Occasionally Gay

Thinking about the previous item, I have a confession to make. Sometimes I'm gay. Yes, when I set aside my cares, when the sun is shining and the air is crisp and there's a happy song on my lips, I am gay. Not homosexual, gay.

If you are not familiar with that use of the word "gay," it is because the word has been hijacked to mean homosexual. Perhaps the selection of "gay" was intended to suggest that the homosexuality is a happy and carefree lifestyle. But be that as it may, it annoys me that we've lost the meaning of such a great word.

In a recent issue of Wired Magazine, evolutionist-athiest firebrand Richard Dawkins outlined his plan to ruin another word. He wants athiests to be called "brights." The logic, of course, is to suggest that athiests are intelligent, and, by extension, theists are dumb.

Homosexual Marriage

In thinking about the Massachusetts high court's ruling on homosexual marriage, one thing that is very unclear to me is what homosexuals hope to accomplish by such marriages. The arguments I've heard say that making homosexual relationships into marriage would solve problems with inheritance, would give the right for one partner to make critical medical decisions for another when the other is incapacitated, would provide partner health care, and so forth.

I'm afraid it's still unclear. I can leave all my worldly goods in trust for a goldfish if I want to and homosexuals can leave their possessions to whomever they please. What does that have to do with marriage? And as far the other difficulties homosexuals face, it seems they could all be settled by contractual arrangements. So I really don't understand the reasoning.

But for the sake of discussion, let's assume there are benefits to marriage that homosexuals could not otherwise obtain. And having assumed that, let's back off even further and ask ourselves why any couple should receive such benefits; heterosexual, homosexual, man and dog, whatever.

In other words, why should the government provide benefits for people just because they decide to live together? Good question.

I suggest that it is because the government has an interest in promoting marriage, and when the government has an interest in promoting some behavior, it often provides incentives to encourage that behavior. For example, the government may give you a tax break if you install a solar system on your house or buy a hybrid car. The reason is because it wants to promote alternative energy sources. Someone may argue that it isn't fair; that the government should also subsidize SUVs, but SUVs don't promote the government's goal of energy efficiency.

So, what is it that the government wishes to promote in male-female marriages? Despite all its problems, marriage provides a reasonably good environment in which to raise children into productive, healthy citizens, and the government has a huge interest in promoting productive, healthy citizens. Further, until recently, the difficulty in obtaining a divorce helped protect from poverty women who stepped out of the workforce to manage a household. Their husbands couldn't abandon them with impunity. Today, with more liberal divorce laws, the government attempts to provide this same protection, should marriage fail, by requiring alimony.

On the other hand, it is unclear why the government should promote homosexual unions. There isn't the slightest possibility they'll result in children. Though homosexual couples could adopt children, it is highly debatable that this is a healthy environment for children. Further, I'm guessing that in most cases, if a homosexual partnership breaks up, both partners simply continue working at their current jobs; one unemployable partner is not suddenly left in poverty.

Amish Airline Hijackers?

Some people hold to a a very ridiculous notion: that it's dangerous to believe something too strongly.

This is so silly! First of all, if this assertion is true, then the person who holds this position is dangerous. Why? Because if this person strongly believes that strongly believing is dangerous, then he (or she) is the dangerous person he is worried about. Look in the mirror, Joe!

But some people (I especially heard this right after 9/11) put a finer point on the argument. They say that strong religious belief is dangerous.

Well... it's still silly.

For example, Al Qaeda strongly believes it is right to kill people (at least if they're Americans), and the Amish strongly believe it is wrong to kill people. So, will anybody seriously suggest the Amish are as dangerous as Al Qaeda?

It's what you believe that's crucial. How strongly you believe it is secondary.

A Big Rock

Can God make a rock so big that he can't lift it?

A Christian who was genuinely confused sent me an email with that question a while ago, and I was happy to try my best to respond.

But I suspect that most people who ask this question do it to show Christians that there is something their God cannot do. So nya, nya, nya! But frankly, methinks the critics exert themselves overly much. After all, they could just look at Hebrews 6:18, which says it is impossible for God to lie. There! Something God cannot do. Satisfied?

No, they'd rather ask one of those silly damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't questions, like, "Do you still beat your wife?" (I do, but only at foosball.)

So, for what little it's worth, let me try to answer the question.

God, by definition, is greater than anything else, so if God created a rock so heavy that he couldn't lift it, then he'd stop being God, because the rock would then be greater than him.

The Second Coming

In my fellowship group a year or so ago, the topic of Jesus' second coming came up and a few people groaned. I understand the groans. There have been so many times when people have said that Jesus would come back in a few months or a year or two, and he didn't. So I think people were thinking about all these wrong predictions and don't want anything to do with the topic.

But I think about it a bit differently. I see those who get excited about Jesus coming back as similar to little kids at home with a babysitter. Every time a car goes by they run to the window because they're sure it's Mommy and Daddy. And, of course, so often it isn't. In the same way, these people often look at dramatic political events - particularly if they involve Israel - as signs of Jesus imminent return. Running to the window.

And actually, I find that kind of enthusiasm and belief so much more refreshing than the embarassment, the long-suffering sighing and cynical - though perhaps unstated - assumption that whatever is happening in the world, it almost certainly isn't connected with Jesus' return.

I confess to being a bit jaded too, but I sympathize with the kids who run to the window at the sound of every car, because I know that while they may be wrong about this particular car, someday they'll be right, and then I want to be at the window with them. Someday our Lord will come back, and looking at the state of the Middle East, it doesn't seem entirely unlikely that it could be soon.

Quotes from Hannah Whitall Smith

Here are a few quotes I liked from the book, The Unselfishness of God, which I mentioned earlier.

On Giving the Battle to the Lord

"Many hundreds of similar battles have been fought and won for me by the Captain of my Salvation, and the secret I learned then, of handing over the battle to the Lord, and leaving it in his hands, has never failed to work when I have acted upon it. It has been to me over and over a practical illustration of Christ's words, 'Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.' He has overcome it, not we; and He will always overcome it when we put the matter in His hands, and will stand aside and let Him fight."

On Old Age

"If it were not for Him, old age with its failing powers and many infirmities could not but be a sad and wearisome time; but, with God, our lovely and unselfish God, at the back of it, old age is simply a delightful resting place. To be seventy gives one permission to stand aloof from the stress of life, and to lay down all burden of responsibility for carrying on the work of the world; and I rejoice in my immunity."

On Giving Advice to the Young

"Advice we who are older may give, and the fruits of our experience, but we must be perfectly content to have our advice rejected by the younger generation, and our experience ignored. Were we willing to do this, I am convinced the young would much more often be glad to profit by what is called 'the wisdom of the old'; but, as it is, they are afraid to ask advice because they know they will be expected to follow it, whether it commends itself to them or not, and because they fear the old will feel hurt if they do not. Perfect freedom in asking advice can only exist along with perfect freedom not to follow that advice."

Canned Church

I've been pondering lately what is necessary to have a church. By "church" I don't mean the universal Body of Christ, but the local gathering of believers.

If a few of us were to start a new church, what would we need? I think most of us would say we need a place to meet, someone to lead and preach, a musician or musical team, and someone to handle administrative tasks, such as putting money in the bank and paying bills.

But are all these things really necessary for cash-strapped little churches?

Well, I think every church - even small ones - need a place to meet, and someone to handle the administration, and a leader, but I'm not so sure about preaching and music.

In this age of electronics maybe you could replace live preaching with video tapes. There are a lot of good preachers out there, so why not use them? In fact, with video even the smallest church could learn from the greatest preachers in the world.

And I think the same might be said of music. Special singers at my church - which is large and has great live music - sometimes use recorded music as background, so why couldn't small churches use recorded music to which the congregation sings along? I know it sounds a little weird to sing along to a recording, but haven't you ever sung along to a song on a CD or on the radio?

Maybe a church service would look like this:

People enter the church, where there would be Christian songs or hymns playing in the background. The leader would get up, welcome people, open in prayer, invite people to greet one another, pray for prayer requests, then announce songs and play the music. After people had sung, the leader would announce the video or audio-taped message, and switch it on. At the end of the sermon, the leader would play another song or two and close in prayer.

I think great live preaching and great live music are always going to be best, but if they're not available - or are only available at a prohibitive price - then maybe canned preaching and music are the way to go. That way the whole church staff could be one dedicated but semi-skilled person working part time.

You and Thou

I just finished reading The Unselfishness of God, the interesting and very well written spiritual autobiography of Hannah Whitall Smith. Read it if you can find it, though I think it's out of print. She's the one who wrote The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life.

Pardon me if this seems tangental, but something that has always bugged me is that the English language has no plural for the word "you." "I" has "we," and "you" has ... uh, "you." I've sometimes thought that we should adopt the Southern expression, "you all," or "ya'll."

Interestingly, Smith's book gives some insight into the "you" question.

She grew up as a Quaker (though she modified her views substantially) and the book has a lot of background on Quaker practice.

At one time, she said, Quakers refused to use the word "you," instead favoring "thee" or "thou." The reason, she said, is because when the Quakers began, "thee" and "thou" were the singular and "you" was the plural. But also at that time people were beginning to use "you" as a mark of respect in addressing nobility.

Well, the Quakers believed in equality and weren't about to put up with the inequality implied in the use of "you," so they wouldn't use it. But "you" gradually began to be used for everybody, but the Quakers had gotten into the habit of avoiding it, though the reason for avoiding it had gone away.

A couple of things occur to me from this story. First, I kinda wish the Quakers had won this battle, so we would have the plural I've long wanted. Second, I wonder if there are ways we act or habits we've formed as Christians for which there is no longer a good reason.

The Long Now

The foundation called The Long Now has the goal of building a giant clock that will run for 10,000 years. At first glance that seems a rather pointless - though perhaps fascinating - thing to do, but the foundation's goal is to get people to think long term, and I guess 10,000 years is pretty long term.

In addition to promoting long-term thinking, I think it is an interesting idea for another reason, one that I doubt interests the foundation.

Alexis De Tocqueville, who wrote the best book with the most boring title ever written, Democracy in America, wrote a chapter called, "How, When Conditions are Equal and Skepticism is Rife, it is Important to Direct Human Actions to Distant Objects."

In brief (It is well worth reading the chapter in its entirety), De Tocqueville writes that as people lose their hope for eternal life, they limit their minds to the here and now, and to what they can accomplish in very brief periods of time. This focus on trivia, he argues, makes them unfit for accomplishing great, time-consuming tasks.

Therefore, he suggests that leaders and thinkers try to place the objects of their countrymen's ambitions "far beyond man's immediate range." Then, when people become accustomed to thinking into the distant future, he writes, "they can hardly confine their minds within the precise limits of life," and they will start to wonder what will become of themselves. By these means, he writes, people "would be gradually and unconsciously brought nearer to religious convictions."

If that's true, then blessings on The Long Now.

Who's the Timekeeper?

I enjoy my prayer group at work a lot, but I've been in other prayer groups that didn't work. I think the problem with the ones that don't work is that nobody is in charge. Here's how things go wrong:

People get together and eventually someone (hopefully) suggests that people share prayer requests, and people do, but they also chat about various other topics, then other people chime in and it becomes a general conversation. Then, about three minutes before the available time ends, somebody says, "Ohh, we're running out of time. John, would you pray for us?" So John prays a brief prayer and that's that. So, the few gregarious people are prayed for, the others miss out entirely, and the prayer time is perfunctory. Even worse, I've frequently seen instances when the time runs out and the group never gets to prayer.

I lead a group at work, and I think the solution is one person committed to watching the time, getting the requests out and making sure there is enough time to pray. I try to keep things on track by summarizing a person's requests. If I sense the conversation beginning to wander too far, I'll say, "So the things we can pray about for you are A, B and C. Are there any other things?" This tends to bring things back on topic. Also, I don't ask who has a request, we just go around the circle. That way even the shy people get a chance to share.

If I were to join a new prayer group, I think my first question would be, "Who's the timekeeper?" And if there wasn't one, I'd request that there be one. And if I couldn't get that, I think I'd decline to participate.

Theater in Church

Every once in a while, during a sermon at my church, an actor or two will come out and illustrate some sermon point with a little play-let. The actors do a good job and the themes are biblical, so why is it that every time this happens I cringe?

I honestly don't understand my own reaction. I feel embarassed - not for the actors, that they may flub a line or something - but for me. Why should I feel embarassed? I don't know. Nobody's looking at me. I have no theological objection to illustrating sermons with play acting.

When I mentioned this reaction to my wife, she said she feels embarassed too. So you better stay away from me. Whatever it is, it seems to be catching.

Catechism

I was in our church library on Sunday, and it occurred to me how much there is to learn about the Christian faith, and much that most people don't bother to learn. That's fine, I suppose. Not everybody needs to be a theologian, but I do think that everyone should at least have a basic understanding of their faith.

I think these basics used to be taught fairly consistently. I have an old copy of the Heidelberg Catechism I picked up at a used book store in Pennsylvania. It has 52 lessons on basic Christian doctrine, one for each week of the year. When a student finished the lessons, I'd say he or she was fairly well versed in the basics of Christianity.

But I'm not sure nowadays how much emphasis we now put on "catechism" - or whatever we want to call it. My church has a new members class that lasts for a few weeks, but I wonder how many churches even have that, and, if so, how meaty it is. Not getting around to a lot of churches, I couldn't really say, but I can say that I haven't heard much emphasis on such training. If so, I wonder if we aren't leaving people insufficiently grounded in their faith. Maybe we should think again about teaching catechism.

Neil Postman

I just read today that Neil Postman has died. I'm sorry to hear that.

Postman, if you don't know, wrote a lot of books about society and education. Very smart guy. At one time I worked with Andy, one of his sons, at a children's software company called Knowledge Adventure. One day Neil Postman came by to visit Andy, and after lunch I was surprised to be called into the boss's office.

I found myself in the office with my boss, my boss's brother, and Neil and Andy Postman. It turned out that they had all been out to lunch, and it had come up that I believed the Genesis account of creation (Perhaps because we were working on a program called Dinosaur Adventure), and Neil wanted to talk to me about it.

I look back with some amusement on what ensued; me, a Gentile, being called into the boss's office to defend before four Jews the validity of the Jewish scriptures.

Anyway, it was absolutely the most engaging and intellectually stimulating conversation I had had in ages! Neil Postman was charming, thoughtful, pointed, challenging and respectful, always letting me finish my thoughts without interrupting, like he really wanted to hear what I had to say. And I got the feeling that he enjoyed our conversation, too, which doubled my pleasure.

The Bookmark

I'm not sure many people still have a quiet time to start their day, but it's one of the best parts of my day. Usually I'll read a passage in my Bible, pray, then sing a hymn. It takes about 15 or 20 minutes.

I have a bookmark for my Bible that, obviously, keeps my place in the Bible. But also, on one side of it is a list of topics to pray about, and on the other side is a list of songs. The topics are just to jog my memory. So, the word "Family" reminds me to pray for my family members, and "World" reminds me to pray for missionaries I know and the lands in which they are working. When I'm done praying I flip over the bookmark, pick a song, and go on my way singing.

I've been doing this for a long time, though, and like any form, it can become rote, though I try not to let that happen, and I think maybe I should try some other technique, just for freshness. So anyway, I'm curious about other techniques. Does anybody else have a system that works well for their quiet time? Let me know.

In Search of the Un-God

A number of people at work have their computers set to run the SETI@home program. The software, if you're not familiar with it, is hugely popular and quite clever. When the computer is not busy with other tasks, it gets raw data from SETI@home (basically electronic static from space) crunches the data to see if it can find messages from space aliens, then passes the data back to the SETI@Home project. So SETI@home basically gets a supercomputer for free.

But my point is that I wonder if searching for space aliens isn't a secular age's alternative to God. I think people need and desire God, but for secularists, looking for mysterious, super-smart and very nice space aliens comes about as close as they can get to God without having to invoke the supernatural.

Leni Riefenstahl

Leni Riefenstahl died recently, and the news reports repeated that she had made the greatest propaganda film ever, Triumph of the Will. Well, I'd never seen the movie, so I ordered it. It is a documentary of a Nazi Party congress in Nuremburg and it was fairly interesting, though I confess I yawned a few times.

What struck me as I looked at Hitler speaking to all his bright-eyed, bushy tailed followers just dying to do something for their Fuhrer, was that he gave these men a vision. He appealed to an innate desire I believe most people have - to be part of something greater than themselves. In the film the greater thing was "Deutschland," unified and strong. There was a scene in which men from various parts of Germany said something like, "I'm from Erfurt," and another "I'm from Hamburg" and another "I'm from Bingen" (or where ever) but then they all added in unison, "And we're all Germans." Or something like that. My German is rusty.

And I began to feel a bit sorry for those bright-eyed young men, for whether they knew it or not, the greater thing they were being led into was wicked.

What I'm getting at, though, is not that Hitler was evil - I assume you knew that - but that the desire to be part of something bigger than oneself is something people are born with. I think God put it there.

And I wish the church would recognize this. I think many church leaders believe people just want to have love and peace and money and successful marriages and good children and nice jobs and fire insurance for eternity. That's partly true, but I think it misses something critical - that there is a restless desire on the part of many Christians to be part of something big God is doing - even if it is hard. Or, I might even say, especially if it is hard.

Perspective

I just got back from a fellowship meeting tonight. We prayed and discussed some little problems at church. The discussion about the problems kind of discouraged me, but then I remembered a passage I'd just read in 3 John.

John writes (9-10): "I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will have nothing to do with us. So if I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, gossiping maliciously about us. Not satisfied with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church."

Whew! Nobody in my church is trying to put godly people out of the church, yet that happened right back at the start of the church, and with the great Apostle John, no less. And who could not like John?

It really helped me put the trivial problems we were talking about into perspective.

Trance-Like State

Ever been to a revival meeting? If so, did you walk to it in a trance-like state? No? Well, LA Times columnist Steve Lopez thinks you did. He had this comment today about people going to a Schwarzenegger rally: "[T]he teaming masses streamed by me on foot, marching, marching, marching, trance-like, as if to a revival." It seems to me he could make his political commentary without being gratuitously rude to Christians.

The Next Wave

I'm going to go out on a limb. As I said in an earlier post, I think the church advances in waves and that we in the North American church are currently in a trough.

But what will the next wave be like? I'm going to make a prediction. I think the next revival will retrieve something of the sense of the awesomeness of God. I think a proper sense of awe has generally been lost. We think of God as our pal, not as our King, not as the great Creator above all the heavens, not as the one the very thought of whom should take our breath away.

I hope we don't loose the sense of God being our close friend, but if we can recover the awe, I think we'd be better off.

If I'm right, perhaps church services will be marked with more formality as people act in ways they think are respectful of God. Casual will be out and clerical collars and candles and old hymns and "Sunday clothes" will make a comeback, which is pretty much fine by me... except for ties; I really don't want to wear ties.

Banned in Saudi Arabia

I read in the newspaper this morning that the National Geographic article about Saudi Arabia that I mentioned in an earlier post has been banned in Saudi Arabia. Wow! And I thought it was pretty tame and in some ways perhaps even too positive. I would have thought they'd love it. I guess the Saudi leaders must be feeling extremely insecure these days.