Holy Crap…(time flies)

I just had sort of a flashback.  I’m sitting in the Westridge Mall in Fargo ND (as if there were ‘ridges’ in Fargo) in about the exact spot that I started my rather sporadic blogging career somewhere in 2004 or so.

I was looking for my “Call”; God’s direction for my life and what I was to do to serve Him.  I began that year locating telephone cable and ended the year working as a Services Coordinator for Synstelien Community Services.  My last post to this blog (prior to this) was made in October of 2008.

In early November of 2008 I was given the responsibilities and title of Executive Director for Synstelien Community Services, a position I’ve held and started to grow into these past eight months.

Capitalism, Socialism & Materialism…What I Learned from Che…

It’s interesting to me that capitalists, socialists and communists all believe that a person’s life-status can best be determined by their wealth.  Basically they are all varying approaches to materialism.  Christians are (called to be) different.

The Question Forms the Answer…

I was listening to a Speaking of Faith podcast this morning on the way to work.  John Polkinghorne was being interviewed; the title of the podcast was Quarks and Creation.  I heartily recommend it.

Rev. Dr. Polkinghorne was discussing how our questions form answers; he gave the example of the difficulty that physicists encountered when trying to determine whether light was a ‘wave’ or a ‘particle‘.  He (thankfully) simply stated that when ‘wave questions’ were asked, light behaved as a ‘wave’ and when ‘particle questions’ were asked, light behaved as a ‘particle’.

This resonated with me (there may be a pun there but I don’t know enough about physics to be sure).

Skills or Gifts?

As a Jesus follower I often struggle with how to balance my thinking about my skills (i.e., what I’ve learned through experience) with my gifting (i.e., what God has sovereignly placed in me). Henri Nouwen, in this devotional, offers some wisdom on maintaining a thoughtful balance…

Being Humble and Confident

As we look at the stars and let our minds wander into the many galaxies, we come to feel so small and insignificant that anything we do, say, or think seems completely useless. But if we look into our souls and let our minds wander into the endless galaxies of our interior lives, we become so tall and significant that everything we do, say, or think appears of great importance.

We have to keep looking both ways to remain humble and confident, humorous and serious, playful and responsible. Yes, the human person is very small and very tall. It is the tension between the two that keeps us spiritually awake.

Not an Organization?

I receive a daily email devotional from the Henri Nouwen Society. Like any other devotional (or life itself) there are good days, great days and awesome days. My understanding is that these devotionals are gathered from Henri’s writings and Henri’s thoughts provoke my own. This morning the thought provoked had to do with thinking of the church as a mere organization.

Which, obviously, it is not (only); the church is (also, primarily and most importantly) the Body of Christ.

I work for an organization that is not the church. In this organization there are many members of the Body of Christ (aka “the church”) and many non-members. Every day, as members and non-members, we together perform many of the functions that are the ‘calling’ or ‘duty’ of the church; caring for widows and orphans, demonstrating love for one another, listening, teaching, learning, belonging, caring and empowering.

And each week we go to various buildings we call “churches” to “worship” (meaning praying, singing, preaching and fellowship). This seems an odd juxtaposition.

But this is our tradition; to parse the “work” and “worship” of the church (as if).

Defining Sin…

I was listening to a podcast from Stanford University available on iTunes U; a speech by Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas. He quoted what his grandfather considered the “Seven Deadly Sins”:

• Wealth without Work
• Pleasure without Conscience
• Science without Humanity
• Knowledge without Character
• Politics without Principle
• Commerce without Morality
• Worship without Sacrifice

As a follower of Jesus I understand that I’m not the definer of sin. I would however propose these seven statements as rather profound descriptors of fallen human traits which destroy culture and community.

Defending Talk Therapy…

I’ve found myself in a position in which I am defending what we traditionally call ‘talk therapy’.  The first, simplist and sometimes seemingly only plan of attack for those suffering from depression and psychoses seems to be medication.  The medical model, at least in practice, seems to effectively dominate the world of service delivery.

Paradoxes of Community…

I’ve been concurrently reading Becoming Human and From Brokenness to Community, both by Jean Vanier. Jean Vanier is the founder of the L’Arche Communities; intentional communities focused on the care of the disabled. In From Brokenness to Community Vanier quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community.

I hope I’ll never be dumb enough to try to improve on anything that Bonhoeffer has said; what I intend to do in this post is to confess conviction. This quotation caused myself to ask me the question; “Do you love your community more than the individuals in it?” My honest answer to self was; “Mostly.”

I realized that it’s much easier to have a relationship to an entity than an individual; whether the ‘entity’ be God, a company, a church or even abstract conceptual entities such as “family”, “country” or “fellow NASCAR fans”.

In Becoming Human Vanier convinced me that a deep barrier to personal belonging-ness lies in my own desire to be special, to compete, to be recognized as valuable and important. How can I belong if my belonging, by necessity, means something more important than everyone else’s belonging?

Walking with Christ is often paradoxical; it is a paradox that 1.) my own desire for community would become a block to realizing the same; and 2.) the tendency that I believe to make me attractive to others…my ’special-ness’…does in fact become a hindrance to experiencing community.

Tilting at Windmills…

About a year ago in the context of my work I saw a clip from Facing the Giants. In this clip a young man, a leader of his football team, was asked by his coach to stretch himself, to go much further than he thought he could. After viewing that clip a member of our team commented that the movie, though produced by Christians, would be unfairly receiving a “PG” rather than a “G” rating. I sort of laughed to myself at the time that we somehow suppose that we are so pure of motive that everything we do deserves a “G” rating; or even that a “G” rating was good…as if “PG”, for “Parental Guidance” – a concept we esteem highly, was a bad thing. I guess it’s somewhat normal to try to apply “value” to every scale.

Today we rented and saw the movie.

Based upon the theological principles presented in the movie I learned two things; the first about me and the second about the Christology of American Evangelicals (at least as presented in the film):

The film’s main character, Grant Taylor and I have infertility in common. Well, the film never came right out and mentioned the S-word, but it was easy enough to put the pieces together that his doctor’s assessment was that Grant was not doing his part in the baby-creation department. What I learned (sarcasm alert) was that I have not yet turned over to Christ all that I should; Grant did and got his wife pregnant. If I was as good a Christian as Grant is my wife would be pregnant too – not just once but twice.

I also learned a lot about the nature of Jesus – His heavenly kingdom is really sort of a merit-based materials distribution system. When we do the right thing we get stuff, better stuff and more stuff.

In summation; the message of this film is that being ‘blessed’ means ‘getting stuff’ and that earthly ‘blessing’ is based upon earthly merit.

As a visual artist and as a follower of Jesus I’m appalled at the lack of devotion to craft, to quality and depth; as a mere Christian I’m appalled at the lack of sensitivity, the immature, selfish and materialistic theology demonstrated in this film.

Affirmation of Faith (11)

Eleventh in my point-by-point series on the BGC Affirmation of Faith:

11. Church Cooperation
We believe that local churches can best promote the cause of Jesus Christ by cooperating with one another in a denominational organization. Such an organization, whether it is the Conference or a district conference, exists and functions by the will of the churches. Cooperation in a conference is voluntary and may be terminated at any time. Churches may likewise cooperate with interdenominational fellowships on a voluntary independent basis.

Denomination = Cooperation works for me; Denomination = Control does not.  I’d probably advocate for a different word than “denomination” were I part of forming an affirmation such as this; and in an attempt to find another word that better defines my thinking I’d probably arrive back at the word I was trying to reject in the first place.  This often happens to me, I find that a careful examination of the definition of a word helps me to cleanse inappropriate connotations that I’ve been dragging along.

Inappropriate connotations is an appropriate term to describe my initial mindset to most things denominational.  I struggle with the idea of denominational distinctives and often assume that the motivation behind distinctives and denominationalism is division/divisiveness…or pride.

The denomination that I grew up in communicated to me the impression that we were right; others were not.  I’ve also met others through the years, from other denominational backgrounds, who impressed me in the same way.  My corrective is: “Denominations aren’t bad, but some responses to them sure are.”  Mine included.

This affirmation Fully Accepted.