Strength For Today

Sometimes I ask God to help me to never again fall into sin. Never again commit the same sin.

Strangely, that prayer has never been answered. Or not so strangely. For I, like most humans I know, am human. I am frail.

This past Sunday as I wrestled with personal disappointment over my own frailty, I found myself asking God for help not for the next forty years, but for the next seven days. As the prayer was formed in my heart, I found myself encouraged.

God is big enough to help me for seven days. But when I seek forty years of perfection? I think I've been not asking God for help so much as I have been making God promises. Promises I cannot keep. I know I cannot keep such promises because I've made them on a series of occasions that stretch back for decades. I have shown God that I am not faithful.

But over the next seven days, I have a feeling that God is going to show me that He Is Faithful.

And in seven days we can do that prayer again.

Truth Is, Psalms (And Life) Can Be Deceptively Complicated (I of II)

I've been studying Psalm 34 recently, and I found myself alternatively chuckling and reflecting on an odd dynamic to this Psalm that is hidden in plain sight.

Psalm 34: 4-10
I sought the Lord, and he answered me;
    he delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant;
    their faces are never covered with shame.
This poor man called, and the Lord heard him;
    he saved him out of all his troubles.
The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him,
    and he delivers them.
Taste and see that the Lord is good;
    blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
Fear the Lord, you his holy people,
    for those who fear him lack nothing.
The lions may grow weak and hungry,
    but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

Now if this were an English class and we were to analyze the mood, the action, etc., I think it would be fair to say that the author finds God to be active and attentive to the pleas of his rather helpless charges down on Earth. Does that seem a fair assessment? Basically, if we want God's help, we should seek him, look to him, call to him, take refuge in him, and (for good measure) seek him again. And that's just what we see in verses 4 through 10.

Let's look at a few more verses...

Psalm 34: 11-13
Come, my children, listen to me;
    I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
Whoever of you loves life
    and desires to see many good days,
keep your tongue from evil
    and your lips from telling lies.

So the first rule of thumb for good living and a long life would appear to be truthfulness and a careful watch over your mouth. All well and good!

But here's where it gets just a bit silly. Run your eyes back to the top of this Psalm now and read the dedication.

Psalm 34
Of David. When he pretended to be insane before Abimelek, who drove him away, and he left.

So... David wrote this song after an event characterized by two things. First, David saved his own skin. Second, he did so by deceiving Abimelek.

Let that sink in for a bit.

So we have a Psalm that first celebrates how an active God gets helpless people out of tight spots, and then which proceeds to identify truthfulness as the key to having a long and good life. And who wrote it? A man who literally just saved his own life by means of a self-conceived, brilliantly executed, command-performance deception.

True, David might not have outright lied to Abimelek, but then again, maybe he did. Did he claim to be Napoleon? Abraham Lincoln? OK, maybe not those future personages, but perhaps Hammurabi? Did he say impossible things? Or did he just moan and froth at the mouth? We'll never know, but one thing David did not do is shoot straight with Abimelek. Far from it.

So what do we make of this curious dichotomy? I have no pat answers, but several questions come to mind.

When the Psalms exhort us to trust in God to save us... how does that play out with our active role in the matter?

When the Psalms exhort us to be truthful... when is it OK to fudge that commitment a wee bit. How much is a wee bit?

David has given us his answers. And maybe they're not perfectly right. Or maybe they are. For the record, I do see real value in that line, "Pray as if all depends upon God; act as if all depends upon you." It certainly seems fair to say that this was David's modus operandi, given what we've seen here. Where truth-telling is concerned, too, we all know that there are certain situations in life where it seems, before God, that deception is the best option we have out of a bad hand. Can anyone fault David for what he did to escape his predicament? Not me.

I find in this Psalm a reassuring reminder in the midst of my own daily dilemmas that life, even life as a child of God, is a complicated and murky business for us frail humans. God knows this, and, thankfully, is merciful. As the Psalm ends, it appears that David is comforting himself with the very same thought.

Psalm 34: 22
The Lord will rescue his servants;
    no one who takes refuge in him will be condemned.

(This reflection to be continued...)

Double-Blind Fanaticism

Blind fanaticism is a familiar enough phrase, and it's usually not much of a compliment, except perhaps among others of the same tribe. What does blind fanaticism look like in writing? Not entirely unlike some Psalms I've been reading recently. For fun–but also for a reason–I've re-worded one such Psalm as if it had been written in devotion to the Cubs, who finally had their moment of post-1908 glory when they won the World Series last fall.

Clap your hands, all you Cubs fans;
    shout for the Cubs with cries of joy.
For the Cubs are awesome,
    the greatest team in all the earth.
They subdued opponents,
    the entire league under their feet.
They won the championship,
    the pride of Chicago, whom they play for.
The Cubs have ascended amid shouts of joy,
    yes, amid the sounding of trumpets.
Sing praises to the Cubs, sing praises;
    sing praises to our Cubs, sing praises.
For the Cubs are champions over the entire league;
    sing to them a psalm of praise.

If you're not a rabid Cubs fan, those words make for pretty bizarre reading. I'm not a rabid Cubs fan. Being a Chicagoan, I could be forgiven for loving the Cubs, but I don't. I could care less about baseball, so the above paraphrased Psalm goes down my throat like a jagged rock.

But let's put it ourselves through it one more time, this time with feeling. We'll keep this one shorter:

May the owner of the Cubs be gracious to us and bless our team
    by signing up lots of stars
so that the Cubs can win all the games,
    and their awesomeness be recognized all over the world.

Uhgh. It screeches in my uninterested ears–I hate to think how it'd sound to a bitter cross-town rival White Sox fan.

Where am I going with this? Well, this is the thing. The above paeans to the Cubs are not faithful parallels to the Psalms they derive from. I changed key meanings and even left verses out. The versions below include corrections (in bold) to those errors and omissions. Just focus on the bold parts...

Clap your hands, every last baseball fan;
    shout for the Cubs with cries of joy.
For the Cubs are awesome,
    the greatest team in all the earth.
They subdued opponents,
    the entire league under their feet.
They won the championship,
    the pride of Chicago, whom they play for.
The Cubs have ascended amid shouts of joy,
    yes, amid the sounding of trumpets.
Sing praises to the Cubs, sing praises;
    sing praises to our Cubs, sing praises.
For the Cubs are champions over the entire league;
    sing to them a psalm of praise.
The All-Star game is a gathering of Cubs,
    because the entire league essentially belongs to the Cubs
    and the Cubs are to be greatly respected.

OK, so that was weird. And then this...

May the owner of the Cubs be gracious to us and bless our team
    by signing up lots of stars
so that Cubs fanaticism might become the norm everywhere,
    and Cubs victories be celebrated by every fan all over the world.
May baseball fans praise the Cubs...
    may all baseball fans everywhere praise them.

Enough! The first drafts were bad enough, but now we're in La-La Land. The entire baseball world simply won't become Cubs fans. Not gonna happen!

And that is precisely the point I'm trying to make, because the Psalms attempt an even less probable feat. Never mind baseball. Let's talk blood and guts rip-your-enemies-to-shreds ancient rivalries. Israel, a nation surround by many other despised and hostile nations, sure did put out a lot of weird cheerleading chants.

The above Cubs chants are reworked versions of Psalms 47 and 67, respectively, and any plain reading of those Psalms (provided down at the bottom of this reflection) conveys a clear conviction that the God of Israel is actually the God of the entire world *and* that this same God is going to bless the whole world just as he is blessing the nation of Israel.

Come again? Those are strange words, coming from a people that on ordinary days alternatively either looked down upon other nations as pagan scum or perhaps lamented the fact that those same other nations were routinely beating up on Israel. Given how Israel felt about their neighbors, the question must be asked: How exactly did the average Israelite understand Psalms like these? How did they (and how should we??) understand these paraphrased excerpts from Psalm 47:

Clap your hands, all you nations!...
(Yeah, you nations that God just crushed under our Israelite feet!)...
And by the way... All you nations? You're going to together with us as if we were all one big happy Jewish family!

Wow. My dear schizophrenic Psalmist! Are you still taking your meds? But speaking of meds...

I've lit upon the phrase "double-blind fanaticism" to describe all of this weirdness. In double-blind drug studies, not only are the recipients of the test drug unaware of whether they're getting the drug or a placebo, but also those who hand out the pills. Double-blind. Both the givers and the receivers are in the dark as to the contents of the pill. But the designer of the study is not.

Returning to our Psalms, I submit that, while God certainly knew the full story, both the authors of these Psalms and their intended audience were equally in the dark regarding portions of the Psalms we are discussing. Why would the very nations crushed under Israel's feet be inclined to jump up and joyfully worship alongside their conquerors? I find it hard to believe that anyone back then had a ready explain for how that would happen.

But set aside the question of how for a moment. Why would Israelites want such an outcome? Consider how New Testament Israelites felt about Samaritans and Romans and you've got a decent idea of what normal looked like back in those days. Most Israelites wouldn't even eat a meal with gentiles, let alone welcome their insertion into an expanded family of God.

So when the Psalmist suggests that all nations will gather as one family of Abraham, it's almost like a scene out of movie where a ghost channels words out of a person that the person wouldn't (and wouldn't want to!) ordinarlily say on their own. Israelite listeners would for the most part be perplexed by assertions like that, and I'm guessing the Psalmists who spoke them weren't feeling a whole lot more informed themselves.

Wonderfully, both the How and Why questions are answered in the light of Jesus Christ. Knowing as we do now that Jesus came to save all of humanity, those Psalms make perfect sense, and we see God's fingerprints all over them. A day was indeed coming when all peoples, foreigner and Israelite alike, would gather as one, worshiping the God of Israel.

But at the time? It surely must have been rather confusing stuff. And that returns me to my double-blind reference. In drug trials they do it that way so that nobody's expectations interfere with the outcome. I find myself wondering if it wasn't for similar reasons that God thought it best to keep both his Psalm writers and his people in the dark on a few matters that involved His coming Son.

Psalm 47
1 Clap your hands, all you nations;
    shout to God with cries of joy.
2 For the Lord Most High is awesome,
    the great King over all the earth.
3 He subdued nations under us,
    peoples under our feet.
4 He chose our inheritance for us,
    the pride of Jacob, whom he loved.
5 God has ascended amid shouts of joy,
    the Lord amid the sounding of trumpets.
6 Sing praises to God, sing praises;
    sing praises to our King, sing praises.
7 For God is the King of all the earth;
    sing to him a psalm of praise.
8 God reigns over the nations;
    God is seated on his holy throne.
9 The nobles of the nations assemble
    as the people of the God of Abraham,
for the kings of the earth belong to God;
    he is greatly exalted.


Psalm 67
1 May God be gracious to us and bless us
    and make his face shine on us –
2 so that your ways may be known on earth,
    your salvation among all nations.
3 May the peoples praise you, God;
    may all the peoples praise you.
4 May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
    for you rule the peoples with equity
    and guide the nations of the earth.
5 May the peoples praise you, God;
    may all the peoples praise you.
6 The land yields its harvest;
    God, our God, blesses us.
7 May God bless us still,
    so that all the ends of the earth will fear him.

Don't Leave Heaven Without It

This reflection is the result of a mistake I made yesterday morning. I hit the road to drive to a customer, only to realize a few blocks down the road that I had forgotten my wallet. Oops. So, what did I do? I suppose the wise move would have been to return home and get it, but I didn't. I decided to save myself a few minutes and keep driving.

Well, friends, the good news is this: I never did get pulled over. Furthermore, I'd like to point out, before proceeding, that the last time I caused an accident was some ten years ago, and on that day ice on the road was the main culprit. That having been said, I'm not always the most cautious and law-abiding of drivers, where speed limits are concerned. Like most drivers, I speed "reasonably", however I am on the upper end of reasonable (which is itself a term capable of a wide spread of interpretations).

But without my license? I became a more tame driver. I still broke the posted speed limits, but much more cautiously than I would normally. I made a point to keep with ordinary traffic. I couldn't afford to stand out, and that got me thinking about the fact that I'm a safer driver when I have fewer rights and privileges. As a white, male, native-born American carrying a valid drivers license... yeah, I have privileges. Without the license? Not so much.

It struck me that driving without a license gave me a glimpse into the ordinary day-to-day life of someone less privileged than myself. Be that person Black, Hispanic, an illegal alien, or a wanted fugitive, all of them have reasons to drive as safely as possible, and push no buttons.

In the current politically charged Trump-as-spectacle world, perhaps all of us would do well to know what it's like to find ourselves without passport in a foreign land, at the mercy of a people who owe us nothing but can definitely make life difficult for us if they so choose. It would be a searing experience. Maybe attitude-changing. If you cannot think of a better way to experience this feeling, I highly recommend driving at high speeds without your driver's license as a reasonable proxy.

Yes, the more I reflected upon it, the more I realized how convenient my legal status is and what benefits my passport and driver's license give me. Things I take for granted. I was then reminded of a biblical concept that overlaps with my American citizenship, and that is my citizenship in heaven. I am, in fact, principally a child of a different kingdom. I have rights as an American, and I exercise them often enough. But what rights do I have as a citizen of heaven? And do I exercise them very often?

Hmmmmm.

Hmmmmm!

Our rights as citizens in America give us the courage to stand up to criminals and other wrong-doers. We can take them to court. What's more, because we're citizens, we've got a good shot at justice if anyone tries to accuse us of a fictitious crime. We have good standing with the judicial system. Even when we screw up, we can hope for kinder justice.

So... how does that play out with our heavenly citizenship? Well, friends, no crazy-deep insights here except to say that we have the Power and Authority of heaven behind us, if we want to take on the evil powers and authorities in the spiritual realms of this earth. They can accuse us, but we are in good standing with the King of the Cosmos. And if we so choose, we can intervene and speak with the Authority of Heaven into earthly mishaps. It's called prayer and action.

Well, the rest of what I might say here is probably clear. It's just a good reminder to me that I should do more than remember my wallet in the morning.

I should also remember my heavenly passport. And at all times behave like I have it on my person.

What Is It We're Trying Not To Think About?

There are a great number of things we desperately don't want to think about. That may sound like hyperbole, but since we're usually successful in not thinking about things we don't want to think about, the number of things on that list may be larger than... well... larger than we want to think about.

But let's draw this wandering claim down to earth and tie it to something. Shall we start with the Cultural Revolution? Not being Chinese, this is not a delicate topic for me, however I was inspired to write this reflection as I read this morning about Youqin Wang and her efforts to document the lives of people in China who were killed during those dark years. Here are two chilling quotes from the article:
1) "It's not known exactly how many people died, but estimates range from 500,00 to several million."
2) "...and while a handful of the people who participated in the violence have apologized..."

Let those numbers sit next to each other in your mind. Maybe a million people died. And a handful of people have spoken up to apologize. Welcome to human nature at its nadir, to my mind. Where are the other people responsible for that uncountable carnage? My guess (and I'm comfortable with it) is that they're trying not to think about it too much. Many of them quite successfully, though surely not all.

All well and good since we westerners don't hail from China. But let's make it personal. We'll do so by means of a three-course meal.

First Course: The Appetizer

The full article is here, but here's a snippet worth pondering for two reasons:

It is always hard to draw a line between the wickedness of the times and the evil of individuals, especially in the case of the Cultural Revolution, and when presented with such a grave issue, most people have chosen to keep silent and forget.

[Editorial aside: The author of this blog is nodding vigorously]

On this point, Wang Youqin loves to tell a story she heard from a science teacher. The teacher worked on a farm during the Cultural Revolution, and he was in charge of a herd of cattle. There was a patch of thick grasses below a big willow tree, which was a favorite food of the cattle, and, one day, the villagers slaughtered an old cow under the tree because it was too old to work; ever since then none of the cows would go anywhere near the willow tree even though the grass was delicious. The chickens, however, upon seeing the innards of their fellow hens chucked into the yard, would all hurry over and peck at the guts of their own kind.

“So mankind is somewhere between cows and chickens,” Wang says. “But now that we have a choice, we need to decide whether to be the cow or the chicken.”

Did you see it? I am betting not. Sure, there was heavy food for thought there, regarding humans and human nature... whether mankind will remember or forget what has been done to other humans. What we have done to other humans. And that is indeed the main point. But for those who eat meat regularly, a second heavy thought regarding food should have left us with indigestion: The cows missed their dead. They abhorred the slaughter of their own. Sure, one may pooh-pooh it as a lonely anecdote, but my own father once related to me a very similar story. He once witnessed the killing of a cow by bullet. After the cow hit the ground, all the other cows gathered around and silently encircled their departed fellow cow. And stared at it.

Ummm, I didn't want to think about that while eating my Big Mac. And yet we do. Eat the meat, that is. As for the cows? We try not to think about them too much. More serious consideration might leave us feeling too guilty to enjoy the meat. And that would be a shame.

That just goes to show how many times a day we avoid thinking about any number of things. However the vegetarian digression seems out of place, it being so trivial when compared to the evils of the Cultural Revolution. But that was just the appetizer. The next dish served will not similarly disappoint.

Second Course: A National Disgrace

We Americans have our own "Cultural Revolutions" that have been both ignored and forgotten. Sordid history that we don't think about too often. Or was it never? An example (but let's not forget that there are others!)... Watch this TED talk and tell me if we've honored our treaties with the native Americans who owned America for thousands of years before we Europeans came along. Oooh, have I touched a soft spot? A log we don't want to turn over?

Here's a picture from that TED talk. A picture we oughtn't forget.

That's a map including the land that the Lakota Indians legally own. Never seen it before? If we don't recognize it, then we have successfully forgotten what our forefathers didn't want us to remember. (I am sure there area a lot of grandparents in China hoping their offspring will be equally forgetful.)

Here are some words from that TED talk. Words we oughtn't forget.

"1980: the longest running court case in US history, the Sioux nation vs. The United States, was ruled upon by the US Supreme Court. The court determined that when the Sioux resettled on the reservations and seven million acres of their land were opened up to prospectors and homesteaders, the terms of the second Fort Laramie treaty had been violated. The court stated that the Black Hills were illegally taken..."

The facts, friends, are cold on this matter. It's their land. And we took it. Illegally. Our own Supreme Court said so. But we'll forget the map and the ruling. Just as have our forefathers before us. The Lakota Indians are still waiting for us to remember. But we won't. We're trying not to think about it.

This is tough stuff to stomach, and those wrongs lay heavy on my heart when I drove through that land myself just last summer. But there is at least that wonderful out: It's a national problem, and not one I, as an individual, can remedy on my own. That's very convenient thinking, and it does help things go down more smoothly. But one dish remains to be served.

Third Course: It Gets Personal

Jesus called us to take up our crosses. I know a few people who have really gotten closer to this kind of radical life. But I haven't. Have you? There is an awful lot about my life that does not reflect the radical teachings of Jesus. Do you feel the same? Here's a word: Incarnational. We love to talk it. Jesus didn't stay in heaven. Jesus became nothing. Became like us ants, as one analogy works it. Yada yada yada. But that yada yada is not derisive of Jesus. Yada yada is for me. For us. Because it's so many words. We say it and love it. But most of us, myself included, don't do it. I live in a comfortable suburb outside Chicago. Living incarnationally in the inner city? Yeah. Didn't happen. I'm just very much in favor of it. In theory.

We like to leave big problems as theoretical. National. Nothing I can do. In practice, however, the solution is personal. Individual. Each of us responding as Jesus would. And therein lies the problem, because my life doesn't look nearly enough like the life of Jesus. That's something I'd rather not think about it, and I certainly don't want to reminded of it, either!

But people have this annoying habit of breaking into our protective amnesia. On the national scene, Wang Youqin reminds China of their past. Aaron Huey (of that TED talk) reminds us Americans of our own. Aaron, it is worth noting, incarnationally went and dwelt among the Lakota. Shared in their suffering. In doing so, he proves that theory can become practice, if we're willing to give up our own comforts. That reminder is annoying.

On the personal scene, occasionally a Jesus freak (or a Lakota freak) will challenge us to become more like Jesus (perhaps among Native Americans) and radically enter into the suffering of our world as ambassadors for Christ. Our response as Americans and as Christians is well described by Henri Nouwen, who here encapsulates the distinctive character of secular prophets Wang and Aaron as well as the Christian variety—and then goes on to describe our typical response to such prophets when they cross our paths.

"There are people in our midst who have allowed the pain of the world to enter so deeply into their hearts that it has become their vocation to remind us constantly, mostly against our will, of the sins of this world. There are even a few saints who have become so much a part of the human condition and have identified themselves to such a degree with the misery of their fellow human beings that they refuse happiness for themselves as long as there are suffering people in this world. Although they irritate us and although we would like to dispose of them by labeling them masochists or doomsday prophets, they are indispensable reminders that no lasting healing will ever take place without a solidarity of heart. these few "extremists" or "fanatics" force us to ask ourselves how many games with play with ourselves and how many walls we keep erecting to prevent ourselves from knowing and feeling the burden of human solidarity."
– Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out

When Vices Become Virtues

Last night we broke from our standard digital-free Sunday tradition and watched the Superbowl. Not being big on football, I used to watch it mainly for the commercials, but those days have passed. Now I pass through commercials like a 10-yr old passes through cemeteries on dark and foggy nights. With fear and trepidation.

What will my children see?

Sadly, more than they should have. A commercial overtly built on a theme of sexual bondage S&M–for cell phones, obviously. A woman getting horny with "Mr. Clean"–yeah, the household cleanser just tried to darken my soul. The best that could be said is that Mr. Clean was, apparently, her husband–helping around the house on stain-removal tasks. The tagline, however, must be noted: "Mr. Clean gets dirty."

A few years ago, in one memorable sequence along a highway, I noted three violations of the Ten Commandments in just two miles.
1. Something suggesting loose sex, the details of which are not necessary to recount here.
2. Tagline for some product being flogged: Creating neighbor envy for XX years
3. Tagline for some tough-guys movie being flogged: The Best Don't Rest

Today I flipped open a Dell computer catalog that came in the mail. And here came the motivation to finally just jot this ridiculous stuff down in a blog post.

GETTING LOST ISN'T THE PROBLEM. IT'S THE GOAL.

Wow. If that doesn't just capture how lost our society has gotten. So lost that being lost has become a desirable destination. Why? Because we're so lost, of course. If we weren't so lost, the notion of getting lost wouldn't be so tempting.

But we are lost. And when life gets that bad, escapism starts to look good.

A friend showed my his latest purchase a week or two ago. Oculus. Virtual reality. The game was of the shoot-em-up variety, but I'll be honest because I'm male and any adult with a pulse would know it without my saying it. I knew and I know where this will go. It won't be too long before quite realistic harem experiences will be available. A bit more time and they'll be able to add physical sensations to the visual cornucopia. A new temptation around the corner.

Why not get lost in a harem, after all?

Enough said, but even if we know to avoid virtual harems, the siren call of getting lost is still well-sold. My own smart-phone is a continual distraction to me, and much worse to many others.

For these reasons I was thankful to put down the Dell advertisement and pick up my latest Nouwen purchase: Reaching Out. Truth pours out on the page before me. "When, after a busy day, I am alone and free I have to fight the urge to make one more phone call, one more trip to the mailbox or one more visit to friends who will entertain me for the last few hours of the day. And when I think about the busy day I sometimes wonder if [what I did today] has, in fact, not become one big distraction-once in a while entertaining-but mostly preventing me from facing my lonely self which should be my first source of search and research."

Nouwen wrote that some thirty years ago. What would he have to say about our habits today? I can say this for him: if he checked his mailbox then as often as we checked our digital inboxes today, he'd have had no need for a gym membership.

Dry humor aside, Nouwen would never have made it far in the advertising world. He calls out our disease and hopes for himself and for us that we seek not more of it but rather the cure.

As to what that cure entails, I would suggest that Nouwen's book is a great start for those who care to know. As for me, I have some work distractions beckoning, so I will end this blog simply recognizing that my world has become so lost that the very notion of being found out is a worrying one to it.

PS—that advertisement about getting lost?

Yeah. It's for Dell Alienware computers. If alienation is the goal, it's only fitting that Alienware should get you there. We're an alien nation, indeed.

The Christian Church Is The Only Army That...

If you've been in church circles long enough, you know how this line ends.

The phrase came up yesterday in a conversation I had with a friend. He'd recently been shown the door, professionally speaking, and is now out of work. He had been working for a Christian non-profit organization, but the circumstances surrounding his departure were quite ugly. Being a close friend, I might fairly be deemed biased, but anyone with eyes to see knows where the real problem lies.

This friend is the just the most recent in a very long line of difficult departures. The entire leadership has moved on over the past five years. The CEO has been ensconced in his role for decades, but no one who works directly for the man ever lasts anywhere like as long.

The Christian Church is the only army that shoots its wounded.

Yeah, that was the phrase that came to my friend's mind, but as soon as the words left his lips I blurted out, "True, but I've got it one better for you!"

The Christian Church is the only army that allows the wounded to shoot the healthy.

Yes, that is much closer to the mark. My friend is spiritually healthy, as were many of his former colleagues. But they're all gone. It's the sick-puppy CEO who continues to resolutely steer the ship. He'll ride it right to the bottom if the board lets him. So far there's no sign that they won't.

My friend and I have both been here before. On the last pass we were in it together, part of a group of healthy families who were collectively ejected from a dying church we had hoped would revive. It did not. The dynamic is tiresomely predictable. In almost every church situation where I have found myself needing to do so, I find after inspection that the entire group of people tasked with a leader's oversight are themselves hand-picked by that same sick puppy. Be it a vestry or a board of directors, the results are usually the same when conflicts arise. The overseers fall in line behind the sick puppy. The organization (if indeed it survives at all) emerges from the storm a very much weakened vessel.

But I think something else needs to be said: We have been too hard on the church in all of this. Waaaaaaaay too hard. I've seen the exact same sick dynamics in the working world. I don't think there's anything particularly unique to the church in all of this. This stuff is what happens when humans are involved.

All those platitudes about shooting the wounded? They are well suited to describe precisely some churches and some organizations. The church I now attend does not shoot its wounded. Our pastor is a good man. As for the board? I submit that churches with healthy elders don't generally have to deal with sick-puppy pastors—because they don't hire them. That has been the case with our church, so kudos to our elders as well.

And yet. And yet we have these phrases about shooting the wounded. Why? Because we believe we were supposed to "do it better". But while our failures are a cause for sorrow both for God and mankind, it is only we humans who are surprised by our failures. God is not. Jesus clearly had no illusions that his followers were going to achieve perfection. Two scripture passages come to mind.

John 2:23-25
Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.

Takeaway? Jesus can be trusted. The rest of us? Not so much. Myself included. In Jesus' absence we must appoint leaders. But along with Jesus we should not trust them blindly, as too many vestries and boards have done. My friend is now out of work and a Christian organization has lost a good manager. Because of a sick-puppy CEO and a blind board.*

A final thought. I have essentially equated church dysfunction with secular dysfunction, but it must be noted that Jesus himself was not as generous.

Luke 16:8b
"For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light."

Maybe we really are the only army that...

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* Actually, one board member was not blind. She resigned in protest. God bless her for her principled stand, but her action makes the indictment of the remaining board members that much the more severe. They didn't even listen to their own peer. Sick-puppy CEO was given more credence. My friend was tarred as the sick one. Shocker? No. Business as normal. Jesus help us, your church. We weren't supposed to be a poorly managed business.