Pastor Yusef: spritual tests

Many attempt to flee from their spiritual tests, and they have to face those same tests in a more difficult manner, because no one will be victorious by escaping from them, but with patience and humility he will be able to overcome all the tests, and gain victory.

Yusef Nadarkhani
Lakan Prison in Rasht
2/June/2010
(currently facing possible execution in Iran)

Quick-review: Love Wins

I have written a much longer thing about this book for other purposes, but really just want to make a few much briefer comments here.  This is partly because it won't be a "quick" review if I don't, and partly because of Jon Dyer's timely article "Let not many of you presume to be bloggers" which was posted at the height of the blogging frenzy about 'Love Wins'.

What is Bell trying to do with this book?  I think it's this: soften the edges of the 'traditional' view of judgment so as to make the Christian faith more appealing to non-Christians and less problematic to Bible-believers.  And if we're honest, who has not been tempted to do so?  We're all looking for the way to make it more...well, comfortable.  But from an evangelical position, such a wish cannot be the dominant force in how we look at what the Bible has to say.  Which leads to a number of concerns about the book - all of which I give as provisional, in that it is possible I have not read the text closely enough, and perhaps were Rob Bell here to comment he would show me how I have erred.  However, as it stands right now, what bothers me is this:

1. It's pretty dull.  It promises to deal with the biggest question facing humanity, but manages (for me) to make that unexciting.
2. Contra Tim Keller's maxim that we should present the opposing view as well as we possibly can, Bell presents the 'traditional view' as something incoherent, positing concepts that are complementary or held in tension as competing and irreconcilable.
3. On the plus side he does ask some useful questions which probably many Christians struggle with and we need to develop better answers for them.
4. The most infuriating thing is how checking out his argument is routinely obscured: no footnotes, no interaction with other interpretations, not even complete Bible references.  This is very worrying when bearing in mind younger Christians who might struggle to followup many of his (controversial and sometimes tenuous) claims...
5. ...which is very important for when he fires off a magazine of verses to prove a point but without context - eg.in pulling together many texts to show God's justice is always corrective (p.85ff) he largely draws on verses promising restoration after the Exile: texts which neither refer to eternal punishment nor even, by and large, to individuals who were corrected, as most of them died in Babylon.
6. Is he a universalist?  Maybe, but having given several reasons for presuming most people will be saved (ie.  hell is an offputting idea, God's love beats any other criteria for deciding how God might react to sin, God's judgments are always restorative) he then leaves the door wide open to assume pretty much everyone will be saved, maybe even post-mortem (p.76).   Or maybe not (p.115) as, having led us up to edge of universalism, he basically says "But who knows?  And we don't have to decide".
7. There are also, sadly, many unqualified assumptions and interpetations of Biblical texts (pp.26, 51, 85 for example) that are occasionally quite odd.
8. Again, on the plus side, he does eventually emphasise the cross - but even here in a way that suffers from vagueness.

I'm really loathe, in light of the outrage its publication caused, to be harsh - and indeed have cautioned against hard responses to Rob Bell on several occasions.  But it really isn't a great book.

Interestingly, my wife pointed out a paragraph in an unrelated blog written by someone who has moved away from the 'traditional' view.  It's interesting because of its gut-reaction factor: the writer was concerned about the apparent kidnapping of a small child that had just occurred:

And I cried in the kitchen, pouring out cereal, and (my husband) quietly admitted that it is in these times that he really, really wishes there was eternal, conscious punishment, the worst of any hell, for men like this because anything else seems not-enough for what that poor boy might be going through, for even the act of making a child ask for his mama and then keeping him from her is a sin beyond any I can fathom.

Hell is a hard thing to contemplate, and like CS Lewis many of us would remove the doctrine if it lay in our power to do so.  But that is hardly the last word or the only deeply felt and authentic response to it, as that quote shows.  And it certainly isn't the way to govern how we interpret the Bible.

Spiritual father

In Christianity Today Brett McCracken writes, "In order to remain relevant in this new landscape, many evangelical pastors and church leaders are following the lead of the hipster trendsetters, making sure their churches can check off all the important items on the hipster checklist." Including:

"Show clips from R-rated Coen Brothers films (No Country for Old Men, Fargo) during services.

"Sponsor church outings to microbreweries.

"Put a worship pastor onstage decked in clothes from American Apparel.

"Be okay with cussing."

I'm not against cultural awareness and engagement. For most people today, pop culture is their culture, so it can be an act of love to learn it. But to be a spiritual father means you are definitely not Wholly Relevant. Dads are, by definition, older and not hip. This one hurts. I spent much of my forties not wanting to accept my age, not wanting to lose my place among the popular and the trendsetting.

However, to pursue relevance is to lose your spiritual power. When all you read, watch, and listen to is what everyone else is reading, watching, and listening to, you have nothing to say.

Chris, a young guy in my church who moved to Manhattan for grad school, explained to me: "The highly relevant pastor is bro'. There's certainly a place for pastors to be in tune with culture and to be relatable. But where do I find a man of God who will nurture my spiritual life? That's what's I need. Relevance is easy to find. But when I stumble in that same old sin that I keep slipping in, I need someone with wisdom and maturity to go to. It's fine if that person also happens to know about some great new indie bands, but in those moments, I need something else. I need depth."

Leadership

Quick-review: Cry the Beloved Country

Standing in a century-long line between Uncle Tom and To Kill a Mockingbird, Cry the Beloved Country explores similar territory but with a distinctive voice.  Unlike Mockingbird, it does not leave a warm glow as was generated by the way Harper Lee communicates a Southern childhood in spite of the harsh reality of racism.  This is not a failure of writing, but a necessary effect of a different kind of book.  Here there are real, fallible, loveable characters (Kumalo, Msimangu, Jarvis) but the canvas upon which they are painted is vast; it is the size of a nation.  And the tragedy of that nation's peoples is too complex and great for a 'happy ending'.  Alan Paton was writing soon after WWII and the solution to South Africa's problems were still half a century away, and so there is no sweetening of the tragedy encapsulated in the novel.  But for all that, it is suffused with hope, even though its fruition is admitted to be so far off as to be unknowable.

In 1948 an ageing Zulu parson travels to Johannesburg to search for his sister and his son who, like millions of others, left the devastated countryside and crumbling tribal culture (both victims of complex factors, but predominantly exploitation by the white minority) to find a new life.  His journey of discovery reveals perhaps the most significant character in the book, South Africa itself, and the complexities of a divided nation, with a fearful minority in control, and a devastated majority looking for hope.

A truly profound and moving book, written in a style which initially takes some getting used to, but also helps to produce an immediacy of effect.

Wangerin: pay attention! (the blessings of affliction)

Surely it's high time -  isn't it? - that we pay as much attention to the blessings of a long affliction as we do to the pain for which we curse it.  Please: it's not a man's peculiar interpretation or a woman's particular gift for a long-suffering patience which enables each to live the sickness better than another person does.  It's a faith available to everyone.  (Though there always is, of course, a learning curve.)

Pay attention!

In the Lakota tongue:  wachinksapa yo! - which meaning is closer to "Be attentive" than to something we do sporadically.  Be ever in a state of attention.

Wangerin, Letters,  p196-7

Wangerin: no longer rushing into the future

I don't look forward so much any more, dashing to grasp the future.  I look left and right.  I've the Time, you see, to scrutinise all that is. And what is companions me.  The trees can't list their roots and move.  A single motion fills a season.  Well then: let me abide by them awhile.  My toes, my roots.  A good rain can linger almost forever.

The shorter the time, the vaster my scope.

Wangerin,  Letters, p.195

Wangerin: little krill and death

I find myself somewhat sorrowful to lose the riveting focus which death;s likelihood provides a sick old man.  Now, together with my resprouting hairs, there rushes back a sea-tide of all the little things that hector daily living - the krill that clouds and crowds the waters once the whale is gone.  Perhaps that indicates another benefaction which I ought to draw from the previous seven months: stick, Wally, to the sense of the proximity of death in order to recognise (at some spiritual and perdurable level) how little are the little krill - even as little as dying (always, always) is near. Here.

Letters from the Land of Cancer, p.124

Wangerin: Robert Siegel's Rinsed with Gold

I'm very old fashioned (actually, Milton would take issue with this and accuse me of being modern a cheap) but I do prefer it when a poet has spent a long time working in rhyme to the finished item.  So it has to be really striking for me when he doesn't.  Robert Siegel hasn't hear, but his imagery has such rhyme I found this wonderful:


Let this day’s air praise the Lord—
Rinsed with gold, endless, walking the fields,
Blue and bearing the clouds like censers,
Holding the sun like a single note
Running through all things, a basso profundo
Rousing the birds to an endless chorus.


Let the river throw itself down before him,
The rapids laugh and flash with his praise,
Let the lake tremble about its edges
And gather itself in one clear thought
To mirror the heavens and the reckless gulls
That swoop and rise on its glittering shores.



Let the lawn burn continually before him
A green flame, and the tree’s shadow
Sweep over it like the baton of a conductor,
Let winds hug the housecorners and woodsmoke
Sweeten the world with her invisible dress,
Let the cricket wind his heartspring
And draw the night by like a child’s toy.

Let the tree stand and thoughtfully consider
His presence as its leaves dip and row
The long sea of winds, as sun and moon
Unfurl and decline like contending flags.

Let blackbirds quick as knives praise the Lord,
Let the sparrow line the moon for her nest
And pick the early sun for her cherry,
Let her slide on the outgoing breath of evening,
Telling of raven and dove,
The quick flutters, homings to the green houses.

Let the worm climb a winding stair,
Let the mole offer no sad explanation
As he paddles aside the dark from his nose,
Let the dog tug on the leash of his bark
The startled cat electrically hiss,
And the snake sign her name in the dust

In joy. For it is he who underlies
The rock from its liquid foundation,
The sharp contraries of the giddy atom,
The unimaginable curve of space,
Time pulling like a patient string,
And gravity, fiercest of natural loves.

At his laughter, splendor riddles the night,
Galaxies swarm from a secret hive,
Mountains split and crawl for aeons
To huddle again, and planets melt
In the last tantrum of a dying star.

At his least signal spring shifts
Its green patina over half the earth,
Deserts whisper themselves over the cities,
Polar caps widen and wither like flowers.

In his stillness rock shifts, root probes,
The spider tenses her geometrical ego,
The larva dreams in the heart of the peachwood,
The child’s pencil makes a shaky line,
The dog sighs and settles deeper,
And a smile takes hold like the feet of a bird.
Sit straight, let the air ride down your backbone,
Let your lungs unfold like a field of roses,
Your eyes hang the sun and moon between them,
Your hands weigh the sky in even balance,
Your tongue, swiftest of members, release a word
Spoken at conception to the sanctum of genes,
And each breath rise sinuous with praise.

Let your feet move to the rhythm of your pulse
(Your joints like pearls and rubies he has hidden),
And your hands float high on the tide of your feelings.
Now, shout from the stomach, hoarse with music,
Give gladness and joy back to the Lord,
Who, sly as a milkweed, takes root in your heart.

Quick-review: Letters from the Land of Cancer

In 2005 well-known Christian author (and professor and pastor) Walter Wangerin was diagnosed with cancer.  And complex, difficult to treat, no-cure cancer.  He did what, I suppose, many of us who think through our pens, would do: he started writing.  So he wrote letters to friends and family periodically, from diagnosis through treatment, declining strength and ultimately to the point when the tumours stopped getting worse.

This realism, the real-time reflections and Wangerin's genuine ability to write (face it, not all Christian writers can write) give the book a revealing, thoughtful and yet calm ability to explore cancer, life, death, hope, the medical system, the past...and to see from inside a man's head what I have had to watch, in my 'professional' capacity, from outside on far too many occasions.

What do I take away from this book?
- how communicating with those who care about you, to know they are there and listening, is a vast help in horrendous times
- the importance of living in the now and how imminent death restores that childlike ability to dwell in the moment
- and that when the moment comes, when we are now facing what we at least believe to be the end, what we feared we would fear, how we feared our faith might fail, that we might dwell with constant panic - does not necessarily have to be the case at all.

Word-clouds

My friend told me of word-clouds
So I went outside to look:
The sky was crinkled with pages,
Wallpapered with a book.

The light fled and rain fell from
the Gutenberg dome aloft,
so I waded back to my house
through commas and full stops.


(composed today in 5minutes, so excuse any corner-cutting)

Quick-review: The Vicar of Wakefield

...by Oliver Goldsmith.

Originally sold for publication by Samuel Johnson in order to keep Goldsmith from debtor's prison, the book feels like a staging post on the way to Jane Austen.  That is to say, the cultural feel, the matters of class and decency, the misunderstandings, and revelations of fortunes all appear.   But it is written in a simpler style,  much briefer, and has the advantage over Austen that, quite often, something actually happens.

I suspect much of the humour and (probable) satire was lost on me:  I felt often as if it were happening but I lacked the cultural knowledge to pick up on it.  But the story itself was nice enough: the tale of a clergyman for whom everything goes horribly wrong and then ultimately is restored (Job style), with several philosophical digressions (some of which are very poignant for our day) and occasional poems.  Plus the slightly self-involved main character who really becomes quite loveable by the end.

A pleasant read but I suspect some knowledge of social history would increase its impact.

Piper: pastoral problems and pain

God has made plain to us one of the reasons for which pastors must suffer.  Paul tells us in 2 COR.1:6: "If we are afflicted it is for your comfort and salvation."  A sermon on this text would have as its main point:  "The afflictions of the Christian minister are designed by God to achieve the comfort and salvation of his flock."

...No pastoral suffering is senseless. No pastoral pain is pointless.  No adversity is absurd or meaningless.  Every heartache has its divine target in the consolation of the saints, even when we feel least useful.

...2COR.1:9: "That was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead."

Piper, Brothers,  p139-40

When anger sneaks up

When anger is intense, we may not initially know, or even want to know, that we have become angry...It is not that we are unable to step back and consider whether we want to go along and act on our anger.  Rather, we are not even aware of being angry, even though we are speaking angry words and engaging in angry actions.

Paul Ekman, Emotions Revealed,  p121

Pascal: greatness and wretchedness

Man's greatness is so obvious that it can even be deduced  from his wretchedness, for what is nature in animals we call wretchedness in man, thus recognising that, if his nature today is like that of the animals, he must have fallen from some better state which was once his own...Man's greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in man some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness.  It must also account for such amazing contradictions.

quoted C John Collins, Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?,  p102

Quick-review: Gladstone

Gladstone, by Roy Jenkins

Several years ago I read Jenkins' Churchill, which I really enjoyed.   have to say Gladstone wasn't quite so compelling.  Perhaps because the grandnarrative of WWII which held anticipation throughout Churchill was absent, along side events being more distant.  But also because his style seemed more verbose and smart-alec.

Even so I'm glad I pursued it (small type and many pages) to the end.  Here's why:

1. So many events in his time connects with ours, sometimes creepily so:  solving the "Irish problem" and dealing with terrorism; attempts to develop a 'moral' foreign policy; war in Afghanistan; balancing budgets and so on.
2. It pulled back the image of arrogant Victorian Imperialism.  Whatever idea we may have of Gladstone he believed: the empire was too big to manage and British gung-ho jingoism needed to be nailed; he despised war and expansionist foreign policy;  he attempted time and again (and indeed wrecked his government over the issue) to solve the humiliating mess of Ireland - and his proposals were incredibly close to what actually came to be in the 1990s.  Given that he was probably the most sincerely religious PM ever, this gives the lie to Christianity driving imperialism.
3.  His unstoppable energy, which only failed him in his 80s (he cut down his last tree - tree-felling being his equivalent of Churchill's brick-laying - in his early 80s) inspires to achieve more;  but also reminds most of us aren't made like him with his boundless force - so maybe we should get on and do the things we always said we would, because maybe we won't be tree-felling in our 80s.

Catch the allusion

Perhaps every English department should keep a Christian around just to catch Biblical allusions that his or her colleagues won't recognize. 

Alan Jacobs on Text Patterns via link at Mintie's

A kink in one's theology

"I hope they won't call Mr Baxter from East Grafton here, anyhow,"said Anne decidedly.  "He wants the call but he does preach such gloomy sermons.  Mr Bell says he's a minister of the old school, but Mrs Lynde says there's nothing whatever the matter with him but indigestion.  His wife isn't a very good cook it seems, and Mrs Lynde says that when a man has to eat sour bread two weeks out of three his theology is bound to get a kink in it somewhere..."

Anne of Avonlea, by L.M. Montgomery, p203

Big Brother algorithm

At last month's TEDGlobal conference, algorithm expert Kevin Slavin delivered one of the tech show's most "sit up and take notice" speeches where he warned that the "maths that computers use to decide stuff" was infiltrating every aspect of our lives.
Among the examples he cited were a robo-cleaner that maps out the best way to do housework, and the online trading algorithms that are increasingly controlling Wall Street.
"We are writing these things that we can no longer read," warned Mr Slavin.
"We've rendered something illegible. And we've lost the sense of what's actually happening in this world we've made."

BBC

Determination (again), risks and growth

Growth comes when we stretch past our comfort zone. The big reason many people (especially high-achievers) plateau is because they don’t like to fail. Instead of taking on challenges that will help us grow, we stick with routines that we know we can successfully do. To protect our ego, we’d rather do the wrong things correctly, than do the right things wrongly. This aversion to risk is a recipe for plateauing.

AoM

Schaeffer: what is church for?

What should the Church consciously be, then? The Church consciously (and my emphasis is very strongly on the word consciously) should be that which encourages its members in the true Christian life, in true spirituality—in that which we have set forth in this book. It should encourage them in freedom in the present life from the bonds of sin, and in freedom in the present life from the results of the bonds of sin. It should encourage substantial healing in their separation from themselves and a substantial healing in their separation from their fellowmen, especially fellow Christians.

...Each group must  operate on the basis of God's individual calling for them—financially and in other matters—but there is an absolute rule, and that is that if our example does not teach faith, it is destructive. There can be many callings but there cannot be a calling to destroy the teaching  of faith. The church or other Christian group that does not function as a unit in faith can never be a school of faith. There is only one way to be a school of faith and that is consciously to function by faith.

The Church or other Christian group must also teach in word the present meaning of the work of Christ. Then as a corporate body it must consciously live on this basis. It must not think that just because the Church or group is legally right, its corporate Christian life will come automatically. It never will; God does not deal with us automatically. Any Christian group must function moment by moment by conscious choice on the basis of the work of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, by faith.. It is not that the group just calls its individuals to so live, but that the group as a group so lives. It is death to think that things are going to come automatically just because of past legal decisions, even though they were right. There must be the present choice, a moment-by-moment choice, a conscious choice of operating on the basis of the work of Christ. 

TS p148-9