god-of-small-things

2009-01-07T07:43:00.000-08:00

Neale Donald Walsch thought he was talking to God.

Oops.

2007-07-23T09:34:00.001-07:00

The Boy Who Lived

Christianity Today just posted my review of the Deathly Hallows .

2007-01-20T10:14:00.000-08:00

The Kindness of Strangers

There's been some good news since the last time I posted. On December 6, my niece, Connie Marie Smietana, came home from the Philippines. A bittersweet moment, as my brother wasn't with her. But she's home, and I hope he is smiling somewhere.

We ran this essay about my brother in the January issue of the Covenant Companion. There are few things, if any, more powerful than the kindness of strangers.

The Kindness of Strangers
Bob Smietana
The Covenant Companion
January 2007

In the year that King Uzziah died, the prophet Isaiah saw the Lord
high and lifted up, sitting on a throne, surrounded by angels
calling out,Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth
is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3).

In the year that my brother died, I also saw the Lord.

Not high and lifted up, but in dozens of small and ordinary ways,
like the platterof chicken salad sandwiches, made by the women of
the church I grew upin, the Evangelical Covenant Church of
Attleboro, Massachusetts, and served after my brother’s
funeral in early November.

The angels from Isaiah tells us that the whole world is filled with
God’s glory. The writer of “Joy to the World” tells us that Jesus
came to make his blessing flow “far as the curse is found.”

This past fall the curse of sorrow struck my family down at what
should have been one of the happiest moments of our lives.

My younger brother, Paul, and his wife, Chit (short for Chitadelia),
were in the Philippines, finalizing the adoption of their
twenty-month-old daughter Connie Marie. The Philippine
government had approved the adoption months earlier, and finally
Paul and Chit had received approval from the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) to bring Connie Marie home.

All they needed was a visa, which should have been routine with
INS approval in hand. But red tape abounds when dealing with
adoption, and there were more delays.

Early on the morning of October 22, Chit went to the market,
while Paul went for a run. When he didn’t return, Chit and
her family went looking for him, and found his body by the
side of the road. In the flash of a moment my brother was
gone, a couple months shy of his fortieth
birthday.

In the days and weeks following my brother’s death, my family
has seen the Lord’s glory and blessing time and again.
We often talk about the body of Christ as if it were a quaint
expression, a bit of religious jargon for the church.

But we saw the Lord and felt God’s care through the hands
and voices of other Christians. They became the body of
Christ and surrounded us with God’s love.

I’ve been overwhelmed by how many people have made our
grief their business. Less than an hour after my parents
received the haunting call from Chit, and had finally sifted
through the tears and pain in her voice and realized the
awful truth, their church sprang into action.

That call had come at about four in the morning. By six
their pastor, Kent Palmquist, came to the house and prayed
with them. Dozens of people brought food, or came to the
house just to sit with my parents and talk with them.
They demonstrated the reality of Christ’s love through
concrete means—hugs and prayers; platters of chicken salad
sandwiches, calzones, and cranberry squares; cards and
phone calls and flowers.

At Covenant Offices(my workplace), colleagues prayed for us
and picked up the pieces left behind when I took off for the
East Coast to be with my parents. The pastors of Libertyville
Covenant Church, Dwight Nelson and Brian Zahasky, prayed with me
and shared my tears. Friends brought meals. My friend Chris Becker
walked in and gave me a hug on the morning we found out Paul had
died. No words were necessary to communicate how he felt.
Other friends cashed in their frequent flier miles and sent my
wife, kids, and me out East for the funeral.

If the angels are right, and the whole world is filled with God’s
glory, then all these acts of kindness are holy. They are
sanctified with God’s presence—transformed from the ordinary
and commonplace into expressions of grace. And God’s blessings
are known far as the curse is found. Grace fills every moment.

My brother understood, in the way he lived from day to day,
how God cared about the small things.

Paul had not been one to talk about himself much and we lived a
thousand miles apart, so there was much about each other’s daily
lives that we never shared. But here’s something I learned after
Paul was gone.

When they left for the Philippines in mid-October, Paul and Chit
took one small suitcase to share between them. The rest of their
luggage allowance was taken up with three large boxes of
clothing and shoes for the children of Quinaoayanan, the small
village in the province of Pangasinan where Chit grew up.

Paul told my dad that when he arrived in the Philippines for
the first time, a decade ago, he noticed how poor the children
were. Many of the children in Quinaoayanan had worn or tattered
clothing, and few had shoes. For entertainment, they rolled a
can filled with stones down a dirt road.

So Paul, who never had to be asked to lend a hand, began doing
what he could to make life a little bit better for the children
in Quinaoayanan. He rented a truck and took many of the
village’s children to the beach. He organized a pig roast and
an impromptu picnic for the whole village, complete with
three-legged races and prizes for the kids.

A big kid himself, Paul was in the middle of the races, like the
ringmaster of a circus. Upon his return home, he and Chitadelia sent
care packages filled with clothes and shoes.

When he learned that Chit’s parents’ house didn’t have
running water, he paid to have it installed. When he passed
an elderly woman in the street selling fruit to make a little bit
of money, he bought everything she had so she could go home and
get out of the 100-degree heat. During many of his visits, parents
in the village would ask him to be a godparent to their child,
and he never said no.

If Paul saw that something needed to be done, he did it. He didn’t
have to be asked. One of Paul’s friends said that if you met him once,
you had a friend for life. And the children of Quinaoayanan had a
friend for life in Paul. None of us could have imagined how short
that life would be.

My brother was not a saint.

He wasn’t Mother Teresa with a tool belt.

He was an ordinary guy, who was more often found on his bass boat
on Sunday mornings than in the pew. He didn’t spend his entire
life alleviating poverty or feeding the hungry or clothing the naked.
He didn’t set out to save the world.

But most of the time, he got the small things right.

When he saw something that needed to be done, he got busy.
Not all the time; not perfectly; but he did not wait to be
asked. He didn’t pass by on the other side and pretend the problem
was somebody else’s business. He made it his business.

More than 400 people came to Paul’s wake, and the church was full
at his funeral, filled with people whose lives he had touched.
Every one of them had a story to tell. One of his fishing buddies
told me that this past fall Paul had learned about a national
guardsman coming home from Iraq who had a love for fishing.
Paul went out and bought a small trolling motor for the soldier.
They had never met, but Paul wanted in some small way to say
thank you to that soldier for his service in Iraq.

“That’s the kind of guy your brother was,” his friend told me.

Toward the end of her book, "Righteous: Dispatches from the
EvangelicalYouth Movement," author Lauren Sandler experiences
a revelation during a visit to a megachurch in Colorado.

Though she vehemently disagrees with the politics and social
positions of church members, she allows members of a small Bible
study to pray for her. The group asks God to bless Sandler’s book
and her travels. That small act transforms the way Sandler sees
evangelical Christians.

Afterwards, she writes that the small group convinced her “that
they are capable of translating Jesus’s legacy of agape into
their everyday lives.”

“Tonight,” she adds, “they have demonstrated the simple concept
that powers and sustains this movement: they have shown me
the kindness of strangers.”

Thirty years ago my family came to the Covenant church as
strangers; curious to find out more about God but suspicious
of church people. My dad, in particular, wanted nothing to
do with what he called “a bunch of holy rollers.”

Still we came to church, not because of a revival or outreach,
but because of a simple invitation. My brother’s friend Joey Clark
asked Paul to go to a Sunday-school picnic with him, and before
long, the friendship and kindness shown to our family had won us
over. More than programs or music or preaching, the kindness shown
to us when we were strangers made us part of the body of Christ.

Paul carried the lessons he learned at the Covenant church
wherever he went. He was generous by nature, and his experience
at church transformed his natural kindness into a lifetime of
giving. He took those lesson with him to Egypt, where he worked
for several years; across the United States, where he traveled
for a time, setting up cellular networks; and eventually he took
them to the Philippines.

Not long after my brother’s funeral, my dad received a letter
from one of Paul’s former tenants. In his late twenties,
my brother bought a triple decker apartment building that
was a handyman’s special. He fixed it up then sold it
a few years later.

The former tenant was an older man who had several physical
disabilities. The man told about how Paul had befriended
him—how he had installed an additional railing to make it
easier for him to get up the stairs; how, knowing he was on
a fixed income, Paul never raised his rent; and how Paul would
visit with him, listen to his stories, and leave him smiling
with a joke.

No fuss, no fanfare. Just a joke and a smile and a helping hand.
And the whole earth is filled with the glory of God.

(Copyright Covenant Communications, 2007. Used by permission. All rights reserved.)

2006-12-02T19:50:00.000-08:00

God in the Ordinary Parts of Life

This review of GP Taylor: Sin, Salvation, and Shadowmancer, ran in the recent issue of the Covenant Companion, by Daniel deRoulet, a fine writer who teaches at Vanguard University.

The section, I think, really gets to the heart of the book:

In our fifteen-minutes-of-fame society, we put people on pedestals. But
who can’t be perfect for fifteen minutes? And then we find ourselves
disappointed and disillusioned when the sports star, politician, or
even Christian celebrity is only made of dust.

Sin, Salvation and Shadowmancer reminds us of how the whole journey
goes.

Here's the whole thing:

What in the world could be considered “ordinary” about the life of G.P.
Taylor, priest and fantasy writer, policeman and rock-and-roll groupie,
who almost drowned as a child and as an adult was nearly beaten to
death by a mob? The answer is in the way that Taylor and Bob Smietana
collaborate to tell the story, and in the surprising effect on the
reader.

One of the difficulties of reading about the lives of people of faith
is that we tend to encounter a series of highlights—a saint’s “greatest
hits” if you will. We see a condensed life of Jacob, Joseph, or Paul’s
encounters with God, but we don’t see the vast majority of ordinary
time that makes up any human life. Oftentimes when I read Christian
biographies, I am left with the thought that I live too ordinary a
life. This can spur me on to good works, but it can also leave me
feeling a little inadequate.

The beauty of Taylor and Smietana’s presentation of an exemplary
Christian life is that the truly extraordinary moments are always
grounded in the ordinary. At the end of the book, Taylor assesses his
life this way:

“Am I perfect? No. Better than you? No. More valued in God’s sight? No.
I am just a child of Adam in need of God’s love....I still lie, cheat,
murder and fall—every day. I am still bad-tempered, moody and
depressed. But God’s grace picks me up and helps me try to be the man
he created. There is still a long way to go.

“Even in the darkest night of the soul, I am enjoying the journey.”
In our fifteen-minutes-of-fame society, we put people on pedestals. But
who can’t be perfect for fifteen minutes? And then we find ourselves
disappointed and disillusioned when the sports star, politician, or
even Christian celebrity is only made of dust.

Sin, Salvation and Shadowmancer reminds us of how the whole journey
goes. And despite the extraordinary moments of Taylor’s life, I relate
to him as an ordinary brother—someone I understand and am drawn to pray
for.

2006-11-14T15:47:00.000-08:00

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dush

We laid my brother Paul to rest this past weekend, on a bright and clear Saturday morning. More than 400 people had come to his wake the night before, and the church was packed for his funeral.

That morning, the Boston Globe ran a long obituary that gives a glimpse of Paul's life, and the grace we experienced by having him in our lives.

Every small act of faithfulness can open up space for God in the world, our pastor once said. Paul specialized in those kind of small acts. He did not have to be asked to lend a hand--he did it naturally. More than anyone I know, Paul knew how to live--no regrets, no equivocating. He knew what he wanted and he got busy doing it.

2006-11-04T10:48:00.000-08:00

Saying Goodbye

My brother Paul's funeral will be held November 11, (a week from today) at the Evangelical Covenant Church in Attleboro, Massachusetts, with visitation on Friday night at the Dyer-Lake Funeral Home

A memorial fund has been set up to benefit the children of Quinaonayanan, Philippines, where Paul's wife Chitadelia's family lives. Memorial donations may be made to the Paul T. Smietana Memorial Fund, c/o Evangelical Covenant Church, 841 North Main Street – PO Box 208, Attleboro, MA 02703.

An obituary ran today in several newspapers.

Here's what I wrote for our magazine:

Paul Smietana, a longtime member of the Evangelical Covenant Church in Attleboro, Massachusetts and brother of Companion features editor Bob Smietana, died October 22. He was 39.

He was born Christmas Day, 1966, the fourth of five children born to Ted and Barbara Smietana of Attleboro. As a junior high student, he visited the Attleboro Covenant church at the invitation of schoolmate, and before long, the whole family was part of the congregation.

After graduating from Attleboro High School and New Hampshire Vocational Technical College, he began a career as an electrician. Then in the early 1990s, he accepted a job offer that changed his life—as a technician for GTE, installing telecommunications equipment in Egypt. He spent several years living near Cairo and traveling with the Egyptian military, helping set up a cell phone network, and learning Arabic. While there, he met Chitadelia Badoin, a young woman from the Philippines who worked for the US Embassy. They returned to the United States and were married in February 1994.

After leaving GTE, he set up his own successful communications business in New England. An avid fisherman, he competed in bass tournaments across the Eastern US and dreamt of becoming a professional bass fisherman. During a 2003 tournament to qualify for a national competition, he and his partner saved a stranded windsurfer that was suffering from hypothermia—an act that earned him a sportsman of the year award.

He and his wife traveled often to the Philippines, where Paul became godfather to many children among his wife’s family and friends. He was in Quinaonayanan, Philippines, at the time of his death.

A man of quiet and steady faith, he was known as a tireless volunteer and worker, always willing to lend a hand. By his bed, he kept a copy of the Bible, tattered by constant reading.

He was preceded in death by a brother, John Edward, who died in infancy. He is survived by his wife, Chitadelia; daughter Connie Marie; brothers Ted (Kathleen), Bob (Kathy), sister Kristen (Glenn) Rounseville; his wife’s parents: Efraim and Concepcion Badoin of the Philippines; sister-in-law: Charito (Edgar) Leaal of the Philippines; and many nieces and nephews.

A funeral will be held November 11 at the Evangelical Covenant Church of Attleboro, with Kent Palmquist officiating. Interment will be at North Purchase Cemetery.

Peace to his memory.

2006-10-22T09:31:00.000-07:00

A nightmare I can't wake up from

My dad call this morning with the news that my brother Paul is dead.

Just a few days ago, my brother Paul and his wife Chi left for the Philippines, in hopes they'd be home with their adopted daughter Connie Marie.

Yesterday, Paul was out jogging and collapsed. The details are sketchy --all we know is that he was found and taken to a hospital and died there. He would have been 40 on his next birthday, this coming Christmas.

Pray for us, if you can.

"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39)

2006-10-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Talk about a series of unfortunate events. The Yorkshire Post reports on GP Taylor's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day:

First the tyre fell off the car he was riding in, while the car was traveling at 70 miles a hour--the car slid to a halt a few feet from the edge of the Avon Gorge.
the tow truck which picked up the wrecked car then caught on fire
a second tow truck then broke down when its gear linkage broke.

Hard to believe? Here's how the Post reported it:

"We were travelling about 70mph on the way back when it started to vibrate." Driver Sarah Hill, 32, then pulled off the motorway. "As we were going down the side of the carriageway the wheel came over our heads, overtaking a passing car and narrowly missing a pedestrian," Mr Taylor added.

"We crashed and were only 4ft away from plunging down the Avon Gorge."

The car was later placed on a recovery truck which burst into flames a mile down the M6, causing severe congestion.

All of this happened after he got some threatening emails.

2006-10-13T10:47:00.000-07:00

It's Alive

What happens when you take a retired mortician turned limo driver, a few cans of Red Bull, and a visit to the BBC on world book day? Click here to find out.

2006-10-10T19:57:00.000-07:00

Dreams and Nightmare

The Yorkshire Post has a piece on GP Taylor that mentions the book
(GP Taylor: Sin, Salvation and Shadowmancer, or "S,S,and S" as my lovely wife calls it).

The piece includes this summary of Graham's early life:

He was born to a working-class family in Scarborough.

As a child he was always searching for the meaning of life and flirted with the occult and witchcraft as possible explanations.

He turned his back on education and worked in a local nightspot before
heading to London.

There, Taylor admits, he didn't become a very nice person.

"I was promiscuous: I was a liar, a cheat and a drunk," he says in his
forthcoming autobiography, GP Taylor, Sin, Salvation and Shadowmancer.

Then one day, he says, God told him to go home and He would
find him a job and a wife.

Although he was not a Christian at that time, Taylor says the power of the voice was too strong to ignore and within the week he had packed his bags and returned home to Scarborough.

And this section, on how a stretch of illness change his view on life and death:

"My health problems have completely changed my life.
It has made me realise that every day is important and
how important it is to tell my children that I love them
every single day.

"My daughter Lydia helped me realise that my view of God was like
tunnel vision, now I realise he is everywhere."

2006-10-04T18:00:00.000-07:00

A Story on the Book

The Covenant Church website has a story and interview about GP Taylor: Sin, Salvation, and Shadowmancer. The most meaningful response, so far, is from my Dad, who stayed up all night to read it.

2006-10-04T17:44:00.000-07:00

More No Bigger than a Minute

PBS has more background on "No Bigger than a Minute," including a couple of interviews couple with the filmmaker, Steven Delano.

USA Today also did a story on Steven's film and a number of similar projects involving little people.

There's also more background at the Denver Post.

As the Brits say, it's brilliant.

2006-10-02T20:08:00.000-07:00

Welcoming the Stranger

Things have been difficult for seafarers coming to the US since 9/11. After weeks at sea they arrive on American shores as unwelcome guests. The cargo their ships bring is offloaded quickly, but getting a shore is a great deal trickier for the seafarers themselves. In some cases, such as cruise ships, a crew may have as little as a few hours of shore leave.

At least in Boston, those seafarers find friendly face in the port chaplains, explains the Boston Globe. Sometimes the chaplains do something as simple as taking the seafarers to the mall for a few hours. Or, in the case of the New England Seafarer's Mission
, the chaplains help provide other small graces--coffee and access to phones or the internet.

Ninety-nine percent of them are married and have families," Steven Cushing, director of the NE Seafarer's Mission told the Globe. "That is why they are doing the job. They come from countries where employment is difficult to obtain. . . . They want to know that everyone at home is all right, and home wants to know that they're all right."

As Cushing points out, the idea of offering hospitality to strangers from straight for the Bible. He told the Globe:

"We're looking at a larger picture of hospitality, even as Christian scripture looks at it, which is you take in the stranger who asks for help as he's on his travels or on her travels through this world. When they cross your path, you provide kind of a safety zone where they can receive help, receive comfort, receive rest, and then you send them on their way to continue their journey."

2006-09-30T19:58:00.000-07:00

No Bigger Than a Minute:On Tuesday Night

Looking for something to watch on Tuesday night?

No Bigger Than a Minute, a a documentary film by Steven Delano, is airing at 9pm Eastern on PBS.

Here's the description:

Few people ever meet a dwarf face-to-face. In this personal journey, dwarf documentary filmmaker Steve Delano shows first-hand how a genetic mutation marks a person for life. He reveals the isolation of his school age years, his "ludicrous" strategies to fit in, as well as the mixed blessings of dwarfism. In No Bigger Than a Minute, Delano exercises his license of stature and irreverent sense of humor to confront head-on conventional representations and misperceptions about dwarfs. From growing up a "freak"-a form of forced celebrity-to finally accepting and asserting his difference, Delano provides an idiosyncratic perspective based on a tip-toe life, and contemplates a future where genetic engineering may eliminate "people-of-difference" altogether

I'll be watching. Steven's a funny and gifted filmmaker--and the clips so far seem great. (He's also my cousin.)

2006-09-30T19:46:00.000-07:00

The Book is in Stores

Alas for my friend Randall Friesen: he's got seven book to read before he can get to "GP Taylor: Sin, Salvation, and Shadowmancer"

If there aren't seven books on your desk, waiting to be read, then saunter on over to your local bookselling establishment, and pick up a copy. It's on the shelf in the religion section at the Borders near my house.(I know because I snuck and peak at it--and waiting until leaving before doing a little dance.

2006-09-24T21:34:00.000-07:00

A first review

From the first (of many, I hope) customer reviews from Amazon.com of GP Taylor: Sin Salvation, and Shadowmancer:

The story of Taylor's life will make you believe in miracles and is a true inspiration. Get two copies so you can pass it on to a friend. Once you start reading you won't want to put it down!

2006-09-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

A Random Thought

Two thousand evangelicals show at at an event this past weekend in Washington, where Jerry Falwell reportedly said that Christians voters prefer Satan to Hillary Clinton, and it's headline news, at least in the LA Times The site of that many evangelicals in one place--something that happens at more than 1,000 evangelical megachurches each weekend--was enough to attract the Times and a bevy of would-be presidential candidates: Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and Senators George Allen of Virginia and Sam Brownback of Kansas--to the Values Voter Summit.

But the Times and the would-be presidents might have seen a different set of values in action had they bothered to attend the Willow Creek Leadership Summit this past summer, which drew more than 7,000 to Willow Creek's sanctuary in South Barrington, Illinois, and more than 70,000 at satellite sites where the conference was beamed into. All of those people, btw, paid a couple hundred dollars each to attend the summit, which focused on how to grow congregations, how to serve the poor, and fighting AIDS. The only enemies addressed in that conference were the enemies of a growing church. According to James Meeks of Salem Baptist Church, those enemies are mainly a lack of faith and poor leadership--apparently this one problem is caused by the Senator from New York.

But the headline of the Leadership Summit would have come Bono: "Love thy neighbor is not advice, it's a command," he told participants via video. Or perhaps this: Stop looking for God to bless what you are doing, and look instead for what God is doing--and find a blessing there. And the best place to find God is among the poor. That's another Bono-ism. Or perhaps this line from Bill Hybels would be better--When church leaders fail, people die. (He was speaking about vulnerable people living in the third world--who die when pastors from rich nations fail to teach and lead their people to live out compassion and justice.)

Ask anyone who knows anything about evangelicals and they'll tell you that in terms of real power to influence churches and people, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson can't hold a candle to Hybels or Rick Warren, or even Bono.

But apparently the LA Times missed the memo.

2006-09-13T17:10:00.000-07:00

Capt. Brad Velotta wanted to get home to see his grandmother one last time. Staff Sgt. Chad Denton misses his five kids. But like the rest of the colleagues in the 4-23 infantry battalion of the the 172nd Stryker Brigade, Velotta and Denton won't be going home from Iraq any time soon, according to Newsweek. .

Things are rough back home for the families they left behind, as Newsweek reports.

"Meanwhile, families are falling apart. Back in Alaska, one 4-23 wife has a suicidal child in the hospital; another suffered an ectopic pregnancy and had to beg her husband's commander to let him come home to care for her. Another wife attempted suicide. Her husband was sent home, but his career, the other wives say, is over. Gossip is running wild: who drinks too much, who has a compulsive-gambling problem, whose kids are left untended."

One our denomination's chaplains, Capt. John Grauer, serves the 4-23. Even he broke down when news came down about the delay in going home. Newsweek narrated the scene through his eyes:

"There was a rush of soldiers trying to get on the phone to call home. Some literally threw up when they heard the news. Some were extremely angry ... Some went to sleep for a couple of days, hoping maybe it was all a bad dream."

It was tough for Grauer to tell his wife, Tyra, and their two girls—especially Morriah, 9. "She started crying," he says. "That's when I put the sunglasses on."

Behind the shades, he wept.

2006-09-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

"Graham's story is a vivid reminder that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing. Not anger, not failure, not illness, not success, not church hypocrisy, not excessive rock and roll--nothing.

If you're losing or have lost hope, I urge you to read this compelling story of a messy, real life that challenges assumptions about smug Christian living and instead gives a glimpse of an ongoing journey of struggle anchored by a God robust to love anyway." Diane Louise Jordan

Some kind words about GP Taylor: Sin, Salvation, & Shadowmancer from Diane Louise Jordan, a television presenter in the UK.

2006-08-30T09:18:00.000-07:00

Tucked in at the end of a news story about the Red Sox was this item:

Jason Gagne, 32, a videographer for NESN, died Monday of an apparent heart attack while driving along American Legion Highway. Gagne shot a lot of Red Sox, Bruins, and Celtics games as well as the ``Sports Plus" show.

Jason was also my cousin.(Technically my second cousin, as his mother Christine is my cousin.)Early yesterday morning, Christine's son Jimmy was woken up at by a knock at the door from the state police. He had to go and identify Jason's brother's body. Then Jimmy and his sister Stephanie had to tell their mom that Jason was dead.

Please pray for them, if you have a chance. There are no other words that will help.

2006-08-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

Sin, Salvation, Shadowmancer

The book countdown is on.

Four days till the UK release of GP Taylor; Sin Salvation and Shadowmancer (as told to yours truly).

Here on the other side of the Atlantic, it's still 34 days to the big release of this story about God's unexpected grace. (Still it's not to early to pre-order

To whet your appetite, here's a few of the early stories about GP (Graham Peter) Taylor, the once time "all around sinner" turned vicar and New York Times bestelling author.

An interview from the Australian Broadcasting Company: "From Wicca to Vicar to Hollywood" .

And a profile from the New York Times-- that includes this summary of Graham's early life:

Mr. Taylor, 46, was not always moved by evangelical fervor. Much of his youth was spent, he said, in the precincts of ''sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.''

His father, Frank, was profoundly deaf, a shoe repairman or, in Mr. Taylor's words, ''a mender of soles.'' (''I am a mender of souls,'' the large and jolly Mr. Taylor likes to say.) His mother, Mary, was severely hearing impaired and worked in a cafeteria. As a child, Mr. Taylor learned to communicate with them by watching them talk to each other in sign language.

The family, which included two sisters, lived in a government housing project. When he was 13, Mr. Taylor was expelled from school. ''I hung a friend out the window,'' he said, ''set fire to the desks. I'd taken a radiator off the wall, dyed my hair bright red.''

At 15 he moved out of the house, lived with a girlfriend and became part of the punk rock scene, imbibing quantities of drugs and alcohol. ''It was good fun,'' he said. ''But it was stupid and dangerous.''

When he was 21 Mr. Taylor found God. He was working in a community center for the deaf and elderly. ''I had been searching for the truth,'' he said. His co-workers began talking to him about the power of Christianity.

''Very gently and very slowly they dismissed every argument I had,'' he said. ''I didn't become a born-again Christian. It wasn't like Saul on the road to Damascus. Over a period, I realized this was the way I should follow.''

Stay tuned for the rest of the story.

And remember, preorder often .

2006-08-18T16:01:00.000-07:00

Small Steps of Faith

While searching background information for an editing project, I came across this quote:

"One little act of obedience creates some space for Jesus to work in the world."

It was a reminder that God works in very small things. An insignificant nation, chosen to save the world. A small boy who gave up his loaves and fishes so that a miracle could take place and thousands of people could be fed. A small group of people, not of them particularly charismatic, given the job of taking the message of the kingdom of God to the ends of the earth.

That same God, who spoke the stars into existence became a small baby, born the "straw and shit" of barn, as Bono puts it. After beng crushed under the bootheels of imperial Rome, that same God announced his return by appearing to two small, insignificant women on a Sunday morning. Those women had come to a graveside to do the small act of annointing a body for burial.

Last week, at an enormous event--the Willow Creek Leadership Summit--Jim Collins, business guru and author of Good to Great--told an crowd of thousand that the key to greatness in life lies in taking one small step at time. One small step after another.

Carolyn Pitezel could have told the crowd the same thing--though she's not a business guru and doesn't have mounds of academic research to back her up. She has a different kind of authority--40 years of faithful, behind-the-scenes service at the national offices of the Evangelical Covenant Church.

Dorothy Grace Nelson could have also given that lesson as well. A faithful member of one church in Minnesota, who gave herself to her church family year after year, and then made an unexpected gift to her denomination.

One small step of obedience makes room for Jesus to work in the world.

That's a good thing to remember.

2006-08-04T16:07:00.000-07:00

Scot McKnight has been hosting a spirited discussion about Randall Balmer's new book, "Thy Kingdom Come," over that the Jesus Creed . Scot's a monster blogger and an insightful commentator—and his posts are always worth reading.

Here's my two cents about Balmer's book, and the rest of the recent books about the religious right as the root of all evil in America.

I suspect that many Evangelicals (and conservative Catholics) vote Republican not because they love the religious right, but because either they see either they see that party as the lessor of two evils or because the Democratic party has made them feel unwelcome. Or because the last two Democratic presidential candidates (whom I supported) had been completely unable to communicate with people of faith.

Balmer all but admits that he wrote this book because he’s mad that George Bush was elected, twice. I suspect that it’s a lot easier to blame the religious right for this, than to ask the Democratic Party to take a cold hard look at how its failed in the last two presidential elections.

The last Democratic presidential candidate who could talk the language of faith and who could connect with ordinary voters was elected twice, and would win today in a landslide were it not for the 22nd ammendment. Without that ammendment, I suspect we’d be in the 4th term of the Clinton president. And nobody would be talking about the religious right.

2006-08-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

So, my prayer this morning went something like this:

"God, I'm want all of my worries--about money, the house, a job for Kathy, the book, the books I'm supposed to do, my mom's illness, all of it—into your hands. Amen."

(Pause)

Ok, will you hurry and do something. Time's a wasting.

Oh me of little faith.

2006-07-11T14:41:00.000-07:00

When Words Fail

Not long after our denomination's annual, a colleague of mine drove out to Iowa to officiate at a family wedding. While at the wedding, news came that his grandnephew had committed suicide. So he stayed on to do the funeral. On the morning of the funeral service, another minister who was taking part in the funeral said, "I don't feel much like being a pastor today."

Words fail at times like this. No trite phrases or platitudes can hold up. My colleague spoke of the love of God which passes all understanding, and of the promise of the resurrection, and together this family clung on to hope, because that was all they had left.

Earlier today, we passed around a card for another colleague, whose husband died suddenly of a heart attack last week. He was buried Saturday and today. They had planned to retire soon and enjoy life together, and now she faces an uncertain future, trying to make her way alone. "God hold you close in these days" was all I could muster for her card.

Meanwhile in India, hundreds of families are mourning their loved ones, snuffed out by terrorists bombs, and Edris Moore, a mother in Missouri, mourns her four children who were swept away in the Meramec River while on a church outing.

A friend of mine taught me once about the sacrament of the present moment--a term he learned about in the one book in seminary he enjoyed reading. Tonight I'm going to give that sacrament a try. I'm going to go home and not yell at my kids for once, read them a few extra books, and instead of packing them of to bed and going down to the basement to work right away, I'll lay down with them until they go to sleep.

I have them today. No one has promised me tomorrow. Tonight I want to remember that.

2006-07-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

Be a Hero

A friend comes to you for advice. He's 30 years old and--despite a fear of commitment--is finally thinking about settling down. Then his girlfriend finds out she's got cancer. So your friend wants to know: should he cut and run or stick it out. He loves her but is terrified of the future--should his listen to his fear or to his heart.?

That's the that question that "Confused in Colorado" posed to Cary Tennis, the advice columnist at Salon.com. Tennis could have lectured or pulled a guilt trip. Or she could have told the reader to grow up and be a man.

Instead, here's what she wrote:

Are you ready for this, the great, defining challenge of your life? Are
you ready to accept what life has put before you?

I hope you can answer yes. I hope you can put aside whatever cynicism
you have acquired by living in an absurd world and recognize that
however absurd this world is, it places before us occasional
opportunities to respond with unambiguous moral clarity.

There are moments, if you are actually living life, when cynicism
cannot approach or tarnish the grandeur of the real thing. This is your
life.

Are you ready?

You might not be. You might not grasp what this means. But I think you
do grasp what this means and you are ready and you want somebody to
help you do the right thing. Why else would you have written to me? If
you have been reading the column all this time then you already know
what I think. I'm not going to suggest that you ditch this woman and
look for something more convenient. I believe in heroic responses.

People often say things happen for a reason. I don't necessarily
believe that. But I believe we must live life as if things happen for a
reason. We must create meaning. Otherwise we're just sick, pathetic,
clueless bastards!

What I mean is, we create meaning in our lives by responding with our
highest selves. We try to do the right thing. To the degree we fail, we
fail. But we don't just walk away from a drowning lover.

I don't what Tennis's faith background is, but she should have been a preacher. She reminded "Confused in Colorado" that love makes all things possible. She inspired him to have faith and leave the security of the boat and to try and walk on water. My guess is that Clueless in Colorado is going to follow her advice and embrace "the grandeur of the real thing."

The Christian world needs writers like this, to help us dream and dare, to hope and love. God help us, because I'm afraid too many of us would rather be Ann Coulter.

2006-06-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

Pray, If You've Got a Minute

My mom's back in the hospital. She's been undergoing a new MS treatment using a chemotherapy drug, which they hoped would counteract some of the MS symptoms. But it also lowers her immune system, and she's got an infection of some kind. When that happens, she can't even stand up. Which pretty much sucks.

So if you've got an spare prayer, she could use them.

2006-06-22T20:34:00.000-07:00

Nuking the Culture

Pop quiz time. What human invention is the most abominable, the most idolatrous, and the most symbolic of the human capacity for self-self destruction?

The ICBM, or intercontinental ballistic missile if you prefer--whose sole purpose is to hasten on the apocalypse by technological, rather than theological means. It's a devilishly clever invention, which makes it possible le for modern nations to annihilate their enemies and commit suicide all at the same time.

As the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, the ICBM is the perfect icon for the modern culture of death and the absolute antithesis of the cross of Jesus Christ. It also happens to be the symbol for a new Christian magazine called "Salvo." A magazine, ironically, with the mission of "promoting life in a culture of death."

The initial ads for Salvo, and its early website featured an ICMB as the symbol of the magazine. The ICBM has been replaced by a targeting cross-hair, at least on the website. But this magazine still seems aimed at destroying, rather than redeeming, its enemies and more interested in culture wars than in Christianity.

The church in America has a choice to make. We can be culture warriors, or we can be Christians. We can choose the ICMB or we can choose the cross. But we can't have both.

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that Jesus said we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us--not nuke 'em.

2006-06-16T18:31:00.000-07:00

Something Like a Barn Raising

Brother Ray fried us tilapia covered in corn meal. Brother Tony called down God's blessings after we'd torn off the leaking roof of his house and covered it in tar paper. Sister Sherri watched over us like a mother hen. And the congregation of Kingdom Covenant Ministries in Miami, treated us better than kings--they greeted us as if we were long lost relatives finally come home. It felt a bit like being at an Amish Barn raising.

Mission trips have gotten a bad name these days--seen as tourism and adventure for rich Christians. But for 17 men from our church, who traveled to Miami to work on the roof at Kingdom Covenant, helping repair damage from Hurricanes Wilma and Katrina, a mission trip was a chance to work side by side with brothers and sisters in Christ. Not as do-gooding white folks, but as Christians lending a hand to part of our family.

It was a blessing beyond compare.

2006-05-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

The Da Vinci Bomb

"Too much guilt. Not enough pleasure."

That's the Book Standard's less than charitable review of the Da Vinci Code movie. The headline says it all: "'Da Vinci' Devalued: Bloated, Wooden, Static—Not Even a Guilty Pleasure"

This may be the best line in the review:

One questionable "cinematic" addition to the film are flashbacks to ancient biblical and medieval historical tableaus in the Holy Land and Europe that illustrate Prof. Langdon's continuous lectures on religious history. These look as if some prankster spliced scenes from last year's Kingdom of Heaven into the film as a bad joke.

CNN reports that the film opened to "catcalls" -- so all the worry and calls for bans and outreach campaigns may be for naught.

Screenwriter Brian Godawa suggests that, instead of bebunking the Da Vinci Code, Chrisitans ought to learn from it, and tell better stories

He writes:

In today's postmodern world, and indeed throughout history, so-called "historical facts" do not usually persuade the masses, but the most convincing interpretation does. In other words, the culture is guided or controlled by whoever tells the best story.

In other words, as the Republicans figured out long ago, framing
beats facts hands down.

2006-04-10T16:43:00.000-07:00

Order Early, Order Often

Hurry, Hurry, you could be the first to pre-order a fabulous new book .

Take it from me--I've read the book and it's fabulous. (OK, I co-wrote it, so there's some bias here.)

In case you're wondering, the book is GP Taylor: Sin Salvation and Shadowmancer, an "as told to" autobiography of GP Taylor author of Shadowmancer, Wormwood, and Tersias . It's a story of redemption, serendipity, and God's grace over the long haul-- along with the various misadventures of a teenaged runaway turned social worker, Yorkshire policeman, vicar, and bestselling author-- kind of The Commitments meets the Vicar of Dibley, with a little bit of James Herriot, Father Joe, Police Squad, and ER mixed in.

A good time will be had by all.

2006-04-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

Believe

In the spring of 1994, Immaculee Ilibagiza packed up her books and headed home for a few days rest from her studies during Easter break from classes at the National University of Rwanda. Just after she arrived at the home, she heard the news that the plane carrying the president of Rwanda had been shot down. Within days, most of her family, friends, and neighbors had been brutally murdered. Their only crime was being Tutsi--a virtual death sentence in the Rwandan Genocide.

In her memoir, Left to Tell, she recounts how she found God and learned to forgive the people who killed her family. It's almost unbelievable.

I talked with Ilibagiza about a month ago for RNS. Here's a bit of the story.

Ilibagiza said that before the genocide, she was never really sure
if God exists. Now she knows, she said, and she believes God loves all
people, including victims and killers alike.

"If God is our father," she said, "that means he is suffering with
us, with both the victims and the killers. Those people who killed in
Rwanda are his children. If I am a good sister, I want to pray that they would be
released from this evil -- rather than cursing them to hell.

"I want people to hold onto God and to understand how big, how wide and how high God's love is. It's much bigger than we can understand."

2006-04-01T10:37:00.000-08:00

Angel of Death?

The Grim Reaper's been coming to close to home lately. Two weeks ago, that angel of death took away our next door neighbor Tami. She was 41, a single mother of two--her son found her stricken with a heart attack just before he and his sister left for school. She died before the ambulance could get there. If you have any spare prayers, Tami's parents Mike and Joanne, and her kids Kristen and Ricky, could use the,.

Then last week, the brother of a college friend murdered his 8 year old daughter in a case of psychosis. The Lofquist family could use your prayers as well.

2006-03-25T09:55:00.000-08:00

Taylor Book News

The GP Taylor biography officially exists; Zondervan has posted the cover and basic info on GP Taylor: Sin, Salvation, and Shadomancer, as told to Bob Smietana. We'll get proofs soon, and the book is due out in October. I'm biased of course, but this a great story of God's grace over the long haul.

Graham's newest book, Tersias, is due out in the US this May, and Bene Diction reviewed it for Spero News and gave it a thumbs up.

Taylor's growing skill is evident in this newest novel. The reader's fears are laid bare; uncertainty, loneliness, hardship, confusion and longing are as identifiable in Taylor's landscape as they are our own. The unseen is seen through the Jonah, Tara, Maggot, Tersias and Malachi - the innocents swept up in events beyond their ability to understand and cope with. The characters are more stark; good, evil and the redeemed, and, as in his previous books, Taylor gives nothing away to help the reader guess who will find redemption

2006-03-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

The God Factor

Cathleen Falsani gets religion. Ahd she practices creative, redemptive, and grace filled journalism. That is, whether she's talking to the archbishop of Chicago or the chief Pastafarian, she listens carefully and tries to tease of the truth wherever she can find it. It's a rare gift in the times, one Falsani puts to good use in her new book, The God Factor.

I had the chance to chat with Falsani about the God Factor few months back for a Religion News Service piece. The piece appeared last weekend here (and here and here but who's counting ?)

Some thoughts from Falsani on religion writing and the God Factor, a collection of conversations with public people--from Bono and Anne Rice to Barack Obama and Hugh Hefner--on faith:

"I find people far more interesting than conflicts,” she said. “You can communicate great truths and universal ideas through the very specific. I could sit down and read four volumes of theology, but if I read a 400-word story about someone who actually expresses it in the way they live, in the way they love — that stays with me.”
She prayed before the interviews that God would be present in the conversation.
“Often I didn’t say very much (in the interview),” she said. “Being a good listener, because it is the loving and respectful thing to do, allows people to think out loud. I am comfortable with the awkward pauses, because usually the next thing that comes out of the person’s mouth is what they really want to say.”
“Without grace, we are screwed,” she said. “If grace isn’t true, we might as well give up.”

2006-03-13T15:38:00.000-08:00

Guns, Dollars, and God

"These days I see graft and corruption reach high into government. These days I see people afraid to speak their minds because someone will think they are unorthodox and therefore disloyal. These days I see America identified more and more with material things, less and less with spiritual standards. These days I see America drifting from the Christian faith, acting abroad as an arrogant, selfish, greedy nation, interested only in guns and dollars, not in people and their hopes and aspirations. These days the words of my father come back to me more and more."

That's William O. Douglas, U.S. Supreme Court justice from 1939 to 1975. in an essay from 1951 for NPR's "This I Believe" feature. Every few weeks, I try and listen to a few of these essays at work, and each times I've been amazed.

Some other thougths from recent This I Believe pieces:

"I believe in the politics that wrote the GI Bill, that passed the Marshall Plan to rebuild a war-devastated Europe, that saved the Great Lakes and that through Social Security took want and terror out of old age. The kind of politics that teaches us all we owe to those who came before us and those who will come after. That each of us has drunk from wells we did not dig; that each of us has been warmed by fires we did not build."
Political Analyst Mark Shields

" I believe that families are not only blood relatives, but sometimes just people that show up and love you when no one else will."
Cecile Gilmer, an events planner from Utah, who was taken in by a friend's family as a teenager

2006-03-13T15:27:00.000-08:00

Guns, Dollars, and God

2006-03-02T16:10:00.000-08:00

Horse Manure and Ice Cream

"Putting religion and politics together is mixing ice cream and horse manure. . . . It doesn’t hurt the horse manure; but it ruins the ice cream."
“If the U.N. would listen to Jesus, the whole world would be in good shape.”
“Jesus loves the United States. Jesus loves Iraq. Jesus loves Afghanistan."

That's Tony Campolo, appearing on The Colbert Report from Comedy Central.

2006-03-01T21:23:00.000-08:00

Throwing Stones

It's not in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of John, so some scholars doubt its historical accuracy. But is there any parable we need to hear more nowadays than this one? I don't think so.

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”

They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.

Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

People love that last line, thinking it gives us an out. If people keep sinning, then we can keep throwing stones. After all, Jesus said, "Go and sin no more."

Somehow, I'm not exactly sure that's what Jesus had in mind. So maybe we all better put down our stones before somebody gets hurt.

2006-02-24T15:37:00.000-08:00

Peace to His Memory

NPR just reported that Danny Perasa died in his sleep at 2:30 pm this afternoon. God's mercy to his family.

Peace to his memory.

2006-02-24T14:15:00.000-08:00

Get Real Love

The word authentic gets bandied about like a brand name or marketing tool these days. Authentic churches, authentic music, authentic books, even authentic jeans. Most of it is paper thin and illusory, and easily blown to shreds when the storms of life come along. Most of what passes for “real” today is a house of cards.

Danny and Annie Perasa, wouldn’t be on a poster for an “authentic marriage” conference. But they are the real deal. Danny—a balding gnome of a man with a nearly toothless grin” and Annie, a kind, plain woman with an energetic smile—know more about love and romance than “all of Hollywood’s leading men put together.”
Danny and Annie, who got engaged on their first date, have become the public face of NPR’s Story Corp—a series of interviews done by ordinary people.

NPR featured a piece on them today, about their first date, their 28-year marriage, and how their love sustains them in the face of Danny’s terminal cancer.

The motto of Story Corp is that “listening is an act of love.” And the project’s director said that Danny and Annie came to personify Story Corp—the eloquence, grace, power and poetry in the words of people you might not notice walking down the street.”

A few thoughts on love from Danny, who writes a love note everyday to Annie:

“I always feel guilty when I say I love you, because I say it so often. I say it to remind you that, as dumpy as I am, it’s coming from here (the heart). It’s like hearing a beautiful song from a busted old radio. And it’s nice of you to keep the radio around the house.

“When a guy is happily married, no matter what happens at work, no matter what happens [during] the rest of the day, there’s a shelter when you get home. There’s a knowledge, knowing that you can hug somebody without them throwing you downstairs and saying, ‘Get your hands off me.’ Being married is like having a color television set. You never want to go back to black and white.”

"I always said the only thing I have to give you was a poor gift and that's myself. And I always gave. And if there's a way to come back and give it, I'll do it."

Listen to this story. Then go and do likewise

2006-02-07T21:32:00.000-08:00

Not Because You Must

A word of wisdom from Douglas Frank in Randall Balmer's book on Evangelicals, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory":

"The gospel says we're all bastards, but God loves us anyway. The moralist says, 'Maybe you're a bastard and I used to be one.' That's a betrayal of the gospel, the good news of our salvation through Christ. The bible teaches that Jesus saves us in spite of ourselves."

And, prompted by Scot McKnight, an invitation to communion from the Covenant Book of Worship:

“Come to this sacred table, not because you must, but because you may; come not to testify that you are righteous, but that you sincerely love the Lord Jesus Christ and desire to be his true disciples; come not because you are strong but because you are weak; not because you have any claim on the grace of Christ but because of your frailty and sin you stand in constant need of his mercy and help; come not to express an opinion, but to seek his presence and pray for his Spirit.”

2006-02-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

Two things to ponder from John Scalzi:

First, on the disappointing box office performance by the films nominated for best picture:

Just how uncommercial is this crop of nominees? Consider this: a nominee for Best Documentary -- March of the Penguins -- has made more money than any of the Best Picture nominees. I guarantee you that has never happened before, ever. When Hollywood's best films can't compete with chilled, aquatic birds, there's something going on.

And then this, on the prospects of the Bush adminstration coming up with an alternate energy strategy for America:

Beware the incompetent armed with a good idea.

2006-01-29T12:54:00.000-08:00

More on Kathy Holgrem's trip to the Congo from the Chicago Tribune.

2006-01-28T18:13:00.000-08:00

From One Saint to Another

Among CS Lewis's many correspondents was Don Giovanni Calabria, founder of the
Congregation of the Poor Servants of Divine Providence, and cannonized by Pope John Paul II in 1999. In other words, a real live saint.

This excerpt is dated March 27, 1948--but it could have been written today. If Lewis were alive today, this is what he would like says to Christians, especially those of the American Evangelical variety. (Note-this is Lewis's reply to St. Giovanni, translated from Latin --the language the two men used to communicate, as Giovanni spoke no English, and I believe Lewis spoke no Italian.)

“Everywhere things are troubling and uneasy - wars and rumors of wars; perhaps not the final hour but certainly evil times. Nevertheless, the Apostle bids us again and again “Rejoice.” Nature herself bids us do so, the very face of the earth being now renewed, after its own manner, at the start of Spring.

I believe that the men of the age (and among them you Father and myself) think too much about the state of nations and the situation of the world. Does not the author of The Imitation warn us against involving oneself too much with such things.

We are not kings, we are not senators. Let us beware lest, while we torture ourselves in vain about the state of Europe, we neglect either Verona or Oxford. In the poor man who knocks at my door, in my ailing mother, in the young man who seeks my advice, the Lord Himself is present; therefore, let us wash his feet.

Amen

2006-01-28T11:35:00.000-08:00

More Important Than the Super Bowl

When Mike Holgren takes the field with his Seattle Seahawks at the Super Bowl next week, his wife Kathy won't watching. She has "more important things to do," as my colleague Stan Friedman put it.

Instead, she'll be at a remote village hospital in Congo, with a group of doctors and nurses, (including her daugher Calla), assisting the Congolese medical staff with their staggering workload.

Congo is, as The Lancet reported this month, the worst humanitarian disaster in the world. Four million people have died there since 1998, as a result of a civil war that devasted the country's infrastracture. The economy, tranportation systems, health care system and schools are in shambles. It is Darfur on steroids.

With few exceptions, the only schools and hospitals still operating are run by churches, with Congolese staff, many of whom went for months without pay during the war, but refused to give up. With the help of aid groups like the Paul Carlson partnership, Congolese grassroots leaders are rebuilding their community.

The Kathy Holgren story should have legs. The Chicago Tribune has a story in the works, and ABC is planning on talking to her as part of their Super Bowl coverage. It's not a publicity stunt--as the trip was planned long before the Seahawks made the Super Bowl--but with any luck the press coverage will shed a little light, and perhaps galvanize some support, for people who are walking in a very dark place.

2006-01-20T09:37:00.000-08:00

The Cost of Forgiveness

If you're lucky, once in your life you'll meet a real life, bonafide saint. About six years ago, my former colleague Craig Pinley and I met three of them: Herb, Bruce and Barbara Baehr of Baldwinsville, New York, on the outskirts of Syracuase. By saint, I mean some who not claims to believe in God but lives like they believe in God.

Here's their story:

THE COST OF FORGIVENESS
The Covenant Companion
July 2000
Bob Smietana and Craig Pinley

On December 6, 1997, Mary "Lily" Baehr of Baldwinsville, New York, was murdered in the home she shared with her husband Herb, and their son and daughter-in law. Lily's son, Bruce, serves as the associate pastor of Grace Covenant Church in Clay, New York.

On March 17, 1999, Kenneth Hobart, a career criminal, confessed to killing eighty-year-old Lily Baehr during an attempted burglary. On January 19, 2000, Hobart was sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison for murdering Lily Baehr. At Hobart's sentencing, Bruce Baehr looked the man who had killed his mother in the eye, and read this statement:

"We want you to know that when you killed Mary Lily Baehr, you took a life that was cherished by her husband, family, and friends. To have her physical life taken by you in such a cruel and unnecessary way has caused great sorrow and pain in the lives of those who loved her so much. We often think of her and miss her....Perhaps part of the good that will come from such a terrible crime is for you to hear what Mary Lily Baehr would have wanted us to say to you today. We want to tell you that we forgive you. We can say this with sincerity, because we have received God's forgiveness for the wrong things we have done."

Bruce Baehr remembers that he was in a hurry the day that his mother died. Bruce and his wife, Barbara, were headed to Chicago to see their son Jason, a student at North Park University, and they were running late. So Bruce headed out the door without kissing his eighty-year-old mother good-bye.

Barb stopped him. "Bruce," she said, "you didn't say good-bye to Mom."
"I turned and went back," Bruce recalls, "and said, 'Mom, I love you,' and gave her a hug and a kiss and then we went out the door."
That was the last time that any family member saw her alive.

Bruce and Barb left their home at approximately 8:30 a.m., on Saturday, December 6, 1997. Soon after they left, a group of men approached the Baehr family home in rural Baldwinsville, New York, about fifteen miles northwest of Syracuse. They had been casing the house for some time, and believed they would find a large sum of money in the house. They also believed that no one would be home. When they found Lily Baehr and only a few hundred dollars in the house, they slit her throat and left her to die on the laundry room floor.

At 9:45 a.m., eighty-one-year-old Herb Baehr returned home from a Saturday morning prayer meeting. It took him some time to figure out that something was wrong. "There was a bit of snow on the ground that day," he says. "When I arrived, I noticed that the outside door was open. I thought, well that's strange, but maybe Lily was baking something and maybe wanted to get a little smoke out. I thought no more of it."

As Herb walked from the garage to the house, he noticed that there were several skid marks in the driveway. "I thought, well, Bruce must've been late for his plane and took off in a hurry."

Then he noticed a second door leading into the kitchen was open as well. Herb walked past the laundry room door, and noticed that several things looked out of place.

There was a pan of quiche on the kitchen counter, with a fork, a plate, and a glass of orange juice next to it. He heard the television on in the living room, but no one was there. He stopped in his bedroom and noticed that the money he kept there was missing. He checked the whole first floor of the house, but there was no sign of Lily.

"I called, 'Lil,' to see if she was upstairs and there was no answer," says Herb, "so then I really was getting concerned. I went into the kitchen and then I went into the laundry room and there she was. I went back to the bedroom and called 911, and they said to go check if she's still breathing. So I went into the [laundry] room and I looked and I felt her shoulder, and it was already starting to get cool, so I knew she wasn't breathing. I checked her body motion and there was no breath, of course. Then I went back in (to the phone) and I said 'She's not breathing.' [They said] to go back again and see if her heart is beating, so I went back in and felt her wrists and felt her pulse and, of course, there was no pulse. That dear woman was in glory."

The rescue squad arrived moments later and tried desperately to revive Lily. The police came a few minutes later. According to the Syracuse Post Standard, more than thirty officers searched the Baehrs' house and farm for the next two days, looking for clues to help them find out who killed Lily Baehr.

They found very little to go on.
"It's one of those cases you don't often see in police work," says Steve Dougherty, chief assistant district attorney (DA) for Onondaga County. "You had a crime that was committed, one of the most vicious homicides you could have, a burglary in the middle of the country, with no suspects. From the outset we were stumped. There was no motive and no suspects."

a cloud of suspicion
suspicion turned immediately to Herb Baehr. He was questioned for some time on the day of the murder - first at the house and later at the police station. He says they asked him where he had been and when he had left the house. They also wanted to know how much insurance Herb carried on his wife.

"We had a terminal policy for Lily, just a small one, $2,500, for terminal expenses," says Herb. "That's all there was. And I couldn't even get that. On the death certificate, they would not put the cause of death. So I could not get the insurance, even for my wife's burial expenses. They weren't sure I hadn't done it."

While Herb was being questioned by police, Bruce and Barb were in Chicago. When they arrived at O'Hare Airport, they were surprised to hear they names paged. They were met by a Chicago police officer, who escorted them to a conference room in the basement of the airport. They called home and talked to one of the officers at the scene, who put Herb on the phone. Herb told them that Lily was dead.

Bruce and Barb spent several minutes trying to piece together what could have happened. Herb had told them that the back door of the house was open and that Lily had died in the laundry room.

"I called back and I got [one of the officers] on the phone," Bruce says, "and I told him, 'I think we have it figured out. I think my mom was probably feeding the cat, [tripped] and hit her head on the laundry room floor.' His words to me were, 'Mr. Baehr, your mother was murdered.' That was the end of the conversation."

Bruce and Barb knew that they needed to get back home as soon as possible. After booking a 6 p.m. flight to Syracuse, they called their son Jason to tell him what happened. They also called David Lysack, a family friend, and asked him to be with Herb until they arrived.

When they arrived at the Syracuse airport, officer Renee Roberts was waiting for them. "We knew that we were going to be met at the airport by the detective," Bruce says, "and they had already told us that we were going to be questioned as soon as we got back."

As Roberts drove the Baehrs to the police station, Barb realized that they were already being interrogated. "She [was] asking questions and wondering if I did this," Barb says. "We were babes in the woods. We had no idea that we would be considered suspects."

When they arrived at the police station, Herb had already gone home with Lysack. Bruce and Barb's daughter Jessica, nineteen, was also being questioned.

"I kept saying, 'I want to see my daughter,' " Barb says, "and they said, 'she's being questioned, you can see her when we are done.' When I was done [being questioned] I asked where my daughter was and they told me she was gone. I tore down the back stairs and she was [driving away] in a police car." Barbara was not able to reach Jessica until the next morning.

Bruce and Barb were questioned until about 1 a.m. When they were finally allowed to leave, they faced a new problem - where to go. They couldn't go home as their house was still considered a crime scene. They ended up at the Lysacks' house. Herb was there, along with a number of friends from church, who had come to support them.

God went before us
The Baehrs say that the thing that got them through this time of their life was a sense that God was in control. They saw this first in the response from their church. Many people brought meals, or just spent time with them. One couple, Herb and Donna James, took the Baehrs into their home.

"They just took over," Barb recalls. "They said, 'You are coming home with us.' Their presence normalized things, because there's no place that you can make this fit in your life - this doesn't have anything to do with what you have ever experienced."

Several days later, Bruce was finally able to go back to the house. It was a mess. Most of the house was covered in a gray dust used for fingerprinting. There were muddy footprints from officers who had been searching the farm, and much of the house was taped off. Still, Bruce says that he saw God at work.

Before being called as the associate pastor at Grace Covenant, Bruce had worked for nearly twenty years at a local adoption agency. The first person he met at the house was an evidence technician who also happened to be an adoptive dad. Years earlier, Bruce had placed two children from Russia with him.

"He came to the door," Bruce says, "and I could see tears in his eyes. He said, 'Don't worry Bruce. I told all of the evidence technicians to be careful. It was sitting at this kitchen table that I saw my son and daughter for the first time. Your house is in good hands.' "

In the earliest days of the investigation, Don Hilton, a member of the Syracuse police department and of Grace Covenant, called the sheriff's office and told them to start looking outside the family for a suspect. Hilton also placed a call to Mary Lawrence, who directs the victim's advocate program for the Onondaga County DA's office. She visited the house, and spent some time talking with Herb. She was also able to help him clear up Lily's death certificate, which allowed Herb to collect the insurance money for his wife's funeral.

Lawrence, who lost her own brother in a murder ten years ago, works with the New York Crime Victim's board to provide counseling, assistance with burial expenses, and other services for victims' families. She talked about some of the hardships that a family faces after a loved one is killed.

"Aside from losing someone violently and suddenly," Lawrence says, "they also find themselves in a system that's focused on the perpetrator - looking for the perpetrator or building a case....You want some respect - that this happened to your life, this is about you, and you have absolutely no control. The media's in your face, the police are in your face, the DA's office wants all their facts, and all of this is out of your control. You can't get a life insurance policy, everything's held up. It's almost like your grief is kind of stopped until, and even after, a sentencing."

coming home
After three weeks, the Baehrs were allowed to move back into their house. At first, Barb and Herb weren't sure they wanted to go back. Besides getting past the trauma that came with Lily being murdered in the house, the Baehrs feared that they would lose the house as a place of ministry. They bought the house in June of 1977, after Bruce and Barb moved to the area to work at a local adoption agency. Herb and Lily moved in that October, after Herb retired as an assistant school superintendent in Valley Stream, New York. Besides their children Nathan, Jason, and Jessica, the Baehrs shared their home with five children from Vietnam: Tuan, Hai, Linh, Loan, and Hoai Nguyen. (Eventually they helped the Nguyens' mother move from Vietnam as well.) They had also welcomed a number of single mothers to live with them, and had often invited adoptive parents and people from church to the house.

"At one point," Barb says, "I thought that maybe no one will ever want to come to our house again. In the third week of January some of the women from church came and they had a little birthday party, and it was so comforting to know that people would still want to come here." A few weeks later, a dozen men from Grace Covenant held a day-long retreat at the Baehrs' house.

Still, everywhere they looked, the Baehrs were reminded of Lily's absence. Lily had decorated much of the house, including a wallpaper border in the kitchen she had put up in the weeks before she died. Barb says that she got mad every time she heard Lily described as an "elderly woman."

"I would not describe her as elderly," says Barb. "She was up [on a ladder] wallpapering. The last thing we did together was put border around the kitchen ceiling. We were laughing hysterically and insisting the men leave the room, and no comments. Our favorite hobby was making fun of Dad. We wanted it to go on and on."

She describes Lily as having a "can-do'' spirit. "If there was a problem like sewing or anything, she would figure out how it could be done," she recalls. "When I think about her life, it wasn't a life that ended tragically in her old age. Her life was snuffed out. She was going full-tilt for the Lord, she was a volunteer, she was an active grandmother and wife, a mother-in-law, and mother. It wasn't like she was petering out at all. She had plans for things we were going to do."

solving the case
While the Baehrs were adjusting to living back at home and Lily's absence from their lives, they were still under a cloud of suspicion. As of April 1998, five months after the murder, they were still the primary suspects.

Steve Dougherty says that while investigating the family may seem harsh, it was necessary, especially in this case.

"You have to look at the family," he says, "and it's so uncomfortable. If you don't turn over a rock, it's going to come out later that you didn't turn that rock over and it can be part of the defense of the person who actually did it or it may lead to the person who actually did it."

The focus of the investigation began to change when Chuck Florczyk, a detective with the Onondaga sheriff, was assigned to the Baehr case. During the initial investigation, Florczyk had been assigned to a federal narcotics task force.

"It looked rather bleak when I came on board," Florczyk says. "It appeared as though there wasn't much of anything that they [missed]. But it just took some time, talking to the right people and asking the right questions."

After reviewing the case and talking with the family members, Florczyk became convinced that they were not involved in the murder. That conclusion was corroborated when both Bruce and Barb passed polygraph tests.

Taking the polygraph test proved to be a frustrating experience for the Baehrs, in part because the polygraph operator led them to believe that new evidence had been uncovered. This angered Bruce, as he had been assured by Captain Gene Conway of the sheriff's office that they would be notified of any new evidence immediately. That, on top of being asked if he killed his mother or knew anything about the crime, was too much to for Bruce. He stormed out of the room once the test was over, and ignoring the operator's instructions, told Barb what to expect during the test.

"I was so angry," Bruce says. "I was angry at Gene Conway, I was angry at the polygraph operator. [I was so angry that] I could not have a quiet time, I could not read my Bible, I could not pray. I realized that I had to ask Gene Conway to forgive me for my anger at him."

So, the next Monday morning, Bruce called Conway and asked him to come out to the house. When Conway arrived, Bruce apologized for his behavior, and asked Conway to forgive him.

"I think that was the one time that I saw tears welling up in his eyes," Bruce says. "His comment was, 'Bruce, you don't need to say that you are sorry to us. We need to [apologize] to you, but to be thorough we had to do this. I knew in my heart that you weren't involved but still procedurally we had to do that.'"

That conversation marked a change in the relationship between the Baehrs and the police officers involved in the case. Several of them have become especially close to Herb. Conway stops in on a regular basis to talk, while Florczyk stops in for a cup of tea every week. Bruce says that the family is thankful for all the work that the detectives have put in, and tries to pray for and encourage the officers involved in the case.

Florczyk and his partner Richard "Chris" Simone worked on the case full-time, often working overtime. Several sources pointed towards Kenneth Ho-bart, thirty-four, a career criminal with a number of arrests for burglary and assault. The two detectives questioned Hobart and talked with many of his associates. "Every day [Hobart] woke up," says Florczyk, "he was talking to someone that was telling him that they had a visit by the police. That's the price you pay when you are involved in this crime."

At first, Hobart denied any involvement in the crime. As the investigation continued, Hobart began to get very nervous. At one point, Hobart begged him to give Florczyk a polygraph test, to prove that he was not involved in the crime. Florczyk arranged two polygraphs for Hobart. He failed both times.

The detectives also conducted several searches, and found a number of pieces of evidence. They also found about a pound of marijuana among Hobart belongings and arrested him for possession.

Eventually, detectives began to suspect that someone close to Hobart might have been in the car while Hobart and others robbed the Baehr house. Dougherty thinks this played a role in Hobart's decision to come forward and confess. On March 17, 1999, Hobart and his lawyer came to the DA's office and agreed to a plea bargain. He gave detectives a written statement the next day.

"[We think] that Hobart's conscience may have gotten the better of him," Dougherty says. "We'd like to think there was some divine intervention. Whether he was doing this to protect someone, we don't know. But he came forward with an attorney and he gave us a full confession. In return for not seeking murder in the first degree, which can lead to the death penalty, we said that if he gave us a written statement we'd drop the charge to murder in the second degree and the maximum sentence, which is twenty-five years to life."

Both Dougherty and Florczyk say that given the lack of physical evidence or witnesses, it was doubtful that Hobart would have been convicted without the confession. "I do give him some credit for facing up to this, for whatever reason," says Florczyk.

Hobart also gave police the identities of several of the other people who were involved in the murder. The other suspects were not arrested immediately because Hobart's confession was not considered sufficient evidence. He did, however, point the police in the right direction. "They have solved the case," Bruce says. "Now all they have to do is prove it." In May, Angel Perez was indicted by a grand jury for his role in the murder of Lily Baehr.

Florczyk says that he feels a sense of accomplishment about solving the case, in part because of his relationship with Herb. "I made a commitment the day that I started this case," says Florczyk. "I promised Herb Baehr that if nothing else, I would provide him and his family with an explanation. I was able to provide this explanation to eliminate all that doubt - that way they weren't going to be pointing the finger at each other in the family. That was a major relief and I think that helped [Herb]."

the road to forgiveness
Bruce says that he is not a forgiving person by nature. But he knew even at Lily's memorial service that he wanted to forgive whoever had killed her.

"You think I may have been early to forgive," Bruce says. "Mom would have been before me. I remember [when I was] a young child, she was going to work on Long Island and she got knocked down and somebody stole her purse. And she never had an unkind word to say about that person. When she came home, I asked her what happened. She said, 'Someone must've needed some money because they took my purse.'

"That's the way she was, she was gentle and kind and could find the good in any person so as I reflect back on this,

I know that forgiveness would have been what she desired for all of us. She really tried to live her life as Christ would live."

Mary Lawrence says she was struck by how soon after the murder the Baehrs were talking about forgiveness. She says that one of the first things that Bruce said to her was, "I forgive this person."

"I told him, 'You don't even know who this person is,' " Lawrence says, "and he said, 'I know, but I forgive this person.' That was within the first days, he still wasn't even back in his home yet. I've been doing this for eight years, and I have never seen [that so early]. I've seen the rage, I've seen the intense grief, I've seen families torn apart, I've seen families pulled together, but I've never had anybody come to me in such a short time and say 'I forgive this person' and not even know [who the person was.]"

Barb says that she knew when she saw Hobart's picture that she had to forgive him. "There was just no question that this is someone God loved," says Barb, "and someone who had led a miserable life and had spread plenty of misery to others. And yet, we [felt] we had no choice."

Forgiveness came hardest for Herb. He spent a lot of time talking with both Bruce, and his younger son Rick about it. He says that since he knew that God had forgiven him, he had to forgive Lily's killer. "I had quite a struggle," he admits. "It was very difficult for me to overcome the fact that my partner of fifty-eight years was taken from me. But I truly can say that I have forgiven him."

the courtroom

The Baehrs worked on the statement they would give at Hobart's sentencing for several months. Barb wrote the first draft. Herb and Bruce revised it. Bruce also called Dougherty and several of the officers ahead of time, to let them know what he was doing. "I did not want anything I had to take away from the wonderful job they did to solve this crime," he says.

Florczyk says that as the sentencing approached, he started to get anxious to hear what Bruce was going to say. After thirty-one years and hundreds of investigations, this was the first time he had heard the family of a victim forgive a murderer.

"[That day] I lost my sense of being in a courtroom," Florczyk recalls. "At one point I thought I was actually in a church, because it seemed like the atmosphere in the courtroom transformed into a church....As a matter of fact, you could see the defendant, Kenny Hobart, actually overwhelmed. I think his original intention was to address the court, but I don't think that he could do it. He was just overcome by the emotion.

"I don't know too many people that could do what Bruce did. I am still talking to people today about this. Most people I deal with find it very difficult to forgive at that level."

Bill Walsh, who represented Hobart at the sentencing, says the act of forgiveness by Baehr still amazes him.

"Hobart did say on the day of the sentencing that he was sorry," said Walsh. "And I don't care how cold your heart is...it's got to affect you. I think he was surprised by the compassion [of] the family. He knew that the family was a churchgoing, Christian family, but in a later conversation, he was still genuinely surprised. And it certainly wasn't a hollow statement by Bruce Baehr. It came from the heart. [Lily Baehr's murder] was a savage act of violence, with no rhyme or reason. For the family to forgive him, I was just astounded."

Dougherty says that the sentencing is the one time where a family can address the perpetrator. He has seen families give a range of responses, from hostility to, in rare cases, forgiveness.

Dougherty says that he was moved by both Bruce's statement and Hobart's response. "When Bruce was reading the statement, [Hobart] was crying." he says. "This is a guy who's got his own children and family. Crack cocaine has gotten the better of Kenny Hobart by leaps and bounds and he did the most unthinkable thing you could do, but still in there was a person with a conscience that came forward and confessed. At least there was some light in his head to come and do the right thing."

Dougherty says that seeing the Baehrs' forgiveness has stuck with him.

"I come from a social-work background, I worked with kids who had a lot of problems, and that has always been a part of my makeup," Dougherty says. "Unfortunately, it gets you a little jaded because what we see [in the DA's office] is a lot of bad stuff. But when you hear someone that comes in and is as refreshing as Bruce is, it makes you walk a little lighter, and for more than just a day. It's great to see the good in people...it makes me feel a bit better inside."

Lawrence, who was in the courtroom that day as well, says that because Syracuse is a smaller city (pop. 164,000), sometimes a victim's family has a connection with a perpetrator, either through family or a neighborhood connection. "But for Bruce and his family," Lawrence says, "it was a total stranger coming into his home and devastating his whole family. And it wasn't just the homicide they were dealing with, it was not just their mother's death, it was all this turmoil they had to face and the scrutiny they were under. And he was [still] saying, 'I forgive this person.' I've never forgotten that. I carry it with me."

Lawrence says that people can confuse forgiveness with saying that what the murderer did didn't matter, that "It's okay what you did."

"Bruce was never saying that," she says. "He was saying, 'I forgive this person, and I hate what he did. My mother's gone forever and we have to deal with my father being a widower in what should be his last, wonderful years.' "

Having a strong faith seems to be a key component for families that have been able to forgive, says Lawrence. She says that faith helps people deal with the pain and the loss.

"It's always a process," she says, "and people who have a strong faith sometimes even question their faith. They tell me, 'I am questioning God, I am questioning my faith, I feel like I am on very shaky ground.' But they always come back to their faith and usually stronger. And they learn to appreciate things more. Life is more precious to them, but so is the void - there is a person missing from their life and that void sometimes becomes huge."

Dorine Hanevy, who covered the sentencing for the Palladium-Times newspaper, says that she was impressed by Bruce's calmness.

"I've heard people in the past mention God and forgiveness," Hanevy said. "But in the other cases you could feel their pain they were still dealing with it. Bruce didn't center on his own feelings, he didn't cry out, 'I'm going through this much pain.' He focused in on his relationship with God and it just came across as calm and believable, that he had actually forgiven him, which I think is a hard task to do."

facing the future
The recent indictment of Perez means a new challenge for the Baehrs. Because Hobart confessed, they did not have to go through the ordeal of a trial. On Monday, May 15, 2000, Perez pleaded "not guilty" to all charges in the Baehr case. The next court date is July 6.

Perez has been involved in a murder before - in 1994, he helped a Florida man kill and bury his girlfriend's husband. However, prosecutors there gave Perez immunity after he cooperated with authorities to indict two accomplices.

His arrest has brought up the issue of forgiveness again for the Baehrs. Perez was charged with murder in the first degree, which carries a possible death sentence. In early May, Dougherty called the Baehrs and asked them where they stood on the death penalty.

Bruce says that ironically, he was a death penalty advocate before his mom was murdered. He now opposes it.

"Yes, they came in my house, and yes they took my mom's life," he says, "but I want to respond, [even though] I am not always able to, as Christ would have responded....We have a loving God who has provided an avenue for all of us, no matter how bad we are, to have an opportunity to come to faith. And if we put someone to death, that lessens that opportunity."

The subject of the death penalty touches some raw emotions in Herb. He says that he hasn't made up his mind over whether he would support the death penalty if Perez is convicted. When asked if he would be able to forgive Perez, he says that, "there, I come to a wall." (At Perez's indictment the DA's office decided not to pursue the death penalty.)

Herb planted a rose garden in front of the house - which he maintains in memory of his wife. He says that he wants to approach the trial in the way that his wife would have.

"Coming back to Angel's trial, I'm sure that Lil would want me to do my best to be objective and say the facts as they were, but at the same time to have a forgiving attitude toward him. I'm sure she would be [forgiving]."

Bruce says that though he wishes that this ordeal was over, he and the rest of the family just want to remain faithful.

"When God is finished with what he has planned through this whole thing it will be finished and it won't be finished until God sees the results that he wants to see. I think I can speak for everyone in our family - that we will be faithful to his purposes till the end of this. It would be wonderful for this to be over, but on the other hand I have seen people's lives changed because of what we have had to travel through - this is not about glorifying the Baehr family - this is about glorifying God."

2006-01-09T15:27:00.000-08:00

Preach It

The Real Live Preacher is a genuis. Too many religion bloggers (and bloggers in general) are either blowhards or Monday morning quarterbacks, complaining about how the media got this wrong, or the media got that wrong, or how the culture just doesn't understand us.

The Preacher, instead, tells it like it is, in a funny and winsome voice that even people who disagree with him can appreciate.

Salon.com asked the Preacher to review the first episode of The Book of Daniel.

The show, according to the Preacher, was suckola, featuring a Jesus who was more Doobie Brother than Savior.

"and all he does is hand out Life Savers and say things like, "Life is hard, but that's why there's a nice reward at the end,"
says the Preacher. "That's no Jesus I ever heard of. Jesus was nice and all, but he was a straight-up ass kicker. Believe it."

So what, the Preacher asked. Think the media or Hollywood is tough on Christians,?

Compared to the Babylonians, they are sissies. The Babylonians, as you may recall, were in the habit of feeding people who believed in Yahweh to the lions or sticking them in a fiery furnance.

The Preacher's advice. Stop worrying what the culture thinks about you, and start acting like a Christian. Maybe then the culture will listen to what the church has to say instead of laughing at us.

Don't take my word for it. Here's the truth, straight from the preacher's mouth:

More and more Christians seem to think that affirmation from our culture is where they will find their power. Since when do religions need affirmation from television stations? That's a little shallow, don't you think? What we should be doing is practicing our devotion and letting our changed lives speak for themselves.

And I've got news for you, Christian. If your faith isn't changing your life enough to make a difference in the world, you've got bigger problems than NBC.

Oh, there is something a little ironic that I want to mention. The first six chapters of the actual book of Daniel -- the one in the Bible -- are about a young man named Daniel and some of his friends who are trying to live out their faith in a very hostile foreign land. Trust me, the Babylonians were much worse than NBC. Daniel's solution was to doggedly worship God in their own way, and let their lives be a quiet and steady witness of their faith.

Their devotion produced a living and real goodness that even won the heart of the King in the end. And all of this happened because they were not foolish enough to try to change Babylon, but rather changed themselves.

2005-12-27T16:25:00.000-08:00

The Abstract Factory has a, shall we say, rather ingenious idea (borrowed from the Mafia) for shutting up proponents on Intelligent Design. Kneecap them. .

So much for civilized conversation.

The problem is that, while breaking your opponent's kneecaps sounds like fun, it's not going to get scientists and other evolution advocates any closer to ending the "Evolution War." Neither violence nor a federal court are going to stop people from believing that God created the world, and from trying to teach their kids that God created the world.

A little humilty seems to be in order. Somewhere someone brave science educator or scientist needs to tell the truth about evolution--that it's our best guess about the mechanics of how life came to be. It's an educated guess, based on observation and analysis. But there are still mysteries to how it all works. In 10 years, we'll understand the process better. In 100, if we've not blown ourselves to smithereens or poisoned the planet, we'll understand more.

Even then, evolution will be limited to "how" life came to be. It won't explain why it came to be, or what life means. It certainly can't tell us if God exists. And the theory of evolution itself is constantly evolving. We have yet to scratch the surface of understanding the secrets of the universe.

Any class on evolution ought it begin with that simple confession. Followed up with a trip outside to a place where the city lights have faded and the stars shine bright all around, and for a few minutes, a class and their teacher can experience the awe and majesty of the universe.

Understanding starts with humilty, not broken kneecaps.

2005-12-26T10:46:00.000-08:00

Fear, Control, and Bad Writing

Back in the early 1980s, a national newspaper reporter paid a visit to Wilk Peters, a retired librarian in Baltimore. Peters, the son of a Texas sharecropper, had an unusual gift for languages. He spoke and read six languages--including French, German, Spanish, and Russian--and at 82, was teaching himself Italian, in preparation for a trip to Rome.

Peters had gotten an award for his work as a volunteer translator, helping out stranded travelers. The reporter interviewed Peters, produced a story about Peters's good works that ran, and then disappeared.

Some time later, c "The Ballad of Old Man Peters" won the Pulitzer Prize.

The difference? One reporter went into with blinders on. He knew the story before reporting it, and missed out of the opportunity of a lifetime. Franklin went in curious, and found something glory.

Franklin describes how he got Peters to tell his story in his book, "Writing for Story":

"I didn't get that story first. A national newspaper reporter got to Wilk long before I did. Mr. Peters received a certificate of appreciation from a local church where he served as a volunteer translator for down-and-out foreign travelers. The reporter heard about it and went out for an interview.

But the reporter made a fatal error: having been attracted by the certificate, he assumed the certificate was the story. He produced a long, static piece about what a great translator Wilk was, and how much good he did for the travelers. It was, well...a nice story.

I was also fascinated with Wilk's good works, but I approached the problem differently. What, I asked, motivated this black sharecropper's son to learn six languages. Why did he expend so much effort to learn them.

Well, shucks, Wilk said. He was just interested in languages.

The earlier reporter had been satisfied with that answer. I wasn't. Mere interest is simply not sufficient to explain the heroic effort. So I sat Wilk down for an in-depth interview about his life, before he finally got tired and told me what really happened."

The rest is history. "The national news reporter's story was soon forgotten," Franklin says. "Mine made me a tidy bundle of cash, and is still being reprinted. The difference? The other reporter didn't look for the complication and I did."

Stephen King says that "fear is at the root of most bad writing." The other root of bad writing? Giving up too early. Assuming you know the story, and not doing the hard work of listening, digging, probing. Of not being curious enough.

Too many writers settle for mediocrity and miss out of greatness. Take Ted Dekker, the Christian suspense novelist. Dekker's a good writer but he could be great. Why isn't he? This interview explains why.

Gina: Do you do extensive plotting?

Ted: Oh yeah, I mean I’d love to just write a story and discover how it all comes out. I think King has said he does that. But, I’ve got too many twists. I’ve got huge challenges in my stories for my characters. I’ve got to know how it’s all going to work out. Otherwise I’d be wasting a lot of time on major rewrites. I write a rough draft and about half way through I start keeping a list of changes I may want to make. I don’t always need to make the changes, I see how it goes. If I need to, I do, then I take the rough draft to my editor and we talk it through.

Dekker is afraid to follow Stephen King's advice. King, if you've not read his book On Writing, believes that stories are "found things" and compares writing to archeology. You start digging, he believes, and then discover the story.

King, who's sold probably close to a 100 million books, had his books turned into major motion pictures, and probably made more money than God, is someone worth listening too.

But Dekker thinks he knows better, just like that newspaper reporter thought that Wilk Peters just liked languages.

We live a world where miracles and wonders abound. Where around every corner, and in every life, are marvelous stories.

Please don't miss them.

2005-12-23T11:14:00.000-08:00

Reporting Facts, Not Faith

Laurie Zoloth almost got it.

"Science is valid because it cannot be taken on faith alone," Zoloth wrote it today's Los Angeles Times, in a commentary on the cloning scandal in South Korea.

Zoloth, a brilliant and insightful bioethicist, is professor of medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and director of the Center for Bioethics, Science and Society, and an outspoken supporter of embryonic stem cell research. But she seems unable to grapple with the issue the center of the cloning scandal.

"How could we have seen it coming??" she asks. "All the mechanisms of scientific integrity and a skeptical media were engaged in reporting the apparent successes."

The fatal flaw in Zoloth's thinking? The assumption that "all the mechanisms of scientific integrity" were "engaged in reporting the apparent successes" of Hwang Woo-suk, the creator of "Snuppy" the cloned dog and of the first human clones.

The South Korea Scandal happenened because bioethicists, researchers, and journalists
--instead of being engaged in skeptical inquiry about the "promise" of embryonic stem cells and the "successes" of Dr. Hwang--were instead engaged in reporting on the controversy over stem cell ethics. The mechanisms and institutions and experts who should have turned a skeptical eye to Dr. Hwang's work instead were, in a word, "framed."

Since 2001, when stem cells first burst onto the headlines, the news coverage and public debate has been framed as a "science versus religion" story, with Pulitizer Prize winners and stem cell advocates pushing for funding for researcher and religious conservatives standing the way. Stem cells were seen as an extension of the abortion divide, with the main issue being whether or not the human embryos--the source for embryonic stem cells--were "human" or not.

Almost no one one asked the hard questions about the "promise" of stem cells. How real is the possibility of cures? What will it cost? What problems stand in the way? Can issues of tissue rejection be overcome? Will cures require cloning on a massive scale?

Instead, reporters, bioethicists, politicians, and scientists put blind faith that embryonic stem cells will become a panacea, and cure all of our human ills. Dr. Hwang took advantage of that blind faith. It could be argued, that stem cell supporters in California got 3 billion dollars from that state's government based on that blind faith as well.

Zoloth made one point perfectly clear in her Times piece. When it comes to embryonic stem cells, "the truth needs to be told with utter urgency."

Unfortunately, she chooses the dream of stem cell instead of the truth.

"The core idea," she writes, "that at the earliest stages of development, all beings begin with a set of identical cells that could turn into any cell — is a powerful one that will be studied, understood and, with courage and tenacity, luck and grace, used to treat suffering and waiting patients. That is not a fantasy, and that is not a fraud."

The truth is that there is no proof that embryonic stem cells will yield cures to human disease. There is a possibility, but no honest talk about the obstacles that stand in the way--and what it might take in terms of time, funding, or ethical practices to make those cures reality.

Enough of talk about "courage and tenacity, luck and grace," of the promise of cures, and of the ethical debates. What we need is cold hard facts, and honest assessments of the state of the science and the outlook for the future.

In speaking to the New York Times about the cloning scandal, Zoloth asked, "Is this our version of W.M.D.?"

The comparison is apt. In Iraq, we are seeing the cost, in human lives and in follars, the danger of putting blind faith ahead of facts. Before we spent billions chasing stem cell cures, it's time to find out if they are fact or fiction. Reality or a dream.

2005-12-15T07:55:00.000-08:00

A Holly Jolly Christmas

Tired of the war of Christmas? Mad at those megachurches for closing on Christmas Day? Feeling more like Scrooge and less like Tiny Tim.

Then try a little Christmas cheer from Journey Church in Norman, Oklahoma, where Burl Ives wishes you a Holly Jolly Christmas (it's the best time of the year) and where you can work out your frustrations by hitting the pastor in the face with a snowball .

And for the rest of the day, you'll walk around humming this familiar tune:

Have a holly, jolly Christmas;
It's the best time of the year
I don't know if there'll be snow,
but have a cup of cheer.
Have a holly, jolly Christmas;
And when you walk down the street
Say Hello to friends you know
and everyone you meet.

Oh, ho, the mistletoe
hung where you can see;
Somebody waits for you;
Kiss her once for me.
Have a holly jolly Christmas,
and in case you didn't hear,
Oh by golly, have a holly,
jolly Christmas this year.

God bless us, every one.

2005-12-13T16:05:00.000-08:00

We Need Saints

"We need saints. We have to become saints. we have to become like Christ. Anything else is simply not enough. The world doesn't need anymore mediocrity or hedge bets>'

That's Anne Rice, from an interview on her publisher's website

Here's that quote in context:

Q: What do you make of the current religious climate in this country?
A: I wish that we had more visible Christian and Catholic leaders who talked about love. We have many, but we could use more. It is tragic that many in America think of us–the Christians–as being people who hate others. We need leaders who open their arms to others. We need leaders like Fulton Sheen and Billy Graham and Rick Warren and N. T. Wright. We need to love one another; we need to acknowledge the goodness and the good intentions of our brothers and sisters; we need to stop fighting Christian against Christian. I have no time now for anything but trying to love other people. That is a full-time job. To fill my writing with that will take everything I have. I want to love all the children of God–Christian, Jew, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist–everyone. I want to love Gay Christians and straight Christians.

But the point is, we need people to make visible the great embracing and compassionate message of Christianity, people to continue the revolution started by Christ Himself, people to bear witness that the story of Jesus Christ is going on and on without end, gaining power with each century, and reaching more and more people. We need saints. We have to become saints. We have to become like Christ. Anything less is simply not enough. The world doesn’t need any more mediocrity or hedged bets.

'Nuff said.

2005-12-12T15:47:00.000-08:00

A Taste of Christmas

Amy Welbourne weighs in on the "Closed for Xmas" phenomena:

So no, this is not just about celebrating "Christmas" at times that may or may not be convenient. What the conversation reveals is the poverty of the non-liturgical Christian traditions in this regard, and our own poverty, when we who are the heirs and guardians of 2000 years of reflection and tradition, turn our backs on the rich theological and spiritual feast that's ours, and start thinking, like the rest of the world, about what we have to squeeze in, so that the religious part of Christmas is taken care of, and the real celebrations can begin.

I have to say that the coverage of "Closed for Xmas" story by the Revealer —which barely mentioned it—and especially by Get Religion —which given the liturgical leanings of its bloggers, has basically used the story to assert their own tradition's superiority to megachurches—has been disappointing.

Neither has asked the $64,000 question, which is, "why have these churches dropped Christmas for Christmas Eve?" (Scot McKnight has taken a shot at answering that question.)

Part of the answer, IMHO, is related to Amy's post about the "rich spiritual and theological feast." The problem is that many people raised the Christian church in the US--mostly in Mainline and Catholic churches--have cut off all ties with the church. (There's a reason why Willow Creek is sometimes referred to as the largest Catholic church in Chicago.)

My family is one of those which cut ties for the church. We made our way back, thanks to a teenaged friend of my brothers--who invited us to the Covenant church--but if not for Joey Clark (my brother's friends) we might still be outside the church.

These folks who left the church, will still, out of longing or nostalgia or seeking or some other emotion--will come to church on Christmas Eve. They cannot enjoy the feast that Amy referred to, because there's no room in their lives for God, and to taste of the spiritual riches of the banquet would overwhelm them.

So the megachurches offers them a taste, hoping to entice them back for the feast. They have made church "bite sized" and accessible--so that people will take the first step toward God. (Whether the megachurches have gone the next step, in bringing people to full discipleship in Christ, is another story.)

If reporters, bloggers, pastors, pundits and theologians will be willing to look past the "can you believe this" headlines, they'll find a much more troubling--and hopeful--story there.

2005-12-08T18:23:00.000-08:00

C.S. Lewis--Uniter, Not Divider

Perhaps C.S. Lewis will be a uniter, not a divider after all. Salom.com has a lovely review of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Stephanie Zacharek compares the film to a comfy old sweater, and urges readers to 'forget the scary hype."
Here's her lead:

| There's something a little ragged around the edges of "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe": It has a vaguely faded, not-quite-new feel to it, like a hand-me-down book from a past generation, with cover wear and smudged pages and a wiggly spine -- all the things used-book dealers sniff at but which, to readers, are simply a book's way of wearing the love that's been lavished on it.

And that's exactly what makes this adaptation of C.S. Lewis' much-loved 1950 novel so wonderful. There's nothing too clean or too overbright about it. It's magic, but not the loud, shiny kind: It has the texture of worn velvet, or a painstakingly hand-knit sweater stored away for years in tissue paper.

A couple other highlights:

There are obviously many reasons why C.S. Lewis' Narnia series -- of which "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is the first installment -- have been captivating readers for so long. But I think one reason people respond to the Lewis books -- a reason that's ably served by this adaptation -- is that even though they take place in a fanciful universe, they show respect for kids' integrity and intelligence, instead of just treating children as charming but woefully undereducated beings.
But it's Lucy who's the soul of the movie, not because, as the youngest child, she's the most innocent character, but because she's the most heart-wrenchingly open.
the most "Jesusy" section of "Narnia" is one that's played so powerfully -- it's moving and staggering at once -- that it can be read on any number of levels. I think, more than anything else, it speaks to our capacity for compassion, and if that's not nondenominational, I don't know what is. If certain religious groups want to lay claim to compassion as a brand, that's their business. But it shouldn't interfere with anyone's pleasure in "Narnia," or, for that matter, in C.S. Lewis' books.

Sound like we've got a winner. My favorite line is this: "there's so much pleasure to be had in the look of "Narnia" that the experience feels somewhat decadent, anyway."

If you want to know what makes C.S. Lewis a genius consider this--in about 150 pages, he created an entire world--one as captivating today as it was 50 years ago. A world that Christians and non Christians, left winger and rightwingers (and us remainng few moderates) can all call our own.

That's a miracle, if you ask me.

2005-12-08T17:03:00.000-08:00

Return of Super Jesus ?

Since I'm stuck in the office, waiting out a snow storm, I took another look at the new Superman trailer, and can't help but thinking that there's an awful lot of Jesus in Superman. (Wonder what Polly Toynbee would think about that--yikes.)

Check out this voice over (from Brando--I think) on the trailer:

"They can be a great people, Kal-El, if they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason, above all—their capacity for good--I have sent them you, my only son."

H. Michael Brewer compares Superman and Jesus in his book, "Who Needs a Superhero" (an excellent book), and made some intriguing points in an interview for a piece I did on comic and spirituality. (It's here and in a slightly different format here

Here's a few thoughts from Brewer:

Comics are about finding meaning in suffering: "Batman has a choice when his parents are killed. He can be crippled for life or deal with tragedy in a way that makes the world a better place. Superman loses everything - his world, his family, his home. Instead of remaining a stranger, he decides to adopt Earthlings as his own."
Comic showcase Christian virtues as humility and being a servant. In one of Brewer's favorite storylines, super villain Lex Luthor programs a computer to discover the connection between Superman and Clark Kent. When the computer concludes that Kent is Superman, Luther cannot believe it - how would a being with Superman's powers be content as a lowly newspaper reporter?

According to Brewer, Superman is content as Clark Kent because he is genuinely good. He has superhuman power and he has chosen to use it responsibly and not for his own benefit. That's not a far cry from Jesus, who could have summoned legions of angels to save himself from the cross and didn't."
Comics follow the basic pattern of the Christian life--sin, salvation, service. "Christians are saved from sin and given the power of the Holy Spirit — not for their own benefit — but in order to serve humanity. A great many Christians remain stunted in their faith because they accept Jesus and then stop, as if that completed things. There is a world out there that needs saving, that needs Christians to act as God’s hands and feet.”

In comic, heroes—unlike some Christians—find joy by embracing their calling. "Christians have a sense that God’s will is a grim and foreboding thing—that we are afraid of what God will do to us or where God will send us if we follow his call. But when when we follow God call, we discover that God’s will brings us joy."

Hopefully the snow will let up before the Superman flick comes out.

2005-12-08T16:04:00.000-08:00

Closed on Christmas

Scot McKnight has some thought-provoking comments on the closing on Christmas controversy. I think Scot's got a better handle on the context of this story than some other bloggers— Ben Witherington and the Internet Monk

Manya Brachear at the Chicago Tribune did a nuanced piece on the controversy, which was better than most of the mainstream coverage--making the point that Willow Creek, for example, has extensive Christmas Eve services planned.

It's not that the church does not value Christmas, the day set aside to commemorate the incarnation of God on Earth. Willow Creek is organizing almost a week of worship ending Christmas Eve, and total attendance at the services is expected to top 50,000. The church has also produced a short DVD designed to reinforce the theme of the Christmas services and help viewers process spiritual questions that may cross their minds during the holidays.

A few thought to add to Scot's:

This whole Christmas closing controversy illustrates how differently megachurches organize their worship life. (Todd Johnson pointed this out several year ago). Sunday services at churches like Willow are more like revival/evangelistic tent meetings-- focused on outreach. Most of the traditional "church" functions--like worship, sacraments, prayer—have been moved to mid-week services or to house church like small groups. Their church life doesn't revolve around Sunday worship--whether that's good or bad, I'm not sure. But you can't understand this story without understanding the way megachurches operate.

The other thing is this. There are a lot of people out there who have stopped going to church, as Martin Marty noted a few months back. While Barna and Gallup polls show up to 45 percent of Americans claiming to go to church on Sunday, researchers who study actual church attendance paint a much different picture--showing that closer to 18 percent of Americans actually show up each week.

What does that mean? Well, if the percentage is 45 percent, then about 120 million Americans would be in church each Sunday. If it's 18 percent, more like 50 million people are in church -- a difference of about 70 million people. Churches like Willow Creek are trying to get some of those 70 million back into the pew--and that's not a bad thing. So when they hold outreach events, their goal is to woo people back to the regular practice of coming to church. We can argue about whether their methods are appropriate--and whether they are calling people to the kind of committed discipleship that Jesus asked for. But we've got to acknowledge the context as well.

2005-12-08T16:02:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post

About four years ago, the very first piece I did for Religion News Service made it to the pages of the Washington Post (no byline, but a mention), and I've been hooked on freelance religion writing ever since. The Post has run my byline twice since then, and today, they've taken it a step further by commenting on the C.S. Lewis Superstar piece -- thought I can't be sure if the writing liked my Lewis and Elvis comparison or not.

The Post also mentions an eye opening piece column from the Guardian, entitled "Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion" by Polly Toynbee.

Two of Toynbee's points:

Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia "one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read".

Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right
Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to? Poor child Edmund, to blame for everything, must bear the full weight of a guilt only Christians know how to inflict, with a twisted knife to the heart. Every one of those thorns, the nuns used to tell my mother, is hammered into Jesus's holy head every day that you don't eat your greens or say your prayers when you are told. So the resurrected Aslan gives Edmund a long, life-changing talking-to high up on the rocks out of our earshot. When the poor boy comes back down with the sacred lion's breath upon him he is transformed unrecognisably into a Stepford brother, well and truly purged.

In the Scriptures, Jesus is a paradox--both the lamb of God who was slain, and the Lion of Judah. Toybee praises Jesus as a lamb, as being meek, but denigrates the power that sacrificial love has to defeat even the most powerful evil. That's the great irony of Narnia--that in killing Aslan, the witch sows her own doom. Toynbee seems upset that Aslan refuses to stay dead. Would she prefer a story when the Witch, after killing Aslan, did everyone else in as well, and the story should end with in her castle, with the Witch looking over her new collection of statues?

She is right that the idea of God dying for us, and the idea that we need someone to save us is offensive. It may be true, but it is offensive. Narnia lives out Jesus's world--that those who try and save their lives will lose them, and those who give up their lives will save themselves in the end.

2005-12-05T16:04:00.000-08:00

Not a Tame Writer

For those who don't want to read the PDF version, here's a few thoughts on what we might learn from C.S. Lewis, from the latest issue of the Companion.

Not a Tame Writer
by Bob Smietana
The Covenant Companion
December 2005

Midway through The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, three of the Pevensie children—Lucy, Susan, and Peter—are taken by Mr. and Mrs. Beaver to see Aslan, the great lion of Narnia. The closer they get, the more nervous the children become. Finally, Susan asks Mr. Beaver if Aslan is “safe,” adding that, “I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“Safe?” Mr. Beaver replies. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”

The same could be said for Aslan’s creator, C.S. Lewis. Lewis, whose books have sold more than 100 million copies, has become a kind of favorite uncle to millions of children and adults alike.

But Lewis, like his most famous creation, is not safe. Never one to suffer fools when he was alive, Lewis remains a potent critic of Christian practices. His Screwtape Letters, a fictional series of epistles from a senior devil, Screwtape, to a younger one on how to tempt human beings, sound remarkably contemporary (deaaspite Lewis’s use of “man” for human). In Screwtape and his essays and nonfiction books, Lewis uses his pen instead of a lion’s claws to expose our weaknesses, tear holes in our pretenses, and point out what God expects of us. He may not be safe, but what Lewis has to say is good for us.

The same old thing
One of the devil’s best weapons, Lewis wrote in Screwtape, is the “horror of the Same Old Thing.” But take a look at most church marketing, and most of it plays on that fear.

Hip church websites, billboards, brochures, and even commercials offer a “new and improved,” “relevant” Christianity—free of “boring sermons” and “outdated music.” Postmodern or emergent churches offer a “new kind of Christianity,” more authenatic than the brand offered by suburban megachurches. Both, Lewis says, risk playing right into the devil’s hands.

“Surely you know,” writes Screwtape, “that if a man can’t be cured of church going, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him best, until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.”
For Lewis, the practice of church shopping undermines Christian formation. Differences in worship practices ought to be opportunities for charity—that is, giving up what pleases us for the sake of others. Instead, to Screwtape’s great pleasure, minor differences become sources of church dissension.

“The real fun,” Screwtape writes, “is working up hatred between those who say ‘mass’ and those who say ‘holy communion’ when neither party could possible state the difference between, say, Hooker’s doctrine and Thomas Aquinas’s, in any form which would hold water for five minutes. And the purely indifferent things—candles and clothes and what not—are an admirable ground for our activities.”

While church marketing—telling people about a congregation and its activities—can be vital work, it can easily turn Christians into fickle consumers, ready to leave the moment a church fails to meet their needs. Searching for a “suitable” church also makes Christians into critics, when God wants us to be pupils, writes Lewis.

What God wants, writes Lewis, “is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise—does not waste time thinking about what it rejects....”

Who knows what Lewis would have made of the worship wars that pit contemporary praise songs and guitars against hymns and organs. There are only two kinds of “blessed” church music, he wrote in Christian Reflections. The first is when a priest or organist of “trained and delicate” musical tastes offers “humbler and coarser fare” to their congregation, in hopes of bringing them “closer to God.”

The other comes when a congregation “humbly and patiently, and above all silently, listens to music” they do not appreciate “in the belief that it somehow glorifies God.” In both cases, “Church Music will have been a means of grace; not the music they have liked, but the music they have disliked. They have both offered, sacrificed their tastes in the fullest sense.”

God as a means to an end
During the 2004 elections, candidates everywhere seemed to get religion. John Kerry quoted from the book of James that “faith without works is dead,” while George Bush relied on “wonder working power.” Jerry Falwell and Jim Wallis argued over whether God was a Republican or a Democrat.

Politicians and believers alike can be tempted to see faith as just another tool to win elections. But that, says Lewis, is another of the devil’s snares. “Once you have made the world the end and faith a means,” Lewis’s tempter writes, “you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades matter more to him than prayer and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more religious on those terms the more securely ours.”

Lewis believed that Christians ought to act on their faith in order to make society reflect the values of the kingdom of God. But he was aware of the temptation to make political goals—whether it is creating a “family values” culture or a “just society”—into an idol.

“The thing to do is to get a man to first demand social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands,” Screwtape says, “and then work him on the stage for which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as convenience.”

Clarity above all
People who can write “readable books about religion are almost as rare as saints,” proclaimed Time magazine in
January 1944. “One such rarity is the Oxford don, Clive Staples Lewis.”

When it come to writing about Christianity, Lewis “did not hedge his bets” as many people do today, says Christopher Mitchell, a Lewis scholar. “He was not trying to be clever,” Mitchell says. “He was not trying to engage in a non-offensive way or leave some measure of ambiguity. He was not concerned about putting people off. He was concerned about communicating as clearly and as forcefully as he could what Christians really do say, and then defending it.”

Lewis’s straightforward approach to the faith drew the ire of many of his academic colleagues. His friend J.R.R. Tolkien reprimanded him for writing about theology, when he was neither a theologian nor an ordained minister. Lewis replied that when theologians and ministers wrote theology books that lay people could read, he’d stop doing it. For Lewis, both clarity and truth telling were essential. Hiding behind jargon or theological obfuscation was unacceptable.
“Any fool can write in learned language,” Lewis once told his assistant, Walter Hooper. “The vernacular is the real test. If you can’t put your faith into it, then either you don’t understand it, or you don’t believe it.”

The reality of heaven
Perhaps the greatest challenge that Lewis offers to modern Christians is this: he believed in the eternal worth of every human being, and that the life to come was more real than our present life on earth. Those beliefs shaped his actions. Despite his literary success, Lewis maintained a simple life. He gave away two-thirds of his income from writing to charity, and never surrounded himself with the trappings of a world famous author. In fact, he believed that after his death, his writings would fade away; and worried about what that would mean for his brother Warnie, whom Lewis supported for most of his life.
He made time for other people, because doing so was more important than any other task he had. Almost everyone who wrote to Lewis received a personal reply. This letter writing came on top of his teaching at Oxford; his care for Mrs. Moore (the older woman he lived with for most of his adult life), and later for his wife, Joy Davidman Gresham; and his own creative efforts (from 1936 to 1956, he wrote twenty-four books).

Why did Lewis do this? Because, as he explained in an essay entitled “The Weight of Glory,” Lewis believed that every person he met was sacred. There was nothing safe or commonplace about them. Even the most dull or unpleasant person, he believed, had an eternal destiny, either as “a creature, which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror, such as you now meet, if at all, only in nightmares.”

“There are no ordinary people,” Lewis wrote. “You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
“Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself,” Lewis closed by saying, “your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.” o

2005-12-01T15:52:00.000-08:00

Not a Tame Writer

Worship wars, church shopping, God and politics, and "readable" books on religion. C. S. Lewis wrote about all these things. Here's one writer's take on what we can learn from Lewis, a writer we adore and then ignore.

Midway through The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, three of the Pevensie children—Lucy, Susan, and Peter—are taken by Mr. and Mrs. Beaver to see Aslan, the great lion of Narnia. The closer they get, the more nervous the children become. Finally, Susan asks Mr. Beaver if Aslan is “safe,” adding that, “I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“Safe?” Mr. Beaver replies. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”

The same could be said for Aslan’s creator, C.S. Lewis. Lewis, whose books have sold more than 100 million copies, has become a kind of favorite uncle to millions of children and adults alike.

But Lewis, like his most famous creation, is not safe. Never one to suffer fools when he was alive, Lewis remains a potent critic of Christian practices. His Screwtape Letters, a fictional series of epistles from a senior devil, Screwtape, to a younger one on how to tempt human beings, sound remarkably contemporary (despite Lewis’s use of “man” for human). In Screwtape and his essays and nonfiction books, Lewis uses his pen instead of a lion’s claws to expose our weaknesses, tear holes in our pretenses, and point out what God expects of us. He may not be safe, but what Lewis has to say is good for us.

The rest of this piece can be found in the current issue of the Covenant Companion. (When you get there, scroll down to "Not a Tame Writer")

2005-11-29T15:03:00.000-08:00

Sexy C.S. Lewis

I could be wrong, but I don't think this cover would fly today. (It's from an early paperback version of Perelandra, one of C.S. Lewis's space novels.)

2005-11-28T15:40:00.000-08:00

A mention from Amy Welbourne

Amy's Welbourne's posted some of my CT story on Lewis on her Open Book blog

2005-11-25T20:59:00.000-08:00

Fragile Holiness

Towards the end of Philip Pullman's novel The Amber Spyglass, God dies. Not Yahweh, creator of the Universe--but Pullman's fictional portrayal of God, otherwise known as "the Authority." In Pullman's fictional world, the Authority is a charlatan--a fake, a liar--the first born of all the angels who decieved the other angels into thinking he created them. But the Authority grows old and feeble, and by the end of the book is locked in a crystal casket for sake keeping. He is so fragile that when the casket breaks, and a gentle breeze blows over the Authority, he disintegrates into dust, and is blown away.

Pullman's potrayal of God has been controversial, to say the least. But I wonder if he's on to something. Christians somestimes treat God as if he is fragile--that the slightest hint of sin is a danger to him.

Last year, I reported for Christianity Today about on a Minnesota group called the “Ushers of the Eucharist,” who sought to “protect the Eucharist” by blocking those who support gay rights from receiving communion. The group believed that their bishop had refused to safeguard the eucharist from sinners, and so took matters in their own hands.

The implication was that Jesus, who spent his whole earthly in close proximity to sinners, now needed to be protected from them.

But when we believe that God is fragile, that holiness will be blown away by the slightest hint of sin, we stop believing in grace.

“We are scared to death of grace,” Mike Yaconelli said in an interview about a year before his death. “We are worried that it is going to be abused or misused. And of course, we only worry about that after we are in. And then we decide to help God by becoming grace monitors and grace police and by saying, ‘God’s really busy and he has got a lot to do, so we will make sure that nobody else gets in.’ ”

I refuse to believe in a fragile God.

A fragile God could not endure the cross. A fragile God cannot save us. A fragile God is not the God of the bible or the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2005-11-23T14:19:00.000-08:00

C.S. Lewis Superstar

My humble contribution to the Narnia mania can be found here: C.S. Lewis, Superstar.

2005-11-22T11:12:00.000-08:00

The Resurrection of Judge Lefkow

"As a sojourner on this earth I don't feel terribly entitled. I do believe the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. It's your responsibility to accept the adversity as well as you accept the abundance." U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow

Nine months ago, Judge Joan Lefkow stepped into a nightmare. She walked into her home on Chicago's Northwest side to find her husband and mother dead, murdered by Bart Ross, an unemployed Polish electrician with a vendetta against Lefkow.

Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune recounts the "little resurrections," like her daughter's wedding, that have allowed Lefkow, a one time Kansas farm girl and Wheaton College graduate and now an Episcopalian, to retain her faith and her sanity."

Here's a taste of how Schmich descibes Lefkow's journey:

Often in the seven months I spent talking with Joan Lefkow, I would look at her, this strong and tender woman, and repeat to myself the soul-rattling thing that when you're with her you can never quite forget and never quite believe: Her mother and her husband were murdered. In her home. Because of her job. By someone who wanted to kill her. She found the bodies.

How had it happened that the ordinary things this humble woman loved and wished for most--family, home, meaningful work--converged and exploded on one awful winter day in the middle of her life?

You could chalk it up to fate, to the inexorable drive of the actions of her life toward a single point. You could subscribe to the dark theory, "Your luck is your doom."

If you're Joan Lefkow, when you think about fate, you also think about faith. You think about the universality of suffering and the promise of rebirth. And you still oppose the death penalty.

"The wedding was a resurrection of sorts," she says in a dark wine bar on a rainy night with autumn rolling in. "A new family being created."

She's shucked off her shoes, tucked her feet underneath her on a couch, ordered a glass of Chianti. In her pink shirt and black suit, she no longer looks like the ghost who when I first met her in April had said, "I feel dead inside."

Resurrection. It's one of her favorite words. Little resurrections are the signposts she seeks out in the foreign land of this new life.

Read the rest of this story. In sparse and clear prose, without resorting to sentiment or graphic detail of horror, Schmich has told a story of the resurrection of an ordinary life.

2005-11-22T08:21:00.000-08:00

Real Worries

AIDS has a death grip on Africa.

The North Korean government ran a steamroller over five Christians for the crime of believing.

There's famine in Madagascar, Zambia and Niger.

Tsunami victims are suffering.

Darfur is spinning out of control.

In the US, like in Europe, church attendance is dwindling, as more and more people decide that their lives are better off without God.

So tell me again why Christians ought to be worried about a gay bishop or gay marriage?

Don't we have more important things to worry about?

2005-11-15T15:49:00.000-08:00

Every year, an estimated 100,000 women in the developing world will develop fistulas, a hellish condition that occurs when a woman runs into difficulty in childbirth. The baby is either too big to come out, or the woman's body too small to allow passage. After hours of hard labor, the baby dies, and the woman's inner tissues are ruptured, causing her to leak urine for the rest of her life. This means she loses her home, her family, her standing in society. It means her life becomes hell on earth.

The women in this picture once had fistulas but now have had their lives restored. We ran this story in the November issue of the Companion. Some days I come to work and wonder why I bother--it's just another day in the grinder. When I wrote this story, I knew that my work matters. (The names of the women in the story have been changed for the sake of confidentiality)

Thank You For Restoring My Life
The Covenant Companion
November 2005

Once Rita had a home, a family, and a future. Then, almost without warning, she became an outcast, an unclean woman. Something went haywire with her monthly cycle, and her flow of blood would not stop. In her village in Ghana, this meant she was cursed. Rita’s husband forced her from their home. Her family abandoned her. She ended up on her own, begging for alms at the edge of her village.

In Africa, millions of women live like Rita, cast out because of uncontrollable bleeding, or more commonly, because of obstetrical or vesicovaginal fistulas (VVF). These fistulas are created when young or small women get pregnant and have difficulty in childbirth because the baby is too big to come out.

“In our country, a doctor could just do a caesarean section, but in poverty-stricken countries this isn’t possible,” says Jim Sundholm, director of Covenant World Relief. Instead, the baby gets stuck. The woman continues to push until the child’s head crushes and tears the mother’s urethra and other tissues. The baby dies and the mother is left permanently injured.

“For the rest of her life, she leaks urine—which means she is always unclean. Remember this is the third world—there are no washing machines,” says Sundholm.

As many as 100,000 women are stricken with fistulas each year, according to the United Nations. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times describes what life is like for these “twenty-first-century lepers.”

“[I]f she survives at all she is told to build a hut away from the rest of the village and to stay away from the village well,” Kristof wrote. “Some girls die of infections or suicide, but many linger for decades as pariahs and hermits—their lives effectively over at the age of about fifteen.”

Mercy in Sierra Leone
It’s not only young girls who are affected by fistulas. Fatmata, age sixty, lived with the shame of a fistula for twenty years, after complications while delivering her fifth child. After three days of labor at a midwife’s house, she was taken to a hospital for a c-section, but it was too late. The child was already dead. When she left the hospital, she began to leak urine. Her husband abandoned her. She moved in with her brother’s family but, full of shame from her condition and not wanting to be a burden to them, she left there soon afterward.

Sia was twenty-eight when she became pregnant with her second child. The baby was breech and became stuck. For twenty-four hours, Sia lay on a hospital bed, the baby partially delivered, waiting for a doctor to come. By the time the overworked medical staff could attend to her, the baby had died, and Sia’s internal tissues were badly damaged. Her husband and brother tried desperately to find help for her, taking her from hospital to hospital in a vain search for someone who could treat her.

Finally, Sia’s husband divorced her. Her brother cared for her as best he could, but Sia felt all hope was lost.She stopped eating and prayed that God would take her life. She thought about ending it herself.

Both Sia and Fatmata were trapped —their lives destroyed by this dreadful condition, with no hope for the future. Then they found healing and restoration at a VVF surgery program, sponsored in part by Covenant World Relief.

The program is run by Mercy Ships, a Christian charity that operates a fleet of hospital ships. A $180-dollar operation can change the lives of women stricken with fistulas. But hospitals equipped to do VVF repairs—and operations for conditions like Rita’s—are few and far between. There’s a major hospital in Ethiopia and another in Nigeria, but many more are needed.

With the help of Covenant World Relief, a new women’s hospital has started up in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Covenant World Relief first began working with Mercy Ships in 2003, following a visit to Ethiopia by Sundholm, where he first came in contact with women who suffer from fistulas. Soon afterwards he was approached by Mercy Ships to help fund surgeries in Togo, where one of the hospital ships was docked. That first year, Covenant World Relief underwrote the expenses for sixty surgeries.

The next year, another request came from Mercy Ships, this time for help in starting a women’s hospital. “Mercy Ships was offered an opportunity to take over a brand new hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone,” Sundholm says. “They realized there was a need for a women’s specialty hospital—and knew the number of women who needed this repair—so they partnered with several groups to start the program.”

The women’s hospital was a perfect match for Covenant World Relief. The program serves the “poorest of the poor,” says Sundholm, and was a program that needed short-term, start-up funds. Covenant World Relief makes yearly grants and can’t fund programs over the long haul. But it can provide a strategic influx of funds to get new programs up and running.

The Aberdeen Clinic and Fistula Center, funded by a Swiss foundation, Covenant World Relief, and the Worldwide Fistula Fund, opened in May and within its first three months had already completed 100 surgeries. The clinic will also pay for two future caesarian sections for women who receive a VVF repair—an essential step because of the importance of having children in African culture, says Sundholm. The new hospital will also serve as a training hospital for doctors and midwives across West Africa.

Celebration of new life
After the surgery and recovery is completed, the Mercy Ships hold a dress ceremony for each of the women—a celebration of the healing that has come to their lives. The women and hospital staff gather together, and each woman is given a new dress. Prayers are said for each woman, and then a group of women take her back to her village to begin a new life.

Sundholm was invited to attend one of the ceremonies in Togo. About forty women who’d had surgery were there, and he watched as each one received a dress and the prayers of the staff. When Rita got up, her nurse introduced her and told some of her story—how she had come from northern Ghana, walking hundreds of miles all alone. How she had crossed the border into Togo and walked all the way to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, and then stood in line with 5,000 people, hoping to be chosen to have the surgery.

But when Rita got up to speak, she said that the nurse was mistaken—she had not come alone. And she told this story:
When I began to bleed and the bleeding wouldn’t stop—my husband removed me from our home because I had this curse.

My family abandoned me because I had this curse. I ended up alone and begging for alms at the edge of our village. Then I heard about the possibility of a surgery on the shores of Togo, so I began to walk. But I was not alone.
When I began to bleed, God was with me.
When my husband removed me from my home, God was with me.
When my family abandoned me, God was with me.
When I sat and requested alms, God sat with me.
When I began to walk, God walked with me.
When I stood in line, God stood with me.
When I was chosen for the surgery, God was with me.
In recovery, God was with me.
Even today, God is here, for I see God in your eyes.
I want to thank you for doing what God told you to do. You have repaired and restored my life.

When he heard those words, “you have repaired and restored my life,” Sundholm says he thought immediately of Isaiah 58:12, where God’s people are called to repair and restore life. That verse is the focal point of all that Covenant World Relief does, he says.

“In the New Testament,” he says, “Jesus is known as a savior. And Jesus saves people in their entire person. When he said, ‘you are forgiven’ to the paralyzed man in Matthew 2, Jesus also restored and healed that man’s life.”

As followers of Jesus, we are called to bring healing to the lives of others, says Sundholm. “Just as Jesus Christ has repaired and restored our lives, so we restore others.”

Seeing Rita dressed in a brilliant yellow and black dress and head scarf, Sundholm saw living proof of the healing that Jesus can bring to people’s lives.

“She was so energetic that she began dancing with joy,” Sundholm says. “I started to get worried, thinking, ‘please don’t dance, you just had surgery.’ But her face was radiant with joy. I won’t say there was a complete transformation of her life—because she obviously had been tough—how many people are going to get up and walk hundreds of miles in hope of a cure.

She had strong faith and trust in God—but you could tell that her life had been restored to her.

“When she said, ‘I want to thank you for doing what God told you to do,’ she meant all of us—Mercy Ships, the church, Covenant World Relief, and everyone who gave to Covenant World Relief. Thank you for doing what God told you to do.”

2005-11-03T15:52:00.000-08:00

I don't like God, but Jesus is OK

Marel, who's three, was head out the door. She had her princess jacket on, with one shoe off and one shoe on.

I picked her up. "Let's get your other shoe on."

As I held her and slipped her other shoe on, she said, matter of factly, "I don't like God."

"Why not?"

"Cause he's a boy."

"But God's not really a, hmm..."

Dad decides to change course rather than get in a theological discussion of God's gender. "Your brother Eli is a boy. You like him don't you."

"Yeah," she said. "But I don't like God."

"But if you don't like God, you might hurt his feelings." I'm grasping at straws here. My daughter is three and already giving up on God. I am totally unprepared.

"I just don't like him."

"OK, Marel." I say, giving her a kiss. "Time to go to church."

"Church, I love church!" she said and clapped her hands. We have dinner and kids programs at church every Wednesday. Whenever she sees the church, Marel starts yelling and point: "There's our church, there's our church."

Three hours later, Marel's back home, playing with blocks, while I write, trying to finish chapter 12 of the book.

Kathy calls from upstairs. "Marel, time for bed." Marel does not move. A minute or so later, I come out of my cave ( I mean office) and get her. I pick her up. "Come on honey, let's go see mommy."

Holding her close, I climb the stairs. "I don't like God," she says.

A light bulb goes off in my head. Marel is shy around new people. She'll jump off a pier into water without any fear, but people,especially if they are loud, sometimes wig her out.

"Marel," I ask. "Does God scare you?"

"Yeah," she says.

"Is he too big?"

"Yeah"

"What about Jesus?"

"I like Jesus," she says. "He's so little."

"Jesus loves you," I tell her.

"You mean I didn't hurt his feelings? YEAH!" She wraps her arms in around my head and squeezes for all she's worth.

Jesus is small enough for my girl.

2005-11-01T20:35:00.000-08:00

Vader as Victim

OK, so this is why the last four Star Wars films sucked. Darth Vader was "a victim," according to Star Wars creator George Lucas.

A new DVD version of Revenge of the Sith is out, and with it, a long interview with Lucas on how the six films tie together.

Except they don't really tie together. In Star Wars and The Empire Strikes back, Vader kicks butt, takes names, and revels in being a villian. He revels in putting the old Jedi choking trick on those who "lack faith" in the force, kills off Obi Wan, blows rebel fighters out of the sky, and blackmails Lando Calrissian into betraying his old pal, Han Solo. He also, despite his Jedi skills, has no clue that the woman he tortures--Princess Leia--and the rebel he tries to blow out of the sky--Luke Skywalker--are his long lost children.

Then, in the Return of the Jedi, the mopey Darth Vader, appears, having more in common with Eyeore than the Lord Vader of the first two films.

"Oh Geez, guess I'll have to turn Luke over to the Emperor."

"Woe is me, my son is trying to kill me a light saber"

"Guess I'll just watch the emperor grill my son with those lightning bolts."

Even the climactic scene, where Vader tosses the emperor off a ledge and saves his son, is mopey. And fon't get me started about Episodes I,II, and III. I know Darth Vader, and Hayden Christensen is no Darth Vader.

In the new DVD, Lucas offers his explanation of the series.

"... I like the idea that the person you thought was the villain is really the victim, and that the story is really about the villain trying to regain his humanity," Lucas continues. "It becomes, really, the story of Darth Vader's redemption. ... Everybody thought of Darth Vader as being evil and with no heart. Not true."

By making his villian into a victim, Lucas drained him of his humanity, of his spark of life, turning the Dark Lord Vader into a wet blanket in Return of the Jedi, and a whiny teenager in films II and III.

Redemption isn't about being a victim. That's something Lucas missed. So his last four films, all visual masterpieces, have no soul.

2005-10-31T08:51:00.000-08:00

Jesus. C.S. Lewis and Bullshit

Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis's godson, had this to say to Christianity Today's movie site, when asked why American Evangelicals have embraced his godfather, who smoked, told dirty jokes, and drank beer.

One of the reasons is that through the—if you can excuse the expression—the bulls--- that has come to be taken so seriously in American Christianity, through all of that, they can still see the essential truth that Jack represented. The problem with evangelical Christianity in America today, a large majority of you have sacrificed the essential for the sake of the trivial. You concentrate on the trivialities—not smoking, not drinking, not using bad language, not dressing inappropriately in church, and so on. Jesus doesn't give two hoots for that sort of bulls---. If you go out and DO Christianity, you can smoke if you want, you can drink if you want—though not to excess, in either case.

But I think that even past the trivialities, many evangelical Christians can see the ultimate truth to what Jack wrote. I think that's why he's so popular.

You'll find the quote at the end of the interview

2005-10-28T19:43:00.000-07:00

No Bigger Than a Minute

"What would the world be missing if there were no dwarves, no freaks, no people like me?" asks filmmaker Steven Delano, in his documentary film, "No Bigger Than a Minute."

Denver Post film critic Lisa Kennedy profiled Steven and his "twisted, thoughtful, thorny" film a few days ago. The film's taken him five years to do, and it's been a journey of self-discovery, Kennedy writes.

Five years means waking up one day, gazing into a mirror and realizing that you have spent your life like Gulliver in reverse.

You have made your way in the company of giants: your average-stature parents; your loving, extended average-stature family; your average-stature colleagues, friends and lovers.

Kennedy recounts how Steven's family--especially his "rough around the edges" father (who told Steven to "play the cards you are dealt"; his mother, who gave him her love and her smarts; and his aunt Sophie, who nutured his love of film--all prepared him to meet the larger world.

Here's a bit more of the story:

"If I did well in school, it's because of my mom," said Delano, who studied English literature at Providence College in Rhode Island. "She's a smart person. My dad was smart, but he was a street kid."

Josephine and her six siblings all earned college degrees. And it was Josephine's older sister Sophie Smietana, who lived in Boston and worked at the New England Medical Center, who put the young couple in touch with the doctors at Boston Children's Hospital.

"She put up my parents for all the extended visits," Delano said of his aunt. Smietana was also the person who fostered Steven's interest in movies, taking him to "That Darn Cat" and "Mary Poppins."

"Being spoiled, expectations were made of me," said Delano. "I wasn't going to go out and lay gas pipe like my dad. So I got to do exactly what I wanted to do. I studied English, read books and did not worry about whether I had to earn a living or not. And so I learned to enjoy how you can create meaning out of nothing, whether it was words or pictures."

Making the film was a journey of self discovery for Steven. "I've covered a lot of ground," he tells Kennedy.

"I've talked to a lot of people. And I've learned a little about my place in the universe. It's for sure I'm just a glitch in the universe. Someone who doesn't like the sound of his voice. A guy who's never liked the look of his own reflection. Now I've made a spectacle of myself."

Great story. Great journalism in covering it. And, from the sound of it, a great movie.

BTW, I'm a little biased about this story. Though it's been years since I've seen him, Steven and I are cousins. His parents were my Uncle Jimmy and Ciocia Pete (ciocia is Polish for aunt, Pete is her nickname) and his aunt Sophie was my aunt too--my daughter was named for her"

2005-10-25T16:05:00.000-07:00

Barren or Child Free: You Decide

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, has decided to open up a can of whup-ass on the child-free lifestyle in the pages of Touchstone magazine.

According to Mohler, such couples are living in moral rebellion against God, and "defraud the creator of his joy and pleasure in seeing the saints raising his children."

Here's a taste of Dr. Mohler's butt-kicking:

This rebellion against parenthood is nothing less than an absolute revolt against God’s design. The Scripture points to barrenness as a great curse and children as a divine gift. The Psalmist declares: “Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; they will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate” (Psalm 127:3–5).

Apparently, Dr. Mohler didn't read the "quiver is full" part, because according to his bio he's got only two kids. So either he and his wife had very little sex, used contraception of some sort, or had low fertility. (The other option, is that they were infertile and adopted two kids.) So is he partially living in rebellion against God? Apparently no one at Touchstone thought to ask him.

Also, aside from a brief mention, Mohler doesn't deal with the issue of infertility—assuming that those who are "barren" are cursed by God. There are more than a few "child free couples" who can't have children, (as many as one in six) but that's just too damn bad, according to Mohler. And if those couples tried, God forbid, reproductive technology like in-vitro fertilization, he'd probably kick them again, for "killing babies" if they had left-over embryos.

BTW, any one who's spent five minutes, or five years, or five decades being "barren" will tell you that it feels like being cursed; they don't need Mohler's to remind them of it.

Let's think for a few minutes about other reasons why people don't have kids. Perhaps some of those child-free couples have post-partum depression or post partum psychosis in their family, so that having a child can be a death sentence for a mother?
Or heck, maybe they're too poor to support kids. Maybe they are not emotionally or psychologically well enough to have kids, or have a deadly genetic disease lurking in their genes, ready to spring forth upon any children they may have. They may even have waited, in purity and chastity, to have sex until they were married, and now are too old to have kids.

Those thoughts never occured to the good doctor. He's not interested in a conversation about the complexities of being childless, or of choosing when to have kids, or how many kids to have. He's content to whack people upside the head and go along his merry, self-righteous way.

The folks at Touchstone pride themselves as being curmudgeonly.

Sometimes, they're just jerks.

2005-10-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

Watchful Dragons

C.S. Lewis once wrote that in his fiction, he was "sneaking the gospel past watchful dragons." Perhaps he had Rev. Barry Lynn in mind.

Lynn's group, Americans United for the Seperation of Church and State, wants the state of Florida to drop C.S. Lewis'sThe Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe from a school reading contest, charging that the book's religious themes violate the constitution.

This year, Lynn wants students to have an alternate book, instead of Lewis's book. In the future, he asks that only "nonreligious books" be used for contests.

Lynn is treading a dangerous road here. In essense, his argument is that books with religious theme books are inappropriate for schools. So should Harry Potter be banned--it's got religious themes. Shakespeare had religious. Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter are out too. Take his argument far enough, and President Lincoln's speeches, and the Declaration of Independence (it mentions a creator.)

2005-10-09T18:11:00.000-07:00

Shadowmancer, Bums, and Boegey's

The great bum and bogey war continues over in the UK, with G P Taylor asking in the Guardian whether "bum" is a bad word, and recounts getting tossed out of school for the first time since he was a teenager.

The kids were excited when I arrived at the school. The talk I had planned is one I have given to hundreds of children, many younger than these. It aims to fire their imaginations and get them to think the impossible. I tell them you can make a story out of anything - anything! - you can even write a story about a bogey. They all laughed and I said, all right, what happens to the bogey? They said, "Oh, it gets arms and teeth and it chases you down the street." I didn't realise at that stage that "bogey" was considered an offensive word.

The hoopla over the "harry potter is gay" story from Reuters has died down, though a few news outlets are still running it--they apparently didn't get the retraction from Reuters. And the whole episode has apparently been good for Taylor's reputation.

How many vicars get expelled from a school? At a talk I gave this morning, I said to the teacher, "Do you have any objection to me using the words bum and fart?" And he said, "Is that all? Crumbs, I wish that was all they said in the classroom."

At the end of the talk on Tuesday, one of the kids came up to me at the end when I was being thrown out. She said: "GP, that was real." The word real means cool. I took it as a great compliment.

BTW, I know that I am biased, as I am writing a book about Taylor, but his new novel, Tersias is very good. My wife even liked it, and she doesn't care much for fantasy novels of the Harry Potter variety. It's only out in the UK now, but you can get it from Amazon.co.uk.

If you are interested, The Scotsman recently ran an interesting feature on Taylor.

2005-10-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

Missionary in a Lab Coat

Five years ago, Alynne Maclean quit her job at a biotech firm, cashed in her stock options, and set out to save the world. Or at least part of it.

MacLean, a bioechemist, has become a missionary in a lab coat. She started a small nonprofit called Science with a Mission. Her goal was to develop simple diagnostic tests--called enzyme immunoassays--for illnesses like malaria and typhoid.

The tests, which act like a home pregnancy test, need no high tech instruments or electricity. They give results fast. And they can allow doctors and nurses in the third world to diagnose and treat people quickly.

Maclean was in Congo earlier this year, with promising results.(More on that to come--there've been several news stories on her lately, but all the links are down). She deiivered 5,000 malaria test strips and 1,000 typhoid test strips -- meaning that at least 6,000 patients will not have wait days or weeks for the results of blood tests, days that can mean the difference between life and death.

2005-10-08T14:05:00.000-07:00

A mudslide killed 1,400 people in Guatamala today, while an earthquake in Pakistan killed at least 1,300 people.

Please help them if you can.

2005-10-08T13:26:00.000-07:00

Alaska Christian College--redux

Full disclosure--I'm not an unbiased observer in the story of Alaska Christian College. The school is affiliated with the denomination I work for, and I have a number of contacts at the school.

That said, the coverage of the school in the Anchorage Daily News has been troubling, on a number of levels. ACC, whose students are 95% Alaska Native or Native American, and an affiliated counseling center, have received around a million dollar in start up funds from the federal government. This has pissed off the Freedom from Religion Foundation , who sued to have the funds cut off.

Yesterday, a federal investigator agreed with them, and the funds were suspended, as reported in the Anchorage Daily News.

Annie Laurie Gaylor of the foundation was patting herself on the back yesterday, in the ADN.

"Our lawsuit has saved taxpayers about half a million dollars that would have been misused to violate the Constitution and indoctrinate a vulnerable set of students," she said. "Underprivileged Native Alaskan students deserve genuine remedial instruction, not Sunday school classes."

Two disturbing things about this story, and one is this quote.

Alaska Native students are "vulnerable" and need to be protected from those who would indoctrinated them in the Christian faith, according to Gaylor.

Did anyone ask any of the students from ACC if they've been indoctrinated. Did anyone ask Alaska Native leaders, if they are worried about this. Did anyone ask the parents of these students if they are afraid that ACC was taking advantage of their children?

The answers, are, at least from the ADN report, are: No. No. and No. I can excuse the Freedom from Religion Folks--because they are crusading liberals who want to protect the students at ACC by cutting funds and putting their school in danger of closing. Never mind that, as the ADN reporting, the school's program is working. This group will never let the facts get in the way of their crusade. They don't care what Alaska Natives want because the Freedom from Religion folks "know better."

But the Anchorage Daily News should know better. There's no excuse for running a story about a school that serves Alaska Natives and not talking to an Alaska Native. (This has been a consistent flaw in the ADN's coverage. Early on the ADN pegged this story as an evangelicals taking advantage of the system story, no matter what the facts were. The ADN has ignored the Alaska Natives in the story.

They also, for the most part, have ignored the other factor in the story. Does the program work, and how does this religiously based program compare to other programs to assist Alaska Native students make the adjustment to college.

The latest story does at least acknowledge that the ACC program works:

The school has had success providing a bridge for rural students. T>hirty students have gone on to take classes at the Soldotna campus of the Kenai Peninsula College after completing a year at the school, including 12 this year, said KPC director Gary Turner.

But the ADN has not, to my knowledge, reported on the context of the story--1) how few Native Alaskans make in through their first year of college and 2) How does the ACC success rate compare to other similar programs?

They should know better.

2005-10-06T20:19:00.000-07:00

G.P. Taylor has been officially SpongeBob'ed --turned into an international news item by an over-eager copy editor.

Not sure where the story originated, but once this headline--"J.K. Rowling rival labels Harry Potter 'gay' " hit Reuters--all heck broke loose.

By this morning, the story had even made the local news stations here in Chicago.

Here's the gist of it--Taylor was speaking to a group of 11 and 12 year olds at a school when he was interrupted by teachers and escorted from the building. At issue was this phrase: "Harry Potter's not the only gay in the village."

Homophobic?

Not if you're a fan of the BBC show, Little Britain, where one of the character's favorite sayings is "not the only gay in the village."

Still, the word got out that Taylor had called Potter "gay" and soon the story was worldwide news.

Reuters issued a correction after about 12 hours or some--not before the story got to India, New Zealand, and even the New York Times.

The new story reports that teachers at the school were upset at Taylor's use of "crap, poo, fart and bogey" in his presentation.

"I think that my language was appropriate," he told Reuters. "Language changes, and words that once were deemed unacceptable are now part of our culture."

The school issued a statement saying they ended the speech after the students became "excitable on hearing his 'inappropriate' language."

The Telegraph reported that Taylor, who was speaking on literacy, told the studentnot to watch television all their lives as 'it is a load of crap.'"

"I told them they should be reading books," Taylor told the Guardian. "I asked how many had not read a book in the last six months and 60 per cent of the class put their hands up."

Meanwhile, the Guardian noted that "Bum, bogey, fart, crap and a joke about Harry Potter not being 'the only gay in the village' would not cause much shock in the playground" but apparently was too much for the delicate ears of teachers.

The best version of the story, IMHO, came from the Ekklesia webise, which included this impromptu review of Taylor's book, Shadowmancer from a parent who attended the school event in dispute.

One less-than-anxious parent told Ekklesia that it is “a rattling good read” in which good gives evil “a kick in the ass”.

2005-09-23T09:42:00.000-07:00

The old rugged video screen

One more thought about megachurches, prompted by a continued conversation with Greg Horton.

Megachurches seem to underestimate or ignore the way that physical practices hasve spiritual consequences. The center of worship at most megachurches, from a purely physical point of view, is the video screen. Video screens, even when they aren't center stage, dwarf everything else in the worship space, and in many cases the cross in not seen. In effect, the cross has been replaced by the screen as an icon in Protestant megachurch worship, a development that is at least troubling and potentially idolatrous, and one that should be reversed.

2005-09-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

Why I Might Stop Blogging

Time again for an extended blogging vacation.

I could blame it on the load green poop my three year old dropped in the center of the bathroom floor, or my unintentional flushing of her Dora the Explorer underwear down the toilet--after swishing the rest of the green poop off of it. Or the third pair of clothes I had to put on her, courtesy of a soaking under the garden house by her brother. Then there was the general disarray of the yard--with broom and bikes amid the standing pools of water from the hose. All of which I missed because of a spirited blogging session about the relative merits of megachurches. Bugger.

My workload could be blamed as well; the book and some articles are beckoning. That's part of it. But not all.

The real reason is that blogging is proving, at least for me, bad for my soul. For some people--RealLivePreacher, Bene Diction , Randall Freisen, Linea Lanoie and Scot McKnight--blogging is a positive spiritual practice.

Blogging is bad for me soul, because it tempts me to drink deep of contempt. The temptation of put others down in order to build myself up, to prove somehow that I am a better or more authentic Christian than someone else.

At it makes me mean, and angry. So angry that I yell at my kid for the mess they made under the less than watchful eye of their blogging dad.

I'd rather not be mean. Or full of contempt. So off I go. For now.

2005-09-21T17:00:00.000-07:00

Shameless plug---Tersias, GP Taylor's new book, is very good. You can only get it in the UK, but it's worth it.

2005-09-21T14:38:00.000-07:00

Greg’s wearing sackcloth and ashes, and somewhere dear old uncle Screwtape must be licking his chops, because Saddleback’s got a luau service. And a country service, a hard rock service, a gospel service, and a "passion service"--which offers a "passionate encounter with God" and makes me nervous. Technically these aren't "worship services" they are "worship venues"-- with live bands and videotaped preaching.

I'm on Greg's nerves this week, for taking offense at his tone in criticizing these venues. Saying that these venues are "predicated on entertaining a bunch of crackers who don't seem to understand that worship isn't about entertainment" and calling them "themed orgies" while authentic, seemed to me unChristian. Greg and I disagree on this point.

In Greg's defense, he's a no-holds-barred theological thinker--dedicated to bringing that theology to bear on the day to day practices of the church, along with being a great host—we shared some great food and beer together during my visit to OKC. But sometimes, I think he gets too worked about what Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, and other megachurch pastors are up to. Take a look at his blog and decide for yourself.

Greg challenged me for some theological engagement with megachurches. Here's a try at it.

First of all, most megachurches are not really "churches," at least in the tradition sense of the word, as in a worshipping community formed around the sacraments. Instead, Todd Johnson points out in "The Conviction of Things Not Seen" (a collection of essays in honor of Robert Webber), megachurch worship service are modeled after the camp meetings started in American frontier revivalism. In essence, megachurches have replaced the Sunday morning sacramental service with an evangelistic tent meeting. They've been successful in drawing large groups of people out of their busy, distracted lives, and getting those people to make confession of faith and begin to make Christian commitments. And they’ve channeled those new converts into a large scale network of small groups for discipleship and formation.

Can those commitments be sustained without a regular sacramental life, filled with prayer and Holy Communion? That's the question to be answered over the long haul. My guess is that as they get older, megachurch goers will be drawn to more sacramental forms of worship. The caveat being that, at least on the Protestant side, the sacramental churches are lean to the left theologically, which will turn megachurch folks off.

Another thought--there is a symbiotic relationship between post modern, emergent churches and megachurches. Emergent churches don't make converts on any kind of scale--by that I mean, they don't get large numbers of people to make initial commitments to walk the Christian path. Once people are on that path, emergent churches can call them to a life of greater discipleship. But somebody has got to get people on the road in the first place, or get back on the road if they've gone on a detour, both of which megachurches do well. But no megachurches means no emergent church.

Megachurches have problems, and can degrade into the kind of mass entertainment Greg despises. These video venues, IMHO, are a step to counter that--by putting smaller groups of people together, week after week. In a 7,000 seat arena, it's easy to be an anonymous spectator. Get in a smaller setting, say 200-300 people, week after week, and it's harder to be invisible.

One last point. Unless we're all going to become Catholics and walk to our parish church, we’re going to have to deal with the danger of being “authentic.” Congregational churches of any size, from tiny to mega, turning into social clubs of like minded people who think the way they “do church” is better than anybody else way of doing church. That they are better or truer or more faithful Christians than the church down the road. The desire to be authentic can easily be subverted into hatred for other Christians. For more on this, let’s turn to CS Lewis affectionate uncle Screwtape.

Here’s Screwtape advising his nephew Wormwood, a trainee tempter, on how to turn a churchgoer into an “other church” hater.

I think I warned you before that if your patient can’t be kept out of the Church, he ought to at least to be violently attached to some party within it. I don’t mean on really doctrinal issues; about those, the more lukewarm he is the better. And it isn’t the doctrines in which we chiefly depend for producing malice. The real fun is working up hatred between those who say ‘mass’ and those who say ‘holy communion’ when neither party could possible state the difference between, say, Hooker’s doctrine and Thomas Aquinas’s, in any form which would hold water for five minutes. And the purely indifferent things—candles and clothes and what not—are an admirable ground for our activities.

Now at least on one point, I’ve got to give Greg his due. Church shopping and church marketing are practices that undermine the Christian life. That’s exactly why Screwtape encourages those practices with such enthusiasm. (Pardon the repetitive Lewis quotes, I am working on a piece about him).

Once again, dear old Screwtape:

Surely you know that if a man can’t be cure of churchgoing, the next best things is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him, until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.

The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organisation should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the Enemy desires. The congregational principle, on the other hand, makes each church into a kind of club, and finally, if all goes well, into a coterie or faction. In the second place, the search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil.

What He wants of the layman in the church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise—does not waste time thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity, to any nourishment that is going on.

2005-09-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

Pastafarians?

"I don't have a problem with religion, . . . What I have a problem with is religion posing as science. If there is a god and he's intelligent, then I would guess he has a sense of humour."

That's Bobby Henderson, unemployed physics graduate from Oregon State and founder of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster quoted in the Telegraph.

Besides claiming that the world was created by a flying spaghetti monster, Henderson shows how global warming is caused by a drop in the world population of pirates and offers an entertaining form of salvation:

Flimsy moral standards.
Every friday is a relgious holiday. If your work/school objects to that, demand your religious beliefs are respected and threaten to call the ACLU.
Our heaven is WAY better. We've got a Stripper Factory AND a Beer Volcano.

Henderson, in an open letter to the Kansas Board of Education, has pointed out one of the flaws in Intelligent Design--the identity of the designer is rather vague.

Unwittingly, Henderson's also put his finger on sticking point in the current ID/Evolution wars. It's not about science. It's about what our understanding of human origins tells us about human identity. Are we the children of a loving creator or accidents of nature. Neither ID or Evolution can answer this. The problem, is that neither side realizes it.

One more thing--why can't Christians be this funny?

2005-09-13T19:33:00.000-07:00

I'm off for a couple of weeks to write and to visit my mom who's back in the hospital, so the posts will be few and far between.

A couple of quick thoughts.

Daniel Smith, in a New York Times magazine piece called "Political Science" notes that many scientists have come to see their dispute with the White House over climate change and stem cells in Manichaean terms, as some kind of absolute showdown between good and evil (science=good, Bush=bad). There's something ironic about that, is all I'm saying.

"How did I miss the two thousand verse about the poor in the Bible?" That's Rick Warren in the latest New Yorker, talking to Malcolm Gladwell. Warren is giving away 90 percent of the royalties from his book, and wants to use his new found influence to serve the poor and marginalized. It'll be interesting to see what comes of Warren's efforts. The New Yorker piece is not online, but ahas a nice summary.

I'm on my second go round of Gladwell's book Blink, which ought to be required reading for journalists. We journalists need to be expert thin-slicers--that is, making rapid judgements on very complicated situations, deciding on which areas to pursue, and then communicating our findings to readers. Our instincts can serve us well in this, but we also can be deceived into what Gladwell calls "Warren Harding" errors. Harding became president because he looked the part--he was tall, dark, handsome and had a presidential voice and bearing. He was also incompetent, but instead of examining Harding's abilities, voters were fooled by their initial impressions of him.

In the same way, we journalists can get fooled when a story, on the surface, fits our predjudices or our worldview, and we take things at surface value, without checking below the surface.

2005-09-12T15:40:00.000-07:00

Pyromarketing

I don't know about anybody else, but Pyromarketing by Greg Stielstra is about to jump to the top of my reading list. Stielstra was marketing director for the Purpose Driven Life, which has passed the 20 million mark in hardcover sales. That's Harry Potter country.

Reportedly, there was a rift between Warren and Stielstra over Pyromarketing--with Warren concerned about the term "marketing" in reference to the Purpose Driven Life (or PDL for short). Publishers Weekly ran a story about the alleged spat called "Purpose Driven Interference" (it's only available to subscribers.) Here's the meat of the PW piece.

Stielstra said HarperCollins accepted his manuscript last February, but in early April, he got a call from Warren staffer Doug Slaybaugh. "Doug had become aware of my book and told me that he would use, quote, 'every ounce of influence' he had to see that every reference to The Purpose-Driven Life was stricken from my book," Stielstra said. According to him, Slaybaugh said he didn't want PDL "associated with the word 'marketing' in any way, shape or form."

Since then, the holdup over the book appears to be over, according to Publishers Weekly. 800ceoread.com posted a blurb from the latest PW article.

Here's Warren's side of things.

"My request to Harper-Collins was simply that Greg's forthcoming book not use The Purpose Driven Life as example of pyromarketing, since that would be inaccurate. The effectiveness of 40 Days of Purpose spread from one pastor to another through word-of-mouth endorsement, not through anyone's marketing plan. That doesn't mean pyromarketing doesn't work. It just means that it didn't create the PDL worldwide phenomena.

Warren said he wants all recognition for the PDL sensation to go to God. "My only concern was that no one, neither Zondervan nor myself, claim credit for the astounding success of The Purpose Driven Life book. The worldwide spread of the purpose driven message had nothing to do with marketing or merchandising. Instead it was the result of God's supernatural and sovereign plan, which no one anticipated."

Tim Challies has a couple on in-depth stories here and here on the Pyromarketing story as well. Both stories have reaction from Stieltra in the comment sections.

Adrain Warnock has links to a promotional plan and powerpoint presentation about how the PDL was promoted.

It all makes for interesting reading.

2005-09-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

The Importance of Disagreeing

Bloggers, like all writers, want to be loved. So whenever I see a new comment, a smile comes to my face and this thought pops in my mind. Somebody out there thinks I'm brilliant.

What's even better, if truth be told, is when someone disagrees and shows another angle to the story. Then I have to think and explore ways of looking at things.

These last few days MT's been posting some great comments that force me to rethink my assumptions, and challenge any lazy thinking on my part. Stan Guthrie's eponymous blog does the same thing. Stan leans toward the Republican side, I don't. Seeing things from his point of view makes me realize how complicated issues can be, and how careful I need to be as writer.

So thanks MT and Stan for keeping me honest.

2005-09-10T21:13:00.000-07:00

On the Road to Super Bowl XL

In case anyone is wondering, the Patriots will win the Super Bowl when it rolls around next January. The franchise that 10 or 12 years ago was the laughingstock of the NFL will make in four championships in five years, not to mention three in a row.

Some do not believe.

Ron Borges picked the Colts.

Skip Bayless hears whispers in his ears that make him doubt.

Others say the loss of Charlie Weis (head coach, Notre Dame), Romeo Crennell (head coach Browns), Tedy Brushi (stroke), Ted Johnson (retirement), and Ty Law (now a NY Jet), is too much to over come.

Oh ye of little faith.

Here's why they will win.

First, they have great players. In an age of "selfish, uncoachable, fundamentally unsound athletes" as Dan Shaunessy put it, the Patriots have assembled a roster of unselfish, extremely coachable, fundementally sound players. The teams scouting manual says it all, as the Boston Herald reported. ``We're building a big, strong, tough, smart, disciplined football team that consistently competes for championships.''

Tom Brady, Rodney Harrison, Richard Seymour, Mike Vrabel, Deon Branch, and on down the line, the team is filled with great football players.

Second, they have a great coach. Vince Lombardi, whose name is on the NFL championship trophy, won 9 playoff games in his career. Bill Belichick, the Patriots coach, has won ten. Enought said.

Third, the Patriots thin-slice better than any team in football. Thin-slicing, as Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in Blink is the ability to make sense of complex situation based on the "thinnest slice of experience"--like doctors in Chicago who can diagnose heart attacks based on very basic information, or art experts who recognized a fake statue by taking one quick look at it (to the chagrin of a museum that spent months reseaching and paid millions for it) and researcher who can tell if a couple will divorce based on taped snippets of their conversations.

It's not just gut instinct or intuition. Thin-slicing is super-fast thinking that can be taught. If you spend enough time diagnosing a situation, and find the right clues, than you can learn to thin slice to. That's what the Patriots do best. The coaches and players diagnose their opponents, through scouting and film work primarily (as Michael Holley points out in Patriot Reign), find three or four keys to beating them, and then focus on those areas only. Many reporters and broadcasters who cover the Patriots seem to say the same thing over and over again--the Patriots are always in the right place, at the right time. That's not be accident, and it's why they'll win another Super Bowl this year.

Ok, that's enough prognosticating for me. Until the World Series begins ;-).

2005-09-10T21:04:00.000-07:00

Is a $10 Billion Profit Looting?

MT made a very good point the other day. Gas prices has soared because of a cut in production capacity--so that, according to the laws of supply and demand, the prices goes up because of shortages.

So far, so good. A business exists to make money, and if an oil company needs to pay more to produce gasoline, they are perfectly within their rights to pass on the cost increases.

But when does a legitimate price increase became price gouging? The Boston Herald suggests that something is wrong when Exxon posts a record quarterly profit $10 billion of as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

Here's how the Herald put it:

That's $110 million a day, and more net income than any company has ever made in a quarter. It's also a stunning 69 percent increase over the same period a year ago and a 34 percent jump from the $7.6 billion Exxon made just last quarter.

Something a little more than supply and demand is going on here.

2005-09-10T06:03:00.000-07:00

Maybe organized religion isn't so bad after all, at least according to the New York Times, which reports on the efforts of churches to feed, house, and care for people affected by Hurricane Katrina. Those churches filled a vital role, especially when the leadership of FEMA has been disorganized and slow to react.

This section of the story tells it all:

"You just walk in," said Ethel Wicker, 57, who fled the Ninth Ward in New Orleans ahead of the storm that flooded it, as she dug into a Styrofoam container of oriental chicken in the gym of Florida Boulevard Baptist Church. "They have clothing. They have drinks. They have candy. And they treat you very well."

In contrast, she said, she and her daughter, Dionne Murphy, 37, had to wait for hours to get food stamps. And so far, she has gotten nothing from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "The churches are handing out meals," she said. "The federal government hasn't handed out any funds to my knowledge."

Indeed, after a day of confusion and complaints about how to obtain debit cards worth at least $2,000 for immediate living expenses, David G. Passey, a spokesman for FEMA, said the agency had decided to end the distribution of the cards after a one-day trial. But later, FEMA officials in Washington said that distribution of the cards would resume on Friday.

Mr. Passey said that victims must register for assistance, and that checks or funds transfers would usually take between 10 days and two weeks to reach them.

But many people said they could not wait that long, or did not have the patience to deal with all the bureaucratic mix-ups. And churches have stepped into the void in what observers say is probably the largest such outpouring in recent memory, with tens of thousands of displaced people stretched out across the country.

"Certainly, in my history of 41 years as a Salvation Army officer, this is the greatest mobilization of churches in general, but definitely the Christian churches, who in my mind have come to truly realize what Jesus said in Matthew in the 25th chapter: 'Inasmuch as you do unto the least of me, you do unto me,' " said Commissioner W. Todd Bassett, the Salvation Army's national commander.

Even Southern Baptist, who usually don't fare well in the pages of the Times, are painted in a positive light--so far the SCC has provided 5,000 volunteers and served more than a million meals.

2005-09-09T16:09:00.000-07:00

Shame on Salon.com

This is not a G-rated post. Or even PG-13. So you might want to look away, because it's about to get ugly.

Let’s play a game of "What if?" for a minute. What if a conservative website, say WorldnetDaily or ChristianityToday.com were to post a book review which waxed poetically about a novel in which a Evangelical Christian kidnapped a gay men, castrated him, and then fed new eunuch his formerly attached body parts? And then, just for the heck of it, criticized an author because his new book didn't any murder and castration of gay men, accusing him of selling out in order to gain mainstream success?

Let's just say that Andrew Sullivan and Salon.com wouldn't be too happy about it. They would be, to quote the mayor of New Orleans, pissed.

Back to reality now. Today's Salon.com features a review of Dennis Coopers "God Jr." Alex Mar describes Cooper's novels as "surprising, moving works of literature" even though most focus on "violent gay sex, pedophilia and the dismemberment of lanky young boys by older men." One in particular includes a scene in which a john does to a young boy exactly what our imaginary evangelicals did to a gay man. While Mar descibes that particular scene as Cooper "at his most repulsive," his reviews seems to lament the lack of violence and pedophilia in the books.

The editors of Salon seem to believe this as a legitimate book to promote, despite such gems as this a direct quote from the review:

If this novel is not Cooper at his best, it's an unavoidable step toward breaking out of the sensational corner he's painted himself into. After all, how many great novels can someone write about raping and dismembering boys?

The answer is none. Mar, by the way, is an editor at a major American magazine. He has, it appears, either no editorial judgment or no common sense. Shame on him. And shame on Salon editors who thought these books worth promoting or this review worth publishing.

2005-09-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

Kiwis Under Seige

You might have missed it, but apparently New Zealand, the land of Kiwis and Hobbits (and Narnians, I believe), is under siege. That's the word from Bishop Brian Tamaki, whose Destiny Church has spawned a Destiny Party. Tamaki looks quite personable on the church website --but looks like he stepped out of Orwell's 1984 or The Manchurian Candidate on this asite.

According to the New Zealand Herald, Bishop Tamaki's four reasons that New Zealand is under siege are:

The Government has "gone evil".
There is a "radical homosexual agenda".
The media is "modern day witchcraft" and a vehicle for evil ideologies.
The retreat of religion in New Zealand.

Apparently, the solution is to have Christians take over.

The Probligo is worried about this.

I would be too.

On a lighter note, I see from the Probligo that criminal masterminds are at work in New Zealand.

Here's Probligo's complete post from August 30:

Three men trying to steal fuel from a Waipukurau farm yesterday ended up setting fire to their own car.

Police said the trio siphoned diesel into a petrol-driven vehicle. When their car would not start, they examined the fuel pipe using a cigarette lighter. Boom, and the car burst into flames.

Senior Sergeant Ross Gilbert said: "Fortunately for them, there is no criminal charge for stupidity."

The men, aged 18 to 19, escaped injury but were charged with theft.

2005-09-06T13:26:00.000-07:00

Some Kind of Charity

An ugly story is brewing in Atlanta, where John Blake of the Journal-Constitution reports that Bishop Eddie Long of the 25,000 member New Birth Missionary Baptist Church received more than $3 million dollars in compensation over a 10 year period from a charity he set up to "serve the needy and spread the gospel." Long reportedly got $3.07 million--the rest of the needy got $3.1 million.

According to the Journal Constitution, Long received the following compensation over a four year period from 1997-2000:

•A $1.4 million six-bedroom, nine-bath home on 20 acres
•Use of a $350,000 luxury Bentley automobile.
•More than $1 million in salary, including $494,000 in 2000.

The Journal Constitution also reported that:

Long and his wife, Vanessa, were two of the charity's four board members. The charity gave a third board member, Terrance Thornton, a $160,000 loan in 1999 to buy a home site across the street from Long's house, tax records show.

Long does not come across well in an interview with Blake:

"We're not just a church, we're an international corporation," Long said. "We're not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can't talk and all we're doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation.

"You've got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that's supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering."

Long's tax attorney doesn't help his cause. He told the Journal Constitution that the charity was "created for Long to coordinate his charitable activities, including mission trips overseas and donations to churches and orphans."

But later, the charity's compensation committee decided to use some of the charity's assets to pay Long for his work at New Birth to make up for many years when he had been underpaid, Epstein said. Long had told his charity's compensation committee previously that he didn't want to be paid the maximum amount available to him, Epstein said.

"It was appropriate to do something to make a dent in the compensation that the bishop hadn't received," Epstein said.

"Bishop Long has never received the legal amount of compensation he is due by law," said Epstein. A Philadelphia lawyer specializing in church tax law, Epstein is the producer of a video for pastors called "How To Maximize Your Clergy Salary and Benefits Package."

Theses quotes from Long don't help either:

"I have great integrity with my congregation," Long said. "I would never take their money and use them to build my own personal happiness."
"It's not like I wake up and say, 'I think I want a Bentley' "
"I would love to sit with you and walk with you through the Bible to show that Jesus wasn't poor"
"I'm not going to apologize for anything. . . ."

Here's another scary quote, from J. Lee Grady of Charisma magazine about the pitfalls that an independent church of any size--from storefront to megachurch--can face when a pastor believes they answer to nobody but God.

Pastors take advantage of a lack of denominational accountability to enrich themselves, said J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma, a national magazine that covers charismatic churches. Grady said, however, that he didn't know enough about Long's ministry to comment on it specifically.

"There are many independent churches out there today that are accountable to no one," he said. "Their board structures are controlled by a few insiders and no one can bring correction. That is not healthy. But it will not change as long as the congregations don't demand change."

When the news from New Orleans dies down, this Long story could get very ugly.

2005-09-05T07:36:00.000-07:00

"Intelligent Design," despite it's growing popularity, seems too mechanistic a term to describe the marvels of the universe. It conjures up images of God as a lab coated scientist in the sky, whipping up a formula for live in a heavenly test tube, or a cosmic engineer, laying out a blueprint and then manufacturing the universe.

A better alternative by far is found in Old Testament; in the image of God as a gardener found in Genesis two: "Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed."

A gardener prepares the enviroment for the garden--clearing a space, tilling the soil, planting seed, then watering, weeding, pruning and caring for the garden. There's a sense of intimacy is God as gardener that is missing from the unknown "designer" of ID.

A garden is a living thing that a gardener nurtures and allows to grow, not a machine that the gardener assembled and set in motion. The universe as a garden allows room for natural growth and development, while leaving space for a creator God, who provides the enviroment for life to flourish.

One last thing. The God that creationist adore and strict Darwinist (those who argue that evolutions explains away God) abhor, is too small. In fact, The most disturbing part of the recent NY Times story on the support for teaching creationism was this paragraph:

The poll found that 42 percent of respondents held strict creationist views, agreeing that "living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."

That anyone of us can make claims of what life was like at beginning of time is arrogant; to say that things have never changed is both scientifically and theologically naive. God, and the universe God made, is much bigger than any of us can imagine, whether we are scientists or creationists.

2005-09-05T05:59:00.000-07:00

Corporate Looting?

Derrick Z. Jackson wonders why no one has declared martial law on "corporate looters":

For ExxonMobil, which is headed to $30 billion in profits, to jack up prices at the pump and then only throw $2 million at relief efforts is unconscionable.

Stay fixated, if you wish, on the thieves and desperate families who are so much easier to catch on camera than comptrollers electronically stealing your cash. It is not pleasant to see anyone loot a store. But ExxonMobil and big oil are looting the nation, and no one declaring martial law on them.

2005-09-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribunes asks, why do looters get shot at, while "price gougers"--whose who jacked up gas prices, tossed refugees out of hotel rooms or raised prices on them to increase profits illegally, or offer $14,000 tree removal services-get off scot-free?

He wrote:

The real looters are the jerks who sit in the comfort of their clean, dry homes, who have no uncertainty about shelter or their next meal, and think up ways to prey on the victims.

2005-09-03T16:33:00.000-07:00

Scot McKnight's posting about grace today , and as usually he's spot on.

In addressing those who see grace as God doing us a favor by not squashing us like the worms we are, he says:

they can’t accept that God’s grace is God’s benevolence toward us because of who God really is (a gracious loving God) and because of who we are: his chosen people in whom he delights and for whom he has crafted a gospel that restores us to be Eikons who are in union with God and communion with others.

(Not sure what an Eikon is, but that's a bit of editorial nitpicking).

A couple years, I had the chance to ask the late Mike Yaconelli about grace, and what he said stuck with me ever since. (His answer appeared in the December 2003 Covenant Companion)

Here’s the reality—we do not believe in grace. We are scared to death of grace. We are worried that it is going to be abused or misused. And of course, we only worry about that after we are in. And then we decide to help God by becoming grace monitors and grace police and by sort of saying, “God’s really busy and he has got a lot to do, so we will make sure that nobody else gets in.”

We make all of these rules, just like the Pharisees did, that determine whether or not you are functioning in grace.

Our secular pagan culture doesn’t make us get drunk, it makes us dull. It robs us of our creativity. We don’t sit around thinking, how can I redeem this situation? We have lost the power of the tiny, of the small, of the little thoughtful things that we can do for each other that will make all the difference in the world.

That’s what happens in a pagan culture. It’s not that we run around doing these horrible sins. It’s that we don’t run around doing these little acts of grace that we ought to be doing. We have lost the power of the tiny, of the small, of the little thoughtful things that we can do for each other that will make all the difference in the world.

2005-09-02T16:11:00.000-07:00

Second Baptist Church in Houston is organizing a volunteer effort to feed the 25,000 refugees from New Orleans now staying at the AstroDome. Christianity Today reports on a meeting that Second Baptist held with Houston religious leaders. According to CT, the meeting included "Christians from mainline, evangelical, and Pentecostal denominations, plus those from other faiths, including Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Bah'ai, and Unitarians." I hope there were Catholics there as well-the piece isn't clear.

A few more factoids from the piece:

Many of the refugees are expected to relocate permanently, as they "nothing to go back to."
Each of three daily meal-line shifts will need 240 volunteers., and the monthly cost for meals will be $4 million.
The refugees will be in the Dome for as long as 6 month.

And two money quotes, both from a suprising source—2nd Baptist Pastor Ed Young:

"All those sermons and passions you've generated, now's the time to put up or shut up for every faith or religious community here. Are you willing to coordinate and cooperate with other people and other denominations? If you're not, sit down."
Young quoted Gandhi: "'God dares not appear before a hungry man except in the form of bread and water.' We all have our religious agendas. You know mine. The first place to start is food and water," Young said.

2005-09-02T15:34:00.000-07:00

When it come outs, go see this movie .

Terry Ryan's "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio" , which the New York Times reviewed as "Fighting Eviction with a Jackpot of Jingles" relates how Ryan's mother raised ten kids on "twenty-five words or less" by winning promotional contest in the 1950s. It's proof that sometimes, real life is better than fiction.

2005-09-02T12:10:00.000-07:00

Some thoughts from the New York Times on poverty and the New Orleans disaster:

"If Sept. 11 showed the power of a nation united in response to a devastating attack, Hurricane Katrina reveals the fault lines of a region and a nation, rent by profound social divisions."
Mark Naison, Fordham University
"It's dangerous to be poor. It's dangerous to be black. It's dangerous to be Latino."
Martín Espada, the University of Massachusetts
"Most cities have a hidden or not always talked about poor population, black and white, and most of the time we look past them. This is a moment in time when we can't look past them. Their plight is coming to the forefront now. They were the ones less able to hop in a car and less able to drive off."
Spencer R. Crew, president and chief executive officer of the national Underground Railroad Freedom Center

2005-09-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

Jeff Sharlett of the Revealer says the disaster in New Orleans is a story about sin. Not the Repent America kind but about the way "developers and politicians and patricians" left the city vulnerable for disaster.

Here's the meat of his story:

if this is a religion story, it's not about an act of God or the banal use and abuse of the Bible as substitute aid for people dying of literal thirst; it's about sin. And no vague, blustery "pride of man" stories about ill-preparedness or mistakes by the Army Corps of Engineers will address the original sin of this event.

We need theologically-charged, morally outraged, investigative historical reporting to tell us why and how the dead of New Orleans died, and when their killers -- not Katrina, but the developers and politicians and patricians who are now far from the city -- began the killing. It wasn't Monday, and it wasn't last week. We need journalists, not just historians, to look deeper into the American mythologies of race and money, "personal responsibility" and real responsibility.

This isn't a religion story because God acted, but because people acted. It's not about what they didn't do, it's about what they did do, under the cover of civic development and urban renewal and faith-based initiatives that systematically eradicate the possibility of real, systemic response to a crisis that is more than a matter of individual souls.

Someone else pointed out a more mundane reason for the human disaster--why people stayed behind and didn't evacuate the city. The hurricane hit on (the 29th) and people hadn't received their ends of the month paychecks. So they didn't have money to leave.