the little fights

Getting Crowded Out

2008-07-16T07:33:00.001-05:00

It is easy to miss things when reading the Bible, especially when Jesus comes into play. Not only are His parables both simple and complex, revealing and obscuring, but even the shortest pericopes about His words or actions operate on so many levels. So too the stories we are given as background.

Take Mark 2:1-12. We are presented with a beautiful story about the faithfulness (and faith!) of four friends who scandalously break the law in order to help their paralyzed companion. Much can be, and has been, said about the amazing example of these four men who refused to give up in seeking the Good. They ignored social convention, physical obstacles and the law for the sake of love. What would our churches, communities and homes look like if we followed their example? This is an easy take away from this story...

Read the rest on Jesus Manifesto.

New church - where do you draw the line?

2008-06-15T14:50:00.005-05:00

With our recent move, the wife and I (and son) have started the process of looking for a church. After deciding against Orthodoxy, which sounds negative, I know, but isn't meant to be understood that way. Ultimately there were just too many little things that we couldn't quite reconcile ourselves to. But after we decided not to become Orthodox, we tried out a few different churches and ended up in a large, non-denominational style congregation. It was certainly a far cry from Orthodoxy, but it was starting to meet our needs and we had hopes of getting involved. Unfortunately, the time demands of school were too much and we didn't end up connecting with anyone for some time. But over the last 5-6 months prior to the move, it had started becoming more and more like the church I youth pastored at (here are some references here here here). Our time in Orthodoxy had given us a stronger appreciation of the intentional nature of worship. Singing pop-music to set up a sermon ain't it.

So we were going to be looking for a church no matter what. Now we're in our new city and not 100 yards down the street is an Episcopal church. We decided to try it out first and have gone for a couple of weeks now. The worship is liturgical and reminded us a great deal of the Lutheran churches (Missouri Synod) that we had checked out before, excepting that the music is much more simple. I last took choir in middle school and the Lutheran hymns were all over the map melodically, which I couldn't even come close to keeping up with. The liturgies have been led by a team of three women priests. The head priest (is that the vicar? I must admit some ignorance of the Anglican terminology) is a male but is presently on a summer sabbatical. I admit that the idea of women priests is still a bit unsettling to me, and not just because of our time in Orthodoxy. I tend to be a traditionalist in many respects and the issue of male leadership is plainly discussed in the Bible in several places. But so too is the equality & priesthood of all believers. I guess I'm fairly ambivalent about the issue at present.

However, the priestess who gave the sermon both today and last Sunday did a phenomenal job, They were on the short side, but I found them both challenging and encouraging. Today, for instance, she spoke about the congruence between our times - with all their uncertainty and present natural disasters striking so close to home*, and the uncertainty of Jesus' time, particularly with the Roman occupation. In sending out His disciples, Jesus sent them out "prophetically unprepared" - no money, no bags, no extra clothes or walking sticks - so they would see both God working in them and in their most meager activities. What may seem just like pebbles disappearing into the roiling sea, may be used in mighty and mysterious ways by God to bring about His Kingdom.

In my distinct pleasure of the simple liturgy, the quality of the homilies and the architecture (say what you want, I still think the design of our worship space is important!), in the challenge of confronting an issue I had not adequately reflected on previously, still ringing in the back of my mind are the larger issues confronting the Episcopal church in this country. I obviously disagree with electing an openly gay, divorced bishop who presently lives with his partner. I also find the disrespect the American Episcopal Church has shown to the larger and more conservative Anglican communion hard to stomach. But I also know there is a fair amount of theological diversity in the local bodies, so this congregation could be fairly conservative or at least middle of the road. I guess I'm just not sure where to draw the line. Is being in communion with Gene Robinson enough to prevent my communion in this church? Or should I be more local minded? So what are the local issues that could potentially cross the line? It seems that a lot of the issues I have dealt with previously, questions of authority, tradition and worship are once again coming back to me, but in very different forms. This congregation seems to care deeply about the things I care deeply about - outreach to the poor, positively affecting the surrounding the community, sharing Christ with those who do know Him. Are issues of sexuality sufficient to overcome those things? Where do I draw the line?

*My brother lives in Cedar Rapids and his home was hit by the catastrophic floods. He was ordered to evacuate Wednesday night and hasn't been able to get back in to check the damage. On top of that, he recently had surgery and so he's somewhat physically limited. Please pray for him & his wife, and the entire region.

Moments of Significance

2008-06-02T13:17:00.005-05:00

**Some of what follows may seem critical of a family member, but it is not intended to be taken personally. These are general comments on our culture and the way it treats the significant moments of our lives.**

My brother-in-law got married this weekend. Overall, the weekend went surprisingly smoothly. The only blemish was an intense thunderstorm that struck Friday night during the rehearsal dinner, which really only soaked people (such as myself) who had to run out to get the car. The rehearsal dinner was relaxed but poignant, and the wedding service itself was beautiful. The words of the pastor were encouraging, gently challenging and, above all, seeded with the Gospel. The musical choices were excellent and the two singers have wonderful voices. The reception went well; the food was good, the toasts personal and humorous, and a video prepared by my brother-in-law (he is an all-things-technical whiz) was both moving and personally revealing. I look at my brother-in-law, and his new bride, in an entirely different light after seeing what he prepared.

There were, of course, highlights to the weekend, but there was a moment in particular that stand out to me.

I, a nephew and the bride's brother, were ushers, and as such, were tuxedoed and invited into the wedding party photos. I, of course, give no merit to the suggestion that there is any kind of luck, ill or otherwise, associated with the groom seeing the bride before the wedding. I do, however, see some special significance to the moment that the groom sees his beautiful, white-clad bride walking towards him in the seconds before they are to be joined. That is a moment that is shared by everyone in the room, and to me, it is one moment that most clearly reveals the analogous relationship between a man and a woman and Christ and the Church. The bride, the Church, being presented in the company of heaven, blameless and pure, to the groom, the Bridegroom, for an eternal union. I remember clearly seeing my own wife in this powerful moment; in fact, it is about all I remember of the wedding ceremony itself. My wife was lovely and beautiful and radiant in a profoundly unique way that will never be repeated. It is a singular moment in our wonderful marriage. But my brother-in-law and his fiance chose to experience this significant moment in a different, less communal way. And they did it for pictures.

The meeting was arranged in a park. A lovely park on a clear, if windy, early summer day. The men arrived about an hour earlier for their photos, then the women. The bride and groom met under a domed gazebo, alone except for the photographer, as the rest of the party waited in the seats of the ampitheater that surrounded them. They proceeded with several photos there, followed by many more photos of them and the wedding party at various other locations in the park. Photos of them in each other's arms, kissing, gazing at each other. As I'm sure you've gathered by now, this bothered me. Not only did I think they were missing out on a truly unique moment in both their own relationship and their relationship with those attending the wedding (friends and family alike), but they were missing out on it for mere memorabilia. And memorabilia they got in spades - 2 sets of engagement pictures, the pre-wedding photos, ceremony photos, family photos immediately after the ceremony and then more pictures of the couple downtown after the reception. It seems to me, and I could be wrong, that their choices reflect a larger cultural pathology to prize the artifacts or narrative of a memory more than the living out of the memory-making experience. We do not inhabit the moment; we provide commentary.

There are numerous examples of this. Scrapbooking, for instance, which is a hugely popular hobby among women particularly. What is the point except to frame and narrate specific memories? How many pictures are taken with the explicit appraisal of how they will appear in a scrapbook? So too are the elaborate social rituals we engage in. Whether its the ten year old girls running up to each other squealing, the group of college-aged friends bar hopping or fifty year old men on the golf-course, so much of what we do with and for each other is not about the actual relationship. Rather, its about defining and narrating the experience of it. I had a good friend in college who moved to California and started hanging out with a group of women. I could tell she wasn't particularly happy there or with them, but she found the narrative arch of 'Sex and the City' compelling enough to compare her group of friends with the show's characters. By using the ready-made identities and relationships of the show, she was able to find some meaning in relationships she would not otherwise have maintained. The story of their friendship, even a borrowed story, became far more important than the friendships themselves. The story is all that matters! Going back to the event that inspired this post, look at the wedding industry. It rakes in billions of dollars a year on dresses, decorations, locations, wedding planners, cakes and extravagant gifts not to celebrate a union, but to tell the story of the "happiest day of your life!" It is another borrowed narrative that we impose on ourselves.

The intent is to tell the story of the event, to present the narrative to others and, most importantly, to the self. And the stories we choose to tell are frequently provided to us by a culture steeped in narcissism, greed and perpetual instability. This is why we have to keep finding a new story to tell. Each new event requires us to once again frame and narrate the story. It seems to me that we are incapable of believing in the event without having a story to relate. It is almost as if the moment becomes ephemeral unless we can provide some narrative or artifact to represent it. The nihilism inherent in consumerism and materialism, the support structures of our Western culture, prods us ever forward into finding another story to tell because without them, we come face to face with our own insigificance.

Which is precisely what we must do as Christians. We have to confront and accept our own insignificance in the grand scheme of history. We will have our roles to play, but Christ must increase and we must decrease. We are but grass, here one day, burned up the next. The story of Christ, which we take as our own in our repentance and baptism, makes us both eternally significant and temporally insignificant. The events of our lives matter but only because they are imbued with eternity. This is why the martyr can lay down his or her life so willingly. It is not because heaven awaits, but because the Kingdom is already present. My life has meaning only in the presence of the King. Without Him, all the trappings of this life, even those moments of profound happiness and joy, are but brief steps in a steady march towards destruction. In embracing His story, our story can only take a back seat. We give up the meaning of our life in exchange for the meaning of His life.

Tell Your Elected Officials to Support the Ban

2008-05-30T09:23:00.002-05:00

I would strongly encourage anyone reading this to contact their representatives in Congress and advocate for the US adopting the cluster munitions ban. The ban is receiving worldwide support even among some of the top users of cluster munitions, like Great Britain. The US, China, India, Russia and Pakistan, however, are refusing to become signatories of the measure even though the ban does not prevent the future use of cluster bombs that utilize some kind of self-destruct mechanism in the case of bomblet failure. Some cluster munitions have as high as a 70% failure rate turning their impact sites into de facto minefields that lead to thousands of civilian deaths or injuries every year. Yes, the US says its working on improving cluster bomb safety measures, but testing for these devices frequently occurs under conditions that are very different from the battlefield. And with as many as 1 billion submunitions stockpiled the US is highly unlikely to decommission those stores in favor of purchasing new, possibly safer weapons. Please let your representatives know that the US should sign the ban.

Here are some links:

Children Are 40% of Cluster Bomb Casualties
The Politics of Cluster Bombs (good statistics towards the end)
The results of cluster bombs in Lebanon
E-MINE page on cluster bombs

Started my new job

2008-05-29T15:57:00.003-05:00

I started my new job this week. Its basically all orientation for the next couple of weeks - nothing too exciting but its giving me a good feel for the organization. I was pleased to hear that the hospital system for which I work gives away almost $500 million in care every year. They are a nonprofit, so they turn profits back into the community by providing care for the poor and disadvantaged. That is an amazing thing.

I was, however, dismayed to hear that the unit I'll be working on will be giving up its transplant patients to a newly formed unit that will handle all transplants, including the intensive care patients that my unit formerly handled. The change hasn't take effect yet but it will by the end of the summer. Frankly, the opportunity to get experience with transplants was one of the reasons I chose this hospital over some of the other offers I had, so I'm disappointed that it won't be happening. I'm sure I'll still be getting good experience but I'm hoping there will still be some variety in the patients. Its a general surgical ICU and without the transplants, it could be little more than 'guts and butts', so to speak.

Appeasement

2008-05-20T21:19:00.002-05:00

Recently there was some degree of controversy over President Bush equating Senator Obama's stated willingness to meet without preconditions with the leaders of American enemy-states, like Iran, with the (attempted) appeasement of Hitler. I didn't really follow the back and forth between Senators Obama and McCain, and the President, but I heard about it, especially on conservative talk radio. I'm not an avid listener but I do punch around the dial on occasion and of the three programs that are aired locally; Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, all have accused Senator Obama of being naive and part of the "blame America first crowd." They also argue that this kind of high-level engagement will make America less safe. This latest appeasement controversy has only increased these kinds of accusations. I'm sure I've also heard at least 2 of the 3 say the leaders of Iran, Syria and Hamas are without hope of redemption or reconciliation. "They only want to kill us!" and "Talking to them shows weakness!" are sort of the catch-phrases of this new attack on Democratic contender.

I am troubled by this kind of rhetoric in a number of ways. First, the argument that meeting with the Iranian President, for example, will make America less safe. What exactly can anyone do that will make America more safe in regards to Iran? They know the US is mired in Iraq and that it will take at least a couple of years to withdraw should a Democrat win the White House. And that starting next year. They're sprinting for the finish line of becoming a nuclear power and America does not have the military capacity to deal with Iran in any fashion. Any strike within the country would almost certainly lead to an all-out offensive on US troops in Iraq by insurgents, if not an all out war with the Iranian military. Plus, the drastic reduction in Middle Eastern oil production that would come with such a conflict would tank the US economy. What option does the US really have right now? Standing tough and refusing to engage may offer up good sound bites, but it is far from sound reasoning. About the only thing we've got left is serious diplomatic engagement. The status quo may not make America less safe, but neither does it offer the chance of improving the situation. Here I think we see the failure of militarism to adequately ensure the peace of the world and the safety of America. Christians cannot rely on the government to ensure our safety precisely because it is the government that is putting us in danger. Christ is our only security.

The other two arguments contradict my Christian understanding of the world. I know there are Christians (ie, Calvinists) who hold to the idea that people are totally depraved and there are indeed those who are beyond redemption because God has willed it thus. I am not one of them. The Gospel is the Gospel to the whole world, not just Americans, Europeans or other people amenable to US foreign policy goals. As Christians, we can never say that someone is beyond all hope, for Christ is our hope. We can never say that there can be no common ground between us, because we share the common image of our Creator. Christ died equally for me and Ahmadinejad. He hung on that cross for you and Hitler. We may be scandalized by that realization and even find it repugnant to our ideas of fairness and justice, but it is the reality to which every Christian must submit. To deny it is to deny Christ Himself. I realize that these commentators are speaking in secular, political terms, but they borrow the language of faith and we cannot allow their language to co-opt the grammar of the Gospel. Furthermore, this kind of political language has a subtle effect on our attitude towards these people. What is the point of loving your enemy if there is not the possibility of making them a brother? What is the point of enemy love if your only option is to kill them before they kill you? To people of faith, this kind of language is inherently dangerous and antithetical to the Gospel.

My final point is on the "blame America first" thing. I am honestly puzzled why this should upset any Christian in America. We always have to look to our own failures and sins, and repent of them before we can begin looking around at other people. Why is this good for us as individuals, to remove our planks before looking for another person's mote, but not good for us as a nation? Why are we as individuals to emulate Christ in humbly submitting to God (not finding equality with God something to be grasped) but as a nation to eschew introspection, honest self-appraisal and repentance? Once again, the political narrative that is being presented is directly antithetical to the Gospel. Our nation is not perfect, indeed, it is downright sinful in many, many respects. Our actions in the world can be and sometimes (perhaps frequently) are sinful. Why is it wrong to admit this? Why is it (relatively) easy for us to admit to personal failure but so incredibly hard to admit to national lapses? These political narratives directly contradict the narrative presented to us in the Bible. Rather than humility, they preach pride. In place of repentance, they preach continuing in our sins. What will it take for Christians to see this?

I am (finally) a nurse

2008-05-18T19:14:00.002-05:00

Well, not technically. I still have to pass boards in a few weeks but I'm finally done with school. And it is anticlimactic, to say the least. I went to our pinning on Thursday where we got our nursing pins in an entirely slipshod, off-the-cuff ceremony that lasted all of 20 minutes. From the big deal the faculty made about the event I was anticipating something much more elaborate. Or that the speakers would have either put together some prepared remarks or actually followed the order of events that was in the program. Silly me.

I am, of course, happy to be done, happy to be moving forward with my career. I recently accepted a position in surgical ICU at well known teaching hospital that comes up with some crazy experimental surgeries. Stuff like intestinal transplants, which is frickin' nuts. The job requires us to move to a new, bigger and cooler city, which is exciting. My folks came out from Iowa to spend the week taking care of my son and packing. We move next Friday and are about 70% done with packing already. Overall, I'm happy, excited and a bit scared.

I'm scared that my new job will be too much for me, that the move will be a mistake, but mostly, I'm scared of not having something to be working for. The last three years have been spent with a single-minded purpose, a very specific goal that required intense focus and lots and lots of hard work. I'll go from working, being in school or clinicals, and spending almost every spare hour studying, writing a paper or preparing a horrifingly long care-plan to just working three days a week. What am I going to do with those other 4 days? And I don't just mean 'how will I fill the time?' I've got a wife and son to spend my days with and tons of reading I've had to put off. But I won't have an immediate goal on which to focus, no overriding priority that gives me some kind of direction. And that kind of freaks me out. For a long time, my life has had a very specific, externally imposed structure. Now I've got to kind of come up with one on my own and I kind of feel like I've forgotten how to do that.

Facing the future

2008-04-27T13:59:00.002-05:00

With the introduction of my son into my life, I have been thinking more and more about the future. In what kind of world will my son grow up? What themes and events will dominate his life? What will he see as the looming crisis or greatest opportunities of his day? What will his grandchildren ask him to tell stories about and what will mine?

I am one of those that would respond negatively to the pollster's question about the state of affairs my children and grandchildren will inherit. But, of course, that is far too simplistic a question and the answer space far too limited to answer it adequately. I am negative about the future because I see a great many conflicts in the years ahead. If we do run out of oil, or at least demand far outstrips a difficultly obtained supply, then conflict is inevitable. But our world, particularly America, is shaped by oil. We have grown into its energy contours. The physical structure of our nation (and nations) is shaped by it - roads, highways, the location of grocery stores, jobs, all have been determined by our dependence on the car and its dependence on oil. Perhaps the car's need for oil will change. Perhaps a new biofuel or fuel cell or some other new technology will be developed and that will be all well and good. But that, by itself, is no solution. At least not to other problems.

The physical layout of our nation has created separation from each other. Garages mean people can enter and exit their homes with minimal contact with their neighbors. Gross consumer capitalism has rendered public spaces into little more than shopping experiences and there is no place for true, public community. Where can people gather? Where can new ideas be expressed, debated and discussed? Historians have traced how the coffee-houses of Europe and America played vital roles in revolutions and political changes because they offered opportunities for discourse. Does Starbucks, as pleasurable as the coffee and ambience it offers may be, provide that opportunity? No, and not because it is some corporate giant preying on the poor coffee growers of South America (though this may be the case). It is because as a culture we have become far more insular. We expect privacy. We demand it, in fact. We don't tolerate interruptions. And without interruption, without being open to meeting someone or hearing something new, there is no opportunity for growth, for dialogue or change.

I think this disconnection, this desire to be private, to seek our own personal fulfillment and to remain uninvolved with other people is the greatest crisis and opportunity of my day and will greatly impact my son's life. And this is because this culturally manufactured desire is antithetical to true human desire. We desperately want and need to be engaged, to be a part of a community, to grow, to change. Our fulfillment is tied up in the fulfillment of others but our culture does not want us to see that because time spent talking is time spent not-shopping. And its horribly messy. New relationships, new ideas - these are not tidy creatures. They are not as immediately gratifying and comforting as, say, a new ipod or shiny new car. Nor are they as gloriously edifying as making a silent statement to the world's deaf ears about my individuality and unique thoughts and desires. We can only make such statements to other people who are right in front of our face. But we are apparently quite afraid of such proximity.

I have a son

2008-03-24T14:32:00.003-05:00

As of March 4th, I have been officially inducted into the role of father. My son was born after about 18 hours of active labor, 3 hours 17 minutes of which was exhausting pushing on the part of the wife. We ended up having to get induced since we were overdue (41 weeks) and the baby wasn't moving quite as much as he had been. The labor was long and initially quite painful for her - which is why the man or woman who invented the epidural deserves the Nobel Prize and an annual salary of at least $1 million, as well as a grateful hug from every man on the planet who is able to not sit by in complete uselessness as his wife struggles in agony. I was fortunately able to sit by in complete uselessness while my wife struggled with discomfort and pressure. I tried to help, and God bless her she says I did, but I felt awfully ornamental.

Unfortunately, the little tyke came out with a giant caput succadeneum, a scary rubbery blue and breathing rather poorly. The neonatalogist came down, took one look at him and promptly admitted him to the NICU thinking he might be septic. Blood cultures were drawn, he was given some fluid resuscitation and he was started on an aggressive course of antibiotics. With this, my largely superfluous role during delivery transitioned into a somewhat more utilitarian role since 1) I know what all the means, 2) I know the right questions to ask and 3) the title "doctor" no longer impresses me. I saw him about an hour after delivery and he looked better. The next morning, he looked great. So good, in fact, he didn't even really look like a newborn. The conehead was gone, his color was excellent and he was very active. All the cultures came back negative and the rest of his labs looked good, so he was able to come home after 2.5 days in the NICU.

Now, people say having a baby changes things. They can, and do, describe in horrifying detail the ridiculous roller coaster you are about to jump onto. You listen and smile and nod and think "yeah, this is going to be a big change" which is akin to comparing the Grand Canyon with a big hole in the ground. Just like the Grand Canyon, having a baby is marvelous and deep, but looking down into that sheer abyss right in front of you is also terrifying and you cannot help but ask yourself half a dozen times an hour "what did we just do?!" This became especially acute when the true definition of colic finally came home to me. For those who do not yet have children, you will learn to fear this word as I do. And mine is just a "little colicky". But at the times he is not crying or sleeping, he is incredibly alert and attentive. His hands are always exploring and his face moves through a dizzying array of expressions. I have been told by those more experienced with children than I that this means he is intelligent. Right now, it makes him incredibly cute and gives him personality.

He is a unique, little creation, an image-bearer, a person, a self. He will turn into someone very different from me and I get to be in on the direction he takes. I get to be in on his discovery of the world and himself. And I get to be in on the discoveries going on in me that only he could reveal. For instance, one night when he was tenaciously clinging to wakefulness, I spent about an hour walking him up and down the hall so he wouldn't cry and the wife could get some much needed sleep. I too, was tired and growing frustrated that every time I stopped he would begin to wail. As my frustration and fatigue were reaching a peak, I had a revelation about my own behavior. How many times has God walked me back and forth after my own repeated failures? How frustrating my obstinence, how grating my cries? And yet all I receive from Him is love and mercy. I saw my son in a new light at that moment and the nature of our relationship changed. What awesome responsibility and what a privilege of delights is fatherhood.

Xenophilia - I

2008-02-25T14:16:00.003-06:00

[This post, and subsequent posts in this series, deals with something I have been mulling over for a while now. It is partially due to the prominence of immigration and immigration reform in the presidential primaries and partly due to my reading and rereading of Ezekiel over the last few months, which has a lot to say about God's attitude towards foreigners and aliens. That is also to say, Ezekiel has a lot to say about what our attitude as Christians should be towards foreigners and aliens.]

Deuteronomy 26:1-10

When you have entered the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance and have taken possession of it and settled in it, take some of the firstfruits of all that you produce from the soil of the land the LORD your God is giving you and put them in a basket. Then go to the place the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name and say to the priest in office at the time, "I declare today to the LORD your God that I have come to the land the LORD swore to our forefathers to give us." The priest shall take the basket from your hands and set it down in front of the altar of the LORD your God. Then you shall declare before the LORD your God: "My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, putting us to hard labor. Then we cried out to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey; and now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, O LORD, have given me."

"My father was a wandering Aramean..." Or, "My father was a lost Aramean..." Or, "My father was a perishing Aramean...." When we have come into the land that the Lord had given us, we are to say to the Lord, "My father, our father, was lost, wandering, dying in the desert. He was a stranger, homeless, without shelter. Until you gave him and me a home. Until you saved us. Until you gave us a place to live, land to grow food, water, livestock. Until you pulled us from our despair and fear and loneliness and gave us a place to worship you. We were aliens. You made us citizens. You made us at home."

Whatever the Hebrew people were or however they started, their identity was forged in Egypt. It was from Egypt they were rescued and it was during that deliverance that God set them apart and called them His own. During their flight, the Law was given, their relationship to God was defined through the covenant and God revealed more of Himself than He ever had in the past. The Hebrew people are a delivered people. They are a rescued people. They were homeless and oppressed until God stepped in.

That by itself, both humbling and revelatory, does not tell us very much about God. The simple fact that He rescued a specific nation or ethnic group, gave them some land and established a relationship with them does not inherently tell us who God is. In human terms, a king will gladly intervene to save his own people. A father does not hesitate to help his children. But God reveals much, much more of Himself. From the very beginning of His relationship with the Hebrew people, God informs us that He has a very different take on things.

Exodus 22:21 "Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt."

Exodus 23:9 "Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt.

These are two short verses, but they say so much. First, God does not want His chosen people to act like other people. They were oppressed in Egypt, other nations oppress foreigners in their midst, but the Hebrews are to treat the alien as they would another Hebrew. In Exodus 12, as the Hebrews prepare for the Passover, the Hebrews are explicitly told to allow aliens among them to participate so long as the household is circumcised. Presumably, these Exodus 12 aliens were other enslaved peoples, but it may have also have referred to Egyptians. God is not vindictive and is not interested in setting up another system like the one from which He will deliver the Hebrews. The Hebrews are to act differently.

These verses also imply a kind of parallel relationship between God and the Hebrews, and the Hebrews and aliens. God extended His kindness and mercy to the Hebrews, they should extend it to the aliens. God desires that the world should see the behavior of the Jews towards foreigners, and, knowing that the Jews were themselves saved from an oppressive foreign power, understand that the Lord extends the same salvific embrace to them as well. God has helped the Hebrews. The Hebrews help us. God will help us. The way the Jews are to treat the foreigner, the alien, the oppressed and powerless, is meant to speak to those people in a way words could never express. It is an invitation-in-action to relationship with God, who is just and merciful.

This point is underscored by Exodus 22:22-15. Do not take advantage of the widow, the orphan or the poor. If you are in a position of power you must deal justly with them because God is compassionate! It was compassion that was displayed to the powerless Hebrews in bringing them out of Egypt and it is compassion that they are to show to the powerless. They must enact God's compassion as a message both to each other and to outsiders. There is no boundary, no us and them. And it is precisely Israel's failure to do this that so inflames the prophets.

(cont.)

When is it ok to vote for my own identity?

2008-02-06T15:02:00.000-06:00

In the run-up to Super Duper Tuesday (as much fun as that was, moreso now that not a whole lot was actually clarified by it), I listened to a fair amount of political commentary on the radio and on TV. In fact, one of my new favorite shows is Morning Joe on MSNBC. Most mornings I sit on the couch quietly slurping my cereal and watch CNN or Headline News. A few weeks back, I turned on Morning Joe and have been hooked ever since. I imagine the luster will fade once the elections are over. Most commentators have been making a big issue over voter identity in this race. When Obama was the underdog, most commentators believed blacks would support Clinton believing that Obama's race was not enough to turn the tide in his favor in that group. Women were expected, and apparently generally are, supporting Clinton, presumably because they're women. Evangelicals support Huckabee because he used to be a Southern Baptist preacher and is still a conservative Christian. And Romney carried 83% of Utah's Republicans. The Mormon majority state voted for the Mormon candidate, which is unsurprising.

But in the weeks prior to yesterday, there was a great deal of snotty condemnation of the fact that a good percentage of the Christians in the US won't vote for Romney because they are suspicious of his Mormon faith. Mormons can vote for Mormons, women for women, blacks for blacks - that kind of identity politics is fine, but when it reverses itself, somehow that is unacceptable? Why is a woman voting for a woman solely because she's a woman less sexist than a man who won't vote for a woman because she's a woman? Why is it racist for a white person to refuse to support a black candidate but not racist for a black person to refuse to support anyone but a black candidate? Why is the positive accepted but the negative condemned when they are just two sides of the same coin?

To me, this points to another failure in our political process. People do not tend to vote with a rational understanding and weighing of the issues. They do not closely examine their own values and then pick a candidate who most closely agrees with them or who will support what matters most to them. They vote with their gut. They vote with social pressure. And all too often that makes for very poor politics.

Child-Men

2008-01-28T14:22:00.000-06:00

Or "My Xbox Broke A Month Ago and I Haven't Missed It At All".

I was listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR on Monday afternoon and caught the end of an interview with Kay Hymowitz on an article she wrote recently for the City Journal, which was also adapted as an editorial for the Dallas Morning News. According to Hymowitz, young men in their 20's are experiencing an unprecedented wave of freedom that they are exercising by playing video games, seeking meaningless sexual gratification and otherwise acting like adolescents. Hence her term "child-men". The articles make a strong case for her point that today's young men are being socialized to be boys fixated on entertainment and self-centered pursuits. Marriage, now coming later than ever for men and women, has lost its civilizing and maturational influence on this generation. Instead of raising children, many young men are instead spending countless hours playing games, both with women and video games. If you only have time for a quick read, go with the Dallas News editorial. For the full article, check out the City Journal page. I have points of disagreement with her, but that is not what caught my attention on the radio.

What caught my attention is the simple fact that I, too, play video games. Or at least I did. See, about 4 weeks ago my Xbox360 took a dive. Many thousands of Xbox360 owners have had trouble with a manufacturing defect that produces the dreaded "Red Rings of Death" (the term is a take-off on the Window's classic "Blue Screen of Death" which appeared whenever your computer crashed). Basically, the lights around the power button turn red and this means your Xbox360 is dead. Microsoft extended the warranty for three years for every Xbox for this and is providing free repairs. My Xbox did not suffer RROD. Rather, the video card apparently died. Which means the system boots up and logs in, which I can tell from the sound effects, but there is no video output. Just a blank screen with some swimming dots. Obviously, this makes actually playing a video game rather difficult.

I was initially quite upset since I was in the middle of some campaigns on different games. That's kind of like having to leave a theater half way through a movie you were enjoying. I didn't like wasting money on the games that I could now not finish. And I especially didn't want to waste $100 on fixing the stupid thing for what is obviously a defect but would not be covered because my warranty is expired. But I forgot about it after a couple of days. School started, we finished up getting things ready for the baby (now just under 4 weeks off if he comes on time), I started reading more, poking around online and engaging in some discussions, talking to friends and family more often on the phone and generally just enjoying life. Until I heard Kay Hymowitz on Talk of the Nation talking about Child-Men. And I realized that, to a certain extent, I am one. Or maybe I was one. I wasted a lot of time playing on that stupid thing. Time that could have been much better spent talking to my wife, studying, praying, exercising, helping other people, writing - any of a hundred different things that had casually and thoughtlessly gotten sucked up by a white box sitting next to my TV. Hearing her talk about these guys, and hearing something of myself brought up in the article, made me realized that I not only didn't miss my Xbox, I'm glad its gone.

I realize there are probably some readers out there who have no idea what a change this is for me. For a very long time, video games were my outlet. Over the last 2.5 years especially, with school as busy and stressful as its been, getting lost in a game was one of my primary stress-relievers. And now I see just how dependent I was on that mind-numbing experience and I'm seeing how so much of popular culture is similarly stupifying. We waste so much time, energy and pieces of ourselves in pursuit of...nothing. It brings to mind my high school Latin teacher when he taught us the meaning of nihil - "less than straw". The Latin mind could conceive of nothing as insignificant as a piece of hay. And that is exactly what today's culture wants us to do; we seek insignificance.

Dating Jesus

2008-01-21T16:23:00.001-06:00

Saturday morning, the wife and I went to a local coffee shop to study. Me for nursing school and her for a licensure exam at work. Towards the end of our study session a group of maybe 10 people pulled a few tables together right next to us. There were a few young women among the group and the rest were men of varying ages. They opened with prayer, always a welcome development when a large group gathers near your study area, and proceeded with their meeting. I had assumed it was a Bible study, but it turns it out was a group of ministry leaders from various college ministry organizations (Campus Crusade, Intervarsity and the like) and representatives of a few local churches with college ministries. They were coordinating ministry and outreach events for the coming semester. Frankly, I was delighted to see that kind of cooperation and cohesion among these obviously competing groups. Youth and college ministries can be especially numbers-driven due to the need for a "critical mass" of students in order to be attractive to outsiders. Kids generally don't like hanging around a fun-filled group of 5 when 2 of them are leaders. So for them to pool resources and forgo competitive ministry programs is, well, very Christian.

I didn't follow too much of the beginning of their meeting. I was engrossed in my "Caring for the Complex Family" text and they were talking about doing a few of the same things they had done last year. But as my interest in the Complex Family waned (directly proportional to the temperature and remaining volume of my coffee, I might add), they started tossing out new ideas. My attention was soon diverted to eavesdropping.

They had a variety of ideas. Most seemed generically conventional for Campus Crusade, based on my experience with the organization at Arizona State. Big, fun, invite-your-friend kind of things with a recognizable speaker or good band. Events with lots of energy and skits. Some of the ideas seemed more suited for a younger crowd but I assumed they knew their audience better than I. The one idea that really caught my attention, though, was presented by a college-aged female. Rough sketch: a skit based on the dating game wherein one of the bachelor's is Jesus, or answers exactly as Jesus would, and at the end of the game the young woman picks him. Excuse me, Him. They kind of tossed it around a bit - maybe the young woman is someone from the crowd, or maybe they just focus on the kind of love we all allegedly want, or all of the bachelors portray some aspect of Jesus. Or maybe they actually set up some kind of contest where someone actually wins a fantasy date, either as a package they can take their significant other on or they actually take the guy or girl from the skit. It went around for several minutes.

My initial reaction was "As a guy, I sure wouldn't want to date Jesus." You know, liking women like I do. So it seemed their strategy was going to alienate at least half of the crowd right then. Other thoughts ran through my head - what if what these college kids want from "love" isn't what God actually offers? How do you choose who gets to be the bachelors and how do you avoid using sexual attraction as an evangelism tool? And why do these oddly perverse notions of the romantic Jesus stay alive? Then an older gentleman said he kind of doubted they could actually know how Jesus would answer dating questions. Another pointed out the obvious difficulty if the person from the crowd chose a non-Jesus bachelor. Other flaws in the plan slowly became apparent but, overall, they seemed to like the general idea and thought maybe a good speaker could adapt what was happening to an evangelistic talk and no matter what happened, use it somehow.

I kept thinking is this what evangelism has come to? Dating Jesus?

As we left, they were on to other ideas and I interrupted the group to proffer a couple of suggestions. But I was still disquieted by the shallowness of their ideas about evangelism. Big-time fun does not equal conversion and on the rare occasion that it does, how much spiritual depth does that person actually experience? How does feeding the obviously jacked-up cultural norms of dating help bring anyone to relationship with Christ? What are they thinking?!

But (and this is a big, big but) then I realized something. They're actually doing it. No matter how shallow or ineffective their ideas seemed to me, they were at least committed to doing it. They were willing to take the time and energy to prepare and plan, to generate ideas and to figure out ways to put them into action. And they were willing to put themselves out on that very uncomfortable limb and plainly deliver the Gospel, no matter the context. And frankly, I'm not. I haven't shared the Gospel with anyone in the last 2 1/2 years. I fully believe that drive-by evangelism is ineffective and irresponsible, but at some point relational evangelism has to transition into actual evangelism. So far, I'm pretty good on the relational part. I think its time to work on the evangelism part.

So here's to that group. God bless them and the work that they do. God bless their endeavors and may they, and You, forgive my arrogance. God grant me their heart for reaching out to the lost. And maybe grant us all some better ideas.

Unless, that is, You like The Dating Game.

What I Learned in Nursing School (in progress)

2008-01-13T16:18:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking about doing this post for a while, kind of a "top ten" list of what I've learned. But I'm not sure I've got 10 things to post and school is still a work in progress, so I'm treating the list the same way. Here is my unfinished, in-progress list of the top things I learned in nursing school.

The best physicians generally aren't good doctors. This of course isn't a hard and fast rule. There are some doctors that I work with who are expert surgeons or diagnosticians and who are also very caring and compassionate human beings. But they are the exception. By and large, the doctors who are the best at what they do plainly stink at how they do it. Family needs or questions are ignored or demeaned and patient needs, insofar as they don't correspond to the doctor's specialty, are treated as secondary when acknowledged at all. For that reason, even if they are the best in the operating room or during a code, they aren't the people I'd want taking care of me. If my prognosis is poor, I'd rather have someone treat me and my family with dignity and respect instead of having a doctor that might give me a few more days of life while treating us like inconveniences.

It is amazing what you can adapt to. When I was young, cleaning up after the dog would send me to the bathroom fighting a fit of gagging and dry heaves. The mere scent of vomit would set me off and the actual sight of puke was almost more than I could take. Rotting garbage, a dead animal, moldy food - the odors were just too much. But now, oh boy, now you could be shooting out of both ends and it wouldn't faze me excepting the knowledge that I'll be the one to clean it up. Also, the...uh...texture and aroma of certain bodily functions can be diagnostic. So I'm definitely over my weak stomach and at odd times find myself sniffing gently in the hospital hall trying to figure out who's got the C. diff and who is just gassy.

If someone says they're going to throw up, its best to take them at their word. And to get out of the way.

Hospitals really do smell funny. I noticed it the very first day I started working in one but forgot all about it until I went in to one to visit someone. Once I was out of my scrubs and just a guy off the street, that smell hit me full force again even though I'm in a hospital 3-4 days a week. That reminded me how bewildering and intimidating the hospital can be for people who aren't used to it.

What we can do to you far exceeds what we can do for you. And the reason, more often than not, that we are doing all of these things to you is because of your family. They can't let you go even though there is no hope for recovery and keeping you alive is only prolonging your suffering. Why? Guilt and fear. Guilt about what is left unsaid or undone, about past wrongs not made right and deep-seated fear about all of our fates. It is generally the conflicted, wounded families that experience so much ambivalence and confusion in the face tragedy. So please, right after you're done reading this, go apologize to those you've hurt and forgive those who have hurt you. Reassure them of your love and forgiveness and remind them about God's. It just may save all of you untold suffering and emotional pain at some unfortunate point in the future. More importantly, it will change that relationship for the rest of your respective lives. And tell at least a few of them in explicit detail exactly what you do and do not want done should you end up laying in an ICU with machines keeping you alive. Maybe, just for fun, put it in writing.

(cont.)

School starts...

2008-01-13T16:04:00.000-06:00

...tomorrow. My final semester in the nursing program, thankfully. I'll graduate in May, take boards in early June and then finally get a job and have something resembling free time again. The other day someone asked me if I was excited for the semester to start. I told them I'm excited for the semester to end. This has been a three year journey that I had never anticipated or even contemplated. After getting thrown a curveball by being fired as a youth pastor and still having huge and unanswered (at that point) questions about "what is church?", the wife and I ended up in Indiana and my starting to pursue a career as a nurse. Its not exactly my passion, but it will pay the bills, provide a great deal of freedom and mobility to pursue my passions outside of work, all the while offering untold opportunities to help people in very significant ways. All told, not a bad compromise.

This next semester is maternity and pediatric nursing. I've got zip experience with either one, with the exception of having taken care of a few kids with bad colds in the ER over the last few months, so I'm looking forward to getting into a different area. And with my own little one due in about 6 1/2 weeks, I should learn some valuable skills in taking care of him and helping the wife through labor and delivery. I've also been told by my classmates who took this section last semester (and who are now due to be taking the black hole of critical care and psychiatric nursing that I was taking) that the teacher is good and the class not overly demanding. Again, a lovely compromise that I am grateful for. Another bonus - I only have one day of clinicals, instead of 2 like most semesters, so when the wife finally pops I'll be able to miss a week without it impacting my grade (missing 2 or more days knocks 3% off your final grade for each day missed). So I'm looking forward to school starting, not least for it being my last semester. It promises to be a very engaging 16 weeks, personally, educationally and professionally.

The Presumption of Malice

2008-01-09T13:23:00.000-06:00

Given the obviously partisan nature of politics in this country, which seems to have only worsened over the last several years with acrimonious debates about the war in particular, it is no surprise that people at one pole tend to take a negative view of the people at the other. Many a lefty takes a dim view of a righty's stance on the war, social programs, abortion, the economy and a host of other issues and vehemently vice versa. For the most part, though (I hope), this negativism is not personal. I think pro-abortionists are wrong but I don't think they are for "reproductive choice" because they find it quite a lot of fun to kill unborn children. I think the pro-Iraq war folks were and are wrong, but I don't think they find it quite a lot of fun to kill brown people or destroy other countries. The list goes on and for a large majority of Americans, I think we tend to look at those we disagree with in a generally neutral light. But there is an increasingly strident minority that does not. For these people, there is an inexplicable presumption of malice.

I think that presumption operates on a principle inversely similar to Occam's Razor - the reason that is most morally objectionable is the true reason someone supports this cause. This methodology seems to be gaining traction in both parties. I'm not talking about the generally negative speech that emanates from both party bases. Its no surprise that Rush Limbaugh or other conservative pundits credit most Democrats/liberals with stupidity, or that left-wing commentators accuse Republicans/conservatives of greed. No, this moves even further afield than that. In general, I don't count comments directed against particular politicians because I don't put political pandering and manipulation beyond just about anyone seeking national office anymore. Maybe I'm a bit cynical but I think the very nature of the political process in this country has become schizophrenic. We demand a degree of perfection and consistency from candidates that is impossible. There are certain ritualistic performances and statements that candidates have to comply with in order to be politically viable. Take the near worshipful view that all of the candidates have towards 'the troops.' I have no doubt that there is a degree of respect for the military in all of the candidates but not every single solider, sailor, airman or marine is a paragon of virtue. Not every combat action taken by an American has been honorable. Not every soldier is fighting for our freedom. Not every one in the military wants to be making the sacrifices they are making. And yet you wouldn't know it from the candidates' statements because you wouldn't know them as candidates if they didn't make them. Because a candidate changing their message or their views in response to polls or focus groups is no surprise, I personally don't think calling the kettle black is unacceptable. Rude, distasteful and occasionally over the top yes, but not altogether out of the question. Accusations of perfidy are par for the course precisely because of the corrupting nature of American politics.

Of late, however, I have heard comments that presume malice on the part of entire swaths of the American public. The two examples that stick out in my mind were made by those on the left but I know that there are just as many voices on the right echoing the sentiment. The first one that springs to mind was heard last week. A woman made the blanket assertion that we pro-lifers don't really care about the unborn child, rather, we're against abortion because it is a way to control women. By opposing abortion we, primarily, undermine the economic freedom of women who would be forced, in an abortion-free society, to forgo education and job opportunities to gestate and presumably raise their unwanted children. Opposition to abortion is then apparently a way we sexist misogynists can make up for, I dunno, women getting the right to vote or something. The second comment was heard just this morning. Two African-American female commentators were discussing the results of the New Hampshire primaries and suggested that a large number of conservative independents may have switched over to vote for Sen. Obama because they think "a black man can't win the popular vote." Helping him to get the nomination would then ensure a Republican victory by racist conservatives.

Personally, I find this kind of political speech disconcerting and reprehensible. And, most importantly, un-Christian. No matter how strongly we feel about an issue, no matter how staunchly we disagree with someone else, I don't think that we, as Christians, can ever presume malicious intent. If a pro-lifer came out and said "I oppose abortion to keep women down" or "I voted for Obama in the primaries because this country won't elect no n******", then these people have identified their own malice and revealed the ugly depths of their own hearts. But we as Christians have to do better than that. We are called upon to love our neighbor and, at the very least, we have to love them with the language we use to describe them. I think we have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise. Which is why, from here through the election, and probably beyond, I'm not going to sit back and let other Christians speak in this manner. If I hear or read a presumption of malice I'm going to call them on it. I'm going to call them to the higher standard we all know we are obliged to live up to. Who's with me?

Election

2007-12-31T14:19:00.000-06:00

With my parents' recent move to Iowa, the upcoming election has taken on a bit of a new dimension. I never really got worked up over the primaries (or the general election, for that matter) but the wife and I have started paying a bit more attention this time around. This is partly due to the possibly historic role my kin may have in determining the fate of some candidate - a real if slight possibility given the neck-and-neck field on both sides of the race - and partly due to the utter banality of the Republican gaggle. In the past, it was fairly easy to ignore the primaries because the race didn't seem like much of a race at all. But now its like a dinner mystery theater; we're all trying to parse the clues and the polls that will point to whodunit. Or rather, 'whowinsit'. I have no favored candidate, no pick to commit to. I probably dislike Huckabee the least but I must admit part of me wants to see Obama win just for the sheer history-making spectacle it will be for a black man to win the presidency. The sheer history-making spectacle of a woman winning the office can wait for another candidate, in my opinion.

So all this election stuff is swirling around when news of the latest violence in Pakistan and Kenya makes the news, and this the violence of election politics. Who won? Who will win? Who will run? Will there even be elections? In other parts of the world these are killing questions it seems. But not here. Not in America or other Western-style democracies. These may be angry-making questions but today they rarely spill over into actual violence and much rarer still does anyone take a life in the asking. Why? Why are we so different than other parts of the world where elections and violence are hand-in-glove? Whether by specific design or the slow march of progress, our society and culture has disavowed violence in the political process. People resignedly accept even the most bitterly contested loss without raising a fist or a weapon. Whatever the failings of our political system and culture, and they are legion, this has to be one of its greatest strengths. The supremacy of the rule of law - how do we export that to other nations? How do we get the Iraqis to commit to that? How do we get Afghanistan to favor the national whole over the tribal division?

These are almost impossible questions to answer and there are clearly many pieces to the puzzle. Get rid of corruption, strive for a fair judiciary, promote a national symbol, eliminate other forms of public violence and...I'm not sure what else. But ultimately it comes down to changing cultures, even changing religious beliefs to a certain extent. Our culture gradually developed into what it is today - is there any way to speed up that process in parts of the world where violence persists? I would hope that our next president, whoever that may be, has some very smart people working on these kinds of questions. Bush certainly didn't ask them, much to the detriment of his purported mission of spreading democracy. At the very least, we can insist that our next peacefully elected leader get started on some answers.

The ravings

2007-12-02T18:12:00.001-06:00

This semester for clinicals, we split between critical care and psychiatric nursing. Why they combined these two hugely disparate areas is well beyond me, but they've both been informative. I already work in an ICU, so the place I learned the most during the critical care portion was in the regional burn unit where I saw a young lady burned over almost her entire body do well and another woman burned over about 30% over her body eventually die because of her inhalation injuries. But the last 7 weeks I have been in the psych rotation and for that we spend time on an inpatient wing, where probably half the patients are on court-ordered 72 hour detentions because they are psychotic (in the technical sense, which basically means out of touch with reality) or suicidal. Or both, as it may be. The rest have usually signed themselves in for drug & alcohol detox or because they recognize they're getting out of control. Kind of in conjunction with that we also observe the "assessment team". Their job is to go out to ER's and assess patients that the police or the hospital have called about to see if they meet the criteria for admission into an inpatient unit. They also take walk-ins and do phone interviews.

This last week I went out with one of the assessment team to a local ER to evaluate a young man who had rather abruptly started acting weird. He'd had a recent diagnosis of a rather severe and life-altering illness and was started on some medications that may have caused this change in behavior. The young man, let's call him Ryan (not his real name, obviously) - Ryan's mother was there and the assessor wanted to talk to her first in order to get a better picture of what's been going on in the month since his diagnosis. For some reason she thought it would be appropriate for me to sit with Ryan while she talked with the mother. So I sit down and ask him how's he feeling. And that is when things got surreal.

At first, Ryan just seemed a bit hyper, which would not be all that unusual with the medication he had been on. But over the course of the 45 minutes I sat with him, it became clear that Ryan was far more than just hyper; he was full-on delusional. To call his delusional world elaborate would be an understatement. In his mind, he is the key player in bringing forth the Next Testament of God. The Old Testament was about God the Father, the New Testament about God the Son, and the Next Testament will be about God the Spirit. He does not know how it will come about but the reason he has been chosen is because he has "figured out the calculus" involved, he has seen the secret key that others in the past have missed. At this point, I have to point out that Ryan was a youth pastor who was also attending a Bible college before all this happened. So during this conversation, he's dropping Bible verses and talking about Ecumenical Councils and doing so in a rather sophisticated, even compelling fashion. He really believes what he's saying to me, believes it way down deep. So much so that he gives me a homework assignment! I'm to get all of the Casting Crowns CD's and all of the books by Ted Dekker and Austin Boyd. These will help me understand what is happening in the world right now, what God is using him to do.

As I'm listening to him there is a little battle going on inside my head, and it began with the simple question of what would someone listening to Paul or James or John have thought? To a first century Jew especially, but likely in general, they sounded crazy. To the Jew, the chance that God would reveal himself in a lowly carpenter who died a criminal's death would have had to sound just as preposterous as the "calculus" did to me on Monday. To a Gentile, the very idea of a single God may have seemed patently false. I don't believe this young man was anything other than completely out of touch with reality. And yet....

And yet I do believe in an active God, a God who moves and works in us and through us to change the world. A God who reveals more and more of himself to us, at least individually if not corporately as well. I guess it boils down to what if? What if these are more than just the ravings of delusionary man? What if they aren't? And who am I to decide?

Switched jobs again

2007-10-28T15:11:00.000-05:00

School is still miserably busy. I've started in the psych clinical and this teacher apparently has a love affair with grading pointless papers and projects because I've got a ton of 'em. And two of them require extensive "contact hours" outside of class. They're all due between now and Thanksgiving, so its going to be a busy few weeks.

And, perhaps stupidly, I decided now would be a good time to switch to a new area at work. I'm now splitting between the ICU and the ER. The ER is definitely a very different environment and I'm not sure if its for me or not, having only done a week of orientation. Of course, my current ambivalence could stem from the fact that I have to work three Saturdays as part of my orientation, which is taking away precious time from school work.

Just about 6 more weeks of school. Thank God.

School

2007-09-16T20:33:00.000-05:00

School is kicking my butt. I thought maybe this semester would be a little less with the busy work given that its "critical care." But that is not the case. I finished my first care plan this weekend, have 2 tests this week, a largeish paper to write next weekend and then a test that next week. After that, I might have a chance to finish my book review. Or not. They tend to toss a lot of things in at the last minute.

Evil and the Justice of God

2007-08-23T11:30:00.000-05:00

A couple of posts ago, I indicated that I was reading Evil and the Justice of God by NT Wright and described it as a disappointingly slim tome. Can I change my answer to just disappointing?

The book is short; only 174 pages including the index with just 5 chapters. Some online reviewers have indicated that Wright intended to pursue a larger volume but eventually decided to offer up this condensed version for publication. Oh, would that he had stuck to his original plan. The book suffers not because Wright has too little to say, but because he has too much and fails to do justice to his arguments. He only skims the surface of a subject that should be dived.

The first chapter is entitled Evil is Still a Four-Letter Word. The brief introduction to the chapter is an interesting exploration of why Revelations describes a new creation minus the sea and gives a concise overview of Wrights views on modernity's understanding of the problem of evil. Which is, specifically, progress shall overcome. The modern western world believes in progress and the evolution of society. As Wright puts it:

"In this climate, the fact that we live in 'this day and age' means that certain things are now to be expected; we envision a steady march toward freedom and justice, conceived often in terms of the slow but sure triumph of Western-style liberal democracies and soft versions of socialism. Not to put too fine a point on it, when people say that certain things are unacceptable 'now that we're living in the twenty-first century,' they are appealing to an assumed doctrine of progress...and progress in a particular direction." (pg 22)

If we just wait long enough, the inevitable progression of our society will eventually eliminate evil. There may be bumps along the way but things will get sorted out in the end. Wright identifies three of these bumps that he thinks should have derailed this blind faith in human growth, but didn't. World Wars I and II are the primary event-bumps, while writers like Barth and Dostoyevsky, both of whom criticized belief in "the steady advance of the kingdom of God from within the historical process," provided the intellectual bump. This has left Western society ill-equipped to deal with the "new problem of evil" (the sub-title of this section). When evil does occur, then, we first try to ignore it until it rises up and makes its presence keenly felt. This willful ignorance makes us surprised when evil does present itself, which, third, leads us to respond in "immature and dangerous ways." One of the immature responses to evil Wright singles out is the dichotomy of blame; I am totally not to blame or totally to blame. Wright thinks, and I agree, that we need a more nuanced view of evil, one that takes seriously our individual and national complicities in evil but that also does not fail to take into account other people's (individual and corporate) evil actions. We have to be able to own up to our own failures while being willing to point out those of others. Adding fuel to our evil-blind fire is postmodernity.

Still in the first chapter, Wright's section on the nihilism of postmodernism is cutting but arguably betrays his stance as a modern thinker. I think he is correct in his argument that, while we "can't escape evil within postmodernity...you can't find anyone to blame either." By deconstructing all metanarratives, even the metanarrative of the individual self, postmodernity leads to a fluid, un-fixed understanding of "I". How can "I" be held responsible for my actions when the "I" of today is not the "I" of yesterday which committed those acts? Postmodernism further muddies the waters by deconstructing the myth of human progress. However, instead of replacing it with a more realistic view of humanity, growth and our future potential (in Christ), postmodernity spins a web of nihilism. There will be no progress, no change, no redemption. Instead of a nuanced view of evil, we have the mire of the status quo.

Wright thinks there are 3 elements key to the West getting a realistic understanding of evil. The first is coming to see that Western-style democracy is not perfect and certainly not a world panacea. We're having enough trouble doing it right ourselves to be foisting democracy off on everyone around the globe in disparate cultures. Democracy is likely the best form of government out there for today's world, but it may create as many problems as it solves, or at least proffer them up in a deceptively different guise. The second element is psychological; we must come to see the inherent ambivalence at the heart of man and that any individual can perform acts of great goodness and great wickedness. And some give themselves over entirely to the lure of wickedness. "What I think we must come to terms with is that when we talk about evil we must recognize, as neither modernity nor postmodernity seems to me to do, that there is such a thing as human evil and that it takes various forms." Which brings up the third element; the recognition that the line between good and evil, us and them, runs through each and every one of us as individuals. We must not make the mistake of moral equivalency, viewing each criminal act as inherently equal, but nor must we make the opposite mistake of supposing that the criminal acts of "our side" (or "me") aren't evil when done at the expense of the other.

Wright finishes the chapter by asking the church to start to try to make sense out of all of this. How can the church teach a nuanced view of evil in today's world, specifically today's America? I think most conservative churches would be very hard pressed to do this in our political environment, given their role in helping to create it. To turn to a nuanced view of evil, to recognize America's complicity in evil around the globe, would just be eating too much crow for some leaders and would not be tolerated by the more nationalistic Christians among their flock. Which brings up one of the shallow points of this work. I expected Wright to tackle these, and other pressing issues, in the subsequent chapters since he did not raise them here. He has started off on a great foot, but quickly starts to get tripped up as we shall see.

(cont)

Baby registry

2007-08-14T14:04:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend, the wife and I went out a registered at a Target and Babies 'R Us. Since we're going to wait until the delivery to find out what we're having, we ended up picking out a lot of stuff in greens & yellows. I realize now one reason so many people decide to find out the sex of the baby; much easier to register. But the thing that really struck me during these trips was how totally consumer-oriented this type of registry has become. Baby has become big business, and it is evident the moment the staff person hands you the checklist of things you'll "need" and "should" register for. The checklist contains dozens of items. You actually need, and I mean need in the conventional sense of stuff you actually require, maybe a third of them. Things like clothes, bottles, diapers, a crib, car seat - the basic stuff. But the list also includes no fewer than three different pieces of sleep furniture (crib, bassinet and portable bassinet) and their various linen requirements, as well as a long list of other items that the baby will likely outgrow within a few months. Knowing that most couples do not have more than 2 children, these items will have a short half-life in most families, ultimately heading for the landfill or the garage sale.

What was most disturbing is how easily we started getting into adding to our list, and this with a mother-to-be who has spent ample time around small children and has a good idea of their actual needs. All these items of convenience just seem so, well, convenient. Which points to a sad reality that many people in this country seem to be looking at their children as either accessories or time-management problems. Which is why so many of the wares in these stores are geared towards fashion & decorating and child-warehousing. Your kid starts to bug you, put 'em in their bouncy seat, fashionably colored to match your existing decor. After we got home, we started mentally reviewing what we registered for and realized we probably didn't need most of it or that what it was ridiculously overpriced. How would a young mother or couple with no experience know you don't need some of this stuff or that its a waste of money? For me, the takeaway here is that its never too early to start teaching your children lessons about what's important in life, and it surely is not a $250 crib bedding set.

Sundry

2007-08-07T14:24:00.000-05:00

I turned 30 on Sunday. I turned 20 during my advanced training in the Army down at Ft Huachuca - needless to say a lot has happened in the last 1o years. I don't feel 30, though never having been 30 before, I'm not quite sure what 30 actually feels like. In the last few months, as I've contemplated this milestone, I suppose I've been rather uneasy with what this means. I'm 30 and still in school - for an associates degree, mind you - not established in any career (though both will change next May when I graduate and become an RN), not sure of where I want to live, am not well connected in any church, have few close friends and am really nowhere near where I thought I'd be when I turned 20. There are, mercifully, things I am quite clear on and happy about - my wonderful wife and coming child are at the top of that list. But all in all, there seemed rather more to be sad, or at least not happy, about. The day has come and gone, and aside from a few fun new things in my possession, it was a day like any other. And instead of making me sad, it oddly made me hopeful. These kinds of milestones give us a rod with which to measure our lives. In the last 10 years, have I become more like the person I want to be? Am I making progress towards my goals? What more do I need to accomplish? What do I need to change? This birthday has given me a reason to contemplate things that I may have been too busy to focus on otherwise and in my self-evaluation, I see new strengths and new possibilities within me as well as areas that need continued improvement. But on the whole, I think I am more like the person I want to be than I was 10 years ago. And that gives me hope.

It doesn't hurt that we just finished up a week in Florida, getting home somewhat late Saturday night. We drove down, which afforded us several opportunities to be incredibly grateful. On the way down, just inside of Tennessee, we got rear-ended on the highway going 70+ mph. A young guy in a black car came flying up behind us and hit us as he apparently mis-timed his move into the left lane. I was able to keep the car on the road but unable to get his license plate. Thankfully, the damage was minimal, mostly just paint, and we did not careen off the road to an untimely demise or serious injury. But that incident came to pretty much characterize the drivers we encountered down south. Even in pouring rain with horrible visibility, people were still driving well over 70mph and hanging out less than a car length behind other vehicles. It is no wonder we saw 1 definite and 2 likely fatal car accidents on the highway in Florida. We intended to drive up and stay with my uncle in Louisville on our way back, but about 30 miles south of the city, our car started squealing horribly. It only got worse when we slowed down and got off the highway. At first, I thought it was the power steering pump, but then noticed 2 bolts just sitting loose on top of the alternator. We had to get towed into a repair shop, which was by all external evaluations, a rather seedy place ran by a couple of unkempt individuals. First impressions did not inspire much trust. But these men proved me wrong, dead-wrong, fixing the vehicle right then and there and not charging me a dime. They could have easily taken me for a new power steering pump and belts, but they stayed open late to wave off any recompense. But if you are ever in the south Louisville area and need some auto repairs, I couldn't recommend BKC Auto enough.

Aside from those 2 unfortunate incidents, Florida was beautiful. The wife's uncle owns a condo that is about a 100 yard walk from a pristine, white-sand beach. Just gorgeous. I got a sunburn in a very weird pattern on either side of my chest where I apparently failed to apply sunscreen, but that didn't stop me from swimming and enjoying the beach most of the days we were there. We even made a little side-trip to St Petersburg, which is a pretty nice city. I haven't been to Louisville in at least 10 years, probably more like 15, and got to see cousins and their kids that I hadn't seen in that time. Louisville is also a nice city - not too big but with a lot going on. My uncle is an avid sailor, so we may get a chance to head down there and enjoy some time out on the water sometime this fall.

I've received or purchased several new books that I'm either presently reading or will be reading shortly. They are:

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, by Anonymous. I'm about halfway through this. While many of the points about the Bush administration's failure to consider Afghani culture before the invasion and the West's consistent misunderstanding of bin Laden are trenchant and important, the author seems locked in a world where neither societies nor people are capable of any meaningful change. His is a rather pessimistic view of the human condition and the book is the poorer for it.

Evil and the Justice of God, by NT Wright. I generally enjoy Wright's books and essays, what I can understand of them, that is. He sometimes assumes his reader knows the positions and parties of various debates certainly more than I do, but such is not the case with this disappointingly thin tome. He is clear and concise, but I wish he would include fewer "but we don't have space for that here's" and more expansion on those subjects. I will likely give a fuller review after I finish it.

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole, by Benjamin R. Barber. I have only briefly flipped through this book a couple of times, but with my growing awareness of how our consumeristic culture discourages faith, reasoned thought or mere satisfaction, I thought this looked like an interesting read.

A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini. I thought The Kite Runner was good and this is supposed to be even better. This novel covers a more contemporary period and I'm looking forward to seeing an Afghan's perception of the event in his country since 9/11.

The debut

2007-07-17T11:05:00.000-05:00

I present the very first picture of the fruit of my loins.

Torture, pt 2

2007-07-17T11:03:00.000-05:00

This is a little free-form, but hey, I've been busy.

If you're willing to kill someone, why would you have any problem with torturing them? Honestly, if you view someone else's life as expendable, which is necessarily how you must view someone if you are willing to sacrifice their life for some "policy objectives", why is their pain and suffering less acceptable than their death? It isn't, or at least it shouldn't be. If you're willing to consign someone to eternity, why should a few hours of pain trouble your conscience? Again, it shouldn't. So why does it? Why are people who are willing to support the killing of combatants and non-combatants alike, which is inevitable in modern warfare, unwilling to support torture? Personally, I think they lack the courage of their convictions. Or, rather, we see that their convictions about the taking of other human life is rooted more in fear for self than love of neighbor.

This may seem like a non-sequitur, so let me explain. If one is willing to kill, if one believes that the death of person A is necessary to save the life of the innocent person B, then on what basis would one decide that torturing person A or C (A's accomplice) is wrong? It clearly cannot be love of enemy, because the executing agent cannot simultaneously love and kill someone on the field of battle. So persons A & C are not spared torture because of love for their persons, since their deaths are viable options. If one is truly acting out of love for neighbor (the innocent B), how is sparing A & C pain, but not death, moral? You have essentially said that B's life is worth A's life, but not his suffering. On what basis is that calculation made? I can see no moral rubric for it; B's life is worth how much of A's suffering? Is there a time-limit? If we could strap A into some machine that would quantify his pain, is there a number over which B's life becomes forfeit, say 7 on a scale of 1-10? No matter how one attempts to negotiate that nebulous concept, it is clear that saving B is not really done for the love of B if one is not willing to torture A & C. So why do so many find it permissible to kill but not torture? It is irrational and on that basis, I can surmise only that it is a course dictated by fear. One is afraid that they will be next, or at least A will get to them somewhere down the line. B's life is entirely incidental to saving one's own self. Killing A can be justified, but I think the deep internal contradiction that is one's un-love for person B makes torture too messy and too direct. One is not the target & one doesn't love B, so a quick death is acceptable, but causing so much pain to someone for an essentially worthless objective is just too much.

So at least those who are willing to torture & kill are being consistent in their moral convictions. They understand the rubric and are unafraid to get their hands dirty. Whether its love of self or love of neighbor, the torturer is simply moving forward in a consistent manner. Death or torture; its all the same. Clearly love for one's enemy is non-existent. For Christians at least, this is the wedge. We are called to love both neighbor and enemy and not one more than the other, but both more than the self. The willingness to kill and to torture both betray a fundamentally consistent imbalance in love, weighting love of self, then neighbor and finally enemy.

What would the Christian's situation be if Christ had operated under that paradigm? (cont)

Big News

2007-06-28T14:54:00.000-05:00

The wife is pregnant! And in the first month of trying, thank you very much. We told most of the family yesterday. My in-laws already have 5 grandkids, but this is the first on my side, so while the in-laws were very excited, my mom was positively explosive. The official due date is February 27th, 2008. Personally, I'm hoping the little tyke will stay in just 2 days longer and be a leap baby, which would be pretty sweet.

All tips, hints, suggestions, ideas and experiences with pregnancy and baby-related stuff is greatly appreciated.

Torture, pt 1

2007-06-28T13:55:00.000-05:00

In the boardgame Cranium, each move involves responding to one of 4 different card sets. The "Data Head" and "Word Worm" sets require you to answer trivia questions and word-related items (like spelling a word backwards), respectively, while the "Star Performer" and "Creative Cat" involve variations of charades and pictionary, among others. I played Cranium with my former youth group once and we happened upon the Word Worm card that asks for the definition of "tortuous", giving three or four possible definitions. One was something like "twisty or winding" and another was "painful or difficult". The kids chose the latter definition, clearly confusing "tortuous" with "torturous", which is easy to do. I confess that I was thinking of that answer when the question was read. I never really thought much of that similarity until some blogs I've recently come across started discussing torture.

The first was Thom Stark's blog post A Free Iraq, which apparently offended a friend of his. He followed up with an update addressing his friend's views and was then subsequently invited to post a response to Death and the Maiden's question "What is torture and is it necessarily immoral?" Thom did respond, and so have several others (here and here), including one response by a professor who has studied aggression. To those who have not seen any of this, I'd highly recommend giving it a read - at the very least these are interesting and challenging perspectives, particularly to those Christians that believe torture may be morally permissible. Its after reading and pondering all of this that I've come to see how tortuous a logical path a Christians must follow in order to support torturous acts (bet you were wondering how I'd draw that together).

A second confession I need to make is that, in brutal honesty, I was not all that surprised or outraged when the Abu Ghraib abuses first came to light. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was despicable, juvenile and unbecoming a US soldier, but at the same time, perfectly in step with what I had experienced as a soldier on deployment. I was never even in an active war zone (though there were some threats, mostly from old land mines) but the stress of long days, separation from family, culture shock, the inevitable crap the military seems to foist on the junior enlisted and the sheer audacity of the local nationals to think they had the right of way at an intersection when I was clearly armed to the teeth and driving a 5-ton armored vehicle, let's just say it adds up. Now clearly, the last bit of that is facetious, but there's an underlying reality to it. The soldier is on a mission, a mission that has been given priority by command and the weight of official sanction, and it comes from the only people around you that look like you, speak the same language and long for the same home. In a soldier's mind the mission is paramount, like it or not, whether they believe in it or not. They've got a job to do and they're going to do it. But locals do not understand that mission and prioritize the living of their own lives, be that simple survival or going through the myriad social & economic tasks that define anyone's daily life. So they get in the way and become resentful of the intrusion of the soldier's mission into their life. And maybe they start resisting (violently or otherwise), which cannot help but raise the soldier's stress and start them resenting the people they thought they were there to help, which is what I found myself doing on many occasions. Its a series of short steps from standing menacingly with an assault rifle to intimidate possible enemies, to pointing it menacingly, to moving aggressively, to pushing, shoving, hitting all in the name of security. Starting down that path does not inevitably lead to torture, but its a healthy head start. So just based on my own experience in Bosnia, I was not surprised that soldiers would inflict this kind of juvenile aggression on prisoners.

The reason I wasn't outraged, though, had nothing to do with the soldier's experience and everything to do with the victim's. I've related some details of this in the past on this blog, but in Bosnia I was both privileged and damned to participate in the discovery of new evidence regarding previously unreported war crimes. The details of those events are not relevant to this post, though it is quite a story. The details of those war crimes, however, bear directly on my response to Abu Ghraib. Some of the documents we procured described in horrific detail the pointless and wanton torture of Croat and Muslims in a specific region in Bosnia. I say pointless and wanton because the torturers were not seeking any information whatsoever from their victims; they made them suffer for the sheer sport of it. I held in my hands accounts of men & women having their noses and ears cut off, their eyes gouged out, and their arms & legs broken before being driven out to a nearby river where they were shot and left to drown if they didn't bleed to death first. In light of that suffering, being forced to lay naked on the floor with some other men didn't seem all that bad. I bet, given a choice, any of those Croatians or Bosnian Muslims would have chosen Lyndsey England any day of the week.

As with many of the painful things I experienced in Bosnia, I tend to put these horrifying images of torture out of mind. I prefer not to think about it and to avoid those things that remind me of my time there. Which is why reading and writing about torture is actually fairly difficult for me. But, as with the public avowal of my commitment to nonviolence, it is time to start thinking & speaking clearly about those moral issues which impose themselves upon our era. Past eras have had to deal with slavery & freedom, religious liberty, women's rights and scientific advances that changed the landscape of the world. How we respond to terror, not only the terror of the jihadist or insurgent, but the officially sanctioned terror of the government, may well be our legacy to the future.

Reversal

2007-06-21T13:10:00.000-05:00

John Howard Yoder coined the term "Constantinianism" to describe the nature of the church that arose after Constantine's edict making Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. The church and the state became enmeshed with each other, each supporting the other's mission and actions. The state used its coercive power to enforce the state religion on the populace, just as it had previously under pagan rule, and added a specifically missionary component to its dealings with outside peoples and nations. This explicit marriage between the spiritual and political lasted even through the Reformation. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli - all allied themselves with local authorities to propagate their version of the Reformation, even granting political leaders the right to appoint clergy. Yoder draws numerous avenues of critique from this fatal mixing of politics and religion but one of the primary points he makes is the improper understanding of human agency that this arrangement inevitably brings about. Christians are not responsible for making history turn out right. Only One person can accomplish that task; our task is to be faithful to Him. We cannot control the flow of history and any effort to do so is really an attempt to usurp God's control of his creation. Thus, quite apart from questions of violence, Christians attempting to achieve political control is always frought with peril because we will find ourselves in an ongoing temptation to (attempt to) yank the reins out of God's hands, often for very good, "responsible" reasons. Mix in the ultimate issue of causing the death of another human being that we are supposed to be loving and inviting into the Kingdom, and we can see that the tight rope of political power shrinks even more. Yoder thus stands for a principled rejection of efforts to take control and to instead put dynamic trust in a God who will act when he sees fit.

But it must be admitted that one thing I personally struggle with now is how to apply my commitment to nonviolence to my participation in our government as a US citizen. The average Christian throughout most of the church's history really has not had to think about how to direct the state to act; a monarchy precludes popular participation in the decision making process. At most, a Christian had to decide about their level of participation in those activities, ie, whether to serve in the military (though this really wasn't a question for many of less-than-noble birth or means) or whether to join a religious order. With the ascension of democracy in the West, especially a secular democracy, Christians have had to tease out a theology of the state and their participation therein. This is doubly true of Christians committed to nonviolence as many aspects of state power require reliance upon or participation in violent acts. How do we reconcile our citizenship in the US with our citizenship in the Kingdom? At what point must we draw a hard line? a soft line? These are vexing questions, especially when considered in light of Yoder's thesis described above.

One the one hand, there is the unavoidable call to live lives that witness to the reconciling love of Christ. This love is expressed and demonstrated mainly in interpersonal ways, through the building of direct relationships and in direct encounters. It is face to face and hip to hip. But when this call to witness is introduced into a democratic environment, we have on the other hand the insidious temptation to wield our power as citizens to force the state to act on our behalf. Needless to say, such activity by the state cannot help but be impersonal, devoid of personal relationships and encounters, except by those employed by the state on its behalf. Take the current situation in Gaza and Israel. There is the strong temptation to attempt to influence the Bush administration to take a line that (rightly) acts to counter the suffering of innocent Palestinians presently trapped in Gaza. Here again is that horribly attractive proposal to be "responsible." We have an obligation as witnesses to the Christ that reached out to the poor and downtrodden to reach out to the poor and downtrodden in Gaza, so why not get out government in on it? Or, taking another current example, there is a relatively strong movement aimed at getting the US out of Iraq and opposing any military escalation with Iran. It varies from person to person, but a common thread coming from pacifist Christian camps is that since violence is wrong for the church, then it is our duty to act to prevent the US from acting violently.

At this point, it strikes me as glaringly obvious that these pacifists have themselves fallen for the Constantinian trap. They are attempting to wield state power on behalf of the Kingdom. Even granting its nonviolent impulses, how is this truly any different from the problems Yoder addresses? The church is conflating itself with the state, trying to use a power other than Christ to influence the world in favor of Christ or on His behalf. Yes, it aims to use peaceful means to bring about these "responsible" acts, but it is not the means that really matter. We once again return to the issue of trying to control history, to make things turn out right.

And this is where I struggle. I believe, with Yoder, that we are not called to a retreating quietism. We are called precisely out of separatist movements into direct engagement with the world around us. But what are the limits of that engagement? Can we engage in local politics? state politics? Should we attempt to serve on school boards or city councils? Should we hold elected office? Should we attempt to influence the national course through protest & demonstration? Or through letter writing & phone calls to our representative? Or not at all? Where and when can we act through the state and when can we not?

Here are some others who are working through similar issues:
Our Christian Discipleship as Political Responsibility
Toward a Cultus Publicus
The King Reigns From the Tree

Miracle?

2007-06-18T20:22:00.000-05:00

This afternoon, a patient transferred over into the neuro section I was working in. He is a young man - probably mid 20's by the looks of him - who had, in the middle of a fight with his girlfriend, put a gun to his head just above the temple and pulled the trigger. The bullet went pretty cleanly through the frontal lobe of his brain and out the other side, leaving an amazingly minimal amount of exterior damage. The mere fact that he is still alive, even on intensive life support, is, well, nothing short of miraculous. If he survives he could spend the rest of his life in a vegetative state, or perhaps, be consciously trapped inside a fragmented and broken mind.

Is his (initial) survival a miracle in the true God-acted sense of the word?

New job....sort of

2007-06-17T18:24:00.002-05:00

There's this older episode of Scrubs where all the characters reflect on their best day in medicine. They start off with some funny moments or stupid moments, but eventually all come to think about this one particular patient and his young son. For me, the best moment I've had in medicine took place at my previous job. Most of those patients were on the upswing after a lengthy ICU stay, so both patients and families were settled in for the long haul of recovery. For families sometimes those initial moments of loss, fear and doubt are the hardest to deal with, and sometimes it is trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel as your loved one struggles through yet another day where progress is measured in millimeters, if at all. I walked into a room with a patient and his wife to answer the call light. This man had had a host of problems and infections, leaving him short one leg, severely weakened and with a bad case of C. diff (I won't describe it; let's just say its bad stuff). The wife was standing, looking out the window and I could tell she was crying. So casual-like, I start talking about the progress her husband has made, how getting well is sometimes a three-steps-forward-two-steps-back kind of thing with the elimination of a major problem causing some minor ones and how, once this problem was nipped in the bud, he'd start really getting back to his old self and going home. I spent 30 minutes in that room, which was 25 minutes longer than I needed to accomplish my task but not one second less than I needed to do my job. By the end of our conversation, the wife was smiling and laughing and I think finally able to see the twinkle of light off in the distance.

That is my best moment in medicine so far, so I'm not sure why I find it so surprising that I'm not particularly liking my present position. For the last 6 months, I've been working in the ICU as part of a student nurse program. Its been a great experience and I've enjoyed all the new things I've had the chance to learn. We have a diverse patient population, including traumas (car accidents and the like, including the occasional shooting or stabbing), post-op heart and cardiovascular patients and a neuro-ICU where we have stroke & brain injury patients. There's a fair amount of excitement with codes and bed-side procedures and always something new to watch or do. But pretty much everyone is unconscious or intubated, which makes developing relationships with the patient difficult, to say the least. And visiting time is severely restricted, not just because we're in and out of the rooms so much and with families things just get too crowded, but also because we do do so many bedside stuff that other patients' privacy would be compromised. So again, not much room to develop relationships or help them find hope. I really expected that all the technical expertise that goes into being a critical care nurse (and its a lot, let me tell you) would be fulfilling for me, but it just isn't. There are parts that can be quite satisfying, but overall, its just not making me look forward to work as I have in the past.

Thankfully, I've been able to change my position so that I will now split my time between the ICU and the oncology floor. If I really enjoy oncology, I may simply go to work there full-time. I'm hoping that oncology will give me the best of both worlds; most patients are still in relatively critical condition and oncology requires its own unique expertise, but most patients are also alert & oriented, which makes conversations a whole lot easier. I should start there in a few weeks, just as summer school is wrapping up.

Old man

2007-06-07T10:15:00.000-05:00

On my way to work, I pass by a nursing home. It sits right on the corner of a large, busy street that is the main thoroughfare on this side of town, and a smaller street that fronts older homes and a few small businesses. The nursing home is, by any standard, a handsome building. It is a three story brick Victorian with 2 rounded turrets and a wide porch that wraps around the front of the building, filled with wooden rocking chairs. The trim around the many windows is done all in white and there are two large bay windows on the second and third floors that face out onto the street. It looks like a pleasant place to live and offers a similarly pleasant name; something with "sun" in it, I think.

While not well-known, but certainly not held secret, the third floor of this nursing home is an Alzheimer's facility. As everyone does know, Alzheimer slowly eats away at your memory and mental capacities, making you in turns forgetful, delusional and, finally, nearly vegetative, until your brain can no longer tell your body to keep on living or you die from something else. Alzheimer's patients have the rather disturbing tendency to go wandering, and given their deteriorating mental state, many will not know where they're going or possibly even who they are. Which is why all of the exterior doors on an Alzheimer's wing are alarmed and why most of the patients have bed and chair alarms to alert the staff if the person tries to get up.

It has happened a few times that on my way home from work, I have seen an old man in a wheelchair seated at the third story bay window, looking out over the intersection. Since I travel the smaller street, I have had a couple of minutes to consider him as I wait for the light to turn. He sits, unmoving, possibly asleep. There is no one else around him. If he is awake, he sees to his right (and mine on the corner) a gas station. Diagonally across the street he sees a low grassy hill that partially obstructs a large, squat church that clearly spent money on space and not aesthetics. To his left, across the busy street, is an old office building. The exterior of this building is completely covered in a grey mesh made of either concrete or metal. Whether artistic or meant as an insulative layer, from this distance, it makes the building look like a cold featureless box. And at this time of day, there are no cars in the parking lots of the office or the church. The traffic on the main road flies by while people wait idly for their chance to speed across the larger road on their way home. As the window faces east, he does not even get to see the beauty of the sunset, but instead, the steady encroachment of the coming night.

And how awful that night must seem to this man. The approaching end (and subsequent beginning) of another day spent in a place that has alarms on all the doors, more like a prison than a home. The approaching night of death. The approaching night of the complete obliteration of the self from an insidious disease. Who is to say which inspires the greatest dread? And what does he do as the waning day gives over to darkness but sit and look over a cold scene, seeing people still in the quick of life hurry past? Does he draw comfort from that? Does this view inspire some hope in him? Does he seek it out? Or does the staff simply park him there, thinking he enjoys it when, perhaps, it saddens or terrifies or does nothing for his diminished mind? And what would he say to me, to us, to a world that has seemingly forgotten him? What lessons, what wisdom, what knowledge is being lost?

I do not know. What I do know is that on the nights I see him, I go home and hug my wife all the harder and am just a little more grateful. And a little more afraid of the coming night.

My new favorites

2007-06-03T20:05:00.000-05:00

My new favorite magazine and my new favorite show.

I think I heard about Make magazine on a tv show - can't remember which - and was lucky enough to find it at Border's. Each issue is practically a mini-book and has a bunch of articles on weird, interesting and practical stuff people are making on their own, either through hacking old machines or buying parts and making stuff from scratch. The last 20 or so pages are also filled with step-by-step instructions for projects you can do at home. I've been looking for a hobby and this sure beats video games, so I'm thinking I might try a few of these things out.

Cities of the Underworld is just plain awesome in almost every respect. Each show goes to an old city in Europe (so far, I don't know if they're planning on going elsewhere) and the host, along with his intrepid camera crew and local guide, delve into the buried past. Some of the locations are amazing and you see the foundations of modern buildings that were built on walls that are maybe 1500 years old. I guess they knew how to build back then. You get some nice historical background on the architecture, what happened in the city, why these areas were buried and so on. You also get the frenetic host's rather annoying habit of saying "And nobody knows this is here!" at least 5 times a show. Which is probably true of some of the locations, but in the Paris show, he said that in the midst of tunnel walls that were completely covered in modern graffiti, and I mean miles and miles of graffiti. Apparently somebody knows its there.

Check 'em out.

Hopelessness

2007-05-23T12:42:00.000-05:00

For most Americans, when you speak of war, one war in particular comes to mind; World War II. It is the paradigm of war in our national mind and you could hear its echoes in the rhetoric that so many promulgated after 9/11. We were (and in the minds of many, still are, regardless of our national exploits since the end of Hitler) innocent victims, dragged into a war we did not want by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. But once the Japanese made that mistake, by golly, we were going to set things right, finish the job, walk the line and oppose those twin evils of Japanese imperialism and Nazi fascism wherever they dared hide. And there is, obviously, no doubt that the German and Japanese regimes were lead by people bent on not just power and conquest, but that they sought those gains on the blood and skulls of the innocent. In Germany, the millions who were murdered in the concentration camps. For the Japanese, the Rape of Nanking and similar atrocities committed against "enemy combatants" in occupied lands. We, the virtuous, aggrieved nation overcame them through the selfless (and it was absolutely that) sacrifice of our soldiers, the ingenuity of our scientists and the savvy of our leaders, demonstrating for good and all the power of good over evil.

Or so the national narrative of WWII seems to go, give or take a few points, in the national mind. There are many points about this narrative that could be debated, not the least of which were some of our tactics aimed against civilian populations or the use of nuclear weapons. But that is not my point. My point is that for most Americans, war is ultimately not about death, politics, liberty or even national survival; war is about hope. War, and the subsequent American victory we have come to expect (the war in Vietnam not withstanding) confirms in our national mind that good really will triumph over evil and that we are on the side of good. Wars then become issues of cosmic significance. They are as much about who we say we are and our hope for the future (both short term and eternal) as they are about the real-world political situation that entails armed conflict. They confirm our national identity, bolster our self-regard and help us to look past our obvious failings. And what else could you expect from a nation that has, almost since its inception, been conflated and confused with the Church? The Church/America is God's kingdom, God's agent of justice, God's prophetic voice to the world and the community of the chosen, the elect. Our victory is nothing less than God's victory, and what surer sign exists of God's blessing? I recognize that I am making a generalization and that this is not true for every American, but I think it is true for most. War may be regarded as a regrettable but necessary evil or a positive force for justice, but behind those statements is the sentiment I have described above. For America, war is hope.

The problem is, war is not that for the rest of the world. War is not hope, it is hopelessness. This is a conclusion I came to during my time in Bosnia, but Dan's post really made me think about it again. For most of the world, war is not about the triumph of good over evil or the vanquishing of some distant enemy; war is about lifelong friends and neighbors one day deciding to kill each other for some very petty reasons. War is about wanting what your neighbor has or blaming him for your low position, and so you set out to take what he has or to punish him for the inexcusable crime of being a Serb/Croat/Muslim/Hutu/Tutsi/Tamil/Timoran/Hindu/Buddhist/Christian/Kurd/Sunni/Shiite, well, you see my point. The list of excuses for killing one's neighbors seems endless and include ethnicity, religion, geographical origin, skin color - all the things that we "peacefully" deal with in America, but elsewhere, are perfectly good reasons to view those around you as expendable. But in many instances, this is little more than fratricide once removed and leads inevitably to despair and and an all-pervasive hopelessness. People cling to their hope, to be sure, as I saw in the Serbs who were willing to live on donated land, building their future homes a few bricks at a time as money barely trickled in from the government or their meager salary. But for most of them, the answer for their children was not to stay and rebuild, to heal the wounds of the past and to try to forge a new future with old enemies, it was to flee to Europe, to build a life and a future elsewhere. What is that but a lack of hope? What greater statement of hopelessness is there than to deny that a homeland, a language, an identity, a family is worth suffering for? That is the reality of war. No matter who wins, everyone loses. No matter what injustices are suffered, no matter what atrocities committed, no matter what horrible enemies are overcome, it ultimately leads to dissolution for both victors and victims. War is not about hope, despite what America seems to implicitly believe.

War is hopelessness and that is why I cannot fight.

Three years old

2007-05-20T18:11:00.001-05:00

I just realized that yesterday was this blog's third year in existence. I might need to put together a little retrospective as I've covered a lot of ground in the three years since I started this thing.

I am a pacifist

2007-05-17T15:22:00.000-05:00

For many reasons I cannot fully identify, a convergence of factors in my life has pushed me to reveal this little fact about myself; I believe in Christian non-violence. I do not "admit" this because I am in no way ashamed of it. My reasons for not revealing this prior to now have been relatively simple - I didn't want the baggage of the term, I didn't think it really mattered whether or not I made this fact known, and, admittedly, out of a certain self-centeredness. See, I didn't become a pacifist after I left the military, I became on while still in the Army Reserves, on deployment, in fact, and filed for a discharge as a conscientious objector (which is rather frustratingly still pending). This latter information, more than the pacifism, seems to bother most people. Nevermind that I served honorably, even admirably, and with a high degree of effectiveness in my military job. Nevermind that I was recognized for my achievements, that my enlistment was actually extended beyond my initial contract or that I precisely followed the Army's own system for dealing with these kinds of things (as opposed to going AWOL & fleeing to Canada) - an admission to actually filing for the discharge seems, in the minds of a great many Christians, to taint me as a coward, a hypocrite, a de facto Nazi and/or terrorist and an overall worthless piece of garbage not worthy of respect or consideration.* So, not wanting to subject myself to this kind of nonsense and to avoid the knee-jerk reaction of those who would use this knowledge to dismiss my arguments about war (especially our current national endeavors), peace and the marks of Christian love, I kept it to myself. I preferred to make my points, proffer my opinions and debate topics undercover, as it were. Which actually never made any kind of difference since people generally assumed that for all my resistance to this war or this bit of violence I ultimately agreed with them that war & violence are acceptable in general.

I not only realized that my debating strategy was ineffective, but I also realized, thanks to a re-reading of The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder, that my understandable aversion to being electronically spat upon is also an understandable aversion to bearing my cross. If I truly believe that a key component of the Gospel is a call to non-violence, and I do, then I should be unafraid to make that known. I should be honest about that not only because I should be prepared to suffer for my King and the message of His Kingdom, but also because letting people know about my commitment to non-violence is in itself a way of preparing them to ask some hard questions. Part of the Army discharge process for a CO is an interview by a chaplain and the chaplain I spoke with had clearly never been presented with even the possibility that Christians may not be able to participate in violence. He seemed genuinely surprised that such a view existed, outside maybe the Amish or some similar group. So to state my pacifism (and like Hauerwas, it is not a word I like) is to refuse to answer the questions as they are posed by our present culture by showing that there more possible choices than just 'A' or 'B'; there are, in fact, entirely different questions to be considered.

So, there it stands. I am a pacifist. I will tell more of how I got to this point in the future, as well as discuss some specific issues or works that I'm reading. If you have questions, suggestions or just want to debate, you can email me - littlefights@gmail.com, or leave a comment.

*I was called all of these things and more on Christian web-forums when I discussed my then plans to seek a discharge.

Last week was hard/weird

2007-05-07T13:18:00.000-05:00

The semester is finally over. Last Tuesday I took my final and managed to squeak through the class with an 'A'. Which is no mean feat when 93% is an 'A' and your teacher, bless her heart and her obvious devotion to preparing good nurses, writes what can generously be described as only mildly-horrible tests. At least 10% of the questions on every test have two right answers. Not one answer is better than the other, which I'm told is a frequent occurrence on the RN licensing exam - you know, which is the first, best thing you should do when your patient is coding or something. No, these are questions like "A common symptom of liver failure is?" and jaundice and elevated serum liver enzymes are offered as separate answers (both are right, by the way). Normally we can argue these questions when we get our tests back and she will occasionally see our point, or the book's point, or her lecture note's point, and allow both answers. But there is no chance for that on the final since we don't ever come back to class. I was borderline going into the final, knew there would be at least a few questions that were just a blind guess and thought there was a good chance I would guess incorrectly between two correct answers, thus scoring poorly enough to drop my grade. I didn't find out what my final grade was until Thursday, so it was a somewhat tense couple of days.

So that was Tuesday, but the week actually started out on a much less promising note. We've been looking for a church here for some time now, and we decided to try a new one that is part of the denomination the wife grew up in (and for which the father-in-law still works). This church was also highly recommended to me by a nurse I work with. So we went. It was nice. Good music, good mix of ages and family situations in the congregation, casual but not too casual, people were friendly - all those little things that are nice to see on your first visit. Until the pastor got up to speak. In reality, there was absolutely nothing wrong with this pastor. He was finishing up a series on parenting and made some really good points about the role of parents in the family - setting up boundaries, consistency, fairness, communication. He was energetic, passionate, engaging and had the unfortunate quality of sounding, and even looked a little, like the pastor that fired me 2 years ago to the day. Bizarre coincidence. And a rather upsetting one. I know that whole situation wounded me pretty deeply and for reasons that are not always easy to articulate, but I honestly thought I had gotten mostly past that. I feel like I've dealt with it. I can generally think about it without getting angry or sad, and I frequently don't think about it for weeks at a time. The wife and I are in a pretty good place in our lives right now and I'm thankful to be here, doing what I'm doing. No, its not my absolute ideal, but it feels right. So I was caught completely off guard by the range of negative emotions just listening to this pastor speak brought up in me; anger, sadness, frustration, anxiety - all the tumult I felt back then was right back, center-stage. It wasn't like picking a scab off of a wound; it was like getting shot in the same place again. It kind of put a funk on the whole afternoon and left me and the wife feeling just wrong. Needless to say, I don't think that is where we'll end up.

So I go from the unpleasantness of Sunday morning, to an entire Monday of cramming for finals on Tuesday. Tuesday comes and goes, which is a relief, but I'm left the tension of not knowing my final grade for the class. I'm mostly an 'A' student and potentially missing one by a few points is very frustrating to me. I'm scheduled to work Wednesday-Friday because I had to juggle my school schedule to accommodate studying for finals. I show up Wednesday morning, everything is going fine until lunch time, when a code-blue is announced overhead. The way things work in my hospital is that when someone codes (ie, dies or gets well along in the process of dying), the floor nurse calls the operator, who makes an announcement overhead, which sends a designated ICU nurse, a respiratory therapist (RT) and a pharmacist scrambling for their respective supplies as they make a mad-dash for the elevator. Once on scene, the ICU nurse takes charge of the code until a doctor arrives. My nurse was assigned codes for that day, so when the call came in, we went running. Another ICU nurse and 2 student techs also came along to assist & observe (participating in a certain number of codes is required for a few different professional accreditations). We get to the room, which quickly becomes crowded by the 7 of us, another RT, at least 3 nurses from the floor and a number of doctors. One of the other students begins compressions, but she is a rather slight thing and we're working on a larger patient (a woman in her early 40's), so I am put in to take over for her. This is the first time I've ever done compressions, first time I've ever seen a code. And it is nothing like you see on TV.

The CPR is fast and furious, with RT's alternately bagging and trying to intubate while we compress like mad. No 1-2-3-4-5, breathe - they're forcing it in as we're pushing on the chest. Monitoring patches are put on, an automatic defibrillator set up and still the compressions continue. I could feel/hear her ribs crack under my hands, but no matter, you keep pushing, pushing, pushing. Ribs will heal but her body needs the blood. I compressed for probably 10 minutes straight, pausing only long enough for them to shock her or try to get the breathing tube in. The shocks were not dramatic - no exaggerated arching of the back, no loud thump or sound of electricity. Just a whine from the defibrillator indicating it had charged, followed by a "Clear!" and then the lady's arms twitching when the shock was applied. And then back to compressions. I was drenched in sweat when another student stepped in to take my place. We rotated through the three of us then, every couple of minutes, though by the end, none of us were lasting more than 30 seconds. My arms burned, my shoulder felt like jello and my whole body was drained. Still, you push. The entire episode turned into nothing more than pushing, shocking and injecting drugs in a kind of organized chaos - all heads turned toward the monitor, hoping, praying for a rhythm, anything other than the horrible, small wavy line that indicated nothing but random electrical activity in the heart. We worked for 35 minutes before the doctor finally called it.

And then it was over. The room cleared. We gathered our equipment and left. For 35 minutes every person in that room was focused on doing anything and everything to bring that lady back. People were handing up supplies, pushing drugs through her IV, adjusting the equipment, asking & answering questions, relaying information to people in the hall - just a hundred different things going on at once. And in the time it took a single man to utter a single sentence, it stopped. It was done and she was gone. The whole drama of life and death and all of eternity opening up for this person was over in less than a second. The quiet that ensued was such a stark contrast that you'd almost think nothing had happened, that we had all gathered in this small room around this metal bed for no apparent reason and now, realizing that our presence served no purpose, were leaving, back to our jobs and daily routines, befuddled by our pointless presence.

In my less-than-2-years in the medical field, I have handled at least a dozen dead bodies. I have washed them, removed IV lines, catheters and readied them for transfer to the morgue. I have put them in body bags, affixed toe-tags, packed up their belongings and carted them down to a large walk-in cooler in the basement. Most of these deaths were expected, even planned in a way. The families had decided to remove life support and on a set day and time, the machines were unplugged, the tubes removed and the person died. Sometimes quickly, sometimes they lingered for hours or days. But everyone knew death was coming soon and there would be no announcement overhead, no mad scramble for supplies or sprints to the elevator. That was the key difference - this lady still had hope, or at least there was hope to be had. It was a struggle to walk away from that bed, to renounce that hope. I came out of that room a changed man; now, more than ever, will I fight to keep that hope alive in those entrusted into my care by their families and Creator. I will push until all hope is gone.

Things that should never be said in church again

2007-03-27T18:44:00.000-05:00

The wife and I checked out a new church on Sunday. And by new I mean brand new. It was started not too long ago by the former youth pastor at my in-law's church. I'm not sure what all lead him to quit his old church and start this new one, but I do recall something about his wanting to reach out to the pomo generation, do the emergent church thing or something like that. I wanted to go mostly out of curiosity because of that and because the church presently meets in a really nice movie theater. It was, admittedly, more than a bit disconcerting to walk into "church" and see a bunch of movie posters and gigantic cardboad cutouts of kids moview characters. But there were a lot of younger couples there, which was encouraging to the wife and me. We've been here close to 2 years and really haven't made any new friends not directly related to work or school.

The service was fine. The sermon maybe started a little rough but he got it together pretty quickly and came to a good, challenging conclusion at the end. The music was also good, with, I think, a good song selection, not too much repetition and worshipful without that overly forced worshipfulness that seems to afflict a lot of worship leaders nowadays. One thing it definitely was not was 'emergent.' It seemed pretty straight forward and evangelical to me, just with a younger pastor and congregation. There are a few other churches we want to check out, but its made the short list of those that warrant a repeat visit.

Couple of things that bugged me and the wife, though. There was the ubiquitous church bulletin with the little card asking for name, address, interests, 'faith response', etc. First, they asked everyone to fill out the card so that "we'll have a record of your attendance." A record of my what?! Am I back in grade school? Am I going to get a perfect attendance award at the end of the year? No. At least I don't think so, though that might draw more people to come. A nice little trophy or a plaque of some sort could be just the thing to fill the seats. I never got one in elementary school - now might be my chance!

The second annoying thing was that at the end of this otherwise good and challenging sermon, the pastor asked everyone to "journal our thoughts" on said little card and to drop them in the offering basket as it comes by. Now, this isn't a large card. It isn't even a 3x5 card. It was 3x3, maybe 3x4, but that was pushing it. And one side was completely covered in the name-address-faith commitment-interested in serving stuff. Heaven forbid you actually wanted to "journal your thoughts" you wouldn't have had room to do more than a line or two. Three if you wrote really, really small. And they immediately transitioned into a song that the worship leader asked us to stand up for. I'm not sure what kind of journalling response they were hoping for but I'm pretty sure they didn't get it. Don't try some new little activity unless you're actually going to structure things to do that little activity. So no more journalling in church. Unless you really need that 'A' to make up for a bad attendance record.

The Twilight of Atheism

2007-03-15T18:08:00.000-05:00

A couple of months ago, I downloaded a lecture by NT Wright from "Open Forum", which is hosted by City Church of San Francisco. Also on the page is a lecture by Alister McGrath. I recognized the name and decided to download his as well. I listened to them both several times during my workouts and was struck by McGrath's discussion about Richard Dawkins, who is apparently a rather militant atheist. I remember picking up his book, A Devil's Chaplain while at Borders a couple of years ago and found it rather unimpressive from a cursory examination. McGrath is presently a theologian, but once pursued a career, and graduate degrees, in the sciences and came to faith as a result of his studies. He is well spoken, irenic and not a little funny in the audio file, so I decided to see which of his many books were available at our brand new downtown library.

I checked out The Twilight of Atheism and have been working through it for the past couple of weeks. It begins with an abridged review of the history of atheism, starting, surprisingly enough, with the early Christians who were accused of atheism for not supporting the imperial cult of the emperor or the Roman pantheon. He moves onto the French Revolution, the rise of modernism, communism and the ways in which the natural sciences became battle grounds in the alleged war between faith and reason. He highlights the works of 3 iconic atheist figures: Feuerbach, Marx and Freud, and examines their main arguments. He touches on some other figures, such as Nietzsche, Carl Jung and others that contributed to the rise and power of atheism in the last 2 centuries.

The book itself is rather short, only a few hundred pages, and the first half is devoted mainly to this historic review. The second half of the book, which I'm just about finished with, focuses on the present day situation of atheism, the waning of modernism and the rise of postmodernism, and the ways in which the church is generally responding. It must be said that McGrath, while a devoted Christian, is not above seeing the shortcomings and failures of Christians and the church. He offers a fairly lengthy discussion on the ways in which the Reformation actually laid much of the foundation for the rise of atheism and identifies the key weaknesses that still plague the mainline Protestant churches. He criticizes some of the early Protestant churches for creating a theology that effectively cut God out of the world in their zeal to eliminate Catholic ways of thinking and possible abuses. For instance, Calvin and Zwingli focused so heavily on the role of scripture in the life of the Christian that they eliminated the potential to encounter God in the natural world. Encountering God outside of the Bible could lead to a Christianized nature-religion, as did develop in parts of Europe and elsewhere. This desacralized nature in the minds of many Christians and McGrath argues it was but a short step to move from a distant God to no God at all.

I'd recommend the book, though there are some portions which are a bit sloppily edited; there are some redundant sections and the flow isn't all that great. The main thing I think I've taken away from this book involves the ways in which Christians have hitched themselves to the dominant cultural themes in their respective times. Simply put, we have to avoid doing that because as believers, we have a strong tendency to dogmatize. Modernistic Christians have built an immense edifice based on reason, rationalism and the pursuit of an absolute, objective knowledge. They have tended to treat God more as an object of study than a person to be worshipped and experienced. As the culture shifts away from modernism's ideals, the ties between theology & reason have become so tightly woven that the fall of modernism starts to pull on faith as well. The same is true of the current political and scientific strategies that many Christians have undertaken. If those scientific underpinnings change, as happened when Darwin initially came upon the scene, what happens to the church and the faith she holds? If we dogmatically link our theology to a specific scientific principle, then disproving the latter inevitably damages the former. I think we should still engage in apologetics, particularly in the natural sciences, but we have to do so with a fair degree of caution lest we inadvertently lay the groundwork for a future assault on the faith.

Unity08 - Can't we all just get along?

2007-02-14T20:00:00.000-06:00

I received the January/February edition of the Atlantic last week - probably a little late due to it being a Christmas gift-subscription. This issue has a special focus on the state of the union, highlighting 4 critical areas: post-Katrina education reform in New Orleans serving as an experiment for the rest of the nation, Chief Justice Roberts' views on judicial temperament and his goals for leading the Court, a profile of a gene-mapper and his efforts to use this technology to help find new energy sources, and a brief exploration of Unity08. All of these articles are interesting, especially the education & court readings, but Surprise Party was probably the most intriguing, at least at first. Apparently a group of old-time political operatives and campaign managers got together for dinner just before the mid-term elections, voiced their concerns and frustrations with the way campaigns (and politics) are being run at present and decided to do something about it. The players are Doug Bailey, who worked for President Ford, and Jerry Rafshoon and Hamilton Jordan. The latter two worked for President Carter's campaign.

What they want to do is field a bi-partisan ticket, chosen by the first online political convention made up of anybody who gets on the website and signs up. Their goal is to retake the center of American politics by putting up centrist candidates who, due to the bipartisan nature of the ticket, will appeal to voters firmly in the middle. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Its a Goldilocks kind of political endeavor. They're hoping that America will be largely dissatisfied with the candidates the main parties pick, thus building momentum for their ticket and giving the middle a voice. They're also avoiding money from PAC's and businesses, and are instead relying solely on personal donations to fund the campaign. Due to the novel nature of their endeavor and their reliance on the internet, they think they should be able to do this on the cheap, which sounds reasonable for the initial stages.

The article is rather upbeat, painting a rather rosy picture with poll numbers, innovators that have gotten onboard with the group and even making comparisons with the feel-good Clint Eastwood movie "Space Cowboys." For anyone dissatisfied with the current political climate and the way money & special interests seem to trump common sense and whats-best-for-the-nation, Unity08 sounds like a winner.

At least until you visit the website.

A brief survey of the online forums reveals that all this come-togethery-feel-good-ness isn't quite working out as planned. The old, contentious and deep running issues still come to the fore. Will Unity08 be pro-choice or pro-life? Its looking to be pro-choice, with most pro-life members getting flamed or accused of religious bigotry (perhaps not too surprising given one of the major fundraisers is Roger Craver, a man who helped create and fund NARAL and NOW). The same is true of the issue of gay marriage. Many are willing to cede that the word "marriage" should not be used to describe gay civil unions, but most of those also want to eliminate the word from all legal references as well. Essentially, they want the government to recognize nothing but civil unions, regardless of the participants, and leave "marriage" up to those religious folk who choose to call their unions such. Those who have their doubts or concerns are roundly ignored.

Is Unity08 for or against troop withdrawals, time-tables, surges and all the other stuff swirling in debates about the Iraq war? You honestly can't pin it down to any one plan, but it seems to be landing well on the side of a near-term withdrawal. Personally, I think that's a good idea for reasons I may explicate in a later post, but I don't know how that's going to play to middle America, especially if there isn't a lot of sound reasoning behind it.

There are, of course, many other issues that need to be discussed, but from what I've seen, most of the participants are ending up left-of-center in their views, which does not bode well for Unity08's chances. It is also not clear how having a Republican president and Democrat VP (or vice versa) will result in any more bipartisanship than we currently see. Whoever is the top man (or woman this time around) still wields the greatest power and is still at least somewhat beholden to his party and its base. There is nothing to say or require that the VP will have any more power or say in the way things are run. If the President doesn't want to let them throw their 2 cents in, they will be sidelined.

Representative of this problem is the attitude of many on the website who don't even want to hear opposing views. One such poster requested a function to screen all comments from "those who aren't contributing positively to this movement." Many of the threads seem to be degenerating into little more than ad hominem attacks, petty stereotyping and the airing of old grievances. Is this any way to build a new political movement? One that aims to shake up the current system and retake the executive office for the center of American politics that seems to be largely ignored? It sure doesn't seem like it. I don't know how Unity08 can expect to overcome these issues, especially with a nearly non-existent presence of the founders & leaders in the web-forum. Since these forums are the only way Unity08 can build a platform or identify the qualities they want in a candidate, these seems tantamount to suicidal incompetence.

Ultimately, I hope Unity08 is able to shake things up a bit. I'd like things to not be so caught up in the extremes of either party. But I also seriously doubt that this kind of ground-up democracy can really work in such a polarized era. Unless the leadership takes on the burden of seriously trying to build a bridge and find constructive ways forward, I think Unity08 will end up as little more than an interesting historical footnote.

Does attendance = approval?

2007-02-08T15:19:00.000-06:00

Driving home from clinicals this afternoon, I was hopping around the radio dial and ended up on a Catholic AM station. I would normally listen to NPR when I'm in the mood for talk, but they were discussing the new diet drug "Alli" and I've dealth with more than enough fecal incontinence to not need to hear about it on the radio. A caller revisited a topic the host had discussed in a previous show, wherein he told someone that it would be wrong for him/her to attend a wedding of a Catholic to a non-Catholic. The caller, who described her family as "very Catholic", was troubled by the host's statement because her son (himself apparently quite Catholic, as well) is engaged to a non-Catholic and she found the idea that she should boycott the wedding, and possibly the reception, to be "arrogant, harsh, legalistic and unloving." The host's response was rather lackluster and it wasn't entirely clear whether or not a Catholic marrying a Protestant or Orthodox is more acceptable in his mind than marrying a Buddhist or some such.

Initially, I favored the argument of the mother. How is it witnessing to the love of Christ to refuse to attend your own son's wedding? What kind of message does that send to the would-be daughter-in-law? I'm not one for an overly pragmatic view of things - what's right should be done regardless of how others perceive it - so the question is what's right? Is communicating disapproval of the marriage right? I agree there are some serious problems with the marriage of a believer to a non-believer, problems internal to the marriage, to the individuals and externally to the community of believers. So if the disapproval is correct, is this the best way to communicate that? Is showing love right? Of course, is that really showing love? If you truly believe that Christ is the answer to the most important questions and that the marriage relationship incarnationally expresses God's relationship with those who believe he is the answer, well then, it really isn't very loving to let someone go on thinking that they're okey-dokey without him. Denying your beliefs for the sake of some culturally-arbitrary definition of "loving" sure doesn't make the grade. But all of these questions are murky, with nebulous boundaries smudged by shoddy thinking and poorly grounded faith. I doubt that many people in today's America are really able to think clearly on these issues, especially not people of my generation. We've got too many different influences, most of them well-intentioned but still hopelessly wrong, to be able to chart a clear course. And if, by miracle or luck, we are able to faithfully and thoughtfully find a position we think corresponds to God's, it is highly unlikely that our arguments will seem convincing to many others. (I know this sounds pretty negative, but frankly, after listening to my peers discuss deep and difficult ethical questions surrounding the beginning and end of life, I realize that my generation not only doesn't have the intellectual and moral ability to think through these subjects, they don't care to even try.) So arguing, as the host and caller did, from a utilitarian perspective is, in itself, not very utilitarian; it just won't get the job done. One person is talking about hammers and the other about screwdrivers and they frequently don't realize they're on different subjects.

The questions raised by the caller made me think back to a few years ago when my wife and I attended a wedding of a Catholic to a non-Catholic (Protestant, in this case). It was held at a Catholic church, presided over by a Catholic priest and, contrary to what I thought was the norm, was over in less than 30 minutes. Probably more like 20. Anyways, the reason it was so short its because the Mass was not performed. There were vows, some music, an exchange of rings - you know, the traditional stuff. Except it isn't traditional at all. These elements were divorced from the truly traditional context of worship that culminated in the Eucharistic sharing of Christ, with the added significance of this newly forged marriage-relationship that is but a shadow of the relationship between Christ and His church. That service was not the spectator sport that weddings have presently become. It was an entrance into a sacrament, a new way of relating to God and to this wonderfully made spouse, experiencing like never before God's love for us. The ceremony I saw was essentially a civil proceeding being overseen by an official, who happened to also be a religious leader, who had been invested with the legal authority to witness 2 parties entering into a contractual relationship of a domestic nature, in front of a group of onlookers. Though both of these individuals were (and are) Christians and their marriage bears the fruit of that comingled faith, the ceremony itself was not Christian, not really. Though we were there as a community, we were not there to worship. Though we all (or only some)believed in Christ, we did not share in His body - either in communion or as a church.

This, I think, is where the host's argument should have been made. Thinking more broadly, the marriage of a Christian to a non-Christian isn't really "marriage" from the perspective of the church precisely because the joining cannot be made as, and in the prescence of, the church. It cannot be done in worship and communion. And if that is how marriage is supposed to begin - as a celebration of God's love and relationship with man - and if that is how it is supposed to be lived, then it is very difficult for me to conceive of any situation wherein such a wedding can have the sanction and blessing of the faithful. No ceremony or ritual can overcome the distance that truly separates these 2 people, or the church body from the non-believer. So participating in a religi-fied ceremony that takes on the trappings of the church's worshipful celebration without any of its content is problematic at the very least. Looking at things from this perspective, I tend to favor the host's view, though I see several difficult questions that our present cultural context raises and certainly agree that such a position can come off as harsh and arrogant.

Can Christians participate and/or attend purely civil marriage ceremonies? Is our presence an implicit blessing of that union? Or is it merely being a spectator and demonstrating our love for one (or both) of the parties involved?

The shadow

2007-01-29T14:27:00.000-06:00

I was at the gym earlier today and while I was working out, I started listening to a lecture by NT Wright given at Open Forum on his recent book Simply Christian. In the opening remarks, Bishop Wright makes a point about the shadow that hangs over our existence. Even when things are working out perfectly, which they often aren't, there is always a shadow hanging over us. Be it death or the inevitable disappointment that things aren't quite as wonderful as they first seemed, there exists a certain hollowness in all of our endeavors that is engendered by the inevitable march of seemingly infinite time. He raises the example of a person who loves music, particularly the works of Bach or Beethoven, who deeply desires the opportunity to study the work of these masters in college. But as these studies unfold, the magic of the music is lost, its engaging mystery fades and the once-ardent passion is blighted, sometimes taking years to regenerate, if ever. I think that accurately describes my own feelings towards nursing at the moment.

With the start of this semester, I am struggling to find the draw that propelled me so forcefully through the previous three. My new job is, I think, one of the reasons for this dwindling motivation. I now work in a surgical-trauma intensive care unit as a student nursing assistant. This job not only pays more, but affords me the opportunity to practice many more hands-on nursing skills. With appropriate supervision, I assess patients, chart their condition, administer medicines, hang IV's and review labs & diagnostic procedures. I get to see the stuff I'm studying first hand. And I'm discovering that this work is very different than what I thought it was. It is quite challenging at times, with some patients requiring constant vigilance and activity to keep them from going bad, but in many situations, the work is actually quite tedious. We administer drugs, we monitor for complications, but their doesn't seem to be many opportunities to develop relationships with the patients or their families. There isn't much of a chance to alleviate fear or to offer support. Part of that, I'm sure, is due to my own lack of knowledge and experience in this setting. I can't tell a family member that things are looking up or that the patient is making improvement because I honestly don't know if they are. I don't know if certain complications are normal or extremely worrisome. I don't know enough to be able to offer an opinion that is worth anything. And while I know intellectually that this will change, that my knowledge and experience will grow and that this will afford me more opportunities to engage the human elements of nursing that I love, that day seems very distant right now. Right now I'm slogging through the entirely mundane elements of school and learning, focusing on the little details of conditions, medicines, charting, etc, that, when added together, make for a strong nurse, but when taken individually, as I am forced to at the moment, are disheartening and dull.

In a way, I know this is good. I am learning more about myself, more about what kind of nurse I want to be and what setting I will thrive in. But right now, looking at the calendar of 3 more semesters of long, hard work, it is a heavy weight.

Reluctant Saint - The Life of Francis of Assisi

2007-01-22T14:42:00.000-06:00

I picked up Reluctant Saint at a used bookstore because, frankly, I had a lot of extra credit with them and needed to use it before they switched to a new system. It looked good, so I picked it up and put it on the shelf to read at some future point. Which I finally did over the Christmas break. Having read it, I would now gladly have paid the retail price for the book.

Spoto, who is apparently better known as a celebrity biographer (his subjects include Audrey Hepburn and Hitchcock, among many others), has also written The Hidden Jesus, in which he calls Jesus the "man no one knows." From that simple statement, one can get a sense of his more liberal theological views, which, thankfully, do not assume a bully pulpit in Reluctant Saint. For the most part, Spoto is willing to let the simple and devout faith of Francis explain his actions without interjecting his own interpretations. Spoto does offer his opinion from time to time, but generally his views offer only a slightly skewed look at what most faithful Christians would overwhelmingly support. There are bits of dross to be picked out, but the remaining substance has clearly been influenced by the amazing life of St Francis.

And Spoto writes well. His prose is clear and engaging, painting a very intimate portrait of a deep, troubled and holy man. He deftly sums up details and arguments that could easily grow tedious to the casual reader while clarifying the issues and showing how they were relevant to the involved parties. All in all, Spoto recreates a very present Francis, tracing through his conflicted youth, to the first inspired steps of a beggar-saint, to the reluctant and eventually rejected leader of a movement that would have a far-flung and lasting impact. I would highly recommend this book if only because the life that inspired many thousands of others to forsake all in pursuit of living the Gospel is still so very inspiring.

I have to admit that Francis' commitment to poverty and simplicity of life & action is something that is just as necessary and relevant today as it was during his lifetime. In a society of conspicuous consumption, where for many what we own defines who we are, what greater challenge to the world can there be than someone who intentionally rejects the pursuit of stuff? And having rejected all that the world says we so desperately need, goes on to serve those that the world has rejected and the One whom it rejected, and does so with quiet joy? I think it is that last point, the joy, that is actually what is so challenging about Francis. He was wracked by physical illness, frequently rejected by the world and eventually rejected by the very movement he founded, his personal hopes and dreams (I never would have guessed Francis made a failed effort at participating in a Crusade!) lay unfulfilled and yet he lived and died devoted to and joyful in his Lord. And it is joy that the world truly covets. Contentment & security is what drives the consumption machine either in an effort to mask the profound sense of alienation and fear that permeates the world or to alleviate it, if only for a few moments.

And Francis unequivocally, unambiguously states that there is no joy to be had in things, indeed, in the very pursuit of joy itself. Joy is a by-product of a life lived against the grain of the world. This is very challenging to me, not in the least because Francis' life of poverty does not lend itself to caring for a family. How do I take the lessons that Francis teaches and apply them to my own life?

13 days

2007-01-22T14:21:00.000-06:00

Today marks my first day off in, you guessed it, 13 days. We had a little trip home to Arizona which inadvertently overlapped with the first day of school. The day after we got back (on the first day of class - that'll teach me not to double check a school start date before booking tickets) I started 2 days of clinical orientation, then 4 straight days of work to make up for the hours lost while we were in Arizona - and for which I have no PTO since I just started the job - then 3 days of class/clinicals, then more work until my first day off in 2 weeks. Which has been spent in blissful inactivity.

This semester should be much more manageable than the last, thankfully. Only 1 class instead of 2, and I started a new job in a student nurse program at a nearby hospital. I'm working in the surgical-trauma ICU which has already provided excellent hands-on experience and learning opportunities. The nurse to patient ratio is always 1:2 or 1:1, and I basically follow one nurse and do whatever he/she needs me to do. As I progress through school, I will be more or less given the less intense patient to care of almost independently while the nurse oversees me and double checks my assessments. While this work is much more challenging mentally, it is less physically demanding than my old job which had me hopping to take care of up to 11 patients on any given night, so I've been less tired. And I'll be able to pull 2 twelve-hour shifts instead of having to work multiple days of doubling up on class & clinicals, so things should be a lot less intense this semester.

Which will hopefully allow me to achieve my goal of posting at least once a week on either Sunday or Monday, which will be my 2 days off. I'm wanting to be a lot more consistent and this semester, I shouldn't have too many reasons not to be.

Finals

2006-12-11T12:55:00.000-06:00

Well, I just completed my last final for this semester. In my nursing fundamentals class I'm almost guaranteed an A. In my pharmacology class, its all but impossible that I get an A. Even with a possible extra credit assignment, I would need to have scored 98% on my final to get an A, which is pegged at a frustrating 93%. I've been unable to break 91% all semester long. So I guess I'll be happy with a B. Well, not happy exactly, but its acceptable.

Sign of the times, though. In preparing for the final, I was typing up answers to a painfully comprehensive study guide. For those of you unfamiliar with the drug naming system in use today, they're all made up and frequently quite unusual. Just about every drug name I typed into Word gave me one of those red-squiggly-hey-idiot-did-you-mean-to-spell-"the"-"teh"-? things, except for the really common ones like acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Oh, and viagra. Yup, viagra has become so commonplace its even on Word's pathetically incomplete dictionary.

Baby dedication?

2006-11-14T15:00:00.000-06:00

This last Sunday at church - which is a rather largish Missionary congregation that was planted a few years ago - a number of families participated in "baby dedications". Basically, the moms & dads stood up front cradling their little one while the pastor prayed for them. It didn't last very long. The main gist seemed to be something about us as a church community coming around the families to support them in prayer, in material ways and in setting a good example of the Christian life for their children and that the parents are committing to raise them up as Christians.=. Nothing at all objectionable or unreasonable. My wife prefered the way the congregation of her youth did it - each child was prayed for separately - and felt that it emphasized the community aspects of the dedication much more effectively. Not growing up in a church that practiced baby dedications, I really have no opinion on that. All I do know is that I just plain don't get it.

What is the point, really? Regardless of whether the parents make a public profession of their intent to raise their children in the faith, they are still commanded by God to do so. Its good that they want to make a public declaration of that fact, but it is of no real consequence; the commitment they made when they had the child far exceeds any mere statement to that effect in front of a group of people. And accountability-wise, those parents should still be accountable to the leaders of their congregation and to those godly men & women God has put in their lives to support, guide & correct them in many other areas. On the plus side, they are introduced to and prayed for by the entire congregation, which is certainly a good thing. But even that functions as a kind of pseudo-entrance into church membership. This child, while likely not getting any voting rights in a congregational lead church, is still treated like a member of the community. So its not like the dedication is any way a preparatory step towards the final goal of church membership. The faith of this child is not presumed against in any way; they are treated like members of the church and full followers of Jesus Christ.

Which is probably why it just really seems to me that child dedications are deritualized baptisms. Instead of serving a spiritual purpose, ie, the child being reborn into Christ and thus better armed to live their faith, it serves the psychological needs of the parents. The parents want to do something for their child, they want the child to be part of the church and they want their child to be prepared for the life of faith, but aside from some informal prayers that frankly could be said by anyone, at any time of an individual's life, child dedications don't actually do anything for that child. No spiritual reality changes for that child. They get some prayers, some people who coo at them a bit and that's about it. Like I said, I don't get it.

If anyone has a different perspective, I'd be interested to hear it.

Ted Haggard

2006-11-06T12:30:00.000-06:00

Of course, everyone has heard about it. The news plays the story ad nauseam not least for the wish of political fallout during this election cycle. Ted Haggard's gay maybe-not-quite-a-tryst-but-close-enough is the latest big deal. The wife has been following it more closely than I. I understand he has resigned or been fired from his pastoral position and as head of the NAE, which is as it should be. The drug purchase by itself would warrant some fairly serious disciplinary action. Stepping over into adultery - yeah, lets just go ahead and take your name off the office door.

I feel bad for the man. There are not many whose personal sins and temptations would make for such national display. And I daresay there are probably even those celebrating the revelation of his hypocrisy. He's got to feel incredibly low right now and I hope he is able to make it through this crisis with a solid faith. He seems to have been blessed with a remarkable and faithful wife, so he's incredibly fortunate in at least one way. I hope he picks up the pieces, spends a lot of time in prayer and finds a way to move on.

What I don't hope, however, is that the man makes some kind of return to public life. Ever. I don't mean that harshly, but I think its fair to say the man has defamed the name of Christ, demonstrated some blatant hypocrisy (which we all do, generally speaking, almost daily) and given a lot ammo to people that already had too much mud to sling. I believe that God can and does heal us of sin. I believe God can and does restore fallen people and that someday, after a suitable period of reflection, prayer and renewal, Ted may even be spiritually fit to step back into a pastoral role. So my reasons for hoping he stays under the radar are entirely due to the cultural backlash his return to prominence could bring. We don't need another national figure with egg on his face, no matter how old.

"Master"?

2006-10-09T16:27:00.000-05:00

In the few odd hours that are not spent with my nose deep in a nursing textbook of one variety or another (I've even had to go down to 3 days-a-week at work for the next few weeks because I was starting to fall behind, especially in pharmacology), the wife and I are trying to work through Dallas Willard's "The Great Omission". I'd never really heard of Willard until a couple of months back when Christianity Today did a piece on him and then I found this latest book prominently displayed at Border's (I haven't been there in once in the last 6 weeks at least, which is bizarre because we used to go there every weekend!) So far, the book has been quite good - asking some hard questions, pointing out some key failings in the evangelical tradition and taking a good hard look at both what the Bible and history has to say about discipleship. One passage in particular really got me thinking.

In it, Willard is addressing a group of Christian academics at a conference of some kind and asks them if what we believe about Jesus is true, how can we regard Him as anything less than the master of every field of human inquiry? How can we not regard Christ as an expert not just on 1st century Judaism and the Kingdom of God, but also literature, science, computers, or any other field of human endeavor? Willard says the responses he got were hostility to the idea as nonsensical, befuddlement and some that found it to be a key and challenging question that they took to heart. I must admit I found myself reacting in all of those ways to the question; generally confused, then wondering what sense it makes to think of Jesus as the master of nursing assistance (since I currently work as a nurse's aid) and then trying to answer that question in a positive light. I can actually see Jesus being the master of nursing assistance since primarily what I do is directly caring for the sick. It ain't real technical, believe me. But it does require care & concern, gentleness, compassion and many other requirements typically associated with Jesus' character. But what about nursing, since that's what I'm studying to be? Believe it or not, nursing is a highly technical field requiring a great deal of scientific knowledge about body processes, disease symptoms, medicines, various medical technologies, as well as the more interpersonal aspects of patient care, working with families and working under doctors. Did I ever really consider that Jesus had anything significant to say about medication administration and patient assessment?

The answer, of course, is no and I truthfully found it a difficult idea to ponder. At some levels, if felt very much the kitschy Jesus-is-my-best-friend crap that I find so very annoying. Certainly one thing I gained of appreciation of in Orthodoxy is Jesus' absolute majesty; something Protestants in general don't spend anywhere near enough time contemplating. But after I thought about it for a while, I realized that this was not actually the case. This is taking Jesus' claims to divinity - and by extension omniscience - very, very seriously. It is to recognize His lordship over all of creation, including these rather paltry human endeavors that we give so much billing to. I realized that, in fact, very few Christians ever seem to give any credence to the idea that Jesus just might have something useful to add to the field of law or computer science or research or literature, except for the moral implications of the way we behave in those fields. We have basically widdled Jesus' mastery over those areas of human thought into simple moral quidelines about the way we are to behave - am I nice to my coworkers/students/employees/customers? Am I honest in my dealings? Do I treat others fairly?

The very nature of those questions, however, clearly demonstrates that we actually give Jesus very little room in our professional lives. He is the cop who makes sure we don't break any rules instead of the map telling us where to go within that field. Indeed, instead of being the very ground upon which we trod in those pursuits. I honestly don't know how to get past that very limited kind of thinking; I'll own up to having not been very active in trying to break out of the former habits of mind if only due to busy-ness and mental fatigue. But I want to.

Darn it...back to square one.

2006-09-11T07:41:00.000-05:00

I must admit that one of the things that I found so attractive about Orthodoxy was that it came packaged with answers to all kinds of difficult questions. What is the church? Who is in charge? What is the source of authority? How do we know who is right? All these questions, and countless others, had easy, or at least easily accessible, answers within the Orthodox framework. There might be some ambiguity, some varying degrees of disagreement or varieties of interpretation, but at least the foundation upon which these differences existed was the same. And in this common source, the questions didn't matter quite as much because the source was in common to all the questioners - everyone could at least agree on that and seemingly get along quite well.

But alas, I am back to square one with no pre-packaged answers to any of it. Well, most of it, anyways. One of the things that has really been on my mind of late is the nature and identity of the church. This has been partly inspired by a series of posts & comments-debates over on Pontifications regarding these same questions and related issues. At the end of one post, which pointed out a Calvinist site taking on Orthodoxy, he posted a quote by Newman:

“And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this”

If there is one thing that my journey through Orthodoxy over the last couple of years has taught me is that this statement is almost entirely true. A quick review of the first few centuries of the faith shows that Protestantism just doesn't match in many ways. Different structure, different understanding of the sacraments, authority, vocation and certainly different theological emphases. But that is not to say Protestantism is wholly alien to the early church; it is Trinitarian, has a high view of scripture (perhaps higher than the Ante-Nicene Fathers, but they clearly held it in high regard as well), is missional and evangelical (in the non-political sense of the word), and ardently desires to worship and honor Christ. Of course, the Orthodox and Catholic churches believe, despite those important similarities, that the absence of the other stuff clearly separates Protestantism from the historic church. Thus, any Protestant truly concerned with the identity of the church must join one of those communions in order to be in fellowship with true extension of the Apostles.

But the Protestant who studies history rightly turns the tables and asks whether Orthodoxy and Catholicism are really all that similar to the early church. Certainly they share generally similar structures with the episcopal hierarchy, similar views of the sacraments, vocations, and certain theological points. But the Protestant reading history and the Fathers finds marked departures as well. In Catholicism, the role & authority of the Pope is a distinct variation. In Orthodoxy, the lack of missional zeal. In both communions the high veneration of Mary and the veneration of the saints generally, icons, eschatology (purgatory and the toll-houses, for example) and other theological understandings are wide variations from the faith of the early church. While they may not have strayed off the path entirely, I think there is a case to be made that Orthodoxy and Catholicism have strayed. They have innovated, perhaps for very good, holy intentions, but they have innovated nonetheless. Who is to say which set of differences, Protestant or Orthodox/Catholic, is the greater or more injurious to faith? Arguments can be made from either side on why their's is the better, but I don't think either really has an airtight case.

Which leaves me with yet more questions, and only a few conclusions. One of which; we're left to deal with what history has handed us. I think the state of the church, in its most general sense, is a mixed-bag of strengths and weaknesses, highs and lows. We all have a long way to go in living out the Gospel of our Lord, many areas where we need to improve our faithfulness. For me, this realization is actually rather freeing. I don't expect to find a perfect church anymore. I don't expect to find a place of ultimate fulfillment, which is what I was hoping Orthodoxy would be. What I expect, what I hope to find, is rather a community of the faithful honest about their failings, committed to doing better and who are trying to live out the Gospel. That is all, and I believe, that is more than enough.

Well prepared

2006-09-05T11:47:00.001-05:00

I am currently heading into the 3rd week of school, which has been wonderfully abridged with the holiday. No class or clinicals - just the lab on Thursday or Friday morning. So far, the nursing classes have been informative but not particularly challenging. Which is not terribly surprising as we've been going through some of the very basic groundwork of the trade; history, safety, asepsis, etc. Most the 'hands-on' stuff we've covered so far I've already learned on the job, and from the instructor's discussion on what we'll be doing & learning for this semester, I think I have been extraordinarily well prepared by my last year of employment. One indicator came last week at the clinical site as we were being assigned patients. The instructor had assigned about half the class and then said a couple of the remaining patients were "medically complex" and wanted to give them to someone with some direct patient care experience. Every thing in her description of their "complexity" is something I deal with every day on almost every one of my patients. I'm very grateful to have been lead to my hospital and for the apparently unique professional experience it has imparted to me.

There have been some things that I have been wholly unprepared for, though. One, due to the often serious status of my patients and the length of their hospital stay prior to coming to us, we are, in all honesty, not overly concerned with their possible embarassment. Many of them have gotten so used to the stuff we have to do, that they don't bat an eye at it anyways, but my instructor and my textbook take a much more serious view to maintaing the patient's dignity. Which is a good thing and a lesson I am trying to take to heart even in my current job. Second, I was not prepared for some of the "theories of nursing" that have been presented to us. Driven largely by what appears to me to be a desire to be considered on par with medicine (ie, doctors), various nursing academics have tried mightily to concoct conceptual frameworks that identify the unique factors that nurses bring to the patient. But as these are academics, some theories have been cross-pollinated by the worst kind of popular tripe that prevails in many of the humanities in the modern university. And with that, I leave you to Parse's Human Becoming Theory

Parse proposes three assumptions about human becoming:

1. Human becoming is freely choosing personal meaning in situations in the intersubjective process of relating value priorities.
2. Human becoming is cocreating rhythmic patterns or relating in mutual process with the universe.
3. Human becoming is cotranscending multidimensionally with the emerging possibles.

The nurse's role involves helping individuals and families in choosing the possibilities for changing the health process. Specifically, the nurse's role consists of illuminating meaning (uncovering what was and what will be), synchronizing rhythms (leading through discussion to recognize harmony), and mobilizing transcendence (dreaming of possibilities and planning to reach them). The Parse nurse uses "true presence" in the nurse-client process. "In true presence the nurse's whole being is immersed with the client as the other illuminates the meaning of his or her situation and moves beyond the moment."

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggggghhhhhht.

Edumacation ain't cheap

2006-08-15T08:42:00.000-05:00

I went to get my books yesterday for the start of classes this coming Monday. Over $700 worth of books and equipment (not including uniforms) for just 2 classes! In case you're wondering what $700 worth of books and equipment looks like...

The big blue bag (which you can hardly see above the books) is the lab kit, which contains all kinds of basic medical equipment (needles, IV bags & lines, catheters, etc) for practicing on each other. Now, the needle/IV thing doesn't really bother me, but the catheters? Yeah, I'm really hoping we have some kind of elaborate dummy for practicing with those.

Fortunately, I got a nice new backpack for my birthday which was more than capable of handling the 40 lbs of books. And thankfully, my new "hog" has a special bag-loop attachment that let me put my lab kit on the floor-board between my legs without worries. Here is my new "hog":

With us only having 1 car and the amount of time I'd have to spend waiting for the bus, we figured another mode of transportation would be good. It isn't ideal, but it'll work just fine for the next couple of years since we live pretty close to school and work. Plus, its a lot of fun.

After gaining a little perspective

2006-08-10T09:55:00.000-05:00

Its been a few months now since the wife and I decided/were lead to turn back on our exploration of Orthodoxy. We've looked around at some other churches, had some good discussions about what we feel like is important in a church and have just gained some perspective on the whole thing. Here is a brief sketch of my current thinking and the insights I've gained over the course of this last year. (And it is just over a year since we moved here; August 5th, my birthday, was the one year mark.)

--Really, I don't consider our current direction to be a 'turning back'. We're continuing forward with a different heading, but its a heading we could have never found without first moving through Orthodox territory. I have found new vistas, new mountains and new roads for having come this way, and I think they will only lead me to a greater and deeper faith. As a caveat, I am not intending this post to be taken as an attack on Orthodoxy - it is a Tradition I admire and love, and I know that it preaches the Gospel. And God may lead us back there someday, so these are really thoughts-in-process and nowhere near a final conclusion. I also know that I am no expert on Orthodoxy; these are simply my impressions based on time spent at 2 different parishes, a fair amount of reading and interacting with Orthodox Christians online. They could also do with a great deal of expansion and will probably each be followed up by multiple posts.--

After gaining a little perspective on what the church is, I think it is both much more and much less than what Orthodoxy recommends to us. First the "more." Orthodoxy views herself as the "one true church" and looks questionably upon other Christian groups. Depending on the zealousness of the parties involved, that view ranges from a warm, benign regard as Christians who are well-meaning but at least partially wrong-headed, to a cold, dismissive regard as so-called Christians who are entirely on the wrong track and likely to not end up in heaven. No matter where the opinion falls, non-Orthodox Christians are viewed as outsiders and are not welcome to commune. And from what I understand, Orthodox Christians are not allowed to commune elsewhere (without special permission, at least.) While I am no advocate of an open table that includes non-believers, I think that a closed communion among Christian groups that subscribe to the Nicene creed is deeply troublesome. Orthodoxy is not the only group to set such boundaries, so this is not an Orthodoxy-only problem. I know there are slippery-slope arguments to be made, that various groups don't agree in other important areas and that there are certainly good, historical reasons why these restrictions are in place, but I just don't like 'em. I don't think they contribute to the unity of the body of Christ, which is a clear biblical imperative. The "less" refers to the hierarchical nature of the Orthodox church. While there are clearly defined roles within the NT portrayal of the church and early church history also points to the episcopal structure, I don't find it particularly clear where the "priesthood of all believers" enters into the Orthodox structure. I also struggle with the fact that Christ spoke rather strongly against the hierarchical Temple system, and yet it seems to be duplicated in Orthodoxy. There is a rigid structure that decidedly keeps non-clergy at a certain remove, putting them back into dependence onto others to participate in their faith.

After gaining a little perspective on the sacraments, I think they are meant to be more accessible. This really struck me on our first visit to a Lutheran liturgy, wherein Communion was taken quite seriously but without all the attendant ritual action & language of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy. I generally felt during the DL that things moved along quite well until after the homily when the liturgy transitioned into the preparation of the Eucharist. At that point, I almost always seemed to get tripped up somehow and had to struggle to remain focused. I know this is purely subjective, but it affected the way I thought & felt about Orthodoxy. Why was all of this necessary? What did it add to our worship? What positive effect did it have on us? Now, I'm not advocating a man-centered worship by any means, but Christ states quite explicitly that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Worship is God-directed but it benefits us by allowing us to commune with our Creator, to adore our Redeemer and to move deeper into the Spirit. Without taking too utilitarian a tone, how does all that ritual action help us to do those things? I think there is an uavoidable tension in worship between God and man. Is our worship pleasing to God and is it beneficial to us? Many Protestant churches obviously stray much too far in trying to fulfill the latter but I think Orthodoxy may tip too much in favor of the former. There is much, much more to be said on this subject, which I'm sure will generate future posts, but this is a good summary of where I'm at right now.

After gaining a little perspective on theology, I think the utter seriousness with which Orthodoxy undertakes it is dead-on. This is especially true in light of many Christians drinking deeply at the well of postmodernism, and thus being lead into the miry clay of relativism. I've heard more than a few such Christians refer to theology as nothing more than "God-talk" with absolutely no positive correspondence to the reality of God. Further, many speak of Christ as if He were merely the way our culture seeks God and other's cultural expressions are therefore equally valid. Even for those Christian groups not investing in postmodern theology, there are more than a few that are struggling with other deviations, like the "prosperity Gospel" or any of the charismatic movements that crop periodically in the Pentecostal churches. And overall, there is a spirit that denies the importance of theology, of teaching theology to the church or that theology affects our daily lives. This is one of the things that the wife and I are most stringent upon as we have attended churches over the last few months - is the teaching good and meaty? Or is it merely baby formula? I, of course, recognize that what separates theologically serious churches from the rest is the dreaded (in evangelical minds) specter of tradition, cue ominous music. Without making that tradition as authoritative as Scripture, and largely without consciously realizing it, solid churches hold fast to the faith of their fathers, reacting instinctively against novelty and innovation. I think this will be one of the areas where I learn and grow the most in the coming months and years; the interplay of Scripture, tradition and the challenges of each new generation.

As I read through this, I think the major theme that runs through my present feelings & thought is balance. How do we find it, how do we lose it and what can we do to maintain it? Not easy questions, I know, and many will likely come up with very different answers. But will Christians be able to find that balance together, or stand on the status quo that keeps us separated?

Allegory as love affair?

2006-08-02T11:26:00.000-05:00

The Pontificator recently quoted a lengthy quote from Robert Louis Wilken on the use of allegory in the history of the Church's interpretation of, and relationship with, Scripture. Wilken argues that allegorical interpretation methods were by no means foreign to the earliest Christians and that, indeed, allegory is a necessary tool for the modern church to recover due to the Bible's inexhaustible depths and the varied experience and milieu of the Church through the centuries. Or, put another way "...the book the Church reads also belongs to another time and to other places...." The Church must dust off the use of allegory because in no other way can the Bible be received as the Bible.

Really, the only reason this post jumped out at me is because I was reading NT Wright's "The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture", and I'm still digesting the weighty arguments of this rather brief book. But in it, Wright discusses various misuses or misreadings of Scripture that have, in his view, cropped up through Church history. He argues that the earliest Christians did not employ allegory, but appealed to exegesis and scriptural narrative of redemption and renewal in Christ in arguing against heresies and innovations. Champions of the faith, like Ireneaus in his battles against the gnostics, used detail exegetical arguments about the actual meaning of specific passages and texts. They did not begin to use allegory until, in Wright's opinion, the focus on the "narrative character" of Scripture slowly diminished alongside "the church's hold on the Jewish sense of the sciptural story...." The latter involves the Church's self-understanding as a continuation of the people of Israel and their story in a creational and covenantal understanding of monotheism. He comes to argue that, while allegory "highlights the church's insistence on the importance of continuing to live with scripture...", it inevitably leads to a tension between interpretation and authority. How far can an allegorical reinterpretation (seemingly) stray from the text before it begins to lose its authority? He asks, "[a]t what point in this process are we forced to conclude that what is really 'authoritative' within such an operation is the system of theology or devotion already believed or embraced on other grounds, which is then 'discovered' in the text by the interpretative method being used?"

I encountered a rather frustrating use of allegory in reading "Mary: The Untrodden Portal". Frustrating because I could easily understand the argument the author was making from the text but really coudn't see how anyone would come up with that novel interpretation without first importing the idea. The author, quoting a saint whose name escapes me, argues that the East gate in Ezekiel 44 allegorically represents Mary (or her womb) and since it was shut after God went through it, similarly Mary was shut after God went through her in the Incarnation, thus "proving" the ever-virginity of the Theotokos. But the text itself could never be made to say any such thing if the doctrine had not already been firmly established in the mind of the interpreter - so what is authoritative about that kind of interpretation? Clearly it is not the text. Wright argues that at least some of the uses of allegory "constitute a step away from the Jewish world of the first century within which Jesus and his first followers were at home." He does concede that allegory, given the nature of the debates surrounding difficult passages in the OT which might have lead to them being tossed altogether, did serve as a way of saving the Bible for the church. But where allegory fails is that it does not appeal to the Bible itself, even though it operates with a Christian framework and uses biblical language, but rather to previously established doctrines and traditions within the church.

Wilken, perhaps understanding this but thinking about it differently, seems to indicate this fact when he says "[i]n [the Bible's] pages the fullness of Christian faith and life could be found in bewildering detail and infinite variety—all organized around the center which was the Church." (Emphasis mine.) Within the Catholic perspective the Pontificator now embraces, perhaps dusting off allegory makes a great deal of sense. Within that (or the Orthodox) framework, there may be enough safeguards to ensure that things don't go too far afield, but what guarantees are there? And what does this say about the Church's true view on the authority of Scripture? If Wright is correct about the use of Scripture by the earliest Christians, what are the practical effects of such a return to allegory? What role will Scripture play, what role can it play, in such an interpretative system?

Waa, waa, waa - I want my milk and cookies

2006-08-02T11:16:00.000-05:00

Adam, over at Pomomusings recently got a traffic ticket from a red-light camera for running a red. Apparently the large sign indicating red-light enforcement was in effect was not enough to dissuade him from this dangerous act because it did not explicitly state "camera in use." He complains that the sign wasn't clear, the he got a ticket at all and that the fine (a whopping $70 which is a pittance compared to most locales) cannot be appealed to a lower amount. And all this because he entered an intersection only a mere second after the light turned red, as if nothing bad can happen in the space of the few seconds it takes him to clear the intersection. Given that I currently have at least 3 patients recovering from severe brain injury due to auto accidents, and 2 others who are parapalegics from auto accidents a few years back, I found his cavalier attitude towards such a dangerous act rather childish and told him so. Apparently that makes me a "troll" and gets comments closed on the post. Yup, Adam, I'll stick to my own blog where the lives of the people in my community are just as valuable as those overseas.

Israel's response - what should we think?

2006-07-26T16:32:00.000-05:00

Like many, if not most, people, the current conflict in Israel/Lebanon/Gaza has been on my mind a lot lately, especially the military activity in Lebanon. Personally, I've been all over the map in my thinking on it. Hezbollah, while it does have some limited political legitimacy in Lebanon through holding elected office and through its strong social support network (it has built hospitals, after all) is, nevertheless, a despicable organization comprised mainly of brutal, hate-filled murderers who think nothing of targeting Israeli citizens and infrastructure. They initiated this crisis with their unprovoked aggression and continue to court a military response with the firing of rockets into Israel. And the Bush administration's argument against merely returning to the status quo has a lot of merit. A much larger and more brutal conflict may loom in the not-too-distant future if Hezbollah, and through it Iran, is not put into check during this opportunity.

Initially I thought they got what was coming to them and Israel was undertaking a legitimate military response to a real and persistent threat. I think there is some room to argue that the response was a bit opportunistic in that this was a huge set of airstrikes that were costing more than a few innocent lives in Lebanon over 2 soldiers that could (potentially) be succesfully negotiated for. But, then again, this has been a long and difficult struggle and it is not easy to draw a clear and simple line about what constitutes a mere continuation of previous hostility and what is a new form or level of aggression. In poking around the internet or watching TV, there seems to be a lot of people who think that this is actually an easy distinction to make and it seems a great deal have settled into a black-white polarity in their thinking on this matter. Either Israel is right or it is wrong, and the latter no matter what Hezbollah did or is doing to foment the conflict. If Israel is right, then a cease-fire or UN peace-keeping force should be pushed off into the future, whether by weeks or months, in order to let Israel finish the job. If Israel is wrong, then these options cannot be brought into the picture fast enough to end the attacks. There is very little middle ground and even less nuance in understanding this conflict.

That being said, I will lay out my position: Israel should end all attacks on Lebanon except on active Hezbollah attack points, ie, missile launchers about to be, being, or have immediately been fired. This means no more attacks on population centers, roads or other non-military targets. Israel should withdraw its troops from Lebanon and seek an actual armed UN or NATO force to impose a cease-fire and to assist the Lebanese government in gaining control over its territory.

Here are my reaons:

1) This has been an ongoing conflict for decades and so it actually makes little sense to try to point to a single act as the cause of this latest flare-up. Yes, Hezbollah kidnapped some soldiers, but they did so in support of Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza who were coming under attack for their own kidnapping operation. Why did Hamas kidnap that soldier? Certainly in response to some Israeli action, which itself was a response to some Palestinian action, which itself was a response to some Israeli action...ad infitum. While I certainly believe that Hamas, Hezbollah and other such groups bear a large balance of the moral culpability in this conflict, we cannot pretend that Israel has been perfectly upright in all its dealings and activity in regards to the Palestinians. The very founding of the modern nation of Israel was actually a bit of ethnic cleansing, forcing Palestinians off of their lands in order to make room for the Jews. And since then, Israel has indeed committed its own fair share of crimes and immoral activity. Even though Israel does not intentionally target civilians, it seems to think very little of inflicting civilian casualties - the Palestinian death toll in the Intifada was more than 3 times that of the Israelis. In the latest conflict, Israel has targeted ambulances and intentionally shelled a UN observation post, and the Lebanse death-toll is somewhere around 10 times the number of Israeli dead. Both sides share in the long and convoluted cords of blame and just because Israel is a Western-style Democracy does not mean that it is infallible or that we should give it a pass on its failings. I am not arguing for moral equivalency, only that the roots of this conflict are too deep to easily make black & white declarations. And because of that, Israel's response may be predicated more on decades of anger and frustration rather than clear thinking on how to best respond to these attacks. I think this long history is churning up more emotion than strategy.

2) Israel's aggressive response is predicated on the notion of eliminating Hezbollah as a military threat. An idea I fully support. But can Israel succeed in this mission? The answer is an unfortunate "no." Yes, Israel may be able to capture or destroy most, or even all, of the rockets and other long-range munitions that Hezbollah currently uses. It may be able to kill or capture most, or even all, of the organization's fighters and leaders. But Hezbollah is not a threat just because of its weapons and it is not limited to its actual members. Hezbollah is an ideology and Israel's response is actually feeding it, helping it to grow and take root. Dealing a strong blow to Hezbollah now will only beat it back in the short term; it will grow back and find new ways to attack Israel. Perhaps it will realize that conventional weapons aren't effective and seek to acquire some form of WMD. Basically, I don't think this is a battle Israel can win in the long-term and I think its chances of success in the short-term are actually pretty low. Hezbollah is dug in deep, it has a well-developed logistics, intelligence and recruiting network, as well as political power and legitimacy in Lebanon and elsewhere. Israel cannot kill it. I don't believe Hezbollah can be negotiated with either, which is why an armed, empowered peacekeeping force is probably the best chance Israel has of achieving a more stable peace.

3) And finally, if the US and Israel is right, and Hezbollah is really just the lapdog of Iran and Syria (to a lesser extent) than a death toll of nearly 600 Lebanese caught in the crossfire is completely unacceptable. I fully believe that a decent percentage of those killed were either actual Hezbollah fighters or were directly supporting Hezbollah's attacks in some other way (ie, storing weapons or housing fighters), but it is entirely inconceivable that even half of them were directly linked in any meaningful way. I don't care what anyone says, a decision to bomb a bunker that is surrounded by civilians is as much a decision to kill those civilians as it is to destroy the military target. Innocent casualties are unavoidable in any modern conflict, but is Israel trying hard enough? I think the death toll proves otherwise and when the sheer numbers are considered in conjunction with attacks on ambulances, neutral observers and vital civilian infrastructure like power stations, we can conclude that Israel is being far too cavalier about the effect its attacks are having on innocent people. That is not at all fitting of a nation that obviously respects the rule of law, the rights of individuals and the spirit of democracy. To argue that Israel must be free(r) from moral restraint due to the barbarity of Hezbollah is arguing for moral equivalency from the opposite direction.

I think 2 & 3 are actually the most compelling reasons for an Israeli withdrawal. Why continue an attack that is costing so many innocent lives if the chance for success is low? Why push forward on something that is only going to make things worse in the long run?

Phundamentalism

2006-07-19T15:13:00.000-05:00

After calling in sick the last couple of days, I got downstaffed today, meaning I've had a 5-day weekend. Thankfully I've got the PTO hours to cover them, so no harm done to the old wallet. Having some time on my hands, I went to Borders to drink some coffee and peruse books and magazines - one of my favorite activities. Whoever came up with that business model deserves a large cash reward. I had been working my way through a biography of Luther but it appears to have actually been purchased. I've also been poking around in NT Wright's books, finding them pretty interesting. I checked out "The Last Word" from the library and have been working through it. Its good if a little simplistic. I also read a lot of culural & political magazines, but since there aren't any new issues out of my usual fare, I popped over to "Discover" magazine, which I do from time to time, and read an interesting article (sorry, but you have to register to view the article) on a debate that's starting to gain some ground in the realm of physics.

For those of you who don't know, physics is plagued by a lack of a "grand unified theory" which works at both the macro (galactic) and micro (subatomic) levels. Einstein's relativity doesn't fly within the atom and quantum physics is persona non grata everywhere else. After reading "The Elegant Universe" some years back, I've found stuff that touches on these issues pretty fascinating. When scientists look at the universe they see that things don't fit within their elegant equations and models, specifically, in the rotational speed of galaxies. Looking at our solar system, the planets closest to the sun rotate much faster than those further out, which is what you'd expect. The further the distance, the less the pull of gravity effects those far flung planets and so they slow down. But this is not the case regarding stars orbiting around the center of a galaxy. The closer stars due rotate faster, but at some point all the rest of the outer stars rotate at the same speed regardless of distance. Newton's laws on gravity say this is impossible, so..."When confronting such a paradox, scientists have only a few options: Question the data; question the theory; or invent something new, maybe even something invisible, to explain the effect." Cue dark matter.

Dark matter is stuff that has mass, and thus generates gravitational pull, but neither emits nor reflects light. Its invisible except, allegedly, in its effects. A lot of astrophysics has concentrated on dark matter since this novelty was proposed and it has become something of a staple in the field. But this mainstay is now being challenged by the theories of Mordehai Milgrom, who proposed a simple change in Newton's laws that not only renders dark matter unneccessary, but also accurately predicts other astronomical phenomenon. It hasn't been proven, but it answers the questions at least as well as the theories of dark matter. But many in the physics community won't even give him a chance to explain himself. He has found it almost impossible to get his papers published and when they are, they are apparently dismissed out of hand. Other scientists are starting to take notice, but it has been a long uphill battle. What we have here is the ugly face of a fundamentalist physics, wherein the key dogmas have already been staked out and any challenge to them is treated as heresy (the article uses that word many times). No matter whether the heresy is supported by evidence, is simpler and/or functions at least as well as other theories.

I find this terribly ironic. Science, which as a whole in the last 100 or so years, has been deeply antagonistic towards faith in something unseen, is now itself fighting to maintain its own faith in something unseen. It is modeling the fundamentalist behavior that so many deride in the religious without realizing its own dogmatic claims.

The seeming impossibility...

2006-07-17T15:31:00.000-05:00

of finding a good, balanced church. Ever since deciding that Orthodoxy was not where God was presently calling us, the wife and I have been trying to find a church to call home. So far, we've mainly focused our search on Lutheran churches, since the LCMS is liturgical & sacramental but apparently in no danger of falling into the morass of liberal theology and practice. The first church we went to, St Paul's, we liked very much, but over a few visits we found that the preaching seemed to consistently amount to little more than "we're Lutherans, this is what we believe and isn't that swell?" Now, this is from both pastors and would be fine if they got into the meat behind the doctrine, but they don't. And this is what we've experienced at the other LCMS churches we've gone to so far. Weak preaching has characterized them all, including a more "contemporary" LCMS church that seemed to be trying to copy a goodly portion of the evangelical, low-church playbook. I think there is basically one more LCMS church close to us that we're going to try and then there is a Wisconsin synod church we might check out as well. We've heard some very good things about a Missionary church that we're also going to try, but we're both a bit nervous about heading back into what (from their website) appears to be a pretty typical evangelical church. I'm trying very hard to keep an open mind, to be prayerful and open to God's leading, but after almost a year of "exploration" we're getting pretty anxious to find our place.

Healthcare

2006-06-20T16:06:00.000-05:00

These articles are a few days old, but they caught my eye and, in large part, are confirming what I'm currently experiencing at work. The first article reports on a study that finds non-profit healthcare providers consistently outpeform their for-profit counterparts.

Authors writing in the journal Health Affairs found that a systematic analysis of 162 studies of nonprofit versus for-profit health care providers supports the concept that a facility's ownership status makes a difference in outcomes and in the cost of health care....the analysis found a pattern of differences between nonprofits and for-profits in cost, quality and accessibility...In what they called the biggest review of the literature to date, authors reported that eight studies found nonprofit hospitals have lower mortality rates, versus one study finding for-profits have lower rates of death.

There are many factors that enter into the relative quality or "success" (a difficult to define term in medicine) of healthcare, but a huge factor is the morale of the direct care providers and their ability to effectively do their jobs. Which is why the second article, which discusses a lawsuit filed by the countries largest nurses union against some of the bigger hospital chains for intentionally colluding to depress wages, is so troubling. Even though the nursing shortage has increased over the last decade "....[w]age increases for nurses have been insignificant during the decade-long shortage, experts said. Wages stagnated in 2003 and then fell 6.4 percent in 2004, leading to a decline in nurses working at hospitals..." Which is unfortunate, because that is precisely where the patients who need the hightest quality of care actually are.

Which brings me to my current employment situation. Our clinical director (basically the head nurse) and corporate director both recently quit at the same time. We currently have 2 interim people from other hospitals filling those roles who are, to say the least, corporate lap-dogs. They have instituted a variety of changes, including pressuring our clinical educator to leave by cutting back on his hours, cutting back on staffing (the cause of my being downstaffed each of the last 3 Fridays) and trying to push down costs on needed patient-care equipment. As an example of the last, we have a patient that needs a specialty bed & mattress due to some very aggravated wounds on his hips, lower back and butt, but since this rental is very expensive they wanted to discontinue the bed even though lower cost beds were not helping him. The staffing cuts, however, have been worse. Most of our patients are coming directly out of the ICU and have a high acuity level, which basically means they are in pretty bad shape - lots of meds, lots of labs to be drawn, IV's, vents, you name it. Our nurses normally handle 3-4 patients, 5 in those instances where the patients are in good shape (ICU nurses generally only handle 2). Now, regardless of their acuity level, corporate has mandated each nurse will carry 5 patients. This makes the nursing staff much, much busier, means there are fewer nurses on the floor to help each other with difficult procedures or to watch patients during a break, and greatly increases the stress level of everyone on the floor. Morale is down, people calling-in for work is up, and for me personally, I'm being run ragged most days of the week - and what I do doesn't have the potential to kill anyone.

So connecting the dots between the quality level provided by for-profits versus non-profits isn't hard to do. Where cost is the prime concern, neither patients nor the staff can be. The staff is too busy to provide high quality care though they'd like to and are more likely to make mistakes or miss something important in a patient's status. A humanitarian endeavor like medicine can be very poorly served by becoming a business.

What makes a Protestant Protestant?

2006-06-20T15:26:00.000-05:00

Via an email exchange with a Lutheran blogger (I haven't asked if its ok to quote him, so I won't link his blog), he made the rather startling comment that he does not consider Lutheranism to be Protestant. Rather, he considered it be a "kind of Catholic." I heard a similar point on a Lutheran radio show while the host was *reviewing a taped testimony of a Lutheran convert to Orthodoxy. He took issue with the convert lumping Lutherans in with Protestants and later described Lutherans as "evangelical catholics" and "a confessing movement within the church catholic". He explained those statements like this: "we hold to the 3 ecumenical creeds, to the confessions, to the fathers, to everything that has been taught since the very beginning - that's catholic. The centrality of Christ's atoning sacrifice - that's evangelical."

Which, of course, makes me wonder - what makes a Protestant Protestant? How is that really defined? There is obviously the element of protesting-against or dissenting-from that is necessarily a part of the definition. But that doesn't fully encapsulate the movement, either, because there are a great many Protestant bodies that are positively for something and not just against the Catholic church. Is Protestantism defined more as a set of beliefs in and of themselves? Or is it more accurately defined in relation to (or opposition to) some other Christian entity? The latter clearly seems to have been much more accurate during the early years of the Reformation, although it must be granted that the Reformers did not just see themselves acting against the abuses of the Catholic Church, but as searchers after the original faith (their success is arguable, obviously). But now that many groups seem either to not care much about Catholicism one way or the other, and other groups are actively engaging the Church for areas of commonality with an eye to potential unity, the latter definition doesn't seem to apply.

Its an interesting claim, and one I will have to think much more about.

*If you're interested, it was the June 6th program during the 2nd hour. He addresses the convert's story at about 38:00, and speaks more about Lutheranism as catholic around 51:00+.

The trouble with monergism

2006-06-09T13:53:00.000-05:00

I spent a goodly part of this morning at Border's doing some reading on Lutheranism, or rather, on Luther and his beliefs, and I must say I found what I read a little difficult to understand and accept. It seems that Luther is a bit of a monergist. I say "a bit" because both analyses that I read (one from Pelikan's masterful 5-part history of the church, this one being the 4th volume on the Reformation, the other The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther) seemed a bit muddled on this point. Some of the stuff he said was apparently quite monergist and others a tad synergistic even though he expressly denied any form of synergism. But he also expressly rejected the monergism of Calvinism (speaking of which, I've gotten into a bit of a debate with Troy on the matter). The doctrine FAQ on the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod doesn't clear things up so well, either. Take this question and answer:

Q. Is it accurate to say that Lutherans believe that we are first given the ability to believe in Christ as Lord and Savior through the Holy Spirit and then it is our choice and responsibility to choose to believe in Christ, or am I off here?

A. Lutherans consistently and deliberately avoid using language of human "choice" when speaking of conversion, since we believe that faith is a gift of God created by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel, not a matter of human "choice" or "decision." From a human perspective, of course--especially in the case of adults or older children--conversion may at times appear to involve certain (mental and emotional) aspects of "choosing," but spiritually speaking faith is not a "choice" we make but a free gift of God's grace created by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the means of grace. Ultimately, therefore, conversion is a miracle and mystery that we confess in accordance with what the Scriptures teach and in which we rejoice, but which we do not claim fully to understand or attempt to explain in ways that "make sense" to human reason (e.g., the question why some who hear the Gospel believe and others do not).

But to another question the role of choice, this is part of the response:

All of this, of course, does not mean that when the Holy Spirit creates faith in our hearts we are not the ones who believe. On the contrary, Lutheran theologians have often spoken of faith as something that is "active" (fides activa) to emphasize that humans are active subjects in the believing. Paradoxically, then, faith is a purely passive act: God alone can give us the power to believe, while we are the ones who believe.

Thus, there is no contradiction between saying that we in our sinful, unregenerate condition cannot choose to believe, but that we can choose to reject God's grace. (emphasis mine)

The last line of this section seems to contradict the last line of the above section in that it does seem to speak to the reason why some people hear the Gospel and yet disbelieve: they reject the gift of faith. But they (the LCMS) seem quite insistent on negating human choice while trying to maintain the capacity for it, at least in the sense that one may reject faith, at the same time. Like this:

Others answer this question by pointing to God's sovereign will: God himself predestines from eternity some to be saved and others to be damned. Lutherans reject this answer as unscriptural because according to the Bible God sincerely desires all to be saved and has predestined no one to damnation.

So how do Lutherans answer this question? The answer is that Lutherans do not try to answer it, because (we believe) the Bible itself does not provide an answer to this question that is comprehensible to human reason. Lutherans affirm, with Scripture, that whoever is saved is saved by God's grace alone, a grace so sure that it excludes all human "action" and "choice" but rather rests on the foundation of God's action in Christ and his "choice" (predestination) from before the beginning of time. Lutherans also affirm, with Scripture, that those who are damned are damned not by God's "choice" but on account of their own human sin and rebellion and unbelief. From a human perspective, there is no "rational" or "logical" way to put these two truths together. Lutherans believe and confess them not because they are "rational" and "logical," but because this is what we find taught in Scripture.

I'm certainly no critic of a good bit of mystery in our faith & theology - it was one of the things that drew me to Orthodoxy in the first place. I do not feel a constant need to define & clarify & dogmatize what can only be speculatively ascertained, particularly when in so doing we have to reject or severely modify passages of Scripture. For instance, 1 Tim 2:4 is pretty clear on God's desire for all men to be saved, yet Calvinists are forced to "clarify" the plain meaning of the text in order to maintain their double predestination, which is not explicit in the Bible. They dogmatize the uncertain due not to sound exegesis, but a value-laden eisegesis, carrying their nice-sounding ideas about God's sovereignty into the text. But this mystery, this uncertainty is troubling me. Maybe because its unfamiliar, maybe because it seems to be rejecting my personal experience and the experience of many of the Christians I know who all most certainly had a moment when they decided to repent, to acknowledge Jesus as Lord and throw themselves on His mercy. Maybe that was an illusion. Maybe it wasn't a positive choice, just the absence of a negative choice, ie, resistance to the faith the Spirit was quickening, but it sure didn't feel like it.

I still have more reading and study to do, but in the meantime, any and all are welcome to comment - I welcome the input and challenges as we sort through our choice of church home. But I especially welcome the input of any Lutherans reading this that may be able to better clarify their position for me.

Back in the fort...

2006-06-05T14:27:00.000-05:00

Fort Wayne, that is. We spent a wonderful, sometimes tense, week leading up to my brother's wedding on Saturday afternoon in Iowa. And it really was a wonderful week, being with almost my entire family the whole time. A few more popped in on Friday, which made it even better. I got to spend a lot of time with my brother, which I am grateful for. We had a last minute change in the rehearsal dinner venue which ended up being a far, far better choice - excellent food and great atmosphere. The wedding itself went off beautifully. A bright, sunny day without being too warm. The men, including myself as the co-officiant, were all in formal kilts - which is the kilt and a tuxedo-ish jacket, vest, shirt and bowtie, along with a "sporran" (a kind of man-purse that is tied around the waist which I found to be an uncomfortably great and useful item), dress shoes and knee-socks with little bits of cloth at the top called "flashes." (You can find a good picture of this ensemble here.) The jackets got a little warm, but there was a nice breeze which kept up some good circulation, if you catch my drift. The ladies wore a very pretty black & white dress which had some embrodery work that kept up the Scottish theme. The bride was in an elegant white dress with detached arms that hung low - it was very Celtic princess-ish - and her processional music was played by a real, live bagpiper.

I was able to do a great deal more in the ceremony than I had anticipated, including pronouncing them husband and wife. I started choking up right from the beginning and had to fight it off pretty hard the whole time. This kind of got my brother going, which I think is pretty funny. My brother is a rather large, mean looking fellow who has in the past taken on 4 guys at once and beaten them handily. He would not strike you as the kind of guy who would cry, even at his own wedding, so I was pleased to show everyone what a softy he really is. My message, which I almost entirely scrapped and rewrote the morning of the wedding, got a lot of compliments and what's more, was what I really wanted to say to them. I hope some of it penetrated and may get them thinking a bit more about God and faith in the future.

We stayed out late after the wedding, didn't get enough sleep before the brunch and before getting on the road for the 8 hour drive back home, so I'm more or less exhausted today. I'm now going to go take a nap.

Road trip memories

2006-05-29T19:57:00.000-05:00

Very early tomorrow morning we will be driving to Iowa for my brother's wedding this weekend - she's dismayed about the early part, not the rest of it - where I will be co-officiating at the ceremony. I'm only able to "co" because I've been out of full-time ministry too long and lost my ministry credentials. So I'll be performing the majority of the service and a local pastor will step in to do the vows and make the final, legal pronouncement. It should be good. And not just because all the men in the wedding party, as well as yours truly, will be wearing kilts. I guess I'm lucky I've got a built-in joke to open with.

But in prepping for this, I wanted to get some cd's together and found an old one that the wife and I listened to a lot as we made the 7 day drive from Anchorage to Phoenix. Right now I'm listening to a song from that cd and I can see the winding road running through the forests of British Columbia, the headlights illuminating a wall of rock where the road cut through the mountains, my wife asleep in the passenger seat. It was a good feeling of coming home, of making a new beginning.

Saying goodbye

2006-05-28T16:20:00.000-05:00

R.F.'s funeral was yesterday morning. The wife and I went to the visitation on Friday night, where I met more of his family and saw a few other staf members. It was strange to see him laying in the casket in a tux instead of a hospital bed with a gown. Stranger still to see how fake he looked with all that makeup on. But that few moments at the casket gave me a chance to say goodbye and I could not help but reflect on how much I've grown and experienced over the course of the last year. My wife's aunt died last summer and we attended both the visitation and the funeral. The visitation, quite honestly, freaked me out a little bit. I've only been to a few funerals and as far as I can remember, this was the first one with the actual body on display. And people were touching her, which made me even more uncomfortable. The wife grew up in a small town in Illinois in a larger church with the whole span of ages present. She'd been to quite a few visitations like this, so for her it was old hat.

But over the course of the last year, I've had the unique privilege of taking care of the recently deceased on a number of different occasions. And I do take it as a privilege - the chance to show a few last acts of love and respect for someone whom I had known and cared for, and who was deeply and passionately loved by the God who died to snuff out death entirely. I've cleaned them one last time, removed the IV lines, EKG leads and other medical implements that allow us to provide heroic care but also, in their own subtle ways, dehumanize the patient, make them into a squiggly line on a computer screen or a drip rate, rather than a person. So I take it as a solemn honor to rehumanize them, so to speak, to return them more closely to how they were when they came into the world. And standing there, sometimes alone with the body, I have found myself almost irresistibily drawn to pray for that person, to pray for their soul and for God's mercy on them. From the Orthodox and Catholic perspectives, I know there is nothing wrong with this. Prayers for the dead are salutary and beneficial for those whom we pray. I also know there is pratically no biblical warrant for it, which is why the Protestant perspectives deem such prayers as at best ineffectual (the person having already been judged based on their own faith or lack thereof), and at worst, sinful to some degree. I don't know who is right or what to make of it all except that it just seems right. It seems like the loving thing to do, to beseech God for their entry into His presence with joy, for His mercy on their sins, for them to hear their name called from the Book of Life.

So I said goodbye to R.F. on Friday night, but the wife and I were invited to a dinner after the funeral to celebrate his life. I felt honored to be invited, but as Saturday noon rolled around, I also felt quite uncomfortable about it. We decided to go and I'm glad we did. His family, those who weren't able to visit him much while he was in the hospital, needed to hear about his final week, the things he said, the feelings he expressed. They just needed to hear it and frankly, I needed to tell it to someone who knew him. It was good. It was bittersweet, shot through with rays of joy and eternal expectations despite the present pain.

Spy camera...

2006-05-28T15:52:00.000-05:00

A while back, I expressed my consternation to my wife that you just can't seem to find a tiny digital camera like you'd find in a camera phone. Our current cell phone contract doesn't expire for some time - we've even still got our Illinois numbers because changing them would require a new and more expensive contract - and we already got our new phones sans camera. In describing this camera to my wife, I almost ivariably called it a "spy camera" because I was envisioning one of those little cigarette lighter-sized doohickeys that James Bond had. I found a few online at Overstock.com, but I'm loathe to purchase stuff like that online. Yeah, its basically a toy, but I don't want to waste my money either and since these were off brands, I decided to wait. And then, 2 weeks ago, I found one at Target, a Philips, for about $15. So I got my spy camera. The photo quality is low, you only get 20 pictures at the highest quality and you can't see the pics until you upload them, but I'm still liking it a great deal. Here are a few photos I took this morning of the Lutheran church we've gone to the last couple of weeks.

And here are a few more from the grounds around our apartments. There's a little forested belt that runs along one of the rivers.

Bad day

2006-05-24T17:39:00.000-05:00

Work today started out kind of rough. We had one patient turn violent over night and lucky me, being the biggest guy in our hospital, I was called in to help this man off the floor after he slipped in a puddle of his own urine whilst fighting one of the nurses. I tell you, nothing makes that 445am alarm worth it more than starting your workday with someone else's pee on your pants. So we get him settled, or so we thought, and I head off to start on my regular duties. While I'm in a room, I hear a "Code Strong" go out over the intercom, which means "unruly patient or visitor". I stuck my head out the door to see if they needed any help but they seemed to have things under control. "Seemed" being the operative word. They had basically barricaded the guy in his room after he attacked the nurse again and called security. He was unhappy with this resolution and in an apparent effort to find an alternate exit, he tried to toss a table through his 8th floor window. And quite nearly succeeded, judging by the largeish hole that resulted. He was eventually carted off to one of the padded rooms in the ER downstairs. The incident created quite a stir and the corporate administrative staff were buzzing around most of the morning trying to "listen to staff concerns" and answer any questions. It was a real treat.

But the worst part of the day happened not soon after Houdini tried to pull his grand escape. We had a patient, R.F., and aside from a real nasty and persistent abdominal wound which would have healed in time, was in good shape. And he was a dear, dear man. He was 82, didn't look a day over 65, and had the sunniest, kindest disposition I think I've ever encountered. He was sweet, humble, caring and just earnest about life, faith and what he considered most important: God, family and helping people. He was a devout Catholic and prayed often, and was tickled pink when a pastor visiting another patient came in and prayed over him, as well. I was assigned to him all last week and he and I became fast-friends over the course of that week. We talked a lot, while I was giving him his bath or when I had time to hang out in his room. He was a WWII vet who was on the beaches at Normandy. When he came back he worked the rail yards and eventually became a yard-boss. He married young and was devoted to his wife until her death 8 years ago. Actually, he was still devoted to her and spoke of her often. His family was in with him all the time, which I think is a testament to the kind of man he was. He said probably 100 times last week that he thought he and I were two of a kind, which if true, would make me a much better person than I take myself for. He said he thought the world of me and, even though we'd only known each other for a short while, thought of me as a friend. He said "you don't make too many friends in this world, so you gotta keep the ones you do."

As I'm sure you've noticed, I'm talking about R.F. in the past tense. We found out yesterday at about 11am that he was being transferred to the local VA hospital at 1230 that same day. We found out so late due to a break-down in communication and after we had spent a good 45 minutes getting him onto a new bed, which required pulling his roommate and his roommate's bed out of the room in order to get the new bed in. At that time, we were chagrined due to all that wasted effort, but it wasn't that big a deal. I was going to miss him, but the VA hospital is closer to home than my work and I was planning on visiting him at least once a week. And, I was definitely going to take him up on the steak dinner he promised to take me and the wife to after he got out of the hospital. Last night, at about 6pm, his family called my hospital because his wound was bleeding profusely (which it hadn't been doing before) and the VA people had no idea what to do about it. He was eventually taken to the ER, but due to apparent indecision on the part of the VA doctors, it was too late. His pressure and heart rate dropped too low for him to recover on his own and his family, following what I believe would have been his wishes, declined to intubate him. He died early this morning. When last I saw him he was on a stretcher being wheeled down the hall, grinning but also a little teary-eyed. He told me that he loved me and I told him I loved him, too and not too worry, I'd see him soon. I guess I won't see him as soon as I thought. But on more than one occasion, his response to my "how're you doing?" was "I've got Jesus Christ so I can't be doing too bad", which leaves me with little doubt that I'll see him again, if only a bit later than we had planned. And I'm still going to take him up on that steak dinner.

His favorite restaurant was Cork'n'Cleaver - I hope they have one in heaven.

Holding pattern

2006-05-22T16:15:00.000-05:00

Needless to say, things on the road to Orthodoxy have gotten a bit bumpy and the wife and I have decided to take a bit of a detour at present. From our many long conversations, which frequently turned into arguments (or at the very least hurt feelings on one side or another), it became clear to me that she isn't ready and I really don't know that she ever will be. Right now, its just too big a departure from the theology she has known and embraced her entire life and probably the best thing I can do in loving her is to yield to her discomfort, anxiety and resistance. So I have and we've decided to start looking somewhere else for a church home.

For me, this is a bittersweet moment. I am sad that Orthodoxy did not draw us in as I had hoped, but at the same time I feel a sense of relief that the tensions between us and the heartache this has caused is over. The joy that relieving this burden brought about in my wife (not Orthodoxy itself, but the burden of the disagreement we had over it) was sign enough that I'm making the right decision. But I also think some of that relief stems from my own trepidations about Orthodoxy. There were really only a couple of significant issues, but they kept on intruding. I was ready to move forward but scared of the possibility for error. I am worried about finding a church we can both feel comfortable with. We went to a Lutheran church on Sunday morning that seemed pretty good to both of us, so I think we should be able to find something. I'll have to do some more reading & studying on what's out there in liturgical and sacramental Protestantism.

I'm not sure how I'll reconcile the new perceptions and ideas that Orthodoxy has introduced. I doubt I'll ever be able to subscribe to sola scriptura if this road doesn't eventually take us back to the East. Similarly, I've found the more wholistic approach Orthodoxy takes to theology far more compelling than the legalistic language of Western theology. I mean, did Christ become Incarnate in order to die to open the door to humanity to participate in God's life or to simply move our names from one column to another on some heavenly scoreboard? I think the depth and beauty of that kind of thinking will be hard to find, though I can obviously "feed" myself with Orthodox writers. And, of course, the idea of the church being the Church will never be a possibility in Protestantism. While I maintain some hope that we will eventually end this detour, I don't want to hold on to that hope too tightly. I, of course, don't want to be disappointed if it never comes to fruition, but I also don't want to let it hold me back from trying to find a good church home, a place where we can get involved and feel like a part of something.

Thus far, this blog has largely been about my journey towards Orthodoxy. It first started as I struggled with my role as a youth pastor in a church that left a great deal to be desired and then, as that position ended, transitioning to being a student again, both in school and in the Orthodox church. I'm not sure where it will head from here but I plan on maintaining it. I have appreciated your prayers and words of encouragement and hope you will continue to keep the wife and I in your thoughts & prayers in the weeks and months ahead.

Gotta know when to hold 'em....

2006-05-17T18:07:00.000-05:00

For no particular reason, things have seemingly come to a head in regards to the wife's and mine's exploration of Orthodoxy. We got into a little bit of an argument on Sunday over whether or not to start crossing ourselves during the liturgy. I've been doing it in my private prayers for some time, but out of consideration for her, I have not done it during the liturgy and wanted to start only when she was comfortable doing it together. We went to my mother-in-law's church service early Sunday morning before the liturgy for Mother's Day and then went to get coffee at a local cafe before heading over to St Nick's. We were having a pleasant conversation when I made the mistake of asking if she wanted to start crossing that morning. I've asked before and been rebuffed, but figured it was worth a shot. Things got a bit tense, which we resolved after church, and we ended up talking about Orthodoxy later that night. Basically, its coming down to the fact that the wife has stopped making forward progress in this journey, and frankly, doesn't want to go any further. She isn't saying 'no' to continuing to go to the Orthodox church and is willing to keep exploring, but she seemingly isn't able to get past any of the major issues she has with it. She hasn't gotten any more comfortable with the veneration of the saints and the Theotokos, is still troubled by the apparent lack of evangelism (only one person, a 13 year old girl, joined the parish this Pashca) and stumbles on the point of the sacraments. And the thing is, she doesn't really want to get past or accomodate herself to those things. There are also other problems that are probably quite parish-specific, namely, a lack of teaching and the fact that we haven't made any reasonably close connections with anyone in the parish during our time there.

So now I'm left wondering if its time to throw in the towel. I am not willing to join without her, primarily because we're probably going to start trying to have kids once I've got school almost finished and how would we raise them? And in the short term, we're both really struggling with the tension this is causing in our marriage. We know a guy from St Nick's who took 6 years of going back and forth before he was finally able to decide on Orthodoxy, so I still hold onto hope that even if we did stop our exploration at this point, there might still be a chance in the future. But I really don't know what to do. I'm not sure where we'd go, if I'm up for "church shopping" or if I'm ready to call it quits.

The Sacred Gift of Life - I

2006-05-14T15:00:00.000-05:00

I have received and started reading both of the books I mentioned in an earlier post and so far, both have exceeded my expectations, especially Fr. Breck's The Sacred Gift of Life. I haven't gotten more than 50 pages into it and I'm already challenged and enlightened. Take this passage in the introduction:

To speak of the sanctity or sacredness of human life is also to speak of "personhood." One is truly a person only insofar as one reflects the "being-in-communion" of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. This is a much misunderstood concept in present-day America, where the "person" has been thoroughly confused with the "individual." Individual characteristics distinguish us from one another, whereas authentic personhood unites us in a bond of communion with each other and with God.

This relational understanding of personhood is obviously different than the common conception, and is radically opposed to those who claim personhood is dependent on the capacity for rational thought. I have in mind Peter Singer (and those who agree with him) who argues that it is fine to kill an infant and the severely mentally disabled or injured because they are nonpersons due to their inability to "think." But if personhood is intrinsically linked to relationship, than no one can ever be a nonperson - we all exist in a web of relationships, be they familial or other. And once ensnared in that web, which cannot happen but at the moment of conception, all human life is instantly personal. This also has obvious bearing on end-of-life issues for those with a severe brain injury that has left them in persistent vegetative state. I'm anxious to see how Fr Breck develops this concept in later chapters.

In the Introduction, Fr Breck also offers a frank discussion on the difficulty of moral & ethical consideration in a modern context. This is due both to the developments in technology and medical science that the biblical and patristic authors did not and could not envision, and to the Orthodox focus on "moral theology" instead of "Christian ethics." This focus on ethics as a theological discipline requires a sea-change in current medical thinking on the purpose of medical care. According to Breck, "[h]ealth and wholeness have ultimate meaning only within the perspective of God's eternal purpose, the divine economy to be fulfilled at the 'second and glorious coming' of Jesus Christ. Medical care, therefore, should serve not only the proximate goal of restoring or improving bodily health; it should strive to provide optimal conditions for the patient's spiritual growth at every stage of the life cycle." Needless to say, I have seen little concern for the patient's spiritual, or even personal, growth in my facility. It would require a complete sea-change in modern medical thinking to move beyond the mere mechanics of health and the fear of death that seems to drive so many doctors and patients. And medical ethics is not something that can be left to the so-called experts, "[a]t its core, Christian ethics is a function of the worshipping, serving Church. This means that the work of doing ethics is a communal, ecclesial work for which each of us is responsible."

Chapter 1, which I have yet to complete, is focused on explaining the theological underpinnings upon which Fr Breck will later develop his arguments. And I have to say that it is one of the best summaries of Orthodox theology that I have yet encountered in any of my readings. He covers a range of topics, providing a wealth of information in a concise and easily read format. I will pull out some key points once I have finished the chapter, which is necessarily a bit long. I'm looking forward to working through this book slowly over the next couple of months.

Christ is risen from the dead...

2006-05-09T15:01:00.000-05:00

Last week, just before I started my shift, a patient died. He had first entered the hospital with heart trouble, suffered complications and was placed on a ventilator. He came to us in fairly good shape relative to some of the other patients we get. There is this semi-conscious state that a lot of people linger in as they start to wake-up from the complications they suffered through (some for weeks on end) and were completely unaware of. They are "in there"; they try to respond to your commands, though often they fail due to sheer physical inability. And they try to communicate - their lips are moving and their expression changes, hands gesture. It is almost impossible to make out what they are trying to say because they are unable to vocalize on the vent and frequently lack fine motor control, so you can't read their lips (something I've actually become pretty adept at over the last several months). And, of course, they are generally confused and would be speaking nonsense and non sequiturs could they actually form words. As I said, people can linger in this in-between state - aware but not oriented, trying to communicate but not coherent enough to realize what they need to do to overcome the barriers. Some stay like this for only a few days, others for a few weeks and a few never find their way out. They remain locked in their own mind for reasons that are rarely clear. He was one of the latter, though I must confess I thought the family moved rather quickly to putting him on a terminal wean. I think they were talked into it by their doctor(s) and though it is fairly likely he would have never pulled out of this half-life, I wish they had given him a another couple of weeks. Miracles do happen.

I ended up helping the family - his wife and daughter - carry some things out to their car. It was a somber walk and one that left me reeling. What do I say? How do I offer comfort? In the end, I didn't say much. I told them I was sorry for their loss and that I had enjoyed caring for him. But in my mind, as I'm walking with those suffering the agony of their loss and the mixed feelings of guilt and relief, the hymn from Sunday's liturgy repeated itself over and over in my head. "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death..." And that, to me, provided some comfort, some degree of understanding. His death was not the end. Death is not the end and the pain is just for a night.

Promise?

2006-05-08T17:15:00.000-05:00

In the May issue of Touchstone, there is an interesting article on high school students that are anything but typical. Terrence Moore writes from his own experience with what are obviously very gifted and very blessed students, and stand as shining examples in a field of peers that are jaded, entertainment-minded, relativists. It is an article that completely belies my own experience working with youth and one that offers some degree of hope for the future of this generation. But, it also scares the pants off of me.

To illustrate his point, Moore introduces us to "Promise", a young woman whom he knows personally. She comes from a good home, is intelligent, faithful and a hard worker. But...

Promise has never set foot in a public school. Her parents discovered in their freshman year of college how little their public schools had taught them and how unprepared they were for higher learning. Moreover, they would never allow their daughter to be exposed to the drugs, sex, and crass behavior that are the norm from middle school onward.

It is true that high schools have largely been turned over to the social norms of sexual and chemical experimentation in today's youth and that this trend is pushing ever lower. I saw it in my students and I heard their stories. I don't blame any parent for wishing to spare their child from the deluge of temptations they will face in today's public schools. And yet, I cannot help but think that this separation from the vast majority of her peers will be to Promise's detriment. How will she understand her generation? How will she know how to reach them? If she can't speak their language and know the things that matter to them, how will she lead them, as Moore suggests she will? I don't for one minute think that a child must succumb to the temptations of their peers in order to better understand them. But without at least some common experiences, how will Promise forge a link with those in her age group? I saw those highly intelligent, moral, faithful homeschoolers in the youth group I lead - I saw that they never fit in and that their separation invariably lead them to live in completely different worlds than their peers. It didn't matter what they knew or how their lives could have been examples to the other students; no connection was possible. And frankly, it is entirely possible to traverse the perils of public school and still come out well-educated and having resisted the temptations of sex, drugs and relativist thinking. I know because I did it.

From here, Moore goes on to list more of Promise's promising qualities. She doesn't disrespect her parents, drink or do drugs, sleep around or brush off school. She feels sorry for girls who do, not because she is self-righteous but because she believes they simply don't know any better. Promise rejects feminism and "...is pretty and enjoys feeling pretty." (This point strikes me as tendentious - what does being pretty have to do with anything and how would Promise feel and behave if she were unattractive? It does not strike me as particularly counter-cultural to enjoy being pretty, what with the amount of emphasis today's culture places on feminine beauty.) Promise is also politically engaged and aware of the import of today's key issues and debates, which I certainly found to be quite uncommon among my high schoolers. All-in-all, Promise is a bright, well-rounded, Christian student who takes her faith and education seriously. But Moore goes on to conflate what appear to me to be clear issues of morality (abortion) with politics and here is where I have the greatest problem with his description:

Promise wholly supports the war on terrorism. This sweet girl will tell you without batting an eye that anyone who blows up a building or decapitates someone for a misguided faith is pure evil. Promise is glad that strong and brave men carry guns to protect this nation both at home and abroad.

Supporting the war on terrorism is not on par with abortion, which is the issue he discusses immediately prior to this paragraph. Having genuine political disagreements over this country's response to 9/11 and the war in Iraq are simply not the same as abortion and nor is there an explicitly Christian position on these points. Also, both men and women defend this nation at home and abroad and I find it odd that Promise should discount this fact and that Moore should forget to mention it. It seems to me that failing to mention the sacrifice of women in the police and armed forces implies more than just Promise's rejection of feminism, although I could be reading into it. But what worries me most is that second sentence. Moore points to this generation's inability to think morally several times, but I cannot accept that this statement is well supported by sound ethical consideration. Perhaps I'm mired in relativistic thinking, perhaps I did not make it through public high school and a state university with a degree in religious studies without being infected by the shoddy thinking Moore derides, but I seriously doubt whether, as Christians, we can ever describe another human being as "pure evil."

Is blowing up a building or decapitating someone for a rightly-guided faith pure good? Is it a mixture of good and evil? Or is it pure evil, as well? What if you're blowing up buildings for a misguided foreign policy? How does that rank? What troubles me is the conflation of "misguided faith" with motive. Those executing the attacks of 9/11 or decapitating Nick Berg were not doing it because they knew themselves to be supporting a false religion; they believed their actions were both in accord with and demanded by their faith. And in that, they were actually acting on good motives. Don't mistake me - I believe terrorism to be intensely evil and motivated by demonic forces, but that does not mean that those who engage in it are "pure evil." They were seeking what they perceived to be a good end, an end pleasing to God and beneficial to their coreligionists, and if their actions had focused on planting trees rather than murder, no one would accuse that aspect of their intentions as being inherently evil. Though there are times when our subjective motivations have nothing to do with the objective moral status of our specific behaviors, we all recognize that motive is indeed a salient point. Our society routinely and uncontroversially recognizes a legitimate moral difference between murder and self-defense, even in cases where there was no actual threat to the defender.

So the question really becomes 'can a person acting on subjectively good motives really be purely evil?' I think the answer is no, just as someone acting on subjectively bad motives (who somehow brings about an amazing good like curing cancer or ending world hunger) can be said to be purely good. Our society would want to turn our misguided philanthropist into a hero of heroes, a celebrated and honored person, to shower them with praise and adoration even though they intended to do evil. We would label them as good and forget about their failings. This is why I find Moore's, and by extension Promise's, unsubtle thinking on this matter so disturbing. To label anyone, even a hate-filled, murderous terrorist as "pure evil" is to cease to see them as human. It allows us to do anything we want to them because they have become completely alien. And in doing that, I fear we cross a line that we simply cannot cross.

Final final finally finished

2006-05-08T16:02:00.000-05:00

As of Saturday, around 845 in the morning, I officially ended this semester. Now onto a blissful and school-free summer vacation. I may try to pick up some extra work over the summer to pad the coffers for fall, when I will have to cut back on my work schedule. In the meantime, I will be focusing on preparing for my brother's wedding, where I will be co-officiating, in the first part of June. And, much to my delight, catching up on some of the pleasure-reading that has been so overwhelmed by school the last several months. My first 2 books are The Sacred Gift of Life and A Feast For Crows. The first book is due to my own lack of preparation for dealing with the hard questions, particularly end-of-life and meaning of suffering questions, that I either deal with now or will have to deal with as a nurse. I want to clarify my own thinking on the matter by examining the thinking of the Fathers and the Church. The second book is the long-awaited continuation of what has turned out to be an amazing fantasy series. I'm normally into sci-fi, but my brother concinved me to read the first one and I was hooked. Its not your typical kind of elves & wizards fantasy writing; there is magic, a world very much unlike our own and a fair share of otherworldy creatures, but it focuses much more on political intrigue and the growth of characters as they work through a tremendous upheaval that draws an entire continent into war over a vacated throne. Its quite good.

Sexual ethics

2006-04-29T14:53:00.000-05:00

Adam, over at Pomomusings, has posted a
summary of the sexual ethics presented in a book called Love Does No Harm by Marie Fortune. Here they are:

5 Guidelines for Sexual Ethics

1. Peer Relationship: Is my choice of intimate partner a peer, i.e. someone whose power is relatively equal to mine? We must limit our sexual interactions to our peers. Some people are off limits for our sexual interests.

2. Authentic Consent: Are both my partner and I authentically consenting to our sexual interaction? Both of us must have information, awareness, equal power and the option to say "no" without being punished, as well as the option to say "yes."

3. Stewardship of my Sexuality: Do I take responsibility for protecting myself and my partner against sexually transmitted diseases and to insure reproductive choice? This is a question of stewardship (the wise care for and management of the gift of sexuality) and anticipating the literal consequences of our actions. Taking this responsibility seriously presupposes a relationship: knowing someone over time and sharing a history in which trust can develop.

4. Sharing of Pleasure: Am I committed to sharing sexual pleasure and intimacy in my relationships? My concern should be both for my own needs and those of my partner.

5. Faithfulness: Am I faithful to my promises and commitments? Whatever the nature of a commitment to one's partner and whatever the duration of that commitment, fidelity requires honesty and the keeping of promises. Change in an individual may require a change in the commitment which hopefully can be achieved through open and honest communication.

All in all, these are not a bad set of guidelines. I don't think there is a whole lot in there to argue with - possibly the "ensure reproductive choice" thing and the part in the last one about how fluid our sense of commitment should be. It is also clear that number 3 doesn't actually require a pre-existing relationship. If I've got some disease, I could just be following simple human decency by putting on a condom; no long-term relationship is necessary. But for a secular set of sexual ethics these would probably lead, if followed, to some healthier choices regarding sexual activity.

These are, however, not written by a secular author but by a minister. And while the author's intended audience is not specifically Christian, "she believes these guidelines would be put to good use in Christian circles as well." Really? A set of ethical guidelines that fails to include any consideration of the biblical witness, the historical witness of the Church or any reference to God or Jesus could be well-used by Christians? I find that sentiment deeply troubling. Moreover, I find Fortune's assumption that an ethic of love that separates and subordinates the Gospel to itself is even possible for a Christian to ponder repellent. Yes, God is love, but we cannot extract that statement from the love God has shown us in Christ. We cannot attempt to shake off the rootedness of that reality in the narrative of God's activity in the world, first through Israel and then through the Church. That is precisely how we know God is love! We are not permitted to take that statement out of its context and try to develop an ethic, a theology or any other system of thought. If we do that, we immediately demonstrate that this is not something we are trying to say about God but about ourselves, about our own way of thinking, our own goals and desires. Which is why we can talk about "reproductive choice" as if it impacted only us as individuals, and not the child in the womb or God in heaven. It is why the sexual ethics we try to create for ourselves make no mention of any external moral set other than respecting the other person's freedom. It is only our choice and their choice that matters, and it is little surprise that Adam's post includes negative commentary on the propensity for the "modern" church to focus so much on convincing youth not to have sex. That is forcing something upon them, not respecting their choices and making them feel guilty about something that should be celebrated.

Needless to say, this is a dangerous game to play. It is true that the evangelical church's youth culture has seized upon abstinence as seemingly the end-all and be-all of youth programs. This is clearly imbalanced - the norms of chastity need to encompass more than just sex, but it is also obvious why sex is so important to youth leaders: it damages people. As does every sin, of course. But the difference is that most other sins do not undermine a future marriage relationship as much as premarital sex does. And a failed marriage hurts kids and thus the damage is perpetuated. So no, these are not good sexual ethics for Christians to use, as they are not Christian and do not take the reality of sin into account.

Just 2 short weeks...

2006-04-25T15:37:00.000-05:00

...and this semester will finally be over. No more painfully boring anatomy lectures, no more Saturday morning microbiology labs - ahhhhh, sweet freedom. I've only got a brief presentation for micro, and the 2 finals. I've currently got 101% in my micro class and could actually fail the anatomy final and still make an A for the semester, so I'm really not sweating finals this time around. While next fall will likely be rather nightmarish in terms of class-load, I'm going to put that out of my mind and enjoy the next few months of school-free days.

Paschal vigil

2006-04-24T19:57:00.000-05:00

Saturday night the wife and I went to the Paschal Vigil at St. Nick's. She actually got there a little later since she had been out of town with her mother at a woman's retreat that day, which unfortunately left her with a horrible sinus headache which caused us to leave early. When your wife is on the verge of tears because her head hurts so badly (and you know the incense only makes it worse), you just gotta leave no matter how much you want to stay or how much she protests that she's ok. So we left before the processional, which was unfortunate, and the post-vigil feast (even more unfortunate), but what I saw was enough. I craved what I saw, I wanted to be able to fully participate in that. When the catechumen came forward to be chrismated, I wished we were up there beside her. I want the fullness of the faith and I believe I saw it Saturday night. Which, of course, makes the tension between me and the wife on this issue all the more acute. We see eye-to-eye on practically all other matters - most without need for discussion, so how can we be so far apart on this?

Odd going back

2006-04-16T20:19:00.000-05:00

Friday night we went with the mother-in-law to her church's Good Friday service (the father-in-law is in Africa right now). It was the first time I had been to a Protestant church since starting at St Nick's back in late August or early September. The church is fairly large with about 2000 members (I think) and 3 services on most weekends. I've met the senior pastor before and heard him speak on other occassions; he's a good preacher if a little frenetic at times.

The service was interesting. There was a spoken word portion that served as a set up for some of the songs, the brief sermon and the close of the service, which was quite well done. They had a goodly sized choir that did a couple of performance pieces but also backed up the worship leader on a couple of praise choruses. Aside from being poorly mic'ed, they were also good. The worship leader was definitely not to my taste - a lot of repetition of choruses and at one point he stood for a full minute with his tead tossed rapturously back. I will give him credit for picking a couple of older hymns that were God-focused (rather than me- or emotion-focused) and which were performed well. The SP gave a brief sermon about the Last Supper and we then proceeded to take communion after taking a few minutes "to do business with God." I have always found it quite remarkable that almost everyone's business with God lasts the same amount of time, ie, until someone gets the guts to stand up. Once that individual has completed his/her transaction with the Almighty most everyone seems to wrap their dealings up pretty quickly. It was one of those serve-yourself affairs with little cups of juice and pea-sized bits of bread. The SP seemed - to me, anyways, I'm sure I'm sensitized to it given our current church situation - to focus an awful lot on the "remembrance" and "symbols" aspect of communion almost at the expense of any other theme he was trying to develop. All-in-all it was a good service, though the flow of things was a little disjointed and it ended rather abruptly and in such a way that most people weren't sure if it was actually done.

But to me it all seemed vaguely foreign. Some elements felt forced, some felt overly emotional and it all felt very showy. Having worked at a church that viewed its Sunday service as an evangelism tool and not a time of focused worship (my mother-in-law's church isn't even close to the church I worked at, but it does share some of the same values in regards to its services) I know Good Friday/Easter Sunday are one of the prime "hook" events of the year - a chance to show the crowds what you've got and see if you can't hook some of them into coming back. There are a lot of motivations behind that "hook", some very good and some quite questionable. Whatever the reason, the quality of the performance on stage, be it music, drama, speaking or other elements, is a prime focus because that is what will bring people back. It is self-conscious to one degree or another and that is something wholly lacking in Orthodoxy. For Orthodoxy, worship is worship and meant for God alone. Whatever aesthetic qualities that are present are there to glorify God; that they please human senses is quite incidental to their purpose. I'm sure there are Protestant churches that strive for this ideal, but this seems like something inherent in Orthodoxy. And having imbibed of that un(self)conscious worship for the last several months, being back in the presence of it was unsettling. It just felt odd. Wherever this church journey takes us, it cannot be to a church that is concerned with how it looks to outsiders over and against how it looks to God.

The bite of sarcasm

2006-04-11T16:37:00.000-05:00

Jeff Wright (linked at right) has generated a minor buzz of controversy and the beginning throws (as in unwarranted mudslinging) of debate by referencing some group called "War On Easter." WOE (an ironic acronym, that one) is apparently planning on easter-egging 666 copies of some anti-Christian DVD in churches across the nation. I'd link to their website, which apparently contains a FAQ, but it is currently down. While trying to find a Google-cache of the site I discovered it was down due to a denial of service attack, which one commenter seems to think is Jeff's doing. Another claims Christians need to undergo a sex-change operation before we can understand the plight of women - what those Christians who are already women are supposed to do is as yet unclear. Hopefully future updates will clue us all in. I, too, left a post sarcastically condemning Jeff for excercising his free speech rights, which was unfortunately misunderstood and the source of his query in the comments of my previous post.

Distractions and struggle

2006-04-10T15:39:00.000-05:00

As one can tell from scanning the last few posts, my posting frequency has fallen off quite a bit lately. There a variety of reasons for this but most have either to do with petty distractions that keep cropping up and the ongoing struggle the wife and I are having with Orthodoxy. Together, they have both served to leave me feeling somewhat drained lately. Work, which I normally enjoy, has taken on a new dimension of difficulty. As my prayer life has dwindled, so too has my ability to find joy in the simple acts of service I provide those under my care. So when it becomes all too apparent that opportunities for learning are growing ever scarcer, my motivation to work, to try to serve my patients fades away. I have also been working through a rather painful shoulder injury which I woke up with the day after we got back from our vacation in Arizona and a fairly chronic spate of fatique. Those will be addressed at a doctor's appointment Monday morning.

I think one of the biggest problems lately, though, has been the wife's steadfast reservations about Orthodoxy. I found some of the resources I had asked for on baptism a few weeks back and we had some good discussions on that. She says she understands the Church's perspective better but still has her doubts. The same is true of the Eucharist, the sacraments in general, icons & saints and the hierarchy. What, to me, are or have been completely resolvable issues, are for her major stumbling blocks. It has led to much heartache for both of us and she has stated repeatedly that she wishes there was some middle ground, some safe place between Orthodoxy and Protestantism. The only option would seem to be Anglicanism, but the Pontificator has surely turned me off on that option. And even if he hadn't, once you've become convinced (or at least largely convinced) of the truth claims of Orthodoxy, you don't want to go halfway. I don't want a middle ground; I want the solid ground of the Church, but right now, I don't know if that's ever going to happen.

Please pray for me, in my struggles with work and prayer, and for us, in our wrestling over Orthodoxy.

It seems anyone can become a hero

2006-04-06T16:24:00.000-05:00

Yes, even Judas. A new 3rd or 4th century work called the "Gospel of Judas" claims that Christ asked Judas to betray him, which "pained Judas greatly." Apparently the struggle with the religious left has been going on for some time.

An archeologist claims the work has been age-authenticated through variuos means and is a genuine bit of "Christian apochryphal literature." I personally don't care when the document was written, but does it really make sense to call it Christian?

Icons as narrative: What story do we tell ourselves?

2006-03-23T17:00:00.000-06:00

Earlier this week, I received a call from our parish priest. Since we had been out of town, he had not had a chance to ask us about our status relative to joining this Pascha. I told him I was pretty close to being ready - I still struggle with some things but am willing to submit and trust that God will work them out for me as things progress - but that the wife was not; her questions and doubts are still just too big. [Which, incidentally is both fine with me and quite frightening; I respect her need to take things slowly and to really mull them over. I don't want to push her or force her into a decision she will later regret. But I'm also worried that she may never "come around" and what that will mean for the rest of my church-going life and the stresses that will introduce in our marriage. But I digress.] Our priest, being the good man and leader that he is, offered to meet with us and did not put any pressure on us to hurry up and decide. We talked for several minutes and he asked about my experience in youth ministry and wanted to know if, when/if we decided to join, I'd be interested in helping out with the kids. I told him I was definitely interested and we talked about that briefly before moving on.

But that got me thinking. I was, first, flattered that our priest wanted to get me involved in that way. Even though I'd be volunteering under someone else's supervision, that is still a leadership position and I'm grateful that he considered me for it. But it also got me thinking about what youth ministry in the Orthodox context might look like and how I would approach teaching the kids and talking to parents. One of my biggest focuses in working with youth is getting them to critically evaluate our culture; what does it contain? how does it affect us? and is that good or bad? Clearly there are good things in our culture, but there are also many corrosive, even satanic, principles that infiltrate us everyday. Particularly kids and most particularly in the media aimed at them. So how would I get kids to think about what they're watching and what it is doing to them? And I immediately thought of icons. Actually, I thought of one icon, that of St John the Forerunner, as it appears on the iconostasis at St. Nick's.

St John is pictured, one hand raised pointing upwards, the other clutching a scroll, dark robe, unkempt hair & beard, exposed legs & sandaled feet, and his severed head situtated in the lower corner. If you take the time to contemplate this image, it is striking how many narrative details spring immediately to mind. His upraised hand is indicative of his role as the herald of Christ, the scroll his prophetic fulfillment. His untidy appearance, coarse robe and exposed legs show his humility and ascetical life in the wilderness; "hair shirt" and "locusts and honey" echo in your mind. And his "extra" head in the lower corner reminds us how he died, like the Christ he was sent to proclaim, at the hands of unjust despot. If we take a moment to really see what is in front of us, the story of St John's life and role in salvation history is unconsciously reinforced. We reflexively tell it to ourselves again every time we see that icon, and in so doing, it takes deeper root in who we are, how we think and what we believe.

In the same way, the media we imbibe, particularly visual media with its rich weaving of both color and sound, unconsciously takes root in us. But what is the story it tells us, or rather, what is the story we tell ourselves when we engage this media? What are we reinforcing in our own minds and spirits when we get hooked into a show or series? Most of the shows aimed at teens focus on relationship drama and the closely related cause & effect of promiscuity, drugs and violence. These tell kids not just that pre-marital sex is perfectly fine, parents are stupid, materialism is the way to go and that drugs & alcohol are required to have fun, but also that relationships are inherently unstable and commitment but a fairytale. To see people constantly break-up, get back together, cheat, lie and hurt each other only reinforces that such is normal, which it most certainly is not. This, I think, is perhaps the greatest danger of these stories; at best they promote serial monogamy, at worst a state of chronic debauchery and pointless self-indulgence. It would take a great deal of study to determine if this mode of living is a result of these kinds of stories or vice-versa. Either way, with the age of first sexual experience seeming to spiral ever lower, I believe it is clear that this generation is going to grow up emotionally scarred from so many lost loves, abuses and betrayals. The potential for negative effects on their children and our society are obvious; a generation that cannot find the discipline and self-denial necessary to maintain relational commitment cannot model that to the next in any context. Not in the home, work, school, to our fellow countrymen and neighbors. Nor, most importantly, to God.

Long story short...

2006-03-21T19:33:00.000-06:00

Even though the letters were not supposed to come out until the end of this week, through a providential turn of events last night I found out that I was accepted into the nursing program. I am in one of 20 available slots out of a few hundred applicants. The wife and I both agree, quite obviously, that this is good confirmation that here is where God wants us to be right now.

We, thy thankful and unworthy servants, praise and glorify thee, O Lord, for they great benefits which we have received; we bless thee, we thank thee, we sing to thee and we magnify thy great goodness, and in lowliness and love we hymn thee: O Benefactor and Saviour, glory to thee.

Baptism resources

2006-03-19T20:08:00.000-06:00

Of late, the wife and I have gotten into several discussions, sometimes heatedly, on the issue of infant baptism in the Orthodox Church. And by extension the practice of communing infants, as well. To me, they are of a set. If the infant has been baptized into the body of Christ, then there seems no logical theological reason to exclude them from the Eucharist. We've kind of been running around in circles but have finally gotten to a point where fruitful discussion is more likely, so I'm hoping that some Orthodoxy-knowledgeable person can point me in the right direction for some good online and book resources that provide theological, biblical and historical support for Orthodoxy's paedo-baptism. Any help is greatly appreciated.

"...growing from the size of a marble...

2006-03-16T16:53:00.000-06:00

to a volume larger than all observable space in less than a trillionth-trillionth of a second."

But, you know, this all just sort of happened on its own.

Obsession?

2006-03-15T17:31:00.000-06:00

In the "Letters to the Editor" section of this months Atlantic comes this little gem in response to The Year of the Two Popes in the Jan/Feb edition:

"If the Holy See could come down to earth, get over its obsessions with contraception, abortion rights, in vitro fertilization, divorce, homosexuality, and male dominance - obsessions most First World Catholics do not share - and concentrate on the social-justice and ethical teachings of the Nazarene carpenter, it could make enormous contributions toward helping to solve the myriad real problems facing humankind today."

The problems with this kind of thinking are legion. First, casually dismissing some of the most important ethical and moral debates of our time - issues that directly affect the lives (deaths) of some 1 million plus unborn children each year, hundreds of thousands of marriages and the emotional-mental-spiritual health of the members of this generation who actually survived to see their parents split - is not at all in line with Jesus' thinking. That the circumstances of the Church in a secular nation are different from the world in which the first Christians found themselves, and thus requiring different responses, is almost painfully obvious. This sentiment would seem to imply that Christians are required to remain silent precisely because we live in a democracy wherein those collective voices can actually have an impact; apparently it is only under tyrannical regimes that politically powerless Christians may give breath to their views on such matters.

Second, while helping to solve the myriad "real" problems that humankind faces today (though I must admit that I find it hard to believe that anyone would label the above-named "obsessions" as unreal) would indeed be very nice, that is not the Church's mission. The Church is not a humanitarian organization and it is neither a charity nor a philanthropic society; it is the Church sent to proclaim that aforementioned Nazarene carpenter and Him more than just a teacher with strong ethics and a penchant for social-justice. Whatever these "real" problems actually are, I have no doubt that at their root we will find the only problem that matters: sin. And if my recollection serves, I think that carpenter had a few things to say about that.

And finally, there is the vapid premise that these "obsessions" mean little to First World Catholics. Protestors with rainbow sashes are not obstructing the administration of the Eucharist in the Third World, and frankly, in the slums of African no one is very concerned with abortion rights (which is not to say that abortions do not happen, only that the political construction of "abortion rights" isn't really the issue Third World Catholics are obsessing over). I would also be very interested to meet those TWC's who are overly concerned with in vitro fertilization, because while FWC's may show similar disinterest in the moral dimension of IVF it is quite clear that they are the only Catholics who can actually afford such procedures.

Back in the 4-8-0

2006-03-10T15:26:00.000-06:00

The wife and I are currently in Arizona visiting family and friends. Yesterday, my mom took a day off from work and the three of us went out to get coffee and spent 3 hours talking a lot about life, faith, Orthodoxy and where we see ourselves going in the next few years. It was an interesting conversation and it reminded me that Orthodoxy is still largely an unknown to a big majority of Americans who confuse it with Catholicism. My mom, who was raised Methodist, seemed to learn a lot and come away from the conversation with a much improved understanding, so that was good. But it was just nice to have 3 uninterrupted hours to sit back and shoot the breeze with her and the wife. I only wish my brother and step-dad could have been there.

We're seeing various friends over the next few days, which reminds that the nostalgia I feel for this place is just that and the warm feelings of the past will never be rekindled like they were. Even a couple of years ago, all I would have had to do coming back into town is call one of any number of people and we would have immediately been drawn back into the network of friends. There would have been some group gathering either planned due to our return or already in the works. But that is no longer the case; what was once a relatively tight-knit group of friends has suffered the steady attrition that marriage, work, moving and the struggles of daily life inevitably introduces. It will never be the same and I have to remind myself of that. I'm left with the inescapable conclusion that this is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here.

Necrotizing fasciitis ate my butt...

2006-03-07T21:24:00.000-06:00

OR Why the little things matter.

Today I helped do a dressing change on a guy who has a gigantic wound on his butt from the a very bad internal infection that was not detected until they did a little work to clean up a very minor, superficial wound. Once they started they realized that this infection was deep, dangerous and spreading fast, so they did some emergency surgery to clean out the infected tissue. This infection was not going to respond to antibiotics and playing wait-and-see would likely have killed him.
They had to go in aggressively. So he now has a 4" deep crater about the size of a dinner plate a little up and to the side on his rear end. Its a huge wound and one that is going to take a long time to heal. I mean months of being in a hospital, of needing medication and a special diet. While its open he will be at risk for other infections, sepsis and is in for a whole lot of pain - lots and lots of pain. He will be left with a huge scar and will require skin grafts, which themselves will be quite painful and leave scars. For the next several months, his whole life is going to revolve around that wound and his healing progress, or lack thereof depending on his body's ability to heal and good care, will determine the quality of the rest of his life. And possibly its length.

The worst part about all of this, though, is that this all started with a tiny little bed-sore. A little bitty break-down in his skin, probably no bigger than a pencil eraser, that in all likelihood could have been prevented with good skin-care and regular turns. And these are minor things, tiny little jobs that don't take more than a few minutes of a caregiver's time. But either they couldn't be bothered, or he wouldn't let himself be bothered long enough to get these things accomplished. It is a very little thing to turn a patient or apply some protective ointment. It is clear now to him, and to his family and to everyone who has suffered like this, and to me, that these little things matter. They are not dramatic, they generally win little thanks and certainly one is not well-compensated for performing them. But oh, do they matter and perhaps they are not so little, after all.

Now to my real point. In our relationship with God, that seemingly endless movement of ebb and flow, passion and apathy, it is the little things that matter the most. The little things of prayer, of devotion, self-denial - the daily disciplines that sharpen the edges of our faith and make it stronger - are what make the biggest difference for us and those around us. While we are "healthy", when we shrug many temptations off with ease and we feel nearly constantly in the presence of the Spirit, we can tend to get lax in our discipline and overlook those little things; at least I know I do. And in those times, such failures may not be catastrophic and may even be inconsequential in that immediate space of time. But(t) when we are unhealthy, when we are beset by temptation and God feels not just absent but nonexistent, if we have not cultivated those little disciplines, then we are in a for a very rude awakening. In those times of struggle and weakness, the seemingly insignificant wounds produced by ignoring those little things can blossom into deadly infections almost overnight. What starts as a minor annoyance, a small frustration or temptation may end up leaving scars we never thought possible.

I wish I had kept count

2006-03-07T20:35:00.000-06:00

Another oddity in the ol' textbooks that I noticed this week - the phrases "spontaneously assemble" and "self-assemble" seem to to pop up quite often in discussions regarding the tiniest building blocks of life. There's no explanation of how these little molecules know how to combine in exactly the right way (and yes, there are frequently other possible configurations), or how they know to get together in the first place. Apparently these things just kind of happen. And I wish I had kept count of each time these phrases appeared so I'd know how often.

The creation of man

2006-02-28T19:42:00.000-06:00

Having become more than a little bored with anatomy and microbiology readings and with Great Lent and Holy Pascha upon us, I decided to undertake some readings in the Church Fathers, specifically Ss. Chrysostom and Athanasius.

I briefly scanned Chrysostom's On the Priesthood but was forced to put it aside - not for any defect in the writing, but because of certain realizations I had when reading even the small sections I made it through. I hope to expand more on this in the future when I am able to take the work up again, but basically I came to understand that in all likelihood I was fired from my youth pastor position because God was sparing me the judgment that was my due for not taking my pastoral duties seriously enough. There were aspects of that position I was quite good at, others where I needed some work or mentoring, but the reality is that I did not the charge of those young souls with the depth and gravity such resonsibility warranted.

This theme of "being spared" actually came up in a book by Fr (or was he a bishop?) Anthony Bloom on prayer. I don't want to get to in-depth with that right now, but in discussing those times when we fell cut off from God in prayer it may be because God is sparing us his presence because of the damage it could do to us at that time. If we are in sin or unrepentant, or if our attention is elsewhere, then the presence of God could be to our judgement and condemnation instead of our salvation. This theme also came up in "Mary: The Untrodden Portal", wherein the author argues that the curse of death was not a punishment for Adam and Eve's trangression; rather, removing them from the Garden was God's way of keeping sin, and the resulting separation from God, eternal. Had they eaten of the Tree of Life, their rebellion would have been made permanent with no chance of redemption.

St Athanasius also discusses creation in his "Incarnation of the Word", again in the context of being spared. But his is a point I found quite startling:

For transgression of the commandment was turning them back to their natural state, so that just as they have had their being out of nothing, so also, as might be expected, they might look for corruption into nothing in the course of time. For if, out of a former normal state of non-existence, they were called into being by the Presence and loving-kindness of the Word, it followed naturally that when men were bereft of the knowledge of God and were turned back to what was not (for what is evil is not, but what is good is), they should, since they derive their being from God, who IS, be everlastingly bereft even of being; in other words, that they should be disintegrated and abide in death and corruption. Incarnation, 4:4-5

You see, I had always assumed that man had been created "on high", so to speak, that we were made at an elevated level. Adam's human perfection (as opposed to the true perfection of God) was an inherent part of his being - put there by God no doubt, but still something integral to who and what he was. But Athanasius says otherwise; man was created out of corruptible and impermanent matter and is, therefore, by nature corruptible and impermanent. It is only man's knowledge of God and participation in God's life that pulls man up out of nothingness and impermanence into being. When Adam turned to rebellion, he turned away from being and "looked for corruption into nothing...." Man, then, was not created at an elevation from which we fell. Rather, Adam was made at the bottom of this metaphoric mountain and raised to the top by communion with God. At the top of that mountain, he rebelled and fell back to the bottom.

Our "elevation" was, and still is, always external to us. This lays to rest any notion of man's inherent goodness or ability to raise himself up to God's level, to earn heaven. How can the imperfect, corruptible nature of man makes itself perfect and incorruptible? How can the flawed make itself into the unflawed? How can the product make itself into the source? This vision, of man being raised up and falling down, of our being actually existing outside of us, has profound implications. And it is helping me to see the contours of the seamless Orthodox theology - more on that later.

As hard as it was...

2006-02-23T19:53:00.000-06:00

As hard as it was getting used to working the 3rd shift, I've found switching back to days to be even more of a challenge. I've been so tired in the evenings, I've barely wanted to get up to go to bed. Part of it is, I think, the (much) faster pace of days; on nights there was usually plenty of downtime but on days the only time I get to sit is when I take my lunch break. The rest is resetting the old internal clock, and the last couple of nights have been better. Hopefully by next week I'll have fully adjusted.

Ascending the peak of compassion

2006-02-14T20:04:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure what it is, but lately I have had a hard time finding love and compassion for the people I take care of at work. The other day, the wife commented that I don't talk about any of the patients like I used to, people I had developed special bonds with over and above the normal patient-caregiver relationship. Part of this is that until recently our patient census has been down and part is just a personality thing - I haven't really 'clicked' with any of them. But the largest part, the biggest culprit is, I know, this difficulty with compassion.

Some people are easy to take care; they are kind, grateful, in genuine need and complain very little, or at least no more than one would expect of someone in their condition. We have a woman who was involved in a serious car accident which broke her neck. She has some gross motor skills in her arms but is otherwise paralyzed. And she is incredibly needy. She rings her call light about once an hour, if not more, needing to be adjusted, to have a sip of water, have a pillow fluffed or to have a wrinkle pulled out of her sheet. But she is abundantly grateful for these acts and certainly can't do them for herself. Though, admittedly, her constant need can be frustrating at times when there are many other things going on, for the most part, I have no difficulty helping her. It is easy because I am being thanked and because the need is clear and unambiguous. But on the other end of the spectrum we have another woman (I'm not trying to be sexist here, these are just the best polar examples we have right now) who is almost the exact opposite. She was in respiratory failure when she came to us, but was weened from the vent within a couple of weeks and is now with us just to finish up some physical therapy and to make progress on a pressure ulcer on her lower back. She is racist and has called black employees various slurs. Though she can walk and eat and do pretty much everything on her own, she is constantly asking for help on even the smallest tasks. She is crass, manipulative, ungrateful for even large acts of assistance and worst of all (in my book) is a complainer and a whiner. Not only am I unable to find the least bit of compassion for this woman, I actively dislike her. There are perhaps several reasons from my past why this particular personality type bothers me so much, but even without those triggers she is not a likeable person. I dread going into her room when she rings her call light, I hate having to listen to her complaints and serving her is a constant battle against frustration.

And I am cut to the quick by what this reveals about me, the failure of love this represents. If the goal of the Christian life is to be Christ-like then surely I am not. If I am unable to get past my pettiness, to overcome the temptation of frustration and anger and to look on these people as the very image of God, as souls Christ suffered and died for in order to redeem them, what illusion of my own goodness can I possibly maintain? What lies can I tell myself about making these failures up elsewhere or with other patients? There are no excuses, no qualifiers, no mitigating factors - I have failed. But I must not stop there and I will not let that be the end of my story. I see, perhaps more clearly than ever, the great distance I have yet to traverse and I am but taking the first small steps.

Protecting our freedom

2006-02-09T16:06:00.000-06:00

From CSMonitor, comes this piece about massive data-mining program that may be being developed by our government to detect and analyze information patterns that may be terrorism related. Leaving aside the potential problems with this system (the cost, the technical difficulty, the possible abuse of power and increased government intrusion into our lives) and its benefits (stopping another deadly terrorist attack), I found this quote from a software developer interesting, not the least which because it reflects an oft-repeated sentiment:

Starlight [a precursor to this new data-mining program] has already helped foil some terror plots, says Jim Thomas, one of its developers and director of the government's new National Visualization Analytics Center in Richland, Wash. He can't elaborate because the cases are classified, he adds. But "there's no question that the technology we've invented here at the lab has been used to protect our freedoms - and that's pretty cool." (emphasis mine)

Exactly how has this program, assuming it has indeed contributed to foiling a terrorist plot, protected our freedoms? Really, how does any counterterrorism program protect our freedom? Terrorists are not, and can never be, an occupying army that could overthrow the US government and establish an Islamic theocracy. While they may have the potential ability to kill our leaders, damage our infrastructure and cause other severe problems, our way of life and our system of government could survive even a hugely devastating attack. Terrorists are not a direct threat to our freedom in that they cannot take it away and they will never take over this country.

So how are terrorists a threat to our freedom? They are a threat to our freedom because of us. I think we are now, as a nation, incredibly weak emotionally and spiritually. I don't believe we are a nation that could sustain itself in the wake of some new atrocity. The panic that would have followed a Beslan in the US would have destroyed us - our economy would have stalled as parents stayed home to take care of kids they would no longer send to school, millions of people would have demanded billions of dollars in increased spending to stand cops and soldiers shoulder-to-shoulder in a ring around every school in the country. Terrorists are a threat to our freedom because of us and the fear that we would undoubtedly let rule in the aftermath of some significant attack. We are no longer a nation that can face hardship with a grim determination, no longer a people that can handle adversity in our own lives. We may come to relearn these "skills", but immediately following a new and deadlier strike, we would likely be our own worst enemy. We would willingly curtail our own freedoms and increase the power and reach of government. So in essence, we are fighting terrorism in an effort to fight our own weakness. Terrorists scare us not just because of what they will do, but what we will do as well.

The Littlefights word cloud

2006-02-07T14:07:00.000-06:00

I've been tagged...

2006-02-07T13:35:00.000-06:00

Clifton has tagged me, so here goes...

4 jobs you have had in your life:

Auto claims adjuster
Youth pastor
Counterterrorism analyst
Nurse's aide

4 movies you could watch over and over:

Almost any Bill Murray movie
In America
Garden State
The Big Lebowski

4 places you have lived:

Tempe, AZ
Seoul, South Korea
Anchorage, AK
Doboj, Bosnia

4 TV shows you love to watch:

Simpsons re-runs
Seinfeld re-runs
Grey's Anatomy
The Office

4 places you have been on vacation:

The Great Lakes
New York, New York
Yosemite
Various points in Mexico

4 websites you visit daily:

The Christian Science Monitor
Pontifications
Minor Clergy
Touchstone

4 of your favorite foods:

Pizza
Sushi
Bureks (a Bosnian dish)
Most of my wife's cooking repertoire

4 places you would rather be right now:

At my own graduation ceremony at the completion of the nursing program
Sarajevo - the Old City, specifically
In the house my wife and I bought and sold last year
Anywhere with my old group of friends if things could be like they were for one night

4 bloggers you are tagging:

Minor Clergy
Troy
Kevin

Okay, I'm only doing three - several people I would have tagged have already been tagged.

Microlutherology

2006-02-07T13:19:00.000-06:00

On Saturday during my microbiology class, part of the lecture focused on the history and development of microbiology. The teacher began this part of the lecture by asking, "what did people think caused disease in 'pre-scientific' times?" Vapors, curses, evil spirits, punishment for sin - all manner of things were thought to cause disease before we discovered the world of microbes. My teacher, who started as a biology instructor and later became an administrator at a neighboring Lutheran high school, apparently believes that it was the Roman Catholic Church that kept humanity in the dark about the true nature of sickness. She went on a 5-minute rant about the Catholic Church's keeping the Bible from the masses, keeping people illiterate and ignorant, opposing the progress of science and scientists and just being a bad group of folks all around. Then, and at this point I almost burst out laughing, she said, "And that's what Martin Luther came along to oppose." She then went on a 5-minute panegyric in praise of Luther's theological, and apparently, scientific acumen. She all but attributed the discovery of microbes to him. I've heard that for many Lutherans Luther's writings and teachings are just a step below the Bible, but I think this is the first time I've ever heard anyone trying to attribute the advent of microbiology to him. Thanks goodness for Luther, the Reformer and the True Discoverer of the Germ Theory of Disease!

The 'ethnic' problem

2006-02-01T16:00:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago in the inquirer's class after church, a woman and her 20-something daughter were introduced to the class by Father M. with the announcement that they would be joining our class next week. We didn't see them the next week, but the mom came last Sunday. She spoke with a thick slavic accent and explained that she was from Yugoslavia and had been Orthodox her whole life, but that since coming to America her daughter had grown up knowing little about the Church. The mother agreed to come to the classes with her daughter so the young woman would feel more comfortable, presumably. Unfortunately, her daughter was ill that day. Unfortunate that she wasn't there to learn about the priesthood and ordination, which was the actual topic of that day's class, and most unfortunate that she wasn't there to hear the teacher's rebuttal to her mother's obviously ethnicized understanding of what it means to be Orthodox.

She raised the first question about "how can be there an American Orthodox church?" right in the middle of a discussion on the priesthood of all believers - I didn't quite grasp the connection, but it was clearly bothering her. St Nick's was originally a Macedonian congregation and many of the older members of the congregation are Macedonian immigrants (a fact that occassionaly causes some tension with our thoroughly American convert priest; they want the old way and still look at it as "their church" to the exclusion of outsiders), but the younger folks are all either converts or were born into other national churches. These latter people all, obviously, view the Orthodox Church as 'the Church', regardless of whatever ethnic flavor its local expression may present. And St Nick's is now a part of OCA. But this posed no small stumbling block to this woman; how can the Liturgy be in English? how can a priest be a convert with German heritage? how can the Church be American at all? She seemed to think that whatever changes the transition from an ethnic to an American congregation might cause almost completely invalidated its Orthodox credentials. Comparisons to the Serbian churches in Chicago were frequent, which still use Church Slavonic and follow the Old Calendar. That St Nick's follows the "American" calendar also bothered her - she asked if they were actually Catholic because they celebrate Christmas in December.

The teacher for that day gamely tried to answer her questions while steering the conversation back to the appropriate subject, but failed in the latter regard. The ethnic problem became the main focus of the class, and frankly, it was the first time I'd ever encountered it first hand. I've heard of it, of course, but this was the first time I'd ever heard someone say directly that they doubted it was possible for there to be an American Orthodox Church, that one had to at least worship in an ethnic congregation (if not actually be that ethnicity) in order to really be Orthodox. I was flummoxed. This represents such a huge disparity in understanding as to what the Church really is that its almost as wide as the divide between Orthodox and Protestants over issues of authority. How do you get someone to see that the Church of Christ could never be limited by language and nationality? How do you get them to understand that the non-Orthodox world is in need of salvation and redemption, that it needs precisely what Orthodoxy has to offer? I can hardly wait for next Sunday's class.

I knew our government wasn't terribly efficient, but...

2006-01-27T17:46:00.000-06:00

...this is ridiculous.

Tired abortion arguments

2006-01-24T13:31:00.000-06:00

Last night, one of the nurses mentioned in passing that she had recently visited a website that displays information, including mug shots, of registered sex offenders living in this area. One of the other nurses (the nurse mentioned earlier and who we'll call "Rita") said that her previous partner's then-7-year-old son had been molested by a female babysitter. She spent a few minutes describing her frustration with the woman's response and attempted justification of her actions, the involvement of this woman's minister, and the ridiculous failure of the local law enforcement to pursue an appropriate course of action and press felony charges. It was a sad story, to say the least. The dietitian, who normally comes in early but for some reason came in around 2am last night, somehow thought this was an opportune time to mention a story she allegely heard about some conservative commentator who said he thought women who have abortions should be legally required to have their tubes tied at the same time. I had to answer a call light, so I walked away for a few minutes.

When I came back, the dietitian was pontificating, with much agreement all around, that she believes anyone with male genitalia (not her precise wording) has absolutely no say in the abortion debate. I expressed my scorn and derision for such nonsense, though likely due to the late hour I was not all that eloquent. I pointed out that it takes a man to make that baby and that if a woman decides to keep that child, the man may be obligated to a couple of decades of child support. Those 2 simple facts alone mean a man has a say in the debate. Rita said that since so many of those men end up being dead-beat dads, that effectively counters my point. I pointed out that just because people fail to uphold their responsibilities does not mean that their rights, and the right, are somehow eliminated. The dietitian then modified her earlier statement to say that married men could have a say in whether or not their wife gets an abortion. So I guess I got a point on that one. Rita made a muddy argument about either the politicization of religion or the religious influence on politics, either way she perceived it as an obvious evil and claimed that any effort to bring a religiously-informed morality into politics was somehow against the Constitution. A couple of call ligths were going off and the debate was turning rancorous and noisy (3 against 1), so I decided to simply back off rather than let things get ugly.

Had it been just Rita and I, I certainly would have argued that her view of religion-free politics is absolutely 1) not what the Constitution actually requres and 2) as much a religiuosly-informed opinion as anything in the conservative's moral agenda. It is the view of religion-as-private-preference, one that has absolutely no bearing on any other area of one's life. If that is how you want to live, then that is fine - keep your religion private and vote like an atheist. However, attempting to prevent others from allowing their faith to influence their politics and views on public morality is just as contentious, imposing and "intolerant" as anything that they object to in the conservative camp. That it is expressed secularly in no way diminishes the religious underpinnings of the argument since many making that kind of statement do, in fact, make claims of faith. Based on their personalized, relativistic understanding of belief and the morality derived thereof, they move forward with an agenda that is irreligious on its surface. But it ultimately attempts to impose that personalized & relativistic concept of faith onto everyone else, to denude and destroy the comprehensive religious understanding of conservative Christianity in this country. Its a tired and failed argument and one that does nothing to make meaningful statements of any kind in the abortion debate.

The difficulty of speaking evolutionally

2006-01-23T10:41:00.000-06:00

This semester I am only taking 2 classes; Anatomy 2 and Microbiology. This is a blessed relief from the 4 classes of last semester, but I've noticed a trend that has carried through - my professors cannot seem to restrict themselves to truly evolution-based language. I, of course, have no idea as to the level or flavor of faith to which my teachers may or may not subscribe, but it is clear from my classes so far that they have do not speak evolutionally. By that I mean they do not speak in the language of random chance or natural selection. They rarely speak of advantageous adaptations or survival of the fittest. There is little discussion as to how our delicately balanced internal systems could have developed such intricate interdependence or how cells developed the ability to control their internal mechanisms with exquisite precision. It seems almost impossible for them to speak of physiology of the body or cells/microorganisms without using words one would, in all other situations, associate with an external conscious agent. Words like "purpose" pop up a lot - "the purpose of the epithelium is to..." - but how can a directionless, unconscious anything have purpose? A function, yes, but purpose? And, of course, "design" is bandied about quite frequently, but almost always with the underlying assumption that either the cells themselves or some amporphous, impersonal "nature" did this work. But how can a cell direct its own evolution? How can a microscopic arrangement of proteins, phospholipids and water plan its own development and growth into something more complex? Of course it can't, but in an academic system dedicated to naturalistic reasoning, how can such talk still exist if evolution is the ultimate truth as to the origin of all life? It seems we should find speaking evolutionally far easier than we do.

But it is not just my teachers, lest anyone assume their own personal faith is shining through. Even my books utilize the language of external agency. Take this quote from my micro book - "The earth initially may seem like a random, chaotic place, but it is actually an incredibly organized, fine-tuned machine." How exactly does random chance produce an 'incredibly organized, fine-tuned machine'? And why is this language so hard to avoid? I'm sure there are those who would argue that our language and culture are themselves barriers to the correct use of evolutionary termingology in everyday speech, but I still find it highly ironic that we find it so difficult to naturally speak "naturally."

Catechumen class and what ensues

2006-01-16T08:46:00.000-06:00

Every Sunday after Litury, the wife and I have the inquirers/Catechumen's class. There are, or were, 5 of us attending regularly. One was a young woman who had gotten married to her Orthodox husband in a civil ceremony. They wanted to get married in the Church back in December, so she was Chrismated early with the understanding she would continue to come to the classes through May - we haven't seen her in a few weeks, though, so I don't know what's up with her. The other 2 are an older married couple with 5 daughters. Their eldest became Orthodox last year and I think, partly anyways, her quest rubbed off on them and they are now searching for historic Christianity. They went through the class last year and are going through again with the intention of joining this Pascha. They were very active Protestants and had participated in church plants and what not, so this is certainly a big change for them. It would be almost like my in-laws converting.

Anyways, class went well - we were the only ones there, so we had plenty of time to talk to the deacon and ask questions. I'm much further along to wanting to "convert" than the wife. She's got a variety of hurdles to overcome, not the least of which was growing up in a healthy church and in a firmly believing Christian home. The former is important because many of the reasons that have driven me to search, and what has apparently driven many of the other recent converts in our parish to search, are huge problems with the church's they formerly attended. Some attended a wide variety of styles, church sizes and denominations and found something wanting, something missing, in every situation. They saw problems that were the result of weak theology or shallow thinking and wanted to find something more resilient, stronger, deeper. Aside from our lousy experience at the church I pastored at, the wife has by and large had good church experiences. They weren't perfect, but the people tried to live their faith and did a reasonably good job of it. So she isn't carrying the baggage I and some of the others are carrying and can't really identify with those problems. What's more, the latter point from above means she has a consistent and pervasive understanding that is thoroughly Protestant with a strong Anabaptist flavor (the denomination has a Mennonite background though they do not identify with it any longer and haven't for some time). Needless to say, infant baptism and sacramentalism have played huge roles in our discussions about Orthodoxy and probably represent 2 of the larger problems she has yet to resolve.

The wife and I's discussion after Liturgy got a little heated and eventually turned into an unfortunate argument. However, once tempers cooled, we were able to talk more clearly and she has recognize that she has not really been giving Orthodoxy an honest try. She's been trying to lay Orthodoxy on the foundation of her pre-existing Protestant theology instead of letting Orthodoxy find its own level, do its own foundation-laying. I'm hoping and praying that this new insight will help us both to know if this is really where God is leading us and where it will be best for us to be. Your continued prayers are much appreciated.

Troy tackles icons

2006-01-09T15:39:00.000-06:00

Some may remember Troy from a previous post (here) and I've gone round and round with him on his blog a couple of times. He's now attempting to disprove the Orthodox veneration of icons - an issue we've debated before (here and here). I'll probably give him another go but all are welcome. So come on over and enjoy the debate!

The throne

2006-01-09T14:50:00.000-06:00

During the coffee hour last week after church, the wife and I got into a conversation with a couple who converted to Orthodoxy only a year or two ago. His wife was mostly minding their young child, so we were pretty much talking to him. We were talking about our faith journey and some of the issues we're still dealing with in regards to Orthodoxy and possible conversion. He said he and his wife dealt with many of the same things and, in what is becoming a frequent refrain, that his wife had a much greater problem with these things than did he. But things kind of clicked for his wife one day, ironically, as she prepared to ask a rabbi a question. She worked in a potato-chip factory and once a month the factory would make a run of kosher products under the supervision of a rabbi. Her question was about Temple worship and why the Jews stopped worshipping that way (I assume she didn't know the Temple was destroyed by the Romans). She realized, though, that what she was seeing at St Nick's every Sunday morning was precisely that. She saw the elements and architecture of the OT brought into fruition and relationship with Christ. The Temple architecture, the decorations/icons, the incense, the sacrifice and the priests - it was all there right in front of her. So things clicked for her and they joined later that year.

A couple of days later, the wife and I were out doing our Bible study. We try to go through a book of the Bible, one chapter per week, and talk about what we've read; questions, things that jumped out at us and insights or connections we've made. Right now we're working through Hebrews, and last week we looked at chapter 8. I hadn't really thought about our conversation with that couple at all that week until I got to verse 5 and then something hit me - where is the throne in Protestant worship? Hebrews draws elaborate parallels between Christ and the high priest of the OT, between Christ's sacrifice of Himself and the high priest's yearly atonement sacrifice, and between the high priest's entering into the Holy of Holies and Christ's "taking his seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven." (Hebrews 8:1) In the heavenly things upon which the Temple and its worship was based, the Holy of Holies is the throne room and the Ark of the Covenant is the Father's throne. God is present on his throne, which is why the Holy of Holies could only be entered once a year by the high priest, and him alone. We see the same pattern in Orthodox worship. Only the priest and those specially appointed may enter into the altar area because Christ, through the Eucharist, is present on the throne of the altar. God's presence sanctifies that area and it connects the mundane to the divine, opening something between heaven and earth. Those heavenly types upon which OT Temple worship was based have not been done away with. No, they are eternal and thus are still the example we should follow, the pattern to which we should adhere but with the new dimensions Christ introduces through the Church.

With this in mind, my thinking instantly flashed back to the Protestant church I recently worked at. I pictured the west-facing auditorium, the wide, flat stage, the lack of decoration and any kind of Christian symbol. I pictured the lack of sanctity in that place, the raucuous music and irreverent spirit. I pictured the coffee stains and bagel crumbs on the floor. But I saw no throne. I saw no seat for God, no place where Christ is made present to us. So is that still worship, biblically understood? Can we worship without the throne?

Why, then, are you a member?

2006-01-08T18:31:00.000-06:00

The wife and I went to Border's this evening to do a little reading and coffee drinking. I saw a magazine I hadn't seen before - Conscience. The sub-title was (I think) "A Catholic Opinion Journal." I stumbled across "First Things" in much the same way, so I thought I'd give it a gander. Yeah, needless to say I was sorely disappointed by this "religiously progressive" rag. One of the first articles was on the (alleged) success of a World Youth Day demonstration in favor of condoms. The author positively squirmed in delight at the discomfort of the Catholic hierarchy and at one point, compared the Pope to a queen. I understand disagreement and a desire to debate passionately held issues, but why the heck are these people still Catholic? Their views go beyond mere disagreement on the small things into questioning the very core of the Church herself. Why, then, are you still a member?