Thursday, February 24th
the first pro-choicers: men, not women!
So I've gotten about half way through In His Steps, which was the original WWJD book. It's a wonderful book, but (seemingly inevitably) when politics became the issue, I felt myself souring on the book. This has a lot to do with my own experiences in the fundie churches, but I tried to push past it and consider what was being said.
Of course, In His Steps was written over 100 years ago, so the "burning moral issues" of our day were absent from its pages. At that time, the issue was alcohol and drunkenness. And, of course, there are those characters in the book that answer the WWJD question by saying that He would certainly do something political about that particular issue.
That statement seems so modern- and yet so ludicrous also when we consider the history of the prohibition movement.
It seems to me almost as if one can guess the course of moral history by looking at what the fundie church of each age considers the burning moral issue. And whatever the fundies are against morally will surely come to pass.
So I did some thinking about what would happen if we traced the history of "burning moral issues" back to Jesus' day. And it seems to me that the political issue of the NT is divorce:
Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?" He answered, "Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." They said to him, "Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?" He said to them, "It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
I found this little exchange fascinating. Perhaps Jesus here is giving us a key on how to act politically on moral questions. Although Jesus took a clear stand on what was right and true (when asked), He doesn't seem to be proposing a change to the law of Moses. And I don't think such a change would work very well, either in Jesus' day or in ours. With all the talk of various constitutional amendments flying around these days, can't you just imagine a proposed amendment prohibiting divorce in the U. S.?
I also find it hilarious that in the Bible the original pro-choicers were men who vigorously opposed any restriction on their "right" to divorce their wives.
Tuesday, February 22nd
Happy birthday to me!
OK so today is my birthday and it's been pretty cool. I went down to pastor man Jeff's office this morning to pray. It occurred to me while I was there that I'm making this prayer thing way too hard. Somewhere along the line I got the idea that prayer was supposed to be really really hard. so- if perchance my mind wandered and I started thinking about something else when I was "supposed" to be praying, it was a sure sign that I was doing it wrong.
Why do we assume that Christianity is supposed to be hard?
God knows how I am made. It's not going to shock the pants off of Him if my mind wanders once in a while.
After a great prayer time I went to cup-o-joe's with Nancy and we had a great talk about life and stuff. I realized that I have the personality of an abused person- which is something of a breakthrough for me. Then we went to the library and got some DVD's: I may even watch them some day.
I've got this new recording software which is exciting but is also a pain in the A because high powered software is always difficult to learn. But I did finally manage to create some decent files. The new software is gigastudio, which is a software sampler. So my piano sounds a lot more realistic now. Compare the new files to the old:
qoheleth (new)
qoheleth (old)
Dreaming of Trees (new)
Dreaming of Trees (old)
It's true that the old files sound louder (which superficially makes them sound better) but this is because the new files have a much greater dynamic range.
Here's a file that demonstrates a violin sample demo that came with gigastudio:
violin sample
pretty realistic I think :smiley2:
Sunday, February 13th
introverted sunday/extroverted sunday
Today was a quite introverted Sunday. Nancy and I decided to skip church and instead went to Cornerstone for coffee and conversation. Then we walked to the Clintonville market and bought a few items. When we came home I spent an hour or two in the studio. Jeff Westerman and I are not gigging together anymore, so he has returned my preamp and reverb unit so that I can set everything up again. I hung some pictures on the wall (to my wife's delight) as well as some carpet padding (to my wife's dismay) to soak up some noise. Then I did a bit of recording.
What contrast from last Sunday! It started out the same way: with Nancy and I having breakfast and coffee at Cornerstone Deli. That was the end of normalcy for the day. It was my Sunday to volunteer to help out with the kids at church. I love kids- they are completely honest in how they feel and freely speak their mind. Of course I find kids very annoying for the exact same reason!
Two things happened in church that almost made me cry for joy. First of all, the kid's teacher I was working with didn't remember my name- and that was actually very cool! At my previous church, Nancy and I were known as "Fred, the piano player and, uhhhh, the piano player's wife. Nancy and I both this very annoying. I enjoy massively the reality of the relationships at CV. The other thing that happened was that somebody gave me two books- with only the condition that I read them and then get together with him to discuss them. I guess I often feel like people don't think my opinion is very important- so this meant a lot to me.
After church Nancy and I went out to lunch with a couple of people from our homegroup. We spent close to a couple hours talking about home group stuff and relational stuff.
If this weren't enough, that night I went to a Superbowl party at Dave and Kara Hill's house. I was totally burnt out on people by the end of the day.
A few years ago I tested at about the break even point on the introvert/extrovert trait on the Briggs-Meyer personality test. I've been wondering if maybe in the last few years I'd been leaning more towards the extrovert end. Apparently not!
Wednesday, February 9th
Pastors and dumb sheep
So I guess the other day I really put my foot in it by posting the following comment:
I know that we are supposed to see our pastors, vicars, etc as "spiritual shepherds" but in the twenty something years i've hung around "the church" i've never seen it. These guys and gals are people hired to do a job- hired to head up institutions that hand out religious goods and services to those willing to pay for them.
I posted this to a music writing group I participate in. Somebody described it as "caustic." This really surprised me because I really meant no disrespect to pastors. I totally respect the job that they do and I didn't think that what I wrote demeaned it. I found it no more different than saying that a chef is somebody that hands out culinary goods and services to those willing to pay for them.
So I asked my postmodern theology list people what they thought. I half expected to be lambasted because the group contains a lot of pastors. But I got only one comment on my supposedly caustic post: "A little cynical perhaps? Maybe more honest that most people want."
Somebody from the music list gave me a clue as to why the reaction was so strong from that list. He pointed out the fact that I've heard time and again: that sheep are dumb. A light went off in my head at that point.
This is how the role of a pastor has been drilled into the evangelical church. We parishioners are sheep. Sheep are dumb. Not just dumb, really really dumb. Dumb dumb sheep.
Dumb dumb sheep should best shut up and do whatever their shepherd (pastor) tells them.
A few years back the doctrines used to really hammer this point home were covering and headship We were taught that all Christians needed covering and/or a head.
The problem of course is that the Bible doesn't teach anything like this. And fortunately those words are dissapearing from the evangelical vocabulary.
So what does the Bible say about pastors (shepherds)? Well, it does compare us to sheep and Jesus to the good shepherd. But one principle of Biblical interpretation that has gone kablooey way too many times is that such imagery is put in the text to hammer home one particular point and not whatever metaphorical imagery people want to pull out of it. Jesus never said, "You are like sheep- really really dumb." Instead, he used the imagery to show that we know his voice and that he knows us and lays down his life for us.
But the image of the dumb, dumb sheep is so obvious and powerful that it is easy for people greedy for authority to use it to control "the flock."
There are so many pastors floating around these days that you'd think that the Bible has loads to say about these people. Actually (aside from Jesus) the "office" of pastor only occurs in that famous verse in Ephesians 4:11. Despite the existence of thousands of pastors, no one has determined for sure that the list in Ephesians is of actually offices or whether they are giftings. Interestingly, as far as I can tell, nobody in the Bible is identified in the NT as a pastor. The normal term for a leader is "elder," borrowed naturally enough from the Jewish community which birthed the early Christian church.
I think that the key to pastoring is found in this verse:
Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. 1 Peter 5:1-4
What I found interesting in this verse was that first of all, the flock is God's, not the pastor's. Secondly, the phrase "lord it over" recalls this verse:
But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them.
It is not this way among you... Matthew 20:25-26
Could it be that Jesus was wrong about that?
Monday, February 7th
Quotes from Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
Here are the things I didn't like about the churches I went to. First: I felt like people were trying to sell me Jesus. I was a salesman for a while, and we were taught that you are supposed to point out all the benefits of a product when you are selling it. That is how I felt about some of the preachers I heard speak. They were always pointing out the benefits of Christian faith. That rubbed me wrong: It's not that there aren't benefits, there are, but did they have to talk about sprituality like it's a vacuum cleaner. I never felt like Jesus was a product. I wanted Him to be a person. Not only that, but they were always pointing out how great the specific church was. The bulletin read like a brochure for Amway. They were always saying how life-changing some conference was going to be. Life-changing? What does that mean? It sounded very suspicious. I wish they would just tell it to me straight rather than trying to sell me on everything. I felt like I got bombarded with commercials all week and then went to church and got even more.
...I began to understand that my pastors and leaders were wrong, that the liberals were not evil, they were liberal for the same reason Christians were Christians, because they believed their philosophies were right, good, and beneficial for the world. I had been raised to believe there were monsters under the bed, but I had peeked, in a moment of bravery, and found a wonderful world, a good world, better, in fact, than the one I had known.
...The problem with Christian community was that we had ethics, we had rules and laws and principles to judge each other against. There was love in Christian community, but it was conditional love. Sure, we called it unconditional, but it wasn't. There were bad people in the world and good people in the world. We were raised to believe this. If people were bad, we treated them as though they were either evil or charity: If they were bad and rich, they were evil. If they were bad and poor, they were charity. Christianity was always right; we were always looking down on everybody else. And I hated this. I hated it with a passion. Everything in my soul told me it was wrong.
...Mr. Spencer then asked us about another area in which he felt metaphors cause trouble. He asked us to consider relationships. What metaphors do we use when we think of relationships? We value people, I shouted out. Yes, he said, and wrote it on his little white board. We invest in people, another person added. And soon enough we had listed an entire white board of economic metaphor. Relationships could be bankrupt, we said. People are priceless, we said. All economic metaphor. I was taken aback... And that's when it hit me like so much epiphany getting dislodged from my arteries. The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money. Professor Spencer was right, and not only was he right, I felt as thought he had cured me, as though he had let me out of my cage. This was the thing that had smelled so rotten all these years. I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did.
Friday, February 4th
the servant's heart
So today I heard the phrase "servant's heart" again. It leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. For one thing Jesus didn't talk about having a servant's heart. He talked about being a servant. To me that is kind of a clue that having a servant's heart could be a cop-out. It could be a way of saying "hey, I know I don't look like a servant. I mean, I don't feed the poor or anything. But I have a servant's heart, you know.
The problem with most of the people I know who have been held up as examples of having a servant's heart is that they are oh so visible. When Jesus talks about being a servant, He held up serving people who can't pay you back. It is a very worldly concept to serve people who are great. The problem with serving people who are great is that they always pay you back somehow. If not by giving you money or power or by reciprocating they can repay you simply by saying "Look, here's a guy who has a servant's heart." And because it is a great person saying this the recognition you receive is repayment for your service.
Unfortunately church politicians are experts at this. Thus people who serve in the church surely have received their reward by receiving the recognition of the church as great servants. But those who stay at home and, for example, serve their children never get held up as having "servant's hearts" and thus receive no reward.
For years I had this misconception about the sheep and the goats. Remember, jesus told the sheep "inasmuch as you have done this to the least of these, you have done it to me." (He's talking about acts of service here.) And I've looked at this and thought "oh, if I do this to someone small and receive a reward, just think of how great a reward I will receive if I do this to someone great."
This is a very worldly way of thinking.
:mario:
Tuesday, February 1st
My wife the writer
"God exists, but He is no longer loved, so He hides away, to conceal His broken heart." Impromptu
I thought that this was kind of a cool quote. It doesn't have much to do with what I'm gonna talk about- other than it occurs in the movie Impromptu, which is about artists in the general sense (Frederik Chopin, George Sands, Franz Liszt)
Nancy has finally become a writer! That is a silly statement, of course- Nancy has been a writer for many years. But finally she has come to view herself as a writer. She is writing a cool novel and needs to interview a Catholic priest in order to continue. She has decided to introduce herself as "a writer." Good for her!
Nancy told me a story over the dinner table. When she was a girl, she desperately wanted to play the drums, but her parents wouldn't buy her the drumstick that were required. So she took a couple of those coat hangers that have the wooden rods in them, broke them, and took the wooden rods to school so she could take drums.
When the teacher saw it, she made fun of her.
How completely sad!
Nancy, I'm so proud of you for overcoming your fears and "becoming" an artist. Actually, you always have been an artist!
I love you.
Fred
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