Julia Child, Good Food, and a Mitzvot

This will be a longer blog than normal.

I promise, this one is worth it. It might even change your life.

(I know that’s manipulative. But I’m a preacher. Without manipulation, how could we do our work? Give me a break!)

My daughter, Talitha, wanted to see a movie the other night. Julie and Julia, a chick flick if ever there was one! I agreed. I love her and wanted to spend some time with her.

I prepared to be bored.

“At least it is a true story,” I said to myself.

The advertisements and trailers all had their time and then the chick flick began.

A young lady named Julie is turning thirty. She compares herself with her friends. They all have promising and ego-enhancing careers. She doesn’t.

The weeks go by. She moans to her husband: “Life isn’t going anywhere. I have no focus. I’m a failure.”

One evening, as her husband oohs and ahhs over her beef bourguignon, she begins telling a story from her childhood. Her mother, in a panic about what to fix her husband’s boss, had prepared a recipe from Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking. Julie remarks to her husband how proud she was of her mother that night, how delicious the meal had been ,and how much she loves Julia Child.

Suddenly, she gets an idea: she will work her way through every single recipe of Julia Child’s book. She will also blog about her experience.

So she begins. Each day she prepares a new dish.

The weeks go by.

Her only reader, apparently, is her mother. Her blogs are going out into the blogoshere without provoking a response. Her workday has become difficult because of her self-inflicted burden. Her husband is eating Tums and angry because of the diminished quality of their sex life.

Meanwhile, we are treated to flashbacks from Julia Child’s life. We watch her trying to convince first the French, then the Americans, that anything good will come from sharing the culinary delights of Paris with Middle America.

For Julia Child the years go by without acclaim or recognition. The same thing is evidently happening to Julie.

Bored yet?

Well, watching Julie and Julia waste their lives on such trivia without a sex scene, a car chase or some gruesome destruction of a human body to break the monotony– that is a tailor-made movie disaster! How can I expect you not to be bored with this blog about such a movie?

Ok, then. The punch line.

Gradually, Julia Child trains Julie how to cook. The task Julie flippantly undertakes in order to have a subject to blog about, teaches her how to become a real cook.

A. J. Jacobs did this same thing, twice. First, he decided to read the Encyclopedia Britannica – all of it! The notes he took while reading became a wonderful and very funny book, The Know It All. Then, after a rest, he decided to read through the Bible, obeying literally every single commandment and teaching of the Holy Scripture, Old and New Testaments, for a year. His notes from that experience became The Year of Living Biblically.

So there’s something going on in our culture about people assuming tasks and experiences that promise to expand their lives in some way.

The Jews call it a mitzvot. It is a path or a discipline one undertakes for a season in order to “put on” some new habit, skill, or knowledge.

Now that I think about it, I have had some experience with this.
The year was 1979. I was 26.

I had not completed high school and was wondering around the world speaking to little churches in North and South America. I was married. I had a young child to support. I had to find a job for a few months, make some money to tide me over until my next preaching appointment.

My father had once sold insurance. Maybe I could do that too. However, the woman at the office said that I needed a high school diploma.

So, I went to the Kanawha County Board of Education building. I talked to some woman there dressed in a pant suit and pearls about getting a GED. She told me where and when the next test would be administered.

I don’t remember the taking the test. I just remember how nervous I was the day I returned to get my score. I wondered if I had passed. The woman with the answers didn’t help me at all. She just stared at me and shook her head.

“Did I pass? Did I get my GED?” I asked her.

“Sir,” she replied as she glared at me over the tops of her glasses, “these scores tell me that you should be in college. Don’t waste your life doing menial and low-paying jobs! Do what you have to do and go back to school!”

“College? Me?” I wondered as I went home to tell Trish.

Anyway, the main thing was that I could now sell insurance!

A few days later, Trish showed me an article in the Reader’s Digest. It was about adults who had earned college degrees through self-study. The University of the State of New York had a program for people like me.

“You should do it,” Trish said. “The woman at the Board of Education said that you should do it. You read all the time. Why not try?”

But where would I begin?

A few days later, I saw an advertisement in a magazine from The Book of the Month Club. They were offering Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization in 11 volumes for only twenty-five dollars. All I had to do was agree to purchase a number of books over the next few years.

That was a good deal. I bought tons of books anyway! So I filled out the card. I dropped it in the mailbox. Then I waited.

When the volumes arrived at my house, I just stared. The huge, thick, heavy volumes just stared me in the face, mocking me, just as Goliath must have taunted David in the Valley of Elah.

(Ok that’s a bit of melodrama. It’s just to keep your attention.)

Sometime that week, I began volume one, Our Oriental Heritage.

Several months later, I began volume two, The Life of Greece.

We moved to Montreal. The books went with us.

I kept reading.

Nearly four years later, I finished volume 11, The Age of Napoleon.

By that time, I had also passed a GRE subject examination. The University of the State of New York rewarded forty credit hours for that accomplishment. I was well on my way to earning a B.A with an emphasis in History.

In 1982, I received my B.A. I had earned 210 credits. The University had to send me a registered letter asking me politely, “don’t you ever intend to graduate?”

I had only needed 120 credits for my degree.

Oh, well. Now I had specialties in History, Sociology and Spanish Literature!

The following year, I began my M.A. The California State University was offering a Masters in Humanities for people like me, who studied on their own while working and raising a family.

I have never stopped learning since.

I am convinced that the foundation for all my graduate and post-graduate training, my brief career as a college professor , the books I have written – everything I have done professionally for over thirty years – all have their roots in the mitzvot I assumed that day I opened the box of books from Book of the Month Club.

A mitzvot, undertaken joyfully (and carried through until its mentoring role is complete) is transformational.

After seeing Julie and Julia, I have been wondering: what would happen if hundreds of people in our church would carefully chose a mitzvot for 2010? What if we would chose some challenging but doable task, commit to that task for the specified amount of time, make ourselves accountable to a friend or group of friends, give continual reports of our progress, and persevere through the inevitable boredom and ‘I-want-to-give-up times” until it is finished.

What would that do?

I think we should find out.

We have several months to choose a good mitzvot. Each of us can think of something we have always wanted to do, something we have intended to learn, some way we have planned to serve, some action that is deeply connected to our passion for life. We keep putting it on hold.

But why not this year? Why don’t we do it this year?!

Give it a date to begin, tell our friends – so they know what to get us for Christmas – and just do it, finally!

What’s in it for me?

Well, I was thinking; perhaps someone will chose to work their way through a cookbook and ask me over several times a month.

The Tragedy of Lawlessness

“Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God.” - St. Paul

One of the most common errors of human life is becoming so fearful of extreme vice or radical philosophy, that one falls into the arms of the opposite. People who are running from lust can become cold and inhuman. Those running from laziness can become workaholics. When we run from intellectual arrogance we often embrace stupidity.

Running from tyranny we can become slaves of anarchy.

Many good people in our nation – Christians, in fact -- are falling into the pit of lawlessness. In the name of preserving freedom, they are running headlong into varieties of libertarianism and antinomianism. (The latter is what the Bible calls “the spirit of the anti-Christ.”)

Lately, I hear believers saying the most hateful things about our nation’s leaders and our structures of government. Evidently people making these statements have no understanding about how the Bible forbids such attitudes towards human government, parents, policeman, pastors – toward anyone in authority.

Certainly, we are not obliged to agree with (or in extreme cases, even obey) those in authority. As Gandhi once said, “there are unjust laws just as there are unjust men.”

True.

But what does a Christian do about unjust laws?

Well, a Christian exposes the errors of those laws and tries to offer to the rulers of his nation a better way. However, a Christian never rails against his rulers. He never forgets that human government represents God. Law does this imperfectly, of course; for alas, we are fallen creatures. Get millions of us together in one place and then create structures of governance to order our social life...then our collective fallenness become immediately apparent!

Government’s flaws are an easy target but they are merely the multiplied faults of its citizens. A little mole on a beautiful face doesn’t bother us. Put the same mole on a big screen and it becomes unavoidable. An angry boss is upsetting to a few; an angry judge or president can be dangerous to millions.

Schools, hospitals, churches and religious denominations are no different, by the way. They too are human institutions and they are ruled by fallen human beings.

Having worked in churches all my life, I can’t imagine a more horrible idea than asking church leaders to rule a state. We tried that once or twice; it never turns out right.

When Roman Catholics ruled Europe, it was not a pleasant place for Baptists, Calvinists or Lutherans.

When Calvinists ruled Geneva, it was a downright hellish place for the likes of Servetus.

When the Puritans ruled England (and New England), it was a hostile place for Christmas, art, music, leisure, laughter, romance, or any kind of Christianity other than Puritanism.

As it turns out, we Christians are fallen creatures too. We have a very difficult time extending liberty to those who differ from us when we are responsible for justice. Put us in charge of a state and sooner or later we will outlaw everything we don’t like. At least, that is what we have done whenever we have had the chance.

Law is a messy business. That’s because humans are messy creatures, including Christian ones.

The unavoidable messiness of humanity is the reason God established different realms of authority for the leaders of family, church, and state. American believers seem to have momentarily forgotten this. The Protestant Reformers were the ones that insisted upon separating religious authority from political power. The separation of church from state, then, was not the product of politicians who were afraid of pastors; it was the product of pastors who were afraid of politicians—especially of politicians who were also pastors.

Not only that, the Protestants insisted on a separation of power within government. We derived our three branches of government from the doctrine of the Trinity, for example. (“One government in three branches, so to speak; “neither dividing the substance nor confusing the branches.”) Protestantism both honored and distrusted authority. They wanted to submit to authority while limiting its reach.

In the view of the reformers, parents were to govern their families. Churches were to govern their disciples. The state was to govern the civic life of its citizens. Each type of authority had its proper realm of governance, and each served as a structure of accountability to protect its people against the usurpation of power by any of the other authorities.

This is a biblical view of law and authority. Libertarianism, on the other hand, is resentment (and a type of rebellion) against authority. It is forbidden by scripture.

Consider this quote from my son-in-law, Austin Cagle, in his commentary on James, chapter 5:

“We Christians are called to proclaim justice and to suffer at the hands of those for whom the structures of injustice are profitable. We are not called to establish justice by force. Rather, God asks us to wait patiently for justice, as a farmer waits for the harvest. Proclaiming justice is the responsibility of the church. Establishing justice is the responsibility of the state.”

(A policeman pulled him over on the way home from preaching this sermon by the way, while he was waxing eloquent to his mother about the biblical foundations of governmental authority!)

The state then does not exist merely to protect the citizens “from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” God appoints government to do what our constitution fathers articulated as “provide for the general welfare, and establish domestic tranquility.”

Streets, roads, sewerage, mass transit systems, parks, education, a trusteeship of a nation’s arts and cultural gifts, a humane concern for the physical health of the citizenry, the encouragement of commerce and the economic well being of the nation, the protection of the powerless against the caprice of the powerful – justice! – is the proper and biblical role of human government.

The Ann Rynd, Friedrich Nietzsche, every-man-for-himself-as-the-suckers-perish kinds of philosophies are simply incompatible with Christian faith. And believe me, if you don’t know who these people are and what they stood for, then you need to know. Their disciples are catechizing Americans daily. If you don’t want catechized by their ideas, you had better learn how to recognize them.

Marxism usurped the authority of both the family and the church. It appointed itself to a messianic role. In so doing, the peoples of the world have justifiably thrown it into the waste can of history.

So if you are running away from Marxism, let me join you. Marx made an idol of government and the sovereign God destroyed it. Only a few miserable and crotchety old professors at Berkley are still grieving about that. However, while you are running from Marxism, don’t forget to watch where you’re going. Otherwise you might fall into the ditch of Cain, who had no allegiance or obligation to anyone.

That ditch is the disastrous and culturally devastating philosophy and attitude of lawlessness, the resentment and disrespect for government and human authority. Fall into that ditch and you will soon become Godless.

St. Paul said all this a long time ago, in Romans, Chapter 13:

“Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God.
2 So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished.
3 For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong. Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what is right, and they will honor you.
4 The authorities are God’s servants, sent for your good. But if you are doing wrong, of course you should be afraid, for they have the power to punish you. They are God’s servants, sent for the very purpose of punishing those who do what is wrong.
5 So you must submit to them, not only to avoid punishment, but also to keep a clear conscience.
6 Pay your taxes, too, for these same reasons. For government workers need to be paid. They are serving God in what they do.
7 Give to everyone what you owe them: Pay your taxes and government fees to those who collect them, and give respect and honor to those who are in authority.

The Pathological Metamorphosis of the American Church

Last week, Tom McDonald made this startling statement:

“Too many of our senior pastors have exchanged their original calling to shepherd a flock for a driving ambition to build their city’s largest congregation. This has set up the conditions in which many church leaders have become abusive to their staff. As these frustrated pastors (and other church leaders) gradually transfer their own inner torment onto their coworkers, the church staff becomes a seething cauldron of bitterness and anxiety. This situation is epidemic among our nation’s churches. It must stop.”

Dr. McDonald is hardly some embittered cast-away, using the pulpit to nurse a grudge. He is the worship pastor at Church on the Way, one of our country’s largest congregations. He delivered his message to several hundred worship leaders. I was there, in a conference held at Christ Church in Nashville. I noted the compassion and tenderness with which he spoke.

I certainly felt the pull of his call for us to return to our calling and to our core spiritual values.

Here is another statement from that same message:

“Something serious occurs to our worship and music whenever we change them from sacramental instruments that we employ to connect the human heart with God, into mere tools for church growth.”

Wow. Please read that statement again.

These two statements expose a spiritual illness that has been afflicting the heart of American Evangelical Christianity for several decades. The illness evolves from an exchange of secular for spiritual terms, then into a continual secularizing of our worship and spirituality, and finally into a complete redefinition of the church’s purpose and ministry.

As an example of this, McDonald told the story of a minister of music who discovered he had cancer. After going through treatment, his church – HIS CHURCH -- terminated his employment. The church leaders had become afraid that the group health insurance premiums would rise as a result of his struggle.

Now, that is surely an exceptional story! It is however, only an extreme example of how we have come to deal with church matters. We tend to smile sweetly at the old fashioned and naive voice that meekly makes some appeal to scripture, trying to gently rebuke our marketing plan or our fund raising methods. We are quick to remind the protester about how things are done “in the real world.” We then lecture the poor soul about our “competition,” “our market share” and “our bottom line.”

Someone had to tell us that our new vocabulary suggests that many of our church leaders have left the narrow path that leads to life. They have joined the multitudes of our disenchanted and soulless age and are leading their congregations to walk the wide road that leads to destruction.

Our liberal counterparts did this intentionally and honestly; we have done it through our spiritual neglect and denial.

We need to remember some things.

Worship is not a concert.

The father of a flock is not a CEO.

Spirituality does not result from a market poll.

Orthodoxy is not a political persuasion.

The church is not the world.

The “real world” is not this present age; it is the age to come.

If these things are not so, why don’t we have the courage to stop pretending? If we are making our living by comforting lonely people with ancient myths, why don’t we just say so?

Every Evangelical leader in America should listen to McDonald’s message. He is a spiritual physician. He showed us the X rays of American Evangelicalism. It turns out that something is dreadfully wrong in the way we are doing church work.

I know: we do many marvelous things. We make our country a better place. We provide a moral influence for our nation. We feed people. We absorb the effects of many of our society’s ills. I am ready to defend all of that. However, the issues that McDonald raised are real. If left unchallenged, this spiritual disease will ultimately destroy our influence even with our own grandchildren – much less with secular America.

McDonald is right. Too many churches are destroying too many people.

Some of the people most harmed by church business were once called to carry the gospel to the lost, or pastor a flock, or heal the hurting. It took some of them years to discover that such things must be done “on their own time;” that the church actually pays them to feed the maniacal frenzy of church growth – getting nickels and noses into the pews.

Why are people in our pews in the first place?

Many of us seemed to have forgotten.

Why did we work so hard to get those people -- mostly from sister churches that are not as cool as we are -- into our pews?

Surely we didn’t call them here to perpetrate the spiritual emptiness that eats at the core of many of our church staffs.