aintsobad

Virtue: The Church You Want to Join, Page Three

   Who am I to say what is right and what is wrong? To say it differently, who determines what is good and virtuous? Our culture decides for us on various biases. If we feel, we probably only follow the mores set out by our culture. If we think and feel, we may question inwardly, how right and wrong stack up for ourselves and our peers.

   What is a just society, for instance? For one party, a just society is one of liberty, wherein persons can rise or fall on free market principles. Hence, limited government with certain specific duties is preferable.

   For others, a just society is one able to recognize necessity and move to meet those necessities. It is famously known how, during the Great Depression, the President in the White House casually remarked that no one had yet starved to death (as far as he knew). Unfortunately, this comment came as persons in the Southwest were boiling down tumbleweeds for supper. Persons seeking virtue argued from necessity, as persons decrying price gouging during hurricane recovery have done in this century.

   Still others, of both parties and some independents, argue for a social order set on justice, by which they argue for civic virtues. Civic virtues include responsibility, accountability, load-sharing and self sacrifice. These are the virtues of a just society, a good society, which, in distress, pulls together to solve problems and settle disagreements.

   I know what you are thinking. I agree.

   None of this verbage above sounds much like the churches I see.

   In fact, it does not sound a great deal like America just now. Let me illustrate. We are ten years into an armed conflict in the Middle East. Thousands of dead and tens of thousands injured and the national treasury drained. Some terrorists deterred, a few military strong men deposed (and hung). I suggest a disproportionate level of suffering for this conflict falls on the middle and lower middle classes.

   When a portion of a struggle falls hardest on one segment of society, falls there and lies there on the prone bodies of one class, you have to question the virtue of, well, the rest of us.

   You cannot argue with me that America is on a war footing. If you do not listen to the news much or have an associate in the military, you would not know our people are dying at alarming rates.

   Is this liberty, necessity or justice? At best it is necessity but the necessity may be not much more than the fact we seem to have no exit strategy. We are there because we were there.

   Simply put, to return to the virtue of the Church, the Church is not much help.

   Let me offer one brief insight and then a seed of a plan.

   Prior to most Spiritual Awakenings, the Church lies dormant, mostly ruminating on its privileges. When a great calamity occurs or looms apparent the Church may recover its prophetic mission and let slip the lambs of peace. In so doing, the Church often excludes itself from a privileged place in its society.

   I suggest we will not have Spiritual Awakening, lively churches or a just society, if the Church spends her time insisting on her privileges. Comfortable living is not the goal of the sojourner.

   I suggest, moreover, the internecine warfare of the past thirty years in national baptist life failed to produce a more just or active Church, let alone to sow seeds of virtue in the secular culture. Simply put, the leadership we let lead failed. It is now time for a pruning.

   A good friend and deeper thinker points out to me pruning often occurs naturally. Dead limbs fall off living trees. We ought to try to guide the pruning, to graft on the wild branch to the staid old tree. There can be new growth from outside and from within.

   Pythagoras and Aristotle cautioned against taking action not based on a broader philosophical context. Action for the sake of action is not worthwhile. In a fully integrated world, it is not enough to "do something, even if you do it wrong." We would need, instead, what Bonhoeffer meant when he urged his native Church to take "...responsible action in a bold venture of faith."

   In this plan, we decide how and when to act, out of a yearning for liberty, or a pang of necessity or of a broader craving for virtue, which is justice in fact and just in theory. We will need, first, to purge out own hearts. It is not enough to oppose evil, if we become what we oppose.

  

  

  

  

  

Virtue: The Church You Want to Join, Page Two

   Any man who ever wrote about virtue wrote not about what he was but about what he wished.

                                                       ----Rick Davis, Final Thoughts

   Bonhoeffer "knew...once life loses its value, all morality collapses..."

                 Gordon Brown, Courage, p.56

   There is a way that seems right to men in general but the end of that way (the way of Man) is his destruction. The way to destruction is a broad thoroughfare with no red lights or speed bumps. The wind is ever behind you and the path always downhill.

   It is hard to be alive but it is much harder to be both alive and good, all at the same time. Few do it well.

   The Church of Christ, Christ's real Church, the Church you want to join will fill up with courageous sinners, if it ever fills up at all. The Church of Christ's Courageous Sinners spends a little time in the Temple and a lot of time in the World. The Enemy likes the Church to stay in the Temple. Jesus taught there, after He tidied up a bit, but He never really got the hang of the Temple. He got the hang of the Cross, though, and it was nowhere near the Temple.

   Courage. He took His courage to the Temple. He took His courage to the Cross. He took His courage to the Tomb, thence to Hell and back. I wonder, what did earth seem to Him, after Hell?

   Dispense with this bromide; that courage is what a man does when he is most afraid. "Most afraid" is a quantitative term and so relative to all his other states of fear. How does he know when he is "most afraid?"

   Courage is what a man does when he knows he is rightly fearful. He is most rightly fearful, this man, when he must carry his sin into the presence of a completely righteous God. The first man who knows his sin has the good sense to hide from God and sets a horrid example for all the Later Hiders, to wit, God knows we are naked and have nothing to hide our sinfulness.

   G.K. Chesterton said the only Christian doctrine that was empirically provable was the doctrine of Original Sin.

   So, the Church of Christ must fill itself with sinners and sinners, to come, must come forward with all their courage. Grace covers our nudity. Courage gives us another place to put our hands.

   So, courage is the first of the virtues. It makes all the others possible.

  

  

Virtue: The Church You Want to Join

   If "church" does not make you better, review you choice of churches, or your soul. By better, I mean more virtuous, more helpful, more of a  benefit to the Citizenry of Heaven and the Nations of the Earth.

   Your soul is your responsibility, not that of your pastor or Sunday School teacher. You must work out your own salvation with "fear and trembling." The beginning of virtue is accountability, which is, in essence, the (very literal) fear of God.

   The fear (phobos) of God is a visceral recognition that the One to whom we must at last respond is the One Person in the Universe we never fool. We practice self-deceit when we act as though God is unaware of our foibles.

    Jesus told us we should not be afraid of those who could kill the body but we should fear the One who can consign body and soul to eternal separation from blessing. Jesus, who conquered His fear and despair (intensified self-doubt) did not hesitate to recognize the tendency of humans to fear one another in the temporal world a great deal more than we fear God, Who alone reigns over the temporal and the eternal.

   Sin-damaged humanity is not naturally virtuous. Scan all the books in all the libraries of all the world. The ethics section is full of advice on how to get along with the fellow next to you.

    We want to be good. We know we should be good. We just are not good. We have to join with God to fight what is bad in us.

   I still believe we must be remade by rebirth. This is a personal choice, exercised with the greatest difficulty considering our  very limited amount of spiritual free agency. I am sorry, my Arminian friend, but grace almost has to be irresistible to get a word in edge-wise.

   It is hard to be saved out of sin. It is harder to want to be saved out of sin. Sin, face it, is just fun. It feels so good, at least for awhile, to take the wheel and go where you want. The highway seems right but the end of the drive is destruction. You are not licensed to drive in the spiritual world. You are unsafe at any speed.

   For instance, you know greed is wrong, regardless of the point at which greed starts or how you define greed. The love of gain (money, mammon, temporal value) is the root cause of all evil but just how do you beat greed without becoming a navel-gazing, Walden-Pond dwelling naturalist? What is the place of private property in an increasingly crowded world?

   Your church ought to help you decide about matters of greed and selflessness. It ought to help you with matters of virtue. If your church lies to you, or fails to tell as much of the truth as is available, you need to rethink why you let spiritual leadership lie or obfuscate the truth.

   I will argue here for virtue. By virtue, I mean the attitudes and actions, the presuppositions and predispositions, the assets of spirit called character, taught by Jesus, the Christ. These are the moral premises on which the Kingdom of Heaven depends.

   I cannot say that government can legislate virtue, although all government certainly makes the attempt. I can say that good citizens make better governments. Good citizens will not tolerate poor government or evil laws forever.

   We just have a hard time deciding what is virtue and what is vice. We are tolerant, which is a virtue, we think, but all of us draw lines across which we will not carry our tolerance. We decide for virtue and against vice. We just need help living out one and leaving out the other.

   In the next few days, I want to set down some thoughts on virtue; working morality, with attitudes and presuppositions like courage, justice and love. I warn you again I think these things come from God, from the grace gift of God's divine Son, Jesus the Christ. My assumption is reborn persons make better citizens of earth and are the beneficiaries of heavenly citizenship, as well.

   There is less food and water to go around, less available medical care and less ground on which to stand on the earth. Your survival will depend on the virtue of your neighbor. His life depends on your virtue. Religious institutions, like the local congregation and the universal Church, should (indeed, must) help people of the earth grow in grace and knowledge and favor with one another. I want to make a small contribution to that discussion.

  

  

  

Where Freedom and Necessity Meet as Equal Foes, Virtue Must Be the Arbiter

   For a few days, this little space will be given over to a presentation of virtues. At least, there will be here a presentation of virtue as I am coming to understand the subject. I admit freely I come at this from a Christian world view, with an emphasis on "a," for it is only one of many.

   My heart grows weary and my limbs weak with carrying those who wish to present themselves as spiritual but not religious. I suppose it is possible to present the form of the former without the substance of the latter but I still think it unlikely. There is a corrective in religious practice set to keep spirituality from becoming self congratulation.

   So, I will warn you, oh, you, who still dare come here, to be ready for an explanation of religious virtues in the sense that there is something God wishes to say to man. It is more than what is said to keep us in line. I think the war going on for our souls today is at the place where freedom and necessity meet as equal combatants. At that place, because freedom and necessity both have powerful arguments to make, virtue has to arbitrate between them. For that to happen, we must know what virtue is in fact.

   For that, we will trail Jesus along from Bethlehem to Calvary, by way of Cana and Gethesemane.

Suggestion Ten: The Triumph of Ideas

  

   "It takes courage to face a duelist with a pistol and it takes courage to face a British general with an army. But it takes still greater and far higher courage to face friends with a grievance."

                                    ----Harry S. Truman

What is your Big Idea?

   I believe the Free Church with all its congregational autonomy (sort of) and its non-creedalism (we are not creedal; we say that repeatedly in our creed), needs some way to locate, train, police and help practice those who indicate a sense of holy vocation (a redundancy; a vocation by its nature is holy). We do not have such an apparatus now.

   Associations can help with this and conventions but they neither feels able to do the policing aspect. The results are sometimes disastrous. Sexual predators, church killers and the feeble-minded can still get recommended to local congregations, if they have a friend. They can still get called to those churches if they can maintain decorum through an often less than elaborate vetting process.

   Free Church ministers ought to change the process. In fact, we probably must if the Free Church is going to continue to be a force.

   So, what is your  Big Idea?

   FDR had his New Deal. HST tried to make it a Fair/Square Deal. LBJ wanted a war on poverty but lost it in Viet Nam.

   Reagan's idea was Morning in America. In two terms, President Reagan's one idea changed the course of the 20th Century. We do not yet know if his vision restored America or only delayed the inevitable decline. We are too close to the events to know.

   What is your Idea?

   We can only make a variation of three choices, really: Stay as we are, Get Worse or Get Better.

   What is your Idea?

   We should be putting money, time, effort and our better brains into Option Three Above.

   What is your Idea?

   My position is clearly stated. Throw money at the problem. Get an organization of ministers into place who will take care to do the works I have outlined here today and elsewhere. It is time to get started.

   A few will tell us this just creates a new level of bureaucracy. It occurs to me some of them might be trying to protect their place in the machine.

   Still, what is your Idea?

   No one seriously believes things will remain as they are, do you? So, we really have two options; get better or get worse. I can see worse coming.

   What about better?

   What is your Idea?

  Ok, try this one, then.

   You guys are too in need of approval, too prone to seek comfort, too likely to take the path of least resistance. We are in desperate need of engaged ministry in the world by the True Church, rather than withdrawal from the process.

   Or, this of it this way.

   Gethsemane was the way to Calvary. The agonizing prospect of public disapproval made the Empty Tomb a possibility. The struggle to be the Savior took place in the Garden the night prior or why did He go there?

   He addressed the issue head on. He insisted the Church (such as it was) keep it eyes open to the reality of the moment. The Church, being the Church, preferred its comfort. Peter and the boys slept, until it was too late to comfort Him.

   Wake up.

   What is He about now?

   What is your Idea?

   You and I will be forgotten by all but Him before too many years pass. Our images will fade in the minds of our dearest lovers before the worms finish with our mortal remains. Our ideas, well, they have a chance to live until He comes again, the One who never forgets.

   Get a Big Idea.

  

  

Suggestion Nine: Know Who You Are (Or, at least know who Soren Kierkegaard thinks you are)

   We are going to get to the title of today's blog but we are going there by way of Denmark. Yes, the return of the prickly Dane, Soren K., who has replaced Heraclitus in my affections, with little Immy Kant now running a more distant third.

   Kierkegaard, Soren, did not live that long. While he did live he preached evangelism (the real thing, not revivalism with a thin veneer over the fund raising), decided on the difference between despair and depression and generally made the world a better, if weirder, place.

   Below is an actual set of sentences from one of his books, concerning the self:

   A human being is a spirit. But what is a spirit? Spirit is the self.

But what is self?

The self is a relationship that relates itself to itself or it is the relation that relates itself to itself in  the relationship.

   No, seriously, he wrote those lines. I have trouble reading those lines.

   We are not met to consider the maniacal genius of the "Fork," as he was known by age ten. Instead, we want to consider the putative difference between depression and despair, in particular, in how this difference effects institutional lethargy. Or, better put, how the suffering of the spirit/self contributes to the death of the whole, if we take the whole as being any larger body in which we participate, however minimally.

DO NOT STOP READING. I WILL LAPSE INTO ENGLISH MOMENTARILY.

   Let me ask it this way. Do you think you might have to leave the church to live a Christian life? That is, if you are a Christian at all, or aspire to be a Christian at some point.

   If this thought has crossed your mind and, if your particular congregation is related at any point to some larger body of congregations, your depression/despair may be contributing to the coming death of the larger body. Institutional lethargy does not spring up by itself. It grows up from the grass roots.

   So, what to do? Well, let's decide first if your spiritual life depresses your spirit or your spirit somehow is brought to despair by your relation to yourself.

   Depression is common and should be taken seriously. Depression may result some times from misfiring neuro-transmitters. Studies, as you might imagine, are under way. Depression may be a contributor to your overall feeling of despair. Take it seriously.

   Or, you may feel intense feelings of self doubt.

   I think of General Fightin' Joe Hooker, commander of the overwhelmingly manned and equipped Federal Armies opposing Bobby Lee's forces during the American Civil War. Fightin' Joe got whipped over and over again. He was asked why, years later.

   Reportedly, General Hooker replied, "I got whipped because at the most important times in the campaign, I lost confidence in Joe Hooker.'

   Joe lost sight of what made him Joe. He was not called "Thinkin' Joe," or "Handsome Joe," or even "Good-Guy Joe." He was called "Fightin' Joe." At the most crucial times, Joe forgot to fight.

   He lost sight of who he was due to intensified self-doubt.

   This is no argument for artificial self-esteem. Some of us are quite rightly humble. We have a lot to be humble about.

   Still, still, still...

   The cure for depression is not yet found. The cure for despair is somewhere around the spiritual junction of freedom and necessity.

   I would like to live free. Really, I would like to be without restrictions, under no commands, bereft of responsibility. I would like to live in complete freedom. I just cannot determine any social situation in which complete freedom is possible or even acceptable, even if I am relating only to myself.

   The burden of necessity makes me more acceptable. I stop at red and yellow lights. I cover my mouth when coughing. I just know there has to be the leaven of freedom in necessity because it is not possible to live according to the bottom line always. There is a lot of empty space between the top of the page and the bottom line.

   Let me put it a different way. All the living matters. There is a lot of living between the birth announcement and the epitaph.

   Or, we might say it is more needful to be wary of an empty life than a full death.

   We just have to know who we are. Some of our old organizations quit being who we are. They broke faith with the us that made them them. So, now we know what and who we are not but there are not many of us left who know who we are or even who we are supposed to be.

   How do we regain a sense of self that lifts despair?

   We have to find the right coupling of freedom and necessity.

   Someone will have to pay a great price.

   When you do not have a great platform from which to speak, you have to steel yourself to act alone, consistently, to be true to the call you received. The day He died, there were more people voting for Barabbas than for Jesus, the Christ. The beatings had already begun. Really, when is enough enough?

   The end or our despair (not depression) starts to come when we regain our identity. We stop hating who we are because we are not something more or other. We accept the self as spirit and spirit as a part of eternity wherein we relate the self to the self, while never stepping out of the social context.

   Know Who You Are.

Tomorrow: The Last Suggestion I Can Make

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Suggestion Eight: Decide What Happens if You Fail to Act

   If I speak out, friends will disagree.

   If I swim against the stream, the stream will ultimately sap my strength.

   If I take an unpopular stand, I will hurt myself commercially.

   What happens if I do not speak or act or stand on principle?

   What happens then?

   In all probability, what happens if I do not act is the very fulfillment of what others fear will happen if I do act. Let us see an example.

   One of our state conventions of churches in Texas is now frail. It is living to support itself only and now living mightily on reserve funds. I take opportunity from time to time to warn people about its condition, though my level of responsibility for the old horse currently is virtually non-existent.

   People who are concerned alternately threaten, bully, intimidate, order me to stop, plead with me to stop. Their rationale is the same; what if something happens to this convention of churches?

   My contention is something has happened, is happening and will continue to happen to the convention. To simply ignore its downward spiral does not accomplish anything serious. What happens to the  ministries of the convention, to its institutions, when the offerings are even smaller and the reserve is completely diminished?

   All the things you fear might happen will then occur. Where will you be then?

   What happens if you fail to act, keep quiet, toe the part line? The things you fear are the things that will come.

   Leave the plight off the frail state convention. What is happening to your local association of churches? A few are superbly led. I have mentioned them in this space; San Antonio, Union and Austin have excellent leadership. They bear light.

   So many others live on the heart beat of the seventy and eighty year olds who remember the days of cooperative missions, when Free Church associations and state conventions had a seeming monopoly on cooperative evangelical missions. This is scarcely so any longer but who seems to care? Today, younger ministers do their work with a cell phone and a search engine, while their elders yearn for what  once seemed true.

     How many associations will exist in ten years? In twenty?

   What you fear most is most likely to occur.

   So, one more step and enough for today. What happens to your church if you do not act? Cooperative ministry does mean a lot, Free Church congregations ought to become autonomous again but remain engaged with one another, if simply because the (lost) world cannot begin to grasp why we cannot get along together well.

   Free Church ministers need an apparatus to train, police and help its members practice the faith and learn their profession. The old institutions can barely provide for themselves any longer. They were once new and young and strong. Something new and young and strong will have to rise to take their place.

   What happens if you do not act?

   If you do speak out, your voice will sound tinny in the empty well of your friends' silence. After you have paid for your words with your place or with your life, you will someday be remembered as that fellow "who was right too soon," or right but "at too great a cost."

   By then, the things you were told to fear if you acted will have come to pass, but only if you do not speak or if others do not hear and follow.

Tomorrow, Monday, November 2, 2009-The Difference Between Despair and Mere Depression

Suggestion Seven: When Out of Power, Show Courage

   Here is an ancient aphorism:

   If the test of tolerance is when you are in the majority, the test of courage is when you are in the minority.

   To be in the minority does not mean there are fewer people who think as you than there are of those who think otherwise. To be in the minority may mean only this; you are not in power.

   Power protects itself in the same way water seeks its own level. Obscure parliamentary rulings, tacit agreements made behind the scene, simple acts of raw strength; all of these can blunt the thrust of reform.

   The modern rewriting of history holds the American Civil War was unnecessary, for African slavery would have disappeared within fifty to one hundred years as industrialization took over labor's tasks. One wonder what a further three generations of persons held in forced servitude  would have voted about their race's inevitable emancipation.

   By this rationale, the European Holocaust would have ended if everyone had just held their place until Germany ran out of Jews.

   Simply put, nothing is inevitable until it occurs. People can still hurt while the sands of time pour through the eye of the hour glass. More cunningly said, the stance of Christianity on the matter of evil is this; evil must be actively opposed. The Christian answer to the problem of innocent suffering is to act against innocent suffering, which in turn implies, on occasion, the need to resist the prosperous wicked.

   No organization may have or hold power simply because it had the power to do so.

   When out of power, it is not necessary to unfold a detailed plan of opposition. It is enough to point out the foibles of the powerful party, to work within the system if one can and to smash it when necessary. If one is shut out of power for a generation the result is a permanent under class, with those in force expressing their feelings of permanent entitlement. The faces in power may change but the cause remains the same; protect the public trough for one's own use. Share it with as few as possible.

   Courage is required to say no, when no is a socially unacceptable reply.

   The source of courage might be civility, or the desire for civility. Courage to quest for civility often springs from deep feelings of social responsibility. The Church is not a bad place to inculcate ideals of social responsibility but it is too often (and too sadly) the last place where reform might take hold. The Church often holds itself up as "an assembly of the elite of the just," (Bonhoeffer).

   If the Church cannot identify with the sufferings of the sufferer to oppose those who bring on suffering the Church fails to identify with its own Savior. The Church ceases to be Christian or even truly religious.

   The failure is not one of faith, often, but of courage. Without courage, faith does not matter much.

  

Fiction Over at Pastor's Pal

   In September, I wrote a month of daily devotionals over at pastor's pal, my companion blogsite.

   In October, it was a daily prayer guide.

   For November, I am writing short stories. At least, it started out to be short stories. So far, it is Four Chapters of the Ham Chronicles, subtitled Piggie Soared: The Swine Flew.

   In chapter four, just put up today, Ham, the Pilot Pig, explains the perfect faith required for a pig to fly. Read it and be informed.

Suggestion Six: Morality Never Really Goes Out of Style

  

   "How happy and prudent is he who tries now in life to be what he wants to be found in death. Perfect contempt of the world, a lively desire to advance in virtue, a love for discipline, the works of penance, readiness to obey, self-denial, and the endurance of every hardship for the love of Christ, these will give a man great expectations of a happy death."

        ----Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ.

   Occupy the moral high ground in all campaigns. Be there because you believe you are right, not because you think you are God.

   People who think they are God behave as though their rules for others apply only to others.

   People who think they are God behave in ways God would never sanction.

   The sinlessness of God includes this facet; to wit, God will not do wrong in the forlorn hope of producing some good result.

   In His best recorded temptation experience, Jesus the Christ is offered a chance to redeem all the nations of the earth if He will worship the adversary for a moment, entirely in private. The Christ refuses, citing the ancient Jewish injunction to worship God only.

   The Devil might have asked Jesus, on the mount, then, who His God was, if He was not in Heaven at the moment.

   I imagine Jesus saying, "I know this for certain. You are not God, nor anything like God."

   Even in those moments when you are not certain about God or where you fit with God, you can always know who is not God. You do not have to let uncertainty feed apostasy.

   Jesus understood His dying time, so He got what His life meant. He was not suicidal. He was committed.

   Jesus is remembered, reverenced, venerated. The file clerks who killed Him are rightly forgotten.

   A practical politician can sometimes get the consent of his listeners but, if he is only a pragmatist, he can never actually win their conviction. An equally expressive colleague can win them to their side with concessions, or with simple empathy. Conviction holds a person fast.

    To convince someone to change is useless. To help him discover he wants to change is durable.

    A moral person, finally, is neither a fool nor a file clerk. He is a man with a sense of vocation, or sacred calling. He is a teacher and a leader, so an agent of progressive change. His opposition will inform him on the matter of cost, while his circumstances will tell him when he must pay. For Lee, it was his commission and Appomattox. For Lincoln it was his family and Ford's Theater. For Jesus, it was all and Good Friday.

   Left unsaid is this; whatever is required and whenever it must be rendered up, the moral man steps up to pay. He inspires with heroism, energy and purity of purpose. He does not act until his righteous indignation burns itself to embers, for it anger does not motivate him, or greed. He sees wrong and wants to right it. He sees need and wishes to meet it.

   The moral man is not waiting for applause to tell him how to act, much less think.

   Morality is not transient.