Friday Photo … After the Rain …

Daddys and Daugthers …

John Mayer gets Daddy-Daughter relationships. His song "Daughters" has been a favorite of mine since I first heard it played. Tommie reminded us prom is just more than a week away. Graduation draws ever closer.

I read Kathleen Parker’s op-ed piece in the Oklahoman on March 1 titled, "Calling dads: Save the girls." (In the Orlando Sentinel - "Calling all fathers: Save the girls.") For a number of years I have been cajoling Dads to do just what Parker says is missing in the APA report,

Although the task force urges "parents" to help their daughters interpret sexualizing cultural messages, there’s little mention of the unique role fathers play in protecting their girls from a voracious sexualized culture.(italics mine)

The issue for me is countercultural. Someone does need to give young girls a different message than what they see in all forms of media. Parker concludes her piece with some solid advice.

    Fathers, after all, are the ones who tell their little girls that they’re perfect just the way they are; that they don’t need to be one bit thinner; and that under no circumstances are they going out of the house dressed that way. . . . The APA is calling for more education, more research, forums, girls groups and Web zines to tackle girl sexualization. But my instinctual guess is that getting fathers back into their daughters’ lives and back on the job would do more than all the forums and task forces combined.
    Ultimately it is a daddy thing.

Jack Bauer and Political Theology …

Jerome Eric Copulsky, Assistant Professor and Director of Judaic Studies at Virginia Tech, submitted an article to "Sightings", published by the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School, titled, "King of Pain: The Political Theologies of "24."" At issue is the moral conundrums Bauer faces. His decisions often place him outside of "protocol." Those who question his tactics face either "trust me" or are made to feel they just don’t understand and hear, "I will explain it later." The matter is one of moral decision making and the "sovereign self."

Along with Copulsky I am a 24 nut. We took in five seasons since Thanksgiving weekend last year thanks to Blockbuster and then Charlie who found it cheaper to buy the seasons rather than rent them. Most of our musings have been on the surface with questions like, "When does Jack stop for a restroom break?" "How is it that is cell phone never dies, except at the most inopportune moment?" "How is it that in the same weekly episode Jack is near death and then gathers enough Sampson like strength, along with a deft eye and handy gun, and disposes of his captors?"

Copulsky probes deeper. He points out the "sovereign" Jack becomes episode in and out." He, Copulsky,  uses the piece to work through what he asserts is the show’s secret, controversial jurist and political theories of Carl Schmitt. He quotes from Political Theology, Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (translated by George Schwab (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), "Sovereign is he who decides upon the exception."  Copulsky offers something of a summary of Schmitt’s "illiberal concept of sovereignty,"

To have this power to stand outside the law, to decide upon the state of exception, when normal rules do not apply. If we follow Schmitt’s claim that "significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts," the human sovereign is the political analogue of the omnipotent God.

Schmitt wrote Political Theology in 1922. Could we look further back to the concept of "inalienable rights" granted by our Creator? The problem seems to come when we "sovereigns" come into conflict. Whose rights’ trump? In developed communities rights must be subjugated at some point.

It has been too long since I took a couple of political history courses in college. Admittedly some will wonder what a pastor is doing thinking about secularized theological concepts. Reading this piece, I began to wonder about faith communities and "rights." How often does conflict arise out of the exercise of the "sovereign self" wherein one asserts the exception beyond the norms of the community. We tend to assert the role of romanticized individualism the culprit. What are the connections between these two - the "sovereign" as noted by Schmitt and the intensity of the individual often referred to as "rugged individualism?" Do we come to think of ourselves as the analogue to an omnipotent God? Just how is it we are to navigate authority when it comes to shared life in the community when any person moves sovereignly above the community suggesting the need either for trust or an explanation to come later?

Willard seems to be helpful here when he notes the conflict between the kingdom of the self and the Kingdom of God. Our attempts at sovereignty, ruling our own lives, do seem problematic. We lose sight of the ethic of love central to the Kingdom and replace it with an ethic resembling selfishness. We then become the framework for understanding and our perspective then turns myopic. The way of Jesus does seem to run "countercultural" to the sovereign self as well as the rugged individual. Witness Jesus who illustrates the norm in the Kingdom over against those who think they have the norm of God’s Kingdom in both mind and hand.

Copulsky closes with,

It’s not necessarily a bad thing to detect the strains of political theory or to be confronted with somewhat heavy-handed religious symbolism in a popular television series. But after we spend an hour in the thrall of Jack Bauer, Schmittian sovereign and secular savior, we should be sure to remind ourselves that entertainment which exploits our fears and strokes our hopes of simple solutions will not provide the means to our salvation, political or otherwise.

Those were the days …

Last evening local CBS affiliates aired, "Life Together Centennial Celebration." I have it recorded to watch this evening. We were downtown feeding the homeless in OKC. I received a reminder with the following ending paragraph,

Oklahoma Baptist history began when one Native American, two Caucasians and three African Americans founded the first Baptist church near Muskogee, Okla. Through the years Oklahoma Baptist churches have increased to more than 1,700 congregations and 750,000 members worshipping in nearly 40 languages.

Re-reading this before pitching it in File 13, I thought of Paul’s post from today. He quotes Ron Sider to offer some perspective on just how we should understand ourselves in a global context when it comes to following Jesus. What would our perspective be were the make-up of Baptist churches in Oklahoma comprised of multi-ethnic congregations?

Breath … could there be something to pausing before reacting? …

Parents of teenagers will readily identify with,

"But it really is a mood swing where things seem fine and calm, and then the next thing is someone’s crying or angry," she added. "And I think that’s why people have used the term ‘raging hormones.’"

A couple of weeks ago Reuters reported, "Hormone paradox may help explain teen moodiness."

You know you are old when …

Sunday afternoon my left ankle hurt.

Me: Patty my ankle sure does hurt.

Patty: What did you do?

Me: Nothing that I can recall. I have not played basketball in a couple of weeks so I know it is not from twisting it. I really cannot think of what I might have done.

Patty: You know you are getting old when something hurts and you do not know why.

Today I woke up with a pain in the neck. I mentioned this to Patty this morning. Before continuing the conversation I recalled her words from Sunday …

God-forsaken places … the church? …

I expected something different next to the ocean. Traveling back to the U.S. from South Africa a few years ago we landed somewhere on the tip of western Africa. It may have been one of the islands. I do not recall the airline. We were given the privilege of deplaning, finding both restroom and refreshment before making the trek across the ocean to JFK Airport in New York. I thought it an odd place to stop and pick up meals for the long trip. From the air the stretch of land looked desolate. Areas along the beach were rocky not sandy. The facilities while clean were not what most Westerners were accustomed. The images still linger and I could say the desolate features conjured the phrase, "God-forsaken places."

Reading Roxburgh and Romanuk’s, The Missional Leader, I came across the phrase "God-forsaken places." Generally we think of places uninhabitable by nature or made so by war, famine or disease. These are places we would not chart destinations to but generally avoid. Would anyone consider the "institutional church" a "God-forsaken place?" Many have and do. Some days pastors wonder if Ichabod, "the glory has departed," fits the church better than  forestate, sign and outpost  of the Kingdom of God - an community embodying the character of God; a place not to go and even avoid.

My friend Todd Hiestand recently presented a paper at an ETS meeting. Todd is pastor of The Well, PA. He is also a student at Biblical Seminary and enrolled in our current ETREK course. His paper is titled, "The Gospel and the God Forsaken: The Challenge of the Missional Church in Suburbia." Todd quotes Alan Roxburgh, "God shows up in the most God-forsaken places." He does a good job of identifying the context of suburbia, He notes the markers chosen offer an opportunity to live out the Gospel in a way God just may show up in "God-forsaken places." I really think Todd put a good, concise finger on some of the issues facing suburbia as well as ex-rural towns - some may refer to as ex-urbia.

I wonder if we should pitch the institutional church or consider the contextual possibilities for God to show up in what many consider a "God-forsaken place." Much of what Todd offers could well give us a picture of just how the church, not just suburbs, capitulated to culture. He rightly notes ways in which this innocuously crept into the church trading a broad view of the Gospel for a quick simple reduction to "forgiveness of sins." Jesus announced the coming Kingdom. He sent the disciples out with the very message he himself used. He then told them to do what he did. Connecting the message and the mission indicates the doing of Jesus ushers in the realities of the Kingdom. Sure it could be argued the Kingdom is not yet fulfilled. But, to do so seems to obfuscate the mission of which we are now a part. Rather than consider the mission as part of what we do, we really should follow on Todd’s reading of Bosch. The mission of God is part of, if simply expressive of, the very nature and character of God. Reading in Revelation 21 a few weeks ago I was reminded of this very implication. We are given a picture of fulfillment. The declaration is something akin to "It is finished." In the ESV it is translated, "It is done." The mission that was accomplished - having a people. When we embody the character and actions of Jesus in the world we participate in the mission of God redeeming the world, all of the world.

I am hopeful Roxburgh is right …

Good for the Gander … Darfur and gender …

Old adages cannot possibly rise to the occasion when the inequities of gender become a matter of life and death. But the idea two women should be sentenced to death while the men involved go free only exacerbates the horrors already a reality in Darfur.

HT: Alan

Community, Commitment and Conflict … Church?

A long-time family friend e-mailed me recently. We had talked a few months ago about a matter in his local church rising to the level of denominational point of contention. Henderson Hills Baptist Church in Edmond, OK made public a lengthy study into the relationship between church membership and baptism. Our state baptist paper waded into the discussion with a "special edition" - albeit a bit one-sided in the scope of its articles. I have been made aware this may in part be attributed to few who would write representing what appeared to be the church’s leaning. The local association of which HHBC is a part took a step to clarify its understanding of the matter. Since that time all has been quiet until last week.

The Elders of HHBC released a "Statement of Closure." Church polity remains the purview of a local congregation among Baptists. The community of faith that is HHBC trusts its leadership to its elders. This is an agreement of the community. It is a commitment. All communities, real communities, form around commitments. Agreement to these commitments may come in the form of taking up residence in a given local geo-political communnity - a town like Tuttle or Edmond. These commitments are both voluntary and involuntary. Since we do not move into a community under coercion - at least not in normal circumstances - the commitment to a community is voluntary. Once in the city limits of a given community, the new resident takes up the commitment to community and experiences the ethos of that community in which it now participates and may be involuntary. For example, if a community to which one moves is mono-cultural then the new resident involuntarily lives under the ethos of that culture. It may be the person grew up in a multi-cultural urban center.  His or her sensibilities  prefer a diverse culture. However, now living in a mono-cultural community  these sensibilities must be managed.

Reading an article Nathan recently pointed me to describes something of the resulting commitments made to community. Central to the development of community lie commitments to that  community. In a recent ETREK conference call Dallas Willard noted the commitment to the people of his church held his interest to continue participation. He acknowledged he could well find another church with which he might find greater agreement but he was called to the people with whom he continues to  learn to be a lover of God. In The Missional Church the writers quote David Lowes Watson, "we find narcissism … and individualism … masquerading as personal salvation and religious experience , … as privatized soteriology and spiritualized discipleship, … leaving the principalities and powers of the present world unchallenged." When our commitment is to ourselves we may well think we look for community and the greater good, but what we really look for is a therapeutic community in which we look to have not only our beliefs ratified but a place to continually be reminded we made the right decision at some point in time.

Eventually we face conflict. We all face the discomfort differently. We know the idiom, "Fight or flight." These polar opposites tend to undermine a third way - conversation. I am glad for the illustration of Henderson Hills. I am not naive enough to believe some people did not leave when the matter surfaced publicly. It appears however that after thoughtful discussion and prayer the community  found strength in its commitments to one another through the  conflict so that in the "Statement of Closure" it could be noted,

2. This difference  of opinion  does not indicate ill will, hostility, or a division among council members. It is simply different ways of looking at aspects of the subject of baptism.

3. We do not foresee a consensus of  understanding on this subject. Therefore, barring an unexpected and obvious divine  intervention, this matter must be dismissed in order for the council  and church to move on with helping people improve their relationship with God and each other.

Those who remained illustrated a commitment to one another. The matter is larger than any one individual’s opinion. Our greater allegiance is to the mission of God - bringing the realities of the Kingdom to bear in our communities and social environs in ways a the principalities and powers of the world may be challenged. When our ethics follow the virtues of the Kingdom the look, feel and experience of our relationships illustrate life under the rule and reign of God; a way of life calling others to join in the Kingdom of God.

Gerald, thanks for the e-mail. Henderson Hills we needed the  healthy illustration of commitment and conflict in the church for the glory of God and the blessing of the world.

Friday Photo …

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