Tagged: philosophy
You’re Next
That’s the title of a sermon I’d like to give.
“You’re Next?”
Intriguing, no?
“Next what?” you wonder.
Whoa, back up a sec, I say.
“Who am I giving the imaginary sermon to?” That’s the first question.
My answer: This is a real sermon, for a real congregation, at a real church.
Most folks in the audience, then, believe they’re “in”.
This eliminates my ominous assertion “You’re Next” from meaning (to these faithful few) something positive.
Instead, I mean, literally, concretely, and practically, that I believe I am talking to people who—like all the rest—are the next to leave Christianity.
“No I’m not!” some of you might respond.
“Now we’re talking!” I exclaim. “You’re not next after all. So why aren’t you gonna leave? Let’s talk about that and see if we can’t communicate all the reasons you’re hanging around to those who are not here today.
“For example, I’m not going to leave because I can read my Bible. And when I read the Bible, I see that, specifically, theology has mucked up what it says. Doctrine begins with Scripture. Doctrine does not prevent taking the claims of the Bible in kind.
“That said, you’re not going to hear me proclaiming ‘doctrine’. Not unless we do this together for decades and I need to speed up the point I want to make. Decades. Not this week. Not next week. Not next year. Not even next decade.
“Open your Bibles with me, then, to the Gospel according to-”
“-Excuse, me,” one of you interrupts. “But how will we keep false teachings out?”
“Good question. By using our god-given minds to determine what the Bible says. If this makes you nervous, it means that you’re not sure you know how to read. That’s fine. I’m sure I can teach you. More than that, I’m sure you’ll agree that you learned how to read.
“Any more questions before we begin?”
Life Doesn’t Have To Be Hard, It Turns Out
I think I enjoy the competition. I enjoy challenges. I like to prove myself. I like to prove that I am better than you expected.
Yes, I think that is why I have lived life in a way that I (and others) might sometimes define as “hard”.
Wearing a boy scout uniform was hard. Witnessing to non-christians as a pre-teen was hard. Being a diver on the swim team was hard. Going to a college where I knew no one was hard. Entering bodybuilding competitions as a teenager was hard. Getting good grades was hard. Becoming an Air Force officer and pilot was hard. Arguing with every living person has always been hard.
These activities have also been fun, but that doesn’t mean they were less hard.
But I have recently spent an inordinate amount of time with people from a different culture and I have come to realize that life doesn’t have to be hard.
The trick to this type of life, so far as I can tell, is to not understand anything.
My goal—if this post has one—is to distinguish “ignorance is bliss” from what I’m talking about.
“Ignorance is bliss”, to me, has always been said by those who are not ignorant. It has always lived in the same semantic domain as “the thing I like about high school is, as I get older, the girls stay the same age”.
I’m not claiming to have rediscovered that concept.
I’m talking about hard vs. easy. Like the “work smarter, not harder” realm.
And I’m saying here I have been living a hard life and enjoying it because I thought that over time I am working smarter and smarter which means more and more work being done, but it turns out, I’m still living a hard life.
And I’m admitting that I just came to the realization that life doesn’t have to be hard.
Let me put it this way.
In the “work smarter not harder” proverb, there is implied that if you’re dumb, life is hard.
There’s another proverb I’ve heard, “being dumb doesn’t kill ya, it just makes you sweat.”
With me yet?
I think I’m saying that these aren’t true.
If you actually don’t understand life, then life is easy. Lillies of the field easy. Birds of the air easy. You know, easy.
Just be and in most cases food makes it to the table.
Just be and in most cases the Nike outlet will have a marked down pair of shoes in your size and on the very day that you went shopping there!
Just be and your kid can’t possibly turn out with low character because he is also only a receiver of life.
Maybe I’ve misunderstood the “just makes you sweat” part and it has always meant “working hard is dumb” to the wise.
Or maybe, just maybe, I have been working my tail off to provide a good life for my new family and the only actual reward is the knowledge that they prefer their old, easy life back.
And to think that for all these years I thought life had to be hard.
Guests Cannot Speak. Not Even Me.
Earlier today I wrote, “Evangelical Christianity has a problem.”
Just now, I returned from attending the second half of the youth service that my wife and step-son’s preferred church puts on. I missed the games and whatever they do for the first hour. This means I arrived when the sermon began. Then it was small group time.
Twenty minutes is all they allot for the smaller groups time.
I’ve been to this church several times, and have been to a few of its members homes. And we sent A- to the youth camp two years ago etc.
I would never join the church, however, because it’s a “one church, many campuses” place that makes you watch a screen for the pre-recorded sermon.
Think of it. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Visual Illusion.
One of these things isn’t like the others.
Anyhow.
During small group time, the two adults (one is a paid, full-time youth pastor who I’ve spoken with at length and texted and talked to occasionally) were teaching the 7th and 8th graders (one of whom was dressed in full Spiderman costume, gloves and all) about not drawing lines when it comes to lust/pornography. As in, do not say, “I’ll go this far—and no farther.” Instead, the lesson was, “whatever is pure…think on these things”.
No problem with the lesson.
But the boys were not getting it.
The way the leaders, sermon guy and two in my group, spoke, barely anyone could’ve discerned what the heck they were saying. They were so general in their vocabulary that it was hard even for me to know what was going on. I wondered, “Were they instructed to never get specific? If so, that’s odd. But it fits these type of churches. Never actually offensive.”
Anyhow, the point is, the boys were saying things that didn’t fit at all and the adults were never correcting the boys or even seeming to care that the lesson was failing.
Finally, after 17 min, I said, “I’m not sure you guys get the line thing. Will one of you explain it? Can someone give me a specific example?”
Peter Parker spoke up, “It’s like you shouldn’t drink alcohol or do drugs.”
Before anyone could respond, the unpaid teacher actually answered me.
I was shocked. Not only did I not doubt that he knew the answer, I clearly didn’t ask him. And the protectionism he demonstrated was wholly inappropriate. I obviously was trying to help teach the boys what they, the teachers, wanted to teach the boys.
I repeated the question, albeit more specific, “What’s like a rule you have in your life right now?”
A boy spoke up, “Don’t watch bad tv.”
“Good,” I said. “Now what’s the very easiest way to make sure that you never, I mean never ever, see bad tv?”
“Read a book,” he answered.
“Perfect. That’s perfect. The line would be ‘watch only good tv’ but the better thing, if you never wanted to watch bad tv, would be to never watch tv period.”
Then the boys took over with other examples and the paid guy fed off the improved mood and everything came to a close.
Skip to the end…
The paid guy approached me and said, “Hey, so I just want to honor our leadership here and let you know that you need to wear a guest badge next time. You know, just so folks know you’re a parent.”
“Will do.”
“And,” he continued, “This comes from the heart, but we want parents to come and see what we’re teaching the kids, but you can’t talk. I mean, I loved what you said tonight and how it helped the conversation, but, again, I need to honor our leadership too and so you just need to know that you can’t talk next time.”
Boy Scouts really ruined me, I think.
In Boy Scouts, the adults taught skills. Like lighting a fire. We learned fire needed three things, blah blah blah.
All the adults either helped teach or were too embarrassed to help as they didn’t know what they were doing and not helping light a fire would result in no fire, so they just sat back and watched rather than shame themselves.
Can you imagine it? Many adults helping towards one goal?
Tonight, if the youth leaders wanted to teach the boys to light a fire, the analogy would work out as follows.
“Boys, here’s a match box. Take it. That’s right, there’s enough that every one gets one. Everyone have theirs? Good. Now you take a match and then strike it on the side and the match grows a flame. Your turn. Try it.”
And then one boy says, “This box sounds cool when you shake it.”
And another rejoins, “Yeah. Like moccasins.”
The teacher corrects, “You mean maracas.”
“That’s what I said. Maracas.”
All the while, the boys are all shaking a box of matches. But no fire is lit. No matches leave the boxes. No boys strikes up a match into a flame.
And the teachers just keep gently “handling” the ignorance.
Then I say, “Boys. Will one of you take out a match from your box?”
“I’ll do it!”
“Thank you. Now will you strike it on the side of the box and make a flame?”
(Shhhh sparkle flame)!!
The boys say, “Oooo. Ahhh. Can I try?”
Then, after the dismissal, the leader says to me, “Silence!!”
Tracking, dear reader?
Maybe I’m too old. Maybe I’m too eccentric. Maybe I have too much baggage.
I just have never been to so many organizations which have such lousy teachers as the Evangelical churches I have attended of late.
It’s not like I taught something different. I merely helped focus the lesson they wanted the boys to learn. In my opinion, I should get a medal for what I did tonight.
Evangelical Christianity has a problem.
Damely, A Review of Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, by Dane Ortlund
Evangelical Christianity has a problem.
We say the canon is closed, but then we keep writing and writing and writing. And encouraging to write and write and write. And read and read and read—everything about the Bible, but never the Bible itself.
Mr. Ortlund’s, or Pastor Ortlund’s, book was given to me last birthday by a good friend. We went to Seminary together. I told him I’d let him know how the book was after I read it. He clearly loved it, so this was an awkward setup for someone as critical as me. He knew that going in. I agreed because I thought I could use some light Christian reading and figured it couldn’t be terrible. And it wasn’t. It wasn’t even close to terrible.
But it’s for women. Dames.
Check out these sentiments:
We don’t use a word like benevolence much today; it means a disposition to be kind and good, a crouched coil of compassion ready to spring.
Or, …my swirling internal world of fretful panicky-ness arising out of gospel deficit…
The felt love of Christ really is what brings rest, wholeness, flourishing, shalom—that existential calm that for brief, gospel-sane moments settles over you and lets you step in out of the storm of of-works-ness.
(My bold.)
No man feels like that was written to him. We all just acknowledge that the Pastor has to include some girly stuff in order to satisfy the publisher, who knows that men typically don’t read anyway. But the book was filled with these and more. Too many. Nobody speaks like that, nor should they. It’s insulting. “Crouched coil of compassion ready to spring”. Sheesh. No need for gender-reassignment surgery here. Just learned what it feels like to be a woman.
Here’s even more truth. The introduction lists a few “who this is written for” descriptions, and the one (only one) that made me decide to go through with reading it was, “…suspect we have disappointed him [the Trinity].” That’s not feminine, neither is it far off from ideas floating around “upstairs” as my step-son says. So I read on.
But I confess that I never really thought the book was for me. And I still don’t. The Bible is for me. This type of book is not.
The problem with these books is their existence itself. You don’t need someone to come up with analogies to the Bible’s analogies in order to understand how to walk according to the Way. You really don’t.
I repeat: the canon is closed.
I have this argument with my wife often too.
The canon is closed. The minute someone creates a recording of what they said, some preacher/teacher, they’re implicitly suggesting that they are as inspired as the authors of the real Bible.
By contrast, I write these posts for me. I don’t believe they can help you in any way that meaningfully would be help. That’s partly because I don’t believe you need my help. You definitely have never asked for my help.
If anything, my theologically-oriented posts may help you understand what makes me tick, but I would never suggest they can help clarify the Bible.
Back to Pastor Ortlund.
If you’re looking for a good spiritual book, most folks would point you to the big ones. Gospel of John, Genesis, early Psalms, Ephesians. Acts is a winner. And that disappoints you. Because that’s not what you’re looking for, I suspect. I suspect that, when looking for a Christian/Devotional book, you’re looking to find a shortcut to the Bible. Bluntly, my gut tells me that you’re looking for a lazy-man’s Bible.
To that search I say: Good luck in your quest. I never have found one. So I stopped wasting time searching and started reading the Bible.
A Midwestern American Man’s Take On Ukraine
I took my two twelve year olds canoeing, here in Minnesota last July. It brought back so many memories. Just being alone on a river and hearing no artificial noise was well worth the price of admission.
Then, as if to further and more certainly confirm that the event was anointed, there was a moment when a bald eagle flew overhead into view.
Can we talk about the bald eagle for a minute? Is there anything good that a bald eagle doesn’t represent? Is there anything good that a bald eagle doesn’t call to mind?
When I see a bald eagle, I might as well see Jesus. Remember that “I Can Only Imagine” Christian song? It even made the Kohl’s playlist? Remember? “I can only imagine/what hmm mm mmhm hmm?…what will my heart feel? Will I dance for you Jesus!? Or in awe of you be still!?” Imagine nevermore. After seeing a bald eagle, I can tell you what seeing Jesus actually feels like.
Awe, then happy, then awe, then somber, then awe, then special, then awe, then at peace, then awe, then blessed, then awe, then talkative, then awe, then warm, then awe, then good.
On a river in Minnesota we saw a bald eagle. It felt good.
Then, to our surprise, we saw a second large bird playfully follow and engage the bald eagle. The second bird had a speckled appearance. It did not have a white head.
When we arrived home, I googled this second bird. It turns out, as you may have guessed, that bald eagles don’t have the white (bald) head until they’re fully grown.
Did I mention that I saw a bald eagle on the river that day? I did.
Truly, when I saw that bald eagle, I saw America.
The bald eagle is America.
The young bald eagle, then, is Europe.
Ukraine is a bald eagle egg.
Should the USA help Ukraine? Sure. We want more bald eagles.
But the USA should not send its own men and women to fight Russia, anymore than the adult bald eagle can get back inside the egg.
It’d be disingenuous. It’d be unnatural.
Ukraine’s real competition, if it were actually a country (I still say, ‘Ukraine is not a country’), is us—not Russia.
One Way I Know I’m Failing As A Father, and One Way I Know I’m Succeeding As A Father
Failing: Afternoon nap time for A- (terrible two’s daughter) and J- (infant son). And their parents.
Son awakes first. Wife brings him to living room where I am lazily reading after a pleasant cat nap. She returns to her nap.
Finally, I get up and go lay near J-.
I beamed with pride as my son rolled around. J-’s movement and posture is a near divine display of inner calm, grace, majesty, and dexterity. And all at such a young age. Impressive, for sure. I also noticed what might prove to be a subtle hint of poopy diaper was released.
To confirm, I moved in and inhaled deeply.
****
Succeeding: Afternoon nap time for A- (terrible two’s daughter) and J- (infant son). And their parents.
Son awakes first. Wife brings him to living room where I am lazily reading after a pleasant cat nap. She returns to her nap.
Finally, I get up and go lay near J-.
I beamed with pride as my son rolled around. J-’s movement and posture is a near divine display of inner calm, grace, majesty, and dexterity. And all at such a young age. Impressive, for sure. I also noticed what might prove to be a subtle hint of poopy diaper was released.
To confirm, I moved in and inhaled deeply.
“First Robot”, or “Explore Space to Deal With Death”, A Review of First Man, by Damien Chazelle
Movie-wise, I’ve still been on a TGM kick, especially at work, and so it was only natural that my boss (also a pilot) was shocked that I hadn’t seen First Man.
“When I heard they didn’t show him planting the flag, I just lost interest,” I explained.
Well, he told me it was just great and must-see viewing for a pilot. “I can’t believe a pilot wouldn’t want to watch that movie.”
So I watched it.
And like all “inspired by real events” movies, they couldn’t just leave well enough alone.
To be clear, there is no record—at any level, to include hearsay—that Neil Armstrong throws his dead daughter’s bracelet into a moon crater.
In the film, we watch, not a man, but a machine train and train and train and then launch for the moon. Maybe the director saw the problem here.
“How can we have a movie called ‘First Man’ and then show that it was a cold, calculating psychopath that NASA launched to the moon?” we can almost hear him asking.
But the answer to this problem is to fix the portrait (or title), not insert a definitively make-believe event.
In short: Tell the Truth!!
From my perspective, I wanted to know—and I thought the movie was wanting to tell me—why Neil Armstrong was the first man to land and walk on the moon. Specifically, why Neil Armstrong was chosen and why Neil Armstrong had what it takes to know that he should be first.
I know I’m better than most of mankind at achieving goals and completing tasks correctly etc. But I also have been around other dudes that I couldn’t hold a candle to. Neil Armstrong seems to have never experienced the latter. He only knew that he was the man. Absolute confidence. Unbridled certainty.
It’s remarkable.
It’s worth a million dollar film being commissioned.
But it’s also worth getting right.
Our culture seems to struggle with the idea that adults still want things. That adults still can have desires. A movie like this bears this out. It doesn’t know what story to tell. The story is not about “look how he couldn’t be both a good dad and a good man.”
Neil Armstrong wasn’t a good dad! Oh em gee! Damn him to hell!
Does anyone else still believe that a good adult can be precisely what a child (and a nation) needs?
Broadening, does anyone else still believe that an achieving adult is precisely what a family and a nation needs?
We’ve become bedazzled by the idea of sacrificing individual achievement in order to help some version of the helpless masses.
Sorry, but my achievements do help them. We don’t need to scrap NASA in order to feed people.
Your desire to stop my achievement is called “envy” and is sin straight from the pit of hell. JS Mill showed me this. You should learn to see it too.
In any case, between First Man and Ad Astra, I’m not persuaded. Men don’t need the death of fathers and daughters to propel them to greatness. They just need…
And that’s it. The heart of the matter. What do men need to propel them to greatness? Do you know?
Public Schools Must Be Abolished
Just a quick note on a recurring theme.
If you don’t have school-age children, then here’s what you’re missing.
Every Friday the administration sends out several “wrap-up”, “week in review” emails, themselves containing links to more content. I read like lightning, and I still would spend more time reading these emails than I would spend on a full week of homeschooling.
What do these people actually believe? Have they written the great American novel? Do they believe the parents are literate at an above average rate? How many adults actually make it through every word?
Public school.
What a waste of time.
Abolish! Abolish! Abolish!
The Bible Is Not Always Clear
The sermon this morning was on James 1:22-25. Here it is.
“But become doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he looked at himself and has gone away, he immediately forgot what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of freedom, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this man will be blessed in what he does.”
James 1:22-25 LSB
The preacher this morning spent an inordinate amount of time on the “common sense” mirror analogy. To summarize, he said, “Unless you’re a ‘doer’ James is saying it’s like you see bedhead in the mirror in the morning and then don’t fix it. Hearing-only is only seeing the mirror, James is saying. But we want to be ‘doers’, so we have to do something about what we see.”
This interpretation, of what you’ll see is an uncommon teaching, is incredibly flawed. See if you can follow me as I explain why.
Firstly, the mirror is never truth. The mirror is never reality.
Secondly, the Bible is not a mirror. As I was critiquing the sermon on the short drive home, my wife somehow defended the sermon with, “but the Bible is a mirror!” This exclamation was especially saddening as she knows better. To be clear, a quick, but exhaustive, search of the Bible shows that no Bible writer ever expressed as much. Of course they didn’t. It isn’t true. The Bible writers never wrote that the Bible is a mirror because the Bible is not a mirror. (This is because the Bible is true and mirrors are not.)
Thirdly, James plainly says that the hearer-only forgets without the mirror. When apart from the mirror, the hearer-only forgets.
Let’s take an example of forgetting. As a professional pilot, I wear a uniform when I fly. The uniform is what a professional pilot wears. You see me in a uniform, just the same as I see myself in a mirror in a uniform. You see pilots in uniforms, but—and you know this—uniforms aren’t the thing that makes him a pilot.
It’s a good look, the uniform. So I like to see myself in the mirror. “Yeah, that’s me. I’m a pilot. Cool.”
Now imagine that I walk away from the mirror and am unable to get the plane into the sky. Am I still a pilot? Even though I’m in uniform? (We’re still on point three; James’ emphasis is on forgetting.)
I saw the other pilots in their uniforms. I put on one that fit me. But, imagine that for some reason I couldn’t perform the task of flight. I have forgotten who I was/am. As it turns out, how I look has nothing to do with whether I am a pilot.
(Here insert any of your own reflective, superficial, outward traits.)
Fourthly, and finally, mirrors, in-and-of-themselves, are not compelling. Don’t believe me? Hmm. Okay. Then I guess you’re not slightly overweight, not slightly unkempt, good from this angle, and you don’t appear to weigh as much as the scale says. I guess you really do look best on video chat when it’s just your face, your clothes really don’t matter, and you’re only working from home—so no need to look nice.
If mirrors could compel us to change, we’d all look exact like we want to, no matter the cost of achieving it.
James was writing to liars (that includes you and me too). Specifically, he was writing to believers who were undergoing various trials. James believes that he (James) knows a thing or two about how to gain the righteousness of God. And he writes that we don’t gain the righteousness of God by living a lie. Or as James says “deluding ourselves”.
If you think hearing a sermon every week, or your having heard a powerful sermon once in your life, is going to gain you the righteousness of God, then think again.
This short passage is not clear. It is not common sense. It is murky, it is mysterious, and it is deep enough that a lifetime can be spent contemplating it. This is because James is promoting the need for religion. He is promoting the need for repetition. He is promoting the need for repentance.
Why? Why repent? Why repetitively perform good works? Why get religion?
Answer: “To achieve the righteousness of God.”
(Here notice that we haven’t touched on what that is. Maybe some other day.)
Mayor Pete Is A Real Boy
Some of you have no doubt seen the headlines that Mayor Pete put pen to paper regarding his first year with the twin babies.
What most of you won’t have taken time to learn, what the news didn’t report, is that Mayor Pete also, after his year in the Land of Boobies, to his great astonishment, grew a beautiful pair of donkey’s ears.
It is moments like these where I am glad homosexual men are sterile. Seems nature has things under control after all.
Captain’s Log 