There's a Law for That

Most Texans hate being told what to do.

So it's been somewhat surprising to see our state representatives from both sides of the aisle falling in line behind new legislation banning texting while driving.

The state's House of Representatives crafted a bill in April, and this week, our Senate approved it. Although they tweaked it with some minor revisions that the House needs to ratify, not much stands in the way of the bill becoming law in the Lone Star State.

Still, having Texas come out against texting while driving represents a fairly provocative - albeit dismal - acknowledgement about society. Sometimes, when people in a society don't police their own behaviors, government needs to intervene to protect the rest of us. Unfortunately, this is one of those times.

Yes, it is scope creep for the Nanny State, something that I've already complained about on this blog. But this is what happens when ordinary people fail to make good decisions on a daily basis about their personal behavior. In this case, if you're too selfish and text while you're driving, I'm glad the state recognizes it needs to protect me from you.

Statistics indicate that texting while driving is six times more dangerous that driving drunk. I've seen police officers doing it, and untold number of teens and college-aged folks. One of the state's most influential conservative legislators, Republican Tom Craddick, actually helped to sponsor the House version of this bill after a tragic texting crash in his home district.

Smartphones have been around long enough now for people to have been able to develop and demonstrate responsible use of the devices, but they have not. We fought this same battle when cell phones became popular years ago, and many jurisdictions passed laws mandating hands-free devices. It's more of the same: I need to make my cell phone call or send this text message. I don't care that I'm compromising my safety, plus the safety of everybody else with whom I'm sharing this street. I've completely forgotten that driving is a privilege, not a right. I'm my own little universe.

Multiply this mindset by thousands upon thousands of drivers, and before long, the traffic accident statistics start climbing. And whether you realize it or not, one of the primary responsibilities of government is protecting the citizenry from those without sense, or who display disregard for public safety. From wars fought in our name to legislation that curtails what we consider to be personal freedoms, defending the public good doesn't always look pretty. And little by little, governments get larger, and need more tax dollars to enforce laws that would be unnecessary if we would all voluntarily be accountable for our actions.

One of the saddest facts about the increasing dominance of the Nanny State is that since so many people refuse to adopt safe behaviors with technology, things will probably only get worse. I've already heard some talk about drafting legislation for the GPS computers people have in their cars, because too many drivers refuse to pull into a parking lot and consult their onboard computers for directions.

I'd like to think that our society could realize that we're only bringing much of this legislation on ourselves, repent of our selfishness, and mend our ways. Even cell phone companies have started advocating for responsible behavior by people using their technology. Not that their promotion of public safety is entire altruistic; they're trying to mitigate the need for future laws which would risk stifling their industry.

It's a lot easier blaming big government, bureaucratic control freaks, and pandering politicians for the spider-web of rules and regulations being spun at all levels of society. But who's the bigger culprit? The people making the laws?

Or the people who prove we need them?
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Money, Health, but Little Wealth

Have you heard? Harriet Chase died yesterday.

Yup - she was 104.

Of course, her real name was Huguette Clark, but... like most people, I had no clue who she was until I read her obituary today in the New York Times. It's one of the day's most popular articles on the Times' website, as a matter of fact.

But not because she was such a socially-connected person.

What Can't Money Buy?

Mrs. Chase - er, Clark! - died at the place she called home for a number of years: Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City.

Yes, it's a hospital. Quite a good one, in fact.

Apparently, late in the 1980's, she checked herself into another posh private hospital in Manhattan and spent the rest of her life as a paying patient - whether she was sick or not.  She employed her own personal nurses and decorated her sterile environs with collectible dolls as homey accessories.  Last year, financial analysts at MSNBC estimated her wealth at about half a billion dollars, the remains of a copper fortune built by her father, William Andrews Clark, whose name is on the family's acclaimed art collection at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC.

At one time, the Clark family was worth the equivalent of $3 billion. So to be left with but a sixth of that inheritance makes one wonder where the rest of it went. She had been married once, but never had children. No immediate family seems to exist. Decades ago, Huguette withdrew from New York's elite society and holed herself up, first in a sprawling 42-room Fifth Avenue apartment, and then in at least two prominent Manhattan hospitals. She never traveled or entertained, spending her days playing the harp, watching television, and collecting heirloom dolls.

Mrs. Clark, as she liked to be called (even though she was divorced), also owned and maintained an oceanfront estate in California, plus a country manor in Connecticut that, after she purchased, she never visited. Her closest friends appear to have been her lawyer and accountant, both of whom MSNBC suspects of having wielded enormous - and perhaps self-serving -influence over her financial decisions.

Solitude and Care

What is most striking about Mrs. Clark, however, isn't the money she left, or even the trophy properties she rejected for hospital suites. Although, considering her impressive age at death, she certainly seems to have gotten her money's worth from intentionally living in hospitals. As some of her more distant relatives have put it, Mrs. Clark ultimately seems to have been driven by a "dual desire for exquisite solitude and exquisite care."

Some of this narcissism may have been due simply to the rarefied world of luxury into which she was born and raised. Some of it may have come from the death at age 16 of her beloved sister, or her divorce, or even her marriage which her ex-husband claimed was never consummated. Her father appears to have been a vile man, and her mother - her father's second wife and child bride, a melancholy soul herself.

Judging by her spurts of philanthropy, the youngest Mrs. Clark wasn't a scrooge or particularly mean-spirited. She donated to charity and treated her staff well. Yet when it came to functioning in society - either the wealthy New York kind or our more generic culture - she saw something that didn't suit her, and so she dropped out.

Fortunately for her, she had the money to live a life of privileged seclusion. Her uptown apartment alone has been rumored to be worth upwards of $100 million. And as she aged, setting up residence in the some of the world's best hospitals afforded her uncompromised medical attention whether she needed it or not.  Nice work if you can get it, right?

Stop the World and Let Me Get Off

Perhaps I shouldn't admit this, but many's the time I've longed for living separately from the world. Regular readers of my blog know that I don't fit in here very well. My thought patterns and proclivities don't jive with the status quo, I find pop culture boring, and even my own efforts at relating to other people seem contrived and superfluous. During one of the summers I spent in Maine years ago, I fantasized about a little waterfront cottage just far enough away from everybody else so that I would only have to interact with other people when I chose to.

But, for better or worse, I couldn't come close to affording it - either then or now. Mrs. Clark didn't have my problem, although I suspect she shared my desire for seclusion to a great degree.

Believers in Christ aren't called to be cut off from community, though, are we? Either in the church, or outside of it. We shouldn't give up meeting together, and although we aren't to be part of the world, we're still to be in it. Christ went into the desert for 40 days, but He came out again to continue His ministry.

Yet I'm not talking about a sabbatical - which Christ's wilderness experience certainly wasn't, since the Devil thought he really could tempt Jesus. I'm talking about letting the rest of the world run with abandon to the cliff and topple over it, like the herd of pigs when Christ sent the demons into them. Yeah, just go jump off the cliff, you idiots! That's my attitude lots of times.

Then I'm reminded that just as I have difficulties relating to other people, they likely have difficulties relating to me. Oh sure - some people give up trying to befriend me right after meeting me. But others do try and make and effort, even when I don't reward their work. So if I feel like a misfit, how much of that feeling is my own fault? The result of my own lack of investment in community?

Maybe one of the reasons God has not blessed me with great wealth is to remove the temptation for me to purchase just the right seaside cottage in coastal Maine and blend into the rocks and pine trees. Or a 21-room Fifth Avenue apartment, high above the city, with stunning views of Central Park from every window and a wrap-around balcony for whatever fresh air I can gasp.

Ahh - these sound like heavenly places to me, but in reality, as a child of God, my Heaven is only going to come after I die. Until then, I'm afraid you're stuck with me down here.

Although it's intriguing, the life Mrs. Clark led in parallel to the rest of us boasted lots of money but little wealth. Do you see what I mean? It may sound trite, but God designed His people to invest in relationships. With Him, and with each other.

MSNBC may have been concerned about her missing money, but Mrs. Clark was more impoverished than her balance sheet let on.
_____

Churching Manhattan

Rome. Istanbul. London.

Even Paris, and maybe Moscow.

But not New York.

Of all the world's great cities, New York has never been known as being particularly religious.

At least, not until the last ten years.

According to a recent study by researcher Bob Smietana, Manhattan alone had 10 evangelical churches in 1975. Today it has more than 200, and 40% of those were launched after 2000.

To the uneducated observer, it looks as though New York City's most exciting borough is experiencing a dazzling wave of discipleship. Except reality, like so many things about New York City, is far more complex, and not as it appears.

In his May 19 article for Christianity Today, Smietana suggests that new urban churches - particularly in New York City - aren't "reaching" the numbers of unchurched people the booming attendance numbers might suggest.

And one of the modern pioneers of church planting in Manhattan agrees.

More than Conversions in the Numbers

First of all, let's get re-acquainted with the political geography of New York City. Most tourists really only spend time on Manhattan Island, and assume that it represents New York City in its entirety. But New York City actually is comprised of five counties in five boroughs, of which Manhattan is only one. However, Manhattan is the most densely-populated and famous of the five boroughs. And during the past decade, in New York City, church planting has been the most prolific in Manhattan.

Which, actually, isn't particularly surprising. It experienced a population boom after 9/11 that has caught everyone off guard. In Manhattan alone, the increase was 93,000 people (depending on the census data, which is in dispute).

If you're keeping score, that's roughly one new church for every 1,162 newcomers to Manhattan in the past decade.

Public schools that once faced closure are now bursting at the seams, and parents in some downtown neighborhoods are demanding new elementary schools be constructed - dilemmas the nation's largest school district hasn't faced in generations.

In addition, new private schools seem to be popping up everywhere, and charging fees upwards of $20,000 per year. Most new construction these days has been for glassy apartment towers where condos cost at least $1 million per bedroom. And the number of whites in Manhattan actually increased during the past decade for the first time since white flight began in the 1950's.

It stands to reason that with these changes, church attendance would increase.  Out of all of these newcomers to the City, at least some of them would want to attend church.  And, as they scouted the country's migration hotspots, church growth specialists would have found it hard to ignore the demographics of New York's new class of newcomers:  generally well-educated, earning high incomes, and relocating from suburban America where the church culture is relatively common.

The Presbyterian Church in America, of which Tim Keller's celebrated Redeemer Presbyterian is a denominational church plant from the 1980's, was actually founded as an outreach to the city's professionals. Subsequently, newer church arrivals to the City have been mainly targeted to, well, the newer churched arrivals.  It's as if Manhattan's large lower-class minority population and small middle-class population didn't merit any sort of focus until all the rich whites started moving in.  The only church I know of that came to Manhattan to reach "the least of these" is Times Square Church, founded by the recently-departed David Wilkerson, who, like Keller, founded his church in the relatively long-ago 1980's.

Another aspect to consider involves the severe culture shock inherent with any move to New York City.  You have to be a little crazy not to find the Big Apple jarring. (You also have to be a little crazy for staying after you've acclimated to the City's demanding personality, but that's another story!) From the crush of humanity to the intensity of mass transit to the incessant noise to the absurdly high prices for everything, New York is an assault on all of your senses.

Which usually means, despite all of those people in such a small area, loneliness runs rampant. I speak from experience when I say that starving for interpersonal interaction quickly becomes part of everyday life.  Turning to church - even if you never attended one before arriving in New York - is an easy way to numb the city's social hostilities.

When Church Growth Can be Oxymoronic

So, who cares if all of these churches have popped up in one of the most hedonistic, materialistic, and carnal places on Earth?  Isn't this a good thing?

Actually, Smietana suspects the explosion of churches in Manhattan owes as much to fickleness as anything else. It's likely the result of an artificial inflation of church attendance numbers by churched people playing musical chairs. Or, should I say, "musical pews."

In other words, even though the raw numbers have increased, the actual number of people attending evangelical churches in New York City isn't as impressive as the data would have us think.

Even Redeemer's Keller is aware of the problem.

He once blogged that "for every one New Yorker/secular person who came to Christ, we saw 2-3 others join who were coming from other churches" inside and outside metropolitan New York. "Without that, we would be a quarter to a third the size we are now."

The significance of the musical pew phenomenon comes when you consider how it disguises the true church growth dynamics in Manhattan since 9/11. Church growth leaders don't appear to have been particularly interested in Manhattan until affluent whites started moving there in droves.

It's no secret that New York City in general, and Manhattan in particular, has been home for years to a significant population of poor blacks and Hispanics. Yet even now, why have most of the church plants been located in whiter, trendy neighborhoods? Granted, some denominations - particularly Pentecostals - have started reaching out to the immigrant communities in the outer boroughs. But these ethnic enclaves, with their cross-cultural challenges, seem to have a harder time competing for ministry resources.

Us Versus Them

To a certain extent, I have little right to question the motives and mechanisms of evangelical organizations who've set their sights on New York City. I haven't even visited my hometown myself in a number of years, and have no plans for moving back. I know how difficult and expensive maintaining a church in New York can be, and on a purely logistical level, I can understand church planters relying on a relatively dependable and affluent white demographic upon which to build new urban ministries.

Yet at some level, I am compelled to speak towards what appears to be a discrepancy between the overt needs of New York City and the highly concentrated efforts of church planters to a specific - albeit influential - subset of the city's population.

On the one hand, evangelizing a group of people known to be nomadic - young white professionals generally consider New York better short-term resume fodder than long-term investment - can benefit the Church Universal as young professionals hear the Gospel in Manhattan and then take their faith to their next job assignment in, say, Los Angeles or Lisbon.

But on the other hand, does this scramble to attract New York's professional class continue to overlook the masses of browner, poorer New Yorkers who still don't fit into the trendy church plants sprouting all over Manhattan Island's hip hotspots?

And when these new congregations of new New Yorkers perform outreach ministries to the City's poor and disadvantaged residents, might they be inadvertently perpetuating stereotypes and further dividing the people of New York into "us" and "them?"

"We" are the new arrivals to the Greatest City in the World, who have the education, jobs, and money to really make a difference for "those" poor blacks and Hispanics mired in generational poverty.

I understand that generally, the small percentage of hardened welfare cases these new churches shower with spurts of attention will never darken an evangelical church's door for worship. But can we forget that many people who aren't white, aren't rich, aren't college-educated, and don't work on Wall Street neither need nor want gratuitous charity?

Native New Yorkers - and most people on welfare in New York City are natives - are a savvy group of people. They can tell when Christians are simply checking off the "service" box, feeling guilty about the way they're earning their wealth, or stoking their own ego with naiive forays into the thrillingly freaky world of deep urban poverty. Even New York's working poor know the difference between genuine affinity and tax deductions.

Legitimate, honest relationships have always worked the best when it comes to outreach of any kind, and while I don't pretend to know the personal motivations of every white Christian in Manhattan, I'm not stupid enough to ignore the part altruism and trendy compassion plays in charity efforts of all sorts. Particularly in a place like New York City, with its incongruously glamorous ghettos. Particularly because I've been guilty of doing that myself.

Not that the Lord can't use all of these hipster church plants for His glory. Or that the spiritual environment of New York City would be good enough without them.

It's just that with so much hollow trendiness already endemic within the towers of Manhattan Island, it would be a shame if evangelical Christianity got lumped into all of the other fads which sweep through its streets.
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Liberty or Patriotanity?

Which is the best way to evangelize the United States?

Politics?

Or the Gospel?

Most people of faith would - or should - automatically choose the Gospel, right? Yet, an increasing number of people who call themselves born-again Christians seem to get more excited over a bunch of dead white guys than the living, reigning Son of God.

As if we didn't already have enough partisan acrimony in the United States, this new crop of right-wing activists is politicizing religion through a movement I'm going to dub "patriotanity."  It's the mixing of Founding Father hero worship and pick-n-choose Christian morality with a twist of hard-line capitalism. Unfortunately, although it sounds like it could work, the combination creates an elixir which dilutes everything good in each of its ingredients.

Not that proponents of patriotanity have bad intentions. They want what many people want for the United States: freedom, affluence, and control. The problem is that none of these things are guaranteed to followers of Christ.

Are they?

The freedom Christ promises His followers isn't political, but spiritual. God doesn't say money is a sin, but loving it sure is. And Christ plainly teaches that anyone who wants to control his life will lose it.

It's right and good to abhor evil in our society, and work against it. But which is the more effective way of doing that: establishing a new theocracy in the United States, or creating disciples of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit?

And don't scoff when I say proponents of patriotanity want to create a new theocracy. It's the only explanation for their worldview.

Abusing God's Word

Take, for example, my recent discovery of The American Patriot's Bible, which was published a couple of years ago.

Ostensibly, it's a celebration of how God has blessed the United States through the leadership of Bible-believing Colonists. Woven between legitimate Bible texts can be found factoids and short articles regarding great events and personalities from American history.  But practically and literally, it's simply a contrivance to wrap the cross of Christ in the Stars and Stripes. 

There's already been enough controversy over the recent trend by booksellers to re-package the holy Word of God into themed gimmicks for sports fans, businesspeople, empty-nesters, students, new parents... basically, everybody for whom the Bible is already wholly adequate. So questioning whether adding sound bites from the likes of retired General Colin Powell and the founder of Colgate-Palmolive to the Bible - which is what has happened in The American Patriot's "Bible" - is unnecessary.

It should be noted, however, that not only are the historical stories sprinkled amongst the holy Scriptures unnecessary, their very content can be borderline heretical. One of the sample selections about patriots details the "Four Chaplains" who were killed in World War II. One was Jewish and another Roman Catholic, yet this "Bible" lumps them all together as "men of God."

Can that be done theologically, since it is likely the Jewish and Catholic chaplains didn't believe in Jesus Christ as their savior? This account took up a whole page in the Patriot's "Bible," which makes me suspicious about what other fallacies are included.

Oops! Here's another one! On page 1217, a tribute to the Bill of Rights is prefaced with John 8:36, which says "if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed." But is the freedom of Christ a political freedom? Of course not! Plus, not even the original Bill of Rights granted political freedom to women and blacks. A key document of our government it may be, but a divine mandate it is not.

The Bible Isn't Just for Americans

What particularly appalls me about this Patriot's "Bible" is its unabashed attempt to promote a version of American history - that is not inerrant - using the infallible integrity of God's Word as an endorsement. The Bible is sacred. American history is not.

Even if there was no dispute in America's evangelical community as to the orthodox, Holy-Spirit-led development of the United States as a Christ-honoring republic, there is absolutely no justification for promoting such a viewpoint with the Bible. Doing so trivializes the very authority God's Word is being banked on to lend credibility to this book.

Remember, the holy Scriptures were not written especially for Americans. God did not divinely inspire the writers of the Canon to document His Gospel for our benefit alone. The histories of many European countries, for instance, are littered with heroes of faith, yet none of them dared to claim God liked their nation best.

I don't doubt that many of the good things with which America has been blessed have come as people in this country have sought to serve God rather than man. And I don't deny that capitalism provides one of the most lucrative mechanisms to achieve high standards of living. But the only people for whom America is the promised land are those with no hope of eternity with Christ.

In Whom Do You Believe?

Please don't get caught up in the thin theology and weak doctrine which purports to undergird patriotanity. It's admirable that so many of our Founding Fathers incorporated statements of affirmation concerning God and the Bible, but that's not the same thing as proclaiming Christ as your Lord and Savior.

Believing the Bible is the word of God isn't enough to save anybody. Nowhere in the Bible is anyone guaranteed faith by only believing God wrote it. Even Satan himself knows more about the Bible than we do. But he doesn't trust in Christ as the Son of God and Savior of His elect. Take the Apostle John's word for it: "These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you might have life in His name." - John 20:31. We have life in Christ's name by believing that He is the Son of God. Not by the "things that are written."

Yes, America has had an incredible history. Yes, I'm grateful to be an American, and I want to see my country and its people thrive and prosper. Yes, I am concerned about the downward spiral of morality in our society, and yes, I'm convinced our government needs to be downsized, and our citizenry needs to be individually and collectively held accountable for its actions.

But can we fix the problems we have in our country by trying to convince Americans how Godly our Founding Fathers were? Has any country in history ever managed to right its ship of state by codifying theocratic principles? Just as Christ didn't come to establish a human government, so the faith of our Founding Fathers - whatever it was - won't change our government today.

Do we evangelize because Billy Graham is a noteworthy evangelical? Of course not. Then why should we evangelize because we believe George Washington was born-again? Nobody's faith can save anybody else. Nobody's faith can encourage a country to be more moral. And nobody's faith can convince politicians to eradicate entitlement programs.

Discipleship can change people, and in the process, people can engender changes within a society as they walk by faith in Christ. But why rely on what the Founding Fathers may have believed? Look to Christ in faith. Seek to honor Him. Then watch Him work.

America's hope isn't in a bunch of dead white men. Our Savior is alive!

Glory, glory, hallelujah! It's HIS truth that marches on!
_____

Temp Work

It was my last day at work.

For almost a year, I had been a temporary employee. At an assignment that was only supposed to last a couple of months. The company, one of America's largest medical supply conglomerates, with a massive distribution center here in north Texas, had provided me some remarkable experiences during my tenure. But after I had received several extensions to my contract, time had run out.

At the beginning, I re-organized all of their safety files, a project which in itself had morphed from updating training records to helping my manager overhaul the distribution center's campus safety system.

Being a high-profile player in the nation's medical supply industry, constant training in safety procedures was a way of life at this company, both for the warehouse employees, and the managers in our upstairs offices. Why such an emphasis on safety? At one point, just before I arrived, this facility secretly held every drop of flu vaccine in the United States. In addition, some of the chemicals stored in its specially-designed haz-mat room could, if exposed to the right elements, have sent parts of our building into a nearby residential neighborhood.

Oops - should I have said that on the Internet?

I Remember Where I Was

Well, it doesn't matter much today - my time there started before 9/11, before safety considerations forced people to think about everything with a haz-mat label as a potential terrorist tool.

Indeed, after that fateful day, lots of changes took place at the warehouse, not only because of the chemicals stored there, but because all of the products shipped from this location. From surgical gloves to medicines to sensitive operating instruments, just about everything in the warehouse would be needed by first responders and medical personnel in the event of a disaster. Sure, before 9/11, we all had an intellectual appreciation of that fact, but afterwards, society's perspective shifted from "if" to "when." And in today's just-in-time world, being on backorder is practically a sin. Some industries, like healthcare, have to be prepared for anything.

Because, sadly, "anything" is now possible. Dumbfounded, I watched on live television in the first-floor breakroom as Tower Two fell that awful morning. I was sitting next to an inventory control clerks who received the call from our upstate New York warehouse for thousands of body bags (which, you'll recall, weren't needed after all).

The parent company's warehouses along the East Coast were scouring their nationwide inventory for emergency supplies to respond to crisis locales in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC. Hospitals from Chicago to Los Angeles were proactively stockpiling supplies for fear of still more attacks. Suddenly, the medical industry had become intensely essential, no matter the cost; not the ephemeral money-hog it's been portrayed as being in the debate over Obamacare.

Perhaps the saddest reality in the office that day, and the days that followed, was that none of those body bags and other emergency supplies were needed after all at Ground Zero or Shanksville, Pennsylvania. All of those victims; their bodies literally erased from existence in the pulverization of the Twin Towers and the obliteration of Flight 93. No survivors pulled from the wreckage to bandage and suture. After being on stand-by for hours on end, yet with no demand for supplies, our inventory personnel somberly stood down.

You're Paying for This

Since my temp work was in the facilities department, I was assigned tasks which sent me into every corner of the building. Such access took me from the special section where the explosive chemicals were stored, to the executive offices, to the picking stations of the hulking German-built computerized inventory machine.

I had never seen such an enormous, intricate contraption in my life. Towering probably 40 feet above thin rail tracks and spanning five or six of those tracks, lined with hundreds of little baskets, this machine was state-of-the-art, at least for 2001. Each of those little baskets held small pieces of equipment and supplies needed by hospitals and doctors, and fast-moving robots would whiz along the tracks, programmed by inventory clerks in real time, plucking the requested items from their baskets and conveying them to human beings at one end of the machine.

The only people to handle the items, these employees would take what the automated pickers delivered to them, match it to a corresponding print-out label, and ship it out. Hour after hour. The computerized robots would be picking all sorts of items used in healthcare that had been requested through the company's online inventory system. The process was so complex that we regularly had engineering experts from its manufacturer's headquarters in Germany on-site to troubleshoot mechanical and software glitches.

As regular readers of my blog well know, few things significantly impress me: this picker was one of those things. It ran constantly, 24/7, both pulling inventory and stocking it. The next time you gasp at your hospital bill, remember that at least part of it probably is going to pay for machines like this that help stock the supplies needed for your surgery.

Getting to Know You

I'm still not sure why, but I managed to strike up affable acquaintanceships in departments all over the building. They were like most office relationships - not quite friendships, but you got to know these people well enough that you didn't just nod at each other in passing. You learned who their spouses were, where they lived, what their politics were, and what they thought of everybody else in the building.

The workers who staffed the amazing picking machine would yell greetings to me above the contraption's mechanical humming, the senior executive secretary upstairs would whisper confidentially to me in a corner of her cubicle. My boss's secretary would blab out loud about anything to me, while my boss would mutter warily, constantly glancing over his shoulder to see who was nearby, even if what he was saying was absolutely harmless.

One older, gentle-featured lady who prided herself on owning a weekend farm could yell obscenities into the phone just like the truck drivers her boss managed. A cute, hyper young girl and the office's token gay guy, who I actually knew from high school, provided most of the workday entertainment. And then there were all of the middle-aged clerks across the other side of our wide-open cubicle farm who spent their days doing work on their computers but gabbing on their phones to spouses and fellow co-workers upstairs.

As my days there dwindled down, I unsuccessfully applied for a low-level position with management potential in a department headed by one of the few executives in the office who never really liked me. I later learned that the vice president in charge of our facility was pressuring his mid-level managers to either find a position for me or get rid of me, because having a temp worker on his books for so long was making him look bad to the suits at corporate. So whatever her reason for not hiring me - whether bristling at some perceived pressure by her own boss or simply thinking I wasn't qualified - my days at the company were suddenly finite after months of establishing my presence there.

Perhaps it's just as well I didn't get the job, which after all, was with a huge corporation with a big-business culture and a high-pressure advancement system. My immediate boss - who didn't have a college degree - was expected to work 50 hours a week, and all of the career-tracker management trainees hired straight out of college were told 60 hours was the minimum. And a lot of those hours were spend doing far more manual labor than these sorority and fraternity-type business majors had expected.

Being a temp whose workload was a fuzzy mixture of clerical and administrative, with some significant responsibilities, I didn't fit the corporate mold. I had a college degree, but was on first-names basis with the janitors. If any of this was some sort of threat to the local management, then the reason eluded me. Which probably helps explain why, on my last day, I was so embarrassed.

Actually, It's Not All About You

It was like any typical Friday, walking in from the parking lot, through the security doors, taking a shortcut through the break room, and on into the long room housing the cubicle farm. As I continued to my own cubicle, I saw a long row of tables set up with food piled on them. And co-workers from all across the first floor gathering beside it with big smiles on their faces. It was a going-away party for me!

"We've never had a going-away party for a temp before," one of the secretaries explained, "but we had to give you one!"

I was stunned!

"We've never had a temp like you before," I remember someone else clarifying.

But before my ego could get too big, someone else sidled up next to me and put it all in context.

"Well, we're not really doing this just for you," she explained, a look of consternation on her face. "We're also trying to make a point in front of Mary Jones!" And by the way, Mary Jones is a pseudonym for the woman who didn't want to hire me.

Apparently, Mary had arrived at this facility with an attitude already in place and a chip on her shoulder. Few people liked her, and she liked even fewer people - all of them managers, of course. She towed the company line harder than some of her own superiors, and shocked everybody on 9/11 when she actually complained that the FAA had grounded all airplanes. Her husband was scheduled to fly somewhere for a meeting, and his flight couldn't depart. I was never sure if she was mad because her husband couldn't leave town, or make his meeting. At any rate, I remember her coming out of her office, announcing her disgust to nobody in particular, and the rest of us - already reeling from everything that was taking place on the East Coast - dumbfounded by her narcissism.

So when Mary didn't hire me, the office took it upon themselves to make some sort of statement. Which was made that much more emphatic when the office's second-in-command was the first to express his disappointment at my leaving, and then helped himself to the first plate of food.

Eventually, that afternoon, Mary did come by my cubicle and say she was sorry things didn't work out. And from an employment standpoint, I was too. From a philosophical standpoint, however, I wasn't.

All Things Come to an End

I've never regretted not staying on at that company. Working sixty hours a week for a 40-hour-a-week salary doesn't particularly thrill me. Surviving the rigors of management trainee boot camp so I can earn a six-figure income with even more hours on the clock doesn't excite me, either. Not that I've become independently wealthy writing blogs. But certain experiences in life help you hone down the things at which you excel from those at which you don't. And what you think is worthwhile.

The gay co-worker at the office who I'd known from high school committed suicide several months after I left. At his funeral, as I commiserated with all of our fellow co-workers who packed the small, fundamentalist Baptist church his parents attended, we expressed our grief at how somebody so young - remember, he was my age - could give up on life so soon.

I have my suspicions for his reasoning, but they have nothing to do with that company we worked for. At the same time, his job obviously didn't meet him where he needed to be met most. Any job is too inadequate to do that.

At least two of our former co-workers got divorced not long after his suicide. Not because of it, however. Several others were laid off during a merger with an affiliated company.

There were so many bad endings associated with this company. At least I got a party.

Even if it wasn't all about me.
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Christ our Passover

(Scroll down for a video link)


You know, I used to idolize traditional corporate worship.

Yeah, yeah:  Chalk up yet another weird obsession for this different-drumbeat blogger - who, speaking of drums, still isn't crazy about them in church!

Well, with the exception of timpani. But more about that in a minute.

Back when I was a kid, corporate worship was merely something your parents made you attend.  It wasn't important or unimportant, fun or awful, traditional or contemporary, or anything else.  It just was.  Every Sunday.  Even on vacation.

It Used to be Called the City of Churches

Then, after college, I moved to the borough of Brooklyn in New York City.  In the 1990's, young unmarried adults had yet to flock over to Brooklyn from Manhattan (once again, I was before my time).  And in Brooklyn's rough Sunset Park neighborhood, as in much of the borough, many of the singles my age either had kids, were in and out of jail, or both.  For them, church was where people had funerals.

So... I found myself unable to find a solid, Bible-believing church with a decent singles ministry in all of Brooklyn, and becoming profoundly aware of the void being without a community of faith can create.  Although today, I'm no longer convinced single adults must prioritize singles ministries when they church-shop, back then, even though there was a Gospel-oriented Baptist church only two blocks away, I dismissed it because it was mostly families and senior citizens.

Back in Texas, my family had been suggesting I try the venerable Calvary Baptist in midtown Manhattan, but they understood my hesitancy because of the commute; on weekends, with sporadic subway service, it was at least an hour one-way.  But finally, practically in desperation, I took the plunge and checked out Calvary.

When I walked through Calvary's thick, wood doors off of 57th Street, I felt immediately at home, even though I didn't know a soul there.  Wow.  I've never experienced anything like it.  During a previous visit years ago, I learned their worship format was traditional, but that really didn't mean much to me at the time.  The church from which I had come in Texas had a mild contemporary mix, but back then, I was naive to the brewing contemporary/traditional controversy.  All I knew when I walked into the foyer at Calvary that Sunday was that I'd found my church home in the big, bad city.

It didn't take long for me to fall in love - with the worship format at Calvary. Majestic and robust, this was doing church like I'd never seen it done before.  We recited psalms.  The choir would sing a plaintive response to pastoral prayers. The congregation would erupt into mighty hymns, the organ in full vibrato causing the wood floor to quake under our feet.  And from the sanctuary's main level, I'd look up into the horseshoe-shaped balcony, packed with people of ethnicities from across the globe, and marvel - sometimes with tears in my eyes - at how it all must be a foretaste of glory divine.

If you haven't really experienced a Biblical, God-focused, traditional service born of an orthodox desire to worship our Creator instead of the created, then you likely have no clue as to what you're missing.  Yes, a lot of Americans today immediately protest comments like mine with accusations of preferences, desires for keeping up with the culture, and a lot of other populist rationalizations for why designing a corporate worship service for God instead of us doesn't make sense.

Substance SHOULD be the Style

And for a while, back in Texas, I dove into this controversy with gusto, first as a conscientious objector, trying to tolerate contemporary styles. Then as a refugee from the seeker/contemporary movement, ultimately landing at my current Presbyterian church.  And then reveling in its worship style so obnoxiously that it took the Holy Spirit to convict me for attending church not for the sermon or even the fellowship, but the style.

The same reason a lot of contemporary aficionados attend rock-and-roll churches, and think I'm a blithering idiot.

Bummer.

It's taken a while, and even though I'm still convinced traditional, classical worship glorifies God best, you're not a heretic in my book if you don't take my side. Well, not completely, anyway.  But that doesn't mean I'm going to give up trying to explain my point of view.

Now, before you click off this blog in disgust, please hear me out!  I've even got a video for you visualists out there.

This past Sunday where I worship, our Chancel Choir sang Christ Our Passover, composed by Robert MacFarlane in 1906. It's one of my favorite pieces in my church choir's repertoire, combining all of the elements necessary for Christ-centric worship music:  scripture set to a score exemplifying the best practices of composition and performed on acoustic instruments.  In other words, music with objective integrity.

So you'll understand my giddy desire to share this glorious Eastertide anthem with you, even if you have to stretch to the depths of your patience to indulge me.

And by the way, about the timpani:  several years ago, the former choir director where I worship commissioned an accompaniment with brass and timpani for this piece from Sterling Procter, whose arrangement you'll hear in just a moment.  Who says classical music has to be boring?

Below, I've provided the text for the piece, which is 100% solid scripture.  Use it for your reference along with a YouTube video of the work sung on Resurrection Sunday this year at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on New York City's Park Avenue.  Although the video is not of the best quality, it does convey the wonderful spirit of this anthem which celebrates Christ, Who was indeed sacrificed for us:

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast; not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Corinthians 5:7-8)

Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more: death hath no more dominion over Him. For in that He died, He died unto sin once: but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 6:9-11)

Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept! For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive! (1 Corinthians 15:20-22)

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: World without end. Amen!



I'm telling you: if this doesn't call you out of your mortality for at least a brief moment and fill your mind with awe for what God has done for you, you probably don't need to be reading my blog right now.

Instead, you need to be re-reading the incredible scriptures I referenced above!
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Who's Your Nanny?

We hear a lot of complaints these days about how America is turning into a "Nanny State." The staggering number of laws, rules, regulations, ordinances, and legislation that our society generates can make it feel as though our lives are being manipulated and suffocated by the government.

Take, for example, the plethora of zoning regulations that exist in most of our municipalities. Here in Arlington, Texas, we have laws governing every sign, from garage sale signs to billboards. Grass gets regulated - both the illegal kind, and the stuff that grows in your lawn (and you're really in trouble if they're both the same thing.) No matter how old your house is, zoning ordinances govern what materials you use if you need to construct an addition.

A neighbor up the street wanted to build a new garage on the very back of his brick house.  Even though the addition wouldn't be visible from the street, however, the city insisted he use brick instead of wood siding. The homeowner got signed agreements from all of his neighbors approving of the siding, but no; the city insisted on brick, because that was the code. What wasn't in the code was the fact that since the house was several decades old, the customized brick originally used for its construction is no longer available. So the garage actually looks stranger with the closely-matched brick than it would with appropriately-painted siding.

At least we can't see it from the street!

Laws are Born from Somebody's Bad Behavior

Upon first glance, it all sounds so silly and intrusive, doesn't it? Good grief; if you're paying your mortgage and your taxes, what right does the city have to tell you what your house can look like? Especially an improvement that won't be seen from the street? And aren't they nitpicking by confiscating innocent garage sale signs by the side of the road?

Yes... and, no.

One of the reasons cities like Arlington have so many zoning codes stems from the discouraging reality that not everybody is interested in maintaining their property. Not everybody has the requisite common sense to draw a correlation between personal responsibility and infringing on the general population's sensibilities.

After all, most reasonable people know what adequately-manicured lawns are supposed to look like. We don't like signs plastered everyplace, or under-used RVs and boats languishing on front lawns. Civilization as we know it won't come to a screeching halt if your Christmas lights stay up all year long, but your ambivalence about neighborhood aesthetics won't do civilization any favors, either.

Will it?

Here in my old central Arlington 'hood, a number of us - and yes, I'm included - have grown weary of people moving in to our aging houses and, through their ambivalence, proving why zoning laws are necessary. Oddly enough, the elderly and less-financially-robust of us aren't the ones neglecting their property. No, the eyesores are owned by people who simply don't care. Not that we're an exclusive enclave by any means. But neither do we want to get as dumpy as other neighborhoods near ours have gotten.

Just because we're a solid middle-class subdivision doesn't mean we don't expect certain standards to be kept. Do you really think nobody's going to hear the whinnying of the horse you're hiding in your backyard? Why do you think we get upset about the engine you've got dangling from a tree in your front yard?

Seriously. This ain't Arkansas.

Sometimes, There's Value in Conformity

The greatest argument for building standards and codes involves the preservation of property values, which of course, benefits both the homeowner when it comes time to sell, and the city in terms of taxes it can collect. And just as home sellers in your neighborhood compete with homesellers in other neighborhoods, cities also compete for economic viability. Some people sniff at codes as merely tools to enhance the snob factor of a community, but the basic financial benefit of codes can't be ignored.

But would we need all of these rules, regulations, and codes if everybody subscribed to the same set of expectations within a given community? Think about it: All it takes is a few people who lack accountability to spawn all sorts of laws meant to bring them in line with basic standards.

And it's not just neighborhood livability that all sorts of laws have been designed to protect. If this essay has sounded like so much intolerance, rigidity, conformity, and foolishness to you, then consider the bigger picture here.  Are you frustrated by the myriad regulations governing Wall Street, our aviation industry, and the foods and medicines we consume?  What if businesspeople acted with integrity on behalf of our entire society and didn't try to cut corners?  How many protections would our government be compelled to create then? If industries could rely on their participating companies to operate ethically and self-police themselves, by how many fewer laws could they be bound?

We Lose Freedom When We Disrespect Others

Our Nanny State hasn't evolved solely because a bunch of bureaucrats have succeeded in crafting job security for themselves. Do you really think most politicians like being squeezed by their constituents who are advocating for or against something that used to be unregulated? Sure, most all cultures have hyper busy-bodies agitated over things they think should or shouldn't be done for all sorts of reasons, and you'd probably throw me into that group.

But you have to admit it: with human behavior being what it is, the Nanny State has taken the place of personal responsibility.  And not just because our government has lusted after that role.

The practical side of me thinks many of our laws, rules, and codes should be unnecessary. But the cynical side of me suspects that those same regulations are probably necessary, considering how spoiled, selfish, calloused, and greedy many of us are.

If we all took greater responsibility for the way our lifestyles and choices impact those around us, we could enjoy far fewer laws, regulations, and even taxes.  Unfortunately, the more that trust within a society erodes, the more protections people feel they need to mitigate that loss of trust.  It's the same with gates and fences - freedom to roam gets restricted by gates and fences when you make a habit of trespassing.

As it is, somebody has to protect you from me. And me from you.

That's where we enter... the Nanny zone.
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Canonizing America's History?

Thank you for your patience as we've waited for Blogspot/Blogger's technical issued to get cleared up!

There was a comment posted on last Wednesday's essay, but it and my subsequent reply were deleted.  I think we're back to normal now, though... or, at least, as normal as I get.  ;-)

So, without any further ado:  today's essay!

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And evangelicals still wonder why I'm so skeptical about the "faith" of our Founding Fathers.

With the drumbeat of conservatives who preach a sanctimonious Christology of America's political heritage growing ever louder, imagine my surprise, stumbling across further proof that our our historical leaders may have been relatively moral, but probably not orthodox Christians.

It seems the self-avowed Deist, Benjamin Franklin, wanted to incorporate an official prayer into the daily proceedings governing the 1787 Constitutional Convention, but was met with stiff resistance by other national leaders of his day. Basically, according to a note in the Library of Congress regarding Franklin's proposal to start each day of the convention in prayer, "the Convention...thought Prayers unnecessary."

So Franklin's idea for prayer didn't really catch on with the bunch of guys modern right-wingers claim to have been so spiritual.

Interestingly enough, part of Franklin's speech that day seems to have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Franklin warned that if they didn't request God's guidance, "We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a bye word down to future age. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human Wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and conquest."

Sounds more like 2011 than 1787, doesn't it?  Particularly since this morning, we hit our nation's debt ceiling, and nobody inside the Washington Beltway seems too anxious about it.

Pressing the Issue of the Press

Which brings me to a second point. We all know how acrimonious politics are these days. A lot of the discord has arisen because today, for better or worse, we have the technology to share information and opinions with the entire country. We also have a press machine - with both conservative and liberal biases - that sticks its nose into everything. Nothing is off-limits, and stories are spun and counter-spun in sensationalistic ways to attract attention, generate advertising revenue, and pretend to convey relevance.

The pace at which 21st-Century information overload swamps our senses with all that's wrong in our country makes it seem as though these present-day problems are bringing the United States to the brink of collapse. And maybe we are.

But how might our present-day mess compare with the good old days during the founding of our country?

Back when we didn't have TV networks, bloggers, and talk radio to document all of the foibles, controversies, immorality, deceit, duplicitousness, and ineptitude which suddenly seem unprecedented today.

For example, consider what I mentioned above when discussing Franklin's prayer idea.  Neo-conservatives tend to wax nostalgic these days over what they perceive as having been some sort of humble theocracy back in country's olden days. Making slogans like “one nation under God” some sort of template by which the Washingtons, Franklins, and Jeffersons of our past intended future Americans to subjugate citizens with other belief systems. Perverting the deific properties of our nation’s documents of incorporation to emphasize the Biblical semantics by which our government today should function. And accusing academics - who’ve acknowledged the frailties, inconsistencies, and outright fallibilities of America’s historic icons - of revisionist propaganda, while perpetrating their own romanticized revisions of what motivated people to establish our great country.

If we knew as much about the events of 1776 and our first Constitutional Convention as we know about today’s power politics, would we be as certain of the righteous intentions of our early government as we are the damnable incompetence of our current legislators? Being the skeptical cynic I am, I wonder how much of what we know of modern government is simply born through the light of incessant media coverage that simply didn’t exist 230 years ago.

Reputations Sometimes Age Well

Granted, starting a brand-new government practically from scratch, incorporating some relatively unproven political ideals on the fly, and stitching it all together among a patchwork of geographically and culturally disparate colonies, remains a stunning sociopolitical feat in the history of civilization.  A pivotal achievement no matter how you look at it, wouldn't you agree?  I can't envision anybody in office today as being capable of dreaming up and implementing what our Founding Fathers did.  And they succeeded back before all of the technological marvels today we think we can't live without!

Yes, they did have the press, and Franklin himself made a small fortune running printing presses and printing periodicals.  The first genuine mass-market newsletter, however, didn't evolve until 1830, in Boston.  And newspapers with what we would consider to be more comprehensive news coverage didn't arrive until the turn of the 20th Century.  Before the First World War, hardly any news organization had a budget for comprehensive news coverage like today's media conglomerates boast.  Which meant that although major stories may have gotten coverage, those who reported them were at the mercy of limited avenues of sources and corroborative agents.  Which meant that the whole truth and nothing but the truth may not always have been what the public was led to believe.

After all, anybody can tell you anything, but unless you can cross-check and verify sources, you're still only getting one side of a story.  Wouldn't it be much easier to run a government when the public has less access to complete truth?  Of course, even today, some conspiracists at the opposite ends of the political spectrum are convinced we're not being told the whole truth about anything.  But we have a much broader perspective of world events today than even our Founding Fathers had.

Not that acknowledging this truth makes the problems we have today easier to solve.  But perhaps it helps to shed some light on why America's early years seem comparatively righteous. 

I'm not saying that today's politicians are really saints;  just that yesteryear's politicians probably weren't either.
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Revolting Against King Content?

Note: This essay was originally posted on Wednesday, May 11, but was inadvertently deleted during a Blogger service failure and reposted.

Might some Christian websites be unintentionally making themselves obsolete?

Not through the poor utilization of cutting-edge technology. But by the poor choices they're making regarding their content.

I used to work for an Internet technology company, and one of the mantras my employer constantly stressed was "content is king." And he's right: there's no reason to visit any website other than to access its content. By itself, Internet technology doesn't soothe you, it doesn't make you rich, it doesn't educate you; there's no benefit for any organization to simply have a website. It must deliver relevant content to be worth anything.

That makes sense, doesn't it?  But it's so easy to forget.

Now, where Internet initiatives make their profits comes with how you define "relevant." And the proliferation of websites during the past 14 years promised the world a treasure-trove of accessible news, information, opinion, and products that would help make the human experience more informed, sophisticated, efficient, and productive.

And, to a great extent, this has happened.

When Content Quality Isn't Job One

Yet, as I troll the Internet searching for content that can be exploited into an essay for my blog, I've become aware that too much of the content - particularly on Christian websites - is rapidly becoming either redundant, suspiciously inaccurate, or is cunning marketing pablum in disguise.

For example, how many articles on Christian websites are written by or about Christian authors who've just had a book published?

Like the old TV talk shows and print magazines, which provided a forum for celebrities to publicize their newest productions, many Christian websites have become hazy PR factories. Which helps explain why so many organizations let their marketing department manage their website. However, in the rush to maintain a web presence, post content that won't scare away advertisers, and attract new website visitors, content isn't king like it's supposed to be. But they still want you to think it is.

Just yesterday, I was on a well-known and heretofore well-respected Christian website run by a legacy Christian magazine. I had found an article by a person I'd never heard before, but who I assumed was some sort of expert, since his piece was featured on the home page of this famous magazine's website.

As it turns out, the guy just had a book published, and what he wrote as thinly-veiled marketing material for this website was sheer blather. It didn't make sense, there was no coherent train of thought, and the condescension he lathered throughout his ill-fitting paragraphs in an attempt to sound avant-garde was palpable. He claimed to be writing about contemporary Christian music, so I didn't expect to be particularly impressed anyway. But even other readers, CCM fans who've commented on the article, have blasted its author - and the website - for tricking us all into thinking this was valid content.

Their frustration validates my own concern that this website wasn't interested so much in educating or even entertaining us, but simply fulfilling part of a publicity contract for the author's publisher.

This isn't the first time I've finished reading an article on a Christian website and realized I'd just wasted 5 minutes that I'll never get back on junk literature.  I just didn't expect it of such a well-known marquee.

Surfer Savvy Eclipsing Conventional Content Standards?

Which leaves me wondering: how long can these sites peddle such drivel before their Internet readership catches on and becomes ambivalent about the organization's integrity, or gives up visiting their site altogether? Believe it or not, most of us have better things to do than devote time to seminary professors whose ivory tower gibberish fails to translate into everyday life, pseudo-famous preachers and "experts" whose craft better titles than articles, and the growing swarm of authors more interested in selling uninspired books than conveying significant ideas. I mean, seriously, people: we Americans already have more material and study guides than we know what to do with, and we're still not wowing the world as salt and light, are we?  In a way, we're choking on our own food.

Granted, some websites give their visitors some sort of code or heads-up about the purpose or relevance of their content before we commit to exploring it. In addition, some articles have readers' ratings, but not all of them. Of course, those can be biased or even rigged by publicists, so their accuracy isn't foolproof. And sometimes, the best content is the least popular.

I suspect other websites - like the one I visited yesterday, which exist simply as online extensions of print magazines - have had a more difficult time adjusting to the transition from print to Internet than they'd care to admit. They really still want us to subscribe to their print magazine, so they sprinkle teaser pieces on their website to try and generate interest in subscriptions once they've captured visitors on their site.  In effect, they're banking on the legendary legitimacy of their print magazine to cover a multitude of sins on their website. Trouble is, the Internet isn't going away anytime soon, whereas print editions...

Being Tricked by the Trade

Despite all of the rapid advancements in Internet technology, the only way we can currently determine the integrity of an online article is by clicking on its link. That click doesn't prove the article is worthwhile, however; it really only tells tracking software how convincing the article's title was. Once we land on that page, and realize it's junk literature, we can't go back and erase our indication of interest. As far as the webmaster is concerned, the article's content was successful. Even if readers are hitting the response buttons with withering criticism of what they've been tricked into reading.

Odd, isn't it, how with magazines, you never really got that agitated if something was junk literature. Maybe because we could quickly skim ahead to try and figure out where the author was going. More likely, however, it was because with a print magazine, you purchased the whole thing, and you knew that its editors weren't making future content decisions based on individual articles. With the Internet, most readers know that what they view is helping the website's owners determine future content. So, being suckered into virtually affirming something we didn't like is more than frustrating; it's misleading, and could result in more of the same bad content down the road.

At this point, the capitalist would say that we have a handy-dandy fix for this problem: Internet advertising revenue. But even that has its problems. For now, advertisers still think that click-throughs and page-view counts are providing them relevant data which supports the prices they're paying for ad space. Meanwhile, without our being aware of it, our Internet habits are being compiled and vast data mines are being created to help websites selling ad space - and advertisers looking to buy ad space - figure out how to get you and me to spend more money. The more we click on links to articles with bad content, we actually pollute the data being collected on our reading interests with endorsements for more bad content. As data mining becomes more pervasive, it will become a vicious circle of bad content affirming more bad content.

I wonder how long it will take for some of the advertisers on Christian websites to realize that many visitors to these sites are getting increasingly jaded by misleading titles and hollow articles. Unfortunately, the media companies who are pushing for some of this content won't be convinced their current model isn't working because it all still generates some sort of exposure for the person or idea they're trying to showcase. It's like the late Irish author, Brendan Behan, said: "there's no such thing as bad publicity."

Except maybe on the Internet.

The whole information technology genre is based on instant access. Some people have interpreted this to mean that content can be disposable in quality. And certainly, for some people, all they can digest is disposable content, and sites which pander to these types of people won't go off-line anytime soon.

But I suspect that people who visit Christian websites have a significant interest in substantial content. They're willing to explore concepts and ideas which directly relate to basic core principles of life. And they expect instant gratification that's legitimate.

They're not visiting Christian websites hoping for junk content that will blow a spare three minutes between tweets. They're willing to think over valid content that they're taking the initiative to find. They don't want their website visit to waste their time and /or insult their intelligence with anything less.

Over time, the more they get burned, the less likely they are to visit such websites. Another thing my IT boss used to say was it's a lot easier to keep current website visitors coming back than finding new ones.  Which brought him back to mantra #1:  content is king.

Why have I harangued on this topic so much today?  Because I've invested over a year and a half to improve my skills as a writer, which means I want to contribute meaningful content in the Internet age.

I also think it would be a shame for certain Christian websites to peak in their influence so early in the Internet age.
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Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Evangelism.

It's a polarizing word. And a scary concept.

Both outside the church. And within it.

One of the reasons we believers have a problem with evangelism was described by the senior pastor where I worship. In his sermon yesterday, Rev. Mark Davis challenged our congregation to confront the common disconnect in Christianity between our perceptions of how evil sin really is, how real Hell is, and the fact that real people are facing a real eternity in Hell because of the reality of their sin.

True enough, right? You know what he's saying: that one of the reasons people of faith are loathe to evangelize - both within their spheres of influence, and outside of them - stems from our ambivalence towards sin and its consequences.

Even as a reformed evangelical, I still believe that one of the ways Christ wants me to express my faith in Him is to share it with others. Not because people won't be saved if I don't evangelize; God's sovereignty is greater than my disobedience. And only God, through the power of His Holy Spirit, can save sinners. Nevertheless, we usually express value for something by telling others about it, and isn't salvation the most valuable thing we have?

So far, you and I should be in agreement.

However, as I drove home from Dallas to Arlington after church yesterday, I realized that ambivalence about sin and the lostness of the unsaved has an even uglier precursor.

Losing Religion Behind the Wheel

As I battled through two traffic jams - unusual for an early Sunday afternoon - and an unplanned shortcut through some rough inner city neighborhoods, my own behavior caught my attention.  It suddenly dawned on me how much antagonism I was directing towards other drivers. Not just frustration, but outright spite, disdain, and even malevolence against other human beings because of their lack of driving skills.

Granted, north Texas drivers will never be known for their politeness, competence, and logic. I thought I'd seen it all from New York City drivers, but here, I'm constantly amazed at how poorly people can drive and manage to make it to their destination in one piece.

Well, on a good day, I'm amazed. Usually, though, I'm disgusted and irate from witnessing all of the near-misses and brazen stunts by my fellow drivers. Perhaps because yesterday, I was being forced to backtrack, sit in abnormally-long lines of traffic, and arrive late for our Mothers Day lunch, I was particularly exasperated. But how much of an excuse is that for being so mean-spirited towards drivers I didn't even know?

And what does any of this have to do with evangelism?

Here it is: I suspect that the reason I don't evangelize has less to do with any disconnect between sin and Hell, and more to do with the fact that I'm basically an unloving person.

I even suspect that I'm not the only believer with this problem. Might the reason many of us don't evangelize have to do with the simple reality that we don't love others very much? We don't love the lost, do we? We certainly don't love people we don't like, or those with whom we don't share similar lifestyles. It's often hard enough to love the people to whom we're married or share a family, let alone people who vote differently that us, pay drastically different taxes than we do, or have spent less time in America than we have.

The cynical side of me would say that, yes, we enjoy our salvation and even bank on it when we want to sin. As a confession we recited in worship service several weeks ago said: we use grace as a tool to push our boundaries ever further from what is holy. Oftentimes, I think we love the sin of the world more than the sinners to whom we're supposed to be witnessing. And from whose world we're supposed to be separate.

Love in the Church

But it's not just the unsaved we don't love. Even in our churches, do we really love our fellow worshippers? How do you behave as you drive into and out of your church's parking lot every Sunday? Where I worship, things can get downright competitive in our cramped, urban parking lots. Even in the vast parking lots of an uber-modern seeker church in Dallas' suburbs, I've read parishioners complaining online about being terrorized by their fellow congregants in their luxury SUV's after church lets out.

Where I worship, about 90% of the people to whom I flash a smile don't even acknowledge my presence. And I've attended there 12 years. Many churches have almost given up trying to stop the chronic revolving door of visitors, unwilling to admit it's because there's precious little love in their congregation for people outside of the church's core cocoon of worshippers. Christian-based and Christian-blasting blogs and boards are littered with stories of disillusioned churchgoers who never managed to crack a church's cozy clique.

Need more examples? How about habitual latecomers (and aren't most people who show up late always late?), whose barging in on a service that's already started doesn't show love for those who are already worshipping, or who are leading us in worship. Nursery workers who skip their assigned week don't show love for the church staffers, other volunteers, and your church's children, who have to improvise without them. Even people who send e-mails and gripe a lot don't always show love in the way they address pastors who have been called by God to shepherd us.

And one of the biggies? That "tyranny of the weaker brother" that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Begrudgingly tolerating restrictions on certain activities because some people at church don't do them isn't love. Perverting the biblical freedom we have in Christ and then sulking because doing so might offend somebody isn't love. And going ahead with plans and programs in spite of rational evidence that doing so could violate another believer's legitimate conscience isn't love.

Granted, neither is it love for the weaker brother to lord it over those who want to exercise things they consider freedoms. The evangelical church has never struck a healthy balance on this issue, but it seems that nowadays, the resentment over the weaker brother has become more blatant. I don't know if there's any correlation between that and the conservative talk radio blowhards who have fomented political discord and rancor in our country. But evangelicals are becoming a belligerent and offensive group for all the wrong reasons. Both inside and outside the church.

Can Love Be Taught?

I'm not sure our pastors can preach or program this out of us. If we're not in tune with the Holy Spirit, and committed to loving the world as Christ loved it, even preaching on evangelism every Sunday probably won't produce much fruit.

If we don't love each other - and you'll notice I used an inclusive pronoun - should we expect to love the unsaved world around us? Because if we don't love others, we'll probably not care much about their future, which doesn't give us much incentive to evangelize.

Not that evangelism is proof of our faith.

But I'm pretty sure love is.
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Fixing What's Really Broken

Do you pick up hitchhikers?

Do you stop to assist a driver broken-down by the side of the road?

Years ago, when my family lived near Syracuse, NY, a rash of assaults took place on well-meaning motorists who offered to pick-up hitchhikers on local freeways. I remember hearing officials telling people to simply ignore all hitchhikers. Don't try to be kind. You don't know who you can trust.

More recently, I've heard many a preacher or small group leader - all men, of course - admonish us guys to stop and help people whose cars have broken-down. Even this morning, as I read an article about faith and risk, the author chided his readers who didn't help stranded motorists out of ambivalence or fear.

For some guys, it's easy to generalize and assume the rest of our gender have the same mechanical acumen as they do, or as society expects us to have. But I've gotta tell ya: if you're stranded alongside the highway with a broken-down car, you don't want me stopping to help you fix it!

I changed my car's oil once, and that was back when I was in college, and my younger brother couldn't believe I was such a wuss as to pay a garage to do it for me. So I did it - to prove that I could. But there are some things it's worth paying somebody else to do, and changing the oil is one of those things for me. Especially now, since so many dealerships use oil changes as a loss-leader for other work that needs to be done to your car.

Speaking of which, a dealership once quoted me something like $75 to change an air filter, so I balked and got online to see if I could do it myself. Sure enough, I found a website that identified where the filter housing was located, and the part number I'd need. I went and paid about $20 for the top-of-the-line filter, got a wrench, and popped the hood. About an hour later, after both my father and I had ripped the skin off of our knuckles, and my next-door neighbor had dropped a couple of his fancy tools into my engine trying to help, we finally wrestled the stupid filter into its housing. I then spend the rest of the evening trying get my neighbor's tools out of my car.  I sure didn't feel like I'd saved $50.

Suffice it to say that if you break down and have a cell phone, you're far better off waiting for professional help than wanting me to happen by. I might be able to help you change a flat tire, but those fix-a-flat cans available these days are more handy than me straining to loosen lug nuts. And I don't jump batteries with my own car's battery anymore; the last time I did, the battery I was jumping was so corroded it fizzed and sparked so much I was afraid to disconnect the jumper cables.

Have I mentioned that I'm not that technical?

When Helping Doesn't Help

Now, if you're a master mechanic, then maybe God has given you skills that He expects you to use as a roadside Mr. Fix-It. But if I stopped to just chat with somebody on the roadside and help keep their spirits up - which is about the only expertise I could offer (and even then, some readers of my blog would question my ability to cheer ANYBODY up) - then having me stand with you by the side of the road would probably discourage somebody who could offer real help from stopping. They'd assume you already had help, and just keep on driving.

But I suspect the basic issue here isn't that helping stranded drivers is something every male is obligated to do because we're supposedly all masters at fixing stuff. All people of faith have been blessed by God with talents and skills, but these abilities aren't exclusively for our personal benefit, are they? They're to be put to use for His Kingdom. And not just in church on Sundays.

At this point, I could take the high road and tell you that I won't list the many ways I help my fellow humanity because then it would sound like I'm bragging. Or I could take the path of least resistance and simply admit that no, this is one of the areas on which I need to work. Yes, I used to help keep my neighbor widow's yard free from limbs and debris (while another neighbor paid for a lawn service to mow it). I've donated what's amounted to a complete wardrobe to local charities, and have served on a neighborhood bylaws committee.

But like many of us, I could do more.

Why don't I?  Why don't you?

Part of being a conservative has become holding people in our society to levels of accountability that make us feel as though we don't owe anybody anything. The reason people's cars are constantly breaking down by the side of the road is because they don't maintain them properly. And they don't maintain them properly because they haven't applied themselves to obtain good-paying jobs. The reason other people need my clothes is because they've made bad choices in their lives. Meanwhile, I drive a reliable car and pay retail for my clothes because I work hard and earn a stable income (well, I used to, anyway).

I suspect this is the rationale behind how many Republicans view entitlement programs. If people would study harder and work harder, and take seriously their personal responsibility of providing for themselves and their families, then they'd be able to purchase all of the things in life that help them be self-sufficient and contributing members of society.

But things break, don't they? Automobile engines malfunction. Workers lose jobs and get squeezed out of the employment market by the economy. And yes, we make mistakes, we put things off just a little too long, or we underestimate the facts of life. Some of these are blatant errors on our part, and some of these are caused by events beyond our control.

Even though I drive by broken-down cars on the side of the road, should I drive by broken-down lives on the highway of life? Just because I figure it may be their own fault for not keeping their stuff in good repair? Or because I can't fix it myself anyway?

I wonder what part of wisdom is knowing the difference between when to stop and help, or when to keep on going?

Who Will Spend the Resources?

Sure, stopping to help means I inconvenience myself.  I have to spend some of my finite resources on someone else instead of me, myself, and I.  I reason that I've worked hard for what I've learned, earned, and saved, so why can't all these other people who want my resources? I'm entitled to keep and spend my time, money, and skills in the way that I want.

Which is the even bigger issue here than fixing broken-down cars, isn't it?  How much of what we've learned, earned, and saved is truly ours?  How much of it has been given to us?  Not by our parents, our employer, our alma mater... but God?

How can I twist my not stopping to help a fellow motorist into a critique on conservative economics?  By realizing that I'm not here for myself, and you're not here for yourself.  Granted, the scourges of generational poverty, laziness, and blaming others for our problems are factors which need to be dealt with appropriately.  And at some point, people of faith have to draw the line between being Godly servants, economic doormats, and expecting maturity from others.  After all, just as Christ calls us to minister to the poor and needy, writers of the book of Proverbs repeatedly warn sluggards that if they don't work, they don't eat.

I've already admitted I'm not qualified to lord over you the moral of this lesson.  So don't just write off my imperfections as disqualifying everything I've said; ask the Lord if there's ways you can contribute to His kingdom through the things He's given you. And if I'm entirely wrong, God will tell you that, too.

Not that I'm suddenly compelled to stop and try to help the next broken-down motorist I see.  Or that you and I should pummel Senator Mitch McConnell and Representative John Boehner with demands that they stop trying to dismantle the government's entitlement programs.

But if you and I spent more of our own resources where we see the needs, would our government have to waste so much money trying to do what we're not?
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Holy Talk

He calls God "Sir" when he prays.

Patrick Lafferty, one of the young pastors where I worship, gives erudite prayers brimming with theology and doctrine.  Which makes them worthwhile in and of themselves.  But although most of his prayers are spoken in modern vernacular, whenever he addresses our God directly, he humbly switches from a pastoral familiarity to a stark subservience.

And like a servant addressing his Master, Lafferty boldly yet respectfully calls God "Sir."

It's so cool, and many people I know in church think it's a great reminder to us that, while at the same time we acknowledge God as our Father, and our Intercessor as our Brother, we shouldn't forget that the Trinity gives us our very life and breath. And It is holy.

A number of years ago at the same church, the late Rev. Dr. Robert Nielson would pray from the pulpit in such a conversationalist way that it seemed as if he was literally standing alongside God, sharing an intimate time of confession, supplication, and rejoicing with Him.  It wasn't until after Nielson passed away peacefully in his sleep that I met his widow, Lois, during one of our worship service's weekly greetings of peace (where we all stand up and greet those sitting around us).  When I learned that Dr. Nielson was Lois's husband, I exclaimed, "Oh, I so miss his prayers!  When he prayed, it was like he..."

And Lois cut me off with a smile, "was having a conversation with God, right?"

Apparently, over the years, many people had seen what I saw in Dr. Nielson's prayer life. What a testimony, right?

Prayer Can Be Better

Today is the National Day of Prayer, and I have to confess that I didn't know it until I saw the New York Times make mention of it on their website this morning.  President Obama had gone to Ground Zero to commemorate both the NDP and the death of Osama bin Laden this past Sunday.  A little irony there, huh?

At any rate, I'm not going to harangue on why prayer seems to get short shrift in our culture these days, or why we people of faith usually seem to struggle with it.  Most of us know it's crucial to our relationship with Christ, yet the more we try to develop a consistent and legitimate prayer life, the more elusive it can become.

To my shame, I'm not a prayer warrior or hero.  There are many times when I spend as much time trying to recover from mental rabbit trails as I do actually talking with God.  Prayer is indeed a discipline, and like most disciplines, I don't find that always comes easily.  About the only times I can pray without distraction are when I really, really want or need something right away.  But how genuine is that?

Over the years, I have developed some tools and processes which have helped me better honor God when I talk with Him.  The main consideration I try to remember is that prayer really is a conversation between myself and God.  He's invited me to talk to and with Him, and since He's as real as any mortal to whom I talk on our planet, I need to begin with at least the same propriety and decorum that would be expected of me were I having a socially-acceptable conversation with anybody else.

I had a Bible study leader one time tell our group that it is OK to fall asleep while talking to God, because He wants us to rest.  But how rude is that?!  Yes, God invites us to rest, but how appropriate is it for us to doze off when somebody else is talking to us? 

Instead, I believe that for honest communication to take place - not only me communicating to God, but Him communicating to me - I need to maintain my attention, concentrate my focus, and value the sacrifice God made on my behalf so we could have these times together.  No matter how long or formal they are.  Not that I'm always successful, but with the help of these tools I'd like to share with you, I think that my prayer life is getting richer.

So if, like me, you struggle with maintaining purpose and perspective when you pray, consider trying some of these ideas:

1. Incorporate snippets of Bible verses that you've memorized into relevant parts of your prayer.

2. When praying for individual people, mentally post an image of that person in your brain for the duration of your supplication on behalf of that person. This helps break up lists of people for whom you might be praying, and also may keep your attention from wandering off.

3. If you usually follow a structure or formula for your prayers, from time to time, allow your prayers to flow organically, perhaps from topic to topic, or by interspersing your petitions with praises.

4. If you catch your mind wandering, check yourself for a brief moment and scan your brain:  are you thinking about this topic because maybe there's something in it God wants you to address in prayer?  It could be that what you think is a lack of attention is actually God trying to get your attention about something that may seem to be a distraction.

5. Diversify the way you end your prayers; I try using hymns that relate to a main theme in the prayer, or a particular aspect of God that I need to appreciate more myself.  I even own two hymnals for this purpose.

6. I usually pray one "formal" or "official" prayer in the mornings with my devotional, and then follow-up throughout the day with more informal, short, "Twitter"-type prayers of petition and even thanksgiving. I also try to remember to close-out my day with a short prayer before I go to bed at night, but I've yet to make that a habit.


I'm not saying that we need to copy what other people do in prayer or how other people pray.  Personally, I don't call God "Sir," and nobody has ever said my public prayers sound conversational.

But I do think I communicate better with God these days.  And I know that gives Him glory.

Which is what our prayers should do, no matter our style.  Amen?
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Beating Life out of SEALs?

Their own families may not know.

And if they do, it's against the law for them to tell anybody.

Twelve members of the Navy SEAL's Team 6 unit supposedly killed Osama bin Laden this past Sunday in Pakistan.  I say "supposedly" because officially, Team 6 doesn't exist.

You think you have secrets?  You've never worked for the United States military!

Of Frogmen and Seals

Ever since Sunday night's surprise announcement of bin Laden's death, the American public has been infatuated with the details surrounding this stunning event.  Yet of all that we've learned about it, we'll never know the names of the guys who actually dropped into bin Laden's Abbottabad compound and did the deed.  We'll probably all be dead and buried before our government removes the top-secret clearance on this operation and allows these men to be publicly awarded some medals for heroism.  Posthumously, of course.

About all we'll know is their gender - the SEALs don't accept women.

Obviously, there are national security reasons for why the SEAL's Team 6 program remains shrouded in mystery.  We do know that qualifying for acceptance is so rigorous, nearly 80% of its already-accomplished candidates drop out half-way through.  Indeed, even saying you had to drop out of Team 6 qualifiers can earn you bragging rights.

Those men who do complete the program spend the rest of their career training for operations like the one to capture bin Laden.  And experts tell us that after the special operations agents were de-briefed back in Washington, they have most likely been sent back out into the field by now, training for their next assignment.  Or maybe they've already completed their next assignment already, unbeknownst to us.  Their world is that secret.

Training the Humanity Out of Them

What isn't secret is how comprehensive the training is that these elite frogmen undergo, and what's expected of them. Both physically, and mentally.

Repeatedly, we hear that SEALs are expected to exceed even the heroic demands of extraordinary military might.  They're trained to prepare for an exceptionally challenging mission, execute it, and then move on to the next exceptionally challenging mission.  Normal physical and mental instincts are drilled, drowned, scared, frozen, and stretched out of them in training.  Exceeding physical and mental limits is the only way to succeed.  They'll get no grand accolades when they triumph, and they'll get no soft shoulder to cry on if they fail. They focus on the mechanics of their mission, and like a finely-tuned engine, without emotion or conscience, they get turned on and off depending on where their superiors tell them to go and what they tell them to do.

Which is all well and good, when you're talking in generalities about rescuing hostages, like SEALs did recently aboard a captured vessel near Somalia.  Or helping find caches of weaponry, like they've been doing in Afghanistan and Iraq.  And even when they're finding and killing somebody as universally notorious as bin Laden.

But is stripping so much humanity out of a soldier really ethical?

Nobody is forced into becoming a SEAL.  Indeed, all the experts say it's impossible to complete its fantastically rigorous demands if you don't have a burning desire to.  Even though we don't know details about specific operations, we all know what's expected, including recruits.  So it's not like the government is coercing any SEAL candidate to do something against his will.

(I've gotta interject - it feels quite odd being able to use only male pronouns in this essay!)

We also need to recognize that in times of officially-sanctioned war, the taking of human life happens.  It's impossible to argue from a Biblical standpoint that war, in and of itself, is sinful.  Our conventional soldiers are taught how to deploy various types of weaponry with the expectation that human beings will be killed as a result.  And in bin Laden's case, multiple world governments have certifiable proof that he is a mass murderer, so his assassination would have been justified had it taken place soon after 9/11, or this past weekend.

But what are the mechanics of ethics which allow the training of human beings to kill like autotrons?  The immediate - albeit inaccurate - correlation is Mafia hit men, who are trained to go out and knock off somebody for the good of the family.  There's usually little remorse or much contemplation about mortality.  It's a job that's gotta be done; badda bing, badda boom.  Is it similar with SEALs?

One expert on the radio this morning, a retired SEAL, scoffed when an anchorwoman asked him what kind of counseling the Team 6 members would have received after successfully completing their mission this past Sunday.  Basically, he snorted, "you don't give counseling to SEALs."

They're trained to treat death and killing as part of the job.  Period.  Part of the punchlist.  A line item on the scope-of-work spreadsheet.  Something that needs to take place for the benefit of civilization.  I guess kinda like the guys who used to operate guillotines, or decapitate criminals in the village square.  But at least those guys didn't have their own humanity rigorously disemboweled like SEALs have.

No Ill Will to Kill?

Couldn't we have simply cluster-bombed this compound in Abbottabad on Sunday, since nobody really expected bin Laden to surrender?  After all, the taking of bin Laden's life, and the lives of whomever else was in the compound with him, isn't what I'm questioning.  Is democracy really riding on the life-defying prowess of the 2,500 super-warriors we call SEALs?  What might God be thinking about our ability to defy the natural limits He's set for our bodies, and our minds?

I've tried to think about how different Bible passages might be applicable to the question of whether we're going too far in stripping select human beings of the very characteristics which make them human.  After all, these guys spend over 300 days a year on assignment, away from whatever family they may have.  They're trained to suppress all of the natural instincts and innate defense mechanisms we're born with.  And life - and that which sustains it - becomes more of a nuisance than something to be cherished.

Granted, people of faith should "die to self" during the process of sanctification, but that process involves our refusal to give in to our sin nature.  We're to give up our emotional and physical attachments to family, possessions, and status if we're going to follow Christ.  And in the case of martyrdom, believers have actually endured tremendous torture and death for the sake of the Gospel.

But nowhere in scripture does God expect His people to deny their humanity.  Christ Himself acknowledges that we maintain a link of responsibility, compassion, and accountability to people and things entrusted into our care.  And we are to mourn with those who mourn, laugh with those who laugh, and weep with those who weep.  Sounds pretty emotional and sympathetic to me.

Sure, our special operations force was able to take out bin Laden for us.  But are elite killers the best way to accomplish such perilous actions?

Might we be losing a bit of our own humanity by asking our secret warriors to relinquish theirs for us?
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