According to a research study published in an online article in New Scientist, conservatives would appear to be hypocrites when it comes to practicing what they preach (HT: boingboing). <pause to allow readers to overcome their shock> The study has to do with online pornography consumption, and finds that states that are the biggest consumers tend to be more conservative and more religious. 8 of the 10 states that consumed the most went for John McCain in last November’s election. How people voted doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but here’s something that does:
Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays – a 1% increase in a postal code’s religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds.
Did you get that? Church folks consume as much porn as everyone else . . . but they do it all with one less day per week. Further,
Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don’t explicitly restrict gay marriage.
There are a number of different directions I could take with this. The most prominent things that come to my mind, though, are the question of whether churches are really being effective at life transformation, and the fact that moral/religious conservatives lack the high ground to be dictating to others what should or should not be allowed. Regular readers of this blog can probably figure out where I’d go with those two things, so I’ll save it (anyone who doesn’t know, but cares anyway can feel free to drop off a comment, and I’ll explain myself a little more).
I’m not noting this stuff as a way of pointing fingers of blame. Let me assure you, I am a Jesus-follower, who commits acts of hypocrisy all the time. I run my mouth, and then contradict what I’ve said through the things I do. It’s just that this makes me want to guard my heart in judging others, in taking pride in my own righteousness, in making my life accessible to people who are less than perfect. I need grace in heaping helpings – these days more than at any other time in my life, trust me on that.
So what’s your favorite vice that you won’t indulge on Sundays? And given that it’s Lent and all, I’m wondering how many people have secretly committed to “giving up porn” for this season. Probably a lot (most in hopes that they won’t return to it after Easter).
Many years ago – back when I was in college – I decided to start seeing a counselor. I don’t remember how long I met with him, but I do know that it was an extremely helpful, formative time for me. This counselor is Christian, and in the cognitive/cognitive-behavioral school of thought. His spiritual orientation was highly cognitive, and I would say that his cognitive orientation was highly spiritual, if that makes sense.
He was big – like really, really big – on getting me to own my identity as a chooser. He used to say things like, “There are no have-to’s.” “You don’t have to do anything.” “You get to do things, you don’t have to.” While I found that mode of thought highly annoying and highly inconvenient at times, I eventually came to acknowledge the truth in it. I am a chooser – I make choices all day, every day. Some are mundane, some less so. The vast majority of choices I make are subconscious – the choice of whether or not to brush my teeth, whether to drive to work or walk, whether to turn on the computer or not. I just do these things. But the truth is, if I slow myself down enough, I can see the choices hanging out back there in the recesses of my mind.
There are some things I don’t get to choose, though. For an extreme example, I could get hit by a drunk driver today and “have to” live the rest of my life without the use of my legs. I do choose my attitudes and responses to a circumstance like that, but I just don’t have the kind of control over my life to prevent all bad things from happening . . . or even cause all good things to happen.
I’m in a phase of life right now where I don’t have a ton of control over some things that are taking place. I’m in a place where the choices I have are limited to how I’m going to respond, how I’m going to manage my attitudes. It is not for me to decide whether or not the circumstances I’m in are fair or just – I just get to choose what I’m going to do with my heart, my words, my prayers. Let me just say that I don’t like this. I want control. I want to change things. I want more choice. But I don’t get that. I can only choose whether to act in love, grace, understanding, and peace. To be clear, I don’t have to do that either. I could (seemingly justifiably) act out of anger, vengeance, and self-protection. But what will be gained in that?
The Kingdom of God is full of choices. Choose ownership over yours today. I will do the same.
Peace friends.
Today is the first day of Lent, the Christian journey toward Easter. I am participating in a Lent Synchroblog, organized by Christine Sine. A number of bloggers and communities will be posting regular reflections throughout the season. Check in at Christine’s blog to explore these. I will be using, and posting reflections on the excellent resource that Christine has prepared – A Journey Into Wholeness: Lenten Reflection Guide . I would encourage you to do the same.
There are so many misconceptions about Lent out there. Having been raised in a non-liturgical Christian tradition, I’m not even sure I knew that it existed until I was in my 20s. In the past ten years, I’ve been much more aware, and have learned some of the value of observing. Some of the misconceptions have to do with the question, “What are you giving up for Lent?” Set aside chocolate, caffeine, television, meat, etc. – as though it’s just something you’re supposed to do. Somehow the sacrifices are able to magically translate into brownie points with God (except we have a gnawing feeling inside that we might not quite be getting it right). Fasting and sacrifice are good, but it’s critically important that we do so with the right motives, setting our hearts right.
David’s famous psalm of repentance (51), which begins with:
Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
later says,
For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.
It’s not about what I do for God, in giving up something I love. It’s about allowing the Spirit to train my senses more completely on Truth.
Lent isn’t always the most pleasant season – fasting and reflection on brokenness reminds of our insufficiency and need for God. But it is important for so many reasons. It sets us in line with God’s generosity toward us. It sets us in right relationship with people around us. It prepares us to celebrate the Resurrection, and the change in our world that results. I am personally walking through a season in which I am acutely aware of my brokenness. May Resurrection hope infuse me, even as I walk in the difficulty of repentance.
Peace to you this season. Unite with God. Unite with the suffering of others.
Filed under: Christendom, denomination, evangelism, spiritual formation, theology, twitter
Despite the fact that my paycheck comes from a major Christian denomination, I don’t typically like to blog about them, er, “us.” Partly because I shudder when using that word – us – because it means I’m complicit in a lot of things I detest. Partly because it’s embarrassing. Partly because I think it’s irrelevant to this blog – I’ve been blogging a heckuva lot longer than I’ve worked for the denom, so what’s it to them (er, us)?
Once in a while, even when I do mention the denom, I’ll do it without naming the denom. All the same reasons as above.
Yesterday, a classmate tossed up a link on Twitter, to a news story that talked about our mutual denomination, and evangelism programs. I literally laughed out loud at points. Laughter was inappropriate, though, because a) it wasn’t supposed to be a funny piece, and b) I should have been grieving.
The article is about how poorly we are doing with our evangelism programs. O.k. STOP, and re-read that last sentence there . . . I’ll wait. Multiple items to chew on there. First, “poorly” is an indicator of success/failure . . . which, of course, we measure . . . by number of baptisms. Not transformation, not community impact, but baptisms.
Next, evangelism programs. The apostle Paul instructs Timothy to “do the work of an evangelist.” Evangelism isn’t a program, it’s the behavior that arises out of an identity. Programs aren’t automatically bad, but the history of evangelism programs – both in our denom and elsewhere – is that they have to be promoted. People in our churches apparently do not do evangelism, therefore, they must be convinced to do it and then trained to do it through these programs. We try to be clever with these programs, and give them catchy campaign names. Like “EKG” – Empowering Kingdom Growth. Like “What Now.” Like “Who Cares.” I swear to you, I’ve made none of those up – they are actual campaigns.
If people aren’t doing evangelism according to our programs, that could indicate a few things. For one thing, it could mean that since we’ve counted previous baptisms, not transformation, we’ve not seen true conversions take place – evangelism is a natural behavior, driven by the Holy Spirit. For another, people who have been converted resist these marketed programs because they inherently know they’re cheesy, ineffective, manipulative, or aimed at the wrong result. For another thing, we’ve turned God into a commodity that needs to be sold.
If we are experiencing God and his Kingdom, Jesus, and the Spirit in a way that changes us deeply, helps us to see the world in a different way, and challenges us to live into a different reality, evangelism will happen all by itself. Not as a result of a program or a marketing scheme.
Filed under: spiritual formation
Without going into all of my motivations for this, I’ll say that the past month or so of my life has been an intense time of introspection, inventory, confession, and renewal for me. One of the things that I’ve recently been coming to grips with is the degree to which over the past seven or eight years I’ve taken on the role and mental state of a tortured idealist. I think I’ve always been pretty idealistic and a perfectionist, but usually infused with a healthy dose of optimism . . . up until the tortured idealist phase, that is.
I think in my shifting toward a radical deconstruction of theology, church culture, calling, and direction there have been a lot of temporary phases. The “angry young man phase,” the “revolutionary subversive phase,” the mystical phase, etc. I’ve cycled in and out of these phases multiple times – let’s keep in mind, that these are postmodern and non-linear phases! But the one that seems to have occupied a larger portion of my life is the tortured idealist. This is the phase where I look at scripture, look at life, look at the Church, look at church history, look at the church of my native culture, and I lament the incongruence of it all. I try to “reimagine” new directions and initiatives, create small spaces of growth, and move forward (whichever direction that may be), but it never seems to be good enough. I feel stunted a lot of times, realizing that when I bring about good changes in one area, I create problems in other areas (kind of like all the well-intentioned ethanol as cleaner fuel folks, who inadvertently complicated the world food crisis by re-allocating farm land for fuel production). I’ve taken on exciting new ventures, and done some very cool things, which have allowed me to meet amazing people, be creative, chart my own course, and “be the change I want to see in the world.” And yet, it consistently comes back to the tortured idealist thing – the things I create, the relationships I engage, the work I do seems to fall short of my idealistic/perfectionist notions, and so I’m tortured. Woe is me . . . and unfortunately, woe is anyone who has to spend time with me.
I’ve spent long hours lingering in cynicism. I actually do believe that cynicism has been a major asset for me, but it most certainly has a dark side.
So the question for me here is how to embrace the hopeful things, the small steps of progress, the little glimpses of the Kingdom breaking through, even if I realize that I’ve still got a long way to go? It’s time to embrace those things, and move forward in them with the confidence that “better” may not be perfect, but it’s still better. Otherwise, I take the blessings I’m given, the opportunities I’m given, the gifts I’m given, and I call them rubbish – devaluing those who bless and those who give to me.
I’m committed to living into a different reality going forward. I will likely still cycle through the phases of tortured idealism from time to time, but while it may be a good place to visit, I don’t want to live there any more.
I’ve been too busy to follow the markets much this week, except to note that they’re going down and down and down. I’ve blogged negatively about some of my thoughts on this . . . mostly in a cranky sort of way.
So how about this for a change of pace? Perhaps one of the most Jesus-y responses to all of this financial chaos, uncertainty, and fear is to do something completely counter-intuitive. We are the wealthy young rulers, right? Selling all our posessions and giving the money to the poor is unlikely. But what if we took on a challenge, and looked at the Dow Jones Industrial Average chart over the past thirty days? And whatever the percentage of loss turns out to be (note: I have not even looked at this myself), we commit to giving that same percentage of our gross monthly income to the poor? That’s an over-and-above commitment to what we’re already giving to churches, non-profits, etc.
This meltdown is likely to pinch all of us . . . but what about those on the bottom of this economic system? Whose going to look out for them, while the rest of us are looking out for ourselves, and the corrupt CEOs that we’ve been bailing out?
Maybe we could turn this painful time into a time of joyful generosity. Just a thought.
Filed under: denomination, emerging church, family, friends, spiritual formation
In odd moments when I haven’t been just chaotically busy lately, I’ve been reflective about change. If I could have seen the 2008 version of me ten years ago, I’m not sure I would believe my eyes. Ten years ago I was in my late 20s, and settling into what I thought at the time was a pretty stable life period – married a couple years, finishing grad school, home owner, rising through the ranks of church leadership on my way toward being a professional Christian, etc. Definitely doing my part to fulfill the supposed American dream.
I don’t have time to go into the countless shifts that have taken place since then.
The thing about all this change that has me reflective, though, is the ways in which some significant relationships in my life have become strained. Some are strained because of differences in theology/doctrine. Some are strained because of differences in praxis. Some are strained because of differences in politics. Some are strained because of differences in culture. To be honest, some of these relationships are well beyond just strained – they’re hanging by a thread.
The cold reality of all this is that in a manner of speaking, it’s all my fault. It’s not the other people that have changed so much, it’s me. Everyone changes and shifts over time, to be sure, but I’ve done quite a bit more than my quota, and I know that’s caused some pain to people I care about. They don’t enjoy spending time with me, they sometimes feel as though I’m too negative, too cynical. They try to work with me, and I just don’t go along with the plan very often. I ask annoying questions, push back on assumptions, make overly stringent opinionated statements. Not the kind of stuff I used to do.
To complicate things even further, I have to say that I really have no plans to go back and undo these changes, or do what it would take to fix these relationships. Sure, I can (and should, and may actually consider some day) be a bit less cynical, a lot more hopeful, and perhaps even more of a team player in certain circumstances. But really, all I have to offer is incremental change, and some of these relationships are in need of serious rehab. It’s just not likely to happen – not unless they change in my direction, because I’m not going back. That sounds really arrogant, but it is what it is, I guess.
I happen to know from dozens of conversations with co-conspirators that I’m pretty normal in this regard. Heck, compared to some friends, I have a dream team of relationships. So what are we to do with all of this? I and others might disagree, but in Shane Claiborne’s words, how can we find the space to “disagree well” with each other? No matter how right I think I am and how wrong I think others are, they’re still brothers and sisters in the Kingdom. I’m called to love and serve them, not blast them and make their lives difficult. I’m not expecting things to be smooth sailing – just a way of communicating love and respect, even if we don’t see eye to eye.
Ultimately it comes down to how valuable the relationships are, and how much effort we’re willing to make to preserve them. Any thoughts on this?
Filed under: spiritual formation
I recently spent a large chunk of time with someone I value a lot, and who I’ve always thought of as an extremely generous person. I admire the giving attitude and sharing I’ve seen demonstrated over the course of many years. One thing doesn’t quite add up, though – most attempts to give back to this person are met with resistance. “Oh no, don’t do that” or “That’s o.k,, I can do it” or “Let me pay for that.” This goes well beyond simply courtesy statements, too.
It made me ask a question about true generosity – is it possible to be a great giver without being able to also be a gracious receiver?
From my perspective, I found it frustrating to want to share myself and my resources with someone who has given vastly more to me, but to not be allowed to. It was disappointing.
Even as I write this, though, I feel the weight of my own hypocrisy. I often have a pretty difficult time receiving help. People around me offer to do work with me, and I’ll thank them as I’m turning them down. Perhaps the most readily recognizable example of this is during our Thursday community meal times at The Purple Door. I really enjoy cooking for large groups, and putting my heart into it. But during the prep times each week, people will come hang out with me in the kitchen and they offer to help – whether it’s chopping vegetables or stirring a pot, or making some iced tea, and I am not very good at just saying, “Yeah, sure, if you want to make the salad, that’d be great! Thanks, I really appreciate that.” Instead, we sometimes have three or four people standing around talking and watching me run around frantic because I’m late getting dinner finished . . . mostly because I won’t receive help graciously. And don’t even get me started when it comes to asking for help.
I’m sure this says a lot about my inner feelings of inferiority or whatever. But I’m going to set out to be a better receiver. I still love giving and sharing with others, so I won’t stop doing that – but I want to grow in my generosity by just saying “Yes, please” and “thank you.”
SpiritFarmer 