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?
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.
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.
Rarely do you find a piece of history so interesting that's not already in the common knowledge. A few books have been written about Operation Azorian, but it was all new to me. In 1968 a Russian nuclear sub had an accident and sunk, mostly intact, in 17,000 feet of North Pacific water.
The US wanted to recover the nukes and any coding information on board and thus concocted a crazy scheme to essentially invent a whole slew of new technology and build a huge, experimental ship, strictly for this purpose.
We could get caught up in the follies of war or the economics of spending $250m in 1970s dollars for such a project, but I'd rather just focus on the well-written, enthralling history of this unlikely mission. Josh Dean gives detail, but not so much as to bog the story down. He gives background that's interesting and mostly leaves out what's not. It's a pretty dense 450 pages, but they fly by with great anticipation. Chapters are short, and it reads like a novel.
Being a real story, the ending is a bit of a letdown, but there's great joy in discovering and learning about a really fascinating piece of history. I didn't really have a blog post topic for today I was excited about, but if even four or five of you pick up this book, the time and space will be worth it. I think a lot of my regular readers would really appreciate The Taking of K-129.
Still, despite the difficult situation, there was nothing but optimism and good spirit at ENC. I'm excited that people seem to be on board with the uncertain future. Already great progress has been made to stabilize things at ENC and Trevecca has come in with lots of administrative and technical support. The various educational institutions of the Church of the Nazarene have long been duplicating services - it makes sense to have regional schools serving regional constituencies, but there is a lot of overhead that goes into running a college or university and I'm all for exploring how to do it more efficiently and effectively. If this merger goes well, there may be a few other schools eager to get in.
As I said, I heard nothing but optimism and well wishes for the school and Dr. Boone going forward. Perhaps it's a bit easier for me to understand that things are different, because I went to ENC during a time of transition. Half the professors I had in my first two years weren't there when I graduated and by my five-year reunion there were only two members of the faculty with whom I'd studied. Colleges are on pretty tight cycles; students typically stay only four years and things change quickly. But the spirit of ENC and it's mission seem pretty similar to what I know and love, regardless of the specifics. Outside of the financial issues, the student experience at ENC is ten times what it was when I attended; they've continued to make things better for students and that's one of, if not the most, important measure of success.
The one thing that did seem to be leaving people scratching their heads, though, was the recent move to re-brand ENC as simply "Eastern." As a pastor on the region, I got a letter about this move with a lot of sound thinking. "Nazarene" is a relatively unknown term that can be difficult for recruiting. People either know it as vaguely religious and their ignorance is a turn-off, or they know they're not Nazarene and assume ENC isn't for them. There can be debate about the value of the name (even though the education at ENC is thoroughly Nazarene and, I suspect, will be for at least the near future), but I totally get moving away from it in terms of branding. That makes sense to me.
"Eastern" in and of itself is not all that distinctive. Trevecca or Point Loma - other Nazarene schools that have moved this direction - have much more distinctive and individual names to use. I'll admit there's some level of emotional pushback on my part since I've literally spent my life (probably from the age of eight) correcting people who call it "Eastern," since it is most definitely ENC. I could get over that, though. I don't think I'd have too difficult a time hopping on board for the good of my school simply because they made a decision I didn't agree with (the new mascot comes to mind).
There's another issue, though, more directly related to the health and well-being of the school that's really given me pause. I hesitate to write all this publicly without having talked directly to Dr. Boone - I did see him twice this weekend, but he was busy and it didn't seem the right time - but I do also suspect he's heard this a time or two from other people. It was the most frequent topic of conversation I had at Homecoming and - oddly enough - I rarely brought it up myself.
You see, the reason I spent most of my life correcting people who call ENC "Eastern" (which is how most of the Nazarene world refers to the school) is because there's an Eastern University just outside of Philadelphia. It's also a small, Christian, liberal arts college with a very similar profile to ENC. If you're a Christian kid looking for a Christian school in the Northeast, you're bound to consider both of them. In fact, if you go to eastern.edu, you'll be at their website - something tomorrow's students might do by mistake for ten or twenty minutes before they realize this isn't the school they heard about in a commercial.
I live in the shadow of Eastern University - even with "Nazarene" in the name, the first part of my conversation with any kids who might be potential ENC students is usually to differentiate it from the local "Eastern" they know. I'd love to be wrong about this re-branding, but even if I am, I still don't know that I could ever call it "Eastern" simply for that reason - people in my area already have a small Christian college called "Eastern" in their minds and it's not the one I want them to attend.
You also have Eastern Connecticut State University - a much larger public school in Willimantic, CT. They've branded themselves "Eastern" for a very long time - in fact the "Connecticut State University" was so small on the billboard I almost couldn't read it as I drove by on Sunday. For kids in the New England area who aren't particularly looking for a faith-based component to their college experience, ECSU is a pretty major rival to ENC for enrollment.
I know Dr. Boone well enough to know he's not just some southern guy coming in without any real connection to ENC and making this decision willy-nilly. Although that was the general consensus from the alums I spoke with this week. They're happy to have him and Trevecca's generous support to pull ENC out of the water - so much that this name thing seems like a small price to pay (and maybe it is), but it's difficult to swallow.
If it were just about a name, I'd advocate swallowing it. Names are just names - the spirit will live on - but it seems awfully short sighted for a school already struggling with enrollment to brand itself in a way that could be confused with not one, but two rivals for various constituencies its trying to recruit. I know Dr. Boone expressed frustration at falling short of enrollment goals this year - I share that sorrow - but I'm not sure this particular move is helping any.
The easy call might be to just brand the place as "ENC" - stop saying the name in its entirety. "ENC" can be the passionate, innovative, Christian college option for New England just fine without a focus on what those letter stand for. I mean, it's likely very few of the current students at ENC even know that KFC stands for - it's a bit trite, but there's a business that found parts of its name problematic for sales and went in a different direction. They seem to be doing ok. ENC is what we call it. It's what people know - not to mention it is distinctive and a great way to solve the branding problems while also investing in the history of the school.
Listen, I'm going to be supportive either way. Dr. Boone asked people to give - give more and give more often - this year and we've done it. We'll continue to do it because we believe in the importance of Christian higher education and my experience at ENC, but I'd also like to give ENC the best chance to still exist in the future and while I see how the re-branding will be part of it, I just fail to see how "Eastern" will do anything but hurt.
I got so frustrated by the logic Friday morning, in yet another discussion, that I said, "I wish they'd just start calling it Trevecca already - it would be better than Eastern." Then it hit me - maybe this is all an elaborate ploy. Perhaps we're being asked to call ENC "Eastern" against all logic and common sense (not to mention tradition) so that, in a few years, when it's known as Trevecca East or TNU-Boston or whatever the merged campus will be, we won't feel so bad about losing our name since whatever it turns out to be will be an improvement on "Eastern."
(For the record, I'm not opposed to any of those names or changing to them now - it's the campus and the culture I hope to preserve and changing the name won't harm that - we should just pick a better name, one that's distinctive and not already taken - TWICE!)
This isn't the most important thing in the world. It's probably peripheral to all the other things that have to go on at ENC. But it's not unimportant and while there's been plenty of persuasive communication about why re-branding makes sense, there's been very little communication about why re-branding to a name that can only be confusing to almost everyone is the right choice. It would be good to know why "Eastern" as opposed to "ENC" or even "Trevecca" or some new name that's been focused-grouped like crazy - any of those seems a better choice.
