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.

Of John Lennon and 18th century European capitalism

I haven’t traced the thinking all the way yet, but in college Farthing told us that one could trace the origins of European capitalism to none other than the Swiss Calvinist community that grew around John Calvin in Geneva. Due to their high read on predestination and God’s sovereignty, they determined that the better they could perform in their business dealings the more likely it was that God had predestined them to salvation. (Some motivation, huh?)

Due to that I’ve long since understood theology as something that happens over time, like the fermenting of a fine wine or the shaping of rocks as the elements see fit. Attended with precision and care, it won’t be rushed. (This is also one reason, by the way, that the en vogue talk of the Early Church just up and deciding to one day “make up” a bunch of theology around Jesus over some long weekend is so laughable.)

Well, this morning on the way to work I was reflecting that as the years keep wearing on I’m beginning to be able to trace (on a much smaller scale, obviously!) similar theological growth in my life. Stick with me a minute or three and I’ll explain.

I came up in a tradition that placed a heavy emphasis upon the ability all believers have to hear and discern the voice of God with ease and with certainty.

Well, I’m too screwed up for that to work, and I’ve come to believe firmly that you and everyone else are as well.

So since 2004 or so I’ve been processing the theological conviction that while God may in some ways reveal Himself anew today, it will always be via some combination of a) His word, b) the community of believers, or c) the wisdom of others who’ve known Him well for some time. (No one of those all by itself is complete to such an extraordinary task, by the way.)

With a conviction such as that, then, questions like ‘how might you discern God’s will?’ or ‘how might you figure out what God has to say today?’ are certainly ones that oughtn’t be shunned.

I’ve determined that the way that works is this: reading lots of books. Talking to friends a great deal. Working hard to determine the highly specific ways in which whatever is going on at church might speak to my life. Studying the wisdom of guys who’ve wrestled through such issues in ages prior. Trusting wisdom from my roommate, Ryan, or any other close friends.

There are plenty of options there, but a few that are dealbreakers.

I don’t consider some impression “revealed” to me, in my “heart of hearts” or somewhere in the depths of my mind, anything worth building on. Not until I’ve talked through it with others at least.

I don’t consider myself “healthy” spiritually if I’m consistently ditching church.

I don’t consider just reading the Bible “enough” to keep me afloat spiritually, and I’d take time talking theology with friends over time spent studying the Scriptures all alone most days.

There’s more I could say, but here’s the part you care about: what becomes “your theology” happens over time. Good or bad, well-founded or heretical, theology happens over many seasons of life and is marked with the palette of the most difficult experiences we endure.

The trick I guess is to strain the deep blues out of what we’ve come to consider “true” about God and build instead upon what seems to be firm clear-minded, community-tested and mother-approved.

John Lennon famously said that “life is what happens while you’re busy making plans.” 

Find a friend, hold a mirror up to what you believe about God, the Scriptures, revelation, the spiritual life, etc., and then consider how much of the theology around which you’ve built your life has already been written while you’ve been busy “making plans”.

And go buy some books.

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.

The tweaking of your magnets

Alright, so a little experiment has come upon us, and it incorporates magnets and chapels.

We’ll start with the question with which we’ll be dealing: of what value is a physical, set-apart-place in the life of the Christian?

If you answered ‘none whatsoever,’ or even your favorite denominationally flavored equivalent, I’d ask you to reconsider.

Perhaps if I phrase it differently, in even blunter terms, we can move on: where is God best experienced?

The danger, of course, in my having phrased it this bluntly is that gravity and philosophical magnets come into play without fail and frustrate whatever kind of new thinking might happen, so please begin paying them extra diligence until you close this window. (Don’t worry, I’ll remind you.)

Please consider a few extremes within recent American Christianity:

• The school where I teach holds its weekly chapel service in our all-purpose gathering area, where things as varied as lunch, study hall, large parent meetings and cheerleader practice all happen on any given day. My roommate’s school, on the other hand, has chapel every single day in a physical building set aside as a chapel.
• As a function of his interpretation of the teachings of the Catholic Church, Mel Gibson had his own church/chapel built right on his property in Southern California.
• The church in which I came up took great pride in the fact that the building in which it met was formerly a strip club. (The building now houses an RV and boat dealership.)
• The renowned theologian/pastor A.W. Tozer is said to have had his deepest, most profound experiences of worship alone and astretch on his office floor.
• Just this past spring a good friend from college had his wedding in an outdoor chapel at one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.

All of this then frames the obvious question that I’m guessing you were hoping I wouldn’t bring up: where is the most proper place to worship God? (Keep an eye on those magnets, okay?)

I know the fundamentals of my own personal journey as a Christian aren’t all that different from most American Protestants’, so I don’t feel like I’m taking all that big a risk in saying that yours are probably similar too.

I’m thinkin’ that we (if you’re still with us, you hereby assent to include yourself in ‘we’) need to recover some of the majesty, the separate-ness of church/chapel and how we interact with God.

I am afraid that we as Americans have become (I wish there were a bigger ‘I’ in ‘we’) a bit too inoculated to the unsearchable things of God by their sheer commonness.¹

One of the proudest aspects of Christianity, especially post-Reformation Christianity, is its idea that God is everywhere, at all times and with(in) all believers via the Holy Spirit. Pretty amazing, huh?

Imagine this scenario, though, and you tell me which one seems more conducive to a more profound interaction with God the Holy Spirit: sitting in traffic on the Tollway, pondering the day in the middle of a few hundred other vehicles, or in the quiet of the Chapel at church. Or take this one: sitting quietly, however reverently, in my apartment one morning, mind wandering toward work, or at the park, quietly watching the sunset (or sunrise). (Magnet check here again. Thanks.)

As I’ve been thinking on this, it has just become more and more clear in my mind that the Biblical idea of God interacting with us is in God being unlike us. Because of that, oftentimes He comes (and certainly demands) that we interact with Him in different and even separate ways, live separate lives, have separate allegiances, have a separate hope, and so on.

Doesn’t it seem to sort of short circuit a lot of important aspects of our religion, then, for us to neglect this part of how our God seems to interact with so many of as recorded in our Scriptures and in our history? (Cue one more philosophical gravity check here.)

During this past academic year, some of the best times of refreshment I found were in prayer in the chapel at work (you know, the room set aside over and against everything else going on in the church) or at the park deliberately watching the setting of the sun.

Not in the midst of a worship service at work, surrounded by students.

Not while sitting on my couch with ten minutes before time to head somewhere.

And certainly not in the car at 6:15 on a Thursday evening.

By now I’m hoping that your magnets, the parts that hold together the ways you organize your world, are a little bit tweaked and maybe even agitated.

Now go deal with it somewhere else besides the Internet.

1 By the way, if you find yourself interested still, take a look here at something similar I wrote ’round about this time last year.

How No News is News

The promise and the impotence of our much vaunted, scarcely imagined Age of Information Utopia and All Knowledge are tied together in an inexplicably bound state.

Or, shorn of pompous verbosity, the Internet ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I don’t know how well you remember your history, specifically that of Western philosophy, but the intellectual inheritance that marked the fundamental incubator of the American Experiment included a staggering faith in humanity’s inherent ability to outgrow the ugliness of human nature. The god of that faith was enshrined as Progress, and plenty of folks in this day and age feel like we are living in a time of truly unparalleled blessings from that particular deity. We never shook that idolatry ground so deeply into the American psyche; instead we’ve spread it around, like your favorite communicable disease, to anyone with an open hand. In my personal life, however, I’m starting to key in on its bankruptcy.  

I guess you’d say I’ve grown up as a child of the Internet, the Information Age, whatever. Way back in the mid-90’s I was one of the very first kids I knew to have internet access along with a decent computer at the house. I was certainly ahead of almost all my peers in learning how to ahem, “procure” music digitally in those halcyon days of Napster, and without a doubt I was the first person you knew to order a pizza online.

Now I wasn’t unique, however; lots of folks (including you, I’m guessing) had computers at the house and some alphanumerically mangled AOL screenname. If in fact you share that same experience, have you ever stopped to ponder how that has marked you and made you any different than other folks who’ve gone before us? Aglow in the good graces of Progress’ viceroy, Information, you’d think you and I would find ourselves a little more free.

We’d be smarter. We’d have wider tastes in art, music, culture, ideas, etc. We’d understand each other well enough to quit killing over religion. We’d be less lonely. We’d be able to keep up with both socks. We’d hack with more efficiency at the Big Questions.

Well, I’m here to confess that I’ve found myself widely astride all the deficiencies above (and plenty more!) the past few years, despite, as an American, having more in my ‘favor’ than most humans who ever prior walked this planet.

I’ve observed that, despite unfettered much easier access to an almost infinite library of music, this music freak is still largely taken with the same stuff that grabbed him in college.

I’ve observed that, despite a truly immeasurable wealth of content available on the Internet, I still gravitate to the same four or five sites every day to troll for fresh thoughts. 

I still like the same sports teams, Subway sandwiches and deodorant I’ve always considered the best.

And I’m still alone.

Probably the only place in my life where I am conscious to try and stretch myself is in the books I read, but I think that is probably more a function of just being tired of seminary-type books than true zeal for any particular far flung topic.

I have been reading more and more of late that Thinkers On Such Things (TOST) are starting to produce the first truly scholarly, wide-ranging studies about the Information Age. Most of them are concluding that about all this wide and sweeping revolution in how people interact with ideas and information seems to be accomplishing is to cause folks to become further entrenched in their beliefs-right or wrong, asinine or silly, intellectually rich or utterly bankrupt.

Or, in the interest of ecological awareness, let me reduce the above to just one sentence: Despite being in the first wave of a true paradigm shift in world history, people aren’t changing; they’re just bogging further down in the muck of their already-established ideas.

Basically, the Internet has just made it easier than ever before to find documentation for why “I” am right and “they” just suck.

I’d say then that what I’m starting to believe, as this particular phase of my academic career winds down, is that there really isn’t some grand or sweeping way of handling the world to be found outside the worldview we can glean from the Scriptures. It seems like every big idea or bright and wonderful thing I encounter somehow has resonance with the Word of God. Through the guidance of the Spirit, I am able to process the fact that there really is nothing new going on in the world, except a fresh need for God’s mercies every morning to save us all from our selfishness and shortsightedness.

I’d like to see you try and say that about anything else out there.

Alright, glad to have all that settled.

What’s next?

The longer of hope and Main

I got it, and I’m going to be well now. Starting today. (Or, tomorrow morning I guess, due to like, time zone and gestation issues.)

I saw my psychiatrist today and I’m starting my crazy meds again.

I don’t treat this with near the fecundity I’m sure you’re getting here.

Tears are still tangled in my eyelashes as I type in fact.

I had a thought in his office about an hour ago that I thought I’d share with you though; the tears showed up somewhere between you, his secretary and the good doctor.

I’m seeing this guy because I’m messed up.

Nature, nurture; sin, perfection; laziness, overambition; decaf or leaded; however you choose to work through my messedupness, I’m calling that your thing.

I’m messed up though, and he’s my hope to get me back on track.

So sitting in his office this morning, as I was studying all the accolades on his wall and reflecting on how thankful I’ve become for his methodical, caring nature, I had one of those 3rd person observation/narration-type moments were I sort of thought to myself about how Dixon had gotten here, what was next, and how much I needed this guy.

Right about then he asked me if I had any questions or concerns for him, snapping me out of my poetic fog.

I didn’t voice any of this to him, but my thinking at just about that intersection reduced to “I’m trusting you to get me well, you and all your diplomas, journals read and hours studied”.

“I trust you to get me well.”

Now you probably didn’t know this, but pastors in the early Christian church thought themselves as “physicians of the soul”.

Their parishoners, or sheep, or patients, trusted them the same way I’m trusting this guy, the guy with more framed, formal accolades on his wall than paint. The guy who understands the frayed wires and wrong fires making my brain work with such ill-tempered rhythm. The guy whose job wasn’t done if I can’t tell him my life is a little better the next time we meet. The guy who has more resources to throw at my “issues” than I’ve got hairs on my head.

I genuinely don’t mean this as any sort of cynical or backhanded statement at all here, but I sure wish we felt that way about our pastors today.

I don’t know, maybe I have before, and I feel like it was well-placed. But I feel like that particular pastor was pretty unique, as far as pastors go. Two of my dearest friends here in Dallas are finishing up their training to go out as two of those very “physicians of the soul,” and I’m hoping they both make that particular pastor a little less unique in the world.

But I can’t tell them how to do it and I don’t have anything new to offer to this lost way of thinking about the office of shepherd.

Here’s what I know ties together the job of the pastor and the physician alike though.

I was headed down to the seminary from his office and decided to take the scenic route through the heart of downtown Dallas. At the intersection of Pearl and Main I reached over and put in my CD of more thoughtful, introspective instrumental stuff (called, appropriately enough, “Somber”). Just as sort of an afterthought I skipped over to Keith Jarret’s “Over the Rainbow” and was struck anew at its appropriateness. Right there in the busyness and grime of downtown Dallas, with buildings drawn too high for even the sunlight to best, deep tears began to stream down these unshaven cheeks.

All I could think of was “hope,” and that life is gonna be okay.

Not because I had that medicine in the seat beside me, or even because of the beautiful weather today.

No, that song, which I’ve listened to a dozen times before in similarly bent situations, just ministered to me sort of a quiet calm, a reminder that many times what’s going on inside sure ain’t like what’s happening outside. Those familiar and gentle piano strokes for just a whisper’s moment seemed to negate entirely the noise around me and the noise within.

Hope is the Christian credential that isn’t marked by some diploma or stamp-hope is the proof that nothing man makes blocks the light of God’s sun.

Hope is found anywhere you’re not ashamed to admit that it might be all you’ve got.

Hope, you see, is the cradle that’s gonna get me better, and hope is the cradle that’s gonna get us all home.