It's a Miserable Life

My kids - who have been cranky up until Christmas because it wouldn't come quickly enough - are now calm and sated with more gifts, candy and food than anyone ought to have.

So is their dad. I'm just pleasantly miserable with all of the holiday excess of joy and blessing.

Angi has been slaving away in the kitchen all week, preparing gourmet masterpieces. With my mom and mom-in-law visiting, we've watched football and half-a-dozen Christmas classics, including my perennial favorite "It's a Wonderful Life." (My 8-year-old daughter Laura gave me the DVD early so we could watch it together on Christmas eve.)

I've rotated out of teaching in the Singles class on Sunday mornings, and though I will miss that awesome energy and youth and passion, I'm eagerly anticipating my return to sitting at the feet of two beloved elders and their wives in class again.

With the Singles, I've put some very out-there questions before them about what comprises true doctrine, suffering, leadership and holy living. We've studied James and I Peter this quarter; a study which seems incomplete without II Peter, where (like the progression in "The Lord of the Rings") the story grows darker and more threatening. I couldn't leave the Singles class without recommending that they spend some time in II Peter during the holiday ... and if they couldn't stand a story without a satisfactory resolution, skip on to Revelation.

For in his second letter, Peter struggles with the problem of false teachers, lambasting their empty words, blasphemies, boastfulness and arrogance. (I've wondered if some of the Gnostic "secret knowledge" teachings discovered at Nag Hammadi were among the heresies Peter was battling.)

About those teachers, he describes a truly miserable existence:

If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. - II Peter 2:20-21

It sounds like a tragic parody of the rescued George Bailey's words from "It's a Wonderful Life":

"Maybe they'd have been better off if they'd never been born again. ... I wish they'd never been born again."

Whew! Now I'm really glad to rotate out of teaching for a while!

An Easier Objective

A news analyst commenting on the "Today" show earlier this week made an interesting observation about the terrorists/insurgents who bombed an alliance mess tent in Mosul: "They have an easier military objective than the peacekeepers."

Isn't that true, not only of the insurgents, but also of evil generally? It has an easier military objective.

A follower of Christ is called to walk a narrow path and enter a straight gate. To perfection without pride. To generosity without curiosity. To be a peacemaker.

Evil's goal is not necessarily to turn us into Vaders and Valdemorts, but into Potters and Scrooges. Evil only demands a little. Thirty pieces of silver are not required to sell out our Savior. A ten-penny nail of greed will do. A thorn of selfishness. A pocket of lust in our hearts to strip and shame Him.

That's all it takes to separate us from Him.

And if that was the only evil in our lives, He still would have come. He would have left it all and become nothing for us anyway. Innocent from cradle to grave to throne, so that we might be considered the same.

God's most extravagant gift.

God's Will and God's Won't

Is there a difference between something that is God's will and something that is within God's will?

Is there a greater good that includes the choice to do what's right or what's wrong?

Is there a need for evil to help define what's good - just as darkness and light work together to define what's visible?

Is God evil because He permits evil? Is He good because He permits choice?

Is it necessary ... is it even possible for us to comprehend the full extent of God's goodness; His providence; His wisdom?

Or do we just need enough of a taste of it to let us know what the banquet in heaven is all about?

Show Me the Way

A couple of weeks ago, my preaching minister began a message on the spiritual disicipline of guidance by showing a clip from "Cool Hand Luke," where Paul Newman's fugitive character petitions the "Old Man" in an abandoned frame church.

It wasn't my favorite clip, nor would it have been my choice. Up until a few minutes ago, I'd have picked the scene in Martini's bar from "It's a Wonderful Life," when Jimmy Stewart's desperate George Bailey pleads "God, I'm not a praying man ... but if You will, show me the way, God. Show me the way."

What has changed my choice is seeing a DVD press of "The Bells of St. Mary's" in glorious, full black and white. I haven't seen it since I was a kid, and I didn't remember the scene near the end in which Ingrid Bergman's Sister Benedict is wrestling with God over being sent away from her beloved St. Mary's School. She doesn't know why, and Bing Crosby's Father O'Malley won't tell her. "Remove all bitterness from my heart," she begs first of all. Then, she too asks for God to reveal His will.

He does, of course. It happens in the movies. But art does not always imitate life.

At noon today, as my disappointed twelve-year-old son begged me to take him back to Blockbuster to exchange the NHL Hockey PS2 game that his mom mistakenly rented (it had been filed behind an NBA game cover), sleet began to fall while I was shrugging on a winter coat. I renegged on the deal, advising him that this might be one of those instances when it would be wiser to wait, and be grateful for what we have ... which is not being stuck at the bottom of a ravine in our minivan as we were after the accident we had in sleety weather in January. "But I hate hockey!" he protested.

It's a little after 3:00 p.m. now. We're snowed in, and the blizzard continues. While the rest of us watched "The Bells of St. Mary's," my son has worn out his fascination with his sled, left his clothes on the hearth to dry, and bounded upstairs. The hockey game didn't go upstairs with him (yet), but he has gained an appreciation for the amount of fun one can have on ice - safely.

Show me the way. It was a wordless prayer as I was putting on that coat, watching sleet collect on the deck and deciding whether to go: Risk our lives or risk my son's perception of my courage, integrity and faith.

God had an answer ... white, cold and wet.

Solstice: What Do You See?

Winter is here. The colder, snowy weather is scheduled to blow in from the northwest tonight, and my mom is racing in her Cadillac to blow in from the northeast and beat the weather to our house.

The weatherman on the radio has a good perception of it: "The days only get longer from here - at least for the next six months!"

That's looking at the brighter side.

Some folks do that. They see that glass half-full. Others - and I am too often among them - see it half-empty.

My mom sees in a whole different dimension. She sees a dirty glass that needs to be emptied, washed and put away.

I often wish I could see through the eyes of others. (See Greg Taylor's post yesterday, The Platinum Rule, to fully understand why.)

For instance, a friend of mine said he sees the banner on my blog in three dimensions after gazing at it for a few seconds. Apparently, the white letters seem to advance and the orange nebula recedes, while the nebula's aqua "eye" floats somewhere between. I understand the principle behind the phenomenon. I just can't experience it. I'm a bit cross-eyed, and even with corrective lenses can't quite perceive the 3-D effect.

Don't get me wrong; I'm more than grateful that I'm blessed with even flawed vision!

But I really look forward to the time when my gifts from above include nightless day ... perfect vision ... and flawless optimism.

Aha! and Uh-oh

I confess that I find mistaken predictions amusing, whether they're about technology or the second coming.

I can't confirm the one about Thomas Watson, IBM's chairman in 1943, who is reputed to have said: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

But Hal Lindsey published his great "Aha!" for all the world to read and buy: The world will end in 1988. The year came and went, without a Roman antichrist to be seen, and his prediction turned into an "Uh-oh." (I think he has since revised his math, and moved the date to the 2060's -- well past his expected lifespan, so there won't be any personal embarrassment from a second "Aha!" gone "Uh-oh.")

Maybe Hal just needed one of those five computers.

Oh, he's not alone; I'm not just picking on him. Jehovah's Witnesses and just about every other Christian group have had their spokesperson(s) for God in revealing His timetable over the years.

Why is it so hard for us to accept the fact that there are some things we just don't know? Why do we insist we must and do understand every detail of God and His creation (much like Job's three friends)?

Jesus said that even He, the Son, didn't know the day or hour set by the Father for His return (Matthew 24:36) - only that the days of devastation would be cut short for the sake of the chosen (24:22).

Is it possible the Bible is written on a need-to-know basis? Or that - as God more or less told Job - we can ask Him all the questions we want to, but that doesn't mean we can understand the answers? Or that we could do anything about the answers even if we had them?

How much do we really need to know about gravity in order to live our lives wisely? Do we have to know that an object accelerates at 32 feet per second per second as it falls? That a human body has a terminal velocity of about120 mph as it falls due to air resistance? That a black hole's gravity bends space and time to create an event horizon around itself?

Or just that if we drop a hammer in a pitch-dark room, it will fall to the floor in the vicinity of our feet even if we don't see it?

Aha!

(Uh-oh.)

The Face of Forgiveness

A baby's face, innocent and pure.

A face filled with compassion for a couple at a wedding, a centurion, a woman who touched Him, a group of lepers.

A face streaked with tears at the death of His close friend.

A transfigured face that shone like the sun.

A face upon which He fell to pray for deliverance from a cup of death.

A spat-upon face, stained with blood for our guilt.

A dead face, bound with burial cloth.

A resurrected face, not immediately recognized.

A face, now seen as in a darkened mirror.

A face someday to be seen where sunless light can no longer reveal guilt.

We owe each other a glimpse at that face while - as we worship together - we are transformed into the very image of its glory.

Do we see it? Do we show it?

Do we recognize Whose it is?

"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." - II Corinthians 3:18

Emergent Mouseketeers?

Some months ago, after returning from Disneyland with my family, I posted the question Wonder What Walt Would've Wrought?.

I've wondered since if the cast members, ex-cast members, stockholders, classic Disney fans and others who post articles at SaveDisney and MiceAge have things in common with the folks who are challenged by the concept(s) of the emergent/emerging church.

The SaveDisney and MiceAge people run the gamut: disgruntled, loyal, militant, nostalgic. The one they look to for answers is gone; died years ago, leaving a rich legacy of simple wisdom. The organization that bears his name has taken directions which don't always conform to that wisdom, and there are questions about what qualifications its leaders must have, how homosexuality should be dealt with, how stories should be told, and whether the organization should be driven by a passion to accumulate money.

My children are pretty much oblivious to this. They just absorb the Disney stories over and over, enjoy them, play them, live them.

Maybe they know something I don't.

A Surprise From the Birthday Boy

My son Matthew turns 12 on Saturday and we celebrated yesterday in the manner he chose: he and six of his closest friends (and younger sister Laura, 8) were picked up at school in a chauffered, white stretch limo and whisked off to the game room at Casa Viva in true superstar style.

As they tumbled into the back of the limo, four boys and four girls and me, one of their moms said to me, "Oh! You volunteered for this?"

"Was volunteered," I answered, throwing a look over her shoulder at my grinning wife, Angi. She followed at a safe distance in the minivan bearing cake, gifts - and backpacks.

The true nature of pre-teens is revealed in the back of a limo where there is a control panel for all of the interior lighting, the radio, speaker balance, moon roof and even the button that opens a drain port to the street, letting the condensation from the ice bucket/soft drink compartment dump onto the street below.

It is also revealed in the somewhat run-down game room of a Mexican restaurant which has long since seen its glory days under original ownership and the name "Casa Bonita." It is visible when about a third of the games are marked "Work in Progress" since your last visit.

It's visible at your final destination, CiCi's Pizza, where the buffet only has three or four half-claimed pizzas on the buffet upon your arrival instead of the usual dozen. (They immediately ramped up and began throwing pizzas, to their credit!)

True character is also revealed when there are just a few games available to play at Cici's, and they must be shared in turn.

While that was taking place and the cake was being readied and the gifts lined up to be opened, I just had to say something to Angi: "Well, my son continues to amaze me. This time, with his choice of friends. They had a great time in the limo, doing all the stuff you'd expect. They had a great time at Casa Viva. Not a complaint or a rude comment among them. Matthew didn't choose the most popular kids, or the richest kids, or even the prettiest kids. He picked the sweetest."

"I know!" she agreed. "Every one of them has already said 'thank you' to me, and what an awesome time they're having."

To top it all off, our son (who can at times insist on his own way and tend to be controlling) shared the limo, its control panel, the games, the tokens, the tickets, the cake - and the spotlight - with some truly superstar friends.

It may well be the best surprise I've ever received.

And it wasn't even my birthday.

In Her Own Words

The December 12 special on CNN The Two Marys examines the mother of Jesus, recounting/questioning the scandal of her pregnancy, painting her as a "13-year-old girl", even mentioning the Koran's version that the birth took place, not in a Bethlehem stable, but in the desert under a palm tree while Gabriel protected her. It maintains that Christian reverence of her essentially "turned [her] into a goddess."

It's easy to see, just from watching a few minutes of EWTN or seeing "The Passion of the Christ," that the Catholic church still venerates her to an extraordinary degree.

Not too many years back, Kenny Rogers and Wynonna Judd wondered: "Mary, Did You Know?"

Something about her character fascinates and tempts the creation of myth and legend about her.

Maybe it's her willingness to be subject to God's will; her simple humility.

Even when predicting the attention she would receive in the generations to come, she gave God all the glory ... and spoke of herself as His servant.

Not long after Gabriel told her that her Child's kingdom would last forever, she visited her cousin Elizabeth and sang (Luke 1:41-55):

"My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me - holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers."

Even if we're a little confused about her identity, she knew who she was.

She knew.

Celebrate ... or Cerebrate?

Words Jesus never said:

"Mother, this is a wedding feast; a time to thoughtfully ponder the blessing of unity - not a time to break out the good stuff."

"You're right, Judas; that perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Shame on you, you wicked and wasteful woman!"

"I'm sorry, gentlemen; hey! Little children! Stop squealing 'Son of David'! This is a temple, a place of reverence and meditation."

"Thank you; I really do need to concentrate on my ministry. The last thing I need is a bunch of kids crawling on my lap to play."

"When they make fun of you and accuse you falsely because of me, stop and think about what you've said that has offended them and see if you could have phrased it more diplomatically."

"Well, there are thousands of them out there. You'd think at least a few would have the presence of mind to bring a lunch."

"Peter, I asked you to prepare the Passover - and you didn't hire a servant? What were you thinking? We can't eat it with dirty feet! - Were you born in a barn?"

Please, God ... help me never to be so meditative that I become vegetative. Help me feel when I'm tempted to think. Help me to remember the joy that You felt in giving Your most extravagant Gift, Your Son. Help keep my eyes on His joy in giving. Open them to the majesty of being born in a barn.

"Help me be Gift-rapt."

Anthem for the Self-Saved Clan

We would never actually sing a hymn like this ... would we?

O True Orthodoxy!
(With apologies to Fanny Crosby, W.H. Doane and Robert Lowry)

O true Orthodoxy; great things we have done!
We love thee so much, we've abandoned all fun
We've yielded our freedom and outlawed all sin
And locked up the life-gate now that we're all in!

Orthodox! Orthodox! Let the church hear our voice!
Orthodox! Orthodox! But don't make too much noise!
O come, see it our way; the battle is won!
O true Orthodoxy; great things we have done!

O great Orthodoxy, the litmus of love!
The straight line to glory and heaven above!
The vilest defender of things that deceive
will blunder to contort the things we believe!

Orthodox! Orthodox! Let the church hear our voice!
Orthodox! Orthodox! But don't make too much noise!
O come, see it our way; the battle is won!
O true Orthodoxy; great things we have done!

Great things it has taught us; great things we have done;
It tells us we're right when we point out what's wrong!
But purer, and straighter and greater will be
Our unity when on all things we agree!

Orthodox! Orthodox! Let the church hear our voice!
Orthodox! Orthodox! But don't make too much noise!
O come, see it our way; the battle is won!
O true Orthodoxy; great things we have done!

- Author known, but not telling

Parousia Ponderings

I've agreed to teach a spring or summer course at church on "The Second Coming of Christ," part of a series of extracurricular (not "extra credit"!) offerings that our adult education ministry has introduced.

It may not be a terribly important item for many Christians, but it was a crisis issue for me thirty years ago. I kept coming up against too many references to it in the New Testament that sounded imminent then; as if His return would happen within years, if not at just any moment. But that was nearly two thousand years ago.

I just couldn't imagine that the writers were mistaken. Or that Jesus was lying.

Since I have problems, as well as points of agreement, with virtually every interpretation of parousia (second-coming) in scripture, I've had to work it out to my own satisfaction.

It's a bewildering wilderness of theories: Dispensationalism, Millennialism, Pre-Milleniallism, Post-Millennialism, Amillennialism, Transmillennialism(R), Preterism and within them all kinds of subcultures like Pre-, Mid-, Post-Tribulationism, and Full or Partial Preterism.

And if the whole thing isn't very important to you, consider the fact that certain views have forged powerful political liasons in support of committing our nation to very sensitive issues in the Middle East.

To me, it has ramifications in this life as well as the next.

So many positions have been defended so staunchly on this issue (as with so many others), that I've wondered if there's room in the market for a book that just investigates what the scriptures say and asks questions about what it might all mean. It might even draw tentative conclusions that make the cut of Occam's Razor ("Prefer the simplest solution.").

I'm hoping that my study to present the course will spur me on to write the book.

So far, all I've written is part of an introduction: a prayer for inspiration and guidance in the study. Since some of my friends have been encouraging me in my paltry attempts at verse, I'll share it along with the question: Is it worth a book?

There is so much that I don't know
about the Day to come ...
I treasure what Your word does show;
I'm glad You've told me some.

I know that You will come again
from far beyond the sky,
and though I don't know where or when
I do know how and why:

As lightning flashes east to west
so suddenly You'll shine,
and take me where the angels rest
and tell Death, "This one's mine."

For long ago You conquered Death
while pinioned to a tree
You gave up with Your dying breath
a Spirit meant for me.

Submitting to Authority ... or Needs?

I hope I was up to the challenge last Sunday of teaching I Peter 3:1-7 to the Singles Class at church. I took an admittedly unusual approach. I asked the men what they thought women wanted in a man. I asked the women what they thought men wanted in a woman. Then I asked the women what they really wanted in a man ... and the men what they really wanted in a woman. We charted it all on the whiteboard.

And I proposed - using Ephesians 5:21-33 as Paul's parallel take on the subject - that what both apostles were calling for in these specific passages was NOT submission to authority (which Peter had already dealt with in chapter 2).

But they do call for Christ-like, sacrificial submission to the NEEDS of others.

We looked at the chart on the whiteboard.

Sure enough, the men craved respect. The women craved expression of love.

- Exactly what the apostles recommended giving.

I exercised my option to disagree with the text of the lesson in our handouts - this particular one written by my minister's brother-in-law. Though Promise Keepers and many others strongly advocate male authority in the home (and therefore in the church), I can't see that it is supported in these passages from Peter and Paul.

Rather, they are describing a change in the relationship between man and God through Christ. In the old relationship, there were two: the Ruler and the ruled. In the new relationship, there is ONE BODY with a Head, which is Christ. He gave up everything to establish that relationship; to submit to our needs.

The instructions given by the Head are not for the sake of authority, but for the benefit of the rest of the body, His bride: His followers.

They are few and simple.

Love the Lord your God with everything in you. Love others as yourself.