A Slightly Grander Song

Trying the Non-Nerd Approach for Once

2010-03-04T22:51:00.002-05:00

Here in InterVarsity-world, we teach our students, particularly our small group leaders, a very straight-forward, systematic way to study Scripture or to lead others in studying Scripture. It's a simple, three-step process: Observe, Interpret, Apply. It can be said in question format too. What is the writer saying? What does the writer mean? And what does it mean for us (individually and corporately)? All of the steps are vital. Without observing what's happening in a passage of Scripture, there's certainly no way you're going to be able to interpret it. Without interpreting what you see, drawing application from those more confusing verses is going to be interesting, to say the least. And without application, we become stale scholars incapable of being propelled into mission by the Holy Spirit's work in and through as we enter into the Scriptures.

For most of my Scripture-studying life, I have made the mistake of sitting in observation and interpretation. It doesn't say anything bad about me, necessarily. I really enjoy thinking deeply about things. I love theory. I love stepping into the shoes of a battered and bruised Paul, or a Jeremiah who is seen as an outcast by his own people, or an old and wise Solomon, and trying to theorize about what is meant by a particular verse. Going even deeper into the endless nerd black hole that is my brain, I was trained as a Greek major to focus in on one measly word and extract a world of meaning from the hundreds of years of linguistic transformation that particular word had gone through when some apostle used it in the first century. I deeply love theology, hermeneutics, exegesis. It's just so much fun!

But application is so significant. Particularly these days. People no longer care, generally speaking (and probably oversimplifying to a fault), about what is true. That's a 20th century question. What is far more compelling to the 21st century mind is not what is true, but what is relevant. So I may be able to spend hours unpacking the meaning of one word, but if I cannot understand myself its relevance for real life, then I definitely cannot invite someone else into my new discovery, no matter how profound or earth-shaking it may be.

But things have changed for me recently. A year of overwhelming grief, emotional outpouring, and soul-baring has totally shifted me. I've realized that, actually, I'm a pretty interesting case. Working through grief has demanded the incredibly daunting task of looking at myself, at my wounds and my pain, as well as at my passions and my loves. And it's fascinating. I'm a weird dude. Some of you maybe have known this for a while already. But I think I'm just realizing it. And so as I have been in Scripture in recent months, I've really had a hard time sticking to the intellectual stuff. Having discovered all these new things about myself, I want to plunge into the application. What does this stuff mean for me? What does it mean for the Church? What is its relevance to the world in which I/we live?

And you know, if this lasted for any duration much longer than a short while, it would be incredibly unhealthy. Noted. But my story has largely taken place outside of myself. By that I mean, I just don't know myself very well. There was a question on my InterVarsity staff application that asked me to rate how well I know myself. I remember knowing myself so poorly, that I'm pretty sure I gave myself the highest rating available. Just never have taken the time to get to know myself. My deeply thinking self has found, um, itself, to be so much less interesting than the things it could be learning about all the other cool stuff in the world. But neither is this approach to things all that healthy either. Ourselves are our lens, our perspective. Any hope to know God will inevitably be through the pain we have felt, or the struggles that we have had, and how God has responded to us in those places in our lives. The same is true corporately. It is through the lens of Israel's pains and struggles that Israel sought to know God. Ever read the Psalms? It is through the exiles, the slavery, the ups and the downs, the good kings (all, like, 2 of them) and the bad kings (the droves of them), the prophecies of judgment and the prophecies of deliverance, that Israel ever really knew God (to varying degrees of intimacy) in the Old Testament. And as we who believe that Jesus was the Messiah to whom all these things from Israel's history pointed, it is imperative to acknowledge that we have been grafted into that people and that name, Israel. And, here goes my word-studying nerd black hole mind again...

...Israel = he struggles or wrestles with God (a basic definition; just be glad Israel isn't a Greek word)

Our very identity as the people of God is to, just as Jacob did before he was renamed, look at the place God has brought us to, and in the moments that we are discontented, to struggle with God over it. And like Jacob, sometimes we leave the encounter with a limp. But that limp does the good work of reminding us that we have experienced the single greatest blessing this life has to offer - discovering the strength and wisdom of the Almighty, so that we can quit trying to act so strong and so wise. After all, acting all the time can just be exhausting.

My Non-Book Review Book Review: Life of Pi

2010-02-22T09:52:00.008-05:00

The best stories speak of life in ways you can understand, by commenting anecdotally on the things you know in your heart to be true, but are so subtle or subconscious that you've never thought of them before. But just as soon as you read these elements of good stories, you say in your heart, "Yes, of course. I've thought that for my entire life, but I've only just now put the thought into words. Or rather, this book has. I should quote this in my blog."

I just finished reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel, which took, well, not long at all for a man as busy and slow-reading as myself. I spent about two and a half weeks on the first 180 pages. And I read the last 150 last night. Couldn't put it down. And I wouldn't want to bore you with a book review that would critique the story and suck all the life out of it. I give it a 10 out of 10. That's all you need to know. Looking for something to read? I would suggest Life of Pi. There, book review over. But I do want to share with you a passage from the book that has been nearly life-changing for me these last few weeks. As I described above, it's one of those passages that made me say, "But of course! I've always known that! Now I finally have words for that thought!" For context, Pi, the main character and narrator, is the son of a zookeeper. He actively practices Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. His fascination with animals and God often intersect, helping him, ultimately, to better understand people, and God. It's an intriguing read. And the following passage has stayed with me since I read it on page 31, the very day I started reading the book.

Just beyond the ticket booth Father had had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.

But I learned at my expense that Father believed there was another animal even more dangerous than us, and one that was extremely common, too, found on every continent, in every habitat: the redoubtable species Animalus anthromorphicus, the animal as seen through human eyes. We've all met one, perhaps even owned one. It is an animal that is "cute", "friendly", "loving", "devoted", "merry", "understanding". These animals lie in ambush in every toy store and children's zoo. Countless stories are told of them. They are the pendants of those "vicious", "bloodthirsty", "depraved" animals that inflame the ire of the maniacs I have just mentioned, who vent their spite on them with walking sticks and umbrellas. In both cases we look at an animal and see a mirror. The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists.

Indeed, the self is an interesting thing. We Christians like to dismiss it. Selflessness is a virtue. Nietzsche considered that to be the worst thing about Christians - the dismissal of the self. Ayn Rand, too, thought it was despicable, not specifically the Christians but altruists altogether, to consider selflessness a virtue. I do believe that Nietzsche and Rand and all the rest who despise the Christian/altruistic view of the self as despicable have indeed misinterpreted things, skewed them to fit an agenda. The Scriptures don't actually encourage selflessness. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself, for instance. Well if we didn't care about the self at all, we certainly wouldn't make very good neighbors.

It's just that the self has a right place and a wrong place. The self is a gift given to us. For people who were created in the image of God, the self is always going to be the most accessible image, however incomplete it may be, of the image of God. Placing the self as an incomplete but accurate image of who God is would be placing the self in the right place. Assuming that everything we do or think is the image of God - now, that would be taking the matter too far. We are not God, though we often would prefer it. But we must humbly acknowledge that everything that is good in us is probably a reflection of God's person, given to us out of his overwhelming love. He could have created us to be completely different, separate, opposites of him. But as with humans and animals, only certain things are separate and different between us and God. Other things are quite similar.

The fault of the anti-altruists - Nietzsche in particular - is that they liken Christianity to Asceticism. Asceticism is not the Christian calling. Self-denial is not good. Self-oppression is not virtuous. Self-destruction is not noble. The Scriptures do not call for that. It is because we know the love which God has had for us that we even know how to love those around us. It is because God has forgiven us that we know how to forgive others. It is because God has placed joy in our hearts that we desire for others to know true joy. It is because Jesus died on the cross for us that we wish to live sacrificial lives on the behalf of others. And it is because Jesus rose again that we know life after death is available to us, and it is precisely because it is available to us that we desire it to be available to others. If we eradicate the self, we eradicate all the memorials of what God has done, for it is our own souls that are the grounds for those memorials. Destroy the self, and you destroy all the memories of God's good work - the change and tranformation He has worked out in our lives.

Indeed, often we go astray, and we do what we do with housepets and zoo animals - we describe God in human terms, in a human perspective, with human limitations. We limit the limitless. In the dangerous task of using the image of God that is ourselves to understand better who God is, we must acknowledge that he is so much bigger, better, and more holy. In myself, I see a minuscule piece of who God is. By getting married, I see in my wife another minuscule piece of who God is. Throw in our church community and our students in InterVarsity, it's a lot less minuscule, but still minuscule. Throwing in nature around us helps too. Throwing in church cultures from around the world, the picture gets a little clearer. But regardless, ourselves, our spouses, our churches, our communities, our cultures - all of them are clouded over by sin, which prevents us from fully being able to see who God is through who we are.

The bottom line is this: God is who He is. Flat out. Nothing can give us a complete, holy picture of who He is, except for Him. So the self can only go so far. The self is how we remember what God has done. It is how we respond to what God has done. But it is only God Himself who can reveal Himself truly to us. And, you see, He's thoughtful like that. For God is very big. Let's give thanks that He's actually kind enough to reveal Himself in small bits so our heads and hearts don't explode.

Kicking Off Lent by Kicking Out Our Idolatry of Now

2010-02-17T11:14:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Lent. I guess we don't really "kick off" Lent. We kick off football games and school years. Lent we more mozy into without an ounce of excitement. Nonetheless. Come mozy with me.

Some of you (myself included) will be walking around this evening with a cross of black ashes on your forehead. Some of you, if you're not a Christian, will be wondering why those crazy Christians are walking around with a cross of black ashes on their forehead. Some of you, if you are a Christian, will be wondering why all the crazy Christians are walking around with a cross of black ashes on their foreheads. I've never done the ashes thing before. I've never been in a church tradition liturgical enough to do an Ash Wednesday service. But now I'm a practicing Anglican, so ashes here I come.

Lent is a weird thing. For 46 days (I think that's right; don't quote me), people of faith in Jesus Christ look toward the crucifixion of their Lord. We focus on sin, grief, confession. We spend 46 days in a state of emotional downturn. We stop saying "Alleluia" in church. We remember that we are dust, and that to dust we will return. For a month and half. Is it all really that necessary? Well, I won't say it's necessary. I haven't done it ever before in my 25 years. And I think I've always had a sufficient understanding of Easter. But man, I think it can be hugely beneficial for a lot of reasons; I'll focus on one.

We are people of immediacy. Gone are the days when people pray for one thing for an entire lifetime, much less for more than a few weeks. People throughout the history of Judaeo-Christian faith give us an example that we can never achieve because of our idolatry of Now. Abraham prayed for how many years that he and Sarah could have a kid? Moses never got to see the one thing he spent his entire life pushing for. Solomon saw some great things in his life, got to see and experience one of the few and far between periods of peace and progress in the history of Israel. And he wrote a great book, Proverbs, to set up his son to carry on the greatness for many more years after his death. And what happened? Dude squandered it all. Solomon also left us with Ecclesiastes, documenting his long struggle with feeling like all his efforts in labor were pointless. These faith ancestors of ours were surrounded by the disappointment of working hard for a lifetime and not knowing if it's really worth it all.

Me? When I pray for something starting today, if I don't have it by next week, I move on. That's a clear "No" from God. Simply ridiculous. Selfish. Shallow.

The fact of the matter is that we are all people full of disappointment whose chief aim in life is not to show the world how disappointed and unfulfilled we are. But God responds to our long periods of disappointment, to our lives that often feel wasted, with an offer of eternal fulfillment, joy, and life abundant. We may spend 46 days looking toward the cross with grief in our hearts, but it's so that we can enjoy the resurrection basically until Christmas. An illustration of how pathetic death is compared to life within the gospel of Jesus Christ. A feeble illustration, yes, but it'll do for now.

Anointed by Mud

2010-02-14T08:14:00.000-05:00

So it's been a loooong time since I've stopped here and written. The beginning of a new semester is certainly no coincidence in that. But man, there's a personal side to it too. January and February have been a good time for me to begin processing things, and with an August-thru-November like we had, I might be there a while. The weird thing is that in the midst of where I am personally, things in ministry at UNC have been, well, as good as one can imagine. Students are praying like never before, inviting like never before, and the Spirit is seemingly at work like never before. We've seen two students come to know the Lord for the first time, some who are new to faith beginning to take it seriously, and some who have just been gone for a while come back to Jesus. And we've seen students who a year ago had serious issues with that word which seems to have become a dirty one - evangelism - embracing it as a lifestyle. In InterVarsity, we like to talk about transformation, and it abounds right now in the UNC-Chapel Hill chapter.

But the trickiness of it all is that ministry is what I do, but it is not who I am. While things are going really well on-campus, I can't deny that I still feel a bit like the man born blind in the 9th chapter of John's gospel on the personal front. Well, except for my under-developed left eye, my eyesight is just dandy. But I feel like a man emotionally born blind. I've always been one to opine before I emote. That's just kind of the way I've been wired. Not unlike many men I suppose. But man, last fall called for a different John Farmer. If all I can do is opine about last fall, I would certainly be able to do nothing but spin myself into a cycle of clinical depression, I'm pretty sure. Losing two of the closest people in your life - I think you can guess my opinion on that. But I needed to learn, and learn fast, how to emote. Not how to deal with emotion - that's quite a different thing. I've always dealt with emotion - hey John, stop it! That's what my inner monologue has always sounded like. I haven't needed to deal with emotion; I've just needed to do the messy business of simply emoting.

The process went through the end of 2009 without so much as one discovery about myself or about how I'm taking things. But January and February have been a bit different. And I'm realizing that it is very deeply a spiritual process. Because emotionally, I was born blind. Fortunately, I was born into the church, and my blind self has been laid in the shadows of the temple just like this man, where Jesus would find me. And he definitely found me found me back in middle school, when the gospel became clear and real to me. But he's constantly finding me again. See, we're not fortunate like the miracle-recipients of the gospels, who seemingly had one or two needs - blindness, paralysis, a hemorrhaging problem. (Kidding.) But seriously, we're all incredibly needy. And we're in a cycle of Jesus finding us in the pit of despair in a lot of different ways throughout our lives. Well, this spiritual process of getting emotional eyes has been largely non-epic. We have this image of Jesus' miracles being these epic displays of power, like scenes from a movie except not. But no, dude took dirt, added spit, making mud, and anointed the blind man with it. That's not the way Spielberg would have written it, I'm pretty sure.

Imagine what it was like. You're blind. Can't see. You've functioned primarily out of your sense of hearing your entire life. So this man comes up to you, and seems intent on healing you. So you're listening really well to hear how exactly he's gonna do it. You hear him spit. Confused yet? You hear him bend down, and you hear him taking his fingers and stirring together his spit with the dirt like it's a milkshake or something. I'm questioning his wisdom by now. And then you hear him take a dollop of the newly made mudshake onto his finger. You feel the warm sensation of the mudshake on your eyes. When this crazy lunatic who just slathered spit-mud on your eyes tells you to go wash yourself in the pool, do you do it?

Here's where the blind man has an advantage on me. He's been aware of his need for sight for all his life. People like me, who think we have it all together, we want to say to Jesus when he does weird things to heal us, "No, I'm fine, you keep your spit to yourself." But the blind man is no fool; if it has even a chance of giving him sight, he's gonna do it. So he goes and he washes, and in faith receives his sight.

So yeah, receiving emotional sight has been a spiritual process. The more I understand about the person of Christ, the more I have eyes to see what is happening in my heart after a hard fall. I'm glad to be back to blogging. It's always a good way for me to process things, to share things, and to invite others into my process, if it's actually interesting to them - to you. When asked why the man was born blind, Jesus says, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him." That's always at the root of our needs. We live in a broken world, a world broken by us no less, and we all as a result have immense needs. But a redemptive God shows the world where the true source of redemption is through powerful works of healing in those who come to him in faith - who in faith can admit their needs, who in faith confess that Jesus can heal them, who in faith believe that whatever weird way Jesus chooses to heal them is just fine. So I'm glad to be back to blogging to share this process so that maybe the works of God might be displayed in me too. There's no point to our suffering if the power of Christ over suffering is not displayed in us.

Why I Believe in Miracles, and Why It Matters

2010-01-11T16:37:00.000-05:00

I wrote this post from the Atlanta airport during my lengthy layover back on December 22; didn't want to pay $5 for the wifi I needed to publish it on the spot. So I saved it for future publishing. And then I forgot to publish it. So here it is. It's a sequel to my "Jesus is not UPS" post, some further thoughts on the miraculous. Thanks for reading!

Not ready to leave this topic just yet. So what totally and completely befuddles me about people is how quickly things become dull and uninteresting to such adventurous and horizon-chasing creatures as humans. My wife and I are flying back to North Carolina from New Orleans today, and on our first flight, I couldn’t but notice – no one looks out the windows on airplanes anymore. I myself am fascinated by being able to look down on the terrain from 27,000 feet. But to everyone else, boooooorrrrrrrrring. We keep pushing the frontier, inventing things like air travel that, once we get there, give us temporary excitement, maybe a pat on our own back, and then perpetual sighs. So bent on achieving things that appreciating our own achievements is generally avoided for the way that it prevents us from going out and achieving more stuff. Simply perplexing.

Why is a miraculous and all-powerful God such a problem for those who believe and those who do not? Because essentially, we all have the same problem. It’s the Tower of Babel problem. For those who believe, it’s okay to acknowledge his power, but we want those miracles to be our own. And for those who do not believe, but who are fascinated by the idea of the miraculous, attributing the idea of the miraculous to some selfish, presumptuous, power-hungry being means that the miracles can’t be our own. We build towers to say that we built towers. We open savings accounts to say that we built a good and secure life for ourselves. We strive for straight A’s to say we made the Deans’ List. And we get mad when a God who knows better re-routes us.

In actuality, while we try our darnedest to care more about ourselves than about anyone or anything else, no one cares as much about us as the God who created us. Everything he chooses for us is in our own best interest, and everything he encourages us to do, to think, to believe, is for the best life possible for us. The problem is, we don’t know ourselves well enough to know what’s best. What is so fascinating about the fact that God knows the number of hairs on my head is that, well, I don’t (although I do know it’s decreasing…FAST). In the same way, I’d sure like a million dollars, but God knows well enough how quickly my soul would decay upon the reception of that million dollars. The reason for this is simple. It is only in a place of need that we find God. He loves us enough to, rather frequently, give us some life- and soul-saving needs. So in an age when we have forgotten God’s power for the miraculous, or lost hope in his desire to choose miracles for us, maybe we will remember that it is our need for our own personal achievements that has made God’s power so monotonous in our eyes.

As I look back on this year, I can choose to overlook the joy of getting married because God chose to withhold miracles in the deaths of my mom and grandfather. Or I can choose to acknowledge that the value of a blessing isn’t relative to its nearest curses. Or I can go even further and acknowledge that miracles and blessings even show up in the curses. Ovarian cancer typically is unrelenting in a person’s first bout with it. My mom got three bouts, seven years, and getting to see two kids graduate from college and get married. And it sure was hard losing my grandfather just two months thereafter, but I certainly remember standing over his bed in intensive care back in 2006, saying goodbye to him just in case the highly unlikely emergency surgery didn’t do the trick. And you can say what you want about just exactly what or who did the trick, all I know is we got three more years with him.

So yeah, I believe in miracles. And I believe that God the Father conceived God the Son by God the Holy Spirit in the virgin Mary. And I believe that God the Father raised from the dead God the Son by God the Holy Spirit thirty-three years later. And I believe that if you or I or anyone believes any bit of that craziness, it must inform the things that happen in our lives and our world. The humane incarnation of the divine or the divine resurrection of the humane are not the kind of things that happen in a vacuum. They are the kind of things that happen all around us, all the time.

I, John, am a Material Girl

2010-01-04T11:57:00.000-05:00

Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all—so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back. Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.
-Luke 17:26-33

It's interesting that this is the way that Jesus communicates the arrival of the end of the world, that salvation comes for those who look at life as what it is, a detour. It is those who define life as eating, drinking, marrying, doing business, making progress, who are left out of the kingdom of heaven.

But this passage seemingly describes all of us, Christian or not. We are people who get caught up in life on earth, and forget that we are just passing through, that life is but a mist. It's why Christians struggle to understand why marriage does not exist in heaven, and it's why many Christians' visions of heaven include all the things we love about earth, but in greater proportions. We are people in love with the things of earth, with material possession, with what we acquire in these finite days. Simply baffling. The world offers us a lot of things. Many of them we like so much that we'd like to turn around and grab them before leaving this place forever. But would we take just anything the world offers us? Of course not. I'd like to leave grief behind; cancer, too. What we so often fail to acknowledge is that it's all-or-nuthin'.

Perhaps harder for us to understand is that even the good things of this world are the equivalent of a frostbitten toe compared to what is offered in heaven. It's hard for us to imagine how wonderful is the unfiltered presence of God, but it's so good that we wouldn't even be interested in having our iPods, our Wiis, our Facebook news feeds, our houses, our cars, or our savings accounts.

Life on earth is not more than these things. But life itself is. And should we turn to get them when we are called into heaven, we shall end up where our hearts are. Why? Because you know we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl.

It's not the stuff itself, but rather a proclivity to preoccupation that dooms us, ultimately. We are preoccupied with immediate things - some material and some immaterial. And the fascination grows and grows with each new iPhone, each new girlfriend, each new career decision. The challenge is that we have been called to live in this material world and not be material girls. How? By acknowledging that the most significant thing to us is a right relationship between creation and Creator, both individually and corporately. When we see God the Father, Son, and Spirit with love, adoration, and worship, all those less important things seem to fade. It is in this way that twelve apostles felt it worthwhile to leave father and mother and comfortable job to follow Jesus, and to not return to those things when he left him to finish the work that he started. And those apostles left us the work to finish, since they didn't see its completion either. And maybe we'll leave the unfinished work to those after us. But maybe we won't. And if that's the case, maybe we'll be fortunate enough to see God the Father, Son, and Spirit with eyes loving, adoring, and worshiping enough to know...He, above all else (life included), is all we need.

Jesus is not UPS: The Phenomenon of the Human Spirit

2009-12-18T12:07:00.000-05:00

Got an e-mail from ONE.org today, an organization that seeks to eradicate poverty and injustice globally through encouraging politicians to make laws that consider those less fortunate. It's a great oraganization, but I was definitely a little surprised by the e-mail's subject line: "The Lazarus Effect." I was further intrigued by an explanation of the phrase: "Our friends at (RED)™ have released a short video called 'The Lazarus Effect'—a film about people with HIV/AIDS who are alive and healthy today because of the miraculous power of antiretroviral medicine."

For a society in which secularism is quickly becoming the new "religion," atheism is becoming more accepted than belief in God because of its plausibility, and science is something people can really believe in for its power and transcendence, there sure is a lot of religious imagery floating around out there. In the TV show LOST, a science fiction thriller, Christian Scripture, messianic figures, sacrifice, and temples are ubiquitous. Or take a look at the movie Donnie Darko (2001). It may be about the scientific intricacies of time travel, but there sure is a strong scent of the predestination/free-will conversation in there too, and even some evidence of the existence of God. Or take this e-mail I received today, wherein supposedly "miraculous" medication is referred to as having a "Lazarus effect" on its recipients.

Now if you would now give me the grace to make some broad sweeping generalizations, I promise I'll clean up the mess later. No one seems to struggle more today with believing in the miraculous than evangelical Christians. Of course, I'm lumping myself in on this one. We who identify as such so often fall into the trap of thinking that everything is about the mind and the heart, and that nothing is about the Spirit. When we who are evangelicals pray for those in our midst who are sick, what do we pray for? "Lord, give the doctors wisdom to do what is possible to remove this cancer." The doctors? I mean, it's encouraged to pray for their wisdom, certainly, but do we no longer believe enough in God's power to heal miraculously to ask for his healing? Really? At the same time, while it seems that the non-religious world believes in the miraculous power of things like medicine (which, admittedly, can't be miraculous because they work within the limitations of scientific laws, but we'll go with it for the sake of argument), submitting to some sort of Godhead seems to be the stumbling block. Yet, the messianic sacrifice is the abosolutely most commonly plagiarized storyline of all time. (See: Cool Hand Luke, The Crucible, The Matrix Trilogy.) For the secular world, it's okay to believe in the miraculous, even to be fascinated by the miraculous messianic story, but to submit one's life to an all-powerful Judge is quite preposterous. The real trick, it seems, is belief in the miraculous and submission to an authoritative God, all in one breath.

This phenomenon of the human spirit isn't a New Age, postmodern thing. Jesus dealt with the dichotomy in his own time on earth. Take Luke 11:15-16 for instance: "But some of them said, 'He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons,' while others, to test him, kept seeking from him a sign from heaven." He had the Pharisees and some others who generally lined up with the former, for whom Jesus' miracles and signs were such a problem and needed to be reasoned away. And he had others who lined up with the latter, for whom a miracle was the only thing they said that they needed in order to believe. How did Jesus respond? He just throws 'em all under the bus:

This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. -Luke 11:29-32

I could spend a lot of time and energy unpacking what Jesus meant here. Instead, I'll point out the two most significant things I see. Jonah was a Jew sent to Nineveh, a Gentile city, and the Queen of the South (of Sheba) was a Gentile who came to hear Solomon, the wisest Jew of all time (until Jesus came) in 1 Kings 10. It is believing Gentiles (Queen of the South and the Ninevites) who will rise up to condemn those who try to fit Jesus into their convenient box. It doesn't matter whether we try to fit him into our miracle-performing box, or our religious box; Jesus is not UPS, and he's not interested in our boxes.

It is the Queen of the South, who humbles herself to receive wisdom from the Lord. It is the Ninevites who receive the miracle of the absolution of sin.

Twice a year, we who believe in Jesus Christ celebrate something miraculous - Christ's birth at Christmas, and his resurrection at Easter. When will we begin to believe that God still works miracles? When will we believe that we worship one God who is the same from beginning to end? The funny thing about all this is that you really have to go against the grain to separate the miraculous and the divine, yet somehow we've done it, and there's contention now between a non-miracle-believing Christianity and a secular world fascinated with the miraculous aspects of the story of Christ. But there's good news. Despite us and our unbelief, God still exists and still is a God of miracles. Our doubts, our boxes, our unbelief and skepticism can't change who God is and what God does.

Though Bing Crosby, Macy's, and mall Santa Claus imposters may make this a little difficult, I still pray that the miracle of the incarnation would pierce the souls of Christians, like myself, who struggle with the whole miracle thing, and the souls of miracle-believing secularists for whom divine power is an implausibility.

Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!

Spreading Fragrances in the Dean Dome

2009-11-11T23:24:00.000-05:00

For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. (Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 2, verses 15-17)

Tickets to my first Carolina basketball game dropped out of the sky tonight. Delightful. It was a competitive game to see, as the Heels wiped the floor with NC Central 89-42. Bojangles apparently gives out two biscuits for a buck when the Heels strike 100. What about pounding our opponent into submission and winning by 47? No? Oh well.

One of my co-staff with InterVarsity at UNC called right around dinnertime to say she had come across four free tickets and was looking for people to go with her. So my wife and I grabbed our Carolina T-shirts out of the dirty clothes. Can't imagine how awful the 10-foot radius around us must have smelt...probably something akin to what Paul described as "fragrance from death to death."

Since majoring in Greek in college, this passage in Paul's writing has always made my mind leap to ancient Greek religious practice. It's almost certainly why he used such an image, the Corinthians were smack in the middle of Greece. Animal sacrifice in pagan religion was meant to appease the gods. The basic principle was that the pleasant scent of the burning would put the often temperamental gods in a better mood, and perhaps stave off whatever plague or ill-fortune they were planning against you. In a way, it was like ancient Hebrew sacrifices. But in a way, it was not. The Greek gods were selfish, pompous, fickle, and overall, kind of annoying. You had to do things a certain way to keep them on your side. The structure of whole sacrificing system for the Greek gods instilled this conditional, I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine between the gods and the people. Sacrifices to YHWH, God of the Hebrews was intended not to instill some sort of conditional view of God, but rather to teach the people about the gravity of sin. Literally, "the wages of sin is death." Christ was the ultimate sacrifice, while the lambs, goats, rams, bulls, etc. were all models of Christ to come.

So literally here, we are the aroma of the sacrificed Messiah. And the aroma is for God, but in the sight of others, both believers and non-believers. My conviction as I engaged with this passage, particularly as a campus minister working with students to define what it means to be missional on the college campus, is that we draw a very clear line between Community and Evangelism in what we do. According to Paul here, that line is absolutely non-existent. We who are Christians shall be an aroma of Jesus Christ for the smelling of God our Father in the sight of our friends who follow Jesus and in the sight of our friends who don't. This obviously doesn't mean flaunting spirituality or religiosity. Jesus taught people not to pray in public to build one's reputation, and Paul warns against being like those who peddle God's word. (Did they have televangelists back then?) The alternative is to be men and women of sincerity. A noble thought. It is nothing more or less than sincerity to share Christ. And assumedly, it is nothing more or less than insincerity not to.

What Happens When You Give an Ill Recluse a Microphone in Front of 300 People?

2009-10-09T04:40:00.000-04:00

My first blog post in two and a half weeks, that's what. Has it really been that long? What a blur. The good Lord knows I've had plenty to blog about. Sorry for holding out on you, blogosphere and faithful readers. I've been off-campus for quite a while now, not able to muster the energy for much more than moving from one piece of furniture to another. Not much sunlight, and definitely not much social interaction. Yet despite an entire month of very limited social interaction, my beloved student leaders and co-workers with InterVarsity at UNC offered an opportunity for me to join four of our students in offering some personal sharing at Large Group last night. The topic of the night was, "Where is God in the midst of suffering?" After much prayer, I felt like I needed to do it.

Wrote out some notes ahead of time, avoided them like the plague (not something I've been very adept at recently) when the spotlight was on. The Holy Spirit gave me the good gift of divine revelation in the heat of the moment. Microphone on. Knees wobbly from a combination of intense hunger (my appetite is never good before speaking in public) and unbelievable bodily fatigue. To be honest, I wasn't in the mood for new revelations, unprocessed nuggets of "wisdom." Earlier in the day would've been great, you know, when I had some time to turn my word vomit into an eloquent presentation. But I was not meant to be eloquent on this night. I was meant to be real and honest.

And this is my now-slightly-more-processed nugget of divine revelation. Back in 2002, when Mom had her first bout with cancer, I noticed that when everyone was freaking out (What if she dies? What will life be like without her?), I was calm. I told myself, and my family, "It's okay, she's gonna be alright, God will take care of her." I believed that. And hey, not bad for a 16-year-old, if I do say so myself. In 2006, for round 2, I had a similar approach, this time even more confident given the 100% success rate Mom had at beating cancer into remission. At 21 years, I was still apparently optimistic in times of crisis. August 2009 punched a serious hole in all my optimism. And here's my wonderfully divine revelation. My "optimism," my "faith," that Mom was going to be okay was actually based on an inherent lie. In 2002, it was based on relative inexperience of serious tragedy. It wasn't based on "God is good," or "God is Healer." It was based on, "There's no way God will let her die this soon." In 2006, it was based on my very limited experience of serious tragedy avoided. "If not 2002, why 2006?" In 2009, I didn't have time to feign shallow, essentially faithless optimism. "Your mother is sick" was immediately followed by, "It's probably a matter of weeks," and "There's not really anything we can do at this point in time." Her liver was failing before we even knew she had cancer again.

And God was gracious that way. Actually, these last few weeks of rest and retreat, though certainly rife with cabin fever, have shown me a number of ways that God has been gracious through all of this. He used Mom's desire to carry this alone to prevent me from going back to my "That can never happen/It will be alright" optimism. He has used this mono to give me the time and space to rest and reflect, to get to know him, and myself, a whole lot better. And he went ahead and let me have all the symptoms, with the exception of spleen-explosion, just to make sure I didn't try to go back to work too soon. And these are just a couple examples out of many ways that the Lord has been gracious through the last two and a half months. And now, praise and thanksgiving be to God alone, my strength (when I am strong) is based on a faith that God is working for the good of those who love him, and my weakness (when I am not strong) is always welcome before a God who can and will be my strength at all times. I have accepted weakness these last few weeks as I lay ill in bed. I have accepted weakness as a part of me, perhaps for the first time in my life. And letting go of my compulsion to feel (to myself) and appear (to others) strong has been one of the most freeing things I have ever experienced.

The centerpiece of all this is the beautiful fact that God's approach to suffering is not an empty "It will be okay." Nor is it a heartless "I will use this for the good of the Kingdom." Though it definitely will be okay (in the eschatological end, or new beginning, however you look at it) and it most certainly will be used for the good of the Kingdom. But God's response is not primarily utilitarian. I like this now disbanded band, Clem Snide, despite their lead singer Eef Barzalay's decidely bitter approach to religion. No sense in letting differing ideologies ruin my taste in music. In their song, "God Answers Back," Barzalay sings from the perspective of God...

I need you just as much as you need me
And the flower-loving bees
Your blood will color every sunset
Your tears will help me grow some trees

It's an ugly image of a primarily utilitarian deity. Utterly incomparable with my Heavenly Father, Creator, and Lord. My God's primary response to suffering is sympathy, literally. It's a Greek word, directly transliterated in the English language. Sumpatheia literally is "suffering with." God's first order of business when suffering was first experienced by human beings was to set in motion a historical chain of events that would make room for God to incarnate himself in human form in his Son, Jesus Christ, so that he could lead a life decidely different from ours in that it was righteous, but decidedly similar to ours in that he experienced immense suffering. Our shed blood isn't for coloring sunsets, nor our shed tears for growing trees. To my knowledge, suffering entered a world in which those things already existed. Our shed blood and shed tears are a) generally quite miniscule in comparison to Christ's, and b) simply ways that God colors not sunsets but our character, and ways that God grows not trees but our likeness to his own righteous self. Redemption carries a delightful exchange rate: we give over our suffering, we receive back eternal life in the future that is without suffering, and abundant life in the present that understands suffering's laughably temporary sting.

Well, this sofa's getting a bit dull. To the recliner I go...

Spiritual Lessons of Mononucleosis

2009-09-21T17:55:00.000-04:00

TMI Disclaimer: this blog post may contain way too much information about my recent medical history. TMI is usually a line of which I am entirely oblivious, my sincerest apologies in advance.

The human body is a curious thing. Turns out that headache and the night sweats were the first of several symptoms of mononucleosis, which I tested positive for last week. Since then, I have developed the worst sore throat of all time, a full-body rash, and most recently, an overproduction of saliva. That makes sleeping an interesting endeavor. When my pride gets over the fact that I will drool, and drool a lot, I guess I will then be able to sleep. Until then, you can go ahead and count insomnia among my symptoms as well.

What we misunderstand about diseases is that we assume it's these sorts of things that diseases cause. That's sort of it, but not exactly. Actually, the headaches, the rash, the drooling tendency, are my body's response to my disease's inherent badness. Ah yes, immuno-response. Please forgive my love-hate relationship with immuno-response. I mean no harm. It's just a little bittersweet, that's all. I know that I have so much, shall I say, snot and spit, in my head for a very good reason. I have something in my body that is destructive and dangerous, and so my body is trying earnestly to create more fluids so that it can expel the virus through said fluids. That it gives me a sore throat and makes me drool is mere happenstance.

Now, of course, none of this is all that interesting to you. Unless you're one of those bioscience types. I'm not. But it's taught me something very intriguing about Christ, in particular his Body, the Church, Christian community, what have you. It's taught me, namely, that community is something that not only has needs, but more specifically, it is something that needs healing. Bodies need healing. His Body is no different. Mono has taught me that at the very worst, significant pain comes with the Body's process of healing (like my sore throat), and that at the very best, mild annoyances are sure to be a side effect as well (like me drooling all over myself). What do we need healing from? You name it. We're people. We're people with bodies that suffer pain and sickness all the time; we're people with spirits that come together into community, forming one Body, the Body of Christ, and all of our spiritual germs intermingle and create all kinds of baggage and mess. Of course, we should not think for even one moment that God did not intend it to be this way. Sometime, after all of these mono symptoms blow over, I'll feel great, like a new man, and I will be so grateful for my health. In the same way, our messy, complicated, dysfunctional, heavy-laden community is a beautiful process for us in making a broken and sinful people whole and perfect again. It's wonderful, beautiful, and it looks something like this...

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. -Paul's letter to the Ephesians, chapter 2, verses 19-22, English Standard Version

And that is why the community must be made perfect. It houses the Spirit of the Living God. It would be irreverent to offer anything less than something radiantly beautiful, flawless, and exquisite. We just have to acknowledge that at times it will be painful and annoying. And that sometimes we will just have to drool in our sleep. Or, maybe that's taking the metaphor too far? Maybe next time we'll spend more time unpacking the hidden significance of my full-body rash. Whatever the people want!

My Godsend of a Headache

2009-09-11T13:32:00.000-04:00

Thought I would let that last post sink in a bit. I've heard from people who didn't even know Mom that my tribute brought them to tears. The post was more for my own sake than anyone else, but I'm glad that the blogosphere made it possible for you to read it as well.

Now, some time removed from all that happened, it's been hard to plug back into life and ministry. Coming off my second week back in ministry with UNC IV, I wish I could say I'm loving life, feeling great, and fully recovered from all that my family and I went through last month. But that would be a bald-faced lie.

Truth be told, after one week of work, a huge headache came on that has now been plaguing me for an entire week. I've had a fever, inexplicable fatigue, a sore throat, and I've woken up every night this week freezing cold but soaked in sweat. My doctor attributes it to stress, but ordered a brain MRI for me yesterday just to be safe. The results are pending.

For years, in moments of crisis, my sister and I have been the solid rocks for our family. I would say that Ashley holds everything together on the logistical, practical side of things. Me, I'm more on the spiritual side of things. To divorce anything from the divine presence of the Lord would be a huge mistake, and I have always felt my role to be making sure we remain centered in the Lord throughout moments of crisis. I think we've always tried to occupy these positions of fortitude outside of ourselves. I know, at least, that I have. Make sure everyone else is good, worry about myself later. And then "later" never actually becomes "now," and eventually just becomes "never." Nothing wrong with that, right? Shoot, that's noble, selfless, righteous. And a little thing I like to call spiritual suicide.

Finally, it's all beginning to catch up with me. And the many attempts the Lord has made to communicate my erring ways to me have failed, so he had to be a little more obvious. Headaches and night sweats it is. Just last week, my co-worker and friend Alex spoke to our students on the story from Mark 2 about the four friends who bring their paralytic friend to Jesus so that he can find healing. There's so many people in the house Jesus is in that they can't get in, and so instead of go in through the front door, they cut a hole in the roof and lower him down on a mat right to the feet of the Lord. He ended his talk with a challenge. There are typically three ways we struggle in regards to this passage, what Alex calls "Mat-independence (I don't need to be on the mat; I'm not paralyzed!)", "Mat-addiction (I don't ever want to get up)", and "The Carolina Way (I need to always be carrying the mat, never lying on it myself, never admitting vulnerability or weakness)." We all had the chance to respond by writing our particular struggle on an index card, and submitting it to a makeshift mat, symbolically submitting it to the Lord. I knew immediately my issue. I wrote on my card, "Time to get up." See, I always think I'm being too weak, too vulnerable, and that I just need to toughen up.

So God performed the reverse Chumbawamba on me. "I get back up! I get knocked down again!" And I could've sworn it was time for me to get up from the mat. But one really awful headache and a week's worth of night sweats later, God's put me right back down on that stupid mat. Doesn't he know that I need to be up and at 'em, ready to serve, ready to carry the mat for some other folks?

Actually, he knows more than I ever could about John Farmer. He knows the number of hairs on my head (significantly lower each and every day), as well as the amount of stress in my head, and the amount of sadness in my heart. And he knows that right here is where I need to be right now. So it seems that Fall 2009 is and will continue to be my lesson in doing ministry without the pretty edifice, and doing life with all my deficiencies visible. Should be fun. I have a feeling the following passage will take on a lot more meaning for me over the next few weeks and months...

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. -Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 7-18, English Standard Version

Great, now I have Chumbawamba stuck in my head...

16 Days, and an Eternity

2009-08-27T12:20:00.000-04:00

My last post went up the morning of August 3. Fitting. That afternoon, I found out that my mom was very, very sick. Not throwing up sick. Not sneezing a lot sick. Liver failing sick. Perhaps only a few weeks to live sick. She died 16 days later. How we got to that point is movie-worthy.

Three years ago, I was a senior in college. Mom's dad had had a major health scare in June. I rushed home to be with Papa, as well as Granny, Mom, and my aunt. My sister soon followed from Texas. A tumor had grown on his pituitary gland, and blood thinners for some leg clots caused his pituitary to rupture. We thought he was done for certain. He was sent for emergency surgery at UVA. Against all odds, he lived through surgery and fought through some hard months as doctors tried to figure out the right balance of medication to do the work that his pituitary used to do. In addition, he lost his eyesight in the surgery. It was a hard few months (and years since) for our family. That September, Mom called me and told me that the ovarian cancer that she fought into remission back in 2002 had returned. She told me and Ashley, but asked that we not inform Papa and Granny of this news, so as not to burden them with this on top of everything with my grandfather. I left college for a week to be with my mom in the hospital for her surgery and recovery. The post-surgery report was interesting. The tiny little tumor that had come back had shriveled up and died inside her body. It was curious, to be sure. I'd never heard of cancer doing that, but we took the good news and ran. My mom left the hospital, recuped her body, and went back to work.

After her surgery in 2002, I had had the privilege of escorting Mom down the aisle at Ashley's wedding. Eight months thereafter, she witnessed Ashley's college graduation, and my high school graduation. In July of 2003, she helped her eldest child move to Texas. Then in August, she took me to the University of Richmond to drop off her baby boy at college. It was like she beat cancer so she could be who she needed to be for us, for all the things we were going to be doing with our lives. After she beat cancer again in 2006, she saw me graduate from U of R that next spring. She saw me into my first year working with InterVarsity at Roanoke College. In the summer of 2008, she helped me to move to Chapel Hill for my first permanent placement with IV at UNC. That fall, she came down to help me pick out Julie's engagement ring. She wanted me to choose the purest, cleanest, most beautiful diamond I could afford. She probably would have helped me pay if I had asked her to. She was always there for the planning of our wedding, doing whatever we asked her to do to help us, and then some things we didn't even think about. Just this past May, she joined me at Julie's graduation from Richmond, and just two weeks later went out with my sister in Texas to celebrate her graduation from business school. A month later, Mom was right there with me, sending me off into marriage with my wife. What we found out the afternoon of August 3, 2009, was that all of these things she had witnessed since October 2006, all of these acts of love, she had done in the midst of receiving treatments for a cancer that just wouldn't quit on her this time. It hadn't curled up and died, but rather, it slowly began to spread all over her abdominal organs. But my mom was just as stubborn as that stupid cancer was. It would not prevent her from being our mom. It would not keep her from supporting us at graduations, or from helping her pick out the perfect ring for her soon-to-be daughter-in-law, or from being so proud at our weddings.

She never told us about the cancer that she fought from 2006 to 2009 because she didn't want it to get in the way of those things. She didn't want her life, her fight, to get in the way of our lives. And it didn't. Bless her stubborn heart, it didn't. She did so much for me and my wife at our wedding in June, that looking back it feels, literally, like she laid herself down for us. It was almost immediate that the tables began to turn on her. It was after our wedding that there began to be noticeable changes in my mom's energy level, and zest for life. The cancer began to get the edge. By late July, her liver was failing, and she became jaundiced. Finally, on August 3, my sister was able to talk to her doctor about why she had gone to hospital. When he began the conversation with, "Your mother is very sick," my sister knew that it was serious.

I am thankful as I look back on this most memorable of Augusts that Ashley and I were able to take a leave from our specific places of work to spend it with Mom, praying with her, encouraging her, prepping her meals, administering her medication and physical therapy. We saw her strength clear as day in those last 16 days of her life. What I had so often seen in her as stubbornness, I realized in actuality was a unique blend of strength, love, and selflessness. She did lay herself down for Ashley and I, and our spouses, whom she considered her children as well. And she wanted to keep fighting to see some grandchildren one day soon. But she just didn't have it in her. The sovereign Lord was ready to call her home.

But in his graciousness, the Lord cared intimately for her in those last days. He gave her 16 days with the two people she loved the most, her two kids. He allowed her caretakers to be not some random medical personnel that she didn't know from anyone, but her two dear children. And on the last day of her life, one of our friends, our church organist, came over to the house. The Lord had given her a message. "Brenda, God told me that I'm to come tell you that I'll help Ashley and John to take care of your grandchildren." It was Wednesday, August 19. And she may have been comatose at that point, but that was the last thing she needed to hear. Soon thereafter her very labored breathing became slower, more at peace. And at 10:00 PM, she took her last breath.

Now, one week later, I'm thinking about what it will be like to return to Chapel Hill. To go back to life as usual. And I realize I won't do that; I'll never go back. I can only go forward, to life after Mom. To a life that doesn't just make her proud, but that in actuality carries on her legacy. See, her legacy was, is, and always will be raising up two kids in a single-parent home, and making sure we didn't become statistics about broken families. Just as she laid herself down these last three years that we would be able to live life normally, she's laid herself down these last 24 years since my parents' divorce that we would have a normal childhood and a thriving young adulthood. She raised us to be followers of Christ and faithful members of our community. Her legacy is not herself, the things she loved or the things she did. Her legacy is Ashley, and her legacy is me. My sister and I will write her legacy from here on out. There are many things to be thankful for, Christmas gifts, a house and home, a good education, help on the engagement ring, but they are all so small by comparison to what I am most thankful for.

Thanks Mom, for your life. I love you, and I'll miss you. Until we are together again, worshipping the Lamb into eternity. And thanks also in advance, because I know you will have my bed neatly made, just so that I feel at home.

Trick, or Treat, or Both?

2009-08-03T09:00:00.000-04:00

So I'm working up my blogger endurance to where I can post a little more frequently. A couple things are preventative here. One is clearly my perfectionism. I can't put mediocre work out there for everyone. (I know what you're thinking. "This is the good stuff?!") Yeah, yeah. The other is just straight-up busyness. I don't know how the more proficient bloggers do it.

So my wife and I rented the recently released stop-motion animation movie, Coraline. A solid addition to the I-think-these-people-tried-to-make-a-kids'-movie-but-totally-failed genre. Or maybe they didn't intend it for kids. But the PG rating and the animation sure throws me off. It's got some pretty intense scenes. The thing I love about fantasy-tinged movies is that they can bend and break rules more realistic movies must abide by. Hard to pull off metamorphizing tricks like you see in fantasy movies without going the unfortunate way of the Transformers blights. If you're going to turn a chidren's book or toy into a movie, trying to make it as realistic as possible defeats the purpose. Can't wait for this, by the way! But I digress...

Without revealing plot spoilers, I'll offer what I took away from the movie. It attempts to make the point that maintaining the mentality of a child is a risk-reward endeavor. It's Coraline's adventurousness that both gives her life meaning and also leads her astray into the throes of darkness. The antagonist of the movie lures her into immense danger by way of wonderful treats, great food, luscious desserts, wondrous circus and theatrical shows, and a beautiful garden that from the aerial view looks just like Coraline. As Coraline begins to realize the evil intent behind these things, the appearance of everything in this begins to fade. Rather than appearing to be very lush, everything begins to actually look dead and decayed.

There's some reality to this. If you think about it, this is sort of the way evil works. I mean, there's the obvious Garden of Eden example. It continues to work this way today. How often does what begins as sweet romance end up in terrible tragedy, a conduit of human brokenness that results in immense pain or even death? Or the hundreds and thousands of kids that get sucked into gang life or organized crime through the edifice of "friends and family." Let's not forget the operations of Al-Qaeda, which covers its despicable actions with the "religious inspiration" card.

Yet, as one of the more affecting songs I've ever heard reminds me, I would be robbing myself of vital self-awareness to stop at pointing at far off examples of evil covered over by beauty or virtue. I do this myself all the stupid time. Almost everything "good" that I do for others is shrouded with selfish intent. Self-aggrandizement. Self-advancement. Self-assurance. All of the above. It all starts innocently, of course. Because that's how evil presents itself to us.

The question is, when we start to realize it's evil, what do we do? When the pretty face begins to fade, and we can acknowledge that something we are doing or about to do is rooted in evil intentions, do we go through with it? Or do we go running as fast as we can back to reality, back to goodness, back to righteousness? This means running as fast as we can back to the cross on which Jesus died. There is nothing more real, more apparent to a stupid man's eyes, than a perfect God paying off his own wrath that was due to sinful man. That reality is so ridiculous it can't be a trick.

Still Very Muddy Waters

2009-07-24T10:03:00.000-04:00

I live in one of the most liberal towns you'll find in the South. Carrboro boasts of socially progressive viewpoints and immense freedom for personal expression. No matter where I may fall on a given political issue, I enjoy being in Carrboro for what it is. Yet even in this hyper-liberal justice-oriented town, we have problems like this.

And, of course, just last week, there's been the uproar over the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, of all places. At first, it was easy to label the police officer as a racist. After all, Dr. Gates is a noble, respected, accomplished scholar. At the same time, the AP reported today that Officer Crowley was actually asked by an African-American police commissioner earlier in his career to educate police recruits on racial profiling. Barack Obama's comments on it certainly haven't helped those Americans looking for something to exacerbate. Of course, who knows what happened in the heat of the moment. What I think we can all assume is this. Both Dr. Gates and Officer Crowley seem to be honorable men. Yet, the tension surrounding race leads them both into stances of defensiveness against one another.

And what I realize is this. We are horribly defensive people. In our culture, there's no way this sort of thing gets reconciled, because we still struggle the concept of "I'm sorry." Especially in an issue so hotly contested but rarely addressed, the defenses go up hard and fast, and we are still miles and miles from paradise.

So yes, just another blog post admiring how far we've come, but lamenting how far we have yet to go. But it's easy to get caught up in the length of the trip, when actually the most rewarding thing is to enjoy your part in the journey. Sure, it makes a big stink when things like this bring light to our unfortunate circumstances. But when we make strides in our relationships, with our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends, it becomes clear why it is worth struggling through the mess of reconciliation to get to the other side.

Invoking the Muse

2009-07-23T10:41:00.000-04:00

I’ve postponed starting a blog for a couple years now because so many of my blogofriends have such catchy titles. It’s intimidating to try to come up with something concise, subtle, and catchy. And maybe this one doesn’t fit those descriptions, but I’m going with it anyways, thanks to Virgil, God rest his pagan soul. The fourth of Virgil’s pastoral poems in the Eclogues starts out, “Sicilian Muses, grant me a slightly grander song./Not all delight in trees and lowly tamarisks.” The Eclogues are 10 poems that the epic poet wrote before any of his other works, all of them from the perspective of shepherds, farmers, lowly rural people. At times political, at times romantic, and at times crude and humorous, all are miniscule in setting, but often more extravagant in topic. Among these, the fourth poem was said by some of the early church fathers to be Messianic. It’s not a stretch. It exhibits ridiculous, and as far as we can know unplanned, parallels to the prophet Isaiah, and strong Messianic language akin to that of the Christian tradition. Written in the political turmoil following Julius Caesar’s assassination, it writes of a hopefulness for a better future, brought on by the advent of a great ruler. His language about a virgin, a newborn baby boy, and nullified sin is what sent the early church fathers for a loop.

In any case, the poem in full is worth a read. But I have borrowed for this blog’s title a phrase from the first line. I am referencing this line alone, apart from the poem as a whole, for the poet’s emotion in writing it. The poet acknowledges his place of relative insignificance, being out in the countryside, but seeks to harp on things more grandiose than his trivial life, as if to say, “I may operate out here where no one sees, but what is about to take place in Rome is a huge moment for us all. After all, y'all must be tired of all this talk of sheep anyway.” In my work as an InterVarsity campus minister, significant things come up all the time – matters of life and death, particularly. Not to mention matters of love and hatred, friendship and romance, the divine and the humane, and so on and so forth. Yet I rejoice that I lead a very day-to-day, routine-oriented life, that impacts a very small amount of people. And that's the case with most of us. The vast majority of us make decisions that leave marks on the world that pale in comparison to the marks which, say, a president, or a writer, or an athlete may leave. I am thankful for my relative insignificance.

Yet, commonness is not the sign of insignificance. Just because all of us experience these things, that does not make them any less significant. Which is why the shepherd could offer his slightly grander song. And so here I also set out with a slightly grander song. Thanks for reading.