humility

My wife, Laura, has many gifts. One of them is the determination not to allow her home to be cluttered. I think she is imagining a day that no longer seems so unimaginable, when we will be relocating someplace smaller, and asking ourselves how we ever accumulated so much stuff, and why we never thought about lightening the load along the way. I've been watching her apply this discipline to our home, while guarding my own secret hoard of questionable junk. My piles are packed into the closet of my basement office. It is a gold mine in there, or maybe a trash heap. It depends on your perspective. This past weekend I finally started to let my mind question the gold mine concept, and begin to consider if the closet is actually a trash heap. How many different kinds of adapters for obsolete computers and audio accessories are really necessary to keep for the coming apocalypse? How about reams of white paper and blank cards and empty 3-ring binders? What about four pairs of bookshelf speakers from a time that our home proudly sported an awesome central wired stereo system with independent sound in each room? What about boxes of memorabilia documenting twenty years of major church building projects and a name change for our congregation? Something got into me on Saturday morning.

I started dumping.

Kyle, our pet house rabbit who roams our finished basement, inspected every growing pile with fascination. Laura was amazed to see the loads that came up the stairs, forming stacks alternatively for recycling, trash, or charity. Even my bookshelves were lightened, with inspirational resources to be shared with the local re-entry ministry. At one point I found my 40-year-old high school athletic letter jacket. I just declared victory by moving it to a different closet where I'll have to confront it at some future time.

Then I found something that I had forgotten, and a lesson in humility that I had once learned and had never really been able to forget.

There in the back of my closet was an empty and beaten-up 1973 Fender bass guitar case. It was tattered and covered with the remnants of stickers. I brought it out into the light for examination and the memories came flooding back.

I was trained as a classical string bass player, but early in life I began to explore the bass guitar and all of its opportunities and promises. In high school my second bass guitar purchase was a beauty. It was a slightly used 1973 Fender Precision fretless bass with ebony fingerboard and sunburst finish. It was stunning and it served me well for many years and across many venues. As my bass guitar collection grew, the original 1973 Fender Precision fretless with ebony fingerboard and sunburst finish became an occasional loaner instrument. That's how I lost the bass forever. At a point of misplaced trust, I loaned the bass to an older player going through tough times, and, at a point of poor judgment, he pawned my 1973 Fender Precision fretless with ebony fingerboard and sunburst finish for cash and that was the end of that.

So now, years later, all I had was the empty case. Despite owning several more bass guitar cases, I had never been able to let go of the empty 1973 Fender bass case that used to contain the 1973 Fender Precision fretless bass with ebony fingerboard and sunburst finish…not that I'm still bitter about losing it.

Seeing the case in the back of the closet this past weekend did not inspire anger about the the loss of the instrument. I'm over it (mostly).

Instead I recalled a lesson in humility involving that case.

In 1988 Laura and I moved from our beloved Madison to Los Angeles for me to begin a three-year stint as a postdoctoral research fellow at Caltech in Pasadena. Elizabeth was born there in 1989, but 1988 was full of exploring and learning and all kinds of music. This in addition to science and new friends and serving in a new congregation. The music was delightful. I played in way too many different ensembles, from classical to rock to gospel.

At some point in the fall of 1988 I confronted the need for some kind of decent new bass amplifier.

It was on a quest for such an amp that I set out one Friday night for nearby Studio City California, where big west coast music stores were to be found. These big stores had huge supplies of the latest gear and were always full of aspiring and seasoned rock musicians looking to buy, sell or trade. I was intoxicated by the idea of hanging out in such a store, seeing and being seen, playing loudly and conspicuously through amazing amps and then maybe buying something impressive. Maybe. So, it was on that quest and with a sense of the excitement of a midwestern musician entering the promised land of a Hollywood-area music store that I set out. In the back of our maroon Ford Escort station wagon was my Fender Precision fretless bass with ebony fingerboard and sunburst finish in its road case. The bass was coming along so I could play it through various amps as I shopped with the big-time rockers. I secretly imagined myself laying down some tasty amplified riffs and the room maybe quieting a bit and long-haired, road-worn musicians taking notice and wandering over to hear the chops of this new skinny mystery bassist as he lay it down. I was on that page as I walked into the showroom. Appearances did not disappoint. The place was packed and long-haired tattooed rockers were everywhere. A huge stack of bass amps sat in the distance. I started to imagine how this was all going to go. I smiled to myself.

I strolled into the room carrying my bass in its 1973 Fender case, the same case excavated from my closet this past weekend, the same case in the photograph above. I felt good. This was going to be quite the night. Just then I caught the eye of a clerk heading in my direction and I began to plan my inquiry about setting up to play my personal 1973 Fender Precision fretless bass guitar with ebony fingerboard and sunburst finish through his beast bass amps so I could make the most awesome impression decision.

The clerk came right up to me, wide-eyed, and I swear he shook my hand and declared loudly, as if trying to get everyone's attention

"You are JIM MAHER!!"

I was speechless for a moment.

How could he know me? He didn't look familiar? Did I look familiar? Did he know me from my musical career back in Wisconsin? From some recording I had done? From friends that had talked about me and my great bass playing? This was so totally amazing! Here I was walking into a store near ground zero in the rock universe, thousands of miles from my original home, and the guy already knows me! My mind raced to consider which of my past exploits could account for my fame having already reached Los Angeles before me. After a pause I asked the clerk how it was that he knew my name.

He looked and me and smiled wryly.

"Dude, you've got your name stenciled in gold spray paint on your case."

Me:  silence.

I listened to a different guy play through some bass amps and slunk out after buying a small $100 unit. I had been 6'4" tall when I walked in. I had trouble seeing over the dashboard driving home.

If you look closely in the photo of the case from last weekend, you can still see the stenciled letters.

I never forgot that night.


2.23.16

Genesis

The Judeo-Christian worldview is rooted in the stories of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the beginning of the Christian Old Testament. Here we learn of a creative God and the story of his personal relationship with humanity, eventually revealed through his insertion into an obscure tribe roaming territory just east of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Bible account begins with "In the beginning," giving us the name of the first book of the Bible, Genesis. The story mentions the creation of the universe, but it is a story intended for the child-like minds of human hearers, so the story places focus on humans. This can be dangerous and misleading, because humans, being arrogant and self-centered, can mistake the story as implying that humanity lies at the center of God's purposes. We apparently occupy a meaningful part of God's story in the present era of life on this planet, but we should never be so deluded as to confuse the Bible story of God's concern for humanity with the broader story of God's creation and timeless purposes in this universe and countless universes beyond this. Those purposes and stories are simply unknowable. 

My point here is to remind us that the knowable story revealed to us is but an infinitesimal fraction of the true story of God's power and purposes in time and space. The real miracle is not that the Earth was created. It is that God attends to such an unfathomably trivial fraction of his creation.

The Judeo-Christian story misses the reality that the Earth is invisibly small relative to the scale of the universe.  I will make this point here in terms of both space and time. These arguments are intended to humble us and widen our awe in the face of a powerful, personal God.

The earth is beyond insignificant on the scale of the created universe. Its insignificance is far more extreme than what is suggested by the photograph of our planet as a tiny speck when viewed from beyond Saturn as seen from the NASA Cassini space probe. The insignificance of the earth is vastly more astounding.

The mass of the earth seems impressive at 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms. That is 4 times ten to the 24th power kilograms. This makes the earth seem important until we risk calculation of the mass of the known universe. The mass of the known universe (never mind  dark matter) is estimated by scientists to be 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms. That is 10 to the 53rd power kilograms.  The earth no longer seems important in any sense. It is beyond trivially unimportant on the scale of the entire creation. Just how unimportant? Let's calculate the fraction of the mass of the universe that corresponds to the earth. This ratio is about ten to the 29th power. It would take ten to the 29th power earths to equal the mass of the universe. Even this makes the physical insignificance of the earth difficult to comprehend.  Another analogy is perhaps helpful. A single grain of sand has a mass on the order of one milligram. This is one thousandth of a gram, or one millionth of a kilogram.

The mass of the earth is to the mass of the known universe as the mass of a grain of sand is to the mass of the earth.

The entire story of human existence and all that has been created from our perspective is like the story of a single grain of sand in the context of the entire planet earth. If we feel that the story of this earth is meaningful and important, that is all well and good. Let us remember that our story is equivalent to the story of one grain of sand in a planet made of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 grains of sand. If we are important, how much more important is the whole story – the story that we don't know?

So our entire story is less than insignificant on the scale of created space. What about created time? This calculation turns out to be no more encouraging. The universe was created about 14 billion years ago. That is 14,000,000,000 years. The written history of human civilization dates back about ten thousand years. That is 10,0000 years. That means that the universe, God's entire story of created time, is more than a million times older than the human story – 1.4 million to be exact.  How do we come to terms with the insignificance of human history in this reality? An analogy is helpful. If the age of the universe were a month, the entirety of the human story – everything we know about God's interactions with humanity, would have taken place in the last two seconds of that month.

Before we imagine that we can define God as the being who is focused on humanity, let us be corrected and stand in awe that the entire human story is truly nothing on the scale of God's creation of time and space.  We are less that a speck of paint splashed on the edge of a vast canvas being painted by a master artist. It is worse than that. Physicists tell us there is reason to believe in the existence of a multiverse made up of countless universes coexistent with ours.

How unimaginably powerful and creative is our God. How vast and beautiful must be the stories of his purposes that do not include us at all. How thankful we must be that the incredible is true – that such a God loves us and seeks us and pays personally for us to win our redemption that we might share timelessness with him.

What is mankind that you are mindful of them?

Psalm 8:4

It's not loud enough!

 I've been blessed to be a musician for more than 45 years. I was trained as a classical string bass player and have also performed and recorded as an electric bass guitarist across the country. One of the greatest joys of my life is combining my love for the bass, my love for Jesus Christ, and my love for my fellow worship musicians as I serve at my church.

I want to share a few personal comments and offer an explanation for my philosophy about the volume of our worship services.

The scriptures teach that we are to love God with everything we have, that is, with passion. Jesus also taught that I should worship God (not me) in spirit and in truth. I take that to mean that my worship should be transcendent – providing a few moments when I experience selflessness and surrender to sense him, not me.

In worship with contemporary music, what volume motivates passion and transcendence in me and in the congregation? The scriptures do not offer a prescription. We are encouraged to use creativity and artistry and the tools of our culture as we welcome the spirit to do his work among us in worship.

But how loud should it be?

I would like to propose an answer based on human physiology. Individuals are wired differently in their preferences for the style and volume of music that brings energy without distraction. No one solution is perfect for everyone. When it comes to volume, we measure the human sensation of sound using the decibel scale. Diagram 1 relates this scale (middle) to common sounds (left) and to music (right).

Diagram 1

The characteristics of groups of people can be described by a bell curve. This principle applies to the physiology of hearing and volume preferences. Diagram 2 shows that volume preferences in worship follow a bell curve with 95 decibels being a rock worship volume that promotes passion and transcendence for the average person. 10% of people don't experience sufficient sound energy until the experience reaches 105 decibels, and 10% prefer sound quieter than 85 decibels. It isn't that some people are "right" and some are "wrong." It is that humans have different preferences due to physiology and culture and experience.

Diagram 2

The challenge in designing and delivering a passionate and transcendent worship experience is meeting the needs of the majority of worshippers while understanding that it is impossible (because of the bell curve) to serve everyone equally. A common church solution is the "cause no offense" strategy. Worship volume is set at perhaps 85 decibels so that fewer than 10% will be distracted by excessive volume. As shown in diagram 2, this has been the typical approach at my church. Our contemporary worship services offer 20 minutes of music averaging 85 decibels. The serious flaw of this approach is that as many as 90% of participants are actually distracted by the inadequacy of this volume experience.

So what do I recommend? Let us learn from the bell curve! Our worship planners are professionals who design worship experiences to serve the majority. Our average contemporary worship volume should be 95 decibels, with the full understanding that this volume is completely safe but will be distractingly loud for 10% who are sensitive, and distractingly soft for 10% who long to "feel" the music. We can lovingly offer ear protection or alternative worship experiences to those with sensitivity, and urge those seeking a louder experience to supplement their worship with music in the car or at home.

Adequate worship volume means moderation to serve the majority. In my opinion, a 95 decibel average should be our goal in contemporary worship at my church.

2.1.15

promotion

A friend of mine who has a career in a service industry recently asked me to comment on skills and traits that are impressive to managers and that imply leadership potential. My response was the following list, and the hypothesis that pursuit of these habits might enhance the probability of promotion. What do you think? Are there items you would change or replace?

1. Provide quality customer service. Don't settle for just getting the job done. Seek to exceed expectations in every transaction with superiors and customers. Go the extra mile and beyond, without being asked, showing creative initiative.

2. Be an excellent communicator. Ask questions and share information efficiently and accurately, without wasting the time of those you serve. Use e-mail and other online tools as effectively as possible to maximize productivity. 

3. Do sweat the details. Always be thinking one step ahead of the process, anticipating issues and resolving them ahead of time. Be known as a detail person.

4. Avoid procrastination. Think ahead, do ahead. Make detailed checklists and plans with deadlines and follow them. This applies to daily and weekly responsibilities as well as long-term projects. Break big projects into small pieces. Be known as a person who gets tasks done well before deadlines, not as a person who puts out fires.

5. Be responsive. Quickly respond to all communications to show concern and attention to detail. Never let any customer or colleague doubt that you have service as your primary goal.

6. Cultivate organizational skills. Use digital and analog tools to stay on top of task lists and subordinates and their assignments. Make your calendar organized, make your computer organized, make your smartphone organized and yes, make your workspace organized. Attention to extreme tidiness in workspace and in the space you control within the organization will impress others concerning your professionalism, and send a message about your style. Appearances do matter when it comes to evidence that you are a highly organized person.

7. Work predictable and realistic hours so that your family has a sustainable lifestyle, but be on call at all times for customer service and problem solving.

8. Offer creative suggestions and show your value by solving problems inexpensively and through collaboration. Become known as a problem solver who gets things done quickly, ahead of schedule, under budget, and without reminders.

9. Request feedback on your strengths and weaknesses. Request a 360˚ anonymous review at least annually to see how you are doing. 

10. Be a good manager of volunteers and subordinates. Show respect, demand excellence, mentor with 3 compliments for every correction, display a sense of humor.

2.5.15

Still (the rabbit song)

There was a time, when days seemed long,
always more, never done.
There I touched you – forever time,
forever time, when time was young.

There is a time, together now.
So short a time, and daily less.
Sweet moments, but so countable,
this now time, time alone with you.

There'll be a time, when counting's done,
when rush and retrospect are all.
Tomorrow time draws closer now,
feel my hand, so soon, so soon.

What color, oh I dreamed it once –
What flight, what wind, what sound.
What distant forest floor, what leaves,
what shore – your eyes at dawn.

These are the days, the time stands still.
Clocks smile back, hands motionless.
Ever dawn, and noon, and night,
and ever you beside me here.

For Kyle
For Titan
11.1.14

RENT

I am part of this fall's civic theatre production of the broadway musical RENT because I am a bass guitarist.

I am also involved in this production because I am a Christian.

Let me explain that.

First let me clarify that being a Christian is not about acting a certain way, or trying to earn God's favor, or being good enough to achieve something. This is a common misunderstanding.

Being a Christian is about being forgiven by God in spite of what I deserve and in spite of how I act.

Being a Christian means accepting that my failings and my evil and my guilt have all been handled for me.

My failings, evil, and guilt separate me from God, yet the Bible explains that God has made a way for these obstacles to be removed. They are not ignored by God. In fact, he knows my failings better than I will ever know them. He knows them personally because he suffered for them in my place.

The obstacles I created have been removed by God because of his love for me.

As a Christian I believe that God paid the price I owed for my failings – and he did it through a kind of suicide. He himself assumed responsibility for my wrongs. God revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ in Palestine 2,000 years ago. Then, beyond revealing himself, God suffered for me by this suicide in which Jesus experienced the separation I deserved.

I am a Christian only because I accept Christ's death in my place, as a gift that makes possible my intimate friendship with God, now and forever. I live my life to express my thanks to God for this gift, and to explain this relationship to those who don't yet know him.

What does this have to do with RENT, Jonathan Larson's Broadway musical that opened in 1996? 

 

I am drawn to RENT because the characters in the musical remind me of the disenfranchised and hopeless to which Jesus Christ was drawn in his ministry. The suffering HIV-infected artists, addicts, and members of the LGBTIQ community of late 20th century New York City shed their dreams for existential phrases like 'no day but today' in defiance of their hopelessness. It is into this kind of Bohemian quest for purpose and meaning that Jesus Christ brings his message of a bigger picture and a fulfilling relationship beyond suffering. Jesus called it the 'kingdom of God' and his message is that this kingdom is now near.  If Jesus had appeared to us in the late 20th century, his friends would have been like those he selected 20 centuries earlier – people like the characters in RENT. He accepted them just as they were – he could not have loved them more. He died for them, and he offered them, just as he offers us, a purpose and meaning beyond today – beyond any day.

 

7.22.14

transcendence

Keith Getty is a remarkable modern Irish composer and musician. Collaborating with his wife Kristyn and with English worship leader Stuart Townend, Getty has created noteworthy songs of modern Christian worship. Composition skills, attention to poetry, and pentatonic Irish stylings make this work beautiful and effective.

On Friday April 25, 2014, Keith Getty led a session for more than 50 worship leaders and pastors in my city. This was an act of kindness associated with weekend performances at our church. Among the helpful points made by Keith Getty during the session was the call for clergy and worship leaders to spend more time reflecting on congregational participation, not simply the quality of the worship presentation. "How did the congregation sing?" was the question Getty implored us to explore after each worship service.

Keith's point was that Christian worship should involve the assembled congregation.

Perhaps this seems obvious, as assembling to honor God should be a corporate act, somehow.

But I've been thinking hard about "How did the congregation sing?"  Though Keith's point about moving the focus from the stage to the room is always appropriate, let me explain why congregational singing should not be the measure of an effective Christian worship service. In this discussion, I assume that the elements of the worship service have been skillfully designed and convey truth. That is not the issue here.

The central problem is a confusion that equates congregational singing with congregational worship.

This is the same confusion that faces liturgical churches, who confuse congregational reading with congregational worship. 

I believe, at least for me and in my experience, whether I do or do not sing at some particular point in a congregational worship service is not a good indication of whether I am experiencing and offering worship in my heart and mind.

Let me be blunt: the Lord isn't the least bit interested in hearing my voice singing or reading. This is not a joy to him at all.

It totally isn't!!

Singing or other visible evidence of participation is a superficial measure of worship. Worship isn't even really about congregational time together. Worship is rather a lifestyle that has the potential to pervade what we do and think all our lives. 

I would argue that the Lord is really ultimately interested in my heart and mind.

In John's gospel, chapter 4, verse 24, Jesus meets a faithful woman from Samaria who inquires about how God should properly be worshipped, given sectarian religious arguments between religious factions of the time.  Jesus responds

"But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be his worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

If I do good or look good or appear to participate, but have a bad attitude, no points for me.

If I have a seeking and submissive attitude, or am broken and surrendered, yet stand quietly, arms folded as an "observer," full credit.

After all, his love for us isn't related to what we do anyway, it's related to what Christ did for us. It's not outward appearance that matters, it's what's going on inside my heart.

Here's a confession from my own experience. Worship is not about me telling God something. It is about God and me experiencing each other. I find that during worship services there are really just fleeting moments or instants of true worship in my heart, punctuating very long periods where my heart attitude is cold to God because I'm thinking technically or pridefully or I am distracted.

Working to increase the number and duration of these rare surrendered and selfless moments is my goal as a worshipper and as a worship musician. 

That being said, if I think about my most powerful experiences of heartfelt worship, some have indeed involved singing my heart out (easiest for me when the music overwhelms me and those around me) and other times when I am in a huge audience watching and listening silently in awe to the beauty of a stunning performance by a skilled person or team.

Worship is what is inside. "How did the congregation sing" is superficial in that it fails to measure the important questions like "how were people's hearts surrendered?" or "how many sensed a special closeness with God during this time together" or "how many were changed by this worship experience" or "how many had even a few moments thinking less about themselves and more about him?"  or "how many found themselves overwhelmed by joy in spite of their circumstances?"

All those questions relate to what I believe God wants for us in worship, and none of them has anything to do with whether we are speaking out loud, reading, or singing! We oversimplify and cheapen in our desire to "measure" worship by visible signs of involvement. Worship can be happening without these signs. Absence of singing does not mean an absence of worship. Conversely, outward appearance of participation absolutely does not prove worship.  I "participated" in reading liturgy for years without engaging my mind or heart.

Because worship is about my heart and my mind, not my gestures or my voice, motivating more people to sing accomplishes nothing if the experience doesn't move their hearts. Moving hearts accomplishes everything, with or without singing.

This analysis has practical implications. As a worship musician, I need to be working to actually clear my own heart, submitting and welcoming the spirit during my time on stage. My focus needs to be on my own worship before I can try to guess what is going on in the hearts of the congregation I serve.

My discipline is then to seek in my worship to at least sometimes experience Christ and in those instants to express my love for him, thanksgiving for him, and praise for him, whether in words or not.

It's about my thoughts not my visible behavior.

I have decided that focus on the external appearances of reading or singing or moving misses this whole point. I can only measure worship by my own heart experience. I don't know any other way.

Finally, in thinking about worship, let me suggest that two words guide the discussion. These words can help us meaningfully talk about our own personal experience. That is all we can know.

Passion: this word implies that I will bring to my intentional interaction with God an internal energy and focus of heart and mind reserved for only the most important things in my life.

Transcendence:  this word describes those few moments in this life where I glimpse selflessness and surrender to sense him, not me. C.S. Lewis described such fleeting instants with the word joy. My goal in worship is to seek these moments of transcendence in my own heart, not for my sake, but for his. Worship is not for me, but for God. His terms are spirit and truth. Since I can only assess that reality in myself, the pursuit of transcendence is where I must place focus. It is in these transcendent moments that God shares what awaits in the timeless life beyond.

7/6/14

Kyle

Friday morning I got up at 5:30 as usual and started my day with the normal routine. When it was about 6:45 and the early spring light was just dawning, I pulled out of the garage and began down our cul-du-sac.  The robins are arriving and the cardinal was calling from a nearby tree. It has been a terribly bitter cold winter, so the sense of spring in the air is more welcome than I have remembered for a long time. It has been a difficult winter in many ways. It has been emotionally draining for me, and there is some stored-up sorrow and even grief.

When I got to the end of our street, something caught my eye on the pavement in the road ahead. There was just a bit of movement. When I looked more closely, I realized what I was seeing.  It broke my heart and it changed my day. There on the side of the road was a wild rabbit. It was dying from injuries it must have received from a  passing car moments before. One of its hind legs was kicking meaninglessly in the air, even as it lay on its side in the cold morning gravel.  I pulled over, torn between the urge to drive away and the inexplicable need to take in the heartbreaking sight.

In the 15 seconds it took me to get to the rabbit, it had stopped kicking, and it took its last breath while I watched. Its damaged body lay stretched out, almost gracefully. Its warm eyes were open, looking up toward a sky pink with sunrise.

I just stood there in my work clothes, my car running a few feet away. The praise music from my CD player could be heard along with the songs of the robins and the cardinal. I stared at the rabbit, so suddenly still, its fur wet.

I didn't know what to do.

The violence of this brutal ending seemed so out of place at the start of my routine day.  I carried the warm body of the rabbit across the street to a clump of evergreen bushes, and laid it there below the protecting branches where the grass was just beginning to turn green.

I pulled back onto the road toward work and made it about a block before my vision was obscured by the tears.

I turned into the empty parking lot of the neighborhood elementary school. I put my head in my hands and I found myself crying harder than I had cried for a long time.

I didn't care. Something about the finality and irony of the early spring death of that solitary rabbit had snapped something deep within me. There was such a feeling of pain and brutality and unfairness.  This little animal had somehow survived the most terrible winter in decades, with months of sub-zero winds and snowy desolation. It had managed bleak and dark days and hidden from untold dangers. Now, on this spring morning with the first sounds of birds, it had met its end beneath a roaring automobile just a few hours before the first warming breezes would transform Minnesota into something beautiful.

It was so brutal.

As I cried alone in the car I considered how it could be that God had created a living world through such harsh principles, referenced conveniently with phrases like 'survival of the fittest,' and 'the circle of life.' These phrases embody the very process of God's creation, but what a cruel process it is.

I found myself praying that heaven will be a place filled with every kind of plant and animal – that all the innocent living things, having joined with all creation in the redemption of Christ, will find themselves forever there in that place that is beyond time and beyond the fear of death.

It took me ten minutes to compose myself and continue to work. I was shaken. I shared the story several times during the morning, each time fighting back tears.

Why did it have to be a rabbit?

My heart has become attuned to rabbits since Kyle came into my life. A domestic lop house rabbit, Kyle was adopted 2 years earlier by my older daughter when she learned that he needed a new home. Kyle had lived with her for months in her Minneapolis apartment, until a dog adoption made Kyle homeless again. At that point he came to live with us.

That's when Kyle started training me.

Rabbits are prey animals related more to horses than to rodents like mice and rats. Rabbits are instinctively shy and difficult to befriend. Unlike dogs, with their predictable affection, rabbits are fickle, full of complex personality and full of surprises.

I never ever would have imagined how quickly I could become attached to a house rabbit.

Kyle is a dependable litter box user, allowing him to have free access to our entire finished basement during the day. He spends solitary hours patrolling and dozing in various of his favorite locations beneath chairs and on sofas. Kyle has trained me to a morning ritual that has re-written my personal devotional time with God. My prayer time is now spent lying on the carpet, Kyle snuggled in the crook of my arm, allowing his ears and head to be scratched. These quiet moments, me in prayer, Kyle with eyes closed, gently grinding his teeth in a bunny purr, start my days in peace. Inevitably my prayers include thanks for time with a small furry soul who offers such simple companionship.

After a few minutes of this quiet time, Kyle will cock his head, look at me, and then offer a contented thump with a big furry hind foot, and dash off to my office where he stands tall on his haunches until I provide a yogurt drop. Kyle is then free to run off and spend his solitary day, awaiting my return after work. In evenings when I am in my office or recline on the basement sofa to watch a TiVo recording or an NFL game, Kyle will inevitably appear and linger in the periphery of the room, entranced by the movements dancing on the TV screen. Lop rabbits are notoriously hard of hearing. It is not uncommon for Kyle to silently hop up onto the sofa for a quiet ear rub, his head pushed gently against my arm.

Kyle knows how to melt my heart. I guess it doesn't take that much.

For some reason I always think of Kyle as a tragic figure, though his life is the very story of redemption. He's been spared no expense. He is indulged to the extreme. In return he offers moments of dearest affection, punctuated by aloofness and suspicion. It is like having a tiny miniature horse in my finished basement.

Sensing the bond forming between Kyle and me, my older daughter was also the one to urge me to read Richard Adams' 1972 classic Watership Down. My tears at the death of the wild rabbit on our street echoed my weeping as I finished the last page of that beautiful book.

There is something about rabbits, their simplicity, their complexity, their unpredictability, their softness.

Though at 53 it is easier and shows more decorum to write about theology and science, I have decided that being genuine and transparent and honest also means writing about how heartbroken I am to experience the death of a wild rabbit on a spring day, and how it makes me dread the death of another rabbit.

And why I pray that there will be rabbits in heaven.

4.13.14

Scrapbooks

 For a related video recording, please click here

I've seen some pretty fancy modern scrapbooks.  These are the ones assembled lovingly by detail-oriented fanatics, typically proud moms, using commercial tools and purchased colorful self-stick decorations to be sure each cherished photo is framed and ornamented perfectly. These scrapbooks are masterpieces, assembled all at once with a special occasion in mind, usually with all the love and pride in the world.

I have a scrapbook too.

Mine is different. Years ago I bought an empty scrapbook binder – it has greenish hard cover and construction paper pages that are faded. When I started in grade school I carefully taped artifacts and memorabilia onto the pages. In later years I started using the scrapbook more like a folder – just a place to insert odds and ends that told of memories from my formative years. Some memories received detailed attention with recorded provenance. Others were included at the spur of the moment, with less record of when or where or why. All of these artifacts are about me in one way or another, and they were assembled for a kind of purpose, but it is nothing like the pretty polished shiny mounted scrapbooks I've seen on the coffee tables of soccer moms.

My scrapbook is now in a large cardboard box in the back furnace room of my basement, 30 paces from here. I'm about to turn 53 and I know where it is, but I haven't looked through it for years. It's bulging and there are clippings hanging out. Nothing has been added since some time during college.

My scrapbook is all "true" but it isn't like a detailed HD movie of my life.

My scrapbook is much more interesting than that – it is an odd, almost inexplicable sampling of snippets of what it meant to be me. The artifacts tell different stories – some of the stories aren't even remembered.

If you were to page through my scrapbook, you'd encounter all kinds of different artifacts and memories that represent different kinds of stories about who I am, where I am from, who influenced me, and what seemed at the time to be worth saving. Some of the items are relatively factual –  there are newspaper clippings with faded text and photographs. But there are other more wonderful things – movie ticket stubs from a forgotten date – programs from concerts – the cover of a matchbook from prom – a piece of a holiday costume – a snapshot from a school play. And then there are even more mysterious and intriguing things – a short poem scribbled on paper, inspired by young love – a printed flyer explaining the gospel message of Jesus – some hair in an envelope.  There is a love letter that still smells faintly of perfume, and a trinket from a bachelor party. There is a ticket stub from a Queen concert, and an essay about the first and only time my father ever showed us how to fire a rifle. A picture of a faintly smiling teenager in a hospital bed is near a sepia photo of two young people posing in fake western garb. There is a music award certificate. There is the picture of a pet cat, long gone.

My scrapbook is all "true" but it's more interesting, more mysterious, more inviting than a detailed full-length HD movie of my life.

It's a collection about me. It's a collection by me. It's a collection of me.  The stranger who pages through this loose and lively collection shouldn't expect neat order, consistency, chronology, or simplicity. No – this collection is more art than history, more music than science. I'm in there, but not digitally – it's an analog 33 rpm LP record, and its pretty scratchy. This is no DVD.

But it's me, and there is a message that pours out from these pages. It's just that you will never understand it all, or grasp the significance, until you get to know me.  Looking at my scrapbook prepares you for someday seeing me – you get a tiny flavor of who you might know if you encounter me and get to know me face-to-face. The scrapbook is full of hints about me. My scrapbook is all "true" but its more interesting than HD.

The Bible is a scrapbook.

There – I said it: the Bible is a scrapbook – not an HD movie or DVD. The Bible is more wonderful and interesting and mysterious than some kind of instruction manual.

The Bible is more art than history, more music than science.

The pages of the Bible reveal snippets and pictures, stories and anecdotes, poems and ticket stubs, clippings, essays, and fragments of love songs. Sometimes we know why the poem was saved and from which play the program – sometimes we can only guess. Sometimes it doesn't matter. 

Some of the Bible records an impression of history, some clippings, some recipes, some instructions, some lyrics, some receipts, some poems, some transcriptions of dreams, some hazy snapshots with no familiar people tagged.  Some pages have first-hand accounts, but some pages are pieces of letters where most of the correspondence is missing.

The Bible is a scrapbook. It is like my scrapbook, full of remarkable fragments and anecdotes and smells and artifacts and pieces of larger things. It wasn't assembled with commercial adhesive corners and stickers in one sitting for one special occasion.  It is just like my scrapbook – accumulating pieces of my life in mysterious and unpredictable ways.

Looking at this scrapbook prepares me for someday meeting someone else – I get a tiny flavor of him who I will eventually encounter and know face-to-face.

Studying my scrapbook is fun and frustrating and mysterious and intriguing – which parts must be understood with a calendar and cross-referenced to a yearbook or diary? Which parts are art and poetry and convey a heart rather than a mind? Which parts were exaggerated or angry or blurred, or tear-stained? What is missing from that blank page?  Whose hair is that? Why is there a playing card tucked next to the obituary of a friend?

The Bible is a scrapbook.

It's worth studying carefully, cherishing, investigating. It's worth challenging the mystery of this epic scrapbook if only sometimes to meet another mystery. It's not easy. It's not an HD movie or DVD.

The Bible is special because it's the most remarkable scrapbook we've ever been given. Collected in different and puzzling and uncertain ways, it's the scrapbook we were meant to have.

It's the scrapbook I was meant to have.

11.15.13

Lewis James

My name is Louis James and I'm 52 years old. 

I have a friend named Lewis James who just turned 6.

I happened to be in Lewis' garage early this evening. It was breezy outside and huge white clouds raced across the sky - the first May-like weather in weeks. The garage was lit only by early evening sunlight coming through the side window.

Never mind why I was in Lewis' garage.

I just happened to be quietly alone for a moment in Lewis' garage saying a prayer for Lewis' mom…and dad.

The outside door to the garage opened and Lewis appeared with his buzz haircut and muscle shirt. I whistled casually so as not to frighten him, but he didn't seem to care in the least. It was as if he was accustomed to 52-year-old grey-haired guys praying in his garage.

Lewis was carrying a long screwdriver.

"Hi Lewis"

"Hey" said Lewis.

Before I could try to explain what I was doing, Lewis spoke, matter-of-factly

"I need your help.  I need to find a shorter screwdriver."

No hello, no inquisition about what I was doing in his garage. Just complete trust and a screwdriver help request.

"Ok Lewis. Where does your dad keep his tools?"

Lewis proceeded to show me the dark garage shelves and we looked through the tool boxes until we found something that looked promising.  I helped him figure out the latches, and we dived into the box, trying to feel our way through the hidden tools in the dim light of the dusky garage. We unearthed pliers and wrenches and huge screwdrivers.

"What's this?"

Lewis pulled out a really big switchblade-like knife. Luckily, I saw that it was latched shut. Before I could tell the 6-year-old to be careful I heard a tell-tale sound

"click."

Lewis stood up and a shaft of sunlight from the garage window fell across a very long shiny blade.

I once had daughters this age. Neither of them would have even tried to flick open a knife this size.

Lewis held up the blade and inspected it with a knowing gaze, unspeaking, turning the shiny steel slowly in the shaft of sunlight. After 10 seconds I half expected to hear a movie director call out "cut and print!"

It was a surreal moment.

I was working on the proper words to admonish the little boy to be careful, when he adjusted his gaze directly to me as he held up the huge knife.

"Do you like costumes?" said Lewis.

Long pause.

"What??"

"I said, do you like costumes? Do you have a lot of costumes at your house?"

Long pause.

"I guess I used to like costumes, Lewis."

"I have tons of costumes in my room" said Lewis, slowly manipulating the knife.

I told Lewis that I guessed I didn't have as many costumes as I used to.

"Let me help you with that knife -  I'll show you how to close it."

Before I could make a move, Lewis was trying to figure out the latch and how to fold the knife closed. Trying to show him was pointless- it would involve me having the knife.

Lewis tried a variety of tactics to close the knife, all of them involved grasping the sharp open blade with his bare hands.

Part of me was thinking about how exactly I would explain to Lewis' dad how Lewis sliced off his finger while I was with him in the dark garage playing with a really big knife.

Another part of me was recollecting what Lewis' dad kept telling me about little boys. It boiled down to "little boys are going to insist on figuring out how to close big switchblades without help."

About the time I really thought I was going to see one of Lewis James' severed pinkies wriggling on the oily garage floor, I heard another click. The blade swung mercifully shut, unimpeded by little boy flesh. 

In 30 seconds Lewis had found the desired smaller screwdriver and I, the father of two demure adult girls, had hidden the closed switchblade at the bottom of the toolbox.

Lewis smiled at me.

"Your name is the same as mine, right?"

We compared spellings as he walked to the door out of the garage, heading into the late afternoon sunlight, white clouds, breezy afternoon, small screwdriver in hand.

"Hey Lewis"

"What?"

"Hey why did you need to find a smaller screwdriver?"

Lewis eyed the tool, rotating it slowly in the sun. He pointed it toward the yard.

"I'm working on carving the letter 'L' into that big fence post up there."



5.31.13

Why I'm not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

I have known and respected many Mormons. Some are among the smartest and most sincere people I have ever met. Others are seriously flawed and struggling. The point of this short note is that I believe Mormons have been misled and are following the teachings of a Christian sect whose central documents cannot be trusted.

Many spend their time arguing about  the various doctrinal differences (subtleties of beliefs) that separate the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from evangelical Christianity. Some don't care about these differences. Many Mormons are mystified about why their lovely and sincere faith is not accepted by their Christian friends.  Many see the central documents of Mormonism provided by the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith as simply additional testaments of biblical revelation. Like my Muslim friends, these Mormon friends would have all believe that God has simply updated earlier faith traditions with new revelation.

So why am I not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, choosing instead to be an evangelical Christian?

It is not about doctrine. We can argue about doctrine all day. It is simply because I do not believe the central documents of Mormonism can be trusted. In contrast, I believe the biblical manuscripts that form the core of evangelical Christianity, though centuries older, are historically and archeologically valid. I base this conclusion on three central problems with the Mormon scriptures (The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants, The Pearl of Great Price). These problems are scientific and historical, unrelated to doctrine.

1.There is no evidence that Joseph Smith was an accurate translator.

Two major problems argue that Smith's documents are not trustworthy translations.

First, the Book of Mormon was produced by Joseph Smith in the early 1800's, supposedly translated by divine power from golden plates since lost. However, the Book of Mormon contains a large number of passages from the King James Bible. Far from this making the document more believable, these King James passages are a huge problem. There is no reason to believe that a divine translation of writings on ancient artifacts would come to Smith in the early 1800's in the English language of Shakespeare's time (1611; 200 years earlier). A divinely inspired translation of the original Hebrew words would be in the form of 1800's language (Smith's time).

Second, there is clear evidence that Joseph Smith was completely unqualified to translate ancient documents. In a tremendous embarrassment to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we have very specific evidence that Smith had no skills in translating ancient Egyptian. His 1835 translation of Egyptian papyri to produce his Book of Abraham is the perfect example. The original Egyptian documents used in the translation were thought lost after Smith's translation was complete. However, key fragments were rediscovered in 1966 and examined by academic Egyptologists. It was immediately obvious that Smith's "translation" was a fraud. The papyri represent a historically important collection of Egyptian funeral instructions and have absolutely nothing to do with Abraham or any of Joseph Smith's alleged translation. The papyri are now known in academic circles as the Book of Breathings. The argument that Smith was given a different "spiritual" translation of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics shows the deep embarrassment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints regarding this matter. Joseph Smith completely fabricated his translation of this ancient document.

2. The Mormon documents are not historically valid.

Large parts of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are well documented by the archeology of the Middle East. In fact, archeologists use biblical texts to understand Middle Eastern archeology. The opposite is true of the Mormon literature. There is no new world archeological evidence for the validity of any of the stories, places, and peoples described in the Mormon texts. As a student of North American archeology I have studied the rich and interesting cultures of North and Middle America. There is no scientific evidence that any of the Native American, Mayan, Inca, Aztec or Toltec civilizations are described in the Mormon literature. None of the places or people or events is connected with any modern archeological evidence, and archeologists find no value in the Mormon literature. This is also a tremendous embarrassment to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Even more problematic are scientifically and historically invalid references in the Book of Mormon, including descriptions of horses and elephants in the New World. Both species had been extinct in the Americas for thousands of years before the arrival of the first humans. Horses were only introduced by the Spanish after Columbus. Nor is there any evidence to support the description of steel implements. Thus, though wildly creative and imaginative, there is no evidence that any of the allegedly written accounts translated in the Book of Mormon have scientific or historical validity. This is quite the opposite for the historical and archeological validity of the Old and New Testaments.

3. Genetic relationships predicted by the Mormon scriptures are incorrect.

Finally, modern molecular genetic research has created a central problem for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. This is because scientists have been able to sequence the DNA contained in cellular mitochondria, the membrane-bound organelles that produce much of the energy of the cell. Mitochondria contain small circles of DNA code that are inherited almost completely from the mother. These sequences provide wonderful genetic "fingerprints" that allow relationships to be traced over many generations. At the very heart of the stories in Mormon literature is the fantastic myth that some Middle Eastern people, including the "lost tribes" of Israel, migrated to the New World in more than one wave,  contributing to the pre-Columbian civilizations of North and Central America. At least one such immigration would have been about 1500 years before Christ. This is an extremely recent date relative to New World archeology. Early in Mormon history, this concept that Middle Eastern people contributed to Native American civilizations seemed quaint and plausible. However, modern genetic testing has completely disproven this possibility: there is absolutely no evidence that any of the people of the New World are related to any of the Semitic people of the Middle East. All evidence shows that Native Americans are related to the Asian peoples through migrations across the Alaskan land bridge. DNA evidence clearly proves that the central claims of the Mormon documents about North and Central American prehistory are wrong. No Middle Eastern DNA is present in the native peoples of America.

To summarize, discussions of doctrinal differences between Mormons and Evangelical Christians are quite irrelevant. The point is that the documents originating with Joseph Smith have no supporting evidence of accuracy or legitimacy, either scientific or historical. There is every reason to believe that Smith and/or other very creative writers fabricated these documents on their own. Because the documents are fraudulent, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints traditions based on these documents can simply be ignored.

This does not mean that Mormon people are insincere or evil. It simply means that Mormon people are being misled.

As with all my friends from other faith traditions, I share the same Christian message: 

Most people think they can earn their way to heaven by being good. I hear it all the time. That’s not what the Bible teaches, but it’s what most people think. “If I follow the golden rule, or try to do my best, I can live with God forever.” “Bad” people go to hell, right?

Jesus taught something very different, and the New Testament makes it clear. Nobody is good enough to go to heaven. NOBODY. Saint Paul writes in the Bible (Romans 3:23) “There is nobody who is righteous, not even one. For all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.” He writes in Romans 6:23 “For what we deserve is death, but the GIFT of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.” 

The Bible teaches that God is perfectly good, and he has planned a way to live with us forever, but it requires that we become perfectly good too. That is impossible for us to achieve by trying. God proved it by giving us the 10 commandments, and all of us have broken many of them many times. If breaking even one of them once makes us imperfect, then we’re hosed and none of us can get to heaven.

No, God made a plan so that we can be perfect and holy like him. We can have this forgiveness and perfection even though we are bumbling sinful humans. We can meet God now, and we can meet him in heaven someday, and we can be confident that we will be accepted. How? Not because we deserve it or are “good enough.” No, it is because we can receive God’s forgiveness as a gift.

The Bible teaches that Jesus didn’t suffer and die on the cross by accident or because of a tragedy. Jesus was God on earth, and he died on purpose for you and for me. He died as a perfect sacrifice in my place and in your place. He died on the cross to receive the punishment that you and I deserve. He took God’s punishment in our place, his one perfect life paying the price for all the imperfect lives that have ever been lived. John 3:16 in the Bible (what you see at football games) says that “God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him would not die, but have everlasting life.”

So what do we have to do to be forgiven and receive this gift? The Bible says that it isn’t automatic, but we just have to ask. I did it when I was a junior in high school. If you haven’t done it yet, you can do it right now, and then learn more by beginning to read the Bible (try starting with the book of John in the New Testament). You can pray a simple prayer just by talking to God. I think I prayed something like “God, I know now that I could never be good enough to live with you in heaven. I’m so sorry for that, and I’m sorry that I have fallen so far short of your commands. But I am so happy that I now understand that you made a way for me to be forgiven forever so I can live with you in my heart now and live with you in heaven forever. I accept the gift of Jesus Christ, and his death for me on the cross. Lord Jesus, come into my heart as my savior and my Lord.”

5.11.13

Mantis

 
On Monday night, August 29, 2011, during the eighth inning of Kansas City's baseball game against the Tigers in Detroit, a praying mantis temporarily stopped play before Brayan Peña of the Royals carefully rescued the insect.

Who cares?

This episode (and note that praying mantises have actually stopped play at several recent professional baseball games) paints a picture of an important concept at the very center of what has been called the struggle between science and faith. I want to use this analogy as I reach out to many who are committed to science and many who are committed to faith.

How can we understand the relationship between science and faith?

What does a praying mantis at a baseball game have to do with it?

Some of my dear friends are frustrated that I, a professional scientist, could also choose to embrace the Christian faith. They are frustrated because such a commitment would seem to mean that either I am a poor scientist (always looking for divine intervention in my experiments), or a lousy Christian (skeptical of every piece of revealed literature and every personal testimony of God at work in this world).

So how can commitment to science and commitment to faith coexist in one individual?

It's like a Cuban-born catcher stopping in the midst of a nationally-televised baseball game to gently save the life of a small, bright green insect.

Although many of us are passionate about science and its power to reveal and change the world, we must understand that science is a kind of game.

Science is not so different from baseball or football. These sports are defined by special playing fields and agreements between players and fans and referees to abide by sets of rules and principles. These rules and principles determine how the game is to be played, and how a meaningful outcome can emerge. Participants (whether players or observers) engage in sports with assumptions about the rules and outcomes. These assumptions mean that the "truth" about the game and its outcome will be officially measured in a score, and in statistics describing the measurable facts recorded during the game. These facts are measured in certain ways, by certain skilled observers. The "truth" about the final score can be verified by the observers, and by recordings during the game.

The sporting event is "true" and it results in a "true" outcome.

However, the participants understand that although the event is "true," attendance won't help them make sense of their lover's blue eyes, or their son's death at the hands of a drunk driver, or their friend's cancer diagnosis. The "truth" of the game must be understood in the context of its rules. Though specific and essential for the success of the game, these rules are meaningless off the playing field, and are powerless to provide judgment or clarity in situations at the dinner table, or in the operating room, or at the hospice.

This is not because organized sporting events are worthless or "false." It is because the "truth" of these events is defined by the rules and expectations of the participants.

Science is like that too. Science is the very best game for learning about our world when we agree to use certain kinds of tools and abide by certain kinds of rules. We use tools of accurate measurement, and we agree to rules that involve principles like reproducibility and explanations that do not invoke capricious divine intervention.

The best way to find out which of two professional baseball teams is better on a given night is to have them compete in a fairly-officiated baseball game, not to see which team can eat the most ice cream, or to ask which is most patriotic.  This is not because appetite and patriotism are meaningless.  It is because measurement of sports prowess is best accomplished within the rules of the game.

When the praying mantis landed on the Detroit baseball field in the fall of 2011, something remarkable happened.

Brayan Peña didn't break a rule of baseball by stopping the game to rescue a praying mantis - baseball rules don't know anything about insects. The universe of baseball doesn't have tools for measuring or describing the praying mantis.  There is no statistic for number of praying mantises saved in a season.

Brayan Peña reminded us that there are "truths" beyond the "truth" of the baseball game.

We know this, but we agree to set these other "truths" aside while we enjoy baseball. We know that there are stars in the sky above the baseball field. We know that a player may be grieving the loss of his father, and that an announcer may be battling an addiction. We know that an official may be afraid about the future.

And we know that a bright green praying mantis can invade the playing field from another universe.

You see, there are "truths" that can be known in baseball, but we cannot say that these are the only "truths."

If a die-hard sports fanatic tells us that baseball statistics are the only "truths" worth knowing about the world because all other "truths" are subjective and can't be verified by the game film and records, we would be justifiably concerned about her sanity.

Science is like that. Science is the best game we have for its playing field. Science is the best way for sorting out "truths" about the measurable world, just like baseball is the best game we have for judging the skill of baseball teams.

But just as baseball isn't equipped to say anything about a praying mantis on the field, so science doesn't have the tools to tell me why I think the insect is beautiful, or whether there is another life after this...

...or why a supreme creative being would enter time as a servant and sacrifice himself for me.

I love the game of science. I love learning about the tiniest and most immense universes with tools and rules. I am in awe of what the game of science reveals about how we exist and the stunning world around us and beyond. I believe science is the best game for a playing field where we choose not to ask the "why" questions, and where we decide the only things we will admit as "true" are both measurable and reproducible. Science is a great game to play on that playing field.

But we must remember that science is just a game on a playing field. It is dangerous to believe that the playing field of science is all there is.

I need you to know that there is more. There is a beautiful, mysterious realm beyond the reach and rules of science. Faith is that world of choice where measurement and reproducibility do not define "truth." Faith is a world where, among many stories that compete for my attention, I find the one most beautiful story of all...the story of the rescue of the most worthless by the most worthy.

When a bright green praying mantis interrupted the Tigers - Royals baseball game in 2011, it reminded us that there is a "truth" beyond what baseball can measure and understand. The mantis was a visitor from a different universe so much bigger and more vibrant and interesting than the game.

Science is like that. It is fun and important. It's just that there is a much bigger universe of "truth" far beyond what science can ever understand.

The praying mantis reminds us that games aren't everything.

justice

I've been reading the Old Testament Book of Job.  This is fascinating early literature. Some scholars believe it was among the oldest stories to find its way into the scriptures, or it may date back 15 centuries before Christ to the kingdom of Solomon.  It is an ancient story treating an ancient question that forever challenges the human heart, not to mention every religion created to make sense of the world.

What does justice mean?

This question comes to us in the Book of Job through a character whose worthy behavior does not save him from waves of suffering. The story is set so as to make the Job character's plight the center of a study of justice. Why is it that a man doing his best to be righteous should suffer? Is he perfectly righteous?  Is that what God demands? Even if Job isn't perfect, isn't his righteousness, as he claims, at least greater than that of the evil ones around him who seem to fly through life joyfully?  Where is the justice in that?  Generations of scholars have struggled with these questions, much like the unhelpful friends who try to counsel Job in the blackness of his hopelessness.

What struck me during this reading was not so much whether the relatively righteous deserve better than the aggressively evil, but rather three amazing passages attributed to Job. These passages cry out from the pages of the story, echoing through time and setting the stage for responses that come only thousands of years later.

What we hear in the fullness of time are answers that finally address Job's search for justice.

In chapter 9 Job laments in frustration,

"God and I are not equals; I can't bring a case against him.  We'll never enter a courtroom as peers.  How I wish I had an arbitrator to step in and let me get on with my life -- to break God's death grip on me, to free me from this terror so I could breathe again. Then I'd speak up and state my case boldly. As things stand, there is no way I can do it."

There is then a perfectly beautiful and poignant passage in chapter 14.  Job whispers wishfully to this seemingly punitive and unloving God, imagining a time when their relationship would be different,

"You'll call -- I'll answer. You'll watch over every step I take, but you won't keep track of my missteps. My sins will be stuffed in a sack and thrown into the sea -- sunk in the deep ocean."

How amazing. 

Job imagines a relationship with God that can be personal -- a relationship not based on perfect behavior, but on God's willingness to know everything and yet overlook the imperfections and still love. 

How could a just God ever love like that?

Finally, this beautiful thread can be seen within the fabric of the book just a bit further along.  In chapter 16 Job continues his call --

"There must be someone in heaven who knows the truth about me -- in highest heaven some attorney who can clear my name -- my champion, my friend, while I've been weeping my eyes out before God.  I appeal to the one who represents mortals before God as a neighbor stands up for a neighbor."

We find in these passages glimpses of a coming truth -- that God can know and be known, both personally and tenderly -- that there will be a way for Job, for me, for you, to come before God in safety and assurance -- to stand both fully-known and fully-accepted. Job repeatedly invokes the legal concept of an attorney or advocate -- one in the position to represent me, lovingly, before the force of justice.

In the fullness of time we learn that God provides precisely this attorney, arbitrator, advocate. He is provided in the form of God With Us, Emanuel, Jesus Christ, capable not only of defending us before our just God, but also making us defendable.  This advocate doesn't ask God to ignore our sins -- he acknowledges our sins before the just God --

--but then pays for them himself.

The author of the New Testament Book of Hebrews writes,

"Therefore Jesus is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them"

In 1 John 2:1-2 we read,

"My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the payment for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world."

The Bible is a scrapbook -- a collection of samples of many literary forms from many times and places and authors -- fragments intended for many different purposes and different audiences -- but with a coherence that is unexpected. It is in the ancient cries of Job from a time of pain, ignorance, mystery, that we hear, put into words, the central need of humanity -- some way to relate to God.  I am so thankful that the answer comes, centuries later, as we learn the truth. In his majestic love and since before the creation of time, God has been above all else just and compassionate. 

Our God is a rescuer.

11.18.12

homecoming

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A week ago we did something unusual. We found ourselves heading back to our hometown on a beautiful breezy fall day. It was a Friday afternoon, and the scenic drive through southeastern Minnesota, the Mississippi river valley, and the rural roads of southwestern Wisconsin was especially striking. Autumn color was past its peak, but the fields of cut hay and baled cornstalks and piles of pumpkins reminded us of our rural upbringing. Geese flew over in scattered formations against clear blue skies.  Cattle seemed especially comfortable strewn here and there across hillsides in the fading sun.

Laura and I were heading back to Madison for two quick nights and the wedding celebration of a rather distant relative.  There would be time with family in our childhood homes, even though our childhood homes were no longer the same.  Laura's home felt different because her mom was away recovering from a hip fracture. My home felt different because my father's failing memory became more and more evident with each visit.

It was also a remarkable trip because of the girls who weren't with us.

Family trips to Madison always involved both girls. Only rarely was one left behind at work or school. This trip was different. Liz and Chris were both happily busy in Minneapolis. We were a couple again. As we drove, our conversation came and went. We were as comfortable in silence as when exchanging words. We held hands across the seat for much of the trip. Laura dozed in the filtered sun. I often looked across at her beautiful face and at the autumn scenery beyond, and I smiled.

I felt a deep sense of blessing, a feeling that echoed back a dozen times on this unusual trip home.

We had laughed when we found that the trip home coincided with homecoming at Middleton High School, where Laura and I had graduated, two years apart, in 1979 and 1981. High School was where we met, I a busy self-absorbed Senior, and she a lovely, tall, blonde and selfless Sophomore who made an instant impression. I love telling people 33 years later that we were High School sweethearts. After professional homemaking, Laura was returning home with me as half of a couple again.

So we found ourselves bundled up and on our way to the high school homecoming football game. We sat on metal seats in a brightly lit stadium overlooking a football field with artificial turf, listening to officials announce penalties using wireless microphones. The halftime dance team offered a fantastic hip-hop routine to booming remixed music that Laura didn't like. There was no dance team when I was in high school.  We saw one or two faces that looked familiar, but no sense of reunion overtook us in the crowd.

Instead I was struck again by that deep feeling of blessing.  As I sat quietly next to Laura I looked up at the stadium lights against the black sky and I squinted, watching the blazing brightness turn into a mass of sparkling rays. I was suddenly aware that there was something familiar about that burst of light rays through squinted eyes.

It was a memory of my first homecoming game at that same stadium when I was a freshman in high school in 1975, exactly 37 years earlier.

I had been fascinated by the stadium lights that fall night too.

In 1975 my life had changed. I had missed some weeks of the fall of my first high school year because of cancer surgery, an ominous diagnosis, and the start of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. I wanted to be in denial, but the combination of abdominal incision, painted X-ray targets on my back and stomach, and nausea from intravenous Vincristine and Actinomycin D made the sense of cancer battle hard to escape. I can only imagine what my parents were going through during those weeks. By the time I arrived home from the daily injections I was barely able to make it into the house before the vomiting began.

When you are at your freshman homecoming game you are supposed to be thinking about friends and girls and the upcoming dance and the spirit competition. You are not supposed to be thinking about surviving.

What small bit of denial I could muster was due to a drug called Thorazine, a narcotic anti-nausea medication whose modern uses are limited to the treatment of schizophrenia.  Thorazine had been key in the treatment of the mentally ill, and had led to the massive deinstitutionalization of the second half of the 20th Century.

Thorazine made me feel good during my homecoming football game back in 1975. I had plenty to worry about, but on that evening I remembered feeling OK. I remembered looking up at the football stadium lights and squinting, watching the blazing brightness turn into a mass of sparkling rays...

My girls have never experienced life-threatening illnesses. I have never found myself begging God to be able to take their place in suffering. Or in death. They have seen their share of tragedy, sometimes unforgettably close, but I have never suffered in the way that a mom and dad suffer when their child is given a dire diagnosis. I now have friends walking that path, a place my own parents walked 37 years ago when they sent their 14-year-old off to a football game, dosed with Thorazine.

It was then in that swirl of memories in that same homecoming stadium that I looked to my right, at my wife. She smiled back, almost shyly, almost like that first time I ever smiled at her, not too far from that very spot.

The feeling of blessing.

I didn't die in 1975. Some kids did. I lived on and came to know Jesus and grew up. I married my beautiful high school sweetheart and lived comfortably with manageable recurrent cancer for decade after decade. I had the chance to pour my life into two lovely daughters and ministry and cherished friends. With the wife of my youth.

Cancer isn't always bad. Sometimes life swallows it up and sometimes, with grace, there is the chance to look back across the years and remember.

And squint. And smile.

For Lydia . For Angie.

10.23.12

Nehemiah

Something like six centuries before the birth of Jesus comes a particularly remarkable story in Jewish history. It is buried in the discouraging saga of the degenerating Jewish monarchy. It is part of that central message of the Bible – the inability of the Jewish people to find any consistency in their covenant with God. The promise of blessing in response to the faith of Abraham had come 20 centuries before Jesus. Moses took his turn trying to lead the Jews six centuries later. David's shaky chapter came one thousand years before Christ. The kings who followed David succeeded only in proving that human beings fail, stumble, and inevitably abandon their God, just like us. By the time of the rise of the Babylonian empire, the two Jewish kingdoms were adrift. Judaism had come to be defined by the existence of a physical temple building, with or without its proper sacrificial rituals to symbolically pay for the sins of the people. The destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 586 B.C. was therefore, in a very real sense, the tangible end of what was left of Judaism. For 60 years most Jews were refugees in Iran and Iraq. There was no temple. This easily could have been the end of the story for just another stumbling local religious impulse.

Then something different happened.

The story of Nehemiah tells us about a man who, though far from home, did not forget his homeland and the idea of a temple to be inhabited, somehow, by his God. It is a story of the rebuilding of the destroyed Jerusalem wall and temple, against the odds. Much of the story seems obscure to us, and except for the idea that this episode preserved Judaism a bit longer, the story may lack meaning for the Christian.

But look deeper. In reading this account, two very pressing and fresh messages hit home. Both are practical, even urgent, for the believer in Jesus Christ.

First, Nehemiah acted without any special call from God.  His passion, his sense of responsibility, his initiative, his creativity, his leadership, all these are described as coming instinctively from the man, unprompted. Though we may be tempted to assume that God actively commissions the pivotal leaders of history, Nehemiah shows this not to be the case. Nehemiah felt compelled to take action, and he took action with intelligence, practical consideration, and cunning. Let us not imagine that we must always wait for supernatural marching orders before we act.

Let us remember that supernatural marching orders have already been issued.

Second, the Christian finds in Nehemiah a startling allegory for the most personal of all issues­ – the revival of a fallen heart. The Jewish temple was the very imperfect picture of God's dwelling place – a picture to prepare us for the time when God's true dwelling place would be made known. In the New Covenant, the sacrifice of God himself in the person of Jesus Christ makes it possible for each believer's heart to become God's temple. As believers who have been once and for all purified, God now inhabits me and he inhabits you.

The temple is inside.

Nehemiah reminds us, however, that like the Jews, like all people, we are still unable to offer God any consistency in our relationship. 

He couldn't love us any more, but we scarcely remember to love him at all. 

Nehemiah grieved for a temple that was in shambles, surrounded by a burned wall.  It was a Jewish humiliation for all who saw it.

And what about the temple in my heart?

Is my temple, the place where God's spirit finds its earthly home, any better than this? Though there may be some impressive walls, isn't much of this temple propped up and in dire need of restoration? Is it much different from the ruined temple that so burdened Nehemiah – a monument not abandoned by God, but by those he had loved and purchased?

The story of Nehemiah reminds the Christian that we are actually responsible for the temple of the Holy Spirit within us. This is what being a disciple of Jesus Christ means. We are to grieve instinctively for its desecration, as did Nehemiah for his temple.  We are to take spontaneous initiative for its rebuilding and maintenance. We are to rediscover the worship that was intended to go on right here inside the heart. 

What Nehemiah accomplished six centuries before Christ was revival.  What we are now called to do is to recognize the urgent need for this same revival in this same temple, now found in the new place that God chooses to call home – a place that is uncomfortably, beautifully close.

10.9.12