Category Archives: Life as the church

Why isn’t the election about climate action?: Your prefacts and gists

Climate, Psychological growth, The Mission, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The election has apparently boiled down to a discussion about the economy (which that doddering old fool, Joe Biden, led into the post-pandemic envy of the world), and the border (which is challenged but apparently better off under the present administration,

Click for SPLC bio of Trump propogandist Stephen Miller

even though Trump torpedoed the rare bi-partisan solution the Senate hammered out). Meanwhile, the existential threat to the whole world, climate change, is not even on the radar. How are our leaders not talking about the biggest issue we face and why are we allowing them to get away with it? We have our reasons.

The false prophets who rule the world, right now, or threaten to do so, could kill us all. So why do they do it, and why do so many of us keep listening to their lies? We seem to have very little capacity to see the wolves under all that sheepskin (Matt 7:15).

Controlling the airwaves

As Donald Trump has proven over and over, liars become powerful when they control the narrative. Back in the day, when our church was training an expanding pool of cell leaders, one of the hardest lessons to learn was what to do when a person dominates the evening’s conversation. A fledgling leader could easily let a needy or naughty person lead the group down an annoying or unhelpful path just because they could not figure out how to make them share the airwaves. The loudest person in a small group is often the de facto leader. Trump lies loudly. He knows that even when he gets attention for being bad, he is controlling the news cycle.

But why do so many people end up believing his loud lies, or forgive them, even after they are told the Haitians are not eating pets in Springfield Ohio?

Since Donald Trump’s successful playbook started surprising people in 2015, psychologists have been writing about why wannabe autocrats do what they do and why so many people commit to them.

We can see why Trump does it, he wants power. But why do people buy the big lie? There are reasons. Let’s not call them “good” reasons, but we have reasons for preferring something other than truth. [Here’s one article about that I’m using today].

Four reasons people follow false prophets

See what you think about this explanation:

  • We believe “pre-facts.” We are generally preoccupied with what might happen (we spend a lot of time “what-iffing”). It is good habit for surviving. There may be no cars in sight, but we still teach our kids to look both ways because, “You never know.” So we believe a car might run us over. That’s a pre-fact. It hasn’t happened yet, but it is true. It could happen. When we believe something might happen, if someone says it is happening, even if it isn’t, we will likely believe them, or forgive them for lying. Fearsome immigrants in the heartland could be eating beloved pets — or they might, you never know.
  • As a result, we get on unethical bandwagons. If we believe someone’s lies will become true, we reserve the moral condemnation they deserve. In one study, participants who were primed to believe a lie was likely to become true were less likely to hold others accountable for spreading lies on social media and more likely to share disinformation themselves. The stronger the gist was felt to be true, the stronger was the prefactual effect.
  • We become committed to the gist despite the facts. When participants imagined prefactuals more vividly and believed there was a good chance of the facts changing, they were less likely to judge lies as unethical, because they experienced the gist of the statement as true, even if the facts weren’t quite right.
    ……It is astounding, isn’t it, how the Mosaic Law flies in the face of every nation’s fear of being overrun or polluted by strangers. Leviticus 19:34 says, “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as a native among you, and you shall love him as yourself” That never seems to go with the gist.
  • Our fears compel us to preserve a lie that fits with our bias. We like to think we are rational, but unconscious things motivate us all the time. If we are focused on the what ifs, negative or positive, we are motivated to “go with our gut” which is often a pre-factual “gist.” We all deny unwelcome truth and adjust the facts to conform to preferred outcomes.
    ……In Western cultures, especially, “motivated reasoning” is a mechanism people commonly use to preserve a favorable identity. To maintain positive self-regard, we (unwittingly) discount unflattering or troubling information that contradicts our self-image. It’s a way we avoid or lessen the distress we feel when we get information that makes us uncomfortable — instead of naming the wolf, we dress it in sheep’s clothing. It’s easier.

I can’t stop thinking that Donald Trump might win the election because enough of us prefer his delusional presence, which distracts us and confirms our own wishful delusions. We prefer going with his lies to dealing with the climate terror facing us and the painful changes every society needs to make to save the planet. After all, accepting that climate change is real portends unpleasant environmental consequences and would require most people to head them off by making significant changes in lifestyle. Changing one’s mind and changing one’s lifestyle is hard work; people prefer mental shortcuts—in this case, having the goal fit their ready-made conclusions.

Undermining climate action

Instead of having anything helpful to say about the recent hurricanes in the South, Trump kept himself in the news by suggesting FEMA was going to deprive Republican areas of aid. State officials, red and blue, immediately debunked the lie, but his narrative fit the gist many people live in – a pre-factual world where something is coming to get them, the government, Venezuelan rapists, or trans-loving Army colonels.

The most discomforting reality, however, is blowing in with the latest storm. In case you missed it, the increasingly powerful “El Nino” climate pattern has reduced the flow of the Amazon River in Colombia by about 90%. In Ecuador, which relies almost entirely on hydroelectric power, people are enduring energy cuts of up to 14 hours per day, knocking out the internet and sapping the country’s economy.

In Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, the government is cutting water to residential homes at regular intervals and the mayor has suggested that people “bathe as a couple” to reduce consumption.

A drought-stranded boat in the Solimoes River in Brazil, one of the largest tributaries of the Amazon River. Credit: Bruno Kelly/Reuters

Long sections of the Amazon River have turned into dry, brown beaches, and officials are dredging sections to make them deeper. In Brazil, wildfires fueled by searing heat and prolonged dry conditions have consumed vast swaths of forest, wetlands and pastures, with smoke spreading to 80% of the country. It has led to canceled classes, hospitalizations and a black dust coating the inside of homes. (NYTimes)

A drought covering large parts of the Amazon rainforest is especially worrying because it is the globe’s most important carbon sink, absorbing heat trapping gases.

Carlos Nobre spearheaded the multi-disciplinary, multinational Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia that revolutionized understanding of the Amazon rainforest and its role in Earth’s ecology.

Carlos Nobre, the climate scientist, says dryer conditions diminish the forest’s ability to take in those gases, worsening global warming. The less rain means less effective trees taking carbon out of the air. Then they burn, adding carbon to the air.

Nobre notes that the recent drought has crossed several unsettling milestones: never has so little rain fallen in the rainforest, never have dry conditions lasted so long, and never has such a vast region of the jungle been affected.

The drought comes amid another worrisome moment: In January, for the first time, the planet’s average temperature hit 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels for 12 consecutive months. Temperature levels beyond that would lead to consequences that would make it challenging for societies to cope, to say the least. Nobre confirms that many scientists and policymakers did not expect the globe to hit that mark for years. They are worried the earth’s warming is accelerating. “We are scared,” he said.

Keep your feet on the way of Jesus

People cherry pick the Mosaic law to find things that are ill-applied to postmodern culture.  It is like a party game or it makes an amusing meme to pass around on social media. Meanwhile they ignore the revelations that contradict their pre-factuals. That’s why the law had to tell people, “Don’t kill or ostracize the stranger, treat them like God treated you when you were a refugee in Egypt.” And why Jesus, the fulfillment of the Law, says, “No, don’t just love people who love you. Love one another as I have loved you.” We strain out some gnat of preferred gist and swallow a camel of lies about reality. Save us, Lord.

Right now the false prophets are loudly leading us to ignore the most important truths about our life together on Earth. They help us occupy ourselves with fantasies which fit our warped views of ourselves. Even those of us who know this are flummoxed about what to do. We scroll screens to calm our anxiety and withdraw from difficult community-building right when we are most needed.

I have not managed to changed the U.S. political system – I’ve tried, but it got worse under my watch. I have reasons to give up. I could not even make significant change in the church – what we did was great for a season, but it got blown away. I have reasons to be cynical. But I still feel obligated to walk with Jesus, the way, the truth and the life and trust God, step by step, no matter what storm arises.

The liars are providing delusions. We’re set up to believe things that confirm our alternative facts about ourselves and preferred futures. The overwhelming info machine in our hands is not helping. Even so, many more of us need to invent and support radical climate action or there will be little future to enjoy. I think Jesus would like to help us with that.

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If you want to read more of what I’ve written on climate action, here’s the link.

In Christ, I am not defined by “the land”

Doing Theology, , , , , , ,

Constantly fighting for land is so damaging to everyone, it defies imagination to understand why men keep doing to us!

The Holy Land is STILL the nexus for strife. We were there not long ago. We saw how the boundary between Palestine and Israel is thick. But we all know it can be breeched.  Our first stop, after we crossed it was at a hotel facing the huge, concrete border wall, festooned with artful graffiti. It was overwhelming. Going outside and feeling the wall’s shadow was terrifying – even though I knew I would soon move beyond it with a quick flash of my good-as-gold U.S. passport!

Then we stayed with some Palestinian Christians (please let the fact they exist sink in). We visited the factory where they make creches from Holy Land olive wood for export. Then we visited people who had their olive groves chopped down and sheep herds destroyed by Israeli “settlers” reclaiming “their” land, often with the whole-hearted support of American Evangelicals.

My Palestinian hosts felt invisible to the Christians of the world. They reminded me of the refugees I visited in El Salvador who squatted in unwanted land called “marginalized territory.” There they received no services and were not contacted or counted by the government – they were officially invisible. The landless “undocumented” in the U.S. try to stay invisible.

Knowing we belong and where we belong is such a deep human desire! Being displaced and feeling displaced is such a deep wound! So the world’s constant violence about the land is overwhelming. I listen to people who do not feel seen quite often, so I know many of us  carry the trauma of being left out or cast out deep inside. If that’s you, last week’s post might help.

Competing for land

Even though we all put our feet on the same land called Earth and raise our arms to heaven in the same air, we still lay claim to pieces of it; we put up walls around it and exclude others. Some people say Eve did just that when she was offered a deed to the Garden of Eden by some ever-present snake/property developer. I think the Evangelicals (who are these people, actually?) are still eating that apple when they overwhelmingly support Trump/Vance in their cause to deport people who don’t belong in “our” land, the United States, what they think is the kingdom where God rules — alongside Israel, the latter being a sliver of land where a great deal of U.S. weaponry resides.

Russia wants Ukraine, and Putin says his Imperial designs come in the name of the Church. The leader of Iran, who visited Putin last week, wants Palestine back in the name of Allah. China provides Russia with the electronics it needs to do drone warfare; it wants Taiwan and put barbed wire on the border with Nepal in the name of the Communist Party. The Europeans and North Americans were settled behind their thick borderlines long ago, having filled their coffers with the spoils of colonialism and having created a world order that kept them in charge of distributing the goods. It is all about the land

One of the deepest heresies the church has promoted, since Constantine made it fully visible, has to do with the Promised Land. When the 17th century Europeans turned the Bible into a collection of factoids to probe and test, much like they would during one of their revolutionary new science experiments, Protestants took on a this-worldly sense of the land. They collected all notions of “kingdom” in the Bible, mixed and matched them, until they ended up with a land-based religion infused with an otherworldly exceptionalism.

In their new, modern theology, God distributed land to those he chose and empowered, and that meant others had no rights to it or rights in it. If you violated that mandate, God would punish you as surely as he destroyed Jericho. The big lie of 1948 was that the new nation of Israel, granted by the British, was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” The new, secular democracy of Israel was equated with the Promised Land of the Bible [1960 mythmaking]. Now, if you speak for the Palestinians Christians you are antisemitic at best and anti-God at worst.

Citizens of heaven

I won’t go into all of that — even though it was jarring to see the ruins of Palestinian homes in Canada Park, 7000 acres devoted to the re-greening of “the land” not far from the valley of Armageddon. I am mostly wondering how Christians gave up the New Testament for a reductionistic view of the Old?

Heider Abu Ghosh at the ruins of his childhood home in Imwas, now Canada Park, built on the ruins of Palestinian villages destroyed in 1967.

When my children were in elementary school they were folded into our new church with its radical Anabaptist flavor. It was the Reagan era, after all, and something needed to be done! So we planted a church. All my children were boys, so I decided they needed a club we called “Boystown.” It was short lived, but a lot of fun. I think I may have learned more about life from it than they did.

The guiding verse for Boystown is from Philippians 3, in bold below. We recited it every week.

For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.  But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,  who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Philippians 3:20 is one of the Bible verses I wish had become popular. Instead, I got, “Nothing is impossible with God.” But this verse is more and more relevant: Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

As Reagan was defeating the “evil empire” (followed by Bush’s Axis of Evil and now just the Putin-Trump hotline), I wanted my kids to learn the basic worldview of a Christian: You don’t get your identity from the world, or from the land, or from some jingoistic manipulator on a screen, you get it from God. You are a perpetual “illegal alien” or you are not following Jesus — that’s the Jesus who rises from the land transformed, not trapped in it, not subject to it, not defined by it.

I deeply care about the disputes of the world and the people who are rolled over by the powerful men, primarily, who tell you they are defending you when they are just making empires for their legacy, raising their “flag,” so to speak. Otherwise, I would not be able to drop the place names I’ve already dropped. But being against all the warmongers and land-stealers is not good enough. I have no intention of keeping quiet about the evils of the world, but my sense of self is not as someone who is merely against evil or for just land distribution.

What Paul was teaching the elementary boys — who no doubt had just been competing with their brother for a place on a bean bag or who had lost a competition for their own room, was, “Who you are is named in relationship with God. Where you belong is in the transcendent kingdom of heaven, any place where Jesus reigns. Your country is no longer defined by powerful humans, you are free to be your true self in Christ, no matter what they say or do.” You follow Jesus:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. — Colossians 1:15-17

I wanted them to practice some radical acceptance of that reality.

Pledge the appropriate allegiance to the flag if everyone is standing up, but you know who you are. If you need to take a king’s ex while the Star Spangled Banner is playing, go ahead. Just remember that Jesus did not even bother, he knew who he was, and still does. You are a citizen of heaven just like He is and one day your body will be just like his is. Believing that Gospel will likely get you in trouble when someone wants you to die to to preserve their land, but it is what it is.

The seed: An earthy story from Jesus (2016)

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Spiritual direction

In 2016 I was an itinerant, moving among our congregations with basic teaching about developing a life in Christ. This one is about the “earth” stage when faith first takes root.

Dates harvested from Hannah, pollinated by Methuselah at the Arava Institute. Photo by Marcos Schonholz

First, let’s talk about the seed that grew this date palm in Israel. This is a Judean date palm that you would have seen everywhere in the time of Jesus. But there was so much war in Palestine during the Roman era that date palm groves were destroyed and this species became extinct by the year 500.

But an amazing thing happened. During excavations at the site of Herod the Great’s palace near Jericho in the 1960’s, archeologists unearthed a small stockpile of seeds stowed in a 2000-year-old clay jar. For the next forty years, these very old seeds were kept in a drawer at a university in Tel Aviv. But then, in 2005, a botanical researcher decided to plant one of the seeds and see what, if anything, would sprout.

She said, “I assumed the food in the seed would be no good after all that time. How could it be?”  She was soon proven wrong. The old seed from an extinct palm sprouted! The resulting tree has been named Methuselah. It has been eleven years, now, and the tree is not only thriving, it has produced pollen, which has been used to germinate seeds on a wild date palm. It is producing more seed.

Jesus probably loves that story — and not only because he was in Jericho many times and had to pass Herod’s palace on the way up the hill to Jerusalem. I think he loves it because God loves seed stories. God is very earthy. For instance, just before Jesus was crucified, he pictured himself as a seed. Everyone read it: “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:14)

That’s a great way to see a seed – as something that dies to its former way of being as a single, encased seed and transforms into a plant and a seed bearer. God is very connected to how the earth lives. Like you heard a couple of weeks ago, our rendition of the Way of Jesus begins with Earth because God begins with the earth. The creator is earthy, God even became one of us – God got buried in us, got buried in the earth, God has experienced all the longing and loving of being a spiritual being in a body like ours as part of the Earth.

Talking about seed

I hope I can get you comfortable with how Jesus is talking about seeds. In the earth, in your body, in your spirit and not just in your mind. I am going to talk about a word, but if you just hear it like it is a word “seed” on a page, I will fail. The word will be truly extinct. I am talking about Jesus talking about a word like a seed, a Spirit-empowered, miraculous transformative seed.

Jesus and the Bible writers are very comfortable with talking about seed. Like I said, He probably loves that story about an ancient seed in a scientist’s drawer that miraculously comes to life. And he has some favorite stories he made up himself. Jesus tells a very basic parable about the sower and the seed he sows. You might remember it: A sower goes out to sow and the seed finds all sorts of soil with which to interact. Some seeds don’t sprout well. Some are eaten by birds. Some sprout and are choked by weeds. And some find fertile, watered ground and thrive.

  • I suppose Jesus told that story because he like seed stories. But more so he was talking about himself, the seed, the word of God. It is kind of a Trinitarian-like story, isn’t it? – God the farmer, Jesus the seed, the Spirit charged environment as the soil.
  • By extension, the Bible writers who quoted Jesus telling the parable, did that because they were talking about their word, their seed of Jesus they cast by writing it down.
  • There is a lot being taught in that little story. But it all goes back to: The story of Jesus is like a seed that grows in a fertile spirit and an open mind.

One time I experienced a seed of the word lying dormant in one of my oldest friends. When I was in the fifth grade I was awarded the title of “best couple” with my childhood friend, Kim. We were not even embarrassed to be best couple since we had been like brother and sister since first grade. After I left town to go to college I became a full-on evangelistic Christian, sowing seeds like crazy. One time I came back to town and ran into Kim. As she told me the story later, I was totally obnoxious. My side of the story was that I was totally, somewhat blindly, into being a newly “out” Christian. At some point in the conversation I said, “Why aren’t you a Christian yet?” Not exactly the best seed sowing. She told me much later that she swore at that moment never to be a Christian.

I did not remember this event at all until she wrote me a letter about it fifteen years later. Usually it was just Christmas cards between us, but this time I was surprised to get a letter.

She started off with, “I hate to tell you this, but I am a Christian.” She went on to say, essentially, “I vowed I would never become a Christian since you were so obnoxious about it that day. But I was so depressed and my family was such a mess, I guess I did not know what to do. At one point I was feeling especially down and desperate and to my dismay, you came to mind saying, “Why aren’t you a Christian?” And I did not have a good answer. I went to the nearest church the next Sunday and to my surprise, I became a Christian. Thanks.”

The spiritual seed I had planted, a very tiny, compromised seed, had laid dormant for a long time! One would suppose it was extinct. But, to even Kim’s surprise, it sprouted!

  • Amazing isn’t it? How did that happen? How did the seed germinate in you?
  • And if the seed of faith has never effectively sprouted in you, what do you think is happening right now?

The germination process

The Bible writers are fascinated with this spiritual germination process. The whole New Testament is kind of a long telling, in all sorts of variations, of how the seed of God is planted in people and how it grows a new, eternal life in them.

If you dig in to what they are saying, the Bible writers might be more comfortable with seed than we are. For instance, the word for the seed sown in the field in the Lord’s story is the same word for human seed: sperma, shortened to sperm in English.

Paul teaches: “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” – (Galatians 3:29). That’s a nice argument about how Abraham’s faith is the deeper way to know God than Moses’ law. Don’t worry if you don’t know about all that yet. Paul’s basic intention is to talk about being re-seeded by faith through following Jesus. He does not mean we magically become offspring of the father of Judaism, Abraham. He means we are seeded with new life in the Spirit and end up having a remarkable family resemblance to Jesus.

John says, No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. (1 John 3:9). This is even more explicit. Being born of God is like you were an ovum and the spiritual sperm of God wriggled its way into you and started an incredible spiritual cell multiplication. The seed remains in us John says – it is like God’s spiritual genes combined with ours and are creating a new being who can justifiably be called a child of God.

It is all very earthy and organic, isn’t it? So I get upset when people try to fit this word of God Jesus is and which Jesus sows into the tiny, head-bound, rational philosophy that runs the world. God is the sower and Jesus is the seed. Jesus is the sower and his words are like seeds. The disciples are sowers and the Lord’s words are like living seeds, the Bible is like their seed chest.

  • It is so troubling when the word of God, that seed which lasts when everything else is extinct, gets reduced to whatever phrases a person can remember from reading the Bible.
  • Then the Bible gets subsumed under a scientific idea of a word, in which words all become data, and the Bible becomes a book among all the books, in the category “Great religious books.”
  • By now, the whole idea of faith can be reduced to an emoticon. Way too tiny.

All that stuff I just said is a LOT less than what Jesus is and what Jesus, Paul and John are talking about in the parts of the Bible I have shown you or told you. But a lot of Christians I have known, and even more I have heard about, think the seed Jesus is talking about is the Bible, or some factoid from the Bible or some principle drawn from the Bible. And they can reduce the idea down to clip art.

It is not just a seed thought

The seed is often seen as a thought. And Luke 8:11 quotes Jesus saying about his parable of the sower: This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. It sounds very rational. Here is the logic if you think Jesus is being merely rational:

  • If the seed is a word, that means a thought, we read words with our mind.
  • And if we are reading words about God, they are in the Bible.
  • So Jesus is talking about finding the seed in the Bible, since that’s where the parable is anyway.

That kind of thinking works if you are committed to a world that is rational. If you think truth is thought-derived or science-and-math-derived, then you might be thinking right now, “What else could that line possibly say?”  If that is what you are thinking then you are probably having an argument in your head most of the time because you believed  Descartes and everyone who built on his dictum that, “I think, therefore I am.” When it comes to faith, you probably think “I believe certain things to be true, so I act on them.”

But there is more. When Jesus is done telling his parable of the sower to the crowds, he says, “If anyone has ears to hear, let her hear.”

He is not just making an argument by telling his story, he expects the listeners to be impregnated, to be planted with the seed through relating to the Son of God and hearing the word.

  • The seed in the story is not just about some thing.
  • The word of God is not the “concept of Jesus” from somewhere else where thoughts come from. It is not a thought that can happen without a body as Descartes thinks truths must be.
  • Jesus is not talking about the word reduced to a book or reduced to someone’s limited understanding.

God doesn’t exist, like Descartes said, because we couldn’t imagine him if he didn’t. God exists in another plane of existence altogether that is beyond one’s mind, beyond what we can fully imagine — like God is doing in the person of Jesus and like Jesus is doing as he tells his story of the sower. The whole process of God sowing the seed of grace and truth is about a person in their environment struggling to receive the life being born in their world, like you and I are doing. At some point we are like the seed, like the soil, like the sower. It all goes together in this ecosystem of love Jesus is revealing.

The seed growing in you

A sower goes out to sow. The seeds sown find all sorts of soil with which to interact.

  • Some seeds don’t sprout, or have such shallow roots in rocky soil they wither in the sun.
  • Some are eaten by birds right off the hard path.
  • Some sprout and are choked by weeds.
  • Some find fertile, watered ground and thrive.

The seed is the word of God, the one who is telling the story about himself is enacting the story as he tells it. Jesus was talking about himself, the living Word of God, and his words are seeds for those with fertile ears. The Bible talks about Jesus telling about himself. The whole book, Old and New Testaments, looks to Jesus, quotes and admires Jesus, and applies the resurrection life of Jesus. The story of Jesus coming, present, working, and coming again is like a seed that grows in a receptive spirit and an open mind.

When Jesus says something to you, he doesn’t want to change your mind, he wants to change your life. If God’s seed sprouts in you, you are going to reproduce life like Jesus lives. If God’s seed remains in you, you are going to feel like living whether all your thinking is in line with your faith or not.

The point of faith is not just thinking correct thoughts and carefully fulfilling conscious behaviors. The seed is planted deeper in us. I say that most of what we do is not all that conscious, anyway. Most of our reactions are pretty automatic. They are mainly trained by who and what we love, not what we think. Starting with our parents, our loves lay out the track for what we do. Our reactions are directed toward what is ultimate to us.

During this speech we have been doing a lot of thinking together. But more important to our faith is how you have been training our loves to live in love. Being in this environment, and exercising the habits of it train our loves for living — this behavior directs your desire back to God. It is where the seed of new life is planted and nurtured.

If you bought the alternative view that you think therefore you are, then you probably have had a constant debate with what I have been saying. You’d have to in order not to lose your sense of self. Descartes taught that doubting is the basis of truth-seeking. You can’t be rational if your mind doesn’t dominate all your other functions.

But Jesus comes along and insists that who and what you love determines who you become and how you live. I suppose it is, “I love, therefore I am.” Jesus says, “If you love me, keep my commands.” (John 14:15).

  • When he says that, is he saying “Figure out the commandment and do it right, think it through and act — believe and so behave?”
  • Or is he saying, “My sheep hear my voice and come when I call, they love me and I love them, and I care for them like a shepherd.” I am with them as they seek me in the street and they will find me.

I say, and I think the New Testament writers back me up, that it is the latter. The seed doesn’t just change your thinking, it revolutionizes your loves. Like the Psalmist says, talking about the Law of Moses that Paul says is a weak precursor to the Word of Jesus: I shall run the way of Your commandments, For You will enlarge my heart. (Psalm 119:32). The seed of God is at work in us to train our loves so we love God again and receive the love that all our other pursuits seek in vain.

If you want to be fertile ground for the seed of God, if you want your soul to be a fertile womb for God’s life to be born, stay immersed in the activities and environments that train your loves. Do them, run in them, never merely think them. Have a life, give into the living places.

I think we have organized a healthy environment for you. For instance, we are trying to put together a track that can augment what happens in our cells on the Way of Jesus website that is filled with Gifts for Growing. It begins with Earth for people who are good soil and for those who may not even have the seed planted yet. Stay in it. If you don’t know Jesus yet, or don’t know if you want to trade in your rationalism, that’s OK. We made this environment for you. It can train your loves while your mind catches up.

  • I won’t go much further except to say run in the way like someone who wants their desires trained for intimacy with God and reconciliation with others.
  • Engage in the rituals: Daily Prayer, Communion, This meeting.
  • Be in the cell. It happens every week to train our loves.
  • Study the Bible like a site map not a text book.
  • Be baptized and join in the covenant.
  • Make the church’s map and move with us as we ratify it on the 25th.

These are exercises for a spiritual being in a body. They help us get started again and again, especially when what we think proves to be outmoded and becomes extinct.

A few tweaks to improve “Draw Me Close To You.”

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Music, Spiritual direction, , , , , , , ,

I was walking in the woods listening to music, which I love to do when I am not walking with my wife — I like her even more than my music!

I realized something about my music as I walked. I have three versions of one song on my playlists — one by the artist who made it popular, Michael W. Smith (Kelly Carpenter wrote it), one by Marvin Winans, and one by me! I guess I like “Draw Me Close To You!”

But now, after further meditation, I want a rewrite. I will record mine again with improved words, once I am done writing this.

The original song was written because Kelly Carpenter was tired. He was doing church hard and losing the reason he was doing it. He saw himself getting in the way of God’s work. He wanted to get out of the way, to get back to his first love and do things the right way, regardless of the cost.

That’s OK until it goes too far. His lovely little mantra has inspired renewal all over the globe by now (i.e. – a Malagasy version). But I think people may take away some unfortunate messages from it.

A few lines of “Draw Me Close” need a re-write

Draw me close to you
Never let me go
I lay it all down again,
to hear you say that I’m your friend

There is a problem here. I think underneath the lines, he is saying, “I don’t believe you love me unless I lay down my life.” Some people miss the whole point of the gospel because when they hear Jesus saying, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” they think Jesus is teaching them a lesson rather than giving them a gift! They think Jesus is putting the sacrifice on them instead of himself!

You are my desire
No one else will do
Cause nothing else can take your place
[I wanna] feel the warmth of your embrace

No rewrite needed here. It is so true. “All my loves are reflections of yours, Lord.” But let’s go on.

Help me find the way
bring me back to you.

I think there is an emphasis in this song, and in most of Evangelicalism, that reinforces, “I need to find the way.” I suppose if you’re not sure you are God’s friend, you probably feel lost most of the time. Several of my Christian clients just can’t be found. Being a lost seeker is their identity. If they stopped being one, they would betray who they are, be false to themselves, lose control.

[Cause] You’re all I want

This might be the worst line. I don’t think it  is true. This song is full of a lot of other wants. He wants to feel better. He wants to live the right way. He wants to stop wasting his energy on foolishness. He wants to look good in the eyes of others. He wants to write a good song. (He wants credit for writing it, even if Michael W. Smith got all the money and fame). He wants God’s approval. He wants security that he is close to God. He wants to feel things.

Some of his wants are needs. Some of them are desires. Most of it is mixed up and that is just how it is with us.

You’re all I’ve ever needed

This might be the best line. So true. At the bottom, top and all around our needs is our need to live securely with God in the love of Christ and the nurturing of the Spirit.

You’re all I want
Help me know you are near.

When I sing this, this is what I mean: “Ultimately, you’re all I want. In the meantime, help me.” Because I don’t always know what I want or know you are all around me. What’s more, I don’t respect my desires, which often makes me feel like I ought to be in control of myself and what going on around me, when I obviously am not.

Maybe we just don’t know what we want

When it comes to desire, Christians, especially, are not too conversant. They think things like, “I need to lay down my own desires so I can get in line with what God desires for me.” Philip Sheldrake wrote a whole book about getting over that error in his thinking. Here is a bit.

On the other hand, desires undoubtedly overlap with our needs and neediness, although it is still possible to distinguish between them. Both may be conscious or unconscious. In fact, it is not unusual to experience a conflict between the conscious and unconscious levels of ourselves. As we reflect on our lives, we can come to understand more clearly how unconscious needs had the capacity to drive us to behave in ways that we actually disliked or that failed to express our truest self. For example, we may be driven by a deeply buried need to succeed, and to be seen to succeed, while on a conscious level we say to ourselves and to others how much we desire to operate differently!

When we choose to talk of befriending desires rather than simply responding to needs we are implying that desires involve a positive and active reaching out to something or someone. Such a movement goes beyond our temporary reactions to immediate circumstances and actually touches upon deeper questions of our identity and our ideals. — Befriending our Desires Philip Sheldrake

Rather than laying down our desires and pretending we know what we want, we should respect our God-given capacity to desire and work out our desires in love.

Strangely enough, David Brooks touched on the same subject last week as he lamented the state of the U.S. culture, dominated, as it is, with micro moments of dopamine jolts which keep us from realizing our deeper meaning. He says:

The problem with our culture today is not too much desire but the miniaturization of desire, settling for these small, short-term hits. Our culture used to be full of institutions that sought to arouse people’s higher desires — the love of God, the love of country, the love of learning, the love of being excellent at a craft. Sermons, teachers, mentors and the whole apparatus of moral formation were there to elongate people’s time horizons and arouse the highest desires.

The culture of consumerism, of secularism, of hedonism has undermined those institutions and that important work. The culture has changed. As Philip Rieff noticed all the way back in his 1966 book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, “Religious man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased.”  — “The Junkification of American Life” by David Brooks (NYT Sep 5)

“Draw Me Close to You” is probably another little dopamine hit for a lot of worshipers. When they heard the first few piano chords the night the video was made, they got a chill of recognition and anticipation. The next song after the video was another little hit with little content but lots of feeling that left them wanting more.

When the “psychological man” (it was 1966, sorry women) gets to the words, looking to be pleased, I think they are more likely to be displeased, essentially unpleasable and perpetually looking for the next thing that might satisfy their unbridled hunger.

Maybe Rieff should have also said the “psychological beings” are born to be pleasing and never quite achieving the necessary splendor — TikTokkers getting abs to get clicks, Christians getting passion worthy of their ideal self and God’s approval.

Let’s make a few adjustments

Draw me close to you
Never let me go

Let’s keep these lines. Just think of them another way. Don’t sing them like you’re a wild bronco resisting  and needing to be broken. Sing it like a  distraught child who needs to be wrapped in security and comfort. Try it. See if you can be drawn in close to God right now. God is close to you.

Instead of  “I lay it all down again, “ try

I tune my ear for grace again

Instead of “to hear you say that I’m your friend,” try being more present, less aspirational,

I hear you say that I’m your friend

Or have you never heard that, personally, even though Jesus says it in John 15?

Let’s keep this part:

You are my desire
No one else will do
Cause nothing else can take your place

Just a small edit, below. Because it is so true: all my loves are reflections of yours, Lord.  Let’s lean into that. I don’t just “want to” feel your embrace; I welcome it right now.

I feel the warmth of your embrace

Instead of “Help me find the way
bring me back to you” try:

Guide me on the way
Through the dark to you.

I general, I think this song could use more mystery and less transaction. Regardless, let’s not be perpetual prodigal children, wandering in our individual wilderness. We are not in or out of salvation, we are in it all the time. I think this song was always about being in it with God, even when I feel a bit in the dark.

Instead of “[Cause] You’re all I want,” try

You’re who I want

Let’s keep it personal. God is not merely a better desire than the other desires I can choose. Besides, she chose us, according to John 15, we did not choose her.

Let’s keep this:

You’re all I’ve ever needed

It is so true. At the bottom, top and all around our needs is our need to live securely with God in the love of Christ and the nurturing of the Spirit.

You’re all I want
Help me know you are near.

Let’s just keep in mind, we’re saying, “Ultimately, you’re all I want. In the meantime, help me.” Because I can’t even keep myself in the reality of your nearness.

With just a few simple tweaks

Is it OK to tweak a very popular song? I obviously think so. So does Michael W. Smith, since he changed the words to the original (which actually made more sense than his). I think my tweaks help us in three important ways:

  • They help us get out of our power struggle with God.
  • They acknowledge we are full of needs and full of desires. Our needs are not always aligned with our desires. Our needs matter to God. Our desires lead us to experience God. There is a tension between them, but not a dichotomy. We need to be aware of the tension and not think our needs are desires and vice versa.
  • They help us not to lie to ourselves and God. Saying, “You’re all I’ve ever needed,” acknowledges our sense of never being satisfied.

Let’s amplify that last bullet to close and acknowledge we are all needy right now. Even as I sing “You’re all I’ve ever needed,” in the back of my mind I am worried I am spending too much time writing this post and wondering if anyone even cares if I did. What’s more, I responded late to someone’s email and I think they’ll think poorly of me. I also ate too much for lunch at a smorgasbord yesterday and feel like I need to get up and get some exercise.

Singing “You’re who/all I want,” also acknowledges the largeness of our desire. Desire is what I worship with. It is what gives me hope of something better. It is place in me where I decide to do something that is from my best and meets God’s best like a kiss. “You are my desire” answers back to God’s desire for me and the burning passion of Jesus to see me come to fullness of life.

Simple songs make a difference. I can sing Kelly Carpenter’s song and let it mean what I want. But I can also sing it with him and relate to the strain he felt when he wrote it. He felt a bit bad about himself and how he was blowing it. He wanted help to get on the right path. Not so bad.

But I just want to note, his desire for God had apparently already put him on the right path. After he had his epiphany, he went home and wrote a song God was drawing him close to write. All over the world, people use it to express their deepest desire.

Most of our worship should acknowledge how much we want to be close to God, not just how much we would like to be close if were weren’t so terrible. Because God has drawn close to us and is close to us right now.

What do you do with a “Gotcha!” question? : VP Harris shows the way.

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, Leadership, , , ,

What does one do with a “gotcha” question? Here is a lesson from Vice President Harris.

Dana Bash, after trying to get Harris to admit she flip flopped on fracking for no scientific reason after she became a national figure (and someone who needs to win Pennsylvania!), brought up Donald Trump’s remarks about whether or not she is really Black. Bash must have been asking about this because that is what every voter needs to hear from a potential candidate, right? “No!” you say? “It was because the CNN anchor, and her network, were hoping stoke a juicy pissing match to make some headlines?” You are probably right.

Unfortunately for Bash and CNN, the Vice President did not take the bait. Her entire response was: “Yeah. Same old tired playbook. Next question.” That’s one thing you could do with a “Gotcha.” Maybe sigh and say, “So boring!” or “So without grace, much less wisdom.”

Gotcha epidemic

Maybe we all need to rehearse our responses. I don’t know if this is happening where you live, but “gotcha” is like a cultural trait around here. Criticism appears to have become an obligation. And catching someone doing something wrong is a sport – even if one needs to make up the wrong out of whole cloth (meaning a patched up mess of scraps masquerading as whole cloth, which was quite expensive in the 16th century).

Trump’s unlawful invasion of the Afghanistan War veterans section of Arlington Cemetery was intended as a “gotcha.” They wanted to tag Kamala Harris with somehow ordering the evacuation during which thirteen soldiers were killed by a bomb — the same evacuation Trump caused by announcing a deadline Biden decided to approximate. Trump intended to show the world how little Harris cares for Afghan War veterans on the sacred day of observance his team concocted. It’s the same old tired playbook. But it happens every day.

I think it happens to most leaders everywhere these days. For instance, I told you I was elected to my condo board. I can’t decide if I was honored to be noticed or not, but one of the members of the loyal opposition to the board spread the rumor that I was illegit because I was delinquent in my payments. Gotcha! Our volunteer lawyer called me up in a tizzy, afraid my reputation was going down the drain. She assured me she informed them I was not delinquent. I think I disappointed her by not being too upset. I’ve been treated worse by people I loved more. And I was wondering if being deposed might just be a good idea.

Such indignities are so common news about them seems normal. For instance, an anonymous complaint was recently filed with the University of Washington where Robin DiAngelo submitted her 2004 dissertation, “Whiteness in Racial Dialogue: A Discourse Analysis.” She went on to write a hugely influential book based on it titled What Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Her book is true and was hugely successful. The internet says she might be worth $5 million now. Her writing and speaking contributed to institutional comeuppance all over the country.

The complaint accuses DiAngelo of “research misconduct,” and details 20 instances in which she appears to have drawn on the work of other scholars and reproduced it without proper attribution (I just cut and pasted that sentence from the NYTimes). A conservative newspaper got hold of the complaint and published it. At the University such complaints are confidential — but no more. Before there can be a rational or relational process, there is Gotcha! “Similar complaints have been filed against diversity officers at Harvard, Columbia, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison” (NYT – don’t want more complaints).

Tim Walz’ approach

At the CNN 20-minute-spread-over-45-minutes interview, Tim Walz was apparently there for eye candy. He wasn’t asked too many questions. But, of course, he was asked why he said he carried a gun in war since he was never in combat. He could have said “The U.S. has been at war since I was born and I served in the National Guard for 24 years.” He did not say that in the interview. Bash asked him, “A campaign official said you misspoke. Did you?” I’m not sure why he did not say he misspoke, exaggerated or whatever he was doing. So what? I’m sure he knew people knew he had never been on the front line or directing drones from Nevada. But make sure you don’t make any mistakes in what you say!

His reply was a pretty good example of what to do with a gotcha, however. He said,

“But again, if it’s not this it’s an attack on my children for showing love for me, or it’s an attack on my dog. I’m not going to do that, and the one thing I’ll never do is I’ll never demean another member’s service in any way. I never have and I never will.”

It is OK to talk back to deceivers or just mean people trying to make you look bad — the same people who are making all of us afraid to say anything. I heard from two clients last week who did not want to keep a journal because they actually feared someone would find it and publish it. Even private thoughts are subject to investigation! Gotcha has an impact on our psychological and spiritual development! So like Gov. Walz, we should talk back — especially if the fear has been installed in you.

Our condo building is full of gotcha, like I said. We have a lot of wonderful people, many Jesus-loving people. But even they get caught up in the zeitgeist of thinking some conspiracy is afoot and we’d better uncover it. (Hmmm. Could the nightly stories of about on all those crime dramas have anything to do with that? I was so glad when Marcella was finally over! [Exhaustive recap]. But the reruns of White Collar were still on the list [Matt Bomer shilling]). I get so many indignant emails I started deleting some senders automatically.

That’s sad, isn’t it? Everyone needs community. No one should be summarily deleted. Condo associations are some of the last associations we have left! We need to associate or we get sick. The gotcha era seems to be an hysterical reaction to being so alone and afraid. If someone is out to get us, a lot of us will get them first. If everyone is out to get us, then everyone needs to be got.

John McWhorter’s suggestion

What came to John McWhorter’s mind as he watched Harris find her way through the gauntlet of skepticism, criticism and lying that surrounds everyone in even mildly public life, was not joy, no matter what Oprah said. It was the cautionary tale he learned from being swept up in the adulation of the first black president.  He does not think people were crying at the DNC because Harris is a seismic shift towards a renewed era of democracy. He thinks they love her because her Blackness symbolizes something. He says:

It’s time, then, to evaluate Harris according to — you knew this was coming — the content of her character. When I urged that about Obama in 2008, some people took offense. They didn’t like being told that they were objectifying him. They said I was underestimating Obama’s record of achievement. I eventually fell in with the idea that his Blackness was cool and important. I know better now, and I hope we all do.

I wish Harris well, partly because I sincerely believe that my tween daughter — and possibly our guinea pig — would be a better president than the megalomaniacal, incurious, unqualified lout who is the alternative.

But just as it diminishes Harris to cherish her primarily because she is not Trump, it diminishes her to cherish her primarily because of her skin color and a vague sense of what it signifies. We truly honor Harris in fashioning the mental exercise — and it is an effortful one, I know — of assessing her as an individual.

That is another way to deal with the gotcha. Accept yourself and be content with  who you are. And let others be who they are. Have the courage to be who you are, tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may [American woodchopping idiom]. Keep your eyes on the main thing. McWhorter says he is an atheist, but he also says his views were influenced by the Quaker schools he attended here in Philadelphia. He sounds a bit like the Apostle Paul,  when he encourages us to see character not superficialities.

So let’s let Paul have the last word. He goes way beyond asking us to avoid seeing people according to the normal superficialities, shame and fear which divide us. He claims Jesus has made us all the same in his death and all unique in his new creation. Not even a “Gotcha!” can do anything about that!

For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for the one who for their sake died and was raised.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! — 2 Corinthians 5:14-17

 

AI resurrection: Questions for a “neutral” technology

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Film/TV, , ,

My son had questions about the vagaries of his student loan. I suggested, “You could just type your question into Google and the new AI pop-up will probably give you a good answer. I’m amazed at what it comes up with.”

“I hate A.I.,” he said.

Meanwhile a colleague just a bit younger than me, I think, is in an AI class. She comes up with the most remarkable things. I asked her to feed documents I want to reconfigure into AI and good things came back. She’s a bit frustrated that our other co-workers are not nearly as interested in the time-saving and money saving possibilities. “Why hire a consultant?” she says. “We have AI! Half those people will be obsolete in 5 years.”

Is AI inevitably evil?

As with every emergent technology, evil people will use AI for evil purposes. Some past innovations, like the atomic bomb, are self-evidently an evil use of a new technology. But most new things are relatively neutral, like your smartphone.

When we were at the theater on Saturday afternoon (Yes. I did get Funny Girl for my birthday.), we were in an upper tier. It was interesting to note that at least a third of the orchestra seats had phones lit up as we waited. When the lady voice from off stage said to turn them off, it took a while for people to comply. I suppose they had to tear themselves away from the phone to see real people who need people (Fanny great, Nicky not so much). I admit, I forgot to take my phone when I went out by myself. I felt a bit anxious, since I couldn’t imagine what I would do if there were a misconnection. Should the phone have us hogtied like that?

NY Times, July 9, 2024

The problem I see with the direction AI is headed is that it may become more personal.  There are a LOT of new TV shows exploring this subject! We started watching one called “Sunny” on Apple. They call a “dramedy,” although I did not find it funny at all, just creepy.  But it is stylish. Rashida Jones has a robot delivered, purportedly made by her husband; it knows everything about her, and she can’t keep it turned off.  Here we go.

Maybe, if it can “resurrect” someone

The main reason I am thinking about AI is not “Sunny.” It is the several articles I saw about a Chinese company called Super Brain who “resurrects” dead loved ones from the massive load of pictures and data we have about them, so you can converse with their replication – so far, just on screen. It did not take AI long to monetize our deepest fear and deepest longing: death and resurrection. AI vs. Jesus right off the bat.

by Hector RETAMAL / AFP

News outlets around the world ran with this new resurrection gospel story during the past month. France 24 found Seakoo Wu who visits the graveside of his son and puts his phone on the headstone and listens to his son speak from beyond the grave. The article said:

They are words that the late student never spoke, but brought into being with artificial intelligence. “I know you’re in great pain every day because of me, and feel guilty and helpless,” intones Xuanmo [his son] in a slightly robotic voice. “Even though I can’t be by your side ever again, my soul is still in this world, accompanying you through life.”

Stricken by grief, Wu and his wife have joined a growing number of Chinese people turning to AI technology to create lifelike avatars of their departed. Ultimately Wu wants to build a fully realistic replica that behaves just like his dead son but dwells in virtual reality. “Once we synchronise reality and the metaverse, I’ll have my son with me again,” Wu said. “I can train him… so that when he sees me, he knows I’m his father.”

Super Brain charges $1400-$2800 to create a basic avatar of a deceased loved one in about twenty days. Some Chinese firms claim to have created thousands of “digital people” from as little as 30 seconds of audiovisual material of the deceased.

For Super Brain’s leader, all new technology is “a double-edged sword.” He says, “As long as we’re helping those who need it, I see no problem.” Bereaved father Wu said Xuanmo, “probably would have been willing” to be digitally revived. He told Xuanmo, as France 24 looked on, “One day, son, we will all reunite in the metaverse.” His wife dissolved into tears. “The technology is getting better every day… it’s just a matter of time.”

Assurances of neutrality

NPR had a small story about tech executive Sun Kai who works for Silicon Intelligence. He said (through an interpreter), “I thought, if I’m modeling voices, why not model my mom’s likeness as well? I raised this question with the company chairman.”

After weeks of fine-tuning, they managed to create an AI rendering of his mother, which Sun says he now talks to every day. “I don’t see her as a digital avatar but as my real mother. When work pressure ramps up, I just want to talk to her. There are some things you can only tell your mother.”

NPR also quoted Michel Puech, a philosophy professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris, like CNN bringing on an expert to interpret what we’ve just witnessed. Puech cautions against over-hyping the ability of current AI technology to go beyond what existing technology already does. For example, looking at a photograph or hearing a recording of a dead loved one’s voice evokes memories, just as AI clones aim to do. “So it’s just a better technology to deal with something we already do.”

I’m not so sure it is that neutral. It could also be another technological “apple” we eat to  delude ourselves into feeling the power of knowing and conquering everything, even life and death. I doubt my mother would approve of that, and I am pretty sure she would not consent to being resurrected by AI.

I hope I get a chance to ask her if I was right about that last thought. If I want to take the risk that she might be just fine with being an avatar, all my pictures and old home movies of her are already digitized. I could resurrect her, if I feel like it. Who wouldn’t like that? Super Brain has already bet we will buy it — it is only a matter of time.

Robert Putnam in his 80’s: The cause of our aloneness is moral

A life in the Spirit, Building community, , , ,

I was impressed to see 83-year-old Robert Putnam in the New York Times Sunday Magazine this week.  I was going back to use some of the article about him for this post last Saturday when something terrible caught my eye instead. It was the news that Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, PA tried to kill former president, Donald Trump. The first information included, “Law enforcement officials recovered an AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle from a deceased white male they believe was the gunman.”

I won’t be surprised if we discover another loner male with a gun causing havoc. Putnam has warned us about how our society is spawning such people since 2000. But our aloneness, especially among men, has only become more pronounced.

Hope springs eternal

Almost 25 years ago, Robert Putnam became something rare: a celebrity academic. His  groundbreaking book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, received a lot of attention and has been widely quoted ever since. In the book he demonstrated that America was transforming from a nation of joiners to a nation of loners. You know for yourself that Americans go to church less, join clubs less and have lost trust in our fellow citizens and our institutions because those things probably describe your aloneness, too. Putnam wanted his prophecy to reverse the trends, but it didn’t. Americans have also heard too much bogus prophecy to trust prophets.

I wrote about being disconnected myself not long ago. I referred to Putnam. But I admit I also expected to be ignored for the most part, just like he has been, for the most part.

Nevertheless, hope springs eternal in our hearts. A man after Putnam’s own heart wrote that in 1733.

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore!
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come. — An Essay on Man: Epistle I by Alexander Pope.(1733)

And hope springs eternal, apparently, in the New York Times Magazine. Upon the screening of a new documentary lionizing Putnam’s work, the magazine got on the bandwagon. Here’s the trailer:

It seems a bit obscene to be hopeful when a twentysomething has just shot up a political rally. But Putnam persists, and so do I. So here are three excerpts from the interview which I hope move you to keep doing what you can to build community.

When it comes to social connection, things look bad

I think we’re in a really important turning point in American history. What I wrote in Bowling Alone is even more relevant now. Because what we’ve seen over the last 25 years is a deepening and intensifying of that trend. We’ve become more socially isolated, and we can see it in every facet in our lives. We can see it in the surgeon general’s talk about loneliness. He’s been talking recently about the psychological state of being lonely. Social isolation leads to lots of bad things. It’s bad for your health, but it’s really bad for the country, because people who are isolated, and especially young men who are isolated, are vulnerable to the appeals of some false community. I can cite chapter and verse on this: Eager recruits to the Nazi Party in the 1930s were lonely young German men, and it’s not an accident that the people who are attracted today to white nationalist groups are lonely young white men. Loneliness. It’s bad for your health, but it’s also bad for the health of the people around you.

Bonding social capital and bridging social capital. 

Ties that link you to people like yourself are called bonding social capital. So, my ties to other elderly, male, white, Jewish professors — that’s my bonding social capital. And bridging social capital is your ties to people unlike yourself. So my ties to people of a different generation or a different gender or a different religion or a different politic or whatever, that’s my bridging social capital. I’m not saying “bridging good, bonding bad,” because if you get sick, the people who bring you chicken soup are likely to reflect your bonding social capital. But I am saying that in a diverse society like ours, we need a lot of bridging social capital. And some forms of bonding social capital are really awful. The K.K.K. is pure social capital — bonding social capital can be very useful, but it can also be extremely dangerous. So far, so good, except that bridging social capital is harder to build than bonding social capital. That’s the challenge, as I see it, of America today.

We’re disconnected because morality is dead.

Putnam’s most recent hopeful book is called The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (2020). He and Shaylyn Romney Garrett looked at long-run trends in connectedness and trends in loneliness over the last 125 years. Here is how he sums it up:

That trend in political depolarization follows the same pattern exactly that the trends in social connectedness follow: low in the beginning of the 20th century, high in the ’60s and then plunging to where we are now. So now we have a very politically polarized country, just as we did 125 years ago.

The next dimension is inequality. America was very unequal in what was called the Gilded Age, in the 1890s and 1900s, but then that turned around, and the level of equality in America went up until the middle ’60s. In the middle ’60s, America was more equal economically than socialist Sweden! And then beginning in 1965, that turns around and we plunge and now we’re back down to where we were. We’re in a second Gilded Age.

And the third variable that we look at is harder to discuss and measure, but it’s sort of culture. To what extent do we think that we’re all in this together, or it’s every man for himself, or every man or woman? And that has exactly the same trend. What caused that? I am trying to get to the issues of causation because it turns out to be morality, according to my reading of this evidence. What stands upstream of all these other trends is morality, a sense that we’re all in this together and that we have obligations to other people. Now, suddenly, I’m no longer the social scientist, I’m a preacher. I’m trying to say, we’re not going to fix polarization, inequality, social isolation until, first of all, we start feeling we have an obligation to care for other people. And that’s not easy, so don’t ask me how to do that.

I follow Jesus, so I feel an obligation to care for other people. I won’t list the Bible verses that inspire my morality, they are too numerous.

I have also experienced the disintegration of a church due to the political polarization zeitgeist combined with frustration over inequality. It tested my morality.

But hope springs eternal. (I’ve written about that too!). In the face of aloneness I joined a new church, I was elected to my very diverse HOA Board (keep praying for me), I created a new small group to be part of, and I have a schedule of dinner parties in mind. If enough of us throw our little efforts into the basket of loaves and fishes, Jesus may change our world, too.

Disentangling from perfectionism — 2013

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Film/TV, Spiritual direction, , , ,

Our teaching for Lent in 2013 had to do with “getting disentangled from the world.” Here is one of the first speeches I offered on that theme.

The movie Enchanted (from 2007) had Dr. McDreamy from Grey’s Anatomy as an unlikely prince charming from New York to Amy Adams playing a princess from fairy tale land. (This is the same Ms. Adams who was nominated this year for an Oscar for the wretched film The Master. “Wretched” is not peer-reviewed.). In France they named the movie “Once Upon a Time” and made the better-looking Adams the main face.

The movie Enchanted, (or Il Etait Une Fois) is a sweet-ish fable that deconstructs the old sweetness of being a princess in your imagination and gets you to face the new overwhelming reality of postmodern, urban life and messy, noncommittal relationships. It asks the question, “Can I get some enchantment into the megalopolis?” And, as in many Disney movies, the answer is “Yes, there is a Prince Charming or Princess Giselle for you — probably not the one you are looking for, but you will miraculously find them and everything will be perfect, just as it should be in your own private fairy tale.”

This piece of fluff  is a surprisingly philosophical movi for being a little fairy tale. I think you will see that fact as you watch one of my favorite scenes from it. Amy Adams, Princess Giselle, has just arrived in gritty New York from happily-ever-after land. She wants to make her environment tidy, like at home, where everything is as it should be, so she calls on animal friends to help her like she used to do back in her native land. You’ll see the homage to Snow White. It’s a fun way to get started on our subject.

The song is being ironic instead of seriously asking the question, which is how we keep from addressing the real questions that bother us. But it presents the dilemma we feel about our very messy environments and our need for special powers to make it all perfect. Amy teaches us that:

You could do a lot when you’ve got such a happy working tune to hum
While you’re sponging up the soapy scum.
We adore each filthy chore that we determine.
So friends, even though you’re vermin, we’re a happy working throng.

Our dilemma: we are supposed to make things neat, tidy, working things out together, ultimately loving and never getting your white gown dirty, happy and talented, filmable, effortless, quick, efficient and you win best song for your ditty.

But, it is a big mess, and often feels like it is getting bigger, the only friends we have to help us are pigeons and rats, we have a lot of filthy chores and we are in charge of them, and we don’t get paid enough to do them, and the big one: we are vermin — not happy and can’t sing.

The world’s answer to our dilemma

I think the world’s answer, including Disney’s most of the time, which is the #14 corporation on Forbes 500, is to “make it work” as they say on Project Runway. You can do it; it’s up to you, it’s a DIY world and you have the tools. Dream like an American, just get educated, assert your rights, make all the right choices — consumer choices and otherwise, especially in a mate, and it can all be made well.

The moral to Enchanted, if I recall, is that if you just stick with it, you can make it all work in reality and not just in the movies. If you just believe in the real you instead of the make-believe you, love will find a way and it will be beautiful.

I suppose there are worse things that could be said, but I think the whole premise ends up making us very tangled up, not only tangled up in our responsibility to make everything tidied up, but tangled up in the need to do it with the right attitude, and right psychology, not tripped up with any of the mess from the past, and being pretty much prescient about how we might be messing up the future, AND with the just right person, or church, for that matter.

The alternative way of Jesus

Jesus has a better way. In a huge contrast, in the face of his impending disaster, not just a dirty apartment, when Jesus knows the true frailty of his disciples is going to be fully revealed and evil is going show itself without disguise, when all the facades of the self-sufficient world are going to be shown up for their true self-destructive purpose, he says:

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” — John 16:33

In Disney’s hands, the way is: “Let’s be honest, you are vermin, but you’ve got to make this work or there is no hope.”

In Jesus’ hands, the way is: “There is hope because I have overcome the world. Take heart, because it is not all up to you. Perfection is not the goal, anyway. The goal is a heart at peace in the kingdom of God.”

This might seem like it is an obvious thing a Christian might say. But I am not sure we even hear Jesus talking to us in the middle of our normal pursuits. We even get hung up on whether we are performing Christianity perfectly enough! Christians argue all the time about how badly the other Christians are doing. We do that, even though Paul clearly wants us to imitate him when he says,

“Who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? — 1 Corinthians 4:7-8

There were some overachievers in the Corinthian church who not only thought they could make it work, they thought they were making it work — and better than Paul! Paul says, “Who in the world do you think you are, all puffed up and competing for the highest rank, thinking you need to be number one and, in fact, are number one? You think you are kings in the kingdom of God, while we apostles are still having trouble in the world and rely on Jesus every minute to give us joy in our very difficult circumstances. I’m talking about Jesus who gives us whatever life we have.”

Why don’t you talk back to the Disney faction in Corinth with Paul by reading the rest of this scripture as if you were saying it to someone yourself:

Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have begun to reign—and that without us! How I wish that you really had begun to reign so that we also might reign with you!  For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! — 1 Corinthians 4:8-10

You would think we would all be on Paul’s side, but even the first believers were already taking things into their own hands and doing Paul better than Paul and telling him so! — becoming perfect, thinking that was what Jesus had in mind all along, and getting there without Jesus!

Perfectionism has always been tempting

This perfectionism is very tempting for us, which is why we are bringing it up during Lent.

Last week I experienced us in the middle of the dilemma in two ways. And I’ll close by talking about them. I feel bad, if all I am getting you to do so far is wondering if you understand what Paul is talking about well enough, or whether you trust Jesus well enough, or whether you are good enough to be in the church, or whether you can take on one more big idea because you already have so much on your plate to handle, or whether you can be responsible for following Jesus and get spread so thin, you are already so responsible. But if I am getting you to wonder these things, you are not alone. In the world we have trouble. But Jesus has overcome it and brings us peace. I’m shooting for helping you receive that.

Fall 2012
  • Internal perfection police

We were at the prospective cell leader training last Monday and great people were learning all about the ambitious mission we have been given as part of God’s redemption project. At the end of the evening people were invited to express some of the fears they had as they imagined themselves eventually being cell leaders. I think some of their answers reflected the perfectionism we are all saddled with: the need to do it right, to be unjudgable, to not mess up.  I don’t think anyone was unaware that this wasn’t where they wanted to be, they were just being honest.

Someone said, “If I become a cell leader, I want to do it 100%.”
Whatever that means. I think it usually means “the extra effort I am not able to give.” It does not always mean, “Doing the best I can” or “Acting with passion and abandon.” It often means matching up to the best effort I can imagine myself doing with the best outcome.

I am afraid I will alienate someone if I say “Christian.”
And you will. We started out our day at Childs Elementary yesterday with worship and two ladies from the neighborhood walked out and waited until we were done. I felt like I had offended them. As it turns out, I hadn’t, they were just kind of dismissive and sort of rude and self-consumed. But I felt I was supposed to be better than that, better than Jesus, and not be alienating. That perfectionism might lead us to only mention being a Christian in the most controlled of circumstances, when I could be sure I was doing the right thing. Whenever that is.

I am afraid I won’t have the right words.
Cell leaders are know-it-alls, after all.

I am afraid of looking flaky or uncommitted.
I am anxious about making it happen, because I have to make things happen right.

I am afraid to represent Jesus or the church.
I am not wise enough. I don’t match up to what’s in the book. I am not good enough. So I have to wait until I am perfect before I put myself out there and am judged by the perfection police.

And just who are these perfection police? Paul doesn’t even judge himself. And Jesus who will judge the living and dead at the end of time, says  “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

  • Perfectionism is beaming at us

I just talked about an internal process that keeps us tangled up in trying to be perfect, but there are a huge external forces, too! One of our pastors sent out a very interesting article that adds sociological reasoning for why we are so perfectionistic. The powers-that-be totally convince us to disbelieve the trouble we are in for their vision of a perfectible future.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin shows off Google Glass

As far as the Forbes 500 know, everything is getting better. The iPhone 6 will dispense with the annoying home button and feature a 4.8-inch screen and quad-core processor. Google is developing Google Glass, which will allow users to text, take pictures and videos, perform Google searches, by talking in a normal voice to a smart lens. The Dow Jones average just reached an all-time high last week, corporate profits are enjoying “a golden age.” Day by day, problem by problem, American life is being fine-tuned to the point where experts now confidently predict a state of near-complete perfection. We are a happy working throng.

But in other news, America’s economic and social decline continues. The percentage of corporate profits going to employees is at its lowest level since 1966. Unemployment remains stuck around eight per cent, and the long-term jobless make up almost forty per cent of the total.  The concentration of wealth at the top grows ever more pronounced all over the world. From 2009 to 2011—the years of the financial crisis and the recovery—the income of the top one per cent rose 11.2 per cent. The income of the bottom ninety-nine per cent actually shrank 0.4 per cent. Eighty per cent of Americans believe their children will be worse off than they are. We are vermin.

The author of the article said this: When things don’t work in the realm of stuff, people turn to the realm of bits. If the physical world becomes presents a dilemma, we can take refuge in the virtual world, where we can solve problems like – how do I make a video of my skydiving adventure while keeping my hands free? Problems most people in the world don’t even know exist! Futurist Ayesha Khanna, from her think tank in London, which funds research into human-technology co-evolution and its implications, described smart contact lenses that could make homeless people disappear from view, “enhancing our basic sense” and, undoubtedly, making our lives so much more enjoyable. In a way, this does solve the problem of homelessness—unless, of course, you happen to be a homeless person.

We need to stay disentangled from all the forces that would lead us to believe human ingenuity will lead to perfection and evolution is inevitably making progress. Human ingenuity — great. Evolution — whatever. The reality of what is going on in our troubling world was striking us in the face at Childs Elementary yesterday. We made ourselves look again at how the powers keep asking people (like teachers) to make bricks without straw. We can’t make things work well enough. Even though we are smart and caring, we are not changing things fast enough to get where we think we ought to go and it makes us angry, depressed, frustrated and self-hating. Part of our anguish is caused by what is bearing down on us from the weird world that technology is creating. But most of our guilt is just that same old sin that leads us to believe that all we have us what we are and we are who we are without God giving us life.

“Take heart,” Jesus says “I have overcome the world.” When you become silent or you move into your worship connection in a few minutes, when you pray as you pray next week, take heart. Let’s receive the gift that Jesus is giving by overcoming the world and reopening the door to true, everlasting life.

God loves the world and we love it with him. But we can’t receive peace from the dying world or our false selves. We take heart, Jesus has overcome and we will too.

When we feel like we have to get it all right, we let that perfectionism lie pass right by and receive our goodness and strength from the Giver of Life.

When we think we have to do it by ourselves in the face of all the huge forces or even judge our community by how good we are, we need to recognize the seeds of a graceless future and let that impulse, that temptation, pass by and be restored and be restoring in relationship to the Lord of all. Jesus is disentangling us from the temptation to be perfect. He’s good right now, right where you’re at.

Reflection is facing up to your new face

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Spiritual direction, , , , , ,

My wife does not turn her phone off at night because we have been listening for children calling in the dark for over forty years, so why stop now? Some unknown person called at 3:30 the other night and then called again a short time later. I hear they called again after I had left in a daze.

I started my day in the dark because I could not get back to sleep and got all sorts of things accomplished. I have many new duties these days. Then I saw clients and oversaw the installation of our long-overdue window in the façade of our counseling offices. After I came home and tried to fix the TV, which had lost its sound, I was, again, a bit dazed. I asked, “Was it just last night those phone calls came?”

As I sat down to reflect and pray the next morning, one of my favorite verses came to mind. I had just said to God, “I am not sure who I am right now.” It turns out, that was a good move, since turning to look into the face of “the perfect law, the law of liberty” immediately reassured me that I was still in the presence of the One who loves me. And then I remembered James.

Be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. — James 1:22-4

Reflection

I’m in a season when I often wake up and say, as I am reflecting, “I need more reflection.” I will eventually take some extended time or take a retreat, which I need to do. But I also need to remember that the day-to-day discipline of taking as much time as possible to deliberately turn toward God has transformed my life.

I think it was the same for James, too. And he is not shy about taking a dig at us in his book of wisdom for lagging in transformation. He basically says, “If you don’t do something deliberate about the new reality you have entered, you’ll still be like a person who doesn’t seem to know what they look like. You’ll still be checking yourself out in every mirror you pass, or in store windows and phone screens. You will never quite know what you’re doing because you’re still looking at your old self in the mirror instead of the transformed self Jesus has made you.”

Why do we love to look in the mirror? — well, at least most of us love it, or at least can’t help doing it. We have a magnifying mirror in our bathroom for advanced plucking, but I also use it to eliminate those stray hairs old men grow. I admit a bit of fascination about how different I look over time. The reflection of my face tells my history, collects my criticism, and always reminds me I reached my peak beauty decades ago. It is easy to forget, day by day, just who we are for all we have been and all we are not. We’re fascinated by our own story, and there it is looking at us.

James is trying to change our usual mirror experience. He comes right out and says it, “That old law you lived by was a pack of lies.” We deceived ourselves so much, we got trapped in checking ourselves out all the time to see if we were performing well, to see if things were all under control. The old law ended up being about regretting who we were and fearing who we need to become. Very few of us looked in the mirror and said, “Yes. You’re crushing it.”

The new law, which is really the oldest law from which the world was created, the law of love, is not like the endless self-criticism and defensiveness that saddled us to fear. It is a law of liberty, a lens through which we see ourselves as God gives us to become.

Facing up to your new face

The other day I said something impolitic in a private meeting and I offended someone. They wrote a letter to me and my board members, publicly shaming me and demanding an apology. I apologized, since I should watch what I say (James has something to say about our tongues right after today’s quote!). Someone called me and wondered if my apology had just given an adversary something to weaponize! Trump has taught us all to deceive and deceive ourselves, to be perpetually defensive. But I wondered if my friend was not right. We’ll see.

With my apology, I was trying to “face up to my new face.” I am in new situations these days. I often wonder “Who am I?” I keep learning who I am by turning away from the mirror of merely me and looking into the mirror where God is looking back at me. How does one do that?

1) Looking is also doing.

Most people see James’ teaching as, “You need to take care of some widows, not just sit there like a saved lump!” I think that’s a fair interpretation.

But James did not get to his teaching about doing the word just by visiting widows. I think he first looked deeply into the new law as part of his rhythm. Being a doer of the word means looking into the law of liberty. That is a basic “doing” that creates a “doer.”

2) Resisting deception is also doing.

I’ve heard many (and may have preached a few) sermons about people who merely listen to sermons (podcasts, videos, lectures, etc.) and think that is the essence of being a Christian. It is not, even if most Protestant churches have a big fat pulpit in the center of the meeting. Merely-hearers are taking in info to advance their project — they are “getting it right.” They are getting justified, over and over, which feels good as long as they are in the echo chamber. And they are creating an image that looks justified;  they are a principle they can articulately justify (or just loudly defend). They are proving themselves, so when they check the mirror to see if they are still there, they will feel OK and maybe even feel like they deserve to represent Jesus.

James wants us to prove ourselves by doing what our true selves should do, not just get more material to shore up our weak sense of self. We’ve got enough material! But before James got to that conclusion, I think he had to go through the hard process of not deceiving himself. He, like all of us, had a story he lived by before he heard the story of Jesus. It is hard to say it, but we were deceiving ourselves, living a lie, and were desperate to get that lie justified. Facing up to our new face means looking at ourselves in new ways. When you look in the mirror and see “the Beloved of God” and not just “a wrinkly old man” or “a fat woman” or “the one who must not be seen,” or “a lot of work left to do,” we’re getting somewhere.

3) Receiving is also doing  

In this era we tend to manualize everything. A co-worker is mastering A.I. at a ripe old age. They ask A.I. everything and it is amazing what gets produced. It is easy for us (or A.I., I guess) to take James and spit out best practices — reduce him to “Don’t just sit there, do something!” Since the world is warming at an alarming rate, that might be great advice. But he’s deeper than that.

James did not get to his advice about doing the word because he had a good idea or a revelation. He probably would not go to A.I. to find out who he is. He appears to have some personal experience. When he says, “If you persevere and keep acting for good with the freedom you have received from your past ways, you will be blessed,” I think he knew about being blessed that way. I don’t think he was channeling a theory.

If you cannot receive God’s blessing of new life and love in Jesus, you probably won’t keep acting. Receiving new life is the first thing we do. If you only feel “blessed” because you succeed as a Christian in the ways you thought of success in your old narrative, you’ll probably give up the whole Christian enterprise. Maybe you should, since you’re following yourself instead of Jesus.

The reality of being blessed is also an experience of being blessed. I turn to God because I am alive, not just trying to be alive. I am blessed because I live under God’s watchful eye, listening for me like a mother in the night, not just because, “I did the right thing and I ought to get something for it.” I reflect because I am a reflection, not just because I need to improve myself and figure out how to survive this day.

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Yesterday was Columba Day! He is one of my favorites of the apostles of the earliest Celtic church. He is larger-than-life, flawed, artistic, ambitious and leaves a legacy many still admire. Click his name and get to know him at The Transhistorical Body.