Churches & Money

While on our post-Christmas trip this week I had opportunity to speak with the pastor of a church that has a million dollars in the bank and receives $14k a month in oil, gas & coal revenues. They're surrounded by available land and the pastor has a vision for expanding so they can reach the community better.

But many of the members want nothing to do with it. They want to keep the money in the bank - "for a rainy day."

I'd rather have my congregation that is in debt, struggling with money than one that has too much. On the surface, it would appear that the church has no money problems. But it does. The security of money has blinded them to the mission God has given them and to the opportunities before them.

Back from 2 Days without Children

We have three great children. I enjoy being with them and doing things with them. But it also necessary to have some times away from them, just with my wife. Each year at this time (close to out anniversary, and at a slow church time), we try to take a couple of days off and go somewhere. We don't usually do anything fancy or expensive. In years past we've gone to places like Goliad, Austin, Natchitoches, Shreveport, and Tyler. This year we went to Dallas.

The main reason we picked Dallas this year was because they had some restaurants we don't have where we now live. Our favorite non-local place is Fadi's. I haven't eaten at many Mediterranean restaurants (due to lack of availability, not lack of desire), but Fadi's is awesome. Our favorite dish there is eggplant. When we lived near a Fadi's in Houston, I once ordered the vegetarian sampler. I couldn't believe that the tasty dark mass on the plate turned out to be eggplant. I'd never in my life had eggplant I liked (though I had had some worthy of toleration). Fadi's hummus is also the best I've had. Fadi's also has many meat dishes, though I have less experience with them. I've liked the vegetables so much, that I couldn't bring myself to not order the sampler.

Another stop on our trip this year was the Dallas Arboretum. The weather was beautiful and we like to walk (and after all the eating we needed some exercise), so off to the park. As far as variety of trees goes, the Dallas Arboretum is well behind others we've been to - the LA Arboretum has the greatest variety; even Zilker Park in Austin seemed to have more. Dallas seems to specialize more in flowers (though this is not the ideal time of year for flowers). They also seem to be developing their collection and to have much work ahead of them. The highlight of our visit (other than walking and enjoying the out-of-doors) was the display of Nativity scenes in the DeGolyer house. The display featured over 500 from all over the world.

As a city, Dallas continues to leave me unimpressed. There is obviously great wealth there. There are also many large churches. But the city as a whole seems dingy and morally decayed. But then maybe the men's clubs just advertise more there than in other cities.

One of God's Workers in Ukraine

You have to read this story to believe it. A Nigerian pastors perhaps the largest church in Europe - in the city of Kiev.

Too Easily Offended

Americans are just a bunch of softies these days. We offend easily and expect everyone else to offend easily. Consider the dispute over Christmas.

Christians have celebrated Christmas with gusto for some years. Over the past century Americans have gone all out in their celebration of Christmas, commercializing it in the process. But then we got sensitive. What about the Jews? How can we celebrate Christmas when they don't? We'll celebrate Hannukah just like we celebrate Christmas. So we start commercializing another holiday.

But in the past few years we've discovered there are people who neither celebrate Christmas nor Hannukah. What can we do? Well, for Muslims, we'll "Christmas-ize" Eid, the festival at the end of Ramadan (sometimes it can happen in December), for some African Americans we'll Christmas-ize Kwanzaa. Maybe we'll keep everyone happy.

But maybe not. What about all the people who vociferously believe nothing - or nothing like any other large organized groups of people believe?

We are now seeing in increasing amounts, not only the commercialization of Christmas, but the de-Christmas-ing of Christmas. It used to be when we said we needed to "put Christ in Christmas" we meant that in the midst of shopping and partying we needed to remember Jesus too. Now when we say "put Christ in Christmas" we're speaking up for even the bare mention of his name. "Winter holiday" is ok. "Happy Holidays" is ok. Hannukah and Kwanzaa and Eid are still ok. But in more and more places, "Christmas" is out. Somebody might be offended.

How painful is this offense? How does it work? Does it cause broken bones? Ulcers? Fear of hellfire? How can the fact that many Americans celebrate Christmas - whether sentimentally as the season of snow, santa and baby Jesus, or more devotionally as the birthday of their Lord and Savior - be so dangerous? Are they afraid that in our celebratory orgies we'll kidnap some children and cook them for our Christmas feast? That's what some of the ancient Romans feared about the early Christians - and what some medieval Christians feared about the Jews. Utter nonsense.

But being offended at Christmas - or any other display of a particular religion - is only one instance of our tendency to be offended. I have seen many situations of late where we disallow saying something good about someone (individual or group) because people take our affirmation to also include a condemnation of those NOT mentioned, our outside the group mentioned. How did we ever get to this place?

Doctors & Miracles

This survey demonstrates that a highly educated segment of the population who daily close to life and death issues tends to not only believe in God, but have a high incidence of seeing that God in action.

Doctrine Irrelevant?

Not surprisingly, some UM leaders thought (they probably still do but I'm sticking to the evidence at hand) doctrine to be irrelevant - as long as growth (and positive publicity?) could be had. Consider this observation in the San Francisco Examiner on Cecil Williams & Glide Memorial:

Highers-up from the United Methodist Church visited with Williams in 2000, hoping to increase membership by taking some of Williams' ideas back to their own communities, even though many of those ideas conflict with official Methodist doctrine. For instance, the United Methodist Church has adopted a kind of "don't ask, don't tell" policy for its members, banning the ordaining of gay ministers and the sanctioning of same-sex unions.

Doctrine Irrelevant

Not surprisingly, some UM leaders thought (they probably still do but I'm sticking to the evidence at hand) doctrine to be irrelevant - as long as growth (and positive publicity?) could be had. Consider this observation in the San Francisco Examiner on Cecil Williams & Glide Memorial:

Highers-up from the United Methodist Church visited with Williams in 2000, hoping to increase membership by taking some of Williams' ideas back to their own communities, even though many of those ideas conflict with official Methodist doctrine. For instance, the United Methodist Church has adopted a kind of "don't ask, don't tell" policy for its members, banning the ordaining of gay ministers and the sanctioning of same-sex unions.

Commas, Periods & God

With all the fuss over the major network's non-acceptance of the United Church of Christ ad, one of their mottos has been receiving attention as well. I think it may be nearly as unhelpful a motto as our UM motto "OPen Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors." Theirs is adapted from Gracie Allen: "Never place a period where God has placed a comma" Sounds ok - but it depends on how you take it. Their particular take on it seems to be as a claim that Christianity is fundamentally open. No doctrines, beliefs or practices are consitutive of Christianity for all time. "God is still speaking," they say, non-controversial as it goes, but in this case it appears to mean something like, 'The bible is an old outdated book, but fortunately God keeps tells us new stuff to supercede that archaic stuff."

Susan Ager is right to see this as illustrative of two very different approaches to Christainity. Though I don't think that "fundamentalism" is the best term to oppose to the apparently always open to major reformulation view she and the UCC seem to advocate (unless all evangelicals and the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Third World mainstream are all fundamentalists), but I won't quibble.

I don't think they really want this "comma" theology, however. Does it mean that everything Christians have said about God or God's commands are always up for correction? It is certainly popular to say that the scriptural teaching on certain topics (the most popular today are those dealing with sex) are merely expressions of ancient culture, before our current age of enlightenment. But what about the other teachings? Is God's teaching on faithfhulness, forgiveness, generosity, etc., to be treated with a comma also?

One gets the idea from Susan Ager, and I don't know if she is a member of the UCC or simply a commmentator, that the driving force is not so much what God says or doesn't say, but what we like. She says,

When I was a child, our Catholic priest insisted only Catholics would enter heaven. That made me sad, because my friend Beth Ann was Protestant, and it didn't seem fair.

I've had trouble ever since with churches that insist theirs is the only way. The God I know in my heart would not condemn good people who prayed in different ways, even to gods with different names.

"God is love." We like that. We'll put a period on that. "Don't lay with a man as with a woman." Oooh - that's mean spirited. We don't like that. Let's put a comma there.

Or do they really mean to put a comma there? Do they want to claim that God said those nasty things but has now come to be of a different opinion? Or do they want to claim that God never actually said any such thing? I could be wrong, but I think they'd be more likely to claim the latter. Ludwig Feuerbach could look at this kind of theology and think his projection theory has been confirmed.

The Cost of Non-Parenting

Mary Eberstadt analyzes the social matrix from which so much of the violent youth music of our day comes. She summarizes:

And therein lies a painful truth about an advantage that many teenagers of yesterday enjoyed but their own children often do not. Baby boomers and their music rebelled against parents because they were parents — nurturing, attentive, and overly present (as those teenagers often saw it) authority figures. Today’s teenagers and their music rebel against parents because they are not parents — not nurturing, not attentive, and often not even there. This difference in generational experience may not lend itself to statistical measure, but it is as real as the platinum and gold records that continue to capture it. What those records show compared to yesteryear’s rock is emotional downward mobility. Surely if some of the current generation of teenagers and young adults had been better taken care of, then the likes of Kurt Cobain, Eminem, Tupac Shakur, and cer­tain other parental nightmares would have been mere footnotes to recent music history rather than rulers of it.

This is a long essay (read the whole thing - an excerpt form her book Home-Alone America) with many examples given from a multitude of muscians, both from their songs and from their commentary. It's heartbreaking.
Surely at some point parents will come to see that their actions (and non-actions) have consequences.

Boundaries, Fences, Inclusion, Embrace

It sounds like Catherine Westerhoff has written an interesting - and high relevant - book on the subject. I think I'll get a copy and read it.

Either this OR that

We have a tendency to think that for any given issue only two options are possible. I believe this lazy thinking is a factor behind our easy acceptance of arguments like "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and "the friend of my enemy is my enemy."

Consider Saddam Hussein. From 1979 through about 1991, Iran was our big enemy in the Middle East. During those years, Iran & Iraq fought a big war. Since Iran was our enemy, we decided their enemy, Iraq, must be our friend. This is why critics of Republicans and the current war with Iraq can point to pictures of current administration leaders being chummy with Saddam. We shared a common enemy, so he was our friend.

Not leaving that part of the world, we see a similar phenomenon. Those who hate George W. Bush have decided that whoever is HIS enemy, must be their friend: thus the common defense of some radical Islamists whose apparent misogyny and homophobia are overlooked so that hatred (or opposition) to GWB can be extended.

We have other ways of oversimplifying and seeing only two options. WHen GWB said, vis-a-vis the war on terror, "You are either for us or against us," he over simplified a comlex reality. When John Kerry was attacked for not approving the 87 billion dollar bill for work in Iraq, a complex reality (when bills stretch to over a thousand pages and congress people regularly pass them without reading them, I'd call it complex) has been oversimplified. Even today, opponents of the current Intelligence Reorganization bill are labeled as "Soft on terror," when their motivation is nothing of the sort.

In the first case the assumption is: There is one way to be against terror, the GWB way. If you don't do it this way, you must be pro-terror.

In the second case the assumption is: There is only one way to support the war and reconstruction of Iraq. This particular bill is it. Therefore if you vote against this bill, you are saying you are against the war and do not support the troops who are fighting it.

In the third case the assumption is: The 9/11 Commission has spoken. A bill has been created that puts their suggestions into place. This is the only way to solve the problems that led to 9/11. If you are against this bill you are for another 9/11.

All are examples of faulty reasoning.