Waiting for Christmas instead of Making it Happen

I was given a book with readings for Advent recently for my birthday (thanks Ashley!) and the reading for Nov. 28 was by Henri Nouwen and is about waiting. He discusses how Mary and Elizabeth went through their pregnancies expectantly (pardon the pun) waiting and supporting each other in that waiting period. He also points out how this was not passive and was hopeful for a promise to be fulfilled, but in our age we view waiting as passive and as the very opposite of hope. Hope has to do with making a plan, doing it, and hoping it works, not with waiting. As he says in the reading, 'We want the future to go in a very specific direction, and if this does not happen we are disappointed..we want to do the things that will make the desired event take place.' We want to take charge, make it happen!

Clearly there are times when we should take action. As C.S. Lewis has noted, some things only happen by our work. Our hands will not come clean by praying for them to come clean: we must go wash them. The dinner will not get prepared by praying for dinner: we must get up to cook it. But Lewis also points out that while some things only get done by our work some things only get done by prayer. Some only get done by marriage and family. Some only get done by humility and waiting.

It  struck me in reading this that some areas of our lives have clear boundaries and others do not. In my work in R&D we are limited by the laws of physics and chemistry. No matter how often Marketing says, 'just go invent something: here is some money, go invent' that does not change the boundaries. Once we find an area of technology that looks to have promise for our applications, we are still bounded by what it can do within it's boundaries. We can only go where the technology is able to go. That may not be where the business wanted to go.  In that sense we often 'wait' for the next thing, the breakthrough. Waiting is forced on us by our boundaries. This seems foreign to some other functions, though, where they decide to 'make it happen' and put on an ad campaign, run coupons, offer incentives, and so on. Money seems to be the only limit or boundary. But in science, more money will not necessarily get you where you want to go. You may need to wait, or you may need to realize it can't be done.

Many of us bring our 'make it happen' approach to Christmas. We will not take time to seek the Lord, to contemplate His coming, to make room in our hearts for that Coming to be refreshed in us. We just make it happen:  we decorate, buy gifts, cook, send cards, go to events, and so on. But I, for one, need to wait, to set aside some time to just wait. Expectantly.

The Promise and Thanksgiving

We are studying Hebrews in our Sunday morning Bible Study (aka, 'Sunday School') and this week in chapter 6 God's promise to Abraham is recalled, and the word 'promise' is used over and over again. This emphasis on the promise of God to Abraham is not just here, but is also talked about by Paul in Romans. In the Old Testament, the first inkling of this promise occurs as Adam and Eve are evicted from the Garden, and recurs over and over in both the Torah and tbe Prophets. We are often told that the Old Testament is about Law and the New Testament about Grace, but Dr. Walter Kaiser has proposed that a better understanding would be that the Old Testament is about the Promise and the New about fulfiling that Promise. I like that. Law is a sub-plot of the Promise.

Does this matter? Kaiser insists that it does, and I agree. Too many folks have understood the Law versus Grace dichotomy to mean a fundamental difference in how God deals with mankind between the Old and New Testaments.  It almost looks as if the basic relationship of man with God is different, being accomplished by Law in the O.T. and grace through faith in the New. Not so says Kaiser. It has always been a matter of faith in God's ability to keep His Promise. During the O.T. the fulfillment of that Promise stood at a different place, but the issue was the same: will God keep His Promise, or not?

Thanksgiving marks the start of Advent. In the U.S. it stands as a day of thanks for our blessings, but as the start of Advent is ushers in the season of remembering the greatest blessing: the anniversary of God taking on flesh to make Himself known in the keeping of His Promise. He has kept His Promise. Let us give thanks!

White Space

In the recent online version of Christianity Today magazine there is an article about viewing productivity in a Christian manner. One comment in the article is that to be truly productive we need some 'white space' in our schedules, unscheduled time that allows us time to think, ponder, and create as well as downtime to rest and recharge. I have always found that to be true, and I think it is more true for us introverts who need time alone to recharge than for extroverts who often can recharge with other people. I find the need for white space increasingly evident as I grow older.

The reason for this is that as I grow older, stress shows up more visibly. I was reminded of this again this past week.  When I get overly tired or stressed, a condition called 'Iritis' in my eyes flares up, causing red and inflamed eyes. This is an autoimmune problem and it isn't really known what causes it,  which makes it somewhat like psoriasis. As my eyes turned red this past week, I realized that I was more tired and stressed than I had thought. This sort of thing never happened to me until after about age 45, though I no doubt had as much or more stress in those earlier days.  However, nowadays my phyical frame doesn't deal with that stress as well as it once did so I get stronger signals when I need to get some additional 'white space'. I am certainly less productive when I am forced to take time out to let my eyes recover!

So I have no choice at times but to leave some white space in my life. Good thing. I obviously need it.

Boston, the American Revolution, and the Current Election

I recently visited Boston for a training conference and took an hour to visit the Old State House building downtown, which was the colonial capital building for the colony of Massachusetts and the seat of the first legislature after independence. When we had been here on vacation to walk the Liberty Trail we got to the statehouse just as it was closing, so this let me complete that part of the Trail. I have often pondered the American Revolution and wondered whether I could have supported that war. Going to war over taxation (Taxation with Representation!) always struck me as not a very good reason to go to war; war is a very extreme remedy for high and unfair taxes. However, in  going through the Old Statehouse museum there were some quotes from colonists about how 'it isn't the taxes so much as the taxability' that angered the colonists. As I have pondered my own anger at the current direction of our government I think I have gained at least some insight into how the colonists felt.

The museum had displays about things like the Writs of Assistance (which allowed search and siezure of personal property at any time for any reason), forced housing of troops in homes, the Stamp Act to tax all pieces of paper, and other things that generally made the colonists angry. It was clear that the throne did not trust them, and they did not trust the throne to act for their common good. They felt abused and without recourse. A poll that was released this week on election day indicated that 75% of Americans were either angry or very dissatisfied with the government (about 25% angry, about 50% dissatisfied). Another 20% or so were neutral, and only 3 percent were satisfied. It seems that Americans neither trust the government to do what is right for the country nor feel that the leadership either trusts or represents them. Many just feel the government is not listening and does not 'get it'. The government treats the people as if they aren't smart enough to know how wonderful their direction really is. After all, we are 'hard wired not to think clearly when we are scared' and are 'clinging to guns and religion' according to the President. All of this results in anger, which I think must be how many of the colonists felt.

I for one am not scared, but I am angry. The election results were intended by the people to send a message to Washington. Listening to the news today, I am not at all sure that they will get the right message. I think many voters are angry for reasons similar to the colonists: a government that is out of control and limited ability to set them straight. That anger in the colonies grew over time due to a number of things, not just the taxes. I think that is the case now as well.  It is not just the economy. It is an accumulation of things. If the next 2 years does not show an improved ability to 'listen' in both Congress and the White House, even stronger messages will get sent.

The Wall Street Journal today included an editorial by Daniel Henninger that discusses how this election has repudiated the direction the Democratic administration was forcing the country to go. It is not yet clear whether the GOP will do any better. The article ended this way: 'If the GOP blows this, one would just as soon not go where a volatile and angry electorate will take the United States.' I agree. It is time for both parties to get in touch with reality.

Arguing with Ourselves

I recently read the book Radical by David Platt. It is a call to change for American Christians and has the subtitle 'Taking back your faith from the American Dream'. He makes a good case that the church in America resembles the 'American Dream' more than it resembles Christ and the early church. He has a lot to say about his ambivalence toward the megachurch situation in the U.S., and I share his ambivalence. Many of the very large evangelical churches have such opulent buildings, such entertainment-driven programming, and such rampant materialism in their membership that they are difficult to differentiate from some vacation resorts.  The materialism espoused by Creflow Dollar, Joel Osteen, and others of their ilk are not the only megachurches with this problem (though they are the worst); it does seem to come with the 'success' mentality that drives the American dream and most of American culture. Growth, numbers, and prosperity are the measure of success both inside and outside the church. He contrasts that with much of what Jesus said which at times seemed to be intended to drive away those who were not ready to follow Him to crucifixion. Numbers were clearly not His goal.

There is much to agree with and to be challenged by in the book. I certainly agree with his proposal that we set a cap, an upper limit, on our lifestyle that we will not go beyond regardless of income we may earn. This has been espoused in the past by Larry Burkett and others but does not get enough play in the church in my opinion. He also espouses something C.S. Lewis recommended back about 50 years ago: when it comes to giving, if it doesn't cramp your style, if it doesn't hurt a bit, if it doesn't cause you to give up something, then it isn't enough. God prospers us so we may help others, not so we can over-indulge on ourselves.

What the author doesn't do enough of, however, is argue with himself. For instance, while the megachurch has its flaws, so do small churches. I  have observed in past blogs that my parents generation was less interested in megachurches because they had more interest in pastoral care from the pastor while my generation has placed a premium on good preaching, and there aren't all that many good preachers. Will the next generation still support megachurches? Or is it just a generational thing? I don't know, but I would have appreciated a bit more discussion, more argument, on the pros/cons of megachurches.

Similarly, while he decries the way Americans apply their 'we can make it happen' attitude to church while ignoring the Holy Spirit, he then seems to imply that we should apply this same ' we can make it happen' approach to missions.  That was a big disconnect for me, partly because I have commented before that it seems to me that missions have failed in some areas of the world, and I think much of that is due to misguided missions work where we have done exactly that.

Still, his challenges at the end to practice discipleship and giving to specific need areas around the world are compelling and the book is well worth reading.

Fall will get here, directly...

It was 2 years ago, in the Fall, that I began to post on this blog. Time flies. I think it goes faster with each year, although this year summer seems to be holding on longer than I would like. I am tired of the endless days above 90 degrees and I am definitely ready for fall to get here.

 For reasons I don't fully understand, Fall is my favorite season. Some of it may have to do with new beginnings. The start of the school year in the fall, though now the administrators have backed it up into mid-summer, was always a time of new beginnings and aspirations.  The cooler weather, when it finally arrives, re-energizes after the dog-days of late summer. Maybe that is why I began this blog in the Fall. Or maybe it had more to do with Jon and Ash going to Oxford and using this to have some conversation, but since that was tied to a school year it still has a connection to autumn. Many of our major moves in life have come in the fall as well. We moved to Memphis to start working with Kimberly-Clark in the fall; we moved from Memphis to Roswell in the fall; we moved from Roswell to Pittsfield in the fall. Of course, when I went to explore seminary, since that had to do with school, that move from Appleton to Chicago also happened in the fall. It has been a time not only of changes in the weather, but changes in life.

This year fall seems to be lagging, though. We were chatting the other day about the word 'directly'. I heard it a lot from my grandfather, and from my father. I recall times sitting on the front porch at my grandparents house when my grandmother or my mother would call to us that supper was just about ready. My grandfather would commonly say, 'We'll be there directly'.  It didn't mean we jumped right up and ran in: we just knew to 'mosey' that way shortly. And it was pronounced  'dreckly'. That way you didn't confuse it with something like the same word used for location, like 'he was directly in front of me' (pronounced 'DIE-rectly'). I expect good things from the fall season, so I am ready for it to get here. I guess it will get here directly.

You are what you were when...

Back in the late 1970's, a professor at the University of Colorado ( I think in psychology) did a film series entitled 'You Are What You Were When'. The gist of it was that the culture, the key world events, and your personal life experiences during your growing up years shape you in a way that stays with you the rest of your life, and to understand any particular generation you need to understand the key events that shaped their life while growing up. For those of us whose parents grew up during the Great Depression, we heard over and over about how tough life was in the 1930's, how a job is not to be taken lightly, how important it is to 'save for a rainy day', how we need to understand 'the value of money', and so forth. The severity of the Depression, the 25% national unemployment, the malnutrition they endured, all of those things had a profound impact on how they viewed the world, and they wanted to transmit those values to us who lived in much more prosperous times. Then the Depression ended in a global war, that brought yet another kind of hardship, often too difficult to even talk about. They sometimes lamented that the message did not fully get through to us the way they had hoped.

Recently Beloit College published their annual list about the mindset of this year's entering freshman class at colleges around the country. The list takes note of things such as this new class thinks email is too slow,  their phones never had cords to twist while you talk on the phone, Czechoslovakia never existed in their life, Russians and Americans always lived and worked together in space, and they never lived under the threat of nuclear missile attack. Even 9/11 is a distant memory to many of them now, half a lifetime ago. As with my parents, many of things that shaped my world view like the Cold War, nuclear attack drills at school, the Vietnam war, 'the pill', civil rights marches and riots, The Silent Spring, The Population Bomb, and double-digit inflation are all part of a distant history to my children, who are all older than this new class. Also like my parents,  I know of no way to really transmit how those things impacted my thinking in a way that comes close to living through them. Again like my parents, I also sometimes wonder if I have done a good enough job in transmitting values about faith, money, defense, the environment (and skepticism in the predictions made about it), family and any number of things.

In that regard the current recession will no doubt have considerable teaching power for things I could only talk about. Attitudes toward debt, jobs, the stock market are undergoing shifts now that will be part of lived reality for this generation. It will no doubt have an impact.

Now I am glad that I heard those Depression stories over and over again. I heard it enough that I at least could understand why my parents and grandparents viewed things the way they did. It does remind me, though, that we older folks need to pause to think about what has shaped the lives of our children and how different it was to the things we often assume as 'givens'. And we need to keep on telling the stories.

The Way of All Flesh

It is interesting how in the course of life you come to have different memories that relate to certain passages of scripture. I was reading in Joshua 23 today and was reminded of my college years. In that chapter, Joshua is giving his farewell address to Israel in his old age as he prepares to die. He reminds them of all the Lord has done for them and warns them to be obedient to the Torah and to follow the Lord lest they lose the blessing of the Lord. As he nears the end of his sermon he says " I am about to go the way of all flesh..." in reference to his impending death.

Whenever I read that passage I laugh. How inappropriate!! How could I do such a thing? Of course, this is where my college years come into the story. As with most campuses, on warm spring days the girls would often put on their swim suits, some of them quite skimpy, and head out into the quad to sunbathe. There were 3 main housing quads-East, North and South-plus a few smaller dorms in the central campus area. There was only one co-ed dorm on campus in those days. South quad in particular had a number of girls-only dorms grouped together, and on sunny spring days that part of campus was thick with sunbathers. The Campus Crusade staff members spent most of their days going to various parts of campus to have one-on-one or small group discipleship meetings, and one of our staff would comment from time to time when heading that way on a warm day, 'Pray for me. I am about to go the way of all flesh!' I laughed then, and I still laugh now whenever I read that passage.

There is more than one 'way of all flesh'. We, as humans, share a great many frailties and temptations. While that isn't what Joshua was saying, the comment by our Crusade staff member was still a valid one. Just  as the fact of death reminds us of our human frailty, so did his comment! Even though I still laugh, it reminds me of the Truth nonetheless.

The Ceremony of Writing

At our family reunion last week one of my uncles had a photo copy of a document from 1918,  my grandfather's release from the draft for the armed forces. My grandfather had lost one leg below the knee in a logging accident when he was 12 years old, and was also legally blind in one eye, so he was exempted from the draft for World War I. The exemption was duly signed by the county draft board representative, who was the grandfather of my cousin's husband. My grandfather did not sign it himself: he had my grandmother, to whom he had been married for maybe a year, sign it on his behalf and then he 'made his mark'. She had been able to complete 5th grade, so her handwriting was better. Appalachia in 1918 was a hard place to grow up, and it got even worse during the Great Depression in the early 1930's.

In a time when many fewer people could read and write, signing an important document really was a ceremony. While my grandfather was able to do his own signature by the time I knew him, I don't really know if he was able to write in 1918 or if it was just slow and laborious so he had my grandmother do it instead. But in any case, to write your signature was an important thing in those days. For those who could not write, it could be an embarrassing thing. I can see how 'signing ceremonies', such as the President signing a new bill into law, would be a much bigger deal in those days than it is now.

This reminded me of what a powerful thing the written word can be. Through much of history writing was both expensive in terms of the cost of paper, ink, and pens, but also required education that many did not have. Writing is taken for granted now, and with computers it is being replaced by 'keyboarding'. In many ways that is a shame.  While in college my mother would write to me sometimes, and she still does. But I only have one letter written in my father's hand. I saved it. Since he was born in 1922,  he grew up in Appalachia when the value placed on education there was still not much different than when my grandfather grew up a few years earlier. Good handwriting was not a priority for them. For him to write a letter was unusual but I am glad he took the time to do that. I am sure it was a chore for him, but it was a blessing to me.

Family Reunions

We had a family reunion yesterday up in Tennessee. We had somewhere around 100 folks show up, which I was very pleased to see. It was my mom's side of the family and all of her living siblings except one were able to attend. There were lots of cousins and their children and grandchildren as well. When I was growing up this side of the family had at least one, sometimes 2 or 3, of this sort of get together every summer since the family was less scattered geographically. It was generally at a public park in the early years, then later at my uncles farm. It was where many of us cousins got to know each other better. In a family like this (mom is one of 13 siblings) it was just about the only way to get everyone in one place, by having the event outside!

The fun and food that happened in those events played an important role in cementing family relationships, in keeping the family acting like a family. Several generations could spend a full day together every so often, talking, playing, eating, discussing all kinds of things: family events, religion, politics. Now that the family is scattered, this happens much less often. My cousin, who organized this one, did the work to organize it in part because she wanted her children to get to know her other cousins better, like she had been able to do when growing up.  I think all of us in the family miss that.

I think that also describes part of what we miss in many churches today, especially mega-churches. I frequently ask my children and others of their generation what impacts their choice of a church to attend. One thing that comes up at times is the desire to know whole families and not just their own generation. In most large churches, we organize the groups outside of the large worship events by age, effectively segregating generations. Families are broken down into individuals.

In my last blog I discussed how Obama and indeed most of secular society since the Enlightenment have viewed the individual as the key unit of society and self-fulfillment as the key goal in life. The Bible uses the family more as the basic unit, with Abraham's family carrying the load in the Old Testament and the church as the 'bride of Christ' and the 'children of God' being the New Testament family. Individual sin and repentance is important, that is true; but the thing that holds society together is a family. Families require a lot of giving and caring, not just self-fulfillment. It is very different model than the individual of the Enlightenment view.

The reunion yesterday reminded me of that as we recovered some of that extended-family cohesiveness, at least  for a day. We need to find more ways to do that in the local church, too.

Breakfast!

I just watched a PBS program called The Breakfast Special. I have a couple of favorites on PBS that I like to watch every now then. A Hot Dog Program is one about little hot dog joints around the U.S.. The Varsity is included, but most of the others are small places with something unique about them. There is another one called The Ice Cream Program that visits stores that make their own ice cream, though again they include one big one (Ben & Jerry's, of course).  I really love these shows, which I suppose is solid evidence that I am a little bit off mentally.  I was able to con Sarah into watching the one about hot dogs with me one time, but otherwise it is a solitary venture that I enjoy nonetheless. This one about breakfast was a new one for me. It didn't quite measure up to the fun of the hot dog or ice cream shows, but I still enjoyed it as they wandered around the country looking for unique places for breakfast, so I took notes on the ones that were most appealing.

One called La Herencia in the historic section of St. Augustine (on Aviles Street) looked like a place for a new and different sort of breakfast. They have a Cuban theme and serve some interesting omelettes. The omelette with pork, black beans, salsa and cheese served on top of Cuban bread looked like a good one. The Breakfast Club on Tybee Island looked rather crowded from the lines outside the door that they filmed, but is one I may actually get a chance to try some time since it isn't that far away. The Maple Tree Inn in upstate New York, where they make their own maple syrup from the trees right behind the restaurant and where they are only open during maple syrup season looked like fun, too, though I doubt I will ever make it there at the right time of year. The Best Breakfast in Westerville, OH, looks to have fantastic home made bread and corned beef hash.

None of this is really the my ideal breakfast, though. At the end of the show they asked the various restaurant owners what their most memorable breakfast was, and they all recounted different stories. As I thought about that question I quickly landed upon the time when I was in junior high school and we had made our annual Thanksgiving trip to my grandfather's farm to help with hog-butchering time. The day of actually working on the pig was pretty disgusting, but the next morning's breakfast is probably my most memorable. My grandmother kept her own milk cow and made her own butter and buttermilk, which she used to make the world's most amazing biscuits. There was no shortening in the biscuits except her fresh butter an buttermilk. That particular day in addition to the amazing biscuits, we also had fresh bacon and pork chops (we are talking fresh here--it had been walking around the previous day), gravy, eggs, apple butter and probably some other stuff like fried apples. Amazing. And thus far unequaled.

This perhaps explains why I like Cracker Barrel. I keep looking for a place to come close to that ideal breakfast. Cracker Barrel is really not close, but the down-home atmosphere and just the fact that they generally have at least decent biscuits does bring it to mind. The Moose Cafe outside Asheville has good biscuits, but I am generally not there at breakfast time so I don't know how the rest of their breakfast measures up, though it looks good from the menu. I need to try that place for something other than lunch or dinner.

So what is your most memorable breakfast?

Why MBA is not a Professional Degree

The July/August 2010 of Harvard Business Review has an article that finally faces the truth: the MBA degree is NOT a professional degree in the way that a medical, law, or engineering degree is. The author, Richard Barker, is a professor at the Cambridge business school in England, and it is quite refreshing to see a B-school professor ‘fessing up' to what should be obvious.


Much of his commentary is based on things that have been observed by others before, and applies just as much to schools of education as to business: that there is not a well defined body of knowledge to learn to become qualified, that the key to the education is the process and ‘case studies’ more than defined content, that there is no board to measure and license those who are qualified and to ban/discipline those who do not live up to it. All of these areas are quite different than in the professions, though most of them fall short on the part about holding practitioners accountable. He points out that the content of what a medical or law school teaches is what qualifies the graduates, whereas in B-school most alumni will tell you that the classmates and discussions were more important than the content. You hire a doctor or lawyer specifically for the technical knowledge they have but managers are mostly hired for their leadership skills. Professionals provide input and expertise in a defined area but managers mostly assemble input from various professionals and ‘connect the dots’.  And as the collapse of the financial sector has shown, there is clearly no accountable and very little in the way of ethics.

This by no means means that management is necessarily an inferior pursuit. It does mean that getting an MBA is not what qualifies you to be a manager. For the most part, you should have already demonstrated the insight and leadership skills BEFORE you get an MBA, which is the reverse of professional degrees. An MBA can broaden your exposure to issues that might take many years for you to encounter on the job, but it does not provide qualifications. In contrast, you would never go to a lawyer, doctor, or engineer until AFTER they are trained. You would never trust a doctor who had spent much of his education just talking about case studies rather than gaining technical skills and technical knowledge. By way of contrast , a great many businesses are successfully  led by entrepreneurs who are very effective but not the least interested in an MBA.

As a culture we have tried to make teachers and managers into a content-based skill like engineering, but it just isn’t so. In both cases the attributes for success have more to do with personal traits than with a degree, and much of it cannot be taught. Both teachers and managers should have a ‘real ‘ degree in an area of expertise, but becoming a teacher or manager is more about dealing with people, insight, and connecting inputs across various disciplines than about mastering a body of knowledge. The reverse of that, of course, is that many professionals have mastered a key body of knowledge but have poor interactions with people. There are a great many doctors and lawyers who are very knowledgeable but very inept as well.

Ministry degrees, like the Master of Divinity, have the same issue. For all our pretending otherwise, the M. Div. degree does not qualify a man for ministry. It can enhance the knowledge of one who already has the right insight and people skills, but it does not provide qualification. While academic theology may have to do mostly with particular areas of learning, pastoral ministry and teaching is more like management and teaching. Divinity schools would do well to follow the example of many MBA programs, not accepting candidates until they have already been in ministry for several years.

Nudges, Marriages, and Feminists

I just finished reading the book Nudge, in which a couple of academic economists explore the idea of 'choice architecture' and what they call 'libertarian paternalism'.  The basic idea is that many of the decisions that are made in both public and private spheres end up nudging us to choose in a particular direction, even if unintentionally, and that we can use that fact to help improve the choices people make by intentionally 'nudging' them in a better direction. However, they support doing so thoughtfully so that we intentionally seek to maintain freedom of choice rather than mandating things. They open the book with the example of how the way food is displayed in a cafeteria influences which foods are purchased, and that we can influence the choice of healthier food in schools by the way the food is displayed. This doesn't coerce anyone's choice but does give healthy food greater exposure. The way we design buildings and cities also nudge decisions on transportation, housing, etc. and such decisions must be made.

We use government in this way much of the time, via tax deductions and tax credits, subsidies, and rebates. It goes beyond nudging to mandates when we legally require things.I like the author's emphasis on seeking to maintain freedom, the libertarian part of it, as well as the idea that choices which must be made may as well seek to help us. Of course, we will not all agree on what is 'good' and what 'helps'. In many cases, though, like the default option for work or government benefits, this idea can be put to good use. For instance, many companies now automatically enroll you in the 401k savings plan if you do nothing, whereas in the past the default if you did nothing was to leave you un-enrolled. This is a 'nudge' and seems to me a good one.

However, the more the decision involves morality and values, the more diificult this use of 'nudging' gets to be. One chapter in the book proposes changing the societal approach to marriage, proposing that governments no longer sanction any marriages, that marriage be 'privatized'. The change would be that the government would only sanction civil unions, and marriage would be a private or religious matter exclusively.  The authors contend that this would improve the freedom of religious groups as well as non-religious folks, as religious groups could be free to exclude whomever they choose and have standards as high as they want without concern about what impacts it might have on things like government benefits.

In many ways that is a place we have already arrived at, though not officially. The June 21 issue of Newsweek magazine,  which has Sarah Palin on the cover, has 2 articles that impact this issue. The first article is about Sarah Palin and the renewed energy of women of the religious right and the other is an article that argues against marriage by 2 self-vowed 'secular, urban' women who rail against the evil of marriage. Palin's work is described as a different sort of feminism, one that 'gathers up the Christian women traditional feminism has left behind' and admits that 'mainstream feminism has had an antireligious bias for a really long time.' The other article is the voice of that 'mainstream feminism' which argues that 'marriage is ...no longer necessary' and that 'the idea of marriage has become so tainted...that we're hesitant to engage in it.'

It is interesting to me that secular, urban homosexuals are arguing they should get married while secular, urban women are arguing that they should avoid marriage. Neither of them are arguing on the basis of virtue. Both are arguing on that basis of what makes them more financially successful and more self-satisfied.  There is very little discussion of what it means to be human, since being human means little more to them than 'maximizing our marginal benefit' in economic terms, which includes maximizing their personal power and liberty. I said above that in many ways we are already there because 41% of births are out of wedlock, divorce rates remain high, and benefits in both jobs and in government are readily available to both singles and homosexuals who live together or have children (whether adopted for homosexuals or out of wedlock for heterosexuals). The feminist article admits that for dual income marriages, there is no tax benefit to marriage. The battles today about marriage are really more about status and power than about economics and benefits, and it is interesting that the secular feminist argument and the homosexual argument so completely contradict each other. To me, one key weakness of the Christian discussion of marriage for the past 2 centuries, since the onset of Romanticism, is that we talk about marriage mostly in terms of self-fulfillment, not in terms of virtue, living out our humanness as God created it, or learning how to put other's needs ahead of our own desires. The feminist article admits that couples who marry for love find that '90% of couples have lost the passion they originally felt. And while couples who marry for love are less 'in love' with each passing year, one study found that those in arranged marriages grow steadily more in love as the years progress-because their expectations, say researchers, are a whole lot lower.' I think it has more to do with different expectations rather than lower expectations. Expecting to put someone else's needs ahead of your own and being surprised that doing so makes you a better and happier person seems like higher, not lower, expectations to me. The secular, urban feminists haven't figured that out.

All of this points out how very selfish and self-centered we are. The most difficult thing about marriage is that it demands putting our self-centeredness aside so often. The basic idea about Nudge that I like is the call to consider what is best for others, yet it quickly degenerates into defining 'best' as nothing more than maximizing our selfish desire for power or pleasure. And I think this is why Palin is touching a lot of Christian women. They see in her example with her Down Syndrome child and her out-of-wedlock grandchild a person who is still striving to do the right thing as a mom, and a lot of moms seem to relate to that. I am not a Palin political supporter because she still seems uninformed about a great many matters of state and policy. But I do see how she represents for many women an alternative to the selfish, secular, urban women of the political left.

Musings on Korea

I just spent a week in Korea, my second visit there. Since I knew to avoid the kimchi this time and the hotel was more conveniently located, it was a good visit. Finding a Starbucks within a few blocks of the hotel was nice, too.

It is interesting to observe a culture in which there do not seem to be any significant racial minorities. Everyone in all walks of life, at least that I encountered, seemed to be Korean. There was not a clear divide, as there is in many countries, in which immigrants make up the taxi drivers, the hotel housekeepers, the janitors and farm workers. There also seems to be a strong service commitment in the culture: the taxi drivers often wear a tie, the hotel has several people near the front door to greet, help with luggage, give directions, call a taxi or anything else, much more available than in the U.S., and tips for service are not part of the culture.

I stayed in one of the cities in the metro-Seoul area, the city of Suwon. It is an old city on the south side of Seoul with an old fortress that is a well known landmark, and it also has a large Samsung manufacturing site. All the places I went seemed to be quite safe with lots of people around and usually lots of traffic. There are a lot of churches as well, and you see a lot of crosses on the top of steeples and roofs as you walk around. There continues to be a great deal of construction going on. In one area we drove past, something like 30 or so high rise condo buildings are going up at once. These are 20-30 stories each. It is like a whole, new city being built at once.

One of the most interesting things from this trip was the discussion on the current tension with North Korea about the sinking of a navy ship in April. I was surprised to learn that quite a large number of folks, which was estimated at something like 25-30% of the South Koreans by the folks I talked with, think the sinking could have been caused by the South Korean government. Some think it may have been an accident in war games and that the government is covering it up. Others think it may have been a deliberate attempt by the government to influence the elections that took place soon after the sinking. Many of the citizens clearly do not trust their government on this sort of thing, and most especially they do not trust the military. The view of this is much less clear cut in Korea than the way it is presented in the U.S. news media.

It was also interesting to me that there are very few semi-tractor trailers on the road. You see lots of trucks, but they are smaller than semi’s. I had to think about that for a bit, but since South Korea is about the size of Indiana, you can see how smaller trucks would work fine if all the trucking you needed to do were within the confines of Indiana. The only semi’s I saw were sea-going containers headed for a seaport to be loaded on a ship. However, there are buses everywhere. I used a bus to and from the airport, which is about 1.5 hours from Seoul at Incheon. Buses are a well used means of transport and take the place of the semi’s on the road.

Overall, I continue to be impressed by the amount of construction and development going on, despite the current economic issues; and I found it interesting that in a land with much less ethnic and racial diversity, and that appears to an outsider as much more uniform in thought, there is still a strong suspicion of the motives of politicians.

Slobs and Preppies

Here we go again….there are 2 kinds of people in the world, slobs and preppies. I am sitting here thinking about Timothy Keller’s book The Prodigal God, which of course is about two kinds of people in the world, elder brothers and younger brothers. Those are the two brothers in the parable of the prodigal son. One of them is a preppie, the other one a slob. You may have other terms for them, like one is Party-er and the other a Do-gooder; one is a Pharisee and the other a sinner; one of them is liberal and the other a conservative; one is Ford guy and the other a Chevy guy. They are all related to each other.


I wrote last year about how irritating this ‘two kinds of people’ thing gets after a while. I think that maybe it is better to think that there are two kinds of people in the world: those that think there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who don’t. Unfortunately I was reminded again of how poignant this little device can be last Sunday morning. You see, I generally go to the early morning service in the sanctuary at our church, but every so often I go to the ‘contemporary’ (aka, ‘rock n roll’) service to help out with the offering and such. Last week I was at the contemporary service.

I am always amazed at the effort some folks put in to looking like slobs. Especially the guys in the band. There they are in front of the crowd with jeans full of holes, a shirt that is too small and looks like it was rolled up in wad for the past week, a stubbly beard, and hair that hasn’t been combed in who knows how long. These are not poor folks who can’t afford clothing without holes or don’t have access to a shower and a laundry. These are folks who work hard at looking like slobs. I don’t get it. Somehow it is ‘cool’ to look like the younger, prodigal son after he hit bottom.

Which reminded me of the prodigal son. Or rather, it reminded me of one section of Keller’s book in which he comments about how traditional churches chase away the younger-brother types by our elder-brotherness, which in turn raised in my mind the question of what church is supposed to be about anyway. Is church supposed to be designed to attract the younger brother, party going, slob types? Or is it supposed to attract the elder brother Pharisee types? Or neither?

My current vote is for ‘neither’. The reality is that we seem to be doing one or the other, with the ‘traditional’ service being to attract the elder brother types and the ‘contemporary’ to attract the younger brother types. Neither of these types want to venture outside their own comfort zone. Neither wants to be made uncomfortable. Both seem to me to go to church at least in part to demonstrate their own style rather than to worship God.

I think the idea of ‘seeker sensitive’ church doesn’t serve the purpose of church and doesn’t make much sense anyway. I am Calvinistic enough to think that there are no seekers without God first seeking us. But we should not be chasing people away either. We should instead be true to what worship is supposed to be, which is to cause us to recognize our own need for God and then respond by worshipping God. So, the goal of church is not to attract younger brothers; nor is it to attract elder brothers. Both brothers are in it for themselves. Both see their approach as best and both seek to put God in a position of owing them something.

The hard thing about church is to cause the Pharisee elder brothers to recognize their Pharisee-ism, repent of it, and respond in humble worship while also causing the partying libertines to recognize their libertinism, repent of it, and respond in humble worship. Instead we often just reinforce both of them by playing to their style. Maybe we should make everyone switch to the other service after they choose the one they want? As someone said, ‘to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted’ is what we should be trying to do. Not easy. It is certainly done best by the Spirit.

I actually enjoyed a couple of the songs we sang in that service, despite the band’s appearance. But I can’t say I left with a sense of having encountered God there. Some people appeared to have done so. Still, I wonder how we reconcile these ‘2 kinds of people’ in our church services.

I am re-reading the book Nudge as well. In it there is a blurb about a product called Clocky, a robotic alarm clock that ‘runs away and hides if you don’t get out of bed’! Such a product is needed because there are two kinds of people in the world: those who get up when the alarm goes off, and those who don’t. We need to get one of those for Daniel!

Carville Finally Gets One Right

James Carville was on 'Good Morning America' this morning, and finally someone blasted the government not only for not responding quickly to the oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, but for not paying attention to the families of those workers who were incinerated on that well. He made it clear that the President and other officials should be there meeting with those families and doing what they can to both console them and be actively directing efforts to stop the oil damage. It is the lack of empathy for the families that bothers me at the moment.

Last night on ABC news was the first time I saw any significant media coverage of the families of those 11 men killed in the explosion and fire on the oil rig. It had been35 days since the accident. Had it been a coal mine or an airplane, most of the media attention would have been on the families. The lack of attention to the families has been telling in my opinion. That lack of attention has made the national values clear: nature and wildlife matter more than people.

The oil well is clearly doing a lot of damage, and that is definitely an environmental disaster. No question about that. But the people matter even more. There is no reason for ignoring them. Certainly the coverage could have been both the horrible loss of life and also the environmental damage instead of focusing only on the ecological impact. It seems to me that the media focus on the loss of life with the recent coal mine cave-in was more focused on the people. Why? My opinion is that it was because that was the best way to show their opposition to underground mines. With underground mines, the environmental damage is less obvious so focusing on the people best accomplishes their agenda. With the oil well, they clearly want to focus on the opposition to the oil industry since the loss of life has been barely covered.

This is part of an overall tone in our culture that disturbs me: a woman's choice matters more tha a baby's life; avoiding the burden of a disabled child or parent is more important than the life of a Down's syndrome baby or a elderly and ill parent; ecological damage matters more than the fatalities in this oil well disaster. I am not a fan of James Carville at all, but he got it right this time. There is a least hope that we will deal with the oil spill, but those families will never be the same.

The Mystery of Women (Post-Mother's Day)

It is ironic, or perhaps even a conspiracy, that as we celebrated Mother's Day this past Sunday the media was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill. I commented a couple of weeks ago how 'The Pill' has had unintended consequences for women that are ingored by the left. Having this in the papers, magazines, and on TV during Mother's Day prompted a few questions on my part:

• Why do women praise the sexual liberation and sexual equality they think is produced by the pill but then wonder why many men find marriage no longer necessary?


• How is it a good thing that the pill, which was sold to the public as 'family planning', has resulted in a society where 40% (and still rising) of all children are born out of wedlock?


• If women object to being treated as sex objects, why do they use the pill before marriage in order to be treated more like sex objects and less like potential marriage partners?

As my mind wandered, a few other thoughts related to Mother's Day occurred to me, which are not related to the pill, but here they are anyway:

• Why do women who would never marry 'momma's boys' do all that they can to make their own sons into 'momma's boys'?


• Why do women define 'helping' in a way that men define as 'nagging'?


• Why do women who compete against men in the marketplace, sports, school, etc find it surprising when men come to view them as competitors instead of as marriage partners?

None of this is to belittle Mother's Day. I like Mother's Day. Our society, on the other hand, seems to be very confused about motherhood in general. Newsweek's Julia Bard wrote about how bad mothers can give us hope to 'lower the bar' from the thought of being a perfect mother, but goes beyond that, quoting the French philosopher Elizabeth Badinter (from The Conflict, the Woman and the Mother) that women are no longer oppressed by men, but rather by children. While she hedges by saying that she doesn't agree with everything in the book, she does find it 'bold' and 'refreshing'. This sort of thing, along with the continuing plague of abortion, simply reminds me that there are a great many bad mothers out there, mothers unworthy of Mother's Day. Which should make us all the more grateful for good mothers. So I once again say a big 'Thank You!' to my mom and my wife for their work as mothers.

The Great 'Caught Up' (or 'Catch Up'? Ketchup?)

We recently had a sermon series on the book of Revelation and it necessarily included some discussion of what is called 'The Rapture' of the church. One of the books recommended by our pastor during the series is titled Three Views of the Rapture and is a debate on Pre-, Mid-, or Post-tribulation points of view by 3 seminary professors. Since they teach at Trinity where I attended seminary for a couple of terms, I decided to read it and I recently finished the book.

First I must vent a little, however. The first thing I dislike about this whole topic is the title. 'The Rapture'. I had never even heard of 'The Rapture' until I went to college and became friends with some folks who had been reading Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth. This doesn't prove much except that it is at least possible to be a serious Christian without caring a whit about 'The Rapture'. But why call it that? It comes from the Latin translation of I Thessalonians 4:17 where Paul says that at Christ's Second Advent those believers who are alive at that time will be 'caught up' to meet Him. 'Rapturos' is the Latin for 'caught up'. So 'The Rapture' is actually 'The Caught Up'. Huh? I suppose trying to talk in Latin makes folks think you are educated or something, like talking about chemistry to marketing folks. It might make you feel smart but it doesn't communicate anything. It reminds me of the way the media today is constantly turning verbs into nouns and vice versa. Rapturos is a verb, not a name for an event. 'The Caught Up' : yuck. If the aforementioned marketers had been involved, they would have quickly changed that (alas, 'morphed' it) into 'The Ketchup' just to make it more catchy. Talk about anticipation! But then I just realized that my kids probably don't even remember that great ketchup commercial that I immediately recall whenever I hear the word 'anticipation'. In any case, the very term 'The Rapture' irritates me.

I much prefer the words that are actually used for the event rather than for an action. Those words used often for Christ's return include apocalypse (revelation), epiphany (appearing), and parousia (coming). 'Apocalypse' and 'epiphany' are both transliterations of greek words in the Bible (apocalypsis and epiphaneia) rather than translations, though we don't use transliterations of 'parousia' in English. I like all of them better than 'rapture', though, since 'rapture' has lots of other meanings in English as well.

Enough venting. The book, though, was a more studious and non-hysterical approach to the subject than most of what is out there. It does point out the history of the subject, which is important since it has only been in the last century that this idea of a pre-tribulation 'Rapture' has gained any significant support among believers at all. My take on it is that the Post-tribulation view has by far the best argument that requires much less reading into the text than the Pre- or Mid- tribulation points of view. Basically, the Post-tribulation view is that 'The Rapture' and the Second Advent are one event, not two separate events. It is not an easy read and the writing style tries your patience at times, but it does a good job in pointing out the differences among these views.

Meanwhile I prefer to skip the ketchup and have the second advent instead.

Economics and The Pill

The May issue of First Things has an interesting article that looks at the impact of birth control through the lens of economics ('Bitter Pill' by economist Timothy Reichert). The gist of the article is that the availability of the birth control pill starting in the 1960's dramatically changed the marriage 'market'. His contention is that prior to the pill there was essentially one market: a marriage market. After the arrival of the pill the market was splintered into 2 markets: a marriage market, and a sex market. The pill, he contends, reduced the incentives for marriage, especially among men, while siimultaneously putting more pressure on women to enter the sex market before marriage since it was now 'safe'.



Like most economic models, I find this one oversimplified but interesting nonetheless. It seems clear to me that there has always been 2 separate markets, else the 'world's oldest occupation' would not in fact be the world's oldest occupation. However, it does seems clear that there are now more incentives for sexual activity before marriage, though the rise of out of wedlock births make it clear that it is not necessarily 'safe'.



His contention in the article is that in fact it is not safe and this market shift has hurt women, not 'empowered' them. It is of course sold by both feminists and the playboy culture that the pill has 'liberated' women. In fact, we now have 40% of all births out of wedlock, and up to 70% in some ethnic groups, and it is well documented that being a single mom is the single most powerful predictor of poverty. By giving men fewer incentives to marry, this also keeps more women and their children in poverty. He supports his article with lots of charts and graphs, of course, as any good economist would. This includes fewer and later marriages, earlier sexual activity, more women in the workplace to support their kids, and declining rates of female happiness.



He does not talk about some of the additional factors that confound his data: legalized abortion coming near the same time, for instance, and declining church attendance. Still, I think he has a point. This technology that is touted as helping women has actually hurt them. However, in my opinion it has hurt them because they use the technology outside of marriage. He does not mention this either. Were it utilized only within marriage, it would be a very different story. There, too, is a message. The more freedom we have, the more important it is that the freedom be exercised by a virtuous people. When we lack virtue, our freedom comes back to bite us.

Remembering the Unthinkable

This past weekend we went to hear a survivor of the Holocaust, Rose Price. She will be 82 sometime this year, but she was 10 years old and an Orthodox Jew in Poland when the Nazis invaded her homeland. Like our veterans who fought in WWII, survivors of the Holocaust are getting fewer every year as they die off. I had heard Rose back about 6 or 7 years ago, and she had more trouble staying on topic and not wandering this time than last, which was sad since there was a much larger crowd this time and the power of her story did not really come through as well as it could have.

She and her older sister both survived the death camps. Her mother, father, and younger sister all died there. She was chosen to be shot on two occasions: on those days the 'chosen' would be forced to dig a ditch, then line up in front of it to be shot. They would hold hands usually in those last moments. She held on and fell into the ditch with her dead compatriots, but had not been shot. She would crawl out later, only to be recaptured and put back in the camps.

One particular guard seemed to enjoy humiliating her and her sister. On rainy days he would force them to lie in the mud so he could walk on them to avoid getting mud on his boots. On fair weather days he would simply beat them. Though she left Germany after the war having abandoned faith in God, she later met the Messiah and went back to Germany to tell her story, and she met that guard there at a crusade where she gave her testimony. It was there that she really learned about the power of forgiveness.

There is much more in her book, and the other atrocities in the death camps, including the 'medical' experiments, are well documented in many places. Yet, today not only do the Palestinians and Iranians want to deny that all this happened, there also seem to be many even in the U.S. who are either ignorant or simply unconcerned that all this happened. They seem to have forgotten that Israel exists not because they conquered the Palestinians: it exists as a U.N. mandate, a mandate of the world community as a result of the Holocaust. The Arab world tried to overturn that mandate, and lost. The West Bank had been a location for Syria to shell Israel with heavy artillery until they lost that as well. The current leadership of the U.S. seems to have forgotten all that, apparently thinking that Israel should just give the land back and live with daily artillery barrages from those who to this day deny Israel's right to exist.

We dare not forget either the holocaust and the stories of those like Rose Price or the history of Israel's fights with the Arab world. To forget is to guarantee another holocaust will happen, this time in Israel.

The Church Arrogant

The April issue of First Things had an interesting article about how economic theory can be applied to church, and along the way it shed some light on some of the mythology surrounding early American church attendance. In researching their book The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, the authors (Roger Finke and Rodney Starke) found that less than one-fifth of the American population claimed church membership at the time of the American Revolution. The rate of church membership then rose after the revolution, to about one-third by the mid-1800's and on up to about half in the 20th century. This is what they are refering to by 'the churching of America'. During this same time, Europe was rebelling against the church and beginning its long decline to today. Contrary to the theory of skeptics, the spread of education and industrialization in America did not force a decline in church membership or attendance. The skeptics insist that increasing education and prosperity necessarily lead to a decline in religion; the authors offer an alternative view.

Their alternative takes a more economic viewpoint, looking at both religious 'firms' (churches) and religious 'consumers' (members). In Europe, they maintain, the church was always a state church with a monopoly. Every nation had an established church so they did not have to compete for members, did not have to compete for funds, and did not have to be concerned about 'quality' or 'customer satisfaction', so the church could easily become focused on its own tradition and the desires of the clergy themselves. Since the 'consumers' had no other choice, they could either participate or stay home. This was also the case in the American colonies, each colony having its own established church and often persecuting dissenters. I well remember visiting Colonial Williamsburg some years back, and part of their living history drama on one of our visits included an intinerant Baptist evangelist being arrested and jailed for breaking the church laws of Anglican Virginia. No dissent allowed!

When the Constitution was approved, some states held on to their established churches for a while, but most of them were done away with in a few years. At this point, the churches had to raise their game to a higher level. Suddenly they had to give parishoners a reason to show up or they could go somewhere else. When that happened, membership began to grow.

This is not all sweetness and light, of course. This kind of religious competition also gave us Mormonism, Christian Science, Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses and various other aberrations. Still, it does point out to me that established churches have other problems even beyond the very serious problem of tying the church to a political establishment. It also makes for a very self-centered, non-ministering church.

The history, though, also sheds light on our 'Christian founders'. 20% of the population as church members is less than most of those shouting about our religious roots would want to hear about. While no doubt some non-members were dissenters who would have been members if their church had been allowed, most of those would have moved to a different colony I would think. While the rural nature of the colonies resulted in many folks not being near a church, that held true much longer and into the period of fast growth of members and attendance.

In any case, the article shed some interesting light on American Exceptionalism in religion: it may have been the arrogance of the church more than education and progress that brought down religion in Europe.

This God is Different

I just finished reading Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler, which I had borrowed from my daughter. There is also a PBS mini-series based on the book, and my interest was piqued by seeing part of that a while back. The book is part travelogue, part history, and part personal introspection by a secular Jew trying to find his roots in the Holy Land. It is an easy read and it gives a nice view of many of the sites in Israel, Sinai, the Negev, and Egypt that are found in the Pentateuch as the author attempts to re-trace the path of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and the Exodus. He is basically examining the path that led from one man and his family (Abraham) to a nation that God used to reveal Himself to show His work of redemption, which we Christians view as the start of a path that inexorably led to the Savior.



It was quite interesting to see how the author and his archaeologist-travel-partner-and-guide visited many of the sites mentioned in the Bible, as best they could find them (many are not known for sure) and would then read and discuss the Bible passages about that site as they experienced the place for themselves. I like to do similar things when I travel, such as reading Jefferson's biography when visiting Monticello. The book would be a nice prologue to a visit to Israel by providing an overview of the history and archaeology of many of the sites that pilgrims to the Holy Land visit. It is somewhat sad, though, that while the author does find in himself a strong emotional response to the Promised Land and biblical stories, he never quite gets to the point of seeing God as personal and knowable. He becomes convinced that the biblical stories that led to the creation of Israel as a nation are believable in a general way, but he does not fully resolve his own doubts about faith though he does reach some sort of peace with himself.



One question that recurs in the book has to do with the question of life after death. On the one hand the Torah makes it clear that God is eternal and His people are to somehow be with Him, these books of Moses do not say a lot about life after death. Job, which pre-dates the Pentateuch, does make mention of seeing God in person after death, and so do the prophets and psalms which come later. Moses says little, although when Moses dies it seems to imply that God took him (and also buried him in secret lest his tomb be worshipped). The author seems to think that this means that the Jews saw God as only the God of this life, and that there was nothing beyond this life.



This was a matter of debate among the Jews in Jesus' time as well, with the Pharisees believing in life after death and the Saducees not. Christians see this debate as being settled by Jesus' resurrection and promise of our resurrection as a result. So why the lack of discussion by Moses?



My opinion is that much of the first 5 books of the Bible has to do with demonstrating how different the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob(Israel) is from the other gods of that time. While other pagan gods demanded child sacrifice, this God demanded the same level of devotion but intervened to prevent the sacrifice of Isaac and provided his own sacrifice. While other gods are unpredictable and unknowable, this God provided his Law to make clear what behavior He expected and what he abhorred. While the Egyptian gods in particular, where Moses was leading them out, were obsessed with death and so built the pyramids and other enormous burial 'cities', this God was more focused on holy living. In other words, I think God was intentionally pointing out the difference between Himself and the Egyptian gods, after having His people live there for 400 years in the midst of their 'culture of death'. It was not to imply that there is nothing after this life; it was to say that the Egyptian obsession with death was minimizing the reality of this life, creating a very bizarre and off-balance culture.



We have our own 'culture of death' today, comprised of the combination of abortion and euthansia. Though quite different from the Egyptian distortions of reality, it bears its own consequences in minimizing the importance of holy living. Today is Easter, our annual reminder that there is One whose Life will overcome. He is Risen!

What defines Quality in Health Care?

In the furor over the health care legislation there have been comments about 'destroying the world's best health care system' by some pundits, while others say America as fallen behind in health care as shown by longevity statistics in countries with government health care. Is longevity the best measure? Is short waiting time for procedures the best measure? Those 2 measures would give opposite rankings when comparing America and western Europe.

I was discussing this with a colleague at work who related his story. In 1989 he tore a tendon in his leg and had surgeons describe to him the incision that would be made from his knee to his ankle to repair it and the resulting 3 months on crutches. Not liking this, he found out that there was a new surgical group here and the founder used to play on the rugby team he was playing for when injuring his leg. This surgeon provided tendon repairs to the Atlanta Falcons and Braves with a then brand new procedure, an arthroscopic method with a very small incision and ability to walk without crutches in a day or two. He contacted him, and the surgeon was willing to take him on because of the rugby team connection. In 1993, the other leg was injured. This time, all the surgeons in town were using the new procedure. In 1999, he was Denmark on business and met a man on crutches who had been injured playing soccer, and there the surgeons were still using the old procedure. They were only 10 years behind. And he had to wait 3 months to have it done, so he 3 months to wait before the surgery then 3 more on crutches.

I have heard similar tales from folks that have moved here from Canada. These kinds of new procedures typically are developed in America and spread from here, though they apparently spread slowly to some countries. Why? Because here there is a payback for new procedures that are less painful, faster, and that return you to full productivity both without a long wait and with faster recovery. Yet none of this would show up in longevity. Is it better?

I don't think we have the right measures to evaluate it. The European approach appears to cost less, but doesn't the loss of 6 months of full productivity have a cost, in this example? The newer method may cost more at first, but does the improved quality of life have a value as well as the improved productivity by less lost time from the job, etc?

Someone has said (Churchill maybe?)that capitalism is the unequal sharing of prosperity and socialism is the equal sharing of misery. That comes close. In this case I think there is also something to be said about freedom having costs as well as benefits. Freedom is risky: this was true in the Garden of Eden, but God considered freedom to be worth the risk, even knowing it would result in the crucifixion of His Son. Freedom is highly valued in the U.S. despite its risk and its cost. In this example, when my friend returned home from Europe he met another athlete in a leg brace with crutches. The arthroscopic surgery was available, but he had no insurance and did not have the funds available just then to pay for it.

My opinion is that the U.S. has the best procedures in the world available, and with the least wait. That does not affect longevity outcomes for a variety of reasons, most of them having to do with diet, obesity, and overall sedentary lifestyles. The U.S. also has the most expensive healthcare in the world, pricing some folks out of the market. A better balance is needed: neither a move to be like Europe and abandon innovation and short waits, nor keeping the current situation. I don't think the current legislation does what is needed; I hope it can cause enough debate to get us on a better path.

The Virtues of Spittle

I recently read Pagan Christianity by Barna (the pollster) and Viola, and while I was generally unimpressed by their arguments about the pagan origins of many church traditions, along the way there was some discussion of how Jesus intentionally confronted many of the traditions and practices of His day. One example of this is when He healed the man born blind by making clay with spittle and rubbing it on the man's eyes (John 9). A few days later, our pastor preached on this same passage. Both the book and the sermon pointed out that this healing was done on the Sabbath, which confronted the Jewish traditional teachings from the Mishnah that prohibited work on the Sabbath, including healing. In the book, however, they noted in a footnote that the Mishnah, which is the rabbinic interpretation of the Torah, includes a passage in the section about the Sabbath (Sabbath 108:20) in which spitting to make clay to anoint eyes (as well as pouring wine into the eyes) are specifically prohibited. How weird is that?



So what is with this fixation on spitting? How could spitting be important enough to anyone that the rabbis would make a specific rule about it regarding the keeping of the Sabbath? In searching around the internet to find out about this I came across some information that surprised me. It turns out that both Jews and others in ancient times considered that saliva could have healing properties (see JewishEncyclopedia.com under 'saliva'). This is recorded by the Roman historian Pliny as well, and Tacitus ascribes to the emperor Vespasian the healing of eye diseases with his saliva. The Greeks also held this view. The Jews held that a man who kept the law and had just been fasting as well could have special power in his saliva. In some contexts spittle was considered unclean, but for the most part it was not and was even viewed as having special powers. In this context, for Jesus to spit and anoint eyes would have been very much expected for a healer. While this passage strikes my modern sensibilities as very weird, Jesus was doing exactly what a healer would be expected to do in that time.



There are 3 passages that involve Jesus spitting to heal: this one in John 9, plus Mark 7:33 and Mark 8:23. It was not a 'one off' event. The gospels report these without comment, just as if it is behavior that one would expect, and such it is. Once again I was reminded of how separated our habits of mind are from that time and place, and how much more we would understand the subtleties of the gospel if we better understood the culture of that time and place.



As I discussed this with my daughter, she brought up a related case around baptism. Here is an interesting link discussing the Jewish mikvah (or mikveh): www.myjewishlearning.com/life/Life_Events/Conversion/Conversion_Process/Mikveh for reference. Mikvah is the cleansing by immersion that is used for several purposes in Judaism, but it is notably used as part of the process for a Gentile to convert to Judaism. It must be complete immersion so that every part and every hair is immersed. It is to be done in specified water, 'living' water, not stagnant or impure water. The comparison to being re-born is explicit, as one enters the water a Gentile and emerges a Jew, just as one born a Jew. So when Jesus confronted a devout Jew like Nicodemus in John 3 and tells him that he, too, must be 'born again' He was referring to something Nicodemus already knew about. However, Nicodemus would not have thought that what was required for a Gentile was needed for himself. He had already been born a Jew. But Jesus confronted him that a major, life altering change of heart was needed for the Jews to be truly God's people, just as is required for a Gentile to become a Jew in seeking the true God. This is not the sprinkling of babies that eventually emerged in the West at all. How much else do we misinterpret by westernizing the gospel teaching?

Call Me Ichabod

I don't remember when I first read or heard Washington Irving's 'Legend of Sleepy Hollow' but it is a story I have always enjoyed, especially in the fall. When we moved to Lee, MA, to start up the first Hydroknit(r) machine we moved at Labor Day and it was a glorious New England fall that year. We were living just a few miles from the Hudson valley where the story takes place, so of course I dragged out an American Lit book from college and re-read it that fall. The description of Ichabod Crane is one of the memorable parts of the story, and his nose is among his many exagerated features. It is described as 'a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock, perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from the cornfield.' With my ongoing nose problems of this past week, I was of course reminded of him with such a famous nose!

Ichabod is a biblical name, and its meaning in the Bible contributes all the more to the description in Irving's story. In I Samuel 4, the ark of the covenant is taken from Israel by the Philistines, and the battle included the death of the high priest Eli's 2 sons as well as Eli's death from shock at the loss of the ark and his sons. His daughter-in-law then dies in childbirth upon hearing of her husband's death and the loss of the ark but before she dies she names the child Ichabod, which means 'the glory has departed' or 'no glory'. Ichabod Crane's nose was just one contributor to his appearance having 'no glory'!

I suspect my colleagues at work and my family who have seen me the past few days with various things stuffed in my nose, hanging out of my nose, and taped to my nose would certainly be thinking that 'Ichabod' sounds about right! I flatter myself , no doubt, to think that my nose was not all that weather-vane like otherwise. A little crooked maybe, but not quite up to Ichabod Crane's standards, at least until the last few days. The extra adornment the past few days has put me 'over the top', though.

Having gone 4 of the past 5 days to see the Ear/Nose/Throat doctor (we took Sunday off), and 2 more days before that getting urgent care to try to stop the nosebleeds, I have a newfound respect for the poor nose. My deviated (deviant?) septum is now a matter of more thoughtful consideration. And poor Ichabod Crane gets more sympathy from me than I ever gave him before.

Counterfeit Gods

Timothy Keller's latest book, Counterfeit Gods, was under the tree for me at Christmas along with several other books, so I have happily started the new year with a backlog of new books to read and recently finished this one. I had found his look at the parable of the prodigal son in The Prodigal God to be refreshing and insightful so I was eager to see what this new book might hold. I think overall I garnered more from his prior work, but I thought a couple of his points in this latest work very helpful nonetheless.

The book is a look at idolatry and how idolatry creeps into our lives in subtle ways which we may not recognize. Paul, of course, had pointed out in the first century that greed is a form of idolatry (Col. 3:5) that is much more subtle than offering a dead animal in a pagan temple, but is idolatry just the same. Most idols are 'good' things gone bad, like prosperity, success, liberty, truth, beauty, and intimacy. The greater the good, the more likely we are to think it will fulfill us. His basic definition is that counterfeit gods consist in 'anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living'. He points out the every human being must live for something and for some hope, and when we substitute for God anything else such that it becomes our reason to keep going, then we have an idol, a counterfeit god. Most of us in modern western culture have idols like self fulfillment, individual freedom, financial independence; in Biblical times their idols had more to do with family, passing on the heritage to an heir, and standing in the community. All ages and cultures, though, are prone to their own counterfeit gods.

He takes an interesting look at Abraham and Jacob and how their cultural icons became challenges to their souls as love (for Jacob,Leah) and family (for Abraham) were idols that God had to purge from their lives, but I thought some of his insights into our culture were especially compelling including:

• Political activism: he says 'one of the signs that an object is functioning as an idol is that fear becomes one of the chief characteristics of life...if our counterfeit god is threatened in any way, our response is complete panic. We do not say,'What a shame, how difficult,' but rather, 'This is the end! There is no hope!'. Wow. How descriptive both of how Democrats responded to Bush's election and how Republicans responded to Obama's election! He goes on: 'Another sign of idolatry in our politics is that opponents are not considered to be simply mistaken, but to be evil.' Again, both sides of the political isle are guilty here. Politics has indeed become an idol in our culture, including our churches.
• Enemies: quoting the 17th century English minister David Clarkson he points out that 'many make even their enemies their god...when they are more troubled, disquieted, and perplexed at apprehensions of danger to their liberty, estates, and lives from men' than they are concerned about God's displeasure. Again, for a 17th century preacher he surely described the current 21st century conservative American anxiety over liberalism to a tee.
• Doctrinal correctness: he says, 'Idolatry functions widely inside religious communities when doctrinal truth is elevated to the position of a false god. This occurs when people rely on the rightness of their doctrine for their standing with God rather than on God and his grace...trust in the rightness of their views make them feel superior'. This superiority of views is similar to what causes political idolatry as well.
• Love of your country and your people: in a discussion that began with the French Revolution and how it turned into terror he concludes that 'when love of one's people becomes an absolute, it turns to racism. When love of equality turns into a supreme thing, it can result in hatred and violence toward anyone who has led a privileged life.' How many times has that played out in the last century, in Russia, China, and the more recent Islamic revolutions?

All of this, he concludes, is due to preferring our own wisdom, our own desires, our own reputation over God's wisdom, desires, and honor.

I, for one, find it too easy to dismiss idolatry as an ancient vice, one not very applicable to me and current times. This book provided a check to that kind of modern bias.

Olympic competition

As I sit in a hotel tonight I have the Olympics on the tv while I do some computer catch-up. They interviewed the American women's snowboard team a few minutes ago and the athletes were talking about how their toughest competition is from their teammates who are also their best friends, whom they travel with, train with, live with. Yet they strive to do their best knowing that if they win their friend does not win. Despite that competition, they love their teammates. The do not 'hate the competition'; they do strive to be the best and do their best.

It was a very good interview in my opinion. One of the things that irritates me enormously in the business world is when so-called experts like Jack Welch talks about things like 'don't fall in love with your team because some of them are turkeys' as well as things he and others say about seeing the competition as the enemy, 'kicking butt' (but more coarsely said than that), and the like. Coming from the likes of Jack Welch makes it all the more irritating. Here is a man who lied to and cheated on his wife, running off with a younger business colleague. Here is a man who played all the same kinds of financial shenanigans as Wall Street did to inflate GE earnings that have since imploded just like Wall Street, which is to say he lied to investors just like he lied to his wife. A friend of mine once told me that a man who will lie to his wife will lie to anyone. Welch is a good example of that truism. So we should listen to him on how to treat employees when he clearly doesn't know how to treat family and investors? I think not.

Any leader that does not love his team even when they are not performing is not a leader, just a tyrant. Welch got it wrong, the snowboarders got it right: we must love our people, but we must also insist on good performance. I think I have read about that somewhere else as well: the gospels. I have been very displeased with much of what goes on in the name of athletics, which has mostly been about extreme narcissism of the athletes and coaches. This group of snowboarders, though, got it right.

Breathtaking!

We hear it used regarding everything from the latest movie to new cars, but driving through the Yosemite valley for the first time gives meaning to the word 'breathtaking'! Three days ago I had the joy of seeing this amazing valley for the first time, and even with significant portions of the park closed for the winter it more than lived up to its billing.



The park stands in stark contrast to the central valley of California, which I traversed to get there. I had been in Palo Alto Monday through Wednesday for business meetings, and after having dinner there with a colleague I drove across the valley to Merced, CA, Wednesday evening. It was a misty and moonless night, so I couldn't see much along the road, though I did get the umistakeable smell of manure wafted my way every so often. The central valley in Califormia is one of the most intensively farmed regions in the world, so I guess I should have expected that. I arrived at Merced for the night a bit after 10 pm and clicked on PBS while unpacking in the Hampton Inn, and sure enough the National Parks documentary was on and the episode about the founding of Yosemite was playing! It was the perfect way to start my visit.




I got underway at about 7 am the next morning for the 1.5 hour drive to the park, and now I could see some of the valley. At first it was mile after mile of orchards on a landscape so flat that it makes the corn fields of central Ohio seem hilly. I would have to describe this valley as the Appalachia of the west, except without the hills and with better productivity from the farms. There are many places I would never want to live, and this is one of them. Farms and food processing plants are the dominant industries, and from the looks of the housing it appears to be home to many of the region's poor.




After about 40 minutes the flatlands slowly gave way to rocky, rolling hills with scrubby trees and cattle grazing. This was more scenic but the land looked very poor. It was getting cloudy as rain and snow were expected that evening, so the mountains were not yet in view, but the road was climbing slowly uphill. Around the town of Mariposa, about an hour into the drive some tall Ponderosa pine trees began to appear and you could start to see some peaks in the distance. The last 30 minutes or so was along the Merced river bank and the terrain grew ever more rough, but still no snow. I arrived at the park entrance by 8:30 am and there was still no snow, the entrance being at about 3000 feet elevation. You could start to see snow on the distant peaks, though.




After entering the park, things changed dramatically. Within a couple of miles I was into snow covered country. The entire Yosemite valley is only about 7 miles long, but driving through it the first time took me about 2 hours. There was no traffic at all. I just had to stop every couple hundred yards to take pictures, walk to a water fall, or just stop and stare. You can almost hear yourself gasp as you go around each corner and your eye lands on yet another breathtaking view. There are a variety of vistas of Bridalview Falls, Yosemite Falls, El Capitan, and Half Dome as you move around in the valley. At about noon I headed up towards the Tioga Road to see the Tuolumne grove of giant sequoias. That road gave still more great views from above the valley. The hike to and from the grove, a bit over 2 miles roundtrip over a snow-packed trail, offered the quiet of a forest trail while the massive trees gave yet another perspective of how unique this place is.



The contrast to the central valley is so stark that it is almost overwhelming. In that way it is like the Grand Canyon and the Tetons/Yellowstone in that the views are so dramatic and in such contrast to some of the nearby flatlands that all 3 of them take your breath away. Just as my reaction to the central valley was that this was a place I would never want to live, these places make you never want to leave. They are very different from each other but they are all awe inspiring.



There are a lot of places I have been and a lot more that I would like to see, though for most of them I would not do everything I possibly could do to get there. Yosemite had been on my list of 'must see' places for quite some time, and it was a joy to finally get there. I hope to return to see some of the areas that were closed for winter, like Glacier Point and the Mariposa Grove of sequoias. It is one of only 3 places for which I think every American should do all that they can do to visit at some time during their life: Yosemite, the Grand Tetons/Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon are unlike anywhere else in the world.

A New Year

Today is the last day of January. Already. We got our Christmas tree taken down a couple of weeks ago and now the Valentines Day decorations have appeared. The new year season is officially over though I still want to take a last few moments to look back.



Several years ago as we headed into the first of what turned out to be 3 waves of downsizing at work I was wondering whether I would still be working there at age 55. This past summer was the 3rd wave and I hope the last for a long while, but I am a year past 55 now and I am grateful not to be on the job market at this time in life and in this economy. While there remains much turmoil in the economy and many questions about where our country and the world are headed, there is also much to be grateful for. The earthquake in Haiti this month reminds me in another way how fortunate I am to still have so much to be thankful for and things to look forward to. Entering the new year is a good time to pause for thanksgiving.



Among those things I look forward to is a visit to Yosemite in a few days. Last summer as I watched the Ken Burns documentary on the national parks I had made it a goal to get to Yosemite some day. As things have turned out, I will be traveling to the west coast this week for business meetings and will be able to take some vacation time afterwards to make a short visit to Yosemite for the first time. What a treat!



I had prayed a year ago that our national leaders would be 'mugged by reality' and some of that appears to be happening. Politics is never a place to put much hope, but a headlong rush in any direction, left or right, is cause for concern. The headlong rush seems, for now at least, to have slowed. I am grateful.



I take a lot for granted, but some of those things force my attention at times. This week the sewer line from our house to the street backed up due to roots growing into the pipe. Fortunately our house had a relief valve out in the yard so it did not show up in the bathtub! Among many things the builder did wrong in our house, they did that one right! Anyway, as the folks in Haiti go without even the most basic sanitation facilities, we still take sewers, water, and electricity for granted until they are missing for a short time. How great to have a working sewer system! How much more I should be thankful for other, more enduring things that I also mostly take for granted: life, family, forgiveness.



So, as January ends and I consider the new year, I have much to be thankful for and much still to look forward to. Happy (late) New Year!

Is Anyone Normal Anymore?

Last weekend we had our annual deacons retreat during which the oncoming deacons who are beginning a new term of service share their testimony of how they came to faith in Christ. I was struck this year by the number of men who had at least one alcoholic parent. As with most years, a great many of them also had been through a divorce of their parents as a child. Since divorce rates have been high for almost 50 years now, the number of men having grown up in broken homes was not a surprise, but I was struck by the number of men with alcoholic parents and the result that had in terms of periodic abusive treatment of them or their mother, and how it led to many of them abusing alcohol and other substances later.



Then on Thursday of this week we had a dinner event from the men's ministry at our church at which a man in our congregation shared his story of growing up in an abusive home in which he and his brother first endured the divorce of his parents and then later his father used his girlfriend to sexually abuse both of his elementary age sons. Since so few men are willing or able to discuss this sort of thing in a public event, it was a story that elicited in me both shock and outrage. I can somewhat understand (though I don't condone)how a man might resort to alcohol or chasing women after a hurtful divorce, but I cannot comprehend how a father could intentionally drag his young children into the cesspool with him. Hearing this man's life story made me wonder, in our society where perversion of many kinds is pushed as simply alternative lifestyles, how many other children have lived through this sort of thing. It made me wonder whether anyone is normal anymore.



Sexual abuse and drug use, including alcohol, are nothing new of course. It is well documented how perverse Alexander the Great and the Roman emperors were. Some have used this to argue that these things are not perverse, that we should accept them as normal since they have such a long history among 'great' people. We should ask folks like this man who told his story on Thursday instead. He was very clear on the damage it did, and how he struggled to eventually extend forgiveness to his father. It was not normal, and it certainly was not good.



One of the reasons that early Christians stood out in the Roman empire was that their moral lives were so distinctively different from the perversion that surrounded them. One of the great impacts of Christianity is the way it improved the lot of women and children in terms of ending abuse when their husbands and fathers embraced Christ. It may well be that apart from a Christian culture the abuse of sexuality and alcohol may be 'normal', but it has not been normal in cultures that have been dominated by Christians. We can expect to see more and more of this if our culture continues on its current path of abandoning Christianity.

The Formality of Christmas

It was cold in Atlanta this morning, 18 degrees F, which was about the same temperature that it was when we left Strongsville, OH, yesterday morning. As a result most folks dressed warmly for church today, although some teenagers remained obstinate and still showed up without a warm coat or wearing flip-flops since being cool was clearly more important to them than being warm. I am sure they were very cool indeed! Nonetheless, their overly-casual attire as well as some of the folks in my generation who showed up in jeans and sweatshirts reminded me of how very few formal events remain in our culture.



In one of his writings C. S. Lewis talks about the occasions in which formality is a good thing, though I don't recall where he says this at the moment. I agree with him that there is a proper place for formality, and I think our culture has lost track of that. Lewis pointed out that one of the functions of formality is to cause us to pay heed to the importance of the event or the vows or the issues at stake. It used to be that folks wore suits to conduct business, attend a conference, to attend church and take communion, to graduate from school, even to attend school. These were in addition to weddings, funerals, and events of state like inaugurations and coronations. In each case the intention seems to have been to make an issue of the importance of the commitments and decisions being made. It was felt that formality in both dress and behavior reinforced the need for seriousness, honesty, fair dealing, and the keeping of commitments whether in business, school, government, or interpersonal affairs. Now we more and more dress down for school, business, church and many other places that were once more formal. I wonder sometimes at the size and overblown expense of weddings these days which runs counter to this overall trend. It is as if all the weight of the need for fomality in our culture has fallen solely onto weddings, as we have abandoned it in so many other places. Yet even there the solemnity has started to fall away as some folks dance down the aisle or stand barefoot on a beach despite the extravagant expense for clothes and receptions. I do not think weddings will be able to bear this weight without a better understanding of why formality is in fact appropriate at times, and those times need to be more frequent than weddings.



I am not of the opinion that dressing more formally for church creates a more penitent heart or a more sincere worship. Nor do I think that anyone lacking money for nice clothes should be left out. I do think it better reflects the importance of the occasion, however, and most folks dressing down these days pay more for their jeans with holes in them than they would need to pay for more formal attire. I do think that attire contributes to setting a tone for an activity and reinforces expectations for behavior. Even kids at school are less likely to roll in the mud when they are wearing a tie.



All of which reminds me of Christmas. While I can get tired of dragging out the decorations and setting up the tree, I do think it sets a tone and an expectation. Special musical events with choirs and orchestras in formal dress focusing on Christmas are events I love. While I am often already tired by the time we leave to attend church on Christmas Eve, the candlelight service with its entirely predictable yet solemn candlelighting and Lord's Supper service sets a tone for the day that is formal yet right. This can be overdone, especially the decorations, yet the idea of special, formal events, special clothing, special decorations remind us of the importance of the event and cause us to pause and remind ourselves why we are celebrating. And that is a good thing.