Taking Up Space

Taking Up a Different Space

2006-10-24T09:54:00.000-05:00

Taking Up Space is moving to Taking Up Space. If you link to it, please link to it.

Watching Grass Grow

2006-10-14T09:47:00.000-05:00

A couple of pastors were working on a computer presentation recently and found themselves spending (wasting) a bit of time staring at the little hourglass cursor while the computer was caught in some eternal loop of logic. One of the pastor's said, "When we get to heaven, I don't think we'll spend any time staring at hourglasses."
"That's true," the other replied, "unless maybe we'll understand the physics involved well enough to make the experience meaningful."
Perhaps the things around us are not as trivial as we think. Maybe what makes certain things seem like a "waste" of time is really a problem of perspective or knowledge. The revelation of Creation is deep and multileveled, and we humans don't see the hand of the Creator in it simply because we lack the faith to look. We breathe God's air as though it belongs to us, and this trivializes all the miracles involved.

Spiritual Growth

2005-12-05T18:06:00.000-06:00

Have you ever thought about what it means to grow spiritually? I’ve become convinced that the way many of my Christian friends think of growth is really more like shrinkage or confinement. Our purpose often seems to be increasing specificity. In the process, we make decisions that confine us. For example, we decide whether we believe in infant baptism, or in the rapture. Or we commit to Calvinism over Arminianism. Or we develop a conviction about the appropriateness of any number of gray issues like drinking, dancing, dating, daily Bible reading, etc. There are whole groups of Christians who still think that long hair (or an earring) on a man or short hair (or make-up or pants) on a woman are bad—perhaps even sinful. To be sure, those groups are a bit extreme, but as I look around, I see that even if we don’t go that far, we think of Spiritual growth as the development of and compliance with an increasingly particular set of doctrinal and behavioral standards.

My problem with this is not that it’s wrong to have a well thought out theology or a commitment to behavioral holiness. It is, however, mistaken to think of those as the sole parameters of the spiritual life. When we do, we end up drawing the parameters tighter and tighter. Using the word “growth” to describe this is something of a misnomer.

The solution to this “problem” is to remember—and prioritize—the personal and relational aspect of spiritual growth. In other words, I view my growth as greater and greater personal interaction or depth of fellowship with God or with other people or with creation. Let me illustrate. When I learned to drive a car, I seriously expanded my capacity to interact personally with the world around me. I began to take up more space in the world—I grew. In a very similar way, if I get to know you well, I can begin to understand and interact with the world from your perspective to some degree. You—or your thoughts and feelings—become like a car I can drive around and get a bigger view of things. By knowing you, my horizons are expanded.

Jesus defined eternal life as knowing God (John 17:3). “Knowing” in this case is personal and interactive, not just cognitive and propositional. If I keep this in mind, I will see spiritual growth as being more and more widely traveled in the personality of God. Then I can put my refined theology and careful obedience in their proper place. They are like cars I can drive around to be more engaged with God. Jesus said as much when he said, “He who has my commandments and keeps them; he is the one who loves me; and he who loves Me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”

Divine Comedy

2005-11-18T16:31:00.000-06:00

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts
—from Shakespeare’s As You Like It

I thought of these lines recently in Church. The parson of the day was expounding upon that outrageous promise God makes to his chosen people that everything is working together for their ultimate benefit. The Play, I thought, that drama presented on the stage of creation, is a comedy—a story in which the hero (God’s chosen ones) comes out especially well in the end, and all the tragic situations of the plot (including his own missteps and character flaws) turn out to have contributed to his success.

It strikes me that this is something that makes (or should make) Christians very odd. Since we have read the script and know the outcome, how do we keep ourselves from laughing 24 hours a day like Paul did: “Where, O death, is your sting!?” It may be that we are not laughing because we spend too much time reading the negative reviews. The Modern reviewer ignores the script and calls the play a tragedy, or if he is Postie enough, he sees it only as a War Story played out in the Theater of the Absurd. To such critics, we comedians look like the greatest of fools, but I say the Risen One, our firstborn, the Author and Finisher, justifies my giddiness.

And now, the comedic words of William Cowper:

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
and rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable mines
of never-failing skill,
He treasures up His bright designs,
and works His sovereign will.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
the clouds ye so much dread,
are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
but trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence,
He hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast,
unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
but sweet will be the flower.
Blind unbelief is sure to err,
and scan his work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
and He will make it plain

A Good Saturday Morning

2005-11-12T18:09:00.000-06:00

I spent this morning with two of life’s great pleasures, a great cup of coffee and a really good book. The coffee was Kenyan Kiaguthu Peaberry roasted to the City+ level. Mmmm. The only way to get really good coffee is to roast it yourself, which I’ve been doing for a couple years now. I had roasted some of this Kenyan bean before, but I think I overcooked it. This batch was much better.

The book is called Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt & Certainty in Christian Discipleship by Lesslie Newbigin. If you know me, you’ve heard me talk about Michael Polanyi, the 20^th century scientist and philosopher whose work was the subject of my thesis. Newbigin’s book is a great quick reference for the application of Polanyi’s thought to the Christian life, and I highly recommend it. It’s only 105 pages and is written in a very accessible style. I read the whole thing this morning.

If you’re curious about how Christian thought fits (or doesn’t fit, as Newbigin shows) into classical, modern, or post-modern ideas about knowledge, you should read this book. If you’re one of those young evangelicals that is disenchanted with the hyper-rationalistic hyper-individualistic concepts of Christianity, you should read this book. If you want to figure out whether truth is objective or subjective, you should read this book. If you want to know what is really wrong with fundamentalism or with liberalism (and you won’t find it in what they say about each other), you should read this book.

Here’s a quote to give you the flavor: “The human person is not a mind attached to a body but a single psychosomatic being. The implication of this, of course, is that the gospel does not become public truth for a society by being propogated as a theory or as a worldview and certainly not as a religion. It can become public truth only insofar as it is embodied in a society (the church) which is both “abiding in” Christ and engaged in the life of the world.”

A few weeks back, my friend Jon (who also introduced me to home roasted coffee) wrote an interesting piece for his blog about a recent trend among young evangelicals in which many are departing to more liturgical versions of Church, especially various Eastern forms (by the way, I think the Emergent Church is sort of a wimpy American-consumer version of the same trend). It’s all a sort of pre-modern postmodernism. If we all read Polanyi (or Newbigin’s short version of Polanyi), this trend would evaporate.

By the way, I FINISHED my thesis last week, and after a very helpful proofread from my English professor friend Bob, it has now been shipped to the seminary! I wish I had read Newbigin’s book at the beginning of the process. It is chock full of pithy Polanyian language.

Postmodern Christianity?

2005-10-21T10:26:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for a single resource that discusses various Christian responses to postmodern thought, this is the book you should read. It's one of those "six views" collections with articles from two scholars who reject postmodernism as hazardous to faith, three who embrace postmodern thinking and seek to "revision" Christianity in postmodern terms, and one who adopts what he calls a posture of "dispute."

This last approach, the one I find most appealing, comes from Kevin Vanhoozer, and his essay alone is worth the price of the book. While many (perhaps most) evangelicals are not taking postmodernism seriously enough and some are taking it way too seriously, Vanhoozer is at just the right level of not taking it seriously. Here's a sample:

Why do I prefer a disputational rather than a conversational model of dialogue? Dispute better captures the seriousness of the encounter; something important is at stake in this discussion. Dispute also suggests that I am contending for my position, not simply sharing it. Better: I am contending for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints (Jude 3). Finally, "disputation" has the merit of being a venerable genre of theology, dating from the medieval period. Part of my purpose in the present essay, however, is to revise the notion of disputation so that the focus is on a whole person witness to concrete Christian wisdom rather than a wholly intellectual demonstration of an abstract truth. On this latter point—the necessity of going beyond analysis—I do not dispute with postmodernity but say "amen." To dispute with postmodernity is also to engage it. Christian thinkers cannot go around postmodernity; we have to go through it.

You seminary students should go to the library and make yourself a copy of this article entitled, "Pilgrim's Digress: Christian Thinking on and about the Post/Modern Way." There's a lot of wisdom here for Christians who want to outgrow the individualistic, rationalistic, anti-ecclesial faith of 20th century evangelicalism without becoming stupid.

Christian Nation?

2005-10-13T14:17:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, my Pastor gave a message based on the line in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come.” That got me thinking about how unamerican Jesus is. We tend to think that the best form of government is democracy, but here Jesus is telling us to pray for the imposition of a kingdom.

The Christian Right is sort of famous for claiming that the United States was founded by Christians on the basis of Christian principles. But is the democratic ideal a Christian ideal? The Declaration of Independence says, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends (preserving certain unalienable rights), it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” Compare that to this statement: “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves” (Romans 13:1-2). In this same passage, the essential purpose of government is a restraint on bad behavior rather than a defender of personal rights.

There’s a basic contradiction here. From a biblical view, it seems more accurate to say that the American government was indeed established by God, but that he did so by means that were anything but Christian.

Things your parents wouldn't let you do today

2005-06-27T00:08:00.000-05:00

The other night, I was visiting with my good friends Mike & Annie, Denny & Trisch, and Roger & Helen. Denny & I got to talking about stuff we did when we were kids. He grew up near Columbus, Missouri, and one summer in high school, he and a buddy took a road trip to New York City. I said, “Your parents wouldn’t let you do that today.” We agreed that the life of the average minor seems highly organized and supervised, compared to “the good ol’ days.” I guess it’s safer, but safe is the opposite of adventure. Here’s a couple things I did as a kid that your parents wouldn’t let you do today:

(1) Ride a greyhound bus from Yuma, Arizona to Denver, Colorado alone at the age of 14. It was a 31-hour trip. I had to change busses in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. I swear I’m not making this up.

(2) Take all your high school buddies out water-skiing on the family ski-boat every Saturday (no adult supervision). This included towing and launching the boat. We used to ski on the Colorado River above Imperial Dam north of Yuma. My high-school-senior brother was in charge; I was 14/15. We always had a good time, and we learned a lot about fending for ourselves and staying calm when things went wrong. We also developed a lot of cool tricks, like two guys riding on one pair of skis, or changing the gas line to a new tank without stopping. At one point, Sheldon (big brother) thought it would be cool to have a really long (200 feet) ski rope. You could ski from one bank to the other, but otherwise, it didn’t really add to the experience. One time, Sheldon was driving the boat, pulling a skier, and watching me change gas tanks. He drove the boat right into the tulees (riverbank vegetation). It took us a couple hours to pull the boat out of the tree and back into the river. No harm; no foul. I think it was several years before Dad heard about this.

Got any good stories in this category? Something your parents actually let you do, not just something you got away with.

Polanyians in Dogtown

2005-06-23T22:54:00.000-05:00

Just saw a really cool movie, “Dogtown and Z-boys,” which is the documentary version of “The Lords of Dogtown.” It’s about the little band of boys in the 1970s who basically invented the sport of skateboarding as we know it . Calling it a sport is a bit of a misnomer. It’s competitive, but it’s not ultimately about winning, but about the beauty of human skill—or the skill of creating beauty. For the Z-boys, a skateboard was a way to surf when there weren’t any waves. They had a lot of free time on their hands, and there was a big drought in Southern Cal, so they roamed the neighborhood looking for empty swimming pools to skate in. Concrete waves.

One of the best parts of the DVD is a clip of some of these guys going back to skate at a schoolyard where it all started. One reason I liked this is that they’re all about my age, a bunch of forty-something guys, balding and grey. But they still had the moves; their bodies had them memorized. It’s a great example of the Polanyian concept of indwelling. The really good skateboarder pays attention to the move he’s trying to pull off and almost no attention to the details of how he does it. In his consciousness, the skateboard is part of him—he indwells it. Polanyi (you might remember Michael Polanyi is the subject of my thesis) also proved that freedom and community are critical factors in the process of discovery. This bunch of kids had lots of both. Minimal adult supervision had some bad consequences, too, but these guys shifted the skateboard paradigm. You might say it’s a life wasted on trivia, but I think the skill and physical grace they demonstrate is a work of art. There’s a bit of the image of God here, a bit of truth.

Dispensational rhymes with sensational!

2005-05-27T13:46:00.000-05:00

I was surfing the fundamentalist web when I came across the most fascinating tidbit. Guess what the F in John F. Walvoord stands for... Flipse! Is that not the coolest middle name ever? Here's the internet proof (http://www.walvoordhistory.com/John%20Garrett%20Walvoord.html) just in case you don't believe me.
Our beloved Dr. Walvoord was given his mother's maiden name as a middle name. I guess his parents were early feminists.

Tolerate This

2005-05-23T18:38:00.000-05:00

It bugs me that pluralism and tolerance have become dirty words among many Christians. One good example of this is a book titled Be Intolerant: Because Some Things are Just Stupid by Ryan Dobson, son of James. (The title alone reveals a great deal about what is wrong with the so-called “Christian right” way of thinking.). The assumption seems to be that the best way to deal with rampant moral relativism is to become intolerant people. In other words, when tolerance gets out of hand, we should leap to the opposite pole—a legalistic overreaction that strikes me as more Pharasaic than Christlike.

I would like to suggest that Jesus provides the right model for responding to moral relativism: grace and truth. Jesus certainly had a particular (and perfectly correct) view of the nature of things, including the sinfulness of people. He did not shy away from calling sin sin. But one of the most fascinating aspects of Jesus’ teachings is that it finds Law inadequate. In other words, being intolerant doesn’t get us where we need to be. Naming sin as sin doesn’t effectively deal with it. So in addition to truth, Jesus provides grace. But grace is costly. Demonstrating God’s grace required Jesus to associate with sinners and ultimately to take on himself the ugly consequences of their sin. He dealt with sin by humbling himself among the perpetrators. Being right did not make Jesus a jerk.

When the Bible calls upon Christians to share in the sufferings of Christ, this includes humbling ourselves among people we know are wrong. We should be ready to proclaim and explain the truth, and we should be ready to demonstrate grace. If a young woman is suffering under the burden of raising children born out of wedlock because of her own foolish/sinful choices, we should not just tell her she shouldn’t have slept around. Rather we should share the burden of her sinfulness by providing for her materially, emotionally, and spiritually. In this way, the gospel is demonstrated as well as proclaimed. It’s better to volunteer at a crisis pregnancy center than to picket an abortion clinic.

Just this morning, I heard a great example of this. I was listening to “Fresh Air,” a radio interview program on NPR. Terry Gross, the host, was interviewing a young woman who represented an odd wave of evangelical Christians in Ivy League schools. Revealing her own prejudices, Ms. Gross asked this young woman how she handled the presence of “very out and organized” gays and lesbians. The guest replied, “I have several friends who are gay. They know I think homosexuality is wrong, but that doesn’t keep them from being my friends.” Grace and truth.

Now a couple test questions:

(1) Which of the following is a more accurate description of the American evangelical church?
A) A humble group of people who would give the shirts off their backs to help anyone
B) A proud group of people who want everyone else to shape up

(2) Which of the above is a more accurate description of Christ?

Intolerance is the opposite of humility; it requires dominion. If I am following Christ, I am not in a position to be intolerant. It seems crazy, but it’s the way of the cross.

Bumper Theology

2005-05-21T22:39:00.000-05:00

New contender for dumbest bumper sticker ever...

God Bless America
Don't let him take away the blessing

just what might we do to stop him?

Personal News

2005-05-17T20:32:00.000-05:00

The big news is that I have completed all of the coursework for the Master of Theology degree at Dallas Seminary (thanks to all of you who have prayed for me). The Th.M. is, as far as I know, the most massive (120 hours) Master's degree there is. I think I may have broken the record (previously held by my dad) for most years of successful post-secondary matriculation without earning a doctorate. Even though I've finished all the classes, there is one big project left, the dreaded thesis. Whenever I mention this, people ask, "What's your thesis about?" so I'll tell you. "An Application of Polanyian Epistemology to Contemporary Evangelical Spirituality." That'll teach you to ask people what their Master's thesis is about.

Besides my thesis, I'm also working on finding a job. Please pray about this. I would really like to live in Nashville, so that I could be involved at CBC. On the other hand, the work I'm really trained to do is likely to be at a church, so I can't really set any geographic limits. I do have a MBA degree also, so theoretically, I could work in various management roles in secular business. I'm also looking at teaching jobs and parachurch administrative jobs. I've applied for the Executive Director position at a ministry called the Veritas Forum. I would love to do this job. To begin with, it would be in the Boston area, but theoretically could be done from anywhere.

Unless I end up taking a job somewhere else in the meantime, my current plan is to move back to Nashville the last week of June. This will come as a surprise to many of you whom I've told that I would be moving at the end of May. Well, I got an opportunity to teach another class at the North Texas Professional Career Institute. I taught Pharmaceutical Math (really!) there in the fall semester. This time it's Introduction to Computer Technology. Anyway, that has delayed my departure. When I do return to Nashville, I will be looking for someplace to live. So if you know of anyone who needs a roommate or has a spare room, please let me know.

Hotel Rwanda

2005-05-17T12:05:00.000-05:00

Everyone should see this movie. It raises very interesting ethical/political questions. It’s the story of a man who could not walk away and let people die.
The ethical question is this: If I know someone is being killed and I have the power to stop it, am I ethically obligated to risk my own life to save another?
The political question is this: If such a personal obligation exists, does it extend to nations? Does the United States government, for example, have an ethical obligation to intervene in cases of genocide?

Get it?

2005-05-17T11:31:00.000-05:00

The other day I told a friend of mine about the cool name of this blog. Now my friend is a very smart guy, but I found it necessary to explain the joke, which by definition means it’s not a good joke, a classic case of what my friend Mike would call Searlian humor, which is a nice way of saying “attempt at humor.” Mike also knows my (much older) brother Sheldon. The true test of Searlian humor is this: Sheldon and I are laughing, and everyone else is not.
The reason this happens, of course, is that Searles are a rare class of genius (ask anyone), so our jokes are super-sophisticated. Anyway, I’m pretty sure Sheldon would get this joke.

Here’s a picture of Ockham…

…now you’re laughing. No, “Shaving with Ockham” is not a reference to his hairstyle.