Catholics, Church and the Constitution

I woke up this morning and found myself musing over the recent revelations involving the Missouri bishop charged with failing to report to authorities what he knew: that one of the priests in his Diocese had, over a long period of time, engaged in habitual acts of child-abuse of a sexual nature.

Several things struck me as I lay there in the dark. First, it struck me with a sudden force that I was really, really angry. Angry at the bishop. Angry at the church. How strange. What about the priest? One might wonder why my ire was not directed in greater measure toward the wicked man who actually abused the innocent children. And so indeed I did begin to wonder.

What I came to realize is that I expect there to be wicked people in the world, and even in lower levels of church leadership. That certain men will, given the opportunity, use children for sexual pleasure surprises me none. It's part of the mix here on broken planet Earth.

What sets my blood boiling is the thought of people in higher (sometimes much higher) levels of church leadership failing to call others in the church to account -- or, in this case, even complying with good and just civil laws designed to protect children from dangerous sexual predators.

So I lay there in a sudden seizure of mental paralysis. Which is worse? And more fundamentally, is either deed really any worse than the other? To sexually abuse a child is an awful thing. To lay children down before the pagan altar of "protecting" the reputation of the church (I guess that one didn't work out so well) is no less awful.

I should hate both sins. And I need to love both sinners. And I should expect failures in church leadership to also be part of the mix here on broken planet Earth.

But I have not been feeling much love or compassion for the Missouri bishop. And I still cling to silly notions that here on broken planet Earth failures such as seen in this Missouri bishop should not happen.

Why?

Perhaps it's because of the abuse I have received at the hands of self-protecting church leaders that I have such a visceral (dare I say?) hatred for the church leaders. I've never been sexually abused by anyone in the church before. My gut reacts to sins I know well enough from the victim's perspective. I am a victim several times over of abuse by turf-protecting, reputation-protecting and self-protecting church leaders. An area of unforgiveness in me is revealed.

But then my thoughts moved on to the next puzzling thing. Yes, both sorts of sins are to be expected in the church. Sexual predators and organizational Machiavellis.

What happens when they collide?

I was struck by the thought that the writers of the Constitution knew something about this. They split the executive branch from the legislative branch. And they further split law-writers from the law enforcers. What have we, in the church, done to address this need? The writers of the constitution understood human nature well enough. Should not the church understand it even better?

Clearly the Missouri bishop had more than a little too much of the executive branch and the judicial branch wrapped into one under his hat. If in the church the executive and judicial branches were more distinct, we'd not (one would hope) have been so likely to see someone in the "executive wing" of the church so blatantly and awfully protected by such utter moral failure on the part of the "judicial wing" of the church.

But we don't. Not in the Catholic church. I see that in the news. And not in the Protestant church. I experienced that in person. In my Protestant church the break-down seems not to be in the ideal set-up, nor even in the legal set-up. In my experience the local executive branch (pastor/priest) was beholden in some way to the judicial branch (vestry/leadership committee). But only on paper. In practice I found, to my great distress and personal pain, that the priest rules and the vestry obeys. I guess some sort of similar process fails in the Catholic church too.

Lord Jesus, have mercy on us, your church. And have mercy on me. I am part of it, and I am obliged to remain in it. I am reminded of an old quote which seems sometimes to be attributed to Augustine and other times not...

"The church is a whore. But she is my mother."

Lessons From A Hamster

At least twice in recent months I dreamed I was holding a struggling hamster in my hands. In both dreams I struggled to accomplish two rather incompatible goals. One the one hand, I didn't want to hurt the tiny creature I had in my strong hands. On the other, I didn't want the hamster to escape my grasp and fall to the floor.

Injury and/or death awaited the hamster if it fell from my hands, but the very same fate lay in store for the hamster if I held it too tightly. And the problem was this: the hamster, in both dreams, was in full panic mode.

We have two hamsters in our home, so I can attest to the fact that hamsters do panic – and when they do, the floor is the next stop if you're not watching them closely. They'll jump to their death, given the opportunity. When they've decided to panic, that is.

So... why the dream? I'm not sure, but I have some guesses. I tell guests in our home regularly that I love to think of the hamsters as reminders for humans of how God thinks about us. We're dumb as a box of rocks (with all the smart ones taken out) and yet he absolutely adores us. We cannot do one blasted useful thing for him, but he's just tickled pink to watch us just to see what we'll do next. He even delights in watching us sleep. Obviously the illustration should not be taken too far, but I still find it helpful.

But what does God do with us when we're panicking? Here I may be reaching too far to interact with a dream that has more to do with last night's pizza than with instruction from on high. But I had the dream twice, so it must have significance in my own thoughts, if not God's.

In the dream I found myself both times coming to the same conclusion. The safest place for the struggling hamster was a cage. I wanted to hold and caress the hamster, but it was squirming like a banshee and to keep it from escaping my hand (and falling to the floor) I had to squeeze it too hard. In the cage I would not have to hold the hamster. It'd be a restricted world for the hamster, but it'd be a safe one.

When in life I find myself feeling caged in, perhaps the time has come to reflect on whether I would be willing to rest (without struggling) in my Father's hands. The sense of imprisonment might just recede if I could.

99.9999999999999%

I was struck by something yesterday morning as I sat in church. The universe is huge. (Stop the presses!) But seriously. Huge. Beyond our comprehension, huge. And largely lifeless. Which means that some 99.999999999999% of it is doing exactly what God designed it to do. Give or take a hundred 9's...

What struck me in that moment, as a programmer by trade, is that it makes all the sense in the world (pardon the pun) that God takes a keen interest in getting that last 0.0000000000000001% working right. We're the sticking point to an otherwise perfectly running program, as it were. My goodness, the lengths I will go to when I know that my program is perfect — except for one thing.

Of course I am usually wrong. I fix the one thing and later find out something else isn't perfect either. But God knows. He's not misinformed on the matter. He's got 99.99999999999999999999% of the universe working like a clock. It's just us.

And here is where love comes into play. Because as a programmer I might be inclined to kill the bugs that plague my otherwise perfectly running program. Most customers won't mind losing 0.00000000000001% functionality if the rest of the product works great. But God didn't take the easy way out. Not like that. He wants to restore what was lost. Not annihilate it and release a product with slightly fewer features.

But so many souls! Six billion? Seven? So many problems, and all bound up in the tiniest corner of his project. But then I remember that for every human soul on earth there are dozens of galaxies (if not more) and that in each galaxy there are a hundred billion stars... and God's got them all working just fine. It's suddenly not so amazing that God is able to pay attention to me. He's running the universe. And most of it is running just fine. It's just that last 0.00000000000000000% that needs help. A few billion souls in a tiny corner. No, for God the daunting part is not the count of the souls but rather the price to redeem them.

Infinite power, infinite wisdom, and infinitely tender love... and perhaps a touch of a programmer's perfectionism. He wants to get that last bit right. How wondrous to see the lengths God will go to in order to get our universe right. To give up himself, to become like us, to die for us... in order to perfect that last 0.0000000000001%

What a mighty God we serve!
What a mighty God we serve!
Angels bow before Him.
Heaven and Earth adore Him.
What a mighty God we serve!

Revenge Fantasies

I just watched The Help with my wife. It was enjoyable. But that does not mean it was good.

Entertaining? Yes. Heart-warming? Frequently. The movie also shone a spotlight on hatred — mostly of the racial sort. To the extent it reminds us all of our common humanity, and of our need to steer our hearts clear of hating others (especially others who gain that distinction by means of skin color or such), so much the better. But when all is said and done, I left the movie feeling that I had been watching a female revenge fantasy.

Many years ago (whenever it was that Air Force One came out...) I made a mental commitment to avoid male revenge fantasies at the movie theater. Male revenge fantasies are typically violent. Extremely. The simple formula is, "You took something good from me. Now I will rip your limbs off, one by one. But I won't move too fast because I don't want you to die too quickly."

Needless to say, this is not the life God calls us to, and it scares me that so many of us have allowed ourselves the secret pleasure of watching someone else engage in violent revenge, and to ourselves vicariously savor the agony inflicted upon the original offender.

I'm reading a great book right now, titled What's So Amazing About Grace. Perhaps that has made me momentarily more sensitive on the topic. Perhaps it'd be best if my sensitivity became permanently. Grace is underrated. Grace is the forgotten word. To the point that many people in common society would struggle to define the word with any clarity.

But I digress. To our movie. The Help. It's a female revenge fantasy. By and large, the good characters are good. The bad characters are bad. Really bad. And the worst character of all? Well, by the end of the movie she gets what she deserves. A female revenge fantasy. Like sugar, it tastes sweet. And when consumed in a theater, it doesn't turn sour in your stomach. You leave the theater feeling great.

But it rots your soul.

I mean that. If we savor revenge fantasies, we'll live them out too — to the extent we can. For we, to greater or lesser extent, become what we worship. If we worship revenge in the theater, we'll appreciate it well enough in the home. And at work. And at church.

Most of what Hollywood produces includes a slice of revenge fantasy, which is to justice what pornography is to sex. But Hollywood does sometimes get it right. To see what revenge does in real life, I'd recommend Mystic River.

Most movies don't tell the true story of revenge. Revenge destroys the souls of those who engage in it. Its destructive power is guaranteed to backfire. Mystic River captures this subtle truth, though perhaps too subtly. I suspect many never see how revenge backfires so tragically in that story's telling.

It's because revenge destroys those who pursue it that God calls us to love our enemies. Ironically, this commandment from God is noted, word for word, in the movie The Help. Several times. The words are celebrated.

I was reminded of Gladiator, a horribly violent movie which,  near the end of the movie, offered up Russell Crowe (with bloody hands) ask his own amphitheater audience when they would stop taking pleasure in violence. Wait! Isn't that what we Americans just did in this theater? Have we come so far since the Romans?

The Help engaged in this same sort of hypocrisy. Love your enemies. Wait! The high point of the movie was when pie (laced with fecal matter) got served up to the unsuspecting enemy! Her just desserts? Fine. But call it what it is. The bad woman ate shit in a pie that tasted great? How fitting, since anybody who left The Help with no misgivings probably did the same.

When Clean Words Don't Do Justice

Occasionally my thoughts grow dark, and what I want to say to others or to God seems to lack communicative power... that is, unless I permit myself to salt my comments with a few choice words that wouldn't pass the family-friendly filter test. Add that extra word or two, and suddenly I feel like I have really said how I feel. Suddenly I feel I have been more truthful about how I am feeling.

At times like these, and I had one a day or two ago, I found myself reflecting on the usefulness of coarse words. Occasionally they seem almost the right word — le mot juste. Without them, I have failed to communicate what I am feeling.

But this morning as I returned to this reflection (yes, after having shared rather bluntly with the Lord how I felt about an injustice I am being subjected to) I realized (I think) that there is a better way to approach the matter.

When clean words don't suffice, I think it's wiser to conclude not that I need to salt up the language a bit, but rather to conclude that I have discovered a place in my heart where I desperately need healing.

In short, coarse words are not part of a healthy diet, but rather a thermometer. My sense of need for them provides an indicator of my spiritual condition. I'll know healing has occurred (in part or in full) when I can speak, and do justice to my thoughts, without feeling a need to use coarse language.

To stretch the analogy a bit further, my use of course language is going to be about as helpful to God and to others as a coughing fit in the presence of the healthy. They'll know how I feel... and if they are wise, they'll take a step or two back from the stuff coming out of my mouth.

Armed with this new insight... I now return to prayer. I obviously need some pretty serious healing in a few spots....

The Last Chapter

Editorial comment: I hope I'll be able to get this thought down concisely... but don't bank on it.

I've been struck recently (from a number of angles) by the simultaneous arrogance and folly with which we interpret our lives and the times we live in. From the smallest details of our day-to-day living to the largest trends of global topics... we tend to think we understand "most of it" and can explain even more of it. And we are fooled by our own thoughts.

A book which was thrust upon me recently proved very rewarding... so first prize to author Nissam Nicholas Taleb. His book (Fooled By Randomness) proved more than a little thought-provoking. He focused mostly on how people interpret financial results. (For example, he analysed the dangers of assuming that "Since Warren Buffett has done so well over three decades, he must be a superior investor." Well, that is very possible. But it's also possible that he's the luckiest coin flipper among 40,000 starting contestants. After 15 flips you can expect at least one person to have demonstrated "a real knack for flipping only heads.")

Taleb's point is that we tend to look at what happened and then construct a story around why it had to happen. Why Harry Potter was destined to succeed. Well, it's often easy to explain why something had to happen, once you know that it did happen. How many other fabulous writers never become well-read? Quite a few. We only know about the ones who became big. And (after the fact, as always) gushing journalists explain why it's obvious the author earned the fame, deserved it... had written in such a way as to guarantee success.

It comes closer to home when we examine our own lives. I still remember to this day a lousy day back in 2nd grade. I was in a crowded room in a Christian camp-ish setting when the leader said that beneath a single chair was taped a candy bar. I reckoned I'd had a lousy day and was a good candidate to receive such bliss. I told God as much. And lo and behold... it worked out that I did (!) win that candy bar... it was under the seat of my very own chair. A 1-in-a-hundred winner... but if I had not won, I am sure I would not remember the incident today, 35 years later. I remember also vaguely that on other such days my views were not so honored by God's stamp of approval. Days on which the candy bar went to someone else, so to speak. I still wonder to this day about the distinction between "I won that candy bar by fluke" and "I won the candy bar because God decreed it."

Too often we use that latter definition, and it's sooo easy to do in hindsight. But the folly of it is that we cannot seem to predict God's sovereign decrees in advance nearly so well as we employ insights into his sovereign will after the fact. We construct so many stories, explaining what God is teaching us and providing illustrations of how God has been doing it...

And I am as guilty as the next person in this perilous adventure. Perhaps even more guilty. I am deeply confident that God is teaching me treasured lessons through a prolonged investment misadventure. Sure that God has my family through the financial debacle through gainful employment... but others will tell how God sustained their family through loss of their home... loss of every asset they own. We each weave our tales in order to explain the outcome we currently face.

It seems to me sometimes that agnostics, atheists and others are not quite so much prey to this folly. I remember the figurative slap in the face from 20 years ago. I commented that God had been kind to me, seeing as my leg in a full cast had been spared some discomfort by a very mild summer. The woman (not a believer) looked at me in awe and said, "Do you really think God gave the entire midwest a cool summer just for the sake of your leg??"

She had a point. I found myself stunned, not sure how to answer. How easy it is to make ourselves the center of the story, and to pretend we know how it ends and how it is proceeding.

What takes more bravery is to say, "I have no idea how this story ends. In fact, it's God's story. Not mine. And my story is only relevant insofar as it pertains to His story. And God has not revealed to me what role I have yet to play."

I mostly don't say that. I instead have a habit of thinking about today as if it's more or less a page in the final chapter of a book. I can explain so much about how God got me to this day. So much about where God is taking me. We know, of course, that today is (for most of us) not nearly the last chapter of our books. But we talk all too often with the confidence of someone who has read the whole book. When we haven't.

The story belongs to God. And I don't know what he's up to most of the time. And I take strong positions more often than I should.

So what inspired me to write this blog? A number of things. More than a few... Here's one...For example, note how many of us Christians alive today, when pressed on the matter, share a hunch that the Lord will return before we die. Hidden in there, I believe, is a commitment to the notion that we are integral to the story. How can it end after we're gone? Of course that sounds absurd when stated baldly. But count me among the guilty. Do I see signs that the end is near? Yes! But then so have past generations. A bit more humility here is due, both from me and the rest of the living saints. More than likely we'll join the ranks of the dead saints and God's story here on Earth will be still in full stride. The last chapter coming some time after my own death? Perish the thought.

But the most recent impetus (and by that I mean the last 120 minutes) was from a comment that theologian Mark Noll shared in a recent interview. He pointed out that neither Martin Luther nor John Calvin would have tolerated the notion that the earth revolves around the sun. But just two generations later, Noll notes, Lutherans, Calvinists and Catholics would together with one voice lend credence to that which is taken for granted by all educated people regardless of creed. Noll wryly (and astutely) proceeded to assure his interviewer that he (Noll) is not enough of a scientist to shed light on current topics of interest. (I can imagine one or two he might have had in mind...), But Noll felt very comfortable as a historian to say that in light of these historical episodes we Christians should not be too hasty in our assessment of God's truth where the latest hot scientific debate is concerned.

To use my own words, I think Noll would point out that the last chapter on many such matters is not yet written.

So let this rambling blog try to wrap up with this observation. Where one cannot predict the future, humility must be afforded the past.

God, grant me the humility to admit I have no clue what you're doing. You're God, and I'm not. It's enough to know you love me, and, where the future is concerned, to not presume too much beyond that.

Hidden Commitments

I've been reflecting on the turbulence of life lately. How we find things so complicated and intractable. Poverty. Politics. Church problems. Family problems.

It seems that there is always a general idea that some Christian principle ought to apply, and yet that somehow it can't be used in this situation because of XYZ. And embedded in XYZ is a hidden commitment. XYZ is usually something that seems good. Or almost good. One thing is sure, however. If XYZ is keeping us from complete abandonment to Jesus and his ways, there's a hidden commitment in there somewhere. It has to go.

I've been struck frequently by the image of Jesus "slicing through" snarly problems, not unlike how he walked through that murderous crowd on one occasion. How is it that a host of threatening things does not prevent him from the straight path out?

Disciples of Christ find themselves at the juncture between subsonic flight and supersonic flight. We're drawn to the supersonic. We know it's smoother and faster. As we draw closer to the threshhold, however, the plane starts to shake and shudder. We're not comfortable. And we're not flying supersonic. And we're at risk of crashing the plane.

Then there is Jesus. Somehow he slices through. His road is not easy nor fun, but his way is smooth. Isaiah didn't have jet fighters in mind, but he did say pretty much the same thing. Make straight in the desert a highway...

Even Jesus had his Gethsemene moments, to be sure, but this is the broader picture of the gospel. A man who sliced through and seemed to glide through all our turbulence.

Why else does Jesus slide through? Said a different way, Why is it we cannot slice through as he does? These two words were added to my reflections this morning...

Hidden Commitments.

The answer is in our hidden commitments.

Supersonic flight requires a smooth aircraft. No clunky bricks attached to the wings. Our hidden commitments not only keep us from bursting through the sound barrier. They also make our flight extremely unpleasant. And the harder we strain to follow Jesus through the sound barrier, the worse and worse (and more painful) our hidden commitments become to us.

No wonder the rich man went away so sad. He could see where he wanted to go. His heart was basically there. Jesus was only a few feet away. But his hidden commitment to wealth prevented the last smooth step into supersonic flight. You can almost see the brick attached to his shaking wing as he veered off.

Hidden Commitments. As these word rattle in my brain this morning, they make a good fit much of my journey these past few years. I've been dropping commitments at a startling pace. I still have more commitments to drop, and some that I have dropped were dropped poorly. None perfectly.

But as I find myself clinging to Jesus more, and other things less, I find my life less turbulent in pleasant ways. Am I still buffetted by many winds? Absolutely. Do I feel less turbulence? Absolulely. And people sometimes turn away. But it is the way forward. I want to fly with Jesus.

Let me not be blind to my own hidden commitments, Lord. When my plane starts to shake, Lord... grant me courage to examine my wings and find the brick.