Have Purgatory, Will Travel

Just thought I'd post a quick update about what's going on for us right now., for those interested in such things It's, sadly, a very quick update because in spite of the time available to me to write about what we've been doing, there's very little of substance on which to report.

My life, of late, has revolved around several things, first and foremost of which is applying for jobs. No, I do not have one yet, despite my best efforts. I've applied locally for anything I could think of, and nationally for worship pastor, young-adult pastor, and missions pastor positions at churches (my training qualifies me for all three). Nothing yet, though one or two prospects on the horizon.

This has left me with more time on my hands than I had anticipated, but for some reason, writing has taken a back-seat. I don't know if it's just worrying about my financial and professional futures that has wounded my passion for writing, but I'm thinking that if it plays a part, it's only a part. The other big part of my time lately has been recording, which has likely sapped my writing creativity for its own purposes. My grandparents gave me a cool little gizmo for Christmas that allows me to plug any instrument into my computer via a nifty silver box with dials on it. The other grandparents gave me a microphone and stand, so the possibilities are limited only to what I can play. But then, my wife suggested that I upgrade my Finale notation software so that I can use their sampling technology to write and record music without knowing how to play the instruments (case in point, drums and oboe; I can't play those, but Finale can if I write a part for them).

Together, the three give me pretty much an unlimited vocabulary of recording possibilities, which is pretty cool, since I've only ever recorded one song and that was before my wedding five years ago. For my first project, I decided that I should record a piece I wrote in college that tells the story of John the Baptist. I'm not sure why I wrote the piece in the first place, but suffice it to say, it's probably my best in terms of poetry and interesting sounds. And then my roommate Mike helped write a cool guitar part.

So I've been playing the same song now for two weeks, and it's slowly coming together. I think I'm nearly done with the guitar parts, and the drumset part sounds decent. Now I'm working on an oboe part for it in Finale and maybe some strings. And then vocals. I've never done this before, so it's sort of an exercise in trial-and-error, and lots of frustration with "but why did it do that?!" But it's starting to sound better. Actually, it's pretty sweet, if I say so myself.

But it hasn't kept my mind off of our situation. If you're the praying sort, I'd love it if you'd mention us to God at some point soon. He's been good to us, and hasn't let us down yet, and I keep reminding myself of this, but I'm not going to lie, it's hard. Thanks to those of you that have been praying for us.

And now, the lyrics. Enjoy.

There's a voice in the desert calling out to the wind
Dressed in robes of burlap, telling of the end
of the sin of man in the Father's eyes
He who has ears to hear, then let him hear
Prophesy ...

Water from the Jordan into fire from the Lord
Saved by the mercy of the One who is to come
For the least of the Kingdom is even greater than He
For a dove will be a sign, make straight the way
Prophesy ...

Prepare ye the way, prepare ye the way

Cast aside to prison in a foreign land
Sent to live and die for the Son of Man
Blessed is the one who doesn't fall away
on account of the Son, who is the Lamb
Prophesy ...

The Valley

I can't believe I'm actually publishing this, but I wrote it for the storytelling class I'm taking this week, and I have no idea if it's any good. In any event, I know it doesn't make any sense, at least, on the first read, but I'd love some feedback anyway.

* * *

Once upon a time, Everything ended.

This was a shock to Everything, as it had quite liked being. Ending was a new experience for Everything, and it wasn't sure that it liked it. But the good thing about endings is that they're also beginnings. Everything liked the sound of that, though where the thought had come from was a mystery. It had quite liked being before, but it had started to get old. Perhaps this is why it had ended in the first place.

It couldn't quite recall.

A cloudy sky, stretching off to the horizon, falling to meet the earth in the distance. The earth, in turn, rose somewhat grudgingly to meet it, half-heartedly butting upwards with a series of low hills. On a particularly phlegmatic hill stood a grim looking figure, surveying the devastation before him. His mottled hair shifted as he slowly turned his head, a few strands languishing in the light breeze. The armor he wore was scratched and dull, the sword clutched in his trembling hand stained a dark maroon. His face, however, wore a calm expression; stern, but calm. Bodies littered the plain below him, stray wisps of smoke drifting in the breeze as the few remaining fires slowly burned themselves into ashes.

Everything grew wary of its condition. What had happened? It knew only that something was missing, but couldn't place what that might be. It shifted its attention to the new beginning. Maybe by watching what was happening, it could perhaps determine what had been lost.

Silence. The corners of his mouth twitched, then drew into a grimace. He was not comfortable with silence, but then, he could not determine if it was the world that was silent or merely his own ears. The battle, after all, had been deafening, but then, silence. He struck his sword against his boot, the grimace drawing into a frown when a buckle popped. But it clinked, and he knew it was merely the silence of contrast. If he concentrated, he could hear, faintly, the stirrings of the breeze. He moved his foot forward. Then the other. Satisfied he could still move, he sheathed his sword and began walking down the hill.

Everything focused warily on this new development. Movement. It vaguely recalled that movement may have been involved in ending as well. That would make sense, it conceded, unless lack of movement was also involved. It pushed the question aside and concentrated, becoming aware of other movement it hadn't noticed before. Vapors, mostly, but none with the sort of intensity it was now observing. It watched more closely.

A light drizzle had begun to fall from the clouds onto the lifeless plain, settling into the dusty earth. Out of the clouds, a lone cardinal, its red feathers a brilliant contrast to the desolation around him, descended in the growing mist. His eyebrows furrowed. Where had the bird come from? It couldn't have come from anywhere close; so far as he knew, everything alive had died in the battle.

Except him, of course. The lone survivor.

Everything was shocked; a second movement had appeared seemingly from nowhere. Puzzled, it began to search. Perhaps it was not Everything, as it had once thought. There, beyond the clouds! A mix of emotions washed over Everything; surprise at first, then fear and then curiosity. Boundaries; Everything had boundaries, and on one lay a small crack. Perhaps whatever had caused the desolation had also cracked the boundary, letting in the other movement. But if there were boundaries, what lay beyond?

In a fit of sheer rage, he pulled the sword from its sheath and slammed it, blade first, into the softening earth. As the drizzle intensified to rain, water began to pool in the depressions, turning softened earth into mud and absorbing the bodies and carnage, the lifelessness becoming one with the desolation. The cardinal landed again on the hilt of the sword.

Everything turned its senses ... outward? Yes, outward. It hadn't realized that there was more beyond the desolation, but it felt a growing sense of urgency about it.

The cardinal looked at him sideways, cocking its head in a jerky, almost rhythmic fashion. What is this? He leaned farther forward, kneeling so that the bird was at eye level, and held out his hand. The bird looked at him steadily and, after a moment that stretched out into the awkward, dropped the package into his hand and with a satisfied chirp leapt into the air. It was a seed. It did not appear particularly out of the ordinary; black, thin, and remarkably small. He glanced up again as the cardinal returned, this time landing on the ground. He bent down as the bird poked its beak into the dirt and looked up. It chirped.

Everything? returned its attention to the two movements inside. The first seemed to have settled down, but the other kept moving around without rest, alighting here, then moving on. As Everything? pondered this, it felt a blinding jolt of light.

He pulled his hand back out of the dirt and dropped the seed down into the small depression he'd made. Standing up, he pushed the dirt back over the hole with his foot. A chirp overhead revealed the cardinal descending again to land on his sword, but there it did not remain. It chirped, louder this time, more urgent, and flew off. When he did not pursue, it circled, chirped again, and flew again toward the hills. Leaving his sword, he followed.

The earth began to rumble. He began to run.

Everything? could not avoid panic as the two movements raced faster and faster toward the hills. Everything? began to tremble as the light grew brighter.

Only when he regained the hills did the bird change direction, slowing down and circling to land on his shoulder. It chirped, gently this time, and he slowed to a stop on the crest of a hill. He turned to face the valley, his eyes widening. From a widening crevice in the ground, a tree was expanding to fill the valley. Roots snaked out of the soil and plunged back into new depressions, sucking up the pools of water before submerging into the earth. His jaw dropped as the cardinal began chirping excitedly. He arched his back to watch the tree as it grew without bounds, filling the sky.

The clouds parted. Sunlight streamed into the land. Color exploded as life burst in to fill the desolation.

Memory flooded back, the battle won. He awoke smiling. Content. Filled. Alive.

Shadow Dancing

Christian Agnostic, Part IV: Science and the Bible

One of my biggest pet-peeves is when a Christian or a Church says "the Bible is the scientifically-accurate word of God." Now, I do understand the context for such a qualifier - science has challenged a lot of what Christians through history have assumed to be true. Galileo noticed that we're not the center of the universe, and then Einstein showed that we could be, depending on our perspective. Darwin noticed that organisms adapt to their surroundings as they change, challenging the notion that once creation happened, nothing changed afterwards.

But the context doesn't seem to prevent my irritation.

It's ironic that so much of the debate is over a book that isn't actually a science textbook. On what level do we think that Moses was thinking "biology 101" when he compiled the accounts of creation in Genesis? Who writes a science text thousands of years before the idea of sceince even existed? Who, for that matter, would do so in poetry? Poetry is reserved for the things we can't explain, not the things we can!

I also find it ironic that many of the Christian notions challenged by science are actually cultural and not really biblical; many came from medieval notions of truth, which originated in their theology. For example, the medieval notion of the earth as the center of the solar system came from theology, not the theology from the evidence. The idea was that God made man last, therefore humanity is most important (interesting that they didn't extend this to gender). Now, from a certain perspective, no, the earth is not the center. The Earth revolves around the sun - we can look up (and even GO up) and see this to be so. However, Einstein being the genius that he was, changed all that. Because of perspective, we can literally be the center of the universe again; the universe, from a certain perspective (one with its fixed reference on our planet), quite literally revolves around us. But it is ALSO true that, from another perspective (one with its fixed reference outside our planet), the earth rotates and then orbits around the sun along with seven other planets and one planetoid (sorry Pluto), along with countless moons, comets, asteroids, etc. It's not either/or because of perspective. Western culture is actually one of the few cultures concerned with what literally happened in the past; most other cultures are more concerned with how we are to act NOW, and so they tell stories FROM the past in order to instruct the PRESENT.

And so I ask, must we think that scripture is scientifically accurate? Is the reason for scripture to show HOW things are, or to show WHY things are? Science and scripture are not necessarily incompatable. Science, for example, is quickly concluding that the universe was made out of nothing, that the Big Bang had to create matter from literally nothing in order for it all to work. Christians think that too - we call it "ex nihilio" (the fancy latin term for "out of nothing") except we say that the whole thing had a cause - God. Science is still "agnostic" about the cause. But are the two fundamentally incompatable? No. Scripture never says HOW God did it, only WHY He did it (and that He did it at all). But imagine you're a person ignorant of quantum mechanics and chemical microbiology (just imagine ... it shouldn't be too hard to imagine this) and living after all of this creation stuff has happened, and then think: how do you explain it to future generations? Of course:

Poetry!

And so to extend the argument further, when we say that organisms evolve and change and adapt to their surroundings, is that fundamentally incompatable with God breathing life into Adam? Only if you have a very narrow view of a God who doesn't work with what's present to change it. And if things can't change and adapt to new circumstances, what makes you think that people can change? Why bother with evangelism or mission if we think that people will always stay as they are, born sinful? I think that evolutionary theory is quite compatable with the story of the gospel, when told a certain way:

In the beginning was The Cause, and He created the universe out of nothing. He created it with order and purpose, with complex and intricate governing rules so that the atoms and molecules would know how to interact. The universe expanded to fill the space He had created, and by His hand, the planets took shape around stars, some around several stars. One planet was just right for a particular plan, and so he made it form in a certain way; volcanoes parted the waters and created fertile dry land. The volcanic activity also cleared the poisonous atmosphere, and in a puddle of green goo, God began moving the molecules into proteins, and the proteins into cells, and the cells into all sorts of organisms. God is like a potter, molding and forming a shapeless lump of clay into a masterpiece of artistic harmony, form and function. The animals grew ever complex, until one day, in the sixth age, God's last creation came to the point where He was ready for His best creative act yet: he breathed His own life into men and women. The two enjoyed the paradise of a planet God had created, until one day, something happened that changed all that ...

Is it perfect? Of course not, but like all things, it's open to interpretation, change, and refinement. God is ever creating, building life from chaos and confusion. Retelling it this way is very risky, but in the end, after refining it, I think it will be worth it. We need to retell anew the stories for our culture in a language that makes sense to each generation, lest they become old, stale, irrelevant.

(to be continued)

A Prayer of Adoration

Dear Father in Heaven,

Words fail me as I look towards You. It isn’t that I don’t want to say anything, but Your majesty, Your splendor, Your very essence seem to remove the breath from my lungs and the words from my lips. A melody could perhaps better articulate the way I feel; something soothing, full of bass and quiet harmonies, then swelling into rapturous, ecstatic peaks full of strings and brass, and finally diminishing into a lingering silence. And yet it still would not be enough. You are too big for mere music! Your presence surrounds me even now!

Pictures can’t capture your image either. A thousand photos of a thousand sunsets, or a million paintings of a million mountains will never portray the grandeur or the beauty or the sheer volume of You. But You don’t sit still; You move, like wind in the trees and over the grass in a meadow; I can’t predict You! With every new flower that spawns a field of flowers, with every squirrel that raises a family, with the birth of a child who will give rise to nations, You are at work doing what You do best: giving life to Your creation.

I will admit, Father, that this is all a bit intimidating. You are so perfect, so good, and I am so small; how can I do anything but gaze at you, dumbstruck, the words stolen from my mouth by Your grace, Your brilliance, Your magnificence. You hold me in your hand, and I am dwarfed beyond recognition – I disappear into the folds of your fingerprint. And yet You knew me even before I knew me; You know me even now, a speck on your palm, and You love me.

Oh for a thousand, ten thousand, a million words to speak of your glory! But my words are nothing; You speak in one whisper what I would spend my whole life shouting. And so Father, I have only four words to give to You, four words that might capture what I want to say:

I love You too.

~Chris

Rule of Life Essay

This was written for VOM this past semester. I really like the paper, for the most part, but you'll have to pardon a bit of hokey "this is what I do next" type stuff that's mixed in. Otherwise, enjoy. [The Management]

* * *

"The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.” [Albert Einstein]

On Pendulums: A Word on Balance

It was upon visiting a friend’s church plant that I first started thinking about pendulums as more than large weights, but as symbols. During the dinner after the service (their expression of Communion), the discussion turned towards balance, and one guy expressed how it seems to be that each time a turn in culture happens, it turns towards the opposite extreme. He compared it to a proverbial pendulum, always moving back and forth, resting at the peak of its arc, then cascading back towards the middle and swinging back up to the other extreme. As a metaphor, it works well to describe balance, that point somewhere in the middle at equilibrium between two extremes. Balance is as much a cycle-in-motion between extremes as it is a resting place. The pendulum thus carries with it a connotation of both “settled-ness” as well as motion, a metaphor which I believe describes balance quite well. It is a metaphor that is working in my life, and one that best describes the rule of life toward which I currently strive.

Mind and Body

It is remarkable how much the mind and the body influence one another. It is here that I wish to begin because it is here that the concept of balance is most intricately illustrated. The mind and body are tied together more closely than most of us would like to believe. The two are mutually interdependent; the mind controls the body, but the body houses the mind. While the two are obviously distinct, together, they form a complete organism. The mind is, for me, the easiest place to overshoot a pendulum. It is in this realm that we find academics, thought, concepts, and ideas (also, incidentally, all things in which I take great comfort). Without the mind, the body is lost; it is just an animal guided by instinct, thoughtlessly surviving. It is without a doubt the mind that gives us life that is worth living. It is by the mind that we can even conceive that God might be there to relate to, but it is also the mind that has been so deified by western culture for the last five hundred years (and at other times in history[1]). The body, on the other hand, is of a baser level. It is crude, instinctual, physical, but it is the body that sustains the mind. Without the body, the mind cannot exist.

Balance comes in the recognition that theology must inform praxis and that in turn, praxis will inform theology. When we separate the two, problems occur, called “dualism”: too much focus on the mind, and faith becomes an exercise in the “uber-spiritual,” downplaying the body’s actions to the point that they are barely tolerated and even evil. However, too much focus on the body, and all that happens is thoughtless action, guided by little more than baser instincts and the spur-of-the-moment. While I do not usually go to either extreme, I tend towards a version of the first, namely ignoring my body and letting it do it’s ‘thing’ however it pleases, so that I can focus on the more pleasurable and stimulating ideas to be thought. Instead of allowing an extreme to dominate my life, I must take care to balance thought with action, scholastics with exercise (I have to take care to schedule myself some gym time several times weekly instead of spending all my time reading), and theology with mission (constantly asking myself, who have I helped lately? Does my theology match my money and time and actions?).

Organic and Synthetic

One of the tendencies in our western culture is towards one of the organic or synthetic extremes. The organic is the world of nature, of the environment, even of the spiritual; we were born into this world naked and with nothing, and likewise from it we will pass. The synthetic is the world of the material, the concrete, of “stuff.” The present culture affirms the synthetic quite a bit more than it acknowledges the organic; it is enthralled with the material. I find myself caught up in this imbalance more than I usually care to admit; I want the latest computer gizmo, the best that money can buy, and in general, more stuff (and better stuff than my neighbor or family or even my wife). This world values noise and imposed schedules over the organic ebb and flow of time, leaving instead of coming, things instead of people. If I am to become balanced between the two, I am going to have to start giving up my desires to buy, to accumulate, and perhaps even start giving away what I have. However, there can be a tendency in some cultures to go to the other extreme, to give away so much that at some point they can no longer survive but for the charity of others[2].

Balance, once again, is found towards the middle; it values people but also values appropriate amounts of time with them. It celebrates the body as a creation of God and values the products of human ingenuity as useful, but rejects consumerism and materialism[3]. This means I must buy less, and give more. It means that a proper amount of material goods is ok, but acknowledging that the amount might differ from person to person and that if what I have is different from another, I must understand that God is choosing to teach that person differently than me[4]. It means I must watch for those in need and then not hesitate to give up what I have for them. It means letting go of my tendencies to hold onto things I “might use again someday” and give them to others who need them and can use them now[5].

Solitude and Community

“In the secret, in the quiet place // in the stillness you are there…” When I first started listening to contemporary Christian music, this was one of my favorites. It’s by a band named SonicFlood, and the song describes the strong desire of the singer to better know the God he loves so dearly. While the song is very particular in describing the very personal relationship the author has with his God (and neglects the communal relationship), this has still been a big challenge for me. At times, I have been very solitary in my relationship with God; it’s Him and me, and we do coffee without anybody else, and there’s no place for others in my walk. But at other times, I’ve swung the pendulum in the other direction and spent little to no time alone with God (this seems to be the current trend; as Dr. West says, I’ve become a “quivering mass of availability” to others). I can always tell when I’m in one or the other by what I do with my Bible; in my solitary times, the Bible sits on my nightstand by my bed, and in my communal times, it sits on my desk ready to be put into my backpack. Western Christianity wants its adherents to focus primarily on solitude, the discipline of spending time alone with God[6]. Perhaps this merely highlights western culture’s individualistic drive. But the point is that it’s about the individual growing (because God is already as grown as He’s going to get; being outside of time has its advantages).

On the other hand, community is also important. Scripture emphasizes this point throughout; at the very least, scripture itself was intended to be read in groups[7]. What we call the New Testament did not exist for the first chunk of “Christian” history; with a few exceptions, the books involved were letters to groups of people (the epistles) or were documents written to educate groups of people in the story of Christ (the gospels, with the notable exception of Luke’s gospel, written for his wealthy patron Theophilus[8]). Community includes several groups of people; family (immediate and extended), friends, mentors, mentees (“disciples” of both Christian and non-Christian flavors), small groups, work groups. But in every case, they are all “the other;” the person not-me – the woman, the impoverished, the black-skinned, the widow, the sick, the alien. In these cross-cultural experiences I must find my community.

It is fitting, then (in light of the line used to begin this section), that in my mind, the closest image I have to fit with this is that of music. Music requires both silence and sound in order to be music. The balance changes for each style of music, but in the end, both sound and silence are required to make a piece of music that is worth listening to. Silence is even called a “rest” in classical music. It is much the same in real life. The sounds of life must be offset by periods of restful silence, meditation, contemplation, prayer, and the like in order to lead a balanced (yet full) life. It is these periods of rest that enable a person – me – to continue functioning. Too much silence and I become apathetic and slothful, but too much sound and I will eventually become numb and deaf to the beauty of the music[9].

Past, Present, Future

Time is an important indicator of spiritual health that must also be balanced. While I must balance my times of solitude with my times of community, I must also balance my preoccupations with time in its three iterations: past, present, and future[10]. We learn from what has already transpired, but it is in the past that we cannot dwell, for the past is dead and gone. Likewise, we look towards the future expectantly, and it is into the future we move, a succession of present moments whose planning is today's responsibility but in which we cannot dwell because it has not yet happened. We are creatures of the present moment. But the three must be balanced.

My tendency is to live in the future; I have to have everything planned out so that when it gets here, nothing unexpected happens to throw off my plans. The trouble with this is that I always seem to be planning and spend little time enjoying what sits before me. I have so far tried to balance this with a commitment for learning history, about what has already happened. Despite my best efforts, what seems to keep happening is that I end up applying what I learn towards what will eventually happen, to better my plans. I need to learn to let go of my plans. Plans are good, don’t get me wrong, but if my plan is allowed to overrule God’s plan (and I do not allow myself to follow the momentary impulses of the Holy Spirit because they fall outside my schedule), I remain in a self-made trap. The trouble is that I cannot plan to be spontaneous nor can I plan to follow the Holy Spirit because, as the scripture says, the Spirit is like a breath of wind; nobody can guess where He’ll move next[11]. Thus, the only solution to this is prayer; prayer that God will see fit to show me how and when to move, that I’ll be listening. I must be ever mindful of the present moment, wondering if in it God is speaking to me, speaking back. For as Lewis writes, it is in this present moment that we most closely touch the infinite; thus, to balance the extremes of past and future, a present-minded reality is the remedy[12].

Art and Science

Science might be best described by words like hierarchy, mechanical, artificial, revealed. It is the world of the rigid order that cannot be broken, the world of language and structure, of order. The world can be understood and controlled, the world of logic. The artistic, on the other hand, is movement, mystery (the unexplained), naturalistic, or fluid. It is the world of the aesthetic and the ascetic, the artist and the poet, constantly celebrating that which is greater than I and cannot be understood in language alone; it cannot be controlled, only expressed and emoted. I find myself at these crossroads quite often, my pendulum swinging wildly. On the one hand, I grew up in the western enlightenment culture of logic, of science, and I often find myself drawn to explain everything, to know everything (or if I don’t, I don’t admit it and make something up to sound like I know everything). On the other hand, I have always had a certain talent for music; I play eleven instruments, I sing, and I compose. The artist in me is always fighting against the scientist, constantly telling him to give up on explaining that which is best left to awe and wonder.

But neither is truly without merit; we should try to explain the world, complicated as it is. However, there comes a point where even the most brilliant Einstein or Hawking cannot make heads or tails of something (where do emotions come from? What do women want?) and must turn to poetry, art, music to begin to make sense of it, and failing that, to express our frustration at our bewilderment yet our inexplicable joy at its mystery. Though both struggle within me, I have, as of late, erred on the side of science, of logic, of academics. I do this unintentionally, but when I realized that I had begun pushing the pendulum too far, I made it a point to join the Asbury College Jazz Ensemble and spend some time with music for a while. It is something I have decided to continue through seminary; instead of allowing my academics to completely dictate my schedule, I will be a part of at least one music group each semester (more if I think my schedule can handle it) and will make time to spend playing music with my wife. Aside from the fact that our daughter likes to listen to us and that we both enjoy it, the music moves in my soul to worship and thus should not be repressed, as it has been. I cannot let it overtake my academics either, but this is a danger far from my present circumstances.

Mission

When it comes down to it, it doesn’t much matter that I don’t yet know my calling; balance is something that must be a part of my life regardless of my circumstances. For if the path of holiness is the imitation of Christ, then certainly balance must play a key role; the Trinity Himself is the personification of balance: three-persons yet one God, mutually-submitted to one another, complimenting and reinforcing one another, growing together, creating together, relating to one another, dancing together. Mission, then, is an outpouring of that dance[13]. Balance is but a means to an end; relationship with the triune God, the mission dei, its purpose. The relationship means I participate in the dance! This means that participation in the Kingdom of God – the path to Holiness – means the furthering of the Great Commission in all its expressions, moving with the Holy Spirit to whichever culture He leads. In C.S. Lewis’ classic words, it is ever moving “onwards and upwards!” into the mountains[14]. It is the ever-present journey, the journey that death can no longer stop. It is for this that I was born, and it is for this that I continue to live.

Works Consulted

Barton, Ruth Haley. Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation. IVP Books: Downers Grove IL, 2006.

Claiborne, Shane. The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 2006.

Lewis, C.S. The Screwtape Letters. HarperCollins Books: New York NY, 1942 (2001).

------------. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle.

------------. The Great Divorce. HarperCollins Books: San Francisco CA, 1946 (2001).

Seamands, Stephen. Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service. InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 2005.

Notes

[1] I can’t help but noticing that our western culture is quite similar to the last time this happened: Greece, and Rome. The two cultures (summed up in the word “Hellenist”) were very mind-centric in the meta-culture that dominated politics, academics, and philosophy (all concepts which find their lingual roots in the same time period). I also notice that the counter-cultures that sprung up during these times were very action-oriented, the proverbial pendulum swinging the other way. Truly, we have much to learn from the comparison between the two.

[2] Though they are few and far between, a notable example is the ascetics of the second and third centuries who would emaciate themselves because it was considered “spiritual” and moved them “closer to God.” I can’t imagine how these practices actually helped anybody, as it certainly didn’t help the participants. The Gnostics, as well, were preoccupied with this heresy to the point that the body was itself evil.

[3] Gluttony (overindulgence) in any form is sinful. See Dr. Martyn’s October 10, 2007 lecture on the deadly sins.

[4] In the story of the Rich Young Ruler (Luke 18:18-29), Jesus obviously values material goods in their proper context (for example, he says to the ruler to sell all he has, but never says to give it ALL to the poor, only to give to the poor). However, to the one who has everything yet still yearns for more, Jesus asks him to die to his selfishness and embrace the moderation of the kingdom of God.

[5] Perhaps cleaning out my closets of that which I do not use anymore and giving it to the Salvation Army is a good place to start on this one.

[6] Am I the only one that finds it ironic that we call it “solitude”? Isn’t it really supposed to at least be some sort of conversation with God, which means that we’re not really alone, nor are we ever?

[7] Think about it: who could afford to have their own copy of the Torah except only the wealthiest of Pharisees? Scripture was memorized by Jewish boys by the time they were ten, and then they spent the rest of their formal education (those that ended up as priests) working through scripture in the company of a Rabbi and his other disciples. In fact, this trend continued right up into the sixteenth century when Gutenberg invented the printing press; it was only after this that society was able to truly become individualistic. Scripture and community are intimately tied together.

[8] Luke 1:1.

[9] Barton, 133-145.

[10] It was through C.S. Lewis that I began to understand this concept, when I read his wonderful text (yet strangely chilling, given that it’s a series of letters from a demon), The Screwtape Letters. See pg. 75-79.

[11] John 3:8.

[12] Naturally, to be ever-mindful of the present is next to impossible; there are far too many stimuli in the world for this. Yet it is this towards which I strive. That is why I must do what I can and allow God’s grace to work in me, showing me the most important things to which to pay attention, and abandoning the rest as useless; I only have so much time, and so there really isn’t time to have both what I (the sinful I) want and what God wants. Nothing to it then but to replace what I want with what God wants. I’m pretty sure that’s in scripture somewhere (Luke 22:42).

[13] Seamands, 157-178.

[14] The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle and The Great Divorce.

Coffee

A Haiku:

Drink Only Coffee

Every sound will surprise

No nap in future

The Bigger Picture (Part II)

Sorry for the long pause in writing, I've been ... busy. Busy is probably the opposite of hyperbole, let's say I've been slowly going insane over the past four weeks. I've had work; at Coldstone, we once again no longer have a manager, making that three managers in four months that have either been fired or quit on us. This time, though, they decided to go a different route and give me all the responsibilities without the salary. Oh, I got a raise, for which I'm grateful, but I'd just as well not be the one in charge. It's one of those "I could get fired if anything bad happens!" which doesn't make it easy to sleep at night. But I love my new job at the optometrist's office. The people are great, the doctors are fantastic, and the work pace is steady. And I get to sit down most of the day instead of stand.

Then there's the baby. She's fantastic (new pictures on flickr), if a bit fussy sometimes. Actually, she's been fussy a lot lately, giving Liz a run for her sanity every two hours. And I really mean every ... two ... hours. My parents were here a week and a half ago, which was awesome. And this past weekend was the Paine family reunion in Illinois. We had a good time, but getting there took a lot longer than we expected due to torrential rains in Indiana, a huge traffic jam in Louisville, and of course, the usual delays from having a four-week-old baby to worry about. But in and amongst all this I haven't had time for reading, much less any writing. But I have a very slow day at work today, so I thought I'd pick up the story where I left off in the last post.

* * *

There are lots of kinds of scripture, but the hardest thing for many Christians to wrap their head around is determining whether a certain passage of poetry should be taken literally or metaphorically. Scripture itself isn't even in historical order, though it roughly moves from earlier to later with some interruptions. For example, the letters of Paul are not in chronological order, likewise for much of the later old testament. Some books (or parts of books) seem fairly indicative of history, though told as a bard would in the early Celtic legends. Others seem to be simply emotional expression, though we could probably match them to historical events (many of the psalms are like this). Still others are both; they contain many levels of history, symbolism, metaphor, truth.

The book of Genesis is this last sort of scripture; it happened, but it's also metaphorical, full of symbols that mean a lot if you understand the perspective of those who wrote it and heard it first. Like the book of Joshua, Genesis is much more than it appears. Its authorship is somewhat debatable; some say that Moses wrote it, but most historians these days believe that Moses was merely a collector of many other works, adding his own commentary as needed. Its original authorship seems to include Adam himself, Noah, Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the many fathers of the Israeli nation. Historians and Bible Scholars tend to agree that Genesis wasn't written by just one person, but by many. Speaking from a literary standpoint, the style shifts back and forth, changing voice. We can tell when one person is writing and then another takes up the next line of the story (Sidenote: the methods for this used are often the same used in criminology and linguistic forensics, when researchers are able to tell one "voice" from another because of their writing style. You know, like in CSI).

But Genesis 1 is the crux of it all, the most debated passage in scripture these days. Evolutionists, creationists, and everybody in between seems to have an opinion about what this passage means. Genesis 1 is written in the form of a poem, an illustration of the beginning of something. You can see it over and over again, with two different refrains: "And God said, let there be __ and there was", and "and there was evening, and there was morning, the __ day." As a poem, it's not half bad, though I imagine it was probably far more impressive in its original tongue. Poetry usually is.

At the start, it says "in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." My first reaction is, in the beginning of ... what, exactly? Of time? Of space? Of everything? We don't seem to be off to a good start if the text is pure history; important details are left out. Looking closer, you could spend ages studying just verses 1 and 2:

(1) In the begining, God created the heavens and the earth. (2) Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

So let's see if I understand this right. In the beginning, God creates the heavens and the earth. There's no particular indication of what "heaven" means here, but most likely it would indicate that space beyond earth's atmosphere, a place we typically associate with a void. But you have to remember, if before this there was only God, there would first have to be created a place in which a universe could exist. And the earth.

An interesting parallel is John 1:1-5:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John takes five verses to say what the author of Genesis 1 took two. We learn some interesting stuff in there, about the triune nature of God, about God's relationship with darkness, and about God's creative nature. It's a loaded text full of mystery, poetry, and truth.

But the next verse (Gen 1:2) makes the first seem odd; the earth was formless and empty. God first creates the heavens and the earth, but the earth was formless and empty. Genesis 1 begins not when there was nothing, but when there was already something. But in classic form, the scripture's author writes it as the understatement of the ages; in fact, understatement runs rampant through the biblical story. Think of Gabriel, "be not afraid." Really? Well, ok, if you say so. "Yep, God made everything. But THEN ..." Maybe the authors just knew that God can't be captured just in words, an idea we (read: modern-day people) might want to keep in mind more often.

If you think about it more, it makes sense that Genesis 1 is poetry; how else could you possibly capture, in any meaningful way, God's desire to produce creation? How else could you record something so beyond man? Scientific language will never do it justice; to say "first he did this, exactly this way, and then he did this, but in between there was this middle stage where this happened ..." seems to lose the message. Poetry (and art in general) is the best way to capture something so profound without resorting to massive volumes of text. Sure, it's less specific, doesn't give a "how", but it reads a lot better.

Besides, if God made it, does it matter exactly how He did it?

(to be continued)

The Bigger Picture (Part I)

So often we want to call scripture one thing or another; it's poetry, or metaphor, or history, or prophesy, or scientific account, but only one thing at a time. It seems we always have to dissect it into little pieces to understand it, to "deconstruct" it, but in doing so we tend to forget to "reconstruct," and lose sight of the bigger picture. Scripture is a lot of things all at once, its whole greater than the sum of its parts. As Rob Bell says, "this is about that."

For example, take a passage in Joshua, a passage that is, strictly speaking, historical in nature; it is written in the style of a piece of history. Joshua 3 describes the nation of Israel - a shepherding, migrant nation after it left the slavery of Egypt under Moses - as it passes across the Jordan river into Canaan. But the chapter is more than just part of Israel's history. Like so many places in scripture it is filled with symbolism and metaphor built on events that actually seem to have happened.

Joshua, newly-appointed leader of the Israeli nation, is told to lead his people into Canaan. In order to get there, Israel must somehow get across the Jordan river, a dangerous river at the easiest of times, and, this being the season of the annual flood, is treacherous at best, deadly at worst. To cross this river, especially for a large nation from the desert, spells death.

But Joshua knows that God is up to something, that God will keep the promise he made to Abraham and to Moses, that Israel will have its own land in Canaan. Per God's instructions, Joshua tells the priests (from the tribe of Levi) to carry the Ark of the Covenant into the river ahead of Israel and to wait until Israel crosses. I imagine that this fills them with a certain fear; stepping out in faith is never easy, after all. As they do so, the river slows down, and eventually stops altogether, and begins flowing backwards far upstream. Israel works its way across the now-dry river-bed and into Canaan, no worse for wear.

That's the historical bit. What's interesting is that the author of the text chose to include a number of details that most of us wouldn't think were important at all for a historical account. Sure, it's miraculous that the river dried up, but if that were so, why include all this other information? The answer lies in Israel's history. The book of Exodus is a major focal point for the Israeli calendar; the story of God's mercy, of his Might in saving the nation from slavery in Egypt and leading them into the freedom of their own nation is one remembered to this day in many festivals. By the time this text was in circulation, every Jewish child would know this story, and every adult would, upon reading a text such as Joshua, pick up on key details.

For example, the tribe of Levi is told to carry the Ark ahead of Israel, in essence, to lead the way, harkening back to the Exodus through the desert when God's pillar of fire moved ahead of them, guiding them to Mount Sinai. Next, the Ark moves into the river, and at its presence, the waters recede. At this, the Jew would remember Moses and the Red Sea.

But here the author includes some seemingly trivial information. First, we're told that the water recedes all the way back to a town called "Adam." This is an odd detail in and of itself, but the next seems nearly pointless: it says that the water is not allowed to flow into the dead sea. Now, anybody is smart enough to know that if you stop a river upstream, the places downstream don't get any water; it's enough to leave it implied. But the author feels the need to leave it there, to let us know that the river no longer flows from the town of Adam all the way to the dead sea, known for its extremely high salt content and (thus) lack of life.

If God uses history as metaphor, then this is a pinnacle story, the essence of the gospel found buried deep within the old testament. Over and over again, Israel was told that they were to be humanity's representatives for God, a "priestly nation" in which God will tell the story of the world. The water was death for the Israelites, but into the middle of it, God (symbolized as the Ark) enters and works a miracle. Death stops flowing, and in fact, flows backwards all the way to Adam, recorded as the first human in Genesis 1. The author then tells us that death stops flowing all the way to the sea of Arabah, the sea of death.

For the Hebrews, deep water was known as a symbol of death, of the demonic, and of hell. Stories are told of the many sailors and fishermen who perished on the sea of Galilee, and popular mysticism attributed this to demons "rising from the deep" to claim their lives. This is probably why it freaked out the disciples so much when Jesus walked along on top of the deep, and then commanded the storm - the very instrument of the death of so many sailors and fishermen - to cease, to calm. How can anyone but worship He who commands death to cease?

(to be continued)

Nessun Dorma

Translation:

None must sleep! None must sleep!
And you, too, Princess,
in your cold room,
gaze at the stars
which tremble with love
and hope!

But my mystery is locked within me,
no-one shall know my name!
No, no, I shall say it as my mouth
meets yours when the dawn is breaking!

And my kiss will break the silence
which makes you mine!

(No-one shall know his name,
and we, alas, shall die!)

Vanish, o night!
Fade, stars!
At dawn I shall win

via Anchoress

Theater

"Theaters are the churches of the twenty-first century. They're where people sit in the dark to watch people in the light tell them what it is to be human." [New York Theater Critic]

Words