God was in the news

An article appearing in the Seattle Times this week recently surprised me, by turning the meteoric fall of Indiana’s Mark Souder, a “strong Christian” who was recently outed as having an affair with a part time staff member, into an appeal to Conservative Christians everywhere.  Taken as a slice of the public paradigm floating around out there in America, two things are truly interesting about the article, written by E.J. Dionne Jr.   For one, it reveals just how far the Christian community has strayed from the heart of Jesus.  For two, it displays how little our American culture really knows about the Gospel.  And both of those things, added together, come up to zero for the Good News.

Two quotes provide ballast to the public opinion.  In the article, Dionne quotes Jesus, saying “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  That’s a familiar passage, even to Americans that haven’t cracked a bible once.  These words could be offered as a comfort to the now-resigned congressman, but Dionne isn’t satisfied with only offering grace to the disgraced.  He goes one step further.  “It would be lovely,” he writes, “if conservative Christians remembered Jesus’ words not only when needing a lifeline but also when they are tempted to give speeches or send out mailers excoriating their political foes as permissive anti-family libertines.”

How might the Bible back up Mr. Dionne?

In Exodus 33, Moses is dealing with the aftermath of the Israelite idolatry, the golden calf they’d set up in place of God while Moses was powwowing with the Almighty for a few days.  God, every faithful, tells Moses that He will give the Israelites the land He had promised them, but rather than lead them there Himself, God says that He will remove His presence from their midst.  It’s in Moses’ response to this edict that we see the departure of the current Christian culture from the heart of Christ.  Moses says to God, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”

In other words, there’s nothing inherent within Christians that makes them special or elevates them to a moral high ground above the rest of the faith community.  The plan was never to create a religious army, with the singular purpose of stamping out sin in liberal congressional districts.  The plan was that God’s people could be marked with humility and grace, so that others might look at them and say, “that same free gift of grace is offered me.  That same source of life and love can be mine.” 

But still we label, we judge, we paint hatred on picket signs.

How many times have Christian Conservatives, touting family values, placed upon themselves the mantle of perfection, of shimmering morality, rather than pointing towards a God who showers them with grace despite their many flaws?

Fortunately, there’s very good news for Mark Souder, E.J. Dionne Jr, and the rest of us.

Dionne, who admits to admiring Souder somewhat from a distance, says he hopes “Souder finds a way to work out his redemption.” 

The good news?  That was already accomplished two thousand years ago, on a cross. 

And the only difference between him and the rest of us is this–when our imperfections and defects emerge from the places where we’ve kept them hidden, it doesn’t make the Washington Post.

Revealed: My Late Night Obsession

I’m including a screenshot of the project that has had me up at nights, working at odd hours, oftentimes with a few cursewords held poised, like small nuclear missiles, on the tip of my tongue, ready to inflict scathing shock and awe at the Mac, at Pages, at the fact that an hour ago at ten-thirty, I had told my wife I would be home in ten minutes.   For the better, Steve Jobs has yet to invent a computer whose feelings can be bruised.  For now, there’s no app for iEgo.

Really, it was a love hate relationship.

For every one of those moments of impending and private techno-cold-war, there were three moments where something clicked into place, or the computer surprised me with its cleverness and foresite (thank you again, Mr. Jobs) and I raised my arms in exultation.  I even made several wordless ululating cries.  In the night, in the pool of lamplight that kept my eyes from burning out of their sockets. 

I guess what I’m saying is, I had a blast writing Journey Magazine.

So though it will be revealed in person (or, in paper) on Sunday, I have to just give you a quick glance at the table of contents.  Not the cover, because it’s too cool to really show off yet before it’s in people’s hands.  But the table of contents, yes.  It’s like the magazine’s profile on eHarmony.  Hopefully it will make you want to see the rest.

As a point of interest, that red line at the top of the page is a cut mark.  It’s how the printer knows where to cut the page to the appropriate size.  You won’t see that in the final copy.

You know, it’s funny–in this edition I wrote articles about cafes and theologiants (that was misspelled, originally, but then I realized it was appropriate for A.B. Simpson), and then realized that they would represent the first material I’ve ever written that would be read by more than a handful of people.  That’s strange to me, kind of a like a hitchcock twist.  That’s how my dreams become realized, in increments, and never as I imagined them.  When I thought of my future self as a writer, in my teens, it was always as the kid who would write the great American novel.  And my first step towards the world of being a published writer is as a magazine editor, working at my local church.  Maybe easy to dismiss, but guess what… I get paid to do this.

I’m going to sit back and enjoy the moment. 

*   *   *

Journey Magazine, Spring 2010, Contents

Waterwings are Dream Killers

Excerpted from an article currently in progress.  Think Matthew 14: Jesus walks on water, for context.  What does your boat look like?  And here’s a weird question: Can something be a work of art and a deathtrap at the same time? 

*   *   *

It occurs to me that none of us would choose, on our own and without an express invitation from Jesus, to climb out of our boat. 

Why should we?  Our boat is a work of art, because our blood and sweat and tears have been worked into the wood.  Battered and broken as we may be, our boats are things of beauty.

 There is blood in the wood of our boats, because we built them to keep us safe, and we were cut up as we worked.  People who either wished us ill or were oblivious of their wake gave us many reasons to build defenses.  We needed stout planks between ourselves and their reckless destruction.  And our sweat has cured the wood of our boat, because our livelihood depended on our resolve—long hours studying, graveyard shifts, second jobs, dreams put on hold—all the things that were necessary to keep our boat afloat.   So of course there was sweat… and also tears.   Waves of unexpected grief threatened to sweep us overboard.  We were left teeth-chattering and numb and fatigued.  It turns out, in those moments, boats are good places to dry out.

So what is a boat?  A boat is a life that has done its best to ride the waves that thrash and swell above a deep and unfathomable dark. 

And until Jesus comes along and bids us come to him, we might as well stay put.  But when Jesus does appear, cresting the whitecaps with nothing but his feet beneath him, he has come for one reason and one reason alone.

Jesus has come to save us from our boat.

Remember Life is an Anthem?

The series from this fall is being made into a short devotional incorporating all the elements we walked through together at the Warehouse.  Here’s a first stab at the intro.  It still needs a lot of work.  My editorial voice sounds a little dry, to me.  Feedback appreciated.

*   *   *

 A now famous singer-songwriter said something at the tail end of his first live DVD that I still remember.  I love behind the scenes stuff, and I ate this up.  The scene was backstage, and the artist was exultant, having just played to a sold out amphitheater.  ”That last song,” he said, “towards the end there, it almost felt like an anthem.”  The song was about a relationship that had come to an end, love burned out, defeated.  The crowd had joined in at the top of their lungs–like it was their song, like they could have written it from their own broken-heartedness.  It was intimate and powerful at the same time.  “Almost an anthem,” like the singer had said.

     I remember wondering why it had come so close in this artist’s mind to that elusive sort of song, the anthem.  What is an “anthem,” after all, and why had this particular song stopped short?  Thousands of people are busting out the lighters and cells (this was before the Zippo app on my iPhone) and singing along with this guy’s song, full orchestra, the slow heartfelt sigh of a generation, and somehow it only comes “this close” to being an anthem.  Why?

     Ignoring (for the moment) the fact that we sing one at the beginning of every baseball game, I don’t think we think that much, generally, about “anthems.”  We think in terms of number ones and genres, not about what transforms any particular song from a ballad to a battle cry.  That’s how I see the term.  Music is its most powerful when it is unifying, emotive, transcendent.  It rallies.  The anthem is the zenith.  I think this is because, as it is defined, an anthem is a song of higher loyalty, of praise or dedication.  That is, it holds as the object of its devotion something bigger than our individual lives and experiences.  Back to baseball–we sing the national anthem out of a sense of unified patriotism.  We say a song at a rock concert is an anthem because it lifts us, as an audience, towards some higher ideal.  Not only that one, long lost love–rather, love itself.

    So, is life an anthem?  Is this gift of breath and conscience that we are all enjoying right now purposed for more than just our selves?  I believe that it is.  Our lives are intended as songs of praise dedicated to a creator whose love for us, both tangible and incorruptible, is multiplying the world over.  He is remaking us.  He is using us to make miracles.  We are meant for one another.  

     So then, the song of my life is about you.  It’s about us.  And it’s for Him.

     What song is your life singing out into the world?

Journey Mag: A.B. Simpson Piece

Working on a magazine from scratch is a little bit like watching Bob Ross paint.  At first, you have a blank canvas.  Then you have vague shapes.  At some point, these shapes become happy blotches.  Then you have a mountain.

When I originally sat down to determine what content would be in Journey Mag, it seemed obvious to me that we needed to present A.B. Simpson to the SVA readership.  The man was truly extraordinary.  I just put the finishing touches on the layout for each page today, and after I dropped the text in, it dawned on me that I had a magazine. 

Here’s an excerpt from the mag, which is due out in April.

*   *   *

Bart, Homer, Marge, and Albert Benjamin.

All Simpsons.

We’re probably more familiar with the first three.  They’ve been on TV since 1989, while poor Albert Benjamin was born before California was a state.  A.B. is older than the New York Times.  He predates the tin can.  Far more recent is the yellow-skinned cartoon kid whose slogan “Eat My Shorts” spawned a billion dollars in T-shirt sales.  Albert who?

When you get right down to it, even those of us who consider the Christian Missionary Alliance our home denomination are a little sketchy on the details when it comes to its founder.  After all, what does a New York preacher from the nineteenth century really have to offer us modern West-coast sophisticates?  Well, for starters: Snoqualmie Valley Alliance is still, down to its very DNA, a successor to the man’s remarkable vision.  Simpson’s passionate desire to introduce men and women to Jesus Christ is still echoing today, in the efforts of thousands of churches and missionaries across America, Hong Kong, India, Nigeria, Brazil–more countries than there are donuts in Homer’s lunch box.  Yet most of us could hardly identify him as responsible for the C&MA.  “D’oh!”