Claiming Charles Darwin: Confessions of a Christian

The phrase “Father, forgive me, I have sinned” might be an appropriate statement for generations of Evangelical Christians who demonized evolution as the enemy of faith. It’s not the first time in history that the church has misunderstood both science and its own theology.

Not 450 years earlier, it was the Roman Catholics who got it wrong siding with Ptolemaic astronomy claiming the earth as the center of the universe. A controversy lasting 200 years started in 1543 with Nicolaus Copernicus work, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, was heighten by Galileo Galilei’s house arrest by Pope Paul V in 1633 and the prohibition of Copernicus writings by the Church in 1758. The controversy concluded in 1835 when Copernicus books were removed from the Church’s index of prohibited books. And all for what? For the belief in the primacy of the earth as the center of the physical universe. At the time, to claim otherwise was “false and altogether opposed to Holy Scripture.” Theses events feels familiar when fast forwarded to the current religious dispute on evolution. Is evolution “false and altogether opposed to Holy Scripture?”

The Faith of Charles Darwin

In the opening words of the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin quotes Francis Bacon,

 “Let no man think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God’s word or in the book of God’s works, but rather let man endeavor an endless progress or proficience in both.”

It may be a surprise to some that Darwin’s faith was that of a Bishop by his own account when he wrote the Origin of the Species. Darwin wrote the Origin of Species as a careful argument for God’s established laws of nature, that of natural selection. The Origin of Species handles Darwin’s new ideas with sensitivity to the static earth belief he is confronting, and by doing so, echoes a tradition in Enlightenment thinking, that God’s laws and nature’s laws were complementary, not in opposition. This similar sentiment was embrace by most scientists of the period, and most recently, with Albert Einstein who desired to know the thoughts of God through the language of mathematics. Even the US Declaration of Independence evokes this tradition with the statement “the laws of nature and laws of God” in its call to emancipate the new world from the old.

But Darwin’s observations are more than science and set the stage for the troubling debate on social reform of his day. In Darwin’s age, the established order saw disturbing disparities between the societal elite and impoverished suffering working class of the industrial age. Change was in the air and those who sought social reform quickly latched on to Darwin’s ideas as a catalyst for disruption. However, the church and established elite of England viewed the structures of society as the rightful ordering by God’s providence. This stagnant and oppressive cultural mold was support by the religious belief in a young earth and an ordained social class complete with the suffrage and squalor of the working classes. The puritan paradigm “be good and be blessed, be bad and be cursed” saw its fulfillment in the social structures of the time. Darwin, in part, seeks to understand the affliction of the poor and finds a rational in natural selection as laws of nature. By doing so, Darwin begins to break a religious notion of providence that justified the segmentation of society into rich and poor.

Science and Faith for Darwinism

For Darwin’s, faith and science were entangle in the liberating tapestry of knowledge of God’s works and word. Natural selection helped serve to debunk the Victorian myths of justified discrimination and fueled social reform. Social status as a result of natural selection shook the belief that it was order by God on the merits of the privileged. Perhaps the tragedy of reforms flight to Darwinism was the values they sought were the core values of the Christian good news, the gospel. But, the establish religious order was so far off its message that it was anything but good news for the poor and Darwinism help fill the void. Unfortunately, Darwinism, in the form of Social Darwinism, would later be used in the human rights debate at the turn of the 20th century. It was social Darwinism against the church that argued for the lesser status of the North American Indian. The church argued for their equality under God as made in the image of God as the foundation for equal treatment as human beings. Social Darwinism would later become part of the 20th century rational that shares responsibility for the killing of hundreds of millions of people in a single century (i.e. Marxism alone was responsible for over 100 million), a number significantly more than all the people killed by religious wars in all recorded history (less than 15 million).

Decoupling and separating the theological roots of Darwinism turned out to be risky business. For the atheistic believer, it opened Pandora’s Box of violence of man against man on a scale never witness before in history. Natural section, without its theological roots, is a very powerful argument for the strong over the weak as in Nietzsche’s concepts of man and superman. For the theistic believer who holds to the young earth theory, the separation of Gods works from word was a loss of intellectual credibility in the modern age. So what went wrong in the debate between the Evolutionist and Creationist? Why would those who are so commitment to truth reject truth and especially truth that liberates?

Lessons From the Past

What went wrong in the debate for Evangelical Christendom was the same fixation the Catholic Church had on Ptolemaic astronomy. For the church, it interpreted its theology too closely to the changing world of scientific knowledge, an association that the writers of the Bible never intented. By linking moral truth to the evolving body of empirical understanding, the church risks devaluing the original meaning of the Biblical writers. In turn, it sets up misleading tests for truth. So today, the picture of a Christian embracing evolutionary theory is analogist to oil and water. Most people would suggest that the two beliefs are a contradiction. To accept evolution is to deny God’s existence, and to believe in God is to stand against the theory that man came from monkeys. The Scopes Trial of 1925 typified these positions. The Butler Act of 1925 in Tennessee made it unlawful in state-funded educational establishments, “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” If we teach evolutionary theory in our schools are we not denying the Creator and the foundations of our moral authority?

As someone who shares a theistic world view, these polarized viewpoints are more monkey business then well thought out positions. In the case of the Scopes Trial in 1925, it started as a publicity campaign for the town of Dayton, Tennessee. George Rappleyea, a local manager in several mines, convinced a group of business men that a test of the Butler Act would give the town much needed attention. He convinced a local school teacher, Scopes, to violate the Butler act and the American Civil Liberties Union financed the case for Scopes. Today, the debate continues to serves the social agendas of prejudice and fear by the Christian right and secular religious (Richard Dawkins) rather than honest intellectual understanding and openness to the other.

Common Ground in the Evolutionary Debate

There are moderate positions like theistic evolution which harmonized natural selection with the works and word of God. Theistic evolution believes that biological selection is a natural process within God’s creation and allows latitude for science within revelation. Not surprisingly, this view is accepted by the Roman Catholic Church, but also by Eastern Orthodox, Church of the Nazarene, Baptist, Anglicanism, and even within Judaism and Islam. To this list, there are many evolutionary biologists who are theist, believers in God. Here, evolution is not a theory that disproves God but complements our understanding of God’s creation. Like all scientific theories that “evolve” or are falsified over time, evolution may suffer its own death and room made for new ideas and understandings of the origins of species. Theistic evolution does not tie the truth claims of Christianity to a particular scientific viewpoint of origins, but remains open to what science can reveal. More importantly, theology is the moral anchor for scientific endeavors. Science has known sin, most notably in the 20th century where empirical knowledge by men is used against men in forms gas, weapons, and nuclear fusion in a historically unprecedented scale.

The history of science and theology demonstrate how scientific knowledge can fold nicely into our understanding of the “Laws of God and Nature.” In the case of Darwinism, how a scientific endeavor helped open up the works of God and loosen the bonds social stratification in 18th century England. Yet, it was hijack by reform movements who place man alone at the center of the universe, a dangerous cocktail that unleashed man’s most violent century. The moral of the matter for the believer and cause for our confession is not to enlist the dichotomy of thought that separates religion from science and untethers morality from empirical enterprise. Like Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, faith should side on the glory of a rational God who established the cosmos.

Forgiveness: The Moral Conundrum of the Economic Bailout

Business Ethics and Financial Services

Forgiveness – The Moral Conundrum of the Economic Bailout

Holding the economic bailout of the Wall Street to a higher standard may sound trite, trivial or worse, irrelevant in our age of analysis and analytic antidotes. It takes intellectual courage to suggest that our cure may lie outside the temples of higher education and think tanks. But in time of crisis, we often look to the measure of morality for guidance.

On the marble frieze of the façade of the US Supreme Court is the court’s pantheon of 18 prominent lawgivers of history, from Moses to Muhammad. Concerning the matter of social and monetary debt, only one had more to say then Moses as the great interpreter of the Law of Moses, Jesus Christ. Are there forgotten lessons hidden in the pages of wisdom asking to be told again? Are there obligations and insights for Wall Street? What about Main Street? In our age of financial modernity, can the past offer us anything?

Business Ethics: An Historical Case Study

Two historic stories resonate for today’s financial bailouts and shoring up institutions too big to fail. They are not the narratives of economic due diligence, but of vice and virtue. They are told to confront conventional financial wisdom, yet accessible and intuitive to the listener of any education. Their message is immortalize, not in the text book, but in the language of a parable. For Wall Street, it is the parable of the unforgiving servant. For Main Street, it is the prodigal’s son. Both parables address remedies for large scale debt, social obligations, and our attitudes to the recipients of monetary release. These remedies inform our cultural values and give us different tools to guide our policy decisions. The question remains, do we have the moral sophistication to adopt such truth telling narratives, or will we ignore the tools of inner and outer freedom that could lift us out of our crisis?

Ethical Issues of a Financial Bailout: Suspending Moral Hazard

For Wall Street, the unforgiving servant tells of a king who reconsiders his judgment against a servant. The servant, who owed millions of dollars, lacked the assets on his balance sheet to pay it back. The servant appealed, and the king was moved by compassion. Compassion trumped the servant’s sentence and the mechanics of the servant’s liquidation into slavery. But here’s the rub of the matter. What does the servant do with his new found freedom? Does the servant reciprocate or “pay forward” the same forgiveness and compassion to those who owe him significantly smaller sums of money? As a creditor, the servant sends his debtors into a debtor’s prison, liquidating their assets and personal freedom until the debt is paid. Oddly enough, it was the common folk, who now felt compassion for servant’s debtors in prison. Their appeal to the king results in a reconsideration of his decision. The king reprimands the servant, revokes his debtor’s forgiveness and liquidates the servant’s assets and freedom.

Regrettably, the message of financial forgiveness was not a spiritualize lesson to be conveniently reduced to the realm of private morality. The listeners of the parable recognize what it meant. In a world of debtor and creditors, the values propagated by this parable would directly impact the creditor’s balance sheets. So if, by any standard, we claim that in “God we Trust” or invoke His favor at time of war or claim Him as a “Christian nation,” then we elicit principles by which we will be measured by. Ironically, the actions of the US Government to provide financial aid to the tottering financial giants without oversight could be considered that great act of compassion and forgiveness aimed at mitigating a market disaster.

This is bit to noble for politics, but here is the rub. As the Government pours billions of dollars into these faltering institutions, how do these creditor institutions treat their debtors in financial difficulties? Do they apply the same standards of help, attention, restoration, or even better, forgiveness? Where are the community voices telling the stories of how an AIG or Countrywide extended the same measures of financial freedom they received? To whom have they forgiven, restructure, or restored human flourishing in communities of foreclosures? The parable begs significant questions for the behaviors of our sacred institutions of capitalism, only of course if in “God we Trust.”

An Ethical Example for Main Street

What about Main Street? Should Main Street be bailed out? Is there not explicit resentment by those who managed their money towards those that did not? Are the victims of predatory financing, by their own choosing, reaping the risks they have taken? Why should they be rescued from their mistakes at the expense of the taxpayer? Are we in risk of perpetuating a socialist agenda that devalues our country?

The parable of the prodigal son does not finish the story with a son who returns home to the delight of his father. The prodigal son returns home broke after he exhausted his father’s inheritance on variety of sinful delights.  Is this the kind of son we would want to see returning home?  This situation sets the stage for the message of the parable. The parable ends on the examination of the attitude of responsible bother, a son who remained in the service of his father and his feelings toward the prodigal brother, his father’s forgiveness and extravagance acceptance of this undisciplined family member.

The brother’s attitude, characterize by anger and resentment that the father never extended such special favors to him, is contrasted and trumped by the importance of the prodigal son’s restoration. Human flourishing is to be prized, even if the recipients deserve a lesser fate. If a member of the community is lost, compromised, trapped by debt, do we value their restoration even at the expense of the taxpayer? Regardless of how they arrived at their situation, whether by just deserts or by folly, is our hope for their ability to thrive? If my neighbor is threatened by foreclosure and the government by reasonable means funds his or her home (i.e. reduces the debt to a manageable load), what is my attitude? Most American’s would most likely side with the resentment of the responsible brother. The parable poses the question of how really “Christian” a nation America is or if it can be properly said that God is on our side. To be on God’s side, according to the parable, is to celebrate human flourishing.

Redefining Moral Hazard

Moral hazard is the belief that we should be punished for financial risk when those risks go bad.  This is the conventional wisdom of the banks and home foreclosures, even when alternate arrangements may keep people in their homes.  The hazard it to those that take risk (i.e. the debt) and punishment maintains the morality or integrity the borrower.  Often, at event of eviction, the quip, “it’s nothing personal, just the market” evokes the principle of moral hazard.  However, maybe it is personal and personal at the most fundamental level, at the level that evolves not only our moral relationship of man to man, but man to God.   Perhaps what trumps moral hazard is when the powerful are forgiven and in turn, fail to extend that same forgiveness.  Is not this double standard the situation that makes moral hazard morally wrong and carries the dire warning of the parable above?

The “Terrible Petition” is what St. Augustine called the Lord’s Prayer because it evoked the call to forgive debt. With St Augustine’s insight, is it still appropriate to recite the prayer in public when our institutions evoke moral hazard to evict families from their most sacred possession, their home? The Prayers invocation to forgive our monetary debts as we forgive others of monetary debt is a frightening proposition and a uniquely Christian vision. Do we really want to do that? Yet, it was the measure of God’s banking values in community. Perhaps it is just best to leave behind the wisdom of the ages and focus on the benign tools of monetary and fiscal policy and listen to the convention of moral hazard. Morality and money have always been strange bedfellows.

Promise or Pessimism: Graduating from High School

The context of this letter was the high school graduation of my son. It explores questions of creating a meaningful life out of the promise of education and career opportunities while avoiding the pitfalls of pessimism.

Dear Garrett,
On Your High School Graduation 2008

To say that mom and I are very proud of your accomplishments would be to state the obvious. You’ve applied yourself and the results speak for themselves. You are among few that have done so well! From your school grades to your talents with computers, these will serve you well over the years. You’ve taken the opportunities given and built on them. Your gifts combined with hard work and God’s blessing has brought you this point. Again, we are very pleased more then you can imagine and applaud your efforts and accomplishments.

That said, college will bring you new challenges. The obvious ones are the day to day stuff of studying, making money and getting thought the next four years. Those are the easy ones. They somehow solve themselves. Money will come and go, and so will college. These next few years will determine how you will build on what you already have. I’m confident you will do well as that is how you are. But there is something more significant about college, college life and the transition to work and perhaps marriage some day. Something I wish I understood at the time but could not see clearly.

As you progress through college and into your work life, there may be the temptation to become cynical about the world in which you live. I don’t mean the big picture, about politics and world events, but the personal road you are traveling on. You will feel it. It’s when things don’t go as planned, you don’t get the recognition or job you wanted or the girl you like doesn’t feel the same as you. Even one’s faith is not exempt, and you may become tired of working so hard when the rewards are not there. Oddly enough, it’s not necessarily the negative situations, but the converse, of the rewards like a good education, success, financial wealth, can produce cynical attitudes and at worse, indifference to those that don’t have what you have. It’s not the success or lack of it, but what you bring to life situations, your mindset, that changes your world. How you respond to your personal issues over the next four years will say more about what you’ve become and where you go in life than anything else. This will be your narrative identity, or better said in traditional terms, your religion.

Here’s the rub of the matter. What shapes your character are your day to day choices. And choices come from values or morals. If you lose the” moral compass” (remember the GPS, still works well but it’s a bit dated now) you started with, your moral direction, then you find yourself lost over time. It a slippery slope that many have found themselves on, me included. Of course, all this discussion about morals begs the better question, “What are my values and why?” If you can’t answer the question or at least struggle with it, then you’ll become whatever the current North American culture of conformity dictates. Few have the ability to not only see beyond our common culture of consumption and its underpinnings, but to hold themselves to higher standards, especially when it is not convenient to do so.

How you answer these great questions will shape your life’s journey. Its outcome is often uncertain, and nor can I give you its answers as they are realized over one’s life. But I can point to a direction that I now understand. You may not have my educational background or experiences, so I don’t expect that you may see its significance without first discounting it. The most significant moral concept that you can understand comes from t our Christian heritage, and is the “Imago Dei,” (Latin) or the Image of God in man. It’s a guiding reality that informs our lives about who we are, from Capitalism to career choices, from personal relationship to business decisions. Historically, it has nurtured the great religious revolutions, like Judaism (Moses) and Christianity (Jesus Christ), and the later reformations in culture from Luther to John Newton and underwritten the values of the American Revolution and our current views on human rights. It touches fields of science with Rene Descarte and Isaac Newton to current “empirical” assumptions about the nature of the scientific enterprise. Others have sought to strike down the “Imago Dei” and it value with disastrous result, like Nietzsche’s underpinnings with its logical outworking in leaders like Mau, Stalin, and Hitler to name a few of the more honest secularist from the past century. These were moral and principled men (yes the Nazis were principled), and shared a common “moral freedom” that devalued and destroyed the “Imago Dei” in men and the entailing inherent value of individual life itself (i.e. Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals). It was a slippery slope that will always continues to leave its mark on our world.

If I can impress one concept on you, it is this, that, not only are you made in God’s image but so is everyone around you, regardless of their status or situation in life. This plurality of God’s image in man is both individual and social, and holds us accountable in death for what we’ve done. It’s the great equalizer that says we are all valuable and that the individual counts. It concepts are echoed in thinking of the American constitution, of life, liberty and the purist of happiness. But it is much more than a neurotic pursuit of the individual happiness even as the founder imagined it. Personal happiness demands that we are responsible and accountable for the well being of the “other,” those who we encounter t that need help. We are “our brother’s keeper.” To be created in the image of God is to see the possibility of that image in our multicultural global world (i.e. movements like World Vision, or Opportunity International). Moses saw this vision of human rights and reached into the events of his time as he wrote the grand narrative of creation and as it played out in the dysfunctional family of Abraham, God’s confrontation of Pharaoh (Ramsey’s II) in his genocide of the infants, and in the history of Israel. These values were reaffirmed in the globalization of the Roman world of the New Testament, and continue today in liberating Christian movements in countries like South America or China.

What will take you beyond the ups and downs of life are not life rewards of consumption, of possessions and accumulated assets, but your sense of mission, to pursing your understanding of the Image of God in the world you’ll inherit. It starts with finding something you like to do, as your own creative expression. Computer Science can be tedious and the cubical jobs demeaning at times. But find something you like about it allot, even a related discipline and purse it. Be a creator in your field because you found a passion, and avoid looking for your self-esteem in the politics of school or business and the roles you achieve. Next, engage your energies with your talents to serve others who need help in this world. Be creative and think global too, as there are many possibilities. To be made in the Image of God is to cultivate relationships of service with people who are on the margin. Seek out not only the opportunities to serve, but the relationships as well. If you develop this sense of conscience, you will have discovered life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

You are at a place where your freedom for the possibilities in life peaks. Many things are good, but few things noble. Knowing how to distinguish the two is wisdom. Be open to new things, but without loosing your roots. See your world as both a steward of our planet and as your brother’s keeper though the lens of the Image of God. In your own way, pursue and struggle with both the intellectual roots of the Imago Die and its application here and now.

On another note, I know you will have fun in University and enjoy the things of value that come your way. I’m sure you’ll have no problem with this! Here’s one last thought from a paragraph I gave you in a letter when you graduated from Eagle Elementary and you got the GPS or compass.

“But, it’s also more. It’s not just another good thing. It’s to remind you of the best things. And the best things are your character, and how you decide to act and think on this journey into Middle School and later into High School. The Bible will be your compass in the same way it has served the great men of history (like the many presidents of the United States), and all who have decided to use it. It will give you direction. So when you have fun with this GPS (and it’s a very cool one), when it shows and tracks your movements (even in the car or airplane), you will know that you have another kind of compass that gives you direction with friends and school. You’re about to move into a new grade and a new school. This is like a new “forest” for you and you’ll know where to get direction. The GPS will remind you of that.

Here’s a principle for 1Timothy 6:17 to 19 given as advice at the height of the globalization of Rome. Something I’m still learning about, and wish to give to you:

“Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.

Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed.”

Lots of Love from Dad and Mom.

Death’s Sting of a Young Life: A Fumbled Promise of God?

The following is the eulogy for Joshua Baranieski who left us suddenly at the age of nineteen. It was given by Murray Owen at St Albert Alliance Church on June 20th 2008. The heartfelt tribute celebrates Josh and explores the tradgedy of the believer.

A Tribute to Josh
In his tragic accident on Sunday, June 7, 2008

It was early Sunday morning when I got the call about Josh’s car accident. What had started as a peaceful Sunday morning now changed and our hearts were heavy as all we could do is wait for news as the drama unfolded from a distance. I don’t think any of us will be able to pass by a highway marker of a cross and flowers without feeling the pain of this moment. And, it’s a parent’s worst nightmare to have someone taken at such a young age with all the promise of youth and who was loved so much by so many. And, it is why we are here, because he, Josh, was so open to all of us. Josh was easy to make friends with and in this way he reminds me of his late grandfather.

So where do I begin. It’s said that a tree is best measured when it is down. If you picture it for a moment, it is so true. Measuring a standing tree is difficult, especially when the tree is tall. But, when on the ground, it is easily measured. It’s true of our lives, and today, for Josh. All this may be a bit too noble for Josh if he were here today, but for me, I long to understand and make some sense out of what has happened and not as just a random accident and a mere commentary on a life short lived.

Much could be said about Josh’s love for the outdoors, his accomplishments in sports, from hockey to lacrosse, and especially his sense of sportsmanship, fair play, and his desire to give back to the sport through coaching. Many a night and day was spent at the ice rink or on the field as you watched Josh develop his athletic skills. I know these memories will be fond places we all will visit when we think of Josh. For me, it was on the 7th hole at a golf course in Boise Idaho last summer, in the early twilight of a warm summers night as we approached the green and a full moon came over the hill in front of us. It was an amazing moment of wonder that Jordan, my son Garrett, and I shared with Josh as we press to finish the front nine before dark. For you Patricia and Merlyn, for Jacqueline, Matthew, Jordan and Angeline, I know you share many more fond memories, especially since Josh had such a good heart.

But, there is something more significant than just the memories that Josh’s death challenges us with. It’s a life taken, not after a full life, but in the prime of life when all the possibilities of youth and its energies begin to take shape. It is a mother and father who are heartbroken and the brothers and sisters who feel robbed of lifelong friendship. And it is all of us, from relatives to family and friends who not only miss Josh, but share in the pain of the family. I know from my own children that the friends they bring home are often dear to me and to lose any of them in their youth touches something in our very core.

Many here today share in the faith that played a role in Josh’s life. How tragic that it was on his way to church that his life was taken. And it is here where faith confronts us. Death is the ultimate evil. It is harsh and cruel, and a fate we will all share. It stares back at us in silence. This is when faith hurts. It’s a cry that comes from the commitment to faith. It’s a pain to be felt. And the pain to be felt is this: that silence is a huge insult to faith. “Where is Josh” is not just a request for information, but a protest and cry for help. How are we to understand all this?

Our reaction may be anger, anger against someone or something. Over the past week, I read many of the posting you have made about Josh’s in his Facebook profile. It was on the Saturday night before the accident that he made his final post. It was strange to read it, his recent remarks with all the playfulness of youth that betrayed his sudden departure. And, as news got out, I was thrilled at the resilience of the many comments made on his site, and the comfort and the faith they express. Words like, “Josh, it must be some awesome up there!! Can’t wait to see you again someday; it’s not goodbye, just see you later.” Another wrote, “See you soon. Can’t wait till that time, lol, well I’m going to have to, but you know what I mean. Love you man!!” And, an endearing note, “Goodbye Josh. I love you so much, you were a great person and a great friend. I can’t wait to see you again in heaven.” These express a confidence of faith that is fresh. However, for some, not all, it is faith that is first wound by shock and tested by anger before it finds a resting place again. To experience the loss of a loved one so young and the entailing anger is too walk thought the dark night of the soul.

But “Whence this anger?” We dream of immortality and death’s sting is the enemy we all resisted. Its presence triggers within a desire for significance in life that death steals from us, a need for transcendence. As one girl wrote on Josh’ Facebook, “Josh was taken before his time.” Her sense of loss from what could have been reveals the tragedy. Last Christmas, Josh, Angeline, and my kids, Garrett and Erica skied together at Mt. Washington. It was fun on a classic west coast power day. Josh’s grandfather that taught him to ski and I could see how Josh had taken the basics of skiing and on his own built them to an advanced level. This was typical of Josh as he could always do more with what had been given to him, a reoccurring characteristic in his life. Whether it was home schooling, getting a job, finding an economical car, Josh was a self starter and a builder. With this attributes, as a young man, he had much promise as a future husband, father, and contributor to the communities he would find himself in. Like Jordan, and Matt, I too would like to ski again with Josh, but death is the ultimate thief taking from us what is most valuable.

Both our joy for Josh’s life and the indignation at his tragedy are now signs post pointing us beyond our natural reality. Our daily gestures of ordinary life with Josh wants me to say “no” to death in a moral outrage at the loss of a loved other. A death refusing hope lies at the core of all of us. In spite of an age of rationality, of science, of empiricism, and surrounded by death on all sides, the hope within us continues to say “no” to deaths intrusion. And through this “no” to death we are lead to faith in the reality of another world that validates our hope as something other than an illusion. It is what the history of reason, experience and authoritative narrative affirm as a massive signal of transcendence or what the social scientist Peter Berger softly calls a “rumor of angels” or CS Lewis so poignantly states as, “God’s megaphone.” It gets our attention, especially in the loss of those dearest to us. Today, Josh has awakens in us life’s fragility, but also our need for God Himself.

However, our temptation, should we become cynical, is to blame God for what has happened, as though God were in His distant heaven ordering and manipulating our lives like ponds on a chess board. Fortunately, this is not the God of the Christian bible. The God of the Christian Bible is a God who protests against suffering and death and all that is evil. He is a God who condemns the sanctioning of tragedy or evil, and who through His prophets expresses His deep pain over evil, a pain that culminates in the crucifixion of His son Jesus. If God’s power is found is the death of His son, then God’s power can hardly be that of some remote monarch who shows his supremacy by avoiding pain. It can only be the power of a love that works through weakness in our world. A God that has chosen to be vulnerable to suffering and death begins to cut away the ground that He is to blame. And, if God himself suffers, then God to is to be number with the victims of tragedy. God knows pain as we know pain. We staked our lives on the conviction that there is One who knows and cares.

Josh had a good heart and as his uncle, I don’t ever recall seeing him angry. Not that he didn’t have his moments as his family can attest to, but anger was not a motivation for him. His tendency was to be a peacekeeper or better describe as the strong silent type. Humor and laughter were more of his day to day guides. When Josh and Jordan came to visit us in Boise last summer, I watch how he interacted with you Jordan and his care for things that mattered in your life, like your need to have glutton free foods. As an older brother to you Jordan, I never saw him put you down or treat you poorly. It was fun to be around him as we got you ready to float the Boise River on that hot summer’s day. And when it came time to return home, Josh was gracious in accepting help to get his car tuned up for your trip. I felt proud to spend a week with you two guys and will not forget.

In the end, blame and anger were not options for Josh in the hospital. He fought hard as he struggled to hang on to life as though it was his way of given his family and friends the opportunity to say goodbye. But it was also more than this, which again, was typical of Josh. Josh in his fight for life gave you Patricia, the opportunity to make some decision about Josh and the doctor’s time to prepare for how Josh could give life in his death. Josh was an organ donor and was able to affect many lives in ways many of us can’t. (DETAILS HERE) Your tears Patricia, Merlin, Jacqueline, Mathew, Jordan and Angeline, became heartfelt tears of joy for those who were recipients, some close to death itself. No one asked you to pay this price nor should any family be expected to give up so much, but in fashion that was so characteristic of Josh, Josh was once again able to build on what had been given to him.

Job was a man in the Hebrew Bible who was vexed by the dark night of the soul, not unlike our experience today. He lost almost everything in series of tragic events that took the lives of his children and all his financial assets. In Job’s moments of darkness, his comforter’s advice to Job was to embrace the events as the will and goodness of God. The comforters caution Job to admit his failings, accept his trials as God purposes, curse God and die. But Job does not believe this. For Job, it was not right, it was not good, it didn’t make sense, was highly unfair and where was God anyway, as Job wants to take God to task in the matter. Job, like Abraham, believes that God is good in a way that Job himself understands goodness. When God finally appears on the scene, God speaks to the comforters and tells them that they have not said of God the thing which is right, as His servant Job has. The point is made that God does not like having people say whatever happens is good. Evil and tragedy are not from His hand. Evil is a mystery and neither God nor evil will disclose its why or reasons.

I do not understand why this happened to Josh. However, evil is not part of God’s good creation, but a parasite, a corruption, a perversion of the created order. The bible doesn’t even attempt to provide a rational for evil because we can only explain things that are reasonable that fit into coherent patterns. But evil, tragedy, and senseless suffering are irrational, inexcusable, and unjustifiable. Evil is not something to be understood, it is to be abhorred, to be shunned, and actively fought against. Evil and death are outside of God’s purposes for us as human beings. What is said of Job resonates with those of us closes to Josh. Like Job, faith affirms that that was so tragic about Josh accident was not the hand of God, but that of a fallen world, a ground cursed, and a mystery of evil that hides in silence.

So what is faith of Job? Abraham is credited as the father of faith and the model the biblical writers look to. What was his faith? Abraham’s faith was that God is good and can be trust to keep his promises. This model of faith, shaped by the biblical authors, includes all the promises God makes.

I made a promise to Josh once several years ago when the Apple IPods were becoming popular. I sent Josh an IPod with the promise that he could have it if he listened to a selection of speakers in the field of religion and philosophy over the period of several months. And Josh surprised me by keeping his side of the bargain. He wrote me one or two paragraphs on what he learned after each speaker and I still have his notes today. Sometime, the topics were not easy, but I can help but believe that it somehow contributed to his maturity of faith and how he worked it out towards others. We all know how much he love music too, so the promise was great incentive for him.

So here is a promise for you Patricia and your family from the Psalmist David in the Old Testament. It reads, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” It’s important here not to empty the phrase “the desires of your heart” as some abstract good that you ought to want and don’t. It means what it says, “the desires of your heart.” And to be heartbroken over this past week is to have loss the desire of your heart, Josh. I cannot pretend to know what defeating good will come out of Josh’s tragedy, but God does not break his promises, including that one about the desires of your heart. If you hold that belief, it does not take away the pain of suffering you feel right now, like in childbirth where the desire for the child does not remove the pain of birth. In this sense, the faith of Abraham, that God is good and is a promise keeper, is both difficult, but comforting and consoling. When our heart is broken, it is the desires of our hearts that we think we have forgone, but that’s what the palmist tells us has not happened. Whatever was the desire that you lost that you thought you could not bear, delight yourself in the Lord and the God of your delight will give you the desire of your heart. This is God’s promise to you and yours. Neither can I give you a better promise nor a tribute to Josh then this.

For those that share the Christian belief, the final promise of God is found in the hope of the resurrection. The sting that death brings and its pain are trumped by the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. The physical resurrection proclaimed by the early Christians was not some isolated or random act of divine power to fight the Roman empire. In their Jewish context, it meant the vindication and renewal of God’s good created order. It was an anticipation of when all that is out of joint will be healed and restored. So the resurrection expressed is not some “pie in the sky” ideal of life after death, but the redemption of our history. When the accident happened, I want to turn the clock back, to rewind the events, to go back to the way things were, but there was not rewind button. So, the resurrection of Jesus is God’s promise of a new day and a transformed world for both us and Josh himself.

But, it does not come without cost. I believe Josh understood this cost and it is why he was like by so many of you. His heart was good not because he had a good heart, but because he understood the voice of his savior. Yes, Josh had his share in the foibles and fun of youth, but deep within he shared in something greater. Josh knew the forgiveness of a God who pursued him and in turn he could forgive others. Perhaps, it was why his heart was so light and humor and laughter could rule the day for him. Who knows how far Josh could have build on what God had given him. Forgiveness, like in the Lord’s Pray where God’s forgiveness is conditional on how we forgive others particularly regarding money, has been one of the spiritual engines driving social change from the Truth and Reconciliation commission in South Africa with Arch Bishop Desman Tutu, to Black Emancipation in America under Martin Luther King, and people like William Wilberforce and John Newton in their efforts to shut down the slave trade as recently popularized in the movie Amazing Grace. Josh may have not have been one of these historic figures, but certainly, the building blocks were there in his life. In the small ways, the important ways, in family, work and friends, in ordinary life, Josh knew how to forgive. Not that it was easy for him, for he had many reason not to forgive, but deep down he experience the power and renewal forgiveness brings.

Forgiveness, renewal, resurrection and hope are all linked. When we share in God own indignation against tragedy and evil itself, we turn from anger and indifference to actions in the world that embody this resurrection hope and God’s promises. Participating in God’s own protest makes our protest creative rather than cynical. We live in the tension between the cross and resurrection of Jesus, and this tension sums up the uniqueness of the Christian vision of a God who suffers with us and for us, and a God who brings hope to our world. As Dietrick Bonnehoffer , a German pastor in World War II who noted from his prison cell awaiting his execution for his role in a plot to get rid of Hitler, “the difference between the Christian hope of resurrection and a mythological hope is that the Christian hope sends a man or woman back to his or her life on earth in a wholly new way.”
Hope, the creative energy of protest, is Josh’s challenge to us with today. How will we remember him? What actions, weather social or private, will we engage in to celebrate Josh and the values we shared with him. For those who played sports with Josh or where his coaches, what resources can you bring to the game that celebrate Josh’s sportsmanship and his desire to help others play. For his close friends, who know him well, how can you champion the good causes that he valued but will not see the day? Josh gave much of himself away in death so that others may live. Can we give as much in life to help others as well? Perhaps our energies need to be focused within ourselves, starting with forgiveness and bringing new life to relationships that have become dead. As a the band, the Black Eye Peas puts it, “Where is the love?” Or as the writer Reinhold Niebuhr put it in the popular pray that was carried on a card in pockets of many a soldier in WWII, “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.” We cannot bring Josh back, but having wisdom to change things that should be is the playing field. These are the moral demands of a uniquely Christian hope as we remember Josh.

I want to close my tribute to Josh with a few lines form a song that became personal to me in my father’s dead. No I won’t sing it as that would spoil the song. but , I love the lyrics. It’s an older English songwriter, Sting and the song is “Fields of Gold.” I don’t know much about the history of the song, but the lyrics resonate a hope I have for Josh some day.

“I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I’ve broken
But I swear in the days still left
We’ll walk in fields of gold
We’ll walk in fields of gold
Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold
You’ll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold”

Our memories of Josh are those fields of barley and our hope is to walk with him in field of gold. Josh will be missed, and the pain is so real. For some, our faith is wounded and tender, but God is good and He does keep his promises.

Grace – A Tribute to My Father

A memorial tribute given by Murray Owen on the death of his father, Ken Owen in June of 2005 at Southgate Alliance Church, Edmonton, Alberta. Ken was not a Christian in the way Evanglicals would define salvation, but Ken was saved by God in the way so many of us are, by Grace. The tribute speaks to Ken’s life and how the Biblical scriptures define salvation by Grace.

“It’s risky business for me to be up here knowing that this will be difficult to do in front of all of you. I know I will have a few hard moments, and I know you will bear with me. It’s why I wrote it out. Several months ago, I began having a feeling that I needed to be preparing to say something about my Dad at his funeral. I didn’t know why this was happening at the time, but today I know why. I’ve assured the rest of the family that I’m not having any premonitions about anyone else!

So where do I begin. It’s said that a tree is best measured when it is down. If you picture it for a moment, it is so true. Measuring a standing tree is difficult, especially when the tree is tall. But, when on the ground, it is easily measured. It’s true of our lives, and today, for my Dad. All this may be a bit too noble for Dad if he were here today, but here goes.

There are many measurements of my Father’s life. He was a husband, a father to me, to my sister, Patrica, and my brother, Darrell. When we married, he welcomed into the family our spouses, Valerie, Merlin, and my wife Linda too. And, he was best at being a Grandpa to our children, his grandchildren, Jacqueline, Mathew, Josh, Jordan and Angeline; Aaron, Christopher, Kara and Mathew; and Garrett and Erica. All were special and he took the time to be with each one. Also, he was a neighbor to those around in every way that it means to be a good neighbor. He was a neighbor to strangers, even to those that were against him. My Dad was never vengeful, but he was firm about doing the right thing. Those of us that knew him witness some, if not all of these traits. His heart was good.

There’s a small portion of the Lord’s Prayer that I’d like to focus on while remembering my Dad. It’s found in the gospel of Matthew chapter 6. Many of us will remember in the old English translation of “Forgive our sins (trespass) as we forgive those that sin (trespass) against us” or to put is more accurately in today’s English, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgives those that are indebted to us.” This prayer has become especially meaningful to me over the years. I attend theological school and studied philosophy, seven years worth of study. Even though my career has been in the technology business, I’ve always remained a student of the historical books we call the bible and the trends that shape our world today. While I was in theological school, Dad said to me that, “You’ll have to work there too.” I don’t know what exactly he meant, but I think it was a father’s concern that his son was looking for an easy job!

A very old writer call this part of the pray the “terrible petition” Why? Because it meant that we are judge by our ability to forgive, and especially the forgiveness of monetary debt. It was the test that God’s Kingdom had come into our lives and this world. Grace would be shown to those that practice grace. It’s how the man, Jesus Christ, taught those closest around him to pray and think. The first recorded words we have of Jesus were that He came to set the captives free and to declare the acceptable year of the Lord. His mission was that of forgiveness. It marked the entranced of God’s kingdom on earth here and now. His words “acceptable year” meant the year of Jubilee to the Jews. It was year in which all debt was forgiven and land restored to the original families. Most recently, “Jubilee” is the theme chosen by G8 nations in their efforts to forgive the fiscal debt of Africa.

So what has this to do with my Dad? My Dad LIVED this with his wife, children, and his neighbor too. No marriage is perfect. In the ups and downs of my parent’s marriage, I never saw my Dad hold anything against mom, his kids, or our spouses. Sure, he had moments of frustration, like when Darrell brought Dad’s company car home with the front end smashed in, or when Darrell and I use to break the occasion windows playing road hockey. Or even when my sister, in those stormy teenage years, uses to bring some strange characters home, he treated those fellows well in spite of what I knew he was thinking. His was committed to making a “home” work and we all know how many times one must forgive to make that happen. My wife will vouch for this. I think her forgiveness count is higher then mine!

But Dad went beyond this. If you ever called Dad to get help, you knew he would come. He was the type of guy that would not only help fix what you needed, but see other needs and fix those too. Mom was telling me about when Dad was last in Parksville, one of her widowed friends needed some help with a rotor-tiller for her garden. Dad not only shows up and fixes the thing, but hears that she has other needs too, like her cloths line is too high. So he tackles that as well. And several other things too! You would know that this is a sick man waiting for surgery. He repeated this kind of routine weekly, sometimes daily. He was a friend to strangers, including the young. My sister’s kids would often bring new friends home. Some of those kids did not have the best of family lives. One of those boys will miss my Dad because Dad would spend time with him, talk to him, and make him feel wanted. This boy asked to come today as he will miss my dad too. In the big snow storm on Vancouver Island of 1997, I watch and worked with Dad as he took the initiate to shovel out not just his driveway, but 3 or 4 of the neighbors too. I have this picture in my mind of him shoveling snow into the early winters evening because these people needed his help. Such was my Dad.

When I left our house in Edmonton and moved to Victoria, Dad made the overnight trip in a moving van to deliver my stuff to an apartment. I think this was his way of making sure I didn’t move back in! But this was the continuation of many acts of giving that he would show to every one of us. I can’t think of all the things he has done for my sister and her family, for Darrell and his, and mine too. Not only was he there fixing and help around our homes so things would work better, but he was especially good to all our kids. He would take the time to be with them, play with them, and help us in anyway he could. All we had to do was ask, and, of course, we did. I think his only frustration is that he couldn’t do more for you Patricia as his limitations were financial. But in the end, he gave you much more as a grandpa to your children. Most recently, I think of how he was teaching Matt and Josh how to play pool and mending the fences around your place Patricia prior to his surgery. His heart was committed to you, and he gave you something that can’t be taken away. I have many memories of Dad’s playful moments with my children and my brother’s children. For a guy that wasn’t sure about being a grandpa when the first grandchild was born, Jacqueline, he was the best! His grandchildren knew him, who he was, his example, and will miss him too.

Another gauge of the God’s Kingdom in this prayer is the measure of love itself. “No greater lover that a man has than this that he should lay down his life for another.” These were words of Jesus Christ. What was his point? If we are willing to give up our life for another, then we are willing to also give up the lesser of our lives. So if a brother, a friend, a neighbor, a stranger, or even an enemy is in need, we come to them and meet that need. This is the measure of love. The giving of ourselves in life itself. Seeing a need, and filling a need.

On many times, I watched my Dad do this. I saw him respond to crisis situation where he would commit himself and his resources to helping out. I saw this in Brockville, Ontario, as a kid when Dad helped rescue a man in a boating accident. It was Dad that brought his wagon to the dock, laid the bloody man in the back, and raced him to the hospital. One of the things that use to amaze me the most about Dad is how easily he could talk to strangers and open them up. He did this constantly without discrimination wherever he went. He treated all with the highest sense of dignitary by talking to them and engaging them in simple conversation. He loved people.

When we were kids, he gave of himself in fun ways too. He taught the whole family to ski and I can’t begin to tell you all the great memories we have from skiing. I remember the pride I felt around him when skiing with Dad and my son several years ago. It was never expressed, but was deeply satisfying inside. I felt it again when I went recently skiing with my sister and her kids, although Dad wasn’t able to come that time, I knew our experience together was build on him. And even though he is gone for now, we will still build on what he has given to us. For Darrell and I, we shared in the many hockey and other sports memories that he supported us in. There were numerous early mornings, long trips, drives and drops offs at ski hills, and vacations that he made the effort to make it happen. He was always there. At Jordan’s first hockey game after Dad’s death, Jordan said to Patricia, his mother that he was looking for Grandpa in the audience. It’s in these tender moments that I realize how much he participated in the lives of others.

Probably the darkest period of my Dad’s life was the time he spent in the Navy during the Korean War. He saw battle and its horrible impact. War changes people and challenges everything we think about what is good. Although he never spoke openly to me about it, I sensed the struggle in him and the hint of pain in the comments he made over the years. I think my Dad shared something of the struggle that Job share in the Old Testament. Job was family man who lost everything in a violent series of events, and Job struggles with the question of why, why, why, why. I believe the war made my Dad wrestle with this same question. And it’s an honest question. Job lived the dark night of the soul and questioned and doubted the goodness of God. Even our Lord, in His darkest hour, asked why. I believe this is what made Dad question faith. He just was not sure. The important thing, like Job, is that he did not concede or give up on the question of why. To do so would be to accept the events of war as normal, as not even evil, and to acknowledge the horrors of the bloodiest period in all of history, the 20th century as the acceptable outcome of man without God in politics and ordinary life. It was not acceptable for Dad. Dad’s world was a moral world, right and wrong counted absolutely, and he knew that God was necessary in this world for it to be so. Like Job, over time, he found his answers. I suppose it was in these later years of my Dad’s life, especially in the last few months, his public openness to matters of faith began to take shape. He, like Job, was finding answers to his deepest questions.

But here is the interesting part. I believe salvation came to Dad even long before I recognized it or he even realized it. This hint is in the Lord’s Prayer. Forgiveness is given to those that practice forgiveness. It’s the measure that God kingdom has entered into one’s life. Grace is show to those that practice grace. This is the gospel, God’s Kingdom on earth here and now. My Dad practice that grace, day in, and day out. He may not have been vocal about this, but the test of his commitment, of his conversion was certain, he lived it. In the word of the brother of Jesus, James, pure religion is to take care of the orphan and widow. My Dad literally did this in the many things he did every day for others. He’s the kind of person that would attract one to become a person of faith where faith is defined as one who practices grace. Dad was not a politician or theologian but any means. He was a practical man. But that is the beauty of his salvation. It is not based on wealth or education. It is for the peace makers, the meek, those that hunger for what is right, the pure in spirit. Such was my Dad’s heart.

If I were to ask the question of what a man of faith acts likes, I can honestly answer that my Dad was that kind of person. No, he wasn’t perfect, but he did practice the heart of faith. He was not much for the formality and politics of religious life, unless of course there was food involved. I don’t think he ever missed pot luck super at a church event! He did love the people. Love vibrated and resonated in him in so many ways.

I have one final comment about my Dad. Death is the ultimate evil. It is harsh and cruel, and a fate we will all share. It stares back at us in silence. This is when faith hurts. It’s a cry that comes from the commitment to faith. It’s a pain to be felt. And the pain to be felt is this: that silence is a huge insult to faith. “Where’s my Dad” is not just a request for information about why this happened, but a protest and cry for help. And the beauty and uniqueness of my faith is this, in Christianity, God shares in our suffering. God is all good and all powerful, and yet God knows pain as we know pain. We staked our lives on the conviction that there is One who knows and cares. Even when we die, God keeps faith with us in the dust. As a Christians, my faith centers on a scandal, Christ’s death as a tortured criminal. Jesus, the God-Man, lets evil do its worst to him and then overcomes it. Thus, the crucifixion has become the supreme pattern of innocent suffering in history. Symbolized by the cross, and by crosses the world over, to be Christian means we are symbolized as people of the crossed sticks. Dietrich Bonheoffer in 1945 while waiting to be hanged for resisting the Nazis and Hitler said, “Only the suffering God can help.” Christ liberates, not by removing suffering from us, but by sharing it with us. Jesus is the “God-who-suffers-with-us.”

So the symbol that allows us to face death, evil, and suffering is the cross. The cross outweighs the silence of why God permits evil. In the crucifixion, evil in its worst form meets love and love wins. There is hope for the victims; there is even forgiveness for the perpetrators. It is what it means to be people of the crossed sticks. In the dust that my Dad has become, I share a hope that both he and I will not be forgotten, that we will meet again. The cross gives us eternal dignity and purpose to our lives what otherwise be considered insignificant. Life, my Dad’s life, our lives are not trivial. These hopes were embellished and carry down in traditions by a very old framer of society, a man we call Moses in the historical account of Exodus, and today, popularized by Disney. Here, about 3500 years ago, Moses saw the killing or genocide of the Hebrew children and the brutral mistreatment of an enslaved people by a monster called Pharaoh. In that situation, Moses wrote all men, regardless of earthly status, shares in the eternal and partakes in the image of God. In doing so, Moses elevated all men and unleashed one of the greatest humanitarian platforms in all of history, and is the baseline of our human rights and even democracy on which we stand today. Why? Because, life is not only scared and special, but is remember by God in death. It’s why we are our brother’s keeper, which my Dad was. We are not just dust in the wind. We are remembered by God and held accountable as our brother’s keeper. This hope, my hope, is represented by those crossed sticks.

It also symbolized something about Dad. Dad, when wronged, always forgave. It’s a hallmark trait of what it means to have a living faith. We’re not only the people of the crossed sticks, but the people of the second chance. We give others a second change. We also give them third, fourth and fifth chances. One man said that we are to forgive each man 70 times 7. This is how often we forgive. It’s what brings faith down to earth. I’m sure Dad has forgiven me many times over well before I was ten years old, not to mention the other two rascals in our family! This is how he treated others too. On the cross, Jesus was a man who blessed those that cursed them, that gave his robe to those who took his cloak, who cared for those that others did care to help. This was the Kingdom on earth. It was also the Kingdom come in my Dad. Grace is given to those that show grace. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught those closest to him that sacred ground and the Kingdom come is when we forgive others.

One of the hymns Dad liked was Amazing Grace. I’m not sure why. But the hymn is about forgiveness and grace. The writer, John Newton, was ship’s captain and a slave trader during the transatlantic slave trade of the 17th century. These captains were monsters with their slave cargo often throwing the sick and dying overboard to preserve their human cargo. Newton was not a religious man. Once, in a storm that Newton was sure his ship would sink, he cried for mercy from God. Later, after the storm subsided, Newton reflected on what he had said and he began to believe that God had extended grace to him as a slave trader. For Newton, it started him on a journey of faith. It leads him to help another man, William Wilberforce, who became the leader in the abolition of slavery. Like John Newton, my Dad liked people and worked for their best interests in little ways. I think it’s why he found an affinity with this song.

There are many more memories I have of my Dad. Like his famous spaghetti sauce, the times we ran together, his personal achievements in running, triathlons, the Orca Running Club (memorial award) and the trophies he was proud of, our many family gatherings (relatives included!), watching hockey together, his love for food, and his friendly simile. For my mom, she will miss Dad’s surprise valentine poems that he placed in the local newspaper, and entertained us all by with this rare look into Dad’s romantic side and local awards for best Valentine’s Day poem. We all have memories of my Dad. These are my personal memories and places were I’ll go to visit him. What else can we do to remember my Dad? Pull a “Ken Owen.” What, you ask, is a “Ken Owen.” It’s what my Dad did so easily. Talk to a stranger, help someone you don’t know, forgive someone, help someone in debt, see a need, and fill a need. This was my Dad and this is how I will remember Him.

The tree is on the ground and can now be easily measured, and what I find in my Dad’s heart for people, I now see greatness in him that I took for granted. It was just him. My desire is to change myself in some small ways in memory of Dad. These words would be too noble for him if he were here. Like all of us, he was all too aware of his own imperfections. He started on a journey in life whose conclusion was uncertain. That journey, by the grace of God, gave him his greatest asset, his heart, and in the end, it is what failed him. I like to think that he just wore it out from too much use. In the future, I know I will see him again, and walk with him in fields of gold. I have peace knowing that death is not the last word, for either of us. Made in the image of God, we are people of the second change, and the crossed sticks.”

Obsolete Christianity and Revitalized Faith: Sanctorum Communio, the Communion of Saints

The ardent Capitalists or devote relativist might view the decline in North American church attendance as signaling the death of Christian religious fever. The capitalist who measures success in numbers and the relativist who sees authority would suggest that we are witnessing the secularization of America, similar to trends in Western Europe. Even the Christian faithful would agree with this. However, history has been here before, and perhaps the North American (NA) religious and secular should ask themselves if their assessment is correct.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian executed by the Nazi regime for his role in a plot to kill Hitler, was particularly disturbed by the decline in German church attendance after WWI. As the social gap widen between the poor and the social elite in the Weimar during reparation payments, he saw a society ripped apart. He observed that the Protestant church had become bourgeois, a place for the artisan and merchant class, but lacking common people. For the elite, faith was private, church attendance casual, and the working class no longer attended, so the question Bonhoeffer asks is, has Christ been divided? Since WW2, Europe’s religious narrative identity has moved towards secularization and the decline in church attendance validates this observation, and that of Bonhoeffer’s, especially in the Western academy. For those opposed to religious fever, the trend is the right one. For the faithful, it’s disturbing and problematic. What went wrong? Perhaps the answer and elucidation lies in Bonhoeffer’s study, Sanctorum Communio or the communion of saints.

What was Bonhoeffer’s observation? It was in his PhD thesis, Sanctorum Communio, written at the age of twenty one, a paper that the theologian, Karl Bart called a theological miracle. Karl Bart’s own examination was that WWI was a disaster for the Church in Europe with each of the warring nations claiming the Christian God to be on their side. Christianity had become a tribal God. When Germany fell, so did its faith in the Church. Bohofeffer’s analysis was that the Protestant church had become bourgeois and lost touch with the poor. The German church had traded its relationship with the deprived for the merchant class and lost the masses. He argues, from the New Testament, that for Christ to be present in the church, it cannot be divided and must maintain a real connection and relationship to all people regardless of race, class or belief.

During the Nazi oppression of the Jews, Bonhoeffer realized the practical implication of such commitment to community. When the right of the church to preach the gospel was challenged by the Nazi’s, Bonhoeffer rethinks the position of the church. The real issue of the church is to stand with the victims of oppression, regardless of their beliefs, race, or economic circumstances. This is the gospel. Not only was church attendance down, but the very meaning of the gospel was at risk, and Bonhoeffer could clearly see how it had been compromised. In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer states that the Protestant gospel proclaimed a “cheap grace.” Cheap grace let Christians believe they are forgiven and accepted by God even if they did not battle injustice in a world around them. Grace is costly for the believer and God. For Bonhoeffer, grace in the bible was a “costly grace.”

Peter Berger, Resurgent Religion

The conundrum today is that in spite of declining church attendance in NA and Europe, the world is not becoming less religious, but more! Peter Berger, one of the original contributors to the secularization thesis that modernity leads to secularization has with his colleagues rejected this thesis after 40 years. Instead, Berger maintains that modernity leads to pluralism (The Desecularization of the World, Resurgent Religion and World Politics, edited by Peter Berger). Not exactly the expected outcome of the enlightenment and technology, the tools that would lessen our dependence on religious belief. So what’s all this noise about declining church attendance?

As Berger notes, religious fever and its growing numbers in the Protestant church is coming from among the poor and uneducated. Church attendance is down in the both western Protestant and Catholic churches, but significantly up outside the western world. For those of us in the NA church, it begs hard hitting questions. Why are they growing and not the traditional homelands of the Protestant and Catholic faith? When growth can be seen as blessing and decline as God displeasure, this is particularly disturbing.

Peter Berger affirms that like Islam, the Evangelical upsurge is breathtaking in scope. He comments:

“Geographically that scope is even wider. It has gained huge numbers of converts in East Asia – in all the Chinese communities (including, despite severe persecution, mainland china) and in south Korea, the Philippines, across the south Pacific, throughout sub-Saharan Africa (where it is often synthesized with elements of traditional African religion), apparently in parts of ex-Communist Europe. But the most remarkable success has occurred in Latin America, there are now thought to be between forty and fifty million Evangelical Protestants south of the U.S. border, the great majority of them first-generation Protestants. The most numerous component within the Evangelical upsurge is Pentecostalism, which combines biblical orthodoxy and a rigorous morality with an ecstatic form of worship and an emphasis on spiritual healing. Especially in Latin America, conversion to Protestantism brings about cultural transformation – new attitudes towards work and consumption, a new educational ethos, and a violent rejection of the traditional machismo (women play a key role in the Evangelical churches).”

Sanctorum Communio, The Communion of Saints

Perhaps, in light of the worldwide growth, we , the NA religious should ask, “What is it that Evangelicals in other countries have that we don’t?” Certainly the Protestant and Catholic religious in NA and European would acknowledge that service to the poor is a priority and engage in a variety of tactics to reduce poverty. But the wider church has something that its NA and European breather don’t — a relationship with the poor. We know of the poor, but lack a direct relationship with the poor. Our growing breather have this unique relationship, bound by a common vision of man, the Imago Dei (Image of God), and in this relationship Christ is found, Sanctorum Communio, the communion of saints. Here, Christ is not divided along between people of means and those without. For example, you’ll find in Africa, small church communities helping 20 or 30 or more victims of AIDs with far less resources than any of their counterparts in North America. With less means, on a church to church comparison, the African church’s do more. What does this say about we who are religious in NA?

Bonhoeffer’s assessment, diagnosis and remedy for the post WW1 church decline echo’s the Biblical prescription for a much purer form of Christianity. Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners Magazine, makes this exacting point when he as a young seminarian cut out every passage in the Bible about poor people, wealth and poverty, and oppression. He found several thousand verses. It was the second most prominent theme in the Old Testament. And in the New Testament, the Synoptic Gospels, the first three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, one of every 16 verses dealt with the issue. In Luke, it was one of every seven verses. When he was done, his Bible was in shreds. It was full of holes, falling apart. When he would take it out to preach, he would say, “Brothers and sisters, this is the American Bible. It’s just full of holes.”

Whatever our churches become, it has foremost to be a gospel in relationship to and for the poor. This is the communion of Saints. So I ask myself, who are the poor in my neighborhood? I, like most NA Christians, find them hard to see, but here is a partial list:

• Woman suffrage and unwanted pregnancy. It may be established that the legality or illegality of an abortion does not affect the rates of abortion. However, we have to ask why do so many women seek such a traumatic remedy and risk so much. In China, abortion has probably more to do with a single child family standard and the desire that the child be a boy. The abandonment rate of female babies would support such a cultural norm. But at home, in NA, abortion has probably less to do with a women’s right to her body as with economics, like health care or the lack of affordable or universal care and the costs of raising children given a single mother financial dilemma. A pregnant mother who knows she will be taken care of is less likely to abandon her child. This plight of the helpless, the unborn child, and financial or social anxiety of the mother is very solvable at the level of the local community or church. Statistically, given the millions of children aborted annually, it may be the largest target for the development of communion of saints around us. Would our church look differently if the mark of the NA religious is their unconditional and long term assistance for mothers of unwanted pregnancies, no matter the cause or social situation? Our intent may be good, but our time, sense of priorities, and what we are willing to risk are challenged to meet the need.
• The Elderly or so call retired. Many come to our churches, but many more fall thought the cracks of any relationship of being wanted, cared for, and the objects of the financial help, as modernity has broken the bonds of the extended family and cast them into the consumerism of care. How different our alter calls might be if the call to accept Christ was tied to a responsibility to help the elderly?
• Additional victims of financial bankruptcy due to a health crisis, those children who long for a big brother or sister, or family’s wounded from predatory lending who’s homes are at risk of foreclosure, or the forgotten casualties of hurricane Katrina. How do we liberate them? What energies do we bring to our confession?

The Confessing Church

Maybe a return to the movement of Bonhoeffer’s “confessing church” along with “costly grace” is the prescription for church growth in America. The “confessing church” was to oppose the Nazi-sponsored German Christian Church of the 1930’s. Major church leaders of the time acquiesced as the German Protestant church was made subservient to the Nazi state. This included Nazi reinterpretation of basic teachings of the church — for example, stressing “the Jews” as the enemies of Jesus and all Christians. In May 1934, the Confessing Church set up an administration and proclaimed itself the true Protestant Church in Germany. The church was forced underground after the arrest of many of its ministers.

Like Bonhoeffer’s “costly grace,” Charles Finney, the 18th century evangelist of the great awakening in Britain, pioneered the alter call and tied it social justice. The reason he did so was he wanted to sign up his converts for the antislavery campaign. So faith and church growth in the 18th century got directed immediately to justice for the poor.

The poor as the center of the church, the focus of the gospel itself is where Christ is found. Protestant and Catholic church growth outside the west would validates this claim. Conceivably, this is our trouble in the NA churches. It has become bourgeois to varying degrees and Christ is not as easily found and in many ways not appealing to the secular side of the house. Learning to risk our own stereotypes of faith, and ask what our freedom means to “be” as opposed to “having.”

In an address delivered by Bonhoeffer in Fanö, he challenges us take the path of peace, of the Jewish sense of Shalom, well being with my neighbor.

“There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture, and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrust in turn brings forth war. To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.”

How Do Buddhists Do the Problem of Evil?

The simple answer is that they don’t. For Buddhism, it’s the problem of desire. Christianity has the problem, not Buddhism. Why is this? Buddhism starts with the problem of evil, suffering or “dukkha,” as its first statement of faith in the four noble truths. However, it is not the problem we think. Buddhism concedes that suffering or evil is what life is made of. It does not begin with an all powerful and good God, and the ensuing moral and logical entailments. In fact, in Buddhism, the question of God’s existence is not raise. Buddhism begins from a different starting point, suffering, not God’s existence.

So how is suffering, inflicted by both man and nature, understood by a Buddhist?

It starts by what cannot be said. The Buddha, the one who is awake and attained Nirvana, the extinguishing of desires, had an experience that does not fit the categories of language. So even the Buddha’s own attempts, and especially mine, to describe the unexplainable will come short of the real thing. That said, language can lead us to an understanding of Buddhism, however imperfect.

Understanding Buddhism begins with its historical context. Buddhism developed as a response to the social evils of Buddha’s day against the prevailing corruptions of Hinduism, a kind of protestant reformation in response to 16th century Catholicism. For Buddha, it was the corruption and abuse of the Brahmins hold on religious teachings, and a challenge to the individual to think clearly about his own religious values. Buddha‘s enlightenment and message was aimed in part at the power structures of his day. He argues logically for a belief without authority, ritual, speculation, and tradition as a response to the religious and social cast. Instead, he preaches a religion of self effort, lacking grace which calls the individual to action. As self effort, Buddhism is a religion of discipline that diminishes personal ego. This leads to an awakening, a state of Nirvana or the extinguishing of desire, and shapes the Buddha preaching to transform the social evils of his time.

So, how does one extinguishing desire?

It begins with the four noble truths. These truths are Buddha’s insights aimed at life’s most troubling problem, suffering. The first truth is that life is suffering, or “dukkha.” This is not philosophical skepticism by the Buddha, but a simple observation or assessment of life. For most us who have lived long enough, it’s intuitive, as we’ve seen too much in our own lives and the plight of others to know that life is a struggle of varying degrees. The Buddha describes suffering as dislocation and outlines six points of common dislocation (suffering or evil) that all men and women share:
1. The pain at birth
2. The pathology of sickness
3. The morbidity of decay
4. The fear of death
5. Being bond to what one dislikes (ie disease or defects)
6. Being separated from what one loves

The second noble truth identifies the cause of suffering or dislocation, desire or “tanha.” This is best described as egotistical desires, because not all desire is bad, like the desire for happiness or liberation of others. Desire as the personal fulfillment for the ego is a kind of bondage that we live in. The Buddha’s teaching is very foreign to the Western mind. It is at the opposite spectrum of our more current popular Darwinian values, nor is exactly the kind of philosophical thinking that would produce the US Declaration of Independence. But, it is a very powerful insight into the human condition. “Tanha” is more than just desire, it is also a force that ruptures our desires and helps us pull back from our egotistical pursuits. For those philosophers in the audience, Tanha may have been the Buddha’s response to Descartes problem of the ego. Even the Book of Geneses links the problem of ego in the garden to sin and evil in this world.

For Buddha, suffering describes a failure to link ourselves to the destiny of the whole. When we look at a group picture, who do we see first? Ourselves, of course! Herein lies the problem, individualism, or the simple inclination to focus on ourselves imprisons us to a life of suffering. We don’t think about the whole group first, but me first. So, the third noble truth follows from the second, the cure, the overcoming of life as desire. The forth noble prescribes the path to overcoming, the Eightfold path, a series of disciplines or working out of one’s awakening or salvation from desire to Nirvana.

To bring our thoughts full circle, the problem for Buddhism is not evil, but desire. The Buddha concedes evil or suffering as an observation of the world. Buddha’s next logical step describes the cause or source of the problem. Suffering exists and has its roots in desire or dislocation. Life’s pains are tied to our own egotistical perceptions of ourselves. This may sound simplest, but not so in Buddhism.

So how does a Buddhist interpert and engage the sufferings or evils of this world?

How does a Buddhist see a holocaust or a Hitler? What about The Peoples Revolution and Chairman Mau, or even natural disasters? Simply put, he sees suffering as the corruption of desires. Not an easy thing to say to a holocaust victim. The remedy lies in the method to extinguish desire and the Eightfold Path. It’s a mindset change, and allot of personal and physical discipline to get there. The Eightfold path is how a Buddhist monk works outs his path to Nirvana.  It has bread a variety of worldwide monastic movements from Zen to the Dalai Lama. For these reasons, a Buddhist lives a simple life, a prescription for evil but not a prescription for the fuel of capitalism that Adam Smith could depend on to build a free market economy (ego is good in Capitalism). Part of the attraction of Buddhism in the West is its confrontation of materialism as a root problem for suffering or empty lives.

So how does one evaluate Buddhism from the Western world?

From a secularist point of view, you can’t. The Secularist version of tolerance, generally speaking, states that you can’t adjudicate or judge between religious faiths. Not only is this uninteresting, but very problematic, as it presupposes no criteria for evil, so societies like Hitler’s Fascist state, Stalin’s Communism, or Mao’s People’s Revolution, or any other societies that violate our Western perceptions of human rights cannot be judged apart from the value that “might is right.” That’s another story.  However, for the Western Christian mind, there are elements in Buddhism to learn from, respected, and discern in our application of faith.

In many respects, Christians and Buddhists share the common diagnosis for evil, ego. Ego made its day beau in the Garden of Eden, and in the first crime of man against man, Cain and Able. And, in its history, Christianity has recognized the Buddhist solution, the overcoming of desire. Christianity own rich traditions in Monastic and lay movements have sought the betterment of societies through reflection and values as well as education and health. Much can be learnt from the Buddhist insight into ego, the Eightfold Path, against our own narcissistic western cultural behaviors of consumption. Unfortunately, the western Christian has lost is dialogue with its own monasticism, its understanding of vice and virtue as root causes for evil as found in the Sermon on the Mount. And perhaps, in the Buddhist tradition, Western Christianity has become tainted with evil (our egotistical inclinations), although I believe they would be too polite to say so. The height of our narcissism is heard in the 9/11 tragedy. We confront suffering and evil with shopping. I don’t recall shopping in either the Eightfold Path or the Sermon on the Mount!

There is a discerning point that differentiates Christianity from Buddhism in the on the ground engagement with evil and suffering. Buddhism is essentially a monastic movement whose call, with sectarian variety, is based on the Eightfold Path. And although it softens the ego in man, and makes for some extremely nice people (Larry Ellison of Oracle excluded), it does not return them back into society with same aggressive social reforms that Christianity has done. Not that Buddhist aren’t people of social reform, as recently seen in Nepal, but their primary occupation is with the Eightfold Path, attainment of Nivarna, and other factors like Karma. Part of the extinguishing of desire can be to engage in acts of compassion and care for the other. But it does not return its devotees back into the world with the same force as a Christian to address the immediate needs of the individual. This is generalization, which means there are exceptions, but it is a true one.

Now, it could be argued the Christians occupation is with heaven, and that its global missionary movement and good works could be reduced to hegemony and imperialism. These popular, but statistically untrue statements are the superficial understandings and conjecture of Secularism in the Western academy as debunked by such scholars as the Yale historian, Sanneh Lamin . Although in Christianity, heaven is a goal, it is not the primary goal. Heaven is the destination, but not the journey. For the Hebrew God, Yahweh, the primary concern has always been for the under belly of society. All men, who share the imago dei, the image of God in man, have inalienable human rights anchored in this common identity, that within us, God exist and we affront Him with social and economic injustices. The encounter with God returns the Christian back into this world with a passion for human rights and the forgiveness he or she has been given by God (i.e. John Newton, Amazing Grace and the abolition of the slave trade). The climax of this encounter is God becoming man, in this world, in Jesus Christ demonstrating the supremacy of all human life. However, such an event does raises the questions of evil and God’s goodness and power. Better to have this problem than not (can you say Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals).

Christians can learn much about the Buddha’s insight into ego and suffering. Unfortunately, the Christian record has its virtues linked to its vices (i.e. humility that is political pretense) whereas Buddhism history is not so checker by vice, its value as a monastic movement. Perhaps there is a middle ground between the two. Where the Buddhist can learn from social engagement and the liberating power of Christ in society, and, the Christian, from Buddhism about insight into egos, motives and manners.

Here are some closing thoughts on evil and world views:

For the Buddhist, it’s the problem of desire.
For the Secularist, it’s not a problem (especially a Darwinian Secularist).
For the Muslim, it is the will of God.
For the Hindu, it’s an illusion.
For the Jew/Christian, it’s their problem.

Critiquing Christians: A Founders Warning

Critiquing Christians: the Lord’s Prayer, a Founders Warning

The Lord’s Prayer is one of the most recited and well known prayers worldwide. Yet, it is probably the least understood. We speak it so freely and frequently in Western society, but do we understand its historical message. As a child, I memorized the prayer, but not until college did I ask for its meaning. What is the “kingdom” all about? Is “hallowed” no more than a vague feeling cosmic importance? It was this prayer that led me to question the Gospel’s demands of me.  Was the Gospel simply a call for private moral forgiveness of the soul by God, which plays outs as a numbers game of winners and losers, of heaven or hell, a Monty Python stereotype of religion? This was hardly a satisfactory answer.  Even a causal reading of the Gospel writings tells a broader story.  What does the Lord’s Prayer teach in its historical, grammatical and literal setting?

A Prescription for Evil

The prayer was Christ’s instructions on how to pray. For the writer Matthew, he places it after Christ’s teaching of Gospel in the Gospel’s most concentrate form, the Sermon on the Mount, in contrast on how not to pray. Luke puts it later in his writings as a direct response to the disciples request on how to pray. Either way, it was a common prayer often repeated by Jesus in his teaching on how to pray. For Jesus, this prayer was a summary of good news in the most personable forms, a petition for forgiveness. Its movement from the sanctification of God’s name, the kingdom come, daily bread, forgiveness of debt, temptation, and its final doxology (although later added) was a well developed prescription for the evil within man and society. As a prayer, it later became the church’s most focused institutionalized mission statements governing those who want to claim His name. But what do these elements mean and what is the critique and caution?

The Historical Setting

To understand the prayer, we must take a quick journey back to the historical context it was written in. There is no better person then the writer Luke who sets the stage. Luke’s preamble in his first four chapters is obsessed to inform us that the mission of Jesus will be a Gospel of good news to the poor and of setting captives free. The prayer is foreshadowed by:

• the foretelling of the birth of John (message of personal righteousness),
•  the angel Gabriel’s message of a messiah (a liberating King from the House of David),
• Mary’s Magnificent proclaiming the scattering of rulers and the proud,
• Zacharias’s prophecy at John’s birth for deliverance from subjugation,
•  Luke’s notes about census, taxation, the message of peace among men to the shepherds,
• Simenon’s proclamation of international reform,
• John the Baptist call for social repentance (honest taxation and wealth distribution),
• the temptation of Jesus to seek power through conventional politics, and
• Finally in Jesus own words launching himself into public to “preach the gospel to the poor … to proclaim release to the captives … to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord,” (Jubilee).

This message of social reform linked to money and debt is unmistakable and dominates Luke’s preamble. Luke, as the writer, makes no attempt to correct their perceptions of the coming liberation as though they were mistaking a spiritual kingdom for an earthly one. Even Matthew, in locating the prayer after the Sermon on the Mount, links the prayer to social and spiritual reform, not to mention the parables that following directly addressing the topic of monetary debt and wealth distribution.

Private Morality or Public Debt?

But what was this oppression and captivity? The quick answer is moral sin, but we limit our understanding and loose the historical meaning if we stop here. Subjugation to the Jews came in the form of Roman occupation, and Jewish pain was felt in the excessive taxation by Rome, particularly the large scale building projects of Herod the Great. Like all effective forms of empire, it required collaborators on the ground to collect taxes to fund regional development and Rome. For the Romans in Jerusalem, collaboration was provided by the Jewish priesthood and temple built by Herod for the Jewish hierarchy. The temple function was more the just religion, it was bank, the Jewish judicial and mediator of Roman policy. In effect, the temple functioned as both the “IRS” and courts of Rome in Jerusalem. In the class structure that Judaism became as the elite and privileged priesthood (i.e. the blessed) verses the struggling working class, debt was the common instrument for tax collection and the resulting bankruptcy of many who could not pay their bills into slavery.  Rome’s appetite for taxes reduced the common family to Maslow’s struggle for basic needs. Such were the times and the penetrating focus of the Lord ’s Prayer.

In this short prayer, Jesus walks his listeners them through a check list, like the one you start saying “yes” to until you get to the part that you want to say, “Hey, wait a minute.” First he calls for God’s name to be sanctified. Most of us would easily concede this point. The text literally says, “Let your name be sanctified…” The verb “hollowed” or literally “to sanctify,” in its original form, is not a call to the adoration of the holiness of God, but rather an exhortation that God be sanctified by His people (agiasthato – 3 p. sing. 1 aor. pass. imper). Sanctifying is something that is done to God’s name. Give all that has been done in God’s name, sanctifying His name, or setting it apart from all the injustice, evil, or even just bad religion is a starting point for the renewal of good faith in society. Thus, the following words, “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” makes sense. No problem here. Jesus’ comment about God’s will be done here, as it is in heaven, is something every believer would agree to as well. As most Christians and Jews believe that God is good, it’s a general enough statement that gets the positive approval. We can easily bring together these two points, clearing or redeeming His Name and looking for the goodness of God in this world.

Bread, Money, and Debt – Temptation or Salvation

The next statement, “give us our daily bread,” begins to be more specific, but in an appealing way. Yes, we want to eat, especially in such financially constrained and taxation heavy society. So bread, as a representation of the most basic of the needs in that time, is that substance of “lunch” that we all need. But, implicit in the lunch is commerce and money, and like the saying goes, there is no free lunch. Food is a good thing, and a daily struggle which we can’t imagine in our modern 1st world countries. It’s the link between eating and commerce which take us to his next line and the core of the matter, “sanctifying” God’s name and His Kingdom on earth.

Here’s the punch line. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive those are indebted to us.” Yes, the word is debt, monetary debt in the original Greek and not the generic word “sin” as we commonly learned in Sunday school (Kittle, Theological Dictionary, Vol V, 1977, p.559ff).  Over time, the term debt became to mean moral debt to God.  However, both the preamble (ie noted above) and post amble of the content (ie Matt 18 – the  unforgiving servant, Luke 7 – the two debtor, etc.) and Jesus’ own qualification of the term (“those that are indebted to us” ie money) link the word to its obvious historical meaning, monetary debt .

The logic Jesus develops between bread and debt may be a bit disturbing. Debt is something that his Jewish audience was very familiar with, similar to the subprime crises of today, but much more widespread. As mentioned, debt was the instrument of subjugation by the Romans (i.e. taxes), a common form of enslavement in business dealings (i.e. entire families who fall victim to it judicial precedence) and a necessary means to eat and prosper for whole communities. However, it had a terrible underbelly. Penalties were swift and harsh, no chapter 11 or 7 laws here. The reality of bread, health and prosperity, unfortunately, was tied to debt and abusive bondage unless you were a Roman citizen or part of the Jewish priestly class. These modes of economic abuse from the highest levels of society were front and center issues for the common man. As such, our Lord’s Prayer strikes with precision at the aliments of society and for some. This prayer was not for the weak of wallet. Can you say Jubilee? Are there any bankers reading this?

Of course, history later began to interpret this prayer as just sin and not debt, watering down its original message, but if we roll back the clock to the moment, the meaning is socially insightful. Being honest to the text incorporates monitory debt and what it means to say “hallow be your name.” and “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Are there debts in heaven or structures of monetary subjugation? Maybe that’s the point.

God’s kingdom has much to do with the forgiveness of debt, and particularly those forms of debt that become socially destructive (not all debt is bad). The focus on debt is an important part of what it means to be Christian and to pray as a Christian. God forgives me, I forgive others. Well, maybe. But what if no one owes me anything? Perhaps this question is too narrow. The better question in the spirit of the prayer is, can I though my own means set another free? What and where are the monetary structures of abuse and bondage where the forgiveness of debt can set another free? And, can I do something about it? Are we slothful or vigilant in this matter? Is the hand that is able to set free cut off from the arm and unable to act?

The Culture of Consumption vs. the Common Good

Perhaps a social commentary from none other than the late Pope John Paul II may help us understand this prayer. Pope John Paul II insight in his Papacy was a critique of western values and capitalism, what he called the culture of death and consumerism. We won’t touch on the culture of death, but the excess of capitalism are consumerism and individualism, culture that is obsessed with “having” and not “being.” In other words, the owning and collecting of possession with no understanding on what it means to have so much. Being, the habit of one’s heart and mind in community, trumps the pursuit of the material or consumption. The Pope’s struggle and justified pessimism is, will our individualism to consume compel us to seek the common good? Individualism, unfortunately, is not a call to set the captives of free. No Jubilee here, just lots of toys. God and His kingdom exist when community and its forces of liberation trump the neurotic excess of individual priorities, when we become more concerned about our neighbor then our own skin. Can you say, “God help me!”

Dietrich Bonheoffer, the German theologian who was executed for his role to assonate Hitler in WWII, understood this kingdom principle with painful clarity. In his paper on “Sanctorum Communio,” the communion of saints, he sees the absence of Christ in the church because of a lack of community, or what he calls the divided Christ between class societies. No Kingdom come here. It is only within true community where the rich know the poor, an undivided Christ, that the gospel and Christ are revealed, where the bonds of oppression can be identified and address. Bonheoffer’s initial solution, in Nazi Germany, was to start the Confessing Church, a body of Christian pastors who opposed Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. Ironically, in what was one of Hitler’s first act against the Jews, he took away their ability to eat bread, not directly, but with the breaking of glass, he shuts down their ability to engage in commerce. The Jews became a people in debt and bondage.

One can think of many examples today of bondage, from the economic slavery in India and Asia, of children sold to settle debts usually for health issues into the sex slave trade, and of how the slave trade, human trafficking, is at its peak in human history. There is bondage in the lack of capital preventing families or communities from accessing working funds to pay for simple machinery or farm animals that could sustain them. Small capital injections by our standards can bring enormous freedom in a 3rd world. There are too many modern day examples that can be written here. You can fill in the blank. No one owes you money? We’re not off the hook. “Thy kingdom come” is a mission for the pursuit to set captive free. However, the question remains, will consumerism and individualism save the day? Or, are the values of “Sanctorum Communio” the communion of saints, a more effect means to break human bondage?

Evil’s Nemesis

Our prayer is not done. “And deliver us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” What is the axis of evil here? Perhaps it is the combination of consumerism, individualism and those structures, companies and institutions that perpetuate bondage and violence the through free markets. “Fair Trade,” in the coffee business, although not perfect, highlights the practice of unfair trade and our temptation to evil. Yes, Adam Smith was right when he stated that markets, or the invisible hand, make the most efficient economies. He also warned of the excesses of the market.  Profit is a good thing, but is it tempered by other values? Who said profit was the end game alone?  What about liberation?

One last final thought. The Lord’s Prayer is not a critique of Capitalism or America. It critiques Christians, how WE should pray, those who claim Christ’s name, in whatever society or time we find ourselves, Rome or modern America. Perhaps, in the spirit of the prayer, it can be a contract with God governing our own actions in the world of commerce. Saint Augustine called the prayer the terrible petition.  Bertrand Russell, the French Philosopher, commented that the values of Sermon on the Mount were great ideals, but of little use as Christians in general do not practice them, a penetrating observation on his part. It’s not easy to claim His name, especially when to hallow his Name on earth means to forgive and fight abusive monetary debts.

A Case for Religious Possibilities: Jonah, a Whale of a Story

For some, the book of Jonah in the Hebrew Old Testament is reminiscent of a grand fishing story. Not only did the fish get away, but the tale seems larger than life. It makes a great children’s story, but is of little use in our modern lives. Even the theologians have reduced it to a metaphor of Jesus Christ death on the cross. However, Jonah, the city of Nineveh and the Hebrew God, Yahweh, have more to teach us then just a cute Sunday school story or a theologian’s confirmation of the Christ centric understanding of the Old Testament.

Like so many of the ancient Hebrew prophetic writings, the book of Jonah is meant to school us in faith and its relationship to culture, those habits of our heart and mind. And, in the case of Nineveh, a particularly nasty culture. The lessons are not easily fit into a box of convenient religious categories. The book ends with a question from God. It directs us to questions of religious judgments. How do we see and respond to people who seek God under the umbrella of their own religion and culture? In “Christian” North America, how do we see the plight of the Palestinian people, Islamic cultures or even the gay and lesbian communities? What about Buddhist, Hindu or secularist cultures? Can they know the Christian God and His mercy?

Nineveh is the other, a people who are outside of our traditional values and at worst a society of habits that have more in common with the brutal regimes of the past century, from Stalin to Pot Pol, from Hitler to Sadman Husain, not to mention the Assyrians brutality to the Jews of Jonah’s time. Jonah, the representative of Jewish orthodoxy, is a prophet, but a flawed prophet. He represents that close link between both vice and virtue, between what is both good but corrupted by ego and denies the religious possibilities of God himself. Not even the call of God himself can bring Jonah, a religious man, to commit to the service of a people he considers offensive.

Jonah is two faced. God calls, he accepts and then immediately proceeds to get as far away from both Nineveh and God. Ironically, he finds his escape on a ships passage among men who are anything but Jewish, sailors. In the heart of the sea’s storm, it is these men, while practicing their own faith, discovery the possibility of the God Yahweh. Not exactly the ideal conversion. What happened to theology and confession? More to the point, where’s the Jewish orthodoxy? What about the Nicine Creed?  The writer is noticeably silent on these points.

Jonah’s miraculous rescue on the sea continues to move him further away from God, but this time in the belly of the fish, a second irony. Yet, here, deep in the ocean, Jonah accepts God’s appeal. His acquiescence is tainted by his desire to finish the task and witness the rightful destruction of his enemies, as his later behavior betrays the intentions of his noble prayer. He can hardly be characterized as siding with God on moral grounds.

So he enters Nineveh, and gives one of the shortest prophetic messages in the Old Testament, a warning about the city to be overthrown. What’s astounding is the results. A city of over 100,000 people believes in God, Yahweh. For such a dramatic results, we are short on details, particularly religious details. What happen to their existing gods and practices of religion? What about the distinctive practices of Abraham’s chosen people and its law’s that distinguish them? The only insight we are given is by God himself at the end of the book. Nineveh learned the difference between their “right hand and left hand,” or between good and evil. Perhaps the Christian and Jewish call to faith is simpler then we think,  encompassing the possibilities of culture that make room for God, His mercy, and “the other” when emancipate from evil, the violence of man against man.

The book ends with a question to Jonah. “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” Jonah’s blind spot, as a man in the mainstream of his own narrative identity, as a people chosen by Yahweh, is his lack of openness to the possibilities of God’s will. Christian missions have a rich history of emancipating cultures from what is evil within the culture. The legacy of schools, hospitals, and social movements and its own internal reforms are its heritage in lifting people up from underneath the structures of power, including secularism.  The critic of Christian missions rightfully points to the role of imperialism and Christian missions, of the sword and the cross, and we are reminded that these are the perversions of faith and not the logical entailments.

Unlike Jonah, Christianity must guard itself from its own arrogance in a pluralistic world, a blind spot of its own virtue. The beauty of Christianity is its openness to the other and of God’s mercy, in spite of our preconceptions of culture. Judaism and Christianity’s own self critique in Jonah calls its own to be open to other races and cultures, rather than its inclinations to judge by internal standards of “self righteousness.” Most importantly, Joahn is a message about caring. Caring enough for the cities and neighborhoods that lack human rights and any sense of practice about the imago dei, the image of God in man.  This is the call of the book, to a distinctively Christain mission.

Evil: The Dark Night of the Soul

The problem of evil has many faces. Unfortunately, none of them are pretty, but all of them very real. Elie Wiesel book, Night, is one of those faces.

The believer’s tragedy is how a good God could allow such suffering and injustice. Is God good? Is God all powerful? Evil can’t be glossed over in theoretical arguments but it pain must be felt. Here is an excerpt from Elie Wiesel’s book Night when as a young teenager of faith, he experiences his first night in Auschwitz:

But I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it.

“Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible, even these crematories…”

His voice was choking.

“Father,” I said, “if that is so, I don’t want to wait here. I’m going to run to the electric wire. That would be better than slow agony in the flames.”

He did not answer. He was weeping. His body was shaken convulsively. Around us, everyone was weeping. Someone began to recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I do not know if it has ever happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have ever recited the prayer for the dead themselves.

Yitgadal veyitkadach shmé raba…. May His Name be blessed and magnified….” whispered my father.

For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless His name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for?

We continued our march. We were gradually drawing closer to the ditch, from which an infernal heat was rising. Still twenty steps to go. If I wanted to bring about my own death, this was the moment. Our line had now only fifteen paces to cover. I bit my lips so that my father would not hear my teeth chattering. Ten steps still. Eight. Seven. We marched slowly on, as though following a hearse at our own funeral. Four steps more. Three steps. There it was now, right in front of us, the pit and its flames. I gathered all that was left of my strength, so that I could break from the ranks and throw myself upon the barbed wire. In the depths of my heart, I bade farewell to my father, to the whole universe; and, in spite of myself, the words formed themselves and issued in a whisper from my lips: Yitgadal veyitkadach shmé raba…. May His name be blessed and magnified…. My heart was bursting. The moment had come. I was face to face with the Angel of Death….

No. Two steps from the pit we were ordered to turn to the left and made to go into a barracks.

I pressed my father’s hand. He said:

“Do you remember Madame Schächter, in the train?”

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

For more on Elie Wiesel, see http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/wiesel/index.shtml