Rome

A friend of mine will be spending the fall in Rome. I wrote to wish him well:

Dear Peter-

Congratulations on your opportunity to spend this semester abroad, in particular, in Rome!  How exciting. I have no doubt that you will have a remarkable time with plenty of experiences that will change your life.

Enjoy every one of them!

I wanted to send you off with some thoughts that you may find a bit different from what others are saying. Because you have given your life to Jesus Christ, and depend on him for your identity and purpose, I wanted to reflect a minute on perhaps the most important letter recorded in the Bible. It is the letter of Saint Paul to the church in Rome. It was written by Paul from the city of Corinth, in Greece. The date of writing was approximately 56 AD, when Paul was about 60 years old. Since you will be living in Rome, I thought this was a good time to review why Paul's letter to the Romans is so amazing and important. Bear with me. If you are bored on your flight to Italy, maybe it would be a good time to read the whole letter. For now, just a few comments on some of the most amazing parts.

Paul was born in about 4 BC in Tarsus, a city in southern Turkey. We don't know too much about him, but it touches me to realize that he was about the same age as Jesus Christ, though they never met before Jesus was crucified in the early 30's AD. Paul's original name was Saul, and he was an orthodox Jew, a man of extreme integrity and determination to keep Judaism pure. As you will recall from the Book of Acts, Saul was miraculously converted from a persecutor of early Christians to the greatest missionary of the early church. His passion was to explain about Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, that is, to non-Jews. Without the life and ministry of Paul, the spread of Christianity might have largely been limited to Jewish communities. Paul changed the world. His ministry is why you and I heard a clear explanation of how God has pursued us, paying our own debts of evil through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for us.

So what is so important about Paul's letter to the early church at Rome? It is a letter that clarified the central truths of Christianity in ways that have been helping change lives ever since. The letter is rich with Paul's theological teaching (after all, he was an expert in the Jewish scriptures so he could explain in detail how the life and death of Jesus fulfilled the Jewish story, while changing everything). Though the entire letter is worth detailed study, there is a selection of very famous verses (statements) from this letter that have been used for centuries to help explain Christianity to those seeking to understand it. These verses helped convince me to give my life to Jesus Christ in 1978. As you reflect on them, keep in mind that as you live and study in Rome, you carry the legacy of Saint Paul, whose love for the people of the early church in Rome led him to write this letter. Recall that he was writing to early Gentile believers who were confused and still trying to understand his message.  This was hundreds of years before Emperor Constantine made Christianity into an imperial religion. Recall that Paul was writing about 20 years after his conversion experience in 36 AD. Reflect also on the fact that Paul probably was killed about 10 years after writing this letter. We don't know, but he may also have died in Rome under Emperor Nero.

Here are some of the amazing verses in this letter, and what they mean to me. Remember that it is always risky to select individual Bible verses and read them out of context. That is why I encourage you to read the entire letter.


Rom 3:10 There is no one righteous, not even one.
Rom 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

These two verses remind me that all humans are in the same boat – we fall short of God's standard. We stumble when it comes to the ten commandments, and even if we manage to avoid doing bad things, we leave good things undone. Worse, Jesus taught that our thought lives count against us as much as our actions. We all stand before God in need of restoration and redemption, and we don't have the tools to restore or redeem ourselves.


Rom 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

This amazing statement suggests that our rescue isn't about our goodness, but about his goodness. It also tells us that there is nothing we can do to merit God's love. There is nothing we can do to make God love us more than he already does. We don't have to improve ourselves or get clean in order to be forgiven. Jesus died to pay for us just as we are. Sure, there are plenty of things that we can do to love God more, and to imitate his great unconditional love for us. Those things show our appreciation and thanks, but they won't make God love us more. He can't love us more.


Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This verse reminds me how wonderful is God's free gift. I had separated myself from him through my selfishness and pride. He has not given me what I deserved, but offers a gift of forgiveness, and a chance to be redefined forever. If I accept this gift, I am forever new, not seen by God in terms of my sin, but seen by him as his own son, Jesus Christ. I need not constantly worry about this new status – I have been adopted forever. Even as I continue to struggle to imitate him, he has defined me as saved permanently.


Rom 10:9 If you declare with your mouth "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Here I learn that accepting God's gift of new life doesn't involve achieving anything or maintaining anything on my part. It is a single decision and statement of faith and surrender to a new Lord. God pays my penalty once and for all, not because I am good, but because he is good.



As you have a wonderful fall in Rome, I pray that you remember and are always prepared to share Paul's ancient message to the Romans.

8.29.16

Inhibition

I am truly so fascinated when I attend wedding dances. I'm especially fascinated by wedding dances after Christian weddings involving churchgoers who I know and love.

I went to one last night.

What fascinates me is comparing the behavior at a wedding dance to the behavior at a worship service.

The behavior is so different and I'm trying to nail down why!

Last night we all had so much fun dancing and singing! People showed practically no inhibitions, even relatively quiet and demure people who are respectable and conservative in church services.  Everyone was on the dance floor leaving nothing behind! 

Such passion! Such joy!

Why are wedding dances fun but the same people glower and look like deer in the headlights in a worship service?

The same people.

I have some theories.

1. Joy. The wedding celebration is fun and it brings people joy. Worship is not and does not. Gulp. OK – if this is true, where are we failing in our worship theology? Does a couple need to get married before every worship service to inspire a celebration?

2. Ethanol. Let's be honest – ethanol helps reduce inhibitions. Maybe that is part of it.  If so, I can only say that either we should have ethanol in worship or we should consider that the Holy Spirit is at least as powerful as ethanol. Inhibitions and self-consciousness are huge obstacles to passionate worship. We haven't figured out how to overcome them in worship, at least not in my church. I didn't detect many self-conscious inhibitions last night at the wedding dance!

3.  Ambience.  We try to make our worship ambience encouraging of passion and transcendence. At a wedding dance this is so easy. The room is dark and there are flashing lights everywhere. Nobody is watching the DJ. People are dancing with joy, clapping, singing, and stomping. They are doing it for hours on end. During worship in church…not so much. At the dance most people knew most of the songs. They were pop/rock classics from the past 40 years, shared deep in our culture. People belted out the lyrics in full voice, unable to hear themselves, sharing happy memories of the songs. Not in church.

4. Examples. At a wedding dance the kids hit the floor hard and immediately with joy and passion. They basically create role models for the wallflowers who soon follow. Who is setting this passionate example in worship, granting permission to shed inhibitions?

5. Volume.  This is the observation that most inspires me. I listened carefully to the music at the dance last night. It was well above 95 dB the whole night. More importantly, it was dance music with simple messages inspiring simple joy. The subwoofer blasted punchy bass lines and powerful backbeats all night long. The sound carried the power to hit us right in the gut where the rock experience belongs!  Even more importantly: nobody complained! No critical comment cards were submitted – there was just joy and smiles and passionate abandon. People came expecting powerful music in that style and they embraced it.

What is going on??

These joyful dancers are the same people trapped motionless in their seats at a church worship service the same weekend.

Why? 

Is it unfair to compare worship to a wedding dance? If so, why? Why is our culture confused about this?

Why should so many Christians settle for passive, inhibited worship when they really do know how to party?

I'm beginning to understand why Jesus launched his ministry by supplying supplemental wine for a wedding dance.


5.15.16

the most important machine in the world

-->

A version of this story was presented as a TED talk. 
Watch the video at TEDx Zumbro River

What is the most important machine in the world?

The printing press?

The car?

The airplane?

The personal computer?

How about the smartphone?

I am going to argue that the most important machine in the world is the machine with the greatest number of copies on planet earth – the most abundant machine.

So what machine is that?

Is it the smartphone?

Manufacturers started marketing smartphones around 2005 with about 3 billion phones produced since then!

That's about 10 smartphones produced per second every day, every week, every month, every year!

The machine I'm talking about is stunningly more abundant than the smartphone.

Let's think about it.

About ten septillion (that is one followed by 24 zeros) copies of the most important machine in the world are created every second, every day, every week, every month, every year.

Wow. How is that even possible?

It turns out the honor of most abundant machine in the world doesn't go to any of the things we discussed, but to a very tiny machine - in fact a NANOMACHINE.

Nanomachines are machines whose size can be measured in nanometers (billionths of a meter). We don't think about them very often, but the most amazing machines on the planet are nanomachines like this one.

The most important machine in the world is really small. In fact, 2 million of these machines lined up end-to-end would reach just one inch.

Here's another illustration.

If you came with a friend, or don't mind bothering a stranger, pluck a single hair from their head for this demonstration. Go ahead, do it!

If you're not that daring, take a look at an arm hair.

You would need 4,000 copies of the most important machine in the world sitting end-to-end to reach across the thickness of a human hair.

The most important machine in the world is a nanomachine not designed or made by humans and not even found in the human body.  It is a nanomachine that is crucial for the existence of humans, and with respect to life on earth, you could argue that this nanomachine is more important than humans! From the perspective of the ecology of the earth and our biosphere, the most important machine in the world is absolutely necessary, and humans are not.

Isn't that a humbling thought?

I'm not saying that humans don't have important purposes. After all, I'm a man of faith and I'm convinced about a beautiful and joyful human purpose. I'm just saying that life on earth isn't all about us.

Let me take a few minutes to describe the most important machine in the world to help you understand why it is so amazing, and why the world absolutely depends on it...and why WE absolutely depend on it.

Let's take a tour of this amazing machine.

You can think of this machine as being made from 4,000 tiny beads arranged in 16 strings: 8 long and 8 short.  There are 20 different kinds of beads used in the strings, so the machine is very fancy. Even more amazing, the 16 strings each automatically fold up into complicated shapes that automatically assemble together to form the machine itself.

If you are a biochemist like me, you would say that the most important machine in the world is a nanomachine called a protein enzyme made up of strings of amino acids. But we don't need those fancy words for this story.

We see the 8 short strings folded into 8 beautiful, identical shapes.

Next we see the 8 long strings folded into pairs and packed together.

Finally we see all 16 chains assembled, each shown in a different color. 

I think the ways the tiny chains automatically fold into spirals and zig-zags is breathtaking.

Even more amazing, this is a self-assembling nanomachine!

OK – I know you are now curious, what is this machine and why is it the most important machine in the world?

The machine is named ribulose-1,5-bis-phosphate carboxylase.  Say that with me once...

Luckily, the machine has a nickname: RuBisCO. If there is one thing I want you to remember from this story (besides that I let you pull your neighbor's hair) it is this funny name.

Let's say it together one more time: RuBisCO.

What does RubisCO do that is so awesome?

It does something no human can do: RuBisCO makes sugar from sunlight and air.

RuBisCO is an enzyme that dramatically increases the speed of the most important chemistry of life: taking rare carbon dioxide molecules from the air, and gluing them into a cluster of carbon atoms to make a sugar called glucose. This is really the only way that glucose is made from scratch, and glucose sugar is really important.

Why is RuBisCO's job so hard? Because it turns out there is almost no carbon dioxide in the air!  Remember that CO₂ even in trace amounts is a greenhouse gas, trapping heat.

Here is a demonstration to show what I mean. It is sometimes helpful to imagine the different components of the air we breathe as if they were liquids.

80% of air is nitrogen. About 19% of air is the oxygen we breathe. About 1% of air is argon. How much of the air is carbon dioxide that RuBisCO needs to capture? Less than 0.04% (4 hundredths of one percent)! Even if I use purple dye to represent the CO₂, you can hardly see it. Imagine poor RuBisCO needing to fish carbon dioxide, CO₂, out of the air. It turns out that this is a really hard job, and RuBisCO can barely get the job done. Many protein enzymes perform thousands of cycles of their job every second. RuBisCO struggles to even capture a few molecules of carbon dioxide every second. Worse, it gets easily confused and sometimes accidentally captures a more abundant oxygen molecule. It ruins the chance to make sugar whenever that happens. These facts explain why RuBisCO needs to be so abundant on earth. It is struggling to get the job done.

So that explains what RuBisCO is, and what it does. 

Why is RuBisCO so important for humans?

Well, RuBisCO makes everything we eat, both plants and the animals that eat plants, and it makes all our fuels...anything we can burn, including fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gasoline, and modern fuels like wood and cellulose and everything made of sugar.

In case you missed it, that about sums up everything needed for human life!

And RuBisCO does all this just by grabbing carbon dioxide from the air. It's just about the only machine that we know that can do this.

If RuBisCO is the most important machine in the world, how do we get more RuBisCO?

Simple. 

More plants.

I'll let you think about that.

So what is the take-home message from this story?

RuBisCO is the most important machine in the world, but it is not designed or made by humans, it is not part of humans, it is crucial for human life, and from the perspective of life on earth it is more important that humans.  

RuBisCO reminds us that humans are beautiful and important, but the story of life on this planet isn't really about us. RuBisCO uses light energy and air to make all our fuels, and it is the only machine that can undo what we humans are doing every time we convert fuel into CO₂.

What is the most important machine in the world?

RuBisCO !

5.5.16

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