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Calling

The number one mistake young adults can make in their careers is to settle for anything less than calling.

holeinthewall

Our process of seeking calling is a simple one. We go to the best college we can get into, pick a major that most interests us, marry the person we feel the most strongly about, pick a career that seems most interesting, buy a house that suits our tastes, have kids when the time feels right, and then say, “Lord, just tell me what you’ve called me to.” We’re like ships that set anchor and then raise the sails.

Calling, or that exact match of one’s passions and the world’s needs, is the only place that’s going to feel right, like that plastic toy my son plays with where you each shape has only one hole that it fits through.  There are, for everyone, very specific places of calling, holes that are shaped exactly for us.

And the most dangerous part of the process is stalling.  We find a place that we are comfortable, or a place that we were called to at one point, and there we stay. Especially if we’re paid.  Never mind the growing sense of boredom or disconnection. We’re going to make it work as looooong as we can, because surely, that which made us happy yesterday should make us happy today.  Richard Rohr says that the biggest obstacle to us hearing God speak next is the way we heard him speak last.

For followers of Jesus, it should be the call or nothing.

Evocatio

The Romans carried out a practice called evocatio. Before going to war with an enemy, they would pray to the enemy’s gods.  They would tell those gods that if they would bless Rome, instead of those patrons from whom they were used to receiving worship, Rome would give them the best worship that they had ever received.  Essentially, before taking an enemy’s land, they would take their gods.

I was in an uncomfortable conversation with another pastor who didn’t like the orthodox leanings of my own church.  She alluded to the fact that if I didn’t like the denomination’s increasing liberality, my congregation should just leave our property behind and go.  Then she opened the Bible and quoted something to me that didn’t seem so much a matter of inspiration to her as a weapon to use in the argument.

And then I recognized it.  When those of the religious left quote the Bible to me, I have the sense that they are practicing evocatio.  They are praying to my God, but only, I think, to take our land.

To Pastor or not to Pastor

A mom once called me at church and said, “Could you tell my son not to become a Pastor?”

“That might sound strange coming from me.”

“Well, he respects you.”

“Why should I tell him not to be a Pastor?”

“It’s a hard job and you don’t get paid that much.

….

Later, this was the conversation with her son.

“You shouldn’t become a Pastor.”

“Why?”

“It’s a hard job and you don’t get paid that much.”

“You do it.  It can’t be that hard.”

Survey

1.  Circle the value that is closest to your church’s heart as it pertains to worship style:

Familiarity

Innovation

 

2.  Now fill in the blank:

People perceive the church as irrelevant because _________.

 

(Now go to the Apple store and ask them to get the ink off your monitor.)

huh

Reconstruction?

Had a lecture from Craig Detwiler of Fuller Seminary this week on a staff retreat.  Very provocative thoughts on the state of the contemporary church.

So…a strain of thought in the history of philosophy:

Plato and Aristotle are portrayed as having divided on the fundamental approach to knowledge, Plato insisting on the eternal forms that conceptually define all particulars, Aristotle debating that it is only in and through the particulars that we can come to construct universals.  school of athens

Augustine inherited Plato through the neo-platonists, and in turn translated Paul through his quasi platonic lens.  Thus a thousand years of Christian theology ultimately leaned on Plato.

Descartes, for all of his functional agnosticism, declared that certain knowledge rested on rational universals (undergirded by the lower-case-g god of philosophy).

Derrida, as exemplar of the project of deconstruction, said that he lived in the place where forms are stamped into particulars.  That is to say, at exactly that point where we try to force our universalizing (translated moralizing or absolutist) standards onto specific situations, Derrida was there to say, “No you don’t.”  I like the way Foucault said it somewhere, that “Truth is the error which is irrefutable because it has been hardened by the long baking process of history.” Again, to translate, that is to say, concepts we accept as universally true and binding actually have a genealogy which expose them to be situational constructions.

So…deep breath…in the postmodern era, universals, whether they be religious, scientific, moral, or political, are unilaterally suspect, which doesn’t leave you anywhere to hang your hat.

A few people have taken a stab at “reconstruction” after a century of deconstruction.  Robert Nozick proposed that there are “invariances,” or temporary moments where two subjects connect in a mutually agreeable objectivity.  What I’m suggesting in my dissertation, which we can only hope is not as longwinded as this, is that in the act of preaching an invariance is created, but only for the fleeting moment of the sermon.

What I’m wondering is how offensive-to-impossible it is to revive teleology in a postmodern world.  Every schmo walks around wanting to be “healthy,” physically and mentally.  But health suggests a biologically predetermined end to humanity.  Does that exist?  And if so, can we wrap our arms around any concrete vision of what that is?  If not, we’re wasting a lot of money on counseling.  Is it, as Freud said, the ability to work and love effectively, or is it something more?  And is “healthy,” subjective and nebulous as it is, metaphysically different from heavenly?  Because if we accept that as a nominal lateral, then reconstruction happens whenever two or three people choose to build the kingdom of heaven on earth.

A Screwtape Letter

My Dear Wormwood,

      It is with great pleasure that I respond to your latest query about vocabulary.  You ask whether or not there isgargoyle1real value in paying close attention to words, and whether or not your patient would just as well come to the same conclusions no matter what words you teach him.

      Clearly, everything hangs on the words.

      I have talked to you of the great use we have made of “Puritan,” destroying the real purity of the concept so that it comes to mean “prude.” You know that we are up all night doing construction on the word “Christian,” hanging on it all sorts of images and attachments that either have nothing to do with the meaning, something equivalent to “nice,” or sliding the impression of the word far away from the majority of the people to whom it actually applies and instead towards the extremists.  Our hope is that they might one day look at any common racist, sexist, hate-monger, and muse to themselves, “He must be a Christian.”

      However, there is one word over which we have presently taken full control, which I want you now to employ at every turn.  The word is “progress” and its derivation “progressive.” See if you can’t lean pretty heavily on it each time some Christian value conflicts with the modern world.  When his mother refers to the sexual mores of their faith, strike the word “progressive” in his head like a gong, and contrast the image of his mother with that of his girlfriend.  You will most likely win that debate without even having it.

      I will reveal to you the secret of why this works so well, on the condition that you do not even whisper it in your sleep, for fear that a few of them catch on and begin to discuss it in one of their dreadfully boring Bible studies.  The word progress originally implied development against a standard.  A piano player progresses by learning to play the notes on the page more accurately.  The baseball player progresses by hitting more often and running faster along the rules of the game.  However, we’ve got your patient already thinking that progress only means doing it differently than it used to be done.  If his grandparents did it a certain way, and he does it differently, it must be because he is more educated and experienced than they, and must therefore have progressed.  With our new twist on the word, the piano player could just as well bang out handfuls of random notes and call it progress because it is different than what came before.  The baseball player could hurl the ball up into the crowd and run in circles yelling, “I’m playing better than ever before!” simply because he’s doing it differently.

      The real danger of the original word “progress” was that the standard of the notes was straight and true for all time.  We can’t very well have him believing in everlasting truth, can we?  The rules of the game did not change, and that’s why the player could progress, playing better along the lines of those rules.  What we are now calling progress is really hiding the word that the humans mean, which is “change.” But we have baptized the word change by teaching them to call it progress.

      So when one of them abandons the faith for modernity, because no new thinkers hold to religion anymore, he calls himself progressive.  However, as we know, at that moment the only ones making real progress are down here.  And his senseless philosophical decision, like banging on the keys of the piano, is music to our ears.

Your affectionate Uncle Screwtape

Denominations

I’m persistently stunned by my colleagues’ inability to talk openly about the death of Protestant denominations in America.  Denominations are a dimly glowing wick around which the fingers of time are closing, but you would guess that they think it’s the Olympic torch from the way they refuse to talk.  Note that I do not find resistance in the form of alternative visions for the future of denominations, only resistance to open communication.  I feel like financial giving to the denomination is a kind of overpriced life support because half the family is not ready to admit that the patient is gone.

So in general, when I talk about the decline of the denomination, I find myself trying to soften the blow by following up my observations with the disarming phrase, “I’m just saying.”

Rev. Dr. Dan Chun announced at the 2008 General Assembly that the PC(USA) had been losing members for 42 years and would cease to exist in 40 more.  He’s being conservative, assuming a steady decline of 50,000 per year.  However, to be honest, we lose more each year than the year before.  I’m just saying.  We don’t do ourselves any favors by refusing to talk about it.  I’m pretty sure that talking about death doesn’t bring it on.

We would be wise to watch the closing years of the United Church of Christ.  They are half the size of my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and dropping at about the same rate.  There will be ways that the UCC turns off the lights gracefully and not so gracefully, and we should take it as a case study for preparing for our own final years.

But is this the worst of all things?  Denominations are a temporary expression of an eternal reality.  It’s the eternal reality that counts, not the temporary expression.  So long as churches can faithfully witness to the good news of Jesus Christ, what’s the harm in changing form?  What’s wrong with molting?  For my colleagues who are too afraid to talk about death, would you be more open if we just pretend like Christianity is shedding its skin?

In any case, there are those for whom 40 years is more than a lifetime away, and they will go to their own rest peacefully before the denomination.  So they don’t feel inclined to talk about it.  There are those who are nervous about their pensions, so they don’t feel inclined to talk about it.  Women in ministry have found life-giving affirmation within precious few denominations, ours being one of them, so the conversation brings them sadness and anxiety.  Those whose professions are system dependent on a denomination are in trouble, so they won’t talk about it.  But for the army of reasons, none of them have the power to change the coming reality.

So let’s take a hearty gulp from the honesty stein.  Denominations are on the way out; Jesus is not.

Sonomaisms

ON HEAVEN

NOMA: I wish I could go to heaven now.

MOM: We’d miss you, though.

NOMA: I wouldn’t stay.  I just want to say “hi.”

 

ON PERSEVERANCE

NOMA: Can we listen to Veggie Tales?
ME: No, I’m tired of listening to it.
NOMA: Well I get tired too, but I don’t give up.

 

FROM THE WICKED CD

“You can’t call me cute. You have to call me popular.”

 

ON FAMILY

“The person who’s giving me a headache is my family!”

 

ON BOREDOM

I tuck her into bed for a nap, then tuck her brother into bed. When I come downstairs, she is sitting on the couch looking at a book
ME: What are you doing down here?
NOMA: There was nothing going on in my room.

AT THE DINNER TABLE
NOMA: I want cow milk.
ME: That is cow milk.
NOMA: It tastes like sheep.

IN SUNDAY SCHOOL
NOMA: I’d better eat all of my chocolate chip cookie or else my Papa might want some.

ON SHAVING OFF MY GOATEE
NOMA: I liked it better the other way. It was tickly, and I like tickly.

ON HUMILITY
SONOMA (looking at a picture of herself): I look so cute.
ME: You shouldn’t compliment yourself. You should let other people compliment you.
SONOMA: We could take turns.
ME: No, you should say nice things about other people and let them say nice things about you.

SONOMA (a minute later): I look so…I mean, I like you, Papa.

 

ON HIKING
SONOMA: Carry me, I’m tired.
MOM: Hiking is hard when you’re little, huh?
SONOMA: Yeah. It’s also boring when you’re little.
MOM (later, in the car, to me): I like adventuring with you.
SONOMA (back seat): But I don’t because it’s boring.

Experiments in Common Decency

 So I’m looking across the counter at her, and it’s my turn to talk, but I’m clearly not talking.  I’ve just given her $22 for a $12 purchase and I have apparently just rocked her world of simply changing twenties.  The look in her eyes is like a ob-gyn who just delivered a hermaphrodite and who is looking at the father who wants to know how his baby is.  And then it dawns on me.  I am not a nice person.

            In my head is a motherboard overload of responses, none of which would get a star next to my name in Sunday school.  I’m tempted to let loose on this woman like John McEnroe on a referee.  So I’m going to experiment in a way that no self-respecting Gen X, Boomer-hating, unsentimental, non-cheesy, sitting-in-the-corner-and-castigating cynic ever would.  I’m going to be nice.  I’m going to be Hallmark nice.  I’m going to be Miracle on 34th St. nice.  Not just once a day.  In every five minute conversation I’m going to go out of my way to compliment the person I’m talking to.  I’m going cold turkey.  Or nice turkey.

            What will be entertaining is not just the reaction to the unusual.  It will be the reaction to me doing it, which would be like the Statler and Waldorf shouting compliments at Fozzie Bear.

            I tried it with my wife today.  She was talking about…I’m not sure, I wasn’t listening, because I was concentrating so hard on something nice to say.  I remembered that I never notice when she gets her hair cut, and I looked hard at her hair, and it looked shorter than the last time I took a good hard look at it.  So when she was done with whatever it was, I said, “Hey, I like your new haircut.” And she said, “I haven’t gotten it cut in six months.  Nice new shirt, Slick.” My shirt has mustard stains on it.  From college.  So she sat there with her uncut hair, and I with my dirty shirt.  All who give and receive such compliments are the wisest.  Everywhere they are wisest.  They are the magi.