Thoughts and Ruminations

As I make the journey from idealistic-yet-not-willing-to-do-the-hard-work-to-be-change twenty-something to something more in touch with reality, I’m noticing something really big;

Change does not take place typically in one big-fell-swoop moment.  Change comes from consistent attention to both the big-picture and the details, with constant readjustment and moments of needing to take account of failures and successes.  In short, change is a relationship, just as being in relationship brings change. 

 My grandfather told me about two years ago, “Nate, ten years from now, people aren’t going to remember the words of your sermon or even what you preached about, but they will remember the times you came to visit, and times you cared enough to listen to them.”  Those were wise words I needed to hear at the time, because I had the naive view that pastors would be remembered for the way they presented themselves and how compelling their sermons were to those participating in worship with them.  And this is true, but my grandfather was calling me to an even deeper reality; they’ll remember you more because of how much you invest in relationship with them.  This is such a compelling thought, and has come back to me time and again since he said that; sometimes it is comforting to me, sometimes a bit challenging, sometimes shoves a metaphorical knife in my ribs in my failures, but always calls me beyond the temptation to think that as a pastor, I will be defined by what I do “up front” of our church family. 

 I thought about it yesterday when I had maybe the biggest challenge yet of me being a pastor.  A 17-year old young woman named Amy Caracofe was tragically killed in a car accident last Thursday, one that is the second of the year for Fort Defiance High School.  The other was senior Travis Williamson.  I was given a tremendous responsibility by the family to give the message at the memorial, which I wrestled with and wrestled with and wrestled with before I had to prepare something to say.  There were 600 people there seated all over the church; from the main sanctuary to side fellowship halls with only speakers to follow along with to people sitting in rows in the nursery with one small speaker to people sitting in the courtyard looking in the windows.  That certainly didn’t help my nervousness, but Amy’s mother was so encouraging with her eyes even in the midst of her deep sorrow, and I heard from many that they had prayed for the memorial service, with some going to the extent of fasting, and I sensed that I was being carried through this challenging time; along with a deep sense that God can work far above and beyond my words in that time.

 So, given that I’m writing this post in light of my grandfather’s wisdom, was my leadership during the memorial important?  Of course it was; people were there yesterday that needed to hear something that could help shape them (along with me) to live for what they’ve been created for.  They needed something that could hold the power to transcend the surface of the tragedy to go beyond.  That’s the power of spoken language in times of crisis like this memorial service.  

The above being said, is the message at the memorial the most important thing in the crisis and beyond?  With all my heart, I believe, “No“!  It will be the commitment to walking beside Doug and Angie (Amy’s parents), speaking when needed, and silently being with them when silence is needed.  Because almost anyone can come up with something to say (even something deeply compelling) at a time like the memorial, but the real challenge is whether I (others in my church family, and others surrounding the Caracofes) have the guts, the patience, the trust, and the room for Doug and Angie to show the wide range of emotions that will take place; all of this within the context of consistent relationship.  

For those reading this who have different roles in life, I believe that my grandfather’s wisdom applies across a spectrum of roles, though, far beyond “pastoring.”  It applies to coaching, dating and marital relationships, work relationships, friendships, public service roles, and a variety of others.  Effective leaders don’t have to be the ones “leading from the front,” but can be in the most obscure of roles, and through their attention to long-term vision and details can transform the relationships of those surrounding them; in more situations than not these persons can bring about positive change much more than the person who’s supposedly the one leading…the one everyone sees.

I guess I would like to say that I don’t ever want to be defined by Nate the “pastor.”  I could talk for hours about how unhealthy it is to take one spiritual gifting, yank it out of the context of the church family, make it a professional role, and impose persons on church families who supposedly “know what they’re doing” who don’t know the slightest thing about the unique personality of the group.  But that’s not the point I’m trying to make.  If you check out the link to the message (also above halfway down the post), you’ll find that I emphasize that every single one of us through the basic act of living influences our reality in ways we could never even conceive of.  Every thought, prayer, speech, and action that flows from our life out has a ripple effect out from our most immediate relationships and beyond, helping to shape the world in ways that benefit it or destroy it. A simple look at Genesis reminds us that we have been called to cherish the world the way God does in all its fullness and astonishing variety.  This sounds like business leadership gobbledy-gook, but I do believe it is true.  We are all connected in relationship with the rest of the world in obvious and deeply mysterious ways whether we’re intentional or not; I intend to do my best to maintain consistent attention to who I am in relationship with others.

 “There’s no categories, just long stories waiting to be heard.“

 As I was casting my eye around my room this morning that looks like a federal disaster area  (thinking semi-seriously about cleaning it), my gaze happened to rest on a stack of books I have precariously sitting  on another stack perpendicular to it.  And as I looked at this stack, I noticed two big things;

1)  These books represent a nice survey of the things I care about (centrally defined by the lifestyle I claim as a disciple of Jesus), and

2)  I’m not a hypocrite (at least, not completely) when I say that I am neither liberal nor conservative (politically and theologically), pro nor anti-science,  sacred nor secular, along with other typecasts; and I hope to stay that way for a lifetime.

I’ll explain.  

First, I love the Bible, for many reasons.  One of those reasons is that it is so incredibly messy and beautiful.  It’s so honest in a way that at times is mystifying (sometimes I say, “I could never confess something like that to someone else because of a lifetime label slapped on me from that point forward).  

For example, the Bible presents a picture of a holy, righteous, and distinct God in need of nothing who for some odd reason repents at times, other times expresses some degree of angry confusion that his people don’t get the picture at other times.  Crazy, right?  This is not some hare-brained theological scheme of mine, it’s letting the Bible speak for itself. Among other things, this simple example shows me a basic principal about God (and by extension, the Bible);

You can’t lock this God down into any easy categories, and therefore his people shouldn’t allow themselves to be locked into easy categories.

 In other words, knowledge of the Bible and its impact on life won’t make me a well-adjusted white conservative Republican or a wild-eyed liberal Greenpeace member; though the Bible could be quoted for evidence that we should be one or the other (the conservative Republican one is just the more prevalent because it’s less of a challenge to the way things already are). So, in keeping with the above “principle,” I commit myself daily to the mantra, “You don’t know everything, let yourself be challenged, because you may find God speaking to you in surprising ways.” Which leads us to my precarious book-stack.

  First off, I should note that you can see my New York Giants hat on the right of the picture.  I didn’t mean for that to be included, but clearly God ordained for it to be included because it is objectively true that God is a Giants fan, which according to this website is defined by “something I believe AND it is actually true.” Using this objectively-true definition of objective truth, it is clear to me from my personal belief and the greater sense of truth I carry when I contemplate the possibility that, clearly, God is a Giants fan (*tongue planted firmly in cheek*) But I digress.

 On my bookstack, you’ll see a well-respected, wise champion of the evangelical church (Stott), a UVa professor (a Christfollower) acknowledging the deep sin (often driven by “Christians” in the South) of racism (The Last Days), a Chuck Colson-endorsed book on faith-based social initiatives (Rev. of Compassion), a brilliant book that *gasp* uses the f-bomb liberally (Moneyball), the most functional, weeping-inducing book on discipleship ever (Foster, in my objectively true opinion), a study on Psalms from an incredibly wise man and mentor-through-proxy-of-books (Where Your Treasure Is), a warning of the consequences of ignoring God’s earth he has given to take care of (Earth in the Balance), an excellent book, “Exiles,” by the clearly heretical Emerging Church crowd (in my objectively true opinion), an incredible little book by a white man with an afro (Yancey and “Church, why bother?”), a book, “Following in the Footsteps of Christ,” about the Anabaptist movement of the 16th century (called heretics and executed in droves by objectively true Reformed, Catholic, and Lutheran folk) that I claim as the stream of disciples I swim in, a great commentary, “The Story of Romans,” on one of my favorite (and most frustrating to grasp) books of the Bible, a Hymnbook I sometimes play piano out of (also co-published by two groups of those confounding heretic Anabaptists, the Brethren and Mennonites), and a book full of stories of persons who actually followed Jesus in the “impractical” and “not-really-meant-to-be-followed” admonition to love one’s enemies as yourself. A little eclectic brew, huh?

This beautiful little mess of life on my desk gives me guidance when I come to things such as a little nugget I found on Jimmy Eat World drummer Zach Lind’s blog (who also happens to have a button on his blog that associates him with that clearly heretical organization Emergent Village); it’s Mike Huckabee, the evangelical “born-again” Christian from the South, talking in clear conservative terms about the death penalty.

Huckabee’s response sounds very practical until you read the words of Jesus on the matter.  It seems Jesus faced this very same conundrum.  I wonder how he responded?

I guess the natural outgrowth of this self-introspective, light-hearted-yet-honest post will be the greater challenge of those I interact with to represent Christ in all of his astonishing fullness.  I welcome that challenge, as well as the inevitable failures that will come.  Oh, surprising and mighty and graceful and merciful and holy God…help me!  :)  

  I’m not sure if you’re familiar with white-bred, incisive beat poet Taylor Mali, but I’ll embed a video of his after these introductory thoughts.  What makes Taylor so funny to many people is how he handles the “likes” and “justs” and “you knows” that interrupt the flow of our thoughts and make us, in his words, “the most aggressively inarticulate generation since, like, you know, a long time ago!”  What makes him so incisive is the last 40 seconds of his following appearance on a comedy show, where he says, “it is not enough simply to question authority, you’ve gotta speak with it too.”

I have several reasons for posting this video, with one being my thoughts above; but I found it so incisive because I can fall into that trap of “aggressive inarticulatism” (if you allow me to use his thoughts to invent a term).  In the last two weeks, I’ve had my local news 15 minutes of fame (or, more accurately, probably 4 min), when two local news channels stopped by to interview members of our church family for our thoughts on the new sanctuary, which included me.  

I’m sorry I can’t post the video from the NBC 29 interview of me, because it’s a perfect example for Taylor.  Here’s the link; to the story, where you can catch a glimpse of what I said, but I think my quote in full was, 

“It’ll be good to, kind of, be back in an area that feels like, you know, a home?  I feel kind of conflicted, because I would really hope that this would just be kind of a gathering place where we have a chance to really learn what it means to be the church.”

I was mortified when I watched it on the news, and that was before I knew about Taylor Mali.

Then, I got a bit of redemption yesterday when TV3 came by, but just a bit, because I still threw in a couple “justs.” Argh! Part of the reason I even said “just” several times yesterday was because my mind was whirring so hard while being interviewed to not say “kind of” or some other inarticulate grunt.  Here’s the link to the TV3 article with embedded video.

And the local newspaper’s (The Daily News Leader) article was great. I really am proud of the work our church family has done together; though by no means is the work done…in some ways, it’s just beginning, as we move away from a focus on the building to using the building as a gathering place for us doing the real work of discipleship.

One of the most beautiful and stirring calls to grasp life in the face of suffering and death; because suffering, which will come to faithful followers of Jesus, and death, which comes to us all, are only transitory and temporary.  We are (or probably more accurately, can be) free!!!!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer; July 21, 1944

Discipline

 If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all
discipline of soul and senses, so that your passions
and your limbs might not lead you confusedly hither and yon.
Chaste be your spirit and body, subject to your own will,
and obedient to seek out the goal that they have been given.
No one discovers the secret of freedom but through self-control

 Action

 Dare to do what is just, not what fancy may call for;
Lose not time with what may be, but boldly grasp what is real.
The world of thought is escape; freedom only comes through action.
Step out beyond anxious waiting and into the storm of events,
carried only by God’s command and by your own faith;
then will freedom exultantly cry out to welcome your spirit.

Suffering

Wondrous transformation! Your strong and active hands
are tied now. Powerless, alone, you see the end of your action.
Still, you take a deep breath and lay your struggle for justice,
quietly and in faith, into a mightier hand.
Just for one blissful moment, you tasted the sweetness of freedom,
then you handed it over to God, that he might make it whole.

Death

Come now, highest moment on the road to freedom eternal,
Death, put down the ponderous chains and demolish the walls
of our mortal bodies, the walls of our blinded souls,
that we might finally see what mortals have kept us from seeing.
Freedom, how long we have sought you through discipline, action, and suffering.
Dying, now we behold your face in the countenance of God.  

 Just a couple thoughts to offer today.  I’ve had a chance to think in the last year or so about this “freedom” Americans often claim our army is fighting for.  I hear it everywhere in our society as a phrase to clobber both naive pacifists and traitorous liberals with different ideas about how Iraq should have been handled.  As I’ve wrestled with what this is all about, I’ve done my best to keep my ears peeled eyes open for others working through this same issue.  I happened to come upon an interview online of one of my mentors-through-proxy (Internet and books substituting for face to face interaction) Stanley Hauerwas that shocked me. I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but as time has passed, it’s making more sense to me.  Check it out;

“In his reflections on Sept. 11, Hauerwas uses the term ‘American imperialism’ matter-of-factly. He’s not afraid to humanize those who flew jets into buildings on Sept. 11, and to point out what he calls ‘the loneliness of the American people,’ a loneliness he says is tied to their pursuit of happiness.’On Sept. 11, Americans were confronted by people ready to die as an expression of their profound moral commitments,  Hauerwas said in his Silk Hope talk earlier this year. ‘Their willingness to die stands in stark contrast to a politics that asks of its members in response to Sept. 11 to shop.’  

‘Americans are, for the most part, good, decent and hardworking people, but so were the people that supported the Nazis.’  Hauerwas said he worries about ‘how goodness can become deeply corrupted by its innocence….most of the time innocence is deeply immoral because it is such a lie not to acknowledge that we live in a very complex world that we benefit from, and we don’t have to acknowledge the havoc our benefits depend upon.’  

While those who loathe the United States are willing to die as an expression of their hatred, Hauerwas said U.S. citizens have no comparable moral conviction on which to base their lives.  ”A people who have been bred to shop then can quickly become some of the most violent people in the world,” Hauerwas said, “exactly because they’re dying to have something worth dying for.”  

 

Before you get too upset (like I initially did), read the quote five or six times, then take a couple hours (or months) the chew on it from time to time.  I’ve come to see it as deeply insightful over time.  The question he raises is relevant; what does “freedom” represent in America, and at what cost is that American freedom perpetuated?  

Example after example in the last few months has proven to me Stanley’s suggestion that “freedom” in our society directly translates to “shopping.”  If it does not, what is the comparable conviction Americans have to bring that they’re willing to fight for?  The right to vote?  Maybe so, but check out the percentages of folks that exercise that right when the time rolls around.  Right to freedom of religious expression?  How many American folks are really, I mean really, deeply invested with the whole of their lives in the religion (often Christian) they claim? Precious few.

So what IS the mark of American (and by extension, Western) society that takes up most of our attention, time, energy, thoughts and dreams?

I’d suggest it’s cash money, the jobs it takes to get more, the marketing that competes for us to exercise our right to buy their stuff, and the sheer amount of stuff we can buy with that cash.    

Our “holidays” of Christmas and Easter are perfect examples of this.  If those who claimed to be Christian truly deeply valued and respected the two most holy celebrations of their year, they would be up in arms about the mockery our secular society has turned them into. Heck, witches and black-magic practicioners should be pissed at how secularism has changed the height of their year (Halloween) into an avalanche of candy and cute little costumes.  In short, consumerism has taken every day holy and sacred to competing traditions, subverted them, and marketed them under completely different pretenses and seeking different ends.  So now we have Santa Claus (the original Saint Nicholas has to be rolling over in his grave), The Easter Bunny, Thanksgiving football and excess amounts of turkey and stuffing, and Valentine’s Day (a boon for the diamond and Hallmark card industries) as examples.  More examples exist, and they all reveal the central value our society upholds; money, what it takes to get it, and (for marketers) more and more innovative ways to convince consumers they need to spend it on YOUR product. 

Which brings us to Black Friday, the official holiday of the hallowed First Day of Christmas Shopping, the most profitable day of the year for businesses and the height of capitalism.  The day where we consumers camp out at our Best Buys and Kohls and JCPenneys and shopping malls so that at midnight or 4 am or 6 am (whoever opens first) we may spend our money on things we don’t need.  But we have the right to!  

Nobody tells me where I can or can’t spend my money, not no A-rabs or dem Chi-nese or nobody!  

And THIS, my friends, is why Stanley Hauerwas is so spot-on in his diagnosis of our society.  We have nothing to fight for in our society but a vague notion of freedom in need of definition.  And the definition has come to mean the right to shop.  We claim freedom of choice, yet our naivete about our individual capability to make good choices as if we weren’t slaves to marketers reveals not only that we aren’t free, but that we’re overconsumed and cynical and bored.  The system keeps us entertained but unfulfilled, and we are shocked by the possibility that someone would give up that right and fight to recover another vision of what life is to be about.  It’s a clashing of civilizations, the dominant one secular (NOT Christian) and competing visions daring to suggest their commitment is more life-giving and worthy of sacrifice. 

This is a series of unfinished and slightly incoherent thoughts, I’m sure, but Black Friday in all its glory shoved me back to the place inside me Hauerwas twisted into a mess with his comment.  I’d encourage you to wrestle with it.

 In closing, I’ll leave you with one of the most prophetic bands I know of around these days, “The Cobalt Season”, and some of the lyrics from their deeply honest lament/hopeful song “Like Jesus“;   

 

And friends, Romans, countrymen

Won’t you lend me your ears?

This Holy American Empire

Gotta tell you it’s crumblin’ down

To the ground

 

’Cause everything’s for granted

And nothing is for sure

So let’s grab a Starbucks baby

And let’s spend a little more

 

Forget about the dreams we had

Just work and sleep until we’re dead

Are we blind to what’s ahead?

 

Oh Lord, how long?

 

When memory’s for granted

Nothing is for sure

And history goes round and round

As we long for something more

 

We lie and wait for better days

With hope and fear and joy and dread

Or just ambivalence to what’s ahead?

 

In a hilarious and sorely-needed interview, David Letterman hammered Paris Hilton time and time again with her prison experience. Even when she stated she was over it and didn’t want to answer any more questions, David kept going, and gave his most incisive thoughts after she quit answering questions. It’s almost like he wasn’t willing to enable her in her life decisions, a life skill her parents could benefit from, I do believe. Here’s the link. Watch her squirm. ‘Bout time someone had the guts.

Meanwhile, Peter King and Jack McCallum continue to be two of the most down-to-earth-yet-inspiringly-great-to-read journalists out there. The first page of Peter King’s MMQB where he dealt with Brett Favre’s resurgence is just great stuff, and McCallum’s appreciation for the great tradition of baseball was shown in his most recent article reflecting on the Phillies and his childhood. In a juiced-up age of baseball, there’s a load of lessons to be learned from the past that can inform the present and the future. One of those lessons is a blue-collar approach to the game that the present-day Phils carry; kudos to my second favorite team on their NL East title.

And while I’m providing links to great journalism, check out this article by Gary Smith on Miami head coach Randy Shannon’s life leading up to this job. While sitting in the bathroom doing *ahem* “#2,” I was reduced to the point of tears to see what Shannon has been through in his life, and how his hard-nosed perseverence speaks to those of his players who’ve grown up in the same inner-city hard-scrabble existence. I don’t agree with what Randy thinks a man should be, but for me to say that would almost be patronizing the depth of pain and struggle he’s been through. I’ve learned a lot about my coddled middle class existence over the past year through intentionally exposing myself to thoughts by persons who either grew up in or have intentionally immersed themselves in situations of desperate poverty, and my former presumptions were shallow and exactly what I hinted at above, patronizing. So please, please, take some time out (the bathroom’s a great place) to read the Smith article in full for a shocking, encouraging, sad, hopeful, yet a bit empty, story.

p.s.  My boys are playin’ defense, it seems. They sacked DMcnabb 12 times; 12 TIMES! And DE Osi Umenyiora had six of them! Eli’s coming around as a leader, Derrick Ward’s a nice surprise until the beast man Brandon Jacobs comes back. I’m pleasantly surprised so far. Here’s the link to the game roundup.

You’ve heard it before just like I have if you’ve ever had a conversation with someone about “emerging” forms of church; they’re relativistic, they’re heretical, they don’t know what they believe in, they never challenge one another, they’re pluralistic, etc etc. Tony Jones presented a paper at Wheaton College at a conference that, while pretentious in its vocabulary, holds the potential to be a groundbreaking investigation of what it means to be church, what the people of God believe, and how the people of God act. You may not be interested in this subject, but I’ll post what I think is the most important section of his paper precisely because his thoughts are so incisive. Here you go.

“If I may borrow from the syntax of the Savior, let me now circle back to the emergent church and attempt to solidify our approach to orthodoxy and answer the question; Whence hermeneutical authority?

You have heard it said that the emergent church values orthopraxy over orthodoxy, but I say to you, if orthodoxy is an event, then another veil has been torn. There is no difference between the two. Orthoparadoxy, as my friend Dwight Friesen calls it, is the dialectical tension in which these two poles stand. Let me put it more boldly: there is no orthodoxy without orthopraxy. It doesn’t exist. People may talk about it, but they also talk about unicorns.

You have heard it said that the emergent church is run by relativists, but I say to you that we are all relativists. We walk into the Christian bookstore and choose a Bible off the shelf, one that’s been translated by a particular group of people with a particular theological bias. You choose that Bible relative to all the other choices in front of you. And you make a relative choice about where you go to church, what college you attend, and whom you marry. Like the umpire who has to call out “Ball!” or “Strike!” a split second after the ball hits the catcher’s mitt, some calls are easy: right down the heart of the biblical plate. But others are tougher, painting the outside corner. We make the best call we can, and live with the consequences.

You have heard it said that emergent churches abandon individual salvation for the sake of communal life, but I say to you that our communities of faith are made up of individual rational actors who have chosen to enter communities of orthoparadoxy, communities where, together, we are figuring out exactly where the strike zone is.

You have heard it said that emergent churches disparage biblical models of pastoral leadership and opted for egalitarian communities, but I say to you that leadership comes in many forms. Some charge that by opening up the Bible, even opening up the sermon, for many voices (including the marginalized) to speak, we are in danger of heterodoxy because we have forsaken strong biblical teaching. But history is clear: the danger of heterodoxy, even of cults, is far more acute when biblical interpretation is solely the purview of on leader or an oligarchy. Let’s put it this way, Jim Jones and David Koresh weren’t asking people to talk openly during the sermon about what they agreed and disagreed with.

And you have heard it said that the emergent church doesn’t stand under the hermeneutical weight of church history, but I say to you that we are more true to the church fathers because they are part of our dialogue. No, they do not rule over us, but they do enter into our event of orthodoxy with an authoritative voice. Have you looked at Luther’s 95 Theses? They’re not about systematic theology, they’re about the very specific issues of his day. Have you read Augustine’s treatises? They are confronting the Pelagianism of his day. And Aquinas? The Islamic Aristotelianism of his day. This is orthodoxy: an ongoing conversation asking; who is God?, who are we?, and what’s the relationship between us?”

*Update* The links to the paper and the accompanying powerpoint presentation are here, in the post on the top of the page.

From Brian P (who I do not know), comment #7 on this site.

Before you read it, which I highly, highly recommend, I should tell you that I italicized some parts myself for emphasis, the first two quoted sections are Brian responding to the site owner, when Brian says “IC” he’s referring to the “Institutional Church,” and if you want some great reflections from Scot McKnight related to Barna’s insights in Revolution that go beyond his more surface findings, listen to this podcast. I yield the floor to Brian;

“I’ve come to a point where I’m at peace where I am, and I enjoy being with ICers, nonIcers etc etc.”

I’m very happy for you!

” It’s just enjoying life and walking with Jesus, no labels”

Heh heh.

That works as long as it’s just you by yourself.

When it will fall apart is when you get together with your fellow Revolutionaries to do something together. Especially if they start having kids. When the blessed moment arrives, everyone in the church will be happy. But then the questions start coming:

So do we baptize the baby now, or wait until he/she is older?
If/when we baptize, do we do it by sprinkling, or by physically dunking people in water?
What exactly are we going to teach this child? Will we use a formal list of teaching points?
And of course now it’s time for Junior’s first communion. How often does that happen anyway? Once a week? Once a month? And what exactly is Junior drinking, anyway?
Wine? Grape juice? From little dixie cups or from one big communal cup?

I’m just getting started.

Think this stuff is trivial? Well, yes, yes it is. But you’re going to find that, in this and in so many other decisions, you have to make choices as to what you will and will not do together. And when you do, sure as sunrise, you’re going to have a small, offended minority who will walk out, convinced that you’ve fallen into error.

Eventually you’ve got a “way things are done”.

And after the first few times you have guest speakers come in who tear that order apart, you’re going to start making sure anyone who gets in your pulpit (or whatever) has the proper education in the way things are done, AND in the Bible. That means your own seminaries.

Until the day you wake up in about thirty or forty years with your own seminaries, your own governing structure, your own specific doctrine… and you realize that you’re a denomination in all but name. But of course you don’t call yourself a denomination. You call yourself “the community who seeks after God”.

Just like all the other denominations . You’d be surprised at how many of them insist that they are *the* true church, usually started by rebels not much different from yourself.

And then in the second generation your kids start noticing all the flaws in the edifice you and your fellow revolutionaries have built. They make a noise, and pretty soon THEY are starting a revolution against YOU and complaining about the IC (or whatever the cool buzzword is) and how it ‘doesn’t get it’. And the cycle starts anew.

I say this, because I’m from a country that was started by just such religious movements. Ever hear of the Puritans? The word originally meant those who wanted to ‘purify’ the Church of England from what they considered it’s idolatrous practices … to make a clean church that would just follow Jesus without all the baggage. When they were run out of England, they came to America to build this ‘perfect church’ from the ground up.

The end result of that, four hundred years later, is places like Church O. How well would you say the experiment worked?

I’m not saying that a new denomination is necessarily bad. Very often, the IC *doesn’t* get it. I am banned from my parent denomination’s most prestigious university because I speak in tongues. A new denomination can very well be a move of God to prod the church *as a whole* in a new direction.

What I am saying is that what you and your fellow revolutionaries are doing has been done before many, many times in the history of the church. It can be a very good thing, as long as you don’t expect too much.

After all, what alternative do you have ? Quit associating with Christians altogether and go totally solo? That, IMO, is the biggest mistake of all.

Why? Because the fundamental lesson of Jesus is *love*. Love means learning to live with people who are very different from you. Church — revolutionary or not — is a perfect laboratory for this, because you find all kinds of rude, arrogant people whom you would otherwise have nothing to do with. Learning to function with such people in love is as good a lesson in being Christlike as anything else I can think of.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Today marks the 59th anniversary of the death of a great pioneer of non-violence: Mohandas K. Gandhi. And I admire him for several reasons:

1) He had the courage to stand and lay his life on the line for something he believed in. No matter what that might be in someone’s life (or how flawed what they believe in might be), investing the whole of one’s life in something is admirable in principle.

2) He recognized the use of weaponry to achieve political purposes may win a battle (or series of battles), but in choosing to extinguish other human life to protect one’s own, we have already lost the war.

3) This may be the most important to me, because like MLK in America, we have reduced Gandhi to a sugary-sweet nice guy and neglected to pay attention to the fact that both of these men endured great adversity in living for what they stood for. They didn’t just pop up and say a little something, only to shrink away or shut up when others disagreed with them. They forcefully shoved the injustice of their present situation in the faces of their societies, and simply. would. not. let. up. in their pursuit of justice. And they both paid the ultimate price for their actions through assassination. Now, I believe MLK’s definition of justice was much more far-reaching and comprehensive than Gandhi’s, which leads me to my fourth thing I admire about Gandhi.

4) This one may also be the most important to me, because I believe the vision of life given by Jesus to his followers is so comprehensive, so life-altering, so demanding in its scope that it is the highest ethical standard this world has ever seen. And the thing that much of Christianity had become in Gandhi’s day (and still is today) was disgusting to him. He famously said,

“It is a first class human tragedy that people of the earth who claim to believe in the message of Jesus, whom they describe as the Prince of Peace, show little of that belief in actual practice.”

and

“Do not flatter yourselves with the belief that a mere recital of that celebrated verse in St. John makes a man a Christian.”

Even though Gandhi is ultimately accountable for his lifestyle and who or what belief system he submitted himself to, I think his point stands as a necessary reminder. It should be appalling to Christians that one who is not a follower of Jesus could live in such a heroic fashion while we often claim to “believe” and turn around and jump with both feet into the systems of capitalism, materialism, self-preservation, and nationalism as if they were the best definition of reality offered to us…neglecting to see those the systems leave wounded and broken in their wake.

I agree with Gandhi. We’re a pretty gutless bunch, that if you scratched a little below our surface platitudes, smiles, and fun little quotes of Scripture verses; you wouldn’t find much. And I include myself in that reality too.

I’m starting to think that the life we were called to as Christians demands heroism every single day of the week in ways that our secular friends (with the exception of the Gandhis of the world) couldn’t sniff at. And if we settle for less than this full development of our character and being in the image of Christ, we are failing the world and spitting in the face of God.

I saw the movie “Half Nelson” on Friday evening, Oct 27th, at Court Square Theater in Harrisonburg (which by the way is a sweet place), and I walked out of the theater with strong emotions. I’ve been trying to get a handle on those emotions since then, and in the process found two things:

1)It’s not often (in this age of relatively shallow Hollywood movies that have resulted from our relatively shallow culture and our willingness to chuck out large amounts of cash over a long period of time to find something (anything!) to take our minds off reality) that I walk out of a movie feeling intense emotions, and
2)I often don’t pay attention to tracing the emotions to their root, or at the very least spend some time thinking about why I was so affected, and thus walk right back into my life as if the movie and the time spent in it never existed. Given time and other priorities, the movie is often reduced to “good” or “bad” or “mediocre.” And so I place it in the unofficial movie pecking order of my life and move on.

As a result of this awareness, I am going to try to slog through what I thought I saw in this movie, how it moved me, what it exposed in me (honestly!), and how I’ll respond with my life. If there’s one thing I’m tired of in my life, it’s mediocrity and simply occupying a place in the long line of humans who have lived and died on this earth…sucking in my oxygen, exhaling my contribution to global warming, and living a life centered on Nate.

So what did Half Nelson have to say to me?

It’s the story of a middle school history teacher who carries an ideal that he wants to affect at least one person in his life for the better. That’s his goal, and in that mix he carries an unorthodox teaching style where he seeks to have his kids look deeper than just memorizing and regurgitating fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice answers that don’t help his students comprehend and make sense out of reality.

The trouble is, Teacher Dan (Gosling) doesn’t know how to make sense of reality himself. His life is full of mountains and valleys, and he copes with this unpredictable reality with cocaine, crack, and some quick booty without relational attachments. His drug problem exacerbates rather than evens out his bumpy life, and he makes the mistake of smoking crack in a spot where one of his seventh grade basketball players finds him. Instead of ratting him out, though, this girl becomes a positive influence in his life. Maybe she can be the one he impacts for the better? She seems engaged in his class, eager to learn…but in taking her home several times, he sees the lure of the drug trade and urban decay threatening to suck her in.

He tries to be the hero, and fails…continuing to exhibit a hopelessly broken life. But this girl, instead of packing it in and giving up, continues to care about and for him (maybe that’s because she’s got a teacher crush on him…very possible given the nature of emotional attraction for ignoring reality…or maybe she just genuinely cares and wants to be an influence for good in his life). In the mix of things, Dan spends some time at home, where his parents, once Vietnam agitators who had a compelling vision for their lives, have fallen into middle-class numb existence, thinking they’re living out their ideals (while their ideals carry no practical reality) and ignoring reality by medicating themselves with perpetual drunkenness.

This has to be a commentary on the sad state of the American left; pretending to care about problems like poverty and social inequity in general while doing little to nothing about it other than punching a ballot, intellectually claiming to believe that liberalism is the answer for the world’s problems, with no life-altering commitment to either. (this is where I insert my belief that the opposite extreme of conservatism is just as insidious and incompetent and elitist and sad as its polar opposite).

The movie didn’t resolve. No, “I’ve been waiting for you,” or “I’m drug-free and happy for life,” or some heart-warming basketball championship for the girl and the teacher that enables both of them to exorcize their personal demons. And I’m glad.

Running with my idea of the status quo in our society mentioned above, I wasn’t surprised in walking out of the movie theater to see all the endorsing blurbs on the movie poster having nothing to do with the substance of the movie…I don’t know if they’ll be big enough for you to read in the above picture, but the blurbs say, “Ryan Gosling gives an astonishing performance!” and “Powerful. Gosling is among the most exciting actors of his generation!” and “A near-perfect film. The acting is flat-out amazing. Epps is a major find.” Are you kidding me? A movie like this, and all you can talk about is the careers (realized or potential) of the individuals? For my money, I don’t go see a movie because you tell me the actor or actress has an “astonishing performance.” Maybe I’m supposed to; that way I can maintain some degree of separation from the raw reality that this individual movie portrayed, and deny the fact that I see strong parallels in the weaknesses of humanity I share with the teacher. If I maintain that separation, I can walk out of the theater, plunge right back into my life, and forget that I ever felt uncomfortable at certain points as the story got close to MY struggles.

My thought upon seeing the movie poster was, “Finally, a solid movie that doesn’t buy into the movie peer pressure to resolve a big problem with a neat little bow in an hour-and-a-half or less, and I gotta come out of the theater to this?”

And maybe my next thought illustrates how much my ADD mind flits around from idea to idea and situation to situation, but I immediately thought about how this applies to the church. How often, on average, would you say a pastor hears one of two things from the congregation?

1) That sermon was good. Well-delivered.
2) Thank you for what you said. Hearing it that way made me think about (this or that aspect of my life…or this or that weakness…or this or that calling)

I’d guess the average pastor hears the first 97% of the time. Because you and I are enculturated to be surface people…because we’re enculturated to be consumers…and because we’re enculturated not to pay attention to the cries of our hearts; just hop around from entertaining thing to entertaining thing; rate each thing on the 1 to 10 scale of the excitement it offered for you, and refuse to go deeper.

If there’s anything I bring away from Half Nelson, it’s two awarenesses:
1) The system is broken. We are broken. Irretrievably.
2) We need to admit we are powerless to effect any long-term change in the system by ourselves. (because the change will be short-term, and our problems cyclical)

In response to what I consider to be two truth statements, I need to be willing to ask myself and others some questions…deep, searching questions…about how that raw awareness impacts my life. Do I need to alter my life in response to this movie? What did it uncover in my heart? Will I seek to separate myself from the teacher but pointing a finger at his drug habit without pointing a finger at my weaknesses that are crippling me? Does it jog me out of the semi-numb state I exist in much of the time to be deeply invested in something?

The prevailing message screams at me daily, “Stay busy. Forget about the layers. Don’t think about or listen to your heart. Just perpetuate the status quo.” And more often than not, because I’m weak, I give in. I let myself be mediocre. But because God entered the picture, turned my life upside-down, and called me to follow Him, I don’t want to be mediocre any more; I’m tired of being an object for others to manipulate and extract resources from; I want my life to matter.

The question that remains now is if my want will turn into a physical reality. My life will give the answer.