A Time to Laugh

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

John Milton

I have recently published on Scribd many of the official documents that led to our exodus from fundamentalism, including our resignation and other correspondence from the aftermath. If I mentioned them in my Ebenezer account, I linked to them there. I haven’t even had the guts to read one of them in its entirely yet — that’s just how painful this all is.

Be sure to read my valiant knight‘s theological tomes: specifically here to Stephen Jones and here to Gary Weier. It will do you good — for your heart, mind, and soul. John Milton would be very proud!

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Through all the tumult and the strife,
I hear that music ringing.
It sounds an echo in my soul–
How can I keep from singing?

Hallelujah! The great storm is over!!

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My blog-Sabbath continues with my soul-crush on Robert Farrar Capon. This time with his commentary on the parables, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus. Starting with the Parable of the Sower — the “watershed” of the parables.

Consider the imagery of seed. First of all, seeds are disproportionately small compared with what they eventually produce. In the case of herbs — which, for some reason, Jesus took special delight in — they are in fact almost ridiculously small. Anyone who has planted thyme or savory knows the strange sensation of practically losing sight of the seed after it has dropped into the furrow: you might as well have sown nothing, for all you can observe. And what does that say about the Word of God that the Sower sows? Well, it certainly does not say what we would have said. Left to our own devices we would probably have likened the Word’s advent to a thunderclap, or to a fireworks display, or to something else we judged sufficiently unmistakable to stand in for our notion of a pushy, totally right-handed God. Instead, this parable says that the true coming of the Word of God, even if you don’t see it, doesn’t look like very much — and that when it does finally get around to doing its real work, it is so mysterious that it can’t even be found at all (67).

I was never satisfied with the way this parable was used in my former life — dirt striving to be less rocky or straining to be more fertile. Interestingly enough, the Mormons interpret the parable similarly. But it doesn’t work that way. Dirt is made. It doesn’t make itself. It doesn’t till itself. It doesn’t improve itself.

I made dirt this last year. Yes, I did. We have the lousiest soil in our backyard — red clay so hard that it surprised the contractors who built our retaining wall. I don’t understand this clay. It’s ugly, stinky, impossible. I sigh at the Midwestern black dirt we pass on our way to Missouri. It’s gorgeous.

So I made dirt this last year. Or rather — compost. I collected carrot shavings and strawberry tops, used kleenexes and coffee grounds, egg shells and dead heads, and I just let it sit. And rot. ::drumming fingers::

And this Spring there it was — black dirt. I included a hand-trowel-full with every seedling and transplant. I sprinkled it on the old plants. I brought a shovel’s worth to Grant’s trees. We’ll see if it works. Ask me in a few months.

But compost is like grace for garbage — turning my forgotten failures and castoffs into the best fertilizer for flowers. That’s what Capon is getting at too — at the mysterious left-handed power of the Gardener rather than the forthright right-handed power we humans crave. We want ex nihilo. We want lightning strikes and fireworks. We want pushy and unmistakable. We want a pre-made Miracle Gro that we can sprinkle on the red pan to POOF! make it soft and fertile.

We want a commodified garden. We want to shove blue “silk” flowers bunches in our azaleas to force them to look like May. We want control.

Every one of us would rather choose the right-handed logicalities of theology over the left-handed mystery of faith. Any day of the week — and twice on Sundays, often enough — we will labor with might and main to take the only thing that can save anyone and reduce it to a set of theological club rules designed to exclude almost everyone (25).

It just doesn’t work like that. God as Gardener doesn’t work like that. The process is slow. It’s indirect. Intuitive. Imaginative.

But Capon is talking mostly about the Seed — the Word. And contrary to the interpretation from my previous life, he insists that in this parable the Word is not the Bible per se. It’s Jesus, a la John 1. The Word who disappears in the earth, sleeps and rises only to grow His Kingdom-Plant grander and stronger than we could imagine.

I found a pumpkin seedling growing in the compost pile. I didn’t see the seed there when I combed through my black dirt, and it’s gone now. The plant is growing stronger and bigger than the ones I deliberately planted in a tidy circle in the clay-amended-with-compost. And I may just get the pumpkin I’ve been struggling to grow for years . . . all in a very left-handed way.

Missing the Joy from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

I’ve been meaning to tell this story too. This is a little earthy, so if you’re uncomfortable with stuff and would rather assume I’m just a immaterial blog on a screen, skip this post. I won’t be hurt.

I hate doctors. I do. I was trying to explain this to my G.P. the other day, but I had strep throat and could barely talk. I’ve picked him because he’s not an alarmist and he’s pretty just factual about stuff. So it’s a good match for me. But I see that white coat, and I freak. Here’s why.

I’ve talked about my several-year-long journey through crappy doctors starting with the little gem who tried to tell me my foot didn’t hurt. I’m still incredulous at her abusive audacity. What kind of doctor tells a patient something doesn’t hurt? She did it several times about many different maladies, so it wasn’t a fluke, but a habit. Anyway, I got through that, and we started talking about starting a family.

We had one pregnancy begin on January 30, 2000 and end on March 3, 2000. We had another begin on October 1, 2000 and end on July 7, 2001. And in 2002 — around the year anniversary of Elise’s death — we had another little life begin. That little boy was not meant for this world. I know that now because he was Trisomy-10, but I had a sense then. I wasn’t just spotting early on; I was bleeding. Badly.

Because I was a special case after my stillbirth, my excellent G.P. sent me to Highlands. It was a disaster from beginning to end.

They did an ultrasound, but it was still too early to tell anything for sure. So they went for the usual HCG testing. They take a blood draw and see the levels of HCG, and then they wait two days and repeat. In a normal, viable pregnancy, the numbers double.

I saw Dr. Stoner. I’ll just sum up my impression of her with this: beware of the OBGYN with loooooong fingernails! She came into the room jabbering the usual line describing HCG testing. Mind you — I saw this little well-manicured genius in 1995 during my last go-round with crappy doctors. Then, when I asked her why I wasn’t having my periods, she said, “Because you’re not ovulating.” No kidding, Einstein!

And this time, in 2002, she was on heartless autopilot again. In the consult, I mentioned my previous two losses and specifically my stillbirth. And like something right out of a SNL skit, she tried to cover her ignorance about my OB history by sneakily thumbing through my records. And she continued blathering.

They took the blood and I went home, still bleeding. I came back two days later for them to get more blood. I asked them specifically, “When will I hear the results?” The phlebotomist assured me, “Oh, by lunch time. No worries!”

I went back to my summer job on the BJU campus. I worked in my office and Grant did too a few floors down. We both waited by the phone. Nothing. Still waiting. Nothing. I called them, and, of course, got nothing but the voice mail (they never picked up the phone). I left my name, my SS#, and my phone number.

Finally at 5:30, Grant and I decided to go home. Since Highlands was closed, we assumed we wouldn’t hear now for the rest of the night. Grant went to Lowe’s to get some mulch. I stayed home to get dinner ready.

And then, when I was alone, the nurse called. Dr. Einstein’s assistant. She said in a very chipper tone (and I remember every word), “Well, Dr. Stoner left the office before she could see your test results. But I have them here. And they don’t look good at ALL! So we’ll call you in the morning to schedule a D&C. . . . You okay?”

Read that again. Read it with a fake-happy tone. Now imagine being on the other end of THAT after all the terrifying stuff I had been through. The sum of her comfort was “You okay?” That was it.

No! I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t anywhere near okay. But what are you going to do about it? What do you care? What do any of you care? What kind of jerks are you over there? Have you even read my file?

I instead just said with all the sarcasm I could muster, “Oh yeah. I’m just greeeeat!” And hung up.

Grant came home and I told him the news. I gotta say that that’s always the worst part — telling those that you love that you’re going to go through Hell again. It was the worst part of Elise’s death — telling my parents. I didn’t want them sad. And now I had to tell Grant.

He was mad. Just mad. So, he did his therapeutic thing: he mowed the lawn. And I called Sarah, my sister-in-law. God bless her! Seriously, she did exactly what I needed. She went into nurse-mode and talked me through it. She reminded me of reality. She kept me sane. She said, “No. You don’t schedule a D&C. Those tests could be wrong. You wait. You get more tests. It’s not over yet. Do you hear me???”

So with a new persistence, the next morning I waited for the phone call from Highlands. I was going to tell them what Sarah had said. I waited. I prayed. And I waited.

Nothing. They never called. So I got on the horn and got their voicemail again and got huffy: “I have been waiting all morning for the phone call that you all promised. When are you going to call me? I have an unusual situation here that you all don’t seem to realize! I’m supposed to be getting CARE, and I’m getting NO CARE from you all. You’re causing me stress, not relieving it!”

Lo and behold! They called!!! But they called Grant. They said, “Hahaha — we were calling her social security number.” And I’m supposed to trust them to read test numbers when they can’t tell the difference between a Social and a phone number?

When I finally got to talk to a person, she said that Stoner had ordered more HCG testing (not the D&C that little Nurse Chipper had concluded). I said, “No. I don’t trust you all. I don’t need this. I’m going elsewhere.” Click.

Well, I had severed that dysfunctional relationship. Now what was I going to do?

And I’m not kidding you with this next part. This is exactly what happened.

I sat at my desk and prayed. Where am I going to find a doctor? I don’t know what I’m doing. God help me.

I pushed away to get up to get the Yellow Pages and the phone rang. It was my sister-in-law. She had talked to a friend who had also experienced a stillbirth. Whose niece babysat for a Maternal-Fetal-Medicine doc in town. And she had gotten me an appointment for that Thursday.

Read that all again. Did you see what God did? Did you see how He wrote that story? I was just getting up to get the phonebook to go doctor-diving, and He not only pointed me to one, He got me an appointment.

What followed was truly startling. Because that doctor — Dr. Chapman — treated me with professionalism and honesty. The news she gave me was the same as I got at Highlands essentially — my baby wasn’t meant for this world. But they had their eyes wide open to my past, they held my hand through the pain, and they treated me as an intelligent soul, not just a voice mail message.

God was carrying us through all that. I know it. Even now, however, I still panic when I see the white coats. I’m learning to get through that, but it’s hard too. It’s another instance of Jesus hugging me through the pain.

I’m the youngest child of two youngest children. And with all those aunts and uncles and cousins (that’s my next oldest cousin Camille up there standing with me on my porch in 1973), I’m the only one in the extended family who wasn’t born in Detroit, Michigan. But my South Bend birthplace still hovers around the Great Lakes. Still in the blustery North. Still where Falls are the loveliest in the world. Besides the roly-polies I used to torture in my tire sandbox and the earthworms I used to divide with a stick (in order to help them multiply), the autumnal hard maple trees are the only flora and fauna I remember from that home at 1601 Byron. Those beautiful trees.

We moved to Tulsa when I was seven. A very well-appointed house. 5008 South Lakewood. That house was the neighborhood developer’s rambling ranch. No basement, which floored my Dad: “Where do I store stuff?” But a sunken bathtub, four bathrooms, a courtyard, terrazzo floors, three ovens and eight burners . . . it was enormous. The southwestern rough-hewn-turned-gaudy-elegance decor threw my mom’s cautious mid-century “colonial” sensibilities. Her serene French blue never fit with those hot orange sinks. Yes, I said orange sinks.

The yard — a.k.a. kid-dom — was good. It was flat. It was angular. The cat hid under the canoe. The dog escaped under the fence. And I swam with the Barbies in our small above-ground pool. Dad grew strawberries. One winter’s two inches of snow and ice gave Steve and me a whole week off of school (sending these Michiganders into peals of giggles), and he pulled me on an old South Bend sled down the street. One December while watching “The Return of Noah’s Ark,” a tornado headed our direction driving these obedient Detroiters into the only windowless room in the house — the gold-leaf-papered “powder room.”

But gee whiz — it was hot. Oh, hot. Hot, hot, hot. I hate hot. It was so hot. Mom tried to do the usual petunia thing in what was the original owner’s changing-colored-lights-and-fountain display at the corner. Yes, I said fountain. Anyway, somebody (maybe us, I don’t remember) had filled that fountain with potting soil, and Mom tried to do petunias. Dad tried to nurse a Camellia in the courtyard — my very own flower, I always figured. Nothing flourished. Nothing flowered. It was completely brown all year, at least in my memory. It felt brown.

Except for one visit to a local civic garden in Spring 1978 to see the azaleas and the grey-purple weeds we used to pick for our mothers after the evening church service, I remember only dried-up, hay-colored brown in Tulsa. Hot, dry, and brown.

In 1978, Dad lost his job and interest rates soared to double-digits. “Mrs. K” — Dad’s dad’s second wife — had recently died, and Dad had inherited property up in the Detroit suburb of Warren — including 11685 13 mile road. On that half acre lot was the house-that-Henry-built when he was 25. A tiny brick farm house. So that 1978 Fall, Dad moved ahead to Detroit. Steve went to BJU. And mom and I held down the fort in Tulsa until that house sold.

Dad would house-hunt up there by himself. But with the new college tuition and the terrific interest rates and inflation and all the joys that were 1978, it wasn’t looking hopeful. He’d cry on the phone to mom — dreading taking her from that opulent nest. But they together decided that the best thing to do was move into that little farm house in Warren. From 4 bedrooms to 2, from a three-couch-minimum family room to a basement, from a slate courtyard outside our front door to a busy Taco Bell next door.

When we arrived that early November, it was other-worldly. Snow covered the front stoop. I hadn’t seen snow like that in forever. I hadn’t seen a stoop like that either. Cove ceilings. But it was November. We hibernated. I was the new kid at school. We looked for a church. Our mini-schnauzer got fatally attacked by two dalmatians.

One snowy afternoon after church as we walked up that stoop, Mom announced cheerfully, “Look! Crocuses!!”

I tried to make sense of this event. What? What’s that? A flower? What kind of flower grows in the snow? But we didn’t plant it? . . . Oooh! Look!! at that color!

That was just the beginning.

What erupted in that over-stuffed, tiny homestead was amazing. It was Eden. Mrs. K had been a pretty good gardener herself, but in her declining years, the place had become overgrown. After the snow melted, these spontaneous blooms would erupt. Flowers I had never seen except in books. Hyacinths, daffodils, tulips — these were just the start. Just the appetizer.

Apple blossoms. Grape vines. Irises. Dill and mint. A patch of lilies of the valley so big I could roll in it. A field of cat nip that would send a pride of lions to rehab. Two snow ball bushes that had been in front of my grandparent’s barn. But though the barn had been razed, the bushes remained and had grown taller than the house. My Barbies camped there for days under the canopy of the largest antique-white spheres of blossoms I had ever seen.

And the lilacs. Lilacs! See that tiny little sappling in front of my grandparents on the stoop? That May in 1979, when we came back home from Greenville with a newly-minted BJU sophomore in the family, that dark purple lilac was wide awake. Oh. That smell. The color. The surprise.

From the opulent terrazzo floors to the tiny portable dishwasher, from Tornado Alley to blizzard watch, from stone, lighted fountains to a rusty chain-link fence. Those were tough transitions for my mother. But for me? I really only remember going from hot, dry, and brown to breezy, muguet, and purple. I remember picking a pear right off that tree in the back of the lot with nothing left by the time I got to the back door except the juice on my chin. I remember Steve building a snow cat with me. I remember our new puppy playing fetch with the green apples. I remember Spring.

So every time I see the hyacinths popping up in my now Southern garden, I think of that little respite from a house payment my family enjoyed back then in that homestead-in-the-middle-of-the-city. Those pretentious columns of blossoms are like a bow on God’s present of the world. It’s Spring. And this is His world!

Today Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz will appear in court for beating to death their 7-year-old adopted daughter Lydia. Autopsy reports indicate that she died of rhabdomylosis — a rapid breakdown of skeletal muscle due to injury to muscle tissue. All of this is consistent with the parenting practices the Schatzes followed from Amish-ish fundamentalist preacher and author, Michael Pearl.

Quite simply, Michael Pearl is not just a nut or a monster or a narcissist. He is a heretic. When in 2006 his advice pushed 4-year-old Sean Paddock’s foster parents to smother him to death, I vowed to God that I would not keep silent any longer. In a small way, I thought, I would speak out in my own little slice of the world. Not about Pearl’s parenting advice per se, but about his theology. Because, as I said then, “If there’s anyone in Christendom who’s good at sniffing out heresy, it’s the fundamentalist.”

I was incorrect about that. Not about the heresy, but about the fundamentalist. But that’s another discussion.

I spoke out on an attention-getting fundamentalist forum, Sharper Iron, in 2006. I tell more of the story here, but that, too, is another discussion.

Today, however, I want to highlight what I said back then because in viewing it this morning — especially in light of Lydia’s death — I realize how right I was about the dangers of Pearl’s heresy.

I strategically attempted to soften my argumentative blow by settling for “soft heresy” or “semi-Pelagianism.” But Pearl’s ideas are full-blown Pelagianism. He’s worse than Charles Finney. Way, way worse.

My former fellow fundamentalists concluded I was cherry-picking. They worked hard to discredit me. “Appeal to motive” is the fallacy. C.S. Lewis would call it Bulverism. But I can admit it to myself now that I’m proud of what I said. And I’ll say it again. Only louder now.

Semi-Pelagianism is often the problem we fundies have with Charles Finney. Our criticism of him runs pretty deep and has always surprised me until I studied it further. And Pearl doesn’t get a pass, I would contend, ’cause he’s quaint.

It means, among many things, that we are good enough to achieve salvation alone. And it denies Original Sin. And it makes Augustine spin in his grave.

As for Pearl, I’ll quote him.

From his statement of faith:

In the eating of the tree, the willful and direct disobedience to God resulted in legal estrangement from God and precipitated the curse of death on Adam and all his descendants. All men are born under the curse and totally estranged from God. When a descendant of Adam reaches a level of moral understanding (sometime in his youth) he becomes fully, personally accountable to God and has sin imputed to him, resulting in the peril of eternal damnation. No man is capable of rectifying this state of estrangement from God. Apart from the free gift of God through the substitutionary work of Christ there is no hope of salvation.
SALVATION
When man reaches his state of moral accountability, and, by virtue of his personal transgression, becomes blameworthy, his only hope is a work of grace by God alone.

Sounds like Original Sin. But one of his recordings on Romans 1 and again on Romans 5, he expands on that and claims that the “death” that Adam gave to all of us was physical death alone. “Death passed upon all men, and that’s talking about one thing and one thing only – physical death. It says nothing about sinfulness passing upon all men.”

Okay. That’s kinda vague. Let’s move on. . . .

To Pearl, we are born like blank slates — neither good nor bad, neither with God or against Him:

When a baby comes into the world the baby is separated from God, without the presence of God, without the Spirit of God, without the divine life of God inside the baby. It is disadvantaged in that it does not have the resources of spirit that comes from God to overcome these bodily drives.

Need more? Okay. . . . From Pearl again:

When a descendant of Adam reaches a level of moral understanding (sometime in his youth) he becomes fully, personally accountable to God and has sin imputed to him, resulting in the peril of eternal damnation. No man is capable of rectifying this state of estrangement from God. Apart from the free gift of God through the substitutionary work of Christ there is no hope of salvation.

On Romans 7, Pearl explains Paul’s would-not-could-not passage:

In his experience historically, at one point he was alive, he was not dead in trespasses and sins. He was probably 3 years old, maybe 4.

Putting it all together, he believes that we aren’t born dead in sin, but that we’re in a neutral state. And that sometime in our “youth” we become sinful. From the statement of faith, he states that sin doesn’t come to an unbeliever until a certain age and, thus, he needs no justification until that age.

Still too arcane? Okay — try this on for size. From his article “Living Parallel Lives in the Same Space” (No Greater Joy, Jan-Feb 2005) he says:

These messages are not motivational teachings or principles for you to apply. They are the wonderful good news that Christ has done everything to free you from all sin, all the time, from this day forward, to sin no more.
… We should and can sin no more!
… I have been preaching and living this gospel of sanctification for many years. It is not a theory.”[emphasis mine]

That’s exactly what raises our fur about Finney — and it should! This is classic Semi-Pelagianism or so-called “soft” heresy.

Michael Pearl will appear on CBS’s The Early Show on Friday, March 19. Watch and pray.

UPDATE at 7:47pm, Thursday, March 18, 2010 — According to Michael’s Pearl’s Facebook group, “the interview is canceled.” The saga continues.

But enough. The amateur is vindicated; let me proceed with my other qualifications.

For the second one, put down that I like food. As a child, I disliked fish, eggs, and oatmeal, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. My tastes are now catholic, if not omnivorous. My children call me the walking garbage pail. (On my own terms, of course, I refuse the epithet: All that I take is stored lovingly in an ample home — it becomes not waste, but waist. On their meaning, however, I let it stand: I am willing to try anything more than once.)

Admittedly, there are some delicacies that give me pause — prairie oysters, for example, or the eye of the calf in a tete de veau. But since I have never tasted them, my apprehension may be only the disenchantment wrought by distance. Even the surf is frightening when you lie in bed and think about it. In any case, it is part of my creed that there are almost no foods which, given the right cook, cannot be found delectable. Just so long as they are not corrupt — no, that is too sweeping: It will cost me pheasant and venison — just so long as they are not gracelessly corrupt, there is, somewhere in the world, an eye that can conceive them in loveliness, and a recipe that can deliver the goods. I am convinced that even shoe tongues, if cooked provencale or a la mode de Caen, would be more than sufferable.

I hated eggs, too, as a child. I hated most breakfast foods, to be honest. I’d eat lunch for breakfast, if I could. And I have done so when pregnant, when you could justify every out-of-the-ordinary choice under the general heading, “craving.”

And meatloaf. I still hate meatloaf.

Grant hates ranch anything, pastrami, and baked chicken. My oldest hates broccoli. My youngest  hates . . . I haven’t met anything that he hates yet.

But I’m not a gourmand. I am not an adventurous eater. Yet I have had goat, squirrel, rabbit, venison, pheasant, and dove. I liked the pheasant the best, but I’m told the squirrel is nearly a Missouri delicacy. One I’ll never fully appreciate, I don’t think.

Yes, when it comes to food, I’d rather stay in my yankee-pot-roast or moo-goo-gai-pan suburban provincialism. I know I could never pass the food challenge in Survivor, and I’m perfectly happy in my rut.

But Capon gives us more here than just how to prepare a shoe leather sandwich. He’s relishing that all things are lawful. All things are edible. All things are pure to the pure in heart. It doesn’t matter what the movie means really or what the menu item contains actually. God’s mercy doesn’t depend on what sin we committed technically.

Grace finds beauty in every thing!