Listen to the Lyrical Winds

The lighthouse. The alphabet. The ramp and the lever.

Not to mention the bed and the table.

Did you know all of these were invented by Egyptians?

At this very moment, Egypt is roiled in an epic sociopolitical upheaval which, aside from threatening the current government, has compromised security in and around what has been called the "cradle of civilization."

From Cairo's world-famous Egyptian Museum to Luxor and the incomparable pyramids at Giza, Egypt holds many antiquities and artifacts dating from the time of Christ, and beyond. Yet since today's impoverished Egypt contrasts so starkly with its ancient heritage, Westerners tend to forget the role the Nile River Delta has played in our own cultural legacy.

And speaking of cultural legacy, here's another amazing factoid: nearly 300 years before the birth of Christ, Ctesibius of Alexandria invented the pipe organ. Who'd have thought, right? Not the grand, towering instruments we know today, obviously. For one thing, Ctesibius used water instead of electricity to pump air through his ingenious contraption.

Alas, the pipe organ has not fared nearly as well throughout the millennia as Egypt's other inventions, like the table and chair. Those have become universally ubiquitous. Fortunately, the pipe organ isn't as obsolete as the lighthouse, although, judging by popular culture, it might as well be.

Not a Pipe Dream

Indeed, the fact that most pipe organs today can only be found in historic, wealthy, or liberal churches doesn't speak volumes about the instrument's broad appeal. Most any modern church these days can host a rock concert. But it usually takes patrician congregations in what evangelicals consider marginally evangelical, mainline denominations to appreciate the glory and grandeur that is the pipe organ.

Such a shame, when you don't need to be all that educated or rich to appreciate classical organ music.

How do I know? Well, I don't have an Ivy League education, or a six-figure income, or a home in a prestigious ZIP code. I've never taken a music appreciation course, I'm not a bookworm, and I'm not a world traveler.

I don't even like all types of organ music. Kitschy Wurlitzer stuff makes me gag. Most modern, abstract compositions seem too bizarre to even be legitimate music. But there exists a wide body of work in the classical pipe organ repertoire which can be marvellously worshipful, therapeutic, and enthralling. Since I can't profess to be an indiscriminate pipe organ lover, I realize I can't demean people who don't like it at all. I suspect, however, that most of those types of people haven't really ever heard good classical organ music to begin with.

Pedal Pusher

Fortunately, here in North Texas, a surprisingly rich environment of classical church and civic musicianship flourishes, including some of the largest and most significant pipe organs in the world. Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth boasts the world's largest French aesthetic organ. The Meyerson Symphony Center in downtown Dallas features a spectacular pipe organ as its focal point.

And last night, I attended a concert on the two-year-old, $4 million pipe organ at Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, where principle organists from 8 major churches in Dallas' Park Cities enclave displayed the dazzling instrument's virtuosity through a program ranging from Charles-Marie Widor to, of all things, nursery rhymes.

Texas may be many things western and country, but thankfully, one thing it's not is starved of is pipe organs, at least not here in the Dallas - Fort Worth area.

Yet an overwhelming number Biblically-conservative, evangelical congregations actually refuse to consider worshipping with a quality pipe organ. Much of the reason for this has to do, naturally, with the discouraging costs of purchasing and maintaining such a complex instrument. Which, however, still make it a matter of priorities. As I look at the amount of money most congregations pour into their mammoth buildings, acres of underused parking lots, and extensive rosters of paid staff, I suspect money would be far less of an issue if the desire for quality classical music actually resounded among their churchgoers.

Let's not make this a debate over music and worship styles, though. Many battles are won and lost through popularity, and this battle has less to do with democracy and more to do with intrinsic purpose. I believe the best advocacy for classical pipe organ music comes from its ability to depict aesthetics and characteristics of our Creator God like no other instrument can possibly do. In that I find great purpose in the invention of Alexandrea's Ctesibius.

The Answer is Blowing in the Wind

If you've already formed your opinions about pipe organ music without having worshipped in a service accompanied by a professionally-trained organist, then might I suggest something? Unlike many opinions which can have integrity without being dependant on personal experience, classical pipe organ playing cannot be easily dismissed as irrelevant if you've never participated in it live.

If you stop and think about it, a pipe organ is a wind instrument, like a trumpet or fife. There is a color to the tonality of wind instruments which reaches its fullest expression and spectrum in the pipe organ. What makes it, as Mozart proclaimed, the "king of instruments," involves its ability to capture the range of other wind instruments while contributing other qualities of resonance to the overall sound.

Expressive in both subtlety and grandeur, the pipe organ perhaps best approximates the regal splendor of Western estimations of God and His holiness. Depending on how the organ is played, its music can envelop the listener in a way few other instruments can, with decibel levels and intonations diffusing shades of emotion, imagination, and perspective.

Perhaps the loss of the instrument's commonality in our culture helps make it that much more provocative. Maybe because we don't hear pipe organ music every day, those times when we do make it that much more exceptional and impressionable. However, I daresay that a daily diet of live classical organ music would greatly dilute my persistent cynicism, and that's saying something, isn't it?

Hear, Here!

Unfortunately, listening to videos online hardly portrays any music in flattering light. But let's whip through a quick tutorial on the basics of organ appreciation, if for no other reason to hopefully convey to you a quick glimpse of why I think organ music should not be scuttled to the periphery of our society.

First, this is what many people think of when they think of organ music. Here is a grainy, choppy video of Bach's famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor from the Sydney Town Hall in Australia. Despite the brilliance of Bach's composition, the utter overexposure this piece has had over the years, particularly in unkind contexts like commercials and movies, has diluted how audiences perceive it. Still, if you can strip away other, less beneficent encounters with this piece, hopefully you can capture some of the utter immortality Bach evokes in it.

Next, consider this composition played by organist Jason Payne playing on the Cliburn organ at Fort Worth's Broadway Baptist Church. This time, we're hearing a combination of two venerable hymns played by a younger, less polished artist, but still conveying layers of expression and exuberance which epitomize both the introspective and celebratory opportunities this one instrument can provide.

And if you want to hear something to a tune with which you should be familiar, try this patriotic piece, again by Jason Payne.

Like I said, nothing beats a live experience of good classical organ music, and thus, these YouTube videos are woefully inadequate as eminent supporting proofs for the integrity of the pipe organ. So, if you live in the Dallas - Fort Worth area, why don't you consider these opportunities to hear great organ music throughout the year:

• Park Cities Presbyterian Church, Dallas
• Highland Park Presbyterian Church, Dallas
• Highland Park United Methodist Church, Dallas
• Broadway Baptist Church, Fort Worth

Alternatively, you can check for local pipe organ events where you live by visiting the American Guild of Organists (AGO) website, which lists chapters across the country. Many concerts and recitals are free.

Consider the opportunity to discover that classical pipe organ music is for more than weddings and funerals!

If it wasn't, it wouldn't have survived since 300 BC.
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Built Without Bedrock

What was the point?

America's Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission released its official report Thursday on the causes of our Great Recession. And about the only eyebrow-raising item in it comes from current Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, who considers this crisis worse than the Great Depression.

If President Obama and those who worked on it were expecting an outpouring of affirmation and gratitude, no wonder they're probably disappointed.

Lack of Logic Equals Lack of Integrity

From the start, liberals hobbled the Commission's integrity by insisting on appointing six of its ten members. And Thursday, we saw the fruits of that petty political machination: four dissenters - all of the Commission's Republicans - withheld their affirmation of the final report.

Part of the reason these Republican holdouts couldn't sign off on the effort involves partisanship, naturally. But most of it involves the Commission's overall failure to logically appreciate broader contributors to the financial meltdown apart from the easy target: big bank greed.

For example, likely factors such as the complex global financial games big bad banks were playing in foreign sovereign currencies were generally glossed over. As if today's travails of Greece and Ireland represent mere footnotes.

But the Commission's most egregious snub was summarized in a New York Times article:

"The report does knock down — at least partly — several early theories for the financial crisis. It says the low interest rates brought about by the Fed after the 2001 recession; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants; and the 'aggressive homeownership goals' set by the government as part of a 'philosophy of opportunity' were not major culprits."

Oh, really?

All That Debt? Not a Problem?

When you're tracing the roots of a problem, don't you dig down deep to reach the bedrock upon which the rest of your situation has been structured? In this case, the bedrock was subprime lending, right? Apparently not, according to the six Democratic members of the Commission.

By summarily dismissing the subprime mortgage fiasco, the Commission appears convinced that having so many people buying homes they couldn't afford would never have precipitated a financial crisis of catastrophic proportions. Instead, from their perspective, bundling up the bad debt and selling it to unsuspecting investors was the core precipitant for the Great Recession.

Obviously, the derivatives, swaps, and other financial hocus-pocus concocted by the big bad banks became an insurmountable problem. But correct me if I'm wrong: those bad loans would still have been out there, right? They were the commodity everybody was either trying to ignore, get rid of, lie about, sell, and buy. Right?

Even if the bad loans hadn't been wrapped up into appealing boxes of pseudo-money, and investors hadn't bought up the tawdry inventory of sub-prime loans, wouldn't SOMEBODY still be left holding the bag? Can debt automatically vanish in a capitalistic system? Does the real problem really lie in big bad banks minimizing their own risks through uber-creative pass-the-buck schemes?

With all due respect to the Commission, the problem they picked may have the easiest culprits to vilify, since many Americans revile Wall Street bankers. However, getting back to the bedrock of this case, didn't the real problem consist of mortgage brokers selling loans to customers they knew couldn't pay the debt? And home buyers buying more home than they should have logically known they could afford?

True, investigating subprime mortgages doesn't make for engaging political theater. Doing so would, by extension, implicate many more voters than the relatively few financial wizards at the big bad banks. Confronting irresponsibility is always easier when you can shift the blame.

How Free Should Free Markets Be?

Not to obfuscate the corrupt morality of bankers who gleefully shilled obscenely risk-tainted products to equally greedy, due-diligence-averse customers. But aren't we missing a huge opportunity to fix some gaping problems in our lending industry by refusing to acknowledge the significance of what got this whole thing going in the first place?

Some financiers might counter that since suddenly, mortgages have almost become extinct in the United States, a healthy correction in the industry has taken place. Lenders have sobered up, borrowers again need to prove employment and income, and we're back to playing with real money and genuine credit.

But if most all of the same players remain in the game, who's to say that ignoring fundamental problems won't again become a costly problem? If we're not willing to get a little dirty with reality, who's to say that our next little financial crisis - they seem to be cropping up like clockwork every decade now - won't be even worse? We could be taking two steps forward and one step back.

Here again, die-hard capitalists say periodic volatility is healthy for a lucrative economy. Keeps companies from getting bloated. Helps cultivate ingenuity. Well, if by ingenuity, they're talking about subprime mortgages and credit default swaps, then I guess we truly deserve the moral vacuum our society is becoming.

At this point, Darwinian capitalists would point to the inevitability that free markets are piloted by the most capable people and methodologies in the world. They're like the cream that rises to the top. However, can we automatically assume that capitalism will inevitably bring into leadership those people with the perfect qualifications to match and overcome problems? Or will it just bring to the top those people with the best qualifications in the pool? Doesn't that overlook the real possibility that those qualifications, while being the best available, may still not be sufficient for the task at hand?

What is the extent to which America's free market gurus have convinced society to go ahead and rest assured: capitalism is designed so that the best-qualified people are running the show? What is the extent to which we've all drunk the blind-faith-in-capitalism Kool-Aid?

Another Missed Opportunity?

If anything, this charade of a Commission has only increased my skepticism that capitalism can police itself. Why don't the six Democrats want the subprime mortgage mess implicated? What didn't the Commission find?

I suspect one little scenario they would like to ignore was documented in this amateur YouTube video. It retells the struggle of Republicans who were seeking to strengthen regulatory oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, several years before the mortgage melt-down. Funny, right? Republicans wanting more regulations! They were fiercely opposed, however, by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, with California's Maxine Waters crowing about the success of no-money-down financing.

Subprime lending is the boil Democrats don't want lanced. Why is that? If capitalism is indeed expected to heal itself, how can that happen with such myopic political subterfuge? Sure, it's easy to blame the big bad banks. And yes, if it wasn't for their greed, our economy would probably be much stronger today. But even all the big bad banks combined fail to hold a monopoly on greed.

Conservative financial analyst and American Enterprise Institute scholar Peter Wallison, one of the dissenting Republican members of the Commission, will be submitting his own analysis and interpretation of the impact subprime mortgage schemes played in the staging of our Great Recession.

Let's hope his analysis makes more sense than the Commission's. At least it won't be any worse.
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When Words Speak Louder than Actions

Most laws are made after people abuse privileges.

Think about it. When did most traffic laws start piling up? After people drove their horseless carriages recklessly.

Oddly enough, however - and perhaps befitting the entrepreneurial spirit of America, it wasn't a bureaucrat who first recognized the need for driving regulations, but a private citizen. In fact, he's probably one of the most important people in America's car culture history that you've never heard of.

Does Civility Benefit Commerce?

In 1909, pioneering New York City businessman William Eno published the world's first rules and regulations for drivers. Eno invented the stop sign, the one-way street, and the pedestrian crosswalk, among other innovations that have become ubiquitous in the modern driving experience. Eno recognized that as streets became even more chaotic with the advent of the automobile, stricter procedures and new safety elements needed to be established so commerce could continue to flourish.

Amazing, huh?

The fact that Eno also wrote the first traffic violations guidebook for the New York City Police Department shouldn't be held against him by today's drivers, most of whom have cringed at the telltale flashing of emergency lights in their rear-view mirror.

Still, to think: all of our traffic laws have come from one enterprising businessman's desire to protect people and minimize congestion so private industry could function more efficiently. Kinda puts rules and regulations into perspective, doesn't it?

Fun Before the Thaw

Of course, many people think laws governing behavior are entirely punitive. Consider, for example, some irate snowmobilers in Upstate New York. They've become indignant over a law enforcement sweep which netted 45 citations in one day for various infractions of snowmobile rules.

Back in the mists of time, during my childhood, we lived in a tiny village on the north shore of Oneida Lake, north of Syracuse. It's the largest lake within the state, 22 miles long and up to five miles wide. Despite its surface area, however, Oneida Lake is relatively shallow, which means during the frigid winters, it seems to practically freeze solid. People who venture out across it on motorized vehicles, including snowmobiles, really only risk falling in if it's early or late in the ice fishing season.

Invariably, somebody would get injured out on the lake. Or, one of their "sleds," as they call their snowmobiles, would fall into the lake. One winter, I even recall somebody's pickup truck sinking through the thinning late-season ice.

In addition, although it might seem counter-intuitive, the buzzing whine of snowmobile exhaust systems gets amplified out on the wind-swept ice, particularly since you don't ever hear anything else in the otherwise snow-packed stillness. And particularly when sled owners affix aftermarket enhancements to their machines to make them go faster.

Since this winter has been unusually harsh in the Northeast, snowmobilers have been making a nuisance of themselves out on the lake, disturbing homeowners along the shore. Particularly those ardent enthusiasts who think they can act with impunity.

One of the reasons people like to snowmobile on top of a frozen lake should be obvious: it's wide open. You can quickly become seduced into believing you can do whatever you please in such a vast expanse.

Well, actually, you can't, of course. You've got people out on the ice who, for some reason, derive considerable pleasure from sitting on a sprawling ice sheet, peering over a little hole, trying to fish. You've got other people on their snowmobiles, some of whom may be even less cautious than you. And chances are, all of you are miles from the closest point at which an ambulance can get to you in case you need one.

So some local cops and the state parks police ventured out onto the ice and discovered a variety of infractions by the winter sports enthusiasts.

According to Syracuse.com, 14 tickets were issued for equipment violations, including aftermarket mufflers designed to make snowmobiles louder. Cops issued 11 tickets for registration violations, 11 for uninsured snowmobiles, and four for speeding. Perhaps it's a good thing only three snowmobilers were ticketed for being drunk.

Rules and Bad Apples

Inevitably, the story generated a considerable response from visitors to Syracuse.com, quickly filling up seven pages. Most people who posted their opinions sided with law enforcement and how a few bad apples usually end up ruining everybody's fun. Rules are rules, and generally, they exist for a reason.

But then, the bad apples themselves came out of the woodwork, posting blather mostly about how rules and regulations have sapped all the fun out of life. About how cops writing tickets has become all about revenue generation. And how people who whine all the time are the ones responsible for ruining everybody's fun.

Indeed, the snowmobilers who sided with their ticketed brethren do have a point: restrictions to most activities usually aren't enjoyable. I don't even like snowmobiles, and I can agree with them on that one.

But you can't deny that most laws are made after people abuse privileges. When New York City's William Eno saw how unwilling most newly-christened operators of automobiles were to abide by simple graces of civility, he saw that somebody needed to craft some guidelines for how to operate these new contraptions in urban areas.

Obviously, enough drivers were rude enough to, in effect, act on behalf of all drivers to force all of them - and, by extension, you and me - to abide by a strict standard of roadway behavior. And unfortunately, as things often do in bureaucracies, rules began piling up faster than Henry Ford could churn out Model T's.

That's a really sad thing about human behavior: we tend to forget about consequences. We tend to act out of selfish impulses, and before too long, we end up being smothered in regulations which actually may be more punitive than if we had simply been a little more patient, a little more cautious, a little less greedy to begin with. This has become the broader story of Wall Street, and of something as regional as snowmobiling.

Somebody once said that actions speak louder than words.

And that's true - unless those actions result in a new set of rules.

Then the rules usually speak for themselves. And often, it's not a pretty sound.
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Churches for Closure?

As if anybody needed further proof of how Christian churches have become more like the world, consider an article in today's Wall Street Journal about the recent spike in church foreclosures.

According to the Journal, almost 200 religious facilities have fallen into foreclosure since 2008. For some perspective, banks foreclosed on only six churches from 2006 to 2008. And before that, hardly any. Yet this may be the tip of the iceberg. Financial experts predict that, like many under-water home buyers, even more churches may default within the next few years as creative financing schemes come due for payment.

To say that this situation is an embarrassment is putting it lightly.

Now obviously, 200 church property foreclosures in two years could be viewed as a drop in the bucket, considering America has over 320,000 congregations. But the statistic to note isn't the 200, but the "hardly any" foreclosures that preceded 2006. In that light, 200 in two years represents a stark number, because it means this is a new problem. And, lest you glossed over the accompanying ominous prediction, it may be just the start: how many church foreclosures will come as variable interest rates begin to reset?

Owe Only Gratitude?

Church debt has always been a polarizing issue. Most evangelicals believe a mortgage for their home is permissible and, as long as you can afford to make the monthly payments, logical. After all, in most parts of the country these days, home prices simply can't be paid in one or two installments.

So, this same reasoning has led church leaders to assume that mortgages for church buildings are acceptable. Particularly if you're in a region with stable land values, your congregation is growing, people are working, and you're not being extravagant in your budget.

But the fallacy of these assumptions involves several things. First, right off the bat, you've probably already said to yourself that extravagance is an extraordinarily subjective term. One person's idea of excess might be somebody else's necessity.

Second, our national economy is cyclical enough for anybody with common sense to not rely on a steady gravy train of good-paying jobs. America's brand of capitalism has warped into a profits-at-any-price race to the bottom in terms of the responsibilities - however marginalized many conservatives have interpreted them as being - businesses have to their employees and communities.

Third, congregations wax and wane for any number of reasons. It could be the charisma of the preaching pastor that sparks growth, but if he leaves, lots of people usually follow. It could be the social aura of the congregation, but beauty and fads are only skin deep. It could even be the excitement of a brand-new building, but all buildings age, and these days, with church construction budges pushed to their limits, they seem to age faster than ever before.

Does the Kingdom of God Even Need All These Churches?

I would suspect that if your church is growing primarily because the Bible, and only the Bible, is being preached, then chances are, your church is not one of these 200, and probably doesn't even have a mortgage.

Which brings up another issue. How is it that some congregations can either maintain - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, depending on their location - or flourish, while others are going belly-up because of bad financial decisions?

Here in Arlington, Texas, new "churches" seem to be popping up all over the place. They meet in strip shopping centers, school auditoriums, and repurposed older church buildings. One of them, funded by Joel Osteen, purchased a mothballed corporate headquarters complex several years ago, removing million of dollars in real estate from our the city's property tax rolls.

Not that I'm strictly opposed to church planting. My own denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, has been exceedingly bullish on church planting, and my church in Dallas has planted at least three other thriving congregations in north Texas. But many of North America's new congregations are entrepreneurial, nondenominational, and unaffiliated with a more pragmatic oversight body that can provide a certain level of discernment. It seems this accountability is greater than what some preachers fresh out of seminary or a church split think they need.

Please forgive my cynicism, but I can't help wondering how many of these start-up churches might really profit centers for guys who would otherwise be, well, salesmen? I'm all for experimentation, innovation, and striking out on your own in the business world. But even though Willow Creek and Bill Hybels insist that such economic and corporate models work for churches, a growing chorus of God-centered church ethicists believe they don't.

Deconstructing Church Growth

For proof, just consider the numbers again: 320,000 congregations in a country of 300 million people. That equates to roughly one church for every 940 people in the United States. With that ratio, you'd think America would be, well, better than it is. Yet as a group, America's contingent of the Church Universal, we're not much different from our hedonistic culture. And doesn't it show?

As many of us get divorced as the unchurched. With an average of only 20% of congregants tithing, we hoard the money with which God has blessed almost as much as the outside world. Like a lot of unsaved people, we tend to begrudge poor people a few scraps from our tables. Like other social climbers, we refuse to live on the wrong side of the tracks.

If you think about it, the guys who go out and do all of the church planting wouldn't get very far if people who loved to church-hop didn't create the illusion of demand.

Ever since the start of the Jesus People movement and the seeker-sensitive contemporary movement, a deconstructionist ethos has been at work in the insular world of North American evangelicalism. Maybe it's because we Americans take such pride in individualism, or youth, or maybe because as our society has fractured along moral fault lines, the stability of our conventional congregational structure has become even more tenuous.

During all of those grand old generations we reminisce about, back when everything was better, perhaps the ideological foundation of the church was being ceded more to the world than we realized. Then, as a more casual approach to doing church evolved, it became easier to classify our fellow believers as either stodgy traditionalists or hip contemporaries. This only further destabilized our relevance as saints in a lost world.

Didn't we also get hijacked by well-intentioned but misguided political diversions like the Moral Majority? And haven't we forgotten how to love our neighbors, even as we've wanted to be both in and of the world? Instead of in the world, but not of it?

Maybe that's all bunk. But however it happened, we've found ourselves at a place where the organized church is expected to carry on the work of discipleship, rather than individual believers. We look to our churches for the framework and identity that we think we need to minister to others. We heap upon our pastors the work of evangelism, while we dabble in service projects so the IRS doesn't strip our 501(c)3's of their non-profit benefits.

Intentional Ministry Without Walls or Roof

Not that I'm innocent of this myself. I'm talking to myself as much as anybody. So many of us believers have made the church an idol that it's no wonder we treat it like any other component of our post-industrial capitalistic universe. That's part of what has made church debt such a palatable concept for many congregations. Which is why 200 church loan defaults in two years should serve as a wake-up call for us all.

If we're treating church as another social organization with maybe a higher plane of consciousness, then maybe we need to re-think why we're going. If we think the ministry opportunities of new buildings justify debt, then maybe we don't understand what purpose brick-and-mortar churches serve.

I believe we're living at the end of the churched age anyway. Many of the buildings congregations continue to construct will probably be empty shells within the next couple of decades, as Baby Boomers die off and their offspring continue to rebuff church as a social exercise or hobby.

I'm not wishing this would happen; I won't mind being wrong. I'm simply drawing conclusions from trends. The Holy Spirit will still be working in the hearts of His people, and the wheat will remain. There just won't be as much chaff in the pews.

Will going into debt for the next twenty years justify the possible scenario of paying off the mortgage when the church closes?

Depends on how we rate our interest, doesn't it?
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Fear, Fun, and Faith

Remember back about ten years ago when the "Fear This" bumper stickers were all the rage?

A friend of mine found a large window applique for his Ford pickup that said "Fear Not" in the same typeface as its aggressive prototype.

Clever, huh? And entirely Biblical, too.

Is Fear a Friend of Yours?

Fear. It used to be, well, feared in Christian circles, and for good reason. Even among the faithful, superstitions and plain old ignorance abounded centuries ago, as the grim history of Halloween can attest. Virtually anything that couldn't be readily explained was feared.

These days, however, people of faith actually seek out fear as a form of entertainment. Perhaps as a subconscious way to flaunt all we now know about our material world. I have to admit, however, that I don't enjoy fear. When I lived in New York City, and church friends wanted to go see the latest horror movie, I'd retort, "Why pay to see fear on a screen when we ride the subways at night?!"

Yeah, well, my bluntness did get well-honed in the Big Apple. And being sensitive to the dangers of riding public transit off-hours is wise. My point, however, was that we tolerate fear when we want to be frightened - but how much sense does that make?

As another example, consider people who go to amusement parks for the "scary" rides. Now, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. I know people who just love the vertigo-inducing gyrations of the roller coasters and other gravity-defying attractions. Most patrons of amusement parks, though, get juiced by the adrenaline rush which comes from their bodies being subjected to fear-inducing scenarios. I guess it's the same physical sensation people who like horror movies get when the computer-generated monster chops its way towards its victim. Or even those time-worn campfire stories which new generations of campers consider an obligatory part of enjoying God's creation.

Is Finding Fear Fun Scary?

Yeah, we may think it's fun, but where in the Bible is fear pleasurable? In fact, those Bible verses that talk about fear convey the idea that fear is not a luxury or triviality, but either an essential, innate protective mechanism or an emotion that betrays a lack of trust in God.

Although popular church culture says "fear not" is found 365 times in the Bible, depending on the translation, it's actually more like 100 or less. Which, nevertheless, is still a considerable amount. There exist only two times when we're instructed to fear. One is when we're encountering evil, either from external situations or from within ourselves. We're also to fear God in His holiness, but in this sense, the word "fear" can be interpreted as "respect."

During Advent, we're reminded that angels told Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds not to fear. Numerous times, God encourages His Old Testament prophets and the Children of Israel to not fear because He is with them. Yet when Adam and Eve sinned, they were afraid to appear before God, and He knew it. Indeed, we need to fear sin, and maintain a healthy respect for the damage it can do.

Which is why I wonder if we evangelicals sometimes enjoy fear too much. Not that fear equals sin; although, since we're told not to fear, yet we subject ourselves to fear as entertainment, is that sinful? Probably not, but how beneficial is it?

To what extent do we blunt our witness and compromise the ministry of the Holy Spirit to our own souls when we intentionally invite fear into our lives? Fear which may not be serving its proper purpose? Trivial fears which could even run interference with our morality antennae?

Comfortable with Fear

Again, different people can process fears differently. Part if it may have to do with the chemistry and biology of fear and the ways each of us react physically to fear stimuli. For some people, pleasurable fear doesn't seem to have much of an effect.

Or does it?

The more we willingly participate in activities which trigger fear, do we, over time, dilute the natural instincts we're supposed to have to keep us from harm?

Why do horror movies need to continually up the ante when it comes to gruesome scenery, surrealism, and the heinousness of the atrocities committed by their villains? Isn't it because movie audiences become jaded to lesser forms of scary violence?

Does any of this acclimation to danger trickle down to things we're supposed to fear for our own good? Might we become less careful drivers when we get desensitized to car crashes in video games and movies? Might we take unwise, unnecessary risks with potentially dangerous objects or situations? If we become less fearful of negative consequences, might that transfer into how we treat sin? If we're accustomed to dismissing fear and its protective traits, might we eventually become more cavalier with sin as well?

Now, I'm not necessarily trying to draw a direct correlation between your love of roller-coasters and a particular sin pattern in your life. I'm just wondering out loud if, with all of the stimuli which bombard our senses every day, fear isn't one of the more socially-acceptable ones that discretely wears down our defenses. Defenses which can include our ability to resist the Devil.

After all, doesn't fear almost always take the place of something far more edifying and encouraging? It certainly doesn't fit well in the Fruits of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, meekness, and self-control. Of all the things God has given us to enjoy, can you really see fear on the list?

I also think of fellow believers living and serving in dangerous parts of our world, even being persecuted for their faith. How shallow must our faith be where we seek out fear for pleasure, when they're forced to live with it night and day?

Oddly enough, fear can be both protective and destructive. Christ came to free His people from the fear of sin and death, to protect us from destruction.

Why voluntarily submit ourselves to a regressive emotion?
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Theology of Profits

Granted, it's not Harvard or the Wharton School of Business.

But Seattle Pacific University's business school features a dean who's remarkably blunt about how Christian businesspeople need to be running their companies.

His name is Jeff Van Duzer, and he's written a book entitled Why Business Matters to God (And What Still Needs to be Fixed). Christianity Today's website has a Q&A article with Van Duzer which features some frank discussions on the purpose of business and how believers can use their companies for God's glory.

Granted, it's a topic which usually flies under the radar at many evangelical churches, since many people of faith pretty much assume that whatever the Republican Party wants is good, and whatever the government wants is bad. Apparently, Van Duzer's church experience has been markedly different, but then living in the Pacific Northwest, I guess it would be. His major purpose in writing Why Business Matters to God is to validate business as a legitimate career path instead of full-time ministry. Here in Texas, at least, that's not a hard sell.

Maybe it's Seattle's post-Christian indoctrination and all that coffee which explains Van Duzer's less conventional - and, surprisingly - more Biblical approach to how commerce can play an integral role in modeling orthodox morality and supporting broad communities. As a business school dean, he's all about free markets, but his theology of profits represents a marked departure from how many Christians currently run their businesses.

Whose Business is Your Business?

For example, Van Duzer has a dim view of ROI strategies and shareholder value:

"A business should serve—internally, its employees, and externally, its customers. A business exists for certain purposes. One purpose is to provide meaningful work. Another is to provide meaningful goods and services. It does not exist to maximize return on capital investment."

That's even different than the view I've espoused in the past, in which I've personally valued a company's profitability above its status as an employer of God's people. Obviously, a business cannot hire staff at the expense of risking bankruptcy. However, is there a balance between putting people to work and the nascent greed which has been quietly tipping the scales towards its own benefit?

Van Duzer continues, "Historically, maximizing shareholder value as the purpose of business has not been the prevailing view. The notion of maximizing shareholder wealth dates back to the 1970s. Companies that existed before that had a different initial understanding of what they were about. This is a recent and fairly destructive idea..."

And even though he's a free-market champion, he thinks businesspeople have enshrined it to the exclusion of Godly principles:

"In fact [elaborating on his belief the free market is in the best position to deliver goods and services], I think the free market is one of the great idols of our age, particularly among Christians in business."

Naturally, Van Duzer had to field the question of whether these somewhat radical views have been dismissed by the business community as heretical:

"I sometimes get accused of being a socialist. But there is a fundamental difference between the view of business I argue for and a socialist economy. In a socialist system, the government is directing the economy. I'm not talking about that. What I'm saying is that individual Christians should align their vocations toward godly desires."

And he comes back to ethics when discussing how Christian absolutes can't be marginalized, even in a tough business environment:

"Christians [should not] accept a position of compromise until it is the very last option. They have to strain for that creative solution that allows them to do it all. Then, when they are absolutely forced to choose the lesser of two evils, they have to acknowledge that nonetheless, they are choosing evil."

Profit Prophet?

Hopefully, these snippets from his interview have piqued your curiosity to read the entire article. Don't worry: I'll stop my own editorializing here to give you more time.

Now, as I've said, the perspective Van Duzer brings to the topic of Christian commerce isn't what you're going to hear in most East Coast business schools.

But seeing as how much of our current economic mess has been crafted by Harvard-educated business school grads, is their opinion REALLY all that superior?
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Blessed When Excluded

It's a curious document, indeed.

The Manhattan Declaration. Drafted by elite orthodox evangelicals. Named after one of the most liberal places on Earth. Intended to send Washington DC a massive conservative show of force. Signed by fewer people than the population of Albuquerque.

And currently being blacklisted by Apple.

Well, technically, the smartphone app created by the Manhattan Declaration was first removed from Apple's app store, then denied upon appeal.

Battle of the App

By now, you've probably heard about how indignant - or flattered, or both - the framers of the Manhattan Declaration have become regarding Apple's rebuff. I've actually already questioned why Chuck Colson and his cohorts at the Man-Dec sound so surprised at this turn of events: doesn't Apple's politically correct stance help endorse the problems Colson's manifesto claims are twisting morality in our society?

This week, however, the Man-Dec came out with a revised marketing strategy using some of the wording from Apple's recent statement on the subject to show how Christianity is "offensive" to unbelievers.

Well, duh! Isn't it supposed to be?

Jeremiah 6:10 tells us that God's Word is "offensive" to people with closed ears. Shouldn't Colson and his seminary professor co-writers already know this? By siding with those who oppose the Gospel, Apple can't help but fulfill the Word of God in our presence.

Yet Colson and the Man-Dec folks sound perplexed. In an e-mail I received from them (yes, I signed the Man-Dec a while ago) this week, Colson describes Apple's stance as "shocking:"

"As you know, on December 8 we re-filed the Manhattan Declaration iPhone app with nothing except the Declaration and the opportunity to sign showing support.

"Apple rejected the app, saying in a letter on December 22 that the app contains 'references or commentary about a religious, cultural or ethnic group that are defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited or likely to expose the targeted group to harm or violence will be rejected. We have evaluated the content of this application and consider its contents to be objectionable and potentially harmful to others.'"

Yeah, so? Did you really expect Apple would slap its collective hand on its forehead and contritely reply, "Oh, we're so sorry - you mean your app promotes Biblical virtue and morality?! Well, why didn't you say that before!"

Colson's apparent disconnect between the content of the Man-Dec and Apple's post-Christian worldview almost makes me wonder if I signed that document by mistake. Surely he knew it wouldn't be popular?

Isn't It Good We're Not Popular?

But that's just the point with many contemporary evangelicals, isn't it? We have insulated ourselves in such a finely-cultivated right-wing religious culture that we've disconnected from realizing the hostility the world has towards us. We've disconnected from the many passages of Scripture where Christ warns His followers that they will NOT be popular. And we deny the suffering of Christ by glossing over the scorn and derision He - and his apostles - suffered during their own lifetimes.

These lives of ease we evangelicals have been leading for generations in the United States may very well be nearing their end. We've tolerated world-creep into our communities of faith and we've dawdled at the fringes of carnality so long that when we want to talk about Biblical lines in the sand, we're taken aback when unbelievers lurch to a stop and say, "that's wack!"

Now, this doesn't mean that here in the United States, evangelicals don't have any less right as anybody else to advocate for our worldview and principles. And, as I've said before, the actual wording of the Man-Dec takes great pains to honor the dignity of all people regardless of whether they adhere to the authority of Scripture. Colson and his crew are correct in pointing out that Apple's stance borders on tampering with free speech. Unfortunately in this case, Apple is a private company which also has the right to prohibit what it wants to prohibit within its product lineup.

I would say that at this point, the issue has less to do with the app for Apple's store than it does the credibility Apple is lavishing on the Man-Dec's raison d'être. If Colson is simply employing good-old marketing savvy by maintaining his indignance towards Apple, then he should just be sure this battle is a good one to wage. And that it's waged for the right reasons.

If, however, the folks at the Man-Dec have genuinely been caught off-guard by the realities of our hard-core secular world, then I encourage them - and all evangelicals who assume we should be popular - to take another gander at Luke 6:22:

"Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man."

True, dat.
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