Xmas Break

Here is something to leave you with for a week or two. I will be traveling to Colorado and finishing up finals, then traveling to Fort Drum, NY. My wife and I were momentarily captivated by an advertisement for AMEX. There was just something so darned interesting about how famous people answer the most basic questions. Hopefully, I can be just as interesting. If not, read this and ruminate.

childhood ambition> to drive a fire truck
fondest memory> hard to beat my wedding day
soundtrack> Bebo Norman at his best
retreat> a warm corner in a library basement
wildest dream> to write a column for Time magazine
proudest moment> on its way, hopefully
biggest challenge> getting out of bed in the morning before my wife
alarm clock> it's there
perfect day> a canoe somewhere in a river with the wife
first job> furniture delivery
indulgence> microwave popcorn
last purchase> something at Starbucks, isn't it all the same there?
favorite movie> The Shawshank Redemption
inspiration> the Rule of Christ

Grace and Peace to you in Advent and beyond!

QuakerWatch

In their vigiliant, inspired, and on-going effort to keep us safe from terrorists, it seems that no one is trustworthy in the eyes of the Pentagon. Not even Quakers. Threats could come from anyone, anytime, and anyplace. I mean, who expected Al Qaeda to actually try to attack us on our own soil? They had only been publicly threatening to do so for about a decade while only truly attempting it twice. The real terror threat is a covert group of people with a bone to pick and US passports. They can move about almost unnoticeably, at least until the Pentagon started tracking their movements and recording what vehicles they could use in their sinister plot to overthrow the . . . Pentagon. Don't believe me? Read about it.

That's right, the Quakers are the new and biggest threat to national security as we know it. They must be tracked, recorded, scrutinized, questioned, and then fed to the lions! Um, ok, maybe sent to Gitmo instead of that last part. Just listen to them. Quakers are just the kind of people the Pentagon would suspect to be terror(!)ists.

In the spirit of Narnia, I ask you. These people are obviously not safe, but are they good?

I would rather spend Christmas with Quakers than with the folks at the Pentagon. But then, they probably knew that already.

Emergent & Me

A good friend recently commended a blog written by an exponent of the "emergent church" movement. I am most grateful for such help, and I am intrigued by the number of people who point me in the direction of emergent after listening to me rant. What intrigues me about this is that I have no involvement with nor leanings toward an "emergent church".

My exposure to emergent has been highly limited due mostly to the denominational affiliation of my seminary. Emergent is not really big here, but a few students like to affix that label to themselves. I prefer other labels, but that is another blog.

While I am not hostile to emergent, (Why should I be? I am a pacifist) I am skeptical of the movement. First, the name "emergent" seems to imply the birth of something new and previously unseen in church history. This sounds more like a "re-Enlightenment" model than anything that claims to be raised from the ashes of post-modernity. As if now, after deconstruction and the Holocaust, we know the secret and have the tools to get this thing right. I doubt it. Having a conversation is one thing, but expecting this conversation to culminate in the unification of all viewpoints is not a good idea. While I have not read of all of Brian Mclaren's book, the subtitle was enough to make me walk away.

And second, I am not totally dissatisfied with emerged churches. (Get it, emerged?!?) Two milennia of Christian expression and thought has produced a wide enough variety that I expect everyone could find one to belong to. If you are unhappy, do some homework and find a confession that fits your best insights. If emergent is just a contemporary attempt to find a perfect church, then it is going to be sorely disappointed in a few years. If it is, as I expect to be correct, a backlash against the GOP-leaning evangelical conservative establishment, then it is well-intentioned but unnecessary. Alternatives have always existed, in many forms. From Quakers and Mennonites to Anglicans and even Catholicism, there is much going on that could appeal to the disenfranchised socially-minded Christian.

So I am not planning on dropping out and planting a new church full of emergent-minded people here in the ruins of Christendom. I would much rather cast my lot in with an existing tradition, dealing with all the ugliness and nastiness that 2,000 years can accrue, than pretend I can keep from spoiling something pristine and unblemished by perpetually moving "toward" something that I do not intend to name.

This will have to do for now. Besides, I could never be in the emergent movement. I still use Windows. Maybe if I had a Mac I would see things a different way...

Moving On

Satire is a wonderful thing. Few forms of communication can be so piercing and illuminative while also not becoming voerly cynical. I read satire to learn things about myself, my world, and sometimes my church.

Larknews.com was recommended to me by a friend during college. I instantly found it ridiculously funny, but a few minutes later I was re-evaluating the small, subconscious categories and characterizations I was making. My own absurdity was revealed. Anyone who has ever seriously studied Swift's Gulliver's Travels knows what I mean.

Inspired by my own remarks about cynicism a few weeks back, and by the wisdom only a sister-in-law can possess, I have decided to discontinue my link to larknews.com. I really do not read it any longer, because it is no longer (very) funny but tragic. It was quite helpful satire for life at OBU. Larknews served as a reminder that the things many people were taking seriously were quite ridiculous. But it has lost its edge on me. Now, it just fuels the fires of cynicism. That is the last thing I need right now.

I am not claiming to be more mature suddenly, or to have become enlightened to the point of ultimate knowledge. But I believe this satire of Christian evangelical subculture has done its work on me. I am ready to get involved. Therefore, I commend it to you one last time, here. Read it, laugh a little, then tell me what you think of it. I hope it offends you in a constructive way.