Care or Cure?

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Richard Heyduck

Stanley Hauerwas:

“One of the demonic things that has happened to medicine is to change its purpose from care to cure, and that puts an unbelievable burden on doctors. It gives them a lot of power, but they break apart under the strain.”

Not being a medical doctor, I can’t speak for their stresses & strains. Given our societal conviction that every disease and sickness can – and ought! – to be healed, I can imagine that the strain Hauerwas is identifying is very real.
From my own standpoint, as a pastor of hundreds of people who will die, I experience the strain differently. I follow a Jesus who healed people. When we see programmatic statements describing his ministry as “Healing every disease and sickness,” we start expecting to see that pattern in our churches, assuming we are practicing real Jesus-style Christianity. But then we don’t. While some we pray for are healed, some by apparently normal means, some by apparently extraordinary means, others don’t get well. Some linger in pain and misery, while others just die. We think we – or they – must be lacking in faith.

But there’s another side to Jesus’ ministry, perhaps most blatantly in John 5. We get the idea that there are many, many sick folks gathered at the Pool of Bethesda. Jesus goes up to one man. I can imagine him carefully stepping over dozens of people just to get to the fellow. Out of all the sick folk there, only one healed.

In some ways our congregation is a typical United Methodist congregation. Since our membership is more heavily toward the elderly, we have plenty of funerals every year. Though it sounds crass, it is normal for old people to die – and none of our folks are growing younger. We’ve lost some key people in the last five years, and so far haven’t had people step up to fill their shoes. But that’s not the hardest part. The hardest part is the number of younger people who have been brought low with major illness, cancer and death. When I consider how many of our younger leaders have gone through major tragedy in the past few years, I become reticent to invite more to take up leadership in such a dangerous place.

As I think about the Hauerwas quote above, I become aware how much more congenial I find the idea of a cure than of care. Mixed up with that is my continued half-hearted acceptance of the call to effectiveness, originating in our culture echoing loudly in the church. We’re supposed to be effective. Being effective means getting things done. And I find getting things done to be harder and harder as more leaders are sidelined.

I’m thinking I need to learn some things.

First, I need to learn to let care supplant cure more often. I’m not going to stop praying for healing, but (maybe) be less insistent about it.

Second, I need to identify what really needs to be done and how my calling has been distorted by our hunger for effectiveness.

In Ephesians Paul speaks unfavorably of being tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine. I need to move beyond being tossed to and fro by every wind of circumstance, to let Jesus be the anchor of my soul – the anchor of our congregation.

Posted in Health Care, Local church, Ministry, Stanley Hauerwas | Leave a comment

Having a Future

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Richard Heyduck

For a taste of some real philosophy, take a look at Galen Strawson’s piece, Why I Have No Future.

What’s your take on what he calls NOF? How does it measure with your experience and your analysis of your experience?

My perception and self-experience not only place me in time as what Strawson calls a diachronic (as opposed to his episodic), but also within space, as the member of a particular community. Contra atomism (expressed on human terms as absolute individualism), I experience myself not merely as an atom (a monad? – I wonder how Leibniz would think of this) passing through time, but that as a person my very being is substantially constituted by my relationships with God and other people. While the people around me tend to occupy different times than I – in the sense that very few of them were born the same day and time, and very few will (likely) die the same day and time – the degree to which I have a future is not really dependent on them. While my current sense of self is intertwined with other people, I do recognize that my sense of self is more than a mere nexus of connections with others. There seems to be something here – what we call an “I.”

So do I have a future (or do I merely imagine a future – what’s the difference between having something and imaging one has something)? From everything I see, I do not have the power to sustain my self after death. I also observe that the power of connection and relationship with people around, me currently (partly) constitutive of who and what I am, lacks the power to sustain my self after death. In the course of doing my day job I’ve done lots of funerals through the years. In every case the dead person has stayed dead. Knowing that – that death is the end for each human, where does that leave me when it comes to having a future?

As a Christian, my hope – and here it is a hope, not merely in a theological sense but in an ordinary language sense of something to which I look forward but for which I lack absolute certainty – is not in my self understanding, in the natural course of things (i.e., a belief that humans are naturally immortal), in the connection with other people, but in my place in the story line of Jesus who was raised from the dead, and who promised to bring with him those who trusted their lives to him.

Posted in Death, Phenomenology | 1 Comment

Mission Field Appointments

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Richard Heyduck

The Texas Annual Conference is now implementing a policy of making “mission field appointments (document is a pdf).” Here’s a key part of the document:

In a series of conversations around the question “who is our
client,” the cabinet (center directors and superintendents) and bishop finally experienced one of those “a-ha” moments. We realized that our client was neither the pastor nor the congregation, but rather the mission field.

God was leading us to deploy pastors, not to make people
who were already living a life of faith happy, but rather to
reach persons living in our neighborhoods, communities and
cities that were not a part of a community of faith. God was
inviting us to appoint pastors who would lead congregations to reach out to people who had not yet heard the gospel, many of whom are young, of different racial/ethnic backgrounds, poor and/or underserved. Understanding the mission field as our primary client was a dramatic shift in our approach.

No one on the cabinet, including the bishop, knew how to make
appointments with the mission field as the primary client. The old mental frameworks in our heads and the expectations of pastors and congregations were major obstacles to change. We knew we needed to learn. Our reading, writing and conversation with outside people and groups intensified….

The mission field is understood as the overall context for ministry. It may be the setting within which a local church ministers. The mission field may be a population in and around
the local church’s community which is not being reached. It may be also be a population that does not have a United Methodist congregation in the vicinity. This perception challenges pastors and congregations to be outward focused, not inward. It encourages risktaking on behalf of mission.

Today an email from MissionInsite was forwarded to me (and to other church leaders around the district) from the district office. The Annual Conference signed up with this company that provides demographic research for churches last year. Today’s message told of their latest offerings. I’d gotten their basic demographic info for our area last year. One of the most potentially useful tools maps areas for lifestyle types (using Mosaic categories). Even more practically, they offered some ideas on how to use the Mosaic data.

So I ran a map of our county. No big surprises. Our area is considered primarily “Rugged Rural Style” and “Lower Income Essentials,” meaning most of the people in the county are counted in one of these two psychographic groups.

Curious how that compared with the rest of the Conference, I expanded the map view. Here’s a what a picture of most of the Conference (East Texas) looks like:

https://banditsnomore.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/demographic-map-of-texas-conference.jpg

Perhaps you notice there is a lot of light blue areas. Those are where the “Rugged Rural Style” dominates. The yellow/gold color is also pretty common. That’s the “Hardy Rural Families.” From the description given by MissionInsite, these folks sound like a step up the economic ladder from the “Rugged Rural Style.” It’s in areas like this that “Cowboy Churches” seem to be thriving. “Simple Churches worshiping a mighty God in a simple way,” is the slogan of one of these churches in our area.

If we are doing Mission Field appointments within these fields, we face some challenges. First, it seems that a fair percentage of people now headed into ordained ministry are coming from other demographic groups. Many are coming out of the churches in larger cities and suburbia. Second, the normal route to ordination includes a pathway through academia the enculturates its inhabitants away from blue collar, rural living. Doing things rural style is real cross-cultural mission for many college educated, seminary educated pastors.

Are psychographics useful in shaping church ministry, leadership, and mission? Are they being taken into account in our identification of the mission field? Are pastors profiled along these lines?

Posted in Ministry, Missions, Texas Annual Conference, United Methodism | 4 Comments

Christian or Muslim?

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Richard Heyduck

Whether President Obama is a Christian or a Muslim is back in the news. Apparently some pollsters had some free time on their hands so they asked people whether the president was a Christian or a Muslim. A surprising number – across the political and religious spectrum – appear uncertain.

I have never heard of Mr. Obama claiming to be anything other than a Christian. I  have heard of him claiming to be a Christian. In general, when I hear folks claim to be Christian I take them at their word.

I know that people can say they are Christian and be wrong in so claiming. They can be lying, confused about the concept, or fail to measure up. If you’d have asked me, “Are you a Christian?” before my senior year of high school I would have said, “Sure!” But by my later understanding it wasn’t until that year that I came to faith in Christ. I know, therefore, that Mr. Obama could count himself as a Christian but be wrong in his reckoning. Again, however, where through my experience of coming to faith in Christ I was able to recognize my own error of claiming the status “Christian,” I have no access to similar information about Mr. Obama. Having no such information, again, I have no reason to doubt his claim to be a Christian.

What of those who say that Mr. Obama is a Muslim because his father was a Muslim? Within the system of Islam that claim may be valid. But Mr. Obama, as a professing Christian, is not within the system of Islam. Here we are beginning to see that the question, “Is X a Y?” is always situated within a particular system of discourse. Within the Christian way of speaking, if you profess faith in Christ, you are a Christian. Within the Muslim way of speaking (at least according to some), if you are the child of a Muslim man, you are a Muslim. Observe that people can find themselves crossways with these systems. That is, according to Christian discourse one can be a Christian, while according to Muslim discourse one is a Muslim. These statuses are relative to particular systems of discourse.

So which is he? Is he really a Muslim or a Christian? Notice how emphatically I put that – even using bold letters! Not just “really”  but “really?” My argument is that there is no “really” apart from particular modes of discourse. Since my residence is within the Christian mode of discourse, I will use forms of identification inherent to that system. So will I say that Muslims are wrong to call Mr. Obama a Muslim (if they do)? Their opinions about Mr. Obama’s religious status are irrelevant to me. If they decide to act in some particular way toward the USA because of their understanding of Mr. Obama’s status (“He was born a Muslim – the son of a Muslim man – but claims to be a Christian, having renounced Islam and its prophet, so he is an apostate and we ought to treat him accordingly)” , then their opinions may become relevant to me.

So in the meantime, I will pray for Mr. Obama because he is the president of my country. And as a fellow claimant of faith in Christ, I can pray for him as one Christian for another also. I can also lament (perhaps) that news people and pundits are wasting their time on this issue, lacking anything substantive to talk about.

Posted in Barack Obama, Current events, Islam | Leave a comment

Brief review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Nomad

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Richard Heyduck

Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells many tales of her painful life growing up in and interacting with Islam in Arabian, African and European contexts. As one who has rejected Islam and belief in any god, she has become a full-fledged disciple of the Western Enlightenment. Her positive thesis is that “there are three institutions in Western society that could ease the transition into Western citizenship of these millions of nomads from the tribal cultures they are leaving. They are institutions that can compete with the agents of jihad for the hearts and minds of Muslims.”

From my angle of interest, she is a staunch advocate of a more vigorous Christian encounter with Muslims who have moved to the West. She sees the church as the most powerful vehicle of modernization and rationalization, which in light of her experience is the only hope for Muslims held captive in darkness. The Christianity she advocated, however, is a “moderate,” Lockean version of the faith, mostly interiorized and reduced to “God is love.” I’m not convinced that there remains a significant segment of the church in the West that is (a) evangelistic, (b) committed deeply enough to sacrifice to reach Muslim immigrants, and (c) convinced that they OUGHT to reach Muslims. In my experience, most of the “moderate” Christians who are energetic in their faith are perfectly happy to say Islam is adequate for Muslims, and repulsed by the idea of trying to change someone’s religion.

Posted in Books, Clash of Civilizations, Islam | Leave a comment

What about the Muslims?

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Richard Heyduck

A friend sent me this link today and asked what I thought of it. Here is my response.

Nothing surprising here. I’ve read enough literature on Islam – from Muslims and others – to have seen it before.

One thing Christians need to do is figure out how to differentiate their approach to Islam from that of secular Western modernity. Secular Western modernity is appalled that Muslims would want to influence the world and remold the world in its own image, out of obedience to God. Of course, those same folks are also appalled that Christians want to influence the world and capture all the nations and their peoples for the Kingdom of God in obedience to Jesus. Before 9-11, there was a rapprochement between Muslims and Christians as they discovered common ground in the face of the advances of atheistic secularity on nearly every front. That  rapprochement has, for the most part, been tossed aside since, and often replaced by a similar rapprochement between Christians and Western secularists (like Christopher Hitchens) against Islam. I don’t think this shift has been an improvement in the direction Christians ultimately want to go.

The advantage of bringing Taqiyya into the discussion is similar to the introduction of conspiracy theories. The great strength of the latter is that nothing can count as counter-evidence, since anything that appears to go against the conspiracy thesis is merely a sign of of how crafty and deep the conspiracy is. In the same way, Taqiyya leads us to believe we can never believe a Muslim when they say what we’d like them to say, only believing them when they say what our theories tell us they ought to be saying. (Here’s one instance of Muslim leaders saying something “nice:” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/us/01imams.html?_r=1)

Modern secularists and modern religious liberals tend to err in asserting that (deep down) all religions are the same. The secularists would say they’re all the same – evil, destructive, obscurantist, and wrong. Religious liberals would tend to say they all preach love, tolerance, openness and diversity. I think both groups are completely wrong and misguided, and that Christians are led astray insofar as we listen to either set. I’m one of those who even goes so far as to suggest that the category “religion” into which we put these diverse phenomena is itself mostly a creation of modernity and more likely to lead us astray than to help us. If “religion” is an artificial construct, then separating it from another artificial construct – like “politics” or “culture” is likely to lead us further in the wrong direction.

I find Alasdair MacIntyre’s definition of a tradition as an argument about the purpose, nature and goods of a group, extended through time, with forces and groups within and without to be very helpful. Contrary to the essentialist approach, Islam is not just one monolithic phenomenon. It is a complex movement of ideas, peoples and cultures through time. It has been shaped by arguments interior to the tradition and with traditions on the exterior. If a MacIntyrean approach like this is correct, we cannot lump Muslims into two groups, those who tell the truth about Islam (whether our expected truth is “religion of peace” or “die, infidel scum!”) and those who are deceptive. There is a contest within Islam as to the true nature of Islam – just as there is a similar contest within any other living tradition, whether Christianity or Western modernity. I’d even go so far as to argue that those who deny such a contest within their tradition are the real fundamentalists.

If we are right to use MacIntyre’s model to understand Islam, we non-Muslims are not in a place to define Islam. We can, however, engage them in conversation, recognizing that through engagement we, over time, can shape their understanding of what counts as Islam and what they as Muslims ought to be doing in the world. There is no guarantee that things will turn out the way we would like. But it’s worth a try.

So what do we do? My solution is to say that Muslims, like modern secular Westerners, need Jesus. My calling as a follower of Jesus is neither to kill them, restrain them or fear them. Instead, as I build relationships with them, I share Jesus with them through my words and actions. Jesus died for all sinners, whatever category we (or they) put them(selves) in.

Will it cost us to represent Jesus to these folks? Possibly. Some Muslims would like to do us harm. They say it quite openly. But we follow a Jesus who didn’t consider the potential for harm or suffering to be a primary determinant of his life. (“What – the authorities in Jerusalem want to arrest me and kill me? I guess I need to play it safe and avoid going to Jerusalem.”) If we really believe God wants us to make disciples of all nations (“ethne” – “people groups”), we can trust the guidance and empowerment of the Spirit to make it happen.

Posted in Clash of Civilizations, Current events, Islam | 3 Comments

Current Books

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Richard Heyduck

This has been a finishing week, book-wise.

First up was Douglas Farrow‘s little A Nation of Bastards. Not being Canadian, many of the references were foreign to my experience. I do see plenty of rejection of marriage as a stable institution. Much better, like everything else in our society, to just make up as we go along. His Ascension and Theology also looks interesting.

Second, was Peter Scazzero‘s The Emotionally Healthy Church. Sure sounds like a good idea to pay attention to the emotional elements in the work of making (and being) a disciple. Being more of a thinking type, I know I’ve neglected it too much.

Third, tonight’s finish, was Kenda Creasy Dean‘s Almost Christian, a stydy of ways the church is implicated in and might go beyond the Moralistic Therapeautic Deism described in Christian Smith’s Soul Searching. I know I want nothing to do with MTD, but as a (nearly) life-long inhabitant of consumeristic, individualistic culture, it’s tough to completely evade its tentacles.

There are some I’m still working on. First is Pierre Manent’s, An Intellectual History of Liberalism, tracing the tradition from the medieval era through Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and so on. I’ve read as far as the chapter on Rousseau. He brings in much more of the political theory of these folks than I’ve read before, so it’s helpful. And no, what he means by “liberalism” is not what most folks in America mean by liberalism these days. The liberalism here in view is the radical individualism and emphasis on rights that lies beneath both what we call liberals and conservatives, though they play different variations on the theme.

For something completely different, I’m also reading Dee Hock’s One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization. He’s one of those fellows I kept hearing Len Sweet talk about, so I thought I should get around to reading him.

Slower reads that I’m still working on include D. Stephen Long’s Speaking of God and Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality. And I’ll also be starting Daniel Bell’s Just War as Christian Discipleship.

And then I read some easy fiction for my down time.

Anyone out there reading something I might like?

Posted in Books | 1 Comment

Pursuing Holiness

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Richard Heyduck

One of the defining convictions of the Methodist movement is that it is possible to live a holy life, a life pleasing to God. Methodists have at least given lip service to this conviction since the days of John Wesley in the 18th century.

This conviction was no less popular in Wesley’s day than it is now. Three primary inclinations work against the conviction that holiness is possible. Some people have been badly burned by those who proclaim themselves to be holy. Through those actions, the “holy” life has been imagined to be the “stuffy,” “stilted,” “inauthentic,” “mean-spirited” or “narrow” life. As second inclination that stands against the conviction of possible holy living is that it is not, in fact possible. Try as we might, we will inevitably fail. While the first inclination is usually rooted in ones experience of others, this second inclination is more often rooted in ones experience of oneself. We’ve made the resolutions, we’ve tried to be perfect, yet we fail over and over again. A third inclination looks elsewhere. It sees that language of holiness – like some other words (righteousness, goodness, etc.) – divides people. These people are holy, those people are not. What we ought to say, according to this inclination, is that sure, people mess up sometimes, but deep down, all people are good, all people are already holy. And because the opposite of holy is marginalized, the emphasis on holiness is either muted or rejected.

United Methodists wouldn’t deny either of these kinds of experiences – we’d be foolish to try. But these experiences don’t tell us everything we need to know. Methodists have, however, historically recognized the reality and depth of human sin, that deep down all of us, even the best of us, are estranged from God, and profoundly fractured inside. In spite of this assessment of the human condition, and in spite of these experiences, Methodists remain hopeful about the possibility of holiness.

First, Methodists consider the commands of scripture. At the very least we run into God saying, “Be holy, because I am holy.” Then Jesus had to go and use the “P” word: “Be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.” While the counsel of despair might come on us at this point, Methodists have tended to draw the conclusion, “If God commands it, surely it must be possible.”

Second, Methodists consider that according to that same book of scripture, the life of holiness is not something we do on our own. My actions, my deed, my character, my performance, my resume – none of these will ever get me to the point where I am holy. Holiness, Wesley and his successors would say, is only possible through the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in us. The good news for us is that God not only commands holiness, but also graciously gives us the resources we need to live it.

It would be nice if, having said that our holiness is something the Holy Spirit does in us, we could just sit back, relax, and wait for it to happen. For holiness to happen, the Spirit will need to (a) remove some things, and, (b) add some other things. Some of this removing and adding is done through our cooperation, our learning to say NO to some of our desires and YES to God’s invitations. Just as marriage requires that we take up a certain set of practices, the life with God that leads to holiness requires us to take up certain practices.

Methodists modify these convictions with one more. The life of holiness, the embodiment of a life of love, joy and peace that is fully pleasing to God, is not only something for which we need the Spirit. It is also something for which we need other people. I will never be holy in isolation from the people around me. I need their input in my life. Sometimes that input is painful. They rebuke me and correct me. They offend me and hurt me, giving me opportunity to practice turning the other cheek and extending forgiveness. Other people, even those far from holiness (or at least far from what we take to be holiness), deliver us from self-righteousness by helping us see ourselves more clearly. Will we listen to them? Can we admit that we might hear the voice of God through them? It’s difficult, but that’s the way the holy life seems to work.

We also refuse to believe that holiness requires dullness. The life most pleasing to God is a life of love, joy, danger and adventure. Those are surely the characteristics we see in Jesus, the one we take as our model for life.

Are you interested in living a holy life? While Methodists believe Jesus is essential to the holy life, we don’t believe we have a corner on the market. In fact, we think we as a church are more likely to be holy the more we partner with disciples in other churches. Just as individuals usually go astray and miss holiness when they go it alone, so it is with churches. If you want live a holy life, try these few ideas. Worship God – not just on your own, but with others. Learn to hear “Yes” and “No.” Those inclined to depression and melancholy have trouble hearing Yes, while those convinced of their own rightness have trouble hearing No. God gives us both, so we need to be able to hear both. Take up some spiritual disciplines – reading the Bible, prayer, service. Finally, find a friend who would like to go on the journey with you, someone to encourage, provoke and challenge you, someone you will let speak into your life. Don’t go it alone.

Posted in Discipleship, Spirituality, United Methodism | 3 Comments

Latest from “Call to Action”

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Richard Heyduck

Tuesday, the United Methodist News Service put out its latest report on the work of the “Call to Action” Steering Team. They give the bad news first.

The United Methodist Church needs to change its operations denomination-wide to address financial challenges and be more relevant in its ministry around the globe.

True enough. We have plenty of financial challenges. But I’m not so sure about relevance. It seems the harder we pursue it the less we have it.

But there is also good news.

Despite these challenges, many churches of varied sizes and settings have found ways to grow and thrive.

In other words, while some churches seem locked in a death spiral of decline, some seem to be doing ok.

I’m not sure why we needed to fund two studies to discover this. Are there any surprises, anything unexpected here, anything that isn’t at the least verging on a truism?

They get more specific:

The study indicated some areas where improvement is needed:

  • More clarity and understanding about the denomination’s mission, culture and values
  • Less perceived organizational “distance” between and among the foundational units of the church
  • Better defined leadership roles, responsibilities, and accountability; and improvements in trust
  • More standardized management processes and reporting systems
  • Utilizing opportunities for improved affordability and effectiveness

It looks to me like the proposed solution is a more efficient and authoritative bureaucracy. Sounds like the usual solution those with power offer. Something along the lines of, “We have a great system, we just haven’t worked it purely enough, had the right people in the right positions, or, the people at the bottom (or congregations, in this case) just aren’t getting it.”

I have not heard enough to convince me that what we need is more power at the top, either of the denomination as a whole or of our annual conferences. More power for those in power is not a commonly successful strategy for working out trust issues – unless the trust we seek is something that can be commanded (as if by “trust” we mean people at the bottom “doing what we expect them to do”).

I see nothing here about theological or doctrinal clarity and unity. Of course, that might clash with what’s happening at Claremont School of Theology right now, so we’d better stay quiet about that.

Posted in United Methodism | Leave a comment

Predictable?

Posted on July 13, 2010 by Richard Heyduck

We’re just back from a trip to our 2010 family reunion. With a family of five, this means lots of driving to get there and back, staying in hotels, and eating out. Come mealtime while on the road, we tend to look for places we already know. We look for a place we know to have food the kids will eat and where we can predict there will be clean restrooms. Some places maintain pretty high standards wherever we find them (Chick-Fil-A currently heads our list). Other places vary greatly from place to place. We value the predictable.

But sometimes we stray across the line.

Since we were going to Paducah, Kentucky for the reunion, we could have taken the kids to the 6 Flags amusement park outside St. Louis. They’ve been to 6 Flags parks before. They know what to expect. Two out of three of the children would have been happy. Instead, we went to Silver Dollar City in Branson.

While SDC had roller coasters, it was not aimed entirely at teenagers and lovers of thrills. It was a park apparently designed for the whole family, for many age ranges. The layout of the park gave it a tinge of mystery. When I drive by a 6 Flags park, I can see several roller coasters and rides as I pass at 60 mph. When you approach SDC all you see is trees. Even as you’re in line for a roller coaster at SDC you can see very little – if any – of the ride. You don’t know what the ride is like until you experience it. It has a level of unpredictability I hadn’t seen at other amusement parks.

Can we handle unpredictability? In the current economic downturn most of our institutions have become extremely risk-averse. We perceive ourselves to have fewer resources – and doubt whether our resources, once expended, can be replenished. So we wait for the sure thing, the thing we see as predictable. Big business, though itself fragile of late, is much more predictable than anything new. So we go with the tried and true, the folks we know. Want to be creative, want to do something different? Well, just make sure you do it exactly like everyone else if you want any funding or support.

Predictability gives us a sense of calm. It delivers us from anxiety. We have enough stress and worry now that the more stability we can find, the better.

I read a book on Chaos Theory several years ago (I think it might have been the one by James Gleick). When researchers began examining the patterns of human heart rate over time, their initial expectation was that greater regularity would reflect greater health, while instability in the pattern would signal impending problems. They found exactly the opposite. Apparently a heart verging on unhealth was more easily predictable than a healthy heart.

Max Weber told us of movements started by charismatics that turned into institutions as succeeding generations turned their charisma into rational routines. Routinization makes things predictable as they run smoothly. We’d be in trouble without any routines to follow. I’d suggest, however, that we’re in just as much trouble if all we have are routines. In fact, one reason churches are declining so much in the US is that we have so majored on routines that we routinized away our need for God. We have all of church life entirely predictable, entirely routinized and rationalized. We are mortally afraid of being in a place of needing God. While God might be ok as an assumption of a transcendental argument, an actual living, guiding, providing, communicating, judging God is the last thing we want. At least that’s the conviction one might read from our actions.

I don’t know if it’s just because I’m a P in a world of J’s, but I don’t want to settle for the predictable. I don’t want to settle for a safe, secure, predictable life, a life where I can have God as my “buddy” or “heavenly Father.” I want a life of faith where if God doesn’t come through, I’m sunk.

That’s what I see in Jesus. When we look at Jesus we see plenty of predictability. If he crosses the authorities, they will stop him. If they aim to stop him, they won’t do it gently. They’ll act decisively. If they crucify him, he will die. If he dies, he’ll stay dead. Can’t get much more predictable than that. And yet Jesus went that way. He bet on the sure thing – against himself. And he won.

I want to walk the way of Jesus. No, I don’t want to suffer. I don’t want the world to turn against me. I don’t want to be crucified. But if that’s what it takes to follow the Jesus who said, “If anyone wants to follow me, let him take up his cross and follow me,” then that’s what I want.

Posted in Spirituality | Leave a comment