On Clare Day last week many aspects of my meditation combined into a psalm of wonder, which she helped me write.
Clare, you were so young
when you ran down the hill to Portiuncula
and begged Francis to cut your hair!
I suppose I love you because I was eighteen once
and I ran through fields
and I asked God to circumcise my heart,
to cut me free from the domination system,
from my own fears of never being myself.
I suppose I love you because you are an anima,
like a figure in a waking dream
looking for a key to open new doors in my soul,
a mysterious other side to me,
to the Francis I cannot seem to shake.
You, Lord, the Eve, the Eros, the Mary, Sophia
appear in the dreamy places just beyond my grasp
and yet deep in the recesses of my mind and memory.
On Clare Day I turn to you.
And though you flee and I am left in awe,
lost in another shifting, inner building,
left wondering what integration is yet to be,
yet I wait for you, and you will come.
I will look you in the face,
into your blurry familiarity:
so near and so elusive,
so known and so mysterious,
so welcome and yet so wild.
On Clare Day, as I follow you,
an old man limping through the poppies,
I am found and still finding.
I am sure and still surprised.
I am filled. And still you come,
as if we were eighteen together
and opening doors for the first time.
Not long ago, one of my psychotherapy clients who is a Christian had a revelation. Their pastor gave a sermon on Philippians 4:8 and my client realized they were dwelling on all the bad things in their life — especially when it came to their marriage, instead of dwelling on what is good.
I was excited because they were very right. They had been making themselves miserable for years by repeating the same narrative of loss, betrayal and dissatisfaction over and over.
Like many of my clients, Christian or not, they found concentrating on what is good was not as easy as just thinking about new things. I often hear reports like, “I tried what the pastor said, and I could do it a little bit. But then the injustice of it all kept popping up. It irritated me to think what I did not criticize would then become acceptable. I was afraid I would be left without getting anything I need, as usual.” There is always a lot more to it than that, but you might be able to fill in the rest, since you may have a tale of grievance you tell yourself, too.
In the course of my dialogue with that one Christian client, I thought there might be something missing. The life-changing action they were trying to take might need a more fundamental step before they got to a new way to see the world and their mate. I said something like, “Maybe you should take account of how all the beautiful things mentioned in Philippians 4:8 are in you. Then it might not be so crucial if someone else affirmed them.”
Let’s all take a few minutes and account for the goodness we live in, which also lives in us. Dwell in what is good and accept that good dwells in you.
Goodness night and day
Philippians 4:8
Philippians 4:8 is one of those places in Paul’s letters to his disciples where he makes a brilliant summary statement. The Letter to the Philippians (in the New Testament part of the Bible), as a whole, is a sweet, four-chapter, summary of the Apostle’s best teaching. Chapter 4 verse 8 might be a summary of the summary. It certainly deserves to be on all those plaques hanging in Christian bedrooms! It sums up how to live according to who you’ve become in Christ.
Here it is in a more literal translation that is widely used:
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (NIV)
Here is a variation from an artful translation I appreciate:
“Finally, brothers and sisters, fill your minds with beauty and truth. Meditate on whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is good, whatever is virtuous and praiseworthy.” (The Voice)
The string of words that render different ways to see the goodness God built into creation are usually where teachers, preachers and commentators concentrate. We love definitions don’t we? — we say things like “What does that mean exactly?” A pastor could get weeks of teaching out of this one passage, looking at one word at a time. And they might be good sermons.
I’m not sure the definitions make that much difference. It appears Paul took most of the words from common Greek philosophy and morality. He could have thought of quite a few more to use. Regardless of the details of how he said it, his main idea was and is, “We will all be better off if we train our fractious minds to focus on the good given to us and good we have to give others.” You can walk around your house seeing every bit of impurity and dishonor until the next family member you see looks like a threat to your security! But why would you do that if you live in grace?
Beyond common sense
In these famous sentences Paul transcends common sense, which is typical for him, in the way he uses of the Greek word λογίζεσθε. In translations of Philippians 4:8 into English, the verb is often translated “Think about such things,” as in the NIV. John Calvin and The Voice, above, say, “Fill your minds” and “meditate” on these things. I memorized the meaning and intent of the word from the NASB in my college days, which says, “dwell on these things,” as in “be thinking continually” on these things. Other translations say, “account for these things” and “pay attention to these things” and “reckon with these things.”
All those variations are good and important. But they tend to leave the hearer in charge of changing their minds and conforming to a better way of thinking. I think most people come away from the verses (and likely from most sermons!) with, “I need to be accountable for keeping my mind on these things” or “I need to be conformed to these good things so I will be good.” Or maybe I have lived in modern and postmodern times so long, I assume most people think that is how reality works — “I make what is real, real.”
My client assumed they were in charge and it felt weighty and impossible. Their epiphany moved them to see what is good but their judgment moved them to fixate on how their mate was one more example of someone not loving them very well. It felt intolerable. And, to be honest, for them it felt like all the hurts of the past were never going to be touched with anything that would heal them, they just needed to be overlooked. It was up to them to make being overlooked OK. We’re complex.
My reply to them was based on a deeper use of the word λογίζεσθε. We don’t make goodness, it is the gift of God. For instance,
in Romans 6:11, Paul uses the verb in the most basic way he sees it: “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Give up your old way of seeing yourself and others.
In 1 Cor. 13:11 he famously says, “I used to account for things like a child.” But no more. See things like a real human grown up, living in love.
In 2 Cor. 10:2, he experiences confidence in the presence of Christ and accounts for his boldness as a result. Later on in v.5 he sees his work as taking godless thinking and making it captive to the knowledge of God in Jesus. It is the hallmark of Jesus followers that they hope for change and look for goodness to make a difference.
So the revelation of the pastor to my client was a bit more than just changing one’s mind (being “mindful,” we say today) and gaining a better outlook and attitude — I sent them the Enchanted video I love which also questions that mentality.
Before most of us can get to such a gracious way to see others and live in the world with confidence, I think we need to apply Philippians 4:8 to how we see ourselves.
Don’t just dwell on the good, dwell in it
My client did not see themself through any of the lenses on which Paul insists we see the world. They were suspicious of anything that could be called good in them. If they were criticizing their mate, they were sure to be criticizing themself more! They saw themself as failing, unhappy, and filled with an icky bitterness they could not shake. Their transformation needed to be spiritual, too. Deeper than mental hygiene is the spiritual work of being restored by God. We can either cooperate with our redemption or be in charge of it.
So I suggested my client apply Philippians 4:8 to looking at themself and then dwell on all the wonderful goodness they could find in themself. Maybe it would be a memory of what someone else noticed or praised, or maybe it would be some comfort once experienced while snug in their bed. But I was hoping for them to see themselves like God sees them and like I saw them: quite lovely now and prospectively even more wonder-filled in the future and then glorious in the age to come. Paul wants us to account for the presence of God in Jesus for us and the Spirit of Truth who dwells with us.
Give it a try. Don’t just assess things outside yourself, or think about how you are going to act well, certainly not how you are imperfect or bad. Dwell on who you already are, what is built into you, what you have developed, what you desire, your best ideas.
Try thinking about each of the following bullet points so you understand as much as you can. But then go deeper. Lean back into the silence with God and let what they talk about rise up in you. See it and accept who you truly are. Be yourself in Christ.
what is true or noble — honest, honorable — better yet “venerable,” of the Spirit, unique to you.
what is right or pure — what can be judged good and what is just good which no one can judge.
what is lovely or admirable – how you are loved and loveable, how you have shown love, how you have been brave in the troubles of love.
what is excellent or praiseworthy – the things in you which you know are good, like your willingness to read this post and do this exercise.
It may be hard to “think about such things” but it must be done. If all you have is “Jesus thinks I am worthy of saving,” that might be good enough. But dig deep; you are a wonder. God is with you and you are part of a good creation. Dwell on that and you will have more capacity to face the complexities of growing and relating.
I always wanted to go to Michigan. Now I have. And now I only have North Dakota left before I can brag about visiting all 50 states!
When I travel outside the U.S., I am often delighted to wander into a place I did not know existed. Once there, I am often even more delighted to experience something that gives me deeper insight into the culture I’m visiting and the character of its people. I travelled like that in the U.S. this time and it was revealing.
As we compared our trip to Michigan to trips in other countries, we kept saying, “The U.S. is rich!” We’re so rich we can afford to be excessive, and we are.
So beyond the charming people we met along the way, the helpful guides, the winsome (really!) fast-food servers, and our good friends, I want to highlight the fascinating excesses we discovered along the way.
Cleveland — The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
I rolled into Cleveland and managed to find our hotel and find parking. I got to the desk and dug out my confirmation when they had trouble finding my booking. I was at the wrong hotel! “You’d be surprised how often people do that!” the nice clerk said.
Just down the street on the waterfront (a short walk from our actual hotel) was the beautiful Rock and Roll Hall of Fame building, an excessive tribute to Boomer music right on the spot where “rock and roll” was invented to name the new art form. I loved it, since I am smack dab in the middle of the Boomer demographic and I was right down to the real nitty gritty in Cleveland.
This museum is almost as overwhelming as the Smithsonian. I particularly enjoyed seeing the tribute to one of my favorite bands, Nirvana, and seeing one of the many guitars Curt Cobain broke on stage (another one sold for $596K at auction in 2023, speaking of excess).
Dearborn — Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village
Outside of Detroit (in Michigan!) is a museum complex we went to because someone heard we were going to Detroit and said we should go. We’d never heard of it. It is a huge tribute to Henry Ford that Henry Ford started himself.
Webster House in New Haven, 1927
To make his new faux settlement, Greenfield Village, Ford moved the schoolhouse of his youth to the site and replicated his childhood home meticulously. The village is a giant dollhouse for an exceedingly rich guy to play with. He preserved artifacts or replicated those of his heroes too. He has Noah Webster’s actual house, moved from Connecticut — he’s the entrepreneur who created American English with his dictionary (1828) and then sold books to teach it. There are a lot of Thomas Edison’s original workshops, too, since he was a real-life hero of Ford’s.
The Museum of American Innovation is enormous, big enough to house 260 vehicles from the earliest to the latest models, not to mention Teddy Roosevelt’s buggy and the car in which JFK was riding through Dallas. I thought the Louvre was a bit much, but the sheer excess of this exhausted me even more.
Indian River — Cross in the Woods Catholic Shrine
I did not realize that the Michigan Shore of Lake Michigan is essentially a Cote d’Azur where I least expected it. Anywhere there is a coast, it seems, Americans turn it into a cute replica of a scene from Carousel. We bought designer chocolates.
Our friends invited us to pilgrimage to the nearby site of the largest crucifix in the world, since they got the idea we do such things. (We’ve been to Chartres Cathedral twice, after all!). When I saw this cross, I was speechless. I asked how this got built and was told a priest thought Northern Michigan needed a place for Catholics to visit. Sounds like how most of the cathedrals in Europe were built.
Just as excessive, was the newly refurbished doll museum at the shrine, which the cashier said we should not miss. She was right. It might be in the top ten of the weirdest museums I’ve ever visited. Dolls and mannequins of all sizes were dressed in the habits of traditional monks and nuns, mainly pre-1970, the Boomer childhood. I doubt any order was missed. I marveled at the absurd, excessive dedication to minutia and irrelevance in documenting this recently-bygone era. It was a bit like Henry Ford immortalizing his childhood.
Frankenmuth — Bronner’s CHRISTmas Wonderland
I wanted to stop in Frankenmuth on the way up because it was advertised on billboards as the location of Bronner’s, the largest Christmas store in the world. I stopped at Bronner’s for the same reason I go to South of the Border when driving to Florida and Wall Drug in South Dakota (and now Buc-ees whenever I see one). I made sure I got there on the way back — just as Michigan experienced the heat dome.
They were not kidding. It is large. This might be the Protestant answer to the largest crucifix. (CHRIST is intentionally advertised in their name and there is a church in the store). Christmas music my mother would recognize was playing. We wandered. The store is 2.2 acres, almost two football fields. We queasily passed through all of it. I usually like little ornament stores, but the sheer excess and kitsch of this one was overwhelming.
The wedding of Christ and capitalism at Christmas has always been a thing with me. My mother aspired to a Bronner’s-like house that I helped her concoct for the holiday, even though she was not a Christian in any noticeable way. When I became one, I disappointed her by insisting the day belonged to Jesus and I would not do it anymore. I think Bronner’s gave me flashbacks in troubling and good ways. I didn’t buy anything.
This brief sojourn in the Midwest mostly had to take place on Interstates. Interstate 75, for instance, is a top-notch road through the middle of nowhere in northern Michigan. My Itchy Boots motorcycle YouTube fav was recently in Bissau-Guinea which provides a sharp contrast. My main lesson remains, “Americans are a rich people and our excesses show it.” And often their Christianity reflects it.
It is amazing that so many beautiful people sprout from under that excess, like when all those ferns appear from under the leaves in the Poconos each spring. I know I don’t sound appreciative of all the art and ingenuity represented in my stops. I am not sure it was all well-used. But you’ve got to love it. I suspect Jesus does — he loves every drop of creativity in creation, doesn’t he? Even that colossal angel trumpeting over my head in the picture above took some God-given imagination.
The speech travelled with me around our network in 2017. This version was for Marlton Pike.
How does one get to be a 50-year-old Christian? We always say a 50-year-old-Christian is our goal in our work of redemption– since if someone makes it that far, they are probably out of the woods. All week we have been thinking about Jesus going through the suffering of being in the wilderness as a thirty-something. But each decade has it’s own perils. We find ourselves in a new wilderness being tempted in surprising ways all along the way of Jesus.
What if you are a twentysomething? I loved watching the precious little story called Brooklyn. A twenty something Irish woman moves to New York and meets a twentysomething Italian man. Every scene is like being a twentysomething. The wonder and tragedy of new things. Discovering. Being wrong about yourself and others. Learning. Confused. Passionate. Brave. How does one end up at 30 holding hands with Jesus?
What if you are a 40-something? I also loved watching The Revenant. It was a wonderful parable. But I also liked being surprised by Leonardo DiCaprio who I never really liked beyond What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. But there he was in his early 40’s, showing courage, showing depth, showing some mature acting — like he looked at himself and realized there was more to life than being a movie star. He said a very fortysomething thing in an interview in Variety:
“I knew this was going to be somewhat of a silent performance; that’s part of what was exciting. But more than anything, I think I learned a lot about being an actor on this movie. It has a lot to do with trust. Trusting the people you’re working with, giving yourself over to a unique process, and trusting that if the people you’re working with are committed like Alejandro, you can focus on being in the moment and rely on your instincts and trust the journey.”
With such major interior things to face in our 40’s and all the temptation to just become your craft, how does one find Jesus and not just oneself in the silence?
That’s the question for tonight. But I felt God was telling me that not only do I need to look to the long term, even while waiting for my life to end right now, I need to look out for others. Faith is an every day, long term journey. It is an ongoing relationship that develops like the seasons.
So when we look at each other tonight, I think we should try to develop an outlook that asks: where is this person going? How does this beloved person get to 50 or 60 or death with their faith intact? Whether they are the youngest child or a 40 something with a lot of responsibility — they are on the Way of Jesus, they may have just got on the road or just gotten back on the road. How do they get to the end? Or in our organic terms, how to they get to the water of faith, where they are swimming in an ocean of grace with confidence? How do they endure all the temptations and suffering and stay planted in the love of God?
Since I have already been a little kid and made it past fifty with my faith still growing, I want to tell you about how I got there. The telling is not just for nostalgia. This is more of my testimony about how I managed to have a lively faith when I hit fifty. Actually, I think I probably just got started when I hit fifty and that feels good. So I am going to give you one thing from each of my five first decades that I think was significantly helpful along the way of Jesus.
0-10 – blessed with affirmation.
So start at the beginning of my faith. I think I was unusually blessed as a child. By the time I was six or so, I think I had learned enough lessons about Jesus to sustain me my whole life. My parents dropped me off at the Baptist church to go to the 5-6 year olds class without ever making their own connection, but I did.
My family never taught me one thing about God, never mentioned Jesus at home at all. Their own spiritual life was taboo, another secret like so many they had. But one Christmas, my mother and father gave me a present that was not from Santa, but had their name on it. It was a nicer Bible, and more importantly, in the Bible was a bookmark, a gold-looking chain of the Ten Commandments — a bit like this one from E-Bay but much better in my memory. It was a treasure. I never used it as a bookmark. I hid it from my sister like it was gold. And I treasure that rare affirmation of my faith to this day.
That is one thing that will get you to fifty as a Christian: The child in you receives affirmation for their faith. We come to Jesus as a child whether we are young or not. If it did not get to you in kindergarten, you’ll have to go there somehow and be touched with the assurance that the little-child-you-are can fit with God. You belong and you are loved. So touch that child in you. Touch the child in each other. Tell them they can have faith in Jesus and God is with them.
10-19 blessed with an identity
The next decade of my life was filled with facts, fears, fun and all the stuff adolescents get into. Some of you here are in the middle of that right now – we have ten to twenty year olds here, in this meeting. One of those people lives with me who I love very much. It is an exciting time of life. If you don’t know what you are doing, that is normal. Hang on to Jesus and he will get you through.
For me, personally, I had to learn the facts of faith and make a decision about them in the middle of some very poor examples of church. The Christians I knew did a lot of fighting. Their bad example often made me wonder what I was into. But I had met God as a child and that was hard to shake. You can imagine how hard it is for people without the affirmation I got as a child when they get next to adults who are not faithful – who fight, divorce, sin. Here they are trying to decide what identities to put on, how to make love, what jobs to do, whether they are worth anything, and their parents and other adults do the weirdest stuff.
Somehow, I not only got some intellectual facts about Jesus — I did some reading and listening, I also got some personal experience of praying and feeling like the Holy Spirit was with me. That was crucial. By the time I was escaping my little town and my dysfunctional family to go to college, I decided that the main fact about me was that I was a Christian. For me, entering my dorm hall and introducing myself to a whole new world was a chance to come out as a full-on Christian. I used the little note board on my door to put a card up with my theme verse: “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.”
I was going through that door Jesus opened. My inner world looked to me a bit like the picture, here. But I had latched on to a great teenager verse. You can get an eighteen year old to die for the country, too. Somehow, Jesus became my commander. Help young people know the facts of faith and make a decision about them. And don’t despise that demanding, critical, clueless teen in yourself or others.
Taking on the identity of a Christian as a teen was a crucial launch pad for the rest of my life. By the time I was twenty, the next thirty years were already in motion. That is one of the reasons we need to be a church for the next generation. Our friends at Rutgers are making the decisions that will decide who they are at fifty. Will they be following Christ or following their passion, like Leonardo DiCaprio? Will they be following the economy like their schools have been training them to do? Will they be Americans first and Christians privately? Before they can clearly think about it, the road is already opening up before them. Is it the broad way that leads to destruction or the narrow way that leads to life?
The child needs some affirmation for their faith.
The teen needs to act on the facts and choose to identify with Jesus.
Among many things, the twentysomething needs to find a place to belong, especially if they are going to keep following Jesus.
20-29 blessed with community
In my twenties, I stumbled on to something that was surprisingly life saving: intentional community. Not only did I marry a great believer, who has been organizing me for good ever since, I ended up living in an Acts 2 community. It kind of happened naturally, as well as being inspired by Acts 2. A group of us spent a lot of time together because we all worked in a burgeoning youth ministry. We got tired of commuting to our relationships, we said, so we started moving in together.
Here is the first house we lived in. It still looks terrible. I planted that tree. Before long there was a statement of formation and twenty people in three houses, welcoming in Cambodian refugees and unwed mothers. Our focus came to be hunger. We decided to live simply so others could simply live. It worked great. And it made me face up to myself every day.
Being a part of the community made me a visibly serious person – mostly to myself. It made me disciplined for righteousness. I got habits of the heart solidified. I am still simplicity-minded. Still communal in nature. Still adept at welcoming in the stranger. I learned that all just by being together with people who were on the same track, praying and working together with Jesus.
There is no such thing as a solitary Christian. If you are going to make it to fifty and beyond, you will have to do it together with the others. A great spouse is good, but you need to be a part of the body and the body needs to be part of you.
30-39 Blessed with integrity
The twenties are great. People will try anything. Hopefully they try it with Jesus. Thirties, not so easy. I had young children. Plus I had some screws that had always been loose that finally started coming out altogether. In your thirties you develop psychologically and relationally, or you try to stay a twenty-something as long a possible. I always connect that difficult process to Joseph in Genesis who must have been about thirty when his earnest mentality and natural charisma propelled him into the management of Potiphar’s household. He is confronted with a big choice — “Should I have sex with Potiphar’s wife, who wants me, or not?” He decides not to do it, which ultimately lands him in prison. But his reasoning is basically, “That’s just not me. I am not going to surrender my righteousness for an orgasm, or anything else.” To get to fifty with your faith, it takes acting like that. Integrity.
The thirties have a lot of decisions like that. Who am I going to be? How will my family function? How do I make a living? What does all of this serve? All these requirements cause a lot of us some huge new understanding. I had some really foggy months psychologically, relationally, with my choices, in our marriage, in my thirties. But things started to come clear.
One thing for me is that I had to realize that not all my desires were going to be met. Also, my ideal future might not materialize. What’s more, not every direction I felt like going was possible. Even more, I’m not that great; I have problems to solve. I settled into: I am connected and I am responsible and that is good even when it does not feel good. Fortunately, I already had some faith built up. The hope God gave me really was like an anchor for my soul. If you are in your thirties, stay the course on the way of Jesus and don’t get drawn into bed with a lot of people who don’t follow God. Hang on to your integrity. And help someone else in the same turmoil.
40-49 blessed with something to do that is worthy of my best
The 40’s may be one of the most tempting ages of all. A lot of people veer off the way of Jesus then. Their childhood faith, if they had any, doesn’t satisfy. Their twentysomething convictions seem juvenile. Their thirtysomething development may seem unfinished or unsatisfying. They start bumping up against their limitations, for sure. They really need to know God. You may have gotten to forty and realized that a lot of what you have built so far has been in service of a substitute dream and you are just too proud to change or too lazy. So by the time you are fifty, nothing is there. This is very common scenario, so beware.
When I got into my forties, I had already taken a leap out of my past that totally revolutionized me. I really grew up a lot in my late thirties when I moved to PA and took the leadership of a struggling traditional church. Being that kind of pastor, in essentially a foreign land, created a huge learning curve. I soon realized that the move was just a first step and felt moved to try my best.
This is a big thing I learned in that decade about how to get to the end: I need to do the best I can with the best God had given me. I need to respond to what I have been given. I faced a temptation: I could pile all I had into succeeding at something or I could labor in obscurity and possible failure while following Jesus. That’s when Gwen and I decided to move to Philadelphia and see if there was a circle of hope here. There was.
The turmoil and challenge of the thirties, the good hard work of the forties is a great prep for the launch pad of the fifties. At least that is what I learned. I wish someone had encouraged me, since I mostly learned in the school of hard knocks. It is good to be fifty and faithful. It is kind of like the last couple of stations on the factory that is making RVs I used to work in. It started with a chassis and now we can drive the spiritual car. There will still be glitches to fix, but it will probably get us to the end.
Destiny
Our destiny is to swim in an ocean of grace, free and joyful, like some big spiritual whale singing songs to God that echo is the depths. We need to imagine ourselves getting there. I want to give you a moment to do that. Whether you are 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50 and beyond, imagine yourself where God is taking you — not so much the place, but the condition, the feelings, the stature, the faith. What is it like for you to be fifty or more and faithful to what Jesus has called you?
Just as our previous ages are always with us, so is our age to come, because the Holy Spirit is with us. So rest in the great love, that grace. Where are you going?
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Today is William Wilberforce Day! Honor his conviction and world-changing action at The Transhistorical Body.
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.
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.
On the 4th of July we got together with a few people from our church to pray for the country. Independence Day is one of the “Other Major Feasts” in the Episcopal Church.
I was happy to do it. All week my clients, family and friends were stressed out by Biden’s stupor and Trump’s lies at the debate. Then the Supreme Court changed more fundamental principles with their wild logic. Everyone, from all sides of the political spectrum, is upset, thrashing about in a great wave of distress washing over the country. Once people are tossed about and “white with foam,” they are mad because they are jostled and dripping.
So it was good to read this portion of Psalm 33 from the day’s liturgy on Independence Day:
There is no king that can be saved by a mighty army;
a strong man is not delivered by his great strength.
The horse is a vain hope for deliverance;
for all its strength it cannot save.
Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon those who fear him,
on those who wait upon his love
to pluck their lives from death,
and to feed them in time of famine.
Our soul waits for the Lord;
he is our help and our shield. — Psalm 33:16-20
This is basic wisdom handed down from the Jews and vivified in Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the Way the Truth and the Life. Wait for the Lord.
We are so tempted
I have been thinking about Psalm 33 ever since that morning prayer, and about all those beloved people I have seen who are wondering what happened to their peace and worse, wondering what horrible thing might happen next. Many of them were anxious long before a wave of anxiety hit them. Many of them were mistrusting before before lies descended on them from all angles.
So what should we all do? It would be tempting to rely on some “mighty army” to save us. Violence is in the air we breath, right now.
For instance, here is something Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, offered last Monday:
“That Supreme Court ruling yesterday on immunity is vital, and it’s vital for a lot of reasons…” [He added the nation needs a strong leader because] “the radical left…has taken over our institutions…[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” (July 1)
It would be tempting to take matters into our own hands, since it appears God will not be doing what we want, and to be the arbiter of life and death ourselves. After all, there are these kinds of candidates:
“The New Republic published a June 30 video of North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson [start at 53:00], currently the Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, saying to a church audience about their opponents—whom he identified in a scattershot speech as anything from communists to “wicked people” to those standing against “conservatives”—”Kill them! Some liberal somewhere is gonna say that sounds awful. Too bad!… Some folks need killing! It’s time for somebody to say it.” (from Heather Richardson)
As if the pandemic were not enough to set us on our heads, there has been so much more. U.S. citizens seem awash in fear and it is clouding their judgment. Every radical that promises victory and vengeance seems plausible — even to Jesus followers!
We’ve got to do something, of course. But what is it? Infiltrate the police? Blow things up? Write books and make speeches? Build a bomb shelter? It seems like almost anything seems plausible and everything seems impossible.
In the face of all that, here are my suggestions, hatched after prayer featuring Psalm 33.
Don’t put your trust in chariots, obey God, not men.
Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. — Psalm 20:7 (NIV)
But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.” — Acts 5:29 NASB
In the U.S. people are likely to say, “The other side of the political divide is trusting in guns not God! We are obeying God/the truth/the Constitution!” So maybe we should amplify Psalm 33 to mean, “Don’t trust in the big principle of the moment, in the media’s narrative of reality, in your own prejudices or trauma reactions. Trust in the Lord Jesus, present with you in troubled times, just like he weathered the storm with his disciples.”
It is a year for putting those verses (above) on a post-its and sticking them to our computers or dashboards.
Maybe you could add a few other notes:
“Don’t think of 2024 like you are fighting to rule the empire.” Be a Jesus follower.
Or “Making the best deal for yourself is not the essence of life.” Jesus already gave you the best possible deal, anyway.
Or “Nothing works, so anything might work.” We all feel so guilty for having the wrong political candidates and leaving our children a mess and causing global warming. We’re overwhelmed with our failure to make things work right. Let Go. Let God. And that will free you to be your best self.
Return to the basics
I really wanted to go to that prayer time on the 4th! It felt good and right to pray. It felt necessary to pray in the face of national hysteria or despair.
We are tempted to do everything but what is the secret goodness we bring to the world: Prayer. Community. Worship. But practicing our reality with sincerity makes the world a place where that goodness can and does happen, where our Savior is among us all. If no one sees you or comes to your meeting, don’t worry about it. We are doing a spiritual work, not gaining a market share. Think eternally and act minute by minute.
Assert the truth
I know we are truth challenged, but Jesus isn’t. I know we have variations on what the priority truths are. Don’t worry about it. Jesus fed 5000 with a few loave sand fish, he can use the meager truth he has to work with.
Quite often, during spiritual direction, a person will be up in the air. They don’t know what to think or do. And I often will say, “I think you may know more than you can grasp right now. Let’s be quiet and listen.” It is often surprising just how quickly the right thought or feeling becomes clear.
As for me, I think it has already been revealed that Jesus is my fundamental truth. I mention him a lot and just see what happens. Grace, justice, hope seem to be truths I can follow through every situation. I think my proverb is: Be present with your best, don’t just reactively argue with what is worst. Whatever I have to bring to the world is what it is in who I am and what I do because Jesus is with me.
Embrace unknowing, curiosity, trust, love.
I am meeting with several bewildered couples and experiencing our fractious HOA. So I know people are very tempted to apply whatever power they have to “take someone out.” Like the candidate said, “Some people just need to be killed!” You think that is absurd until you witness people wrecking their marriage or taking down their own community because they are sure some other person is wrong and will ruin them.
Fear feeds the what ifs. Anxiety becomes its own logic. I often suggest to married people, “Really, you do not know what is going to happen. You do not know what can change and grow.” Jesus followers are not fools waiting to get devoured by lions prowling around, of course, but they are also not afraid, because they are already taken care of. They don’t have to know what will happen. They have a destiny. So they can enter toxic times with hope. They can brazenly love their enemies. They can pick out what they can trust and let the chaff blow away.
The seed planting we do always seems small in the face of frightening threats. But each seed has the possibility to grow into the life-changing tree under which some overwhelmed American needs to rest.
I have talked to many Christians about their anger. Many of them could barely tolerate the subject because they were ashamed of their lack at self-control. I’ve concluded they felt that way because they had concentrated on talking themselves out of it. They were looking for their thoughts to align with God’s and then expected such an alignment to fix their anger problem. They really wanted to stop being a time bomb their mate was afraid they were going to set off. They understood their problem. But they just could not get their problem to listen to reason.
Pixar boils it down to this.
You might carry some anger
If the description above resembles you or someone you know, I hope you won’t hold it against them. They may have grown up in a church that was so convinced the Bible was God’s gift to solve all their problems they were obsessed with learning and applying the words correctly. They might have been so into the interpretation of the words they stopped listening with anything but their minds. Chances are they have been angry at themselves for being such a terrible listener and apply-er!
I have often preached, as I am about to, that the people who wrote the Bible were a lot deeper than the Bible. John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, plainly says he did not scratch the surface of what Jesus said and did at the end of his profound Gospel. The Apostle Paul apparently spent 14 years listening and meditating before he was sent on his missionary journeys and wrote his wonderful teaching. They experienced deep transformation that went way beyond words.
Here is one thing Paul learned from God (not merely the Bible) that applies to letting go of your anger.
Not that I have already obtained all this [new life], or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. – Philippians 3:12
He wrote that line because he was taken hold of by Jesus and he was moved to take hold of Jesus. He did not apply a loosely understood set of words to write his letter and he was not teaching his readers to do that. He believed the Holy Spirit would take hold of his readers just like he was, and they would be able to let go of the past and live a new life with new goals just like he was.
If you are so angry your children are afraid of what you will do or say to them; if you can’t get along in your work or it makes you so frustrated you can’t resist venting about it; if you are angry in advance about what you suspect someone will do to you much of the time; if you use intoxicants to “take the edge off” because you are perpetually on the edge of anger; Jesus is reaching right into that place, Spirit-to-spirit, to save you. Take his hand and good things will follow.
When anger comes up, take hold of it
Lots of people want to be saved and have taken all sorts of steps to reap the benefits of faith. But many of them have done it via words and thoughts, not by Spirit and experience. They say to me with frustration, “I have done the right thing. I study the Bible every day. And I am still this way.“ You may have grasped the content, but not the hand of Jesus.
When it comes to anger, when we pray (which is mostly too deep for words), anger will likely come up if we have it, unless we are committed to repressing it. If we let our anger surface, acknowledge it — you could say “grasp it,” then we can let it go.
Some people I’ve heard lately want the Spirit of God to fulfill promises on their behalf and take care of their anger. They say things like, “I did what the Bible says to do. I cast my anger on God because God cares for me. So why was I still furious as soon as I saw my wife?”
There are a lot of answers to that question which go beyond what I am trying to do here. But one answer would be. “I think you may have really just cast your anger back into the place where you usually keep it, and you expected Jesus to guard the door for you.”
What we need to do is let the anger out when we are with Jesus. We need to see it as best we can. And then we can let it go. The mindfulness people do a nice job at getting to this idea, only without Jesus in the room. Here is a nice meditation one of them suggests. I think Jesus wouldn’t mind sharing that YouTube with you. When I looked for a Christian variation designed for the same purpose, it was mainly a collection of words we were supposed to think about. I’m not even going to show it to you.
When you let the anger up it might be like a hot ball. One person described it as a dark slimy mass. Another envisioned a heart with chains around it struggling to beat. It might feel terrifying to intentionally look at your anger and feel it, to take hold of it like it takes hold of you. But you can do it.
You could get with your therapist or spiritual director and they might help you experience the feeling of anger when it is not just a reaction. You could start by talking about what you’re feeling with anyone who will listen, which might be your spouse if you let them. They might help you remember the earliest times you experienced anger coming at you or coming from you and how you formed the habits you formed for defending against it or using it. You might learn why you protect it, or dominate with it, or love it, or are afraid of losing it.
Sunset at Sea — Renoir, 1879
Then let go of it
I think we have to grasp the self-defeating emotional habits and thoughts we carry before we can let them go. It might be a gentle process like loading our anger on a little boat made of fallen twigs carefully putting it in the stream and watching it float away. Or it might be more aggressive like wrestling with an opponent through the night until something new happens.
We need to apprehend our anger before we can set it loose. The translation of Philippians 3:12 which is most accurate, in my opinion, includes the word “apprehend.” It reads something like, “I want to apprehend what apprehended me.”
The sentence reflects how Jesus apprehended Paul like He was chasing down a terrorist that day Paul was on the way to Damascus to do more crimes against the Lord’s fledgling community of followers. For the rest of Paul’s life he relished being imprisoned by Jesus, stolen from the world of sin and made a slave to righteousness. What a guy! His deeply spiritual and helpful sentence has the feeling of his exhilaration: “You’ve got to grab it!” You probably won’t share his excitement unless you open up to being grabbed in the deep places you organized to defend your heart when you were very young, or when disaster struck.
See if you are angry about being apprehended after reading what I just said. See what parts of you are off limits to being touched by the Spirit or by love. Anger is usually a first line of defense against what we fear or hate. Is there anything don’t you trust Jesus to handle with you, something your anger is trying to handle instead? Ask him yourself, and you will probably be well down the road to letting go of your anger.
I know people who are angry with their spouses about how they are angry with them. But they all love and depend on their spouse! They would like not to be angry at all. They would like to stop having arguments with people in their heads. It makes no sense. When you notice that irrationality, that’s the part of you that needs to be grasped and ultimately let go. Just withdrawing with the feeling back to safety or detonating it for the same reason will not work for good.
When you are contemplating with God and anger comes up, welcome it. It is not just a distraction, it is you. You may not know everything about it: “Why I am like this? Where did this come from? Why don’t I want to deal with it?” But if you listen in the quiet you may grasp a lot more in your soul than you understand with your words. You probably know a lot about your anger you would rather not handle.
Grasp what you can so far, maybe even put your hands around that ball and look at Jesus looking at it with you. Shame, fear, loss, disappointment, all sorts of deeper emotions may start to rise. That’s OK. They may move you to let the ball go and let Jesus heal you.
Maybe you will see that hot ball of anger float away when you let go of it, blown by a spiritual breeze until you can’t see it anymore, like Renoir’s little boat (above) out in his spiritual sea. Then turn back to Jesus to see how he looks and what he wants to do. Let him do it. Lay hold of him.
I hope some kind of embrace comes to your mind when you turn to Jesus — He loves you, angry or not, after all. You’ll get to feel that love more when you’ve taken hold of your anger so you can let it go. You’ll undoubtedly feel more love from others, too, and they will feel more love from you, for sure.
*******
Today is Harriet Beecher Stowe Day!Few, if any, American women have had more influence on the United States than she had. Meet her at The Transhistorical Body.
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.
Is it just me, or do you sometimes feel like you will never be released from your Boomer music prison? I was in the dim sum restaurant celebrating 8th-grade graduates and one of them stopped eating dan dan noodles as soon as “Build Me Up, Buttercup” came on the background music. We belted out, “I need you (I need you) more than anyone darling,” which was sweet. But I also thought, “Will we never be free of this song?”
Graduation Day
I went to two commencement ceremonies (loved them!) and heard 8th graders singing Boomer anthems to Boomers. But most of their parents were born in the 70’s and 80’s, weren’t they? In the first ceremony the kids actually sang “Graduation Day” which was a hit for the Four Freshmen in 1956! I went down to gym floor as the director was cleaning up the band music to congratulate her, “Extra points for ‘Graduation Day.’ Where did you discover that?” She said, “Oh, we always sing it. It’s a tradition.”
How did that piece of fluff become a tradition? You could say, “The same reason your son makes the Jello dessert for Thanksgiving your mother’s family still calls a salad.” Touche. But still, any use of that song does not make perfect sense to me.
I was out in the Redwoods with ten-year-olds where we discovered our cool farmhouse VRBO had a TV in their room with the Disney channel. We turned it on and there was the new Beach Boys documentary being headlined. I was interested in the Beach Boys, so we watched a bit. But I thought, “The Beach Boys hold some interest for the Disney Plus watchers?”
The Boys also came to mind during the first commencement, since Brian Wilson was obsessed with the Four Freshman and much of the brilliant harmonies he built into surf music were directly from them. The Beach Boys also recorded “Graduation Day.”
The first record Brian Wilson bought when he was a teenager in Hawthorne, CA (about an hour from where I lived), was the Four Freshmen’s 1955 album Four Freshmen And 5 Trombones. The story goes that 30 years later he still loved the album. He told an interviewer, “They had a demonstration booth where you could listen in the store and I found the Freshmen album. My mother said, ‘Do you really want to hear this?’ and I said, ‘Sure.’ So I went into the little booth and played it and fell in love with it.”
I aspired to BE one of the Beach Boys when I was young. So I find them very appealing and have almost all the songs from Pet Sounds on my playlist. But “Graduation Day” was a bit of nostalgia when the Beach Boys were young! What was it doing in an amazingly diverse class of 8th graders in Philly in 2024? Has it become “America the Beautiful?”
I turned to the grad’s older brother and said, “Couldn’t they find a more representative song than that? Do they think people have stopped writing music?” He wasn’t really listening to me complain but he was polite. I went on to suggest, “How about ‘What Was I Made For?’” (which I recently Smuled for my sister). That would be a great commencement song for the present generation, some of whom were dressed like Barbie before our very eyes.
Forever Young
The next day we celebrated with an even more diverse class of 8th graders and they were also programmed to sing for us, which they did very nicely. But what song did their Boomer teachers (or were they GenX?) pull out for them to learn? — the classic “Forever Young” by Bob Dylan, written for his son in 1974. He recorded a couple of versions but, honestly, I have never been able to listen to him sing. Here’s my favorite of his interpreters:
Last year there was a Joan Baez documentary, too: I am A Noise. I watched part of it because I have always admired her voice and activism. She’s inspiring. It ends with her dancing in a field as an old woman, but much like any hippy would imagine Joan Baez dancing.
But what was Dylan’s song doing in a commencement ceremony 50 years after it was written? Has it become classic, like the “Hallelujah” chorus? I looked at my wife when the kids first sang, “Forever young,” and said, “No thank you.” Who in the world would want to stay young, especially always in 8th grade? I want them to be full of the brightness and hope of that moment, but I am not sure they’ll make it if they are stuck in Dylan prison.
My mind turned to all the other, more recent, sentimental music they could have used. I think Dear Evan Hansen’s “You Will Be Found” from 2016 would have been much better. It is just like Disney but always makes me cry. This year’s grads endured the pandemic, after all.
Music matters
We live in an environment in which every sound wave is monetized. Molecules will probably soon come with pop-up adds. There is a lot of competition for our attention, which means were are mostly not attending at all. But we need to listen to the music. Music matters. The Boomer/GenX teachers keep sampling the past for feel-good nostalgia, for the muffled sounds they heard in the womb, I suspect. That’s OK. But that’s not real enough.
Music is such a wonderfully integrative art, especially singing, if we let our whole bodies get into it. That’s why churches are holding out as a place where singing in public still happens (well, there is the Phillies games and Luke Combs concerts, too). Singing is a spiritual discipline. But even if you aren’t disciplined, or aren’t really listening, it is still a spiritual experience.
The teachers, it seems to me, chose to keep their kids enclosed in a small space — the kind of space stores offer when they dish up more “Build Me Up Buttercup” while you’re looking for polenta (which they keep moving around!). The kids of the future will need a lot more than sedation or amorphous feelings of well-being. They will need a lot of spiritual imagination to get out of the mess they are in. As the atmosphere gets warmer and the warzones get wider, they will need real music to live on, not just leftovers. I hope they learn to remember way beyond 1956 and dare to write the soundtracks of healing and building way into the future.
Just as excessive, was the newly refurbished doll museum at the shrine, which the cashier said we should not miss. She was right. It might be in the top ten of the weirdest museums I’ve ever visited. Dolls and mannequins of all sizes were dressed in the habits of traditional monks and nuns, mainly pre-1970, the Boomer childhood. I doubt any order was missed. I marveled at the absurd, excessive dedication to minutia and irrelevance in documenting this recently-bygone era. It was a bit like Henry Ford immortalizing his childhood.
My family never taught me one thing about God, never mentioned Jesus at home at all. Their own spiritual life was taboo, another secret like so many they had. But one Christmas, my mother and father gave me a present that was not from Santa, but had their name on it. It was a nicer Bible, and more importantly, in the Bible was a bookmark, a gold-looking chain of the Ten Commandments — a bit like this one from E-Bay but much better in my memory. It was a treasure. I never used it as a bookmark. I hid it from my sister like it was gold. And I treasure that rare affirmation of my faith to this day.
difficult process to Joseph in Genesis who must have been about thirty when his earnest mentality and natural charisma propelled him into the management of Potiphar’s household. He is confronted with a big choice — “Should I have sex with Potiphar’s wife, who wants me, or not?” He decides not to do it, which ultimately lands him in prison. But his reasoning is basically, “That’s just not me. I am not going to surrender my righteousness for an orgasm, or anything else.” To get to fifty with your faith, it takes acting like that. Integrity.
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.
I went to two commencement ceremonies (loved them!) and heard 8th graders singing Boomer anthems to Boomers. But most of their parents were born in the 70’s and 80’s, weren’t they? In the first ceremony the kids actually sang “Graduation Day” which was a