Gratuitous Cat Post #3

Hospice Kitty or Furry Grim Reaper?

Oscar may be a little of both. My wife alerted me to this story, which you have simply got to read.

It tells about a two-year old cat named Oscar, who grew up in a nursing facility and has developed the knack of knowing when the facility's residents are about to pass away. Apparently, he curls up at their sides just hours before death. And he is so accurate that the staff knows it is time to call the family when Oscar comes calling.

One of the interesting things about the description of Oscar is that he doesn't seem to be sentimental at all about his duties. He doesn't want to be cuddled, but instead goes about his "rounds" in a businesslike manner.

Oscar presents some interesting questions: Should he do a unit of CPE for more training? Could he benefit from a pastoral care class to improve his bedside manner? Would Duke's Institute for Care at the End of Life be interested in having Oscar as a speaker on campus? The possibilities seem endless.

"I'm spiritual, but not religious"

You hear versions of this statement all the time, and I write about it in my current UM Reporter column. Some other related comments: "I do my Sunday morning worship on the golf course," or "I can worship just as well on the beach (or in the woods, or on the river, or in my living room), as I can in a church sanctuary." It all goes back to a sugary "spirituality" that is rampant in our culture. Literally yesterday, I heard a former United Methodist minister in an NPR interview who said, "I'm a very spiritual person, but for me that is an individual thing."

The only possible Christian response to such a ridiculous statements as those above is "No, you cannot worship God just as well by yourself. And there is no such thing as an individual spirituality." Because since we are the body of Christ, and individually members of it, we are called to actually, physically gather together as the church. A Eucharist of one is an ontological impossibility.

Listen to these words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer about church as a gathered community:

"Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race." (The Cost of Discipleship, p. 302).

So seen one way, the thing that causes people to define their "spirituality" in individual terms is simply a consequence of sin. It is pride, because it is a way of saying, "I can define my relationship with God, and no one else." It is also a form of laziness, in that people who espouse it want to have God on their terms and do not want anyone else telling them that their notion of God might be mistaken or misguided.

So we should be clear: it is the church that tells us who God is. The church is the community of faith which, across time, has maintained a constant witness to the God of the Old and New Testaments. The church makes that God intelligible to us, which would simply not be possible on our own. And the church is the community that Christ himself has determined his followers will find their lives until the final consummation.

Lots of Gen X'er Chrisitan I talk to are interested in the true renewal of the church. They want to see a church, alive and faithful, making a powerful witness in the world. They want to see Christians in that church who engage their faith on a deep level. I hear those Gen X'ers in face-to-face conversations, via e-mail, and in the blogosphere.

But if we Gen X'ers really want to help bring about the renewal of the church, we have to recognize the dangerous, mistaken notions of discipleship that are out there in our culture. There can be no renewal of the church without a deep understanding of how much discipleship to Jesus is at odds with life in the world. And that discipleship calls us to recognize that the church is a community where "I" makes no sense without "us."

In memoriam: Harmon Wray

This e-mail was sent by my friend Tim Eberhart in Nashville earlier today:

Harmon Wray died Tuesday, July 24, 2007 from complications of a massive stroke. His ministry with Edgehill UMC, the Tennessee Conference, Vanderbilt University and beyond provided profound inspiration for those who knews and loved Harmon and his partner, Judy Parks.

Visitation will be Friday evening, July 27 at Edgehill UMC, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m. The Memorial Service will be Saturday morning, July 28 at 10 a.m. at Belmont UMC.

May the witness of Harmon's life continue to motivate and inspire us to work for God's justice in a world that does not know the ways that make for peace.

Harmon worked tirelessly to promote the cause of restorative justice and opposition to capital punishment throughout a career in ministry, teaching, and writing. In the process, he attempted to show both the church and the world that God's love is more powerful than the darkness of prison and more powerful than a senseless societal commitment to the death penalty. He was a voice for many voiceless men and women languishing inside our nation's prisons. And he was an agent of reconciliation in trying to help the penal system become more about restoration than retribution.

I got to know Harmon during my time in Nashville, from 1998-2001. It was a formative time in my life, and Harmon was a formative influence. He helped me to understand the sanctity of all human life, because all human life has been redeemed by Jesus Christ. The world is poorer for his loss. I will miss him.

The Tennessean has printed a very good story on Harmon, which can be viewed here.

Happiness matters

Do you ever wish you were happier? Do you ever wonder if you even known what true happiness is about?

I think mixed-up messages and confused conceptions about happiness are rampant in our society. And I think sending those messages is one of the cruelest ways our culture of consumption tricks us in this day and age. The culture says that happiness is all about maintaining a fairly high level of elation or euphoria, usually (of course) given to us by purchasing the right product, using the right substance, or engaging in the right activity. And you can bet that there is a company that will sell you whatever you need to get there.

Ellen T. Charry says it can be as varied as "a laundry detergent, a gourmet meal, an exotic vacation or a sexual triumph," in her recent article on the subject in The Christian Century (the article itself was not availble at the CC website at the time of this blog posting; I'll add a link to it when/if it becomes available online). But, Prof. Charry adds, this vision of happiness is at odds with the vision of happiness that is found in both the Western philosophical and Christian theological traditions.

From both Aristotle and the Old Testament, we can find a view of happiness that includes experiences of profound, sustained joy and well-being, but does not depend on transient experiences of physical or emothional 'highs.' As you move further into the Christian tradition, from the New Testament to Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, you see the devleopment of a theology of happiness that insists that true happiness is found in virtuous growth in Christlikeness, a process that involves committing oneself to choices that produce habits, which in turn shape character, which in turn define one's life. So while the Christian life may seem to involve difficult, painful sacrifice in the short term, such sacrificies are always put in the context of an ongoing growth in virtue. And a virtuous person, because she is closer to God, is ultimately a happy person.

Charry sums up her position well in her closing paragraph: "Contemporary culture offers us various versions of happiness. We are told that happiness is a feeling, or that happiness is a result of wealth or health, or that it can be attained by having the right product for the right moment or by perfecting one's circumstances so as to build a buffer against ill fortune. None of these visions is the Christian vision of happiness. Instead, happiness is a life nourished by the love and goodness of God that contributes to the flourishing of creation. Even in the face of evil, rejection and suffering, a person who has learned to love well will experience pleasure a nd satsfaction from being herself - a person built from the loving use of God-given creativity, power and goodness. When that goodness takes up residence in us we realize that we are the living image of God, and that makes us happy."

This is a very good article, and I don't do it justice in this blog post. I do wish Prof. Charry had spent a bit more time on the distinction between Aristotelian notions of happinenss and Christian (or really, Thomistic) notions of happiness. I suspect that eschatology may significantly alter how we understand the teleological thrust of happiness in Christian discipleship. But all in all, a very good essay. Check it out!

Open Season on Pope Benedict

Pope Benedict XVI has drawn a lot of criticism lately, in response to some new documents that have come out of the Vatican authorizing use of the Latin Mass and defining non-Catholic churches as they relate to Roman Catholicism.

In a letter issued in recent weeks, the pope relaxed restrictions on use of the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass. Now, any Catholic congregation so desiring can celebrate the Latin Mass without permission from the local bishop, so long as its priest is competent to do so.

Also in recent weeks, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued a document (with papal approval) that defines the Roman Catholic Church as the one true church, and other churches as lesser Christian communions with various flaws. (This is not a new teaching, but is a clarification of current Roman Catholic doctrine.) For instance, Eastern Orthodox churches are considered "churches" properly, but they lack observance of the primacy of St. Peter (i.e., recognition the authority of the pope), so they are deficient. Reformation churches and their descendents (for example, the United Methodist Church) don't come off so well in this document. Asserting that they do not stand in the apostolic succession, the document states that they cannot properly be called "churches."

The pope has been criticized for trying to turn the clock backwards with these pronouncements. He is seen by many to be out of touch with the times, wishing, for instance, to return Europe to a state of Christendom that existed in centuries past. Now I have some reservations about the way Protestants are defined by the CDF document, but I have greater ones about the way that many of the criticisms of the pope have been framed. I'll offer two examples.

In a recent blog post in the Washington Post's "On Faith" forum, well-known biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan offers a thinly-veiled critique of the pope's authorization of the Latin Mass as an unnecessary step backward in time. He writes, "one of the ways you know a religion is dead or dying, is its refusal to change and/or its attempt to return [where] once it was." Crossan goes on to talk about the way the Christian faith was observed in Aramaic, then Greek, then Latin, and then in the various vernacular languages of later centuries. He says, "for community, tradition, or hierarchy, it is ultimately impossible to hold back the inevitable future by returning to the abandoned past."

I am not sure how one can really separate Crossan's critique from his own troubled relationship with Catholicism throughout his life (he is a former monk and priest) or from the sometimes bizarre lengths to which he pursues historical-critical exegesis of the gospels (see the mechanistic method he develops for determining "authentic" words of Jesus and testimony of the earliest Christian communities in The Historical Jesus and The Birth of Christianity). But it is at least worth pointing out to Dr. Crossan and others that most - if not all - of the great reform movements in Christian history have been efforts to turn back the clock. Or, to say it another way, such movements have sought to reclaim what is always seen as an earlier, more authentic form of Christian practice. This is certainly the case for the Reformation era, when Lutherans, Reformed, Anglicans, and Anabaptists saw their respective movements at efforts to jump back over medieval "corruptions" of the Catholic church.

John Wesley in the 18th century, of course, saw the Methodist Revival as an effort to restore the practice of "primitive Christianity" to the Church of England. So whether a return to the Latin Mass is or is not an effort to retrieve something that has been lost to the contemporary church, it is simply not a valid statement to say that attempting to return to historic practice is the mark of a dead or dying church.

Another critique, this time of Pope Benedict and the CDF document, came from commentator Roland S. Martin in a CNN piece last week. In his commentary, Martin accuses the pope of "running off at the mouth and making pointless declarations," and even goes so far as to call him "an old man trying to get a little attention." Perhaps such an emotional and irreverent barrage against the leader of 1 billion of the earth's Christian population doesn't merit a response. But Martin's counter-argument is troubling enough that a couple of comments are in order.

Martin counters the CDF document's statements defending Catholic tradition with a kind of naked biblicism. He accuses the RCC of not caring about the truth of Scripture, and he argues that the doctrine of the church is subservient to the Great Commission, which he interprets in highly individualistic fashion. He encourages Protestants to disregard the pope's (or the CDF's) statements and instead keep focusing on Matthew 28.

The problem with Martin's line of thought is that it is much more about American individualism than it is about Christianity. He espouses a view of absolute individual interpretation of Scripture, and he seems oblivious to the problematic - and sinful - American denominationalism that is rampant in our culture. Again, this is not to say that there aren't problems with the pope declaring Protestant communions as something less than full churches. But it is to say that a point of view that: a) disregards the weight of the Christian tradition; b) ignores the fact that individuals need the church to help them interpret Scripture; c) shows a lack of concern for Christ's intended unity of the church; and d) encourages the worst aspects of American individualism, demonstrates a whole lot of exactly what is wrong with the typical American Protestant mindset.

Here are some of my thoughts, for what they're worth:

A greater familiarity with Latin (and Greek, for that matter) on the part of the church is a very good thing. It unites us with the communion of saints throughout history, and it calls us to look into the tradition for help in navigating the dangerous waters of the present time. Celebrating the Eucharist in a language that most (or all) of a congregation does not understand may raise some issues, but they are certainly different ones than those that Crossan focuses on.

Just so, any statement out of the Vatican that helps us think more seriously about our status as Protestants (those who are protesting something about the Catholic church), and helps us think about the path to Christian unity, can't be all bad. It is disingenuous to say that statements about church tradition (and hence, church unity) are somehow "trumped" by a shallow appeal to biblical prooftexting, and it is downright dangerous to encourage American Protestants to go right ahead interpreting Scripture individually as they see fit.

In the critiques of both Crossan and Martin, there appears to be an undercurrent of the pervasive and popular line of thought that anything that runs counter to our refined liberal democratic sensibilities must be wrong. Lord help us.

Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors

I have wanted to write a column about the "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors" slogan of the Igniting Ministry campaign for a long time. But I've always held back for some reason. I respect the work of the general church, and I know a lot of time and effort has gone into developing and implementing Igniting Ministry.

Still, I have some real issues with what the Open Hearts slogan communicates about the United Methodist Church to the wider world. And for that reason, I went ahead and wrote my column. You can read it here in the UM Reporter.

At the bottom line, Open Hearts is about marketing the church. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. After all, viewed a certain way, marketing is a kind of "front line" evangelism. Every church that buys radio time, lists its service times in the local paper, or has a marquee sign out front is doing marketing of a sort.

But what worries me is the message that Open Hearts sends. As I explain in my column, I think it can play into some of the worst aspects of our individualistic, "anything goes" American mentality. Igniting Ministry's efforts seem to frame the church as the place where you can come and get all your "felt needs" met. But isn't that false advertising? An honest church is going to ask you to toss a lot of the garbage in your life into the trash can so you can be an authentic follower of Jesus. It is going to show you "open hearts, open minds, open doors," as far as the invitation to follow Jesus is concerned, but once that invitation is accepted, it is also going to ask you to live in a radically different way.

Saying 'yes' to Jesus and his church is about discipline, commitment, and sacrificial love. Living in the church is not always easy, but it is where redemptive life is found. When we market our church on the world's terms and in the world's language, I am afraid that the core of who we are gets fatally obscured. We need the church, instead, to be a truly faithful community built on honest, solid theology. When that happens, we will be marketing ourselves by the very way we live in the midst of this troubled world.

And that's worth more than all the catchy slogans in the world.

Tragedy at the Simple Way

Beth Quick recently reported the destruction of the home of the Simply Way community in Philadelphia due to fire. I don't know how I had missed this. The Simple Way is the home of Shane Claiborne, author of the Irresistible Revolution. You can read about the unfortunate incident here, on Jim Wallis' blog.

There was an excellent NPR interview with Shane a couple of months back, which is available here. Like most radical disciples, Shane elicits strong opinion from both ends of the spectrum - those who would call themselves liberals and those who would call themselves consevatives. But regardless of your opinion on the specifics of Shane's theology, you have to admire the deep and intentional Christian commitment of he and other folks at the Simple Way.

Gratuitous Cat Post #2

So why is the term "cat owner" a misnomer? Read on...

The Washington Post carried a fascinating article about the domestication of cats a few days ago, called "Why do cats hand around us? (Hint: They Can't Open Cans)." The story reports the conclusion of scientists about the history of cats' domestication.

Researchers argue that cats were domesticated in a much different way than other animals such as dogs, horses, cattle, and goats. All these other critters served important functions of either food or labor for our prehistoric ancestors. So we sought them out for domestication, and we selectively bred them to be more docile and more willing to submit to our control.

Not so with cats. Our furry feline friends don't fit the profile of other domestic animals. You can't slap a saddle on them and go for a ride (like horses). You can't get them to pull a heavy load (like cattle or oxen). They're not much good in the way of hunting or protection (like dogs). And the darned little critters are just too tough and stringy to eat.

So why did they ever get domesticated? The story reports that cats were originally drawn to grain stores that prehistoric people gathered once they became settled farmers. Grain draws rats and mice. And mice and rats draw, well, cats. People like for cats to eat the vermin that civilization tends to attract, so we kept them around. But the article argues that people didn't selectively breed them (at least, not originally). Cats wouldn't allow it. What cats did, though, was selectively breed themselves. More congenial cats could count on a bowl of milk or a night indoors, and those are helpful things for survival. But cats are, according to this story, still much closer to their wild cousins than other domestic species. That explains why the average housecat can fend for itself in the wild, whereas the average Cocker Spaniel just won't last that long.

Genetic research shows that domestic cats today are all descended from a single wildcat species that existed in the Ancient Near East. Unlike other species that were domesticated independently of one another, in different times and different geographical locales, cats were really only domesticated once. And when humans moved to new areas, they didn't re-domesticate new cat species. They just carried their cats with them.

So are you a "cat owner"? Of course not. There's no such thing!

The flag, the cross, and the sanctuary

The United Methodist Reporter has recently covered debates within the church over whether it is appropriate to have an American flag in the sanctuaries of our churches. As you can imagine, feelings are passionate on either side of the debate. For those against the presence of the flag, reasons that are given center around the flag as an idolatrous image unfit for for a sanctuary where Jesus Christ is worshiped as Lord. According to this reasoning, the flag represents a symbol of another lordship - that of country and patriotism.

Those who support the presence of the flag argue that it does not necessarily imply idolatry. For them, the flag symbolizes support for church members who have served in the armed forces, or for the United States as a country that is founded upon "Christian principles."

This story, by Mary Jacobs, outlines the debate that has been going on.

There is a mistake made by many in the flag debate over whether approval or disapproval of the flag is a "liberal" or "conservative" issue. And flinging those labels around is irresponsible. It should be possible to have a considered, theological debate over the use of the flag without resorting to shallow, secular political stereotypes.

I personally believe that any flag is inappropriate for use in a sanctuary. (I would actually include the use of the "Christian flag" that often sits on the opposite side of the chancel from the American flag in that statement.)

The question I would ask of advocates for the flag is simply, "Why is it necessary?" To me it seems that the cross, as the symbol of Christ and of his death, is the one symbol that is appropriate - indeed, necessary - for Christian worship. Placing an American flag, while perhaps not outright idolatry, certainly carries the risk that the wrong message will be received by those who gather for worship. We do not gather out of allegiance to country, but to Christ. We do not gather with permission of the government. We gather out of response to a call to be God's people. And no flag is necessary to demonstrate that fact.

I have worshiped in several churches in Peru in recent years through mission work with the Iglesia Metodista there. It has struck me before that our Peruvian brothers and sisters never seem to see the necessity of displaying Peru's national flag in their sanctuaries. By refraining, I think they safeguard against sending messages of mixed allegiances.