Black Friday and Wendell Berry

On this Black Friday I am spending some time reading Wendell Berry's essay, "The Idea of a Local Economy" and reflecting on the following excerpt. If you have the time, consider letting it sit with you, too:

"We live, as we must sooner or later recognize, in an era of sentimental economics and, consequently, of sentimental politics. Sentimental communism holds in effect that everybody and everything should suffer for the good of "the many" who, though miserable in the present, will be happy in the future for exactly the same reasons that they are miserable in the present.

7 signs you're doing Christianity wrong

It's hard to be a Christian sometimes in this aggravating world that sometimes spits in the face of what you believe. I get that. I struggle, too, with how to live and love God in the best way that I can. I also read what other Christians write, listen to what other Christians say, and reflect on my own presuppositions about the faith, which has led me to this: there are some terrible ways to show your Christian faith and the internet has basically blown all of them up for the world to see.

So, here it is: a non-definitive list of signs that you're not doing this whole "being a Christian" thing very well. I hope it helps.

Seven signs you're doing Christianity wrong

This is Your Obligatory (Almost) December Post about Waiting

            It’s got a catchy title and everything. Wait, wait, wait—that’s what it’s all about! Now, if only I could actually follow my own advice...

            I’m writing this on a Tuesday morning when I have a dozen things that need to get done in the next several hours and there’s not enough time for any of it. Waiting is not an issue; actually, I need more time. I expect I'm not the only one feeling this way. This is my least favorite time of the year and it really isn’t close, because as much as people want to talk about the exciting hustle and bustle of the malls and the lights and the Christmas music, I’m mostly overwhelmed and uncomfortable being out in any of it. Oh, how I wish I could just read a book by a fire, but instead every day brings another list of things to do.

            Probably you have some combination of hockey and basketball games, Christmas concerts, shopping and travel in this season; possibly you have all of the above. So much stuff. I don’t mind being busy, but it’s kind of ruining the point of the season. For as much as anti-consumerist-minded Christians have chimed “Jesus is the reason for the season” over and over again, the reality of Advent is that it actually has nothing to do with Jesus—at least not yet. It’s a time of waiting and anticipation; hence the title: “Your obligatory (almost) December post about waiting.”

            But the problem isn’t just that we’re terrible at waiting. The problem is that there is no time to wait, because there is no time to waste—or so it seems... or so we’re told.

            Martin Luther once said, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.”

Jeremiah 29:11 and the Challenge of Faith for the Twitter Generation

Scripture: Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14

            “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” I have to be careful whenever I say anything about this verse because my wife has it tattooed around her ankle, but she’s in Alexandria, so... here we go! She’s not alone in liking this either. Jeremiah 29:11 has been called the most popular biblical verse of my generation (I should probably explain at this point that I’m going to refer to my generation as the “millennial” generation because that’s become the cool thing to do; and I’m not sure yet if this is a compliment or a derogatory term, so for now I’ll go with it). Anyway, more than one stuffy commentator has noted with a kind of sweeping generalization that members of the millennial generation claim Jeremiah 29:11 as a personal motto because we are selfish and entitled, believing in a God who is out to serve us, and because, you know, we’re snotty kids who haven’t figured out what the real world is like. Basically, Jeremiah 29:11 has become the rallying point for theologians who want to paint a negative picture of America’s Christian youth.

            Like most stereotypes there’s a grain of truth in this. All of us pass the Bible through the lens of our own life experience. So, when a person’s life experience to this point covers only years in school, including perhaps bullying, struggling to find the right social group, discovering who you are against the backdrop of who others expect you to be, and never living up to the standards set by your parents, your friends, your church… in other words when life basically looks like forces outside of your control telling you what to do and be, it is awfully attractive to look for a promise that another force outside of your control has good plans for your life. If you want to understand why millennials love Jeremiah 29:11, you need to start by understanding what it means to be a teenager. Mostly, it’s rough.

The only thing you really need to know

This has been a rough week in our little corner of NW Minnesota.

And, frankly, the more words I use to say this the more it risks getting lost, so I just want to put it our there: You are loved. Whoever you are. It does not matter. And it's not only my love, because my love really isn't all that special. But let's start there: I love you. Now, you're freaked out. OK, freaked out is better than not knowing you're loved, so I'll take that hit. Now, let's go a step further: There are others much closer to you who love you too; they should probably say it, but some won't. It's just who they are. But it's not even their love that truly matters. I mean, we're all human: we love you, but we also love french fries. The love that matters is much deeper than mine or yours. It's this kind of love:

"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39).

I realize those are just words (and pretty simple ones at that), but on a day when I'm emotionally exhausted (and you very well might be too), it's hopefully enough.

So, you think you want justice to roll down like waters?

Scripture: Amos 1:1-2; 5:14-15, 21-24

            Justice is one of those tricky ideas that sounds really nice in principle—like, who could possibly be against justice? It’s like being against hope or brownies—but when justice actually comes somebody always has to pay. We default to a victim’s mindset, assuming that the comeuppance will be for somebody else when the reality is that it may just as well be you or me. I read an interview with Lance Armstrong this past week that just stuck with me: here’s a guy who was on the receiving end of justice—who did terrible things and is now getting what he almost certainly deserved—and, yet, he rails over and over against the unjustness of the witch hunt that brought him down. His hollow apologies betray a person who cannot see himself as anything but the victim, never as the perpetrator, in a world where justice always means getting his way. When asked if he thought justice was served, Armstrong said plainly, “No.”

            If justice is going to roll down like waters, as Amos famously says, perhaps that should make us uneasy. Perhaps we really don’t understand what justice is.

The thing we fear the most: Silence and the presence of God

Scripture: I Kings 9:9-18

            One of the things I worry that my children and grandchildren will be most deprived of in this busy world they are entering is silence, especially when it comes to being silent together. Being silent together is a lost art. Every day there are more and more things that fill our lives with background noise, making it harder to think, harder to meditate and harder to discern God’s voice in all the madness.

            You see this with the various screens that we put in front of ourselves: TV screens and computer screens and smart phone screens and tablet screens and many more. The audio and visual noise is comforting, even the vibration of a phone on so-called “silent” mode gives us positive feedback with every text message or Snap Chat. Every month and week and day silence is more elusive.

All Saints Day and the church militant

Happy All Saints Day!

Don't be ashamed if you don't know what to do with that greeting, because most of us don't. That's OK. We'll learn a little about this together.

Firstly, one of the main ways that we commemorate this day is by remembering the dead, which is fine, but also incomplete. It used to be that churches in the western world celebrated the Triduum of All Hallows, which was All Hallow's Eve on October 31, All Saints Day on November 1, and All Souls Day on November 2. If you celebrate all three then, yes, All Saints Day can be about the dead and only the dead. However, most Protestant churches don't celebrate all three anymore (if they celebrate any at all), which means that All Saints Day has taken on a new meaning.

On All Saints Day many churches ring bells or speak the names of those who have died in the last year. Again, it's a really nice gesture and those who have passed are certainly included in the saints, but saying names and singing hymns should not be the entirety of our All Saints commemoration. If you're following the traditions of mainline Protestantism (which, if you're Lutheran like me, you probably should consider doing) then the dead are not the only saints. In fact, all people--living and dead--are counted in the saints, and this is why we see no need to celebrate both All Saints and All Souls.

Lutherans believe that we are 100% saint and 100% sinner, and the only difference that death makes in the equation is that it finally sheds that sinful skin that we have worn in this life. So to celebrate only the dead on All Saints Day makes me a little suspicious that this is all just a little synchretistic with the Day of the Dead and other celebrations of that sort. Of course, remembering the dead offers a pastoral service, but if we want to be honest to the way we interpret All Saints Day it should also be bigger than that.

So, if we're all saints (living and dead), what is this day about anyway?