The Story Behind the Story (I)

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.", -John 1:1

"Galadriel! Galadriel! Clear is the water of your well; White is the star in your white hand; Unmarred, unstained is leaf and land In Dwimordene, in Lorien More fair than thoughts of mortal men." -JRR Tolkien

I shared this obscure poem from Lord of the Rings because Tolkien peppers his trilogy with references to an older, brighter, and higher world that lies behind the trials of Middle Earth. In fact, he later wrote a book called The Silmarillion, to tell the story behind the story.

The Bible does the same thing. Throughout its long story of redemption, there are glimpses of a reality that transcends history. Its first words, "In the beginning...", implies that there was something there before there was a beginning. There was, simply, God: infinite in glory, beauty, otherness, purity, justice, and above all things, love. Such love begets loveliness, or an object of love, a beloved, the eternal Son. Because the Father has always loved, there has always been the Son. Both God the Father and God the Son are mutually committed to one another, and the fulfillment of each is to see the other exalted. The love between the two is so intense that (according to St Augustine) love itself takes on personhood, and proceeds from both as the Holy Spirit. This is a transcendent mystery and can only be expressed symbolically.

Notice that God has never existed alone. He has always been a community. That means he did not create man or the universe out of need, but out of joy and exuberance. It also means that God intended man to live in community ("it is not good for the man to be alone..."). God hates heresy in the fallen world because it breaks the community of the church. He hates adultery because it breaks the community of marriage. He hates selfishness because it breaks the communities of men, and even breaks a man's unity with himself.

The Bible states that man was made in the image of God. There's much theological debate over what the image means: the capacity to reason, to feel emotion, to imagine, to be spiritual. I lean towards Paul's statement in Colossians that Jesus is the image of God (1:15). In other words, Jesus was the model that God used for man when he created him. Men and women were meant to be little reflections of the Son; through their gifts, through their creativity, through their service and sharing with their Elder Brother, the Son was to be shown off to the universe. And likewise, as they turned with the Son to the Father, His glory would be increased.

As the story behind the story progresses, the Tempter enters. There is some indication that Satan hated the Son, and wanted His role as King of heaven. Since he could not dethrone Him, he turned all his energy and malice on destroying the created image. Satan succeeded in convincing man that God had a hidden agenda and couldn't be trusted. As a result, man chose autonomy, set himself up as his own god, exalted disobedience as a noble thing, and in turning away from life, fell into the cycle of selfishness and death.

Next time, the beginning of the solution.

Why Did the Hebrews Speak Hebrew?

"An object is an act outside its time element." -Eugen Rosenstock-Huessey

Two experiences led to this question:

1) I studied biblical Hebrew in the 1960's under Ludwig Dewitz, a German Jew who converted to Christianity between the world wars, and escaped from the Nazis with nothing but the shirt on his back. He was a scholar of ancient Middle Eastern languages, and a man of God. He taught like an old European school master: he made us stand at our desks and parse Hebrew verbs--if we faltered he would mutter something in Yiddish and would throw erasers at us. It was terribly humiliating, especially since we considered ourselves graduate students, and beyond such behavior. I learned through sheer terror. But I loved the man, and I can still wake up in the night going qatal,qatalah,qataltah, qatalt, etc. I can't say that I mastered the language, but I can at least find my way around with a lexicon and a word study book.

2) I recently re-read Rosenstock's The Origin of Speech, a book which I read about 5 years ago, and which was so far outside the box of western rationalism that it deserved another look. In summary, Rosenstock believed that language, not thought, was the key to understanding man and his cultures. He also believed that our western emphasis on the indicative mood, the mood of reason and reflection, did not accurately describe the reality of human life. Instead, he began with the imperative, followed by the subjunctive, followed by the narrative, and finally, by the indicative.

To put this more simply: we are all born with immediate imperatives that determine our lives ("eat your cereal," "go to bed," "avenge your father," "renounce the devil and all his works," etc.). Most of our lives are lived in the subjunctive of possibility--will we fulfill our imperatives, or fail? After we achieve our imperatives, we "tell the tale," we relive our success and failures and write the story. Finally, as old men, we analyze the whole experience, and only at the end of our lives, enter the indicative. When life begins in the indicative, all of life is cold and abstract, because the indicative freezes it into something motionless; hence, "an object is an act outside its time element."

All story follows this pattern. But story is closer to reality than abstract analysis. Reality is story! I've used this before, but consider the Lord of the Rings: The Ring must be destroyed (imperative). The bulk of the trilogy is a quest--some fail, some succeed, but the quest reaches its end (subjunctive). The men write poems and histories, and the elves sing songs. The main characters pass into the West (narrative). Sam finishes the manuscript and writes a conclusion (indicative). Isn't this a description of all our lives?

Rosenstock also describes our stories lived out in "cups of time." An imperative gives us meaning and forces us into the future. Its fulfillment ends that cup of time. "Honey, take out the garbage," only is completed with "the garbage has been taken out." Otherwise the cup is not closed, and tension remains. When cups are not closed, an unfulfilled moment is created, and it must be relived til sealed. When Lee's command, "Get those people off that hill," was met later with "Sir, I have no division!" a cup of time was created that is still literally reenacted at Gettysburg every year. We never rest til cups are sealed.

So, back to my original question. Why did the Hebrews speak Hebrew? Every language explains the way its speakers perceive reality. Consider the almost non-existent use of the subjunctive in English (as compared to ancient Latin and Greek, which both had complete subjunctive conjugations). We only see it in the phrase, "if I were you...." All other instances of the subjunctive are expressed by helping words: "if," "maybe," "perhaps," "except." But the fact that we no longer have a mood to express probability in our language reveals how much we revere abstraction, and life itself becomes a "happening" or an "event," robbed of time. The present is an abstraction in the indicative; it is a force moving into the future in the subjunctive.

Biblical Hebrew was outside the western box. It contained seven binyanim, roughly what we would call moods. Six of these were either active or passive voices. To use English equivalents: an indicative, active and passive; an intensive, active and passive; a causative, active and passive; and a reflexive, which by nature can have only one voice. If the reflexive is placed in the middle, three actives on the left, and three passives on the right, an outline of Hebrew moods resembles a menorah, which modern Hebrew teachers use as a visual aid to understand the structure of the language.

Old Covenant Hebrew thought grew out of their language, and their language affected ideation, and if we believe in Biblical inspiration, their view of God and His world, and God’s view of reality should “leak out” through the structure of the Old Covenant language. The amazing thing is how difficult it is to find any discussion of this fact. I dug out my old Hebrew grammar book and read the introduction. It told me about the author, and why he chose to use his very systematic approach to learning the grammar, and how it had helped countless students to meander the binyanim conjugations, but not once did he tell me why the Hebrews spoke Hebrew--a perfect example of the tyranny of the indicative, a lot of hows and whats and no whys.

Let me illustrate with something I think I understand. Hebrew has no subjunctive mood. At least, it had no conjugation that required the long vowel sounds of the Greek and Latin subjunctives. I say, “no subjunctive,” until one considers the Hebrew tense system. There is no present tense in biblical Hebrew. That function is taken by the participle, and sometimes by the infinitive, when necessary. (I read somewhere that modern Hebrew uses the participle with helping pronouns to express the present.)

Biblical Hebrew had two tenses: complete, and incomplete. An action was either finished, or was on the way to completion. The only way that can be expressed in English is with the past or the future tenses. Complete, incomplete. Done, or not done, or partially done. We rest in a finished work, or strive to complete it. I said in the last paragraph that Hebrew had no subjunctive; but here it is, hidden in the cup of time created by the beginning of an action and its fulfillment. The whole tense system creates a subjunctive mood. And because it is subjunctive, it is also eschatological. The whole language sucks us into the future towards a fulfillment. “And it shall be in that day” draws us towards “and it came to pass.” I find this an incredibly beautiful expression of struggle and life lived with a hoped-for goal in mind, so different from our present tense indicative obsessed with scientific definition (“the human being is made up of 70% water”). Why didn’t the text book author tell me this? Because he is western scholar whose job it is to turn a living language into a frozen object.

Now I want to look at a couple of other binyanim, with much less certainty about their meaning. I must admit at this point that I know nothing about modern Hebrew, or about parallel thought forms in other Middle Eastern languages. For all I know, Arabic, Urdu, and Farsi manifest the same concepts of time. That would draw us into a study of the Islamic mind, and, wow, do I digress.

Biblical Hebrew possessed what we called the piel/pual conjugation, or, in English, the intensive form. It basically shortened vowel sounds, which connects it indirectly to the imperative, which is the shortest form of the verb in most languages. That's because the imperative is both command and warning. The intensive forms are translated in English with "very," "exceedingly," "continually." In some cases they simply intensify a verb: "break" put into the intensive form became "smash." In other cases time is involved: "weep" put into the intensive form did not mean to "weep loudly;" it meant rather to "weep continually."

That's all interesting, but the question still remains: why would a culture find a need to create a whole complex conjugation around a concept that we simply express with "very?" I've read that the Hebrews were realists, earthy, and not given to abstract meditation or reflection. I'm not sure about that. The author of Ecclesiastes wore himself out with reflection, and concluded that man should eat and drink and enjoy his labor--a carpe diem theme. It wasn't so much that the Hebrews didn't reflect; they reflected intensely, almost violently ("whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might"). In fact, "live to the hilt" describes the mood of much of the narratives in the Old Testament. The intensity of their lives grew out of faith in an intense God. They, at least the godly ones, would be far too intense, pushy, physical, and emotionally raw to get along in our church culture, which says a lot about how frivolous our western approach to God can be.

Lastly, Hebrew also possessed the hiphil/hophal conjugation. It was causative. Normally translated "he/she caused thus and thus to happen," it also could form a new concept. For instance, the causative of the verb to "go" meant "send:" to cause to go was of course to send. Combined with its person and gender and an accusative pronominal suffix, an English phrase like "she caused him to fall" could be condensed into one word--quite a feat of grammatical acrobatics to English speakers. At any rate, why did the Old Covenant people find it necessary to form an entire verb system around the idea of causation?

The first use of the causative is in Gen. 1:4: “And God divided the light from the darkness.” The verb in the indicative is “separated,” and in the causative becomes “and God caused the light to be separated from the darkness,” or simply, “divided.” I don’t want to make too much of the fact God is the subject in the first use of the causative; I suppose it could have been Adam, or Eve, or the devil. Nevertheless, there is a hint that all causation goes back to God as the Creator. Could it be that the Hebrew language manifests a belief in final purpose, an eschaton growing out of God’s predestination and providential care of history? Hence, a conjugation based on causation.

All this is pure speculation, and poor at that, because I’m out here on my own. I am back again to the question, “Why did the Hebrews speak Hebrew?” It amazes me that I suffered erasers and Yiddish deprecations of my mental ability, strange lists of sounds, many years of struggling with large lexicons and word books because I felt I owed my congregations the honesty of sound exegesis (and remember, I did all this backwards), and no one has ever told me WHY the Hebrews used the patterns of word and thought that I simply memorized. It brought me no closer to the interior mind of the Old Testament saints, and consequently, the heart of God. Is there anybody out there that has come across a book, a website, an insight, etc, or am I stuck with the tyranny of the indicative?

Extremes (2)

(Am doing "devotionals" at my job on ba

sic Protestant doctrine. Thought I'd blog them as well.)

"See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil." -Deuteronomy 30:15

"Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious." -GK Chesterton

Last week I suggested that American Christianity has weakened itself by blunting its sharp edges and turning a religion of remarkable extremes into a comfortable world-view with hazy definitions. Consider the following common biblical dichotomies that are so extreme they are opposites:

Heaven--hell, Life--death, Light--darkness, Freedom--bondage, Holiness--depravity, Grace--wrath

Consider, also, that God Himself is an extreme paradox. The fathers described Him as "Three Persons in One Essence." Was God one God? Absolutely. Was God three Persons? Absolutely. Was God three Gods? No. Was God one God with three personal manifestations? No. Do the members of the Trinity add up to one God? No. Each one is fully God, not a third of God. Chesterton was right. The church believed that God was one, and God was three, and believed both furiously; or we might say, extremely.

This God, in turn, reveals extremes in His attributes. He is absolutely just and unbending in His insistence that no law in His universe, moral or physical, can be broken without serious consequences. His reaction to lawlessness is anger. He is also loving, and carries out an incredible program to meet the demands of His own justice, called simply, the cross.

The person of Jesus is a combination of extremes. He claimed to be God. He did miracles like God. He forgave sins like God. The high priest of His own religion was so appalled by this claim that he sought and achieved His death. Yet a hardened Roman executioner called Him God, solely on the basis of watching the way He died.

He also referred to Himself as the Son of Man. He was born in a hovel. He ate and drank with the poor and the marginalized. He went to weddings and parties. He was hungry and thirsty. He grew tired. He bled and knew pain. He cried over the death of a good friend. He understood temptation--the worst being to use His divine power to circumvent the plan of God--and overcame it. The church Fathers stated it philosophically: "(Christ is) perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood..." (Creed of Chalcedon). And, again as Chesterton reminded is, the church believed that confession furiously, extremely.

Lastly, think about inner, subjective Christian experience. My pastor likes to sum up the Christian life with two phrases: "You are more evil than you know, and you are more loved than you know." Christians understand the tension of these extremes. Love and grace are like lights that shine on the darkness within. The more we experience them, the more we comprehend our own depravity. And the knowledge of depravity drives us to grace and love.

The cycle goes deeper and deeper, or if you prefer, higher and higher. Christians never stop changing. And one thing becomes obvious: Christianity is not a comfortable cup of latte, or the warm fuzzies we get at the church picnic. It's extreme, and like all extremes, it stretches us. To quote CS Lewis: "Love's as hard as nails." Next: The Story Behind the Story

Extremes (Introduction)

I've recently begun a devotional at work on basic Christianity. As long as I'm writing, thought I'd blog it too.

"See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil." -Deuteronomy 30:15

"Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious." -GK Chesterton

EXTREMES (introduction)

One of the great challenges to the church today is the drastic cultural shift of the last 50 years, especially in the way the individual sees himself. My father's generation valued faithfulness and loyalty; that's why churches of that era had cemeteries. One generation expected to be in the same church as their parents, and be buried next to them. Today's generation, however, no longer shares those values, but is more committed to personal fulfillment. This is not necessarily a bad value, and it forces the church to shift to questions of fulfillment if she is to speak with clarity. But no one today is going to be buried next to Grandpa. He was a Christian, his son was an upwardly mobile agnostic, and his daughter in turn is a committed wiccan.

On one hand, the church should be excited about the modern concern with fulfillment. The gospel of Christ claims to be the ultimate definition of who man is and how his most basic needs are met. On the other hand, a quest for fulfillment means that all possibilities are open, and the world, including the church, is now a huge shopping mall of competing ideas.

The church is huffing and puffing to catch up in the competition. I read a Catholic author recently who argued that the great fault of Protestantism was the infinite splitting and division that occurred after the Reformation. His call was to come back to Mother Church with her infallible tradition and teaching office. What he failed to see was that in American culture the Roman Church is just another voice. There is no way around the fact that the American church is a potpourri of choices, and churches set forth their wares in the open market, hoping to hook someone's personal quest for meaning.

It's not unusual for visitors at my home church to declare at the door that they're "church shopping" (I hate the term). That means they are trying to find a particular combination of teaching and practice that make them feel "fulfilled." I picture myself with a half opened overcoat with watches hanging on the inside: "How about this little number here--slightly used, with a Methodist face, and matching hands that glow in the dark with Pentecostal fervor." Or how about an evangelical Starbucks: "I'd like a large cup of grace and love, with a dash of good works (so I can feel OK about myself), a hint of just enough suffering to look humble, but leave off the heavy doctrine--it gives me a headache." Don't shake my world. Just fulfill me.

I saw a spot on the news recently in which baseball fans were questioning the practice of walking a talented batter. It means that the best seldom get to perform, and the less talented play the game. The fans don't see as many great plays. Excellence takes a back seat to winning.

I wonder if that's not a metaphor for the church. At her best, the church is full of extremes: martyrs, heretics, councils that settled life and death issues, renewals, revivals, reformations, and saints. Her doctrine breeds sheer terror and joyous ecstasy. What can be more extreme than the notion that God became man? Nothing mediocre there! Yet I fear that the church in our culture has settled for a cup of latte, or to stick with the metaphor, "Ball four; take your base." I personally think the church needs to forgo selling a product, and return to confessing her extremes. More next time. . . .

Evangelicals on the Road to Somewhere Else

A Review of Journeys of Faith: Evangelicalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Anglicanism. Robert L. Plummer, General Editor

This was a fun book to read, and definitely had a different format than most books that explore defections from evangelicalism to the "high" churches. In the section on Orthodoxy, for instance, the convert presented his case, which was answered by an evangelical, which was in turn rebutted by the convert. This pattern was repeated in the sections on Catholicism and Anglicanism. And just to reverse the trend, there was a section by a Catholic turned Protestant, with a rebuttal and a rebuttal of the rebuttal.

I can't say that any of the doctrinal issues have changed. The Catholic blames all the divisions of western Christendom on the Reformation, with a hint that secular humanism is also an offspring of the events of the 16th Century. The Orthodox sets out to prove that the West is in error because it is, well, western; and describes an intellectual and emotional conversion to a whole different way of perceiving reality--which explains why all the Orthodox that I've known or read happen to be brilliant thinkers capable of such a feat. The Anglican writer describes a renewed love for history and for liturgy. This may come as a shock, but he quotes CS Lewis, and speaks of his influence on his worldview, along with GK Chesterton. This sounds vaguely familiar.

So, what's going on here?

1) Psychological analysis. I am about to say something totally bizarre, and I hope humorous; but I am saying it from experience, not as an outsider. Raised a Presbyterian, I became deeply involved in the charismatic movement of the 1960’s and 70’s. In the 1980’s I began to burn out and look for historic continuity and consistency in the Christian faith. Without going into all the details, I emerged a few years later in a small, conservative Anglican communion similar to the one described in Plummer’s book. In a short time I went from anti-institutional spontaneity to wearing a collar and making the sign of the cross. It was a breath of fresh air to not have to do one better every service, but sink into the beauty and objectivity of the prayer book. I began to understand why my early heroes like Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien drew so much life from the Christian Liturgy. I felt cozy and secure.

I was struck while reading Journeys of Faith how common this experience is. Every writer had been where I was and described the need for “something more” in ways that resonated with me. Interestingly, all had been in some form of ministry for roughly 20 years, which would make most of them fortyish when they began a new quest. I have a subtle feeling that there is a need for radical change and a wider view and a deeper sense of security for men at that age. OK, laugh if you want. Much of the ecclesiastical shifts around that age bear a striking resemblance to a male mid-life crisis. That may lie behind some of the defections that evangelical churches have experienced since the 1960’s. Thank you, BF Skinner.

2) Ecclesiological strictures. My experience was different from the men in Plummer’s book in one sense: I did not stay in my new-found haven. I am one of the few men who has actually outlived his mid-life crisis. While I loved Anglicanism, it (at least at the local level) did not love me. I found myself at 60 out of a church, out of a denomination, and out of a collar. Anne and I let gravity take its course, and we ended up in a charismatic church with Presbyterian (Reformed) theology. This descent into the far past was expounded several decades ago by St. Dorothia of Kansas when she said “There’s no place like home.”

So why are people abandoning evangelicalism? I was going at this point to suggest that it’s because evangelicalism is not charismatic enough, and not Calvinistic enough. In other words, its not like me. Then I lapsed into some sort of euphoric state that only an old guy (I turn 70 this month) can have, and began to see boxes--little boxes, and big boxes, and men shouting “My box is bigger (and better) than your box,” and I was afraid I was in some Freudian nightmare. I thought of the fact that there is more than one Christian where I work, and maybe that’s where my church is--out there, where God had to drive the Jerusalem church because it wouldn’t leave the city, and that seed grows better when it is scattered than when it is gathered, and really, who gives a rat’s behind who wins the True Church Award?

Sorry to lose it there. I’m totally off the point (maybe there’s such a thing as stream of consciousness blogging). But there’s something afoot in the land.

John Flavel's The Fountain of Life

I just finished reading John Flavel's The Fountain of Life. Flavel was an English Presbyterian who lived through the Civil Wars of the early 1600's, and who, like most Presbyterians, would be classified as a Puritan. He preached faithfully, even when his ministry was curtailed by the Act of Uniformity of 1662.

I like the Puritans, in spite of the caricature of them as constipated, legalistic, sexually repressed, witch burning men in black with buckles on their shoes, who killed the Indians they with whom they ate Thanksgiving dinner. There has to be something appealing about a movement (on both sides of the Atlantic) that arouses so much hostility and misrepresentation both then and now.

The Puritans were all great writers, verbose by modern standards. There are no contemporary writers who dig as deeply into their own hearts to find grounds for repentance (see John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners), or who were as joyous and emotional in their experience of Christ's love for them and their love for Christ (see Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections).

The fact is that the Puritans loved Christ, and wrote about Christ, and searched their souls to make sure they were bound to Christ. Flavel wrote:

"He (Christ) is bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, a garment to the naked, healing to the wounded; and whatever a soul can desire is found in him....Take away Christ, and where is the loveliness of any enjoyment? The best creature-comfort apart from Christ is but a broken cistern. It cannot hold one drop of true comfort. It is with the creature--the sweetest and loveliest creature--as with a beautiful image in a mirror: turn away the face and where is the image? Riches, honors, and comfortable relations are sweet when the face of Christ smiles upon us through them; but without him, what empty trifles are they all?"

The Fountain of Life is a detailed exposition of Christ's atoning work, beginning with the cost of our salvation in the heart of the eternal Trinity, moving through the incarnation, the humility and suffering of Christ through his lifetime, and ending with His passion, resurrection, ascension, session, and final triumph. Flavel unpacks the absolute all-sufficiency, all-pervasiveness, all-completed work of Christ on our behalf, a work approved and accepted by the Father, and confirmed by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon vessels that were previously unclean.

Flavel makes no apology for the doctrine of the Substitutionary Atonement. Of course, The Fountain of Life is not a doctrinal apologetic at all. It is aimed at lost sinners and believers who are seeking assurance of the love of God. But the doctrine of Christ's suffering and dying in our place pervades the book.

Flavel makes two assumptions:

1) Man is fallen beyond repair, and unless God takes the initiative, is under the wrath of God and an eternal curse. Flavel: "Man, by the apostasy, is become a most disordered and rebellious creature, opposing his maker, as the First Cause, by self-dependence; as the Chief Good, by self-love; as the highest Lord, by self-will; and as the Last End, by self-seeking. Thus he is quite disordered, and all his actions are irregular. But by regeneration the disordered soul is set right; this great change being, as the Scripture expresses it, the renovation of the soul after the image of God...."

2) God Himself supplies the antidote in Christ, who as God and representative Man bears the curse that rests upon our sin, bears the whole load, and in the process declares us free. His ascension and session are the Father's proof that the sacrifice is sufficient. Flavel: "O what a melting consideration is this! that out of his agony comes our victory; out of his condemnation, our justification; out of his pain, our ease; out of his stripes, our healing; out of his gall and vinegar, our honey; out of his curse, our blessing; out of his crown of thorns, our crown of glory; out of his death, our life: if he could not be released, it was that you might. If Pilate gave sentence against him, it was that the great God might never give sentence against you. If he yielded that it should be with Christ as they required, it was that it might be with our souls as well as we can desire. And therefore, thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift."

I realize that the doctrine of penal substitution is rejected in some parts of the church, accepted by others but not seen as all-sufficient, and is a bit of an embarrassment even among Protestants. Personally, I find it a great comfort and a joy beyond anything hoped for. I also believe we should move closer to the Puritans in the church's proclamation of the gospel in an age that resents God's right to be God. Let me close with Flavel's conclusion:

But now reader, let me tell thee, that if ever God send forth these two grim sergeants, his law, and thine own conscience, to arrest thee for thy sins, if thou find thyself dragged away by them towards that prison from whence none return, that are once clapt up therein, and that in this unspeakable distress Jesus Christ manifest himself to thy soul, and open thy heart to receive him, and become thy surety with God, pay all thy debts, and cancel all thy obligations, thou wilt love him at another rate than others do; his blood will run deeper in thine eyes than it does in the shallow apprehensions of the world; he will be altogether lovely, and thou wilt account all things but dung and dross in comparison of the excellency of Jesus Christ thy Lord."

Spring Update

For some reason I feel guilty when I don't blog on a regular basis--maybe because I picture the hundreds of disappointed friends who found I had nothing to say this week. This is definitely a neurotic fantasy that needs correction. Anyway, for you real people out there, here is an update.

Anne and I are both increasingly involved in the ministry of Trinity Chapel in Knoxville, and since we are both still working, our time gets spread thin. Trinity has been a safe place for us over the last ten years, a place of growth and healing, a place to readjust, and more than anything, a place to see the fulfillment of the vision for church that has evolved in us during our years in the ecclesiastical jungle. Trinity is establishing a sound doctrinal base in Reformation theology while continuing to adhere to its charismatic roots. (Can you believe a group of charismatics coming together to study Grudem's Systematics?) Trinity also has past roots in the inner city, and is taking a renewed look at what it means to be a community, and its responsibility to the city at large. Any of you who know me realize that being part of this combination is like throwing a pig in the mud!

I also need to mention that Trinity Chapel has been attracting old and beat up ex-ministry somethings during the past years. I've never seen a group of Christians with as much experience and gifting under one roof, coupled with a leadership that has the vision to revitalize them.

Anne has been teaching a women's study on Thursday mornings, using the inductive approach she learned in Inter-Varsity. It's good to see her productive and working change in others' lives.

I've done some teaching at our Wednesday night services, and am about to begin a Sunday AM class on the life qualities listed in 2 Peter 1:5-7. It's been good to get on the floor with my books, whom I consider to be old friends, dust and all. I love exegesis. (I have some videos on the church's website: http://www.trinitydownloads.com/262.php.) We've also begun leading a house church, with our friends the Marleys, in north Knoxville. Right now we're building a core group and getting used to each other.

It seems odd that, though we live (and I work) in Sevier County and enjoy the entertainment and beauty here, we've never had a deeply rooted ministry here. I don't know whether that's for spiritual, psychological, or cultural reasons. At any rate, most of our friends, church relationships, shopping, and Anne's work, are in Knox County. I'm glad we bought a house near I-40!

We're heading to Hilton Head next weekend to celebrate Anne's mother's 100th birthday. She's had some physical set-backs lately, but is still mentally sharp, and definitely the most positive, optimistic person I know. We're expecting @50 family members, plus her friends at the Seabrook. Beth is coming down from Charlotte, and David is flying in from Los Angeles (traveling is hard on Channon's health--we'll miss her).

We're working on a late spring vacation on the Island, and thinking about a trip to California in the fall. Otherwise, life goes on. Blessings, everybody!