The Word of the Lord to Evangelicals

I heartily and without reservation recommend The Word of the Lord to Evangelicals to everyone who reads this blog.  It’s a wonderful little parable in which we follow Wheaton College student Wendy Gullivan.  Wendy has a surprise encounter with God in the form of a homeless man while she’s on an “Urban Immersion” ministry weekend with fellow Wheaton students.  God, it seems, is depressed–suicidally depressed–by Evangelicals…”Especially American Evangelicals.  And most especially in groups.  The more, the scarier.”

Over the next four or five years, Wendy and God meet up several more times, and with each encounter, Wendy learns a little more about how to shift her perspective from an obsession with personal salvation and certainty of doctrine, to loving and ministering to those God loves.  Along the way, McLaren is good for several hearty laughs from those of us who recognize ourselves, our friends, or our churches in his characters.  I don’t want to ruin the story by spilling too much…for three bucks you really ought to just read it!  But I will say his alternate rendition of some Scriptures the way Evangelicals teach them is worth the price alone.  Take this example:

For God so loved the church that he gave to himself his only Son, as a penal substitutionary sacrifice, so that those elect few who believe in this atoning doctrine would not suffer eternal, conscious torment in hell as a result of original sin, but would live forever in heaven after death.  For God did not send his Son into the world to save the world, but to condemn it, and save only the church.  (Not John 3:16-17)

The other two books, The Word of the Lord to Democrats and The Word of the Lord to Republicans are both good, but I can’t give them the same unqualified “You Must Read This” endorsement.  Both are actually funnier, in places, than Evangelicals.  But while McLaren’s skewering of Republicans is both witty and pointed (and quite appropriate, I think), in Democrats Brian pulls his punches too much.  I say this as a Democrat–it seemed to me that McLaren’s “Word of the Lord” to the Dems was largely that they are behaving too much like Republicans.  While this is to some extent accurate, it seems to me that if God were to send a message to Democrats it would have a lot more content than just “make up your mind what you’re going to stand for and then take a stand”  (for one thing, I think God’s message to Democrats would also remind them (us) that morality and holiness aren’t antiquated concepts to be left on the scrap heap of history).  So I finished Democrats rather disappointed that he hadn’t slapped them around with the same gusto he did in Republicans.  I will say, however, that his parody of Rush Limbaugh in Democrats is inspired…

All three books are well worth the $2.99 each.  Unfortunately they are only available as e-books…the good news being that this means they’re cheap, but it also means you can only read them on an e-reader or your computer (either Amazon or Barnes & Noble carry them).

But lurking in the background is a deeper question that I don’t hear being discussed, and that is the value of already-born human life.  I say this because, as we all know, the stage upon which the current drama is playing out includes Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law.  As represented in the media (and I have heard this characterization on both Fox and NPR), if a person “feels threatened” he or she has the right to use deadly force against a would-be attacker, and has no “duty to retreat.”

Importantly, Florida’s actual Stand Your Ground law is a bit more tightly worded than either conservative or liberal media suggest.  Most of it involves defense of a residence or vehicle, the so-called “Castle Doctrine,” which in essence allows a homeowner to shoot on sight anyone who breaks into his/her home, vehicle, tent, etc.  The part of Florida’s law that might apply to Zimmerman’s defense is XLVI 776.013(3), which reads:

A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

It is this “no duty to retreat” clause that causes me the greatest concern. The concept of a duty to retreat, historically, has meant that a claim of self-defense to justify homicide would only be sustained if the defendant not only feared for his life, by also had no reasonable means of escape.  In other words, if retreating could have de-escalated the situation without resulting in death or serious injury to either the defendant or a third party, then the defendant had a duty to extract himself from the scene rather than resorting to lethal force.

I’m not going to argue the history of the laws. My question is not a legal one, but rather moral: what is a human life worth? The Florida law explicitly states that anyone who has forcibly entered your home (i.e., broken in) can be presumed to have violent intent…therefore, in essence, the inviolability of your threshold is worth a life. Stand Your Ground says you need not leave the scene if threatened, even if the only wound you might sustain by retreating is to your ego. Bluntly, your pride is worth a life.

This is not unusual in our culture. Listen to conservative American commentary on our wars and foreign policy–heck, listen to our presidents–and it is clear in numerous circumstances that we as a people are perfectly willing to take human lives, at times in great numbers, for no greater cause than our pride in our greatness as a nation.  As goes the people as a whole, so go many as individuals.

Christians disagree about the appropriate boundaries for the legitimate use of deadly force. I myself am not an absolutist in this regard, though my criteria are stricter than most. But I see no rationale whereby the follower of Jesus can justify or defend the doctrine of Stand Your Ground, rooted as it is in the presumption that one man’s ego could ever justify taking another man’s life.

How does this apply to Zimmerman?  Well, he’s likely to be tried either against the state Stand Your Ground law, which even former governor Jeb Bush said is not applicable, or on federal civil rights charges.  Neither is likely to address what I think is the root cause of ego-vs-life, but nor will they address the other relevant question, which is training for those who are armed.  This is the practical side of the Martin/Zimmerman story, and it’s likewise getting no play.  We can argue all day about whether guns, or concealed carry, should be legal in this country.  Bottom line, those arguments will garner lots of donations to the NRA and to gun control groups, but they’ll accomplish little else.

I think we ought to try for a little common ground by requiring that those who have the permission to carry a weapon–particularly a concealed handgun–must undergo regular training.  I don’t mean how to shoot, though they certainly should be proficient with their weapon.  I mean when to shoot.  I rather suspect that in most situations where a weapon is involved, the escalation to the pulling of a trigger happens incredibly quickly.  I know many police departments require their officers to undergo shoot/no shoot simulation training on a regular basis.  So ought civilians.  Evaluating the danger of a confrontation is tricky business, and there are no simple answers.  But those who hold in their hands the power to take life, owe to the rest of us the discipline to have thought, and practiced, and thought some more about just when that power ought to be used.  I’m neither judge nor jury, but I’m guessing that neither George Zimmerman nor the vast majority of his supporters have exercised that discipline.

Dad’s account covers a lot of ground.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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Introduction
The following is my summary of my experience in Papua New Guinea (PNG) during Feb. 11 – 23, 2012.  It is not an attempt to detail all of our experiences or to give a complete chronology of the time.  Instead I have attempted to give you a taste of some of the experience.  The trip included such amazing experiences that it almost seemed as if we lived a lifetime in that short time span, hence my title.

To the reader, my training is in mathematics and the physical sciences, and I am very grateful for that training.  I have found it to be very helpful and useful.  My bachelor’s degree was in mathematics and my master’s degree was in astronomy.  Some of what follows will not sound very “scientific” but I remind you that the sciences are limited to the repeatable, the predictable, and the measurable.  Not all of our lives fall into these areas.  So enjoy the following for what it is, an amazing story.
March 9, 2012

A Lifetime in Two Weeks

The Background
For my wife Ruth and for me, this all began in the end of May, 2011.  Our son Dave wrote a posting on his weekly blog about a group of five tribes in Papua New Guinea (PNG)who had been driven from their ancient, ancestral home lands by Exxon and dumped in Port Moresby, the PNG capital, with no place to reestablish themselves.  Dave working with Clemence Kanau and others acquired a tract of about two square miles of unused land about three miles east of the Port Moresby airport.  The tract with very fertile soil could support several thousand of the displaced families, except for one problem, there was no potable water on the site.  The closest accessible water for most of the site was around three miles or more of walking distance from locations on the site, and that single tap water source was only available in mornings and evenings, if it was available at all.

Dave in his end of May blog posting challenged the world to step up and provide water to the site through a windmill, and that is where we entered the scene.  Several years earlier, Ruth had received a modest inheritance from her Uncle, John Parsons.  Uncle John lived a very simple life.  He was never married and had no children.  He had a sail boat which he kept on the Chesapeake Bay.  On many occasions he took our family sailing with him.  When he died several years ago, his estate was divided among his 12 nieces and nephews.  Since we were never expecting such a gift, and did not need the money to live, the money was set aside for special projects.  Ruth immediately decided there was enough money in the Uncle John account to buy a windmill for the displaced tribes.  Most of the Dave’s projects through his company M-CAM (see m-cam.com) are much larger than our budget can touch, but the windmill seemed to be within our reach.

We initially thought we were simply buying a windmill, but Dave informed us that local PNG culture expected us to be present for the installation of the windmill.  PNG was never on our list of places we wanted to visit.  We knew no one there, except for Theresa Arek (Mama T) who Dave and family brought with them to our family gathering at the beach on Emerald Isle over Thanksgiving several years ago.  Mama T was delightful, but hardly a reason for a trip to the other side of the world.  Besides, she lived on another island from the location of the windmill in the Farea Model Village.  But Dave insisted we should be there, so we started to make plans for the trip.

For us information was sketchy.  We learned that PNG is hot (which I despise).  We learned it was the humid rainy season.  For us there was a lot of uncertainty about the trip.  It was supposed to take place before Thanksgiving, then before Christmas, then in January.  There was supposed to be a team going, most of whom we didn’t know.  In mid-January, we were supposed to be ready to go with less than a week’s notice.  We were supposed to get an anti-malaria prescription drug that was expensive and not readily available.  Our doctors screwed around getting the prescriptions we needed.  The trip was long and at our ages of 76 and 73, we were not sure how our bodies would handle such a long trip.  Furthermore who would really care if we were there or not?  Just a couple of days before we to leave in January the trip was canceled because the windmill was not yet at the site.  We came close to saying scrap the whole trip.  After all, the windmill was the important thing.

How wrong we were in our thinking to perhaps skip the trip, but we did not understand that at the time.

The Trip
The trip was rescheduled for mid-February.  Colleen, Dave’s wife purchased the tickets.  We had our anti-malaria drugs.  Ruth got hers through our pharmacist friend, Archie Bennet.  The well drillers were on the site but had not hit water.  It looked as if the trip might happen this time.  With all the uncertainties, I could not say I was really anticipating the trip.  How would we fare on such long travel?  What if we got there and there was no water.  (I did not yet know the way Dave and the tribe’s elders selected the drilling site.)  I knew the Exodus story of Moses striking the rock in the wilderness and water coming from the rock, but was there water at the PNG well?  We asked all our praying friends to pray for water, since that was the real reason for the trip.

On Sunday, February 5, the small group at Greensboro Mennonite Fellowship (GMF) commissioned us for the trip.  There are two Ethiopian families at GMF.  Each of the families had one of their elder mothers staying with them.  Neither of the mothers is very fluent in English, so I was a bit surprised when one of them offered a prayer on our behalf.  I could not understand her prayer, but it sounded beautiful, not unlike some of the best praying in tongues that I heard before in some of the best charismatic circles we had encountered years ago.  We were encouraged by the GMF family.

February 10, in the morning, we started out for Charlottesville to join the team that was to leave for PNG the next day.  About half way to Charlottesville, we got a phone call from Colleen.  She had just gotten a phone call from Clemence in PNG that the driller had hit water.  (Some time earlier the driller had told them that they were in a dry hole.  Dave told the driller to drill deeper for another day, which was when they hit water.)  We were relived.  For the first time, I began to anticipate the trip.  After all the purpose of the trip was to provide water for the community.

We got to Charlottesville around noon.  We went to the M-CAM office where we met some of the other members of the team.   We reviewed the supply of tools we had purchased to take for the project.  We went out for supper, and then went to Dave and Colleen’s house to rest for the night before we began the long journey.  At the house we went through our bags with Colleen and our grand daughter Katie to review what was good to take along and what was best left behind.

Ray, from the M-CAM office met us around 8 AM on the morning of Feb. 11 to take us to the airport to begin our long journey.  Flying with us out of the Charlottesville, VA airport were Colleen (Dave’s wife), Katie (our granddaughter), Greg Smith, and Dylan Korelich.  Greg joined the team because of his construction skills and Dylan was along to document the entire event.  Dave was not with us because he was already on an assignment in India and would join us later in PNG.  Dustin DiPerna would also join the team but he was traveling from San Francisco.

The first leg of the flight was uneventful, just a short flight from Charlottesville to Dulles International airport.  The flight from Dulles to LA was delayed by “mechanical problems”.  Finally after a three and a half hour delay in our flight to LA we were on our way again in a different plane.  Fortunately, Colleen had built a 7 hour delay into our schedule in LA so we simply divided our wait time between Dulles and LA airports.

The first of our “mini” amazing experiences of our trip happened in the LA airport.  We are cheap and we frequently find food prices in airports to be outrageous from our point of view.   We knew meals were to be served on the next leg of our flight from LA to Sydney, but it had been quite some time since we left Charlottesville in the morning.  We found a place that served fruit smoothies so we each ordered one.  As I listened to the couple behind the counter I thought their speech sounded like what I heard when one of the Ethiopian mothers had prayed for our blessing the previous Sunday.  I inquired and the serving couple was amazed and delighted that I recognized their native language, Amharic.  I was also a bit amazed, because I am not the linguist in our family.

We have flown across the US on a number of occasions and I find a flight across the country to be quite enough of travel for one day, but our long day of flying had just begun.  Our flight from LA to Sydney was on schedule.  I am a window person for flying, but I did not have a window seat.  In addition it was already dark when we left LA.  After a feature length film you check the monitor because it seems as if you should soon be there, only to see that you have barely travelled a quarter of the distance, if that.  There are ways that a long flight can feel somewhat like suspended animation, or perhaps a mild torture chamber, but it ends eventually, and I was glad at my age that I was feeling as good as I did.  It was the morning of Feb. 13 when we landed in Sydney.  Since we had crossed the International Date Line, Sunday, Feb. 12th never existed for us.  Keeping track of dates and time was a challenge, but did such details really matter anyway.

The in air flight time from LA to Sydney was almost 14 hours, and that after having flown across the US.  But we were still not yet in PNG.  The flight from Sydney to PNG was almost like a flight across the US.  This time I had my window seat.  I could see the farm land as we flew over Australia.  I saw a number of beautiful coral reefs as we flew over the waters north of Australia.  And finally we caught our first slight of PNG.  We soon landed in Port Moresby, and our long flight was over, about 40 hours after we left Charlottesville.  (We had logged just over 23 hours of in flight time.)

We collected our bags which were all there except for the tool bag that we had checked, and proceeded to customs.  Colleen and Katie wonderfully changed the money to pay for our entrance Visas.  We had our passports stamped, proceeded through the gate, and there was the smiling face a Theresa.  It is always wonderful at the end of a long journey to recognize someone familiar and the face of Mama T was a welcome sight.  With Mama T was a big man.  We finally met Clemence.  He is tall.  He is big.  His big smile is reddened from chewing betel nut.  His heart is as big as he is.

We piled into Clemence’s van.  He said before he took us to the place where we were going to stay that we would stop somewhere for a brief news conference and a little snack; no big deal.  Boy were we wrong!  After driving a while through Port Moresby, (on the wrong side of the street from our perspective), we turned into a side street and there they were.

The Welcome
Out the driveway came the mud men, dancing and pointing their arrows at us!  (Fortunately I had just read about the mud men in an inflight magazine on the flight to Port Moresby.)  There were other dancers, singing, and shouting and surrounding us.  There was a big sign over the driveway (about 3’ X 15’) that said in big letters “Welcome to PNG Mom Ruth and Dad Aaron and the M-CAM team, with the names of the rest of the team in smaller letters.  We were escorted by the joyous crowd to an outdoor decorated platform where we were warmly welcomed.  There was an opening prayer and a welcome speech.  We were all given bilums, beautiful handmade bags.  Some of us were given caps and beautiful long arrows.  Several of us were asked to give speeches.  I almost felt that they were giving us too much honor so I told them that the windmill was possible because of the gift from Uncle John.  I was asked to tell about myself, and to lead in a closing prayer.  The celebration was amazing.

Then came the “little snack”.  It was our first encounter of the mu mu, which we were to experience a number of times.  A mu mu is a meal that is prepared by heating lava rocks in a fire.  When the wood is burnt, the hot rocks are covered with banana leaves.  On top to the leaves are placed special bananas, sweet potatoes, perhaps regular potatoes, sweet corn, squash or pumpkin, cabbage greens, carrots, perhaps squash flowers and squash vine tips, and chicken and/or pork.  All this is covered with more banana leaves, then earth, and left to cook for a couple of hours.  What a wonderful “snack”.
The crowd stayed around.  Some of the women around the edge were working on their needle work.  Ruth quickly joined the women with her prayer shawl knitting.  The whole event was featured in the next morning’s national newspaper.

Accommodations
We were shortly in for another wonderful surprise.  We were told before the trip that we should prepare to sleep in tents out at the windmill site.  Showers would become available when the windmill was working.  Right across the street from the welcome site was a house and courtyard owned by Naomi Tulaha, a most delightful woman.  She had an Ed. Dr. from a Canadian university.  The house was empty at the time and she made it available as a place for us to stay.  So instead of sleeping in tents on the ground, we were given a bed, under a ceiling fan.  There was another bedroom where Katie and Teresa stayed, and a large living room area where the rest were able to spread out mats under ceiling fans.  There was a shower, which was so welcome after a hot, sweaty day at the site.  It was a gift beyond our dreams.  The courtyard was filled with orchids and other wonderful flowers.  The open windows allowed us to wake up to some of the most beautiful bird calls I have ever heard.

After Dave arrived the next morning, we proceeded out to the windmill site, about three miles east of the Port Moresby airport.  Since it was the rainy season in PNG, and since the road to the site is just through the grass land, and since there were some low spots where water would stand, we got stuck.  That happened nearly every time we went to the site.  What was somewhat amazing was how quickly people would show up to help push us out.  I was inclined to get out to help push, but Clemence said we should stay in the van, so we did.  But at one spot we were stuck so badly that we all just got out and walked the rest of the way to the site.  After we came over a small rise we descended toward the site of the well.  As we walked toward the well, we saw in front of us a hill that was clearly an extinct volcano that was called “Gunner’s Hill”.  It seems that the tip of PNG where we were was a crucial part of the Japanese flyway to Australia and other parts of the South Pacific during World War II.  So the US and the allied troops set up machine guns on top of Gunner’s Hill to shoot down Japanese planes as they flew over the tip of PNG.  There are still remnants of the activity in the area.

We had a productive day assembling parts of the windmill and the windmill tower.  Each of the tribes provided a group of men to work on the project.  I was very impressed with their strength, and with how quickly they caught on to the construction procedures.   Clearly if they lacked anything, it was opportunity, not ability.

Uncle John
I woke up early next morning thinking about Uncle John.  I was in tears as I thought about Uncle John.  We knew that Uncle John (John Parsons) was a communication officer in the Navy during World War II.  We knew he was in the Pacific, but that is about all we knew.  He never wanted to talk about his war experience.  He did not consider himself a war hero.  We loved to go sailing with him in his sail boat on the Chesapeake Bay.  He did not talk that much but it was clear that he enjoyed being on the open water in the bay.  He was never married.  He lived very simply.  Except for his sail boat, he spent very little on himself.  He spent much of his adult life working for the telephone company.  When he died, his estate was divided among his nieces and nephews.  And this windmill project was a result of that inheritance that Ruth had received.  But we learned more about Uncle John from Dave.  Dave was digging into old World War II records due to the fact that the tract of land that was given for these five displaced tribes contained the burial site of some of the US military personnel .  I have frequently been amazed at Dave’s ability to uncover information, and in his research he discovered another amazing piece of information.  Dave found that Uncle John was assigned to a ship that was just off shore from Gunner’s Hill.  So now, here was the gift from Uncle John returned to the location where he had been during World War II, but this time it was a gift of water, not the destruction of war.  We were sure Uncle John would be pleased with this gift.  It was also most fitting that the people in Farea Model Village were claiming Uncle John as one of their own.

Shoes
Since the road and the site were muddy in places, our shoes got quite dirty.  When we returned to Naomi’s house in the evening, after a day on the site, we took off our shoes and left them on the back covered porch rather than taking them and the mud into the house.  During the night we heard dogs barking but did not think that much about it since we heard dogs barking before.  When we got up next morning Greg said “where is my one shoe?”  We discovered that not only was Greg’s one shoe missing.  All the men’s shoes were gone from the porch.  Dave quickly set the tone for our response.  He said “well we just imported some duty free shoes into PNG.”  He lost a favorite pair of boots but did not seem too distressed by the event, and that set the tone for the rest of us.  I lost my new pair of shoe that I purchased just for the trip.  Shoes are a problem for me when I travel since I wear size 12 shoes and shoes do not pack well.  I had packed a beat up pair of duck boots in the tool bag in case I decided they would be good for the work, but the tool bag was still stuck in Sydney.  The only other foot ware I had was a pair of very cheap, flimsy sandals and a pair of flip flops.  All the men on the team took inventory of the foot ware we had.  I tried on another pair of shoes but I could tell that they were too small for my big feet.  So I ended up with Dylan’s flip flops.  I took his because the thong in his flip flop was not nearly as sharp and irritating as mine.  The plan was that Clemence would take the group out to the windmill site, then take me into town to buy a replacement pair of shoes.

There had been heavy rain the previous night and the road was muddier than usual.  We forded the river, as we always had to do.  The water was deeper than it had been.  We started up the ascent out of the river on the other side, which was always a challenge.  But this time, due to the extra rainfall, we got stuck going uphill and around the curve.  It was clear we were not going to push ourselves out of this one.  The decision was that the only practical thing to do was to walk the remaining two miles to the work site.  It was also clear that Clemence would not soon be free so it would be quite some time before he could take me into town to buy other shoes.  So I had a choice.  I could wait indefinitely with Clemence until he might or might not be able to take me into town to get other shoes, or get out and walk with the group back to the site.  I chose the latter.

I discovered there is a problem trying to walk in sticky mud with flip flops.  The black volcanic soil made mud that quickly built up a heavy ¾ inch thick layer on the bottom of the flip flops.  In addition the mud was extremely slick.  I was sliding all over the place.  Trying to walk in heavy flip flops that are sliding all over the place is no easy task.  I was quickly falling behind the rest of the group.  That alone might have been OK but we had not gone to the site often enough that I was sure of the trail.  So I made a decision.  I saw that many of the men in the community walked barefoot.  I had gone barefoot a lot as a kid.  I was told that it would not be a good idea for me because of the sharp volcanic rocks and some of the tall grass, but I decided to try it.  Once I was barefoot I was able to catch up with the group.  At times the mud squished through my toes.  I did not find the volcanic rocks to be irritating.  When we got back to the site, Tevin had my flip flops washed and I was able to wear them later in the day.  For the next several weeks the skin on my feet felt smoother than they had been for years.  It almost seemed as if this could be some valuable pedicure treatment.  The tool bag came and with it were my duck boots, which I wore because the thong had created a blister between my toes on my right foot.  But the theft of my shoes had resulted in my learning some local wisdom that I likely would not have experienced if that had not happened.

Raising the Tower
We were waiting much of the day for the crane that was to come to raise the windmill tower and the windmill on to the tower.  We heard various reports throughout the day on the progress of the crane, but it was of no use until it got to the location.  Finally by mid to late afternoon we got the word that the crane was hopelessly stuck in the mud and would not make it.  So Dave made the call, “let’s raise the tower.”  Since the work crews from the tribes had also been waiting all day, they immediately sprang into action.  A number took their bush knives and cut down trees with forked notches for pushing poles. Poles were lashed to the bottom feet of the tower to prevent the feet of the tower from sinking into the mud.  Then teams lined up along each edge of the tower and the lifting began.  First it was up a few feet, then a few feet more.  At each stage the tower was propped so the lifters could reposition themselves for a better pushing position.  And up the tower went.  When it was up at about a 30º angle, a rope was attached from the top of the tower to the raised bed of a dump truck.  As the pushers lifted, the bed of the dump truck was slowly lowered, assisting the lifting effort.

And then it happened.  The tower was now high enough that most of the lifting had to be done with the poles.  When the tower was at about a 40º angle, a partial rainbow appeared behind the tower!  As the tower went up, the rainbow got more complete and brighter.  It appeared as if the rainbow was either pushing or pulling the tower.  It was a most amazing sight, and the people of the community understood the meaning of the blessing of the rainbow.  When the tower was erect the rainbow framed the tower and Gunner’s Hill in the background.  People were laughing and crying.  It was a powerful sight.  The bright, triple rainbow persisted about right up to sun set.  I cannot imagine anyone who was present will ever forget that sight.  It was an amazing sight!

The Crane
The tower was upright but the windmill itself with its motor was still on the ground.  The windmill fan and motor weighed nearly a ton.  Dave, Greg, and I spent much of evening trying to figure out a block and tackle system that could be attached to the tower to raise the fan and motor.  Greg and Dave thought they figured out a system that would work.  I was confused on some of the details.  Meanwhile Clemence and Theresa were scouring Port Moresby to see if there might be some other crane operator that could be hired for the task.  In the morning we got word that there was a crane operator who would come with a bigger crane provided we paid him up front with a cash advance of about $1500 (US).  Due to the weight of the windmill, that seemed to be our best option.  I went with Theresa to the bank to withdraw the cash (converted into Kina, the local currency).  The rest of the crew went out to the site.  There was still the issue of the muddy roads, even though there was no rain after the rainbow.  The work crews from the tribes worked on the road.  They took shovels and dug out and drained the worst of the mud holes.  They cut logs to fill in low spots in the mud holes and ditches.  The cooperative work was beautiful to watch.  They worked under united thought and direction.  Their strength and skill was a sight to see.

Then the fairly new Caterpillar crane appeared.  It maneuvered into position.  It first lifted the tower so the final bolts could be put in place to secure the tower to its buried posts.  This crane was up to the task.  The fan and motor were lifted slowly but easily.  Dave and Tevin went to the top to the tower to direct the windmill onto its mounting shaft.  The windmill was slowly lowered onto the mounting shaft, but it was tilted at such an angle that it would not slip on to the shaft.  The windmill was lowered.  In the first attempt the tail fin of the windmill was folded parallel to the windmill.  This time we opened the tail fin with the tail perpendicular to the fan which made the whole assembly hang more nearly vertical.  Up went the windmill again.  This time it started to descend onto the mounting shaft.  After moving it back and forth a number of times it finally fell into place.  The crowd below erupted into cheers.  It was a good day.

There was just one problem.  A 3 inch coupling that connected the rods from the windmill motor to the pump was missing.  We spent much of the next morning visiting hardware store after hardware store in Port Moresby.  The city has many excellent hardware stores, but PNG, as much of the rest of the word uses metric standards, and the windmill, built by Aremotor in Texas, does not.  We went out to the site and searched as carefully as we could for the missing coupling, but it was not to be found.  Most of our group stayed at the site.  Tevin said he wanted to show us his home, and Dave said we should go with him.

Tevin
Tevin is a fine man.  He has been selected to be the chairman of Farea Model Village, and he seems to be very capable of the assignment.  He took Ruth and me down the tall grass path, past lovely gardens and a few village houses.  He took us with his beautiful wife, Esther, and fine son up Elder’s hill where the windmill project was conceived.  He took us to his house with its lovely flowers and fabulous gardens.  He brought us back beside Gunner’s Hill, to the windmill site.  We walked by a small shelter that was the meeting place for their church group.

It seemed so strange that Tevin was not the leader of his church group.  He was a clear leader.  He was highly committed.  But instead, a “missionary” came out from Port Moresby to “lead” the group.  We never saw a trace of the missionary during the water project that was a major event for the entire community.  I am not sure who needs to repent and be converted.

New Britain
Since it was Saturday and all the shops would be closed for the weekend, the decision was made that Greg would stay in Port Moresby while the rest of us went on to Theresa’s home on another island.  The original plans were for all of us to fly to New Britain but the windmill was not working due to the missing coupling.  Clemence found a machine shop that would fabricate the part on Monday, but there was no reason for all of us to stay for that one small but essential piece.

The few days at Teresa’s home were most delightful.  We learned about the operation of the small plantation.  We participated just a bit in the processing of pepper.  We learned about coconut production and special spices.  We visited the volcano that had been active very recently, tasting some of its salt deposit, and feeling some of its hot pools.  It was a break to spend a few days at higher elevation where it was a bit cooler.

For me a very special highlight of the entire trip was to spend some extra time with Dave.  I am not sure there is anyone I would rather be with than our four boys and their families.  Dave, however, is all over the world, and I have often been puzzled to understand what he does and how he does it.  On the trip it was delightful to watch him lead the windmill project.  I enjoyed when I watched him with Colleen.  But for me it was a special treat to watch him at work with some of the abused peoples.  PNG is an extremely rich land.  It has some of the richest mineral deposits in the world.  But much of the world has treated the people as if at best they are entities to be exploited.  The tribes making up Farea Model Village were pushed off their ancient lands so Exxon could exploit their natural gas.  Mining companies have come in and taken copper, gold, and other minerals and given essentially nothing and sometimes worse than nothing back to the people.  External companies have come in and violated international law to take what they wanted from the land.  It is not that these are not bright, capable people.  It is often that contracts are signed without the people on the land having any knowledge of what is being signed.  There is even one company where anyone in the world may buy stock in the company except for citizens of PNG.  Exploitation has been the name of the game.  Dave, with his company M-CAM, has been working around the world to correct some of these injustices.  And on this trip I had the chance to sit with him in some of his meetings in homes or under trees with some of the abused people and see him provide them with information that they did not know.  I gained a new appreciation for his work on behalf of people around the world.  At the very least, people everywhere should have equal access to information and opportunity.  Exploitation of other people is never appropriate.
Windmill Dedication
It was Wed., Feb. 22, time for the dedication of the windmill.  We had word from Greg that the coupling was fabricated and the windmill was working.  Dave flew back early in the morning.  He was the project leader and he needed to be sure to be back so everything was ready for the big day.  We caught a flight later in the morning.  The dedication program was to start at 1 PM.  Clemence picked us up, but it seemed as if he was trying to do everything he could to stall our arrival at the site.  We knew by now that PNG time schedules were not necessarily the same as ours, but he seemed to make every stop he could.  There was ice to pick up.  There were more drinks from several different stores.  Dave had called and said things were getting crazy at the site.  It was after 1 PM when we turned off the road beside the airport onto the three mile dirt road back to the site.  Since there had not been rain, crossing the river was easier than many time had been.  We saw people walking toward the site.  They were driving.  They were on the open beds of trucks.  We soon saw flags planted along the way, PNG flags, US flags, and M-CAM flags.  The road had been worked on to the point where it was in better shape than we had seen it before.

And then we saw them… all the people with whom we worked during the construction of the previous week.  Those who prepared the mu mu while we worked were there.  Kids were there.  Families were there.  Young and old were there.  When we saw them we asked to get out of the van to walk with the people.  We were surrounded by a river of people.  The mud men were there.  The yellow clay people were there.  The red paint people were there.  The tall strong warriors were there.  It was the most amazing crowd from all the tribes, many dressed in their finest festive garments. There was singing and dancing. I was reminded of the very beautiful scene in the book of Revelation where there is the description of people coming from every tribe and nation and tongue gathering for celebration.   We marched with the joyous throng, an experience unlike anything I saw before.  As we came over the rise toward the windmill, they came with three chairs on poles.  They put the man who had given the land for Farea Model Village in the first chair.  Ruth and I were placed in the other two chairs and they picked us up and carried us through the joyous waving throng, past the windmill with Gunner’s Hill behind it, to a very decorated platform prepared for the occasion.  I felt like I was being recognized beyond what I deserved but knew it was not appropriate to refuse the honor.  I knew I was recognized because I was the father of Dave, who had done far more for the project than I had ever done.

Each of us was carried by six men.  I think at one point one of the sticks supporting me cracked.  I heard what sounded like a crack.  I felt the chair shift slightly, but they carried me on as if nothing happened.

A lot of effort went into the preparation for the occasion.  The windmill was decorated.  The stage was built.  A generator was brought in to provide power for a PA system.  A special band was there for the event.
We were seated on the stage, and as we looked out from our seats we saw this incredibly beautiful sea of humanity.  (I do not know how many people were there.  Some said a thousand.  Some said a couple of thousand.  I was told that if the event had been on a weekend instead of a work day the crowd would have been twice as large.)  The formal ceremony began.  Tiven, beaming broadly welcomed everyone.  There was an opening prayer.  Clememce gave an extended speech.  He spoke in Pidgin so I was not able to follow what he said, but clearly the crowd was with him.  Dave appropriately was asked to speak.

Now it was time to cut the ribbon to open the windmill.  We went down from the platform and over to the windmill.  Ruth and I were asked to cut the ribbon, then pull the stop to release the tail of the windmill.  The tail opened.  At the moment there was no wind so a couple fellows climbed up and turned the windmill.  The water started to flow and the crowd went wild.  Shortly a breeze picked up and the windmill pumped water on its own.  This was the moment people were waiting for.  They held plastic bottles in the following stream to catch some of the wonderful flow.  The crowd laughed and cried.  They shouted and hugged each other.  The gift of water had come to Farea.  It was a celebration of life itself.

We returned to the stage where I was asked to make a few final remarks and Ruth was asked to lead a closing prayer.  There was another large mu mu feast.  At the end of the day we left Farea Model Village but part of us will always remain there.  We were there such a short time. We were barely beginning to get to know some of our new brothers and sisters.  There was so much more we wanted to learn and want to know.

The Face
One final amazing experience on the trip.  I think it happened on Sunday morning, Feb. 19th.  We had to get up very early to be ready to leave at 4 AM to catch our flight to Rabaul.  In preparation for that early flight we should have gone to bed early on Sat. night, but it was our last night at Naomi’s house, and she and her family wanted some special time with us.  They prepared a wonderful dinner for us.  They presented us with very special gifts.  So it was late when we got to bed, and I was very tired next morning.  It was still quite dark when we got into the van.  I may have closed my eyes, and there I saw the most beautiful, round, bearded face of a PNG man looking directly into my face and smiling.  I did not recognize him as any of the men I had met.  I was so tired I could easily be convinced that it was a hallucination, or was it a vision?  The face was so beautiful that I tried to hold and keep the image, but it faded far too quickly.  I will let you decide what I saw, but I know that at the moment I wished I was a skilled artist so I could paint the face of Christ as a PNG man.

I’m not going all theological on this song.  I could disagree with various nuances of the lyrics, and it’d be beside the point.  It’s somehow sweet and thought-provoking and worth chewing on.

Of course, season your thoughts with the fact that, if you believe what the Scriptures teach us about Jesus, than in some interesting, transcendental, and wholly-incomprehensible way God did, in fact, become one of us.  Not “just a slob like one of us” exactly, but certainly alone at times and trying to make his way home…with us in tow.  That’s worth contemplating as Easter approaches.

The Foundations of American Law and Government display contains documents that played a significant role in the foundation of our system of law and government. The display contains (1) the Mayflower Compact; (2) the Ten Commandments; (3) the Declaration of Independence: (4) Magna Carta; (5) “The Star-Spangled Banner”; (6) the national motto of the United States of America; (7) the Preamble to the Georgia Constitution; (8) the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution; and (9) a picture of Lady Justice.

The code has several provisions to make sure that no single one of these nine elements be given prominence over the others.  Though I’m not a lawyer nor a constitutional scholar, I find it interesting that this law appears almost identical to one overturned in the 2005 Supreme Court decision enjoining the display of the Commandments in a Kentucky courthouse.  Though I’m a staunch advocate of the separation of church and state, that is not the issue I intend to address today.  Rather, I’m looking at the ridiculous claim that the Ten Commandments actually serve as a substantial foundation for American law.

Here’s what the Georgia law states in its prescription for the “Foundations” display:

The Ten Commandments have profoundly influenced the formation of Western legal thought and the formation of our country. That influence is clearly seen in the Declaration of Independence, which declared that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Ten Commandments provide the moral background of the Declaration of Independence and the foundation of our legal tradition.

The law further elaborates on the Commandments’ influence in its description of the Declaration of Independence:

Perhaps the single most important document in American history, the Declaration of Independence was, as Abraham Lincoln stated, the “frame” into which the Framers placed the Constitution. The Declaration’s fundamental premise is that one’s right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is not a gift of government. Government is not a giver of rights, but a protector of God-given rights. Moreover, government is a creation of “the governed” and derives all its power from the consent of its people. As the Preamble to the United States Constitution states, “We the People” are the government. (emphasis mine)

The Georgia (and previously, Kentucky) authorities claim that they are setting out an educational display to educate the public about the “Foundations of American Law and Government.”  45-13-51(a)(4) of the Code actually states “A basic knowledge of American constitutional history is important to the formation of civic virtue in our society.”  It is rather astonishing, in this context (and the Supreme Court decision referenced above observed the same thing), that a display purporting to teach “a basic knowledge of American constitutional history” does not even include the U.S. Constitution among its documents.  On the other hand, it does include several components that cannot plausibly be said to have any bearing on United States law at all, including most significantly, our National Anthem, the national motto “In God We Trust,” and a picture of Lady Justice.  These things are American cultural traditions, but they are not law.

That aside, the portion I highlighted above makes the true intent of the display pretty clear…among the “Foundations” of American law, in the mind of this bill’s advocates, is the premise that our rights come from God, not from man, or law, or government.  This is a premise worthy of debate on its own merits, but it is not one I intend to engage in this post.  Nevertheless the premise must be acknowledged, because it makes clear that when the legislators claim a secular, educational purpose for laws related to the display of the Ten Commandments, they are in fact being disingenuous.

The claim that the Ten Commandments provide a foundation for American law would be laughable if so many people didn’t take it so seriously. Here’s a link to the full text of the U.S. Constitution.  Go read it.  There is no mention of God or religion in the entire thing.  Nor does the Constitution touch on any topic addressed in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17).  The two documents simply do not overlap at all. Now here’s a link to the first ten amendments to the Constitution, otherwise known as the Bill of Rights, and here are all the remaining amendments to the Constitution.  Go read those.  Note this important point:  The word “God” or any other name for (or reference to) the divine does not occur once in the entire Constitution of the United States nor its amendments.  Nor do the amendments allude to any subject also mentioned in the Ten Commandments.

Finally, let’s look at the Commandments one by one.  I’ve done a visual commentary on the Commandments in America before, but this time, we’re going to look at the actual text (taken from the ESV in this instance):

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

There is nothing in American law that specifies any God in particular, or any hierarchy of gods.  Even the Declaration of Independence only references a “Creator.”  Other than the Creator’s having given to humans the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” we are told nothing about that being.  Furthermore, as mentioned before, the Declaration of Independence, while an important historical document, is not actually a law.  Commandment One does not influence any law of the United States.

2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them…

The laws of this nation do not forbid idolatry, and they certainly do not forbid sculpture or photography, both of which create images or likenesses of many things.  For that matter, only very few Christians throughout history have had any objection to the creation of images and likenesses.  We have taken this commandment (correctly, I think) to enjoin idolatry, not art.  But neither is prohibited by American law.

3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Whether or not this command contributes to American law depends on what one thinks it means.  Though I’m not aware of any law currently in force, there have certainly been legal prohibitions against public profanity, particularly profanity using God’s name, in various American states in the past.  Clearly any such laws that still exist have lost any force, given the ubiquity of profane speech, music, writing, and general discourse in our country today.

Most credible sources I’ve read suggest this command has more to do with taking an oath in God’s name and then breaking it…and possibly even making an oath with full premeditation that one intends to break it (hence taking God’s name in vain).  We certainly have laws against perjury in this country, though I’d suggest there’s nothing uniquely Judeo-Christian about them.  The material sense of such laws is the dishonesty of the oath, not the violation of God’s name.  To claim we get our laws against perjury from Moses is a stretch at best.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Many places in America used to have Sabbath laws.  We don’t any more.  Very few Americans, Christian or otherwise, come anywhere close to keeping any sort of sabbath law on any day of the week.  American business, pleasure, goodness and sin all proceed apace on a 24-7 schedule.  Nothing to see here…move along now…

5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

We could debate exactly what this command means too.  One common interpretation is that we should provide for the care of our elders, which could easily devolve into an argument as to whether each family should care for their own, or whether Social Security and Medicare are our way of keeping the Fifth Commandment.  I’m not taking that bait, at least not today.  But whether it’s the question of long-term care, or the more immediate question of kids obeying their parents, our society has mores and expectations in that regard, but not laws.  A child can disown, disrespect, and even abandon his parents, and as long as he does not physically abuse them (and there are other legal bases against abuse), there are no legal grounds upon which to charge him.

6. You shall not murder.

Yup.  We have laws against that.  So does every society, whatever god it does or does not worship.  Even atheist, Communist societies have laws against murder.  There is a much broader Biblical case, particularly in the New Testament, for a standard on the protection of human life that goes far beyond the prohibition of murder.  The standard of Jesus, which our nation most certainly does not presume to follow, elevates the sanctity of all human life including that of fetuses, enemies, and criminals to a level that those who claim to be “pro life” completely fail to grasp.  Nevertheless, for the point at hand, to suggest that our prohibition against murder descends uniquely from the Sixth Commandment beggars belief.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

Obviously, we have no law against adultery in this country.  In many states, even adultery as grounds for divorce has lost much of its punch.  Whatever public moralizing we may do (say, an adulterous congressman trying to impeach an adulterous president, to pick a random example), nobody goes to jail or pays fines for adultery in the United States.

8. You shall not steal.

We have that one too.  So does everybody else.  Our laws against stealing come from our standards of private property, not from divine fiat.  As I said for murder above, there’s nothing unique about our prohibition of theft that shows any divine sourcing.  Theft did not suddenly become a crime at the revelations from Sinai.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

I already touched on the subject of perjury up in the Third Commandment.  This command is more particularly about false accusation and testimony that wrongly convicts the innocent.  The Code of Hammurabi has several provisions with a great deal more detail than Exodus, regarding the consequences for perjured testimony against another.  Hammurabi predates Moses by anywhere from 300-500 years, depending on what date estimates one accepts.  Moses didn’t inspire this law.

10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.

Of all the Ten Commandments, I find the Tenth to be the most blindingly obvious evidence that American law and Mosaic law are two radically different things.  Without covetousness, the American market economy would not exist.  Advertising as a profession is the deliberate creation of covetous desire in the contented.  Far from reproving covetousness, our society stokes the fire under every human lust and turns it into a market opportunity.

In summary, there is very little material overlap between the Ten Commandments and any laws of the United States.  The most generous reading would see links only in the sixth (murder), eighth (theft) and ninth (perjury/false witness) commandments, none of which contain anything particularly unique, none of which were novel at the time of Moses, and none of which require divine revelation to substantiate them.  To display the Ten Commandments as prescribed in the “Foundations of American Law and Government” regulation is a statement of religious endorsement.  Advocates’ claims  of  secular, historic motivation are at best specious, and at worst  baldfaced lies.

With the deepest respect to Scot, this post is my response to his question.  In point of fact, I have what I think are several reasonable objections to the Nicene Creed, which I’m going to lay out below.  First of all, here’s the text I’m using.  There are several variants, and I had to pick one, so I went with the version I found at www.reformed.org/documents/nicene.html:

The Nicene Creed

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

I’m not going to do a complete line-by-line commentary of the Nicene Creed because it’d get real boring real fast.  I will stipulate, in answer to the objections that I’m sure some will raise, that there is a historical context in which the various clauses of the Nicene Creed (and others) may be more fully understood.  But part of the error in insisting upon the creeds, in my view, is precisely that the creeds are taught in most churches as a thing to be believed and assented to, entirely devoid of their historical context.  In fact, if we looked more frequently at the controversies that were being considered, which influenced various clauses in the creed, I rather suspect more of us might come to the conclusion I have, that some of those old arguments don’t compel us as they compelled the Fathers who fought over them in the third, fourth and fifth centuries.

At any rate, the following paragraphs address my major thoughts or objections.

I believe …

Strange as it may seem, my first objection comes with the very first two words, “I believe.”  I’ve mentioned before that I see the Shema of the Old Testament, quoted by Jesus in Mark 12:29-31 among other places, as one of the best examples of a creed actually in the Bible.  The Shema starts off with a simple declarative statement “The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”  The focus is not the fact that we believe something, it is the reality that there is a God and He is one.  God is God, and God is there, and God is one, regardless of what you, I, or anybody else thinks or believes.  The shift from “there is a God” to “I believe in a God” may seem subtle to some, but to me it implies that the individual’s assent is the important thing.

Furthermore, the Shema goes from declaring that there is one God, to commanding that this God is to be loved as Lord.  The creeds, on the other hand, focus merely on “right thoughts,” that is, giving intellectual assent to the existence and character of God.  This is part of the shift from discipleship to religion against which I’ve argued repeatedly on this blog.

… the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds… (referring to Jesus)

This is not a section I actually take issue with, though I do take issue with the proposition that it matters.  What I mean by this is that this clause, along with the “begotten, not made” clause later, address the issue of Jesus’ pre-creation existence.  While I do see texts in scripture that suggest Jesus did in fact pre-exist creation (not least the first chapter of John, and John 8:58), I don’t know that a dogma of Jesus’ origin, and the timetable of his existence, is something we actually need to care about.  Sure, the biblical evidence suggests these clauses are true (I think).  But I fail to see what difference it makes.  I certainly don’t countenance the Constantinople Council’s anathematization of anyone who disagreed.

… God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God … (referring to Jesus)

I rather suspect that only a tiny fraction of everyone who recites this phrase has any clue what it even means.  I’m not sure I do.  I presume it’s referring in some way to Jesus’ divinity, and the commentaries on it that I find through a quick Google suggest the same, though interestingly I find an alternative translation “God from God, Light from Light” etc., which may even be compatible with the divine-yet-subordinate position that I have previously suggested is a more accurate characterization of what Jesus said about himself–that is, that he comes from, and is therefore distinct from, the Father.  So my objection to this phrase depends on how the speaker interprets it:  if as a classic Trinitarian construction that places Jesus as fully divine and equal to the Father, I object to the content; if rather it’s just something the speaker doesn’t comprehend, I then object to reciting as credal, words that have no meaning to the speaker.

I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life …

It’s in Pneumatology that I really start to take serious issue with the Nicene Creed.  This is one place where this creed goes far beyond its antecedent Apostles’ Creed, which merely stated “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” full-stop, with no qualification or theorizing.  Whatever the Holy Spirit is or is not (and on this I have previously written), I can think of no place in the Scriptures where the Holy Spirit is referred to as Lord, and “Giver of Life” is mis-attributed altogether.  The two texts to which I would point for this latter would be Genesis 2:7 and its beautiful New Testament mirror in John 20:22.  In Genesis it is God the Father who breathes the breath of life into man (“breath” and “spirit” are synonyms in Greek and, I’m told, in Hebrew too), and in John it is Jesus who breathes the Holy Spirit onto the disciples, initiating or symbolizing their new life in the new Kingdom.  The Spirit is, if anything, the life that is given, not its giver.

… who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified … (referring to the Holy Spirit)

I can find no place in the Scripture that admonishes or commands anyone to worship the Holy Spirit, nor states that the Spirit is glorified.  Nor can I think of any reference to people doing so.  The Breath of God is, as I wrote before, the tangible and very active presence of God working and speaking in the world, but it is never an object of worship.

There is more, I am sure, to be said, and this post is more of an opening for dialog than anything definitive.  Nevertheless each of the above objections is, I believe, a reasonable point to challenge the Nicea crowd for going beyond what is written in some rather substantial ways.

There remain areas where, while I say it differently, I do believe things that are substantially similar to the statements of the great creeds.  I illustrated as much in my post What IS a Christian, Anyway? I’m not saying the creeds are all wrong, but I do hold that emphasizing them is most assuredly wrong.  As Tom Wright stated in a recent lecture at Calvin College, “It is possible to check the credal boxes, and miss the larger reality to which they are the signposts.”  More than that, I would say without reservation that the Nicene Creed includes several boxes that ought not to be checked at all.

Unfortunately most Christians believe that heaven is simply a destination and that death then heaven is what eternal life means. Of course there is something eternal to this thing we call life but the more profound understanding comes when we realize that an eternal kind of life is meant to be started right now in the here and now while we live on this earth.

When we begin to strive to live today as if all was right in the world as God originally intended, it is as if our veil is lifted and we see this world differently. This theme fits nicely into the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven reality. If only Christians would be taught more often what it looks like to be used a vessel to usher in heaven into the here and now. This I believe will be the challenge to the church over the next decade and longer.

The church has focused so much on the inner transformation that it has forgotten how to pair that vision with the transformation of the world vision as well. For some strange reason God has chosen to use his people to re-build his Kingdom on earth as it is heaven. Jesus was the first fruits of this vision and now it has been extended to his people through the profound presence of God’s Holy Breath (AKA Spirit).

I love how N.T Wright articulates this in that through Jesus God became King. When you pair that profound way at looking at how the heavenly realm and earthly realm are working toward becoming one with the Christus Victor view of the cross, you end up with a Kingdom citizens vision and mission. Loosely, to not just be recipients of new creation but to be agents of it as well. We are of course to shape ourselves into living an eternal kind of life now but we are too also look for places where the powers have strongholds and through prayer, sacrificial love, non-violence, etc tear down those strongholds and re-claim for the Kingdom what the powers have taken on this earth.

Shockingly in all of those battles Jesus has already won. All we have to do is remind the powers that they lost and send them packing. Because we are image bearers it will be our physical work and words / prayers that will accomplish this feat.

I want to end this post with an image and some reflections on it.

I have to say this image makes an interesting point. Of course it is entirely a generalization and deeply flawed, however, if the Church and God’s people were being loyal to their calling as also being agents of new creation, I believe the words describing Christians would be as follows.

Christian:
Takes care of the sick
Cares for widows and orphans
Advocates for the poor and those on the underside of power
Brings food to the hungry
Brings water to the thirsty
Provides shelter for homeless
……

And many more things rooted in sacrificial love. Believe it or not that list above, and more, is actually what I consider “evangelism.”

Grace and Peace.

To whet your appetite, I transcribed one of the most salient (to me) passages which occurs between 8:20 and 10:34 in the audio:

The creeds were drafted in order to highlight points on which the church resolved major difficulties. But when the creeds began to be used as a teaching syllabus (as they often are to this day), then the problem begins, because of course the creeds jump straight from Jesus’ birth to his death … and I have a mental image at that point, of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John standing there saying ‘Excuse me, we spent a lot of time and effort telling you about all that stuff in between, and you just skip over it?  What’s that about?’

Now, I have nothing against the great creeds.  I love them, and I say them or sing them ex animo.  But they have accidentally encouraged—or the way they have been used has accidentally encouraged—a reading of the New Testament in which the main body of the four Gospels is not theologically load-bearing.  For many Christians, it would have been quite sufficient if Jesus of Nazareth had been born of a virgin, died on a cross, and never done anything in between except, perhaps, lived a sinless life.

The four Gospels then, function for many as the dispensible back story for the Gospel as preached by Paul … this is the de facto position of many Protestants and many Evangelicals—many conservative Evangelicals—the irony being, of course, that it’s the exact same position as that of Rudolph Bultman, with the only difference being that Bultman thought most of the stories were pious fictions.  But the reason why most Evangelicals would differ is not that the stories are doing anything theologically, in themselves, but simply to shore up a view of the inspiration of Scripture.  Not for the only time, swaths of Evangelicals are more anxious to protect a theory of Scripture, than to hear what Scripture actually says.

And toward the end, one more excellent quote (55:40 in the audio):

We have substituted the static belief in Jesus’ divinity for the active belief in what the Incarnate Son was actually doing.  It is possible to check the credal boxes, and miss the larger reality to which they are the signposts.

There’s much more to hear.  Take your time and give it a listen!

The sharing of this article sparked a dialogue both online and offline with a number of people which got me thinking and led to the title of this post. I may not be in the same camp on a number of theological issues as much as mainstream evangelicalism. That is one of the reasons I have no problem labeling myself as a non-evangelical and stating that I resonate with different faith traditions more than evangelicalism. Although I ask the tough questions about the text and have come to some different conclusions, I can boldly say I have very good, well thought out, exegetically honest, and communally vetted conclusions.

So why do I bring this up in the first place? Because I have gotten the sense through the years, from those who question where I have landed, that they seem to think that I don’t accept the stock answers because I am stubborn, rebellious or perhaps something worse. I get the sense some think I reject the standard issues just because. I have never gotten the sense from any of the more controversial conversations on controversial subjects that I may actually have deeply researched my conclusion. It seems they assume I have not, yet they have and that is why they are right and I am wrong. When in all actuality nothing can be farther from the truth.

As much as it shocks me to think about this reality, I happen to be a public authority and noted thought leader in the technology industry. This position has earned me a spot as one of the few technology columnists for a number of publications including TIME.com. I speak regularly to captains and leaders of industry at CEO summits, industry trade shows, and many other public and private forums as an authority / expert within my field of knowledge. To accomplish something like this one does not formulate opinions or expertise without deeply researching, analyzing, and vetting ideas in order to make conclusions that I do. I would approach conclusions made to my faith with no less diligence than I do in my professional practice.

This is why I titled this post the way I did. I have finally reached a point in vetting my beliefs and working out my salvation if you will where I am absolutely confident in the areas that for me are black and white (there are still grey areas). I know where I stand on many issues, I know why I stand there, and I can back it up with sound plausible exegesis.

It wasn’t easy and I have been fortunate to have access to noted biblical scholars, heads of noted theology schools, as well as read most of the major scholarly works from a wide range of scholars from a wide range of faith traditions. This journey started when I was 27 and I am now 33. That is how long it took for me and for many it probably takes longer.

I realize for many of those I engage with debate and conversation with, that they have as well vetted and rigorously wrestled with these issues and come out on a different side. I respect that wholeheartedly and in most cases can see where they are coming from. I value their efforts and their convictions and have no problem to agree to disagree and go build the Kingdom together.

With many of my answers to some of the tougher and perhaps more controversial questions about the text it is important to note the vast diversity which is the Christian tradition. If you only explore answers to questions within the very short and heavily Calvin based history of evangelicalism then you are missing the bigger picture.

For many Christians the questions that pop out in my mind about many biblical issues may never come up or they don’t matter as much to them to answer as they do to me. I am OK with that and I fully acknowledge that reality. The truth is not everyone thinks like me and that is OK. This journey is still going as there are still matters that lie in tension, in a good way, in my brain. But there is a peace in confidently knowing not only what you believe but why you believe it.

Rachel is absolutely right to call Piper out on this. My own first reaction to the suggestion of a “masculine Christianity” is basically one of “eeewww!” To be fair, what Piper actually suggests might characterize such a faith doesn’t sound so far off:

“When I say masculine Christianity or masculine ministry or Christianity with a masculine feel, here’s what I mean: Theology and church and mission are marked by an overarching godly male leadership in the spirit of Christ with an ethos of tender-hearted strength, contrite courage, risk-taking decisiveness, and readiness to sacrifice for the sake of leading and protecting and providing for the community. All of which is possible only through the death and resurrection of Jesus.”

Interestingly, I rather suspect that if we were to remove the word “male” modifying “leadership” in that paragraph, few readers would find much objectionable in Piper’s description of leadership. This is an important thing to consider. I submit the problem is fundamentally that we have badly misunderstood both gender and leadership as Jesus (and even Paul) taught them, and hence are objecting to all the wrong things. Seriously, what is particularly masculine about “tender-hearted strength, contrite courage, risk-taking decisiveness, and readiness to sacrifice?” I personally know men and women who do, and others who most decidedly do not, exhibit all those characteristics.

Frankly, I’m getting more than a little fed up with the repeated drumbeat of observing “male” or “female” characteristics in God, or in ourselves for that matter. I’m a daddy, it has always given me great joy to embrace and kiss and hold my kids. I could never breastfeed them, obviously, but when our youngest couldn’t nurse, I fed him–and wept many tears over him–while my wife pumped what I would then feed him. Was I getting in touch with “my feminine side” as I did this? Hell no! I was lovingly caring for my son and my wife! I resent the implication that tenderness is uniquely feminine, or the converse that strength is uniquely masculine.

Egalitarians have, in my opinion, been far too acquiescent to these sloppy definitions of gender. Each time one calls out the Pipers and the Driscolls of the church by pointing out “feminine” traits in God, they are tacitly granting these harmful distinctions in gender character (but see my parenthetical comment at the end).

The second key issue I take with this debate is with our definition of leadership in the church. Conservative church leaders insist that pastors, and particularly the “senior pastor,” must be male. Egalitarians object that women are also gifted in the same qualities and should be able to participate in these offices. Neither considers the possibility that the authoritarian structure that is the modern pastorate might itself be unbiblical!

I can think of no better illustration of my point than a passage that is often held up as a prime exhibit of the apostle Paul’s presumed mysogynism…1 Cor. 11:2-16. The common reading of this passage sees all the language that can be interpreted to demean or control women. I’m not going to get into that here. What I want to point out, is verse 5, completely ignored by most it seems, in which Paul doesn’t even question the reality that women are praying and prophesying! One can argue, as I’ve heard before, that prayer is private, but there’s no such thing as private prophecy. Add the record of Philip’s four prophetess daughters (Acts 21:9), and the story of Priscilla and Aquilla (a husband-wife team who schooled Apollos in theology…and Priscilla’s name comes first every time!), and it’s pretty clear that the New Testament church heard plenty from women as well as men.

What we do not find in the New Testament record, is individual church leaders invested with unaccountable, unquestionable authority.  In contrast, throughout Jesus’ ministry we find repeated efforts on Jesus’ part, to disabuse his apostles of the notion they should rule each other or anybody else. In fact, most references throughout Acts and the Epistles to pastors, teachers, apostles, deacons, prophets, or any other function in the church are in the plural.  1 Cor. 12:7 (to each one) and 1 Cor 14:26 (each one contributes) are only two examples of many showing us that the body ought to hear from each other, not merely from a limited cabal of ordained leadership.

So my appeal is that we not correct error with error. The autocratic style of leadership exhibited by male church leaders will not be fixed by simply adding women to the ranks of the autocracy. It will only be repaired when we rediscover the real meaning of Ephesians 5:21 and we all submit ourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ.

One final parenthetical comment.  I remain troubled by the trend among some, while rightly objecting to the male-centric theology that has inhabited the church for too long, to refer to God in female terminology.  This is not least because it seems to me to tilt toward ancient idolatries of goddess worship.  Atheist wags have said in the past that “man created god(s) in his image,” and the gods so created were a pretty disgusting bunch.  No less the goddesses, many of whom demanded various perversions such as human sacrifice, temple prostitution, and other sexual and fertility rites that have been rightly blasted by the prophets throughout the ages.  Feminized idolatry is no less reprehensible than the male version.

Though I am by no means a verbal-inspiration fundamentalist, I do think that God has consistently revealed his character throughout the ages (and in many different cultures) using masculine terminology.  As I pointed out above, the perversion of the concepts of masculine and feminine within our theology and our culture do not change this.  Certainly, whatever the use of male terminology with reference to God may mean, it does NOT carry a sexual component, and any claim to the contrary is blasphemous.  But replacing it with female terminology is, in my view, one of many forms of remaking God in the image of modern humanity instead of the older and more benighted version.  Biblical Christianity deserves better.