Altered Pathways

2008-05-09T10:45:00.005-04:00

A GOOD DAY FOR A SPRITZ OF SADNESS

It's going to rain all day today so here's a rainy piece written a while back.

A mist of sadness spritzes the terrain of my soul again today. Actually, this damp chill pretty much defines the daily weather pattern in one region of my inner life. I’m not sure what to name this part of myself except to describe it with words like despair, sadness and melancholy. Oddly, I’m not terribly worried about these dark emotions. My Christianity has led me to conclude that I need them.

Many want to escape feelings of sadness and employ a variety of tools to do so. Friends often work to “cheer up” the sad, hoping to hurry the sufferer onto sunnier pathways. As a pastor I like preaching hope. In fact, I cannot remember a time I’ve encouraged despair from my pulpit.

My August vacation initiated my latest sojourn into this sad land. My family and I enjoyed the beauty of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. We spent the better part of two days traipsing through Civil War battle fields where good men, many who were deeply dedicated Christian men, not unlike myself, slaughtered one another. Those from the south defended State rights and slavery. Those from the north championed federalism and “freedom” all the while practicing an equally dehumanizing form of labor in her factories. Both could only see the sins of the other and neither could find a nonviolent way to resolve the great issues.

At Coaling Hill my mind wandered back to my youthful days when Holy Spirit filled members of my holiness denomination fought over campground properties, leveling accusations and hurling barbs against one another. No blood was spilled, at least not the kind a bandage can staunch. But each side inflicted painful wounds.

My wife and I celebrated our anniversary in the Massachusetts Berkshires the following week. Waiting for the Boston Symphony to begin our last night, I leafed through the program founding this observation by Serge Koussevitzky, music director from 1924 – 1949. “So long as art and culture exist there is hope for humanity.” Thinking of my recent battle field reflections, I wondered how anyone could believe what seemed to me such blatant naiveté.

Soon after returning home Katrina struck. Natural disasters happen every year around the globe stealing the life of someone’s family member or friend and wrecking havoc with those left behind. As beautiful as the world of my vacation was, land and sea are menacing places. One is tempted to embrace the sarcasm of a recent cartoon in which the fellow responds to news of Katrina, “So THIS is intelligent design.” Yet the same Christian understanding that leads me into despair won’t allow me to embrace this sarcasm.

This autumn I and my congregation are plunging into the Old Testament, seeking helpful insights for our lives. The opening pages of the Bible, remind me that something has gone terribly wrong with the planet including the world of human relationships. Nothing is quite the way God intelligently and lovingly designed it. Everything good has been twisted by alienation from God, including myself, Mississippi and Louisiana.

The New Testament observes, “The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth. We ourselves, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved” (Romans 8:22-24).

I easily become wrapped up in daily life. I enjoy my home, my car, Cherry Garcia ice cream, the mountains, the shore and much more. Though my mind protests, my enjoyment of physical things suggest that materialism defines my practice of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That’s why I need an occasional foray into the land of despair. It reminds me that I cannot attach my joy or place my hope in the good experiences of the material world, for sooner or later that world will turn on me in tragedy. Neither can I anchor my joy or hope in people, any people, Christian or otherwise. The best people inflict wounds, sometimes fatal wounds. Ironically, the quality of my life demands that I embrace despair of this life.

Though I enjoy this world and work to make it a better place, my joy and hope must reach beyond everything this life offers to that future when my body will be made new and placed in a new heaven and new earth (2 Peter 3:13). As a Christian, I believe that this future reality is available to anyone through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe it is joy and hope rooted only in a living Jesus that saves me from an overwhelming flood of despair.

Therefore, I have come to welcome an occasional walk through melancholy drizzle. I need it. So please don’t try and cheer me up, just yet.

2008-04-28T12:21:00.003-04:00

The Tulip Spring
The garden spread before the manor in complete and appalling disarray, her grandeur lost long ago in the uprising. The gardener’s knowledge and skill hadn’t been good enough for the stately tulips who staged a coup early that spring. They could not have anticipated the annual ritual of vicious uprooting and choking they would unleash.

But unleash it they certainly did. Still hidden beneath the soil, the red tulip bulbs conspired with the yellows to finally rid themselves of the gardener. She had kept them confined in only one area of the garden. Fully aware that their supreme dignity and vibrant color contributed to the garden more than any other flower or shrub, they determined to secure a broader presence for themselves.

Beautiful but rather small minded, the tulips did not expect an insurgency by the roses once they buried the gardener behind the weeping cherry. This, of course, precipitated riots among the pansies, petunias, and peonies. Feeling threatened, the variegated greens on the western border sent roots sprawling in all directions. The azaleas and rhododendrons reacted by spreading their branches up and out. It wasn’t long before the holly, great pine, and dogwood felt the need to usurp some control over their shorter friends.

The first season after that Tulip Spring, as the rebellion became known, ended in disarray. Each passing season the former grandeur sank further into confusion as the plants struggled for control and dominance. For years now, this patch of ground drew only sad nods as passersby longed for the return of the gardener.

It took a yellow tulip. She whispered to the tiger lily about her longing for yesterday’s beauty, even if it meant the tulips would be confined to standing tall in their narrow patch, and for so short a time each spring. The tiger lily excitedly passed along the glimmer of hope. Soon flower and shrub, bush and tree, buzzed with conversation.

It wasn’t easy, the negotiations. Getting the variegated greens to be satisfied with their place along the western border required intense diplomacy. The rose bushes didn’t want to be pruned. After all, they had grown quite dominate through the gardener-less years. But finally the azalea convinced the roses that less presence would mean more beauty. Of course, the azaleas had to agree to severe pruning, as did, well, just about everybody else.

The members of the garden finally began to realize that each plant had its place and value to the whole, even though they all looked, smelled, and stood differently; and even though they all grew at different times and contributed their beauty for different lengths of time.

Attitudes began to change in the garden. Regaining their grandeur in order to bring delight to the occupants of the manor – and every passerby – became their common agenda. Sadly, they still lacked one thing.

A gardener.

Perhaps, they thought, if we combined the life in each of us, as if we were one large plant, enough of it would permeate the garden so that the gardener, lying under the weeping cherry tree, would return to life.

They did. And she did.

Then it happened. They hadn’t anticipated this. Full of new life, the gardener’s mind brimmed with new ideas for the garden. It would be grander than it had ever been! But this would mean moving the tulips, and the pansies, and, well, just about everything.

The garden, still in appalling disarray, sat in shock. What ideas did the gardener have in that head of his? Would they like this new arrangement? Who would get positions of prominence?
The resurrection of the Gardener presented them with a brand new choice. And again, the tulips led the way.

Deception In The Ranks Of Abortion Protestors

2008-01-22T13:47:00.000-05:00

Sorry, abortion protestors. When you’re standing in the fire of public ridicule, law suits, or police intimidation, I don’t think the barely visible person standing with you is the appearance of divine presence as enjoyed by Daniel’s friends, Shadrach, Meshak, and Abendigo. More than likely, it’s the one who appears as an angel of light to deceive – to deceive you.

These are fighting words, I know. But, if theologically conservative Christians care about reflecting the heart of God to our society, we must confront ourselves with truth that will likely, at first, anger us, only then to transform us into effective witnesses to Truth.

If God’s self revelation reached its zenith in Jesus Christ, then we must admit that his priority is not to merely prevent abortion, but to rescue all lost humanity. No true Christ-follower can go about ridding the world of abortion in a way that hinders the “For God so loved the world” (John 3:16) and “He does not want anyone to be destroyed” (2 Peter 3:9) mission.

To rescue an unborn child in a way that hardens the mother’s heart to Christ is both un-Christ-like and contrary to God’s redeeming passion for the world. When you do this, you fall into trap of the Deceiver! The God who showed himself in Christ must ache when you picket the homes of abortion providers and directors and employees of women’s centers. You have so successfully projected what Christians, especially Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, are against onto the consciousness of this nation, that the average person on the street hardly understands the holy and transformative love that dominated Jesus’ life and ministry, and compelled him to the cross.
Yes, the child in that mother’s womb is important to God, from conception forward. Why else would God himself (in the second person of the Trinity) come into the world beginning with 9 months of gestation in Mary’s womb?

That said, the 50-million aborted babies since Roe v Wade have received no greater love from the Heavenly Father than far greater number of infant to 5-years olds who have died from preventable diseases in the world during the same period.

Consider these statistics from UNICEF as reported in the British medical journal, Lancet. Worldwide child mortality rates dropped about 2.5% annually from 1960 to 1990. From 1990 to the present, rates of decline have slowed (!) to about 1.1% annually. Even with these declines, death still visits over 10 million children under 5 years old every year! The highest rates of death are on the continent of Africa while, due to population size (1 billion) the largest number of child deaths occurred in India.

If you read the previous paragraph you know that 10 million childhood deaths reflect the lowest rate if deaths since 1960! So do some conservative math. Arbitrarily cut that number to 5 million. Multiplied by 35 years (since Roe v Wade) the math results in 175 million deaths. The majority of these deaths are caused by solvable issues like unsafe water and sanitation, and lack of vaccines. Let’s assume the bare minimum majority, 87.51 million deaths.

Do not be deceived. If conservative Christians had invested the same entrepreneurial energy in preventing early childhood death in the world as we have in the anti-abortion campaign, we would have saved as many or more birthed children from death as we have unborn children, and that despite international hurdles! There is no way to prove this, of course, but I cannot imagine it not to be true.

Are we, are you really interested in saving children?

More important, I believe caring for impoverished birthed children at home and abroad, while speaking the truth about God’s value of children in the womb, would very possibly have prevented much of the contentious cultural warfare that divides the nation today and hardens so many against a “we’re against it” kind of Christianity. I suspect, the same Deceiver who tricked Peter into opposing Jesus’ talk of death (Mark 8:33), has also used the anti-abortion movement to hinder his disciple-making mission in America.

Think about it. The so-called culture war really took off with the creation of the Moral Majority. The major impetus for its creation was what? Abortion. This single issue has done more to polarize the nation and set verbal, and sometimes, physical fists flailing than any other issue since 1980.

Lest you forget, most of our mamma’s lectured us about how many it takes to tangle. If conservative Christians had taken the Roe v Wade decision as a clarion call to get passionate about birthed children around the globe, and had we gotten passionate about making sure health care, living-wage jobs, and quality education is as abundantly available in the inner city as it is suburbs, and had we offered the proverbial cup of cold water in Jesus’ name; tell me the cause of disciple-making would not be further ahead today!

We can’t undo the damage Roman Catholics and Evangelicals (my religious group) have perpetrated in the past 28 years. Still, we could start making some small, yet significant, changes now. Like what?

Attitudes changed from seeing abortion providers as enemies to persons loved by God.

Protests outside clinics changed to coffee, donut and cookie kiosks. “Here, enjoy a little refreshment. You’ve got a tough day. Wish you’d make a different decision, but whatever you decide, you can count on our love.” And on the way out, after the abortion, “Care for another cup or a cookie?” And the signs? Let’s start with the slogan, “You are valuable beyond what you can know!”

Stop giving to anti-abortion organizations and shift that money to organizations like World Hope, World Vision, and CareNet pregnancy centers.

Elect leaders you believe will best help America’s poor and poorly educated (these are those among whom the greatest number of abortions occur!). Then get involved in ministry to them yourself.

Are we, are you really interested in fulfilling the Great Commission (to make disciples of every nation – literally “ethnic group”) in the spirit of the Great Commandment (Love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and your neighbor as yourself)!?

2008-01-12T21:40:00.001-05:00

Christian Men Confront Two Codes

This column appeared in the Morning Call in 2006 and won the Amy Outstanding Merit Award. I think it's worth a reread now and again.

I enjoyed reading the bestseller, “The Da Vinci Code” and anticipate seeing the movie. It’s a thriller with action from the first pages and intrigue until the last. It was hard to put down. However, the further I read the more I felt God using Dan Brown to confront me and my fellow professing Christian men.

This fanciful tale celebrates goddess worship. Brown fictionally charges the Roman Catholic Church of suppressing evidence that Jesus believed in and practiced goddess worship by marrying Mary Magdalene. The church’s motive? To help men dominate women.

Brown rightly reports that religions more ancient than Christianity worshiped goddesses alongside gods. In fact, often ancient Israelites worshiped the goddess Asherah which included sacred male and female prostitution even though God strictly forbade it (Exodus 34:10-17). Sadly, Brown reverses historical truth. Where clans and cultures substituted worship of created male and female idols for worship of the invisible Creator God, their worship reinforced repression and abuse of women rather than freeing them to enjoy a mutual relationship with men.

The Old Testament reveals a God who, in this repressive context, began the long process of lifting woman to the position of equal dignity and rights he originally intended. The ancient goddess worshiping cultures defined women as property. Husbands “kept” them to produce sons. Reproductive success defined their self worth. Goddess worshiping men used them to act out, in ritual intercourse, their hopes that the gods would make their farms fertile. Reading the Mosaic Law against this backdrop, I cannot help but see many ways God began to restore women to the mutual status that pagan religion denied. Not the least of which was to forbid ritual prostitution!

Then came Jesus. He elevated women even further. Rather than seeing them as objects of sex, even ‘sacred’ sex, he insisted on viewing them above their shoulders and deeper than their skin. The New Testament speaks of women prophets and of a woman apostle. Paul, often misunderstood, wrote “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Both are exalted, equally reflecting the Creator’s glory.

Confession. Christian men have often failed to live up to the Creator’s ideal for us. We often misinterpret biblical texts to keep women “in there place.” We often expect women to serve our wants in marriage. And, if Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker are right in “Every Man’s Battle,” most, if not all of us face temptation to view woman as sexual objects. The further I raced through Brown’s novel the more I felt confronted with a reality I didn’t fully appreciate in the past.

At best, every temptation to use women for my own purposes puts me in league with the goddess worshipers in “The DaVinci Code.” At worst, such temptation also tempts me to abandon my commitment to the God of the Bible and his relationship Code. In the words of the Old Testament prophets, I prostitute myself in goddess worship.

Goddess worship exerts its powerful attraction just as much on men today as it did for ancient men. I believe it expresses itself in seeking multiple sexual partners in order to meet one’s own needs. Enjoying pornography turns women into used objects as much as Dan Brown’s curator of the Louvre turned an unnamed woman into an object in a basement sacred sexual ritual.

Rather than creating a wonderful harmony between male and female, a so called yin and yang relationship, goddess worship acts like poisonous gas seeping into our lives, slowly eating away at our ability to experience true and lasting harmony between equal and highly valued persons. Husbands grow dissatisfied with a wife’s body because it is less than physically perfect, too boring and familiar or not functioning the way we imagine it should. The honeyed voice of goddess worship betrays “till death do us part.”

The Bible begins with Adam and Eve setting themselves up to be their own gods. Looking back, the New Testament observes that consequently people exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped created things instead of the Creator. Broken, empty and oppressive relationships with women give witness to the lie that many professing Christian men live.

“The DaVinci Code” is many things. An engrossing read. Bad history. For me, as a professing Christian man, it has also become a powerful reminder that I cannot divorce my sexuality from my loyalty to the God of the Bible and his righteous Code. To view women and to physically interact with them, including my wife, in any other way than God reveals in the Bible, is tantamount to abandoning God for a goddess. In effect, I become a practicing pagan rather than the Christian man I profess to be.

Thanks, Dan Brown, you’ve helped to strengthen my faithfulness to God — and my wife.

A Jekyll And Hyde Christmas

2007-12-25T11:54:00.000-05:00

I am schizophrenic every Christmas. And I am determined to stay this way. No medications accepted! In fact I cannot think of a healthier way to celebrate Christ’s birth.

Christmas excites joyful anticipation every year in me. And it should.

That God would love a sinner such as I so much that he would come into my world to make a way for a personal relationship with God, well, “how wonderful a love like this!” Now that’s a perfect gift.

I am ecstatic that God isn’t Santa who checks his “Naughty and Nice” list twice to determine who gets the lump of coal instead of a precious gift. God knows I have been naughty! I don’t deserve anything good from him. Yet by his grace I have been saved rather than by my own merit. “Joy to the world!” Pull out all the organ stops and let the sound reverberate until the Christmas Eve crowd can’t stand the volume. Then quietly sing “Silent Night” as candlelight spreads through the congregation and we bask in the glow of the spreading hope Jesus brought with him.

Sometime during the preparation season of Advent, something usually stirs in my spirit, like a strange chemical reaction. It transforms a joyous man into a brooding one. Dr. Jekkyll becomes Mr. Hyde. The potion that produces the unpleasant change? It spills from the pages of Matthew and Luke.

There is a dark side to Christmas that we fail to celebrate at great risk to the experience of God’s work in us and in the world. So I welcome Mr. Hyde and celebrate an unsung and little recognized triad of Christmas qualities.

Christmas exalts personal sacrifice and loss. Yes, Jesus left heaven, not considering equality with God something to be grasped. But he did not accomplish this great humiliation except through Mary’s own significant loss. Lost dreams of what life would hold for her and Joseph. Lost respect from neighbors who knew better than to believe a teenager claiming to be pregnant and a virgin. We could discuss Joseph’s losses when he agreed to proceed with the marriage. And what of the losses to both sets of parents?

Very often God only accomplishes his work in the world through the willing sacrifice and personal loss of devoted people. No carol celebrates this holy calling of sacrifice. Yet we must celebrate it. Emanuel came not to fulfill our dreams but his. Without this realization Christmas becomes only another occasion for self-amusement or self-pity. Christmas can become a time when we ask ourselves, “Is my Christian life all about me or all about God?”

Christmas, fully told, heaps suffering onto sacrifice. Imagine Mary’s late term donkey ride to Bethlehem and her giving birth attended by sheep and rodents. Now imagine the agony Bethlehem’s parents soon suffered at King Herod’s hand. The Magi visit and the presence of an infant king precipitated the slaughter of their youngest sons. Then came the difficult refugee years in Egypt.

A fellowship rooted in suffering describes the first Christmas context. All year Christians seek God for the elimination of suffering. And we should. It’s biblical. Yet, Christmas offers a time to celebrate the fellowship of suffering that comes to God’s people. Here is wonderful opportunity to meditate on the value of suffering, even its necessity to God’s Kingdom. Paul claimed a desire to “know…the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings.” Christmas is an ideal time to ask “What suffering do you need me to experience in order to advance your Kingdom plans?”

Who has not experienced the connection between loss and suffering, and vulnerability? Who of us has not built strong defenses even offenses as a result? We work hard to become invulnerable as persons and as groups.

Christmas flies in the opposite direction. Here an all-powerful God nurses in total vulnerability at Mary’s milky breast. Martin Luther reminded us that we have not begun to grasp the mystery of the incarnation until we have bent close enough to the manger to smell Jesus’ dirty diapers. And God chooses to enter the world through two vulnerable nobodies who must flee to Egypt for their lives.

Dare we celebrate vulnerability at Christmas? What assumptions might the Spirit of Christ begin to unravel if we shift from operating out of strong defenses to risky vulnerability? Dare we celebrate a God who hangs on a breast?

I don’t like my Mr. Hyde Christmas. But I need it. I need the whole truth. Even when I don’t fully understand it or know how to practice it, I need to celebrate it. Only this way can I open my spirit to God’s Spirit and experience the gradual transformation of my life in his image.

Three women, three deadly battles, only one healing

2007-12-20T19:21:00.000-05:00

Cancer cells marauded from one organ to another like the barbarian hordes spilling across the Italian Alps on their way to sack Rome. These bloodthirsty invaders ravaged three precious women this past autumn.

Mary always sat next to her sister toward the front of the church. One could tell by her face that worship was more than punching a religious time clock. Then, one Sunday, Mary disappeared. Surgeons had to saw through her skull to remove a tumor full of those microscopic marauders. Captured, some were taken to a laboratory where specialists discovered they had migrated from another part of her body. There would be more enemies to face after Mary regained her strength. Meanwhile, the enemy was free to conquer.

Mysteriously, sometime during her recovery, the onslaught stopped. Finally, strength returned and technicians performed additional scans in preparation for a new battle. But the cancer had disappeared!

Today, Mary sits next to her sister singing and smiling as she worships a healing God.

Neither Marilyn nor Georgine sit next to their husbands anymore. Nobody knew cancer had launched a massive invasion of either woman's body, until one organ began to wither under the assault.Marilyn and Bob had just joined the church. In fact, Marilyn was the reason he was back in church after more than 20 years spent gambling life and loved ones away. His laugh and her sweetness perfectly complemented each other. Then the pain came. And the surgery. The cancer diagnoses. More cancer. And death, barely after we had begun to pray for healing.

We had more time to ask God to heal Georgine. She and her husband, Jim, worshipped and fellowshipped regularly at Calvary, but had connections to many churches. People from all over joined in the prayers. Sadly, as the prayers ascended, her body descended ever closer to death until it finally took her.

Both husbands doted. Cared. Prayed and loved. But the deadly cells spread, unstoppable by any earthly force, and unstopped by any heavenly force.

The Calvary Wesleyan family just began using a beautiful new Welcome Annex with a spacious Fellowship Foyer. Before anyone had a chance to fully appreciate the facility, these newly painted walls and beautifully carpeted floors enfolded the casket beds of two women we'd come to love.

Three women. Three deadly battles. Only one healing.

Praise God for one healing. I don't understand why there weren't three. I think I understand the prophet Isaiah's words better today. ''For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.'' They sure are.

Doubt could define me today, even bitterness. I'm not one for blind, irrational faith. One can rationally expect an all-powerful and perfectly loving God to heal three out of three cancer-invaded women. Disappointment with God is not easy to stomach.

Yet, while God's ways often confuse me, he chose to reveal himself in a way that has convinced me that he is trustworthy, even when he is confusing.

Thinking about all the possibilities, I have concluded that the four Gospel writers recorded firsthand and reliable accounts of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. If this is so, then the One we sing about at Christmas as ''Immanuel.'' God with us, has revealed a God who personally experienced a horribly ravaged world, embraced the worst such a place could dish out when he died, and conquered it when he returned to life in a resurrected body.

So, sorely missing two women and rejoicing with a third, with renewed appreciation, I will sing the Christmas carol refrain, ''Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth.'' Only, this year, I'll sing about three daughters of earth and the One born that all three would live forever!

The Good News About Santa!

2007-12-17T12:21:00.000-05:00

Thank God for Santa! The jolly ‘ol fellow, everywhere present this time of year, would not exist were it not for Jesus. In reality, every time you see a Santa, he’s pointing you to Jesus!
Santa got his start is misty Christian antiquity.

A boy named Nicholas was born to a wealthy family sometime in the second half of the 3rd Century AD. His parents were devout followers of Jesus who brought salvation to the world just about 230 years before. Though they died in a plague while Nick was still young, he caught their faith and made it his own. In fact, so devoted to reflecting Jesus was he, that he gave all his inheritance away to the poor. After all Jesus had said to another rich young man, “sell all you own and give the money to the poor.”

Giving his life to serve Christ and the Church, Nicholas soon became Bishop of Myra in what is today southern Turkey. However, the Roman Empire still had not officially recognized Christianity. The Bishop was imprisoned and tortured under Emperor Diocletian. Only when Constantine made it legal to be a Christian in 313 was Nicholas released and returned to his flock.

Bishop Nicholas was so generous toward the poor and cared so deeply for vulnerable children that he earned an enduring reputation of the consummate protector and helper of those in need. Out of this reputation grew many legends of his gift giving generosity. His reputation so moved medieval Europe that communities from Russia to England named hundreds of churches in his honor.

December 6 became the day Christians celebrated this saint’s life since that was the day he died in 343. In time, this became the day set aside to give gifts to needy children. Beginning in the 16th Century the Protestant reformation tried to stamp out reverence for the saints, including Nicholas. But common folk wouldn’t let go and continued giving nuts, fruit and sweets to their children on his special day.

The Pennsylvania Deutsch (German) and the New York Dutch (Holland) brought the celebration of Saint Nicholas to the American Colonies. With the help of Washington Irving and the unknown author of “The Night Before Christmas” in the early 19th Century, Saint Nicholas evolved into a jolly elf. Then, with the help of Norman Rockwell and 1930’s Coca-Cola Santa artistry, he became the red-suited, full-sized man we know today.
Interestingly, the name Santa Claus is simply the anglicized version of the Dutch word for Saint Nicholas; Sinterklaas.

Santa’s life centers on giving, especially to the young and vulnerable. That’s agape love. He focuses on the young and vulnerable, the least of these as Jesus put it. That’s God’s heart! Yes, he checks his list of naughty and nice, but even the naughty get good gifts. That’s grace. He doesn’t tell the kids what they’ll get for Christmas. Instead, he gladly accepts their lists, subtly reflecting the psalmist’s reminder that God is one who gives us “the desires of our hearts”.

Many rigid secularists think they are getting away with a non-sectarian Christmas exhibit when only Santa is displayed or celebrated. Now that you know better, pass along the story. No Jesus. No Santa. Truly know Santa. And you have the opportunity to know Jesus.

Santa really is an opportunity for Christians to witness about this Jesus who so inspired an ancient youing man that others recognized him as a "santa" - saint! If Christians stopped grumbling about Santa, they just might discover that they have a truly sacred symbol available to them everywhere!

SHOCK JOCKS & FREEDOM OF SPEECH

2007-11-20T10:45:00.000-05:00

Shock Jock, Don Imus is back on radio, December 3. Hurray for the freedom of speech victory!

Not.

In the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, we citizens gave ourselves one of our most valued rights, freedom to speak our thoughts as individual persons and to assemble and speak out corporately. That amendment also gives us the freedom to speak religious thoughts and to commit our thoughts to more permanent and public written forms.

Very often, those who push hard at the envelope of socially acceptable speech appeal to their rights based on this amendment. But envelope pushers such as raunch radio icons like Don Imus, pop musicians broadcasting vulgar and demeaning lyrics, or, for that matter, anyone spitting insulting and injurious words, are lousy free speech role models.

Sure the 1st amendment protects that kind of speech, just as it does the increasingly foul speech that infects so much of our daily conversation, even with children. But just as surely, refusing to self-censure the thoughts and ideas that enter our heads smothers the more important aspect of this amendment; the freedom to wisely govern ones own speech.

Freedom of speech is not only the freedom to choose what we will say, but also the freedom to choose what we will not say.

You’d think we would instinctively catch this as we grow into adulthood. It’s small children who indiscriminately blurt out whatever enters their little heads. That’s why kids say the darnedest things. And the most embarrassing things! But somewhere in the evolution of our culture, we seem to have lost the ability to develop the filter gizmo that is supposed to grow somewhere between our brains and our mouths.

Our generation seems to have left behind the advice of Abraham Lincoln. He said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” The more we speak and publicly record whatever dribbles into our minds, the more foolish we have become.
Our lopsided focus on free speech as saying everything we *@#&@ well please, sets us on course to growing legal restrictions on speech. And of necessity such rules are vague and consequently dangerous.

The danger begins innocently enough. In the process of redressing rigid and sometimes silly self and social censorship in our Victorian past, instead of recalibrating our internal filters, we gradually allowed them to decay until they became completely useless. So we not only give ourselves the freedom to openly discuss the facts of sexuality but ended up hip hopping about “doin” the “hos” or degrading a women’s basketball team as a bunch of the same.

Our insistence that free speech gives us the right to not filter our thoughts, poisons every sphere of culture. We don’t just debate political ideas, we demonize politician’s character. When another person inconveniences us, we feel obligated to generously offer a piece of our minds. Even in our religious institutions, though we use more pious words, we free ourselves to verbally cut and slice one another.

Writing about the Imus affair, Marc Fisher of the Washington Post, lamented, “In the end, it's all about public standards, and the fact is that we hardly have any anymore.”

Without giving adequate weight to free speech as freedom not to speak any and every thought, we resort to the legal authorities to protect those we perceive to be especially vulnerable to verbal brutishness. Thus the rise of hate speech regulations in universities and corporations around the country.

And with the advent of such language rules we wade into a dangerous legal quagmire sure to wreck much havoc on our 1st amendment rights. This is a cure worse than the disease. And an unnecessary one. That is, if the American people, said to be self governing, will in fact begin to govern their own speech, on their own.

It’s time to once again embrace the old truth, ‘everything entering the brain does not need to gush out the mouth.’ It’s time to reinsert the filters! We might begin with just a basic one. Nothing too complicated. Perhaps Model 429.

This model originates in ancient Christian spiritual wisdom, though any religious or irreligious person will find it useful. It’s found in the New Testament, Ephesians 4:29.

“Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.”

Not a bad filtration system for the new Don Imus show.

Grammy winning rapper, Chamillionaire, discovered this ancient wisdom quite by accident. He’d decided to clean up his language but still reserved for himself the right to use the N-word insisting, "I've always used the N-word." That is, until one concert this past year when he noticed a mostly white audience lip-syncing his own word back to him! Something clicked.

"I was like, 'You know what? I'm not going to say the N-word on this one because when I go back on the road, and I start performing, I don't want them to be saying it, like me teaching them.'"

Would that all of us realize the negative force of our own freely chosen words and take at least one step toward freely limiting our words to the good and helpful ones.

(comments welcome - responses not guarenteed)