Archive for ◊ 2007 ◊

19 Oct 2007 Ecclesiastical Orphism

Last night, my wife and I had a delightful evening out at an orchestra concert, but the object of our evening outage was no ordinary orchestra.

The fare for the evening was the world-renowned Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which happened to be visiting the Strathmore Music Center in Bethesda, MD, where Heidi often freelances with the National Philharmonic Orchestra.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

This was a very special night, shared with a very special group of people. Orpheus is, quite simply, a joy to watch. Their philosophy of music and of life is evident with every note.

You see, unlike the vast majority of “normal orchestras” – even world-famous ones – Orpheus has no conductor. There is no “leader” standing up at the front of the stage waving a stick, giving orders to the performers on stage, and taking responsibility if something goes wrong.

Rather, this group operates by what it calls “The Orpheus Process,” described on their website thus:

“Instead of one person taking on the orchestra’s artistic responsibility and leadership, we share leadership throughout the membership of the orchestra. Each piece sees a different concertmaster, rotating principle musician chairs, and a sharing of ideas and inspirations. This empowering formula creates a dynamic setting where each musician takes artistic ownership of the performance, not just his or her own part. When we feel personally connected to the music, we know you will too.”

Indeed, that connection was obvious – inescapable, even. Each musician was personally invested in every note, every movement, every breath that escaped the stage.

As an amateur musician myself, I’ve performed in a number of low-level orchestras. As a professional violinist, my wife has performed in more advanced settings. I’ve never experienced anything close to what I saw on that stage, and according to her, neither has she.

Normally, the conductor chooses the music, interprets it, and then coaches the orchestra into performing his interpretation. Normally the orchestra members have a responsibility to follow him, and to pay attention to their section leader and their stand partner. Normally the section leaders have the responsiblity for coordinating and leading the other members of their sections.

That framework means nothing in Orpheus. Yes, there are section leaders, but they rotate for each piece. Yes, there is even a concertmaster (The section leader of the First Violin section in a traditional orchestra, arguably the “lead musician” on the stage, underneath the conductor.) But when it comes time to prepare for a performance, each musician is fully invested in the art the group is crafting. The section leaders are rotated for each piece. A violinist might be the concertmaster for one piece, sit near the back of the section for another, and watch a third from off-stage if it calls for a smaller number of violins. The music is interpreted, not by one person, but by the whole ensemble, through a collaborative rehearsal process that gives each musician a chance to examine the piece from both inside and out, and to provide input to the group.

Similarly, where a normal orchestra receives its cues from the conductor – starting and stopping based on the movement of his baton – Orpheus might take its cues from the concertmaster, or the oboe, or the section leader of the string bass section . . . all in the same piece of music, depending on where the melody is at any given point in time. The music is almost organic – cues come from the people responsible for the particular phrase of music being played at that point in time, and each musician is keenly aware of the other 40 or so musicians on stage at every point in the piece. They have to be, or the whole enterprise would collapse.

I found myself musing, as I watched them play, “This is what the church should look like . . . “

The traditional, institutional church has followed a very similar path as the traditional, institutional orchestra. In the beginning, neither had a “conductor” in the true sense. The early church was led by learned men who agonized over the interpretations of what they perceived to be the words of God. Similarly, early orchestras were led – if not by the composer of a given work himself – by the concertmaster . . . the most learned and experienced musician among them.

Over time, both institutions began to travel a different path. Rather than a musician being both a part of the orchestra, in addition to being its leader, the role of “conductor” became a “special” function – set apart from the rest of the people on stage. It became the conductor who solely interpreted the music, who solely took responsibility for its successes and failures, and who solely accepted the applause of appreciative crowds.

Similarly, in the church, the “vicar class” was born. Bishops, Priests, Pastors, and other roles were invested with meaning well beyond that found in scripture, or invented from whole cloth – meaning that set them apart from “normal” members of the flock – the “laymen.”

Where the conductor was responsible for interpreting the intent of the composer, these “pastors” became responsible for the interpretation of God’s intent. Where the conductor’s shoulders bore the weight of the orchestra’s success or failure, the pastor’s shoulders bore the responsibility for the eternal souls of his parishoners. Where the conductor was glorified when “his” orchestra performed well, the pastor became the object of special status – including promotion in the new ecclesiastical hierarchy – depending on the “performance” of “his” church.

Orpheus, to me, is a symbol of where the church is going. I cannot speak for all believers, but I can speak for a small but growing portion of us. We are steadily wearying of the so-called “experts” who impress upon us their interpretations of God’s will with less and less justification. Instead, we are turning to relationships – the same sort of relationships that I saw on that stage last night.

Think of the incredible amount of trust those musicians must have in one another. If a single person falters, the whole performance suffers. If a single person even fails to communicate – fails to cue the others when beginning a new phrase, fails to hear or see what another part of the ensemble is doing, fails in any way to either understand the other musicians, or to make him or herself understood in turn – what was a glorious piece of music a moment before is suddenly a cacophany of mere noise.

In the same way, believers should be able to trust one another. If we all have the same goal in common – the joy of a life lived with Christ – I should trust that my fellow travellers on this journey are living that life as best they know how, and I should expect them to trust me the same way. None of us should be due any individual credit for any “kingdom” successes – the reward belongs to the body of Christ. The tapestry that is created when the body of Christ lives and works as an organic entity – all parts in relationship with one another and working in their unique and separate ways toward the common goal of seeking to know God – is truly a work of art . . . one even more stunning than that created when 40 musicians trust each other enough to get out on stage and create something beautiful together.

Just like the Orpheus process, participation in the body of Christ should be, and is, an empowering process. It does require an incredible amount of investment. In a traditional church setting, I could sit back and let some pastor tell me what to think. Outside of the traditional church framework, I cannot do that. I am responsible, any and every day, to truly “give a reason for the hope that is within me.”

I can’t just regurgitate some talking points or a list of scripture verses. In the same way each member of Orpheus has to know what they think of the piece being played, I have to know what I believe about the God I walk with.

It is a big responsibility – and one I don’t always live up to. There are too many questions I continue to ask myself, and to which I don’t know the answer. There are too many times when I still find myself reciting a party line, rather than giving coherent thought to a question.

I want more for myself – demand more from myself.

I want a life – a faith – that looks like Orpheus.

Author: Mike |  Category: Ideas I stole from somebody else, but improved on, Things most people will disagree with, Things that will convince you I'm a godless heathen, Things that will get me excommunicated, Things that will piss somebody off  | 6 Comments
10 Oct 2007 Who is John Galt?

The mysterious question that opens Ayn Rand’s epic novel Atlas Shrugged has now haunted the readers, seekers and thinkers who comprise her audience for fifty years, as of today. Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism finds its voice – and a great deal of its thought – in this book. I am not an objectivist. I consider myself more of an existentialist – a term Rand herself preferred to “objectivism,” but which, she said, had already been taken by its adherents in a slightly different direction. Nevertheless, I do find much to appreciate about Rand’s worldview.

In defining Objectivism, she wrote, “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

While Rand and I might disagree on a few definitions here and there, I find her basic framework quite appealing.

Rand, it must be noted, was an avowed athiest. This, she explained, was because, “I had decided that the concept of God is degrading to men. Since they say that God is perfect, man can never be that perfect, then man is low and imperfect and there is something above him – which is wrong.”

Anybody familiar with conservative theistic philosophies – be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish or some other religious tradition – can see where she is coming from. In my own religious heritage, Evangelical Christianity, it is called “worm theology,” the belief, drawn from an old Isaac Watts hymn, “that a feeling and expression of low self worth means God is more likely to show mercy and compassion.” This belief has its parallels in virtually all theistic religions. Even in more gracious religious systems, such as some more modern streams of evangelical Christianity, the prevailing belief is that man is always on the verge of failure, that God is constantly at watch in case of such failures, and that religious structures are necessary to prevent them.

Small wonder, then, that according to Neil Parille writing at Rebirth of Reason, “Ayn Rand is noteworthy for her atheism and uncompromising opposition to religion. Unlike many non-believers who see utilitarian value to religion, Rand is somewhat unique in seeing (with minor exceptions) virtually no value to religion.”

This seems, to me, to stem from a deep misunderstanding of the Christian religion – not merely on Rand’s part, but on the part of those who claim to adhere to it.

After all, when one reads the Bible – the epic story central to Christianity – one sees in man the same things Rand saw in her characters. Genesis 1 describes mankind as the pinnacle of creation, a being formed in the image of God, blessed, and given primacy over every other living thing. It is true that the heroic being at the center of God’s creative work is ultimately capable of failure, but so were Rand’s characters. Even the messianic John Galt himself ends up in need of rescuing before the final pages of her novel.

So rather than the concept of God being “degrading to man,” it seems to me that the concept of God is the very thing that gives humanity its worth – for are we not far more valuable as beings created in God’s image than we are as the momentary occupants of the top spot in a food chain subject to the accident of natural selection?

I think Rand had it right, when she described man (and woman – the most compelling character in Atlas Shrugged is its female protagonist, Dagny Taggart) as a heroic being.

What, then of her belief in “his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life”?

I am not breaking any new ground when I say that this notion is perfectly compatible with a Christian worldview. John Piper, an evangelical Christian theologian, has already spent a great deal of time reconciling this perspective with a religious outlook. He calls his synthesis “Christian Hedonism,” which he summarizes in the phrase, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” He seems to differ from Rand in that he says “By Christian Hedonism, we do not mean that our happiness is the highest good . . .” but ultimately he reconciles the two divergent worldviews with, “. . . The desire to be happy is a proper motive for every good deed, and if you abandon the pursuit of your own joy you cannot love man or please God.”

The rest is mere semantics. Rand exalted “productive achievement as [man's] noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” I agree with both sentiments – though Rand and I would probably be quite at variance over what constitutes “productive achievement” or “reason.”

Nevertheless, my regular readers will be quite familiar with my essays on choice – and on the importance of actively choosing. To me, this constitutes the highest level of productive achievement, and I am not sure that Rand would disagree all that much. Her characters, after all, are at their best when they are making choices for themselves, rather than being forced into certain actions – even actions she considers heroic.

As for “reason,” what is reason, anyway? Apologetics.org defines reason as “the use of logical faculties to arrive at truth.” It has already been demonstrated, though, that Rand’s view of mankind, while exultant, left room for human failings. Thus, there is room for a perfect embodiment of reason, which is capable of bestowing that reason upon the products of its own labor – in short, there is room for God.

The success of this book (According to the Christian Science Monitor, a 1991 poll ranked it the second most influential book in America, after the Bible) is to me a testament to the very ideal it espouses – the glory of the human spirit. It is a testament to the fact that, despite the messages with which we are daily confronted about the depravity, degradation and disgustingness of what mankind is and has become, we refuse to believe that these outward actions are the sum total of who, or what, we are. Why else would a book like this be so influential, if it were not a release of that burden – an assurance that I am not the sum total of what others say about me, or even of the things I do.And yet, Rand would harshly disapprove of the “cult of self-esteem” that has been born in Western Civilization over the last century or so. She would note that there are those who have done little or nothing to earn the lofty opinions they have of themselves.

She would urge them to do something about it – and so do I. Don’t for one minute rest on the laurels of the so-called “experts” – politicians, teachers, doctors, pastors – anyone who tries to tell you that you don’t have to think . . . that they’ll do your thinking for you. On this point Ayn Rand and I agree perfectly – a life of discovering, becoming, and deliberately shaping your psyche and your world through the choices you make is a life truly lived!

This is mankind’s burden, and our gift. Some see choice as a prison, a labyrinth from which there is no escape, and in which one wrong choice could spell death.

I see death in the lack of choice – for it is our ability to choose that makes us human. If we lose that, what are we?

Live free and unencumbered in a life of your own choosing. That is what you were created to do.

And if somebody tries to place the weight of the world on your shoulders . . . shrug.

Author: Mike |  Category: Ideas I stole from somebody else, Things that will convince you I'm a godless heathen  | Leave a Comment
04 Oct 2007 Random acts of thinking too much . . .

I don’t have the time or inclination to write one of my typical lengthy and involved posts, so I thought I’d share some of the more profound things that I’ve been reading and pondering of late . . .

I promise I hadn’t read this article by one of my favorite columnists, when I wrote my most recent post. But heck, if Peggy Noonan and I are thinking the same thoughts on the same day, I must be doing something right . . .

This captures perfectly the way I feel when I walk into a church service anymore . . .

This is a very interesting essay about MySpace, Facebook, and social strata. I’ve been on MySpace for a while now, but am not terribly impressed with it. I have been enjoying learning Facebook more over the last week or two, and I find it infinitely more useful – but that’s just me. I’ve even started a Facebook group called “So you don’t go to church anymore?” . . . come hang out with us if you happen to find yourself wandering around Facebook. All are welcome – even those who prefer to relate to God in the more traditional setting of a typical local church . . .

Dilbert for President? (Hat tip: Bob Hyatt) As someone who makes a living as a contractor supporting a government agency, I can identify very strongly with Scott Adams’ perspective . . .

As president, I would solve all the world’s problems by creating a reality TV show where think tanks compete for the best solutions to everything from health care to energy policy to immigration. The judges would be experts who help viewers sort the squirrel shit from the caviar, but the final decisions would be made by viewers, just like on American Idol.

I think you can see many problems with this plan. But you have to compare it to the current political process where idiots elect liars to transfer wealth to crooks. How’s that working out for you?

As usual, he has a point . . . but hey, who needs a political system where the people who genuinely make the decisions are the same ones affected by them . . .

For that matter, I could ask the same could be asked of religious system, or an educational system, or a medical system, or a financial system, or . . . need I continue??

. . . did I mention I’m not a huge fan of being controlled by other people? I’m sure this comes as a shock to any regular readers I have left . . .

Author: Mike |  Category: Completely random stuff that has nothing to do with anything  | Leave a Comment
29 Sep 2007 Profundity sometimes crops up in the strangest places . . .

It’s been a month now since I’ve posted here. I feel like I should apologize, but the truth is, I’m not terribly sorry for it. I only tend to write when I feel like I have something profound to say, and I haven’t felt that way much lately.

The short story I mentioned a month ago (and said I’d have ready in a couple days) is still in progress. I’m hoping to get further into it later today.

But that’s not the reason I’m writing now. I’m writing because, finally, I feel like I have something to say.

It stems from a post on one of my regular political blog reads PowerLine. The post was very short and simple, about the new action movie out in theaters this weekend, “The Kingdom.”

The post notes the Saudi Kingdom’s ties to terrorism, and the movie’s dubious assertion that the Saudis are our “partners” in combating terrorism. PowerLine’s conclusion, “skip the film.”

This is, to me, symptomatic of many conservatives’ approach to Hollywood, and more broadly, to life in general.

In attempting to differentiate from the relativism so prominent in liberal circles, conservatives, as the arbiters and protectors of absolute truth, often seem to want to protect that truth by eliminating access to anything else.

Take, for example, the movies “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “The Da Vinci Code” or “Brokeback Mountain,” just to name a couple examples.

Each of these movies contains themes that are anathema to the average conservative, so the conservative solution is to boycott the films, encourage others to do likewise, while simultaneously excoriating them, along with those who created them and those who go to see them.

I’ve seen all three, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what there is in any of them that fills conservatives with such fear that they refuse to engage the ideas in the films directly. The first is a pure propaganda film that anybody who regularly reads a newspaper should be able to refute. The second is a quasi-historical action film based on a thriller novel. The third is, quite simply, a tragic love story just as epic (and just as psychologically screwed up) as “Romeo and Juliet.”

Yet conservatives are afraid to engage with these cultural statements, preferring to shun them instead.

This approach is costly, on two counts. First it discredits legitimate criticism of these movies by revealing that, often, their harshest critics haven’t even seen the movies they deride. Second, it allows those who refuse to see movies because of political objection to miss out.

Which brings me to the reason I’m writing this post. Last night, Heidi and I watched the movie “Knocked Up.” I was expecting a dumb, brainless comedy, but that’s not what it was. It certainly had its stupid moments, but on the whole it was, really, almost a cross between a romantic comedy and a coming of age drama. The main character is a thirty-something bachelor who lives in a house with five other guys (and sometimes with their various girlfriends of the moment, smokes pot, and wants to start a porno website. He ends up getting a girl pregnant, and the story goes on from there.

Sounds like your typical dumb comedy, right? But along the way it has a lot of great messages about really getting to know the ones you love, taking responsibility for your actions, and . . . well . . . learning how to be a grown-up. In a day when we have an awful lot of thirty-something “kids” running around our world, that’s an important message.

It reminded both of us of a similar movie (made by the same director, Judd Apatow) “The 40-year old Virgin.” It’s a story of a guy with a pretty normal life, except for the fact that he’s 40 and has never had sex. Upon finding this out, his co-workers attempt to twist a variety of situations in order to change that fact.

Again, sounds like pretty standard comedy fare, right? Hardly. The fact is that this movie has a lot to say about love, sex, relationships, marriage, and the purposes for each.

Nevertheless, you won’t find most conservative movie reviews recommending these two. In truth, they have a lot against them – both are pretty crude, and I’d hardly recommend them for anybody, but the simple fact is that just dismissing them out of hand misses something.

But isn’t that the way we are about a lot of things? (I say we, not because I self-identify as a “conservative,” any longer, but because this is not just a conservative problem, it’s a human problem).

I mean, if you think about it, how many times have you conservative readers dismissed something because “It was in the New York Times,” or you liberals because you “saw it on Fox News”?

How many times have we used the words “consider the source” to dismiss an idea, rather than engaging with it?

What are we so afraid of?

This, quite frankly, is one of the biggest things that drove me from organized church. I couldn’t stand the fact that each question I raised was one more thing nobody around me would deal with. When I asked why my church didn’t allow women in leadership, why they insisted on church attendance at least twice a week, why they believed in the universal effectiveness of accountability relationships, and why they believed that tithing had a place in worship, but special music didn’t, I had Bible verses spouted at me. When I questioned whether those verses said what was claimed of them, I was “prayed for,” “counseled,” and eventually, marginalized.

I have no doubt that each person I spoke with at that church was very sincere in what they believed. But I just wish that they would have engaged more with my questions, for I was no less sincere. Those I spoke with were happy to engage with questions of theology and eschatology. We had many frank discussions, for example, about the “five points” of Calvinism, and about the differences between dispensationalism and covenant theology.

But when it went deeper than that, the doors were shut.

Perhaps that’s the answer. Perhaps we just can’t quite engage with something scary enough to undermine our entire worldview. The question “does the Bible require that we attend, or at least attempt to attend, church each Sunday?” is just such a question. It’s scary.

But what are we afraid of? Why do churches like the one I used to attend marginalize radical thinkers like John Eldredge or Brian McLaren?

Is it truth we’re defending when we marginalize someone just because we are uncomfortable with what they say?

Can’t the truth stand on its own? If something is really true, why do we need to shield it from those we perceive to be attacking it?

And if it’s not true, why should we believe it anyway?

Is it truth we’re defending? Or is it our comfort zone?

Author: Mike |  Category: Posts you wouldn't watch if they were on TV, Things that will convince you I'm a Democrat, Things that will piss somebody off  | 5 Comments
28 Aug 2007 Happenings . . .

I find myself once again apologizing for having gone so long without posting. It has been an eventful last few weeks. My sister-in-law spent a week in the hospital with a burst appendix (she’s recovering quite nicely now), My wife got raked over the coals by an idiot doctor who doesn’t seem to believe that she’s actually sick, our electricity went (mostly) out (it’s back now), our hot water seems to have died, and my spare time has lately been taken up with creating a new website to highlight my writing (the site will debut soon), and making a foray into the world of short story writing.

It is this last pursuit which, I think, readers of this blog will find most interesting. The story in question is still merely in its conceptualizing stage, but when complete, I will post it here. The main character of this (entirely fictional) short story is Abraham Lincoln . . . or rather, Abraham Lincoln’s portrait on a five dollar bill. It should be complete in the next couple of days.

Stay tuned . . .

Author: Mike |  Category: Completely random stuff that has nothing to do with anything  | 2 Comments
07 Aug 2007 A final observation . . .

. . . on the Slice of Laodicea/Naked Pastor dustup . . .

Nakedpastor


Slice of Laodicea

. . . just thought it was worth noting.

Hat tip to Bob Hyatt for the link to the blog rating engine.

Author: Mike |  Category: Things that will convince you I'm a godless heathen, Things that will piss somebody off  | One Comment
07 Aug 2007 Nothing Personal

I have tried, over the past week, to generate a few different posts on a few different topics, but found that I couldn’t bring myself to write them. I think, in looking back, that the reason for this grew out of the fact that they were all sort of interconnected in a way I hadn’t quite grasped yet.

I think I’ve got it now, so I’m going to give this a try.

Last week, a tragedy occurred. A poorly-maintained, heavily-traveled transportation artery constructed more than forty years ago failed due to neglect, and people died.

About 100 of them.

No, I’m not talking about the I-35W bridge in Minnesota. The cost of that catastrophe, in lives, at least, was thankfully much smaller than it might have been.

The same day, however, on the other side of the world, a train wreck in the Democratic Republic of the Congo took a far higher toll.

Also last week, as I noted in my last post, a religious talk show host made and defended statements linking the Emergent church movement with terrorists from al Qaeda.

Over the weekend, the Democratic leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives, which took power early this year after capitalizing on unethical and morally questionable tactics employed by the former Republican majority, violated the House rules they themselves had established, changed the total of a razor-thin vote after the Chair had gavelled it closed, and expunged the old total from the record, literally stealing the vote on national television. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was heard on camera responding to protests against the violations of parliamentary procedure with, “We control this house, not the parliamentarians.”

This week, one of my favorite bloggers, “Naked Pastor,” was viciously attacked on a popular “Christian” blog, where the author and several commenters cast brutal personal insults and aspersions masquerading as critiques of his blog’s content.

What on earth, you may ask, do any of these events have in common?

Perhaps it is the ease with which communications are conducted electronically. Perhaps it is the breadth of information that is easily available, allowing anybody who desires to become an intellectual. Perhaps it is the fact that government interventions and intrusions have eliminated the necessity for people to just grow up and be adults.

Perhaps it is all of these, and more, but it seems to me as though we have entered an age where we interact with numbers, figures, statistics, information and data, and forget that we live out our stories here on earth interacting with other people.

The news media has had a field day with the I-35W bridge collapse, giving it nearly wall-to-wall coverage ever since it occurred. In all the talk of recriminations, blame and fallout, the one thing I have yet to see is an ounce of sorrow over the lives lost.

“If it bleeds, it leads,” according to the common news media slogan . . . but that doesn’t mean they treat it as the human tragedy it is.

Still, since it is, after all, an American tragedy, at least it gets some recognition. The same day, virtually the same event in a country on the other side of the world received nary a breath of coverage, despite the far higher loss of life.

I asked my wife why she thought this might be, and her response was very telling. She said, “We care about the tragedy in Minnesota because that could have been us.”

That’s just it. We don’t care about the people who have lost loved ones. We don’t care about the lives lost. We care because it could have been us. Those of us in the Washington D.C. area care because we’re in the process of getting a new Woodrow Wilson bridge due to unsafe conditions on the old span similar to those that cause the I-35W collapse. Our emotions are not filled with sorrow, but with relief.

We don’t care about the train in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, because that could not have been us.

In my last post I talked about Frank Pastore’s article excoriating the emergent church movement. I’m not going to rehash my previous words here, but it seems to me that this is the opposite extreme of the very same phenomenon that I talked about relating to the transportation tragedies in Minnesota and Africa. In Pastore’s case, it’s dehumanizing by taking things too personally.

Whoever you are, whatever you believe on any give subject, right now, I want you to think of the single issue you care most about in all the world. It can be a political issue, a philosophical issue, a religious issue, or your favorite color for all I care. I want you to think of a person with whom you have often and/or emphatically disagreed with on that topic. I want you to repeat after me. “Just because they disagree with me doesn’t make them stupid.”

I myself have fallen into this trap more than once – the trap of believing that disagreement with my staked-out position on some political, theological or philosophical issue is an indication that the one doing the disagreeing is less “enlightened” or “informed” than I.

That may well be true – but it may well not be. Very intelligent people are capable of coming to very different conclusions on the very same issue. Assuming that one who disagrees with our chosen beliefs is “stupid” is to assert that we know all there is to know on that subject . . . to assume that it is even possible to know all there is, on this or any subject. It is the height of arrogance.

It is this same arrogance that has led the political leaders in this country – both Republican and Democrat – to forget why they are there. In the case of our nation’s leadership, they have dehumanized the very people who put them in leadership in the first place, by treating power as an end in and of itself, rather than as a means to the end of leading this country well. When former House Speakers Newt Gingrich and Tom Foley, whose political views are as opposite as they come, can agree with one another that you’re doing something wrong . . . odds are pretty good that you’re probably doing something wrong.

In the case of the transportation accidents, we have dehumanized the victims. In Pastore’s article, he dehumanized a group of believers. Congress dehumanized those they’re supposed to work for.

In the final example I listed, though, a group of people did their best to deliberately and viciously dehumanize a single person who had done nothing to them . . . and in the process dehumanized only themselves. Many of the commenters chose to attack him simply based on the vague and provocative descriptions provided in the blog post itself, and the author of the post felt it necessary to filter out comments supportive of the attacked pastor, and then defend herself against his supporters in a second post.

Naked Pastor’s response is one more example of why I like him so much – it is full of the very same grace and kindness that his attackers chose to eschew. He doesn’t become defensive or take the bait of their vitriol. Instead he says,

To my sister Ingrid and Slicers. Thanks for the review of my blog. I’m truly honored that my blog even got noticed, nevermind a mention! A couple of things:

Your filters only block words, not pictures. The word “naked” in nakedpastor, a blog where I try to bare my soul and not much else, is what’s being blocked. You probably couldn’t get The Naked Archeologist either, and he just shows ruins and pots. I consider what I show on my site to be artistic and tasteful. We disagree there. I just wanted to correct you on why my site is blocked by porn filters.

Ingrid: I’m surprised you didn’t mention my cartoons! Come on – admit it – you HAD to like some of them. You could’ve written some of them yourself. That’s okay though – you were critiquing one aspect of my blog. But from my artistic style and taste to conclude that my site is “theoretically supposed to be a pastor’s blog” is quite a leap. There’s nothing theoretical about it. It IS a pastor’s blog, no matter how different in taste and expression he is from your image of what a pastor is or looks like. That’s okay too though. I don’t expect full endorsement from everyone.

This is just a slice of who I am. If you read through my site you might discover that we are, after all, brothers and sisters with the same Lord. You would “meet” some people from my church who I consider heroes of the faith – of the Hebrews 11 caliber! It interests me that some of you are so quick to call names like “pervert” and question my call as a pastor or even a Christian. But that’s okay too. I suspend judgment and hope that we can cross kinder paths in the future.

Lord haste the day when we will all finally stand naked before you!

david (aka “nakedpastor”)

Even in the midst of personal attack, he treats his attackers as human beings, with different tastes, opinions and beliefs – and that’s exactly what they are.

All of this talk about “dehumanizing” begs the question, “what does it mean to be human?”

I think, as I write this, that we have to return to the creation story to answer that.

Genesis 1 doesn’t tell us very much at all about humanity, other than that it was created. Neither does much of Genesis 2. Verse 15 tells us where God placed his first human. Verses 16-17 tell us of God’s first interactions with his first human.

Not until verse 18 do we learn anything at all about this creature Scripture calls “man.”

What, then, is the very first thing we learn about man? It is the simple fact that “it is not good for the man to be alone.”

There it is. The very basis of what humanity is. We were created for relationship. When we eschew relationship, we dehumanize ourselves and those around us. The more we pursue genuine, open, honest relationship, the more we are being what we were intended to be.

But instead of relating to . . . and grieving with . . . sufferers, we sigh in relief that it is not our own suffering. Instead of engaging in dialogue with others who do not believe as we do, we think them simple-minded or immature. Instead of serving one another we seek as much power as we can, and instead of being kind in our differences we are cruel.

What a fallen and broken race is this humanity! Where we are intended to nourish one another emotionally, instead we feed on each other, engaging in emotional cannibalism, and very accurately say, “it’s nothing personal.”

Indeed it isn’t. That’s the problem.

Author: Mike |  Category: Ideas I came up with totally on my own, Things most people will disagree with, Things most people would agree with if they really thought about it, Things that will convince you I'm a Democrat, Things that will piss somebody off  | One Comment
31 Jul 2007 An Anti-Christian Christianity

My friends, it has again been a long time. I think I find that some posts just flow from my fingers, while others take time to germinate and grow in my mind. With this latter type of post, I feel – as I have always felt, with many projects and pursuits throughout my life, to allow it to gain a level of maturity before I share it with the world.

This is such a post.

Many of you who read this might consider yourself representatives of the “emergent” or “missional” community as it is sometimes known. I need to preface this post by the fact that I consider myself neither, for reasons that have nothing to do with the reasons those who take these names have for choosing them.

I simply do not like the terms. The first – when taken to its logical conclusion – seems to me to imply that believers can somehow “emerge” to different levels of spiritual enlightenment. In one sense, I have “emerged” from the institutional religious setting known in the 21st century as “the church.” But in truth, the sense in which I have “emerged” is the same sense in which all those of us who follow Christ are free from the bondage of our own sin and the weight of our humanity.

The second, it seems to me, misses the point. Even those who consider themselves “missional” define it as a different way of “doing church,” a different focus.

All of that said, I have a tremendous amount of respect for many of the ideas espoused by missional and emergent thinkers, and for those who espouse them, particularly their focus on how much of Christian tradition is precisely that – mere tradition.

It is for this reason that I was incredibly disturbed by something I read on the popular conservative political site formerly operated by the Heritage Foundation, Townhall.com.

I was disturbed because it was one more reminder of who I used to be . . .

The item in question was a column by Townhall columnist Frank Pastore, referred to in his bio as “a former professional baseball player with graduate degrees in both theology and political science,” who is also a radio talk-show host for KKLA 99.5 FM in Los Angeles. His original column has now become two. They can be found here and here.

The first column is entitled “Why Al Qaeda Supports the Emergent Church.” It is a lengthy diatribe against members of the emergent movement, the logic of which seems to run “Emergents are generally not politically conservative. Political conservatives are the only people interested in fighting al Qaeda.” Therefore, Emergents are allies of al Qaeda.

His second column is a defense of his first, in which he responds to challenges for his “sources” by citing several emergent writers and a number of critics of Emergent, none of which, according to his citations, at least, says anything about al Qaeda at all.

The most ironic thing, for me, is that as someone who is generally pretty politically conservative, I probably line up with Pastore’s political views a fair percentage of the time. Nevertheless, despite the fact that I do not consider myself “emergent” or “missional,” I feel the sting of Pastore’s accusations myself, simply because I seem to fit his overarching definition of an “al Qaeda ally” – by which he seems to mean anybody who disagrees with his personal, political and spiritual agenda. I have written a lengthy response to his first column that addresses several issues he raises point by point. That response continues below the fold . . .

more…

Author: Mike |  Category: Things most people will disagree with, Things most people would agree with if they really thought about it, Things that will convince you I'm a Democrat, Things that will convince you I'm a godless heathen, Things that will get me excommunicated, Things that will piss somebody off  | 3 Comments
13 Jul 2007 With “Friends” like these . . . (UPDATED with Video)

One of the last few remaining institutions of government that reminds us the First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, rather than freedom from religion, is the morning prayer held in the U.S. Senate. Over the two centuries of our country’s history, this prayer has predominantly been offered by Christians of some stripe or other, though in the past Jewish and Muslim leaders have also offered morning prayers.

This morning was a historic first. For the first time in history, a Hindu spiritual leader offered the opening prayer of the U.S. Senate.

The invocation given by Rajan Zed, a Hindu priest from Nevada, was taken from the Rig Veda and Bhagavad Gita, and I find its words quite inspiring, despite the fact that they come from a culture that does not acknowledge the God I worship:

“We meditate on the transcendental glory of the deity supreme, who is inside the heart of the earth, inside the life of the sky and inside the soul of heaven. May he stimulate and illuminate our minds.

“Lead us from the unreal to real, from darkness to light, and from death to immortality. May we be protected together. May we be nourished together. May we work together with great vigor. May our study be enlightening.”

I can certainly agree with particularly the second half of of this stirring invocation.

Unfortunately, this morning’s Senate prayer was an historic first for another reason.

. . . three reasons, actually, named Ante and Kathy Pvkovic and Kristen Sugar.

For the first time in U.S. history the morning prayer of the U.S. Senate was disrupted by the shouting of protestors who interrupted Zed by “loudly asking for God’s forgiveness for allowing the ‘false prayer’ of a Hindu in the Senate chamber.”

UPDATE: Here’s a video of the travesty, courtesy of Talking Points Memo

[youtube EZ9To30Hz7A]

One of my favorite political blogs, Captain’s Quarters, the author of which is a devout Catholic, excoriates the trio:

Thank the Lord that this trio doesn’t represent real Christians. They’re great ambassadors for the numbnut contingent, however.

Unfortunately, I think this is a shortsighted view of the incident. While most “mainstream” believers might not try to disrupt the U.S. Senate, it is clear that they have the sympathy of a large contingent of the so-called Christian mainstream. A Newer World points out this statement from Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council. The statement closes with:

There is no historic connection between America and the polytheistic creed of the Hindu faith. I seriously doubt that Americans want to change the motto, “In God we Trust, which Congress adopted in 1955, to, “In gods we Trust.” That is essentially what the United States Senate did today.

Hogwash.

On many fronts.

The U.S. Senate is not a religious body, and while many of those who came up with the concept of the Senate may have been believers in the God of the Bible, even Christian tradition is fractured and diverse – and our nation is hardly exclusively a “Christian” nation.

According to the Hindu American Foundation, the nation contains 2 million Hindus, and it is one of the fastest growing belief systems in the country. To say that we are a “Christian nation” is to live in the past. To say that Hindus have no impact on our history and culture is to ignore the impact words like “karma,” “yoga,” and “avatar” have on 21st Century American culture.

Certainly, a practicing Hindu could tell us that these words are hardly used in their original context . . . but then, even the U.S. Senate doesn’t operate like it did at its founding. The point is that American culture is no longer exclusively influenced by that of Western Europe.
The simple fact is that Hindus, like Christians, Jews, Muslims, Athiests, Wiccans and many, many more adherents of all manner of belief systems make up this country. Members of each are represented by the U.S. Senate, and each has its right to be heard. That is, after all, what freedom of religion is all about.

I may not agree with most of what some – or any – of these religious traditions has to say, but the least any of us can do is respect their right to say it.

It’s people like Kristen Sugar and the Pvkovic’s who make me ashamed, at times, to call myself a Christian. If statements like Tony Perkins’ are representative of the “Christian” response to this morning’s events, I’m not sure I am one.

With Rajan Zed, I pray to the deity supreme, who resides in my heart, and ask Him to stimulate and illuminate my heart and mind, and those of all who read this.

I ask Him to lead us from the unreal to real, from darkness to light, and from death to immortality. May we be protected together. May we be nourished together. May we work together with great vigor. May our study be enlightening.

Author: Mike |  Category: Things that will convince you I'm a godless heathen, Things that will get me excommunicated, Things that will piss somebody off  | 5 Comments
13 Jul 2007 Living with Desire

As you may or may not have noticed, I’m taking a page from my wife’s blog with the title of this post. I was prompted to write about it by a running email conversation with my dad over something in another recent post of mine. I recalled a conversation with my best friend Nate from many years ago, in which he said, “I have such a hard time wanting anything . . . mostly because we were always taught that the wanting itself was a problem . . . if we truly want anything, it must be bad for us to have.”

Understandably, my father wondered who, in this particular instance, had done the teaching. It was understandable because this was certainly something I never heard from him.

I’ve talked a lot on these pages about choices . . . and about the importance of taking responsibility for our choices, and indeed, responsibility for making them in the first place.

The problem with the choices that led me to this particular place – the place of truly believing that desires were evil things – was that I made those choices when I was very young, and did not truly understand the ramifications of those choices.

I never consciously said to myself, “I think that from now on I’m going to decide to believe that desires are bad.”

I did, however, sit through years of teaching in churches and para-church organizations that imparted to me gems of wisdom like�. . .

  • being a Christian means being hated by the world
  • being a Christian means sacrificing
  • being a Christian entails suffering
  • being a Christian means forgoing our own desires in favor of God’s

Pretty standard fare for the sort of fundamentalist Christianity I grew up under, right?

Think about it though . . . what happens if you couple being hated by “the world” with an unhealthy dependence on the approval of your fellow churchgoers who are supposed to help “keep you accountable”?

You end up psychologically predisposed to crave the approval of those around you, and unless you end up spending your life in a monastery, those around you are predominantly the same ones your church calls “the world.”

So much for a desire to be liked by . . . just about anyone at all, really.

How about the sacrificing and suffering? If you’re told your whole life that being godly means hardship, and that if things aren’t difficult for you then God must be “putting you on a shelf” because of some sin in your life that is preventing Him from using you effectively . . . what’s going to happen to any desire for success or fulfillment in life? Either you’re going to kill it because it’s “sinful,” or you’re going to live with guilt your whole life.

And how about subordinating our desires to God’s? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard it taught that when scripture promises that God will “give you the desires of your heart” it means that he will literally reach into your heart and tell you what to desire. Instead of being a wonderful promise of His easy yoke and light burden, it becomes another form of manipulation and control, and kills any reason to desire . . . well . . . anything. After all, if you’re following God, then He’ll tell you what to desire, and if you’re not, well, you shouldn’t be wanting that anyway . . . and after all, since you’re not living in constant suffering and misery, you must not be following Him anyway.

Welcome to the teachings I absorbed throughout my childhood and teenage years.

And I made a choice . . . a choice to buy into them wholeheartedly.

It didn’t seem like much of a choice at the time, really. After all, my Pastor and other seemingly unassailable “spiritual authorities” were speaking as the mouthpieces of God, right? How could a young teenage boy look up at them and say “that doesn’t make sense!”

Wouldn’t that have been an act of most grievous pride . . . tantamount to spitting in God’s face? They sure seemed to think so . . . and oddly enough, some of them still do.

It just so happens that I’m an adult now, and can understand much more how . . . human . . . we humans really are, even the ones who wear special clothes or stand behind pulpits.

Nevertheless, I am still responsible for those choices. But how do we deal with the choices we made years and years ago, when we were too immature to recognize them as choices at all?

I think the first step is to do just that. Identify your choices . . . own them . . . acknowledge that “I made a decision, be it recently or many years past,�to agree with this.”

Then make another decision . . . to continue believing what you believe . . . or not.

For me . . . when it comes to living from a place of desire, or killing off my desires and hoping against hope that God comes and whispers His�desires�into my ear someday, so I know what I’m “supposed” to want (which, oddly enough, has yet to ever happen) . . . I’ll take a life of desire.

Author: Mike |  Category: Ideas I stole from somebody else, Things most people would agree with if they really thought about it  | One Comment
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