anarchy and occupational hazards

I have sorely neglected this blog over the past four or five months, and I apologize to my faithful follower! I could no longer stay away, however; I need to get some thoughts online. Besides, I love to hear myself type.

So I have been doing quite a bit of thinking over the past several weeks about the Occupy Wall Street (And Any Other Street That Takes Your Fancy) movement, and what it all means. I confess to an overarching mistrust of the "movement". While I think there are certain Occupiers that honestly hold a moral outrage against the turns the Western Capitalist system has taken, I believe that much of the movement is being instigated, supported and funded by people who have made their nut on the back of Capitalism and are now simply seeking to foment disorder, playing on the genuine angst of the 'rank-and-file' of the movement.

Setting this aside for the moment, I have been trying to assess the moral and spiritual underpinnings of the times and it comes down to a single word: anarchy, or to use the more theological word, antinomianism, i.e., lawlessness. The Occupiers are engaged in an act of lawlessness in response to a perceived—and in some fashion, at least, real—lawlessness in the financial/banking/investment capital industry. And I believe the cause is, at its core, a failure of the Church. Allow me to explain.

Capitalism has worked as a financial—not to say political—system for centuries because it is the only such system that takes into account the reality of human greed. The free market of Capitalism has historically allowed for the checks and balances necessary to contain the human sins of greed, avarice and gluttony.

Over the past 80 or so years we have watched the moral degradation of our culture, and it has pervaded every aspect thereof. There was a day when the every institution in the West was imbued, to say nothing of run on, Judeo-Christian moral law. Most of these institutions, but specifically the financial industry, began in the middle part of the last century to become amoral. This turned out to be a slippery slope down which we have slid over the past half-century; we now find ourselves in a land of our own making that is void of all morality. Some would see this as the liberation of our society, but it is quite the opposite; it is the enslavement thereof.

Anyone who has spent any time at all around children knows that one of the most fundamental things a parent or authority figure can give a child is a healthy sense of boundaries. A child without rules is terrified; that fear will often express itself as rage, and the child will act out in an effort to garner some response—any response—that will say, "This far you may go and no further".

Our culture (and here is where I fault the Church) has been allowed to systematically dismantle the moral code of society, the very things that hold us together and that keep us safe. The sanctity of marriage, the institution of the family, the "Golden Rule", the Ten Commandments—all have been marginalized, negated, ridiculed and removed until we are left with one law: the law of self-indulgence, i.e., if I want to do it, it is allowed. In the case of the financial industry, the caricature of Gordon Gekko, Michael Douglas' nefarious character in the iconic 1987 filmWall Street, has come to ascendancy; "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good!" And in our current culture, so is adultery, sex outside of marriage, gluttony, public nudity, trespassing, slander, usury and a nearly endless litany of what used to be called 'sins'. Sin is the occupational hazard of being a human. And it will have its way with us unless we bend the knee to a higher power.

And so we have thousands of people without boundaries, funded and supported by people without morals, crying out against an institution which is simply exhibiting the fruit of lawlessness. And I wonder how long it will take before this lawlessness, this anarchy, explodes into class warfare that will take out the final shaky underpinnings of the Republic in which we are blessed to live. And I wonder if we, the Church, have what it takes to wade into the anarchy with the Law of the One True King, and rescue this nation, perhaps even the world, from the dash to destruction. More on that in a coming post.

imagining god

In the past week I have had a couple of people flag an LA Times article at me that declares in no uncertain terms that science has now proven that God is a human invention. The empirical evidence is in; when we consider things of a religious nature, certain key areas of our brain light up. These areas turn out to be the same areas as light up when we process social interaction and relationships. This is proof that our need to engage in social activity and attachment is the same as our need to believe; we are as hard-wired for one as for the other. Faced with this revelation I find I have no choice but to abandon the ridiculous charade of being a purveyor of religion. I am turning in my shingle and looking for a job as a sanitation engineer. Or maybe a bartender. Or... perhaps not.

One of the most stunning statements from the article is this:

Michael Tomasello, a developmental psychologist who co-directs the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has also done work related to morality and very young children. He and his colleagues have produced a wealth of research that demonstrates children's capacities for altruism. He argues that we are born altruists who then have to learn strategic self-interest.

This is profound evidence, once again, of the truism (attributed to Abraham Maslow) that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Tomasello, and others of his ilk have begun their research with a premise. Their overarching metanarrative is that there is no God. Thus, every link in the chain of evidence reinforces that belief (or better, lack thereof), until at the end of the day their point of view is unassailable.

The notion that we are "born altruists who then have to learn strategic self-interest" could only have been proposed by someone who never had to get up for a 3 a.m. feeding. The altruistic infant would somehow understand, upon waking, that Mummy and Da need their sleep, that they will be certain, in the morning, to give the child as much food as he will need to survive, and that he should simply re-aquire his binky and return to blissful, altruistic slumber. Just where such an altruist would first learn "strategic self-interest" in the face of the doting nature of most new parents leaves me puzzled. The behavior of most parents, on the contrary, tends to reveal the better side of human nature—the denial of strategic self-interest. Of course, this evidence would not back up the 'non-God metanarrative', and so it must either be discounted or ignored.

After the page break the article makes the point that  

[S]cientists have discovered neurological explanations for what many interpret as evidence of divine existence. Canadian psychologist Michael Persinger, who developed what he calls a "god helmet" that blocks sight and sound but stimulates the brain's temporal lobe, notes that many of his helmeted research subjects reported feeling the presence of "another." Depending on their personal and cultural history, they then interpreted the sensed presence as either a supernatural or religious figure. It is conceivable that St. Paul's dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus was, in reality, a seizure caused by temporal lobe epilepsy.

  What if science were to presuppose, rather than a [John] Lennonist notion of "no God, no religion", a God who, consistent with biblical evidence, created all things, declaring them "very good"(Genesis 1.31)? Might then one be able to see the sparking of the human brain under Persinger's "god helmet" as evidence that he was stimulating the very centers of the brain of the believer as are stimulated by the Holy Spirit? Could not the existence of these areas themselves be seen as evidence for God, rather than against Him? Rather than adaptive evolutionary triggers we have developed to insure that we all have a predisposition toward connectivity, may it not just possibly be, Drs. Persinger and Tomasello, that they are the product of "Intelligent Design"—that Whom we know as God, the Creator and Redeemer of the universe?

  What if St. Paul's dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus was, in reality, his temporal humanity being seized by the God who redeemed him?

Imagine that.

amusing ourselves

I happened to StumbleUpon some photos the other day of the Six Flags New Orleans amusement park. There was an eeriness to the pictures, not unlike what you might feel standing on the porch of an abandoned Victorian house—sort of "Addams Family-esque" feel.

But what struck me most was the irrelevance of it all. In my mind there was something of an "interesting, but so what?" feel to the whole thing—not at all the same feeling as I get when looking at the washed-out and abandoned homes left in the wake of Katrina. I was reminded of the story of a Ugandan bishop being taken on a tour of Disneyland. At the end of one particular ride (not to be named, but let us say that the main character in the story would be lost without his hat and whip), upon disembarking, the bishop turned to his host and asked, "And how, exactly, does this glorify Jesus?"

I love Disneyland, Six Flags and amusement parks in general. But looking at those photos of Six Flags NOLA brought a realization of the near-vacuity of a culture that is, as Neil Postman wrote in the mid-1980s, "amusing ourselves to death". I was struck particularly by the millions of dollars worth of equipment and structures simply lying around rusting into oblivion, and the incongruity of the graffiti sprayed in several places: "NOLA rising".

It is significant that there has been no effort at rehabilitation nor even clean-up since August 25, 2005. It is as if folks understand, almost unconsciously, the values-statement any such work would make. I assume that the Six Flags corporate office has realized that any attempt to rebuild while the real lives of thousands of residents and former residents of "NOLA" are still, six years after the fact, desperately impacted would be a profound act of hubris bordering on the inhuman. As it stands, it is a reminder of how much we expend on things that have no eternal value, and a statement of something that we really do not care to think about if we can at all avoid it: the notion that there is much we hold in high regard that, when the wheels come off, really do not amount to anything at all.

There is in me a certain gratification that Six Flags New Orleans lies abandoned and rusting away. I like the personal reminder that, when it all comes down to it, amusing myself for the sake of amusement not only doesn't add much to my life, but can in fact diminish it in some deep and profound ways. Paul said it this way:

Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things [Philippians 4.8, ESV].

anxiously acting out

There has been a tragic revelation lately in news stories of politicians behaving badly. The absence of sense and morality, the public indiscretions exposed in national leaders such as the former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York Representative Anthony Weiner are only the latest in a long series of such events that include Newt Gingrich, John Edwards and Bill Clinton; and we must not forget they also include folks like Ted Haggard and Jimmy Bakker.

What possesses men like these to undertake such tragic lapses of judgement? And even more tragic, what possesses us to accept such men as leaders? Is there no place for, much less expectancy of, morality and upright behavior any more? What could possibly entice us to elect and/or follow such people and invest them with so much power and authority?

I have been reading the blogs and online news sources, and I see a trend that I find profoundly disturbing. There seems to be a proliferation of opinions that run along the lines of: "Well, it was only pornography" and "We all do it!", so "What's the big deal? Why are we such prudes?" To say that Rep. Weiner's indiscretion was "only pornography" is like saying of the 400,000 + acre Wallow conflagration in eastern Arizona, "Well, it's only a wildfire!"

The truth is that we, as a culture, are on an ever-accelerating societal revolution to abandon all moral living as something which "cramps our style" to use the vernacular of my youth. And the curious—even tragic—thing about this collision course with anti-nomianism is that we are steadily laboring to abandon the very thing we are crying out for. Any culture needs laws, particularly moral laws, in order to survive. The current trend, however, is toward anarchy, and everyone a law unto himself.

Edwin Friedman writes that we are a culture in deep anxiety. This chronic anxiety has caused us to have ceased to promote and follow healthy, well differentiated leaders, and instead to organize ourselves around a basic immaturity, to the point of selecting those least mature to be our leaders. Instead of looking to great hearts and minds to lead us, we gravitate toward the slick and the self-aggrandizing egos of those who have no sense that they are not above the law, and no shame except the shame of being caught out in their indiscretions.

And, tragically, the anxious society perpetuates its own anxiety, potential leaders are prevented from rising to the top through the systematic cultural sabotage of their resolve and the tearing down of any initiative that might cause them to rise above the crowd. Curously, and almost counter-intuitively, one of the primary examples of a society in regression (to use Friedman's term) is an over-sensitivity to potential hurt. In A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, Friedman writes:

As with any chronically anxious family, there is in American society today an intense quickness to interfere in another's self-expression, to overreact to any perceived hurt, to take all disagreement too seriously, and to brand the opposition with ad hominem personal epithets (chauvinist, ethnocentric, homophobic, and so on).

 Until we begin to recognize that we are desperately in need of leaders who are unafraid to lead, and to undertake the hard solutions to a society in free-fall versus making their decisions based on the latest poll and looking for the "quick fix", we will continue to find ourselves "led" by the fearful immature, those completely incapable of doing the hard work of truly leading. And those "leaders", whose souls recognize their own poverty, will continue to act out of their immaturity in self-destructive fashion.

justice and sorrow

There is a great deal of talk surrounding last night's tracking down and killing of Osama bin Laden by a task force of US Special Operations warriors. As followers of Jesus, we have much to consider about this event. The more we consider, the more we must realize that there are no easy answers, no easy positions. While we may be tempted to delight glibly in seeing the arch-terrorist put to death, or conversely to decry his killing as murder, we disciples must, before everything, approach this with prayer and a godly attitude.

The first thing we must realize is this: we are made in the image of God. Because of this, we are imbued with a strong sense of justice, the desire to see things set right and to applaud when we see justice done. And because we are God's agents in the world, it is up to us to do all we can to see justice brought about, and injustice destroyed.

The difficulty for us lies in knowing exactly what justice entails in every situation. In some cases it is clear and obvious. In other cases it is muddied, uncertain. One of the great theological minds of the previous century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man thoroughly convinced of the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, was executed for his part in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler. in 2009 Scott Roeder, conservative Christian pro-life advocate, slew late-term abortion provider George Tiller. Tiller, who during the week killed gestational infants in their third trimester of growth, on Sundays was himself an usher at his church, a ministry in which he was engaged when Roeder shot him. The same Jesus who told Peter to put away his sword had just that very evening told His disciples to arm themselves (John 18.10-11, Luke 22.36-38).

What is certain is that Jesus laid down His life for Osama bin Laden, as surely as He did for you and me. The fact that bin Laden never availed himself of that sacrificial death for his sins does not change the fact that God loved him. I imagine His sorrow over bin Laden is not unlike that He expressed over Jerusalem (Matthew 23.37, cf. Luke 13.34). This, then, should be our first reaction—godly sorrow for a lost soul—before we allow ourselves the satisfaction of justice meted out.

For surely the death of Osama bin Laden is an act of godly justice, even though it may be dispensed by a team of Navy SEALs, upon the command of President Obama at the behest of the government of the United States of America by the will of the people of this land. As Jesus told Pilate, no one has any power or authority unless it is given him by God (John 19.10-11). Bin Laden's death is simple and long-delayed retribution for the thousands upon thousands of lives his plotting and scheming and planning and training have violently ended over the course of his nefarious career.

On another level his death was, it would seem, the one he chose. For surely he would've been taken prisoner and brought to trial—or perhaps a military tribunal—in the US had he surrendered on May 1, 2011 when the SEALs stormed his compound. Rather than be taken, however, he took up arms as he had vowed, and purchased for himself the death he had sworn himself to.

Nevertheless, even though justice has been served, our response as followers of our Lord should not be jubilation, but sadness—and only then satisfaction. D. A. Carson, in his book Love in Hard Places (ISBN-13: 9781581344257) has this to say:

He is an evil man, and he must be stopped, but he is a man, and we should take no pleasure in destroying him. Vengeance is the Lord’s alone.

Do not offer the alternative, “Should we weep for Osama bin Laden or hold him to account for his genocide and prevent him from carrying out his violent intentions?”

The right answer is yes.

The only rejoicing being done over the death of Osama bin Laden ought to be the glee of the demonic forces of darkness, who this day claimed another soul for eternal torment. And that, indeed, is a tragedy worthy of godly lament.

royals? really?

I have been noting with something approaching bemusement the hoo-hah regarding the Royal Nuptials so recently concluded in the wee hours (PDT) of this morning, and trying to figure out what all the fuss is here in the US. Facebook is rife with commentary and comedy. I have seen several statuses asking the question, "What's your Royal Wedding name?", inviting friends to combine the names of dead relatives with dead pets and street names to come up with a high-falutin name worthy of, ahem... Will and Kate's guest-list. The wife of one of my friends hosted a party to which the guests wore their wedding gowns to watch the event together.

I have been pondering all of this and have concluded that the Royal Wedding is much like St. Patrick's Day, during which, of course, everyone is Irish. In the same way, for the Royal Wedding, we are all loyal subjects of the Crown of England, cheering on the new Prince and Princess William, Duke of Cambridge with all vigor and stiff upper lips and whatnot. Of course, we pay no attention to the conflict this must set up within us as good Irish (that was so last month)!

Now, don't get me wrong; they seem to be a sweet couple, and I pray them a long and loving marriage in defiance of the statistical odds, and the tragedies of less recent royal marriages. And we all love pageantry, don't we? I mean, look at how we dress up our children for preschool "graduations" these days? We seem starved for pomp and circumstance.

But the question arises for me, and I wonder that it doesn't for every American: Didn't we undertake a war 235 years ago in defiance of the notion of being subject to the Crown? I seem to recall that some very smart and sincere men penned a little document called the Declaration of Independence, wherein some words were written about being "Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown." I know this because I spent a great deal of time as a child memorizing the dialogue from Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America Part One: The Early Years, wherein Tom Jefferson attempts to get Ben Franklin to sign off on the document before the 4th of July holiday ("You're so skittish! Who possibly could care if you do?" "The Un-British Activities Committee, that's who!"). I mean, what else are you going to do when you're 15 and you are imprisoned in a one-room cabin for weeks on end when you hate fishing and the only other things you have to entertain you are a .22 rifle and the Big Stinky Fly Trap?

So I'm trying to figure out this fascination with the Royals when it occurs to me: we, even those of us steeped in Independent America, are longing for a King. We mostly don't even realize it, because we have so long drunk at the tap of Independence that we think we are quenching our thirst for fountains of Living Water, when all we are doing, really, is sipping from a muddy cup. I am proud to be an American. I believe America was formed from the embodiment of good and godly principles of Christian faith. I believe we have done some of the greatest good a nation can possibly do throughout our short history. But I believe there is Someone larger than the United States of America to Whom I owe my fullest allegiance, and even my very life.

We are in the midst of celebrating the Resurrection of this King, and our resurrection with Him, who follow Him. He is the true King of all kings, the Real Royal of which all earthly royals are but types and shadows. He is the King we long for, even though we may not know it, even though we deny it; somewhere within us we know we need Him, and we desire to be subjects of His Kingdom. This is what we are created for; this is our deepest and most magnificent Obsession. And under His reign, we ourselves, simple independent commoners, become royals. A blessed Eastertide to all.

...or what's a heaven for?

There has been so much heat—and no small amount of light, as well—throughout the Interwebs surrounding Rob Bell's latest book, Love Wins, that I feel compelled to say something about the subject. Not about the book, mind you, nor even about Bell himself. I have not read Love Wins, and I honestly have no intention of so doing. There are some excellent reviews out there, if you are interested. I, though, find it difficult enough to keep up the good fight of reading things I believe will increase my knowledge and wisdom regarding the things of the Kingdom of God. To spend any great amount of time reading that with which I must necessarily do mental and theological battle is for me misuse my time, apologetics not being my prime calling.

While the idea of "know thine enemy" is a valid one, the depth of that knowing is something we must carefully judge. And while I am pretty certain I would not classify Bell as "enemy", he seems to ascribe to certain—well, "fuzzy" is not too unkind an adjective, I think—ways of thinking about God and the Gospel. So much of what passes as theology today is what H. Richard Niebuhr described as liberal thought: the idea that "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross"—in other words, a theology without theology, or at least such as could be recognized by the Fathers of faith. Add to this my belief that the best way to spot the counterfeit is, as the Secret Service knows, to get intimately familiar with the real, and I feel the need to reflect.

So, it seemed fitting and proper to me, during this Holy Week, to spend a little time looking at the truth of the Gospel, and why it is important. In 900 words or less. Bold, you must admit, if somewhat audacious. Please keep your appendages within the vehicle, and remain seated at all times until the ride has come to a complete stop.

The first thing to remember about the Gospel is this: it is an offense to the thinking of the world (cf. 2 Peter 2.6-8, 1 Corinthians 1.18-31). Nothing about "dying in order to live" makes any sense to the world. The notion—in a culture where it is imperative that no one ever feel bad about himself—of being broken, or (God, or Whoever, forbid!) a sinner and in need of being fixed or "redeemed", is anathema.

The Gospel, however, is clear: every human being, save One, is a fractured image of humanity, of what we were intended to be—a clear reflection of God (cf. Genesis 1.26). Every one of us. Everyone. We have rebelled against God, and in the reality of creation, those who rebel against the Creator are doomed to die. That death, again according to Scripture, is eternal and tormenting. This is the bad news; and we have to deal with the bad news before we can approach the Good News. That bad news can be summed up thusly: Without direct intervention from a Source outside ourselves, we shall surely be lost, tormented in death forever unending. This thought does not make people happy. Nor is it intended to. It is, however, the truth; and it is offensive.

But it is not the end of the story. Once we acknowledge the bad news we can pass through it to the Good News. And the Good News is this:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God" (John 3.16-18 ESV). 

The short version: God does not desire that we suffer the penalty we ourselves have incurred, but has indeed made a way that we should not have to suffer that penalty through the work of God the Son, Jesus Christ. Contrary to the false premise some theologians put forth, God does not condemn His creatures to Hell; He rather provides the means, through the shedding of His own blood and the giving up of His own life, for us not to have that horrific never-ending end.


God is holy, and His holiness cannot, by very nature, abide that which is unholy. Jesus is completely holy. He is also completely human. Because of that, humanity has access once again to the One True and Holy God. We are saved, not by our own doing, and not because God is too nice to let anyone spend the eternal life He gave him in the torture of unending death. No, we are saved through trusting in God's unending, unquenchable, unconditional, unfathomable love revealed through the death of God the Son by the horrific torture of the Cross. While our lot is death forever, in Jesus Christ we may have life forever. Which will we choose?