IVP - Strangely Dim - November 2008 Archives

Good News for Short Attention Spans

Pity the poor seminarian, forced to articulate the totality of Christianity in a carefully worded, highly scrutinized document. I occasionally go to a regional meeting for my denomination where candidates for ordination have to stand there while a room full of people read their faith statements and then saunter up to a central microphone to tell them what's wrong with it. The lines of each faith statement are numbered for the convenience of reading and, more important, confronting: "I think it's wonderful that on line seven you speak so movingly of the love of God, but can you help me understand how, on line eight, you contend that this loving God willfully punishes people eternally for something so minor as failing to believe in his Son?" This litany of back-handed compliments and theological posturing is sufferable only because it's so perfunctory; I've yet to attend such a meeting where the doctrinal hazing wasn't followed immediately by unanimous approval of ordination.

The statement of faith is, some might say, an artifact of modernity. They're inheritors of the creedal tradition, when communities of faith would gather and come to consensus about what God had revealed about himself, his creation and his purposes. Such creeds would then be returned to the faith communities, where they would be declared in unison as part of the service. I grew up reciting the Nicene Creed week after week after week, and never once did someone saunter up to a microphone and argue for or against including a comma in line four.

But statements of faith have served as much to distinguish communities of faith as to unite them. They're invitations to an argument, a shot across the bow of other denominations or organizations to confront perceived slippage in the integrity of the Christian faith. They get longer and longer, with more and more numbers for ease of reading and, more important, for ease of shredding. And they're required for seminary graduation, the theological equivalent of requiring someone to stand on a firing range wearing a T-shirt with a bull's-eye on it.

One countertrend to such carefully crafted documents as the statement of faith is Twitter, a forum for communicating random information in 140 characters or less. A few theologians in the Presbymergent community, most notably Adam Walker Cleaveland and Shawn Coons, have taken up the challenge of twittering their faith: stating clearly and concisely how they perceive the heart of Christianity. You can check out the growing pool of entries here.

I like the idea of twittering your faith; it's not only a good challenge to say what you believe in as few words possible, it's a good exercise to do so and then get on with your day, which presumably is an outworking of what you've just twittered. And even beyond that, to declare your faith in a forum that is necessarily ephemeral--each Twitter entry will soon enough be replaced by the next, potentially something as mundane as "stuck in traffic"--is to acknowledge that we are finite and incomplete, that we're still growing in our appreciation of a faith that precedes us by millennia and will extend far beyond us, even to the end of the age.

How Can I Keep from Singing?

What'd you do this weekend? I ran the gamut of contemporary singalong culture. Thursday night I sang along with people at church, mostly songs that are in rotation on Christian radio. Friday night I sang along with my friends and coworkers in the audience at a concert that featured Christian music legend Mike Roe and unbelievably brilliant cult favorite Over the Rhine. (By "cult," incidentally, I mean loyal fan base, not heterodox brainwashers.) Saturday night I served as MC for "patriotic karaoke night" at my local library, something I still can't quite believe I did. And Sunday morning and evening I sang contemporary praise music with folks from my church. I did all these things while suffering from bronchitis; my apologies to the people who stood in front of me.

This weekend reminded me of an essay by Don Saliers in the book Practicing Our Faith. He observes that, by and large, people don't sing together anymore. Oh, we'll sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" if we're actually at a ballgame, and we'll sing in the shower, if we're by ourselves. We'll sometimes even sing when directed to do so by our pastor or our president or our boss. But spontaneous, voluntary group singing is pretty much reduced to road trips, and only then with the right song, after being cooped up in a car has made the group sufficiently loopy.

Each of my singalong experiences this weekend--from the coerced to the impulsive--was surprisingly enjoyable. The most surprising for me was "patriotic karaoke night." I was nominated for this gig by folks from my church who didn't even show up. But I'm not bitter. It was technically not karaoke; it was a singalong, using a karaoke machine for the lyrics. About twelve people showed up, including one woman from the Ukraine. Not bad for 7:00 on a Saturday night. Most in attendance were well into their retirement years, though there were a few in their thirties. No kids, interestingly enough. We sang about twelve songs together over coffee and cookies, and people shared stories about their history with the songs.

These songs, I came to learn, function as a sort of archive of American culture. There's an explicit connection between the lyrics and the historical moment in which they were written. There's a clear mashup of nationalism and spirituality, from the ubiquitous references to God, on the one hand, to the fact that some of them were composed by seminarians, on the other. There's a nearly universal celebration of liberty as a central ideal, a demonstrated fondness for the American landscape and an outspoken pluckiness that insinuates, among other things, that to be American is to be indominatable--materially, emotionally, spiritually.

In the 1930s and 1940s two songs were championed as replacement songs for the national anthem--"God Bless America" and "This Land Is Your Land." Woody Guthrie, in fact, wrote the latter because he was sick of hearing Kate Smith belt out the former on the radio. The group stood in honor of "God Bless America," at the suggestion of one woman, but "This Land Is Your Land" was the only song we sang twice, at the suggestion of the man who sat right behind her. "God Bless America" might actually make for a good anthem for the red states, and "This Land Is Your Land" befits the blue, but keeping them both in the rotation perhaps best reflects the spirit of the purple.

I'm not a very good nationalist, I freely confess, but patriotic karaoke night was good for me. I was surrounded by people of various ages and life experience, singing songs we all recognized and had somehow assimilated into our subconscious. I came away with a better understanding of the context out of which I sing songs of worship each week with a couple hundred other people, the context that shaped how the songwriters I'm most drawn to put music to their own particular worldviews. I left each event feeling somehow connected to the people I had sung with, and in most cases I continued singing or whistling or humming as I made my way home. You can get a lot out of singing together, it turns out. It's a wonder we don't do it more often.

Lord, Have Mercy

A dispatch from Lisa, who is currently holed up in an undisclosed location.

I know we're all sick of political commercials; signs in yards with names and positions in big red, white and blue letters; phone calls and junk mail from candidates; newspaper and magazine articles on the candidates' past sins, present mistakes and whereabouts, and future vacation plans; the latest political poll; and so on. So I'll keep this short.

Conversations with friends and Paul's words about praying for leaders in 1 Timothy 2, as well as wise commentary from N. T. Wright on that same passage, have reminded me, in the midst of all the hullabaloo, that we're called to pray for our leaders. So, whether or not you voted early at the mall, are going to vote on Tuesday and ask for extra stickers to wear throughout the day so that everyone will know you voted, or aren't going to vote at all and didn't even know there was a presidential election this year--start praying.

I admit, it feels like such a small thing to do for an election that will affect nearly every other country in the world. Voting sometimes feels that way. (As a friend recently expressed, in a broken system can my one vote really make any practical difference for people in need? Will broken, sinful people in power really act out of the best interests of others?) But prayer can feel even a step further removed from Washington, D.C., than voting: If I throw up this prayer for our leaders, will God really hear? Will my prayers for our president and other leaders really bring about change in them, in this country?

Many days, if I'm honest, it doesn't feel like a prayer will affect national and global affairs. But as I talked with friends about the election, it struck me what a dangerous position president of the United States is: in our post-Fall world, few men or women can handle that much power and not fall into sin or greed as a result. So even when we feel like our prayers won't make a difference, I'm convinced we must pray for our leaders.

We're commanded to, for one thing. And prayer moves our focus away from the little power we have to the power of the One we pray to: the only true God, the only all-powerful One who really does hold the kingdoms of the world in his hands. If Paul can exhort others to pray for their leaders while imprisoned by members of his own government, surely we can put his words into action.

Here a few suggestions for prayers you can pray for our leaders, whoever they are:

* Pray for grace to handle the power of their position and wisdom to use that power for the best interests of others, particularly the poor and oppressed.

* Pray for the wisdom and humility to surround themselves with wise people who will help them handle the power.

* Pray that they will be good listeners.

* Pray for their family life.

* Pray for a heart that is compassionate, that longs to see justice done.

* Pray for godly vision.

* Pray for protection from those who would harm them and their families, whether physically or emotionally.

Who knows? As we pray, God may move and empower us to act in some of these areas, to make a difference not for our country or our glory, but for his kingdom and glory.

Forget the Donkeys and Elephants; I Vote for Rabbit!

Today is the first of the month, which means today we once again play our monthly game of Rabbit. And because I'm the only one with remote write access to Strangely Dim, I'm the only one who can create this entry. Hooray for me!

It's not often, actually, that Lisa or I win the Rabbit competition. For the uninitiated, one wins Rabbit by saying, texting, e-mailing or otherwise communicating the word "Rabbit" before anyone else on the first of the month. It's demented and sad, but social.

We also have a Facebook group for this game, of course (Rabbit Uber Alles!), which means we wage our little rabbit battle on multiple fronts. This month avid blogger and longtime friend of Strangely Dim, Rick Stilwell, pulled off a stunning victory from, of all places, the happiest place on earth. Maybe all those giant mice and ducks and nondescript animals walking around the theme park jogged his memory. In any event, congratulations, Rick!