The Creationists are at it again. In a news story I recently learned about a museum in Kentucky that has dioramas with Adam and Eve alongside dinosaurs "cavorting" together. In terms of exhibits, this is a pretty good one. I mean the photos just smack of realism.
The Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY is set to open next week. The museum has a theological agenda of teaching that the earth is about 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs roamed the lands at the same time as Adam and Eve. It's a jab at evolution, and it's a really good art instalation, but I still don't get it. What's the problem with believing in both the idea that God created the world we know (and a few we don't) and in the idea of natural selection/evolution as outlined by Darwin et al?
I grew up in the household of a father who was both farmer and chemist. Faith and science blended nicely before my eyes. I learned on the farm that a faithful planting, fertilizing, and watering mingled with a mysterious germination and miraculous growth to yield a fruit. The process called for something from both God and farmer.
But I also saw a scientific side to it, and never once saw a disconnect between The Farmer's Almanac with it's pithy and sometimes Biblical quotes and the Chemical Engineering News that graced our mailbox each month. There was God-mystery in both, and I discovered at an early age that God was a genetic engineer who used amazing processes to bring about the world as we know it and that those holy processes line up with the knowledge that scientific pursuit yields.
Leafing through the pages of my father's technical journals I didn't always understand the world but I never felt threatened. Similarly, my small hands would dig tunnesl in the dirt rows of the corn and soybean fields and knew that the earth was a precious and holy thing. Though I didn't understand why I perceived it as holy, I never felt threatened by it. So why do we Christians get wrapped around an axle by scientific theory?
I believe both ideas - that God made us and that evolution is accurate scientific theory. Some of my more conservative Christian brothers and sisters disagree and try to claim a place of primacy in the created order that we humans do not rightly deserve. I think they have a real problem not being the center of the universe, but if the Christian theology that so many rabid Christians espouse is true then it is God that is the center of the universe, not us. We are, in keeping with the imagery of Scripture, nothing more than clay in the hand of the Creator, and if the Creator chose to arrive at my bodily expression by way of clay-mation and evolution, then so be it. What's the conflict?
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
What Kind of Death Are You Choosing?
This work week has been book ended by two different kinds of funerals.
The first, on Monday, was your basic "most dreaded" scenario for a minister. Part of the reason it's "most dreaded" is that I didn't know the man all that well. I've been pastor at his church for five years, but he's been bed-ridden for all of that time, refusing visits from me or our deacons who take communion to our homebound church family. That made it difficult to eulogize him gracefully or accurately.
The other part of it is that not many others knew him, either. Aside from his wife and two adult children, there were a total of 8 people at the funeral, counting me and the pianist. It was truly heart breaking for me to watch this widow grieve virtually alone. Perhaps he just outlived all his friends who might have come to his funeral. I don't think that's the case, though. The surviving family seemed so oddly out of synch in how they communicated with others that I suspected their eccentricity explained a little about why the chapel echoed when I spoke. I and they moved stiffly through the liturgy, we each speaking holy words of care and consolation ringing hollow in a relational vacuum. It was empty.
The second funeral was different. Not just because the main sanctuary was respectably full. Not just because I knew this woman more personally. Something was different, and I'm not able to put a finger on it. The liturgy lived, the holy words of care and consolation were spoken from a relational context, and those same words fell on ears that knew them to be true - not because they were spoken more eloquently or passionately, but because they were drawn from the same deep well common amongst our congregation.
Neither of these people chose their death, rather their type of death chose them. The man in the Monday funeral died in his sleep of old age, "not with a bang but a whimper." The woman in the Friday funeral died after a hard fought three year struggle with cancer. But whether they went gently into that good night or whether death was fought - well - to the death, the result is the same and neither of them could stop death's advent.
But more of us choose how we'll leave this life than you'd think. All of us want to end on a high note, a blaze of glory, or as a widely watched "season finale." My father says he wants to die at age 93 having been shot by a jealous husband. I suppose that's not a bad way to go. But most of us choose the death of a thousand cuts, making small decisions, taking tiny actions that lead us up to and over the brink of oblivion.
So this lonely afternoon in my study, I turned aside from preparing a sermon for the weekend to ponder - "What death am I choosing?" Is it bold and faithful? Or is it slow and timid? Or more importantly, what life am I choosing? Am I squandering precious moments and experiences, stuck in self-absorption, arrogance, and jealousy? Or am I choosing a life that means something, gives something, leaves something worthy behind?
The first, on Monday, was your basic "most dreaded" scenario for a minister. Part of the reason it's "most dreaded" is that I didn't know the man all that well. I've been pastor at his church for five years, but he's been bed-ridden for all of that time, refusing visits from me or our deacons who take communion to our homebound church family. That made it difficult to eulogize him gracefully or accurately.
The other part of it is that not many others knew him, either. Aside from his wife and two adult children, there were a total of 8 people at the funeral, counting me and the pianist. It was truly heart breaking for me to watch this widow grieve virtually alone. Perhaps he just outlived all his friends who might have come to his funeral. I don't think that's the case, though. The surviving family seemed so oddly out of synch in how they communicated with others that I suspected their eccentricity explained a little about why the chapel echoed when I spoke. I and they moved stiffly through the liturgy, we each speaking holy words of care and consolation ringing hollow in a relational vacuum. It was empty.
The second funeral was different. Not just because the main sanctuary was respectably full. Not just because I knew this woman more personally. Something was different, and I'm not able to put a finger on it. The liturgy lived, the holy words of care and consolation were spoken from a relational context, and those same words fell on ears that knew them to be true - not because they were spoken more eloquently or passionately, but because they were drawn from the same deep well common amongst our congregation.
Neither of these people chose their death, rather their type of death chose them. The man in the Monday funeral died in his sleep of old age, "not with a bang but a whimper." The woman in the Friday funeral died after a hard fought three year struggle with cancer. But whether they went gently into that good night or whether death was fought - well - to the death, the result is the same and neither of them could stop death's advent.
But more of us choose how we'll leave this life than you'd think. All of us want to end on a high note, a blaze of glory, or as a widely watched "season finale." My father says he wants to die at age 93 having been shot by a jealous husband. I suppose that's not a bad way to go. But most of us choose the death of a thousand cuts, making small decisions, taking tiny actions that lead us up to and over the brink of oblivion.
So this lonely afternoon in my study, I turned aside from preparing a sermon for the weekend to ponder - "What death am I choosing?" Is it bold and faithful? Or is it slow and timid? Or more importantly, what life am I choosing? Am I squandering precious moments and experiences, stuck in self-absorption, arrogance, and jealousy? Or am I choosing a life that means something, gives something, leaves something worthy behind?
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Falwell's Farewell
I'm probably going to get criticized, but I have to say this. I think it's a good thing for the Christians in the United States that Jerry Falwell has gone on to the next thing for him. While I'm positive that many Christians were aided by his brand of religion, I'm also confident that many non-Christians were driven away from the faith because of his divisive, insipid, and frequently ungraceful commentary.
There was something about his career of mixing politics and religion that created a noxious aphrodisiac of power and contributed to an overall loss of gentility in public discourse in our country. Forget his offensive conservatism. Forget his embarrassing abuse of the Scriptures I consider sacred. Forget the whole idea that his spiritual heritage as a Baptist includes countless men and women who have died for the separation of church and state that he tried to destroy. Forget the hatred he promoted toward gays and lesbians. The bottom line is that his public persona had a swagger of arrogance completely contrary to the humility that I find in Jesus. He fanned flames of hate-mongering and tacitly approved the abuse of humans in the name of Christianity.
I know what many of his supporters will say - look at all the good he did. But good at what cost? Isn't there a point in time at which we have to ask if the hatred he incited was an offense to the Gospel? Isn't there a sense in which his attempts at a prophetic word were an abuse of his ordination?
I never met Dr. Falwell personally, but I did live in his shadow. My first pastorate was in Skipwith, Virginia. It's about 90 miles or so from Lynchburg. The name of my church was Liberty Baptist Church, and folk often confused my church for his. I guess they thought that since he was president of the university that his church would be Liberty Baptist.
About three times a year I would receive mail addressed to my church intended for Thomas Road Baptist Church. The letters always contained money, usually a pretty good sum of it. One of the checks I remember in particular was for $1,000.00 and the "For" line on the check said something like this: "Political action fund against gays."
I wanted to shred it up, but I did the right thing. I properly forwarded it on to the Thomas Road Baptist Church, assuming they would know which designated church fund for which that was intended.
I haven't thought about that misdirected mail in years. But today I am thinking about it and wishing the people of this world - especially the Christians in our world - were a lot less hate-filled. I don't know your religious views on the gay question, and I'm not sure I'd want to know, anyway. But I do know that what Anne Lamott once wrote is true:
You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out he hates all the same people you do.
I don’t know the private Jerry Falwell, I’m sure like all leaders of mass movements he would be charming and disarming in an intimate conversation. But I do know the public Fallwell, and he was not a gentleman. He did not display the grace of God very well.
There was something about his career of mixing politics and religion that created a noxious aphrodisiac of power and contributed to an overall loss of gentility in public discourse in our country. Forget his offensive conservatism. Forget his embarrassing abuse of the Scriptures I consider sacred. Forget the whole idea that his spiritual heritage as a Baptist includes countless men and women who have died for the separation of church and state that he tried to destroy. Forget the hatred he promoted toward gays and lesbians. The bottom line is that his public persona had a swagger of arrogance completely contrary to the humility that I find in Jesus. He fanned flames of hate-mongering and tacitly approved the abuse of humans in the name of Christianity.
I know what many of his supporters will say - look at all the good he did. But good at what cost? Isn't there a point in time at which we have to ask if the hatred he incited was an offense to the Gospel? Isn't there a sense in which his attempts at a prophetic word were an abuse of his ordination?
I never met Dr. Falwell personally, but I did live in his shadow. My first pastorate was in Skipwith, Virginia. It's about 90 miles or so from Lynchburg. The name of my church was Liberty Baptist Church, and folk often confused my church for his. I guess they thought that since he was president of the university that his church would be Liberty Baptist.
About three times a year I would receive mail addressed to my church intended for Thomas Road Baptist Church. The letters always contained money, usually a pretty good sum of it. One of the checks I remember in particular was for $1,000.00 and the "For" line on the check said something like this: "Political action fund against gays."
I wanted to shred it up, but I did the right thing. I properly forwarded it on to the Thomas Road Baptist Church, assuming they would know which designated church fund for which that was intended.
I haven't thought about that misdirected mail in years. But today I am thinking about it and wishing the people of this world - especially the Christians in our world - were a lot less hate-filled. I don't know your religious views on the gay question, and I'm not sure I'd want to know, anyway. But I do know that what Anne Lamott once wrote is true:
You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out he hates all the same people you do.
I don’t know the private Jerry Falwell, I’m sure like all leaders of mass movements he would be charming and disarming in an intimate conversation. But I do know the public Fallwell, and he was not a gentleman. He did not display the grace of God very well.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Bonoprah
Bono and Oprah are two of the most powerful figures in the entertainment business. So naturally, it caught everyone’s attention when they “went red.” They are two key celebrities affiliated with the RED campaign, an idea to brand products and give proceeds from the sales to fight diseases – specifically HIV-AIDS - in third world nations. On the surface it seems like a good idea to “do the Red thing,” but I have my questions.
Bono explained the campaign this way, “Some people won’t put on marching boots, so we’ve got to get people where they are at, and they’re in the shopping malls. Now you’re buying jeans and T-shirts, and you’re paying for 10 women in Africa to get medication for their children with HIV” (quoted in Relevant Magazine, May/June, 2007).
My concerns are several-fold. First, I believe I can make a pretty good Biblical case that buying more “stuff” isn’t good for a nation of people who already live in a culture of excess. Then there’s the whole false sense of having done good. Have I really done something special by buying a “RED” iPod rather than the white one? And lest we miss this little ethical quandary, there’s the mix of consumer frenzy, corporate profit, and fund raising. Aren’t the big corporations just riding a “feel good for buying” wave to sell more of their stuff and increase their bottom lines?
As people who allegedly build our lives based on Biblical principles, we Christians are called to care for the world by taking up a cross like Jesus, not by taking up our shopping bags. I was troubled by this same issue when President Bush told us the very best thing we could do for our nation in the wake of 9/11/2001 was to continue spending. Even in the church, this is present. The issue is similar, yet even more theologically complicated in the church by “Prosperity Gospel” preachers of the cable-TV ilk and the mega-church on the corner that has turned our faith into one more consumer choice to make.
Commitment to following Christ is something more than our consumer choices. Following Jesus has to be something more than the “hip” church we choose, or how our T-shirt touts our cause in some chic/pop/relevant way. Commitment to Christ must mean something more than just the things we choose to buy, wear, eat, or drink. It must be more than all those things and yet include every one of those things.
In Matthew 10.32-42 Jesus talks about commitment to his cause. He gives startling and difficult words, saying, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” In other words, commitment to Christ supersedes all things. He follows on by saying, “…anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
Matthew 10.32-42
32"Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. 33But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.
34"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35For I have come to turn
'a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
36a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.’
37"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
40"He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me. 41Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and anyone who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward. 42And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward."
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
My Theme Song
I've been to quite a few Astro's games over my five years in Houston. One of my favorite parts is when an Astro's batter comes up to the plate his favorite song is played to "juice" him up to hit. I spend too much time wondering how these hitters chose these songs, especially since it's not appearing to help them this season.
I've decided that it would be good liturgy to have the same thing happen when someone steps up to lead in worship. For example, the scripture reader for the day could have their favorite song played as they walk up to the pulpit. Imagine hearing Blondie's Rapture just before a reading from Revelation or Daniel. Or how about Money from Pink Floyd while the offering is collected? And for the deacon who prays that day, how about Me and Missus Jones? Even the pastor who stands up to preach can pick his or her favorite song.
I'm searching for my favorite song. Could you, my dear readers who NEVER leave comments, take a moment to pick a song that you think might be an appropriate segue into the sermon? Currently I've got Sexy Back on the top of my list, but I'm open.
I've decided that it would be good liturgy to have the same thing happen when someone steps up to lead in worship. For example, the scripture reader for the day could have their favorite song played as they walk up to the pulpit. Imagine hearing Blondie's Rapture just before a reading from Revelation or Daniel. Or how about Money from Pink Floyd while the offering is collected? And for the deacon who prays that day, how about Me and Missus Jones? Even the pastor who stands up to preach can pick his or her favorite song.
I'm searching for my favorite song. Could you, my dear readers who NEVER leave comments, take a moment to pick a song that you think might be an appropriate segue into the sermon? Currently I've got Sexy Back on the top of my list, but I'm open.
And all the while the clock is ticking
A few Friday's ago I borrowed a classic drop-top from my friend Rusty. I could write bunches about that friendship, but that's for another post, probably to be published posthumously. Nonetheless, the occasion was the Belle Ball for the Older Sister. She had a dress, a date, and a corsage.
And I had the keys to a '77 Caddy Cabrio.
I drove the Older Sister and her boyfriend, along with another couple, down to the Aquarium restaurant for the dinner and dance. We met up on the front step of her
boyfriend's Bellaire mini-mansion, and we went through all the rituals of picture taking in various poses and pairings. But of all the photos, this is my favorite. It just captures the whole "moment" for me. The dress, the corsage, the Caddy.
She's almost 16.
We went to the Department of Public Safety yesterday to get her Instructional Driving Permit so I can teach her how to drive. We have to go back on Friday because she didn't have all the documentation to prove she is who she says she is.
She was bummed, justifiably so, but she didn't read the fine print about what she was supposed to bring to DPS, so it was only right she has to go back. She was so bummed out that she actually let me hold her hand across the armrest on the way home, just like when she was a little girl. I kissed her hand and told her I was truly sorry. It was just a little lie.
Like any parent, I'd like to protect my kids from disappointment, but a part of me was glad she couldn't get the permit. Not because I'm vindictive or cruel, no. But because it makes it three more days before she can get her license to drive alone, three more days that she'll depend on me for something. Three more days that I can hold on to the idea that I'm younger than I really am, three more days I can sleep at night without worrying what time she'll get in, three more days I'll have some say over where she goes and with whom.
And yet. And yet I am eager for her to grow and thrive and change and mature and become independent. It's the horrible beautiful fine line of parenting that, when walked, strikes the balance between freedom and boundaries, sailing the open seas and staying near familiar shores. It makes me pray for my kids, and all the parents I know who are doing their dead-level best to make the most of every teachable moment in the hopes that our kids won't repeat our mistakes, will build on what we give them, and learn that the ever-present clock is all the while ticking.
And I had the keys to a '77 Caddy Cabrio.
I drove the Older Sister and her boyfriend, along with another couple, down to the Aquarium restaurant for the dinner and dance. We met up on the front step of her
boyfriend's Bellaire mini-mansion, and we went through all the rituals of picture taking in various poses and pairings. But of all the photos, this is my favorite. It just captures the whole "moment" for me. The dress, the corsage, the Caddy.She's almost 16.
We went to the Department of Public Safety yesterday to get her Instructional Driving Permit so I can teach her how to drive. We have to go back on Friday because she didn't have all the documentation to prove she is who she says she is.
She was bummed, justifiably so, but she didn't read the fine print about what she was supposed to bring to DPS, so it was only right she has to go back. She was so bummed out that she actually let me hold her hand across the armrest on the way home, just like when she was a little girl. I kissed her hand and told her I was truly sorry. It was just a little lie.
Like any parent, I'd like to protect my kids from disappointment, but a part of me was glad she couldn't get the permit. Not because I'm vindictive or cruel, no. But because it makes it three more days before she can get her license to drive alone, three more days that she'll depend on me for something. Three more days that I can hold on to the idea that I'm younger than I really am, three more days I can sleep at night without worrying what time she'll get in, three more days I'll have some say over where she goes and with whom.
And yet. And yet I am eager for her to grow and thrive and change and mature and become independent. It's the horrible beautiful fine line of parenting that, when walked, strikes the balance between freedom and boundaries, sailing the open seas and staying near familiar shores. It makes me pray for my kids, and all the parents I know who are doing their dead-level best to make the most of every teachable moment in the hopes that our kids won't repeat our mistakes, will build on what we give them, and learn that the ever-present clock is all the while ticking.
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