What Is Real, Really?

So much of what we think is valuable is, in a sense at least, a figment of our collective imagination.

Human beings do not live merely as natural beings in a natural world; they live in a natural world overlaid with meanings they pour into it.

Our interpretation of things, events, motives of others – even of our own emotions – are often as real to us as any tree or bird. Thus, a robin is pleasant and a vulture is not. We can be as wise as an owl or as self-deceiving as an ostrich; stubborn as a mule or free as a bird.

Wisdom is the process of distinguishing between useful and delightful thoughts on one hand, and absolute reality on the other.

We live within a web of mental constructions that can seem as real to us as brick houses. In fact, most of us live in houses that others constructed. In many cases, the houses were here before we were born, just like the mental constructions that were given to us by culture, nation, family and religion.

The houses are made of natural substances. However, even those substances are prepared by human hands. Brick is clay that people have cooked according to recipes passed down and refined by generations of people since the days of ancient Babylon. Nonetheless, we soon invest these houses – at least the ones we actually inhabit – with affection, memory and meaningful artifacts and so, in time, these “houses” become “homes.”

The same sort of process transforms a piece of dirt into a “motherland” or a piece of cloth into “Old Glory.” It even transforms a nasty piece of cloth-paper into “money.”

It is all “art,” a shortened word for “artificial”: that is to say, “man-made”.

Art is the purposeful arrangement of materials in order to communicate emotion, idea or meaning. It is the imposition of human imagination upon nature. It is the process of transforming a piece of imagination into a piece of matter.

So what is imagination? The word means “image-making.” It describes the greatest power of human life: our ability to “see things that are not as though they were.”

Isn’t it great? Well, most of the time.

The Bible continually warns us against idolatry, which is the elevation of man-made things into the category of “absolute.” Idolatry erases the border between God-made and “man-made.” It makes the figments of our imagination as valuable, or even more valuable, than the world of nature. Thus, a national border, which human minds conceive and then project upon the natural world, can become more valuable than human beings, who bear God’s own image and likeness.
Our greatest president recognized the point I am making here when, in his most famous speech, he acknowledged that this nation was “conceived and dedicated to a proposition.” The proposition to which he refers is noble, even godly: “all men are created equal.” Nonetheless, the president’s assertion exposes the nation’s foundation: ideas.

The true borders of our nation are not latitudes and longitudes but ideals: a democratically governed republic, a portion of the world in which people make the most important decisions of life according to the dictates of their own conscience, a contract among all the generations that “this government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth,” a promise to “provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare for ourselves and our posterity,” and so forth and so on.

My mind is filled with all these phrases and customs, explanation and emotions, arguments and historical events. Every time I cross the border from another country into this one, this web of patriotic constructions shudders with delight. “This land is my land (not so sure these days that it’s your land) from California to the New York islands.”

This land is my home: “land where my fathers died; land of the pilgrims’ pride.”

My ancestors were all here before the revolutionary war. They fought and died in all its wars. They tamed a wilderness and left home places that I treasure.

It’s wonderful. But it’s not holy.

When patriotism becomes holy, the darkness of idolatry leads to purges, concentration camps and persecution.

The first two commandments are clear: we are forbidden to worship the things we create.
When we blur the distinction between creation and art, we get into dangerous territory.

Fantasy is another form of imagination; little private movies that we play for our own amusement, instruction or horror. When the fantasies turn dark, they can exert great power over our actions.

“May the words of our mouths and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Thy sight, Oh Lord.”

May we have the wisdom to discern the difference between art and nature, between that which is holy and that which only deserves respect, and between fleeting notions and ideas which need to be nourished, developed and imposed upon the world.

Am I A Conservative?

From time to time, people will ask me if I am a conservative. Usually it is because something I say, or the way I say it, just doesn’t sound right to them.

I usually smile and reply that I am.

But am I?

Or perhaps I should ask another question: “are there only two camps of people in our country now – conservatives and liberals? To fail to be in one camp automatically places one in the other?”

Has it come to that?

This matter of political labels is a particularly difficult issue for Christians. Jesus said, “If you have two coats, give your brother one.” Does that make him a liberal? The early believers in Acts had “all things common.” Was that socialism? One the other hand, St. Paul said, “if a man will not work, neither shall he eat.” Does that make him a conservative?

What do these labels mean for a Christian?

Last week, Jack Kemp died. He was truly one of America’s great patriots and public servants. He deeply influenced the nation’s political life through his influence upon Ronald Reagan. Jack Kemp was called a “bleeding heart” conservative.

He was conservative but…

He once wrote a book called Liberal Concerns; Conservative Solutions. I really, really liked that book. It gave me words to express my own political beliefs. Kemp was a fiscal conservative, which meant that he did not believe that government should operate with huge budgets and massive social programs. But he also believed all citizens had a responsibility to care for those who could not care for themselves. He cared about mass transit, health care and education and explored ways to address these needs of a well-ordered society that was consistent with his conservatisms.

He deplored the cold hearted “that’s just the way it is” kind of mentality that was increasingly gripping his party and his nation.

The reason I liked Jack Kemp was that a Christian simply cannot embrace an “everyman for himself, social Darwinist philosophy.” The Bible forbids that path in its opening chapters, with the story of Cain. So if a believer knows, really knows, that people suffer because of systemic failure or neglect – such as a lack of urban infrastructure – he or she cannot ignore it. (I was hungry and you wouldn’t feed me.)

Serving a mid city congregation for ten years forced me to become aware of urban poverty and of the systems and lack thereof that maintain that poverty. We could find work for our people but since there was no effective mass transit, (that situation has now improved in Phoenix) the people were forced to buy cars. Furthermore, the cars had to pass emissions. Furthermore, the cars had to be insured. Furthermore, the jobs did not provide health insurance, which meant that the workers either had to go to work ill – even if they were flipping hamburgers – or to miss pay (or get fired) for not showing up to work.

During that decade, I became aware that my pat and packaged answers to urban poverty, health care and mass transit were inadequate and cruel. However, when I tried to explore my concerns, fellow Christians would look at me with horror or amusement; I was either “one of them” or idealistic and naive.

Meanwhile, I watched families struggle in neighborhoods that were veritable hellholes of poverty and crime, trying to get up and get out before their children would have to go to bad schools, resist violent gangs and escape the scourge of drugs. The parents had to guide their children through this mess while trying to get rides to work and then trying to get home again before their children had to spend too many unsupervised hours; trying to keep the kids healthy without health care, trying to survive in the world’s wealthiest nation.

So I decided that an economy of the “quick or the dead” was not one I could embrace as a Christian. I remained a capitalist and a free-market person but I no longer believed in social Darwinism or liaise-faire capitalism. I was definitely not a libertarian, which was the direction my party and fellow conservatives seem to be embracing.

So what was I?

I was a Christian conservative. However, the word “Christian” would define the type of conservative I had become.

What I meant by that was simply that from now on, the words of Jesus would trump the words of Adam Smith or the actions of Donald Trump. The authority of St. Paul would supersede that of Jack Welch or of Rush Limbaugh. In fact, I would reject the group-think of my party altogether. I would continue to vote with my party most of the time but I would no longer take for granted that my party (or that American conservatism) was right. I would think for myself, as the light of scripture and the power of prayer molded my thoughts as well as my emotions. I would think about “the least of these” and the impact of my theories and my votes on the social structures in which they live. I would do these things because my Lord commands me to do them.

Those were my thoughts last Saturday when I learned that Jack Kemp was dead.

He did not become president. He did not become vice-president. He was merely a congressman and a football player who although a loyal Republican and conservative, had the decency to listen to the other side from time to time and to acknowledge the strength of their concerns.He was a man of integrity; a patriot who remembered that public service is a calling to be of service to the public.

May his tribe increase.

The Problem With Civic Religion

The United States is not a church. It is not a “new Israel.”

It is a nation, founded on high ideals and moral principles, that is highly informed and influenced by Christianity. Therefore, we can assert the American people are, culturally speaking, a “Christian people.”

This means that many of our customs, laws and ideas are rooted in the Judeo-Christian scriptures and spirituality. For all these reasons, I am a patriot. I am moved by patriotic songs and patriotic speeches.

But patriotism is not holy and the nation is not a church.

For a long time now, many American Christians have confused their patriotism with their spirituality. In most Evangelical churches, the people will stand as we bring the flag down the aisle. If we bring the cross down the aisle however, the people seem confused. Thus, some feel that honoring a cross may be idolatrous but that honoring the flag is not.

I honor the flag. I will stand when you bring it into the room. But I am not worshipping the flag. I am merely showing respect for what it represents. If we worship the state, we cannot confront the state when it is in the wrong. That makes us bad citizens. It also makes us unfaithful Christians.

As a minister of the gospel, I exercise authority in a few areas that precede and supersede the authority of the state. For example: marriage. I perform marriage ceremonies. My actions as God’s representative make a man and woman “man and wife.” This ceremonial action creates the beginnings of a family. The family then has a diverse origin. It is not an institution that derives from either nature of the state.

What the state does is “recognize” marriages. The state decides what sorts of unions are “legal,” which is to say “are recognized within the realm that the state rules.” The state cannot decide what God will recognize or what He will not recognize. So what happens when the state recognized a marriage as “legal” that God judges as “an abomination?”

Well, those who view the states authority as legitimate in that area – businesses, military, civic organizations and such like – will bow to the states decision.

But what does the church do? It depends.

If the church exists at the pleasure of the state and automatically acknowledges the authority of the state in all areas of life, it will join the various communities and organizations that submit to the states decision.

If the church understands its own origins, precedes within its proper realm of authority, supersedes the state, it will resist any laws that contradict and defy the rule of God. The church has no authority over those who do not belong to it. We should never seek to rule the state. We have tried that and it always corrupts both the church and the state.

The church does have authority over the flock of God. We proclaim, defend and teach the Bible – Old and New Testament – as the viable word of God. We insist that all followers of God order their lives by God’s law.

In short: we submit in all things that the state requires – except when its requirements are in clear violation of God’s word.

May God grant that American Christians never be forced to choose between the authority of God and that of our country. Or, if it comes to that, may we have the courage to move beyond civic religion to embrace the cross.

(To get an idea of what got me thinking along these lines, read Never Silent by Thad Barnum.)

Election Response

As Americans, we have the responsibility to vote our conscience. As Christians, our conscience is formed by the Word of God. Therefore, as American Christians, we try to vote in a way that is guided by our discipled conscience. That is not always easy. Sometimes the lines are blurred and neither side fully represents our values. One side holds to one of our values; the other side holds to another. In such times, believers find themselves on differing sides. Nonetheless, we each vote our conscience.

When the election is over, as Americans we are either delighted or disappointed, depending on whether our side won or lost the election. As Christians we know that “the dice is in the hand of the man but the outcome is in the hands of the Lord.” So we turn from our pre-election passion and turn toward our spiritual responsibility to pray for and support in every way our conscience allows, the person whom God has seen fit to make the leader of the nation.

St. Paul tell us to pray for kings and those in authority. When he wrote this, the emperor Nero was killing Christians. How were Christians to pray for Nero? That he would come to faith, surely. That he would learn the ways of God and lead in a just way. In the end though, “God puts up kings and puts down kings.” We do our part: we vote. Before the election, we make our beliefs known. After the election, we pray.

Yesterday, young Senator Obama became president of the United States. We are unsure of what sort of president he will become. He may become a wicked and despicable leader; he may become a godly and great leader. We all have our opinions but the story is not yet told. We have to wait. We have to pray. As Americans, none of us will benefit from him becoming a bad leader. As Christians, we are forbidden to anticipate that he will become bad. Rather, we are called to do all we can to help him become good.

Yesterday, the new president began his day in prayer with T.D. Jakes. They were together a long time. We don’t know what was said or done. We do know that he invited a godly and a good man to pray with him. Lets pray that this sort of influence will grow and that this president, like Lincoln whom he admires, will bow his knee to God and seek His direction for our nation.

President Obama and the Communion of Saints

In the days leading up to the inauguration, there was a lot of talk about President Abraham Lincoln by both Obama and his team. Two nights ago, the new cabinet members joined the soon-to-be First Family in a meal recreated from the favorite foods and even the personal china of our sixteenth president. Then, yesterday, our new president took his oath of office on Lincoln’s Bible.

What are we to make of this reverential acknowledgement of the great emancipator? What does Lincoln have to do with Obama? What does the world of our nation’s sixteenth president have to do with us?

Well, I am moved by the tribute to Lincoln. His speeches, letters, diary and life have been a continual inspiration to me, as they have been to countless other Americans. Lincoln is a treasure.

In many ways though, Lincoln is hardly a symbol of our country as it has become. Introspective, often depressed, scholarly and physically unattractive, Lincoln is everything that modern America tries not to be.

We are dangerously addicted to entertainment and much too inclined to glorify ignorance. We substitute piety for knowledge and sincerity for responsible reflection and informed action. Lincoln may have been tempted to do those things too, for all we know. However, if this was so, his times and his duties pushed him into an entirely different direction.

Perhaps against his will, he peered long and deep into the reality of the human condition and pondered the divine purpose for our country’s existence like few of our leaders ever have. Today, there are few pastors who are inclined to do such a thing!

We are doers. We live in the fiery rush of urgency. We thrash about, listening to bits and pieces of this and that, doing what is at hand to do, answering our email, greeting dozens of individuals a day with a superficial sentence or two. We do not truly converse. Even when we try…well, before any meaningful words are exchanged, we must answer our cell phones. Then, when we return to the conversation, the moment of connection has been lost.

This is not the age of Lincoln.

Our sixteenth president often retired to read the scripture, or Shakespeare, or to tell several jokes to a few friends. He wrote letters. He prayed. He took long walks. He plunged into solitude for hours at a time.

Lincoln did all of this not because he did not have urgent things to attend to. People were forever complaining that the president was lazy and unfocused. He moved with a quiet deliberation at his own pace and came to conclusions when they had matured in his own mind and heart.

That is how we got the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural Address and the Emancipation Proclamation. He was molding a nation, not merely responding to crisis.

Lincoln is an altogether beautiful man, at least when viewed through the mists of the generations and fourteen decades that separate us from him. He was a man of his own time that did not allow the issues and urgencies of his own time to imprison him. He stood on a mountain and looked out over the future and dedicated himself to preparing as good a world as he could – for us.

Leon Kass claims (in The Beginning of Wisdom) that the entire focus of covenant is to help a man become responsible, first to his living family, then to his descendents, and finally to his ancestors.

Modern America has drifted very far into a preoccupation with self, the immediate, the urgent and the titillating. This is as true of believers as it is of unbelievers.

When Obama put his hand on Lincoln’s bible, perhaps he was telling us that he intends to take a different course of action than we have been taking of late. Perhaps he is thinking about how to become a great man and not merely a popular man. If so, he will walk a lonely path. Lincoln could tell him that. But the loneliness will be worth it if he succeeds in waking us up from our stupor and focusing us on our nation’s purpose: to make it possible for every man, woman, boy and girl to become truly great and truly free.

Lincoln can help Obama do all of that because Lincoln did it.

Christians call it the Communion of Saints. It is the belief that our past brothers and sisters are living presences in our everyday lives and that their journey can inform our own.

The reward of taking seriously the communion of saints is that we slowly join their ranks. Our contemporaries may not see it; indeed, we may not see it ourselves. However, gradually, little by little, our thoughts and our deeds become a part of the great conversation and the archive of the ages. An Obama can become a Lincoln. I can become a Daniel, a Barnabas or a Patrick.

It takes a lot more than eating Lincoln’s food or putting one’s hand on his Bible.
But it’s a start; a very good start.

Watching the Seasons Change

Today, for the tenth ten time of my life, a new president will take the oath of office.

I can tell the story of my life by recounting the various presidents I have known: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush; and, today, Obama.

Like most Americans, I have taken pride in the peaceful way we transfer our highest office, sometimes between bitter opponents. So far, we have always passed the baton with dignity and with a sense of celebration. As President Kennedy once reminded us, an inauguration is not the victory of a man. It is not even the victory of a party; it is a “celebration of freedom.”

Ten times now, I have witnessed this celebration of freedom.

I remember the day Johnson took his oath on a Dallas airfield. The people around me were weeping, still in grief for the President he had replaced. The transition was hardly noticed because we were so stunned. Still, the presidency survived and the ship of state sailed on.

Several times, I heard an inaugural speech on foreign soil. I heard Nixon’s farewell speech through a Portuguese interpreter, for once wishing I could hush the tones of what may be the world’s most beautiful language in order to hear the relatively harsh tones of my own. The leader of my country was surrendering his office and I wanted to hear the same words, in the same language, that my fellow citizens far away in North America were hearing. When I heard the new president take his oath of office, I was still irritated that I had to hear it through a Brazilian interpreter. Still, I joined, in the best way I knew how, my countrymen’s celebration of freedom.

Many years later, I was living in Montréal when Reagan came to visit Prime Minister Trudeau. It was his first state visit. I was proud when he gave a part of his greeting to the Canadian people in French. The interpreters, always attentive to their erudite and multilingual prime minister, scrambled to react to the unexpected utterances of our new American leader. I smiled and knew that this new president would do well.

Whether here or aboard, the beginning and ending of each presidential administration has marked the seasons of my life.

Eisenhower was president until I was eight years old. I remember seeing him only once. He was on an oval-shaped television screen in the house of my mother’s friend. I was fascinated by the television. Few people had one in those days. However, its owner stopped to ask, “Do you know who that is? It’s the president, Mr. Eisenhower!” So I looked more intently at the primitive television set.

For some reason, her remark and my vision of the president on that television screen got etched into my memory. Other than that, I hardly recall the presidency of the great Second World War general. I respect him; I just don’t personally remember him.

Kennedy was the first president I really remember. When he took office, I was in the first grade. Our young president fascinated us most West Virginians. We memorized passages from his speeches and collected pictures of him and his family.

The violent ending of his presidency (and our romantic attachment with his administration) came on a cold November day when I was in the third grade. The adults had fear in their eyes that day. That made me afraid too. I had no idea that the violence and fear would continue in our country until the end of that decade.

During the Johnson administration, I discovered girls. Other, more important things occurred during his years in office – the civil rights act, the war on poverty, Viet Nam – to name but a few; but I was a teenager. World events merely formed a backdrop against which my unfolding life was taking shape!

By the time Nixon took office, my family was preparing to move to South America. Walking through the streets in Quito, I sometimes saw our president’s name written on the walls with a swastika, where there should have been an “x.” I didn’t understand why the president was so despised. Sometimes it felt personal. Most of the time, I just went on with life as an immigrant teenager, getting ready to become an adult.

As the Nixon years continued, I increasingly felt caught between cultures and languages. I was an American but had also become a member of a global community. I wanted to speak many languages and understand the customs of the world’s peoples. However, many of my countrymen were drawing back from intimate interaction with the world’s cultures. I first experienced what would become a life-long issue: the sense of patriotism mixed with an appreciation and respect for other cultures and languages. This tension would sometimes alarm those Americans who are uninterested in the richness of the world’s cultures. Then and now, this disinterest in the opinions and contributions of others would strike me as a false and even putrid form of patriotism. I learned to dislike it then and I dislike it still.

I married an American girl, from Appalachia, like me. We moved to South America and traveled around the continent. We were still newlyweds; spending a month in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil the day Gerald Ford took office.

When our daughter Talitha was born, Jimmy Carter was president. Trish and I were visiting Chicago, taking Lamaze classes to prepare for her arrival. On the way out of the class, we noticed how a bright star flanked the crescent moon. We shivered at the sight. That same day, the president had met with Prime minister Began, Chairman Arafat and President Sadat at Camp David. What did that sign mean? We still talk about it sometimes.

When our second daughter, Tiffany was born, Ronald Reagan was president. During his term of office, we moved to the United States, finally settling in Nashville. We raised our children during his administration and that of his successor, George Herbert Walker Bush. It was a good season. I became more deeply acquainted with the culture of Middle America and marveled at the richness of our national heritage.

The first Bush presidency maintained the culture and atmosphere of the Reagan years, for the most part. However, things kept changing. The Berlin Wall came down. My children couldn’t understand why I wept at the reports from Germany. The final vestiges of the Second World War were just swept away as people in Leipzig drove to Bonn for the first time in fifty years. The Russians pulled down the hammer and the sickle for the last time. Communism was finally dead everywhere but at Harvard, Yale and Berkley.

Clinton became the first Baby Boomer president. Someone from my own generation was president of the United States. Imagine that! The times really were a changin’.

Our family moved to Phoenix. We discovered the Western part of our nation. We ate fish tacos and toured Native American towns more than a thousand years old.

Our children grew up.

Our children got married.

George W. Bush became president and almost immediately, the world changed again. Towers came down in New York. Air traffic ceased for the first time in a hundred years. We were at war. My life entered a severe turbulence in Phoenix that mirrored the turbulence of the world. We had a grandchild. Then another. Trish had a brain aneurism. We moved back to Nashville. We had another grandchild. Trish slowly recovered. Trish and I experienced together the deepest joy of our lives: having lived long enough to know and to love our grandchildren.

Today, Mr. Bush will go back to Texas and we will enter a new season of life. We wish him well. His was a difficult and taxing season. For the moment, many Americans associate, perhaps unfairly, the sorrows of this season with his name and with his face. Perhaps the future will look kinder upon him. In any case, the moment has shifted to a new season.

A young man is taking his oath of office today. He never saw President Eisenhower on an oval-shaped screen. He never took a drink from a water fountain set aside for people of his race. He neither served in Vietnam nor dodged the draft. He doesn’t remember race riots. He is a new face, a very new face.

Today, Mr. Obama will become the President of the United States.

He is younger than I am -- by a decade. That’s new for me! He is an African-American. That is also new! As is true of all new presidents, we are not yet sure what he will be like or what the season he represents holds for us. We only know that we have once again transferred our highest office peacefully and with great celebration. Most of us, even those who did not vote for him, wish him well. We are all proud that our nation has proven to the world that any citizen can become president. We have proven once again that ours is a nation with many faults but it remains a land of great opportunity and possesses a nearly unbelievable ability to renew itself.

May God give President Obama the wisdom and the courage to be a righteous man. He inherits what is in many ways a damaged nation. It is dangerously unsure of its values and alarmingly unstable. But we have been here before. Each time we have been granted a new season because a new leader found a way to call us back to greatness.

On this tenth occasion of a presidential transition in my lifetime, it is my hope that this new president will be such a leader. May this new season be a good one that my grandchildren will remember fondly.

Serve Somebody

Friends,

All through the presidential election, people kept pressing me for my opinion. I decided to remain silent for a number of reasons, not the least of which is my repugnance at the politicizing of the pulpit in recent years on both the right and the left. Also, we have a racially mixed congregation whose unity I want to guard. Finally, I felt I simply did not have the grace and permission from God to speak about it. Now the election is over. So as I prepared for the sermon, I noticed that the Common Lectionary reading included Joshua 24. That’s when I felt permission from God to speak about the present climate of our nation.

You will not find specific praise or blame for any of the candidates in the sermon. Instead, you will see my passion to keep the people of God focused on eternal things and to not allow themselves to be highjacked by transitory things.

Here at Christ Church, we are experiencing an ingathering of people from many walks of life. God is at work in a mighty way. I want us to keep the main thing the main thing: “loving God, loving each other, making music with our friends.”

May God Bless each of you, our new president and our beloved country.

You Gotta Serve Somebody

(Joshua 24: 14-24)

The people of the United States have entered a new era. Future historians will note how drastically our nation’s culture shifted during the years between the bombing of the World Trade Center and the presidential election that we experienced last Tuesday. This shift of our national culture makes many Americans anxious. For them, the changes represent an unmitigated disaster and a lunge toward an uncertain future. For others, the shift represents the opening of new opportunities and a deeper connection with the rest of the globe. Therefore, these Americans view the cultural shift with a sense of excitement

So, we are divided about what these historic changes mean. The truth be told, none of us yet know what they mean. Those who fear the cultural changes worry that their most cherished values may be in danger. Those who celebrate these changes hope that we are stumbling toward a more globally aware and equitable society.

History suggests – and our faith asserts – that both our fears and our hopes of cultural change are often overblown. Nations and cultures go through seasons. The French Revolution, the October Revolution, the Cultural Revolution; the long march, the war to end all wars, the great society; the reformation, the renaissance, the enlightenment; all these great movements announced their arrival with great sound and fury, made their impact and then became the cultural artifacts that our children learn about in school.

After seventy years of Communism, Russia returned to being Russia. After sixty years of Marxism, the Chinese realized that being Chinese was more important than being Communist. The French have been as French without their monarchy as they were before they stormed the Bastille. Neither the League of Nations, The United Nations, or the North American Treaty Organization ever delivered even a fraction of what some people hoped. However, they also did not deliver even a fraction of what some people feared.

I would not for a moment minimize either the fears or the hopes of any American facing the current changes of our culture. Our economic changes are real. The election results are clear. Globalization has overwhelmed our borders and overturned our provincial views of the world. It is therefore impossible (and ultimately irresponsible) to ignore these realities. We certainly cannot live in any other era than our own. If we try to escape our own era of history, we become mere curiosities – like the people who insist on driving buggies and banning cell phones in order to escape the evils of modernity. Nations, churches and individuals do that at the cost of becoming entirely irrelevant.

As your pastor, it is not my responsibility to weigh in on political issues anyway, except when those issues clearly relate to our spiritual lives. However, it is my responsibility to remind you that we are an eternal people and that we serve an eternal God who is faithful in every era and in every culture. Therefore, we do not have to fear any culture; we were made to thrive in them all.

Moses led the children of Israel, out of slavery and into the Promised Land because God was with him. Then he died. Joshua was the nation’s next leader. He conquered the cities and villages of Canaan because God was also with him. When Joshua was an old man, he addressed the people who had followed both him and Moses. The Israelites now lived in very different circumstances than when Joshua was a young man marching from Egypt. The days of slavery were now far behind them. The battles for Canaan had been won. The Israelites were no longer nomads and wanderers. They were a settled people living in their own homes.
As so often happens, the man who had led the Israelites for so many years felt more connected to the era of his youth than to the one in which he was now living. He was fearful that the values that had brought God’s people from a place of bondage to a place of security and safety might be destroyed. The complacent and dispassionate attitudes that often develop when a people are no longer in danger, could undermine the very purpose of Israel’s existence.

Joshua is concerned about these things as he gives his final address to his people. So this passage is an impassioned plea: do not forget the Lord! Do not fall into idolatry and the debauched life styles of your neighbors. Remember that you are the people of God. Hold on to the past as you move on into the future.

Joshua goes on to say that living as a covenant people in any era requires that they make a deliberate choice. He is saying that covenant requires intention, awareness, mindful actions and disciplined thoughts. He understands that one can drift into apostasy but that fidelity to covenant requires an intentional choice. Every generation of believers must make such a decision and then they can adapt themselves to live in their own times as children of God.

“Choose you this day who you will serve,” the old man insists. Then he does what all real leaders must do; he makes his own choice. His choice will not be predicated upon the choice of the people. Although a political man decides what the people think and then makes his choice, a leader chooses his path and then invites others to follow. “Whatever you decide to do,” he says, “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”

This is the heart of the matter: we must deliberately decide whether we intend to be people of covenant or if we will merely drift along with the flow of public opinion and popular culture. As Leon Kass so capably points out in the greatest commentary written on the book of Genesis in our lifetime[1], The God of Israel does not base his work on those who do heroic deeds in order to become “men of renown” but upon those who remain faithful to their God, to their families and to the teachings of covenant. These kinds of individuals have the courage to appear insignificant to others as they just do the right thing day after day.” In other words, covenant people live in their own times but are not obsessed with their own popularity. They realize that popularity can be a detriment to one’s character and productivity.

I am not unaware of the importance of the historic events of our times or of the impact of our great leaders. Occasionally, some event really does change the world. Sometimes a person really does galvanize nations into action. However, I want to remind you that great events and great leaders ultimately do not impact the world nearly as much as the small actions of small people who live in insignificant places. Nero is dead and is barely remembered. I dare say that few of us in this room would be able to say when he lived or what he did. That may be deplorable but it is probably the truth. However, what person here will not know who St. Paul was, or what he did?

The Bible implores us, pleads with us, to resist the allure of fame and fortune and to focus our fleeting lives upon making a real difference in the world. The Bible insists that the way we make a difference is by learning and applying the teaching of Holy Scripture to our lives and by organizing our deeds around long-range plans that will rarely come to fruition in our own lifetimes. Covenant people live their lives in service to God and they act in order to benefit their descendents and their neighbors. This way of life is completely contrary to anything the secular world teaches, on either the right or the left side of the aisle. However, it is that sort of kingdom living or “serving God” that ultimately changes the world.

Let me tell you some stories that will illustrate what I mean.

In the gospel of St. Mark, chapter 12, Jesus watched as the people came to the temple to give their offerings. He watched several of them conspicuously drop in great sums and heard the onlookers gasp in amazement. Then he saw one widow bring a mite (approximately two pennies in American currency) and place it in the offering. Jesus stopped to say to His disciples, “the others all gave from their surplus but this woman has given everything she has.”

In a real sense, that woman’s actions impacted the world far more than the actions of the Emperor. I say that not only because of that one widow who gave that small sacrificial offering; I say it because she is merely one of multiplied millions who have given small and seemingly insignificant offerings, year after year, decade after decade and century after century. These accumulated offerings of money, time and action have changed the world. Those who have given the offerings - widows and farmers, maids and butlers, soldiers and carpenters -- are mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts and babysitters of great leaders and of mighty kings. I guarantee you that some Chinese child of some well respected Communist leader is being diapered and loved today by an insignificant Christian maid who makes no money and takes all sorts of abuse. As the years pass, this child will be learning songs and memory verses from the maid whom he will love all his life. Someday, when he is called to leadership, the words of scripture that she taught this child will mold his thoughts and guide his decisions. That is what a “widow’s mite” does. It changes the world because it is a tangible expression of serving God.

Last Sunday, as I was leaving the church, a lady came to me with just such an offering. I have known her for years. I know that her life has been difficult. She has had very little money and has always struggled with poor health. She lives alone and in poor circumstances. She had an accident not long ago that resulted in a financial settlement that she did not seek and did not expect. She was able to use her modest settlement to help pay her rent and to get a more reliable car. However, she also wanted to give something back to the church because the church has helped her several times through the years. It was only when I got home and looked at the check, that I realized it was for $1,000.00!

The offering that this economically challenged woman gave last week was given to help the people of this church who may run into temporary difficulties in the next few months because of the economy. When I told Bill Spencer (the leader of NarrowGate Ministries) about this offering, he said, “I want to add $500 to that fund.” Trish and I also decided this week to make a sacrificial gift toward the fund. What the church will do with this money is keep our people solvent and stable through the challenges ahead. If someone has trouble with a light bill or a car payment, we can help them. Naturally, we will first help those who have been faithful to the congregation. This will help keep our church financially sound. It is also the way scripture instructs us to care for people – “to the household of faith first.” We will also pay close attention to our widows, single moms and others who work hard but can barely keep their heads above water. If we all pitch in, no one should be devastated by this temporary downturn in the economy.

I am not going to make a big deal about contributing to this fund. You have already been giving generously. Our tithing has increased and our mission’s commitments were almost $250,000 for the coming year. So this is not a sales pitch or a marketing ploy. We will take whatever money comes in and then we will disperse whatever we receive. However, I do want you to know that this woman’s gift was a holy thing and that it is the sort of action that Jesus said changes the world. It demonstrates, far more than my words, the lordship of Christ.

There is another story that the gospel writers tell about a boy who offered five loaves and two fish to Jesus when a multitude had run out of food. (You can read the story in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Mark.) The Lord’s disciples looked for food but the little boy’s lunch was all they could find. They also reported that they did not have enough money to buy food. But they found out that Jesus knows how to make much out of little!

He still does!

For over a year we have been engaged in a philosophical debate in this country about the role of government. Many Americans believe that it is not government’s place to care for the elderly, the poor or the sick because the government has no capacity to distinguish those who are truly in need from those who simply refuse to work.

If this is our view, then as Christians we must become even more responsible to care for our own widows, sick and elderly. We can hardly rebuke the state for trying to care for people if we refuse to step up to the plate to care for our own families or our own church members. So let us resolve to do this. Let us resolve to put action behind our words. Instead of speaking bitterly of those whom we believe are asking the state to do what the state cannot do, let us demonstrate with our money and our actions what a responsible and Christian community does. Perhaps the nation needs some good examples of how things ought to work.

This is an essential part of what it means to be a person of covenant: to demonstrate our discipleship in deeds as well as words. We don’t yell at people; we serve people. We don’t theorize; we act.

As the elderly Joshua spoke to his people, he urged them to decide who they intended to serve. When they insisted that they wanted to serve the Lord, he urged them to get rid of their idols and ungodly practices. He was teaching them that following God is much more than merely praising God in song and word.

Serving God is about applying God’s words to everyday life. That’s what one lady did in our church last week with her check. She was not acting from compulsion or guilt; she was full of joy because she was finally able to contribute. It was her attitude as much as her gift that changes the world.

I believe her gift is a seed. I believe it will encourage many of us to give sacrificially so that everyone in this community can weather the storm. If we do what God teaches us to do, none of us will need the government to help. That will become a testimony to the world that we practice what we preach. That’s what a “widow’s mite” does; it grows small seeds into big fruit.

Of course, a “widow’s mite” is not always money. Sometimes it is a small action or a short word.

In early 1960, the Evangelical community was terrified at the possibility of a Kennedy presidency. John Kennedy was a well known Roman Catholic and there were all sorts of dire predictions circulating about how the Pope would be secretly taking over the government and so forth. So, although I was from a family of union organizers and coal miners, they all intended to vote for Richard Nixon.

As you know, John Kennedy won the election.

A few days later, after the election, I was singing a jingle I had learned at school about John Kennedy. It was not very flattering but not all that bad either – just a cute campaign jingle form the Nixon campaign.

My father will probably not remember stopping me and taking the opportunity to teach me how godly people deal with authority.

“Son, Christians do not speak ill of the leaders of their country."

“But dad,” I protested, “I thought we voted for Nixon.”

“The election is over now,” he said. “The Lord decided to appoint Senator Kennedy to the presidency. Now, it is our responsibility to pray for him. Four years from now, we will get another chance to vote. Until then, Kennedy will be our president and we will respect him.”

Do we really believe that God “puts up kings and removes kings?” if we do, then we must manage our emotions and pray fervently for President-elect Obama as he makes his selections for cabinet positions, ambassadors and all of that. We must pray also that God will send people into his life who fear God. This is the way Christians behave.

I learned this from my father in 1960. I have tried to manage my attitudes toward national leaders accordingly. I was dismayed by the movie ridiculing President Bush that came out recently because it violates the honor of our highest office and it is an ungodly and heathen act to ridicule and humiliate someone who is trying to wrap up a most difficult term of office. I pray the movie becomes a disaster and a disgrace to its producers.

I hope I am making myself clear this morning. We are a people who order our lives and attitudes differently than the unbelievers. We are called to deliberately think and act differently than those who do not know the Lord.

Tuesday is Veteran’s Day. We will honor those who serve our country in the armed forces on that day. That is important in my family. My uncles all served in World War II. My wife’s uncle was killed in the Normandy invasion and her cousin was severely injured in Vietnam. I have a son-in-law serving right now in Iraq. So I know that when we ask people to put their lives on the line on our behalf, they deserve our respect – not only while they are on duty but when they return home.

All those who want to follow Christ must also “put their lives on the line.” It is possible that years of prosperity and comfort have made us numb to the seriousness of being covenant people. It is possible that some of us have allowed immorality and greed to take over our lives. Well, now is the time to get that stuff out of our lives. It is time to choose. We all have to serve somebody; it’s time to decide who that will be.

God is obviously doing something powerful in our church. He is asking us to get serious about our service to Him. We may feel we have little to offer – perhaps merely a “widow’s mite” but let us offer that “mite” today. Tomorrow, let’s give it again. Then, let us do the same thing the following day.

If we all do what we are able to do, God’s work will go forward in this, or in any other era or culture. At any rate, as Bob Dylan said many years ago, we all have to serve somebody. It may be the devil, it may be the Lord, but we have to serve somebody!


You may be an ambassador to England or France,You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You're gonna have to serve somebody,Well, it may be the devil or it may be the LordBut you're gonna have to serve somebody.

You might be a rock 'n' roll addict prancing on the stage,You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage,You may be a business man or some high degree thief,They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeedYou're gonna have to serve somebody,Well, it may be the devil or it may be the LordBut you're gonna have to serve somebody.

You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk,You may be the head of some big TV network,You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame,You may be living in another country under another name

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeedYou're gonna have to serve somebody,Well, it may be the devil or it may be the LordBut you're gonna have to serve somebody.

You may be a construction worker working on a home,You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome,You might own guns and you might even own tanks,You might be somebody's landlord, you might even own banks

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeedYou're gonna have to serve somebody,Well, it may be the devil or it may be the LordBut you're gonna have to serve somebody.

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride,You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side,You may be workin' in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair,You may be somebody's mistress, may be somebody's heir

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeedYou're gonna have to serve somebody,Well, it may be the devil or it may be the LordBut you're gonna have to serve somebody.

Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk,Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk,You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread,You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeedYou're gonna have to serve somebody,Well, it may be the devil or it may be the LordBut you're gonna have to serve somebody.

You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy,You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy,You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray,You may call me anything but no matter what you say

You're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody.
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

Copyright ©1979 Special Rider Music; Bob Dylan


[1] The Beginning of Wisdom, Leon Kass, Chicago University Press

Election Day Response

Many of you have been calling, e-mailing, texting and otherwise communicating with me that you want to know my thoughts on the election outcome.

I am working on my response, but as this is such an important topic, I want to take my time with such a response.

As I sat down to write my thoughts, it quickly turned into a sermon. (I know you are surprised!) I am continuing to work on this material throughout the week, and will post something within the next few days.

Please check back. I look forward to your thoughts.

Dan Scott

Cultural Revolution

On May 16, 1966, Chairman Mao set into motion a movement of youth and peasants who would work untiringly for nearly a decade to rid China of all "foreign," "elitist," and "bureaucratic" elements. He called for the masses to unleash their frustration against the educated classes.

We call Mao's movement "the cultural revolution."

In that decade of ideological madness, the Chinese people learned to think and speak in clichés. Sentences often began with "as the Chairman says, …"

In the movie, The Red Violin, a woman who loves music has to hide her records and instrument from the young punks who roam the streets in search of people like her, people who care about culture. She has to sit in silence while sarcastic "no-nothings" publicly ridicule an old music teacher because the man had taught Bach and Beethoven instead of popular Chinese music. It was a time to hide one's love of learning, culture and refinement. For the moment, the mob was in control.

I believe that we are in a sort of "cultural revolution" like that in our own country. One can detect, in the political speeches from both the right and the left, an appeal to resentment, to class alienation and the economic anxieties of the populace.

On the left, this cultural war sounds something like: "wealthy people have made your lives miserable long enough. They make their money while you suffer. They get their health insurance while your children go sick. Aren't you tired of it? Don't you want a change? If we don't stop the right wing from controlling everything, some Hitler is going to take over soon and destroy the last freedoms we have left!"

On the right, the cultural war sounds something like: "Aren't you tired of how the people in the arugula and wine crowd keeps looking down their long noses at you? Well, that's who controls the media! That's who keeps trying to destroy your faith in God and the American constitution. If you let them get their way, you can say goodbye to your churches, your hunting parties and to any business opportunities that are still left in this increasingly socialistic nation of ours!"

This cultural divide deeply affects the church. It has become difficult to have a conversation about literature, art and culture from a Christian standpoint. It is even more difficult to talk about discoveries made in the last few decades in fields such as physics and paleontology. There are, to be sure, orthodox Christians in these fields and some of them write and speak, but one wonders how many believers have the patience or the capability now to actually listen to them.

I have lived long enough to see even biblical studies become a secondary concern of most churches and of most Christians. We seem to keep dumbing down and the more we do, the more shrill our voices become agaist those with whom we disagree.

To be sure, the intellectuals have brought some of this on themselves, including many theologians. Academia has become ever more detached from day-to-day reality. That is why people trained in our universities often display an alarming lack of common sense. They do often seem to mock the ideas and practices that bring comfort and meaning to millions of their fellow citizens. So it is tempting to mock them back – the pointy headed, good-for-nothing privileged class of lazy bums. However, if in the process of mocking the intellectuals we dismantle the culture and social graces that has made our civilized life possible, we may open the doors to the same barbarism that ruined Rome and brought a thousand years of a dark, illiterate, cruel and base existence to the peoples of Europe.

Our corporate leaders have also brought some of their woes on themselves. President Reagan convinced us that a rising tide would lift all boats. "If we would stop restraining business, we would create an economic machine that would make us the envy of the world. Health care would be better managed by the people who know how to make creative business decisions than by government bureaucrats. Our companies would make health care benefits a part of our pay."

Well, all of that worked for many years. Then, or so it seems to many of us, our corporate leaders learned that they could make even more money if they could break their unspoken contract with the American workers. They learned that they could employ the workers of other nations, people whose standard of living did not require the same salaries as Americans. They could buy and sell, merge, and dismantle their own companies. And, by the way, health care had now become too expensive for the companies to offer. So the workers, who were now making less pay relative to the current economic realities, were on their own. Of course, the ones who were actually sick would have a difficult time getting health insurance, but that was just the cruel reality of the global marketplace.

Regan was right, I think. However, he did not anticipate the effect of fallen human nature upon those who make corporate decisions. He was right to think that the "invisible hand of market will force a person to be prudent or to fail"; he did not seem to realize that the invisible hand of market forces will not force a man to be just or even mindful of the suffering of those who get crushed in the gears of our global economic machine. I am not saying that it is a business leader's responsibility to shoulder this reality, but by the turn if the century, we have convinced ourselves that it was nobody's concern. We had become social Darwinists – even many of us who oppose biological Darwinism!

So many of us have become dismayed and angry. Someone, or something has taken away our culture, our borders and our sense of national identity. Who is it? Who do we blame? What questions do we ask?

But where do we begin? Do we join the hatred of the left against business and thus destroy the structures that create our jobs? Or, do we join the hatred of the right against artists and intellectuals, who create the communication and dialogue that gives us meaning an purpose for our lives and culture? Which Cultural Revolution do we join? Which pied piper do we heed – the ones on the left or the ones on the right? How can we escape the sound-bite and cliche-ridden talk that passes for conversation, so we can figure out where we are and where we need to go?

My answer may sound self-righteous (and it may actually be self-righteous), but Christianity refuses to join either of these crusades against humanity. Christianity rebukes arrogant intellectuals and calls them to serve and to teach those who do not know. However, Christianity calls the person with financial gifts to serve others and not to forget the stranger, the sick, the elderly, the widow, the orphan and the other folks who get left behind.

I have been thinking about these things as all my friends push me to commit myself in this election. I am not ready to empower the rage of either side against the other. I am not holding myself aloof because I have no opinions. I am refusing to commit because I have not yet found a way to have a conversation about the issues of this campaign that is not an endless flow of clichés and repetitions of fear-based pandering.

I would like to consider the issues of this election in the light of the Lord's message in Matthew 5, 6, & 7. Senator Obama says that the Sermon on the Mount would wreck our Department of Defense. But isn't that the point? We are proclaiming a kingdom that will ultimately wreck every nation's Department of Defense. In the meantime, we tolerate the need for national defense; but we do not glory in it. We realize that even the Lord told us that we would always have the poor with us, but we don't forget them.

We take our civic responsibilities as serious as we can; but we never forget that no person and no human ideology can have our ultimate loyalty. Our kingdom hasn't come yet, but we judge all issues facing our present kingdom in the light of the values of our ultimate kingdom.

That's what makes a Chairman Mao and all his ilk so angry at us. We can't join their cultural revolution. We have another king and another country. So we make our decisions the best way we can, realizing that "here we see through a glass darkly and only then face to face".

And one thing more – some of the people on the other side of the aisle from me share my higher loyalties to the kingdom not made with hands. So I refuse to allow my transitory, provincial and limited understanding about political and cultural matters, to separate me from people with whom I intend to share eternity.

I have joined the real Revolution – the one that will soon overturn all the nations of this world. That's why I can't join the other ones -- at least with the deepest part of my heart. I am a citizen of this nation and a patriot. I believe that my allegiance to the kingdom of God has real consequences in this world in our time. I am not sitting around singing, “this world is not my home; I’m just a passin’ through. The decision to be a follower of Christ does not excuse us from the obligations that all mature people must accept, including those related to citizenship. It does force us to deal with life and with people very differently than unbelievers. It also helps us put political life in its place, as important but not ultimately so.

In Praise of Civility

When Walter Mondale and President Reagan were about to begin their first debate, Mondale began with a statement: "Tonight, I will say some strong things about the President's views and policies. I would like it to be understood that I mean no disrespect, either to the man or to his office. I enjoy President Reagan's company, and I know him to be a decent and kind man."

At this, President Reagan replied, "I like you too Fritz, let's go to it!"

The audience laughed and the debate began in earnest. Mondale did not hold back. He hit the president's policies hard. But he had already announced his boundaries: he was not going to cross the line into dishonor for his opponent.

Walter Mondale didn't win my vote that night but he did win my respect. He had modeled how a person can be passionate for his cause and still remain a gentleman. His words reflected what our national leaders thought, once upon a time: that it was as essential for a statesman to promote national unity as it was to advance his political persuasion.

I miss the values and the culture that Mondale demonstrated in that debate.

The attribute that Mondale demonstrated that night is called "civility." It is a word that is closely related to "civilization," the state of living and working together in a way that promotes the common good of all who comprise it. Civilization depends on people learning the sort of social protocol and mutual respect that will allow them to process their differences without destroying the underlying unity that makes their quality of life possible. Unless we want to adopt the ways of those nations where political differences get settled by civil war, we must remake and maintain our commitment to civility.

Here's another story that helped me learn the meaning of civility.

When I was a little boy, we became terrified about the threat of a Kennedy victory in 1960. There were all sorts of sermons and conversations in the air that year about how Catholics would run the government and persecute Protestants.

Kennedy won anyway, of course.

Some weeks after Election Day, my Dad heard me singing some anti-Kennedy chant I had learned in school. I forget the lines but it was about how unfit John Kennedy was to be President. When he heard me singing, my Dad, who had opposed Kennedy, told me to stop. I was never to sing that song again. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Son, John Kennedy is the president of our country. The Lord wants us to pray for him. The election is over. Mr. Kennedy won. Now all Americans must respect his office and pray for him."

The day the President was killed, my father wept. He did not say something like, "Well, Kennedy finally got his," or "That good-for-nothing Democrat is dead." He said, "Oh God, they've murdered our President." My father had somehow made the man whom he had voted against, "our president."

When we live in a democracy, we are not obligated to like the person who holds an office. We are even less obligated to like our political opponent. As believers however, we are always obligated to treat all people with respect, especially when they are the leaders of our nation. This is especially true for Christians, who are commanded to “pray for the king,” even if that king is Nero and is slaughtering other Christians.

As an American who has spent considerable periods of time living outside the country (as both of our current candidates for President have done) I have always marveled at the way we transfer the presidency and the other high offices of our land. Since the beginning, each party has been willing to pass the baton of leadership to their opponent because both have had a common commitment to values and institutions that they believed to be more basic than their underlying differences. This should not be taken for granted. It is a gift – a gift that requires civility and a high view of civilization.

Discussion about important issues ought to (and usually does) provoke people's passion. Apathy, especially over things that impacts people's happiness and well-being, is not a virtue. We all get heated about out politics, our religion and our standards of quality. We should; these things reflect who we are.

However, a warning is in order: ideas and issues are not made in the image and likeness of God; people are. It is, therefore, no crime to expose the weakness of a bad idea. It is a sin to ignore human dignity. Civilized life – learning to become a gentleman or a lady – is about making a difference between how we treat ideas and as opposed to how we treat the people who hold those ideas. Expressing sarcasm and cynicism about another human being – even our political opponent -- diminishes his or her humanity. Unbelievers can do it; a believer must not.

Mr. McCain is, as his campaign continually reminds us, a war hero. He has demonstrated extraordinary courage and patriotism in times and places where there were no cameras and no press.

Mr. Obama is an extraordinarily brilliant United States senator who now represents the hopes of millions of Americans that our long nightmare of racial division and social stratification is ending.

Surely, we can choose the candidate who most represents our views for the nation's future without demonizing, ridiculing and diminishing the other party's leader.

If all else fails, perhaps it will help to recall that when we ridicule a standard bearer of a national party during an election, we are ridiculing all those who support him. We push away our friends and family who believe differently that we do and leave no room for serious discussion.

Serious discussion requires civility, like that demonstrated by Walter Mondale in his fight for the presidency. He lost his quest for our highest office; he succeeded in keeping his country safe and united. If that's not strong leadership, I don't know what is.

What Is Liberalism?

What is liberalism?

Some of the popular definitions for the word "liberal" include "showing or characterized by broad-mindedness;" "generous and broad sympathies," tolerant," "having political or social views favoring reform and progress," " tolerant of change;" "not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition;" "a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of personal civil liberties."

"Liberalism," is thus a philosophy that seeks to advance "social progress," usually defined as continual movement towards increased personal freedom and broader protection for the individual from the threat of poverty, prejudice, illness and ignorance. Liberalism is thus an orientation toward the future rather than the past.

These definitions beg a question: who gets to define these terms? What is "progress," "poverty," "prejudice" and "ignorance?" How does a society alleviate the illnesses of its citizens? What is the "future" towards which liberalism pushes us? Is this future inevitable, irresistible, divinely determined or created by human initiative?

For most people claiming to be liberals, it is human government that becomes the agent of societal transformation, the force that enables "progress;" that is to say, "movement toward the future." Government decides what constitutes "ignorance," "prejudice," "progress," and "poverty" because democratic government is simply the formalized will of the people. As in the case of "conservatives," there are many different kinds of "liberals."

It may be shocking to many Americans to learn that our "liberals" are often viewed by Europeans and people of other industrial nations as "moderates" or even as "conservatives." Furthermore, even in our own country the definition of what makes a person a "liberal" varies from region to region. However, in hopes of gaining some common definition of a label we use daily, let's look at some of the possible meanings for the word.

Social liberals seek to create a secularized public sphere in which the representatives of the various religions (as well as those of no religion) can work together to maintain the common good of its citizens. The values of our public life should thus be founded upon the latest findings of science (including the social sciences.) Since a well-ordered society requires continual investment in the common good, social liberals are dedicated to public funding of such things as education, health care, mass transit, parks, and other resources that work together to promote human dignity and expression.

When stated this way, is likely that most Americans will have considerable sympathy for "liberalism." Americans generally prefer a future orientation rather than one focused on the past. The issues that provoke people who might otherwise think of themselves as "progressive" to resist the liberal label, involves the role of religion and religious values in society, the means by which social infrastructure is to be funded, and whether or not these aims can be reached without a loss of traditional culture and values.

A social liberal can be (although usually is not) a religious conservative. For example, a person who is deeply committed to his or her church and its teachings may not believe that the state ought to be an expression of any particular church. In this view, it is better for the state to be apathetic and neutral where religious questions and values are concerned. This encourages freedom for all religious people to express their various faiths unhindered by any state preference for a specific faith. Historically, this was the traditional Baptist position.

"Theological liberalism" is an intellectual attitude toward one's own faith that says in effect: "my faith contains many precious things that I do not want to lose. However, I am a modern person who must take into account all sorts of scientific discoveries and social advances. Therefore, a religious man or woman should reinterpret his or her faith in order to bring its values into the present age."

Theological liberalism makes it possible for some professing Christians in our times to support things that leave orthodox believers angry and bewildered. An obvious example is homosexual unions. Some church groups have decided that ordaining openly partnered homosexual church leaders is a "prophetic" statement that pushes the Christian faith into the modern world. An orthodox Christian, who may otherwise agree with the aim of political liberals to promote and maintain a social infrastructure, cannot conscientiously condone such actions. By rejecting such "progressive" actions, an orthodox believer becomes a "conservative" almost by default. In the present polarized political climate it becomes difficult to see another possibility.

Fiscal liberalism is the belief that a society's economic health is the result of strategic public investment. Strategies to advance social progress may include public debt or the printing of paper to float governmental expenditures. The best-known economist of this school is John Maynard Keynes, the architect of President Franklin Rooselvelt's New Deal.

A more extreme version of economic liberalism is the socialist (and mixed economy) model preferred by many European countries, especially in the aftermath of the Second World War. In this model, citizens are protected by an extensive social net that provides financial help during times of unemployment, by free or nearly free health care services, and by providing easy access to higher education.

Maintaining an economically liberal society requires the collection of higher taxes, of course, since someone must pay for all the social amenities enjoyed by the populace.

At the core of the conservative-liberal divide is the issue of how individualistic VS how communal a well-ordered society should be. Should a culture create the sorts of infrastructure that provide the greatest amount of good for the greatest numbers of its citizens? Or, should a culture provide the greatest possible amount of freedom for its creative and entrepreneurial citizens, who will in turn develop the businesses and organizations that will lift all the other citizens?

History suggests that a society that allows the greatest freedom for its creative and enterpreneurial citizens will produce the most wealth. However, this wealth often comes at an enormous cost for the elderly, the ill, the disabled and those who for whatever reason are unable to participate in the wealth of their fellow citizens. For this reason, American culture has tended to vacillate between a free-market and a commitment to social nets that protect the most vulnerable.

If you consider yourself to be a "liberal," you may want to ask whether you wish to embrace all the meanings of the term listed here or merely some of them.

If you do not consider yourself to be a "liberal", you may want to consider whether any of the aims of those referred to as "liberal" appeal to you, or whether you may share something in common with those who do.

What Is Conservatism?

What is conservatism?

The most obvious meaning of the word "conservatism" is "a philosophy that revolves around the intention to conserve." Of course, this definition begs the question – "conserve what?"

When we begin to answer the second question, "what are we trying to conserve?" we discover that there are many different kinds of "conservatives." Everyone who claims the label "conservative" is not trying to conserve the same thing.

I thought it might be helpful to look at some of the major "conservative" groups.

Social Conservatives work to conserve the values of their particular culture. In our country, we can break this subgroup down even further, into religious and secular social conservatives. A religious conservative wants to convince the nation to order its public life around the values of faith –in our country, that means some form of Christian faith. (In the American South, this means some form of Evangelical Christian faith.) A secular social conservative, on the other hand, wants to maintain the nation's traditional culture but is not as interested in the spiritual aspects of that heritage. Thus, a religious conservative may differ from a secular one over immigration or abortion. The religious conservative may be sympathetic toward his or her fellow believers from other countries, while a secular conservative may view immigration as undermining the traditional culture. In the case of abortion, a secular conservative may be much less passionate about the issue than his or her religious counterpart and may even believe that a conservative government should not interfere with a citizen's private choice.

Orthodoxy is a term worth noting here. Orthodoxy is fidelity to a common core of beliefs and practices that transcends one's own historical era or geographical location. Orthodox Judaism seeks to preserve and propagate the historical beliefs and practices of that religion. There are several forms of Christian orthodoxy – many of them related to ethnicity and culture, such as Russian and Greek Orthodoxy. However, all forms of Christian orthodoxy profess allegiance to a common core of beliefs that transcends the boundaries of time and space. For most Christians, the two major creeds of the faith embody that common core.

It is possible to be a religious conservative (and certainly to be a cultural conservative) without being orthodox. For example, a religious conservative may be passionate about the music, practice and traditions of his or her particular brand of faith while being apathetic about whether those practices have historical or biblical roots. In other words, religious conservatism is about maintaining one's religious culture (which may be decades old); orthodoxy is about maintaining one's connection to "that which has at all times and all places been believed by the whole people of God." Mormons are religious conservatives but they are not orthodox. Southern Baptists are orthodox, religious conservatives and usually social conservatives as well. Some Roman Catholics are Orthodox but not socially conservative.

Fiscal Conservatives preach the values of historical Capitalism. The most important philosopher of this philosophy is Adam Smith, the man whose ideas molded American capitalism. Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasurer of the United States, who almost single-handedly invented our economic system, was profoundly influenced by Smith's ideas.

Fiscal conservatives are usually (but not always) proponents of laissez faire capitalism, a fancy term that simply means, "allow the market forces to weed out bad financial judgment; don't try to regulate industry – the invisible hand of market reality will, in the long run, make life better for everyone." However, some fiscal conservatives (such as Theodore Roosevelt) have been in favor of placing boundaries around business to guard against the worst kinds of abuse against workers and consumers. (For example, a monopoly can control prices and supply in ways that rewards the monopoly but harms the consumer. Therefore, government will step in from time to time to insure that there is fair competition for goods and services in any section of the market.)
Here is a great term: "luddites!"
These people reject all forms of progress, including technological ones. The term has its roots in England, where textile workers once successfully resisted technological inventions for several decades because the new machines threatened to reorder traditional methods of making cloth.

Libertarianism is a belief that government should have a very limited function. Other than defending us when attacked or punishing murders and thieves, the libertarian's cry to government is "stay out of my life." People who hold this position have very little concern with "common goods or services." Parks, mass transit, food and drug regulation and so forth are not viewed as legitimate governmental concerns. Thus, while a religious conservative will fight for tough drug laws, a libertarian will resist the governmental intrusion into one's recreational choices. The same difference will surface around traditional morals.

A "conservative" in the American southeast is usually a religious conservative. A "conservative" in the American southwest is usually a libertarian. A conservative in the northeast is often religious and some sort of orthodox believer but probably not an evangelical. Wealthy conservatives in all these regions may or may not be religious but will most certainly be fiscal conservatives.

A religious conservative who is wealthy will probably be a fiscal conservative as well as a social conservative. A religious conservative from lower social economic levels however, may be a populist – someone who is willing to use public money to bring financial relief to people in financial duress.

As we can see, conservatism (like liberalism) is a very broad tent. An American Southerner who is a religious conservative and perhaps a fiscal one as well, may vote the same way as a libertarian but the two are hardly seeking the same kind of country. A fiscal conservative may disdain religious conservative values. A luddite who opposes trade with China will have very little in common with a free trade follower of Adam Smith.

The present bitterness in our public political discourse may well be due to the vastly different ways in which we try to define ourselves with only two labels – "liberal" and "conservative." The two labels have come to mean very little because we have tried to make them mean so much.

So if you consider yourself to be a "conservative" you should stop a moment to ask, "What am I trying to preserve? Are the people leading my party trying to conserve the same things that interest me? Am I voting for labels or have I made sure that the people claiming those labels truly hold to the values that I cherish?"

If you reject the label "conservative" for yourself, you might want to ask whether there is anything in life you wish to preserve and if so, whether you may have more in common than you might have thought with "conservatives" who wish to conserve the same things.

A Political Glossary #1

After writing it, I decided to not publish my blog about my son-in-law’s deployment to Iraq.

Experience has taught me that our culture – and especially church culture -- no longer tolerates nuanced opinion. The prevailing belief is that one is either on the “right” or the “left”, and that all subcategories of thought, emotion and opinion assigned to those two broad labels naturally attach to one of these polar positions. Thus, we tend to select the media outlets most favorable to our stated position, form our friendships, alliances and even our churches according to how they revolve around one of these labels. We also tend to consider or dismiss issues and ideas according to how they seem to support or threaten our social and political identity.

This polarized environment leads us to speak in sound bites and clichés with those who agree with us and call the result, “a conversation.” Of course this is not real conversation at all but it takes a lot less work than a “real conversation.”

A real conversation requires the following:

1. A willingness to speak one’s true thoughts about the subject at hand

2. A willingness to listen to the true thoughts of another; without using the time when the other person is speaking to craft our own speech

3. The ability to maintain respect for the person with whom we are conversing even when we disagree with his or her opinion

4. Being more concerned with finding the truth about a matter (or at least gaining understanding the other person’s opinion) than with winning an argument.

I invite the reader to ask himself or herself if we have very many conversations these days, at least as I define “conversation” here.

I say all of this to point out the fact that it has become notoriously difficult to have a political conversation nowadays – at least with people who feel differently about political matters. One of the reasons is because we don’t always share with them the same definitions for the words we use to discuss political life. So I thought it might make sense to create a political glossary – defining our political vocabulary in an unbiased way and with as much “common” sense as possible.

We could begin a political glossary with the words “right” and “left.” The terms were first used in a political way in France, where the early attempts at parliamentary democracy resulted in hundreds of delegates sitting in a massive room, grouped by political orientation, from the royalists on the extreme right to the anarchists and socialists on the left.

So do those labels tell us anything at all, here in the United States, in 2008? Well, yes. They tell us whether a person is generally more interested in social change (left) or in maintaining continuity with the past (right). Few people sit on the extreme boundaries of these positions, however. Most people position themselves somewhere away from the extreme of their stated position. This means that a person who is somewhat more interested in social change than in continuity with the past will have a lot in common with a person who is somewhat more interested in continuity with the past than with social change. In fact, these two people will likely have more in common with one another than with those who “sit on their side of the aisle” but at the edge of the room.

At present, the American media seems to define us all as sitting at the edge of the room. Thus, if we are on the “right” side of the aisle (as I am) then we are expected to be in agreement with every idea and emotion represented on “our side of the aisle” and to find every idea represented by the folks on the other side of the aisle thoroughly repugnant and nauseating.

As I just said: I sit on the right side of the aisle. That tells you that I am more committed to maintaining continuity with the past than I am to facilitating social change. This does not mean that I am uninterested in social change at all, however. Actually, I am extremely interested in social change. I just want to experience change in a way that does not sever my social, spiritual and cultural root system. That makes me a conservative, although not one that a person like Rush. Limbaugh or Ron Paul (both of whom claim to be conservatives) would affirm. Both of those gentlemen (if gentlemen they are) sit further toward the edge of the room than I do.

I am also a Republican, or at least I have voted that way most of the time. Now what does that mean? What exactly is a “republican” or a “democrat?”

Here’s a simple explanation. Since the beginning, our country’s leaders and thinkers have been divided about whether the nation ought to be governed as a pure democracy – a place where every citizen has as much say about every decision as everyone else – or as a republic – where every citizen helps select the best and the brightest political thinkers among us to make those decision that most of us do not have the experience or training to make.

So. A democrat leans more toward the idea of pure democracy. A republican leans toward the idea of a republic.

Historically, republicans have kept democrats from degenerating into mob rule. However, democrats have kept republicans from forming an oligarchy. That’s why we tend to change parties every few years – to keep our nation from tilting toward either one of these extremes. Kept in power too long, each party tends to drift toward its most radical position.

In the last twenty-five years or so, both of our parties have shifted away from being republicans or democrats and toward being conservatives and liberals. Before, each party had both liberals and conservatives and had to work through the differences of the nation before arriving at a party platform. Today, the parties – and those who belong to them – are able to escape real conflict of opinion within their own parties. It is possible to read only those magazines, listen only to those radio personalities and to affiliate only with those people who are in substantial agreement with us. This creates a climate in which the opinions of the other party seem like insanity, like the babblings of madmen. It opens up a chasm between the parties that forces people at the center to choose between the extremes, least they fall into the widening abyss.

In such a climate, nuance and moderation gets lost and civility and respect colors one as cowardly or duplicitous. So the radicals and extremist rant while the centrists and moderates remain silent, shamed by their desire to maintain community with those with whom they disagree.

That’s why I thought I would create a political glossary before sharing my own views on the war, public service and political life.

Response from A Soldier

Dan,

My heart is filled with love and regard for both you and Talitha. We have a saying in the military: “we serve, the family sacrifices.” I know you are at a loss for words and I can understand. When I left for both tours, Sandy could only say, “I love you” while inside she was proud, angry and hugely burdened. On the other hand, I and every soldier has difficulty saying what we feel because the emotions of fear, pride, honor, love for family and concern all rush together at the same time creating a bottleneck of words and emotions. After I had deployed, I was finally able to express my feelings in a prayer which I imagine is what Tyson is feeling. I have attached it. I hope maybe it is a comfort to you and your daughter. Feel free to share/use it however you wish.
Just know that I understand, love, care and support you any way I can,

Jim Patterson

It’s me Lord.
Sometimes I don’t know what to say to You especially when war looms so near.
As dawn breaks, I hear a bird sing and realize that Your peace is still present even in the midst of such awful anticipation.

Right now, my mind is dancing with memories of all those I love so much.
Like a kaleidoscope I see faces of friends and family;
I see places and things;
I hear songs and laughter and joy and they make my heart smile.
Lord I wish I could be in church right now just to hold hands with my wife and sing a song of wonderful praise.
Just to be there one more time.
Oh Dear Lord, thank you for these precious memories.

On this dawn of the unknown, please be with my wife, my family and loved ones.
Place Your hand on their heart and let them know Your presence. Comfort them, as You are comforting me now, with Your love.
Take away their fear, wipe the tears from their eyes and hold tight to their trembling hands.
Dear Lord let them know how very much I love them and how very close to me they are right now.
Tell them I am in Your hand; You will watch over me and I’ll be all right.

Well Lord, the time is near.
The threat of violence is on the horizon; the great engines of war are screaming across the sky and every eye is wide with great awareness.
As the hatred of the enemy is waved before us, I wonder why mankind has to come to such a horrible confrontation.
Questions flood my mind: Will I do my job? Will this war be won? Will I live to see my family again?
Forgive me Lord for being afraid.
Please give me courage so that I might do my duty and be faithful to my country and my fellow soldiers.

Oh Lord help me understand the right to self-defense, the nature of retribution and the wisdom to know the difference.
Somehow, let peace and love and freedom be born out of this trial.
Let the world see and know Your truth, Your love and Your redemption.
As we march now into the future I hear the words so clearly that I learned in Sunday school years ago:
“Yea, though I walk through the valley and shadow of death, I will fear no evil for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff shall comfort me”.
I know you are here.
I feel so small and unworthy right now.
My heart begs that you protect me and keep me safe.
Throughout this trial, let me be brave, let me be true, let me be honorable.
I am a soldier Lord, please never let me fall from your hand.
In Jesus name

Lt Col James Patterson
12 October 2001
Deploying to Southwest Asia
Operation ENDURING FREEDOM

War, Political Life, and The Gospel

This past Tuesday, my son-in-law said goodbye to his wife and daughter and headed out for a year and a half deployment to Iraq. I had so many emotions and thoughts when I tried to blog about it that I realized that I was not quite ready to share them. So I thought I should start here: with my daughter’s blog.

I will respond soon to her blog and probably write a series on “war, political life and the gospel.” Anyway, by way of introduction, my daughter’s name is Talitha Kartler. She lives in Phoenix and is a gifted and called eighth-grade teacher. My granddaughter’s name is Kendall and she is four years old, very pretty and above average in every way! ( I have pictures if you are interested!)

**********


Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Until A Soldier Comes Home

Tonight I sit at my dining room table, eating a peanut butter sandwich, and it is completely silent. My daughter, exhausted from a day of playing, is asleep on the couch. I, on the other hand, am restless. Today I dropped off my husband, my companion of 10 years, at the airport as he heads for deployment in Iraq. There are a lot of other things that should be done right now. There is a pile of laundry on the couch, and the bills are next to me at the computer. I need to throw away the crusts from my peanut butter sandwich.

I wish I could say something profound about his departure. Just like this morning when I dropped him off, there were not adequate words. "I love you" had to cover the vast range of emotions that I had been reeling through in the last few days. Even now, there are so many things I want to say, and instead I'm trying to decide how I feel. It's a new emotion, or maybe no emotion at all. I'm not sure. I think that now I have resigned myself to the task that is at hand, which is to be the keeper of the household while Tyson is gone. I can handle myself; I know that there will be good days and crying days. So far I have been able to have a good cry and then pick up and move on. What I cannot figure out how to handle, however, is what just happened.

Kendall woke up from her late nap, lifting her fuzzy blond head from the couch in a bewildered state. Then the crying began. I couldn't quite figure out what she wanted, until she whimpered,

"Mommy, I miss Daddy."

So we fixed some chocolate milk, put on Loony Tunes, and now she and I are cuddled up on the couch.

I know that in time, Kendall and I will settle into a routine, fixing lunches, running late for school, watching movies on the couch. The days will pass. And then, by the grace of God, Tyson will be home.

I have never regretted Tyson's decision to join the Army. The Army needs someone like him. Anyone who knows Tyson would instantly agree with me. Tyson will be in his element over in Iraq. He will miss home, I know, but he will have quite an adventure. I also admire the way that our country has rallied around its military. Regardless of the public's varying views of the war, I feel that our soldiers have been treated with respect and appreciation. Our country is aware of the sacrifices our soldiers make.

But the families make sacrifices too.

Just remember that for every soldier fighting, there might be a child who is drinking chocolate milk, watching cartoons, and waiting for her daddy to come home.