It’s just a fairy tale…

I had one of the more interesting conversations I’ve had in a long time this evening. I was honored to be invited to Anna Danger Hering’s surprise birthday, and over some tasty fish and chips met a Baylor student apparently disenchanted with political religious system offered by America’s largest evangelical mega-university.

The conversation picked up when he heard me throwing in my two cents about nationalized health care.

“I’ll tell you what the solution is…”

My new friend went on to explain a political philosophy that reflects the thinking of Daniel Quinn, something entirely new for me. Intrigued, I listened asking more questions than he probably cared to answer, not a surprise for those of you who hang out with me a semi regular basis.

As hard as I consciously try to not sound explicitly evangelical in my presuppositions and questioning I’m sure I somewhat failed as I launched question after question clothed in the dress of politically correct and often vague form.

Somehow we got to some of the more explicit questions I often wonder about when thinking about major worldviews and political philosophies.

“You know, Jesus didn’t need health insurance.”

“Yeah, but the people Jesus healed still died,” mark the shark walldrop fires back.

“It’s true!” here is my chance…he’s given me a glimmer of supernatural recognition. The Cosmological argument seems to have a little pull with him…sometimes that’s enough of a doorway for the mystical to fit through…so I question

“What do you make of that whole resurrection business?”

As matter of fact and almost in a tone of sympathy that understands the magnitude of his response’s effect on me, “Just a fairy tale man.”

Initially I think of Lewis. “It’s simply the true myth.” Lewis understood that the story was so bizarre that it properly belonged to the genre of myth, regardless of its truth-value.

And then it hits me. I feel 25 years of the investment of my mind rumble around in my head. Here’s a guy who actually doesn’t believe it happened. Not really novel. I grew up in the north were Jesus is about as popular as he is in Europe. Unbelief is the norm. Yet for some reason tonight, his response hits me hard.

“Fairy tale,” that’s the category the story of Jesus Christ is allotted for those who believe he didn’t rise from the dead.

Were about 48 inches from each other, across the table in restaurant in Waco they call The Elite Bar and Grill and somehow I feel like our souls are 50 million light years apart.

It’s not judgment. I like the guy…I owe him gratitude. But for the first time in a long time I recognize that amidst a journey plagued with doubt…

”I believe!”


I believe because I encounter unbelief, and am able to recognize the deep existential incongruity between us. “I believe,” and I have my Daniel Quinn political philosophizing friend to thank for it.

I found grace today. I hope he did too.

5 things about Jesus

I’ve been tagged by my friend and theological superior, Emily. I’m not exactly sure how to do all the things required, but I’ll try my best.

I share five things I dig about Jesus (the purpose of this particular tag)…

1. He was seemingly idiosyncratic in his interpretation of the law revealing, I think, the complexity and beauty of life.
2. He told some to sell everything and for others it was o.k. to sell half of what they had and restore from those they had stolen four-fold. To me this means Jesus is neither liberal or conservative, but rather the type of guy who would challenge you exactly the way you needed to be challenged to grow.
3. He was resurrected, which as I get older and experience death through loved ones, becomes more and more the one miracle I need to be absolutely true.
4. He gave people like Pete second chances
5. He in the business of restoring the type of people found in Flannery O’Connor’s short stories.

My tags

1. Craig
2. Candace
3. Ashley
4. Harris
5. Erik

Hope this works out

Carney

Allie Hewson

Driving down the highway or is it the autobahn? She can’t remember and she doesn’t seem to care. “45 years of this shit! When’s it going to end,”… “I just want to be normal tonight, I want to go spend time with my grandchildren,” she thinks to herself.

Still she submits to the highway hypnosis and keeps driving. Eventually she approaches Berlin. “Berlin,”…“I remember how many nights it stole from me,” anger rising within herself, “too many.” I just want to see my grandchildren, she reminds herself. "Enough of this benefit crap. Africa will go on,”…”I wish history would find another hero.”

The city lights become brighter and brighter, but anger has the best of her and she fails to notice. She approaches the first stoplight, but she is unaware. Red….Red….Red…Red…it’s the color of the writing on all those damn t-shirts. Suddenly she awakens…”it’s the color of stop!!!”

“Shit” it’s too late. The only thing that seems redeeming in the moment is her honest thought of recognition of her need of grace…even now. But it is too late.

She pulls up not in the car she was just driving, but rather in the honest nakedness of herself. Suddenly she is confronted. Not by anything, but by someone.

Somehow she recognizes the truth. It’s David Copperfield. How could she possibly know David Copperfield? He was just a character. The stranger reality about this new place is that all epistemological bets are off. They, David and her, have a strange sense of parachoresis and somehow both her and David Copperfield recognize each other.

David speaks…”come try on this well deserved crown.” She is apprehensive, yet slowly she approaches. She bows her head while Coppefield places the crown upon her head. It’s awkwardly heavy at first, but then she finds the strength to lift her head high enough to look David in the face. Then she realizes the irony of the situation. The irony of grace. It’s David’s crown.

“I can’t wear thi”…,but before she can complete the thought she is strangely surprised by her sudden immediate and supernatural strength. Her neck is miraculously strong enough to hold this crown up.

“How?” is the only question to be asked. “How can she hold this crown up?” she wonders, but this same strange sense of parachoresis delivers the answer in an unprecedented way. No words required, just this deep sense of profound understanding. Not just understanding of this is how it is, but understanding that reveals this is exactly how it should be because He has willed it be so from all eternity.

“this can’t be right,” she thinks toward Copperfield. He looks her back in the eye knowing exactly why she is feeling this way. All she spent her time doing was “Chernobyl” she reminds Copperfield. His thoughts come back to her, “But it was not just Chernobyl,”…”it was gracefully standing beside a superstar for 45 years. There’s the real unprecedented strength found uniquely and sparsely throughout human history!” “Because of your patience and your sacrifice, my kingdom found it’s way into the 21st C.”

Recognizing her feeling of ineptitude Copperfield escorts her into her the realm of her company. Company…a metaphor seems to be the only thing left powerful enough in the world of epistemology to make sense of all this. There she sees them. James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Bartholomew, Itzhak Stern, Scottie Pippin, Sam Gamgee, and the boy who shined shoes in all those redemptive novels.

Below her she sees Peter, Paul and Mary. Above her she sees only the glory, but the propensity to judge and compare is gone. It has no place here. All is equal under the shadow of the almighty.

Reflections on Fathers Day

The Bible carefully offers us metaphors from time to time. Two of them are relational. They are Christ’s relationship to the church described in terms of Bride/Bridegroom and God’s relationship to Jesus as Father/Son.

I really hated Song of Solomon when I was growing up. Especially when girls in our youth group talked about being enamored by belonging to the groom. “Gag me” I thought to myself. Not only do I hate romance, but now the Bible is asking me to participate in this metaphorical relationship from the sappy/estrogen side.

Eventually I got married and this metaphor came alive for me. I was able to move beyond the literal level of the metaphor and move into an understanding of a wee bit deeper existential profoundness.

As for the other metaphor, well I guess I’m qualified to throw my noetic lot in the realm of comprehension on the Father/Son metaphor. As I was trying to fall asleep last night I was pondering this one. As my first fathers day came to a close I realized just how different God and I are. He sent His son to bear the sins of the world. I silently confessed to myself that I'd send the whole world to hell before I’d let my son be crucified unjustly.

Grace for now


Roy's present for me.


Roy and I in matching C.S. Lewis outfits. Nerdy professor cardigan, khakis, and a t-shirt. Notice our favorite Lewis works.

We've all done it. "God I really need to hear from you." So we crack open the Bible flipping through, hoping that the place where we end up is magically going to be a "word from the Lord."

My experience tells me that God in His freedom won't be manipulated by such tasks. Rather I think that He prefers that I get to know what is actually in the Bible and drawing from a wealth of knowledge that I've stored away through years of hard study, the Holy Spirit can then take something and bring it to remembrance in difficult times or good times.

I am old fashioned enough to believe that this works. Last night was one of those wrestles nights for me. Thus I woke up early and paged through my Bible and was impressed upon by lengthy Psalm 131.

The second verse seems especially alive to me.

1 O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvellous for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.*


3 O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time on and for evermore.

grace for now

on prayer

I think one of the most perplexing things for us to try and figure out is prayer. What really makes a difference? Does our praying change things?

Often I find myself praying for superficial things. Our evening prayer before meals is routine, not because we pray the Lord’s prayer, but because our requests seem to remain constant. Thankfulness, Roy’s health, our health, our family’s health, our friends. Requests, Sam Evans, the two kids from Lindsay’s school. Gratefulness, my dad is cancer free.

Here is my ridiculousness. Since Tom’s bachelor party last Thursday I’ve been informed of a thing on mlb.com called beat the streak. Joe DiMaggio consecutively got a hit in 56 games back in some year that I don’t know off hand. If I, as a participant can correctly select one player from MLB to get a hit for 57 nights in a row, I will have beat the streak and will be awarded $100,000 by mlb.com.

Every night I open the gameday window of the team for whom my player plays for and watch. During the day I tell my wife whom I’ve picked and half jokingly/half seriously tell her who we are praying for to get a hit.

I’m tempted to think prayer works. Especially the prayer that goes something like “God please provide for all of our needs.” And if I’m honest, all the wants that American advertising has convinced me that are needs.

I think it is really noble and theologically right to thank God for all I have, but here is my predicament. I know plenty of Christians in Africa who don’t seem to get all of their needs provided for. Does God forget about them? Did God forget about Dietrich Bonhoeffer while remembering sparrows elsewhere, or did Bonhoeffer’s prayer get answered?

Grace for now

Survey Says

Inspired by our friends the Shelton's, I decided to post this question. Who do you think Roy looks more like? won't be offended by the results.

Caught

So this morning I was in my bedroom making the bed and I kept hearing this racket coming from the living room. I made my way out there and Roy tried to put his bottle on the table and with the other hand he quickly tried to put a Phillips screwdriver behind his back to hide it.

I asked him what he was doing with a screwdriver and he responded gleefully, "I'm going to shotgun this one dad!"

Kids these days.

pirates 3

This is not a movie review, because I’m a horrible critic. There isn’t much I see that I don’t enjoy. Especially films like Pirates 3. It would have taken an awful movie to get me to say I didn’t like it.

Call me overly evangelical, but I have this belief that as far as our culture tries to run from religion, the impact of the Bible and it’s themes on our culture are inescapable. Sometimes this seems a bit more intentional in movies like the Matrix which sought to simply communicate world thought.

Other times movies accidentally stumble onto theological themes. If you haven’t seen the movie and care about everything being a surprise then stop reading.

Here are two quick ones I noticed.

When Will’s dad “Bootstrap Bill” is freed by Will from his debt, he replies that he will stay with Will to endure his newly acquired task. (Rom 6:18)

Here another one. When they are returning from initially saving Jack from the world end, they pass from death to life through water.

But far and away the most interesting one to me was the scene where Jack is stranded at the worlds end with all the other Jack Sparrow’s. I suppose I have a special interests in doctrines about heaven, hell, soteriology, and post-mortem existence, hence my interest in this scene.

As many of you know one of my favorite books is C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. I think Lewis gets a lot right including the way he presents salvation having to do with nature of one’s character’s initial encounter with the presence of God.

As good as C.S. Lewis is, his book is fiction as his introduction emphatically suggests not be systematized into our theologies. Someone who puts theological language to the direction Lewis is going is Greg Boyd in his chapter on Karl Barth’s das Nichtege and his subsequent understanding of hell. Boyd, who wants to avoid annihilationism proposes that we understand damned beings as eternally existing ontologically only unto themselves. Thus they have a place in eternity, but not a place in heaven.

I felt like that’s what this scene in the movie communicated. Sparrow, got his final wish at the world end. Himself as the only reality (Lewis’s neighborhoods moving further and further apart from one another). Here’s something else I thought was interesting. The real genius in the depiction of Sparrow was the actual Sparrow was the one who was barking orders out to all the other Sparrows and selfishly eating the last peanut. Thus, not the one who suffers the loss of something, but the loss of giving to someone and overcoming the problem of self.

security???

A quick thought before I go to bed.

You computer savvy people might be able to answer this. What is the deal with the squiggly letters that appear below the login name and password boxes when you want to sign into something. You know, the ones that I suppose are a sort of security device or something and usually read something like "vks89l" only in wavy, crazy font.

If this is a security deal, it seems like a poor one and a discriminant one at that. Who is it really keeping out besides the color blind and or those in need of bifocals?

looking for some intelligent responses

a tired Carney

Shane Part 5 (the problem with me)

For my last Shane post I really wanted to share about his demonic encounter. I believe we have lost a lot in the West when it comes to understanding the metaphysical, but I’m going to read God at War by Greg Boyd for my mentoring this summer, so maybe I’ll pipe in about it then.

Instead you get something that is mildly entertaining and after I post will either leave me on an island of embarrassment or I will get a lot of silent and honest nods of understanding form y’all as y’all read this.

So I first heard about Shane’s book a year ago from friend John, who I affectionately refer to as “The Machine” on the side of my blog in the “ubc folk” link section. As John told me about the book I thought to myself, “oh yeah, another social justice, I’m bad for being a White Western American book.”

I didn’t hear much about the book until this last fall when Shane came and spoke. At our Upsilon Beta Chi meeting Shane’s name came up and someone, I think Paola said, he didn’t really say anything in his talk, (or I think in his videos either) that she hadn’t already heard. I only mention this moment because I think it was at this juncture that I officially filed Shane’s book in my head as mediocre. All that for this story.

So a girl that I worked on staff with back at Bethel as a resident assistant made her way down to Texas during our spring break. They got here the first Saturday of the break and we met them at the World Cup Café for lunch. Jimmy Dorrell had just spoken to a group of her and her friends a couple weeks prior in MN. So she decided to stop by Waco to see what was happening.

We shared about what we knew about Mission Waco and the area. She talked about living in the ghetto in Minneapolis, and I talked about living in the ghetto on 14th street. We were having a good time being social progressives. At some point church came up. Of course this was one area I knew I could one up her in. No matter how cool you are there is no way your church is going to be cooler than ours for goodness sake. We have Dave freakin Crowder as our Rock n’ Roll pastor. So naturally the, “what do you read to substantiate your ideology” question came up.

I proudly told her some of the names that came and spoke to us. At this point she asked me if I had read anything by some people that were thinking about things differently, like Rob Bell and Shane Claiborne. “Wait a minute,” I thought to myself, “you can’t know our people, that would put us on the same page.” So I replied, “we’re actually a little post-that.”

She replied, “well, like who are some of the people you guys are into.”

Caught. I had to think of something, so I reached for a couple of names from academia that mildly addressed some of the things we think about at UBC and yet would be esoteric enough that she wouldn’t know who they were. In response I would only get the desired, “Oh,” from her.

Why do I do that? That is retarded. I guess since Craig admitted an insecurity of his own his blog I can follow suit.

P.S. if by some chance Laura you read this, I owe you an apology. We are not, well at least I am not post-Shane Claiborne and I found the book to be very helpful.

Grace for now, especially for me.

Shane part 4 (economics in the eschatological vision)

I used to think that heaven was about my spirit/soul joining Jesus somewhere in outer space and that everyone would be raptured out of here at the same time. Once we got to heaven there would be something like the Matrix’s version downloading information. We would all know and love God, because God would just bring everyone onto the same page so to speak. There would be no epistemic difference among any of us and we would all spend time worshiping God, with music of course, on our streets of gold occasionally taking time to go into our individually prepared mansions.

I think one of the most exciting chapters in the book is on finances or rather economics. Shane shares a story about a family that owned Josefina Minimart across the street from them. He shares that their kids would come over to do homework, to do their theatre camp and to wipe the floor with them in UNO. Shane and his gang helped rehab this family’s house and they taught Shane’s gang Spanish. Oftentimes this family would need transportation to either restock their shelves or to pick up kids from school and other places. Shane and friends gladly provided these services. They also found out that they could insure their kids under their policy at no extra charge, so they did that too.

They share cars. The family stopped taking money from them for groceries. And at the end of the paragraph Shane writes something great “money has lost its relevance.”

I used to think it might be cool to try and write a paper about kingdom economics. Here’s one thing that Shane’s story makes me think about. As N.T. Wright has shown me numerous times, there is a great deal of continuity between now and the Eschaton. So though we will be resurrected in glorified bodies, they will still reflect the human body in some sense. And though there will be a new earth, it will still reflect the beauty of this earth. Hence the importance on the Irenaic/Wright et. all theme of restoration and why Clark Pinnock argues, and I think rightly, that the same power behind creation is the one behind redemption.

All that to say if there is a good deal of continuity like Wright argues, I wonder if certain anthropological functions might also hang around in the eschatological vision. It would seem absurd for someone to be hungry in the kingdom, but I wonder if there won’t be something like the need to share as is shown above?

If so it strikes me that Shane really has found heaven on earth and given meaning to the already/not yet concept.

Shane part 3 (love and peace)

Maybe the most impressive thing Shane does is go to Iraq and live with the families as the country is about to be bombed. As you might guess he is a pacifist. It's not that Shane hates the military in fact he shares several stories about how convicted soldiers found a way to live the kingdom within the military. But he indisputably hates war or perhaps I would do him more justice if I said he loves peace.

Shane operates with a hermeneutic that says "love your enemies" is a literal love your enemies, and "blessed are the peacemakers" is a literal blessed are the peacemakers. And "take up your cross and follow me" is not about suffering through your white collar job for the chance to share Jesus, it is stand with the oppressed and in the process be ready to die for it.

Here are my struggles. I like a lot of people feel like I would like to whole heartedly embrace pacifism, but I bet like a lot of people draw the line somewhere along these lines. If I were a single guy, like Shane, Jesus, and Paul, I might be more o.k. with going and dying with the oppressed, but the truth is that I'm not and when I think about dying for Jesus I think about the agony that would put my wife and perhaps someday, child through. Maybe this is another chance for me to offer an excuse, if so you can pray for me. And unlike Shane if someone broke into my house I would hit them in the legs with a baseball bat to protect my wife and child.

Here is another thing that puzzles me about the faith. I struggle with a pair of motifs that seem to run through this faith we call Christianity. On the one hand there is the above motif that recognizes all the ugliness in the world and says go stand with the poor and oppressed and know that if it cost you everything, the God of the resurrection will vindicate you. On the other hand we have what I like to refer to as the Kyle Lake motif. It is the motif that says love God, embrace beauty and live life to the fullest. It recognizes that there is so much that is beautiful about life and challenges you to live every minute of it to the fullest.

Now let me anticipate a response from Shane. He has never seen so much beauty, lived so fully, and loved God so deeply as he has in Calcutta, Iraq, and on the streets of Philadelphia. I'm not denying that he is right. But I love my son, I love mountain biking, I find God in the beauty of scenic things like the Rockies, and I most certainly find God in the serene lakes in Northern Wisconsin on a beautiful evening.

All these things are far removed both fiscally and geographically from the world of Shane. So if I want to take my following Jesus as seriously as Shane, what do i do with this motif?

Grace for now.

Shane part 2 (children)

There is a lot I could say about Claiborne and probably more important things, but let me post this.

I tend to be the instigator in my family. Not because I’m wildly revolutionary or even smarter than anyone in my family, but perhaps, from time to time a bit more curious about why we ended up believing what we believe, which most of the time I’m complete agreement with.

During my last couple of visits home, I have tried to be this person in the political conversation. My family is almost entirely republican. So at the apex of one of our last discussion my dad, who tends to tease like I do half jokingly asked me, “Do you think Jesus would vote democrat or republican?”

I wanted to say democratic, but I didn’t and still don’t really know enough about politics to defend myself. I only know what we hear in the broad scope of things. I don’t actually look at voting records and political platforms.* So trying to think about how Jesus would overcome the abortion issue and cast a vote for the donkeys I realized I didn’t have a response.

I was pretty sure that Jesus would be disenchanted with the American political system and not be excited about voting at all, but I didn’t try and make that case. I just dropped it.

Here is one story Claiborne shares that hit me square in the face. He talks about a rally/convention…something that they had in the Bahamas. It was about low wages and working conditions for children in countries that supply products for some of our American multinationals. Instead of having the Bonos and the Oprahs speak they had the children that work in these factories. One of the children shared his story. In his speech he pointed to a scar on his face and shared that he got it when an armed guard hit him in the face for not working hard enough. The guard then torn between needing the child to work and not wanting the blood from the new cut on his face to get on the fabric pulled out a lighter and burned the cut shut. The child told that he got this scar from “making your stuff.”

Now again let me say that I’m not a political guy. So I don’t really know that by casting a republican vote if I empower mega corporations to continue this activity or if that is just a ploy that the left sells me. But regardless I think this should stop us in our tracks. I don’t mean to upset anybody, but let me personalize this and list some names of people who these children might be close to. Imagine if these people have their faces cut open and then burned shut to produce products so we could buy them cheap.

Roy
Calla
Jack
Sam et all.
Kerstin
Shane/Hannah
Jude Sutton
Soren
Etc.

I’m not trying to be graphic, but I am saying this. Casting a vote for a republican sometimes makes us feel justified as we think about all the babies that we are trying to save. And don’t get me wrong, I think this is noble and though my political leanings change, this issue has never been made easy for me. People, not just babies die when we abort. But it seems less and less clear to me that any one political party really wants to save all the children.

Shane reminds me that they are all God’s children and if I’m going to participate in God’s kingdom they are all my children too. The Iraqi children, the Afghani children, the Darfur children, the democratic children, the republican children, Caesar’s children and the bin Laden children.

So vote and vote with conviction, but can we be bold enough to admit that our political parties aren’t the end all and that they are probably killing some children somewhere.

Grace for now, and find time to vote for the kingdom with your life.

* I try and be intentional about asking when I feel like I've run into someone who is passionate about their politics. Assuming that this much passion results in a good deal of research I'm continually disappointed by few who actually know much about their candidates.

Shane part 1

I’ve been reading Shane Claiborne’s “Irresistible Revolution,” this week.(by the way frequent readers will notice I use quotations for books, that’s because I don’t know how to use the italics on blogger).

This is the best book I’ve read in a long time. Before I hear some of the groans from you literary types, really well read types or even super theological/philosophical types, let me add that it is the best book “I’ve” read in a long time. Maybe not even because it’s so fantastic, but maybe cause it hit me at just the right time.

I plan on posting a few things about this book over the next few days, but here is my first thought.

I’m really impulsive. Especially in the way I process data and the speed at which I sometimes do. So as you can imagine, I have this sudden need to be more socially justice minded because Claiborne has me, once again, believing that this is really what it means to follow Jesus.

It might be helpful to say what this does not mean then. This does not mean that my main concern is getting people saved or getting people to church or even being missional or emergent. It means that in whatever context I am in, I try to be Jesus.

So here’s the two teeny tiny steps I’ve taken. 1. I got rid of a lot of books and clothes for the garage sale. I tried not to be the guy that donates “used toothbrushes” and give something that might be really meaningful for someone. But lets be honest this will only raise another $5-10 for the church. I think this step was more me overcoming my need to hang onto my “stuff,” something which I see myself really guilty of.

Speaking of stuff, my second move. 2. I feel really guilty about having all my DVDs. No it’s not that I believe Jesus thinks my DVDs are ridiculous, though He may, but I guess it symbolizes this same problem in my life. I started by collecting a few DVDs that I liked, but eventually this grew to ones I kind of liked and before I knew it we have 200 DVDs.

So instead of throwing out my DVDs or selling them, something that would mimic the adolescent secular music cleansing ceremonies we all know about, I’ve decided that I’m going to try and make good use of them. I started by inviting the neighbors from across the street to come over and pick a few out. I hope to add more people from the neighborhood as a way to get to know them better.

Some of you may think this is an excuse for me to hang onto my possessions and you may be right, but if so I ask that you please pray for me. In a strange way I feel like Claiborne is inviting me to really follow Jesus for the first time in my life. This decision is more difficult than I thought.

That’s all for now.

dear cell phone

Dear cell phone,

612-747-2122. It was a good run. In fact we were together for some of the best years of my life. I remember I signed a contract to get you before I was married. It was like the first married thing I did. Lindsay was in her last year at River Falls student teaching and consequently poor. So I flipped the bill on our new contract. Our first joint account.

You were there for some really big moments. You sat in the car charging while I got married. You were there with me when I walked the stage back in ’04 when I graduated from Bethel.

You were there when I first moved into my apartment and used to call my brother for help. You were used to communicate to us that Lindsay’s Grandpa passed away. You were used when we called everyone with the news that Roy was on the way and when he arrived. You have been good cell phone. Thanks for all the memories. Thanks for being pivotal in helping me develop all my new and old friendships.

We’ve been through a lot. Happy retirement.

The Dark Side of Baseball

There is this legalized form of gambling. It is called off season decisions made by major league baseball owners. Some buy players like Soriano and pitchers from japan who aren't worth their weight in Sushi.

The flip side of painful coin is when you let players go who have great seasons elsewhere.

As of tonight Jeff Suppan is 5-2 with an ERA of 2.63. Jason Marquis just won his fifth game is now 5-1 with an ERA of 1.70.

The Cardinals are a slumping 14-18 and showing no signs of a world series ring.

life change

My sinks are constantly filled with poop stained onsies

My trash constantly smells like poop

I’m awoken three times a night with squawking and or crying

The highlight of my life is eliciting a smile from a 7 week old

I nightly get overly warm due to bouncing a unhappy baby for 20-30 min.

I don’t hear the details on Sports Center anymore

I eat with one hand

And each day I wake up feeling like I’ve won better than the lottery

Update on good lookin'

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Goodbye Johnny Potter part 2

They had just dimmed the lights. I think this officially marked that it was the moment in the evening separating those who come to eat a dinner meal and those who were there to stay for one or two or several after dinner drinks.

The waitress approaches the crowded table only to find one occupant left and she asks the lone soul if he’d like one more drink.

He politely turns her down acknowledging that he’s only there at this point to enjoy the jazz music. Jazz music as it turn out, is strangely appropriate for this moment.

The slow beat of the drum serves as sort of metaphorical life metronome for him. With each beat and the help of four or was it five beers, a new memory pops into his head helping him recount all the reasons why Waco has been so great these last couple of years.

He can feel the emotion begin to well up. His initial response is to fight it, but then he decides, “no, this is the place for this to happen.” He decides that this is the goodbye. Sure he’ll be in church on Sunday and see the few people he really cares to say goodbye here and there, but this is goodbye to this place.

The Elite Grill is awarded being the crescendo of so many great happenings over the past several years. For him, it is the icon for all that he appreciates about Waco. And so he thinks…

He thinks about all things sad, all things happy, and yet somehow all things good. He thinks about all the people that for the first time in his life have actually been a community that is worthy of the title “community.” He thinks about Baylor. He thinks about his soon to be lonely home (the first he ever bought). He thinks about losing a friend and gaining so many more. He thinks about his first job and the radical decision to walk away from America’s dream to pursue his own and he thinks about this night and how it seems to be a perfect ending to a great chapter.

Feeling a little more like driving, he stands up soaks up the end of this last song…offers applause. But the applause seems to be more than just thank you to the jazz band. It is thank you to all of you and all of this. He turns towards the exit and proceeds.

As he steps outside there is a crisp breeze that reminds him there is more. There is a reason to move on and he is reminded why, though all this is so good he is leaving. The slowly closing door finally closes and the last period of the chapter is finally punctuated.

Jonathon Potter is moving on.

Good-bye Johnny Potter part 1

I wish I was better at writing these things because the people I write them about really do elicit more emotion from me than my writing communicates. Frequent readers will notice that I use Tolkien to try and express this hard thing we call good bye. In Tolkien’s Novel, which is so large and so superb, we meet many memorable characters that grab our hearts and eventually in scenes like when Frodo goes to the Grey Haven’s, have to do this difficult but appropriate thing we call saying goodbye.

I remember saying goodbye to Harris and struggling to really communicate the significance of his impact on my life, be my knowing him a small amount of time. And yet I say goodbye again. This time to a friend whom I have developed what has become an almost sacred tradition with. Some of you who are local will know about the four of us who faithfully meet for this great American invention known as “Happy Hour.”

I don’t really know what it is about happy hour. Maybe it’s the honesty that comes out after a few beers or commitment to meet on a regular basis, but over the last few months I’ve come to know these three people in a way that is unique. We share the common bond of community that you can only find in shows…well like Cheers. Can I be bold enough to suggest that I have found a church within the church? A proverbial life group if you will. A group to hear my struggles, questions, and share my joys with.

And now, now one of us leaves. This is one of the hard but sad truths about life. We learn to say good-bye to some of our own narratives main characters. So to Jonathan Potter I say thank you. Thank you for taking a chance on a bunch of punks from the North and trying to make your way through the book of Job for a semester and thank you for all the great friendship that followed after that.

And cheers…Cheers to the most creative artist I know on this side of the Mississippi.

Here I should put some fancy thing like Craig, but for now that’s all.

For those of you who wonder why I love WI so much

State Senate OKs free beer samples at the store

The Associated Press

MADISON — Beer lovers of Wisconsin, rejoice! Thanks to the state Senate, you’re a step closer to getting a free (yes, free!) half-can of beer.

The Senate today approved a bill on an unanimous voice vote that allows grocery and liquor stores to hand out samples of up to 6 ounces of free beer per day to people of legal drinking age. The Assembly was expected to take up the measure later today.

Current state law allows wineries, but not grocery and liquor stores, to offer up to 6 ounces of free samples.

Sen. Pat Kreitlow, D-Chippewa Falls, home of the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Co., is the bill’s main sponsor. He said the measure is designed to help beer manufacturers compete with wine makers.


p.s. thanks Kenny

belated easter

I didn’t write or say much anything about Easter and I feel bad. In college I used to casually suggest that all the churches in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area should rent out the Metrodome and celebrate Easter all week long because it is that big of a holiday.

Irenaeus has me thinking otherwise. The West’s version of atonement has a lot more to do with death and resurrection than say the entire resume of Jesus’ life. Not so in the theology of the East. For Athanasius and Irenaeus, Jesus entire life was critical for the participation of the community of God. Yes the person and work of Christ culminate in his faithfulness to and on the cross, but his redemptive work is substantiated by a life of righteous faithfulness to the will of God.

What does this mean for us Easter celebrators, only that Easter is all year long everyday. This Easter I didn’t reflect like I would have liked to, but there is much in my life that indicates newness and life among the craziness. For this I’m grateful to God.

whispering the truth

Last night I attended our small group, “Generous Orthodoxy.” At some point in the discussion one of our bright thinkers commented that he would like it if we stopped deconstructing because after so much deconstruction there is little left to actually call “the faith” when you/we get done.

At this point I checked out and began thinking about deconstruction. I began to ask myself where all this deconstruction happens. Ironically I think the primary area that deconstruction happens is in our collective slighting sarcastic comments. We see or hear a phrase from our pasts and we snicker and make a joke of it. Let me stop here. I’m chief among these people and I don’t think this humor is all together out of line. Humor has a unique ability to expose what is wrong with systems from time to time.

In case you are not following let me give you a quick example. When Donald Miller came and spoke to Baylor over a year ago now he talked about how we have a Christian subculture for everything. His example was a Christian office supplies store. His punch line came when he asked us if when we purchased hole punchers that had been “bathed in the blood of the lamb.”

This is a good example of what I’m talking about. So many things have been handed down to us that haven’t been given apt explanation. Thus, when the experience doesn’t substantiate the language we grew weary and became cynical. In this sense I think the sarcasm and deconstruction have a place.

On the other hand I think we secretly believe that for some, perhaps our parents, phrases like “bathed in the blood of the lamb,” had/have significant meaning. These types of phrases evoke a bit of nostalgia in us and we secretly appreciate this type of language and practice in someone when we sense they are genuine.

This is why I believe that Ben told me that in a way he really enjoyed when Louis Giglio came and spoke to UBC. This is why Craig reported to me that when he dined with the Brownings several months ago he was a bit touched by their before meal prayer. And this is why I believe there has been an overwhelming positive response to this past Sundays service.

We sat there and began to notice the familiar. Church picnics, baptisms and communion all remind of our past that we so often ridicule….but…but are still secretly appreciative of.

date night

My girlfriend Macy came over last night. It was our fist play date. I think I made a really good impression. Hopefully my daddy-like charm wooed her.

Dear Roy

This is why we love the sports teams we do.

We really only care about three teams. And to tell you the truth I’m kind of shaky on one of them lately.

First and most important we are St. Louis Cardinals fans. We love the fact that they just won a world series and are Pujols, Eckstein, Edmunds, and Rolen fans, but they are all on trial. If they spend the majority of their careers in St. Louis then they official make it into the Carn-Dog sports hall of fame. The real Cardinal we love is Ozzie Smith. 13 gold gloves later, you got to love any guy who can do back flips out onto the field. I’m not real sure why being a Cardinal fan took, but Grandma and Grandpa were born there and my Grandpa was real into them. I remember when I was little and we used to go and visit them, my Grandpa would take us to the local sports shops and buy us grandkids Cardinal sports gear. I can’t remember not loving them.


Second we are Packer fans. Wisconsin can be a bit fanatic. In fact last time I checked the official state religion is Favre-inism. Lambeau Field is a sacred place, and Green Bay fans are like none other. Hopefully we will get there some day. I probably owe a bit of my love for the Packers to my best friend Tom who you will probably learn to effectually call Uncle Tom. I wasn’t real into football growing up, but Tom kept me in front of the T.V. on Sunday afternoons when I was little and eventually I learned to love them.

Lastly, we are Duke Blue Devil basketball fans. As of late I have wavered a little. I love Coach K., but don’t care for the players of the recent Blue Devils like I did when they had the Bob Hurleys and the Christian Laettners. I gained my love for the Blue Devils back in 1991-2 and when they won back to back national championships. To be honest, it was probably more with wanting to be like my big brother than my own personal love for the team, that initially drew me to them. Now he doesn’t really care for them and I still do. I didn’t pick them to do well this year, probably because I find myself gravitating towards Wisconsin sports lately.

Will talk more about this when you get older.

Love dad

KOG participation

"God has a special place for the poor. The poor are where God lives. God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is where the opportunity is lost and lives are shattered. God is with the mother who has infected her child with a virus that will take both their lives. God is under the rubble in the crys we hear during war time. God is with the poor and God is with us if we are with them."

from a speech Bono made to the NAACP recently.

It is one thing for guys like Jurgen Moltmann to understand the KOG better than I do. After all they have been at it for who knows how long. The problem for me is that the pagan rock stars seem to be getting better than I do too.

Rats!!! I'll have to work through this.

New Pictures

Mom and Dad,

here are some new pictures from 3-26.

P.S. if you are looking for a gift idea, he still does not have an Albert Pujols onesie

The unsung hero

I don’t really know how to understand God’s providence, but sometimes I believe God sends us the right person at the right time.

Lindsay had a fairly good labor on a number of accounts. Roy was only 6 pounds 9 ounces vs. 8+. She didn’t have to have a caesarian section. Though she was in labor for a long time, we commented throughout the day about how time seemed to be flying. The epidural worked well. I would say after she got it at about 1:00 she didn’t feel much till about 6:00.

However, at about 8:00 p.m. I noticed that she was turned away from me and fairly quite. We had a room full of visitors, and so I didn’t notice at first, but eventually I got up and went around the bed to discover a few small tears running down her face. For my male readers, I’ll inform you that an epidural helps with the contractions, but doesn’t do much to ease the pain that is associated with actually delivering the baby. At this point I found myself begin to freeze.

Some say hell is burning in fire and being in darkness. Some say it is separation from God. I would like to add that it is watching someone you love suffer and not being able to do anything about it.

You know that moment in Top Gun at the end of the movie when Ice-Man is in trouble and Maverick is sent up to help him? There is a critical moment when Maverick gets up there and with shaky confidence pulls out of the fight to contemplate if he wants to be involved. He says to himself with his ex-copilot Goose’s dog tags in hand, “talk to me Goose, talk to me.” That moment snaps Maverick out of his funk. I had that moment and my sister-in-law Lisa, was my Goose.

In my own valley of the shadow, my two-time child bearing, ex-army medic sister-in-law, came to my aide and began coaching Lindsay in her breathing and offering necessary moral support. I watched, learned, and quickly joined her. I joined Ice-Man and we won the fight.

Thank you Lissa.

toys???

Dear Fisher Price,

Making some of our purchases this last year I though you were overpriced on a lot of things. However, tonight when a very tired us put Roy in his swing and it took…well, I began to rethink my accusation.



Roy the burrito



6 pound 5 ounce Roy drowning a new born outfit

Home Sweet Home!!!

thanks to everybody for all your prayers and support. We are finally home. Mommy is sore and tired, but healthy. Roy is hungry and tired, but healthy, and I'm the guy and nobody really cares how the guy is doing:) JK

I've got a lot to say about these last couple of days and will try unpack some thoughts as well as post a few pictures, but for now I'm going to make dinner.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Introducing......

The fabulous, Roy Clemensssssss CARNEY!!!!!!!!!!
Born: March 20, 2007
TOB: 8:40pm, Hillcrest Hospital
Waco, Texas
Weight: 6lbs. 9oz. Length: 19.5in

Roy has entered the building...













"Hey World! Take this!"











Mom's doing great for those of you wondering.....











It's O-F-F-I-C-I-A-L











"Dig my lid, dawg! Keeps my skull warm, dawg."











"He looks just like me...I think...right?"











SO Handsome!

Dear Roy

Dear Roy,

I write to you on eve before you are born. I suppose I should say something profound like “I am who I am,” or “I came to give my life as a ransom for many,” but I’m not God, just your dad.

I did think I would share this with you though. This has been one of the hardest things for me to learn, that is trusting God with my money. I’ve gotten pretty good about writing my monthly tithe check, and we support a compassion kid. But to tell you the truth Roy, sometimes it feels mechanical, like another bill. I can’t say it has ever been really difficult, because as long as I’ve been alive I’ve always had enough and so was never in between a rock and a hard place when it came to giving. Close, but not real close.

I don’t mind giving. I don’t think I do it grudgingly, but I don’t think I do it cheerfully either. I think I just do it, and by the grace of God I’ve always had something to give. I need to work on this Roy. So one of my prayers for you is that you will experience the joy of giving and that it will plague your life.

Let me give you an example of how God takes care of us. Tonight your mom and I went looking for a changing table for you. It is the last thing that we didn’t have for you. It’s not a necessity, but still nice to have. So we went to Toys’r’us and no luck. Then to the baby Depot and no luck. Our last stop to Big Lots to check out a discounted table that your mom found earlier today.

Before we made it there though we went to Barnes and Noble, so that I could buy you a birthday present. I didn’t think it was a good idea because I’m tight on the budget and being the guy who worries about the budget, which you will eventually come to learn, I didn’t have the money allocated for your present. But I figured you are only born once so I broke down and bought you “The Giving Tree.” The deep existential significance of which you will learn at a later date.

On to Big Lots.

In the back of the store on the bottom shelf sat your changing table. The box was opened and we had to dig to find all the pieces. Your mother told me to bargain for a deal. The box listed the table at $35. This was good because I allocated a cheap $40 in my mind for your last minute table shopping. Apprehensively I asked for the manager to bargain for a cheap price on an already discounted table. She made her way to the back of the store and much to my surprise looked at it for a minute and said…”how about $15.” Being a guy I slyly responded, “Yeah, I guess we could do fifteen.” In my head though I was immediately thinking about how I purchased your present and a changing table for under the price I had originally allocated for the table alone. This might be telling of how nerdy I am, but this is the sort of thing I get excited about…saving money.

Roy, there are several ways to understand this story. Some might call it luck. Some call it fate. We like to think of it as grace. No I don’t think that God went ahead of us and convinced the lady to mark down the price. And no I don’t think that because we give. God gives to us. That actually isn’t grace at all. I do think that God provides for us and that giving is important. I can’t draw the lines of cause and effect because they aren’t in the bible, but I do think both are important and I hope you find joy in both God’s provision and in personal giving.

see you tomorrow,
love dad

Are you ready?

There are two questions I find particularly annoying these days. One is, “how is your wife?” Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m not interested in her well being or in you being concerned about her well being, but it’s just that, it is only one of two questions people ask me. And to tell you the truth, most of the time I don’t really know how she is doing. Today I can report that she is bored. She is bored because she is on Spring Break and spends all day at home watching T.V. and resting. Her ankles aren’t swollen, and she looks fantastic for a 39+ weeker. So I report that she is doing well, but she is bored.

And for the other question…”are you ready?” Am I ready? Is Josh Carney ready to be a dad? Well, the best answer I have for people is that I’m as ready as I was when I got married. What would constitute being ready?

In sports if a team loses a game, the coach will say something like, “we just weren’t mentally prepared, we weren’t ready for our game tonight.” Apparently the team made too many mistakes or didn’t do enough right consistently to win the game. We would say that they weren’t prepared.

How do you get ready to be a dad? It strikes me that a lot of the same will be true. I will make mistakes, I will often feel that I did not do enough right consistently. I envision in about two weeks, feeling deprived of sleep and telling myself I’m not ready. I see down the road when Roy is 12 and starts asking questions about sex…I won’t be ready for that either. And someday he will leave for college or maybe just leave…and I won’t be ready. But I will do all those things. And I will do them as best as I can. I’m not going to worry about those moments, just do my best to be Josh Carney when they happen.

So yes I’m ready. To get ready, I decided with my wife nine months ago that we wanted to try and have a child and to get ready I’ve committed loving Roy as best as I know how. That is how I’ve gotten ready. So, yes I’m ready.

citizen of heaven

I don't know how you grew up, but inadvertently I grew up with the Tim LaHaye eschatology. it is the sort of eschatology that pays no attention to the corruptible now, but rather chops history up into dispensations so that we can disregard ethics for today. Of particular interest to me lately is how this ties to our care for creation. This is just some of the thoughts that will probably end up in my paper.

Philippians 3:20-4:1

20But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. 21He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. 1Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

For N.T. Wright the most important issue to clarify is the nature of citizenship in this text. Typically this text has been read with the hermeneutic that envisions a time in the future when Christians will return and live there (heaven) forever. Against Philo and the popular notion of Hellenistic Christianity, Paul has is mind a Hebrew meaning. Wright makes a pair of points, the first of which is of great interest here. He suggests that the model Paul is operating on here has two levels and the first is anthropological. We are not souls trapped in bodies that existed prior to being born and that are longing to be released so that we may go home. Wright argues that Paul is suggesting that our bodies will be transformed, not abandoned. This point is made more explicitly in I Corinthians 15, and the language here of “humiliation” to “glory” is akin to “corruptible” “incorruptible”. Wright asks, “What lies beneath this? A theology of creation very different from that of Philo. The final phrase of phrase 21 echoes Psalm 8:6, just as in I Corinthians 15:27-8” . Wright continues by fleshing out the pragmatic ramifications for this understanding of the text. Note his explicit allusion of its application to created order itself.

"the Messiah here is the truly human being, the fulfillment of God’s purpose in creation, now set in authority over the rest of the created order. There is no need to escape from the created order; the Messiah is its lord. Nor is there any need to escape from earth to heaven; instead, the Messiah will come from heaven to earth, to rescue his people not by snatching them away from earthy but by transforming their bodies. Paul does not here develop the wider context for this, that of transforming renewal of creation itself; but when he does just that in Romans 8 he merely fills in the details of the present lightning sketch rather than adding anything that alters its shape and content. It is because of this continuity between the present and of the future that the practical conclusion of Paul’s argument here, exactly as in 1 Corinthians 15:58, is focused not on waiting for a different life altogether but on “standing firm in the lord.” (4:1)."

Resurrection of the Son of God, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 231.

Wright makes several pertinent points. Here I’ll just consider two. First, his comment that Paul does not develop the wider context for this, that of transforming renewal of creation itself, implies that this is same narrative substructure under girding the Romans 8 eschatology and thus the ecological implications are found here as well. Secondly, Wright speaks of continuity between the present and future. This is a critical point to be noted and one that when overlooked produces the sort of faulty eschatology that understands “citizens of heaven” to mean something like “ignore the present order because we will end up in a future heaven anyhow”. This sort of think has disastrous pragmatic implications for care of God’s creation.

Dear new daylight savings time,

I got up about ten minutes ago to get ready for work. It is dark out. I find the new you depressing. You are like December without the anticipation of the 25th.

Carney

why do you think global warming is a hoax?

These are the notes I took from the film “Jesus Camp” that I intend to use for my ecology/reconciliation paper. My question comes at the end of the dialogue.

Levi 12 years old. Home schooled. Parents interested in teaching him things like creation over evolution. A.G. background. Preaches. Evangelical dream boy. Shows cover of science book “exploring creation: with physical science”

Levi’s Mom: one popular thing to do in American politics is to note that the summers in the United States over the past few years have been very warm. As a result global warming must be real. What’s wrong with this reasoning? (A curious and sarcastic) “hmm…”

Levi: It’s only gone up 0.6 degrees. (Mother shaking her head in approval)

Levi’s Mom: yeah it’s not really a big problem is it?

Levi: Nope…I don’t think that it’s going to hurt us.

Levi’s Mom: It’s…It’s a huge political issue—global warming is and that’s why it is important for you to understand…(Levi interrupts)

Levi interrupts: is evolution too?

Levi’s mom: um…not really

Levi again interrupts: creationism?

Levi’s mom: um…it’s becoming one now…what if you had to go to a school where the teacher said, ‘creationism is stupid, and you are stupid if you believe in it.’

Levi: I think they should…wait a minute

Levi’s mother: or what if you had to go to a school where your teacher said evolution is stupid and you are stupid if you believe in it

Levi: I wouldn’t mind that.

Levi’s Mother: you wouldn’t mind it…if you look at creationism you realize it’s the only answer to all the question

Levi: that’s exactly what dad said

Levi’s mom: um hum…it’s the only possible answer to all the questions (eyebrows now raised in a matter of fact expression)

(Later with a smile on the face)
Levi’s mother: Did you get to the part that says science doesn’t really prove anything. It’s really interesting when you look at it like that…(a devious smile that almost looks like she has just uncovered some monumental truth.)

Later again Levi: I think Galileo made the right choice by giving up science for Christ.

75% of home schooled kids are evangelical Christians

For those of you who may have political convictions that lean right, I was wondering if you could tell me why by and large the person typified by Levi and his mother has it out for the environmental campaign. It has become more difficult to stereotype the person who is against environment. In an interview on 60 minutes about a year ago, Ted Haggard, who all of you should know now, was interviewed as the president of the National Associations of Evangelicals. In the interview when questioned about how Evangelicals may have had it wrong, Haggard replied that more attention needed to be given to environmental affairs. All of that to acknowledge that there has been a swing in Evangelicals concerning the environment.

Still my friend Morrow included a quote from James Dobson, which I don’t know how recent it was but it reads,

“"More importantly, we have observed that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children."

So to those of you who would consider yourselves this type of conservative, my question is why. Why take this stance? My research for my paper has shown me that this is a Christian issue. So maybe my question is this. Political rhetoric aside, is there not Biblical warrant for us to be ecologically concerned? If so why not take these issues of global warming more serious? Is it money? God knows we’ve blown money on worse fake problems!

Who's in and Who's out?

I have a certain propensity to want to know who is in the kingdom of God and who is not. I don’t know where this comes from. Well…maybe I do. You see in the type of Christianity I was raised with, there were good deeds, which didn’t get you into heaven, and then there were good deeds that were a consequence of your faith in Jesus. The former was meaningless and the latter was meaningful. I like to think about this in terms of epistemology and ontology. You can do ontology, but if it doesn’t have the right epistemology associated with it, it was deemed worthless.

Consequently a critical tenet to the Christianity I grew up with, was that you didn’t get to heaven by being a good person. This was important because it gave us something to start our proselytizing with. The problem with me these day is that though we have our John 14:6’s the verse that my growing up brand of Christianity puts on banners and never lets you forget about, we also have and I think a substantial amount more of the gospel given to verses like Matthew 7:21. Here the issues seems to be that those who think they have correct epistemic notions about Christ, haven’t done will of the Father, what we might take to be correct ontology.

So who is in and who is out?

$1,000,000 night for a mere 13 bucks

This morning I woke up and made my way to the kitchen to pour myself a bowl of cereal. When I got there I discovered that my wife and set out two steaks to defrost…tonight’s dinner. I got an idea. I asked here if she wanted to go out to eat and enjoy a dollar theatre movie. She enthusiastically responded yes and I put the steaks away. I thought this might be a good idea for a pair of reasons. 1. Frequent readers will note that we are celebrating a lot of lasts, so I thought this cold be our last non-Roy date. 2. I took my 3rd of three midterms today and needed an academic break. A night free form school if you will.

All was well until I passed by a fellow student at Truett who asked me if I would be there tonight. “Tonight, I thought to myself…what is tonight,” and then the light bulb went on. I had my Generous Orthodoxy group at Church tonight. I debated for a while. On the one hand I really love our community groups, but on the other I really thought it was important that my wife and I enjoyed our date. So at about 4:30 I called Jon Mark and asked if it would be okay if I ducked out for the evening to which he graciously responded with a supportive yes. Thanks Holly and Jon Mark.

As it turns out Tuesday is a great night for a cheap date. We began our night by intending to enjoy the Pei Wei restaurant. We got there only to take note of the long line standing outside the door. Consequently we opted for Rosa’s where we each got a soft drink and a plate of three tacos, rice, and beans for roughly $5 a piece. We ran into Janine Jackson’s sister Lindsey and her boyfriend Ben and they joined us treated us with some fine company.

Next we made our way to the dollar theatre which only charges a mere fifty cents on Tuesdays for all shows all times brining out date night total to $11. After our movie, “Night at the Museum,” we drove over to Wooded Acres to enjoy $1 scoop ice-cream night at Baskin and Robins. I got a turtle cheesecake scoop on a cake cone and Lindsay got Everybody’s Favorite Candy Bar in a cup. This brought our total to $13.

It was a perfect evening. Now it is 9:48 and I will retire to my bed and enjoy a great nights sleep. And I think to myself, I’m like Tom Scavo, for you Desperate Housewife fans, I’m the guy who has it all.

reasons I don't follow Christ

Dear Jesus,

I’ve been thinking about why it is hard for me to follow you. Why I am reluctant to join in Molmann’s solidarity, Brueggemann’s prophetic imagination or Volf’s self-donation. I know these are excuses, but at least I’m being honest.

1. You didn’t need health insurance. Either one of two things seems to be true about your life. You could just heal yourself not with a couple of vitamin C’s, but rather with a quick “be healed.” Or you had some good reason for enduring the pain and knew it wasn’t time to call down the help of 1,000 angels. You didn’t have to allocate 300 Caesar coins a month for health insurance. That’s more money for the poor.

2. You didn’t need groceries. If you got hungry, you could just steel a sucker from a baby and make 5,000 suckers out of that one sucker. Or you could just throw a net into the Brazos and pull in 1,000 fish. You never worried about making it down to H.E.B. that’s another way to save money and give to the poor.

3. People just gave you donkeys to ride and the state of Jerusalem didn’t require insurance on donkeys. That’s more money to give to the poor.

4. Though Dan Brown was riveting in his writing, I have a felling you didn’t marry Mary Magdalene. If someone broke into my house, I’d love to turn the other cheek if I had the guts, but I’m afraid I’d fear for the life of my child and wife. I’d probably try and hit them in the legs with a baseball bat.

These are just some of my thoughts. Help my lack of faithfulness unto obedience.

Carney

the political landscape of spiritual institutions

Dear people who think Truett is liberal,

Truett is part of the south and when your neighbors are Southwestern and DTS the proverbial Jerry Fallwell and Pat Buchanan, then yes we are liberal.

But in the larger scope of things, namely the more realistic and national scope of things we are far from liberal. In fact we are probably more like John McCain, with a propensity to draw a few socially liberal, yet conservative Rudy Giulianis.

We find ourselves strange bedfellows with certain folk and even work on stuff with the Joe Lieberman’s (the Fuller, Duke, Denver types if you will) every once in a while bringing people like E.P. Sanders to lecture because we think we can learn from people who don’t believe exactly like us, but we are still moderate to conservative.

Liberal I’ll have you know is out east. And if you’ve ever realized that there is more to the United States then the south, you’ll see schools like Vanderabilt the proverbial Hillary Clintons, and Harvard divinity school your proverbial Noam Chomsky. These institutions consider us grossly dogmatic and fundamental. And you well they don’t consider you legit educational institutions.

For a helpful discussion on the relative nature of a fundamentalist see Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief. Just look up “Son of a Bitch” in the index and you’ll find the page.

Your moderately conservative future mega church pastor

Carney

Embrace that I really rather exclude

“God does not abandon the godless to their evil but gives the divine self for them in order to receive them into divine communion through atonement, so also should we—whoever our enemies and whoever we may be.” Miroslav Volf--Exclusion and Embrace p. 23

Can I be honest? I’ve been reading a good deal about a brand of Christianity that I did not necessarily grow up with. It is the brand found in Jurgen Moltmann, Walter Wink, John Howard Yoder, Volf and even Brian McLaren. This is a difficult brand that I don’t want to wear. It is too hard.

It is the brand that notes the miracles and sayings of Jesus, but always keeps them at bay and subservient to the more urgent theme of his faithfulness unto death. This is hard, and in my heart of hearts, I read about Volf’s system and I just want to be one of the godless. They are given grace and that would just be easier. But, by the grace of God, the self in me has not successfully extinguished the voice of the Spirit, even with all the wiles of my white Western life begging to do so, I experience God’s voice calling me to conform to the cruciform character of Christ… and I want so badly to ignore it. But this, the life that ignores the voice, as it turns out is not a life that is worth living.

learning

Today I had the privilege of attending a lecture given by one E.P. Sanders. Sanders is a Methodist who is probably closer to being an agnostic. He has a Ph.D. in New Testament studies with specific interest in Christian history. Sanders is undoubtedly one of the more renown scholars alive today, made all the more poignant by his Professor Emeritus status at the prestigious Duke University.

Sanders lectured on Christianity, Judaism, and Humanism. The lecture was pretty good. I made several mental notes and walked away with a few things to chew on. In short he suggested that the top down system of government (Judaism’s contribution) and the bottom up system of government (Hellenism’s contribution) shared humanistic ethics in common. Yet these two systems promoted competing ideological governmental systems that produced wars throughout the centuries. His example: note the middle ages. The solution to all this, Sander’s says, is that Locke and others mined these two systems for the humanistic ethics and saved us from the religious wars that peaked right before the enlightenment. Hence we got the beautiful world of democracy, and the privatization of religion. A place where competing ideals could co-exist. Bono would have loved it. (at this point if you disagree or are angry, please save your comments…this is not the point of the post)

What struck me about the lecture was this. There are many ways to learn, but the way I learn best is not an environment like this one. Maybe more notable though is who I learn from. With all due respect, Sanders is fairly solidified in what he believes, as I would guess most of us are by his age. He has systematic ways of understanding the world and where he sees a problem he applies what he knows as best he can to filter and understand the problem. Though his answer may not be perfect, it is coherent given the data he has. And yet I find that I learn more through the honest questions that come up in my community groups from believers at all different phases of their God journey. I hear the sincerity in their voices and all the sudden I find myself wondering some of the same questions, be they elementary. They share their stories and their context gives the questions all the more meaning. As the semester continues the pieces of their individual narratives come together and by the end of the semester we find that our community is in the midst of it’s own story of mutual learning. It is here that I find some of my most precious theological gems from the most unlikely of characters.

This is a strange juxtaposition, and yet a powerful one that testifies to the creative activity of the Spirit in the life of the church today.

**this is not to take away from E.P. Sanders. Perhaps he could write the same thing about his own community. He just happens to be the guinea pig that helps this post makes its point.