Time travel

So today we had a fun day with the deans at Bethel. It was designed to be a day of relaxation away from issues about work. We went to the Dean of Education's place on the river and spent most of the day out on the deck. It was very nice. I work with the best people I could imagine.

We started with a silly, creative exercise designed to do two things: 1) force us to think outside of the box; 2) get to know each other a bit more. Each person had to draw a question out of a hat, and a quotation out of a hat. Then we had 30 minutes to write the answer to the question, incorporating the quotation, and using exactly 100 words. It was pretty challenging, but everyone rose up to it. The answers were enlightening, touching, profound, funny, etc. The 100 word requirement added an interesting twist.

My question was, "If you were forced to travel through time and stay there for the rest of your life, to what year would you go?" And my quotation was from Plato: "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."

My 100 words were as follows:

Before slamming the door behind me, the angry, mustachioed commander barked, "60 seconds until the flux capacitor activates. If you don't set the time dial, a year will be chosen randomly." I tried last year, thinking I wouldn't mind trying it over again, but the dial only went to 1900.

Looking around I saw graffitied on the wall (by a previous victim?) the words, "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." Wow! Despite almost certain martyrdom I have to pick 30 AD to spend three years playing with Jesus.

Women and Men

Over Memorial Day, we were staying at my parents' cabin down toward Ft. Wayne. For Sunday morning we decided to go to a local church. I like showing up at a place where no one knows me and seeing how other places worship.

The kids were very nervous. Even after promising that we wouldn't make them go to some class on their own, but we'd all sit together in the pew (or individually stackable, padded chairs arranged in rows), they were still sure it was going to be a place full of 85 year olds wearing suits and ties and listening to pipe organs.

Well, we were pretty close to the middle of nowhere, but we found a "Community" church with a service at 10:00am. We arrived right as the service was starting and heard drums and guitars going. The first people we saw were in blue jeans and shorts. There was a themed service going on, complete with a large set built on stage for visual cohesiveness, a drama, special music by the full band that felt like a concert, and a video presentation. In short, it felt about like most growing, suburban churches. The kids were at ease.

The theme for a few weeks was "Desperate Households" modeled after the TV show by a similar name. The scripture text was Colossians 3:18-19, "Wives, submit to your husbands; husbands love your wives." The pastor had some very good things to say about interpersonal relationships between spouses, and I was personally challenged to be a better husband. But there's something about the exegesis of this passage that is always so glaring in omission. For we got the typical take on it in which women are encouraged to let men lead like they should, and this is not oppressive to women because men really are charged with the more difficult task of loving (of course this is something of a caricature; again, he had some very good things to say).

Now, I have few doubts that first century Roman Empire was a very patriarchal culture, and I'm not trying to twist the text to make it sound otherwise. But as we try to appropriate the meaning of the text for today, does anyone seriously doubt that wives are also called to love their husbands? And if that is the case, doesn't it seem reasonable that husbands might also be called to submit to their wives? On this interpretation, wives are being told what they need to hear especially, and husbands are being told what they need to hear especially. Look at almost every TV commercial involving a married couple and see who is the mature, dominant one; to this model of spousal interaction, I think Paul would say, "Ladies, ease off a bit and make the guys step up." When we get down to reality, most guys don't have much trouble submitting and letting their wives call the shots and run the family. Most guys do, however, have trouble showing genuine love for their wives--and their wives need this. Hence Paul's injunction to them.

The model of mutual submission and mutual love needs to be upheld as a model for marriage. We can learn something from the Trinity in this.

Tuesday's Blog about Blogging

So I have down somewhere on my sidebar a blurb about the book Chad Meister and I are writing. I've been using this blog to start a groundswell of support that will launch the book onto the best seller list. LOL. (Aside: that's the first time I've ever written "LOL" in an electronic medium; I'm not sure if the context or syntax is entirely correct. Also I feel a little bit deceptive in that I wasn't actually laughing out loud--more like chuckling to myself. But I didn't think anyone would know what CTM would mean.)

Actually, I've been using this blog as a sort of propaedeutic to writing the book. In the evenings when I work on the book, I prime the pump of the writing by putting words down in this blog. It is interesting to me that writing anything can help the process of writing well. This is one of the positive effects of blogging even if no one is listening.

Last Tuesday when I wrote a kind of whining blog (maybe this will become a Tuesday Tradition competing with Terry's Tuesday Travel Tips here?!) wondering about the merits of blogging, two apparently faithful readers responded with encouraging comments. I followed the links to their own blogs where they were kind enough to mention Stump Speeches by name. This advertising has resulted in my Feedburner Stats yielding the following: I've gone from 2 subscribers down to 0 subscribers; and from 3 live hits in 21.5 hours down to 1 hit in the past 25 hours. Ouch! Don't put those guys in charge of your ad campaign!!

To be fair, I've had more comments this week than the others. But the moral of the story is that whether or not anyone reads this, it is getting the writing juices flowing. If that's all that comes, then it will have been worthwhile. I'm signing off to edit chapter seven.

USA

Memorial Day weekend offers the opportunity to display some of the tangled web of thoughts and feelings I have regarding the land of the free and the brave. Here are a few of them:

1. I consider myself a citizen of the world more than a citizen of America.


2. When I say "we" in this list, I'm identifying myself as one of the Americans.


3. I'm not very patriotic.


4. I got misty-eyed when visiting the Statue of Liberty.


5. I'm often embarrassed when seeing Americans in other parts of the world.


6. I'm glad I have an American passport.


7. I like having ice in my drinks.


8. At the USA - England soccer match I went to, I was embarrassed that the only crowd chant we had was U-S-A, U-S-A.


9. I think baseball is way better than cricket.


10. I don't believe that God likes us more than other nations.


11. I'm rather cynical and pessimistic about the motivations of most people in federal government.


12. I found new respect for our nation's governmental system reading Founding Brothers.


13. Capitalism is the worst form of government-sponsored economic systems--except for all the others.


14. I'm embarrassed that MTV is the most widely watched network in the world and that Baywatch is the most widely watched TV show in the world.


15. I fear that we're getting worse at public education rather than better.


16. Our system of elections is messed up.


17. I have respect for soldiers who laid down their lives for our country.


18. The mighty American military does not make me feel proud or safe.


19. I wish we as a nation could bless those who curse us.


20. Freedom of speech is a very good (and important) thing.

Happy Memorial Day!

Spiritual Disciplines

So unless other noteworthy things happen and need blogging about, I'm continuing to work through the main points of my spiritual disciplines class. By way of review, so far we covered:

1. There is a gap between what we are called to be and what we too often settle for.


2. There is usually not some divine ZAP from on high that turns us into mature disciples; rather, we have a role to play in preparing the soil for God to grow his holiness in us.


3. Most of our churches have not done that great at Jesus's last injunction in the Great Commission: Teach them to obey all that I have commanded.


4. We can't expect to do what Jesus did unless we train like Jesus did.

OK, today's installment: A discipline is any activity I can force myself to do that brings about in me a disposition I can't just force myself to adopt.

This is a general definition that does not pertain only to spiritual disciplines. These, however, are more easily seen as a type of the more general group. Again, examples about from the world of sport. Athletes like to talk about muscle memory. They do a particular task over and over and over again, until it becomes the natural thing for their bodies to do. Or consider musicians playing scales on the piano or the guitar. It takes lots of (tedious) work to get your fingers to do that naturally. But then once the flesh has been formed, it does it naturally. That is, it is disposed to react in a certain way in a given set of circumstances.

The spiritual application becomes clear. Spiritual disciplines train our flesh (in the biblical sense) to respond in certain ways. Then our automatic or natural responses can become positive and life-giving, rather than life-sucking.

WWMJD?

At its essence, the WWJD movement is right on target. We are to be emulators of Christ, we should be doing what Jesus would do if he were in our shoes. It seems to me, however, that there is a big problem with this. Let's motivate it with a story.

Pretend that I am playing basketball in game 7 of the NBA finals. My team is down by 1 point with 15 seconds to go. The coach calls a timeout. In the huddle he says, "Stump. We're giving the ball to you. Win the game." But coach, I was cut from my high school basketball team. I don't know what to do out there. "No worries, Stump. When you get the ball, just pause for a moment and think to yourself, 'What would Michael Jordan do?' and then just do that."

Is it any less absurd to think that when I get into a "game situation" in life, I can just force myself to do what Jesus would do in this situation? In the first place, life usually comes at us too quickly, and we react rather than choose. And our reactions are a product of how we've trained ourselves. When someone cuts us off in traffic, do we ponder for a moment how Jesus would respond? No. We react. Certainly there are times that we have some time to decide on a course of action, but most of life is running on autopilot.

Second point: Back to the analogy: MJ doesn't really think about what he does on the court (OK, I'm sure I should be talking about Carmelo Anthony or someone more current, but I haven't followed NBA in quite some time and I don't know who's who anymore). It comes naturally because of the years of training.

It may be objected that the analogy doesn't hold very well because there is this thing called talent in basketball (I wasn't cut because of a lack of effort!). Is there an analogue to talent in the spiritual sense? That's a great question, and worthy of exploration in the future. For now I'd like to claim that it may in fact be easier for some people to do the right thing than for others (perhaps due to environmental factors), but certainly we are all given the raw talent we need to succeed in life when we are born of the Spirit.

So, moral to the story: be careful before putting the WWJD hitch cover on your truck. We can't expect to do what Jesus did unless we train like Jesus did.

If PowerPoint makes you stupid, what does blogging do?

I just finished leading a seminar on using PowerPoint for some faculty. I gave the qualifier at the beginning that I'm very sympathetic to the charges going around a couple of years ago that PowerPoint makes you stupid. There was an article in the New York Times with that title. The claim is basically that the way PP is used by most, it becomes a dumbing down of complex issues into lists of bullet points. The cognitive style of PP does not lend itself to critical thinking. So, I tried to steer people into what I think are more legitimate uses of the program--namely showing pictures and giving quotations.

I wonder what the cognitive style of blogging is... How is this training us to think and interact? The threaded discussions that appear on Facebook, etc., are interesting in that they provide a forum for you to think about something before saying it--as opposed to the classroom discussion where I have to be more impromptu and off the cuff. I like that. (Of course there is a lot of off-the-cuff threaded discussion, but the possibility is there for it to be more reflective.)

Blogging, however, is more like a monologue. It is like making speeches or writing essays. It can certainly be used to sharpen one's own thought. But as far as impacting others, I'm not confident that there are many bloggers who are going to change the world. According to my Feedburner Stats, there have been three hits on my blog in the last 21.5 hours. I assume that means there have been three people who have actually made it to the site. That's not exactly a crowd.

So if it were this difficult thing to get "published", then only the strong survive and everyone who wants to read goes to the same thing. Now getting "published" on the web is as easy as writing a letter. Supply and demand. Given the glut of blog supply, there's not much demand.

It seems, then, that the benefit of writing this is primarily for myself. Why put it on the web, then? Hmmm...

Back home again

I did make it back home (only a couple more goofy things happened). I enjoy the adventure of the kind of trip I described last week. I don't know that I'd want to do it every weekend.

Travelling abroad just continues to fuel my love for the world. It is so fascinating to see both the commonalities and the differences in cultures. It gives such a healthy perspective for understanding minority populations here when you become one in another place.

I continue to desire to learn to speak another language fluently. Spanish seems to make the most sense as it would have the greatest currency in the places I find myself. It is funny that I have this (false) impression that people speaking Spanish to each other can only communicate imprecisely because that's all I can do in that language. What a blessing it must be to be able to slide between languages easily.

OK. Back to some other themes tomorrow.

Venezuela Saga

Here is a very long--though somewhat entertaining--account of my trip to Venezuela. It is mostly just the travelling that I'll talk about for now. And it is not over yet. I'm stuck in Miami as I write. Hopefully the story will end well.

Wednesday, May 16th, on an airplane
I’m at 32,000 ft somewhere over the Caribbean, en route from Miami to Caracas, Venezuela. It’s been quite an interesting trip already; we’ll see how it goes. I had to drive to O’Hare this morning. It took me about 3 hours to get there, putting me there 90 minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave. But, the flight was delayed. I was a bit nervous that I was going to miss my connecting flight in Miami, and I don’t exactly know whom I’m meeting in Caracas, so that could cause all kinds of problems. Barb and I talked several times as she tried to track down some information on Dave Mann or Bob Eagle down in Venezuela; but we didn’t seem to be successful. Barb did get me Dave Mann’s cell phone number. When I tried calling him (I wasn’t sure that he was even in Venezuela), it rang right to voice mail, so I assumed he had no service. I left a couple of messages anyway. I did get my ticket changed to the later flight that arrives in Caracas at 10:20pm, instead of the 7:30pm one that I was scheduled for.

Well I got to Miami and wandered out to look at the board. The earlier flight had been delayed from a 4:30 departure and now said 5:10. Well it was 4:55pm. The gate was A10 for departure, and I had just arrived at A9! Providential! I walked to the desk and no one was there, but then someone came shortly and said, “Yes we can still get you on this flight; it is final boarding.” So, I tried to call Barb back and get them to cancel the change of plans; but she didn’t know if the change of plans had ever been received. So I got on the plane. Before they banned cell phone usage, I called and left another message on Dave’s voice mail. I guess the worst case scenario is…well, we won’t talk about that; a realistic scenario is that I have to wait at the Caracas airport for two and half hours for someone to show up with my name on a cardboard sign. It should be interesting.


Thursday, May 17, in a conference room

I made it to Valencia last night at midnight. It was quite the ride. When I got through customs, there was a young Venezuelan kid with a cardboard sign that said, “Dr. Jaimes Stimp”. I decided that that was as close as I was going to get to someone that knew me. He didn’t speak any English, so he motioned for me to come over to another older man. We greeted each other for awhile in words we understood, but then it became obvious that he didn’t know any more English than the kid. So he got a security guard to come over who did speak English.

Through our official interpreter, I learned that the plan had been to get me onto another plane for a quick trip from Caracas to Valencia. However, because my flight was late, we missed that flight. So they were discussing what to do. My host, whose name was Ruben, I discovered, called to Valencia on his cell phone and I was able to talk to Bob Eagle. That helped ease my fears that my real hosts had been kidnapped, and these guys stole their cardboard sign and were preparing to rob and abduct me. Bob told me that they were going to take me to a hotel, and then come back and get me in the morning to catch a commuter flight. I said, OK. So, Bob talked some more to Ruben and they hung up. Then my security guard/interpreter said there wasn’t a flight until 1pm on Thursday from Caracas to Valencia. So he suggested that I take a taxi to get to Valencia yet that night.

Well it is about a three hour drive to get there; and thankfully they decided that I shouldn’t just do this on my own. But Ruben had things he had to attend to on Thursday back in Caracas, so he couldn’t come and return in the morning (it was already 9pm). So we weren’t sure what to do. Ultimately, the security guard/interpreter found another security guy whom he knew and Ruben knew (but again, didn’t speak any English). I understood that he was going to drive both Ruben and me there, and then turn around and get Ruben back yet that night. So, we got into his beater car and started driving. About 30 minutes in, he pulled over onto the shoulder of the road where there was another vehicle waiting. Ruben and I got out and into this more official taxi. It was a nice SUV, and I’m assuming that they had called ahead for this guy to meet us. But it didn’t seem as though Ruben knew him at all. But we got in and started driving… well, more like flying.

I was seated in the back on the right, and had a good view of the speedometer. The road was nice; a four lane divided highway. While we were winding in the mountains, he kept it to about 125-130 km/hour. There was some traffic, and lots of trucks stopped on the shoulder; but it was OK. Once we hit the flatter, straighter portion of the road, we picked up the pace a bit. We were routinely over 150km/hr, and I saw the speedometer hit 170 km/hr once. If my math and conversion factors are right, we were doing over 100 mph there for a bit. That helps the prayer life stay active. The good part was, we got here in just over two hours. They had to talk their way through the security gate; then we found the check-in desk, where they had my name (spelled the same as on the airport sign).

Ruben took me to find the room, and we were greeted at the door by Nat Brown in his underwear, and he woke up Dave Mann to give Ruben some money. They paid the equivalent of $135 for my taxi fare and Ruben’s return. Dave laughed about the voice messages. He said they do come through down here, but not right away. When he finally got his messages, there were five. The first was me saying I was going to be late; then the second was a more coherent version of me explaining why I was going to be late at the airport and to please have someone there later to get me; then his secretary had called to tell him I was going to be late; then another one from his secretary saying she never heard back, but thought I was still going to be late; then the fifth one was me calling saying I wasn’t going to be late. He hadn’t gotten any of them in time to do anything about it but laugh. I slept pretty well, all things considered.


Friday, May 18, 9pm on an airplane

OK, headed back to the motherland somewhere over the Caribbean. Technically I’ve already been on US soil because I had to stop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It seems like that shouldn’t count, though, since it’s not a state and they still speak Spanish—though I was successful finding some English speakers too. I wasn’t too sure I was going to make it even that far for awhile. I should back up. I gave my spiel to the MC folks on Thursday afternoon in Valencia. It was fine. I impressed them with the Spanish opening that I had Scott DeVries write out for me. I practiced it over and over beforehand, but still stumbled over the word, “desafortunadamente”. It was pretty good though. The problem was that then the people didn’t really believe that I didn’t speak Spanish, and so quite a few walked up to me and started speaking to me as though I knew what they were saying—I just nodded and smiled (probably agreeing to give their kids scholarships to Bethel!).

So, I was told that they were arranging for a taxi to take me to the airport today. Evidently the President of MC Venezuela (a thoroughly likeable guy) knew the administrator of the hotel; and this other guy knew someone reliable who was a taxi driver for hire. He would be there at 8:00am to get me. It would cost 210,000 bolivars ($100 at the official rate of 2100:1—a bit cheaper at the street exchange rate of 3000:1). OK. This morning I went out to breakfast at 7:00am. At about 8:00am (the time the morning session was supposed to start) the Venezuela President pulled Nat Brown and me together with another guy (erstwhile Brazillian, now naturalized Venezuelan) named Newton to talk about the plan. The driver would be here at 8:40. If there was enough time, Newton (who spoke no English) would come with me downtown to the guitar shop where I could get a decent quatro (a kind of Venezuelan ukulele) for around 50,000 bolivars. At 8:40 no one was there yet.

At about 9:00am the group finally sauntered into session and I went with them. About ten after nine the hotel guy came to say the driver had come. Newton evidently decided that there was still enough time for the quatro run because he grabbed my bag and started walking out to the car. Downtown, we meandered around a few blocks looking for the shop, but found it without too much difficulty. It turns out that the mid-range quatros were more like 300,000 bolivars, so I went for a cheap one. All told, I decided on one with a vinyl bag and an instruction book (in Spanish) for $48 US (they took my dollars at 2500:1). I was starting to get a little worried about the time, because the registrar wasn’t cooperating very well and we were still standing there 15 minutes later. But we finally completed the transaction (which included me giving my passport number for tax purposes).

Then Newton bid me adieu, trying to communicate in Spanish words I knew that Ruben would meet me at the airport, that it would take about 3 hours, so I should get there at 1pm for my 2:15 flight (thankfully, Nat had already informed me of all this at the hotel!). There was something said, too, between Newton and the taxi driver (who spoke less English than Newton, if such a thing is possible) about cost. It made me a little nervous because I thought I caught “240” in there somewhere, and I was only given 210,000 bolivars for the trip. Then it was just the taxi driver and me. It was a nice sedan car with leather seats. He was a much saner driver than my guy the other night. I don’t think we went over 140kph, and usually more like 110-120 because there was some traffic. Things went uneventfully until we got close to Caracas. Then we got stuck in some traffic. And there was heavy rain. Our pace slowed considerably and I started getting nervous. I knew there was a later flight so I was hopeful that there might be a plan B if necessary. At one point I resigned myself to missing my flight. Then there was a glimmer of hope as we finally got out of traffic and I was able to ask and understand (en Espanol) from the driver that we were only 20 minutes away. It was 1:30pm.

We did make it to the airport drop-off place at 1:45 leaving me 30 minutes to get on an international flight. But then, my fears about the price of the taxi ride came true. I gave him the 210,000. Those were all the bolivars I had to my name. Driver-guy was obviously not satisfied. I said, “No tango mas bolivars”. He seemed reluctantly willing to accept US dollars. I had been planning during the trip to give him an extra $10 if he didn’t seem like he was happy with the bolivars (unfortunately he didn’t seem to be a very happy guy in general). But then he didn’t even accept $10 extra dollars as sufficient. I think he said that $10 was only 20,000 bolivars; I said something like “Necissito denero para my trip” (which I’m sure really cleared things up), but ended up giving him another $10. Then he smiled and shook my hand. I never found Ruben (who was supposed to confirm back to the guys in Valencia that I made it OK), but I didn’t want to spend much time looking since I thought I might still catch my flight. In the terminal I found out that my flight had been delayed anyway. And in fact, there was a flight direct to Miami that had been scheduled for 12:30 and was also delayed. It was now expected to depart at 3:15. I was pretty psyched about this, as I might be able to get on an earlier flight from Miami to Chicago (instead of arriving at 11:40pm Chicago time). Then the agents got confused and couldn’t find the seat they had seen on the earlier flight. They fussed around with the computer for awhile, then said that it must be a problem in the system. They were going to give me a boarding pass anyway and send me to the gate. If I hurried, I would make it. I had to go through immigration (or is it emigration when I’m leaving?). I had some difficulty finding the gate, but eventually was directed by the gate agent to another customer service agent since my boarding pass didn’t have a seat assignment on it. He was expecting me because the ticket agents called after I left them. He said, “Sorry, there are no seats on that flight.” He was very nice and spoke good English. There was another 4pm flight direct to Miami, which would get me there in time for my connection to Chicago, but unfortunately (that is, desafortunadamente) this booked solid too. I could wait until 4:00pm and try to get on it, but he suspected I wouldn’t be successful. My original flight through San Juan was now too late to catch the connecting flight to Miami. He said that there is a later flight to Miami, but that will cause me to miss my flight to Chicago—the last one of the night (lots of desafortunadamente’s).

Well, what to do? He said, “I think your best bet is to take the later flight to Miami and spend the night there, and go to Chicago in the morning; American will, of course, pay for your hotel.” Faced with the prospect of spending much more time by myself in a place were I could understand very few words and couldn’t make myself understood, I opted for my original flight to San Juan and the later flight to Miami. I went to a gift shop to try to get some touristy things for the kids, but they didn’t take credit cards, and I had no more bolivars (and decided not spend the $65 US they were asking for a flag and two T-shirts). Loading the plane in Caracas was quite the interesting event. Everyone is standing around the gate in the terminal, and then finally some workers come out and start setting up tables. They put a few of the turnstile markers out, but they were unheeded except for the entry point where someone took your boarding pass. Then our carry-on luggage was inspected right there. I was a bit nervous about having three carry-ons: my suitcase, my briefcase, and now my quatro case; but there were no problems. The connection in San Juan even for the later flight was pretty tight. I had to go through immigration and customs, then back through security. The security lines were particularly inept—coming to complete halts with nothing moving on the conveyor belts for minutes at a time. I switched lines twice, hoping to save some time because it was time that my flight was scheduled to start boarding. Net result: my line jumping further delayed me by about 5 minutes according to my calculations of my spot in the original line. I did make it through, though, and got to the gate while boarding was still going on. We’re just getting ready to descend into Miami. Hopefully I’ll find agreeable agents who will give me a hotel room and some food (I haven’t eaten since 7am this morning; it is 9:22pm). I’ll continue the saga from my hotel room.


Friday, May 18th, 11:45pm, in a hotel room

I'm at the hotel that American Airlines provided for the night. After just a bit of haggling at the counter, I'm set to be on a plane to Chicago at 8am tomorrow morning. It was nice of AA to put me up, some funny situations continue. They gave vouchers for a shuttle, for meals, and for the room. The room worked out OK. The shuttle got me here along with about 10 others staying on AA's tab (wonder why plane tickets are so expensive?). I checked in and got up to the room and called about getting some food. The restaurant that I had a voucher for closed at 11pm. The time on the clock read 11:01. So I called about getting the shuttle back to the airport in the morning. The guy on the shuttle first said you have to call to make reservations 24 hours in advance. I explained that wasn't really possible, so he said, just call as soon as you can. When I got ahold of someone, they said that the shuttles were all booked for tomorrow morning. "When is the first one available?" I asked. She said, "They haven't told us yet."

OK, I'll take a cab. That will probably let me sleep a bit longer in the morning. So I saw a Burger King across the street, so I walked over there. It closed at 11pm too. There was a Checker down the block. I successully got a CheckerBurger Combo. Ate it in my room. Ready to go to sleep. Tomorrow the adventure continues.

Venezuela

I'm headed for Venezuela tomorrow. There is a conference going on there this week for representatives of all of the denominational affiliates in the Americas. I've been asked to come and talk about issues surrounding education accreditation.

I guess many of the would-be-pastors in other countries need to take some courses to satisfy the licensing requirements, but their countries don't have accredited institutions that offer those kinds of courses. So, we're going to talk through some possibilities for how Bethel might help.

I've never been to Venezuela, and my Spanish is not that great--in fact it is not good at all. It is one of those things that I've desired to learn, and I've even gotten tapes and listened to them a couple of times. But I've never put together the reliable action plan to make it happen.

I use this as an example in my spiritual formation presentations. I suspect that most Christians are in the "desiring" stage with regard to becoming spiritually mature (and learning how to do all the things that Jesus commanded). We sure wish we were spiritually mature, and even do something about it every now and then. But not many make it to the reliable action stage. More on this later.

There is supposed to be a guy in Caracas at the airport with my name on a piece of cardboard. I'm supposed to go with this guy to a hotel room, then Thursday morning he'll see that I'm put on the correct bus for a three hour ride to Valencia, where the conference is. I trust that I'll make it back here Friday night and not become some political prisoner of Hugo Chavez!

Prayer

Yesterday our middle son was having some pretty severe acid reflux from his stomach--resulting in a lot of pain for him and a lot of being grossed out by the rest of the family as he constantly deposited the effects of the reflux into a bin he kept with him. By 10:30 last night, we were bracing ourselves for a long night. He couldn't lie down because it made things worse; and he couldn't fall asleep sitting up.

I've been thinking a lot about prayer lately (probably more thinking than doing, unfortunately). Some of this has been because of the VTech incident and my musings on why God doesn't always keep us safe [see May 1 and following posts]; but also because I've been mulling my way through Philip Yancey's new book, Prayer: Does it Make Any Difference? I find Yancey to be very insightful and profound and highly recommend his books to everyone. But this one is challenging. There are lots of examples (to which we could all add many more) of good, sincere people asking God for things that don't seem unreasonable, and being met with deafening silence. And yet somehow, we keep praying and asking. What else can we do?

So last night as I sat in bed with my son I prayed, "God let him sleep tonight. I'm not asking for a miraculous cure, just some rest for his body and for ours." In 30 seconds he was sound asleep, and stayed that way the whole night. This morning he was up reflux-ing again right where he left off.

I think that one part of becoming a spiritually mature person is to orient oneself toward, or to see the world through, faith. Did an answer to prayer happen last night? Would he have fallen to sleep if I hadn't uttered those pleas to God? I suppose there will always be competing realities for people of faith and people without faith--like the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip where the tiger is alive in Calvin's perspective on the world, but not in anyone else's perspective. Life is sure a lot more interesting and fun with a live tiger.

Teach them to obey

"Teaching them to obey all that I have commanded." I talked about this briefly on Thursday. This is the last of those participial phrases in the Great Commission. The verb of the sentence in Greek, of course, is not "go", but "disciple" as in "to disciple". So a very literal translation might be something like,

"(As you are) going, therefore, disciple all the ethnic groups, baptizing them into the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you."

So, he's talking to the eleven disciples here. So the operative question should be, what were the things that he had commanded the disciples?

The first thing Matthew records Jesus saying is to John the Baptist, convincing John to baptize him. If if we construe John to be one of Jesus's disciples, it doesn't seem that this would be one of the commands we're to teach would-be disciples to obey. Jesus has already been baptized, and we don't have to do it again.

The next conversation in Matthew is with Satan in the desert. So these commands again are not the ones we're to teach people to obey. Then he begins his public ministry, proclaiming (to anyone who would listen?) "Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near." I'd still like to claim that we're not yet talking about the commands in question, for this is more of a general call.

Then, he calls some disciples. This sounds promising. "Follow me," he says to Peter and Andrew. This was a fairly literal command, because these guys (and then James and John after them) stopped what they were doing and started following him around. I guess our challenge now is to translate this to our age: what does it mean to follow Jesus, and how do we teach people to obey it? I'd suggest that Jesus gives us some help here, because the next time Jesus's speech was recorded it is the Sermon on the Mount. And I guess I always had this idea that this was a sermon to a whole bunch of people. But the text is a bit ambiguous on this. For there were crowds around him, it says, and when he saw them he went up the mountain and sat down. Then his DISCIPLES came to him and he taught THEM.

If we take the unity of the book of Matthew seriously, I'd suggest that we ought to take very seriously the commands found here as the prime candidates for what Jesus wanted his disciples to be teaching his future disciples to obey. We'll explore what this might mean in the future.

Pretty pictures

It's Friday afternoon. A good chunk of the day today was spent pouring through the self study again. My mind is mush. The creative and profound muses--if they are around at all--are completely obscured by the fuzziness of my consciousness.

So instead of attempting to stimulate you philosophically, I attempt to do so aesthetically. Here is a flower from the Dominican Republic:

And here is the view out the front door of where the Bethel class in Hawaii is staying:

That's all I've got for today.

Is the Church Held Accountable for its Mission?

I spent the whole day at work schlogging through our institution's self-study. Once every ten years (if all goes well) the regional accrediting agency comes around to check to see whether we're doing what we say we're doing. In advance of this we have to prepare several hundred pages of documentation and reflection on how well we're doing. It's really a pain in the posterior, because tending to your mission is different than documenting or proving that you're tending to your mission. However, there is something about having someone check up on you that makes you do things better and more responsibly.

I got thinking, "What if churches had accrediting agencies?" I guess those that are part of denominations in some sense do have a regulatory body, but I'd bet that there is not a lot of rigor with regard to the expectations.

What if Jesus showed up occasionally to see how we're doing with regard to the mission he left us? The Great Commission in Matthew has four components to it as normally translated:

1. Go into the whole world;
2. Make disciples of everybody;
3. Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;
4. Teach them to obey all that I have commanded.

When people talk about the Great Commission, they rarely make it to #4. What if the accrediting agency came around to our churches to check up on this one? Disregarding for the moment all of those people who aren't in the church (whom we're supposed to be going to, discipling, and baptizing), could we demonstrate that those who are in our churches have been taught to obey all that Jesus commanded? Notice that this is not just teaching them what the commands of Jesus are (though we might not do so well on this easier task either). Rather, we have been charged to teach people to obey.

I'd even like to claim that it is not just declaring to people that they ought to obey the commandments. If I were writing a Message-esque paraphrase, this passage would be rendered, "Teach them how to obey all that I have commanded." For that is the sense of what Jesus is expecting. And these were pretty tough commandments: Love your neighbor, love your enemy, bless those who curse you, turn the other cheek, be perfect, etc. Have we been teaching people how to do this stuff? This is the beginning of spiritual formation.

ETS President turns Catholic

I take a break from the spiritual formation posts to comment on the hottest news in the academic world of evangelicalism. The president of the Evangelical Theological Society, Francis Beckwith, announced this week that he has become (or actually, rejoined) the Catholic Church and resigned as president of ETS. The account of the decision in his own words can be found here.

I'm not a member of ETS, but I'm at their annual meeting each year (along with several thousand others) because the Evangelical Philosophical Society meets at the same time and place. Many of the EPS members are also ETS member--including Beckwith. In practice ETS leans very heavily to Reformed theology (some members have spoken openly about trying to erradicate the Arminian heretics from their membership), but the doctrinal statement is merely as follows:

"The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory."

Beckwith says he intends to remain a member of ETS because he continues to agree with the statement, but wants to spare the society from adverse attention.

I'm not sure what to think about this yet... I'm all for ecumenism and believe Beckwith to be a brother in Christ. There are decided theological differences, though, and it's difficult to know how significant we ought to make these.

Jesus is probably somewhat troubled by his so-far-unanswered prayer in John 17 that we all be one. Denominationalism certainly has its faults (there are more than 33,000 distinct Christian denominations worldwide now); but I guess I'd like to claim that the preservation of important theological traditions is not one of them. None of our denominations has a corner on the truth, and at their best they serve as helpful correctives to each other.

Gap but no Zap

My son got a kite today--a prize for practicing the piano a certain number of times this month. Wouldn't you know it, there's no wind. We just got back from running around the grassy field by our house trying to get this thing to fly. As long as the person with the string was running, the kite stayed in the air. But when the running stopped, the kite went down. It took a lot of effort.

What a nice segue into the sequel from yesterday! (Mind the Gap) Dallas Willard has gotten a lot of mileage out of saying, "Grace is not opposed to effort, just to earning." Premise 2 from yesterday's post is that we have a role to play in our spiritual maturation. This does not mean that we somehow earn our salvation or sanctification, nor that we can make ourselves holy. But it does mean that there is some effort required of us.

I come from a theological tradition that is keen on using the terms "entire sanctification" or being "filled with the Holy Spirit." These are well-intended concepts that I'm afraid have wandered some from their biblical moorings. In practical, everyday language it is often preached, "You've made Christ your Savior, now it is time to make him Lord of your life." The more theologically astute might say something like, "Subsequent to salvation the believer will have a crisis experience, fully surrender, and God will fill her with the Holy Spirit in a second act of grace." At that moment the believer is fully sanctified.

OK, so I'm not going to quibble about terms, but the impression is given that we have no role to play in this apart from giving God permission to fill us up. A recent speaker at my place of employment claimed that all we must do is "Let go and let God. We have no part, it's all his part." (This is almost verbatim, by the way, from The Christian's Secret to a Happy Life.) That is to say, we must just sit back and let God zap us into holiness.

Perhaps that is a caricature, but it the message that many of the college students are hearing. And many of them resolve (sometimes year after year) to make Christ Lord of their lives, but find themselves back in the old patterns after the spiritual high has gone away. I know quite a few of these who end up saying, "Let's be honest. This is not working." And they jettison what vestiges of faith they once had.

The biblical story, I believe, and the one that is true to our experience, is that it takes some effort on our parts to become holy people. Again, that doesn't mean we're making ourselves holy, but rather that we're putting ourselves into the position where God makes us holy. No one (except the extreme 5 pointers) would argue that there are things we can do that hinder our spiritual development: if I consciously decide to spend my time on the internet looking up soft porn, I am doing something that impedes my spiritual growth. So, by listening to a baseball game instead (go Red Sox), I am "doing" something that is better for me and contributing to my spiritual state. It is not too big of a leap from there to understand that there are other positive things that I can be doing that will help to move along the process of becoming more like Christ. There is no Zap that does this for me.

More on this in the future. If you've read this far, you must have enough time on your hands to skip over to Knee Deep in Life and read the May 7 posting. Good reflection on labor involved in getting something done.

Mind the Gap

It was a lovely spring weekend in Northern Indiana. I spent a lot of time sitting on decks--both my own and some friends'--enjoying the weather. I sure enjoy the change of seasons. Those living in San Diego or Quito, Ecuador can make a decent argument about constant pleasant temperatures, but I'll take the ups and downs. Too much of the same thing becomes numbing after awhile.

I'm back to writing about spiritual formation. I mentioned in an earlier post that I recently taught a six-week class exploring the spiritual disciplines. The integrity of such a class rests on (at least) these two premises:

1. There is a gap between the mature Christian state we are called to, and the state in which most of us Christians currently find ourselves.
2. God does not zap us into that maturity without our cooperation; we have a role to play.

The gap-premise seems obvious from the letters of Paul to the Christians of those early churches, and this is distinct from what is called justification in most of the the classical theological systems. This latter idea has been emphasized too much in my opinion. I suppose there is some change in standing with God, some legal transaction that occurs, when I repent and my sins are forgiven. But when I read the Bible, the overall emphasis seems rather to be on where I'm going once I've repented (literally, "turned").

If as a non-Christian I am running away from the Kingdom of God, when I repent, I stop and turn around. But if I just stand there looking, I'm not entering the Kingdom. So, if the goal is for us to enter that Kingdom fully by having everything in our lives go the way the king want them to be going, most of us have a ways to go. That is to say, there is a gap between where we are and where we are called to be.

Tomorrow: the N0-Zap-Premise.

Sunday Archives

I'm going to take a Sabbath rest from writing on Sundays. Most of the time I'll just keep silent. Sometimes I'll provide a link to something I've written in the past. Today falls into the latter category.

I used to write a column for the Bethel Beacon (the newspaper published by the Student Council at Bethel). It was called... ready for this... Stump Speeches. Below is a link to the first of these from the fall of 1999. It was a review of this brand new movie that was sweeping the nation: The Matrix.

My thinking about the movie has evolved since then and become more layered and complex, but I would still stand by most of what was said then. I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Review of The Matrix (written in 1999, 1082 words)

Hate Crimes

I get a little frustrated with the mode of civic engagement of most Christians. This week's Hate Crimes legislation provides a handy case-in-point. The Christian radio crowd mobilized lots of their loyal listeners to take up as a holy crusade the opposition of the democratically introduced bill, HR1592, because purportedly it contains within it the Trojan Horse of muzzling pastors and others from speaking publicly against homosexuality.

As best as I can tell, here is the relevant section of HR1592:"(1) IN GENERAL- At the request of State, local, or Tribal law enforcement agency, the Attorney General may provide technical, forensic, prosecutorial, or any other form of assistance in the criminal investigation or prosecution of any crime that--
(A) constitutes a crime of violence;
(B) constitutes a felony under the State, local, or Tribal laws; and
(C) is motivated by prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim, or is a violation of the State, local, or Tribal hate crime laws." (www.govtrack.us/congress)

So my interpretation of this in plain language is that non-federal agencies can request federal support in prosecuting acts of violence against certain classes of people which have been motivated by prejudice. Period.

Now, I think there are some good reasons for opposing this legislation. For example, why are hate crimes limited to just these classes of people; why not include the elderly and military personnel (a proposed amendment to the bill that was voted down)? Why not protect short people or balding men?! I think there are reasonable responses to such questions, but equally, I think the objections to the legislation are reasonable.

What upsets me about Christians' reactions is that there is absolutely no language in the bill that says anything about prosecuting speech--not even if it was speech that persuaded someone to do violence to one of the protected classes. The way the knee-jerk crowd is making it sound, you'd think the Congress criminalized Christianity.

I'm fully aware that there is a political strategy going on here with respect to homosexual rights and the recognition of them as a protected class. And this may be worth opposing because of future bills that will be coming making it illegal for faith-based organizations to discrimate against homosexuals in employment practices. But please, in the process of engaging in the political process, let's shed light and proclaim truth rather than obfuscating, misrepresenting, and falsifying.

Garage Sale

Big neighborhood garage sale tomorrow. Time to off-load some of the earthly treasures we've been storing up. Or perhaps it is better described as tearing down our barns to make room for new and improved bigger ones...

Our attachment to things is probably not very healthy. Stuff becomes such a clutter both physically and spiritually. I've been amazed by the growth of the storage rental business over the past two decades. How much more stuff can we accumulate? What does this do to us? When our son, Casey, was 5 years old, he and I were driving somewhere and out of the blue he said, "Dad, why is it when you first get a new toy it's really fun, but then after awhile it's not that great anymore?" From the mouths of babes... He hadn't yet been so corrupted by our culture's obsession with consumer goods, and could still see the truth of the situation.

One of our faculty members has to move to a dry climate because of family allergies. In doing so they are selling about all of their possessions here and moving with only a van. It would probably be good for all of us to shed most of our things every once in a while to keep things in perspective. The discipline of simplicity is almost non-existent in America. It would be so good for us to live without so much stuff. But that stuff is really pretty fun--for awhile.

A Related Poem

My wife and I lived in Africa for a year just after I graduated. That was the first time I started reading classic fiction, and that is what turned me toward philosophy. One of those books I read was The Brothers Karamazov, which I alluded to in a previous post. This was simultaneously the most challenging and most affirming to my faith of anything that I'd read or experienced up to that time.

Our year in Africa was also a creative time for me in that I wrote a lot of songs and poems and things. The poem below was written during this time, and subsequently was accepted into a poetry anthology (at about the same level of prestige as getting into Who's Who). I don't know if it is much more than doggerel, and feel at my most vulnerable when I put a poem like this out for all to see (or at least both of you!!). But, here it is.

The Trade Off

Since just after the beginning there have been countless years
Imbued with injustice and suffering and tears.
Time doesn't know the hurt and the pain;
It rolls on and on and on unscathed.
But we in our finiteness feel. Pain is real.
It respects not and its wounds do not heal.

Years and years you've let it go on.
Masses have perished without the Son.
Are you really watching? You don't seem to care!
Why is so much evil allowed to be here?
Can the few who have found your eternal light
Be worth more than the loss of those left in the night?

Where is the balance? Where are the scales?
I try to reason but my reason fails.
Where? Oh where is the the most blessed end?
The Omega is solely the one who can mend.
But not just mend--restore and rebirth.
But will even these atone for the evil on earth?

I believe, I do, in you and your plan;
But what can be done in this curséd land
To thwart the darkness in spite of the night
And reclaim the wrong and transform it to right?

More God and Safety

A similar discussion is raging on the Bethel Facebook network in the Bethel Philosophy Group. And here someone wonders whether all tragic situations can be redeemed.

This is tough stuff, because we have such a different emotional reaction to evil than we do a logical one. Logically, I think it's pretty easy to solve the problem of evil... but we're not Vulcans.

Can all evil be redeemed? I guess we Christians believe that in the end, yes, all will be redeemed. Evil's reign is only temporary. All will be made right. But here is where Ivan Karamazov objects: he doesn't want the lion to lie down with the lamb; he doesn't want the afflicted to embrace their afflictors. Forgiveness doesn't take away the fact that someone has been severely wronged.

This is the natural emotional response. Evil ought to evoke anger in us. In the wake of the VTech situation, I was angry that my kids have to grow up in a world where stuff like that happens.

But then unforgiveness doesn't take away the evil that has happened either. And here, then, is an opportunity for us to be chiseled and shaped into people who more fully reflect the image of Christ.

This is still so abstract and impersonal. It used to be much easier for me to reflect on what it meant to love my enemies, because I didn't really have any enemies in the normal sense of the word. Then in the past few months a situation occurred in which I had a very identifiable enemy in a fairly significant and potentially dangerous way. How could I love that person? The situation prevented any personal contact at all, so taking her cookies was out of the question.

To love (in one aspect of the word) is to genuinely will what is best for another person. Could I genuinely pray for God's best to come to her (and not just the heaping of coals variety of best)? I'm pretty sure that one who can do that, conforms more closely to the character of Christ. And in the economy of the Kingdom, there is some redemption that happens.

God and Safety

I was browsing through the Chronicle of Higher Ed today, which included a big section on the Virginia Tech tragedy. Two weeks after the event, it seems that most things have returned to normal outside of the campus itself (and the families themselves who were afflicted). The week after the shooting, I was pretty upset. Most of the media coverage focused on safety--how can we keep our campuses (and our businesses and towns and homes...) safe?

It is interesting that safety doesn't seem to be God's chief concern. Most of us Christians probably have some stories where God did intervene and protect miraculously, but for the most part tragedy doesn't seem to be a respecter of creed or sincerity of belief. Christians die from cancer and are victims of drunk drivers and all the rest. It is not a safe world. This fact causes some theological conundrums.

Jesus taught us to pray, "Deliver us from evil." And he himself prayed--unsuccessfully on most interpretations--that the cup of suffering would pass from him. Granting that God does do this sometimes, still leaves us with the other times. Why doesn't he deliver us from what are obvious evils like psychologically disturbed gunmen?

One response is typically called the free will defense to evil. God places such a high value on the free will of these creatures of his that he's not going to step in and stop the consequences from such actions even when they result in evil. But the problem with this solution is that it is too strong of a response. On this principle, it seems that he never should step in if he values free will so much. This seems to rule out the possibility of any miraculous protection against the evils perpetrated by free agents--a possibility we'd like to leave open. We're still left with the question, "Why does God intervene sometimes and not others?"

While I will uphold free will till I'm blue in the face, it doesn't seem to me that this can be the whole story. And I don't pretend that this settles the problem once and for all, but it seems to me that the answer must lie in the direction of the following: God desires above all our holiness, not our safety or even our happiness. Holiness is an attribute that transcends our existence in this unsafe place, in this kingdom of the world. It is very difficult for us to take the perspective of eternity for ourselves and for those we love, but from God's perspective and from within his kingdom, events like the tragic death of loved ones must look a little different. I don't mean to suggest that they are not difficult or even still tragic. But they must be something else in addition to this. They must be opportunities God has decided to allow because they have some redeeming value for shaping us into the kind of people he wants us to be.

I don't mean to suggest that God is to blame for somehow causing tragedies to happen. Rather, I believe and trust (what else can we do?) that God can use tragic situations for something else, that he can work all things together for good. This is little consolation if our perspective on life is for this world only--quantity and quality of embodied life is all there is. But what if there is more?