Septiembre 2004 Archives

The Westminister Declaration of political / theological interactions from the Movement for Christian Democracy.

Yesterday was another marriage anniversary:

• 9 years and 4 months
  
• 112 months
  
• 3411 days

Its always been a good exercize for me to count my days, to think of how long particular realities have been true in my life. As of March, I have been married for a quarter of my life, If we're still in Chattanooga in 2009, I will have lived here longer than in any other place.

But the challenge of counting your days is to think about making each one of them count. In 3411 individual decisions, have I worked toward the building of our marriage? What have been the choices and decisions made. What has been the impact.

Count your days - and every day practice Radical Dependence on the Lord.

I have commented before that I lean left. That is quite controversial in my conservative PCA world, so I don't say it that often. However, I do appreciate the way Tim Etherington lays out his political calculus in his posts: Am I a Liberal and Its the End of the World as we know it - And I Feel Fine I have wanted to to sit down and do a similar point by point thinking of my concerns in this election and honestly work out where I feel there is merit in the candidates opinions and where I feel like Tim that both are bad medicine. Tim has done lots of this work for me.

I feel hamstrung in the significance of my political opinions by the 12 - 16 point lead Bush has in the state of Tennessee. I am going to vote, though I don't feel my vote will count for much.

1. A history of Chinese Food in America
Having grown up in South America - I have a slightly different take on this article. Much like this country - in every small town in Ecuador there is at least one "Chifa" or chinese restaurant. One near our house was called "Chifa Lung Fung" which caused generalized coughing every time we thought about it.

I always assumed that the prevalence of this line of work among Chinese imigrants had to do with cultural diferences that made cooking viable work for men - unlike latin american "machista" culture. The article in the NYT explains things more simply - a successful pattern was copied by successive immigrant families.

2. Muckraker extrodinaire I.F. Stone's expose on The Trial of Socrates. It goes without saying that this questions the hegemonic influence that Plato has on the history of philosophy. Good reading that I wish I'd seen back in the day when I was comparing Plato to everyone; Marx, Buddah, etc.

Saturday I had another one of those experiences. I was cleaning out a broken window pane in order to replace it. As I was working with pliers and scraper to remove the broken glass I thought "I need to be careful not to hurt my hands on this glass because I'm playing guitar in church tomorrow." Classic premonition. Of course I didn't take action in relation to the premonition, but simply decided to take caution. I didn't put on gloves or move to better light, but I just told myself "be careful". 30 second later a piece of glass broke as I was pulling it out of the frame and my thumb got raked over a shard - requiring 6 stitches. Not because I wasn't careful, but because I hadn't transitioned passive concern to active protection. Needless to say I didn't play guitar in church on Sunday.

This is a repeated theme in my life. It is not enough to simply think about being careful, I've got to take action when faced with such premonition.

And that is my proverb for the day.

Interesting conversation a few days ago debriefing a "peacemakers" mediation of a small business conflict. I was only speaking to one party to the conflict, but the perspective was interesting. Apparently, in an effort to come to resolution, peace was pursued more forcefully than truth.

In our contemporary situation, this seems to be very attractive. When our churches are using an apologetic of community rather than conviction - I can see how this experience would result. However a community is always going to have conflict, and the best sign of our maturity and our witness as community is the means in which we handle that conflict. Naive peacemaking might get past an initial relational obstacle, but unless there is conviction, repentance, forgiveness and agreement I can't see how renewed relationships can ever emerge, and I'm afraid that community will always be scarred.

Yet I am also a product of my age, understanding the conflicted nature of observation and perception, the personal filters that consciously or unconsciously we use to color what we see in the world around us and how we interpret it. A judicial pursuit of truth in business conflict is most likely going to emerge as a complicated "He said, She said" argument, unless more formal documentation emerges. Conflict often arises in that grey area where there is no clear victim, victimizer axis, where no obvious repentance is warranted. How do we handle this?

My conclusion(initial and tentative) is that peacemaking without an initial pursuit of truth will not produce long term resolution. Yet there are situations where the pursuit of truth produces diminishing returns, and a balancing point must be observed where the pursuit must be put aside and resolution, compromise, agreement must be hammered out.

In the messiness of community, that process is probably lots harder to ferret out than I'd like to imagine.

Marialice and I watched the Spanish art hit The Butterfly last night. The story of a small boy in a Galician village in the year before the Spanish civil war. Small stories of the break down of civility and unity caused by passions of order versus freedom, traditional disciplined order versus unruly democracy. We were moved by the struggle in a young man's heart, the impact on a divided family, and the instincts of a mother to protect her home, even at the expense of breaking her husband's heart.

It is good to see the history of a nation rent in two by a struggle between polarities because it reminds us that no matter how uncivil our political process becomes - the center still holds. I wondered aloud whether that would ever cease to be the case - whether on side or the other would consider its position so inviolate that it would resort to open hostility and violence in order to guarantee its ascendancy. Though I'm tempted to characterize actions by either side as such, I'm not sure they qualify. Looking at Spain in the 30's makes me realize that we are sooo far from that in our country.

And for that I'm glad.

I missed my birtday reflection for both my daughters last weekend. So now, I'll make up for it with some notes about the two girls I love so dearly.

Liliana is becoming a voracious reader. Every day when I come home she brings me three or four board books and wants them read carefully to her. Tonight the other kids were hugely bothered because she kept interrupting the movie we were watching by crawling up on my lap to demand reading. She is no child of the image age – she’s all print (at least for now).

Several images that I want to record.

• Certain books have to be read just so. One set of alphabet books has the entire alphabet printed on the first page – obviously context for the series and not the first page of the book. Liliana however will not let one read the first page without backing up and reading all the letters on the prior page.
  
• Other pages bring a particular hilarious response – consistently. One “this is who I am book” has a page with hands and fingers. (monster hands that is). Liliana takes great delight in putting her hands on that page, and making sure it is her fingers that are counted to ten.
  
• Her patience is growing. Two weeks ago – she would only sit through the simple “one sentence on a page” book. This week she will consent to read story books – with paragraphs on the page. But if it is too long, she’ll start turning pages on her own timing, eventually sending the whole sheaf to the back – closing the book and getting down to run off and get another book.

Elena lost another tooth – making three missing across the front. She is showing a proud and gappy smile. The tooth had been nearing its finale for a good week, but she wanted to wait until her “tita” was here (my mother). And so at dinner, after normal evening pleasantries – she popped the tooth right out.

She dutifully wrapped the tooth up in her little velour drawstring pouch, wrote a note to the tooth fairy (“I hope I can meet you someday”) and put it all under her pillow.

Well the tooth fairy didn’t come. Something about the bad weather related to the Florida hurricanes sending her way off course. I was surprised, because I heard nary a peep out of her that next day – but probably her grandmother, big breakfast, tea out with the girls – all contributed to minimizing the distress.

Sleepy parents make bad myth makers.

One of the enduring issues in our marriage is that both Marialice and I are both firmly entrenched in the "Martha" side of the "Mary - Martha" distinction. We have a hard time determining how much this is a function of our culture, our stage in life (the valley of the shadow of diapers), or our essential character. But both of us struggle mightily to spend quality time in reflection and silence, in deep communication with each other and with our lord. Even though this depth of connection is what we yearn for, we are hugely prone to fill our lives with Marthalike business - excluding what we value most.

"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." Luke 10:38-42

So this is the question that emerges - especially Marialice's: Where are the models for a Mary-like character when three small children must be cared, a house managed, and home school taught? Who would you point to as someone who exemplifies this character in the midst of the stage of life? What are the disciplines and strategies they have used?

Comments welcome.

Now I see why I'm not half the writer I'd like to be... I didn't do the right drugs. (Via AL Daily)

By Faith Online PCA's online rag has an article on my church. And then here is part 2 about our sister church in St Louis.
BTW - this site needs to date the release of their content. How old is this article?

The Neo-Calvinistas had a round with Piety some months back. This thought from the Bruderhof's daily dig might be helpful:

Christian piety has all too often meant withdrawal from the world and from men – it has led to a sort of transcendent egoism and an unwillingness to share suffering. It has lacked human warmth. But the world has risen in protest against this form of piety, this arrogance, this indifference to the world’s sorrow. And only the living faith of the reborn can withstand this protest. Care for the needs of another human being, even bodily care: that is the essence of true piety. Bread for myself is a material question; but bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one.

Jacques Maritain

Bryan Borger on the limitations of worldview - constructed to a certain degree by race and class.

Without diminishing the reformational insight about first principles of the heart — our faith, our most fundamental loyalties to ideologies and idolatries — I want to remind readers that race, class and gender are also huge influences upon our vision of life.

The essay is also great reading regarding friendships in a cross cultural setting like I am

This week I have been thinking about whether it is appropriate for the church to act like a business institution. There are at least two separate issues that I am confronting and I am afraid the interaction of the two is making my thinking somewhat muddled. I need to work it out.

1. Our church is moving through some longer range planning and considering a capital campaign. My involvement in business has included strategic planning, long term vision building and operational effectivness programs, so I am comfortable with this work. I really like the military planning model that says:

• Targets dictate weapons
  
• Weapons dictate means
  
• Means dictate costs
  

And so I am trying to push our session back to the targets (do we want to grow to be a large congregation or start another church, are we a leadership development engine or a center of worship excellence), instead of obsessing on the means (larger building, specific property, targeted hirings). This seems to be the best sort of business planning, providing clarity and focus to the directions and projects that are undertaken. I want to appropriate this model in the church.

2. A good friend took on a large project in a far away church group. After about 9 months the group found that his qualifications were not exactly the way they understood or expected. He had the words on his resume - but they meant different things to him than they did to them. This seems to have become a huge issue and escalated until last week he was fired. Their statement was "we need to get this project done, we don't think you can do it, we just need to find someone who can do it - thanks.." This sort of short sighted, mean spirited corporate "gear exchanging in the machine" is exactly what I hate about business institutions. My friend had been honest with his supervisor about struggles and questions, but had been performing well according to the targets laid for him. They simply were not willing to take what they saw as a risk to the success of thier investment. I want to completely reject this sort of investment model of church planning. This focus on success at all costs seems so unbiblical. (you can probably feel the anger...)

But now I have two positions, and I wonder whether they are contradictory. I realize that the first is all about ideas and plans, and the second is about implementation and people. But is it acceptable to operate from that strategic investment model in long term theoretical planning and then try to switch gears and operate more personally and peacefully when it comes to supervising people who are working out the implementation of a plan. Is there a model that incorporates a biblical worldview to the entire planning and implementation process?

Maybe what I am most angry about in my friends situation is that the expression of his weakness to his supervisor seems to have brought about the condemnation and rejection that quickly led to his firing. It seems that they had an ideal related to outcome, image, and return on investment and then essentially shoehorned my friend into it. When my friends falleness started proving that rough edges would create a somewhat different result in the outcome - they couldn't handle it.

So - does a more personal, biblically informed model take the individual all the way back to the beginning? to the idea and planning stage? Should the model be:

• People have gifts, abilities and weaknesses given by God
  
• Asessment of these in the community of faith should produce vocational challenges - to the individual called to serve and to the community asked to support the challenge.
  
• Implementation is measured by faitfulness to the vocational challnege and not by success to some external imagined standard

I am thinking of the church at Antioch as a model here. A large mulitcultural urban presence, that asessed the vocation of two of its members, and challenged them and their congregation to send them out as missionaries. I can imagine a strategic planner saying: "Our target is transforming the city of Antioch, Our weapons will be the best leadearship possible, our means will be hiring Paul and having him preach at 5 services in 3 different locations every Sunday!" Instead, they saw Paul's calling to the world, and sacrificed the "success" of their institution for the good of churches throughout Asia Minor, Greece and Rome. This is the sort of thinking that we might be called to do. This might be what transforming our institutions in the mandate of biblical thinking might look like. Revolutionary - yes! Difficult - absolutely! Worthwhile - I believe so....