There’s a story told, more legend perhaps than fact, about a mayor of a large American city in the late 1960s. It wasn’t a good time for his city: It was facing financial bankruptcy, crime rates were spiraling, its public transportation system was no longer safe at night, the river supplying its drinking water was dangerously polluted, the air was rife with racial tension, and there were strikes and street protests almost weekly.
As the story goes, the mayor was flying over the city in a helicopter at rush hour on a Friday afternoon. As the rush-hour bustle and traffic drowned out most everything else, he looked down at what seemed a teeming mess and said to one of his aides: “Wouldn’t it be nice if there was plunger and we could flush this whole mess into the ocean!”
He was being facetious, but I worry that we sometimes subtly think the same thing about our world. Too often we and our churches tend to see the world precisely as a mess, as caught up in mindless trivialization, as self-indulgent, as narcissistic, as short-sighted, as no longer having values that demand self-sacrifice, of worshipping fame, of being addicted to material goods, and of being anti-church and anti-Christian. Indeed, it is common today in our churches to see the world as our enemy.
And, far from feeling heartbroken about it, we feel smug and righteousness as we gleefully witness its downfall: The world is getting what it deserves! Godlessness is its own punishment! That’s what it gets for not listening to us! In this, our attitude is the antithesis of Jesus’ attitude towards the world.
Jesus loved the world. Really? Yes. Is this what the Gospels teach? Yes.
Here’s how the Gospels describe Jesus’ reaction towards the world that rejected him: As Jesus drew near to Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it saying: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” Jesus sees what happens when people try to live without God, the mess, the pain, the heartbreak, and, far from rejoicing that the world isn’t working, his heart aches with empathy: If only you could see what you’re doing!
Looking at a world that’s breaking down because of its self-absorption, Jesus responds with empathy, not glee; with understanding, not judgment; with heartache, not rubbing salt in the wounds; and with tears, not good riddance.
Loving parents and loving friends understand exactly what Jesus was feeling at the moment when he wept over Jerusalem. What frustrated, heartbroken parent hasn’t looked at a son or daughter caught up in wrong choices and self-destructive behavior and wept inside as the words spontaneously formed: If only you could see what you’re doing! If only I could do something to spare you the damage you’re doing to your life by this blindness! If only you could recognize the things that make for peace! But you can’t see, and it breaks my heart!
The same is true among friends. True friends don’t rejoice and become gleeful when their friends make bad choices and their lives begin to collapse. Instead there are tears, mingled with anxious empathy, with heartache, with pleading, with prayers. Genuine love is empathic and empathy is never gleeful at someone else’s downfall.
We are asked by our Christian faith to have a genuine love for the world. The world isn’t our enemy. It’s our wayward child and our loved friend who is breaking our heart. That can be hard to see and accept when in fact the world is often belligerent and arrogant in its attitude towards us, when it’s angry with us, when it wrongly judges us, and when it scapegoats us. But that’s exactly what suffering children often do to their parents and friends when they make bad choices and suffer the consequences of that. They impute and scapegoat. This can feel very unfair to us, but Jesus attitude towards those who rejected and crucified him invites us to an empathy beyond that.
During Marian Catholic High School night at Guaranteed Rate Field on Saturday, Sister Mary Jo Sobiek took the mound to deliver the first pitch. In one of the slickest moves of the season, Sister Mary Jo showed off a cool arm-bounce trick and threw a strike over the plate.
Sister Mary Jo comes from a long tradition of nuns having fun. Here are a few more sisters at play…
And you wonder why the evangelical churches are shallow?
Because THIS is the kind of leadership advice they are getting and listening to.
When your church is mediocre, it should be no surprise unchurched people aren’t lining up to join you and that you’re not attracting and keeping the amazing leaders who might attend your church but don’t want to get involved because things are so sub-par.
…So, how do you know your church is mediocre? Here are 7 signs to look for.
1. You have non-singers singing and bad players playing
2. Bad Production
3. School Play Quality Live Streams
4. A Lame Website
5. Your Info Isn’t Current
6. You’re Resigned to This
7. You’re Afraid to Change
Seriously, these are the problems churches are having these days?
The real problem is in the assumption Nieuwhof makes — that the goal is to have “unchurched people line up to join you” and “attracting and keeping amazing leaders.” More church growth babble: if you build it (an awesome organization with incredible entertainment and programs), they will come.
But will they find Jesus there?
Sad news from the McCain family…
“Last summer, Senator John McCain shared with Americans the news our family already knew: he had been diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma, and the prognosis was serious. In the year since, John has surpassed expectations for his survival. But the progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict. With his usual strength of will, he has now chosen to discontinue medical treatment.”
“Our family is immensely grateful for the support and kindness of all his caregivers over the last year, and for the continuing outpouring of concern and affection from John’s many friends and associates, and the many thousands of people who are keeping him in their prayers. God bless and thank you all.”
As our series on Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind showed, “human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it’s also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental.” These days, it doesn’t matter what partisan side you’re on, it seems you are compelled to play judge and jury on every thing you become aware of through the all-pervasive media.
Daniel Murphy is a baseball player. The Chicago Cubs traded for him to boost their flagging offense for the pennant race. As a Cubs fan I am interested in all things related to the team, and I was excited to get this All-Star quality player for our side. But as I listened to radio coverage, it seemed like all anyone wanted to talk about what something Daniel Murphy said back in 2015 about the “homosexual lifestyle.”
Back then, Murphy, a devout Christian, made some comments about former MLB player Billy Bean, who is openly gay and serves as the league’s Ambassador for Inclusion. Murphy said at the time he “[disagreed] with his lifestyle” and “the fact he is homosexual.” But in fact his statement was more nuanced than that, and he affirmed that he would not shun Bean or any other homosexual, because that would not represent the kind of love he believes he should show to everyone. It was a common evangelical response.
Billy Bean, MLB Vice Pres & Special Assistant to the Commissioner
Now I don’t happen to fully agree with Daniel Murphy about this. But words like “bigot” were being thrown around by these radio people and in print in stories I read.
Folks, holding an opinion that I disagree with is not bigotry. Bigotry, in fact, is not an opinion or an intellectual “position” a person holds. There are no “bigoted views,” as the linked article above calls them. Bigotry is an attitude, a visceral opposition to another. Someone holding an opinion may be misinformed or ignorant. Views and positions may be spouted in defense of bigotry, but a bigot is not someone who simply holds a point of view. Furthermore, we are all on a journey, and on this way we learn, we grow, and our opinions and perspectives change. But no one seems to be inclined to practice patience or forbearance anymore. We have become so partisan and violently tribalistic in our discourse that views we deem unacceptable are seen as active animosity toward our side and therefore simply cannot be tolerated.
In fact, Billy Bean himself showed us a better way. He personally reached out to Murphy in 2015 and intentionally sought to develop a friendship with him. By all reports, they have indeed become friends. If anybody has a right to talk about Daniel Murphy it’s a person like Bean, who refused the path of moralistic judgment and chose the way of generosity, hospitality, and peacemaking.
Speaking of which…
An article at CT makes reference to a recent survey that shows — surprise! — people want to go to church with people who agree with them about politics. What might be a bit surprising is that it is younger people who agree most with the statement, “I prefer to attend a church where people share my political views.”
More than half (57%) of Protestant churchgoers under 50 say they prefer to go to church with people who share their political views. And few adult Protestant churchgoers say they attend services with people of a different political persuasion.
Those are among the findings in a new report on churchgoing and politics from Nashville-based LifeWay Research.
“Like many places in America, churches are divided by politics,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research. “And churchgoers under 50 seem to want it that way.”
The survey did find that it is a relatively small group of people that feels very strongly about this, so perhaps there is something we can find here to be thankful for.
This is not a story from The Onion…
The animals on the Barnum’s Animals Crackers boxes have been set free from their long captivity in Barnum & Bailey Circus cages. As the New York Times reports:
After 116 years of captivity, animal crackers have been freed from their cages.
It was a symbolic victory for animal rights activists, notably People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which had argued that the immediately recognizable yellow-and-red boxes by Nabisco portrayed a cruel bygone era when traveling circuses transported exotic wildlife in confinement.
The new boxes are expected to arrive in stores this week. They show a zebra, an elephant, a lion, a giraffe and a gorilla roaming free side-by-side in a natural habitat, a sweeping savanna with trees in the distance.
…“Throughout our history, we have leveraged and evolved our classic design to drive awareness around key animal and environmental issues,” a Mondelez [Nabisco’s parent company] spokeswoman said on Tuesday. “To continue to make the brand relevant for years to come, we felt this was the right time for the next evolution in our design, now showing the animals in a natural habitat.”
I do like what Matthew Haag, the author of the Times piece, observed: “While the animals enjoy freedom on the box, the small, crisp, sweet crackers themselves are of course still destined for human stomachs or perhaps the crevices of baby strollers.”
Happy Birthday, Jeff Tweedy…
Songwriter, musician, and leader of the world’s greatest rock band, Wilco, was born on this day in 1967. Of course, in honor of the occasion I’d like some Wilco today, please.
• • •
And here’s the man himself, with Punch Brothers on Live From Here:
Another Look: How the Bible “Works” Today From 2013
Today I’d like to discuss how I think Scripture “works” in our lives today — we who live so far removed from the events it records and who live in a vastly different time and culture.
First of all, we must be willing to recognize that anyone who begins to take Scripture seriously is immediately immersed in historical questions and questions about the nature of the Bible itself.
In the churches and groups where I’ve been (primarily evangelical/fundamentalist), I don’t think this has been appreciated. Very little thought was ever given to how we came to have the Bible, how and when it was composed and edited, who the audiences were that first received the sacred writings, and how the various parts of the Bible carry on conversations with each other, reflecting diversity and development in the biblical message.
My experiences have led me to lament the Biblical illiteracy of our congregations, and that includes a lack of the most basic understanding of what kind of book the Bible is and isn’t. Most conservative evangelicals have a simplistic Sunday School grasp on the nature of Scripture. It is God’s Word, first of all, and so we tend to approach it with kid gloves, as though saying “God said it” is enough. As though God merely dropped it from heaven. As though every page and every story and poem was not forged in the blood, sweat, and tears of people who believed but needed help for their unbelief. As though the Bible has no human backstory that brought it to us. As though we could merely dust off its historical and cultural and literary characteristics and discover a purely divine message shining beneath.
Out of this naivete, we fail to appreciate the diversity of genres in Scripture and so we read its apocalyptic literature and poetry with the same literalistic mindset as when reading its historical narratives. We tend to think anything resembling historical narrative must be actual reporting of events, and we have little patience for anyone who suggests some of these might be folk tales or stories designed to make us think, laugh, or engage in discussion with one another. We flatten Scripture and fail to recognize the progress of revelation and the fact that some Scriptures are more significant than others in contributing to the overall message.
I’m not saying every church ought to be like a seminary, and every Christian a serious student of historical criticism, rhetorical criticism, literary theory, Ancient Near East history, Second Temple Judaism, life in the Greco-Roman world, and the traditions of interpretation throughout church history. However, our pastors and teachers ought to be acquainted with such matters and engaged in continuing education about them, and the church must learn not to be afraid of any learning that helps us understand the people, events, and backgrounds of the biblical story better, even if we end up being forced to reexamine some of our long held pet interpretations.
This is only one level of engaging Scripture, however, and for the vast majority of Christians, exposure to such robust and well-informed biblical and theological study will have to come through their teachers and pastors. For their part, the church’s teachers should have as one of their goals making this kind of instruction clear, understandable, and interesting so that believers can move beyond a Sunday School perspective on Scripture.
My own life, for example, has been enriched immeasurably by coming to understand more about the nature of the Tanakh (the Old Testament). Knowing that it was gathered, compiled, at least partially composed, edited, and put together after the Exile in Babylon by people who were trying to come to grips with their identity before God and in the world after having suffered such devastation has opened up a multitude of new insights for me as I read it. The Bible has a human backstory — it is not just divine truth dropped from heaven.
And I think this is where we can make a statement about how the Bible is designed to “work” in our lives.
If we take the life-settings of Scripture, the contexts in which God has acted in the past, seriously…
And if we take the authors and compilers and editors of Scripture seriously, recognizing that they worked in specific settings for particular purposes, to bring a word from God to people who needed to hear it in their context…
Then, we will recognize that the Bible is not a theological textbook characterized primarily by propositional doctrines and ethical instructions written to a universal audience, but a family story, a narrative about particular people in particular times and places who experienced God in the midst of their lives and communities.
This means that much of the Bible was not written to us directly, but it was written for us, and for all who are part of God’s family. This is our family story. It has been given as a means of shaping our identity and forming our lives in the world.
The Bible “works” in our lives when, through an ongoing process of understanding, internalizing, and contemplating our family story, we embrace our identity as God’s people and seek to live out the family identity in our own time and place.
The main way in which we approach the Bible, then, is not as students, but as heirs together.
The main way we look at the Bible is as a living ancestral record, a story which is continuing in our lives.
The main tools we use are meditation, imagination, discussion, and commemoration.
Our churches build the life of the community around an ongoing immersion in the story.
There may be other ways of doing this, but I’ve found nothing better than being part of a congregation that keeps the annual Church Calendar with a variety of celebrations and customs, following lectionaries and other guides to Scripture, marking the daily hours of prayer and praying the Psalms, using contemplative Bible reading practices such as lectio divina, and participating in liturgical worship that dramatizes Christ and the Gospel every Sunday in words and sacred actions.
We’ve been reviewing the book, Mere Science and Christian Faith, by Greg Cootsona, subtitled Bridging the Divide with Emerging Adults. Today, we wrap up the series by looking at Chapter 8- Moving Forward. Cootsona identifies five main areas he feels would help a minister to young adults move the conversation forward. The first is engaging issues that make a difference. Of course, he is referring here to integrating faith issues with mainstream science. But, as some commenters have noted, these last few weeks have been difficult to engage science issues when the socio-political issues seem overwhelming. Good luck engaging emerging adult Catholics with their faith as their church so egregiously fails to protect and nurture the youngest and most vulnerable children. And Protestant Evangelicals don’t fare much better with the hypocritical denials of sexual harassment and blame-the-victim-they’re-all-liars tactics by the Willow Creek leaders and Bill Hybels or the social-justice-is-the-greatest-threat-to-the-gospel BS by John MacArthur while his Masters University leaders re-rapes a rape victim. Speaking of the youngest and most vulnerable children, you have the utterly contemptable action of caging very young immigrant children apart from their parents, which 80% of evangelicals seem to excuse. Sigh… it makes my upset-ness with the Ark Encounter seem quaint and pointless indeed. Nevertheless, faith and science is what I do, so I’ll press on; but I am very cognizant of the fact these other issues overshadow the discussion and make it seem quite secondary at times.
Cootsona’s second area is “Engaging Endorsers” by which he means local churches find science professionals in their congregations and engage them in teaching their young adults. His number three point is “Identifying Translators” by which he means people in the local congregation that can put the Bible in its historical perspective and translate that ancient worldview into something moderns can understand. Number four is “Cultivating Resources” by which he means identifying and making available books, articles, websites, online videos, etc. as well as promoting them on social media. His final point is “Telling Better, True, and Beautiful Stories”. The story science should tell is that “the heavens declare the glory of God”. The awe and wonder of the universe is a narrative that should direct us to worship. Cootsona then relates the stories of 3 emerging adults he is familiar with. Rather than recount his description of their stories, I thought I would interview my granddaughter, Taylor McCann, on this subject.
Taylor McCann and MTG (Mike the Grandfather)
Taylor is 20, a junior majoring in Chemistry at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI- pronounced ooey-pooey). She is a professing Christian who grew up in church at Grace Assembly of God, a local mega-church in the Franklin-Greenwood area.
MTG:As you were going through high school, what experiences, if any, did you have in class when the subject of evolution or creation came up?
TM: In high school biology courses, evolution was brought up on multiple occasions. Most of the time it was brought up it was discussing the amount of time such as “millions or billions of years” compared to creationism of “thousands of years”. I have always been brought up in a biblical home so I always believed thousands of years to be more realistic as well as “B.C. and A.D” time marks. Many times through the discussion of geology and the changes of animals/humans it was apparent when they were teaching evolution.
MTG: Has the issue of having faith while studying science in college ever come up with either teachers or classmates?
TM: Going to a big university, many students do not ask questions out loud. Most people keep to themselves and assume the professor is right. To be honest, most college students do not care about what is right or wrong or if evolution is right or wrong. They just memorize the materials to succeed in the class and get out. It is all “fend for yourself” when going to a big university if I am being honest. There is no argument or debate for the most part when it comes to following authority and their teachings, it is what it is. So, no for me personally faith has not been brought up with teachers or classmates.
MTG: What issues about science and faith or evolution vs. creation were discussed or taught in the church you attended, either as a sermon or youth group discussion.
TM: We had a series at church quite a few years ago, I was pretty young. But I do remember [they taught]… The millions and billions of years according to one of the sermons, is absolutely impossible. There is a difference between “Macro-evolution” and “Micro-evolution”. Macro-evolution is what I believe is … MAJOR changes in animals evolving like my example of a lizard changing into a frog. Micro-evolution I believe is real. When animals, insects, or humans are placed in a certain geography, they have to adapt…or die. Survival of the fittest. I believe over the thousands of years there have been minor changes in animals, humans, and insects in order to survive. [Taylor then expresses skepticism about how major transitions of species could occur].
MTG: As you know, I’ve been a geologist and a Christian for a long time. There really is overwhelming evidence that the earth is “millions” of years old. [We discuss some of the evidences, such as the accumulation of annual layers in Lake Suigetsu and radiometric dating]. Does it bother your faith to learn the earth is ancient?
TM: Not really, I understand if something is true, then it has to be God’s truth, because all truth is God’s truth. But why does the church teach the earth is only thousands of years old?
MTG: They do it out of a sincere, but misguided, effort to defend the Bible. But to defend the inspiration of the Bible as a science book is to misunderstand the reason God inspired the Bible to begin with. Like the Galileo and Copernicus controversy over whether the sun or the earth was the center of the universe. We now know that, in fact, the earth revolves around the sun, despite there being 69 verses in the Bible that say the earth stands still, the sun rises and moves across the sky, etc.
TM: 69 verses, I did not know that. But, yeah, I get it, the Bible’s an ancient book, how could they know about modern science?
MTG: Let me use an illustration I often refer to: We see a tea kettle on the stove and ask:
Why is the water boiling?
Well, water is boiling because heat from the burner is transferred to the water raising the energy level of the individual water molecules until they overcome the latent heat of vaporization and undergo a phase change from liquid to gas.
Or…
Why is the water boiling?
Because I want a cup of tea.
Now you will notice that neither cause is less true than the other. One simply deals with the proximate cause; mechanical, secondary, physical, measureable. The other deals with the ultimate, or teleological cause; meaning, purpose, reasons for existing. The proximate cause answers the question; How? The ultimate cause answers the question; Why? The purpose of God inspiring the Bible was to answer the “Why” questions, He is not concerned so much with the “How”.
TM: Okay, I see that. I can see how micro-evolution is true, but how can macro-evolution be true? Do you really think we came from monkeys?
MTG: Well, the problem is the time frame. Micro-evolution can be observed within the human timescale. Macro-evolution occurs over too long a time frame to be directly observed. So we infer it from the fossil record—life has progressed upward from the simple to the more complex to finally humans appear. Or we infer it from genetic evidence—we share 85% of our DNA with mice and 98% of our DNA with chimps. We inherit the same endogenous retroviruses.
TM: But that 2% difference makes all the difference in the world. You change a couple of molecules and the DNA is totally different.
MTG: Indeed, it does! It makes all the difference in the world!
TM: But couldn’t God have just created the DNA with the 2% difference, created us human beings with the 2% difference.
MTG: Sure, he could have, but did he? Would it weaken your faith if macro-evolution is true?
TM: No, I don’t think it would. But my mind here is blown…
MTG: Well, then my job here is done 🙂 I wish we could talk like this more often.
We are in process of deciding, to whom does the present belong? On most days, we imagine, the present belongs to the empire. When we think that, we succumb in resignation, because then we conclude that everything is settled and nothing can be changed. On some days, however, we hear this voice which crowds in on the empire. That odd voice, the voice of the gospel, asserts, “I am doing a new thing. Do you notice?” When we notice, we are strangely free. We sing, we dance, we care—with abandonment—because we are no longer intimidated. We get our strength back. We get our priorities right. We declare God’s praise and reclaim the present for the God to whom it belongs We are liberated to live in the present where God’s newness is at work, undaunted, undiminished, unintimidated, free, powerful, joyous. It is enough to trust the poem and to find the present made new for God’s purpose.
The account of Adam and Eve in the garden is a story.
It is a story that tells the whole history of Israel in microcosm. It is a story about Israel.
Today we will see that this is a wisdomstory.
The quintessential wisdom book in the Bible is Proverbs. The first nine chapters form the introduction of the book, and here is a summary of what those chapters teach.
This book is designed to instruct “the simple” (the young, morally unformed, susceptible to temptation) to listen to and follow “wisdom” (fear the Lord and follow his instructions), because listening to wisdom is the path to “life” and failing to do so leads to “death.”
Sound familiar?
It should, because that is the exact story of Adam and Eve.
The story of Adam and Eve has been often portrayed as the story of two sinless people in perfect conditions who “fell” into a state of corruption and mortality and plunged all creation into a corrupt state because of rebellion. But “fall” is not really the best description, or at least the most accurate description of what this story teaches.
Instead, this is a story of two children who fail to grow up and follow the teaching of their parents. Genesis 3 tells how God set boundaries for two children (or adolescents, as Irenaeus suggested) who are “simple” — youthful, naïve, inexperienced, morally unformed, and susceptible to temptation.
Look at them: “naked and not ashamed,” like children who don’t even know enough to be embarrassed as they frolic about without clothing.
Look at them: enticed by a treat that looks good, that promises to taste good, something that engages a childlike curiosity which knows no caution.
Look at them: easily distracted from their parent’s warning by a cleverer, wiser tempter.
Look at them: persuaded into transgressing the boundaries set for them without even thinking.
[T]he Adam story is not about a fall down from perfection, but a failure to grow up to godly wisdom and maturity. Adam and Eve weren’t like perfect super humans. They were like young, naïve children, who were meant to grow into obedience, but were tricked into following a different path.
. . . The serpent tricked Adam and Eve into gaining wisdom too soon, apart from God’s way. They were naïve children who did not have the shrewdness to withstand the serpent’s craftiness. They should have just trusted their maker. The knowledge of good and evil isn’t wrong, but getting it free from God’s direction is death. Without the maturity that comes from obeying God, Adam and Eve can’t handle the truth (said in our best Jack Nicholson voice).
This is the point of this story: the choice put before Adam and Eve is the same choice put before Israel every day: learn to listen to God and follow in his ways and then— only then— you will live. The story of Adam and Eve makes this point in the form of a story; Proverbs makes it in the form of wisdom literature; Israel’s long story in the Old Testament makes it in the form of history writing.
This story was intended first for Israel, who throughout their history followed the same patterns set by Adam and Eve and then by their children Cain and Abel and were likewise sent off into exile from God’s good land.
But one effect of reading this as a wisdom story is that it tends to universalize its message. Whether Jew or Gentile, we recognize ourselves in the stories of Adam and Eve and their children. Adam is everyman. And Eve is everywoman. These stories reveal the universal human susceptibility to temptation. We all show ourselves to be simpletons, in need of divine wisdom.
We all need to learn: “Trust in the Lord with a whole heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” (Prov. 3:5).
Recently, we’ve had a lot of discussion about “original sin” and “total depravity” in our comment section. Those doctrines presume that Adam and Eve “fell” and that event changed everything. From then on, all their descendants were born with a sinful nature and started out “dead in sin.”
Reading this as a wisdom story leads to a different conclusion. The Bible doesn’t tell us where sin came from. But it does tell us that each human being is susceptible to giving in to temptation and choosing ways other than God’s. And that every human does that. After Adam, “death spread to all because all have sinned” (Rom 5:12).
As James writes: “But one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.” Most people see James as a NT “wisdom” book, and in this section of his epistle he appears to be reflecting upon Genesis. Adam and Eve had what it took to sin from the beginning, and so do each of us. What their story teaches us is that we are all “simple” like them, susceptible to making sinful choices, and so we stand in constant need of God’s wisdom.
Note from CM: Michael Spencer asked the following questions ten years ago. Has anything changed? I no longer live as a participant in the evangelical world. At times I have heard rumblings of evangelicals talking about “spiritual practices” and so on, but it’s pretty obvious to me that if I want to go somewhere for a silent retreat or meet with a spiritual director or read material with true spiritual depth on the subject of contemplation or personal formation, I must find it in a historic tradition such as Roman Catholicism. I’d love to hear from people in evangelical churches about this one.
• • •
So….imagine that a Baptist (or other evangelical) — like my dear wife used to be, for example — were to decide that she wanted to deepen her spiritual life; to grow spiritually and in spiritual disciplines; to seek out spiritual direction and pursue spiritual formation.
Where would they go within their own evangelical, Protestant tradition to find resources, guidance or direction?
OK. I can hear the Catholics and Orthodox giggling already. Cut it out.
Let me say that this is a real problem.
No one knows how many Protestants and Evangelicals develop a hunger for holiness and spiritual growth, then discover that what awaits them in their own tradition is paltry, often shallow and frequently almost completely unaware of what that hunger needs to be satisfied.
Is it any wonder that it is at the point of seeking out spiritual growth and formation that so many evangelicals are first introduced to the riches of the Catholic tradition, and soon conclude that the greatest resources for the spiritual journey are on the other side of great denominational divide?
Why is it that entire segments of Protestantism have such a comparatively thin understanding of the spiritual disciplines, find contemplation to be suspiciously new age and have almost nothing to say to the spiritually hungry person other than “Get more involved at church?”
Why does evangelicalism produce so few spiritual directors? Why is a pastor like Eugene Peterson- attuned to the importance of the life of reading and prayer — such an anomaly in evangelicalism?
Where are the Protestant and Evangelical places — retreat centers and houses, for example — dedicated to prayer, withdrawal from the world and focus on God?
Why are evangelicals so surprised when they discover that so many of their leaders and celebrities are spiritual empty, stunted or phony?
Once you’ve read My Utmost for His Highest during your quiet time, what then? Where is spiritual growth as a priority in churches and pastoral ministry? Is it inevitable, because of the Protestant spirit, that the person interested in spiritual growth must look to Catholicism for help?
Is this the fruit of the Reformation gospel’s emphasis on forensic justification and imputed righteousness? Is it Protestant to be “weak on sanctification?” Can the wholesale emphasis on evangelism have made us so spiritually shallow that the only thing we know to do is tell someone to “pray more and read the Bible?”
Thirty-four years ago when I launched this column, I would never have said this: Restlessness is not something to be cultivated, no matter how romantic that might seem. Don’t get Jesus confused with Hamlet, peace with disquiet, depth with dissatisfaction, or genuine happiness with the existential anxiety of the artist. Restlessness inside us doesn’t need to be encouraged; it wreaks enough havoc all on its own.
But I’m a late convert to this view. From earliest childhood through mid-life, I courted a romance with restlessness, with stoicism, with being the lonely outsider, with being the one at the party who found it all too superficial to be real. Maybe that contributed to my choosing seminary and priesthood; certainly it helps explain why I entitled this column, In Exile. For most of my life, I have equated restlessness with depth, as something to be cultivated.
…And much in our culture, especially in the arts and the entertainment industry, foster that temptation, namely, to self-define as restless and to identify this disquiet with depth and with the angst of the artist. Once we define ourselves in this way, as complex, incurable romantics, we have an excuse for being difficult and we also have an excuse for betrayal and infidelity. For now, in the words of a song by The Eagles, we are restless spirits on an endless flight. Understandably, then, we fly above the ordinary rules for life and happiness and our complexity is justification enough for whatever ways we act out. As Amy Winehouse famously self-defines: “I told you I was troubled, and you know that I’m no good.” Why should anyone be mystified by our refusal of normal life and ordinary happiness?
There’s something inside us, particularly when we are young, that tempts us towards that kind of self-definition. And, for that time in our lives, when we’re young, I believe, it’s healthy. The young are supposed to overly-idealistic, incurably romantic, and distrustful of any lazy fall into settling for second-best. As Doris Lessing puts it, there’s only one real sin in life and that’s calling second-best by anything other than what it is, second-best! My wish is that all young people would read Plato, Augustine, John of the Cross, Karl Rahner, Nikos Kazantzakis, Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing, Jane Austin, and Albert Camus.
But, except for authors such as Plato, Augustine, John of the Cross and Karl Rahner, who integrate that insatiable restlessness and existential angst into a bigger, meaningful narrative, we should be weary of defining ourselves as restless and cultivating that. High romanticism will only serve us well if we eventually set it within a self-understanding that doesn’t make restlessness an end in itself. Just feeling noble won’t bring much peace into our lives and, as we age and mature, peace does become the prize. Romeo, Juliet, Hamlet, Zorba the Greek, Doctor Zhivago, and the other such mega-romantic figures on our screens and in our novels can enflame our romantic imaginations, but they aren’t in the end images for the type of intimacy that makes for a permanent meeting of hearts inside the body of Christ.
Just the mention of Aretha Franklin’s name conjured transcendent sonic fury. She came to it honestly. Her father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, was one of the most storied preachers of his day. His rhetorical genius made its way onto dozens of recordings that were treasured possessions in many black homes.
…He was a master of the chanted sermon, where words are put under pressure of music and speech bursts into song. The young Aretha learned from her father and turned into a gospel wunderkind.
…When it came time for her to switch from sacred to secular, to head for the soul music charts after she had brilliantly charted the path of the soul in gospel music, she confronted brutal blowback from some black believers.
They thought that she had betrayed her first love and her true calling. But they were wrong. After experimenting with numerous genres, from blues to jazz, Aretha Franklin found a bigger canvas on which to sketch her artistic vision, which drew both from ancient soul passions and progressive moral possibilities. Thus, she transformed Otis Redding’s punchy “Respect” into a timeless anthem for racial pride and a cry of feminist recognition. Her church got larger, her congregation composed of millions of people in search of a soulful vision of spiritual direction beyond sanctuary doors.
When she returned to the world of gospel in 1972, and again 15 years later, her embrace of the phrases and emotion of the sanctuary put at ease those who may have feared that she had somehow lost it, or that God had somehow forsaken her. Her father let the world know, in spirited remarks on her 1972 album, “Amazing Grace,” that his daughter “never really left the church.” And clearly it had never left her.
During her remarkable career, Ms. Franklin made sure to incorporate her concern for social justice and redemptive politics as she performed at civil rights fund-raisers for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s and to benefit the efforts of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. She offered to post bond for the jailed revolutionary Angela Davis in the early ’70s, going against the wishes of her father. In her statement at the time she said: “I’ve been locked up (for disturbing the peace in Detroit) and I know you got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace.”
…The Baptist church that we both sprang from eventually took great delight in her reign as the most dominant force in American music. The preacher in me believed that hers was the best way to tell our story to a world that might never darken the doors of a church but was sorely in need of a dose of the Spirit.
The story of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church by predatory priests accelerated exponentially this week with a mind-boggling report from Pennsylvania.
“There have been other reports about child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. But not on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else, someplace away. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere.” So begins the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s grand jury investigation into clergy abuse, released to the public on Tuesday afternoon. The 900-page report, which investigated all but one of the state’s dioceses, identifies over 1,000 victims of child sexual abuse and over 300 predatory priests.
The report explains why abuse flourished for so long. “While each church district had its idiosyncrasies, the pattern was pretty much the same. The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid ‘scandal.’ That is not our word, but theirs; it appears over and over again in the documents we recovered,” the report asserts. Church officials kept complaints in a “secret archive,” to which only the bishop kept the key. The report also states that diocesan files repeatedly relied on euphemisms to describe clergy abuse; the files refer to rape as “inappropriate contact,” for example. Predatory priests were referred to treatment, and in the rare instance the church removed a priest from his parish, his congregants never learned the real reason for his departure.
If Jesus were here today, would He not be running through American cathedrals, knocking over tables as He did with the money changers in the Temple? “According to scripture,” He said in the Gospel of Matthew, “my house will be called a house of prayer; but you are turning it into a bandits’ den.” The words are a fitting indictment of the men who are accused of committing a moral theft of unimaginable wickedness — in their thoughts and in their words, in what they did and in what they failed to do.
The innocence of children was stolen, as was the church’s sanctity and the faith of congregants, many of whom are today asking how they can possibly continue to believe that this is the one true church that Christ founded through Peter. They do not expect the church to be perfect; even St. Peter, after all, denied Christ three times. But they do expect to find the reflection of Christ there.
According to news reports, the church hierarchy in Pennsylvania and beyond has already denied Christ’s gospel three times: once when it sheltered predators in silence; once when it failed to remove everyone who was involved in covering up any crime; and again when two of the six dioceses involved tried to shut down the grand jury investigation that produced the report. Now they face the same choice Peter did.
They can offer the full record of faithlessness in abject penitence, witnessing for repentance and redemption even at risk of martyrdom. Or they can deny Him a fourth time by minimizing the past and protecting those who helped maintain that grisly silence. Which is to say, they can choose to be a millstone around the neck of the faithful — or the rock on which the church can be rebuilt.
Another Moral Line with Children Has Been Crossed…
Deliberately taking a small child’s life is unlawful everywhere in the world, even when the child is terminally ill and asks a doctor to end his or her suffering once and for all.
There is an exception to this rule: Belgium. In 2014, that country amended its law on euthanasia, already one of the most permissive in the world, authorizing doctors to terminate the life of a child, at any age, who makes the request.
For a year after the law passed, no one acted on it. Now, however, euthanasia for children in Belgium is no longer just a theoretical possibility.
Between Jan. 1, 2016, and Dec. 31, 2017, Belgian physicians gave lethal injections to three children under 18, according to a July 17 report from the commission that regulates euthanasia in Belgium.
The oldest of the three was 17; in that respect, Belgium was not unique, since the Netherlands permits euthanasia for children over 12.
Belgian doctors, however, also ended the lives of a 9-year-old and an 11-year-old. These were the first under-12 cases anywhere…
The Post calls this the result of a “libertarian technocracy” in Belgium, that limits the ability of laws or oversight commissions to oversee such matters, instead trusting medical experts to make the right decisions. Last year, a woman with dementia and unable to make a decision in the matter was euthanized at her family’s request. This led to a petition, signed by 360 Belgian doctors, to tighten controls on euthanasia for psychiatric patients.
Now there is precedent for allowing children to make this decision.
A Tennessee megachurch is facing backlash after pastors used live animals on stage to illustrate a sermon on Sunday.
The Cornerstone Nashville church used a cougar, lion, mountain lion, a ram and miniature ponies in the sermon that focused on going back to school.
In the sermon, senior Pastor Galen Davis compared a lion and mountain lion to each other and used them to demonstrate the differences between fear and faith. The mountain lion, Davis explained, isn’t considered to be a big cat because it cannot roar; instead, he said, it screams.
“We have to move from being a people of fear to a people of faith,” he told churchgoers. “That when the scream of fear comes in our life, we know it’s not the real lion … We know that it’s not what God has for us.”
PETA has criticized the church for using the animals. One PETA representative said the organization “is encouraging Cornerstone Nashville to serve the meek by pledging never to exploit vulnerable animals ever again.”
If you ask me, the real criticism should be reserved for the totally lame sermon.
And hey, I love baseball as much or more than anyone else, but preaching in an untucked baseball jersey? Is this a thing now? Dude, you just look silly.
Finally, yes, of course, using the animals is over the top and ludicrous.
The evangelical circus is alive and well. With animals.
While we’re on the subject…
Speaking of people who just don’t get it, time to revisit our old friend, Dr. John MacArthur. One of my friends once said of Johnnie Mac, “He ain’t neutral about nothin’.” Well, he ain’t neutral about “social justice,” that’s clear.
Evangelicalism’s newfound obsession with the notion of “social justice” is a significant shift—and I’m convinced it’s a shift that is moving many people (including some key evangelical leaders) off message, and onto a trajectory that many other movements and denominations have taken before, always with spiritually disastrous results.
Over the years, I’ve fought a number of polemical battles against ideas that threaten the gospel. This recent (and surprisingly sudden) detour in quest of “social justice” is, I believe, the most subtle and dangerous threat so far.
The good doctor once again betrays his historical ignorance of anything outside of what he considers to be the “pure stream” of orthodox faith. If he didn’t have his head stuck in the separatist sand he’s bogged down in, he would recognize that, in many ways, evangelical faith has often been at the forefront of social movements, protests, and efforts to bring justice for the marginalized and to promote societal change, especially in the wake of the 2nd Great Awakening here in the U.S. Perhaps it is because MacArthur and other neo-Calvinists consider anything coming out of the 2nd Great Awakening to be tainted by a kind of evangelical faith they don’t deem genuine.
Whether he wants to admit it or not, the abolition movement, campaigns for women’s rights, workers rights, and assistance for the poor have deep roots in an evangelical understanding of the gospel. On one side or the other, evangelicals have been leaders in the “culture wars” in this and other countries. For MacArthur to say this is a “newfound obsession” is simply absurd. For him to claim that it is “the most subtle and dangerous threat so far” is one of the silliest statements I’ve ever heard.
Of course, we here at Internet Monk have been loudly critical of “culture war Christianity,” but that’s because in our generation, we think the approach of those who make that their priority (particularly the Christian Right) has led them to embrace strategies, attitudes, and behaviors that are contrary to the way of Jesus — specifically seeking positions of power to impose their beliefs on others.
That’s not MacArthur’s beef. He has an issue with “social justice” itself, and to me that reveals he has a gospel that is too small. In my view, he simply does not understand the trajectory set by the New Testament and its emphasis on a good news that is actually meant to change the world, not just relieve the guilt of individual consciences.
I would agree that there are social justice advocates who cross lines and make the same mistakes those on the more conservative ends of the culture war do. That, again, is not what MacArthur is saying. He is painting with a broad brush here that ignores not only the reality of church history but also the message of a large portion of the Bible. See the prophets for more information.
Finally, I have to brag on this…
Last Sunday night, I was working on the blog and listening to the Cubs play the Washington Nationals. In the top of the ninth inning, the Nats scored a couple of insurance runs to make the game 3-0. The Cubs had been so bad at the plate all night, I shut the audio stream off and kept working. A little while later I brought up the MLB Gameday page, which is a visual reenactment of the pitches and a running feed of each play as it happens.
David Bote, a reserve who has been filling in for the Cubs’ best player, Kris Bryant, was pinch-hitting in the bottom of the 9th. The Cubs had loaded the bases, there were two outs, and it was a 2-2 count on Bote. Next thing I knew, the feed announced that the young player had hit a game-winning, walk-off grand slam home run. And he did it on Sunday Night Baseball, before a national TV audience.
This is one of the rarest of feats in baseball, the heroic thing every young player dreams of doing in the backyard. Here is that dramatic final at bat:
Well, it has been an interesting few Fridays discussing this topic. After much deliberation I have decided to wrap it up with this post.
Thank you for all the feedback and all the comments. Thank you also to my Pastoral friends who took the time to give me their thoughts. I apologize that I have not been able to adequately summarize the reams of material you sent me.
There were a few interesting submissions that I will use as a launching pad today.
The vast majority of those responding offered celibacy and singleness as an option for the single gay person. To their credit most of them knew individuals in that position and were actively supporting those individuals. Also to their credit, almost no one suggested that the gay individual could be “healed” of their same sex attraction, an idea that has been thoroughly discredited, and is fact now banned in many jurisdictions.
However, one friend wrote:
I did have a student… who was gay and from a conservative Christian family. He was also a sharp Bible student. The question of what we are asking him to do from his perspective was simple: follow Christ and never have genuine romantic intimacy with another human being. The alternative was to walk away from God and have that human intimacy. When he put things in those terms I understood just how personal his dilemma was and all the feelings that went with it. He sincerely did want to follow Jesus but could not bear the prospect of a life without human intimacy. He knew the Bible well enough to see that it really was a binary choice. The prospect of God reforming his sexual attractions to heterosexual was unimaginable to him, I think. So far as I know he has still chosen the latter [option, to walk away].
Almost all of my Pastoral friends also saw this as a binary choice, that following Jesus involves rejecting any intimate same sex relationship. In a nod to those friends, my post last week detailed how we could support those who choose to live celibate single lives.
There are those, like the student above, who in their heart of hearts don’t feel like they have a choice, that they have been created in a certain way, and to deny that is to deny who they are. Many, believing it is a binary choice, and because of the rejection that they receive: from the church, from family, and from friends, are driven to suicide. My heart goes out to them.
Much of what drives me in this topic is the church saying that because you are same sex attracted, and feel that you cannot be celibate, then you cannot be a follower of Jesus. I have seen too many who are no longer followers of Jesus as a result of this thinking who would otherwise still be. I am also seeing a generation of young people who are rejecting the church because while they have come to accept same sex attracted people for who they are, the church has not.
I asked one Pastor who holds a more traditional view, “What if you are wrong? What if you are preventing all these people from being followers of Jesus because of your understanding of same sex attraction?” His response was that if he accepts same sex attraction (and acting upon it) as acceptable, and he is wrong about that, then he is condoning a sinful lifestyle and might be condemning people to hell. I did not respond to him at the time (as I was interested in hearing him out), but I have had a chance to reflect on it further. In both cases he is condemning people to hell. I would want to err on the side of grace, and believe that those who try to follow Jesus will be accepted by him.
What no one realizes up until this point, is that this series, had its genesis, not in Geoff wishing me Happy Birthday, but in me wishing Geoff and his partner “Happy Anniversary” in response to a Facebook post. I pondered my response for several minutes before posting that reply several years ago. What it came down to was this: At that point of time I was unsure of my thoughts on this topic. What I did know is that I was interested in building the friendship, and that while silence might not do any harm, it wouldn’t have built up the friendship either.
Years later, when I look at Geoff and his Partner, I see love, I see caring, I see fidelity. What I do not see is sin. A couple of Pastors mentioned that they would counsel divorce between Geoff and his partner. I do not accept this. Instead I think their marriage is one to be looked up to and admired.
So how do I handle those Bible verses that indicate that same sex relationships are verboten? For me there are two possibilities.
1. There exists the likelihood that neither the author of Leviticus, nor Paul knew of same sex relationships similar to the one that Geoff has with his partner. While these commands might have had relevance and meaning in their time and place (like Paul’s command for women to be silent), they lack insight and knowledge of situations like we have today.
2. I believe in the inerrant Word of God. His name is Jesus. The Bible is not inerrant in and of itself, but points up to the inerrant Jesus. I believe that the Bible gets it wrong when it comes to idea that the sun revolves around the earth. Having that belief would have labelled me heterodox (if not a heretic) for most of the history of the church. I also believe that Bible gets it wrong when it comes to same sex relationships.
If that makes me a heretic, so be it. But I would rather my same sex friends know that they have the option of following Jesus while staying in their committed relationships, than chase them away from Jesus forever.
I have many more thoughts on this topic, many more than I have been able to encapsulate here. I hope that we can have a vigorous, yet respectful discussion in the comments, where we can have a further exchange of ideas. Your thoughts and comments are welcome.
We are in process of deciding, to whom does the present belong? On most days, we imagine, the present belongs to the empire. When we think that, we succumb in resignation, because then we conclude that everything is settled and nothing can be changed. On some days, however, we hear this voice which crowds in on the empire. That odd voice, the voice of the gospel, asserts, “I am doing a new thing. Do you notice?” When we notice, we are strangely free. We sing, we dance, we care—with abandonment—because we are no longer intimidated. We get our strength back. We get our priorities right. We declare God’s praise and reclaim the present for the God to whom it belongs We are liberated to live in the present where God’s newness is at work, undaunted, undiminished, unintimidated, free, powerful, joyous. It is enough to trust the poem and to find the present made new for God’s purpose.
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