The Little Friar

It's no secret to readers here that I have a hard time being patriotic  in the ways patriotism is practiced in modern America.  I haven't said the Pledge of Allegiance is decades.  I stand out of respect, but in honest protest, I stay silent.  July 4th, and all its related celebrations, are particularly rough.  The social pressure to confirm is nearly too much.  Nearly.  And every year, I end up having to explain why, yet again, there's a wide gulf of difference between being Christian and being American.  In so many ways, those are mutually exclusive.  The problem started for me back in 1994.  There comes a time in every Bible reader's life when the queasy-making parts of the Bible just can't be ignored.  When it's time to admit that following Jesus, confessing him as Lord and God, means you recognize the Bible won't fit into modern categories.  It's almost like instead of reading the Bible, the Bible is reading us.  Narr...

10.  The stoning of Stephen 9.  The beheading of St Paul 8.  The (upside-down) crucifixion of Peter 7.  The woman Jesus refuses  to condemn to a legal  execution (aka, the woman caught in adultery) 6.  The whipping and crucifixion of Andrew (on an X -shaped cross) 5.  The stoning and clubbing of James, Jesus' brother.  4.  The execution of Jude (by arrows) 3.  The assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero 2.  The Hanging of Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1.  God's mercy  for Cain (after Cain murdered Abel) And in case that isn't enough:  What about Jesus' own crucifixion?

Sigmund Freud once wrote that the only feeling that doesn't lie is  anxiety .  This is a hard thing for us to hear, because few feelings terrify us more than anxiety.  Anxiety disrupts our carefully constructed and managed zones of comfort and serves to remind is that there's a world beyond the edges of our noses.  In other words, anxiety is the way way we're affected by the reality we can't change, the things that just won't go away.   That's why it's so hard to repress anxiety.  Sure, we medicate it, attempt to hide it.  But it's still there.  We can pretend it's not there.  That's one of the luxuries of modern life.   If we don't like seeing tragedy, just change the channel.  If we don't like hearing about all the deaths in the world, there's XM Radio.  If you don't like all that talk you hear in church about sin, repentance and following Jesus, you can always stay home and watch Joel Osteen and feel much better about y...

I'm often called a "liberal" or "progressive" Christian by others, in a way that wants to deny that I believe certain things about the world.  So let me try to set the record a little straighter today.  1.  On suffering Only in America -- and in suburb  America at that -- would folks who read and hear me think that I deny suffering in the world.  In fact, suffering is what drives my Christian faith.   My own biography is riddled with doubt precisely because I've come pastorally and existentially face-to-face with so much suffering.   Thing is, so many theologians have turned the spiritual fight against dark forces into an intellectual puzzle to solve.   Thus, evil wins in two different ways.  First, by causing suffering.  And second, by making us theological-navel gazers, doubters rather than resisters.   This is particularly stinging for American Christians.  Folks who have grown up experiencing genocide and tyranny know ...

Raising Cubby  is a beautiful memoir of parenting in the midst of challenges -- in this case, Asperger's Syndrome.  As an Aspie myself, I was excited to read this one.  I've been familiar with Robison's other work -- Look Me in the Eye  and Be Different  -- so I knew this book would be a treat.  I wasn't disappointed.  Funny and moving, this book is filled with memories of all the ways Asperger's Syndrome affects and challenges the already-challenging task of raising children.  Robinson himself was diagnosed with Asperger's in his 40s, so his approach to parenthood (as logic puzzles and practical jokes) demonstrates that we Aspies may be different, but different doesn't mean incapable.  Robison recalls reading  electrical engineering manuals to Cubby at bedtime.  He told Cubby that wizards turned children into stone when they misbehaved.   But he got all the basics of parenthood right . Because this book is the story of a fathe...

Matt Knisely's Framing Faith:  From Camera to Pen, an Award-Winning Photojournalist Captures God in a Hurried World  is a masterful book for Christian spiritual growth.  It's built around one central premise:  Learning to tell our stories as the telling of God's Story.  Learning to see our lives as the beautiful artwork of God's Vision.  Learning to hear God's Voice through the listening of our life's silences.   With the skill of a master artist, Knisely's sketches his own spiritual biography by weaving in lessons learned through taking snapshots of the world behind a camera lense.  Having spent a lifetime of catching the beauty in the lives of others, he found himself reflecting on the beauty in his own life. And that beauty brought him face-to-face with God.  That spiritual encounter, Knisely is quick to add, is an encounter that also brought him face-to-face with others.  Every picture tells a story.  And stories (like pictures)...

One of the most striking vantage points 17 years in ordained ministry I've seen over the years is just how fragile, foolhardy and even frighteningly beautiful the ordinary  faith of ordinary people can be.  On more than a one occasion, I've sat through a pointless church meeting or an inane clergy gathering and been struck by this realization:  The very testimony to which we respond every Sunday "The Word of God for the People of God/Thanks be to God" was written by believers who, in all likelihood, were every bit as sinful, ignorant, and only partially faithful as the people gathered around me right now.  Call the author "Saint Luke" and you give him beautific hues.  Realize he's the same as the guy sitting next to you in your pew, singing off-key on Sunday, and he's a completely different guy.  Ministry offers me a glimpse into the mysterious side of the "simple" faith. And alongside that bitter dose of reality, there's the miraculous...

It may seem odd to review a study Bible, particularly one like the NIV Teen Study Bible , 2011 edition.  But this Bible caught my attention for a number of reasons.  1.  The NIV Teen Study Bible , with features written by Larry and Sue Richards, has a long history.  It's been around since its first edition in 1993.  This newest edition contains a series of devotions around The Apostles' Creed.  It treats the biblical narrative with a holistic view toward passing on the "faith once received" in a beautiful way.  As I've read through this series of devotions, I've been struck by the pastoral wisdom that's given through the toward nurturing a faith that avoids denominational hurdles, and yet remains true to the wealth of the Christian faith.  2.  This edition also contains "Panorama" helps that keep teens focused on the overall themes of each biblical book.  When combined with the reading plan in the back, this features helps students read ...

Theologically, I'm pretty pessimistic about human nature.  Think sin and all that.  I don't believe in human progress -- the idea that human history is headed somewhere great.  The Enlightenment notions of being human  aren't that great to me.  Things aren't generally improving.  People, even less so.  The  real problems of life are intractable and almost completely resistant to our flimsy toys of reason, education, therapy, and whatnot.  I'm certain that only thing worth really hoping for is the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.  Temperamentally, though, I'm an outrageous optimist.  I won't be lying if I tell you that I have probably felt optimistic about every human being I ever met.  This drives my wife nuts.  But it's true.  We humans are, to my mind, at best a mixed bag .  There's good to be found in the worst of us, and bad to be found in the best of us.  I say these things i...

" God loves human beings. God loves the world.  Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world.  What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.  God establishes a most intimate unity with this.  God becomes human, a real human being.  While we exert ourselves to grow beyond our humanity, to leave the human behind us, God becomes human; and we must recognize that God wills that we be human, real human beings.  While we distinguish between pious and godless, good and evil, noble and base, God loves real people without distinction.  God has no patience with our dividing the world and humanity according to our standards and imposing ourselves as judges over them.  God leads us ad absurdum [into absurdity] by becoming a real human being and a companion of sinners, th...

I fell in love with reading Shakespeare when I was eleven-years-old.  It was Romeo & Juliet  that captured my imagination.  From there, I moved to Hamlet .  I still remember my excitement in reading some of the soliloquies.  At 18, I read King Lear .  I'm still fascinated with Shakespeare, and find in him a treasure for preaching and teaching.  So imagine my excitement when I first encountered Ken Ludwig's How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare .  I had high hopes for this book.   Ludwig, after all, is an acclaimed international playwright.  As an actor, he has spent his life loving and living Shakespeare, breathing life into the Bard's words.  He brought that life's work to his own children, teaching them to love and live Shakespeare, too.  And then gave the world a gift -- How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare . In 40 brief chapters, Ludwig offers plot synopses, character insights, tools and tricks of the acting trade th...

The trouble with praying -- my  praying -- is that I sin so often.  And so boldly.  Sin makes it difficult for me to pray.  That's because sinning makes me believe that prayer is so "holy", and I'm so un holy.  Thing is, if I'm sick, it's also difficult to get me to go to the doctor.  So these things really must be related.   But how? From the perspective of despair, sin (and sickness) are an admission of my humanity.  So any seeking of healing -- either in spirit (through prayer) or body (by getting to the doctor) -- confronts my bull-headed notion that I should be complete in myself.  I know enough, I'm "good enough". But am I?  It's interesting to me that Jesus refused  to be called "good".  " No one is good -- except God alone" (Luke 18.19).   No, I'm still too much like the "rich young man".  I depend on justifying myself in the face of rules.  And those rules can always do nothing more than shine a ligh...

Money, sex and power -- those are the three great temptations and struggles for ministers.  For that reason, the monastic reforms which began in the second century focused on three vows:  Poverty, chastity and obedience.   The concern about money is written deeply into the biblical witness when it comes to ministry.  1 Timothy 6 comes immediately to mind: "Godliness with contentment is great gain.  "Because  we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.  "But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.  "Those who want to get rich  fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.  "That's because the love of money  is a root of all kinds of evil.  Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith  and pierced themselves with many griefs.   "This is why clergy must flee from all this gr...

As a minister, one of the most common requests made of me:  "What's ago of study Bible?"  It's a difficult question to answer, precisely because the published options offer such diversity in the possibilities.  Given all that diversity, then, what's left to say about Holman's Study Bible for Women? It's written by women -- with training in biblical studies, theology, and ministry -- for women.  The study notes range from excellent commentary that help to read the Bible with understanding, to essays on the nature of "Biblical Womanhood".  The general editor is Dorothy Kelley Patterson, a trained theologian in her own right, who's also the wife of Paige Patterson, the president of Southwestern Baptist Seminary.  All the contributors come from the best minds of Baptist life in women's studies, and the work together to create an excellent study Bible for those complementarians among us.  As with most "specialty" study Bibles, though...

Angie Smith's Chasing God is part memoir, part spiritual direction.  In a world awash with advice about how to live Christianly, lots of us become busy chasing after God by doing this or that thing.  Pray.  Go to church.  Read the Bible.  Pray some more.   It all gets exhausting.   For most of her Christian life, Smith had been chasing God in lots of the same ways.  " The goal of this book is not to present you with a formula for living out Christianity.  It's to offer my thoughts on the difference between looking for Him and looking at Him.  And maybe you, like me, have been spending your time going after the wrong objectives (without realizing it) and it's left you weary of the whole process.  What was meant to be a gift has become an obligation, a source of guilt or a way to fight fear" (page 2). Those of us who chase God are spiritual control freaks.  We're arrogant in our abilities to get to God through this or that right ...

Love, Skip, Jump  is a book I almost missed.  The cover, while bright, was nearly too catchy; it made me wonder if the content would be worth the read.  I know the dangers of judging a bookby its cover, but this is one book I wasn't sure I'd enjoy.  After 10 pages in, though, I was hooked.  Bryan's style is conversational.  And while the spate of books about Christian discipleship that I mostly read these days have more to say about an individual's walk with God, this book reminds us that the love of God and others are intimately intertwined.  You can't have one without the other.  The book recounts Bryan's adventures in learning to say "yes" to God.  After having been asked the dreaded question when you're giving to missions projects -- "Are you sure those kids are real?" -- she begins an adventure in listening to God's call to serve the least and forgotten among us.  Learning to say yes to God, Bryan admits, means loving, sure, but ...

I never set out to be me.  If I were to be honest about the course of my life, I would have to admit that it's only been in the living of it that I can look back now, and begin to articulate that the things that have mattered (and matter now) aren't nearly the things I would have thought at 18 would  matter.  Who I am now isn't who I set out to be.  Because of Jesus.  Who I am, I am, not because I set out and made choices that landed me in this time and place.  I can't say, with Ben Franklin or Fredrick Douglass, that I'm a "self made man".  Because, who I am, I am, only because of Jesus.  Last night Kendra and I were talking about a few things that matter to us.  We were talking about our future, and the thought of a possible job application that makes me do less, with less of the financial gain.  "Would you really be okay with that?" And without hesitation I responded, "As long as we're eating, housed, comfortable, and contributing to ...