Category Archives: character

May 24, 2013 · 4:35 pm

The Epic Battle: Message Series Starting This Sunday

Harry Potter

“Just think how much good you could do!” 

Those enticing words also may be some of the most dangerous words around–they can open the door to extraordinary evil, perfectly disguised and cloaked with something that just looks so right.

Starting this Sunday, May 26, I will begin a five week message series on the necessity of learning as early as possible to discern that which is good from that which is not good.

Because even the youngest need to learn to develop that facility if they are to make wise decisions, I want to make this series as accessible as possible for them.  To do so, I will use several primary characters from the Harry Potter series of books and movies to help us understand these concepts better.  We’ll move from these characters to the biblical texts and work on making our own life connections with them.

These are the characters I will be using:  Tom Riddle, Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom and Harry Potter.  These characters run the spectrum from astoundingly good to astoundingly bad, and each made choices along the way that are similar to the choices each of us makes daily. Their stories also mirror many important biblical stories that we all need to know and understand. J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, is an active member of the Church of Scotland and wrote very much influenced by her Christian faith.  The strains of sin, forgiveness and redemption flow from her work.

Please note:  any visuals used on the screen will be good in nature.  Although the Harry Potter books and movies do have some tough to read and view scenes, I don’t want any of those to be shown during worship.

Vicki Whitmer and Pat Nolan, who have together given a wonderful Sunday School experience for our school-aged children, will be taking a summer break. All children are very welcome in worship. What they see and experience there will be appropriate for them and might also help spur discussion later among families.

I so look forward to being in worship with you all again this week.  And I give thanks to the excellent leadership of our worship teams and David Taylor and Jessi Soule while I was gone.  I have really missed you!

See you on Sunday,

Christy

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May 9, 2013 · 10:43 am

Missing Babies, Feral Males, “Smokin’ Hot Wives” and Female Appointments

Ultrasound of a female fetus

Ultrasound of a female fetus

A little background here before I weave together some threads of thought.

Sex Selective Abortions

First, look at issue of sex-selective abortions and female infanticide. These are major issues especially in India and China.  For multiple financial and cultural reasons, many families have a strong preference for male babies over female babies.  The growing availability and affordability of ultrasound technology makes it increasingly easy to abort unwanted female fetuses.  If an unwanted one makes it to birth, the child is often abandoned and left to die.

The result is a growing disparity between the number of males and females entering adolescence and early adulthood.  In plain English, there are not enough women to go around.  Here’s an article about the situation in 2001.  By using 2001 figures (it is worse now), we can see that the situation has now manifested itself in that shortage of marriage-age females.

Feral Males

Now, has anyone besides me noted the large number of news items recently about the growing incidences of mass rapes in India?  My quick analysis:  there are bands of feral males roaming the countryside full of anger about the shortage and taking out their anger on the women they cannot have.

Women are a civilizing force, even relatively powerless women, which is very much the case in India.  The decision to radically reduce the number of female infants is contributing to the destabilization of these societies.

We all know the teen-age brain is long on impulse and short on self-control.  This is especially the case in males whose brains do show somewhat different developmental patterns than females.  Risk-taking behavior without regard to consequences characterizes much youth culture, especially male-dominated youth culture.

I predict that things are going to get much, much worse in those societies that do not have sexual parity.  Even in the unlikely hope that incidence of sex-selective abortion stops immediately, it will be at least 30 years before all this sorts itself out.  Expect immense damage and continued destabilization there.

“Smokin’ Hot Wives”

Now, let’s talk about “Smokin’ Hot Wives” for a bit.  For the last several years, young, virile, charismatic male superstar pastors have made a big deal of their “smokin’ hot wives.”  It appears to be a way to let everyone knows how sexually potent these pastors are.  Here is a great post on the situation, written by someone who himself was guilty of that demeaning stances before recognizing how very, very destructive it is.

The  phrase objectifies women, placing all their worth only on their ability to be sexually attractive.  Personally, I call it “smokin’ hot pastor porn.”  It’s the first part of the book of Esther all over again.  The foolish King Xerxes insists his beautiful wife Vashti come out and dance for his drunken cronies.  When she rightfully refuses, he deposes her for her lack of submissiveness. He then systematically searches for as many young virgins as possible so he can routinely deflower them until he finds just the one who pleases him.

I do wonder what would happen if one of those “smokin’ hot” wives were to say to her pastor husband, “You are a fool and are an embarrassment to all around.”  Except they won’t because then they, like Vashti, will be labeled as “unsubmissive” and will face just punishment.  Trust me on this one.  I know that world.

Female Appointments

Now, let us talk about the apparently growing number of churches that are saying, “We don’t want a female pastor.”  I don’t know how strong this movement is, but understand that this is a problem at least in the North Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church.

These churches want men, preferably young, handsome and virile ones, to fill their pulpits.  These young men, especially when they’ve got their own “smokin’ hot wives” in tow, will solve the problem of depressed and declining churches.

They could very well be right.  Let’s face it:  pretty and sexy draws the crowds.  Always has, always will.  We live in a visual, consumer-driven society.  The call to well-formed characters, depth in spiritual understanding and practice, and complicated paths to discipleship that include following Jesus to the cross just do not fill worship spaces or offering plates.

Multiple sociological studies show that the young, the tall, the beautiful and handsome nearly always are hired earlier and with better pay packages than the dumpy, plump, and homely. I call this the Elephant Man syndrome: we have a very difficult time getting past the exterior.   Why? Probably because the young, tall and beautiful say, “Life is going on.  We will not die.  We will persevere.”

Here are the problems for female clergy:   First, when they are young and especially attractive, they very much get sexualized. Huge forces combine against taking them seriously as leaders. Second, these are their prime child bearing years.  Few female clergy are going to get away with what some high-powered women in industry get away with:  having babies and showing back up at work the next week without missing a step. Some of these high-powered ones even hire surrogates to bear their children for them.

Many older women, no longer facing the problems of being sexualized or needing to bear children while they can, have developed immense reservoirs of wisdom and the understanding of spiritual things.  But we have little value in a system that says, “only the young [and pretty/virile] may apply.  Frankly, older men do not face the same demeaning pressures.

This is our reality.  This becomes our cross to carry. And this becomes the church’s loss to bear.  So the church continues to move forward with surface spirituality that cracks when real life pressures hit.

Why can’t we do this in real partnership?  Male AND female?  Young AND old?  Beautiful AND plain?   Charismatic AND quiet? And, yes I will dare to mention this:  Heterosexual AND homosexual?  But all with formed characters, impeccable moral lives and unwavering love of God and neighbor?

Should we do this, we might indeed show the world that the church is a place where the kingdom of heaven is lived out.

But we don’t and we won’t.  And God’s heart breaks.

Addendum:  In Barry Weber’s comment below, he pointed me to a TED talk.  I thought it was so important that I have linked it here.

 

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April 24, 2013 · 9:17 pm

Called and Gifted? How about Called to Circuits?

A Circuit Rider

A Circuit Rider

The blogging world of United Methodist Clergy has exploded recently with the revelation that the Texas Annual Conference is floating a document that appears “ageist” in its suggestions as to who might or might not be encouraged to seek ordination there. I want to thank Jeremy at Hacking Christianity for this post which exposes the possible plans in the Texas Annual Conference for discouraging older people from entering the ordination process.

Now, there are lots of comments flying around. One, from someone who was part of creating the proposal, reminded us that we live in the real world and that, among other things, older clergy add to the health insurance burdens of all us the rest of us. This, of course, assumes that no younger clergy will find themselves in the midst of a horrific disease and will run up giant medical bills in response to it, a rather naive assumption.

But others are saying, and in my opinion more rightly, that just because someone senses a call to the ministry of the ordained doesn’t necessarily make them one of the chosen for this very complex and draining profession. Age, gender, able-bodiedness, race, etc. are not the issue.

Giftedness Must Match the Call

The issue is giftedness for the profession.

I wish that every person sitting on the various gatekeeper boards (SPRC’s, District Board of Ministries, Conference Board of Ordained Ministries), would take the time to read this compelling little novel called Cosmas or the Love of God.

Here’s a review:

Devout, sensitive, young Cosmas believes that he has a vocation to become a Trappist monk, but the reality of monastic life disappoints him deeply. Fellow monks are hard to live with. The life of the monastery seems worldly. He is disheartened by his own shortcomings and appalled by the weaknesses of others. If he can’t live the life, does that mean God isn’t calling him to it? What should he do? Many people—single, married, vowed, ordained—ask these same questions. Pierre de Calan explores them all in this exquisite tale of a man who learns that sanctity does not mean perfection.

Now, that statement in the review, “the reality of monastic life disappoints him deeply,” struck a nerve with me. The reality of the life of one in the ministry of the ordained surely has disappointed everyone to some degree.

Frankly, fellow clergy are hard to live with. The nature of the “career ladder” for pastoral moves, and a highly limited number of prime appointments makes us all competitors with one another more than colleagues in loving covenant.

“Worldly” is very much a word that describes The United Methodist Church. We are selling our souls down the river of numerical success. The “making of disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world” be damned. The process of discipleship simply gets in the way. It is too slow, too cumbersome, without glamour, and not at all remunerative. Seriously, no really effective discipler is going to make Time Magazine’s “25 Most Influential Christian Leaders” list.

We’ve Already Tried This

But none of that is the point. Here is the point:

The young, hotshot (male) clergy that the movin’ and shakin’ Conferences want and are actively promoting to prestigious pulpits look like clones of the very people who helped bring The UMC to the point where we are now: laboring under giant, smothering, expensive infrastructure that says, “More is better!” They are the ones who have proudly brought us to a situation where we are crushed under bureaucracy, burdened with an unworkable, impenetrable Book of Discipline, and dismayed by the fact that apparently only 15% of our churches can be labeled “vital.”

Now, time for a serious disclaimer: Every Christian generation does what seems right at the time in their call to serve the church and to love God and neighbor. Those men, and a few women, who came into clergy ranks 35-50 years ago were doing exactly what the conventional wisdom of the day said to do, and they did it with the best of intentions. Many have persevered through years of heartache, disappointment, and difficult appointments.

The Search for a Messiah

Nonetheless, we as a denomination are in a bad place. So we, in our very human state, start looking for a Messiah. But we don’t want a Messiah like Jesus, who died alone at the cross, pretty well disappointing everyone who wanted to restore “success” to the Jewish nation. No, we want a messiah like Moses who will lead us to the promised land, flowing with milk and honey, or in our case, full offering plates and stuffed worship centers.

Our current hopes as those who will be our Messiahs? Young, gifted, good-looking male pastors. There are solid reasons for this. Frankly, the ones I know that fit the description have simply an astounding level of talent and also come to their calls to the ministry of the ordained under powerful leading from the Spirit of God.

But here lies my great, huge concern: Too many of these young, gifted ones have not spent adequate time in the desert in order to competently deal with the huge pressure to succeed, i.e., save The United Methodist Church. How many of these will bring incalculable harm because their talents have not yet been joined by characters both tested and purified by fire? How many will end up like Walker Railey and Bailey Smith, just to name two of those whose talent levels were not matched with formed characters?

Moses was clearly called to leadership, to his own brand of messiahship, from birth. He was not gifted for the task until he lost everything and had to come face-to-face with his own soul in the wilderness.

Called to Circuit Ministry?

I want to make a suggestion here that I think might help: Let us consider returning to real circuit ministry. Our so-called “itinerancy” is simply a joke, a code for “some well-connected ones are going to make it big and will be powerful and famous but most of you are going to labor in near-poverty and great obscurity for your entire ministerial lives.”

It’s time to change this system.

I envision circuits this way: Churches are grouped geographically into a circuit with no more than one large membership church in any given circuit. Clergy teams are appointed to circuits, not individual charges. The teams consist of a mixture of young and energetic, middle-aged and experienced (especially those coming in as second-career pastors), racially mixed, older and full of wisdom, male and female, elders in full connection, provisional elders, local pastors and interns, some full-time, others part-time, gifted in multiple ways and with varying talents and theological viewpoints.

Clergy teams are charged with the spiritual health and well-being of their entire circuit, not individual charges. Together, they pray their way through the God-visions for the circuit. They rotate preaching, teaching, pastoral and administrative skills from charge to charge. They hold each other accountable in every area of their lives. They model for their charges the nature of kingdom of heaven living as they work out their conflicts and misunderstandings with each other. They know they are in this together and for one charge to benefit at the expense of another becomes anathema to them. Together, they seek the lost, the least, the last and the littlest, and never, ever poach one another’s “founds.”

A Common Pool for Compensation

Furthermore, all members of any given circuit share a common pool for their compensation, although it will vary among the team, factoring in experience, background and full or part-time status. The way clergy salaries are currently set should be a cause of public shame. To have it necessary for some clergy to have to enroll their children in Medicaid to get health insurance while other clergy are able to purchase lavish homes and enjoy country club memberships denies the very basis of Wesley’s understanding of itinerant ministry. At this point, the highest paid clergy may enjoy pay and benefit packages that could be as high as eight to ten times what the lowest paid clergy receive.

We are either in this together or we are not. Currently, I believe we are more “not” than “together.”

The challenge of the distribution of the compensation pool may be one of the toughest faced by each team, and certainly input from the superintendents will be mandatory.  If, however, we could do that and do it maintaining deep love and respect for each other in the circuit, then, and only then, do we evidence the spiritual maturity necessary to move into pastoral leadership.

Compensation is a very touchy and deeply personal issue.  The world tell us, “your compensation packages speaks volumes about your worth as a human being.”  But the church must say, “The love of God has already determined your worth as a human being.”  That’s what we call “grace.”

Could We Start a Conversation?

I know this is radical. I know the idea needs huge tweaks. It’s easy to start listing the issues with it.

But what if? What if we serve in life-giving connection with one another? What if we seek to honor the distinctiveness of the itinerancy by marrying it to the need for greater accountability because of our cultural context? What if we make the Discipline-mandated committee structure start working for us instead of against us, which is too often the case?  It would have to undergo giant change to make circuits work.

Could we at least start a discussion on it? Could we engage in a connected discussion where we explore whether the idea could be matured and shaped into something far healthier than we currently have?

Any and all comments are both hoped for and welcome.  I will also be happy to take emails privately.  I just want to know:  could we even talk about this?

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February 14, 2013 · 12:55 pm

We Do Love Our Tools

The Tool HouseHumans are tool-making and tool-using creatures.  Our opposable thumb and finger grasp strength provide the springboard to create and use machines as extensions of our bodies and brains.

We are also tool-purchasing creatures.  Tools to cook, tools to communicate, tools to study, tools to build, tools to create, tools to clean, tools to repair, tools to heal, tools to build muscles and increase stamina, even tools to help us relax and have fun. We really do like ‘em.

Last spring I saw what a tool-wonder New York City is for my two-year old grandson. A north-south avenue near his house is undergoing reconstruction for a subway extension. Giant, noisy, smoke-bellowing tools provide constant entertainment for an enthralled little boy.

Take a talented cook into a high-end cookware store and the same sense of enthrallment will take over. Or an enthusiastic do-it-yourselfer in a yet unexplored hardware store.  Or someone with a new craft project into a hobby supply store . . . and watch the bank account empty.

Whenever I go to the State Fair, I am a sucker for the areas where slick salespeople offer skilled demonstrations of their mops, knives, and cleaning solutions. This year, it was the steamer that emptied my pocketbook—oh my, was I awed by the way it did clean.  And probably would still, if I would get it out and use it!

Yes, we do love our tools.  Each one promises, “This is the one that will make your life easier and will magically make your dreams come true.”

That is, of course, the siren song. “Buy me, and you will get what you want with so little effort!  Twenty minutes a week for the ideal body!  In days, the perfect home-make-over!  Clean up is a snap with our super-duper pots and pans!  Speak your thoughts into your phone and that great piece of literature shall easily appear!”

So, I’m wondering what kind of tools are available to magically transform and fast-track a spiritual infant into a well-functioning, spiritually grounded adult.

None.

Yes, we can now access hundreds of electronic biblical texts and condense formerly months-long research tasks into seconds. Commentaries by erudite scholars and messages and Bible studies by the most famous of pastors reach us with the click of the mouse.

And while I asked my church members to actually show up at an Ash Wednesday service and make an intentional and solemn entry into the Lenten season, a number of clergy were offering a drive-by imposition of ashes, instant repentance, so to speak.

But lasting spiritual growth can’t be implanted or manufactured or show up within seconds.

It doesn’t happen in ten easy steps or in deciding your purpose or in declaring boldly that you are living your best life now.  There are no spiritual steroid supplements to create the muscles needed to live richly grounded in the love of God and willingness to expend oneself generously for the love of neighbor.

There are no short-cuts here.  No spiritual equivalents exist to combines that can harvest in minutes what used to take days of back-breaking labor to achieve or to ice-makers that regularly pop out perfectly formed ice cubes with the flip of a button.  The steps to spiritual maturity are rather more like laboriously cutting large blocks of ice from a frozen lake and then carefully storing and watchfully distributing those precious blocks during hot and dry weather.

Our tools?  The spiritual disciplines: communal worship, fasting, prayer, study, giving, serving, confession, repentance, forgiveness.  Once learned and practiced, they shape profoundly good and well-functioning human beings who carry the light of God with them everywhere they go. Everyone is called to this kind of spiritual depth.

Only a few reach it.  Simply too much hard work. Only a few . . . but those that do change the world.

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February 11, 2013 · 5:17 pm

On Popes and Retirement

I doubt that there is anyone in this connected world who does not know by now that  Roman Catholic Pope Benedict XVI, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, has announced his retirement as of February 28, 2013.

Apparently, many of his closest aides were flummoxed and unprepared for this announcement.  And within moments, the cyberworld starts asking, “Is a new scandal concerning the Roman Catholic church starting to break?”  And, “How can the RC possibly function with two living Popes?” as though Ratzinger is not quite elderly and hardly physically robust, and has already said he will live out the rest of his life in an enclosed monastery devoting himself to prayer and meditation.

The sky is hardly falling at the thought of two living Popes, as much as the question seems to be throwing people for a loop.

Now, I will tell you I had little admiration for this man.  Personally, I saw him as a power-hungry institutional church man who knew little of a gracious and Holy God whose Son came to seek the lost and die a lonely death, and who really didn’t care that many, especially children, were severely injured by decisions he made in his high-level clerical career before he assumed that highest seat of honor and power in the RC world.

I also didn’t particularly care to hear from his lips that I serve a “deficient” religion.  Nonetheless, that was his opinion and there is certainly a grace in being honest.

But at this point, I say that he has done an honorable, if unprecedented, act.  He is simply no longer fit for the position, and has appeared to face this situation honestly and to leave before he becomes completely unable to do the job. Had he just waited it out until death took him, many vital decisions would be left in the hands of his minions who could easily say they are speaking for him, even if he never uttered another world.

It was an act of integrity. I trust this was not the first of his life, despite how I view his record.

With all this silly talk of “60 is the new 40″ and “80 is the new 60,” people seem to want to forget that we are seriously mortal beings, and that we either get old and die, or we die before our time. Either way, we’re all going to die.

Not exactly new news, but the way most deny this inescapable reality often leaves me shocked.

The Pope is 85 years old.  There is no way his brain is fully sharp anymore.  He should NOT be making decisions that affect millions and millions of people.

Would that more people who are in life-time appointments would figure this out and learn to step down graciously, rather than insisting on keeping their seats of power long after their effectiveness has deserted them.

But it takes guts to be that self-aware, and frankly, it takes a brain relatively free of dementia to even begin to think this way.  That’s what does make this decision so remarkable–in order for him to make this decision, a good part of his mental acuity must still be present.

So, I say, “My hat is off to you, Pope Benedict.  May you find the fullness of the grace of God and blessing in your retirement and may the church universal find healing  where necessary from your tenure in that seat of power.”

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January 29, 2013 · 7:45 pm

Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief

With both horror and fascination, I just finished reading the Lawrence Wright exposé called Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief.

This exquisitely researched book takes us into the bowels of Scientology, a religious group that has apparently systematically lied, cheated, abused its followers, sought to destroy its detractors, devastated families, amassed giant amounts of money which impoverished many and landed in the pockets of very few, and pandered to celebrities whose egos got stroked by the maniacs who run the show.

Scientology doctrines do not actually address the major religious concept of a holy God or the idea that there might be a moral and good center to the world.  It is based on the idea that people, by following its scientific principles, can become essentially super-human and immortal.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t show much respect to science.  The whole thing was built on the science fiction imagination and highly prolific pen of one L. Ron Hubbard, whose writings have been elevated to the state of Holy Scripture, forever and unquestionably true.

But there is little holy about them or about the organization.

A lot of people have been sucked into it and had the life sucked out of them. Wright’s work particularly chronicles the life of Paul Haggis, highly successful screenwriter (multiple well-known TV shows and movies, such as Crash and Million Dollar Baby), the years he spent in it and his eventual journey out.

Haggis was told never to read anything about Scientology that someone outside the fold wrote.  Should he disagree with anything that Hubbard wrote, no matter how crazy it sounded, the entire problem was within him and he must change his own thinking.  The rule: NEVER question what he was being told or taught.

Secret upon secret, lie upon lie, he and his family were pulled through the upper ranks of this organization.

Haggis finally could no longer tolerate the organization’s abuse of his daughter. He began to ask questions and read materials from outside the fold.

He had indeed been in a prison of belief, along with others who may have been unable to escape. The structure and insularity of Scientology consumes their entire lives. Wright documents spiritual, mental and emotional abuse heaped on many loyal Scientologists, most of whom entered the organization as sincere seekers of greater spiritual truth and emotional freedom.

How could this be?

I think all of us long to be surrounded by a group of like-minded people whom we believe understand us and are in general agreement over major life issues. And most of us like being near the seat of power. This desire appears early–the so-called “popular” boys and girls not only call the shots, but other children vie get near them, to have some of the aura of popularity rub off on them.

Dangerous religious groups draw people in by keeping the real secrets of the faith tenants hidden until strong personal connection is already made.  They also create enticing incentives to move to the inner circle which will than have them deeply enmeshed in the culture of secrecy they have created. Because this touches a basic human need, the movements may grow rapidly.

I contend that when an aura of secrecy dominates any religious group and those in the inner circles are there to be served rather than to serve, there is something terribly, terribly wrong. Belief has indeed become a prison.

Wright has done us all a favor by writing this book.  He has probably also put himself at risk.  Scientologists have a long history of stalking, threatening, and piling lawsuit upon lawsuit on those who have dared to question or expose their secrets. This is a courageous piece of scholarship and deserves a careful reading.

Let’s think, people.  If we can’t read critiques of our belief structures and their histories without attacking, there is something very, very wrong.

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January 22, 2013 · 6:26 pm

Controlling the Narrative: Lance Armstrong and the Rest of Us

The Dope on Biking“I wanted to control the narrative.”  That phrase has sprung out of the otherwise unsurprising Lance Armstrong doping confession. The need to “control the narrative” captures much human motivation and underlies multiple decisions. If we can indeed control the narrative, we can keep ourselves protected, lie with impunity and still look intact, together and successful.

Armstrong’s real problems lie far beyond the lying and the doping. Those transgressions can be seen as primarily self-destructive. But Armstrong was other-destructive because he insisted that all who rode with him had to submit themselves to the full doping regimen AND routinely lie about it.

Frankly, when the ultimate motivation is winning at all costs, that was a smart and necessary move by Armstrong. To even suggest that he could have won all those competitions without the doping help is simply preposterous. They were all doping and everyone knew it.

The real issue for Armstrong is that had to control all words that were written or said about him in order to feed and support his nearly super-human athletic and health mystique. He did so by bullying, intimidation, lawsuits and lying.

An extraordinarily gifted and well-known preacher, Walker Railey, held the pulpit at First Methodist in downtown Dallas for years. Railey was engaging in an extra-marital affair and needed to deflect attention from his character deficits AND promote an aura of victimization in need of sympathy. So he created threatening notes, sent them to himself and then publicly announced that he wore a bullet-proof vest under his preaching vestments. Now, who is going to question something like that?

When his wife was found strangled and nearly dead in their garage, the immediate assumption was that Railey’s presumed assailant had instead gone after the more vulnerable wife.

It was an incredible piece of deflection that almost worked. Railey, that masterful preacher and storyteller, also masterfully controlled the narrative very much as Armstrong did. Until he, too, was exposed, although never actually convicted in criminal court (a civil court held him liable for the damages, however). He, too, lost all public credibility.

Let’s bring this home a bit and consider the human condition. The famous or infamous may make the news, but most of us seek to control the narrative in some way. If we can do this superbly well, we can render our own deficiencies nearly invisible.

It all starts with twisting the truth. The fear of exposure has always been a central motivation for lying.  Fear that if others could peer into our own souls and see the real truths there, they would immediately reject us.

So, we restructure our stories, our own narratives, with partial-truths, and sometimes outright lies and deceptions. We also do all possible to deflect light from shining on our inner lives by pointing to the darkness in others. I call this the, “But Mom, he started it” syndrome. Then, and this part is absolutely necessary as well, we paint ourselves as wonderfully sympathetic so no one will carefully examine the story.

If keeping our own story intact depends on others also supporting it, then we must do what Armstrong did: find a way to make sure others will not in some way expose the truth. That’s what leads to emotional blackmail or worse and unending pleas for sympathy that become more and more urgent as the narrative, the story that has been holding this together, begins to unravel.

I invite us to think this week about the ways each of us seeks to control our narratives.

Where have we so compromised our basic truths that we need to deflect attention elsewhere?

Where do we need to control or intimidate or even threaten, however subtly, others in order to keep our own stories intact and free from examination?

Let’s spend a little less time condemning Armstrong and see what we can learn about ourselves from his public humiliation.

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December 14, 2012 · 11:54 am

A Normal Day Interrupted by a Divine Appointment?

the pastor's desk

The view of my desk from the chair

I woke yesterday with a sense of work-urgency informing my plans for the day.  It was the first day I had any real schedule freedom to do intensive work on the many messages that need to be prepared and delivered in the next 12 days.

My Director of Worship and I have been working on the services for several weeks.  Initial concepts have been examined and modified, perfected, so to speak.  Music pieces discussed, musicians recruited, especially for the 11:00 pm Christ Mass on December 24, and our first ever Blue Christmas service on December 20. Acolytes and readers are lined up, other details settled.

We signed off on all the services and the wonderful and skillful volunteer who puts all this information in clear and artful form into our presentation software went to work.

Now it was time for me to outline the messages, find illustrations and visuals that will help the worshippers enter more fully into the biblical world and connect it to ours and to remember more fully the core of the message, and get all this information screen-ready.

I decided to work on the media computer, because working with three screens makes this work easier for me.  Plus, it meant I would be far less available for the many “drop-ins” whom I normally welcome with joy.  But the pressure was on.

Deep into the Scriptures, supported spiritually by the work of the Director of Worship as he was creating a new arrangement on the keyboard at the same time, I didn’t even notice someone entering the media booth.  When I did look up, one of the day care workers told me, “There is someone in the hall who says he must talk with the pastor.  He says he is not a church member. Are you available?”

I have to admit I rolled my eyes in frustration, pretty sure I was going to face someone coming in for a handout, and fought against the temptation to send a message saying I was unavailable.  A bit tense, I went to the hall to greet the visitor.

I saw a young man, casually dressed, polite, but with sadness hanging over him.

I invited him to my office, choosing to sit behind my desk rather than the more conversational chair and couch, thinking it might send a subtle message of how busy and important I am.

Oh yes, I do have a high opinion of myself, don’t I?

He began to speak, and I noticed immediately something huge was on his heart.  Suspecting a need for privacy, I shut the office door, and invited him to tell his story fully.

No details here–what was spoken shall be kept confidential.  What I saw, though, was a young man, not having been in a church building in over 13 years, whom God had touched profoundly in a dream last night.  He was also in a very, very difficult situation, much of his own making.

Long pockets of silence punctuated our time together.  I saw before me a man of powerful character, choosing to speak painful truths, finding freedom in that honesty, and who was at his own moment of conversion.  I also saw a painful life situation that has no easy way out.

We prayed together.  He wept.  My heart ached.

As our conversation ended, he said with confidence and with a much lighter countenance , “I will be in church on Sunday.”

He thanked me for the time and expressed concern for the interruption.  I replied with my own honesty:  ”You are far more important that what I was working on.  I am so glad I was here when you came in.”

Yes, I was.  And as I resumed work on the message, I knew once more the answer to the question of the season, “Does the world need a Savior?”  Yes, it does, and that Savior shows up in the most inauspicious of circumstances.  Kind of like my visitor.  Divine appointments happen in multiple ways, sometimes by angelic announcements to lonely shepherds; sometimes by unwanted interruptions in the life of an oh-so-busy pastor.

I don’t know for sure what that young man experienced in our encounter.  And I’m not sure what I encountered either, other than the mystery of the working and wooing of the Holy Spirit to bring all of humanity back into reconciliation with our Holy God. I also know that I have been touched in a way that is life-changing for me.

This is the story of Christmas.  So much better than the glitter and the gold.  This is a life redeemed.  And I’m talking about my own.

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November 2, 2012 · 11:37 am

Politics and the Pulpit

So, here is Dallas’s own Robert Jeffress opining about politics and the pulpit.

Although he does not name the name, Jeffress makes it clear that Christians either vote for the candidate he clearly supports or they are voting against the biblical values of family and traditional family roles.

Now, there are a whole other set of Christian thinkers and writers who affirm a different candidate, whom we shall also not name, believing that their candidate has a far better understanding of the biblical values of justice, compassion and mercy.

I’ve been careful when speaking from my position as pastor not to give my opinion as to the worthiness of either presidential candidate.  I did write this piece on The Ten Commandments of the Political Season and affirmed several times in there, “The President is NOT the Savior,” but that’s been it.

I stand by that phrase.  No matter who wins, that man will not be the savior—or downfall—of the nation.  Nonetheless, he will be important and what he says and does will affect all of us.

One thing I can say for sure:  again, no matter who wins, about ½ of the electorate are going to be very, very unhappy.  Many will look askance at anything the man who will be inaugurated in January will do or say for the next four years.  That man will be blamed for everything that goes wrong, including hurricanes, tornadoes, personal problems, and fights between warring countries on the opposite side of the world.

However, that unhappy half of the electorate will be unable to give that man credit for anything that goes well, including good weather and robust harvests, personal prosperity, and anywhere peace may be found in the world.

We each view the world through lenses that both enhance our visual clarity AND which bring total blindness.  Those lenses, rarely examined for their biases and foundational truths—or untruths, drive our thoughts.

The political machinery does everything possible to keep those biased lenses in place, for an unthinking voter can be bought by the highest bidder.  That is the history and legacy of US politics.  There is not one thing new here. It’s part of our system.

Do I worry about our direction as a nation?  You bet I do and I write about it frequently.  I think many of the character values that actually built something profound in this place we call the United States have been seriously eroded in the name of self-interest.

We have defined prosperity only in terms of material possessions and our ability to consume more and more and more.  The idea that prosperity might be defined as soul competence, a deep sense of both personal responsibility and community connection, a willingness to see radically different others as worthy of respect and awareness of a Holy One who does have a call upon our lives has been lost.

The church does have a role in the political process.  Our primary task is to actively work to teach people to be authentic followers of Jesus. We are to shape them so they might integrate deep into their minds and hearts the understanding that to be a Christian is to be willing to go all the way to death for our enemies so that the resurrection becomes our common experience. We are to teach them to think as holy and spiritual people, to examine their prejudices and their souls, and to make informed decisions.

Then we send them out into the world in as many different ways as possible.  Those shaped followers of Jesus, from the least noticed to the most powerful, become the aroma of Christ to a world steeped in ugliness and despair.  They go into those ugly and dark places, living faithfully, offering forgiveness, reconciliation and hope, and seeking to change systems that degrade others in the name of personal power and prosperity.

This is called “making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”

Those are the politics of the kingdom of heaven.

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November 1, 2012 · 12:56 pm

Invisible People

Last Sunday, I asked people to think long and hard about how they treat others in a way that makes them invisible.  I had used a scene from the movie “The Help” to illustrate it.  There, the black maids, who made life possible for their white and privileged employers, were also invisible to those very employers.  Their employers spoke about their maids as though they were not there and denied them the most basic of courtesies.

At the end of the message, I suggested we all remember what if feels like to be rendered invisible by others see what we could do to raise our consciousness of the invisible people in our lives.

I, of course, am not exempt from raising my own consciousness.

This morning, after a necessary meeting in Denton, I decided to head to the grocery store.  I needed only a few items and, as is my habit, looked for the shortest check-out line, having a strong dislike of checking out my own groceries.

One looked nearly empty, so I unloaded my cart.  As I did so, I realized the woman checking out prior to me was having trouble entering her PIN for her debit card.  My initial reaction:  annoyance.  I hate to admit it, but it was true.  I had things to do, and I’ve seen this happen before, where an older, somewhat forgetful person, will have trouble checking out.

Now, the fact that I am also older, and becoming more forgetful, did not enter my mind until later.  I just wanted to be done and get on with other things.

As the woman fumbled with her purse, she dropped a credit card on the floor.  She was unaware of the problem, so I retrieved it for her.  A minute later, having switched to cash after being unable to make the card work, she dropped her change on the floor.  I also retrieved that for her.

At this point, I looked her fully in the face.  She suddenly became a real person to me, not just a delay in my schedule.  A beautiful face—the kind of beauty that only comes from an older face that has years of practice of loving others—responded to my look with a beaming smile.  I asked if she needed help getting her groceries to the car and loaded.  She said, “No, her daughter was in the car.”  Then she sweetly thanked me and left the store.

By then, my few items had been rung up and I paid for them.  As I reached for my purchases, I realized the woman before me had left a small bag of items on the counter.  I mentioned it to the checker, looked out the door, and saw her slowly making her way across the parking lot.  I said I’d take care of it, quickly grabbed her bag along with mine and headed toward her.

I caught up with her as she and her daughter, a woman I would guess to be near my age who gave me the quick impression of having some mental impairment, were unloading the cart.  My help was again sweetly declined as they gratefully took the bag, and I headed back to my car, on the other side of the parking lot.

It was then that I began to think of my message last Sunday:  she who was invisible had become visible.  She who had been an impediment to my schedule had turned into rich blessing with the beauty of her smile and graciousness.

And I have been humbled as I’ve wondered how many others I have kept invisible this morning.

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