Paris, Islam, Jihad and Christ

Last night recreation venues in Paris were attacked, bombs were detonated, AK-47 guns were fired into crowds and hostages were taken, suicide bombers exploded themselves.  We don't yet know for sure who is responsible for the murder of 200+ and wounding of 600+ people.  One witness reports the gunmen shouting 'God is Great!' in Arabic, and shouting about Frances participation in Syria.   It seems likely this was an attack by Islamist Jihadists against a soft 'western' target.  I anticipate that IS in its various forms is the instigator. 

Perhaps you will disagree, but I think it's necessary to say that these attackers were Muslims - followers of Islam. I know many peaceful, law-abiding gentle and wise Muslims.  That's not my point.  My point is that these people - were also Muslims, radicalized and driven by some big idea.  We know two things for sure about IS and radicalized Islam in general: First, they have an apocalyptic vision in which provoking the west to war is seen as a necessary precursor to bringing about their understanding of the 'end-times', and therefor s a victory for universally enforced Islam.  (This is understood primarily as a Christian versus Islam Holy War in their particular framework of apocalypse.); Second, they want to establish a 'Caliphate' immediately - a single Muslim ruler to rule all Muslims across the world.  This Caliph will enforce unity among Islam, imposing the Sunni variety of Islam and forcing either the conversion or death or all Shia Muslims. I don't know what they would do with Sufi Muslims - I presume kill them. 

Last night took careful planning and funding.  Imagine the time and care it took to make those bombs - the slow, attentive process of packing the explosives, forming the detonator, packing the metals around the explosives to cause maximum carnage.  Imagine the heart that beat in those chests as they undertook this painstaking and careful work. Imagine the nurtured hatred, the heart of murder, cold, slow and deliberate.  The westerners they killed were seen by them as sub-human.  Yes, I am assuming this, but how else could any person operate at this level?

Jesus Christ - God born as a human - came with a different approach.  He expected that He and we would be persecuted, insulted, injured, robbed and murdered.  What is His teaching and commandment to us?  Love those who hate you, bless those who persecute you, walk a second mile if forced to walk the first mile, offer an uninjured cheek if hit in the face. It doesn't make any sense, and that's exactly why it is the only answer to murder.  

The Holy Spirit, speaking through Paul says the same in Romans 12, quotes Proverbs 25:21-22.  It is written:

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.  Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.  Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.  Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.  If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.  Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”  To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

So, may we, as Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, refuse to speak of retribution and revenge.  Let us weep with Paris, pray for Paris and act with honor towards our enemies and also our Muslim neighbors who live peacefully as a part of our shared society.  Let us work for justice at home and in the Middle East and shame the men of death with our care and wisdom.  May our military work to empower people in the middle-east with equity and upholding the rule of law.  May our leaders carry the sword of leadership (Romans 13:4) with humility and wisdom.  Let us overcome evil with good.

Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ, who transformed hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, first of all mine. Jesus fulfills not only the Jewish Torah law but also He fulfills and exceeds Shariah law. He alone can change the human condition, transforming us from fear to love, power to service, hate to care, war to peace. 

Liturgy

I hope you will take a moment to click on this link and read this page of another blog.  He argues that liturgy in church worship is a good thing.  I agree.

At Christ The Way we do not use classic Christian liturgy for all of our service, but we have introduced some beautiful liturgical elements to our services, all while embracing the best of modern thought and post-modern thought.

Enjoy.

http://pagebrooks.org/2015/10/16/why-you-shouldnt-use-liturgy-in-your-worship/

No Guile

John 1:14 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!”

Why did Jesus say this of Nathaniel? Why was it so noteworthy that this soon-to-be-disciple had no 'deceit'? (The old King James Version uses the word 'guile'.)  Why was this quality important to Jesus?

One of the most remarkable things about the beginnings of Christianity is that it started with one person - The Lord Jesus Christ, and the world has never been the same since.  Christ's chosen method of changing humanity and the world for all time...was to entrust the entire mission to 12...soon to be 11...quite ordinary men.  They were an odd mixture of people, of personality types, of professions.  You or I probably wouldn't chose them to start a company, let alone change the world.  So what exactly was Christ doing by selecting them?

Noteworthy also, is that each of these men gradually understood that the Kingdom which Jesus was building was not one that would bring them glory or power, but separation from their families, homes, businesses, and a life of constant uncertainty, risk, danger, and eventually, certain death (all but John who seems to have died of old age after a long lifetime of hardship and imprisonment). They were at no point compelled to take on this life, this calling.  At any time, indeed over many thousands of opportunities, then could have bugged out, and simply faded back into any other life.  It required a continually renewed commitment to their life of hardship and death to see their vocation through. What motivated them?

I think it was that they had seen the truth, and were people who could not deny the truth that they had seen.  This, I think, is the one quality that they all shared - they could not deny the truth.  Perhaps this was the quality that Jesus was selecting for, when he chose his 12 disciples...and it worked through in all 12 of them.  Even Judas Iscariot did not run from the truth - but rather his own fear and hunger for influence and power overtook him.  The other 11...the truth overtook them. 

Yes, here are men in whom there is no deceit. They are men who are true to the truth...to The Truth. 

May I, may we, be so called. 

Buddhism, The Four Spiritual Pains, and Christ

Buddhism (as reported by Richard Rohr, the celebrate Franciscan contemplative) identifies  Four Limitless Qualities: loving kindness (maitri), compassion, joy, and equanimity.

The American Book of Living and Dying - a wonderful text often favored by hospice chaplains, identifies four areas of universal spiritual pain, often faced by those who are dying: Meaning/Purpose, Relatedness, Forgiveness, and Hope.

It seems to me that these two sets of ideas can be connected together...layered. Also, that the central living-giving truths of the Christian Way - that is Christ Himself - provide a uniquely effective way to satisfy the deepest human needs that these two sets of 'four' map out:

Meaning and Purpose: Each human person has a profound need to to matter, to have made a difference, to have discovered our place in the universe. That is, we need to have understood that we, our life, has meaning and that we exist for a reason.
The Buddhist value of equanimity connects here, and closely resemble what Christians mean by 'peace', We find balance - equanimity and peace when we are at rest in ourselves. This comes when our unrest is satisfied. When we discover that our purpose is to love God, others and ourselves, when we have insight that the meaning of our lives is to worship and love God, we find rest for our souls, we can focus our seeking and yearning and it finds its satisfaction in discovering the loving God who is above us, beside us and within us. This active, growing rest, is what Augustine spoke of when he said that 'we find our rest when we rest in thee', meaning Christ. Christ alone purposes us and gives us meaning and thus we find equanimity in Him. The Gospel of John calls this 'abiding'.

Relatedness refers to the ability to relate to people, places, times and things (pets even) and yet to hsve the grace to let these connections slip away and release, especially as we die. you can see that this requires great peace and a certains restful , centeredness in Christ, to do well. Only when we have anchored our meaning and purpose in Christ and found equanimity, can we yield up all other relationships. The Buddhist quality of Loving Kindness connects here because it is essentially a relational quality. Kindness is shown from one creature to another - in relationship. Love is also a relational quality. What Buddhists call maitri, what Jews call hesed, is this Loving Kindness - sometimes rendered in Judeo-Christian circles as mercy - although I think that word has come to mean something slightly different these days.) Hesed is an essential quality of the One True and Living God - Yahweh - who came to us as Jesus Christ. On the cross, Christ demonstrated the ultimate and one-time-forever relational loving kindness when God died to absorbs and nullify the power of all death and darkness so that we might be free from death and it's seed, sin Sin is essentially broken relationship.

Forgiveness can follow now that the cross means that God has forgiveness us. As we respond to this wonderful truth and accept God's forgiveness, we can offer forgiveness to others. All the offenses against us pale in scope and significance when we gain insight into the depth to which God has forgiveness each of us, and us collectively. Only when we have forgiveness another person, can we have full compassion with them. Compassion means to have co-passion - to 'feel together' with them. To allow ourselves to feel what they are feeling. Indeed I have long held that compassion is not only a fruit of forgiveness but also it's precursor. When we can climb into another person's shoes, then we can understand them, realize that we are not so very different from them, and in turn find the compassion to forgive them. God has compassion toward us, that is he is forgiving toward us. The Cross enacts His compassion and forgiveness as God was alone able to clear away all that stands between a healed relationship between us and Him.

Finally, Hope, which is the prospect of life and goodness, the sum of all that has gone before, is yet ahead of us. The dying can die in hope because God has broken death and provided eternal life. Those who die without God , die with crippled hope. Hope is not just for death but for every moment of life. Indeed the contemplatives of both Christianity and Buddhism encourage us all to live 'in the moment' by which they really mean to live fully alive - to have life and to have it abundantly. Christ alone brings thi s hope and abundant life. Without hope there is no joy - Joy and Hope are synonymous in that hopelessness and joylessness are also synonymous. Just ask anyone who has faced suicide. Hope, Joy, Life - these words travel together. They are facets of Christ, who alone brings Joyful Hope, Hopeful Joy.

To Christ be the glory, Prince of Peace, the Hope of Nations, Minister of Reconciliation, The Way, the Truth and the Life, now and for all ages, Amen!

Ashley Madison and Germanwings

This is a two - part post.  Here a brief thought from earlier this year that I did not publish at the time.

Depressed Morality April 17, 2015
Today I have been taking in the enormity of the Germanwings aircraft crash, in which, it now seems, the co-pilot locked the captain out of the cockpit and flew the airplane into a mountainside at full speed, killing all aboard.  The cockpit sound recorder carries the steady sound of the co-pilot's breathing and the screams of the passengers just as the airplane hit the ground.
     Subsequent reporting reveals that the co-pilot had been suffering for some years with bouts of depression.  Of course lots of people suffer with bouts of depression without intentionally murdering almost 200 people - men women and children.  It seems to me that something else must have been happening in that man's mind.

Now for a more recent musing - Ashley Madison
The Ashley Madison website for married people who are seeking to commit adultery, or at least play with the idea - was always reprehensible to me.  So I  don't feel any sorrow for the 33 million people whose identity has been revealed in the recent hack and Internet-publishing of their client base.  What has surprise me is that they had 33 million paying customer. The NYT reports that only 3 zip codes in the USA did not have payin Ashley Madison customers - two is Alaska and one in New Mexico, all are tiny towns with sometime intermittent Internet connectivity.  Wow.  What does this tell me?  Some commentators write that this is another fruit of the individualism and the metaphysical-sexual fulfilment culture that is the zeitgeist of our culture. I agree.

I'm not making any further connection between the Germanwings mass-murder and Ashley Madison, except this - that in both there is the assertion that the need of the individual trumps the needs of the 'other'.  That pilot was surely mentally unwell - and just how and in what way, we will never know. What we do know is that he chose his own perceived and immediate needs over the very lives of 200 people.
 Surely those who act out their need for further sexual excitement than their marriage currently provides, are engaging in deeply selfish short term thinking that will reap deep and long lasting pain in the very souls of their spouses, parents, children and friends. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

I yearn to ever more become the sort of person who embodies a deep, loyal, empowering, dignifying presence not just in my own self, but in the community and families that I am a part of.  More and more I see this Christian life as shared.  Truly no person lives alone. Our lives are not our individual fiefdoms, they are a shared and deeply connected organic life in which sin never affects just the sinner, and love never can be contained in just one soul.  Both ripple through the connections that are the essential us.

I acknowledge the darkness, sin and dysfunction that remains in me, a work-in-progress, a sinner saved by grace and currently being sanctified by Christ.  Inside me is a little piece of the Germanwings pilot. Inside me is the potential to be in the Ashley Madison shame database. There is no them, only us. Thanks be the Christ, the author and sustainer of our faith, our life, our hope.

Antediluvian Widespread Evil

As someone interested in both science and theology, I have a particular interest in the human race and it's history.  Contrary to some people who believe the human race is only 6,000 years old (based on their arithmetic of Bible accounts) the overwhelming, irrefutable evidence of science is that humans have been around for a lot longer.  That does not mean the Bible is wrong, just that the Bible is not that interested in telling us about exact time periods of human history.   The Bible is not a science handbook but a book of infallible truth, carried in a variety of literary genres, most of which are not concerned with being a text book.

One such idea is that there was once a great flood that God used to wipe all humanity off the face of the earth, except for 8 people he preserved in a boat. The Noah's Ark and the Flood story is about evil human nature and it's relationship to the environment, disinterest in the good God, God's sovereignty and right of judgment, and His continuous desire to redeem and recreate, and finally His inviting us into that recreating process.   The timescales are quite irrelevant. The exact extent of the flood is not the point.  The essence and quality of the truth conveyed in the Bible narrative is what is intended.

I spent my teen years tramping the upland massif of Dartmoor in Devon in England, where bronze age relics are everywhere to be seen.  Perhaps that is why i have no problem thinking about human in great antiquity.

That's Grimspound - the remains of a Bronze age settlement on Dartmoor dating from about 1300 BC.  I read today a story from the nearby county of Somerset:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150416-our-ancestors-were-cannibals

Our ongoing research shows that ancient people, although great artists and craftspeople, had a poor view of human sanctity.  If cannibalism and human sacrifice were normal ancient impulses, how much suffering did God abate when he selected a few people in a global 'do over' for humanity?
Do we need historical evidence of the 'fallenness' of human nature?  Perhaps the news headlines from various war zones and ISIS provide evidence that human morality is not evolving or improving as many modernists might suppose or hope.  Human nature, like God, is the same yesterday, today and I fully expect, tomorrow.

Thank God - for he has made a way of saving us from ourselves, from the darkness we each carry, and has made a path of forgiveness, affirmation, healing and growth.  That is the Way of Christ.

(And just in case you were worried about all the ancient humans who died in those days of flood and rain...see my previous blog post.)

A Rich Day, Part 1: Humility and Recognition

     Wednesday April 15, 2015 was an extraordinary day in the life of this chaplain.  4 aspects will remain with me, and I'll blog on each one.  In this post I want to share with you a simple moment.
     As usual for my workplace chaplaincy role, I visited with the employees of one of my companies at 6:15 AM to walk the line of field-technician trucks and meet the men and women with a one-on-one handshake and a friendly word.   Today the company was meeting at a function hall to give everyone a breakfast buffet, some hoopla and to announce the first quarter results.
     The company principals gave their presentations followed by each of the senior directors, finally the HR director.  She had a couple of slides and the final bullet-point was my name with two exclamation marks after it.  Ashley Chartier was so gracious to me, thanking me for my work over the year 'from the bottom of her heart'.  Everyone applauded and then a few people stood up, then more, and soon all 80 people in the room were on their feet, applauding me.  A standing ovation for a chaplain. For me.  I was just crushed with humility, genuinely - which I was as unexpected to me as their applause.  I motioned for them to sit down and they did.  The principal echoed Ashley's thanks and the meeting moved on.  I however was just so deeply moved.
     I don't work for either praise or thanks, but I'll take them if they come.  What moved me so very deeply was that my ministry was recognized and valued.  It was a gracious gift of God to me.  Not all the leaders of my last church shared their sentiment, a fact that has humbled me these last 3 years.
     I may not know what the next few months may bring, but I want to stay with this group of people, just as I have stayed connected to the kind people from my previous church.  Thank you God for a unique moment.  You have humbled your servant, and in due time, have lifted him up (James 4:10).  Thank you Lord for this encouragement.