The Internet Monk Archives

Epiphany IV: God, everywhere present, filling all things

Epiphany IV
God, everywhere present, filling all things

Today, words from Fr. Stephen Freeman on the “one-storey universe.” That is, he is talking, from an Orthodox perspective, about the sacramental nature of reality.

As the Apostle Paul said in Athens:

The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.” (Acts 17:24-28)

Or, as St. Patrick prayed:

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

• • •

The shape of the universe of my childhood was not [simply] the invention of Southern Protestantism. It was part of a much larger culture, forged in the crucible of the Protestant Reformation and the birth of the modern world in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Today it is the dominant shape of the universe shared by most cultures of the modern Western world. It is the universe in which modern believers live. It is also a universe increasingly hostile to religious belief.

I have come to think of this modern cultural construct as the “two-storey universe.” It is as though the universe were a two-storey house: We live here on earth, the first floor, where things are simply things and everything operates according to normal, natural laws, while God lives in heaven, upstairs, and is largely removed from the storey in which we live. To effect anything here, God must interrupt the laws of nature and perform a miracle. Exactly how often He does this is a matter of debate among Christians and many others within our culture—often measured by just how conservative or liberal their religion may be. The effects of this distance are all-encompassing in the area of religious experience and belief, and frequently in other areas as well.

…With the universe divided and its secularly conceived component dominating our daily life, the transcendent begins to elude us, and the world begins to drown in a sea of literalism. In the ultimate banality of the secular world, “what you see is what you get.” Time becomes chronology, and history triumphs over all. True eschatology, the moment-by-moment in-breaking of the Kingdom of God, ceases to have a place within the Christian world. Scripture becomes lost in a constant battle between opposing camps of literalists—those who believe literal history negates the Bible and those who believe the Bible is literal history.

This bifurcated universe is not the legacy of Christianity but a deviation from its legacy. The accidents of politics and philosophy have reduced our understanding and experience of human existence. But such sad turns in human history are not the final word. The witness to a deeper Christianity and a world in which God is “everywhere present and filling all things” has not disappeared. This book is an effort to draw back the curtain and look at both the emptiness of our present understanding and the fullness of our Christian inheritance.

…It would seem to me that anyone who comes from a sacramental tradition should feel a certain cognitive dissonance with the sounds and images of secularized thought. For the God who took flesh and dwelt among us is surely the same God who continues to take common things like bread and wine, oil and water, as well as men and women, and make of them the instruments of His presence among us. For He is indeed everywhere present and filling all things.

• Fr. Stephen Freeman
Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe

Saturday Ramblings: January 30, 2016 – Hawkeye Edition

It’s the final weekend in January 2016 already!

Here in central Indiana, it looks nothing like our Rambler portrait today. Most are cheering that the weather will be in the 50’s this weekend. I can finally go outside and take my hoses off the spigots and see how much damage the occasional sub-freezing temps have done to them.

Then the Missus and I might just hop in the car and go for a ramble. Care to join us? Let’s go!

It’s that time again — ???? time to give Iowa a try! ????

The Iowa Caucuses will be held on Monday, finally kicking off the never-ending presidential election year after a never-ending pre-campaign season.

Folks will gather all across the state in homes, churches, school gymnasiums and other meeting rooms and make their picks. The Republican caucuses are kind of boring, but those Democrats really know how to do it with drama. If you need a primer on how the caucuses work, here’s one, and here’s some historical background.

Or, you can read this summary from Funny or Die.

And here’s a little taste of what the candidates have been finding out about Iowans as they’ve traversed the state. Tough crowd.

Perhaps you’ve never been to Iowa.

Well then, let us introduce you to this wonderful state by means of a tribute song by Heywood Banks:

We’re told that wintry weather may play a part in the turnout.

A winter storm has been forecasted to arrive in the state on Monday evening, while the caucuses are gathering. But its residents, hardy Midwesterners, won’t likely be swayed from doing their civic duty. Tough people, those Hawkeyes.

With all this important information now at your disposal, it’s time for (drumroll…)

YOUR PREDICTIONS.

Who will win the Republican caucuses?

Who will be the big losers?

And who will win on the Democratic side?

You might want to read this article at Bloomberg, offering nine credible predictions, before you make your final choice.

Enough already. Let’s go to where politics are really crazy — covering nude statues crazy.

28Rouhani-web2-articleLarge — Boxes covered nude statues in the Capitoline Museum in Rome during the visit by Rouhani. Credit Giuseppe Lami/ANSA, via AP

Rome’s Capitoline Museums made a decision to cover their nude statues last week in a bid to avoid offending the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, who was visiting the city. Wine was also banned from official receptions. The New York Times reports:

Some media reports suggested the Iranian delegation had asked Italian officials to hide the statues to avoid Mr. Rouhani any potential embarrassment. Other reports fingered nervous (and perhaps overzealous) Italian bureaucrats. One newspaper even reported that in the grand hall at the Capitoline where the two leaders spoke, the lectern was placed to the side — not the front — of an equestrian statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, apparently to avoid having images of the horse’s genitals appear in news photographs.

The Italian government evidently did not anticipate the uproar and mocking that ensued. One cartoon making the rounds showed a bewildered Mr. Rouhani, with the boxes in the background, asking Mr. Renzi: “Where did you bring me? Ikea?”

The decision has raised an uproar in Italy. Here’s how one critic put it:

“The problem is that those statues — yes, those icons of classicism and models of humanism — are the foundation of European and Mediterranean culture and civilization,” the columnist Michele Serra wrote in La Repubblica. To conceal them, he wrote, “is to conceal ourselves.” To not offend the Iranian president, he wrote, “we offended ourselves.”

Haaretz, the Israeli paper, noted that that last time Rome covered its monuments, it was in deference to another international visitor: Adolf Hitler.

Patriarch Youssef III Younan , the head of the Syriac Catholic Church, criticized the move as insensitive to Syrian Catholic Christians, who are being persecuted for their faith in the Middle East. Younan said it pained them that those in Rome were forgetting their brothers and sisters for opportunistic reasons.

Meanwhile, the Ohio House of Representatives apparently didn’t know what they were getting when they asked a fundamentalist Baptist pastor to open last Tuesday’s session with prayer.

Normally, those who offer such invocations take about a minute. Well, Pastor B.J. VanAman had other plans. A minute passed. Then two. Three. Four. And after five minutes, during a pause in the sermon — er, prayer — House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger took advantage of the break, said “amen” and ended the prayer before it was over.

“I didn’t mean to be rude and I feel terrible.” Rosenberger said in an interview with The Columbus Dispatch. “When I thought it was enough I didn’t know really how best to do it, so I just said ‘amen’ and away we go.”

Pastor VanAman, I have a book recommendation for you.

We reviewed it Thursday on Internet Monk.

And then there’s this.

AZCentral reports:

Members of a satanic group are set to give the prayer at an upcoming meeting of the Phoenix City Council, triggering a debate about religious freedom and whether such a display is appropriate for the venue.

Satanic Temple members Michelle Shortt and Stu de Haan are expected to give the invocation at the council’s Feb. 17 meeting after the group submitted a request in December. Despite the objections of some council members, the city has decided to let the satanists speak as scheduled.

Phoenix City Attorney Brad Holm released a statement Thursday evening, defending the city’s position. The city typically holds a short invocation at the start of formal council meetings and has included members from a variety of faiths, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Sikhism.

“Consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s direction, the city cannot dictate religious viewpoints or the content of a prayer,” Holm wrote. “In addition, government may not exclude a denomination or a religion from praying under these circumstances.”

Councilman Jim Waring said he thinks the city should have told the Satanic Temple members “no,” and let them fight the issue in court. He said he thinks the action is intended to be offensive to residents and questioned whether it’s a gimmick to get the city to stop doing a prayer at council meetings altogether.

Carey Nieuwhof at Christian Week has made some predictions about where the church is heading in the future. I encourage you to read the article and follow his reasoning, but here’s his list of ten prognostications:

The potential to gain is still greater than the potential to lose.
Churches that love their model more than the mission will die.
The gathered church is here to stay.
Consumer Christianity will die and a more selfless discipleship will emerge.
Sundays will become more about what we give than what we get.
Attendance will no longer drive engagement; engagement will drive attendance.
Simplified ministries will complement people’s lives, not compete with people’s lives.
Online church will supplement the journey but not become the journey.
Online church will become more of a front door than a back door.
Gatherings will be smaller and larger at the same time.

Of all these, I really hope that numbers 4 and 7 will lead the way.

What do you think?

This week in music…

In a few days, we mark the 57th anniversary of one of the pivotal events in U.S. rock-n-roll music history. And it took place in Iowa.

On a cold winter’s night a small private plane took off from Clear Lake, Iowa bound for Fargo, N.D. It never made its destination.

When that plane crashed, it claimed the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson and the pilot, Roger Peterson. Three of Rock and Roll’s most promising performers were gone. As Don McLean wrote in his classic music parable, American Pie, (annotated) it was “the day the music died.”

Performing in concert was very profitable and Buddy Holly needed the money it provided. “The Winter Dance Party Tour” was planned to cover 24 cities in a short 3 week time frame (January 23 – February 15) and Holly would be the biggest headliner. Waylon Jennings, a friend from Lubbock, Texas and Tommy Allsup would go as backup musicians.

Ritchie Valens, probably the hottest of the artists at the time, The Big Bopper, and Dion and the Belmonts would round out the list of performers.

The tour bus developed heating problems. It was so cold onboard that reportedly one of the drummers developed frostbite riding in it. When they arrived at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, they were cold, tired and disgusted.

Buddy Holly had had enough of the unheated bus and decided to charter a plane for himself and his guys….

The plane took off a little after 1 A.M. from Clear Lake and never got far from the airport before it crashed, killing all onboard.

A cold N.E wind immediately gave way to a snow which drastically reduced visibility. The ground was already blanketed in white. The pilot may have been inexperienced with the instrumentation.

One wing hit the ground and the small plane corkscrewed over and over. The three young stars were thrown clear of the plane, leaving only pilot Roger Peterson inside.

• The Day the Music Died

Here is a link to a brief documentary on YouTube exploring the three artists who died that day. And here is a performance by Buddy Holly from the Ed Sullivan Show, Dec. 1, 1957:

Adam McHugh: A resolution to listen to the seasons

A resolution to listen to the seasons
Adapted from The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction, by Adam McHugh

• • •

In Southern California seasons are largely a state of mind. Annual weather patterns here follow the retail calendar: we have summer, and we have Christmas. If you close your eyes and point to any day of any month, odds are it will be sunny, blue and warm. I have been trying to land a gig as a weather forecaster in Los Angeles for years.

Our weather patterns are marked by uniformity, and as a result, our lifestyles often are as well. Rob Bell observes that “when the weather is the same year-round, you tend to live at the same pace year-round.” When the weather neglects to take its cues from seasonal shifts, so do we. Unfortunately, when you continuously move at the same speed and engage in the same activities, you often find yourself exhausted, restless and bored.

What if, instead of trying to transcend the rhythms of the calendar, we took guidance from them? I’m not necessarily suggesting that you strip down and howl at the next full moon. But the drama that plays out in the skies above us so often parallels and even affects the drama that acts in us. Perhaps the seasons are a lesson book for the soul, instructing us when to move fast and when to slow down, when to act and when to rest, when to focus on the world outside and when to hibernate and go down deep.

I love that the word deciduous has the word decide embedded in it. I like to think that certain trees “decide” to shed their leaves annually, like they’re tired of giving so much energy to their leaves and need a change. Even though I live in an ever-green climate, I have resolved to lead a deciduous life. I am determined to listen to the seasons and to receive their instruction, even if where I live they are subtle teachers.

I once lived an hour and a half inland in Southern California, which made for slightly cooler winters and summers that would make Dante blush. If you cracked an egg on the sidewalk at high noon in August, it turned into a chicken. But what I appreciate about living in a climate with minimal variation is that it forces me to pay attention to the nuances of the seasonal shifts. Summer does change into fall, but you have to carefully investigate the shift. I have slowly trained myself to notice the low cloud cover that flirts with the mountains in September. The air warms up just a little slower in the morning and cools down a little faster in the afternoon. The arc of the sun starts to resemble more of an inverted smirk than a broad smile. The light falls differently and casts longer shadows; the loud pink rays of the summer sunset are brushed aside by the soft amber and burnt orange hues of fall’s curtain.

I am also learning to notice the equally subtle emotional changes that accompany the seasonal transitions. I think Leighton Ford is on the mark when he asks, “Isn’t it true that we usually think of the seasons less in terms of dates that begin and end than in terms of their effect on us: the cold of winter, the awakening of spring, the glow of summer, the pathos of autumn leaves?” For me fall is a season of exhilarating sadness, a time when we marvel at radiant colors and celebrate harvest yet mourn the inevitable retreat of the world back into the ground. Winter is a contemplative season, a time for gratefully reflecting on what has come before and quietly hoping for what is coming. Spring blossoms with renewal and romance and resurrection. Summer is a time of openness, abundance and relaxation, when the living is easy.

In noticing the patterns of fluctuation around us, we are given permission to embrace the changes and varied responses in our souls and bodies. We don’t need to fight them. The seasons relieve us from the pressure to put on the same face and act the same way all year round. It’s not always summer, and we don’t need to live and feel like it is. Just as our wardrobes change for the seasons, so do our emotional and spiritual lives. We can cycle through our own seasons of dormancy and new life, activity and quietness, celebration and sadness, blossom and harvest, openness and being closed, austerity and abundance.

When I consider all the rhythms in creation resonating to the glory of God, I am most entranced by the waxing and waning of the tides. Few spiritual practices are as meaningful to me as sitting on the beach, praying with the movement of the waves. I learned recently that this is part of a tradition called “praying with the elements,” in which we let the basic components of creation—earth, wind, water and fire—draw us into prayer. Like me, my friend Lara is drawn to water, and she finds that surfing is an act of worship for her. As she puts it, “When you are in the ocean you quickly realize that you cannot conquer it. It’s too powerful. If you fight it, you will lose. But if you are skilled enough, what you can do is move in rhythm with it. It’s just like God. You will never overpower God, no matter how hard you fight, but you can learn how to move in harmony with him.”

I have an irrationally intense fear of jellyfish, so I prefer to stay on the beach rather than surf. I sit in the sand at dusk, and I pray according to what Ignatius of Loyola called the consolations and desolations of God. As the waves crash I inhale the salt air and receive the Lord’s consolations: his mercy, goodness and presence. As the waves flee I exhale, and I release the desolations, the places of my life where God does not seem present and the parts of my interior life that I do not want.

IM Book Review: The Listening Life

The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction
By Adam S. McHugh
IVP Books (2015)

• • •

Listen carefully, my child…and incline the ear of your heart.

• Opening words of the Rule of Benedict

The question that drives this book is, how would our relationships change, and how would we change, if we approached every situation with the intention of listening first? What if we approached our relationship with God as listeners? What if we viewed our relationship with nature as one of listening? What if we approached our relationships using our ears rather than our mouths? What if we sought to listen to our emotions before we preached to them?

• Adam McHugh

I have come to understand, kicking and screaming, that my work as a hospice chaplain is primarily that of a listener. And, by the way, I think it might also be one of Jesus’ main callings for all of us if we want to live a Jesus-shaped life.

And — and this is important — that listening is very often enough.

The act of simply paying attention to someone and hearing her can do more than a multitude of actions. This goes against the grain for most of us. We are doers and fixers and people who like to try to control the outcome of situations. We want to “help.” Especially as Christians, we think it our job to “speak truth” into situations. We view “just sitting there and listening” as something passive and ineffective, perhaps even unloving. We even fill our relationship with God with a truckload of words as we proclaim our worship, lift up our petitions, and verbalize our witness.

Our friend Adam McHugh, who writes for us occasionally here on Internet Monk, has written a book we need: a primer on listening.

A Listening God
Adam reminds us that our God is the one who “hears our voice,” who heard the cries of his people Israel while enslaved in Egypt. Unlike Pharaoh, who would not listen to their groaning, God took heed. And God acted. One helpful reminder he gives is that in Scripture there is a great overlap between “hearing” and “responding,” whether it is speaking of God responding to us or we to him.

God also takes time to question his people, to invite them to “come and reason with him,” to show genuine interest in what they have to say. In one of the most astonishing texts in the Bible, God listens to Abraham as he intercedes for the righteous in Sodom. The original text even says, “God stood before Abraham,” as though God was taking the place of the servant before the master and listening to him for directions. Jesus is also portrayed time and again as someone who elicits responses from people, asking questions like, “What do you want me to do for you?” and listening with sympathetic attention in order to respond.

Adam McHugh is not suggesting that God is at our beck and call. He deals honestly with those times when it seems like God is not listening, when he doesn’t hear, when he fails to act. As in any relationship, these times of darkness and silence try our love and call us to work through them to listen more deeply and perhaps learn what the absence of God might signify.

Listening to Creation
Tomorrow we will post an excerpt of what, at this point, is my favorite chapter in the book, where Adam encourages us to listen to the world we live in, the creation that “speaks” all around us. As one might expect, he has chapters dealing with listening to God as a spiritual practice and ways of listening to God’s voice in Scripture, but it was so refreshing to read this quote from John Calvin: “Meanwhile let us not be ashamed to take pious delight in the works of God open and manifest in this most beautiful theater.”

I love the encouragement this book gives to take up “the spiritual discipline of the long walk.” He is calling us to find the quiet, immerse ourselves in it, and pay attention. I like that he says, “There is no pressure for our observations to be theological or spiritual; we are simply waking up to the craftsmanship of God’s handiwork around us and listening.”

I also like that he calls us to keep time with the rhythm of the seasons, to take interest in the ways humans have brought trouble and even devastation on the creation so that we might participate in its “groaning” and long for its ultimate redemption, to take the words of the prophets seriously when they anticipate a new creation of peace and wholeness.

Listening to People
The Listening Life is also filled with solid encouragement and ideas about how we might all listen to one another better. I appreciate that Adam McHugh is not content with giving us a list of rules and techniques for doing so.

You can give a person all the tools for listening, you can teach him all the right techniques, you can introduce him to the fancy words — active listening, mirroring, paraphrasing and repeating, open-ended questions — but a person’s listening ability is not determined by the techniques in his arsenal. The law does not have the capacity to give life. It is not my intention, nor my personality, to delineate a whole host of rules for effective listening. I am determined to take the “list” out of listening. We do listening a disservice, I believe, by making it overly mechanical. It doesn’t have to be plodding or boring or like eating your lima beans. It can be utterly exhilarating to listen to someone and to see their eyes light up as they discover something new about themselves and feel their emotions validated. It is one of my greatest joys. (p. 135f)

Instead, he recommends spending time around great listeners, learning to imitate them. He suggests we need to do some honest self-reflection to ask ourselves why we are entering a conversation in the first place. A listening heart is about seeking to give, to learn, to welcome, to serve, he reminds us. It is not about controlling or manipulating, but ceding all of that. It is one outworking of Paul’s admonition, “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” It is about paying focused and interested attention on the other. Imagine there is an arrow above you that swings in the direction of the person upon whom the conversation is focused, he writes. Do everything you can to keep that arrow pointing toward the other person. Push it toward their interests, their concerns, their needs as they allow.

As St. Francis prayed, “O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved as to love.” In order to seek this prayer’s fulfillment, Adam suggests we consider each conversation a “Conversatio Divina” — a sacred interchange, a participation in a communion that goes beyond the human dialogue. Perhaps this is what Bonhoeffer meant when he said that Christians do not relate directly to other people, but always through Jesus Christ.

This is especially true when listening to people in pain. Adam has a wonderful chapter with this specific focus. I hope to write more about that, reflecting on his excellent insights, in days to come.

Listening to Your Life
The final aspect of listening that I will bring up in this review that I found most helpful in The Listening Life is the chapter on listening to one’s own life. Our heads are so full of voices! Some of them are friends, some are enemies, some are serious and others silly, but if we ever take the time to get alone and practice solitude, it becomes immediately obvious that our inner world is a a loud and crowded room.

But it’s not simply filled with conscious chosen thoughts. All kinds of random (and not-so-random) emotions are ebbing and flowing within us. Our bodies also speak to us, and we are wise to pick up on their signals. There are refined scripts that we’ve been writing since childhood that repeat themselves over and over again, which we have failed to examine and critique. There are questions we’ve been avoiding or putting off waiting to be answered.

Our inner world is filled with a continual musical score, as it were. Perhaps we’ve become so used to it we can’t really hear it. If you were to describe the music within you — its rhythms and tempos, its melodies and harmonies, its in-tuneness or out-of-tuneness, its style, its instrumentation — what would it sound like?

• • •

What if we would learn to listen? What if the church of Jesus Christ would learn to listen? Adam encourages us to consider becoming a “society of reverse listening,” where those who are expected to speak instead invite others, who never expect to be heard, to speak to them. Without immediate judgment. Without immediate answers. Just listening. Just welcoming the questions and embracing the neighbor. Would we be willing to humble ourselves like that?

As with his earlier book, Introverts in the Church, Adam McHugh has written about a topic which, in my experience, is not often on our radar.

We live in a busy, noisy world that’s supposedly all about communication, but who’s listening?

Who’s listening?

Another Look: A banal suggestion as to why we might be “losing our religion”

“Its a typical situation in these typical times —
Too many choices…”

• Dave Matthews

“In a world of choice, obligatory religions are not faring well.”

• Diana Butler Bass
Christianity After Religion

* * *

Diana Butler Bass once asked an executive of a coffee company how many choices were possible in one of his stores. He said there were nearly 82,000 possibilities for a drink from the menu. I drink my coffee black, but there are apparently 81,999 other choices.

Are you telling me that life and human behavior is just as it ever was?

Are you telling me that a mundane fact like this hasn’t changed the world?

I’d like to posit something very banal here today with regard to the subject of why so many of us today seem to be “Losing Our Religion.” I think a big part of why we are seeing people move away from organized religion in the U.S. is really quite simple. Are you ready? Here it is:

Today, people have many, many different choices.

Choices, choices, and more choices. In my opinion, churches in the United States have not adequately reckoned with the fact that we live in a new world, a world dramatically different than it was fifty years ago. Today we live a world of virtually unlimited choices and options.

We’ve come so far that we can hardly fathom a culture like it was when I was a child — when there were just three television channels, three car companies, only a few places where one could find fast food, and hardly anything was open on Sundays. People listened to AM radio (only) and got their news at certain times of the day when the newspaper arrived or a news program was broadcast on TV. If you stayed up past midnight, there was nothing to watch but a static test pattern. Communication was nowhere near instantaneous and the means of communication were few and fixed — land line phone, letter, face to face.

Shopping choices were limited (no malls! no big box stores! few national chains! no Amazon.com!). Eating out options were limited, information access was limited, and entertainment choices were limited. Heck, the only diet soda was Tab (yuck!), and when you ordered coffee you got it black, or with cream and/or sugar.

Even the possibilities for where and how one might worship or practice one’s religion were limited. Churches and other religious institutions were more likely to be based on historic traditions and practices than on the “felt needs” or consumer preferences of the community. More people lived in communities where there were certain expectations about religious practice, so there were pressures of obligation that constrained one’s comfort in making alternate choices. And there certainly weren’t as many options on a Sunday for Christians to choose.

However, today people have choices like they’ve never had before. These choices are available because of many factors, but I think three are foremost:

Technology
Affluence
Freedom

Technology is the first big driver and, I think, the key. Technology makes things possible that were not possible before.

Before the automobile and other forms of modern transportation, along with the infrastructure that supports them such as the interstate highway system developed a half century ago, it was not possible for mass numbers of people to be as mobile as they have been since. We Americans pulled up our roots, restructured our lives around the car, hit the road, and never looked back.

Advances in technology sent people packing to the cities for work. Result: the urbanization and suburbanization of our culture.

Advances in technology made the modern media age possible, with its instant and constant flow of information and communication, along with an almost unlimited variety of entertainment options. I can remember when people used to say that “TV killed the Sunday evening church service,” and I believe it. Choice brings change. People behave differently when they have choices. If they have options, they won’t always choose the ones you think they should.

Advances in technology made the “sexual revolution” possible. Would our culture’s relaxation (some would say “abandonment”) of sexual mores have happened as it did without the pill? Would pornography be as pervasive without the development of video and other media and the internet? Would phenomena such as widespread divorce be as prevalent if we didn’t have the mobility we have in our culture to move about and relocate so easily?

Now listen up: Of course, technology has made our lives better in a multitude of ways. I’m not casting judgment on progress or saying that we all have to imitate the Amish or go back to Little House on the Prairie days to turn these trends around. All I’m saying is that when we wring our hands about how the world is going down the tubes, we lay the blame on all kinds of esoteric or pernicious things. However, in reality, a big part of the reason can be found in commonplace changes, brought about by remarkable advances that have affected the way you and I approach life.

When you get in the way of a big wave, it’s going to sweep you along with it. And suddenly, you won’t be in the same place you were before. Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Advances in technology and our good use of those advances have made us the most affluent nation the world has ever known. Sure, we have our economic challenges, but our standard of living is unrivaled, and a vast number of people today are therefore free to make lifestyle choices unheard of in the past.

Here in our free society, advances in technology and our resulting affluence have led to increased possibilities in personal freedom. I’m no longer bound as tightly by limitations and circumstances. Opportunities are everywhere and more accessible to more people. I’m empowered to do more things on my own, to go more places, to purchase more goods, to participate in more activities, to make more choices for myself.

So, for example, I simply don’t have to go to church anymore. I have a greater power to choose. Like most of us, I probably no longer live in a community where I am bound in close relationships with extended family and friends that exert the pressure of obligation on me. Free from that, I can do most anything I want on Sunday. Technology and affluence have given me many, many choices.

I can travel. I can stay home and watch TV or go to the football game. I can go to any one of a dozen restaurants and have brunch with friends. I can catch up on my work at home on my computer. I can go to the store and shop on Sunday because, with everything that’s available and all the different choices people have about their schedules and lifestyles, it doesn’t make economic sense for stores to close on the “Sabbath” anymore. Also, if I want to, I can still worship with a DVD, watch a preacher on TV, do an internet Bible study, listen to a “spiritual” playlist on my iPod, and have “fellowship” texting with my friends or interacting with others on a blog (!) or on Facebook.

The vast majority of us have many, many more options in life than people had in previous generations. As Diana Butler Bass writes, “Americans, even those of modest means, exercise more choices in a single day than some of our ancestors did in a month or perhaps even a year.”

Or to make it personal, she quotes one man she met as saying, “My life is full without church; it seems kind of irrelevant.”

I suggest that this, my friends, is the challenge for churches today and in the future. Some of the most fundamental reasons for the decline of religion in today’s U.S. society are remarkably natural and banal. There are other reasons, of course, but we mustn’t downplay the strength of the commonplace cultural currents that have transformed the way people live, communicate, move about, and decide what to do with their free time.

Because of advancements in technology and our affluence, we have arrived at a level of personal freedom that gives people a vast array of choices about how to live their lives.

More and more of them are not choosing religious ways — at least in the fashion that they are being offered to them.

First posted in 2013

Damaris Zehner: Our Addiction

Bosch Ira — The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things (detail), Bosch

Our Addiction
By Damaris Zehner

I once asked a recovering alcoholic why he had begun to drink to excess. “It dulled the edges of things,” he said; “anxiety about whether I was going to succeed at something or live up to my potential (I hated that phrase), depression about what I saw as failure – these all didn’t matter so much if I drank. And then of course I drank to take the edge off my guilt about drinking.”

Many, maybe most, of us are blessed not to have to struggle with alcoholism. But many, maybe most, of us have a comparable problem. We have a habit that is designed to make us feel better about failure, console us for our disappointments, and assuage our guilt. This habit is anger: one of the seven deadly sins, one of the three spiritual sins, and the one we are most likely to insist we have the right to. Sure, pride is wrong, we know that, and envy is not just wrong but nasty-feeling; but anger is a glorious, adrenaline-pumping, red-orange surge of power and passion and self-justification.

Believe me, I know about anger. I have a terrible temper. Everything I say in this essay convicts me, the chief of sinners, before it does anyone else. But I do think that anger is a problem endemic to our society, not just a personal struggle of my own. It’s worth looking at as a broader issue.

There are many reasons we get angry and justify our anger. One is as a means of coping with the realization that we’ve done something bad or even just embarrassing. Anger is the perfect cure for that cringing, salted-slug desire to curl up out of sight and not face what we’ve done. Once we can discover that it’s someone else’s fault, then we’re expressing righteous indignation and holding the guilty accountable. Right? That’s not sin.

We also get angry when we feel our rights are infringed. We planned to get work done, but a co-worker has a melt-down or just wants to talk. We planned to make a phone call, but the boom-box-carrying jerk who sits down next to us makes that impossible. We planned to take a quick nap, but the kids decided to get into a fight instead of watching Frozen. We planned to finally pay off the credit card, but our spouse gets in an accident or needs expensive medical attention. It doesn’t always make sense whom we get angry at; ultimately, if we’re honest, we’re angry at God.

Sometimes anger isn’t prompted by immediate feelings of guilt or infringement. Sometimes it’s just a habit. “Damn it, where are my keys?!” we bellow – every day, every single morning as we get ready to go to work. We probably wouldn’t say we were angry, because our anger meter has ratcheted up pretty high, but the children and pets who suddenly want to be elsewhere should be a hint that we have an issue. Do people get reluctant to meet our eyes as we talk about politics or employment or youth or the church or whatever? Do people start playing with their food, changing the subject, telling irrelevant jokes when we’re talking? Because anger may be an adrenaline rush to us, but it’s nauseating discomfort to those around us. Maybe we have a problem we haven’t recognized yet.

But even if we realize that we are using anger to make ourselves feel better, that we lose our tempers because we rate ourselves and our rights too highly, and that we have gotten into a bad habit of venting any frustration into the outside world, we still are facing our most dangerous temptation. This one is Satan’s masterpiece. It is the conviction that anger is in fact the right reaction to evil and injustice, and that we are being Christ-like in telling it like it is. Didn’t Christ drive the money-changers out of the temple? Didn’t he chew out the Pharisees for hypocrisy? Didn’t he get pretty confrontational with the apostles a few times?

Yes, he did. And yes, we are supposed to be like Jesus and act as he acts (although I notice we’re fine making exceptions in other areas. How many of us walk across ponds on our way to work or go out to a hilltop and expect to ascend into heaven?). Maybe when we are just being annoyed by people we’re supposed to love, we can see that we shouldn’t get angry; but when we see abuse within the church, injustice in our society, or inefficiency in our home, we have to respond with anger, don’t we? Isn’t righteous anger proof that we care? That we have a moral compass and aren’t afraid to use it?

No, anger isn’t proof that we care for God’s commands or others’ good. Humility, death to self, love, and forgiveness are. They aren’t fun and glorious, the way anger is, and sometimes they seem terribly wrong to our (somewhat warped) consciences. But that’s what we’re asked for by God. “Judgment is mine,” says the Lord; “I will repay.” We’re supposed to turn the other cheek, even in the face of cruelty, injustice, and stupidity, and not console ourselves with the warmth of rage.

Sure, maybe there are times that Christians can get legitimately angry. After all, the Bible says, “In your anger, do not sin;” it doesn’t say never get angry the way it says never murder or commit adultery. But we need to go back to our recovering alcoholic. It’s not always evil to have a drink; there is a time and place where a glass of wine is proper. But not for him. He knows he can never allow himself that luxury because his faculties have been permanently damaged. Not for him the glass with friends after work or the celebratory toast. Not until all sin is healed and he is raised from death. And we are the same with anger. Whether it is occasionally allowable is not the point; our society, and we as members of it, are so intoxicated by anger that we have to go cold turkey. It will probably even be a relief, not to have to parse every occasion and wonder if this is a time we can legitimately lose our temper. Just don’t. Call your anger sobriety partner and talk yourself through the temptation. Don’t think that this time is an exception or that that group deserves to be yelled at.

My recovering alcoholic friend talks about how hard it was to be sober once he made the commitment to do so – not just to avoid drinking, but to become an entirely new person, to grow into a new shape once the trellis of alcohol was removed. He ended up ultimately with different friends, relationships, even a different state of residence. We may find the same thing in rooting out anger. How will we know we care about anything? How will we defend ourselves, show self-respect, address evil? The danger might be to sink into depression, often described as anger turned inward. But there is hope for us. My friend has been sober for almost thirty years now and built up a new and healthier life, one that he couldn’t have imagined when he was drinking. There are also people who have rejected anger and have faced injustice with cheerfulness and love instead – Maximilian Kolbe, Brother Lawrence, my grandmother, and others. It’s not easy giving up a habit, and an addiction is even worse; but the twelve steps that lead people out of alcoholism can lead us out of anger addiction – acknowledging that we have a problem, that only God can give us the strength to deal with it, that we have harmed ourselves and others and must make reparation, and that we need courage and honesty to see ourselves for what we are.

Take the pledge. Get on the wagon. Rearrange your life to avoid those things (websites, television shows, water-cooler complaint sessions, etc.) that make you mad. Be anger-free and proud. Oops, not proud. Pride’s a sin, too. But we’ll get to that another day.

Mondays with Michael Spencer: January 25, 2016

This is part two in a series of iMonk posts that Michael wrote back in 2006. We have edited them and present them each Monday. Michael’s subject was “the sermon,” and the series was called “What’s Wrong with the Sermon?” Here is Michael’s explanation of the approach he took:

In this series of posts I will be examining the sermon as it is currently done in evangelicalism. My method will be a bit backwards. I am going to examine the most frequent criticisms of sermons — something I hear all the time from my peers and student listeners — and see if there is truth in the criticisms.

Past posts:
• Part 1: The sermon’s too long

• • •

What’s wrong with the sermon?
(2) The sermon’s boring

What did we do before the word boring was invented? It must have been tough.

One of the ironies of the study of preaching is that I’m pretty sure most of the great preachers of history would have been boring to the vast majority of people who ever happened to hear them.

Take Jonathan Edwards, for example. Edwards is a darling of theological type preachers, and a fan of Edwards like John Piper can wax rapturous about Edwards’ sermons, but I’ve read enough Edwards to safely say that, for the vast majority of the time, he would have bored the socks right off of any reasonable audience. I don’t think those “great awakening” stories of people falling out of their pews in writhing anxiety were the normal fare at Edwards’ church. The guy could split hairs to the point most people would have been begging for the words, “…and in closing” to arrive.

Or Martyn-Lloyd Jones, the great Welsh expositor of the mid-twentieth century. The Doctor was a relentless plodder in the pulpit, with a kind of dogged, warrior’s determination to wrestle every text to the level of application. Hearers like J.I. Packer were enthralled by Lloyd-Jones, but I would never put a Lloyd-Jones tape in the car player after a big meal. He’s put me down many times.

I preach to teenagers mostly. I work really hard at holding the attention of my primary audience, and I’m known for being able to keep the students’ attention for longer than anyone here. I can be funny, and I use my knowledge of my audience to make sure my sermons are well-seasoned with attention grabbers. Of course, that doesn’t stop the vast number of kids who sleep through everything I say from catching a 20 minute nap under my influence. I’m a sure cure for insomnia for a good sized portion of my audience. In other words, no matter how hard I try, I’m boring to many people. (And yes, preacher, so are you. Quit grinning.)

Today’s preachers are more afraid of boredom than of terrorism or disease. Preachers like Ed Young will bring tanks and tigers into church rather than preach another boring sermon. From object lessons to magic tricks to video clips to background music and slides, today’s preachers would rather hear any criticism before “it was boring.”

Other preachers, however, seem to have accepted the fact that boredom is a quality of this culture’s addiction to entertainment. Television has made us a culture with viciously short attention spans, and we assess almost everything by its ability to create an “instant” sensation or reaction. MTV made us into people who needed a new camera angle every 3 seconds. While many churches have decided to fight the battle to hold the attention of an ADD audience, other preachers have opted out of the competition.

I believe it is an inherent flaw in our consideration of Christianity to say that the Gospel will always appeal to the interests and concerns of any person in a culture. A culture that is literate, that has a concept of God and takes a theistic worldview seriously, will certainly find the Gospel much more interesting than a culture that is addicted to Entertainment Tonight and Oprah Winfrey. The Gospel speaks to us in Biblical language and concepts because the truth of the Gospel is conserved and communicated in those concepts in a way they are not conserved in other forms. If relevance and interest are purchased at the expense of laundering the Gospel for the coinage of entertainment, we’ve made a deadly and critical error.

In fact, a far superior approach to preaching insists that we not seek to be entertaining, but that we speak about the Gospel in the same way the Bible speaks to us. At this fundamental level, we must answer the question, “Is the truth of the Gospel true, whether it is entertaining or not?” The answer to this question is the difference between good preaching and mediocre entertainment.

• • •

Here are my suggestions for good preaching that isn’t unnecessarily boring.

1. Good illustrations are golden. Ravi Zacharias can talk over the head of 98% of his audience, and then put them in his pocket with the right illustration. I believe this is worth imitating. Work as hard at illustration as possible.

2. If you are preaching to the same audience on a regular basis, try to build up a basic understanding of the Gospel that will allow you to say more and more with each message. If you are privileged to preach to the same people for years, you should be able to avoid much that is boring by having basic concepts well defined, explained and illustrated.

3. The entertainment culture in which we live cannot become the standard for what is good preaching. Jesus was a master communicator, but he didn’t try to outdo the theater productions at Sepphoris. In the same way, we should refuse to compete with the secular entertainment media for the attention of people. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” “If they refuse to hear you, shake the dust off your feet and move on.” These are the words of Jesus.

4. Many sermons are boring because the preacher is doing exegesis or theological debate in the pulpit. We are announcing the good news of a new king and a gracious offer of salvation and inclusion in his Kingdom. We are not parsing verbs or answering the 28 objections to predestination in a scholarly review.

5. Sermons that are too long are usually boring. 20-25 minute messages may be a lot of things, but they are seldom boring simply by duration. The better organized, the more flow in content, the less boring.

6. Interest in a message is generally a matter of relevant, personal application. We need the quality of being able to speak to hearts and minds in the depths, and not to just scratch the itch of superficial entertainment interests. Work at application. Use personal questions. Be appropriate in dealing with life issues.

7. Some of my most “non-boring” sermons were messages were I came at something everyone was interested in, talking about in the introduction, and then used that as the door or jump point into the Biblical material. This is a skill that requires an awareness of how media, news stories, television, trends, etc., can be pressed into the service of the Gospel.

8. Are you excited by the Gospel? Or you enthused by its power? Are you excited by its relevance? Is the outrage of the Gospel alive in your preaching? Read Robert Capon! Read people who keep the “live wire” of the Gospel charged up in your own heart. Don’t be afraid to create interest by letting the Gospel be what it is: an offense and a stumbling block to those who want justification by morality and decency.

9. There is great drama, comedy and reality in scripture. Our job is to find it. Even in Paul’s letters, there is real life behind the scenes, and in that real life there are possibilities for preaching. When we deal with a text, we may be the ones who are bored as we read. No wonder others are bored. Find what is exciting about the epistles or the rest of scripture. Where is the conflict? Where is the struggle? The drama? The battle? It is there.

10. One of the finest books on worship anywhere is Michael Horton’s A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship. Horton helps us to see the drama that should be inherently present in properly ordered liturgical worship. If the worship service is a drama, a covenant renewal service between God and his people, then what is the sermon? The sermon is God speaking the Gospel to his people, preparing them for the Lord’s Supper.

God-centered, liturgical worship has proven, though not immune at least highly resistant to the pressure to become entertainment oriented. I believe that the sermon, when it is part of worship that is, in itself, dramatic and serious, will become what it should be: Good News of a great joy for all people.

Revivalism is inherently flawed as a model for worship- and preaching- because of its assumption that whatever grabs interest will result in public professions of faith. So a dog and pony show can get people down the aisle, and therefore the dog and the pony are superior to a sermon that announces the message of the Bible. This is a dangerous model, to be rejected without guilt.

Conclusion

In an entertainment addicted, spiritually depraved culture, the Christian message will never escape the charge of being boring, so preachers should tell God’s story clearly, creatively and persuasively, but without trading the Gospel for the applause of an audience.

We live in a culture that finds everything boring eventually. The Gospel is timeless, not entertaining. It is true, not trendy. It has depth, not just overnight ratings. It is God’s word to all of us, told in the story of Jesus. While sermons will always be boring to someone, we dare not find that God has been bored with our attempts to become entertainers rather than heralds and proclaimers.

Epiphany III: I wonder…

Epiphany III
I wonder…

Luke 4:14-20 (NRSV)

¹⁴Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. ¹⁵He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. ¹⁶When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” ²⁰And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

I wonder what I should think?

I am preaching in local church congregation today.

The Gospel text for this Sunday is about Jesus preaching in a synagogue.

I was once pastor of the church in which I am preaching. The people and I will know each other.

The synagogue where Jesus preached was in Nazareth, his home town, where everyone knew him.

I will be welcomed, and when people leave, they will greet me at the door, smile, and shake my hand or give me hugs.

Jesus’ sermon provoked a ruckus that prematurely ended the service. “They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff” (Luke 14:29).

At first, when the people heard the part of the sermon recorded in today’s text, the people were pleased: “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” But it wasn’t long before all hell broke loose.

Why?

Because Jesus went on to make them face the implications of the gospel.

It’s okay to speak in general terms about reaching the “poor.” No problem to speak of ministering to the “captives,” healing the “blind,” or freeing the “oppressed.”

But when Jesus references passages from the Tanakh that show God passing by his own people — the good people — and paying attention to specific foreigners and outsiders and insinuating that Jesus, their hometown boy, will do the same, well, that starts to raise the hackles.

I wonder what it’s like to get thrown out of church by your friends and neighbors.

I wonder if uncovering the true implications of the gospel for our lives would make the good and faithful people upset.

I wonder if I’ve ever really proclaimed the good news of Jesus.

Saturday Ramblings: January 23, 2016

Hey, iMonks on the east coast, how you doin’ out there, under the wrath of Snowzilla? Hope you’re not thinking of doing any rambling today, at least on the roads. Looks like it might be awhile before you could dig that Rambler out. Why not sit back with a big mug of coffee and join us. The weather’s fine here — a little crazy, yes — but no snow plows required. So, let’s ramble!

We’ll punctuate our journey today by stopping to take a look at a few more of the greatest blizzards in U.S. history.

The Great Blizzard of March 1988. 40-50 inches of snow was dumped on NY, NJ, Mass, RI, Conn. Killed over 400 people and caused over $20 million in property damage. — **Great Blizzard of 1888**. 40-50 inches of snow was dumped on NY, NJ, Mass, RI, Conn, killing over 400 people and causing $20 million in property damage.

Update on my weekend…

I’m thrilled to say that tonight we’ll be going downtown to hear one of our favorite singer-songwriters, John Gorka. John is so clever, insightful, and funny, his songs are memorable, and I can’t wait to hear him this evening here in Indy.

How could I not share the wealth? I wrote about dreaming of spring on Friday, and the following song was one of the factors in prompting me to write. Here’s John singing “Thirstier Wind” from his latest album, Bright Side of Down.

Update on Crazy CP headlines. I enjoy perusing The Christian Post now and then just to be amazed at the way evangelicals process life (and even more amazed that I once thought this way on occasion).

Some recent headlines astound me and have me shaking my head. Who thinks like this? Who actually says things like this?

FRC’s Tony Perkins: ‘Two Corinthians’ Gaffe Proves Trump ‘Isn’t Familiar With the Bible’. Except that I have heard British preachers say it like that all my life. Way to point out your own cultural insularity, Tony. Now, I’m not saying Trump is familiar with the Bible, but you might think twice before calling it a “gaffe.”

Pastor Steven Furtick Says God Told Him to Preach Against Prejudice. Who needs a special message from God to do this? Hey Steven, God told me you should stop preaching.
Should Your Spouse Love God More Than They Love You? This is a great example of the kind of question some Christians ask that no one else in the world would even think to ask. But rather than pontificate further, let me ask you: What’s so insane about this question?

Is David Bowie in Heaven? Can we please just stop speculating on this “elevator up”/”elevator down” theology? Even if it were the main point of the New Testament (and it’s not), who would trust Greg Laurie to answer a question like this?

Blake Shelton Shocked Tim Tebow’s Christian Faith Might Be Keeping Him Out of NFL. My jaw set a new record in drop speed with this one. First of all, Blake Shelton? Second, Tim Tebow is a bad football player, my fellow believers. Get that through your heads. He is not being persecuted or given less than a fair chance because of his faith. If he could play and win and make money for an NFL owner somewhere, he would be on the field. Oy vey. Soon you’ll be telling me you’re pissed off that Kirk Cameron hasn’t gotten an Oscar nomination!

The Knickerbocker Storm, 1922. Named this because the Knickerbocker Theatre in Wash DC collapsed, killing 98 people. The storm left 28-33 inches on the ground. — **Knickerbocker Storm, 1922**. Named because the Knickerbocker Theatre in Wash DC collapsed, killing 98 people. The storm left 28-33 inches of snow on the ground.

Update on the even crazier (in a good way) Pope Francis…

Here is news from LifeSite News that many of us might find rather exciting:

A group of Finnish Lutherans were offered Holy Communion by priests at a mass held in St. Peter’s Basilica following a meeting with Pope Francis on January 15, according to a report by the Finnish periodical Kotimaa 24.

Lutheran bishop Samuel Salmi was visiting the Vatican as the head of a delegation that included a youth choir that was to perform there. Salmi says he met privately with Pope Francis.

After the personal audience with the pope, the delegation was present at a celebration of the Catholic mass. According to Salmi, at the time of communion the non-Catholics placed their right hands on their left shoulders, a traditional way of indicating that they were ineligible to receive the Eucharist. However, the celebrating priests insisted on giving them communion.

Salmi told Kotimaa 24 that “I myself accepted it [Holy Communion].” He added that “this was not a coincidence,” and nor was it a coincidence when last year the pope seemed to accept the notion of a Lutheran woman receiving communion with her Catholic husband. The original article, written in Estonian, was translated for LifeSiteNews by Voice of the Family’s Maria Madise.

At that time the pope acknowledged that “explanations and interpretations” of communion may differ between Catholics and Lutherans, but “life is bigger than explanations and interpretations.” He advised the woman to “Talk to the Lord and then go forward.”

“At the root of this there is, without a doubt, the ecumenical attitude of a new Vatican,” Salmi told Kotimaa 24. “The pope was not here at the mass, but his strategic intention is to carry out a mission of love and unity. There are also theological adversaries in the Vatican, for which reason it is difficult to assess how much he can say, but he can permit practical gestures.”

The visit took place just three days before an annual ecumenical delegation to Rome on the part of Catholic, Orthodox, and Lutheran Finns to celebrate the feast day of St. Henry of Uppsala, who is credited with the evangelization of Finland in the 12th century.

snow2 — **Great Appalachian Storm 1950**. This Thanksgiving storm dumped over 57 inches of snow on the U.S. and Canada, killing 350 people.

Update from Wheaton College: RNS reporter Emily McFarlan Miller brings us up to speed on the very public dispute between Wheaton College and Prof. Larycia Hawkins.

Now the faculty has chimed in.

Wheaton College’s faculty council unanimously recommended that the administration drop termination proceedings against Professor Larycia Hawkins, according to an email to the faculty obtained by RNS.

…The council statement said it has “grave concerns” about the process the college followed in pursuing those actions, according to the email dated Jan. 20 from New Testament Professor Lynn Cohick, who chairs the council.

…The council still has questions it hopes the administration will answer at a listening session for students and faculty scheduled for Thursday night (Jan. 21).

Those questions include:

Does the college have a position on what can be said regarding the question: “Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?”

What is the process for determining acceptable interpretations of the college’s statement of faith?

Do faculty have a role in this process?

How will faculty know if their views and/or statements are in danger of being judged unacceptable?

This is getting curiouser and curiouser. When the faculty begins to question the administration (not just idealistic students or people with a political agenda), the pot really gets stirred.

It’s my own opinion that Prof. Hawkins’s statement was not meant to be as theologically precise as many of her detractors are suggesting. One faculty member, in fact, called what she said “innocuous.”

This is what I have seen in my own experience: when administrations rise up publicly to deal with matters like these that they find threatening, a lot of their bluster is likely covering fear about donors. Which is fine: institutions need to protect themselves. But, especially in religious controversies, everybody wants to imagine that such debates are high-minded theological conclaves about ideas and purity of doctrine. I don’t think so. It’s about an institution’s worries concerning public perceptions and the way their patrons might react to those perceptions by pulling support.

In today’s climate, when conservative evangelicals are looking to people like Ted “the carpet-bomber” Cruz and Donald “ban all Muslims” Trump to satisfy their view of the world, Wheaton had little choice but to take a stand on this one. Right or wrong, I just wish they’d admit it.

Blizzard93 — **Storm of the Century 1993**. It came as both a cyclone and a blizzard, and wreaked havoc from Cuba to Canada. As strong as a hurricane, covering an entire continent, the storm was responsible for 310 deaths and $6.6 billion in damage. However, it also marked the first time the National Weather Service had made a successful 5-day forecast warning of a storm’s severity.

Update on the most “Bible-minded” U.S. cities. Christianity Today reports the results of the annual “100 Most Bible-Minded Cities” of 2016. Each year, the American Bible Society and the Barna Group survey the Bible reading habits and beliefs about the Bible from over 65,000 adults in major American cities, and this is what they’ve found this year:

The Top Ten Most “Bible-minded” Cities:

Chattanooga, Tennessee (52%)
Birmingham, Alabama (51%)
Roanoke/Lynchburg, Virginia (48%)
Shreveport, Louisiana (47%)
Tri-Cities, Tennessee (47%)
Charlotte, North Carolina (46%)
Little Rock/Pine Bluff, Arkansas (45%)
Knoxville, Tennessee (45%)
Greenville/Spartanburg/Anderson, South Carolina/Asheville, North Carolina (44%)
Lexington, Kentucky (44%)

The Least “Bible-minded” Cities:

91. Salt Lake City, Utah (17%)
92. Phoenix/Prescott, Arizona (16%)
93. Hartford/New Haven, Connecticut (16%)
94. San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, California (15%)
95. Las Vegas, Nevada (14%)
96. Buffalo, New York (13%)
97. Cedar Rapids/Waterloo, Iowa (13%)
98. Providence, Rhode Island/New Bedford, Massachusetts (12%)
99. Boston, Massachusetts/Manchester, New Hampshire (11%)
100. Albany/Schenectady/Troy, New York (10%)

Most of this seems fairly unsurprising to me. South = Bible Belt. Northeast & West = the elitists and the liberals who won’t submit to the Bible’s authority. Isn’t that what we’ve heard our whole lives?

What do you think?

The Chicago Blizzard of 1967. This storm stranded over 800 CTA buses and 50,000 cars on the streets. A similar storm in 1979 cost the mayor his job and led to the election of the city's first female mayor. — **Chicago Blizzard of 1967**. This storm stranded over 800 CTA buses and 50,000 cars. The storm left 76 dead across the Midwest. Strangely, it occurred just days after the region had experienced 60º weather and tornado warnings.

Update on the Oscars and diversity. Well, this is bound to start a bit of conversation.

Charlotte Rampling is one of my favorite actresses and I can’t wait to see “45 Years.” But she made some rather incendiary comments this week about the controversy that’s been brewing over the lack of diversity in Hollywood and in the recent Oscar nominations.

Academy Award nominee Charlotte Rampling does not buy into the notion that the Oscars are racist. In fact, she thinks the conversation surrounding a lack of diversity in the nominations is actually anti-white.

“It is racist to whites,” she said on France’s Europe 1 radio station Friday.

“One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list,” added Rampling, who was nominated in the best actress category for her role in “45 Years.”

She disagreed with the proposal that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences use quotas to encourage diversity.

“Why classify people? These days everyone is more or less accepted,” she said. “People will always say ‘Him, he’s not as handsome’ or ‘Him, he’s too black’ or ‘He’s too white.’ But does that necessarily mean there should be lots of minorities everywhere?”

**Buffalo Blizzard of 1977**. With wind gusts ranging from 46 to 69 mph and snowfall as high as 100 in, with winds blowing this into drifts of 30 to 40 ft, this storm solidified Buffalo’s reputation as the blizzard capital of the U.S. The storm was worse because Lake Erie froze and the high winds blew the snow on it onto land in addition to the snow that fell. That winter, Buffalo had a total snowfall measurement of 199.4 inches.

Today for your musical pleasure and amazement…

I have heard a lot of gifted guitarists in my lifetime, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone play like Tommy Emmanuel. Without relying on electronics or special effects, he brings things out of a guitar that I never knew were there before.

Here’s some hot licks for you on a cold, snowy day. This is Tommy playing Arthur Smith’s Guitar Boogie.

Be safe out there. Or better yet, stay in there.

midwinter

midwinter

in long and deep midwinter
dreams of spring arise
of fulsome brooks and fragile buds
of warmer winds and skies
that, moaning, pour the anguished tears
of childbirth on the land
and ‘midst the muddy, messy muck
transform the slender strands
weaving a carpet ‘neath the trees
which don their own green gowns
and fill the space below the blue
like dancers all around
who hear the call of lively song
— they bend, they reach, they sway —
and welcome all the newborn life
now coming out to play.

a wish-dream only!
cold and lonely
here i pass the day.

in frozen climes
i’ll wrangle rhymes
‘til winter pass away.