Plank Eyed

The New York Times ran a fascinating article last week on former Senator Gary Hart (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/magazine/how-gary-harts-downfall-forever-changed-american-politics.html?_r=0). Hart was considered the frontrunner of the Democratic Party in the 1988 presidential election until the Miami Herald exposed that Hart was having an affair. Matt Bai writes about the events that led up to the discovery of the affair, its reporting, and how political journalism changed as a result.

If Nixon’s resignation created the character culture in American politics, then Hart’s undoing marked the moment when political reporters ceased to care about almost anything else. By the 1990s, the cardinal objective of all political journalism had shifted from a focus on agendas to a focus on narrow notions of character, from illuminating worldviews to exposing falsehoods. If post-Hart political journalism had a motto, it would be: “We know you’re a fraud somehow. Our job is to prove it.” Matt Bai.

When I read that last sentence, I thought about by my circle — church world, the evangelical culture. I’m afraid we’re no different. Witch hunts abound. We too have a tendency to look at church leaders and say, “We know you’re a fraud somehow. Our hope is that someone will prove it.” A lot of the times, this comes from legitimate theological or ethical concerns. I am grateful for those committed to integrity and who long for accountability; those who are led by conviction not an agenda and have no political axe to grind. There are a good number of noble and honest people of principle who are not afraid to call someone to the carpet on occasion for the sake of the Kingdom. I’m not talking about these guys. My concern is for those who seek power, notoriety, or pleasure in bringing someone down. Mark Driscoll is the latest in a long line of leaders others enjoy seeing fall from favor and loose their influence. I still think character matters and it seems as though Driscoll has shortcomings, but what if instead piling on, this incident caused us to do our own moral inventory? Isn’t that really what we’re responsible for? Why do we feel better about our own sinfulness when the flaws of someone held in high regard are made known? What does that little sense of joy or gladness we feel at someone’s comeuppance reveal about our own character? What does the fact that we cannot engage in civil discourse with someone with whom we disagree without reacting, pigeon holding, getting off topic, or developing an ulcer say about our own faith?

Seinfeld, Dad’s Wardrobe, and Church

In a recent NY Times article on Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld Intends to Die Standing Up – NYTimes.com), Jonah Weiner recalls one of the comedian’s great lines:

“All fathers essentially dress in the clothing style of the last good year of their lives.” 

Pretty funny. When I read that quote to my wife milk came out of her nose.

She’s been after me for years.

My wife and kids see Christmas as an opportunity to upgrade my wardrobe. These improvements used to be fairly subtle, but now they just tell me what they’re doing. Apparently most of what I consider in style went out with the Bush administration – and I’m not talking about W.

But why are fathers reluctance to change? Here are three ideas:

• Ignorance.  Maybe he’s just unaware that his clothing is out of date.  “Agnosagnosia” — he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know.  The fashion train has left the station, but he never even bought a ticket.  If he’s oblivious to this, how can anyone expect him to make clothing choices that will not embarrass the family?
• Comfort. Maybe he just likes what his current wardrobe because it’s comfortable.  If he feels good in what he’s wearing, if it fits well and doesn’t chafe or blister, why change? Comfort is an enemy of change and most guys are pretty set in their ways.
• Resistance.  Follow me on this.  Let’s just say dad picks up on the fact that his clothes are out of style and desires to make a change.  When he gets the new threads, he will experience internal and external resistance.  It doesn’t take much to cause him to revert back to his old gear.
  • The internal resistance comes from the awkwardness of a new look.  It’s not him and he knows it.  It’s not comfortable.  It looks silly.  He’s uncertain that his choices are appropriate.
  • The external resistance comes from friends, coworkers, and even family – the very ones who asked for a change – when they make comments about the new look.  If he doesn’t stick with it, he’ll give in to the resistance and go back to what was comfortable.

This happens in church life, as well.  Many churches essentially “do ministry” in the last good year of their lives. They fail to change for some of the same reasons above. They don’t know their efforts are outdated and ineffective so they continue  doing the same things they have always done. There’s comfort in the familiar and confidence in the belief that it worked before.  Innovation is risky and awkward and there are no guarantees. Not knowing how to change and being comfortable in what they’ve always done keeps them from venturing out. But if it doesn’t feel awkward trying something new, you’re probably not trying something new.  If change is in order, churches must break from the past and work through internal and external resistance to make the necessary adjustments.

Your family is waiting.

Monday Mentor — Eugene Peterson

The churches of the Revelation show us that churches are not Victorian parlors where everything is always picked up and ready for guests. They are messy family rooms. Entering a person’s house unexpectedly, we are sometimes met with a barrage of apologies. St. John does not apologize. Things are out of order, to be sure, but that is what happens to churches that are lived in. They are not show rooms. They are living rooms, and if the persons living in them are sinners, there are going to be clothes scattered about, handprints on the woodwork, and mud on the carpet. For as long as Jesus insists on calling sinners and not the righteous to repentance – and there is no indication as yet that he has changed his policy in that regard – churches are going to be an embarrassment to the fastidious and an affront to the upright.

Monday Mentor — Marjorie J. Thompson

We gather for worship to remember who and whose we are.   We come to recount the stories that shape our faith, stories that turn us from a collection of individuals into a community with a common source and vision.  The church as a worshiping community carries our biblical faith and spiritual tradition down through the ages to each individual.  We are joined to that community in Baptism, tutored in faith through the interpretation of Scripture in preaching, and nourished at the Lord’s Table as a family of believers.  Life in the church teaches us that we are made for communion not only with God but with one another in Christ.  

Tourists

Eugene Peterson opens his book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction,  using the images of a pilgrim and a tourist to describe two approaches to the Christian life. The tourist is a passive observer interested more in being entertained or amused than engaged. He desires short cuts and high points and is looking for instant credit in the eyes of God. Whereas a pilgrim spends her life journeying towards and with God.  He writes:   There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness. Religion in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset.  Religion is understood as a visit to an attractive sight when we have adequate leisure. (p.16)

Mark Buchanan makes this point, as well, in his new book, Your Church is Too Safe: Why Following Christ Turns the World Upside-Down (scheduled to be released later this month). Chapter Five begins with this convicting comparison:

Historian Daniel Boorstin documents a momentous shift that occurred in North America in the 19th Century: we stopped calling people who went on trips travelers and started calling them tourists.

Traveler literally means one who travails. He labors, suffers, endures. A traveler – a travailer – gets impregnated with a new and strange reality, grows huge and awkward trying to carry it, and finally, in agony, births something new and beautiful. To get there, he immerses himself in a culture, learns the language and customs, lives with the locals, imitates the dress, eats what’s set before him. He takes risks, some enormous, and makes sacrifices, some extravagant. He has tight scrapes and narrow escapes. He is gone a long time. If ever he returns, he returns forever altered.

In a sense, he never goes back.

A tourist, not so. A tourist means, literally, one who goes in circles. He’s just taking an exotic detour home. He’s only passing through, sampling wares, acquiring souvenirs. He tastes more than eats what’s put before him. He retreats each night to what’s safe and familiar. He picks up a word here, a phrase there, but the language, and the world it’s embedded in, remains opaque and cryptic, and vaguely menacing. He spectates and consumes. He returns to where he’s come from with an album of photos, a few mementoes, a cheap hat. He’s happy to be back. He declares there’s no place like home.

We’ve made a similar shift in the church. At some point we stopped calling Christians disciples and started calling them believers. A disciple is one who follows and imitates Jesus. She loses her life in order to find it. She steeps in the language and culture of Christ until his word and his world reshapes hers, redefines her, changes inside-out how she sees and thinks and dreams and, finally, lives. Whatever values she brought into his realm are reordered, oft-times laid waste, and Kingdom values take their place. Friends who knew her before scarcely recognize her now.

A believer, not so. She holds certain beliefs, but how deep down these go depends on the weather or her mood. She can get defensive, sometimes bristlingly so, about her beliefs, but in her honest moments she wonders why they’ve made such scant difference. She still feels alone, afraid, sad, self-protective, dissatisfied. She still wants what she always wanted, and fears what she’s always feared, sometimes more so. Friends who knew her before find her pretty much the same, just angrier.

You can’t be a disciple without being a believer. But – here’s the rub – you can be a believer and not a disciple. You can say all the right things, think all the right things, believe all the right things, do all the right things, and still not follow and imitate Jesus.

The Kingdom of God is made up of travailers, but our churches are largely populated with tourists. The Kingdom is full of disciples, but our churches are filled with believers. It’s no wonder we often feel like we’re just going in circles.

I’m looking forward to reading the entire book.