“All Saints Day is a witness to God’s way of blessing the world…” (David Thiede)
Listen to me, dear brothers and sisters. Hasn’t God chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith? Aren’t they the ones who will inherit the Kingdom he promised to those who love him? (James 2:5)
• • •
Imagine a school playgound. A group of children gathers to play some game, let’s say kickball. Two are elected captains, and now it’s time for them to choose up teams.
Everyone knows who the best players are. They are the boys and girls with strong bodies and exceptional coordination for their age. They are smart enough to know where to kick the ball to get the most for their effort. They can run fast around the bases. In the field, they are the ones most likely to position themselves well and catch the ball. If you need a strong throw, one of them can be counted on to make it.
There are other children who dread this time of dividing up teams. They know they are not gifted athletes. Perhaps they haven’t had their growth spurt yet, and they are smaller and weaker than the other children. Maybe they just prefer other kinds of activities — reading, music, or indoor pastimes. Some are shy. Some lack confidence. Some have made mistakes in previous games and were laughed at by their mates, and they are not eager to be embarrassed again. They wait and wait while the captains make their choices. They know they are at the bottom of the heap, and some of them will only be taken when there are no other players left.
You are one of the captains. Who will you take for your team?
Right before our Gospel passage for today, the Bible tells us who Jesus took for his team:
Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot, and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. (Luke 6:12-16)
By any measure, this was an unlikely group of people for a Coach to choose for team. But he doesn’t stop there. Following his appointment of the twelve disciples, Luke tells us the first thing Jesus did with his team was to reach out to a crowd of even more unlikely people so that he might also include them in the game:
He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. (Luke 6:17-19, NRSV)
In the words that follow, our Lord gives his rationale for the draft choices he made for his team. “God’s plan is to turn the world upside down,” he said. “In order to show you that there is no one outside the scope of God’s grace and blessing, I will choose the most unlikely, the most looked-down-upon, the ones with the least to offer from the world’s point of view. And I will shower heaven’s favor upon them. I will put them on my team. I will bless them.”
So Jesus chose the undersized guy with thick glasses. The shy girl who hides behind the taller ones. The kid with two left feet. The one who’s so scared to make a mistake he cries whenever the pressure’s on.
And he promised to restore God’s blessing to the world through them. How great is that!
The main way God blesses the world is by pouring his grace upon unlikely people, and then using them to live and tell his Good News to others. This is one of the great messages of All Saints’ Day. You don’t need to have “what it takes.” Riches aren’t required. No diploma necessary. You don’t have to be good looking, coordinated, popular, of any certain race, class, or social status. First in your class, or at the bottom, it doesn’t matter. God’s grace is here for you in Jesus.
Anyone can be a “saint.” Though we may honor certain of our forbears as exemplary people of faith, hope, and love, the Bible uses the word “saint” to refer to anyone and everyone who has received forgiveness and new life through Jesus. The Protestant take on saints is that ultimately there are no levels in God’s family. There is no “elite” class of Christians beyond a “regular” class of hoi polloi. On All Saints’ Day we honor all saints, known and unknown, past and present, from every branch of God’s family tree.
In doing so, we magnify the grace of God in Jesus Christ.
There’s no other way Charlie Browns like me could be called blessed.
A church-planting friend just wrote me about a conference he’s attended in one of our state Baptist conventions. Plant those churches, boys, was the rallying cry, but stay out of those pubs.
Take the Gospel into the world, but stay out of anyplace that serves beer. That’s someone’s version of how the Gospel applies to church planting. Go to jungles, mountains, into the tribes of cannibals or the roughest ghetto, but stay out of O’Charley’s.
Here’s my current theory: it’s not that we are simply ignorant of the Gospel. We can stop announcing that the church needs to hear the Gospel for the first time. It’s more than that. I think most people in most evangelical churches have heard it more than adequately. (Though I am not disagreeing with myself or anyone else that many in evangelicalism’s darker corners haven’t heard the Gospel with accuracy, understanding or personal application.) They may not have your footnotes on justification memorized and they may not be wrath-anxious enough for some of you, but a lot of Christians understand the Gospel.
The problem isn’t simple ignorance. It’s primarily cowardice.
Need a classy vehicle in which to take the little ones Trick-or-Treating tonight? Ditch that SUV and pile them into this sweet ’59 Ambassador Cross Country so they can fill it and themselves with candy and laughter.
It’s Halloween. Let’s Ramble!
First, this public service announcement for Daylight Savings Time (thanks, Clark Bunch!):
Second, because this is not only Reformation Day, but also Halloween, throughout today’s Ramblings we will feature the most frightening creatures on God’s earth:
Note from CM: I’m so pleased to announce that Damaris Zehner’s new book has been published! It is available on Twenty-Third Publications’ websiteand for pre-order on Amazon. For our readers from New Zealand (!), there is a local source. Germans can pay with Euros here and Dutch here.
We’ve asked our friend David Cornwell to review it today.
Congratulations, Damaris!
• • •
It wasn’t long after beginning to visit Internet Monk that I noticed the comments and posts written by Damaris Zehner. She has a certain kind of consistent depth that makes what she says so relevant. On the right side of the blog page, you will notice something new. It’s the unveiling of a new book by Damaris with the title The Between Time.
In the Introduction Damaris states part of her reasoning for the book: “Our race exists between the original creation and the unveiling of the new heavens and the new earth. We hold on with faith between God’s promise and the distant fulfillment.” We find ourselves in what sometimes can feel like a spiritual no-man’s land. Something seems vaguely wrong with where we find ourselves and what we are longing for.
Many years ago I took my four or five year old grandson on a trip to southern Ohio to visit my parents. This is a trip of about 280 miles. He and I were traveling together with no one else accompanying us. About five miles down the road he asked his first question, and you guessed it: “Are we almost there?” He has never been a patient traveler. And so the question was asked again at regular intervals for the entire trip. We were in the Between Time!
As we all know, rest stops are important on a trip. Damaris and her family discovered that they needed something different from the kind of evangelical Protestant churches they had always been part of. They found that they needed more than “do-it-yourself Christianity, churches with stages rather than altars, and the sovereignty of individual interpretation of Scripture.” Their searching ended when they entered the Catholic Church in 2011. And with it the realization of “having found a place of peace from which to continue my journey.”
Like all of us, Martin Luther didn’t always remember or apply his own theology in the face of life’s realities.
The following story by David Lose illustrates this.
This past summer I was visiting Wittenberg and heard a story about Martin Luther I hadn’t heard before that seems appropriate for those observing Reformation Sunday this week. I knew that Luther died in Eisleben, the place of his birth, bringing his work and life, in a sense, full circle. And I knew that he preached his last sermon there after successfully negotiating disputes between several local magistrates. What I didn’t know was that only five people showed up for the sermon. What I didn’t know was that he was pissed. He wrote a friend about the event, despairing over what he feared was a “failed” reformation.
I’ve been a pastor and I get Martin Luther’s sense of failure. We all long to be “successful” in our churches (however we might define that), and when the church appears weak and sickly, and people don’t seem interested in supporting or responding to her ministry, it’s the most natural thing in the world to imagine that our efforts have been for naught.
We can become angry, as Luther did. We can become fearful, disillusioned, and depressed like Elijah did in 1Kings 19, running from Jezebel after he had defeated the prophets of Baal. We can become sad of heart, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, who kept saying, “But we thought he was the one . . .”
The brilliant answer to this sense of failure that Luther gave voice to in many of writings is what we know as “the theology of the cross.”
When it looks most like God has been defeated, he is winning. When God seems most absent, his presence is sustaining us. When all feels lost, we are, in fact, being saved.
I have long thought that this, above all Luther’s teachings, is needed in the Christian church today. We give so much attention to the appearance of success and strength that we fail to find God in much more prevalent circumstances of failure and weakness. We forget that our hope is in resurrection from hopeless death, not in being crowned after having built a glorious resumé.
The last word today goes back to David Lose:
While I can understand his dismay and disappointment, I nevertheless think that at that moment Luther forgot that much of our energy and effort will be given over to failed endeavors. He’d forgotten, that is, Paul’s reminder that we have all sinned and fallen short … and will keep sinning and falling short. Moreover, he’d forgotten that our ultimate hope rests not in our successes but in God’s great failure on the cross, the failure that redeems all failures and successes, binding them together in the promise of resurrection. He’d forgotten, that is, his own words at the close of the hymn many of us will sing this week, “Were they to take our house, goods, honor, child, or spouse, though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day. God’s kingdom is ours forever.”
I’m not ashamed of the good news; it’s God’s power, bringing salvation to everyone who believes — to the Jew first, and also, equally, to the Greek. This is because God’s covenant justice is unveiled in it, from faithfulness to faithfulness. As it says in the Bible, “the just shall live by faith.”
– Romans 1:16-17, The Kingdom New Testament
* * *
Though the beginning of the Protestant Reformation is traditionally dated October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses upon the door of Wittenberg University, there is another, even more foundational event. Sometime between 1514-1518, Luther had his famous “tower experience.” The monk was studying Romans and trying to understand the phrase in verse 17, “the righteousness of God,” when he came to an understanding of this text that changed his life and ultimately, the world.
“I greatly longed to understand Paul’s epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression “the righteousness of God,” because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust.
My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage Him. Therefore I did not love a just angry God, but rather hated and murmured against Him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.
Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the righteousness of God and the statement that “the just shall live by faith.” Then I grasped that the righteousness of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before “the righteousness of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven…”
It is necessary to understand that Martin Luther, like all of us, was a product of his times. His initial understanding of “the righteousness of God” was based on the interpretations of the scholastic theologians of the high and late Middle Ages (1100-1500 A.D.), who taught that the righteousness of God was God’s active, personal righteousness or justice by which he punishes the unrighteous sinner. This concept was understood in the context of the burning question of the day: By what merit are sinners made righteous before God?
That is why this text offered no comfort to Luther, who was well aware of his own lack of personal righteousness. If the Gospel “reveals the righteousness of God,” then he saw no hope. He knew that he was an unrighteous sinner who fell far short of God’s righteous (perfect) demands, and therefore the thought of God’s righteous judgment terrified him. He knew God’s Law condemned him. If the Gospel was yet another revelation of God’s righteous character and judgment, there was no way of salvation for him.
However, as he continued meditating, he began to link this phrase with the words at the end of the verse — “the just (righteous) shall live by faith.” And then it broke through to him. Luther realized that the verse was not talking about the active righteousness that God demands, but the passive righteousness that He freely gives to those who believe the Gospel. We are saved by an alien righteousness of Christ that comes to us as a gift from God, not by a righteousness of our own doing.
For Luther, then, and for Protestants centuries afterwards, “the righteousness of God” meant the righteousness that God gives sinners when they put their faith in Christ. God justifies sinners (declares them righteous before him), not because they have righteousness to offer God on their behalf, but because of Christ, who died and rose again for them.
The point is that Luther and the other Reformers, in light of their context (Middle Ages Roman Catholic theology) interpreted Romans 1:16-17 solely in terms of personal salvation.
The Gospel is good news of salvation for the one who believes.
It shows us how a person becomes righteous in God’s sight — by faith.
The Gospel, therefore, equals “justification by faith.”
In my view, Luther was both right and also incomplete in his reading of Romans 1:16-17. Here it is again, this time in the ESV:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
First of all, Luther was right that the text teaches justification by faith.
It is those who “believe” who are “saved.”
The way the Gospel comes to the world is “from faith for faith” — I interpret this to mean that God’s word of salvation is sourced in God’s faithfulness and finds its home in those who respond in faith.
“The just (those whom God calls ‘righteous’) live by faith.”
In light of the corrupt church practices in his day, this understanding was crucial, and Martin Luther was right to emphasize it. In a day when people were compelled to purchase indulgences in order to accumulate merit before God so that they might gain forgiveness and right standing before God, and when Luther himself found he could not find peace with God through the most rigorous ascetic exercises of the monastery, the call to simple faith in Christ was a refreshing corrective that started a revolution.
But, secondly, I think Luther (and those who followed or built on him) missed some important aspects of this text.
Most fundamentally, Protestants in Luther’s train have neglected the clear historical grounding of this passage (Rom. 1:1-7), which is reflected in the text itself in the words, “to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
As we saw in our earlier study, Rom. 1:1-7 summarizes the content of the Gospel message Paul preached, and it is not simply a message about personal salvation. Rather, it is an announcement about how God is establishing the Kingdom he promised to Israel through the person and work of his crucified and risen Son, the Messiah-King.
Luther, the Reformers, and Bible interpreters ever since continued and exacerbated the trend of those who went before them in de-historicizing the Gospel. They removed it from its Jewish context, its story of Israel’s God and his chosen people, its promise of a Messianic Kingdom and New Creation that would begin in Jerusalem and reach to the ends of the earth.
Growing out of this, Luther and others have missed the bigger meaning of “the righteousness of God” in Romans 1:17. The main concern in Romans is “to show [God’s] righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). In other words, God is not merely revealing the way by which people are counted righteous, he is establishing his own righteous character. He is vindicating himself. He is showing the rightness of what he has done in bringing his Kingdom and salvation to the world in the way that he has.
Paul wrote Romans for a mixed community of Jewish and Gentile Christians. Paul himself was a Jew who had received a calling to be an apostle to the Gentiles. Paul proclaimed that Israel’s God had been faithful to his people and had fulfilled his promises to them in Christ. God was establishing his Messianic Kingdom in the world through Jesus, starting with Israel.
But there was a big problem. The Jews were, by and large, rejecting this message! The congregation of people of God was being populated more and more by Gentiles (this was happening in Rome, as well).
As J. R. Daniel Kirk notes:
If the God of Israel has acted to save his people, but Israel is not participating in that salvation, then in what respect can this God be said to be righteous?
– Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God
Paul’s purpose in Romans is not just to speak to individuals about “the way of salvation.”
Paul is looking at a much bigger picture.
Paul is showing how God himself has proven himself “righteous” (faithful, true, a person of integrity) in the way he has acted toward Israel and the world.
Paul is showing how God has been true to his word, how his promises to Israel are now being fulfilled toward them, and how those promises apply to the non-Jewish world beyond Israel.
Romans is Paul’s theodicy — showing how God vindicates himself with regard to the way he is bringing his Kingdom and salvation to the world.
“Justification by faith” will play an important part of the argument — showing that God accepts all people everywhere on the same basis: through faith.
This will also mean that Paul will discuss the Law, the covenant under which Israel was designated “God’s people” under Moses and by which they were separated from the rest of the world, experienced God’s presence, and received his promises. If, in the past, it was the Law that marked out Israel as God’s people, what place does the Law have now that God has acted in Christ? What bearing does it have on the Gentiles who have come to Christ?
N. T. Wright’s translation of Romans 3:25-30 is a good summary of Paul’s purpose in writing Romans (emphases mine):
God put Jesus forth as the place of mercy, through faithfulness, by means of his blood. He did this to demonstrate his covenant justice [righteousness], because of the passing over (in divine forbearance) of sins committed beforehand. This was to demonstrate his covenant justice in the present time: that is, that he himself is in the right, and that he declares to be in the right everyone who trusts in the faithfulness of Jesus.
So what happens to boasting? It is ruled out! Through what sort of law? The law of works? No: through the law of faith! We calculate, you see, that a person is declared to be in the right on the basis of faith, apart from the works of the law. Or does God belong only to the Jews? Doesn’t he belong to the nations as well? Yes, of course, to the nations as well, since God is one. He will make the declaration “in the right” over the circumcised on the basis of faith, and over the uncircumcised through faith.
Paul’s teaching about “justification by faith,” you see, serves a bigger purpose: to show that God himself is just, and that his Kingdom is for everyone, from faith for faith.
Reformation Week 2015 Reformation Day is October 31
Note from CM: I love the article by David Lose from 2013 at Working Preacher that I reference in this post: “The Pharisee, the Tax Collector, and the Reformation.” I encourage you to read it in its entirety. It is a wonderful statement about the subversive nature of Jesus’ teaching.
Just when we think we’ve conquered self-righteousness . . .
• • •
So here’s one of the tricky things about “celebrating” the Reformation. Celebrations can easily become triumphalistic. In this case, rejoicing in what Protestants think is a more biblical understanding of “righteousness” can become, without one even realizing it, an attitude of self-righteousness that looks down the nose at others who “don’t get it.”
In his article on Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the publican, David Lose shows us how this story can be a “clever and dangerous” trap for preacher and listener alike.
For most who take it at face value, Jesus’ parable teaches that we should be like the humble publican and not like the proud, self-righteous Pharisee.
However, the very moment we criticize the Pharisee and express gratitude that we are not like him, we are engaging in his exact behavior!
And the very moment we identify ourselves with the publican we find ourselves in danger of taking pride in our humility (!) and thinking that we have somehow earned God’s favor because of the lowly posture we have taken.
In my opinion, one of the most important contributions the Lutheran tradition has given us is its emphasis on the universal human practice of trying to justify ourselves before God.
If we can’t do it through boasting, like the Pharisee did, in our good deeds and blameless lifestyle (and by most standards, he most certainly was an exemplar of a respectable, righteous life), then we will find a way to do by focusing all attention on ourselves as “miserable sinners.”
At the heart of the Lutheran understanding of human sinfulness is the concept of incurvatus in se— the person “curved in” on himself or herself. Luther put it this way:
Our nature, by the corruption of the first sin, [being] so deeply curved in on itself that it not only bends the best gifts of God towards itself and enjoys them (as is plain in the works-righteous and hypocrites), or rather even uses God himself in order to attain these gifts, but it also fails to realize that it so wickedly, curvedly, and viciously seeks all things, even God, for its own sake.
In other words, the world revolves around me, and God should vindicate me because I am at the center. I can put myself in the center by my goodness or by my depravity, but either way it’s all about me and I expect God to respond in my favor.
I think David Lose makes exactly the right point when he says about this parable:
This parable — and indeed the whole Reformation — was and is an attempt to shift our attention from ourselves — our piety or our passions, our faith or our failure, our glory or our shame — to God, the God who delights in justifying the ungodly, welcoming the outcast, and healing all who are in need.
So perhaps the best way to preach this clever and dangerous parable is to keep all talk of the Pharisee and tax collector and Luther and ourselves and anyone and everyone else to an absolute minimum. Instead, perhaps we should reserve most our time, thought, and words for God, the God who creates light from darkness, raises the dead to life, and pulls us all — Pharisees and tax collectors, righteous and sinful, disciples and ne’er-do-wells alike — into a realm of unimaginable and unexpected grace, mercy and joy.
My reading on Luther and the Reformation has changed my mind about a lot of things. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but here’s the short list.
I no longer believe the Reformation, as it’s commonly described by Protestants, is the distinct event we’ve made it out to be.
I no longer believe Luther ever intended to slay the Catholic Church and establish the wonder of contemporary Protestantism.
I am becoming increasingly sure that many things in the typical Reformation story are probably mythological, or most nearly so.
I’m especially convinced that a lot of the typical “Luther story” is probably historically inaccurate. Not necessarily untrue, but plenty of mythology in the mix.
I am very sure that the humanist and Catholic contribution to the reform of Christianity has been considerably obscured in the creation of a Protestant mythology.
I do not believe true Christianity was restored or rediscovered in the Reformation.
I’m convinced that it didn’t take long for Protestantism to accumulate enough problems of its own to justify another reformation or two.
I believe that a lot of Protestants say sola scriptura when they mean solo scriptura or nuda scriptura or something I don’t believe at all.
I now believe that tradition is a very good word.
I believe the Reformation was very secular, political and, eventually, quite violent. To act as if it was mostly a spiritual revival movement is naive.
I believe we ought to grieve the division of Christianity and the continuing division of Protestantism.
I no longer believe the theology of the Reformers was the pinnacle of evangelicalism or is the standard by which Biblical truth itself is judged.
I can see huge omissions from the work of the reformers, such as a theology of cross-cultural missions and much more.
I believe it is embarrassing to turn the Reformers into icons. Calvin on a t-shirt should win an award for irony.
I am a Protestant and I always will be, but I no longer take the kind of juvenile pride in Protestantism I did in the past. Much is good, and much has not been good. We have no right to stand superior to any other Christians.
I want to understand how Catholic and EO Christians understand Protestantism, and I want to do so with a sense of humility.
I don’t believe in ecumenism at any cost, but I can no longer imagine being a Christian without a commitment to ecumenism on some level.
There are many sins associated with Protestantism that I need to admit and repent of.
Part of my Reformation Day will be spent contemplating what it means to say “One Lord; One Faith; One Baptism; One Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church.”
Having a party celebrating the division of Christianity doesn’t really strike me as a something I want to do.
Note from CM: It is, of course, time to re-post one of Michael’s Halloween rants about what evangelicals did to a simple, old-fashioned American tradition.
Happy Reformation Day (and Halloween).
• • •
As October 31st looms, it’s time for true confessions.
I grew up among Southern Baptist fundamentalist Baptists. The KJV-only, women can’t wear pants, twenty verses of “Just As I Am,” Jerry Falwell, Jack Chick, twice a year revival kind of fundamentalist Baptists.
We were serious about things like beer. By sheer quantity of attention in sermons, drinking beer was the most evil act one could describe. We were serious about movies, cards, and something called “mixed bathing,” which normal people would call “swimming.”
We were serious about the Bible, Sunday School, suits and ties, and walking the aisle to get saved.
And we were big time into Halloween.
No, that’s not a typo. I said we were big time into Halloween.
From the late sixties into the early seventies, the churches I attended and worked for–all fundamentalist Baptists– were all over Halloween like ants on jam. It was a major social activity time in every youth group I was part of from elementary school through high school graduation in 1974.
We had haunted houses. Haunted hikes. Scary movies. (All the old Vincent Price duds.) As a youth minister in the mid to late seventies and early eighties, I created some haunted houses in church education buildings that would win stagecraft awards.
The kids loved it. The parents loved it. The pastors approved. The church paid for it!
No, this wasn’t “Judgment House” or “Hell House” or whatever else evangelicals have done with a similar skill set today. It was fun. Simple, old-fashioned, fun. No one tried to fly a broom or talk to the dead. Everyone tried to have fun. Innocent play in the name of an American custom.
And then, things changed.
Mike Warnke convinced evangelicals that participating in Halloween was worshiping the devil. Later, when we learned that Warnke may have been one of the most skillful of evangelical con-artists, lying about his entire Satanic high priest schtick, the faithful still believed his stories.
Evangelical media began to latch onto Halloween as some form of Satanism or witchcraft, and good Christians were warned that nothing made the other team happier than all those kids going door to door collecting M&Ms.
Evangelical parents decided that their own harmless and fun Halloween experiences were a fluke, and if their kid dressed up as a vampire, he’d probably try to become one. If there was a pumpkin on the porch, you were inviting demons into your home, just like it says in Hezekiah.
A general fear of the occult, manifesting itself in Satanic ritual abuse mythology, crept into evangelicalism and took a deep hold on many churches.
Occult ministries exploited these fears, and ministries like Bob Larson found it was profitable and powerful to make rock music, drug use, occult worship and Halloween one big package.
Today, if you want to split your church, divide your singles group, get a fight started with parents or see the youth minister fired, just find some way to have an old-fashioned Halloween event in your church.
In the ministry where I serve, we can’t have fall festivals. Putting out a pumpkin is risky. Any costume other than dressing up like Billy Graham is taboo.
Halloween experts have proliferated in evangelicalism. Where did these people learn all this stuff? Oh yes, The Onion. That’s right.
Those great, fun, harmless, safe, nostalgic, exciting, slightly scary and completely un-demonic Halloweens of the past? Gone, gone, gone with the evangelical hot air.
Does it bother me? You bet it does. It bothers me that we fall for such lame, ridiculous manipulators as the crowd that made all of those Halloweens past into satanic events.
It bothers me that any lie, exaggeration or fiction will find thousands of eager believers to pass it along.
It bothers me that the Biblical message about Satan would be co-opted by the fear-mongering and manipulation of the hucksters. (Read The Screwtape Letters for some real Satanism.)
It bothers me that such a wonderful part of my childhood and of American life has been turned into an example of evangelical paranoia and gullibility. We ruined something good, and everyone knows it but us.
I know all about the sophisticated responses thoughtful Christians have about Reformation day and All Saints Day. That’s fine, but it’s not the same. I just want my grandkids to be able to dress up in cute outfits and trick or treat without the local church designating them for exorcism.
Shame on those of us–evangelicals–who allowed Halloween to be taken away from families and many communities, all because we prefer to believe that life is a Frank Peretti novel.
It’s the last full weekend of October and the world is colorful and sad. A perfect time to pile in the old Cross Country and go for a Saturday drive. Let’s ramble!
The only thing I will say about the Cubs and their loss to the Mets in the NLCS is that this is the first year in a long time that “wait until next year” actually means something on the north side of Chicago.
No one expected this young team (several of whom were in the minors at the start of the year) to make it as far as they did, and the season they gave their fans was fun, energizing, and hopeful.
Add a few more pieces and let’s try it again, boys. I hope to make it to Spring Training in Mesa.
Meanwhile, the amusement park north of Chicago that our family used to frequent lost a bet on the Cubs-Mets series and is paying up by changing names:
Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Ill., threw their support behind the Cubbies ahead of the NLCS, agreeing to a friendly bet with Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, N.J. As a result of that bet — and the subsequent Mets series sweep — Six Flags Great America is now “Six Flags Great Mets” and has renamed its Goliath roller coaster “GoMets” for the rest of its Fright Fest promotion.
Oh, the shame.
One way I like to listen to music is by seasons. There are spring songs/albums, and others that fit summer, winter, and fall. The ones I have chosen as “autumnal” today strike me as fitting for this season because I first heard them in the fall, or because they prompt some memory of an event that took place in autumn, or because the artist has intentionally designed the music to be fitting for this time of year.
As of now, here are my favorite 5 “autumnal” albums:
#5 — The Whistle of the Jay, by Bill Staines
#4 — North Country, by the Rankin Family
#3 — October Road, by James Taylor
#2 — Ashes and Roses, by Mary Chapin Carpenter
#1 — Get Lucky, by Mark Knopfler
Honorable mentions: Harvest by Neil Young, Tapestry by Carole King, Amber Waves and Winnowing by Bill Mallonee, Here’s Glen Campbell by Glen Campbell, Declaration of Dependence by Kings of Convenience, Infidels by Bob Dylan, Manassas, by Stephen Stills & Manassas, The Harrow & the Harvest by Gillian Welch, albums by Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes, and pretty much anything Celtic and melancholy. Oh, and the kind of good ol’ folk, country and bluegrass you might hear at a harvest dance.
What music do you like to listen to in this wistful time of year, when the northern climes are ablaze in color, the leaves are falling and crunching underfoot, when we begin to smell the smoke of wood fires, don sweaters and jackets and drink our cider and Oktoberfest, and dread the coming cold?
Researchers investigating beneficial new uses for psychedelic drugs have set their sights on what may seem an unlikely group of volunteer subjects — your local priest, minister or rabbi.
Scientists at New York University and Johns Hopkins University have already shown positive results in an expanding program where psychotherapists have used psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms,” to treat depression and acute anxiety in cancer patients.
Roland Griffiths, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins, is leading the new research, which stems from findings that volunteers who’ve taken psilocybin in a wide variety of research settings often report profound mystical experiences.
Griffiths wonders whether these altered states of consciousness are the same as those reported by longtime meditators or highly religious individuals.
So, a person can participate in this study in one of three ways: (1) through a confidential online survey about mystical experiences you may have had and what inspired them; (2) people who have a long history of practicing meditation can participate in another survey that allows them to try psilocybin in a clinical setting with experienced guides; or (3) ordained clergy are invited to participate in a third study. According to the article, here is what this ministerial study will involve:
After extensive preliminary screening, including medical and psychological tests, 12 subjects will receive psilocybin in living-room-like psychedelic session rooms at NYU in Manhattan and at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Subjects wear eyeshades, listen to evocative music designed to heighten the journey inward and are monitored by two therapists, who provide reassuring support.
All I’ve got to say is, FAR OUT!!! And . . . sign me up!
Internet Monk would definitely be groovier.
In politics this week, we found out that Joe Biden is not running, Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafeestopped running, and Paul Ryanis running. Hillary Clinton has been duking it out with congressmen over Benghazi, an issue that they hope will trip her up as she runs for the presidency. Our friends to the north elected another Trudeau who ran for Prime Minister. Secretary of State John Kerry ran to Berlin to tell Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas to cut it out with regard to the recent violence on the Temple Mount and now he’s running around trying to help figure out a way to end the Syrian war. Ben Carson has now run to the top of the polls in Iowa, passing the Donald and leading by over 5 points.
But the person who got the most run this week was Larry David, who did a spot-on impersonation of Bernie Sanders in the mock debate open on Saturday Night Live.
By Adrienne Celt, @ The Toast
They used to say women loved the strong, silent types, the ones, you know, who didn’t have to prove their manliness or virility with a lot of talk, but who just oozed testosterone and confidence through their dreamy eyes. Those who were loudest, who tried to prove themselves with a lot of talk, well, it was just assumed they were compensating for something they were lacking.
Know what I mean?
Turns out, in at least some of our near evolutionary relatives, this may bear out. According to the American Bazaar:
A study conducted by an international team of scientists has revealed that howler monkeys with the loudest vocalizations are in fact compensating for smaller testicles.
Dr. Jacob C. Dunn and his team of researchers published the results of their study titled “Evolutionary Trade-Off between Vocal Tract and Testes Dimensions in Howler Monkeys” in which they found that the primates can only have either a bigger and deeper voice for mating calls or bigger testes for a more abundant supply of sperm — but not both.
However, the uh, less endowed group of monkeys appear to be making out like kings with the ladies.
The researchers found that males with large hyoids and deeper roars but more diminutive testes live in small social groups with often only one male dominating a number of females – a “harem” social model.
Males with bigger testes and smaller hyoids live in large groups with up to five or six males where the females mate with all males in the group.
I have no idea what any of this means.
But any serious study about monkey testicles certainly deserves a place of honor on Saturday Ramblings, don’t ya think?
Finally, this week in music history:
The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” charts for the first time on its way to #1…the single is the result of six month’s work and 17 sessions in four different studios at a then-unprecedented cost of $16,000…
Here is some film footage from those original recording studio sessions:
#5 — The Whistle of the Jay, by Bill Staines
#4 — North Country, by the Rankin Family
#3 — October Road, by James Taylor
#2 — Ashes and Roses, by Mary Chapin Carpenter
#1 — Get Lucky, by Mark Knopfler
Researchers investigating beneficial new uses for psychedelic drugs have set their sights on what may seem an unlikely group of volunteer subjects — your local priest, minister or rabbi.
The Internet Monk Archives 