It’s an interesting thing to go back and read American popular fiction from the 1970s—especially, in my experience, near-future science fiction of the period—and see the view presented there of America and its future. What you find, or at least what I’ve found, is (to use Jimmy Carter’s least favorite word) a deep malaise, a sense that the US had become (to quote one of Spider Robinson’s characters) a “tired old fraud” whose decline was inevitable. Across various genres, from liberals like SF’s Robinson to conservatives like the political novelist Allen Drury, the theme and tone is the same, varying only between “woe is us” and “good riddance”: America is fading, decaying, declining, its time at the peak of its success near its end.It’s interesting, as I say, because the actual 1980s ended up looking so vastly different from the 1980s envisioned by novelists in the 1970s, the era of Watergate, gasoline rationing, the hostage crisis in Iran, and, yes, the famous “malaise” speech; rather than ongoing economic collapse and a continuing loss of influence abroad, the decade saw the reassertion of American strength and power, both economically and diplomatically/militarily. By 1984, “It’s morning in America” would be a potent campaign theme, and the decade would end with the fall of the Berlin Wall and talk of America as the world’s only superpower.Why? A change in leadership. The election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980, bearing a message of optimism about America’s future and confidence in American strength, combined with economic policies which have set the terms for a quarter-century of economic growth and prosperity, was a major part of this. In Britain, which was having similar problems in the ’70s, it was Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power in 1979. And though his authority and influence were largely of a different kind, it’s surely no coincidence that around the same time Bishop Karol Wojtyla took the throne of St. Peter as Pope John Paul II; he made no economic policies and wielded no armies, though he had many wise things to say about both economics and the world scene, yet surely there have been few people in recent decades who have done more to inspire people and give them a sense that there is reason to hope than he did.It is a telling thing that the Democratic Party has now nominated a presidential candidate who gives us the vision of Jimmy Carter in the visionary language of Ronald Reagan. Whether it’s telling because it means that liberalism has changed, or because it means that we’ve forgotten that it hasn’t, remains to be seen.
Author Archives: Rob Harrison
The myth of choice
As I’m continuing my “catch-up tour,” I dove back into Confessing Evangelical, John Halton’s blog, this afternoon; John’s a British Lutheran, and his blog is one of the deepest I know, especially but not only theologically. It’s really not an easy one to catch up on—far better to stay abreast of it, really—but I’m enjoying getting back into it. I particularly appreciate his newest post, “I choose, therefore I am,” in which he addresses “the myth of personal autonomous choice—that our decisions are free, conscious, independent, entirely ours alone”—and the difficulty we have in combating that myth. I think his conclusion is particularly important (it’s something I tell my congregation fairly often):
I am not denying that we make true choices, and that those are truly our choices. However, what I am saying is we need to be more suspicious of our choices, and more aware of the forces that are at work in influencing them.
Wise words. I encourage you to read the rest of it.
The Dark Knight of the soul
“My subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.”—Flannery O’ConnorI have not seen The Dark Knight, nor did I ever really intend to; I don’t watch all that many movies (though it’s nice to be able to see them in the theater again), and I’ve never been a Batman fan. It does sound like a remarkable movie, though, judging from the reviews—and, no less, from the arguments over it in the Christian blogosphere. I know Thinklings Phil and Jared loved it, and I know Brant Hansen hated it, and their reactions seem to be pretty much representative. The most interesting response, though, has to have been the question Grant Thomas asked:What would Flannery O’Connor think?As he points out, given her artistic philosophy and her view of what it takes to communicate the reality of sin and grace to an unbelieving world, there’s good reason to think that she would have approved of the movie.
I think Flannery would say that Joker shows us that the world we are living in is in the territory of the devil. . . .I think in light of what I’ve been reading from Flannery O’Connor, that she would applaud the film for showing evil for what it is. Not only does it make evil look evil (rather than funny like in the old Adam West TV series), but I think Flannery would say that we need the Joker to realize how much we need grace. We need him to wear make up to realize that this kind of person should seem out of place in our world when most of the time we simply think this sort of thing is normal or at least tolerable.
As I said, I haven’t seen the movie to be able to judge, but what Grant says here makes sense to me. Read the whole post, including his several quotations from Flannery O’Connor, and see what you think.HT: Joyce
Sooner or later?
There’s a bit of a debate going on (in the comments on this post, for instance, where it’s obviously among those pulling for Sarah Palin) as to whether John McCain should name his running mate before Barack Obama or wait until after Sen. Obama has made his pick. Personally, I don’t see the advantage to waiting. I stand by what I wrote earlier in my open letter to Sen. McCain, that I think he needs to act and force Sen. Obama to react; he needs to set the agenda, the standard and the tempo so that Sen. Obama needs to play catch-up, rather than dancing to Sen. Obama’s tune. Given the dynamics of this election, I do not believe Sen. McCain can afford to be seen as secondary, an “anything you can do I can do better” candidate with no ideas or initiative of his own; he can’t let Sen. Obama drive the bus, he needs to take the wheel and drive it himself.This is not an election for the conventional approach. That’s one of the reasons why I think Sen. McCain needs to name Gov. Palin as his running mate, and why I argued in my open letter that he should take an unusual approach to selecting his cabinet team: if Sen. McCain is going to win, he needs to shake up the conventional wisdom and cross up people’s expectations. Fortunately for him, he’s good at that.
From politicians to squirrels
I think it’s an upgrade. Certainly, this is too funny for words . . .
HT: Joyce (Like I said, I’m getting caught up.)
Head falls off hatchet—news at 11!
CNN announced today that Anderson Cooper would be doing a story on Sarah Palin and the Monegan affair—news which of course raised the question of whether it would be a fair story or a hatchet job. It would appear that it was intended to be the latter, because after a number of people connected with Adam Brickley’s blog e-mailed CNN with some pertinent facts about the case, Cooper dropped the story. Taken all in all, I’m inclined to agree with Adam’s conclusion on this:
Maybe they’ll try to go back and rework the story using better facts, but I’m guessing that there won’t be any new attempt now that they know just how bad this story would have made them look. “Troopergate” is one of the most poorly executed hit jobs I’ve seen in my life, and this proves that it has no legs.
The things we leave behind
The road which the church is called to walk as we follow Jesus Christ toward the kingdom of God is a road rather like the Oregon Trail: it leads to someplace better, but it isn’t an easy road. Back in the days of the Oregon Trail, families heading west often started off with far too much baggage; when they hit the Rockies, they found they had to leave many of their things behind, or else they wouldn’t make it across the mountains, and so along the trail one could find tables, beds, dressers, and other pieces of furniture abandoned by families who needed to lighten the load. The road behind Jesus is similarly littered. Matthew and Zacchaeus left behind their tax booths, and the fortunes they had stolen. Simon and Andrew, James and John, left behind their boats, and the family business. St. Francis of Assisi left behind a rich inheritance. John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace,” left behind the slave trade. Sundar Singh left behind his religion and his family.
Some of the things God calls us to give up if we are to follow him are sinful, some aren’t; some are easy to give up, while others are bitterly difficult to let go. Some are harmful in themselves, while others merely absorb time and energy to no real gain. But all of them are things which compete with his will in our lives, and so they are things which we need to lay aside if we want to follow Jesus on his road. The work of discipleship is, ultimately, the work of aligning ourselves with the grain of God’s will, and against the grain of everything that competes with his will—including many of our own desires, and many of the world’s expectations. The good news is, as Michael Card and Scott Roley wrote a couple decades ago, that there is freedom to be found if we leave all these things behind to follow our Lord.
Things We Leave Behind
There sits Simon, foolish and wise;
Proudly he’s tending his nets.
Then Jesus calls, and the boats drift away,
And all that he owns he forgets.
More than the nets he abandoned that day,
He found that his pride was soon drifting away.It’s hard to imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind.Matthew was mindful of taking the tax,
And pressing the people to pay.
Hearing the call, he responded in faith
And followed the Light and the Way.
Leaving the people so puzzled, he found
The greed in his heart was no longer around.It’s hard to imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind.Bridge
Every heart needs to be set free from possessions that hold it so tight
‘Cause freedom’s not found in the things that we own—
It’s the power to do what is right.
With Jesus our only possession, then giving becomes our delight,
And we can’t imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind.We show a love for the world in our lives
By worshipping goods we possess;
Jesus said, “Lay all your treasures aside,
And love God above all the rest.”
‘Cause when we say “No” to the things of the world,
We open our hearts to the love of the Lord, andIt’s hard to imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind.
Oh, and it’s hard to imagine the freedom we find
From the things we leave behind.Words and music: Michael Card and Scott Roley
© 1986 Whole Armour Publishing
In defense of the church, part V: process
There are churches out there that are actively poisonous, no question, and there are people who have been badly hurt by such churches. (Not all of them are in the pews, either—some are pastors.) That said, there are a lot of folks out there complaining about the church for a lot less reason, whose gritching essentially boils down to “the church isn’t perfect according to my standards.” Well, no, it isn’t. You aren’t perfect according to its standards either, believe me. There are three things that need to be said here:
1) It’s an old saw, but it bears repeating because it obviously hasn’t occurred to a lot of people: If you ever find a perfect church, it will stop being perfect the minute you join. This is the most basic thing to understand: every church is an imperfect combination of imperfect people, of whom you are one.
2) Every good church is in process: specifically, in the process of being grown by God the Father through the work of Jesus Christ as applied to us in the power of the Holy Spirit into the church which God intends for us to be. Every church will hurt you at times; every church will let you down at times; every church will fall short of what it’s supposed to be at times. That’s because every church is made up of people, and people do that. What matters is how theyrespond to those times, and particularly how the leadership responds; churches ought to admit their failures and shortcomings, apologize and try to make things right, and then work to address them and get better. A church that generally does that, with leaders who usually model that approach, deserve support and praise, not to be bashed for their mistakes. (Even the best of churches won’t always respond as they should; when they don’t, though, they should be corrected gently and graciously, with humility about our own imperfection.)
We have to understand that we can’t expect the church to get everything right; the most we have the right to expect is that the church be in the right process, moving in the right direction. That’s what the church is, after all: not a bunch of people who have it all together, but a bunch of people who are together, growing together, following Jesus together, and helping each other along the way. We need, as Jared put it, to be willing to “submit to community,” even with all its inevitable imperfections, if we’re going to live as Christ calls us to live.
3) If you want to receive grace, show grace. It amazes me how many people gracelessly and self-righteously bash churches for being graceless and self-righteous. If you show that sort of attitude, you’re as much a problem as the church you’re criticizing.
The general principle here, it seems to me, is one that Tim Lane and Paul Tripp articulate well in their book Relationships: A Mess Worth Making, in a passage quoted by Jimmy D. atCruciform Life:
Worshipping God as Savior means that I acknowledge that I am a sinner in relationship with other sinners. I remember that you are still in the middle of God’s work of redemption—as am I. He is still convicting you, teaching you, and changing your heart. He is faithfully doing all these things at the best time and in the best way possible. None of us ever gets to be in relationship with a finished person. God’s redemptive work of change is ongoing in all of our lives. When I forget this, I become self-righteous, impatient, critical, and judgmental. I give in to the temptation to play God and try to change you in ways only God can . . .
When I fail to worship God as Savior, I am too casual about my sin and too focused on yours. Our relationships are often harmed when we try to atone for our own sins while condemning the other person for his. When you are sinned against, you will be impacted by the weaknesses and failures of that other person. When this happens, you need to allow God to use you as an instrument in His redemptive hands rather than seeking to make changes in the other person yourself. Only God can accomplish these things. Are you trying to do work in someone’s life that only the Savior can do? (HT: Jared)
Many churches are guilty of this mistake on a systemic level, and I don’t blame anyone for avoiding such congregations. Even those that aren’t, even those that consciously teach and preach and disciple against this, will still struggle with it, because it’s one of the subtlest of the sins that beset us, and one of the most insidious forms of spiritual pride. But when we bash “the church” for being imperfect without acknowledging our own imperfection, when we denounce “the church” as sinful without confessing that we too are sinners—when we insist that the problems of “the church” are everyone else’s fault and we are innocent of all responsibility and all blame—then we too are guilty of being “too casual about my sin and too focused on yours.”
There are, to be sure, many congregations that have problems that are intractable, and many people who have worn themselves out trying (and failing) to bring change to such congregations; but the answer to that is not to write off “the church” as a whole. Rather, it’s to find a church that will love you for who you are while you heal, and in which, when you’re ready, you can step up and use the gifts God has given you to help grow his church into what he wants us all to be. I do not deny that the church is imperfect, sin-riddled, flawed; I simply deny that that’s justification for attacking or dismissing it. Rather, it’s our call to do our part to help fix the problem.
Previous posts in this series:
On this blog in history: January 2007
Jared made a point today over at Gospel-Driven Church that I’ve been thinking about for a bit as well:
One of the inherent weaknesses in the medium of the weblog is the virtual temporariness of the best writing. A good solid piece may exist on a main page for a brief time, and then it disappears into the aether of the archives or random web searches. If a blogger attracts new readers, they will likely never see past posts unless they are the thorough sorts who read archives. But most are not.
His solution to that is to start reposting pieces, which is something I’ve thought about doing as well, but decided against. Given Jared’s example, though, I’m going to try a different approach to the same issue: putting up links posts to past material on this blog. To organize it, I’m going to limit each post to a particular month—maybe everything worth linking from that month, maybe not, depending. We’ll see how this works. I’ll start with January of 2007 because, though I began this blog in 2003, that was the month in which I first started posting consistently. (Even then, it wasn’t much.)Umm, what was that about grace?
On the confusion of grace and justice.The butterfly effect and the providence of God
On the ways God works through every circumstance.The parable of the three little pigs
“The day of the Lord is like three little pigs who went out into the world to make their fortunes. . . .”
Raoul Wallenberg, RIP
As long as we’re celebrating great figures in the fight against tyranny, today is a good day to honor one of my heroes, Raoul Wallenberg; this would be his 91st birthday, had he lived. For those not familiar with Wallenberg, he was a Swedish humanitarian sent to Hungary during WW II to rescue Jews from the Holocaust, and is one of those honored at Yad Vashem. He wasn’t officially an ambassador—he was appointed as the secretary to the Swedish legation to Hungary in 1944—but he effectively was, for he had been authorized by no less than the king of Sweden to operate completely independently of the ambassador. His purpose in Budapest was to rescue the Jews of Hungary from the Holocaust. Between his arrival that July and the arrival of the Soviets, who arrested him and sent him off to Moscow, never to be seen again, he saved at least 20,000 Jews and perhaps as many as 100,000. Wallenberg had the courage not to go with the flow in Europe at that time, but to seek to change it at the risk of his life; he had the courage to carry out the desire of his government to save as many Jews as possible from Hitler’s “Final Solution.” That his courage and faithfulness led to his death is no surprise; that he lost his life not at the hands of the Nazis but at the hands of Hungary’s Soviet “liberators” is one of history’s bitter ironies.