Author Archives: Rob Harrison

Song of the Week

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I’d meant to post this earlier in the week—it’s perhaps my favorite Pentecost hymn; a former colleague of mine in Denver, the Rev. Dr. Tom Troeger, wrote the text.

Wind Who Makes All Winds that BlowWind who makes all winds that blow—
Gusts that bend the saplings low,
Gales that heave the sea in waves,
Stirrings in the mind’s deep caves—
Aim your breath with steady power
On your church this day, this hour.
Raise, renew the life we’ve lost,
Spirit God of Pentecost!

Fire who fuels all fires that burn—
Suns around which planets turn,
Beacons marking reefs and shoals,
Shining truth to guide our souls—
Come to us as once you came;
Burst in tongues of sacred flame!
Light and Power, Might and Strength,
Fill your church, its breadth and length!

Holy Spirit, Wind and Flame,
Move within our mortal frame.
Make our hearts an altar pyre;
Kindle them with your own fire.
Breathe and blow upon that blaze
Till our lives, our deeds, and ways
Speak that tongue which every land
By your grace shall understand!Words: Thomas H. Troeger
Music: Carol Doran
FALCONE, 7.7.7.7.D
© 1983, 1985 Oxford University Press, Inc.

“The great challenge in this decade . . . is social revival.”

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So says David Cameron, leader of the British Conservative Party, who has brought about a considerable transformation in the party of Thatcher, a transformation he describes this way: “We used to stand for the individual. We still do. But individual freedoms count for little if society is disintegrating. Now we stand for the family, for the neighborhood—in a word, for society.” It seems to be working, since the Conservatives (or Tories) mopped the floor with the ruling Labour Party in local elections held across Britain two weeks ago—Labour even lost in London.David Brooks certainly thinks there’s cause and effect here, and sees a lesson the Republicans need to take to heart. Brooks wrote in last Friday’s column,

The British conservative renovation begins with this insight: The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government. The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state. But the central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary but insufficient to talk about individual freedom. Political leaders have to also talk about, as one Tory politician put it, “the whole way we live our lives.” . . .These conservatives are not trying to improve the souls of citizens. They’re trying to use government to foster dense social bonds. . . .They want voters to think of the Tories as the party of society while Labor is the party of the state. They want the country to see the Tories as the party of decentralized organic networks and the Laborites as the party of top-down mechanistic control.

As Brooks notes, this isn’t an isolated phenomenon, as center-right parties have risen to power recently in Germany, France, and Canada, among other places; the question is, as he puts it, “whether Republicans will learn those lessons sooner, or whether they will learn them later, after a decade or so in the wilderness.” I don’t know if his analysis is right or not; but it needs to be considered. Carefully. Given that the direction he suggests is one that would suit John McCain well, I hope the McCain campaign is listening, and will give his analysis that consideration.

Politics in a nutshell

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I’ve been reminded several times recently of the line (I forget who said it) that the difference between conservatives and liberals is summarized in Brown v. Board of Education. In Brown, if I recall correctly, the Court said that changes should be made “with deliberate speed”; conservatives emphasized deliberate, liberals emphasized speed. As a thumbnail sketch of the two political philosophies, it’s not bad.

(As a side note: it works for churches, too.)

Explanations aren’t excuses

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The Atlantic has a piece up today titled “Burma’s Days,” which is essentially a thumbnail sketch of why the behavior of the military junta that rules Burma (and renamed the country Myanmar nine years ago), deplorable though it may be, makes perfect sense in light of Burmese history and culture. It’s a useful piece for the information in it (and a more useful one yet for the links to other articles), but it’s also an irritating example of the tendency among Western intelligentsia to look for excuses for foreign dictators. People who condemn the Israeli government for breathing will look the other way at Mugabe’s efforts to depopulate Zimbabwe or calmly explain how the Burmese military should be excused for diverting aid from cyclone victims because “they have reason to be suspicious about their neighbors and outside powers.” (And of course, those who wouldn’t make those particular mistakes may yet have a soft spot in their hearts for the corrupt rulers of Saudi Arabia, or be perfectly content with the generals running Pakistan; this is a game both left and right can play, and have.) Why is that?I suppose I can understand the Realpolitik approach that says, essentially, as long as dictators don’t give us any trouble, we should let them run their countries however they want; I don’t like it, and in the long run, I think it’s self-defeating (to borrow from Barack Obama on Pakistan, if we choose to promote stability instead of democracy, we tend to wind up with neither), but at least I can see the logic. But what on earth moves our journalists and public intellectuals to find excuses for these thugs? That, I just don’t get. (As you can see, I go with “Burma” over “Myanmar.” The latter is probably closer, as far as I can tell, to what the Burmese people call themselves—not that we let that bother us with places like Hungary—but I have two related reasons for not using it. One, the name change came from the junta, which is an illegitimate government, and therefore in my opinion is likewise illegitimate; and two, it’s not just my opinion. I had, for several months several moves ago, a landlord who was in exile from Burma due to his activities with the opposition; he called his country Burma and himself Burmese. He knew a lot more than I do, and had a lot more reason to care, so if it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.)

Doctrine in a nutshell (or two)

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HT: Ray OrtlundAnd I never get tired of this song.Creed

I believe in God the Father,
Almighty Maker of Heaven and Maker of Earth,
And in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
Born of the virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate
He was crucified and dead and buried.And I believe what I believe
Is what makes me what I am;
I did not make it, no, it is making me—
It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man.I believe that He who suffered was crucified, buried and dead;
He descended into Hell and on the third day, He rose again.
He ascended into Heaven where he sits at God’s mighty right hand.
I believe that He’s returning to judge the quick and the dead of the sons of men.ChorusI believe in God the Father,
Almighty Maker of Heaven and Maker of Earth,
And in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, our Lord.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
One Holy Church,
The communion of saints,
The forgiveness of sins,
I believe in the resurrection,
I believe in a life that never ends.ChorusWords and music: Rich Mullins/Beaker
© 1993 Edward Grant, Inc./Kid Brothers of St. Frank Publishing
From the album a liturgy, a legacy, & a ragamuffin band, by Rich Mullins

The genius of Bach

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Bach : music :: Shakespeare : playwriting. Not only in terms of genius, but also in the fact that the power of the work comes through no matter what you do with it (whether it be Nazi-era Richard III or “electronic Bach”). As Jan Swafford writes in Slate,

His music tends to work in all versions, I submit, because the notes-qua-notes are so good. Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky, or [your favorite composer here] were constantly concerned with the instruments that played or sung their work: great notes, too, but intimately bound to their media. In The Art of Fugue Bach didn’t seem to care what the medium was; it would work no matter what. A lot of his music—not all, but a lot—is like that: incomparable notes, regardless of avatar. . .Bach universalized what he called “the art and science of music” by the power of gripping melody, rich harmony, towering perorations, intimate whisperings, explosive joy, piercing tragedy.

That’s why, as Swafford writes, a work as demanding and formal as The Art of Fugue can still end up at the top of the best-seller list (as Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s solo-piano version did this spring): just because it’s Bach at his best. Genius has that kind of power.HT: Alan Jacobs

Belated thoughts on prayer

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Over a month ago now, Barry put up a post on prayer asking, essentially, if prayer changes things, why does so little seem to change? I meant to respond at the time, but for a variety of reasons, didn’t get to it; but then I was reminded of his post during a conversation last week with several colleagues in ministry. The question of why our prayers so often don’t get the answer for which we hope is a live one for most pastors, and it’s one for which I don’t have any kind of truly satisfactory answer; but I do have two thoughts.First, I don’t believe that prayer changes things. I believe God changes things. I don’t believe there’s power in prayer, I believe there’s power in the God to whom we pray. I do believe Pascal was right, that prayer is the means by which God gives us the dignity of causality—of doing something other than just passively absorbing his actions—but even if in prayer he allows us a voice in what he does, that doesn’t mean there’s any power in us or our actions, let alone enough power to compel him to do as we want.Second, I’m learning to trust that God knows what he’s doing. One of my colleagues last week, musing on all the times God has not given him what he’s prayed for, made a statement to the effect that “I’ve come to see all those refusals as my salvation.” Experience had taught him that God was right not to grant him his requests. The longer I go, the more times I see in my own life where that’s clearly the case, and the more I learn to trust him for his “no” as well as his “yes.”So why doesn’t God heal more? Why don’t we see people raised from the dead? I don’t know. I’ve been a part of churches where that happened; I’ve seen remarkable healing take place right before my eyes as I and others prayed. I’ve also been a part of other churches that were, as far as I could tell, no less faithful in following God—but prayers for healing were rarely granted. I don’t know why. I don’t suppose I ever will know why. Maybe it has something to do with challenging our modern emphasis on cure over care, which has certainly reached the point of being theologically problematic. But whatever the reason, I’m learning to trust God who has promised that whatever we may bear in this life, in the end, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

John McCain, unnatural politician

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A couple weeks ago, Karl Rove had an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he asserted that “Mr. McCain is one of the most private individuals to run for president in history,” and argued that the Senator will have to set his reticence aside and open up to American voters if he wants to win in November. Rove has a point regarding what the electorate will want, and what stories are important for Sen. McCain to tell in the course of making his case to the voters; but what I think he fails to understand is that it’s not just a matter of being a naturally private person, as if he just needed to overcome his embarrassment and brag a little more. Sen. McCain’s reticence, I believe, goes to the heart of who he is.In the first place, it seems to me that he has a real aversion to making political capital out of things that are truly meaningful to him. The stories he’s told about his life during this campaign have been stories he’s told to explain himself, to help people understand him, not to make himself look good or play on voters’ emotions. Clearly, he would prefer to inspire voters by talking about honor, duty, patriotism and courage, not by bragging about what a wonderful person he is; the stories he’s told about himself have tended to be self-deprecating rather than self-exalting. Similarly, though by any normal definition you’d have to call Sen. McCain an evangelical conservative (and one with a strong personal testimony, at that), he’s been very resistant to leading with his faith, preferring to duck such questions or answer them sidelong. I respect that; I think using one’s faith for political gain, turning Jesus into a means to an end, is spiritually a risky thing at best. That said, however, running for office is an act of self-communication; if your relationship with Jesus is at the core of who you are and why you believe and do what you believe and do, then you have to tell people that in a way that they’ll understand. Though I think his theology is notably off at points, I don’t think he deserves the skepticism he’s received from other evangelicals; if he wants their active, involved support rather than just (most of) their votes, he’s going to need to find a way to make that clear.Second, I believe there’s another issue as well with regard to Sen. McCain’s military experience. I think I’ve written about this somewhere (though I can’t find it), but having grown up in a military family, I’ve spent a lot of time around combat veterans, some of whom were Vietnamese POWs. In all that time, I’ve noticed a clear pattern in the kind of stories I hear and the kind I don’t. I hear funny stories, and stories that show what a sharp pilot Commander X was, or how good a shiphandler Captain Y was; I hear stories as object lessons about leadership and doing your job right, and sometimes I hear stories about fellow officers sold up the river by the politicians. What I do not hear, and have never heard, are stories about the blood and guts of combat (for lack of a better phrase). My brother was with my father when he went to the Wall, and saw him break down; I have never seen that side of his experience, and I would be surprised if I ever do. Because, you see, I have never been there; I don’t understand, and I can’t.From my own observations, combat veterans rarely talk about that kind of thing except among their own, with those who don’t need to be told how it was because they already understand, because they, too, were there. That’s why I never trusted John Kerry, because he was the kind of man who could make political capital out of his medals, and out of turning on those with whom he had served; which told me that he’d only gone into the military for what he could get out of it. Fundamentally, he was a political officer, someone who had put on the uniform as a politician, and such people are not to be trusted.Sen. McCain, by contrast, went into the service for very different reasons, and served out of very different motives; and though he, too, went into politics after returning to civilian life, he has made very different (and much more limited) use of his military career in the pursuit of his political goals. Karl Rove is asking him to change that, and to cross a line that I suspect he might find not only difficult but even somewhat dishonorable to cross. I think Rove is right, that his campaign will need to find a way to do that if they’re going to run successfully; but I also think it might be asking too much of the Senator himself to tell those stories. Maybe their best option would be to get folks like Col. Bud Day to cris-cross the country and tell them for him.

In defense of the church, part III: Doctrine

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There’s a strong anti-doctrinal spirit in parts of the church these days, as the impulse in this direction of oldline Protestant liberalism is being reinforced by Emergent types who are assiduously reinventing Walter Rauschenbusch; it’s a spirit that’s captured quite well in this video from Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis.

[10/23/15: The video is no longer available, as far as I can tell.]

I’m struck, in that video, by the blithe confidence with which people look into the camera and assert that their church has no doctrinal statement that anyone has to believe because everyone has their different opinions and they’re all valid, and that upholding anything as unchanging truth is a waste of time because Scripture is evolving, as if a) they’re obviously true, and b) doctrine is obviously a bad thing. The problem is, these statements don’t hold.

They don’t hold for three reasons. The first is that if you want Scripture to mean anything at all, it can’t mean that. You will not find “everyone has ideas and they’re all valid” in the Word of God. What you will find instead is Jesus declaring, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6); what you’ll find is Paul telling Timothy, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:14-17). What you’ll find, in other words, is a strong concern through all Scripture that the church know and believe and uphold the truth, which in fact does not change, because truth is of God and God doesn’t change. If we actually want to follow Christ, that necessarily means that we need to be concerned to know and believe and proclaim the truth—and that in turn means that we do need doctrine, and an understanding of at least the most basic beliefs that we need to hold if we’re to follow where he’s actually going (as opposed to where we want to believe he’s going).

The second reason is that, as John Hatton has noted in a brilliant post on Confessing Evangelical, doctrine is necessary as the “constitution for a community.” He pulls this phrase from Columbia law professor Eben Moglen, the lawyer for the Free Software Foundation who helped draft (and enforce) the GNU General Public License; according to Moglen, that’s the primary purpose of free software licenses, not that they provide a platform for enforcement, but that they constitute (which is to say, create and give form to) a community with a given identity and purpose. Without that constitution,

groups arise within the community who, being ignorant of the principles on which the community is constituted, start to reject and work against those principles. They do not mean to undermine the community—quite the opposite; they consider they are strengthening it—but by undermining that community’s constitution it is inevitable that they will end up damaging the community itself.

This is a phenomenon with which the church is all too familiar, and it shows why there is a need to teach people the faith. Not because people need to know doctrine inside-out in order to be good Christians; not because it is a useful technique that is effective in building up individuals and the church; but because poorly-taught Christians may find themselves inadvertently undermining the constitution on which the church is built, by coming to reject doctrines they have never even known or understood in the first place. . . .

In addition, the free software movement and the church are both faced by numerous external opponents (variously, the world, the flesh, the devil, and Microsoft 😉 ), and ignorance of the constitution on which each community is founded makes it easier for those external opponents to damage that community and the individuals within it.

The key here is that those who reject doctrine (or conceive themselves to be doing so, anyway) do so because they misconstrue it as primarily regulatory in purpose, as if the main reason we have doctrines is so we can punish those who disagree. As Hatton, applying Moglen, shows, that’s wrong: the primary purpose of doctrine is formative, creating us as the people of God, as the kind of community God wants us to be. Set it aside, and you may be fine for a while, but ultimately you’ll find “poorly-taught Christians . . . inadvertently undermining the constitution on which the church is built, by coming to reject doctrines they have never even known or understood in the first place.” Who we are and how we live begins with and flows out of what we believe; we cannot be a unified community in Christ, we cannot serve God together as his people, in any faithful way for any length of time without holding at least our most important beliefs in common (such as who this God is we’re worshiping, and who this Jesus is we’re following, and why we’re doing this at all). As Rich Mullins summed up the matter in his song “Creed,”

I believe what I believe is what makes me what I am;
I did not make it—no, it is making me;
It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man.

The third reason the statements I referenced above don’t hold is that they fail the Francis Schaeffer test: “Can you live them out?” You can’t; Solomon’s Porch can’t, and their video shows it. In the snippets from Doug Pagitt’s sermon (at least, I assume it’s Doug Pagitt preaching), he makes such statements as, “Ultimately, community that’s Christian means to be a community of love.” That’s a doctrinal statement. It makes no sense whatsoever without a complete doctrinal context that provides definitions (so that we know what words like “community,” “Christian,” and “love” mean; they aren’t self-evident) and goals (so that we know, for instance, why we value community, and why we want a community that’s Christian as opposed to some other kind), and it asserts something that we must believe: a Christian community is a community of love. On the basis of what they say, the folks at Solomon’s Porch ought to be completely happy if someone stood up at that point and said, “You’re wrong; that might have been true once, but it isn’t now”—but they wouldn’t. They might say, “all those ideas are important and valued,” but if someone tried to interrupt the message to insist that a Christian community is not a community of love, they would find out exactly how important and valued that idea isn’t.

And that is necessarily so. It has to be; because if they really believed their own sweeping statements and tried to live accordingly, they would find that the rejection of doctrine is a universal acid that dissolves community. And so, even as the folks in that video insist that all beliefs are welcome, they also say, “If Jesus were alive today, what would he be concerned about? Well, he’d be concerned about what I’m concerned about” (and therefore, by clear implication, you ought to be concerned about that, too). They’re not rejecting doctrine as such; they can’t, because they wouldn’t have a coherent community if they did. What they’re rejecting is any doctrinal authority except themselves—which ultimately ends in rejecting the authority and primacy of Jesus, and building a church that’s all about us and how wonderful we are.

This is, I believe, where the attack on doctrine comes from. People may say they’re attacking the church because it insists on believing specific things, but their overt complaint is in fact incoherent, and merely a mask for the real complaint: that the church is telling them things they don’t want to hear. That’s not all bad, nor is it necessarily unreasonable, since no church has all its doctrines right, and too many churches teach things which are harmful, or proclaim things in harmful ways; but the problem comes when we start to think that the church should only tell us what we want to hear, and only ask us to believe what we want to believe. That’s not the model we have from Jesus. Jesus spent a lot of time telling people things they didn’t want to hear, because it was what they needed to hear; if we as the church are to be faithful to his call, we must go and do likewise.

(NB: the last paragraph has been edited to more clearly and accurately express my point.)