The Call of the Leader (whoever they should be)

As I contemplated the relevance of Aristotle's observation that one of the worst forms of government is a democracy, I came to appreciate the significance of good leaders. As I contemplated Gustave Doré's etching of Merlin advising King Arthur, I came to appreciate the significance of good advisers and friends.

Then I contemplated the leaders of Israel, particularly during the time of the judges, and I wondered why "Israel once again did evil in the eyes of the Lord." It seems that God would have raised up a judge to prevent the people from falling away as opposed to waiting until the damage had been done and then attempting to fix it. Then it occurred to me that there might have been another reason for "Israel once again doing evil in the sight of the Lord." Maybe it was because there were God-blessed, God-ordained leaders who did choose to lead. Maybe an entire group of people suffered the consequences of their own pathetic choices because there was no one to proclaim and renew the vision of God's kingdom.

We now live in a society where the masses are ruled by the tyranny of their own desires, and they choose leaders who will protect their "God-given right" to follow those desires. Are the people of God on the verge of "once again doing evil in the sight of the Lord"? Are there leaders whose eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, but remain silent because of the overwhelming tide of public opinion? Would we recognize a 21st century Aurthur and Merlin. Would we respond to a 21st century judge, or prophet, or king? Will a 21st century judge, prophet or king arise?

The Crumbling Economy of Signs and Symbols: Part I

Ever since the book Simulacra and Simulation, by the French cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, made a cameo in the movie The Matrix, I have had a mysterious draw to read what was between its covers. Why is that, I suppose? Well, as I read this philosophical treatise, as well as several other works by this author, I came to realize that Baudrillard himself has an explanation for this mysterious attraction. He would argue that I desired to read the book, in part, because it was participating in a system that gives value to simulated images. I must admit, I had previously seen the book while perusing through the philosophy shelf at a local bookstore. But why was the book not valuable to me when it appeared before my eyes in a form tangible to all of my senses? It was not until Hollywood presented it as a simulacrum (that is, an image or representation of someone or something) that I then thought it was worth reading.

The more I thought about this, the more I saw Baudrillards theories play out right before my eyes.

The first was at a large youth convention that had multiple big screens set up front so that the people in the back could get a better view of the happenings up front. However, I noticed something that was both intriguing as well as comical. Most of the youth who were up front near the stage were not looking at the speaker who stood ten feet in front of them in the flesh, but they nearly all of them had their heads cranked to one side or the other so that they could catch a view of the speaker on the big projection screen. Why was the projection screen more worthy of their gaze than the actual person in the flesh? It obviously had nothing to do with being able to see him. If anything, it was easier for them to simply look forward rather than craning their necks to one of the screens on either side.

I later observed a conference that set up two large projection screens in a significantly smaller arena. Youth in the back of this auditorium would have had no difficulty in seeing all of the things going on up front on the stage. This compels me to ask, with Baudrillards help, are the screens serving a practical purpose, or are they being used so as to enable the leaders of the service to participate the value system of the dominant culture? In other words, in order to give their appearance more credibility, then it must take the form of something that is simulated and one step closer to being mass-produced.

One other observation is the way people, especially youth, value their “image.” What gives their “image” value is the way in which it can participate in the images that get mass-produced and consumed. Given the fact that the images that are “worth” something are the images that are being consumed (consumed either by buying movies and magazines, or simply consumed by the eye of another human being). This is why people try to simulate the style and image of models and celebrities, either in looks or in style, because in the very act of simulating the image, they are participating in the larger value system that is based on the currency of simulacra and simulation. I am valuable because I am the generic version of Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. Most generic versions obtain their value by scamming off of the more valuable thing, and so do many of us in when we attempt bum a particular style. Even our language of “name brand” and “generic” corresponds to our language of “real” and “fake.”

These are but bits and pieces of how Baudrillards observations and commentary play out in our every day lives. He writes at great length trying to locate all of this in what he would call an economy of images, signs, and symbols. Images, signs, and symbols ain’t what they used to be – both how they are used as well as how they are understood. If there is only a thread of truth running through Baudrillard’s observations and commentary on this aspect of our culture, then there are some major concerns that the church must deal with, particularly in the realm of Christian worship where there is a very particular kind of economy of images, signs, and symbols.

Just a few things to throw into the hopper.

Translating Youth to Hear the Gospel

Youth are flooded with a wide array of information that flows through the pipeline of television, internet, telephone, school, billboards, cell phones, iPods and Podcasts, to name only a few. Not only does the information flow through seemingly countless media, it also seems to come in equally numerous forms and at an alarming rate. Youth now have instant access in virtually any location to world news, local news, what color socks their friends are wearing, television shows, movies, advertisements, historical facts, literature, magazines, research papers, and even streaming videos of what people are doing in Kazakhstan. Because businesses make a great deal of money from the media channels our youth tap and consequently guzzle, businesses also devote a great deal of effort to woo to their media.

In light of all this, the church often wonders how she can compete in this fast-paced media frenzy, as well as how she can send the gospel down the same pipelines that all of the other information seems to be flowing. But are these the right questions the church should be asking? There is no doubt that in we need to be able to communicate the gospel to youth in a way that they can understand, but this process does not necessarily mean that we are supposed to transform the gospel so that it fits into a Podcast, or make it light enough to float over the airwaves so that it can reach as many people as possible. I find it a bit disturbing that this often constitutes "cutting edge youth ministry."

While there is a definite need to translate the gospel into the mother tongue of all the peoples of the earth, the work is only half done. In fact, the main act of translation has yet to take place. To assume that the gospel is the only thing that has to change in order to bring reconciliation is erroneous. We too must be translated. We too must be changed in order that we may express and be communicated to God. And the media through which we are translated and communicated is Christ – not a virtual Christ, with a virtual body, but a physical Christ, with a tangible body.

One of the definitions of ‘translate’ is to move from one place or condition to another. This is part of what the gospel is – to move people from one place or condition to another. Sometimes it seems as though Christians hand their youth over to be formed by the dominant culture, and then they wonder why their children are not responsive to the gospel. One reason is because the gospel is not information to be enjoyed or mentally known, as if it were a television series or a documentary. For too long have we believed that as long as we are careful about the type of information that flowed into our youth through these various media that they would be alright. But while we questioned the information, we neglected to question the activity of consuming this kind of information in this sort of way.

To address the problem is not a matter of being “educated consumers.” The problem goes much deeper. We don’t save the lives of people playing Russian roulette by teaching them better techniques. The issue is not about the technique but the activity. Likewise, the church needs to reconsider the ways in which youth’s lives are shaped by the activity of consuming information in all of these ways. We as parents and mentors need to live in such a way that we are able to demonstrate the gospel of Christ is worth changing your life for. We translate the gospel to our youth by showing to them that the gospel is worth the radical transformation of our lives.

Random Observations #1

I recently visited Christ’s Church United Methodist in New York whose beautiful construction and elaborate decoration was funded almost entirely by poor immigrants families during the Great Depression. I find it odd that these people would spare the expense of living in a more polished abode, so as to spare no expense for the shared space of the worshiping community. (The doors were unlocked)




Shortly after that, I visited a megachruch whose construction was funded almost entirely by middle to upper class white people during one of the wealthiest economic periods in American history. I found it odd that these affluent people spared the expense of having a beautifully cultivated shared worship space in the name of “practicality,” but spared no expense on their 500,000-dollar homes in the name of “individuality.” (The doors were locked)

Read further thoughts concerning Houses Built with Human Hands...

Conjectures of a Guilty Youth Minister

If I Were To Be Perfectly Honest

“Why was Junior not at church last night?”

“To be quite honest, Junior had a lot to do.”

To be quite honest? Really? That’s about as ridiculous as you answering, “to be quite honest, he had a pulse, and that's why he couldn't come to church.” Thanks for being honest, but what does that have to do with anything? Last I checked, youth are never without a lot to do. To be quite honest? Is that supposed to make me feel as though you are really being honest?

No. Honesty would be to say I was too lazy to bring my child to worship; I do not care as much about him worshiping God as I do about him tidying his room; I do not care as much about him directing his thoughts towards God as I do about him directing his thoughts towards facebook (which, by the way, I noticed that several of his comments were timestamped at the same time as our worship gathering); I am more concerned with him following his own desires than the desires of God; I want him to please himself more than I want him to please God; I think the body of Christ is expendable and not expandable; I think that a child going through adolescence is in the prime condition of their life to make the most formative decisions of their life; I will allow the ideology of American Idol, The Apprentice, and Jersey Shore to cultivate and inform his imagination; I will encourage him to take my apathy towards the body of Christ and to make it his own.

But I can’t say that to you. Not because I’m scared – believe me, it’s on the tip of my tongue and it is taking everything within me not to unleash a world of verbal hurt on your tinpot religious façade you call your faith. No, I can’t say that to you because I need to help you get to where you need to go, and not grind you further into the ground of where you currently are. Again, I must play the fool. I must pretend that your excuse actually holds water. I must pretend that I’m an idiot and did not notice that you were trying to pass off a non sequitur for sound reason.

But that’s only if I were to be perfectly honest.

* Unfortunately this post is not based on one particular person

Rush Limbaugh to Speak at Sojourners’ Mobilization to End Poverty

This is an inspiring display of how even the most hard-hearted schlep can see the error of his ways in order to walk the path of compassion, mercy and love. So as the saying of Jesus goes, "I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." Let us all take time to celebrate this beautiful conversion.

What's Your Story?

“…liberalism can be characterized as the presumption that you should have no story other than the story you chose when you had no story. A society constituted to produce people who get to choose their stories[, however,] cannot help but be caught in perpetual double-think. For what it cannot acknowledge is that we did not choose the story that we should have no story except the story we choose when we had no story.” (bold and italics mine)

⎯ Stanley Hauerwas quoted in Virtue Ethics and Moral Knowledge By R. Scott Smith (p. 69)

Once this noodle-baking concept is comprehended, it is actually quite refreshing. Quite often we are in the habit of thinking that accepting Christ is to assume subservience, while saying no to Christ we maintain an autonomy of freedom. Hauerwas reminds us that no such autonomy exists, and that we are always in a “metanarrative” that gives meaning to our choices and actions. The question then becomes whether or not we are satisfied with the story that engulfs us. Do we want to become characters in a story where we are manipulated into being slaves to systems of power, or do we want to become characters in a story where we are invited to serve the one who serves us? But one thing is sure, we cannot be presume to have no story other than the story we chose when we had no story.

Reading Lord of the Rings Makes Me a Better Christian

Something resonates deep within my soul every time a crack open the majestic book by J.R.R. Tolkien. It calls to me like the mysterious music of the Ainur that still lingers on the waves of the sea. I feel that it summons me to a higher life - a life of quality, excellence and grandeur, where friends share lives using the High Speech of Tolkien, or sacred scriptures, and within every twig or fallen leaf is the pulsing power of the Holy Spirit that transfigures dross and quickens the dead.

I’m convinced that if any of us were to live in Middle Earth, we would walk around wide-eyed and flabbergasted for a couple of years, and then we would become inoculated towards its mystery and grandeur. I say that because I believe our sojourn through this world is charged with the same kind of majesty and mystique as the Fellowship’s journey and epic confrontations with the powers that threaten it.

I have found Tolkien’s story to be so moving because of its ability to open my eyes to this sort of reality in our own world. I've started from the beginning of this story I’ve read several times, but have jumped forward and read "The Passing of the Grey Company" twice already. I long to be Halbarad, who carries with him a humility and simplicity of the Ranger, but the regal presence of one who holds the weight and splendor of the Númenóreans. What kind of character walks with this grand heritage on his shoulders and yet looks at one of the Hobbits and says, "A little people but of Great worth are the Shire-folk. Little do they know of our long labour for the safe-keeping of their borders. Yet, I grudge it not." There's a lot behind that statement.

Ash Wednesday 2009

Lent: the last Christian season to be colonized by Hallmark and other trinket-making industries. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure it will. It’s only a matter of time. First, they took Christmas from us. Then they took Easter with that ridiculous bunny and those disgusting Cadbury eggs. Then they moved on to snag All Hallows Eve. Next they started chipping away out our saints, like St. Patrick and St. Valentine.

But the season of Lent is difficult terrain for our capitalistic society to colonize into a profit-making season. After all, “tis the season to be… fasting” is hardly a motto that could stir the masses into a buying frenzy.

But it is for these very reasons that Lent just might be all the more significant for Christians to practice in our modern culture. There is something about it that cuts across some of the most powerful currents in our society. If for nothing else, it reminds us that we as a church are shaped by disciplines and practices that are utterly foreign to our dominant culture. Read full article

On Writing

Dylan Thomas on Poetry
These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damn' fool if they weren't.

Thomas Merton on Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas' integrity as a poet makes me very ashamed of the verse I have been writing. We who say we love God: why are we not as anxious to be perfect in our art as we pretend we want to be in our service of God? If we do ot try to be perfect in what we write, perhaps it is because we are not writing for God after all. In any case it is depressing that those who serve God and love Him sometimes write so badly, when those who do not believe in Him take pains to write so well. I am not talking about grammar and syntax, but about having something to say and saying it in sentences that are not half dead. Saint Paul and Saint Ignatius Martyr did not bother about grammar but they certainly knew how to write.

The fact that your subject may be very important in itself does not necessarily mean that what you have written about is important. A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book, even though it may be about the love of God. There are many who think that because they have written about God, they have written good books. Then men pick up these books and say: if the ones who say they believe in God cannot find anything than this to say about it, their religion cannot be worth much.

A Proclamation about the Proclamation

By Frederick Buechner

When the preacher climbs up into the pulpit, switches on the lectern light and spreads out his note cards like a poker hand, maybe even the vacationing sophomore who is there only because somebody has dragged him there pricks up his ears for a second or two along with the rest of them because they believe that the man who is standing up there… has something that they do not have or at least not the same way he has it because he is a professional. He professes and stand for in public what they with varying degrees of conviction or the lack of it subscribe to mainly in private…All of this deepens the silence with which they sit there waiting for him to work a miracle, and the miracle they are waiting for is that he will not just say that God is present, because they have heard it said before and it has made no great and lasting difference to them, will not just speak the word of joy, hope, comedy, because they have heard it spoken before too and have spoken it among themselves, but that he will somehow make it real to them. They wait for him to make God real to them through the sacrament of words as God is supposed to become real in the sacrament of bread and wine, and there is no place where the preacher is more aware of his own nakedness and helplessness than here in the pulpit as he listens to the silence of their waiting. Poor, bare, forked animal in his [suit] with his heart in his mouth if not yet his foot. What can he say? What word can he speak with power enough to empower them, waiting there?

Excerpt from Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, (p. 39-40).

Some Christians Want Stimulus from the Government's Package

I recently received an email calling for Christians to be scandalized and outraged. Not wanting to pass up an opportunity like that, I read on to find out that Former Speaker Newt Gingrich “feels that if Christian activists would have enough courage and holy anger to e-mail and call their representatives and senators.” Over what? Well, the current administration’s stimulus package has a section prohibiting the uses of its funds. One of the prohibitions is that the money cannot not go to building or renovating buildings that are used mainly for religious or sectarian purposes. The actual wording in question is:

No funds awarded under this section may be used for - (C) modernization, renovation, or repair of facilities (i) used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school or department of divinity; or (ii) in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission; or construction of new facilities.

It is important to note that nothing is keeping Christians from doing their own funding. We can still send a fat check Duke Divinity School in order to renovate their chapel. And we can even still meet in the buildings being renovated, as this very email notes that in the 2001 Good News Club vs. Milford Central School Supreme Court decision, the court ruled that restricting religious speech within the context of public shared-use facilities (or schools) is unconstitutional. This paragraph simply says that the money cannot go towards chapels and buildings used by seminaries and bible colleges, or building “in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission.”

And yet some Christians see this as "discriminatory," "theft," and "corruption of the highest order." Another portion of the email says,

Christians have not expressed enough outrage focused on the concept that people of faith are being taken advantage of by the stimulus bill during a time of crisis. They are being stolen from them when they are down and out and looking in good faith to the government for help. Instead of the stimulus we need, the liberals are getting the pork that they want -- for themselves, their families, and their friends. They are pickpockets and thieves preying on the down and out.

There seems to be a great irony that some of the Christians who speak vehemently against any sort of “handout” are now shamelessly offended when they don’t get a piece of the pie. I am befuddled as to why they would want to be stimulated by the government’s package. I understand that, given its size, it is very tempting, but the church has no need of the government’s aid. Sure, we’ll take what they want to give us, but we do not need it.

Furthermore, some believe this to be a slow move of edging the Christian voice out of the public square. But part of the Christian story is that we do not force our voice to be heard, nor do we shove our presence into people’s homes or even the public square. Even if there was any validity to this alarmist claim, it still does not change anything for the Church, because it is not our custom to force our presence anywhere. Christ can only be invited.

Praise Song for the Day

Elizabeth Alexander



Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other,
catching each other’s eyes
or not
about to speak
or speaking.
All about us is noise.
All about us is noise and bramble,
thorn and din,
each one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem,
darning a hole in a uniform,
patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words
words spiny or smooth,
whispered or declaimed;
words to consider,
reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways
that mark the will of someone and then others who said,
“I need to see what’s on the other side.
I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce,
built brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle.
Praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Others by “first, do no harm” or “take no more than you need.”
What if the mightiest word is “love”
love beyond marital, filial, national;
love that casts a widening pool of light;
love with no need to preempt grievance?

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
anything can be made,
any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light.

Read after Barack Obama's inaugural address
January 20, 2009

Our Culture of Dysphoria

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What aspects of western dominant culture are the most insidious and pose the greatest challenge to the church? I often hear that it is evolution, gay rights, abortion, and the prevailing doctrine of "tolerance." Someone with more patience than me can wade through the ocean of misconceptions and erroneous interpretations at work in the current debate over these issues. However, I would like to suggest an often overlooked aspect of our culture that seems to be a greater challenge than the above hot-button issues, and that is this this culture's cultivation of dysphoria (A state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life. The opposite of euphoria).

In the early years of the church Christians would actually prepare themselves for various kinds torture in order to confess Christ even under the most grueling of circumstances. Such stories of Christians resisting threats of excruciating torture stands in stark contrast to the stories of many western Christians who find it almost unbearable to be in a state of discomfort.

We do not have to look far to find examples of the fact that our current economy is contingent upon a society that is compelled to buy products that avoid discomfort and promise a life of ease, comfort and convenience. This compulsion to buy such things is provoked by the cultivation of dysphoria. Why else would I be compelled to buy a remote control that does much more than merely control my tv from a remote distance?

So what? you might ask. Well, this might sound redundant, but if we continually make choices that avoid discomfort, then it seems to follow that we are going to be predisposed to make choices that avoid discomfort. This cannot be good. Again, this is in stark contrast to early Christians who put themselves in positions that made them endure discomfort, pain, and even the threat of death so as to predispose themselves to not be as influenced by those things. That is to say that while the early Christians were predisposed to resist coercion even under torture, contemporary Christians are predisposed to be persuaded to do some pretty stupid things with nothing but the threat of discomfort.

If western Christians were transported to the time of Nero, what would it take to get us to deny Christ - threaten to withhold a side item from a the menu; threaten to withhold drugs for our attention, mood, or weight disorder; threaten to make us be seen in clothes from 80's?

The Truth Project: Simply a Bad Way of Talking

The more I listen to how the Truth Projects talks about truth, the more I come to realize that it seems they have an urge to separate truth from Jesus. Of course they proof-text that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, but they isolate verses that cast truth in the abstract rather than intimately connected with the incarnation (which in turn is intimately connected with the church). Then they make the declaration, “This scripture reveals that salvation is a result of a person's belief in God's truth claims.” This statement is irksome because scripture doesn't reveal that "salvation is a result of a person's belief in God's truth claims" but a life lived in the fullness of Christ.

It is also interesting that out of all of the proof-texts offered, they leave out Ephesians 4:21, which reads, “that is not the way you learned Christ! For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus.” It seems that they do not want to associate truth with the living community of Christ, as it is implied in Romans 10:8-10:

‘The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.

The problem with how the Truth Projects talks about truth is that the confession that “Jesus is Lord” will no longer suffice. Now, we must confess that this confession is a truth that exist regardless of us and outside of us.

Does Jesus want truth to exist apart from us? It seems that the message of the incarnation is that the truth is near us, that God is wrapping all of creation into Godself. Granted, we need to guard against the danger of making truth whatever we want it to be (which is usually called a lie), but we also must confess that, by the grace of God, truth is with us, and indeed in us. If truth corresponds to God, and hell is separation from God, then why would we want to assert a particular kind of confession that emphasizes the separation of God/truth from humanity rather than a confession that emphasizes Emmanuel, “God with us”?

Other Posts on The Truth Project:
1. The Truth Project?
2. Wariness of The Truth Project

I also want to include this link to Hackman's Musings. He has honored me with a link to these pages, and I would be remiss not to link back to his thoughts on this topic. He makes numerous spot-on critiques and observations, as well as facilitates a much larger conversation in his comment section.

1. The Truth Project: Part 1

2. The Truth Project: Part 2