Forbidden Math

I’ve taken to staring at walls a great deal.

Two lyrics from Jackson Browne’s immortal “These Days” once again describe every thing about me well, these days.

Well I’ve been out walkin’

I don’t do that much talkin’

These days

(…)

These days I seem to think a lot

About the things

That I forgot to do

This morning I stare across the trenches at monumental changes in my life (don’t worry-these changes still be largely the stuff of secret; if we share friendship you will be privy soon enough). These days, I’m not doing that much talking, and I’m giving a lot of thought to all that I’ve never gotten around to doing.

While I do not consider ThisSpace a journal, I do find it funny how my personal journaling tends to inspire me to share with the scattered dozen whose eyes land here. Allow me to try and polish it for public consumption by way of a question.

Anyone know how to untangle personal faith from an ideal, from an institution, from a (perhaps) ill-founded dream?

I think the content of my atrophied soul’s wonderings has been to ponder how faith (mine, actually; not that on some impotent chalkboard) stands apart from well, everything else.

Let me make it tangible.

I don’t go to church these days, mainly due to my work schedule (but also due to laziness).

How well does (or should) I expect my faith to stand, to grow, to nourish itself?

I don’t work at a Christian institution any more, by (sometimes lamented) choice.

How should my faith function in places where it is a sorta quirky “lifestyle choice” to everyone else, not necessarily a decision I make every day about the star around which my personal galaxy orbits?

I graduated seminary some six months ago.

How should my faith function, both in private and in vocation, given the richness of the theological education I’ve undergone?

Subtract those three things and… what do you make of my faith in Christ?

What does such a faith look like?

A crooked stick? An empty jar? Filthy rags?

Can you subtract all of the things that make you a Person of Faith and just retain well, that faith?

Are you supposed to do that?

Permit me to drop a bit of historical analogy on you, one that doesn’t quite fit but makes the point as best I can contrive at the moment.

It became the uber-hip, in vogue thing in the 19th century to subtract all that stuff that well, we’d prefer weren’t in the gospels and the rest of the New Testament and reduce all of Christianity down to just Jesus as Love Guru and Omnidirectional Revolutionary Force for Hire or something. (See guys from Crossan to Spong to Chopra for such ‘making of Jesus in an image of our own choosing’ today.) That was then and always has been the default answer to the ‘what do we do with this Jesus?’ question.

Well, I wonder if I have not done something similar, by subtracting most all of Jesus except for whatever I can get going on with Him by myself.

The stuff I don’t like about Jesus, like his expectation that I make church, or make effort to grow in the knowledge of him, or negotiate tough teachings about him, or deal with the unpalpable things others in my tradition may do with him, or, whatever… I guess I’ve sort of subtracted all that I don’t like about the Lord and stuck with what I can would rather hold onto.

By myself.

Alone.

For the Christian, the forbidden math is that which leads to one.

Alone.

Who did I think I was?

Okay, two rules:

1) This will be short,

B) this will be the beginning of more regular postage.

Promise.

Sitting at IHOP a couple of days ago and I found myself reading and meditating deeply upon Romans 8. I decided then and there, in true keeping with the ‘anything goes’ espirit de summer, to pay no attention to amount ingested, how “far I got” from my starting place at Romans 8:1, or to even be conscious of “how many verses I read this morning”.

That triggered the realization in me that there is a lot packed into our Scriptures.

Why rush?

When I taught at the School-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named, there was an, ahem, very ardent Republican lady with whom I occasionally crossed paths. We would always share good banter, never anything serious or heavy (at least to me; I’m sure I wasted valuable real estate on her “God Please Open These Sinners’ Eyes” list).

Well, all in good fun (I think…), this lady one time told me that she and I were one day soon going to sit down and talk politics, Bible-to-Bible, and hammer out which position, hers (ardent GOP) or mine (not-ardent-for-either), was “more Biblical”.

The reason this exchange stuck in my mind is that, almost immediately, I realized that I don’t know my Bible well enough to make that argument on one side or the other.

I didn’t then and I don’t now.

Nor do I think I ever shall.

I hope I’m never that convinced of my own grasp of God’s Word, as well, I really do hold that if we have even a moderately high view of Scripture, as we go through life we’ll invariably be confronted with our own shortsightedness with regard to it. We’ll grow, change, and even laugh at what we used to believe they said about God.

So back to the Maison des Pancackes.

I’m reading Romans 8 and all I can do as I go is ask the inspired writ as I go, “what does this mean?” and “why?” or even “why not?”.

Alongside. Every. Verse.

Just yesterday I returned to church after about a five-week uhhh, sabbatical from there.

The question I asked myself almost as soon as I got done talking to Ryan was, “what in the world was I doing, thinking I knew God, the Bible, and His world well enough to imagine I was getting the whole picture doing Christianity by myself?

Who did I think I was?

As most who know me well are aware, I’m sort of a student of church history and what those who’ve had the same Book and Savior as us have done with It. The more I study and think deeply upon just what we are to do with this “Jesus Thing,” I stand ever more convinced of the need for deep and profound humility before God, our tradition, and the Scriptures.

The Spirit of God, alongside the Scriptures, has been at work in God’s people for some two millennia now-and we haven’t exhausted the meaning or power of Holy Writ just yet.

I’m not sure I should alter Augustine this way, but he famously said that “When you’ve found yourself a god you understand, you have built yourself an idol.”

I wonder if it’s okay to say something similar about the Scriptures?

I know I err more often than not on the side of epistemic impotence, but I really did shudder at my friend’s presumption of knowing the whole of Scripture that well, and it made me wonder if she had not in fact erred on the side of building herself blueprints for an idol.

May the Scriptures never conform… to anything.

Not a song, political platform, doctrinal presupposition, or anything else.

May they define, not deviate.

May they always shape, mold and polish.

And may they always inspire thanks to our holy God.

Playing ketchup

I’ve really fallen off pace compared to days past with this thing. I have entertained everything from the meds I’m taking to my busyness with work/school/social affairs to… whatever else.

I don’t have any profound reason; in fact, I have no reason at all really. I’ve had a few ideas, but just haven’t done the work to wrangle them that is usually required. Politics also hold a spot very much at the fore of my thinking these days, but I grow further convinced on a weekly basis that such discussions are usually ‘disputable mattters,’ as the apostle Paul would term them. (If you do find yourself interested, here you’ll find a pretty good snapshot of most of my political thoughts of late.)

The rhythms of the academic calendar make the passage of time so much easier to mark, and I’ve gotten quite a bit older in the past year it seems.

And I find myself increasingly at peace with that. (The umm, loosening of the skin just about belt level, not as much.)

As part of how I handle my tangled, troubled mind, there are a number of lessons I’ve learned both one time yet have to continue to reaccquaint myself with time after time after time again.

Most of them are too personal or too specific for me to share, but there is one very simple one that’s worth sharing. I know I’ve talked about it in posts prior (don’t feel like finding the links-sorry), but as I find its importance never waning so might you.

It is simply the power, the necessity, of not living, not even operating in the mindset that you can “do life” alone.

One time I heard about a phenomenon in computer programming, called a ‘feedback loop’ or something. The basic issue in such an occasion is that an intended action contradicts another in such a way that it gets caught up in this cycle (or ‘loop’) with the result that rather than either executing as planned neither ever happen at all.

You see, the way that God has wired our psyche, deep below sin and shame, urges us constantly toward communion with others, in whatever fashion. Just about as attractive, however, is the urge to tune out of such relations and… give life our best shot without the resources or encouragement of others. You know… alone.

What a deadly wreck of contrasting desires!

The simple solution that continually restores and heals my soul, over and over and over again, is simply to make plans with a friend to share a meal and talk.

About whatever.

About sports, the news, a movie, or (for bonus!) them and whatever might be up in their world.

A soul that feasts only upon its own whisperings is nothing more than a cannibal, and as such it wastes away more every day.

Merely getting together… merely doing the ‘friend’ thing… merely sharing a meal to trade a few insights about Life of late…

Playing catch up heals the soul (not to mention tightens the belt).

Of monsoons, American idolatry and Interstate 70

Politics are a big interest of mine, yet I have been very deliberate to clutter this area with only things that are either of concern even for the Christian who isn’t into politics or those that would hold deeper intellectual cachet than the usual partisan tripe.

Well, take a look here.

It appears that Focus on the Family, aka the ministry political outreach group of Dr. James Dobson, have encouraged their supporters to “pray for torrential rainstorms” for the night of Obama’s speech tomorrow night (as it is to be held outdoors, at Denver’s Invesco Field at Mile High).

In their defense, Focus have come out and said that proclamation was intended to be “mildly amusing”.

The joke was lost on me.

Wanna know why?

Because vast swaths of Americans no doubt hold that God really does work that way with His creation, i.e., the only way poor old God would be able to get something done would be through the weather… as commanded by the fervent prayers from more of one group of people against another. (Think of it as a kid playing his aloof grandparents off one another to get around being grounded.)

In this sort of scheme, God becomes our Hit Man, Mob Guy, Messenger Boy, or Biggest Endorsement the Galaxy Has to Offer to Whomever Courts Him Best.

That also makes Him an idol.

Allow me to lay my cards on the table here openly and honestly.

Attempted humor or not, I find these guys’ sentiments vile, theologically bollicksed and despicable.

The God of whom they supposedly speak is a) not at our whims and b) smart enough to reveal Himself in ways that no phalanx of political hacks can pat themselves on the back for provoking.

Demographers and other people-qualified-to-speak-on-such-things say that the younger generation of thinking evangelicals (the age group of pretty much everyone that reads this blog, I’m pretty sure) are turning away from the GOP in droves and are growing to repudiate them entirely.

May I present to you Exhibit A.

Obama and the Black Hole Son

As sleep began to gain the upper hand last night, my mind was carried aloft by that classic party-stopper, “how can a Christian vote for someone who is pro-abortion?” As has more than once in my world proven the case, this is an issue with which we Christian folk think and communicate with an incredible amount of zeal. And not without reason!

If you made it past the word “abortion,” allow me to posit a wider, perhaps more refined way of thinking about not only politics, but our entire world.

I dredged up Col. 1:15-17 for you so you wouldn’t have to look it up:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together

We sell God’s creation short when we settle for simple explanations of God’s role in the issues of our day, ones that easily surrender to talk of where God isn’t or even can’t be.

As you think about that, let me toss this your way: what if one were to say, based on the famous passage in Leviticus 18, that the entire Bible is about human sexuality and right relations betwixt the genders? Or that the entire Bill of Rights was about the importance of the Third Amendment, which can be used as a check on the power of the federal government’s ability to interfere in citizens’ private affairs and property? Would not either of those perspectives do extraordinary violence to the content, the history, the origins, the authors, etc. associated with those works?

Both of those situations above (which, if you’ll allow your mind just the barest liberty, you’ll no doubt see scenarios in which people would argue those perspectives very well) are what I would call an “adventure in missing the point”.¹

As we discuss “the point” as Christians, we find ourselves in an interesting quandry. Revisit the wideness of the language used above in Colossians: phrases like “all things,” “all creation” and that list comprised of “heavenly things…” to “… earthly authorities.” Surely you won’t object to my saying that Paul meant this list to be exhaustive!

So then, what is “the point”?

Guess what: no answer here.

Here’s what I will tell you though. If in fact all of this high and exalted language of Christ is true, if indeed he is in, before, transcendent and in the midst of “all things,” then such a figure as our exalted Savior in all his transcendent glory should be as frequent an informer as possible to the world of the Christian. In the very midst of the realities of the dirty and the pure, the complex and the simple, the amenable and the lamentable alike, we should seek out and apply that depth, majesty and wisdom.

So then, when we presume to have the “Christian perspective” on something, or to speak “as a representative of Christianity,” let’s make sure we’re taking into account the majesty, the awesomeness, and “all-ness” of Christ. Let’s make sure we aren’t settling for something that isn’t real.

Let’s err on the side of humility.

I don’t know about you, but I’m just not smart enough, holy enough, wise enough, or familiar enough with the Scriptures to say with confidence which candidate, and for what reasons, God is “for” or “against”.

If what Colossians says of Him is true, then I’ll bet He’s got a way to make one vote count for both anyway.

1 I actually first heard this phrase as the title of a McLaren book; haven’t read it.

What a difference five years make

So, I graduated from college five years ago today.¹

Right here would be the standard place for a link to that day’s commencement speech.²

Thankfully, in the midst of all that day’s revelry³ I was able to set aside some time to reflect upon that particular apex in my life, whichª I revisited just now.

What a difference five years make.

For whatever silly reason, as I’ve been pondering this particular milestone the first place my mind leaps is, “Man, another five will make ten! Oh, the places I’ll have gone by then!” Some sort of internal governor, however, catches me before I neglect to reflect too much upon today’s milestone, and for that I am thankful.¹¹

I’m reading a book about Robert Oppenheimer right now, and he was a pretty screwed up dude in his late teens and throughout his early twenties.¹² Psychological issues, medical issues, math issues, you name it. At the outset of his twenties things certainly didn’t look very bright for him.

The Dixon/Oppenheimer bit at precisely this moment hits ‘Empty’, but I invoke it for the¹³ simple reason that things for him got betterªª, before he even really noticed.

As have things for me gotten better.

Did you notice, though, that I didn’t say “perfect”²¹?

I hope you took the time to check out the picture below.²² That day I consummated things at Hendrix as an altogether shattered guy, and the smiles that day weren’t feigned by just professors whose mind my name had slipped. I was torn up inside, for all kinds of reasons,²³ and a solid two years or so passed before I felt like there was ground covered between that guyªªª and this one.

But I’ve made it, because things got better.

“Hope,” it has been said, “is a dangerous thing.” Maybe Hope was in Pandora’s Box not for any innocence on its part, or even the benevolence of the gods, but in fact because it is something that can make the world skip its programmed track. Maybe indeed it drives people insane.

Just like that atom that Oppenheimer et al smashed, when we dare entertain the world that the intersection that authentic hope, love and faith make, we are presuming to mess with something entirely out of our realm of experience.

We’re messing with power that can guarantee us a lot more than five more measly years, I promise you that.

1 In case you didn’t know, you know now that I’m sort of a freak for random dates, very few of which that actually matter.

2 Luckily it isn’t available on the Hendrix site. However, here is the one given the year before, to which I have returned on more than one occasion since that humid Saturday morning. It is one of the richest commencement speeches I’ve ever heard. And for something entirely unrelated, take a look at this.

3

a Most of which I won’t be sharing with you here.

11 I choose to interpret that governor as the inner working of the Spirit, if I dare be so bold.

12 This was before The Bomb, by the way.

13 Reading has also been pretty much all I’ve done when I’ve had free time the past two days, besides get pwned in Mario Kart.

aa I do know the end of the story, and how his life played out is one of the saddest you’ll find in American history.

21 And did you observe that I didn’t put that particular parenthetical thought in one of these ridiculous footnotes?

22 See 3, above.

23 See a, above.

aaa See 22, above.

Why I pray with my eyes open

I think it was the other night at church when I noticed how funky it feels to have my eyes open when I pray. Me, ever the proud iconoclast, I poke and rake pretty much everything I do in the practice of my faith, both at the Christian school where I teach and in my personal life.

I remember Farthing, back at Hendrix, talking about this one time and making the point that “I guarantee you this-Martin Luther wouldn’t be praying with his eyes closed!” or something like that. Remember, Martin Luther proudly fashioned a wide embrace of all the so-called “nastiness” of this physical world, including such foul things like non-sacred music, the opposite sex, and even alcohol (shudder).

I’ve toyed with that on and off over the years, and I think I’ve got my reasons lined up for what that means to me.

In its simplest form it reduces down to this: what happens when we bow and shut our eyes to pray is that we are trying to take ourselves into a world away from this one, to connect with God unencumbered by all the so-called “distractions” and ugliness of this world. (And before you raise your hand to say “No, it’s so we can focus better on God!” remember that every time you pray, the room either goes silent or gets that way real quick. Good question though!)

But wait a minute. Ever notice that those very distractions, and ugliness, are the exact things about which you’ve bowed to pray most times? I pray at the beginning of most class periods, and I’m praying for either the shared time we are all about to spend together, or one of the students and his/her needs. Same way in church services, and at meals-you’re praying for something right there in your midst! So what are you hiding from, what are you “tuning out,” in order to better thank the Lord for the meal you’d rather have started by now?

Let me ask you this. You ever think about what it would mean if your prayers actually came true? Ever thought of how it might look if in fact God did say, cause every Baptist* to become a Christian, or some girl/guy to realize that you are as wonderful as your friends know you are deep down, or your cousin’s dog to be healed retroactively? Take a look at this passage, especially verse 15, for some of this very same silliness, but done by people in the Bible!

Those examples are funny, yes, but what about the more serious ones? Say, the myriad prayers these days about having a Christian person elected as the next U.S. president? Or for God to intervene in Darfur? Or for your relative whose life is a mess to finally have a steady job, or to ditch the loser boyfriend/girlfriend? Or even that some girl/guy for whom you’ve got a thing might reciprocate said thing?

Most of those prayers require sort of complicated strings of events in order to be answered the way you want, and most of them, I’d say there is nothing wrong with such prayers.

Yet by your retreating behind closed eyelids, or say, having your prayer meeting hidden from the boo! scary! world around you, I wonder if you aren’t neglecting to connect the bold things of which you’re dreaming with how they might actually look if/when they come to pass, and even some specific things you might be able to do to help them come to pass.

I wonder if that’s the reason your prayers suck.

I’ve gotten sort of hardcore about trying to only do stuff that actually means something, and most of my prayers I’ve found don’t mean anything, to me or to anyone else. I am not invested in them, and I do not venture the hope that God’s will might smile upon them. Keeping my eyes open forces me to connect the lofty spiritual (“You’re our only hope here, Lord…”) with the realistic physical (“Here’s how this might look if the Lord sees fit to intervene…”).

Oh yeah, and don’t forget-the spiritual and the physical found perfect union in Christ, who started out as a baby, with real flesh and real diapers, and who died a real death on a real wooden cross on a real part of the ground beneath your very feet.

Praying, actually, is quite easy, with your eyes closed. 

Prayers made with eyes open, my friends, are scary prayers to toss heavenward.

*I teach at a heretofore undisclosed Southern Baptist school.

A Life More Honest.

Well, a funny thing has started happening this week.

Think of it as simple “out of sight, out of mind” I guess.

Think of it as hope delayed fulfilled at last perhaps.

Think of it as the perfect set up for “well, what took you so long?!?”

I’ve started thinking of myself as a “former seminary student.”

I’ve started saying things to friends like “back when I was in seminary,” or thinking about no longer having my student discount at the Angelika, or noticing the ever louder din of that drip drip drip asking me again just what makes exegeting from the Greek so important.

And I’ve started doing normal people things, like stress only about my job when I’m at work, ponder things I’d like to do with world class friends I’ve neglected, get all Wahhabist about my finances, try and talk to a wonderful female friend from college regularly on the phone (it’s platonic, Mom), get some new recipes, read with more depth, think about picking the guitar back up…

Simply put, just be alive again.

I am not going to try and put you in my shoes to see how hard I pushed myself, and how far out of balance the cost of what I was willing to sacrifice for the thing(s) I had decided to pursue was compared to simple life affirming things. My life was pretty empty when the days were all said and done, and now well, I’m trying to fill them up with the things I’ve thought only true heroes neglected.

I’ve got a lot of stuff to replace, however. You probably remember this post from few weeks ago. Yeah, that’s one of my more bare, and stupid, moments-but it was honest then and I’m trying to live honest now.

In the honesty department I’ve been doing no small heavy lifting as of late, but I am convinced to my core that the best God has for us is found when we risk a life lived more honest.

I’m not entirely sure what’s next for me, school-wise. I’ve got 81 of the 120 hours I need for my degree in the can, and most of what I’ve got left to take, well, it will apply to any other degree I pursue; the only unique part of it are my last two semesters of Hebrew. There was a time when I was nuts about that Hebrew, any sort of theology, trivia about NT manuscripts, what fed into Martin Luther’s thinking on Bible translation, what a Mike + the Mechanics song being sung in Christian circles these days says about everyone you and I know, different theories on the nitty gritty of the Incarnation, etc. and etc. and etc.

Those parts of me are on hiatus right now, or, to use a recent phrase in my world, “indefinite bedrest”. That one turned out okay for my friends, and I suspect it will for me.

So what I’m doing in the meantime is simply loving my job and slowing down enough to apply all these years of school and daydreaming about “when…” to well, now, and doing a life more honest.

We probably haven’t seen each other in a while, so here’s a picture I shot just tonight:

Me, 11/1/07

There’s more stirring behind those glasses than in a long time, that I can promise you.