If Jesus Came to My House (Part 4 of 4)

The bottom line on your ‘fast days’ is profit.
You drive your employees much too hard.
You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
You fast, but you swing a mean fist.
The kind of fasting you do
won’t get your prayers off the ground.
Do you think this is the kind of fast day I’m after:
a day to show off humility?
To put on a pious long face
and parade around solemnly in black?
Do you call that fasting,
a fast day that I, God, would like?

So fundamentalism is no different than any other ‘-ism’ really. It’s just more. And in the moralism game, the one who dies with the most rules wins! There are no people on the planet more disciplined than those in fundamentalism. It’s like the Marines of religions — stunning but dated uniforms, terrific defense and offense, and the cultivated knee-jerk response to comply without hesitation.

In fundamentalism you’ve got the haves and the have-nots — with the currency being not property, of course, but rules. As with any system, this bifurcation morphs into a spectrum. There are two poles–rules vs. no rules or law vs. license–and everybody actually lives somewhere in the middle. So conversations about a particular rule develop like this: “Pants on women are WRONG! Haven’t you read your Bible?” “Well, I actually like wearing skirts. It makes me feel more feminine.” “Well, I wear modest pants and never shorts.” “Huh? Pants are wrong? Says who?” Bring up any lifestyle rule among fundamentalists, and a similar spectrum will develop from the it’s-clearly-biblical position to the rules?-what-rules? position.

The stock resolution in these conflicts is always the same: balance. It’s not that you should not have any rules or that you should have too many. Instead you need to find that delicate, subjective balance between neo- and anti-nomianism.

The problem with the metaphor of balance is that it completely ignores the real problem. The problem is with the human scale that’s doing the weighing. It isn’t just. It isn’t sufficient. It’s flawed. We all have our fingers on the scale making sure that our side comes out ahead. “Well,” we think, “I don’t have as many rules as so-n-so. But at least I have more rules than they do! And I have a good reason for my rules!” And for those who wield more cultural power than another, judging and punishing those in our care is easier if we don’t communicate our standard of “balance” too explicitly. That way, those whom we serve can maintain themselves in fear a la Foucault.

On the same day that Isaac and I played War and “Little People,” I discovered another little gem from my childhood–If Jesus Came to My House. Isaac was captivated by the little sing-songy text, and so was Mommy by the end:

I know the little Jesus
can never call on me
in the way that I’ve imagined
like coming in to tea.

But though He may not occupy
my cozy rocking chair,
a lot of other people
would be happy sitting there.

And I can make Him welcome
as He Himself has said,
by doing all I would for Him
for other folk instead.

That’s it. That’s the Rule. God’s Rule. Not keeping a clean house per se or finishing a knitting project. And it’s the Extreme Golden Rule. It’s showing kindness to others because you are showing kindness to Christ when you do so. Since Luther would say, God is masked in our neighbors.

And it’s not a reserved, throw-a-couple-of-bucks-in-the-offering-plate kind of giving. It’s not as simple or as reactive as not chewing gum in church or wearing a skirt to class. It’s way, way more than that. It’s a feast. It’s anything but balanced! Lavish, a little too-too. Like buying the best perfume and washing Another’s feet with your hair. Or serving cailles en sarcophages to elderly rustics.

Martin Luther calls this serving our “vocation.” We all have vocations, and their purpose is not serving God as much as serving others. “God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does” Gustaf Wingren concludes. Gene Veith says it like this:

The person who has been justified by faith, who realizes the forgiveness of Christ and who is thereby changed by the Holy Spirit, is motivated by love, not by the rules and regulations and threats of the Law. The good works which follow, however, are not done, as is often piously said, “for God,” but for other people. Strictly speaking, we do not “serve God”–rather, He is always the one serving us; instead we serve our neighbors.

I always have to read that several times. Go ahead–read Veith’s article a few times too just to see how different it is from your fundamentalist background. Fundamentalism taught me to do everything for God. And if I wasn’t doing everything and I wasn’t doing everything for God, then I was guilty of sin and God didn’t want any part of it. That leads to an independent (cum solipsistic) kind of living as the most holy. Luther wouldn’t recognize this as Christian piety at all:

If you find yourself in a work by which you accomplish something good for God, or the holy, or yourself, but not for your neighbor alone, then you should know that that work is not a good work. For each one ought to live, speak, act, hear, suffer, and die in love and service for another, even for one’s enemies, a husband for his wife and children, a wife for her husband, children for their parents, servants for their masters, masters for their servants, rulers for their subjects and subjects for their rulers, so that one’s hand, mouth, eye, foot, heart and desire is for others; these are Christian works, good in nature.

Babette lived that. She served generously–so extravagantly that the pious she served didn’t even recognize her feast as a gift from God. They assumed it was nothing but carnality–sin. And it took a doubting General–a man not at all versed in their peculiar living–to point out the beauty they were missing.

Then there’s Tim Keller’s sermon on breaking the yoke of injustice. I’ve listened to that sermon three times now, and what Keller describes is the exact opposite of the fundamentalist ethic. Honestly, it’s one of the best antidotes to my own life as a Pharisee. I haven’t even digested it all. He talks about Shalom which is not just complying with authority, but a well-running, interdependent, healthy web of life that mirrors Luther on vocation. He describes the wicked not as simply sexual deviants, but as those who use their resources selfishly for only themselves (think Judas!) rather than for others (think Mary Magdalene!). Just hearing the introductory Scripture reading from Isaiah 58 alone has me scraping my jaw off the floor.

Babette demonstrates Keller’s ideal as well as Luther’s. Even when the far-from-peaceful pious are determined not to enjoy her gift, they can’t help themselves! That’s how well Babette serves. Her gracious dinner breaks down their walls. By the fruit course, they start to relish their meal, and over coffee they begin to forgive.

God calls us to a generous kindness. Doing good, loving mercy, and walking humbly. Shalom. As I face the very sentimentally heavy month of July, I’m praying that my part in this righteous Shalom will become obvious. May the chains of injustice be finally broken.

This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts.
What I’m interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on,
and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
The God of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, God will answer.
You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’

Amen.

“Difficult?” (Part 3.75 of 4)

So when you perceive unwritten rules unwittingly applied to you, the gut response is an anxious grab to fix it. The Rules draw you in. You know enough to know that people are talking about you, writing it down (in pen!), passing it around, and, in the end, ignoring you. Still we desperately need help, and we reason the only way to get the help is to comply. We wear those dreadful paper gowns that the Rules make us don and even pretend we like them.

The deal is — that anxiety turns easily into a stifling obsession — a nihilistic show . . . about nothing.

And that’s not the point either.

Shout! A full-throated shout! Hold nothing back—a trumpet-blast shout!
Tell my people what’s wrong with their lives,
face my family Jacob with their sins!
They’re busy, busy, busy at worship,
and love studying all about me.
To all appearances they’re a nation of right-living people—
law-abiding, God-honoring.
They ask me, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’
and love having me on their side.
But they also complain,
‘Why do we fast and you don’t look our way?
Why do we humble ourselves and you don’t even notice?’

Isaiah 58

Dumb Things I Gotta Do Today (Part 3.5 of 4)

Jesus didn’t die for the stupid things we do. He died for our sins. If I just call my sin ’something stupid I did,’ I’m not truly repentant.

Jim Berg, BJU Dean of Students

In my perceiving and (over)reacting to other’s rules (both spoken and unspoken), I remember my own. I’ve got a ton of them. I tell myself that I’m a good mom today if I read to my kids, if we get our Green Hour in, if we eat enough (any!) fruits and veggies, and if I don’t yell. And I’m a good wife if I manage to feed my hubby a nice dinner, if I keep the house picked up — vacuumed, dishes away, laundry folded — and if I have sparkling conversation ready for dinner. I’m a good person if I exercise, if I lose some weight, and if I walk the dog.

Sometimes I do these things fairly faithfully. But I’m no SuperMom — even if Gavin bellows, “MOOOMMMMMYYYY” every time he sees a Wonder Woman toy. I goof. I fail. I can’t even keep up with my own rules.

During the corporate prayers of confession at church, you know what comes to my mind? Stupid things. And I mean, things that are more attributed to my normal human limits, not my sin. The smocking projects that I haven’t finished. The terrible state of the too-often-washed downstairs carpet. The cucumbers I forgot about and let rot in the veggie drawer. Knitting mistakes. The dishes I left in the sink. The emails I haven’t answered. The rust on my tomato plants. The fitness program that I’m avoiding.

Tim Keller cuts to the chase on this one often when he divides us all between moralists and secularists. Either you follow corporate rules religiously or you express yourself shamelessly. Either you’re a neo-nomian or an antinomian. Either you’re the Prodigal that stays or the Prodigal that leaves.

And neither works. Both are as Godless as the other.

Martin Luther talked about it too. He compared the theology of glory with the theology of the cross. Theologians of glory push a “proper righteousness” that appears good and attractive. They are very busy but are puffed up, blinded, and hardened in their activity. On the other hand, theologians of the Cross feature what Luther reasons seems like an “alien righteousness” that appears evil and ugly. Since they feature God’s sovereignty over salvation, they believe much (instead of doing much). Luther sums it all up by saying that “the law says ‘Do this’ and it is never done. Grace says, ‘believe in this’ and everything is already done.”

Now I’ve been eating, sleeping, and breathing fundamentalism for 20+ years. I was an earnest follower, a committed apologist, and a firm ideologue. On top of that, I’ve devoted my professional life to trying to explain the way fundamentalists talk, and I don’t believe I should stop now that I’m just outside its walls.

In order for fundamentalism to work, you have to live it inside and outside and upside and downside. My brother’s prof at Ohio State, when he heard the salary rate at BJU, used to say “You can’t get bad people for that little. That salary guarantees a certain ideological devotion.” So the whole system supports a fervent loyalty. And if their ethic reads everything as a fight and then the fight turns internal and interpersonal, you end up scratching and clawing to prove that you’re loyal and to make sure you’re on the “right” (a.k.a. powerful) side.

Another way to say all that is to say that fundamentalists are expert moralists. Pros. Prodigals that hang around for years working to earn the Father’s love. Articulate theologians of glory. Their earnest sincerity only enhances their commitment. They believe in some sort of cosmic reciprocity for every deed. They see God as a taskmaster waiting to give bonuses to the good workers and charge fines to the lazy ones. I say this as a former fundamentalist myself. The moralistic side of Keller’s equation was my life.

And it still is. Don’t get me wrong. I still feel the Pharisee in me. I’m just fighting it now. There’s really not that big of a difference between me 10 years ago and me now. I know the Apostle Paul understood since he was a recovering Pharisee himself — the chief of sinners.

And so while the secularists overlook sin as merely normal expression, moralists hyper-focus on mistakes and call them sin.

What the moralistic theology of glory does is no different than noodling the rules for a card game or emotionally bludgeoning a playmate for not knowing an unspoken rule about which Barbie wears what. UGH! It’s such hypocrisy. I’ve erected this terrific set of rules (which looks an awful lot like a Dumb-Things-I-Gotta-Do-Today list), and I judge my cosmic worth on my accomplishing those things. It’s all part of those lies that we Christians tell ourselves in our scramble to live impeccably moral lives. We think if we can just do X-Y-Z we’re okay, and we judge everyone — or at least ourselves — by that standard.

My rules are not God’s rules. Plain and simple.

Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.

Matthew 7

The One About the Rules (Part 3 of 4)

We make rules. We bend rules. Humanly speaking, there’s really no difference between ours and theirs except power. I know I sound like Nietzsche and Foucault. But those guys were right really. Without God, it’s all about power.

Recently I found a couple of ugly and public things said about me. Honestly, it hurt. I probably shouldn’t let it, but it did. In both cases, the commenters were imposing their rules of propriety on me. They were judge, jury, and executioner. In passing their judgment, they put me at arms length to improve their own standing with little empathy for me and mine.

And in my saying all that, I’m trying to understand how they came to those conclusions and to remember how often I do the same.

I’ve perceived a lot of rules lately. I’ve seen the irritation from people who were frustrated by my dear four-and-a-half-year-old when he dresses as Link and wears all his weapons at once. I’ve felt the disgust when I’ve taken my preschoolers for a walk where someone has deemed I shouldn’t. I’ve heard people complain about how ill-tempered those other children are. I’ve read Mommy bloggers who grouse about those horrible mothers who cut off the crusts from their PB&J sandwiches.

Even now, I’m sure some of you are constructing reasons I shouldn’t have a clip from Friends on my blog. “Dear me! Can you believe that? Doesn’t she know that that’s an anti-Christian show and that she’s promoting unholy living by posting it on her blog? ‘I will set no wicked thing before my eyes!’ I would never do that!”

Sigh. . . . We can so easily see the fleck of mascara on someone else’s face, but those rivers of black eye liner that are streaked down our cheeks? We’re oblivious to those. And I do the same thing.

Grant often repeats back to me, “S/he’s not evil, just mistaken.” When he does that, he’s reminding me of my own take on a Burkean principle and what I believe is a Christian ethic. He’s right — to nudge me and to bring me outside of myself. To steer me away from the fundamental attribution error. We all need that kind of help. That’s why God gave us each other because when one of us stumbles, we need our friends there to help us up.

Sanctification is a team sport after all.

The Fundamental(ist) Attribution Error (Part 2 of 4)

So a toddler’s-lifetime-ago, my parents gave us my old Fisher Price Little People toys. I played with these things for weeks at a time. I later graduated to Barbies, of course, and then the Sims. It’s especially hilarious to turn off the “free-will” setting on The Sims.

Now, let me tell you about my toy-friends. My Raggedy Ann met her alopeciac fate when she went crossways with the washing machine. My Barbies had similar trouble. Well, first of all, they weren’t actually Barbies per se. They were Barbie’s younger groupies, Francie and Skipper (all from Malibu). My mother believed that these models were more realistically shaped (I do agree with her there!). Now, Francie was known in my little world as “Francie the Handicapped Barbie.” Through some unfortunate accident that none of us remember, Francie lost an arm. Now, the other Barbies still loved her — Dorothy Hamill (whose Bicentennial Olympic duds were soooo cool), Quick Curl Skipper (whose hair I genuinely coveted), Growing Up Skipper (whose quick-change gifts were intriguing and quite disturbing), Ballerina (whose sparkly head gear wouldn’t. come. off!), Supersize (whose gigantic proportions frightened all humanoids — both petroleum- and carbon-based. Clearly my dear mother had given up her goals of realistic feminine models by 1978). You see, I had my own little rules I enforced in my created world of little people, and that included a sort of plastic kindness to the armless and balding.

I’m sure you played with your people similarly. You had rules — rules that made perfect sense to you. No, the Little People lady in blue is not the postal carrier. She’s the police woman!! Can’t you tell?? The African-American man is the dentist, not the barber. We’re trying to quash sexual and racial stereotypes in this town!! No, the bed in the castle doesn’t go there. The throne goes there. Can’t you see that you’re blocking the passage to the trap door if you put it there? No, no, no, Francie can’t wear that dress! It only embarrasses her because it highlights her handicap!!

So as Isaac and I sit down to play with my vintage Little People or with his cars or pirates or “red coats and blue coats,” the same thing happens. I sit there thinking, “NO! The teacher’s desk has to go here. It’s the only place it fits!” While Isaac says, “Mommy, you can’t park the green car here. It always goes here.” “Always?” I think. “ALWAYS?? Are you kidding me? I was playing with these toys before you were even born. I certainly know where everything goes!!”

Well, I don’t say that. I am 35 years older than he, so I can refrain.

But I remember the War card game we had played just a few hours before. He negotiates over seemingly arbitrary but actually objective rules while rigidly enforcing his own. Well, pardon me. . . . We negotiate over seemingly arbitrary but actually objective rules while rigidly enforcing our own. I do it as much as he does. I just have more rules and more “weight.” I’m the Supersize Barbie to his Little Person Mail Carrier. Life’s taught me subtlety not righteousness, and it’s given me a few-more-than-I-need extra pounds to enforce it.

We’re both playing, then, in our Mythic-Literal developmental stage. Isaac’s jumping ahead briefly, and I’m regressing. In Stages of Faith, James W. Fowler describes this usually school-age developmental stage as follows:

Stage 2 Mythic-Literal faith is the stage in which the person begins to take on for him- or herself the stories, beliefs, and observances that symbolize belonging to his or her community. Beliefs are appropriated with literal interpretations, as are moral rules and attitudes. Symbols are taken as one-dimensional and literal in meaning. In this stage the rise of concrete operations leads to the curbing and ordering of the previous stage’s imaginative composing of the world. . . . The limitations and literalness and an excessive reliance upon reciprocity as a principle for constructing an ultimate environment can result in either an overcontrolling, stilted perfectionism or “works righteousness” or in their opposite, an abasing sense of badness embraced because of mistreatment, neglect, or the apparent disfavor of significant others (149-50).

A tad revealing, eh? Wiki puts it this way:

In psychology, hypocritical behavior is closely related to the fundamental attribution error: individuals are more likely to explain their own actions by their environment, yet they attribute the actions of others to ‘innate characteristics’, thus leading towards judging others while justifying ones’ own actions.

Also, some people genuinely fail to recognize that they have character faults which they condemn in others. This is called psychological projection. This is self-deception rather than deliberate deception of other people. In other words, “psychological hypocrisy” is usually interpreted by psychological theorists to be an unconscious defense mechanism rather than a conscious act of deception, as in the more classic connotation of hypocrisy. People understand vices which they are struggling to overcome or have overcome in the past. Efforts to get other people to overcome such vices may be sincere. There may be an element of hypocrisy as well if the actors do not readily admit to themselves or to others how far they are or have been subject to these vices.

In other words, each of us earnestly believes that our own rules are good and required and even biblical (or based on biblical principle). Others’ rules are arcane, irrelevant, illogical, juvenile, or just plain stupid. And we follow our own rules just perfectly while all those other scofflaws are dooming themselves to perdition. Sure, people call us hypocrites, but they just don’t know the Rules like we do! Tsk-tsk. Well, we all know that we will be rewarded, and they will be punished.

Right?

The Art of War (Part 1 of 4)

But the idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men.

Augustine’s Confessions

I loved board games and card games as a kid, and I still do. I’m always willing to play Settlers or Dominoes or Rage (an acceptable-to-Baptists version of the old stand-by face card game “Oh Hell.” I didn’t name it, remember!). My older brother wasn’t always available to play games with me when I really started to understand them, but we did play more than our share of Battleship and PayDay. My mom was always willing to play Uno or Go to the Head of the Class or Chutes and Ladders, but she couldn’t stomach the Game of Life. “Too realistic!” she claimed. And I quickly found out that playing Clue with the cat just wasn’t going to work.

Isaac has just taken to games. He likes “Goggle,” “Hippos,” and, just recently, War. I think it’s as much the soldiers on the cards as anything. And you know, there are some big lessons there — turn-taking, counting, comparing numeral values, and following the rules.

It’s that last one that trips us up. Isaac, the just newly minted 4.5 year old, rewrites the rules as we play. I lay down a nine and he lays down a four. “Mommy, didn’t you want to trade that one with me first?” “Mommy, but this one has a sword, and I reeeeeally like swords.” I just stare and sigh and then grin and remember, shaking my head more at myself than anything.

I did the same thing. Maybe that’s why the cat was the most willing to play with me because she didn’t care if I took a peek at her next card or traded my Scrabble tray of vowels for some of her consonants.

And Augustine’s reminder plunks me between the eyes every time Isaac revises the game play. It’s not the kids are any different than adults. Adults bend or make up the rules as we go. It’s just kids aren’t as skilled at hiding it.

Life teaches us to be sneaky, not to be good.

Blogging Jeopardy

“I’ll take Quotable Quotes for a $1000, Alex.”

“I hope he never pretends to repent and asks forgiveness. I would then be compelled to forgive him, and I could never trust him. I would much rather things remain as they are so that I can continue to have nothing to do with him. . . . From my father I learned many important lessons in strategy which have stood me in good stead. One of them is, ‘Never retreat when you are under attack.’ I try to avoid any statement for which I might have to apologize. If my enemies try to use against me something I have said, I reply, ‘I said it, I meant it, and I will now reemphasize it.’”

“Who is _____?”

So you think you can dance?

When Mormons direct Vespers. . . .

“There is only One Whom we have to fear, that is God.”

More proof of the rhetorical dysfunction in fundamentalism. In commenting on a recent 9Marks interview with Mark Dever and Mark Minnick about separation, one listener noticed that:

Minnick seemed shackled by the expectations of political fundamentalism, being very cautious in answers, afraid of who he might offend. Dever even picked up on this, saying at one point that he didn’t want to get Minnick in trouble with his group. That was sad really and a testimony to one of the major ills in fundamentalism. Out of fear of getting branded, men often don’t say what they think. This environment emasculates many of the men of the movement. Some might contend that this is the graciousness of Minnick coming out. I hope so. I don’t think so. He’s a gracious man, but his lack of boldness was unsettling. Minnick was so ambiguous in his description of separation that I could not understand how to even practice it based on what he said.

Our True Identity in Christ

A sentimental trip to Missouri this month. The last trip we took a year ago was in the middle of document-writing and ominous email-receiving communicating “some concerns.”

We had no idea what was ahead for us back then. Something was looming, but we didn’t know enough for certain to burden our Missouri family with the details. On my sister-in-law’s fridge we found two lists that nailed it — the entire message of Grace and the Gospel. Grant took one list for his blog today, and the other one follows here. They were a comfort and an affirmation to find way back when, and they are still a sweet reminder to see how God has carried us through this remarkable and scary year.

My True Identity in Christ

• You are justified and redeemed (already)–Romans 3:24
• Your old self was killed (crucified)–Romans 6:6
• You are not condemned. (My performance is condemned when I don’t trust in His life through me, but God does not condemn the performer, just the performance.)–Romans 8:1
• You are free from the law of sin and death–Romans 8:2
• You are accepted. (All my life I’ve sought to be accepted. Now I am!)–Romans 15:7
• You are sanctified (holy, set apart)–I Corinthians 1:2
• You have wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption. (I am ransomed–restored to favor)–I Corinthians 1:2
• You are always led in His triumph (whether it appears so or not)–II Corinthians 2:14
• Your hardened mind has been removed–II Corinthians 3:14
• You are a new creature. (Even though I don’t always feel or act like it.)–II Corinthians 5:17
• You are the righteousness of God. (You can’t get more righteous than this.)–II Corinthians 5:21
• You are liberated–Galatians 2:4
• You are joined with all believers (not inferior to anyone)–Galatians 3:28
• You are a child and an heir–Galatians 4:7
• You are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Heaven–Ephesians 1:3
• You are chosen, holy, and blameless before God–Ephesians 1:4
• You are redeemed, forgiven–Ephesians 1:7
• You have obtained an inheritance–Ephesians
• You are sealed with the Spirit. (Imagine the real you sealed up in the envelope of God Himself.)–Ephesians 1:13
• You are alive (formerly a dead spirit)–Ephesians 2:5
• You are seated in Heaven (already)–Ephesians 2:6
• You are created for good performance. (And I can let Christ live through me to perform it.)–Ephesians 2:10
• You have been brought near to God–Ephesians 2:13
• You are a partaker of the promise–Ephesians 3:6
• You have boldness and confident access to God (not slinking as a ‘whipped dog’)–Ephesians 3:12
• You were formerly darkness, but are now light–Ephesians 5:8
• You are a member of His body (not inferior to other members)–Ephesians 5:30
• Your heart and mind are guarded by the peace of God. (Peace is knowing something, not always feeling it.)–Philippians 4:7
• You have all your needs (not greeds) supplied–Philippians 4:19
• You are complete (perfect)–Colossians 2:10
• You are raised up with Him–Colossians 3:1
• Your life is hidden with Christ in God–Colossians 3:3