faithasawayoflife

u2 in boston

yes, i went to see my boys play the fleet center in boston this week and it was truly amazing even if the hard-core fans said that the show was a bit lackluster for u2. here's my review.

+peace

bike rant: answering amos

i'm preaching at the baptism of my nephew amos this weekend. the assigned texts are do not include anything from amos, but i'm going there anyway--how often does amos come up in the lectionary, anyway? well, i had to go look, but it turns out in the three year lectionary amos comes up five times, including all the 'famous passages' but not including most of the horrible blood and guts stuff. probably better that way.

so anyway, i had this passage on my mind as i rode to work, dropping grace off at abiyoyo preschool and then isaiah at edgewood school. yes, i know, the family biking is a bit precious. but anyway, i'm riding down whalley ave into downtown and thinking about how we've passed the peak oil production in the world. amos wrote 'seek good and not evil--and live! you talk about god being your best friend. well, live like it, and maybe it will happen!" (5:14, The Message). and i was laughing as two big trucks, one a suburban, would roar past me, only to be stuck at the next red light. i matched them, block for block, for two miles into town. every block, i'd zoom off and they'd roar past me, and then i'd catch them at the next light. it seems that we unintentionally separate evil from the mundane of everyday actions, but amos had a vision of faith lived daily, and that ultimate things are found in the little decisions we make.

i'm no zealot. i drive when it is raining or when the day is complicated with meetings here or there, or if i'm staying late. still, i think it is mighty easy to fall asleep in my privilege in this nation of wealth and not take seriously how amos and the prophets desire to shape my discipleship. live it, he says, and then we might actually build a friendship with god that by grace has been offered to us freely.

+peace

morning glory

have you ever woken up and walked out of the bed room to catch what seems to be an artscape of sky? i used to see this as a child in montana because out of every window of our house you could see 10,000 foot mountains. when the clouds were sort of wavy, but not extending all the way to the eastern mountains, the pink of dawn would paint the whole underside of the clouds, picking me up above the groggies. this morning, as i usually do, i rolled out of bed about 5 am and wandered into the sunroom where i sit to read and write before the kids wake up. and the room was bathed in the most glorious orange light. i thought, wow, is it like 8am or something? the room faces north west, and into a bunch of trees, so there's no way the light should be shining like that. but it was the same kind of cloud cover as when i was a child. absolutely stunning. little moments of deep gratitude and joy. i recited to myself, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight.

faith, work, and the idolatry of efficiency?

i've been meaning to blog about our recent meeting on faith and work in springdale, arkansas, and will begin to do so over the next weeks. the trip, part of the center's faith as a way of life project, took a group of pastors, theologians, and lay leaders to visit one of the largest producers of protein products in the world: tyson foods.

many of us visited the plant on randall road in springdale where cornish game hens are processed. they come in off a truck from the farm on one end of the factory and emerge on the other in a shrink-wrapped bag and ready for the -40 degree storage freezer. this plant produces 90% of the cornish game hens for the u.s. market and to give you some sense of the numbers, this means 135 birds a minute and upwards of 1,200,000 birds per week. this is one thing to say in a blog post, but another thing altogether to see it happening before your eyes.

we all had many experiences and reactions to the visit, and to the plant visit in particular. the reaction i what to highlight here is the feeling among some of the participants that the mechanization, the 'efficiency' of the production itself, is wrong.

at the time, i thought to myself, 'on what theological basis?' of course, a hundred years ago, and even when i was a kid in montana, we killed our own chickens or our neighbor did. i remember watching them jumping around headless in the yard. so surely the issue can't be simply that we've consolidated the killing from hundreds of homes and local communities to one facility. of course one can object to killing animals at all, but that is clearly a contested issue and not one held by a majority of christians. i haven't read deeply enough to say i won't be convinced on this point, and i do eat low on the food chain more for environmental reasons than concern about the immorality of killing animals. after all, i was in 4-H, raising my own sheep, cows, etc. that we then gave thanks for and share around our table.

but what about the impulse for efficiency itself? is there a value there that is in fundamental conflict with christian values? this depends, i suppose. is efficiency simply a means to profit and done in a way that disregards people? if so, it may conflict. but efficiency can also be a way to both make dangerous jobs less so, and to eliminate waste of all sorts from the production process. if so, then it may fit with christian values of stewardship. efficiency is a slippery value that can be pushed for good or ill. an example. in the factory, they've worked out a plan of shifting roles on the assembly line every 30 minutes so that people don't get so numb from doing the same thing over and over. the change required additional training and substantial getting used to, but has reduced turnover at the plant by 50%. furthermore, the introduction of specialized machines has mechanized some of the most dangerous parts of the process.

these are complex issues and deserve complex thinking. i welcome that, but fear too often we short change complex reflection for pat answers and critiques. our visit to tyson began to push us further into this sort of complex theological reflection, but in order to do it, we have to check our preconceived assumptions (what we know) at the door and enter with the intention of learning (what we don't know).

anon, and +peace

rescuing the bible from spong AND robertson

nicholas kristof, columnist for the new york times, did something many religiously orthodox christians like me will cringe at, but it deserves a careful look, and i've done it before myself, in a different way. that is: he gave sincere attention to another book by jack spong.

kristof's op-ed over the weekend deals with form episcopalian bishop john shelby spong's new book: the sins of scripture. he was writing it last summer when i did a bit of fieldwork in a course he taught at hartford seminary. the point, besides recycling some of his inflammatory theories like st. paul was a repressed gay man, is to say listen, the bible say some pretty awful things and many of them are portrayed as god's action or will. witness, for example, the command to kill the amalekites, man woman, child or infant (1 samuel 15).

kristof's genus in reviewing spong's work is to marginalize the more extreme claims and follow the hermeneutic of generosity. kristof writes, "this book is long overdue, because one of the biggest mistakes liberals have made has been to forfeit battles in which faith plays a crucial role. Religion has always been a central current of American life, and it is becoming more important in politics because of the new Great Awakening unfolding across the United States. Yet liberals have tended to stay apart from the fray rather than engaging in it."

kristof concludes that "Some of the bishop's ideas strike me as more provocative than persuasive, but at least he's engaged in the debate. When liberals take on conservative Christians, it tends to be with insults - by deriding them as jihadists and fleeing the field. That's a mistake. It's entirely possible to honor Christian conservatives for their first-rate humanitarian work treating the sick in Africa or fighting sex trafficking in Asia, and still do battle with them over issues like gay rights. Liberals can and should confront Bible-thumping preachers on their own terms, for the scriptural emphasis on justice and compassion gives the left plenty of ammunition. After all, the Bible depicts Jesus as healing lepers, not slashing Medicaid."

for the record, the evangelicals (at least some of them) are pushing for a fuller reading of the bible and its moral values than currently in fashion with segments of the political debate.

i personally would argue that the scripture's first and primary aim is to show forth god's grace and mercy known in jesus christ, and the spirit's power to draw us into living as his disciples. when the bible becomes a source for battles over which of us is right or which is damned, we've missed the claim made clearly by jesus in scripture: 'do not judge, or you too will be judged' but if those christians who, as i do, decry the conservative use of the bible as a moral legitimation for a narrow political program, don't publicly offer alternative readings of the bible and its contemporary relevance, then we're truly as sorry as kristof suggests.