The Internet Monk Archives

Beverly

“I had a dream about not long ago,” she said. “My sister and I were at the roller rink, skating together to that wonderful music. I never did get very good, but she could really skate. In fact, we all saved up and bought her skates and then later we even got her a case. That was really a big deal, you know, to have your own skates and case.”

Beverly told me how the skating rink had been a favorite place for her sister and her to go. How they would scrape up enough change and walk there together. How gliding around the rink on those skates would provide a bit of respite from their hard life at home.

“Daddy drank,” she told me, “and would beat the living hell out of my mama. She had long hair and he would grab it from behind and swing and throw her around, ‘cause she was just a thin little thing. He was so mean to her. And sometimes he would come home late at night when the house was locked up and pass out on the front porch and pee all over himself. We were so embarrassed because everybody walked to school back then and they’d see him when they passed our house.”

“On Sunday mornings, my sister and I would try to find a church – any church we could get to – just to get away, because he was drunk every damn Saturday night. We just wanted to be out of there. Once I attended a Presbyterian church for a certain number of weeks in a row and they gave me a free Bible. I still have it upstairs.”

“But our favorite thing was to go roller skating.”

Tears came to her eyes and she had to turn away. It was the week of Christmas and I asked about her family. The conversation had meandered into her childhood, and this hard-shelled, funny, coarse, husky-voiced old woman with the wrinkled face and the dark, cluttered house that smelled like stale cigarette smoke grew unusually reflective and quiet. I found myself leaning forward, into her story. She had never opened up and talked so seriously like this before. The change in her demeanor was astounding.

She told how her father ran off to Louisville when she was in her teens. Sometime later a hospital there called and asked her to come and see him and could she help take care of his bill? She didn’t go. Neither did mama or any of her brothers or sisters, save one, and when he got to the room, his own daddy looked up and said, “Who are you?”

One time after that he showed up at their house. When someone told mama, she grabbed a butcher knife and started out of the kitchen after him. But Beverly, pregnant at the time, got between mama and the door and persuaded her not to do it.

Mama had never remarried, and every single one of the siblings had been married at least twice. Daddy’s drunken doings cast a long shadow.

For years the three of them were close and strong: the woman before me telling her story, along with her sister and mama. But now mama was gone – “for longer than I can remember,” she whispered. And sister died a few years back.

You could tell losing them was the most profound of all her sorrows. She told me, “I love my kids, I really do. But it’s just not the same with them. They didn’t go through what we did together.”

“In the midst of all that pain,” I asked, “do you have some good memories?”

That’s when she told me about roller skating, and then about the dream. “There we were. We didn’t say anything to each other, we just skated. But we were together. And in that dream I felt so peaceful.” She turned and looked out the window, wiping an eye with her sleeve.

“You really miss them at Christmas,” I said after a moment of silence.

“This time of year is hard, yes,” she confessed. “What’s that song? – ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ – I can’t listen to that. There’s a bunch of ‘em that I have to turn off when they come on.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

“But that’s enough of my sad story,” Beverly said as she slapped her hand on the table.

It was only a few days until Christmas, and as I drove away a waltz was running through my head, with a vision of two young girls feeling safe and free as they glide over polished wood floors, around and around and around.

It’s that time of year when the world falls in love
Ev’ry song you hear seems to say,
“”Merry Christmas, may your New Year dreams come true”
And this song of mine in three-quarter time
Wishes you and yours the same thing, too

Christmas Waltz, Frank Sinatra

And please, Lord, keep speaking peace to Beverly in her dreams.

Mondays with Michael Spencer (+ a bonus!): December 21, 2015

It was at school that I first discovered the beauty of music — in “Lo! How a Rose, E’er Blooming.”

Seventh graders were required to take music class. We were not music enthusiasts, to say the least. There was about us all the sense of artistic compulsion, but in the cause of sheer endurance. Nothing more. Our teacher was Mr. Waite, the assistant principal. Mr. Waite was a towering, imposing, intense force to be reckoned with. He managed rooms full of junior high students with a firmness that produced consistent results. Fear of impending doom concentrates the mind wonderfully, and sometimes, in our case, frees the voice to do great things.

I later learned that he was, in fact, a boisterous, happy and spontaneous man who could make anyone smile, but we rarely, if ever, saw that smile. He was turning seventh grade Philistines into singers, and this was war. His entrance into our tiny music room was like the arrival of a holy prophet bound and determined to convert the captive heathen to the true faith. He did not abide any misbehavior, and we would sing whether we liked it or not. We were there to sing, and we would learn to sing and we did sing. Or else…I’m not sure what would have happened, but I didn’t want to find out.

I couldn’t read a note of music, and though Mr. Waite diligently taught us, and I surely nodded at every lesson, I never learned to actually read music. But that didn’t mean I didn’t learn to sing. I was blessed with a good voice and memory. I loved to sing with a group. If we couldn’t read the music, we could still memorize our part, and I did.

Christmas approached that seventh grade year, and we prepared for a Christmas music program for our parents. I am sure I was in the choir and sang several pieces, but I only recall one piece. Mr. Waite used a small, seventh grade boy’s choir, and among other things, we sang a classic arrangement of “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.”

I knew the usual Christmas Carols from church, but I had never heard this song or anything of its kind. I didn’t understand the text. I didn’t understand the scriptural references. I certainly didn’t understand the beautiful arrangement by German composer Michael Praetorius. I did know that this song was an experience of beauty that moved my young soul like no other music I’d ever heard. The mysterious moving of the notes, slipping in behind one another, created an interaction and harmony unlike anything in my hymn-singing tradition. (Think “When We All Get To Heaven” and you have my total experience.) I was captivated. I couldn’t explain what I was feeling, but it was what C.S. Lewis called “longing for joy.” Having once experienced it, we are never the same, and we are pointed toward God with our sails to the wind of joy.

I remember our performance well. There was a small group of us formerly rowdy boys, all standing in white shirts, singing words from the 15th century, in almost complete ignorance, but now under Mr. Waite’s tutelage, becoming instruments of beauty despite our depravity and barbarian natures. My mother was there, and I am sure she was proud of me in my shirt, tie and cowlick, but I could never tell her, or anyone else, what I was really feeling. I didn’t have words for it myself. I couldn’t have told Mr. Waite what happened to me in those rehearsals and in that performance, but I had entered a whole new world.

I wonder how many people in my world have never been moved by music? They listen to the radio or CDs and are excited, or manipulated, but never moved by pure beauty like a visit from a spirit. How many have never been drawn into the beauty and the mystery of wondrous art like this seventh grade boy? Perhaps that day was my biggest step toward believing that God was real, good and loved me. Could the empty universe of the scientists have produced such a sound, and such a feeling to accompany it? Was this all there was, or was there more? And when this world is exhausted, is that all there is, or is there more beside? Is there what Lewis called a heaven of music and silence?

Mr. Waite, I owe you a great debt. You transformed us into the conduits of beauty, and you put the music of the gods on our lips when we were too young to know what it all meant. You rescued me from an artless world and showed me worlds beyond. You did what every educator should long to do- bring the experience of truth, beauty and wonder into young hearts and minds, and so capture us that we can never be happy again without tasting more of that miracle. You gave me a great gift, a gift that life, with all its pain and loss, will never take away. I will always have that song. And now, I have the Rose of whom the poet wrote, and the beauty that made that wonderful song beautiful is mine as well.

• • •

Note from CM: Here are the incomparable King’s Singers, singing this magnificent Christmas hymn in its original German, “Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen.”

Advent IV: The King is coming, and we shall overcome!

mary-and-elizabeth — by Brother Mickey McGrath

Advent IV
The King is coming, and we shall overcome!

(First posted in 2011)

One day in my chaplain work, I had marvelous conversation with an African-American woman who had grown up in Mississippi, moved to Indianapolis, whose family had relocated to other rust-belt cities like Chicago and Detroit in the 1960’s and 70’s. She could talk about picking cotton, participating in civil rights marches, employers who were members of the Ku Klux Klan, and what it was like to take part in the great migration of southerners to the north to look for good jobs and a more prosperous life. Her family had also experienced many of the sad events associated with the black American experience. Families had broken up and were separated, young men like her son had been victims of crime and violence, those who at one time found employment in manufacturing industries later found themselves out of work, their descendants plunged yet again into poverty.

Yet this woman was full of joy. Despite the hardships she, her family, and the members of her community had suffered, she smiled and said she felt blessed. She knew that God was with her, and that God would continue to make a way because that’s just who he is.

In his book, The Real Mary, Scot McKnight likens Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) to African-American protest songs like “We Shall Overcome.” It is an theological-social anthem expressing confidence that ultimate justice will come — indeed, God’s justice has come — because of the events that he has put in motion, starting with two humble Jewish maidens, Elizabeth and Mary.

You see, Israel was an oppressed people in those days. Yes, they had returned from exile in Babylon and were back in the Promised Land. However, a series of nations had overrun Palestine and in Mary’s day, the Romans were its rulers. They used local “kings” like Herod, a brutal dictator, to administrate the region. Israel found itself under the thumb of its enemies on its own home turf. They had returned from exile, yet found themselves still captive. And like my friend from Mississippi, who could describe what it was like to be knocked down by the blast of a fire hose and to lose her job because she showed up at a civil rights rally, Mary and the common citizens of Israel faced daily insults and indignities as they lived in a Roman police state, were fleeced by tax collectors, and were treated like second-class citizens in their own homeland.

Many years before, another humble Hebrew woman lived in a similar setting of injustice. It was the days of the Judges in Israel. Judges were local rulers who governed and protected regions of the nation, but none of them had proven able to bring all Israel together to serve God and live justly. Because there was no king in Israel, the nation lived in a constant state of tension that often spiraled out of control into chaos. The Book of Judges portrays a people that was living crisis to crisis.

In those days this woman Hannah, like Mary, was told by a divine messenger that she was going to have a baby, though she was in no position to expect that such a thing was possible. She suffered from infertility. And yet one year, when she went to Shiloh to worship, the priest blessed her, and in due time she conceived and bore a son. She returned to Shiloh, dedicated her son to the Lord, and in anticipation of Mary, lifted up her voice in a song of praise.

Hannah prayed and said,
‘My heart exults in the Lord;
my strength is exalted in my God.
My mouth derides my enemies,
because I rejoice in my victory.
‘There is no Holy One like the Lord,
no one besides you;
there is no Rock like our God.
Talk no more so very proudly,
let not arrogance come from your mouth;
for the Lord is a God of knowledge,
and by him actions are weighed.
The bows of the mighty are broken,
but the feeble gird on strength.
Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,
but those who were hungry are fat with spoil.
The barren has borne seven,
but she who has many children is forlorn.
The Lord kills and brings to life;
he brings down to Sheol and raises up.
The Lord makes poor and makes rich;
he brings low, he also exalts.
He raises up the poor from the dust;
he lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes
and inherit a seat of honour.
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s,
and on them he has set the world.
‘He will guard the feet of his faithful ones,
but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness;
for not by might does one prevail.
The Lord! His adversaries shall be shattered;
the Most High will thunder in heaven.
The Lord will judge the ends of the earth;
he will give strength to his king,
and exalt the power of his anointed.’

• 1Samuel 2, NRSV

This is the Biblical context of Mary’s later song in Luke 2. Note the similarities: (1) Both begin with personal praise for God’s surprising, powerful intervention in a woman’s life; (2) Both speak of a “great reversal” to come in which the proud and the powerful will be brought low and the humble poor exalted; (3) Both speak of God coming to rule among his people and over all the earth.

Note how Hannah’s song ends: “He will give strength to his king, and exalt the power of his anointed [Messiah].” Hannah’s son will introduce God’s chosen king to Israel — King David. David will subdue Israel’s enemies, extend her territory to the boundaries promised to Abraham, establish Jerusalem as her holy city, and prepare for the construction of a temple in which God will take his glorious throne. God will promise David an everlasting Kingdom through an heir — a “son of David” — who will rule forever. David’s Seed will fulfill the promises God gave Abraham in Gen. 12:1-3, and God’s blessing will be restored to all the earth.

Now, note how Mary concludes her Magnificat: “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.” Mary is announcing the arrival of the Son of David — the promises to Abraham are being fulfilled!

The Magnificat is Mary’s glad song of gratitude that she has been given a key role in God’s story, and her proclamation that this story is reaching its climax in her own day. God’s promises are coming to pass. His King will be enthroned. God’s enemies will fall. His people will be gathered. God will put things right. All is being made new.

Tom Wright calls her song, “the gospel before the gospel, a fierce bright shout of triumph thirty weeks before Bethlehem, thirty years before Calvary and Easter. …It’s all about God and it’s all about revolution, and it’s all because of Jesus.” (Luke for Everyone, p.14)

Saturday Ramblings, December 19, 2015

Hello, friends, and welcome to the weekend. Ready to Ramble?

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and a coalition of dozens of prominent social conservatives and Evangelicals are reportedly planning to endorse Sen. Ted Cruz. Their goal is to avoid a split in “the evangelical vote.” Mike Huckabee, the former evangelical pastor, says he is disappointed by the news. Cruz also seems to be the front runner in Iowa, as people are looking for an alternative to the craziness of the Donald.

**“So, Admiral Ackbar, what do you think of Cruz emerging as a more level-headed alternative to Trump?”**

Larycia Hawkins got in some trouble this week. The political science professor at Wheaton College publicly claimed that Muslims and Christians “worship the same God.” Hawkins, an Episcopalian, also decided to wear a hijab, a traditional Muslim head-covering, in solidarity with Muslims during the Advent season. Wheaton announced on Tuesday that they had put Hawkins on administrative leave for her “same God” comments. In an official statement, college administrators expressed concern over the “theological implications” of her statements and promising a full review. Your thoughts?

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings, December 19, 2015”

Damaris Zehner: How to Question Your Faith: A Guide for Young People and Others

How to Question Your Faith: A Guide for Young People and Others
By Damaris Zehner

A conversation I had recently made me think about the scary process of – pick your metaphor – stepping off a cliff, walking in the dark, setting off across an uncharted ocean, or any other image that suggests the potential change, insecurity, and blindness that questioning one’s faith involves. I have questioned mine several times in my life, sometimes the entire Christian religion and sometimes particular beliefs within a tradition. I’ve done it for bad reasons and good ones and gotten bad results and good ones. I have no particular qualifications for giving anyone advice on this topic, but I’m going to anyway, partly as a reply to the person who asked me, and partly as an analysis that might be generally useful. As always, caveat lector.

It’s scary, questioning what we think, but it’s a good thing to do if it’s done well. Although some religious groups and individuals would rather people just take their religion for granted, God allows us the freedom to challenge what we’ve been told. In fact, he seems to require most of us to do so at least once in our lives. In order to mature both spiritually and intellectually and to become more strongly ourselves, sometimes we have to ask ourselves if all this stuff we say we believe in really makes any sense.

Of course there are bad reasons to question, doubt, or reject faith. Seeking some sort of personal gain or comfort is probably the worst. Someone who rejects her religious upbringing because it doesn’t condone what she wants to do is acting without integrity. So is the person who wants to join the “in” crowd or sees some other advantage in no longer being what he was. Questioning faith simply in order to rebel against family, social establishment, God, or authority in the abstract is never a good idea. And some people don’t even claim to be seeking the truth but just drift away on an ocean of indifference.

So how do we question rightly, then, when we’re led to the point that we have to? I want to break my answer down into two parts, first concerning a particular belief (for example, do I accept my church’s understanding of baptism?) and then concerning religious conviction in general (Is there a God, and what is his nature?). In either case, the foundation of questioning must be the willingness to get an answer – and sometimes that means an unanticipated answer. Questioning is not genuine if it is a nervous tic or an amusing hobby rather than the pursuit of truth, and setting out to prove a predetermined position is not honest.

Questioning particular beliefs: If you are struggling with doubt or worry about a Christian belief or denominational tenet,

First, articulate carefully what you have the problem with. Something like this is not helpful: “I just can’t accept all that baptism stuff.” This is helpful: “I don’t see how a little ceremony with water can really have any effect on our spiritual condition or our standing before God.” This is a good way to discover if you really do understand what you’ve been taught; be open to correction once you get your question into words.
Next research your own tradition’s beliefs on the topic. You may have a catechism you could read through. Find other books, articles, or websites by respected, legitimate religious leaders. Talk to your pastor or some other person who could be expected to know. Call or write a college or seminary of your denomination and ask someone there.
Find relevant Biblical and historical information. Be careful not to distort the record to suit your own preconceptions.
Look into what other traditions have to say on the practice. In some cases you may find that they agree with yours, or they may be united in disagreeing. You may even plunge into a mass of disunity and contradiction where no one agrees at all.
In any case, don’t be too quick to make up your mind. Let everything settle for some time. Some people spend years with these questions percolating slowly through their minds.
Pray. Surely God himself knows what is right. He probably won’t speak to you directly, but prayer is still somehow efficacious in sorting out the truth.
Strive for humility. You may get an answer you don’t like. You may even find that there is no “answer,” at least not in a form that satisfies you. Allow there to be some mystery. After all, if you understand the answer to a vexing religious question through and through, it’s probably not a very good answer. Often the best result of questioning is not an answer but simply a deeper trust of who God is – think of Job. God answered Job by presenting him with a panorama of his glory, not by explaining how things work.

Questioning Faith in General: If you doubt you can accept the entire Christian premise, or even the premise that there is a God of any sort,

Do everything suggested above, adapted to your broader quest. Be especially clear to articulate what it is you’re questioning. (The best soundtrack for this process is Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine.” I recommend it.)
Dismiss no source of truth, and take nothing for granted. Nature, people, culture, or some other unexpected source may end up revealing God to you when church or scripture remains silent. Don’t limit the terms of your seeking too stringently.
Along the same lines, expose yourself to great art – painting, music, literature, architecture, etc. – of all kinds, times, and places. All can reveal some sort of truth, but beware of the art that seems to hate you. The artistry may be skillful and the hatred may seem grittily honest, but you are not likely to find God there.
Also meet people very unlike you and listen to them, especially those who are simple, sane, and poor.
Disentangle cultural trappings from eternal truth. If religion to you means stodgy, repressive people singing bad music, then who wouldn’t question it? But inadequate people or cultures do not disprove the faith – they are, in fact, a perfect example of its necessity. Chesterton (of course) said it best: “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” What is it that you are really questioning?
Be careful to balance rationality, experience, and trust. Some aspects of the faith can be understood by being studied and thought about. Some aspects must be experienced and cannot be well expressed in logical form. And there are some things in religion as in all of life that have to be taken by trust, simply because we do not have the time or ability to analyze or experience everything. Depending on your personality, you may be tempted to rely on one of these three, but you are more likely to draw near to the truth of the ineffable God if you expand your means of knowing.
Balance “integrity” with humility. This is an issue I see often. I am the only Christian in my immediate family and one of the few in my extended family. When I discuss issues of faith with my relatives, they commonly explain that their personal integrity prevents them from accepting a position that they don’t feel comfortable with. In a way I respect that position, but I think in some cases (not all) it is founded upon an unquestioned self-satisfaction and unwillingness to be proven wrong. If you have heard yourself say something similar, ask yourself if you are really willing to sacrifice what you call your integrity for the sake of finding the truth. Ask yourself if your perceptions are likely to be complete and correct or if there is still anything you could learn.
Try being the hands of God even if you doubt his existence and see if he reveals himself to you in the process; in other words, stop thinking and get out and do something. When you get knotted up about doctrine, go play with an unhappy child, take some food to the homeless shelter, crochet a blanket to give away, or build a house for a person who needs one. (Once again Indigo Girls provide our sound track: at this point listen to “Hammer and a Nail.”)
Practice silence, simplicity, and self-restraint. Let God speak. Strip away defenses until you have nothing left to hold on to. Discover what remains when everything has been taken away. This is terrifying.
Read “The Hound of Heaven,” by Francis Thompson.
Be patient and honest and put your whole self into the search. “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart,” says Jeremiah.

What will be the results of this process if it is done well? I can’t say. Some people have lost all faith and been either relieved or devastated in the process. Some have ended up in a position they never expected, perhaps one that puts them at odds with everyone around them. And some have found themselves right back where they started from, delighting in the depth of the richness and beauty that they once questioned.

Tell me you didn’t see this coming

Few things in life are as utterly predictable as the evangelical circus, as some pieces I read this week show.

The phoenix rises

Everybody’s favorite preacher boy and ringmaster is back. According to the seattlepi blog:

Former Mars Hill Church senior pastor Mark Driscoll has filed incorporation papers in Phoenix for a new entity called The Trinity Church in Arizona, 14 months after he resigned his Seattle pulpit and just under a year after Mars Hill ceased to exist.

The new entity will be a “Bible-based Christian church” with Driscoll and two other directors, each giving the address of Mark Driscoll Ministries in Phoenix. Driscoll and his family moved to the “Valley of the Sun” last summer.

…On Nov. 30, 2015, Driscoll and two associates incorporate[d] The Trinity Church in Arizona. Driscoll has been back on the evangelical preaching circuit and has early new year appearances at the Zion Conference in Texas, the North Valley Community Church in Arizona and the megachurch-hosted Most Excellent Way to Lead conference in South Carolina.

Driscoll is also blogging, lately with an eight-part series on the meaning of Christmas.

I’m all for second chances, but this one was a no-brainer from the start. Do you think Driscoll and crew moved to Phoenix because one day he learned about the legend of the phoenix rising again out of the ashes to live forever? Do you think he’s gonna be working that into his bio?

Do you think maybe he has been reading feng shui Master Lam Kam Chuen’s description in The Feng Shui Handbook?

A mythical bird that never dies, the phoenix flies far ahead to the front, always scanning the landscape and distant space. It represents our capacity for vision, for collecting sensory information about our environment and the events unfolding within it. The phoenix, with its great beauty, creates intense excitement and deathless inspiration.

Sounds like the making of a new evangelical leadership conference:

“You won’t want to miss this spectacular event — Phoenix Rising. Learn how to fly in front of your people, to gain vision from your environment, to create intense excitement and deathless inspiration! Starring…of course, Marky D!”

Excuse me if my excitement is not intense and my inspiration bit the dust at this news. It’s just so predictable.

• • •

Will the hymns be by John Williams?

From the Daily Record (New Jersey):

The Liquid Church’s Christmas services will center around Star Wars, coinciding with the release of “The Force Awakens.”

“We want to draw on the excitement surrounding Star Wars in order to reach new people and teach them about the birth of Jesus Christ, in a way they’ve never heard before,” said Tim Lucas, lead pastor and founder of Liquid Church. “We believe we have the greatest story in the world, but the challenge is reaching people with that story. So, as a church, we want to be dynamic, engaging, and culturally relevant.”

Liquid’s “Cosmic Christmas” services began last Sunday and will conclude on Christmas Eve with a live Star Wars Nativity Scene. Guests will be invited to line-up for their opportunity to wield a lightsaber and join the Nativity with Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, and R2D2, according to a press release from the church.

…In a break from tradition, the church will tell the story of the birth of Jesus through the book of Revelation – the last book in the Bible. Kenny Jahng, media pastor at the church, said the use of Star Wars characters allows the church to draw a line from something familiar, in this case Star Wars, to the biblical story.

“In there is a story about an epic battle of good and evil and we will pull in the story from Star Wars and frame it from that perspective,” Jahng said. “We will use Star Wars characters on stage to tell the story. It’s family friendly and Bible based.”

Here’s some promo text from their website:

COSMIC CHRISTMAS EVE is an “out of this world” 60-minute holiday experience featuring…

NJ’s only LIVE Star Wars Nativity Scene! You’ll wield a lightsaber and join the Nativity Scene with Leia, Han Solo & Chewy

Sit on “Darth Santa’s” knee and take a selfie

Plus Jolly Ol’ Stormtroopers and fun Star Wars giveaways

This family-friendly event culminates in a message of hope that tells the story of Jesus’ birth in a way you’ve never heard before! The event is FREE…but TICKETS ARE REQUIRED. Space is limited…please fill out a campus form below to register today!

Register during the “12 Days of Star Wars Christmas” starting on December 6th and get automatically entered to win awesome Star Wars prizes!

If you didn’t see this coming, you don’t know evangelicalism.

• • •

The suckers are still being born

Christianity Today ran a couple of major circus stories this week, one of them about yet another wave of Multi-Level Marketing companies becoming popular among Christians.

Shaklee or Amway, anyone? The businesses that made many of us uncomfortable back in the 1970s and 80s are back with a vengeance. And the evangelical church, especially its women, are signing up more than ever.

The article in CT discusses why this form of business has such appeal among Christians, and especially among conservative Christian women:

In some ways, the church is a perfect setting for MLM sales. Many companies were founded by Christians or have explicit Christian values, including Mary Kay (cosmetics), Shaklee (nutritional supplements), Pampered Chef (kitchen equipment), Premier Designs (jewelry), and Advocare (sports performance). “Because direct-selling is relationship-based, and of course the church community is so relationship-based, that definitely is a draw,” said Monroe.

Further, MLM allows Christian women to engage business, community, and family at once, in a way that the current work–home divide doesn’t allow for, at least not as seamlessly. Many women want to work and raise a family without the demands of a 9-to-5 job. In a 2012 Pew Research Survey, US mothers said their most desired work scenario would be part-time; working moms wish they were home more, and stay-at-home moms wish they could work outside the home. This makes a “work-from-home” arrangement such as MLM attractive—especially to evangelicals, who are more likely than any other religious group to say it’s better for the family when one parent stays home.

“As long as MLMs are regarded by conservative Christians as a more honorable option for women than a normal part-time or full-time job, these organizations will continue to attract women within the church at significant rates,” says Jen Wilkin, a minister at the Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, where she leads a citywide women’s Bible study.

MLM is “one of the most sanctifying things that I have ever done aside from parenting,” says Molly Abrigg. The stay-at-home mother of two based in Dallas sells essential oils—tiny bottles of plant extracts purported to have cleansing and healing properties. For her, it’s a way to meet and minister to other sellers. “There are many benefits to being a stay-at-home mom and having an extra income coming from a product you are passionate about,” Abrigg said. “It helps women find their ‘why’ outside of being a mama.”

What the MLMs don’t tell you however, according to CT, is that fewer than one percent of sellers in them earn a profit. In one company the article profiles, more than ninety percent of recruits stay at the lowest level, earning $600 or less per year.

And that’s not the only problem. For years, these kinds of companies have been on the FTC’s watch list for fraud, deceptive claims, unfair pricing of their products, and operating as pyramid schemes.

In terms of Christian relationships, the article accurately attests to the awkwardness that can grow in communities where people want to love and support each other, but feel conflicted and uncomfortable when they are pressured to buy or join up. Beyond personal discomfort, some churches have found this kind of “pitching in the pews” troublesome for the health of the congregation and potentially schismatic.

Nevertheless, this piece reports a resurgence in MLM, especially among evangelical Christian women.

With a church that tends to view life in consumeristic, transactional terms (and, in my opinion, doesn’t adequately value the contributions and gifts of women), we oughta see something like this coming pretty easily.

The Haunting of Christmas

There’ll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories of
Christmases long, long ago

• It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

• • •

As with other posts this Advent/Christmas season, we’re exploring some of the strange and interesting ways people celebrate the season.

The way we as Americans celebrate Christmas hasn’t essentially changed much in the past 150 years or so. We still send Christmas cards, decorate evergreen trees, go door-to-door caroling and stuff stockings with candy. These are traditions from the Victorian Age.

But there is one Victorian Christmas tradition that we Americans haven’t kept going, though the English have.

A few years ago, on the wildly popular Downton Abbey show, the Christmas episode contained a story line that revolved around members of the service staff attempting to communicate with the dead through the use of a Ouija board. This puzzled many on this side of the Atlantic, but in England hardly raised a stir.

Why?

Because the Victorian celebration of Christmas includes ghosts and the telling of ghostly tales.

As Jeffrey Peterson writes, in a 2010 article in the Deseret News,

“Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories,” wrote British humorist Jerome K. Jerome as part of his introduction to an anthology of Christmas ghost stories titled “Told After Supper“ in 1891. “Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about specters.”

The practice of gathering around the fire on Christmas Eve to tell ghost stories was as much a part of Christmas for the Victorian English as Santa Claus is for us.

The one exception to our unfamiliarity with this tradition is, of course, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. The original title for the book was A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. According to the website “A Gothic Curiosity Cabinet” —

Dickens had actually worked on the story previously, published as The Story of the Goblins who Stole a Sexton in The Pickwick Papers. The story of a gravedigger with the disposition of Ebeneezer Scrooge, it too involved the protagonist being kidnapped, in this case by goblins, to show the error of his ways. That many elements of Christmas came from the pen of Dickens is a testament to the power of tradition. For example, when Dickens was a child there was a mini-ice age, which sent temperatures plummeting, resulting in many a white Christmas. By setting his story some years in the past, he was able to tie the concept of a white Christmas to what was already an old, communal memory.

But Dickens was not alone. For example, in Henry Irving’s Keeping of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall, an American traveler visits an English country squire gathers the community together at Christmas to tell local legends and ghost stories. Similarly, writes Derek Johnston:

Dickens’s use of the phrase “Winter Stories” points back to an Elizabethan or older tradition of telling strange and fantastic tales in the winter. Which brings us to Shakespeare and The Winter’s Tale, one of his late romances of tangled identities and apparent death and revival. Telling bizarre and fantastic stories around the winter fire was clearly a well known tradition before the time of the Bard himself.

Roger Clarke in The Telegraph posits that one reason the tradition took hold is that many British upper class would hire servants in early November. These servants, less educated and worldly-wise, would suddenly find themselves in big, mysterious houses and weave supernatural tales to explain the things that went bump in the long winter nights.

Jeffrey Peterson attributes the practice to the fact that Christmas celebrations had long mixed pagan and Christian elements, and the Victorians continued this syncretism. He writes:

In addition to being the longest night of the year, however, winter solstice was also traditionally held to be the most haunted due to its association with the death of the sun and light. It was the one night of the year when the barrier between the worlds of the living and the deceased was thinnest. On Christmas Eve, ghosts could walk the earth and finish unsettled business, as exemplified by the apparition of Marley in Charles Dickens’ Christmas masterpiece.

In short, the Victorian Christmas celebration, which drew heavily on pagan symbols like yule logs, holly berries and Father Christmas himself, also embraced the winter holiday’s associations with the supernatural to create one of its most popular annual traditions.

England has carried on their long-standing traditions too. The BBC had a regular series in the 1970s called “A Ghost Story for Christmas” and British TV continues to explore the theme in various shows, including the aforementioned Downton Abbey.

It hasn’t become much of a tradition in the U.S., though my favorite movie of all time (Christmas or not) is It’s a Wonderful Life, which may not technically be a “ghost” story, but involves angels and supernatural occurrences. These kinds of elements have become more and more prevalent in many cinema presentations of Christmas stories. And of course, there is a Christmas horror film genre.

I probably won’t be sitting around the fire with my family telling ghost stories this Christmas, but in some places that’s what families will do.

What about you? Anybody pulling out the Ouija board for the holidays?

Another Look: Why do we love this season?

Why do we love this season?

I would suggest that aesthetics have much to do with the answer to that question.

Advent and Christmas are made sensible to us by means of the things we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch at this time of year.

Spiritual truth comes out of the closet of the abstract and makes itself real to us through our bodily experiences during the holidays.

God in heaven becomes incarnate in Bethlehem.
We shiver at the chill. And grow warm by the fire.
We smell the pungent dung of the stable. And fragrant bows from the pine.
The song of the angels fills our ears. And the voices of children.
Our gaze is transfixed upon a newborn Baby.
We relish the special feasts we share with one another, as the Baby suckles his Mother’s breast.
Gifts are exchanged, hand to hand, paper ripped open and flung aside amid squeals of delight and smiles, tears, hugs, acknowledged later with handwritten thank-you notes.

It is not simply the Christmas “spirit” but the lived experiences of Christmas that we treasure.

All of our traditions and practices, the idiosyncratic celebrations of our families, and the special events in our churches and schools and communities take place in space and time in the lives of boys and girls and men and women of flesh and blood who hold up their candles in the darkness and await the moment when “the dawn from on high will break upon us.”

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

• Christina Rosetti

Hear this marvelous testimony from Eric Gill. Don’t get sidetracked and focus only on the specific path he chose (Catholicism), but hear the larger message he brings:

I became a Catholic because I fell in love with the truth. And love is an experience. I saw. I heard. I felt. I tasted. I touched. And that is what lovers do.

Oh, that we, in all our faith traditions, might learn this. There is no “spiritual” faith.

What God has given us is bodies, by which we receive his gifts. The path leads from the outside in, and not vice versa. To reach our hearts, he took on flesh.

We instinctively know this at Christmas.

My prayer is that we will know it in all the gracious seasons of life.

Mondays with Michael Spencer: December 14, 2015

From a sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent, 2006

Christians in America have a preference for people like themselves. In this, we’re not unlike most human beings, but that’s exactly the problem. Most 4th graders would be able to give the correct answer to the question “Who is my neighbor?” As obvious as the answer would be, most of us would still like to be surrounded with people from our tribe, culture, language group, income level and, of course, worldview.

Christians like to participate in the fantasy that ours is a Christian nation in what is becoming a Christian world. Muslims, atheists, occultists and others occupying the planet get the requisite dose of rhetoric saying we love our neighbors who are unlike us, but if we’re honest, especially about our evangelicalism, we’d have to admit a strong bias toward familiar surroundings and familiar people.

Those radically, fundamentally different from ourselves make us uneasy, as if we were somehow under attack from different cultures and beliefs. The sound of the culture war is the sound of Christians- largely- declaring that they are in some way at war with their neighbors. The rumblings of culture expansion and population shifts in Europe and the American southwest brings out a kind of paranoia in some Christians remarkably similar to what one might have heard from white South Africans in the waning days of apartheid.

I am blessed to live in one of the most diverse communities in America, a place where various races, cultures and religions live and work together in the pursuit of education. For those of us who are part of the Christian mission and identity of our school, the command to love our neighbor takes on flesh and blood every day as students from Muslim, Buddhist, Communist and secularist cultures come into our classrooms and lives.

It is not unusual to watch Christians at our school struggle with the feelings this kind of diversity creates. I might find myself surrounded by Koreans speaking their language, and I am assaulted by a temptation toward resentment that they aren’t speaking English. A table of inner-city African-Americans seem too loud and their hip-hop culture seems alien and disrespectful to me. The hostile questions of an atheistic student cross the invisible boundaries I’ve set up; boundaries that demand he not find my worldview oppressive or ridiculous.

These experiences are common enough that our school might lose a staff family each year primarily to the stress and strain of relating to those different from us. The familiar rhetoric of “I thought this was a Christian school” often comes along with that resignation, insisting that a “real” Christian school would, of course, be populated by Christians in agreement on everything from politics to worship music.

. . . Evangelicals have almost totally lost the outrage that lies at the heart of the Gospel. We believe that everyone ought to believe what we believe because it’s obvious that its the truth. We have big churches, media stars and books explaining everything so persuasively that it shows just how stubborn and hostile unbelievers really are. If they would just listen to our pastor answer all the questions, it would make sense.

. . . Evangelicals have convinced themselves that the light shines in a room where it’s been patently obvious for a long time that we needed some light around here, and Christianity has the best bulb for the job. Scripture tells us that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot comprehend it.

We have convinced ourselves that every reasonable person is looking for a Savior, and that Jesus’ contemporaries should have been waiting for him with a welcoming committee. The Bible says the Word became flesh, came to his own, and no one wanted anything to do with him. In fact, the thought of God visiting this world is every bit as outrageous within the Christian story as it is outside of it.

[Atheists like] Sam Harris are right to point out the unlikelihood that such a story is anything other than a delusional mythology. Our own Gospel tells us the same story: sin had created a chasm between God and his creatures that renders the likelihood of God having anything to do with us ridiculously comic. We ought to be laughing at it ourselves, because it simply shouldn’t be. It is amazing grace indeed.

Advent III: Bearing the fruits of mercy

Advent III
Bearing the fruits of mercy

I find today’s Gospel reading most interesting and instructive.

^3:7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

^3:8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

^3:9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

^3:10And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?”

^3:11 In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”

^3:12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?”

^3:13 He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.”

^3:14 Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

^3:15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,

^3:16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

^3:17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

^3:18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

• Luke 3:7-18

The part I find most intriguing is the final verse:

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

Everything Lutheran in me recoils at these words. In my tradition we make a strong distinction between “exhortations” and proclaiming “the good news.”

We are taught that exhortations are Law, directed to me, divine commandments telling me how to live and what to do. The good news on the other hand is Gospel, a declaration of what God has done, is doing, and will do for me in Jesus Christ.

We are also taught that, in God’s economy the two work together. Through hearing the Law (divine exhortations) I recognize my sinfulness and inability to fulfill God’s commandments. Then, despairing of my own righteousness, I hear the Gospel, which assures me of Christ’s righteousness that is mine through the living union with him that comes through faith. As Luther said in the Heidelberg Disputation: “The law says, ‘do this,’ and it is never done. Grace says, ‘believe in this,’ and everything is already done.”

However, the text before us links John’s exhortations with proclaiming the good news in a much different kind of way.

John proclaimed the good news by exhorting the people.
With exhortations he proclaimed the good news.

Now, perhaps John’s words could be understood in different ways:

Perhaps John was preaching two things: (1) he gave exhortations, and (2) along with those exhortations he proclaimed the good news.

Perhaps, as Raymond Brown suggests in his commentary, the later meaning of the Greek word euangelizesthai (proclaiming the Christian message of salvation) is not indicated at this point, and the focus in simply on depicting John as an exhorter of the people.

Perhaps this is simply a typical Lukan summary statement (which are common throughout Luke/Acts) and shouldn’t be pressed too hard. John had a ministry of proclaiming good news, in the context of which he gave the kinds of exhortations we see in the preceding passage.

But these seem to me to miss the plain reading of the text. John proclaimed the good news by exhorting the people, as is portrayed in the preceding verses.

If that is the case, John not only preached the gospel by pointing people to Christ (3:16-17 — though notice that even here the emphasis is not primarily on Jesus bringing salvation but the fire of judgment on Israel), but also by telling them, “Bear fruits worthy of repentance” (3:8) and then detailing what that might look like in different cases.

What I find interesting is that, in the specific exhortations John gives, there is an emphasis on showing mercy to others.

The one who has more than he needs must share with the one who has nothing.
Those who collect taxes must not take more than they are due from others.
Soldiers must be content and abstain from extorting, especially through threatening or mistreating others.

Then, observe, it was these very exhortations that moved the people to be “filled with expectation” and to wonder whether John “might be the Messiah” (3:15).

In other words, their expectation was not simply that a Messiah would come to save them from their enemies, but that the Messiah would come as a prophet, proclaiming God’s mercy and the fruits it would bear in their lives. The good news of God’s mercy toward us in Jesus is both salvific and transformative.

The “good news” they heard in these “exhortations” was that Messiah would both bring them mercy and make them merciful.

This is why, during Advent, we are not just looking for Jesus to come and deliver us from evil.

We are also looking for Jesus to make us people who will confront the evil in ourselves and in the world with mercy, grace, kindness, and love.