A Time to Laugh

Our most recent trip to Dollywood included an afternoon show in a cool, dark theatre (the actual reason we attended) — Veggie Tale’s Rack, Shack, and Benny. It made a huge impression on Isaac, and as I read him the real Bible story last night, he kept correcting it, “No, no, no, no. Larry and Bob and Junior didn’t want to sing the Bunny song. So . . . “

Well, I thought today we’d feature our own version of Daniel 3 sans salad fixin’s. Meet our cast:

Shadrach:

Meshach:

Abednego (and his understudy):

The King was played by Yours Truly, but I’m not nearly as cute on your average day, so no photo for me. We first made crowns:

Then we built King Nebuchadnezzer’s golden statue, 90 feet high and 9 feet wide. Shadrach and Meshach knocked it over before the King could get a good picture. Shadrach built a second one just for good measure.

The King tried to yell out the story before the fun began, but it’s hard with so many very active “Hebrew” children running around. The music commenced (Copeland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” seemed most appropriate), and those stubborn, God-fearing boys did not bow down. So into the fiery furnace they went! We even stoked the fire with hot, hot pillows.

At first, Isaac said, “I’m getting burned! I’m getting burned!! Ouch! It’s hot!” And Mommy had to explain, “But Jesus is in there with you. Remember? The Bible said they didn’t even smell of smoke and their hair wasn’t even singed. When Jesus is in there with you, the pagan punishment doesn’t last.” All morning we were throwing everything and everyone in the furnace. Mommy jumped in several times, and it was kinda nice in there — reclining and cushy. I even used the “furnace” as a playful threat when silliness or just-being-boys got out of hand. “If you don’t behave, I’m gonna have to throw you in the fiery furnace!” And the giggling and chasing continued. When all four of us were lying there in the furnace near lunch time, I said, “See? It’s not hot in here. Jesus is here with us!”

And that whole experience has made me think differently about the story. The last discussion of Daniel 3 that I heard was almost exactly 5 years ago. The sermon has now made the circuit and has been broadly distributed and even published. The moral of that speaker’s telling of Rack, Shack, and Benny was decidedly human-centered: make sure when you’re going through the fiery trial that others can see that Jesus is there with you. Sure, he emphasized that God should get the glory (sounds God-centered), but that depends all on me looking like God (really me-centered).

And that just ain’t it. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego weren’t walking around in the furnace for the King’s eyes. They weren’t saying, “Yo, King!! Nee-ner, nee-ner, nee-ner. Look at us!!” Which is what they would have done if the point was looking like Jesus was with them. No. They were just chatting with Jesus. Walking around. Just chillin’.

The point of the story is that pagan punishments are irrelevant and kinda pointless when you’re safe in Christ. The capricious ruler or power-hungry and annoyed brother intends it for evil, but God makes it into good. It’s a Brer Rabbit story. When the believer get tossed smack-dab into Christ’s care, it’s your laughin’ place!

So during fiery trials you don’t have to look like Jesus is with you. Jesus is with you. Period. End of the story.

Funny how I was trying to teach Isaac a Bible story, and I really just learned it all over again.

A friend passed along an “ad” for Calvinix.

From Phinney Pharmaceuticals comes an exciting new product to keep those Reformed thoughts out!

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• I can now read Romans 9 without stress!” – Dr. Bob Jones III
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• “Amazing product! James White, you’ll never convince me now!” – Dave Hunt

And that little goofy joke alone made me remember that I had never gotten past Romans 8 in my study. Talking about our victory in Christ seemed enough. But now I’ve got a new hobby horse. Read this (italics are all mine):

What God did in this case made it perfectly plain that his purpose is not a hit-or-miss thing dependent on what we do or don’t do, but a sure thing determined by his decision, flowing steadily from his initiative. God told Rebecca, “The firstborn of your twins will take second place.” Later that was turned into a stark epigram: “I loved Jacob; I hated Esau.”

Is that grounds for complaining that God is unfair? Not so fast, please. God told Moses, “I’m in charge of mercy. I’m in charge of compassion.” Compassion doesn’t originate in our bleeding hearts or moral sweat, but in God’s mercy. The same point was made when God said to Pharaoh, “I picked you as a bit player in this drama of my salvation power.” All we’re saying is that God has the first word, initiating the action in which we play our part for good or ill.

Are you going to object, “So how can God blame us for anything since he’s in charge of everything? If the big decisions are already made, what say do we have in it?”

Who in the world do you think you are to second-guess God? Do you for one moment suppose any of us knows enough to call God into question? Clay doesn’t talk back to the fingers that mold it, saying, “Why did you shape me like this?” Isn’t it obvious that a potter has a perfect right to shape one lump of clay into a vase for holding flowers and another into a pot for cooking beans? If God needs one style of pottery especially designed to show his angry displeasure and another style carefully crafted to show his glorious goodness, isn’t that all right? Either or both happens to Jews, but it also happens to the other people. Hosea put it well:

   I’ll call nobodies and make them somebodies;
      I’ll call the unloved and make them beloved.
   In the place where they yelled out, “You’re nobody!”
      they’re calling you “God’s living children.”

Isaiah maintained this same emphasis:

   If each grain of sand on the seashore were numbered
      and the sum labeled “chosen of God,”
   They’d be numbers still, not names;
      salvation comes by personal selection.
   God doesn’t count us; he calls us by name.
      Arithmetic is not his focus.

Isaiah had looked ahead and spoken the truth:

   If our powerful God
      had not provided us a legacy of living children,
   We would have ended up like ghost towns,
      like Sodom and Gomorrah.

How can we sum this up? All those people who didn’t seem interested in what God was doing actually embraced what God was doing as he straightened out their lives. And Israel, who seemed so interested in reading and talking about what God was doing, missed it. How could they miss it? Because instead of trusting God, they took over. They were absorbed in what they themselves were doing. They were so absorbed in their “God projects” that they didn’t notice God right in front of them, like a huge rock in the middle of the road. And so they stumbled into him and went sprawling. Isaiah (again!) gives us the metaphor for pulling this together:

   Careful! I’ve put a huge stone on the road to Mount Zion,
      a stone you can’t get around.
   But the stone is me! If you’re looking for me,
      you’ll find me on the way, not in the way.

A new blog featuring vintage recipes clipped from yesteryear. Not as funny as Lileks and not as chumpy as Martha. But it should remind you of your grandma’s good ol’ apple sauce and chicken ‘n’ dumplin’s.

When the director of ER wants you to hone in on a character’s facial expression, s/he uses this camera technique that always makes me a little sea-sick. The room spins and shakes, but the actor stands statue-still. I had a film person name the technique for me years ago, and I promptly forgot it. But I’ve had a lot of those room-spinning moments as of late (but in real life), and I get the same intensely queasy feeling.

This has been a very, very sentimental year. And I didn’t even know it would be sentimental until months later. But my heart is warmed that God anticipated my need for sweet memories, for room-shakingly intense snapshots of life.

I had the opportunity to sit in an American Public Address class again under my dear teacher, DeWitt Jones. Granted, I was sitting in as his supervisor for a teaching evaluation, but it didn’t feel like that in the least. It felt like I was 21 again, hearing about FDR with the same energy and enthusiasm that wooed me into the discipline as an undergraduate. Taking that class with him cemented my decision to pursue rhetorical studies.

Looking back now, I realize why I fell in love with Bob Jones University. The faculty. All the students at BJU speak with great honor of their teachers. A few years ago — the first year, in fact, I wore my doctoral regalia — I marched into the Commencement exercises with another favorite teacher from my undergrad years, Ed Panosian — a giant of a man who taught me History of Civ and Ancient Philosophy. He was a real cut-up, too, during that exceptionally formal proceeding. His wife, Betty, was my office mate for a brief time and is another teacher I admire. But it’s her sense of humor that still makes me laugh out loud. “Oh, some of those WCTU speeches would drive you to drink!”

I could never name all the teachers that I treasure, and I could never list how I use their lessons daily. Karen Pine taught me outlining. Ray St. John taught me essay writing. Elizabeth Edwards, interpretation. David Burke, persuasion. Ron Horton, precision. DeWitt Jones, argument. Joyce Parks, audience analysis. Lonnie Polson, problem solving. And I also had the rare blessing of calling those teachers my colleagues and my friends. Even if we’re talking about black spot on our roses or Russian gypsies over cold cuts or sharing verses through tears, I cherish those conversations and I pray we have many more in the future.

This past Spring I also had the opportunity to teach my favorite section yet in a series we started years ago under the course title, Seminar in Public Address. We started with Jonathan Edwards, then moved to George Whitefield, Charles Finney, and Dwight Moody. The final class, little did I know at the time, was this past spring, and we discussed “The Fourth Great Awakening.” Covering the current rhetoric of Evangelicals, Pentecostals, our own Fundamentalists, and even emerging voices, it was our chance to imagine what the next Great Awakening might look like. The topic was exhiliarating to me, but I am more thankful for those dear students. They were such a constant encouragment. I don’t know if the students know how much a blessing they are. I know we don’t tell them enough.

One of the students from that class was walking with my husband and me to Commencement this last Spring, and the school’s photographers snapped a picture. There we are up there (and I got the wrong color hood!). When she first showed me the picture, I made some goofy comment about it being an interesting “bookend” with the other picture from 17 years ago. I didn’t even know then that we were seeing our last Commencement or how prophetic that careless comment would be.

I said this first on a more public blog to further introduce myself there. And also to question the so-called denomination-splintering debates we Protestants “enjoy.” As much as our recent life change has been characterized as motivated by a drastic change in our theology, that’s not what started it. It got started in the same lessons I learned in those wrapped-in-love lectures, and it continued in order to encourage the same students I left behind. So it’s not a break or a change really at all. It’s the same journey.

We’re still very, very close to our exit from Bob Jones University. The room is still spinning in many ways. But my professional and personal life is knitted to those people, and I wanted to say how much publicly. God’s people are there. I’ll always be thankful for them. And I’m praying for them daily, even during this exceptionally busy week for them.

I must admit that I never understood what people were talking about with the term “Grace.” Sure, sure — I learned “God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense” like every other good little indy-fundy Baptist girl. And I was a good girl too. I “asked Jesus into my Heart” at 4 after listening to Little Marcy singing “Jesus Knocks, Knocks, Knocks,” and I had my “second blessing” or “dedication” at nearly-9 at Camp Good News after hearing the story about the American Indian and the circle. I attended Christian Day Schools from first grade through twelfth. And I attended Bob Jones University — receiving only 11 demerits total my whole four years. I married my college sweetheart, the man I met in my Freshman English tutorial, the only man I have ever loved. There we are in that picture in 1990 which graced that year’s Calendar of Events, Bulletins, etc. Please don’t laugh too hard at us. We were young and thin. And it was 17 years ago! That blush was the style at the time. Two BJU degrees later and with four years of teaching under our belts, we headed off to Indiana University and received our doctorates. We then returned to BJU to be “lifers” as we all called ourselves.

That was the year 2000. And after 32 years in fundamentalism, I still didn’t get Grace. I had lived a squeaky-clean life. Everything had gone pretty smoothly. Just few months after returning to BJU’s faculty, I discovered we were expecting. We had already lost one little one to a miscarriage just 7 months earlier. But this little person felt “sticky,” and stick she did. I wrote my dissertation while feeling her dance in my tummy to the Big Band music I played in my home office.

She was due on July 3, 2001. But on the 6th — our eleventh wedding anniversary — she wasn’t moving, and an ultrasound proved the worst had happened. Her heart had already stopped, and on the 7th our little Elise was born to Heaven.

It was while sitting in that hospital bed just before, during, and after her birth that I started to understand God’s Grace. God surrounded us with dear friends and hospital staff and carried us through that time. Even as I wept through 9/11 (feeling like the nation was crying with me rather than me crying with the nation), that first Christmas, that first dreaded Mother’s Day and her first birthday in Heaven, God was so near. He cried with us and held us close through all those hard times. I was starting to get a glimpse of Grace.

People commented that we must be doing something right because it was clear that they could see God through us. I always looked at them quizzically when they said that. I didn’t feel like I was doing anything. I felt so feeble. I regularly begged God to tell me what it was I was doing because I wanted to keep doing it so I didn’t tick Him off and lose more children. I didn’t want to endure all that again!

But we lost two more babies to miscarriage after Elise’s still birth. When God finally blessed us with our Isaac in December 2003, I literally laughed for joy when I heard him cry that first time. He was, in fact, so eager to breathe that he breathed in too quickly and had to stay in the NICU for ten days to clear up that fluid. Our nursing relationship, then, got off to a very rough start. And I had to nurse him. After having my body prepare to nurture Elise when Elise was not there to nurture, I knew that to heal I needed to nurse this little “screamer.” But it was so rocky. None of the nursing advice I received was working. I finally chucked that whole series in the trash and went the exact opposite direction. I nursed him on cue which ended up being a lot of nursing and a lot of sitting! So in those quiet times, I read all the Scripture passages I could find on nursing, and I realized how often God describes Himself as a nursing mother. I learned that God loves me as much as I love that little child. God aches for me just like I ached for my Isaac.

When you feel God’s love on such a cellular level, everything changes. I admit, I was raised in what I now know was a historically recent view of the Christian walk. Some call it a dispensationalist view of sanctification, some label it Semi-Pelagian or Chaferian. Previously, I’ve called it just another sort of Keswick camp sermon. But the rhetorician in me sees this dispie story of sanctification to be a relationship between employer and employee. I think J. I. Packer says as much. You give a little, and God gives a little. Back and forth. “God gives grace to the humble,” after all, so you have to work hard to get a lot of grace. Like a bonus check or Fuji apples in the office vending machine. That’s why I begged God to be clear with me as to what I was doing to gain His blessing. The message came back loud and clear, “Nothing!”

In processing Isaac’s birth and my growth in Grace, I realized God was my Father, not my boss. He didn’t taunt me with threats; He picked me up and carried me. He didn’t deliver vague orders; He lovingly (and sometimes firmly) showed me the next step. He didn’t withhold blessings until I earned them; He lavishly showered them on me when I didn’t deserve them. He hadn’t hired me; He pursued me and loved me. He didn’t toss me out alone to grope my way to His best; He took me by the hand and led me all the way.

So then I needed to minister that same Grace to those around me — especially my Isaac and now my Gavin. So often the children are forgotten in our one-anothering — sometimes considered “vipers in diapers” and other times treated as disturbing God’s work. But Christ cherishes the little ones. The ancient Hebrews were unique among their contemporaries for including even the unborn in their Covenant with God!

I now hear my little preschooler minister grace to me. “Mommy. You are having big feelings. You need to go sit in your comfort chair. Here. I’ll bring you a book to help you feel better. Do you need a hug?” Kindness I don’t deserve, but that comes so easily from him.

Sometimes I wonder if Satan was trying to throw herbicide on my growth in grace as we lost all those children. Knowing that mothering a child would teach me God’s Grace anew, I wonder if Satan was doing his best to stomp out that seedling. But I relish the fact that God took those tragedies and didn’t just give them a happy ending; He rewrote them entirely. He turned my ashes into His Beauty and my mourning into the joy of His Grace. God’s like that. After all, He took dust and made life and took a sin-sick sinner dead in her trespasses and sins and made her His child. Every last bit of it was by His Grace alone.

Amen!

** I first published this post on another group blog, but I wanted you all here to see it as well. So it’s a duplicate posting.

I have this favorite skirt. It’s a favorite because it’s easy and wrinkle-free, dressy with a forgiving fit, and because I got it dirt cheap after eyeballing it for full price at the beginning of the season. It’s also a favorite because of the consistent reaction I get when I wear it. Every single time my Dad (or another gentleman in the same demographic) politely tells me my slip is showing. It’s not. That’s the skirt you’re seeing in the thumbnail. That’s the style. But it’s gotten to the point now that I’m disappointed if my Dad doesn’t say something.

And I don’t mind really. He’s my Dad. He loves me, and he’s looking out for me. If my slip were showing, I’d want someone to tell me. It would be cruel not to say something, you know? Or even more cruel — to talk with his cohorts about my droopy petticoat.

And blogs are the same — like people. Quirky, personal, infuriating, inspiring, funny, goofy. . . . sometimes cheap (or open source), dressy, and wrinkle-free too! Like clothes they are public, but they are rarely as attention-getting to the big-wide world as they may seem. And if you see the blogger’s slip showing, it would be cruel not to say something, you know? But then again, maybe that’s the style?

Enough time has passed that I’ve been able to reflect on recent events. And since our blogs are now blocked by our former employer, I have an even greater freedom, I believe. That’s a brand-new feeling for me. And the rhetorician in me must reflect on my changing blog voice.

Once I realized that my blog was being scoured for “offensive” content, I thought, “Hm. They are reading. I have an audience. I’ll use it.” And that entire series on Grace from last Fall was an attempt to speak to this audience. I doubt they read it. If they did, I now understand that they probably didn’t get it. Touché.**

When the summer started an ominous sense of doom loomed over us. I had never quite felt that before either, and my blog turned once again to the more Second Sophistic fare — talking about the benefits of baldness and such. I had big feelings and big issues to talk about, and I discovered in my reading that many, many others have felt similarily. John Milton, for one. Martin Luther. Ghandi.

Knowing the way I’m plumbed, I had to write about that, but I didn’t dare with this dark cloud engulfing us. So I started a secret blog under the pseudonym, John Milton: www.mysamizdat.wordpress.com. You’ll recognize “samizdat” as a underground Soviet newspaper copied and circulated in defiance of a singular, all-encompassing power.

You’ve probably already clicked on the link. You won’t find the blog anymore since I deleted it at wordpress.com, but there is the google cache, I’m sure. Still I imported the posts here and filed them under “speak.” So there’s no need to search too hard.

The tone is different. Far from silly, more prophetic. Frankly, it’s exactly the tone that I used in the now-expunged chapter in my book (So dangerous was that chapter that I was told publishing it would get me fired. I didn’t publish it. I complied with their request.).The Esther persona that I tried to use last Fall is absent in those Milton posts. It’s more Deborah- or even Jael-like. But I don’t even have any warm milk to coax people into my tent.

I’ve been thinking about whether or not to keep the mysamizdat blog, and I’ve found that I don’t need it anymore. I can say what I will here. Sometimes silly (see Marcy or Daker below). Sometimes pointed (“Tent stakes for sale!”). Sometimes ambiguous (“May I come and speak to you, Oh Xerxes?”). Sometimes very, very transparent.

I am reminding myself that when the Poles won their Solidarność, they scrambled and floundered for awhile under their new freedom. So did the newly emancipated slaves. Suddenly running barefoot after trying for so long to dance in grace while wearing vintage brass diving boots will certainly mean a few stumbles in dog poo.

But knowing I’m safe in God’s care means it’s okay if I stumble. My soul is at rest in Christ. Why should I fear?

That Rockwell picture up there was the header for mysamizdat, but I just used a horizontal sliver of it honing in on the patriarch grinning and listening to the citizen. Now I can show the whole picture — persona and person meet.

** On August 16, 2007, our pastor found this paragraph offensive and instructed me to revise it or risk my husband’s solo “ministry.” Following my usual pattern of compliance with fundies, I did change it to the following:

Once I realized that my blog actually had an audience last Fall, I tried to write that entire series on Grace. Whether or not it was read wasn’t really the point. It was helping me see God in a very difficult situation. Rhetoric is like that! It changes the speaker too. And it focused my voice from fish talk to Grace talk, and that has to be a good thing.

But they still took away Grant’s solo ministry on October 16, 2007. So now, three years later, I can offer both versions freely. Edited on July 10, 2010.

Disputations have been allowed from ancient times, even concerning the Holy Trinity. What good is a soldier if he is not allowed to fight, a sheep dog if he may not bark, and a theologian if he may not debate? Better spend money to support old women who can knit than theologians who cannot discuss.

Martin Luther to Johann Eck