Respite

Three weeks ago Pam and I headed to Rawley Springs, Virginia, about 11 miles west of Harrisonburg, for a week of relaxing alone and together.  The parents of some friends in our church have a cabin there, and they allow us to use it to get away from it all.  This was our third trip, and it remains one of my favorite places in the world.

It has a screened-in front porch, but my favorite spot to hang out in is on the screened in back porch.  There is a stream about 15ft behind it that provides the most relaxing backdrop for reading, and that's what I like to do.  Here's the chair where I'll blow through 3-5 novels in a week:

 Problem is, with the drought this summer, the stream had dried up.  When we arrived on Sunday afternoon, there were some standing pools of water, but the stream wasn't running.  I should have taken some pictures so you could see what I'm talking about, but who wants to take pictures of a dry stream?  Besides, I couldn't anticipate what would happen and the need for a before picture, so all I have are after pictures.

See, when we arrived Sunday afternoon it had just started sprinkling.  Some time during the night the sprinkling turned to sho'nuff rain.  Monday morning it was raining pretty hard, and stayed that way until late afternoon.  

I wasn't sure how much rain it would take for the stream to start running, but by Monday afternoon it had reached that point.  It was flowing.

But then the tropical storm rolled in Wednesday night, and by Thursday afternoon the stream wasn't just flowing, it was practically raging.

Here's the view from the porch:

 Here's a view from behind the cabin, and you can see how close to the back porch the stream runs.  It's hard to believe that just a few days before this was dry except in a few places.

I want to retire to a place like this.  Don't know that I'll be able to, but that's what I want.  I feel close to God in places like this.

What a blessing to have generous friends.

To the End

     Actors David Arquette and Courtney Cox have separated.  That’s hardly news, honestly, except that they have been married for 11 years, which is forever in Hollywood.  I don’t normally pay attention to these things, but for some reason I bit and clicked on the headline to read the article.

Some days I just don’t understand myself and why I do the things I do.

Anyway, they issued the following statement: "The reason for this separation is to better understand ourselves and the qualities we need in a partner and for our marriage.  We remain best friends and responsible parents to our daughter and we still love each other deeply."  They don’t understand themselves either, which is apparent, since it stands to reason that the time to understand the qualities one needs in a marriage partner is before the wedding, not eleven years into the marriage.  Of course, most of us get into this marriage thing when we’re young and think we know a lot but don’t know how much we don’t know.  So cut them some slack.  But it’s that second sentence that I don’t understand.  In it they say that they 1) are best friends; 2) are responsible parents to their daughter, and 3) still love each other deeply.

Now, see, that really gets me, because when people ask me what they should look for in a marriage partner, I frequently tell them to marry their best friend.  (Of the opposite sex, of course.)  You are going to be spending a lot of time with that person over the course of your lifetime, so make sure that you actually like spending time with them.  Looks fade, waistlines expand, and all sorts of other things happen to the external stuff people often use in picking a mate.  So look past that stuff.  Find someone that you can be best friends with, and fall in love with that person.  Then make a commitment to them.

By commitment I mean hang on for dear life.  No matter what, hang on.  Marriage is hard; of all the relationships we have, marriage is probably the hardest, and that’s why an essential element in any marriage is perseverance: the sheer dogged determination to keep going, to slog through the tough times when you aren’t best friends.  When those tough times come because you don’t understand yourself or your spouse, that determination will force you to go (together) see someone who can help you understand each other.  And when tough times come from external circumstances like a job loss or adolescent children, perseverance will allow you to weather the storm until things get better, which they invariably do.  A new job opens up, and kids grow up.  Life is like the weather—storms come up regularly, and so do bright sunshiny days.  If you quit during the storms, who are you going to share the sunshiny days with?

So that’s the formula.  Fall in love with your best friend, and then hold on like a pit bull with a t-bone.

 Following Jesus is hard, too, which is why perseverance is not just a relational virtue but a spiritual one as well.  There are times when it’s  great, and it feels like nothing you’ve ever experienced before in your life.  But there are times when it’s not so great and you can’t feel anything at all.  And then there are times when it’s costly, it’s really, really hard, and maybe even dangerous.  What are you going to do then? 

When all you can do is hang on, hanging on is a virtue.

Mother Teresa apparently had a lot of doubts about God toward the end of her life, and I have heard some Christian leaders criticize her because of them.  I imagine the best way to avoid having doubts about God is to avoid as much as possible any contact with human suffering.  Mother Teresa lived in the muck of human suffering all her life, so it doesn’t surprise me that she had some questions, some doubts, some misgivings.

But you know what?  In spite of her doubts, she showed up.  Every day until the day she died, she showed up and helped suffering people who were created in the image of God die in dignity.  When her faith was small and her hope dried up, her love persevered.  It held on; she held on.

Sometimes, that’s all we can do.  And God honors that.  He really does.

The Whole Thing

I learned today that there is an illustrated version of the book of Genesis.  Not that I’m going to rush out and buy a copy; I’m perfectly fine with not having pictures in my books, have been since I started reading Hardy Boys books in the third grade.  I rather like forming my own images in my mind, and the images from my own reading of Genesis have been with me for many years.  I don’t want anyone messing with that.  When The Lord of the Rings exploded in popularity in the late 70’s, I remember browsing through an illustrated LOTR calendar and seeing someone else’s vision of the characters.  When I read Tolkien’s trilogy again, those images had replaced my own and it took me a couple hundred pages before my own returned to me, and I decided I didn’t want that to happen again.  (Some of you are probably wondering about my mental condition right about now.  Well, what took you so long?)  So I’m not going to be reading The Book of Genesis Illustrated by Robert Crumb.

It’s interesting that Crumb would undertake this project.  Crumb founded the underground comics movement in the 60’s, and was as much a influence on the anti-establishment drugs and free-love hippie culture as Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and Timothy Leary.  He is best-known for his one-page “Keep on Truckin’” comic that was seen on t-shirts and posters in the late 60’s and early 70’s.  Spiritually he says he’s an agnostic.  “I don't doubt the existence of God, I just don't quite know what God is. It's a question that will challenge me until the day I die," he says in a U.S.A. Today interview last year.  The project started off as a satire on Adam and Eve, but then he got an offer to do a larger take on the Bible.  He largely used Jewish scholar Robert Alter’s translation of Genesis, with an assist from the King James, and he reportedly stays faithful to the biblical text.

But anyone hoping that it might lead Crow to spiritual enlightenment will be disappointed.  "I got totally sick of it by the end of it. I've come out exhausted.”

Part of that is the content of Genesis itself.  "To take this as a sacred text, or the word of God or something to live by, is kind of crazy.  So much of it makes no sense. To think of all the fighting and killing that's gone on over this book, it just became to me a colossal absurdity. That's probably the most profound moment I've had — the absurdity of it all.”

Well, there’s no doubt that Genesis, taken alone, doesn’t seem very spiritual.  There’s fighting and killing, rape and murder, incest and lust, and a story of widespread humanticide.  Jacob cheats his older brother out of his birthright and blessing—with the help of his mother.  Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery, and lie to their grieving father.  Pretty rough stuff.

But Genesis shouldn’t be taken alone.  It was never intended as a stand-alone book.  It’s the beginning of a long story, and while it contains hints of where the story is heading and how it will reach a climax, they are just that—hints.  No good writer gives away their endings in the first chapter.  No, first chapters set up the problem, and Genesis does that quite well, doesn’t it?  As you move through the story, into chapters two through five, the problem is complicated even as solutions are offered.  The middle of the story, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, brings it all to a head.  The prophets give commentary on the story and provide further hints as to the climax, but the climax doesn’t come at the end of the Old Testament.  The Old Testament ends on a cliff-hanger, pointing to a sequel that is in development but with no firm release date.

And then comes Jesus.  He is the climax of the story; he changes everything.  He comes into a world of violence and dies a violent death, but without resorting himself to violence.  And with his resurrection he shows that his way is the only way, and that changes everything.  No more violence from men toward women—no more rape, no more abuse, no more “I-own-you.”  No more violence toward children—baby girls in particular were often killed in Roman culture as fathers desired boys and girls were seen as a burden.  He condemned violence from kings toward their subjects, even as he condemned violent insurrection from subjects toward their rulers.  He truly was the Prince of Peace, and his peace comes not at the tip of a sword but at the foot of a cross.

You can’t judge a book from the first chapter.  Oh, and for you New Testament Christians, you can’t understand the climax and epilogue if you haven’t read the opening chapters, so spend some time reading through the Old Testament.

If you want to understand and appreciate the story, you have to read the whole story.

A Beautiful, Ugly World

“Why is our world beautiful, and what are we as Christians to do about the fact that our world is beautiful? Why is our world ugly, and what are we as Christians to do about the fact that our world is ugly?”

Biblical scholar N.T. Wright asked these questions in a 2005 lecture at Seattle Pacific University.  He’s right, of course, our world is both unbelievably beautiful and unmistakably ugly.  

This is a world of sunrises and sunsets, of graceful deer and playful dolphins, of jonquils in the spring and autumn leaves in the fall; and it is a world of civil war, of terror and fear, of shame and disgrace, of oppressors and oppressed.

The prophet Isaiah in chapter 11 provides us with a vision of hope in which the ugliness of our world is either redeemed or destroyed:

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.  The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.  His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.  Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.  The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.  They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

This is a vision of a world in which oppressors live peacefully with the ones they have oppressed, having repented of their oppression.  It is a beautiful picture of repentance and reconciliation.  And it is also a warning: those oppressors who cannot repent, who cannot give up their violence toward innocents, will not be allowed to go one forever.  They have no place in this lion and lamb world, and will be destroyed.  If this seems a harsh word for the oppressor, it is a word of hope for the oppressed.

If all one sees in our world is the ugliness, then it’s hard to see Isaiah’s vision as anything but unrealistic wishful thinking that will never stand up to real-world realities, but when one sees the beauty of the world—not just that which God created, but also that which humans are able to produce in our in-his-image creativity—you realize that there is a real-world reality that is full of the glory of God “as the waters cover the see.”  One of our God-given gifts is imagination, and every work of beauty begins with imagination.  The creative imagination doesn’t accept what others say is real-world reality; it envisions other possibilities, and makes them real-world realities.  Wright provides an example:

There's a work of art which stands at the moment in the great new atrium in the British Museum in London. The director of the British Museum is a practicing Christian, Neil McGregor. And he has with great courage put this work of art there. It speaks volumes about the nature of Christian imagination, taking the great biblical story and making it live again, speaking into and engaging with our culture. It's a sculpture from Mozambique, and it's a sculpture of the Tree of life, the Tree of life which stood there in the Garden of Eden, but was inaccessible, the Tree of Life which now grows on the banks of the Waters of Life coming out of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 and 22. But this tree of life is different, because it is made of decommissioned weapons after the Mozambique civil war. It's composed entirely of military hardware — guns and stuff. It's a very powerful symbol of what Isaiah was talking about. There will come a time when people will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, a time of peace.

How do you re-imagine the Christian story after a civil war? Maybe you do it like this. You turn the weapons into a tree of life. What a wonderful symbol of engaging the culture, of taking a theme which spans Genesis to Revelation and of saying, put this in the middle of your world and imagine, imagine what God is like and what the world will one day be like.

Grace Giving

I’m constantly amazed at how much we resist grace.  Not in receiving grace, though there is some of that.  There are some people whose guilt is so great that they just can’t handle grace.  They feel so bad about themselves that can’t conceive that they are worthy to receive grace, to receive forgiveness as a gift, free and clear, without them having to do anything.  They would feel much better if they could somehow earn forgiveness; then forgiveness would be justified.  But they never feel justified because by definition no one is worthy of grace.  Forgiveness that comes as a result of the recipient’s worthiness is not grace.  The person has in a sense earned the forgiveness because they are worthy of it.

And that’s not grace.  This is not to say, however, that a person receiving grace is not a person of worth.  This is a mistake that many evangelicals have made all the way back to at least the time of the Reformation: in saying that salvation is by grace and is not earned means ipso facto we humans are worthless, we are utterly depraved, sinners in the hands of an angry God, lower than worms.

In my opinion, that’s nonsense.  Our worth as persons was never based on our actions; it’s based on our creation.  Each person is created in the image of God, and that creation imago dei is a fact, a fact which sin cannot change.  Our sin is not greater than God’s creative power.  Nor is it greater than his love or his grace.

But most people don’t have much of a problem receiving grace.  But showing grace and giving grace, that’s another story.  We’re hard on each other. 

When a person hurts us, well, it hurts.  And no one likes to hurt.  We want the hurt to go away, and we don’t want it to come back again.  And the longer the hurt lingers, the harder we tend to work to make sure that it never happens again.

Usually that takes the form of some kind of punishment for the person who hurt us.  Harsh words, a raised voice, yelling and screaming and other forms of non-physical violence become our first refuge.  Sometimes it escalates into physical violence. 

If we are unwilling—or simply unable—to use these methods, we will punish by withdrawal.  We’ll stop talking, or our conversation will be void of any emotional and relational content.  Or we’ll withdraw physically—we’ll just avoid the person who hurt us.  While these may be seen as merely self-protective measures, there is no doubt that there is a punitive aspect to them, even if unintentional.  But as anyone who has been on the receiving end of “the silent treatment”—and who hasn’t?—withdrawal is definitely punitive, and it’s usually consciously so.

But so what?  If someone hurts you, they deserve to be punished, otherwise they’ll just keep doing it and doing it.  You’re actually doing them a favor by punishing them and leading them to change their behavior.

And that’s the rub that most of us have with grace: it feels like we’re just letting the other person get away with bad behavior; not only that, but we’re enabling the bad behavior.  Grace feels like we’re rewarding the bad behavior and guaranteeing that it will be repeated, not just with us but with others.

But to equate grace with permissiveness is to fundamentally misunderstand grace.  True grace doesn’t ignore the gravity of the sin or the reality of the hurt caused; it doesn’t give permission, it doesn’t enable, it doesn’t look the other way.  But it also doesn’t seek to attack or to withdraw.  Just the opposite: grace confronts, but without violence.  Grace not only seeks to change the behavior, but to fundamentally change the attitude behind the behavior as well.  More than anything, grace seeks to maintain the relationship.  Punishment can and often does change the behavior, but often hardens the attitude as well.  It certainly affects the relationship.  Grace changes behavior and attitudes better than punishment.  Neither is foolproof; if that’s what you’re searching for, good luck.  Even God couldn’t find a foolproof way to change the human heart.  Even after offering his son, many hearts remain hardened.

So giving grace is not permissiveness, and confusing the two often leads to people forsaking grace.  But the real reason grace is so often left untried is that it’s hard.  Real hard.

The punishment route is actually easier than the grace route for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it is the most natural.  And what comes naturally is always easier.  The harsh words just flow out, and it’s hard work to keep them in.  “Count to ten” is done to keep from saying harsh things.  Withdrawal is easier than grace-full engagement.  Working toward reconciliation so that the behavior is not repeated, forgiveness is given, and the relationship is maintained is hard work.  Anyone who thinks otherwise has never really considered the meaning of the cross.

Grace is hard, but it’s worth it.  Because reconciliation is always better than revenge.

Dumb and Dumber

Like most Redskins fans, my two favorite teams are the Redskins and whoever is playing Dallas.

   To me the Dallas Cowboys are in the same category as the New York Yankees.  Teams everybody loves to hate.  They both have fans that can really be obnoxious.  I have referred to the Yankees many times before as the Evil Empire.  But they usually play a good brand of baseball.
   The Cowboys, however, are usually the most overrated team in the NFL.  No matter how good they are predicted to be before the season starts, they almost always fall short.  Yet their fans still like to claim that they are "America's Team."  They talk smack and act like winning a championship is their right.  And then whine like crazy when it doesn't happen.
    Well, it hasn't happened since 1996.  Last year was the first year they even won a playoff game in a looong time.
    This year a lot of people were expecting them to go to the Super Bowl, which just happens to be played in Dallas this year.
   Well, after last night, it ain't going to happen.  They aren't that good.  I know, one game is a pretty small sampling, but I'm telling you: they aren't that good.  This year, they are not only overrated, they are waaaay overrated.
   They might make the playoffs, but they won't go far.  And then their fans will whine.
   Maybe I'm being too gleeful in the wake of the Redskins win last night against the 'Boyz, but I don't care.  It gives me great pleasure to say it.  


The Cowboys are overrated.  They aren't that good.  They're good, but not great.


And as much as it gives me pleasure to say that, I get even more pleasure in saying this:


The Cowboys are dumb.  
   I mean, they are just dumb.  They are a dumb team.
   They would have won last night if they weren't so dumb.  But they didn't.  Because they are.
   They are that dumb.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.


Beethoven's Fifth Symphony Dumb.  You know: dumb dumb dumb DUMBBBBB.   dumb dumb dumb DUMBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB.

Yeah, the Yankees may be The Evil Empire.

But the Cowboys are Dumb and Dumber.

A Different Way

Man, Terry Jones knows how to get people’s attention.

Jones is the Florida pastor who was planning to burn copies of the Qu’ran on the anniversary of 9-11.  Right now it doesn’t look like he’s going to go through with it, but not because he realized that it runs counter to the teachings of Jesus, but because he’s hoping to broker a deal concerning the mosque near Ground Zero.

I’m not sure what he wants to accomplish, but he sure has had some important people dialing his number.  The heads of two large Evangelical groups, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the World Evangelical Alliance, have called him.  Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Gen. David H. Petraeus, conservative commentator Glenn Beck, even Angelina Jolie have all reached out to him.  Billy Graham’s son, Franklin Graham, has called him twice, and only got voice mail.  I mean, how busy (or self-important) are you that you blow off a call from Billy Graham’s son? 

He’s been asked to consider the way this act could endanger U.S. troops serving in Muslim countries.  He’s been asked to consider how much harm this would do to Christian missionary efforts around the world.  I just want to ask him when’s the last time he read the red letters in his Bible.  This is the kind of thing that seems so obviously antithetical to the teachings of Jesus—you know, the guy who said, “Love your enemies.  Pray for those who persecute you”—that it’s hard to believe anyone could honestly read the New Testament and come away thinking that this represents Christ in any fashion.

Well, it does, but not in a good way.  What’s ironic is that in Pakistan protestors have taken to the streets, burning the American flag and effigies of Uncle Sam; doesn’t Jones see that there is really no difference between the two actions?  In trying to draw a distinction between “Christian America” and the Muslim world, he’s demonstrating that religious extremists are all the same, whether Christian or Muslim.

Most people understand that this doesn’t put Christianity in a good light.  The president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Leith Anderson, issued a statement Wednesday asking Muslims not to judge "all Christians by the behavior of one extremist. One person with 30 silent followers does not speak for 300 million Americans who will never burn a Koran."

Anderson is right, and I hope that the majority of Christians realize that the same holds true for Islam.  I bring this up because of the negative reaction of so many people toward the plan to build a Muslim community center a few blocks from Ground Zero.  I don’t know how far “a few blocks” is, but I like what one very insightful young woman in our church’s youth group said: “Well, how far away is far enough?  A mile?  Five miles?  Outside the city?”

I understand those who say that these plans are insensitive to the feelings of Americans in general and New Yorkers in particular, especially those who lost friends and family members in the Twin Towers attack, and just as Terry Jones should respect the sensitivities of Muslims, so should the planners of the community center respect the feelings of others.  Fair point.

But what if we took this as an opportunity to show the world what Americans in general and Christians in particular can be when we are at our best?  What if we let them build the center as a way of saying, “This is what we do: when religious extremists attack us and kill innocent people, we don’t respond with fear, with hate, with revenge, with flag- or Qu’ran-burning; we don’t even respond with mere tolerance.  We respond with love.”  It seems to me that a Muslim community center within sight of Ground Zero is not an affront to either American or Christian values, but rather that in allowing it, we embody the values of religious freedom and freedom of expression.  Let other countries and other faiths persecute those of differing viewpoints, burning their flags or their sacred texts. 

We can offer the world a different way.