Hurricanes and Compassion

Hurricanes and Compassion

People often want to know if human beings are basically good, or fundamentally evil. In the most challenging of circumstances, the real nature of people is exposed. Saturday evening and night I went to the George R Brown Convention Center to help. I tried to go to the Astrodome, but they had all of the volunteers they could use. I think that is a testimony to the goodness of people. I have heard some preachers debating the need for international aid, and I spoke up and said that it was a funny notion. It is not that we do not need the community of human kind to pitch in, it was just that in the heat of the moment, no one is saying, "Where are the French when you need them!"

I was a bit nervous as I went to work at the GRB. That lost feeling is troublesome. If anyone asked me a question, I would not know the answer. I did not know where to stand or what to do. I found myself in line to receive a family that was getting off a bus from Louisiana. There were eight people, four young boys. My job was to take them through the line to get shoes (if they needed them), two days worth of clothing, soap and towels and tooth brushes and the like. We spent about three hours together. One young boy who was about 8, named Kahlil warmed up to me right away. He became my leaders. Where he wanted to go, we went. His brother Raheem was a bit more reserved. The older boy Keiron, was confident and serious. The littlest boy just wanted things to be normal. Then one of them said, "Where are the French when you need them!" (Not really.)

They were from the west bank of the Mississippi. Water rose into the second level of their house. They heard gunfire outside their house. Then some military men came and told them to get out of their house. They crawled through a window into deep water. They did not tell me about snakes and gators. They did say that they reached some dry ground and a man who had ‘borrowed’ a car from a car lot picked them up and took them to the mall. The mall was horrid. They did find their way onto a bus and they arrived in Houston Saturday night, five and a half days after the storm. We settled them in to their air mattresses and had a prayer, and I went to the next task.

I wandered about the GRB looking for a way to make myself useful. I found my way into the volunteer line. I did not know that was the starting place! A lady asked for two people to come with her, so I went. I spent the next four hours working security, checking baggage for contraband. Anything that could not be brought on to an airplane or into a prison could not be brought into the GRB. It was hard to taker their cigarettes and lighters. I took one woman’s comb that had a sharp and pointed end, and she began to cry. I felt terrible. The last bus in that night was full of special needs children. We did not search their bags. I was thankful.

Then I went home to my air-conditioned home. Troubling.
Are people good? I think so. We are compassionate. Our hearts ache. I am thankful for that.

Family Laws

Ten Laws of Family Life

1. Emotional Distance does not solve problems. Sometimes emotional distance actually transfers problems to other relationships. We change partners and keep the problems.
2. Loss and Replacement. When people suffer a loss there is often a rush to replace the loss. The immediate pain may be reduced, but the potential for change is low. There are lessons to be learned from the loss.
3. Chronic Conditions. If a perpetual problem exists, identify the person or persons who are reinforcing the dysfunction. The situation in the family will have to get worse before it gets better.
4. Pain and Responsibility. I have to be able to allow another member of the family to struggle, to hurt and suffer, especially if there are consequences that need to fall upon them. We must learn to sit still and wait. Within reason, natural or logical consequences must fall and we must learn from them.
5. The Paradox of Seriousness and the Playfulness of Paradox. Some situations are only made worse by standing around and saying, "Isn’t this awful?" Being too serious is as a bad as being too flippant. Over reaction and under reaction both have a price. Joyfully work the problems.
6. Secrets and Systems. Keeping a secret is like plaque in the arteries. Let there be none in your family. Get all of the information out on the table. Reality is our best friend. The unmentionable is unmanageable!
7. Sibling Position. Our position in our family of origin does in fact teach us certain roles to play. These roles are ones that we bring with us into our nuclear family as well as our congregational family.
8. Diagnosis can be addicting. We can spend so much time diagnosing other people that no change is ever effected. Labeling is easier than enacting a cure.
9. Symmetry. If one extreme polarity exists in a family, you will probably find a counter balance.
10. Families are durable and resilient. Survival is probable.
    
    How might these make a difference in ministry? Churches are families.

Edwin Friedman - Generation to Generation

Evolution - Scientists and Creationists

There is a debate going on stirred up by the intelligent design proponents. It seems to me that some of the scientists and the creationists are talking past one another. The intelligent design people are asking the scientists to be unscientific. They want to say, "When you get to a mystery, like the mystery of the similarity of genes found in humans, mammals, worms and bacteria, couldn’t you just say that ‘God did it!’?" A scientist is compelled to continue asking the questions without surrendering to the mystery. I appreciate that. I will draw my own conclusions somewhere a long the way, without demanding that someone quit asking the observable questions. We are thankful for Copernicus and Galileo, who did not stop seeking the truth about the world. When I see the similarities in genes and embryos, I will see economy of Design rather than common ancestry through natural selection. My feelings won’t be hurt when some scientist says, "That’s unscientific!" I am not a scientist. I am a theologian!

I am also comfortable with evolutionary theory, at least in a macro sense. Things change over time. That is evolution, right? I think we should not ignore good evidence. We should be observant. We should ask questions. We would do well not to limit ourselves to our own disciplines, too. Theologians should be reading chemistry and biology, as well as philosophy and the Bible. What I am interested in is the truth. I think we can handle the truth. Virtue, it seems to me, demands that we have our eyes and hearts and minds open. This is the world that God has made, and it pours forth speech (Ps 19:1-4). We should listen. Paul Woodruff says, "The writer who is serious about virtue can’t stay behind the boundaries of a single academic discipline; the subject brings together poetry and philosophy and the history of ideas and puts them all to work on a huge live-wire of a question -- how we should live our lives." If the scientists or the creationists forget the point of it all, we should not.

Of course, you know, I believe that God created the heavens and the earth, that he created a moral agent out of mud.

Dangerous Listening/Dangerous Speech

Having God in your presence is such a dangerous thing. It is so difficult to follow our own desire when God is around. How difficult dating would have been if I had known that God was coming along! If we had an inkling of an idea that God was paying attention, I think we would either hide, or we would shoo him away.

As I read Scripture it seems to me that you really can do those things. We can run away. Did you ever play peek-a-boo with your children? Why was that fun? In their minds, if they could not see you, then you were not present. If we do not look at God, or consider that he could see and know what we are up to, then we are off the hook. We can ask God to leave, even.

Moses tells the story of the Ten Commandments. He said to the people, "You said, ‘The Lord our God has shown us his glory and his majesty, and we have heard his voice from the fire. Today we have seen that a man can live even if God speaks with him. But now, why should we die? This great fire will consume us, and we will die if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer. For what mortal man has ever heard the voice of the living God speaking out of fire, as we have, and survived? Go near and listen to all that the Lord our God says. Then tell us whatever the Lord our God tells you. We will listen and obey.’"

Moses, you go take the risks for us. We will listen to you. We say that we will obey, but really we will just evaluate what you have to say and... from a safe distance decide our course! What a deal! God says, "Okay Moses. Let’s follow their plan. Go, tell them to return to their tents."
And then, in the here and the now we wonder where God is. We marvel at the fact that we cannot hear God speak.

Annie Dillard says, "It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. Did the wind use to cry, and the hills shout forth praise? Now speech has perished from among the lifeless things of earth, and living things say very little to very few.

"The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega. It is God’s brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blended note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to ‘World.’ Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing."

Quit your tents! Come out! Look and listen. God speaks!

Moments of Blindness

I have been working on a project for school. It is the last big thing of my formal education...well unless something else crops up that I would like to learn in a formal way. I spent a couple of months writing the prospectus. I knew that the next step was to submit it for critique. I also have great confidence in the people who will critique my work. However, when the criticism came, I had this sense of failure, of being overwhelmingly inadequate. One of my advisors wanted me to read some other material. I read it and understood about half of it. (J. L. Austin’s How to Do Things With Words and John Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality) On Friday, I felt like surrender. I sent a note to my advisors and I got a response that was encouraging. Despair has its effect, and I think it has some value. The effect is humility.
Humility should not paralyze us. In fact, perhaps it should set us free. Today, I happened upon these words from Annie Dillard.
Speaking to someone who has had success in writing a book: "I have an urgent message for you. Everyone feels like a fraud …separate yourself from your work. A book you made isn’t you any more than a chair you made, or a soup. It’s just something you made once. If you ever want to make another one, it, too, will be just another hat in the ring, another widow’s mite, another broken offering which God has long understood is the best we human’s can do – we’re forgiven in advance."
We are forgiven in advance. That is the nugget of information that releases us to try. When despair comes, we have been blinded to the goodness that surrounds us. In those moments, when we think everything is bad, we are most blind. Every offering is broken. That should not prevent us from humbly making the offering.

Grief

In February, Grady Burke was killed in the line of duty. He was a Houston firefighter. Frank Cordua is on trial for manslaughter because he was cooking drugs in an abandoned house. His drug cooking ignited the house and station 46 responded to the blaze. Captain Burke was on the hose leading the charge into the fire. The house collapsed on him. I have been called to testify at the trial this week. My job is to describe the impact of Grady’s death on his family. His wife Cindy is a courageous woman. She is a firefighter’s wife. Their three children are exceptional people. Hannah, Hailey and Hunter have suffered an irreplaceable loss, however. Their lives have been redefined by the death of their father.

I was listening to a song by Natalie Grant this morning that I thought was an appropriate prayerful response to their grief. The song is about the loss of a child. But the lyric is so well written for godly grief that it effectively speaks a word of suffering and comfort.

Two months is too little, they let him go, they had no sudden healing
To think that Providence would take a child from his mother while she prays is appalling.
Who told us we’d be rescued?
What is changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We’re asking why this happens to us who have died to live? It’s unfair!

This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life, and you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was when everything failed, we’d be held.

This hand is bitterness.
We want to taste it, let the hatred know our sorrow
The wise hand opens slowly to lilies of the valley and tomorrow.

If hope is born of suffering…
If this is only the beginning…
Can we not wait? For what? Our watching for our Savior?

What I appreciate about this is the honesty. This is not a message that says that if we were only faithful, we would not suffer. God does not deliver the blows on our hearts, either. We live in a fallen world where people are given the freedom to act. With that freedom comes also the responsibility for our choices. Who told us we’d be rescued? God does not spare us from living in this world of choice. The world is full of pain, and God loves the world.
Yes, the wise hand opens slowly to the lilies of the valley and tomorrow.

Out of the Boat

The first lesson that I taught as the preacher for the Southeast church was about walking on water. I was encouraging our people to step out in faith as they were leaving what was comfortably known into an adventure with Jesus.

I still believe that the adventure ‘out there’ is worth the risk. God’s mission in the world, as I see it, is bringing order out of chaos. We are invited to participate in the mission of God in the world. Of course that means that we are going to have to GO out of our little circles of safety, out where the chaos is happening!

Then today I was reading one of my favorite preachers. He always makes me re-think. Re-thinking is a virtue, I think (is that as funny to you as it is to me?)
Here is what Fred Craddock says,

Only God can walk on the waves. That is what the Bible says. In Job, in Isaiah, in Habakkuk, in the Psalms, it is God who walks on the storm, God who makes a path in the sea. Why? To show a miracle? To say, “Hey, look, I’m walking on water.” No, don’t be shallow. In ancient times the sea was the place of evil. The evil monster was there; the Leviathan was there. The enemy of all that we know as good and right is there in the water. In the Bible, the water is the abode of all the forces that are against us. And God walks on the sea. In other words, there is no power, no storm, no wind, no force in the world that God cannot conquer, no evil over which God is not superior, nothing that can destroy your life because God loves and cares for you.

Jesus’ walking on the water is not to be understood as a miracle. Look at it, listen to it. Jesus comes in the storm on the sea and says, “Take heart, I am?” These words are translated, “It is I” or ’I am he?’ but what Jesus actually says is, “I am.” “I am”-- that’s the name for God. God has come to them in the storm in the person of Jesus, and what happens? They cannot believe it. At first they say, “It’s a ghost, it’s a ghost!” From a distance Jesus does indeed seem like a ghost. I know a lot of people who have never made friends with Jesus, and he is still out there as a ghost-like thing.

But Jesus gets closer, and Simon Peter says to him, “If you are . . . if you are, tell me to come to you on the water.” Do you recognize those words? Do you remember hearing those words before? When Jesus was tested in the wilderness, the devil said, “If you are the son of God…” The words of Simon Peter are the words of the tempter. I am putting you to the test, Jesus. If you are really the son of God…

It is no wonder that two chapters later Jesus says to Simon Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.” So the fact that Simon Peter could walk on the water is just not a little thing. I’ve heard all those piddling little sermons that say that Peter tried to walk on the water but he took his eyes off Jesus and so he began to sink. Do you understand what is really happening here? Simon Peter doesn’t believe. He wants to put Jesus to the test, and in the attempt to test Jesus, he ends up testing himself and sinking. You don’t test God. Jesus got in the boat and everything was all right. It was quiet, and the others fell down in the bottom of that little boat and worshiped Jesus. (Matt 14:22-33)

Boredom is the root of all evil

We do so much better under pressure. We need the stimulation of direction. When we are bored we invent adventure. Fred Craddock says that watching the Indy 500 can lead one to being unchristian. The cars race round and round and round. They are going 230 MPH, round and round and round. They are going so fast it is hard to see the racing, the strategies, the art of the race. Instead you see the cars whizzz and whinnne past the grand stand. The monotony creeps in and you do not mean to be ugly…but you find yourself wishing that SOMETHING would happen! I think that is why Danica Patrick is such a hit among Indy fans. Yes, she’s cute. But cute does not get that much attention these days. She is tough and can race. She breaks up the boredom!
Of course, the issue is not Indy. Craddock is talking about church not racing. Have you been bored at church? I have been irritated and anxious at church. I am seldom bored. Of course, I am the preacher. When I think about the people who have gathered with a sense of expectation, it can be intimidating. I always have a message. If it is a Christian message, I can be assured that it is an important message. What is it that makes the people tune out, bob their heads as they fight off the sleepies? Some of them have been hearing the Bible for all of their lives. More information is boring! Some of them have not been listening for years! And sometimes, just maybe, I have ground it up into pabulum, too easy to swallow. What we need is a little bit of Bible scandal. What we need is a good 23 car pile-up. What we need is some eyes plucked out and hands cut off (Matthew 5:29-30)! That would wake everybody up, don’t you think! We need a few people dropping dead because their contribution was out of whack (Acts 5:5). What we need is not more information. We cannot allow reflection and discussion to become our central business. Craddock says “As long as life can be kept at a distance by stacking to ideas and concepts, a clever head can clear the way to operate a brothel and publish a new hymnbook at the same time.” (Overhearing the Gospel, p. 20)

Words Matter

Words matter.
The old cliché was that words would never hurt. The truth is that words have such great power. When someone chooses you, and says to you, “I choose you,” your world is changed. When you stand before God and friends and say, “I do,” your world is changed. If you stand before the judge and say, “I don’t,” that, too, changes the world.

We learn the power of words early. We learn the power of “no.” I had to convince my children that “no” was a very good word, but not a word that could be effectively used with mom and dad. We taught them the power of their kind words, “Please,” being the most operative.

Words matter. They are full of our shared hopes and dreams.

Barbara Brown Taylor is one of America’s preeminent preachers. She says:

“You don’t need a grand pulpit; any old housetop will do. Even the sun room will do at the nursing home, where you stand by the piano surrounded by wheelchairs full of old people. Some of those old people are dozing, some whimpering, and less than half of them are aware you are there.
Say “Resurrection!” in their presence.
Say, “Life everlasting!” say, “Remember!”
Just let those words loose in the room; just utter them in the light, and trust them to do their work. Speak to a support group for people with AIDS. Worship with them, laying hands on their heads and praying for their healing.
Say, “Mercy!” to them.
Say, “Comfort!” Say, “Beloved children of God!”
Just let those words loose in the room; just utter them and trust in their power to make people whole.

“Here’s the plan: God showed Jesus how; Jesus shows us how; we show the whole people of God how; they show the world how.”

(“Words We Tremble to Say Aloud”)

Your words matter. Your words change the world…for someone.

Major in Majors

This is the news from Houston today.

Yes, it is hot and humid in Houston, but I wonder if there is a lesson about majoring in minors. You are familiar with that term, right? It is something that is rather common in church, too. We spend huge amounts of energy on matters that are not central. We get upset and we upset others over issues that are on the margins.

Here is the story...
An undercover sting operation in Houston nabbed more than two dozen air conditioning repairman performing work without a license, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation said Thursday.
TDLR officials said the sting took place at a home in Houston between July 12 and 14.
The agency is expected to issue cease and desist orders to the unlicensed companies identified during the sting until they are in compliance with the law. Businesses that fail to obey the order could be subject to a $5,000 fine.
"We want every person in this state who is performing air conditioning or heating work without a license to worry every time they answer a call," TDLR's Executive Director William Kuntz said in a news release. "If they meet the requirements for a license, we want them licensed. If they don't meet the requirements, we want them out of business."
State law prohibits unlicensed businesses from offering to perform air conditioning work to actually performing it without a license.
Kuntz advises consumers check with the state's Web site to see if the repairman they are about to hire is properly licensed.
"The consequences of hiring an unlicensed, unqualified person can be disastrous. Your home can burn and your family may be harmed or killed. Even if you escape without injury, unlicensed contractors rarely have insurance. You will have no recourse if the unit fails to function properly - or function at all," Kuntz said.

At least is was not a police sting operation!
....

Let's stay on task. The task has everything to do with righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17).

Heritage

Is heritage disposable?
When a young couple comes for premarital counseling (or even if they are not a young couple) I ask them to do a three generation family tree. I would like for them to see the significant relationships that have been a part of their heritage. We learn to be who we are in our families. This is the story of our lives. When you think about your grandparents and your parents, your aunts and uncles, what do you see? Some families are close-knit. They are dependent upon one another. Some families are far-flung. You may not even know the stories of our family. But that IS the story. Is your story full of fractured relationships? That does not mean divorce, necessarily. Sometimes the fractures are tolerated. We learn what we live. We live what we learn.
Heritage counts.
But it does not count for EVERYTHING!

This is the old hotel in my old home town of Dewey. I grew up going to the Dewey United Methodist Church. We were Democrats. Dad worked for a susidiary of Phillips Petroleum, and we had a photo studio across from this old hotel. Across the other street was the Tom Mix Museum. Tom Mix was the mayor of Dewey and a cowboy actor in the silent movie era. The Harbours came to NE Oklahoma before statehood to sell contraband to the Cherokees.

Our heritage counts, but we are not bound by it.

Spanglish

Have you seen Spanglish – movie with Paz Vega, Adam Sandler and Tea Leone?

It is about rearing children, about love and neuroticism, and about the cultural divide. What I liked about it was that Adam Sandler’s character had the capacity for understanding the women in his life. That was amazing, and the women were amazed at him, and loved him for this ability. This is something of the idea that I think we are trying to communicate about God’s love.

If we could take a moment and move out of the significant bundle (or jumble) of pressures that we face on a constant basis, we might be able to see the reality of the life of the other person. If we could do that, we could make room for them in new ways. We could make allowances for their troubles. We might even have the energy to help bear their load.

God loves us, knowing us.
Remarkable.

A begining

Hey friends,

How much can one person think about? From time to time some of you might be interested in knowing what kinds of subjects are running through my mind.

Some of that might even be useful from time to time.

Today for instance, I am thinking about how people relate to Christianity. The classical liberal approach to Christianity was to make the story of the Bible reasonable in our culture. People still hunger for that apparently. They want to know about the pay-off for being a Christian. They also what to know of Christianity makes sense. Many are suspicious that it does not.

From Hans Frei – a theologian from Yale:

“The Bible’s claim to truth is not only far more urgent than Homer’s, it is tyrannical – it excludes all other claims. The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be a historically true reality-- it insists that it is the only real world, is destined for autocracy. All other scenes, issues, and ordinances have no right to appear independently of it, and it is promised that all of them, the history of all mankind, will be given their due place within its frame, will be subordinated to it. The Scripture stories do not, like Homer’s, court our favor, they do not flatter us, that they may please us and enchant us --they seek to subject us, and if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels.”

What do you think of that?