After the game, Galarraga expressed his respect for Joyce as a first-rate umpire and let him off the hook with a simple and poignant, “Nobody’s perfect.”  Kind words from a man who had just pitched a perfect game ruined by an imperfect call.

And wise words. We depend on each other. Baseball players and umpires need each other.   As do husbands and wives, parents and children, co-workers, fellow citizens.  But nobody’s perfect.  We will let each other down. And when we do it’s the person let down who has the most power—to let the other off the hook, to turn the other cheek, to speak words of release, to let love overrule.

The next night, Tiger manager Jim Leyland sent Galarraga to home plate umpire Jim Joyce with the ceremonial line-up card.  Another classy move.  Tiger players stopped by before the game to pat Joyce on the arm and speak kind words.

When the game was over, Joyce said, “I don’t want to make it sappy and say it was love, but the support I got was just love.”

Just love.  Nothing but love.  In a game that is more than just a game, it’s good to know that love can overrule an errant ump’s call.

We humans don’t reveal our beauty in perfection. We reveal our beauty in love.

Thanks, Armando Galarraga, for something more beautiful than a perfect game.

We call it the Richter Scale and it measures the movement of the ground beneath our feet. Beneath our feet is a kind of jigsaw puzzle: pieces or plates that fit together.  As the pieces move (slowly, imperceptibly) tension builds where the edges meet.   From time to time, friction fails and there’s a little shift, a minor rearrangement.  Or sometimes a major rearrangement.   You do know that the Americas used to be connected to Africa in a much larger land mass and that mountains are forming all the time mainly beneath the ocean waves.

Such movements create anxiety for land dwellers.  It’s well known that various animals change their behavior just before an earthquake.  They can sense the pent up pressure about to release, so they ready themselves for the rearrrangement.  Once the needle on the Richter Scale is rocking and rolling, the anxiety of the land dwellers goes through the roof, often because the roof itself is shaking.

Reformations are scary, because the idea that the terra is firma is a comforting fiction that we don’t let go of without a fight.

If you happen to be part of the Vineyard movement, you ought to understand this already.  Things call themselves movements when they recognize changes in process. The Protestant Reformation that took place 500 years ago and rearranged our dance floor had some defects.  Miracles, signs and wonders, subjective experience, and the agent of same–the Holy Spirit himself–were suspect.   At the beginning of the 20th century (see how long these things take?) the tension hit a breaking point and the Pentecostal earthquake of 1906 hit Los Angeles (there were earlier quakes elsewhere building up to this one.) The impact of that rearrangement took 70 years or so to reach most evangelicals.  They called it “the third wave,”  but it wasn’t a wave that rolled through an ocean–it rolled over a landscape in fits and starts.

Beneath it were subterranean gyrations in theology.  The theology of the  kingdom of God didn’t play a prominent role in the Protestant Reformation, though it is a major theme in the Bible.  The reformers were focused on Paul–Romans and Galatians, in particular–and Paul didn’t use the phrase “kingdom of God” much, so it lay hidden from their view.   John Wimber, who studied under George Eldon Ladd at Fuller Theological seminary, who in turn picked up the scent of the kingdom of God from Oscar Cullman and Albert Schweitzer brought this theological development, brewing for decades and decades in the academy to the surface.   The gospels came into their own as the teaching documents of the church, having been largely ignored by the Reformers of old.

Now there’s a reassessment of the writings of Paul going on.  (Actually, it too has been going on for decades, but it just now reaching the surface of the local church.)  Maybe Luther and Calvin (Luther in particular) didn’t read Paul as well as Paul deserves to be read.  Maybe they didn’t get it all right back then.  Part right, but not all right.   N.T. Wright is advancing what has been called a new perspective on Paul but Wright would claim that it’s a recovered old perspective, just one that was missed by the Reformers of old.  As if there’s important Bible study still to be done.

We know more about the Bible than we used to.  We can read the Bible with a greater understanding of the questions being asked to which the Bible was the answer, rather than forcing the Bible to answer questions that we have, just because we have them.

The gospels, the kingdom of God, the Holy Spirit, Paul, justification–gosh when you add it all up, it’s shaping up to be another massive reformation.  We’re in the middle of a slow but powerful earthquake.  The ground beneath our feet is shaking.

Mostly what we have to show for it right now, though, is anxiety.

There’s great anxiety in the system right now and there will be the for the rest of your lifetime, young pastor, as this earthquake, this Next Reformation unfolds, erupts, takes hold, and then, eventually quiets down for a time until the next one is due.

Learn to live with it or find a different line of work.

The biblical witness corresponds to the witness of biology. Darwin saw in nature a struggle for existence pitting members of each species against each other in a never-ending competition for limited resources.  So this rival thing is pretty primal.

Could it be that our task in this world is to let God be God, to accept his freedom to chose, to prefer, to favor whom or what he will, and let rivalry be crucified among us?  Crucifixion happens between a rock and a hard place.

Oh it would be easy to let God’s choice continue to inflame our rivalry as it inflamed Cain’s jealousy of Abel, which turned murderous, as envy will. (Pilate said that the chief priest handed Jesus over to him “out of envy.”)  Why is it that God’s chosen people, whoever they understand themselves to be, seem to feel that they must reinforce his choice (as if it weren’t enough) by asserting their superiority over their fellows?

Or it would be easy to deny God the freedom to choose, to favor, to prefer.  Turn him into the equal opportunity, even-steven, everybody-gets-the-same- from-this-god God.  A banal god who is equally removed from everyone, so as not to give anyone the idea that they are chosen.

But no, we’re between the rock and the hard place of a God who insists on his freedom to choose, to favor, to prefer and the call, the command, the non-negotiable requirement of this same God to love our brothers and neighbors, to treat them as brothers and neighbors, not rivals, to put their own interests, even,  above our own.

I don’t see any way to pull that off without a crucifixion and a resurrection, do you?

It took a while to finish Darwin’s classic–the man loved his Beetles!–but I came away charmed by Darwin’s warmth, his respect for critics in what would today be “the Intelligent Design crowd,” and the staggering breadth of his genius.

Clearly, Darwin did not set out to overturn the ruling paradigm of biology–that species were, like God, immutable.  He recognized the power of nature’s selective mechanism with fear and trembling–reluctantly, in much the same way that I came to recognize the power of my rabbi, Jesus.  He knew that this acknowledged mechanism–nature chooses winners and losers in the struggle for life and thus are new species endlessly spawned–would cause him much anguish, as indeed, it did.   He took up the cross of this truth and followed it with grim anticipation of what awaited him.

Those who respect the scientific enterprise often regard the realm of faith as a foreign realm, and wonder why those who live there view scientists as strangers.

Darwin’s Gentle Approach

But Darwin himself models a different approach in Origin, one we could all learn from. He persuades the reader gently, as did the parable teller of old, leading from the known (the transforming power of a breeder’s selective eye) to the unknown (the transforming power of nature’s selective pressure.)  He woos us to the truth he sees by kindness toward those who see things differently.

Darwin, unlike some of his successors, understood the compelling beauty of the notion that God–without the use of any means whatsoever–simply created each species whole and intact from scratch. It was, after all,  his  view for much of his life. And it was the view his dear wife held dearly for the wonder it stirred in her heart.  Darwin understood, it seems, that it is a noble thing to hold nature in awe for whatever reason, and that those who stand in awe before her stand in awe together.

Darwin could refer to nature as a creation without condescension or contempt, even though the particular theory of special creation that he grew up with lost its luster in light of what he learned from careful observation of God’s creation.  He didn’t treat those who didn’t see what he saw as fools, knowing how hard he had to work to see if for himself.

I came away from my encounter with Darwin through his book, aching for his spirit to return to our discourse regarding the origin of species. Year after year, the surveys remain essentially the same.  Half the population rejects the broad outlines of evolutionary science, leaving them suspicious of science in general–dubious now of climate change, the safety of the H1N1 vaccine, and whatever else comes down the pike from the citadels of science.

If only my evangelical colleagues could approach the discourse regarding the origin of species with the spirit of Darwin–so close, in this respect, to the spirit of our master.

If only Darwin’s disciples could learn from their master how to teach their fellows: that respect for one’s listeners helps one to deliver one’s message; that one can be so right sometimes as to be wrong; that truth conveyed requires a mystery beyond all of our command: love–Darwin’s for his fellows, God’s for us, and ours for each other.

[Post Script: A few months ago, I did a post on Darwin's birthday.  It was an apology to the memory of Darwin. If you'd like to sign on the apology, please do.  Mostly it's been signed by Christians who regret the culture war approach so many of us have taken to evolutionary science.  It's also been signed by some biologists who regret the attempt to fight fire with fire and wish to adopt a more respectful approach to matters of faith. Given the vitriol that such posts engender from those who view any effort to reach out across this culture divide as betrayal, I'll not be posting such comments on this blog post or the earlier one.  These kinds of comments can be found anywhere you look on the Internet when the subject comes up.-Ken ]

When we read in the Bible of God’s anger, do we trust our ability to identify with his anger?  How do we know what anger feels like–is–except by our own experience of anger?

Given your experience of anger, do you trust your ability to understand God’s?

What makes you angry?  Fear?  The insults or insensitivities of others, perhaps.  Sometimes I get angry just because I don’t get my own way.

Or think of it from the receiving side.  How often do you trust that the anger of others toward you is justified? Does it seem sometimes to be less than pure?  Does it seem often to be out of proportion? Does it sometimes baffle you?

Let us consider our anger in the pure light of God.  Let us offer it up to God for inspection.  As we await his verdict on our anger, are we confident?

So perhaps the anger of God is something that we should be careful about in this sense: We should be careful to think that we can understand his anger, or identify with it. We should be careful to assume that our anger and his are aligned.

Much of our anger may be the anger of man, not the anger of God.  Our anger may be Republican anger, or Democratic anger.  It may be the anger of the Libertarians.  It may be the anger of the free market advocates or the anger of the socialists.  It may be the anger of the N.R.A or the anger of the A.C.L.U.  It may be the anger of Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken.

It may be the anger of our mothers and fathers manifesting in us by reflection or reaction.

It may be misguided anger.  Perhaps we’re sad, but it’s easier to be mad.

I wonder if God’s anger is ultimately a reflection of his love.  He pursues his harassed and enslaved children out of bondage in Egypt.  He leads them with his love and follows them with his love.  His love goes before them and makes a way through the Red Sea, parting the waters for them.  His love follows them to protect them from their pursuers.   All they had to do, the Egyptians, was stop.  Stop chasing the children.  But they didn’t stop.   The waters overwhelmed them.

I don’t know.  What would I know about the anger of God?  Until I understand, deeply understand, painfully, by experience, that the anger of man cannot work the righteousness of God.

Then the movie kicked in. An opening scene of incredible cruelty, one human being hunting down other humans beings because they are Jewish.  Then the gathering together of the Inglorious Basterds, a group of Jewish American soldiers sent behind enemy lines in WWII to brutally kill Nazi soldiers in order to put the fear of the Allied armies into the German ranks.  Flat out revenge–a powerful human response to evil.  We laughed at revenge and rejoiced in it’s purity.  We cheered the avengers.

Love.  Hate.  Evil. Good.  Human beings.

What is God speaking through this film?

More love, more power, more poetry. Psalm 148 is poetry.   Go ahead, read it.  Better yet, sing it.  The poem places you in the position of conductor and the world is your orchestra.  You tap your baton and begin with the heavens, commanding them as a conductor does, to praise.  All that the heavens are–their meaning–is praise.

Then the earth and its creatures, then one’s fellow human beings in all their vast array.

More love, more power, more poetry.  What if Psalm 148 is the way, or one of the primary ways, that we are to engage the world around us?  You see the heavens and you call them to praise.  You see the earth, the trees of the field, the grasses, the creatures wild and tame, and call it/them to praise.  You see your fellows as part of this glorious creation and call them to praise with you.  Not argue with you to see who’s right, but to praise with you.  But only if you are actually praising. More love, more power, more poetry.

Would you read Psalm 148 as science? That would be a mistake.  Poetry is not science.  You would not say, “Because Psalm 148 says that there are waters above the highest heavens (and we know there is no water above the highest heavens) the Bible is in error.”   Neither would you say, “Since the Bible clearly teaches that rain does come from from above the clouds, from the storehouses above the heavens, anyone who says otherwise is a heretic.”   And you wouldn’t turn yourself into a pretzel to prove that Psalm 148 is scientifically true because in fact, there are signs that Mars may be hiding water, and see, the Bible is true after all.

We wouldn’t have to do any of that, because poetry can be true in a way that science is not true. (Just as science is true in a way that poetry is not.)  It’s a different form of truth, and truth is so big, so vast, so wonderful, that it cannot be contained in one form only. One person, perhaps, as the true Icon,  but that’s another discussion, or better yet, another song, like the opening to John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.”  A poem, if ever there was one, to be sung, preferably on one’s knees.

Science can lead to praise, can lead to love, but first it has to be translated into poetry.  My friend, Carl Safina knows that and does that.  Read his books and you will see how. But that’s another song too.

Is it an accident, a mere randomness rather than a purposeful randomness, that John Wimber one of the early leaders of Vineyard, was first the manager-producer of the Righteous Brothers?  Wimber had his hand in the most played radio song of all time, “Unchained Melody.”   Perhaps God wants to unchain the church with a new song, so that we can bring more love and more power to the world.

Being right or sounding right or treating Christianity like it’s primarily a “belief system” rather than a way of life, has blinded the church to her lack of emotional intelligence.  Our emotions do two things: they move us to do things and they can be felt by others.  Our words are one thing, our feelings are another, and people detect our feelings more powerfully than our words.   All this talk of  “hate the sin and love the sinner”?  People feel the hate and the love doesn’t stand a chance.

So let’s pay attention to our feelings, just for this post.  How do we feel about entire groups of people who stay away from church in droves?

How do we feel, for example, about people who have different political views? People tend to treasure their political views and take them personally.  How would you feel about bringing yourself and your views into a setting in which you expected them to be met with, at best, polite-unspoken hostility?

How do we feel, for example about people who are part of the gay community?  Many in the church are  so caught up in the debates about gay marriage and so tuned in to media voices filled with contempt toward gays. Is it any wonder that that the church mirrors the emotions that go with the debates and the media voices? Are these the emotions that empower us to share good news the way Jesus shared his gospel of the kingdom with the sheep (of his pasture) who were harassed and dejected in his eyes, and made him feel deep compassion? Jesus has a heart of love for people that we can barely comprehend.  I’m talking about his love. Do our feelings mirror his heart?

Or lets’ take the feelings that ooze out of the church surrounding science and scientists.   Say the words, “climate change” or “evolution” or “stem cell research” and what feelings are evoked within the church?  Not thoughts, not opinions, not convictions, not beliefs–feelings.

The feelings of say, of a cornered racoon?  Or a threatened porcupine?  How effective are such feelings for announcing good news?

How do we feel about any group of people when we don’t know very many of them personally?  How do we feel about any group of people when we simply fail to give them the benefit of the doubt like we give ourselves and people we know well?

I suspect that this post might generate comments that are focused on the beliefs surrounding various “issues.” But this post isn’t about the issues, per se, or the beliefs surrounding them.  Just the feelings.  And just the feelings in relation to the impact the feelings have on our capacity to spread the gospel to people who are on the outside of faith looking in.

Duh, we need a little emotional intelligence in order to do our job.

Every medium is its own massage. Blogging, I think, is part soap-box, part confessional.  Maybe it’s a sign of the Judgment Day approaching: what is whispered in secret will be shouted from the rooftops.    Sometimes you need to say something out loud.  You need to make a note to self, so you don’t forget.  And to hold yourself accountable to what you’ve heard or think you’ve heard.

I had trouble sleeping the last couple of nights.  Sometimes God uses that to get a word in edgewise.

So I slept in the chair.  Stumbled back up to bed early in the morning and had a dream.  My father (dead 10 years) and my mother (dead 25 years) came walking through the door on a video that I was watching on a screen. I was next to my wife watching this video.  In the dream.  And I crumpled to the floor sobbing.  Man, I miss my parents.

I noticed something lately: all judgment toward my father seems to be gone.  Vanished.  I can’t conjure a negative thought about my father.  Narry a critical thought.  I had one of those conflicted relationships.  My dad probably suffered from something like PTSD.  Certainly clinical depression.     Nothing new.   He lived through through very difficult times, much more difficult times than I’ve ever seen in my life.   But what do you know when you’re a kid?  You think the world is supposed to work when you’re a kid.  And you judge it accordingly.

This morning, prayers later than usual.  But words from the clear sky: let my people go.  We–the church in our time–is in bondage.  We are in bondage to judgment.  Billy Graham said, “It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge, and my job to love.

Our collective, communal bondage to judgment keeps us doing his job and prevents us doing ours.  We’re meant to be slaves of love, not judgment, because we’ve been delivered by love from judgment.

Judgment runs through us like cancer cells gone wild.  Judgment weakens us from within, takes the power of life, marvelous life that keeps regenerating itself within us, and aims it awry so that what multiplies within us destroys us.

Oh, it’s shot through us stem to stern.

I don’t trust my understanding of sin any further than I can throw the millstone ’round your neck.

Why did I eat that fruit from that forbidden tree?

I was free to eat from any tree in the garden, but no, I had to have that one.

I miss my parents.

The greedy are nailed throughout the Bible as sinners of a serious variety.  The prophets denounce the greedy.   Paul has more than a warning or two.  The greedy are among those who shouldn’t presume on entrance to the kingdom. Jesus didn’t make it easy for the greedy to follow without leaving much of their stuff behind.

Well then, who are the greedy? Ah, the pesky matter of definition! Could we say that greed involves taking more than your fair share?  You’re at the dinner table and a pie is served.  There are ten people who want pie and ten pieces of pie.  You quickly take three pieces of pie.  You are being, can we agree? greedy.

By this definition every North American is greedy.  We consume more than our fair share of stuff.  I’m not talking about how much wealth we generate.  Wealth is something we can create.  But stuff?  There’s a limited amount of stuff, because, well there’s only one planet.

It’s been said that if all the people in the world used as much stuff as we Americans do, it would require about four planets worth of stuff.   I heard once that if everyone in China used as much toilet paper as the average American, we’d run through all the forests on earth in short order–faster than we could renew the forests.

Speak For Yourself!

Let’s change the pronoun, then.  I.  If everyone on planet earth ate the kind of food that I do–food that takes a lot of energy to produce and distribute–well, the current energy crisis would look tame.  People are starving around the world because people like me like our gas cheap, so we’ve got a government that doesn’t mind making it from corn.  People like me are funny: you live just fine on rice and beans, but once we get a taste for chicken, then pork, then beef, we’re hooked.  Each one takes more energy to produce, but what do I care?

Meanwhile, many of us are adding weight every year.   I think I added a couple of pounds. I got married at 135 and haven’t grown a vertical inch since then and haven’t added muscle mass. Now I’m over 175, last time I checked. I’m apparently eating more food than I need. If they came up with a pill that would allow you to eat what you want at will with no weight gain or side effects, I’d be sorely, sorely tempted to get it.

I’m Stuck!

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see any easy way out of being greedy.  I can be less greedy or more greedy, but how do I get to the place where I’m not greedy?  I’m working on it.  I bought some beans and rice and had ‘em on Monday night. I’m washing my hands with cold water, rather than let the water run for a minute to get warm. I’m getting out of the shower faster.  I’m still driving my car, even though our little family of three has two.  Because my lifestyle requires it and I can’t just leave my lifestyle without paying a price that I deem to be too heavy.

Oh, I could sell my car, get rid of my house and go off the grid.  But what about my wife and daughter?  This could really be hard on relationships.

Please tell me how it is that I am not simply stuck being greedy.  I’m sure many creative interpretations of greed can be found to be quite comforting.  But what do I do with this shaft of light shining on my greed?

As far as I can tell, greed is rampant, and we’re not even copping to it.   Sin sharpens our recognition of the sins of others and blinds us to our own sins. What else is new, Adam and Eve?

What do I need?

As far as I can tell, mercy.  I need a church which makes space for me in the meantime.    I need a God who makes space for me in the meantime.   I need a little breathing room.  Mercy, me.

How would we think about others we deem to be sinners if we saw ourselves in the pure light of God?

Could we start finger point less and weeping more, and see what we become?

That’s what I learned on my summer vacation.