:: in a mirror dimly :: A theology and culture blog with the Bible in one tab and a news feed in the other.

It is only until recently that some Evangelical Christians have begun questioning our group’s role in politics and issues of social justice. From where I sit, I have typically summed up the social involvement of Christians in today’s world by the following issues: banning abortion, supporting world missions, and writing checks to World Vision.

My narrow conception of Christian social involvement is radically different from the Christians in the Nineteenth Century. William Dyrness writes about work of Christians, especially in Great Britain, to provide orphanages, hospitals, and any other social service to meet whatever needs were found in society.

Personally, I don’t have a grid for that. I find myself asking, “Why bother with all of that, just preach the Gospel.” And that is just one example of how much the church has changed in 150 years. There has been an almost Gnostic disconnect of the spiritual from the physical Gospel message that I think many Evangelicals are struggling to fix. Even if I do something to help the poor or the prisoners, I still can’t say I quite understand why I’m doing it other than knowing Jesus did the same and it seems like a good idea.

I think Christians like the idea of helping the poor, but there is a gray ambiguity when we try to cram social action into a Gospel that leaves no place for God’s intervention in our current situation. We know we should be doing something about social justice and poverty, but where, how, why, when?

I want to dig deeper into this another time, but for now, I’ll end with the thoughts of Dyrness on this topic:

“The revivals of the early nineteenth century stimulated many evangelicals to become involved in social causes. Their efforts against slavery, child labor, and other injustices left a lasting mark on American culture. Later in the century the question of the Christian’s relation to culture was contested and in the first quarter of the twentieth century social and cultural concerns disappeared almost entirely from the evangelical consideration. In a few generations evangelical Christians in America went from being a dominant (and constructive) force, both in religion and politics, to being an often despised and culturally invisible minority. There were important historical reasons for this. Believing Christians were placed on the defensive by the challenges presented by Darwin, industrial unrest, immigration and the progressive social gospel this stimulated, and, especially, by the challenge to the authority of Scripture represented by the rise of higher criticism” (From William Dyrness, “Evangelical Theology and Culture,” The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology, 149).

• Darryl’s Blog: Tim Keller: What are the risks for evangelicals?
  Emergent Village listed this post on their blog. I think it’s an important post about the current state of evangelicals.
  (tags: evangelical emerging emergent)
• Why Evangelicals May Turn to Romney - TIME
  Or why I’m probably not voting for a Republican in 2008. “The Romney apostles understand that any successful GOP nominee will have to unite all the ornery wings of the party. With that in mind, they cite not only Romney’s strong family values and faithful
  (tags: politics christianity evangelical)

I love going to the farmer’s market in the recreation park of Manchester, Vermont. I see people I know, have a chance to talk with farmers about their crops and animals, and am surrounded by youth and life. Kids do crafts in a sprawling tent area, while local musicians provide a cheerful backdrop.

More than anything, farmers markets raise the value of a community. People attend and have a chance to see just how many amazing things exist in their local towns. I never knew there were so many musicians and talented bread bakers in my area. Between Rupert Rising Bread, the Battenkill Bread company, and Granny Om Bakery in Shushan, NY, I can buy freshly made bread from any of these companies within a 30 minute radius of our rural home.

I love the chance to chat with farmers about how they raised the chicken that is now a frozen mass of meat in my bag, or with another about his wide variety of heirloom tomatoes. I have never felt so connected with my food. When I put food into my body there is a deeper sense of relationship and significance. I’m no longer just suffocating hunger pain, I’m fueling my body with good, local food.

Today is the last day of the Manchester market, but the Sunday afternoon market in Dorset, VT continues throughout the winter at the J. K. Adams kitchen store. Many of the same vendors will be on hand, and so the community sticks it out together through the winter.

I heard it said that anger results when we are denied a perceived right. In other words, we expect to be treated in a certain way or to have things fall into a certain order and consequently become angry when they do not.

This applies to dealing with a customer at work, getting along with family members, or trying to take apart a stubborn food mill (as I did last night and just about threw across the room). Anger matches the degree to which expectations are not met and one’s mood permits.

I’m not in the clear when it comes to dealing with anger, but I have received sound advice that has helped and have learned some lessons that I’m willing to pass along as a work in progress, not as the expert. Whenever I sense anger taking over, I try to do the following:

• Keep my lips sealed. Whatever I say in anger, I almost always regret, not matter how righteous it seemed at the time. Give it at least a day if possible to see if it really is worth bringing up to someone. Bearing grudges is a whole other matter (the whole, don’t let the sun go down on your anger bit).
• Identify why I’m angry. This is not easy. There could be ten little aggravations that set me off when there really are one or two things at the root of my anger.
• Look for perspective. If I can find the root of my anger, it often helps to put it in perspective by thinking of just how much this affects my life and the lives of others. The end result: I find that the root of my anger isn’t as big a deal as originally thought.
• Pray for the people I’m angry at. Whether or not my anger is justified, praying for (or at least wishing good will toward them!) is a positive step that removes me from my inward gaze and leads me to a concern for others, even if I don’t like them this is an almost guaranteed way to defeat anger. Hat tip to my wife for teaching me this!

I could list other ways of dealing with anger, such as secretly calling people names or making jokes out of difficult situations, but they probably aren’t as helpful as the four tips listed above. They’re fun, but not as useful.

We took Baxter to the vet yesterday and were told to our surprise that Baxter is a “she.” This is a common problem with younger rabbits, as people can often mix them up, as they did at the pet store for poor Baxter. We have friends who just had the same exact thing happen to them with their male to female rabbit.

You’d think it wouldn’t change so much for us, I mean, Baxter is still this cute, spunky, furniture-chewing rabbit who bounces to greet us each morning with paws outstretched and a white belly showing. But we have to think a bit now when we talk about . . . her.

Oddly enough we read in a rabbit book about a lady who made the same mistake and began to speak with her rabbit differently. The rabbit soon became lazy and dare I say depressed. When she corrected this mistake and talked the same way as before to the rabbit, all was well. Do you think we’re insane yet???

So it’s a time of pronoun transition in our home. She is still the same bunny, but now we look at her differently. She isn’t the male punk we thought she was. It seems like we need to create a new persona for Baxter. It’s funny how we create these odd things in our minds and keep them going whether or not they really fit the pet.

At least this clears up the mystery of why our other rabbit Evan was so friendly through the cage whenever he went over to Baxter. We expected to see biting and scratching. For once Evan knew something we didn’t.

On October 7th, 1777, General John Burgoyne and 7,800 British, Canadian, and Hessian soldiers marched down the Hudson River valley from their encampment and attacked the American forces, numbering 15,000, at Saratoga. If there was ever a decisive day in American history, this was one of them.

Yesterday I toured the battlefield of Saratoga in the early stages of fall color. The picture here shows Benedict Arnold’s headquarters behind the American lines at Bemis Heights. As a fan of history I have a read a few books about this battle and the American Revolution in general, and so it was a fantastic place to visit both for brining to life the history and enjoying the scenic beauty.

I had the luck of joining a few friends from my college days while driving around the large battlefield. He claims that Saratoga may be one of the best preserved battlefields in America. To add to the interest, two of his distant relatives fought in the Battle of Saratoga with the famed riflemen of Daniel Morgan. One, a distant uncle, was among the sharpshooters selected for picking off British Generals.

Private Murphy was credited with killing the British General Fraser at a key point in the battle of Bemis Heights where the British were faltering and Fraser attempted to rally his troops to hold the Americans back. With Fraser out of the picture, the Americans routed the British with the ever bold General Benedict Arnold leading the flanking charge against the Hessian forces.

Though no one can be 100% sure who killed General Fraser in the heat of the battle, it was fascinating to walk the field with my friend and test various theories for how it may have gone down. We noticed certain features of the ground and tried to speculate how high the wheat would have been, how thick the woods were, and whether or not the fields would have had the same contours.

Because of the American stand at Bemis Heights and the bold flanking attack by Benedict Arnold, the Americans were eventually able to capture nearly all of the 7,800 invaders and to show the world that this young nation had a fighting chance in the war for independence. If you would like to see more pictures of the battlefield and the fall colors, have a look at my Flickr account. For more info about the battle, check this summary.

Technorati Tags: saratoga - battle+of+saratoga - gates - benedict+arnold - burgoyne - american+revolution

• Burma: Thousands dead in the massacre of the monks dumped in the jungle
  through Emergent Village I found a link to this article. Apparently the killing of monks in Burma is far worse than we have heard.
  (tags: justice)

There are two kinds of people on the covers of magazines in supermarkets: those whose lives are falling apart and those who have their act together. The majority of society hovers somewhere in-between, but never mind that for now. Have we stopped to think about this enormous contradiction between adoring competence and gawking at broken lives?

Divorce, unfaithfulness, pregnancy out of wed-lock, and marital disputes fill up half the magazine covers while tips for losing 5 pounds in 5 days, how to get the man of your dreams, and how to feel great about yourself are just a side panel on the positive, you-can-do-it-because-I-did-and-I-was-a-fat-loser-who-is-now-hot magazines.

What are we after with this mix of crazed and constructive? If only the makers of each magazine could send copies to the subjects of the other respective magazines, then perhaps we’d be getting somewhere. The perky perfect people would learn to live dangerously and do the occasional stupid thing so they have a good story to tell at their perfectly planned cocktail parties, and the overdosed celebrities would learn a little moderation and control. Can’t you feel the world getting better just by reading that idea?

I suppose it’s always comforting to read about people who are far more troubled than ourselves and at the same time to read about solutions to our problems that are so simple we can’t help but try and fail. It’s so much easier to pick up a magazine from the check out line, read the 3-page article about changing your life, and then making up excuses for why it didn’t help while reading about some stupid celebrity in a gossip magazine.

God’s solutions are something like this: give up and let me take over, but you can’t pick up something like that in the check out line of the supermarket. Even if God’s offer is free, it’s a lot of work. Wouldn’t it be easier to buy a candy bar and a magazine or two about changing your life?

Back in college I thought I had people pegged, in particular I was pretty sure I knew who the serious Christians were and who was just playing along. It seemed so obvious that certain guys I knew or at least knew of were too cool to really care about Jesus, their popularity being a much more important occupation.

In the past two months I found many of these guys on Facebook and it turns out several are now missionaries or at least in full-time ministry. It just goes to show that I don’t know . . . anything.

Now my fine-tooted comb of judgment is pointed straight back at myself. Besides the fact that I’m coping with my transgressions of judgment and criticism, there’s something far larger lurking beneath the surface: insecurity.

Back in high school and college I was painfully insecure. I assumed that most people didn’t really like me all that much, aside from my friends, which I thankfully had a lot of. But once I moved beyond my friends, I had a hard time holding on to a shred of self-confidence, interpreting the silence of others as disapproval.

This insecurity was fought off by self-righteousness, such as, “He may think I’m a nobody, but at least I take God seriously.” This doesn’t soften the blow all that much, but it helps to know why my thinking was so awful.

I can safely say that I am less painfully insecure today because I have also befriended some of the people who I thought didn’t like me. In addition, my wife has saved me from myself because her acceptance and deep friendship provides real security to be who I am, quirks and all.

And now that I’ve aired out that bit of dirty laundry, I’d like to write about the people who don’t blog as well as I do . . .

• Christianity’s Image Problem - TIME
  Nine out of ten outsiders found Christians too “anti-homosexual,” and nearly as many perceived it as “hypocritical” and “judgmental.” Seventy-five percent found it “too involved in politics.” These findings from 2004 are still relevant problems the church
  (tags: christianity)
• House Church Resource.org
  A new house church resource site by a friend of Frank Viola.
  (tags: church)
• bethany.pdf (application/pdf Object)
  Frank Viola’s free e-book about Bethany as a vision for the church. In my own life the idea of Bethany has been very important. I think we all are looking for our own “Bethany.”
  (tags: christianity)

I have seen God in a whole new light this morning. There aren’t many places in the Bible where God actually appears to people, but he did appear quite a bit Moses. Look at what happens when God shows up to Moses and a few others:

“Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.” Exodus 24:9-11

Read that again just to make sure you catch it. God shows up on a mountain with his very own pavement of sapphire, and instead of shaking in fear or bowing in worship, the leaders of Israel say, “Man, I’m famished, how about we grab a bite to eat?”

Read the rest of this entry »

• 9/11 Is Over - Thomas Friedman - New York Times
  Friedman says, Our government has been exporting fear, not hope: “Give me your tired, your poor and your fingerprints.”
  (tags: politics culture)

I have a large tote bag full of apples that I gathered from the apple tree at my place of employment sitting in our kitchen. With the intention of making applesauce, I’ve had a large pot sitting on top of the bag waiting for the right time.

The weekend passed, and so I decided that Tuesday night was going to be applesauce night. I even told Julie about my scheme and we planned out the entire evening. And then while in bed last night I remembered: I’m throwing a huge party at work on Tuesday night for about 100 people!!!

Rest assured I’ve been planning for this big event over the past 4 weeks . . . and perhaps that makes it worse that I momentarily forgot about it. So while I have most of my plans in place for tonight, I don’t quite see how I could have forgotten about it so completely yesterday.

The whole thing has me a bit creeped out. Am I that distracted? I’m just imagining myself pulling out of work tonight at 5:00 pm to the utter consternation of my co-workers.

On the plus side I did manage to finish my first draft of the my theology book yesterday. Now I’m officially freed up to work on the study guides. Maybe I’ll work on them tonight since I’m not doing anything important . . .

• Radiohead Album Price Tag: Its Up to You
  I am blown away by Radiohead’s creativity in allowing their customers/followers decide the value of their work. Something like this could really change our world. This is a bold, risky move that pushes us toward honesty and to a certain degree, morality.
  (tags: culture)
• Disruptive Conversations: Facebook brings the twin taboos of politics and religion into the workplace
  Facebook reveals one’s religion and politics. Should we worry about the ways this public information may affect our professional relationships?
  (tags: culture religion)