Associated Luke

Ash Wednesday Meditaiton: Giving up and Taking On

2012-02-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

Meditation from last week's Ash Wednesday Service, held in the chapel at Sylvania UCC.

The author Paulo Coelho posts short stories on his blog. He posted on last week that really hits to the core of what Lent is about. It goes like this:

In the desert, fruit was scarce. God called one of his prophets and said:- Each person may only eat one fruit a day.

The custom was obeyed for many generations, and the ecology of the place was preserved. Since the remaining fruit supplied seeds, other trees appeared. Soon, the entire region was turned into fertile soil, which was the envy of other towns.But the people continued to eat one fruit a day – they remained faithful to what the ancient prophet of their forefathers had told them. However they never allowed the inhabitants of other villages to take advantage of the abundant harvest with which they were rewarded each year.

The result was that fruit rotted on the ground.

God called a new prophet and said:- Let them eat as much fruit as they like. And ask them to share the abundance with their neighbors.The prophet came to the town with the new message. But he was stoned – for by now the custom was ingrained in the hearts and minds of each of the inhabitants.

With time, the younger villagers began to question the barbaric old custom. But, since the tradition of the elders was unbending, they decided to abandon the religion. Thus, they could eat as much fruit as they wished, and give the rest to those in need of food.

The only people who remained faithful to the local church, were those who considered themselves saints. But in truth they were unable to see how the world changes, and recognize how one must change with it.

For me, this story highlights the dual themes of Lent. Lent is about self-discipline as well as self-reflection. Two things the villagers lack.

They could not see or listen to God, they were rendered immune to the movement of the Spirit through their traditions and rituals. And as a result, the children abandoned the church.The reading from Hebrews is all about discipline.

The message is that God's discipline is an expression of God's love. For human parents that's the trick and the challenge. Love without structure or limits, guidance or correction—that is, without discipline—isn't particularly good for children and other living creatures. Call it "sloppy agape" or “cheap grace.” But on the other hand discipline without love isn't a good thing either. Call it, as Paul does, "clanging cymbals, noisy gongs." Without love, discipline veers toward cruel and self-justifying punishment.

Love and discipline, holding the two together, is the challenge.

And there’s also self-reflection. The people in the story have disciplined themselves to have only one fruit, but that discipline is now out-dated and only served to drive the children away from the church. The discipline only served to convince those practicing it that they were righteous and saintly. It did not serve God, it did not further the good news. It is like what the Matthew text warns, it only served themselves and they were “hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.”

That’s where self-reflection comes in and can save us from outdated disciplines or empty piety and hypocrisy.

Our church is currently engaged in a corporate practice of self-reflection and discipline. With the help of our consultants and the transition team, we’re engaged in taking a long and hard look at ourselves and how we do church. In doing so, we are trying to rid ourselves of the phrase “We’ve never done it that way before,” a phrase that as killed many a vibrant and well meaning church.

We have work ahead to do. It’s hard work, but it’s necessary work. And corporately we’re engaged and doing a good job.

Personally, I, and maybe a few others... We could use some discipline. And not the discipline that we hear in Matthew which is very public and done only to puff yourself up and show how more holy or righteous or better you are than others.

Lent is not just about giving something up, it’s about taking on discipline. For your spiritual health as well as your physical health. Not to better your standing over and against your neighbor.

I have a few suggestions for ideas for lent: If you worry a lot, try to give that up. Discipline yourself against your anxiety. If you tend to isolate yourself, reach out and make new friends, share your story and what you’re going through. If you worry about your weight, discipline yourself not to have fast food, or cut out soda, take simple steps don’t go whole hog in discipline. Take on a spiritual practice that you learned about during last year’s Lenten services. If you are doing too much and running around to program to program, kid event to kid event, pull back during Lent. Discipline yourself to have a Sabbath.

With the dual themes of Lent, discipline and self-reflection, we can avoid the fate of the villagers in the story. We can respond and teach the next generation why we do what we do, and if it does not work anymore, we can adapt it or stop doing it.

I believe Lent is a good tradition to keep. A necessary tradition for our faith as it shows that discipline isn't necessarily the opposite of love; it can be an expression of it. And self reflection keeps us honest and open to the grace of God as well as finding Christ in our neighbor. Let us journey together into Lent and take on the practice of discipline and self-reflection. AMEN.

The Stellar Evolution Talk

2012-02-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

A recap: we won a grant, we have a speaker series, as well as a blog series all about the issue of Science and Religion. Now you can finally check out what we're doing here in NW Ohio. This is from our Feb 20th talk: Our faith, our scriptures and the big bang, stellar evolution, and the geological record, with Rev. Dr. Julian A. Davies and Dr. Al Compaan, both from the University of Toledo. You can read more about Al and Julian by clicking on their names or by checking out this video featuring Al, or even our Stewardship video for the church (that dude gets a lot of coverage!)

Without further linking, here's the youtube video:

The Myth of the Monkey Trial

2012-02-23T08:30:00.000-05:00

Reluctant teacher who never taught
evolution. But he's good for business!

Many of us have seen the play or movie Inherit the Wind.

Shame on us for relying on pop culture for history. It's so far from the truth.

First it's placed in the conflict model of science and faith where science wins (yay smarties!) and religion loses (boo on the idiots!). NOT TRUE.

Here's the deal: The Butler Act prohibits the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. Fact. The ACLU takes out an ad in Tennessee stating that they'll cover the lawyer fees of anyone who has been arrested on this charge. They rightly want to challenge this law and it's constitutionality and need a teacher to act as a defendant.

John Robinson, owner of Robinson's Drug Store in little Dayton, Tenn. thinks that having a trail in his little town would be good for business. So the enlist John Scopes (pictured to the left), the new teacher in town who taught physical education and substituted from time to time in various classes.

He did teach a biology class but skipped the chapter on evolution. But Robinson and the local business dudes convinced him to go on trial anyway.

And he lost and was fined $100 (later overturned on a technicality but the constitutionality was never at stake). The Butler Act remained until 1967 when it was repealed by the Tennessee legislature.

So the champions of Scopes are inaccurate on history.

Plus when you look at the book that Scopes was supposed to be teaching out of, you find even more shocking things. The book Civic Biology by George W. Hunter is incredibly racist and advocates for the sterilization of idiots, imbeciles and other parasites on our culture. I'm not sure that's the text to champion or lift up as good science at all.

Because of this style of Eugenics and social engineering (which is NOT mentioned in any of Darwin's writings) caused some 60,000 women to be sterilized, included Carrie Buck which is an extremely sad tale. Please click on the Biology book link and Buck's name to read the details.

References
Saving Darwin by Karl Gibberson
The Great Monkey Trial by L. Sprague De Camp
Summer of the Gods by Edward Larson
The Trails of Carrie Buck by David C. Long

The Myth of Darwin

2012-02-20T08:30:00.000-05:00

He also never stated we came from apes
in his book. Might want to read the book
and understand the theory before blasting it.

"Darwin is nothing more than an atheist set to prove his theory." -Al Mohler, creation apologist

"I did not doubt the literal truth of anything in the Bible." -Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin didn't quite know what he wanted to do.

He tried to be a surgeon but found the blood and guts of it to be absolutely repulsive. He learned taxidermy and loved the outdoors. His father, however, wanted him to pursue something that would be worthy, so Charles went off to seminary. But the call of nature was too strong and when an offer to travel on the H.M.S. Beagle presented itself, he jumped at it.

He embarked on December 27, 1831 and the voyage lasted almost five years. He kept careful notes of his observations and theoretical speculations, and at intervals during the voyage his specimens were sent to Cambridge together with letters including a copy of his journal for his family. Upon the Beagle he often debated sailors on their morals, ethics, and virtues. He was raised in the Unitarian and Episcopal church and believed deeply in natural theology.

After the voyage, he sat and thought about the voyage and didn't publish On the Origin of Species for two decades.

During his work he began to doubt the work of an omnipotent deity in all the pain and suffering such as the ichneumon wasp paralysing caterpillars as live food for its eggs. Yet he still viewed organisms as perfectly adapted, and On the Origin of Species reflects theological views. Though he thought of religion as a tribal survival strategy, Darwin still believed that God was the ultimate lawgiver. During this time he attended church with his family.

It wasn't until the death of his beloved daughter Anne (1841-1851) that he lost faith and described himself as an agnostic. He was a devoted father and love Anne but the loss proved too much for him. He then would walk his family to church and drop them off at the door, take a walk, and picked them up after service.

So Darwin was not an atheist set out to prove his already held belief. Nor did he renounce his theory on his death bed as is often claimed. He was a man of faith greatly troubled by the suffering and evil he saw in the world.

As we all should be.

References

Saving Darwin by Karl Gibberson (an EXCELLENT read!)

Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution by Randal Keynes

The Darwin Legend by James Moore

The Myth of Galileo

2012-02-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

Galileo was a valiant crusader for science whose great discoveries were smushed by the ignorant and stupid religious people. He was tortured by the Inquisition, kept from writing any more books, and was placed on strict house arrest where he lived out his life alone and poorly treated.

This is the popular account, and it is grossly inaccurate almost to the point of complete fiction. But like all good lies, the truth is mixed with lies and half-truths.

Galileo didn't come up with the idea that the earth revolved around the sun (instead of vice versa), it was Copernicus who didn't get persecuted at all. What Galileo did was set out to PROVE Copernicus was right by searching for evidence.

While searching he found many discoveries like moons around Jupiter and imperfections in the lunar terrain. Why were these shocking discoveries? Well, if all things revolve around Earth, no other planet should have moons let alone more than one moon. Also the heavens are supposed to be perfect, and the moon should be perfectly smooth, not an imperfect, scarred terrain (that's visible to the naked eye.. I mean seriously people!).

Galileo found no clear evidence however and kept searching and pressing for it. He was asked to stop because, you know, the 30 Years War was raging and so was the Counter-Reformation and the Plague, so overturning a helio-centric model was not a top priority and would only cause more division.

But then Galileo's buddy Maffeo Barberini (AKA Pope Urban VIII) becomes the pope in 1623. Since Galileo's good buddy is the pope he figures he now has a blank check to do whatever he wants. So he writes a book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems that features three characters: A Copernicus dude, an Aristotelian dude named Simplicio, and someone who isn't sure but ends up siding with the Copernicus dude (no surprise there).

Now Galileo's personality was one that generated a lot of enemies, and they were looking for any ol' reason to get Galileo in trouble. And so they jumped on this and put him in front of the Inquisition, claiming that his stupid character Simplicio was a caricature of the church and the pope. He was put up in a suite and asked why he attacked the pope so much in his book. Galileo couldn't prove it wasn't the pope, his buddy, his friend, and was placed on house arrest.

His house arrest was okay. He lived the life of an elder scientific statesman and was visited by all sorts of people, including Robert Govermine, the biggest theologian of the time. There was no oppression or suppression of his work, but in fact further dissemination since he was visited so much. He even brought back around the Jesuit Order that he had alienated earlier on. He died at the ripe old age of 77.

Kepler had cooler quotes and a better beard... just sayin'!

Now house arrest would be pretty boring and yeah, the church was pretty harsh in that instance. I don't want to say that it wasn't a poor move on the church's part, but it wasn't as awful as it is often made out to be.

And let's consider Johannes Kepler. Kepler would actually be a better model of how most scientists worked with the church at the time. He wrote about what was provable, worked with the church and the other orders and shaped a lot of the future of science. Yet Galileo dismissed as a "useless fiction" Kepler's idea that the moon caused the tides. Galileo also refused to accept Kepler's elliptical orbits of the planets,considering the circle the "perfect" shape for planetary orbits. Kepler did a better job of showing evidence for his claims and swinging the scientific establishment towards a Copernican view of the universe. He also, by the way, came up with a better way of making telescopes two years after Galileo’s demonstration in Venice.

I don't think Galileo is the best example of the science of the time nor is he an example of "religion vs. science." He's an example of a bombastic personality overstepping his bounds and having to pay for it.

References
Galileo's Daughter
Behind the Scenes at Galileo's Trial

Galileo and the Powers Above

ZOMBIES! Coming in March!

2012-02-14T06:30:00.000-05:00

In honor of The Walking Dead starting up again on AMC, I will present “The Theology of Zombies: The Doctrine of Resurrection and the Living Dead” at That Thing.

Date and location TBA. Suggestions for a location and date and time that is most suitable for y’all would be most welcome.

This is open for anyone who is interested in the church. Young Adults, Families and more. Confirmation-aged and up, please.

Oh, yeah, Happy Valentines Day! Hope you know that Zombies only love you for your brain.

The Myth of the Flat Earth

2012-02-13T06:00:00.000-05:00

The myth of the Flat Earth is the modern misconception that the prevailing cosmological view during the Middle Ages saw the Earth as flat, instead of spherical. Only two people in recorded antiquity believed this, and they weren't half as important as the big dudes like Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, or Origen, all of whom wrote about the spherical earth.

So where'd this come from?

The idea originated from a fictional story written by Washington Irving (you know, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow guy). It made its way into the Encyclopedia Britannica and the rest is ~~complete and utter fiction~~ history.

Great book out there that goes into fuller detail: Inventing the Flat Earth by J.B. Russell

4 Ways of Relating Science and Religion

2012-02-10T06:00:00.000-05:00

Ian Barbour came up with the Four Fold Typology of Relating Science and Religion, and was first published in 1988, expanded slightly in 1990, and in 1997. The four models are

Conflict: You have to choose either science or religion, and your only two options are scientific materialism or biblical literalism--Richard Dawkins or the Creationist Museum.
Independence: This stance states that science and religion have contrasting methods, differing languages and while they both address similar issues, there is no overlap between them. Stephen Jay Gould would be a proponent of this style.
Dialogue: Science raise questions that it can't answer and that is where religion steps in and addresses these. It is a polite discussion, but it can lead to the "God of the Gaps" where new methods of science shrink religion's role in society.
Integration: There is enough overlap between science and religion's quest for truth that one can inform and illuminate the other.

The conflict model is the most popular and widely held stance. Largely this claim rests on historical caricatures and urban legends (which I will address and deconstruct in the upcoming posts). It also stems from an assumption that the creationists and atheists agree on! And you thought that those groups don't agree on nuthin'.

They agree that evolution and science are inherently atheistic.

Our church does not agree with this. The founders of many of the scientific methods and Enlightenment principles wouldn't agree with this. And the scientists who attend church DEFINITELY DO NOT agree with this.

So where does this come from? What are these myths and urban legends that you said you'd address?! Let's see the evidence, Luke! Geez, calm down dude, I'll answer those, just stay tuned!

Report from the Trip to the Scientists in Congregations Conference

2012-02-08T06:30:00.000-05:00

We won this little grant a while back from the Scientists in Congregations Grant funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Sheila and I took a trip out to Chico, California (home of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company as well as Aaron Rodgers!) last week to network with the other recipients of the grant.You can read what we've done with our grant funds by clicking on this sentence.

We arrived at Bidwell Presbyterian church and got signed in. We then took our seats and found that we had 5 books for us as well as a sweet messenger bag! Pretty excellent way to start the day!

We received a binder which listed all the program briefs of the other grant winners. We got to speak with them in various structured and unstructured activities.

We heard talks from authors Karl Giberson and Robert J. Russell. We heard from Greg Cootsona, one of the associate pastors at Bidwell and a 15 year teacher of science and religion. We also heard from David Wood, the offsite co-leader for the grant.

We came, we saw, we were treated to a dinner at Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, we networked, we got a whole lot of stuff, and I feel really excited about this grant and the possibilities for future programs at Sylvania UCC.

Work needs to be done in this area and there's 50 some-odd years of writing on science and religion. It's time we make that work known and celebrate science within the church and the church's role in the advancement of science. If we don't, we have much to lose. After all, those who are leaving the church in droves (young adults ages 18-35) state that one of the reasons they leave is due to the lack of engagement with science.

The next few posts will be about the intersection of faith and science and some of the biggest myths and outright lies used to divide faith and science. These will be taken from my notes on a talk given by Karl Gibberson at the conference.

Unity within Diversity

2012-02-06T06:30:00.000-05:00

My last post strikes me down as a little idealistic and too simplistic.

What exactly am I advocating for? Don't I realize how fractured our political system is?

We're only fractured if we fall into black-and-white thinking. Both politically and theologically. Like you're either in the round hole or the square one. Turns out, you're actually on a spectrum. Spectrum thinking allows for diversity within a system or group and sees the pluses and minuses of various claims.

So when people ask me, "What's the UCC? What do y'all believe?" I can say, "It depends."

I think this is the gospel way. Jesus chose a zealot, a tax collectors, a few fisherman, and a half dozen women for his running crew. There's no way they agreed on every single thing. They can disagree mightily and still be together and respect one another.

I mean your family is like that right? You have that crazy left-wing, granola eat'n aunt who happens to be married to your Rush Limbaugh love'n right-wing uncle right?

The fact is, it's easier to stay in one corner or another and take a black-and-white view. It is easier to demonize your neighbor and rail against the strawman you create in your own head.

It's much harder to love your neighbor. It's much MUCH harder to turn the other cheek and to pray and serve those who harm you. It's harder to coexist.

So what do we do with the people whose minds are already made up? We love them. And we keep on accomplishing what are goals are.

It's easier said than done.

It is something I struggle with every day. Yet I feel it is key to discipleship.

Join or Die: A Flag for the Militant Moderate

2012-02-02T06:30:00.000-05:00

Ben's original flag

The Tea Party brought back an old flag. The flag was designed by and is named after American general and statesman Christopher Gadsden. It was also usedby The United States Marine Corps as an early motto flag.They hope to show how big government tramples on their liberty.

That got me thinking about a similar flag. Namely
<---this one designed by Ben Franklin that helped make his point about the importance of colonial unity.

I find the Tea Party pretty divisive. The members in Congress have succeeded in bogging down the political process and further fragmenting the Republican party. The OCCUPY movement is portrayed as a bunch of lefty wackos with no plan. I don't think they are, but they have made it known that they aren't seeking policy changes at this juncture. They are consensus forming. That "Join or Die" flag is consensus forming as well... sorta... So why not adopt it as the flag of the moderates?

I mean, where's the consensus flag? Where's the flag of those willing to be team players and compromise to fix what is wrong with our country and society? Why has compromise become a dirty word? Whatever happened to servant leadership? You know, the style Jesus talked about?

Pastor Luke's remake

I've been thinking of this for a while and Jon's State of the Union post sorta cinched it for me. It is past time we get around the table. It is time to "carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2).

I updated the labels on the flag at right to our current "hot categories" both politically as well as theologically. I put "The People" at the head in reference to David Graber's idea that “We collectively create this stuff, and so we could do it differently.”

We can fix it.

We.

Not "us" over and against "them."

But We.

Whatever label you fall under.

My High School Self

2012-01-30T06:30:00.000-05:00

Me at 17: Working on becoming differentiated

Over the holidays I went to my mom's house and helped her clean up my old room. I rediscovered my X-Men comics and sports cards (which weren't really the good investments I once thought). I also discovered these boxes stuffed with paper.

Turns out the papers were old school reports, basketball and baseball stat sheets, drawings and art projects, and reports cards from my school days. Those were pretty cool! I didn't do as poorly as I thought in certain subjects. I also got to brag about that triple-double against Lakewood freshman year (points, rebounds, and assists).

Then I decided to read the reports I wrote.

Bad idea.

Not only were there missspeelings and awful grammar, the worldview was so radically different from where I am at now.

The ideas weren't my own. They were things I had overheard from my family and friends. The view in the papers weren't really what I learned in the books, but what I thought the teachers wanted to hear.

I was utterly shocked. I was troubled as to why I was like that and wondered if I am still like that.

How much of what I am thinking are my own thoughts?

Then I went to the 2030 thing and learned about Bowen Family Systems Theory.

The key concept of Bowen's is the idea of differentiation of self. Differentiation of self refers to one's ability to separate one's own thinking and feeling from that of the family. Individuals with "low differentiation" are more likely to become fused with predominant family emotions. Individuals with "high differentiation" are more independent in their thoughts and feelings.

The idea is that we parrot the thoughts and feelings of our family from a young age, and as we mature and gradually find our own voice, we become more differentiated. One wants to start low and end high, so to speak, and become a person who isn't completely influenced by the actions and feelings of the family.

What I was reading in those reports and what I was so completely shocked about was how much I was parroting what I thought I heard from my family. Not a bad thing entirely, but when I was a teenager I thought I was an independent-minded dude.

I was wrong.

I am now caught between wanting to kick "high school self" in the butt and wanting to give him a hug and say a kind word or two.

The kick in the butt is to tell him to get his act together, he's not as special as he thinks he is and to expand his worldview and be nicer to others.
The hug is out of compassion.
The kind words would go something like this,"Dude, you have no idea what's coming, but it's going to be a blast! Listen more closely to what others in your life are saying. Oh, and invest in Apple."

Such is the process of differentiation. I am glad to have read those reports now and look at how far I have come as a differentiated person. I also realize I still have further to go.

Have you had a similar experience? A trip home where you're reminded of who you used to be? How are you doing at becoming a differentiated person from your family?

My Trip to Tampa for the Target 2030 Initiative

2012-01-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

Not a buccaneer from Tampa, instead a pirate from
Tybee Island, circa 2005, but you get the idea... right?

I went down to sunny Tampa Bay, Florida, for the week of January 8th and spent my time in a cold, windowless room learning about Bowen Family Systems Theory.

It was a blast! Good food, good colleagues and friends, and lots and lots of learning!

Bowen Family Systems Theory states that you aren't just an individual, but an individual with a history and a conditioning within your own family system. This system is both nuclear as well as generational.

Simply put: Your family is an emotional unit. It is the nature of a family that its members are intensely connected emotionally. What systems training does is have one map out the nature of these relationships to reach a better understanding of self--what your buttons are and why, how to remain connected but without becoming fused to the other person, and prevents a "boom and bust" ego.

That's pretty cool stuff, but what does that have to do with being a pastor? Well, congregations are emotional systems, too. Pastors need to be aware of the history each congregation has within itself.

Or as the Lombard Mennonite Center puts it (that's where our instructor was from):

With today's rising levels of anxiety in society and its resulting impact on families, there is little doubt that such anxiety impacts the church. The elevation of pressures within congregations and the increasing demands placed on clergy make it imperative that leaders step back from the fray to assess their own capacity for managing themselves in a calm, more differentiated way.
These clinics are designed to enhance the ability of participants to function as self-differentiated leaders within their own ministry setting. They provide a safe forum for processing challenging situations, while also facilitating reflection on a way of thinking about the human condition which has implications for all aspects of life.

It's a lot to chew on. So I will do just that. And post a few things about it.

UPDATE: Pastor Jon from Point Place spent the week with me, and you can read his take by clicking this hyperlink!

Associate Pastor's Annual Review 2011

2012-01-16T10:09:00.001-05:00

Ithas been quite a year. My first full year at Sylvania UCC has been a big one. Ifeel very at home here both in my role and as a member of the community. Hereare some of the quick highlights from 2011:

· Applied for and was accepted to theTarget 2030 Initiative, a leadership group for young UCC pastors.

· Spearheaded a grant proposal forScientists in Congregations which we were awarded in August 2011.

· The blog has been well-received. I getmany verbal comments (not many digital) about the posts. It averages 1,000 pageviews a month.

· Feel like I have assumed the pastoralrole quickly with all the weddings, funerals, and preaching that would normallyhave fallen to the Senior Pastor. In 2011, I have had the honor of conducting, 4baptisms, 8 weddings, and 7 funerals.

· A good working relationship with staffand other clergy.

· Taken over posting the text and audio ofthe weekly sermons and helped promote them on Facebook.

· Formed the Tech Team to explore use oftechnology in worship and to help fix glitches in sound system.

· Assumed role of Vice Chair of NWOA’sFaith Formation team.

· Establishing relationships in the churchcommunity and especially among the young adults and young families.

“That Thing” the young adults group that meetsthe second Tuesday of every month has been great fun. The average attendance is6 people per meeting. The Young Families Fellowship is going well and theevents for 2011-2012 have been well attended. I have established and maintainFacebook pages for both groups as well as a blog (http://associatedluke.blogspot.com) forthem and the wider church community.

Sharon, Sheila and I have found and arereading Think Orange by ReggieJoiner; a program that helps churches and families unite and work together innew ways. We are learning a lot and look forward to implementing an OrangeStrategy for families in the next year.

Advertisement for the Scientists in
Congregations speaker series

The9:20 education hour is still going strong thanks to the great system put inplace by Susan Rowland Miller. I thank her for continuing to teach seminarylevel classes and bring up wonderful topics and for her help in planning futurecourses. I look forward to teaching some classes of my own and want to thankall those who teach and attend these classes on Sunday and throughout the week.

Iled the confirmation classes in 2010-2011, and have planned and written thecurriculum for 2011-2012. It is a joy to get to know our youth and to be withthem as they make their transition into becoming full members of the church aswell as young adults.

TheWednesday Night Bible Study continues to teach me how to teach. It’s great toget to know those who show up and hear their views on and experiences ofscripture. In the spring, we read through the Gospel of Mark. In the fall, wedid “Not Your Grandma’s Bible Study (NYGBS).” NYGBS covered some not-so-pleasantstories from the Bible. The purpose was to show how human and gritty the Bibleis, how it looks unflinchingly at humanity and all our issues and drama. Andhow we’re still dealing with issues from thousands of years ago. It was a lotof fun.

Bill’s death was hard to deal with personally and professionally. I feel like I couldhave learned a lot more from him, but I am thankful for the time I had learningfrom such a great pastor and mentor. The fact that I knew him and that pastorslike him exist in the world is of great comfort. I am thankful to have knownhim and continue to learn from him from this community he helped lead.

I amthankful to be your associate pastor and look forward to journeying with you in2012 and in the years to come.

Guest Post from David Walker

2012-01-11T06:30:00.000-05:00

David Walker is a financial advisor from the firm Hegde and Walker here in Toledo. He is also a member of our church. Recently he sent me the following email in regards to our discussion:

ESPNtoday had a story and the 2 announcers were discussing the bulldogs played thebulldogs and compared the game to the definition of bull tog, listed below I could not believe my ears one announcer said EQUITABLE, is thateven a word?

Thenit occurred to me, maybe young people do not know the word and it does not meanequal but fair . The OCCUPY movement in my opinion is taking aboutbeing just and fair not equal. You may want to include this in yourfuture discussions. Maybe the OCCUPY mascot should be the bulldog

Theperfect Bulldog must be of medium size and smooth coat; with heavy, thickset,low-swung body, massive short-faced head, wide shoulders and sturdy limbs. Thegeneral appearance and attitude should suggest great stability, vigor andstrength.

And the dog should be able to skate... and so should OWS

Sound sturdy limbs and the suggestion of great stability, vigor and strength are as important to the present day's Bulldog as they were to its ancestors.

Thedisposition should be equitable and kind, resolute and courageous (not viciousor aggressive), and demeanor should be pacific and dignified. These attributesshould be countenanced by the expression and behavoir.

I like what he has to say and agreed. The bulldog is a good mascot. I've liked all the bulldogs I've met (even though they breath a little loudly). I mean we don't want the mascot to be a greyhound cause they just lay around all day despite being able to run 45 MPH (I know this because I own one). Or a Border Collie who works like mad all day long and doesn't know how to quit. The bulldog is a noble breed of working dog. Protective yet kind. Dignified yet sort of goofy looking.

I asked David what he thought of the OWS Movement and he said that he was all for it. "It's what I've been preaching for years. We need to things for a strong middle class: the ability to earn a living wage with good, stable jobs and to spend within your means."

Missing the Point

2012-01-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

Dude, you don't get it.

As I stated in the last OWS post, there have been more than a few objections to the OWS movement. Much of this criticism has come from a blog called We are the 53% (a play on the OWS blog called The 99%).

The site was started by Erick Erickson a right-wing blogger who named the site after the false assertion that that only 53% of Americans pay taxes.I find it interesting that the user-submitted stories are just as depressing and virtually identical to the stories on the 99% blog, except that these struggling Americans are militantly defensive of their poverty.

They are way too excited to spend most of their waking existence working ridiculous hours on multiple minimum wage jobs with no benefits. Ironically, these stories are the very thing that spawned the OWS Movement!

The entire 53% site is the worst case of Stockholm Syndrome I have ever seen.

Should we call these people "proud yet mindless minions"?

OWS does not hate capitalism or the USA. What it hates, as I understand it, is how the capital markets have run amok and threatened all of us. Think Enron, the housing bubble, Goldman Sachs and the banks "too big to fail". It hates how the people of this country, like the marine, are working two jobs, have been abused time and time again and left to pick up the pieces from the relentless and pathological pursuit of profit above all else.

We need to write a new social contract. The old one has been ignored, trampled on, and forgotten by those defending the 1%.

So, where were we?

2012-01-03T14:09:00.002-05:00

Oh yeah, talking about Occupy Wall Street (aka OWS).

I have found it extremely difficult to type anything about OWS for a variety of reasons.

First, OWS is like a teenager. Well, like I was when I was a teenager. It doesn't quite know what it is, but it knows what it isn't. It can tell you what it's not more than it can tell you what it is at this stage, being about 4 to 5 months old.

The Occupy Toledo website states, “A protest is at first antagonism. An occupation is at first COMMUNITY. A protest is defined by opposition. An occupation is defined by PRESENCE. A protest is singular. An occupation is MULTITUDE.”

So it's not a protest, but a presence. It is not a protest or list of demands but a consensus building collective sans authority, sans private ownership, sans any set-in-stone political agenda.

It is against the 1% but not against wealth per se. It's against wealth acquired by unethical means and against wealth hoarded by the wealthy.

The movement is still young and working to define it's values, yet it has been mislabeled more often than not. This cartoon takes down many of the objections and mislabeling.

The second reason I have been hesitant to write about OWS, is that I might be way to biased toward the movement.

I was raised below the poverty line and watched as factory after factory shut down in my little area of Appalachian Ohio. My heart is with the working poor. And much of my thinking is there as well.

I might look like a super-stylish, devilishly handsome middle class dude, but part of me still identifies with my working class, poverty background. You can't see that, but I often think it those terms and sympathetic with that POV (mainly since many of my family and friends are still in that mindset and circumstances).

So I have been a little reluctant to put my views out there as I feel I might offend someone. Or be labeled that I'm participating in the "class warfare against the rich." I might have already offended someone. And I am participating in class warfare only because I have been in that fight for my entire life.

That means I can largely see the worker's point of view but not so much the CEO's. Esp. the CEO who runs a company into the ground and gets a big bonus for it. I am trying to be aware of that as I continue the conversation. Feel free to call me out one way or the other.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

2011-12-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

Here's Eve and Papa's telling of the Nativity Story.

I hope you and yours have a fantastic holiday season, whatever you celebrate!

I'll see you again in the New Year where we'll pick back up on the Occupy Wall Street discussion!

Keep the T-Rex in T-Rex-mas!

2011-12-21T06:30:00.000-05:00

Don't ponder this picture (or the title
of this post) too long. Just soak
in its awesomeness!

"But Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart." -Luke 2:9

"The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him." -Luke 2:33

There's a lot of pondering going on in the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke.

Have you ever done that? Pondered?

It's a dangerous business you know.

But this seems to be the season for it. At the end of the year, we ponder what to get family and friends. Whether we should get gifts for others. Whom to send those holiday cards to. Whether we should say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" and if there's really a war on Christmas (BTW, no, there isn't.)

We see it in our magazines as the critics ponder and decide what movies, songs, artists, etc were the best of the year. And we ponder if they're right and whether it's worth writing a letter about if we disagree.

In church, we ponder the history of the Christmas story and what the virgin birth really means.

After Christmas we'll ponder what resolutions we should make for the new year and how long we'll actually keep them.

I am thankful for you, dear reader, for reading my weekly ponderings here on this blog. I ponder a lot. I ponder how we'll go forward as a nation both politically and culturally. I ponder how to support the least of these, how to stand against the criminally rich, yet honor wealth earned.

And most of all I ponder how I will bring the good news and light of Christ to those in my life and you who read this blog. How can I bring God's paradoxical kingdom closer and become a better citizen of it?

How can we all incarnate God and live our lives in service and in love of our neighbor?

As the new year begins, let us all live the questions.

What questions do you have?

A History of the Market Economy

2011-12-19T06:30:00.000-05:00

Bloomberg Business week ran a feature on one of the minds behind the OCCUPY WALL STREET movement. David Graeber is an
anthropologist, activist, and anarchist who helped transform a hapless rally into a global protest movement. You can read the full article here.

What I found interesting was Graeber's take on how the idea of the market economy developed from a barter system into a common medium of exchange system.

Here's how the article put it, the emphasis are mine:

Economics textbooks tell a story in which money and markets arise out of the human tendency to “truck and barter,” as Adam Smith put it. Before there was money, Smith argued, people would trade seven chickens for a goat, or a bag of grain for a pair of sandals. Then some enterprising merchant realized it would be easier to just price all of them in a common medium of exchange, like silver or wampum. The problem with this story, anthropologists have been arguing for decades, is that it doesn’t seem ever to have happened. “No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money,” writes anthropologist Caroline Humphrey, in a passage Graeber quotes.

People in societies without money don’t barter, not unless they’re dealing with a total stranger or an enemy. Instead they give things to each other, sometimes as a form of tribute, sometimes to get something later in return, and sometimes as an outright gift. Money, therefore, wasn’t created by traders trying to make it easier to barter, it was created by states like ancient Egypt or massive temple bureaucracies in Sumer so that people had a more efficient way of paying taxes, or simply to measure property holdings. In the process, they introduced the concept of price and of an impersonal market, and that ate away at all those organic webs of mutual support that had existed before.

That’s ancient history, literally. So why does it matter? Because money, Graeber argues, turns obligations and responsibilities, which are social things, into debt, which is purely financial. The sense we have that it’s important to repay debts corrupts the impulse to take care of each other: Debts are not sacred, human relationships are.

If we understand the social origins of debt, Graeber says, we become much more willing to renegotiate debts when conditions change, whether those are mortgages, credit-card debts, student loans, or the debts of entire nations. And if the desperate response to the ongoing financial crisis has shown anything, he argues, it’s that we’re willing to forgive debts if the institution that has them is important.

“Sovereignty does ultimately belong to the people, at least in theory. You gave the bank the right to make up money that is then lent to you,” he argues. “We collectively create this stuff, and so we could do it differently.” (page 5 of the online article)

This information presents a different history that I learned about economics. Lots of people like to talk about the "Free Market" and the "Invisible Hand." Graeber doesn’t seem to buy those ideas, instead he insists that since humans created it, made the rules, and choose to enforce them or not: then it’s a construct and we can change it if we want.

Thus he seems to say that total deregulation of the market isn't going to fix the problem any more than total regulation would. His scope is on a local level of communities developing and sticking to their own rules in markets they generate.

What do you think? Is this guy a total wacko or is he onto something here? How do you understand the Free Market and Invisible Hand?

The Occupy Wall Street Movement

2011-12-14T06:30:00.000-05:00

2011 seemed to be a year of social movements. First there was the emergence of the Tea Party Movement. And now the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) popped up.

What's the difference between these two movements? Just check out the diagram.

Difference between OWS and Tea Party.
Diagram originally posted here.

<---I really like this diagram.

In many respects Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is indeed a mirror image of the Tea Party. To the Tea Party government is the enemy. To OWS the huge corporation is the enemy. OWS wants to raise taxes on billionaires. The Tea Party wants to considerably reduce them. OWS wants to rebuild and strengthen the safety net. The Tea Party wants to weaken it.

The Tea Party has it's own leaders in a top-down system as well as a clear program. That program is about shrinking government, adhering to the constitution in every law passed, audit federal agencies for constitutionality, demand a federal balanced budget amendment, and reduce taxes.

The OWS movement lack leaders and a formal platform, but their demands clearly emerge from the thousands of individual grievances expressed in homemade signs and letters. The demands boils down to “free us from the bondage of our debts and give us a basic ability to survive.” They note that the CBO finds that, between 1979 and 2007, income grew by:

275 percent for the top 1 percent of households,
65 percent for the next 19 percent,
Just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent, and
18 percent for the bottom 20 percent

So this is not strictly an anti-business move nor is it an anti-wealth movement. It's a fairness movement.

There's no list of demands. There's a whole slew of diversity in the movement whereas the Tea Party has become a Republican-Libertarian-Right Wing movement.

The Tea Party is defined over and against the government and the "establishment" however they define it. OWS is inherently a consensus building movement. I know of some Tea Partiers who have moved over to OWS without abandoning the Tea Party label. Some understand the OWS in the Tea Party movement, while others don't at all (and maybe don't want to).

Of course this is my limited view. You can check out Pastor Jon's awesome write up on his blog. And other resources like the official OWS page, the Occupy Toledo Page, and the Jesus Radical's write up.

The Billboard Wars Hit Home

2011-12-08T15:57:00.001-05:00

Students at Southview paint their rock to show up their rival
school

Recently the Sylvania Northview High School's student newspaper caused a stir this week with an article about student views on homosexuality. You can check out the article here at the Toledo Blade.

The comments on the Blade are equally fascinating.

If anything, it confirms what we have been talking about in The Billboard Wars Series, specifically how Liberals and Conservatives make moral decisions.

So what should we do about this? Should we reprimand the school, retract and hide the paper?

I don't think so.

If anything, this is honest journalism. It's a tough topic. The students tackled it and provided us with an insight into what they think about an important issue. Steering away from topics like homosexuality, sex, violence, bullying and other "impolite topics" does a disservice to our youth and to ourselves. If we are not facing hard ethical and moral issues, how will we or our children ever learn?

Avoiding issues only perpetuates the old way of thinking and prohibits any new insights dialogue can bring. As Einstein once said (or has been reported to say but I can't verify or deny it), "The thinking it took to get us into this mess is not the same thinking that is going to get us out of it."

And we need everyone's insight.

We need the boundaries and clear thinking of the more conservative people. We need the fresh view and complex thinking of those who are liberal. And we need the moderates to moderate between these two sides and bring a pragmatic view to the picture.

Maybe this is all about the importance of public and civilized debate. Looking at the various news outlets' letters to the editor and online comments, we adults have lost that ability. Maybe our children can learn from this experience and lead us.

Occupy That Thing

2011-12-07T09:51:00.000-05:00

The Clobber Passages

2011-12-05T07:00:00.000-05:00

Now that we've established what the two churches believe, it's time to turn to scripture.

I have read extensively on passages that supposedly refer to same-sex relationships. So this post is my condensed analysis of many scholars like Peter Gnomes, Gail O'Day, and others. These are commonly referred to as “the clobber passages” or the “big eight”. I think only 6 are commonly used, plus there are two other passages that are argued for as well, but pertain more towards the “naturalness of heterosexuality” or as an argument for homosexuals to remain celibate.

Four of these (Genesis 19:1-5, Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 23:17) are found in the Old Testament while the other four (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 1:9-10, Romans 1:21-31 and Jude 1:6-7) are located in the New Testament.

Only six or seven of the Bible’s one million verses refer to same-sex behavior in any way — and none of these verses refer to homosexual orientation as it’s understood today. None of these verses have anything to do with the understanding we have today of a same-sex monogamous, consensual and committed relationship.

What Bible is talking about was not homosexuality as we understand it but rather sex-acts. The culture the Bible was written in believed that no long term committed relationships could exist between members of the same sex. Men having sex with men were viewed as lust only, no love or loyalty needed, both in pagan and Jewish thought. The concept was only alluded to in the ancient world and the word homosexuality itself is an invention of the late 19th century.

Genesis 19:1-5 and Jude 1:6-7: appears to refer to the desire by the men of Sodom to engage in rape. As we have covered in the previous posts about the story of S&G, there is nothing about homosexuals. The “Sin of Sodom” as commonly referred to in other parts of the Bible and for the Rabbis up until the 1700s was inhospitality and selfishness. That is what the interpretation of the phrase "wickedness" was, nothing else. Plus Rape has little or nothing to do with sex, orientation, or whatever, but everything to do with power.

Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13: if you eat shrimp or pork or a cheeseburger, wear mixed fibers, do not stone adulterers to death, suffer witches to live, cut the hair at your temples, or celebrate certain festivals then you’re an “abomination.” This book is for a cultic sacrificial culture organized and ran by the priests at the temple. Many church father's state that since there is no temple, no priests, thus the book is largely invalid. My question is that Christians largely do not follow this book, why do many lift these two verses out? I just find it strange and hypocritical that opponents of same-sex relationships would lift this verse out of the many more that would apply to their own lifestyles (which, I would guess, does not involve sacrificing pigeons or doves).

Deuteronomy 23:17: is an anti-prostitution passage for both men and women of Israel.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 & Timothy 1:9-10: these passages are ambiguous. They might possibly relate to homosexual behavior; but they might well refer to men who sexually abuse boys, or to male gigolos, or to male temple prostitutes or men who enjoy sex too much, or men who enjoy fine things too much. We just don’t know. The two words used in 1 Corinthians is esp. ambiguous. I wrote a whole paper on these two Greek words,

1.Malakoi

2. Arsenokoites

If these passages actually referred to persons with a homosexual orientation, they probably would not refer to loving, consensual same-sex behavior in a committed relationship. Paul was writing before the existence of a homosexual orientation was known (the word first came about in 1886).

I think the terms are against "excess" and "exploitation" and would cover things like having too much of anything like sex (or concerned with it too much), or wealth, or alcohol or whatever, and exploiting others through blackmail, lying, or being a human trafficker of some sort or another.

Romans 1:21-31: The idea here is that natural acts are exchanged for unnatural acts. These words literally mean that which is a persons "natural disposition" and something that comes "instinctively" to them. In other words, it is who you are naturally; without reprogramming, counseling, or any other form of behavioral modification that attempts to change your behavior to that which society has deemed acceptable. If you are naturally gay, what then? The majority of medical science agrees that being gay is not a choice.

Not to mention that this whole deal is a rhetorical set up, chapter 1 of Romans, Paul is getting his audience riled up only to say in chapter 2, "don't feel so righteous, y'all do this too." That's the problem with proof-texting, if you lift out verses you can sometimes miss the punchline.

Sometimes Genesis 1:28 is used (be fruitful and multiply) to show that the “natural” union is between man and a woman yet that definition would make any marriage that does not produce children just as bad or unnatural as being gay. That does not equate. If you also think of the nation of Israel's position between empires, then having as many kids as possible would be incredibly important.

Sometimes Matthew 19:12 is used which is Jesus talking about enuichs to show that homosexuality is okay as an orientation but can’t be practiced. This comes from the cultural value of the Matthean church that exceptional people, such as prophets and missionaries remained unmarried as a mark of their special calling. John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul belonged to that group. It is for the minority who can, because it is given to them by God (1 Cor 7:7-12). The Catholic church uses this for their stance on homosexuality. It's okay to be gay since it's not a choice, but one cannot practice it. Thus celibacy is not a choice but a forced norm by the church and not a gift like Paul states it is in many places in his letters.

Click on this ye olde post for a list of works cited.

That's what I make of these posts after struggling with them, researching the socio-historic setting that they were written in, and trying to figure out what they mean for my life. What say you?

The Moral Mind: The 5 Differences Between Conservatives and Liberals

2011-11-30T06:00:00.000-05:00

I love the TED Talks.

One in particular helps shed some light on what the debate over homosexuality is really about in the church.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral valuesthat form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right orcenter. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberalsand conservatives tend to honor most.

Haidt states that “We can say that liberals have a -- kindof a two-channel, or two-foundation morality. Conservatives have moreof a five-foundation, or five-channel morality.” It is these 5 moral check points that is actually at the core of the debate:

Harm-Care
Fairness-Reciprocity
Group-Loyalty
Authority-Respect
Purity-Sanctity

Liberals hold 1 and 2 the highest but largely don't care about the last three. Conservatives hold the last three over the first two; so 1 & 2 only matter if you meet the other criteria, if not then who cares you're outside the group. Here's what it looks like in the graph (there's a better one with explanation in the video if you don't understand this poor reproduction):

I see this in the Billboard Wars as well. The Church on Strayer is processing 3-5 over 1-2, stating that homosexuality is:

sinful (unpure = #5)
interpreted to be outside the bounds of the authority of the Bible and group tradition (#4 and 3)
thus fairness and caring only matter if they repent from this lifestyle choice

Yet Central Methodist is claiming that:

the church has caused harm to the LGBTQ community and hasn't be fair to them (#1 and 2)
which is unfortunate because God's creation is diverse and grace abundant and includes LGBTQ people (thus saying that #3, LGTBQ peeps are in the group)
God loves everyone and Jesus broke down walls that divide people and either moved or removed the purity codes of his time (#4 and 5).

Accurate? I think they stick with the given data from the TED Video... how about you?

Two Churches, Two Assumptions

2011-11-28T14:45:00.000-05:00

What They Said
Central Methodist: Being gay is a gift from God
Church on Strayer: Being gay is NOT a gift from God, forgiveness, love, and eternal life are.

What They Mean
Central Methodist: All life is a gift from God, including homosexual life
Church on Strayer: Being gay is sinful and homosexuals need to repent.

Theology and the Bible
Central Methodist: All are God’s beloved.Jesus is God’s grace (love) made real in the world. God never abandons. By acknowledging our brokenness we open ourselves to relationship with God. No direct definition of the Bible is quoted on their website. Mainline denomination.

Church on Strayer: The Holy Bible, and only the Bible, is the authoritative Word of God. It alone is the final authority in determining all doctrinal truths. In its original writing, it is inspired, infallible and inerrant (II Timothy 3:16; II Peter 1:20-21; Proverbs 30:5; Romans 16:25-26). Mega-church affiliated with the Church of God Pentecostal denomination.

View of Homosexuality
Central Methodist: Churches often unfairly alienate members of the LGBT community. They believe that sexual orientation is not a choice and that anti-gay sentiments are harmful to LGBT individuals, they sought to provide an open environment for gay Christians to worship freely.

Church on Strayer: Being gay is a choice and a deviant one and the pastor's assumption is that it is not in line with scripture and goes on to quote Romans as proof.

References
Central Methodist: http://centraltoledo.org/

http://centraltoledo.org/blog/get-involved/being-gay-is-a-gift-of-god-campaign/

Church on Strayer: http://thechurchonstrayer.com/

http://thechurchonstrayer.com/our-belief/

http://tonyscott.org/post/10444747926/being-gay-is-not-a-gift-from-god

Number of Billboards

Central Methodist: 1

Church on Strayer: 9

The Billboard Wars

2011-11-23T06:30:00.000-05:00

First and foremost, HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I'm thankful for all my blog-readers, congregants, and internet-stalkers ;-) It is a privilege to write to you and that you're willing to read and comment on this blog.

Now onto the post!

Two churches in our area recently took out billboards. Both have something to do with homosexuality. What are these two churches actually saying? What are the assumptions behind these billboards? What does the Bible actually say about homosexuality? We'll tackle these questions in the next two weeks! Until then, you can read about these two churches here at the Toledo Blade and from OutlinesToledo.

Why the Interpretation of the Sin of Sodom

2011-11-21T07:00:00.000-05:00

from the Naked Pastor

The “sin of Sodom” is understood to be against gay people. I, myself, have been told that Sodom was destroyed because of its homosexual citizens, but the passage never specifies the sins of Sodom.

In Genesis 18:20, God only states that Sodom and Gomorrah “have great outcry against them and their sin is very grave.” The intent of the mob is one of rape, but I don’t see the connection to homosexuality in any sense.

The Bible understands the "sin of Sodom" having to deal with inhospitality and lawlessness. If this is the case, then more than a few towns I’ve visited are in trouble. And those who don't welcome LGBTQ folk are actually the ones committing the "sin of Sodom"... oh irony of ironies!

The prevailing explanation of this pericope among Christians is that the sins of Sodom involved sexual immorality, specifically homosexuality. It says nothing about a committed same sex relationship, it does involve rape and rape is about POWER and has almost nothing to do with sex. It's a sex act, sure, but it has nothing to do with love-making, relationship, or LGBTQ people in the least.

Yet the interpretation still persists.Why is that?

IMHO I think it has everything to do with the traditional boundaries of a group.People within a group want to be told what to do and to be assured that theirs is the right path. The thinking of “boundaries keep us safe” is important to people who benefit from the boundaries. This is why this passage has been used over the years to show the sin of homosexuality.

Esp in the case of this Bible story.. why read when your
prejudice already tells you the conclusion?!

Homosexuality is an affront to social power structure. David Hilborn argues, "It must be granted that direct references to homosexual activity in the Bible are relatively few. However, these more explicit texts belong to a much broader Biblical discourse on creation, love, holiness and human relationships - a discourse which goes to the heart of God’s purpose for humankind" (1). People will build boundaries out of passages that have nothing to do with the boundary. Just looking for reinforcement of these boundaries is no way to interpret the Bible.

These people who attempt to justify their condemnation of homosexuality with this story ignore the real sin of Sodom (being inhospitable), and overlook the other elements of incest and rape. Instead of actually reading the story and thinking, believers often lead with their pre-existing bias and prejudice. This is a travesty.

If we can make a Bible story about "them" then we don't have to look at us.

Works Cited

Hilborn, David. Homosexualityand Scripture. London England: Evangelical Alliance, 2000.

Mission:1 Rawk the Hawk Results Show!

2011-11-19T17:54:00.001-05:00

I talk about the amount of food items donated to the UCC's Mission:1 from Sylvania United Church of Christ (watch 'til the end).

The Sin of Sodom Biblically Understood

2011-11-17T06:00:00.000-05:00

From ReverendFun.com

No reasons are given for destroying Sodom in Genesis, aside from that it is exceedingly wicked. But how is it wicked? I would like to know what the specific sins of the town were so that I can avoid living in a place like Sodom.

Doing a search within Scripture reveals the sin of Sodom: Sodomy is inhospitality, not feeding the poor and hungry, and not following any type of law or code.

Check it out:

Ezekiel 16:46-50: “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.”

Jeremiah 23:14 states, “I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem a horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.”

Keeping the alien/stranger safe and caring for the poor are commands in Deuteronomy 24:17-21. These transgressions would be a grave sin to ancient Jews.

Given this information, how does that affect your understanding of the "sin of Sodom"? How would "sodomy laws" be affected?

A Tour of Our Great Cities

2011-11-14T06:00:00.001-05:00

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, John Martin, 1852.
found on Wiki

Greetings! Once again, I'm your tour guide Ah Biz Mal and I want to welcome you to the beautiful twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah Oh, and btw, Sodom means “burning” and Gomorrah means “submersion.”

Sodom is one of a group of five towns, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Bela -- also called Zoar (Genesis 19:22). The region is also collectively referred to as "the Cities of the Plain" (Gen 13:12) since they were all sited on the plain of the Jordan River, the southern limit of the lands of the Canaanites (Gen 10:19). Lot, a nephew of Abraham chose to live in Sodom, because of the proximity of good grazing for his flocks (Gen 13:5-11). He recently moved into the city limits.

Some information you may want to know about our town is that we want to make sure that you know your place. We're in charge, you're not.

Jacob Isaacs in his book Our People; History of the Jews tells the traditional story of Plitith, Lot’s daughter, who had secretly given food to a starving stranger, and the people of Sodom burned her in public. Another story tells of when the citizens discover a young girl had fed a starving beggar, they smeared honey all over her and placed her upon the city wall, so that she died from the stings of the bees attracted by the honey (Isaacs).

The Talmud also cites Sodom as well. A Talmudic saying evaluates people’s attitude toward property stating, “He who says ‘Yours is mine and mine is yours’ is a pious man: ‘mine is mine and yours is yours’ is the average, but there are those who say 'what's mine is mine and yours is mine' that it is the Sodomite rule” (Steinsaltz 202).

We are a legislative ~~evil~~ paradise. In Sodom, we can go back on our word and no court could convict us (Steinsaltz 202)!

Just so you know what you're getting into! We hope you'll enjoy your stay here. Odds are, we'll enjoy it more than you will.

Works Cited
Fretheim, Terence E. "The Book of Genesis: Introduction, commentary, and reflections. The New Interpreters Bible Volume 1. Abingdon Press, 1994.

“Gomorrah.”Hebrew-English Lexicon of Old Testament. 2^nd edition. Vol. 1 NewYork, United Bible Societies, 1989. BibleWorks. CD-Rom. Vers. 7.0.BibleWorks 2006.

Isaacs, Jacob."Excerpt." Our People; History of the Jews.

“Sodom.”Hebrew-English Lexicon of Old Testament. 2^nd edition. Vol. 1 NewYork, United Bible Societies, 1989. BibleWorks. CD-Rom. Vers. 7.0.BibleWorks 2006.

Steinsaltz,Adin The Essential Talmud. Basic Books, Inc. New York, New York, 1976;202.

Sodom and Gomorrah Fly By

2011-11-09T06:30:00.000-05:00

Welcome to S&G Travel, I'll be your tour guide, Ah Biz Mal. Here is the view from 50,000 feet on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Sodom and Gomorrah motif from the Nuremberg Chronicle
by Hartmann Schedel, 1493 from wiki.

Lot is first introduced in Gen 12:1-5 and was the son of Abraham's brother Aran. Abraham had always a great affection for Lot, they could not continue longer together in Canaan because they both had large flocks and their shepherds sometimes quarrelled (Gen 13:6,7). Lot went southeast to plains near the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, since the land there was well watered. (Gen. 13:10-12). This tells the reader why Lot is in the region of Sodom and separated from Abraham.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is foreshadowed in chapter 18. The messengers that were on their way to Sodom encounter Abraham in Genesis 18. Abraham and Sarah have a meal with them and the messengers state that Sarah will bear a child. Sarah laughs at this and suddenly the Lord is there. The Lord asks a rhetorical question “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” Then the men set out for Sodom with Abraham and the Lord looking on.

Abraham then negotiates with the Lord. God hasn't really figured out what to do with Sodom and seeks Abraham's advice. The audience would also know that Lot survives only through Abraham’s negotiation with the Lord.

The three men suddenly become two angels at the start of chapter 19. They come to Lot. Lot houses and protects the angels against the wicked citizens of Sodom. The angels then deliver Lot from the city’s destruction, all except for Lot’s wife who is turned into salt. Whoops!

Lot and his daughters by Giovanni Battista Lama

Verses 27 to 29 depict Abraham viewing the destruction. Notice now how Abraham bookends the story. It is almost as though Abraham must verify the story, that Lot’s testimony cannot stand on its own. Abraham meets the angels and talks with God to save Lot and then verifies that the cities were destroyed as he views the smoke rising from the land.

The end of chapter 19 is the story of Lot and his daughters; a great way to cap off a story of destruction than with incest.

This is the whole point of the Lot narrative. This story is about the birth of the Moabites and Ammonites, two of Israel’s neighbors. This story suggests that these countries are born from incest. The Moabites and Ammonites have Abraham, and in turn Israel, to thank for their existence.

At this time, make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright positions and locked as we begin our decent to S&G International Airport for a closer look at the story.

Sodom And Gomorrah Intro

2011-11-07T06:30:00.001-05:00

So in a lead up to talking about the Hot Topic for November (The Billboard Wars) I'm gonna start with a Bible study on Sodom and Gomorrah.

You know, the two towns destroyed because of all the gay people living there having a lot of same-sex sex?

Well, it may surprise you that the historical understanding nor the Biblical understanding of the "sin of Sodom" and why God destroyed the towns has little to nothing to do with the actual story. I mean the story of Sodom and Gomorrah gives me the same feeling of when I watch a decent action film. My adrenaline rush kicks in and makes me overlook the plot holes that will bother me later. It seems one of those plot holes, namely the exact reason why S&G are destroyed, has been filled in recent times with an awful lie. Namely that God destroyed them because of homosexuality.

The following posts will outline the story, discuss what the sin of Sodom is and how it was understood both historically as well as within the Bible itself.

First I'll do an overview of the entire story arch and why I, and other scholars, think it was written (a fly-by if you will).

Then we'll tour the two cities, where they were and how they were traditionally understood in the Jewish tradition.

Next we'll deal directly with how the Bible itself references S&G and what the nature of the sin exactly was.

And finally I'll attempt to describe why people want the story to be about something it's not.

Don't Rawk the Hawk

2011-11-01T06:30:00.000-04:00

A Special Message from Pastor Luke regarding the United Church of Christ's Mission One Campaign.

Read the Toledo Northwest Ohio Food Bank's Hunger 101 Statistics.

Oh, and here are Eve's thoughts on Rawk the Hawk:

Chat-bots, Furby, and Singularity: The Most Important Discussion of Your LIFE! Part 4 of 4

2011-10-31T06:30:00.000-04:00

People often under estimate the complexity of even the simplest life forms. Multi-celled life forms are mind bogglingly complex.

Papa Furby marries Mama Ewok and have baby Gizmo
this explains why you can get Mogwai's wet..?

Try to imagine a machine that can grow and physically adapt to it's immediate environment, make copies of itself by interacting with other individuals of its type. The offspring mutating and further adapting - this is a tiny fraction of the enormous complexities robots cannot come close to that... yet.

The question is, should we strive for computers that do that? That mimic nature? I can post about that later but before those, I'll give my preliminary conclusion about whether the Furby is alive.

No. It's not. It's has the sensors and such, but it has no soul, no way to adapt and change, and simply put, it's reactions to environments are rather predictable and stayed. Organic life does follow patterns, but not to the letter. It's not entirely predictable. And the source of the life is much different.

Organic life is part of the epic story of evolution. You, sitting by your computer (or reading this on your smart phone) are the product of millions of years of evolution. You are part of the bigger story in a way that the Furby is not. Furby is part of the hundred year story of toy-making and marketing.

Your story is much bigger, grander, and less predictable than the Furby but with a purpose. I think that story is a divine story and the author of that story I call God. Life is a mystery, it's complex.

Now I've met a lot of people who don't like life. It's too messy. So the filter it. They remain positive, they stick to their mindless platitudes and the keep things neat and tidy and boxed up.

Yet Jesus came to give us life so that we would have it abundantly (John 10:10). Life is messy. So those who box up others, who box up themselves, who box up God are really committing the sin of idolatry.

That's why we have marriage counseling, so that people can see if they truly love the person or if they're in love with the idea of the person, or what the person represents to them. That's not life, that's not a relationship. It would be like talking to the chat-bot, or confusing the Furby mimicking life.

Same with God and Jesus. You can make all the dogmas and doctrines you want, the divine won't be contained.You can quote all the Bible verses you want, God is God and you are not and God can't be controlled, contained, or fully understood. Dogmas, doctrines, and Scripture all point to the Living God, but they themselves are NOT in and of themselves, God. If your answer is something different, that'd be idolatry my friend.

The people who state "Once I found God my world has become rainbows and ponies" sort of annoy me. It might be their experience, but it makes me question because following the living God for me has brought with it a lot of conflict and problems I didn't have before. Yet how I deal with those problems has also changed.

The peace of Christ is in my heart, so that does not mean that my life is devoid of conflict, it means that I handle the conflict in a peaceful manner that honors life and humanizes my 'enemy.' That's the whole "walk the extra mile" and "if someone asks for your coat give 'em your shirt" that whole process is to humanize yourself to the other person, to show that "I am a living person, not your doormat and not your enemy. Honor my life!"

Life is really cool, it's no wonder we're trying to preserve it and even create it with our technology. It's an honest pursuit really.

Well, this Furby is alive.. we can agree on that... right?

So this leads me to think that there's something behind the epic process of life and all that stuff... some higher order behind the chaos that leads me to a different take on the incarnation: What if we are the incarnated universe trying to figure itself out?

Or as Dr. Malcom from Jurassic Park states (in different parts of the movie that I've mashed together), "If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, ah, well, there it is... Life finds a way."

Furbies do not find ways. They sit, squeak, and chatter until their batteries die, nothing more.

At the same time, life, and the Source of All Life, are knocking over fences, crossing property lines.

An Inside Joke

2011-10-28T14:53:00.001-04:00

Based on the discussion at THAT THING on 10-18. Special thanks to Rober! Click on the images for a closer look.

Chat-bots, Furby, and Singularity: The Most Important Discussion of Your LIFE!: Part 3 of 4

2011-10-27T05:30:00.000-04:00

This is my attempt to relay to you the readers the awesome conversation from That Thing on 10-18-11. This account is factionalized. Meaning that it's based in fact but has been edited and compressed for the purpose of the blog (and my spotty memory).

Rober: I can see why the kids didn't care about the Barbie Doll, there's no interaction. But with the hamster and Furby, they react. There's something more there. Now what's the difference between the Furby and the Hamster, I don't know. Gears and wheels vs. flesh and bone, but both react to the stimuli provided by the kids.

That makes me think of sociopaths for some reason. The kids who'd keep the Furby and hamster upside-down just to torture the critters. The fact the kids had compassion for the two things shows they aren't sociopaths, and that's a good thing!

Elizabeth: Well that makes me think that what's alive is then about feeling. Like reality is in the eye of the beholder. The kids thought the Furby was just as alive as the hamster, so it was. Sort of like the people talking to the computer-therapist program or the guy talking to the chat-bot. It was real to them.

Rober: Well that's true too. A sociopath does the same but it's out of balance. Their perspective is the most important and no one else matters in their world. That's an interesting point Elizabeth. It makes me think of a birthday wish. Like it's real to the person who gives the wish and it's good to get your hopes out in the open. When you do that, they'll come back or you'll see the opportunities to achieve the goal.

Jenni: I'm thinking of the spiritual implications of all that. Wouldn't a birthday wish be just like prayer? So that means like God is the first computer-therapist in the sky? Like it's just us talking with nothing on the other end? I've been struggling with that lately.

Group: Wow, yeah...

Kate: Well, I guess it depends on what and how you pray.

Me: That reminds me of a lyric by Brighteyes that will do nothing to alleviate the tension. He sings on Triple Spiral:

That's the problem, an empty sky.
I fill it up with everything that's missing from my life.

Or from the movie Tron, which uses a Zen understanding of prayer and meditation. The idea is that you "knock on the sky and you listen to the sounds... or the echos" I can't remember which. For me that means that we're already filtering things to what we want to hear (sometimes, for what we don't want to hear), but if we follow the echos we might end up somewhere new, even at nirvana.

Jenni: Well that doesn't help much.

Chat-bots, Furby, and Singularity: The Most Important Discussion of Your LIFE! Part 2 of 4

2011-10-24T06:00:00.000-04:00

We're talking about a RadioLab episode called "Talking to Machines" and this is the second post.

The podcast then turns to an interesting psychology experiment involving those Furby dolls that were big in the mid to late-90s. Freedom Baird, a grad-student, had an idea for an experiment that Freedom believed could serve as a kind of emotional Turing test, a way to ask whether machines are more alive than dolls (you can listen to this segment of the program here).

He used a Barbie Doll, a hamster, and a Furby.

The task was for children aged 8 to 12 to see how long they could keep these three things upside down.

The results were:

Barbie Doll- indefinitely but children's arms got tired around the 5 minute mark.
Hamster- 5-8 Seconds.
Furby- 10-15 seconds.

What's up with the Furby only lasting a few seconds longer than the hamster? Should those results be closer to the Barbie Doll?

The Furby: Incinerating the line between real and
manufactured life since 1996

The Furby has a sensor in it that knows when it's upside down, and so it say that it's scared, whine a little bit and eventually just start crying until it's turned over. The children couldn't distinguish if the Furby actually felt scared or not, the line between toy and animal had been blurred for those kids.

And that leads to a bigger question.

Is the Furby essentially alive?

First, think about computers. Silicon chips on circuit boards sending pulses of electricity through wires and minuscule transistors.

Then, think about brains. Throbbing clumps of tissue sending chemical and electrical signals through intricate webs of neurons.

The human brain may be more complicated than a computer, but silicon or carbon, they both run on the same principle; manipulating matter and energy to solve problems and perform tasks.

How, then, can one be more limited? The Furby is more advanced than many insects, does that make it alive? Emotions and thoughts are simply complex chemical and electrical signals transmitted throughout the neurons in our head, right? If emotion is simulated well enough, at what point does it become the real thing?

Chat-bots, Furby, and Singularity: The Most Important Discussion of Your LIFE! Part 1 of 4

2011-10-20T06:00:00.000-04:00

I LOVE NPR's RadioLab. It's a great show about science and all the lovely practical and ethical implications that scientific research is bringing to light.

Recently they had a show called "Talking to Machines." I have listened to this show like 12 times... okay, that maybe an overstatement, it's more like 10.

I LOVE Science Fiction, robots, and even did my ethics paper in Seminary on Singularity: the idea that someday robots will have consciousness. Plus with all the apps, iPads, and augmentative technology (think technology for amputees), this is an area ethics professors and churches will have to deal with.

You can listen to the podcast linked above but the run-down of the show goes like this: This dude tries online dating and finds a lady he likes. She's totally hot and from Russia. After about two months, he finally realizes that this woman wasn't the woman of his dreams, she wasn't even a woman!

She was a chat bot (a program designed to mimic human conversation and engage in small talk for a variety of reasons).

This would seem obvious to we the observer. Russia girl, bad english, keeps asking for information, very repetitive. Sorry dude, you're loneliness is clouding your vision.

But the story gets stranger and more muddied.

In the 1960s, a program was designed to mimic responses a therapist would. The program was called ELIZA and its creator Joseph Weizenbaum thought the idea of a computer therapist was funny. But when his students and secretary started talking to it for hours, what had seemed to him to be an amusing idea suddenly felt like an appalling reality.

Are humans so lonely that they will project and so anthropocentric that they can feel a connection to just about anything? Does this technology make us more or less connected? Are we expecting more from our technology and less of one another? What do you think?

The RAWK THE HAWK Challenge

2011-10-18T07:07:00.000-04:00

You may have read my challenge from the October 23, 2011 Intercom, it goes like this:

RAWK THE HAWK Pastor Luke CHALLENGE to Youth and Young Families!

Our church is ramping up to participate in the Mission 1 outreach program. If you haven’t heard, the United Church of Christ will collect more than 1 MILLION ITEMS OF HEALTHY FOOD and other household items for local food banks and outreach services in 11 days (from 11-1 to 11-11). Sylvania UCC’s Outreach idea is to watch our Pumpkin Patch grow with a large collection of non perishable food items to be shared with Feed Your Neighbor and Second Chance.

If the youth and families alone donate 1,000 non perishable food items to the pumpkin patch, then Pastor Luke will “rawk the hawk” AKA have a Mohawk from 11-12 to 12-11. Drop off your cans and what not and make sure you record your giving on the “Rawk The Hawk Pastor Luke Challenge” sheet on the table by the pumpkin patch.

I really don't want to get a mohawk for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, it is going to be a pathetic mohawk. I could rawk a reverse mohawk (pictured on the left of this picture with a regular mohawk on the right) since my hair line is going that way anyway, but a regular mohawk... I'm not so sure I have the follicle density for it anymore.

But I am willing to be humiliated by people I love for a good cause.

It is my hope that this exercise will inspire our young people and our families to get motivated and support a great cause (as well as the Biblical principal) of feeding the hungry. I hope this exercise will show our families how much power they have when they band together toward a common goal... the goal of harassing their pastor ;-)

Could I rawk a bubble mohawk like Eve? I don't
think it will last the full 30 days...

Back at It

2011-10-15T12:28:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm back after two weeks of paternity leave. I feel re-energized yet at the same time very sleep deprived. I missed my time away from church while realizing that "Wow, I do a lot. I need to slow down and regroup and get some purpose and clarity before I muck something up (if I haven't done so already)."

So here's what's on the docket.

That Thing's discussion on 10-18 is called "Chat-bots, Furby, and Singularity: The Most Important Discussion of Your LIFE!"

We'll be discussing LIFE. It's kinda on my mind recently, you know (since the new life we've brought in is keeping us up all hours of the night.) Our chat will be an ethical discussion on life: when does it begin, how valuable is it, can we end another's life and under what criteria, and can we "improve" it or augment it with technology?

AND THEN!

Not Your Grandma's Bible Study is tackling some great stories on Wednesday nights at 6:30 in the Fellowship Room. We are covering Sodom and Gommorah on 10-19 and That Thing is dealing with LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgendered, Queer) issues in November, so upcoming posts will inform and lead up to that discussion.

Oh, and there maybe one or two more videos like this:

Keep reading and responding, and I'll see you in church!

Sorta REPOST: How Low is the Bar Set?

2011-10-13T06:30:00.000-04:00

Why yes, I am a vision in this hat. Please note my family
whom I'm rather attached to.

I've been reading some posts on my old blog from back when Eve was a newborn. I found this and wanted to share. Updated a little from the original post on Toothface dated 8-11-09.

Hey you hetero-males out there! Wanna know what makes the ladies crazy?! Men with babies!

I was sitting in Longs Park, just minding my own business, trying to be still and know that God is God. I was just giving Eve a bottle and reading Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People and I was hit on by two different women.

Normally I can't pick up when I'm being hit on unless the woman uses a hammer, but these were pretty blatant.

The first woman, around my age, came up to me as her own kids were running around and throwing stuff in the lake and having fun. She stated how beautiful Eve was, and we talked about how it is being a parent.

As she was leaving she stated how I make beautiful babies. I stated how "I didn't really make her, my wife did, I just contribute a little at the beginning."

To which she said, "Well, I'm sure you make the process as pleasurable as possible."

I smiled at this and then she collected her kids and walked off.

And then I thought about that comment.

It only hit me later to which "process" she was talking about. Sex? The pregnancy process (i.e. getting Kate ice cream and Sunkist)? The delivery or the parenting part? Or the whole thing?

Was I being hit on?!

I brushed it off and continued with the bottle, Eve happily sucking the bottle down and staring at the willow branches swaying in the breeze. A 60-ish woman and her friend come up. They too fawn over Eve and state how great it is to see a dad out with his daughter. I asked why and they said "I had to about break my husband's arm... unless it was about sports..."

As they were leaving, after a short convo, one of the women turned and said "It was great talking to you! Take care! And you are just a vision in that hat!" (I was wearing my OU hat pictured above).

These of course are just two examples of a slew of things I overhear while spending my day with Eve. While on a walk I heard "I think it's so hot when dads push the stroller" from a group of moms.

Are dads really that absent? I know my own was, but for different reasons... like he wasn't around! But are "present" dads this big of lumps?

The whole row here of seminary dads are all active and watching their kids during the day while the moms are out bring'n home the bacon. All I see, everywhere I look, are dads my age taking an active interest in their kids... Both of my brother in-laws do their own thing as well! They are active.

So is this a stereotype left over from the previous generation? Or are we the exceptions? Or is the expectation bar set extremely low for men? How deep do our gender-ideals go?

Equipping Parents

2011-10-10T07:00:00.000-04:00

According to the book Think Orange by Reggie Joiner,I as a pastor only have 40 hours in a given year to influence your child’slife. You, on the other hand, have 3,000 hours to influence the lives of yourchildren (pages 87-88). We, the Sylvania UCC staff and teachers of the 9:20 classes onSundays, hope to equip you as parents so we can work to bless the whole familyof God.

The 9:20 class offerings this fall are one way to engage thewhole family. There are classes for every age, from pre-school to college toretirement, that will help you learn and grow in your faith. The point of theclasses is this: If one son or daughter sees God at work in the life of a momor dad, it has more impact than any of us can imagine.

So I invite our families to engage these programs. The goalhere is not to engage parents to do everything but to engage us as parents todo something more. If you haven’t been praying with your kids, start. If youhaven’t been reading the Bible with your kids because you feel that you don’tknow it, check out David’s class. If you rarely discuss spiritual issues, checkout our Connections Fellowship and learn how. If you want to know more aboutthe earliest of Christians, check out Susan’s class.

Come check out a 9:20 class. It may just change your family life for the better.

Welcome, Samuel Robert!

2011-10-07T18:06:00.001-04:00

Your first look at our new bouncing baby boy!

Mama and baby are resting at home. Eve is totally excited to have "baby brudder" around and wants to hold him and show him her toys. She also points out important sights around town. "Baby brudder, this is library/Krogers/Sautters/Doctors/Meier/Target/etc" She's been awesome--a great big sister thus far!

Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers and for those bringing food. Y'all have blessed us and continue to do so.

We'll be resting up, trying to get sleep while we can, so the next few posts will be some re-runs from Toothface and the Intercom church newsletter. You can check out Eve's First Video, too.

This Post is About The Next One

2011-10-01T12:53:00.000-04:00

How Eve announced "Baby Brudder" last February

Baby Lindon #2 is here!
Your prayers for Kate and Baby #2 are much appreciated!

I will be off-line for a little while, but the next post on here will be your introduction to "Baby Brother" who should have a name by then.

What will that name be? Landon Lincoln Lindon? Brandon Brendan Lindon? Nelson Nicodemus Lindon? Ned Franklin Lindon (aka NFL)? Oh, the suspense!

On Children by Kahlil Gibran

2011-09-29T06:38:00.000-04:00

"What chu talk'n bout Gibran?!"

So #2 is due soon. I have been thinking about the time just before Eve was born. It's a strange state of emotions to be in.

I described it in the past that it's like standing on your front porch watching a meteor coming at your house. You know it's going to hit, but you don't know when. All you know is that your life is going to be completely changed, and you just hope that you're prepared for it.

The difference between then and now is we know a little of what to expect. We've been through the process before. I don't know if that helps or hurts.

I think Eve will be an excellent big sister. She's really excited to have "baby brudder" here and be able to see him not just pat Kate's stomach and yell "HI, BABY BRUDDER!"

I know Kate is an excellent mom and proof that women are the stronger sex. She makes being pregnant look easy, and I'm always surprised by her grace in this state.

I take comfort in the words of Kahlil Gibran. A poem my mom read when she was expecting me, one that gives me comfort, and one I hope to pass on to Eve and #2 if and when they have kids.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts.You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your childrenas living arrows are sent forth.The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

from The Prophet

Fate and Free Will: God Only Knows...

2011-09-26T06:23:00.000-04:00

So this whole conversation started in the car in August. Here we are in late September still talking about it. I think it's time to put a pin in this topic and retire it.

So where are we?

Well, to attempt to answer the initial question of "Was it fate or free will that brought Kate and me together?" My answer is it is fate that we met, and it has been our free will that has got us beyond that meeting.

Zippo Museum in Bradford, PA, on our 12th dating and
9th engagement anniversary

Were we supposed to meet? I would like to think so. It happened, so I'll never know otherwise. Yet there were plenty of times we could have broken up and gone on dates with other people. But we didn't, and we'll never know otherwise.

I never thought that I would go from camp to college, from college to Washington, D.C., from D.C. to seminary (of all places!) and from seminary to Sylvania.

Yet here we are.

Almost two kids later. I had no idea where this ride would take us but here we are together, and it's been fun, surprising, and life-changing.

I have felt guided in some parts of it, but not all. Nowhere near like a blatant Sign From God that we're doing the right thing, but small nudges and bits of luck that have helped along the way.

Sorta like Proverbs 3:5-6 which states "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will direct your paths." So I trust in the unknown future which God may or may not have fully planned out for me. I try to submit to The Dude and let the path be directed as it unfolds. I will try to be grateful for it, greet those I meet along the way and love them, too.

That's the best I can do.

God only knows where I'd be otherwise.

God only knows what I'd do without Kate.

God only knows.

Hot Topics: The Death Penalty

2011-09-22T12:00:00.002-04:00

I have been thinking of the Troy Davis case recently.We as Christians follow someone who was publicly executed. The cross is the first century electric chair. It was meant for political enemies of Rome.

So it shocks me that there are Christians out there who support the death penalty. Here are my three reasons why I'm against the death penalty: one practical, one systems-oriented, and one theological.

The Practical Reason: "It is cheaper to imprison killers for life than to execute them, according to a series of recent surveys. Tens of millions of dollars cheaper, politicians are learning, during a tumbling recession when nearly every state faces job cuts and massive deficits," states an article from MSNBC

The Systems Reason: The justice system is supposed to convict people "beyond a reasonable doubt." The recent execution of Troy Davis should have never happened based on that standard. Too much doubt was cast for anyone to be sure what happened that night. With issues of race and corruption in the system, this trial should have been reviewed by a higher court, and it simply wasn't. Not sufficiently.

Why?

Because those in the system want to protect it, and that means letting injustice slip by to protect those within it. The whole justice system of Jackson, Georgia, should now be under review and on trial. This will never happen because the system protects itself.

The Theological Reason: "Let the sinless cast the first stone." Jesus stopped an execution.

He was subject to an unfair trial from a corrupt system that was out for blood. The reasons why Jesus was executed didn't work anyway. He was killed to show the power of the system and how you shouldn't stand up to the Temple nor to Rome. There was a revolt not too long after his death.

The death penalty doesn't take blood off of our hands, it simply puts more blood on them. That is what the cross should show us first and foremost (then take whatever atonement theory from there, but that's a separate post). Instead it seems we only tend to hang more and more people on the cross in the misguided notion that we think it solves anything.The scapegoat mechanism simply doesn't work despite its popularity throughout human history.

What are your thoughts on the death penalty? How do you reason this issue out? What reference points do you use for your stance?

The Shack on Fate and Free Will

2011-09-21T06:30:00.000-04:00

Four years after the fact, I'm finally reading The Shack. For those of you who don't know, The Shack is a book that generated a lot of controversy. The plot of the book is about a father who has lost a child and his face-to-face conversation with God in the very shack where his child's life was taken.

Imagine my surprise when early on in the book, the issue of fate and free will pops up!

The father is standing in front of God and states, "You knew I would come, didn't you?"

"Of course I did." God responds.

He then asks God if he had a choice in the matter to which God replies that he's free to leave if he wants. God states:

"I am not interested in prisoners. You're free to walk out that door right now and go home to your empty house. Or, you could go down to The Grind and hang out with Willie. Just because I know you're too curious to go, does that reduce your freedom to leave?

..."Or, if you want to go just a wee bit deeper, we could talk about the nature of freedom itself. Does freedom mean that you are allowed to do whatever you want to do? Or we could talk about all the limiting influences on your life that actively work against your freedom. Your family genetic heritage, your specific DNA, your metabolic uniqueness, the quantum stuff that is going on at a subatomic level where I am the always-present observer. Or the intrusion of your soul's sickness that inhibits and binds you, or the habits that have created synaptic bonds and pathways in your brain. And then there's advertising, propaganda, and paradigms. Inside that confluence of multifaceted inhibitors," she sighed, "what is freedom really?"

-The Shack by William Paul Young, page 95

I thought this was a nice way of putting things. It's all of those blogposts I have generated thus far on the subject put in one nice paragraph. That is why Young authored The Shack, and I write this blog.

What do you make of this? Agree, disagree, or would you add or subtract something? How do you define freedom? Have you read The Shack?

The Adjustment Bureau

2011-09-19T06:46:00.000-04:00

The Adjustment Bureau is a 2011 movie starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. It's an intriguing film that explores themes of fate, destiny, divine and free will.

I don't want to give too much away but the premise is:

Boy Meets Girl
Boy isn't supposed to be with Girl,
"The Adjustment Bureau" (an otherworldly bureaucratic organization controlled by an unseen entity (or, perhaps, deity) known as "the Chairman.") seek to keep Boy from Girl.

It's a really great film, a great meditation on fate and free will that I highly recommend.

The film poses a question that is left open-ended when the credits roll: Is it possible to change our fate?Are human beings, created with a free will, capable of changing God's mind? And if we are, what does that say about the nature of the Divine? What does scripture say about this?

Well, the results of scripture are mixed.

There is a quote in Malachi 3:6 which says, "I the Lord do not change[...]" However, how do we explain Exodus 32:14 which says, "Then the Lord relented [or changed God's mind] and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened." So what is the true answer? Does God change God's mind or not?

In Jonah chapter 3, Jonah finally preaches at Nineveh. Fortunately, everyone repents of their sin, even the king! Therefore, the Bible says in Jonah 3:10 that God had “compassion” (or "changed His mind") and decided not to destroy Nineveh because the Ninevites had repented of their many sins.

In 1 Samuel 15:11, God regrets ever making Saul king and "changes God's mind" and anoints David in secret. Yet a few verses later in 1 Sam 15:29 is states "He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind.” Uhhhh.....?

I think what scriptures like Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8; Numbers 23:19; and 1 Samuel 15:29 all tell us that God does not change in character. God "relenting" or "forgiving" is God's plan and means that this will never change; God will not go back on this promise no matter what.

This leads me to believe that it is our "clicking into" God's plan that matters. God has no timetable for the big plan ("not even the Son knows the day or hour" -Matt 24:36) and the kingdom involves our buy in and our buy in must be our decision.

Make any sense? Still confused? Did you see this film? Comments, Questions, Primal Screams? Sharing is caring!

Hot Topics*

2011-09-14T20:55:00.000-04:00

*said in the tune of the "Hot Pockets" jingle

Hot Topics* is the theme for this year's string of That Thing meetings.

Our first meeting was last night at Q-Zar Laser Tag! A good time was had by all, and we may conclude the year there since it was so much fun! Not to mention a great workout. Thanks to Jro, Jenni, Elizabeth, Caroline, and newbie Wes for making it out.

Our next meeting will be at Nautica Coffee at 7 p.m. on October 11th. The title will be "Chat Bots, Furbys, and Singularity: The most important discussion of your LIFE."

I want to also make you aware of another hot topic that is being discussed in our Science and Theology book study on Sunday nights at 7 p.m. in the Fellowship Room. They are reading Michael Dowd's book Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World. I've already read the first two chapters, and I am completely jazzed up about this book.

The first Science and Theology meeting is this Sunday, September 18th, and all are welcome. I would encourage you to pick up the book. If you can't afford it, let me know, and I'll get you a copy.

That will be one hot topic* we won't discuss at That Thing since you can talk about this topic with real scientists with a killer book. I hope you'll join us Sunday! If not, I'll see you on October 11th.

Fate and Free Will Have Fun With Charts

2011-09-13T06:34:00.000-04:00

When I was blogging in seminary, I somehow came across Sabio Lantz. He's an atheist blogger, and we had some really good debates and conversations. One thing I really admire about him is his use of charts. He is a master at putting hard concepts into easy-to-read graphics (just take his recent discussion on science as an example).

So I am attempting to put our discussion on Fate and Free Will and those options (mostly provided by you in the comments) into easy-to-understand charts. Note: Click on images to enlarge if the font is too small in your browser.

Option One: Total Fate

The arrow would be "Fate/God's Will/Karma." It's a strictly linear model that starts when we're born and ends when we die. It's straightforward with no deviation and no room for free will. Anything that even LOOKS like free will and choice was already predetermined.

Option Two: Total Free Will

Choices made here

Carry on into the future

-------->

In the total free will model, we're faced with many choices. Whatever path we take then influences our future choices but there is no overriding destiny other than probability and personal history.

Option Three: Combined #1

The first combination model combines both free will and fate as well as providing room for conditioning, socio-historic context, and cultural influences. This model has more fate than free will. Fate would be the conditions and factors in the boxes. The choices (the arrows) that are made are based on that and influence the future but not in a linear model. It's more of a cycle of living model, but there is a definite direction that fate is heading regardless of the choices we make.

Option Four: Combined #2

The second combination is more free-will focused. God influences us as to the path we can take, and we can choose whether to listen or not. God's "plan" or "fate/karma/whatever" then adjusts to our decisions.

Do these charts help? Which chart represents your views? Are they accurate? If not, how would you depict the options?

10 Years Later

2011-09-10T06:55:00.000-04:00

September 11, 2001, I was at Ohio University living in Martzolff as a first-year RA. My first class that morning was with this eccentric journalism professor.

I arrived at Scripps Hall early in the morning, around 9 or so, and the prof is running around like a crazy person. This was not unusual. I was joking with a classmate, also not unusual, and down comes the big screen and on pops the projector.

"Oh," I thought. "We're watching a movie today, cool!"

The walk up to Scripps Hall in the fall.
Photo by Justin Hickey.

On the screen pops a picture of the Twin Towers. One of them is smoking.

"What movie is this?" I ask my friend.

"I don't know...." she answers.

Just then the second plane hits.

"I don't think this is a movie," she says.

It wasn't.

Everything changed that day. Our flags and guards went up. We started to draw together, then paranoia set in.

The world looks a lot different from sitting in that Scripps classroom to where I sit now in my office at Sylvania United Church of Christ. We are still trying to deal with the effects of 9-11: as a nation, as communities, and as individuals. Some people are starting to relax a little; become more hopeful, more ecumenical and less ruled by fear and isolation.

Where were you on 9-11? How do you interpret it? Are you marking the day in any special way? Have you told your kids about 9-11? If not, how do you plan to?

Other Helpful Posts about 9-11
The Day that Something Went Wrong…: Sylvania UCC'er Kate Fineske reflects on 9-11 and the Challenger explosion.

Nick-News 9-11 on The Big Help: Nickelodeon (yes, Sponge Bob's Nick) partnered with APA to provide some tips, prepared by Dr. Robin H. Gurwitch, about how parents, grandparents, teachers, and caregivers can help kids make sense of the media’s coverage of the September 11, 2001, anniversary. Watch the full episode with your kids here.

How Do I Tell My Kids about 9-11?: A CNN column by Mike Milhaven about his struggle to protect his kids.

A Glimpse of Hope: A great theological reflection from Pastor Jon over at Point Place UCC.

This is gonna sound a little weird...

2011-09-08T06:45:00.000-04:00

This post could be labeled superstition... Maybe it’s a littlestition, but it is outside of the ordinary.

Maybe not. Y'all have surprised me before... anyway, I am stalling. Here's the revelation.

There are times where everything feels familiar, so familiar that it was like I have been here before and knew what was coming. It was like I know EXACTLY what is coming for a short time.

It's like I'm clicked into the higher math, I don’t have to think, I just had to be and I knew what was coming. almost as if I were guided.

On one of my first dates with Kate, we were watching "You've Got Mail" (don't judge) at my house. This was like our second date. We were sitting on the couch, and the movie was just starting and I just got this feeling like I had been there before.

Of course, I hadn't. No way to have predicted that some hot camp counselor would be sitting on my couch watching a rehashed version of "Sleepless in Seattle." But there we were and there was that feeling, and I went with it.

Same movie, different cities. One where the medium
is radio and the other is the Internet.

My sister, my mom, and her boyfriend were still milling about in the kitchen and getting food, so I said to Kate, "You know, when they come back in, they'll be like, 'Oh, what movie is this?' and then guess the actor and actress and then the location."

Kate giggled. So I continued, and that feeling grew stronger.

"My mom's bf will say, 'Is that Mel Gibson?' and my mom will be like 'Yeah! What else was he in?' 'Braveheart' my sister will say, and the bf will say around a bite of pizza, 'And Lethal Weapon... wait that's not him, it's Tom Hanks!' and my mom will be like, 'Oh yeah, Tom Hanks, I liked him in Maverick.' and the bf will say, 'No that's still Mel.'"

And Kate snickered again.

Then the family came into the room with their food and proceeded to say EXACTLY. WHAT. I. SAID. Verbatim. Down to the pauses in breath.

Kate looked at me and was a little freaked out, but I could tell she thought it was kinda cool, too. Then the feeling faded.

There are times when I click into another state-of-consciousness that I can’t dismiss. I’m just as confused before and afterwards, but there are moments of clarity.

For a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh.

I can never make these moments last.

They are fleeting, but during those times I feel at home in the universe, loved and embraced and guided by existence and happy that I’m alive for the extremely short time I am. I trust in it, and I trust things will turn out well.

I call this experience "clicking in."

The question is, clicking into what? Fate? Probability? My free-will trajectory?

It is like I can see the exact route the probabilities are heading and thus I can see the fate/destiny/whatchamacallit unfold around me. These moments are rare and hard to describe. It makes me weigh in that maybe free will isn't as free as we like to think it is. Our patterns of behavior have set us on a certain path regardless of how we feel about it.

Have you ever had times like that? Do you know what I'm talking about? Or is this just silly?

Fate and Free Will Go to the Movies

2011-09-06T06:59:00.002-04:00

I don't know if I have told you yet, but I really love Forrest Gump. This movie is a meditation on the issue of fate and free will.

At the end, Forrest remarks:

I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time.

Like Forrest, I have no idea if it's one or the other so I throw my cards in with the "both" answer.

Now you might be saying, "So why all these posts? Just to make us think?! Come on! It's the end of summer, let us relax before the huge fall rush kicks into gear!" Or who knows, you may be eating this stuff up with a shovel. I dunno since I'm writing this post on August 25 and you're reading this... well, whenever you're reading this (did you choose to or were you fated to read this?).

What I want to say is that neither side, free will or fate, has any evidence to back anything up.

What I see is a debate on a clever turn of phrase where some believe "everything happens for a reason" while others state "everything that happens can be reasoned." Big difference!

And my answer is "yes!" Both!

Now this may seem like a cop-out. but I state that our scriptures have both (for those who take them as authoritative), our traditions have it (whether theological or scientific) and some state it better than others and even our experience isn't clear on it.

Even Jesus wasn't clear on it! While he stated all those things in the last post, he also stated he gave the sermon on the mount so "That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." (Matt 5:45) That sounds just like Ecclesiastes!

And here's one that will blow your mind. "When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, 'A shower is coming,' and so it turns out. And when you see a south wind blowing, you say, 'It will be a hot day,' and it turns out that way. You hypocrites! You know how to analyze the appearance of the earth and the sky, but why do you not analyze this present time? And why do you not even on your own initiative judge what is right?" (Luke 12:54-57)

I take that to say that Jesus states "Make up your own mind." It is left to our interpretation. And our interpretation matters. Kierkegaard stated, "The problem with life is that we have to live it forward but we can only understand it backward." Interpretation is all we have and it REALLY MATTERS!

I know a few people who are bound to their tragic personal histories. They believe that the past weighs on them so heavily, they are helpless against it. They are somehow destined to be alone and miserable. I’ve heard people say that they are destined to be broke and to be a loser.

Are you someone who thinks like that or do you know of anyone who does?

If you are, then through the power of choice, you are setting the outcome of your future events more-so through your attitude than some predestined power.

Here’s a two-step process by which I look at this whole debate in a way that serves me.

1. All events are fated in some way. We are bound by past decisions that we have made or that have been made by others. We are subjects of history. I don’t have control over these events.

2. Yet I have absolute power of my attitude and the way I choose to respond to those events. At all times I have the power right now to decide how I think. I can choose to be grateful and cultivate a positive attitude.

I largely derive this from the Serenity Prayer written by one of my heroes, Reinhold Niebuhr.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Fate and Free Will Read the Bible

2011-09-01T06:48:00.004-04:00

Where in the Bible can we find out whether we have fate or free will? Scholars much smarter than I come down on either side, but here's my brief and extremely humble overview:

Starting off in Genesis, we are shown how God's providence starts in Creation, keeps through Abraham and Joseph, extends into the Exodus, is reinforced by the Deuteronomistic tradition (Josh through Judges), and then in statements like those in Proverbs 2.

Yet these aren't totally solid. God does not always provide.

Well, at least provide what the people where hoping for.

There are the multiple invasions by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans... There are the parts where God seemingly abandons God's people or behaves punitively towards them (2 Sam 12:16-23, Job, Psalm 22:1,2 Luke 13:1-5, 2 Thess 1:9)... And then there's the theological watershed of the Holocaust.

This problem has been around way before the Holocaust, way before modernism and the rather new debate as to where Evolution Leaves God, and the problem is found within the Bible itself. Specifically the wisdom literature books such as Job and Ecclesiastes, both of which challenge the conventional understanding of God's unwavering providence.

Job and Ecclesiastes both acknowledge the randomness of life and changes of circumstance. They claim that there is no moral order of the universe humans can discern, the wicked go unpunished and the good get trampled. The conclusion of both books is that we are not to assume anything personal about the providence of God according to one's life situation (Ecc 9:11-12). By personal we mean God caring about us personally, God rewarding and punishing us personally, God forgiving our sins personally, God hearing our prayers and responding personally.

Then there's Jesus. Jesus claims that God is not only active in the world but more intimately personal than we have imagined!

God knows the number of hairs on our heads. (Matt 10:29)
Not a bird falls from the sky outside of God's will. (Matt 10:29)
A friend helps another friend, and we have much more assurance that God will rise and help us. (Luke 11:5)
A corrupt judge gives justice to a persistent widow, how much more assurance do we have that God will grant our petitions? (Luke 18:2)
Ask and it will be given, seek and we will find, knock and the door will be opened. (Matt 7:7)

Yet we also must acknowledge:

God may have numbered our hairs but God neither prevents them from falling out or turning gray.
Why is it God's will that a bird dies? I would have preferred "knowledge" instead of will, what the heck does that mean?!
If God is inclined to rise when we need help, then why do so many children go to bed hungry and die before morning?
How much time does it take for God to respond to our petitions?
If we ask, seek and knock and don't like the results, or can't interpret or even hear God's answering, why doesn't God prevent us from getting disappointed in God and turning from faith and community?

What do we do with all of this?

Fate and Free Will Go to Camp

2011-08-29T06:24:00.001-04:00

Driving home from the Target 2030 Orientation, Kate and I had one of those conversations that can only happen when you're in the car for way too long. We pondered whether we have free will or if we are subject to destiny/fate/karma/whatever-ya-call-it.

What brought this on was a return to where we first met for the first time since, well, since we met. We met at YMCA Camp Tippecanoe.

Two weeks vs. 12 years, 1 kid and 1 on the way

The camp was out the road from my house, and I attended there, always with the hope of meeting some camp hottie. That never happened while I was a camper. I decided to volunteer one day after about two years away from the camp. And there was Kate.

Why did Kate decide to work at that camp that summer in the middle of nowhere instead of the day camp she usually worked at in her hometown? Why did I decide to volunteer that day and not just play bball and video games with my buddies? Did either of us really decide anything or were we always supposed to find each other?

The question whether we are driven by our fate or if we have free will to choose the path we walk on has always been intriguing. (Kate and I didn't come up with a conclusive answer, by the way.) In the East, it is a common belief that life is guided by fate. If you are from the West, you most probably believe that life is what we make out of it i.e., we have free will.

Did you find yourself asking this question? Where do you come down? How does it make you feel to be subject to fate/destiny/karma? How does it make you feel to have free will?

2030 Update

2011-08-25T06:20:00.001-04:00

I attended the Target 2030 orientation August 8-10 at the “Church House” in Cleveland. The church house is what the “insiders” call our national offices, which is a nice 9-story high-rise (not the 12-story stained glass building complete with neon comma I had pictured).

I learned a lot about the 10-year continuing education program and about the other 17 clergy who were picked to be in the class of 2022. There were 48 applicants for this year’s class.

Not what I was expecting, but somehow
better! This is the Amistad Chapel,
We spent a lot of time here.

The Pension Board’s program is named “Target 2030” because that is the year the program will end (I’m in the 2nd class of the program) and because it targets 20- to 30-year-old pastors to sustain and equip them in their ministries. The goal is to form pastors who are committed to long term pastoral leadership in UCC congregations. It seeks to infuse the church with leadership that is catalytic, nimble, and dynamic.

The program runs 10 years and comes at no financial cost to the local churches. The first 4 years offer 2 intensive, face-to-face week-long classes and 2 webinars per year. My first trip will be January 8-14 in Tampa, FL, to learn about family systems theory. The final 6 years of the program will be continuing education of our choosing.

I am really excited about this program and look forward to sharing more of what I learn in the future

A Modern Midrash

2011-08-22T11:02:00.000-04:00

Remember when we were talking about Midrash and Teaching Bible Stories to kids? ME TOO!

I was talking to a good friend about Noah's Ark and was reminded of the Robot Chicken skit about Noah's ark. Check it out below:

It's sort of like a Midrash. Explains why there aren't any unicorns, like the Shel Silverstein poem about the unicorn. The punchline however, that "God doesn't like freaks" is up for debate.

Jesus hung out with the "freaks" of his day and argued for their inclusion. The story of Jacob as well as the rest of the narrative for Israel is that God's people aren't the most powerful, strong, and perfect people. God's people are the freaks and geeks, if you will. The bookish tricksters, the crafty scorned woman, and the reluctant prophet who doesn't want to give God's word.

Despite many theologies claiming that people must be perfect and viewing the Biblical characters as perfect, I don't see that at all. Noah might think that, but God doesn't.

Potluck

2011-08-17T06:57:00.002-04:00

I've been blogging for going on 7 years now. I've met a lot of cool people during that time.

One such person is Andrew, author of God Will be God. He's a talented dude with a similar theology. He also makes videos and writes songs. Here's one based on a comment I said some time ago.

LOVE IT!

The comment stemmed from talking about what is at the core of Christianity. For me, it's community and communion. How many times did Jesus sit at the table? Countless. How many times was he on the cross? Once. What did he do after he got down off the cross? He went back to the table!

As another blogging buddy stated, "The best definition I heard for this mystery of God is to say that at the heart of God, God’s very character, is a ‘community of endlessly giving and receiving love." That's the Trinity in a nutshell and that is what we're called to do as Christians IMHO.

The problem with having the cross as the central image is that we will tend to use it... that is, hang people on it. Those of the "wrong" doctrine or creed or faith or skin color or sexual orientation. A table however... A table means a party! Food! Stories told, secrets revealed and friendships made and nurtured.

C'mon over! We're having a potluck! Around the table we can tell our stories and learn from one another.

"Show the world what you give
And bring what you are able
The crossroads don't tell the whole story
Pull up a seat at the table"

Sylvania Sessions: Green Day Rock Worship

2011-08-14T08:23:00.002-04:00

Order of Worship

Download the full audio from this Session! Right click here to download the Session in its entirety.

About the “Sessions.”

Welcome! To all those who are visiting and to those of you I see every Sunday. My name is Luke and I’m the associate pastor here at Sylvania United Church of Christ and this worship service is our third in a series called “The Sylvania Sessions.”

There are three reasons for doing the Sylvania Sessions.

1. Is for people outside the church to know that people inside the church, like myself, know about pop culture and can actively engage it. That pastors like myself don’t make you burn your Beatles records at the door and pick up only approved “Christian” music, movies, and books.

2. Is for people INSIDE the church to know about pop culture and how to actively engage it. And to experience God everywhere, in a new form of worship with new music.

3. To show case those creative people who live in our community. My buddy Rober being one of them. We have a ton of people around here that are involved in music, and this venue is one way to expose you to them and if you like what you hear this evening, you will attend a show. This is to help support our local music scene and our local artists.

Tonight we will feature the music of Green Day. The sessions before focused on Pearl Jam and The Beatles.

We hope to do this again next year if we are able and our artists are willing.

Now let us begin worship by responsively reading the call to worship printed in your bulletins.

Call to Worship (from 21 Guns)
When you're at the end of the road and you lost all sense of control;
Our thoughts have taken their toll.
When your mind breaks the spirit of your soul;
Our faith walks on broken glass.
Nothing's ever built to last, and you're in ruins;
In this state we can turn to God.
And in that state, true worship can happen.
We come as we are and we throw our arms up to the sky to worship God.

A Right-Left Confession
Pastor: We confess we have mistaken
Right: Our take for the truth
Left: Our perspective for the whole
Right: Our piece for the puzzle
Left: Our view for the vista

Pastor: In doing so

Right: We have failed to notice others
Left: We have ignored their wisdom
Right: We have failed to take the longview
Left: And we haven’t heeded the warnings

Pastor: The Body of Christ is not made up of one part but of many,

Right: No part can ever say “I don’t need you”
Left: Nor can we swim in apathy.
Pastor: Let us confess and be reconciled with one another!

ALL: Forgive our arrogance and narrowness of mind. In the Name of Christ. AMEN.

Passing of the Peace

Introduction to the first song:

As we are together here to worship. Do you know how small the odds are that we would be in this room together? That all of us are alive and gathered here, now and may never be again in exactly this arrangement, ever in the history of the world. There has never been a you on this earth and there never will be again. Let us wake up to the presence of God! Let us acknowledge that we are on the fleeting cusp of eternity.

"Waiting" from Warning performed by Jeremy Rober

Scripture Reading: John 3:1-9 (The Message)

Response: Holy God, we thank you for the ways in which we have known and understood you;
We thank you for the metaphors that have opened our eyes to more of who you are; We thank you for the language that has brought the transcendent, timeless, mysterious God within our grasp.

Intro to Second Song:

When you’re reading the lyrics, keep in mind this idea that the spirit blows where ever it wants and you don’t know where it’s come from and where it’s going. Even though WHEN I COME AROUND was written after a breakup of the singer and a girlfriend, for me there is this element of the spirit that goes where ever it wants. I like to imagine the first verse are the words of the Spirit to us, and the second verse is our response often to the voice of the still speaking God.

Song: “When I Come Around” from Dookie performed by Jeremy Rober

Scripture: Mark 16:1-8 (The Message)

Audio of just the Sermon: No One Will Do It For You

Offering
Free Will Offering will go to benefit Grace Community Center. GCC provides community programs and services in the Old West End to create a stable and self-sufficient community.

Song: “Holiday” from American Idiot performed by Jeremy Rober

Prayer of Dedication
Your importance in our lives, O God, is reflected in our gifts. We promise that these offerings will not be the end of our giving. We will also invest our time and abilities in your work of healing, comforting, teaching, guiding, and proclaiming good news. Bless each gift, whatever its size, and multiply the good to be done through our talents and treasure. Amen.

Benediction
Holy God, we are hungry for more of you;
We ask you to reveal more of yourself to us
to take us beyond the confines of familiar habits
to free us from the restrictions and distortions of our language
to expand our understanding of you
so that we can love you whole heartedly
we can communicate you faithfully
and we can reflect your full image to a world that needs you
Amen.

Closing Song by Jeremy Rober

props to Will Stuart of NuVizion for the awesome poster!

About the Artist:

Jeremy Rober is a talented musician based in Bowling Green, Ohio. He is a childhood friend of our associate pastor Luke Lindon and that is how he was roped in to doing two of the three Sessions, first Pearl Jam and now Green Day.

Jeremy heads up two bands. ‘tis is a melodic super-grunge collaboration project featuring members of Straight to the Withdrawal and Echo Hill. Lifeline Revolution is a straightforward rock and roll band that just put out a new cd “Save My Soul.” Check out his music on Facebook or through the 'tis website or Lifeline's home page.

Jeremy and his bands have opened for national acts like Theory of a Deadman , Candlebox, Safety Suit, Taproot and Pop Evil. He is currently in the studio recording songs for Lifeline.

Tell the Story, Live the Questions

2011-08-10T07:32:00.004-04:00

I liked what Jon had to say back on the post on midrash. He stated:

"I know there are some approaches to the OT that consider it more a compilation of stories than a bigger story, but I think the bigger storyline actually adds more levels and more cohesion to these smaller stories beyond the individual lessons they may teach."

We must keep our eye on the story line. The story line of each character, where they came from, where they're heading, as well as the BIG story of the Gospel and of God's redeeming grace.

IMHO, we tell these stories as they are: uncensored, unedited.

Then we ask questions.

Lots of questions.

We explore character motives and nuances and texts and ancient midrashes and modern commentaries. We discuss these with our family and friends at home, at church, on blogs. Telling the stories and asking questions bring us together as God's children--people you would never talk to, you find yourself sharing a personal story you've never told anyone else that caused you to interpret the story the way you did.

And in that, you find that God is working through your life. Offering you grace and comfort and communion.

I think that the questions we ask about these stories are more important than the answers. The stories help us be critical observers of our world and our place in it. Asking questions keeps us engaged, informed, and in conversation with one another.

The UCC has a great slogan that states, "Never place a period where God has placed a comma, God is still speaking." Another way to put that would be "Never place an exclamation point where God has placed a question mark."

from the Naked Pastor

Jesus asks 307 different questions in the gospels. (No, I didn't count them myself, but someone did.) By contrast, Jesus only directly answers three of the 183 questions he is asked in the gospels. He also told a lot of stories and midrashs about the Kingdom of God. We call them parables.

So tell the stories, the full story, to your kids and make sure to help them ask questions. It is only in the asking of questions that we find meaning.

What questions do you have? Do you worry about teaching your kids these Bible stories with integrity or is this a problem just ministers with young children have? What interpretations or questions from your children or grandchildren have given you new insight into familiar stories?

How do we Teach our Kids Bible Stories with Integrity?

2011-08-08T06:13:00.002-04:00

Eve has this Baby's First Bible that I'm, speaking with all honesty, absolutely disgusted and appalled by.

There are picture after picture of rosy-cheeked, Precious Moments-style people that are supposed to depict the stories. Ironically, these pictures of smiley friendly folk are depicting horrible things. David and Goliath are smiling like kids at a birthday party. Never mind that David is about to hurl that rock in his hand into Goliath's face and then decapitate him.

How do we teach our kids these Bible stories yet keep their integrity?

Often when I read the full story and explore the details of Bible stories with confirmation kids, they feel lied to. We just covered the graphic marriage/manipulation of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel which reads more like the plot from the Sopranos than Sesame Street. How do we teach these stories without sugar coating them?

"Regardez Jaque, un elephant, zebre,
et des cadavres dans l'eau!"

Noah's ark is often used for nursery themes and a nice way to teach our kids a Bible story AND about animals. But think about it, the story is about mass genocide and a frustrated artist--God whose work didn't come out the way God planned it and thus is ripping up the canvas and starting over. It is, as Maranatha put it in his comment in the first post, Aquatic Genocide.

Most of the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures would be rated PG-13 these days. There are very few G-rated stories, and those parts are usually surrounded by crazier and darker stuff. But then I think of all the Disney stories, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes our kids are exposed to. We think nothing of singing these songs or plopping our kids down to watch these films, but most of these stories and songs have a darker underlying meaning.

Pop Goes the Weasel: lots of layers through the years, much of it nonsense, but some verses refer to the Gunpowder Plot, an economic protest song, and there are children dying in it ("Jimmy's got the whooping cough, and Sally's got the measles, that's the way the story goes...").

Ring Around the Rosie: about the Plague and people dying left and right (We all fall down!).

Baa Baa Black Sheep: protest song against the Wool Tax of 1275

Jimmy Crack Corn: originally a black-faced minstrel show that on the surface is a black slave's lament over his master's death. There is a subtext of rejoicing over that death, and possibly having caused it by deliberate negligence. Either way, it's racist.

Most Disney stories have one or both parents missing or their deaths are somehow depicted (Bambi and the Lion King fall in the active death category). Almost all others have one or both parents missing from the plot without explanation like Aladdin (Aladdin is an orphan, Jasmine's mom is not pictured), Beauty and the Beast (just Belle and her father), etc.

How do you feel about learning the undertones of these songs and stories? Have you noticed the missing parents in Disney and other kids' movies? How might this inform your telling any stories to your kids?

Manipulation, Abuse, and Family Dynamics

2011-08-05T07:16:00.003-04:00

Jacob is manipulated and so are the women in Genesis 29.

Leah and Rachel are violated as their feelings are not heard or even considered in this story. Yet we get their feelings later. In Genesis 31:14-16 they state, "Do we still have any share in the inheritance of our father's estate? Does he not regard us as foreigners? Not only has he sold us, but he has used up what was paid for us. Surely all the wealth that God took away from our father belongs to us and our children." And they plot with Jacob to take revenge on their father.

Both women play an important role, and their role is not limited to just being victims or mothers.

The text recognizes their abuse at their father's hands, and this abuse is given a public voice--it is not covered up. They both give a sharp critique of their father and renounce his authority in their lives. Their renunciation takes not only verbal form as Rachel takes it a step further. Rachel doesn't just let Jacob do the dirty work, she steps up, too. She steals Laben's idols in Genesis 31:19. Stealing the "household gods" would have been a tremendous insult to Laban.

The moral of this complex and crazy story filled with lust, manipulation and abuse is that God works in all things, even within our dysfunctional family systems. God does not work in isolation but in and through people and their lives, no matter how dark, no matter how crazy, no matter how broken.

The families in the Bible aren't perfect, middle class, gentile folk. They were less like this family:

And more like this family:

Genesis 29 shows us that we don't have to be from the perfect family. Few of the Biblical characters were. We should not ignore or be ashamed of this fact for it shows that we can engage our worst moments theologically and see God in our story and even in our messed up, crazy family history.

Don't be afraid to tell your story, warts and all. You may be amazed what pearls lie hidden in our crazy family tree or in our darkest moments.

Have you felt this way about your family? Like before you could attend church you needed to edit your personal history? Or do you feel the need to conform to some model of 'family'?

Lust or Passion in Genesis 29

2011-08-01T07:00:00.002-04:00

Jacob and Laban painting from 1737
by Jean Restout II

Do we find a romance story between Jacob and Rachel? Or do we find something else?

Jacob sees Rachel and is taken by her beauty. The H.S. doesn't often give us physical descriptions but it does in Genesis 29. It says Leah had delicate/weak eyes (Hebrew words are unclear as to whether they were beauitful eyes or she needed a prescription) and that Rachel was graceful and beautiful.

Since the first moment, Jacob was overcome with emotion about Rachel. In fact, the first time he kisses her, he weeps and sings about it. He even went to work for Laban for the following seven years. “And they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her."

We get the idea that Jacob was impressed by Rachel—probably too impressed. We get the idea that he was so fascinated by Rachel’s beauty, and so enchanted by her charm, that he failed to recognize her shortcomings or even to consider the cultural and familial expectations placed upon him. He will learn all of these too late.

When Jacob's time is up, there is no "Yay! I can't wait to start my life with my bride." Jacob rushes right up to Laban and says "Now it's time for me to do the nasty with your daughter." Imagine saying that to your father in-law or having your husband-to-be say that on the day of the wedding!

Jacob and Rachel by William Dyce

Jacob seems to be interested in nothing else but obtaining what he wants. We are given no details of those 7 years. Did Jacob court Rachel? Was this a match made in heaven? Or was this a conquest for Jacob? Another way to test his skills in getting what he wanted. This does mark a slight change in character for Jacob as he does not resort to any tricks this time but is true to his word, something the rabbis picked up on.

What does stay the same is Jacob sees what he wants, and he's willing to do whatever he has to do to have her, and nothing else matters. It was only one month after Jacob arrived in Haran that Uncle Laban approached him to see if they could work out a mutually acceptable wage arrangement. He had nothing to offer Laban for his daughter, so his labor was promised in lieu of a dowry.

One month, it seems to me, is hardly sufficient time for anyone to get to know someone well enough to make a seven-year-long, let alone, lifetime commitment. Certainly it doesn't seem like enough time to know whether or not we are in love. True love requires thorough knowledge. To profess to love someone we do not know intimately is merely to love our mental image of that person. And if he or she does not measure up to our mental image, then our so-called “love” turns to disillusionment and resentment, and sometimes to hatred.

My questions are: Did Jacob love Rachel? Or was it lust? Did he love the person or did he love the idea and physical appearance of Rachel? What do you make of it?

Comments, Questions, Primal Screams?

2011-07-30T15:50:00.000-04:00

On July 25, 2011, the church cabinet approved a two-pronged approach to the senior minister interim process: Hiring an outside consultant and continuing with the current ministerial team. Read the congregational letter and FAQs here that were mailed July 28.

Feel free to ask any questions of me via email or on here. Your thoughts are very important. After all, as congregationalists, you are the boss, I am just the guide. ;-)

An Introduction to Midrash

2011-07-28T06:31:00.004-04:00

In seminary, one of my favorite classes was a Jewish Commentary Class on Genesis taught by a local rabbi. Rabbi Jack taught me about midrash.

Midrash (Hebrew: מדרש‎; plural midrashim, lit. "to investigate" or "study") is a homiletic method of Jewish biblical exegesis (exegesis is a fancy theological term for a method of studying the Bible). The term also refers to the whole compilation of homiletic teachings on the Bible developed throughout Jewish history (definition taken from the wiki article).

Rabbi Jack explained that the Bible was written in short hand.What is said is just as important as what is not said, so rabbis wrote/write midrash or “supplemental” stories to fill in the blanks in the Bible. Genesis 29 is no different as there are a few midrash stories to help explain this complex and confusing story.

Jacob was not only the main dude to establish the nation of Israel (his other name) but he was also a trickster. He tricked his father into giving him his older brother's birthright in Genesis 27:1-40. In Genesis 29, we have Jacob being tricked by his uncle Leban. Thus there is an element of karma in this story.

The midrash goes like this:

And all night he (Jacob) called her Rachel and she answered him. In the morning, "And behold, she was Leah." And he said to her, "Deceiver, daughter of a deceiver! Did I not call you Rachel last night and you answered me?!" And she replied, "Is there a master without students? Did your father not call you Esau and you answered him?" (Zornberg, Avivah. The Beginning of Desire page 186)

This midrash uncovers a truth about Jacob. Jacob expects to be dealt with fairly, even though he will go to great lengths to deceive others to get his way. Are we guilty of doing the same? Do we expect honesty from the world even though we deal in dishonesty or half-truths?

The question then is: Do you find Midrash helpful? Have you heard of Midrash before?

Recommended books of/on Midrash

The Classic Midrash: Tannaitic Commentaries on the Bible, by Reuven Hammer (Paulist Press, 1995).
Searching for Meaning in Midrash: Lessons for Everyday Living, by Michael Katz and Gershon Schwartz (Jewish Publication Society, 2002).
Legends of the Jews, by Louis Ginzberg (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).
The Book of Legends (Sefer Ha-Aggadah): Legends From the Talmud and Midrash, by Hayim N. Bialik and Yehoshua H. Ravnitzky (Pantheon, 1991).
A Midrash and a Maaseh, by Hanoch Teller (Feldheim, 1996).
The Midrash: An Introduction, by Jacob Neusner (Jason Aronson, 1994).
The Aggadic Midrash Literature, by Hananel Mack (Jewish Lights, 1997).
From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy, by Stephen Fraade (SUNY Press, 1991).
Reimagining the Bible: The Storytelling of the Rabbis, by Howard Schwartz (Oxford University Press, 1998).

Genesis 29 Said WHAT?!

2011-07-25T12:09:00.041-04:00

I preached this past weekend on the Matthew text using one of my favorite modern parables. I did not touch the Genesis text for the weekend.

Leah and Rachel by Jewish artist Deborah Kotovsky

This Sunday we heard the strange story of Jacob being tricked by Laban, his uncle, and marrying Leah and Rachel. Jacob works 7 years for Rachel's hand and then says, "Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed." No, that is not a typo.

Jacob sleeps with who he thinks is Rachel but finds in the morning that he has bedded Leah. Laban states, "It is not customary for the younger to be married before the older."

So what can this possibly mean? Why is this in the Bible? What insights can we gain from this story?

My next few posts will cover this story and the lessons to be learned from it. But the first lesson to be learned is that the Hebrew Scriptures (the H.S. aka Old Testament) are uncensored, raw, and do not sugar-coat anything. The stories are complex and potentially dangerous for people to read. It's raw, it doesn't cover up the ugly moments. The response to these politically incorrect stories is that most people avoid them, ignore them or hate them.

I love these stories!

Often times, the heroes of the H.S. have been "sanctified" by the Christian church, while this is not so in Judaism. We tell our children stories and teach them in Sunday School, often skipping uncomfortable parts or explaining them away. We should not attempt to gloss over these stories. These stories contain real people with messy relationships, and their worst moments are recorded with their best.

What is your experience of the Hebrew Scriptures? Do you know much about them? How does this story from Jacob make you feel?

A Chat About God, the Universe and All There Is, and the Meaning of Life

2011-07-19T15:57:00.002-04:00

This past weekend we visited sunny Bradford, PA, home of the Zippo lighter. We were in town so that I could conduct the funeral for Kate's great Aunt Clare. All of Kate's family and extended family were there. Included in this were my niece (10) and nephew (8) who had just come off of their week long vacation bible school.

Life is good in Bradford

It came as quite a surprise that Uncle Luke is a minister.

"I was wondering where you were and then you were up at the pulpit! I didn't recognize you in the robe at first," said my nephew after the service had ended.

We were at the hotel, hanging out and talking when my niece and nephew started asking some questions. We ended up having a chat about God, the universe and all there is, and the meaning of life.

You know... small talk.

"So, you're a preacher... have you met God?" asked my niece.

"Yes, in a way I have," I said.

"What does he look like?" asked my nephew.

"Well, you can't see God. And God isn't really a him," I replied.

"I find that confusing," said my niece. "God isn't really a person is he? I mean, God. God isn't up in the clouds because they're just vapor and beyond that is space and lots of cold space. Lots of people think about it like that though, right?"

"Well, where is God?" asked my nephew.

"Well, your sister is right," I said. "God isn't really in one specific place like you and I are. God is everywhere, at once. In and through everything."

"Kinda like The Force right?" asked my nephew.

Not pictured: Oldest Niece as Hermione Granger
(they are also a Potter Family)
and Youngest Niece as Queen Amidala

Now would be a good time to point out that my niece and nephew are Star Wars crazed. They are from a family that goes back a long way in Star Wars fandom. I have only added to their addiction. See this family picture for evidence --->

"Well, yeah, God's sort of like The Force but with some differences. The biggest one is that you don't use The Force, it uses you."

Both of their eyes got big. "Whoa.... COOL!"

We then talked about how they make sense of the universe, God, and what the meaning of life is. It was a great discussion. One I will remember for a long time. Hopefully they will, too.

Shadow Sides: Worlds Behaving Badly

2011-07-15T06:54:00.006-04:00

World 1: from the Naked Pastor

in our discussions we have talked about how each world has a shadow side. each world has it's own unique way of behaving badly, abusing people both inside and outside the faith, and creating a general mess of things.

the following is a short list complied over our time together:

World One, The Orphans: They can get creedal and exclusive and end up doing things like: You must make sure you believe our 10 point statement of faith before joining or taking communion. If you've come from another church you must be re-baptized because their water was tainted with heresy and sin. There is a love of tradition and ritual that can be stagnating as well. Fear of change, of the outsider, and of one another all seem to be pitfalls for this world.

World Two, The Crusaders: This world has no shadow side. All is okay. Just ignore the picture below.

oh yeah... there's the shadow side...

World Three, The Adventurer: World Three's shadow side is relatively harmless compared to the other ones. They just get eccentric and more than a little weird. They can also get a little colonial (as in: misusing other religion's symbols and rituals for their own purposes). But largely no one dies, gets judged, or excommunicated.

For example, I once went to a progressive UCC in seminary. They were focusing on Celtic Spirituality and that meant not only Celtic-Christian but Celtic-pagan. They 'cast a circle' which is a ritual that's purpose is to keep positive energy in and negative energy out. They then stated that we were free to move about the building, go to the bathroom and such. This would break the circle and then it would have to be recast. I mentioned this and the pastor stated "Well this circle is permeable."

FAIL.

There was nothing Celtic about that worship. It was an American's idea of a Celtic worship.

World Four, The Sinner: This world runs the risk of becoming hypocritical and/or the morality police. That is blindly fighting for causes with their words yet becoming the thing they fight with their actions. This often results in them lifting up a 'sinless' person only to find that they have 4 partners on the side. Oh, and there's also this:

another classic from the Naked Pastor

World Five, The Wounded Healer: This world runs two risks. First would be of losing faith (but not giving up). The person will keep on their goal but will give up on God, their faith, and their community. It reminds me of the movie Defiance where a Jewish teacher prays

"We have no more prayers, no more tears; we have run out of blood. Choose another people. We have paid for each of your commandments; we have covered every stone and field with ashes. Sanctify another land. Choose another people. Teach them the deeds and the prophesies. Grant us but one more blessing: take back the gift of our holiness. Amen"

There's also the more real threat of becoming fatalistic. Since 'stuff' happens and Murphy's Law is constantly in effect a sort of stasis can set in. Here is where the reliance on rituals can set in, a going through the motions (also an Orphan problem) without seeking any transformation from them. You take comfort in the enacting of the rituals without any transformation because comfort is, at best, all you can get out of life.

What do you think? What would you add to the shadow sides of the worlds? What would you take away? Have you seen or heard any stories of "church-people-behaving-badly"and wondered what spawned it?

Your Theological Universe

2011-07-13T07:20:00.002-04:00

We have covered each of the 5 Theological Worlds (if this is your first time here, you can check these out in the "topic index" under the Theological Worlds Heading).

The big questions remain. Those are as follows:

How would you describe each world?
What was your favorite?
What was your least favorite?
How do you see your worlds operating together?
How does knowing these worlds affect you?
What difference does knowing these worlds make, if any?
What was the point in teaching you all this stuff?

Sharing is caring, sound off!

TONIGHT!!!

2011-07-12T12:20:00.000-04:00

Tonight, my house! Cook out with good friends and fellow Sylvania UCCer's. Firepit, s'mores and talking about your theological universe!

Beatles Liturgy from Sylvania Sessions

2011-07-09T18:13:00.004-04:00

Listen to the full service! Right click here to download the Session in its entirety.

Order of Worship
About the Sessions: Welcome! To all those who are visiting and to those of you I see every Sunday. My name is Luke, and I’m the associate pastor here at Sylvania United Church of Christ and this worship service is our second service in a series I’m calling “The Sylvania Sessions.”

There are three reasons for doing the Sylvania Sessions.

1. Is for people outside the church to know that people inside the church, like myself, know about pop culture and can actively engage it. That pastors like myself don’t make you burn your Beatles records at the door and pick up only approved “Christian” music, movies, and books.

2. Is for people INSIDE the church to know about pop culture and how to actively engage it. And to experience God everywhere, in a new form of worship with new music.

3. To showcase those creative people who live in our community. This band being one of them. We have a ton of people around here that are involved in music, and this venue is one way to expose you to them and if you like what you hear this evening, you will attend a show. This is to help support our local music scene and our local artists.

Tonight we will feature the music of The Beatles. August will feature the music of Green Day on the 13th. I hope you’ll come out for those as well. It is my hope you’ll listen to this music a little differently, that you see the divine in every part of your life, and that you know the talent of Watson Street Loft who play in our community often. In fact you can check them out at the Village at 8 p.m. on July 16th.

Now let us begin worship by responsively reading the call to worship printed in your bulletins.

Call to Worship (from Across the Universe)
Sounds of laughter shades of life;
Are ringing through our open ears,
Exciting and inviting us
Into limitless, undying love that shines around us like a million suns. It calls each one of us, on and on across the universe;
Let us come together and reach out to the God who comes to us from across the universe.

Song “Come Together” performed by Watson Street Loft

Scripture Reading: Ecclesiastes 4:7-12 (The Message)

Reflection: Science is finding out what religion has known all along. We’re meant to be together: Humans, at the core, are a social animal. We don’t work together well on our own and there are few exceptions to that rule. Even the religious monks who sought isolation in faraway places ended up forming monastic communities.

This message is found throughout scripture but explicitly here in Ecclesiastes. The Beatles stumbled upon this truth through their songs, especially the one we heard today: “Come Together.” Eleanor Rigby, the song you’re about to hear is my favorite song by the Beatles. It shows the negative effects that trying to live alone causes.

The song associates church with lonely spinsters, death, ineffective priests, empty pews, and ignored sermons. There is an atmosphere of loneliness and decay. People are going through the motions of religion but the force that once inspired it has long since left the scene.

Father McKenzie’s ‘sermon that no one will hear’ and Eleanor’s ‘face that she keeps in a jar by the door’ are both disguises that conceal an underlying emptiness. The final line is literally damning, “No one was saved.” Paul borrowed this from the Christian Classic from The Miller’s Tale by Chaucer where the ending line is “No One Was Converted.”

The Good News of the Bible is that we are not alone. We have one another and we have a God who is for us and whose plans are not to harm us but for our benefit (Jeremiah 29:11 and Acts 17:11). I heard a pastor once describe the church’s business and mission in the world is primarily connecting people to people. I love that image.

Connecting people to people and in that connection; in that communion, we connect to God as well.

Hear in this song, we hear a psalm of lament. It lament’s Eleanor and Father McKenzie’s loneliness. It implores us not to wear a mask and to speak what is on our hearts, not say what we mean in ways no one will hear.

Song “Eleanor Rigby” performed by Watson Street Loft

Scripture Reading: 2 Timothy 4:1-5 and Mark 7:1-8

Sermon “PrOPhesy” Lucas Lindon (sermon with audio)

Offering
This free-will offering will benefit Nu-Vizion United Church of Christ. Nu-Vizion is an inner-city mission church located in the Old North End/Polish Village neighborhood of Toledo, OH. More info can be found at www.nu-vizion.org

Song “Blackbird” performed by Watson Street Loft

Prayer of Dedication
Through these gifts we hope that we can add our voices to the song being sung at Nu Vizion. May the broken wings there learn to fly. May the sunken eyes see a new vision. May we be inspired and blessed by them. In your many names we pray. AMEN.

The Next Session is August 13th: Green Day

Benediction
And now the time has come and we must go;
We shall remember what we learned here.
That we are all lonely, and wounded;
But we can come together and in this moment we can fly.
Go out and lift one another up. Know that there is hope and a magical mystery that involves each one of us. May you find joy and give peace today.
Amen.

Song “All You Need is Love” performed by Watson Street Loft

We're All Terminal

2011-07-06T14:04:00.002-04:00

I love World 5. The more I read about it, the longer I live and I'm a pastor, the more World 5 I get.

I have known suffering in my life. I have seen it and experienced it. I have come through it. In the words of Richard Rohr, I have found my pain and transformed it, instead of transmitting it. I did so in a world 5 fashion without knowing what it was.

World 5 is the least populated world of the 5 worlds. It is the world of hospital chaplains and monks and nuns. It is the world of Henri Nouwen.

Nouwen was a trapist monk who wrote 40 some books on spirituality, one of which was entitled The Wounded Healer. The name comes from Greek mythology, the centaur 'Chiron was known as the "Wounded Healer" because he was poisoned by one of Hercules's arrows. Unfortunately, 'Chiron was unable to heal himself and so suffered the pain of an incurable wound His woundedness gave him empathy to others, he was able to relate to them because he experienced the same pain.

I am fascinated by this world and find myself drawn to it. I keep reading Nouwen and I'm enthralled with him.

I'm also a fan of this world because Pastor Bill was a prime World 5 type.

He stated his path thinking he would be a chaplain. Even at the start, he must have been an off-the-charts 5. But then he realized he wanted the long-term relationships that the church offered, not just the crisis management chaplaincy offered. He then entered into ministry and was there ever since.

I only knew him when he had terminal cancer. I was amazed that he still wanted, almost needed to minister to others.

I remember one time sitting with him on a pastoral visit to someone in the hospital. They were going in for minor surgery but to them it was major. They were freaked out. And there Bill is comforting the person.

I got angry.

This person doesn't have cancer. They are going to get through this and Bill won't. They are in extremely good health and Bill isn't. They have years to live, he had months. Yet here he was comforting them and walking with them in total empathy.

"They should be comforting him. How selfish of them!" I thought*

Walking out of the hospital, I asked him about how he could minister in his condition, being terminal and all, he stated, "Luke, we're all terminal."

That comment floors me to this day.

For me, it showed how to rightly face our shared fate, death. Bill treated his fate like a refining fire. He came out of it and was healed by it. His integrity and determination to outlast, to persevere, and to love no matter what is an inspiration.

In the end, he was at peace with his fate.

I'm struggling to do the same.

*it was not one of my prouder nor more pastoral moments

Lee Pitts' Wisdom for Kids

2011-07-04T07:00:00.002-04:00

I found this online while researching for a sermon. It's from Lee Pitts' 1995 book People Who Live at the End of Dirt Roads and was written in total World 5 fashion. Each wish carries with it learning through suffering. Check 'em out and see if you agree... or even add your own!

We tried so hard to make things better for our kids that we made them worse. For my grandchildren, I'd like better.

I'd really like for you to know about hand me down clothes and homemade ice cream and leftover meat loaf sandwiches. I really would.

I hope you learn humility by being humiliated, and that you learn honesty by being cheated.

I hope you learn to make your own bed and mow the lawn and wash the car.

And I really hope nobody gives you a brand new car when you are sixteen.

It will be good if at least one time you can see puppies born and your old dog put to sleep.

I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in.

I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother/sister. And it's all right if you have to draw a line down the middle of the room,but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you because he's scared, I hope you let him.

I hope you go to Sunday School and church to help you find God and Godly friends.

When you want to see a movie and your little brother/sister wants to tag along, I hope you'll let him/her.

I hope you have to walk uphill to school with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it safely.

On rainy days when you have to catch a ride, I hope you don't ask your driver to drop you two blocks away so you won't be seen riding with someone as uncool as your Mom.

If you want a slingshot, I hope your Dad teaches you how to make one instead of buying one.

I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books.

When you learn to use computers, I hope you also learn to add and subtract in your head.

I hope you get teased by your friends when you have your first crush on a boy/girl, and when you talk back to your mother that you learn what ivory soap tastes like.

May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on a stove and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole.

I don't care if you try a beer once, but I hope you don't like it. And if a friend offers you dope or a joint, I hope you realize he is not your friend.

I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your Grandma/Grandpa and go fishing with your Uncle.

May you feel sorrow at a funeral and joy during the holidays.

I hope your mother punishes you when you throw a baseball through your neighbor's window and that she hugs you and kisses you at Hannukah/Christmas time when you give her a plaster mold of your hand.

These things I wish for you - tough times and disappointment, hard work and happiness. To me, it's the only way to appreciate life.

Written with a pen. Sealed with a kiss. I'm here for you. And if I die before you do, I'll go to heaven and wait for you.

The Breakfast Club: A World 5 Model of Church

2011-06-30T07:32:00.002-04:00

I am proud to announce this movie is not one of my choosing. This stems directly from our World 5 discussion; look, user generated content!

Five teenagers who don't' know each other spend a Saturday in detention at the suburban school library. At first they squirm, fret and pick on each other. Then a real encounter session gets underway. They begin sharing the stresses and strains of adolescence.

In short, they provide the sharing model for church in the world of the wounded healer.

Bender (The Criminal) starts off the sharing when someone notices a cigar burn on his arm; a sign of the abuse he receives at home.

Andrew (The Jock) has spent most of his youth trying to measure up to his father's super masculine image he has set for Andrew. This entails winning (not losing) in athletic competition and bullying weaker peers.

Brian (The Brain) wishes he could be accepted as a person and not seen just for his intellect. Brian has contemplated suicide rather than live with the ire of his disappointed parents.

Allison (The Kook) is the eccentric of the group. "My home life is unsatisfactory," she confides. The group finds out she is a compulsive liar and even she can't really tell the difference between the truth and the lies she fabricates.

Claire Standish (The Princess) is the most popular girl in school. It is revealed that she thinks her parents use her as a bargaining chip so they can get back at each other. She doesn't like the shallowness of her friends but has to do exactly what they say and conform to their wishes and the school's wishes. She reveals the pressure popularity brings with it.

The movie points to the separation of rigid high school caste systems and how it continues into adulthood. The lament is "When you grow up, your heart dies." The radical sharing the teens do opens up their worlds and heals them. They feel more connected to one another than to their own families or even their own friends.

They engage in a conversation, in radical sharing, that is healing and sacramental to all involved.

Despite the powerful service and the new developing friendships, the students are afraid that once the detention is over, they will return to their very different cliques and never speak to each other again.

In typical world 5 fashion, there is no happy ending. There is only the sacred moments of sharing that we're left with. We are unsure if the friendships blossom from there or even if any long term change is made or program implemented either within their cliques or family systems.

That doesn't matter.

All that matters is the sharing which healed everyone for a time.

Their attitudes and perspectives have changed and are now completely different... at least, for now.

Super 8: A World 5 Movie

2011-06-27T06:53:00.010-04:00

If you haven't checked out this summer block-buster by JJ Abrams, I would highly recommend it. I'll paint in broad brush strokes and not give away too many spoilers.

The lead character is a 12 year old boy who has recently lost his mother. His dad doesn't understand him and is angry and drinks too much. His father is distant. The father doesn’t respect the boy's dreams and tries to impose his own feelings on the boy, insisting he go to baseball camp when the boy wants to stay home and make monster movies.

The boy falls in love with a girl while making a super 8 film with friends. Her dad switched shifts at the local plant which caused the boy's mom to die. The girls father is angry, distant, and drinks too much as well.

A heart-warming film of a boy, a girl, their awful fathers,
a zombie movie, a train crash, a monster, the air force,
and life in a small Ohio town in the 1970s.

The girl states "It's like I already know you, do you feel that way?" The boy says yes. This isn't surprising to me.

They share the same wounds.

They know what it's like to have an alcoholic father who doesn't understand them or 'see' them truly.

Those similar wounds attract and bond the girl and boy.

Then a lot of stuff happens filled with a train crash, a monster, a mystery, and the air force trying to cover it all up.

There's one scene where the boy and girl confront the monster. The boy yells at the looming monster, "It's okay! Sometimes bad things happen." Turns out the monster is an alien and upon crash landing on Earth, the monster was picked up the government and poked, prodded and tortured.

It’s angry.

It's been mistreated.

It's misunderstood and handled by people who don't 'get it' or 'truly see it.'

All it wants to do is get home.

That bonds the monster to the kids and instead of destroying the whole town, or at the very least eating both kids, it jumps in the space ship and goes home. That's it, that's the end.

We're not sure if the dad's ever truly get to know their kids or bridge the distance between them. There's no happy ending, no promise that bad stuff won't happen after all this has happened.

That's the view of world 5. Murphy's Law is still in effect and suffering will happen in the future. The only way to do it is to outlast it and look for those souls out there who truly see you (even if one of them is an alien monster).

Mother Teresa and the Matrix Series

2011-06-23T06:49:00.001-04:00

There is more world five in the entirety of the Matrix series than I initially thought. Two scenes jump into my mind that scream world 5. First would be Agent Smith, after fighting Neo and unable to defeat him, finally breaks down and screams

Agent Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Yes? No? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. The temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?

Neo: Because I choose to.

Neo fights because that's what he's set himself to do. He will do it until he can't any more, and when he can't he'll resurrect and come back. He is persistent. He set himself on a course and followed it to the end. It makes me think of Mother Teresa and her persistence.

Could she dodge bullets? In the end,
she didn't have to...

Mother Teresa's published diary reveals the inner spiritual turmoil of the nun so revered for her good deeds. It holds an important message for humanity. That a religious leader supposedly beyond the clutches of doubt wrestled so personally and persistently with it, touches people – religious and nonreligious – because doubts of all sorts are so common to the human condition.

Her refusal to give in also inspires – not only because of the immense good that came from her perseverance, but because it is only persistent striving and loving that can relieve the burdens of the human experience. Imagine what the world would be like if doubt – of faith, of ability, of purpose – were allowed the upper hand.

She set herself on a course and she followed it until the end.

World 1, 2 and 4 often fall into the temptation to think of great moral leaders as unshakable warriors, but that is so rarely true.World 3's tend to change course whenever they feel like it, which may not be a bad thing depending, but discipline and persistence need more emphasis in this world. It is also tempting to think that great leader's courage and good deeds are not possible for the general population to achieve. But the case of Mother Teresa should make her works feel more accessible to people. If "the saint of the gutters" was tormented by personal failings, then those who feel less saintly can also commit to acts of charity.

Mother Teresa may have believed she had no faith, but was not her persistence an act of extreme faith?

I think her ability to hope, despite the facts, despite her face to face with the naked despair and poverty of Calcutta, is inspiring and indeed what World 5 is all about. Logic would have told her to run away, abandon her cause she set out on and renounce God, church, and faith. But she didn't. And that is hard for me to understand. Indeed, it's hard for the machines in the Matrix to understand.

The Architect: Humph. Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.

I think hope is one of our strongest delusions. Pair it with faith and hope and you have the full package. As Paul writes in 1 Corithians 13:13 "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

Is hope a delusion? Do you find that your hopes often fail or save you? Have there been times when your hope won out over the odds?

World Five in the Matrix

2011-06-20T07:24:00.000-04:00

World 5 is the least populated world of the 5 worlds. This makes it harder to find, especially in a kung-fu, shoot-em-up movie. But it is there.

Neo is a good- hearted man on the path to enlightenment who realizes that the suffering of the world is brought on by ignorance, greed, craving, and attachment. The tests and trials he undergoes in his martial arts training with Morpheus enable him to see the power of the mind to alter conditions and bring about change. The assumption by Morpheus is that the power of the human mind and it's unique blend of endurance, reason and emotion are stronger than the mathematical precision and cold calculating logic of the machines.

Morpheus is the key to world 5 in the series. It is his faith in Neo and his determined willingness to outlast, to persevere, no matter what that helps him hold out while being tortured by the agents. Morpheus possesses that strange power which strengthens one to press on. The agents don't understand it, they can think of no good reason for Morpheus to continue to resist them. Doesn't he know that it's statistically improbable for any sort of rescue attempt, let alone a successful rescue.

It is Morpheus' philosophy that unlocks Neo's mind from the bondage of the Matrix. During the initial sparing match Morpheus constantly beats Neo and then asks why he did it.

Morpheus: How did I beat you?
Neo: You... you're too fast.
Morpheus: Do you believe that my being stronger or faster has anything to do with my muscles in this place? Do you think that's air you're breathing now?

Morpheus functions as Neo's spiritual guide. He seeks not to initially change the whole system of the Matrix, since one cannot really change the way things are. He does seek to change how his crew, and Neo in particular, chooses to live in the world and operate in the Matrix.

Morpheus states: "If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it."

In the climactic battle with Agent Smith, Neo's imagination and intuition enable him to bend and break the rules which the humanoid machines are unable to do. This scene holds the key to what makes The Matrix such an enthralling adventure on so many different levels. The vast and untapped potential of imagination is the force that can save the human race and release us from enslavement to ignorance and the follies of craving and attachment. Actually, the opening scene in the film sums up what it all is about. Neo is asleep in front of his computer and on the screen, presumably typed by Morpheus, it says: "Wake up, Neo."

World Five: Wounded Healer

2011-06-14T19:20:00.000-04:00

The dilemma which focuses life for citizens of this World is life itself, the way things are. There is a heaviness to daily living, so that it seems that whatever can go wrong will ala Murphy's Law.

Although one cannot really change the way things are, one does have a choice as how to live it. Resolution, ironically, can come through suffering treated like a refining fire. Travail, rightly faced, can bring healing, in which integrity is birthed. Integrity is a determined willingness to outlast, to persevere, no matter what. Spirit is that strange power which strengthens one to press on, even when one can think of no better reason than just keeping on keeping on.

For the Christian, such faithfulness, no matter what the consequences, is rooted in the belief that we are not in it alone. Because the companion God is suffering with us, we can endure to the end. On Golgotha, God screams in agony with us, drinking deeply of all that we too go through; therefore nothing can separate us from such a God. Redeemed life has little to do with grand designs or miraculous reversals. It is the integrity born of tenacity on the daily road, respecting the small and the commonplace. A knowing glance and a sharing hand are the manna which feed.

Primal Fear: life is hard, bad stuff happens.

Commonly Used Phrases: "stuff" happens, nothing you can do about it. Life's a trip and then you die, it is what it is.

God is: compassion and empathy

Jesus is: EMMANUEL! and paramount as Jesus is the ultimate paradox. God knows through Jesus on the cross what it feels like to be abandoned by God.

Church is: intimate sharing, a big support group.

Pastors are: pastoral councilors and role models of compassion

Education is: experienced based. it is hearing the stories and sharing the suffering. it is offering ways to cope with life and sharing of personal struggles.

Pop Culture References/Prime Images: Mother Teresa, Alcoholics Anonymous, Henri Nouwen

Music: Lonestar's song "Come Cry'n to Me" would be a prime example. The emphasis isn't to fix whatever problem is facing the person being sung to, the emphasis is just to cry it out and to sit in the ashes until you feel better.

I love Mumford and Sons. their songs are all about suffering and endurance. They are the stiff upper-lipped Brits who will endure and thrive. just check out the lyrics to The Cave: And I'll find strength in pain, And I will change my ways, I'll know my name as it's called again: Biblical: check! Endurance: check! Transformation that leads to salvation (with vagueness to what that actually is): check and double check! here's the song!

The New Young Families' Structure

2011-06-13T11:53:00.002-04:00

From our meeting on June 12, 2011.

This is the structure of our young families group. At the bottom is all the young families and from them everything else springs. Here's the set up:

Young Families- People with kids ages 0-14 who attend our church. Role: Attend and Host events.

Forum- Formerly Mary P and Kate F now a group of volunteer parents (between 5-7) who will plan events, manage calendar, and give Pastor Luke feedback.

Pastor Luke- Will act as a guide and educator. In charge of notification and coordination with the church calendar and facilities and pastoral care to young families.

And here's what we do:

Events

Socials: These events take two forms. We will either meet as the Younger-Young Families and Older-Young Families at homes, church, or bowling/local events. Each event is hosted by volunteer from the Young Families and form of event is determined by the host (whether it’s a potluck, pizza party, as well as location). Default place in case of cancellation is either Pastor Luke’s home or the church. Or we will be together with events like the kickoff and closing picnics, parents' night out, game night, slime-time, etc.

Connections Fellowship: A small discussion group set up by Janet and Pete Hildebrandt originally designed for Young Families. It is now open for all, not just young families. Takes place during the 9:20 education hour during worship in Fall, Winter, and Spring.

Second Sundays: An education group led by Pastor Luke that will discuss topics like communion, baptism, confirmation, and other topics like “talking about God/Jesus/Church/etc to your kids” that will meet during the year during the 9:20 hour during the Fall, Winter, and Spring.

Forum Meetings: Bi-annual meeting of the young families to plan events. One meeting in the winter and another in the summer, the summer will be for the upcoming year and the winter will be a mid-year review and a chance for feedback on how the programs are going. This used to just be two people, but to prevent stress and burn out, we've now upped the planning group to a little larger (not because the former peeps were doing a poor job, just the opposite!).

Questions, comments, primal screams; please do so below or by emailing me. THANKS!

Look for the next Forum Planning Event to go down the third week of July, keep July 17th-23rd open if you want to plan events!

Pearl Jam Liturgy from Sylvania Sessions

2011-06-11T19:00:00.007-04:00

Order of Worship

About the “Sessions.” Welcome! To all those who are visiting and to those of you I see every Sunday. My name is Luke and I’m the associate pastor here at Sylvania United Church of Christ and this worship service is our first in a series I’m called “The Sylvania Sessions.”

There are three reasons for doing the Sylvania Sessions.

1. Is for people outside the church to know that people inside the church, like myself, know about pop culture and can actively engage it. That pastors like myself don’t make you burn your Beatles records at the door and pick up only approved “Christian” music, movies, and books.

2. Is for people INSIDE the church to know about pop culture and how to actively engage it. And to experience God everywhere, in a new form of worship with new music.

3. To show case those creative people who live in our community. This band being one of them. We have a ton of people around here that are involved in music, and this venue is one way to expose you to them and if you like what you hear this evening, you will attend a show. This is to help support our local music scene and our local artists.

Tonight we will feature the music of Pearl Jam. Next month on July 9th, we will cover the Beatles. August will feature the music of the Stone Temple Pilots on the 13th. I hope you’ll come out for those as well. It is my hope you’ll listen to this music a little differently, that you see the divine in every part of your life, and that you know the talent of this band ‘tis who play in your community often.

Now let us begin worship by responsively reading the call to worship printed in your bulletins.

Call to Worship
To say that “I’m still alive” can be a lament or a cry of defiance;
On Good Friday it was a lament. And the disciples were asking if they deserved to be alive when their leader was dead;
Yet, on Easter Sunday, it was a defiant cry. Eddie Vedder originally wrote it as a curse;
As life carries many burdens and avenues for suffering. Yet the response of the fans lifted the curse;
And transformed not only the song, but the man who wrote it.

Song “Alive” from the album Ten, performed by ‘tis

Scripture Reading: Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 (The Message)

Response
Our hearts and thoughts will fade away. What is there that is constant?
The love of God is constant and unchanging. May we see God in one another and may we

have the courage to scream hello.

Song “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” from the album Vs.,‘tis

Scripture Luke 16:19-31 (The Message)

Sermon by Luke Lindon

Offering
The offering will benefit Second Chance, a Toledo-based social service program that provides comprehensive services to victims of domestic sex trafficking and prostitution.

Song “State of Love and Trust” Ten, 2009 reissue, ‘tis

Prayer of Dedication
Parent of the Orphans and Victims, we give these gifts to lift the burdens of others. May our giving be not in vein. May it further the good work of Second Chance and help those in need. Amen

Benediction
Let us listen for that voice within us;
God is still speaking.
May we seek a new state of love and trust;
Where the naked are clothed and the hungry fed.
May the God of all bless you and keep you;
As we bless and keep one another. Amen.

Today!

2011-06-11T14:52:00.000-04:00

Full liturgy to follow

My Painful Growth of World 4: part 2 of 2

2011-06-09T07:09:00.001-04:00

I started off as a sin-denying, people-hugging humanist but after an existential crisis, time spent with my Neo-Orthodox professor, and time spent as a hospital chaplain I became a sin-seeing, people-hugging humanist. I grew from a idealistic view of people to a more realistic view; not only of those around me but also my personal history (some daddy issues, but that's another conversation).

We human-beings often have the best intentions as we try to grasp the wrong things or take the easy approach to life thinking that these two things will make us happy and secure. Prof S had me read Niebuhr and I was transfixed with his revision of the doctrine of original sin and I now subscribe to it. I even wrote a sermon describing my break-through experience while working as a hospital chaplain.

Hi! My name is Reinhold. I was just working on

something that is going to BLOW YOUR MIND! TTYL!

I see original sin not in Augustine's view of some sexual transmitted disease (like herpes or some STD) but more along Neibuhr's lines. For Niebuhr, original sin describes the historical and social environment of self-interest and warfare into which individuals are born. The Fall points to the fact that humans are anxious regarding finitude and mystery, and over reach in their quest for power, knowledge and goodness. So rising out of our anxiety regarding finitude and mystery, we often seek immortality or at least to deny death and pretend we are gods. We seek objective and absolute truths despite our inability to perceive, understand, and communicate them to other people. The closest we can come is what you're doing now, reading this post which is such inadequate a method to describe what I went through. So it goes...

So every time we seek to eat the fruit of the tree of 'good and evil' we fall. Life is more complex than this binary thinking and that is why the good and evil tree was outlaws in Genesis 2 and the tree of life was free to all. Debates about good and evil only makes sense within the context of something like a court case, where there is a judge and clearly defined rules. We can't play God and we get in big trouble when we do.

There appears to be no limit to the desire to use all things, including God, to our own glorification or to conceal such self-interest by hypocracy and the presumption of good intentions. It has been a long journey and a day-by-day struggle to get to this point. It is easy to fall into legalism or a non-humanist stance given this doctrine. But I have found great truth in it namely that

I can't do this (live and understand life) by myself.
There can be no freedom from sin without divine assistance.
Good intentions aren't enough.
Humans are complex and good and evil exist side-by-side
We are not a blank slate when we enter the world
Nor are we entirely corrupt or inherently good or bad, but we lean towards selfishness most of our lives
Sin is already active in our lives before we even enter the world and it is the inheritance we are given by the world, one we can go along with or try to transform. the choice is left up to us.

Is world 4 easy for you or hard? What world have you struggled with so far? Are humans good, bad, both, or neither?