The Mystery Of A Lost Generation

I read two very interesting articles on CNN.com this week. One told of how more of those under the age of 30 are expressing doubt in the existence of God than ever before. The other was a story of the Clergy Project, an effort to help those pastors who want to come out of the closet—and admit they no longer believe in God.

I want to say right up front that I know what I’m going to say is preaching to the fully-robed choir. And I know we could turn this into a good old-fashioned roast, with the evangelical circus as our guest of honor. That is not my intent today. I want to look at one reason why I think so many are ignoring God. And  And then we’ll move on to a review of the new album by Rush. And by the end I hope to have drawn all the threads together to make something that somehow resembles sense.

Are you with me?

The Pew Research Center’s survey is not new. As a matter of fact, it’s more than two years old. Why CNN just now deems this “news” is beyond me. Yet it does paint a pretty clear picture that those labeled as Millennials (born after 1981) are less inclined to find religion an important and active part of their life than any other age-based group going back to 1900. More of those in this group are defining themselves as “nones,” meaning they have no religious affiliation. And many are referring to themselves as agnostics or even atheists. Yet these same twenty-somethings express that they are morally conservative. We’re not dealing with heathens and pagans here. We’re dealing with a generation that no longer even sees a need to bring God into the conversation.

Continue reading “The Mystery Of A Lost Generation”

Midweek Tidbits (6/13/12)

1. So, I go to Christian Post, and John Piper’s message this week is, “Did the Death of Jesus Accomplish Anything for the Non-Elect?”

He begins by saying,“It’s amazing how frequently that question is coming up recently.”

Really? What world are these people living in?

2. The more I think about the upcoming presidential election, the more I am convinced what we will have is a choice between two people completely committed to statism, one who is center-left and the other who is center-right.

Is this much of a choice? Will it make much of a difference?

3. I must confess my absolutely un-Christian loathing for the Miami Heat.

“Father, forgive me for I have sinned…

“But, Lord, mayest thou bless the Oklahoma City Thunder as thou didst blest thy holy hand grenade, that they might be the instruments of thy holy wrath in the NBA Finals and blow thine enemies to bits. In thy mercy.”

4. I am really digging using my new Google Chromebook to write the blog. My Macbook’s hard drive bit the dust a couple of weeks ago, and I decided to get something inexpensive and devote it to internet use, storing everything on the cloud.

We’ll still have to come up with another solution eventually to handle music, iPhone and iPod synching, and perhaps some larger storage issues (like pictures), but for now and for blogging and web-based usage, this little machine is swift and sweet.

5. Oh, I can’t stop with just one Christian Post story. That site is a veritable gold mine of evangelical craziness. I hereby raise a glass to Ed Young for continuing the constant drumbeat of moralistic pietism with, “Eliminating Vulgarity Key to Restoring Relationship With Christ.”

Then there’s the always reliable Dan Deizell with another question that comes straight out of the revivalist, “Wretched Urgency” mentality: “Can Deliberate Sin Negate Your Conversion Experience?”

And, are churches still really talking about tithing?

6. I received an email from a renowned author and NT scholar last week. He wanted to comment on some of the discussion regarding the Sermon on the Mount we had. Here’s what he wrote:

Mercy, I’m surprised how many of your readers don’t want the Sermon on the Mount to do what it does: do what Jesus says. It ends with a call to do. The theological overlay, Lutheran and Calvinist, concerns me in those readers.

By the way, Luther’s Sermon on the Mount commentary does not do that at all. He does not say it has to do with the Law raised to the highest level in order to reveal sinfulness. I read the whole thing; not sure he says it at all in that little commentary. Nor does Calvin’s. That so-called Lutheran view, while it may be found somewhere in Luther, is not so much Luther but later Lutheranism and is a theology gone astray. Bonhoeffer said that.

Bonhoeffer’s Sermon blows apart the distinction of justification and sanctification.

I’m thinking we are going to be having more posts on the Sermon on the Mount. To really understand Jesus, we have to get that message right.

* * *

7. I can’t wait to go camping in northern Indiana this weekend. The only thing I dread is that the temperature is supposed to be in the low 90’s. Away from the phone, away from the computer, away from the television, away from the daily grind — and can’t wait to just spend relaxed time with the family and friends.

Jeff will be watching over Internet Monk Saturday and Sunday.

Oh, and thanks to all of you for your words of encouragement on Monday about peeling myself off the wall that I so unceremoniously hit last week.

Another Look: Making Music in the Midst of Chaos

Note from CM: I just realized it has been twenty years since the events in this account took place. To me, what you are about to read is one of the most remarkable stories of my lifetime. As I re-tell this tale of imaginative grace today, may it fill you with wonder as you read about one man who made music amid the ruins of war.

* * *

Back in the early 1990’s a simple act of heroism caught the imagination of those who learned about it.

On May 27, 1992, Vedran Smailovic, principal cellist for the city opera, was practicing his cello in an upstairs apartment in Sarajevo, in the former Yugoslavia. It was a time of war, and Sarajevo had become ground zero in the conflict. Beautiful Sarajevo. A center of European art and culture, this lovely city had been transformed into a living hell as sniper fire and bombardment from the nearby hills that overlooked its neighborhoods and streets rained down upon its terrified citizens daily.

They called it the Siege of Sarajevo.

Continue reading “Another Look: Making Music in the Midst of Chaos”

Getting the Point

Shaking hands at the door of the sanctuary after the service, the pastor noticed frowns on several of his parishioners’ faces. “I don’t know, pastor,” one man said, pointing an accusing finger at him. “If I were you I’d take a look at Romans 2:1.”

When all had gone home for Sunday dinner and he feared his own was getting cold, the minister went back to his study to gather his things. His Bible was on the desk. Remembering his friend’s admonition, he opened it to Romans 2:1 —

“Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.”

“Well, that’s pretty harsh,” he thought. “He has some nerve.”

The pastor decided he would call later and give him a piece of his mind. He looked up his number in the church directory to write it down and noticed something he had never seen before. The man’s picture. His gaze was piercing. In the pose, his hands were folded on a table in front of him but his index finger was pointing. Straight out from the picture. Right at the pastor. “That’s strange,” he thought. “I’d never noticed that before.”

The minister locked up the church and got in his car. Noting the time, he decided to take the interstate home. It was a few more miles but quicker. From the on ramp, he saw that the traffic was exceptionally heavy for a Sunday. “Must be an accident or something,” he sighed. He tried to merge, but no one would let him in. His temperature began to rise. Muttering turned to explosive cursing as driver after driver insisted on getting through without making room for him.

Finally, he saw a small opening and forced the front of the car into the gap. The man behind the wheel in the car he cut off laid on the horn but the pastor would not be denied. Finally, the man swung around, tires squealing, and passed him on the right, squeezing ahead of the frustrated minister once again. Before the car moved ahead of him, the pastor looked at its determined driver and shouted, “You idiot!” The man just glared and pointed his finger at the pastor. The right reverend was tempted to hold up another finger in reply, but somehow restrained himself. He turned up the air conditioning for the rest of the trip home.

“That was a pretty strong sermon this morning,” said the pastor’s wife as she passed the platter of meat to him at the table. “I would imagine more than a few people were unhappy about the way you criticized their sins.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his children nodding their heads. When all had fixed their plates, they bowed and the pastor led them in the Lord’s Prayer. His eye squinted open just as they were saying, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” What was that? Each member of his family had eyes closed and hands folded on the table, but their index fingers were pointing toward the head of the table, straight out, directly at him. For a moment he fumbled his words, catching up again at, “but deliver us from evil…”

That afternoon, he decided to fix a shutter that needed attention on the side of the house. The pastor wasn’t much of a handyman, but this was straightforward. A couple of screws had worked their way loose and the wind had caught the shutter, ripping it away from the siding and leaving it hanging there crookedly. Just replace the screws and re-secure the shutter. All was going well until he leaned back to make sure he had it straight. His foot slipped and he went tumbling off the ladder, hitting the ground hard on his right arm. He knew immediately it was broken, and it felt like he might have busted the index finger on his right hand too.

The physician at the emergency room said he’d have to wear the cast for several weeks, and should keep his arm in a sling to keep from moving it. The finger was also in a cast to straighten it and keep it immobile. The resulting look was almost comical. His right arm was slung across his chest, with the index finger pointing upward, right under his chin.

As he was leaving the room, the doctor gave the pastor a wry smile. “Guess you’ll have something to preach about next Sunday, huh?”

IM Book Review: Knowing Darkness

Knowing Darkness: Reflections on Skepticism, Melancholy, Friendship, and God
by Addison Hodges Hart
Eerdmans, 2009

* * *

“In other words, conventional piety is fine so far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far at all in making sense of the larger mystery enveloping our existence — it has significant limitations where ‘explaining’ human experience is concerned.”

In Knowing Darkness, Addison Hart pushes back against several common notions of conventional piety. He argues that soul-conditions like melancholy and skepticism are vital parts of the life of Christian faith, and that our sad attachments to surface religiosity often keep us from being true friends to one another in the struggles of life.

Hart is unapologetic about his use of vintage words to describe types of dis-ease we experience in our lives. “I find that in some cases archaic terms are useful precisely because they don’t carry along with them the baggage of modern tastes and prejudices found in contemporary terminology and neologisms.”

And so he speaks of melancholy rather than “depression” and describes it in more robust terms as “a feeling of thoughtful sadness.” Hart bluntly says that anyone devoid of melancholy in a world like ours lacks something vital with regard to an essential humanity.

Anything calling itself “faith” that sets itself against the essential human feeling that engenders melancholy is in fact a fraud. Even when melancholy becomes a malady,there are few things more intolerable, tyrannical, and oppressive than the inane injunction that “Thou shalt smile:” When this absurd dictum goes on to get mixed up with mass-market religious drivel, such cheerfulness and baffling optimism are enough to drive a thoughtful believer to the brink of disbelief or even despair.

Continue reading “IM Book Review: Knowing Darkness”

A Prayer of Martin Luther

The Stone Bench in the Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital, Van Gogh

Behold, Lord, an empty vessel that needs to be filled. My Lord, fill it.

I am weak in the faith; strengthen me.

I am cold in love; warm me and make me fervent, that my love may go out to my neighbor.

I do not have a strong and firm faith; at times I doubt and am unable to trust you altogether. O Lord, help me. Strengthen my faith and trust in you.

In you I have sealed the treasure of all I have.

I am poor; you are rich and came to be merciful to the poor.

I am a sinner; you are upright.

With me, there is an abundance of sin; in you is the fullness of righteousness.

Therefore I will will remain with you, of whom I can receive, but to whom I may not give.

Amen.

Signs you may have hit the wall…

You’ve been driving for work so much that you can’t see out the rear window of your car because of all the empty fast-food bags piled up in the back seat.

You dream about work…in detail…every night.

You are praying more and more passionately. But all your prayers are imprecations aimed at other drivers around you. This does not help you feel closer to God.

You catch yourself sighing a lot.

You would miss your wife, but you’re not sure you would know her if you saw her.

Kids? I have kids?

Your first thought at almost every moment is negative. Or blank. Or negative about having such blank thoughts. Or..now what was I thinking about? Damn it! What’s wrong with me?

Oh yeah, you say things like “Damn it!” a lot more.

Shower. Work. Eat. Work. Eat. Work. Sleep. Rinse and repeat.

Friends tell you they’re retiring, selling their house, and moving out west. You smile and congratulate them. You hate them.

You are only able to concentrate on the moment at hand. Sometimes, you feel a rush of panic, because you can’t remember yesterday — Did I miss something or forget someone I was supposed to meet? Did I say or do something stupid? Did I…[who knows what]?

It takes one entire day off before you can even begin to unclench your jaw.

A balanced meal is one you don’t spill on your shirt as you drive. A relaxing meal is when you pull over after going through the drive-up window and park for five minutes. An enjoyable meal is nowhere to be found.

There is little or no sense of satisfaction when you complete something. All you can think about is what you have to do next or the pile of things that remain unfinished.

You hear rumors about a mysterious time called “weekend,” when some people don’t work but take time to enjoy themselves. You Google it to learn more.

You don’t want to go to bed at night because you know the next thing will be getting up and starting another day of work.

Friends? Ha ha ha ha! Stop it, this guy is killing me!

You write a blog, but instead of producing something thoughtful, provocative, and creative, all you can think to write about is a silly list of signs that show you may have hit the wall.

An Introduction To St. Columcille

A while back, I threatened to write about the three patron saints of Ireland, and since I’ve covered St. Patrick and St. Bridget, now it’s time to tell you all about St. Columcille, because his feast day was yesterday, the 9th of June.

Some of you may be more familiar with him under the Anglicised version of his name, St. Columba.  He is very much associated with Iona, the Scottish island famed for monastic culture and nowadays often referenced in terms of “Celtic Christianity.” Iona is linked to the Book of Kells as it is thought that the book was begun in the monastery there during the 9th century and, because of Viking raids, brought to Ireland with the fleeing monks where it ended up in the Abbey of Kells.  Iona is important for its role as mother-foundation of the missions that St. Columcille and his successors began in Scotland and the north-west of England; the monastery of Lindisfarne (the Holy Island) was founded by the Irish monk St.Aidan, who had been sent from Iona to Northumbria at the request of King Oswald in the 7th century and it became the base for evangelization in the North of England and also sent a successful mission to Mercia, and Irish monks and the Irish-founded monastic settlements produced and had a great influence on the Anglo-Saxon monastics and saints of the north-west and north of England, such as the famous St. Cuthbert of Durham, who grew up near the abbey of Melrose which was founded as an off-shoot of Lindisfarne.  This would later lead to a small amount of friction between the Irish and Irish-Scottish-influenced Anglo-Saxon Christians and those converted by the mission led by St. Augustine of Canterbury, sent by Pope St. Gregory the Great to the southern English kingdom of Kent.  All this was sorted out in the 7th century Synod of Whitby.

Returning to St. Columcille, he is known as the “Apostle to the Picts” and was a vigorous and successful missionary, founder of monastic settlements, and trusted emissary amongst the tribes of the Picts.  All this sounds very virtuous and edifying, and it truly was, but the thing is – Columcille didn’t head off to the west of Scotland for the benefit of the pagan Picts.  He did it as a penance, being sent into exile for his role in the battle of Cúl Dreimhne.

Continue reading “An Introduction To St. Columcille”

Sermon: Jesus, the Stronger Man (Mark 3:20-27)

JESUS, THE STRONGER MAN
Sermon by Chaplain Mike
Preached June 10, 2012

* * *

This past week marked the 68th anniversary of D-Day, which took place on June 6, 1944. It was on that day that the Allied forces invaded Europe by crossing the English Channel and landing on the beaches of Normandy. It was the largest amphibious assault in world history, as air, land, and sea forces sought to turn the tide of World War II by getting a foothold in Europe and inaugurating its eventual liberation. By the end of that day, 160,000 American, British, and Canadian troops had landed along a fifty-mile stretch of the French coast. The enemy fought hard to push back the assault from dug-in bunkers that had been under construction for four years. It is still unclear to this day how many Allied soldiers died on D-Day, but estimates range from 2,500 to 5,000. It was a costly victory, but a victory nonetheless.

In fact, one might say that we won the war on D-Day. It was the decisive battle. From that point on, the Allied forces advanced until the war was over nearly a year later. May 8, 1945 is called V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day); it marks the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces and the end of the Third Reich.

So, the war was won on D-Day but not over until V-E Day. In between, a lot of fighting went on, but the outcome was certain.

This is analogous to our Christian faith. When Jesus came, he inaugurated the Kingdom of God. Through his life, death, resurrection, ascension, and outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Jesus won the war against the forces of sin, evil, and death. However, as we are all well aware by experience, the battles are not yet over. We still await the consummation of Jesus’ great victory and in the meantime, the fight goes on.

One might say that Christians live between D-Day and V-E Day. The decisive invasion has occurred. Victory is sure. God’s Kingdom has gained a sure foothold in this world. Nevertheless, we still find ourselves in a fight, we still sustain our losses, we still struggle and wonder sometimes if final victory will ever come.

Continue reading “Sermon: Jesus, the Stronger Man (Mark 3:20-27)”

My Apologies

I finally had some time to do some maintenance on my end of things here this morning. Normally I just have time to do what has to be done to keep the fire from raging out of control, and sometimes I don’t even do that. (As you know, we’ve been having quite a few problems with our server these last few weeks. Thanks to the diligence of Joe Stallard, we’re hoping these problems have been resolved.)

So this morning when I saw that an old email address was still listed on our PayPal donation site, I was really upset—at myself. This meant I was not getting acknowledgements of your donations, and had not been responding with thanks for you generosity. I felt terrible. So many of you have given to us so we can continue the upkeep on this site, and you are probably wondering just why I have not written to you with my gratitude. It’s simple: I was not getting acknowledgement of your donation.

I have been getting balance updates from PayPal, and transfer that money into our bank account. (It’s an account with Arvest Bank here in Oklahoma, and used solely for Internet Monk. I have  my personal accounts with a different bank, keeping the two as separate as possible so there is no appearance of monkey business. I’m just trying to be open here with you.) But I have not been getting notification of individual donations.

I fixed that this morning. Now when you donate to us using PayPal, a notification will be sent to me at my iMonk email address. Then I will—Lord willing and the creek don’t rise—send you a note expressing my sincere thanks.

All donations are most welcome. Some send five bucks, some more than a thousand. Some donate one time, others on a regular basis. And I thank the Lord with each donation for his faithfulness to us, and pray his blessing on you for your generosity.

So, will you please forgive me for this long-overdue correction?

And will you please join with me in thanking Joe Stallard for keeping InternetMonk cruising along at warp speed?