Being Good Humanbeings

The September 2005 issue of Christianity Today included an editorial entitled "Neighbor Love Inc.: Christians in business have an honored place in God's plan." The author says:

"Most pastors do not feel equipped to discuss violations of business law at the top levels of major corporations. But the church does need to help its business people develop a fundamental understanding of what it means for Christians to engage in business."

Either this presumes that there are as many fundamental understandings of Christian behavior as there are vocations (or avocations). Or, the writer is saying that there is a different understanding of what it means to be a Christian in business than in medicine, engineering, or social work. In either circumstance, it seems that the author is missing the heart of the Christian message. Jesus did not address the various vocations of his followers whether they be fishermen, tax collectors, or prostitutes. This is precisely because the Christian message is one of communal righteousness. This is why we get broad commands such as:

• "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven... For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
• "No one can serve two masters... You cannot serve God and wealth."
  
• "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear."
• "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged."
• "Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it."
• "For nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known."

The universality of these commands resist being co-opted by any one discipline. Further, these words are stripped of their purpose when applied as a specific business, medical, legal, scientific or social ethic. The point of these instructions, as well as the hundreds more given by Christ, is to make us understand how to be better members of humanity and, by implication, the community of the faithful.

Do pastors need to concern themselves with helping its business people develop a fundamental understanding of what it means for Christians to engage in business? The two-word answer is "Hell no!" The role of pastor is complicated enough without asking him or her to understand all of the specific vocational issues their sheep are facing in their respective workplaces. If anything, the pastor should focus his or her attention toward the exact opposite goal: develop a fundamental understanding of what it means for Christians to engage in humanity. We are business people, carpenters, mechanics, teachers, doctors, etc. for a certain amount of hours a week and for a short period of our lives. We are human beings from the cradle to the grave. Is our energy better spent discipling our sheep to be good business people or to be good human beings?

PAX

E

Deception at Four Years

On Friday, I took my kids to Washington Square Mall for the afternoon. Their official reason for wanting to go to the mall was that they wanted to play at the indoor playground. What they really want to do is go eat at the McDonald's fifty feet away from the playground. I know this but I take them anyway. Four year olds have a highly developed aptitude for cloaking their agendas. It goes something like this:

7:30am:

Quincy - "Daddy, can we go to McDonald's for lunch today?"
Me - "No"

10:30am:

Quincy - "I want to go to the mall today."
Me - "Why?"
Quincy - "I want to play at the playground."
Me - "There's a playground across the parking lot."
Quincy - "But that one doesn't have Mt. Hood in it."
Me - "Good point."

By noon we are in the car on our way to the mall. When we get to the mall the kids make a full-press to the playground where there they run into this mix of madness that resembles the bleacher seats at Wrigley Field. There is crying, fighting, laughter, and the occasional stink of a full diaper.

After some running around, the four year old's ruse continues...

Quincy - " Daddy? "
Me - "Yes?"
Quincy - "I'm thirsty."
Me - "Lucky you. I brought a bottle of water with us."
Quincy - "But Daddy, I just don't want water."
Me - "Well, what do you think you would like, a Beer?"
Quincy - "No daddy, I want some hic." (this is what Quincy calls Hi-C)
Me - "Where do you think we could find some?"
Quincy - "Well daddy, McDonald's has some and it's just over there."

The deception is complete.

Do I refuse this request? No way. After the planning that went into that scheme, that kid deserves a cup of hic.

PAX

E

You can run...

There is an immutable law at work in the cosmos that compels one to do that to which one is called. We can't run far enough or fast enough from this spectre of responsibility. There are therapeutic models that cite cognitive dissonance as the root cause of all anxiety and, therefore, all dysfunction. When our gut/conscience/reason/etc. tells us to do one thing but we refuse to indulge this selfish, impudent voice it creates an inner struggle between what we are in esse and what we are on the surface. And I'll be damned if the more I try to run the more I find myself being pulled back into the center of my essence by this cosmic law (much like a centrifuge). I have struggled to find a way to remove myself from being, as my mentor Waylon calls it, the "wounded bird guy". Wounded birds seem to find their way onto my doorstep, both literally and figuratively. We can't change what we are in esse. We can't really change what we are on the outside either. Just like a dead racoon in the attic will soon betray its presence, our essence will betray its entrenched presence at some time. It will either manifest as an easy, natural giftedness or as a pent-up, perpetual dysfunction. Even though I believe this to be true, I also understand this Cosmic Law theory as incomplete and, in practice, a load of shit. There is so much more going on than some simple two-way inner dialogue. If you are only hearing a dialogue you are blessed my friend. I believe it to be true that most of us are having the equivalent of a senate hearing going on inside. I don't have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. I have this host of voices on either shoulder and nobody is talking about right and wrong. They are reasoning shit out at the same time and it all sounds good to me. So what to do?

PAX

E

Spectator to the past

I hold in my hand an old book entitled "Abridged Treasury of Prayers". It was published in 1930 by Concordia Publishing House in St. Louis, MO, a Lutheran Church M.S. publisher. This small volume (3"x5"; 150 pages) contains in it an inscription that reads:

Mrs. Gertrude Ludwig
The Savior's Blessing
attend you always is
the wish of your pastor
Walter J. Luecke
Feb. 10, 1946

I don't know who these people were. Neither does my father, who gave me the book.

I can't help but wonder, though, how Mrs. Ludwig used this book of prayers and how it may have drawn her nearer to God. Just thinking...

PAX

E

Guilty Pleasures

Let me count them...

Desperate Housewives
Journey
Extreme Makeover Home Edition
Power Puff Girls
Holla Back Girl
Pon de Replay
TBN
Marshmallow Peeps
Mt. Dew Code Red
Loofa sponge

More to come...

PAX

E

Corporate Culture Co-oping Evangelism

This blog post is enlightening and takes a few shots at Starbucks... And it feels soooo good.

http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/2004/07/paul_and_johnmo.html

PAX

E

Sweet Jane

I fell in love with Cowboy Junkies' Sweet Jane back in college many moons ago (how many moons is none of your business). I think a friend made a mix tape for me with that song on it and I immediately went out and bought The Trinity Sessions. Come to find out that that album was recorded in a delapidated old church with a single microphone. It has such a raw and live sound and at the same time it is so dark. Enough about the album... I was disappointed to discover that Sweet Jane is a cover of a Lou Reed and Velvet Underground song. Not because I think Lou Reed sucks or anything. I guess I just romanticized the whole Sweet Jane/Trinity Sessions thing. It's sorta like finding out the girl you love has been sleeping around. She isn't so special to you anymore. I went on a quest to hear Lou Reed's version of the song and after chasing it down on itunes I found I enjoy it as much as the Cowboy Junkies'. Life is like that, isn't it? Humans idealize just about everything. We do it with technology, politics, religion, relationships, and just about every other facet of life. Every political ideology is, at the outset, unadulterated. And then it enters the machine of humanity. We hash, rehash, spin, revise, edit, and otherwise mutilate these ideals which, on paper, are almost romantic. So it is with Sweet Jane. My ideal has been deconstructed. She has been reduced to an adulterated and defrocked saint. But I love her just the same. Sometimes a little tarnish is just the thing we need to make us realize how much we love something.

PAX

E

God Hates Fags

“God Hates Fags”. That’s what the sign said as it was bouncing back and forth along the sidewalk. The National Council of Bishops was meeting at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas to address, among other things, the sexual abuses of boys by priests. I was walking with my brother Kirk and my friend Phil to grab a bite to eat for lunch. We passed the cordoned protest area and saw the dozen or so protesters picketing the Catholic Bishops. My blood began to boil. I was beginning to feel enraged. Not because I am gay and not because I am Catholic but because these fuckers were invoking the name of God, presumably the same God that I profess to serve. It crossed my mind to run across the street and do violence to them. But I thought better of that and continued walking to the pizza joint for lunch. I stewed over these assholes who were propagating the benevolent and kind God that I serve to affirm their puerile agenda. The rest of the day was a wash for me. I went home that evening and had to see them marching again on the evening news!

When I was growing up you weren’t allowed to say, “God dammit!” or “Jesus!” in an expletive manner because that was considered taking the Lord’s name in vain. While it is disrespectful I don’t believe that it is akin to transgressing one of the Big Ten. I am certain, however, that the God Hates Fags people have a lot to answer for by truly using the Lord’s name in vain. To vainly invoke and ascribe God’s name to something that is not of God is certainly the true context of blasphemy and a transgression of a commandment. The irony here is that I have done ill against my neighbor by calling them fuckers and assholes. Ahh, the gift of humility made manifest. The difference between my sin and theirs is that I know that I have done wrong and will address that with God. They stubbornly proceed by blaspheming the name of God and doing so with misplaced confidence. Maybe it is the sin of pride that keeps us in the dark. Maybe humility is the key to redemption and salvation. For without pride we can be searched and known by a loving God but without humility we stand ourselves up next to God. And when we stand toe to toe with the divine we’ll never see eye to eye with God.

PAX

Race Relations

It was the third grade and I was at recess. I recall that it was the fall because I was wearing a jacket. I don’t know which of my friends I was with but I was relating a joke that I heard someplace. We were alone on a far corner of the playground, safely out of ear-shot of anyone who might overhear my inappropriate joke. All I remember about the joke is that its telling necessitated the use of the word “nigger”. Lurking nearby, unintentionally eavesdropping, was a classmate whose name I don’t recall but I remember that she was short and fat and as I was about to discover, she had a big mouth. When I had finished telling my joke and after the tittering had subsided, we turned to walk back to the center of the playground and I was terrified to see Regina Brown making her way to me with Big Mouth McFatterson close behind. What happened next is fuzzy and maybe I have learned to block out the pain and humiliation but there was the distinct sound of someone cracking open a can of whoop-ass and then I remember the smell of wet pea-gravel and dirt while being pummeled by Regina. As I recall Regina, she was about 8 feet tall, very black, and not at all amused by my racially charged musings. She used words that I had only heard my teenage brother use when my parents weren’t around. I took my beating for what seemed like hours but, in reality, was probably only a few short moments long. By the time she finished wearing me out, our little breakdown in race relations has drawn a sizable crowd of witnesses.

I remember looking at the Dairy Queen sign across the street because it directed my face away from the crowd of onlookers. I was choking back tears of pain and shame. Seven year old boys DO NOT cry on the playground, even those who just had the shit beat out of them by a girl. No teachers intervened and there were no further corporal repercussions from the incident. While the elapsed time of the beating was fuzzy, I was painfully aware of every second that ticked by while lying on the ground. It was an eternity. There were some kids laughing and others were wondering what the hell happened. I was humiliated. I was embarrassed about the whipping I took. With the wisdom of thirty years hence, I can only conjecture that I was equally embarrassed that I used the word nigger. I never knew the power of words until that day and I suppose, in retrospect, Big Mouth McFatterson deserves my gratitude. Martin Luther King, Jr. may not have approved of Regina’s methods but I believe he would be happy with the results these many years later.

No matter how I feel about that incident today, there is nothing I can do to make it go away. As a Christian who believes that we may find Christ in all circumstances, I ask myself, “Where was Christ on that playground almost thirty years ago?” As far as I can tell, he was thirty years in the future waiting to teach me about the power of words. I may not always see Christ in the midst of suffering but I can rest assured that he is somewhere in time waiting to teach me about my suffering.

PAX