Category: Faith Challenges

I think a lot about our culture. Not just the immediate political and religious morass but on a broader scale. I believe our immediate cultural crisis (cultural crisis may be the only point on which there is agreement), is a symptom of a cataclysmic shift in human history. I know that sounds melodramatic. However, in the absence of some understanding of where we have come from and how we got here, any hope of progress, much less resolution, is dim. Admittedly, my understanding is mostly gained from a cursory engagement with the thoughts and writings of Charles Taylor and others on what is being described as a secular age. Accordingly, I’m open to a course correction.

Until I get redirected, I will continue In my assertion: Living in a disenchanted age is the most significant challenge we face in seeking a relationship with God.

The following citation from a previous blog post can help give context to my assertion and clarify my concern.

The default mode for the disenchanted age is reliance on human ability/reason and scientific laws as an ultimate source for answers to the problems of modernity. Utility, efficiency and production are our preimemmant tools to achieve full potential as human beings. Inherently, disenchantment rejects the transcendent. Mystery, fantasy, spirituality, faith, divinity, magic, art, namely, enchantment, is rendered irrelevant. our existence in a disenchanted age is reduced to one dimension, removing depth and meaning and distorting the purpose of our lives. As Beck describes, “When creation is stripped of its holy, sacred and enchanted character …it becomes–material. Raw, disenchanted material. Inert stuff. Piles of particles.”

The challenge of a secular age is so massive and complex it is overwhelming. For that reason, I am constantly looking for insights that can help me, and hopefully others, navigate the perils of our secular age. Last year, I found echo chambers to be a highly relevant factor in the continuing implosion of our society. For those who have not had the opportunity (or declined) to read my essay on echo chambers, you can download it HERE

Recently I came across an article that introduced a metaphor which I believe can be helpful and is the subject of this post, Middle Tint. I highly recommend the full article which you can read HERE. Please note I am unable to provide attribution for the article. Should anyone know its source, please let me know.

Commenting on a well know landscape painting, distinguished by its middle tint, the author writes, in part:

…middle tint—that is, the grays, the browns and blues and dull brick reds, not bright; the colors that do not sing out for your attention; the colors you might not notice if you are not looking for them.

..the truly skilled painter devoted most of his canvas to middle tint. In a great landscape, there is “excessively small quantity, both of extreme light and extreme shade, all the mass of the picture being graduated and delicate middle tint. . . . The middle tint is laid before the dark colors, and before the lights

Perhaps middle tint is the palette of faithfulness. Middle tint is going to church each week, opening the prayer book each day. This is rote, unshowy behavior, and you would not notice it if you weren’t looking for it, but it is necessary; it is most of the canvas; it is the palette that makes possible the gashes of white, the outlines of black; it is indeed that by which the painting will succeed or fail..

As is the case for metaphors, there can be many interpretations and applications. I thought about how middle tint could apply to our society, churches, families and organizations, all worthy of consideration. But, I was drawn in my imagination to consider what a realistic landscape painting of my life might look like.

Would it be largely absent middle tint and dominated by bold light, color and extreme shade, reflecting life in a disenchanted age, reduced to one dimension, absent depth and meaning and purpose?

I want to think it would it be a great landscape, built on the gradations of middle tint; bringing bold light, color and extreme shade into proper perspective.

Of course my life’s landscape painting is not complete, its composition is on-going . Clearly, today it is not a great painting, lacking essential qualities which would make it a masterpiece. Deficiencies of my landscape come from a failure to lay down middle tint, that puts bright light and color in its proper perspective.

As opportunity to complete my landscape wanes, priority and purpose become clearer… work on in the middle tint. I suffer no illusion about producing a masterpiece, but there is hope for a better painting.

serendipity : the  phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for

This morning I experienced a serendipity. It came by virtue of a blog post from the Internet Monk by Chaplin Mike. I fully understand a serendipity for one person may not be so for another person. However, serendipity is delicious and should be shared. There is always the risk that my taste isn’t your taste but I’m willing to take the chance.

Another Look: My Ambiguous Apologetic Chaplain Mike

I confess. I have no apologetic.

There is no defending God. There is no proving his way is right. To do so would require that I understand God, that I can substantiate the claims of truth my faith calls me to hold.

I can explain what I believe well enough. I can demonstrate to a certain degree that my faith is reasonable and not the delusions of a crackpot. But I can’t prove anything. I can’t argue an airtight case. I can’t campaign for Jesus on a platform of certainty.

You see, all the “evidence” is ambiguous. It is capable of being interpreted in a variety of ways. What convinces one person to believe may lead another to have serious doubts.

Even the bedrock occurrence in the story of our faith — the resurrection of Jesus — was not what you would call a public event. It was unexpectedly discovered by a few common people in the hazy dawn of Easter morning. All of Jesus’ appearances were reserved for people who became his witnesses. It is their word we have to trust. I happen to be convinced that they were trustworthy and that they had no reason to invent a story so fantastic, but I can see why people might have doubts.

I suppose this is why some Christians feel the need to posit an inerrant Bible, a fully trustworthy revelation directly from the mouth of God that demonstrates in incontrovertible terms that it is TRUTH™. Thus, all we have to do is open up the book and — there it is! — a sure and certain foundation for our beliefs. However comfortable that might make believers feel, in reality it just creates another proposition Christians must defend. Proving the divine perfection of the Bible requires herculean efforts and, as centuries of dispute over Scripture’s nature, meaning, and interpretation show, the evidence here is muddy too.

So, I don’t really have an apologetic. At best, it’s ambiguous.

The other day I was thinking about the shepherds in Luke’s Christmas story. Surely they had a sense of certainty. Surely what they experienced was so unambiguous, so transformative, that they lived the rest of their lives in the assurance of faith. Surely God had proven himself to them. They beheld the angel hosts! They heard the gospel announced directly from heaven! They saw the baby Jesus in the flesh!

However, sometimes I wonder what happened next. The Gospel tells us they went back to work later that night. We never hear from them again. What was it like for the shepherds a week later? a month? ten or twenty years? I don’t know if they were around when Jesus went throughout Judea proclaiming the Kingdom. I’d like to think their faith was confirmed and strengthened over the years, perhaps by personal encounters with Jesus in his ministry.

On the other hand, it is possible they didn’t hear much about Jesus again, perhaps for the rest of their lives. If so, what would that long silence have communicated to them? Based on the angel’s message they would have expected, somewhere along the line, a Son of David to ascend the throne in Jerusalem, bringing lasting peace and relief from their enemies. An unambiguous fulfillment of God’s promise. But even if they did become part of the crowd and followed Jesus around Judea and Galilee, they never saw that happen, did they? How might they have reconciled that grand birth announcement with reality on the ground years later — an itinerant rabbi with nowhere to lay his head? And then, the cross? Some king. Some throne.

All this is pure speculation, of course, but I think it makes a point:

In my opinion, Christians (and I include myself) have been far too cocksure in talking about Jesus and our faith. As though it’s about having a sense of certainty that carries us blissfully through life. As though what we believe and the reasons we believe are so clear, so transparent, so unambiguous that we just can’t imagine others being unable to see it.

I had a spiritual awakening in high school, and it was prompted by relationships I developed with a group of Christian young people in school and church. What I liked about them was that they were real. I saw their imperfections and could blow holes through their arguments. But I couldn’t get past their joy, their belief that life was worth living in spite of problems and doubts. There was something that kept them moving forward to embrace the goodness of life and faith and hope and love. They were pitiful at trying to explain it, but it was there. Ultimately, I found I couldn’t resist the song their lives sang to me.

So this is what I keep coming back to. Sometime long ago, on a dark night I heard angels sing. I saw the face of the Savior. And it was real.

My experience wasn’t nearly as spectacular as the show the shepherds witnessed. However, it just as effectively got my attention and caused me to change direction in ways that I suppose were as crazy as leaving your job in the middle of the night to go see a stranger’s newborn baby, and claiming you heard the news from angels.

But then, like the shepherds, I had to return to life, plain old life, everyday life.

Through the years I’ve had reason to doubt over and over again whether that experience was real. I have wondered whether the promises I received were genuine, or whether it might not all have been some adolescent fantasy born of hormones, naiveté, and group dynamics. It can get awfully ambiguous at times.

Whether or not the shepherds ever saw Jesus again, I can testify that since my epiphany, every once and awhile along the way I have encountered him. Thing is, he’s never what I expect. He constantly confuses me and makes me scratch my head. The more I try to define what he’s all about or what he’s doing in my life, the more mixed up I become. And when I go to speak, I fumble around for words to explain him, to express what he means to me, to put my finger on the gifts with which he has so graciously filled my life.

He’s real, and that’s about the best I can do.

And there you have it. My ambiguous apologetic.

Maybe you were hoping you’d read something today that would nail it all down for you, relieve your doubts, answer your questions, make it all certain.

Sorry. Just a shepherd here.

Most nights are pretty quiet.

Today is the first day of advent. Admittedly, the Christian calendar has not been a part of my spiritual rhythm. Although, In recent years, my journey has led me to become more aware and responsive to the Christian calendar. In my reading this morning, I came across the following excerpt written by Michael Spencer that gave me pause on this first day of advent.

We all live the days before. We are living them now.

There was a day before 9-11.

There was a day before your child told you she was pregnant.

There was a day before your wife said she’d had enough.

There was a day before your employer said “lay offs.”

We are living our days before. We are living them now.

Some of us are doing, for the last time, what we think we will be doing twenty years from now.

Some of us are on the verge of a much shorter life, or a very different life, or a life turned upside down.

Some of us are preaching our last sermon, making love for the last time, saying “I love you” to our children for the last time in our own home. Some of us are spending our last day without the knowledge of eternal judgment and the reality of God. We are promising tomorrow will be different and tomorrow is not going to give us the chance, because God has a different tomorrow entirely on our schedule. We just don’t know it today.

Live each day as the day that all of the gospel is true. Live this day and be glad in it. Live this day as the day of laying down sin and taking up the glad and good forgiveness of Jesus. Live this day determined to be useful and joyful in Jesus. Live this day in a way that, should all things change tomorrow, you will know that the Lord is your God and this is the day to be satisfied in him.

He didn’t know it at the time, but when Michael Spencer wrote those words, he had cancer. Within five months, he died. We never know the time or day, either of Jesus’ return or of the day when our lives will be forever changed.