Category Archives: Bible and Theology

#173: Hospitalization Benefits

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #173, on the subject of Hospitalization Benefits.

This is not about health care or health care coverage.

Some of you are aware that I was recently hospitalized twice within two weeks.  It started on a Wednesday afternoon, when someone needed a ride to a clinic and I thought while I was there I should get an opinion about a previous umbilical herniorhaphy that was not doing well.  The people at the clinic desk said they could certainly look at it, but it would almost certainly require tests which they were not equipped to perform, so I should go to the emergency room.  I did, and indeed they performed the obvious test, having me drink the contrast and wait around for it to work through my digestive tract so they could get a clear Computer (Axial) Tomography (C(A)T) image.  Hours later someone was poking at my belly, and said that this might be very serious and he did not think we should wait until morning, so despite the fact that he and I both wanted to go home and the anaesthesiologist had already done so, I was to be prepped for surgery.

Ilford Hospital chapel windows.
Ilford Hospital chapel windows.

I’m told that the condition was not as bad as feared, and the surgery went well–so well in fact that I was placed on clear liquids in time for Thursday breakfast, and on full diet by Friday morning, and was discharged after supper on Friday.  There were the usual restrictions about lifting and driving and the like, but in the main I came through well–except that my arm hurt.

The pain in the arm was apparently related to the IV site, that is, the place where they had connected the intravenous feed to give me such medications as were deemed necessary post-surgery.  I think every nurse that looked at it said it did not look good and she (or he) was going to move it when there was time, but they pushed me through so fast that it was out before anyone had the time to start one somewhere else.  Below the site (further out into the extremities) my arm was swollen and inflamed, painful to the touch and when moved in certain positions.  I was also having some difficulty breathing and a worsening cough.  Respiratory problems do not normally alarm me because I have allergy-related asthma and the list of allergies which aggravate it include just about anything that has a smell other than real food (artificial food scents can be trouble, particularly if they are linked to smoke as in incense or candles).  However, I have a history of pulmonary embolism, which is a condition in which a blood clot usually from an extremity migrates to the lung and lodges there, and thus there was at least the chance that the swelling in the arm and the respiratory trouble were related.  It thus called for more tests, and again of a sort that required a visit to the emergency room.  This time the CT scan was of my lungs, and there was an ultrasound of my arm, and the major conclusions were first that the two problems were not connected, but second that there were definitely two problems that needed to be addressed.

There was no evidence of a pulmonary embolism, but there were some small clots in the veins in my arm which could be problematic and were going to require treatment.  There was also a shadow in my lung which the emergency room doctor took to be a very mild pneumonia, but of concern because it might have been contracted in the hospital, and if you get an infection in the hospital it is likely to be a serious microorganism.  My wife, the registered nurse who would rather have me home where she can tend me herself, argued that there was not much they could do in the hospital that she could not do for me at home, and this is where it gets weird.  The emergency room doctor said that the treatment for the clots was going to involve heparin injections, a drug that ought to be monitored fairly closely as it really does promote bleeding, and so I would have to be admitted for the heparin.  However, before I got the first shot of heparin or got moved out of the emergency room to an inpatient bed, the order was changed and I was put on the very expensive (mostly covered by my wife’s employee health care coverage) new drug Xarelto, which is taken P.O., that is, per orum, by mouth.  So I did not have to be in the hospital for that.  However, because the pneumonia might be some drug-resistant organism they were planning to treat it aggressively, with vancomycin and cefepime, two IV antibiotics, instead of oral antibiotics, so the reason I had to be admitted had changed.  Still, I was admitted, and I was not complaining because this time they were going to let me eat, and Elmer Hospital has mostly decent food, and I don’t have to cook it or do the dishes.

The next day the specialists appeared.  The hematologist said in essence that the Xarelto had been cleared through our prescription plan, so as far as he was concerned I could go home and take the medication there, as long as I came to see him in four to six weeks.  The pulmonologist was even more optimistic:  the lung shadow on the CT scan was identical to that in a scan from 2012, and I did not have even the slightest touch of pneumonia, the antibiotics were unnecessary, and I could go home any time.

It was still another day before that got through the red tape so that the hospitalist overseeing the whole case ordered my discharge, but in essence I was not really very sick.  I still have to get the staples from the surgery removed and see the hematologist, but the surgeon did stop by and look at the incision during my stay and said that I am permitted to drive, so I am overall on the mend.  (The staples were removed at his office today.)

And at the risk of stealing a line from Arlo Guthrie, that isn’t what I came to talk about today.

In the wake of these hospitalizations, many people, some of them readers, some connections through social media, some “real world” connections, have mentioned that they were, have been, are, or would be praying for me.  They fall into three categories, that I’ve noticed.

First, there are people who mentioned that they are always praying for me.  Prior to this I could not have named more than one person (my wife) whom I could say I knew was praying for me regularly or consistently.  I’m sure my grandmother was, years ago.  This aspect of having someone praying for you, when you are in ministry (as I am–Chaplain of the Christian Gamers Guild and Christian teaching music ministry), is very important.  Pastor Ern Baxter once told of how his grandmother always prayed for him and he never really gave it much thought, as he had been seminary trained in how to preach and had the necessary skills–until the day his grandmother died and he went to preach a sermon and found nothing.  He told his congregation, right then, that he had never appreciated his grandmother’s prayers until that moment, and now she was gone.  Someone in the congregation rose and said, “Pastor, I’ll be your grandmother.”  She prayed for him, and he said thereafter he kept an army of praying grandmothers to support his ministry.  So to discover that there are people I did not know were praying for me is an encouragement.

Second, there are those whom I know pray and who probably are not usually praying for me, who having heard of my hospitalization turned some of their prayerful attention my direction.  Some of these people I have not met outside the Internet, or only met once or twice.  Many of them have ministries of their own.  That they have raised prayers on my behalf tells me that they care, that I matter to them at least enough that they noticed my condition and put some prayer into it.  It means there are people out there who will support me, at least with prayers, when it is needed.  That, too, is an encouragement.

Third, there were some people praying for me through these events whom I would not have guessed were praying people.  Some are people who do not express much of a belief in God in our interactions.  Some are people with whom I have only recently reconnected after decades who have seemingly found faith in the interim.  This, too, is an encouragement, as it tells me that these people are not lost, that they are praying, connecting with God, and while I am always hesitant to say that I know any individual is saved, it is good evidence that they might well be.  After all,

he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him,

in part because who would pray who did not believe at least that much?

So I thank you all for your prayers and encouragement, and now I return to that long “not what I wanted to say” part at the beginning.  One of the lessons I learned many years ago came from II Corinthians 1:11, which in the Updated New American Standard Bible reads

…you also joining in helping us through your prayers, so that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many.

That is, the reason God wants us to agree in prayer, and is more likely to answer prayers when many agree, appears to be that way when the prayers are answered all those people who asked will all say thank you.

Thus your prayers on my behalf have obligated me to let you know that God has been healing me, I am improving rapidly, and there is cause to give thanks.

Thank you.

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#171: The President (of the Seventh Day Baptist Convention)

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #171, on the subject of The President (of the Seventh Day Baptist Convention).

One subject that intrigues me is what is called church polity, that is, the way various churches and denominations organize and operate themselves both locally and globally.  We call our various subdivisions synods, presbyteries, conferences, and quite a few other names.  Among the Baptists, a highly democratic and congregationalist group (“congregationalist” polity means that the church is run entirely from the bottom up, as church members decide what the denomination believes and does, and anyone who disagrees either goes along for the sake of unity or leaves the group), divide themselves into “conventions”, gatherings that attempt to agree on what is important to them.  Each convention elects a president, who sets the agenda for his term; they also hire staff to provide services for the member churches, such as publications.  I am not an expert on church polity, with only passing familiarity with a half dozen or so denominations, but my mind was caught particularly by the practice of one denomination, the Seventh Day Baptist Convention, and I thought it might have lessons for non-religious people immersed in the secular political world.

Seventh Day Baptist Churchof Plainfield, New Jersey
Seventh Day Baptist Church
of Plainfield, New Jersey

For those who care about such things, the Seventh Day Baptists were founded in England and are the oldest denomination in America to observe a Saturday Sabbath.  Some are perhaps a bit legalistic about that while others are more relaxed–much as found in Sunday-observing churches.  (I have written On Sabbath elsewhere.)  They are otherwise like most Baptist churches.  Once a year–in the United States, it happens in August–they hold a major meeting of the convention, Conference, hundreds of members getting together somewhere for a week of meetings and services and discussions.  (The week prior to this, they have a major gathering for the youth of the denomination in the same location, many of whom then stay for the convention itself.)  It is at this conference that they elect a president.

The interesting aspect is that the president does not at that moment take office.  He is elected to replace the current president, but it is expected that he will take time to tour the denomination, talk to the churches, and develop his “vision” for the denomination during his term.  He remains effectively “president-elect” during this time–an entire year, as the following year at conference he will step into the role, introduce his vision for the year ahead, and oversee the election of the person who will replace him as president elect.  He now has a year to serve as president of the denomination, to make his vision a reality, before the new president takes the office at the next annual conference.

There are a lot of interesting aspects to that.  For one thing, I don’t believe anyone has ever served two consecutive terms, but in the several centuries of history (our local congregation was established before the American Revolutionary War) I could not say whether anyone has filled the position more than once.  It is a small denomination, the sort in which ordinary members all over the country know each other, partly because in addition to this annual meeting they have another annual business meeting one weekend to which everyone is invited, hosted by one of the member churches, and several smaller multi-church gatherings.  So the fact that I know a father and a son who both held the position (many years apart) does not suggest nepotism as much as tradition.  It also means that no one runs on his record–you are not going to be elected to serve two consecutive terms.  Interestingly, you are not really elected based on what you promise to do; you are elected based on the belief of the electorate that you will do something that needs to be done, something that will be good for the denomination.  You are elected, in essence, because people trust you to discover the needs in the church and address them.

Ultimately, too, the system reminds us that all leaders are temporary.  In a democratic system such as a representative federation, almost all leaders serve terms of office which end after a few years.  (Our federal judiciary is appointed for life, but even that ends eventually.)  Some can be re-elected, but many have term limits, and re-election is never guaranteed.  The people we have picked to be our leaders were picked because a large number of us from a very large area of the country thought they would do what needed to be done.  It was not exacty because we liked their policies, although that is part of it and in truth it was also partly because many of us feared the policies of the alternative.  It was, rather, because we perceived these as people who would try to do what America needed to have done.  It might not be exactly what they intended to do initially, and they might not succeed in their objectives, but we needed to change the course of the Ship of State, and this crew seemed to be the best chance to do so.  We know that we are committed to this choice for the short term, and if we are unhappy with it there will be a chance to change in the not too distant future (already serious politicians are working on their twenty twenty presidential campaigns).

Every once in a while I find myself trying to reconstruct the sequence of Presidents and Vice Presidents who have served during my lifetime.  They are all important, and they all have done things that mattered at the time.  Some have also done things with long-term consequences, but despite their importance at the time there are few who can tell you what significant actions were taken by the Eisenhauer administration, or that of Johnson, or Ford, or Carter, or even Clinton.  We remember the scandals, but what Presidents do is rarely remembered outside history books.

So stop worrying about it.  A Presidential term is really a rather short moment in history, even in the course of your life.  There will be other Presidents, some better and some worse than the present one.  Let’s see what this one does, and build from there.

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#169: Do Web Logs Lower the Bar?

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #169, on the subject of Do Web Logs Lower the Bar?.

I noticed something.

img0169Diary

I don’t know whether any of you noticed it, and there is an aspect to it that causes me to hope you did not, to suspect some of you did, and to think that I ought not be calling it to the attention of the rest.  But it is worth recognizing, I suppose, even if it is at my own expense to some degree.

What I noticed was that some of the web log posts I publish are not up the the same standard I would expect of my web pages.

Certainly it is the case that some of the web log subjects are what might be called transient.  I was quite surprised to see in my stats recently that someone visited the page that covered the 2015 election results for New Jersey.  I’m thinking it must have been a mistake.  Yet at the time it was important information, even if in another year it won’t even tell you who is in the Assembly, because we’ll have had another election.

It is also the case that being an eclectic sort of web log it is going to have pages that do not appeal to everyone–indeed, probably there are no pages that appeal to everyone.  I recently lost one of my Patreon supporters, and that saddens me, but he was the only person contributing as a time travel fan, and was not contributing enough to pay for one DVD per year; I’m sure he is disappointed that I haven’t done more time travel pages, but there has not been that much available to me and the budget has been particularly tight.  With pages about law, politics, music, Bible, games, logic problems, and other miscellany, there will certainly be pages that any particular reader would not read.  Yet that has always been true of the web site, and although the web log is not quite as conveniently divided into sections it does have navigation aids to help people find what they want.

What I mean, though, is that I don’t seem to apply the same standard to web log pages as I would to web pages.

I suppose that’s to be expected.  As I think about it, I recognize that I put a lot more time and thought into articles I am writing for e-zines and web sites that are not my own.  I expect more of myself, hold myself to a higher standard, when I am writing such pieces.  For one thing, I can’t go back and edit them later–which on my own site I will only do for obvious errors, never for content.  For another, something of mine published by someone else should represent the best that I can offer, both for my own reputation and for that of the publisher.  If you’re reading my work at RPGNet, or the Christian Gamers Guild, or The Learning Fountain, or any of the many other sites for which I’ve written over the decades, you might not know any more about me than what you find there.

It’s also the case that, frankly, anyone can set up his own web site, fairly cheaply and easily, write his own articles, and publish them for the world to ignore.  There is a limited number of opportunities for someone to write for someone else’s site, and to be asked to do so, or permitted to do so, is something of a recognition above the ordinary.

Of course, there are even fewer opportunities to write for print, and fewer now than there once were.  Not that you can’t publish your own printed books and comics and magazines, but that those that exist are selective in what they will print, and so the bar is higher.

The web log system makes it quicker and easier to write and publish something.  I suspect that there are many bloggers out there who open the software, start typing what they want to say, and hit publish, as if it were an e-mail.  I maintain a higher standard than that–all of my web log posts are composed offline, and with the only exceptions being the “breaking news” sort (like the aforementioned election results page) they all get held at least overnight, usually several days, reread and edited and tweaked until I am happy with them.  (As I write this, there are two web log posts awaiting publication which have been pending for two days, and I will review this one several times over the time that they go to press.)  But even so, the standard of what I will publish as a web log post is considerably lower than that which I will publish as a web page.

In that sense, the web log becomes more like diary, something in which you compose your thoughts and then ignore them–except that this diary is open to the world.  I think–I hope–all bloggers put more thought and care into their web log posts than they do into forum conversations and Tweets and Facebook posts.  However, while I have read some web log posts that were excellent, I have also read a few that caused me to wonder whether the author was thinking.  I try to keep some standard here, but I admit that sometimes I wonder whether I posted something because I thought it was worth posting or because I wanted to keep the blog living and active.

In any case, if you read something here and wonder why I bothered to post it, perhaps now you have a better idea of that.

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#168: Praying for You

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #168, on the subject of Praying for You.

A number of years ago I was playing quite a few venues and interacting with quite a few other Christan musicians, and something began to bother me.  At first it was that we needed to support and encourage each other, and I took steps to do this, connecting venues with artists as I was able.  However, I realized that no one had ever mentioned praying for me, and I had not mentioned praying for anyone else in music ministry, and that this was something I should remedy.  I sent notes to–well, quite a few people whom I knew were involved in music ministry, and offered to pray for them on condition that they keep me informed of their situation (that’s going to be explained).  A very few accepted my offer; one offered to reciprocate.  Then over the next year or so they all dropped off the radar, as it were, no longer answering my inquiries about their situation, and today I again have no Christian musicians on my prayer list.

And that just is not right, so this is an attempt to fix that.

img0168Hands

On the other hand, I don’t want it to seem as if I’m being exclusive.  I have quite a few Christian ministers on my “friends” list who are not musicians, or not primarily musicians, and quite a few who are not involved in ministry but would want my prayers (and some of you are indeed already getting them, whether you want them or not).  So I am putting this forward as a sort of “open offer”, that anyone who wants me to pray for him (or her or them) should contact me, and I will put you on my prayer list.

However, I have a few conditions.

The one idea that is not a condition is that you pray for me.  I would not feel at all right saying that I will pray for you if you will pray for me–it’s too mercenary, I suppose.  I certainly do not object to you praying for me, and if you wish for me to meet conditions similar to those I am about to state here, I will certainly endeavor to comply.  Nor is it a condition that you support my Patreon or PalPal.me campaigns–a lot of people who need prayer don’t have money, although I’m sure that people who have a lot of money still need prayer (not something I really know from personal experience).  I am certainly grateful to those of you who do support my efforts in any way at all, but I need to assure those who cannot do so or cannot justify doing so that they will not be treated the worse for that.

My conditions are based on II Corinthians 1:11, which in the Updated New American Standard Bible reads

…you also joining in helping us through your prayers, so that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many.

What I derive from that is the point that God wants us to agree in prayer, and answers prayers when more of us are agreeing, because that way when He answers there are more of us saying thank You to Him for the answer.  That, though, means that if I am going to pray for you, I also have to know how God is answering those prayers.  So this is how it works.

  1. You must connect with me through Facebook.  If we are not already “Friends” send a “Friend Request”, and I’ll approve it and ask how we’re connected.  Just tell me that you read this post and wanted me to pray for you, along with some idea of who you are (for example, pastor, Christian musician, Christian gamer, reader of my other materials).  I am betting that I will already have some notion of who most people who want my prayers are, but I don’t always connect names to people quickly, so at least jog my memory.  I do not really do e-mail–every few months I download a few hundred letters, throw most of them away, and see if there’s anything important in what remains.  Facebook is the way I communicate.
  2. Tell me enough about your situation that I can pray intelligently.  This is not Romper Room (and I pray for Sally, and Jeff, and Mary, and Mark….).  If I’m to know how God answers these prayers, I have to be praying for something particular enough that you can tell me about the answer.  I have a theological objection to those “unspoken” requests which I should probably discuss somewhere sometime, but as Paul says about people who pray in tongues in public meetings, if I don’t know what is being prayed, how can I say “amen”?
  3. Which of course brings up the final condition.  Probably about once a month I’m going to get a reminder to drop you a note to ask what is happening.  That’s so you can tell me what good things God has done and I can give thanks for them, and so you can update me regarding what I ought to be praying.  If I miss a month, don’t worry–I’m still praying.  If you miss a month, don’t worry, I’ll keep praying for a few months without hearing anything.  However, after a few months I’ll decide that you’re not answering and I’ll drop you from the list.  I can’t very well give thanks to God for answers to prayers on your behalf if you don’t tell me what God has done on your behalf.  You are, of course, welcome to drop me notes between my reminders, either to let me know about God’s answers or to redirect my prayers.  I do not want your impersonal newsletter; I want to interact with you directly, to hear from you what God is doing.  If it’s not worth a few minutes to do that, you don’t really want my prayers.

So that’s the offer.  I should caveat that the only people for whom I pray every day are my wife and myself (she because she deserves it, I because I need it); how often I pray for you will depend on a lot of factors including how many people ask for prayer, how serious I perceive your need, and the limits of the program that manages the prayer list.  Obviously I am offering to pray for individuals, but the offer also extends to individuals who want me to pray for a ministry they represent, such as their band, who thus are promising to keep me informed regarding the band.  I also don’t promise that I won’t give you advice if I think you’re asking for prayer about something with which I can help; it’s free advice, and you can decide whether it’s worth as much as you paid for it without offending me.  You can also ask me to stop praying for you (which I assume you would do if my monthly queries are irksome) and I’ll take you off the list.

I think that covers it.  Any questions?

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#165: Saints Alive

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #165, on the subject of Saints Alive.

I usually avoid issues that are denomination-specific.  I don’t want to fight with other believers but promote unity and love between us.  This, though, seems to have crept up on me.

It came about because my wife decided she needed a statue of St. Francis of Assisi for our currently non-existent back yard garden, and found one online (not the one pictured) which we could have for a song and a long drive.  She has never been Catholic; she was Lutheran for many years until God moved her to a Baptist church, and although she is still more liturgical than I she shares much of my interdenominational attitude and experience.

img0165Francis

There seems to be a story connected to this.  St. Francis means little to me and only connects to two stories, one a legend about a wolf who agreed to a vegetarian diet so he could live with the friars and their animals, the other a joke about the unluckiest man in the world.  However, one of our long-term houseguests was raised Roman Catholic, and during his brief ill-fated marriage to a conservative Baptist girl made the mistake of bringing home a statue of St. Francis for their garden.  She was so upset by this that she had her father come read him the riot act for this act of pagan idolatry, and I think maybe our statue is here to say that not all Christians are so unreasonable.  However, I don’t really know why we need this statue, other than that it is apparently part bird bath (although she also wants a bird bath).  It was going to rest on our front deck for the winter, but then someone was concerned it might be stolen or vandalized, so it is now decorating our living room.

I would be more concerned, I think, had I any expectation that our guest was likely to pray to this icon.  I don’t think he does very much praying, and certainly not when he is not in trouble, and probably not when he is.  I do, however, realize that there are a lot of nuances and complications here.  The Roman Catholic Church officially states that people do not worship saints; they venerate them.  That’s a word that most people don’t have in their vocabulary, but some Dungeons & Dragons™ Dungeon Masters will recognize as the verb form of the adjective “venerable”, the oldest age category for character races in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.  To venerate, to revere, is to show someone well-deserved respect of the highest order.

That appeals to me.  There are believers I genuinely deeply respect, and not all of them are living people whom I have met.  If you tell me that St. Francis of Assisi, or St. Teresa of Calcutta, is someone deserving of such respect I can at least understand that, whether or not I share that respect.  However, one point that is worth noticing is that just about anyone I think deserves that kind of respect does not count himself worthy of it.  It is something of the enigma of veneration:  anyone who thinks he deserves it is disqualified.  That doesn’t mean you necessarily deserve it if you don’t think so, only that thinking so is arrogance of a sort that does not fit the character of the person who deserves it.  The people we most admire for their faith generally do not think themselves all that admirable, or at least don’t convey the impression that they do think that.  It makes it difficult to know who to venerate, as just about anyone who might deserve such respect to whom you offered it would reject it and turn your attention toward Jesus.  Maybe, though, it is different when you have entered heaven; maybe there are some among us who are regarded more highly in heaven than the rest, and have had to accept the burden of being special.

It is the next part, the part where people pray to the saints, where we start getting into trouble–but the trouble is complicated.

Let us first establish that most people do not confuse the statue with the person.  That is not an impossible mistake to make, and there are people who appear to make it, traveling great distances to visit specific statues or shrines where miracles have been reported, thinking that somehow the statue is, or contains, the presence of the person here in the world.  For most people, the statue is not different in kind from a crucifix or even a cross–a reminder, a focal point, a way to keep in mind the person being addressed.  It is not in that sense different from the person who comes upon a photograph of a deceased or absent family member and speaks to it as if it were that person–except, of course, that the person speaking to the saint in the presence of the statue assumes that the saint can hear.  But the request is being made to the saint, the departed believer, and not to the statue.  If that is clear in the mind of the person making the request, we eliminate one of the problems.

Of course, it still is not that different from idolatry.  Certainly there were ancient worshippers who believed that the statue or carving was itself the deity, but in the main most pagan worshippers understood that the statue was just a statue, a marker of the presence of the deity but not the god itself.  Worshipping a statue and worshipping a spirit whose presence is indicated by the statue are both idolatry–but then, so is worshipping a spirit who is not God.  There is a fine line between veneration and worship, since the former means showing respect for the object/person and the latter means expressing reasons the object/person ought to be revered (worth-ship), but let us assume it is possible to stay on the right side of that line.

C. S. Lewis explored the issue of prayer to the saints somewhere, and his analysis was interesting.  He noted that asking St. Francis, or St. Teresa, or any other departed believer (he did not name anyone specifically), to pray on your behalf is not different in kind from asking your pastor, or your spouse, or your neighbor to do so.  It seems rather straightforward, really, when you put it that way.  The problem he advanced as fatal was the issue of knowing which persons actually are in heaven.  That is a certainty we cannot have about anyone other than Jesus Himself.  We might carry the ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine percent out to the hundredth decimal place, but it is not actually given to us to know that Peter or Paul or Mary–or Francis or Teresa–is in heaven.  I am very confident that my sainted grandmother is there, less confident of others of my relatives, but I could not say with absolute certainty that anyone I have known is in heaven–I do not see the heart.  I am completely confident that I will be there, but my confidence is not something I can give you, and I have been known to be mistaken about some facts in the past so I might, in theory, be mistaken about any of them now.  We don’t really know who we can ask.

We have the additional problem that we don’t know how we get from here to there.  Are our departed loved ones already experiencing heaven in what we call real time, concurrent with our continued lives here on earth?  That is a possibility popularly embraced.  However, some hold to the notion of “soul sleep”, that we who die remain unaware of the passage of time until we are awakened on the resurrection day and all enter heaven together.  That would mean that Jesus is in heaven, but Peter and Paul and the others are still waiting, unconscious of the wait but not yet there.  There is also the possibility that neither of those is quite the reality, but that at the moment of death we leap across time to the moment of resurrection, not “sleeping” anywhere but simply skipping whatever time remains in this world to enter eternity on the day of a resurrection still in the future for everyone else.  In those cases, it does not matter who is going to enter heaven–no one is there to hear us yet.

Prayer to the saints also assumes that those who are in heaven are listening to those of us who are on earth.  We imagine that they are for a couple of reasons.  One is that from our earthly perspective, if we were to be taken from our loved ones and moved to heaven, we would be very interested, even concerned, with what was happening to them here on earth, and so would want to watch, listen, keep aware of their situation.  The other is that we want to believe that those who have left us love us enough that they would want to know what is happening to us.  Both of those points ignore the possibility that someone who enters the presence of God might have something far more significant to occupy his attention for the next few thousand years than what is happening to the people he left behind.  Having finally stepped into the actual immediate continual tangible presence of God, am I going to be wondering how my granddaughter is doing?  That’s possible, but somehow not likely–and I tend to think we would very quickly lose track of time, particularly if we have stepped out of time into eternity.  Let’s suppose, though, that it is the case that my grandmother wants to know how I am doing.  There is yet the question of whether heaven actually provides the opportunity to watch–as if it were the observation windows above the operating theater where students can observe the surgeons at work.  We are never told that the departed know what we are doing.  In fact, the one documented instance in the Bible of someone speaking from beyond death, of that of Samuel to Saul, suggests that Samuel had no idea what Saul was doing, and had to figure it out when it happened.  So the assumption that the departed can hear us is itself questionable.

But even if we grant all that, there is yet the question of why they would be listening to us, specifically.  I can imagine that St. Teresa of Calcutta might be intimately interested in what is happening with the Sisters of Mercy order she founded and the work progressing in India (and as we recently noted, it is getting more difficult for Christian work in India).  I might even suppose she is interested in my close acquaintance Dennis Mullins, who on one occasion some years ago wrote a song for her and presented her with a copy of the recording.  It is a far stretch to suppose she would be interested in me–I never met her, never directly supported her work, probably never prayed for her during her ministry.  It is an even farther stretch to imagine that St. Francis has any particular interest in me, and the fact that I will be one of millions to erect a statue of him in a backyard garden probably does not impact that significantly.

I think, though, that there is a fundamental problem with our attitude when we pray to a saint.  The notion we have is that somehow they are more worthy, more likely to receive an answer to their prayers than we are to ours.  It is a mistake.  If we ask our pastor to pray for us because we want someone to pray with us, that is perfectly reasonable; if we want him to pray for us because we somehow think that Jesus is more likely to hear and answer his prayers on our behalf than our prayers on our own behalf, that is not humilty, it is error.  God wants us to bring our concerns to Him ourselves, and Jesus is given to us as the “one mediator between God and man”.  When we ask others to pray “for” us we are using the wrong preposition; we should be asking them to pray “with” us, to agree with our prayers, to support us as we pray.  We are invited, encouraged, even commanded, to pray to God through Jesus Christ.  If we will not do this, our prayers to anyone else, living or dead, are not going to be of much use.  If you ask me to pray with you, I will gladly support you in prayer; if you ask me to pray for you, the best I can do is pray for whatever I hope God will give you (which might not be what you are asking), or perhaps that you will be able to find whatever it is that will enable you to pray.  God will hear your prayer.  To pray to the saints is to presume that God does not care enough about you to listen, and that someone more worthy than you needs to mention you–like having a friend who has God’s ear.  You have God’s ear, and no one is more worthy than Jesus Who makes you as worthy as Himself.

So respect believers who reflect this, but make your requests known to God directly.

And don’t make a big deal about lawn ornaments.  A reminder in the middle of our garden of a man who cared about our relationships with God and with nature is not a bad thing, and a better thing if it reminds us that God cares about our garden more than we do, and loves us, and hears when we pray.

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#163: So You Want to Be a Christian Musician

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #163, on the subject of So You Want to Be a Christian Musician.

I have been a Christian musician–performer, composer, arranger, founder and/or director of bands–for near half a century now.

It might be argued whether that alone puts me in a position to give advice on the subject.  After all, although I have recorded an album, it would be debated whether I was ever a “successful” Christian musician.  I am not in much demand on the circuit and never have been.  However, from the time I was in high school, later in college, and then during five years as first a disk jockey and ultimately program director of a major Contemporary Christian Music radio station I talked to dozens, possibly scores, of successful Christian artists, and nearly always asked them that question:  what advice do you, as a successful Christian musician, give to anyone who wants to do what you do.  I asked such people as Noel Paul Stookey, Dan Peek, Phil Keaggy, Scott Wesley Brown, Glad, Brown Bannister, Chris Christian–well, I don’t even remember everyone I asked, let alone what they all said.  However, four of them I do remember, and I will give you something of the gist of what they said for your consideration.  I will also comment on that advice, because I think it worth contemplating.  I also think, in retrospect, that it is probably good advice for anyone who knows what he wants to be or do, and particularly for those who want to pursue artistic endeavors.

Larry Norman, perhaps the original nationally known self-identified Christian rock musician
Larry Norman, perhaps the original nationally known self-identified Christian rock musician

I will mention Barry McGuire first–probably the first truly prominent secular musician to become a leading contemporary Christian artist, who had been with The New Christie Minstrels, starred in the Broadway production Hair, and soloed with the hit Eve of Destruction, but whose signature song following his salvation was Happy Road–mostly because I do not think I can articulate what he told me.  What I remember is that the concert somewhere near Boston had ended and he was out among the audience, mobbed by people, but he heard my question and focused his entire attention on addressing it, addressing me and the rest of the audience, as if the question genuinely mattered.  What he said, and perhaps what he did, caused me upon returning home to write a song entitled Mountain, Mountain, about being what God made you to be instead of trying to be something you perceive to be great.  That actually is a good starting point for this, but we will return to it.

I was one of several reporters interviewing B. J. Thomas at Creation ’83.  At that time he was probably the most successful secular artist to turn to Christian music as an entertainer, his song Home Where I Belong introducing the singer of Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head and I Can’t Stop This Feeling to a Christian audience, and he had a hard time in the Christian music field precisely because he was an entertainer, not a minister.  What he said, though, was don’t think you missed your break, or that you are still waiting for your break to come.  If you are diligent, many breaks will come to you, and if you are good you can make one of them work for you, and if you miss it, another will come.

Ted Sandquist was probably the original contemporary Christian worship leader, with songs like Eternally Grateful, All That I Can Do, and Lion of Judah.  I’m afraid that when I caught up with him after a concert, his answer could have been a wonderful book, delivered orally in under a minute.    He spoke about things he called scope and ministry, and to a large degree was the first person ever to get me thinking of some of the things I discussed recently in the music ministry series–along with whether your calling is to be nationally known or simply serve in a local congregation.  In short, his advice was to think in terms of ministry, whether you are called to it, and what is the nature and extent of your calling.  If you follow this web log, you have already seen the extensive materials I have written on that.

Finally, I caught up with Larry Norman after one of his concerts at Gordon College.  Larry is probably the original nationally-known Christian rock musician, best known for I Wish We’d All Been Ready, Sweet, Sweet Song of Salvation, and the album title Only Visiting This Planet.  The intensity of his response was overwhelming, and the focus of it was in the question, why do you want this?

Before I address that further, I should mention two things about Larry that I learned separately from that.  One is that he was known for a gift of discernment, that he could see things about people that they often did not recognize about themselves.  It may well be that he would have given different advice to someone else, but that this was what he thought I needed to hear.  The other is that he had a very hard life as a Christian rock musician.  Often he would play a concert and after the fact be informed that “apparently the Lord did not provide” enough money to pay him.  He was then criticized for subsequently insisting on signed contracts for concerts that could be enforced against those who did not pay what they agreed, and quite specific terms concerning what his hosts would provide such as accommodations.  He rubbed shoulders with people like Paul McCartney, but he did not find the life at all glamorous or enriching.  That might have impacted his view as well.

However, I think that there is a level to that advice that we all need to hear:  Do not want that; it is not something to want.

It came to me recently, as I had again heard a story of some Christian band that had been formed to provide music for one event who then found themselves propelled to the top of the Christian music charts and sent on national and international tours.  The famous story is that of Amy Grant, who at sixteen spent a bit of money on some studio time to record a song for her mother’s birthday, and the recording was heard by Christian record producers Brown Bannister and Chris Christian, who quickly signed her to a major Christian label recording contract and propelled her to stardom–perhaps the first contemporary Christian recording artist to crossover into secular success.  God clearly sometimes chooses some people to be “successful” Christian artists who had made no effort to be that; it makes sense that He has a hand in choosing those whose success appears to be built on years of hard work.  There are equally many stories we do not hear, of people who worked hard to achieve what never came, and of people who hoped maybe that one day lightning would strike, as it were, and they would be propelled to success, to whatever level of fame is found in Dove Awards and Christian music chart-toppers.  If God wants you to be there, He will get you there; it may be that He wants you to work hard at your music and stay where you are, and it should be sufficient motivation for the work that God is pleased with it.

It is also the case that this is not something to want.  The work of a “successful” Christian musician is hard work–constant travel, brief stays in strange places, one performance after another.  I have seen how tired such people often are, but this is what they do, and they will do it again tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.  It wreaks havoc with family life, as either you take your family with you to hotels or more commonly in a camper, or you leave them behind while you travel for weeks or sometimes months without them, sleeping in the “bus”, a modified camper shared with the rest of the band.  Those who make it work either managed to reach a high enough level of success before marriage that they were able to do very short tours and fly to most events, or have other jobs frequently as pastors such that they finish concerts Saturday night and are in church Sunday morning.  And the money is not all that good–better, perhaps, than it was for Christian artists a few decades back, but the entire music industry is changing, in a sense collapsing, so that even the major stars do not make what they once did.

Of course, it is not so much the money as the recognition, that you are on stage, people are listening to your songs on the radio and the Internet, you are traveling the world singing.  That is also called fame.  But then, fame in the entire music industry is not what it was–if you heard a list of the twenty most successful musicians in the world today, it is likely that you would not recognize several of the names simply because styles have fragmented, and no one is truly informed about rock, rap, country, Christian, and the wealth of other genres that command substantial but discrete audiences.  Take it from me.  I might not be a “successful” musician, but I am world famous–as a role playing game author and theorist, defender of hobby games, time travel theory writer, and general writer–and it has almost no cash value and very little impact on my daily life apart from that I have to do the work.  Or hear Paul Simon.  He tells a story of a night when he and Art Garfunkle were sitting in a car in a park under one of New York City’s many bridges, and a song came on the radio–their song, Sounds of Silence, which the disk jockey announced was now the number one song in the country, by Simon and Garfunkle.  At that moment, Art Garfunkle said to him, “Gee, wherever those two guys are right now, it must be a real great party.”  Being at the top of the chart doesn’t mean nothing, but it doesn’t mean much.

Of course, get enough fame, and you have to reorganize your life to insulate yourself against the crowds.  You are not going to get that kind of fame doing this, and the admiration you do get will perhaps bring a smile to your face from time to time, but it’s going to prove to be much less than you imagined.

More on point, though, and connecting what Barry McGuire said to what Larry Norman said:  this is not something you should want.  What you should want is to know God, to become what He made you to be, and to seek to do what He wants you to do in life.  If that includes being a famous or successful musician, He will bring you there; He won’t lead you where you want to go, though, only where He knows you will become the best you He made you to be.  One thing I needed to learn over the years was that had I been a successful Christian musician early in my life I never would have been any of these other things–I never would have written the role playing game or become involved with the hobby gamers whose lives I have in some small way touched, never would have undertaken to write about time travel, never would have studied law or written about politics, never would have become chaplain of an international online organization, never would have done most of the things for which I am recognized.  There was so much of who I am that I never would have discovered, that no one would have known, had God moved me in a straight line to what I always thought was the only thing I could do well–music.  He wanted me to become the teacher, the writer, the influence that I am.  I might have been a great musician, but I would never have been anything else.

Peter Hopper was the drummer in a band called Rock Garden, who played their penultimate concert at Carnegie Hall.  I never talked with him despite having a more than passing acquaintance with the band’s rhythm guitarist Dennis Mullins, but a few weeks after that concert, after they had played their farewell concert, I heard him speak about it.  It was what he had wanted all his life, and as he sat on stage playing for the crowd he looked around and said, is this really what I wanted?  Why did I want this?  He told us that God promises that if we seek Him He will give us the desires of our heart, and said that in his experience God had done that, given him what he had always wanted, so he would be able to see how empty it really was, and how the only thing worth desiring was God.

So don’t want this.  Don’t want to be a musician, or anything else for that matter.  Want to know God, and to find His path for you.  That’s the only desire in life that is guaranteed to be fulfilled and to satisfy.  It is also the only path that will bring you anywhere worth being.

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#162: Furry Thinking

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #162, on the subject of Furry Thinking.

If you are in the gamer community you probably have already heard or thought most of this.  Ridiculous news travels fast.  For those who are not, well, it’s worth getting you up to speed a bit.

A British company known as Games Workshop publishes a game under the name Warhammer 40K.  The “40K” part means that it is set in a far-flung (forty millennia) future in which, perhaps somewhat ridiculously, primitives fight with mechas.  The game makes significant use of miniatures, which the company produces and sells.  These miniatures are entirely made of plastic, but some of them have designs that include the image of fur clothing or covering on people or machines.

PETA, that is, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is protesting this.

Image by  Erm What https://www.flickr.com/photos/ermwhat/
Image by Erm What https://www.flickr.com/photos/ermwhat/

I am tempted to join the chorus of those who assert that PETA has lost it–it being at least the last shreds of credibility that the organization had.  I would prefer to think that they are intelligent people who have sound reasons for their position, and so I would like to attempt at least to understand them.  I do not agree with them, because of what I think are some fundamental issues, but in order to discuss those issues I think it is important at least to attempt to grasp their view.

The stated issue is that the appearance of fur on the models, even given that it isn’t even faux fur but just molded plastic in a roughened pattern that looks like fur, sends a wrong message.  That in itself is a bit ridiculous–as one father of a gamer reported his daughter asking, how can PETA tell whether the plastic molding representation is supposed to be real fur or fake fur?  However, we should give PETA the benefit of the doubt.  They could reasonably object to the use of fake fur for much the same reason:  it is popular because it looks like real fur, and in looking like real fur suggests that killing animals for their fur is an appropriate human action.  People should not kill animals for fur today, and suggesting that it will be acceptable to do so forty thousand years in the future is just as unacceptable.

In its argument, PETA includes some detail about the inhumane ways in which animals are either trapped or hunted and killed, or raised and killed, for their furs.  Within the context it’s a bit ridiculous–for all we know, in the Warhammer world such furs might be grown in vats of cultured skin skin cells that have no innervation and no central nervous system, and thus no real pain.  Fur might grow on trees, genetically mutated or modified.  They might have devised completely painless methods of hunting, trapping, and killing fur-bearing animals.  Extending an argument based on the details of actual modern treatment of such animals to the distant future is indeed silly.  However, it is probably not the distant future with which PETA is concerned.  If they still exist in forty millennia they will undoubtedly argue whether any of those methods are truly humane; their real argument is not whether these are appropriate actions in the future, but whether they convey an appropriate message to the present.  Their position in the present is that it is fundamentally wrong to kill animals for their skins, and so the suggestion that it will be permissible in the distant future is a wrong message, because it always will be–and by implication, always has been–wrong for people to do this.

That is where PETA and I part company on this issue.

Somewhere I have seen, probably in some natural history museum, a montage of a group of primitive men dressed in furs using spears to bring down a Woolly Mammoth.  That display, to my mind, communicates something of the reality of the lives of our distant ancestors.  Yet if PETA is to be taken seriously, that display sends the same kind of wrong message as is sent by the Games Workshop miniatures:  humans have killed animals so as to clothe themselves in the furs, and are engaged in killing another animal.  It might even be argued in their favor that one of the theories for the disappearance of the Siberian Mammoth from the world is that it was hunted to extinction by primitive humans (although in fairness it has also been suggested that they died due to the decline of their habitat at the close of the last ice age).  Yet wearing furs and killing animals was how those humans survived, and thus the means by which we have come to be alive today.

I think that PETA would probably assert that the humans had no higher right to survive than the bears and wolves and deer and other creatures they killed for those furs, or the mammoths they hunted for meat and skin.  PETA has an egalitarian view of the creatures of the world, as I understand it:  all creatures are created equal, and have an equal claim to continued life.  People have no right to kill animals for their own purposes, whether for clothes or for food or for habitat.

One reason this view is held is that people believe there are only two possible views.  The perceived alternative is to believe that humans have no obligations at all to other creatures, and can use them however we want, kill them with impunity, torture them even for no better purpose than our own entertainment, eat them, and wear their bodies as clothing and jewelry or use it to adorn our dwellings.  Put in its extreme form, this position is indeed reprehensible, and I object to it as much as PETA does.  However, these are not the only two positions.

Still, that “reprehensible” position is at least defensible.  PETA can argue that the human species has no better right to survive than any other creatures, but it is equally true under that argument that our right to survive is not any less.  Other creatures do not, by this fundamentally naturalistic argument, owe us their lives, but neither do we owe them theirs.  If our survival is enhanced at their expense, it cannot be asserted that we have less right to survive than they.  In the abstract the claim that we do not have a higher right sounds good, but if the issue were to be whether you or I would survive, it is very likely that you would choose you, and if it went to court after the fact and it was reasonably clearly apparent that it was “you or me”, the courts would undoubtedly exonerate you for choosing your own survival over mine.  The simplest form of that is the self-defense defense, but it’s not the only situation in which this is a factor.  Our ancestors killed animals and ate them and wore their furs because in a very real sense it was “them or us”, either we kill these animals and protect ourselves in their skins or we die of exposure.  Certainly I think that killing for furs that are not needed for our survival but merely decorative is selfish, but under a naturalistic viewpoint I can find no basis for saying that it is wrong to put the needs and preferences of other creatures above our own.  Further, I would not condemn an Inuit for his sealskin boots–it is part of his survival, and it is not clear that modern boots are either as easily available to him or as effective for the purpose.

Yet I do not intend to defend that position.  I think there is a third position that covers the concerns of both PETA and the Inuit.  Man is neither the equal of the other creatures in this world nor the owner of them.  We are their caretakers; they are our charges.

That means that sometimes we have to kill them, responsibly.  The best example is the deer of North America.  In most of the continent, and particularly most of the United States, deer thrive but the predators that kept their numbers in check have been decimated.  Without wolves and mountain lions in significant numbers to kill and eat the deer, their natural reproductive rate (geared to replace those lost to predation) quickly overpopulates the environment.  Certainly we have the selfish concern that they will eat our gardens, but even without that part of the problem they will starve in droves, because there is not enough food to feed them all.  The lack of predators is our fault, but only partly intentional.  Certainly we took steps to protect our children from creatures that would recognize them as a potential meal, but it is also the case that we frighten them, and so as we expand they retreat.  That means that deer will die, and their bodies litter the wilderness–and the alternative is for us to maintain managed killing of the overpopulation.  Licensed hunting is an effective and economical approach.  There might be other ways–such as rounding up herds into slaughterhouses and selling the meat on the market–but PETA would find these at least as objectionable.

It also means that we have the right to kill them when in our view it meets our needs–such as taking cattle and pigs and fowl to slaughterhouses to put meat on our tables.

The issue of whether we should refrain from killing animals for clothing is a more complicated one.  After all, in Genesis 3:21 we are told that God made garments of skin for Adam and Eve when they were inadequately clothed in leaves, and we take that to mean that it was the skins of animals, and that thereafter we dressed ourselves in animal skins following the example God gave us.  On the other hand, we have other materials now which are at least as good, and we have a shortage of animals, at least measured against the number of people we have to clothe.  We can provide for our needs without killing a lot of animals, and so we should prioritize our responsibility to care for those we still have.  That does not mean we cannot use fur or leather as part of our clothing; it means that such use should be limited to situations in which it is the best choice for the purpose.

It also means that in a distant future in which animals, including predatory animals, are plentiful and humans are struggling to survive, our present standards about killing creatures for fur or wearing the skins of animals who died or were killed for other reasons simply do not apply.  Most of those who are intelligent enough to be able to play complicated miniatures wargames are also intelligent enough to understand this, even if PETA is not.

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#161: Pseudovulgarity

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #161, on the subject of Pseudovulgarity.

At an hour ridiculous by just about anyone’s standards, the dog rousted me to let him out.  A word went through my mind as I sat up.

I’d like to be able to tell you that the word was “Hallelujah”; it was not.  What I can tell you is that it was not any word that is ordinarily recognized as a curse or swear word or vulgarity.  It was, rather, one of those words made up by some science fiction or fantasy writer to give the characters foul language that doesn’t have any real meaning and so won’t be nixed by the censors–not the one used in Red Dwarf, but that sort of thing.  In fact, the words that went through my head next were, “He can curse in six imaginary languages.”  I can’t, but it is a silly notion, and raises the question of how we as Christians should regard such speech.

img0161Dwarf

Words are avoided for several reasons, and we should understand why specific words are avoided–but I am not going to delve into explanations of individual words.  Some are called “vulgar” by which we mean “crass”; they refer to objects or actions which are not discussed in “polite society” and so it would be rude to use them.

Problematically, some words which make this list have perfectly appropriate uses within certain contexts, but become offensive when they are used in an insulting way.  An expression that means being condemned to eternal punishment is probably appropriate declared from the pulpit, but not expressed as a wish aimed at an individual.  The proper word for a female dog among breeders at a kennel club show becomes vulgar when applied to a person; in its original sense it becomes obscene.

Obscenity is perhaps vulgarity up a notch:  these words usually refer to actions which decent people disdain because they are in some sense morally repugnant.  “Rape” might have been on this list except that we need a name for that crime; it will serve, though, as an example of other words which are not used because they refer to acts themselves regarded immoral.

The other category of avoided words involves the commandment not to use the name of the Lord in vain.  Here the problem is that no one should invoke God disrespectfully, and it is commonly done.  All “offensive” words are considered offensive to people, or at least to “decent” or “proper” people; those in this category are considered offensive to God, but also to people who would be offended by disrespect toward God.

Prior to the early 1970s respectable people did not use such offensive language in conversation, public or private.  This ended with the release of the transcripts of what are called the Watergate tapes, recordings of conversations in the Oval Office in the White House, in which the words “expletive deleted” probably were the most common longer than three letters.  These announced to the world that the respectable speech of our leaders was a facade covering considerably more corrupt language in private.  It is certainly ironic that Richard Nixon is still roundly condemned in nearly all quarters, but his example in this followed by so many.

This covers most of what we consider “foul language”, and most of us feel that if we manage to keep this out of our speech we have done well.  I wonder, though, whether we have.  The other day someone who uses entirely too much foul language asked me whether there was something he could say instead.  I suggested Praise the Lord; I do not know whether he has implemented an effort on this front.  I do recall a pastor friend of mine telling of a deacon in his church with Tourette’s who apparently spoke no foul words and so his expletive outbursts were all on the order of Alleluia, Amen, Praise God, and that answered a question I had had about the syndrome in people who had not learned any bad words.  Most Christians make a point not to say anything that falls into any of these categories; some don’t consider it a significant issue.

What is somewhat more intriguing is the use of substitute words.  The language is littered with them–“gosh” and “golly”, “gee” and “geesh”, and words like “heck”, “darn”, “dang”, “sugar”, “frigging”, to replace more vulgar language.  These words we use in order keep our language “clean”–but do they miss the point?

The phrase “apple-polisher” does not immediately call the image from which it is apparently derived; “brown-noser” is closer to the vulgar original, but you don’t want to think about what that one means.  The fact that we avoid the words but convey the ideas is not especially commendable.  In college I was very good at creative invective until an event I have recounted elsewhere shocked me into the realization that some people were hurt by words which to me were a game.  If what you say is intended to give offense, it is not really inoffensive to say it without offensive words.  Perhaps more fundamentally, if the use of a word reflects a bad attitude within, a replacement word to express the attitude does nothing about the attitude.

I am of the opinion that we as believers should avoid using words which offend–not merely those which are offensive to specific races or subcultures, but those which are offensive to polite society.  The use of invented vulgarity, in the form of invented words, is probably reasonable for inclusion in fiction, particularly fantasy and science fiction, to give the feeling of a real lower-class culture (I still see the use of such words as the language of the lower classes, and the fact that Nixon and his aides used it lowers my opinion of them far more than it raises my opinion of the use of such language).  In my own writing I manage to avoid most of it, and while I’m prejudiced I don’t think my prose suffers for it.

As far as substitute words in daily use, to the degree that they reflect negativity, invective, or distress, we probably should learn not to use them–not because the words themselves are bad, but because they convey attitudes which we ought to be eliminating in ourselves.  We mistakenly think that something which happens is bad because at first impression we don’t like it, but every gift from God is good, and He gives us our days and our lives.  Certainly there are people who harm us or others, and we are right to hate what they do–but that they do it tells us that they need to be repaired, need God’s love and ours to escape the darkness in which they are living.  They don’t need our foul language or our not-foul replacement language or our invective or insult or disdain.  They need our help.

So if you wondered why words of that sort mattered, maybe this will give you some notion.

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#160: For All In Authority

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #160, on the subject of For All In Authority.

O.K., show of hands:  how many of you have been praying for our new president?

I see that hand.

img0160Trump

No, I appreciate this.  I have never been much of one for canned uninformed “pray for the President/pray for the leaders”–I never know what to pray, and I’ve been a political writer for several years, and still don’t know what to pray.  Part of the difficulty I face is that we are told to give thanks for the answers to our petitions, but for most of what I can imagine asking I have no reason to expect to see how God has answered–I am not privy to cabinet meetings nor to the thoughts of men.  Part of the problem is that it is very easy to want God to move our leaders to my political opinion, and God does not generally do that, or at least not that I’ve recognized in others.

But I am upset about the people who have been protesting, and particularly because I know that at least some of them would take the name “Christian”.  I do not mean that Christians should never protest.  I am not even saying that Christians should never be involved in overthrowing governments–that’s simply more than I know.  However, the call we were given was to pray, not to condemn.  In a modern democracy, the proper function of protest is to communicate our opinions to our leaders, not to condemn them for theirs.  Communicate, certainly; do not condemn.

One of those who taught me along the way made the statement God gives you the person that you need, not necessarily the person that you may want.  I do not even now remember to what exact situation he was applying that, but I have recognized it in connection with spouses, pastors, and particularly governments.  (I suspect it applies as well to parents, although I was out of the house and married before I heard it; I wonder to what degree it applies to children.)  Proverbs has a verse which in the original speaks of a lot falling in a lap, an archaic concept among archaic concepts for which the Christian Gamers Guild has found a modern translation, “We may throw the dice, but the Lord determines where they fall.”  Benjamin Franklin noted that if sparrows do not fall without God’s notice, nations certainly do not rise without His aid–and that would undoubtedly apply as well to governments.  At this point we know, incontrovertibly, that God chose to make Donald Trump President of these United States.  We may debate whether that is upon us a blessing or a curse, a reward or a punishment, a path forward or an impediment to truth, but whatever it is, it is what God decided we needed.  This is God’s gift to us, what He has given.

And every gift God gives is good.

Don’t choke on that.  Understand, as I know I have said previously and elsewhere, that when the Bible says that God’s gifts are good, it does not mean necessarily that we will like them.  All things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to His purpose it says in Romans 8, but it does not mean that everything that happens to us will be pleasant.  Eat your spinach, it’s good for you–this is the kind of good Paul meant there, that whatever comes to us benefits us, whether we enjoy it or not.  Suffering produces endurance.  When Jesus says that God gives both sun and rain to the good and the bad, the righteous and the unrighteous, He did not mean that we all get good things and bad things–he meant that we get the good that is the sun and the good that is the rain.  I do not yet know whether this presidency will be steak or Brussels sprouts–the good I will enjoy or the good I need to endure–but I know that it has been given to us and it is good.

In the early days of the church, nearly all Christians lived in or near Jerusalem.  Then a terrible thing happened.  A Christian named Steven was lynched by a mob.  Instead of the rioters being brought to justice, the local ruler arrested one of the top people in the church, a man named James, and had him executed.  The persecution of believers had begun.  Many, including some of the leaders themselves, fled Jerusalem, left the province known as Judea, and sought homes elsewhere in the Roman Empire.  It was undoubtedly something they would have prayed to end, despite the fact that Jesus told them it would happen–and we see in hindsight that these fleeing believers carried the message with them into places it would not have reached nearly as quickly otherwise, so the church spread and grew as others heard the gospel and believed.  Christians had been told to take the message into the whole world, but were rather complacently sitting in the one small town (and face it, as capital cities of the time went, Jerusalem was a small one) sharing the message mostly with people who had already heard it or knew where to hear it if they were interested.  We needed that trouble to move us in the right direction.

Therefore I know what to pray.  I pray that God will give wisdom to this man and his advisors, so that they will accomplish the task God has given them in the best way possible.  I do not know what that task might be, nor do I know to what degree the answer to my prayer will involve God clearing the path for what the man wants to do and to what degree it involves God impeding that path so that only part of the human program will be accomplished.  I do know that God will accomplish His purpose, one way or another, and the current presidency is part of that.  We are instructed to pray, and not given much understanding of what to pray, but this is enough.  One way or another, this should move us in the right direction.  We might not know what the right direction is (and for those first century Christians it seems to have been every direction as long as it was motion), but we know that God is moving somewhere and will bring us where He wants us to be.

So let us pray.

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#159: To Compassion International

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #159, on the subject of To Compassion International.

Compassion International is shutting down all of its operations in India because the Indian government has been objecting to aid coming from outside India for relief efforts.  There is evidence that it is because Hindu nationalists are trying to shut down Christian ministries; India is now 15th on the Open Doors’ list of places where it is hardest to be Christian.

Someone has said that when God closes a door, He often opens a window.  I’m sure that the organization has long honed its methods, and has a clear idea of how to do what they do to make it work–but now it is not working in India, and they may have to rethink their approach there.  The words “creative financing” and “creative accounting” sometimes have an “iffy” sense to them, but I think in the present situation the organization needs to be creative in how they deliver their aid to those children.

I would like to make a suggestion that might get them thinking in a workable direction.

img0159Compassion

India certainly has a tourist industry.  We know that people travel to see the Taj Mahal and other sites within the country.  At present they are turning away aid connected to a Christian ministry–but it is doubtful whether they would ever be turning away tourist dollars.  I am thinking that if Compassion International set up facilities in India modeled on hotels or restaurants or other tourist services, then said they were part of the tourism industry but listed the rooms at exhorbitant prices, such a model might work.  Couriers could bring money into the country and “pay” the hotel, which could then use the money to “purchase” supplies at low rates from an international supplier (Compassion International).  Native workers for the organization would become employees of these facilities, and the children they wish to help could be listed in any of several ways so that they would receive the benefits–employees, dependents, stockholders, whatever method works under Indian law.

Let us suppose that we list the children as employees of the hotel.  A courier arrives, checks in as a guest and stays overnight, paying the thousands of dollars that would otherwise have been spent on child care to the hotel perhaps by electronic transfer from the organization’s account to the hotel’s account, which might be in an international bank (depending on Indian law).  The hotel then spends most of that to buy food and supplies from its suppliers, and pays the children an official wage.  The children would be required to do the work of attending school (one of the benefits currently provided by Compassion International to its children), and school attendance would include free meals for the school day, and the employee benefits package would include fully-paid medical care.  “Uniforms”, that is, free clothing, would also be provided for school and work.  Some of the older children could be given tasks related to running the operation, such as working in the kitchen or cleaning the facilities, so that there is actual labor being performed by the employees.  Sponsors who currently are seen as donating money to provide benefits for individual children would be recouched, in legal terms, as providing for the salary and benefits of individual child employees.  In the United States they would continue donating to a non-profit charitable organization; that organization in turn would be, on the books, investing capital in a for profit corporation in a foreign country that is operating at a constant loss.  In doing this, the organization manages to deliver its care, much the same care as it is currently delivering, and the Indian government cannot prevent that care from being delivered without creating a lot of laws that are going to severely negatively impact its tourism trade.

Certainly the system would incur taxes and tariffs, but how serious can we be about wanting to help these poor people if we are unwilling to deal with such government regulations and costs?  There might be official industry standards to meet, but we deal with those problems in our own country–soup kitchens and homeless shelters are required to meet commercial facilities standards in order to deliver services to the homeless, and while it is an impediment to meeting those needs it is one that we overcome regularly.

I am not on the ground in India; I don’t know how severe or complex the problems actually are.  I think, though, that we are looking at some of the poorest people in the world, and I understand it is one of Compassion International’s largest national efforts, so I am hoping that if they give it some consideration they can find a way to continue delivering aid to these starving children within the strictures being imposed by the government and whatever other opponents they face.

I pray that they will find a way.

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