The Purpose of Marriage

The following post is excerpted from the chapter, "The Purpose of Marriage," in my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God.

At some point, all the practical questions about marriage find their basis in the central question of what marriage is supposed to be all about. One might think that we should begin with that question, but in reality none of us do. Ask most couples when they’re about to get married, and they will tell you that they’re getting married because “We’re in love.” Doubtless at the time, that is true. Ask a couple on the verge of divorce why they got married in the first place, and sometimes they’ll say the same thing, and say that later on they fell out of love. If they’re being sincerely reflective, though, they’ll acknowledge ulterior motives. She wanted to get out of her parents’ house and couldn’t afford to be on her own. He wanted sex, and for religious or other reasons didn’t want simply to sleep around. She wanted the security of a committed relationship. He was afraid he was going to lose her if he didn’t lock in the relationship with a ring. She hadn’t had a lot of guys interested in her, and felt that this was the best she could do. He had been scared to death of marriage, until he ended up being more scared of ending up alone. She wanted children and didn’t want to raise them alone. There are a multitude of reasons. Feel free to swap the pronoun genders around: none of these reasons are specific to men or to women in particular.

So which is true? The romantic version at the time, or the jaded version from years later? Most likely, both are. People are complex beings, and we all have ulterior motives, whether we think we do or not. It doesn’t make the love we feel at the time any less real.

But the important issue is not what we think marriage is all about. Rather, it’s what does God think marriage is all about? Why did he create marriage? What is it for? How is it supposed to function in our lives?

The Means Justify the End

We've all heard the phrase, "The end justifies the means." Actually, I've more often heard the phrase, "The end doesn't justify the means," when the "means" being discussed are actually illegal or unethical. But we live in a world where ends are supposed to justify means all the time.

When I was growing up, "evangelistically speaking" was a euphemism for exaggeration, if not outright lying. In the workplace, achieving a goal is often an expected norm, even if it involves treating people badly to accomplish it.  One often finds that behind closed doors in a "successful" church, the leader is harsh, demanding, perhaps even abusive, or uses people to accomplish a project rather than having interest in them as individuals with their own needs. Success, it seems, is its own justification. As long as you didn't do anything outright illegal or sinful--with that interesting set of blinders evangelicals often use with regard to what is and isn't sinful--then it's okay. The end is good, and we just won't look too closely into the means.

The Privilege of Pastoring

In August, when my family went up north for Alan Gillies's memorial service, we had the opportunity to get together with some of the people I had the privilege of pastoring about ten years ago. We sang songs and shared. It was a really lovely time. And it made me think a lot about my experience of pastoring.

I was twenty-nine when I began pastoring in Brimley. It was my first and only pastorate, except for a semi-official assistant pastoral position I had had just prior to coming to Brimley, in a small church that didn't really need an assistant pastor. I was about two years out of seminary, chafing to get into full-time ministry, and thinking at times that it would never happen. And then I got a letter out of nowhere, and had to look at a map to find out where Brimley, Michigan was. We looked at the map index, and found the grid number, and followed the column up, and up, and up, and there it was, on the shore of Lake Superior. Cecile burst into tears--not because of where it was, but because she had just had a breakthrough with the girls in the Missionettes class that she taught, and she didn't want to leave them. "Honey, I don't even have to respond to this!" I told her.

"Yes you do," she said, "this is God."

And so I sent the church a resume, figuring it wouldn't hurt to get rejected one more time. And then they called, and wanted us to come up. We met the previous pastor and his wife, and then the board, and they were all very kind, and before I knew it, I was pastoring the church.

And I didn't know what I was doing. My seminary training had mostly been in Biblical exegesis, systematic theology, and church history, not on the practical issues of pastoring a church. I felt my youth; I felt my shyness, which God had overcome in me to a great extent, but not nearly as much as He has since then. I often had the horrible feeling that I was "supposed" to be doing something different from what I was doing at the time, but I didn't know what it was, or I didn't know how to choose. I've learned a lot since then about leadership, about giving direction to a group of people, about the importance of reaching out to people and building relationships. At the time, I was simply responding to needs as best I could, studying for messages, planning youth group activities--just doing whatever seemed to be needed at the time.

And despite all my insecurities, God really did bless us. I credit a lot of that to Cecile, for whom reaching out and forming relationships is as natural as breathing; I'm still convinced that most of the people who love us (and there are a lot) love us because of her. We made some wonderful friendships. We were blessed far, far beyond what I understood at the time. I was going through what most pastors will privately admit to going through, but don't feel they can share with their congregations: deep discouragement. The church wasn't moving in the direction I thought it should as fast as I thought it should. I felt my leadership being challenged. I took criticisms to heart. I felt that I might have found a better fit elsewhere. I wondered if I should be teaching instead of pastoring. I wondered if I was having any positive effect at all, on anyone.

And so I left, after 3 ½ years. I was asking God, if He wanted me to stay, to reaffirm my leadership, and if He wanted me to go, to give me something to move toward. And two opportunities presented themselves. I felt it was God's leading.

Since then, I've had the chance to return a few times, most recently last August. And every time I go back, I am blown away by the kindness and love that the people from that church have for Cecile and me. They make my wife and me feel like royalty. They lavish kind words and fond memories on us. They tell us that they recall and appreciate things I said over a decade ago. They love us, truly love us, far beyond what I had ever imagined.

When we go, we see people we had known as children and teens, now grown up and married. And one of the greatest regrets I have is having lost the opportunity to have been there to watch them grow up, to have been a part of their lives during that time. What a privilege it would have been, to have been involved in their lives for the long haul; to have been more than a memory, however pleasant. If I had to do it all over again, would I have left? Am I hairsplitting too much to say that the person I was then needed to leave, but if I knew then what I know now, I may not have?

I am now in a very similar place to the one I was in just before going up to Brimley: not in a position of formal ministry, looking for an opportunity, dealing with some roadblocks and disappointments and constraints. I truly believe that if I am ever given the opportunity to pastor again, I will do it better, with more purpose, more confidence, more wisdom. And more than anything, I hope that I will understand and appreciate the privilege that it is to invest yourself in the lives of other believers, to encourage their growth, and to have a positive influence on them. I pray that I get the chance.

A Life Well Lived

Brothers, we do not want you ... to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. 
-- 1 Thessalonians 4:13

A few weeks ago, my family took a trip up north to attend a memorial service for a young man who had been in our youth group when I was a pastor in the small town of Brimley, Michigan. Alan Jastorff Gillies was 27 when he died, and left a wife whom he deeply loved and a beautiful baby son. His death was unexpected, untimely, tragic, sad; one would have expected it to have occasioned bitter wailing and grief that could not be contained. No one would have blamed his immediate family or close friends. And yet ... it wasn't like that.

It wasn't a "celebration," either. When the attempt is made to make a funeral into a "homegoing" party, it leaves me cold. I understand what people are trying to do, but funerals are for the bereaved, not for the one who is now in the presence of God. I don't think people should stuff or hide their feelings of grief­­­, much less feel forced to do so. The passage quoted above doesn't say that we shouldn't grieve. It says we shouldn't grieve as those who have no hope.

There was grief at Alan's memorial service. There were tears. But the moving thing, to me, about the service was that everyone there knew, without doubt, that Alan's life, though short, had been lived well. No one had any doubts about his eternal destiny. There were no wry stories about morally questionable hijinks, no evasions, no concerns that "if only he'd had time" to put something right. This was a young man who had truly been a blessing to everyone who had known him.

When I was pastoring and he was in my youth group, Alan was a solid young man in a solid family, the kind that maybe doesn't get the attention that the not-so-solid end up needing. But he always had a good humor; he was joyful and fun, as well as attentive and serious and a deep thinker when those times came up. He loved life and loved the outdoors and seemed so healthy that it was easy to forget that his family had told me that he had a life-threatening genetic disorder, an immune deficiency that had hospitalized him a number of times before. It seemed like something he'd outgrown, a childhood disease that he'd beaten.

And so I was stunned when I heard that he was struggling for his life, and a few days later, that he had passed away. There was a funeral in South Dakota, where he most recently lived, and a memorial service in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, near where he had grown up and where his parents lived. We went to the memorial service. It was great to see those whom I had pastored years ago. And as I said, there were tears. But there was also hope. There was a firm, strong, unquenchable hope; an unshakable conviction among everyone who had known this young man that he had lived his life to the glory of God, and honored by everyone who had had the privilege of being touched by him.

God bless you, Alan. I'm looking forward to seeing you again one day.

Rich Tatum Nails the "Reveal" Study

Rich Tatum blew me away with his discussion of what Willow Creek’s ‘Reveal’ study really tells us. I agree entirely with his analysis: "The main takeaway is this: numeric growth does not equal spiritual growth." He goes on to write,

If we’re honest about it, the idea that numeric growth reveals a church’s health and its members’ own spiritual health has infected the American church for decades. The idea is captured in this syllogism:

Healthy organisms grow
Churches are like organisms
Therefore, healthy churches grow

But what this logical three-step logical tango fails to take into account is that healthy organisms stop growing when they reach maturity and a size appropriate to their nature. In fact, an organism’s failure to experience a growth plateau is one evidence of sickness.

By contrast, Rich asserts that

the chief problem with most (if not all) of the churches I’ve attended has been a failure to encourage, challenge, and provide for spiritual transformation and discipleship in individual believers within a transformed community.

He couldn't be more right. Rich moves on to an analysis of cultural shifts that have affected the church, both in terms of the assumptions that people bring to churches and the assumptions that church leaders bring to the direction and content of their leading. I strongly urge you to read the original article to follow Rich's points to their conclusions.

For my own part, I can't help reflecting on troubling church issues that are symptomatic of what Rich is talking about. Large churches that grew, to a significant extent, by abandoning the neighborhoods they were planted in and the people their founders were trying to reach. Small churches whose pastors worried more about the lack of numerical growth in their congregations than about actually discipling and developing the people God had given them to minister to. Pastors being more interested in presiding over an ever-increasing corporate entity than in nurturing the lives of those under their care. An anti-intellectualism that boils down to contempt for any spiritual and theological development other than learning how to get the next convert. An emphasis on conversions to the exclusion of what Jesus actually said that the Great Commission was: making disciples. A devaluation of those spiritual gifts which are not directly tied to the ultimate goal of numerical growth, and by extension, a devaluation of believers who have those types of gifts. A focus on "revival" as the ultimate goal of the church, as opposed to seeing seasons of revival as only one part of the ongoing processes that God uses to develop his people.

This is why the problems in the "Reveal" study are not limited to Willow Creek or other megachurches. They infect churches of all sizes. A disconcerting shallowness pervades Christian culture, in nearly every expression. Churches and denominations are largely one-dimensional: worship without theology, theology without experience, experience without reflection, reflection without action, action without worship. We choose our favorite flavor and point the finger at everyone else as lacking. We are not in the process of becoming whole, rounded, deep, substantive people who actually have an answer for the equally shallow and one-dimensional world around us. Rather than offering a real difference, we either accommodate or react to that culture, and either way, we're just as ersatz and vapid as the culture we're responding to. One way or another, we're being conformed to the world, rather than being transformed by the renewing of our minds. And that includes those who react the most strongly against that world: they're just a mirror image. Accommodate or repudiate: we're being defined by our surroundings. And that's not good.

The Bible presents a completely different view of life. One would think that Christians would be interested in discovering what it is. One would hope that Christian leaders would be enthusiastic about facilitating that discovery in others. If only.

Screwtape on Frames of Reference

In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but in such a voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face. To keep this game up you and Glubose must see to it that each of these two fools has a sort of double standard. Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother's utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention. She must be encouraged to do the same to him. Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent. You know the kind of thing: "I simply ask her what time dinner will be and she flies into a temper." Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken.
--Screwtape

So, yes. There's a flip side.

Frames of Reference

"Words, words. They're all we have to go on."
--Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

I recently had a misunderstanding with someone that's gotten me to think about the nature of communication. The odd thing about it was that the point I was trying to make had to do with exactly that--the difference between what a person thinks he has communicated to someone else and what that someone else thinks has been communicated to him. The difference between giving and receiving communication.

We've probably all had the experience of having someone say something that hit us as being insulting or rude or otherwise inappropriate, and when we call them on it, they respond, "No, no, that isn't what I meant at all." The conversation can go in many directions at that point, but isn't the feeling we usually have, when this protest is made to us, something along the lines of, "Well of course you did! What else could you possibly have meant?" We just simply cannot believe that anyone could have said those words and not meant them exactly the way they came across to us.

Of course, there will be those times in which the errant communicator is indeed, shall we say, fibbing about his original intentions. But I am also convinced that there are times when the EC truly did not mean what we so forcefully heard. Why is that? How is it that someone can say something, in all sincerity meaning one thing, and someone else can hear that same thing and just as sincerely feel that it means something completely different?

"It is impossible to say just what I mean!"
--J. Alfred Prufrock

Communication is a tricky thing. A communicator, attempting to convey a thought, a feeling, an idea, starts out with a particular frame of reference, a matrix of understanding that is a conglomeration of his personality and entire life experience, and more specifically, his experience of how words have been used toward and around him. He shapes this thought into words, the symbols by which we attempt communication, within this matrix; he says what he says because it makes sense to him to say it that way; to him, that's what the words he comes up with mean.

But the recipient takes these words into a completely different personality and life experience, into a different experience of how words have been used toward and around him. He receives the sounds, or the sight of print on paper, or on a screen, and has to create meaning out of these raw sensory impressions, and the meaning he creates has as much to do with his own matrix of understanding as it does with the actual words that have been used. To the extent that the two frames of reference are similar, the communication will be understood in the same sense as it was intended. To the extent that they differ, communication will be impeded.

It's most obvious when people speak different languages. Here, there is no common frame of reference at all, at least where language is concerned. But also, there is no real issue of misunderstanding, because there is no illusion of understanding at all. The dangerous situation--which is by far also the most common--is a partially shared frame of reference. We have just enough similar life and language experience to be dangerous. We know each other well enough to think that we know everything--or at least enough to understand what they said! And so we react, based not on the actual words that were said, but by what those words would have meant if we had ever uttered them. Coming out of our own frame of reference, saying such a thing might have been unthinkable, or would have been spoken only with a completely different intent. But we really have no way of ever experiencing anyone else's frame of reference. The closest we get to it, aside from shared experiences (we both know what "As you wish" means because we've both seen The Princess Bride), is--talking: i.e., communication, language. The very thing that seems to be the impediment is the only clue we have into one another's world.

Perhaps what we most suffer from is a lack of empathy. We simply don't have the imagination to conceive of another way of looking at life, at people, at language. Our way seems so obvious, so right! The problem is that everyone else stubbornly refuses to agree with God and me! Or perhaps it is merely inconvenient. It's easier simply to think that the other person is wrong than to think that they view things from a different point of view. It's easier simply to react than to give the other person the benefit of the doubt, to imagine what might have caused them to articulate what they did. I've found myself in the position of being a translator on numerous occasions, not between different languages, but between different frames of reference, trying to get two people to see things from one another's point of view, and it can be exhausting. But really, if we're to love our neighbor as ourselves, isn't that exactly what is being asked of us?

"That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at."
--Addie Bundren

Of course, I can only hope that anyone could possibly understand this.

Karate and Coasting in North Dakota

Julie wrote a very thought-provoking post, entitled Wear the purple belt. I'm tempted to summarize it, but that would just make prosaic what she expressed much more eloquently. So if you want to know what her title has to do with my title and how that could possibly be thought-provoking, you'll just have to check it out for yourself.

Intentionality

Intentionality seems to be a buzzword these days in church circles. The idea is that whatever we're doing--worship, preaching, evangelism, decor, cell groups, niche ministries--we should become conscious of why exactly we're doing what we're doing and how we're doing it and what it conveys to people so that we can better tailor what we're doing for maximum effectiveness at whatever it is that is our goal.

This would seem to be wisdom, if it weren't for my having read Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions.

Sowell's book has nothing to do with faith or church or theories of evangelism. What it is, is an attempt to explain why the same people group together around various political issues which apparently have little to do with one another. Sowell's theory is that political positions relate to how a person views human nature--as essentially constrained or unconstrained. The unconstrained vision, roughly identifiable with liberal or socialist politics, views humanity as essentially perfectible, and therefore has a more negative view of history and tradition and a greater willingness to embrace change and social experimentation. The constrained vision, roughly identifiable with conservative politics, views humanity as essentially limited, and therefore is more skeptical of the possibilities inherent in experiments in social change, and has a more positive view of history and tradition.

The unconstrained vision regards humanity as on a journey toward perfection. The present generation is therefore farther along on this journey than past generations have been, so present-day ideals and mores are to be preferred to those of the past or of tradition. Moreover, particular individuals are more advanced than the rest, so their views are to be preferred to those of the hidebound majority. It is, finally, by the conscious foresight and will of these enlightened individuals that humanity advances.

The constrained vision regards humanity as limited and potentially dangerous to itself. The accumulated wisdom of generations past, conveyed in its traditions and rituals, is to be preferred to the vicissitudes of present-day innovators. There may be reasons beyond our understanding for some of these traditions. We should be wary of the law of unintended consequences: what we change may have ramifications beyond what can be predicted.

No one is perfectly constrained or perfectly unconstrained in their views. But the constrained view accords more nearly with the biblical view of humanity. Although created in the image of God, we are only an image; we cannot be God himself. And we are fallen. Even redeemed, there is much in our minds and hearts that has not been perfected. And we are not the agents of our own perfection: God is.

The idea that we should be intentional about what we do as believers, individually and corporately, assumes that we can know what the goal of our actions is, or should be, and that we can adjust our methods better to achieve that goal. But that comes from more of an unconstrained view. Can we truly know all of the reasons God calls on us to worship, or to witness to our faith, or to gather together for mutual edification? Is it possible that we may exaggerate one reason and thereby frustrate others?

It appears to me that we have spent the last 20 years or so becoming increasingly intentional about what we do as Christians; we have tried to become more relevant to the world, more understanding, more accommodating. We try to understand how our services and our worship and our language are viewed by outsiders, and we've tried to adjust. But overall, we are losing ground as a percentage of the population.

Is it possible that we are not supposed to be conscious and intentional about what we do in our Christian life? Is it possible that our quest for intentionality is a quest for control, that we simply are not willing to do and be what God told us to do and be, because we think that if we figure it out, we can do it better? Should we perhaps worship in the way that we feel glorifies God best, without worrying about what impact we think we're making on others? Is it perhaps the best way to serve God to focus on Him, and let Him take care of the results?

Just a thought.


Technorati Tags: Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions, Intentionality

The Man Who May Have Saved the World

I wonder how many of you know the name Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov. If you don't, you need to read this article. Because he may well have saved your life, as well as the world as we currently know it.

I'm not going to recap the whole article, but on September 26, 1983, at a time of extremely high tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, Strategic Rocket Forces Lieutenant Colonel Petrov was on duty, monitoring the Soviet satellite early-warning network. His responsibilities included alerting his supierors of any impending nuclear missile attack. On that night, he received a computer report that indicated a nuclear missile being launched from the United States and headed toward Moscow. Reasoning that the US would not have launched a single missile, he--did nothing. But then the computers indicated more missiles, five altogether. Petrov still chose not to respond. In the end, Petrov turned out to be right. But being right came at a price. He was sent into early retirement with a poverty-level pension, and into a nervous breakdown, for breaking military protocol.

There is debate concerning whether Petrov's actions actually averted all-out nuclear war. The Soviets maintain that Petrov didn't actually have his finger on the proverbial "button," and that the lack of corroborating evidence would have prevented any missile launch on their part. But the decision would have had to be made in a matter of seconds or minutes. Who knows?

I guess this affects me strongly because I wonder how those of us who were supporters of a tough stance during the Cold War would have felt if we had known about this incident. How would we have felt if one of the officers in our bunkers had made the same judgment call? (Who knows but what some of them did?) Did we really take seriously the possibility of an accidental war?

It's easy to take positions based on ideology, or being tough, or sincerely believing that we're in the right. But we need to think through, really think through, the implications and possible consequences of our positions. Because there may be more riding on them than we had thought.

HT: Jollyblogger

Technorati Tags: Stanislav Petrov, Cold War, Nuclear War

The Death of Worship as Evangelism?

Just read a killer article: Sally Morgenthaler's "Worship as Evangelism," in the Next-Wave e-zine. Not all I agree with: the extended quote of an unchurched journalist lampooning a contemporary worship service, and the all-too-familiar accusation that we're all just looking for "an excuse not to do the hard work of real outreach" (evidently only extroverts are real Christians). But there is compelling stuff there:

• a survey of what has been going on in the last 20 years with the seeker-sensitive/worship-driven model of church growth;
• the irrefutable stats that show us that "For all the money, time, and effort we've spent on cultural relevance—and that includes culturally relevant worship—it seems we came through the last 15 years with a significant net loss in churchgoers";
• the fact that churches that think they're reaching the unchurched are finding that only a tiny percentage of their congregations are actually from an unchurched background.

The seeker-sensitive movement had it right that if someone is going to visit your church, it will likely be on a Sunday morning (although that isn't really all that exclusively true, it seems to me). But that has very little to do with reaching people who never visit a church at all, who don't think that church is relevant to their lives. Frankly, there is nothing in Scripture that remotely suggests that the gatherings of believers is a primary evangelism opportunity, or that we should structure our services in order to be evangelistic. The closest you can get is Paul using the synagogue service to introduce Jewish worshipers to Jesus the Messiah. But he was bringing that in from the outside, and the inevitable result was getting expelled from the synagogue, and worse. So that's not really a model for churches to follow. The gathering of believers together was for an entirely different purpose: to strengthen, unify, build up, teach, and equip believers to live out their faith in the larger world when they were not gathered together.

I'm the last person to pretend to have the answers regarding evangelism and church growth. But it seems to me that real evangelism happens almost exclusively outside the church walls, by people who are especially gifted for that type of ministry, and also by people who are really excited about their own Christian lives, about what God is doing in them. People will naturally share what they're genuinely excited about. It can't be hyped into people, and it can't be guilted into them either. It has to be a God-thing, and we need to be seeking God to restore and rejuvenate that excitement. Because if it's not working for us, why would we invite anyone else to try it?

If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?

Egalitarianism, Complementarianism, and Ministry

I've been following discussions of women in ministry on such forums as Jesus Creed, and Better Bibles Blog. It's rather a tangential issue for me: my fellowship doesn't prevent women from ministerial licensing or ordination; on the other hand, there are not a lot of women who are in positions of senior leadership in my fellowship either. Having watched this debate in as close to a position of objectivity as is possible, it seems to me that the debate is framed in terms of a significant misunderstanding of one another's positions, and a significant misunderstanding on the part of both sides of what ministry is.

The two primary terms in this debate are complementarianism and egalitarianism. The egalitarian position asserts that it is part of God's overall plan to erase distinctions of status and authority among the people of God. The key verse here would probably be Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." The argument here would be that what God has accomplished ontologically, as a spiritual reality, He also would want to make a visible reality in the lives, relationships, and organization of those who compose His Body.

The complementarian position acknowledges that with regard to our status before God, we are indeed equally sinners and equally saved by the mercy of God and the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf. Nonetheless, complementarians would argue that there remain positions of authority and submission, even within the Godhead, and our human relationships reflect that. There is no one passage that epitomizes this point of view, but a good contender would be 1 Corinthians 11:3: "Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." Without getting into the thorny issues regarding what headship means in this verse, it seems to imply some sort of relationship other than mere side-by-side equality. Complementarians would argue that the relationship between Jesus and the Father was, among other things, one of authority and submission, and that that same relationship would exist among men and women, or at least among husbands and wives specifically. The central idea is that we do not image God as mere individuals, but in relationship with one another, and the relationships that image God are, once again, not merely those of side-by-side equality.

The reason why I say that the debate is framed largely in terms of a significant misunderstanding of one another's positions is this: egalitarians do not seem to be able to conceive of the complementarian position as describing any relationship other than authoritarian domination and abject submission, and complementarians do not seem to be able to conceive of the egalitarian position as anything other than radical individualism, an insistence that there cannot and must not be any differentiation between any two persons, and that each person has an equal right to any position and any measure of authority. Both views are mischaracterizations.

One thing that the Bible focuses on very strongly is our mutual interdependence. That's precisely what the metaphor of the "body" of Christ is used for. We are not pennies in a roll, equal and undifferentiated; we are various "members" with differing gifts, gifts which make us interdependent, since no one person has them all. That is God's design for His people; quite frankly, He wants to force us to be dependent on one another. The odd thing about that is that it is mostly egalitarians who emphasize this mutual interdependence, even though it implies something of a complementarian position. Because the main point of complementarianism is (or should be) not dominance and subservience, but the fact that we complement one another to form a whole that none of us can fill on our own.

Egalitarians will respond: "We agree that all this is true. What we deny is that God does not give the gifts that imply authority only to one gender." And they may be right. I happen to think that they are right. But they are not necessarily right; that is to say, gifts are gifts, and God can give them to whomever He pleases, for whatever reasons He sees fit. Nobody has a right to a gift; the two terms are mutually exclusive. Egalitarians commonly argue, regarding 1 Timothy 2:12, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent," that Paul is dealing with a local issue involving women at Ephesus. What this implicitly acknowledges is that under certain circumstances, God may in fact rightly place restrictions on one group that He does not on another. Because after all, they are His gifts to give, His ministries to fill.

And this is where I think that both sides misunderstand what ministry is. Ministry isn't about authority; it's about service--that's what the word means. And it's not about the right to self-expression on the part of the one ministering; it's about meeting the needs of those who are being ministered to. As someone who has been in and out of a few different types of formal ministry, I hardly know what those who are agitating for their "right" to minister are after. The best medicine might well be for them to get what they want. The slings and arrows of ministry--the second-guessing, the opposition, the pettiness, the politics--fall on anyone who ministers.

I find it an odd little contradiction that those in the emerging movement tend both toward affirming women in formalized positions of ministry and being skeptical of formal ministry itself. Perhaps we need to stop focusing on formal ministry and simply focus on service. Serve however we can, wherever we can, whatever our individual circumstances. I know that this doesn't answer all the questions people have, and they're worthwhile questions to explore. But it seems to me that whether Junia was an apostle or what exactly head coverings meant might be less important than asking myself the question, "What can I do, here and now, today, to represent Jesus to my world?"

Come to think of it, Jesus never had a position of formal ministry. And He managed to accomplish a few things.

Technorati Tags: Egalitarianism, Complementarianism, Egalitarian, Complementarian, Women in Ministry

The Ghettoization of American Evangelicalism

Just adding collapsible post functionality and a pull quote. No new content. First line is a pull quote.
We've identified the gospel with a political and social perspective that few people can identify with who haven't been raised in it. Scot McKnight passes on a letter he's received in his most recent Letters to Emerging Christians segment. The complaint of the letter-writer essentially involves the fact that being an "evangelical" has become too identified with a particular brand of conservative American politics. A few quotes:

• Conservative Christians [frequently] conflate Christianity with American patriotism and/or the Republican party. One commentator says Jim Wallis can’t call himself an Evangelical because he’s a “left- leaning socialist” who made a speech on the Democrats’ weekly radio address!
• Dobson & company, attacking a member of the NAE for daring to suggest that global warming might actually be a problem.
• I read the quote from D. James Kennedy, a pastor and seminary leader in Florida: “The publication and promulgation of the 1599 Geneva Bible will help restore America’s rich Christian heritage and reclaim the culture for Christ.” What!? A 1599 Bible which, incidentally, comes with a middle-English glossary to help you understand what the heck they were saying, is the answer that will reclaim the culture for Christ???

Now, I've long been conservative in terms of my politics, although I am beginning to wonder... But regardless of one's political stripe, it should be deeply troubling that the Christian faith is so identified with a particular political position, especially on issues regarding which the Bible either doesn't speak or quite arguably speaks in the opposite direction. It should be disturbing that the mandate of the Church seems not to be to make disciples of all nations, but rather to "restore America’s rich Christian heritage."

And then I read Dan Kimball's excellent post, "Hope, depression, hope." He cites a sociologist and student of church growth and leadership:

He shared that the reason church statistics regarding attendance may be staying around the same level is because those in the churches are living longer. There are now a ton of old churches with elderly folks living longer which keeps that statistic up. He also shared how the already Christians in churches who have babies also keeps the percentage leveled out.

What isn't happening however, is the growth of the church from people outside the church coming in. We aren't keeping up on the population growth at large. I was reading that the church has leveled out in attendance over the past 15 years but at the same time our national population has grown by around 50 million people. So we can celebrate that churches are remaining relatively the same attendance-wise, but now there are more than 50 million people who aren't part of the church.

I don't think it's a great leap of logic to see these two issues as being related. We've identified the gospel with a political and social perspective that few people can identify with who haven't been raised in it. We've essentially said, "You can't join our club unless you're willing to subscribe to all twenty-six points of our worldview." And then we wonder why our churches stagnate, growing, if at all, through transfers from other churches. We are relevant only to one another. Welcome to the Christian ghetto.

Can't we see the wisdom of the Apostle Paul, who "resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2)? Paul wasn't a "culture warrior" in the modern sense. His aim was not to "take a stand" and then have his already-convinced buddies pat him on the back for not backing down. His aim was to reach as many people as possible with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Period.

The tension between the standards of the already-converted and the imperative of reaching the larger culture is nothing new. Jesus was accused of being "a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and 'sinners'" (Luke 7:34; cf. Matt. 11:19). Peter became the first to take the gospel to a Gentile audience. What was the response from the Christian community? "So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and said, 'You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them'" (Acts 11:2-3). Peter himself compromised his own principles and broke off fellowship with Gentile believers in order to satisfy "the circumcision group"; he had to be publicly rebuked by Paul because his "hypocrisy" had infected even Barnabas (Gal. 2:12-13). The pressure to conform to so-called "higher standards"--even at the cost of ostracizing some for whom Christ died--is intense.

Kimball continues with words that should be of particular interest to some who regularly read this blog, "It will be horribly sad if in 30 years or 40 years the church of America is a tiny thing, and we are still fighting each other about whether one is a Calvinist or Arminian or whether you preach verse by verse or preach topically etc." Obviously, I think divine election is a worthwhile thing to discuss, but it must be kept in its proper place. There's a lost and dying world out there. We have answers, but we're fading into irrelevance. We're squabbling with one another instead of trying to reach that world. We're telling people that they must oppose abortion and homosexuality, that they must support Israel and capitalism and lower taxes, that we must win the War on Terror and support our president, oppose the environmentalist wackos, and stand up for God and Country. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that these are all noble and worthy goals. I just have one question.

Where did the gospel go?



If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?

Does Your Theology Honor God?

Does your theology honor God? By asking this question, I do not mean, do you have The Right Theology, the one that objectively honors God by having all its "i"s dotted and its "t"s crossed and will at the Judgment be decreed The Final Truth about God. What I mean is, do you honor God by your interest in theology? Is your desire to read and write about it motivated by a love for God and a desire to honor Him?



This question has been prompted by my on-again, off-again conversations with Timotheos, a Reformed brother. He and I have gotten into some comment discussions on Peter Lumpkins's blog, as well as on this one and via email. During one of these discussions, I was quite moved by recognizing that Timotheos deeply cared about what he was writing about--that his theology was motivated, more than anything else, by his desire to honor God. I felt at that moment that even if I could have served up a definitive rebuttal to his position, I would not have desired to do so: it would have been robbing Timotheos of something that was precious to him and contributed to his appreciation for God. Timotheos was just as concerned to honor God by defending God's thorough and unasked-for transformation of His elect, as I was to honor God by defending His mercy and genuine offer of forgiveness to all of humanity. At that moment, the specifics that we were debating paled into insignificance compared with the desire we both had to honor God by what we believe about Him.



It is not always this way with theological debate. We are all too often motivated by the desire simply to Be Right--to be proven right, to show our superiority over the other person's argument, to defeat our opponent in verbal battle. Do we hold to a theological system because we truly believe that it honors God, or do we hold to it because it's the most logical, or the most experiential, or the most contemporary, or the most rooted in history and tradition, or the most evangelistic, or the most strongly opposed to the theological tradition we like the least? We can hold any theological position--even the correct one--for all kinds of wrong motivations. Ultimately, I think God cares more about why we believe what we believe than He does about the precise specifics of what we believe. It seems to me rather obvious that all of us are going to have some of our positions, er, adjusted in eternity. Probably much of what we squabble about will prove to be a false framing of the question. Meanwhile, the real issue will have been, were we honoring God with our theology?



It would be reasonable to wonder, at this point, why I bother taking theological positions at all. What does it matter exactly what we believe, as long as we have a heart that desires to honor God? Well, in a broad sense, content does matter: we can't be honoring God if we're honoring the wrong god. And in a narrower sense, Jesus did say that the Great Commandment was to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Especially for those of us who have that bent, loving God with our minds involves pondering these things, trying to make sense of what the Bible tells us about God. And it's inevitable that we should come to some conclusions, even if they're tentative, and end up in discussions with others who have come to differing conclusions.



But ultimately, the specifics of our conclusions matter less than our desire to honor God through them. One thing I know about my brother Timotheos: he loves God with all his heart, and his conception of God contributes to that love. My conception of God contributes to my love for Him. Maybe the real challenge is to love God, and to love one another, more than we love our conceptions.



Technorati Tags: Calvinism, Arminianism, Calvinist, Arminian, Theology, Theological, Debate, Reformed

Groundhog Day is Today

Republished without picture, since ImageShack decided to yank my access. No new content.

So put your little hand in mine
There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb
     -- Sonny and Cher

If you haven't ever seen Bill Murray's movie, Groundhog Day, you really should check it out. The movie is based on a simple premise: a self-centered, shallow weatherman (Murray) finds himself repeating the same day over and over. It recounts how he first disbelieves and resists his situation, then decides to exploit it, tries repeatedly to kill himself (only to wake up the following morning), falls in love with his producer (Andie MacDowell) and tries to exploit the situation to win her, and finally becomes aware of the needs of the people around him, choosing to use this eternally-recurring day to serve others and improve himself.

I've long enjoyed the movie; it's Murray at his best, both funny and poignant. The central idea is irresistible, and much of the fun of the movie is watching the same scene setup play itself out in a myriad of different ways, based on Murray's character Phil Connors trying out all sorts of different responses to the situations that repeatedly confront him. Once the movie has established the basic setup, we often see the same scene repeated a number of times in a row, as when Connors uses information gleaned from a previous day--say, a woman's high school or favorite drink--to his advantage on a subsequent day. Or sometimes, the same type of thing happens in different settings (the slapping montage is the most priceless example).

But the movie makes its turn when Connors sees the needs of the people around him. A child falls out of a tree; a group of women are stranded with a flat tire; a man in a restaurant chokes on some steak; a homeless man dies. Connors begins setting for himself a set of "chores"; things that he does for people every day, despite the fact that when he wakes up again, the same needs will exist again, and the people he's helped won't even remember that he has done so. Besides this, he also does things, like taking piano lessons, to better himself in a personal way. As he does so, he earns what he could not gain by manipulation: the admiration--and the beginnings of love--from MacDowell's character.

What struck me the last time I saw this movie was how it really played as a parable of our own lives. To be sure, we are not caught in a time loop during which we are literally repeating the same day over and over. But for most of us, life settles into a routine. We go to work, we come home, we frequent various places for amusement, we travel the same routes, we see the same people. The real question for each one of us as human beings is, what are we doing with that routine? How aware are we of the people that cross our paths every day? What kind of people are we making ourselves into? What influence are we having on others?

It's all-too-easy to find ourselves mindlessly repeating the same pattern, hoping for some Big Thing to get us out of our rut and make a change in our lives. It's tempting to think of ministry as something that we will do if the right opportunity comes along. Some of us, frankly, are stuck--in jobs we didn't expect to have, in places we didn't intend to be, in situations we didn't plan on. The real question is, What do we do with the place we're stuck in and the people we're stuck with? Because how we answer that question determines the kind of person we are. Jesus, to be quite frank, didn't say, "Repeat this prayer after me, and if you really believe it in your heart, then you can live forever in heaven." He did say, "Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these, my brothers, you have done it unto me. Enter into your rest."

Technorati Tags: Movies, Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Comedy

Christmas and the Search for Significance

You've got big dreams? You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying. With sweat. --Fame

In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.--Andy Warhol

Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super... no one will be. --The Incredibles

You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody. --On the Waterfront

I read recently that over half of bloggers say they blog for themselves, not for an audience. I have a really hard time believing that. You don't need online web space to have a journal; all you need is a blank book and a pen. Or if you'd rather type, a Word file will do. I think that even if we don't care about having a large readership, most of us posting into cyberspace are trying, at some level, to etch our own "Kilroy was here" into the ether. We hope that there is at least one kindred soul out there somewhere who "gets us." We want to "be somebody." Our whole culture is saturated with an irrational fascination with celebrity. Why else would anyone care about the verbal slugfest going on between Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump?

Some years ago, a friend recommended the book The Search for Significance to me. It discusses the ubiquitous need we have to be recognized in the eyes of others, and the solution to the dilemma in recognizing God's investing us with worth by creating us in His image and by giving His Son to redeem us. I liked it in many ways, although frankly that insight, by itself, doesn't seem to remove the appetite to "be special" in the eyes of other people.

And it is in this context that I reflect on the birth of our Savior. We tend to discuss the "humble" birth of Jesus in a sort of sweet and sentimental way. We use quaint and obsolete words like "manger" to avoid saying that Jesus was laid in an animals' feeding trough. We talk about Mary and Joseph being "poor," and conceive of that as being modest working class, without dealing with the reality of the struggle for survival that poverty entails. More to the point, we forget about the total obscurity that someone like Jesus would have lived in. The details of "One Solitary Life" are very true: Jesus never wrote a book, never led an army, never traveled more than 300 miles from where he was born. He was, at most, a working-class laborer, the (apparent) son of a working-class laborer, and an itinerant preacher, among an oppressed, conquered people at the outskirts of the Roman Empire. By the standards of the intellectuals of the day, the Jews would have been considered an uncouth, barbaric people. Jesus had a brief popular ministry among them, which ended up getting him into a conflict with some of their religious authorities over some obscure points of their religious dogma. So they trumped up some charges and handed him over to the Governor, who had him executed in order to avoid a riot. He died the death of a criminal, in a humiliating fashion, the Romans' favorite object lesson on What Happens to Those Who Dare Oppose the Empire.

And other than some odd stories his followers began telling a few days after the execution, that was it. God could have sent his Son to the political capital, Rome, or the intellectual centers of Athens or Alexandria. Jesus could have been somebody. He could have been world-famous. Satan offered him just that at one point. But he lived his whole life in virtual obscurity, and if his followers hadn't written about him, no one would know that he had ever existed. It wasn't necessary for him to be known, or liked, or admired, or any of the other things that most of us crave. He came to die for us, and he also set an example for us. "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus," Paul writes to the Philippians (2:5),and goes on to outline Jesus' humility to the point of death and his subsequent exaltation by the Father.

So as we celebrate Jesus' birth and recall the events surrounding the Incarnation, let's recall Jesus' willingness to be one of us--even to the point of being a nobody. Let's take note of all the "nobodies" that cross our paths, and remember that "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me" (Matt. 25:40).

Reflections on the Amish Schoolhouse Murders

I lived for some time in rural Pennsylvania, and so I have felt with peculiar horror the developing story of the gunman who wounded five girls and killed five others and himself in an Amish country schoolhouse. I don't claim to have anything profound to share on the subject, but I do have a few reflections.

• When the story first broke, all that was being said, to my knowledge, was that the gunman was reacting to something that had happened to him twenty years earlier. So it appeared to be a revenge thing. Does anything illustrate the desperate circumstances that the world has fallen into better than the increasing tendency for people to lash out in lethal rage against people who have never harmed them, people whom they don't even know? How is it that people have such intense hatred in their hearts? How is it that we are assimilating this sort of thing into our collective consciousness more and more readily?
• Later it developed that 20-year-old issue that the gunman had dealt with was his own molesting of family members (by his own admission; it has not been confirmed), and that his intent had evidently been to rape and torture the young women whom he held captive. He had kept these desires hidden for years, only to explode in vicious destruction. And yet, many persist in trying to make sexuality separate from all other morals or ethics. Anything is permissible, it seems, as long as it is kept locked in the imagination or between consenting adults. But as we see here, by the time it does explode into violence, it is too late to do anything about it. If only he had found salvation, healing, and deliverance through our Lord!
• This kind of attack on what the man probably assumed were the most innocent victims he could find can only be regarded as demonic. Can there be any doubt that we are truly in a spiritual war, and who our enemy is? Nero fiddled while Rome burned; will the epitaph on the contemporary church be that we navel-gazed while our civilization crumbled and the bearers of God's image all around us perished without a knowledge of the truth?
• It is impossible for us as believers to cloister ourselves away so that the world can't "get at" us. The Amish are about as far removed from contemporary society as you can get, and yet it crashed in on them. I am not specifically indicting the Amish in this; they, in fact, see tourism as their opportunity to show the outside world a stark difference. But we all have our ways of cloistering ourselves away, socially if not geographically and culturally. Our business is to be in the world as an influence, not safely huddled away from it.
  
• An interview I saw with an Amish man was quite revealing. He talked about the importance of forgiveness, and mentioned that the gunman's wife and children were also victims in this tragedy. He was, of course, right--that family is scarred for life by the actions of that husband and father. Can you imagine being a child and coming home from school to find out that not only is Daddy dead, but that he was a murderer and everyone in the world knows about it? We seriously need to pray for that family. But I was deeply impressed that one of the victims of this tragedy could have the perspective to recognize the need of another, very different sort of victim.
• This brings into question the type of theological discussion encouraged by this blog and many others. How much difference does dotting one's theological 'i's and crossing one's theological 't's correctly matter in a world that is this lost, this corrupted, fallen this low? I still think that discussion of various theological issues is of value--how could reflection on what God has revealed in His Word not be of value?--but it is clearly of secondary importance to the overall war that all believers face against the enemy of our souls.

We all have different gifts, different interests, different parts to play in the Body of Christ. We don't all have to do the same things or react the same way to momentous events like this. But I hope whatever reactions we have, whatever we do, that we will allow events like this to remind us of the larger fight that we are engaged in, and the larger purpose for which we are placed on this earth. We are called to make a difference, wherever we are, whatever we're doing, to draw people to our Lord. That is what being salt and light means.

Get To Know Me! What prayer is really about

I was recently at a pastors' meeting at which the subject of prayer was being discussed. The general theme was that if we want to see things happen within the church--people saved and healed, the church healthy and growing, the power of God working in and through us--then it all starts with prayer. Prayer must be made a priority. We need to devote time to it, we need to gather together for it, we need to be examples of it.

We also discussed obstacles to that: the sense in Western culture that prayer isn't actually "doing anything," the struggles that some of us experience in keeping focused, the general busyness of our lives, the tendency we have to focus on methodology rather than to rely on God, the fact that the results of prayer are often delayed and we expect instant answers.

Being relatively new to the group, I mainly listened, but as the discussion proceeded, an idea jelled in my mind. All too often, we use prayer as a means to an end--and the end is something we've decided ahead of time, before we begin to pray. (Isn't that, after all, the meaning of the term, "prayer request"?) We are essentially bringing our agenda to God and asking Him (politely, of course) to do our bidding. Yes, we've all heard teaching about various types and stages of prayer, but really, don't we often treat the other stages of prayer merely as prologue? "Adoration, check. Confession, check. Thanksgiving, check. Supplication--okay, now let's get to business." And the reality is that sometimes issues are weighing on our hearts so strongly that pretending to focus on something else amounts to self-deception. We need to be honest with ourselves and God about where we're at.

Nonetheless, I think that using prayer as a means to the end of getting God to enact our agenda is the main reason that we have difficulty with prayer. Quite simply, God isn't going to help us in prayer if that's what we're doing. And we ourselves know at some level that we can't really arm-twist God into doing what we want, so it's difficult to pray with any confidence. And if we don't have God's help or confidence in getting what we want, it's going to be hard to focus, and we're going to feel like we're really not accomplishing anything.

The phrase that kept running through my mind was, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection" (Phil. 3:10). It seems to me that the real object of prayer is for us to get closer to God and become attuned to His agenda. As we are "conformed to the likeness of His Son" (Rom. 8:29), our desires will more closely coincide with His desires, and we can pray with greater confidence that we are praying according to His will. As a matter of fact, the prayer request we started out with might actually have been in His will--but I'm convinced that God is much more interested in who we are becoming than in most of the things we ask of Him.

Paul writes, "I want to know Christ." This is after his conversion, after assisting Barnabas for years in Antioch, after his three groundbreaking missionary journeys, after having written several of his epistles. We tend to look at "knowing Christ" merely positionally: if we're Christians, then we "know Christ." Yet here is one of the greatest Christians who ever lived, deep into his maturity as a believer, still seeking to "know Christ." How much should we be longing to know Him? I know the deepest experiences of prayer that I have had involved simply a desire to seek Him and know Him, with no other agenda whatever.

"And the power of his resurrection." Knowing Christ is the key to His power. But He uses His power for His ends, not ours. We can't just make knowing Him, once again, a means to the end of accessing His power. He's not going to play that game. We have to be tools in His hands if we want to be channels of His power. Miracles happen when we're doing what He wants, not trying to get Him to do what we want.

And then there's the part of the passage that I had forgotten: "and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings." Here's where God's agenda is so often completely different from ours. How much of our prayers involve escaping suffering? Some theologies are built around the idea that if we had God's power, we wouldn't have to experience suffering. Paul says the opposite: that in coming to know Christ and experiencing His power, he actually wants to share in the sufferings of Jesus. This, quite frankly, is beyond me; and yet I at least know where I lack. We may need to go through suffering in order to accomplish God's will in our lives; but if we're submissive to it, He will even redeem the suffering.

Reorienting how we think about prayer is the first step toward reenergizing our prayer lives. I'm tempted here to finish up by suggesting that as we get to know Christ better and become more like Him, the results we were looking for in the first place will follow. I believe this to be true, but isn't that just lapsing back into the same mindset: a means to our own ends? Let's just purpose to become more like Christ. Isn't that the best possible end?

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy...

"Naturally one wouldn't condemn a dog on newspaper extracts."

--C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

Bob Mitton recently blogged about news and information overload. It seems to me that there are two separate but related issues: the value of "the news," and how to filter information so as to get the best from what is available (of course, this involves defining "best").

I'm ambivalent about the first issue, the value of the news. It seems to me that news could be moderately valuable if it would stick to being actual news, rather than Tips on Beating the Summer Heat, Can Automated Sprinkler Systems Really Kill You, and Recipes to Improve Your Love Life. Even what masquerades as actual news often falls into the categories of manufactured news (usually polls), entertainment news (the celebrity publicity mill), and personal tragedies ("There was a four-car pileup today...."). This last category is particularly odious, partly because it takes precedence over other news ("If it bleeds, it leads") and partly because it has relevance only to the people involved, who don't need to find out about it on the news. Real actual news--events of political or social significance that have a potential effect on the reader or an actual effect on enough other people that the public in general should know about them--is an ever-shrinking piece of the information pie.

But the larger question is to what degree even real, actual news is of benefit, expecially to the Christian. That is, what does it mean to be an Informed Person (or an Informed Christian) and to what degree is being "informed" a Good Thing?

It seems to me that Western technological society is addicted to the ephemeral. It's most obvious in fashion, where clothing styles that just months ago were considered fresh and attractive are now derided as outdated and ridiculous. There is quite obviously no improvement going on; just a marketing system that urges people to replace clothing more quickly than it is worn out. The addiction of some people to the news is very much like the addiction of others to fashion. Very, very little of what is disseminated by AP, UPI, Reuters, and other news-gathering organizations will be of any historical consequence, let alone eternal consequence. For that matter, very little of what gets discussed on talk radio or on blogs will be of lasting importance.

Asking whether a person is informed is rather like asking whether a measuring cup is full. The question is, "Full of what?" Or, "Informed with what?" If we are to be informed with something that is worthwhile, we will have to overcome our cultural addiction to the ephemeral, and stop imagining that the most recent thing published on a topic will also be the most useful, relevant, and important. It's not true. The most important things have been put into writing a long time ago. "It's all there in Plato," as the Professor said to Peter and Susan.

So to answer Bob's question, my problem is not figuring out how to "filter the noise of our information culture to find relevant information," it's rather finding the time and the quiet and the energy and the desire to read the important books that I already know about but have never read for myself. I don't think I need to amass large amounts of extra information; I think I need to delve deeper into what I think I already know. Bob writes, "news has become entertainment rather than information"; I think amassing quantities of ultimately useless information is itself a form of entertainment. And I, like virtually everyone in my culture, am addicted to various forms of entertainment. As Neil Postman wrote (in yet another book I need to get around to reading), we are Amusing Ourselves to Death. What I need to be doing is digging deeper into the well of life.