Saturday Ramblings 11.6.10

It’s Saturday. That means donuts and extra coffee for breakfast, time to read the paper, watching Bugs Bunny cartoons … what? Really? Since when? Oh my. Well, if Bugs Bunny isn’t on Saturday mornings any more, then may I present the next best thing: Saturday Ramblings.

Did you vote on Tuesday? (This, of course, is a question for our American readers. Martha and Matthew, you may skip ahead if you like…) Voters in my state of Oklahoma voted to make it illegal for judges to consider any international law, including Islamic Sharia law, in any court case. The measure passed, but it is already being challenged in court. Has this ever come up in a court case in Oklahoma? No. But the state representative who proposed the change in the state constitution was afraid that it might someday. Muslims living in the state now say they are less comfortable being open with their faith. Nothing like whipping up some unfounded fear to get out the vote.

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I Don’t Get It (again)

By Chaplain Mike

I have to admit it—I don’t get Pentecostalism.

Though I have been exposed to charismatic and pentecostal brothers and sisters since the earliest days after my conversion, their approach to the faith and their practices have never, ever rung true to me.

Theologically, I am not a cessationist. I don’t think the Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit’s gifts expired after the apostles or when the first Bibles were bound. I can accept that signs and wonders may accompany the proclamation of the Gospel and confirm its message with power. But I’ve never seen it, at least not in the way my pentecostal brethren claim it happens. Instead, in charismatic and pentecostal Christianity I have most often seen a sort of manic enthusiasm that emphasizes all the worst aspects of evangelical/fundamentalist faith practice, and then adds to them additional layers of hype, hoopla, and hysteria.Continue reading “I Don’t Get It (again)”

Preparing to Honor the Saints

Saints Like You and Me, Mills

By Chaplain Mike

In some traditions, All Saints’ Day was celebrated on Nov. 1, while others will honor the saints this coming Sunday, the first in November.

All Saints’ may be compared to American national holidays like Veterans Day or Memorial Day. On it we remember and honor the lives, faithfulness, deeds, teachings, and martyrdoms of God’s people, known and unknown, throughout the ages of the Church. We remind ourselves that they, like us, were but ordinary human beings—limited, sinful, and flawed in many ways—whose lives were inundated by the grace of God in Jesus Christ, so that they in turn overflowed in faith, hope, and love.

This is one celebration about which non-liturgical evangelicals know and care little. Besides the generally a-historical and non-liturgical perspective of revivalistic Christianity, many also view All Saints’ Day as utterly “Catholic” and therefore to be avoided. However, the earliest Protestants did not do away with this commemoration. Foundational Lutheran documents, for example, show that they sought to reform the festival, not abandon it.

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A Paint-By-Numbers Life

Sometimes I envy those of other religions. Really, I do. There are times I want a paint-by-number religion, one with a complete set of instructions as to how I am to please the deity we are creating with our brushes. All the 8s get green paint, while the 6s are filled in with yellow. That kind of thing. Give me a list of what I’m supposed to do, another list of what I’m not supposed to do, and I will try to act the way I’m supposed to act to the end of my days. Give me a religion where I get to be in control of me, please. One where I can manipulate my god by the things I do or don’t do.

But no. We Christians get a different kind of God all-together, one who insists on getting personal with us, invading our space, pushing himself in where he’s not invited and embarrassing us in front of our well-intentioned friends who are all ready to put blue in the number 4s. Our God is awkward to be around much of the time. He stays invisible and undetectable while asking us to believe that he is there. He doesn’t give us lists to follow–instead, he tells us to follow him.

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Creativity Overcoming Safety

Editor’s note: I came across this essay by Orlando, Florida pastor Cole NeSmith recently. Cole says what I have been saying for years, only much better than I could say it. Read this and pass it on to others to read as well. This is so important to understand: Not just for artists, but for all who want to reflect the creative heart of God.

By Cole NeSmith

We live in a culture consumed by safety. There are organizations completely dedicated to making sure we’re safe while working and traveling and eating and doing just about any other common practice.

And, being good westerners, we’ve allowed our cultural obsession for safety to define our lives as Christians. We’ve spent the last several hundred years sterilizing our relationship with Christ into a religion that is neat, defined, predictable… might I say, systematic?  We’ve worked hard to eliminate as much of the unknown as possible, and we wonder why we feel distant from a God who exists in the mysterious.  Today, we try to compensate with our heads by creating large educational institutions where we can further define and attempt to know God intellectually.

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Nouwen on Prayer

Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers, Van Gogh

By Chaplain Mike

There are so many gems in the new books which present Henri Nouwen’s teachings on spiritual direction and spiritual formation that I did not even try to begin to include excerpts in the review I posted earlier this week. Today, I was thinking that these books would provide an ample storehouse of quotes for a year! Once in a while, I will treat you to some of his rich insights as food for thought, contemplation, and discussion.

Here is some fine thinking on prayer:

The world says, “If you are not making good use of your time, you are useless.” Jesus says: “Come spend useless time with me.” …

…Prayer is being unbusy with God instead of being busy with other things. Prayer is primarily to do nothing useful or productive in the presence of God. To not be useful is to remind myself that if anything important or fruitful happens through prayer, it is God who achieves the result. So when I go into the day, I go with the conviction that God is the one who brings forth fruit in my work, and I do not have to act as though I am in control of things. I have to work hard; I have to do my task; I have to offer my best. But I can let go of the illusion of control and be detached from the result. At the end of each day I can prayerfully say that if something good happened, God be praised.

• Spiritual Formation, p. 19f

“For you we face death all day long”

Church bombing in Telskuf, Iraq, 2007

By Chaplain Mike

A current article in Foreign Policy magazine by Eden Naby and Jamsheed K. Chosky makes the following startling observation:

There is now an alarming possibility that there will be no significant Christian communities in Iraq or Iran by century’s end.

The statistics are sobering:

  • The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that between 300,000 to 400,000 Christians have been forced out of Iraq since 2003.
  • Though Iran’s population has swelled from 38 million to 72 million people since the mid-1970’s, the number of non-Muslims has dropped by two-thirds. This includes members of the Assyrian Christian Church, whose population has dwindled from 100,000 to 15,000.
  • Christians made up about 20 percent of the region’s population a century ago and now account for about 5 percent.

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Open Mic: Election Day

By Chaplain Mike

I have a mantra: “I am about the most a-political person you will ever meet.” That’s why we don’t talk much about the subject here on Internet Monk. Generally, I have little interest in politics, except on a pragmatic level. I like to think that’s a theologically valid perspective. As Paul wrote,

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings should be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1Tim 2:1-4)

The Apostle here places politics at the service of the Gospel, not vice versa. His chief concern seems to be that those in civil government will provide stable and peaceful conditions which will allow God’s ambassadors to spread the Good News.

Here in the United States (unlike the Roman empire), we have opportunities to take an active role in the political system. We can do more than pray. In our political system, “the government” is not someone else ruling over us, it is “we the people” electing representatives to speak for our interests and bring about our will. It remains an open question as to how extensively Christians should be involved in the political process and whether or not such participation is ultimately effective in bringing about salutary changes in society.

As for me, I am more interested in WHY Christians want to be involved in the political arena, whether simply on the level of citizenship or as active participants in political activity. That’s why I would like this election-night edition of Open Mic to focus on a simple statement made by Scot McKnight:

Somewhere between 6pm and 8pm, Central Time, on November 2nd, 2010, the eschatology of American evangelicals will become clear.

Eschatology is about where we place our hope. What part does working for political change (at whatever level) play in your hopes for the future?

A note to our international readers. You are welcome to participate, but I will acknowledge at the outset that I am primarily interested in a discussion of American politics here. The politicization of evangelical Christianity has been an issue in the U.S. primarily, and today’s elections here and the Christian response to the results will reveal a great deal about what the church in our country believes about this question.

IM Book Review: Spiritual Direction

By Chaplain Mike

Two of Henri Nouwen’s students, Michael Christensen and Rebecca Laird, have taken their late teacher’s course in spiritual direction and supplemented it with his unpublished writings to create a “new” work presenting Nouwen’s thoughts on the Christian life.

The result? A series of books filled with the characteristic simplicity and wisdom of this tender-hearted man whose spirit burned with love for God and his neighbors.

The first book is called, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith. It is not about giving spiritual direction, it contains spiritual direction. Reading it is like having Henri Nouwen as one’s spiritual friend and mentor.

At the outset, let me say that this series of books is a gift. Having read through the first volume and having perused the second, I know that I will be returning to them again and again for personal contemplation and pastoral guidance.

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One Last Gasp

A few nights ago, I passed through the room where my husband sat watching television. I stopped and stood mesmerized – gripped by the depiction of a woman drowning. It was so graphic that I had a sense of struggle within me as I saw her fight against the sea that wouldn’t let her surface. I remembered the times as a small child my throat and nose burned from the accidental intake of pool or lake water and the sense of panic I felt until an adult hand would reach down and pluck me to safety.

For this woman there was no rescue. The seawater filled her lungs. Her eyes bulged with the realization of her impending death. Then she ceased her struggle and sank into a murky abyss.

I could think of a lot of ways I wouldn’t want to die. Drowning is right at the top of the list. Nevertheless, I realized that in a spiritual sense drowning is the very thing that has been causing such a fight in me for nearly a year.

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