I drove past a church that had a message on its sign at the driveway entrance:  “The Ten Commandments Are Not Multiple Choice.”  To me, that is akin to another one commonly seen, “What Part Of Thou Shall Not Don’t You Understand?” signed, “God.”

One only can imagine the crowds of people attracted to such churches. (That’s because they only exist in the realm of imagination.)  How the Christian faith can be expressed with belligerence and the edge of anger is a mystery to me.

At my seminary there were a number of pretty conservative students who were there only because their bishops or district superintendants or someone in their church’s hierarchy required them to earn the Master of Divinity degree.  These guys already understood God, Jesus, and the Bible with a clarity that eludes most others, and were deeply suspicious of professors who challenged them to think beyond their accepted conventions.  Sometimes they remarked how they would “pray” for the professors to be “saved.”  Uh huh, I’m sure.

A little story that seems applicable appears in the current Christian Century, describing the experience of a Sri Lankan Buddhist during his days at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary.  One of the other students, a Christian, declared publically that the Buddhist was “going to hell,” presumably for not sharing the Christian’s outlook and faith.  The Buddhist responded that the Christian likely would end up in heaven, but his “noisy theological disputes” would be so loud and disruptive that he, the Buddhist, would “voluntarily choose hell, where he might compassionately serve suffering souls.”

What part of “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself” (a teaching attributed to Jesus) don’t Christians understand?

If television evangelist Kenneth Copeland wants to raise money so his broadcasts can be viewed in high-definition, that’s his business, and that of those who choose to send him money for such a purpose.  If Copeland wants to live in a $6 million home, that’s up to him and the board of his church, over whose decisions he holds veto power.  If he desires to have numerous relatives on the payroll, benefitting financially by their involvement in various church-owned businesses, so be it.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), member of the Senate Finance Committee, has been looking into the financial matters pertaining to some high-profile, and extremely wealthy, ministers, including Kenneth Copeland, in order to determine whether current tax laws governing churches are “adequate.”  I assume that means, “Are they appropriate vis-a-vis church-state separation and sufficient in maximizing revenues for the federal government?”

Of course, for many, the temptation is to look at Copeland’s empire (1,500 acre gated compound, mansion, private jet, hefty bank accounts, etc.) and suppose there is something fishy going on.  I’ll let Sen. Grassley worry about that, although that is not his stated purpose.  After all, Copeland is a “prosperity gospel” advocate, so it makes sense he merely would not “talk the talk.”  Talking, however, is not something he is doing with the senator from Iowa.  Subpoenas may be on the horizon.

It appears I need to go back and consult lecture notes from my seminary days (as if I even could find them!), for I don’t recall that the words “prosperity” and “gospel” ever were linked together.  I know I have missed it in my reading of the New Testament.  In fact, sometimes I wonder whether the North American church, with all of its troubles, has endeavored to make the connection anyway, only to find it detracts from the reason for the church’s existence.

In other words, with organizational structures to maintain, intense focus on budgets and income, and strategies for “getting more members,” do the worship of God, and ministry in the name of Jesus become lower priorities for churches?  It sure looks that way a lot of the time.

Ah, but we need to have all of that so worship and ministry can occur.  Right?  I guess so, if we are placing more faith in out-dated business models and comfort food levels of church membership (how many people are needed before valid ministry can occur, anyway?) than we place in the Holy Spirit’s guidance and God’s provision. 

As I recall from reading the New Testament, Jesus rounded up a dozen average folks, taught them and showed them what God’s love was about, sent them out to tell and show others, and they became known as people who “turned the world upside down.”  Not everyone welcomed them.  Not everyone chose to join the parade.  We know very little about their individual lives.  They left no financial legacy, for there is no evidence they prospered in a material sense.  In fact, many suffered as a result of their convictions and commitments. 

Jesus called for sacrifice, and he took it to extremes, himself.  Was he merely a fanatic?  Was his approach unreasonable?  Is there a connection between his teaching and example, and the Rolex (when you can refer to an inanimate object by a brand name only, you know you’ve moved to a loftier dimension) on some televangelist’s wrist? 

How is success among Christians and the church to be measured?

What are the implications of faithfulness?

Legal, legitimate, honest, on the up and up, or not, it’s difficult for me, given the evidence of scripture and the experience of most Christians in the world, to embrace prosperity as the standard or result or promise of following Jesus.

I'll be taking a break from the blog for a week or so.

Here are some videos to tide you over:

My sons and me.

George Carlin on the difference between football and baseball

I don't drink beer, but I love the Miller High Life commercials

Cab Calloway sings, "Minnie The Moocher"

Enjoy!

One of the most crucial aspects of responding to Jesus’ Great Commission, to “go and make disciples,” is the sharing of personal experiences.  Sometimes these are referred to as “resurrection stories” or “Easter stories,” and the idea is they illustrate how God is present to people, and how life changes when that relationship is embraced. 

A resurrection story currently “out there” is the one told by baseball player Josh Hamilton.  Several years ago, Josh was considered the best amateur baseball player in the country, and was signed to a contract by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, as the team was then known.  (They now are simply the Rays, having dropped “Devil” from their name prior to the current season.)  The team committed $3.5 million to Josh in order to get him into their organization.

Unfortunately, most of the money went up his nose and into his veins. 

Josh was a hopeless addict of cocaine, heroin, and alcohol.  It disrupted his baseball playing to the point he appeared only in 15 minor league games for the Rays before he was kicked out of baseball for violating rules related to substance abuse.  Meanwhile, his family struggled mightily as his addictions ruled Josh’s life.  His wife feared for her safety and that of the couple’s young daughter.

It took an admonition from his grandmother, who was repeating everything Josh heard from others through those years, before he finally accepted the challenge of sobriety.  As Josh explains in his resurrection story, “For some reason God allowed my heart to open up that night and see my grandmother’s eyes cry and see that in her face.  That’s what it took.”

Josh soon will mark three years of being sober, and as people familiar with baseball can attest, his comeback as a player is remarkable.  Anyone who watched the Home Run Hitting Contest prior to this year’s Major League All-Star Game saw quite a display by Josh, including a record 28 home runs in the first round of the competition.

Now, Josh takes advantage of opportunities to share his story and tell how God’s presence in his life gives him a new beginning.  He observes, “Obviously, the better you are, the more people are going to listen.  That’s the way the world is.  At the same time, if I wasn’t doing well, I’d still be talking about what God has done in my life.”

Further, Josh states, “Where I’m coming from is no different than a lot of people that have gone through the same struggles.  It’s just that I’ve got the platform to be able to share what I’ve gone through and how God brought me through it to hopefully inspire people that are going through the same things.”

Keep it up Josh.  I would add that we don’t have to be athletes or otherwise prominent people to share our resurrection stories.  Anyone with faith in God has a story to share.

What’s yours?  And who have you told?

There are more victims of war – the children of our soldiers.  This is a growing reality as more women are serving in the active duty military, and as National Guard units are relied upon more heavily in this war than in prior conflicts.  Stress, depression, school absenteeism, physical symptoms go along with the fear, confusion, sleep disorders, and anger of children whose parent or parents are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan not only once, but twice, or even more.

According to the Washington Post, “Of approximately 263,000 people deployed overseas, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 43 percent are parents.”  Even when the parents return home, things can be very difficult, especially if the parent is traumatized by the experience of war (are any of them not traumatized?), and/or if they suffered wounds or even the loss of body parts.  The Post states that “Of 808,000 parents deployed since September 11, 2001, according to Pentagon data, more than 212,000 have been away twice.  About 103,000 have gone three or more times.”

Johns Hopkins University, Sesame Street, and others have developed resources in an effort to provide necessary help to children and families directly affected by troop deployment.  Counselors and teachers are struggling to keep up with the needs.  Finding ways to maintain contact with their children, even while in the war zones, have helped some parents provide a semblance of assurance to their children.  At least, today’s technology provides some opportunities in this regard.

But still, the burden is heavy for young developing minds and bodies.   I can’t even begin to imagine what “life” is like for the children actually caught in the crossfire.

I guess we’ll never learn.

Six or seven years ago, in preparation for attending a leadership conference at some big-time training center in Colorado Springs, I had to complete a number of personal inventories, assessments, and the like.  I discovered that Myers-Briggs considers me to be INFJ. 

One assessment tool required completion by a “superior” in the workplace, and since I am a clergy person, I turned to my then-regional minister, who graciously took the time to fill out the form.  I think the idea was to gain a picture of how another person understood me, compared with my self-understanding.

I was amazed when later I saw the results.  He had me nailed.

Our answers to the questions or statements were plotted on a graph somehow by those who received the data input, and the line representing my regional minister’s responses was almost perfectly parallel to mine (he rated me slightly higher than I rated myself in terms of skills, gifts, interests, areas of strength, etc.).  I found this astounding, but then at that point I had known him for about twenty-five years in different capacities.  He figured out my Myers-Briggs assessment, too.

I guess it’s nice to have someone, in addition to a spouse, know you so well.  At least that person understands where you are coming from when you present to him or her a concern or problem with which you are struggling. 

L. Gregory Jones, dean of Duke University Divinity School, reports what pastors already know – studies show high levels of loneliness and isolation among clergy.  True friendships are difficult to come by in this role.  Apparently, the same is true of CEO’s and others in leadership positions.

Jones writes of his experience with the online social network available through Facebook, and the pleasure it brings him when he is able to connect with others who “friend” him.   But he also points out the need human beings have for intimacy that simply cannot occur through such means.

We’ve all heard lamentations regarding the breakdown of community, and of how “people don’t know their neighbors anymore.”   In the past, declines in human interactions were laid to the advents of home air conditioning and television.  Now, with all of our time and labor saving devices, people are working more days and longer hours, and for so many, regardless of how they spend the rest of their time, interactions with others largely are confined to time spent online. 

I don’t know whether anyone else has coined the phrase, but I think of this as “silent friendship,” in which nothing ever is spoken aloud to the other person – it’s just words on a screen.  It’s almost telepathic, as the thoughts of one are communicated to another, but they neither speak to nor look at each other.

L. Gregory Jones says, “We are created for relationship, and we long for support and encouragement from those who know us well…our confidants sometimes know us better than we know ourselves. They can and do check our propensity for self-deception. They challenge us, support us and encourage us to dream even when we have given up. Even when they call us to account, we are confident that they are doing so with our own best interests at heart…Loneliness becomes a spiral downward that diminishes a person's capacity to relate to others and to envision a hopeful future.”

Years ago, one of my seminary classmates excitedly told me he discovered an insight regarding prayer.  He said, “If my grandmother is driving her car and notices that another car has run a red light and is about to collide with her, all she has to do is pray, ‘God, I thank you for keeping that other car from hitting me,’ and the accident will be avoided!  She thanked God in advance, so God will stop the accident!” 

Where he got this idea, I’ll never know. I just hope Grandma can think fast enough to pray when the other car is careening toward her.  My guess is she’ll be a little distracted.

Someone named Rocky Twyman is organizing people to pray at gas stations to keep the price of gas from exceeding $5.00 per gallon.  I certainly am not in favor of such high gas prices, but it never would occur to me to pray about it.  Twyman is a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and a public relations professional.  His “Pray at the Pump” efforts began when gas was still less than $4.00, but I guess God decided $4.00 was within the purview of God’s will.  It likely has seemed so to Europeans for a long time, since they are used to paying much more for gas than those of us in the U.S. have paid over the years.

In writing about Twyman’s crusade, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite suggests that “while some Americans are praying for lower gas prices, others, let’s presume oil company executives, for example, are most likely praying for higher gas prices.  For other Americans, the higher prices are seen as a God-send, since it is forcing people to make more environmentally responsible choices such as walking, biking, taking public transportation or getting rid of the SUV and buying a hybrid.  And yet for others, the higher gas prices are a curse.  These Americans have to choose whether to feed their families, pay the mortgage or put $100 more a week into the gas tank to get to the low-paying job that is not accessible by public transportation.  $5 a gallon gas for them is a sin and an offense to a just God.”

I appears to me that higher prices gas result from some pretty deep issues and concerns, such as greed among oil producers and market speculators, international relations and politics, war, and chosen lifestyles. I’m not sure whether our pal Rocky has taken those into account. 

Expecting God to magically prevent prices from rising without the other factors changing is just plain foolishness.

The Church of England is wrestling with the issue of appointing women bishops in the church.  Arguments, debates, threats of leaving the fellowship, proposals of qualified or “less-than” status for female bishops, ponderous processes and timetables, righteous indignation, and handwringing all are involved.   Women have been ordained as priests only since 1992, and a growing number of Church of England parishes have female priests.  Assuming everything moves forward and enlightenment is embraced, it still likely will be at least another four years before the first female bishop takes office.

Come on, people, let’s get on with it.  The Episcopal Church in the United States, a branch of the Anglican church is further ahead, and in fact has a female bishop as the head of the church.

But wait.  Word from the Vatican is that if indeed the Church of England follows through with the notion of women as bishops, the Roman Catholic Church will be extremely put out.  Such a move will endanger progress in the “advancing” dialogue between the two churches.   Because, after all, Jesus only selected men as disciples!  What do you say to that?

I’m not sure where the dialogue supposedly is heading, but the whole idea brings to mind the image of a roomful of glowering old men sitting around a conference table (after a lengthy negotiation regarding the shape of the table, the arrangement of the chairs, and the order of seating and speaking) presenting papers with extensive footnotes and appendices, the air thick with self-assumed spiritual superiority.

I might be wrong about that, but with the world gasping and heaving under the weight of bitterness, division, suspicion, hatred, poverty, and violence, is there really time for delicate negotiations between religious elites about how they will think of one another, and whether they actually might be able to worship (the same God) together, pray (to the same God) together, or share the bread and cup (given by the one Savior) after centuries of estrangement?  Good luck working all that out, guys.  It’s not surprising people are running from the church and its representatives.

A year or two ago I phoned the pastor of a church a few blocks away and invited him to attend our local ministerial association.  He was somewhat amused that I would extend such an invitation.  After all, doesn’t the scripture say something about the effects of associating with people who don’t share one’s own doctrinal insight and purity?  He explained he really could not join in fellowship with others who had differing views on matters of faith, the Bible, and who knows what else.  (I checked to see whether my fly was open.) He asked, “Does that make sense?”  I replied, “It does to you.”

I sure am glad Jesus realized he didn’t have time for all of this nonsense.

Some years ago at a different church in a different state, I had the misfortune of being part of a group discussion about whether to allow folks who attended a mosque, located down the street and undergoing renovations, to use our church parking lot until the work was finished on their building.  This was well prior to the 911 hysteria surrounding Muslims, but still some in the group feared what they didn’t understand.

In fact, the wife of the pastor unequivocally stated, “Why should we let them use our parking lot?  Their religion is the exact opposite of ours!”  Exact opposite?  I have no idea what that meant, but I’m certain it doesn’t accurately describe Islam.

Yes, there are fanatical, extremist fundamentalists in Islam.  Christianity has our share.  There are violent hateful Muslims.  Some Christians fit the same description.  In fact, anything negative that is said about Muslims could apply to many Christians, as well, and probably already has been said about us.

When I worked at William Penn House in Washington, I would on occasion take student groups to visit the city’s Islamic Center.   Visitors always were warmly welcomed, briefed on Islam, and given a tour of the mosque.  While the guides were clear they did not consider Jesus to be the Messiah, they expressed high regard for him as a teacher and prophet. 

But, Islam is associated with violence, terror and anti-US sentiments in the minds of many people.  This perception is providing difficulty for Barack Obama as he campaigns for president.  Opponents are linking Obama to Islam through his Kenyan father.  Some emphasize his middle name, Hussein.  Others purposely mispronounce his name as “Osama.”

The senator is trying so hard to prove he isn’t a Muslim that not only is he continually expressing his Christian convictions and commitments, he also has declared that his father actually was an atheist.  Better even to be an atheist than a Muslim, it would seem, according to this strategy. 

Obama may be fighting an uphill battle with ignorance (and losing a lot of potential Muslim votes).  A person named Jim Peterson from Ohio, a critical state in the campaign, actually went on record as saying, “I’ll admit that I probably don’t follow all the election news as probably I should.  I haven’t read his books or studied up more than a little bit.  But it’s hard to ignore what you hear when everyone you know is saying it.  These are good people, smart people, so can they really all be wrong?”

It is entirely possible, my friend.

Every now and then a funeral takes on a bit of a different look, with the idea of being a personal expression of the life and outlook of the deceased.  I had one case where the person who died previously made plans not only to be buried in his pajamas, but to have a fork placed in his right hand for all to see.  This was the result of his hearing that tired old story about “keep your fork” because even as the dinner dishes are being cleared from the table, the best part of the meal is on its way – the dessert. 

Some have used this image to suggest being ready for the fulfillment of the promise of heavenly bliss.  Throughout time many people have been buried with such items and other mementos from their lives, which someday may provide quite a mystery to archeologists.  (One can imagine a scene in which a major dig is underway, and the interns shout over to their professor, “I can’t believe it!  Another fork!  What’s going on?”)

Funeral music is changing these days, with a trend toward nonreligious songs.  With today’s technology, folks easily can make CD’s or tapes of music they feel is meaningful or appropriate to the life and memory of the deceased.  I recall one service in which the family played Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird.  Others like sentimental songs, or that special favorite number that meant so much to their loved one.

An item on the website of DisciplesWorld notes this trend as it occurs in Australia, but I would guess it is very widespread.  While the hymns Amazing Grace and Abide With Me still remain among the most popular songs for funerals at a cemetery in the town of Adelaide, other pieces are becoming more frequently requested. 

There is obviously Stairway To Heaven by Led Zeppelin, along with AC/DC’s Highway To Hell.  Check out some of the other songs they mentioned:  Another One Bites The Dust; Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead; and, Hit The Road, Jack. 

It appears in some cases family members may be trying to have the last word.