We Don't Have to Be Dumb!

I just read a Facebook comment on a Sports Illustrated profile of Johnny Bench someone shared here. The comment: "Very long but good article."

That sort of bugged me because the article didn't seem unduly long: 3239 words. (I checked.)

It strikes me that our attention spans have dribbled down to nearly zero.

And this has consequences for life and society beyond how we perceive profiles of old baseball players.

How will we ever innovate or solve problems if we don't have the patience to wrestle with facts and ideas?

Without a significant attention span or a willingness to read or watch or listen to things that will inform us, teach us, enliven us, challenge us, and stretch us, how can we possibly function, how will we make good, informed decisions in life?

I've thought about this a lot. The founders of this country thought that an informed and educated people were essential for the functionality of a democracy.

When I mention being educated, I'm not talking about college educations. The Founders didn't think that everyone needed to go to college and neither do I.

I'm talking sound basic education that includes science, history, civics, English, the Arts, and physical education.

My grandfather, a man orphaned at the age of eight who was shipped from one foster family to another before graduating from high school, could still, in his sixties and seventies, recite soliloquies from Shakespeare that he learned in his school years.

It's not that these basics aren't being taught in some of our schools; they most definitely are and I have infinite respect for teachers.

But the imposition of "standards" by state legislatures and other government entities trying to impress their constituents, and the advent of "social promotion" have conspired with other aspects of our culture to dumb down America.

Read, for example, a transcript of an average American political speech or public lecture--meant to be heard by ordinary lay audiences--on anything from science to foreign policy from forty years ago, then read some from today, and you'll notice, by and large, this "dumbing down." Yes, we have TED Talks and the like, certainly good things. But even they are tailored for our short attention spans.

When I was an admittedly nerdy teenager, I used to borrow back issues of Vital Speeches, a magazine that presented transcripts of all kinds of addresses, from the library. It helped me understand what was going on in the world from a variety of perspectives. I guarantee that many of the speeches I read back then were longer than 3239 words.

I'm not being nostalgic here. Nostalgia is inaccurate history. I've never been one to pine for good old days that never existed.

For all the information and education available to past generations of Americans, they still managed to justify moral horrors like the murderous subjugation of Native Americans, slavery and Jim Crow laws, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War 2, and on and on.

I believe that education without the personal and societal transformation that only comes through faith in Jesus Christ and the consequent unleashing of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we will operate from the human default mode: The Bible affirms that we are sinners who WILL commit sin, including the perpetration of injustice, unless we take hold of the new life that God offers to those who repent and believe in Jesus. Even then, we will make mistakes, we will sin.

But as we live in an ongoing relationship of accountability with the God Who saves us by grace through faith in Christ, we will encounter the ministry of God's Holy Spirit, Who convicts of our sin and then convinces us as we repent that God is forgiving us and making us new in spite of ourselves. This, in turn, engenders humility, open-mindedness, and open-heartedness. (I'm sure that nothing angers God more than "Christians" misusing their faith to justify things like injustice and hatred or the acquisition of power.)

I wonder though if, in the mad dash to make quick impressions on us, the media elites and others, aren't selling us all short.

I'm convinced that we human beings are far more capable of learning, growing, and thinking than the Kardashians, the politicians, marketers, and media mavens think that we are.

If only we believed it too.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

'Why I Gave in to Barbie, Even Before Her Size Change'

We knew a man who worked for a major toy manufacturer. He hated Barbie. No matter how much research or work they put into their own versions of the 57-year old staple of the world toy market, Barbie always won.

Barbie hasn't been winning lately. Her whiteness and impossible measurements are blamed for aiding and abetting a culture that objectifies and idealizes white women, while discouraging them from using their minds or athleticism.

Many parents have been avoiding buying Barbies for years, meaning that lately, she hasn't been the market queen who bedeviled our friend.

That's why Mattel has recently unveiled, modestly more physically realistic versions of Barbie.

But Laura Goetsch writes that after she and her husband refused to give Barbies to their daughters, their opinion about the doll changed. It started with a gift given to one of their girls at a birthday party.

We threw her a butterfly-themed party, and one guest brought a present to match: a Barbie with extendable orange, pink, and black wings, like a monarch butterfly. This thoughtful neighbor, having recently arrived in the US, was likely unaware of our American angst over Barbie, and she clearly did not share it. She simply chose a toy that a little girl who was into butterflies would love. There was no question that we would embrace this thoughtful gift with gratitude and gladness.

The Barbie was embraced. But within a context of other messages, conversations, and examples for the the daughters.

I could have tried to quash my kids’ love of this svelte fashionista, but I chose not to. To express disdain for Barbie risks communicating to my daughters that their interests are frivolous, their delights are wrong. I won’t do this. At heart, is love of fashion and design not love of beauty? I believe that God himself planted this love of beauty, color, and texture in us.  

Playing house with dolls is a way to explore our own world. This is no less true when the doll’s proportions are unrealistic and her clothes a bit tight. If there had been another line of toys that I could have easily found secondhand with as many interesting accessories, I would have bought those. Instead, we have allowed our girls to relish the endless creative opportunities Barbie offers despite her downfalls.  

Like most American moms, I worry about my girls’ body images. I want them to view women as strong, wise, and gifted by God. In a society flooded with airbrushed pictures, no woman is immune from self-doubt and confusion. I wish that for the next 20 years I could hide all the commercials, billboards, and celebrity photos. I would love to create a world in which my kids only saw real women with realistic bodies.  

I’m grateful that the newly shaped Barbies help us take a step toward that world, but it’s only a tiny step and will likely make little impact on girls who learn early our cultural preference for skinny bodies. When I was wrestling a few years ago with whether to let my kids play with Barbie, I realized that to eliminate her would simply be to remove one trickle from a fire hose….at the cost of my kids’ favorite way to play and create. I decided that it was more important to foster their gifts and interests than to assuage my uneasy conscience (a conscience that on this issue was perhaps more informed by society's expectations of me as an educated Christian woman than by the Holy Spirit).
This is not to say that I am off the hook. My husband and I must still ask, how will we build up our daughters in truth and strength? How will we give them God’s vision for women? We’ll start off by ensuring that Barbie is not the only female figure they know and admire.  

We surround them with godly, brave, gifted women. We read biographies of Corrie Ten Boom and Harriet Tubman. We play soccer, practice math, and make art. We call them to love God with their hearts, souls, minds, and strength. We push them to love their neighbors as themselves. And yes, we discuss their Barbies’ absurd proportions. 

We talk of building sharp minds and strong bodies, soft hearts and deep souls. We cheer their ingenuity. We root them in a rich faith community. We play with Legos and with light sabers. We laugh and delight in what delights them. We tell the stories of Scripture. We trust that God is using their creative play with Barbie to develop their unique gifts.

In my years as a pastor and a parent, I've found that it's possible for parents to discuss anything with their kids, so long as you love and support them. Girls will even accept your criticisms of Barbie's impossible body, her obsession with beauty, and her dependence on a man for validation, if they know that you love them and when you teach them that God has gifted them to use their minds and that adhering to a false image of womanhood is both destructive and unnecessary. Read the whole thing, please.

Christians: Ebenezer Scrooge, George Bailey, and the Grinch Can't Do What Only You Can Do

It's that time of year again. The time when one of Christians' favorite indoor sports is lamenting how advertisers, retailers, and the big bad media have taken Christ out of Christmas. These lamentations are often accompanied by references to how different things were "back in the day."

Really?

Think of the Christmas classics that have warmed our hearts for decades.

How much of Christ is there in It's a Wonderful Life? It's my favorite movie. But there's no mention of Jesus' birth in it, except for the incessant rehearsal of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing by one of George Bailey's daughters.

The only mention of Jesus in The Bishop's Wife comes at the end, during the bishop's Christmas Eve sermon, when he holds Jesus up, not as the Savior of the world, but as an example of good living.

Most of the Christmas Classics--from How the Grinch Stole Christmas to The Polar Express, from A Christmas Carol to Christmas in Connecticut--have nothing to do with Christmas.

They're wonderful, heart-warming stories. But they're not about Christ at all.

The media, advertisers, and the retailers have always loved turning the Feast of Christ's Nativity into a festival of winter sentimentality and materialism. It sells. And it's less controversial. (The rare exception being, A Charlie Brown Christmas, among others.)

So, why the laments? The culture's Christ-less Christmas is nothing new. We Christians need to get over it.

Many of the Christian laments and groanings are rooted in a more basic problem: We Christians are terrible about passing our faith along to others in our personal relationships. For decades, Christians have relied on the culture (or the preacher or the Sunday School class) to pass along the truth that God came into the world in the Person of Jesus Christ, took our rightful death sentence for sin, and rose from the dead so that all who turn from sin (repent) and believe in Him as their only God and King, have life with God, imperfectly in this imperfect world and perfectly in the perfect world to come.

We can't trust the culture to share that message. It's not the job of moviemakers, toy manufacturers, or Macy's. It's someone else's job altogether.

In today's installment of Our Daily Bread, we're reminded of God's instructions to His people, Israel, delivered through Moses, just before Israel entered the Promised Land. God gave His people what's become know as the Shema:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

A relationship with God is passed on person to person: parent to child, child to parent, friend to friend, co-worker to co-worker, neighbor to neighbor, classmate to classmate.

We can't rely on a culture that isn't so much antagonistic to Christian faith as it is, as it always has been, indifferent to Christian faith, to pass it on to our neighbors and friends.

People do not come to faith in Christ by cultural osmosis. It's passed on from one flesh and blood human being who believes in Christ to another flesh and blood human being.

That's why, writing decades after Jesus' resurrection, the apostle Peter told Christians living in what is today called Turkey:

...be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,  keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. (1 Peter 3:15-16)

As a Christian, I believe that everyone who calls out in faith to the God revealed in Jesus Christ will be saved. But, as Paul writes at another place in the New Testament:

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? (Romans 10:14)

Paul wasn't talking about professional preachers proclaiming the Good News of new and everlasting life for all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

He was talking about every Christian, in their sitting at home, in their walking along the road, in the morning and in the evening, being ready to do things like...

• offer to pray for others to the God with whom they have intimacy through Christ;
• offer to help them when they need child care or a lift to work;
• serve meals to homeless people; 
• be considerate of those others disrespect;

and, in a thousand other ways, earn the right to tell others about the eternity of hope through Christ that causes us to gratefully love God and love the people for whom Jesus Christ died and rose...everybody.

You might earn that right with something as simple as telling the clerk at the store, "Merry Christmas" or "God bless you" during this Advent season.

Jesus isn't relying on the culture to share His gospel with the world. He's relying on people who follow Him to do that.

Christians, that's us. Will we do it? 

Who Are These "Celebrities"?

Saw this magazine cover while shopping today at Costco.

The cover says it has the scoop on, "What Tore Them Apart."

My first thought? "Who are they?"

I wasn't interested enough in learning who they are to do a Google search.

It just struck me what our celebrity culture has come to. Once upon a time, there were a few people who were celebrities: leaders in government and other institutions, a handful of entertainers, writers, and artists, and that was about it.

But with the explosion of the Internet, which came after the advent of five-million channels on cable and satellite TV, a media machine that eats and spits out "celebrities" at roughly the same rate at which your Toro cuts and discharges blades of grass, almost anyone can be a celebrity.

And Andy Warhol turns out to have grossly overestimated the shelf lives of instant celebrities; fifteen minutes takes many way past their expiration dates.

The consequence is, of course, that people's stars go by so quickly that many in this celebrity-craving culture miss them altogether.

I'm sorry that this couple experienced some sort of split.

But, if they're fortunate, they won't be celebrities much longer and they both can focus on being the one thing we should most want to be, actual human beings.

 [See also here.]

"I wonder what would happen if the church sought to be culturally distinct rather than culturally compliant?"

See here.

One Little Thing

It’s just one little thing.

In this case, the “one little thing” is the letter E.

In itself, it may be a minor matter.

But when you’ve watched the denomination you’ve loved and that you labored and prayed, in your own small way, to help birth, as it slides deep into error through a profusion of “little” things, one little thing is just one more thing.

And that one little thing points out how desperately the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) needs reform and renewal. (Which I pray for regularly.)

The E in question was called to my attention this past Sunday morning at breakfast. Our daughter, who was to read the Bible lessons in worship, was going through them one more time when she saw something she hadn’t noticed before.

Our lessons for each week, which are largely taken from the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), are printed on bulletin inserts published by the ELCA Publishing House, Augsburg Fortress. The inserts are called Celebrate. On the inserts, each of the lessons is preceded by brief explanations. Those explanations, which are meant to be read during worship just before each of the lessons is read, are designed to give context to the Bible passages. They’re often helpful. (The explanations also appear in an annually published book called, Sundays and Seasons.)

Here’s what our daughter saw when she read the introductory explanation for this past Sunday’s first lesson, Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18:

The book of Daniel was written in the second century B.C.E., when the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes was severely persecuting the Jews. Daniel’s vision of the four beasts serves to proclaim the message that human kings will come and go, but the kingdom will ultimately belong to God and to God’s people.

“What’s this E doing after BC?” our daughter wondered.

“Is that a mistake?” my wife asked.

“No, it’s not a mistake,” I said. “But it shouldn’t be there!”

The old designations of B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini, Latin for Year of Our Lord), have been replaced in most contemporary scholarship and journalism by new designations. B.C.E. stands for Before [the] Common Era, while C.E. stands for [the] Common Era.

And you know what? I get that. Christians, varied and as numerous as we may be, members of the fastest-growing religion in the world, are still just one group among many who occupy this planet. We live in a world whose most enlightened people eschew cultural, racial, or religious imperialism, a world in which diversity is celebrated. And as a Christian, I embrace this trend. In fact, I pray for it to continue.

I think that this trend favors a project very dear to me, the central calling of all Christians: fulfilling the great commission Jesus has given to the Church. We’re to make disciples—followers of Christ—among all peoples.

In looking at history, I see that Christianity first spread not in the artificial hothouse of being the favored religion of an empire and not just in defiance of state condemnation and persecution, but in the context of theologically diverse societies, where people believed in many different gods and philosophies. History, to me anyway, shows that true pluralism and democracy always favor Christianity; when people are free to explore differing beliefs and come to know the relationship with God offered by Jesus Christ (as opposed to the "religion" offered elsewhere), following Christ will always look good. The more diverse, pluralistic, and free societies are, the more likely people are to become disciples of Christ.*

But, to me, pluralism and diversity are good for another reason. In a nutshell, Christians shouldn't even appear to be throwing their weight around, forcing their faith and worldview down other peoples’ throats. It isn’t right. It isn’t how Christ won disciples. It’s unloving. And it sets the cause of Christ back, not forward.

And so, though confessing that part of me cringes a bit every time I see “B.C.E.” or “C.E.” in books and articles from the fields of history, science, or the arts, I understand the use of these terms.

I accept it.

I even support it.

Nothing about the faith of Christians should be forced on others. People who subscribe to other religious convictions and people who have no religious convictions should not be forced to see history in terms of what happened before Christ or after He came to earth bringing the reign of God. Non-Christians don’t see what the theologians call “the Christ event,” as the center of human history.

But, here's the point: We Christians do! We see Jesus as the center of our history. We see Jesus as the center of all history!

When Christians read the Old Testament, we see the God of creation, by grace, calling a people—the Jews—to believe in Him, to become a light to the nations. We see prophecies pointing to the Messiah Who would come into the world to offer, by grace, new and everlasting life to all who believe in Him. For the Christian, everything before Christ, points to Christ.

In the New Testament, we see God becoming flesh, living in our world, being spurned by Jews and non-Jews alike, bearing the sins of the whole human race on His shoulders, dying for our sakes, and being raised to life again by the Father, so all who repent and believe in Jesus, will live forever with God. After Jesus died and rose, we believe, everything changed. The lives of all people were marked by new possibilities. "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Christians believe that, after the fall of humanity into sin, all of human history has been the theater in which God has worked for the time—what the Bible calls God’s kairos time, as opposed to chronos, human or chronological time—when Jesus Christ would enter the world, bring the reign of God to all who believe, promise that one day, He will return and make all things new, and, in this intervening time--in these Years of Our Lord--will fill those who follow Him with the Holy Spirit, fortifying them for lives of loving God, loving neighbor, sharing Christ in words and actions, and living "in the sure and certain hope" that even though we die, we will still live with God for eternity.

The timeliness of God’s action in Christ is emphasized by the apostle Paul in the New Testament’s Romans 5:6: “…while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly…”

In another New Testament book, Hebrews, which is a sermon preached to Jewish Christians in the first century, we see this Christian confession of Christ as the center, the goal, and the fulfillment of human history, of cosmic history: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds” (Hebrews 1:1-2) (emphasis mine, of course).

Since we Christians believe that Christ is the center of history, why would a document prepared by a Christian denomination for use in Christian worship shy away from the use of the terms, B.C. and A.D.?

And why do some professors who teach at some seminaries of the ELCA “correct” students who use B.C. and A.D., rather than B.C.E. and C.E.?

Why should Christians be in any way wary of making the inherent confession of Christ as the center of all by using B.C. and A.D. in their own internal communications or in their public worship?

Why should we avoid declaring Christ’s Lordship? Jesus didn't avoid it!

He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

He said, "The Father and I are one" (John 10:30).

He also said, “Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:32-33).

And He said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:16-18).

If Jesus claimed to be the Lord of everything, the center of history Who changes everything, the only access point to God, the liberator of humanity from the enemies of sin and death, then why should the Church claim anything less when speaking of Him? Why should we be shy about Christ's Lordship?

Is this “shyness” mere political correctness?

Is it absent-minded acquiescence to a cultural norm?

Or is there something more sinister about it?

Whatever the answers to those questions may be, the “little things” keep piling up in the ELCA. The Lordship of Jesus and the truth of God’s Word seem denied in numerous little ways all the time among us. When it doesn’t make me mad, it makes me sad. Then it makes me pray. (And write blog posts.)

You see, it isn’t really such a little thing, after all, because, no matter how many little things get piled on, the Bible still says of Jesus, the center of history, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

It may be a single letter E. But its addition to B.C. says a lot about the state of the ELCA and what at least some of its most influential people really think about Jesus.

The early Church faced persecution and death to declare that Jesus is Lord. Many Christians in many parts of the world today face the same threats for their faithfulness to Jesus as Lord. So, why can’t we North American Lutherans own Jesus’ Lordship in the comfort and safety of our sanctuaries as we worship? That’s a big question. And every member of the ELCA must, I think, eventually answer it.

*I speak from personal experience. For about a decade, I considered myself an atheist, but, in a pluralistic society in which I was free to explore other possibilities, Christ wooed me into relationship with Him.