I’m going to take the next 4 weeks off of writing. The next Tuesday post will be February 9. After doing it every week for a solid year, my reserves are drying up a bit, so I need time to better develop my ideas.
I’ve added a “Subscribe by Email” link to the top navigation as well. If you want, you can get all of this delivered by email as soon as it’s written. You can also use a RSS client or add it to your Google homepage (among other options) by visiting this link.
Multiple levels of understanding of freedom in Christ.
etc.
The problem is that when I see another Christian act differently than me, I will usually assume that I am a level beyond him in maturity rather than a level behind. This is why there are so many conflicts over the “gray areas” in the Christian life.
As of today it’s been one year since I decided to start posting every week. I entered this commitment with maybe five or ten ideas for things I could write about, and I fully expected that I would run dry sometime during the summer. But seasoned writers will tell you it is of capital importance that you keep writing even if you don’t feel inspired, because it is only by writing that you are inspired to write more. I’ve found this to be true.
This was not just a one-year experiment, so I have no plans to stop now that the year is over. There’s a chance I may soon change the day from Tuesdays to something else like Thursday, as I’ve been late a lot in the past couple of months, but otherwise nothing’s going to change. If I’m not writing, I’m not thinking, and though some weeks it has been very difficult to find the right words to express my ideas, this discipline engages my mind in a way that I can’t afford to go without.
I do have one request: I’ve never solicited comments before, but in an effort to make this site as good as possible—if you read this, whether it’s today or two months from now, could you post a comment and say what is your favorite thing that you’ve read on here? It would mean a lot to me to get an idea of who reads this and what they like about it.
Thanks, everyone, and have a happy new year!
—Why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven. (Acts 1:11)
—Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation. (2 Peter 3:4)
—When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8)
It is tempting to give up. I’ll tell you that the Bible is true history, but in truth its stories are so far outside of my own experience that it doesn’t feel real. I have never seen fire come down from heaven to consume a sacrifice and the ground around it. I’ve never been brought my supper by ravens. And I certainly haven’t seen anyone raised from the dead, except in those dreams where Dad is fine and nothing ever changed.
In my world, the strongest army wins the battle, the blind stay blind, and when a poor widow’s flour and oil run out, she starves. And it really is another world, isn’t it? Everything changes so much in the span of a single generation; a thousand generation I can’t imagine. I share no common ground with my predecessors. Rivers run dry and mountains change shape, cities and cultures are built and fall into ruin, continents drift as their tectonic plates shift—their world has slowly given way into mine and is no more.
Yet one thing never changes. As Elijah looked to the sky, he saw beyond the blue a God who was very real and alive: a God who holds the whole world in His hands and yet listens to our prayers. And even today we look to the same sky. The same clouds obscure the same stars at night; the same rain falls on the righteous and the wicked alike; the same moon eclipses the same sun. When I look up, time and distance no longer separate me from the prophets and kings and apostles.
This same Jesus…
(Told his disciples that he would come back like a thief. He must have known how we would sculpt and chisel him with our sinful desires after he was gone, and he must have known how surprised we will be when we find that he doesn’t resemble our graven image.)
…will come back in the same way you have seen him go…
Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? …
(He will return to a world that has spent millennia trying to prove that they can exist without him, that they can live and move have their being outside of God; but all these attempts have only proven without a doubt that they cannot.)
…everything goes on as it has since the beginning…
When the Son of Man comes…
(Not if.)
…will he find faith on the earth?
Knowing that the world is transient, Elijah did not look around him for signs of an unchanging God. He looked upwards. And still today many crane their necks toward heaven, anticipating Jesus’ descent from the same azure skies he was taken up into, though the earth to which he will return is a different one.
He will find faith; of that there is no question. I just want to be among those he numbers faithful.
I came across this yesterday and it’s been running through my mind ever since. It seems that the idea of “economic counter-protests” has been catching on as a good way to fight against Westboro Baptist Church.
The way it works is this: If Westboro decides to picket an event or place with their inflammatory signs, someone will set up a pledge fund in the area, getting as many people as possible to pledge one dollar for every minute Westboro pickets. Then after the protest, they will donate the money to the organization that is being protested, or else a charity that represents the cause. They will refuse to show up to counter-protest in person, instead leaving only a sign that informs the Westboro protestors of the pledges: the longer they protest, the more money goes toward that which they protest.
Most of WBC’s protests are against pro-homosexual organizations. I have already made clear my position on homosexuality, but this forced me to ask myself what I would do if Westboro came to Des Moines. Would I donate to an organization that I may somewhat disagree with in order to fight against a group that I disagree with much, much more?
I wonder to myself what Jesus would have me do, and in the midst of all of the answers that fill my thoughts—”fight!” “stand up for your beliefs!” “no compromise!”—I hear one that could never have come from within: “love them all.” I still don’t know what this means or how to do it, but I know it’s the right answer.
Amanda and I don’t own a television. This is hardly a culture crusade; we just don’t watch many shows, and thought it was better to be deliberate about the ones we did watch. It also forces us to be more creative when we have an evening with nothing to do. But not having a television has changed the way I perceive my culture: I implicitly assume that the country watches less TV than they did ten or twenty years ago—for no other reason than because I watch less TV now than I did ten or twenty years ago. But this is in direct contradiction to Nielsen statistics which indicate that Americans watch more television now than ever before.
This is a form of what a psychology textbook would call egocentrism. It means that I interpret the world based on myself first of all. The term is usually used to refer to a developmental stage in infants where the baby thinks that his mother doesn’t exist if he closes his eyes, but I think that in some small capacity we never grow out of it. When our basic needs are met, when we never once in our lives have to wonder where the next meal will come from or where we will stay that night, it’s easy to believe subconsciously that the same is true of everyone. (Even here I assume that this is true of everyone because it’s true of me.)
My own theory is that this is a defense mechanism. In America we are assaulted every day by stories and statistics telling us all the things we need to care about: AIDS, corporate corruption, dirty water, drugs, endangered species, exercise, high fructose corn syrup, poverty, sustainable agriculture, topsoil erosion. It’s too much. It leads to cultural apathy. I can’t possibly fix any of those things, so I can’t allow myself to care. Any time I hear of a new disaster, injustice or social problem, my first filter is, Does it affect me? Does it have an immediate impact on my life, or will its consequences not come to pass until after I’m gone? And this determines whether I think about it constantly for weeks and months or whether I forget about it in a half hour.
The brain is wired to cause us to focus primarily on the problems that are directly in front of us. It has to be this way. If we understood the true extent of human suffering in the rest of the world, we would never be able to buy anything or complain about our circumstances; we would never be able to be happy or content with anything, because life is so hard for other people. Because this knowledge would ruin our lives, we convince ourselves that it’s not real. All of it is relegated to a statistic, a mere fact, and set on a shelf next to all the other things we know are true but not real. This is the only way we could function in life.
But the biggest factor in our chronic unawareness is how far removed we are from all of the suffering. Most of it is in other countries, and the biggest problem America has—poverty—we are very good at hiding. The poor people do not live on the same streets or go to the same stores as the rich people; as the leaves fall from the trees, the homeless communities with their brightly-colored tents are ordered to evacuate the forests near the river; and the projects are always far from a major highway so travelers will never see the worst of it.
You have to go looking for it. It will not come to you. But it’s there.
They rode in silence for a while, and then the driver made another good point. He said he knew that his truck was turning the atmosphere into poison gas, and that the planet was being turned into pavement so his truck could go anywhere. “So I’m committing suicide,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Trout.
“My brother is even worse,” the driver went on. “He works in a factory that makes chemicals for killing plants and trees in Viet Nam.” Viet Nam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes. The chemicals he mentioned were intended to kill all the foliage, so it would be harder for the communists to hide from airplanes.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Trout.
“In the long run, he’s committing suicide,” said the driver. “Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.”
“Good point,” said Trout.
—Kurt Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions, p. 86
Without a doubt, my favorite fast-food hamburger is the Whopper Junior from Burger King. It has no equal among dollar-menu sandwiches. The lettuce, onion and pickles are joined with the mayonnaise in perfect balance. The Whopper Junior also noticeably lacks mustard, and though I enjoy mustard, the choice to only use ketchup on this sandwich was a good one. This all fits between two sesame buns, adorning an all-beef patty with artificial charbroil flavoring and fake grill marks which contains meat from an average of a thousand different cows, some of which were pushed with a forklift into the slaughtering house because they were too sick to walk.
I enjoyed the Whopper Junior until I found out that last part, watching the documentary Food, Inc. and reading the book In Defense of Food (both of which I recommend). After seeing what happens in those meat-packing plants and reading about how the industry really works, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat one with the same enthusiasm. This is the burden of knowledge.
Let me stop here and switch gears. As soon as I hear someone talk about “the hidden side of the system”, the conspiracy alarms go off and I assume a skeptic’s posture for the remainder of the article or conversation. I assume that most others are the same way. So rather than linking to videos and using sensational language to explain that it really is all that bad, I’ll use only a few general facts along with observations about human nature to demonstrate why it should be all that bad.
1. Humans are sinful. We are rotten to the core, and we will corrupt any system if we have the opportunity and are able to avoid consequence. (I could stop here.)
2. The industry is mostly hidden. Everything they do is behind closed doors, in food processing plants without windows. In the rare cases that a non-employee is allowed inside, photographs and video cameras are strictly prohibited. Because of this, they are not accountable to their customers. I am not allowed to see what happens to my chicken from the time it is hatched to the time it arrives in the store.
3. Their oversight is powerless. In 2001, a court decision revoked the USDA’s authority to shut down a plant for failing too many health inspections. Though there are bills in the Senate to restore this authority, none have been passed yet. Because of this, the USDA cannot enforce its own safety standards, and the meat-packing industry is not accountable to anyone.
4. It’s a business. Any well-run business has one primary objective in mind: to make money. Everything else is secondary. The food industry does not exist to feed people; they exist to maximize profits by way of feeding people. It follows that such factors as nutrition and long-term health are less important than the immediate impact on profitability. The people in charge will tend to make the most cost-effective decision, even if it is at the expense of health.
This is not unique to the meat-packing industry. These four criteria—sin nature, lack of accountability, lack of authority, and love of money—can be used to predict the integrity of any system, whether it’s a business, a non-profit, a church, or even an individual.
Why does all this matter? Joel Salatin, a very outspoken “back to basics” farmer in Virginia, takes this perspective:
God actually loved us and provided a salvation experience for us that shapes the way we should, with the same grace and appreciation and respect, honor the creation that God made. It’s in respecting and honoring the pigness of the pig that we create our ethical and moral background for respecting and honoring the Tony-ness of Tony and the Mary-ness of Mary. And so it’s how we respect and honor the “least of these” that creates a theological and philosophical framework for how we respect and honor the creation that God made.
(From an interview in Sojourners Magazine, December 2009)
In other words, if they don’t respect the pig then they won’t respect the person who eats the pig.
This is reality. And yet, like all things that break the status quo of my life, it will probably fade back to normal after a few months, as TIME separates me from the experience. I will be reminded of the harmony of the lettuce, pickles and onion in a Whopper Junior, the mayo, the ketchup with no mustard, and I will convince myself that it couldn’t be as bad as I thought it was. But it still is.
Do you wish to honour the body of Christ? Do not ignore him when he is naked. Do not pay him homage in the temple clad in silk, only then to neglect him outside where he is cold and ill-clad. He who said: “This is my body” is the same who said: “You saw me hungry and you gave me no food”, and “Whatever you did to the least of my brothers you did also to me” … What good is it if the Eucharistic table is overloaded with golden chalices when your brother is dying of hunger? Start by satisfying his hunger and then with what is left you may adorn the altar as well.
(Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, no. 50)
If you ask [Christians] who is Amos or Obadiah, how many apostles there were or prophets, they stand mute; but if you ask them about the horses or drivers, they answer with more solemnity than sophists or rhetors.
(Source unknown)
We admire wealth equally with them, and even more. We have the same horror of death, the same dread of poverty, the same impatience of disease, we are equally fond of glory and of rule. We harass ourselves to death from our love of money, and serve the time. How then can they believe?
(Homilies on First Timothy, no. 82
—St. John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407 A.D.)
There are three dangerous phrases that I often hear Christians say. These phrases are not innately harmful, but like a crack in the wall of a house, they often indicate a deeper problem.
This phrase almost always precedes an unsubstantiated theological claim. There are two things wrong with it. The first is that it is noncommittal, using “like to” rather than “do”, and “think” rather than “believe”. The second is that it is individual, carrying the implication that it’s personal, a theological equivalent of comfort food. Together, these two characteristics result in a proposition that can’t be corrected, even if it’s clearly wrong.
This one depends heavily on context: usually people will say this jokingly, as in “Duran Duran is sort of a guilty pleasure of mine”. But Christians will often use this line to justify their enjoyment of things like R-rated sex comedies or profane music. I won’t say these types of things are inherently sinful for all people, but if it makes you feel guilty and you do it anyway, it is sin.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that each of us is allowed a limited number of free sinful habits as long as they aren’t too bad. How is this conforming to the image of Christ? We are supposed to kill all of that, not keep it as a pet.
This is the one I hear the most, and it’s also the most dangerous. Mark Driscoll, whom I respect and admire, had this to say about Jesus:
There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. (”7 Big Questions”, Relevant Magazine, issue 24)
This prompts the question: What if Jesus is not like that? What if he is a short, skinny guy with no athletic skills, and any one of us could beat him up? Would he be less worthy of our worship?
The problem with this is that it implies that I am the final authority on who God is. If he does not fit the image of who I want him to be, I will stop believing in him, and he will disappear to make way for a new God who is slightly different and much more favorable. But God is self-existent! He does not need my belief, and no matter what I believe about him, he remains the same. To choose to believe in God is to surrender myself to who he is, and to abandon any notion that I can decide who I want him to be.
