The longing for home. . .

In what passes for art today, words on a canvas, plate, or mug often speaking in glowing terms of home and the yearning for order and place.  The so-called art remains popular even while it would seem that Americans have done nearly everything to distance their own lives from any sense of place, from the order of the past, and from an enduring home.  We are mobile and do not merely travel but move from place to place, house to house, and apartment to apartment.  We trade in jobs faster than we do vehicles.  We have invented desires and genders and mainstreamed them.  At the same time, we live more on screens and the reality of a digital world than the real world.  We love the idea of longevity but we ditch relationships and romances as fast as we replace our phones.  We are enamored of nostalgia and so the popularity of things like Downton Abbey but it is a conditional nostalgia -- conditioned upon including glimpses of the present in the mythology of our past and a non-judgmental view of our core values as a society.  

The longing for home will not be satisfied by technology or digital relations.  It is built in us by our Creator and yearns for the real reality of husband and wife, parent and child, extended family and abiding friendships.  It does not imagine home but builds it whether in house or apartment, establishing the blessing of place alongside the blessing of purpose.  The gift of Christianity is not simply the salvation of the individual but the restoration of this blessing in the shape of vocation.  The problem of the present is that we attempt to embrace the imagery without adopting the theology of creation, the order and purpose of our lives, and its shape in marriage, family, and home.  Art can express many things but the artsy words of pop art fail to deliver to us the things of which they speak.

My grandparents and parents never left home.  They flourished where they were planted.  They lived not for the pursuit of financial gain or the realization of great dreams but they sought to be stable financially in order to take care of those within their duty and to live as a contributing member of the community of church and community.  At my parents funerals, and those of my grandparents, family gathered from all kinds of places to join with the lifetime friends in the community to remember and give thanks that these were part of their home and their lives.  In that moment I longed to be part of them but part of me felt much like an outsider.  I had left home for college and then to seminary and the wisdom of the Church and the work of the Spirit planted me first on Long Island and then upstate New York and finally Tennessee --  a world away from the small town in which I was nourished.  Though I imagined myself one with them, my brother was more than me.  I made my home where I was and did not join my labors and love to the place where I had been born.

The playing of sexual desire and gender as if they were toys and the disconnect between our lives and their purpose and shape with the purpose and shape of those who went before us have left us confused and confounded as a people.  We long for the very thing we have rejected.  We want to be given order in the hope of receiving from it purpose and identity but when confronted with that order we reject it -- forgetting its cost in fueling our longing while keeping us from see that yearning fulfilled.  Retreating to our screens and the imaginary places we might belong, we keep alive the yearning while distancing ourselves even more from its fulfillment.  It is no wonder that depression is rampant among us nor should it surprise us that our melancholy estate finds its ultimate conclusion in the decision to end our lives when we so decide to end them.  The answer does not lie with the digital but with the real, with the surrender of our wills to the Divine Will expressed in the shape of creation, the blessing of redemption, and the purpose of life to glorify God above all things.

When the Church is silent on this part of our life -- the ordered life shaped by God's purpose and will -- we are depriving the people of God of the comfort of knowing their place within God's creation, their purpose grander than self-fulfillment, pleasure, entertainment, or happiness, and their supreme identity as a child of God.  When we go to Church, we find ourselves met by the waiting Father who welcomes us home and to an end for the longing and yearning that threatens to consume us.

The quest for emotional support. . .

How curious it is that reports are now telling us how AI (artificial intelligence) is being used as well as how it is trusted by those who use it.  There was a time when AI was being heralded as an advance in the minutiae of technology, science, law, etc., which employed terminology and patterns of thought not normally used in every day conversation.  It was a means of freeing the people from servitude and pawning off unpleasant or boring things to AI.  Then it became a means of souring the breadth of information available and distilling it into short and easy to understand answers about questions -- what is happening across the world and why things happen as they do.  Very quickly, however, AI has shifted to another area.  It is now seen by many as a means of emotional support -- a therapeutic role.

A study from the Collective Intelligence Project on Human-AI relationships surveyed a small but significant number of people from some 70 or more nations and concluded that "AI moved from task tool to emotional infrastructure.”  What people are outsourcing is not the mundane, boring, or tedious tasks of work or life but friendships and emotional support.  In fact, the survey found that folks tend to trust AI in this role (as with others) even more than they trust other people or the institutions of society and culture.  In their quest to find support for or help in personal issues and emotional needs, they increasingly and very quickly turned to AI.

There was a time in which churches provided the means to and access into community where personal relationships were formed and flourished and emotional needs could be met.  Could it be that the churches have lost this role precisely because they have adapted to and been replaced by the same cold and impersonal digital reality of the rest of the world?  Watching worship is clearly not the same as in person participation in worship services.  Watching preaching and teaching on a screen are not the same as sitting in the pews with others and listening to a preacher or teacher.  Hearing music through speakers is not the same as lending your voice to the congregation's song.  Praying along with a voice on a screen or in your earbuds is not the same as praying with one voice as a congregation (just try praying a common prayer out loud in a zoom meeting).  Receiving a spiritual communion while watching the altar and the pastor distribute the gifts of God to the people of God is not the same as kneeling, eating, and drinking those gifts in the Holy Eucharist.  Yet too many churches and pastors rely on these in place of the common assembly of God's baptized people around His Word and Table.  In this, the churches have shown themselves to be the same as and not distinct from the ways things work in the world.

People once valued hearing even the hard things they did not wish to hear but needed to hear.  In those days preaching did not tiptoe lightly over people's views but confronted them with His Word and truth.  The side reality of our digital world is that we are less likely to hear things we do not agree with or the unpleasant truth that can compel repentance and we tend to look for places to be affirmed in what we already believe and to be encouraged in what we already think.  AI is very good at sensing both what we believe and think and then addressing us passively without rocking the boat of our sacred thoughts or feelings.  Furthermore, AI finds it hard to speak in the unequivocal truth of God's Word but very easy to appeal to feelings and to address the emotional wants or needs we place above our want or need for objective truth.  AI takes enough of what we give to figure out what we want to hear.  It is no wonder that AI has become an essential tool in the desire for emotional support in many.  The question ought to be at what cost?

Our critique of AI needs to focus clearly on the cost of hearing our own thoughts or beliefs amplified in the echo chamber of AI and internet communities and resources that supply us more with what we want to hear than what we need to hear.  Indeed, there are some who have found that over the long term, AI does not deliver.  Look at the beginnings of a revolution among the young who have been coddled with the soft and easy life of living within the comfort of their own thoughts or opinions but who now are seeking out those churches which will call them to repentance, connect them with the transcendent, and compel them to change their sacred feelings and exchange their easy sins for a nobler life worthy of the higher power of God.  It may not quite be orthodoxy yet but it is headed in that direction.  A resurgence of orthodoxy means distinguishing the real Church from the fake ones whose soft seats and easy gospel has little to do with sin, death, a Savior who is God in flesh, and a life stronger than death.  I am not saying we should be blind to the emotional quests of those around us but we cannot deliver to them anything less than the real Gospel of Christ crucified and risen and of the new life in us arising from baptismal water.  The real emotional support for which we long is answered not by finding a safe place insulated against all the things we do not like or want but in the power of forgiveness, the robe of Christ's righteousness, and the work of the Spirit to bring this to bear in us through lives worthy of our calling as the people of God.  The emotional support AI can bring is a feel good moment that will end up leaving us mortally wounded.

 

The real war against abortion. . .

For a long time many of us believed that the war against abortion was fought on the level of law and before an invention of a constitutional right.  Then came a change and the legal underpinning of the abortion cause was undone at the level of our highest court.  But nothing really changed.  The technology had marched quietly along and abortions were less the domain of medical procedure than they were a pill popped into the mouth and forgotten about.  We won the wrong war.  We should have been fighting for the hearts and minds of all Americans.  Instead, we were worried about nine in black robes.

Here we are celebrating another anniversary of some of our best legal minds getting it absolutely wrong while we have forgotten to instill and maintain a culture of life that beckons to the soul of an entire nation.  Abortion is not about a law.  Abortion is about the sanctity of life, the cheapening of that life by pills that mask the reality of death and about efforts underway to extend the same callous indifference to life's mystery to those already born.  Whether euthanasia or assisted suicide, the fight against abortion has lost the hearts and imagination of most folks.  It simply is not what people think and even Christians are no longer shamed by the mountain of death that has become normal.  That is our problem.  Abortion has become normal like taking a pill for a headache.  It has become so normal that the same legitimacy given to life has been sanctified in the culture of death.  From Illinois to New York, governors are proudly pushing the agenda of death to make it quick and easy to do for the living what pharmaceuticals have done for the child in the womb.

Sadly, I had no idea as a college age young man what it meant when abortion was rendered legal by the devious manipulation of law and in the name of what was a woman's right.  Only now am I realizing that the energy marshaled against that court decision should have been accompanied by a mass movement rekindling the fire of life against a cause of death.  Now we find ourselves at a time when hardly any Christians push back against what was never conceived of at the decision handed down on January 22, 1973.  Life is ours to do with as we please.  Or is it?  Are we the powerful who define what is life and what is not, what is life worth living and what is not, when it is okay to choose death over life and when that right became more profound that the mystery and dignity of life itself?  Or have we become the weak who stand for little more that expediency and who will gladly risk moral uprightness rather than stand against the wave of public opinion that has made all of this messy stuff normal?

I have no idea how much gun laws play into the mass violence that plagues our land but I am pretty sure that the cheapening of the value of life has done more than any trigger.  We are no longer offended by those who offend against the sacredness of life unless they offend our politics.  How odd it is to get all wound up about the cause of the immigrant but casually to dismiss the idea that you can play God with the life in the womb of the mother or with your life or the life of your loved one when it is judged no longer worth living!  Though some complain about the whole idea of a seamless garment when you deal with issues of life, we have to begin stitching together a cohesive connection between all of the life issues in such a way that it is more than political ideology or personal preference to choose what is okay and what is not.  The strange thing is that people are more excited about capital punishment which is rarely carried out than they are the pills that kill in the womb or make for a painless way to end your life.  The solution is not as simple as some suggest.  It is fought not before justices robed in black but in the hearts of every American.  Life is not a commodity for the unborn or the aged or the infirm or the people you vote against.  Until we begin connecting these dots, we may win before the law but watch as the culture of death steals the victory from the overall cause.  Some will immediately argue with me about how these causes are all connected but while we are battling it out over nuance the hearts and minds of young and old have already decided the outcome.  If you do not believe me, why have we lost the cause of marriage and children in city after city across America?

The Church cannot content herself to speak simply about how we stand before a righteous God and we must also address the cause of life, from its natural beginning to its natural end.  We must be uniformly offended by those who would take that life into their own hands and admit that pills are just as effective at killing as our guns.  Abortion depends upon everyone finding it unthinkable that anyone can take the life of another and call it normal.  This is not specifically Christian doctrine as much as it is the restoration of the cause of natural law and ordinary common sense to the senseless way we have come to see death as preferable to life. 

Was blind but now I see. . .

This Christian stuff is not easy and sometimes it really burns me when folks try to make it seem easy.  I especially detest that "let go and let God" saying.  We Christians struggle with what it is that we believe and confess.  It is never easy and never simple.  There is no such thing as the simple faith of Jesus and there is even less of no such thing in the simple faith in Jesus.  If it were simple or easy, we would not need a Holy Spirit to call, gather, enlighten, and sanctify us.  But we do.  We do because faith is not easy or simple.

Jesus repeatedly tells His disciples and us that we have not seen the Father.  Duh.  Just show us the Father, somebody once said.  We have not and do not see the Father.  Jesus does.  He has seen the Father.  He comes from the Father.  He is the embodiment of the Father's heart, His saving will and purpose.  Jesus does not tell us we need to see the Father or even that we can see the Father.  Seeing Jesus is enough.  For the disciples that was a little more straightforward.  After all, for three years they walked with Him, heard His voice, witnessed His miracles, touched Him, and saw Him die and then risen again.  No wonder they did not have to see the Father.  They saw Jesus and that was enough.

Or was it?  They had constant doubts.  When Jesus was talking or doing miracles or revealing the hidden Kingdom to them, they were somewhere else.  At least in their minds, anyway,  Sometimes they were even asleep.  Their doubts drove them to Jesus because they did not know where else to go.  Somebody once said that, I think.  Doubts in the face of a little boy's lunch multiplied while they carried the baskets of leftovers.  Doubts before those whose ills left the world with little more than sympathy.  Doubts before the unmistakable voice and presence of Jesus when they thought they had seen Him dead and buried.  In the end, the doubts kept pushing them back to where they were not sure they wanted to go -- to Jesus.  Peter put it best.  Where else can we go?  Lord know, Peter and the rest of them had tried to find somebody else.  Doubts can either gnaw away at what little faith is left until there is nothing (Judas) or they can push you into the arms of One who has seen the Father (the rest of the apostles).

Jesus never said it would be easy or simple.  In fact, He reminded them of their doubts and asked them if they were going to give up and just walk away.  In the end, they could not just walk away.  Only one had seen the Father, come down from heaven into flesh and blood, paid the debt for sin, died to kill death, and rise to raise up those who still had bodies to shed before they were made new and glorious.  Jesus asked them if they were offended because of Him.  He preached from the mound of the blessedness of those who were not offended by Him (whose doubts drove them into His arms and not away from Him).  And so we come.

When the Church got into the habit of making faith simple or easy and doctrine reasonable and flexible to fit the times and situations of the people, the pews emptied.  But when the full measure of what faith is and requires was laid before the people, they took up the cross and followed Him.  The easier and simpler we try to make faith and the easier and simpler we try to making following Him, the worse it will be for the Church.  It is in the desperate doubt that has surveyed every other option and found none that the broken are restored, raised up from despair and disappointment to follow Him.  It is in the hesitance before the call of God that saints are made from sinners and the strong forged from the weakest of stock.  Make worship easy and simple and fun, they said.  But they did not come and those who came did not bother to stay.  But hold up the mystery of the faith and invite the doubts to rest in the arms of the one and only who has seen the Father and, well, the Church lives. 

In praise of words. . .

There is no doubt that Google can translate so that something can be understood in its basic form or that AI can mimic poetic rhyme and turn words into content that can be comprehended and even appreciated.  But words remain the domain of the Word made flesh and of the people created by Him and endowed with His creative gift.  Words are the exclusive domain of humanity.  Whether in poetic form or story, novel or essay, comment or commentary, words are what distinguish us from the rest of God's creation and mark in us the sign of His image.  We are a wordy people created for words.  Some of them are profound and others vulgar but all of them the unique sphere of those who the Creator formed from the dust of the earth and made to reflect His glory and serve His purpose.

I fear, however, that words are beginning to fail us.  Our speech has become coarser and more vulgar.  We tend to resort to this kind of demeaning speech when the force of our ideas fail us or our skills with words become rusty and contrived.  It very well could be that we have become captive to the briefest spurt of words that fit a text or a tweet but have little room to explore the greater opportunities of the language as a whole.  It could be that we have substituted words on a screen for real conversation, authentic debate, and reasoned argument that we have forgotten how to talk.  Perhaps Charlie Kirk was so popular because he took the time to listen and to speak, delighting in the rich and vibrant forms of debate while the rest of the world simply spoke into an echo chamber or wrote off those who might or did disagree.  Politics has lost the sound of the mighty orator whose craft was once able to change minds and influence hearts.  The greats were remembered not simply for their wisdom but for their words.  Churchill once made a living and kept his sanity by producing two thousand words (and laying 200 bricks!) each day.  Now a school child cannot write cursive and looks in terror when an empty exam book is placed into his hands, expecting him to write cogently of his knowledge and to make his point.  What has happened to us?

Reagan was perhaps the last of those for whom words were a gift.  He was the great communicator because he had great writers, knew his words, and delivered them not as script but as the language of his heart.  Others after him have had good writers too but they were wooden in delivery and the words were strangers to them, almost like enemies which had to be battled and won.  Trump has some good writers but off the cuff he betrays how he uses words less to convince than to inflict damage.  In modern times we have been lacking in those whose voices on senate floors or in the house or even in an interview left us struck and rethinking what it was that we once believed.

Sermons were once the most formal speeches any person ever heard live and without filter.  Great preachers served us well with the Word of God in eloquent words and nuanced speech.  I know how many sermons I remember from days gone by and how few reach that mark today.  Yes, we have people who speak well and faithfully but in the pulpit they seem to wear their homilies as if they were ill-fitting clothes.  For the record, I do not consider myself a great preacher and dare not hold myself up as fine example.  I write a great deal -- almost every day -- but not very many of my words are what I would call memorable.  But I know it when I read it or when I hear it.  You do as well.

If there is a problem speaking the Gospel to people today it could very well be a problem with words that has created a crisis of communication among us.  Truth has become as weak as a passing thought in a moment.  Unleashed from its anchor in fact, everything has become about feelings and so little about anything stronger.  Even in the pulpits of America pastors speak with more conviction what they feel than the Christ they know and whose words they are there to preach.  It is no wonder that people do not find this Gospel as compelling.  God's Word has become an alien language and their ears no longer know how to listen to what is being preached and taught.  Too many of us go back home without being changed or transformed by the Word of God in the words of men.  An armor of sorts has left us impermeable and our lack of appreciation for the good book and its author have served to close our ears and hearts to God's entry.  It was always about words.  When words become strangers to us, God is distant.  To pray for the renewal of the Holy Spirit is to pray to be open to hearing the voice of God that transforms everything.  I hope and pray that this renewal lies in our future.  It will most certainly lead to repentance and faith in the hearts and minds of the hearers but it also has the power to rescue us from the bland and mundane that fits the minimum of who we are but fails to elevate us.  The renewal of words spoken, heard, and considered is key to the renewal of the Gospel among us but its fruits will also spill over into a better humanity of better people.  The silence and our uncomfortable relationship with words not only prevents us from being saved by that Word but leaves us with little that would distinguish us from the rest of God's good creation.  Pray that this too shall pass -- for the sake of our life with God and for the sake of everyday human life.