For the Joy of the Journey

So Much to Think About

George May 17, 2021 Notes Anthology 1 Comment

Self-awareness
Self-awareness is being able to not just feel your emotions, but observe yourself feeling your emotions; to not just have thoughts but to observe your thoughts as though they weren’t yours; to not just have beliefs, but to question those beliefs.
This self-observation—or the mind that watches itself—is at the root of mental and emotional health. It is a skill that we can practice and become better at. Therefore, knowledge is gained and wisdom is practiced. While knowledge is accumulated, wisdom is honed. While knowledge can be lost, wisdom lasts forever.
Mark Manson

Prison Prayer Request
Posted on 5.10.2021
As I’ve shared, after a long absence due to COVID, chaplain volunteers have recently been allowed back to the unit on Sundays to participate and preach in the prison worship services.
I preached in two services yesterday. In one of the services, we had a moment where the men could come forward for prayer. Three men came to me and we shared in a time of prayer.
The request that struck me was from Robert. Robert was heavily tattooed, even on his eyelids. Obviously, an intimidating appearance. But as Robert shared his prayer request, tears started to fill his eyes.
Robert was a stutterer. And he wanted prayers for his speech. When he’s anxious or emotional, he can’t express himself. What he carries on the inside cannot make it to the outside. In fact, Robert shared that the reason for all this tattoos is that they communicate the important things that he cannot. He has etched his heart on his skin.
I prayed. For the healing of Robert’s speech, but mostly for his pain, his frustration, his embarrassment, his shame.
I left the unit thinking about Robert. We’re all carrying on the inside some fragile thing, our external facades masking some shame or deep frustration. Looking at Robert, you wouldn’t know the pain he carried. When we gaze at each other we can’t see what is hidden on the inside. Like Robert, we’re all carrying, even hiding, some private fragile thing.
Richard Beck

What Happens?
Russell Moore’s powerful and anguished words, “What happens when people reject the church because they think we reject Jesus and the gospel?” He continued, “What if people don’t leave the church because they disapprove of Jesus, but because they’ve read the Bible and have come to the conclusion that the church itself would disapprove of Jesus?”

Sin
Sin is so seductive and its strategies can seem so reasonable. In fact, sin is so deceptive as to make standing against it not only humanly unreasonable but culturally untenable, not only unloving but insensitive.
J D Walt

Follow your dreams…
A few years ago I was the commencement speaker for my son’s High School graduation. During the talk I made a very uncommencment like observation. I said, “During commencement addresses you’re supposed to tell the graduates to ‘follow your dreams.’ But if the research is to be believed, that is bad advice. What we dream for often doesn’t make us happy.”
Richard Beck

Live by the Spirit
“Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. (Galatians 5.25) For years now, Strictly Come Dancing has been a highlight for those who are into such reality shows. What makes for a good performance is timing, movement in unison, anticipation of the moves, mutual understanding, shared enthusiasm, familiarity with the music and rhythm, and practice; lots and lots of practice. If we keep in step with the Spirit, and perform the music of Scripture with practised precision, then we become like those Paul described as those who live by the Spirit, and receive the promise: “The one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”
Jim Gordon

The Kingdom of Man
In the Kingdom of Man, the seas are ribboned with plastic, the forests are burning, the cities bulge with billionaires and tented camps, and still we kneel before the idol of the great god Economy as it grows and grows like a cancer cell. And what if this ancient faith is not an obstacle after all, but a way through? As we see the consequences of eating the forbidden fruit, of choosing power over humility, separation over communion, the stakes become clearer each day. Surrender or rebellion; sacrifice or conquest; death of the self or triumph of the will; the Cross or the machine. We have always been offered the same choice. The gate is strait and the way is narrow and maybe we will always fail to walk it. But is there any other road that leads home?
Paul Kingsworth

Christian corporations
…all too many American Christian institutions are corporations first. They’re perpetually-existing legal entities who confront each and every scandal with a single prime directive: This ministry must endure. It is too important to fail. It cannot die.
David French

View from the front porch.
It has been a busy few days, rehearsal and dinner, wedding and reception, family visiting. It was all good and great memories abound.
I cautiously predict spring has arrived, sweet smelling lilacs, stunningly beautiful rhododendrons, green grass, warmer mornings are undeniable evidence.
—
Linda’s van slowed and stopped. “I lost Archie.” she lamented, “he passed unexpectedly on April 28.”
I had been missing him, but with cool weather and my absence, I expected he would appear with spring,—walking to Cluckers to buy lottery tickets for Linda. His wife Linda and I never met but Archie walked past regularly and we often talked. A gregarious person, in his jeans and suspenders, looking like he might have been working in his garden, he shared a lot. He took pleasure in walking the one mile round-trip to buy the lottery tickets for Linda. Unable to get out, lottery tickets brought her some joy, he said. He was willing to do what he could to make her happy. “I love her,” he said, “I finally found a good one, she’s my third wife. We’ve been married 27 years.” “I’m her fourth husband.” Amused, I tried to do the math…
I never got to hear the whole story.
I miss Archie. As I think about he and Linda, I am thankful that they found each other. I am thankful that Archie stopped to talk. I may just buy her some lottery tickets.

Still on the journey

THE CHURCH (3) Hans Kung

George May 8, 2021 THE CHURCH 4 Comments

Already as a youngster, Küng recalled coming home “radiant” when he realized “I can swim … the water’s supporting me.” For him, this experience illustrated “the venture of faith, which cannot first be proved theoretically by a course on ‘dry land’ but simply has to be attempted: a quite rational venture, though the rationality only emerges in the act,” he wrote in his first memoir.A lifelong lover of nature, Küng spent much time in its environs — swimming almost every day of his life and skiing up to age 80 during brief holidays in Switzerland. Skiing helped him if only for a few hours to “air my brain and forget all scholarship, often defying the cold, wind, snow and storm,” he attested in his memoir.Almost all of his books were composed in longhand as Küng sat on his living-room-sized terrace in Tübingen, close to the banks of the Neckar River, or alongside his Lake Lucerne home in his native Sursee, Switzerland. Sunshine and fresh air pervade his texts as much as do research, history, exhaustive scholarship, and analysis of and solutions to specific theological and philosophical problems.

‘The nicest liturgical words and the highest praise of Christ — unless backed by Scripture and understood by the people — are just not useful.’—Hans Küng

‘My theology obviously isn’t for the pope [I will do theology] for my fellow human beings … for those people who may need my theology.’ —Hans Küng

Continuing to examine my understanding of church, this post will use Hans Kung’s book “THE CHURCH” to set a framework for further inquiry. As I wrote earlier, “THE CHURCH” was a highly influential factor in reimagining my ecclesiology. It is has continued to be a reference over the past several decades.

The Second Vatican Council, also known as Vatican II, which took place from 1962 to 1965, was one of the most important councils in church history, and it profoundly changed the structures and practices of the church. It sought, in the words of Pope John XXIII, aggiornaménto, “to bring the church up to date,” and many of the council’s decrees did bring the church into the modern world. Although the reforms were welcomed by many, they produced internal disruptions greater than any the church has known since the Protestant Reformation.

Written in the shadow of Vatican II — Kung’s states the purpose for his book in the preface.
One can only know what the Church should be now if one also knows what he church was originally. This means knowing what the Church of today should be in the light of the Gospel, It is the purpose of this book to answer that question.

For Kung, Church always refers to the Roman Catholic Church, a point to be aware of in his writing, but the applicability of his observations and critiques are unmistakably relevant to the catholic [whole] church. There is some attraction to the idea of a “Vatican II” kind of council for the church today — to bring the church up to date— but the Protestant diaspora that followed the Protestant Reformation makes that impractical. You can’t herd cats.
Perhaps these posts can serve as a mini-council? Restoration II 🙂

A presumption shared among many Christians today, and motivation for these posts, is that the church is headed in the wrong direction. Holding that assumption, Kung says the vital question is: “… by what criterion are we to judge that the church is now headed in the wrong direction?”

Answering, Kung eliminates paths most frequently chosen in response to concerns that the church is headed in the wrong direction — adapt itself to the present — because to do so would mean adapting itself to the evil, the anti-God elements, the indifferentism in the world — or secondly, — hold fast to the past, because that would mean ignoring what is good and acceptable and perfect, holding to what has gone simply because to do so is convenient, less disruptive. Clinging tenaciously to the past in this way is no less dangerous than a misdirected adaptation to the present….therefore, that where adaptation to the present is inadequate, because it leads to modernism, clinging to the past is no better, for it leads to traditionalism.

How do we know the church is headed in the right direction? Kung answers:

…The Church is headed in the right direction when, whatever the age in which it lives, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is its criterion, the Gospel which Christ proclaimed and to which the church and the apostles witnessed. The church did not come about of itself. God himself called it into being as the Ecclesia, the body of those who answered the call, and this he did in the world, from among mankind. God himself convoked the Church in the call issued through Jesus, the Christ. This call is the Euangelion, the good news: the news of the dominion of God over this world, the news that the hopes and desires of man should be directed to God alone, the news of God’s love, and man’s love for God and his fellow men. …

The Church, therefore, is the pilgrim community of Believers, not of those who already see and know. The Church must never again wander wander through the desert, through the darkness of sin and error. Fo the Church can also err and for this reason must always be prepared to orientate itself anew, to renew itself.It must always be prepared to seek out a new path, a way that might be as difficult to find as a desert track, or a path through darkness.

There is however, one guiding light it is never without, just as God’s people in the desert always had a guide: God’s word is always there to lead the Church. Through Jesus, the Christ it has been definitively revealed to us. …
With the message of Jesus Christ behind it, the Church is headed in the right direction. Thus armed, it is empowered to take new directions, now and again must do in an attempt to perfect God’s rule which it so frequently inclined to forget.

He further observes:

The Church today does not impenitently leave things as they were, but reforms and renews its life, structures and teaching, adapting itself to the world as it actually is. But it has not just developed a craze for modernity: it is looking for its own origins, to the events that gave it life.
The Church must return to the place from which it proceeded; must return to its origins, to Jesus, to the Gospel. And as a direct consequence, this can only mean forward to a new future, the future God had in mind for mankind.

There is a lot to digest in these citations, only a brief portion of his preface to THE CHURCH. A dissident in the Catholic Church, Kung’s, critiques were a delightful, he voiced criticisms of the Catholic Church I had heard and repeated for many years. It was only when I began to look in the mirror that I realized how relevant he was to the whole church and for me, and the church of Christ in particular.

In listening to those who believe the church is headed in the wrong direction, which, ironically, may be our greatest point of agreement, there are two dogmatic positions — adapt to the present —or— hold fast to the past. Those who do not fall into those categories, most usually, are sympathetic to some amalgamation of the two. In any case, Kung paints us all into a corner.

I am confident that this brief look at THE CHURCH through Kung’s eyes will not scrub our windows clean, but perhaps, there is a bit more light coming through that will illuminate the path as we move forward. My next post will explore restoring the New Testament church.

Still on the journey.

THE CHURCH -2 [Church History]

George May 6, 2021 THE CHURCH 0 Comments

It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong.
— Terry Pratchett

Perhaps somewhere, there is someone who dwells among unicorns that does not have preconceived notions about church. If you are that rare creature, you should wait for my next post. For me, I need to unravel my church history to understand how it shapes my perceptions and expectations about church. At this point, with regard to church, I’m not sure where I am and I don’t know where I am going. As Pratchett posits, it is important to know where you come from.

“Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t come in.”
Alan Alda

Choosing to believe my windows are crystal clear, I resist challenges to my assumptions. My adopted mantra…”I could be wrong” prompts me to forge ahead. Church history in this post refers to personal experience with church rather than 2000 years of Church History. Most people have a church history, all of which differ in some way; but none of us can escape the influence of our personal experience of church. Perhaps, as you walk with me through my church history, you will recall you own and recognize ways in which your perceptions and expectations about church have been shaped and together we can see where we should go.

I have no memory of life without church. There was the church Dad and I attended— church of Christ— and the church Mother attended— The Methodist Church. I have no recollection of animosity between them, although I can’t imagine there wasn’t. As a youngster, it was clear churches differed, some were right and others were not. The church of Christ was the former. There was only one true church— the church of Christ— all others were not the true church.

Members of the church of Christ do not conceive of themselves as a new church started near the beginning of the 19th century. Rather, the whole movement is designed to reproduce in contemporary times the church originally established on Pentecost, A.D. 33. The strength of the appeal lies in the restoration of Christ’s original church.
—Batsell Barrett Baxter

I wrote in some detail about my experience in the church of Christ in an earlier post, you can read it HERE. I learned early, the best way to know what you shouldn’t be doing was to look at what other churches (non-church of Christ) were doing. Such logic about church is clearly irrational and I reject it intellectually, but I cannot help but wonder if it doesn’t reside somewhere in the depths of my assumptions about church. explaining my tendency to be critical and wary.

I learned church was a place. Not any place, but a building —not any building but a building that reflected the nature and character of the church we believed it was established on the day of Pentecost AD 33. You could tell if it was the correct building because the cornerstone would be engraved —”Established AD 33” . Memorials to good stewardship and proper doctrine and ecclesiology , buildings were sparse, devoid of decorations, including a cross on an occasional steeple. Interiors were consistent with the absence of icons, banners or crucifix. The only semblance of an altar would be a communion table —”Do this in remembrance of Me”— flanked by the pulpit beneath a baptistery.
Ornate and extravagant church buildings were evidence of departure from the New Testament church and delineated “in” from “out”.

Church was where religion happened. There were certain things that could and couldn’t be done at church — within the church building and particularly in the auditorium (not the sanctuary). Everything changed when I went to church— clothes, language, demeanor, music. It was confusing to observe activity regularly condemned in preaching and teaching to somehow be allowed, if not permissible, as long as it wasn’t “in church”. Unwittingly, my life was being shaped into two discrete realities, sacred and secular.

Church was home. I felt welcomed and loved. There was fellowship — koinonia —the preacher called it. My religious identity was church of Christ. We were a special people, Campbellites — a derisive appellation, worn proudly because it affirmed our righteous sectarianism. To put it another way, we were a tribe — families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect — our tribalism was most evident in our assertion that members of the church of Christ th were the only ones going to heaven. It was home.

The above are just a few examples of my church history. There is much more for me to reflect on, including theology, doctrine, hermeneutics, ecclesiology, to understand my underlying assumptions about church. These are biases about church. Despite the fact that my view of church has changed dramatically over the course of my spiritual journey, biases from my church history will resist and/or filter new or different understandings about church.

This exercises requires self-awareness and self examination, both rare commodities.

…even though most people believe they are self-aware, self-awareness is a truly rare
quality: We estimate that only 10%–15% of the people we studied actually fit the
criteria. *

It is my contention that any effort to re-examine church, absent a clear understanding of our mostly hidden but powerfully influential biases about church, will produce little more than confirmation of those biases. If you are inclined to walk with me on this trek, I encourage you to examine your church history — know where you have been and where you are —so we can see where we should go.

Still on the journey.

THE CHURCH

George May 1, 2021 THE CHURCH 2 Comments

“The problem of God is more important than the problem of the church; but the latter often stands in the way of the former.”
Hans Kung

This is the first post in a series entitled THE CHURCH. It is my intention to share some thoughts as I rethink the subject of church. I have been prompted to write on the subject for several reasons.

Most recently Gallup data on church attendance was startling and generated predictable and appropriate response from pulpits across the country.

Additionally, the recent death of Hans Kung reminded me of his influence on me through his book “The Church”. You can read my post HERE. I am re-reading his book and finding it still relevant 40+ years later.

Third, is the pandemic experience and its impact on church attendance. For over a year we have not attended a church service in person. We have been faithfully “attending” church on-line. Actually our “attendance” has increased over the past year. as we joined more than one church on-line each Sunday, praising, praying and taking communion.

Thinking about that experience, I was reminded of a convicting question presented many years ago. A teacher, I don’t remember, asked, ” If by some supernatural event, the Holy Spirit was removed from your life, what difference would it make ?” …a question still worth pondering.
In the last year we experienced a supernatural event that removed church, as we know it, from our lives. The question I am pondering is: …what difference did it make?
The answer will differ for each person, but for me, the answer is troubling and curious… I do not perceive my faith has weakened…my prayer life has grown and deepened…I’m more aware of my sinfulness and God’s mercy and grace… I have engaged scripture and teaching that have challenged and changed me. Contrary to some people’s expectations, not going to church did not have the negative impact I would have expected.
I am not implying my positive experience over the last year was a result of not going to church, but apparently, not going to church did not impeded my spiritual growth. For that reason, I am re-examining my understanding of church. I have no idea to what end this will lead but you are welcome to walk with me.

Still on the journey

So Much to Think About

George April 29, 2021 Notes Anthology 1 Comment

…poetic words from Neale Donald Walsch
Yearning for a new way will not produce it. Only ending the old way can do that. You cannot hold onto the old all the while declaring that you want something new. The old will defy the new; the old will deny the new; the old will decry the new. There is only one way to bring in the new. You must make room for it.

“When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”
Flannery O’connor

Biblical Interpretation
Hermeneutical Self-Awareness + Judgmental God = A Whole Lot of Anxiety

Biblical interpretation is so anxiety-inducing because it’s viewed as so high stakes. Your eternal destiny hangs in the balance, so you have to get it right. And yet, given the hermeneutical situation, you lack any firm guarantees you’ve made the right choice. The whole thing is a neurotic spiritual nightmare. In fact, it’s this nightmare that keeps many Christians from stepping into self-awareness to own and admit their own hermeneutics. It’s more comforting to remain oblivious and un-self-aware.

So I told my students, You have to believe that God’s got your back, that, yes, you might make a mistake. But that mistake isn’t determinative or damning. Just be faithful and humble. You don’t have to have all the correct answers to be loved by your Father. Each of us will carry into heaven a raft of confusions, errors, and misinterpretations of Scripture. It’s unavoidable. We will not score 100% on the final exam.
But don’t worry. Let your heart be at rest. God’s got your back.
Richard Beck

Freedom
Freedom is not the ability to do anything, to have no limits, but the ability to truly be who and what you are, which can only be known through the revelation of limits.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Sabbath moments
The Sabbath moments of the soul are those brief glimpses we all have of unexpected wonder, unlooked for surprise, being ambushed by beauty. “Consider the lilies…” “Look at the birds of the air…” “He owns the cattle on a thousand hills…”

Even when life turns darker, and we know the deeper valleys where the sun is hard to see behind looming horizons, God is there, and blessing is to be found. Not the answers to all that we need or want; and not easy ways out of hard places. But those small signals of hope, those touches of goodness and unlooked for moments when kindness, comfort or laughter come as gifts.
JimGordon

The Gospel cure
Stating that “The Gospel” is the cure to any social ill is lazy and dishonest…it is the Gospel proclaimed and applied that transforms people and society…if we cannot agree on the application it is empty sloganeering to avoid dealing with the sin in question…
Phoenix Preacher

True and real
Somehow, myth is not just true, but real. The nature and character of the world cannot be described properly without reference to something more. That something more has a nature that gives shape to the stories labeled as myths. They are not just any story, a sub-genre of fiction. Indeed, even stories that would otherwise be labeled “true” and “real” (in the literal sense) have significance precisely in their mythic character.
Fr Stephen Freeman

What are we betting on for Christianity to succeed?
…it frustrates me that a fair number of my tribe — Christians who are theologically, morally, and politically conservative — are betting all their chips on the hope that the main fight is political, and can be won through politics. It’s just not true, and to say that does not mean that political engagement is useless. We have to stay engaged as long as we can. But it’s to say that the core problem is a loss of spiritual meaning — and that’s something that each of us has the ability, and indeed the duty, to address in our own lives.
Rod Dreher

View from the front porch…
Today is the first tine in a week or more that I have been able to spend time on the front porch. Weather and travel have interfered but I anticipate regular porch time now that spring has appeared.
We traveled to Nashville and Florence, Al for a wedding shower and visit with our son and adaughter-in-law. It was our first serious breakout from COVID restrictions. Fully vaccinated, we are pleased but cautious.
This morning reaffirmed my conviction that the front porch (literally and figuratively) is an important factor in my spiritual well-being. Extended conversation with a good friend and a brief conversation with my postman were meaningful glimpses into the Kingdom of God on earth.

One last thing I’m thinking about…

This report from Gallup has shaken the U.S. Christian community. It seems as though every church I have contact with is preaching on the church. This information maybe coincidental but it is relevant. Stimulated by my Covid experience, I have been rethinking church and intend to write a series of posts on the subject.

LISTEN OF THE WEEK

The sermon below is one of many but I found this one particularly helpful as I continue to rethink church.

CHURCH? WHY BOTHER?: WHY DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE LOCAL CHURCH?
Josh Graves 4/25/2021

Still on the Journey