aintsobad

Religion: Can We Know God? (31)-Religious Knowledge is Artistic, Not Pragmatic

   Religious knowledge is numinous, not nominal. Simply put, if religion merely imitates what is available in various other strata, it is ultimately invalid, because the practice of religion requires the application of massive amounts of unproductive labor and great expense. 

   Granted, the world would be the poorer if Michelangelo never climbed a scaffold and equally poor if no Leo had ever been Pope. However, one would be hard put to prove the world is richer for the advent of idol worship and that is religion, too. Much labor is required to build a Temple, much expense to maintain it and even more to staff such a place. When one no longer believes in the substance behind religious expression, the beauty of an idol, carved to entice a demon to take up and maintain residence, is of benefit only as a curiosity.

   Religious knowledge has a pragmatic value but this is not primary. Religion appeals to us as does art. Art and religion inform us (and so call out of us) in ways we strive to describe and can only barely explain. 

   Religious knowledge (and there is such a thing, or religion would not survive across generations and cultures) is a way to find meaning. Meaning is our primary defense against despair. Religion is often called an escape in the same way art is labelled a diversion because each lifts the spirits by transcendence. 

   In our day, paradoxically, religious explanation, to be relevant, requires one thing most religions now practice but are willingly in forfeit of, and another thing none of us seem to have or want. The first is an educated clergy and the second (hold your breath) is a uniquely feminine initiative rite.

   Educated clergy have the ability to discern truth under reliable control. An educated clergyperson may have various mentors but must finally have the ability to reason personally. He/she need not reinvent the wheel for every vesper's service but Sermon Central must not replace his cerebral cortex. 

   Education is the ability to offer the follow-up question rather than regurgitate absorbed information. Knowledge, through various forms of education, serve to help form, direct and enact policy. Educated clergy transcend the "gig" mentality and, so, bring a richness to their sacred calling. The educated clergy can do more than gather  a flock and fleece it.

   Most religious bodies today practice some form  of education beyond the primary grades for their clergy. It is with the greatest sadness we notice the way Christians seem ready to forego a trained clergy today for simple crowd-gatherers. This is like a civilization that eschews farmers for hunter-gatherers. The hunter-gatherer technique ultimately leads to poverty and starvation. The wealth of nations is said to be in its cities but cities only occur (and recur) only in societies with agricultural surplus. 

   Just as important, and less replicated, is a religious form of feminine initiation, or rite of passage. Since much of history is dominated by masculinity, either of masculine men and their descendants, or of women forced into the masculine role because of the absence of masculine males, religion, like politics and commerce, developed certain, specific rites of passage for the young males. These rites of passage (which might include spirit treks, circumcision, tatooing, fasts, costuming, et al) represent transferences of power, ala "the divine right of kings," as well as serving as social-sexual rites of passage.

   The ancients and historical moderns lived (live?) in fearful times, by which one means eras of anxiety. Physical strength and personal courage were combined with the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the good of the whole to form masculine virtues, which became social ethics. Religious rites of passage (transfers of power), then, were almost totally reserved for the male. Young boys were wrenched from their families (meaning, mostly, mothers), forced to surrender the needs of childhood, terrorized, victimized (often) and made to survive. The survivors were the fittest, the strongest, the smartest or the luckiest. 

   We will talk about "luck" later. "Luck" plays a large part in religious development and social structure. Lincoln often picked and discarded generals based on their "luck."

   Female rites of passage into the religious cult were dissimilar to those of the male. They still are dissimilar and do not so much relate to a transfer of power from generation to generation as they do transfer of power over the female from the home (Father) to the husband or the cult itself. Feminine virtues (ethics) include chastity and faithfulness to the father/husband/cult, with simpler self-sacrifice limited to the nuclear (and, in some cultures, the extended) family unit. A female who wants something other must waive the feminine virtues (ethos) for masculine sacrifices. Supposed religious repression of the female is mostly cultural but it is one of the ways/places/mores where religion is not allowed/encouraged to surpass acculturation.

 

Next Post: How Zombies, Vampires and Post-Apocalyptic Images represent social anxieties and religious need.

   Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

 

 

 

The Decalogue (Ten Commandments Received By Moses)-The Third Commandment-Emptieness

   You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain, Exodus 3:7.

   Years ago a fellow took my name. He took my identity, actually. He used my identity to get credit cards, my credit rating to secure some properties, my social security number to buy his way into various small medical clinics where he got prescription pain killers for his use and for sale to other addicts. I was not he, nor was he me, but he used my name all over North Central Texas.

   He took my name in vain.

   That is to say, the thief used my name for purposes I did not intend.

   He took up a ton of my time, he cost me some money, he then got himself arrested, all the while using my name. I barely avoided a felony record. He used my name for purposes I never intended in ways I never wanted.

   When I found him and confronted him, first personally and then legally, he expressed to me his deep and abiding faith in God. He urged me not to "get side-tracked" with this problem, so I could "do my ministry" with a full heart.

   No remorse, no shame; just a profession of an empty belief in God, a belief that in no way informed his actions.

   I put the brother in jail. He got out in a few months and tried it again. He did not get so far this time.

   To use God's name in vain is not the mere ephemeral use of foul language combined with the use of a divine component. It is, rather, the use of the name of God for a purpose of self-aggrandizement for which that name was never intended.

   Ten years ago now my middle son said to me, about basketball, "Dad, we are all through playing. You are through coaching. Let's go be referees."

   His idea sounded so reasonable at the time.

   We paid our dues, got our books and videos. We studied hard, went to meetings and just generally did what one does to become a good referee.

   The fellow taking our dues did not turn them into the state association, TASO. He kept the money from 45 referees for two season, about $10,000. When he was caught, he begged for mercy, as he had very recently found the Lord and would not steal again. He was sorry he did not have the money any longer but he would not take any more. To me, personally, he insisted on forgiveness, for compassion, for clemency. I must practice clemency he told me, so that "God could bless my ministry."

   Years later I still work to get the paperwork straight concerning how long I have paid dues to TASO and how long I have been a referee. So much in the referee profession is based on points for seasons involved, meetings made and games called. You work hard for years to amass points in order to move up in points standings so you can get higher level games.

   To take the name of the Lord in vain is not a single instant of rhetorical flourish in private or public. To take God's name in vain is to use God's name to excuse one's own failures. In the same way that one may believe he may vocalize any hateful thing he wants if he only includes some palliative measure, so does it seem some find God an ever present shield in times of (self-inflicted) dishonor. This it is to take the name of the Lord God in vain.

   God did not leave this fellow unpunished. He did not go to jail. He repaid part of his ill-gotten gains. He lost a position he had sought for some time. There are some places he is no longer welcome.

   He absolutely taught me to take care around little men who seek position as though it is their right. Men who feel others owe them something are the most dangerous. Since they are most dangerous, they are in the most danger.

   God says He, God, will not leave them unpunished. After the social disgrace, at the end of financial ruin, in the throes of their addiction to drugs, or money or power, these little men (and women,for the fairer sex is not immune) still face the greater penalty; God will judge them. In fact, God does judge them this day.

   The second fellow, in confrontation, also reminded me personally of my sacred calling to ministry. He also urged me to think of my work and leave him alone. He showed no remorse, not until the legal authorities got involved. Then, he suddenly found the Lord and gained the right to admonish me.

   You cannot hate without arrogance. Arrogance is a component part of evil, of hatred, of gossip and of malice.

   Notice that each of the fellows, the thieves, wished for others to return to our routine, as if routine is normalcy. The thief, the liar, the arrogant abuser counts on the inner wish of decent people to live a normal, routine life, with predictable results for consistent actions. The thief, the liar, the arrogant abuser wants to meet you at the end of your hard work, where he may purloin the sweat of your brow. When he invites God to theft he takes the name of God in vain.

   A year ago I began to seek a different place of service. Yes, I did. I reached out to various people in the ecclesiastical network. Some were blessedly honest. They told me my written words of critical reform and my whistle-blower actions made me too toxic for them. They could not help.

   Given the opportunity most of us will remain captive to our routine. There are worse prisons than words. The despotic conscience we beg to go away and leave us alone. We are finally making a decent living, and we do not wish to risk much.

   There are those times we use God to cover our cowardice. When our own conscience repulses us, we may turn to God. We may insist God has put us in this spot and God should remove us if God wants. As for us, we will keep silent (at best) or simply repeat "Peace, peace, there is only peace." The latter cry is worse than the former but their result is the same.

   When we use God to cover our silence or affirm the truth of our untruths we take the name of the Lord God in vain. I sat in my comfortable office day after day, thinking of the living I made, the name I had worked so hard over so many years to build, of the children and wife who depended on me. I thought of every reason one could conjure to keep quiet. I asked God to use someone else.

   "Here am I Lord," I told God. "Send him. Or her."

   There is a place in religious service where nobility trumps routine. It is the highest place of calling and we all aspire to it. When we finally see the mount, we suddenly realize that to ascend the mountain means we must leave the lower, fruited plain. When we look back down at the plains we see all our friends and every creature comfort. Atop the mountain we see no one but God and He may must be a glare off frozen rock for all we know.

   "If the high summit is so great," we wonder to ourselves, "why doesn't anyone else live up here?"

   I cast my lot with the reformers. I blew the whistle. Men punish me regularly. One dear dolt uses his entire blog to do nothing but attack me. I do not escape the punishment.

   Before I came to this place of service where now I work, I met a man who said he would help me. He offered me some retraining for a cost, sent my name a few places where no one ever called back and stayed in touch.

   Then, I received incontrovertible evidence he was disparaging me to the one group that had gotten interested in me. He told them I was too energetic, would move too fast for them. When that did not work he told some of them I was too old. He told them I was anti-this or pro-that. He threw a lot of mud on the wall to see what might stick. He did not stay within the search team but infected anyone who would slow down to listen.

   The lay-people on the search team saw through him.

   "Methinks," the bard said, "she doth protest too much."

   When confronted, the buffoon claimed holy leadership and meekly retreated. When I confronted him he just lied. He lied with ease and great facility (as though he had lied well before, as though he expected the occasional slip of his lip, as though he had prepared his lies) but in the end,  he just lied. He invoked his sacred responsibility and urged me to focus on my ministry and not on him.

   It is instructive that the identity thief, the reputation thief and the character assassin all need their victims to return to that life we never left. They need for normal people to live normally, so that they might meet us at the end of our work to take their unearned share..

   This is what it is to take the name of the Lord God in vain.The fellow need not fear jail. He may face legal action, that is yet to be decided. He certainly risks exposure and that exposure will surely come for him. The organization he represents is no longer welcome. There is cost to duplicity, even if we are only complicit to the duplicity.

   More simply put, one ought to remove oneself from any action that might attract the wrath of God. To take the Lord's name in vain, e.g., to use God's name to cover illegal, immoral or unethical activity is one act God says will not escape divine punishment. We ought not to make God's name a hollow reed.

  

  

Three Peaches: Two Rotten

For those who looked today for the continuation of the Citizen Myth, he will be back on Monday, I think, August 6th. I am not nearly finished with him. If you have not caught up due to trips or the like, this is a good time.

Today I am going to fashion a poem, of sorts. I know many are glad I left poetry each day and went back to my myth telling. I still write poetry most days in my journal. More than that, I try to hear it in my head and feel it move me.

This is a continuing part of the poem about "Joshaway" the fictional representation of the small town where I grew up a thousand years or so ago. We had fireflies instead of fireants, meadows in place of malls, rabbits in the backyard and armadillos in the front. All around we had friends, real friends, the kind I have met since then from the same fictional small town heart, all with the same quality: the ability to love in such a way that, no matter how long we were parted, the briefest reunion is a walk-back in time to another day.

Three Peaches: Two Rotten

A cracked sidewalk divided the space between the Feed and Hay

and the one residential street back in old Joshaway.

You could go from old to older

(some would say from mold to molder)

just steppin' up a thin stretch of c-ment.

People there built houses 'round the trees in the 'hood

'stead of hackin' down a hundred year old Cottonwood.

Peanut and me went hard to work there for Missus one day

at the end of the c-ment stretch in old Joshaway.

We mowed her yard,

a big lot,

just like she asked,

we rolled up the cuttin's,

'cause that's how she tasked.

We mowed with a push mower,

one without rotor,

the kind of push you push

with no help from a motor.

We gathered up dead limbs and cut off the low hanger

that was too low for mowers to get 'neath without danger.

Our buddies and brothers,

were ridin' their bike,

and playin' baseball

and doin' what they like.

Me and Peanut,

we'da enjoyed the same

but was sweatin' for dear Missus

I won't publish her name.

From mornin' to evenin'

without lunch in the middle,

we'd bent and grunted

never stopped to play or piddle.

At the end o' the day

we'd mowed and bagged and raked and cut

and tidied up 'round her little out-hut.

Ten hours we worked, if't was a minute

and no other way for management to spin it.

We went to her backdoor

near sunset, sweaty and sour,

expectin' to get at least two-bits an hour.

'magine, if you can the lesson learned

better remembered in backs broke and skin burned.

When Missus pulled six peaches from a bag,

gave three to me and three to him

and didn't let her screen door drag,

but shut it an' was gone

leavin' Peanut an' me with nothin' to say.

We walked away, then,

with six peaches we'd gotten

two each of which was either wormy or rotten.

And home we trudged, a lesson learned

and never since let slip.

Ya see, as regards Missus,

I've worked for her kind since

and refused to be bitter.

Worked for her sort

an' never a quitter.

She gave what she could,

she paid what she had,

it's our own fault if we got had

and really had bad.

I've worked for her kind, yeah,

several times since that day.

Yes, for her kind

but not in her way.

For the lesson I studied

back in old Joshaway

is to ask 'fore I start,

"Say, just what does this pay?"

Value Judgments

   A value judgment is a matter of moral philosophy, perhaps. One of the vexing things about value judgments is the impossibility of justifying them by deduction from facts alone. That is, suddenly, when in movement from premise through evidence to conclusion, one suddenly finds a transition from statements of is and is not to ought and ought not. The movement is startling because it still  seems to require we consider the statement as a statement of fact, when it is, in reality, a statement of oughtness, which may not conform to the norms of reality.

   So what?

   So, I might not want two and two to be four, if two hours of time times two dollars of money per hour equals four units of pay. I might prefer five or ten or whatever I can get. My valuing my time beyond the norm does not change the number of units of pay I should receive.

   Yet, if I surmise one may not murder, or should not engage in vulgarity while preaching a sacred Word or must tell the truth at all times, there is an immediate movement into the value judgment realm. For instance, there are those who call state sanctioned execution murder (Texas has executed ten this year, while Illinois is still in its moratorium). Others argue, from their values, that capital crimes deserve capital punishment as prescribed in codes back to Hammurabi.

   A deductive argument begins with a premise. The premise itself may be a fitful statement requiring verification/clarification before it can be moved to conclusion. If the premise is a judgement of value or a value judgment (the two are not necessarily the same) it may not be moved to a conclusion when started from a dubious precept, though the argument itself may extend one's knowledge or produce a zig-zag streak of insight.

   So, two X two is four, only four, just four, purely four but the forced death of a child in utero (legal) is not like the forced death of a toddler (illegal) or the forced death of a capital criminal (legal, though involved) or the forced death of a terminally ill person (illegal, but not always investigated).

   So what?

   So the Constituion of the United States of America, bloodsome in origin, amended seldom, defended to the death, is a series of value judgments. Slaves were valued at 3/5 of a free (read: white) man. Since this formulation was used to apportion representation, the demeaning act of valuing a slave as 3/5 of a man was better for the slave states, who got Congressional representation beyond their population and worse for the free states. Slavery actually would have died sooner, perhaps, if the slaves had not been counted at all.

   So what?

   Religion creates a lot of value statements/judgments. Human life is sacred to some Christians who could not tell you why and do not extend the oughtness of sanctity to capital criminals and euthanasia. The extent of oughtness stops short of "all ought." The premise is dubious, so the conclusion may be invalid. It is voted simply up or down, pass or fail, according to values that may have nothing to do with the argument itself and may put one in bed with questionable partners.

   Or, maybe, that's a value judgment.

   I have stated before some of the reasons I think the religious answer matters. Everything I wrote was a value judgment, so easily contested. Most of what I have had to say is instrumental, using established facts to lift religion out of a sacred context to locate it (belief systems based on a personal God with my own personal Big Guy as favorite) in purely pragmatic terms. That is, there are a lot of us religious guys, so you have to listen to us. We Shall Overwhelm.

   Fact is, you can get your values from your lodge or the Humanist Manifesto or the Apostle's Creed, sans Deity. The fact there a lot of us does not mean we speak with one voice. The fact there are a lot of us may mean several somebodies among us are good marketers, which does not necessarily require us to be good people.

   If you can find one good among us, though, you may have to reevaluate the whole thing. If there is any truth in this thing at all, you may have to rethink your position.

   Nonverifiable? Yep. Till you get a step or two in it.

   

Time According to Einstein

   "The only reason for time is so that everything does not happen at once." This quote is attributed to Uncle Al Einstein.

   According to George Will, the two scarcities in a political campaign are the time of the candidate and money. I can relate to both and so can you.

   Certain phrases pop up over and over:

   "There are not enough hours in the day."

   "Where does the time go?"

   "Years feel like months used to feel."

   "Time flies whether you are having fun or not."

   I was watching my daughter go through the emotional upheaval of giving up her baby to surgery again this week. It is his third. I hope it is his last but we have to prepare ourselves for more if the need exists.

   Just a short while ago, twenty-eight years now, we gave up our daughter to the surgeon whose skill and knowledge gave her back to us. The things she is experiencing exactly mirror the pain we felt as young parents who had to (have to) question everything they do.

   Jennifer asked me, not long ago, looking at her two children, "When do you quit worrying about them every minute?"

   I could only answer, "I'll let you know when it happens."

   Einstein may have meant time matters only in measuring experience. In truth, being dust as we are, the experiences do not differ much from time to time; joy, pleasure, sunshine, shadow, illness, infirmity. John Claypool was right too, when he wrote, "There is nothing in the Christian faith that precludes the possibility of tragedy. There must be something in the faith, then, that helps us endure tragedy without loss of hope."

   

An Agency for the Interpretation of Oneself

Nine Ten one Wednesday

in a place near Cold and Hard,

I felt six years rush by my face.

Shoulda known it wasn't six, not only six,

but sixty-six and ninety-six,

Time, time and half a time.

Temple defiled,

abomination set on altar-top,

incense abandoned, sacrifice scorned.

Is Doom the end to Hope?

Or just a second kin?

Thermopylae or Gallipoli,

Rubicon or River Styx,

Sartre's Exit, friendly-fire,

Gallant death or sweet friend's pyre?

Doesn't matter now.

Cowards die their thousand deaths

a hundred times a day.

While my own hero,

my sweet, brave friend,

my earthy, golden fawn,

full of hope and fear

makes shining moments melt.

What I Will and What I Want

  Schopenhauer is quoted as saying, "A man (he lived in a patristic time) can do what he wants. He simply cannot will what he wants."

   This is not intended as a discussion of free will. I am a sovereigntist but that is not the subject for today.

   Let me tell you what I want to do next Tuesday, 16 January. I want to get up early (for me, that is any time before 6am), have my devo/study time, go to Starbucks for a bracing cup of Verona, read the editorial page of the Times Herald, write a blog and go to my office. I want to spend the day in study, administrate what I must and do some visiting (read: prospecting). I want to call my wife, my kids and grands. I want to go to the fitness center and get warmed up to call some ballgames that night. I would like to visit with staff-friends, member-friends and others at some point during the day.

   Instead, I will be at the Edgemont Park Baptist Church at 1804 Hickory Tree Drive in Mesquite, Texas from 10am to noon, meeting with a group of concerned baptist Christians from around Texas and maybe as far away as Oklahoma. We will try to high-tech the meeting at low-cost and you can get on-line with us or watch us on webcam. Yes, there is such tech available even for lowly serfs such as we.

   If what I am doing is so alien from what I want, why am I doing this? Why do any of us bother with denominational things at all? Why don't we do what the larger churches do and just keep our money (the bulk of it) under our own control, admitting the irrelevance of central authority in a post-modern world?

   For whatever reasons, my church gave $65,000 plus through the Cooperative Program last year, plus additional offerings to World Hunger (BGCT, the only actual BGCT offering in existence) and CBF World Missions, Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong and Mary Hill Davis. We chunked in over $100,000 to all of them combined.

   The missions money I feel best about from last year is the $3550 we raised and spent to put a roof on a small African American church in Dallas. We paid for the labor. A larger African American church in Lewisville gave them the money for materials, so we all got together to help. We did not require the interference of any central authority to complete this project.

   My point is simple; as long as my church chooses to put in that kind of money, I feel a need to find some way to hold the central authority accountable for the funding. We cannot find out what SBC paid leaders are paid. We are told the BGCT wasted at least $1.3 million dollars to a scam they assured us for years "was nothing." A pastor who tried to have the investigation referred to proper authorities had his microphone turned off at the convention, was told he was unChristian and had to listen to the chair read a technically correct but despicable ruling even the editor of the Baptist Standard says needs to be repealed.

   Accountability? Members of the BGCT Executive Board I have spoken to have said this to me time after time: "There is nothing we can do. The administration has protected itself at every level."

   If you tell me over and over you cannot do your job, I will eventually believe you. That is lamentable but understandable. Just don't ask me to keep funding it.

   Let me be plain spoken about these things:

1. I do not regard the people I will meet with on Tuesday (weather permitting) as duds or discredited persons, as has been alleged to me over the last week in exactly that language because they may be pastors or members of small membership churches. If these folks are "duds" we are duds because they make up 75% of our congregations and we take their money. Dud money.

2. I do not believe waiting for a change in administrative persons at the BGCT restores the credibility lost during the scandals of the last years or the "mind numbingly frustrating" reorganizations of the current administration (Marv Knox's words in quotes, not mine).

3. I do not believe a pastor is a fundamentalist because he is in a dually aligned church. Many of the younger guys are caught in a fight they did not make (they were babies when it started). They may not have thought through everything but I see thinking starting to take place. Ask Ben Cole and Kevin Holmes. For that matter, ask the two power-elite candidates for SBC president last year, both of whom were defeated in large part because the Blogger Nation told the truth about them.

4. I do believe we have to start rethinking how we do business together. This is common in denominational life. I notice at least 40 baptist organizations plan to meet in Atlanta at the Carter Center next winter (Jan. 30-Feb. 1, 2008) in a meeting expected to attract as many as 20,000 participants representing as many as 20 million baptist Christians in North America. I mention this just to indicate we are not the only ones thinking about how we do business together.

5. I do want our group to make a covenant to pray for the cooperating churches and ministries (including institutions) of the BGCT. BSM's, River Ministry, colleges, et al, need our prayer support.

6. I do want us to find ways to inform the annual meeting of the convention of our concerns. Isolated individuals are shut out right now because the disaffected have not organized, calculated, negotiated, planned particular appeals nor put together particular units of power. It is easy to shut off their microphones, call them nonChristian and read prepared scripts ending further debate. The entrenched win the argument, decisively, but lose the relationships, making enemies of friends.

   The immediate past 2nd Vice President of the BGCT told me in a phone call last year, "Make no mistake, I am making one last turn around the tree to try to renew this thing (the BGCT). If we cannot make a difference and soon, we'll be gone."

   I can't remember how to spell Pyhric. Pyhric victories are no longer victories at all, if they ever were.

7. I do want the collective wisdom of the disaffected ("discredited duds") to find how we can increase the level of giving to ministries we need without the steady encumberance of the current apparati. I hope we can find, together, a way to represent the Great Center of baptist life.

   William Lee Miller writes:

   "...(ethics)....presupposes the freedom of the subject, within some limits, to choose different courses of action. It assumes that he can, by a sequence of choices, shape abiding patterns of conduct-virtues. It presupposes that out of his margin of freedom, with whatever the conditions of his life may be, he can over time mold a stucture of conduct, a certain character."

   He continues, later:

"Often our "moral" formation is affected more by readings and teachings that open us up to the range and depth of the ultimate seriousness of life than by specific intentional efforts to teach rules of conduct..."

   Or, to quote, Thornton Wilder, "Of all the forms of genius, goodness has the longest awkward age."

   

Authority, Opportunity, Identity

      On October 20, 2006 I spun out a short blog entitled, "Identity, Authority, Opportunity." Today I want to put Authority first in the line and briefly discuss the problem(s) I think we might experience with authority in the Free Church because of the way we perceive ourselves.

    If we cede leadership to authority it ought to be because we sense some relevance in cooperation with one another so strongly we willingly sacrifice some degree of unilateral action to a central power. We surrender some of our liberty (dare we say, some of our autonomy?) for the purpose of concentration of forces at certain vital points.

   Are we a democracy? We cease to be a democracy right after the first vote is cast. As one Greek philosopher put it, "When the voting started, the democracy stopped." To vote is an up or down thing wherein we give up subtle nuance for a consensus on  direction.

   We are a republic, then, with certain voting rights extended not to all regardless but to many and only on the basis of certain qualifications. If your church gives, cooperates, wishes, you may send a set number of messengers (not delegates, for we are only cooperating together, not uniting in a federation) to a yearly meeting. To be a messenger you must have some standing with a cooperating church, prove it and register. You then have the opportunity to hear reports and cast votes on previously decided issues, up or down, take it or leave it. You have limits and have agreed to them. Take it or leave it.

   So many have decided to leave it. Our BGCT has lost more than a thousand churches under its current administration along with millions of dollars of annual support.

   We forfeit so much more in terms of trust in the movement itself because we seem to forget our Identity. We are a Populist Structure, a People's Movement (spare me the pseudo-spiritualistic historinics at this point), wherein we come to God one at a time as a result of the quickening power of the Holy Spirit, the foreknowledge of God the Father and the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We make, each of us, a conscious, personal decision to put all our trust in Christ and then opt for a local expression of the Kingdom in order to submit, each of us, oneself to the God we are seeking to love through God's local church.

   Our associations, conventions, authorities, et al, mean something (have relevance) to us as they join what the Local Church does. The human authorities to whom we cede certain portions of our liberty should understand we sacrifice these liberties grudingly, watchfully, with the covetous jealousy of a father protecting his daughter's virtue. The Local Church will tell the lesser agents what they may do to be relevant to us. We accept no earthly Council's right to rule, call no man father and recognize the Christ as the One True Teacher.

   So what is a poor temporally constituted apparatus to do? The authority we barely give our liberty to must demonstrate we are part of a society of fraternity and equality as much as anyone can be when we agree to submit to a common yoke.

   That is, the constituent members of a local church must be made to feel we belong within the larger body. If an apparatus excercising authority among cooperating bodies is to hold our attention, let alone our affection, it must be because we are made to feel a sense of companionship.

   We think, wistfully, we have this for awhile, this sense of walking into a crowded hall full of stangers grudgingly united over our differences for a greater good until one day we are horrifed to discover we more belonged to this thing than belonged with it or in it.  We are colonists, we find, doomed to perpetual servitude as we export our wealth in cheapened raw materials into a giant loom to be sold back to us more dearly than it left. We will never satisfy the mother country, which needs more and more from us each year to hold its own position in the world while its "outlets" settle into beggary.

   The Local Church looks up one day to find it belongs to (as a possession of) the central apparatus. The only rebels around show their myopia by moving off to form another central apparatus identical in all but name to the one against which they rebelled, clearly demonstrating their natural resentment and automatically eliminating themselves as serious players in the post-modern drama. The great core sits baffled, neither wanting to stay nor to demonstrate choice.

   We could use some clear thinking on this subject. No one siezes the banner and runs to the top of the hill if he/she cannot see the hill or finds himself/herself unattached to the cause the banner represents. If the Local Church feels it belongs to something worth belonging within she will grab the flag to ascend the heights. Only, along the way, do not tell her she does not much matter or count for a lot. She may hand you back your flag and go find another mountain.

   

In the Quiet

   A few faithful readers have asked about devotional stuff. This is my week to answer faithful readers, so here goes.

   I am not good at holding still, so I have to occupy my body and mind. Solitude times usually begin for me with physical exercise, which means I do not look for a workout partner since I do not want to talk sports, physical failures or aging.  I do a lot of thinking during these times.

   Meditations on Scripture are my usual wont. I am looking for nuggets of insight I do not recall getting from anyone else but are valid from previous informed study. For instance, thinking recently about the Matthean account of the Temptation experience has led me to believe that each of the three recorded experiences is about identity, i.e., the questioning of the tempter as to what kind of Messiah Jesus intends to be during His sojourn.

   Will Jesus be the kind of Messiah who forgets God quickly? He has been on a euphoric fast for forty days and nights. He did not just deny Himself food for a sufficient time. Instead, He is so caught up in God He just leaves the usual way of doing life. The Tempter asks Him to put that spiritual high behind Him quickly (stones to bread; like teenagers leaving church camp) and get back to the usual order of things.

   I thrill to the spiritual insights that come during the silence/solitude periods but get shocked very quickly back into the "real world." God is using this recent devotional revelation to make a change in me. What God teaches in the quiet He must want us (me) to walk in the loud. Indeed, the silence/solitude is the preparation for the roar of the crowd over which God might not be as easily heard.

The Deists

    Diderot was a French philosopher, publisher, et al, a historical contemporary of our Ben Franklin. It was Diderot who examined the deists of his day, both European and American and decided, "A deist is one who has not lived long enough to become an atheist."

   I am spending a bit of time in the atheist literature of recent times. No, I am not converting (how do you convert from something to nothing?).  I know those who just cannot abide looking at thoughts absolutely opposed to our own ("You will be corrupted," comes the fearful cry.) will now write me off yet again. However, I just feel an overwhelming need to know what people think. It is hard to answer people with whom one never has a conversation.

   For many believers, the literature of the atheist movement is virtually a samizdat. I never get more unfavorable press or replies than when I refer to some atheist writer I am reading or to some metaphysical relativist (atheist) I count as a friend. So, get set to get mad again, if you are still reading.

   A cursory examination of atheistic writing will virtually cause one to choke due to excessive self-congratulation on every page. The standard formula for the writer is to take some straw man, or lift some "sacred values" quote out of context and then kick the living daylights out of them. In this they remind me greatly of the fundamentalist preachers I know, demonstrating, again, that if you get far enough to either end of the spectrum, you will touch the other end coming around the bend in time.

   If a reader can wade through the praise the writers heap on themselves and their comrades for their "free thinking" the arguments get down to a rather pitiful few.  They might include, but not be limited to:

*We do not need the sacred. There is no need of appeal to anything that is not immediatley verifiable by sensory perception (forgetting that all evidence is anecdotal and thus not necessarily immediately verifiable or ultimately sensory in nature as to proof).

*Those who resort to the non-verifiable demonstrate a weakness of argument that bespeaks a weak mind or spirit. I disagree here only as to a point. People of faith, it seems to me, often demonstrate an intellectual laziness that is not a part of faith in its purest form.

*Horrible atrocities are committed in the name of the unverifiable. In fact, gross atrocities can only be committed when popular unity is incited around a non-verifiable like a religion or a mass movement that almost becomes a religion, like Natiional Socialism in 1930's Germany.

   I need to run to my definition of a truism. Some of these arguments are true on their face but so trivial in relation to the issue they touch as to be irrelevant. Sensory perception is basic but often points one outside the self. What then? Intellectual laziness on the part of a person of faith indicts the person, not the faith. The improper assimilation of the transcendent truth speaks to a fallen human nature; it does not validate the causes men take up in the name of their God or gods.

   Nor do I mean we need to attack the metaphysical relativist. For Jesus, evangelism is a conversation of some duration, often sprinkled with the question, "Do you know what it would cost you to accept this truth I give you?" We have the opportunity to engage our culture in conversation. We ought to take it.

Navigate over to my IKant blog by clicking on it under the heading "My Three Blogsites" on this page. Take a minute to read the blog "Intrinisic or Instrumental" and leave me a thought on what you read.