Wednesday, May 26, 2010

I'm not going to jump into the partisan camps battling over who is responsible for the British Petroleum off-shore oil well leak and spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I'm just among those who are stunned over the amount of time it's taking for BP, the EPA, the White House or someone get on a fast-track to stop it and get it cleaned up. We keep hearing how complicated it all is. Most things are. Someone on a radio program observed how the Apollo 13 crew was rescued in their aborted moon landing attempt. Mission control personnel in Houston had precious little time and limited resources to engineer a make-shift air-filtration system, make sure it worked, and communicate the instructions to the crew in space. Taking their time was not an option, nor was failure. Yet a multi-billion dollar industry can't find a way to plug a hole in the bottom of the Gulf.

I noted this discrepancy to my wife. Wise woman that she is, she suggested the difference. NASA personnel in Houston had a personal investment in bringing Apollo 13 home. They knew the crew members. They felt themselves to be an extension of the mission. They experienced a sense of urgency that put all other agenda on the back burner. Unless you're in the shrimping or fishing or tourism industries on the Gulf coast, or you live on the Gulf coast, there doesn't seem to be too much of a sense of urgency. BP seems to see this as a public relations urgency, more than an environmental crisis. They can count on America's continuing glutinous addiction to non-renewable fossil fuel. (In three decades computers have gone from bulky expensive items to things you can hold in the palm of your hand. In a century the technology of the petroleum based internal combustion engine has barely budged.) BP is still making in profit nearly three times more than they're spending on the spill. There's no urgency or personal connection.

The core of the faith to which I adhere demands urgency and personal investment of followers. We are to see people as creatures who urgently need to meet a God who loves them enough to die for them. If we fail to act with urgency, passion, and compassion we fail the very mission of our movement itself. We are to be like the Houston crew.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Give Them Everything! That'll Kill Their Faith!

I have some brilliant friends, I really do. One of them made an insightful observation a couple of days ago. In our faith tradition we have an ancient story about a man named Job. (His name is pronounced "jobe" not "job." He actually lost his job, along with everything else in his life!) We don't know much about Job's historic setting, but we do know that he's presented as a man of abundance who lost everyone and everything close to him. In a sort of a cosmic wager, Satan (the enemy of our God) bets God that Job will lose his faith and curse his God if life turns that bad for him. It's quite a story, really, and I commend it to you.

Anyway, my friend and several of our other friends were talking about how much we have in middle class America - comfort, ease of travel, absence of military conflict, high technology, unlimited entertainment, etc. We noted that this seems to be going alongside commitment to the one called Jesus that can run very shallow, very ego-centric ("What have you done for me lately, Jesus?"), and very easily distracted. Too many of us complain about what isn't just right in our worlds, and are more prone to fuss over what we think we lack than rejoice over what we have. My friend said, "It almost seems like this...Satan bet God he could weaken Job's faith by taking everything away from him. Satan seems to have bet God that he could weaken our faith by giving us everything!"

Brilliant observation! In our comfortable world, many organized churches and denominations are on the decline. In some of the most poverty-stricken and war-torn areas of the world people can't organize churches fast enough to accommodate the new followers who are coming to Jesus. Something to think about. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Confessions of a Complainer and a Worshipper

We see what we choose to see. I've talked about this before. In their book, Crucial Confrontations, authors Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler say that whenever we see another person and/or another person's actions, we immediately tell ourselves a "story" which determines how we see that individual. I may see a news report of a person of another ethnic origin arrested for armed robbery. Consciously or unconsciously I tell myself a quick story, maybe, "Someone of that ethnic once took something from me." I then leap to a conclusion that determines how I see the next person of that ethnicity - "All people like that tend to be thieves. He should be put behind bars forever." Or, perhaps I see that a young woman with an Islamic background has won the Miss USA title. I quickly rehearse a known story - every terrorist I've noticed on the news has an Islamic background. My conclusion? The new Miss USA is part of a Muslim plot. We see what we tell ourselves we want to see.

That's true about almost anything in life. People who believe the best in other people, usually find that in those people or draw it out of them. People who look for the worst will have no trouble finding the worst. A good friend of mine shared this great quote about my world - the world of Jesus-followers and churches: "I think there are two types of people in the world: complainers and worshippers. And there isn't much circumstantial difference between the two. Complainers will always find something to complain about. Worshippers will always find something to praise God about. They simply have different default settings." (From In A Pit With A Lion by Mark Batterson. Multnomah Books, 2006 - pp. 69-70.)

I've been a complainer more often than I care to admit, and that has determined what I see. By the grace of God alone I have also been a worshipper, and that opens my eyes to something entirely different.

What will we chose to see in this next stretch of the river? I'll see you around the next bend.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor

It seems that immigration and border regulation matters comprise an on-going push button issue these days. It's a complex matter, I know, involving social services, economics, politics, potential terror threats, etc. Lots of people on all sides of the discussion stand ready to explode with passion about it. (I listened a little bit to Rush Limbaugh yesterday, and I thought he was going to have a coronary on the air, he was so upset about administration immigration policy.) I don't pretend to understand it all or have any answers. However, there is something that confuses me some.

As a child, I was taught to value the sentiment associated with the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor; your huddled masses learning to breathe free..." My parents and my teachers told me that was an important part of our country's identity and the ideal of freedom. (My dad would point at that, at one time or another, all of our ancestors were those "huddled masses.") I learned that the anti-Irish-immigration sentiment of the 1800's was a negative and bigoted thing; contrary to the values that make our country great. Every four years I watched with pride as Olympic athletes from the United States came in all colors, ethnicity, and national origins. I grew up believing that part of being American was living in a country that would find a way to absorb and value those who came here, for whatever reason. Therefore, I don't get the rhetoric of some of the extreme voices.

I'm not trying to land in any camp, and there are good arguments on all sides. It's just that in my faith system, that of being a Jesus-follower, we have a long-standing belief in extending hospitality to strangers. Recognized or not, it is deep in our value system demanded by our God. As such, even if for sensible reasons, I guess I'm always going to have trouble with posting, "We don't want you," messages where there should be welcome signs.

I'm not trying to make a big point; I'm just wondering out loud. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Get Happy

During the great depression of the 1930's many songs designed to brighten the nation's mood became popular. I heard by parents and grandparents sing one that had the line, "Gray skies are gonna clear up; put on a happy face!" Those of us of the iconoclastic, somewhat cynical baby-boomer generation tended to regard these pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by tunes as sappy and unrealistic. However, that was easy for us, because we didn't live through those lean and hard days. Against job loss, home loss, hunger, dust storms, government corruption and a myriad of widespread, depressing problems, many people just found ways to get happy. They sang sappy songs. They went to cheap, cooperative meals and dances. The invented roller derby. They raced horses. Without the outward trappings to make them happy, some of them just decided to be happy.

Real problems exist now. War, famine, and disaster take lives. While there are some signs of rebound, the economy still struggles. Cancer, heart disease, HIV, and other conditions still take their toll. I don't want to minimize or deny any of this. As I look around at many folks in our society, though (particularly among people like me who live materially comfortable lives), I wonder if we have developed the habit of (please pardon the crude and tasteless term) "bitchiness." (Sorry, sometimes the best words for the occasion are the ones we aren't supposed to use!) I would submit that there's no shortage of reasons to complain, if we're looking for them. It's not hard to blame someone for something, and get frustrated or angry about any number of things. I've been as guilty of this as anyone. Maybe some of us ought to just get happy!

In my world of organized churches, we'd better get happy. We serve a mighty God like no other. We have a good news that no other news can touch! We have been given the greatest gift and the greatest task imaginable. If we don't get happy it's our fault; not God's or anyone else's.

So, get happy. Sing a sappy song and splash someone in the canoe nearest yours. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child

A half century ago I have a vague memory of a public service ad on television. I don't remember what was the cause. I do recall one line of a song that ran in the background, though. A mournful female singer sand, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child." For whatever reason, that made a big impression on me as a kid. I guess I had "poor-me" moments wherein I did feel like a motherless child. However, I had a mom, and those feelings would pass. It disturbed me that there were people in the world who really felt like that all the time.

There are people all around us who feel like motherless children, regardless of their age, and aside from having biological mothers. They may feel like motherless children because they are older now, and the world keeps getting more and more confusing to them at a geometric rate. Or, they may feel that way because they are young, living in the dog-eat-dog world of accelerated pressure on youth, wondering, "Is this all there is? Am I just supposed to survive this endless competition of who has the highest ACT score, who gets the starting spot on the team, who wins the pageant, who sets the social pace?" Some people may feel like motherless children because of in illness; an unseen but powerful demon damaging their bodies. Some may feel orphaned by life do to rising mortgage payments and shrinking paychecks. Others may feel like motherless children because of relationships gone south, and they're wondering if anyone will ever really know them and really love them.

Emotional, relational, physical, spiritual orphans are everywhere. They are all around us. They are among us. They are in our social networks, on-line and face-to-face. They are in our groups, our offices, our churches. Sometimes they are us. In my world - that of organized churches - such people aren't turning to us and looking for dynamic music, inspirational speakers, slick programs, and impressive facilities. Essentially, if they are turning to us at all, they are asking, "Will someone please adopt me?"

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

What Women Really Want?

This post has nothing to do with anything, really. I just find the phenomenon amusing. Without getting too stereotyped, many men I know shop in a significantly different way than the women in their lives. Much of this is culturally conditioned for middle-income Americans, I know. Many men are like I am. "Shopping" consists of knowing what you want to get, going to the store that has the item, finding the item, paying for it, and going home. That's a successful shopping outing. Many women are like my wife. Shopping is a prolonged experience. It involves moving purposefully and slowly through a multitude of stores. Testing, comparing, trying on items, going back to stores to re-look; these are all integral to the shopping event. Elaine, my wife, can "shop" by this latter definition for an entire day, come home having purchased absolutely nothing, yet be happy as a clam for the experience.

Many women are particularly fond of taking the men in their lives with them on a shopping outing. I'm not sure why, but it's important to them. I guess it's a way that we can show we are interested in the things that interest them. Looking over stores and malls over the years, I've rarely known this effort to be successful, at least judging from the men I see in the shopping centers. You've seen them; the guys sitting on the benches looking forlorn and fatigued, holding a bunch of bags, wishing for all the world she'd just run out of steam and he could go home and watch baseball like he wanted to today. Again, I'm not sure why women want us to go with them on these hunt and gather excursions. Some women say it's because they want our opinions on items they they consider, particularly with clothing. I guess that's true in my case, in a reverse sort of a way. Whatever outfit I suggest my wife should buy, she eliminates that and looks at something else. (I really thought the sheer number with the plunging neckline would look good on her!)

Then came the creation of mobile Internet. With an iPhone a man can go shopping with his wife, and still satisfy what he wants. Instead of drifting to the video electronics section at J.C. Penney, he can now carry the game with him in the palm of his hand, check e-mail, and text his buddies, all the while being right at his lady-love's side. Perfect scenario, right? No, I'm told. According to many who claim to know, and according to the disgruntled looks I see on woman's faces while their men poke the keyboard right along side her in stores, it's not just that she wants you physically with her on the shopping trip. She wants you attentive to her, as well. That's the point and apparently has been the point all along.

And that's just the guys' side. Probably a whole different spin from the gals. Human beings...frustrating and exciting, mysterious and wonderful, never done with surprising new things to learn. Maybe that's how God wants it. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.