:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

I have a new online comment policy that I’m testing out. I’m trying to not tell people everything I know all at once.

You know those comment threads that go on for paragraph after paragraph? I’m trying to stop that.

Who wants to read a short essay each time I leave a comment?

So far, it’s worked out pretty well. When I was tempted to write a lot in the comments at someone’s blog, I just dropped in a link to a relevant article. As it turned out, the blogger already knew about that article and my perspective.

Conversation over. No need to duke things out. I’m glad he knows about my point of view. If it doesn’t work for him, a long, rambling blog comment won’t change his mind.

Despite this success, I somehow entered into a comment thread on Facebook that turned into a series of short essays by one particular person. Ironically, when I pointed out to the essayist that her long, rambling comments weren’t readable or convincing, she decided to leave a few more.

I think I know how she feels. It’s like you run into someone who HAS to be wrong. It’s a Jekyll and Hyde transformation where you just… can’t… stop… typing. On and on you type. It’s like drinking salt water—only leaving you thirsting to type more. “If I just put it right, he’ll change his mind!”

Of course the conversation topic was women in ministry.

This woman was a complementarian frustrated with the way egalitarian’s such as myself play fast and loose with the Bible.

She presented her “airtight” case based on several bits of scripture that are quite popular with complementarians.

I’d like to step back for a moment and consider what’s going on when someone like me or her starts to list out arguments online like this. There is a presumption that the other party doesn’t know something. Supplying the information in a convincing format will make the difference, right?

Well, I discovered that as awesome as my link may have been, that particular blogger wasn’t convinced. After recovering from the shock that someone… disagreed with me, I had to back off. Well, back off or throw more arguments into the comments, most likely wasting my time and his time.

And there’s something even bigger going on when we engage in these long, drawn out debates in our Facebook and blog comments. We’re throwing information at people we don’t know without any clue about their background, experiences, or knowledge.

This woman didn’t know it, but I’d spent years—and I mean years—studying everything I could find about those verses that she interpreted for me with such certainty. I’d interacted with the champions for her view. I’d also written long papers taking her line of reasoning to task.

Am I right? I think so, but hey, you never know. However, I think a lot of the frustration we hit in these online debates and discussions is the lack of knowledge about the other party. I’ll admit, it’s really frustrating to invest so much time (and money, hello seminary loans) into sorting through a really weighty issue and then being lectured as if I just needed someone to explain it to me on Facebook.

It will always be tough to sort through these tough debates if we don’t know who we’re talking to and what they know.

My suspicion is that I always assume I know more. Always. Things become complicated when the other party feels the same way.

Unless we know who we’re talking to, we’ll just continue dumping information onto others who don’t want it.

I will admit that my sarcastic side was tempted to write to this complementarian, “If I agree with you, does that I mean I’ve submitted to your authority and you’ve instructed a man?” I didn’t, but I thought about it—a lot.

Yeah, as I’ve ably demonstrated, most of the time our online debates don’t actually result in the sharing of useful information.

When I put together my first draft of Coffeehouse Theology, I sent it to tons of friends to get their opinions. Tons. I’ll be owing my friends favors in return for the next two generations.

One of my friends said something like this, “You seem to like all of this emerging church stuff, but you don’t point out what’s wrong with it.”

Insert: double-take, wounded look, and passionate reply, “Something wrong with the emerging church??? What do you mean?”

I’ll just stick a footnote here in the middle of this post since no one reads footnotes and note without any foot that this was in 2006 before it became fashionable to stop emerging… or whatever.

Still, my highly intelligent friend shocked me. How could he doubt the goodness of this new movement trying to recover practices from ancient Christianity and critiquing the ways Christianity had been infected by Enlightenment Rationalism? I mean really, is that not awesome sauce—that is, before Parks and Recreation taught us to use the phrase “awesome sauce?”

While my time with the emerging church stuff taught me to be jaded and suspicious about the Enlightenment’s effect on Christianity, I hadn’t yet thought that this emerging stuff needed to a taste of its own medicine. Could I find the downside?

As to the details of that, I’ll leave that to the experts. All I know is that I used to think I was on team awesome. I could see the flaws in fundamentalism, mainstream conservative evangelicalism, Catholicism, and mainline liberalism, but I could not see any flaws on team awesome.

How could I see flaws on team awesome? Would I not join team awesome unless it had all of the correct answers?

Clearly the people with the flaws were those not on team awesome… All that to say, it took me a little bit of time before I could see my friend’s point.

And here’s the thing: We have lots of team awesomes. I just read about a NEW team awesome on a popular Christian blog. Only this time the blogger mentioned the conservative flawed team, the liberal flawed team, the emerging/missional flawed team, and the NEW team awesome that doesn’t have any flaws.

The new, cutting edge, revolutionary, game-changing stuff never has any flaws because its part of team awesome. That is, until it’s not.

Reading that post brought me back to that conversation with my friend and the first time that I realized I was a member of a made up team awesome. After looking over the emerging/postmodern context stuff, it didn’t take long to find some flaws that tarnished my image of team awesome.

We were now team pretty good.

In all of this, a lesson from writing a Bible commentary may help. I know, I know, you probably think I’m losing it after reading that last sentence. Just bear with me for a moment…

When writing a commentary about a tricky passage, Bible scholars start with the least likely meaning of a passage and then work toward the most likely meaning. In other words, they rarely say something is “unbiblical” or “wrong” and they rarely say that one perspective is the “certain” or “biblical” meaning.

I always liked this approach to Bible study because it keeps us in our place, seeing things in a mirror dimly, realizing that God’s thoughts are not our own. We all have our most likely take on a Bible passage, but we don’t need to create unrealistic team awesomes that are 100% correct and don’t have any flaws.

At our very best, we’d all be kicked off team awesome if it did exist.

We’re stuck with team pretty good, providing the most likely answers to life. What may surprise us is that a “pretty good, most likely answer” is really all we ever needed.

Every now and then I run into a statement like this: “The problem with the church is that it’s too feminine.” Other times I hear: “We need men to stand up and… and… be… MEN!”

I think these folks don’t know what they’re really saying.

These folks may have an idea in their minds of what this looks like, but if you asked them to really explain such things in detail, the training wheels of these undeveloped thoughts fall off.

I’ve been thinking about all of this for years now, and yesterday I finally put some thoughts together…

Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I realized that I may have an unhealthy relationship with my computer…

Dear Loving Computer Screen,

Thank you for always being on whenever I need you. Thank you for providing me with work to do and money in my bank account. Thank you for giving me thousands of followers and hundreds of friends. Thank you for providing hours of streaming NHL hockey to help me battle the evil forces of laundry and dishes.

I offer my day to you, focusing my eyes on your brightly illuminated pixels in search of guidance and provision. Only you can provide the programs I need to open, the hyperlinks I need to click, and the Klout that I desire so badly.

Only you can connect me to the infinite wisdom and entertainment of the internet. Only you can make my day better.

Guide me, consume my time, and fill me with the good things I desire from life. May I rest in the peace of your presence throughout today. Be with me whether I’m online or offline, for now and until you’re rendered obsolete by the next big thing.

A-RAM

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Notes for Readers

For the full scoop on where this joke is coming from, see JesusNeedsNewPR and the original post.

The final straw arrived last night—the one that breaks the camel’s back. Like an angry camel I flopped onto the ground flailing and spitting. Proverbially spitting that is.

Or are llamas the ones who spit?

Regardless of the spitting involved, I hit my limit last night. Enough things had gone wrong, enough projects had piled up, enough incidental circumstances had mounted to the point that I snapped.

The crazy thing is that under normal circumstances, the final straw was actually a pretty good thing tinged with a few problems. It was something that I would normally thank God for. But oh last night, I didn’t need one more thing to do. One more urgent deadline was too much after pushing to meet more deadlines than I could count. The constant urgency of one thing after another got to me.

I stomped out of the house because I needed to break my little pity party. I needed… Mediterranean food. I could try to tie this back to my camel metaphor (I mean, where else would a camel in Columbus go?), but I’ll just stop things there since I ate a lamb wrap.

A few hours later I had some perspective.

I hadn’t prayed about things. I’d just reacted. It was alright that I recognized a need for a change of scenery, but it took me far too long to realize that some of the things that had pushed me over the edge were essentially answers to my prayers.

I just didn’t expect those answers to my prayers to arrive along with all of this other junk.

So now I just feel like an ungrateful jerk who asks God for stuff and then doesn’t even recognize it when it arrives. In fact, I had the audacity to see his blessings as a problem.

I feel like I need to channel my inner Ann Voskamp and work on this gratitude thing. My spirit runs dry for want of gratitude and worship.

My mother-in-law once said that we overcome sin and the schemes of the enemy with worship. And if I was honest with myself, something that is not a guarantee, I’d have to say my “woe is me” attitude is a pretty good sign that I’ve been a tad self-absorbed lately.

I need to redirect my worship to where it belongs.

As a rule I never waste an opportunity to feel bad about myself. What can I say? Life is short.

For example, there are authors and books that that are wildly popular, but I’m just not into them. Such a discrepancy provides all manner of opportunities to feel like a terrible person. This past weekend I came face to face with such an author.

Just writing this post feels like I’m divulging a terrible secret.

Before I say anything too specific, I’d like to preface this with a little background…

I’ve never been able to read poetry. Perhaps I’m too rushed, demanding instant gratification. Like I said, I never waste an opportunity to feel bad about myself. I’m just a bad English major.

As a writer I stand in awe of poets—their economy of words and the images they paint. As a reader I just get annoyed.

So here’s my dirty little secret. I’m not a regular reader of Ann Voskamp’s blog “A Holy Experience.” I have no plans to read her book One Thousand Gifts. She writes beautifully poetic posts, but remember, I’m not into poetry.

If Rob Bell hadn’t gotten rid of hell, I’d be going there for sure.

Having said that, there are few writers and poets that I respect more than her. It’s an incongruity that gnaws at me.

I heard Ann speak at the Story Conference last week in Chicago. She gave one of the best talks I’ve ever heard.

Here’s what sets her apart: She knows how to create an image, convey a feeling, and teach a concept with God-given authority. She knows how to listen, how to offer herself to God, and how to create with hands open to heaven.

If I have to learn a bit of poetry in order to know God like she does, then sign me up.

Each word of her presentation had the smooth sheen that only comes through hours of preparation and craft. Each sentence had been carefully assembled, and the crowd responded with a standing ovation that testified to the power of her words.

Later that day I stopped by the Zondervan table to check out her book again. Had I missed something before? Did I just need to see things differently? I opened the book and launched into a reflection about dish washing bubbles and sun beams, and I felt like stomping on a flower or popping a small child’s balloon.

Yep, I’m still going to hell.

Ann and I are different—which should be quite evident since she’s been on the New York Times bestseller’s list for 19 weeks and has more blog readers in a day than most of us have in a year.

I can’t write like Ann Voskamp, but I am in awe of what she is able to do. Poets like her have much to teach us about finding God in the everyday, but there is so much more to learn from her about communicating.

Perhaps I could say it best like this…

Cue the gentle trickle of a piano.

Bubbling pots of blueberry and strawberry jam are my gifts to friends and family. There aren’t too many unique, homemade items you can give in an outsourced world.

I pick berries in the heat of the day, pile them up in boxes, and stir them into a dark, bubbling glaze at my stove.

Steaming jars are picked up with green clamps from a blue pot of boiling water, and the jam is ladled into each jar through a funnel. After wiping the mouth of each jar, I drop the lids into place, tighten them, and wait for them to pop.

I’m not giving someone a jar of sugar, fruit, and pectin. I’m giving those afternoons I hunted for bright red and dark blueberries and my evenings at the stove stirring and steaming. I’ve shared an experience, a small fragment of my life that is preserved for someone else.

I have a story to share along with my sweet little gift.

OK, OK, enough of that blasted piano!

Though I don’t write like Ann Voskamp, I have learned so much about writing by observing the care that she puts into her writing and communication. She stirs her words together until they reach the right consistency, and then bottles them up as a gift for thousands upon thousands.

I probably won’t read her blog today, but I will be reading my notes from her talk—each phrase a wonderfully crafted delicacy to be savored in a quiet moment.

The other day I flipped through a bunch of pictures on Facebook that were posted by The Simple Way, a Christian group in the inner city of Philadelphia that ministers alongside the urban poor. Some have called them neo-monastic, but this isn’t a post about labels.

This is a post about serving others.

The crew at the Simple Way put together 500 backpacks loaded up with school supplies and handed them out while throwing a huge block party with juggling, dancing, and who knows what else.

That’s just a small picture of what The Simple Way is up to.

Today I received the following e-mail from a relative whose brother spent a year in India assisting local lawyers in the fight against sex trafficking. Here’s what the e-mail said:

Today I committed to call my Members of Congress as part of International Justice Mission’s National Call-in Day to Pass the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). Will you join me?

The TVPRA is critical, bi-partisan legislation that supports U.S. anti-trafficking efforts at home and overseas. At the end of September, the bill will expire. Abolitionists around the country are committing to call their elected policy-makers on Thursday, September 8th to urge them to support the bill.

This is yet another picture of Christians working to serve others. It fits with the story of Jesus. His ministry aimed to set captives free, welcomed little children, and served those in need.

These ministries look like the ministry of Jesus. They make sense as part of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit from the New Testament into today.

Over the past week or so, I haven’t heard too much about Christians committing themselves to helping poor children start the school year on the right foot or demanding that our government renew legislation that will help the most vulnerable. I’ve heard and read a hell of a lot about a few religious leaders from various denominations who feel jilted because they can’t pray at the 9-11 memorial.

If it weren’t so tragic that a non-story has trumped the many good stories about the spread of the Gospel, I could spend an entire post on the delicious irony of religious leaders complaining about “government prejudice” against religion while they freely plan worship services and prayer services in their tax-free churches.

While I don’t want to underemphasize the importance of prayers for peace, for the healing of victims, and for reconciliation with our enemies at this time, I think it’s worth pausing for a moment to look at the many relevant and powerful ways in which God’s Kingdom is spreading. Rather than focusing on the foolishness of denominational leaders at this time of national mourning, I hope that we can focus instead on the many ways that the Gospel is bringing hope, reconciliation, and healing to our world.

The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that starts small and grows without too much notice. There are seeds all around us. We just need to know where to look for them.

I pray that we will seek out the places where God’s Kingdom is growing and jump fully into it with mind, heart, and spirit. May the Good News triumph over the Non News.

One last thing: Here’s a link to the IJM page to support legislation that will help the victims of trafficking.

There is one thing that I really, really dislike about moving.

It’s not finding cheap and reliable high speed internet. No, I spent two hours on that yesterday, and that’s still not the worst.

It’s not signing on to an electric company that literally pledges on their home page to fight EPA regulations.

It’s not finding a good co-op or farmer’s market.

We used shipping containers, so I don’t have to drive a truck to Columbus.

The part of moving that I really, really dislike is finding a new church.

It’s like crashing a party you haven’t been invited to. Sometimes you’ve dressed up when everyone else got the text about wearing flip flops and shorts. Sometimes you stick out like a red shirted communist at a Tea Party rally in your liberal Birkenstocks that cower before smartly polished leather shoes.

I’ve been on both sides of this. It’s natural to expect that a group of people will create a certain culture and group identity when they gather together. I think it’s natural to have a hard time breaking into such groups.

I still don’t like it.

However, the pay off is excellent. We visited exactly one church during our time in Connecticut, and after enduring two pretty horrible Sundays, we started meeting people, joined a small group, and developed some great friendships. As we grew in our church, I watched a bunch of people step forward to reach out to visitors. That gave me a lot of hope.

The hard part about visiting a church is that it forces you to consider what really matters most to you and what you’re willing to give up in order to be in a healthy community. One couple visited our church in Connecticut, and they left because we let women teach and don’t give an altar call each Sunday.

I scoffed at his closed-mindedness, but then I thought about our upcoming church hunt.

I really want to belong to a community that values the leadership and wisdom of women as God-intended equal partners with men.

I really don’t want to belong to a community that ends each service with drizzles of piano and an impassioned plea to flee the fires of hell and commit yourself to the Lord right this very moment because you are in danger of the fires of hell if you die tonight, yes, this very night… friend.

Hooray for Christian unity.

I’m both trusting God and nervous about this, which means I need to work on trusting God a bit more in this area.

All of this brings up questions for me about how the body of Christ works, where we draw our lines for unity, and the role of personalities and culture in our worship. I appreciate the diversity of traditions because in some ways they represent different ways of connecting with God. Simple church, contemporary music church, traditional church, and liturgical church all have their places.

Where will we end up? That is a question that I both want to avoid and desperately hope to answer.

All of the talks within the U.S. government about potential spending cuts has me really worried that our nation could make drastic cuts to one of our most important groups: nuclear weapons. A nuclear weapon is always a sound financial investment because there really is nothing like guaranteed mutual destruction to make you sleep well at night.

We’ve built our weapons with great care and precision, stored them in specially designed bunkers to keep them warm and dry, and even paid people to care for them. What kind of heartless savage would tell our loyal weapons, “Thanks for preventing WWIII, but we need to balance the budget and you’re going to be dismantled.”

Shame on us. How could we be so uncaring as to tell some of our 5,000+ nuclear weapons that they’re superfluous and unnecessary! If China only has 240 nuclear warheads, it’s only because China clearly fails to see the long term value of stockpiling thousands of nuclear weapons.

Before we allow our politicians to sabotage our national security by dismantling even one weapon, let’s consider these important facts about nuclear weapons:

Nuclear Weapons Need Shelter

Under their cold metal shells, nuclear weapons really are defenseless. Sure they could blow you up if you don’t handle them properly, but every nuclear weapon just wants a quaint little bunker to call home. I’d think we could at least maintain enough funding to make sure that every single missile in our country has a place to call home. As the largest economy, that should be a simple task for us.

Nuclear Weapons Need Care

But it isn’t enough to provide shelter for our missiles. We need to maintain them, plan for their future, and make sure that they’re ready for any challenges to come into the future. If we don’t invest in our missiles, they may let us down when we need them most.

Nuclear Weapons Deserve a Dignified Old Age

As nuclear weapons enter their golden years, they won’t be able to care for themselves. Our weapons have worked hard all of their lives to prevent nuclear war, and now we dare to send them off to a landfill or wherever you send hazardous waste? No weapon should have to worry about whether it will have a safety net of support to ensure it has a dignified existence when it can no longer take care of itself.

I understand the pain of our lawmakers who have to make tough cuts to our budget, but there are certain budget cuts that are simply unconscionable.

How could we make a budget cut that leaves a missile out in the cold?

How could we fail to invest in the future of our missiles, especially missiles in poor states that may not be able to afford caring for them?

How could we let our weapons down late in their existence when they’re at their most vulnerable?

Perhaps Jesus said it best when he told his disciples, “Blessed are the peacemakers who prevent wars by using nuclear weapons to assure the mutual destruction of everyone.”

If we want to assure our continued existence and peace, we need more weapons. Let’s tell our politicians to make sure our budget continues to make that happen.