Temptation

We always think, somehow, that we're not the one being tempted.  Especially when it isn't an obvious temptation, like the temptation to lie or steal or cheat on taxes or commit adultery.  It's easy to find justifications, to stumble through the world stepping on people's toes and somehow remain it's their fault.

It's easy, but it isn't right.

The first thing my mom was told when taking ballroom dancing was that she had to follow the man she was dancing with (often, in fact, mostly my father).  If he stepped on her toes, it was her fault because she wasn't following well enough.  And the same principle probably applies to life, or so we think.  If your toes are being stepped on, it's definitely your fault because hey were simply in the way.

How rude.

"He who would retain his life shall lose it, and he who shall lose his life shall keep it."  Jesus said it, and He, as usual, was all too correct.  To lose one's own life, to be absorbed into the Church, is to lose all rights of protest and critique.  The Church will err, it will hurt you, and it will sin.  People, whether Christian or not, will err, will hurt you, and will sin.  Don't worry, God put them there specifically to transform you.

"So count it pure joy when men revile you..." not, in fact, because you're being reviled and thus persecuted.  No, rather, count it pure joy because that reviling is itself turning you into what Christ wants  you to be.

Well, it's been forever since I blogged.  Why?  Haven't the foggiest, except that life is pretty mundane - do research, answer the phone, do more research, go home, eat, talk to friends or family, sleep.  Boring, right?

Not exactly.  As some may know, and all will know in a second, I've really been working through a lot of spiritual issues lately.  There are multiple reasons, including a sense that I failed God too much for Him to want to forgive me, a sense of unworthiness for the pastoral ministry, and some pretty profound disillusionment with the way my church has handled gender roles in the past.  It's been a pretty nasty struggle.

But like all struggles, there are lessons to be learned.  I learned that, though Christians can be careless in word or deed, they are also the most likely to get down at eye level and say, "I love you too much to let you wander like this."

I learned that God uses those who are unworthy to shame the wise.  God uses the weak to shame the strong, the poor to shame the rich, the foolish to shame the wise.  And, as Christians, we are that weak, that poor, that foolish because in us God is working.  That is both humbling and frightening at the same time.

I eventually got down on my knees and told God that even if He sent me to a place where the church was split, the doctrine was stupid, the rules were legalistic, the women were oppressed, the men were egotistical, and the worship was contemporary, I would obey his call.  It took a lot.  I gritted my teeth and went back on it several times, but in the end gave it all up to Him.

No bells went off.  I gained only a little peace, and no satisfaction.  Still, I was surrendered, which mean, in the end, I wasn't doing it for peace or satisfaction or bells.  I was doing it because I am completely owned by Jesus Christ.

Which brings me to a good point.  The book No Better Freedom by Michael Card will change your life.  You might hate it, you might love it, but you won't escape unscathed.  His central premise is, well, that we are owned by Jesus and in that we have freedom.  But to my little brain, it was commendable because not once did the author imply there was something broken about the modern church.  Instead, he showed what discipleship was about.  Instead of critiquing, he proposed.  Instead of destroying, he rebuilt.  It was liberating just to read.

Not that life is suddenly easier this week.  Old Man comes sneaking up on me a lot, along with Temptation.  I relapse.  I wander back.  I doubt everything again.  I find myself vacillitating between extreme piety - Book of Common Prayer, late night prayer vigils, watching Jesus of Nazareth on my iPad - and extreme rationalism - no, you didn't just admit you believe in speaking in tongues, you silly fool.

So let's see what another few weeks brings.

Leap ye Lame

The work down at PBN is, well, tiring.  You spend all day researching arcane types of knowledge - who built what church at what time?  Who owns what building now, and for how long?  What is the size of the congregation currently?  Droll stuff, certainly.

But it is within the droll stuff that humanity lives, breathes and has our being.  The sum total of florists in a city is wonderfully obscure, but it says much about what types of people prefer what types of flowers.  This in turn tells you about what people think about aesthetics.  And aesthetics is built on cultural assumptions and mega-trends that shape an entire epoch or civilization.

Which means that every day, when you buy gas at that gas station, or shop at that store, or eat at that restaurant, you are affecting a mega-trend.  Also, in a small way, you are throwing your tiny weight and changing civilization just a slight bit.  This is called bearing the Image of God.  It is being a fully participatory adult.

Art Festival

I strolled down to the Allentown Art Festival today.  Art Festivals aren't always my thing - lots of people, plenty of kitsch, pickpockets, annoying salesmen.  In fact, I usually go to watch the people.  People-watching is a pastime of mine, has been with me as long as I can remember.  You see the darndest things, sometimes, too.  Today, I saw:

A hideously burnt woman with barely healed skin in a very revealing dress.  Maybe the dress was necessary to prevent infection in her wounds, maybe she had been burnt for so long she was no longer self-conscious about it.  I really don't know.  But I would love to know how she got in that fire, why she survived, how she dealt with surviving. In short, I want to know her story.

There was also the poor college student who couldn't play guitar very well but was out with a hat and a guitar anyway.  I wonder - did he pick up guitar in order to play outside, or did he play outside in order to practice guitar?  Or is he an amazing virtuoso whose voice was damaged after a long weekend of rehearsal, and he was resting?  He wasn't bad, he was just simply very quiet and simplistic in his chord structures.

I also noticed that most fast food owners are rather large people.  I wonder, do they eat their own food?  There is something remarkably dangerous about eating your own poison (or delicacies, for that matter).  It gives one a god-delusion, I think, for I also noticed that the vast majority of them were loud, foul-mouthed and impatient.

Please don't take this post to be me criticizing the world for my own amusement.  There is some of that, true.  There is also something else going on.

All of those people were beautiful.

Sure, they were burnt, or not particularly musical, or fat and foul.  But they were images of a far-distant Creator.  They were our kindred.  Taken in the aggregate, humanity is overwhelming.  Taken in the individual, each person is a work of art from God Himself.  There was artwork all around me, but little of it was for sale.

Or are we?

Some of us may think we're kitsch, valuable only because of the whims of others.  Others of us don't see how we are like art at all, because we think we are so worthless.  But the truth is that worth is not something measured by the crowds, or the experts, or even the other people in our lives.  It is not something learned about in books, seen on TV, or even the result of comparative analysis with the rest of humanity.

The Mona Lisa would be great art even if it was hiding in a dim corner of a dilapidated bar in Patagonia.  Picasso was art before anyone discovered him.  And each person is precious because our lives were painted by the Master Painter.  Don't fit in?  You're probably the beginning of a new movement by the Master Painter.  Feel like no one takes you seriously?  Yeah, that was Van Gogh's problem.

Wow, I've wound up with God again.  This is why it is unwise to leave me alone for two hours at an arts festival.

Glory and Ashes

There are some times in life when we must throw back our heads and howl to the winds, "why??????"  The diagnosis comes in, the job market dries up, the friend calls with awful news, and suddenly you are knocked on your knees.  It's like a hurricane came barrelling through life, raining on everything, whipping up the hot air, and you're headed for the hills while throwing plywood over everything.  We demand answers of the universe, and the universe refuses to answer.

Then people show up with their comfort.  "Oh," they say, "isn't it great that all things work together for the glory of God?"  Yes, of course it is, but why did He have to glorify Himself with my friend, my sibling, my child?  "What is God trying to teach us?"  How to pop hot air balloons.  "Just cheer up, it'll get better."  Well, yeah, but not right now!

But brace yourself up, like a man, if you still can!  Can you raise leviathan?  Can you put hooks in his jaw?  Of course not, he is too large.  God is the Eye of the Storm, and in Him alone is comfort.  He is the Truth beyond Learning, the Glorious One who is coming to reign.  Behold He comes, and in His train come Justice and Mercy, Punishment and Compassion, the things this world needs.  Every rapist will be given their due, every murderer will feel the sting of death, every oppressor will feel the rectifying power of God.  That alone is our hope of salvation.

Summer

I lied.  That was not the last post.  This is.  I am coming back for the summer, to work with more historic churches.

BUT...first...I visited Houghton.  And saw friends.  You know what?  Friends are awesome.

AND...before that...I was home.  For three weeks.  Which was the awesomest awesomeness since they invented sour cream and onion potato chips.

Time to wax eloquent.  I've been pondering why communal worship is so meaningful to so many people (including me).  I know some of it has to do with feeling like part of a group, of belonging.  Part of it is worshipping.  Part of it is the beauty of communal worship (even that deaf fellow with the tin ear in pew three).

However, it seems there is something deeper and more meaningful.  In fact, I have come to believe there is something, related perhaps to Jesus' words about "let them be one as we are One," that connects us in communal worship.  It is something deep, so deep that we lose ourselves (for awhile) in the immanence of other human beings. 

And this feeling is all the deeper and stronger when it is felt with God.  There is nothing like the Oneness with God, which we find only in worship and which no one who has tasted of it has ever forgotten.  Even those who wander away from the faith remember and long to sense God near.  They convince themselves that they felt nothing but chemical washes, but they were experiencing Another.

This summer, I seek God.  Historic churches, friends, family, books, Latin (I'm teaching myself), a novel that must be written all seem so important.  But my priority is to sense again and again and again the nearness of God and His worshippers.

Final Post

This is the final post of my internship log.  It sounds weird to write that, because I don't want it to be the final post.  In a sense, it isn't, because I am coming back for the summer to work on the same project.  That is why I wasn't too heartbroken to not say good bye to my boss.  After all, the summer is coming.

But this is an ending.  It is the end of my routine.  Currently, I am at home, in a pattern of life laid down five years ago it seems.  My schoolyear schedule is off.  I no longer need to rise for an early morning class or work session.  However, I also am running around a lot more with my siblings.  The vacation is nice.  But it is vacation, and now I know it is such a thing.  Even after only a weekend, I want to get back to work.

Somehow, I've discovered the tools I want to work with at this point in my life.  Research and analysis of historic churches sounds dull.  Perhaps it is.  But it tells me things, things I haven't deciphered yet.  Why are people leaving the city and leaving the church?  Why do those who stay have such a helplessness?  Why do we view ourselves as victims?  These are questions I still have to answer.

And then there is the sheer pleasure of doing something useful and original.  The pleasure of writing up a methodology and knowing that in all the world, you are one of the few who has ever thought about how to do a comprehensive survey of historic churches.  This sounds like an arrogant statement, and perhaps it is.  For sure, survey work is hardly an in-demand skill, but it is still cool.  There is the pleasure of producing something new and original, of adding to the economy and producing something with skill.  Doing a job and doing it well is so satisfying.  At times, it feels glorious.

And meeting so many fellow Christians in a foreign and new city has been exciting.  I've met evangelicals, Catholics, charismatics, non-denominationals, godly hippies, and a whole range of others.  I must admit, sometimes I quite deeply disagreed about methods and madness.  But, the Body of Christ is so large and so beautiful and so diverse that it staggers my mind.  Their churches range from massive relics from Europe, to small and quaint chapels, to polished modernist fabrications.  But they are all still churches, where people come with their burdens and meet their God.

My professor jokes that we need to provide him with the answers to all the urban dilemmas he has introduced us to in the past few weeks.  By the end of the semester.  I cannot hope to accomplish such an audacious task, but here is my summary.

Urban poverty is first and foremost a poverty of the spirit.  It is a failure of the imagination, an inability to imagine a better and different life.  It is possible to be poor and improving.  It is possible to have nothing in material goods, but be determined to find a better life.  Prime examples of this would be the refugees in Buffalo, who arrive destitute and nation-less. After a few years, however, they transform their lives, start stores, get jobs in a jobless city, and become prosperous.  They will to thrive.

The endemic poverty of the inner city, however, is a poverty that does not will to thrive.  It turns adults into dependents.  It convinces the mind and the heart that there is nothing else in the world.  "This is not a good life," says the endemically poor brain, "but no life is possible for messed up and stupid me.  I cannot break this cycle.  It is too big for me."

And so it is.  But there are bigger forces than the individual.  The end of poverty begins with the enrichment of the soul.  The church is the only institution capable of transforming dependents into free spiritual adults.  It must move back to the neighborhoods.  This return must be not just a white church, but a black and Asian and Hispanic church.  It must show the way for racial integration, socio-economic integration and a change in life.  Many endemically poor people have expressed to me how betrayed they feel by leadership, their own leadership, including in the city government, the federal government and the church.  The church must begin to restore this confidence in the poor.

Once spiritual poverty has been addressed, the world can begin to rethink its economic strategies.  The urban system is currently built to contain the poor in the city, where living is cheapest, or in the far distant countryside.  The rings of suburbs and townships around the cities are where the wealth generation is happening, except for major wealth producing areas such as Manhattan.  But this disconnects the poor from opportunity, and this leads to joblessness.  A more confident and assured underclass is useless unless that renewed confidence can be combined with opportunity.  But as to how this can be addressed, I have very little knowledge.

So that is my summary, Granpa.  Ask me in five years if any of it still makes sense.