Year's End

I got up this morning to a sheet of ice over the roads. No way I'm getting to work. So it seemed like a good time to begin on the "obligatory" end of the year review. First, external events.

Four events stick in my mind. In the summer we rented a condo at Hilton Head, which we shared with David and Beth. Had good times on the beach and struggled with a catamaran. The best times were sitting around the table on the deck in the mornings and watching the squirrels and the turtles and sharing with each other. Over the weekend of July 4th Anne and I borrowed her brother's lake house in NC and invited the Kelloggs to stay with us. They mentored us in our younger days. John is in his eighties now, and flies to Africa 3 or 4 times a year. God has opened a wide ministry for him there. His counsel to us has stuck with me: "Be expectant, but lay down your expectations." It takes a lifetime to come to that conclusion.

In October we went to Salt Lake City for a Max conference. Were very busy, and did not see as much of the area as I would have liked. But what we did see was impressive: very clean city with beautiful surroundings and friendly people. We did spend a few hours poking around Temple Square. It gave me a bad case of the heebee-jeebees, seeing the glint in the eyes of true believers and statues of Joseph Smith, et.al. Not to deny the influence of Mormonism on American culture--we stayed in the downtown flagship Marriott. Nice.

The big event of the year was just a couple of weeks ago--David and Channon's wedding. David in our minds is one of the most loving and caring people on earth, and we've prayed for a long time for love in his life and an end to loneliness. This sure seems to be the real deal. We love Channon and look forward to getting to know her better.

As for internal events: I suppose I should divide these into negatives and positives. On the negative side, I have had an ongoing battle with depression this year. It is exacerbated by the fact that depression can be as homey and friendly as an old blanket--all warm and cozy and debilitating as hell. Breaking away from it is like slogging through a swamp to dry land.

I have a plaque in our bathroom that reads, "We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for the past, and fear of the future." That pretty well sums in up. I have spent hours analyzing my past, trying to make some sense of events, especially during the last few years. It's a hopeless task. The past can be viewed through so many perceptions that in the end only God knows what it means. I suppose he is much more concerned with the finished product than the chain of events. "Forgetting those things that are behind...."

As for the future--Anne and I did not plan well for retirement (if that is even a value anymore), and the crash of 2008 hurt what we did have. Like most Americans, Social Security will sustain us only at a subsistence level. I see a cliff looming ahead as we get older. I counter this fear by reminding myself that God has never ceased to provide for us any time in the past or present.

As for the present: I enjoy getting up and going to work every day. The best part of my job is my relationship to my fellow workers. We are all supportive and know each other well enough to give counsel. I would miss that if I left. On the other hand, I am more aware than ever that "all men are liars." I am constantly disappointed with our clients--misdemeanor probationers. It's easy to believe that the entire county is hyped up on uppers or downers, is consciously deceitful, and obsessed with an entitlement mentality. Responsibility is a foreign idea. Oxycontin is like candy in the high school. Bottom line: the culture is sick and the judicial system is broken. Deeper bottom line: Jesus really is the hope of the world. Everything else is some kind of delusional band-aid. Feel like I'm
wasting my time and trying to put a good face on it with half-measures.

Well, there's that. On the positive side, Anne and I have enjoyed our experience with Max International this year. Max is a network marketing company that manufactures a supplement that increases the strongest anti-oxidant in the body by 200-300%. Increases energy and retards aging. We've had a good personal experience with it. After the bad experience many of us had with the big "A" in the 1970's, this company has been refreshing. We're impressed with the corporate leadership and with our local team. It is gradually generating some extra income for the coming years.

Of course network marketing can be a bit weird. Large numbers of associates are Christians--and network marketing by its nature can take on the earmarks of the church. There are apostolic fathers, mentors, discipleship, enthusiastic meetings, and evangelistic techniques, plus a payoff in material blessings. There is a thin line between a business that applies biblical principles and a cult. A thin line that I intend to keep an eye on.

And on the positive side, there is Jesus. Light of the world who meets me every morning. He is solid and "there." Buber's Thou. Increasingly the world system around me is becoming meaningless, and he is becoming the source of all meaning. There just isn't any meaning or purpose anywhere else. There is great joy in him, and I know it would increase if I ceased to grieve for the passing away of the world. Thanks to contributors to that joy this year: the elders of our church, Solzhenitsyn, Oswald Chambers, Fr. Steve Freeman (great blog), Alexander Schmemann (For the Life of the World), John Kellogg, Anne's love, David's caring, Beth's wisdom, all Facebook friends, and my co-workers. What a hodge-podge of God's mystery and delight!

Merry Christmas, everybody.

The Gates

Just finished reading John Connolly’s The Gates, a book for older children (and adults). In it the powers of hell try to invade earth by a combination of clumsy witchcraft and the Hadron Particle Collider—science and demons intertwined in ways that are reminiscent of warnings from CS Lewis.

Connolly is a word master and just plain funny. Here is a sample:

Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities, sat on his gilded throne, his servant Wormwood at his feet, his kingdom spread before him, and yawned.

“Bored, Your Scourgeness?” inquired Wormwood.

“Actually,” said Nurd, “I am extremely excited. I cannot remember the last time I felt so enthused about anything.”

“Really?” asked Wormwood hopefully, and received a painful tap on the head from Nurd’s Scepter of Terrible and Awesome Might for his trouble.

“No, you idiot,” said Nurd, “Of course I’m bored. What else is there to be?”

Connolly blows off God in the first couple of chapters, caricaturing him as an old man with a beard who created the world in seven days, and in whom no self respecting person with a knowledge of science can believe. Then he goes on to give a description of hell as another dimension attempting to break into ours. Why heaven cannot be making a similar attempt he does not say.

Connolly’s Satan (The Great Malevolence) hates mankind with a perfect hatred—because men are happy and productive and love flowers. Man as man is the object of his scorn. The biblical notion that Satan hates man because of the Image he reflects is not on Connolly’s radar. Here is a repeated theme of the modern novel—Satan without God, hell without heaven, and evil resisted and overcome by man without any help from You-Know-Who.

Heaven still manages to sneak into the book through the back door, however. In the end, a child’s courage saves the world, along with a demon who joins the forces of light and sacrifices himself to save the others. Child-like faith. Conversion to the other side. Self-sacrifice. Hmmm. Truth pervades all art worth the name, maybe even against its will.

Still a fun read!

To Life

You must be born again.
I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.-Jesus

Old things have passed aways; behold, all things are made new.-St. Paul

"L'Chaiim"--"to life!" The Old Testament spoke of life as an experience, not as an abstract principle that could be separated from physical existence. Life for the Hebrew was holistic, because all of life came from God, and was seamless because it had a unified center.

The Greeks, on the other hand, needed two words to encompass "life." Bios was the favored word. It meant "living" in the sense of "livelihood," and at a higher level meant "life-style" or manner of living. It had philosophical implications. What is the "good" life? How does one find the good, the true, and the beautiful? How does one lead a temperate, well-balanced life? What is the place of truth and virtue, of honor and duty? These phrases remind us not only of the ancient Greeks, but of their Enlightenment descendants, the "Renaissance men," and the southern gentlemen that were part of my own youth.

The other term for life was Zoe--a word with a more scientific nuance. It meant life, not as a value or a quantity of virtue, but life as opposed to death, animate as opposed to inanimate, flora and fauna as opposed to earth and rocks. Zoe was simply defined and discernible. Bios required exploration and was a complex concept. Bios was the preferred term when discussions about existence became serious. It was the term for philosophical speculation.

Yet when Jesus and the New Testament broke into a culture that had been under Greek influence for three hundred years, the two terms were turned on their heads. Bios at its best meant "making a living," and at its worst a dead pursuit of arrogant and self-centered man (Luke 8:14, 2 Tim. 2:4, 1 John 2:16). Zoe was their chosen word for "life," and it pervaded the words of Jesus in the Gospels. He dismissed bios as the hopeless quest of men who did not need to be reformed, or disciplined, or cleaned up--they were instead men who needed to be resurrected, brought from death to life. Jesus proclaimed the joy of an alien life, a restoration of the chaiim that flowed between God and man, between gift and thankfulness in the first garden.

Alexander Schmemann pointed out somewhere that when Jesus was crucified, all the hope that had ever been in bios died. Man at his best chose to kill God. The cross was the suicide of bios. The placard above his head represented the great cultures of his day: the power of military might and shrewd administrative ability of the practical Roman mind; the philosophical Greeks; and the peak of monotheistic revelation, the chosen ones, the apex of morality broken into ten thousand minute fragments--all conspired to destroy God in the name of saving bios. Its salvation was its death.

Zoe is the life of God in his creatures, placed in fallen man by the Holy Spirit. That is not quite saying it right. Because zoe is not an abstraction, it is a Person--God united with man through Christ in a union that was meant from the beginning. Adam lost that union when he chose to pursue the life that came from God without God--and broke the world into life as an end in itself, and life as religious duty--sacred and secular (Schmemann).

The past pulls us back into bios; the future draws us forward to zoe. Bios is spoken in the indicative; zoe uses the imperative and the subjunctive (Rosenstock). Bios abstracts; zoe is relational. Bios is a given, something into which we are born; zoe is a gift. It can only be received, not earned. But zoe can be neglected, and must be fed. Objectively, that is done by word and sacrament in the church (John 6:35), and subjectively by seeing the life of God in all things, from the glimpse of the image of God in broken people, to the utility of computer files. Zoe desires to wake the trees and give the beasts a rudimentary ability to speak (CS Lewis, Randy Alcorn). It is released, above all, by thankfulness for all things, suffering as well as pleasure.

I must admit that I have never heard (or preached) a sermon on the topic. I am afraid we evangelicals are guilty of leading people to a zoe encounter with the risen Christ, followed by a lifelong rehearsal of the rules and principles that govern the bios of the church. Or as Paul said, “having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?”. “We (evangelicals) begin with Christ” said Neil Silverburg, “and we end with Moses.” We pass out band-aids in full view of an empty tomb.

Personally, I am a bit tired after 67 years of seminars on Christian principles, how to be a man, how to adjust my finances, how to love my wife, how to raise my children, how to, how to...all commendable things, which have not been unhelpful. But my heart wants joy more than knowledge, exuberance above principles, relationship above all else.

There are, of course, dangers in what I am saying. One is that we don’t take bios seriously enough, which leads to mystical hedonism, the view that, since I am a new creation, what the “old man” does is his business. So I can let lust, greed, and rage loose, because that is not who I really am. Paul was accused of holding such a position, and answered simply with, “God forbid!” Paul also pointed out that whatever enslaves you is your true master.

The other is taking bios too seriously, or morbid involvement. I think of an old friend who wanted to ride in an ambulance so he could face “real” life. Morbid involvement is based on the fear that, if we get too enthralled with zoe, we will lose touch with the world. The truth is that zoe calls us to carry life into everything we touch. (The Jews fled from lepers lest they be made unclean; Jesus walked into their midst, touching them and overcoming their uncleanness with his own zoe.) Zoe is simply a word describing how we were originally meant to live, in love with man and with nature, and sharing with God as we go.

There may be reasons why evangelicals lapse from an exciting honeymoon to the drudgery of married life (speaking metaphorically). I think the central one is their emphasis on the work of the cross. Of course life springs, perhaps above all, from the cross. But it also springs from the incarnation, the resurrection, and the ascension. “Christ was born to die” is an evangelical mantra, and a travesty. Christ was born to live, to touch humanity, to die, to rise, and to reign forever at the right hand of the Father, and to bring us up to where he is. Those are all sources of zoe, which is another way of saying that Christ is the fountainhead of all life.

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

Planetary Consciousness

The service of the land is an inexorable duty laid upon Man, and it is surprising that it was not included in the Ten Commandments. The reason must be that it was prior to the Commandments, since it was already decreed in Genesis that Adam was put into Eden to dress it and to keep it, and that Man was given dominion over the Earth and all its creatures for that purpose. In attaining planetary consciousness we come back again to this primordial commandment; we have now to dress and to keep the planet, the whole planet.

-Eugen Rosenstock, “Planetary Man”

Several years ago I stated in a blog that there is a tension, maybe even a contradiction, in my outlook as an American citizen and my outlook as a Christian. I want to pick up that theme again.

As a citizen, I am somewhere to the right of the Constitution Party. Because I affirm the doctrine of original sin (I might as well say total depravity), I believe government should be small and controlled by intricate systems of checks and balances--within by the classic balance of its own powers (judicial, legislative, etc), and without by other spheres or institutions, notably the church and the family. Add to this the balance of central and local governments. I have no doubt that the collapse of the balance of powers in our culture is on the increase, and government is no longer protector, but nanny and priest. I am delighted to see groups like the Tea Party, who are trying to articulate a building frustration. If their cry becomes articulate, there will be hell to pay for one side or the other. Big government scares me, and talk about world government raises specters that would make the Lubyanka cringe. In fact, to me the words world or planet are spooky in themselves.

And there seems to be an inevitability in the whole process. One-world market and one-world communications transcend political boundaries, and perhaps pave the way for the politicians to catch up, and open the door for the inexorable rise of anti-Christ. The solution for Rick the citizen is to hold to the past. I read somewhere that the Church of the Middle Ages saw its very existence as an inhibitor of the rise of the Beast--a persuasive argument for its perpetuation. We certainly have our Protestant, evangelical, dispensational version of the same scenario. Preach the gospel, maintain limited government, resist socialism, affirm isolationism, curtail world-wide anything, and we will not be dragged into the future horrors of the Great Tribulation. Two things stand out in this agenda: the believer and the citizen become one and the same, and the past is our hope and the future our nemesis. With those realizations, the Christian in me parts company with the citizen.

In passing, it is worth pointing out that all good things come of God, and all good things are counterfeited. One-world market and communications have brought great good for man in the sovereign purposes of God. But that is an issue for another time. My real concern is with the Christian attitude towards the future. The past helps me find and know myself among others with their own pasts, but the future is what draws me and ultimately defines me. If the future is the perfect, then it draws what is not yet perfect into itself. The eschaton will reveal who I really am, and the future man who is already born in me struggles towards it and will never be fulfilled without it. That means that the Incarnation was not only God entering human space, but the future entering human time and calling us forward. The first Coming was not just a promise, but a seed, of the second. How can I possibly want to hold it at bay?

I began this blog with a quote from Rosenstock, to which I should probably turn my attention. Here is a Christian using a term that is worthy of Hilary Clinton: "planetary consciousness." Rosenstock realized as early as the 1940's that political barriers were hazing, and that "we can no longer sacrifice ourselves to dale and grove, nor to the idol of Western Civilization, nor to upholding the schism between Western and Eastern Christendom, nor to European hegemony...." Many things of the past will die or drop off as God calls the world into the future, parallel to the transformation that occurs in each individual Christian in microcosm. Doubtless rebellious man will counterfeit God's plan. But that should not stop us from longing for the time that the lion lies down with the lamb and a little child leads us. In fact, "longing" is too weak a word. "Taking responsibility" for the earth that groans for the manifestation of the sons of God is a better term.

Taking responsibility may include thinking "green," and taking part in movements that lift human oppression, but I believe that it primarily means accepting the fact that we Christians are already part of a planetary movement known as the church. The West is no longer the model for Christendom. There are mass conversions in South America and India. There are miracles in Africa. The Chinese church is full of a power that puts the West to shame. The American church is looking for a new expression of itself (or resisting it). There is a foment going on that requires looking forward, not backwards. The future is pulling, and pulling; and it is glorious, and not our enemy.

So back to the original point: here I am, stuck between past and future, pessimism and optimism, and hoping the two resolve themselves, or flow together in a way not yet foreseen. For the time being I'll live with it.

Thoughts on Family, Sex, and Marriage

It is obvious that American culture has gone through a massive shift in family and sexual values for the last decades. It is also obvious that the church is not dealing with the changes well. She is either following the culture or looking longingly to the 1950’s and hoping to turn back the clock. Being “conservative” is merely foot-dragging. Are there any positive things she can do to strengthen her own view of the sanctity of marriage and family? Here are some thoughts.

Number One: The church can no longer depend on the culture or the status quo to confirm its faith, because cultural values and family are no longer vitally inter-connected.

In The Origins of Speech, Rosenstock took issue with most anthropologists, who believe that primitive tribes were formed by associations of family groups seeking security and protection. Rosenstock reversed this order. He believed that tribes saw the family as a necessary means of creating, first, sexual order. No man could have any woman he wanted at any time, without chaos and fighting among males. Tribes also found that incest and rape produced poor offspring. The result was the rise of family groups with taboos against incest in particular. But, second, and at a deeper level, tribes discovered that the family was the best means for propagating the values of the culture. The best citizen was also a good father, whether it was a Roman patrician passing on the rules of the Republic to his children, or an Amazonian tribesman showing his son how to artfully shrink an enemy’s head; and the culture pressured parents to fulfill this role.

I question if this connection still holds in America. Children are taught cultural values by mass media and by the public school, values which may or may not be those of their parents. I have wondered if there are initial and confirming rites in secularism as there are in most world religions, and I’ve decided that the first day of school and graduation fit the bill. Mommy takes junior to the bus and turns him over to the state to arrange his values to the cultural norm, and the state turns him loose to be a model citizen at the end of the process. I am desperately biting my tongue so as to not make a moral judgment at this point; I just want to point out that the family is not necessary to the culture for the propagation of its values. That means that defining “family” is no longer important to cultural survival. It also means that the accompanying sexual mores are not governed by survival pressures. Now the individual is free to choose family style and sexual preference without a larger societal frame of reference. This is not to say that large numbers of people will not opt for the security and commitment of family life—but it is an option, not a requirement for passing the culture's values to the next generation.

The church, therefore, must determine if the family (even more than clergy, doctrine, and programs) is still her primary means of propagating her values, and if so, how to perpetuate those values in a religious sub-culture that is voluntary. There will be very little outside support.

Number Two: The church needs to define “marriage” for its members.

The definition of marriage will be different than the culture’s, because it will presuppose the existence of God—a God who is in his triune relationship an archetype for the family, and because it presupposes a Christ who looks at his church as his bride.

If the Persons of the Trinity are committed to one another in love, and if Christ calls the church into union with himself, then marriage, as a mirror of the archetypes, is a lifelong covenant, made before God and the church. The members of that covenant will be changed and grow in love within it, until death. All covenants, by the way, have sacramental rituals that seal or validate them—from dinner after signing a business contract, to baptism and the Eucharist as the sacraments of our union with Christ. I believe that sex is the sacramental seal of marriage vows—initially on the wedding night (parallel to baptism), and repeatedly afterwards (parallel to the Supper). That doesn’t mean that sex can’t be fun, or earthy, or even fumbled. It does mean that there is a serious commitment hovering behind it. It’s interesting that the Old Testament penalty for pre-marital sex was marriage (if you’re going to act married, then so be it), while the penalty for adultery (covenant breaking) was death. This understanding of marriage and sex of course has no meaning without a sound faith in the blessed triune nature of God and Christ’s passionate love for his church. Those positive truths need to be taught and lived before young believers early and consistently. They lay a much better foundation than saying, “Don’t have sex before marriage or God will be mad at you.”

3. The church needs to take seriously Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians 7:9, “It is better to marry than to burn.”

First, “burning” is not an innately evil thing to be shunned, not should it be confused with lust. “Burning” is Paul’s word for normal sexual desire. Lust is its perversion. Lust is to sex what gluttony is to eating, drunkenness to a glass of wine, and rage to anger. “Burning” is a real force that is not going to be suppressed or treated like some kind of teen-age disease in moralistic sermons.

Second, the church opts for the wrong side in the present conflict between the biological and economic clocks. In Old Testament times, these clocks were synchronized. A young man learned a trade, usually in the context of the family business, and was able to be self-sufficient at the same time his libido was peaking. This is not true today. Middle and upper class young people will be in their upper twenties before they finish their master’s, or their residency, or grad school, etc. The church consistently follows the culture and says “wait.” The church is biased against young marriages—an admission that she has not adequately instructed her children. She offers no solution to “burning.” But she will certainly cluck with disapproval if the young find ways to alleviate the pressure. This is a clear rejection of apostolic counsel. That means that the church will have to support young marriage and weave the economic clock into it, not the other way around.

The Grail

This past weekend I re-watched The Fisher King with Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams. It's one of my favorite movies. Williams plays a college professor turned into one of New York's homeless as the result of a tragedy in his life. He tells the following story, which may or may not be true to the Arthurian legend, but certainly defines the Christian ministry (and I am paraphrasing). I don't believe I can add to it:

"When the king was a boy, he went into the forest to seek his destiny. During his time there, he was given a vision of the Holy Grail, and accepted as his life's mission the quest to find it. Over the years, after many disappointments, the king became discouraged and more reclusive. It seemed he would never find the Grail, and would end his life a failure.

"One day the court fool came in the king's quarters, and being a simple man, did not see a king, but a man in deep emotional pain. He asked, 'What may I do to help you with your pain, sire?' The king answered, 'You can pour me a drink of cool water.'

"The fool reached for a cup, and filling it with water, handed it the king. As he sipped, the king suddenly realized that it was the Grail he was holding, and that it had been in his chamber all that time.

"The king said, 'I've sent my brightest and bravest men to search for this. How did you find it?' The Fool laughed and said 'I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty.'"

The Doors (or Dancing with Runes)

The humanoids of the dry and desert planet Mortopia formed a primitive culture based on a constant quest for food and water. However, after the discovery that a life-sustaining lichen that grew on the shady side of desert rocks could be cultivated and packaged in various forms, the Mortopians evolved into a medium-status culture with some economic complexity and a small but wealthy intelligentsia. They divided their history into pre-lichen and post-lichen eras. Mortopian society stayed pretty much at the same level, with very little excitement, until the coming of the age of the Doors.

The Doors were discovered by a lad herding a flock of g'malim, a camel-like mammal about the size of a terrestrial goat. Stumbling over an outcropping of rocks, he came into a flat sandy valley with barren hills on both sides. And there they stood: two doors upright in the sand, unweathered and reflecting the rays of the large orange sun of that world. They would become the object of puzzlement and intense study for coming generations, and also the subject of much debate, division, and argument, especially among Mortopian scholars, whose opinions attracted a following among the lower classes.

The Doors were double, like French doors, meeting in the middle, with golden handles on each door. No attempt to open them or pull them apart or uproot them succeeded. They stood approximately 20 feet high and 20 feet across, each door being 10 feet wide. Whether they had been placed there, or emerged from the sand, or had been there all along in an inhospitable lost valley, no one knew. What material they were made of was unknown. The handles were on the side of the Doors facing east. The backside of the Doors had no handles, suggesting that they could only be opened from the east side. There was a plain horizontal panel midway across both doors, front and back, forming four equal sections on each side, or a total of eight sections. And each section was covered with symbols and runes.

Over time, the Doors became the domain of scholars, who erected scaffolding and ladders in order to study the raised lettering on the eight sections. The west side (or back) was found to be covered with pre-lichen runes, while the east side (or front) contained a more recent script. Translation revealed a collection of myths relating to the desert gods, interwoven with stories of a land of bright sun and green grass. There were also basic rules about living and relationships, and stories about ancient heroes and commoners who had adventures in the bright-sun world.

Scholars began to find within the sub-units of the eight major sections certain discrepancies and nuances that made them different from other sections. Schools of thought began to form around the major sections and their sub-units. Certain scholars became experts within these schools, and gathered disciples or apprentices who worked with them at the site or helped them in translation and the defense of whatever world-view the master scholar espoused. Arguments would often arise at the site of the Doors, sometimes to the point of violence, and at times among the greater population which was divided over which master to follow. This difficulty subsided when the masters and apprentices of the schools stayed on their own scaffolding and pretty much ignored all the others. The population followed suite. This uneasy peace persisted until the morning of the fateful Grand Opening.

On that particular mid-summer morning, as the sun rose to throw orange rays across the huts and scaffolding of the resident scholars, there was a loud crack, and the Doors slowly began to open, stopping a few inches apart, and leaving a gap just big enough for a man to walk through. Early risers jumped from their perches about the Doors and fled to a safe distance to watch. Others emerged from their huts to see what all the excitement was about. Bright, silver sunlight flowed from the opening, and those who were brave enough to hazard a peek saw a rich green lawn sloping down to a tree-lined river, with hills in the distance, and beyond, the hint of mountains in the mist. Some scholars fled behind the Doors, and discovered that the gap from that side only revealed the desert of their homeland. The new world could only be seen from the east side.

The whole experience was disconcerting. Some tried to push the Doors closed, to no avail. Some of the younger apprentices, who still had a sense of adventure, wandered into the bright land and did not return. Most of the resident scholars simply tried to ignore the opening and continue their work. Of course, news of this development spread, and in a few weeks pilgrims were making journeys to the Doors to see this phenomenon. Soon a small town grew up around the site, offering food and lodging to visitors, and selling souvenir replicas of the partly opened Doors and postcards showing the silver light shining across the desert floor. Occasionally a pilgrim would approach the gap and disappear into the light within—usually after being begged by family members to reconsider. The most alarming incidents occurred when one of the older scholars would lay down his notebook and stylus, climb down the scaffolding, and walk directly into the gap with a strange smile on his face.

After a few months, some of those who had gone through the doors began to reappear. But their answers to curious questions were enigmatic, and they were always in a hurry to return. Their only reason for reappearing, apparently, was to call those around the Doors to come back with them into the gap.

One was a ruddy youth with deep blue eyes, red hair, and a scattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. He had been apprenticed to a master scholar who was an expert in the fourth sub-quadrant of the third sub-unit of the second section on the front side. He was approached by his master, and the following conversation took place:

“Where have you been, my boy, and what have you been doing in there?”

“I have been enjoying the light, master, and dancing with the runes.”

“You mean there is knowledge of the runes in there? You mean that you have been learning the runes and obeying them?”

“No sir. I said I have been dancing with them.”

“Too much unnatural sunlight has touched your mind, my son. You know you can’t dance with an idea or a commandment.”

“O, they’re not ideas, sir. They’re people--people who are the creaturely expressions of what the runes teach. Without them the runes are merely floating concepts. The Doors only portray word pictures of them. They come out of the woods at night and dance with us. They are teaching us, I think, to become runes ourselves.”

“The light has caused your imagination to run wild, my boy. But tell me, if you dance with runes, what do they tell you of their differences? Which rune is the true one?”

“They are all true, master. I told you they dance—a great intricate dance—and I told you they are people. How can one person be truer than another?”

‘No, son. You’ve missed the point of my question. Which one of the interpretations of the runes is the right one?”

The boy hesitated, working this question in his mind. Finally he replied, “I’m having trouble answering, master. The category ‘right’ does not apply in the sun-bright land. No one is right, no one is wrong. There is only the dance.”

The master could not compute this response, so he tried a different approach. “So…what do you do there, I mean, with your time?”

“I told you, master, we dance. Every night. The dance is so complicated that we novices move about in the outer ring until we learn the steps that will take us closer to the center. The runes are in the middle, and their differences form a unity. But we do other things. We sing. And we tell stories—wonderful stories, personal stories, stories of defeat and victory. No one thinks anyone else’s story is unimportant. The runes also tell us their stories. And we laugh a lot.”

“You keep talking about people,” said the master. “But surely there are ideas in that world. Surely you must have scholars—great thinkers who are capable of abstraction—who interpret the runes.”

“Yes, master. But only the very old enter the abstract world. In the sun-bright land abstract thought is a privilege to be earned. Occasionally a gray-beard will disappear into the woods alone, and come back days later, exchange knowing glances with others of his age, and walk away shaking his head and laughing to himself. Once I got up the nerve to ask an elder about this practice. ‘Oh my wee one,’ he chuckled, ‘One must be deep in love and joy, and know his place in the dance, before he can think the Thoughts. Abstraction is the reward of a life lived, not the basis of it. That is why it is a forbidden fruit to those too young to have learned courage.’”

At this, there was the short burst of a child’s laughter from inside the Doors. The youth looked around uncomfortably, and said, “I must really be going, master. The dance begins at twilight. But look, come with me. There are greater than I that can answer your questions.”

A look of joy, quicker than the bat of an insect wing, passed over the master’s face, but then he said, “Perhaps later, my boy. You know how important it is that I finish the research on my next dissertation. It is important that my disciples understand the intricacies of the Quest for the True Rune.”

“But the True Rune is a person!” Seeing his master already ascending his scaffold to his accustomed place, the boy walked slowly back to the gap and disappeared into the light. The conversation was over.

After that, things continued pretty much business as usual. People sporadically passed through the gap in the Doors in both directions. The scholars who worked on the front quadrants were often distracted by the light, and tried several means to cover it up. Boards hung from the scaffolding seldom worked. Finally, one of them hit upon a contraption made of wooden frames and a thick fabric curtain that could be rolled in front of the gap. It blocked the light, but allowed passage by folding the curtain aside. The only distraction after that was the unpredictable laughter from behind the curtain. Some scholars dealt with this by stuffing pieces of cloth in their ears while they worked. The ruddy youth did not reappear. The master finished his dissertation and began a new one entitled “The Quest for the Historical Rune.” It made quite a splash in scholarly circles until a rebuttal was written by a master on the west side of the doors who proved definitively that all runes were merely a projection of the Mortopian psyche.

Thoughts on Renewals--Again

I fear I am entering that phase of my life in which I merely repeat myself. This entry is another approach to a topic that I rehash and rethink every few months.

The only success I’ve had in ministry was in a charismatic fellowship. I am a charismatic. I would rather hang out with them than any other brand of Christians. I know the language and its nuances, and I remember the glory days of the 1960s and 70’s.

The miracles and excitement of those days appear to be resurfacing in our local church. But I have apparently been warped by other experiences and movements, because I have a certain reticence about it all. Some of that is native (I might as well say sinful)—the usual reluctance to answer the altar call when people are falling out under the power of the Spirit—I go forward just because I need to conquer my self-consciousness. I also have to confess a bit of envy. No one falls down when I pray for them—a mark of anointed leadership within the movement.

So there they are. Selfishness and envy. Having admitted those, let me confess an even deeper habit of standing outside the movement (both historic and current) and looking at it in a broader context—a habit that I have not yet decided is a gift, or mere judgmentalism, a worse sin that the others. I don’t know yet. Anyway, here is a rehash of thoughts about renewals that float through my head, usually on my way home from church.

First: God likes to do New Things. The charismatic movement is fifty-three years old. I remember reading about Smith Wigglesworth’s vision of the ocean: every new wave broke against the retreat of the previous one. Wigglesworth’s point was that movements often resist a new wave, and even create a reaction that brings the new forth. This is a difficult thing to bring up, because no one professes to long for a new movement more than charismatics. But the fact is that a charismatic vision for a new movement consists in a repetition of the old familiar phenomena. This is a blind spot. I remember visiting Pentecostal churches during the high days of the charismatic movement. The manifestations in both groups were similar, but there was a nuanced difference. The charismatic meetings were fresh and exciting; the Pentecostal meetings felt stale and old—“free” forms had become a learned ritual, and there was a sense of “we have arrived and sooner or later you’ll do it our way.” We need to remember that the charismatic movement is as old as Pentecostalism was when the charismatic movement broke out. It would be easy to fall into the same mindset.

I am not yet convinced that the New Thing is upon us. It may be the Emergent Church. It’s too early to tell. Right now I perceive Emergence as more of a reaction than a positive movement. It is still trying to find its voice. But whatever occurs next, it will probably contain something that offends charismatics. That is why we need to keep our eyes open and be aware of that fact. What can be newer that healing, deliverance, and salvation? Perhaps new forms, but definitely something wonderful, something outside the box. I don’t want to miss it.

Second: Renewalists describe church history in terms of renewals. That means that charismatics view the dry times between renewals as, well, evil. They are our fault. If we would pray more or be more zealous, or return to our first love, renewal would reoccur. The assumption is that perpetual renewal is normative for the church, and the lack of the normative is a human failure. I take issue with that at a personal level. My life in Christ (from my side) is more like a mountain road with high views, and low valleys without much vision past the next step (the classic kataphatic/apophatic tension). Neither the high nor the low has taught me to walk with Jesus; but their combination has. High times give vision; low time increase endurance and strength. I believe the same is true of the church. To repudiate low or “dry” times as a wasteland between the really important high points wipes out opportunities for the church to stretch her faith. It may be that the Lord is closer to her at those times than she realizes.

Third: There is a relationship between the church and culture. The first Great Awakening transformed the areas in which it occurred. Taverns emptied. The morality of those areas coincided more readily to a biblical standard. There was also a connection between the abolition movement within the evangelical community and the preaching of later Awakenings. In light of that, I have wondered from time to time how much influence the charismatic movement has had on American culture. To be fair, the Great Awakenings were revivals in which numbers of people converted to Christ, while the charismatic movement would be more accurately called a renewal within the church. Nevertheless there has been little lasting effect by the movement on government, economics, social issues (other than abortion), or the arts.

While there have been positive changes in American culture during the last fifty years, especially in relation to civil and women’s rights, my observation as a Christian is that traditional morality has declined significantly and secular humanist ethics have increasingly dominated since the 1950’s (everybody say “duh!”). It is interesting that this decline has coincided with the life span of the charismatic movement. Nothing in the movement slowed the death of biblical morality. I have a suspicion, which may get me in hot water, that there is a latent Gnosticism among charismatics that separates between Christ as Lord of my inner experience and Christ as Lord of nations and cultures. Many thinking charismatics have struggled with this conflict, and may be helped along their way to cultural change by other Christians, particularly in the Reformed camp. I hope that in the next Move of God the life of the Spirit spills out into the surrounding culture, producing not a renewal, but a Reformation.

In Defense of my Job

When I was sixty years old, I found myself out of work and looking for a job. The folks at the local probation office had mercy on me, hired me, and eventually moved me into the role of intake officer (seeing probationers for their first visit after court) and Community Service Coordinator (working with local non-profits and hooking up probationers who have been ordered community service with the proper work site). Our office deals with misdemeanor offenders who are sentenced in General Sessions (County) Court. Common offenses are DUI, Possession of Drugs, Shoplifting, and Domestic Assault. I like what I do, and I like the people I work with. They are committed professionals who care about each other and about the people that make up their case loads. However, we are not always perceived that way. More often the profession is regarded with suspicion and even contempt. Here is my response as an “outsider” who wandered into the probation office from another vocation.

A probation office is sort of like a garbage truck. Everyone wants us to do our job, but they don’t want us parked next door. We are perceived as tainted. That may be true of all law enforcement agencies—guilt by association. The equivalent would be fear of a doctor because the diseases he treats may rub off on other patients. I tried several times to get our local newspaper to do a human interest story on some of our successes, or on the service provided to the community through the work of probationers at the local food bank and rescue ministry. Whenever I called, the reporter ignored my request and began immediately digging for dirt. Apparently, only an article that fed the negative perception of our office was newsworthy. I gave it up.

The negative perception of the probation office can be summed up in three statements, to which I want to respond.

1) “I don’t have time for this crap.” Translation: “Probation is a way for local government to harass and oppress me.” The assumption behind this statement is that probation is a right, not a privilege. It has been a common practice in most counties for so long, that it is perceived this way. But in reality, probation is an alternative to 30 days to twelve month’s jail time. It allows the convicted offender to stay with his family, maintain employment, and provide some form of pay-back service to the community which he has in some form endangered. Those who complain about having their lives interrupted seldom consider the alternative. Neither, apparently, does a segment of the community.

2) “It’s all about money.” Well, in some ways, it is. Our office uses electricity, buys equipment, rents a building, and pays employees. (Case workers of any kind, by the way, are on the low end of the American pay scale. No one goes into such a profession for the money. Most of them are idealists.) All probation offices in Tennessee, whether private or part of a county system, charge probationers a fee that is set by the state Board of Probation. Some folks see this as unjust. I have had clients tell me that “the government should pay for this.” My response is, “Friend, I am the government.” In other words, if a probation office does not collect fees, it will come out of the pockets of local taxpayers. How about a referendum in Sevier County to see how local citizens would feel about that? Let me add here that there is a process for truly indigent probationers to have this fee waived by the court.

3) “My probation officer is mean.” Law enforcement philosophy in our culture has two poles: retribution and therapy. Is justice a matter of punishment, or an opportunity to change lives for the better? Most court systems and their probation offices walk the middle ground between the two. Either way, the job of the probation officer is to see that the probationer completes his court ordered obligations, which may include retribution (such as trash pick-up) or therapy (such as addiction treatment). Failure to complete obligations will result in a violation of probation, which means the probationer will be back in court and face even more severe obligations, often jail time. That means that, if the officer presses the probationer to complete his obligations, that pressure is in the probationer’s best interest.

It is also my observation that only @10% of our clients are deliberately malicious or dangerous. The remaining 90% are simply irresponsible. That means that the probation officer is a surrogate parent. The term “mean” should be more justly translated “stern.” It’s interesting that “mean” is often a child’s response to a parent who loves him enough to provide structure and discipline. Success in our office is defined by personal growth and the willingness of our clients to take responsibility. Those successes are too rare, but they provide the impetus to keep officers going. Caring probation offices provide another chance for people who missed loving parental or pastoral authority. I realize that that statement raises a host of questions about church-state-family issues, which can be discussed at a later time. My point here is that our office acts as a safety net, not only to protect the community, but to salvage lives. Thank God for some “mean” folks.

The Island

We have one of the most beautiful views in the world from our deck. We overlook a section of Douglas Lake, with English Mountain in the background. Just east of that are hills that roll up to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and we can see the range from Mt. Cammerer to Mt. LeConte. In the winter there is snow on the peaks. If I ever left here, I would miss the mountains.
But....

I love Hilton Head Island. So much, in fact, that Anne and I just bought slots in an outdoor columbarium at a church on the Island, so that our ashes can rest under live oaks, Spanish moss, and palmetto trees within the sound of the ocean.

We first started going there when Anne's folks retired and built a house in Sea Pines in the mid 70's. Our kids grew up going to the Island two or three times a year--swimming, riding bikes, hanging out in Harbor Town and listening to Greg Russell sing John Denver songs (and the all popular "Booger Snot") under the big oak tree across from the lighthouse. Greg is still performing for the second and third generations. Naturalist Todd Ballentine taught us about marsh life and its biological chain, and about the dolphins who buried their dead in the caves of Port Royal Sound.

On our first trip we crossed a two lane draw bridge across the Inland Waterway, got lost on the way to Sea Pines, had to loop all the way around Skull Creek to get to the Island's other end, and realized that we "weren't in Kansas" any more. It was absolutely beautiful.

Today the bridge is a sweeping four lane affair that hop-scotches over Pinckney Island Wildlife Refuge and joins a cross-island toll way that by-passes the business district along highway 278. Traffic can be a nightmare during major tourist seasons. There are more restaurants and night-spots, and the bike trails are more crowded. But the Island has not lost its ambience. This is due mainly to the foresight of the local leadership who planned ahead with strict zoning and building codes, not to mention that there are a number of gated communities that enforce their own rules and do their own landscaping. Anne's Dad died several years ago, and her Mom moved into a retirement community mid-island, so we no longer have free access to Sea Pines--we either scrounge or pay for a pass. But we still love the place.

So why not retire there? Aside from the obvious fact that we probably can't afford it, there are a couple of other reasons:

1) Hilton Head Island means vacation. I have a custom of rolling down the car window and smelling the sea and the marsh when we cross the bridge. My breathing eases. My mind relaxes. I am Home for a season. I know that Anne and I are going to walk on the beach and evaluate our lives and make plans. But Anne and I have a fear that if we lived there, we would lose all that. The place would no longer be special. And that is something we don't want to lose. Better for it to be a unique get-away and stay its special self.

2) Hilton Head is memories. We planned our lives and dealt with crises at home sitting on the beach or bobbing in the surf. We watched two children grow up. The sizes of the bikes we strapped to the roof of the van changed. The distance they rode them grew. There was the time they wanted to take friends and go places without Mom and Dad. I see them through all the subtle changes of their lives whenever I am there. I also see the persons that Anne and I were then, sitting on that beach thirty, twenty, ten years ago. The changes on the Island are hardly noticeable when compared to the memories that don‘t change. Somehow living there would be an attempt to hold to a past that can only be visited.

Of course, if we suddenly struck it rich, I might renege on my reasons for staying where we are. But for now, we'll settle for long weekends and a summer vacation.

Letters to Cynthia

I'm in a dry period, between fighting allergies and preparing for vacation. Here are some quotes from Rosenstock's "Letters to Cynthia" to chew on. Cynthia was a student at Ratcliffe in the 1940's with whom Rosenstock corresponded. Later she became his secretary.

March 11, 1943:

"Gerda is back in our house since Phillip has scarlet fever. This 3 year old girl is asking me the two types of questions: Why do you do that? What is that?

"In watching her I became convinced that both questions are not asked without real pressure by her. She fears to be left out when she does not know. She feels life as a process and she desires to be a partner, a 'dancer' in the cosmic dance. Her question is not neutral, not curious, but fearful. How can I participate? The why and what express her effort to acquire new keys for participation. If she can be informed 'why?' she can join in the process unerringly. The question, then, makes her out not as an onlooker, but as a person thrown out by changes in the cosmic order and trying to re-enter it; the order in so far conceived by her three years, is upset by something new. And the new must be assimilated. Or it contains the danger of excluding her, Gerda, from further participation.

"All young people are eager for novelty because by learning new things they secure their participation in a world which for the adult is quite old and from time immemorial. Newness is so often just the newcomer's own newness. And his eagerness is very vital to him since his qualities as member of the cosmic ballet depend on his questioning in time and getting the right answer.

"This... question is based on a new person's volunteering to enter society. Questions are not meaningful if they attack the existence of any truth, any order, any power to join....
You may deny God by no longer asking for truth, you may deny man by no longer trusting him, you may deny the earth by committing suicide. But you cannot do so by ASKING those same questions as you quote Spengler, by denying God, Truth, progress. The simple fact that you speak, although in mere question, interrogatively, has ushered you into a universe in which truth and trust and toil are accepted by you. Truth from God, trust in man, toil on earth, are the pre-requisites for asking any question...."

April 28, 1943:

"Peace: a daily creation and a daily practice of our overcoming death.
Life: usually treated today as deathless. This amounts to the abolition of the law of cause and effect, for society.
War: the struggle between more integrated life and less integrated life goes on incessantly. Nature is in a state of war.
Wars happen when men relapse into a state of nature by not creating peace daily. These are my 'peace terms.' Obviously, no one can hope, under these terms to eliminate the relapse into a state of war as long as man is man.

"The specific form of war between nation states can of course be superceded in our time. It seems to become antiquated. But the "war" against which you rebel, is a more universal phenomenon. Its eternity means that any order for which nobody is willing to give his life is doomed. If wars between states are abolished, civil wars within this One Superstate will take their place. Man will not respect any order which is not made sacred by the only test we have. When people give their lives for something, they ascribe to this something a superselfish rank. This something may be an idol. The fact that Nazis die for their cause, does not prove their righteousness. Nevertheless, where nobody volunteers for giving battle, we do not even have so much as a cause! History is the story of real causes. This much I had to put down, lest you conclude that you have not been dealt with honestly from the beginning."

Dreams

This blog is personal to the point of being maudlin. I may be writing for myself alone, or hoping for a Joseph who can interpret dreams.

Last night I had the third in a series of repetitive dreams with the same motif. These dreams have occurred roughly a year apart. In them I am with Anne and a small group of other unknown but friendly folks. We are looking at property. In the first dream it was a motel, in the second an old house, and last night a school building--one story with separate access to each classroom from outside. Our concern in the dream is that persons unknown, but that we care about, have their own space in a larger communal setting. "Would so-and-so like this?" "Would so-and-so fit here?"

In all three dreams the property needs to be cleaned up, but not renovated. It is structurally sound, but the flower beds need weeding, and a screw needs tightening, or a door needs painting. All the basic essentials are there--it only needs cosmetic work. We are excited.

The atmosphere of the dreams is not gloomy or fearful, rather the opposite. I am usually in a deep sleep when these occur, and everything is sunny and in technicolor. There is always a landscape: trees, sweeping green lawns, and flowers. We are hopeful, and talkative, and pointing at this or that. The place evidently perfectly meets some important need.

Waking up from these dreams is different. I weep as I come into consciousness. There is a deep sense of loss. I can't go back to sleep, and the atmosphere of the dream stays with me for days. Prophetic? Something from the sub-conscious? Something from the past? The fact that they are repetitive and very intense is significant.

Interpreting dreams is difficult because it is easy to introduce extraneous ideas, but I do think of two possibilities. One is my life-long fascination with the Ephesians 4 model of the church. There is some connection here to the need for individuals to have their special space in a larger community. I've run from this model for years (because it is almost impossible to bring to birth and sustain), but it is apparently going to assault me in the middle of the night.

The other is more obvious. Yesterday I went to a seminar put on by Moral Kombat, a program used by juvenile officers to teach values, tolerance, and proper self-image to teen-agers. The statistics were troublesome. 10% of teen-agers are gay or bi-sexual. 30% of teen suicides are because of struggles with sexual identity. Most have no concept of proper ethics in relationships or in the work place. Commitment to long term relationships is difficult for them. Please understand I am not playing "ain't it awful." But my heart goes out to these that are simply lost (even though I can no longer speak Adolescent), and need a safe room in the company of safe people who can hold them until their roots are firmly planted.

These dreams may be all about church.

More Thoughts on Sevier

Several weeks ago I described the conflict in Sevier County over the posting of the Ten Commandments and the practice of prayer at County Council meetings. The conflict is not resolved, and we are awaiting Act II. Here are some more (rather random) personal opinions:

1) In The Origins of Speech, Rosenstock lists inarticulateness as a disease of speech. Christians in America are angry and frustrated, but are unable to verbalize what they feel or to clarify what they mean, even among themselves. Rosenstock states that revolution occurs when inarticulate shouts or groans find a voice or a word that summarizes the cause of the frustration, a voice or word that causes the discontent to say, "yes, that is what we mean." We may be on the verge of such articulation.

2)Peck and Strohmer, in Uncommon Sense, state that Christians are inarticulate because they do not use biblical language or concepts in their conflicts with unbelievers. For example, Christians insist on using political and "constitutional" language in the abortion debate, and in the process, back themselves into an unnecessary corner. Neither "right to life" nor "sanctity of life" are biblical concepts. No man has a right to his life; it is a gift of God. It is His to give and take away according to his will. And while a man's eternal existence as a perfected human being may be called "sacred," there is no "sacredness" to physical life in and of itself. The phrase has eastern overtones. The Bible, in fact, doesn't speak of "rights" or inherent sacredness, but of duties and responsibilities, which are intensely personal. The commandments are not demands that I lay on my neighbor, but revelations of my heart's attitude toward him. The use of "right to life" focuses on the fetus as an object outside myself that can be analyzed--hence the endless (and ridiculous) debate over when life begins. The question is not “when does life begin?” It is, rather: “what is my responsibility to the unborn?” This question is vitally personal and will not allow me the luxury of abstraction.

This is an illustration of how using political or constitutional, rather than biblical concepts opens debate on issues that miss the point. Somehow I feel we are in the same boat in the courthouse debate, and I am still working on that one.

3) It is my own conviction that when a culture has no absolutes to which it bows, the state becomes absolute. While humanists can list the oppressions and horrors propagated by religion (especially Christianity) through the ages, I can’t imagine that the statist solution offers anything better. In fact, it is far worse.

The removal of the Ten Commandments from a courthouse wall says, “We will not have this Man to rule over us.” But then, what else is new? That decision was made years ago. The pasture gate has been standing open for a while and the cows are gone. We live in a multi-cultural, multi or a-religious culture held together by a state with its own vocabulary and mythology. Taking a stand at the courthouse is a rear-guard maneuver that only looks silly in light of the age and depth of change in America. Is protesting at the courthouse really the "sticking point," the point of resistance, the point where one's own conviction crashes into the will of the state? I don't think so.

4) The fact is that outstanding believers in both covenantal eras faithfully served pagan or secular states. Classic examples are Joseph, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Mordecai, and especially Daniel and the three friends. The reason they could do so is simple: they believed that God was Lord of all history, that God governed through kings and emperors whom He raised up and put down. (Jesus recognized the authority of Pontius Pilate because He believed that His Father was the author of all earthly power.) That is why outstanding Old Testament believers showed respect to Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, the Persian emperors, and why Paul insisted that Christians submit to the authority of Rome. But they also believed that the king was subordinate to Jesus Christ, and there was the rub, or I should say, the sticking point. When the authority insisted that a believer confess his hegemony over whatever God the believer served, the believer refused. The issue was who possessed final authority.

Notice that the sticking point was not whether the state was godly, pagan, or secular; or whether the state recognized God's authority. The sticking point was forced acquiescence to the final authority of the state over all gods and powers. It was at that point that the three friends went into the furnace and Daniel went into the lions' den.

This was the issue that faced Christians during the Roman persecutions. Rome was a multi-cultural, multi-religious state that practiced commendable tolerance within its borders. I do not find Christian protests against Caesar's declaration of himself as Dominus et Pontifex Maximus, terms which the Christians reserved for Christ alone. It was only when the state demanded a bit of incense, a mere tip of the hat to the final and ultimate godhood of Caesar, that Christians balked. That meant the individual was being forced to deny the ultimacy of his God. Pushed to the wall, the Christian could not assign the terms to both divinities. Jesus was Caesar's Lord, and the Christian could serve Caesar for that very reason. Being ask to reverse their rolls was blasphemy, both to the Christian and to the Roman, who saw not religious fanaticism, but treason, in the Christian resistance.

The sticking point, biblically, occurs when the Christian is forced to choose between Christ and Caesar, and when the choice for Christ is considered an assault on the state. Are we there yet? The difficulty with answering that question is that we are moving backwards in comparison to the first believers. The early Christian grew up in a pagan environment and gradually so influenced it that even the emperor bowed to Christ. We today are moving from 1500 years of Christian culture to a flagrant rejection of it. It is difficult to assume that modern American Caesars will not test the commitment of their followers. In the meantime the inarticulate frustration will continue to latch on to less than important issues and long for a clarifying voice. It may be that the articulate voice and the “sticking point” will coincide.

Look Out, Pilgrim: Epilogue

Symbolism, then, is not some secondary concern, some mere curiosity. In a very real sense, symbolism is more important than anything else for the life of man.

-James Jordan

OK. I confess I've been foolin' around with this series. It sorta grew. After I wrote Look Out, Pilgrim I, I thought it was too gloomy. So I tried out #II as a balance. Then I decided to do #III for fun, to see if there was a third way to interpret the Temple symbol . At present I spend too much time in #I, I used to be a stronger advocate of #III, and I would love to live all the time in #II. That doesn't mean that this particular symbol is less than true, or subject to human whim; it means that it is larger than we supposed and encompasses more than one phase of human need and perception. Like their Creator, symbols have an endless quality about them. That's why their study keeps changing us.

Pilgrim, the way through the Temple is exciting.

Look Out, Pilgrim III

...(N)othing could hide the essential business of the Temple, which was the ritual slaughter, consumption and combustion of sacrificial cattle on a gigantic scale....To the unprepared visitor, the dignity and charity of Jewish diaspora life, the thoughtful comments and homilies of the Alexandrian synagogue, was quite lost amid the smoke of the pyres, the bellows of terrified beasts, the abattoir stench....

-Paul Johnson

A couple of weeks ago I read Ezekiel's vision of the eschatological Temple, and this quote from Paul Johnson's A History of Christianity came to mind. The fact is, that by the time of Jesus, Herod's Temple (and all it represented) had become Big Business, with a self-aggrandizing hierarchy that had completely lost touch with both the God and the people of Israel. I once heard a local Bible teacher ask, "What do you think the priests and elders did when the veil of the Temple split open on the first Good Friday?" Answer: "They stitched it up and went on business as usual." The institution had hardened to the point that any new voice other than its own could not be heard, even the voice of God in pain and thunder.

The irony is that as the Temple was hardening into judgment, God was raising up a new Temple outside its walls. A small group of disciples sat in the garden across the Kidron Valley, or walked the hills of Galilee, and the Holy Spirit brooded over them as he had once done over the temple of the Restoration. Something new was being nurtured. In time, Rome destroyed Jerusalem, and the church emerged as the Temple of God.

This is, of course, a pattern throughout history. Movements that begin in spontaneity and power harden over time and assume the posture of the True Church, and the Holy Spirit becomes attached to forms and doctrines which he resists because he will always be free. Movements begin their downward spiral as soon as they become self-conscious of the Spirit's presence, or see themselves as the last great move of God.

The question is, where is the Spirit moving today? What is going on outside the walls of our own comfortable traditions? Where are the genuine Sprit-filled leaders that God raises up through history? And how do the people of God stop the process of calcification that has made previous movements as hard as the stones of the Temple?

Pilgrim, the way through the Temple is a dangerous business.

Look Out, Pilgrim II

...(N)othing could hide the essential business of the Temple, which was the ritual slaughter, consumption and combustion of sacrificial cattle on a gigantic scale....To the unprepared visitor, the dignity and charity of Jewish diaspora life, the thoughtful comments and homilies of the Alexandrian synagogue, was quite lost amid the smoke of the pyres, the bellows of terrified beasts, the abattoir stench....

-Paul Johnson

Last week I read Ezekiel's vision of the eschatological Temple, and this quote from Paul Johnson's A History of Christianity came to mind. Johnson reminds us of the grubby and gory work that actually occurred on the grounds of Herod's Temple. It is easy to be fascinated with the death and carnage that the worshipper passed through on his way to prayer, and to draw analogies to the difficulties and suffering of the Christian life. But Johnson missed something in his description. Above all this bloody activity stood the Temple itself, calm and majestic, so bright that a pilgrim coming over the Mount of Olives had to shield his eyes when the sun reflected off its gold and polished marble.

I remember a member of our church years ago who was planning to go to South America as a medical missionary. He became an EMT because his ambulance took him to places where he could experience "real life." One of our mentors reminded him that pain and suffering were not "real life," but the results of the fall. "Real life" was the healing he brought to those in need. (And ultimately "real life" is the resurrected life of the future.) He was focusing on the carnage of the court yard, not the quiet power that rose above it.

When I was in college, I went through a particularly tough time my senior year (career, etc.). I remember finding comfort in looking at the stars. They never changed, the familiar constellations were always there. They transcended the confusion and fear that were part of my state of mind--a reminder that their was Someone out there who never changes.

Though Herod's Temple was destroyed, the "concept" of Temple has not changed. Ezekiel's vision of a glorified Temple was of an eschatological reality toward which we are drawn. As Rosenstock taught, the future is not a fearful unknown, but a living reality in the mind of God that shapes the present and helps us define who we are. Past, present, and future are one in Christ. We taste that future in our best and highest moments: in worship, in our stained glass sanctuaries, in our fellowship meals together. Those are the times that the future world and this world overlap. The Temple is a symbol of that future into which all the world is moving.

Pilgrim, the way through the Temple is a glorious business.

Look Out, Pilgrim

...(N)othing could hide the essential business of the Temple, which was the ritual slaughter, consumption and combustion of sacrificial cattle on a gigantic scale....To the unprepared visitor, the dignity and charity of Jewish diaspora life, the thoughtful comments and homilies of the Alexandrian synagogue, was quite lost amid the smoke of the pyres, the bellows of terrified beasts, the abattoir stench....

-Paul Johnson

This morning I was reading Ezekiel's vision of the eschatological Temple, and this quote from Johnson's A History of Christianity came to mind. I've read (and heard) countless lectures on the symbolism of the Tabernacle and the furnishings of the Temple, including a description of the Temple as seen from the Mount of Olives on a clear morning, when the sun, reflecting off gold and polished marble, blinded the pilgrim's eyes. But none of the commentators and allegorists tell the rest of the story quite like Johnson. I've always had a suspicion that under all the beautiful imagery there was another reality.

I have an aversion to blood, something I'm not proud of, but there it is. I've found myself wondering what it would have been like to be an Israelite lad taking his lamb to the place of slaughter. When it came down to it, would I become nauseous or faint? All that blood. Was there a stain on the earth when the Tabernacle moved on? How did they handle it at Herod's Temple, which had a paved court yard? Troughs?

I've thanked God often that I am on this side of the covenantal shift. Jesus became the propitiatory sacrifice for sin, the fellowship offering that brings peace between men, and the burnt offering of total dedication and worship. At a more selfish level, I am glad that I don't have to lay hands on a lamb and watch its throat cut. I am also grateful that the sacrifices of the Old Testament passed through the cross and became the bloodless oblation of the Eucharist. I much prefer bread and wine.

It is not my intention here to get into the doctrines of the atonement or of the Supper. I'm thinking about this at a personal/corporate level. If the Temple in the New Covenant is the church, where are the parallels? Cynically, I could say that the church (at least evangelicals) are willing to sacrifice human beings for orthodoxy and orthopraxy in a skinny minute. But that is, as I said, cynical.

So let me put it this way. I have loved the church and church life because of "the dignity and charity of diaspora life" and the "thoughtful comments and homilies." Stained glass, Easter lilies, the singing, the cleanness, the exhilaration of worship, the acceptance of fellow believers. I like the view of the Temple from the Mount of Olives, a foretaste of the eschaton.

But there is another side to life with Christ within me. I have said more than once that God is ruthless with my sin. Ruthless, at least, in comparison to my excuses and weak apologies. There is the smell of the blood of an unwilling animal deep within my heart, where God cuts and slices because He is much more concerned with my salvation than I am. And at a corporate level--well, love is easy at dinner in the church’s fellowship hall, where we look at each other through stained glass. But in the parking lot, at work, in the unguarded moments where the fear or anger or hurt of the other emerges, where either through a slip of the tongue or a genuine confession the truth comes out, when there is blood on the pavement, when the stained glass shatters and love becomes a call to die--that’s a different matter. And I’m speaking of relating to other believers. To reach out in love and acceptance to the people of the world, to rub shoulders with the irresponsible, the cynical, the controlling, the floundering, and that frustrating unbeliever who seems to find love and sacrifice easier than I, requires a rending that no man in his own strength can produce. Someone else must wield the knife.

Pilgrim, the way through the Temple is a messy business.

Spontaneous Earth...

I know I shouldn't like the old pagan e.e. cummings, but I do, I do...

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty, how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

Overload

The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

It may be an unwise time to blog. My health has been in grumpy mode since the pollen began. We are changing our computer system at work, with the attendant frustrations and loss of time. Our "clients" are increasingly rude, hostile, or stoned. And my Facebook/ meta-church/ electronic family has become so diverse that my inner world is expanding more quickly than I can process ideas. I am mentally tired. I am suffering from what I hope is a passing case of overload.

But the stress has had one interesting effect. I have seen Jesus through so many perspectives lately, that in frustration I've asked, "Who are you, Lord?" "I mean, really, Who are you?" My mind has become so encrusted with Christ as a theological concept, that I am again forced to the Center. And I don't mean "who are you to me." That would involve a conceptual definition. I mean, "who are you for me?" God made flesh, Man in the eternal Trinity, God suffering, God condescending, God loving, God broken, God not just giving life but giving himself as life--what does that have to do with my rising from my bed tomorrow?

I desire the trust that moves beyond knowledge, to not "concern myself with great matters, nor with things too profound for me;" to sit at his feet for a season.

"His desire is toward me..."

The church has historically thought of the Song of Songs as an allegory of Christ and his church, or of Christ and the individual soul. More recent commentators, who feel that the allegorical approach is a cover up for the church's embarrassment about all things sexual, exalt the Song as a story of two lovers, no more, no less. Delitzsch strikes a middle ground: the Song is a love story, but because all love stories are reflections of The Love Story, it can be considered a type of the greater. So far I hold with Delitzsch.

Interpretive issues aside, no Christian who repeatedly reads the Song can escape finding himself in the narrative. In this entry I want to look especially at the three confessions made by the Shulamite--confessions that are the result of the actions of her lover.

The first confession is "My beloved is mine, and I am his." It follows two opposite experiences: first, disenchantment with serving in the vineyards for her brothers (religious experience defined by someone else--legalism),and, second, the giddy awareness of being in love. She is feeling both the relief of being loved, but also the fear of going back to what she came out of. Note the order of the confession: "he is mine" is spoken first. The relationship depends on her capacity to hold on. She is tenacious out of desperation and fear. While that is a mark of a new Christian fresh from the bondage of the world, it will eventually block maturity.

Her lover does not deal with this fear by consolation. Rather, he creates situations in which she must choose between her fear and her desire for him. She prefers the safety of their country home. But he comes and calls her away--and at least one time mentions the dreaded vineyards. When she disobeys, he withdraws his presence. In two instances he does this, and both times her love for him overcomes her reticence to follow. In one case she is abused by the "watchmen on the walls," the keepers of the status quo who do not believe it is proper for a young lady to demonstrate too much exuberance about her lover.

It is impossible to read these passages and not think of the "dark night of the soul" or the kataphatic/apophatic tension I mentioned in "Boxes," March 6. Most of us spend a long time in this phase. Notice the confession at the end of this process: "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." It is the reverse of the first. It is spoken by one who has learned the joy of obedience.

But it is not the last word. The third confession is "I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me." The very words create a yearning in the heart, so close and packed with meaning, and yet so far away--causing one to stretch to hear it. This confession is not brought about by withdrawal and discipline. It is preceded by some of the most intense love poetry in any language. It is spoken out of intimacy; it is purely relational. It does not come from external experience, but from direct knowledge of the character of a person.

It is a statement of absolute rest, not lethargy; peace, not timidity; trust, not fatalism. She loves him because she knows the depth and security of his love. She returns to the vineyard, not out of obligation, but because it is where he is. May God bring us all to such a place before we die.

(Picture: 12th Century cover of a manuscript of the Song)

A Sevier Cynicism

The Sevier County Commission has the 10 Commandments posted on its wall, and opens its meetings with the Lord's Prayer. Recently the Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) have raised objections and will probably take legal action. The County Mayor has dug in and will keep the Commandments on the wall and will continue the Prayer until forced to change. The next Commission meeting will be packed with church folks and some folks from the other side, and we will have, no doubt, another American Circus, with a lot of smoke and very little clarity.

I wish I could hide somewhere and wait this one out, but my job throws me into contact every day with local government folks who are choosing sides, and want to know what I think. So I want to offer my own muddle of perceptions and presuppositions, so when someone asks me what I think, I can refer them to this blog. Most of them won't take the trouble to click this and that, so I can continue to shrug the whole thing off, knowing that my opinions are available to anyone willing to take the trouble. Here are some pretty traditional thoughts, which may or may not be inter-related or even worthy.

1) Speaking culturally, religion is the over-arching worldview that holds a culture together. That can include anything from Christianity to humanism to syncretism. There is no such thing as neutrality by that definition, because neutrality is itself a religious concept. If the American religion is syncretistic humanism, then the Christian either has to tip his hat to a higher power than Christ, perceive Christ as the archetypal syncretistic humanist, or be recalcitrant. Anyone who wants to touch this, have at it.

2) I can see that the Lord's Prayer is uniquely Christian, though the need to forgive and have daily bread are common to all men. But what's the issue with the 10 Commandments? The three great monotheistic religions of the world base their moralities on them. And I can't imagine a Buddhist or Confucian having issues with them. CS Lewis included them in what he called the Tao--the basic values common to all cultures. They are culturally fairly syncretistic. Or is the AU suggesting that blasphemy, murder, adultery, theft, and lying are valid moral options? OK. Cheap shot.

3) Gary North once did a tongue-in-cheek piece on how a group of Presbyterians could steal a Baptist church building. The Presbyterians could find a little Baptist congregation, join the church in numbers, call a congregational meeting, vote to join the local Presbytery, and deliver the congregation to the Stated Clerk, building and all. His point was that democracy cuts its own throat. Being sweet to everybody doesn’t mean everybody is sweet. Treating everyone democratically means opening the door to a lot of undemocratic folk. See Europe.

4) Calvin believed in separation of church and state. The Founding Fathers believed in separation of church and state. I believe in separation of church and state. It is a principle in the Constitution. No argument. When the mantra is quoted today it really means separation of a transcendent God and state, a whole different animal. Without the Commandments, or the Tao, or some higher absolute, the state fills the void and becomes answerable to nothing beyond itself. All humanistic societies, from Rome to modern China, are statist to the core. America has been lusting after statism since (forgive me) 1865. Whatever. None of this is new--even boring in its repetitiveness.

5) I have a prophecy about this coming meeting. The AU will have cogent, pre-planned arguments backed by the power of law. They will look, well, cool. The church will be angry and frustrated, have no cogent argument, and have no power but that of a discredited tradition. It will back down and grumble for a few more years. I just don’t think I can stand it. I hope I’m wrong.