thesecondeclectic

Time is money

2009-06-27T10:45:00.003-05:00

Cultural texts provide the flesh and bones, as it were, for what George Lakoff and Mark Johnson call the “metaphors we live by.” These are metaphors that shape our most basic understanding of the world as we experience it, metaphors that shape our perceptions and our practices without our even noticing them. As Lakoff and Johnson point out, the North American proverbial saying “time is money” is a root metaphor for a fundamental aspect of human experience and suggests that time is a valuable commodity. This metaphor predisposes us to think about everyday life in terms of “spending,” “saving,” or “wasting” time. Once again, we see how culture exerts its hegemonic influence by taking captive our imagination.

from “What is Everyday Theology?” by Kevin Vanhoozer, in Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends.

Following the prophets.

2009-06-16T16:25:00.002-05:00

If the prophets of the Bible didn’t understand all of their own prophecies, why do we expect that we’ll understand everything God asks of us? Why does it have to make sense to us before we’ll obey? Or how do we determine when to follow God into something we don’t understand? And how do we know which way that is?

"It's a one-way thing"

2009-06-16T13:22:00.002-05:00

Here's some anecdotal conversation about strange relationships created by the medium of television from the perspective of some recent American Idols (via Newsweek).

Hicks: I've had an older couple come up to me and ask me for an autograph and say their phone bill is $400 to $500, voting and texting for Idol. When people say they invest in your career on the show, they invest their time. But they also invest their money. Even younger people come up to me and say, "My cell-phone bill is $200 extra this month."

Sparks: Sometimes people feel like you owe them something. I love meeting them, but sometimes it gets scary when they get angry at you when you make them wait. The Idols all have a different relationship with our fans. They all feel like they know us, because they grew with us on the show. You have to be careful with what you say or how far you let people in.

Archuleta: I don't think they realize it's a one-way thing going on. You're not getting to know them.

Sparks: Do you get people coming up to you and giving you a hug?

Studdard: Yeah.

Sermon tapes

2009-06-11T13:53:00.000-05:00

Every technology is a value statement. If that value were put into words we might say we disagree with it, but our choices to use certain technologies betray our biases and values.

With this in mind, I was thinking about sermon tapes. Well, now it’s mostly CDs. Sermons are recorded to CDs, tapes, mp3s, and now even DVDs so they can be distributed to those who couldn’t make it to church. Let me affirm from the outset that these can indeed be valuable for the listeners.

Probably the two most common reasons these listeners don’t get to church are that they’re elderly or they’re incarcerated (to draw no parallels between the two). But even while the pastor is delivering his own message, the sermon tapes themselves are also delivering messages. The messages I can discern are these.

The sermon is the most important event that happens at a church gathering. Most sermon tapes are just that, sermon tapes. They don’t include the music or announcements, baptisms, baby dedications, or the conversations that happen during "fellowship hour." The sermon is really the important thing. Sermon tapes perpetuate this already-held belief, and are not its primary instigator.

The information delivered in the sermon is more important than the gathering itself. Because of the centralization and elevation of the sermon in the church gathering, we church kids have started to believe that it’s the sermon and not the gathering that is essential. Just last Sunday, I showed up late to church. I felt okay about it though because I hadn’t missed the sermon yet—so I wasn’t really missing anything important. But in truth, the presence of the gathered community of believers is probably more transformative for the individual than the sermon is.

The lone believer can grow spiritually with a regular collection of good sermon tapes. Taken to the extreme, some might conclude that they can have all the real benefits of church without actually having to go to church. This is absurd, of course. It’s the commitments to others and responsibilities of real relationships that keep many from following their own sinful desires. You can’t have a relationship with or through a sermon tape.

Now, I’m not saying sermon tapes have no value. Indeed, many will argue that it’s better to have them available than not. It’s better for the elderly and the incarcerated to hear a word from the preacher than not. But these sermon tapes will always bend toward supplanting the power of the gathered church. If we give out the sermon tapes but don't spend just as much time being with the people we give them to, then we fail to grasp what it means to be the Church.

You are better than a sermon tape. You are the medium. What message are you sending?

How far is it?, Or The Logic of Technology

2009-06-05T12:00:00.002-05:00

(Continued from "Boston on Foot" and "Proportions, Proximity, and Pace of Life")

What goes through your mind when you’re driving along a major thoroughfare and you a spot pedestrian traipsing down the side of a road that has no sidewalk? For me, my brain generally circulates through a recurring set of possibilities. I imagine that maybe he is poor, homeless, or mentally unstable. I wonder whether his car broke down. Or I reason that perhaps his license was suspended.

I realized, as I thought about these scenarios, that all of my explanations assumed some sort of deficiency, that the man lacks some basic need. I realized that I was working from the assumption that no capable person with adequate means would walk as a functional means of transportation. I doubt I’m the only one who has thought this way

Technology, as it develops, not only changes the proportions of our lives, but it also changes our perceptions, just like it has with walking and driving. With the advent of mechanized transportation, walking has been relegated to evening exercise, the weekend stroll, or the narrow needs required at the office, the mall, and the home. In the same way that horse-drawn carriages are now quaint pleasure rides, walking is a luxury, not primarily a functional necessity. I mean, we might get annoyed if the parking lot is full at the grocery store.

My sister moved downtown Chicago to go to college. When we came to visit her, she would take my parents and I to some new restaurant or store in the area. After the 9th block, my parents and I would be wondering how much farther it was. My sister had grown accustomed to walking everywhere. We, on the other hand, were happy to navigate our town ensconced in glass and steel.

Technology changes how we think about things as simple as walking. When people walk where we expect only cars to travel, walking is transformed from natural to abnormal. Even though, as in Boston, the reality may be the other way around.

Proportions, Proximity, and Pace of Life

2009-06-04T12:00:00.002-05:00

(Continued from "Boston on Foot.")

Our increased ability to reach distant places more quickly hasn’t only changed how we travel though. It’s changed how and where we live. Living 40 miles from work made no sense even 50 years ago. Instead employees chose to live and work in closer proximity—probably requiring less time to commute as well. Likewise, they shopped at nearby stores, worshiped in nearby churches, and spent time with nearby friends.

In my own life, I’ve chosen to live some 200+ miles from family and even more from friends because I know I can cover that distance in my car quite in just a few hours. But despite this capability, I am still separated from them by a significant distance. I’ve chosen that distance because I’m able to close it if and when I choose, but that distance still disconnects me from them. And in reality my range of life defaults to what’s nearby and eventually disconnects me from those farther away, no matter what I could do in theory.

In my social psychology class in college, we learned that “proximity breeds liking.” It is still true. This past year a few friends moved in to our apartment building. These were the friends I went to Boston with. Had it been others who’d moved in, our roadtrip might’ve included those people instead. I’ve become closer with them emotionally because I’m closer to them in proximity. Indeed, my closest friends over the past ten years have always been those I’m living with. Maybe that’s partly my nature, but we can’t like those we don’t know or don’t see.

The proportions of proximity do change with technology. The person I call my neighbor may not live across the hall or down the street anymore (even Jesus recognized that). Being aware of this reality is important, even if we choose to live according to these new proportions.

Twice a week I carpool with a colleague from work. Last fall there was a mid-afternoon thunderstorm that knocked out power to most of the traffic lights on our route. Our normal 25-minute commute took more than an hour. As we crawled along, we noticed all sorts of scenes and features that we’d never noticed whizzing past—a trail into the woods, a sign, a house, a store.

Sometimes I wonder if life is meant to be taken in at the pace of our legs. The faster we travel, the farther ahead we cast our eyes. On my feet, stopping to smell the roses wouldn’t cause a traffic jam. In my car, I may miss the roses altogether. And the only scents I notice are diesel exhaust fumes, burning oil, and the occasional skunk.

Boston on Foot

2009-06-02T12:00:00.002-05:00

I visited Boston this past Memorial Day weekend with some friends. Boston is called “The Walking City.” As we drove through the downtown, that title’s accuracy was immediately apparent. People were out walking everywhere, not only in the historical districts but throughout the city in many different neighborhoods. The sidewalks were packed with foot traffic. Some locals told me that many Bostonians don’t have cars. In fact, the couple we stayed with didn’t own one.

Since McLuhan’s Understanding Media was fresh in my head, I filtered my Boston experience through the book’s perspective. (That’s when you know it’s a good book!) McLuhan argues that technology changes the proportions by which we live our lives. This argument helped me understand why Boston is indeed a walking city.

Boston is one of the oldest cities in the country. Harvard was established in 1636, which means that Boston was already a place on the map. In 1636, most people used one means of transportation: their feet. Indeed I was told that many of the roads in Boston were simply paved cattle paths. That’s why GPS is so unreliable there. There is no street grid.

The US pushed westward as transportation developed faster and faster transportation. Trains, cars, and airplanes all came into mass use as the US moved west. Thus, further west, you see cities and towns developing differently, with different proportions, from those in the east.

Chicago was a major water port and train center in its developing days. For this reason there are some 5 to 8 major rail lines fanning out from Union and Ogilvie Stations. This transportation changed the proportions we lived by. We need no longer travel by foot or horse, but by rail. Man could go farther in the same amount of time. Over time, these railways have allowed the Chicago suburbs to expand farther and farther west. People now live some 40 miles west or north of Chicago but take the commuter train in every morning. This was unthinkable for a city like Boston during its development. The proportions changed in the 200 years between Boston’s birth and Chicago’s.

Likewise the proportions have changed farther west in cities like Scottsdale, Arizona where the car is the primary means of transportation. That city’s layout and traffic patterns probably reflect the car’s primary usage. It’s known for its sprawling exurbs, catering to the proportions we live by with cars replacing our feet.

And now, with air travel, many states in the Midwest have been dubbed “flyover states” by those who travel between New York and LA. The patterns continue to change as our transportation technology changes.

Obedience rises in the mourning.

2009-06-02T11:16:00.000-05:00

I’ve been in church all my life. I’ve lived among Christians who know their Bibles and take notes during sermons. And like them, I resemble outsiders much more than I resemble Jesus.

Last Sunday morning walking into church, I was thinking about what obedience looks like in my life, in my context, in the world I inhabit. I thought maybe God, in his infinite wisdom, would take all those variables into account when I faced his judgment. I would receive grace as I struggled to know what obedience looks like here and now, even if it looks different from what I read in my Bible.

The sermon wrecked my rationale. You know it’s a good sermon when it dismantles your defenses and reminds you of everything you’ve know and don’t want to admit.

For all us church kids who know our Bibles, I’ve been trying to figure out how knowledge translates into obedience. Implicit in most sermons is one answer: Obedience is the result of having enough information. If they aren’t obeying, give them more information. Close the case. Prove your argument.

But that answer just hasn’t worked very well. Look at us. Even as we have more and better Bible scholarship, there’s more and better information in conflict too. The proportions for and against remain about the same. No, the problem isn’t a want for information.

I think obedience is a matter of mourning. We don’t need to be convinced; we already are. Instead, we need to mourn the losses of the things we love—the things keeping us from obeying, the things keeping us from God. We need to have a funeral for all the things we prioritize above God—our idols, our ideals, ourselves.

I think a church kid’s movement toward obedience can take a cue from the famous Stages of Grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When I’m faced with the hard and fast lines Jesus takes against the sins in my life, I wriggle and writhe. I do a lot of things to avoid accepting it and obeying. I don’t need more information, more head knowledge. I need to deal with it emotionally. I don’t need to read more books and feel conviction. I need to cry about not getting my way, and then let it go.

The stages of grief make sense to me for this process. I might amend them a bit. Maybe something like rationalizing, resistance, compromising, mourning, and obedience. But I think the five stages as they are serve as a good guide. There are a lot of places in my life where I need to grieve my priorities and the inconveniences that will come from obeying. I need to have a funeral and bury what’s dead. And I’ll cry for a while, maybe go back and try to dig up the bones and resurrect it, but maybe after a while I’ll be okay. I’ll stop grieving over things that were dying anyway. And in their place, I’ll find things that won’t.

A Community of Weakness

2009-06-01T16:48:00.002-05:00

The antithesis to transience is not stability but commitment. For 20somethings, commitment is foreign currency in our economy.

The problem is that where commitment is not sewn, fear springs up. It is a fear of abandonment, and it will drive us inward. We rely on ourselves to meet our own needs because we have quit trust that others will give of themselves.

But we cannot satisfy our own needs. Even as we know our need, we know that we do not have the capacity to fulfill it alone. We need others. When we find them, if we still do not trust them, we use them. We manipulate them to meet our needs. We expend all our energy to achieve this end.

This inward orientation is the opposite of community, and we must fight it. Even as others turn inward we must continue turning outward. As others are full of fear, we must continue trusting even when we are empty and waiting. As others are isolating themselves from community, we must be open to it. As others are taking, we must give.

We choose to wait. We choose to absorb their insults when we refuse to be manipulated. We choose to be drained when they do not give back. The outward orientation of relying on others, of trusting, of opening up, of giving, is a position of weakness. And that is just how God would have it be. A community of weakness.

Extending your reach

2009-06-01T08:00:00.001-05:00

McLuhan called media the “extensions of man.” He used the word “media” almost synonymously with “technology.” Technology, he said, extended man’s senses and capabilities. With a radio, a man could project his voice farther. With a home, a man extended beyond his own skin the space he controls and embodies. With writing, a man could outsource his memory or communicate his ideas beyond those he could speak with.

“Outsourcing” is a good way to think of technology too. Technology is a way to outsource man’s senses and capabilities. Over time, we’ve developed newer and better ways to outsource these. Thus, as technology has increased (and at an increasing rate), we’ve outsourced more of these dimensions.

We indeed still have our 5 senses and numerous other dimensions like memory, language, and emotion. However, as technology extends or outsources any one of these dimensions, we begin using those dimensions for different things. When that happens the equilibrium among them is thrown off. Recalibrating these dimesions means changing any number of them to compensate for the imbalance. We are foolish to believe that this recalibration is not a spiritual matter.

Status Updates: Life Between the Scenes

2009-05-15T17:32:00.002-05:00

I've heard some people complain about Facebook's status updates. Some think they border on narcissism. Other's complain that we don't need to know about the minutiae of people's live. Who cares, they ask, that friend #143 is out for a buying dog food for Duke with a buy 1 get 1 free coupon, posted at 5:17 pm?

Maybe these accusations are true. Maybe we are narcisstic and our lives are full of mundane details. But does Facebook make us narcissistic or our lives mundane? Maybe we were already narcissistic to start with. I have a hunch that this is the case.

As for the minutiae in our lives, the truth is that those status updates are oppotunities to share a glimpse of the human experience. Is life mundane, or are we simply fed movies that film only the important scenes and edit out the minutiae, the in-betweens of real life? Status updates are an opportunity to report what happened until "6 months later" when they finally got back together and what it really looks like when they "lived happily ever after." Life goes on between the climax and the denoument, excruciatingly long as that period sometimes is.

I need to know that, to see that. Status updates give me a better picture (albeit, still skewed, still mediated) of life as it's really lived, in the meantime when we are becoming who we are.

Questions to help me avoid the real issue.

2009-05-11T22:35:00.002-05:00

As you might have noticed, I’ve picked up Crazy Love to read. If you haven’t read it, don’t. It will make you uncomfortable. It won’t let you look yourself in the mirror and feel okay about how you’re not giving God what he deserves. I’ve had to put it down a few times because I couldn’t deal with the conviction.

I asked the question not too long ago, “When is it okay to say no to a good thing?” Maybe you remember. When is it okay not to feel convicted and make the sacrifice to help? This book isn’t letting me off the hook. As my friend says who gave me this book, “It’s wrecking me.” It is.

Here’s why. It’s a question of response versus action. Is the Christian life primarily one of responding faithfully to what comes at me? Or is it primarily about setting out to act faithfully according to my convictions? Is obedience to God defined more by how I act or how I react? Is it okay to live how I’m living and be obedient when the challenges show up at my doorstep? Or do I need to step out the door and go find the challenges myself? Do I just take what comes or do I go out and make something happen?

The answer of course is probably in-between, both, a mix, c) all of the above. But that doesn’t help much.

In reality, the truth is that I’m not obedient in either regard, neither with what comes at me, nor with the potential to go find something to be obedient in doing. I’m failing under either rubric. I recently read it put this way: “We’re educated beyond our obedience.”

I know my Bible. I know what God has said and what he expects. I don’t have to do any theological interpretation to understand it. I don’t need any commentaries or study notes or sermon applications. I know what it says, and I don’t do it.

Maybe these questions are just sidestepping the issue. Maybe these two sides are just splitting hairs. Maybe when Jesus said, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off” he was neither exaggerating nor expecting us to mutilate our bodies. Maybe he simply expected us avoid the issue of mutilation versus exaggeration altogether by simply obeying and not sinning in the first place.

Like I said, don’t read the book.

Bottom leaders

2009-05-11T10:33:00.001-05:00

The director of my department at work had an impromptu motivational speech in the office today. He differentiated between management and leadership. Management is organizing resources to get a job done. Leadership is envision and different future and mobilizing people to work toward it. He came up with four components for leadership.

Imagination: Imagining a future other than the one you’re en route to.
Writing down the seeds of your ideas.
Soliciting the help of others. (I think. . .)
Leading by example.

Then he talked about how change begins. It could start, he suggested, with our COO or with himself, but creating change through top-down leadership isn’t a sure thing. He singled out a colleague of mine who started a reading group, to read and discuss good writing, to shape our aesthetic, to give us a vision of what the books we work on could be with some work. He’s definitely a leader by example, but within our department, he’s one of the youngest workers here.

The term “bottom leader” came to mind. I like it because it rhymes with “bottom feeder” and communicates a place and a humility in leadership. But it also communicates a grassroots-level style of leadership. My colleague would be a bottom leader in this way. How does he do it? Well, I tell him he’s a “raver.” He convinces more people to read books than anyone I know just because he goes on and on about them. He talks, unabashedly, about their distinct value and the qualities that make them worthy of raving about. He nearly convinced me to read The Brothers Karamazov as a summer project.

I think bottom leading is a relatively thankless job. I think a lot of bottom leaders rankle against the authorities and eventually lose heart and the will to persevere. Bottom leaders want to change the way things are, but often they have few resources beyond love and passion to fuel interest for the change they seek. But sometimes you just keep raving because the vision is just that big.

Just a few Monday morning thoughts. Hail to the bottom leaders.

Crazy Love quotes

2009-05-10T15:05:00.003-05:00

". . . while God doesn't need us but still wants us, we desperately need God but don't really want Him most of the time."

". . . if God is truly the greatest good on earth, would He be loving if He didn't draw us toward what is best for us [that is, himself]?"

Francis Chan

The New Zeal

2009-05-09T07:37:00.011-05:00

I went to my favorite bookstore yesterday. I went looking for George Whitefield's writings. I left work early because it's only open until 5:30 on weekdays and isn't open on Saturdays or Sundays. Not exactly convenient for customers, but that makes a visit more valuable. I might come across good paperback novels at used bookstores or interesting current books at Barnes and Noble, but the books I really go hunting for aren't usually in those stores. Books by Whitefield aren't really selling enough to keep in stock on the shelves. That's why this one's my favorite. It had a number of hard-to-find books that I wanted. I spent way too much.

The owner of the store has to be in his 90s. He still moves around pretty well, but his voice fades in and out. His eyes are clear but curtained with wrinkled eyelids. He's hunched a bit, and his computer is about 15 years young. The database of books he maintains doesn't require a mouse. He rings the books up by hand and adds tax that way too. "Have to give the governor his portion," he told me.

Like I said, he had three books you're not going to find at Barnes and Noble without ordering them, not even at a specialty Christian bookstore. Sure, you can find them on Amazon, maybe, and spend less. But that's lame.

And you don't get to have a conversation on Amazon, or meet a man who's full of life and wisdom, who might tip over if you brushed up against him, who has too much life left, too many books to read to call it quits when he breathes his last. I've always tried to make conversation with Mr Roberts when I come in, but it's only been passing humor. For me it was humor. For him it was passing.

So I was excited at the register when he pointed and said, "I have a reference book over here on Whitefield's writings and his opposers." I pulled it off the shelf. It was three inches thick, on pages almost the size of printer paper. He told me, "I put that together before computers"--in the early 1960s, I found out. He'd visited a "few hundred libraries in this country and in the United Kingdom" to find all the writings. He'd catalogued what they were about and what libraries they were located in.

I've never been that focused on anything, I thought. I started asking questions (they do wonders for conversations!) about Whitefield and Wesley. "Wesley," I said, "seems the more popular of the two revivalists."

"That's because he was an organizer. Whitefield was the real mobilzer. He was the greater preacher. The revivals had already started two years before Wesley's famous conversion. Wesley simply united what was already happening"

"But Wesley eclipsed Whitefield," I said.

"Well, when you're doing the work of the Holy Spirit, it doesn't necessarily result in anything people will remember you for," he responded. "When it becomes more arranged and congealed, then people begin to get credit by association. Wesley coordinated what was already happening."

I just came in for the book, but I found a man who had done his research. Try to find that on Amazon. He told me two stories, one about Wesley and one about a drunk.

"Wesley came to the United States at one point and met a woman," he told me. "He decided he needed to list and compare her positive and negative traits." He indeed sounded like an organized guy. This didn't seem so bad to me. Sometimes you need to weigh it out. "Then he showed it to her. She was understandably upset. But that's the kind of man Wesley was. He dealt with women tactlessly. He was never found to have inappropriate relations with these women, but he just didn't think it through very well."

"Sounds a bit like Peter," I said. "Very impulsive." Those men, captured by God, are powerful forces for the Kingdom.

"Whitefield," he told me, "was a great orator. In a tavern there was a drunk man who decided to have a contest with two other patrons to see who could preach like Whitefield the best. The tavern owner brought out a Bible, spinning it on its spine, and letting it fall open. Wherever it fell open, they had to preach from it like Whitefield. When it was the drunk man's turn, his passage fell open. As he was preaching, he himself felt convicted by his own words, left the tavern, and was never drunk again."

"God's word is a powerful thing," I said. Mr Roberts agreed.

He still travels and speaks he told me, had been in North Carolina just four weeks ago. He told me that he sensed a new religious fervor in young people under the age of 30. "Under 30 and over 65. It's weighted on both ends. Those are the people who are seem the most intent on God's work."

"My parents have said the same thing," I told him. "They sense a renewed interest among the younger generation."

"It's true. The people in between show up, but not with the same investment."

His observations interested me because they were independent of my parents'. He was an old man who you would guess is far removed from the life of culture and current events, tucked inside his tinderbox bookstore. But instead he's engaged and observant.

His observations interested me. You start paying attention when you hear the same thing from disconnected sources. Is there a renewal going on? Is there a zeal reigniting in my generation? Don't we all think that of our own generation--that we are the new hope, young and alive? Yet, here is an old man, on the other end of life telling me this. And I wonder what it means? And I hope he's right. And I wonder whether there's a way I can grab a stick and stoke the fire.

Getting more than my feet wet.

2009-05-08T16:08:00.001-05:00

I have an amazing small group. I wish you could be there. I’d say there are moments that are magic, but magic is the wrong word. We meet at Panera Bread, and it gets noisy in there. There’s lots of distractions. Some weeks there’s hardly any customers there, other weeks there’s so much going on around us, we all have to lean in to listen and we have to repeat ourselves. You can’t control it. You can’t plan for it. I wish it wasn’t like that, but honestly that’s the way life is with God too. Sometimes God’s sitting at a table by the window in our hearts with us, and so many things are going in and out, there’s a vacuum, a softball team, a beeping oven, a blender, a rattling bread cart across the tile floor in the kitchen. It’s just easy to get distracted an miss important stuff. So maybe this is just practice for that.

Here’s why it’s like something like magic. There are moments when the conversation turns with a single comment, one honest reaction, and all those distractions dissolve around us. We see something anew, feel something like love for something like good. Remember when you were a kid at the pool? It was noisy and sunny and hot, full of laughter and splashing and sparkling light. Then you dove in the deep end, and everything was muted, cool, darker, and you were all alone. You had a moment to think clearly or come back to yourself or relax. That’s what it’s like in those moments that are like magic.

It’s like that, except I don’t experience it alone. I experience it with others. We share the experience together. When we’re underwater, I always want to capture it and write it down and tell you about it, but I know I can’t. I can’t make you feel the muted coolness. I couldn’t do justice to it. I wouldn’t be able to make you understand. Partly because it’s not just about understanding it. What’s there to understand about being underwater? No, it’s what you experience that changes you. Or, well, it changes me at least.

Of course, I can’t hold my breath forever. I have to come up for air. I come up dripping wet.

Green anomaly?

2009-05-08T12:25:00.001-05:00

It seems that most trends or movements or whatever you want to call them have major figures who lead the charge. I suppose it makes sense: People need a personality with whom they can get on board. They need to identify with a person before they can really adopt an idea. We’re relational beings. People like Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Princess Di, Bono, and others have each been those sorts of figures for their causes. Even Jesus is like that. Most great movements in history are attached to a personality.

But I was thinking about how the “greening of America” has developed over the last few years, and how the figures leading that charge aren’t really visible. It seems like a very diffused movement. The most visible figure I could think of is veep Al Gore with his global warming initiatives and movies. But that seems a bit outside the center of the green trend. Global warming is a piece of it, but I don’t see it as the central one. Maybe I’m wrong. Either way, he’s not a dominating figure for the cause as a whole. Are there other figures who are really driving this trend? Why hasn’t the greening trend had a major figure stand out yet? Is it simply that it’s enough of a inner conviction for people that need no outside encouragement to act? Is “green” simply a really marketable commodity that businesses are pushing to sell their wares (think “FlexFuel,” “Hybrids,” recyclable everything)? Is the trend just really good at being organic instead of manufactured (the medium is the message…)?

Note to Self

2009-05-06T11:24:00.001-05:00

If you ever recount a story where a lesson is learned, be sure that you’re the one learning the lesson, not the one teaching it. Otherwise, you just look arrogant.

"Where now is our authority?"

2009-05-06T08:34:00.001-05:00

Last week, I finished a short book called The Great Emergence. I’ve found some of the best and hardest books I’ve read are short ones. Their wording is concise and their scope is immense. They demand a lot of their readers.

The Great Emergence was a wide-ranging book, covering the past 2000 years in about 110 pages. You try it.

Phyllis Tickle’s big idea is that cultures make big shifts every 500 years, and with them faith does too. (1) Gregory the Great consolidates the papacy around AD 600. (2) The Great Schism occurs, splitting Eastern and Western Orthodox churches around AD 1100. (3) Luther started the (Great) Reformation around AD 1517.

Where does that leave us in the 21^st century? At another 500-year hinge. Tickle calls it “The Great Emergence.”

Tickle says the single big question that is always under review at these points in history is “Where is our authority?” This was the question being asked in each of the previous pivotal eras. We are facing the same question today. Sola Scriptura has been under scrutiny attack and question for about 100 years now. It’s only getting harder for conservatives to defend. Tickle shows us how Sola Scriptura has begun crumbling, bringing us face-to-face with very contemporary issues (abortion, gay rights), and she continually returns us to this question, driving home her point.

Tickle makes an interesting observation about power, almost as an aside. But I think it’s quite intentional on her part. She says power was once derived from lineage, then from money, and now from information. In other words, nowadays we appeal to experts who are the most educated in a certain field: lawyers, doctors, pastors.

However, with the Internet, a sudden diffusion of information has subsequently diffused power as well. We have access to more information, thus more power, than ever before. That could change everything.

Thus, when the question is asked, “Where now is our authority?” I respond by saying it’s no longer primarily in experts with the most education and information. Instead, I believe it will be in the crowd. Like crowd-sourcing, like “the wisdom of crowds,” I believe people will begin appealing to their own immediate communities. Call it “wisdom in the counsel of many.”

I find this happening in my own life. I seek the wise counsel of those closest to me, who know me and my circumstances. I ask their advice (or am trying to more often). I look for themes among their answers. As a Christian listening to them, I trust it is not just wise human counsel but the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking through them. No, no one person is the voice of God, and no I can’t be sure that the theme I’m hearing is God speaking, but I do trust that God gives discernment and clarity if I’m humble, attentive, and listening. No, the Bible isn’t outmoded or without authority. Rather, it is another voice in the community. After all, the great community of people called the church (including those who wrote the Scripture to begin with) together decided that the Bible should have that sort of voice of authority. The Bible itself is the voice of a community speaking.

“Where now is our authority?” My guess is that it will be in the voice of the community.

“But you don’t have to take my word for it.”

"Hey Jealousy!"

2009-05-03T16:16:00.003-05:00

I had this thought cross my mind yesterday, "I want to make people jealous of good things."

We mostly think of jealousy in a bad light. This makes sense, but not because jealousy itself is bad but because we're generally jealous of bad things. It's the objects of our desire, not our desires themselves.

But what if we were jealous of something good? Then we could indulge our desires for it.

Two years ago, I decided to sit down on a Friday night and watch a movie. All by myself. Mike stopped in before heading somewhere else for the evening. Weeks later he told me he was jealous of my night in. Then maybe 6 months ago, on a Friday night, Mike was torn between two different activities for the evening. Back and forth, you know how that is. Finally, he sat back and said, "I'm going to just stay in tonight and enjoy that." So he did.

It was really unintentional on my part. I was just doing what I wanted. It was really neither good nor bad. But what if we could make actual good things look good? Life is full of bad things that look good. Do good things just have bad PR? Maybe that's part of it. Maybe, too, part of it is that we just attach our desires to the bad things, like I said. We're just messed up like that.

But man, if we can find good things and make them look good, and show other people how good they are, maybe we can make them jealous for good things. That would be pretty cool.

Hording and Shedding Blessing

2009-05-03T16:04:00.002-05:00

I'm reading Christopher Wright's, The Mission of God (sporadically). Today he drove home the idea that Israel was to serve as a blessing to the nations. By virtue of their relationship to Abraham (Gen 12:1-3), Israel would would cast profligate blessing upon "all nations."

Of course, Paul then expanded what it meant to be Israel, he expanded it to include outsiders. In doing so, Israel began to be a blessing, by incorporating we who are the outcasts, outside the circle, the unaccepted. But at the same time, as we become the insiders, we become Israel, giving the opportunity to spread the love, share the blessing.

Here we are though, often hording the blessing. We keep it for ourselves thinking that God has given it to us for our benefit. No. We are blessed to bless others. We are called to be part of God's mission in using our blessing, the opportunities it gives us, to flippantly bless others without requirement. We get to fly through life shedding blessing on others. Blessings only become burdens if we hold on to them. Lighten your load and bless someone!

Suffering that isn't on television

2009-05-02T15:52:00.005-05:00

Recently I was wondering, "When do you start saying no to good things?" There are so many good things to support and serve out there. How do you choose? How do you prioritize?

As I was reading Flickering Pixels this morning, Shane Hipps chimed in with his perspective. Here's what he said.

"The human psyche isn't designed to withstand the full gravity of planetary suffering. Numbness and exhaustion are natural inclinations. Feeling helpless and hopeless is nearly inevitable. The heart can only stretch so far before it is worn thin and wrung dry. This is empathy at a distance.

"Over time, if unchecked, this numbness undermines our ability to extend compassion to those in our own city, neighborhood, or even our own houses. The pain of the world, experienced through television, can keep us from understanding and alleviating the pain we encounter in our daily lives. The task of recalibrating our psyche and reigniting compassion must begin with local relationships."

It's true. The television works like a river, flooding sad story after sad story into our living rooms. We can't swim upstream to touch it or change its current. We're just carried along in that sadness. We're just as helpless to change their conditions as they are. We can't bear the emotional drain of perpetual helplessness. Eventually we have to disengage from it.

Hipps then relates the story of sitting with a friend who's wife had just left him. He is present physically and emotionally in that pain with his friend. He goes on.

"When pain and suffering are right in front of us, we're moved to act and respond. Exposure to local traumas revitalizes our compassionate instincts.

"Direct service to people around us heals our feelings of helplessness and apathy. It is quite possible that the needs of some far-off place are greater. But you aren't there. You're here, and there are needs galore in your own backyard. We do what we can, where we are, and watch the world change life by life."

I appreciated this. I felt encouraged by it. We've become quite distracted with the desire to create big change, lasting change, felt change. But that's indulgent and self-centered. In reality we need small change, personal change, relational change. This isn't glorious, but it's real. This is a quick fix but a long-term challenge worth persevering in.

Believing the right things (how much is enough?) versus Loving the right things (which ones?)*

2009-05-02T11:42:00.007-05:00

In Hipps current book I'm reading, Flickering Pixels, he talks about the binary categories emphasized through print culture and the holism that is rising through visual culture. He points out that this has implications for the way think conceive of our faith. With this shift, we're beginning to think differently about how salvation works out. Instead of the off/on categories of being unsaved and saved and placing people in one column of the "ledger" as Hipps says, we're beginning to think of it more like a process or continuum.

"Of course it's a process," many people would say. "That's called sanctification!"

Again with our binary systems.

I, personally, find the continuum analogy much more useful. In my mind, this shift from binary to continuum-based thinking about salvation parallels another way I've been thinking about faith. The binary system emphasizes belief and truth. Once you get your doctrine right and your beliefs in order, you change columns. Boom! Saved. In that system it's primarily about Truth and knowing it.

Parallel to the continuum-based thinking is an emphasis on relationship and love. Now this is something that has begun to creep in to conservative theology. The "it's not about religion but relationship" is a beachhead of postmodern faith in the modern mind.

Unlike truth, love isn't a right-and-wrong dichotomy. It's just better or worse, but it's still love. There certainly is a love/don't love dichotomy, but that's much easier to define in the context of faith than trying to figure out, "Okay, how much truth is enough? How much do I need to know to be saved?"

Whereas emphasizing knowledge and belief to be saved becomes a "how much" question, it's not that way with love. Love, strong or weak, is love. Somehow it feels foolish to ask, "Do I love Jesus enough?"

In the end, of course, we need both, but somehow love makes more sense in the head. Funny how the heart does that.

* These are ideas in process and not final theological statements. And they are not completely orthodox or even clearly articulated, so please be discerning. Much love.

Technology as Spiritual Formation: Opening Questions

2009-05-01T18:31:00.002-05:00

As we think about technology as spiritual formation, we need a guide. For me, for now, Shane Hipps is our man. He's done some good thinking about it. But he's not the first either. He points us to Marshall McLuhan. MM gives us 4 questions to ask, that will help us start to think about how technology is shaping us.

First we need to do the basic work of technology analysis. McLuhan can help us out here. He has what he calls "Laws of Media." These are four essential questions to help individuals understand media’s power, but also its limitations and dangers. Technology has certain characteristics and these question will help us see those.

(1) What does the medium extend? This refers to what human ability is extended or amplified by the technology.

(2) What does the medium make obsolete? This refers to the old technology that is replaced by the new technology and whether that old technology is completely useless or relegated to specialized usage.

(3) What does the medium reverse into? This question explores the potential dangers of a new technology by imagining its effects when pushed to an extreme, typically the opposite of what it’s meant to resolve.

(4) What does the medium retrieve? This is related to Law #2. It refers to what old technology is renewed and expanded. This question can help answer #3 by looking at the problems that were created by the old technology pushed to an extremes.

We'll start with these four questions, but later we'll need others to help us too. These first four will help us analyze technology. We'll need others to help us evaluate it.

But that's for later. Next up, we'll ask these questions about some different technologies out there. We'll look at a Shane Hipps example, then maybe at television, cell phones, and then maybe Internet, Facebook, or Twitter.

Stay tuned.

Mission > Leader

2009-04-30T13:49:00.001-05:00

Jesus on Leadership is continually coming back to the concept of mission.

Mission isn’t primarily about leadership at all. Mission is bigger than that. It encompasses both leaders and followers. Followers join leaders on the mission. Mission is the purpose or goal or end. Thus, it is also the reason we go do something. Mission is the reason leaders lead and followers follow.

If leaders lead because they like leadership or want its prestige or privilege, there is no mission beyond self-interest; once they have leadership they will have no other compelling mission because they’ve accomplished their mission. If followers follow because they like the leader, they will not move toward the goal unless the leader deflects their attention and points beyond himself (not only in what they say, but how they live and lead). This ongoing deflection diminishes the leader and magnifies the mission. This ongoing deflection will alienate followers who are looking for a leader but not for a mission. A mission will require effort, and many followers will reject it for that reason. Leaders shouldn’t take it personally.

A few things I’m contemplating about leaders:

Leaders follow.
Leaders listen.
Leaders wait.
Leaders trust.
Leaders serve.