Thoughts While Watching a Baseball Game

I only infrequently have multi-topic blog posts, but I probably ought to do it more often. What better opportunity, though, to post such a sporatic bit of nonsense than a baseball game. Right now the Rangers lead the Mariners 13-7.

Israel continues its warpath in the Middle East, with no end in sight. Hezbollah, too, shows no signs of settlement. I have been reluctant to comment on the situation up to this point primarily because it is an issue of almost infinite complexity and an historical record stretching back millennia. I also think giving it attention only further entrenches its permanence. Hezbollah and their brother terrorist organizations engage in terrorist acts in order to get noticed. They know that it is a statement of their perceived subservience so the rest of the world will be sympathetic to their plight. Israel, too, knows that they can make grandiose claims about being the victims of Islamofacist terror, and brutalize their cultural enemy without serious recourse (at least nothing more than being the most hated country in the world).

The reality is that the world never cares or involves itself in the countless cultural genocides and religious wars that rage daily in Africa. The world hardly bats an eye at the brutality of the communist dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela, or religious persecution in China and the Middle East. Why did the Darfur crisis (which continues, unmitigated) receive 15 seconds of the world's attention? Robert Mugabe is ruling Zimbabwe with the iron fist of economic oppression with catastrophic consequences, AIDS is ravaging all of Sub-Saharan Africa, and yet the world is concerned with a small ethnic conflict that has been around almost as long as time itself. The news agencies want each flare up between Israel and the terrorists to be the tipping point that drags Iran into open war. The likelihood of this is minute, but it sells.

We need to stop giving the terrorists and the bullies our attention, and maybe they'll stop craving it. At the very least, we could focus on somebody who might be at least remotely interested in our advice.

Next topic...interest rates. For the first time in two years, the Federal Reserve decided not to raise interest rates. I have opposed about the last three rate hikes. Interest rate stability is important to a number of sectors of the economy, not least of which is the consumer debt market, the fundamental underlying support of the U.S. Economy. The ability to leverage income at reasonable rates of interest sustains demand levels for consumer and durable goods, as well as luxury items. The home mortgage market is additionally vital to long-term wealth creation, since one of the few ways Americans save money and build equity. Forcing more individuals into rental markets for housing will significantly diminish individual net worths. We'll see where the Fed goes from here, but if they do not maintain rate stability in the coming months, we will see stagnation in those key markets as well as the US stock exchanges, which have always been leading economic indicators.

7th Inning, Rangers still lead the Mariners 13-7.

This is a totally random comment, but I am finding in my life that the more I complain about a particular woe or dislike, the more aware I am of it and its negative effects. That in turn causes me to complain more. Vicious cycle. I need to utilize the lessons of the contemplative lives led by the likes of Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton to empty myself of those wants and desires so I can be free to offer myself and my love to others. Complaining never remedies the situation anyway.

Typing from my blackberry....my thumbs are sore, so that is all for today.

Britain's Home Secretary on the Fungibility of Liberty

I am writing this entry from my seat on a commercial airliner after being repeatedly interrogated prior to boarding about whether or not I had in my possession any liquids including bottled water or hair gel. Don't I feel safe now.

With the security threat level raised today as a result of the attempted hijackings, Britain's Home Secretary, John Reid weighed in on the issue of limiting liberty in order to preserve security.

"Sometimes we may have to modify some of our own freedoms in the short term in order to prevent their misuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy all of our freedoms."

I'm unsure how others might read this little clip, but I am certainly puzzled as to how liberty is best protected when it is curtailed. The unfortunate reality is that in spite of many short term measures to "protect" the people of countries targeted by terrorism, what we have is, at best, an illusion of security interspersed by an infrequent piercing of that dubious veil.

President Bush has said that we mustn't let the terrorists win be reducing our protection of liberty and essentially "give in." Yet this is precisely what his administration and Tony Blair's government have done in response to the recent increase in Islamic terror threats. These threats, lest we forget, have been around since the end of the First World War, and have manifested themselves in a number of ways over the last several decades. Islamic terrorism is nothing new, and our response ought not belie this reality.

We cannot be completely secure, and we must decide what level of safety we are willing to accept with its corresponding loss of freedom.

I would take the opposite stance of Mr. Reid. It would be better to sacrifice some short term security in order to preserve our long-term, fundamental liberties--for they will depart us, not with agony, not with sorrow, and not with fanfare, but in the silence of the night and nothing to be done about it.

Bless Those Who Curse You

I'm eating breakfast at an out of town hotel and drinking my morning coffee before I hop on a plane back to Dallas. This week has been an enormous lesson in "bless those who curse you." One of my most intense dislikes in human personality is passive aggressiveness, especially from people who claim to be blunt.

For example, I'm quite content if somebody doesn't like me, but I would appreciate the courtesy to just say it rather than be passive about it and make small, snide remarks here and there. Yet, I have to be patient and kind to those people too, even if I know that behind my back they are trying to push me out or cut me down. As much as it pained me, I turned the other cheek to somebody like that this week, and then walked into a room and received a hammering from that person. He of course will never realize the favor I did for him, but I have to be content with that. To seek recognition for my charity would diminish its nobility, but for whatever reason I have a resentment brewing inside of me over the whole matter.

 That is the selfish portion of me that I have to bring under increasing control, and force it into submission to that inner voice of love. In order to succeed in the relationships I have with those who I love, I must be able to love those people I do not like. For if, as I believe, Christ was the archetype of the inherent goodness and value of all mankind, and if he who hates his neighbor has hated Christ, then it follows that he who has hatred toward one neighbor has hated all. And I believe that genuine love is only possible when it is universal, for only then is it rightly rooted I unselfishness rather than self interest. If it is the case that I dislike a person, it is likely for some selfish reason- I simply dislike his company, that is, I view it as unpleasant to be with that person, for example. Yet that dislike cannot translate into malice or disregard, the latter perhaps being the most heinous, since it seems the most excusable while causing us to become callous and unaffected.

It appears to me that if I am able to fully love a stranger, then it enables me to devote myself in love to those precious few people who are closest to me. Only then will I be able to put all of their needs and all of their concerns above my own, thereby fulfilling the command "love one another as I have loved you."

Manipulating People

I usually blog sporatically and when I have sat down and given enough thought to write a lengthy post. I will most assuredly continue my long posts, but it is my hope to intersperse them with shorter ones as well, like this one posted from my blackberry.

I am traveling today on business, and the time alone gives me the much needed opportunity to think and reflect, something I simply have not taken adequate time to do as of late. I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine yesterday about the way people treat each other. In a beautifully Christian humanist statement, my friend said "I try not to view other people as objects of manipulation." My cursory analysis of his statement was "well of course." But I realized it meant something more difficult. Sitting in a book store, he pointed to one of the workers and noted that he desired not to view that person as merely a source of information to help him locate a book, but as a human being with intrinsic value. Makes sense enough, and then I started to realize what a tall order that is.

Even in my personal relationships, I know I don't do a good job of that. I'm primarily concerned with what I am getting. This is with people I care deeply about. How much worse is it with people I don't even know.

"Love suffers long and is kind...Love does not seek its own."

It is difficult to deal with all of my selfish interests. They make me impatient, and consequently frustrated, which leads to vindictiveness, not on any broad scale, but potentially in a worse way, on a very petty scale--and for no other reason than that I am not getting my way.

I've got to do better. That will only come about with a change of attitude, though, which doesn't occur with ease. First must come the recognition that my needs aren't the only needs, and my pains aren't the only pains. And until I am able to subordinate my ego to the needs and struggles of others, my hope for unselfishness is an exercise in futility.

Theory and Reality

by Skinner G. Layne

My life of charts and graphs
Of mathematical tears
And algorithmic laughs
Where I add equation x
To the top of axis y
And the lines and slopes descend
Til it divides by eight times pi.
Want and need are always met
At that overlapping point
Of the Phi and Omega sets.
The compromise of life and land
Is most predictably found
Where supply intersects demand.
If only books and essays could
Translate into real life
And computation of two and two never would
Turn out to four plus five.
For Plato's cave may entice
Those who thrive on theory
And dread life's vice
But function g and d of C
Could never hope any day
To boast the ocean's majesty.
Nor could cosine and his friends
Be fairer than the sunset
Or the flower petal's ends.
The order of sigma and of mu
Are maddening perfection
That no beauty can undo.
Rules cannot exist while being free,
So why can I not be content
When one and two don't make three?

Can MySpace Change the Face of Politics?

I ran across an article today on CNN Politics

http://snipurl.com/tnij

and after reading it, got to thinking. Is it really possible for a poorly-designed social networking destination to change the face of American politics, and break the eternal trend of youth uninvolvement? The naively optimistic might argue that finally we have found something that will get young people actively involved in politics.

But those same people said the same things about MTV's Rock The Vote, a campaign that failed miserably to turn the 18-25 demographic out to the polls. They also said that the War in Iraq would do it, but it didn't. In fact, neither did the War in Vietnam--the first time 18 year olds got to vote, they elected Nixon. That, by the way, was the year of the highest youth turnout in American elections.

It has been declining ever since.

The lack of youth involvement in American politics, and the decline of voter turnout among that age group will not be cured by gimics like MTV or MySpace, though I do believe that the Internet and the Social Networking Phenomenon, when properly harnessed (MySpace is not going to be the venue, but neither is some political hack social networking niche site), will produce massive upheaval both socially and politically. The Internet will one day break politics as we know it, but we are not there yet.

That is because we are not to the breaking point in politics. We are at the apathetic point, and that apathy is rapidly spreading into the adult communities. There is the growing belief (as if it could be any greater than it is) that only money influences politics, and the ballot box is incapable of effecting any change in policy. It has little or nothing to do with the party in power, though.

Is life really any different under George W. Bush than under Bill Clinton? Does it really matter whether the Democrats or the Republicans control Congress? To an extent, it does. Tax policy is perhaps the only reason it matters. Spending policy certainly doesn't change based on the party in power. We have more entitlement programs under this Republican administration, not fewer. Social policy isn't markedly different, except perhaps on the issue of gun control, but even the Clinton administration couldn't enact permanent gun control policies--the political will simply wasn't there, even after Columbine.

Sure, the Supreme Court nominees would be different under a Democrat administration, but some days we can't tell the difference between David Souter and Stephen Breyer.

So, the question remains, how can Social Networking and the Internet change the face of policy and politics in America?

It is a frightening prospect for anybody who is currently a part of the political system and who simultaneously understands the real impact of a radical change in politics based on the new medium of the Internet. (I would argue, given the comments of Dinosaurs like Ted Stevens about the "Interweb" that there are few political figures who do actually understand the far reaching implications of the coming Revolution). This is because we will soon see an end to the two party system. I wouldn't go playing taps just yet, but it is out there in our future, I'm quite sure.

It's a rather tricky process, however, and will take a number of sophisticated organizers to pull it off, but it will be remarkable and revolutionary when it happens.

First, I ought to note that no revolution is truly revolutionary. Revolutions are merely evolutions with breakthroughs. The decline of party affiliation in the United States is an example of one of these evolutions. Since there are no viable independent candidates, it is inevitable that a new party--or parties will emerge, and it will likely be the latter. In fact, the more the better, because as more parties emerge, it will become increasingly difficult for a major party candidate to receive a majority of the votes.

If you think this is unlikely, then imagine for a minute a Congressional candidate from a third party who is able to muster say 10,000 supporters on a social networking website that is in common usage by the masses, and especially young people. He (or she) blogs daily, and that means the candidate, not some carefully crafted press release from a PR professional. He posts his clever video ads on his profile page. He chats and IMs with supporters and constituents. That 10,000, if amassed before his primary, will turn to 100,000 by election day. Don't believe it? Take a short browse on the website YouTube, where people can post their own videos. A spoof of the new Mac commercials has already had over 250,000 viewers. That's just the one video--YouTube's daily downloads number over 100 Million. A savvy candidate can harvest that power in his district to garner a tremendous amount of support.

But he will have to be real. The Television Politician was the Movie Star. Everything he said was scripted and crafted, and every hair on his head was neatly combed. The Internet Politician will likely wear Diesel jeans and have misspellings in his blogs. People have turned to the flawlessness of Hollywood to the ameteurishness of a lot of internet entertainment, and we should expect the same in politics, one of these days at least. Ameteurishness isn't such a bad thing, either. It means a politician much less beholden to special interests, party identification, etc.

The New Media--it means more than catching Dan Rather in memogate, it means breaking politics all together. I'm looking forward to the day of that flash point.

The Democratization of the Media Redux

Public Service Announcement: I have recently rediscovered SnipURL.com, a wonderful zero price utility on the web for creating persistent, shortened URLs for referencing in such places like this blog. You will see that I will primarily link (especially to news articles that disappear days later) to SnipURL links--do not be decieved, this is merely an efficient archiving tool, and one I highly recommend.

Now on to today's ruminations.

Blogging entered the average American's vernacular during the 2004 Presidential Election, when astute observers of the political scene stood up to the so-called "Old Media" and took down Dan Rather in the now infamous Memogate Scandal. This was a significant event in American political history, but it seems to have also been a mere flash in the pan. So it shall remain for the time being. The other day, I embarked on writing a blog post about MySpace's interaction with politics. I might get to finishing that today or tomorrow, if I am lucky, but it warrants such significant considerations that it may just remain a "draft" in my blogger post history. With the Internet, it isn't true that "what is here today is gone tomorrow," but it certainly is true that "what is here today will be irrelevant tomorrow."

The impact of blogging on American politics in 2004 was significant in a certain sense, but negligible in the sense that it likely didn't affect the outcome. But Web phenomena are having radical affects on the habits and propensities of Americans when it comes to their entertainment. YouTube and MySpace are the precursors to something truly mammoth that is yet to come. They are the pioneers in the Internet entertainment marketplace in that they have taken something that people have tried to do successfully in the past and have actually made it successful. But they haven't yet made it profitable. That will be the true success story of Internet Entertainment---or, I suppose henceforth, I will call it Intertainment, because I am lazy. The Wright Brothers took the age-old dream of the Flying Machine and made it a reality--American Airlines made money doing it.

This same cycle will repeat itself on the Internet, and in Intertainment. We are starting to see the Democratization of Entertainment--the fruits of which are Intertainment. This New York Times article encapsulates this phenomenon quite well:


http://snipurl.com/tmq9

It is always thought that Big Business will be the best equipped to profit from new phenomenon. I would so fervently challenge that thesis as to perhaps make a fool of myself, were it not for the facts being squarely in my corner on this one.

The profiteer of the Massification of Retail was not Woolworth, but Walton. The profiteer of Internet Search was not AltaVista, but Google. TimeWarner has no more profited from owning AOL than Rupert Murdoch has profited from owning MySpace. The ideas are good in theory, but they don't work themselves out so well in reality. Perhaps that is because of a lack of innovative culture at those acquiring corporations. Or maybe it is because "me too" is simply no way of doing business--it has to be "me better."

The movie studios have monopolized mass entertainment for the better part of 7 decades, but that is slipping. But it is not slipping because somebody else is taking over mass entertainment; it is slipping because there is decreasingly such a thing as mass entertainment. There is micro-entertainment on a massive scale. It is the person, or company, who first figures out how to monetize this phenomenon who will be the next Wal-Mart or the next Google, but more likely a hybrid of the two. Wal-Mart figured out how to sell more of more to most people, and Google has figured out how to sell a little something to everybody. That combination will be impenetrable--for a week or so at least.

To harness the collective talents of the world's billions is an undertaking that only recently could have been possible. But in a world where every man can be an actor, every woman a director, and every Net user a viewer and critic, the profit potential is unfathomable.

I look forward with great anticipation to the social upheavel that is on the horizon because of Intertainment. The next casualty of the Net will be Education--and then Politics. Somebody will profit from all of them, but it will require bold creativity, a challenge to every assumption that currently pervades these arenas, and a commitment to weather the storms that always accompany creative destruction.

A Life of Riddles & Rhymes

by Skinner G. Layne

When I look outside of my window
I see no grass or trees,
I see blades of honey
And flowers made out of bees.

I look at the roads of pepper
And doors with candy seals
While people go driving around
Their horses that stand on wheels.

Buildings are made with popcorn
And buttered with Chardonnay,
And weren't it for the Stilton Moon
I couldn't tell night from day.

Streetlamps are filled with fireflies
LIt by the lightning strings,
And nursery rhymes are covered in chocolate,
When they story of frogs with wings.

My pen writes with maple syrup,
And the seas are filled with wine,
THe stars are platinum coins,
And a wish can make them mine.

In a world with so much heartache,
In a time so mired in pains,
Why can't I look at cornfields,
And see cotton candy chains?

You may wonder why I hide myself
In metaphor and rhyme
Yes I could think concretely
But I haven't got the time.

For all of life is riddle,
And to pretend it's not is vain,
So why not stop and enjoy the taste,
Of the falling lemonade rain?

The Chest and the Locksmith

by Skinner G. Layne

Not many months ago
In an unsuspected way,
I happened upon a dusty chest
And took it home that day.

I dusted off the chest and lid
Then open it I tried
And found it bound by bolt and lock
So with bar and hammer pried.

It was sealed and shut more tightly
Than banks with bars of gold
So I knew there was great treasure
Stored inside its hinged fold.

For months I sat and stared at it
Wondering what could be inside
Wishing I could open it
And see what there was to hide.

When I called my local Locksmith
To see if he could help me out
He looked at the tightened bolts
And said the right tools he was without.

He said a chest so sealed shut
Was a special chest indeed
And would open itself someday
Traveling at its own desired speed.

But that when it finally opened
And I feel its internal bliss
It would be for me the thrill and softness
Of a lover's genuine kiss.

I despaired the Locksmith's words
For I do not like to wait
And wondered if I even could
To peer inside that crate.

But the Locksmith told me, "Patience,
I've seen such chests before,
And those who finally look inside
Find that which they adore."

"The wait will not be easy,
And may never seem to end,
And the choice is wholly yours
Whether with Time you will contend."

"For Time that vile robber
Who's incessantly on attack
Will thieve you of your treasure
By making you turn your back."

"He will make war upon your Spirit
And fill your mind with doubt
But you must cling to what your heart knows
And learn to wait it out."

"For one day his seige will falter
And though tired you will transcend
Rejoicing that you were victorious
And thankful you did defend."

"Then your chest will open,
And share its richness with your heart
You will forget the trials
And how long past was the start."

The Locksmith left my house that day,
And there I was alone,
But determined to heed his words
And stare down the great unknown.

Since so few things in life are worthy
Of patience and travail,
And when you finally find one
You must resolve that you'll prevail.

Another might never come along
For years or lives of man
Those other distant hopes or dreams
Mustn't figure in your plan.

The clouds may make fantastic shapes
But soon will float away,
The sands produce mirages
In the fervent heat of day.

But there is much that seems appealing
Yet never does fulfill
And though the ones that do, take time,
I've resolved to have the will.

There's no key to open that treasure chest,
And one cannot be made,
But one day it will open itself,
And I'll be elated that I stayed.

Politics is almost as exciting as War...

Winston Churchill remarked once that "Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous, for in war you can die only once, in politics, many times." And thus is the career of Albert Gore, Jr. Gore of course was a failed presidential candidate in 1988, a little-remembered fact, because as we all know, the "also ran" guys don't stick in our memories too well. He earned his reprieve in 1992 as the unlikely running mate of the come-from-behind surprise nominee of the Democrat Party, Bill Clinton, and being Clinton's running mate was barely a consolation prize when Clinton was bringing up the rear in the three-way campaign between himself, George H.W. Bush and H. Ross Perot. But the come-from-behind syndrome miraculously kicked in against an incumbent President who at the peak of the success in the Persian Gulf Campaign had an 80%+ approval rating.

Until Dick Cheney, Al Gore was probably the most influential Vice President in American history. Even among Vice Presidents who became President, most Veeps were weak and kept out of the loop. Harry Truman wasn't even aware of the Manhattan Project until FDR died. It is also not uncommon for failed Presidential candidates to come back to life--in the 20th Century, Richard Nixon was Vice President and lost to Kennedy, only to return in another era and win two terms as President. Ronald Reagan lost to Gerald Ford in 1976 in the Republican Primary, and George H.W. Bush was defeated by Reagan in 1980.

As Mr. Gore's profile continues to rise again, he cannot be written off, and what better motivation for him to run than simply to defeat Hillary Clinton in the Democrat Primaries. Rumors have it that Gore was always jealous of Hillary's power and influence, and the fact that she often eclipsed him in things like office space and other such things in the West Wing. Moreover, Gore has been blamed publicly as squandering the legacy of the Clinton administration (unnecessarily, in my view...the Clintons squandered the legacy of the Clinton administration), and so he has motivation to prove that it was Bill & Hill's fault that the Democrats lost the White House to George W. Bush, and not his own.

Gore has instant star power and name recognition. He is easily the most popular candidate in the field among African Americans, and we mustn't forget that he pulled the highest percentage of the Black vote in 2000 than any other person to run for President in American history. The ability to keep the Black Bloc together is integral, not only in winning a Democrat Primary but also in securing the victory in the '08 General. He is liberal enough to appeal to the Democrat Base, but, if he wanted to, could return to his moderate roots to appeal to a general election crowd. Gore is certainly more palatable and less cacophanous than Hillary, and does not have the same divisive character. He is more laughed at by Republicans than hated or feared. And perhaps that works to his advantage---he is underestimated by his opponents.

Furthermore, he has already run for President once, and almost won. He did in fact receive more votes in the popular count that George W. Bush, so it is not as if he doesn't know what he's doing. And I'm sure he'd do a few things differently this time around. I think not running in 2004 was the most brilliant strategy for preserving his political future that he could have imagined. Better to place it on life support for a few years than try to fight with some major wounds still bleeding.

I'm definitely not saying I want him to be President or that I would vote for him...but it's important that we not write him off. Republicans have already made that mistake in Congress, and we are about to lose the House because of it. Let's just make sure we nominate somebody who is up to the task of defeating Gore once again, but not once and for all---a week is an eternity in politics.

Ecclesiastical Migration and the Southern Baptist Conservative Resurgence

A dear friend of mine, Doug Baker, published an article in
Baptist Press this week and asked me to read and comment on it. I thought the subject matter of value and would like to publicly remark on its content.

Doug argues that there is an exodus, and perhaps a coming mass exodus out of the Southern Baptist Convention by conservatives who are fleeing to other denominations, like the Presbyterian Church in America for example, and he crticizes the heirs to the Resurgent Conservative SBC for failing to produce grounded theology and instead being purely programmatic. He argues that "the prevailing ethos of the day held by critics of the Southern Baptist Convention is that the modern conservatism of the SBC holds no specifically theological ideas--only political ones--which are not worthy of serious consideration by the thinking class."

I would completely agree with this criticism. However, I would argue, the chief problem lies not merely in the laity's inability to comprehend such theological ideas, but in that the laity has no desire to comprehend such ideas, and as a result of the forces of supply and demand, the lowest common denominator of preaching often emerges in SBC sermons. This stems in large part from the fact that the conservative resurgence was accompanied by a resurgence of fundamentalism. The two are often confused as being identical, but I would argue that they are not. There are many philosophically consistent conservatives, most of them in the Calvinistic tradition, who are able to present a systematic theology. There are few fundamentalists, however, who are capable of such academic rigor. But more importantly, they could not care less about academic rigor.

The faith of today's fundamentalists lies in its ability to produce power politics collectively for the congregation. Academic rigor and philosophical inquiry necessitate a certain level of humility and willingness to make concessions for the sake of philosophic consistency. Fundamentalists are unwilling to make any such doctrinal concessions, even on the most obscure jot or tittle of their belief system. This stands immediately in the way of the kind of theological depth that Doug argues is necessary for the Southern Baptist Convention to continue its success.

I would partially criticize Doug's comparison near the end of his article on the basis of methodological soundness, as he compares the SBC's 5% growth to the 42.4% growth experienced by the PCA and the 57.2% growth of the Evangelical Free Church of America. The PCA and EFCA are of course much smaller denominations, and so the percentages betray the hard numbers entering those congregations. He is probably correct, however, in his conclusion that most of that is because of theological migration. Those hard figures, though, still leave the SBC with a significant 5% net growth rate.

I would like to explain the reason I believe the SBC's success has been as remarkable as it has, and why it will continue, though this explanation contains primarily criticism of these ends.

One of my favorite authors, M. Scott Peck, M.D. outlines the stages of spiritual development in this way: 1) Chaos, wherein the persons is an emnity with God and the world and acts out of pure selfishness and without restraint. 2) Structure, the person has a spiritual conversion and then possesses a simplistic and generally legalistic faith that he adheres to rigidly. 3) Agnosticism, where the person begins to doubt some or all of the teachings he so readily accepted in phase 2 and may even reject the existence of God. 4) Mysticism, where the person has a peaceful understanding and love of the world and sees the interconnectedness of creation and of God's place therein.

The success of the Southern Baptist Convention has been in its ability to take people from Phase 1 to Phase 2, and because they see the appreciable gains in the quality of their life when they make that transition, they are easily kept there in Phase 2, unwilling to question doctrine or philosophy espoused by their respected authority out of fear that it will disrupt the benefits they received from their conversions. The Fundamentalist approach of Faith through Fear is particularly heinous, and rather than encouraging discussion and understanding, it represses dissent and thought in order to maintain its safety. The Catholic church had centuries of success with this methodology, if one defines success as being full pews and full coffers. But the quiet trickle of the thinking faith community within the conservative culture is evidence that some people, although they will not stand up to such oppression, will at least not subject themselves to it, and so they walk out of the doors one by one.

The reality is that the one holy catholic (universal) and apostolic church must recognize that if it is to maintain its legitimacy in the public sphere, if it is to succeed in remaining relevant in the post-modern era, it must not and cannot resign itself to doctrinal rigidity and thought oppression. The only reason a person has to fear being questioned is that he lacks the substance to provide a satisfactory response, and so his fear causes him to react in a way that is generally contraposed to the personality of Jesus Christ. It is most in the defense of the faith where Christians utterly abandon Christian Charity.

Baptist Preachers are quick to quote 1 Peter "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that is within you," but they often fail to finish Peter's admonition "But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your Good Behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander." Rarely is there gentleness from the pulpit, and never respect. But this is what keeps the masses fired up. It keeps them writing checks and filling pews.

Religious zealotry is the best friend to the charlatan, and a trusting dupe to the con-artist. I want to be careful that my generalizations are not too broad or sweeping, as I know there are many honorable and decent men in the pulpits of Southern Baptist and Fundamentalist churches across the United States, but it takes little effort to turn on the television or walk into a mega church and find one of these charlatans getting the masses to shout a collective "amen" at his uneducated assertion that so energizes people in Phase 2 of Spiritual Development.

The Church must be willing to undergo the pain of helping people develop beyond Phase 2, however, and the great challenge is how to skip the 3rd Phase and go directly Phase 4. The boldness required to achieve these ends is generally lacking, as the will to undergo pain is usually lacking from preachers who have good salaries and nice benefit packages.

Sadly for the fundamentalist wing of the Church, Paul did not tell the Philippians "That your judgment may abound more and more in dogma and shallowness of insight." No, he prayed "that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight."

The Conservative Church will always survive--there have been zealots throughout human history in every religion and sect and cult, and Christianity is not immune. The question for the relevance of the Conservative Church is whether it chooses to be a purely political organization whose goals are rooted in adhering to a rigid set of doctrine and imposing it on the rest of humanity or if it chooses to be a thoughtful, truth-pursuing culture rooted in love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control. Shall it be Pat Robertson or J.I. Packer? If it is the former, the Conservative Church will be irrelevant in the postmodern world and will fail to have an impact. If it is the latter, then important and sensitive issues can be faced with sincerity, diligence, and charity, and the zealots might be kept at bay.

It is my hope that Doug's analysis that the thinking populace of the conservative resurgence in the SBC are fleeing to other denominations like the PCA is an indication that there is a backlash against the anti-intellectualist, dogmatist bent of the SBC. Perhaps the Conservative Church will not be marginalized in the wake of higher criticism and postmodern philosopher, and whatever its successor may be. But more importantly, let all Christians hope that the zealots and biggots who call themselves Christian do not marginalize the entirety of the Faith of Jesus Christ and His message of love and forgiveness that was borne out on the Cross of Calvary.

Oh Draconian Director, O Lame Movie!

I went to see the movie, The Da Vinci Code last night, and when I awoke this morning to post about the movie, I was instantly struck with a memory of the poem G.K. Chesterton inscribed in a copy of a book he himself wrote that he did not care for, and it rather sums up my impression of the movie The Da Vinci Code:

This is a book I do not like,
Take it away to Heckmondwike,
A lurid exile, lost and sad,
to punish it for being bad.
You need not take it from the shelf,
(I tried to read it once myself:
The speeches jerk, the chapters sprawl,
The story makes no sense at all)
Hide it your Yorkshire moors among
Where no man speaks the English tongue.

First and foremost, the movie was not subtle enough. This is classic Hollywood, I understand, but good grief--showing the sarcophogus of Mary Magdalene at the end? I am attempting to think of an exaggerated example to prove my point, but I truly cannot fathom anything more blatantly obvious than that. Anybody who hadn't read the book could have figured out that Remy was a bad guy, and most likely that Teabing (Ian McKellan) was too, within about, oh the first forty-five seconds after their appearance on the screen. Where was the secret conspiracy? They showed the viewer everything.

The enjoyment of thinking about and breaking the codes that were scattered throughout the movie was lost in the rather inconceivably lame sequences where Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) lit up letters with his eyes and pictured scenes that materialized in front of him. I wasn't sure if I was watching a mystery-thriller or a really bad B rendition of CONTACT.

The acting, too, was...lacking. Tom Hanks delivered a rather mediocre performance at best, though perhaps we can blame it on the utterly bankrupt directing skills of Ron Howard. Jean Reno, who played Captain Bezu Fache, was the only believable character who went through any sort of development in the film. Langdon and Sophie Neveu, who were supposed to be the most round of all the characters were not appreciably different by the end of the movie than they were at the beginning.

I was thoroughly disappointed in the quality of the movie, and again must express that the movie's worst quality, like the book's, is its abject denial of the Divinity of Christ. It is most certainly heresy--but fortunately in our country heretics, too, are free to make truly awful movies.

The Da Vinci Code

A friend of mine emailed me a couple of weeks ago about the Da Vinci Code and asked my opinion. He asked me today to post my response on my blog, so below is the original, unedited response I gave to his question.

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Skinner -

I saw this article about the Da Vinci Code today. I haven't completely formed my opinion on where I stand on the issue because it is a fictional book that three years after its publishing has not to my knowledge spawned any new religions or any back lash to the church by feminist movements... Or am I just in the dark.

Let me know what you think about this article and about the effect that the movie is or will have on society.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/commentaries/othercott.html
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My Response Below
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Andy,
I’m not sure if you have read the book or not, but I actually just finished reading it (it’s always important, in my view, before one criticizes something to actually have experienced it, whatever it may be....almost whatever that is haha). It is a well-written novel with a solid plotline and suspenseful action sequences, but it is based on a rather blasphemous premise. I can’t say I have a wholesale rejection of some if its statements concerning the male-dominated nature of the Christian faith. I think that gender issues have been demagogued for the purpose of social control in Western society for two millennia.

The Church’s bleak history on women’s rights is hardly an argument for radical secular feminism, but nevertheless, I am quite firm in my commitment to a contextual reading of all texts on gender and sexuality, even if such readings are considered heterodox by the majority of those in the conservative wings of the church (Catholic, Southern Baptist, Bible Church, and PCA). In fact, if we scrutinize the scriptures, we will find that, for example, the fourth chapter of the Philippian epistle makes reference to women who were “fellow workers” or as some translations put it “fellow ministers” with Paul in the Gospel. This, combined with the mountain of Old Testament references to the power of influential females in Israel ought to make one reconsider the androgocentric interpretations that have pervaded modern Christian thought.

Interestingly, we can trace a good majority of contemporary conservative thinking on gender and sexuality to the works of Augustine of Hippo, whose philosophy more resembles baptized Platonism than it does thorough Christian theology, not only on this subject but on a number of them (e.g. God’s relationship to Time, the Duality of Body & Soul, and others). Yet it was Augustinian theology that influenced Calvin and other of the Calvinistic Reformers on Soteriology, and they translated their acceptance of Augustine’s Soteriology into an acceptance also of his Ethical and Moral Philosophy. Now, whether or not Augustine’s conception of Original Sin is accurate, I think the Reformer’s embrace of his Moral Philosophy was improper, given his Platonic presuppositions and his inability to get away from some of their more fundamental beliefs. This is one of the reasons why it seems that there is such a discrepancy between Old and New Testaments. The interpreters of the Old Testament who informed much of the tradition of the Early Church were in fact Hebrews themselves, and Jewish Rabbis. However, the first interpreters of the New Testament after the Apostolic Creeds were holdovers of Greek education. Thus, there emerge certain dichotomies that unnecessarily now plague the Faith as a result of the infiltration of the norms and beliefs of the time.

I say all of this to mitigate the overraction to books and movies like Da Vinci Code. I obviously do not embrace the core tenets espoused in the book, but I reject the supposition that says that the Faith would be destroyed or rendered moot if those tenets were true. Let us examine this logically. If we consider the primary argument of the book: namely that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children, it does not inherently contradict any of the teachings of the Scriptures. The Scriptures say that Christ was sinless. Marriage and sexual intercourse are not sinful for us, and we must infer, as a result, that they would not have essentially be sinful for Christ. This is not an argument that it happened, but merely a caution against the sometimes rabid responses we hear from the fundamentalist right-wing of the Church who are literalist and exclusionist in their hermeneutics. I do not want to seem like I am being radical, but simply objective and logical.

Now, I still haven’t answered your question, though I felt it was necessary to preface my answer with the foregoing commentary. You are correct that, to date, there has been no new religion spawned or any (new) backlash from feminists against the Church (as I have noted previously, the Church has done enough in actual history to get such backlash). I think that this, just like any other book or movie, has entertainment appeal. Take the Chronicles of Narnia for example. It was an acclaimed film with a great cast of actors and directors, a wonderful plot and storyline, and raked in millions of dollars. But it didn’t cause a massive revival or awakening, in spite of its New Testament allegory. Even the Passion of the Christ did not have the kind of cultural impact that people expected it to have. Nobody walked out of the movie loving Jesus the way many predicted, and nobody walked out of the movie hating Jews like many predicted. It is sad to say that little affects our fat and entrenched culture these days, even the power of visual literature. Widespread cultural shifts take place one person at a time on a very compressed scale. The tipping point. We are due for one—one way or the other at least.

With something to think about...

Skinner

The Kingdom of Heaven

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

O WORLD invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air--
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!--
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places--
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry--and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry--clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

Francis Thompson

Whether intentionally, intuitively, or accidentally, I believe that Francis Thompson better understood the notion of "the kingdom of God" than most modern theological commentators, preachers, and sunday school teachers. Particularly in the conservative evangelical community, and moreso even in dispensational and quaisi-dispensational circles, the "Kingdom of God" or "Kingdom of Heaven" is considered to be some sort of distant literal kingdom where Christ reigns in the "millennium" or else it is just heaven itself where God reigns from His throne.

I occaisionally turn Christian radio on to listen, as I find it insightful into the minds of the pop-theologians of the day, and see some of the consequences of their errors borne out in the hearts and minds of the laity that have so ardently trusted them. This week I happened to catch part of a sermon by David Jeremiah, who I find to be an excellent speaker, though I do not consider myself at all sympathetic with his theology. Dr. Jeremiah was preaching about the "kingdom." He referenced it with respect to Christ's coming earthly reign in the millennium, and commented that there is more mention of the millennium than any other event in the prophetic literature. I was instantly struck with the thought that something was amiss, as I could not for the life of me count that many. But as he continued to speak, I realized he was including all of the references to the "kingdom."

It seems that contemporary conservative Christians make the same mistake that the conservative Jews of the First Century made with respect to the nature and purpose of Christ's eternal ministry. The First Century Jews expected the Messiah to come and establish an earthly kingdom a la King David and wrest political control from Rome. St. John's Gospel quotes Christ saying explicitly "My kingdom is not of this world." The 21st Century Christian expects some future return of Christ to establish that earthly kingdom. Dr. Jeremiah said in his sermon that "Christ will return to reign on this earth the second time as he was expected to do the first time." It's not precisely obvious to me from where this expectation is derived.

The Revelation of St. John, Chapter 20, says only this about the "millennium"
"And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time.I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years."

There is no mention of rule from earth or heaven or where, it is extraordinarily vague. There are several reasons for this. First, Revelation was written as an account of a dream that St. John experienced. Anybody who thinks that Revelation is written in any way remotely literally completely ignores the context of its writing. It certainly does not detract from its value or validity, but we cannot properly interpret the text if we fail to understand that its very nature is inherently figurative. Conservative commentators obviously recognize this, but their interpretations make it a literally representational writing, meaning that the events in Revelation symbolize literal events that will occur at some point in the future. This to me is still far too literal and causes us to lose much of the meaning of the Revelation as well as of what "the kingdom" is.

Moreover, when we examine the references to the Kingdom in the Synoptic Gospels, as Brad Young points out in his work Jesus the Jewish Theologian, the parables of the Leaven and the Mustard Seed "illustrate the progressive growth of the kingdom...The major theme of both of these illustrations is this miraculous growth. The idea of a sudden, total reversal of the present situation is not congruous with these parables of progressive growth."

Similarly, in the Beatitudes, Christ admonishes thus, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." I again quote from Young, "Modern interpreters have somtimes missed the message of the kingdom of heaven. It is not about the future age. The kingdom is not heaven in the sense that someone dies to inter in. It is neither the church nor a denomination. It is not given over to human leaders for their custodial care. Jesus did not view the kingdom as a political ideology or program. The kingdom is a process which cannot be imposed upon others through political activism. The kingdom comes by God alone. It is a divine force in the world that brings healing to suffering humanity."

Many people probably wonder why the interpretation of the kingdom passages of Scripture is important. I would argue that it has tremendous implications for the way we interpret many of the ethics passages in the Pauline Epistles. For example, in Paul's Epistle to the Galatian church, he says "The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God."

Knowing what "the kingdom of God" means is incredibly important to the understanding of Paul's admonition. Does he mean that people who are envious or jealous or ambitious are not going to have eternal life? No, I would argue that this is directly contradictory with the words of Christ when he says "Whosoever believes...shall not perish but have everlasting life." Indeed, the kingdom of heaven, when properly understood, sheds immense light on New Testament ethics. The punishment, if we even ought to use that term, for those things Paul lists above, is not damnation to hell--but a lack of the realization of the kingdom of heaven in the present age. The leavening process is slowed or stopped in the presence of such vices and sins. If the kingdom of heaven represents the peacemaking or whole-making process that we understand in the context of Jewish teachings is what Christ was speaking of in the Beatitudes, for example, then we see the sin is not punished with some slap on the wrist or electrical shock, but that sin is its own consequence for it prevents us from the realization of peace and wholeness.

In my view, this gives me a far greater incentive to maintain New Testament ethical standards, as the consequences of a breach of those standards is much more tangible than the far-off threat of some ethereal hell. Similarly, the wonder of wholeness and fulfillment here on earth is an enticing prospect compared with the again intangible reward of heaven. This does not mean that I do not believe in heaven or hell, but I would argue that if we understand New Testament ethics solely in the context of eternal reward or everlasting punishment then we completely disregard the importance of our earthly existence. It is quite heretical, in my view, when Evangelicals use phrases like "this life doesn't matter" and "it's only the next life that counts." That is directly contraposed to the teachings of the New Testament, and the Incarnation itself. This life matters quite a lot, and the physical existence we have on earth is extremely important to the New Testament writers, on par I would argue with our spiritual existence. Though the duality therein I believe to be disputable.

Francis Thompson's poem captures the spirit of the Kingdom better than any other writing, and not because it explicitly describes what the Kingdom is or where it is like Young does in his work of theology, but because Thompson's poem exposes to us the practical implications of the Kingdom in this life. His point is quite clear: we try to see the world when we cannot; we try to know the world when we cannot; we try to understand the world when we cannot, and it is foolish. That is the point of his next line "Does the fish soar to find the ocean? The eagle plunge to find the air?" He notices so clearly that we look for things in far off places that are right in front of us. "Not where the wheeling systems darken and our benumbed conceiving soars"--no, if we would recognize it, the meaning of life and the truth of life is directly in front of us. And this is his ultimate conclusion "Lo! Christ walking on the water, not of Genesareth, but Thames."

And therein is the inheritance of the Kingdom of God, for the life of Christ typified love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. And it is through those virtues that we are fulfilled and inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.

Dealing with Subjective Interpretations of Reality

"The essential matter of history is not what happened but what people thought or said about it." --Frederic William Maitland

"History is but a set of lies agreed upon." --Napoleon

The philosophical discussion about the nature of reality, perception, and experience is not one that I can add much novel thought or creative understanding to; the philosophers and thinkers of the annals of history have beaten that proverbial horse to death. Yet, I would like to perhaps discuss the impact of what I think is a necessarily subjective interpretation of reality.

I myself am not a subjectivist, whether in the field of ethics, epistemology, or metaphysics. There does seem to be a philosophically inconsistent case for a truly subjective reality. However, we each perceive that objective reality differently as a result of our nature as finite beings. Absent omniscience, each of us falls prey to the restrictions of our own senses, which often deceive us.

As I observe the interactions I experience each day, and the interactions of others, I find increasingly that there are tremendous disconnects in the human experience. Just this morning, I awoke to 21 emails at work about a relatively obscure contention over business cards. Five people were communicating with each other over email and had six quite distinct interpretations of what was actually going on with the issue. In my relationships with friends and family, I have begun to notice that the same event is not only interpreted in divergent manners, but even perceived extremely differently. Certainly I am not the only person to notice this, but I find it curious that although it is a widespread phenomenon, we do very little to remedy it.

People's temperament causes them to approach such different interpretations of the world in different ways, too. I am naturally prone to "correct" others' views of situations, but because I know this about myself I attempt to be more sympathetic. But that alone does not ameliorate the impact of the dichotomy.

It does not seem that there is an adequate linguistic solution to the problem, and that the solution lies deeper beneath the surface. I am never going to be able to explain my particular interpretation of reality in a manner sufficient to cause somebody else to suddenly understand my perspective since that person is even going to be interpreting the input of my words in a way other than my precise intention when I spoke them.

Upon recognizing this utterly disagreeable situation, it behooves us to come up with some sort of solution, albeit imperfect and perhaps piecemeal. I propose a movement toward genuine community. In order to understand, we must first know that we do not understand. For it is in the comprehension of our own finitude that we are humbled, and in that humility we can begin the healing process with our fellow humans.

Community is an environment that is safe. Community is a place where people can express their deepest emotions, most ardent dreams, greatest desires, and sincere worries without fear of judgment. It is a place where people need not fear making a mistake, or the reprisal that comes from a slight misstep. The rules in community are merely that people be loving and kind.

This genuine community should exist everywhere: in the workplace, amongst friends, in romantic relationships, families, and everywhere people interact. It is in community where healing can and will occur, and it is my hope that we can all find this healing in our lifetimes.

Action and Contemplation: Finding Balance in Vocation

Little boys make heroes out of men of great action: the General, the Politician, the Revolutionary, the Inventor, the Explorer, the Astronaut, the Firefighter. For it seems that in childhood we have a great need to do and to try. What little boy did not at some point in his life want to go to the moon? Or fight in a war? It is not merely that we desire to mimic those who we have made into heroes, but because we want to be the hero. We want to become somebody else's hero. Even people whose temperament or personality would never permit them to actually act on those desires nevertheless seem to have them to some degree or another.

I do not even begin to question the popularity of the concept of Superman or Spiderman--normaly, socially unadjusted men who accomplish great things and win the heart of a maiden in the process. The Superman of the American pop culture is the embodiment of the introvert's daydream.

This desire to be a hero is born out of our desire to escape mortality. Mortality is, ipso facto a death sentence. So from the time we are children we long to accomplish that which will make us remembered. And often, remembrance is found more in infamy than in fame. This explains why the Superman of Krypton can quickly become the Superman of Nietzche, that is, the transformation of Marcus Aurelius to Hitler. Some little boys never pass this phase of their fixation, though others do.

The little boys who begin to mature turn their admiration to another sort, I think. The maturing lad who has discovered the world of altruism comes to admire the Poet, the Philosopher, the Novelist, and the Scientist. It is no longer the creative process that captures the mind, but the observation process. The child no longer wants to be Patton, but Plato. Contemplation becomes paramount--a life of solitude and thought is idealized. Whether it is Thomas Merton and St. John of the Cross or the Buddha and Shankara, the Thinker supplants the Soldier.

While this transition is an improvement and a maturation, I do not believe it is the mature view. I think it is merely a decrease in immaturity, for as great as the Thinker may be or as high as his Thoughts might reach, there is a sort of emptiness in the purely Contemplative, a void. For the transition from Action to Thought is an overraction, it shows an exaggerated sensibility to the errors of the former by rejecting it entirely in favor of the latter. I believe there is a balance that inheres in a person's true vocation (which I do not mean in the occupational sense but in the understanding of one's "life calling").

This balance is found in people like Edmund Burke, Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Susan B. Anthony. These are people who were both Thinkers and Actors. Some were known more for their thinking (Burke) and others for their action (Churchill), but a careful study of the lives of these people indicate an intimate relationship between the two aspects of life. For I think that the union of contemplation and action requires a maturity absent the Austere Philosopher and the Bold Doer. Churchill's political philosophy is not as thorough as Locke's, and it can be quite easily assumed that Jefferson's metaphysics would not stand the test of a Wittgensteinian analysis, but Locke did not save England from the Nazis, and Wittgenstein did not grant freedom to the Americas.

If I am the kind of person whose propensity is toward action, I must make room in my life for contemplation in order that my action be tempered with wisdom and humility. If I am the kind of person whose propensity is toward contemplation, I must make the effort to turn those thoughts into action--to make them real.

My closing thought is thus: Action without thought is brute--Thought without action is empty.

The Brutal Friend

by Skinner Layne

The Mirror is a vile glass
Who mocks us day to day,
He doesn't try to give a pass
When we want to see our way.

He points out our imperfections,
He laughs at us to our face,
And knifes us with rejection,
When we enter his vaunted space.

He tickles us with an angled view
That seems to us appealing
But then throws our witness askew
Those vicious details revealing.

So why do we return each morn
To gaze in his vengeful lens?
To see our outward appearance torn?
Or so we our face can cleanse?

The mirror, you see, is our best friend
And so we visit him week after week.
For he alone the truth won't bend
When his counsel and advice we seek.

To know the mirror, what benefit!
Though our pride he long ago stole--
I truly wish that I could get,
A mirror for my soul.

The Return to Progress

"When suddenly you seem to lose all that you thought you had gained, do not despair. Your healing is not a straight line. You must expect setbacks and regressions. Don't say to yourself, "All is lost. I have to start all over again." This is not true. What you have gained, you have gained. Sometimes little things build up and make you lose ground for a moment. Fatigue, a seemingly cold remark, someone's inability to hear you, someone's innocent forgetfulness, which feels like rejection--when all these come together, they can make you feel as if you are right back where you started. But try to think about it instead as being pulled off the road for a while. When you return to the road, you return to the place where you left it, not to where you started."

--Henri J.M. Nouwen

Multiple times a day, every single day, I lament that I have lost ground in my struggle for spiritual and emotional growth. It is like when I was losing weight back in high school, and I would stick to my rigid diet for a month, completely faithfully, only to devour a piece of chocolate cake or an oversized bowl of ice cream, giving into ridiculous temptation and then saying to myself "look at all the ground I have lost." But that one piece of cake did not ruin my progress; it did not defeat the previous month's worth of work. It was merely a relapse into old, bad behavior. Kipling reminds us

The dog returns to his vomit
and the sow returns to her mire,
And the burnt fool's bandaged finger
goes wobbling back to the fire.

I can usually feel it coming on, that temptation to pry a little too much into somebody else's life, as the outflow of my own low self esteem and insecurity. Or perhaps it manifests itself in my anxious behavior, seeking immediate reassurance to satisfy my own craving for recognition and affection. What is most difficult about these times when I feel like I have obliterated months worth of work is that it most directly affects the lives of people for whom I care the most. Sometimes it takes an even more insidious pathway, where I will intentionally make negative comments about myself knowing that the other person will respond by praising or complementing me. I feel so guilty that I manipulate people to boost my own self-esteem.

Or perhaps I will make myself better by keeping a record of other people's wrongs or missteps, by thinking to myself when they criticize me "Well I remember this and that time when you did this." But this is not loving behavior either. The Apostle Paul reminds us in his first letter to the Church at Corinth that "love...keeps no record of wrongs." This is a particularly difficult admonition by which to live. We are not naturally prone to forgetful forgiveness.

Yet, even though these things happen on a daily basis, I cannot discount the miles I have traveled. Like Nouwen says, it is not so much that I have to start over, but just return to the road on which I was traveling. It is more a matter of focus and diligence than reconstructing a path.

We all have those things with which we struggle. Perhaps we are trying to get rid of a particular part of our past, but we find ourselves letting it once again rule our lives. We cannot ignore the progress we have made, for perhaps we have kept that out of our lives for quite some time, but it rears its head for a day. That is not regress, it merely shows that there is more progress to be made. Or perhaps our struggle is in being kinder and more longsuffering with our co-workers or family, and we lash out or snap at them reflexively. The list of things we could be working on is endless, but we must not be wearied by the struggle, however wearying it is. For the result, if we persist, will be a peaceful and loving interraction with our fellow man, meaningful, mature relationships with friends, family, and significant other, and a cessation not of conflict or stress, but anger and anxiety.

Conflict and stress are natural parts of every life and every relationship, but when healthfully handled and managed, do not produce anger and anxiety. Let us continue to return to progress toward that end, even if there are setbacks along the way.

Comfortable Not Being in Someone Else's Skin

I am continuing my blog series on Henri Nouwen's book "The Inner Voice of Love" today and will do so for several more entries at least.

We often hear a confident person being described as "comfortable in his own skin." This is considered a mark of genuineness and high emotional aptitude. We also generally hear somebody who pokes around in other people's business as being "nosy" and this is something that is less than a desirable quality or trait. I have come to a new understanding of these two divergent, and in fact directly opposite traits in light of some of my own experiences and this admonition from Nouwen:

"When you find yourself curious about the lives of people you are with or filled with desires to possess them in one way or another, your body has not yet fully come home. As soon as you have come to live in your body as a true expression of who you are, your curiosity will vanish, and you will be present to others free from needs to know, or own."

The realization I came to after reading this quotation was that a person who truly is comfortable is his or her own skin is not going to be the type who is nosy or always feels a need to be in the know about other people's lives. It seems that this applies more heavily to those for whom we care the most. We should live in genuine community with those we love, and in a different sense with all whom we come into contact. But community only exists where there are individuals who can commune with one another. There is no community of one.

I borrow an example from Scott Peck from his book THE DIFFERENT DRUM, though I add my own analysis: In Christian theology, the Doctrine of the Trinity even shows that there had to be a diversity of personality in the singular being of God. God's eternal existence did not deny Him the participation in community because there were three distinct divine personalities in His united being. But if God were the monistic Sovereign of Islam, for example, God would have existed in eternity without the ability to commune with another prior to creation.

Although this is somewhat of a diversion, I use the example to illustrate that genuine community necessitates the existence of individuals and boundaries. I cannot live in community with another person if we are not emotionally separated. If there are no boundaries or borders, then we are essentially a single individual, thus obliterating community. This is why communist societies and the Utopian Ideal is so terribly flawed. It is not so much that Communism disrespects the individual, though it certainly does that. Communism does not claim to respect the individual. Nay, the most grievous error of communism is that it disrespects the community. Community and Individual are merely two different sides of the same unified coin. They are different faces of the same humanity.

Whether it is in our familial relationships, work relationships, platonic relationships, or romantic relationships, in order for true community to be present, the highest respect for individuals must also be present. Herein lies the consistency in the simultaneous existence of Unity and Diversity. Though different people, with different thoughts and feelings, wants and needs, beliefs and desires, dreams and aspirations, we share in pleasure and pain, experience and fulfillment, loss and gain, in the passage of time, the struggles of life, and the joys of it as well. We may not fully understand the other participants in any given community experience, but that is not necessary for community to exist.

Indeed, the only preconditions for community are kindness and respect. I need not understand why my fellow person is struggling in order to care for him. I need not know the details of her struggle in order to have sympathy. I need not know what he did last night in order to enjoy being with him today.

This does not come easily for us, however. True community is a towering peak whose ascent is long and arduous. It is an equilibrium whose balance requires both strength and endurance. It is a goal that necessitates both patience and persistence, suffering and endurance, hardship and resolve. But its reward is a deep fulfillment, an understanding of both self and other, the appreciation of all that is human, and all that is humanity. It surpasses the most exciting momentary thrill, it excels any physical pleasure, and it surmounts the consumption of the most exquisite of goods. And it is for this reason that we should seek it both ardently and urgently, whether it is in our friendships or romantic relationship, interactions with co-workers or strangers, and even with our closest of family.

But it all begins by being comfortable in our own skin, and being comfortable not being in somebody else's.

Yearning and Learning

Henri Nouwen wrote these words in his journal during the deepest depression of his life, "The years that lie behind you, with all their struggles and pains, will in time be remembered only as the way that led to your new life. But as long as the new life is not fully yours, your memories will continue to cause you pain. When you keep reliving painful events of the past, you can feel victimized by them. But there is a way of telling your story that does not create pain. Then, also, the need to tell your story will become less pressing. You will see that you are no longer there: the past is gone, the pain has left you, you no longer have to go back and relive it, you no longer depend on your past to identify yourself...You can tell your story from a place where it no longer dominates you. You can speak about it with a certain distance and see it as the way to your present freedom. The compulsion to tell your story is gone. From the perspective of the life you now live and the distance you now have, your past does not loom over you."

Regardless of who we are, we all have pains and hurts from our past. Everybody has what is commonly termed, in today's vernacular "baggage." But this baggage does not follow us around through some strength of its own, but like real baggage, it is something we carry with us, and many times it can become so heavy that we can no longer walk forward because we are so weighed down. It is when we are in that state of paralysis that we are most awakened to the need to stop carrying that baggage. It hurts our present freedom, it causes us present pain, and is detrimental to our present relationships. We can blame our baggage for our lack of progress and growth; we can blame our baggage for our present actions, but it is merely an excuse, for if we recognize the presence of the baggage, then we have no reason not to deal with the pain and consequences it is causing in our present life.

For the moment we say "oh, it's the fault of my baggage," is the moment we ought to say "I cannot let my past rule my life anymore." The lack of affection I have received in the past from persons I most wanted to receive affection from should not cause me to cling irrationally to those who I want to receive it from today. The excess of affection I received in the past from people who I love and care about, but did not need as much affection from should not cause me to push away completely those who I care about, but do not need that excessive affection from today.

This does not, however, mean that our past does not and will not affect us today, for it always will to some extent, but we cannot be governed by it, and we cannot live in constant fear that the past will be repeated. This difficult realization, as painful as it might be, will free us and allow us to tell our story out of compassion rather than compulsion, such that we may commisserate with those who are experiencing today what we experienced yesterday. Much like the words of Longfellow in his poem "A Psalm of Life," where he says

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

We must shed our baggage and leave it in our past where those events occurred. We must remember it, to be certain, but more so we can empathize with and be more understanding of others than for it to motivate or dictate our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and actions.

The question, however, is how does one stop carrying his or her baggage? There is no "quite simply" response to the question, I must admit. But I believe the first step lies in recognizing that we are carrying it around with us wherever we go. If we find ourselves preparing to use the phrases "Well in my last relationship..." or "When I was dealing with my father..." if those phrases are to be followed with "So that's why I did what I did." If the answer to the question "Why did I do x?" is "Because of such and such happened to me in the past?" then we are carrying our baggage with us. It does not mean that we do not learn from the past, but we do recognize that in spite of similarities we may see between past circumstances and present circumstances, or between the people who were in our lives previously and the people who are in our lives now, we must always recognize that the circumstances of today are not identical to those of the past and the people we are with today are not identical to the people of the past.

It is in realizing the differences that we are able to best apply the knowledge we gained by our past experiences rather than simply trying to avert the identical consequences out of pure fear, and ending up causing more damage than good.