A Time to Laugh

Home Sweet Home

As I write this, Gavin, our 22mo, is vacuuming the kitchen. He’s quite the little helper — putting toys away, vacuuming, picking the (clean and dirty) dishes out of the dishwasher, pushing the wet clothes into the dryer. Mind you — I’m not asking for his help, he just volunteers.

He’s also pretty chatty. Just about 1-2 new words a day. Last night was “Ketchup” which came out as “kthp” — no vowels, just percussive consonants. He also said his first “sentence” — “all done balls.” And the singing! When he listens to our family’s fav CD — Gramma Sings — everything else stops. He dances and claps and spins and grins and sometimes even matches pitch and rhythm. He then races to get his trumpet or accordian. Then the terrier howls a few notes. It’s quite a happy cacophony.

(That’s Gramma Lewis singing up there. She personally recorded 78 songs just for her littlest grandsons, and it’s a big hit. Isaac turns to Gramma first when he needs an extra help in going to sleep.)

Gavin’s growing neurons and muscles have even matured enough to help him sleep through the entire night! I mentioned this to my mom the other day, and she reminisced, “Oh honey! It wasn’t until Steve was 2.5 until he did that! So Gavin’s doing great!” Good ol’ Mom! . . . And anybody who insists that babies can and even should sleep through the night by two months should take his place right alongside the weight-loss gimmicks and the get-rich-quick schemes.

Gavin’s also just started to pretend, mostly with Brother (i.e. “Ikah”). You’re never quite sure who Isaac will be on any given day. He might be Superman or Spiderman or Woody or Link. If he’s Link, he won’t say much since Link is the strong, silent, serious type. Today Isaac has asked to wear a tie to church. A tie!! I guess he’s going to church as Peter Parker.

Now just one month past his birthday, Isaac the Four-Year-Old is very, very fun! This week we played “War” and “Valleyball.” “War” is cool because we get to talk about numbers. I’m always a little stunned that without much effort, he’s really taken to reading. Yes, READING! My mom said I was the same way. He’ll sound out almost anything, but not nearly everything. He wrote “tap” and “dog” this morning — his first actual writing. And he will read one or two pages in Go, Dog. Go! But our favorite book right now is Blueberries for Sal. This week, after reading about Little Sal and the Little Bear, we collected “berries” (wooden beads) around the house in a tin bucket and made a pie for Daddy with white felt for a pie crust. Big fun!

Many have asked us what schooling options we will choose for our boys. And we can answer with a very decisive, firm, “We dunno!” Yet. . . . There are, of course, many good schools in the area, but I’m not sure that we’re able to spend $3-6000 yearly for 2.5 hours of private-school Kindergarten. The nearby public elementary school is well-rated. Since Isaac will not be actually in K-5 until 2009, I figure we have a lot of time to decide. Right now, I’m intrigued by the Charlotte Mason approach, and we very loosely follow Before Five in A Row. So many of our friends have chosen homeschooling for these early years, and initially I do understand the appeal.

I never dreamed I’d have that kind of input on my sons’ schooling.

There are many other things I’ve noticed but never before considered as we step out of the cave and into the wide open pasture. In our search for a new church, we’ve chosen a denomination — PCA. Based on our reading, no other denomination is as historically aware, theologically sound, confidently evangelistic, and academically argumentative (from a rhetorician this is a high compliment!). Greenville offers many options in the PCA, and our first visit was startlingly gentle. We found old friends and new and a sermon lifted straight out of the words we ourselves have quoted over and over again to plugged-up ears. We will visit several more, I’m sure, but we already feel at home.

It’s still odd to me to find a place where education is seen as a robust compliment to the Faith (instead of, at best, a suspicious antagonist).

I plan on talking more and more about this transition. I still scratch my head at the hoopla that so many made about my speaking out at all. You know that, don’t you? It was exactly 2 years ago this month that it all started. I was told my blog was “blipping on the radar.” My words here were scoured — all the way from a year and half before. My good-natured jokes about campus food, my fatigue during summer school — those were forbidden because “we don’t let the students talk like that on their blogs, so we can’t let you.” Huh?

The most appalling objection — and my mind spins as I remember it now — was a post that was in the context of a prayer for our little Gavin. Under that veneer of silliness, I was timidly asking God to bless us with our second child. “My pencils are all sharpened,” I said. I was praying. Pregnancy is a very scary thing for us, you understand. And I had the books ready about sibling rivalry and breastfeeding. I linked to the book about breastfeeding, and THAT was offensive. THAT, I was told, would cause “a young man to stumble.”

Now, go look at the book and judge the offense for yourself. There’s not even a picture of a woman breastfeeding. The cover art is a cartoon drawing of a mommy flying through the air, happy because she was successful at nursing.

I refused to take it down. I would refuse again.

That kind of underhanded, cowardly scrutiny has caused me to be pretty quiet about a whole lot of things. Still. I’ve played in metaphors. I’ve talked in code. I’ve only hinted at strong opinions. As I look up and see that Damocles’ sword is really not hovering above my ‘do, I realize that I can talk. It’s okay. I can say what’s on my mind without fear of retribution beginning with cryptic emails from the authorities meant to make me squirm in fear. The sanctity of the Body of Christ does not rest on my own personal energy level, my forced appreciation of square fish, or my old-fashioned mothering choices.

Gavin just brought me a snack of cereal. Sweet, little gentleboy. I want to talk more about what God has taught us through these little ones. Not as an expert, of course, but as a blessed Mommy. Why should that scare anyone?

Elbonian Gets Employee of the Year

“Don’t let your karma run over my dogma!”

At the time God made Earth and Heaven, before any grasses or shrubs had sprouted from the ground—God hadn’t yet sent rain on Earth, nor was there anyone around to work the ground (the whole Earth was watered by underground springs)—God formed Man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man came alive—a living soul!

Genesis 2:5-7

God sent me to announce the year of his grace—
   a celebration of God’s destruction of our enemies—
   and to comfort all who mourn,
To care for the needs of all who mourn in Zion,
   give them bouquets of roses instead of ashes,
Messages of joy instead of news of doom,
   a praising heart instead of a languid spirit.
Rename them “Oaks of Righteousness”
   planted by God to display his glory.
They’ll rebuild the old ruins,
   raise a new city out of the wreckage.
They’ll start over on the ruined cities,
   take the rubble left behind and make it new.

Isaiah 61

But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants, ‘Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time.

Luke 15

It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

Ephesians 2

First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.

1 John 4

Serve the Lord With Gladness!

Thanks to my hubby’s generous Christmas gift of an mp3 player, I’m obsessed with podcasts. And thanks to TulipGirl, I’ve found a new source for downloads. In this first (for me!) podcast, a little factoid popped up that can be a compelling retort to some who say I’m a little too optimistic about the Christian life. ;)

You know Old Hundreth, right? The first stanza looks like this:

All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.
Him serve with fear, His praise forth tell;
Come ye before Him and rejoice.

It’s based on Psalm 100, of course. But notice the stark change between William Kethe’s words and David’s:

1 Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!
2 Serve the LORD with gladness!
   Come into his presence with singing!

Uh. . . . Those two don’t match. Why? Why did Kethe change it? We serve with gladness – mirth, joy! The Vulgate chose lætítia. Luther uses Freuden. And Calvin is practically giddy!

Shout joyfully to praise the Lord,
all you who dwell upon the earth.
Worship the Lord with happy heart;
before him come with songs of joy.

So I think the better, more historically astute question is, why did we all get so crabby? Optimism about the Gospel is a good thing and, I would argue, a Biblical thing. What happened?

Dead to Sin!! Amen!

This was such an encouragement to me. For Jerry Bridges to admit that he was wrong in the past. For him to say that conservative Evangelicalism has lost its proper focus. And for him to articulate the same thing that Grant and I have been saying over and over and over again to our students and friends and . . . . well, everyone! This is what we put our necks on the line for! To foreground the Gospel in every interaction and conflict and struggle!

It’s a must-read!! Read every word.

And it’s just nice to have some company. :)

I prayed that God would use the Bible to guide my conduct. Then I began diligently to seek to obey it. I had never heard the phrase “the pursuit of holiness,” but that became my primary goal in life. Unfortunately, I made two mistakes. First, I assumed the Bible was something of a rulebook and that all I needed to do was to learn what it says and go do it. I knew nothing of the necessity of depending on the Holy Spirit for his guidance and enablement.

Still worse, I assumed that God’s acceptance of me and his blessing in my life depended on how well I did. I knew I was saved by grace through faith in Christ apart from any works. I had assurance of my salvation and expected to go to heaven when I died. But in my daily life, I thought God’s blessing depended on the practice of certain spiritual disciplines, such as having a daily quiet time and not knowingly committing any sin. I did not think this out but just unconsciously assumed it, given the Christian culture in which I lived. Yet it determined my attitude toward the Christian life.

Performance-Based Discipleship

My story is not unusual. Evangelicals commonly think today that the gospel is only for unbelievers. Once we’re inside the kingdom’s door, we need the gospel only in order to share it with those who are still outside. Now, as believers, we need to hear the message of discipleship. We need to learn how to live the Christian life and be challenged to go do it. That’s what I believed and practiced in my life and ministry for some time. It is what most Christians seem to believe.

As I see it, the Christian community is largely a performance-based culture today. And the more deeply committed we are to following Jesus, the more deeply ingrained the performance mindset is. We think we earn God’s blessing or forfeit it by how well we live the Christian life.

Most Christians have a baseline of acceptable performance by which they gauge their acceptance by God. For many, this baseline is no more than regular church attendance and the avoidance of major sins. Such Christians are often characterized by some degree of self-righteousness. After all, they don’t indulge in the major sins we see happening around us. Such Christians would not think they need the gospel anymore. They would say the gospel is only for sinners.

For committed Christians, the baseline is much higher. It includes regular practice of spiritual disciplines, obedience to God’s Word, and involvement in some form of ministry. Here again, if we focus on outward behavior, many score fairly well. But these Christians are even more vulnerable to self-righteousness, for they can look down their spiritual noses not only at the sinful society around them but even at other believers who are not as committed as they are. These Christians don’t need the gospel either. For them, Christian growth means more discipline and more commitment.

Then there is a third group. The baseline of this group includes more than the outward performance of disciplines, obedience, and ministry. These Christians also recognize the need to deal with sins of the heart like a critical spirit, pride, selfishness, envy, resentment, and anxiety. They see their inconsistency in having their quiet times, their failure to witness at every opportunity, and their frequent failures in dealing with sins of the heart. This group of Christians is far more likely to be plagued by a sense of guilt because group members have not met their own expectations. And because they think God’s acceptance of them is based on their performance, they have little joy in their Christian lives. For them, life is like a treadmill on which they keep slipping farther and farther behind. This group needs the gospel, but they don’t realize it is for them. I know, because I was in this group.

“Gospel-Driven Sanctification,” Jerry Bridges

A Touchstone: Defining Fundamentalism in the 21st Century

Recently Touchstone Magazine asked the following questions about Evangelicalism with the intention of asking other “pundits” from other denoms the same. How would you answer them for your slice of the world? Here’s mine:

• How do you define “Fundamentalist” in a way that distinguishes Fundamentalists from other believing Christians? And has this definition changed over the last several years?

I know the textbook answer. I know that a Fundamentalist believes in the fundamentals of the Faith. Over the years, as I’ve shown Christians in other denominations my fundamentalist creed, I’ve been a little stunned, peeved, and over time tickled at how many of them say, “Oh! Well, I believe that too!” Uh . . . no! You can’t. Those are MINE! . . . As if Statements of Faith are proprietary marbles I bring to the religious playground.

More specifically, I know that a Fundamentalist is a person who believes in the fundamentals of the Faith, but especially privileges separation as the distinguishing doctrine.

I learned all that intuitively in my first 30 years in fundamentalism. And I learned it academically at Indiana University. Since then, I’ve learned a little more.

I now know that a Fundamentalist is a person who believes in the fundamentals of the Faith, but especially privileges separation as the most distinguishing doctrine, and who elevates certain unwritten notions to the level of the fundamentals themselves. These things don’t appear in any creed, but Fundamentalism passionately defends them as Gospel Truth: a pre-trib dispensationalism, an authority fetish, a Keswick/Chaferian soteriology, and a punitive, behavioristic childrearing ethic.

I do believe it’s changed in the last 50 years, but many disagree with me. I sense that fundyism has grown more people-pleasing, and because people can be fickle, it has become more calcified, less able to do the right thing. It’s not independent anymore. I covered this in the expunged chapter of my book. BJU Fundamentalism was always articulated as a beautiful thing that woos the unsaved to Christ. That’s a good thing! But after the Campaign 2000 debacle, things changed. They talked less to those to the outside and more just to themselves.

• Has Fundamentalism matured since the 1950s, and if so in what ways?

No.

I have a friend of a friend who graduated from BJU in the 1950s. He always teases my friend and me that “He went to BJU when it was more liberal than Wheaton!” ;) I have since figured out what he meant by that. Wheaton, especially then, was a haven for pietism — for Keswick theology. Bob Jones Sr. founded BJC to be different from the so-Heavenly-minded-they-are-no-earthly-good “higher life” Christianity expressed in Keswick camps. In Standing Without Apology Dr. Stenholm is quoted as describing the Moody grads similarly — “dowdy,” I think was her term. Within early 20th-century evangelicalism and because of the liberal arts curriculum, BJC was unusual. Jones, Sr. had a common-sense trust in the study of the humanities since the best of humanity reflects the image of God we’re all created in.

Now? The oldest fundamentalist school with the most humane roots talks most like the Keswick/Chaferian theology its founder opposed. It’s not totally a surprise. The Keswick/Chaferianism sells very well because it imitates capitalism’s story. And it’s hard to not bring that sort of commodification into the Christian faith.

The metaphor I used to describe this change is that BJU went from actively wooing their secular Other to continually recasting themselves. Their talk turned narcissistic. It was a kind of Extreme Makeover.

When you talk with the old timers at BJU, you get a clear sense that there were many more personalities back in the day. More quirks and idioscincracies. More conflicts too! But now, for that iteration of Fundamentalism at Bob Jones University, at least, it’s very homogenous. Very artificial and manufactured. In other words, 1958 Fundamentalism is to 2008 Fundamentalism what Jessica Tandy to the Olsen Twins – the older version might have a few more age spots, but she’s the one going to the Oscars (not the eye candy)!

• Has Fundamentalism lost anything in the process of maturing (if it did)?

Since the 1950s, BJU turned into a corporation. Losing the tax exemption is just one piece of that. It is bigger and more corporate than its post-war self.

• Are there any fundamental differences within the Fundamentalist movement today, and do you think they will deepen into permanent divisions, or even have already? How might they be healed?

Usually Fundamentalism is criticized as being unable to “think outside the box” or live “outside the bubble.” Most often people say that it’s obsessed with control. Some accuse the movement of a Pharisaical, works-based righteousness. All of those descriptions are accurate. But I think something more comprehensive is going on that includes all of those criticisms, and I describe it in an earlier series of posts. In sum, Fundamentalism is no different from its less separated sister Evangelicalism. Both have unwittingly and uncritically reified the capitalist story and knitted it to their reading of Scripture. Their bickering between themselves has become nothing more than a cola war — each scrambling for their share of the market.

There’s lots of talk about the “Young Fundamentalists.” And I have nothing but admiration for these (now) under-38 set (I am barely one year their senior). They were my students and I now am honored to call them my friends. They tend to be more optimistic about political involvement, more skeptical of authority, and are trying to articulate a more Reformed soteriology. I wish them the best.

The “Old Fundamentalists” consider their heirs to be lazy upstarts and obnoxious rebels. There’s no surprise there. The biggest insult lobbed at their “sons” and younger sibs is “You’re just an evangelical.” Many younger fundamentalists leave in frustration or, as I know first-hand, are pushed out against their wills. Some stay to try to reform while others still stay to keep it the same. This last group is more cunning than their fathers with their Fundamentalist tropes. While repeatedly insisting that they are “loosening up,” they are actually increasing penalties for noncompliance. Their luster can only stay shiney so long. The optimism will wear off soon, I’m afraid.

One thing that Fundamentalists must learn to do, if they hope to keep the movement from atrophy, is read. I know that sounds simple enough, but for too long I’ve seen too many of the brightest and best just glaze over when presented with any text — Scriptural, Fundamentalist, or otherwise. Their habit is to passively accept the words and the worlds they make. Most don’t even read the best-selling books from their own presses. But to read authors just outside their denominational lines — still believing and orthodox and within their conservative hermeneutic — would be a healthy start to broaden and deepen their thinking.

When we talked about these sorts of transitions, my professor at Indiana always quoted his professor — “All you have to do is outlive the bastards.” I’m not sure that’s the solution. I am watching these Young Fundamentalists carefully. If they will win the day and honestly change the movement, they must find a better way to deal with difference. A long life span is not the solution that will edify the Saints. I find too many well-intentioned young men, who have bristled for too long under their father’s charismatic but oppressive personalities, only resort to the same tactics when confronted. I fear that their rearing has permanently crippled them, and it will take an extra resilient and perceptive group to persevere inside the movement and foreground the Gospel. I don’t see it happening. But I do pray I’m wrong.

• What does your movement, speaking generally, fail to see that it ought to see?

That it’s not the movement that is god. God is God. The Body of Christ is more important than creeds, alliances, and organizations.

• What would you say to a Fundamentalist tempted to become Catholic or Orthodox?

I know that Fundamentalism has driven away scores of its followers into a more mystical, more liturgical, more exotic, more Old World religion. Fundies are still assuming that those who leave go so they can consume seeker-sensitive services. Nothing can be further from the truth. People are leaving for something much, much older.

I responded to that exodus in another blog post. The gentlemen that responded to this question at Touchstone are much more informed and gentle than I. I’m still a little exasperated at the whole thing. Probably because I find myself at a crossroads.

• What has Fundamentalist to offer the wider world that it will find nowhere else?

I had a professor at Indiana University in my American religious history class who, when the question was asked about the Parable of the Ten Virgins, looked to me for the facts. He knew that I knew. Even though he was a seminary-trained, Missouri synod Lutheran, he knew that I’d know the Scripture because I was a fundy. That’s a good thing. Fundies will always win the Bible categories at Jeopardy!

I joke that Fundamentalists are the ISTJs of Christendom — earnest, hard-working, duty-bound, a little clueless about politics, oblivious to cultural shifts and nuances, uncomfortable in large groups, and somewhat anti-social. They are the Hank Hills of the neighborhood. The Jack Bauers in the Faith. Sure — they are hard-nosed and difficult to cuddle, but when you need someone reliable to rescue you from your latest mishap or to destroy the terrorists, you call the ISTJs!

John Piper says as much when he calls them the “backbone” of the Body. I couldn’t agree more.

• What else would you like to say?

I may no longer be inside, but I know that God’s people are inside the movement and that He will continue to take care of them as He has with me and mine.

Technorati Tags: Fundamentalism, Touchstone Magazine, Bob Jones University, Young Fundamentalists

Operation Romans 8: “I’m a very good man. I’m just a bad wizard.” (Part 3 of 3)

Coming from — Dorothy vs. The Great Oz

Only after the Great and Powerful Oz is face-to-face with the individual is he pressed to admit: “No, my dear. . . . I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad wizard.”

God’s power isn’t like human power. At all. Ours is grounded in showmanship, fear, bravado, tradition, and competition — agon. God’s power just is. Look below at how the Dreamworks creators communicated that difference between God’s miracle and the Egyptian charmers’ production. Rough-and-tumble, just-came-from-the-dessert Moses vs. the slick and snarky magicians.

There’s a reason the charmers had to dim the lights and fog up the room. Sunshine and transparency would ruin their illusion. Their humbug thrived on obfuscation. They had to control the environment and distance themselves from their “audience.” The crowds ooh-and-aah for them, but we know the end of the story.

There’s something that happens to contemporary Fundamentalists when they get together in large groups. They think they must imitate the pagan’s show. They try to build what amounts to ziggurats for Christ. Just as Moody leveraged the Press, they find legitimacy from the Press for their elaborate evangelistic productions. In the end, however, Fundamentalism isn’t very good at wizardry. It’s actually merciful that stitching a human ideology to Scripture ends up with so many knots and holes and crooked seams. It’s good that the ziggurat crumbles.

You just can’t sell the Gospel with humbug. The two conflict.

After all the smoke has cleared, it’s just not our show, and it’s not our battle. God doesn’t need the illusion. He doesn’t work in agon. The battle is God’s, and He’s already won. We just enjoy the victory.

A few posts ago, I included an interview with Benjamin Barber — a political theorist who just released Consumed. In this his latest book, he contends that American capitalism infantilizes the American consumer into buying more and more. He reminds us that it’s only just recently that risk has been socialized: corporations can’t stumble anymore for their financial goofs. And, like a good productive critic, Barber urges us to restore our civic community and make capitalism give us what we need (rather than make us need what it wants to give us).

His critique of capitalism easily fits the problems in American conservative Evangelicalism. Try it on for size. . . .

Fundamentalism infantilizes the believer. We’re treated as pre-redeemed or heathen or unregenerate. That keeps us coming back to church and keeps us participating whole-hog in para-church organizations. And it keeps us consuming more material religion so that we feel temporarily sated. Risk for our religious leaders is socialized — sins (for the prominent) are swept under the rug — while the solitary human things are exaggerated into destructive sins. We think we have a church body, but what we have are groups of silenced, hurting individuals threatened into denial, all to preserve the precious image of the movement. Transparency is forbidden since the public might get a peek at our human foibles.

We don’t have a religion designed to help believers grow in Christ; we have believers scurrying to protect a commodified religion. Barber argues that the Market is supposed to serve the consumer, but it’s been juggled so that the consumer serves the Market. And I’m afraid that it’s the same in Fundamentalism. The Fundamentalist believer is cornered to serve the movement. Barber’s right: for the Market, the Civic Sphere, and the Church. We are consumed. I wish he were wrong.

Capitalism is too easily knitted together with conservative Evangelicalism. We shouldn’t see the Church in a political theorist’s correction for capitalism. In his seminal work on Fundamentalism, George Marsden said that modernity created Fundamentalism. And it seems that in the 21st-century, we may well conclude that capitalism created contemporary Fundamentalism.

But think about it. Go look at the books on your shelves or listen to the evangelistic slogans you’ve absorbed over the past year. Some Fundamentalist “self-help” books sound no different than the ones on Oprah’s Book Club. It’s all Prosperity Gospel. The push-pull “let go and let God” is just like “Stop eating! EAT THIS!!” of a diet fad. Bible verses have actually become weight loss slogans! Church signs make God’s House look like a check-cashing joint.

Capitalism and conservative Evangelicalism share the same sawdust, hawk the same wares, silence the same naysayers, adamently defend the same reputation, polish the same insincere veneer, and tell the same tragic story.

And we don’t need to do that. We don’t need to sell God. We don’t need to pawn the Faith.

Believers don’t have to try so hard to be beautiful. We don’t need to “work it.” God living within us makes us beautiful. We don’t have to struggle to be separate. God has already set us apart, sanctified us, made us peculiar. Just like a wife doesn’t need to have an Extreme Makeover for her husband to love her or a child doesn’t need to ride his new two-wheeler perfectly to guarantee his parent’s approval.

God loves us. His love makes us beautiful.

I had always been a little mystified by why God picked circumcision for His people. What a strange sign to communicate to the pagans that these people were set apart! . . . Did they all walk around half-naked?

Then a friend explained it to me: no, it wasn’t an external sign to the pagans; it was an internal sign to the Hebrew!

The “sign” of our sanctification is to us — it’s private, internal, quiet . . . small! We know we’re His. We don’t have to flaunt it or defend it. It would be immodest to do so! We don’t have to fight for or against it. That’s just unnecessary. Romans 8:5-11 contrasts the obsessive flexing-your-own-moral-muscles humbug with the Christian life like this:

Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.

But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!

The war’s over. God won. And now, while we join God in cleaning up the muck left from the battle, while we struggle and gradually progress from our sinful nature toward Christlikeness, we’re not in a continual fight with God (His Son reconciled us). We’re not at odds with our world (just a little out of step). We don’t need to cut off our fellow believers (we’re all part of the Body after all!). And we’re not in turmoil with ourselves either since God redeemed all of us and is progressively sanctifying us until we’re in Glory. We don’t need to struggle to look saved. It’s not a competition.

No, we’re not salesmen or show windows or wizards or charmers or humbugs. We’re not soldiers. We’re actually more than conquerors.

Technorati Tags: Fundamentalism, Bob Jones University, Benjamin Barber, Prince of Egypt, Keswick theology, Chaferianism, Humbugs, The Wizard of Oz

Operation Romans 8: God vs. Me (Part 2 of 3)

Coming from — “Bah! Humbug!!”

Implicit in the interaction between showman and pigeon, there’s agon — a contest, a debate, a struggle. It doesn’t work without that difference and distance and antagonism between the humbug and consumer, the “cast member” and the “guest,” and even the revivalist and the revived. The best peddler of humbug leverages that antagonism, skillfully wielding it to his own advantage. Sadly enough, the showman often winds up fooling himself. The illusion is so all-consuming, the illusionist himself becomes an unwitting dupe.

I’ve come to realize in the last seven years that purveyors Fundamentalism are not much different. After years of fighting the evolutionists, the higher critics, and the “modernists,” after wholly digesting urban revival á la Moody and Barnum as their raison d’être, they pick up their well-worn Scofields (for the older set) or ESVs (for the young ones) and see nothing but agon. In other words, Fundamentalism goes to the Text Itself and reads every story in the Bible as the same kind of contest, debate, or struggle. It’s all a fight. The fight is not between Good and Evil, not between Christ and Satan, not between the Oppressors and the Oppressed. No, Fundamentalism reads every story as a fight between God and humanity. Or better yet, as a fight between God and the individual. Or even more directly, between The Omniscient Almighty Power of the Universe and little ol’ you. The divine vs. the self. The Infinite Creator vs. the lowly creature.

Fundamentalism easily views Scripture through this lens. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is a story not about God’s promise to provide the End of Sacrifices, but about Abraham’s submission. The three Hebrews in the fiery furnace is a story not about God’s salvation, but about three young men maintain their shining testimonies before their pagan audience. Jonah is a story not about a merciful God acting through a nationalistic prophet, but about a disobedient man. Prophetic passages about wicked heathen are (mis)read as direct condemnations of contemporary believers sitting in the pew. The Prodigal Son is not about a gracious, always-loving Father, but about two selfish sons. Paul’s warning that legalism wrests us from grace and his command that we “bear one another’s burdens” are met with complete confusion since the well-honed legalistic cudgel of agon must be dropped when in an unguarded embrace. The Fruit of the Spirit is not the work of that Spirit living within you, but God’s divine character qualities that you must struggle to grow in your own life.

In the end, the entire canon of Scripture is not God’s Book about His Son, but merely a book about us.

So Isaiah 55:8 is then predictably mangled to read: “For my thoughts are incompatible with your thoughts, And my ways conflict with your ways, declares the LORD.” That’s not what the Text says! God doesn’t say we believers are at odds with Him any more than the salt and pepper on the table are at odds with the banquet being served. He says: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, And my ways are not your ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God’s saying that He’s not as short-sighted as we are. Although He’s infinitely bigger than we are, He harbors no belligerence towards us. He sees the pattern in the tapestry that we can’t see.

And so it goes. . . . In Fundamentalism even the Christian is at odds with himself. Sure — the Holy Spirit lives within, but every believer also supposedly has a “clone of Satan’s own nature” that “violently opposes God.” Strangely enough, Fundamentalist theology allows for the tables to be turned, creature controlling the Creator as he “lets go” and “lets God” in and out of his life like air from a balloon. Even while recognizing God to be all-powerful, this approach places the believer on an equal footing with his Sovereign God.

Reading God’s Book as an epic war story between God and man trickles down into everyday life. Everything’s agon. It’s all a fight. Husbands end up quoting the “submission” passages to their wives more than they remember the “love” passages God has written to them. Masters forget that God is the premier no-respector-of-persons since they are too often preaching “You will respect my authority!!” Parents and in loco parentis, albeit without a whiff of anger, literally and emotionally whip their charges into a learned helplessness, completely ignorant of the seething ire such rituals induce.

Sure — God’s sovereignty and His grace do mercifully pop up every now and then. But it is, unfortunately, the exception rather than the rule.

And it gets worse.

Since the Bible is always viewed through the lens of agon — a contest between God and human beings — normal anxieties and conflicts are condemned. Any human attribute that is “not-God” is sinful. Being silly is a sin. Being sad is a sin. Thinking too much is a sin. Feeling too much is a sin. Overeating is a sin. Undereating is a sin. Worry is a sin. Apathy is a sin. Sleeping too much is a sin. Not sleeping enough is a sin. Trying too hard is a sin. Giving up is a sin. And the myriad variations between those extremes are muddled with the ever-present and totally subjective appeal to “balance.” Whenever you do one thing, you get scolded for not doing the other. It’s a push-pull. A Catch-22. You can’t win.

Essentially, being human is sin.

It seems like a tolerable enough read on the Scripture. What’s wrong with a little unselfishness, right? But when you live it out in the nitty-gritty of daily life, it becomes nothing more than a sublimation of God-given personhood and, worst case, a squelching of the Holy Spirit.

Since being human is a sin, then the most human among us — the small and the weak — are the most sinful and the most dangerous. Even our children are our enemies — “vipers in diapers.” Read the prominent texts on child-rearing recommended within conservative Evangelicalism. Read them with your eyes wide open and don’t miss a word. There’s a war presumed to be raging in our homes. And the littlest one is the biggest threat.

So when life gets complicated, contemporary Fundamentalism isn’t teaching its followers to be like its founders — to be the rugged individual who will resist the wrong and the choose the right in spite of the culture. No, we’ve been trained that the self is wholly sinful and, by extension, the singular and the small is sinful, leaving the corporate as the only alternative. So whenever a believer faces opposition with someone or something more powerful or more popular, he must acquiesce. He has been trained to follow the corporate over the small and the quiet. It’s not “do right ’til the stars fall.” It’s “do right because we say it’s right.” It’s “peace at all costs.” How far we have strayed from the roots of our faith!

All of these tropes and habits are so prominent that I can easily predict the Fundamentalist’s response to my words. It won’t be a head-to-head clash (which is what I relish and welcome!). It won’t be, “Mmmm. . . . I’d like to see more proof.” It won’t be a shrugging it off and saying, “Whatever.” No, the response will be to make me small — to presume the worst about me, to shame, to insult, to name-call, to question my character – ad hominem responses which are far from necessary or logical or Christian. Some will say, “Well, you aren’t being gracious by saying all this. By talking about such things, you’re just revealing the seething bitterness in your heart.” And I must beg this last person, whom I know is a friend, to understand that I believe keeping quiet would be the most ungracious, embittering, unChristian thing I might do.

Then again, you may be muttering under your breath: “So what? What’s the big deal? That’s what everybody does. Every group does that.” Well, yes, groupthink is a problem among many gatherings of people. But this particular gathering is the one I care about, and this group or movement is most obviously losing its moorings. The consequences in this instance is that the groupthink will continue until Fundamentalism’s followers are unique among their contemporaries — uniquely miswired, unable to communicate with those around them, incapable of seeing the right choice when powerful hegemony looms.

What happens is that a Fundamentalist child becomes most vulnerable to sexual predators since he doesn’t know how to listen to the small voice bellowing inside to “RUN!!” from stranger danger. His wiring has taught him to mistrust his inner voice, and the adult authority must be obeyed at all costs.

What happens is that a white, middle-class, conservative Evangelical co-ed, who would always vote pro-life, is the most likely person in Upstate South Carolina to resort to abortion because appeasing the overwhelming, punitive culture is easier than listening to the small, thriving life within her. Yes, you read that right: it’s not the lack of religion that pushes many young women to kill their babies; it’s too much bad religion.

What happens is that a young man who is asked to give his credit card number to the mysterious voice over the phone — even though his gut is screaming to “STOP!!” — can’t resist since to do so would be impolite and contrary.

What happens is that a new mother prematurely stops breastfeeding (or never even starts) because so many have told her that it’s a sexual stumblingblock to men.

And others get strong-armed into submission as well. Bullied into dropping out of school. Shamed into silence about a contrary opinion. Blacklisted for not continuing to maintain the image. Shunned for speaking out about injustice. None of these stories are exaggerations. All have recently happened to real people fully committed to Fundamentalism — over and over again. And all for the same reason — to squash the small self and defer to the powerful, popular, dominant culture.

The single group member, we’re told, can mar the reputation of the movement. The baby’s wiggles are clearly “defiant” and make us all look bad. The individual, no matter how small, speaks for the whole group, right? Unless that individual is very powerful and prominent; then he only speaks for himself.

So the hegemony rules. The big, the corporate, the loud is most important. The god-like becomes God.

At that point, the Great and Powerful Oz needs Toto as much as Dorothy does. After all, he’s not a bad man. He’s just a very bad wizard.

Next — “I’m just a bad wizard!”

Technorati Tags: Fundamentalism, Bob Jones University, Keswick theology, Chaferianism, Humbugs, The Wizard of Oz

Operation Romans 8: “Bah! Humbug!!” (Part 1 of 3)

P. T. Barnum was the Prince of Humbugs. He sold what amounted to nothing to the public and made his customers feel it was worth every penny. He hawked “curiosities” — albinos, giants, midgets, “fat boys,” jugglers, magicians, and “exotic women.” He defended these hoaxes or “humbugs” as “advertisements to draw attention . . . to the Museum. I don’t believe in duping the public, but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them.” For him, hype was no problem; it was bald-faced deception that rankled him (since, of course, it would only hurt his business).

Barnum distinguished himself from the real con artists in The Humbugs of the World. He describes Grizzly Adams’ bears, the Davenport Brothers’ spiritualism, Mr. Pease’s Horehound Candy, Benjamin Brandreth’s Sarsparilla Pills, Joanna Southcott’s prophesies, and Robert Matthews’ elaborate religious cons (you may also know him through his most famous follower/slave, Isabella, a.k.a. Sojourner Truth). The most amazing example he describes is the Miscegenation hoax. The pamphlet was a fraud – a complete fiction created by the then-Democratic party to ruin the anti-Slavery platform and the Republican party candidate, Abraham Lincoln, in the 1864 election.

The circus came late in Barnum’s career. That’s when he built the Hippodrome. But in America’s centennial year, the building didn’t house “the greatest show on Earth.” Instead, it hosted a Dwight L. Moody revival. In the midst of New York City’s surging unemployment and inflation, increasing domestic violence and drunkenness, Moody came to Madison Avenue.

So did 150 policemen, 500 ushers, 1200 choir members, and 1000s of listeners. Reporters saw lawyers, doctors, scientists, presidential press agents, clergy, and pickpockets in attendance. Now, it wasn’t until the Chicago revivals to follow that Moody, near the end of that stint, invented a special Prostitute night. You’ve heard of Goldfish Sunday? Well, this was a little different.

Bruce Evensen describes it all. In New York, street vendors sold counterfeit Moody and Sankey pictures for five and ten cents each to people who had never seen the revivalists’ faces! The Times reported that $40,000 was spent on the revival — two-thirds of a million in today’s dollars. Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and Episcopalians came. All entered through Barnum’s big doors . . . on Madison Avenue.

In the midst of Barnum’s sawdust, the press puffery, the teeming masses, and the fake merchandising, here was Moody’s forehead-poundingly-ironic message:

We have to sink the self. We have to get our eyes off these things and toward the Cross.

Surprisingly, Moody’s pitch is not much different from Barnum’s. Evensen, too, connects the Revivalist Moody and the Humbug Barnum. Go read it for yourself. Both cut their professional eyeteeth in sales — Moody pushing shoes, Barnum Bibles. Both advertised aggressively. Both get lampooned by Harper’s. Both advertised aggressively. Both used the press skillfully. And the success of both “enterprises,” it seems, depends on the same suspending of the self.

Let me explain it another way. . . . We visited Walt Disney World this summer. Enjoying the whole park through the eyes of a 3.5 year old and a 1 year old is a scream although the heat, the crowds, and the prices do tarnish the fun. Grant and I tried our best to keep our 30-something sarcasm at bay, and Disney does pretty well at curing the Gen-X jaundice with attractions like Soarin’.

I still get the most giggles when Disney’s slip is showing — The Tiki Room and the Carousel of Progress, for instance. When you enter those now-quaint attractions, you have to work a little harder at enjoying the illusion. You have to give up more of your 21st-century sensibilities to enjoy the squawking toucans and corny humor of the jerky animatronics. With both Soarin’ and the Tikis, for the illusion to work, you have to give in to the fantasy. You have to detach yourself from reality. You have to let yourself go or, as some might even say, “sink the self.”

When Dorothy opens the curtain and confronts the Humbug, when you MST3K your way through Disney’s vision of the future, when the individual dialectically stands face-to-face with the corporation, when the sunlight shines on the smoke and mirrors, there’s no more “self to sink” since the humbug is sinking pretty fast on its own.

That’s why, when we’re in the middle of the humbug and working so hard at “sinking the self,” we might get a little peeved at the yappy Toto (who cares very little for humbug) as he races to pull back the curtain on the Great Oz. It’s startling and disconcerting and even disappointing to see the humbug for what it really is.

Next — Dorothy vs. The Great and Powerful Oz

Technorati Tags: Fundamentalism, Dwight L. Moody, P.T. Barnum, Wizard of Oz, Humbugs

Invisible

“But he has nothing on!” a little child cried out at last.

“Just hear what that innocent says!” said the father: and one whispered to another what the child had said.

“But he has nothing on!” said the whole people at length. That touched the Emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but the thought within himself, “I must go through with the procession.” And so he held himself a little higher, and the chamberlains held on tighter than ever, and carried the train which did not exist at all.

“The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Hans Christian Anderson