Postmodern Redneck

Why Liberal Policies Don't Work

2011-11-12T18:10:00.000-08:00

I was born five years after the end of World War II, and was in high school when Lyndon Johnson announced his "Great Society" and "War on Poverty" plans. Around that time my grandfather retired and started collecting Social Security. But over the years, it seems that many of these ambitious social programs (and economic programs as well) have fallen far short of the promises made when they began. War on Poverty? We lost! We seem to have just as many poor as we did before Johnson declared war on it; they may be the richest "poor" in the world's history, with more consumer goodies and better lifestyle than the middle class had when I was born, but they are still dependent on government handouts. Social Security? The shrinkage in the pool of workers paying the taxes compared to the number of beneficiaries is bringing the world's largest Ponzi scheme to bankruptcy.

But why? As Charley Brown kept asking during baseball season, "How can we lose when we're so sincere?" At the root of these liberal failures is a basic misconception that ruins everything they try to do: liberal policies are based on a view of human nature that is inaccurate and therefore everything they prescribe does not work well in the real world (Remember what I put in my last post--The Real World Always Wins). Liberal policies of all kinds are based on the idea that people--all people--are basically good, and that if we can just eliminate war, poverty and ignorance all will be very well and we can create a Heaven on Earth.

But are all people basically good? Is this true--does what they are saying correspond to what we see in the real world, now and throughout history? I am a lifelong student of history, American, British, European, world, and often less-commonly studied cultures, and I would have to say that this view is not true to the world we live in. In terms of "goodness" human nature has a rather broad spectrum. There are a few people who are in fact very good; a larger number who try to be as good as they can. There are a much larger number who are as good as they think they have to be, and another substantial number who are as bad as they think they can get away with. And there are some people who simply are Evil, and have no intention of changing. And I think a strong case can be made that this description fits the Real World we live in better than the liberal view.

The idea that all people are basically good has been around for a long time, but seldom widely held. Of the American "Founding Fathers" only Thomas Jefferson seemed to express any form of it. It definitely was not held by the men who wrote the Constitution in 1787 (Jefferson was serving as ambassador to France at the time, and was not part of the effort, and was not sure whether he even liked it); that is why the Constitution included all those "checks and balances." It was the "Victorian Optimism" of the 1800s that brought it into style, first in England and Europe, but much later in the U.S.--it did not take hold here until well after the Civil War. It was widely but not universally adopted by the "elites" by the 1920s, but its greatest popularity came in the growth of prosperity after WW2.

But why should this assumption about human nature matter so much? It matters because if one of your basic assumptions is wrong, every thing you try to do based on that assumption will turn out badly. It would be like trying to balance your checkbook or fill out your tax return, when you are absolutely convinced that 2+2=6 (and therefore 4+4=12, and so on--everything you add up, all the way through, is tainted and ruined by that basic misconception).

Looking at the history of the last century alone, this wrong view of human nature is why British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain could not deal effectively with Adolph Hitler in 1938, why FDR could not handle Josef Stalin, why Jimmy Carter could not handle Ayatollah Khomeini. And it is why liberal policies and enactments keep running afoul of "the Law of Unintended Consequences." No matter what they prescribe, it either does not work as they thought it would, or people find ways to game the system or get around their new rules that they did not foresee. All too often, the policy they implement makes things worse instead of better, either by failing to cure the problem or causing new problems worse than the original ones.

The final proof that the liberal view of human nature is wrong is that they do not stick to it consistently themselves. A liberal will act on it, even with enemies of his own country (as Chamberlain tried to do with Hitler). But let a liberal politician run into one of his own countrymen who dares to disagree with him, and he quickly drops the pretense--these opponents are EVIL! He treats them with contempt, tries any dirty trick available to overcome the opposition. He totally drops the "all people are basically good" "schtick" when he meets opposition in his own country, even if he still applies it to the enemies of his country.

In contrast, there is the historic Christian view of man: that man was created good, but having free will, chose to disobey his Creator and has ever since been flawed. The all-out version of this teaching is that man is now flawed in all areas: morally and spiritually, of course, but also physically (the long lives of the earliest patriarchs in Genesis express the idea that man was created to live forever and took a while to decline and die at first--the Babylonians preserved a similar tradition about their ancestors' long lifespans), and intellectually (meaning, nobody is ever as smart as he thinks he is--no matter how many degrees he has) [And yes, this does include me; and sometimes I even remember it...]. This teaching of traditional Christianity is compatible with the spectrum of human nature that does exist in the real world. It is not compatible with the liberal idea of human nature. But it does work in the Real World we actually live in, and the liberal view on human nature does not. And as I said before, no matter how attractive the theory, The Real World Always Wins.

An Interlude

2011-10-29T15:30:00.000-07:00

I am going to interrupt the series I've been writing on politics to interject some things that bear on posts to follow. These are important principles that apply to all of life, including politics. One of them I have blogged about before, but I wanted to bring it up again rather than have to include it in the next post. The other is somewhat related to the first, but still important in its own right.

The one I've written about before is a working definition of truth, as given by a professor I studied under in college. "Truth...is a degree of correspondence between what is, and what is said about what is." No matter how high up you are in the ivory towers of academe, or how elevated in political stature, sooner or later what you have said is going to be compared by others to reality; and if it does not match up, you will suffer for it one way or another.

The second one is also very important to remember. It does not matter how pretty your theory is, how tidily it fits with your other opinions, or with your desires. It does not matter how much government research money is available to back you up, how many degrees you and your friends have, or what the consensus among scientists is, or how many and how elaborate computer models are made....The Real World Always Wins! Memorize that...The. Real. World. Always. Wins.!!!

One Redneck's Politics, Part 2: A Historical Comparison

2011-10-26T18:48:00.000-07:00

I've been having an occasional email discussion with a friend about the political situation lately. My friend is bothered by all the name-calling, noise and general nastiness of the political discourse lately, and would prefer not to accept any label or be too closely associated with either side. I can understand that view, but my knowledge of American history tells me that the vision she has, of people discussing things, disagreeing, but still getting along, has been rather rare in this country. There was a time that the historians call "The Era of Good Feelings" from 1816 to 1824, when partisan bickering was almost minimal; but it did not last. At the best of times, American democracy has a tendency to get messy.

But I do think that the U.S. today is more sharply divided than it has ever been in my lifetime, possibly more divided than at any time since the Civil War. And this time the division is not along any geographic regions, as with the Southern Cotton states and the manufacturing North, but is much more spread out. Even the Red State/Blue State maps of the last few presidential elections do not show the real gravity of the situation: if you look at the first map on this site http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/ , you see the electoral vote by states, and it looks like one side controls the coasts, the Great Lakes area, and a few scattered states elsewhere. But farther down the page, there is a map of the electoral results by counties, and the picture changes dramatically; many of the solidly "blue" states turn out to be dominated by a small highly populated area surrounded by a land mass less densely populated--of the opposite opinion. There are no neat geographic dividing lines between Left and Right. Even if we wanted to, we can not just split the land up and go separate ways as the South tried to in 1861. (Reminder: these maps at the link are of the 2008 election results; there is a strong possibility that a map for 2012 will not look as blue.) The South, as a contiguous defined region, had at least some chance of making it as a nation; the Blue cities have no such chance--they are too dependent on the surrounding Red counties to survive without them. The disagreements, which really are fundamental, are going to have to be worked out over time. It may be some states will be divided into two or more new units, as West Virginia, a mountainous region of small towns and small farms, separated from the Virginia of Tidewater plantations during the Civil War. Most of Illinois would likely be happier without Chicago, and much of upstate New York would not really miss New York City. There has even been a proposal voiced to break California up into five states, because of the cultural differences in that state's regions.

So far, the rhetoric, and actual violence, has not been as bad as in the years leading up to the Civil War. In 1856, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was sitting at his desk on the Senate floor, when Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina walked up behind him and started beating Sumner with a cane. He kept it up until the cane broke. Sumner took several years to recover from the beating, and Brooks received donations to pay the fine the court assessed him--and a lot of canes from all over the South to replace his broken one. The territory of Kansas was being settled in this period, and the violence between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions got so bad it was called "Bleeding Kansas."

But why did these things get out of hand so badly? Overall, there is some case to be made that the South escalated the rhetoric, and later the violence, and the North responded in kind. And the South escalated the rhetoric because they saw they were beginning to lose the long-term struggle. During the early years of the nineteenth century, the Southern states and the Northern states were equal in number; while the North's greater population gave it an advantage in the House of Representatives, the South maintained an equality in the Senate that would allow it to stop any legislation it disliked. In 1820, the "Missouri Compromise" brought in two new states, Missouri (slave) and Maine (free)--the equilibrium was maintained. But as new territories were acquired by the United States in the 1840s, this equilibrium was about to end. Most of the new land would not have been suited to growing cotton, and would likely be settled primarily by anti-slavery people from the North. The South did not really have the population to fill up these new states-to-be. And as their long-term prospects dimmed, the voices in the South got louder, angrier, and more inclined to violence. I am not saying the North was blameless in the march to violence, but I do think the South led the way in starting the rhetoric and in ratcheting it up. And of course, it was the South that first resorted to arms. They did win the battle at Fort Sumter (and quite a few more) but they lost the war.

I also think one of the major factors leading to the Civil War was that too many people in the South, among the leaders and the ordinary citizens, fell into the trap of believing their own propaganda. They had to learn the hard way that their slogan "One Southerner can whip any five Yankees!" was mistaken: Midwestern farm boys turned out to be as tough, man for man, as any Southerner. And that discovery itself pointed out another of their big mistakes: many in the South assumed the Midwest would side with them against the industrial Northeast; they totally underestimated the anti-slavery sentiment among the small farmers of the Midwestern states. (Another change they had not noticed: in the early 1800s, much produce from Ohio and Indiana was shipped down the Mississippi to market, but by 1860 the railroads provided an alternate route to market.) Another mistaken assumption by the South was that the British would come in on their side to keep the flow of cotton going to their factories. As it turned out, many British politicians were inclined to favor the South, but the mass of the British people was so firmly anti-slavery that it would have been political suicide to intervene.

How does this compare to our situation today? I have heard quite a bit of what comes from both sides, and I think the Left is in the position of the South in the late 1840s. The handwriting is on the wall, and they are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people.

In the 1930s the Democrats backed the industrial unions and helped them gain legitimacy; now only six or seven percent of private sector workers belong to unions. Now the main strength of unions is among government employees, but their successes in the past in negotiating lavish pensions and other benefits is threatening to bankrupt cities and states across the country. There was a lot of commotion in Wisconsin earlier this year when a new Republican governor and legislature took steps to curtail union power and benefits; steps in the same direction by the Democrat governor of New York did not attract nearly as much attention.

For many years the public school systems across the country have been a bastion of liberalism. Yet as many have noted, the more tax money is spent on education, the lower the quality of the results. The causes are too many to go into here. But one result is the cracking of the monopoly on education. In the 1920s efforts to shut down the Roman Catholic school systems failed. In the 1980s a new wave of private Christian schools began to appear, followed by the phenomenon of home schooling (my own family was part of this, and our daughter is now teaching her own children). Now charter schools are cropping up all over the landscape, and voucher programs are starting to get past the legal challenges and gain ground. The educators' unions are still fighting, but it is definitely a rear-guard action.

Another albatross around the Democrats' neck is the social welfare programs; people are realizing they cannot be sustained. When Social Security began in the 1930s, there were over 150 people working for each one collecting its benefits; by last year there were three workers per retiree. In the '30s, many who retired at 65 drew benefits for a year or two. My grandfather died in 1973, nine years after retiring. My own father died last year at the age of 90, after 35 years of collecting both Social Security and his pension from Ford Motor Company.

And then there is the regulatory mess. When the Federal government started regulating businesses in the early twentieth century, there was some need for it. But they have kept adding, and adding and adding...the Federal Register shows 81,000 pages of new regulations--just for the past year! Add to that the state government regulations, county and city enactments, zoning boards, and even homeowners' associations that want to tell you what color you can paint your house....A few months ago the President of the US admitted that there hadn't been as many "shovel ready" jobs as expected when Congress passed his stimulus bill. Just this week he voiced concern that we are no longer building great things like the Golden Gate Bridge. Well, they did not have Environmental Impact Statements to file back then! As I mentioned in the last post, it took a year and a half to build the Empire State Building in the early 1930s; a few months ago in an online article, the writer was telling of his co-op association's ten-year effort to get a permit from the city to repair the building they live in.

This is just a sampling. But the point is, whether you call it Progressivism, Liberalism, or just the Democrat Party, it is failing, and a large part of the American people are getting soured on it. And the "Blue States", "liberals" or just "Democrats", whatever you choose to call them, showing signs of getting scared, just as the South did. They cannot bring themselves to admit it, any more than the South could, but they are scared, and they are reacting the same way, by making more noise and getting nastier.

Some may say there is little to choose from in rhetoric between the two sides, but I do not agree. It is one thing to call a politician a "Marxist" or "socialist"--one might argue whether the label is accurate in a particular case, but these are at least terms that indicate a political philosophy by the way, there is a socialist caucus in the US Congress, and a 2009 newsletter from the American Socialist Party claimed it had 70 members--I looked at the list, and a lot of them are still there, and many of them are quite well-known). [I tried to link to Gateway Pundit's post on this, but either the computer or Blogger would not cooperate]. But on Labor Day of this year, Jimmy Hoffa, president of the Teamsters Union, referred to Tea Partiers as "sons of bitches"; President Obama spoke after him, and did not then and has not since done anything to show disapproval of that language. That was not a description of a political philosophy, it was a coarsening and degrading of our political discourse. And, I think, it is a sign of decline and failure of liberalism in this country.

One Redneck's Politics

2011-10-24T18:44:00.000-07:00

I said when I began blogging that there were other blogs on politics and I did not plan to write on that topic. But lately the things rattling around my head are more in that direction, and I have a few posts taking shape that bear on current politics. I am not going to endorse any particular candidates, but I do have some things I have been thinking concerning the intersection of politics, faith, and general culture. If it goes on too long and gets too specific I may have to set it up as a separate blog, but for now I'll keep it under the Postmodern Redneck schtick.

Before I start in, I should say a bit about my own journey up to now. I've called myself Postmodern Redneck because, as I said at the start, I Are One! On one side of my family I had (until the Depression) small farmers and some small businessmen, primarily of English ancestry, at the western edge of Ohio's part of Appalachia. On the other, mountain folk from eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, of Scotch-Irish extraction (my grandfather was a Burns, my grandmother a Webb--both good Scottish names, but the family tradition is that they came to America from Ireland. There were major settlements of Protestant Scots in Ireland in the 1600s, and a quarter of a million of them moved on to America during the 1700s). My grandfather and his sons spent some time working in the coal mines; otherwise, it was likely, as the old saying goes, "Whatever it takes to get the coon."

I was born in 1950, brought up in a UAW household. My parents revered FDR, and between them and my schoolteachers, I was brought up to be a good little liberal. (There was one incident, though: sometime when I was two they got too close to an Eisenhower rally, and I picked up the catchy slogan "I like Ike!" It apparently took a few spankings after I got home to get me to shut up....) Of course, back in the '50s and early '60s, even the Republicans were liberal, primarily from the Northeast like Nelson Rockefeller.

There were a number of things that moved me away from my liberal upbringing. One is my love of history--all periods, most places, but American history especially. Another was when I started studying theology in Bible college and learned something about "liberal" theology, which has always been hand-in-glove with liberal politics (there will be a post on that in this series, I suspect). Then, after college, as I drifted away from pulpit ministry I found myself making a living for my family in small business (my great-grandfather Hawkins, who died before I was born, had owned a bus company in his small town and an electrical contracting firm).

But probably the biggest factor was the drift of the Democrat Party itself. There's a saying around, "Not your grandfather's Democrat Party." It's true; the Democrats have traveled a long way from the time when I was born. Franklin D. Roosevelt was totally opposed to the unionization of Federal employees; now government employee unions are a mainstay of the Democrat Party. I grew up during the Cold War; there would be no room among today's Democrats for men like Harry Truman, John Kennedy, or "Scoop" Jackson. It was JFK who said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Today's Democrats are all about what they are going to do for us (and to us!).

The change in me had already taken place when I read "Modern Times," an account of the years from the end of World War I to the Reagan/Thatcher years by the English historian Paul Johnson. One thing he wrote in that book has always stayed with me. He said the real divide, in Britain and America, was not between liberal and conservative, Tory and Labour, or Republican and Democrat; it was between those who see the state and its power as the answer to every problem, and those who believe in individual freedom. You can have liberal or conservative statists; they may want to use the power of the state for different problems, but they both see the state as the ultimate answer.

This resonated with me because of something C.S. Lewis had written, I think in "Mere Christianity"--that if an individual man is a creature who lives for seventy years or so and dies and is ended, then a state that can last for hundreds of years is more important; but if man is a spiritual being who can live for eternity, then a state is a transient, passing thing, and the individual is much more important than the State.

At this point, I could probably be described as a "libertarian" (small "L"--my older son has considered being a precinct officer for the Libertarian Party, but I'm not into that). I think we as a nation have reached the point where we have too much government regulation, at all levels: not just the EPA and OSHA, but state regulations, county licenses and boards, zoning rules that go beyond sense, and even homeowners' associations. (At least I finally got free of those where I live now.) The busybodies have been allowed too much control and are strangling us! As a remodeling contractor, I have had experience with the building codes and electrical codes. The basics of these are sensible and necessary; but the revisions every few years have gone far beyond the basics. I would say that most of the revisions are trivial, made to justify the bureaucrats who write them staying on the payroll; a few are important; and once in a while they make a change that I look at and think, "They had the technology to do this forty years ago! Why did it take them this long to figure it out?" This regulatory mindset is a large part of why there were no "shovel ready" jobs a couple of years ago. It took less than a year and a half to build the Empire State Building in New York City in the 1930s; it took ten years to build the 911 memorial on the World Trade Center site, and one of the neighboring churches destroyed at the time still has not been rebuilt, because of bureaucratic dithering!

So this is where I've come from, and a bit of what has shaped my thinking over the years. In my next few posts, I hope to discuss how some of these things apply to what is going on today.

A Religious Conflict

2011-09-25T15:51:00.001-07:00

The political activity is heating up, on both sides. In some quarters, the rhetoric is heating up to the point that I'm beginning to think there are only two things left that could tone it down effectively: one would be a major religious revival (it would probably have to be bigger than the 1700s Great Awakening and the 1800s Second Great Awakening combined), the other a revival of the practice of dueling. It would be nice to see a lot of our politicians get religion and turn into nicer people; the redneck in me thinks many of our politicians deserve to be used as targets, and reducing the numbers of the political class might well be beneficial. Dueling in this country had a long history, and died out relatively recently. Even Abe Lincoln was once challenged to a duel. As the challenged party, Abe chose the weapons; and he picked sledgehammers in six feet of water. His much shorter opponent nearly died of laughter, patched it up with Abe and they became good friends.

But the discussion is getting heated, and I think one of the reasons is that this is in part a religious conflict. And I am not referring to the Christian Right, but about the Left side of the issues. Years ago, probably in the early 1990s or possibly in the 1980s, James Dobson, despite his reputation in some circles as an intolerant bigot, had a couple of Orthodox Jews as guests on his program. One was Dennis Prager, a columnist and talk show host, the other was Rabbi Daniel Lapin. During their discussion, Lapin was asked why so many Jews were so liberal in their politics. His response was that when a Jew drifts away from his ancestral religion, often he takes up a new one--liberal politics. (G.K. Chesterton once remarked that when a man ceases to believe in God he does not believe in nothing, he believes anything.)

In recent years there have been some who commented on the religious frenzy associated with the global warming debate, but I think a case can be made that liberal politics is a type of religious system. It has its dogmas: "The poor" are always virtuous, and "the rich" and "profits" (and those who receive them) are evil...Any problem requires government action to solve it, usually by spending money or passing a new law, or both (which is why the IRS Code is now past 60,000 pages--most Bibles are something like 1,200 pages or so).... They have their various sorts of clergy: politicians, academics, media figures, kind of like the various "orders" in the Roman Catholic church....And they have informal systems of penance and atonement, so that people like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates who have made a lot of money can absolve themselves by supporting liberal politicians and causes....And if you look at how they operate, they try to use guilt and shame to control people's actions, just like any other religious system--talking about what's "fair" (without giving any objective definition of "fair"), calling their opponents ugly names, and accusing them of wanting to bring back slavery and lynching and other nasty motives. And like the scribes and Pharisees in the Gospels, they have their ways of overlooking certain sins of their own and harping on the sins of others. (There's a local talk-show host who says he will believe in human-caused Global Warming when Al Gore sells his mansions, quits flying by private jet, and starts living like he says we all ought to live.)

Now I am sure someone out there who reads this will be thinking "But many of these people are Christians!" And my question in return is "Are they Christians or just churchgoers?" Just going to church is not guaranteed to make a person a Christian. In my life I have known many people who were Baptists or Roman Catholics first, and Christians second; I have known some who were Christians first and Baptists or Catholics second. I think some people need to decide whether they are Christians first and liberals second, or liberals first and Christians second. The Ten Commandments starts out, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." And Jesus said, "No man can serve two masters."

I do think it is possible for a person to be both a Christian and a liberal. Back in the Nixon years, there was a Minnesota Congressman named Al Quie, who was a committed Christian. He was also a liberal. When he heard the news that Charles Colson had become a Christian in the middle of the Watergate scandal, at first he could not believe it. But through a mutual friend he met Colson, became convinced his conversion was genuine, and stood by him as a friend through Colson's trial and imprisonment. They were on opposite sides of the political divide, but they became Christian brothers.

It is possible; but that incident was nearly forty years ago, and I'm afraid such things are both harder and rarer now. There is a passage in C.S. Lewis' "That Hideous Strength" where Professor Dimble is explaining to his wife: "If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family--anything you like--at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren't quite so sharp;and that there's going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder." This "sorting out" is still going on, and there are some of us, on both sides of the political divide, who are going to have to choose whether our Christian faith or our political "faith" takes priority.

Following the Holy Spirit

2011-02-26T07:12:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't posted anything for a long time, but I got into a Facebook discussion the other night and apparently the software did not allow enough room for what I was trying to say, so I am going to put it here for whatever good it may do. Some of the things I will say I have said in various places, maybe even in the archives of this blog, but I don't think they have all been said in one place at one time. So here it is.

The discussion didn't start there, but it ended up in a debate over following the Bible vs. following the Holy Spirit. The obvious answer is that we need both. In practice, it is never that easy. The sad truth is, through much of history, the Church at large has neglected and ignored the Holy Spirit. For hundreds of years the Christian world was dominated by a doctrine that the Holy Spirit works only through the written Word. Even Pentecostals and Charismatics have over time declined into a tendency to focus on what the Holy Spirit says through "anointed" preachers, teachers, and "prophets'' rather than each Christian learning to hear what the Holy Spirit has to say themselves. In sixty-one years of life, all but the last two spent in local congregations, I have only seen one local church that made any kind of serious effort to teach ordinary church members how to hear from the Holy Spirit themselves. And I have seen all too many members of the clergy who seem to prefer being the spokesman for the Holy Spirit rather than having Him at work among their people without their supervision. (That's about the kindest way I can put it.)

I am not trying to say we should not read the Bible. We do need a good working knowledge of it: the basic drift of the overall Old Testament story, the life and teachings of Jesus, His death and Resurrection, the life of the early Church from Acts and the Epistles, and so on. But knowledge of the Bible is not the end in itself; it is a means to the real end, knowing its Author. The Jews had hundreds of years to figure out the prophecies about the coming of the Messiah; yet when He came, the ones who had the most trouble recognizing him were the "scribes and Pharisees", the Bible scholars of the day. They had focused on the means so much they missed the real purpose of all their study.

I hate to say it, but human beings are too lazy for their own good. Our fallen human nature does not want to take the time to develop a close personal relationship with the Creator. Left to itself, human nature wants a set of hoops to jump through, so it can feel good about what it has done and then go on and live like it wants to. In church leaders, that fallen human nature tends to look around for hoops to give the members. (After all, it's easier to evaluate how many hoops a given church member has racked up than to get close enough to the person to find out how they actually live.) Read the Bible all the way through in a year? Chalk up a hoop. Memorize the most verses in a contest? Another hoop. Get a pin for a year's perfect attendance at Sunday School? One more hoop.

The problem here is the assumption that knowledge of the Bible is equal to spiritual growth. What if it isn't? One thing that has stuck with me over the years from a college class in Christian education is this quote: "Learning has not taken place until there is change in the life of the learner." If all the Bible you have absorbed does not change the way you live, you haven't really learned it. Or as Jesus Himself advised, "You will know them by their fruit." He is more interested in results in our lives than in credentials from programs and classes.

So far, I've edited out about half of what I had above this line, because I want to focus on the real point: it is possible to follow the Holy Spirit, and learn to hear Him (Yes, "Him," not "it"--the New Testament uses the masculine pronoun, not the neuter). It can be done. But it is not easy. The religious hoops seem to be the easy way, at least at first; but they only lead you to either great frustration, or self-righteousness and pride.

The first step in learning to hear and follow the Holy Spirit is the hardest for us fallen human beings. It can be summed up as "Sit down and shut up!" We want to do things; we want to be leaders; we want to have our say; we want to be in control of the situation. These desires go back to the original temptation that caused Eve and Adam to fall: "You shall be as God." We want to be autonomous; we want to be master of our fate.

And the key to learning to follow the Holy Spirit is to give all that up. "Sit down"--quit doing things on your own and in your own way. "Shut up"--because as long as you are talking, you are not listening to Him. The first thing we must do is surrender our desire to be in control and yield the control to Him. It is hard for us to do, and has to be done again and again, day by day until we learn the habit. We want so much to be in control. But as a very wise pastor I once knew liked to say, "If you can see where you're going, you aren't walking by faith." But when you give up control, you have to trust the One who is in control. The "religious" word for this is "faith." In fact, "trust" is the literal meaning of the Greek word that is usually translated "faith" in the New Testament.

When you trust someone you don't rush in and do things your way; you wait for the one you trust to do it. But most of us rush in and do things and say things without waiting to hear from the Holy Spirit what we should do and say. We have not learned to trust Him. And being what we are, it does take time to learn this pattern of doing things.

I'm going to use an example from my own life for how this can work. I have always been musical; I learned to play guitar as a teenager, I sang in choirs in high school and in church. I started "leading the singing," as we called it back then, when I was seventeen (this was still in the days of organ and piano). And I have led worship in small churches and small groups over the years. At first, I planned it all my way. I might ask the preacher what he was talking about, then sit down with the hymnal and pick songs that worked with his topic if I could. I would have some rousing stuff first, then quieter as the service went on to communion.

But in a small group we were in at the Cincinnati Vineyard, I began to learn a new way. The group met on Thursday evenings. I would start praying for the music on Friday, and keep it up for a few days. Around Monday or Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest, songs would start spontaneously popping into my mind, sometimes three or four in sequence. All I had to do was write down the list, maybe put one group of songs in front of another. And they worked as well, often better, than what I planned myself. The oddest thing of all was the occasional week when the songs did not come. If I didn't receive the music by Wednesday, I would sit down and work it out the old human away, or pull out a list from a few months ago. And invariably the same thing happened: late Wednesday night or sometime Thursday the phone would ring, and the group leader would tell me something had come up and we would not be meeting that week. The Holy Spirit didn't give me the music because we did not need it. If we needed it, He gave it. In a later group, I reached the point where I did not plan anything ahead; I just sat down with my guitar, strummed a few seconds, and the song came into my head and I played and sang as He gave it to me. (It helps if the group has a good-sized body of music they all know--this one did.)

At one time during our years at that Vineyard, my wife and I went through their training to serve on the Prayer Teams, praying for individuals at the end of the services. One of the things we were taught was not to start praying as soon as the person told us their need, but to wait a few moments and ask the Holy Spirit to show us how to pray for the matter. It felt awkward at first (remember what I said above about how we want to rush in and do) but it worked very well as we learned to rely on the Spirit.

This fits with what Jesus told the disciples: "When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not worry about how or what you are to speak in your defense, or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say." Luke 12:11-12, NASB Two things: (1) That was not just for them--we are all supposed to be "filled with the Holy Spirit." (2) It is not just for the big "life-and-death" matters; we need to learn it on the little things. If you decide to take up mountain climbing, you do not start by heading for Mt. Everest; you start with smaller mountains closer to home. When you have learned to trust Him in the little things, you will be able to trust Him when the "life-and-death" matters come up.

What about the Bible, then? For starters, it is where we begin to learn about the Holy Spirit. And it can be a way to check what we think we are hearing from the Spirit, especially in the beginning; if what we think we are hearing is at odds with the precepts of the Bible, then we need to wait for Him to clarify the matter. He inspired the human writers of the Bible, and He is available to guide us; but He will not contradict Himself. If there is an apparent contradiction, either we are hearing something else other than the Holy Spirit, or there is something wrong in our understanding of the words of the Bible at that point. Wait and see which it is. And as time goes on, you will come to walk in the reality of what Jesus said, "My sheep know my voice." It becomes easier over time. The real barrier that most of us never pass is to "Sit down and shut up" in the beginning.

A Voice From the Past

2010-08-21T17:03:00.000-07:00

Just a few days before he left office, President Dwight Eisenhower delivered a speech (text found here: http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html) that included warnings of several dangers he saw for the United States. One of those warnings got most of the attention in the following years: his concern about the “military-industrial complex.” That term continued to reverberate for most of the years when I was growing up (I was almost eleven years old when he made that speech, no, I do not remember hearing it; but I heard a lot about that one expression for years after).

For some reason I looked up that speech lately, and read the whole thing more than once. Looking back at the last half-century, I would say that “Ike” was rather prescient, but our society missed some important things he was saying back then. In spite of Vietnam, the two Iraq wars, and Afghanistan, the “military-industrial complex” does not have anywhere near the power it once had in American affairs. But I found he spent more time in that speech talking about a different danger: the domination of research and technology by Federal money. He spoke of “the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop” being replaced by “task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields.” He went on: “Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity....The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present....Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.”

This warning went right over people's heads, it would seem, judging by the results in recent years. A prime example has been the Global Warming debate of recent years: scientists in universities and government agencies in the US and Europe were pushing a set of policies, using government-funded research to back it up. I never was impressed by their arguments; as a lifelong student of history, I had known about the Medieval Warm Period, when wine grapes grew as far north as England, and the Little Ice Age, which ruined the Viking settlements in Greenland and nearly wiped out the Pilgrims at Plymouth, long before before the Warming controversy began. I am also old enough to remember all the articles and hoopla about the coming Ice Age we were supposed to be facing thirty years ago, in the same newspapers and magazines that later jumped on the Global Warming bandwagon! Not only was the Warming research funded by government grants, the East Anglia emails and other events have shown how these “scientists” were prepared to use rather unscientific and even unethical methods to doctor the evidence and silence dissent so they could keep the grants rolling in.

And now we face other problems, especially the financial collapse of recent years and the seemingly endless “Great Recession” and the budget deficits here and abroad. “Ike” said it well: “As we peer into society's future, we—you and I, and our government—must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.”

What is Truth?

2010-07-16T15:25:00.000-07:00

It seems that one of the things that has taken a beating in recent years is the concept of "truth"--what is true and what isn't. One of the warnings about "post-modernism" that some were making a few years ago concerned the view of "truth" supposedly at the root of PM thinking. Personally, I'm not sure that what Postmodernism really is has been that much settled and cast in concrete yet; "modernism" which PM is replacing (supposedly) took a century or more to really come together, and PM is going to need at least as much time to settle down.

I think what we really have is two things related to "truth": a lot of fuzzy thinking by some people about the nature of "truth" on one hand, and a lot of other people playing fast and loose with the truth when they find some truth inconvenient (this is part of the moral breakdown in our society that I've blogged about elsewhere). The fuzzy thinkers want to have "my truth" as something separate from "your truth"; the trouble is, sooner or later you have to accept the fact that the only place we can live in is the real world. Sooner or later you have to face the fact that this "my truth/your truth" fuzziness does not work reliably in that real world; and the longer you put off facing it the worse mess you'll be in. The second group has always been around, often in professions like politics and used-car sales. There's a good old-fashioned, Anglo-Saxon word for them: liars. And the trouble with being a liar is you need a very good memory; the more you lie, the more you have to keep track of what you said, who you said it to, and when. And the odds are really against the liar; sooner or later he slips up and gets caught.

I know there are plenty of books out on this subject (I saw one of them a few weeks ago at my in-laws' house). But I keep going back to a simple working definition of "truth" that I learned in a class on "Philosophy of Education" many years ago. The professor passed away long since, but some of the things I learned from him have lasted all this time, and here's the relevant one for this post:

"Truth" is the correspondence between what is and what is said about what is.

In other words, you look at what is being said and compare it to the real world, or a particular item in the real world.

He also told us, "Absolute truth" is an absolute correspondence between what is and what is said about what is.

Let's unpack some of this. You've got two things: "what is" and "what is said about what is". And it involves a comparison, a checking up to see if "what is said" is valid or not. And I like it because it is rooted in the real world, the place we actually live in day after day. If "what is said" conforms substantially to what is in the real world, and works in that real world, we can regard it as substantially true. And if it does not, we do not regard it as true. If we can't tell, then the best thing may be to put it on hold and leave it undecided for a while. We can look at the source for this "what is said" --have its statements been reliably true before? Do its other statements work in the real world or not?

And what about "absolute" truth? I know it has been fashionable in some circles to say "There are no absolutes." I see two problems with this: in terms of logic, the statement itself is made as an absolute, therefore according to its own content it is false (any argument that undercuts its own validity loses). And it does not work in that pesky "Real World"--have you ever tried to convince a math teacher that under some circumstances two plus two might equal five? Mathematics is certainly one area where the Real World does have some absolutes, and a case can be made that it is not the only area.

The "fuzzy thinkers" can stay in their academic ivory towers and cook up their fancies all they want. As long as they stay there out of the way, not much harm is likely to be done. Make-believe worlds can be fun, as long as you remember they are only make-believe (science-fiction and fantasy writers do this all the time). The problems start when these fuzzy thinkers and their students come out and expect the rest of us to take them seriously and act according to their ideas in the Real World--and their ideas don't work in the Real World. All too often, they themselves do not live consistently with their own ideas when they have to deal with the Real World. A classic example was the composer John Cage, who tried to make everything in his music random and non-patterned rather than following the traditional ideas of harmony and tone in music (at one of his performances the orchestra themselves hissed at him at the conclusion). But when he developed a taste for wild mushrooms and started collecting them personally, he learned all he could about identifying them properly; he knew if he picked up mushrooms randomly as he wrote his music, he would end up dead! The Real World won.

I think that could lead us to another Absolute: Sooner or later, the Real World is always going to win. I suspect one advantage of the current economic distress is that it reminds us of the Real World and its importance, and that indulging the fuzzy thinkers and the liars is at best a luxury, a luxury that maybe we really cannot afford.

Behind the McChrystal Mess

2010-06-26T07:45:00.000-07:00

The news lately has been full of the McChrystal affair, dissecting why they even allowed that writer to hang around for so long. I try not to comment on political matters, but there is one idea that has been on my mind about the thing, and I have not seen anyone else bring this up, so I will.

A common thread in the discussions over this thing is that the Military Code sets standards of behavior for officers, and that the staffers' comments were in violation in their criticisms of the civilian leadership, and that the general himself was in violation for allowing it to go on at all, even if he did not contribute that much criticism personally. But why is this so surprising, when you consider what else has been going on in our society?

For nearly a century, the "Intelligentsia", the intellectual classes, the "elites" or whatever you might call them have been trying to undermine traditional Judeo-Christian morality. The process was slow at first, but it picked up steam in the 1960s and after. Remember the "Sexual Revolution"? Yes, the immediate sticking point was that many people did not want to be bound by Christian sexual standards; they wanted to be free to have all the sexual activity they wished with whomever they wished, whenever they wished. But the Sexual Revolution opened the door to many other things.

The basic fact is, morality is unitary. It is all one thing. Its essential nature is self-control. And if you undermine it in one area, you undermine it everywhere else in the process. So now we not only have the fruit of the Sexual Revolution in broken homes, unwed mothers, abortion, STDs, pornography and on and on, we have a bunch of things the Sexual Revolutionaries did not count on.

Business ethics declined as well, resulting in the Enron affair, Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, and all sorts of criminal and shady doings, with a backdrop of low-quality products and self-serving, all driven by greed. After all, morality is the basic restrainer of greed; when it goes, greed has free rein.

Political ethics went early, perhaps because they were never too high in some quarters anyway. "Watergate" started in the 1972 election, and we have seen all sorts of "-Gates" since. And while politicians of both major parties keep falling into sexual misdeeds, there has been more and more (or more open) bribery, mutual backscratching, unsavory dealings, and disregard for both the laws and the Constitution among the political class.

You can look at any area of life, and the ethics involved are in decline. Medical ethics? Scientific ethics? (The Climategate emails uncovered the extent that modern scientists will go to in making the data fit their theories to keep the grant money flowing.) Cheating is rampant in the schools, and there have been reports in the last few weeks of teachers and administrators doctoring standardized test answer sheets to make their schools look better. And I am starting to see a few brave souls pointing out that "Rolling Stone" and its writer were not following high ethical standards either, and there have been a lot of journalistic frauds uncovered in the last few years: fictional "human interest" stories, plagiarism, forgeries plugged as genuine, biased and slanted news accounts....No, journalists are no better than anyone else ethically.

So why are the talking heads so surprised that ethics in the Army's officer corps are not what they used to be? These officers grew up in this country in the last half-century. General McChrystal is 55, and his staffers presumably are mostly younger. They have seen every other moral standard go down, so why should they be held to any traditional standard?

I have come to the conclusion that the nearest thing to a universal moral principle in 21st-century American society is hypocrisy: The individual expects to do whatever he wants, but he still demands that the people around him and in authority over him or under him continue following traditional morality and its strictures. Thus, a politician can complain about the lack of civility in modern political discourse, and the next day call his opponent a Nazi. A pastor can rail against the Gay agenda, and hire a male prostitute in secret. A businessman can cut corners in his own operations, and complain about the quality of his new luxury car.

Francis Schaeffer expressed a chilling idea about the Judgment of God: imagine a tape recorder hung around the neck of every man, which kicks in every time he opens his mouth to make a moral judgment about someone else. And at the end he stands before God, and the tape is played; and his own actions are compared to the rules he would enforce on everyone else. Not a pleasant picture for any of us, is it? And Schaeffer did not come up with this on his own; the idea behind it is expressed by both the sayings of Jesus and the writings of Paul.

Where is it all going? In the book of Judges, one statement is repeated again and again about the land of Israel in that time: "Every man did what was right in his own eyes." The result was essentially anarchy. Even police states cannot arrest this drift; not only do you need more police than you have taxpayers, but the police themselves will be corrupted in a very short time, and the anarchy gets even worse.

There is only one real answer: a return to faith, and with it morals, from the grassroots up, and the removal and/or marginalizing of those who still reject that one answer. Nothing else works or has any real possibility of working. We have gotten by as long as we have on the memory of a moral consensus, but the memory fades more with each generation, unless somehow it can be renewed.

We All Scream for Ice Cream

2010-06-17T17:19:00.000-07:00

Since I wrote my last post on competence, something has happened to remind me that competence is the precursor of high quality, and incompetence leads to low quality.

My wife and daughter and son-in-law went together to buy me a gift for Father's Day: a White Mountain hand-crank ice cream maker. We like home-made ice cream, and we make a fair amount of it. Historically, the White Mountain ice cream makers have been regarded as the best. Expensive, but reputed the best.

So, yesterday evening we went over to my daughter's, and the box was put in front of me. I opened it, we put it together, ingredients were mixed and I started cranking. That's when the trouble started.

It's a simple machine; you turn the crank, the gear on the end of the shaft turns two other gears which rotate the canister in one direction and the dasher in the opposite direction, while the ice and salt in the outer wooden bucket lowers the temperature of the mix.

But on this one, as I cranked, the gears kept jamming. Crank a couple of turns, jam. Back it up, crank half a turn, jam again. Eventually I figured out that if I pushed in on the crank, hard, while turning the handle it would go a little longer before jamming again. Forget any ideas about the kids helping crank the thing.

Then, after about fifteen minutes of disjointed cranking, the ice cream began to thicken a little bit (not done, just beginning to stiffen) and the gears started to slip, between jams.

We finally got out my daughter's old machine, transferred the ice cream mix and ice to it(minus some metal particles that had gotten into the ice cream) and finished it while my son-in-law and I tried to figure out what was wrong with the White Mountain.

The first thing we noticed was that the gears were rough castings, coated with a finish, but no lubrication (and no, the instruction book did not say to grease the gears during our assembly). They were also fitted together very loosely, and did not mesh tightly together. There was a lot of slop in the gear box. There was also a lot of slop where the dasher shaft came through the canister top, about a 3/4" hole in the top for a shaft about 9/16" in diameter, which is how the metal particles from the gears got into the ice cream. Even the wooden bucket was not that well made; my grandfather was a cooper (barrel maker) for Seagram's, and over the years I have learned at least enough about his trade to spot whether such work is done well or not.

We finished the ice cream in the old machine, ate it all, and came home. I got online and started looking up "White Mountain Hand Crank Ice Cream Machine Problems", and found our experience was not unique. There were a number of glowing recommendations, but there were also a number of complaints. One of the glowing reviews that seemed to come up on every site was from a person who had had a White Mountain for twenty-three years. But most of the negative reviews seemed to be from people who had bought one in the last four or five years. The problems seemed to be of three major types: leaky wooden buckets, metal shavings in the ice cream, and the gears jamming and slipping.

White Mountain is an old company, dating back to the 1850s in New England. But like many other companies I have seen, the ownership has changed repeatedly in the last fifty years or so. The booklet in the box was marked "Holmes Group, Inc." Holmes is a maker of portable electric heaters, fans, and air cleaners. But the invoice from the online retailer called it a "Rival White Mountain" model. It turns out that both of these companies are owned by an organization called Jarden, which owns both Rival and Sunbeam, Holmes, Coleman and a batch of other producers of sporting goods, small appliances, smoke alarms, playing cards, and all sorts of unrelated things.

The old White Mountain ice cream makers were made in New England. Mine had no markings anywhere on it to say where any part was made, but there was a small item on the carton, "Assembled in the U.S.A. from Foreign and Domestic Components."

So we have yet another instance of a product from this country with a good reputation for quality that has gone down the drain. Forget about craftsmanship; just order parts from various countries (whoever is cheapest), slap them together and ship them out. And don't bother with testing the product; as long as it goes together, ship it out to the retailers.

This is not just individual incompetence; it is corporate incompetence, at all levels. The product reviewers who had tried to get the company to honor the "Five year warranty" had problems getting the parts to fix their machines, too. This is not a complicated machine, and they are charging a premium price for it. They are living on their past reputation, and it is beginning to fade.

I am not going to frustrate myself dealing with the warranty. We have a return authorization from the retailer, and I am going to send it back. It will cost us for shipping, and a restocking fee, but will probably avoid a lot of frustration. And in the future I will do what I can to avoid buying any products from Jarden and its subsidiaries.

Competence

2010-05-31T18:03:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about a post on this subject off and on for months, but an article I read online last week triggered some more thinking, and over the weekend I had time to sort a bit of this out. Here is a quote: "I was led to believe that a powerful and active Federal government would be good for society at large, but unfortunately the Federal government's ability to be large and active is not as pronounced as its ability to be large, meddlesome when its help is not wanted, and slothful when its help is actually needed." (from "The White House and the Oil Spill" by Pejman Yousefzadeh, in "The New Ledger")http://newledger.com/2010/05/the-white-house-and-the-oil-spill/

I have said for years that the problem with Big Government, and Big Business as well, is finding people who are competent to run it. And this lack of competent people is becoming more and more a problem.

America was once a "can do" nation. The slogan "The difficult we do at once; the impossible takes a little longer" from the Army Corps of Engineers expresses this well. And for generations Americans as a people lived it out. Marvels of engineering and construction, settling a vast continent, the overthrow of enemies on both sides of the world by 1945, and subsequently helping rebuild the economies of our former enemies have all cemented this tradition.

But it would seem that in my lifetime this has changed for the worse. Our educational system has promoted ever-higher levels of education, but it seems to have resulted in a trading of educational credentials for actual competence; and there is a difference! In fact, there are a number of differences!

The higher education system focuses on reading, talking, and thinking. Competence is about DOING. Academics debate and tweak theories, and too often stay in the theoretical realm. Competence is based in Reality. Credentials at best imply that an individual ought to be able to do a particular task or work. But competence is experience and proven ability. Credentials may boost self-esteem, but competence builds self-respect.

Personally, in my college years I trained for two different professions. I am trained as a pastor, and as an accountant (in the late '70s I went to the University of Cincinnati for business classes, and ended up only a few credits short of the requirements at that time to sit for the CPA exam). One thing I heard during that time from a practicing accountant was that the most important things he learned about accounting were the things he picked up the year after he finished school. Over the years I have questioned people in other professions and they confirmed that their experience was similar. So, there is all too often a disconnect between the academic world and the real world. They spend time on things people in the real world don't need, and miss things the real world does need.

When I was in Bible college, some of the faculty members were pastoring churches themselves, almost always small churches in small-town or rural settings. The men who pastored the large churches were busy running those churches, and were not on the faculty. Years later, when I saw George Barna's note that the average church size in the US is 90-100 people, I realized that that is all the church size the seminary professors can handle themselves; and you can't really teach someone else what you don't know yourself. There is an old adage (it gets me in trouble with my schoolteacher friends every time I bring it up, but there is all too much truth behind it): "Them that can do; them that can't, teach it!"

Competence is about knowing what to do, and with it, what not to do. It is knowing how to do it, and when to stop doing it. And it comes by the experience of actually doing it, not just talking about it.

Grass Pharisees

2009-12-18T19:00:00.000-08:00

No, not that kind, the green stuff all over the ground, what you always meant by "grass" before the 1960s. Now, I don't really mind grass, I don't dislike it or anything like that. It 's just that sometimes we move and find out our new neighbors have some kind of fixation on grass. Some people think their yard has to look as good as any golf course, and a few of them seem to measure it regularly to see if it needs to be mowed again.

Now I am not bothered that much by people like that; if they get pleasure out of their yard, that's okay by me. But too many of these "grass freaks" get all religious about it; they want ME to take care of my lawn the way they take care of theirs. And that is where I get bothered.

I guess when you come right down to it, I just don't care that much about having a perfect lawn. It does not excite me that much, certainly not enough to put in all that work to get it. I'll do other things, mainly on the house itself. Give me two-by-fours, drywall, paint, wire, pipe and a bunch of tools, and I'm a happy man. But grass? As long as it is reasonably green, and not too tall, that's good enough for me. (No, I don't water my lawn much; it costs money, and I'd just have to mow it that much sooner. Astroturf? If I had that much money, I've got better things to spend it on, like tools.) So what if there's dandelions? They're kind of pretty in their own way, and it's fun to see the fluff blow away. Raking leaves? Whatever for? better to let them go back to the soil where they are, rather than deplete the soil nutrients by bagging them up and throwing it all away! No, I do not get excited about cutting grass, or fertilizing it, or weeding it, or any of that stuff. I'll cut it eventually; I've never let it get so long that I found a car when I mowed the yard. But I don't do it enough to please those grass Pharisees.

We did make one of them happy this past year. We moved away from him and sold the house to somebody else. I don't know if his new neighbor is a grass Pharisee; I know he isn't a fixer-upper like me, because he bought a very fixed-up house from us. That house was in rough shape when we bought it, and the buyer got a very nice house when we left. That's what my wife and I do with houses: buy them run-down and cheap, and clean them up and make them nicer than we found them. We just don't do any more than we have to with the doggone yard!

2009-12-11T17:59:00.000-08:00

I have written a few times about writings of Francis Schaeffer and the things he foresaw in our culture. But I want to take a little space this time to point out some things he did not see coming. I was re-reading portions of his 1979 book "How Should We Then Live" in which he saw a bleak future coming for our society. Some of his concerns are problems for us still, but others have changed in unexpected ways or been replaced by other problems, and a couple have possibly given new hope that he did not see.

One major change since 1979 that he did not foresee was the collapse of the Soviet Union, the breakup of the Warsaw Pact and even the secession of some of the Soviet "republics" like Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Russia today is still an authoritarian country, and possibly always will be; it would take generations for a people without a history of self-government to develop it from scratch. Likewise, the change of China to an authoritarian but somewhat capitalist state might have surprised him.We still have threats of war and terror, but now it comes from Islamic terrorists, not from Communists. It is still not comfortable, but there is a difference.

He also wrote about the use of "high-speed computers" by authoritarian states (Communist and our own) as a tool of oppression. But about the time of his death in 1984, the computer began to change from a tool for government, big business and academia to a tool for many ordinary people, with the arrival of the personal computer and the Internet. I saw some statements years ago that the copy machine helped bring down the Soviet Union; I once saw another that technology had allowed to KGB to tape so many phone conversations that they lacked the manpower to listen to and evaluate them all, and their system went down anyway.

Now, the further development of computers in the last twenty years has become a way for people to communicate across the country and around the world. And while governments may try to restrict the freedom of the Internet, their success may be limited. Recent events in Iran raise the possibility that regime may yet be brought down, in part, by the Internet and Twitter!

My last post was about "Climategate", and I heard a statement on a local radio show referring to Al Gore's claim years ago to have invented the Internet, which has now been used to cut the ground from under his Global Warming crusade.

The Internet has done something else as well. One of Schaeffer's concerns was the power of a biased press and media in our culture, especially to spin the news and even determine what gets reported as news. But that power has taken severe hits in the last few years. Talk radio and Internet news sources have eaten into their monopoly. In a number of cases in the last few years bloggers have broken major stories before the press did, and sometimes in spite of the press's attempts to ignore them. Climategate is only the most recent example; the Acorn videos gives another. When Dan Rather was pushing the letters reflecting poorly on George Bush's military service, it was bloggers who noticed, and published, that those letters must be forgeries because certain details in the print were possible on word processors and computers, but not on typewriters--and word processors and desktop computers did not exist at the time the letters were supposedly written. Bloggers are still around, but Rather is off the air. The power of the "mainstream media" has been severely reduced and may yet be broken.

And to add injury to insult, the Internet has been a major factor in the "legacy media" going broke. Newspapers are shutting down all over the country; the New York Times has borrowed millions and laid off many of its workers. The threat to them is two-pronged: competition from other sources of news on one hand, and loss of advertising revenue on the other (my wife and I have not bought anything from a newspaper classified ad in years, but we have bought several items, including our vehicles, from Craigslist). The downward spiral seems likely to go on for a while longer, and shows signs of taking down many magazines as well as newspapers.

So, some of the clouds Schaeffer saw thirty years ago have turned out to have silver linings. We still have causes for concern, some of them the same and some different; but we also have cause for hope. I certainly have enjoyed the friendships I have found online; some have been across the country, and some did lead to local face-to-face relationships. We will face the remaining problems as we have to.

"Climategate"

2009-12-02T16:08:00.000-08:00

One of the hot topics of the last week or so has been what's called "Climategate" or "Climaquiddick" after past scandals. People are arguing over the significance of the leaked material, but a cursory reading of the emails certainly does look like certain scientists have played fast and loose with both the data and with the historic ethics of modern science. And quite frankly, I was not all that surprised by the revelations now coming to light.

Those who have read a lot of my blogging, and people who have known me well over the years, are aware that I have had two favorite Christian authors for many years: C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer. I have often said that I read Lewis for his understanding and expression of Christianity and Schaeffer for his understanding and expression of our culture. (In the last couple of years, as I acquired Schaeffer's "Complete Works" set and read the books I had not been able to access before I increased my appreciation of his more specifically Christian material, but that has cropped up in other posts and may again.)

If Schaeffer were still alive (he died in 1984) he would not be surprised by these recent events either. While he had serious criticisms about the way the environment had been treated by our society, and even by those who were supposed to be Christians, he was also one of the first to notice that the "environmental movement" had been taken over by leftists as a tool to gain influence in society and government. And if you look at the actions being promoted to combat "global warming" many of them are top-down, coercive, government-imposed answers that will increase the control of a few over many.

The second thing I was reminded of was Schaeffer's discussion of the likely direction of science, in his book "How Should We Then Live" from 1979. He brought up the writings of Alfred North Whitehead(1861-1947), who had written that modern science had arisen because of the teaching of Christianity that God was rational and created an orderly universe. This belief made it possible for the early scientists to work out the things that became the basis of modern science. And Whitehead was not a Christian writer; he was a mathematician and philosopher but not even known to be a Christian at all. Yet he admitted that modern science grew out of the Christian view of the world.

But later in the book Schaeffer made a prediction. He declared that as science got farther and farther from the Christian worldview that made it possible, it would decline and tend toward two things: a high level of technology, and sociological manipulation. We certainly have the high level of technology; the computer I am writing this on and the Internet that carries it to whoever may read it are proof of that. But there are more and more signs that we have the efforts to use science to manipulate society as well.

And that is what is at the root of "Climategate": an effort to make the "science" give the desired answer rather than searching the data and seeing what the data actually means. These emails talk about "tricks" and adjusting data to reflect the desired outcome, and about refusing to share the original data so that someone else can verify your results (one of the basic traditions of the hard sciences), and even trying to discredit and silence any critics or skeptics. And one of the latest revelations is that the original, unaltered "raw" data was thrown out and all that remains is the fudged "data", which was doctored to match the theory, where a real scientist would doctor the theory to match the data! These are not real scientists; they are political hacks.

This one "Climategate" incident is bad enough. But there have been plenty of lesser scandals in recent years. A few years ago someone was claiming to have achieved nuclear fusion-"cold fusion" in his lab; it was later label a hoax, because no one else could duplicate the experiment successfully. A South Korean researcher claimed to have cloned multiple animals; he is now facing fraud charges, from what I heard a couple of weeks ago. The continuing emphasis and grant money for embryonic stem cell research, in spite of the failures in that area and the successes in adult stem cell research, are another case of ideology controlling science.

This last point is my own thinking. I am not a scientist, but I went through a pretty decent science program in my schooling many years ago. There was one assumption that underpinned all the scientific advances, all the work of the last few hundred years: trust. Scientists must be able to trust each other to work objectively and honestly. That is the real basis for duplicating experiments and peer-reviews of results, to make sure no one violates the trust of his co-workers. (Those early scientists who started the whole enterprise had grown up with the Christian view that people are flawed and may not be totally trustworthy at all times, so they went for, in Ronald Reagan's words, "Trust, but verify.") And that "Trust" component is exactly what is at stake here. The "Climategate" emails seem to indicate that these " scientists" have doctored data to fit their theory, ignored data that did not fit, thrown away the original data so no one else can check their work, and abused the peer-review process to silence anyone who might call them to account. This is no longer a scientific problem; it is a morals problem.

Hard Choices

2009-09-06T16:22:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't written anything for a while; as I said to a friend lately, "Life is what happens while you were making other plans." But some things have been nagging at me for several months, and maybe I can get something down here.

There's been a lot of noise the past few months over the "enhanced interrogation" methods used on some of the captured terrorists by our government. I have to admit that a lot of the outrage on one side strikes me as politically motivated, because so many of these people have been putting down traditional morality for many years, and mocking anyone who seems to be associated with it. (I may have something more to say about this in another post, if I can get it written.) Yet suddenly they are up in arms over this misbehavior! They have excused all kinds of moral lapses among their friends and supporters, but let their political opponents commit a sin, and they are enraged over it.

I've seen some others who are conservatives themselves and are outraged that their leaders approved these actions. And many conservatives are saying essentially, "hey, it worked--therefore it was justified!" (Apparently many religious conservatives fall into this group, too.)

It seems to me that most people want to paint their own side as bright white and their opponents as totally black. The trouble is, life doesn't always work out that way. As a Christian, I believe we are all fallen people, living in a fallen, damaged world. Even the best of us fail at times, and at the other end of the spectrum there are people who are almost completely evil, doing good about as often as the best do wrong. Most of us land somewhere between. And one result of this situation is that sometimes things are not "black and white" with a clear choice. Sometimes you look at the available options and none is completely white, all are darker or lighter shades of gray. The principle involved is called "the lesser of two evils." I would even say sometimes it may be three or four evils, or more. All you can do is try for the one that is the least black, as far as you can tell. I have had a few times in my life that I had to make that sort of decision, on a small scale--nothing of any national importance or significance--and I am glad that I did not have to make any such choices involving life or death for other people. I am very glad I was not in a position in government having to make the choices about interrogating prisoners.

I do not agree with those who call the "enhanced interrogation" a good thing; I think it is an ugly thing. But I can see that it may have been necessary, or seemed necessary at the time. That still does not make it a good thing, and I think we need to recognize this. On the other side, those who did not have to make such decisions themselves need to show a little more humility and not be so self-righteous in condemning others. If they were in the same position with the same responsibilities, they might make the same choice. And if there really are some in elected office who did know about the matter, kept quiet until the uproar started, and then joined the chorus of outrage: these may be the worst of all.

"This is broken"

2009-05-16T18:09:00.000-07:00

A few days ago my wife found a video of a conference presentation called "This Is Broken." It was pretty funny, showing all kinds of things people do--signs, policies, instructions--that don't really make sense. It seems there was a website with this title, now moved to another, focusing on "good experience" in business-to-customer relations. Their conferences are geared to helping businesses keep from making stupid mistakes that can drive customers away. But it's gotten me thinking about the brokenness in people, and in our society.

There is a school of thought that everybody is basically good, and if they just get their external problems fixed--poverty, lack of education, poor housing, etc.--everybody will get along fine. In the construction field, where I spent over twenty years of my work life, this attitude translates into "If everybody in the skilled trades is properly trained and licensed, everything will be done right." Well, over the last twenty years I've seen way too much shoddy work done by supposedly licensed tradesmen (not to mention all the car accidents seen and heard of caused by licensed drivers). The sad truth is, people do not always do what they know they should do, on the job and in the car and in a lot of other places, too. In fact, in all areas of life, the vast majority of people fail at times to even live up to their own standards, let alone anybody else's. And it's not just limited to the moral issues; none of us is a smart as we like to think, or as competent as we think we are. (The real problem with Big Government and Big Business is that nobody is really competent to run them!) We really are "broken."

Christianity and Judaism are the only religions that understand this. They teach that man was created good, but fell from that state and now is at best mixed--good and bad mingled in each person. We are now "broken," to borrow the term used in that video, and even the best of us cannot be counted on to do right all the time. And some are so broken they do wrong most of the time--from the petty criminals to the Hitlers, Stalins, and other monsters.

The problem is, most of us do not know and do not accept the fact that we are "broken." We go our merry way, leaving trails of misdeeds of various kinds and extents behind us. But we are, and we need healing. The Good News of Christianity is that God chose not to leave us in our brokenness, but to make a way for our healing. That does not mean the healing is instantaneous--almost all Christians do and say stupid and wrong things, because we are still somewhat broken even if we are on the right road to the healing. Some take longer on the road than others, some make little progress, and some of us take some pretty strange detours. And the healing is not forced on us; we have to recognize our need and accept it, which comes hard for many people. But God created us to have free will, and has chosen to respect our free will even when we abuse it by doing wrong.

So we as individuals are broken; the society and culture we live in are broken; our government and institutions, including our churches, are all to varying degrees broken. The best thing we have in all of this is the hope of healing, but we must put our hope and our trust in God, not in some broken person, party, or institution.

Doing or Being

2009-03-28T12:48:00.000-07:00

Three of the four gospels tell the story of the rich young ruler who came to Jesus and asked, "What can I do to have eternal life?" Most who read the story focus on his backing off when Jesus told him to "Sell all you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me." His riches are seen as the sticking point. I am not so sure that is all of the story.

I think we see here two different approaches to "eternal life"--man's, and God's. Matthew quotes the young man as saying, "What excellent and perfectly and essentially good deed must I do..."(Matthew 19:16, Amplified NT)--and I'm afraid he meant, "What ONE good thing can I do (and have it over with and get on with the rest of my life.)" And Jesus' answer boils down to, "Get rid of your stuff, and come hang out with me." These are two totally different approaches, one based on actions and hoops to be jumped through, and one based on an ongoing relationship.

Years ago I read that the natural state of fallen man is legalism. It is, so to speak, the default position. You don't even have to be a Christian to be a legalist--I've seen vegetarians and environmentalists show the same attitude over their convictions. Human beings are constantly setting up codes of behavior (all too often, for others to follow--which was at the heart of Jesus' criticism of the Pharisees). It is typical of religious man to want things he can DO to show how good he is and be approved, whether it's natives sacrificing the chief's daughter to keep the volcano from erupting all over their village or the Pharisee in Jesus' parable bragging to God about how much he did--or Bob Girard's description of the good church member in "Brethren, Hang Loose":

"I found myself measuring individual spiritual growth by some of the same outward standards I had deplored in the established churches:
--how they were picking up the "language"
--whether they would pray in public
--regularity of attendance
--how many of the church's activities they involved themselves in
--availability to the organization
--agreement with the pastor
All the marks of a "truly involved" churchman." "Brethren, Hang Loose" p.31 [the italics were Bob's, not mine]

The thing is, you can jump through the hoops, conform to the expectations outwardly, reap all of the rewards of status in the church and public approval--and still be a sinner in the eyes of God. The truth is, outward religious practices do not reliably result in changed lives--all too often they result in people acting one way in church on Sunday and acting just like everybody else they know the rest of the week--sometimes even worse if they think they can keep it a secret.

So what do we do? Jesus Himself said, "Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart." It isn't about what you do, it's about what you are. This runs through both the Old and New Testaments. The prophets kept telling the people that fasting and keeping the festivals was no good if they oppressed the poor the next day--"I desire mercy, and not sacrifice" was only one of many examples. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus expanded to the reach of the Law to the inner thought life, not just the outward actions. The lists of qualifications for church leadership that Paul gave to Timothy and Titus do not say anything about specific "deeds"--they are all character qualities. The "fruit of the Spirit" from Galatians 5 are all character qualities, not actions.

Yes, these character qualities are going to produce actions, sometimes the same actions that the "religious" types perform. But God is not that interested in the actions for their own sake, but the motivation of the heart behind them. The real difference is between a person who puts on a mask on Sunday and takes it off when the spotlight blinks off, and a person who is who he is, 24/7/365.

But how do you know which is which? It is not easy, especially in our modern fragmented society, with no more front porches, little neighborhood interaction, and even very little interaction between Christians once they're away from the church building. It takes time and proximity, spending lives together, not just looking at the back of someone's head on Sunday morning.

Roughly forty years ago there were some efforts to deal with this issue, some called the "renewal movement," some in the "Jesus people," some reflected in the book "Body Life" by Ray Steadman, some in Bob Girard's "Brethren, Hang Loose!". The term "emerging" or "emergent" church has been big in recent years--it was in use then to describe what was going on. There were variations, but much of it boiled down to restoring community in church life--people living their lives together in Christ, not just sitting in pews on Sunday morning. My wife and I were part of this movement as young adults.

So what happened? A lot of it faded away. One church we were part of dwindled to nothing because some of the men in leadership failed to love their co-workers. Others got distracted by new trends--the "discipling" movement, the "praise and worship" movement (and accompanying "worship wars"), the "Toronto blessing" and following "outpourings" and "next big things."

As I said, "emerging" churches have been hot for the past few years. A lot of the things they say remind me of what happened before, some do not. But already I am beginning to see some signs of fading. A church here in Indianapolis that we were part of for a couple of years shows signs of this drift already. A church in Cincinnati that our Indianapolis congregation tried to use as a pattern has drifted even farther, and seems to have ceased growing.

There's been some stir this past month over Michael Spenser's essay "The Coming Evangelical Collapse" in the Christian Science Monitor (first published in three posts in his blog "Internet Monk." He didn't claim Evangelicals will disappear totally, but thinks they will lose half their numbers, much of their funding, and their societal clout (Michael is a Southern Baptist, by the way, and seems quite committed to them). I think I see some of the same things that concern him (I blogged last year about rural churches having an appearance of strength without the substance).

The difference between Michael and me, I guess, is that I see some hope that this collapse is not merely a human thing. Back in January Frank Viola posted one of his old messages on his blog, "Reimagining Church," from a passage in Hebrews: "He [God] takes away the first that He may establish the second." Frank traced this pattern in God's dealing with His people through history. Jesus said in the opening of John 15: "I am the True Vine, and my Father is the Vinedresser. Any branch in me that does not bear fruit He takes away...." I think we are going to see some deadwood removed in the coming years, so that God can do something else. I'm afraid the Evangelical church is going to collapse because God has already given it two wake-up calls and most of them kept on in their own happy little rut. And while there may be some things lost that we may miss, my main concern is to be part of what God is doing, and to be the person He wants me to be.

Trust

2009-02-27T15:51:00.000-08:00

If you dig around in the archives of this blog, my second post, on April 18, 2007, was on "Authority and Respect." I don't want to repeat exactly what I said there, but lately I've been thinking about a related issue--trust. To a certain extent our current financial meltdown has been described as a lack of trust--trust between banks, trust in the investment system (a lot of people trusted Bernie Madoff, and got burned for it) trust in the auto companies, trust(or lack of it) in various institutions of our current society. The way the stock market has trended downward for nearly two months now may well indicate that investors do not put a whole lot of trust in the ability of our government to improve things.

I'm inclined to think of "trust" as being "applied respect." When a person or company or other entity has earned your respect, you are more willing to do business with them or work with them or rely on them. Some people do trust more easily than others--after all, there are some people who do buy the Brooklyn Bridge! Others are more cautious (I'm usually--not always, but usually-- one of the more cautious ones). Either extreme can cause problems.

But when you have trusted someone and they let you down in some way--cheated you, didn't do what they said they would do, lied to you, whatever the shortcoming--trust is broken. And it generally isn't that easy to fix. Because when trust is broken, respect dies too. And it will be harder to restore damaged respect than it was to gain it in the first place. Also, the more the guilty party whines about "You don't trust me!" the more the injured party is reminded of what happened when they trusted that person.

But what about forgiveness (for Christians, anyway)? Well, we have to be careful to distinguish between a hurtful action and its consequences, and between forgiveness and repentance. Forgiveness does not remove consequences; when we come to the cross our sins are forgiven, but the consequences of them in our lives remain: broken relationships, physical problems (just because an alcoholic comes to Christ and stays sober doesn't mean he is necessarily free from the risk of cirrhosis of the liver), financial problems, legal problems (just because Christ forgives a murderer doesn't mean he will not face prison or execution for his crime). Repentance, on the other hand, is really a necessary condition for forgiveness. It is more than regret or sorrow (some people are only sorry they got caught!); it is a regret to the point that you reject the behavior and resolve not to do it anymore. The Greek word used for "repent" in the New Testament actually means "to turn"--essentially to turn away from or turn around and go the other direction. It means there is going to be a change in the way you behave. But if there is no repentance...why should you expect forgiveness--or be trusted again?

Back to the current situation today: there is plenty of blame to go around for violating trust, from debtors and creditors to investors and brokers to the highest levels of government. And there are plenty of consequences for all of us; even those who didn't abuse credit will suffer from the loss of the value of their homes, from the economic conditions, and other consequences of the current meltdown. But unless there is repentance--at the individual level, the corporate level, the governmental level-- it is going to take a long, long time to restore trust in our society and economy. And until trust is restored, things cannot get very much better.

A Modest Proposal

2009-01-29T15:22:00.000-08:00

I know I said when I started this blog that I wasn't going to say much about politics. But this particular subject has been on my mind for a while, and it really is sort of bi-partisan--it digs at both parties equally, not just one. So let's run it up the flagpole and have some fun seeing if anybody salutes.

I am a lifelong history buff, and one thing I read years ago, can't even remember where or who wrote it, was that the American Revolution was essentially a quarrel between the American colonists and the "governing class" of Great Britain--the nobility, the professional politicians, the Members of Parliament, and the dregs and shirt-tail relations and castoffs of all the preceding who staffed what bureaucracy the British had at that time. Well, as I look at the current scene, I think there is a quarrel building between the American people and our own home-grown governing class--the politicians, members of Congress, their staffs, the bureaucrats of the various agencies, etc. When you look at the approval ratings for Congress, the indictments and criminal convictions of members of Congress and governors, the proposed laws and regulations that make no sense to ordinary folks, and the rest of what's going on, people in much of the country are getting disgusted with the whole thing. And I have an idea that may not totally fix it, but maybe it would help.

I think it is time for a new U.S. capital. Washington, D.C. was good enough when the whole country was east of the Mississippi, and thinly settled once you got away from the coast; but that situation changed over a century ago. And people in Washington have been getting farther and farther out of touch with the mass of the American people.

I suggest we build a new capital city, say out around where Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri come together. That would be a nice central location. But location in itself is not the whole answer. How do we get from here to there? LET 'EM WALK!!! Really, I do think that! Everybody currently working in Washington for the Federal government should have to walk, or maybe ride a bicycle, to the new capital. They can ship their stuff, but their bodies need the walk; not only will it be good exercise, but it will get them out among the people they serve for a while, and give them a chance to get acquainted again. The ones who've only lived in the big cities need to see just how much open space there still is out here in the heartland, and some of those who write regulations should have to spend the time among the people their regulations affect. Members of the House and Senate should have to start by walking their own state--whatever direction is the longest. It really won't disrupt the operations of government that much--departures can be scheduled so there aren't too many on the road at any one time, and there are such things as cell phones and fax machines to enable keeping in touch (wouldn't do them any harm to find out how spotty cell phone reception can be in the rural parts--or how far it can be to a Starbucks or a WiFi hotspot). And if anybody, especially Representatives and Senators, is too old and decrepit physically to do it (and they're welcome to take all the time they need--the more time among the people, the better) then maybe it is time to step aside and retire. A little fresh blood won't hurt.

And when they get there, let's do things a little differently. Washington wasn't built in a day, nor even a year. So let's only build enough office space for, say, five or ten staff people per member of Congress--to answer the phone and the mail and so on. That means the members of Congress, House and Senate, will have to do their own research and write their own legislation instead of having staffers write it. And speaking of legislation, let's require each Representative and Senator to to write out a copy of every bill, in his own handwriting, and present it before he can vote on it. That will have two results: it will guarantee that they have personally read the bill before they vote on it, and it will force them to keep the laws they vote on short, simple, and uncomplicated. It might also make them think more in terms of getting the other two branches to enforce the existing laws so they don't have to write new ones. It might even keep them busy enough they won't have time for dining with lobbyists, going on junkets, and getting into legal trouble. And anybody who feels too overworked is welcome to go back home and let somebody else try it for a while.

But what about the Fourth Estate, the Press? Let them walk, too. New Yorkers and the media have come up with the expression "fly-over country" to describe where the rest of us live. If any members of the current Washington press corps want press credentials for the new capital city, they should have to take an extended itinerary that meanders through all fifty states--they REALLY need to get back in touch with the people! Come to think of it, that would probably be the best route for the President, too--although I wouldn't blame him if he chose to walk separately from the Press. (As for the New Yorkers, they'd learn a lot more respect for the rest of us if we just quit shipping them food--let them live for a year or so on what they can grow within their own city limits.)

But what do we do with the old capital in Washington? It's got a lot of monuments, and we can turn the old government buildings into museums or tear them down and build any new monuments we'll want on their sites. Most government employees don't live in the city itself anymore; they live in the suburbs, out in Virginia and Maryland. And the people who actually do live in D.C. can have the rest of it themselves--as long as they pay for it themselves--no federal subsidies for anything beyond the monuments and new museums. We'll need that money for the new capital.

One more thing: to keep the new capital from ending up just as bad as the old one, let's require The Walk after every new election, for all elected officials and political appointees, and maybe every three or four years for the career bureaucrats in the agencies. After all, when Washington was first built, they all had to travel there by the conveyances available at that time--horseback, carriage, stagecoach or sailing ship. That helped keep them in touch with ordinary folks; even the early railroads didn't allow much distancing from the population. Cars and planes have done a lot to enable the governing class to insulate themselves off from the governed.

I know this is going to be hard to pull off. Some of it might be possible to accomplish by rules changes and executive orders, other parts might even take Constitutional amendments. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for this to happen, but it's been fun thinking about it. And just maybe, if enough of us did think about it and talk about it, the powers that be might get wind of it and start to take a hint or two.

Seeking the Experience?

2008-12-13T05:21:00.000-08:00

I figured out I was a charismatic over twenty years ago. And while I haven't "done it all" I have done a lot of it. I've been in places where we worshipped our heads off, danced in the aisles, seen healings (one time my wife received some healing she hadn't even sought as she walked by when someone else was being prayed for--never did know whether he got healed or not); I've spoken in tongues, received words from prophets, delivered a few myself, been part of a "laughing revival", been drunk on the Holy Spirit (never have been drunk on alcohol in my life, but that night I was drunk); never cast out any evil spirits, but I've known people who have; and finally figured out that I had walked in a form of the gift of discerning spirits for most of my adult life, even before I knew I was a charismatic.

But the best advice I ever heard on this came from one of the leaders of the Toronto Blessing. I can't even remember who it was, John Arnott or one of his associates. Right around the time they were asked to leave the Vineyard Association, he spoke at the Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati. And one of the things he said was, "Don't seek the experience--seek Jesus."

And he was right. I've seen a lot of people "seeking the experience"--lining up to be prayed over by a prophet (some almost treat it as if it were fortune-telling), running to the next big meeting, going to see the big-name worship leader or faith healer, running off to Kansas City or Brownville or wherever the next big happening is. And the hype goes on and the egos of the "leaders" get bigger and bigger.

But in recent years I've noticed something else going on. The first hint I picked up was when Frank Schaeffer, son of Francis Schaeffer (whom I've cited at times in this blog) left the heritage he'd grown up in to join the one of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. And he's not alone. A number of evangelicals have gone either Orthodox (including a couple of bloggers I read) or Roman Catholic (Sen. Sam Brownback used to be a Baptist, but is now RC). And some of the newer churches--some I've known of, and one I attended for a couple of years--have been getting into things like candles, incense, liturgies, Lectio Divina, Divine Hours--I've even heard someone teach that "spiritual disciplines" are how you "abide in Christ" (from John 15:4--the problem is, IMO, if you read the whole chapter, Jesus told how to abide in Him, and he said something else--more on this in another post sometime).

It's almost seemed for some years now that serious Christians are going in two different directions--some becoming more formal--liturgies, etc.--and others are becoming less formal--house churches, "free-range Christians" ( a term I picked up from Wayne Jacobsen). And I've realized for a long time that my own inclination is to less formality (maybe it's the redneck in me).

But lately something else about this situation has dawned on me. All the formal stuff--liturgies, incense, candles, Divine Hours--is another way of "seeking the experience." The "experiences" they seek are not the same "experiences" the charismatics went for, but the principle is the same. And the problem is, the "experiences" are not Jesus. And while for some the experiences may lead to Jesus Himself, all too many will stop short, just as all too many charismatics kept seeking experiences and never quite got all the way to Him.

So--Don't seek the experience, seek Jesus. If He knows the experience will be good for you, or is something you yourself need, He'll see that you get it. (That was my own attitude about tongues years ago.) But keep your focus on Him, not the experiences along the way. The best they can do is point you to Him, but if you focus on them, you can miss Him. And that road leads to emptiness and the need for more and more "experiences" to try to fill up the void that only He can fill.

Values, anyone?

2008-12-06T15:16:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't posted anything in a long time--it's been a busy year for me. I've wanted to get back to it, but just haven't managed it. For a while after we moved I didn't even have Internet access at home. But through it all I did keep reading.

One of the things I read this year--actually re-read-- was one of Francis Schaeffer's later books, "How Should We Then Live." Some of the things in that book struck me this time, especially in light of the election, the economic events of this year, and some other happenings. He believed that most people in this country had drifted away from the Judeo-Christian values of the past and were left with two "impoverished" values--personal peace and affluence, which he described this way:

"Personal peace means just to be let alone, not to be troubled by the troubles of other people, whether across the world or across the city--to live one's life with minimal possibilities of being personally disturbed. Personal peace means wanting to have my personal life pattern undisturbed in my lifetime, regardless of what the result will be in the lifetimes of my children and grandchildren. Affluence means an overwhelming and ever-increasing prosperity--a life made up of things, things, and more things--a success judged by an ever-higher level of material abundance."

Schaeffer wrote this in the mid-1970s, and I think the trend he saw got worse in the years that followed. But on September 11, 2001 Americans' personal peace took a hard hit, and at first many stepped up and reponded to the need to act against the new enemies. But as the years passed and the struggle continued it has become clear that many of our people no longer have the stomach for long drawn-out action. "Personal peace" does not provide men and women with the stamina for difficulties that cannot be resolved in short order. "Personal peace" demands that everything be settled in an hour or so, like on television, so we can go back to our own little affairs.

And now "affluence" is taking hits. The "dot-com" bust at the turn of the new century was the first warning, but the "housing bust" of the last couple of years and credit crisis of the last few months have shattered our comfortable complacency. Just a few years ago, when I was contracting in southern Indiana, if my customers felt secure in the balances in their 401K and mutual fund accounts, and their houses continued appreciating, they spent money--a few spent money like drunken sailors (the ones I was more comfortable with tended to be more careful). Now stocks are down, retirement accounts are shrinking, house prices have plummeted, new home construction is way down, and the news is full of doom and gloom.

I do not claim to know what will happen. I don't think it will be as bad as the worst of the predictions, but I don't put much stock in the rosiest projections, either. There have been a lot of excesses in a lot of areas--mismanagement, misuse of credit, misplaced trust, and others, both in business and in government. I think we as a people are having our assumptions and our belief systems tested--will they hold water or not? My hope is that many will see the emptiness and shallowness of what they trusted in, and turn to the Source of Living Water, and values that will see them through tough times.

Schaeffer and the Emerging Church

2008-02-03T17:23:00.000-08:00

After a long absence, I'm back, and with some new material. For Christmas my wife and kids went together and got me the Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer-- a five-volume set containing the 22 books he wrote. I had 8 of them before, and had read a couple more over the years, but never had all his writings available before. So I've been working through them, and finding a lot to appreciate.

In "The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century" (originally published in 1970, apparently revised and updated for the "Complete Works" in 1981) Schaeffer declared in Chapter 4, "Form and Freedom in the Church," that the church would have to change to meet the challenges of our changing culture. He laid out eight Biblical mandates for the form of the church: That there would be congregations of Christians, that they would meet in a special way on the first day of the week, that local elders should be responsible for the churches, with deacons to see to material needs, that these should be chosen according to the Biblical qualifications Paul laid out in his letters, that they must take discipline seriously, that local churches may come together as in Acts 15 to decide some issues, and that the Lord's Supper and baptism must be practiced. He saw these as basic and unchangeable; but within the framework of these forms, he said that the church had great freedom to change to meet current situations, as long as the leadership of the Holy Spirit was followed. He saw church buildings as optional; if you have one, be thankful, but if you don't your congregation is no less a church. He did not even mention professional pastors (seminary-trained or otherwise). He believed the church should meet on the first day of the week, but said the time of day "was left totally open". He didn't even touch on the proper music for services!

I'm going to quote a few passages:

"I am not saying that it is wrong to add other things as the Holy Spirit so leads, but I am saying that we should not fix these things forever--changing times may change the leading of the Holy Spirit in regard to these. And certainly the historic accidents of the past (which led to certain things being done) have no binding effect at all."

From Chapter 5:

"Let us speak where the Scripture has spoken. But let us notice that we must also respect the silences. Within every form, there is freedom....I suggest that where the Bible is silent, it indicates a freedom within the scriptural form."

"If the church will allow freedom for changing situations, churches will be here until Jesus comes back. But let us not mistake historical accidents and what is sociologically comfortable out of our past for God's absolutes either in rules of personal dress or in the forms that individual churches take in individual situations."

And finally "Let us be thankful there is a given form. Then let us be careful to make sure that we are not bound by unbiblical forms, by forms which we have become used to and which have no absolute place in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. In regard to the polity and practice of the church, except for the clearly given Biblical norms, every other detail is open to negotiation among God's people under the leadership of the Holy Spirit."

He was writing these things 27 years ago at least, maybe 38 years ago. And today, change is happening in some places: house churches, emerging churches, even "free-range" Christians--and some who cling to the old ways and spend a lot of time bashing those who are making changes. He did not see much future for those who "ossified" (his word) in the old ways and refused to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

By the time he died in 1984, Francis Schaeffer was widely regarded as one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth-century church. But unlike many, he did not spend his later years reliving the battles of his past, but focused on what his readers would need to do and be in the years to come. He was a conservative Presbyterian, not a Charismatic or Pentacostal, but I believe he was a genuine prophet of God.

Another Lewis Quote

2007-12-09T07:17:00.000-08:00

If anybody hasn't figured it out yet, C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite Christian writers. And this passage has resonated with me, probably because I've made my living for years working on houses. He admitted he borrowed the idea from George MacDonald; I've never read enough of MacDonald's stuff to find the original reference. Here's Lewis' take:

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of--throwing out a wing here, putting up an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage; but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself." "Mere Christianity", p.205

My life has had a lot of unexpected changes and turnings compared to where I was, say 40 years ago. But I've learned to trust the Architect, and I have no wish to go back to my own original plans.

My Van

2007-12-02T04:08:00.000-08:00

I decided it's getting time for something a little light-hearted around here, so I'll update on one of the things that's been going on for me. I had to replace my work truck this fall. Now, I know Rednecks are supposed to drive pickups, but I'm a bit contrary (which is itself a Redneck trait) and I like vans. My stuff stays dry (even caps on pickups often leak); I can access my gear from the back, from the side doors, and even from the cab; and when I get home for the day, I don't have to take my tools out of an open truck bed, I just lock the doors and go in the house. I hadn't planned on buying another truck this year; I liked the one I had and was hoping it could go for a few more years. But out of the blue, one day a shift went sour and its transmission changed from 4 speeds forward to 2 speeds forward--and no reverse! When I hit the Internet to figure out what was wrong, it turned out to be a very common problem. And apparently in the mid-90s all three American carmakers switched to using automatic transmissions controlled by the engine's computer, and all of them have some kind of problems--stamped parts that break, oil passages that are too small and cause failure from inadequate lubrication--makes me wonder if too many of their old engineers retired and the new ones weren't as smart as expected.

Anyway, I found a 1991 15-passenger, already minus most of the seats. It's early enough to avoid the electronic transmission and its problems, yet only had 75,000 miles--for us, that's practically new (I usually buy them with 100-150,000 and drive them for a couple of years until the wheels fall off--when we part with a car, there usually isn't much left)(I should also add that Indiana hits you an excise tax on the value of your car every year when you get your plates, so it's Old Car Heaven around here--a new car can cost you 3-4 times or more in plates).

The fellow I bought it from had started dealing with the condition of the paint (seems like most Detroit paint jobs since 1980 peel off after 10-12 years). He primed it, using spray cans. I had a compressor and a spray gun available, but I've never been that good at spray-painting, and I didn't have any place indoors to do it--this one-ton van is too tall to fit under a normal garage door, even if there was room to get it in the garage--and there isn't. But I had heard something, and googled "painting your car with a roller" and found it. My truck now has a real "Redneck paint job"--Rustoleum, applied with foam rollers and foam brushes. No, it isn't going to win any prizes at car shows, but I wasn't going to enter it in any car shows anyway. It's a 16-year-old work truck, not a show car. I was concerned about that gray primer just blending into the mist on a cloudy, rainy day--now, with a white roof and "electric blue" body, it shows up real well, on the road and in parking lots.

I found where Hot Rod magazine tested out this method of painting a vehicle. They concluded that it passed the "5-5 test"--if you're 5 feet away and the car is moving at 5 mph, it looks okay. It's an industrial paint, just a lot cheaper than the standard automotive paints--you can buy it at Home Depot and Lowe's. And the guys who've had it for some years say you can match the paint perfectly later, you can't always do that with car paint.

Anyway, that's one of the things I did this fall when I wasn't blogging.

Which HasBeen Put First?

2007-11-29T04:09:00.000-08:00

I was re-reading a C.S. Lewis book last night and came across this passage:

"And no sooner is it possible to distinguish the rite from the vision of God than there is a danger of the rite becoming a substitute for, and a rival to, God Himself. Once it can be thought of separately, it will; and it may then take on a rebellious, cancerous life of its own. There is a stage in a child's life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas and Easter. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began 'Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen'. This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer be sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat. They have taken on an independent, and therefore a soon withering, life." from "Reflections on the Psalms", pp.48-9.

Reading this now at the beginning of the annual "Christmas rush" it struck me that our society has largely chosen the ritual over the spiritual. Think of the controversies the last few years over the euphemisms being promoted over names of items associated with Christmas--"holiday trees" and "Winter Break" are only a couple. Some want to keep the festival while discarding the Reason for it. But removing the spiritual element also removes the moral restraint, and so the festival becomes one of excess and overindulgence. And once that pattern takes over, it always escalates; it always takes more and more to keep up the pretense of satisfying the urge, because our people have chosen the Lesser and are trying to fill up the void left when we rejected the Greater.

A Warning

2007-11-26T18:13:00.000-08:00

One of the most chilling passages I've ever seen in the Bible is Matthew 7:22-23: "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them,'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.' "(NASB)

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is talking about the Judgment Day. And those whom He describes Himself saying this to are not the pagans, the atheists, the hardened sinners--He will be saying this to people who thought they amounted to something in the church, people who did miracles and wonders in His name. He calls them "you who practice lawlessness." What is "lawlessness"? It's rejecting God's law; and Jesus elsewhere summed up the whole law in two things: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. In other words, he is effectively saying, if you don't walk in love for God and man, you are none of Mine, and no religious activity, even miracle-working, can overcome that lack.

This passage is not an isolated one-time thing; it is echoed through the rest of the NT. Just before His arrest, Jesus was saying things to the disciples like "Love one another as I have loved you" and "By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another." Late in his life John was writing things like "If any man does not love his brother, the love of the Father is not in him" and "If you do not love your brother that you do see, how can you love God who you do not see." Paul wrote a whole chapter on love in I Cor. 13, and started out by saying it was "a more excellent way" than the tongues and prophesying he had just written about. One more from John: "For love is of God, and every one who loves is born of God, and knows God." And that implies that those who do not love do not know God.

In my life I've run across a lot of Christians who are more interested in arguing than in love--arguing over End Times, whether the "sign gifts" have ceased or not, Calvinism/Arminianism, liberal theology/conservative theology (there seems to be a whole cottage industry these days of blogs and websites to identify who is orthodox and who's a heretic) and nowadays over the postmodern thing--I see quite a few who are "agin" it. And if there's one thing I've seen again and again over the years, it's that when people start arguing they quit loving. I've seen at least one church destroyed because the leaders argued instead of loving.

I'm not saying these other issues have no importance at all. But it seems clear to me that Jesus, John, and Paul all considered Love the Most Important Thing. And any time we take one of these lesser things and try to act like it's the Most Important and forget that Love is the real Most Important Thing, we are making our own priorities higher than God's, and are in danger of the final rejection of Matthew 7:23.

Personal Update

2007-11-22T16:47:00.000-08:00

I haven't done this before, but at least one reader expressed concern about my wife's recent health problems, so I figured I should report. She is doing better. Not any cut-and-dried cause, but it looks like a familiar suspect. Miriam had a brief hospital stay almost five years ago--heart-attack symptoms, but no actual heart attack, low cholesterol, no blocked arteries. It turned out to be formaldehyde poisoning--she had had a small business making tents for historical reenactors (we've done some of that ourselves since 1993). Some of the canvas was treated with a flame retardant containing formaldehyde. We had figured out that every time she made a flame-retardant tent she got another kidney stone; but in early 2003 some other things pushed her over the edge, and she got really sick. Formaldehyde doesn't cause hives or sniffles; it interferes with liver and kidney function. We did find a doctor who recognized it and helped, but it took a long time to de-tox from the experience. She is still very sensitive to a lot of chemicals--even latex paint bothers her for a couple of weeks after it is applied.

Last winter Miriam got a job selling flowers at Costco here in Indianapolis, as a contract employee for the flower wholesaler. She liked the job, enjoyed being around people, had some play for creativity. But there is a strong possibility that the dyes and pesticides used on the flowers are bothering her. She has given notice that she will not renew her contract next month, and her supervisor is looking for someone else to take over (supervisor is not happy about it; Miriam's sales were often among the best in the region, until she got sick). She is feeling much better after some rest and de-toxing activity, and around February she'll look for a new job.

Postmodernism and the Doctrine of the Fall

2007-11-11T18:07:00.000-08:00

Despite the rantings of some church leaders about how awful pomo is, I personally think it fits better with one basic Biblical doctrine than modernism does. The modern assumption is that man is basically good, and with proper education, health care, and the elimination of poverty, everything will be fine. The Bible teaches that man was created good, but rebelled against his Creator; and ever since, man has been flawed. Compared to what he was, he is now flawed morally, intellectually (researchers figured out years ago we only use about 10% of our brain's capacity) and physically. This means you can't always count on people doing the right thing; even the smartest have blind spots and weaknesses, and very few are as smart as they think they are; and our bodies run down, wear out, and succumb to diseases.

It is common to claim that postmoderns don't believe in absolute truth. But what if there are some absolutes, but you can't rely on fallen Man, as he now is, to (1) recognize one if he stumbles across it, (2) understand it completely if he does recognize it, and (3) express it accurately to someone else so they can understand it? I think the real net effect is nearly the same; you don't have properly functioning absolutes, not because there are none, but because Man doesn't "get it" when he sees one.

Which of these two views of Man--the modern mantra that Man is basically good, or the historic Christian teaching that Man is marred by the effects of sin and death--actually corresponds better to the real world we live in? If Man is good, why are there such people as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein, Ahmedinejad, Charles Manson, and the neighborhood mugger? But according to the Bible, such people are to be expected because of the present nature of man. Even when he means well, Man does not always do what he knows he ought to do (I've worked in residential construction for the last 20 years, and I've seen way too much shoddy, substandard, unsafe, and just plain WRONG work done by supposedly trained and licensed tradespeople--and missed by the building inspectors, too!) And there are some people who don't even mean well.

I think the postmodern shift is going to allow us to get back to some basic Biblical concepts that the modern world rejected and tried to ignore. As Brian MacLaren expressed it, the modern world was not a bed of roses for Christianity; let's look for the opportunities the new situation may bring.

Is postmodernism really "back to the future?"

2007-11-10T04:35:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I posted anything here--you know the saying, "Life is what happens while you were making other plans."? My wife has been ill (doctors still don't know what or why), several car breakdowns (I'm finding the Internet more useful than the repair manuals you buy at the parts stores, but you have to get home to use it.) Anyway, enough has been going on to push blogging to a low priority. BUT--lately somebody came over and read my postings lately, read the whole schmutz, apparently, AND LEFT COMMENTS!! So I know he was here! (Thank you, ded, for giving this tired blogger a shot in the arm, and maybe a needed kick in the pants!)

Going back to the title of this blog, I thought I'd say some more about the "postmodern" thing. While some Christians have come down hard "agin it", I think they're overreacting to the first stages when they should be pitching in to have a chance to help shape the final product. A few months ago Harrison Scott Key, on the World Magazine blog, made the remark that "postmodern" with a small "p" really only means "what comes after 'modern'."

Yes, there are some common characteristics. But I think a case can be made that even these are not necessarily opposed to Christianity. For instance, take distrust of authority: I admit I have a pretty strong distrust of human authority. But it has nothing to do with any academic philosophy or literary criticism; rather it is rooted in the doctrine of the Fall, as I learned it from the writings of C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer. Because human beings are fallen creatures who do not always do what is right, I am not going to put unlimited trust in any human authority figure, in government, business, or the church. (I do not have a problem with God's authority--He isn't a fallen human being). The idea the man is basically good is not a Christian teaching; it is one of the results of the modern worldview. It did not take hold in this country until after the Civil War. In fact, the writers of the US Constitution definitely did not believe men could be trusted with absolute authority; that's why they wrote so many checks and balances into the Constitution. For many years I regarded myself as something of a "throwback" or pre-modern, because some of my attitudes were more common among Christians of the late 1700s rather than in the 1960s and 70s. And I think the postmodern shift may be recovering something valuable that people in the last century moved away from.

To give an idea what this can mean, from something that happened a few years ago: We attended a new church that was starting up in the Lawrenceburg area, a Vineyard church. The pastor made a poor decision about the order of service. It was a poor decision for two reasons: he rejected what most of his people wanted; and because he had agreed publicly to what they wanted, it put him in a position of going back on his word. Under the Vineyard church structure, the local pastor pretty much has the authority to do whatever he wants. But I can't find anything in Scripture that teaches that having authority automatically protects you from being stupid, or protects you from the consequences of bad decisions (half the people left that church in a couple of weeks). Look at Rehoboam in the Old Testament--he shot off his mouth and was left with only a fraction of his kingdom's territory and population.

Well, life is intruding again; have to get out and do some things. I'll try to get some more posting in soon.

What's Wrong With Gambling?

2007-09-19T16:50:00.000-07:00

My last post drew a comment from Scott Roche: "Of course gambling is no longer seen as a sin by most Christians. Just out of curiosity, what would you use to justify that it is?" I found the comment last night, but was too tired to respond then. I also wanted time to think about it before writing about it.

It is true that gambling is not directly condemned in the Bible as some other activities are--drunkenness, adultery, and so on. And C.S. Lewis had one of his characters point out in "The Pilgrim's Regress" that God Himself could be considered an inveterate gambler--He takes risks to accomplish His purposes, risks that apparently He considers worthwhile. And on the human level, there are many risk-taking situations in business and other areas that could be thought of as gambling.

But I do think there is a significant difference between the risk-taking mentioned above and the gambling for money--poker in its various forms, slot machines, betting on the horses, numbers games, state lotteries, etc.--that go on today. (The way some people play the stock market could be included too.)

Scott, my first approach to answering your question is to do as Jesus often did and ask you a question in return: How does taking someone's money at cards or with dice fit in with "Love your neighbor as yourself"? Or "Love one another as I have loved you"? How do you seriously love someone and yet take his money? (And if you think the corporations who run the casinos and manage the lotteries are still fair game, go back and look up what Jesus said about the quibbling the scribes and Pharisees used to get around the Law at times. Corporations are a legal fiction in our culture, but they still have people involved--shareholders, employees, management--and they may punish those who lose too much of their money.)

The other conclusion I come to is that gambling for money comes under the heading of "coveting" which is the subject of the tenth Commandment: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor." (Ex. 20:17, NASB) "Anything that belongs to your neighbor" would include his cash. I was taught in a theology class that the Ten Commandments are rooted in the nature of God Himself: He is truth, so lying is wrong; He is faithful, so adultery is wrong; and because He is generous, coveting is wrong. The New Testament both condemns coveting and encourages generosity in the followers of Christ. If a Christian goes into a casino or a "friendly" card game with the expectation of coming out with more money than he carried in, he's probably coveting.
(Of course, I can only say "probably", but God knows the heart--for sure.)

One other standard of evaluation, advanced by Jesus: Look at the fruit. What has been the fruit of gambling in Dearborn County, Indiana? Well, the local governments and the state definitely have more money than before--the town of Lawrenceburg and the county have spent money like drunken sailors for the last ten years (they've also had to fend off attempts by the state to increase its share and reduce theirs). The state seems to go from one fiscal crisis to another, so the casinos have not been a real help. Lawrenceburg and Dearborn County have more problems with drunken driving and crime than they used to--they had to expand the capacity of the local court system to handle the increase. There are a lot of ads offering help for people with gambling problems. And since there are now three riverboat casinos in three consecutive counties, the one in the middle is struggling at times because the other two siphon off so much of the traffic. I really can't say the results are that impressive.

By the way, Scott's statement that "gambling is no longer seen as a sin by most Christians" fits in with something I did say in that last post: that too many churches are full of "churchgoers" rather than disciples of Jesus.

Appearances Can Be Deceiving

2007-09-09T16:46:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about my last post, and the comment that it came from. And I ended up looking back at one of the events that prepared me to think about the problems in today's church structures and practices.

Back in the mid-'90s we were living in Dearborn County, Indiana, on the Ohio River just west of Cincinnati, Ohio. The state of Indiana had recently decided to have riverboat gambling on the Ohio River, and various counties were deciding whether or not to get involved. Dearborn County's officials chose to pursue it, and the issue was put on the ballot.

Now Dearborn County was a changing area. The eastern part was turning into suburbs of Cincinnati, with subdivisions filling in the open spaces. The towns--Greendale, Lawrenceburg, and Aurora, were picking up some new residents from the city, but hadn't visibly changed yet. The western half- to two-thirds of the county was still predominantly rural.

It also appeared to be as religious as any other small-town/rural area. There were the usual mainline Protestant churches in the towns, and a Catholic church in Lawrenceburg. There were a couple of megachurches in Bright, up in the suburban area near the Ohio line, a Methodist one and a Christian Church/Church of Christ. And the countryside was dotted with church buildings, mostly of the traditional denominations--Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and a sprinkling of others. They weren't on every crossroads, but there were plenty of them.

There was an appearance of strength of religious faith in the area. And when the ballot issue on riverboat gambling came up, nearly all the churches opposed it. (And it wasn't often they agreed on much.) Yet when the vote came, the gambling issue sailed right through, regardless of the opposition of the churches. Within a year the casino was open. The churches of Dearborn County were not as strong as they appeared to be.

I guess this event caused me to look a little closer. I began to notice that those numerous country churches mostly had only six to ten cars in the lot on Sunday morning. I got wind of a Methodist pastor and his wife, also a pastor, who served two churches each to make a living. Former church buildings in the region ended up with new uses.

And to be quite honest, that gambling initiative could not have passed without the votes of a significant number of churchgoers. That leads me to think that many churchgoers are not living lives shaped by their faith, but by the general culture. The church system in this country has for many years been producing churchgoers, but not real disciples.

Since that time, I've seen a lot more: surveys documenting that most Christians live pretty much like their non-Christian neighbors, estimates of 20,000 churches that will close their doors in the next decade or two, church leaders who don't live and behave like Christians...the list could go on and on. But things started getting a lot more obvious to me after that election.

A Basic Question

2007-09-02T17:45:00.001-07:00

I've been participating in some discussion on Steve Sensenig's blog, Theological Musings. and Steve paid me what I guess is the blogger's ultimate compliment: he took my comment and made it into a guest post in its own right. While I don't know that I should put the whole discussion here, I am putting up the new post here on my own blog. So here goes:
Looking back at this whole discussion, I come back to this basic question–What is Christianity? Is it
(a) a set of activities in a sacred place on Sunday morning, with a list of tenets to be subscribed to as a condition of participation, coupled with rules for behavior, enforced by the official leadership

or

(b) a way of living, every day, 24/7, in relationship with Jesus Himself, and with others who also are in relationship with Him.

Going through the words of Jesus Himself in the Gospels, I cannot find anything that leads to (a); in fact, he often rebuked the leaders of the (a) system of the day. I grew up in churches, have been in churches all my life, and my conclusion now is that in most situations, the more of (a) you have, the less you have of (b); in fact, (a) tends to replace and eliminate (b)!

How did “Abide in me” come to mean “Be at the church building every time the doors are open”?

If you want to improve your relationship with someone, say your wife, do you go off to an auditorium and sit while someone who claims to know her better than you do lectures for half an hour? Or would the time be better spent going somewhere alone with your wife and conversing with her for half an hour? Which really builds the relationship with her?

I’m afraid most humans are too lazy for their own good. We’d rather have a list of rules to keep than try to walk in the Spirit. We want a doctrinal statement to assent to rather than trying to learn to hear His voice ourselves. The Hebrews started it at Mt. Sinai–they wanted Moses to hear God for them.

And for those who would say “It’s some of each, both (a) and (b)” my question is How can it be both, when (a) eliminates (b)? I think, and I suspect [frequent commenter] ded would agree (based on what he’s written here), that they are two different things, coming from two different sources. If God meant it to be a symbiosis, it would be a stable symbiosis, not constantly drifting in one direction.

To look at it another way: What has been the “fruit” of (a) in this country? Do we have a vibrant church that is transforming its culture? Are non-believers coming to Christ in droves? Are believers “turning the world upside down”?

Or is the picture more like this: “Our bookshelves are full of Christian books and videos. We have churches on every major street, more staff workers than ever before, large Sunday school departments, cell systems, mega- and meta-church seminars. We have Christian bumper stickers, political action groups, huge parachurch ministries–and in the midst of it all, we have lost every major city in North America.” Back in 1999, Wolfgang Simson included that quote from Ted Haggard in his book “Houses that Change the World”.

Maybe we do need to lay aside everything that’s been written since and go back to the New Testament for our original instructions.

Bob Girard Has Gone Home

2007-07-15T06:46:00.000-07:00

Most people may never have heard of him. He wasn't a big-name speaker or denominational executive. He didn't found a megachurch, didn't land in one of the "hot rock" pulpits. He didn't have a radio or tv show. But for many of us who read his two small books back in the 1970s, his words were a breath of fresh air, and had a profound influence on some of us.

Bob Girard was a Wesleyan pastor in Arizona who had the courage to follow God's leading out of "church as usual" and into uncharted territory. He got fed up with programs and began to look for better ways to live as Christians. He found some things out, restructured his congregation for small groups, and eventually they gave their building back to the denomination and operated as a network of house churches. The thing folded later, but their influence lives on. Bob's two books, "Brethren, Hang Loose" and "Brethren, Hang Together," are still being sold on Amazon.com. Many of us who got into small group life in churches in the 70s read his books and learned from them; his writing helped us avoid many pitfalls and saved a lot of headaches. He had to learn to let go and trust the Holy Spirit to lead through others, something many pastors never learn at all.

Anyway, many years and additional books later (and for me and my wife, quite a few churches and small groups later), Bob Girard has gone home. He left this life on June 19 of this year. I found out about it almost accidentally, because I clicked on a link to the blog of the writer of an article I had just read. That eventually led me to his obituary, the blog of one of his family members, and a website that has now been started for him. He seems to have quite a legacy: a fairly large family of children and grandchildren and their spouses (looks like quite a few of them are still strong in the faith) and an untold number of spiritual children who follow in his steps today.

Going It Alone?

2007-07-04T12:19:00.000-07:00

There are some things in the Christian life you can't do alone. You can pray alone, you can sing alone (for some people, that's a plus!) you can read your Bible alone, you can listen to teaching and preaching alone through the modern miracles of radio and recording. But have you ever tried to do the Lord's Supper alone? It's pretty lame.

Even the name "Communion" says you can't do it alone. It comes from the same Latin root as the words "common" and "community,' which has its base in the Greek word "koinonia," which means "in common" or "fellowship." It's something you do as a group, not alone.

While I'm on this subject, I'll say a bit about the communion practice at one particular church we were in back in the late 1970s and early '80s. We allowed plenty of time for the Lord's Supper (this was before the church growth experts or the seeker-friendly churches --whoever it was-- decided services shouldn't be longer than an hour or so). We'd sing a song, have a meditation and prayer, and then instead of passing the elements, we went up to get them. A father might get them for his whole family and take them back to the seats. Or the whole family might go up together. Friends might go up together. Occasionally friends who had been at odds during the week would go up together and use the opportunity to make peace and seal it with Communion. People might kneel and pray up front before partaking. And however long it took, the rest of us just went on worshipping. It was very relaxed. And yet very important. And in most of the churches we've been in since, it has always felt rushed, and it seems to me, regarded as less important than the sermon. And that bugs me, because the New Testament in at least one spot uses the language "On the first day of the week, when the disciples met together to break bread...." That sounds to me like their real reason for meeting was not the sermon, but the Lord's Supper. I'm afraid that in most churches the sermon has, implicitly or explicitly, been regarded as the center of the service (many churches only have Communion at all a few times a year) when Biblically it is not central, and may not have been a standard part of the first-century church at all.

More on Fruit

2007-06-23T04:07:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday evening our small group was discussing the weekend's sermon, which was about joy, one of the fruits of the Spirit. During the talking, something struck me. We often talk about "feeling" joy. But really, if you look closely at the various fruits of the Spirit, they aren't feelings, they are attitudes. And attitudes are something we choose. We can even change them. Sometimes we choose unconsciously, without thinking. But they are chosen, not something determined by our circumstances.

Sometimes in raising our kids we had to push them to examine their attitudes toward things, and maybe persuade them to change their attitudes in particular areas. And it often worked quite well.

But what about the feelings? Well, if you bring your attitudes around to what they ought to be, the feelings will usually come around after a while. Feelings are useful followers--they make lousy leaders.

Monuments

2007-06-17T05:53:00.000-07:00

Some years ago I came up with what I call the "Monument Theory of Church History." It works like this: In every generation, God is doing something; people are drawn to it, and after some years, most sit down at that spot and build a monument to what God did. One result of this is that the landscape is littered with Christian monuments to God's past activity--Lutheran monuments, Presbyterian monuments, Methodist monuments, Christian Church/Church of Christ monuments (the one I grew up in), Pentacostal monuments...all over the map. Even the Jesus Movement of the early 1970s produced a few. The Vineyard churches grew out of that time, and while John Wimber, their most prominent leader, lived they stayed vital. But he died in 1997, and five or six years after that I began to see signs that the concrete was starting to set. (We spent about 10 years in Vineyard churches in Cincinnati and in Batesville, In.)

The trouble is, while people are building monuments, God moves on and does something else, usually in a different spot, with different leaders, different focus, different aspect of truth He wants to highlight. And I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I don't want to spend the rest of my life polishing some monument; I'd rather be part of what God is doing now. Yes, it is great that God did something in this spot maybe 20 years ago; but the monument that's been erected here, while very nice, is not Him--and I want to be where He is now.

There's a place in south-central Kentucky, about 10 miles or so from the Tennessee line, called Red River Meeting House. Around 1787 a log Presbyterian church was built there. The region was known as "Rogues' Harbor" for the lawlessness of its inhabitants (travelers often disappeared while passing through). After several years of prayer by the small group of faithful Christians in the area, a Communion service in 1800 set off a major revival, the first of the frontier camp meetings. A visiting clergyman hosted another event at his church at Cane Ridge in northern Kentucky, and what the historians call the Second Great Awakening was well under way (the first was in the mid-1700s, involving John Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and others.). "Rogues' Harbor" changed its character and lost the name, and became known for hospitality to strangers. It also became a center of anti-slavery activity--slave owners who had believed Negroes to be not fully human and without souls saw the Holy Spirit falling on whites and blacks alike and were convinced that they had been wrong about slavery.

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church, a small denomination that formed out of the camp meetings, still owns the property. The original log church was followed by several buildings (the original log building's site is now part of the cemetery). When the last of them was disintegrating in the 1950s, and the congregation no longer existed, a group of local people partnered with the Cumberland P.C. to preserve it as a historic site. A replica of the log church was built on part of the remaining open land (and replaced in the 1970s after vandals burned the first one). In October each year a weekend commorative gathering in honor of the original camp meeting is held by a mixed group of local people and historical reenactors. There is still a feeling of peace that hangs over the grounds.

We (me, my wife Miriam, and my younger son Caleb) were part of the commemorative gatherings for several years. Caleb and I were part of the impromptu band that played for the services, we camped with the reenactors, we enjoyed ourselves there. But there came a time when we concluded that it was time to put our energy into what God is doing now. It isn't that monuments are wrong; but sometimes a good thing crowds out better things. We need to learn from the past, but we must live in the present, and if possible build for the future.

I once read an interview with Carol Wimber, John Wimber's widow. She said he was never that worried about the future of the Vineyard, but that his hope was that their kids would find what God was doing next and go be part of it. I think he was right.

The Guitar

2007-05-28T12:35:00.000-07:00

Most people think the guitar is a musical instrument. I see it as a bit more complicated than that. To me, the guitar is a family of 10 to 12 musical instruments (or more, depending on how you count). Most of them have some similarities--most have six strings, most are mainly made of wood--but there are differences, too, including more or less than six strings, use of metal in place of wood--and some look quite different from the rest.

Part of those differences stem from the fact that those 10 to 12 instruments are used in even more styles of music, and each type of music puts different demands on the guitar and the guitar player. The "licks" a bluegrass guitarist uses would be out of place in rock--the rocker's playing wouldn't go over in a jazz setting--the jazz player doesn't measure up in a classical guitarist's eyes--get the picture? As a matter of fact there have been times when it seemed to me that after playing guitar, the most common activity of guitar players is looking down their noses at each other. They get to feeling that their musical genre and type of guitar are superior to the others. There are some who aren't so snobby, but all too many are.

And that's to be expected, really. Guitar players are not angels; they're fallen human beings, just like the rest of us. So enjoy the music--as many styles as you can--but when they quit playing and start putting each other down, just take it with a grain (or five or six) of salt!

My Musical Family

2007-05-27T18:29:00.000-07:00

I haven't said too much about music here so far, but it has always been a part of my life. As far back as I can remember, I was singing. When I was fifteen I took up playing guitar, and kept singing. In high school I was in Concert Choir and Varsity Ensemble, as well as church choirs. And when the Hawkins family got together, we made music. My father played guitar, mandolin and tenor banjo (he had a couple of violins, too, but in his own words, "he never got the squawks out"). He had played in a few bands, working the bars around Harrison and Ross, Ohio in the late 1930s and early '40s (near Cincinnati). Once they got on the radio--live show, before the days of DJs. My grandfather played guitar and mandolin, my grandmother played piano and guitar. But I only learned last year that my great-grandfather, who died before I was born, had also played guitar. We were together, playing music, and my Dad sang one of his old songs that I'd remembered him singing over the years, but my son Caleb was struck by it and asked him to write down the words, then got him to talk about where he learned it--turned out that when he was little, his grandfather, my great-grandfather, had played his guitar and sung it to him!

My sons carry on the family tradition. Nathan, the older, plays guitar and electric bass. But Caleb, our youngest kid, took after my Dad--he wants to play everything. He started with guitar, then banjo, then mandolin, then fiddle. Added upright bass (he had one for a while, but sold it--they take a lot of room). He had dulcimer lessons from a friend of ours some years ago, now he has one--it's about the only instrument he's had formal lessons on. Also added harmonica and dobro recently. He's messed around with keyboards at times. Once in a while he plays the electric bass he got from Nathan.

We still take our instruments when we go to visit my folks. Dad will be 88 this fall, but he still gets out the guitar and plays with us, at least for a while. I'll sing and play a couple of their old favorites, and Caleb will either do something old or some of the songs he's written (unlike me, he is a songwriter). I've also been singing to our youngest granddaughter, born this year, and she seems to like it. Looks like the tradition will go on.

A Commumion Meditation

2007-05-20T04:19:00.000-07:00

The day after feeding the 5000, Jesus was in the synagogue in Capernaum, where He made the statement, "I am the bread of life." Later on in that discussion He said, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your fathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever."

This teaching freaked out his listeners. The Jews had no tradition of cannibalism, and the Law of Moses required them to avoid eating or drinking blood. John records "From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him." But the Twelve did stick with Him. And I can imagine them, a long while later at the Last Supper, when Jesus gave them the bread and wine, saying "This is my body" and "This is my blood", looking at each other and thinking, 'Is this what He was talking about that day?' Probably the lights really came on for them after the Resurrection.

I don't think there is anything magical about the bread and juice. It isn't the going through the motions of Communion that makes the difference in us. But it is a reminder that our life comes from Him, our new way of life depends on Him. Our spirits must feed on Him.

Remodeling Questions

2007-05-19T04:38:00.000-07:00

I've made my living as a remodeling contractor for over 20 years now. And in those 20 years there have been two questions that come up again and again. The first is "Why is it so hard to find someone to work on my house?" The second is "Why does it cost so much?" I don't know who will see it, but I thought I'd lay out my take on the answers to these.

One answer that applies to both questions is that there aren't enough people doing the work to handle all that needs to be done. I've read the contractors' magazines for 20 years. And there have been items and articles about the labor shortage in the building trades for almost the whole time. There aren't enough young people coming into the building trades to replace the ones who are quitting or retiring. I saw an article last year saying the average age of a subcontractor in new residential construction is 45. And my own experience on jobs goes along with this. The last new house I worked on was in 1996; in the month or so our crew was on that jobsite, I saw maybe one man who looked to be under 30. Of the crew of 4 that I was with, I was the youngest at 46. Back when I started in this work, there were 4 of us who got together to take on big jobs, such as roofing a large house or siding or interior trim in new houses; I'm the last one of the four still in the construction field. Age and injuries have taken a heavy toll; not too many stay in construction until retirement age. A lot of things in construction used to be considered young men's work (framing and roofing, for example) but now older men are doing them because there are too few young men. The biggest relief so far has been immigrants (legal or illegal), but they work out best on large crew jobs, with one good English-speaker to interpret for the rest.

A second factor on both questions is that construction can be a hard way to earn a living, in other ways besides the physical issues. To begin with, the whole field is rather seasonal. The winter is slow. Around March or April it starts to pick up. By June I'd often be booked up for three months out--one year it was five. After Labor Day the backlog shrinks to about a month or so, then by November you're going week by week, then day by day. In January I'd usually have only a week or so of work for the whole month, two at most. We learned to cope by saving all year so we could take a two-week vacation in January (there's no such thing as PAID vacation when you're self-employed).

Along with the seasonal work, you don't always get paid for a whole day's work. I've always told folks I'd do jobs from one hour long up to a month long. The main value of the one-hour jobs is that they often lead to bigger jobs--many people will try you out on something small and call you again for something bigger. But it is almost impossible to schedule more than half a day's work on one-hour jobs. People's own schedules and the variables in length (half an hour here, one and a half there, then a trip to the hardware store for something unexpected) throw things off and you can't get everything in. My real bread-and-butter is the week to two-week jobs, and the month-long jobs are nice when I can get them. Any longer than that and I start to lose other work because I'm tied up too long. And sometimes, especially in the spring, I have to take a half-day or a whole day out and get estimates out to people so I can keep the work flowing.

That brings up what is probably the biggest single expense in contracting--estimating. Everybody expects free estimates. In fact, they are not really free--they are paid for by the people who actually have work done. How many estimates does it take to get a job? It can be as high as 10 per job, in the commodity fields like siding or windows. In most remodeling, the experts figure you're doing well if you get one job for three or four estimates. I love repeat customers, because with them I often get 3 jobs out of 4 estimates. On the other hand, I've had people call up wanting some estimate in the spring--and that's all I hear from them until they ask for another estimate. I reached the point a long time ago where I don't even do a third estimate if the person hasn't had any work done at all. "Tire kickers" like that just run up the costs for everybody else. How much does it take to do all these? Generally I can kill an hour going to look at the job, sometimes two. The estimate itself may take an hour or so for a simple job, 8-10 for a complex job like finishing a basement or designing and building a deck.

Over the years I've seen plenty of fellows try to move from working for a contractor to contracting on their own; most start out charging their new customers what they were getting paid per hour as employees. After about 6 months they figure out that with all the time they are really spending, they'd clear more per hour as a minimum wage employee. A few learn to charge more for their work; most go back to being employees.

The above isn't a complete answer to the two questions, but it's a start. This post is getting long enough, but maybe I'll come back to the subject someday.

More on Spiritual Gifts

2007-05-06T14:41:00.000-07:00

Last night's message at church got me thinking some more on this topic.

I think there are some things that are a combination of talent and gifting. For example, being a worship leader requires a certain level of musical talent, but I've known some very good musicians who could not lead worship well. I think this may be a composite of developed skill and gifting.

I also remember Steve Sjogren, founding pastor of the Vineyard in Cincinnati, sharing that he once believed leading worship was one of his gifts, but later concluded that he was a worshipper, and when he picked up a guitar and worshipped, other people got drawn in.

There are some spiritual gifts that are not that pleasant to be involved in. For most of my adult life I've had a form of the gift of discerning spirits: I don't identify evil spirits, but if something is going on and the Holy Spirit is not in it, there's some kind of internal alarm that goes off in me. Unfortunately, when that alarm goes off, it often means I have to go talk to somebody--somebody who really doesn't want to hear it. Know what? Many of the pastors I've known do not have much appreciation for this gift, especially when they have a new pet project in the works. I do have to be careful not to mix up this with my own likes and dislikes, and not to speak until I'm sure of what I'm hearing. It doesn't happen all the time; I'd say the "alarm" has been quiet for a couple of years now, and that suits me. It's not a comfortable gift.

Drifting Along

2007-04-26T04:51:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, I don't remember exactly when, I read something in a article on the 'Net that has stuck in my mind. Don't even remember how to find it now, but this is pretty close to the writer's words: "There is nothing inherently wrong with building an organization to do God's work; the problem is that, over time, building an organization to do God's work becomes an intoxicating substitute for doing God's work."

This is a profound idea. It also expresses, in a religious context, a principle that I came up with over many years that applies to almost all organizations. Since I haven't seen it expounded by anyone else, for the purposes of this blog I'll call it "Phil's Law of Institutional Drift." What is this law? "Over time, the natural tendency of institutions and organizations is to drift towards being run to suit the convenience and benefit of the staff rather than the clientele."

This principle applies to just about all human organizations. It sheds a little light on why the hospital staff will wake you up at a pre-set time--to give you a sleeping pill. It is why minor-level bueaucrats (BMV employees, IRS clerks, local government people, you name it) will sometimes convey the impression that you are an interruption to their work rather than the reason for it. Lower-level employees of large corporations are no better in this, nor are labor union leaders. All too often schools illustrate the principle too. Even religious organizations are not exempt; Francis Schaeffer once commented "One of the official titles of the Pope is 'Servant of the servants of God'--but when he is in Rome, he is carried about on the shoulders of men." (Don't mean to bash this particular church or any particular man in that office--just another example of the drift at work--Protestant denominations just haven't had as much time for the drift to work on them.)

I admit it is possible for a particular organization to resist this drift. But it takes a conscious effort, continued over time. And the larger the organization becomes, the more difficult it becomes to maintain the resistance. And the drift goes on....

Gifts and Fruit

2007-04-22T10:52:00.001-07:00

In my years in the church (fifty-seven of 'em--no, I'm not a "young whippersnapper" any more), I've seen many times when after teaching on "spiritual gifts" and talk about "discovering your gifts" and so on, a lot of people, often young but not always, get excited about them and want to start exercising them. (Especially the ones that put you up front--I have some thoughts on this, but it will have to be another post.) But what I have come to understand from reading the NT passages on spiritual gifts is that they are not given to us as individuals; they are given to the church--we are not the recipients, we are the delivery truck drivers. They are given to meet the needs of the church body in this life, and as such, they are temporary. Some may be lifelong, but by God's standards that is still temporary. And there have been times in my life when something was given through me, to meet the needs of the moment, and that particular type of gift was not given through me again--sort of a one-shot deal. (And if God wants to work that way, I'm okay with it.)

Now the fruit of the Spirit--love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control--are a different matter. We have to develop these in our lives, with the help of the Holy Spirit. (If it was up to us to generate them on our own, the church would be in a sorry mess--come to think of it, sometimes it does get like that!) But these are character qualities, not functions. So whatever we can acquire of them really does become ours, not only for life, but for eternity. In fact, acquiring these is what turns us into the kind of people who can enjoy Heaven.

I'm not saying the gifts are unimportant, but that they are God's business. If He wants me to help with some delivery now and then, I'll do what I can to oblige. But my real concern--my day job, you might say-- is developing the fruit of the Spirit in my own walk. Can't say the mission is fully accomplished, but I haven't given up yet either.

The Postmodern Process

2007-04-20T04:00:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading "A New Kind of Christian" by Brian Maclaren. (Yeah, I know, I'm late getting around to it.) I have already read a couple of his books; in fact, it was Maclaren who helped me realize I've been postmodern for years. And after that, I went back and re-read some of Francis Schaeffer's books that I acquired in the 1970s; I found that he was dealing with postmodern issues before anybody had come up with the name for it. But unlike some, he didn't start ranting "Postmodernism must be stopped--it destroys our apologetic!" He just quietly adapted and found ways to talk to people where they were. He understood that all people are created in God's image, even if they themselves do not believe it, and should be treated with love for that reason. Because he believed that, he was able to reach out to all kinds of people, from teenagers to middle-aged ultra-liberal church bishops like James Pike. He was not always successful in bringing them to Christian faith, but he still did not "write them off" or indulge in hate.

Maclaren had a quote from a C.S. Lewis book that I had never read (it was a book on medieval literature, his professional field, not one of his "Christian" works). In this quote Lewis seems to note the differences between modern thinking and the medieval patterns, but then acknowledged that someday the modern pattern would be replaced itself. Whether he was aware that the process had already begun is hard to say, but at least he could distance himself from modernity enough to see the possibility.

And the change IS a process, not an event. The change from medieval to modern was a process too. The date Maclaren sets, 1500 A.D., is only a convenient approximation, just as 2000 is for postmodernism. (I would say that the first crack in the fortress of modern science was Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, in 1927--the first hint scientists had that they could not nail everything down; even Einstein didn't like it.)

Some complain that postmoderns are too negative, but that was true of the first moderns as they broke with the medieval traditions, too. Schaeffer was as aware of the faults of modernism as anyone--he had some negative things to say about it. In order to replace something, you've got to recognize its defects; then you can look for something better (or at least different).

I have to get to work--probably more on this later.

Institutions

2007-04-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that the 20th century was the age of the institution, especially the big institution. In recent decades, it got so all of life was governed by institutions. You're born in a hospital, sent to day care and pre-school as soon as possible, then to public school (preferably in a big, "consolidated" district), then college, then off to a job with some big corporation, or else a big government agency or maybe a big non-profit organization. Then you retire, live in a "retirement community" until they ship you to a nursing home, and then back to the hospital to die.

Is it any wonder that people want some opportunities for personal contact, maybe some handmade art objects for their homes, some things that aren't mediated by big institutions? And I guess I've been sort of counter-cultural in this respect for a long time. In the 1980s there was some buzz in the media about self-employment and being an entrepeneur--I started my first business in 1975. When we started home schooling our kids in the early 80s, the HS community in the Cincinnati area where we lived was just seven families. And our church life had centered around small groups for several years before that. Our second child was born at home, and the third would have been if we could have arranged it. (He's now 19 and getting ready to move out. Meanwhile, our daughter--the child who was born at home--has kept the tradition going; her third daughter was born at home this winter.)

Back in the 90s I read a book called "Megatrends" by John Naisbitt. One of the things he predicted was that with all the high-tech stuff in our society, people were going to want what he called "high touch" things to balance it--hand-made pottery and other art (music is still on CDs, but there's been a drift away from synthesizers to acoustic instruments in the last few years), anything where they can feel they touch real live people. I don't recall him saying anything about the Internet. It may not have taken off at the time he was writing. And it's sort of a paradox--obviously high-tech, but a tool for touching people--and it has made it possible to find kindred souls all over the world, even if there are none in your own location.

I don't think institutions are going to completely disappear from the landscape for a long while yet. But their dominance is fading--hospital costs are skyrocketing, public schools are facing increasing criticism of their results (Biblical term, "fruit"), the auto industry is hemorrhaging (I'm real glad I didn't follow my Dad's advice to get a foreman's job at Ford), and the house church movement and other emerging church forms are pioneering less-institutional forms of church life. It's an interesting, if sometimes scary, time to be alive.

Redneck Authenticity

2007-04-19T05:26:00.000-07:00

Postmoderns put great value on "authenticity"--being real, not putting up a facade, or a mask, not play-acting (which is the original meaning of the Greek word that became our English word "hypocrite"). They don't like it when people seem all right but are actually pushing a "hidden agenda."

Rednecks share some of the same attitudes, they just express it differently. They might say a certain person is "puttin' on airs" and even issue the warning "Don't git above your raisin'."

When I was thinking about starting my own blog and the idea for its title hit me, I googled the term "postmodern redneck" to see if anyone was already using it. Found various places where the two words were in the same sentence or paragraph, a few people who did refer to themselves in that way, but no one with the blog title at that point. The other thing that came up was a Wikipedia article about "rednecks"--yes, there really is one. It included material about the origin of the term--one theory is that it goes back to red scarves worn around the neck by 17th-century Scottish Covenanters, and was brought over to America by Scottish and Scots-Irish settlers (my mother's maiden name is Burns, by the way). The article also included a quote from a Professor James C. Cobb of the University of Georgia, essentially regarding a redneck as a man "who is what he is and doesn't give a damn what anybody thinks."

If that ain't authenticity, what is?

Authority and Respect

2007-04-18T16:52:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in my last post that postmoderns and rednecks both have some issues with authority. While that's still fresh I decided put out some of the things I've learned over the years in this area.

To me, authority and respect are two sides of the same coin. If people respect you, you will have a lot of authority with them. If they don't respect you, you'll have the bare minimum they can get away with giving you. There are also two kinds of respect/authority: positional and relational. Positional respect goes with some kind of position--teacher, boss, doctor, pastor, cop, etc. Its big drawback is that it is only temporary--maybe a life of 2 weeks to 2 months in most cases, as little as 5 minutes in a few. Its main value is to give the authority figure time to develop relational respect, which is the respect you earn. But once earned, it lasts much longer, maybe even for life. (Unless, of course, you manage to blow it badly.) The more of it you earn over time, the more authority you have. Even rednecks generally know which of the cops in their small town is firm but fair, and who is the jerk who likes to throw his weight around.

During my senior year of college and for a couple of years after I worked for a franchise organization in two different cities, for two different managers. The first never asked anyone else to work as hard as he did, genuinely cared about his employees and customers, built good relationships with both as much as he could. He had tremendous authority with his people, because he had earned it. The second was a former Air Force captain--not a pilot or combat officer, he finished college with a metallurgy degree and spent his military service in a laboratory. His military background turned out to be a liability--he did not have a clue how to deal with employees who could legally quit--and did they ever quit!! It was a constant struggle just to maintain a minimal staff level, let alone any growth. Finally I quit too, largely because my future with the organization depended on his success, and he wasn't going anywhere until he learned to earn respect. Even our best employees had little respect for him and many of our customers had less. It took me a couple of years to process that experience and really understand what was wrong.

Couple of other lessons I've learned on this: The people who have earned the most authority generally wear it very lightly--they'll rely on other methods most of the time, rather than using raw authority. The people who are most enamoured with their authority and position usually have the least. Also, authority is like a bar of soap--the more you use it, the less remains (can't remember where I read that, but I agree).

That's all for this one.

Why "postmodern redneck?"

2007-04-18T04:36:00.000-07:00

To put it simply, 'cause I are one. I figured out several years ago that I'm part of the approximately one-third of Baby Boomers who are or lean toward postmodern thinking. And my redneck credentials are impeccable (might be peckable too, if your taste runs that way.) From 1998 to 2006 we lived in a trailer on 4-1/2 acres, with a pole barn and assorted sheds (Don't ever buy a spread with a storage building bigger than the dwelling--junk DOES expand to fill the space available). There was a time when of the half-dozen cars in our driveway the only one that actually ran was not only the worst clunker of the lot (the driver's door was latched with a bungee cord), it wasn't even ours--just on loan till I could get one of the others fixed. It's my heritage, too. My maternal grandfather died of injuries from a coal-mine accident near Hazard, Ky. My uncles worked in the mines until they came north to work in the factories, with the exception of Uncle Junior, who made up for it by being the family jailbird (a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it).

The terms "postmodern" and "redneck" aren't as incompatible as you might think, either. Postmoderns aren't real respectful of authority--neither are rednecks, they just show it in different ways. Both live with uncertainties, just different uncertainties (is this car going to make it home, or do I have to rummage around for the baling wire?).

So the point of this particular blog is to look at life (at least those parts of it I find interesting) from these two perspectives. Sometimes it may get a bit philosophical, sometimes a little "down home". I do plan to generally avoid political discussion, not because I don't care about it but because there are already so many political blogs out there. And, as you may have noticed by now, there may at times be a little bit of humor--for me, the Eleventh Commandment is "Thou shalt not take thyself too seriously."