Why Bother?

I was recently asked, "What do you get out of it? You live with constant, largely uncontrollable pain, you're spitting up blood, you can't walk more than a few steps without wincing and often buckling to your knees, and barring a miracle, it's not going to get better."

"So, what makes it worthwhile? Why are you smiling?"

All true. Good question, really. Why not just give up, curl up in a fetal position, and wait for death? Or at least go to the hospital and let them tranq me into insensibility?

Aside from my wife, my dogs, and my work, there are three main things that make it worthwhile.

• This has been a learning experience. I've been forced to look at the circumstances of others, and see that in comparison to some, I've been, and continue to be, immoderately blessed. I can get around, with a cane, a wheelchair, or on my hands and knees. I can see and hear, and my mind's sharp. I live in a house, and sleep in comfort and warmth. I can't eat much, but when I can eat, the food's there. So many people lack some or all of these...so I'm vomiting blood, and have to crawl to the shop to weld? So what? I think many people on this planet would trade places with me, in a second.
• It's an exercise in savoring every bite. When the landscape's a bit rough, one can try to appreciate the now. The taste of a spoon of rice, the sound of the dogs howling along with a distant siren, the sight of the moon rising. These things were so easy to overlook, but if you look at them from the right perspective, they're precious.
• It's a challenge. Getting through the really bad minutes to the...well, not good, but less really bad minutes is not a trivial exercise. It's a path of tears, and fear. But it wouldn't be a challenge if it were easy, and it wouldn't be a victory if there was nothing to overcome. At the end of the day I'm still - metaphorically - standing. And while it's true that I'm not expressing that "bullshit optimism" during the worst minutes, I tend to bounce back pretty quickly.  That bounceback is the measure of the victory.

I've deliberately omitted faith. It plays a large role, but I'd like to make the lessons accessible to anyone. A strong faith helps - a lot.

In the end, I don't know whether all of the above is true and valid, or whether it's just self-aggrandizing self-delusion, and the effort isn't worth the result. It is to me, so I guess that means something.

I'll be here, and working in hope and gratitude, for as long as I'm graced with breath.

Christ Died For Your Wallet

Heard a preacher - don't know who - on television the other night.

"Christ died for your financial prosperity."

Unfortunately, I am not taking it out of context, and it's verbatim. The guy really said it, and he really meant it.

"Prosperity theology" is one of the most common threads in modern Christianity, and it's no wonder - most people would love to be rich, would love to feel that being rich isn't a bad thing, and that God will help them get rich.

That's all very nice, and a careful reading of the Bible doesn't really contradict it. At least, not too many times. I mean, Jesus did say that it's easier for a camel to pass through the Eye of the Needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, but:

• rich people are smarter and can perform at a higher level, so what's hard for you now will be easy when you're rich
• there were a lot of rich people in the Bible that God seemed to like so we don't really need to put too much stock in this one comment
• the Eye of the Needle is a gate in Jerusalem's wall, not the eye of a sewing needle, so camels passed through it all the time

Besides, Jesus was rich! Carpenters made good money. His friends were rich - one of them had two boats, one for fishing, one for fun.

And...now watch this...poor people are cursed by God!

I've heard all of this stuff come from people who are doing well enough to maintain a TV presence, and that presumably means that this is a large part of the Christian message for a significant number of people.

The saddest thing about it is the reduction of the Almighty to something approaching an ATM...swipe your card and key in the password (worship and pray the way the book you got for a Love Gift of $59.95 said to), and God will dispense cash.

One day you, too, will be up on the screen, giving a testimonial as to how a check for $10,000 arrived from a suddenly dead uncle the day after you sent $1000 to Reverend P. Ross Perity.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think their hamster got so far off the wheel that it'll need a GPS to get back. I think God's about love, and most especially love for those who've had life's breaks go the wrong way.

I don't think God has anything against rich people, but I think he does expect more from them...more help for the poor, more help for the church.

And I think we ignore words directly ascribed to Christ at our own peril.

Our own mortal peril.

Smarter Than The Smart Guys

Recently I saw an interview with a very prominent clergyman. He was recounting his refusal to take part in a prayer service shortly after 9/11. He had been asked not to make reference to Christianity as the one true religion, and this he would not do.

The Founding Fathers, it seems, made an oversight in not making Christianity the American Religion, either de facto or officially.

The United States was founded by Christians. It gained independence under the guidance of Christians. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written to provide a framework in which the citizens' God-given rights would be preserved.

 And the Union was preserved under Christian leadership. (OK, the South did feel that God was on their side, too.)

But the United States is not, and was never intended to be a Christian nation. The First Amendment to the Constitution specifically says that no religion will be 'respected'; that is, given preferential treatment. And it goes further, to say that the free exercise of religion won't be infringed.

What this means to us, practically, is pretty clear - we won't have an official state religion, and, contrary to what certain preachers would like to believe, there's no legal way to turn the United States into a theocracy without some radical legal surgery.

It also means that the Ten Commandments have no place in our courthouses, and organized prayer, led by teachers or administrators, has no place in our public schools.

I'm tempted to wish it were otherwise, except that I know that I'm viewing the situation from a point of bias. I'm a Christian, and it would make me feel good to see the trappings of my religion honored in the public institutions my tax dollars support.

But if I shift perspective, say to Iran, comfort flees. Iran was something close to a theocracy under Ayatollah Khomeini, and the existence of a state religion made things distinctly uncomfortable for non-Muslims. In the years since the 1979 Khomeini revolution, Iran has varied from horrible to juts merely awful.

We're Christians, we say. We wouldn't be like that. I'd like to think so, but the Founding Fathers apparently didn't agree. They knew that their tenure in this life would be limited, so they left us with a set of guiding principles that are specific enough to prevent too much misinterpretation, but broad enough to grow with the nation's physical borders, population, and even technology.

What "freedom of religion" should mean to us is that we're expected to worship as we see fit, and we're to help others use their God-given right to worship as they see fit.

The Founding Fathers were smart men. They invented a country whose record of basic decency has never been matched, let alone surpassed, in the history of the world.

Until we can make a case for being smarter, it might be best to run the country according to the instructions.

Defusing The Holiday Dinner-Table Bomb

It seems that the American holiday tradition includes showcasing dysfunctionality in families. In a movie, or on television, it can be funny, though it's often the uncomfortable kind of humor that we laugh at, and not with.

In real life, it can be funny in retrospect - epic battles at the Thanksgiving table can be grist for the conversational mill of family reunions for years to come.

But while it's happening, watching what's supposed to be a festive event spin out of control is painful, and ultimately profoundly sad. It's the irrevocable ruination of a day that can't be brought back - and even if the fight's stopped and apologies tendered, it's never the same. Something is lost, and even if you schedule another 'make-up' dinner for next week - it doesn't come back.

What to do? I believe - I hope - that if you've read this far you'd like to avoid the fights, and create a holiday that's memorable for being peaceful and enjoyable. While you clearly can't control everyone's behavior, youcan control your own, and that can go a long way to spreading oil on those choppy waters.

Here are some suggestions -

• Don't respond - most arguments start with baiting. Someone will try to get your goat, try to draw you out about something - anything! Try seeing yourself as a rock on the seashore, with waves breaking around you. The water comes in, and it goes out, but you remain, solid and serene. Even if the baiting intensifies, and I'll bet it will, The Rock is unmoved, and the unfortunate person who's trying to make you a target will, hopefully, move on to other pursuits.
• Filter what you say - in any group of people, there will be a diversity of opinions on almost any significant topic. Before you throw a comment out there, give it some thought, and see if it passes this test...are you making it to a person you know will disagree, to get a rise out of them? We all do it, and it's called...see above..."baiting".Beyond that, if it's controversial, do you really have to air the subject? Chances are that your gathering will not have an immediate effect on, say, abortion, so why bring it up? (Please park the "you've got to be involved" thought at the door - we're talking about conversation at a single event)
• Change courses - when you hear others' conversations heading south, jump in to pull one of the participants away - to the next room, outside, whatever. You may feel this is being something of a busybody, but it's not. You're protecting the interest everyone has in a peaceful event - and that's your interest, too.
• Be firm - if you're the host, or have the host's permission, be firm in breaking up an incipient conflict. If you've got an unrepentant "bad boy", telling him to leave the room, or the house until he can control his mouth may be the only recourse. It's bad if the situation gets to this point, since a "please leave" will tend to hang in the air for awhile and chill the mood, but once a troublemaker is removed, folks will be quick to relax - quicker than you think.
• Avoid dead time - idle hands are the Devil's tools, and idle time is what the Devil uses to create discord. Keep things moving, with planned and scheduled activities. It's also not a bad thing to maintain some sort of agenda for dinner-table conversation, things you can introduce that are both interesting and nonconfrontational.
• Don't mourn - if, in spite of your best efforts, things get derailed, set an example by putting it behind you as quickly as you can. This involves attitude, choice of words, tone of voice...everything. Someone has to create a holiday miracle - be the miracle.

You may be thinking, "fine, great, but this won't work with MY family". Maybe not. But will making the effort make it worse? Probably not, so what do you have to lose?

You may also be wondering why you should be the one to carry the burden. The short answer is why NOT you? You're there, you have a vested interest in making the experience pleasant, and unless you secretly enjoy conflict, you're acting in your own interest. Besides, if you set an example, others will follow.

Give it a try. And good luck!

The Wrong Tool

The Great Commission is sometimes maddeningly unspecific. I mean, why can't we be told how to win souls, along with being told that it's what we need to do?

I wrote earlier that the right tool for the audience to which I was a sometime minister was that the Apostles were willing to die for their faith, and that they were, as far as we know, intelligent men who would not accept martyrdom for what they knew was a lie.

But along with what works, it's probably good to recount what didn't work. The list is longer.

• Jesus is my best friend - this, mentioned to an unbeliever in almost any form, will usually bring back a smart-alecky comeback about invisible friends
• God loves you - a lot of people look at the trouble in the world, now and historically, and say, "that's not believable." It immediately sets up a block which can be overcome, but takes time - which your listener may not grant you
• You don't have much time - this may have worked for Billy Graham, but many people are well-read enough to know that end-time predictions have been going on for over a hundred years in the US. They don't feel a sense of urgency
• If you're not a Christian, you're going to hell - most people who believe in Heaven don't believe this...they believe that pretty much everyone is going to Heaven, with a few exceptions, like Hitler. Additionally, many people have friends of different faiths, and when you try to tell them that their Buddhist buddy is going to Hell, you put your listener in the position where he feels he has to defend his friend. You won't win that fight.
• The Bible says so, and the Bible is right - most of the people you talk with don't believe that the Bible is inerrant.

The most important thing to remember is that you're offering hope, and you should do nothing that will make someone fight against that hope.

Because fight against it they will. Sometimes, to the death.

The Right Tool

Evangelism isn't easy. Mind you, I don't suppose it was meant to be a walkover, because along with bringing the convert to Christ, it sharpens the faith of the evangelist, and a sword is sharped on a whetstone.

I'm an untutored fisherman. I came to the Christian faith through a fairly roundabout path; never went to bible college, never went to Sunday School, and when I tried Bible Study I came close to losing my faith.

Additionally, I'm not by nature a very emotional person, and describing an impassioned salvation of my soul would be inaccurate, and for me, impossible.

So the toolbox was pretty empty, but I wanted to give people I met the Good News.  What to do?

1. First, I looked at what impressed me most about Christianity, in terms of making me believe that it's true. This doesn't mean, "what made me a Christian", for the excellent reason that I don't know...I just realized one day, hey, I believe this stuff!
2. Second, I looked at my potential audience. I was working on a PhD at the time, in a technical foeld, and talked with a lot of students about a lot of things while we worked together in the lab, doing menial work. So the audience was mostly 20-25 years old, college-educated, mainly male, mainly white. There were a few older fellows from China, Korea, and India.
3. Third, I looked at the support system to which I could direct a convert or potential convert...since this was Southern California, the Catholic Church loomed large, and I tailored what I said to follow a largely Catholic message.

The main arguments against Christianity were:

• The Resurrection didn't really happen; Jesus either wasn't killed on the Cross, or his body was merely stolen and the Resurrection story fabricated to create a legend and gain influence by starting a new religion
• Jesus never really lived, and the whole thing's a myth

Other arguments really didn't hold water, and eventually devolved into these two.

The "Jesus never lived" argument was easy to demolish, since He was mentioned by a couple of contemporary sources. Josephus, for instance, from whom we have the description of the siege of Masada, speaks of Him.

The second argument's harder, since there are no non-Biblical accounts of the Resurrection. Telling someone who doesn't believe (yet!) that "the Bible says it, so it's true!" is remarkably ineffective in that it creates a circular argument.

But we don have "something". We have the rapid rise of a new religion that would come to be called Christianity in the hundred years after Jesus' crucifixion.

And we have the people who walked with Jesus; the Apostles. We know who they were, where they went, how they died; in some cases we have fairly well-documented tombs.

How they died. With the exception of John of Patmos, the Apostles were martyred.

And there's the answer. The Apostles were in a position to know, if anyone did, whether the Resurrection was true, or whether Jesus' body was merely stolen. If it was the latter, then their deaths were in the service of a known lie, and not even a madman will accept a hideous death to promote a cause he knows is false. And these were not madmen; no one's ever claimed they were.

Here was the key that worked for my audience. A rational argument that comes as close as one can to "proving" the central tenet of Christianity, that Jesus died and rose from the dead.

Everything else could build from there.

What tool do you use, or have you used, to attract people to Christianity? What worked, and what didn't?

Welcome To The Jungle

Did you survive Black Friday?

Did you find everything you wanted?

Are their people on your Christmas list who will be disappointed, no matter what you give them...and will subtly let you know?

Did you vow, last year, to avoid the lunacy of Black Friday and the whole "let's overspend this Christmas!" mentality...and then break the vow?

Welcome to the rest of the human race.

Society runs on two pillars - laws and traditions. We need the laws to make sure things run smoothly. We need traditions to make sure that we understand the meaning for our world...to let us know why things are worth running at all.

The tradition of Black Friday grew out of the reality that we have a prosperous society. Gift exchange is an ancient way to express love, affection, and good wishes; in a society in which most members have disposable income, spending a significant amount says to the recipient, "Hey, you're important to me!" This is generally understood, at least subconsciously, by both giver and recipient.

(When was the last time you god an "it's the thought that counts" gift from someone you knew could afford more. Were you just a bit disappointed? Honestly, now.)

Black Friday itself just recognizes the fact that most people have one 'extra day' to shop between Thanksgiving and Christmas. If retailers can get people into the stores and spending money for Black Friday, they assume - correctly - that shoppers will be likely to come back more often, and they'll make more money.

The "Black Friday" label, and the whole " great sales and early door openings" thing comes from a need to somehow distinguish special days. We do this with the Superbowl, and college basketball's March Madness.

Taken in context, and viewed with a sympathetic eye, Black Friday and the whole "commercial consumerist" tradition is just a to-be-expected manifestation of the things that we kind of like in our society...the ability to live without worrying about where our next meal's coming from.

And if you think that overspending and finding oneself in debt come January is unusual, just look at the feasts, the "potlatch" that Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest used to throw. They'd put out huge spreads of food, and give livestock and slaves, and after it was over the coffers of an individual - or tribe - would be exhausted. That made a true potlatch a pretty rare event.

You can swim against the tide allou want, and refuse to take part in this dirty greedy grubby custom, but the fact is, you're being a Don Quixote, in the worst sense. The real evils in our society are not found here. These are only windmills - they are not giants.

Now have fun, and go feel good about it!