Can We Stop with the Over-Spiritualizing?

A few months ago, my alma mater (Eastern Nazarene College), sent out a donor letter with a copy of Max Lucado's book, Unshakable Hope. I really, really hope some alum paid for all these copies to be sent out and funds from the school itself were not used. Still, I want to support my school, so I'm reading the book before deciding whether to give it away or just recycle it.

Max Lucado, if you don't know, is a pastor from Texas, but one of the more prolific evangelical authors of recent times. He's published 40 some books and the jacket of this one boasts 130 million total books in print. His writing is basically a Christian version of self-help, with lots of bible verses and basic affirmations. It's not terrible. I don't always (or often) agree with his theology, but I have found his writing helpful from time to time (especially when I was younger and less confident in my own beliefs).

I don't want to trash it, but it's not my thing.

As I read through the book, some chapters seem really good - like they'd be incredible helpful to people who need a dose of hope. Others (far fewer) seem problematic, like they're going to provide a short term fix, but make things worse in the long run. These tend to be over-spiritualized chapters. It's not surprising; one of the hallmarks of evangelical theology is a tendency to downplay or ignore humanity. Modern evangelicalism was birthed out of a theological divide that, in shorthand, led to liberals being associated with social justice and real-world problems, while conservatives became associated with eternal destiny and spiritual health. These are just stereotypes, but they're important.

In one chapter, Lucado talks about how the Devil is the embodiment of evil and selfishness and those people who deny the real, personal existence of a devil are just playing into his schemes for damning our souls. This is very typical evangelical fodder (although a bit dated) perfectly appropriate for someone Lucado's age and for his core audience. I'd argue this kind of talk ends up letting us, as people, off the hook. We blame the devil for our sin and it creates a layer of separation from responsibility. Evangelicals have been trained to take the shame and guilt of sin on ourselves (sometimes too much), but we struggle accepting responsibility, which, in my view, is a real key to overcoming and redeeming our faults and failures.

The most recent chapter I read started and ended with the powerful story of a college softball player who injured her knee rounding first base on a game-winning home run. The rules prevented her teammates from helping her to reach home plate, so the opposing team decided to do it, even though it meant them losing the game. It's a profound story of compassion and selflessness - the kind of thing that can bring a tear to the eye and stir the soul.

Lucado uses it in an interesting way, though. The softball story is bookended around an extended explanation of Jesus' humanity. (Lucado's real talent is somehow extending what should be a paragraph of information into a chapter; that's how you write forty books while working full-time as a pastor.) He talks about how Jesus experienced life as we do, understands our suffering, and offers a solution.

All of that is great. He ends the chapter, though, after revealing the conclusion of the story, by saying what that opposing team did for the injured player in what Jesus wants to do for us. We're stuck in the failure and inadequacy of life, incapable of doing what we need to do and God makes up the difference. That's all true, but it missed the actual, practical point: that we're called to do for others what those players did for their opponent. We're called to be the difference for each other.

Now, I grew up hearing that kind of argument refuted as humanistic. God does for us; we don't do for ourselves. Ultimately that comes back to the Calvinist idea of total depravity - that sin completely removed the image of God from humanity and we're incapable of doing good without God.
That's not the foundational argument for over-spiritualizing, but it is a contributing factor. Many evangelicals want to be careful not to attribute anything good to humanity.

I don't think that's a real worry, because I don't believe in total depravity. I certainly affirm that people are incapable of being good on their own, but I wholeheartedly believe God has always intended to make us partners in the redemption of the universe. God works with us and in us - sometimes before we're even aware of it - to bring good to the world. It doesn't diminish the power of God to say that we can be agents of grace and salvation to one another - so long as we recognize the work of God underneath and within it all.

The real issue evangelicals struggle with - at least in this instance - is the notion that this life doesn't matter. We get so focused on being "in the right place" when we die that our lives become a means to an end. I don't know whether Lucado himself would say it (I don't like putting words in someone's mouth), but many evangelicals would say that grand gesture in the softball game doesn't mean squat if the people involved haven't prayed the right prayer and committed their lives to Jesus Christ.

That's far too dichotomous for me. It's a simplistic separation between the physical and spiritual - something the New Testament and the earliest Christians fought tooth and nail against. Jesus profoundly merged the physical and spiritual; the Jewish tradition (of which Jesus was deeply a part) says we are not us without both elements. The Lord's Supper, the center of our faith, makes it very clear how these two things are completely intertwined.

Yes, Jesus wants to do for us spiritually what those players did so graciously and self-sacrificially for their opponent. We can be lifted up, made whole, healed, and redeemed by the love of Jesus Christ. But that love was manifested in a physical act: suffering and dying out of love for the world. That love continues to be manifested in physical acts, like the one in question and a billion others around the world every day.

In fact, Jesus tells his disciples they will do even greater things than him. Maybe, just maybe, some of those things are fallible, sinful, dysfunctional human beings responding to the love of God by being agents of salvation to each other in the midst of the world. I don't believe eternity is some far off place. I don't believe "afterlife" is the best way to talk about heaven. Eternity begins here and now. God's redemption is happening as we speak. Our call is to be part of it as God calls an enables.

I believe strongly the condition of your soul has far more to do with the condition of your hands and heart than most evangelicals have been led to believe. I suppose there's some danger out there that we could focus so much on humanity that we forget God. I don't think it's likely, though. After all, no one has put more faith in humanity than has God. We'd do well to follow that example.

The Ballad of Smith and Wesson

I spent most of my formative years in Vermont. We moved there near the start of second grade and left after middle school. I grew up there - for all intents and purposes - which means I grew up in a hunting culture. I haven't lived there in twenty-five years, so I can't say if things have changed, but certainly it was NOT a gun culture, at least not in the way you see today. Hunting was (and presumably is) a part of life. Kids went hunting as soon as they were old enough to take a hunter's safety course. My middle school was one wing of the high school and there were pickup trucks in the student lot with rifles (plural) on racks in the back. In what might be an apocryphal story (although if it is, I've done a phenomenal job of creating the memory of a photograph in my head) one of my sixth-grade classmates killed a deer with a .22 while out squirrel hunting before school one day (the photo is of a brutally mutilated deer head, because .22 bullets are small and it takes a lot of them to kill a deer).

We were not a hunting family, as anyone who's ever met my father could tell you (although there's a great/traumatic story about my mother picking off a moving groundhog with a head shot from 150 yards in defense of her garden), and guns have never really interested me, but I grew up around it. Hunting was part of life; there were guns everywhere. I never once felt afraid.

Of course the notion of self-defense never came into it. We lived in a small town where literally everyone knew everyone else; crime was not something to which one gave much thought - outside of kids from the state college getting into whatever mischief they happened to invent for themselves.

I say this only to register that I understand. Guns may not be in my DNA the way they are for some people, but I get hunting culture at least.
I'm serious when I say, although I'm no fan of guns, that I have no intention to get rid of them. I know why they're important and useful and proper in the right context.

I also spent a good deal of time volunteering and working in Kansas City during grad school, specifically at an after school program that catered to low income, largely minority students. I went to the funeral of a 15 year old kid who got shot, not even in anything crime adjacent, but in an accident with a handgun - which, I think more than anything, illustrates the problem of gun prevalence in inner-cities, coupled with an extreme lack of knowledge and preparation for how to use them.

I've got strong views on what I'd do with gun laws, were it up to me, but I hope, at the very least, I can understand the vastly different context from which people come to this debate.

The one that's totally foreign to me, though, as I've alluded to a couple times, is the true "gun" culture. I see people on youtube videos shooting ridiculously high-powered weapons at targets and almost literally blowing shit up. To some extend, as a former teenage boy, I get the adrenaline rush and excitement of the power. Although it's definitely not my thing, I do understand, to some extent, why having and shooting big guns is kinda cool. I won't claim to understand the culture surrounding this past time, though. I don't want to step in some place where I don't belong.

I'd like to at least be sympathetic, though - since the root of our dysfunction when it comes to guns is the fear we invoke in those who disagree with us.

If there were laws that banned assault weapons and super high-powered guns that, while possible to use for hunting are generally designed to kill people, and hunters were free to keep, buy, sell, and use their guns for their intended purposes, I don't think you'd get a lot of pushback.
Yes, the libertarian ideologues and conspiracy wackos would be up in arms (literally and problematically), but you wouldn't have a ton of major opposition. The problem is, those people involved in hunting culture just don't trust the people on the other side - they're not confident gun reform would be fair - and they've got a point.

Listen, I'm a pro-regulation guy. As much as I like and espouse the notion of anarchy, I get the reasons why a government bureaucracy is essential, but you'd have to admit it's a bit absurd. The inefficiency and waste of our system is mind-boggling and unnecessary - it's just the easiest way to do things, which is almost never the best. It's not impossible for us to image that gun regulations would go the same way.

Then you've also got the people who really do want to see every gun in the world destroyed. I get that from an ideological angle - in a perfect world we wouldn't need them, even for hunting, but it's also hard for me to find real fault with target shooting, as a pleasurable pastime. Yet those people exist - and they're generally the most vocal (along with the gun nuts who would complain most vociferously about reform) and you can't deny that it's all a bit scary.

I won't save the punchline for the end: this post is about fear. Extremes on either side of this thing have fear as a motivator. There's a lot of common sense in requiring registration and tracking for guns the way we do for cars - it's not too hard to sign the back of a registration form when you sell a car and transfer the ownership at the DMV - or limiting the capabilities of guns people can keep in homes. There's no common sense in seeing gun-toting murderers around every corner (which also goes for Presidential characterizations of immigrants, too, by the way). Yes, some people have suffered real gun-related traumas that cause them to literally see gun-toting murderers around every corner - and with good reason - but those are not healthy people, operating in functional or encouragable ways.

There's a lot of common sense in hunting as means of controlling animal populations (or simply improving the food supply) and there is a legitimate public debate to be had about the time, place, and degree of self-defense that's in the public interest. It's downright delusional to think private citizens should be armed to combat a future tyrannical government; those are the lunatic whims of fantasy world - not because tyrannical governments don't do bad things to ordinary citizens, but because the government in question has nuclear weapons and a fleet of sophisticated drones that could level your doomsday bunker before you even get the AR out of the ceiling tiles.

They call it the "lunatic fringe," because fear-reactions are not logical or helpful - and they're not limited to one "side" or the other.
Fear is the enemy, not guns or snowflakes. It's not even the hate and evil that make people kill no matter the weapon in their hands. It's fear. Being afraid is perfectly human; reacting out of that fear is the most inhuman thing you could possibly do. What we call "human nature" is actually the animalistic part of us. What separates us from the animals is our ability to recognize our own instincts, evaluate them and act against them, if necessary.

We don't because we're afraid of each other. Why? Because we're mean and cruel and evil and vindictive to each other. We're selfish and we take a mile when given an inch. We're generally subhuman and we excuse it as natural.

What saddens me most about the gun "conversation" right now is that it's not a conversation at all. We take our media-driven talking points and beat each other about the head with them, all pawns in the powerful's attempt to distract us from actual discussion. Who's paying for rallies and events are irrelevant to the discussion; rich interests on both sides pay to support people who agree with them. Ideology doesn't matter either. I know it's strange hearing me say that, but when it comes to enacting public policy, it's true - it's one of the reasons I'm not cut out to enact public policy. Philosophical notions of freedom and utopia are profoundly important, but entirely irrelevant to governing the real world in which we must all live.

If I leave you with anything, let it be that a call to self-reflection. However we're responding to people, whatever actions we advocate, let us do so without fear. Don't think the worst of someone with whom you disagree, but give them the benefit of the doubt: at the very least, take them at their word. Be graceful. You won't get what you want, because that's how life works; don't come to the conversation assuming you can or will. And please, please, please, don't get caught up in distractions and irrelevance; the arguments you hear on cable news aren't good or relevant or worth hearing, let alone repeating.

Talk to people like people; if we respect each other and genuinely seek the good of the other, not thinking first of ourselves, we'd already be in a better world.

Bernie and Condemnation

In my long tradition of dealing with contemporary issues long after they've fallen by the wayside, I'd like to weigh in on the confrontation between Bernie Sanders and Trump nominee Russ Vought from early June. It made a lot of headlines at the time, with people drawing lines and choosing sides and lobbing bombs back and forth at each other.

A transcript of the exchange can be viewed on any number of sites I'd rather not link to, but here's one anyway, since you need context.

The crux of the matter is Vought's comment, in support of his alma mater, Wheaton College, that people of non-Christian faiths (specifically Muslims in this particular case, but it's expanded to all) "do not know God" and "stand condemned." Sanders uses this statement as a means of rejecting (or voting for the rejection) of Vought in a government position because this view might be offensive or fear-inducing in people whom he's referenced.

In my view, both of these guys made real fools of themselves.

Sanders is easy - he falsely equated personal opinion with action. You need to show actual discrimination to justify denying someone a position of power, at least in the US government. Vought's belief that some people are condemned is just a belief, unless there's proof he acted on it. Shoot, this is a position in the Office of Management and Budget, for crying out loud, are there even religious issues that this guy would have power to rule on in the first place? Even if Sanders thought he might act prejudicially, he would be hard-pressed to come up with a scenario where such prejudice could even be possible.

People have rightly pointed out that this is, essentially, making a religious test for office - something the constitution forbids. Of course, what we conveniently never talk about in those scenarios are the ways in which our laws already impinge on the freedom of religion for things like child brides or abusive corporal punishment, to name a few. It's not outside the realm of possibility that "condemnation" on the basis of religion, might be one step on that same train Sanders would like us to pursue.

All of those are interesting, but what I didn't hear too much of is criticism for this notion of condemnation coming from Vought. It's terrible theology, to begin with, and just over-archingly anti-Christian to make such a statement. I could see justification, perhaps, for the condemnation of specific actions, but to condemn not just individuals, but whole groups of people, simply for a theological difference, feels like precisely the kind of thing Jesus denounced the Pharisees and religious leaders of his day for doing all the time.

In fact, I feel like Jesus said, at one point, "God did not send his son to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." Time and again Jesus failed to condemn anyone, except those claiming religious authority. We miss that boat a lot, as Christians, and maybe it takes a wildly over-zealous, secular Jew to get someone to notice.

I don't think Sanders was remotely right - at least constitutionally - in his statements and his badgering. In fact, it sounded an awful lot like condemnation in its own right. At the same time, Vought shouldn't be defending those words; he should be profusely apologizing for them.
To use the name of Jesus, the Church - his followers - as the means for doing it just makes me sad. The people most committed to the name of Jesus Christ don't appear to know Jesus at all. Rather they've bought into a dogmatic theology that serves its own internal logic more than the God it purports to represent.

It's intellectual assent taken to its logical conclusion - a person's acceptance or rejection of the idea of Jesus overrules individual action.
No one is saved or condemned based on their religious affiliation - we're saved or condemned by our commitment to love and selfless service -
you know, living in the way of Jesus Christ, whether you're in a position to admit that's what you're doing or not.

Neither of these guys did much to advance their cause in this matter. Neither one showed any real understanding of honor or respect. I'd say those actions - the words and actions of both men - are embarrassingly counter to the message of Jesus. Fortunately, that doesn't devalue them or their identities in any way. There's still plenty of love and hope and grace to go around.

At our very best, we're still more prone to condemnation than grace. I'd say the best we can hope for is to recognize it in ourselves, admit our failings, and work to be different moving forward. The intractable positions we see here are far more alike than they are different and we deserve better than either one from people we've placed in positions of power.

Principles and Guidelines

A few weeks back, I wrote a little about the moralism with which my generation of Nazarenes grew up. It was a very specific way of life that focused largely on rules. We had a right and wrong for just about everything - and while there may have been grey areas, we tended to just avoid them as bad so as not to fool around with where the line might be.

It's been reflected in the way we view our constitutional document: the Manual. In fact, for a long time, the various sections of the Manual were labeled "rules." What we now know as the Covenant of Christian Conduct was the "Special Rules," specifically because it was a list of dos and don'ts. We got to be very good about our Manual legalism. As Wesleyans, we might've been a little less legalistic about the Bible, but the Manual was another story. I hear tales, these days, about families where the rules weren't followed to the letter - but you never heard about those families at the time (if they really existed), because rules were awfully important.

This past month, at General Assembly, was really the first time I saw any public acknowledgement that life is a little messy. Our delegates were willing to admit, from the floor, pastors even, that accepting into membership, even leadership, people who occasionally drink alcohol, is a pretty common practice. That's light years ahead of anything I would've expected, but it was truly refreshing.

I'm not saying that the most recent US Presidential election had anything to do with this (because I'm loathe to equate anything positive with that shit show), but I wonder if, give the realities of that last post I mentioned, we might now be a little more comfortable looking around the curtain of moralism at the pompous wizard running the show?

This new generation (mine, but really the one immediately behind me) seems unwilling entirely to play the old games. We're much more comfortable with both ambiguity and grace. We see the Manual as more of a guidebook than a rule book and it's throwing a bit of a wrench into things. This General Assembly had us asking, "Why not set strong standards and then hold to them with grace, rather than legalism?" Which might've been a slap in the face to old Phineas Bresee.

We'll get into an argument about that, too, because it seems to me each generation sees themselves in the old man - he possessed enough legalism, grace, social justice fire, and prohibitionist dominionism for everyone to have a piece. That's become our go-to perspective on the Church of the Nazarene as well; each generation makes the denomination into the entity most appropriate for itself. One generation, those spry, pesky Baby Boomers, held onto the reins of power for an awful long time, but that time does appear to be ending and what comes next is totally up in the air.

There's a generation in between that's going to have an unfairly small window out of which to operate - and they might want to have their say, but times are most definitely changing. Things will certainly get more complicated, but probably a little bit healthier, too. Of course, health in one area often leads to the exposure of dysfunction in another - some area our kids will grind against and reject when their time comes.

Regardless, the moment of change may have arrived. It came quickly and almost without warning, but the movement from rules and structure to guidelines and grace is inevitable, especially given the way my generation looks at and interacts with the world. Because of my experience, I have a real hard time calling the next phase "good" or "better," but it's certainly refreshing. The age of moralism might finally be dead in the Church of the Nazarene.

And that is undoubtedly a good thing, no matter how it came about, or what might be yet to come.

Talking to Kids About Difficult Things

I have a five year old daughter. As a result, I've spent far more time than I ever expected talking to parents of young children. One of the issues I've run into lately has been the debate over when kids are "ready" to talk about various topics. There's often a sense that the outside world is just waiting to stream into our children's lives and overly complicate things.

That's probably true, although that same danger exists for us, as adults, and every other human being on the planet. The world is a confusing, difficult place for anyone to live in - but maybe that's the whole point? I wonder if perhaps we seek to keep our children "innocent," as we like to say, because we, ourselves, aren't quite comfortable understanding, let alone explaining, complex ideas to them (especially when they have varying levels of ability to understand in the first place).

One of the kids in my daughter's preschool class has two moms. My daughter's never mentioned it; I'm not sure she's even really noticed. I have heard parents, though, lamenting their frustration about having "that" be forced into their child's life when the parents would rather save "that" for a later conversation.

I'm not sure "that" would be my approach to parenting, but I certainly understand where they were coming from. Then I got to thinking. My daughter wasn't even two yet when she could articulate what a princess was and understood that a princess goes with a prince. She still doesn't have even the remotest understanding of what "romance" is, but she knows that moonlight boat rides, evening strolls, and late night magic carpet adventures are the kinds of things that bring two people together.

She doesn't have much capacity to understand attraction, orientation, dating, or marriage, but she has some semblance of knowledge about what a relationship is. She's already been shaped and formed in the language of relationships and we've never had a conversation about it. In light of that, it doesn't really make sense not to bring up complex topics, because life has already done it.

Sure, she's not going to understand, at five, what it means to seek out a spouse, but she's forming the foundation from which she'll make those decisions in the future.


Like my time talking to parents, I've spent far more of my life than I ever expected working with teenagers, both in and out of the Church. The most important lesson I've learned from those experiences is that kids always have more knowledge and exposure to things than their parents ever suspect.

This is why I've always tried to answer every question my daughter has as completely as I possibly can. We've had conversations about death and dying, about homelessness, poverty, and violence. I don't think she understands much, if anything, about those topics other than they exist and they're problematic. Then again, on the way to school this morning she told me, "Dad, if Mimi (her best friend) and I had lived a long time ago, we never would've been friends." When I asked what she meant she said, "A long time ago they didn't let black people and white people live near each other and if we didn't live near each other we wouldn't go to the same school."

Did I mention she's five? Yeah.

We try to avoid talking with our kids about difficult things until we absolutely have to, because we love them and we want them to be blissfully unaware for as long as possible. But they're going to be aware long before we ever know they're aware. I know we think our kids will be different, but my experience tells me that's just not true.

I've long proposed that the most important tool for Christians to practice and possess is creativity. Creativity allows us to think outside the systems and structures we're given and respond differently to the world around us. It's a gospel creativity that lets us cut through the divisive and partisan nature of our world to present the beautiful alternative that is the Kingdom of God.

It's that creativity we must foster in talking to our kids about difficult subjects while also presenting the hope that we have in Christ. It is the middle way, between sheltering our children and leaving them exposed to the world. As parents, we know them best, and it should be our job to introduce them to the already-not yet world in which they live, one full of great sorrow and tremendous grace. I don't believe there's anything we can't say to our kids, so long as we foster this creativity to speak to them in ways that make sense for who and where they are in life.

Avoidance sends a message of fear. Addressing topics, even difficult ones, puts legs to our faith claims that God is in control, that the victory has already been one, that love and peace and hope will win out in the end. Yeah, it's not always simple, but our kids need to know we wrestle beside them and aren't afraid to wade through the mess together.

One of the more difficult things I've done as a parent was also the most rewarding. I sat down with my daughter and read through her (age appropriate) "how does my body work/where do babies come from" book. The most difficult part was reading all of the proper biological terms without pausing or stumbling or otherwise letting on that this was something to be embarrassed about. In the end, she asked a few questions, but we've had to go back every few months and read it again because she could care less about these topics. At least I know, though, when she has questions, there's a foundation to discuss them together.

A few weeks ago my daughter came in crying about something - probably neighborhood kids being mean - whether it was embarrassment, fear, or confusion, she just wouldn't talk about it. I found myself telling her something spontaneously, and, as I was saying it, realizing, deep down, that it was one of the truest things I've ever said. I told her, essentially, there are lots of things you'll do in life, some things I'll like and some things I won't, but the single most important thing to me, as your dad, is that you'll always be able to talk to me.

I mean that. At least I'm working towards that in my own life. If she makes decisions about boys (or girls), drugs or beliefs or money or any number of other things I may not want for her, I'd much rather she do them and talk to me, than avoid them and not. I don't think this is the typical attitude our churches take towards parenting, but I can't imagine any other way to do it.

Listen, I'm under no delusion that we'll always be able to talk to each other about difficult things - she's only five and it already doesn't go as well as I'd like - but I know these early moments, when the stakes are much lower, are great practice for shaping both of us into the kind of people who can have the best possible relationship later.

I'm convinced it starts with telling the truth - all the time. I answer every question as honestly as possible. So far she understands very little of it, but she knows I'm not hiding anything. I want her to ask questions, to know nothing is off limits, that every question is a good one.

As parents, we've got access to a God-given imagination and an incredible creativity to meet our kids where they are. If we do mess something up, we have great faith in a God who reconciles all things and draws all people - young and old - to God's self. Our children don't need to be sheltered; they need to be prepared, not irresponsibly, not beyond what they can understand, but we're the ones who know what's out there and we have to be the ones preparing them to face the world. If they can't count on us before we think they're ready, they won't count on us when we don't know they're ready.

Parenting is the single most difficult thing we'll ever do, but I'm coming to realize, it's not something you do for your kids, it's something you do with them. Good luck and God speed.

Nazarenes and Alcohol

It shouldn't be any surprise that I am a member of the clergy in the Church of the Nazarene.
We are a relatively young denomination (110-130 years, depending on who's counting), but one that's always been a bit of a conglomeration.
Initially, we were founded by three diverse groups coming together around the idea of Holiness - which I typically sum up as "living the way God intends for you to live here and now." You might say Nazarene believe you don't need to wait for heaven to be holy. That's more than a bit simplistic, but if you dig down deeper, you'll find out even we don't really know how to explain it out to the end of every argument train.

One of the big issues, historically, for us has been alcohol. The West Coast faction was founded around ministry to the urban poor, where alcohol was a real problem. The Southern wing was pretty moralist and some looked on alcohol as inherently sinful. In any event, they agreed that drinking wasn't good - many participated heavily in the prohibitionist movement. It was a big deal.

As the years have gone on, context and culture changed (although maybe not as much as we tend to think) and our denomination has grown even more diverse, with 70% of the members living outside the US. You will find every, and I mean EVERY, possible position on alcohol both preached and practiced among Nazarenes around the world. It's an issue we've historically been unable to even speak functionally about at our quadrennial General Assemblies.

The next such assembly is set for June of 2017. As part of that, delegates will discuss dozens of amendments from the mundane to the densely theological. As a member, I have the ability to submit proposed changes to my district, where a committee (usually the elected delegates and a few others) determine if it will be submitted to the General Assembly.

I submitted a number of resolutions for consideration, one deals with alcohol. I want to give great credit to my district - the committee invited me to one of their meetings to discuss the resolution and hear my rationale. I am not sure what, if anything, was actually passed on (they have the ability to amend or change anything and the final resolutions haven't been released yet), but I feel like it would be good, with the Assembly coming up, to share my proposal more publicly.

I am not a drinker. Its never been something I've wanted to do. This isn't an issue that really affects me personally. It does, however, effect a lot of people I love and care about. I've known far too many families royally messed up with alcohol a big part of things. Further, I feel a real kinship with those urban founders with a real heart for the poor. It's a perspective that largely kept me a part of the Church of the Nazarene. I don't think we should drink, not because alcohol is inherently bad, but largely because our culture can't handle its collective alcohol. It's good to be a safe, dry place for people.

At the same time, it seems silly to make any sort of fanatical mandate on individual members of the denomination, especially since, in practice,
we have come a long way from a clapboard barn in 1800's Los Angeles. We look different in so many ways. Beyond that, our practice has always been grace - or at least mostly been grace. A few pastors will run people off for having champagne at a wedding, but most won't. We take people into membership who exhibit a lifestyle of holiness, even if it doesn't mesh with every little line in the Manual. We just do. That's reality.

In light of these seemingly contrary realities, I tried to write something that would both make a collective and theological statement and would also allow for individual and contextual freedom. I think both elements are infused with grace, which, I believe, should be at the core of all Christian politics (if you're a new reader, I define politics as "the way we deal with people.") I also strove to keep as much of the current language as possible so as to remind people that this is not a replacement, but an update on a longstanding position we've struggled to fully grasp.


Here is the proposal I submitted:

The Use of Intoxicants
Paragraphs 29.5 and 29.6

Resolved, that paragraph 29.5 be retitled, “The use of intoxicating liquors as a beverage,” and replaced with the following:

Acknowledging that consumption of alcohol, in moderation, is, in itself, not inherently sinful, we recognize the pain and trauma suffered by individuals and families as a result of alcohol abuse and addiction. Society often prefers to hide, ignore, or ostracize these problems.

From its earliest days, the Church of the Nazarene exhibited a special calling to ministry among the poor, lost, and forgotten as primary vocation. Because of this special calling, we ask our members to refrain from alcohol and other intoxicating substances as a symbol of solidarity with those who suffer.

We acknowledge this is not the calling of God for all people or the only way to faithfully respond to addiction, as such, abstinence from alcohol consumption cannot be considered an essential of the Christian faith. We make the choice to abstain from alcohol in response to the biblical mandate of self-giving love for our brothers and sisters. Our position must be embodied with grace and without judgment. In that spirit, we do not hold adherence to this position as required for fellowship, either in the body of Christ or in the Church of the Nazarene.

Further, we should seek to minimize the irresponsible use of alcohol and glorification of the same in society and culture. Effort and attention must be paid to the consequences of irresponsible alcohol use and its effect on people for whom Christ died. The widespread incidence of alcohol abuse in our world demands that we embody a position that stands as a witness to others.

(In light of this stance, only unfermented wine should be used in celebration of the Lord’s Supper.)


Further resolved, that paragraph 29.6 be retitled “The use of other intoxicants, stimulants, or hallucinogens, outside proper medical care and guidance,” and replaced with the following:

In light of medical evidence outlining the dangers of such substances, along with scriptural admonitions to remain in responsible control of mind and body, we choose to abstain from intoxicants, stimulants, and hallucinogens outside proper medical care and guidance, regardless of the legality and availability of such substances.


Reasons:

1. Our statement should reflect a broader directive on the use of intoxicating substances that will guide the practice of our denomination regardless of medical, scientific, and legal changes.

2. Our statement on alcohol should not simply be a condemnation of alcohol, but an understanding of our Christian responsibility to those who suffer from its abuse.

3. In light of the unfortunate judgementalism that has accompanied our interpretation of understanding of alcohol in the past, our statement should reflect grace strongly, in imitation of our savior, Jesus Christ.

I'd also point to a great podcast from In All Things Charity that discusses some aspects of the realities of our position on alcohol.

Loving the Unlovable

We've got two really disturbing stories in the news this week that bring some real difficulty when thinking about them theologically. There is this man in Montana who, three times, raped his own teenage daughter and was given a suspended sentence, which will result in just a couple months in jail, provided he completes serious counseling and other treatment plans (and has no solo contact with minors, pretty much ever again). The judge in that case is getting a lot of flack, including a potential impeachment/recall, but he also sites the insistence of the girl's family that having the head of their household gone for, potentially, forever, would be a real detriment to the family, especially the man's young sons.

We've also got a police report out, which details journals and documents from the counseling sessions of NFL kicker, Josh Brown, who admitted to abusing his wife in many ways and on multiple occasions. There was a police incident over the summer that lead to a suspension, but these details show both a lengthy, serious pattern of abuse, but also an equally lengthy, involved process of counseling and recovery.

Our general society like revenge. We say, "do something awful, pay for it forever." That's generally our attitude in public and it's the way most of our laws are written. It's not hard to say, "You rape your own daughter, you're lucky to get to live." Although "life" for a child rapist in prison is probably not preferable to death, but then again, people are often ok with that - whatever punishment we can get for people like that. Spousal abuse used to be something we brushed aside as "private," but lately (and sadly) largely due to the spotlight of the NFL, those attitudes are changing - and perhaps to make up for all those years of neglect, the vitriol with which we approach those situations is as intense as just about any other crime someone could commit - and with good reason; it's pretty sickening.

What we seem to miss in all of this, and what makes it so difficult to really parse, is that despite the inhumane things these men did and the dehumanizing our system of laws, courts, and punishment does to those who commit them, these people are, in fact, still human beings.

I've written before that we take such extreme responses largely to separate ourselves as people from other people who do terrible things. We don't want to think of child rapists or murderers or domestic abusers as humans, because we are humans and it forces us to face the reality that we are capable of entirely inhuman things. Given a specific set of circumstances, that could be us. It's terrifying.

We rightly run from it.

Although I'd argue that people who embrace that notion - that we are all capable of tremendous evil, are the ones most likely to find the kind of health and peace necessary to avoid such evil. Hate is powerful, but it rarely plays out to our benefit. We tend to become that which we hate. In dehumanizing, we become like those we dehumanize. That's a lot of historical precedent for this.

I read, last week, the memoir of Bryan Cranston, who played Hal on Malcolm in the Middle and Walter White on Breaking Bad. He talked about an incident early in his adult life, where he became so afraid of and angry at an ex-girlfriend-turned-stalker that he believed himself capable of killing her, even had a lucid dream of doing the deed so real he believed, for a time, that he'd done it. The rest of the book (which is very good, by the way) illustrates, though, how the realization of that moment, those feelings, his actions, led to a really healthy process of growth and development that shaped his life in profound ways, building a solid foundation that helped prevent many of the mistakes he seemed bound for in his early years.

If we're going to see terrible people as human beings, we have to treat them humanely. Providing counseling and rehabilitation - programs for healing, growth, and recovery make a lot more sense than archiving evil in prisons and jails, ignoring mental illness, or labeling people as hopeless. Is Josh Brown going to be punished because he sought help? Will we eliminate any possible good this Montana rapist might ever do in his life, because of the atrocities he's committed? That's the Bill Cosby question, right?

If you're like me, it leaves you totally confused. I like black and white. Even in difficult issues, I tend to work until I find a path through the weeds - it might not be perfect; it might even need to be altered a time or two, but it's something, a decision. It doesn't work that way here.

A man raped his own daughter, three times! Certainly he should never, ever, ever have contact with her ever again; his name should never be uttered in her presence, unless she initiates it. I believe she earned that kind of respect and protection by what she's suffered. And Josh Brown is not the kind of person anyone would want to employ - and his bosses should have every right to fire him and no one should feel sorry about it.

At the same time, I believe in redemption. I really do. My faith is built on the idea that love changes people - not often quickly or completely, but I've formed my life around the idea that no one should be written off. It creates a real problem - the old punishment vs consequences problem - which is easy to solve in the abstract, but darn near impossible to even fathom in the reality of people's lives.

How do we separate our need for revenge and dehumanization, for distance and escape, from the very real responsibility we have as a society to ensure people don't escape the consequences of their actions. We long to shelter and shield innocent others from the consequences of the guilty, but it's rarely that simple. The pain we inflict on one person necessarily radiates to others - many others - for whom it was never intended.

That is the reality of life.

I'm not going to take a "position" on either of these two issues I brought up - other than to say I think we'd all be wise to consider every perspective with care and genuine concern. I don't think this judge is just trying to let a rapist off; I don't think it's necessarily undue compassion (the way it probably was for that Stanford athlete) - at the same time, it's real hard for me to call what the judge did "right." It's courageous and it flies in the face of what society expects.

Of course, as in any public event, there are a lot of details we don't know that are pretty core to making a learned opinion. And as much as these travesties compel us to speak, act, and react, we can never be in the position of those actually involved. We will never understand or fully appreciate the context. I'd just like for us to consider what our reactions say about what is important to us. I'd like to suggest that perhaps we expand that definition of "important" influences beyond those emotions which immediately spring to mind.

Life is difficult. Life is complex. Life is messy. But, man, is life worth it.

Punishment vs Consequence

I got to spend a week at camp with 230-some teenagers (which is part of the reason these posts are late this week). There was some good time for reflection, renewal, and thinking. One of the things that struck me most profoundly (I guess because I'm now old and my memory fades) was the reminder of just how tough it is to be figuring out how the world works. Navigating adolescence and the search for understanding is tough, even with a supportive environment where people love and care for you.

It's not just teenagers, though - I mean it's a search everyone is on for their entire lives. But this week it just kind of struck me how important it is for us (all of us - parents, children, adults, teenagers, humans) to understand punishment and consequences. I feel like I've written about this before, how punishment is really a way for authority figures to display grace. Punishment most often occurs as a means of avoiding the consequences of some action. Someone driving drunk is punished as a way of bringing the very real consequences of that action into view. A person who drives drunk and kills someone with their car experiences the consequence. Even in that scenario, there's still a punishment. Typically the consequence of killing someone is that we die ourselves. Society, in general, cares enough about life to not repay death with death. Regardless the consequences are serious.

As a teenager, punishment feels like torture. There's no way around it. It feels that way on purpose, because if we understood consequences deeply enough, punishment wouldn't be necessary. Now not every authority is perfect and punishment does sometimes end up being punitive. That's regrettable. These errors in punishment, though, shape how we view the world, especially if take a theistic view of things.

It's real easy to look at the consequences of our actions as divine reward or punishment. This is likely more true in places most guarded from real consequences. In the modern US we shelter our kids, our families, large parts of our society from any real dangers. It is few and far between who suffer real consequences from our poor choices - and we tend to ignore, hide, or marginalize those who do suffer. So much of it is in secret. Thus, we're really living in a world of punishment - actions intended to teach us lessons about consequences, but facing few real, actual consequences.

This means we expect everything that happens to us to be someone else's choice. Kids are far more worried about what their parents might do if they're caught drinking on a Friday night than the hangover they'll have the next day (and even less concerned about cirrhosis in the future). Punishment is just our major frame of reference.

We project this on God.

My mom is a drug addict and abandoned me when I was a baby to be raised in marginally safer foster homes the rest of my life. That is really a number of tragic consequences to poor choices made by many people. But it's really easy to see it as divine punishment for something we did or for just not being a good enough person, punishment for some inherent failure.

I suppose it's inherently human to think this way. Our first inclination of the world is that someone somewhere is pulling the strings on everything. It's an underlying cultural assumption even into the present day. It's one of the reasons scientists get so fed up - not just that some religious people continue to propagate this notion, but that so many people believe it even without strong faith commitments. In this worldview, karma makes sense. The world somehow rewards and punishes people - and often in unjust, arbitrary ways.

I don't think the world really works like that. I make that statement as a faith claim, as someone who's spent a lot of time studying the Bible and theology - and the world around me. Science makes that claim, too - action and reaction, cause and effect. The things that happen to us are not rewards and punishments, they are consequences. They are the result of action, conscious or otherwise.

As a faith commitment, I believe in a God that suffers with humanity - a God who does not reward and punish, but who walks with us through life, enduring consequences as we endure them. God celebrates and mourns right alongside us. It is this loving co-suffering that is exemplified in Jesus and to which each of us are challenged to. I believe this is the way to live well in the world.

This is the difference between grace and torture.

If we see God as punitive, we can only see life as torture. It's pain, divinely inflicted pain, for no discernible reason other than existence. It's depressing and it's no wonder people flounder around in search of meaning when life looks like that. Instead, we should see (or try to learn to see) God's presence in the midst of pain as profound grace. God, and those people around you who represent God in your life, walking with you through the inevitable ups and downs (and the far more serious celebrations and crises) that life brings, are hope in the midst of despair.

This world is not about rewards and punishments - at least not deep down. It is about riding the wave of consequences and, if you cling to some measure of faith, trusting that our loving co-suffering can actually make a difference down the line. I believe that love changes things, but we have to see grace and love and peace around us to ever see this change.

It starts, at least in part, with how we see God present in the midst of tragedy.

An Ideological Comparison

I've sat around the last few weeks (in those rare moments I get to sit these days) and really struggled with the tension inherent in my nation's problems. As much as our media has perfected sound-byte wars and click bait headlines and the commodification of "news," complexity persists. There's nothing so simple as it seems.

I've struggled with how to express strong, uncomfortable truths in ways that maintain the dignity of those who are being critiqued. It's a difficult path to tread these days and quite possibly beyond my abilities. I've noticed an interesting parallel, though, that perhaps might give us pause to think about such complexities.

I've not polled anyone; this is purely anecdotal. If you don't have the tendencies I'm referencing here, this post probably isn't for you, feel free to stop reading. But I've noticed that people on the right tend to support police uncritically, while lodging serious complaints against teachers unions as a major issue in education. Similarly, those on the left tend to support teachers uncritically, while lodging serious complaints against the fraternality of police officers as a major impediment to racial and violence issues in society.

The parallels are interesting. These are two professions where the familial ties of union still ring strong across the country. There's a sense of duty and loyalty to those who serve together in the trenches that tends to bring with it a level of grace and forgiveness that's beyond what the general public might bestow.

As a pastor, my ears prick up at the all too common rationalization, "But I'm a good person, so I can let ________________ slide; nobody's perfect." We understand the difficulties we face in life and, rightfully, are gracious with ourselves. When we can so easily put ourselves in someone else's shoes, it's easy for us to give them the same measure of understanding - at least as much as we'd want.

I recognize that police and teachers aren't exactly on the same level; a bad teacher will almost never cost a student their life. At the same time, we put a lot of pressure on them to plug the straining dykes of societal backwash. We sort of expect the police and teachers to solve poverty without many of the resources that are absolutely essential to the job. The best police officer on earth will not prevent crimes or lower the number of criminals - threat of punishment is rarely, if ever, a deterrent (at least on a macro level). The best teacher on earth will not prevent students from missing educational opportunities. There are great stories or police and teachers affecting the lives of individuals in profound ways - and good teachers/police certainly can do so more often than bad ones - but thinking that these professions, even at their best, can tackle the problems society expects them to solve is sort of like asking someone to keep the ground dry in a rainstorm. The very fact that people keep trying is a real testament to the optimism of the human spirit.

Now I could outline a lot of things the police do that really works against their goals, as impossible as they may seem. The same could be said for teachers (as a group, remember, when we personalize these things, make them about that officer I know, that teacher who lives under the same roof, the whole conversation gets pulled out of context). It doesn't take a genius to see that things can and should be done differently. That's what people criticize. We've got neighborhoods out there where kids are more likely to end up in prison than college - that shouldn't necessarily demean that police and teachers who work hard to change the situation, but it's also a pretty strong condemnation of both systems in which they work.


I guess my point is that it's the same story. One gets used as a liberal crusade and the other to bolster conservative ranks. There are lots of kids convinced the cops are out to get them; a lot feel the same way about teachers. On the whole, that notion is silly and paranoid, but not all of those kids are wrong. There's the rub.

When things are broken, it's easier to blame someone else than roll up one's own sleeves. We can conveniently point to the people specifically charged with handling that "problem," and replace them if they fail too badly. But the responsibility we put on people, like police or teachers, is not their responsibility, it's our collective responsibility. There's a lot of good, sincere people attempting to do both of these jobs - just because some of them could be better, the drive and effort shouldn't be demeaned. The tight-knit unions that protect police and teachers don't do a lot to help society at large be sympathetic to the issues they face, but that shouldn't demean sincerity and commitment either.

The reality is that no hero's perfect, but also that no hero should ever be scared of admitting the truth of that statement. It's our responsibility to create the environment where that can happen. I suggest we do a better job of it before we go after "the other guy" or defend our own.

Is It All About Truth?

So there's some demeaning talk out there about truth being relative. As in, "I understand truth and you're watering it down with all this talk of nuance and perspective." I tend to think, though, that it's more about how we understand truth itself than any actual truth. Those people who are after absolute truth or understand truth in definitive ways are really talking about a propositional truth - that some things are always true.

That argument ultimately lasts until it passes from your mouth to someone else's ear. Even if you're not on board with the "my truth is my truth and your truth is your truth" movement, you almost have to admit that everyone is going to have a slightly (or drastically) different perspective on what's true - AND none of us is going to get it completely right. I do appreciate the effort, though. I do think we should be seeking absolute truth - we just can't look at it propositionally; doing so is basically an exercise in absurdity.

What we need to do instead is understand truth relationally. Truth is not some abstract notion or idea or principle - truth is that which extends between two people. The way we treat others, the way we act, tells everyone all they need to know about what we hold true.

This is where a lot of Christians get in trouble - well, religious people in general, really - it's certainly not limited to Christianity. We sometimes get so worked up trying to defend (to others and to ourselves) our notion of truth that we equate our understanding of truth with actual truth. What's more we do so by seeking to prove some truth claim by another person to be wrong or faulty or imperfect. In doing so, though, we betray another truth we'd rather not own up to - in short that being right is the most important thing, that being right comes before showing love and grace to others.

At its core, Christianity hold that absolute truth is Jesus Christ. Truth personified - that idea even came out of his mouth. Christians believe that truth is not an idea or a concept or something to be mastered or defended - truth is a person to know and by whom to be known. Truth is inherently relational. We need to treat it that way.

Jesus never went out to crush the ideas or perspectives of others, he only really had criticism and challenge for his own people - the religious leaders of the day. He was holding people accountable who were already part of his own group - he wasn't challenging strangers or seekers with some propositional knowledge. He just sort of loved people. He did a lot of forgiving, often in ways and places where it didn't always seem wise. He was gratuitous with grace.

This is something we forget when we make truth propositional. We forget that real truth is not a concept, but an action. Truth is living out what we believe to be true - living in imitation of Jesus, seeking to live in peace and value everyone for the human being they are - a human being made up of actions and experiences uniquely formative of that particular individual.

Perspective does indeed matter when it comes to truth. We can only really approach truth when we recognize and respect the perspective of another. Yes, there are certainly propositional values that are important to Christians, but they're not learned for their own sake, but out of relationships - both with God and with the world (and the people) around us.

So when people get up in arms about "defending the truth," I think, "the truth is fine on its own; it doesn't need defending." What the truth needs, though, are people who believe it enough to live it out. That might make a real difference in the world and, who knows, might actually help other people find the truth themselves.

Do We Really Believe?

It's a rough morning (quite honestly, it's been a rough few months, since I started this post in June and am just getting around to finishing it, yet it seems as timely as ever.* The truth is, I'm having a hard time believing these days. It's not really a crisis of faith - at least not faith in God, that's pretty secure for the most part. What I'm having trouble believing is that all these Christians around me really have faith. I mean, I know they do. Intellectually. I see the fervency with which they live and, being in some measure of relationship with many of them, I get it. You don't have to convince me. I have a sincere belief that people deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to faith. Nobody's perfect - we're all great big hypocrites in some way (or many). At the same time, as I'm understanding in my head, my heart struggles; it hurts. I see a lot of words and actions that confuse me, that send a message that doesn't quite make sense - words and actions that, frankly, break my heart.

So much of our actions in this world (and by that I mean, human action) come from a place of deep fear. In the end, we're scared that someone will take what we have. Even if it's not something tangible, we live in this delicate balance where, in an instant, it could all be gone. Call it, "there, but by the grace of God, go I," syndrome.

And it's not as though that phrase isn't true. There really is nothing separating my relatively mild (or non-existent) suffering from those people and places where suffering seems unbearable - nothing except grace, or maybe just dumb luck. The problem is not that the phrase is untrue, but that we don't really mean it.

We more often mean, "there, but by the amount in my savings account, go I," or "there, but by the loaded gun under my pillow, go I," or "there, but by my obedience to God - or there, but by my cunning intellect - or there, but by my good job, go I." We talk a lot about blessing or grace, but we don't really mean it. Many of us overtly.

If we let these refugees in, they'll bomb our churches and take our jobs. Society doesn't have any right telling me what to do with my money or my guns. Sure, I could help that guy out, but what if he takes advantage of me - I might lose my home or my car.

So much of our fear is about control. We're afraid we won't have any. Without control, we can't protect those things we hold most dear. Rarely, rarely, rarely, is one of those things we're afraid of losing our faith. We're scared of losing comfort, security, possessions, money, family - and none of those are impossible scenarios. They're probably pretty natural fears. The difference, though, is how Christians face them. How do we deal with the thought of losing what we have, or, more fearfully, how we deal with having those things we love taken from us.


We buy into the myth of scarcity. That there isn't enough. "If we tried to give everyone what they need, we'll all be poor." "I have to look out for myself - or at least for the people I love."

Not only are these individual actions challenged by the words and life of Jesus and the historic tradition of the Church, but they betray a larger denial, the one I have trouble understanding sometimes. do we not believe in a God with the ends under control? I recognize that things might be a bit chaotic now, but do we really believe that love will win? That my suffering today is part of that victory, the very means by which it comes about, in imitation of Christ?

Maybe we really don't believe. That's my doubt.

That's my doubt when I see such hateful rhetoric addressed toward any group of people. We are not called to love some people more than others. I think the Luke passage says as much - everybody loves their friends and family; everybody loves those who are nice to them. Some people are even moved with compassion towards those who suffer. That's not really the challenge of Christianity, though.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be afraid (although God does say that a lot) - I'm saying we can't let that fear dictate what we say or how we act. I don't understand how people can claim the power of the cross and also advocate the power of the gun, or the army, or the law, or the power of some big-ol' freakin' wall.

And I don't mean to say we should just be able to believe unconstrained (I have a bank account and a mortgage and locks on my doors). I am saying we should be honest. We have to say either, "I'm scared of __________ and I'm reacting out of fear," or "I'm not convinced this will work in the short term, but ultimately it's the right thing to do." Faith and love and grace and peace will not save us from pain or suffering or heartbreak or death - in fact they'll likely invite more of each. But warmongering and mistrust and self-protection will never get us what we desire.

There's no such thing as a regrettable means towards a glorious end. That's a lie we tell ourselves when we're scared to justify doing what we know is wrong.

That's why my doubts are just doubts, not beliefs. I don't believe these people I see saying and doing things that make me sigh and shake my head are really without faith. They are merely human, doing what comes natural. If we were the kind of people who could act entirely on our beliefs, well, we wouldn't need each other, would we? We wouldn't need to meet each week and remind ourselves of who we are and what we're called to do. We just wouldn't need that bread and that cup, because we'd already be transformed.

Do we really believe?

Of course not. It's darn near impossible, but the very fact we still ask the question means there's hope somewhere. I think.




*Seriously. I didn't change a bit of it after the events of this week, just cleaned up the language some, made it a little more readable. It was all there.

I Disagree!

I disagree... and that's a good thing.

Why does it feel like we always secretly hope, no matter how nice and accepting we are of other people, that they'll some day see the light and think like us? Yes, I suppose, on some selfish level, life would be easier if everyone thought exactly like me, but, really, if we're thinking about it, life would also kinda suck.

For one, there would be no one to tell us an idea is stupid until AFTER we've done it. Everyone would think it is a great idea and be really encouraging, right up until the point it goes horribly wrong, then they'd be all, "that was a terrible idea." Yeah, thanks. I got it.

We really need people to be different and think different. It's good for us. It's good for the world. We need to disagree. We need it. It's that important.

Now, of course, there are going to be some fundamental things that we'd like everyone to agree on - things like, "don't kill Ryan," that's a big one for me. Perhaps more generally, "don't kill people," but honestly, we don't really agree on that one anyway. The best we can hope is to be sincere in our desires, willing to change if our conscience leads us to do so, and respecting when others think differently.

I don't get this notion that my sincere beliefs should be those of other people. Yes, it's nice to have the validation when people do actually accept my reasons for belief and we do all need people who agree with us at some level for community and support, but why do we really expect everyone to agree?

This is especially troubling among Christians - who have (supposed) unity in Christ. It's not like we're coming from vastly different foundations when we disagree, we're essentially choosing different beliefs for the exact same reason.

I'll just call it out - my denomination responded to the Supreme Court ruling this week with a pretty well-worded conservative statement (as expected), explaining that its position has not changed and generally wishing good will towards all people. Great. But it ends with the line, "We pray that God will help us be examples of His truth in a world that needs to see God’s love demonstrated in word and deed more than ever."

This line could be construed just as it says - longing for truth - but earlier in the paragraph, truth was defined as a particular view of gay marriage. Now, I'm not expecting my denomination to change its stance over night (in fact, I think we ask the wrong questions and focus on the wrong things - as I've written about before), but it might be nice to be charitable and humble.

We're essentially saying, "We disagree and we hope God uses us to bring other people around to right thinking." I guess it's honest, if nothing else, which is good, but it's also sad.

I don't have a problem with what we believe (although I wish we'd talk about it better). I do have a problem with us assuming our convictions are definitive of a "Christian" of "faithful" position. It reeks of arrogance and it turns my stomach.

We also believe that we shouldn't drink alcohol. That's a Nazarene distinctive. We do it not because alcohol is inherently evil, but because we desire to be open to all people, even those who struggle with alcohol addiction or were hurt by its effects on their family, so we choose to forgo it as a means of supporting those people. Other Christians choose differently. We don't demonize them or use this veiled "truth" language to insinuate they're somehow wrong.

We just disagree.

As I said, I don't mind disagreement. It's a good thing. But we don't have to do it self-righteously. We also don't have to do it apologetically. Wouldn't the statement have looked better if instead of closing with a prayer that all people would be converted to our way of thinking we said something like, "We pray that God will help us be example of His truth in the world, that all people, ourselves included, would be converted to the Way of Christ, even if it means changing our long held beliefs."

That, to me, is the crux of real, healthy disagreement. I believe this, but I might be wrong. If I am, forgive me, but I can only do what I think is right. Let's keep talking and maybe one of us will change their mind, but if not, that's ok, too.

The Difference Between Hope and Optimism

I finished my first reading of Walter Brueggemann's Prophetic Imagination today. I know, it's a classic and I am embarrassed for not having read it before now. So much of my seminary education was influenced by people influenced by this amazingly influential little book. It's also very dense. So much so that I'll be diving in again once I bust through a book review book this week. There's so much to learn there - I need a second go 'round.

Towards the end of the book there's a little off-handed remark (it might even be in parentheses) that hope and optimism are not the same thing. He didn't even explain it, really, but it struck me as particularly profound. Optimism, as Brueggemann says often, is a pacification technique used by those in power - it is the notion that things will get better (especially if we hold the course). Hope, on the other hand, is a recognition that things, as they are, are broken. Hope looks outside ourselves to something (some one) else to make necessary changes. There is still a belief things will be different (better), but hope builds within us and motivates for change - change within, but change from outside. It is the instilling of hope that helps make the changes in action that lead to a different world.

We should not confuse optimism for hope, for there is little hope in optimism beyond whatever panacea brief, immediate peace may bring.

I'm sure I'll write more about the book as I tackle it a second time, but I'm energized by the notion of being a people of prophetic imagination - both unmasking the failures of the system in which we live and working to present an alternative more in line with God's intentions for creation.

All I Have Left to Say

As things have unfolded at Northwest Nazarene University, I've been watching closely. I wrote earlier about my concern over the message this sends to the denomination - a lot of people have picked up the difficulty we're having on this (and other) issue(s). There's a lot to be decided in the near future and we've got generations that really don't understand each other (a great message for a younger generation was delivered at my alma mater, Eastern Nazarene College, recently, by a friend and seminary classmate of mine - it's worth checking out). I think another friend and NTS classmate hit on the real importance of this situation - unity.

If you've made it through all those links, you're probably up to speed enough to understand what I'm saying. I think the real problem has been a conflation of many things, related, yes, but also separate, that is making any effort to do anything real difficult to parse. First, there is the difficult relationship NNU President David Alexander has had with his own faculty. It's not been a good relationship and there are a lot of issues to work through in terms of trust, communication, and collaboration. Second, there is the very real difficulty many denominational leaders in the Church of the Nazarene have with, at least, the way in which Tom Oord presents his theology. Third, there is the declining enrollment in NNU's graduate theology program, the failure of outsourcing recruiting, and how the school has chosen to address it. Clouding all three of these issues in the general tenor of distrust and protectionism that's been rumbling through the Church of the Nazarene at large in recent years.

All of these things are related, but none are necessarily connected (in the very strictest definition of the word: they don't HAVE to be addressed together). Because of this, it seems we have all manner of disparate angry people upset to different degrees about various elements of a complicated problem.

I don't have a dog in this fight - other than my place as an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene, the son of an NNU Trustee, and a friend of Tom Oord. In other words, there are some larger, less tangible things at stake for me personally, but there're an awful lot of people I care about who are right in the middle of this. I'll try not to speak out of turn and nothing here is anything beyond my perception of the situation. My only hope and aim in writing about this one more time is to hopefully provide some clarity for those who may feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the conversation.


1) I have very little to say about the relationship between NNU's President and it's faculty. The faculty are obviously pretty upset. I've known some faculty who've been upset for years. They're going to have to figure out a way to work together - and that means growth and change from both sides. I pray they'll be able to do it.


2) Tom Oord has chosen (as is his duty as an academic) to explore some areas of theology that break new ground. He's asking and attempting to answer questions that a lot of us wrestle with. I don't always agree with Tom - sometimes it feels like he's trying to put together the theological version of Stephen Hawking's Unified Field Theory and the missing pieces prove elusive - but I am encouraged by his efforts, because they are the same ones that intrigue and capture me. I hope what he's thinking and talking and writing about is not out of bounds - but I'm pretty biased on that account, since it would put me over the line as well.

Tom is a kind and gracious person, which is difficult to reconcile with claims that he leaves students with too many questions and not enough answers. I know they moved him to upper level courses in recent years partly because of these concerns. I do believe Tom does what many professors are (reasonably) leery to do, namely playing devil's advocate and challenging student thinking without always wrapping up the discussion in a nice bow of confidence. I think this is a fair and good way to teach (albeit with some inherent risks) - at the same time, I think having reservations about this style is also a fair position. There's a real (perhaps impossible) balance to consider when undergraduate education is involved. Tom's theology is far more controversial because he's a professor than it would be if he were a pastor in a local church.

I am one of those people for whom Tom's loving challenges have helped to explore new areas of thought and find real confidence in a faith that might otherwise be shaky. I can name a number of close friends, many of them ordained Nazarene ministers, who directly attribute their continued faith to Tom's influence. We're seeing many of the people Tom Oord has impacted in this way coming to his defense rigorously. I'm not sure it's good in a situation like this to weigh help and harm - it is always regrettable for a student to engage academically and lose their faith - but for those intent on doing so, please consider the many who likely would not have remained Christians without the freedom and permission a professor like Tom Oord provides.

That being said, as much as I might personally disagree with which places in the denomination those with authority determine are appropriate for Tom's particular teaching, I do think those we've given authority to in these matters have a right to make such decisions. There is certainly nothing different in Tom's method or belief that what we routinely encountered at Nazarene Theological Seminary (a place, were Tom to need one, I'd love for him to end up teaching) - a graduate seminary like NTS is certainly a more comfortable place than an undergraduate institution in this scenario.

I hope, if Tom Oord does move on from NNU, there is some great measure taken by the denomination or another denominational institution to include him, validate him, and bless him as a worthy leader in our tradition. I desperately pray this situation will not be one of the appropriateness of Tom Oord's theology and only an issue of the appropriate place for it.

3) NNU's online graduate programs have been pretty groundbreaking and pretty darn respectable over the years. They went after this market quickly and with great aptitude. I know a lot of people who've finished degrees through NNU and really enjoyed the experience. That being said, there is a very limited market for graduate theological degrees in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition. That's just a fact. NTS is doing much better in competing for these students after really falling behind at the beginning. Outsourced marketing or not, there was very likely going to have to be faculty cuts at NNU as a simple reality of the marketplace. I find it sadly ironic that NNU's pursuit of ATS accreditation for a fully online MDiv program was likely to hasten the problems they're having with enrollment. Once other seminaries were given permission to replicate this model, things were only going to get more difficult.

If a cut was on the horizon (and thinking outside whatever is the required, agreed upon plan for making such cuts - something that internal NNU processes will adjudicate and something I've got no understanding of at all), the difficulties presented by Oord's presence (and the continued complaints, founded or otherwise), plus his immense position in the academy (and the reality that he'll likely have no trouble finding another job) are legitimate considerations for choosing him (even if they're easy to disagree with). I'd personally, if I were associated with NNU, want to keep as many of our best, brightest, and well-known faculty as I possibly could, even if it meant more headaches for me - I'd consider that worth the trouble. I can also understand why some might not consider it worth the trouble.

4) The Church of the Nazarene is in a bad spot. We just are. There's very little patience left with the administrative structure of the denomination and even less trust. There have been real witch hunts (or as real as such things get without actually hunting witches). We have leaders on record not just disagreeing, but denouncing various people, theologies, and ideas. While some apologies were given, the reverberations of such are always much less than those of the original statements.

I really feel the future of the denomination is walking out the door. Many of us are starting to wonder whether sticking around is going to get us thrown out the door in time. I'm not entirely pessimistic. I'm really not. I think there are enough people with enough grace to make things work going forward. I have a deep and abiding belief in the love of God to make the world right and in the Spirit of God to guide us into all truth, to make (and keep) us one, and to provide for a bright and unified future.

I guess I've written all of this to say: I'd love to see Tom Oord stay at NNU. I think he wants to be there and I think it's good for the school to have him there, even if it creates headaches and problems from time to time. At the same time, I don't think Tom having to leave is the end of the world. It would be sad, certainly worthy of grief, but there are many setbacks in life and even Tom believes in a God who works all things together for good, a God who holds the future (even if God doesn't always know the details).

What would be a real problem, though, is for this to be a referendum on Open Theism or a theology of non-coercive love or Tom Oord himself. We can't afford that. We can't afford this situation to become a theological dividing line. I know it won't be such a line in all places within our denomination, but it also can't be such a line at the center of our denomination. We must keep our pursuit of Christ-likeness at the center of our fellowship, unified around the pursuit of a holy life, even if we debate, discuss, and disagree about the ways some people get there.

So argue and debate and protest and mediate, but make sure you're aware of the complexities and make sure you're keeping God's gracious hospitality at the forefront of your mind.

Let's Be Honest

I have some problems. We all do, of course, but I have some particular problems. I tend to be pretty obsessive-compulsive. I've not been diagnosed, mind you, but I'm sort of worried about the result were I to ask. Related to this, I've got a bit of a perfectionist streak. Sometimes these quirks can join forces to be a real problem, occasionally paralyzing.

If I think about a decision (and, boy do I think - it's taken me 18 months to replace a pair of shoes, and that is not at all an exaggeration), really mull it over and choose what I think it best, then I'm ok with failure. I might replay it over and over for a while to try and learn from the mistake for the future, but I'm generally ok. If I make the wrong choice without having spent time considering it, I will dwell on it for days - even something very simple.

There's a lot of guilt in my life. Mentally, intellectually, I completely understand it's unearned. I recognize people make mistakes and no one's perfect, and all that stuff. It just doesn't feel that way in the moment. I tend to respond with self-loathing or abject rage, at the very least a strong sense of embarrassment.

I've been seeing a counselor lately, to try and weed through these various threads connecting my past and my actions and my thoughts and emotions. It's been helpful. Of course this process also brings with it a fair bit of introspection. I've always spent a lot of time thinking about why I do things. Now I spend even more.

This week I've been thinking about the tension that exists growing up in the Church of the Nazarene and our particular ways of speaking about holiness. (For those who don't know, holiness is, pretty much, the reason our denomination exists.) My upbringing was pretty typical of an evangelical holiness tradition. We were taught people should be saved, basically intellectual assent to the idea of Jesus as God and savior of the world. Beyond that, though, there's also this thing called sanctification, a miracle working of God's Holy Spirit that cleanses one of a propensity to sin - not that you become perfect, but given a choice, you're capable of choosing good. This new life is called holiness.

There are a lot of intricacies that go into the explanation of this process for our tribe - something I have no desire or time to go into here - but this was the basic outline of my understanding of life and faith. This sanctification part was always kind of mysterious to me. I got that it didn't make you sinless or perfect, but that there was some real change wrought supernaturally in a person. Something noticeable and real.

I'm not sure I ever really bought into that kind of thing until it happened to me. Shortly after college I was pretty directionless. I'd never planned for my life after college and I felt pretty purposeless. I was listening to a band rehearsing some worship music and was simply struck by a feeling of hopelessness - an emotional/spiritual rock-bottom, as if my attempt to run my own life had finally and completely run its course. I spent close to an hour just weeping and admitting to myself and God that I could not do life on my own. I needed someone else to make the decisions. When the night was over, I felt different. I was changed. A lot of things changed. Parts of my personality were forever altered. I was different. I believe that.

But it wasn't the kind of different I expected from my upbringing. It was a different different.

Part of that experience, or shortly thereafter, was a calling to preach. Within 18 months, I'd gotten married and we'd moved to Kansas City where I was attending seminary. This was a great experience and a real chance to explore exactly what all of this meant. I got to reading scripture more closely. I got to read John Wesley (the guy from whom all of this particular take on holiness descends). I made a lot of discoveries.

Most importantly, I saw how John Wesley described "entire sanctification." It wasn't all that different from how I'd been taught. I found, however, that Wesley never claimed sanctification for himself; beyond that he guessed perhaps no more than a handful of people in all of England (where he lived) had ever been entirely sanctified, and, if so, they only maintained it for a few weeks. This was quite different from what I'd been taught. In fact, the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene, to this day, requires a testimony of entire sanctification even for service on a local congregational governing board.

Throughout the process of my schooling and training I underwent annual interviews for a minister's license and, ultimately, for ordination. I think there were eight interviews total. Holiness came up in a lot of them. I don't think I ever claimed to be sanctified (although early on I may have checked the box out of habit). I relayed pretty much everything I've included here and those boards were satisfied I met the requirement.

The more I look at it though, the more it seems my experience lines up much more with what Wesley called salvation. He was a long-time priest before he had what he called a salvation experience. Intellectual assent was not enough for him. This moment of transformation, when your heart and will are turned away from self-interest and towards God, Wesley called that becoming a Christian. That's pretty similar to the way it was described in my seminary theology classes, too. Dr. Tom Noble, one of the greatest and smartest men I've ever known, told us that if one's will is not aligned with God's, then you're probably not yet saved.

Dr. Nobel is also the only person I've met who was actually able to describe what a second work, beyond that salvation experience might look like. He knows what he believes about sanctification and how it differs from salvation. I'll be honest, I believe he knows what he's talking about, but I was never able to understand it - and I've spent a lot of time trying.

I've had that experience I was always taught I needed, but it certainly didn't feel like what they said. Oh, sure, there have been times, sometimes quite extended periods, where I've felt like I was supposed to - like I could make the right decision, even if it was difficult and succeed at doing it over and over again. But that hasn't been my experience at all times.

I'll admit it. Sometimes I know the good I ought to do and I don't do it. That's sin (almost word for word from the Bible).

While I'm fairly certain a few people can exist on that plane of holiness, the way I was taught, I'm fairly confident that most of the people in our denomination required to testify to that experience probably aren't - at least not all the time.

Don't get me wrong. I believe in holiness. I believe God can and does change us, as we allow, over time into people more like Christ, people who think less about themselves and more towards the needs of others, people who love unconditionally and are willing to suffer with those who suffer. It's part of this crisis/process debate we Nazarenes have been having for some time. It's not difficult to see the process and it's not difficult to see the crisis, but it's awfully difficult to see how this works out practically.

This standard of holiness is sort of used and not used when it's convenient. As adults we sort of understand the practical nature of grace and responsibility. Life is messy and things aren't always cut and dry. It makes sense rationally. But that rational part of my brain is having a hard time dealing with the part of my brain raised with the notion of perfection as the goal. We Nazarenes do a good job of clarifying our terminology - sin doesn't quite mean what most people take it to mean, and neither does perfection. I get that, too. But I didn't always get it. Those early lessons are hard to overcome.

Now I'm not blaming my psychological issues solely on theology - there is a lot of other personal stuff that goes along with it - at the same time, it sure doesn't help. If a person believes perfection is the expectation, then they are never good enough and always a failure. It seems as though people feel that way enough on their own, without (even unintentional) religious practice reinforcing it. The gospel really tells people the opposite: we are all good enough; we are all loved and valuable and important; even if we fail and fall short we are still loved.

That doesn't absolve us of responsibility or exempt us from facing the consequences of our actions, but it does speak to our fundamental value as people.

I'm not sure my tribe has done a very good job of forming ourselves around that idea. The very holiness we talk about so much is really only possible once we get over the notion that we can get it all right. We've always been very good about making that clear for people... until they're sanctified, then there's an expectation that those days are over. Like I said, it may very well work that way for some people - it hasn't for me, and I'm guessing I'm not alone.

It's strange that I've felt nervous writing this whole time. It's not a big deal to admit I'm not perfect, or at least it shouldn't be - but, as an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene, it sort of feels like it is. Even by that definition which exempts unintentional mistakes from perfection, I'm still not perfect. I choose selfishly all the time, to the detriment of my family and friends. I do so willingly, sometimes even knowing it's wrong when I do it.

I recognize how that fits theologically and I can put it within the framework outlines above. I know how it works within notions of holiness - I am definitely more Christ-like now than I was last week or last year, let alone a decade ago. I'm just not as good as I always believed I should be. I don't think I'm as good as the Manual of my denomination expects me to be.

I know we're often a gracious people. I've experienced it time and again. We're certainly better at dealing with people honestly than we've been in the past. But what we say, in writing, and what we do, in practice, don't really line up that well with each other. It's harmed me in the past. I know it's harmed others. I suspect this implied expectation of perfection has been behind a lot of trouble our denomination has had in recent years. We're just not able to cut each other slack because we've always held this notion of perfection up as right to rule - the most holy people are the ones in charge, so the ones in charge must, at least, appear holier than everyone else.

I know that's not who we are at our core, but it's sure who we appear to be.

I'm not sure if or how long it might take to get over these mental blocks in my head constantly telling me I need to be perfect, that preventable mistakes are wrong and make me less valuable. I doubt I'm alone in battling these lies. But perhaps it's time to just admit we're human.

When I tell people what exactly we mean by holiness, I often say we believe that we can live the kind of life God intends for us to live right here and right now - we don't have to wait for heaven. I believe that. I'm just less and less convinced that life looks like one without error. I suspect it's more likely a life in which love and grace can be expected at all times.

I know we don't live in a world where that's true, but perhaps we should be able to be part of a Church where it is.