Continuing my now ongoing series of things I really want to do but most likely never will, here is another video for viewing pleasure:

1. This post seems fitting for the day. Everything you wanted to know about the history of margarine vs. butter in this country.

2. Felix Salmon talks about how to kill a city’s mojo with parking lots, while Andrew Sullivan discusses how highways can do the same.

3. Bruce Reyes-Chow delves into the radical Jesus bubble in contemporary Christianity.

I don’t like advertising my vulnerability, because, well then people would know I’m vulnerable. I know, it makes a lot of sense… With Morgan the vulnerability is explicitly part of the package and I need to learn from him. So going forward I am going to make this blog more personal and I will share more about me in hopes that we will be able to build a more personal community in general.

So there we go, I’ve already gotten my New Year’s resolution out of the way early!

1. I almost laughed as I read this. It seems the article could be summed up as “Talk to gay people like you do everyone else, because they are like everyone else.” I realize that not everybody has spent much time around someone who is gay, and that many people have been told that gay people are somehow evil and icky, so this is a pertinent message. I also realize not everyone has had bosses who are gay, spent time with people in long-term same-sex relationships (even marriages), or watched them lovingly parent beautiful little girls. It’s good for me to realize that, because it’s really easy to forget here in the Bay Area.

2. I pass this along both because it touches beautifully on the heart of the forgiveness Jesus calls us to exhibit to all, and because I’ve met Jeremy and he’s a really nice guy.

3. An intriguing post. I don’t know the science behind this really at all, but I do know that there are times Reggie will do something he clearly knows he isn’t supposed to and will show it in his body language before Kate or I can even say anything. He has this hunkered down quick slink away that only gets used when he’s willfully disobeying us.

My problem is that some blogs only show you a snippet of each post on their main page so that you have to click to another page if you want the whole post. This makes sense for layout reasons, and it can make your site stats look better (especially for ad revenue). It also is really annoying in Reader because you have to open a new tab to read the post. This is most annoying when I’m reading on my iPhone (which I do a lot) and navigating multiple windows. Happily, I’ve found two solutions to the problem.

The first is the coolest. It’s Super Full Feeds for Google Reader™ and it allows you to switch between the regular Reader feed, the full feed, or the actual page from the original website, all within the post window in Reader. It works really well, is free and the only downside is it doesn’t work with Safari (and therefore on the iPhone).

This is where solution two comes in. It’s Full Text RSS Feed and all you have to do is go to the site, paste the feed link into the text box, hit submit and the copy the new link and add it as a subscription into Reader. I haven’t had any issues yet and because it changes the feed itself it works no matter what device or browser you’re accessing Reader from.

So there you go, a small problem you may or may not have is now solved. You’re welcome.

(h/t Incidental Economist)

csmonitor.com

I’ve been debating whether to write anything about the Penn State debacle or not. There’s a lot about it that makes me really angry. Child abuse, let alone serial rape and molestation, is absolutely heinous and anyone who had an inkling about what Sandusky was doing and didn’t do anything should be fired. If possible, charges should be filed. I don’t care who they are or how important they are. Maybe you think I’m overreacting, but all I can think about is the kids. They never had a chance and it’s our job—all of our jobs—to protect them.

I don’t want to write a few hundred words about my anger or how screwed up the situation is. There are already plenty of those out. What has drawn my attention is the way Joe Paterno is talked about. In almost every case the discussion falls into either a discussion of how Paterno is a fraud who was never the man his image portrayed, or how he is being persecuted and is somewhat near a saint.

As humans we want to reduce everything to the simplest terms possible. We want black and white, we want answers, we want certainty. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t offer us much of anything that fits into these boxes. Instead of a bunch of Hitlers we get a former coordinator who mentored hundreds of college kids and ran a charity that helped many more at risk youth, who also was a serial child rapist. We get a legendary coach known for doing everything the right way, meticulously fallowing up to make sure his athletes were doing well in school and expecting the best out of everyone in his program, who also let a close friend get away with sexually abusing children. We get a Pope who covered up sex abuse by his priests when he was a bishop.

These men are not just their best or worst actions. They are both, and everything in between. We don’t like this though. We want to be able to classify people as good or bad, with us or against us. If we can’t do this, then we have to spend time dealing with the complexity. Our humanity is in the complexity though. It’s easier being able to write Paterno off as a bad guy or to keep up his reputation, because then we don’t have to deal with whether or not we would do what he did. Would we report a best friend to the cops? Would we still be his friend and help him to face what he did and get whatever help he could, even as the world rejected him?

Pay attention to the movies you watch, the books you read. How many times is the main character a flawed human being who finds redemption in the end? How much of the story is based around the character grappling with his or her flaw? How important to the story is their overcoming that flaw? If you know the Bible you shouldn’t be surprised by the storyline. It’s the story of Abraham, Moses, David, Jonah, and many others. Even more, it’s our story. We’re complex, conflicted and trying to overcome our flaws. As Christians we believe this is where Jesus comes in—showing us the way we were created to be, and the way to get there. We don’t get there in this lifetime, but by the grace of God we get there in the end.

This doesn’t change what has happened at Penn State, and it doesn’t make any of it better or OK. I think it does help it make some more sense. This isn’t a feel good story, and I’m not sure where redemption can come from. Sometimes in this world that’s all we get to go on.

Vision of Ezekiel, Peter Paul Rubens

So about a week ago I posted the first part of my thoughts gleaned from this debate. Below is part number two.

The second problem we have as Western Christians isn’t just our fault, but we are at least as culpable as anyone. The problem is that there is a lack of literacy in this country. I’m not talking just about being able to read words on a page and understand your USA Today or Newsweek. I’m talking about a fundamental ignorance of literary styles and genres. About an inability to discern metaphors and allegories, or to see a deeper meaning in a text. Jerry Coyne’s post is a perfect example of this. I would presume that Coyne would be able to read Animal Farm and explain that it was both a fictional story about animals on a farm, and an allegory about communism. I would assume that he would also agree that Orwell’s choice of using talking animals instead of people in a fictional story does not make his arguments about communism less true. Yet somehow Coyne is incapable of seeing anything in the Bible, and assumedly any other sacred text, this way. He even unwittingly admits as much, saying towards the end,

“So the problem we have with ‘sophisticated’ theologians and smart religious people like Douthat is not that we think that fundamentalism is the best interpretation of religion, but this: there is no rational basis for seeing part of the Bible as literally true and part of it as metaphor (author’s italics).”

In Coyne’s mind all the Bible has to be 100 percent literally true for it to have any meaning, even when it is poetry or clearly allegory (have you read the book of Daniel? ), and the fact that Coyne’s argument is completely absurd is his proof that the Bible is completely worthless. Then he says anyone who disagrees is stupid and pathetic for disagreeing. Would Coyne argue that we should write the New York Times off because of the comics, crossword and jumble? Clearly those don’t make sense taken literally.

The church is not solely responsible for causing this problem. We are at fault for failing to teach our members how to read the Bible in multiple ways. We have become too focused on trying to have the most authentic text possible, and the most literal understanding, and as a result we have lost the story of the BIble. Yes, knowing the original text as best we can is important. It’s also far from all we need to know. We need to recapture the stories we learned in Sunday School or in our picture Bible we had as a little kid. (We also need to reread the stories and see the endings that got left out, and the sections that got skipped, because they weren’t quite appropriate for first or second graders.)

Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Simeon Solomon

When we go back and read the stories we get a fuller picture of the God we believe in, and we can’t help but see the different messages the writers were trying to convey. Exodus can be a little tedious and repetitive, but there are also some beautiful hymns and a moving story of devotion and perseverance. The Psalms are great poetry, and the prophets can match many sci-fi novels for shear craziness of imagery. I guess that’s the real problem we have as a church—we just don’t care to read the BIble, and we suffer greatly for it. Where else can you find a collection of writings so diverse, and yet so intertwined?

This is another area where Coyne and I disagree. He thinks the Bible is,

“a jerry-rigged, sloppily-edited, largely fabricated, and palpably incomplete collection of oral traditions and myths, once intended to be the best explanation for the origins of our species, but now to be regarded merely as a quaint and occasionally enjoyable origin fable related by ignorant and relatively isolated primitive ancestors. It’s a palimpsest that is largely fictional, a story reworked many times, but based on our ancestors’ best understanding of how we came about. It’s simply a myth, no truer than the many myths, religious or otherwise, that preceded it.”

I’m guessing you can see where some of my disagreements might be… He sees these characteristics of the Bible as failings. I see the Bible as not sloppily edited and jerry-rigged, but as a collection of narratives that tell the stories of the Israelite people, and then the early Christians, left in imperfect form because that is all we have as humans. Life isn’t perfect, and neither are our stories. Honestly, if the Bible fit together perfectly I wouldn’t be able to buy it.

Coyne has problems with the works of the Bible being edited and reedited, but what writing put out for general consumption isn’t? Also, has he read past the first couple chapters of Genesis? If you do, you see that the vast majority of the Bible is not about our origin, or even the origin of sin, but about the reality of our imperfect relationship with God and how it plays out in the world.

Following Coyne’s logic in his post we should disregard the entire corpus of his life’s work once we find any contradictions in it. Clearly this is ridiculous, and it’s the same with the Bible.

1. Immerse Journal has quickly become my favorite Christian magazine, and a go to resource for youth ministry. They’re offering a great holiday special, letting you download the new issue as a PDF for free, then once you’ve decided to subscribe you get a free gift subscription as well. Read the issue and I don’t think you’ll be able to pass up the deal.

2. Along similar lines, Tony Jones (of the oft-linked Theoblogy) is offering his latest book for $2.99 in the Kindle store. (Don’t have a Kindle? No worries, there’s a free Kindle app for pretty much any device.) If you have an interest in the future of the church, and especially if you want to be a part of deciding that future, this is a book worth reading.

3. Kate and I were at the Broncos-Raiders game yesterday and lucky enough to see my favorite team pull out a late win. I have to say though, if you feel like you’re too hopeful about the future of our country and you need to be a little depressed, go to a Raiders game. I know there are intelligent, respectable Raiders fans out there, they apparently just don’t go to games. There were a couple guys in the next section over heckling Tim Tebow the entire, calling him a sadly impressive (most would say offensive) range of insults, with the most memorable being, “where’s your messiah now Tebow?” after an incomplete pass. These guys were extreme, but they weren’t the exception either. They were the rule waiting to be proven. I’m not sure what else to say, I’m just consistently amazed each year when we go to the game.

Photo courtesy Jeffrey Beall via Wikimedia Commons

4. I’m also still not sure about Tebow as an NFL quarterback. He is 2-1 as a starter, and he clearly has the the team behind him, but it’s not pretty. There are times you watch him and he looks completely overwhelmed before the snap. Then he’s antsy in the pocket, looking to run at any chance and overthrowing open receivers. You see that and think there’s no way he has a future as a quarterback. Then the next series he comes out and is completely calm behind center, stands tall in the pocket and makes some beautiful throws. Maybe he does have a future… Could he be a Doug Flutie style QB? I really don’t know. As long as the team is winning the answer is yes, I guess.

1. Everything you wanted to know about megachurches in one big infographic. Clearly starting one has its rewards. Sadly I’m clearly too young…

2. Ta-Nehisi Coates reflects on his attempts to switch away from flying whenever possible after a train trip through the Northeast.

3. Chuck Queen talks about how he reads the Bible.

         Adam and Eve from, 4th century Rome.

I’ve long believed that our two biggest failings as a church are that we don’t spend nearly enough time in the world being the servants that Christ tells us we are called to be, and that we don’t have anything more than a surface level understanding of the theology of our faith. These two problems are too often treated as separate, or even opposed to each other, when they are actually inextricably linked. Christian theology is fundamentally a theology of service. We see this throughout the biblical narrative, but specifically in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We see it in Matthew 20:28 where Jesus says he came to serve and not to be served. We also see it in Jesus’ summary of the law where he says the greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus spent time talking with the religious scholars of his day, debating theology with them for hours. He spent much more of his time working with people to meet their needs. It’s instructive to me that Jesus doesn’t spend all his time in the temple. He spends it walking around the country.

I bring this up because of this debate about whether the Adam & Eve story has to be literally true for Christianity to have any validity. To sum the debate up as simply as possible, Ross Douthat argues that atheists need religious fundamentalists because they both thrive on absolute black and white thinking, and neither side can stand people who try and introduce gray areas. Jerry Coyne then argues that Douthat has no idea what he’s talking about, and that anybody who thinks they can introduce grey into the black and white areas of theology is stupid, pathetic, and worse than fundamentalists. Oh, and he says the Bible is outdated and childish. Mark Shea responds to Coyne by arguing that there has to be gray, and that theology is about a deeper meaning than just literalism. Finally, Andrew Sullivan gives his thoughts here and here, which track closely with mine, and are more eloquent, so I’ll just ask you read his posts.

I don’t feel the need or interest to add more to this debate. I do however want to highlight what I think are two problems with Western Christianity that help cause this debate. I’m going to do this in two posts because I’m too long-winded to do it as one, so below is installment number one.

The first problem is one I stated above—we have a lack of theological depth in our churches and, therefore, in the people who attend those churches. The fault for this lies at the feet of those of us charged with leading the church. Too often we have looked at theology as either a subject we love but have no time for once we leave seminary, or as that pain in the ass class we just want to pass so we can get out of seminary and never have to think about again. I was amazed at the number of future pastors in seminary who viewed theology as antithetical to their future ministries.

The problem is that theology, being the study of God, undergirds everything we do as a church. You literally can’t escape doing theology, even if you don’t believe in God. Everything we do as a church and as individuals shows what we believe about God. I know pastors who claim that they don’t want to do theology, they just want to show people how to live like Christ wants us to live. They are completely oblivious to the fact that they just explained their theology in that sentence—Christ-like service as the purpose of our lives.

This lack of theological depth is the reason that so many of our churches fall in to one of three mistaken tracks. Either a) the “God wants you to be a millionaire” prosperity/quasi Retribution Theology gospel that is partially informed by the Pentateuch and not at all informed by the prophets or Jesus; b) The “You can go to heaven as long as you do x,y,z” gospel (or it’s twin, the more common “they’re going to hell because they do a,b,c” gospel) that also tends to ignore Jesus and the prophets while focusing on some laws cherry-picked from Leviticus; or c) the “Just come to church on Sunday morning and then keep your beliefs private” gospel that is very respectful and proper, but also ignores a good part of Jesus’ message and leads to a dying church that is out of touch with creation.

As the church we too often forget that so much of what Jesus did was teach theology to his disciples and anyone who would listen. What was the sermon on the mount if not a theology lesson? What were all the parables? It wasn’t the religious leaders who understood the teachings either, they were the ones least willing to listen. That should be reason enough for us as leaders to encourage everyone to claim their theology and work with us in figuring out who God is calling us to be in the world.

I can remember the first time it hit me. It was as a result of walking one of my seniors through processing her emotions over the suicide of her best friend’s dad, who also was a close family friend. It grew more real about a year after I left my job at that church and Kate and I moved to San Anselmo. One night in the middle of class I found out that a former students and his mom had been killed in a double murder suicide. Life showed how fragile it is that night, and I’ve never been able to look at it the same since. It has been my work as a hospital chaplain that has brought me to a comfort level with my own mortality that I don’t think I ever realized was possible unless you were terminally ill. There is something about standing with a mother at 2:30 in the morning as she stares at her just deceased middle-aged son that makes you look at life differently. The same is true for sitting in a waiting room listening to three generations share their favorite stories about the family’s matriarch.

There really is something beautiful in death. Not death itself, or dead bodies, but in the process, in the community, in the finality and hope. I know that sounds weird and morbid, but it’s true. (For my readers who understand what I’m saying, please post a comment so people see I’m not totally crazy.)  To be sure, there is a lot that is ugly and scary about death, and sometimes you have to look deep to find the beauty. I promise you it is there. It may be in the long forgotten stories that have been newly remembered, or repaired relationships, or the relief of suffering. It has many forms, but it is always there. By the grace of God it is always there.