For the Joy of the Journey

It’s not too late
We have news that eight-year-old you would have loved: Hasbro announced yesterday that, starting this fall, you’ll be able to put a 3D-printed version of your own head on any of the toy company’s signature action figures.
Only $59.99 (plus tax) to transform into the Red Ranger, G.I. Joe, or Princess Leia? Total steal.
The Dispatch

Modern Catechesis
 “People come to believe what they are most thoroughly and intensively catechized to believe, and that catechesis comes not from the churches but from the media they consume, or rather the media that consume them. The churches have barely better than a snowball’s chance in hell of shaping most people’s lives.” Alan Jacobs

Exposed
The Dobbs decision has revealed fault lines in American Christianity. These fault lines lay just below the surface for a long while, but are now clearly exposed. As long as abortion was legal by Supreme Court decree, it was possible to identify as pro-life but keep that commitment at the level of theory; one could hold pro-life views but not be perceived as a threat. All that has now changed. To identify as pro-life post-Dobbs is not simply to hold an opinion many regard as wrong; it is to be part of an act of political and social “oppression.” And predictably, many Christians are feeling the need to “nuance” their relationship to the overturning of Roe.
Carl Trueman

Funeral Sermons
Funeral sermons do need to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. They certainly can’t tell the whole truth. But they should do what I had intended—and failed—to do: acknowledge hurt, pain, and brokenness when appropriate, and with pastoral sensitivity.
God’s love can’t be reduced to free-floating aphorisms sewn into a blanket. It’s an active, redeeming love, its beauty most luminous in relationship to our flaws, shortcomings, and sins, which it forgives and heals. If that harder subject matter is off-limits in a funeral sermon, then so too is the deepest truth of the gospel.
Roger Owens

Fundamentalist
Here is one way I identify a fundamentalist church or individual. There are three types of Christian beliefs: essentials (dogmas), non-essentials (denominational doctrines), opinions (definitely non-essential even if interesting beliefs). Fundamentalists empty the “opinion” category and move everything they believe into the “essentials” category. (Some moderate fundamentalists will leave some non-essentials in the middle category.) Liberals, on the other hand, move everything into the “opinion” category, leaving the essentials category virtually empty. (I’m talking about doctrines here, not ethics.) Moderates are those who make serious, thoughtful effort to put the right beliefs in the right categories. We are very few.
Roger Olson

Following Jesus
I don’t mind people pointing to Jesus as an ideal moral exemplar. But problems come when we reduce Jesus to being a moral guru or an enlightened human being. We see Jesus standing at a summit of moral progress with a smooth road leading up to him. We climb, as heroes, toward that summit. We are on a journey of moral and spiritual self-actualization. But in the Christian story, this entire enterprise is radically called into question. We can’t climb. We can’t self-actualize. We’re stuck. And so Christ comes down to us and dies for the ungodly.
 Richard Beck

Prospective Converts
Tim Keller writes, “The United States is slowly running out of traditionally-minded Americans to be converted, and conservative Protestants on the whole are unwilling or unable to reach the highly secular and culturally different.”

Many of the things that you believe right now—in this very moment—are utterly wrong.
I can’t tell you precisely what those things are, of course, but I can say with near certainty that this statement is true. To understand this uncomfortable reality, all you need is some basic knowledge of history.
At various times throughout the history of humankind, our most brilliant scientists and philosophers believed many things most eight-year-olds now know to be false: the earth was flat, the sun revolved around the earth, smoking cigarettes was good for digestion, humans were not related to apes, the planet was 75,000 years old, or left-handed people were unclean.
Around 100 years ago, doctors still thought bloodletting (that is, using leeches or a lancet to address infections) was useful in curing a patient. Women were still fighting for the right to vote, deemed too emotional and uneducated to participate in democracy, while people with darker skin were widely considered subhuman. The idea that the universe was bigger than the Milky Way was unfathomable, and the fact the earth had tectonic plates that moved beneath our feet was yet to be discovered.
Issac Saul

Inflation Casualties
Nearly two-thirds of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. An estimated 41 percent — 135 million people — are considered either poor or low-income. Eighteen percent of households earn less than $25,000 a year. Even before the pandemic hit, one in four Black families had a net worth of zero.
Rachel Poser NYT

No short term solution
“The US hasn’t built a full-scale refinery since 1977. Designing and constructing the labyrinth of pipelines, tanks, and distillation columns would easily cost $10 billion and take as long as a decade,” they write. “During the pandemic, plants that distill crude into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel shut down around the world, and construction of new ones was postponed. The closures were especially acute in the US, where old facilities suffered irreparable damage from breakdowns and hurricanes while others were converted to produce renewable diesel. … ‘My personal view is there will never be another new refinery built’ in the US, [Chevron CEO Mike] Wirth said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in June. ‘You’re looking at committing capital 10 years out, that will need decades to offer a return for shareholders, in a policy environment where governments around the world are saying, ‘We don’t want these products.’”

View from the Front Porch

In a recent Sunday morning worship service. It occurred to me that in 1972 I would have been wearing a suit, maybe 3-piece, white dress shirt with a Countess Mara tie and polished dress shoes. My leather bound Bible, with index tabs to facilitate quick reference, at my side. Highlighters and a fountain pen to take notes. Today, my Sunday morning worship clothes are a casual collared shirt with slacks and casual shoes— no socks. Instead of a Bible i bring a journal to take notes. Of course my iPhone is handy with Bible apps and numerous translations.
I am pondering what is different about me today than 50 years ago. Hopefully more than appearances.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Roe v Wade
I have a lot of thoughts and emotions on today and in time I will share them as I parse them out. I can assure you they are multi-faceted and complex. Abortion has been an issue close to my heart for more than two decades and Bethany served many years as a crisis pregnancy counselor for various local resource centers and went through the process of an unplanned pregnancy herself which helped shape a lot of her views and subsequently many of my own. So this just can’t be a passing issue of minor theoretical relevance to me (I also was recommended to be aborted as an unborn baby myself, of which I am personally glad did not happen–albeit, point taken that I would have never known). So yes, thoughts and emotions.
That said, I want to implore people to remember this: no matter where you stand on today, it is more than likely (and if you don’t, you’re likely living in your own echo chamber) that you have a good deal of friends and loved ones that stand on the stark opposite of you as it relates to abortion. People you love, appreciate, and even respect as thoughtful people with genuine experiences and honest hearts.
Be patient. Be kind. This is a felt justice issue at all sides and simply condemning one side as being bigoted or evil stops any conversation from moving forward as they are or could equally condemn you under the same descriptors.
Unfortunately, I know people that will hang up friendships on this issue alone. And they will feel justified in doing so. But that doesn’t allow any potential listening to occur and even if you feel action is necessary, one should always be in a state of listening. If not to the ideas and thoughts that shape the perspective, to the person behind those ideas and thoughts.
Randy Hardman

A thesaurus
—here it comes—is for increasing one’s aliveness to words. Nothing more and nothing less. By going into the buzzing and jostling hive of words around a word, we get a purer sense of the word itself: its coloration, its interior, its traces of meaning. I looked up the verb excite just now and found the word in its affective (touch, move) and mechanical (electrify, galvanize) aspects. Which gets at who we are, as humans, doesn’t it? Feelings and circuitry.
As for you, blessed Mr. Roget, they say you had OCD. Of course you did. You were hooked, hung up, haunted by the hidden life of words: their selves, their stories, as told by the words they are closest to. You gave us a great gift. May you rest eternally among your synonyms.
James Parker – Atlantic

Hoofprint
You’ve heard of the carbon footprint. Now there is a development on the carbon hoofprint.
New Zealand has announced a plan to tax livestock burps in an effort to curb the country’s gas emissions.
Methane emissions from animals is a well-known issue. Cows alone are responsible for about 40% of those planet-warming gases globally — mainly through their burps.
UC Davis scientist Ermias Kebreab is something of a cow whisperer who has spent two decades studying the greenhouse gas contributions of hoofed animals.
“If you tell me how much your animal is consuming, I can tell you pretty closely to the actual emissions using mathematical models,” he said.
“Most of the gas is formed in their stomach, so in their guts, particularly in the first chamber. And so they belch it out.”
He and other scientists have developed special diets and genetic predictions that could help reduce the methane formed in cow stomachs.
Now, New Zealand could become the first country to tax its way to fewer “four-legged” emissions. 
There are seven times more cows and sheep than people in New Zealand. And on Wednesday, the country’s government released a draft plan to have farmers pay for their animals’ emissions, starting in 2025.
The group recommended the government “introduce a farm-level split-gas levy on agricultural emissions with built-in incentives to reduce emissions and sequester carbon.”
Past measures to tax farmers have met strong resistance, but New Zealand’s climate change minister James Shaw thinks it is a good start.

Extremism
The prevailing operative worldview is shaped by by a view of the world seen in the extreme. Facilitated by media and technology we see the world magnified to the extreme, an equivalent of bacterial bed buddies.

Dead skin cells, sweat, saliva, and more can turn your comfy bed into a petri dish for germs to grow. For instance, lab tests found that swabs from pillowcases unwashed for a week harbored 17,000 times more colonies of bacteria than samples taken from a toilet seat.
Information that is true, when viewed in the extreme is unreal. Unreal in the sense that it does not reflect reality. It is true but not real. Reality is the sum of all parts. Bacterial bed buddies are true but they do not reflect reality. They are one minuscule part of a vast reality, which when understood in proper perspective will produce healthy outcomes… enjoying freshly washed bed linens and sleeping soundly. Magnified out of proportion they produce anxiety, fear and disproportionate responses. 
Rohr puts it this way:  People with a distorted image of self, world, or God will be largely incapable of experiencing what is really real in the world. They will see things through a narrow keyhole. They’ll see instead what they need reality to be, what they’re afraid it is, or what they’re angry about. They’ll see everything through their aggressiveness, their fear, or their agenda. In other words, they won’t see it at all.
Society’s (our) gross misbehavior, comes from viewing a world distorted by extremism. Ever present media depicts what is true, but seldom real. We are lost in the desert desperately pursuing a mirage, living in panic, fighting bacterial bed buddies. 
I have little optimism that secular society will embrace what is true and real. My hope lies in the transcendent reality of the Kingdom of God, where what is true and real dwells.

To that end, my prayer remains, 
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
George Ezell

Prayer
A father has a young child whom he greatly loves.  
Even though the child has hardly learned to speak,  
           his father takes pleasure  
           in listening to the child’s words.
Your Word Is Fire: The Hasidic Masters on Contemplative Prayer

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Loving People
Theologian Gustavo Gutierrez challenges us: “So you say you love the poor. Name them.” A name is a good place to start, a meal is better, and life together is even better than that. Real love requires knowing, listening, understanding. It cannot be foisted on people from a distance.

Gregory Boyle says, “The measure of our compassion lies not in our service to others but in our willingness to see ourselves connected to them.” Love is not something that you can do to another. It is something you do with them.

Roses
RosesEveryone now and again wonders about those questions that have no readyanswers:
first cause, God’s existence, what happens when the curtain goes down and nothing stops it,
not kissing,not going to the mall, not the SuperBowl.
“Wild roses,” I said to them one morning. “Do you have the answers?
And if you do, would you tell me?”
The roses laughed softly. “Forgive us,”they said.
“But as you can see, we arejust now entirely busy being roses.”
Mary Oliver. 

Something More
My dad was an artist who made his living near New York City. He painted the portraits of wealthy people and often commented on the subtleties of fine art. One day he told me that if I looked closely at the paintings of the great masters, I would see all the colors of the spectrum in every square inch. This is what gives a portrait its richness and its depth. It’s also the thing that distinguishes the work of a genius from that of an amateur.
After a while, I began to wonder whether our lives are like a portrait being painted by a renaissance artist. If our eyes are too close to the canvas, we might be confused by its complexity and wonder, “What crazy person would put every color of the spectrum in every square inch?” Our souls will focus on disappointing things and we will ask a lot of haunting questions that seem to have no answer. Most importantly, we won’t be able to make sense of the entire work of art because we are too close to the pain.

If we never experience the rude disappointments of life, it is nearly impossible for us to have the richness and depth that a masterful artist seeks to create. We will offer only trite and shallow ‘answers’ to a world that yearns for something more. Someone once said that fundamentalism is to faith what paint-by-numbers is to the Renaissance. It presents a portrait of the divine that does the opposite of what it’s supposed to do. It oversimplifies the complex. Augustine said it another way, “If you can comprehend it, it is not God.”

If it were possible to have our souls painted by a renaissance artist, strange colors in strange places would appear on the canvas – each one emblematic of the events that broke us and deepened us. The richness and depth of our portraits would be reflective of a faith that has matured. It is not a paint-by-number faith. It doesn’t expect easy answers. It’s not intellectually lazy. It longs to uncover deeper and deeper layers of truth. It never attempts to domesticate God. It is wonder-struck by the mysteries that surround us. All these things bear witness to the genius of a divine painter who is still at work in us.
Will Kautz

Resurrection Hope
May God grant for each of us,
If our world has died in the night,
That we may see the first day of a new creation,
A new heaven and new earth.
Because on this day God walks again in the garden,
Not in the cool of the evening but of the dawn.
This, is our resurrection hope.
Duane W.H. Arnold

Grace is Greater than Sin
Celebrating grace is not endorsing, much less condoning, error. On the contrary, celebrating grace is holy acknowledgment of the doctrinal truth that grace is greater than our error (or sin). 
Some do not believe, it seems, this truth.
“Who is a God LIKE YOU?” 
The prophet places the question squarely in the context of the character of the God of Israel, 
“who is a God like you, 
PARDONING INIQUITY 
and passing over transgression … 
because he delights in showing mercy … 
you will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” 
(Micah 7.18-19).
Bobby Valentine

Gospel
While the gospel is a message, it cannot be confined to messages. While the gospel is the truth, it cannot be captured by a series of propositional truths. Before the gospel is anything else, the gospel is God. Gospel means “good news,” and the good news is God. The good news is not that God loves us. The good news is that God is love. The good news is not that Jesus saves. It is that Jesus is himself salvation.
J D Walt

View from the Front Porch
A highlight of our 60th wedding anniversary celebration was having all of our children and their spouses with us. A rarity which we treasure.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY