IVP - Strangely Dim

Summer--It Turns Me Upside Down

Whenever I finally escape, I'm pretty sure it will be to the 80s. 

Last summer I attended my high school reunion; this summer I've scheduled two playdates with childhood friends and commandeered my brother-in-law's Rock Band game for Beastie Boy and Duran Duran jams.

I'm not alone in doing the time warp again this summer. We've seen reboots of retro classic film franchises such as Star Trek and The Terminator. Captain America, one of the industry's oldest comic book superheroes, who successfully leaped generations from the 1940s to the 1960s for an impressive 45-year run but died earlier this millennium as a martyr for an ideological conflict, is once again alive and kicking. Zac Efron played Matthew Perry's midlife crisis in 17 Again, and Chace Crawford is gonna cut loose as middle-age darling Kevin Bacon in the remake of Footloose. The Beatles are changing the game of Rock Band with their special edition release later this year, and Barack Obama is the most energizing president since John F. Kennedy--if you ask Kennedy's family. And speaking of John F. Kennedy and the Beatles, even the generation gap--the perceived worldview difference between older and young Americans--is reaching levels not seen since the 1960s.

The past always beckons, it's fair to say. We doctor our wrinkles and nurse our grudges. We archive photographs and unearth old relationships online. We collect kitzch and commendables from our formative years, and we complain about the present as a pale imitation of the past. Summer kindles this longing, I think, in each sideways glance out any window. We're reminded that in days of old we used to run freely through the sprinklers, roam freely through the woods, laze freely throughout the day. When I was a kid I would ride my bike from one end of Des Moines to the other on the off chance that I might find a comic book to add to my collection for a good price. I'm reminded of John Mayer's wistful nostalgia: "These days I wish I was six again . . . if only my life were more like 1983."

In 1983, of course, I was worried about the end of the world as we know it, that intercontinental ballistic missles (ICBMs for short, which is pretty funny to say out loud, now that I think about it) would be launched either by accident (a la War Games) or on purpose (a la The Day After). And in 1983, of course, I was dreaming of being an adult--fully autonomous, dream girl at my side, conquering this world and others. Even my post-apocalyptic scenarios were hopeful, with me sprouting angelic wings and rescuing people from danger.

There's something euphoric about imagining ourselves from one time period to another. It's the ultimate escape: once you indulge your mind in the impossible, anything becomes possible. Anything, of course, except fully engaging the present. To the degree that we imagine ourselves into other eras, to the degree that we indulge the notion that some time other than these times are the best of times, to the degree that we're living in dreamtime--to that degree we are living only half-awake.

Meanwhile, wildly interesting--exciting and even daunting--things are happening in our midst. My toddler nephew is singing a song by the Ramones ("Hey! Ho! Let's Go!") while putting together floor puzzles of the universe. The earth is heating up. People are losing their jobs and their homes. People are writing new books and making new art. These and other things are happening not in dream time but in real time, and they alternately demand and reward our attention. Elvis Costello put it nicely in his song The Other Side of Summer: "There's malice and there's magic in every season." In other words, every season merits our full attention.

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I count ten veiled references to old songs in this post. I invite/challenge you to sniff them out. I'll send a free copy of my book the first person to get them all.

In Defense of Ordinary Time

It seems presumptuous and even a bit preachy to pre-empt our summer of escapist fantasy by appealing to the church calendar, but as I thought about this writing experiment my mind kept going back to Kimberlee Conway Ireton's second chapter on Ordinary Time in The Circle of Seasons. Turns out she takes on pretty bold-facedly the longing for what lies beyond our immediate grasp:

When I was a girl, I longed to experience what Emily Starr, the heroine of L. M. Montgomery's Emily trilogy, called "the flash." . . . I wanted to experience that glimpse of the transcendent, to be thrilled with the momentary parting of the veil between heaven and earth.

What I have since realized is that I do have these glimpses of the glory beyond and that they are a mixed blessing. The parting of the veil fills me with awe and delights my soul, but it also opens in me a yearning, a deep and almost painful desire. . . . In the past, I have grasped at whatever ushered me into the enchanted realm beyond the veil--the sleeve of my husband's crisply striped shirt, the roses fresh-cut from my rosebushes and sitting in a bowl on the counter, the crescendo of the organ as we sing the name of Jesus in church--in an attempt to replicate the experience and so quench my desire to live in moments of mystery. This never works.

Summer may be the time when our escape impulse is most intense; it may even be the time when escape seems most sensible and achievable. This is summer, after all, where everything flourishes and even blazes with life. But for the church, summer means Ordinary Time.

Starting a mere week after Pentecost Sunday, when we celebrate the miraculous anointing of the church, and lasting till Advent, when our longing for the return of God becomes so acute that we can no longer ignore it--Ordinary Time is the longest season in the church calendar. Ordinary Time is so ordinary that according to many traditions it happens twice each year: from barely summer to nearly winter, and between Epiphany and Lent.

It strikes me that the Scriptures prepare the church for this prolonged ordinariness. Pentecost is marked in the early verses of Acts 2 with a big bang--fire and wind and dynamic preaching and mass conversion and all that stuff. But it very quickly gives way to the later verses of Acts 2, which are profound in their plainness. Here the Scriptures describe teaching and eating and praying (oh my). Even miracles are described in the passive voice. If you want to get your church all riled up, read them Acts 2:1-41. If you're brushing up on your bureaucracy, read 42-47.

Of course, there's awfully cool stuff happening in the ordinary days of the Church of Latter Acts 2. Passive or not, wonders and miraculous signs were done. Meals were shared. Property was redistributed according to need. The people's favor was enjoyed. And daily, the chapter ends by observing, people were being saved.

Kimberlee notes that the veil separating us from a more wondrous view of God is not really ours to pull back.

No one can look on God and live. It is not simply because we are sinful and God is holy. No, it is because God is real, and our finite minds cannot comprehend nor our frail bodies bear the eternity and majesty--the utter realness--of God.

Instead, when we embrace Ordinary Time as part of whole gift of our existence, we sometimes find ourselves pleasantly surprised by how thin the space we occupy actually is. The veil itself drops long enough to give us a sideways glance behind it at ultimate reality. We're reminded that even the most ordinary time is undergirded by something extraordinary.

We live the bulk of our lives in the daily, doing the same tasks again and again--preparing food, showering, dressing, checking voicemail or email, doing dishes or laundry, commuting to work--and it can come to feel like a grind, pointless and redundant. But it is precisely because these tasks are daily that they have such transformative potential. . . .

In sharpening our physical senses to be more aware of this world, we are also quickening our spirits, opening them to the earthly beauty that surrounds us so that we will be more ready to receive visions of the unearthly beauty that lies just beyond our senses on the other side of the veil. As with any grace, we cannot force or demand such a vision. We can only wait for it, attentively and hopefully, as we engage in the relationships and work that constitute our lives.

The most extraordinary moments, it seems, come not when we run away from the ordinary but when we walk by faith right through it.

The Summer of Our Discontent

Remember when we were kids and each year followed a familiar, structured rhythm? School would start in September, we would get a few weeks of winter break, more school, and then summer! The end of the school year meant one thing: summer vacation! Freedom! Every year I would look forward to nearly three months of sleeping in, watching morning cartoons and reading. 

 

The memory I have of this transition from school to "not-school" is that it registered only as the beginning of summer rather than an end to classes. There was such relief. I liked school reasonably well, but I always felt as though the break from all the expectations of classes, of sports schedules, of navigating the tumultuous waters of the schoolroom social hierarchy, was a well-earned respite. I planned each year to revel in it. And I did--for about two weeks, at which point I was generally ready to go back.

 

Of course, there came a point when summer was less about respite and more about stresses: summer school, summer jobs, the uncertainty of whether or not I could see family, year-round employment with limited time off. Summer vacation, which had always seemed like a given--almost a right--became at times merely a hope, often limited more by financial concerns than by time constraints. Summer, it sometimes seemed, was not so much an opportunity for rejuvenation but rather a season of discontent.

 

I don't think I've been alone in this. The summer vacation event seems to be part of the fabric of the season. As with Christmas (when we ask when coworkers or friends might depart to visit far-off relatives), come May and June we begin asking what everyone's summer vacation plans are. It's exciting to hear about other people's plans to far-off places. On the other hand, things can get awkward when no destination trip is in the works. More than simply an event, the summer vacation is a cultural norm, a goal, a symbol of social status or financial standing. People who take lavish vacations are envied; those unable to take them are pitied.

 

But more, even, than this, I wonder if the idea of a summer vacation has taken on some of the symptoms of a greater cultural phenomenon: escapism--not just "getting away" but actually "tuning out." Given the cultural trend toward embracing new technologies that allow us to escape in some form from the immediacy of our surroundings or circumstances (such as television, video games, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) this wouldn't be at all surprising. Especially since so many other forms of escapism are designed to be taken with us wherever we go--including on vacation.

As an example, consider the pervasive presence of television sets (one of many cultural artifacts that suggest that we are, collectively, addicted to the "elsewhere"). They can be found just about anywhere: in supermarkets, at gas stations, in cars, on planes, on our phones and in our homes, with online streaming readily available for shows we missed. We've found a way to be anywhere but where we are at any time of the day or night.

Whether we're boarding a plane or packing the car for a road trip, the one thing that summer vacations have in common with gaming, watching T.V. and spending hours on Facebook or Twitter, on cell phones or with music blaring through our headphones, is perhaps a sense of separation from the "real world," of going to a "neutral" location where the cares and concerns of work or family or future are suspended while we disconnect, or engage something that exists differently. It's easy to forget that, no matter how far we travel--virtually or literally--we can't actually leave it all behind.

Don't get me wrong--everyone needs a break from the daily grind, a time to reset and to get fresh perspective. Vacations eventually come to an end; a return to work or school or family is in general an inevitability. And perhaps, in the end, vacations, with all other forms of escapism, are just one symptom of humanity's collective discontent, for which there is only one cure.

Continue reading "The Summer of Our Discontent"

The Vindication of Scum

Good news out of Denver reported (albeit in hushed tones) by pastor and soon-to-be Likewise Books author Mike Sares: in a dispute with his church's neighbor over noise complaints, the courts found in favor of the church. This from Mike's newsletter:

Scum of the Earth was declared "not guilty" of disturbing the peace in Denver court on June 4, 2009. (Say "Hallelujah" quietly.)

For the unfamiliar, "Scum of the Earth" is the name of Mike's church, taken from Paul's description of apostleship to the Corinthians (the first ones, not the second ones):

We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world. (1 Corinthians 4:12-13)

You have to keep a sense of humor when you call yourselves the scum of the earth--and when you commit yourself to responding to anger with love, to adversity with endurance, to confrontation with grace. Mike keeps his wits about him in all things, and his church is blessed for it.

Scum of the Earth isn't the first or the only church to find itself at odds with its neighbors, though it may be the most colorfully named. Scum went to great pains to accommodate its neighbor, which may have contributed to the court's favorable ruling. But even after the case is closed, the challenge of loving our neighbors remains an open proposition. Pray for Scum and churches everywhere to love well, and at the end of the day, to be able to laugh at the days to come. 

Making It Work, Redux

Last year, right around this time (by "this time" I mean "the time of year when my boss reviews my performance") I posted the following reflection on the vocation of an editor. Now seems an appropriate time to revisit those reflections. (By "an appropriate time" I mean "a particularly strategic time"; by "revisit those reflections" I mean "suck up again to my boss.")

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May 15, 2008

What We Know

Maybe it's because I'm a frustrated musician, but I frequently compare the publishing industry to the music industry. It's often a helpful comparison: both industries are creative enterprises with content and personality both being critical ingredients for each new product's success; both have struggled to redefine themselves in the digital era. But I'm starting to wonder if my industry is less like the music industry than it is like its own arch-nemesis: television.

I had this proto-epiphany in a movie theater during the pre-previews portion of the evening's entertainment. On the screen was an extended commercial for (or "behind-the-scenes look at") the new Jada Pinkett-Smith medical drama Hawthorne. Punctuating the preview--I mean advertisement--was "TNT: We Know Drama." And I thought to myself, Well, yes, they do know drama.

TNT is a basic-cable enterprise out of the mind and wallet of Turner Broadcasting. They know lots of stuff, if you take them at their word--drama and comedy being their main areas of expertise. I don't regularly watch the content they broadcast, but I accept the identity they've claimed for themselves for a variety of reasons:

• they air interesting films and syndicated reruns (My Name Is Earl is by no means your typical sit com)
• their forays into original programming have earned them critical accolades (The Closer and Saving Grace are compelling dramas built around strong female characters, and Ten Items or Less and My Boys both consistently get props from critics, if not stellar ratings)
• they take their viewers behind the scenes of both their original programming and their repeats (a la Hawthorne)
• they get creative with their rehashed content (editing the randy Sex and the City for commercial rebroadcast)

So when TNT says they know something, they can point to things that back their claim up.

The other thing that strikes me, however, is that while each show is actually in a sense its own independent entity--producers shop programs around before landing a deal with TNT--each show is unavoidably tethered to the network. Episodes air on the network channel or stream on the network website. For better or worse, the individual programs are banking on the premise that TNT knows what they're doing, and that their audience believes it.

Of course, the dependence is mutual. TNT's reputation is more than, but not less than, the sum of its parts. It relies on the consistent quality and appeal of its contracted original programs and the actors who perform and promote them to sustain its reputation as a source of compelling drama, progressive comedy and innovative broadcasting. The moniker "TNT" is both an endorsement and an extrapolation of the network's contractual relationships.

So is the donkey that graces every Likewise book. As a line within InterVarsity Press's publishing program, we try to work with creative, compelling authors on significant books produced and promoted in interesting ways. Our publishing partners benefit from our sixty-plus year reputation, but that reputation is itself an aggregate of sixty-plus years' worth of publishing partnerships. What we know as a publisher, you might say, is more than but not less than the collective wisdom of our authors and the people who populate their acknowledgments page.

So what does Likewise Books know? If you base it on our authors to date, you might say we know the complexity of Christian faith, discipleship and mission twenty-one centuries into the life of the church. We know what resources are available to God's people, and we know what challenges God's people face. We know that there is wisdom to be found and embraced beyond the walls of the church, and that the church itself has wisdom to contribute beyond its own walls. And we know more than anything that we need to be there for one another. For Likewise that means bringing writers and readers into conversation with each other to explore the contours of acting thoughtfully and thinking actively--and above all, as our donkey reminds us, going and doing.

Of course, that's just my take on our publishing project. What do I know? Or maybe a more constructive question would be, what do you think?

Is 2029 to Publishers What 2012 Was to Mayans?!?!?

A note to Likewise authors from the Washington Post: "Word of mouth has long been the holy grail of book marketing." Tell all your friends.

But for goodness' sake, don't tell them in person or over the phone. Send them an e-mail with a URL for your book page; group-message them on Facebook with an embedded link; blog about it; tweet about it. Display it, don't say it. The mouth has gone digital.

My friend Mr. Steve turned me on to this report from BookExpo America, only the latest industry-wide hand-wringing to take place among publishers in light of an economic downturn and a technological shift to a paperless (surely that doesn't mean bookless?) society. According to some, including authors of recently printed and bound and pricey books about information longing to be free, publishing is not moving inevitably into extinction, but it does desperately need a facelift and a tummy tuck.

The world may end, according to the Mayans, in 2012, but on the off chance it doesn't, the printed book may vanish by 2029. In its place will be digital content that transcends particular platforms such as the Kindle, let alone paper and ink. That digital content, we're invited to presume, will emerge 140 characters at a time, as Twitter and Facebook and other social networking locales become greenhouses for long-form content.

If I may borrow from Battlestar Galactica, all this has happened before and will happen again. It's not so much ideas and art that live and die; it's the media through which those ideas and art are conveyed, and the architects and profiteers of those media. Such has been the dilemma of news, which is experiencing a shift from newsprint to something else as we speak, and music, which has provided its own moribund soundtrack for the past few decades as the corporate giants of the recording industry shrink while indie music on Myspace grows. Again from the Post:

The music industry, broadly defined--which includes bands, fans, concerts, recordings, iPods, etc.--is thriving, [Wired editor Chris Anderson] said. It is only the major labels, with their foolish attempt to cling to the CD model, that crashed.

Trust me, those of us in the "major labels" of book publishing (even us minor leaguers) are strategically stroking our beards and scratching our heads over this. But again, dear authors, you're not off the hook. If Facebook and Twitter are the breeding grounds of the new literati (and not of the new illiterati, as their naysayers might suggest), then writers need to figure out what art looks like in those media, how ideas there germinate and sprout and blossom and flourish, and what shape such a fully evolved idea ought to take. If we're going to publish in new ways, we need truly new stuff to publish.

So there you go. Your twenty-year mission, authors, should you choose to accept it, is to change the way we absorb, engage and convey fully conceived ideas. As for us publishers, our twenty-year mission is to figure out how to make money off of it, and of you. So say we all.

The Church's One Foundation

This year--appropriately on Pentecost--marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Barmen Declaration, a document drafted by theologian Karl Barth and adopted by the Confessing Churches of Germany in 1934 as a confrontation of accommodationist religion and totalitarian government in fledgling Nazi Germany. The document is short and inextricably linked to the details of the day, but it's nonetheless been embraced worldwide as a historic confessional statement, rightly establishing where the church's source of strength solely lies and the boundaries that God has ordained for human government. Here's an excerpt of this brief statement:

The Church of pardoned sinners . . . has to testify in the midst of a sinful world, with its faith as with its obedience, with its message as with its order, that it is solely his property, and that it lives and wants to live solely from his comfort and from his direction in the expectation of his appearance.

To a government and cultural movement that desired to be as totalizing in its worldview as it was in its claims to power, the confessing churches of Germany appropriately shouted "Nein!" We are not the property of governments even of our own making; we are children of the God who made us, and we're to live and move and have our being as such. It begs the question, Who needs to hear this from me today? Where do I need to testify this today?

Echoes in the Sound of Static

Over Memorial Day weekend I helped staff a retreat for the high school students at my church. I've gotten to know several of them over the years, helping at junior high retreats or serving as a confirmation sponsor, that sort of thing. This retreat was somewhat accidental--for the youth director, a last-minute need for an extra adult male (and I am nothing if not extra adult), and for me, a weekend with no fixed plans. So Friday evening I found myself driving four teenagers from the western suburbs of Chicago to southwestern Illinois, with a front-seat view of cultural shifts happening right under our ears.

There was a time--I remember it--when part of the adventure of a road trip was finding something to listen to. You'd rock out to your favorite radio station till you got too far from home, then you'd scan frequencies, listening for something good. Along the way you'd learn bits and pieces about the region you were driving through: radio stations along the Canadian border report weather conditions in degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit; the deep South has lots and lots of radio preachers; Iowa likes classic rock; and so on and so forth. Of course, you might have thought ahead and brought along your favorite CDs or cassettes or 8-tracks, but those were often last resorts. You were on a trek, both literally and sonically.

That time has come and gone. Having embraced the insights of Andy Crouch's <a href="Culture'>http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=3394">Culture Making,</a> I often look at an iPod and see a cultural artifact. Among the many things that the shift in music culture from physical product to data file management makes impossible, or at least more difficult, is the end of the aural pilgrimage--that parallel auditory tourism described above that accompanied road trips of yesteryear. There was a time (I remember it) when a carload of travelers would scan the airwaves, looking for a coherent frequency broadcasting something intelligible to sing along to or be edified by. That time has come and gone. Now we hit the road searching for static.

We search for static because with supplemental technology the iPod can broadcast onto unused airwaves. Even this technology is slightly outdated, actually; my carload of kids was devastated to learn that I didn't have a USB port to plug their All American Rejects/Nickelback/Anberlin/Black Eyed Peas playlists directly into my car's sound system. Fortunately for them, one kid was used to such archaisms as a 2002 Hyundai Elantra GT; he had brought a port with him, which we plugged into the cigarette lighter. A quick scan for sufficient static, and all of a sudden: "Boom Boom Pow."

I am--how can I put this?--not a Black Eyed Peas fan, and one of the kids in my car failed his weekend challenge to convince me that Nickelback has talent. I, incidentally, had a carful of my own CDs, and it was my car, after all; but after playing one song from my archives I was unceremoniously evicted from the DJ's seat.

I suspect there's something developmental about musical taste; some day far into the future one or more of these kids will probably be muttering under their breath about the cookie-cutter noise that the adolescents in their lives are making them suffer through, about how these audio androids could stand a little exposure to the artistry of songs like "Peanut Butter Jelly Time." I think about that and laugh a little. But I hope I'm wrong; not about their musical comeuppance but about the death of the road trip listening tour. You don't necessarily find great rewards as you search unfamiliar airwaves, but there's reward in the searching, I think. And in any case, there's something sort of pathetically postmodern about searching for static. I'll bet a radio preacher somewhere in the South is yelling about it right now.

I'm Not Overreacting!!?!!

The swine flu--pardon me, H1N1 flu--buzz reminded me of a tendency we seem to have in America: overreaction. In other words, it doesn't take much for panic to set in. Now I realize that people did die from swine flu, and I'm not in any way making light of that. My heart goes out to families who lost loved ones to the infection. However, the very, very large majority of the America public was never in danger of dying from it. Every day on the news for about a week or a week-and-a-half, though, swine flu was the top story, with new statistics, updates about school closings and reopenings, and opinions from medical doctors who didn't know any more about it than anyone else did. Mostly, they just told us to wash our hands.

That did not do much to assuage people's fear or stop our sometimes hypochondriatic imaginations, however. If I cough twice, we wonder, should I go to the emergency room? No, the "experts" would say. Watch for multiple flu symptoms--and wash your hands. Should we stop eating eggs, in case there were also pigs on the farm where the chickens were raised? Well, no, that's most likely not necessary. Just wash your hands. Should I disinfect my whole house every day when my child gets home from school? You can--but you don't need to. Just wash their hands, and yours.

It's not just illnesses, though; we overreact to plenty of other things as well. A report comes out that pomegranates are good for us, for example, so we put them in everything: salad dressing, tea, juice, yogurt, body wash (in case our skin cells can absorb their goodness). We don't like how we're treated, so we sue. Our sports team loses--or even wins--the championship game, and we riot.

I don't mean to blame America. To some extent, overreaction might just be part of being human. It's certainly been happening for a long time. Jesus' disciples, for one, were not immune to it. Case in point: When a Samaritan town didn't welcome Jesus, James and John ask, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?" (Luke 9:54). Luke writes that Jesus "turned and rebuked them," and then they all moved on to another town. I was thinking of this passage during the swine flu hysteria, and feeling grateful that people couldn't just call down fire from heaven. If we could, there would perhaps be no pigs left on earth--and maybe just a big ashy crater where Mexico used to be.

In any situation, there are multiple ways to respond. Luke's story about James and John gives us a sharp picture of that: Jesus is unfazed by the Samaritans' response to him, but James and John want to call down fire from heaven and destroy them. Would they have, if Jesus hadn't been there to stop them? We don't know. But it's likely that, at some point--probably while the village was still smoldering--they would have realized they chose the wrong response. Oops.

Responding well to something is hard; it takes discernment. It doesn't mean we never react strongly to things, of course. Jesus did that often. The difference was that he knew when strong reactions were appropriate and necessary; he knew who to react strongly to, and when the timing was right to do it. Take the Pharisees, for example. He called them some pretty strong names. But he wasn't overreacting, because his reaction was appropriate to the situation. Knowing their hearts, he called out their hypocrisy, their pride, their refusal to do justice. He was confronting in them what tears his kingdom down instead of builds it up.

He reacted strongly to positive things as well. In Matthew 8, a centurion's faith in Jesus' power to heal his servant from a distance leaves Jesus "astonished." He also praises a widow for offering her last two coins at the temple, and a sinful woman for anointing him with expensive perfume.

It seems to me that Jesus reacted strongly to two types of things: what destroyed his kingdom and what built it up--to pride and dishonesty and injustice on the one hand, and faith, justice and sacrifice on the other. His responses, then, can help us know what's most important--what's worthy of a strong reaction. I think overreaction comes when we react strongly to something that isn't worthy of a strong response. Like, perhaps, swine flu. Should we take precautions? Absolutely. Wash your hands. But should we fear for our lives? Probably not. Dwelling on it too much will most likely only increase our fear and tempt us to try to take control of the situation somehow, instead of focusing our energy and thoughts on trusting God more deeply in the situation.

As Jesus' followers, we look to him to show us what's worthy of our response. Sin--other people's and our own--is one thing worthy of a reaction; it's serious, and deserves a serious response. Though we can't judge hearts and are not to condemn people, it's entirely appropriate to express anger over injustices like sex-trafficking and to weep and wail over death caused by gang violence, or over our own hardheartedness that has kept us from reconciling with a family member. Jesus confronted the Pharisees directly; we take our anger at sin to him, trusting him to one day make things right, knowing he hates sin too, and listening for how he wants us to respond. In this way, we react strongly yet appropriately, without overreacting. Moreover, when we do feel led to confront someone else's sin, we're able to do so with humility and grace and truth, as a friend angry at how the sin is hurting the other person and as a guide who can point the person back to the abundant life that's free from sin's grip.

And then, on the flip side, we're to celebrate and point out examples of deep faith, love, compassion and justice. These are the things should make our eyes light up, the things that are to astonish us, more than new technology or high scores in video games or incredible plot twists in our favorite television series.

I suspect that, when we focus on the truly important things, pomegranates--while still good and healthy and wholesome--will lessen in significance. I also suspect that, as others see us following Jesus' model in what we respond strongly to, they'll notice. And Christ's kingdom will spread.

And pigs everywhere will thank you.