Pastoring, Parenting, and Purpose

I spent a day last week with sixty or so of my colleagues, listening and discussing practical theology in a session led by one of our General Superintendents (the six ministers selected to pastor my denomination: the Church of the Nazarene), David Busic. He's a thoughtful, vulnerable, and transparent leader, which meant the session was both informative and provocative. I say that only to indicate I'm not sure what I'm about to write has anything to do with what he said, but it did stem from whatever was happening that day.

I wrote a note that said, "If we're out to help people live into the Kingdom we'll act and approach life and ministry in radically different ways than if we're out to prevent mistakes (sinful acts)."

I've done a ton of thinking about the moralism of my holiness experience in recent years. I'm convinced, despite the good intentions of our parents, that my generation received a pretty crappy, harmful version of the gospel that's largely contributed to the extreme die-off in participation in the Church from people 35 or so and younger. In fact, part of the reason I haven't written and posted here as regularly is that I'm trying to spend my writing time writing something more substantial to address both those problems and their victims.

I don't use the words "trauma" and "victim" lightly, especially because I know how much it hurts those responsible. Our pastors and parents really did have the best of intentions, but, as my note indicates, they were perhaps more concerned with keeping us from making mistakes than actually teaching us how to live into the Kingdom of God.

A big part of holiness theology is the absence of intentional sin. It's often explained in the negative, though, with language about avoiding sin or being free from sin - which is elucidated in ways that neither the speaker of the hearer can fully comprehend. I prefer the more positive explanation of holiness: that we are partnering with God's Holy Spirit to grow into an ever-increasing Christ-likeness. We avoid and find freedom from sin only in that we're closer to the people God created us to be today than we were yesterday. This avoids the dangerous territory of "perfection" language that's been so troublesome in the past.

That notion of perfection has led us to pursue a mistake-free life. As a result, us grown-up evangelical kids were handed a faith that was primarily fear-based. Activity X, Y, and Z bring you perilously close to sin, so we'll avoid them altogether as way of safeguarding your purity.
Practically, that's not a terrible approach. I believe there are lots of problems I avoided because I just never had the opportunity to be exposed to them. The issue, though, is that, try as one might, you can't avoid everything and the avoidance itself creates problems later in life, especially when it comes to things that have a proper context for engagement.

This shows up most clearly when it comes to sex. Linda Kay Klein's book, Pure, does a bang up job of illustrating the real problems caused by the evangelical purity culture that largely demonized sex. You can replace "sex" with anything considered sinful (although, frankly, it was mostly sex) and you'll get a good picture of the kind of faith we were given.

Beyond any of the practical realities, though, this desire to avoid mistakes really stems from a terrible theology of salvation. We can say something different with our words all we want, but both us and our parents had (and may still have) the notion that if you let one cuss word slip out and get hit by a car before you apologize to Jesus, you're destined for an eternity in torturous hell.

This is the root of that obsession with purity (and not just the sexual kind). Our parents were so afraid we'd lose our salvation if we made mistakes they didn't help us navigate and make decisions about how we'd engage the world. We just got taught, with a heavy dose of fear, to avoid anything that might remotely be sinful.

Shoot, the word "shit" isn't sinful. It's crude, for sure, and it might make someone uncomfortable or offended in certain situations, which certainly wouldn't be considered virtuous. I don't fault any parent for trying to keep those words out of their child's regular vocabulary.
For many of us, though, that meant also avoided slightly less crude words like "crap" or, in some cases even "poop." You'd never really know what substitute words were acceptable in a given household; you might get scolded for saying "shoot" instead of "shit" because "we all know which word you were thinking," despite the fact that we'd been so scared out of saying something like "shit" we'd never, in a million years, even think it.

You get the overkill. If you're reading this blog, you've probably lived it.

All that to say, perhaps our job as pastors and parents isn't to keep our kids from mistakes, but to help them learn what it means to live into the Kingdom of God. Boundaries with no context teach nothing. If your kid doesn't know why they were sent to their room, all you've done is damage your kid.

I cringe even writing these things, because I was so formed in the "avoid mistake" culture that it feels almost sinful just to argue for a different approach. That's the residual effect that doesn't do any of us any good.

You know what, I'd rather my daughter not have sex before she's married. I think that's a healthier, more productive, less risky path in life, but I'm also not so naive to think that path will leave her with less sexual dysfunction than the alternative. It's really not about action at all, but the intentionality and control we have over the actions we take. Do you know why you use the words you use? Do you know how they affect you and the people around you? Do you have control over the words that come out of your mouth? How do you feel about the answers to those questions? What kind of person do you want to be with regards to language or sexuality or politics or violence?

I didn't really confront those questions until well into college, when I was secure enough in my independence to even realize I had choices.
When I did, I had very few tools by which to even approach issues I could've been dealing with earlier.

I get that our parents didn't want to reveal our independence to us at an age when we might abuse it; it's a natural protective instinct. We want to spare our kids the mistakes of our own lives. What we often fail to realize, though, is that there is no age when we won't abuse our freedom.
The process of navigating ethical and moral waters is necessary for maturity. Some of us simply matured much later because of the sheltered environment we inhabited. Others never matured, because they lack the tools to even make choices, resorting either to indulgence or repression.

The truly tragic result of this misbegotten perspective is that faith became a hindrance to understanding freedom and ethics, rather than a foundation. God, Christianity, and the Bible serve as a barrier to engaging the practical issues of life rather than a guide. So many people feel they lack purpose and direction in life, that they're missing the moral tether faith is supposed to provide - and I suspect more of those people grew up in Church than not.

The defining revelation of my life is: if God is love and a perfect love drives out all fear (both direct Biblical statements), then things which make us afraid are not from God. We cannot be afraid, even of sin, even for the salvation of our children, because that fear itself prevents the grace and love and power of God's good news from transforming both our lives and theirs. We must instill in our children not a fear of sin or an avoidance of mistakes, but a profound trust in the grace of God to redeem the sin in our lives and make us - more and more each day - into the people God created us to be.

The freedom to sin empowers us to reject it; the fear of sin empowers it to control our lives. I think, by and large, we received the latter when we needed the former and it's incredibly difficult to pass on something different to the next generation. They don't need help knowing who not to be, but it's really hard knowing who we should be and even harder to become that person. That should be the focus of our life and ministry.

Legends and Legacies

Last Tuesday was 9/11, so I decided to save this one a week.

9/11 is only going to become more important as the distance from it to the present increases. The kids I see in schools everyday weren't even alive when it happened and so many young people have no living memory. As much as telling our stories can feel old, at times, it's important to help our collective memory.

The world is different now than it was, which is always true, but rarely do we have such definitive, recognizable transition moments as 9/11. The militant nationalism so prevalent in our society can be traced to that day and the ones following. Our obsession with safety and security are collective travails that extend from the emotional trauma of watching a nation that had never previously been attacked succumb to the kind of violence that's commonplace in so many countries around the world.

It's a real thing and we must, absolutely, with all our might, prevent it from becoming legend.

Legends lack complexity and context. When we were in Hawaii a few years back, we got to tour the Pearl Harbor memorial. What struck me most about the museum was the dearth of historical context. The US was competing with Japan for influence and control in the Pacific, and part of that meant limiting Japan's supply of oil. War was inevitable, because that particular US policy was an existential threat to their country. We can talk about tragedy - a surprise attack that cost a lot of lives - without negating the issues surrounding it's place in history. We don't tend to do that, though, we paint ourselves the innocent victims and the "other guy" as the bloodthirsty evil.

The speed with which we did that in 2001 is why 9/11 has much a troubled connection in my mind. We set out for revenge real quick. It didn't even seem to matter who was on the other end of our national fist. It got us into a lot of trouble and it shaped our society in really negative ways (beyond the governmental and economic consequences, which were nothing to sneeze at).

9/11 was a violent attack; all violence should be denounced. I don't like the distinction between civilian and military targets, because, as I said, all violence should be denounced - but 9/11 was certainly beyond even the commonly accepted rules of war: terror at it's very definition. The purpose of terror, of course, is to create a fear that grows, panic and overreaction that feeds itself in a cycle of expansion that ultimately gnaws at the roots of a society.

In that sense, the terrorists won.

That's why context is so important. We need to tell the stories of our experiences and emotions on that day. We need to communicate just how traumatic it was for people entirely disconnected from the lives lost, because violence has real consequences - when we do it and when we're the victims of it. We need to tell the stories to learn the lessons of how to respond to terror, how to control our very real and right fear and not allow it to eat us up and dictate our actions.

We need to keep 9/11 within the larger narrative of international politics, recognizing the out-sized influence the US has played in middle eastern politics and how quickly a religious narrative can be used to manipulate people and power. We need to keep perspective on the "good vs evil" dynamics and tell the story of 9/11 honestly - not filtered through the lenses we'd like it to fit.

Things have been sanitized that don't deserve cleaning. The impact of the clean-up on the fire and police officers, the rescue workers, both paid and volunteer - they're lionized in the stories we tell as they lie forgotten, suffering and dying as a result of their work. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in Iraq and Afghanistan died because of decisions our government made. Casualties of war are not just numbers on a page or phrases in a history book; they're real people - and there's many more of "them" who died than there ever were of "us." Such small numbers of "us" were ever asked to serve or sacrifice and we continually cut corners and pinch pennies to care for the hearts and heads of people who gave life and limb and family to fight angry, vengeful wars. We can't even be bothered to sacrifice the next marginally better drone or fighter jet to provide the medical care veterans across the country need.

Yes, I'm opposed to war and violence, precisely because they dehumanize and devalue life. It's all the more reason to support and care for those who've been victims of such war (and there are always many victims on every side of a fight).

I feel very different about 9/11 today than I did seventeen years ago, but that should also be part of the story. Reliving the vivid memories and emotional legacy of the moment as well as the changes it's wrought in us since that day, both individually and collectively. We need to recognize that while this is a singularly remarkable event, it is but one of many singularly remarkable events in our history and each come from somewhere and lead to somewhere. They fit in a larger narrative with both causes and consequences. While we may not be able to internalize all the complexities of experiencing such an event, we can understand why it happens and how we need to respond.

We can only do that, though, if we're honest - not just about the story we want to tell, but about the story that must be told. The worst possible way to memorialize 9/11 is to make it legend. The best thing to do is to keep it real.

May we all keep it real. On this day and on every one to come.

Where I've Been for the Last Month

In short, I spent 11,000 miles in a car - the majority of them driving - and spent some length of time (literally anywhere from ten seconds to a couple days) in all 48 contiguous US states. 3,000 of those driving miles involved a six year old in the car. The day before we got home (19 days after I left home), my wife asked if I was ready to be back. My response? "I feel like this is my life now."

After having been home for a week, I still wish it were.

I love driving and traveling. Now, the 97 straight hours or driving or riding or sleeping in a car would (and did) definitely get old, but doing 400-500 miles in a day, then taking a day off, then doing it again, became a comfortable rhythm on the drive back. We saw Craters of the Moon, Yellowstone, the Bighorn National Forrest, the South Dakota Black Hills (including Wind Cave, Crazyhorse Memorial, and Mt. Rushmore), along with the Badlands and some friends and family.

**Pro tip: The Crazyhorse mountain sculpture is several magnitudes bigger than Mt. Rushmore - see the Presidents first, so you're not underwhelmed.**

We drove 1700 miles in two different (back to back) 24-hour periods (and then followed those up with two more 1550+ mile 24 hour periods) in an attempt to set a World Record for driving all 48 contiguous US states. We fell short, partly from a little too much navigation gambling, partly from driver error, and largely because of a flat tire. It was still a tremendous experience and one we're already talking about doing again.

The subsequent two weeks were spent with my family (my wife and daughter flew to Boise to meet me) - where we put an additional 3,000+ miles on the rental, experiencing some small parts of the West!

My favorite day was the drive out of Yellowstone - we went up to the Mammoth Hot Springs, which were as cool as anything in the Park, then headed out the Northeast Entrance along the Lamar Valley, which was packed with Bison (and a coyote!) (not to mention incredible views). When we left Yellowstone, we took the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway down to Cody, WY. This was what I believe must be quintessential Wyoming. The views were indescribable. Huge mountains. Big sky.

We drove down the mountain directly ahead, stopped to check out a bridge over an 800' ravine, then up the switchbacks you see in the foreground. The top was only about 8,000' - nothing like the 10,000' summit of the Beartooth highway you can sort of see off to the right (the one where they take those photos in the winter of a road with 25 foot snow walls on either side) that I greatly wanted to try, but will have to save for another day.

I've written before that I like hiking and driving, because the expanse of the universe comforts me. The feeling of small-ness and insignificance gives me great peace, when most of my life my brain is telling me I need to be better and do more. There's nothing like giant wildlife or expansive mountain views to help one understand the world does not revolve around them.

Even crazier, on a scale I'm still struggling to understand - even after barely scratching the surface of a National Park that's almost twice the size of our home state, we drove hundreds of miles through brilliant, amazing Wyoming wilderness (because there's almost nothing but wilderness in Wyoming) only to realize we never even left the top third of the state.

I have driven through large parts of Wyoming on other trips and a lot of the state is nothing like the majesty of the mountains (although I'm one of those people who finds a real, rugged beauty in the high plains), but it's still amazing to think that such a huge expanse of majesty exists - not only that, but there are two large states south of it, with similar mountain vistas, and another north, not to mention thousands of miles on either side of the border, as well. And that doesn't include the deserts of Utah and Arizona and New Mexico. Or California. Or the rest of the world.

It's a big country - and even though we saw more of it faster than all but a handful of people, there's so much we missed. Getting to go slower on the way home was helpful. We stopped wherever we wanted to stop and it was glorious. It definitely firmed up in my mind that once our cats have died, we should definitely spend our summers traversing the country like this. We'd probably have to stay in fewer hotels and more campsites, but it's an experience that just doesn't get old... even with a six year old.

I like accomplishing tasks, but it's also good for me to have some tasks that are basically impossible. I can't see the world. I can get to the highest point in a lot of states, but 50 is pretty doubtful - and after that there's a whole world full of high places. I can see all 50 states, but not all of them and for not enough time. The world is a beautiful mystery to be explored, but you've also got to balance that with the people around you; your own community is also an endless, beautiful mystery, and there's not enough time to explore that deeply either.

Perhaps, in the end, this trip has given me even more reason to believe in eternity. There simply isn't an end to everything good in the world and I have great hope there is also no end to the time we have to explore it. The paradox of eternity, though, is that while it seems, on the surface, to be reason for patience, it's actually a drive to urgency. We've got all the time in the world, why waste any of it?

Swearing

I had an interesting conversation about Christians and swearing a while back. I don't quite recall with whom, so I can't give credit, but thanks, whoever you are/were. The idea brought forth was an examination of the purpose for Christians taking a strong stance against profanity. (Even the definition of what words are course, offensive, or "bad" is a pretty tough slog, but we'll just define them as however you would define them, for the purposes of this post.) Christians generally try to avoid needlessly offending people (so much so we've gotten squeamish about necessarily offending people, but that's a topic for another day) - and avoiding certain words was a way of ensuring we weren't lumped in with a particular, marginal group of people - you know, the proverbial sailors and skullduggers, the kind of people who had tattoos back when tattoos were something only a few, unwashed people had. It was a "set apart" kind of thing, an abstention from something that was generally seen as detrimental to society.

The question then emerges, what is the purposes of maintaining such abstention when the only people who are really offended by those words are the Christians themselves? I mean, in a world where you can't say "crud" because we all know you really want to say "crap" and crap is just a stand-in for "shit," which you can't even say on television (except you mostly can, now, because, by and large, don't care), is any of this verbal gymnastic even serving a purpose?

There's something to be said for a unique distinctive. Holy means to be set apart, after all, and there's lots of peculiar things Christians do because they're Christians. My question remains, though, is this one really saying anything of substance theologically? Does utter avoidance of certain words strengthen or enhance the cause of God's Kingdom in the world?

I'm not saying we go willy-nilly, say whatever the (circle one) heck/hell/fuck you want, because that's just selfish and inconsiderate. I'm all about embracing situational appropriateness. There are times and places for every word just as there are, most assuredly, times and places where they don't belong. I'm not even saying we should abandon the worthwhile endeavor to avoid offense in our speech; I'm just saying that maybe we tone down the good/bad talk and treat every word in relation to context.

Christians should absolutely be an odd, marginal people in the world, but probably not because of the words we avoid.

There's a book that came out last year, one that I've been on the library waiting list for, called Swearing is Good for You by Emma Byrne. As I said, I've yet to read it, but I did catch a very short article by her, about the book, in TIME Magazine (link unavailable) where her basic argument is that "profanity" words have real power and should be reserved for appropriate times. (Funny how he brings up a book that agrees with the idea he just put forth. Hmmmm....) I'm looking forward to reading the book because she talks about how people develop positive associations with particular swear words. Research seems to indicate that positive connections only occur during adolescence and come from "a friend's laughter, parent's disappointment or an enemy's fury," to name some examples. It's a learned behavior.

Not learned so much as "someone taught me," more learned in that swearing induces pleasure when it makes someone uncomfortable, angry, or upset. In other words, parents lecturing their kids about swearing only make those same kids MORE likely to swear. It really does seem like a universal issue - abstinence and/or shame (because they're almost always the same) imbues a thing with greater power than it would otherwise possess.

As I said, twice, I've yet to read this book, but instinctually I took this tact with my (now six year old) daughter. I've never said a single thing to her about "good" or "bad" words. She's heard swear words on occasion - whether it's something slipped into a podcast or some neighbor on the street - I've tried really hard not to react in any way to those instances (other than perhaps repeated or gratuitous use, where I might make some comment about needed a broader vocabulary to vary one's word choice). I feel like it's worked out pretty well. Our kids learn their vocabulary from the words they hear us use, not from everyone word they hear anywhere. My daughter is going to learn to talk the way my wife and I talk - for better or worse. If we're using words in ways that are comfortable to us, she will, too.

I was just using some potentially faulty logic when I made that decision, but I'm glad to know science backs me up on this one.

I still cringe a bit (at least internally) when I think about the little mouth click/disapproval vocalization my dad made literally every time an even moderately offensive word was uttered in our presence (and outside our presence, for all I know). There was certainly no doubt which words were acceptable and which weren't - and what's more, I don't think I was harmed in any real way by that. I'm not sure it served the purpose for which it was intended, but I do appreciate growing up in an environment where I was taught to consider my words.

That's the other side of the coin on this one.

We all know people for whom "those words" make up a shockingly high percentage of their vocabulary - like where the 'f's outnumber the conjunctions. There's something a little off in those conversation - not because such a person is lesser in any way, but because words do, in fact, mean something. I've got a pet theory I'd love for sciency person to actually test out: I think people who swear so casually are more likely to be violent.

Hear me out on this. "Swear" words are those we generally save for our most emotionally intense situations - from the proverbial hitting on a thumb with a hammer, to hearing the news that a loved one has tragically and unexpectedly died - the moments when we feel our feels to the feeling-est degree are often those times when profanity is most understandably used. These are special words to express special emotions at special times. (That's the very definition of profanity, by the way, making sacred - or special - things ordinary.)

My theory is that people who use profanity casually, as placeholder or filler word, when they encounter those moments of extreme emotion - the places where profanity is most appropriate - they lack a vocabulary to properly express those emotions and there's nothing left but a physical response. If some guy hits my care out of sheer carelessness, I might say "what the _____ were you thinking" while we wait for the tow truck on the side of the road. But if that's my response to someone setting the table with forks on the right or bringing back an espresso instead of a macchiato, I may lack the ability to express myself appropriately after the car crash and just take a swing at the guy.

I'm not saying it has to happen that way, just that it makes sense that it would for some people. I'm suggesting correlation, not that individuals who swear a lot are more violent, just that collectively, people who swear a lot might be more violent. Obviously it's an unscientific hypothesis that's convenient in that it proves my point. Still, I think it's got some merit.

This brings me back around to where I started in the first place. How and why do Christians approach this topic? Maybe, since Christianity is profoundly non-violent, there is some real world, theological purpose for avoiding profanity. Maybe banning even the replacement words, like darn or gosh, really does help us learn to save the "bad" words for extreme moments. There's also an argument to made that Christians shouldn't be reacting out of anger anyway (and that's one I do agree with, by the way) - disciplining our use of profanity might actually be discipline, as in practices designed to control our use of those very words so can avoid them even when they might be warranted and overcome the kind of anger that leads us to act in un-Christian ways towards other people.

I guess I'm saying if we're going to call people to be really, really careful with the way they use words, we should also be really, really careful that we know why we're doing it (both calling people to greater consideration and avoiding certain words ourselves). "That sucks" might be a crude phrase I was discouraged from saying growing up, but, as a pastor, I've found it profoundly helpful as a response when someone tells me a parent has died, or they lost their job, or an engagement was called off. It's an expression of compassion and solidarity and truth, regardless of how it's judged socially - I've found it to be comforting and cathartic and appropriate in ways I never would've imagined.

Words are indeed just words... in the same way that people are just people. We can define them from afar, offer our value judgments, and put them into neat little boxes, but none of that can actually define who or what they are in the context of our relationship to them. The world would be a lot easier if people would just be happy being who we expect them to be - that's just not how things work. We need a language that's just as specific and unique and flexible as the world we use that language to create, describe, and engage.

Subcultural

A few weeks ago, at a pastor's meeting, we discussed the notion of "cul-de-sac" groups - specifically boards or committees and congregations. The cul-de-sac was a concept developed to impress upon people the idea of safety, security, and privacy (which never really materialized, to be honest). He had a great quote: "a committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled."

It is human nature to insulate ourselves. We want a predictable, familiar community of people - and when we find it, we want it to remain the same forever. Too often we've built these insular communities and called them "churches," when that couldn't be farther from the original design. Intimate, connected, familial - for sure - but closed and private, certainly not. The whole purpose of the Church is to live out a specific lifestyle in the midst of the public square, to be an example of an alternative way of life.

This brought to mind a distinction I ran across months ago (so long ago I've now forgotten who to properly credit) that Christians, especially American evangelicals, intend to be counter-cultural, but have actually constructed a subculture, separate and distinct from the culture at large. This is the distinction between living differently in the world and living in a different world altogether.

Conservative Christians in the US - what's become commonly known as "the evangelicals" - have created their own little world and, instead of engaging culture, reject it and recreate it separately, expecting people to take notice. What's worse: so much of this subculture has very little to do with Christianity; it's largely a generic moralism that's vaguely related to carefully curated scripture passages - often entirely devoid of context.

In a subculture, your primary concern is checking the right behavioral boxes to live in a way that will qualify you for the subculture. The colloquial expression growing up was "don't drink, smoke, or chew, or go with girls who do." It was an out-of-touch joke even then, but it betrays a reality. It's not even that a distinctive set of practices (either done or avoided) is a bad thing - a common rule of life is a community-defining practice and often vitally important, even for a counter-cultural presence. The problem really arises when you start to look at "why" those things are done (or not done). If it's simply to bodily identify with a specific group or to check off the boxes for heaven, you're in real trouble. If it's to embody a different set of principles, foundational assumptions for life, then it makes a lot more sense.

One of the real benefits, though, of American evangelicalism becoming and ever more exclusive subculture is that it has less and less presence in the real world. Not having been in a traditional ministry setting the last few years has woken me up to the fact that most everyone, even many people very involved in Christian ministry, just have no clue this evangelical subculture even exists. I hear pastor friends lamenting some preacher/author/conference that's embarrassing themselves and Christ and I gladly don't know what they're talking about.

As a subculture prefects its isolation, it disappears. The only time evangelical leaders pop up in mainstream culture is when they're saying ridiculous, usually deplorable things. It's a strange novelty - a bit more offensive than the Amish or a hippy commune, but equally as irrelevant in everyday life. I suspect (and hope) that by the time my daughter's grown up, the average American will know as much about Franklin Graham as they do about snakehandlers.

True counter-culture makes it's present felt simply by existing. Subcultures fade from consciousness as they reach their goals. Counter-culture is generally painful for the mainstream, but largely by asking difficult questions about relevant issues. Subcultures are annoying to the mainstream, because they feign relevancy by making a scene (almost literally the original definition of geek).

The gospel of Jesus Christ is wildly relevant to this (and every other) time and place. It is a counter-cultural message of suffering, unconditional love. It does not always provide the safety, security, or privacy of a cul-de-sac - but those very well may be illusions anyway.
There is no question of whether Christianity will survive the current upheaval of culture and human understanding, but whether the organizations and institutions we now associate with Christianity survive the change is entirely dependent on them rejecting the human desire for subculture and embracing a truly revolutionary counter-cultural presence.

Modesty, Misogyny, and Logic

I'm not a fan of faulty logic; I hate it. I also am not a fan of misogyny or gender disparagement, so the latest meme going around really got under my skin. There's a reason I've done everything possible with my Facebook settings to avoid seeing GIFs and memes in my feed - well, I just don't like GIFs; they seem stupid and pointless - but memes generally make me mad, which is their purpose and thus I try not to see them so they don't win.

I saw one the other day. You might have, too. It looks like this:

Let's tackle the logic first, before we get to the misogyny.

You can't get into a petting zoo without asking - even if there's free admission, there's at least a gate you need to pass through and an attendant who has to open it. Nobody's insurance would cover a come and go, self-service petting zoo. Not even bunnies are that safe. For this analogy to hold up, you'd have to do away with consent or permission altogether - as if just wearing more-revealing-than-average clothes or putting a cuddly animal inside a fence near public view is, in and of itself, invitation to touch. No one in their right mind would ever argue for that.

Is the guy (and it's definitely a guy) putting this meme together advocating willy-nilly animal fondling? In some versions of this meme, the text is credited to "grandma." It's just not fair to pass off that kind of terrible logic on someone's grandmother. Irresponsible and despicable - and that's before you get to the content!

I mean, sheesh, it doesn't even work if you accept the premise. Let's say the clothes of these women do, in fact, 100% advertise themselves as objects for sexual interaction, then what? I mean, you can't even touch a prostitute until you've paid up - there's a consent agreement inherent in the interaction. What this is logically saying is that any man can touch any women if they believe their appearance is inviting it. The clothes don't matter at all, unless you're willing to posit a universal definition of modesty - and if you are, there's an Amish women I'd like you to have a chaperoned conversation with across a very wide table.

Let's get this through our heads, guys: women are not objects, even if they objectify themselves or allow themselves to be objectified. The post of Kate Upton in a bikini on your wall might give you license to touch yourself, but it's not permission to touch her or any other woman. I'm not even sure what that's hard for us to understand.

Ok, that's a lie. I know exactly why that's hard for us to understand: we've been conditioned with 10,000 years of human development and for about 9,900 of them women were literally property - and when they weren't property, they were considered too weak, stupid, or fragile to make decisions for themselves. We live in a society that subtly tells us women can be used and manipulated with a clear conscience - in the last few years, when women are finally being listened to when they disagree with this norm, it's become controversial for some reason.

A woman should be able to walk down the street naked, if she so choose, without getting touched, manhandled, or molested (aside from the arresting officers, I suppose). There's no excuse or justification for that kind of thing. Period.

This meme is asinine on both a logical and practical level...

...it does bring us to the tricky situation of modesty, though.

What should people wear?

The short answer is whatever they want, right? People are people. They have free agency and none of us really agrees on what's "appropriate" or not. We've got some basic public decency laws - but even there we find complications at the margins of the definition. A lot of it boils down to sex - what clothes will keep men from lusting after a woman? The answer is none, really. The lie we've been telling ourselves is that men need a reason to objectify women and it's simply not true.

I mean some clothes might cause more men to lust than others, but even the nature of the dresses in the meme above are only titillating because our society has made them so over time. Those women are out at public events, not bedrooms or brothels - and part of the purpose of those events is specifically to draw attention to them and their various projects.

As the father of a daughter (albeit one who's only five), the logical question to ask me is "would you want your daughter wearing those dresses?" There's a gut reaction "no," because of the world in which we live, but there's a more reasoned answer that says, "it should be her choice, right? Why is my input required." Those are grown women; they get to make their own choices; I want my daughter to make her own choices, even if I don't agree with them.

Of course, it's my job to help teach her how to do that as she gets older.

She's definitely getting to the age where she can process and think critically about decisions, although we still usually have to prompt her to think of alternatives. She's already skittish to have conversations about topics without clear answers or to make her own choices when we don't tell her what's right and wrong - but I presume that changes as they get older.

A year, or so, ago, I was given an article about a facebook post a women wrote concerning what her teenage daughters wear. I've kept it because it focuses on questions they ask their kids (or teach them to ask themselves) about how they make clothing choices - covering things like context, comfort, health, exposure, purpose, etc.

What particularly struck me was the admission by her daughter than people will ogle and objectify her regardless of what she wears, so she's going to wear the clothes she likes and is comfortable wearing. She wasn't going to let the bad practices of others dictate her choices. That's a lesson I'd love for my daughter to learn and it's applicable in many contexts.

The question, "Are you comfortable with the parts of your body that are visible?" takes into account that people might do or say uncomfortable things, even if it's not the fault of the women herself. It also makes kids aware that the world isn't as perfect as it should be, which is something that's often difficult for teenagers to deal with.

Lastly, there's an emphasis on decision - why are you wearing what you're wearing? Are you doing it to show off or be provocative or impress someone? You might be wearing perfectly modest clothes for the wrong reasons and it's a worthwhile question.

I'm not going to repeat the whole thing for you, because you can read it (and you should). There's a real difference between shaming someone from their choices and asking questions which allow us to reflect on our choices. I'm not saying the more revealing dresses in the meme are right or wrong - I suspect they might be good fodder for conversations about our society, the way we view women, and the choices we make in our clothing. At the very most, you can question a person's motives for the decisions they've made, but you can't blame them for the response of others. That's basic human decency and one half of the population really has to work harder to remember the other half is actually human.

Let's get on that; it's WAY overdue.

Real Life and Real Life

So, last week was a crazy busy one. Not only that, but the business required a level of creativity that's difficult to sustain. I feel pretty taxed. So, because I missed last Thursday's post and I've got no time or energy to write one for today, you get my sermon from Sunday.

It was partially inspired by chapter eight of Empathy for the Devil by JR Forasteros, which came out last week (and which I reviewed in my last post). I struggled mightily with how to make sense of the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, but the idea of psyche and zoe that he elucidated so well in the book framed what I was trying to say quite nicely.

Anyway, here's my take on Matthew 25:1-13:

There was a guy, we’ll call him Fred – an ambitious young man with lots of potential. He joined the military out of high school and stayed in long enough to pay for college and an MBA. He got the education he wanted, but when he hit the work force, he was already years behind his peers. So he worked extra hard, burning the candle at both ends – and within five years he was the youngest executive in the history of his company. A great success story.

He got there the right way, too. People genuinely liked him. He was tough, but fair. Fred was everybody’s image of a go-getter. Along the way he’d even managed to marry a wonderful woman, and after five years, they were starting a family – with his new position, they thought it best for her to take time from work and stay at home with the kids.

So Fred just kept going. He continued to work harder than everyone else and now he coached his daughter’s soccer team and made it home for family dinner at least once a week. They took the right vacations to the right places and his wife never felt like an outsider when she got away with her friends. They had anything and everything they wanted.

Fred and his family went to church, too – religiously, even – spent every Thanksgiving at the soup kitchen, serving turkey and eating with folks who just weren’t as fortunate. Will was one of the other volunteers – he and Fred knew each other from church and their families ended up sitting together one Thanksgiving. Will invited Fred to his pick-up basketball game.

“Oh man, I haven’t really played basketball since high school,” said Fred, “It was absolutely my favorite thing in the world; I’d love to come. You said 5:30 on Thursdays? I’ll be there.”

So Fred got up a little earlier, sent his secretary an email that he’d be in late and entered the middle school gym. The guys were going back and forth, maybe a dozen – running up and down the court in a way that was simply nostalgic. The smells, the echoes, the squeaks on the floor.

Fred jumped into the next game and started running. Most of it came back – his shot was a little off, but he hit one or two and no one was really young enough to play defense anyway. By the end, though, his lungs were burning and the lack of sleep couldn’t just be covered up.

As Fred heaved on the sidelines, Will came over. “We won, Fred, we have to play again.” Fred responded, “Sure thing, can I buy some of your stamina.” Will began laughing and started to play along, but then he saw something in Fred’s eyes, “You’re not serious, are you.” “Of course, I’m serious,” says Fred, “I need more stamina to play. I’ve got the money. What does it cost?”

Will’s a little taken aback, “Fred, you have to know it doesn’t work that way, right? We’ll just get somebody else.” He called to another waiting player and they started a new game. Fred was left, breathing heavy, voice sounding desperate, “C’mon guys, let me play. I just need a little energy, a little more oil for the fire. I’ll pay whatever it costs. Please, I need to play.”


I grew up going to church. I heard the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids any number of times. They’re all waiting for the groom. It’s getting late. Some run out of oil and ask those with oil to borrow some. I always wondered why they couldn’t just share the oil? If the groom is coming, that means they’re not going to need much more – surely there’s enough to give the foolish ones a little bit to tide them over, right?

The best answer I can come up with is that it’s a parable, an analogy for life and in real life, it doesn’t work that way. Like Fred, we discover there are some things we need we just can’t buy.
I can give you the best running shoes in the world, give you all the water and nutrition and maps you need – professional level marathon support – but if you didn’t train you won’t be able to run the race – it’s as simple as that. Some things in life require preparation.

You might say, like Fred in the story, I’m working so hard, doing all the right things, just trying to find happiness or fulfillment, or to appease my guilty conscience, and it just doesn’t seem like enough. We’ve all been there: desperate for just a little more oil. One more hour, one more dollar, one more prayer, one more date – just one more and I’ll have what I need to be happy.

Satisfaction is always just over the next horizon – and that’s what makes heaven such a hopeful proposition. We slog through life the best we can, then finally, someday, we have what we need.

If you come to adult studies you’ve heard this a whole bunch, but we get heaven wrong. The Kingdom of God is not about the fulfillment of all your desires; it’s about being content without them. The Kingdom of God is not some far off future event, it came with Jesus and while it’s not fully realized yet, we can begin to live into the Kingdom of God right now.

In the parable, the foolish bridesmaids didn’t have what they needed to enjoy the party, because they were waiting for the party, rather than preparing for it. They were looking for some far off heaven, rather than seeing the Kingdom of God all around them already.

It’s a confusing parable for us, because in our world things are reversed. The people we call prepared are the ones doing everything. Like Fred, they’re working hard, taking care of their families, and checking all the boxes of success. Jesus is saying, though, that these are the fools, the people who think they can work their way into the Kingdom by doing everything right.

In the end, though, they just end up desperately looking for more oil, because they never arrive. They never find what they’re looking for, just more pressure to do even more.

That sneaks into the Church as well. Too often we’ve made Christianity about checking off our own list of requirements. As much as we say we can’t earn our salvation, that’s what it sure looks like we’re trying to do. Church becomes a scary, unwelcome place precisely because we greet desperate, overworked, unhappy people at the door and hand them an additional list of things they need to do. Our solution to the problem is to do more of the same.

So it ends up that Christians look no different than the rest of the world. We might have a different checklist, but we’re still running ourselves ragged trying to get it done and desperate for just a little more oil to see us through the day. That’s not really a life any of us wants to live.

The good news of the gospel, however, is that the Kingdom of God is not some far off heaven. It’s not something we have to wait for or work for or discover the secret to get in. Jesus invites all people, the lost and the least along with the best and most prepared. He invites the wise and the foolish alike to enjoy the eternal benefits of true life in Christ. He even says, “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

However – and this is the hard part for us – the invitation is not for a destination. The Kingdom of God is not about arriving some place, or achieving some goal. The Kingdom of God is a journey. It’s a path we have to walk. You can join anywhere and at any time – and it doesn’t matter if some people are farther along than others; we’re all in. You can be prepared or you can be totally winging it, but you have to understand it’s not about where we’re going, it’s about how we get there.
You ever wonder about the Sermon of the Mount? We read those chapters from the beginning of Matthew where Jesus teaches us to love our enemies, to give to anyone who asks without expecting anything in return, to not worry about what we’ll eat or wear – we read those chapters and our first response is “wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world like that?” We think, “maybe someday our world can be like that,” and then we go right back to doing things the same way.

These “judgment” parables always scare people, as if Jesus were saying, “Do this, or else,” but really Jesus is saying, “Life is short, here’s how to live it well.”

The wise bridesmaids are the ones who do life differently. They’re the ones who live not for the destination, but the journey. They’re prepared for life if the goal we so desperately seek never comes to fruition. They’re happy in all circumstances and always ready to respond with love and grace. They look like Jesus and there’s no reason we can’t look like them.

Yes, the Kingdom of God requires us to give up our goals, to let go of this desire to feel safe or happy or secure. I think we know, in our heads, those pursuits won’t really bring us what we want, but our hearts still believe they will. Guess what? Jesus is in the business of changing hearts.

Living into the Kingdom of God does cost us something, because we won’t look like everyone around us. We won’t be seeking after the same things. There is tremendous peer pressure in our society to live by a certain set of ideals and values all of which are designed to bring fulfillment and yet never will. People who step out of that life or approach things differently get labeled – and those labels are never good. Why? Because we all want the same things, but most of us are too scared to try a different way.

Some of you here are old enough to remember the Apollo space missions. NASA made those first astronauts huge celebrities. Neil Armstrong and John Glenn and all the rest were all over TV, with their crew cuts and their perfect American families. They didn’t look like hulking superheroes; they looked like regular guys.

It’s easy for us to watch videos of them floating around in space and think, “that looks like fun; I’d love to do that,” and forget the years and years of intense training that went into those space visits and the real, constant, inherent danger involved in every one.

What’s more, we see space as this exotic, attractive destination, where people like us can have the time of their lives. But I’ll tell you what, those Apollo astronauts did not see space as a destination; for them it was just something they had to do in order to get back home.

There’s a blessing I love, although I’m rarely brave enough to say it people: “May all your dreams come true tomorrow, so you can discover they aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and you can get on living.”

We’re constantly in search of more oil to keep the lamps burning, because we desperately want to find peace, solace, comfort, greatness. The message of the gospel, though, is that you’re already home – the Kingdom of heaven is here! The key is to learn to live in the moment, to love the people around you, to give up the search for something great – and surprisingly, unbelievably, impossibly, you find what you’re looking for in the most unexpected of places.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen!

Is the Reformation Worth Celebrating?

I can't imagine I'm the only one writing this post this week - fortunately, though, I'm generally out of the loop on contrarian click bait. Still, the Reformation always makes me a little uneasy. Part of it probably comes from having attended a hardcore Presbyterian high school where we got out of class each year to watch a plodding green and white version of some Martin Luther movie (probably from the 50's). It was a bittersweet experience for all the reasons you might think.

More than that, though, I wonder if the Reformation really did us any good. No one will argue the Roman Catholic Church was utterly corrupt in 1517 and needed some serious help. All of the things Martin Luther proposed to do were good (well, most of them, at least; confession: I haven't fully vetted all 95 theses) and even though the narrative goes that he didn't do what he set out to do (reform the Church), that may have been what we ended up with.

While many of my fellow Protestants will claim we liberated the faith from its bureaucratic, stale, and limiting tendencies, what we replaced it with was basically the same. The Church was still an institution.

I'm enough of a historian to know that, given the era, institutionalism was probably inevitable. However, the Church - no matter how corrupt and un-Christlike it became - always had radical factions, witnessing with their lives to the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Yes, they were often brutally hunted and killed off, but they were also always followed by another movement doing basically the same thing.

What I'm thinking is that the real reformation of the Church comes not with a changing of the gatekeepers, but with a changing of the life and practice of faith itself. I've been working a lot with Jesus' Kingdom motif lately - most of the parables begin as an explanation of the Kingdom - and I've found a recurring theme I hadn't noticed before. Most parables involve not the separating of saint from sinner, but the separating of the saints into faithful and otherwise. It's as if one message of the Kingdom, consistent throughout Jesus' ministry and thereafter, was that practicing the faith in the established institutional way is no guarantee of entry to the Kingdom of God.

We know that, of course; I can recount many a Sunday School lesson that stressed the very Lutheran notion of salvation by faith over works - that we can behave our way into the Kingdom - but I'm not sure we ever make the full connection to worship. We can't worship our way into the Kingdom either - at least in the way the institutional Church has come to define worship. Merely participating in the practices established by the community is not enough if there is no real transformation.

This is the message of Jesus' parables. The people of the Kingdom are noticeably different, not in habit or confession, but in being. The core of who we are is transformed by love and while may never act as perfectly in-line with "Christian" expectations as we'd like (or to the liking of some who share our pews), we may very well be experiencing and living into the Kingdom of God in ways those others don't yet understand.

When I think about the Reformation, I don't doubt the sincerity of its heroes or the core of its convictions, but I do wonder if the net result was just to change the expectation the institution places on its adherents, rather than a real testimony to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We have a long history of truly counter-cultural, prophetic movements - mostly small and unorganized - who witnessed to this great power.
Maybe we would've been better off with one monolithic Church that continually battled the prophets of its own conscience than to have 10,000 different perspectives on what the monolith should look like, each claiming to be radical and prophetic?

Now, perhaps, instead of one corrupt organization in need of salvation, we've got 10,000 and the work of the prophets is all the more difficult.
It is the converted who need to be converted, continually and for all time. Maybe, just maybe, in the grand scheme of things, the Reformation really didn't do much to further that cause?

God, Evil, and Excuses

I received an actual stranger comment on one of my old posts - and one that's not trying to sell me counterfeit pharmaceuticals or infect my computer with a virus. It references a post on "Atheism and the City" addressing the failure of traditional theism to properly address the problem of evil. I wrote a response to that post that I thought might be good to share.

I found this piece because of a comment on my blog post about never having been born.

I appreciate the valid critique this post gives to a certain theistic perspective on evil, although I do tend to see some flaws in the analogy. First, the bag of money - the notion that there is an end or reward, while very common in religious circles, isn't something I'd associate with the teachings of Jesus (my only real frame of reference, religiously speaking). At the very least, I'd argue he says the means are the end - whatever "reward" or "goal" is in the process, not the conclusion. Therefore the gifting of a bag on money, in this sense, doesn't really represent my understanding of how the world works. I do grant that it's a very common religious (and especially Christian) perspective - but I have just as many problems with it, as someone trying to take Jesus and the Bible seriously, as you do as an atheist. This is the kind of critique of which we need more.

I'd also point you toward theist philosopher Thomas Jay Oord, who's recently been writing a lot about the problem of evil, especially as it comes to determinism. He works with principles of Open and Process Theology to challenge the notion of God's omnibenevolence. I can't say I'm totally on board with the direction of his work, but I do agree with him (and you, apparently) that those "omni" claims are more problematic for Christianity and theism than most people want to admit.

My personal views are that we're too quick to individualize everything in the modern western world. While I do recognize the place, worth, and value of individuals, I tend to see existence itself as more of a coherent whole and advocate the necessity of evaluating individual participation in the whole through that context.

I don't find as much need for addressing the problem of evil as many others - it just doesn't keep me up at night in the same way - I tend to see evil as a reality in the world and I just don't have much impetus to ask why. I do tend to ask "what should I/we do about it," and my answer is generally "love."

I don't think it's a complete answer, but I do find a certain beauty in redemption (the reconciliation of warring or aggrieved parties) that simple isn't possible without pain. I know there's a sometimes-distinction made between pain and evil (cheating on your wife vs genocide, for example), but I'm less inclined to believe in it. I feel like a poor philosopher saying it so simply, but I find great peace in the notion that pain breeds pain and love breeds love. I have great hope that the latter can eventually defeat the former - or that, if I'm wrong, a life lived with that expectation is worthwhile even if it's ultimately futile.

Some Things Aren't News

Indulgence is a double-edged sword. We're tantalized by the notion of "too much of a good thing." You don't want to eat chocolate until you're sick, but you do want to eat chocolate long after you should've stopped. We fantasize about indulgence so much it's become our de facto picture of heaven, paradise; we want a place where we can do whatever we want with no repercussions.

This isn't a post about our conceptions of heaven, but needless to say a place of unlimited, consequence-free indulgence might not be all it's cracked up to be. Indulgence just isn't good for us. I'm terrified of ever going on a cruise, because it takes all my willpower (and usually I don't have enough) just to maintain a below-average modicum of discipline. It's terrible difficult to get back to a normal sleep routine after a vacation. I just can't imagine what life would be like coming off the week of pure indulgence that those boats seem to embody. It's scary.

You may wonder how all this ties in with the title of the post, but it's really indulgence that drives the ridiculous "news" coverage we all publicly lament and secretly enjoy. TMZ is my guilty pleasure. Talking about the private lives of total strangers seems odd, but it's really a firehose of false intimacy that costs me nothing. It's indulgent and it's fun.

This is what the news has become. There's no more journalistic curation - what's news is what gets ratings. We can all pinpoint some "moment" where it started - whether it was Elvis's death or the royal wedding or OJ's car chase, but the reality is it's always been this way. TMZ is no more than the modern, digital version of the gossip at the town well you could've experience in 2,000 BC.

Granted, it seems as though this gossip has become mainstreamed with just about every "media" outlet signing on for the circus - that's new - but it also fits with the times. We're an indulgent people dominated by the idea of more. More information, more false intimacy, more purposeless pleasure. We want what we enjoy - and we want as much as we can get. It's indulgent.

I shouldn't be surprised by the traction this Trump phone call to the soldier's widow is getting, but I am surprised. Maybe it's a sign we've moved beyond all propriety when it comes to other people. Maybe empathy is truly dead. That's what it feels like.

None of this is our business. That congresswoman with the hat shouldn't have brought it up and the White House shouldn't have responded. Even if the President had a dispassionate, awkward, offensive conversation with the widow of a soldier, it's not news. It's not something that should be covered. It's private correspondence about dead loved ones. We should all know better than to be interested, but of course we don't.

It's not as though this is even news, in the proper sense. It's not new information. It doesn't change anyone's perception of Donald Trump. It's not as thought he was some suave public speaker, beloved by the masses for his compassion and empathy and this particular phone call were dispelling common perceptions. Even his most ardent supporters know the guy doesn't do words very well and he's even worse with the feels.

No matter where your conclusion resides on the spectrum, no matter if this was deliberately disrespectful, a sign of sociopathic incompetence, or the guy just can't talk to people very well - heck, even if he made a perfectly normal, well-intentioned phone call with proper decorum, nothing about this story presents any information people didn't already know. It's useless fodder for the indulgence machine.

At some point, we have to just stop. It's not news and it's more than a little unseemly.


While we're on the subject - most of what Trump says isn't news, as in "not worth covering." From the very beginning we've known that he says outrageous things on purpose, to stir up a firestorm of angry coverage and distract from substantive policy issues. We've known it and we've said it; it's been widely reported. Yet we still play into it.

The week before he made the comment on NFL players kneeling, just six - enough to be counted on one hand by about 1 in 1000 human beings (look it up) or Count Rugen (I hope you don't have to look it up) - were kneeling during the anthem. The week after? Hundreds. Guess what? Now we've got a giant mix of protest. Were they kneeling to speak up for free speech or to oppose Trump or were they actually speaking out for the original protest - the continued disproportionate killing and mistreatment of young black men in society? Who knows?

What's more, since those comments, we've heard very little about racial injustice and a lot about patriotism and free speech. The narrative has been completely overwhelmed with stuff that just isn't news - and the real news, the shootings and brutality, the sentencing and prison imbalance, the real, actual problems that need to be addressed don't seem to be news at all anymore.

Why? They're less indulgent. They affect the lives of each of us on a near-daily basis. It's not abstract conversations about the hypothetical, about the mindset of strangers, about issues that play into our desperate need to emote. Yeah, we can make real news black and white, yes and no, hard line opinions, but most of us still have a conscience that recognizes the grey. Those things don't get ratings unless people are yelling at each other and, in general, the public doesn't like watching the yelling when it's about an issue that hits home.

CNN tried to run the middle ground for a brief time there. They ceded partisan bickering to Fox on the one side and MSNBC on the other. Their ratings tanked and they became the media scapegoat of a scapegoating President anyway. We can bemoan the lack of principle all we want, but a principled CEO in that moment would've been fired for not making shareholders any money.

No, the real responsibility lies with us. Some egotistical hotshot somewhere decides what goes on TV, but we, the viewers, decide what stays.
I've never been in the majority on that account (RIP Trophy Wife) and maybe I'm not now, but it feels like something worth saying.

We need to take responsibility for our indulgence. No one is force-feeding you media comfort food. You can say no. It feels good to pound donut after donut on a Saturday morning, especially when the week has been stressful and life seems unfair, but we all know it's not good for us.
The current state of "news" is like a free donut machine someone installed in our living room. It's got an endless supply of sugary goodness just waiting for us to consume - and it's even socially acceptable to do so.

In the end, though, some things aren't news. We need to be focused on the real events that really shape the real people who live real lives all around us. Maybe that's the rallying cry when we see something interesting pop up as click bait on facebook or scroll across the TV screen -
does this have anything to do with people I know and love? Should I care more about the people this story involves? If the answer is "no"
to both of those questions, just turn it off. Even if the whole world is consumed with fighting about it - it still might not be important.

Click Bait with Depth

So, I've been sitting on this for a while. I clicked on some click bait a while back - I do that occasionally, I'm sad to admit. It was about a man who refused to take off his Marine Corps hat for his driver's license photo. You may have seen it around. Essentially, the story was that an older gentleman was asked to remove his hat for the photo, as is general practice, but he refused, pointing to a man allowed to keep his turban on. When told the only exemption is for religious items worn daily, he claimed his hat was such an item and, after a flurry of phone calls, was allowed to wear it for the photo.

We have no real way of knowing if this is true. Even Snopes says it's anybody's guess, although the details are plausible. I believe the quote from the story is that his marine corps oath was "to one nation under God, which makes it as good as religion." Whether fabricated or not, it's a pretty telling statement about the perception of nationalism and the ways in which Christianity has been distorted to serve powerful and violent interests. We've essentially sanctified "common sense," when the gospel is foolishness to the wisdom of the world.

What's more telling, perhaps, is that this was designed to get people clicking. It's popular. It's the kind of feel good story people are willing to read and share. I sure hope my Christian friends are uncomfortable with it, but I've also seen plenty defend this kind of analogy. I've long heard people say you can serve God and country as long as you have them in the right order. Those are often the same people who say its un-American to welcome immigrants, for example - without much thought to Biblical teaching on the matter; who choose war over peace.

It's a broad brush and perhaps the characterization doesn't fit you - for that I'm glad - but it's been true in enough of my conversations to warrant comment. We simply can't combine nationalism and Christianity - even if there is some purported "right" order of allegiance, in any conglomeration of the two, Christianity always loses. Power is a wily foe - it's why Jesus says a man cannot serve both God and Mammon. We typically take that to mean "money," and greed is probably the best translation, but it's not always about money. Greed speaks to accumulation, typically at the expense of others. This is a power game.

When we seek to be "the best country in the world," there's tacit implications that this means others are less good. Perhaps we could be the best country in the world while also helping the rest of the world to achieve what we have. However, our typical fallback for maintain "greatness" is not magnanimous generosity and sacrifice; it's military might, force, and power. We hoard those things and in doing so, give worship and honor to Mammon.

The guy in the click bait, if he really exists, has nobly given his life to a certain set of principles and assumptions. They're "noble" in every sense of our vernacular, but they're not Christian values and the Church can't continue to strain between two pillars moving in opposite directions. That edifice, of God and country, is simply unstable. Better for it to fall and us pick up the pieces than to kill ourselves in an unwinnable task.

That's not to say nationalism or American patriotism doesn't have elements of true virtue embedded within it - just that they're in service to a worldview that's dead and dying. The sooner we cut the cord, the better we're all going to be.

I still don't advocate giving in to the clickbait - it's the surest way for your to spread fake news or contract a computer virus - but here's one, at least, that speaks volumes beyond simply the words on the screen. Our lives are telling; they reveal information about us we may never have intended or known. Let's serve God and keep Mammon out of it.

Value and Validation

I was reading an interesting article about the place of Macklemore in the cultural conversation.* The article included a video from his new album - a song featuring Kesha. I thought the song was below average, in fact the only parts I enjoyed were the parts Kesha sings. It got me to thinking that she, herself, just put out a tremendously well-received album that I hadn't yet listened to. So I listened to it.

It's tremendous, by the way, ranging over a bunch of different styles and musical genres, all of which are pretty good. Kesha, herself, has an improbable story - the daughter of a semi-successful songwriter, she came to prominence as her family hosted Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie during their ill-fated reality show The Simple Life. She was soon after handpicked by mega-producer Dr. Luke and signed to a record deal. The Song Machine - a book about the manufactured pop sound of the last two decades - makes it seem like Dr. Luke (not a doctor) chose Kesha specifically as part of a project to literally create a pop star from scratch; it depicts her as more of a tool, from his perspective, than even an artist.

This all came to an ugly head when Kesha accused Dr. Luke of sexual and financial abuses and sued to be released from her recording contract. This request was denied and it was ruled that the statute of limitations on the rape allegations had expired. She was left to release her newest album, the one I listened to, through Dr. Luke's label, even though he had nothing to do with its production.

Kesha's carefully curated persona through most of her career had been as a drugged up, sexually adventurous, party queen - her songs were generally about drinking and laughing off disastrously bad decisions in a way that makes teenagers excited and parents concerned. Typical pop music to the extreme. With the new album Kesha is being more personal, exploring the depths and breadth of her actual reality, and dealing with all the crap in her life (of which the above description is just a tiny fragment).

We went from seeing this Kesha



To this one




It's a little jarring, both to see how pop culture is manipulated and to see what it can do to real people. Kesha's new album isn't polite - there are a bunch of tracks marked explicit and while there are some potential Top 40 hits there, it's mostly about an artist expressing herself. In other words, it's real art. I recommend the whole thing - it's not too long and it's insanely real, especially if your aware of Kesha's journey to making it.

One of the songs that really caught my attention is called "Hymn." I tend to enjoy music that uses religious language or overtones, especially the songs that challenge the staid assumptions of religiosity. This one, in particular, talks about being a "hymn for the hymnless," a song for "kids with no religion."

I got it, immediately; it really resonated with me. She's not talking about religion persay (and you can read a longer description of Kesha's thoughts on the song here), but about people who feel left out. It's a song for people who don't fit in.

I wouldn't say I've been an outcast in my life; I've rarely felt alone. I have, however, often felt like I don't fit in. I tend to challenge the status quo, mostly because I believe deeply that somebody should. I also tend to think differently. I like this song in particular because of the religious language. Christianity, a movement of outcasts, specifically designed to include and accept everyone, has become one of the most exclusive, homogeneous movements around. Even in the midst of our deep Christian divisions, we tend to be people who like to congregate with people like us.

I love that the very fact this song includes explicit profanities, it'll be rejected by many Christians as bad or troublesome or dangerous, when, to me, it seems downright prophetic. I get that it sounds like an unapologetic apology for all things hedonistic and sinful. It's got overt celebration of selfishness and individualism - generally things Christianity frowns upon. I think, though, above it all, "Hymn" is a declaration of human worth - that's something the Church could use more of.

We have theological statements about how grace and salvation is a free gift from God, but we tend to supplement those statements with actions that show we really do expect a specific standard of behavior to really belong. A lot of the things Kesha has done or sung about are not the kinds of things I want for myself or my children; they're not things I'd condone - and not because they're inherently bad, just that they tend to be harmful. However, when we hold the ideal up as the standard, we all end up falling short. It produces shame and guilt that only lead to a devaluation of self-worth and, often, a devaluation of someone else's worth in our eyes.

Yes, there's a balance between judgement and grace, especially when we actually have the kind of relationship with people where they can hear hard truths as love. The problem we run into is that almost everybody already knows their guilty, but almost nobody really believes they're loved (and lovable). The balance can't be 50-50, because we don't need to hear judgment in equal measure with love. We need a lot more of the latter. It is love and acceptance that's truly transformational.

I believe that. More lives are changed, more positive, healthy decisions are made, because people are loved and accepted in spite of their faults, than will ever be changed because those faults have been highlighted and condemned.

People aren't perfect and they certainly aren't all the same. The expectations we have for each other might be made with the best intentions, but if they're not true to who people are, they're not expressing the kind of value and validation we need to be loved - to be truly human. Just this week I heard and friend and mentor of mine say some powerful words. They perfectly express the reality of this seeming paradox and they fit perfectly with this post, that I'd already been constructing.

He said, "I don't mind the 'I'm okay, you're okay' culture we're in" - this is not what you'd expect from a pastor, for sure - "because what it's really saying is that I'm valuable and so are you."

This culture of acceptance - "I'm okay, you're okay" that's so often decried in religious circles is not meant to be a discussion of the individual merits of an opinion or action or belief - it's meant as the validation of someone's humanity. We're saying, "You are a human being, with experiences and insights that come from real living; you have the right to believe what you believe, even if we disagree."

There's no ability to even get to a discussion of our various views, until I accept your right to come to your own conclusions. That kind of fearless freedom is, truly, at the heart of human life as Jesus understands and explains it. It should be at the heart of Christianity - although it so rarely is - and it's definitely at the heart of Kesha's new album.

I may not agree with the content and substance of the words in these songs, but they express a fierce determination to prove personhood and value in the face of inexplicable tragedy. For someone who's been dehumanized and devalued in ways we can't fully understand to be able to stand up and produce such a strong statement in defiance of those circumstances is entirely worth celebrating.

This new album, Rainbows, is a triumph of the human spirit - and there's a particular, if unintentional, gospel lesson there, if we've got the ears to hear it.

May it be so.





*It's a pretty intriguing topic - a white rapper comes to prominence with culturally conscious and often challenging lyrics and takes the world by storm, winning Grammys with solid, but inferior material over a black rapper (Kendrick Lamar), who's essentially a better, more credible version of the archetype Macklemore was chosen to fill. It wasn't really a position Macklemore asked for, but one he really struggled with.

Lessons and Limits

You may have noticed that the blog schedule has been a bit sporadic since the school year started. There's good reason for that. One, the school year represents a really big change in schedule for our family - we're very school-year centric here - and I'm just not good at change. It takes me a while to get into a new schedule (in fact, I'm not even there yet - notice this Tuesday morning post is coming out on a Wednesday).

The other reason is that I got called to sub on the second day of school. I was a substitute teacher, when I could, for half days last year (while my daughter was in school). With her starting Kindergarten this year, I'm available for full days (when I'm available), but I never expected to get called the first week (teachers tend to want to be there to get the year started well). One of the local schools has a teacher out on maternity leave and they were having trouble finding a long-term replacement and needed some extra help in the classroom.

It was great - same kids every day for a couple weeks - students I had subbed with pretty frequently last year. Smooth sailing. Then the school went through two long-term subs in about four days without much hope on the horizon. I got offered the chance to take over the class for two months, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Listen, I only signed up to sub last year because they were short. I wanted to fill a need and help the public school system, which has become the community space our family is pretty heavily invested in. I've served on district committees. I try to make most school board meetings. It makes sense. I knew the kids; I'm ok with seventh grade math. Shoot, I've lived with a middle school teacher for more than a decade.

Despite having lived with a middle school teacher for more than a decade, I just simply had no idea the skills and abilities one really needs to teach. I don't know many people who have more respect and admiration for public school teachers than me - but I gained a whole lot more over the weekend. Trying to get a handle on everything required to even take over a class for a few weeks was literally overwhelming. I couldn't sleep,
riddled with anxiety (not something to which I'm prone - it took me some time to even realize what was happening).

I also learned the difference between someone who can teach and a teacher. I've done Sunday School classes and tutoring - I've even taught actual classes in the ministry training program on two districts. It's a lot different getting a class of kids through the day and being a consistent,
positive presence there with everything on your shoulders.

I knew this. Of course I knew this - but knowing something intellectual or through observation is a lot different than knowing through experience.

I'm a wimp, for the most part. I don't tend to attempt things I'm not certain I can complete. Risk is not my thing. However, when I'm pretty convinced something has to be done, I buckle down and do it. There aren't a lot of things in my life that I've attempted and failed. Yes, that's because I'm cautious, but it's also because I'm a pretty quick learner and I'm good with systems and organization.

In the end, I probably could've done it. I could've taken my lumps, endured sleepless nights, learned from my many, many inevitable failures and possibly survived. My sanity might not have been intact, but it could've technically been done. I opted out though. There's a sense of shame in that. One, I don't like to admit defeat. I've gotten less obsessed with winning over the years, but I'm still darn competitive. This feels like a loss to me, and that's a big ego hit. I also feel like I'm letting people down who work hard and a tremendously difficult job. My not being there created extra work and more headaches for people who have an impossibly tough assignment to begin with. That stinks.

It was a good lesson in limits, though. Just because I can do something or something needs to be done, doesn't mean I have to do it. I probably should've known this was a bad idea from the beginning. I'm not a teacher; I don't really want to be one. I can fake it through a day or two -
which is really useful and helpful in its own right - but that's about it. So many great people have a passion for it, and skills to be really good - and, despite my close proximity to one of them, I'm not sure I ever truly appreciated that, certainly not as much as I do now.

My life is not where I thought it'd be. I'm not upset at all; I really like my life. It's just that I don't really have a job description.
I find great joy in being "of use," although I never know from one season to the next exactly what or where that will be. I keep trying to jump into new thing where I'm needed, but I learned over the last few weeks that perhaps a little more self-reflection might be important in figuring out where that is.

Even more so, other people might have a different perspective of what I am (or should be) capable of doing. I need to trust myself a little more. It's a difficult balance between challenging one's self (or accepting the challenge of others) and knowing one's self well enough to say 'no.' Hopefully I got a little better at that this week - and maybe it'll mean I can make more of a difference in the right places moving forward.

Anyway, we should be back to a better posting schedule now - at least until basketball games start November 15th.