"Speaking Up To Be Put Down................"

Ben Stein is not on my list of favorite celebrities. His role in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is known to me only via television’s frequent advertising of the film; the game show he emceed got a bit too vulgar in its attempt to be humorous; so mostly he’s familiar to me via those Visine “ red eye” commercials. A week ago, however, during Sunday service, we were shown a short film clip promoting his new documentary and my curiosity got the better of me. Googling “Expelled” for some more information, I discovered, among other things, that the man was once a writer for President Nixon and is no dummy in a conversation concerning politics and our national economy. His recent venture into the cinemas across this nation, though, deals with our present-day, neo-darwinistic society dismissing believers from positions of employment…..

The church school that my grandsons attend took the upper level, yesterday, to see the show. My daughter went with them and noted the kids were probably more bored than anything else, but she, herself, was enlightened. One fellow within the scope of what I have seen simply stated a desire for “freedom to follow the evidence wherever it leads”, and so I suppose that there are some such clues suggesting intelligent design presented. Albeit, the focus is on this country’s freedom of speech, not some religious rant which demands a unified view of creation. Why should people lose their jobs over publically expressing an opinion of facts encountered? Why, indeed? Can it possibly be that our rights have no right to disenfranchise another person’s rights and drawing a paycheck tends to make one subject to his employer’s demands?.....

I can certainly sympathize with those being ostracized since I, too, believe in a Creator. Nonetheless, it appears to me that the situation is as it has always been and I’d venture farther to say it wouldn’t be all that hard to find the shoe on the other foot. If America’s beginnings were laid in a search for religious freedom, history clearly shows that those gaining it seldom extended such privilege it unto anybody else. Connecticut and Rhode Island, both, were born out of expulsion from the established Church. When you boil it all down, holding an unpopular view and expressing it publically often requires a price to be paid no matter what the arena. It’s the nature of the beast, even when it’s wearing a collar. The only question is which do you value more: your integrity, or whatever the crowd is offering in exchange for your soul?....

"The Universe in Perspective............................."

There’s a boy assigned to another Special-Ed unit at our school who, two years ago, often responded to certain demands made of him, by swearing in stronger terms than any sailor I ever heard during my decade in the Navy. Now a Fifth Grader and about to leave us for another level, he now amazes me with the progress accomplished; and, this morning, as he debarked from his bus, I spoke to someone nearby regarding such wonderful change in his behavior. When the dialogue then turned to my remembering a young child who once, while on an outing with my bunch, stood staring at a picture of the Cincinnati skyline and mentally calculated the number of windows in each tall building, lo and behold my partner in conversation informed me that this was, indeed, the same fellow! To prove it, she asked him how many floors there were in a couple of well known structures; and, immediately, he spit the answers out as if each were some key that unlocked a magical kingdom to which he, alone was privy…..

“To each their own”, I always say. If his grey matter is hardwired with an obsession to compute the mathematical design of architecture, my own seems prone to ponder the mystery of just about everything else. Standing and waiting for the next yellow chariot to arrive, I glanced down to discover a single ant pursuing a path across the concrete entranceway. Was he aware that his present surrounding was contaminated by humans? Did he realize that, at any moment another flood of their prodigy would sharply increase the odds of his demise? Perhaps he figured himself safe, having now reached one of those seams created in the construction of such areas; but plants, dirt, and others of his kind yet remained at least twenty feet away and I couldn’t help but wonder if his thoughts were akin to those that we, ourselves, at times possess: “How did I get here? Where in the world am I going? Is there any sense at all to this mess? Everywhere I look, there’s just more of the same…..”

Earlier that morning it had been just my granddaughter and I driving in for another day on the treadmill. In just four weeks she would be coming down a level, from the smaller children in the higher hallways of our edifice, to the esteemed ranks of those older kids who dominate our population. Usually she and her brother sleep during the entire drive. Today she sat up front with me and talked. Our normal repertoire on any similar occasion is singing songs and telling jokes; but, somehow, a miscue by her on it now being Autumn took us into the seasons and how God was in the complexity of all that we knew and realized in life. It was like a door had been opened unto us; and, if for only a moment, opportunity was there to put the message in simple terms. I did not take her down some Roman road. I didn’t insist she adopt my view. I did, though, speak of an emptiness inside each of us, one that suggests something is missing, one that can only be filled by He who is the answer to all our questions…..

Our Sunday school class, this weekend, discussed maturing in Christ, agreeing that the task was not accomplished so much through trying harder, as it was via surrendering ourselves unto a higher power. When I asked the others, though, in what terms they viewed such an indwelling, the teacher quickly took us “back to the basics”, explaining that, while change is an internal work of the Spirit, the end product is an external reproduction of Jesus, a metamorphosis, of sorts, that takes place as we respond obediently to the written Word of God. Never mind that his theology tends to suggest we can, indeed, reach continual levels of holiness, the pace, I suppose, depending on just who is judging our progress…..

Recently, following a buddy’s link, I eventually discovered the Gospel according to Bishop David Zac Niringiye. Seeing Americans as “go-and-make” missionaries obsessed with the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, he described them as acting as if saving souls was all in their own power, the passage providing illusion that “it’s all about us!” He preferred the Great Invitation given by Christ earlier in Scripture: “Come. Follow me; and I will make you fishers of men.” The first word indicates His acceptance of us; the second two leave the decision up to us; and the last portion is a matter of recognizing that, always, it is He who seals the deal. We are vessels, not the remedy, itself.....

Thirty-six years in this; and, if I have been somehow transformed in any way at all, it’s merely through what the journey has taught me. The fellow who’s inside this earthly tabernacle is no more holy, no more righteous, than he ever was right at the start. Inside me, however, dwells One who is all that and more; and while, on occasion, “from glory to glory”, He comes forth out of some inner well until, with me swimming in all that He is, we two become entwined, mostly what I’ve known is an inner connection that stays with me as I stumble down the path. If that is less than what others have found in Him, it yet remains my own experience and I rejoice in it…..

"Snorkeling............................................"

After fifteen months of four adults and three children sharing one bathroom, two televisions, and a single computer, my small house suddenly seems quite empty; and, yet, at the same time, my mental state is similar to that which I felt upon retiring from the railroad. Thirty years was suddenly just memories. The next day and the one after that were as they should be: Nothing strange. Turn the page and let’s just keep going. As long as I’m in motion, progress is just a matter of taking the next step and facing whatever life brings as it comes. Yesterday’s gone. The important thing, for me, is in following, as best I can, His tug upon my heart.....

This particular run with Elementary Special-Ed through the Elementary school term has been quite challenging; and now that we’re down to the final five weeks or so, the job seems to require more than ever. As we enter into testing, the kids well know that such event marks summer break being right around the corner and the whole building is charged with an electrified anxiety that only youth can maintain. I come home most afternoons, fall into the recliner; and, for about an hour, allow my body to recuperate. It isn’t always a matter of sleep. Physical labor hasn’t demanded a need for rest. The man inside the man is just trying to unwind and re-grip…..

While the location of our brain is no mystery, whether it is, in itself, the total sum of who we are as individuals appears to yet have the medical profession baffled. Is our grey matter, indeed, all there is to that portion of us that ponders our own existence? Inquiring minds want to know. Scientists, however, in speaking of our consciousness as being a “phenomenal experience”, can presently only theorize it as equating to no more than interaction between different functional processes or a non-physical entity that sits somewhere within us playing with the cranial computer as we go. I favor, of course, the latter, believing only that such system works better when reconnected to the Creator’s input…..

"Super Glue................................."

Over at The Naked Pastor, the author speaks of a personal journey taken through eight different denominations, and of a personal struggle with so much that religion brings to the faith. While recognizing the latter, though, he yet finds an inner tug at his heart that enables him to embrace the Church in all its variations. He states that the most important thing for any congregation to become is a “manifestation of the reality of unity” and he equates such a display with love. I can well appreciate such viewpoint, having spent more than three decades, myself, within the ecclesiastical arena. People remain people, regardless any Scriptural declaration of their having become “new creatures” in Christ; and since, like snowflakes, no two of us seem able to see all things exactly alike, bringing our humanity into harmony remains a task ever under construction……

In our Sunday school group, yesterday, we explored the idea of our being believers without our becoming hypocrites. Actually, the teacher brought the subject to us in terms of our “maintaining our integrity” and he defined that phrase as “living up to that which others expect of us”. While I understand such effort being a normal part of who we are in our relationships, it seems to me that victory can be better won if we realize it is our perception, not the other guy’s, that counts; and, when you boil that truth down, you’ve still got to address the fact that we’re prone to lie. If we’re going to talk “integrity”, therefore, let’s acknowledge that it designates that which makes us complete, that which “holds us together” on the inside; and too many of us, I’m afraid, attempt the task operating out of our own vanity rather than simply surrendering it to an inner connection with the Holy Ghost…..

"How It Works For Me.................................."

In reading of four different views of God, each supposedly geographically held by America, two friends expressed their own summation of His being simply a mystery. That set the wheels in this old man’s brain spinning once again, not in any debate of their statement, but more in terms of what such a label really means. It isn’t that hard to find it utilized within the pages of the New Testament. The apostle Paul likens the wisdom and the will of God unto an enigma, one that has been made known unto him and the other disciples, but not so as to establish a chosen few. Indeed, in referring to it as a mystery which has been hid from both ages and generations, he speaks of it as having now been “made manifest to His saints”, describes it as a “fellowship” for all to share, and calls it simply “Christ in you”. Surely such puzzle, “full of the hope of glory”, is embraceable and meant to be explored, not in the sense of our conquering the Creator, but most assuredly in our learning His reality at work in our life…..

This Sunday Beth and I will celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary. Neighbors ever since my family’s escape to suburbia, we knew each other from a distance all the way through high-school, never dated, but then somehow began exchanging letters when I entered the Navy. Four years later I proposed while still stationed overseas and, when she accepted, our merger was more like an elopement: a quick tying the knot before a local preacher before driving to language school in Monterey, California. If we were young and in love, the months to come would quickly teach us that the latter is easier penned on paper than it is lived as individuals under the same roof. We made a lot of good memories; and we fought. We made children; and we fought. At the same time, however, some invisible, internal bond secured us one to the other and, little by little, we began to realize that such connection was greater than our disagreements. She is still a mystery to me in many ways; but I can’t imagine living without her…..

Marriage is but one analogy that the Bible gives of our relationship with the Creator through the mission accomplished via Calvary. To tell you that there no longer exist any questions, about me, about Him, about days and events and people as they come to me, would be a lie; but if I believe anything, it is a flow established that afternoon, there in my living room, when I gave it all to Him. It meets me in the journey, rising up from some inner well, flooding me with faith, or surprising me as a gentle breeze blowing across my face, confirming His faithfulness. We two become one, if only in that moment; and, even so, she and I. The moment passes, of course, but the sharing of it strengthens the heart and remains…..

"An Asthmatic Gospel..........................."

We began our Sunday school class this morning with a Gallup survey written and analyzed by sociologists from Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religions. The questionnaire was evidently a nation-wide endeavor since its findings revealed that America’s view of God has a lot to do with where we live. People in the South tend to see Him as an authoritarian, ready to pass judgment on the unfaithful, while Midwest inhabitants find Him primarily benevolent and forgiving. Eastern folk are prone to think Him critical of what’s going on down here, but possessing no desire to interfere in our affairs. Out West they believe Him more like some cosmic force that initially launched this whole mess and then took off somewhere, leaving us to deal with it on our own……

When the teacher asked us, then, to individually describe the Creator for ourselves, using no more than one word, while others offered adjectives such as “loving”, and “faithful”, and “all-knowing”, my own choice was “tangible”. For me, it seemed to embrace all else, giving witness of possible encounter beyond an emotional sense. Likewise, when he next requested us to fill in the blank at the end of “God is not”, after begging off the former requirement, I answered “my lump of clay”. If we, as the Body of Christ, lose it anywhere, in my opinion, it is in reproducing Him in an image we mentally construct out of chapter and verse. Our golden calf hasn’t been melted down and shaped from everyone’s earrings, but if there is no life in it, then who’s kidding whom?.......

When I used to have my own group, regardless of age level, my favorite query to put before it on day one was: “How many of you are saved?” Immediately, every hand would shoot upward, a smile on their face until the next poser “How do you know?” left them sitting there scratching their heads and looking puzzled. We’re usually quite good at occupying our little denominational credos, that is: until we have to explain them. In the same manner yesterday, everyone’s pause, their gasp when I suggested it might be interesting to ask the same thing of those who claim the Holy Ghost as an indwelling, told me wheels were spinning. If somewhere in your theology, though, heaven and earth don’t connect to confirm the reality of the promise, you’re just walking in your word, not His……

"Expanding In Him..............................."

Having just recently located an interesting site via a friend’s sidebar link, I visited again, this morning, and began tracking the archives provided. This fellow produces single panel cartoons, most of which make a religious statement of sorts, all of which then serve as fodder for discussion in whatever comments come forth. The artist is a resident of the United Kingdom, youthful (but old enough to make a living with such gift), and a member of a church that refers to one of its governing elders as a “vicar”. His immediate page so caught my fancy that I wanted more and proceeded to scroll backwards through his prior work until one, in particular, “hit me right where I live”. The subject of worship music getting to a point where it begins to peel the paint off the sanctuary walls is an issue I’ve addressed within my own writing...

It’s not that change is a commodity unacceptable in any form. I fully understand that life is an on-going process and each generation comes with its own likes and dislikes. “Community”, however, comes from the same basic Latin roots as to “communicate” and indicates an ability of various individuals to interact in spite of their differences. In other words: when your volume is so loud that it strips me of any and all potential to hear my own thoughts, thus negating the power to pray, it’s time for us to sit down and negotiate; and if neither end of the age gap is willing to do that, it’s a pretty good indication that Christ has been left out of the arrangement somewhere. Longevity, as a matter of fact, has nothing to do with it. The Holy Ghost “in” man is not restrained by his or her calendar count and He, alone, defines our profession of faith…

I loved, therefore, the quote provided by Jon in response to youthful intolerance for the elderly. “When we grow old,” he said; “we become pathetic old fools, angry old fools, or holy old fools. We all become fools; and the only negotiable is whether we become pathetic, angry, or holy ones.” At sixty-six, I resemble that remark, but will the choice of adjectives to some one else. No doubt, while driving down the road if nowhere else, the first of the three has been attached to that noun often enough and pinned on me; but if my humanity marks me as existing anywhere at all within that trio, then let me be found guilty of being, even as Paul once named himself: “a fool for Christ”. Let His heart be my heart, His eyes be my eyes, and my ears open unto His tug upon the anchor-line. I remember being sixteen, twenty-two, forty-five…

"The Great Mediator............................."

With an empty house once more extending me computer privileges previously enjoyed, I arose this morning to “surf my sidebar” and found those thoughts, rolling around in that void which occupies my upper level, being tied together over at Scot McKnight’s “Jesus Creed”. He was celebrating his third year of posting a daily blog (one, I might add, that draws a rather larger congregation on any given day) and he likened his site to “ a big table with bundles of folks sitting here drinking coffee- the Emergents drinking beer and the Episcopals sipping wine and the Southern Baptists drinking cokes.” It was a place, he said, where they had learned to come together, as community, “get a bit steamed and raise (their) voice a tad”, yet do so without “making war”. Having walked within the ranks of Pentecost for over 36 years now, I’ll admit such scenario is hard to accomplish. It doesn’t even seem to matter if the parties involved belong to the same denomination. Somehow, “speaking the truth in love” gets lost all too often in the heat of speaking what one believes to be gospel……

Here in northern Kentucky, if there’s any group around claiming to be “emergent”, I’m not aware of it. Just across the river, about fifteen minutes from me, is an old Home Depot where something called “Crossroads” now ministers. My nephew attends; I’ve visited a few times; and if what takes place there isn’t identical to what I know of the movement, it has to be close. Although their style offends me not, my wife doesn’t care for it at all, not understanding such departure from what she has always known as “church”. That doesn’t surprise me, her roots going back to an early baptism into old-time holiness. While legality has never been some sword she’s swung, nor a mandate she has, herself, followed in its entirety, neither could you ever convince her that her personal view of “what’s right” is wrong. What’s more: she doesn’t want to talk about it! I, on the other side of that coin, have always enjoyed “kicking around theology” with anyone willing to participate, believing what I believe, but, at the same time, trying to remain open to the Holy Ghost…….

In other words, it doesn’t bother me if your standards don’t match mine. We may not be in total agreement concerning eternal security, predestination, or several other tenets that tend to divide the ecclesiastical masses. Your style of worship may not be my cup of tea. Loud music with a beat that makes one want to “boogie down”, indeed, so loud that you can’t even hear your thoughts in an attempt to communicate with the Creator, might find this old man stuffing some cotton in his ears, but it will not offend me. My main concern is as it has been since the day my salvation was confirmed by more than just some preacher’s explanation of the Word. Lying flat on my back in bed one night, swimming in a prayer of thankfulness that anyone as filthy as me could know His grace, I found an assurance, given through the reality of the Spirit, that removed all doubt of an inner connection restored through a resurrected Christ! In this statement, then, I rest: Whatever our present position regarding chapter and verse, whatever promise we claim regarding a vision for the future, He, alone, will prove us as we go……

"Planting Seeds...................................."

Working within the public elementary school system here in northern Kentucky, I’m well aware that a teaching career nowadays necessitates possessing, at least to some degree, an understanding of self-defense. Autism, for example, spans a wide spectrum of behavior and it’s not all that unusual, on any given day, if your duties lie within Special-Ed, to find yourself dealing with anger displayed through biting, kicking, slapping, and head-butting. The scenario is just part of the job. I was a bit shocked, however, to read of a group of Third Graders in Waycross, Georgia, who were plotting to seriously do bodily harm to their teacher because she had scolded one of them for standing on a chair; yet a Google search enlightened me that, just eight years ago in Michigan, a six-year old First Grade boy murdered a girl in his room with a .32 caliber handgun……

Since February 2, 1996, in the United States, alone, excluding the shooters’ own act of suicide afterwards and without examining those incidents which have occurred at college level, teenagers have killed 46 classmates and 11 adults, wounded some 120 others. Horrible enough statistics without discovering that such tragedy is beginning to occur among children still learning their multiplication tables, but easy enough to point our finger at Hollywood, television, and video games, then walk away like we don’t know the act will only be repeated somewhere, sometime, down the road. For me, it’s a ticking bomb every bit as important as the threat of terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. We’ve just created this one, ourselves, by teaching our heritage that nobody has a right to discipline them, by failing to provide them with assurance of a love greater than their hang-ups……

My pastor’s Sunday sermon included a survey noting that: “Of all the people on earth being saved, 19 out of 20 are under the age of 25”. A 1999 Barna research would only expand that figure, declaring that a person not yet converted to Christ by the age of 14 has only a 10% chance of being reached later in life. My own response, however, is to question whose definition of salvation was being utilized, and to ask even farther just how many of those coming to the altar then “endured to the end”. If all we arm youth with is a doctrinal credo, do not they merely embrace a denominational statement and do so to “fit in with the crowd” as much as anything else? Chapter and verse, it seems to me, must be reinforced with the Reality of what we preach, not simply extended as the “soul” extent of what we need to build a house. Either He lives or He doesn’t; and life, itself, will demand of us a decision sooner or later……

"Metamorphosis............................."

The day has arrived. Fifteen months ago, the half-crew pictured with me just to the right, along with mom and dad, moved into my tiny abode here in northern Kentucky. Weather permitting, this afternoon we begin another transfer, extracting all their possessions from a local storage unit and delivering it to the house they just purchased about thirty minutes from here. Everyone, naturally, is excited; and yet: It will be another year, at least, before I stop finding Mac Donald fun meal contraptions buried beneath the sofa cushions, small toy figurines scattered in every corner of every room. I don’t remember the last time was that I opened the refrigerator without two or three items stuffed in there tumbling out, or that there was a quiet spot around here to relax for a few minutes after school. That said, however, it’s just as true that the silence next week will be more of a void than it will be music to my ears. The granddaughter, in particular, is also approaching the change with mixed feelings, the separation from Mamaw a bit more than she’s willing to embrace at the moment…..

Saturday afternoon, the oldest daughter, just next door, hosted a party to celebrate my grandson’s sixteenth birthday. The still attend the old church and, rather than simply a few of the young man’s friends, she had invited most of those families with whom they socialize, sharing, via that connection, basketball games, school activities, and all those events that come with parenting such age level. It wasn’t an occasion where one would expect some display of their profession of Him to fill the room. The place was packed, not enough chairs to seat everyone, and conversation was full of laughter spilling forth out of fellowship. I knew most of them, if not all. Good people doing their best to raise their kids in an understanding of what they, themselves, believed to be truth. My mind, though, pondered the framework and foundation of such faith as represented before me. How deeply are our roots entangled in our heritage and do we pass on to those we love merely our mentality or a tangible reality of His resurrection that will keep them in the days to come?.....

Life, it seems to me, is more than merely the ticking of our internal clock and might be better described as a substance in which we exist, an ocean in which we swim. As we go, it’s like that through which we travel is somehow absorbed into the who and what we are; and just as each breath we take is accomplished automatically, the brain running the show without our having to give much thought to the procedure, our reasoning often drifts into pretty much the same manner of operation. Experience has already taught us all we need to know. We’re happy right where we are because we’re familiar with where we are. We built this wall, ourselves, and faith means defending it if necessary. Yet, in the truth that this is an on-going, day-by-day get-up-and-do-it-again, tomorrow is but one more lesson and, always, there is no greater one to learn than this: (a) we need to realize that our own contribution to the program is prone to error, thus requiring some realignment along the way; and (b) it is of the utmost importance to give His voice priority as we continue in the journey. Sometimes that means a move from what feels good…..