I realize it’s been awhile, but life has been happening, so… whatever, you get what you pay for.
Anyway, Margaret Atwood is one of Canada’s greatest living writers and more than a few would say she’s one of the best on the planet. Her latest book, Payback is a non-fiction exploration of the concept of debt in our society from a sociological and literary perspective. I haven’t read the book yet, but I’ve read an excerpt and I’m persuaded to buy it. The book it also the subject for the Massey Lectures and I will be listening to Ms. Atwood on Ideas on CBC Radio (Sirius Satellite 137) from Nov. 10 – 14.
One of the ideas she explores is that of the connection with debt and sin. ““The whole theology of Christianity rests on the notion of spiritual debts and what must be done to repay them.” she says at one point. I don’t know if thats the whole theology of Christianity, but it’s certainly part of the picture. This language is in some translations of the Lord’s prayer “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” In this picture Jesus pays back in his death on the cross the debt we have accrued against God with our disobedience.
This has become an unpopular view in some circles and the debate over substitutionary atonement in this sense has burned up many blogs and has pushed people into deep corners of debate. I’m curious if some of the unconscious motivations behind the the denial of debts owed to God might be the accumulations of consumer debt and the desire to ignore it. Perhaps debt language hits too close to home and we’d rather it go away.
I had never heard of the pastor from Australia with the unpronounceable last name before his story broke a couple of weeks ago, so I didn’t have an emotional attachment to his apparently popular song. I also don’t want to diminish the damage his sin has done to people who trusted him and the Body of Christ around the world. His lies caused an immense amount of pain to a great number of people and there are no excuses for him and there can be no rush to cheap forgiveness. True forgiveness is rarely fast and it is never cheap. That said, I think his song is more poignant now.
Full disclosure, I generally don’t like the Hillsong-y type songs. I find them kind of… stupid. The lyrics never say very much and what they do say is flat and trite and doesn’t really move me. Whatever, I hope I’m mature enough that I don’t have to like every song we sing in order to sing God’s praises. It’s not about me.
But now the story has broken that the disease that this man is trusting God to heal is not the cancer he is elaborately lying to everyone about, but something else; something deeper, something more sinister, something that endangers not only the body, but could destroy body and soul.
I can’t imagine the depth of fear and dread that would make someone try to pull off a charade like that but I can imagine not wanting to show people what I’m really like. I can imagine wanting people to like me, to think I’m smart, or good or worth something more than what I think I’m worth. And I know that this fear and doubt is real and dangerous and deadly and tougher than I am so I need a cure for that dis-ease. I need a healer who can bring me peace.
Now the song has layers. Now the song speaks of something bigger even than cancer to source of our inner conflicts. We fear, so we lie and we hide. But nothing is impossible for Jesus. Even making of us brave people who are able to love, live, and forgive.
I was having a late night conversation with my wife not too long ago and we were talking about, well… pretty much everything, mostly a project that I’m working on about church.
Some background for our conversation. People leave Church. Not just my church or your church but Church. They do this for a variety of reasons. Some are big and dramatic, some are subtle and draining, some we can call good, bad, whatever the reason, they drop out of community with God’s people. Now, I know many people in this situation and most of them would still call themselves Christians and many of these claim that they would like to be part of a church if it was … something.
The basic plot of the story is this: Person A meets Jesus and becomes involved in Church, there is a period of happiness and contentment, at some point there is a conflict, large or small, where the Church fails to be what “A” expected it to be and they remove themselves.
If this seems like an incomplete story, that’s because it is. I know so many people who have run this far in the story who are still God haunted or church haunted, longing for a community they know intuitively should exist but seems incredibly difficult to locate. I could write more but you’ll have to wait for the book.
I can speak to this story because I lived it. I can tell bad church stories with the best of them and it amazes me everyday that my faith survived where it died in so many of my friends. More amazing to me is that I feel a deep bone call to serve this Bride that has left me scarred. The problem is that I did this young. My conflict and rejection of the church happened early enough that by the time God dragged me to Bible College at 22 I had been angry and fighting for close to a decade and I was tired. I had to figure out a way to live with God’s people or break the other way and, for me, that just wasn’t an option.
So when I hear people talking about leaving church and their anger and ambivalence and how they feel lied to and ripped off, I understand it. I really do, but sometimes it sounds adolescent to me because that’s the time in my life when I was going through this. Most of the time I manage to not be a jerk in this, but I feel myself categorizing people and I don’t want to be that guy. People walk their paths at their own pace in their own time.
So for me, the lesson of the day is patience. Patience for you, patience for me, patience for God who is working in his time to bring about peace for all of us who seek it.
By now most of you have heard about the murder that took place on a bus between Edmonton and Winnipeg. When things like this happen people sometimes look to me as a pastor to answer questions. Questions like where is God when a psycho stabs a random guy to death on a bus. Questions like that don’t have satisfying answers, or answers that heal. Answers don’t heal anyway.
Here’s what I’ve got.
This world, this planet is sometimes very big and at other times very small. It is a place of amazing beauty and wonders and also great dangers. But this world is never enough. It’s not big enough for our joys, not for our sorrows nor for our anger. When we lose someone, no matter how, we never feel we have had enough time, or enough conversations or space to make all things right. When someone is taken from us, no matter how, there is no amount of vengeance that will satisfy. This world is not enough.
So if this world is not enough, what is? Eternity. This world, this lifespan of however many years we’re granted isn’t enough because we were designed for more, life that goes on eternally. All we are is too much, we don’t fit here.
So we look at and hope in an empty tomb and a better kingdom and we long for the day when, like Sam Gamgee waking up after Mordor, we ask “Is it over? Has every sad thing been made untrue?” any the Answer that heals will speak an overwhelming “Yes”.
I got the term from Bill Simmons, of whose writing I am a big fan. Basically he uses the term to refer to those who follow and love pro sports without declaring allegiance to a specific team. I’m splitting hairs a little bit, but a more accurate term would probably be sports pluralist. The sports atheist would be the humourless Noam Chomsky sort who believe that pro sports are the new opiate of the peoples, as if we would solve world hunger and cure cancer if we got rid of the NBA. I agree with them to a point, what fun are they at a party? I’ll take some friendly NASCAR fans, thanks. The sports pluralist, however, stands back from the scene as a supposedly impartial observer. We delight in sport for the sake of sport and while we appreciate how insane fan-dom adds to the colour of our experience, we are unable to choose just one object of devotion.
For Simmons this is ridiculous idea. He was born and bred in Boston and lives and dies with the Boston area teams. The joy of pro sports is for him the emotional roller coaster ride being a fan can give. While this brings joy (the Red Sox coming back from a 3-0 deficit to the Yankees, The Celtics crushing the Lakers in game six) it also brings pain (the Patriots being upset by the Giants, Spygate). In his mind, without a team, you’re not truly a fan, you’re a watcher.
I became a sports pluralist honestly. I grew up in Charlottetown, far enough away that I didn’t have any clear geographic ties and the only sport my Dad really followed was NASCAR, or more accurately, what was then Winston Cup. Free agency helped, as there were no real ties for the players anymore, so why should I have those ties. Video games were part of it as well, as it made no sense to keep playing Madden with my favoured Bengals because they were terrible.
But the biggest issue I think is protection. I didn’t want to be a fan because what do I do when they lose? That sucks, and no one wants to be the bandwagon jumper. Who likes the guy who shows up on Tuesday wearing the SuperBowl winners hat? That guy is a jerk. After a while it was easier and seemed cooler and safer to maintain distance.
This is all in direct contrast to my faith life, where I am not a pluralist. I have pledged allegiance to a team and I believe that the only way to truly follow is to believe in our team exclusively and if our team “loses” (sports analogies fail) I will go down with the ship. I am all in to Jesus. As a person of faith I believe the religious pluralist to be in a sad position. While they aren’t subject to the discipline of following a faith path, they don’t really get to experience the joy, comfort, and connection that comes with choosing to follow the One.
There are times when I feel the pull of real sports fandom, but like faith, at some point it has to happen to you. I can’t wake up tomorrow and decide to be an Oilers fan, on some level the Oilers have to happen to me.
I haven’t posted much lately, mostly because I haven’t got anything to say and the book project is taking up a lot of my mental energy. I just haven’t had anything interesting to say.
I was re-reading Robertson Davies‘ Deptford Trilogy to immerse myself in great writing. I probably read it once every couple of years. There was a part of the Manticore that inspired me. Dunstan Ramsay is speaking with David Staunton about Staunton’s father Boy and Ramsey says something to the effect that every man has many fathers in his life, and what may be more important than his biological fathers are the ones he chooses for himself.
So the next couple of entries are going to be about fathers, specifically the fathers I’ve been blessed to have.
So I’m working on a book. It sounds silly even as I say it but I am and I want to finish it so I’m going to pressure myself by announcing it publicly. Feel free to ask me how it’s coming so I will feel stupid if my answer is that I haven’t touched in six months.
Please bear in mind I said that I’m writing a book, not publishing a book or selling a book. These are very different things. Of course it would be nice to publish and I may do it myself, but the main goal hear is to actually write the thing. We worry about other stuff later.
The book is going to be about the church, because thats where my head is at these days. I want to people to fall in love with the Church again, with all her flaws and stupidities and meanness, I want to help people see her as the Bride. I want to see her as the Bride.
I try to avoid being overtly political, but this isn’t a political issue. I watched the tape of the incident, and in the context he was placed in by the questioner Dallaire was right. Jason Kenny backed him into a corner with a ridiculous statement and Romeo Dallaire didn’t back down. If anyone should apologize it’s Jason Kenny.
Dallaire is right. We can’t pick and choose what international treaties we’re going to follow, specially when dealing with child soldiers. If you break the law you break the law.
So as I’ve mentioned before, I work for a large, multi-national coffee company that shall remain nameless. I know that they are a huge and potentially evil monolith, coating the world with sub-standard coffee products. I get it. I also get that I’ve got kids to feed. If you want to talk about how much better that little shop on the corner is and how awful its been since my employer came to town, go ahead, I’m not going to argue. But they don’t pay my mortgage.
I knew when it came time to plant our church that I would have to find another job. Altogether, I’ve spent almost ten years in the restaurant business, so I was able to put together a decent resume. I knew I wanted to be in management, because table or bar service by itself bores me now, and I knew I didn’t want to be working until 3am. That left my current employer or someplace where all the menu items start with Mc and a guys got to have some standards, right?
I’ve experienced few conversations more awkward than this one with an overdressed person judging my resume:
“So your last title was minister of urban outreach. What exactly does a minister of urban outreach do?”
“ummm… I ministered … to urban …. people… and did … out, er, reached out”
I realized then that I never wanted to have another job that I can’t explain to a two year old. I do two things. I make coffee and I talk about Jesus. I could make my job description more complicated than that if I wanted to feel important, but really, those are the two things I need to get right.
Really, any job is as simple as you want to make it. Even when you work for the company that shall remain nameless.
Listening to: My wife playing scramble on facebook
I know you’re not supposed to announce your fasting, but I’m not fasting anymore, so I think it’s okay. I’m not trying to raise my spiritual profile with tales of exorbitant fasting. I don’t have any.
In the tradition I grew up in (mental fundamentalist) we didn’t really talk about fasting. We didn’t talk about gluttony either, for that matter, but the only spiritual disciplines we talked about were refraining from smoking, drinking, card-playing, movie-going, and non- King James reading. We figured if we had those down, we had fulfilled the law and the prophets.
So, while I have a much more robust view of the disciplines that I used to, I haven’t been in the habit of fasting. I know it’s a good and godly thing to do, it just hasn’t been a part of my life. I have occasionally, and more often in the past couple of years gone on one or two days fasts, but never anything of consequence. Last week, inspired by a friend, I decided to fast from solids for seven days. Admittedly, I didn’t have much of a plan, I just felt the need to pace myself in a more open posture before God to allow and I figured a fast would be a decent way to do that.
I probably should have prepared better, but I only made it to day three and a bit. It wasn’t the hunger discomfort itself, that did me in. One of the side effects of food withdrawal, especially for those with not the greatest of diets, is irritability. I got home from work this afternoon and I hadn’t slept well, and it had been and early morning and … whatever. I snapped at my daughter. It’s not the first time, of course, lest ye think I’m some sort of saint, but it is pretty rare. Anyway, I stopped, apologized. She forgave me and she went back to playing with her pet snail/sock Shrudshire. I went to the kitchen and had a bowl of cereal.
I have a few callings in my life. I’m a pastor, a preacher. First of all I’m called to be disciple, but the main burdens I have been blessed to shoulder are that of husband and father. I could have the most successful (however you may choose to define success) church on the planet, I could preach like the apostle Paul, and in the midst of that, if I fail Teddi and Zoe and Simon, I’ve lost everywhere. I don’t always remember that.
Starting this fast, I wanted to become more aware of God’s goodness and where he wanted me to grow. I realized this afternoon that my spiritual growth doesn’t come in spite of at the expense of my wife and children, but through them and with them. They are God’s clearest and most consistent reminder of his love for me and his desire to make me new. They way I interact with them is a picture of how I’m relating to my Lord. I can’t grow closer to him while being selfish to my family. So because I have two small kids who need me to be present and pleasant, I went back to eating. Less and more simply, but eating still.
I wanted to become more aware of God, he told me to be more aware of my family.
