Arrogance and swagger

I wonder how a pastor can assert his authority these days. Tenuous ground to be sure in days when church shopping has made any one church a disposable commodity in people’s minds. Sometimes you must preach the law and instead of finding conviction, you see that backs of their heads as they leave the church, sometimes not to return.

I’m not one to mince words, conviction is conviction and most people need more of it rather than less of it in their lives myself included, and I don’t think anyone could accuse me of being too quick to pardon myself so I guess I just wish that we had a culture that respected honest debate and honesty in the service of the truth a little more. We’re too conditioned to be suspicious of each other’s motives to listen with an open mind. In equal measure, we’re too acculturated to seeking rhetorical advantage to just speak the truth in order to have it spoken.

Isn’t that what we are called to do, please comment, since I can only speak from the position of the one in the puplit, aren’t we supposed to call Bull%$#t when it truly is bull%$#t? And not necessarily just to point and blame, but to accept equal measure of culpability, mostly in the realm of sins of ommission, since they are pretty much the American way. We must have the most advanced necks in all of human histiry the way we turn away so often and so well.

Feeling a little grumpy, sorry about that. Got to get Caitlyn to Basketball, got to do Bible Study this evening, got to, got to, got to . . .

still want to though, which is a blessing beyond measure

The Minister’s Discount

I have been entertained on a number of occasions by stories of Debbie’s Grandfather and even her uncle shopping and simply being out in the world and asking for (and receiving) the “minister’s discount.” I imagine that this is one of the reasons that in days past, pastors and the like always went around vested, not only would you garner a bit more respect, but there was in popular culture a sense that you were a person of substance, thought you didn’t earn much money. Maybe times were different then and it was seen as noble to sacrifice material success for the sake of a calling, but wearing the collar certainly cemented you within a certain orbit of thought and behavior and people responded.

Out in California, there is most definitely less deference and respect given to members of the clergy and there is almost no administrative recognition, but it has occurred to me in recent weeks that even among the unchurched, there is an oddly rising tide of recognition of the place of clergy in society that I find very interesting.

Stores in the neighborhood make accommodations for me because they know that I serve a church. For example, a fire bowl was on sale outside one of the local hardware stores and I mentioned in passing that if it came down below 80 or 100 dollars they should call me. When asked what it was for I explained the Easter Vigil to them and told them about kindling the New Flame for the sanctuary. The price moved to $80 in an instant.

Tires get mounted for free, tune-ups happen for the price of the parts, fig trees are delivered to me at work when I mention that I might like to have one.

It feels like the world is turning again and that the casual disdain for clergy that seemed fairly prevalent in places like California specially may be making way for a newfound understanding that faith leaders are not necessarily divisive influences, that we (if we portray ourselves this way) can be islands of calm in a harried world (Steinke’s “non-anxious presence) and there is some value in that.

I feel especially “cared for” here. Some of the terms have changed but I am glad to be here.

Okay, maybe I’m overstating it. It was 80 degrees this morning at 6. If I’d wanted weather like that I’d have stayed in Minneapolis! 100 degrees this afternoon!

I hate to be grouchy about the society in which I live, but . . . (pt.2)

The problem of professionalization and depersonalization is, for me at least, most vividly on display in social behavior.

Ken mentioned in Pt 1 that kids these days have at their disposal so many more resources that most people reading this might have. I wonder whether or not this is a good thing.

don’t get all worked up, I’m not saying we should deprive our children of every advantage our society has developed and built.

But what about the things that are not truly advantages? Clearest to me is the video console. Never before in the history of Mankind has there been a device that encouraged solitude and self-modifying behavior. Whittling is as close as I can come up with insofar as other hobbies or pastimes that have not been group activities in the past, but whittling was never really that rewarding and so people either got bored with it or became sculptors, neither of which is a bad solution.

But in the modern context, we have so many things that kids can do, so many activities, so many inputs that there is almost no time in which they are bored. They may say that they’re bored, but as often as not they are seeking a new disc for the game cube or something because the game has become boring, or their movie collection has become boring, or their computer is too slow or whatever. That’s not boredom, that’s just deprivation of instant input.

No, I’m talking about real boredom. Take away the video console, no soccer, no tv no internet for a week and inspire some real boredom and see what happens. Probably nothing other than your life becoming a living hell. And that’s the problem. With so many different avenues of individual entertainment, pick-up games of soccer or basketball, common on the playgrounds and fields of my youth, have all but disappeared. They have been replaced by leagues, this is true, but then it begins to edge out of the realm of play and into sport and it isn’t so much a cure for boredom as it is a way to fill the time between school and dinner, between dinner and sleep, between Friday and Monday. It has preempted boredom.

But what’s wrong with boredom?

The constant barrage of input, the amazing spectrum of scheduled events, the wealth of possibilities is truly the blessing of an advanced society with wealth that would make Solomon blush and yet, so much of it leads us into pursuits that fill our time without bringing us much closer to the people around us, even teammates because the activity is the point not the creative, corporate dispelling of boredom or the spontaneous creation of community.

I think that the most glaring example of too much input and not enough society is the frequency with which I see young people riding around with their parents, staring out the windows of the car with the ubiquitous white wires from their ipods hanging from their ears. Two people sharing a small space, bound by love and family, not interacting at all.

We’re losing touch with each other as much as we’re losing touch with the unseemly bits of the life that we lead. We were made in the image of God for community, mutual support and loving communion with one another and we are fracturing, idividualizing and becoming distanced from one another in an effort to become all that we can be as individuals, without seeing that we were meant to be all that we can be, together.

I hate to be grouchy about the society in which I live, but . . . (pt.1)

I’m not sure whether or not I’ve brought this idea up in the blog before (I can’t read the blog and write it at the same time, a minor flaw in the system, or in my knowledge of the system) but there is a single thread running through really quite a lot of what ticks me off in the world, in the church and in how things are run in modern western society. This spills down into so many aspects of human life that it becomes the source of much of my irritation in an average day.

Our image of success no longer includes or even supports relationships that exist solely for the purpose of human interaction. We’ve professionalized so many functions of life that we no longer have a visceral attachment to the things and activities of our lives and have lost the relationships that spring from those attachments.

Not clear? It was hard enough to write but I’ll spend some time hashing out what I mean.

We seem, as a society, to have discarded much of what makes for genuine relationships, not just with people, but also with the things of this world. Our food is sanitized and packaged and is therefore far removed from having been a living creature at one point, or having been dirty at some point, or even of having been in any other state than the one we purchase. (as if Twinkies were “born” in those little cellophane sleeves) One of the hallmarks of success for many people is that they no longer have anything to do with the maintenance of their vehicles. Their oil is changed in tidy little oil-marts and they are treated to coffee and CNN in the waiting room. When was the last time you heard of someone doing their own brake job? When was the last time you heard of a High School that still had an auto shop? They’re out there, but they’re rare. Most of the time, we shuttle “those people” off to Vocational ED centers where all of the “non-academic” schoolkids go. Out of sight, out of mind, apparently. So now people who do excel in academics have little or no opportunity to even learn about basic physical, vocational skills.

I can build a boat, conjugate a verb in five languages, weld and cast metal, calculate the speed of a chemical reaction, fix my brakes and rebuild a carburetor and dissect a shark. This isn’t bragging on my own account, but rather a demonstration of the things you had the opportunity to explore in my schooling.

I suppose that the aim is to make the students more able to compete in the workplace. They need the advanced skills in order to secure admission to a good college, a good job and a good life, so the story goes.

But what seems to happen is that the people who are shuttled off to Voc Ed end up being the shadow mechanism that enables the livelihoods of the “elite” who stay in academic classes. They may have to get dirty for their living, but without them, the lives of the others would grind to a halt, not because they grow the food or they provide the services that the others desire, but because the elites have been denied the skills to live a life that is in actual contact with the things and processes of the world.

I think that this is one of the reasons that some of the most important people on the planet, the teachers, are more and more being viewed as functionaries in the lives of those that they teach, as if they were the vocational underclass who is there to implement the curricula that their bosses select and pay tax money to acquire and nothing else. If they are simply servants of the system, another way to separate people from the vicissitudes of raising children, then we grow to trust the system” rather than the teachers. The system teaches our children what they need to know. The system is the depersonalization of life and so some are groomed and some are doomed because of forces beyond their control, their birth, their social situation, their income. I’m not trying to say that there are not ways to overcome this, but many people fall prey to it anyway.

I think that this little screed may take as many as fifteen iterations to get it free of my head, I’ll try and interesperse them with more uplifting topics

Is this REALLY Time magazine?

Rather than flacking for one side or another for the sake of readership and sensationalism, there is an excellent article in Time magazine about the virtues of doubt in both the religious and public/political arenas. You can read it here and I think it’s worth the time. (get it?) Andrew Sullivan, editor of the New Republic and a self described “South Park Republican” is completely cogent and is a delightful read.

check us out Lord, sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but it’s always interesting. Laugh with us, cry with us, and in the sharing of our lives, clue us in on your vision for us and for all creation. Show us how to make the view pleasing to you.