Disagreeing with Your Teacher

I finished up reading The Weight of Glory last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It wasn't the thickest of books, but it was--as is all C.S. Lewis--rich and warm and spiritually nourishing.  I am the better for reading it, as I always am when I engage with his warm and gracious spirit.

What struck me, in the reading of his essays, was that I do not always agree with him.  Take, for instance, his essay entitled "Why I am Not A Pacifist."  I'm not either, not fundamentally so.  But I see this as a weakness in my nature, a flaw in my commitment to the radically healing and transformative message of Jesus of Nazareth.

Clive Staples, in his essay, elegantly and articulately argued against pacifism as a response to evil.  He brought the big guns of his Oxbridge brilliance to the table, reason and history, ancient story and the deep traditions of the church and her teachings.

But I could not help but notice that when it came time to deal with what Jesus had to say, he was a little more coy.  He danced around it, contextualized it, and did not linger there, because it was not a place he could linger.  To stay in the presence of the Christ requires us to set down our swords.  Period.  Tolstoy, who Lewis often quoted and deeply admired, he understood that.  Tolstoy was uncompromising in his advocacy of nonviolence.  But Lewis?  Well, he was living in a different context.

Pacifism is the way of Christ, but with National Socialism burning like a demonic fire in Europe, I can completely understand why C.S. Lewis would have discouraged passive nonresistance.  That does not mean I agree with tone of his essay, which did not touch on the depth of Christ's challenge to our desire to take up our father's sword.  But I can understand it.

Later, in another essay in the collection, Lewis waxes poetic about the natural state of things, which he views as fundamentally patriarchal.  Men are made to be in charge, he says, and egalitarian thinking exists only as a necessary counterbalance to our sinful nature.  He never quite gets around to explaining how this works with Galatians, but...er...I don't think he quite wanted to go there.

I just can't see it, nor can I embrace his thinking.

So here I am, with the great teacher of my childhood and youth, and I have found places where I don't just nod along as he talks.

It would be easy, and in keeping with the spirit of this dissonant age, to slap labels on him.  He's dated and inadequately progressive, I might say, turning up my nose.  He's just another example of patriarchal hegemony, with its use of violence to oppress and subjugate, I might say.

But then I would be deluding myself.  If I focused primarily on the places of disagreement, I would miss the profound and transforming grace of his writings.  If I chose to attack and deconstruct, rather than finding the places of agreement, then I would get nowhere.

If we only choose to learn from and relate to those with whom we completely agree, we will never learn, and never grow.

And so instead, I shake my head at those few places where a wise old colleague and I disagree, and choose to dwell in the many, many places where he sings new and graceful truths to my soul.

It's always better to seek the gifts and graces.

The Church That Doesn't Teach

A front page piece in the Washington Post last week highlighted Wesley Theological Seminary, where I spent seven years snagging my Masters of Divinity, and where I'm currently trundling towards a Doctorate.

It's a fine institution, and being there deeply enriched both my understanding of the Christian journey but also my faith.

The article, though, was about the transition of seminaries away from being places to train pastors.  The individuals interviewed for this story were getting their degrees in theology, but had absolutely no intention of using them for full-time pastoral ministry.

This trend goes deep, as the article noted that while 90% of seminary attendees a generation ago intended to lead a congregation, only forty one percent have that as their goal today.   Instead, their stated intent was to have seminary be the place that strengthened their faith, so that they could better apply it in their day-to-day lives.

From experience, I know that seminary does this.  I understand why people would seek it out.

But what struck me was this:

Isn't that what the church is for?

I mean, really.  Maybe it's just me with my teaching elder hat on, but how is it that local congregations aren't meeting this need?   That's kind of the point of what we do when we gather as disciples.

Oh, sure, there are other things that church does...worship and service and fellowship.  But if you come into encounter with a faith community that leaves you with no idea how to apply faith in the day-to-day, what use is it?

The article places much of the blame for this on the tendency of the institutional church to focus on structure and politics, turf wars, and arguing over the modern theological equivalents of iotas or how many angels dance on the head of a pin.

That may be so.   And I understand, as the part-time pastor of a small community, that there are limitations to what one can do.  But our gatherings do need to both model and teach what it means to be a follower of Jesus, no matter what our vocation or calling.

Feels like a baseline, to me, at least.

Echoes, Teaching, and Memory

As I got ready to take the little guy to his drum lesson this evening, he insisted that I download a bunch of Pink Floyd onto my iPhone.  He's been on a hardcore classic rock kick lately, with Zeppelin and Floyd being the rock of choice.  It's history to him, as far back in the past as Count Basie or the Ink Spots are to me.  But good music is good music, and that he is twelve going on thirty doesn't hurt his taste.

And so on the way to the lesson, as we navigated across the snarls of country-worst Beltway rushhour traffic, the sounds of Pink Floyd's Meddle filled the car.

The little guy sat back, soaking it in.   "This is an amazing album," he said.  Then he reclined the bucket seat, and promptly went right to sleep.   In-transit naps seem to be a genetic trait both boys have inherited from their mom.  It's a useful skillset.

This left me in the car, as what was side two of the Meddle record/cassette kicked in.  Back in the analog era, those grooves in vinyl or magnetic variances on a tape would yield Echoes, a twenty-plus-minute drifting bit of sweet psychedelic mind-butter.

As I listened, and as he twitched slightly in his sleep, I was struck by just how long it had been since I last heard that song.  I don't think I've listened to that album since before I got married.  

Twenty years, at least.  Twenty two, more like.

Every note, every change, every word of the lyrics was familiar.  Not a one was surprising, or out of place.  And as much of my life has passed since I last listened to it as had passed when I last heard it.  The last time this music played for me, the Internet wasn't a thing we knew about.  Cell phones weren't common or even viewed as necessary.  I was thin.

Yet my mind received the music like an old and familiar friend, a peculiar assemblage of neurons lighting up in recognition in encounter with the song.

Music is like that.  As are stories.  They linger with us, folding their harmonies and progressions into our minds in a way that simple data cannot.  They become deep memory, and they weave themselves into our identity in ways that are both subtle and inescapable.

Which is why both musicality and storytelling are so key to teaching anything of value.

Preaching and Third Rail Theology

This last week, I had a conversation I'd been anticipating with someone.   The question posed was where I stood on the whole "gay thing," and did I concur with my... um ... "evolving" denominational position on the subject?  And so we talked for a while.

I and my conversation partner did not share perspective on the issue, nor to my knowledge were any minds changed on the issue, but we did share prolonged conversation, and it was civil in disagreement.   Following the conversation, I found myself reflecting a bit on my own approach to preaching on the issues we argue about the most.   When it comes to the "gay thing," I really don't have it as a central theme of my preaching.  On occasion, I have.  I likely will again.  But it's not been a core theme for me.  Is this just pastoral wussiness?  Maybe.  But there are other things at play.

In part, this is because when I preach, I discipline myself to preaching from the fullness of the Bible. That means following the three year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary, which touches on the entirety of Scripture.   If you do that, well, the "gay thing" is just not a central explicit theme.  Our culture-war obsession with it is entirely out of whack with the narrative of Scripture.  On a verse-weight scale, it's of considerably less significance than menstruation, skin disease, and the sin of Jeroboam son of Nebat.

So on 95% of Sundays, I stick to justice, grace, mercy, and Christ's radically inclusive love for the stranger and the outcast, and let folks figure it out for themselves.

But in larger part, it's because as much as I value preaching, I'm strongly aware that it has limitations.  If you're in a community of like-minded souls, or a community that has formed around one strong personality, then you can get away with preaching whatever you like, as did that preacher in the video making the rounds this week.  You know the one, the guy who suggested that gays should be rounded up and sent to concentration camps.  Sigh.  I have it on good authority that he'll be obligated to spend his forty-seven thousand years in purgatory preparing and delivering graphic Powerpoint sermons on menstruation, skin disease, and the sin of Jeroboam son of Nabat to a bored throng of texting succubi.

Whichever way, preaching can mask the truth of an exchange.  You can pitch out your passionately held position, and be strong and outrageous about the things you're "agin", and everyone will laugh and say Amen, except for those one or two souls who are silently seething on the receiving end.  I've inadvertently done that on occasion myself, and when I've been called on it, it's been a convicting moment.

But in authentic community, we're not all identical.  There's difference.  And where there's difference, there needs to be openness and conversation.  Otherwise, you're just monologuing.  I know, I know, you need to stand up and be counted.  You need to be a prophetic witness, an overturner-of-tables, a declarer of the Way Things Are.

I'm perfectly willing to do so in my writing here, and in conversations, and in small-group study.   And in sermons, but only if there's safe space for difference to be explored and expressed.   In these places, questions can be asked.  Disagreement can be articulated and explored.  I prefer it because it is both harder and the risk is higher.   The risk comes when you look at the other with eyes that are not glazed-over with the scales of your presuppositions, and see the depth of common being you both share.   Are we willing to have our assumptions about others changed as we engage with them across the boundary of difference?

The hardness comes in taking that into account.   This person you disagree with is another soul, no matter how you may differ, and even if you are strongly convicted of the inherent rightness of your position.   And if you allow yourself to really see them, and not have your eyes scaled over, then it becomes considerably more difficult to view them through the polarizing lenses of our adversarial, binary culture.

Entertaining Preaching

I am not the world's best preacher.  A reasonable appraisal of my own abilities, measured against those I've heard preach, leads me to figure I'm above average.  Not stellar, but not half bad.  Not earth-shaking, though enough Sundays lately seem to resonate with folks to keep me encouraged.

Here, I find myself musing over an article...a few years old...that recently wended my way through the Facebookery of the Vice Moderator of the denomination.  In an opinion piece from the New York Times, a Congregationalist pastor lamented the tendency for pastors to burn out, and gave his thesis as to why that is such a frequent occurrence.  His appraisal?  

According to that pastor, the problem is that congregations don't want to be taught.  They want to be entertained.  Rather than seeking the clear moral instruction that they should be seeking, they're looking to be affirmed in what they already know.  And they want a couple of jokes thrown in.  Oh, and it can't run more than 10 minutes.  Here we are now, entertain us!  Does this smell like church spirit to you? 

There is some truth in this, of course.  But I've known many pastors, and have heard their laments about their personal and spiritual exhaustion.   What I haven't ever heard is "entertaining sermons" presented as the problem.  Leaders of congregations burn out when they're overburdened with administrative requirements, when church is all about facility and carpets and task force meetings about liability exposure.

What burns out pastors are the seemingly endless interpersonal dramas that groups of human beings generate.  What fries pastors are the flames they have to stomp out, particularly the heat rising from the smoldering whisperings of those apparently inextinguishable human tire-fires in your community.

But entertaining preaching?  I'm not sure about that.  Neither am I sure that it's a bad thing.

Because good preaching is entertaining.  It's funny.  It's moving.  It's delightful.  It's challenging.

A good sermon does not feel long, even if it goes for 45 minutes.  A good sermon can run five minutes, and still convey one concept potently.  A good sermon involves rapport, as preacher and congregation connect.  It doesn't have to get all call-and-responsey, but a little bit of that is a good thing.

The challenge facing most overeducated Presbyterian pastors is that our task is not simply to give instruction.  Preaching is not the conveying of data.  It is not a board room presentation, or an academic lecture.  It bears no resemblance to the presentation of research results at a scholarly conference, or the oral presentation of a particularly hard-hitting article.   Even the most potent ethical or theological insight will transform no lives if it is smothered under mumbled bullet-point droning.

It needs to inspire, and to interest, and to stir the minds and hearts of the listeners, even...and particularly...if they don't totally agree with the pastor's interpretation.

If all you're doing is entertaining, that's a problem.  If it's all canned anecdotes and in-jokes smattered with a generic scripture here and there, all fluff and treacle signifying nothing, then you're not teaching.  You're just pretending to preach.

But if everyone's asleep, you're not teaching either.  If a congregation asks...please...try to make it interesting....that's well within their right to expect.

Jesus Fail

As one of the few Americans who still reads a print newspaper, I tend to pore through my Washington Post over a cup or three of coffee.  Much strikes me, but I'm particularly drawn to interesting faith-related niblets. 

Today, the moment of Jesus in the Post came in a conversation between two women.  They were both from Tennessee, members of the community where a man's house was allowed to burn to the ground because he'd forgotten to pony up his seventy-five bucks in fire-department service fees.  Their conversation went thusly:

Neighbors are torn over the incident.  Retired teacher Laura Davis rushed to see whether the Cranicks needed help but wants a world in which "people suffer the consequences" of their actions.  A friend challenged Davis to think about what Jesus would do.  "I don't know that he'd put it out," Davis said.  "I don't know what he'd do."

One could always assume that Ms. Davis isn't Christian, but then again, it is Tennessee.  It's deep Bible Belt, and pretty much ain't nobody not Christian in them parts.  Or nominally Christian, anyway. 

Here, we have evidence that Christian ignorance of the core teachings of Jesus goes rather deeper than flailing on the recent Pew survey.  Not knowing about key figures in the Reformation or the philosophical underpinnings of Catholicism is one thing.  But honeychild, if you can't figure this one out, you've failed as a Christian.

Why?

Because when Jesus was asked where the rubber meets the road when it comes to following him, he pitched out this little story.   Perhaps you've heard of it.  It's about this guy who chooses to care for an Israelite who foolishly walked a road alone and got himself in a mess of hurt.  It's terribly obscure, of course.  But it is, nonetheless, something that speaks to the heart of what Jesus taught.  If you see someone suffering, you help 'em.  It's a fundamental duty of every human being, one that Jesus couldn't possibly have made any clearer.

But it's probably not what she's been taught.  Many churches in Tea Party country, I'm sure they don't really preach about it at all.    Not very "pull yerself up by yer bootstraps."  It's so off message.

The Definitive Teaching About Dogs and Heaven

There's been a little bit of lull in my blogging lately. And my Facebookin'. And, in fact, across much of the other non-essential activities of my existence. The reason for that is the introduction into our household of a little scampering bundle of lickity affection. After forty-one orbits around the sun, and a full year of lobbying from my nine year old, I have a dog for the very first time.

Ellie is an eight week old blend of Golden Retriever and Standard Poodle. She eats, she sleeps, she runs in crazy little circles. I haven't been this focused on feeding schedules and their resultant output since my younger son was a tot. It's not as intense, as she's far lower maintenance than an equivalent toddler. She's tiring, but in an utterly-worth-it sort of way. I am, as the missus puts it, totally smitten.

In one of those synchronous events, one of the blogs I feed pitched out a musing about dogs the other day. It's the blog of a leader of one of the most ferociously hard-core conservative cells within my denomination. Carmen tends to look for things that trouble her in the church, signs of liberality and progressivism and the creeping influence of secular/Wiccan/socialist/French heresies. Here, though, she was "going after" a church that allows dogs in it's services. It seemed tailor-made for harrumphing. Not taking worship seriously! Not showing respect to the orderly praise of the Creator of the Universe! Only, try as she might, she couldn't quite bring herself to get into high dudgeon about it. Because she..well..she loves dogs. It's hard to get all ornery about them, even if being ornery is your favorite hobby.

The conversation that followed among her commenters surfaced the classic question asked by every earnest 12 year old: Does little Barky go to heaven? One of her readers said no, for reasons that probably have to do with having presuppositional apologetics beating in their chest where their heart should be. But the majority (true-believing conservatives all) said, um, maybe. Probably. It'd be nice if they did. That's not a good enough answer, though. In my capacity as the Pastor Who Spends Way Too Much Time Thinking About Things (tm), I will now offer up the definitive Christian answer to that question: Yes.

Why yes? Well, let me elucidate. First, from scripture.

The Bible doesn't spend a whole heck of a lot of time talking about the eternal lives of canines, felines, gerbils, and hamsters. For some reason, this probably didn't seem like the highest priority for an ancient Semitic people. But as we look at how creatures are directly approached in the Hebrew Scriptures, it's clear that there are some moral and spiritual obligations towards the animals in our care. From the Torah, we hear in the 10 Commandments that the Sabbath is to be kept sacred by all. A day of rest is to be given not just to those who are part of Israel, but also to the stranger in the land and the bondservant...and to the animals. This assertion of care for the well-being of domestic animals is repeated in the Exodus teachings about the value of the Sabbath. Critters get included in.

Now, some might say this is simply utilitarian. You got to keep 'em rested, so they can work harder and/or taste better. There is no spiritual component to this, some might say. But in the Writings, the Teacher of Ecclesiastes speaks directly to the question of the spirit behind the inscrutable eyes of your cat. The answer, from this wisest of the wise souls in the Bible, is that there is no difference between humankind and animals. We are all creatures of earth. We are all animated by the same breath.

So on the infrequent occasions that the Bible teaches directly about the non-human beings around us, it seems to point to the strong possibility of animals sharing in whatever our eternal destiny may be.

But there are deeper Christian theological principles at play here too...which I'll deal with in my next post.