Snow Days

I don't have anything new or insightful for this week's post. So I'll just tell a bit about what's going on where I live and mention the work of a few of my fellow bloggers.

First, it's snowy and cold here. It's been that way for a solid week, with temperatures usually below freezing. Last night, it got down to 15 degrees Fahrenheit. There's enough snow around right now to choke several Abominable Snowmen. This is posing quite a shock of adjustment for an ex-Californian like me. I find myself craving a sight of palm trees and sunlight. The National Weather Service is saying that later we could get freezing rain, ice and sleet on top of everything else. By the way, did I mention the fact that it is snowing?

As far as fellow bloggers, I'd like to thank Stormchild for her kind mention of me on her recent post, “The Wisdom of Mr. Singh,” from her blog, Gale Warnings. Her blog is an interesting and informative read, as it deals with the things individuals can do in individual daily interactions to protect themselves from being victimized by abusers.

I've been enjoying Borz Loma Nal's posts on Biblical exposition and study on The Blog of Lema Nal. Those posts contain valuable helps and suggestions for recovering the ability to properly study the Bible after escaping from an abusive church. This understanding is especially necessary because a key characteristic of abusive churches is the distortion of the Bible by the church leaders in order to serve their own purposes. One of the blog posts, “Hermeneutical Errors,” has some very funny examples of mistakes in Biblical interpretation.

I haven't heard from the DeTox Church Group authors in a while. How are things going? I hope you are doing well. Are you getting a lot of snow in Idaho?

I hope to begin tackling the subject of Christian community in more detail. The damage done by abusive churches is not only their distortion of Bible doctrine, but that they distort the experience of community and fellowship. Therefore I think that an important element in recovering from an abusive church consists of discovering what real Christian community is, and beginning on some level to experience it.

But that subject will have to wait. I'll be traveling to visit relatives this week, so I probably won't be posting anything this coming weekend. (I'm going to the Promised Land – the land of palm trees and sunshine!) Stay safe, everyone, and have a blessed Merry Christmas.

The Casuistry of Collapse

I've been learning a few words over the last few months. These words are useful shorthand for complex concepts that I've been carrying around like a loose bag of tools for a while. One such word is “Constantinianism,” which can loosely be defined as the attempt to marry Christianity to politics, nationalism and earthly patriotism. This has been the defining characteristic of the leaders of the American Religious Right, who long ago ceased to confine themselves to matters of strictly Biblical morality, and who have for a long time tried to define Christian duty mainly in terms of being a patriotic, flag-waving American defending the American way of life.

Constantinianism is named after the Roman emperor Constantine who ostensibly became a Christian when he was 40 years old, and who decreed that Christianity was to be the official state religion of the Roman empire. As a result of his decree and profession of Christianity, conditions improved greatly for Roman believers, who had heretofore been violently persecuted. But Constantine went farther than simply becoming tolerant of the Faith. He began to see himself as a guardian of the Faith, responsible for using his earthly political power to maintain orthodoxy. Thus he led a military assault against the the North African Donatist Christians, who were accused of heresy by bishops and clergy loyal to Constantine. In fact, the “heresy” of the Donatists consisted of nothing more than refusing to accept the authority of bishops who had renounced the Christian faith and turned their brethren over to Roman authorities during earlier persecutions, and had then asked for reinstatement to clerical office under Constantine. (It appears, then, that eritheia, power games and abusive churches are not a new phenomenon.) (Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I#Religious_policy)

Under Constantine the religious authority of the Christian Church was married to the political and military power of the state. Thus the “state church” was born, and was empowered to stamp out any churches not officially sanctioned by the state, using military force if necessary. Members of the state church were taught that one of the highest Christian duties was for each member to zealously and unquestioningly support the state in which their church resided, to the extent of full military service if called for. And the state church legitimized the wars and conquests fought by its sponsor state by teaching the concept of a “just war.” After the Reformation, when there were several European states each having its own state church, each state church functioned along the same Constantinian lines, each teaching its members their supposed obligations to the states which sponsored them, and teaching the same “just war” concept. This frequently led to contradictions that were ridiculous enough to be quite funny if they had not been so tragic: the armies of two European nations at war with each other, each praying to God in the Name of Jesus Christ for the annihilation of the other army. One example of this is World War 1, with the British Bishop of London advising in 1915 that Britain should be mobilized for a “Holy War,” and the Germans inscribing “Gott mit uns” (God with us) on the buckles of soldiers' belts and praying “Gott strafe England!” (God punish England!)

Is all war unjust, then? I cannot answer that question. I, for one, am glad that the American Civil War was fought and won by the North. As a result of it, I am a free man instead of being a victim of inhuman exploitation. But there have been many supposedly-just wars fought by the supposedly “Christian” nations of the First World. History, and the Day of Judgment, will show that the vast majority of these wars were not just at all, but mere land or resource grabs or colonial conquests designed to enrich the elites of the warring nations. As the years have passed, I have come to see Constantinianism as a worldly corrupting influence in the Church, whose members are supposed to be living as strangers and exiles on the earth. My rejection of the American Religious Right is a rejection of Constantinianism.

I am not alone in this rejection. Over the last several months, I have met several other bloggers who think along the same lines. One of them is Sarah, author of the Accidental Blog (http://accidentalweblog.blogspot.com). A recent post of hers, “Responsibility To Protect,” asks how Christians ought to relate to the state if our relation is not supposed to be Constantinian. She makes a very good point that Christians may be making a mistake by just walking away from involvement in the polity of the state, since polity is part of everyday life and not a separate sphere. The main thrust of her question is this: should Christians attempt to use earthly power at all in order to promote a godly outcome in their own state or in other states?

Her question is a good one; it forced me to think – a lot! People who ask such questions perform a valuable service for their neighbors. In fact, I think a good goal for a thinking person is to try each week to ask a question that gives someone else a headache from having to think a lot to answer it :). I have to admit, though, that while I have some opinions on the subject, I don't have an answer to her question.

But there is one aspect of her question about which I think I can speak with assurance. She was thinking specifically of Christians using the power of their state to help the citizens of “failed states,” that is, states whose governments are crumbling and unwilling or unable to provide justice, basic security and essential services for their citizens. The example she cited of a failed state is that of Zimbabwe, whose citizens are suffering from hunger, violence, disease and monetary hyperinflation. I think she was thinking that Christian citizens of a rich, privileged nation such as the United States should have some power to intervene for good in the affairs of a backward nation like Zimbabwe.

I'd like to offer a rather different perspective. First, I think that there are many uncomfortable and heretofore un-noticed similarities between many failed states as they are now and the United States as it now is. I think that these similarities will lead to conditions in the United States deteriorating rapidly very soon, and that it's entirely possible that parts of our country may end up suffering just as badly as Zimbabwe.

It's hard to get at the truth regarding Mugabe's role in Zimbabwe, since news about that country is brought to America largely by major media corporations owned by Western economic elites who have their own agenda. But it is also true that there are many African (and other) nations which are ruled by self-seeking leaders who sell out their citizens and the natural resources of their lands to the West for the sake of massive personal gain. This has also been true of the leaders of the United States ever since Ronald Reagan. The selfishness and looting of our nation's wealth by politicians accelerated through the reigns of Reagan and Bush I, and really took off during the presidency of Bill Clinton. Under President George Bush, the term “looting” has become totally inadequate to describe the raiding of this country by the rich. We may have to come up with a new term, something like “hyper-looting.”

A country whose leaders raid its resources for their own personal gain has no resources left to provide for the common good. Such a country is characterized by increasing disorder and failure of infrastructure – including roads, sewers, bridges, water treatment plants, law-enforcement and public protection agencies, financial systems, and even whole cities. Increasingly, we don't have to look overseas to find evidence of such failure. We need only look at the American South in the aftermath of the hurricanes which have passed through since 2005 to see destroyed infrastructure that will probably never be rebuilt. Or we can look at Detroit and the urban ruins that are reverting to prairie wilderness there. We can look at the strong probability that the U.S auto industry will be bankrupt before New Year's Day, the massive job losses, the partially-finished new housing tracts that will never be finished and that are being stripped for salvage, and any number of other signs of state failure right here in the U.S.A.

The U.S. is hardly alone as a candidate for the designation of “failed state.” Jeff Vail at http://jeffvail.net and John Robb, author of the Global Guerrillas blog (http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/), have argued that the early 21^st Century will be a time in which the nation-state loses its legitimacy due to resource constraints and system failures, and that local “resilient communities” will become a much more important part of everyday life.

In short, many of the nations of the West, or the Global North, or the First World, however you want to describe them – nations which have for so long considered themselves to be the privileged, the rich, the advanced – are on the verge of becoming failed states in their own right. This is especially true of the United States. (How many of you have read Reinventing Collapse?) So here's my question to make thinking heads hurt, if anyone out there is reading this and wants a headache for the next few weeks: how should Christians live and act in a land that is falling apart?

Ya Better Be Good...Joel Osteen's Coming to Town

For those who still think that the blessing of God consists primarily of material possessions, I have some good news. Joel Osteen is coming to Portland, Oregon next weekend, and he has a message that will fit right in with your views. Ticket prices are $15 per person. If anyone does not have the $15, they can just name and claim that money, and they should be all right. Or if they have extra faith, they can just name and claim a seat at the Rose Garden arena, and they won't even have to worry about money. I won't be attending his event, so you can name and claim my seat.

Defining the Blessing of God

I'm going to talk like a geek for a few sentences. I hope no one minds. Being a geek is what I get paid for; “it's what I do.” Anyway, here goes.

On my job, I recently had to specify some electrical power protective relays for generator and transformer protection applications. I was basing my selection on guidance that I had been given to base my design around Schweitzer or General Electric Multilin products. But I got to talking to a fellow engineer who told me about another company's protective relays – how good they were and how easy they were to program, as well as how much less they cost than the Multilin products. I already knew a fair bit about Multilin and Schweitzer products, but I knew very little about the this other company's relays. So, being intrigued, I checked out the other company's website (I'll call them Company X).

The home page of their site has a tab titled, “About Company X.” It also has a tab dedicated to the founder's artwork. Though I get paid to be a geek, I also have a human side, and am always curious to find out more about the non-engineering side of engineers who have additional sides to their personalities (some engineers don't). (BTW, the last time I took the Myers-Briggs test, the results indicated that I should have been a psychologist or tutor instead of an engineer.) I checked out the founder's art (he's actually pretty good) and a few other things; then I read the “CEO Message” from the founder's son. A few sentences caught my eye and made me stop and think (don't worry; I soon kicked myself in the pants and got back to work). Here's an excerpt of the “CEO Message”:

“There are those in this world who believe that the only way to get ahead is to look out for #1 first. God's Word says - NOT SO! We are to humbly serve others first. We are to treat the other guy like we want to be treated. We're to consider his welfare above our own. None of us meet these goals to perfection, but if these aren't our goals, then we don't meet them at all.

“A business, subject to the Lord, based on these goals cannot fail. God won't let it. In fact, He promises, 'Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.' Now what CEO could resist an offer like that!

“So, when we regard our customers' needs more highly than our own and act accordingly, then God blesses the business more abundantly than we could ever imagine. If we look out only for #1, that's exactly how many we've got on our side. When we care for others first to the Glory of God, we have all the creation power of the universe on our side. May we at Company X always keep this foremost in our minds.”

Now I've never met the CEO, but I do know the reputation of his products, and I believe that he is a reputable, hard-working, honest man. But his portrayal of the blessing of God aroused questions in me, because what he said about blessing seems to be typical of the idea of blessing which is standard in many evangelical circles nowadays – namely, that the blessing of God on someone's life is seen primarily in their material prosperity.

I have a few problems with that idea. First, it seems to me to be a peculiarly American idea, although I cannot rigorously defend this statement, since I haven't studied world history deeply enough to state such a thing categorically. Yet when I think of the bits of history I remember from college and high school classes taken long ago, it seems that the Christianity of other places and other times regarded this earthly life as a time of suffering and trial, and reserved the hope of a better existence for the hereafter. Indeed, Dmitri Orlov says the following in his book Reinventing Collapse: “(The message of the Russian Orthodox Church)...has always been one of asceticism as the road to salvation. Salvation is for the poor and humble, because your rewards are either in this world or the next, not both. This is rather different from Protestantism, the dominant religion in America, which made the dramatic shift to considering wealth as one of God's blessings, ignoring some inconvenient points rather emphatically made by Jesus to the effect that rich people are extremely unlikely to be saved. Conversely, poverty became associated with laziness and vice, robbing poor people of their dignity.”

Orlov's observation is a good one. According to many spokespersons of modern American evangelicalism, material prosperity is the sign of God's blessing, and poverty is a sign of failure of some kind in those who are poor. Yet what does this say about the many poor saints throughout history? What does it say about the many poor and suffering Christians who live now in foreign countries? What does this say about a person like Dr. Paul Brand, a poor missionary doctor in India who discovered the neuropathic damage caused by leprosy and invented treatments for leprous patients, yet who refused to get rich from his discoveries? Indeed, James 2:5 says, “Listen, my beloved brothers. Didn't God choose those who are poor in this world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the Kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?”

But there's an additional problem with identifying the blessing of God as receiving ever more material wealth. The fact is, as many have said many times, that the world is running against functional, structural limits to consumption and economic growth. Much of the growth that has taken place over the last several decades has come at the expense of the environment and the poor of the earth. There is therefore not only a moral danger in living large; there is also the practical matter that living large will not be possible for many people for much longer. The comfortable, affluent way of life of First World citizens – of Westerners – of Americans – is coming to an end, to be replaced with something a lot less comfortable, something quite a bit more rugged.

That new existence which is coming upon us is something for which most American evangelicals are ill-prepared. Indeed, it's hard to find Christian bloggers who openly and honestly discuss Peak Oil and climate change, or the immoral nature of excessive consumption. We don't tend to think realistically about these things, and when we think about them at all, we tend to think that God will work some miracle to prevent us from having to suffer or live more simply. I think it's time we all grew up. Part of that growing-up will be a repentance from materialism (“Don't lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consume, and where thieves don't break through and steal...” - Matthew 6:19-20, World English Bible), and a new, accurate understanding of what the blessing of God actually is in this day and age. I don't claim to have that new understanding, but I'm working on it.

Now perhaps the CEO of Company X has this accurate understanding, and I simply misinterpreted his “CEO Statement.” Also, I don't mean this in any way as a criticism of this company's relays. I too think they provide a lot of value for the money, and the next time I have to specify a protective relay for medium- or high-voltage applications, I will look first at this company's products. And I am sure that the company CEO is a very charitable person, and it would not surprise me to find that he gives very generously of his material resources to help the less fortunate. It's just that I think we American evangelicals need to start looking at things differently. Please kindly consider this post as the chicken-scratches of a guy who's trying to figure all of this out.

The Cost of a Christian Witness

It's been obvious to me for a while now that being a Christian witness in the world is not the same thing as upholding American patriotism. The two are different; they are not equivalent. Seeing the difference between these two things means that I can never again go along with the agenda of the American Religious Right. But that has brought me to a question: what does it mean then for Christians to uphold God's interests in this present world? What would God have us do?

It's a question I am trying to figure out, although I have a very rough idea. Does God want us to advance His Kingdom on earth? Or does He want us to invite people on earth to come out of the present social arrangements of this world and to become subjects of His Kingdom? Is advancing God's Kingdom on earth the same thing as inviting the citizens of this world to join a kingdom that is coming? If our goal is to try to make all the nations of earth conform to the laws of God's Kingdom, I don't know if such a goal can be accomplished by fallible mortals as long as this present age lasts. That's something that only God can do, although His earthly subjects can exert some influence over the things that happen on earth. But if our goal is to invite the citizens of this world to join God's Kingdom, that is more achievable. Our invitation to others to join that Kingdom consists of us acting as witnesses of that Kingdom.

But the witness must first and foremost be the witness of our lives. Talk is cheap, and too many people have already said too many words. And the deeds of some of these people have contradicted their words. On the other hand, deeds are costly. Living out the Sermon on the Mount can be very costly, especially at this time in history when our present global economic and political systems are failing, when moral and ethical expectations that were common a few decades ago are trampled, and when life as a whole is becoming more chaotic. I read a lot of blogs and articles relating to Peak Oil and financial collapse. And I read (and sometimes witness firsthand) the stories of the breakdown of American society, stories about ordinary Americans doing increasingly bizarre and incredibly selfish things, like trampling store employees to death just to be the first in line to score a deal on discounted consumer electronics.

Hearing about these things leads to anxiety. Certain things could ease that anxiety, I suppose. I could hoard my resources instead of sharing them. Or I could buy a gun. My neighbors have several guns. One neighbor and his wife are active in their church, but they are also armed to the teeth. I could also get back into martial arts, which I haven't studied since I got out of high school. If that's too much for conscience to bear, I could cheat just a little bit – maybe put up a punching bag in the garage, do a bit of shadow-boxing, rig up a few homemade devices to practice with to improve my speed and coordination. But there's Matthew 5:38-42, and the Lord's words to Peter in Gethsemane: “All those who take the sword will die by the sword.” And taking up the sword would disqualify me as a witness, I think. So there's a conflict.

That conflict was especially pronounced this week when I drove to a restaurant (one of the few times I drove this week; I suppose I should have walked or ridden my bike instead) and found upon leaving that someone had smashed the passenger window of my vehicle. Whoever did it was too stupid to take anything valuable, like the radio or my vehicle registration; instead they just lifted a pair of gloves that had been on the seat. My vehicle is over ten years old and wasn't expensive even new, so I wondered a lot about why someone had chosen to target me. Later came the anger and fantasies about what I would have done if I had caught the vandal in the act.

I think I'll have many more occasions to face this conflict between the requirements of Christian witness and the natural desire to preserve myself. Every time the conflict comes, I'll be faced with a “Gethsemane moment.” I'm facing one now.

Ted Haggard, Sociopath, Rises Again

Ted Haggard, disgraced former minister of New Life Church in Colorado, is seeking to make a comeback as a preacher. (See http://news.aol.com/article/is-disgraced-pastor-reinventing-himself/258087?icid=100214839x1213997335x1200907067) This is less than a year after he was ordered by his church to refrain from preaching for a period of a few years in response to the revelation of sexual sin and drug use by Mr. Haggard.

Haggard is justifying his earlier return to preaching by pointing to his "gift" and "call from God," and he has a band of supporters and yes-men who are singing the same tune to anyone who will listen. Rather than face the fact that he has become a toxic person, he has sought to shift the blame for his toxicity onto others, going so far as "chastising church leaders for missing an opportunity to use his scandal to 'communicate the gospel worldwide,'" and boasting that he has emerged from his scandal with a stronger Christian faith and marriage than he'd ever had.

This is really bizarre, yet it is typical of many fallen and disgraced "ministers" in American evangelical culture. The fact that they are able to stage "comebacks" after exposure of serious, long-standing sin says something about the people who are still gullible enough to listen to them. It shows that there are still too many of us who call ourselves "evangelical" who are willing to give their lives and resources to leaders whose gift consists of nothing more than being able to organize or speak well and entertainingly, and who don't know how to live what they preach.

It also shows that too many of us don't have enough confidence in our own ability to understand the Bible, and is seen in our insecure search for "experts" whom we worship as heroes. And it shows that there is still too much money to be made in starting a big megachurch ministry. It's the money that ruins things, by attracting unscrupulous men to positions of power in much the same way that flies are attracted to hot, smelly dung.

A Few Rabbit-Trails

Shortly after I started this blog, From SoC to Points North, I began to fear that I would quickly run out of things to say. I never had this fear with my original blog, TH in SoC, nor with my other blog, The Well Run Dry. But I guess if people are attuned to the things that happen to them every day, they can find something to talk about – especially in these present times.

I had another dream about my old church, a church which I must ashamedly describe as an aberrant and abusive group of people, as I described them in TH in SoC. But I also had a flash of insight after the dream, and I figured out why I still have dreams about that place and those people. It has to do with community. Like many high-demand, totalist groups, these people held out the promise of instant community to anyone who was willing to submit to their demands. Because they set themselves as the definers and mediators of “community” and because their demands were so intense, many of us who left had trouble establishing our own circles of community after we left.

I know it has been a struggle for me. While I lived in Southern California, during the days after I left that church, I had some healthy distractions and experiences of community in which people were free to be themselves. For instance, there was the experience of getting to know the neighbors on my street and talking to all of their kids. The kids used to come to my front yard so often to hang out that I once humorously thought to myself that I should have become a child psychologist instead of an engineer. Then there was a guitar class and a creative writing class I was involved in, and my discovery of Peak Oil two years ago, which took my mind off a great many other things. (Ah, but Peak Oil is a subject for another blog...)

Anyway, since I left Southern California over a year ago, the process of rebuilding the experience of community has been rather slow. It is not that there are not opportunities here; in fact, it seems that it would be easier here than it ever would in the vast suburbs of So. Cal. It's just that it's up to me to do the rebuilding, and not to lazily cede control of my social life to some authority figure usurping the place of a parent in my life. And the rebuilding involves adults coming together as free individuals who are free to be themselves as they interact with each other. Once that rebuilding is underway, I will be able to say that a major portion of the damage done to me by that old church is fixed, and that I've scored a victory over them.

There are other things I've been thinking about, such as the place of Christian art in the present world, and how to find and support artists whose work doesn't stink like corporatist cheese. I am also pondering the challenge of being a Christian witness in a dangerous world, as I think about the things I have learned over the last two years concerning energy, climate, and the evils of the present worldly power structures. That makes me think of a statement on Stormchild's blog Gale Warnings: “...most of us spend our lives as prey, economically and psychologically...” In a world dominated by rich and powerful predators, living as a Christian and not becoming prey will be a very big challenge. I've also been seeing the need to re-learn the “mechanics” of how the supernatural actually works. This is because of my exposure to wacky teaching in my old church over the years, as well as the craziness I have been seeing among many who are involved in the Charismatic/Pentecostal side of Christendom.

But this next weekend I am going on another long bike ride with a local club, providing that it doesn't rain on us all. I may even take pictures. To anyone reading this, I wish a happy Thanksgiving.

The 2008 Election - A Rearview Mirror Look

They say that you're not supposed to talk about politics and religion. I wonder if that means that people are not supposed to talk about these subjects publicly at all, or whether it just means that you're not supposed to talk about them together at the same time. Perhaps politics and religion are like two substances that, when mixed together, undergo a hypergolic reaction and burst into flames. Anyway, I've been careful in my blogging not to do as “they” say. I hope I haven't set anyone on fire (but maybe it would be good if I had). And I'm about to talk politics and religion again. Why here instead of on my other blog, The Well Run Dry? Because I'm in the midst of covering alternative transportation and peak oil on that blog, and I don't want to interrupt the flow. So if you are flammable, you may want to stay away from this blog post.

The election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States has produced some rather interesting reactions from various sectors of the American public, including reactions from many leading members of the Religious Right. According to a recent article in The Daily Advertiser titled, “Clergy Urge Prayer for Obama,” James Dobson told his radio audience that he was “bereft” after the election, “in the midst of a grieving process...over the loss of things that (he) has fought for 35 years.” Earlier in the year, he had threatened to sit out the 2008 election if John McCain was chosen as the Republican nominee, but later reversed course and endorsed McCain after McCain's pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate, stating that “it's probably obvious which of the two major party candidates' views are most palatable to those of us who embrace a pro-life, pro-family worldview.” There have also been stark warnings from Georgia Republican congressman Paul Brown calling Obama a Marxist with a Nazi agenda. And there is a Roman Catholic priest in South Carolina who told his parishioners that any who had voted for Obama needed to do penance before partaking of holy communion.

On the other side of the aisle, there are reports of joyful dancing in the streets among Democrats and those who call themselves “progressive.” Many of their spokespeople have called this election an historic moment in which old racist and class barriers were broken, and they speak of the dawn of a new day of “tolerance” and “diversity” and “progressiveness,” dwelling much on the symbolic value of this past election.

To both sides, I have a few things to say, things that will be very hard to swallow. Since I am a conservative evangelical Christian, I will start by addressing the conservative side of the aisle.

As I have said, I am a conservative evangelical Christian. I believe that the Bible is actually the inspired Word of God. My theology is summed up in the Apostles' Creed. I believe that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and that becoming a Christian means repenting of one's sins. I also believe that homosexuality and abortion are sins, because the Bible says that they are. Such beliefs are in direct contradiction to the views of most people aligned with the Democratic Party. In fact, I disagree with Barack Obama's position on these issues.

Yet I voted for Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States.

Some who know me will say that I voted for Obama because, like me, he is black. Others will question my Christian credentials, unable to grasp the reasoning behind my vote. Really, though, it is very simple to explain. My vote for Obama was not because he is black, although there are advantages to having a man like Obama in the sort of public spotlight granted to presidents. Obama – urbane, thoughtful, educated and well-spoken – is a powerful contradiction of the stereotypical def'-jammin, jive-talkin', b-ball, gangsta-thugga-rappa portrayal of black culture typically presented by the mainstream media. This stereotype is frequently the only portrayal shown in mainstream entertainment, so that when real-life events force people like Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Nelson Mandela or Barack Obama into public view, it's a surprise to many. Now at least, America gets to be surprised every day for the next four years.

Why then did I vote for Obama? Because the conservatives, Republicans and members of the Religious Right proved themselves to be supporters of a corporatist agenda that benefited a small group of rich elites while destroying poor nations and the poor of this nation, as well as destroying the earth. The evidence of that destruction has been well-documented on my blog, TH in SoC, in the posts titled, “Fighting With Broken Weapons” and “The Sins of the Right.” Here I will list just a few examples: the Iraq war, which was started on a pretext solely to seize Iraqi oil; the subsidizing of biofuels and genetically-modified food which inflated the price of basic food and lead to widespread hunger; the expansion of the private prison industry, which brought many people convicted of nonviolent crimes into long-term slavery while forever depriving them of the right to vote; the promotion of global laissez-faire neoliberal trade policies which destroyed the local farms, manufacturing enterprises, natural resources and economies of foreign nations while enriching Western corporations; the privatizing of public utilities and services in order to enrich private corporations at the expense of the poor and working-class; and the refusal to admit the reality of anthropogenic global warming and environmental degradation.

These are just a few sins of the Right. Many more have been documented in books such as the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, and on websites such as the OXFAM site, Casaubon's Book and Navdanya by Vandana Shiva. Eventually these things would lead to the ruin of the United States and any other nation which allowed its economic elites to practice such sins. But the coming ruin has been accelerated by the increasing speed of manmade climate change, as well as the decline in resources due to Hubbert's Peak. Because of resource peaks and climate change, our present corporatist economic system is breaking. Yet under President Bush and the Republicans, average working-class people are being forced by their government into continued reliance on that system while being deprived of the ability to build a safety net of alternative systems. After examining the public service records of John McCain and Sarah Palin, I was convinced that these two persons would have continued the corporatist agenda pursued by President Bush. Therefore I voted against them.

The American evangelical “Religious Right” has sought to portray the Republican party as the party of godliness, Christianity and “family values,” stating that the Republicans are the most “pro-life” of the two major parties. I personally believe that the spokesmen for the Religious Right have been acting simply as builders of a political power base for candidates who have a corporatist agenda. The leaders of the Religious Right have pushed two issues to identify whether a candidate has a “Biblical” worldview and agenda, yet they have ignored the fact that the Bible does not confine itself to just two issues. Also, the Bible defines being “pro-life” much more broadly than just being against abortion. Abortion is sin – make no mistake. But oppressing and robbing those who have already been born is just as much of a sin as killing the unborn; yet the Religious Right is silent when it comes to condemning the murderous practices of rich Western elites.

But suppose I were to believe that the leaders of the Religious Right are sincere in their lobbying and use of political action to try to make America a “Christian” nation. It would be a great stretch to believe this, since they are just as vocal about opposing issues about which the Bible says nothing, issues like mass transit (since when is that a sin?!) and climate change legislation. Still, what if I were to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they sincerely think they are doing God's work? I believe that I would still end up scratching my head in wonder at them. Take Sarah Palin's statement to James Dobson before the election: “I'm going to know, at the end of the day, putting this in God's hands, that the right thing for America will be done.” Indeed, there were many prayers and calls for prayer made by Religious Right leaders in the days up to November 4. One minister at an Iowa McCain rally prayed for a McCain win because an Obama win would cause Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists to think that their god is bigger than the LORD. Let's assume then that religious evangelical conservatives were wholeheartedly committed to the rightness of their cause and to their strategy of political action as a means of advancing the Kingdom prior to November 4.

What then did November 4 teach them? Things certainly turned out differently than they had hoped and prayed. God didn't give these people what they asked for. Does this mean that God does not exist? Is God weak? Was it merely that these people did not have enough faith? Or could it be that they are mistaken about who God is and what He considers important? Most of us evangelicals have been down the political action road before. For years, I unquestioningly supported the Republican party as the party of God and country. For years I actually believed that it was possible to make a nation Christian in character through laws and elections. Much later I realized that this approach cannot work, because it's impossible to get unsaved people to act like Christians via political action. God is calling His people to live on this earth not as supporters of earthly empire, but as strangers, aliens, and witnesses of new life. Certainly all the political agitation of the Religious Right has produced less-than-stellar results. In fact, the country has gone very much in a direction opposite to that in which the leaders of the Right were trying to lead it. Yet they are unwilling to think on the implications of this. Perhaps it's true that the mark of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting a different result.

I assert that while the American Religious Right has stated that it's agenda is to use political action to create a Christian nation, its real agenda has been to legitimize the agenda of the rich and powerful, and to promote American (and Caucasian) domination of the world. Their narrow focus solely on homosexuality and abortion galvanizes potential members of their political power base, yet it poses no threat to established economic elites.

What then of the Left? The Left has historically been a critic of the greed and excesses of the Right. The Left has produced many spokespeople who were fearsomely anti-corporate and anti-capitalist, people like Saul Alinsky, Martin Luther King, and folk singers such as Woody Guthrie. Yet in recent years, traditionally “left-leaning” mainstream media outlets have re-defined the “Left” solely in terms of rejecting Biblical sexual morality and being “progressive” regarding sexual issues. This too poses no threat to established economic elites. Thus we were told during the Democratic primaries that we should vote for Hillary Clinton because she's a woman with “progressive” values, and that a vote for her would be a vote for “change!” We know how Barack Obama was able to market himself as a “progressive” candidate, a “change agent,” with a message of “hope” and “inclusiveness” for America. Now that Obama has won, the mainstream media focus has largely been on spokespersons and proponents of sexually “alternative” lifestyles who are celebrating and giving their views on the meaning of Obama's victory for their cause.

My vote for Obama was not a vote for sexually “progressive” values, but a hope that he might tackle a far more difficult job, namely, the preservation of our country from ruin at the hands of economic and political elites. The danger is that the elites of our country may succeed in defining “progressive” values solely in terms of “alternative” sexual morality just as they defined evangelical conservatism solely in terms of sexual morality. Defining societal values in these terms poses no threat to the members of these elites, and allows them free rein in continuing to practice immoral deeds which enrich them while ruining, robbing and enslaving the poor of the earth. Yet by their actions, these elites are on the verge of destroying our nation and our planet.

Therefore I have a challenge for Mr. Obama and the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. If they are as “progressive” as they have been saying they are, they will quickly enact legislation to break the power of the rich and to prevent the possibility of any one individual or small group of people gaining inordinate wealth or power over the many. They will tell the truth to the American people about our present economic, environmental and energy crises, rather than trying to maintain the unsustainable American lifestyle of ever-increasing consumption. They will lead us into a truly sustainable way of life in which each person's needs – not greeds – is met. And they will remove the power of multinational corporations to extract the wealth of poor nations while destroying the people of those nations.

A good legislative/executive agenda for the first year of Obama's presidency might well look like this:

• Break up economic monopolies and oligarchies in America, starting with the media. Enact rules and laws preventing one man or corporation from owning more than one percent of all newspapers, radio/television stations or Internet media services. Period.

• Stop bailing out failed businesses that are dying because they based their business models on unrestrained growth of profits. The Big Three automakers don't need a bailout. If they are to be saved at all, let them re-tool to make railroad rolling stock and components, or to make bicycles. Poor “Joe-the-Blogger” Americans do not want to be turned into collateral for bailouts given to cover the bad choices of the rich.

• Repeal all government regulation enacted by the Bush administration to prevent poor and working-class people from finding alternatives to products offered by big business. Abolish the National Animal Identification System for starters. Abolish all rules and laws which hinder small businesses through excessive regulation while letting big business off the hook.

• If you want to “stimulate” the economy, require creditors to forgive the majority of debts owed by members of the working class, and to forgive all subprime mortgage debt. This will rein in many of the excesses and evil effects of our present credit economy, and will force a change to a more sensible economic arrangement.

• Bring American troops home from their far-flung bases, ASAP. Bring the troops home from Iraq NOW. They never should have been sent there in the first place.

• Repeal the Patriot Act NOW.

• Shut down Guantanamo NOW.

• Start NOW to build the policies and infrastructure that will help Americans live in a future with far less natural resources and energy. This does not require new leaps of technology, but simply requires that we honestly face reality. This is imperative, because a poorer, lower-energy, lower-consumption future is coming our way whether we like it or not.

Obama, you and the Democrats have identified yourselves as the “progressive” party, the party of “change.” How about it? Are you enough of a change to enact an agenda like this? Symbolism means nothing to me; I'm only interested in deeds. Show me what you've got.

Wanted - A Good Bard

Lately I've been exposed to some interesting music videos from the late 80's and early 90's. One captivating example is the Billy Joel video The Downeaster Alexa. It tells the powerful, evocative story of fishermen struggling to make a living and provide for their families against the backdrop of the depletion of their fisheries by overuse and environmental damage. It's a very good video from a technical standpoint, and The Downeaster Alexa is a strong song, a good story well-told. Its lyrics were pounding in my head last Saturday as I rode my bike along the Columbia River in the early afternoon, pushing against a hard wind while yellow leaves fluttered and went airborne and gunmetal-colored clouds scudded overhead.

That song and its story have got me thinking. Christianity is also a strong, rich, multilayered story, and its bards should be just as skilled, just as excellent as artists like Billy Joel, if not more so. Yet the last time I checked out a “Christian” bookstore, all I found was commercialist cheese. My blog, TH in SoC, was in part a protest against the commercialism which has taken over Christian culture in recent decades. Hearing The Downeaster Alexa has aroused a hunger in me. I need a good story. Good stories, skillfully told, instruct and inspire pilgrims on their journey and help to keep them oriented toward their goal. But I don't know where to look for a good story. I am wary of going to the usual places to find stories, fearful that I will be charged lots of money for mediocre work.

I've started wanting again to be an artist. Not to (starve while trying to) make a living at it, mind you. Being an engineer is a reliable gig and it gets the bills paid. But I want to be an artist, not as a way of making money, but as a way of learning to tell the best and most edifying of stories. As Aaron Tate once wrote, “So I write a book of life/using the best words I can find/for some struggler to snuggle up/when the world becomes unkind.” I want to learn to tell good stories as a freewill offering. But this means two things: first, learning the craft of good storytelling, whether poetry, visual art or music; and secondly, being a living, breathing example of what I preach. It's the second part that's the hardest, since often I am tempted (and sometimes I yield to the temptation) to act in a way that denies the truths I profess. Anyway, I've been itching to start practicing guitar regularly again.

But that alone won't satisfy my hunger for a good story. I want especially the sort of stories that can be packed into short, pithy poems. I can take these with me and remember them when going to work or when stuck behind my computer doing a project. Maybe I should search other people's blogs, since I have recently been learning many though-provoking things from the blogosphere. And blogs are freewill expressions; most bloggers don't ever dream of making money from their writing, so the commercial motive is not present to corrupt what they say. Are there any blogs by skilled bards out there? Does anyone have any suggestions?

A Scripture for the Election Season

As anyone reading this blog can probably tell, I've started regularly reading the Bible again. It's something we were compelled to do in my old abusive church, and something I did for a bit even after I left. But work got busy and other projects took up my time, and my regular reading became highly irregular. I don't know that I feel very guilty about this. Maybe I should, since the psychological damage I experienced in my old church environment did not go so far as to render me incapable of bringing myself to read.

Anyway, that's all water under the bridge now. But a couple of weeks ago I read something in Deuteronomy that hooked my interest, and I went back again tonight to study it in more detail, because I wanted to write about it for this post. The oddest thing happened while I was studying the passage, and it had nothing to do with what the passage was saying. I had to remind myself that I am not in the Assembly (the name for our old church) anymore, and that I am not preparing a “word of ministry” for Sunday morning. I'm just re-formatting my soul's “hard drive” and re-installing software that had gotten corrupted, if you get my drift. It's amazing how much it takes to fix good and noble things after bad men have gotten their hands on those things to screw them up.

But on to the passage. It is Deuteronomy 17:14-20, and it reads thus:

When you have come to the land which the LORD your God gives you, and shall possess it, and shall dwell therein, and shall say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me”; you shall surely set him king over yourselves, whom the LORD your God shall choose: one from among your brothers you shall set king over you; you may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.

Only he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he may multiply horses; because the LORD has said to you, “You shall not go back that way again.” Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart not turn away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.

It shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book, out of that which is before the priests the Levites: and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life; that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them; that his heart not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he not turn aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children, in the midst of Israel. (Quoted from the World English Bible, a public domain translation.)

Among the things that struck me from this passage was the command that the king of Israel must not be a materialist – “Only he shall not multiply horses to himself...neither shall he multiply wives to himself...neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.” The Bible elsewhere equates greed with idolatry. Getting “stuff” was not to be the king's priority, and his choices and lifestyle were to be a reflection of this.

What was the king's priority to be, then? The law of God, the word of God – the king was to study it in order to obey it, that his reign might be an expression of the justice of God on earth, and that the king might remember always that he was simply one of the sons of Israel – "one of us," not superior to his brothers and sisters – and that all people are under God.

Note the contrast between the distraction of lusting for material possessions versus remembering the justice of God.

I am not quoting this passage in order to argue about what a “Christian” nation should look like; nor am I trying to force America to submit to the law of Moses. But if one looks at our most recent leaders, one sees a remarkable contrast between what this passage in Deuteronomy says and the character of the lives of our leaders. In order to get into elected office, they must both have and raise lots of money. While they are in office, they are servants of a corporatocracy, and after they leave office their corporate masters reward them richly with extremely lucrative appointments to leadership roles in the private sector. I think of former President Clinton, who according to some reports is one of the richest ex-presidents ever, and who was still busily shoveling dollars into his bank account as of the beginning of this year (See http://www.newsweek.com/id/105650, and http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?pagewanted=print, for instance.) But I also think of the greed of President Bush and the Republicans, as seen in such things as their tax cuts for the rich and their multi-hundred-billion dollar taxpayer-funded “bailouts” of their friends in high places.

In short, I see our former, present and (possibly) future leaders stuffing themselves with earthly wealth, gorged to bursting with possessions, and unable to stop themselves from their continued bingeing. While I am not reading or discussing the Deuteronomy passage in order to push some political action plan, I guess I am thinking about this passage as an aid to help me understand why our government seems so warped right now. Understanding is a key to coping.

I've gotten enough campaign mail in the last month to choke a camel. Most of it has very little effect on me, since I know who and what will get my vote in this election, and I hold no illusions about any of the candidates I am voting for. Yes, I am voting. But I am also doing other things as I see fit, in order to adapt to the future I think we will all face. Am I cynical? Maybe not; maybe I'm simply being realistic. But I'll be glad when, after this Tuesday, my mailbox contains only bills again.

A Prayer for Hard Times

Our Father which art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil:

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.

Amen.

I'd like to consider for a moment Matthew 6:9-13, commonly known as the Lord's Prayer.

It is a “pattern prayer,” taught by our Lord as a pattern of the priorities which we should have when we pray, the things we should all be wanting when we ask. It was given under circumstances remarkably like those we face today. In giving this prayer the Lord was addressing a group of people who held an otherworldly hope of a coming age in which righteousness dwells. This group of people, while large in terms of absolute numbers, was yet a very small percentage of the total Jewish population of Palestine at the time. They lived in a world dominated by corrupt and self-serving elites, from the rulers and agents of the Roman Empire to the self-seeking leaders of the Jewish political/religious class (Pharisees, Saducees, Herodians, tax-collectors) who had sprung up to accommodate the Roman occupiers and conquerors of Palestine. The members of these elites used their power to devour the poor and powerless who were under their reign. The Lord's Prayer was a prayer for hard times, given to people living in hard times.

Therefore it is a good prayer for today, a day in which those Christians who seek to conduct themselves as strangers and exiles on the earth must live in the shadow of a corrupt, dominating, exploitative global system – a system which has invaded every area of common life, including the religious/evangelical institutional realm. In considering this prayer, I think it may be helpful to study each of its clauses and ask what it is we are really praying for when we recite each of its requests.

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

Yes, Lord, teach us reverence. Our society has so corrupted us that we mock everything and consider everything a joke. Teach us to appreciate those things that are worthy of honor, to give reverence where reverence is due. Above all, may this world learn to hallow Your Name.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

May righteousness reign on earth. Lord, You see the injustices perpetrated by the powerful against the poor, and how it seems that the powerful will never be brought to any earthly justice. Lord, behold the wars started on the basis of lies, in order that rich, powerful elites may steal the resources of other countries. Lord, behold the exploitation of the poor by the rich, the unjust imprisonment and enslavement of the poor by the rich, the swaying and corrupting of earthly governments by the rich, the destruction of the earth in order to satisfy the appetites of the rich. Thy Kingdom come. Bring in a day of judgment and justice in which these evils will be righteously and swiftly stopped. And prepare us for that day by turning us away from unjust deeds in our own lives. Maranatha.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Yes, Lord, we repent of asking to be rich, of asking to be spoiled, of living as materialists, of overconsumption. We simply ask for our daily bread, our needful bread for the coming day – knowing that in the days now upon us the answering of this prayer must rightly be regarded as a miracle, for which we will give thanks.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

Lord, we know that hard times will bring out the worst in many people. May we be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Deliver us from vindictiveness.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Lord, in the coming times, may we behave honorably. May we not face a temptation so severe that we would compromise ourselves or deny You by our words and actions.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Remind us in the coming days that no matter what happens, You are still enthroned in Heaven. We acknowledge that You are still in command.

Thoughts, anyone?

People I Meet (And Run From) In My Dreams

One thing about enduring interesting times is that a person who does so spends a long time afterward processing what happened to him. That processing tends to show up at night, in the things that go through a guy's head during R.E.M. sleep.

So it is with me. It's been over five years since the last time I attended the abusive church I described in my blog, TH in SoC. For the first several months afterward, I very regularly had dreams about some of the more difficult people in the group (that includes almost all of the leaders, by the way), people that were a royal pain in the ... uh, neck to me. Most of that time I was quite angry. It finally occurred to me that I should do things to distract myself from rehashing the things I'd had to put up with during my involvement in the group.

During that time God providentially arranged for me to be assigned to a long-term consulting engineering contract in downtown Los Angeles, so I had to ride the Metrolink every day (expenses paid by my company, of course), which I had never done before. It was a welcome change of scenery and I encountered loads of new faces and new situations. During that time I also took a night class in creative writing at a local community college. Yet there were too many mornings when I'd wake up after a night of dreams re-hashing and processing old situations and encounters with old familiar faces, and I'd wonder why I never dreamed of work or school or riding the train instead.

Thankfully, the severity and frequency of the dreams has diminished quite a bit since then. I'm not really angry anymore. And if you want to talk about a change of scenery, I now live a thousand miles away from So. Cal. Yet even here there is an occasional night when old faces and old scenes insinuate themselves into my dreams.

Maybe I should write a song about this. Jackson Browne wrote “Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate.” Billy Joel wrote “River of Dreams.” Shawn Colvin wrote “Diamond in the Rough,” which has a memorable line, “I have lost too much sleep and I'm gonna find it.” If I have another “flashback” dream, I'll write a song titled, “Hey you! Get out from under my eyelids, man!” Then I'll have a good wry laugh. Does anyone out there from a similar background find that they're still “processing” things? How do you deal with it?

* * *

I attended Saturday evening service at the local rescue mission. Afterward, I asked one of the staffers a bit about the mission and the sorts of people they are seeing as visitors. He told me that while most of those who come to the mission are over 25 years old and dealing with substance abuse problems, there are some who come because they are victims of the current American economic mess. We talked about the needs of the residents and opportunities for volunteers to help out as he handed out bed tickets to a line of waiting men and the light rail trains rumbled by in the darkness outside. As I was leaving, he invited me back and said that I was welcome anytime. I may indeed make a return visit soon.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I'm going to hook up with some bicycle riders and go on a long recreational ride. It's more fun to do it with a group than to ride by myself. The weather should be good. And I have a post in the works which I will publish soon, titled, “A Prayer for Hard Times,” a look at the Lord's Prayer found in Matthew 6.

A Faith for Hard Times

Sometimes I work too hard at writing. I wrote a little story for my most recent post on my other blog, The Well Run Dry; I intended to just bang out a cute, quirky little allegory, but I spent way too much time doing research on Wikipedia and other sites in order to provide enough detail to make it believable. This post on From SoC to Points North will take a lot less time.

First, I want to point out a very good article, “Helps to Spiritual Renewal,” written by Margaret Irons, webmaster of the Assembly Reflections website. She came out of the same abusive church from which I also escaped. Her article is at http://www.geftakysassembly.com/Articles/Recovery/HelpsToSpiritualRenewal.htm.

It seems undeniable that hard times are ahead for our world, and particularly our nation. The most helpful thing when facing hard times is to have a clear-headed, adult perspective. This is especially true for Christians, who are supposed to be a display of wisdom in the midst of hard times, instead of clinging to erroneous beliefs that lead to disappointment and harm.

I recently finished reading the book of Numbers and am now in Deuteronomy. One thing confronted me inescapably: the knowledge that God is holy and that He punished nations which turned to wickedness. This is why He told Israel to conquer the nations of Canaan. But He told them that while, if they lived according to His law – if their deeds were a reflection of His character – He would bless them, He also told them that if they too turned to wickedness, He would punish them in the same way that He punished the nations they dispossessed.

People in the “post-modern” West don't like hearing this, and they tend to get very agitated and hostile whenever the holiness of God is mentioned. Yet that holiness is a fact, as is the fact that we have all fallen short of it. The failure extends across all lines – Left and Right, rich and poor, red, yellow, black, white. The evidence of our failure is the mess we have made of our country and of the world. “Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” But God has promised to the repentant an inheritance just as He promised an inheritance to Israel. One day, His people will inherit a new earth. The future heirs of the earth are known by this sign: that they are gentle and meek – Matthew 5:5. The first element of a faith for hard times is to acknowledge that God is holy, and to humbly accept His judgments and wait on His vindication.

There is a second element. I visited the Russian church I wrote about last week. I didn't understand everything (though I had a capable translator), but one day I'll write more fully about the parts I did understand. One thing that struck me was a hymn they sang at the end of their service. They sang it a cappella, with multiple parts, in a peculiarly Russian rhythm. I have to say that it was beautiful. My translator told me that it was Psalm 121 set to music, and since I had my English Bible, I opened it to that psalm and read it while everyone else sang. I was struck by another thought: that God has promised to keep His people. He is the unfailing Keeper of His people. “The LORD will keep you from all evil. He will keep your soul. The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in, from this time forth, and forevermore.”

I had to ask myself whether I really believed this. It's easy to distort Biblical promises of God's care and safekeeping to mean that He will give each of us a Mercedes-Benz, a lifetime supply of gasoline, a McMansion all paid for, perfect health, and a trophy spouse. Then when things don't work out according to our greeds (as opposed to needs), we get “disillusioned.” I don't believe that God has promised an easy life to anyone. In fact, when the Bible mentions people who have an easy life, they are usually numbered among the wicked. But God wants His people to trust Him – even in the times now upon us – that He will be our Keeper. What that means, we will all find out shortly. But whatever the shape of His keeping, it will be evident in the end that He did the right thing by us.

I'm thinking of heading over to a local rescue mission tomorrow for Sunday service. I'll come bearing gifts for the offering box – not money, but things like toothpaste, toothbrushes, shaving gear and the like. (Things like clothes and underwear also go over very well.) I'll tell more about it next week.

P.S. This is slightly off topic, but today I read a major news article about several states illegally purging voters from their voter registration rolls prior to the November Presidential election. The Republican party is trying to take advantage of this to influence the election. The news article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?em. Please let others know about this, if you would. Fellow bloggers, let's do what we can to ensure that this election is honest. Thanks!

Perils and Promise of Christian Community

On my other blog, The Well Run Dry, I have been writing about how the present global system known as the “official economy” is breaking, and how it is necessary for those who are not rich or powerful to begin building safety nets of alternative systems. One such system that I mentioned in a recent post is cohousing as a form of communal living in which community members could provide mutual support to one another.

After I wrote that post, I started thinking to myself, “What have I just written??!” Two things came immediately to mind: the relatively smooth experiences of some members of a secular cohousing community I recently visited, and my experience with communal living many years ago while a member of an abusive, unhealthy church. It seems from reading the Lord's commands in the Sermon on the Mount and the Upper Room discourse (Matthew 5-7; John 13-17) that Christians should have no trouble living communally when necessary, and that in the midst of widespread uncertainty and economic hardship, Christians should be a model for others to imitate. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just like I have loved you; that you love one another. By this everyone will know that your are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Why then was my experience of “Christian community” so screwed up? I know the answer: I was hoodwinked into joining a fraudulent organization that was not a genuine church, but merely one man's personal empire established to exploit its members. But I found after leaving this “church” that the founder's attitude was typical of many leaders and would-be leaders in modern evangelicalism. It is an attitude that loves hierarchy and domination, and the culture of that attitude is widespread in many parts of the American church.

So I guess I have a question: can Christians associate regularly with each other in a non-hierarchical way? Could Christians form cohousing communities in which every decision was reached by mutual consensus? Or are we doomed to be forever looking for popes to rule us? Will we always be easy prey for would-be religious empire-builders? I'd like to think we can get beyond that. (By the way, I'm not protesting the Biblical prescription for leadership in the Church. But I am protesting the obsession many wanna-be leaders have for trying to establish a pecking order in every situation where Christians come together.)

I ran across a Wikipedia article describing an encouraging example of a community that seemed to get beyond that. According to the article, “Clarence Jordan was a Baptist scholar and theologian who founded Koinonia Farm, a small but influential religious community in Southwest Georgia” in 1942. Koinonia was a radical community whose members regarded each other as equals, shared possessions, and practiced ecological stewardship. They were also racially mixed, which swiftly brought them into conflict with their neighbors, including the KKK. From Koinonia Farm arose organizations like Habitat for Humanity.

Mr. Jordan is an intriguing character, and I intend to find out a bit more about his life. One other thing about him is his “Cotton Patch Gospel” translation of the New Testament from Greek into early 20^th Century American English, Southern style. Check out his translation of Matthew 21:12-13: “Then Jesus went into First Church, pitched out the whole finance committee, tore up the investment and endowment records, and scrapped the long-range expansion plans. 'My house shall be known for its commitment to God,' he shouted, 'but you have turned it into a religious racket!'” I like the sound of that!

I checked out the small elderly church I wrote about in my last post. This weekend I think I will check out a Russian church. (Imagine that – a black man visiting a Russian church. And why? Because the American church seems so vacuous!) I know how to say good morning, good afternoon, good evening and farewell in Russian, but after that I'm lost. The week after next, I may attend Sunday service at the local rescue mission. (Why there? I'll explain in another post. I'll just say for now that I think I'd be more likely to meet the Lord among poor people than at a glitzy megachurch.) After that, I'll take a Sunday off to go on a long bike ride and do some thinking and evaluating.

The Road North

Welcome to my new blog, From SoC to Points North. I am the author of the blog, TH in SoC. But while I am still TH, I am no longer in SoC, having moved a thousand miles north from Southern California a year ago.

I suppose this is a second phase of my recovery from an abusive church experience. The first phase culminated in the writing of my first blog, TH in SoC. It was with a great deal of pathos and not a little anger that I wrote that blog, and though I put a lot of research into several of the posts, it was much more than just an academic study. Rather, finishing that blog gave me the sort of release and quiet that comes from having just successfully concluded a long fist fight. I hope I caused an appropriate amount of trouble for some perpetrators who badly needed troubling.

But now, it's time for me to take a little care of me. Chiefly, it's time for me to take some time to seriously figure out what the Christian faith is really about, since the teaching of the Bible was severely distorted in my old abusive church in order to serve the ends of the church leaders. I haven't abandoned the faith; I am still a pilgrim. But over the course of years my compass was smashed and someone scribbled in magic marker all over my map. It's time to sort things out. That sorting-out process is likely to be a very large subject. And I want to connect with other pilgrims.

I guess that means it may be time now to start looking for a church. If I confine myself to churches within walking distance of my house, three interesting choices come to mind. There is a very small church composed of people whose average age must be around 65 or 70, people who probably own collections of old vinyl records of Andy Griffith or Jim Nabors singing old Gospel favorites. I don't know how well I'd fit in there, but I don't think I'd be in much danger from stupid church games. Then there are at least two Russian churches nearby. Once a few weeks ago I saw a bunch of Russians walking to one of the churches, and I asked one of them about resources for learning Russian. His reply was that if I joined their church, they would teach me Russian. But I don't know if I want to pay that kind of price for a language lesson. Something about the word "join" makes me sweat a little, even now. Lastly, there is a wanna-be "Purpose-Driven" church within easy walking distance, complete with praise band and jeans-clad cool pastor. I'm definitely not going there. I think I'll probably try out the elderly congregation tomorrow.