Wright's Right: The Second Coming and Patience

Believing in the second coming itself is anything but arrogant. The whole point of it is to insist, over against not only the wider pagan world, but against all self-delusion or pretension within the church, that Jesus remains sovereign and will return at last to put everything right. This putting right (the biblical word for it is “justice”) is the sort of sigh-of-relief event that the whole world, at its best and at many other times too, longs for most deeply. All sorts of things are out of joint, both on a large and a small scale, in the world; and God the creator will put them straight. All sorts of things are still going wrong, corrupting the lives of human beings and the larger life of the environment, the planet itself; God the creator will put them right. All sorts of things are still wrong with us, Jesus’s followers; Jesus, when he comes, will put us right as well. That may not be comfortable, but it’s what we need. Believing he will do it is part of Christian humility. Waiting for it is part of Christian patience: 

When the king is revealed (and he is your life, remember), then you too will be revealed with him in glory. (Col. 3:4) 

Beloved ones, we are now, already, God’s children; it hasn’t yet been revealed what we are going to be. We know that when he is revealed we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)

Wright, N. T. (2011-10-25). Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (p. 201). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Haynes Alive

For years I had read about Warren Haynes and his band Gov't Mule in guitar magazines, but this past January I decided to give a listen to him.  I listened to some previews on iTunes and really liked what I heard, so I downloaded the Gov't Mule album, Deja Voodoo--and proceeded to listen to nothing else for two whole months.  Then I downloaded one of his solo projects, Tales of Ordinary Madness--and listened to nothing else for another couple of months.  Since then I have downloaded a few more albums, and Warren Haynes is pretty much all that I've been listening to all year.  (Exceptions being a little country music recommended by a friend--Jason Aldean, "My Kinda Party"; James Wesley, "Didn't I"; and some blues by Joe Bonamassa.) 

Haynes has long been known for his work with the Allman Brothers, but his Gov't Mule and solo projects, while not cut out for Top 40 radio play, are what has garnered him a very loyal following.  His is the kind of music I really enjoy--guitar-driven, blues-based classic and southern rock.

For Christmas Pam wanted to get me tickets to one of his concerts and asked Clark Briggs, for whom I built guitar #3, to find out if and when Haynes was going to be in the area.  Clark found out that Haynes was going to be in Silver Spring at the Fillmore on November 19, but asked Pam if he could take me there as a birthday gift.  She graciously said yes.

Last night was November 19.  The Fillmore is not a large venue, but it is very cool.  The concert was general admission, standing-only.  Clark and I were 20 in line, which means we were able to get right on the rail in front of the stage.

Oh. My. Goodness.  All I wanted was to be close enough to be able to watch Warren play, but I was within just a few feet.  It was all better than I expected.  An amazing night of music.  It was the last night of the tour, and they seemed energized.  They had fun.  There was joy on the stage and in the audience.

Here's some pics from the concert.

Haynes recently switched from a Gibson Les Paul to a Gibson hollow body, not sure if it's a 335 or maybe a 333.

This girl could sing!  There was soul all through her voice.

Here is my favorite picture.  Warren isn't in pain, he's just bending the heck out of that string.  When you bend a string you are squeezing every ounce of feeling from the note.  No other look is possible when getting that much blues out of your guitar.  Trust me on this.

After two sets and an encore that was almost as long as the second set, a final goodbye at the end of the tour.

I have some video that I will post but that will have to wait.  I first have to upload video to YouTube, and my DSL here at home can't handle the bandwidth required.

Wright's Right

I'm going to start a new series of posts that I am calling "Wright's Right."  These will be quotes, mostly without commentary from me, from his writings.  Wright is the biblical writer who has been very influential in my own thinking--and I am not alone.  He is among the most prolific of writers, and writes at different times for scholarly, pastoral, and popular audiences.  I just finished his latest book, Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters, and I highlighted a number of passages that I'll be interspersing among my other posts in the near future.  Here's the first: 

The disciples wanted a kingdom without a cross. Many would-be “orthodox” or “conservative” Christians in our world have wanted a cross without a kingdom, an abstract “atonement” that would have nothing to do with this world except to provide the means of escaping it. Many too have wanted a “divine” Jesus as a kind of “superman” figure, a heavenly hero come to rescue them, but not to act as Israel’s Messiah, establishing God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. Jesus’s shocking combination of scriptural models into a single vocation makes excellent historical sense; that is, it explains at a stroke why he did and said what he did and said. But...it remains as challenging in our world, and indeed in our churches, as it was in Jesus’s own day.

Wright, N. T. (2011-10-25). Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (pp. 173-174). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Consumerism Aftermath, Pt. 1: Tearing Down the Walls

     Consumerism has hit Christianity in the United States, and brand loyalty is fast eroding.  I wrote about this last week, and while it is fashionable for commentators on Christianity to bemoan the way that consumerism has hurt the church and diluted its message, I want to assert, without denying the corrosive effects, that there are some positive trends that we are seeing in the landscape of Christianity that are a direct result of this consumerist attitude that people are bringing to the church.  Just off the top of my head, I see these things happening:

· As denominational distinctives get blurred, denominational walls get torn down

· As denominational walls get torn down, denominational theology becomes more democratic

· As theology becomes more democratic, Christians from different backgrounds and points of view talk to and learn from each other.

· As Christians talk to and learn from each other, we learn to respect and admire the totality of the 2000 year history of Christianity.

· As we re-claim all of Christian history, we enter into dialogue with Christians from different ages and epochs.

     All of these are positive developments, and need to be more fully explored.  Let me tackle the first one.  Historically, each denomination has some key elements that distinguish it from other denominations.  Presbyterians, for instance, are the spiritual descendants of John Calvin and hold to some form of Calvinism—the total depravity of humans, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints.  In other words, God chooses who He wants to save, and there’s not much we can do about it.  Methodists, on the other hand, believe that humans are free to accept or reject God’s call or election to salvation, but that is really not the thing that historically has distinguished Methodists from other denominations, but rather their belief that the Christian is to pursue holiness or perfection as our chief object, and this through the method (hence the name) of small accountability groups.  This, of course, is an over-simplification; both Presbyterians and Methodists would point to other aspects as distinctives as well.  For Baptists, this issue of predestination vs. free will is not distinctive; there are Calvinist Baptists and free-will Baptists—right in our congregation.  Historically, Baptist distinctives are as follows: Believer’s Baptism by immersion—it’s in our name, after all; soul competency—the freedom and right of every Christian to interpret and apply Scripture under the leadership of the Holy Spirit ; the priesthood of all believers—the freedom and responsibility of every person to relate directly to God without imposition of creed or control of clergy or government; the autonomy of the local Baptist church—that Baptist churches are free, under the Lordship of Christ, to determine their membership and leadership, to order their worship and work, to ordain whomever they perceive as gifted for ministry, and to participate as they deem appropriate in the larger Body of Christ; and religious freedom—the principle of separation of church and state. 

The thing is—these things aren’t that distinctive anymore.  There are other Christian denominations that are strong advocates for religious freedom in the way that Baptists have historically advocated.  Similarly, there are more and more denominations that practice Believer’s Baptism by immersion, more and more that believe in soul competency, the priesthood of believers.  Similarly, we are all learning from the Methodist’s emphasis on holiness through accountability, and the Presbyterian emphasis on God’s sovereignty, the Pentecostal emphasis that the Holy Spirit is active in visible ways in the lives of believers, the Orthodox Church’s emphasis on the mystery and beauty of God, etc.  As the lines between denomination get blurred, the walls between believers get torn down.  Actually, to be honest, the denominational institutions still insist on their distinctives.  The institutional walls still exist; it’s just that individual believer’s no longer pay much attention to them.  And that’s a good thing.  Jesus never intended that his followers would rebuild new walls to replace the wall between Jew and Gentile that he tore down.  Disciples of Jesus build bridges, not walls.

That’s our distinctive.

Unbranded

Throughout most of the history of Christianity, brand loyalty has been strong.  Whatever brand of church you were born into, that’s where you stayed.  Of course changing brands wasn’t that simple back in the day—there were no options.  First, there was just the Church.  Then, there was the Coptic Church, which split away from  everyone else, and the Church.  Then there was the Greek Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, which went their separate way.  But even then a person didn’t really have a choice, given that these churches were geographically—and therefore socially—restricted.  If you were a Christian in Egypt you went to the Coptic Church; if you lived in Greece or Eastern Europe, you went to the Orthodox Church; in Western Europe, the Roman Catholic Church.  A Christian living in Gaul really didn’t have the choice to go to the Orthodox Church down the road—unless by “down the road” you meant a few thousand miles down the road.

In the West, the Protestant Reformation brought new brands of Christianity, and choices somewhat increased.  In Germany, for instance, your choices were the Catholic Church or the Lutheran Church, and that’s pretty much it.  But after a generation or two of the Reformation there really wasn’t that much crossover, if any.  If you were born Catholic, which meant your entire family was Catholic, you stayed Catholic.  To change would cut you off , not only from your family, but your entire social structure.  Same if you were born Lutheran.

This is an over-simplification to a degree, but not by much, and certainly not by comparison to what followed as religious groups, seeking religious freedom, came to the New World.  Within a few generations you had Congregationalists, Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Catholics living in the same state, same city, same township.  You may have been a Lutheran farmer whose nearest neighbor a mile or so away was a Mennonite.

But while all these different brands came in close proximity to each other in the United States, brand loyalty was still extremely strong.  People just didn’t switch brands that often, and there was a high cost for doing so.  Then came television, and with TV came advertising to an extent not seen before, even in the days of radio.  As the years went by marketing became more and more sophisticated.  Consumers began having more choices of cars, toothpaste, laundry detergent, etc.  The shopping mall came along and it flourished, giving people choices of stores and products under one large, climate-controlled roof.  Brand loyalty was still high.  Among the WWII generation you would still hear men call themselves Ford men or Chevy men.  And Baptists were always Baptists, Lutherans were always Lutherans, etc.

Not so for their children.  This generation, the Baby Boomers, came of age alongside the television, and they were the first generation that grew up marketed to.  Brand loyalty began eroding.  If the toothpaste they were using didn’t include fluoride, brand loyalty didn’t keep them from switching to a new brand that did.  Or that promised whiter teeth and fresher breath.  Companies could no longer rely on brand loyalty to keep their customers; they had to always be better than the rest.  And the bar kept rising.

So it shouldn’t be any surprise that when the Boomers came of age and started having children and returning to church in the 1970’s and 1980’s we began seeing the erosion of brand loyalty in church life as well.  If a husband and wife who grew up Baptist moved to a new town with their kids (or because they had kids decided to go back to church after a long-layoff that started in college), the Baptist church or churches might be the first churches they visit, but they likely visited other brands as well.  And the determining factor of where they eventually joined probably had little to do with the brand—it was almost solely based on the quality of the children’s and youth programs.

The result in this shift in mentality to a consumerist approach to church shopping is a marketing culture it created in churches that sought to gain the greatest numbers of religious consumers.  And while this is not new, and the weaknesses and flaws are apparent, what is new is that some very positive trends are coming out of this consumerist/marketing culture in church life.  I’ll explore some of those exciting trends in the next few posts.

God on the Brain

In their book, How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist, neuroscientist Andrew Newberg and therapist Mark Robert Waldman  conclude that believing in God is good for your health.  Based on evidence culled from brain-scan studies, a wide-reaching survey of people’s religious and spiritual experiences, and the authors’ analyses of adult drawings of God, they made the following discoveries:

· Not only do prayer and spiritual practice reduce stress, but just twelve minutes of meditation per day may slow down the aging process.

· Intense prayer and meditation permanently change numerous structures and functions in the brain, altering your values and the way you perceive reality.

· Contemplating a loving God rather than a punitive God reduces anxiety and depression and increases feelings of security, compassion, and love.

 It’s the last one that is interesting to me, not because it’s surprising—I imagine a having a strong belief in a punitive God would indeed result in increased anxiety and depression while believing in a loving God would naturally result in feelings of security, compassion, and love.  I didn’t need a neuroscientist to tell me that.  What makes it interesting is that so few people believe in such a God.

According to the authors, Americans view God four ways.  “Whether we are conscious of it or not, we all assign a personality to God.”  These personalities are as follows:

· The authoritarian god (32% of us)

· The critical god (16% of us)

· The distant god (24% of us)

· The benevolent god (23% of us)

So only 23% of religious people have increased feelings of security, compassion, and love.   Put another way, at least 48% of religious people have heightened feelings of anxiety and depression.  (I’m assuming, of course, that both an authoritarian and a critical god would be punitive, but I think that’s a pretty safe assumption.  I didn’t include in that 48% a distant God, since punishment would seem to entail engagement.  Nonetheless, one could argue that being distant and unengaged is a form of abuse if not punishment, but at the very least no one would describe a distant god as being warm, compassionate, and loving any more than we would call a distant father those things.)  That doesn’t surprise me, I’ve worked in churches all my adult life  and have seen and read enough about church life to know that they are often very anxiety-ridden places. 

If this is in fact true, that only 23% of religious people believe that God is principally benevolent and loving, we all ought to be concerned.  My favorite theologian, N.T. Wright, tells of the time when he was talking to an Old Testament professor when a student approached and said to the professor that she didn’t like the God of the Old Testament, that he was mean and wrathful and judgmental; that she preferred the God of the New Testament, full of grace and mercy and forgiveness.  (It strikes me that this was not a very graceful thing to say to a Christian professor of the Old Testament, but I digress.)  She went on to say that as a Christian she was obligated to follow the New Testament God, not the Old Testament God, to which the professor pointed out, quite calmly and gently, that the Old Testament God was the God of Jesus Christ.  There is only one God in the Bible, and, sure, there is fire and brimstone in the Old Testament, no doubt, but Jesus didn’t just show up and introduce a whole new way of viewing God that was different from the God revealed in Scripture.  This loving, benevolent God is found from Genesis through Malachi; Jesus just pointed it out.  Drawing from the Law and the Prophets—and principally from Deuteronomy and Isaiah—Jesus taught that the nature of God is to love and forgive and be merciful, and that he, Jesus, was the fulfillment or pinnacle of that understanding of God.

Jesus himself was the epitome of compassion and love. 

So why do only 23% of us believe in his God?

Marlin's Fingers

In July I decided to take some guitar lessons to break out of a rut in my soloing, so I signed up with Marlin King at Make N Music.  Marlin has been playing and singing in bands since he was a teenager, and he's in his sixties now.  He shows me so much stuff that I end up forgetting much of it before I can get home, practice it and solidify it in my memory, but a friend of mine suggested videoing some of it with my phone.  What a great idea!

This video is Marlin playing against a blues backing track.  He's showing me stuff, but mainly I'm just enjoying watching him play, and thought you might enjoy it also.