Perhaps I Only Owe One Toilet Seat
From my e-mail box:
Dear IRS,Enclosed is my 2004 tax return showing that I owe $3,407.00 in taxes.
Please note the attached article from USA Today, wherein you will see that
the Pentagon is paying $171.50 for hammers and NASA has paid $600.00 for a
toilet seat.I am enclosing four toilet seats (value $2400) and six hammers (value
$1029), bringing my total remitted to $3429.00. Please apply the
overpayment of $22.00 to the “Presidential Election Fund,” as noted on my
return. You can do this inexpensively by sending them one 1.5” Phillips
Head screw (article from USA Today detailing how HUD pays $22.00 each for
1.5” Phillips Head Screws is enclosed for your convenience.)It has been a pleasure to pay my tax bill this year, and I look forward to
paying it again next year.Sincerely,
A Satisfied Taxpayer
A Meditation on those Deceptive Words
The present quote, as I said yesterday, is one that has really struck me over the last couple of weeks.
“Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: 'This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.'” (NRSV)
It seems that what Jeremiah is saying is extremely applicable to our present time (and any time, for that matter). The people of Jerusalem at the time of this warning were feeling invincible against the Babylonians; they never could imagine that the city would be wiped out by those who did not know God, for how could the temple of YHWH fall to the Gentiles? Sure, they worshipped a few other gods on the side, visited the high places and so on — but they were in the city of the temple. “This is the temple of the LORD” so who can possibly destroy us?
Israel had been wiped out in 722 B.C., but that was something that could be understood. They did not have “the Temple of the LORD.” As the Deuteronomist likes to often remind us, the people of Israel did evil by following the example of Jeroboam, worshipping the golden calfs he fashioned as replacements for proper worship of YWHW in Jerusalem. If the fate of the Northern Kingdom was tied in part to the evil of Jeroboam, then so long as God's true temple was in Jerusalem, nothing could possibly go wrong, right?
They got their answer. It didn't matter even if they had not let their hearts stray to other gods, they didn't “get” the message of their God anyway. They thought that what God desired was sacrifices and worship. They had down the rituals — they did not see that rituals are empty.
Rituals are nothing in and of themselves. As Mircea Eliade noted, what a ritual does is symbolize — connect us with — “sacred time.” If we fail to focus on the deeper meaning of it, it is about as useful as a book of cuneiform writings is to someone like me that doesn't understand those symbols. It does not matter if the rituals are complex ones with hundreds of years of history or a contemporary worship service with its own set of informal rituals, rituals are all throughout the church. We naturally represent the Sacred through symbols, but our problem is that we often focus on the symbols and not what they point to.
It makes me think of a store selling large or expensive items. Usually, the displays have little tags you can take that allow you to purchase those items. Those tags symbolize the item you wish to purchase. Imagine if people went into the store and excitedly exited with those tags but never went to a clerk and traded the tag for the actual item it is intended to aid you in purchasing. That's basically the situation we often have with ritual.
The message of the Ethical Monotheism expounded by the great prophets is simple: having the right heart before God, not performing ritual, is at the heart of what God wants. While those in Jerusalem were busy chanting, “This is the Temple of the LORD,” one of Jeremiah's colleagues was busy expounding precisely how far off the mark the people were. In Micah 6:6-8 (ESV) it is written:
“With what shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?” (Emphasis mine.)
Consider that if the heart of what God desired of those in the Old Covenant was this threefold command to act justly, to be kind and to be a humble follower of God's path for us, how much more this should be something we pay attention to as those in the New Covenant. Consider that the Old Covenant provided restoration from our sinful state through rituals, ours is provided completely by Grace bestowed on us at God's pleasure. If what mattered in a ritualistic setting was not really the rituals but a faithful heart toward God, we cannot overestimate the importance of such in Christianity when faith is at the core.
This seems to me just an ideal reminder on the theme of reform that I've talked about over the past week. We must always seek to cut through the popular religion, the temptation just to get lost in our own rituals, and remember what Matt Redmond referred to as “the heart of worship.”
“And [Jesus] said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.'” (Matthew 22:37-40 ESV)
Credit where credit is due: I should acknowledge the deep influence of Dr. Alan Meyers throughout this meditation.
Those Deceptive Words
I've read the passage before, but for some reason, it is really striking me at the moment. Part of it may be that I'm reading it in a different translation (NRSV), but I think part of it is that it just happens to hit a chord at this time.
“Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: 'This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.'”
I feel led to write about this passage (Jeremiah 7:3-4), but that will not happen tonight. I'll try to post some thoughts on it, along with my previous quote of the month (from Doctor Faustus), in the coming days.
Late Night Haiku X
XXVI.
Hope erodes at times
To the loneliness of truth,
But it does not die.
XXVII.
Autumn leaves pass by,
Season grows shorter briskly now,
Oh! To slow the end.
XXVIII.
A stream bubbles, faint,
As my thoughts like water flow,
Will they come ashore?
Seems Accurate Enough
| You Are Likely an Only Child |
 At your darkest moments, you feel frustrated.At work and school, you do best when you're organizing. When you love someone, you tend to worry about them. In friendship, you are emotional and sympathetic. Your ideal careers are: radio announcer, finance, teaching, ministry, and management. You will leave your mark on the world with organizational leadership, maybe as the author of self-help books. |
Is the Reformation Over?
Mark asked me about Mark Noll's Is the Reformation Over? in my last post. I respect Noll quite a bit, so I figured I'd probably agree with him, but I am not familiar with that book, so I decided to look around a bit about it. I found a speech from last year in which Noll summarized the book.
I think Noll seems to be right that Evangelicals (in the broad sense that includes those of us who are Reformed) and Catholics have more in common than we have in differences. Primarily, he isolates the views of the Church (do believers come before the church or the church before believers) and tradition. I'd tend to agree. Most other differences (such as views of the nature of Holy Communion/the Eucharist, the authority of the papacy, and the importance of Mary) draw out of the realm of tradition. For instance, as the Orthodox Church did, pre-schism, I think many Protestants will gladly give the Pope a great deal of respect, but we won't elevate him to a position of the final authority of the Church. That is a view supported by Catholic Church dogma, not Scripture — at least in my view as a Protestant — and thus so long as I look with suspicion on tradition in and of itself, I obviously will not support that view of Pope (even though I really respect the pontiff).
These differences are significant, but not a barrier. As Noll says,The “mere Christians” in all of these traditions believe very similar things about the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, the Trinity, the centrality of the work of Christ for human salvation, and the power of the Holy Spirit as the motive force for holy living in the world. But each tradition expresses these realities with characteristically different emphases:I personally am attracted to the mystical character of Orthodoxy, the grandeur of the Catholic Church and the emphasis of the priesthood of the individual believer in Protestantism (I won't reject Pentecostalism, but have a harder time picking out anything I am particularly appreciative of in that case). That is to say, I do not look down on the other two great wings of the church for their distinctives; in fact, as a Protestant, I envy them for those things that we lack. I think this is key to the question of if the Reformation is over: I think it is. I think the lessons of the Reformation are still valid and that is we should always reform and be on the lookout for unscriptural dogmas, but that does not necessitate continued isolation between Protestants and Catholics. As Noll says,
Orthodoxy, the mystical mysterious of God
Catholicism, the power of God to build his City
Protestantism, the civil society shaped by individual choice
Pentecostalism, the direct empowerment of the Holy Spirit
We have gathered here today as people who not so very long ago looked upon each other as orcs and elfs, and were as repelled by orc-speech and elf-speech as it was possible to be. Today, it is more like ents and hobbits, not yet speaking the same language, but nonetheless getting quite a charge from hearing the other tongue and actually getting along quite well together. Might God do even more? Look around you. Listen. It is happening right before your eyes and ears.Amen.
The 488th Reformation Day
My professor of religion and advisor is a wise man. Today, when he saw me, he smiled and wished me a “Happy Reformation Day!” He is one of the few I know who make it a habit to wish a happy Reformation Day, but I think that's a good habit. To an extent, Reformation Day is like Good Friday — it is a day that isn't exactly happy, but on the other hand, it is a very happy day indeed. Let me explain.
It is a dreary day for the obvious reason. As with the Great Schism of 1054, Reformation Day marked a day in which the unity of the Church was irreconcilably lessened. But, that is only one aspect of Reformation Day. The good Dr. Martin Luther never intended to split the church, only to fix what was wrong with it (click the link to read the 95 Theses and A Mighty Fortress is Our God, as I posted them two years ago). In the long run, that much was a success: even the parts of the church that did not split off were forced to begin to clean out the corruption of the Renaissance age. Would we have the Vatican II era in the Catholic Church without the Reformation? It is something to consider.
That is what we should take away from Reformation Day today. This is a day of renewal, not destruction. While it has taken almost 500 years, these days the parts of the one universal Church are communicating better than they have since October 31, 1517 (well actually better than they have since the beginnings of the Great Schism in the ninth century or so). In what might have seemed very odd not that long ago, and what is still perhaps ironic, I spent part of today working on a web site for a Catholic ministry. What this day should remind us — regardless of whether you adhere to the Protestant, Orthodox or Catholic creeds — is that we should always seek truth, for as the saying I still cannot find the citation for says, between God and truth there can be no conflict. The church here on earth will always be collecting barnacles that prevent smooth sailing, and it is good to look and clean those off every so often.
A day that leads to self-reflection is a good day. So long as we do not look at Reformation Day as something from the past, but as something very real in the present, it is a good day that helps us continually aim for the goal: Soli Deo Gloria.
Happy Reformation Day to all of you.
The Road Ahead
I've been trying to figure out where I am headed, in a number of ways, for some time. In different ways, I've tried to make some strides in two particular cases over the past week. I'll deal with one way now, and one in a future post, I hope.
For the past four or five years, I've realized my calling is in academia. I'm a theologian at heart and in the present time, academia would appear to be the best place to go to work on such a pursuit. Instead of the more practical pastoral ministry, this is a ministry, but one for the mind more than the heart. That is to say, my “patron saint” would be Thomas Aquinas and not Francis of Assi; John Calvin rather than John Wesley; C.S. Lewis rather than Rick Warren. The need for both is strong; these are a complementary pursuits. Knowledge does not save, but it does provide a stable foundation for faith — it is the well tilled soil in which carefully planted seeds can thrive.
I am aware that I am squarely aiming myself for a field that is “highly competitive,” which means I must be as well qualified as possible if I hope to actually crack the nut and get in. With that in mind, I'm considering exactly what kind of training I need to take aim for. Some have advised me to make my next goal a MA in Religious Studies, presumably continuing to a Ph.D. in the same. This would be useful, but is rather limited: should I ever wish to do anything in the other realms of ministry, I'd be totally unqualified by many standards (be they legitimate or not). Moreover, while I readily admit and appreciate the usefulness of anthropology, sociology and other disciplines which inform the Religious Studies field, they are not the part of the Critical Study of Religion that I have the biggest affinity with. I'd rather focus on Christian theology and philosophy and supplement that so as to make myself able to teach World Religions and other similar courses.
It seems to make the most sense to take aim for some kind of seminary degree. Ultimately, I am mostly convinced to aim for a Ph.D. track (be it directly from a school that would start me off working in that direction immediately or working through a masters and then finding a place to continue later), but along the way I must decide whether to go with a MA in Theology or a M.Div. For my purposes, the former is mostly what I need, and would allow me to reduce the amount of time I have left to reach my goal in about six to seven years rather than seven to eight. But, again, it leaves something lacking in ordination qualifications, which I think might be a mistake. Therefore, I am mostly leaning toward an M.Div. Although I do not see myself in a pulpit ministry, I do want to pursue ordination eventually.
That is not the end of the discussion, of course. My big decision is whether I should aim for the local PCA seminary, which is small and I've been looking at for some time (Covenant), or perhaps I should instead aim for a PC (USA) seminary back East. Some of those who advise me seem to think (I suspect correctly) that the well established PC (USA) seminaries may be more oriented to the scholarly, rather than practical, and therefore better suited for an academic career. This, of course, could be crucial to actually making it into a good position down the road.
Right now, the two seminaries I'm looking most closely at are Covenant and Princeton, but I'm still doing a fairly cursory consideration. Some others that I'm planning to examine more closely are Fuller and Union. I've briefly considered Concordia, which is also in town, but I think I've ruled that out, along with Trinity. The main criteria that will end up deciding what happens are class sizes, academic job placement success rates and scholarliness. Cheaper would be nice too, but none of them are going to be cheap. I would like to stay here in St. Louis, or nearby, but I don't want to shoot myself in the foot either. I'm most likely aiming to stay within the Reformed tradition as opposed to the more Evangelical seminaries.
Any recommendations, would, of course, be appreciated.
Reformation Sunday
Well, I wrote up a really nice post on Reformation Day and, particularly, reflections on some of the problems it leaves us with today, but I'm afraid I hit the wrong button and it went off into the abyss. It was probably the best post I've written in awhile, but not good enough to warrant rewriting the whole thing, so I guess I'll leave well enough alone for now.
Something, That's What.
In response to my last post — it has been a bit of a peculiar week, but overall, everything went better than I had hoped. I am thankful for that. I almost feel as if the last week hasn't really occurred, but I don't mean that in a bad way.
I have a few blog entries I'd like to write if only I had enough time to do so. It just seems I never have time and energy at the same time lately. Oh well.
