Baseball!

I took Caroline to the Red Sox game at Oakland last night. She is so much more than a fan: the Red Sox are her church and attending a game is a sacramental experience. Me, I've always enjoyed baseball, and tend to give my loyalty to whomever is least likely to break my heart, but Caroline is a Red Sox Fan through and through: for better or worse, for richer or poorer, to love and to cherish until, I guess, finally parted by death. I do not understand such devotion, but I do enjoy watching it in action. Her good cheer about her Red Sox - win or lose - is delightful.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun to shop for something I knew she would love: tickets to see her beloved Red Sox. I got us tickets in section 116, row 32, just to the left-handed hitters side of homeplate. We spent roughly a zillion dollars on a couple of crappy hotdogs, a couple of drinks and the worst tub of popcorn I have ever eaten in my life.

Welcome to Oakland.

Josh Beckett pitched for the Sox, Barry Zito for the A's. The Sox roughed up Zito - he gave up five earned runs - but it was easy to see how he can be so dominating when his pitches are all working. Papi and Manny both homered, which delighted her. Beckett overcame a shaky start and was dominant for 5 innings. The Sox turned 3 DPs. Papelbon closed it out. In short, we got to see all the things she would want to see.

Banners around the stadium exhorted "Let's Keep the A's in Oakland!"; apparently Oakland is not doing a great job of supporting the A's. At several points in the game, the cheer "Let's Go Red Sox" rumbled through the ugly old barn that the A's call home. Not only were there nearly as many red Sox fans as A's fans at the game, the Red Sox fans were far more rowdy and loyal to their team. We stood and cheered the homers and the key defensive plays, talked smack with the A's fans around us, and took photos with fellow Sox fans after the game. They really do treat one another like "brothers" within the closely defined context of "Red Sox Nation".

I love the pace and rhythm of a baseball game, the ebb and flow, the phases of the game, (beginning, middle, end). It feels like life-writ-small.

I sat there thinking, "I need to attend more baseball games" and began plotting my purchase of Diamondbacks season tickets next year. I imagined myself becoming a real fan, knowing the players, the teams, and my fellow fans. I imagined myself charting pitches, keeping a box score, and just generally giving myself to the Diamondbacks, not because they would reward my loyalty by winning but because the rhythm of the game helps me to unwind. I also imagined how the pace of my life during baseball season would change as I made attendance at the games an integral part of my life.

I have no idea how much it will cost, but I like the dream.

San Fran Weekend

I spent the weekend in San Francisco, which is not merely on the opposite side of the Bay from Oakland but is also the opposite side of the world, culturally speaking. I love San Francisco; I will live there for a year at some point in the future.

Saturday I decided to drive into town rather than take BART. It took 20 minutes to get to the traffic jam waiting to get through the toll gates for the Bay Bridge, and then another hour of crawling to get to the gates. At least we were sitting in air conditioning. I did not at the time know what a blessing that was. Once through the toll gates, we breezed along across the bridge at 60 mph. 20 minutes later, we parked close to Union Square and stood in line to get on the cable car.

While waiting, we saw one guy wearing a scarf on his head and admiring his reflection in the shop windows. Another guy was standing on his head on the street corner. Uh huh. This is San Francisco.

It was a touristy kinda day. We rode the cable cars, strolled through the Cannery, had a Beer at Jack's Cannery Bar while listening to a guitarist play through Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon all by himself. We hung out on the beach down by Ghiradelli Square, napped a little bit, then walked back up into town. We had exceedingly hot Hot Wings at a little diner on Lombard, got a brief massage from an aspiring massage therapist whilst waiting for the 28 bus to the Golden Gate Bridge, and then walked across the Bridge at sunset, snapping photos all the way.

We took another bus to some swanky neighborhood on the Pacific side of the peninsula down by Balboa Park I think, We walked a lot more and finally found the the Muni back to Powell station. We finished the evening with dinner in a Jazz place down by Union Square. I had a mostly boring mixed greens salad, a pretty decent boullabaise, and a Neopolitan to finish off the meal. The music was good, but the service was abysmal. Just like Europe!

While trying to find the Bay Bridge again, I made an illegal left turn and got pulled over by a motorcycle cop. He asked for my license and registration. When I told him it was a rental and I was from Arizona, he replied, "I thought this was gonna be easy", and let me go without a ticket.

The trip back to the hotel in Pleasanton took less than 30 minutes. THIRTY MINUTES.

Sunday was completely different - we decided to take BART. The trains are apparently not air conditioned. It was - uhm - unpleasant. (Did I mention this was the hottest weekend of the year? Temperatures inland reached 110, and it was in the 90s in SF.) I couldn't help wondering what it must be like on a weekday afternoon packed with bodies. Bleh again. While trying to find a rail car that was not 10 degrees hotter than the blistering outside air, we got separated, which resulted in 30 minutes of trying to reconnect, which we ultimately did at the West Oakland station.

Together again, we rode BART into the Mission District and began wandering around. I had hoped to find a killer Peruvian-fusion restaurant called Limon where I had eaten before, but really had no clue where it was. As we walked up 16th Ave past a bagle shop, I overheard a couple of guys talking about Limon. I interrupted, asked them to point me to the place, and it turned out we were less than a block away. Eureka!

It was a little before 4 when we arrived, so you could say we beat the dinner rush, which was nice since we got the opportunity to ask our waitress not only about the food but about herself. (Ashley, from upstate New York, in SF for about 18 months.) We ultimately chose the sampler with 4 kinds of cerviche. Then we did the tuna tartar patty and some amazing shrimp-stuffed calamari in saffron sauce - all exquiste and well-balanced. We washed it down with a bottle of some kinda white spanish wine, (instead of the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc I’d requested), and finished with latte and two decadent deserts - a dark chocalate truffel with vanilla ice cream, and home made short bread cookie sandwiches with 4 kinds of sauces. The cookies were a tad too sweet for my taste, but overall, it was a thoroughly fabulous dinner.

We then wandered 3 doors down to a joint known as Blondies Bar & No Grill. Black walls. Black ceiling. Black floor. Minimal signage. No Grill. 16 ounce martinis. This is a place you come to drink, to lounge, to groove, to lounge and to drink. We drank, lounged and grooved - and thoroughly, completely, utterly enjoyed ourselves. The Tour de France was on the tube above the pool table in the back, a very eclectic, very San Fran sound track was playing at conversation-enabling sound levels, and a lesbian couple was making out in the back corner.

We each had only ONE 16-ounce martini because ONE 16-ounce martini is enough for anybody.

Next, we crossed the street to a little curiosity shop specializing in used clothing, snarky refrigerator magnets, (”Divorce is Expensive - Freedom is Priceless”), and anti-George Bush knick knacks. It occured to me that the humongous market for Anti-George Bush tchotskis has probably helped to keep the economy afloat - an irony which would no doubt really irritate the George Bush-haters if they had a capacity to appreciate irony, which I doubt.) The place was buzzing - at 7:30 on a Sunday evening! We bought nothing, but enjoyed the experience.

Finally, to complete our Sunday of Decadence, we wandered down Valencia back toward 16th to a dive called Casanovas Lounge. (I have a thing for slightly seedy bars with quirky character.) As was Blondies, Casanovas was mostly empty, and mostly dark. Whereas Blondies has an air of world-weary sophistication, Casanovas has more of a 19th-century opium-den vibe going on. Not that I’ve ever been in the 19th century, or in an opium den, but this is the kind of place I picture when I read Sherlock Holmes.

What little light there was in the place was provided by red-tinted lamps scattered around the room. Paintings, not posters, were hung all around the back part of the bar. When our eyes adjusted to the dim light, we realized that the paintings were mostly nudes, and that the sofas in the back were invitingly low and soft and cushiony and easy to get real comfortable in, if you get my drift.

We took seats in the corner across from the bar just in front of the back lounge where we could watch people both in the bar and on the street. (San Francisco is a great people-watching city. If you can’t see it in SF, it can’t be seen on the planet.) Back behind the sofa-strewn lounge area was a smaller room with couches on three walls and heavy drapes framing the doorway. The drapes looked as if they could be drawn to make a private area, but they were open the entire time we were in there. A lesbian couple was making out on the cushions behind the drapes. Of course.

We decided on shots of Don Julio Silver since neither of us was driving. Lick the hand, sprinkle the salt, shoot the tequila, lick the salt off the hand, suck the lime. Weird, but fun. In fact, so fun that we did another shot.

Directly across from our table, a DJ was spinning actual vinyl albums with actually terrific rock & roll. Most of it I had never heard before, but I really liked it. It had a 70s feel without being 70s schlocky. Oh, and it too was played at a volume that did not prohibit conversation. (What marketing guru recommended that music be played so loud that your guests cannot hear themselves talk? And who thought shouting into an ear 3 inches from your mouth makes for a fun evening? Huh?)

At some point, I remembered that I was actually supposed to work on the morrow, so we hopped BART back to Pleasanton. The return trip was a good deal cooler and less eventful than the trip out. Thank God.

It is hot in the Bay Area. HOT. Aitch Oh Tee steaming hot. I’m glad my stale, lifeless cubicle comes equipped with A/C.

Fecal Matter Occurs

Strange how a relationship can be so bad that you feel more lonely in it than out of it.

Can I get a witness?

Long or Short?: This Girl is Not Attractive, so Short Her

Long or Short?: This is strangely compelling, kinda like the game we used to play where we'd rate girls on a 1-to-10 scale, only for the go-go stock market generation.

Denny Burk

Or, as I prefer to call it, Burk's Benign and Boring Baptist Blog.

The Inklings' Cafe

The Inklings' Cafe is the work of a Singaporean Presbyterian.

I didn't really read the blog - I just wanted to say "Singaporean Presbyterian".

If he slobbered when he thought about nachos, he'd be a "Salivating Singaporean Prsybyterian".

I could do this for a while. But I won't.

I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you...

Memo to survivors of the government-induced levee break in New Orleans: The Feds are so concerned about your health, they will let you starve rather than allow unfit food to be given to you.

Some guy has figured out how to build a cleaner-burning engine. I'll be the government outlaws it.

One more reason to love Dave Barry...

For the survivors, cry mercy.

The Mask

Dan writes about evangelicalism from the inside, and boy, does he speak the truth.

Not long ago, I made the mistake of confessing my deepest, darkest sins to some "church friends", and it became immediately obvious that they didn't know what to do with such a depraved sinner as me. I'll be a lot less likely to confess my faults in the future.

A lot less likely.

A Heretical Confession

I don't believe in life after death.

I know, I know. Heretic. Before you start stacking cordwood for your Jack-flambee' though, hear me out.

Though I do not believe in life after death, I do believe in the resurrection of the dead. "What's the dif", you may ask. The difference is that the whole "life after death" thing requires that I leave my body upon death. That whole notion implies the very Greek and entirely unscriptural idea that "my body" and "me" are not the same, that my body is a prison from which I must escape if I am to experience existence as I was meant to. But if that is true, then I should seek to die as quickly as possible so that I can enter into the fullness of my existence. If being "stuck" in this body means I am barricaded from "real life", then Death is the friend that sets me free from my prison and should be welcomed as a liberator.

But Death is my enemy - a vanquished enemy, certainly - but an enemy nonetheless. I hate to draw attention to the obvious, but when we die, we quit living. Else what does it mean to say that we die? Death is The End, The Grand Finale, the Last Chapter, the Final Enemy.

Or at least that is what Death meant until Christ defeated it and broke its grip on mankind. The promise of Christ's resurrection is that though Death will claim us all at some point, Death will no longer have the last word.

Christ as the firstborn from among the dead has become the first fruits of the New Order of Creation; He is not a disembodied spirit but an embodied man. If Christ rose bodily from the dead, then we too shall be so raised. If Christ is now clothed in immortality then we too shall be so clothed.

But if that is so, what happens between the time of our death and the time of our resurrection? No one really knows, but I think we must simply cease to exist. We are dead. And though we are gone, we still maintain a kind of life in the memory of those who knew us on this earth. Those on earth who remember us after we are gone will not have known us perfectly, nor will they remember us perfectly, and - worse for us - they too will one day cease to exist.
But God knows us perfectly and will remember us perfectly.

Our bodies decay and return to the dust from which we were made, but the memory of us will remain incorruptible and in perfect safety and integrity in the mind of Him who first imagined us. Though our friends may wish to reanimate their memory of us, they are powerless to do so, but the God who loves us perfectly is not. When they time comes, He will restore us to life by His great power, His infinite knowledge and His perfect love.

He will raise us from the dead just as Christ Himself was raised.

The first time God imagined man, He made us from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life – His life - into us. The second time He creates us, He promises that the life He breathes into us will never end.

---

The ancient creed affirms the Christian belief in "...the resurrection of the body..." Paul reminded the early church that "if there is no resurrection of the dead, then we are to be pitied above all men". Christ appeared to the disciples after His resurrection and He made an explicit point of showing them that He was physically present. He was not just an ethereal concept or a substance-less spirit but a real person with real scars who ate real food. He occupied space, but was not constrained by space.

God seems to like the physical realm. He must get a charge out of His creation, or He wouldn't make such a big deal over it. When we treat death as if it were a friend and act as if this physical creation is somehow a lesser expression of God’s goodness than the spiritual realm, we are guilty of devaluing that which God highly values.

Life is good. Resurrection life will be even better.

Grace So Amazing

Donald McCullough verbalizes what I have been pondering for quite some time - the offense of grace.

If it doesn't offend your moral judgment, it probably isn't grace.

A Perfect Mirror

...we tend to forget that ‘justification by faith’ is primarily the story of God’s faithful actions in the world in his Son, Jesus Christ. It is because God justified himself that we are justified, and only for that reason. It is too easy in our preaching to make ‘faith’ something we do, a work almost, which smuggles in all the dross and anguish of human-centred religion which Luther left behind.

Martin Luther and the Justification of God

Robert Doyle

Sometimes I get so worn out with trying to do the right thing, be the right thing, think the right thing, say the right thing and hang with the right people that I forget the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

I manage to screw up with great regularity. Every single blooming day I do at least one thing that violates some scriptural principle, and I can always find at least a dozen books, articles, tapes and radio preachers who are eager to explain - in excruciating detail - why any person who does what I do is (insert condemnatory description here) and certainly perdition-bound.

I keep thinking about that phrase in the letter from James to the church where he says that the person who gazes into the perfect law of liberty and acts based upon what he sees there will be blessed in what he does. I used to think that James was warning us not to forget what scum-bags we are, but now I realize that I had it exactly backwards.

When I gaze into this perfect law of liberty, I see reflected back to me the image of a perfect Man. This is a wonder to me - yet the image in this mirror is in fact what God sees when He looks on me. As I gaze into my "reflection" there in that perfect mirror and ponder what God's gracious work has wrought on my behalf, the glory of it penetrates - however slowly - to the darkest and densest reaches of my heart, and as this "God's-eye-view" of me seeps into my soul, I see myself as God already sees me. A lifetime of gazing into this image changes me - my choices slowly align themselves with the reality of that image.

I can trust that the screwups I assign to myself are not reflections of the real me that God already sees, but are merely the vestigal remains of the old Jack that is already dead but not quite yet fully decayed.

Good Cop/Bad Cop - Stupid Jack

I wonder...

Am I worse at being a Christian than the other people at church, or am I just more aware of how screwed up I am?

The other day, as I was contemplating doing something I knew I shouldn't do, I stopped myself and gave myself a good talking to: "You know better than that. God doesn't want you to do that. You should do the right thing."

And so I didn't do what I was contemplating. I felt slightly better about myself and found the shadow of this thought floating through the detritus of my mind: I'll bet God is pleased with me for doing the right thing...

And just like that I realized what a fool I am.

I believed that God would be please by me doing the right thing. I imagined Him weighing my deeds in the balance and finding me worthy for doing the right thing, (or worthless for doing the wrong thing.)

Though I've always confessed that my fecal matter is malodorous to the Almighty, (and everyone else as well), I apparently still believe that my righteousness somehow impresses Him. I guess I honestly thing that my good deeds are NOT as repugnant to God as used, bloody bandages. What an idiot.

The New Testament clearly shows me that my evil deeds do not separate me from God and my good deeds do do not bring me any closer. My deeds - both good and evil, righteous and unrighteous - have no bearing of any kind on my relationship to God. With the death, burial, resurrection and glorification of Jesus, God has taken the whole issue of good deeds / bad deeds off the table. My sins mean nothing to God because they are all already paid for by the death of Christ, (and therefore forgotten by God). My righteous deeds are worthless to God, because they are dung by comparison to the righteousness of Christ. God approves of me not because I behave or don't behave but because I am in Christ .

This is such a radical way of thinking and living that I can barely wrap my head around it. I find it so much easier to condemn myself for my failings or to praise myself for my successes - yet both of these imposters are worthless to me and repugnant to God. He is utterly pleased with Christ, and is utterly pleased with me in Christ.

My deeds - both "good" and "bad" - are death for me, death if I place any value or trust in them at all. But if my trust is in Christ, then my life is in Him. He is the Vine, I am one of his branches. Whatever life is in me is His life. As the life of the vine is in the branch, so the life of Christ is the life of Jack.

Treasure

Axiom: When God speaks, no one has any trouble hearing Him.

I know that I know that God has spoken to me, but I have no recollection of the time or event when He gave me the words that I now carry in my mind. I have a message inside my head - a message from God to me - but I have no memory of when that message was given. At some indeterminate point this summer while on vacation, I knew something that I hadn't known before. I don't know how it got there, but this "message from God" was burned into my mind:

I will be your reward.

God said this to me - I don't know when, I don't know how, I don't know where. I only know that these words are in my head, and I didn't put them there.

For as long as I can remember, my experience of life did not measure up to my expectations. I thrashed about trying to make sense of it all. I've made messes, hurt people, tried things, rejected beliefs and - in the immortal words of Bono - "still haven't found what I'm looking for." A deep, brooding dissatisfaction with life has marked me and colored every day in melancholy shades of gray and blue.

Not long ago, I was reading Jesus's instructions about the things we hold dear: "wherever your treasure is, there will your heart be - so store up treasures for yourself in heaven where they cannot be stolen or rot or rust." I remember responding saying to God something along the lines of: "Help! I don't know how to treasure heavenly things. Please help me do that."

I guess maybe that was one of those dangerous prayers - you know - the kind you shouldn't pray without strapping on your crash helmet. But I prayed it. And today I realized that since I prayed that prayer and since He spoke those words into my head, I have experienced a radical reorientation in my life. I had just finished lunch with a friend, and as we were parting, he asked if he could pray for me. I'm always grateful that anyone would talk to God on my behalf, so I said sure. He then asked me, "what do you want me to pray about?" and it struck me - I have everything I need.

I have lost everything in this world that I counted dear: my marriage, my children, my home and - to some extent - my church. And yet God has not abandoned me. I don't know how I know that, but I do. Even though I am bereft of the things that were most important to me, even though I feel their loss accutely, even though the external circumstances of my life are bleaker than they have ever been, God has not abandoned me. He's here hanging out with me, even as I stumble and bumble through the biggest mess and most difficult, painful experience of my life.

He's not making me feel better - I feel like shit most of the time. He's not easing my circumstances - they suck. He's not vindicating me - my reputation is shot. He's not doing any of the things that I used to think He should do to make me feel loved. Yet I feel more loved than ever in my life.

I cannot explain this except by saying "He is with me." And because He is with me, I just don't care what people think of me. I don't really care if I am doing the right thing in the right way at the right time. I don't care if people think I have gone off the rails, or that I am a lost cause or have abandoned the faith. I don't need to explain. I don't need to defend. I've lost everything I ever thought I cared about, and now I know - even if I never get any of it back again - God is with me.

So I told my friend, "I can't think of a thing to ask of God. He is with me - what else could I possibly need?"

He has become my treasure. He is my reward.

Jamming...

I can hardly wait to see what I am thinking.

I spoke with Robert Capon today, the author of the subversive book Between Noon and Three. He is the first author I have ever found who is willing to say publicly what I have only dared to half-imagine. Grace, as he sees it, really is a the free gift of God to the underserving, and the only possible way to avoid enjoying its benefits is to not believe it. Simple, I know, but profound in its implications...

I have wondered over the last few years why it is that I have always been attracted to the folks who exist on the fringes of cultural normality - the freaks, weirdos, oddballs and assorted socially not-quite-acceptable people. Normal people, while non-threating, tend to bore me. I don't know why I prefer the statistical outliers to the normal folks, but when I look at His creation, I find all sorts of analogues in the natural world. God apparently has a tremendous taste for the bizarre and the weird and the just plain not-normal. How else to explain the platypus, or the venus fly-trap, or tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, cancer, Amos 3:6, crocodiles, dragons, giants, dwarves, the Loch Ness monster?

I know I am wandering back & forth between the nominally real and the nominally imaginary, but where exactly is the border between the two? Chesterton argues that myth is more real than reality, that the realm of the fantastic is where life really lives, and that the world we moderns and PoMos call "the real world" is really just a two-dimensional cardboard replica of the real thing. (Sorry, I don't remember if I got this idea from Orthodoxy or from The Everlasting Man.)

In light of my previous post, and in light of being cut off from the five most meaningful relationships in my life, (and thus losing my gravitational center), I find myself questioning my whole concept of God. It seems He is both far more terrible and far more wonderful than I thought before.

Well, maybe I have thought it before. I remember as a pre-adolescent reading The Chronicles of Narnia and tasting of something so much more wonderful and more awful than myself and my small, constrained little world, something I identified as God expressed through Christ, but the 30 intervening years have pretty well smashed the awe and wonder of that childlike vision out of me. I am so much more sophisticated, more worldly, more cosmopolitan - and yet somehow my world has become so much smaller.

But along comes Genesis and Job and Chesterton and Lewis and Capon and my world is turned inside out, or upside down or something I cannot explain in a straight-line intellect-only dimension. Poetry or song or art might better capture it.

I stumbled onto some poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, (who is apparently no longer in vogue as a poet), and found a beauty and wistfulness there that I had all but forgotten. So I shall sit down with my poetry again, and seek to touch that long-lost chord that Lewis first struck in me when I was 11 or 12, that music which echoed in my soul for years but that the years have likewise silenced, that wonder and awe at the beauty and mystery woven into the very fabric of the universe.

I am alone tonight, as I have been for the last 16 nights, and probably will be for many more nights to come, yet in some undefinable way, I am NOT alone, maybe for the first time ever.

As Robert Capon reminded me on the phone today, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and if I am anywhere at all these days, it is in Him.

A Disturbing God

What makes the Christian faith different from any other, from that of the Jew or the Mormon or the Jehovah's Witness or the Muslim or the Buddhist or the Sikh? Aren't all who fervently hold to their faith determined to be good people, to do good things, to be a positive influence on their world? Quite frankly, I know plenty of Christians who are simply nasty people. (I may be one.) And I know lots of extremely good people who are Jews and Mormons and JWs and Sikhs. So I cannot help but wonder if the behavior of the faithful is not really the distinguishing characteristic of Christianity.

We had a bible study at the office today and read Genesis 39-41 about Joseph, and the leader asked what the story taught us about how we should behave, (I think.) But it seems to me that is the wrong question. Rather than asking, "what does this story teach us about us", it seems to me the right question would be "what does this story teach us about God?" And quite frankly, I find it pretty darned disturbing. Here is a God who was apparently powerful enough to prosper Joseph as a slave and as a prisoner, wise enough to give him the interpretation of dreams, in control enough to cause them to come to pass, faithful enough to be with Joseph wherever he found himself, and yet this exact same God also allowed Joseph to be sold into slavery, allowed him to be cast into prison, allowed the baker to be hung, and allowed the famine to occur. It seems to me that such a God is utterly unlike anything we could imagine on our own. It seems He cares not one whit about pain - He certainly allowed, if not outright caused plenty of it. So the thought of us being "used by Christ" to be nice people in hard circumstances seems utterly laughable.

What kind of God allows a beloved son to suffer from cancer and die at the age of 9? What kind of God says "I am with you no matter what", and then allows or causes all hell to break loose in our lives? What kind of God allows over 100,000 people to be swept away in an instant by a tsunami He darn well could have prevented?

If our job as "believers" is to help people by being nice and not causing pain and helping relieve painful circumstances and bring comfort in pain, then why doesn't our God simply arrange things so that people don't experience hard circumstances? Why in the world would He need me to be a pain-reliever? What lunacy!

I don't know the answer to these questions, but I do know that the God I see in the scriptures is not the tame and kindly old grandfatherly figure much of Christendom seems to imagine and teach. The God in these stories is terrible and wild and utterly beyond our comprehension. He keeps the universe spinning, for pete's sake. Does He actually need us to be nice to other people? The sheer folly of such thinking simply overwhelms me. If He was incarnate in Christ, (and I believe with all my heart that He was), then what do all these things tell us about God? I just don't think it tells us to be nice people, to say nive things and think nice thoughts and be a postive influence. I'm really not sure what it tells us, but a God who names the stars, puts the planets in place, sets the galaxies spinning, builds an earth that wipes out people as if they were nothing more than kindling for a fire, presides over cancer and AIDS and divorce and alzheimers and even became a man and DIED a horrible, humiliating death, such a God certainly has absolutely no need of me for anything. The whole idea of "morality" utterly pales before such a God.

For some reason I keep thinking of that story where Jesus was teaching in somebody's house and these guys cut a hole in the roof and lowered their paralyzed friend through the hole right down in front of Him. Jesus looked at the paralyzed guy and said, "Your sins are forgiven you." And then, because He knew the Nice People, the Moral People, the Upright People, were all pissed off about that and saying to themselves, "who does He think He is", Jesus said to them, "I know you are offended that I granted this man forgiveness for sins. You concept of God does not allow me to do that. So just to show you that your concept of God is completely wrong…" and then He turns to the paralyzed guy and says, "Get up. Take your mat and go home." And the guy gets up. And takes his mat. And goes home.

Who is this God? And how could I dare imagine He needs anything from me? My intellect is not merely humbled, it is driven speechless to the ground where it wallows face down in the dirt. My emotions short circuit from the nearness of His overwhelming power. My very body wants to find a small, dark place to tremble in fear and hide.

This God is not what I would have imagined, not what I would choose, and certainly not what I have been taught.

But I want to know Him. Dear god, I want to know Him...

Old Friends, New Friends

Over the years, I have come to realize that I like weird people. I like the folks who fall outside the bell curve of "normality". Don't know why, all I know is that freaks never freaked me out. I always kinda enjoyed their weirdness. Some folks are weird just for the sake of being weird, and in my mind, they are just poseurs and are as ignorable as the 68% of the population that fits neatly inside the mouth of the bell. But other folks just genuinely look at life differently, and that makes them fun, interesting, intriguing. As the bumper sticker says, "why be normal?"

Alex is one of those people. I've known Alex for several years - we work in the same company and in fact I actually interviewed him when we were hiring. I've always liked him - he's really different. He is very ethnic looking - in actuality I think he is part cuban, part japanese, part I-dunno-what, but he could pass as any number of ethnicities or nationalities. He was raised in Europe, was recruited by the CIA right out of high school and quit his high-paying job as a QA manager for a big Fortune 500 company to become an entry-level programmer. Did I mention he is brilliant, gentle and interesting?

We had a drink together tonight, solved the problems of the world together, and I thought to myself, "why are we not better friends?" I honestly don't know the answer to that question. But I am determined to change that. Alex is an extraordinary man - he challenges my thinking in some ways, and agrees with me in others, but he is most of all his own person.

So tonight I give thanks for a new old friend. To Alex, who dares to be simply who he is. Next time, the drinks are on me.

Return to the Dark Ages?

Those who know what is happening in my life now may find it ironic that I link this article by Joe Sobran, but there it is. I agree with Sobran - the "bright new day" the Progressives envision for us is in practice a dark, dark night. Speaking as one who has been living in darkness for as long as I can remember, I ought to know.

I won't blame "Progressives" for all the societal ills from which we suffer, but they certainly bear significant responsibility for changing our societal paradigm from one which tolerates deviance to one which revels in it. Jonah Goldberg makes the case more clearly than I could.

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I face an awful lot of fear now. I just wrote a note to my pastor and one of the elders describing all the things that scare me in my life: living alone, being barred from worship, the effects of this situation on my family... Panic lurks under the surface.

The really, really, really weird bit is that I have more of sense of being in God's hands and more sense that He is actively at work to do me good than I have had in a Very Long Time. Go figure.

More Thoughts on Mercy

Mercy comes in painful packages as well.

The last few days have been some of the most difficult, painful and strangely liberating of my life. A personal crisis has forced into the open some issues in my heart that I never recognized, and the recognition has been not merely a revelation but an epiphany. It is as though I had spent my entire life viewing the world through the wrong end of a telescope, always running into things and tripping over things, never really seeing or experiencing the world the way "normal" people do. And suddenly, I understand why.

Now, that doesn't mean the pathology is not still there. But what it does mean is that the first step to finding a solution is identifying the problem. I've been in the IT biz for a long time, and it is axiomatic that you cannot solve the problem if you cannot identify the problem.

Well, now I know the source of the problem.

It's a relief, really, even though my life externally appears to be in worse shape than ever. In reality, what might appear to an onlooker as the first day of a disaster was in reality the first day of healing. Although the metaphorical cancer is still inside me, at least I now know the nature of the problem.

I fight self-pity a lot, which is both self-indulgent and stupid. God is actively at work on my behalf, sorting out the mess that I have made of my life, redeeming that which seems irredeemable, making something beautiful out of something horrendous. I am not in control - He is. But the illusion of control is hard to relinquish.

My family suffers because of me. That is my excruciating reality. Yet they too are in God's more-than-capable hands. I do not understand His ways, but I have reached a point of desparation where I must entrust myself and my family to those ways, opaque though they may be. And in abandoning my delusion of control, I find freedom. Paradoxical, eh?

Mercy in a Strange Package

Today's morning Psalm was number 103. Among the mind-boggling things it says is this:

Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not one of all His benefits -

Who forgives every one of all your iniquities
Who heals each one of all your diseases
Who redeems you life from the pit and corruption
Who beautifies, dignifies and crowns you with loving-kindness and tender mercy
Who satisfies your mouth, (your necessity and desire at your personal age and situation), with good so that your youth, renewed, is like the eagle's.

Sometimes the scripture seems so random, other times it seems as if God had something written specifically for me. This is an instance of the latter.

I am overcome by my own iniquities. I have climbed down into the pit and am trapped in my own corruptiom. My life is hideous, shameful and despicable. I deserve scorn and wrath. I am ever hungry and never filled.

God's mercy is displayed initially in allowing my shame and corruption to be exposed to the light. It is horrible to be exposed as a liar and a cheat. But I am hopeful - very hopeful - that He is faithfully dealing with me as son, cleansing me, forgiving me of my sin and changing my life into one that is an honor to His name.

This is my Body

Consider the fact of your own bodily presence. What is undeniable about you - or about your body? Just this - no one but you can occupy that space at the same time. You can say with utter assurance, "this space is mine". No matter how confined or constrained others may make your space, God has given us our own space that belongs to no one else, and the borders of that space are defined by our own bodies. Silly? Perhaps. But for that person who has everything else stripped from him, there is comfort, however small, in the fact that the space occupied by their body can be occupied by no one else.

Small as this is, I think it speaks to a fundamental truth God has woven into creation. In spite of the virtual nature of so much of our work these days, we are still creatures, not merely consciousness. There is a physicallity to existence that makes each of us unique, no matter how unremarkable we may be. The constraints of space and the borders of our physical bodies both reinforces our alone-ness and our uniqueness.

And this also has implications for those who profess belief as Christians. Our physical presence - together as people - is the format through which Christ is manifested to the earth. Gotta have that body - and all the irritating realities that come with it - living, working, singing, laughing, crying. fighting, forgiving together to incarnate the Word of God in our communities.

Mark Steyn Makes Sense

Steyn on why American conservatism gives us a better chance of surviving a Muslim Revolution than the British Commonwealth and the EU.

Just to remind myself

1. Be proactive. Control your environment, rather than having it control you.

2. Begin with the end in mind. Covey calls this "the habit of personal leadership" -- leading yourself toward your goals.

3. Put first things first ("the habit of personal management") -- organizing and implementing your activities in line with your objectives.

4. Think "win/win" instead of "win-or-lose" ("the habit of interpersonal leadership") -- because personal achievements are largely dependent on cooperative efforts.

5. Seek first to understand and then to be understood -- a habit that is based on the power of communication.

6. Synergize (see "Word to the Wise," below) by exercising the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts ("the habit of creative cooperation"). This habit implicitly lays down the challenge to see the good and potential in the other person's contribution.

7. Sharpen the saw ("the habit of self-renewal"). This habit supports all the other habits and helps you stay physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually fit.

An interesting, (if slightly academic), article on how monetary inflation is destroying us.

Cranky About the War on Terror

When we went to war against Hitler and the Axis powers in 1941, what were fighting for? "Our freedom" seems to be a pretty good answer. Hitler had armies and - at one point - had used them to occupy and subjugate all of Europe. Hirohito had armies and had used them to occupy and subjugate most of Southeast Asia. If either of these two powers remained unchecked, it was quite clear that we were in danger of being occupied and subjugated. In other words, the Axis were a threat to America and to the freedoms we enjoyed as Americans

What terrorist army is threatening to occupy and subjugate America? I know that they could have suitcase bombs - and that is certainly a horrible thought. But I have a question - what if they do? What if they unleash a nuclear bomb on New York? Will we all suddenly decide to become Muslims? Will we bow in abject humiliation and obey our new masters from Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Syria? Will armies of mujahadin lead by mad mullahs suddenly materialize in Phoenix and Los Angeles Atlanta and Nashville, Chicago and Dallas to force our compliance with Islamic law?

Not in a million years.

Terrorists are no threat to America - they are a threat to Americans. They threaten us individually, not corporately. They are mere criminals. Terrorists have no Army they can use to occupy their "conquered" lands. They have no Navy they can use to enforce an embargo of our ports. They have no Air Force they can use to conduct high-level bombing raids on strategic targets. They are nothing more than a small group of well-financed criminals with the capability of doing a lot of damage but NO CHANCE of denying us our freedoms as Americans. The only entity in the world with enough power to deny American citizens their basic rights is the American government.

And that is exactly what is happening to us; happening in the name of protecting us from the terrorists.

Star Chambers
Suspension of the Writ of Habeus Corpus
Virtually unlimited police powers granted the federal police
Destruction of the dollar by the quasi-governmental Federal Reserve
Budget deficits that have saddled our children with unpayable debts
Out-of-control taxation
Out-of-control debt
Out-of-control government growth

If this is the price of Freedom, what in the world would slavery look like? And who would inflict it upon us?

I know of no better way for a couple to learn to work together than dancing.

I have four children of my own ranging in age from 21 to 15. I also teach a bunch of high-schoolers in my living room on Sunday nights. One thing I've learned about dealing with people in general and kids in particular is that you gotta keep it simple. My philosophy as a parent is pretty simple:

1. Make very few rules
2. Make the rules unambiguous
3. Enforce the rules

This has worked well for me & my kids. I think it works because it acknowledges something fundamentally true about humans.

In that vein, Jesus did the same for us. He told us that the entire bulk of the Law & the Prophets was contained in two commands - Love God, Love your neighbor.

Every violation of God's law is a violation of one or both of those commands, right?

I'm no theologian, but I expect that when I am at last fully sanctified, I will in fact love God & love my neighbor perfectly, thus perfectly obeying His Law. Funny thing about love, though - love cannot be commanded. That means God commands us to do the one thing which He cannot coerce us into doing.

Lest I be misunderstood, I fully realize the difference between Love, the squishy affection, and Love, the action that does good to our neighbor. But the command is to Love God and neighbor not just with our strength and mind, but with our hearts as well. You may command my Mind and compel my strength, but sheer force is powerless over the heart.

Seems like there is some sort of paradox here. I can "obey" God's command to Not Steal, Not Murder, Not Commit Adultery, Not Perjure, Not Covet - but if the motivation of my heart is anything other than love, then I am not truly obedient, am I?

Man, am I hosed. Oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ, my Lord.

But what does that mean? What is it that Jesus my Lord has done in light of this question about loving God and neighbor? Just this:

He is with me always, having made His dwelling within me, and is now at work in me not merely to obey His commands, but to want to obey. (Phil 2:13)

This is what the Apostle Paul was talking about when he says that any man who is in Christ has become a new creature. We become people who actually want to obey God and also have to power to obey.

If the purpose of school is to educate children, why are school schedules designed with no regard for the sleep needs of adolescents? Why Teens Need More Sleep

"...high school starts too early for most teenagers, often as early as 7 a.m. Two decades ago, high schools typically opened at 8 a.m. or later in the United States as well as elsewhere around the world." Review: Adolescent Sleep Patterns: Biological, Social and Psychological Influences

"...a teenager's brain typically needs to sleep from 11:00 pm to 8:00 am. However, most high schools require students to be in class as early as 7:15 or 7:30 am. "Should Teens Sleep In?

Is it education, or just school? The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher, by John Taylor Gatto.

...if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness-curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.

The Odysseus Group - John Taylor Gatto

...the more we ask from the state, the more power we grant it over our lives. And when we rely on force to get what we want, we can be certain that that force will one day be used against us, or in ways we find deplorable.

This from Bretigne Shaffer via Lew Rockwell.com who said it better than I ever could.

How big is too big?

This is a question I've been pondering for quite some time. I know I haven't quite got this figured out, but this is a blog, so it doesn't have to be perfect yet.  Here's what I am thinking:

Is there a size limit to every human endeavor? Is there something hardwired into us humans that makes us incapable of building a large organization that does not abuse its own power? Can you think of any large organization that does not abuse people? I cannot.

Humans band together to form organizations because whatever goal they wish to accomplish is unattainable without cooperation. But what happens when the existence of the organization becomes a threat to the original goal? What happens when, for example, a government that was formed "of the people, by the people, for the people" becomes the single biggest threat to the liberty of those same people?

In a small organization where the raison d'etre for its very existence is still at the forefront of the group's consciousness, it may be apparent that dissolution of the organization is the best way to meet the organization's original goals - or at least the best way to quit screwing up the organization's original vision. A small organization is able to dissolve with a minimum amount of fuss and pain.

But the bigger an organzation becomes, the more it loses sight of why it was formed, and the more self-preservation becomes the dominant goal of the organization.

The mess in Iraq is made far worse by the almost universal insistence that the country of Iraq remain One Country. But why? The reality is that the nation-state the world knows as "Iraq" is composed of three distinct ethnic and religious groups, none of whom gets along with the others. Why then do we insist on uniting them all under a single flag? Why do we not seriously discuss the option of splitting the state into three smaller, autonomous countries? Does it have any thing to do with the human (generally) and American (particularly) addiction to bigness and power?

Closer to home, schools were formed for the sole purpose of educating our children. But as school systems get bigger and control of the schools becomes more centralized, the actual task of educating the young takes a back seat to perpetuating the existence of the schools.

Perhaps you recall that the Republicans promised to disband the Department of Education in their "Contract with America" in 1994. What happened when they took over the house, though? Same ole same ole. No one can honestly argue that the intensified centralization of schools has actually helped to better educate our children, but almost no one seriously advocates decentralization as - if not a solution - at least a step in the right direction.

I don't know if there is a principle involved here or not. But I suspect that there is a natural size limit to any organization - no matter the type. I suspect that God has created us in such a way that we are incapable of creating non-abusive organizations bigger than X. (What X is, I have no idea. But I suspect it is a lot smaller than almost any organization we are familiar with.)

Whether government, business, education or religion, once an organization grows beyond that limit - whatever that limit may be - it loses the human element; it loses its ability to respond to people as people.

On Sunday nights, the high schoolers come to our house for Bible Study. That's not too strange, I guess - lots of folks host Bible studies at their house. But what's strange, to me at least, is that I lead it.

I used to think I knew so much about life and God, thought I had it pretty much all figured out. Then I spent 20 years raising kids, being married, working for a living - and all the things I thought I knew I realized were mostly theories. Life knocked the wind out of my sails.

But I guess I haven't really given up - although I've tried a few times. I just cannot get away from this God Who seems to continue to pursue me. So I ask myself, "What do I KNOW is true? What can I really count on?" The answers are few and far between.

One of the guys I work with recently filed for divorce from his wife of more than 20 years, and it shook me to the core. I can hardly believe the depth of his duplicity, the extent of his selfishness, and the self-delusion in which he is ensnared. I understand getting worn-out with a marriage that just doesn't seem to work. What I cannot understand is how quickly he gave up - and how dishonest he has been about his intentions. Looking back over my last year's worth of conversations with him, it is apparent to me that he never intended to try to work things out. He found a girlfriend and it was the excuse he needed to jettison his wife and kids.

Oh, and he claims to be a believer. He knows what he is doing is wrong, but he also knows "God will forgive". I've had those kinds of thoughts when I chose to go my own way in spite of my certainty that my actions were immoral, but I shudder at the folly of such hubris.

And I guess this is just part of the whole picture - things I see but do not understand. My friend's wife and children are devastated beyond description. The man is utterly lacking in human pity and has proven himself to be completely contemptible. He spent the last year rearranging the family finances so that his wife will end up with less than nothing, half their debts and no source of income. Unbelievable. He acted like he was listening to me as I commiserated with his pain while encouraging him to not give up. But he'd already given up - and let me talk away as if it mattered. Dispicable. He acts as though he's decided to sell an old car, not like he has betrayed wife, children, family and friends.

I understand wanting to quit on a marriage. I don't understand intentionally, systematically screwing everyone involved.

When I pray for his wife & kids, I don't even know what to ask. God knew all this was going down and chose to allow it. It doesn't make sense to me, but I have to say - in spite of my blinding ignorance - God is still in charge and still acting in a loving way.

Last night, I told the high schoolers what I know about faith. The essential part is this: if you can perceive it with your senses, then it doesn't require the saving kind of faith. The saving kind of faith believes in what is not seen, and hopes in that which real, even though it is unperceived by the senses. And God intends that we live in this state of faith all the time - believing that He is acting out of a heart of goodness toward us even when we are betrayed, beaten, unjustly accused, ridiculed. Even when our lot in life is desperate and dire, even when all my senses say "this is a horrible, terrible tragedy". Even in such outrageous circumstances, faith says, "God is good, and is acting in goodness toward these whom He loves even now."

It's more than I can grasp with my mind; I have to apprehend it with my heart. It delivers a knockout blow to my understanding and leaves it sprawled senseless in the dirt. It forces me to believe with nothing but desire - the desire to continue believing that God is good, in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

I fulfilled a goal yesterday: I hiked the Grand Canyon from the South Rim to the North Rim in one day - actually 12 hours & 25 minutes.

Hooray for me.

(Where are you, Patrick?)

This week I crept into the belly of the beast and have now emerged with a story to tell.

I had jury duty.

First and foremost, I am shocked that I was even seated. I am the last person anyone wants on a jury because I am (a) informed and (b) independent. In other words, I know that I can judge the law as well as the evidence, and I am not prone to manipulation by anybody.

But I still got seated.

It was a drunk driving case - the perp was from out of town, he got stopped on Halloween because he was weaving slightly. The officer who arrested him testified with confidence and was pretty credible. The other prosecution witnesses ranged from unimpressive to incredible. The last guy screwed the case for the prosecution.

The charges were DUI, BAC of .08 & BAC of .15. The first charge is subjective but does not support the other two, which are objective but do not support the first. In other words, the state encircles the perp with a collection of charges and assumes they can get him on at least one.

My fellow jurors eventually agreed that we could not be certain the breathalyzer was reliable, and therefore all agreed to acquit on both the BAC charges. But the others were firmly convinced that he was impaired by alcohol and therefore guilty of the DUI. I struggled mightily with the idea of a crime without a victim - which is what happened here - but also realized that most of my fellow jurors only voted to acquit on the BAC because they were convinced he was guilty of the DUI. If I had held my ground, we would have been hopelessly deadlocked, and would have had a hung jury on all THREE charges.

So I compromised.

I compromised to keep the guy from getting hung worse than he was gonna get hung if the state had its way. Although I believe anyone who decides to drink and drive is a menace to society, I believe that the biggest menace in that courtroom the past three days was the state with its almost unlimited power, money and complete disregard for the principles of freedom.

Some will argue that the guy got off on a technicality. I would argue that the inexcusable for fairly laziness and sloppiness of state employees allowed a man who had committed a victimless "crime" to avoid additional, excessive jail time. And I'm darn thankful for it.

I didn't enjoy the process. But at least I learned a lot of things you can do to compromise the investigation if you are ever stopped for DUI/BAC.

If I trusted the state, I wouldn't have such a difficult time with such an apparently black & white case. But I don't. I have no confidence anymore that anyone brought up on charges is not the victim of state malfeasance rather than a criminal being brought to justice. The system is rigged to prevent the jury from really getting at the truth - we are only allowed to see the various attorneys' versions of the truth as edited by the judge. Judge and Prosecutor are both employees of the state, and Judge, Prosecutor and Defense Counsel all have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. In short, don't go to court and expect justice - just expect a decision.

And pray that someone even more stubborn and independent than me is on your jury.

There are vast swaths of the Bible I can read through without reacting, but the story of Abraham and Isaac is not one of them. I avoid this story like the plague, because it hurts so bad.

Abraham sits awake by the fire, the night before The Day, and he watches his son Isaac sleeping under the stars. His body is numb and his mind clicks machine-like from task to task. He has torqued down the clamp on his emotions so tightly now that nothing will ever touch him again. He does not understand, he CANNOT understand, yet he is driven by the Command and he knows that on the morrow he will do the very last thing he could have ever imagined doing.

This boy, this beautiful boy, sleeping peacefully on the sand under these stars.

Oh God, not the stars, not the sand.

His heart is a lump of cold lead somewhere inside the deadness of his chest - and that is all he can feel. He knows it is cold outside, he can see his breath, but he is unable to sense cold. He knows the fire is warm - all fires are warm - but he can feel nothing. The wind moves his hair move across his face, but he senses it as if from a great distance. His vision has gone red around the edges - red like blood and like fire and like madness.

How did it come to this? He wills himself to forget the past, to forget the future, to forget everything but the act he knows he will commit tomorrow. Is he mad? Of course he is. Madness is the only possible response - madness or suicide. But a man must be alive to commit suicide. And Abraham knows for certain he is already dead. Oh, his heart still beats and blood still flows in his veins, he can see his chest moving and know that breath still flows in his lungs, but that is simply the habit of the body. He is surely already dead.

Sand and stars and even his name mock him now. All those choices he made parade past his inner eye, a procession of demons. Why did he leave home and family? Why? Such pain... Why did he dream that dream under the Oaks at Mamre? Who is this God that gives and takes with such sovereign impunity, who treats mankind as toy soldiers to be set up and knocked down at will? He quickly slams the lid on these thoughts - Thinking is no longer an option. All that is left is Doing. And then after that...

There is no after that.

Isaac stirs, and mumbles something, rolling with his face towards the fire. Abraham gazes in mute wonder at the miracle sleeping blissfully unaware on the other side of the fire. If he had any heart left at all, surely it would break in two now. But he is already dead inside. He died the moment he heard those words:

...take your only son Isaac, and offer him...

Oh how he wished he could die this moment. But he knows as surely as the stars above his head and the sand under his feet that he will keep on breathing, and that he will not stop breathing until this soveriegn, imperious God decrees it to be so. And so he wills himself to concentrate on this shining, golden moment - he forces himself to study the face of his beloved Isaac, to memorize ever curve and crevice of that beautiful face; the dark hair; the strong hands, the broad shoulders that will never carry a son...

"STOP IT!", he commands himself.

What is this dread certainty that impels him onward? Why not just say, "to hell with it" and put an end to this madness?

The small little man in his mind, the one that can never quite be silent, whispers to him, "remember The Promise", and the last desperate hope within him wants to grasp that ethereal Word. But he knows it is just a dream, an illusion, a wish as surely as his whole sorry life has been nothing but a wish. Nothing makes sense, nothing will ever make sense again. ALl that is left is breathing and doing till the day he can blissfully stop.

Somehow, in spite of his fervent desire, night mercilessly gave way to the cruelty of morning. The first rays of daylight stabbed across the floor of the desert and through his soul with the speed and violence of a sword-thrust. And yes, Abraham thought, yes of course the sky is blood red. And I am dead, and Isaac is so very alive and soon even this will not be so.
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In later years, looking back on that night and the following day, Abraham had shadowy recollections - he remembered the heaviness of his old legs as they climbed the mountain, he recalled that the buzzing in his ears and the redness that never left the periphery of his vision. He remembered the sound of Isaac's questions as if he listened from the bottom of a well. He remembered stones and wood and rope and the uncomprehending look in his son's eyes as he bound him and gently laid him across the altar. And cold metal - he remember the sound of the knife as he pulled it from its sheath. Cold and hard and unforgiving as man - the cruel sunlight glinted off the blade as he grasped it familiarly, momentarily blinding him. He remembered how dispassionately he wondered how he would go home afterward. Or even if he would go home. Anywhere or nowhere was fine. Maybe he would just stay on top of this mountain and never move again. He felt his arm lift into the air as if it had a will of its own, he looked up at the blade then down at his son; he was grasping Isaac's arms, pulling his shoulders back and his chest forward. That moment, etched forever in his memory, dripped with life and death and fear and ache and sorrow.

And Fury.

Now!

With primeval rage and a furious roar, he thrust downward with the knife...

...and felt his arm stopped in mid-flight.

Someone had grabbed his arm. He turned his head to see a hand - a strong, familiar hand on his arm. And heard a familiar Voice, "Not the boy, Abraham, not the boy. Take the lamb - the one caught there in the bush."

That same voice - that same unmistakable Word - the very Word that had seized him so many years ago, compelled him to leave Mother and Father and Land and Home and strike out looking for a city of his own, that same Word that had made the Promise, that same Word that had come twice more in the most unexpected times and ways - that Word which had only last week taken his very heart and snuffed it like a glowing wick - that selfsame Word restored to him his very life and promise and love...
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In the days and years that followed, he and Isaac never spoke about The Day. But Isaac would sometimes simply gaze upong the old man with a mixture of awe and fear and deep, deep love. For his part, Abraham never saw Isaac the same way again. In some ways, if it was at all possible, Isaac was even more precious to him than he had been before The Day. And yet in other ways, Abraham knew with deep certainty that Isaac did not belong to him, never had belonged to him. He knew that he, Abraham and Isaac and who-knows-who-else, were merely players in a grand drama that was being worked out before his very eyes by a God both closer and more mysterious than he had ever dared imagine.

And that was enough.

My normal day starts with a trip to school to drop off the kids. On the way, we listen to NPR. Usually, after the kids jump out of the car, I switch to ESPN radio to listen to Mike & Mike in the Morning, (Mike Golic used to be a local radio personality, and I like listening to him), but this morning I kept it on NPR. And heard that 53% of Russians think Josef Stalin was a great man.

Hold that thought while I bring another stream online.

Last night we had our small group meeting at my house. I started to exercise my normal leadership style, which is actually no leadership at all - really just facilitation. I realised quickly that these folks didn't want facilitation, they wanted to be lead. And further, that they would do what I said. I've had to make a conscious effort to lead rather than facilitate this meeting over the last month, and I have quite frankly been shocked at the eager acceptance these folks accord my leadership. I'm certain my shock is related to the fact that I would not be near so easy to lead as they are. But still, they desperately want to be lead and respond positively to strong leadership.

Hold that thought while a third stream joins the river.

The story I quoted from on 2/28 talks about how the first chapter of Genesis shatters the idols of day with the assertion that the one true God created everything. One of the most ancient myths of beginings is the Chaos/Order dichotomy. Choas is personified and is seen to be the overriding reality in all creation. Some great god fights with Choas, pushes him back and brings order, but Chaos is always lurking around the borderlands, looking for an opportunity to bring destruction and wreak havoc. The ancient Greeks developed the political philosophy of the Republic largely out of desire to bring order out of chaos rather than to bring freedom to the masses.

I heard in the voices of the Russians interviewed on the NPR program this morning the same longing for order. These folks honestly missed Stalin, wept at his memory and considered him a great man - because he brought order and because the country was strong and feared when he was the leader. They desperately long for leadership - any leadership -and are apparently willing to accept genocide as the price of pushing back Chaos.

I struggle to make sense of this. What is it about the Russians in particular, (and most people in general), that will embrace a strong leader who brings order and discipline - even if the cost is mass-murder? The 20th century provides a veritable laundry list of such tyrants. Hitler was actually elected by popular vote. Stalin rose to power on the back of Lenin, who was brought to power in a "people's revolution". Mao led a "people's revolution". Mussolini was lauded not just in Italy but around the world because he "made the trains run on time". Pol Pot, Idi Amin, the Ayatollah Khomeini - I'm just pulling these from memory. Wander backward along history's timeline and you will constantly stub your toes on these murderous despots who are fondly remembered by the very people they destroy. Does Saddam Hussein belong in this pantheon of pusillanimity?

And worse, how many of us are just like that? I'm independent to a fault and difficult to lead, and yet I know I long for strong leadership. The folks in my home group eagerly embrace my leadership. Does paganism have such a grip on this world that we still believe, (and fear!) the Chaos myth?

Does this horrify you like it does me? If Josef Stalin were running for president of Russia today, he would win. Is this the appeal of Napolean, (and Saddam)?

Does Islam appeal for the same reason - it is a strong denouncement of the chaos of the modern west? I'd love to hear comments from whatever readers there may be out there...

This article has so many great quotes:
If I could say it, do you think I should have danced it?
Anno Pavlova

Myth is my tongue, which means not that I cheat, but stagger in a light too great to bear.
E. H. W. Meyerstein

Is the Gospel Really Good News?
Most American evangelicals don't know the Gospel. I am certain this is true because the Gospel story most of them tell me, (when I ask them), is not good news. It is the same nasty old Bad News repackaged and relabeled. And what is that bad news? God demands perfection - and you ain't near perfect, sucker.

Oh, sure - they can throw around phrases like "saved by faith" and "redeemed by the blood" like they know what it means, but the way they act, it sure isn't the mind-blowingly Good News that the Gospel is supposed to be.

So what is the Gospel? Just this:

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners!

Of course, most evangelicals would agree, but I can tell they don't really believe it. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that they believe they no longer qualify for it.

Most evangelicals apparently think something subjective happened to them at the moment of their conversion, (whatever that may happen to be), and - presto-changeo! - they suddenly ceased to be sinners. They are now - what? Something special that shouldn't sin any more and is in big trouble when they do, right? I can list all the adjectives and the nouns that evangelicals use to describe this special mystical state of those who stand on the "saved" side of that divine Line in the Sand. But - dang - they sure look like, act like, talk like, think like and smell like your typical garden-variety sinner, don't they?

Lemme ask a question? Don't you just totally groove to those dramatic conversion stories? You know the kind - Joe Bad-Ass has spent his whole life kicking sand in the face of 98-pound weaklings, biting the heads off live bats and listening to head-banger-hip-hop-grunge-gansta-rap-rock. He then gets miraculously converted, and immediately starts a successful, (and highly visible), ministry to skinny beach bums. He dresses like Pat Boone, combs his hair like Benny Hinn, listens to CCM day and night and best of all has a godly and beautiful ex-Hawaiian Tropic bikini model for a wife.

Don't we just love those stories?

And in comparison, don't our own pathetic, puny, pitiful Christian lives make us want to hurl? Our lives are mundane, we struggle with the same stupid actions and attitudes we've fought for years. We still don't like skinny geeks. We still enjoy the taste of a good steak. And we honestly think that CCM sucks.

What kind of Christians are we, anyway?

I'll tell you what kind I am - I'm the kind that Christ Jesus came into the world to save. I'll be honest - I'd really like the heart-stopping conversion story and the million-dollar public ministry. But if I had it, I still kinda doubt that I'd be much different from the miserable stinking wretch I am. I'd just have better packaging. And I might start to believe my own press. I might start to think that I was somebody who had power over the ravages of sin, somebody who had some mystical control that the unwashed masses lacked. I might get really, really depressed about the undeniable fact that, in spite of memorizing a squillion verses and having a quiet time 3218 days in a row, I still occasionally lust after my neighbor's wife. I might get a little weird and stupid trying to explain that my fecal matter doesn't really stink, but I'd never be able to get away from the stark truth that I'm not nearly as well-behaved as I ought to be, not nearly as pure of heart as I should be, and not nearly as righteous as I hope to be.

But if I'm convinced that I ain't no longer a sinner, what hope is left for me?

Naw, I pass - you can have your cheap suit and your ministry to beach geeks and your cheesy music. As for me, I'm a sinner utterly unable to do a thing to save myself. I couldn't do it 35 years ago when I first put my faith in Christ, and I still can't do it. Fortunately, Christ Jesus came into the world to save people just exactly like me.

And that, my friends - that is Very Good News Indeed!

I stole this from somebody else, but I prefer to call it "research":

I have found that all human beings have limitations, which is something everyone should take into consideration. We should recognize that everybody is capable of making a mistake, and we should not raise any more hell about somebody else's mistakes than we expect to be raised when we make one. Who does not make mistakes? Who is not limited? Everybody but God.
Duke Ellington

Somebody in England "Gets It"
There's a lot of stuff that makes the rounds on the internet that is fantasy. So when I got sent a copy of a copy of a copy of a story reportedly written by a "liberal" in the UK, I was deeply skeptical. But I did a little research and discovered, to my delight and surprise, that the article was real.

Here's what Tony Parsons of the UK's Daily Mirror had to say about European anti-Americanism.

Dear Europe,

My vicar from my home church in England sent me an article regarding the war written by Robert Fisk, the so-called "Liberator of Kabul". This article, (which I am unable to link to - sorry), no doubt captures the mood of many of you in England and Europe regarding America and Americans. It reeks of a mistaken belief many Europeans have about us, namely - that we are wreckless, unintellectual, blood-thirsty simpletons. What is most maddening about this misconception is that the only possible way an American can convince a European that he is not an unsophisticated rube is to agree with the European. Europeans apparently cannot conceive of the possibility that they might be wrong.

We Americans, on the other hand, are very aware that we might be wrong. We remember Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs and Carter's abortive attempt to rescue the hostages from Iran. Like the English and you Europeans, we are cynical and distrustful of our government. We hate what the government did to innocents at Ruby Ridge and Waco and Miami, but we remember also that these attrocities were visited upon us by an administration whose leader wasn't sure how to define the word "is". For the first time in a very long time we have a president who actually seems to rely on principle rather than polls for guidance.

We do not all agree that Saddam poses a direct immediate threat to our security, but this President - the one who actually seems to have some semblance of moral vision - made it clear on 20 September 2001; before a joint session of Congress when he warned the nations of the world that those who are not with us in the fight against terror are against us.

The Butcher of Baghdad has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he is not with us.

Americans are overwhelmingly in favour of removing Saddam, not because we are the doltish, uneducated dupes of a cowboy oilman and his neo-con henchmen, but because we have images of burning, crumbling buildings seared into our national consciousness. We are very aware that politicians are capable of all sorts of nefarious behaviour - remember that we had a front row seat at The Slick WIllie Show for eight miserably long years - but we also know that criminally wicked and evil people who hate the west and will stop at absolutely nothing to destroy us are even now plotting something more devastating than 11 September. And we will not stand idly by and wait for it to be brought to our shores.

In American football, we have a saying that perfectly captures the essence of our response to terrorism: The best defense is a good offense. We were caught napping on nine-eleven, but we are fully awake now and we are determined to carry this war - a war we DID NOT start - to the enemy. We are sorry you don't like it, but quite frankly, it wasn't your WTC and your Pentagon and your Flight 93 that were destroyed.

As I read European and British news reports about the anti-war fervor there, I cannot help but think of Winston Churchill thundering unheeded warnings about Nazi Germany from the backbench of Parliament in the 1930s. Your leaders were proclaiming peace even as an unspeakable evil was being hatched in your midst. How do we know these days are any different than those? How do we know your leaders are any wiser now than then?

Maybe you're right, maybe we are "simpletons". But you, Europe, have little in your recent history to convince us that anything short of a nuclear, chemical or biological attack in the heart of London, Paris or Berlin could possibly shake you out of your moral and intellectual torpor. Your revered principle of moral equivalency has eaten away the very soul of Europe. Your leaders are no longer capable of judging anything as absolutely right or absolutely wrong. Oh, anything that is, except where America is involved; in that case we are apparently wrong all the time.

We here on the western shore of the Atlantic wonder at the moral vacuity of a Europe which could dispassionately observe, (and therefore passively condone), genocide in Yugoslavia and then lecture us on principles of right and wrong. We wonder how many millions more would have died in Slovenia and Bosnia had the United States left it to you to resolve the mess in the Balkans. We remember Sarajevo 1914, too. We marvel that anyone could dare to compare a popularly elected government such as exists in Israel with Yassar Arafat's thugocracy. We remember that all of Europe would be speaking German if not for American "intervention". We remember that it was American military, industrial and economic might that liberated Europe from a Nazi terror that could have been prevented had you heeded the early warnings.

11 September was an early warning.

For generations, we Americans have perceived ourselves to be somehow slightly inferior to our older, more sophisticated cousins on the east side of the Atlantic. But we are slowly coming to conclude that your sophistication is a sham. Europe has become our embittered, crazy, never-married great-aunt who swears and rails and cackles insanely at us from her attic loft. We love her and tolerate her because we remember the relationship we used to have back before she lost her mind and forfeited her soul. We'll shelter her and care for her until she dies, but we now know she has nothing useful to say.

Finally, I can think of no better description than "simpleton" for any person who would argue that this fight is about oil. This is about survival. America was viciously, brutally attacked by an enemy that has no morals we recognize and no creed beyond infidels must die. We recognize, even if you don't, that this is a battle to the death between the ideas that have formed the west for nearly 2000 years and the ideas that hold sway in those poor benighted countries suffering under the tyranny of Islam.

We have been thrust into a war we neither wanted nor asked for. We know we are not virtuous; we are not pure and we are frequently ham-handed in our dealings with others. But we are also very, very angry. And your silly, simplistic and naive arguments do nothing to convince us that you are anything more than the unwitting accomplices of those who would destroy us all in the name of Allah.

Had a terrific day yesterday. Chris & Bryanne came up for lunch, Audrey brought a friend (Kat) from school, and Patrick was with us of course. There were 9 people around my dinner table - and that is good. Kat is delightful person - English Lit major who is getting into real meat. Currently into Milton and loving it. Bryanne asked Karen how she could improve her vocabulary and grammar usage. That girl is so motivated it blows me away. I see why Chris likes her. Chris told me about a new project he is working on, and agreed to let me help him plan it and bid it. Tyler and Ellyn were their usual hysterical and charming selves, and Patrick was able to regale us as he bantered with Kat about Jansenism, whatever that is. All in all, it was a terrific Sunday lunch.

We had a Sunday Night Praise meeting at Billy & Anita's house, and it was the best one by far. This little church is learrning how to love one another. Afterward's I came home and made my Red Bean Soup, which we'll have for dinner tonight. In fact, it is time fior me to head in that direction - I'm bushed.

I just read this line in my accounting textbook:

...some issues may be resolved by reference to the application of general priniciples rather than the generation of further rules. (Accounting, an Introduction )

These words are as true for law in general as they are for accounting practice. The United States legal code is so monstrously huge, it is a safe bet that nearly anyone is alive, ever was alive, or ever will be alive is a lawbreaker in some way. And why this sad state of affairs?

We have no idea what the general principles of law should be.

Therefore, we just crank out one rule after another, with the certainty that One Big Law, the Law of Unintended Consequences, will always kick in and kick some poor shmuck in the teeth.

I have much more to say on this, but I'm behind in my studies...

I didn't write the following, but I wish I did. You can complain to me if you don't like it, or blast the author, Judson Heartsill. Either way, this piece rocks.

War is on my mind.

I am a Christian, but I am not a pacifist. I am a dual citizen of the kingdom of God and the United States of America. In the kingdom, I've been naturalized. In the U.S., it's more like a green card.

What am I talking about? In practical terms, this means that, should the U.S. disappear overnight, I must be just as happy and content with my life as I am now. In fact, I am commanded to be just as happy. Such a perspective may seem bizarre to some, but to me it makes all the sense in the world.

This is not to say that I don't love the United States. I love it very much. My birth here, what some would call a lucky accident, is actually a colossal example of God's grace. The same goes for my being born to loving parents, being born into safety, meeting a perfect wife, and having a perfect child. None of these were based on my goodness-- they were all freely given gifts. Left to myself I would have done much, much worse.

That's why I am not a pacifist. I believe that some things are worth fighting for.

I know lots of Christians who are pacifists. In fact, Christianity in general almost seems split between pacifists and non-pacifists. I think the pacifists are zealous lovers of peace, and I share that with them.

The pacifists believe in common grace, like me. Unlike me, they believe it is better to let these things be destroyed, perhaps while protesting nonviolently. They believe this because they value their kingdom citizenship more than their U.S. citizenship-- just like me. They say it is more important to stoically endure evil, because Jesus did. They say that to fight for these common graces is to idolize them over Jesus.

Interestingly, some of these actually accuse me of wanting to fight for religion, since I talk about things like "common grace". In fact, my religion-- Jesus Christ-- is the only grace for which I absolutely, positively refuse to fight for with the sword! I use an entirely different sword for that. (That sword curiously resembles a book).

The pacifists I admire most are those whose souls are just too gentle to contemplate violence for any reason. I disagree with them but I admire their intense desire for peace. I think some of them need to read some more of Jesus's own words about what he, himself, meant, and what his self-proclaimed mission on earth was.

The pacifists I respect the most are those who remind me of the dangers of worshipping mammon. They help drive into my skull exactly how depraved our country really is, and how deluded we sometimes are. It is in part due to their warnings that, so far, I have managed to avoid falling completely headlong into these pits. I am always dangerously close, and it is terrifying to me-- much more so than a collapsing skyscraper.

When I was a teenager searching for my vocation, I first thought I wanted to be an active duty fighting man. Then I discovered disciplines and trades which I loved more, and followed those instead. My military desire did not go away, however. I decided to become a reservist.

I am a Navy man, a fighting man of the United States of America. If war comes, I may have to go and serve. My expertise is not with missiles, radios, or cannons. I know how to drive big ships. If my country needs me, I will probably be placed in service on commercial vessels, because the Navy needs officers to liason with civilian shipping.

Those ships don't have guns. Tactically, they are sitting ducks. In the open water they are defenseless. If a carrier group is nearby it's a different story, but the fact remains that the sailors on materiel ships have absolutely no illusions about their defense capability.

Nevertheless, I am not a hero, and I don't really know much at all about how to conduct sea warfare. That's the point, and that's why the Navy needs me. For almost all intents and purposes, I'm a civilian who has simply volunteered to be very much in harm's way, if necessary.

In the few days after 9-11, I entered what was probably the biggest depression of my life. Generally I am a happy guy. With all the wonderful people in my life, how could I not be? But my mood was positively, evilly black for weeks. You liberals of the marxist of nihilist variety: don't you dare preach to me for a second about "not letting them get to you" or "not sinking to their level". The fact is, their level is hell, and for a while I was right there. And I'm not about to apologize for being depressed or sad on the account of mass murder. If you weren't in hell too, then shut the fuck up.

For a while, I thought my depression was due to the possibility of a military call-up. My wife was pregnant with our first son. I dwelt on the blackest possibilities.

I slowly began to realize that my depression wasn't because I might be taken from my family, or because I might have to fight. It was because of the immense wrongness of the murders. The sheer willfull massacre clouded my heart and withered my mind.

So what of leaving my family, maybe never to come back? It did make me sad. But not depressed. What pierced me was the knowledge that they could be murdered like those in New York. What drove me further to despair was the knowledge that the murderers would love to kill them. To them, my pregnant wife was evil, and the only way that true righteousness could possibly flourish would be through her death.

Current events have got us all talking about heroes. To me, the Columbia astronauts were the truest heroes. They are the talented ones which I mentioned. They are incredible men and women, pilots and doctors, brimming with skill and determination, and standing on the shoulders of giants. They show us a glimpse of the good side of the world, the side away from evil, the side of imagination and triumph.

I am not one. I am a relatively immature, self-centered man who happens to be surrounded by huge amounts of grace. I am rough, not tough, as evidence by my language above. I haven't learned how to be graciously angry yet. (FYI- rough bad, tough good). But it occurs to me that the most important reason heroes exist is because they are necessary for the survival of hope and love and the human race. If we didn't need those things, we wouldn't need heroes. So, talented people work and train to become heroes. Ordinary people, like me, sometimes rise up and, through lots of agonizing, try to be as heroic as possible in order to save what they love.

Jesus of Nazareth claimed that he came in order to pay for the evil in human hearts. He told his comrades "A man can have no greater love than this-- that he lay down his life for his friends".

He said this right before he became a hero. His job was to make his friends free forever. Everybody wants to imitate him, or at least to imitate what they think he did. Nobody can do exactly what he did, I promise you. To a citizen-soldier like me, the best way to make my friends free is to prevent them from being murdered. This statement says a lot about who my friends are. They not only include my wife and child, but a whole lot of Iraqi people. In fact, they include every human on the planet who doesn't want to be murdered.

However, I didn't make myself a friend of those people. Someone else did, and I do not have a right to cut off those ties.

The murderers have it all wrong. True righteousness cannot flourish through my wife's death, or my son's death. It can only flourish through one man's death. The good news is, he already died. Think that's good? It only gets better.l

Dear Tyler & Ellyn,

This morning when I asked you two about your thoughts regarding the Columbia disaster, you said, "I don't see why they were called 'heroes'." I understand why you feel that way, and I wanted to take a few moments to talk about it.

Back when I was a kid, the United States of America was a different country. There are many, many things that have changed, too many to tell you about here, but one of the ways it was different is this -

No country had ever put a man on the moon.

I remember the day Apollo 1 exploded on the launch pad and killed three astronauts. I remember when Apollo 8 was launched and orbited the moon for the very first time. And I will never forget that night in July 1969 when my parents woke me up in the middle of a good sleep to listen to the broadcast of the very first landing. The words "The Eagle has landed" have an emotional impact on me today that cannot be overstated. We did it. The US put a man on the moon before 1970.

The next day, Neil Armstrong got out of the Lunar Module, climbed down the ladder, and actually walked on the moon. Little kids would never again look at a virgin moon - man had conquered it.

But that conquest came at a tremendous price. It required the combined, coordinated efforts of thousands of people, millions of dollars, and untold personal sacrifices by the engineers, scientists, astronauts, and all who knew and loved them to make it happen. It was a conquest greater than any in the history of man. It absolutely dwarfed Columbus' discovery of the new world, Magellan circling the globe, or De Gama seeing the Pacific Ocean. All those men were explorers, and their daring, their courage, and their dedication opened up new frontiers for the rest of us.

It is just over 30 years since mankind walked on the moon. 30 years after Columbus discovered the New World was 1522. It would be nearly 100 years before Europeans gained a meaningful foothold on the new continent, but the initial exploration had been completed. Columbus had proved it was possible, even if it was incredibly difficult.

In the same vein, the astronauts and the entire space program have proved that space flight is possible, that landing on the moon is possible - even if it is still incredibly difficult and terribly risky.

In some ways, the space program is a victim of its own success. They have had so many successes and so few failures that we have come to believe that space flight is routine. That it is about as risky and complicated as hopping on plane and flying to London. But as we saw on Saturday, it is many orders of magnitude more risky. Every one of those astronauts knew that they could die when they strapped themselves onto the rocket three weeks ago, just as Columbus and his men knew they might never return to Spain. But they did it anyway. They considered the risk to be worth the reward.

So when we say that the astronauts are heroes, we mean they are people who are trail-blazers, people who incur great personal risk, people who will actually get very little personal payoff from the risks they take and who may in fact pay for their daring with their lives, but people without whom all of humanity would be infinitely poorer.

Hope that helps you to understand.

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