Predestination, Providence and Tolkein

On one hand, I am very religious, and always have been. But, as I listen to religious people of our time describe their outlook on life, their view of God and other people, I feel very distant from the normal Christian views of this society. I am talking about Christianity, because I don't hear enough about how other religions represent faith.

But, Christianity in the U.S. is something I was raised in and something I hear about all the time, whether I want to or not. And, the majority of what I hear is so foreign to what I experience and what I believe. And, the main thing I don't believe has to do with the common belief that God plans all things out ahead of time and that everything that happens is what God wills to happen, and that all things are part of a good plan that was worked out long, long ago.

I don't believe this and don't experience this in my faith. I believe in God who is in a real relationship, a living, dynamic relationship with this creation. I believe in God's complete goodness and how that is violated again and again in this world. And, yes, I believe that a lot of things happen that should never have happened, and can in no sense be called "part of God's good plan." And, I believe that God's goodness is the most powerful force in all the world and that this goodness will eventually overcome. But, God's goodness is hidden in the present time and God's power is hidden in the present.

My reality is a lot more like Tolkien's Middle Earth, than the reality envisioned by so many Christians. This thing we are going through on earth is a real struggle. God is the greatest character in this struggle, but the struggle is real. It is not as if you can step aside from life and say: "well, it doesn't really matter, because God's will will be done anyway." No, somehow God has allowed his will to get all mixed up with the screwed up human will on earth. And, somehow God means to work through this all so that human beings can learn to will the good, the good that God has always willed, but which has not always come to pass.

Creating out of Nothing

The ancient doctrine of the Church is that God created all that there is out of nothing. In Genesis 1:2 it says: "And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

It is hard to describe nothingness without giving it some characteristics that make it seem like something.

But, this creation out of the void, or out of the chaos of "nothingness" is not just an abstract teaching of Judaism and Christianity and Islam. This teaching about creating out of chaos is deeply rooted in the experience of living as a human being in this world.

If we share any likeness with God, as scripture says we do, surely we share this: to have our little spirits move upon the face of the deep, to face the empty void and to will order out of chaos, meaning out of despair, and something out of nothing. God is, of course, the Great Spirit who broods over the chaos of the world. But, each of us, broods over our little world, seeking to create against the forces that would bind us and have us simply give in to the void.

Now, I admit that I am taking a very traditional teaching and giving it a certain existential meaning. And, I guess that if you forget that our existential struggle takes place within the context of God's creative movement, then you could end up with the kind of despairing struggle of many early 20th century existentialists, who felt that they were carrying on their struggle to create out of nothing in a universe that was silent to their deepest hopes and needs.

But, these existentialists like Sartre and Camus, and earlier philosophers like Kierkegaard, really did hit upon something at the very core of being human. This struggle for meaning in a world that denies meaning or at least shakes traditional ways of finding meaning, is certainly at the heart of the modern (and, post-modern)thinking and feeling of so many of us.

The remarkable thing about human beings is their ability to begin again, to start over, to look into the nothingness and will somethingness, to stand in the darkness and summon the courage to say "let there be light," because in the beginning, the universe was spoken into being by the Courage of the Great Spirit who looked directly into the emptiness of chaos and nothingness and said: "Let there be light."

For those who face the void often in their experience of life, more courage is required. But, that courage flows into our souls from the Creator whose light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

Thinking about Egypt

Egypt has been such an important country/civilization in the history of the world. The world knows of the Pharoahs, the pyramids, the wonders of an ancient civilization. I heard reports about the city of Alexandria, Egypt in turmoil from demonstrations against the government. Alexandria is such a well-known name to anyone who has studied church or world history, as Alexandria was the intellectual center of the early church (Carthage and Antioch have some bragging rights as well). But, Origen (born in the second century, a.d.) and Athanasius were both from Alexandria. Origen who is probably the greatest Biblical Scholar of all time laid the foundations for theologians and biblical scholars who followed him.

Egypt was the land in which God was revealed as the God of Israel was manifest as a God of history who took action for the oppressed Hebrews in history. Of course, God confronted the power of Pharoah, to expose that Pharoah was afterall only a human being, no matter how much he was worshipped and now matter how divine he seemed to be.

Egypt, the land of learning, the land of bondage, and later the land which became home to Christianity and some of its greatest leaders.

I pray for Egypt and all that it is going through in the hopes that the "revolution" that seems to be going on will lead to a new day of real freedom and dignity and justice for a nation that has been at the center of human civilization for a long, long time. In the early days of the Church, Egypt had a great influence and close connection to other African peoples to its south who lived along the great Nile River. If Egypt moves in a good direction, maybe its influence will bind it to its fellow Africans of the Nile Valley as closely as in the past.

The Republican Agenda on Health Care and Immigration

It seems to me that the Republican Party's callous attitude towards Immigration and Health Care Reform is clearly opposite the way of fairness and mercy, and that makes it so much easier for me to know where to stand on political affairs. I am confident and clear in my soul in saying I stand against the Republican Party on the matter of how to deal with Immigration, because their stand does not show compassion towards the stranger and outcast in our land. With regard to Health Care Reform, if you have much experience at all in this society, you know many people who have suffered deeply from not having health care insurance or affordable health care insurance. To think we can simply go on and ignore that, seems very, very callous.

We have enough of a conscience in our country to require treatment of uninsured persons in emergency situations, but we aren't honest enough to admit that so many of those who appear with emergencies are the uninsured who could not afford to get regular check-ups or get medical care for a problem before it became life-threatening. Truth is, in many cases, the lack of care is devastating. A woman had symptoms of a serious gastro-intestinal problem, but was still in a probationary period at work, so that she had no medical insurance. By the time she got her medical insurance through work and went to get checked, her cancer was so far advanced that all the doctors could try to do was try some last ditch efforts at chemotherapy and control her pain for the last six months of her life. Now, this woman would almost certainly have died from this cancer, but with early detection/treatment, she might very well have lived two or three or four or more years like another man that I know who had the same type of cancer which was treated aggressively when discovered when symptoms first arose. He had health care insurance. Of course, we can't know exactly how it would have gone for the woman mentioned above, but don't we want her to have as good a chance as the man mentioned? And, aren't an extra two, three, four years of life something of inestimable value?

I commend Barack Obama for having the fortitude to shake up the status quo in this area of health care reform. I have not been terribly impressed with his efforts in Immigration Reform (the last president had a good plan for this, but couldn't sell it to his own party). But, back to Health Care Reform. And, all this complaining about it happening in "back-room" deals! We have so little understanding of how laws are actually made in this country and how politics works at every level (or maybe we just like to pretend). It has been hurtful to the Obama administration to have been as "transparent" as it has been. This country will never accept the way laws are made if it has to see the truth. The public would be shocked if it knew how criminal cases are negotiated and resolved as well. Of course, people make deals. As long as they are not illegal deals, it is both acceptable and necessary in politics and law practice.

Though I certainly am not qualified to address the issues on health care, I certainly am concerned when over 30 million of my fellow citizens in this country have no health care insurance. And, I want to support those who don't want to tolerate this intolerable situation any longer.

The attitudes of citizens around this country on immigration vary greatly. Many of those who are fairly quiet people believe in showing the utmost compassion and decency towards illegal aliens who are here working hard and trying to live among us in peace. But, those who are loud don't agree. The loud people most always get their positions on the news, but loud people are usually wrong in life. They just dont' take enough time to listen and observe what is going on. They are too busy talking and wanting others to observe them.

Political parties are generally dominated by "loud people." Maybe there are some quieter Republicans who are saying some better things. If they are, they certainly need better press agents.

The Gospel of Life and the Gospel of Death

In "The Didache," which is a document of the very early Church (around 150 A.D.) it says: "There are two ways - the way of life and the way of death - and there is a great difference between the two ways." It goes on to set out the things of life and the ways of death.

I am struck today of how we in the Church need to return to a dynamic moral teaching, a moral teaching that arises from the truth of life and the love of life, and not from the fear of life. And, a moral teaching that takes a strong stand against the ways of death.

The ways of death are envy and haste and arrogance and self-seeking and hatred and unfaithfulness and lust and greed. The ways of life are patience and self-acceptance and love and forgiveness and simplicity.

I am sick of the ways of death and have increasingly realized that I have not been able to communicate the ways of life to many young people I have worked with over the years. More on this later. My dog needs to go outside.

Snow Days and Why I Haven't Grown Up

I am sitting here on Monday afternoon, with six inches of snow on the ground. My wife and I both got a "snow day" off from work. I have been out for a couple of walks in the snow.

But, last night I didn't know for sure, so I stayed up late to see if it was really going to snow like the weather forecast had said. I feel asleep around 1 a.m., woke up at 2:30 a.m. and saw a serious amount of snow on the ground. I love snow!

I remember so many good times when I was a child, checking the temperature, knowing it was well below freezing and then knowing that the snow that was starting was going to stick on the roads. We had four or five years of that when I was 8-12. And, we sledded and sledded until we were so cold and tired that we could barely walk home. Those were great times. As I got towards the end of middle school, it quit snowing, or at least that's how I remember it.

When it snowed a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday evening, I took off for a good long walk that night, because when it snows, I always want to get out into it.

I love the way it looks when it snows, and I love the way it smells and feels outside. I guess I have never grown up in some ways, and I'm glad I haven't. I took a small sled down part of my backyard - not any real sledding like I am going to be ready for if it snows again. But, I am still a kid when it snows. I am glad that I still feel that way about it. It makes me feel good about life.

What is Preaching?

I started preaching in early summer of 1989. I was 28 years old and had just become the pastor of two small rural Presbyterian churches in South Carolina. After 17 years of preaching each Sunday in three different pastorates, I have shared the pulpit with the Reverend Sonya McAuley-Allen since the summer of 2006. With Sonya moving at the end of this month, I will be preaching every Sunday again as before.

I have stacks of handwritten sermon notes from over the years. Even though I don't hand=write anything else, I still hand-write most sermons. It is just an old habit. One thing has changed in the past couple of years. Unless I think it was a particularly good sermon, I simply throw away my notes when I am done. I had previously kept all sermon notes. Over the years, a sermon has come to seem less about the notes written in preparation, and more about the communication (or lack) when preached.

And,sermon notes,even when I am preaching, don't seem like "the sermon" anymore. The notes are preparation, but not the only preparation for preaching. There is the readiness of the heart and mind and openness to the moment of preaching. For me, right now, I am hoping to communicate in a very basic way with those who are gathered with me for worship. I don't want to let worship services come and go without making a sincere effort to speak a true word. And, truth to me is beginning to seem like something very simple, even primitive. The many thoughts have to give way to one thought; the jumbled feelings have to give way to a peace that can hold all feelings.

When I reach this way of being during preaching, something good seems to happen. When I don't, even the most interesting ideas seem to fall not only on "dead ears," but to rise from a "dead heart."

Of course, there is always "life" in me - in my heart and soul and body. But, that "life" when cut off from the life of God, has a deathly character to it. Life with the character of death is anxious life, bitter life, envious life, despairing life. Life in union with God's life is creative life, peaceful life, hopeful and purposeful life.