Lewis, Tolkien and Evangelical Senility

One of the most productive religious revivals of the last two hundred years occurred at Oxford University. Initially, this spiritual movement resulted in the conversion of a few hundred. Now, however, it touches millions of lives around the world. Unlike our more famous revivals, where people may glow in the dark or remain frozen in place for hours, this was a revival of Christian thought. 

The Oxford converts formed a community that launched its members into the intellectual stratosphere. Seventy years later, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Dorothy Sayers,  J. R. R. Token, Michael Palanyi, Charles Williams and many other lesser known writers continue to influence not only Christianity but secular culture as well.

As I write this, The Hobbit is playing in our theaters, just a couple of years after the Lord of the Rings and Narnia may be fading from their long runs at the box offices and bookstores. Meanwhile, the writings of Michael Polanyi have been quietly provoking breakthroughs in economics, neurology and, of course, in chemistry, the field in which he won his Nobel Prize. These Oxford converts have been a most productive group of people.

Christian thought and Christian community nurtured the intellectual gifts of these believers, refined and developed their ideas, and helped them reach several generations of readers and researchers both within and without the Christian Church.

Although most of the Oxford group would not easily fit within the boundaries of contemporary American Evangelicalism, we have continually drawn upon their insights to address our postmodern questions. It is difficult to know what modern Evangelicalism would even look like without them.

Nonetheless, I don't think we would tolerate a community like theirs today.  Unbelievers wouldn't like them or their ideas, of course. But believers wouldn't either, to tell the truth. Intellectual life is at low tide in the American Evangelical Church at the moment. We seem to have little patience for serious conversation.

How can I explain what I mean?

Perhaps this will help.

When I was a little boy, our church ran an “old folks home.”

I found it mysterious. Once, when my great-grandmother broke her leg, I spend several hours there trying to understand the world the staff and patients had created. We had not yet learned how to sanitize (and camouflage) the unpleasant realities of human biology as we do today. So I still recall the sights, sounds and smells of human decay. However, it was the social aspects of the place that intrigued me the most.

I discovered that although Mr. Tommy was completely paralyzed, he was as rational as a person can be without healthy human interaction. The staff treated him kindly and he seemed to appreciate their help. Still, recalling his condition makes one grateful for modern advances like FaceTime and voice recognition software. 

Most of the others in the House of Mercy however, suffered from dementia. Well, come to think of it, perhaps they were not suffering! They laughed hardily enough, rocking away their hours and talking to people I couldn't see. Perhaps it was their lack of awareness that unnerved me.  But of course that was not their problem. 

One French-speaking woman was always calling for her mother. She giggled in her unknown tongue as she stroked a doll’s face.  Even though I watched her intently, I don’t think she ever saw me. Her mind was in a time and place that comforted her but which removed her from me.

Outside, a president had been assassinated. American cities were burning. The world was threatening to blow itself up. People were learning how to fly to the moon. But that poor woman knew nothing about any of that. Her eyes were fixed on something that although invisible to everyone else brought her some sense of joy.

But at what cost?

Inside the nursing home where she and the others lived, a little boy was trying to make sense of the world. He was mystified by this display of human fragility that made the word seem less safe than before. He was discovering that big people don't always have the answers; that sometimes big people are less aware than little ones.

Blissfully unconcerned about my existential anxiety, the inhabitants of the House of Mercy rocked on, shouting at one another about all their real and imagined offenses. They had become yesterday’s people, incapable of (and uninterested in) making a contribution to a world in which they no longer played a part.

Presumably, they had once conversed about world events. They had once made love. They had once raised families. They had once created machines and pieces of art. They had once participated in the life of the world. Then, for some reason and at some point, they began either surrendering their lives voluntarily or succumbed to the various kinds of neurological disease that worked to steal their lives. 

Whenever I consider the current state of American Evangelicalism, I think about those scenes at the House of Mercy Nursing Home. 

We are still here. We still breathe and eat.  But we have gradually cocooned ourselves in a spiritual gated community where we ignore most of the global changes around us. We have disinvested ourselves of huge chucks of real life rather than face the unsettling realities that might shake our internal equilibrium. 

Not much science makes it in here and hasn't for some time now.

Nor literature.

Nor philosophy.

And, increasingly, not much theology either.

We enjoy technological gadgetry, the products of the sciences we have, for the most part, rejected. But American Evangelicalism is a world of group think and cliches, where the price of community is conformity and where happiness is often purchased at the price of remaining in a state of intellectual adolescence. 

Unencumbered by the responsibility of offering answers for modern questions, we prefer speakers that say amusing things to make us happy over ones who tax our minds with difficult conundrums.  Our worship services are brief, vacuous, and often look a lot like kindergarten. We have lost much of our collective memory and so have little idea who the likes of Wesley, Calvin, Luther, and Aquinas were or what they may have said. We may have heard their names but are not likely to believe they have much to say about anything in real life. We wonder what sort of sadistic artists would have ever put words like propitiation, incarnation, and redemption in worship songs and why they could have ever thought anyone would know what such strange words meant.

We wonder why any faithful believer would study things like genetics, paleontology, or neurology.

If we listen to the conversation of people in this gospel ghetto of ours, we will hear amazing and revealing things.

“My nephew was raised in this very church by good parents. Then he went off to college. Now He believes the earth is hundreds of millions of years old; can you believe that? Our pastor took him for a game of golf and lunch but it didn’t help. Maybe it’s not a good idea to send our kids to college!”

“That nice young man wants to become a pastor. Naturally, he wants to study the Bible, which is good, but he will need to understand how the real world works if he plans to be successful. So I told him to study marketing and management. He can study the Bible on his own.”

“I love our church. The pastor talks about sports and things I can relate to. The service keeps your attention and best of all -- you’re out in an hour!”

Meanwhile, the culture's pressing questions about sexual identity, addiction, human origins, global warming, mass killings, and urban sustainability are met with clichés, sneers and, ultimately, by silence. Not only are we uninformed by modern perspectives on such things, we have lost historical Christian perspectives that might have added our unique voice to the discussion. We have become so alienated from our own past in fact, that perhaps few things are as alien to us now as historical Christianity. Therefore, information we might have found in our own hymns, theology books, creeds and art is long gone. Like the people at the House of Mercy, we have found that our old life and its belongings just don't fit in this place.

When someone mentions things we have lost, we comfort ourselves with words that lack real content.

“God is doing a new thing.”

“God hates religion.”

“God wants His people to be happy.”

Rock. Rock. Rock.

Happy. Happy.

Drool. Drool.

What time is lunch?

We do not notice that little children are growing up in a house without answers. We seem unaware that we have been amusing them with the same mindless fare we have been feeding ourselves. Except for our neat electronic gadgets, the world stopped evolving for us somewhere about 1870; before the likes of Darwin, Freud, Einstein and Max Plank; before the discoveries of continental drift and DNA; before globalization and the Internet; before Christians stopped having much to add to the disciplines of human society; before the great Oxford revival that could still renew our understanding of biblical faith if we would actually pay attention to it. 

One wonders what our little children will do when they discover the truth: that for over a century most of us have been asleep at the wheel, too terrified of an evolving world to think or converse about much of anything of substance. And what will they think when they discover that the people who made us the angriest were those who tried to wake us up? 

I am proud that our little church cared for people who could no longer care for themselves. The House of Mercy Nursing Home was a loving and kind response to human suffering. Many congregations still do such things and I am proud of them too. I am not proud when church becomes becomes a retreat for those who no longer wish to think.

There are many wonderful things I could say about American Evangelicals. Intellectual courage is not one of them.

So enjoy The Hobbit. We may not be anything like it for a long time. And besides, like all spiritually healthy things, The Hobbit breathes virtuous life into all who encounter and savor it. Perhaps, just perhaps, it may spark courage in someone to go against the current tide of intellectual sloth. Perhaps he or she will assemble another group of prophetic Christian intellectuals like the ones whom God touched at Oxford. And if so, perhaps our children's children may delight in the wonders of an informed, sanctified and anointed intellect; as we do whenever we read the works of those shaped by the Oxford revival.

Some things to think about as we ponder what we might do with this blessed gift of a brand new year. 

Who Was Bishop Ralph Henry Houston?

It has been well over a year since Bishop Houston first asked me to speak at this memorial service. I thought, then and now, that participating in this service would be one of the great honors of my life. 

A few weeks ago however, I began to have second thoughts.  I wondered what I would say. It would not have been difficult to prepare a eulogy for a man like Ralph Houston. His life was long, colorful and noteworthy. However, the bishop could not have had a traditional eulogy in mind when he asked me to speak to you today. He evidently sensed that God might use this moment for some purpose that I would to discern when the time. But what would that purpose be, I wondered?

Other people here have known Ralph Houston longer (and better) than I have. Indeed, by the time I met him, he had already lived much of his life. Were I to give a biographical sketch of his life, I would certainly leave out some important things and characterize him in ways many of you would think inauthentic. 

It has occurred to me though that my limited knowledge of Bishop Houston’s life might be an advantage on this occasion. By the time I met him, something important had already formed in his life that I believe God wants us to acknowledge today, but which we might miss were I to simply dwell on his fascinating life. 

That’s why I decided to speak less about what Houston did and more about who he was.

By the time I knew him, Ralph Houston was simply "The Bishop." 

But what exactly is a bishop?

On one occasion, St. Paul, said that "although there are Lords many and Gods many, to us there is only one GOD." 

Gods were everywhere in the ancient world. Every Greco-Roman village had a god or two. Their images filled the parks, on street corners and government offices. But these “gods” were not God. These lords were not The Lord. 

We could say the same thing about bishops. They are many and seemingly everywhere. Every day it seems, some pastor, weary of his lowly estate, grants himself the title of Bishop. So, we feel obliged to pay proper homage to his freshly acquired high holy immanence, even if his diocese consists of three widows and calling card. 

This sort of self-promotion has become so common that for many people the very word "bishop" is something of a joke. 

Then there is the abuse of those bishops who have hidden the sins of the church, misused funds, and in so many other ways have disenchanted the public and even the followers of Christ.  All of these things have worked to undermine the efficacy of the episcopal office. They have created a caricature that unfortunately comes to mind whenever we hear the word “bishop.”

Imagine my surprise then at meeting the real thing.

It happened on a specific morning in this very church. We had asked the people who needed prayer to come forward and among them was a tall African-American man wearing a clerical collar. The impression he made that morning would endure for the twenty-five years I knew him. This, I realized, was no imposter. This was not someone who was trying to impress us by wearing a piece of cloth around his neck. This was the real thing.

Ralph Houston helped me to realize that a bishop is a vital part of a New Testament Church. The bishop is the "episcopos," overseer, the pastor of pastors; the spiritual father of the church’s emerging leaders.  Without a bishop, the Lord’s church become fragmented, superficial and disconnected from its past.

Ralph Houston knew that a bishop is not named to care for just a specific ethnic group or to serve a specific denomination. A bishop, he realized, is called to be a shepherd to all those who follow Christ and even to those who do not yet know Christ. A bishop works to connect the Lord's people scattered throughout the world and through time and space. A bishop watches out for the flock of God. He observes the opportunities and challenges that come during his watch and what they may mean for the church. He discerns the spiritual strengths and weaknesses of the pastors he leads. He takes care to address their susceptibility to temptation and their opportunities for development. He senses when their teaching may be drafting away from sound biblical doctrine or when they may be sliding into of some sort unhealthy attitude. At such times, the bishop steps in to correct, exhort, heal, forgive and restore. He does all these things because the bishop’s motivation is not to demonstrate ecclesiastical power but to maintain the spiritual health of the Lord’s church.   

For all these reasons, a bishop does not pontificate out of a sense of authority and entitlement but out of an influence he earns through love and by manifesting God’s grace through his life and ministry. Out of that grace, he offers prayer and advice. He listens. He waits to be received. He is patient. He is kind. However, does not hesitate to use his authority to bring health and correction to the flock. Most of all, whether in kindness or rebuke, a bishop must strive to speak and act like Jesus.

And didn't Ralph Houston do all of that? 

On a specific date, and in a specific ceremony, the Church of Jesus Christ consecrated Ralph Houston to be a bishop. But Ralph Houston knew what many seem to not understand: that ceremony and vestments do not create a bishop. The spiritual blessings offered through rite and ceremony must be actually received and cooperated with by the one to whom these blessings are offered. When the church lays it's hands upon a person to consecrate him or her to a ministry or office, it is up to that person to accept, receive, and act upon the consecration. After the ceremony of episcopal consecration comes the hard work of doing what is required to actually become a bishop. Becoming a bishop requires that the one set part for this office actively participate in his own personal transformation. The grace is given through the church but it must be received by the person, in the same way that bread and wine are given to the church but must be received and consecrated in order to become for us the bread of life and the cup of salvation.

Ralph Houston did these things. He did not appoint himself to be a bishop. He walked into the appointment that had been given him by the Lord’s Church. Once the appointment was given, he cooperated with the spiritual process that gradually turned that role he had assumed into the man he became. 

That is how Ralph Houston became "the bishop," even for people who do not usually recognize the calling and role of bishops in today’s church.

We will bury him today.  A few days ago, he surrendered his title and office and has joined the communion of saints. So, I conclude my remarks with these brief observations. 

Not all pastors are disciples and not all bishops are Christians. But this pastor was a disciple and this bishop was a Christian. The affairs of the church never became more important to him than the state of his soul. He ministered to us out of his personal walk with God, and so what we received through him came from the Lord he served.

He rose from poverty and built a great business. He led a prosperous church. He grew a healthy family. He was known and respected by national politicians. He led the delegation that welcomed Pope John Paul to California. He was known by church leaders and heads of corporations. He led his denomination. But above all, Bishop Ralph Houston did justly, loved mercy, and walked humbly with his God. He walked with Jesus until he became a lot like Jesus. Then, over a week ago, he went to be with Jesus. 

We ask of our fathers-in-God that they strive to model the attitudes and actions of Jesus Christ in how they talk, live and die.

And didn’t Ralph Houston do this? 

Can I get a witness that he loved us, served us and taught us the way of God?

Can I get a witness that he prayed, studied the Word and walked uprightly before us?

Can I get a witness that he ran the race, that he kept the faith and that he finished his course?

The Lord’s Church on the earth then joyfully releases our father-in-God, Bishop Ralph Houston, into the hands of the glorified spirits in Heaven, into the community of saints, into the company of the holy angels, and into the care of him who sits upon the throne and the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.
We release him to heaven with our deepest respect and devotion. And as we do, we pledge to walk as he walked so that we may achieve what he has now achieved: eternal delight in the presence of the Lord.