Safe for the whole family?

There is a local Christian radio station that my wife listens to exclusively (or would that be religiously?). The only time I listen is when I am in the car with her. It's not that I'm against Christian music. I don't even listen to FM radio at all. But Christian music doesn't move me like it moves my wife. When it does, it is not the big worship anthems, or the vocal gyrations of the "pop" songs, but rather the quiet, reflective songs that put words to my deepest hopes—and doubts.

The tagline for this local station is "Safe for the whole family." I always wonder, what exactly does that mean? I think they mean that their content and on-air personalities can be trusted not to be objectionable or provocative. And they pretty much deliver on that trust (although I find some of the inane chit-chat of the DJs objectionable just from a communicator's point of view).

I fear, though, that for many, "safe for the whole family" can be a very misleading and even dangerous notion. It infers that there is a safe, protected place where, if we are careful, we can insulate ourselves from harmful influences, harmful thoughts, and harmful acts. In other words, from the world at large.

If there is such a place, I haven't found it, and I've been around almost six decades.

It cannot be found by hiding in the church. Christians by the hundreds are being killed for their faith. Even Christians in countries where there is freedom of religion find themselves mocked, reviled and marginalized. To hide in our "Christian ghetto" with others just like us is to avoid the issues. It is also to avoid being salt and light to a sick and dying world.

Safety cannot be found by hiding behind God. Please notice, I did not say hiding in God. The Psalms alone won't let me get away with that. I simply mean that it is wrong to hide from the world under the robes of God, as if we were chosen because we were holier than those outside. Nope. We were chosen to become holier, but we started out in the same place, and truth be told, we are still probably more like those without our club than we are like God.

We cannot even be safe in Christ. Did He not say that if you want to follow Him, you must "take up your cross"? Didn't the apostle Paul (who never had Christian radio) pray that he would "share in His [Christ's] sufferings" because he (Paul) knew that simply knowing is not the same as sharing? Jesus said: "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28) He was talking about himself. Does he sound safe? I am reminded of Mr. Beaver's comment in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, as he describes the great lion Aslan, a type of Christ: 

“Safe?" said Mr. Beaver."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.” 

The dangers, as I see it, of the well-meant "safe for the whole family" mindset are manifold. Perhaps most of all, it insulates us from the fallen world. It gives us a false notion of purity, a heightened sense of other's sin, and sometimes a dulled sense of our own. It also suggests that true Christianity is best lived right in the middle of the road, away from the dangerous shoulders. But at the edges is where life is truly lived. That's where ministry takes place. That's where love, mercy and grace are most needed. In John 4:1-30, Jesus met the Samaritan woman at a well, not in the temple. She wouldn't be allowed in the temple. The side of the road is where Paul met Christ (Acts 9:1-9). It is where we will find the man beaten by thieves (Luke 10:25-37). Let us not be like the priest and the Levite, who hurried by (perhaps singing a catchy song?).

A safe place. It's a nice place to visit sometimes, but I wouldn't want to live there.

In fact, I can't. And shouldn't.


—Wayne S.

Science or Morality?

There are many things that are “unscientific” but not anti-scientific, things science can’t prove but can’t disprove either—things everyone accepts, like beauty, and love, and morality, and the presence of a self, an “I” in this body, not just atoms. So there’s nothing wrong with being “unscientific.”

...

Today, most people who don’t believe in God are not hard-headed scientists who demand rational proof of everything, but softhearted, compassionate people who are afraid God is too tough, too demanding, too “judgmental,” too moralistic. The primary reason for refusing to believe in God—the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—is moral today.

from Angels and Demons, by Peter J. Kreeft

The Essential Fear of God

Religious fear, or awe, is an essential ingredient of all true religion, yet it has been systematically exiled from modern, “psychologically correct” religion. What irony!—the thing the Bible calls the “beginning of wisdom” is the experience modern religious educators and liturgists deliberately remove or try to remove from our souls: fear and trembling, adoration and worship, the bent knee and the prone heart. The modern God is “something I can feel comfortable with”. The God of the Bible, in contrast, is “a consuming fire”. (See Psalm 103[104]:4 and Hebrews 12:29).

--Angels and Demons by Peter J. Kreeft

Reconciling God of the Old and New Testament

How does one reconcile the loving God of the Old Testament  with the harsh God of the New Testament?

 When I ask this question of students, at first they are shocked,  and then most assume that I have simply misspoken, as I am  prone to do. They typically have heard the question inverted,  along these lines: "How did the mean Old Testament God  morph into a nice guy like Jesus?" I assure them that this time,  at least, I have not accidentally inverted my words. I then observe  that God in the Old Testament is consistently described  as slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, but Jesus  speaks about hell more than anyone else in Scripture. The  word hell doesn't even show up in English translations of the  Old Testament.

—David T. Lamb, in God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist?

Triptych

   I am an admirer of the triptych. A work of art (usually a painting, etching or bas relief sculpture), I appreciate it for its flexibility. It consists of  three separate works, presented as a whole. They may be unrelated to one another (although that is hard to do well), related in some thematic way (color, shape, size, subject), or even contiguous works (a panorama, or a progression of some sort).

   An example of the latter which recently wowed me was Monet's Water Lilies, which I saw at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. A panorama, it measures an astounding 6' 6 3/4" x 41' 10 3/8".

(Click to enlarge)

 What is most moving about Monet's Water Lilies is this scale. Most paintings illustrate large objects (a landscape, a building) in a much smaller frame of reference. Here Monet has done the opposite: he has made a common pond much, much larger than life. Unlike real life, we must look up—and step back—to see it.

  I think this is true, too, of the triptych that is God. He is three distinct parts, but together He forms the panorama of grace. And we must look up—and step back—to even begin to grasp Him. However, it seems we cannot back up far enough. The canvas is infinite in all directions.

  And most impressive of all, He painted it himself.

—Wayne S.

Bonhoeffer on a true leader

The following is an excerpt from twenty-six year old theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's radio address, delivered on February 1, 1933, two days after Adolph Hitler had been elected Chancellor of Germany:

If he understands his function in any other way than as it is rooted in fact, if he does not continually tell his followers quite clearly of the nature of his task and of their own responsibility, if he allows himself to surrender to the wishes of his followers, who would always make him their idol--then the image of the Leader will pass over into the image of the mis-leader, and he will be acting in a criminal way not only towards those he leads, but also towards himself. The true Leader must always be able to disillusion. It is just this that is his responsibility and his real object. He must lead his following away from the authority of his person to the recognition of the real authority of orders and offices.... He must radically refuse to become the appeal, the idol, i.e. the ultimate authority of those whom he leads.... He serves the order of the state, of the community, and his service can be of incomparable value. But only so long as he keeps strictly in his place.... [H]e has to lead the individual into his own maturity.... Now a feature of man's maturity is responsibility towards other people, towards existing orders. He must let himself be controlled, ordered, restricted.

Of course, Adolph Hitler had no intention of allowing himself to be "controlled, ordered, restricted." Yet in reading this, I am reminded of a current leader, one who had allowed himself to become "the idol," and who seems to have little fascination with leading people away from his authority back to the authority of the Constitution [Bonhoeffer's orders] and the people. Thankfully, I do not fear for one second this current leader will kill millions. But his bald attempts to build a "thousand year reign" of entitlements and debt may end up with the nation impoverished and defeated. Again, from the same address:

Only when a man sees that office is a penultimate authority in the face of an ultimate, indescribable authority, in the face of the authority of God, has the real situation been reached.... And this solitude of man's position before God, this subjection to an ultimate authority, is destroyed when the the authority of the Leader or of the office is seen as ultimate authority.... Alone before God, man becomes what he is, free and committed to responsibility at the same time.

The current leader professes to be a follower of Christ, yet not in an orthodox, Biblical way. It is interesting that, the same day as Bonhoeffer's address, Chancellor Hitler also took to the airwaves, offering this appeal "to the God he did not believe in":

May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our Volk!

--Wayne S.

(All quotations are from the book Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas.)

A lone raindrop in the desert

   After spending a few days on the coast of  Kauai, one can be forgiven for thinking that, in the battle of rock versus water, rock always wins. My wife and I witnessed countless huge waves drive fruitlessly into the ancient lava and rock shores, only to have to regroup and come again. These islands, and these rock shores, have stood for millennia  (sorry, young earthers) and have yielded little.

   But not always. On April 1, 1946, a tsunami raked the northern coasts of the Hawaiian Islands. The giant wave blasted a hole in the middle of a small sandstone island that sits right off La'ie Point on Oahu, leaving behind an unique sight.

Click to enlarge

As La'ie Point proves, on occasion the water comes with such force that even stone cannot resist. Here's an interesting paragraph from the book The Lighthouse Stevensons, the story of the Scottish family of lighthouse builders, and the ancestors of author Robert Louis Stevenson:

When finally finished, long after Louis had departed for more promising places, the breakwater stood intact for four years until a spectacular storm in December 1872 destroyed the entire harbor, shifting one massive block of stone weighing 1,350 tons and folding the whole structure into the sea. Tom was devastated. In fact, his reaction was far more extreme than the incident warranted. But he had based his professional faith on studying the sea, learning its moods, its tempers, and its breaking points, and the discovery that much of his life's work was founded on a miscalculation was almost unbearable. The early studies he had made of the force of waves were based on the movements of ten- or fifteen-ton blocks, not of something that weighed as much as the whole mass of Bell Rock Lighthouse. His reaction was initially incredulous, then defensive. He published papers complaining of the force of the elements the Stevensons contended with, photographs of immense waves smashing against the harbor walls,  anything that might vindicate his position. Eventually, once the disputing was over, the breakwater was rebuilt, this time with a 2,600 ton foundation block in place. In 1877 another apocalyptic storm washed it away. Tom could do nothing but turn away in disgust.

   A five-million-plus pound rock moved by the force of the sea! We must all react with awe at that fact. As my favorite atheist, Christopher Hitchens, says: "Nature is boss, and she is pitiless."

   If there is no God, which is Hitchens's presumption, then we must indeed, allow that Nature is supreme, at least over man. But if there is a God, which is my presumption (to be fair), then the power that spews acidic clouds into the air from Iceland (Hitchens's topic), or punches a hole into an island of rock, or tosses a multi-million pound stone like a toy, is no more than a lone raindrop falling in a vast desert.

         More than the sounds of many waters,
         Than the mighty breakers of the sea,
         The LORD on high is mighty.  Psalm. 93:4.

—Wayne S.

In any language

My wife and I just returned from 10 days in Hawaii--three on Oahu and seven on Kauai. I am resisting the temptation to show you my 700 or so photos (of which maybe 25 are very good). But I would like to tell you of two observations:

God does His best work in small places: The island of Kauai, at 552 square miles, is smaller than the metropolitan Atlanta area where I live. It is only 25 percent inhabited. Some of it is only accessible by helicopter. Yet in such a small place there is variety in geography, ethnicity, climate, altitude and flora and fauna unmatched anywhere else. Beauty and surprises await around every corner.

God loves to astound and delight His Children. One of our dear friends, who along with his wife accompanied us on the trip, made this comment: "When I see this, I can't help but think 'My Father made this.'" Amen. On the last night of our stay, we went to a luau at the next-door Hyatt resort. The Hyatt is a monument to conspicuous consumption (suites go for $4500 a night), and the luau was no exception. Liquor flowed freely, the food was mountainous in volume, and the mood was festive. That why it came as a surprise to us when the emcee announced to the crowd that, before we ate, he would like to offer a traditional Hawaiian blessing for the meal, as most Hawaiians do. What we heard, in a rich, baritone voice, quieted the crowd to silence, and lifted our hearts.

Here is a version performed by the Kamehameha Schools Children's Chorus, along with just a few pictures of my Father's work. Enjoy and be blessed. --Wayne S.

The faith of last resort

Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?

—C. S. Lewis, in The Four Loves

God in the equation

    I am a person who has problems believing, and yet, in spite of them, perhaps because of them, I do believe. I think the right to doubt is one of the most important rights given to human beings. But I believe in God. In fact I never stopped believing in God—that's why I had the problem, the crisis of faith. If I had stopped believing, then I would have been much more at peace. It would've been okay to be disappointed in human beings. what else could you expect from a human being who is the object of seduction and all kinds of ambition, right? It is easier if God doesn't enter the equation. The moment you start to believe in God, then how can you accept the world? Do you then accept God's absence? Do you accept God's silence? God—why doesn't he tried to make people better, make them lead better lives and be kinder to each other? Why doesn't he do it? A few times he gave up. But the floods were not a punishment for sins against God but for crimes against each other. what are they doing to themselves? God thought. So he brought the floods. And it didn't help. I cannot understand two aspects of human nature: indifference and nastiness. I cannot understand. At my age, I should be able to understand. But I cannot. I do not understand. Indifference and nastiness on every level, on petty levels and on high levels.

—Elie Wiesel, Author, Holocaust Survivor, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, quoted in The God Factor, by Cathleen Falsani.

Afraid of strength?

   Perhaps I'm stronger than I think.

   Perhaps I am even afraid of my strength, and turn it against myself, thus making myself weak. Making myself secure. Making myself guilty. 

   Perhaps I am most afraid of the strength of God in me. Perhaps I would rather be guilty and weak in myself, than strong in Him I cannot understand.

—Thomas Merton, in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

All truth is God's truth

"All truth is God's truth. It doesn't matter who's saying it or where it's coming from; if it's true, it's from God. Even if it's from Fargo."



Cathleen Falsani, author of The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers.

Hide and Seek

Over time, I have learned two things about my religious quest: First of all, that it is God who is seeking me, and who has myriad ways of finding me. Second, that my most substantial changes, in terms of religious conversion come through other people. Even when I become convinced that God is absent from my life, others have a way of suddenly revealing God's presence.

    —Kathleen Norris, in Amazing Grace, a Vocabulary of Faith

Man as a creature of purpose

The efforts that men make to bring about their own happiness, their own ease of life, their own self-indulgence, will in due course produce the opposite, leading me to the absolutely inescapable conclusion that human beings cannot live and operate in this world without some concept of a being greater than themselves, and of a purpose which transcends their own egotistic or greedy desires. Once you eliminate the notion of a God, a creator, once you eliminate the notion that the creator has a purpose for us, and that life consists essentially in fulfilling that purpose, then you are bound, as Pascal points out, to induce the megalomania of which we've seen so many manifestations in our time - in the crazy dictators, as in the lunacies of people who are rich, or who consider themselves to be important or celebrated in the western world. Alternatively, human beings relapse into mere carnality, into being animals. I see this process going on irresistably, of which the holocaust is only just one example. If you envisage men as being only men, you are bound to see human society, not in Christian terms as a family, but as a factory--farm in which the only consideration that matters is the well--being of the livestock and the prosperity or productivity of the enterprise. — Malcolm Muggeridge, in an address at Hillsdale College in 1979.

As

Sometimes I think the early church fathers missed a chance to better describe the Trinity. All of the major creeds—The Apostles, Nicene, Athanasian—infer that God is three-in-one; Father, Son and Spirit. Yet they go on to describe them as pretty much different entities.  

How better would it have been to simply say, for example in the Apostles Creed:  

"I believe in God as the Father Almighty....

"I believe in God as Jesus Christ the only Son...

"I believe in God as the Holy Spirit..."

WS

God and Man

God doesn't learn from experience, does He, or how could He hope anything of man?
— Graham Greene, from Our Man in Havana

Hold tightly to your freedoms

I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yestereday at the voting booth. — William F. Buckley, Jr. Up From Liberalism (1959)

Irrational Rationality

"You can't be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the week, go to a building and think you're drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god..." — Bill Maher, on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.  



“It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense, and can’t see things as they are.“ — G. K. Chesterton

I want what he wants

"I want God, not my idea of God; I want my neighbour, not my idea of my neighbour; I want myself, not my idea of myself -- C. S. Lewis.

On our contrary God

But we rebel against the impossible. I sense a wish in some professional religion-mongers to make God possible, to make him comprehensible to the naked intellect, domesticate him so that he's easy to believe in. Every century the Church makes a fresh attempt to make Christianity acceptable. But an acceptable Christianity is not Christian; a comprehensible God is no more than an idol. I don't want that kind of God. — Madeline L'Engle.

Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. — Timothy Keller, The Reason for God.