Weather and Preaching

I hope your preacher is better than my weatherman.

This morning my weatherman leads with this: "There is a cold front coming." When he said this there was a graphic of my reagion of the country with orange and yellow colors where I live and green and blue colors to the north and west. The temp here: 68. The temp in Kansas City, where the cold front is currently located: 47.

But then my weatherman closes the weather section of the news with the extended forecast:

Highs:
Saturday - 74
Sunday - 76
Monday - 76
Tuesday - 81
Wednesday - 76

So, on which of these days does the cold front show up?

What I believe is happening is this meteorological poser is proof-texting unrelated National Weather Service feeds and calling it a forecast.

Now, about your preacher. I know it is more true in the past than now, but restoration preachers are notorious for doing cut and paste scripture butchering and calling it sermon prep. Just like my weatherman's forecast that was probably true to the NWS feeds he was getting, it meant nothing becuase it was not interpretted for my context.

Ever been victimized by so-called preaching which was really violence to scripture?

Now I'm Going To Make One For Loneliness

My new favorite commercial is a cell phone service where the guy in the cubicle is making paper voodoo dolls. A woman asks him about them and he says one is for overages and one is for roaming. She says that their cell plan doesn't have roaming or overages. He is pleasantly surpised. "So they work!" he says as he looks at the dolls. She leaves. With his new found power his voice chases her, "Now I'm going to make one for loneliness."

I think this commercial taps into something very serious. When something happens, good or bad, we often run that result through a pre-existing filter for explanation. This voodoo doll guy never had the option of believing the causation of the good phone plan had to do with anything but his paper voodoo dolls. Even when the answer was right in front of his face and clearly explained. No, all he could understand was the power of the paper voodoo dolls.

So, he took that formula and appiled it to another problem he had - loneliness.

Don't we do this in church? Saddleback is purpose driven, so we get all excited about being purpose driven and get out our voodoo dolls and try to make something happen? We might be missing the real source of the power and the change.

Misapplication of formulas is not only a great cause of failure or even abuse in churches, but also a significant source of spiritual disillusionment. "What is God doing here?" is a better question than "What did God do over there?" OR "What did God do back then?"

Forgiveness

Had Jesus waited for me to become trustworthy in order to forgive me, I'd be in a world of hurt.

So why do people make the offending person's trustworthiness a requirement for forgiveness?

Compassion generated forgiveness is more likely to happen and more genuine than trust dependent forgiveness.

"No fair?" Well, fairness is luxury mostly innaccessible to humans. Waiting for it is much more like procrastination than virtue.

God's Will?

Kyle Lake is dead. One of the names of his books is the following: "Understanding God's Will" Go figure. What kind of understanding of God's will comes from publicly dying by electrocution in the baptistry during a baptism? The whole situation is tragic and seems ripe with symbolism, but I just can't think of anything to say.

May his family and church find peace through the deep grief and sorrow they are going through. May they find ways to mourn.

Abortion

With the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the supreme court has come the usual fighting and posturing for the battale to come. Unlike Harriet Miers, this guy is going to make it to a vote of confirmation.

What struck me as odd was the very first comment I heard on the news about this guy. "He is so pro-life he even voted to mandate wives to notify their husbands if she gets an abortion." OK, that comment didn't strike me as odd, it angered me.

I guess my views are exposed in my anger. When I think of a married couple in which the wife is pregnant, I consider this woman to be carrying their child. He had just as much to do with becoming pregnant as she did. It was his biological mass (sperm) that met hers (egg) in conception. Conception is a 50/50 thing. Now please, I understand that from that point on, she is doing all off the carrying of the child, being concerned with her health, puking, carrying anxiety about delivery, gaining weight, and on and on. I have observed this experience from close range twice. She also gets the attention, excitement, joy, fulfillment, praise that the chopped liver father does not get, but this fact does not really help the arguement, does it? Let's move on.

If this mass inside of her is a person, then it is their person, not her person. It is their responsibility, not exclusively hers.

Ah, but this sends me off into another direction: Husbands need to be engaged with their pregnant wives on all levels. As much as the extreme pro-choice crowd looks and sounds to me like a cocophonous choir of sickle-wielding abortionists, there needs to be more of an emphasis on the father's responsibility throughout the life of the child. I have actually heard men say that they will start to be involved with the child when he or she can talk, or can "do something," or at other various stages in their development.

Wrong answer, dude!

As I look more closely at this problem, I believe that a good marital relationship (as opposed to legislation) is the best hedge against a wife getting a secret abortion. Good marriages will rarely result in a secret abortion.

What is truth?

Hey gang, I have an article on truth published here. Feel free to check it out. The "excellent" photo of me is worth the price of the click.

It’s A Guy Thing (in depth)

For several years now I have been hearing this phrase in conversations: "It’s a ________ (fill in the blank) thing." An ambiguous discomfort fills me when I hear someone use this kind of language. For years I have tried to ignore this uneasy feeling, but it hums in the background of my psyche with the annoying persistence of a mosquito I just can’t swat. I’ve had all I can stands and I can’t stands no more (Popeye voice). So, rather than continue to be dogged by this menacing language, I am taking it head on right here and now.

The first thing we need to do in unlocking the mystery of this "thing" language is to figure out what this phrase means. There is a clue to the meaning packaged in how people fill in the blank. I have heard the following words used to fill in this blank: girl, guy, black, white, gay, straight, Baptist, Pentecostal. Surely there are others, but these are the inserts I have heard.

It appears that there is a little linguistic posturing going on here. For example, when I hear a female, among a group of mostly females, say to a male, "It’s a girl thing," in response to a question or perplexed facial expression he has, I generally translate it like this: "Of course you don’t understand, (you poor thing), you’re not capable of knowing what we know. I don’t hold your incompetence and stupidity against you. Right now, your best move is nod and smile and not say a word, OK shmoopy-boy?"

Now, when we get beyond the faux-compassion expressed for the apparent plight of the guy on the receiving end of this comment, we realize that although he is not directly insulted or formally shunned, he has no meaningful retort at this juncture. His presence in the conversation has become superfluous. Nothing he contributes to the conversation at this point, whether there is logic, sense, or meaning to it can possibly be received with any credence. Any attempt to speak now would only serve to prove that he is indeed stupid and deserves an even stronger chastisement than he has just received.

Ah, but this phrase can be turned the other way as well. Supposed that a guy, among a group of mostly guys, says to a female, "Yeah, that’s a girl thing." She, then, is the one who is suddenly out-grouped. The phrase this time is a masked insult to the female and not a statement made to her social advantage. The translation this time would be something like this: "We all know that’s the way women are – uh-hem - irrational, petty, weak-minded. But hey, they can’t help it– they’re women. Hey toots, just sit there and be pretty – that’s what you’re here for anyway." What is she going to say after that? Any attempt by her to speak at this point will only invite ridicule.

Again, any sense of compassion within this statement is merely a mask for the true intent, which is not at all charitable. The female just got ex-communicated from being a true equal in the conversation. She was demoted from full member to object.

Regardless of which of the above ways this phrase is used, it serves the very same purpose. It clearly marks social distinctions and in-groups some while out-grouping others. It also serves as an effective silencer of the out-group. It is a clear and undeniable assertion of social power meant to make the more powerful group comfortable at the expense of the less powerful group.

In short, this phrase is used to mask religious bigotry, homophobia, heterophobia, sexism, racism, and lots of other kinds of –isms by bundling it into a socially acceptable linguistic package. Once again, prejudice has found a way to reincarnate itself within the common vernacular.

Walter Scott's Five Finger Special

This guy's name is Walter Scott. He is not to be confused with Sir Walter "Oh what a tangled web we weave" Scott, the Scottish novelist and poet. No, this is the American Restoration Walter Scott. He was an Alexander Campbell groupie. OK, I really like this guy, but at the same time he was a little nuts. Richard Hughes, in his book Reviving The Ancient Faith, tells on Walter Scott a little bit.

So, I like this guy because he was culturally relevant. He knew that his audience back in the 1800's was mostly illiterate. So, rather than pumping out voluminous book, chapter, and verse, Scott gave them an easy five finger memory help.

1. Hear
2. Believe
3. Confess
4. Repent
5. Baptism

>>>Depending on where you live you might have a different order<<<

Rick Warren could not have said it any better. And it is all good, right? Well, it was fine when it was a neat memory trick. The problem is that I didn't learn it as a neat memory trick. I learned as The Gospel. I doubt many people of the American Restoration Movement these days learned it as merely a neat memory help. What I thought was rock solid, undeniable Biblical truth was really something that had to do with how many fingers I have on my hand and a Bible quickie.

Had Scott just left it alone, left it as a memory help, I think we might have been OK. But he didn't. No, and this is what I do not like about him, he had to go and say stuff like he had completely restored the ancient gospel with this five finger special. When he went and did that, he turned from a clever and culturally sensitive guy to freakin' nut case.

I know that it was the spirit of the age and he could never have known how much damage his overstatement would cause. And in all fairness, it did a lot of good. It must not have sounded so arrogant and naive back then like it does now. It must have been an invisible thing that got glossed over and made so much sense in that day.

But I still have a little heartburn about it. I was taught that the Bible and salvation could be reduced to a little formula. Slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am, you're saved! I mean, the stupid memory trick doesn't even mention God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit.

I think there is a lesson here. Our words, whether with our children, friends, co-workers will have a legacy. Having said that, I am a litlte concerned about saying Scott was a freakin' nut case, but I am going to stand by that one. More than our words, though, it is our life and the direction we go and the force with which we go in that direction.

What's your five finger special you hope doesn't get overstated?

Best Ever

I'm not going to lie to you, Batman Begins is the single greatest comic book movie ever. Do not even try to argue.

Linguistic Posturing

What does it mean when someone says, "It's a guy thing," or, "It's a girl thing." Or how about "It's a Black thing," or what about, "It's a God thing."

What is meant to be communicated by this "thing" language that seems to pop up in conversations?

And what about when people preface their opinions or responses with unusual disclaimers?

"Look, I'm not going to lie to you..."
"You won't believe this..."
"Now hear me out..."
"You're probably not going to believe me, but..."

What are we to make of these?