John H Armstrong

Moneyball, Two Dramatic Loses and the End of the Line for My Team

As a fan of the great game of baseball the last 36 hours have been filled with great emotion, great joy and a huge sense of loss. Rarely will we ever see four regular-season games that mattered so much come down to the end in both leagues on one dramatic evening like Wednesday night. In the AL the Red Sox lost with two outs in the ninth to the lowly Orioles. They were leading 3-2 and had one of the best pitchers in baseball on the hill.  About three minutes later the Tampa Rays won on a walk-off home run by Longoria to win the AL Wild Card. Tampa has enough pitching to actually make a serious potential run at the AL Pennant.

In the senior circuit the Wild Card leading Atlanta Braves, my life-long favorite team, suffered one of the greatest stretch-run collapses ever, blowing a 10 1/2 game lead from late August and an 8 1/2 game lead from September 5. First-year Braves skipper Fredi Gonzalez has to be questioned about a number of bad decisions he made but he will be back again next year. (I believe Bobby Cox would not have blown this lead!) But give the Cardinals credit for winning big games when they had to even thought the Braves handed the Wild Card position away by losing their last five games when everything was on the line and they had several games won but then found a way to lose them. I actually felt more than a week ago that they were finished. It seemed like every move they made did not work and everything fell apart across the board. You could see the “deer in the headlights” look on the faces of the whole team and staff. Their game Wednesday evening came down to the ninth inning. When the Phillies tied them in the ninth and it went to thirteen innings it was agonizing to watch as I knew they would lose.

On Thursday, to get some closure on a very disappointing finish to what had been a really fine season for five months, I went to see Moneyball in the late afternoon. It is the new, much ballyhooed, baseball movie released last weekend. It proved to be a great way to grieve Wednesday’s huge loss. If the end of the season was emotionally gut-wrenching then this fine movie was the fix that I needed to get me ready for next spring.

Moneyball, based on the best-selling book by Michael Lewis, is the true story of general manager Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics. Beane sought to change the game by applying new measurable statistical evidence to how he chose players for a small market team with limited payroll. To some extent his effort altered the game of baseball in subtle but truly significant ways. This story is itself compelling even if you do not understand baseball at all. In the film Brad Pitt is Billy Beane and Philip Seymour Hoffman is field manager Art Howe. I have seen most all of the major Hollywood films about baseball. This has to be in my top five all-time baseball movies. Moneyball is clearly the best fact-based movie on baseball ever! It just might garner a few awards next year from the Academy. It really is that good. I’ll not tell you how it ends, in case you do not know the story, but I would encourage you to see it for yourself, even if you’re not a big baseball fan like me. If you are a fan then you will understand the range of emotions I felt today.

For all those friends who root for the Rays and Cardinals I say, “Congratulations. Enjoy your next series.” For me I believe the Phils and Rangers will play in the World Series and I think this is Philadelphia’s year. Why? They just have too much of everything that is needed and thus a balanced and well-managed club. Plus, they lost last year and have that sense of urgency in their team. I see the Phils play a lot of games since they are Atlanta’s chief rival. I have never more profoundly respected a rival team like this year’s Phillies team. They beat Atlanta six straight games in the final twelve of this season and did it with total class. They honored the game and walked off the field with class when they knocked the Braves out on Wednesday. They play the game the right way and their manager should get a lot of credit.

A Theology Professor’s Prayer for Her Students

I am particularly grateful that Wheaton College embraced the complete equality of women on their faculty many decades ago. (Wheaton was born in the time of anti-slavery and has always been an activist school in its robust evangelicalism.) I am even more grateful that this inclusion of women includes the Bible and Theology Department, a place where women are often rejected by conservative schools. Happily, women hold important teaching positions alongside their male peers at Wheaton. One such person is Dr. Beth Jones, author of The Marks of His Wounds: Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection (Oxford University Press, 2007) and Touched by a Vampire: Discovering the Hidden Messages in the Twilight Saga (Multnomah Books, 2009).

Beth Felker Jones, who holds a Ph.D. from Duke University, is married and has four children. She is a busy mom besides being a teacher of Bible and theology at Wheaton. Her husband is a United Methodist minister. On the college web site Jones writes the following about her life and work: “John Calvin wrote that ‘All right knowledge of God is born of obedience.’ It is my privilege to serve at Wheaton College as a teacher of theology and to explore what may be known of God when the Spirit leads us to obey. The more I learn about the Christian faith, the more I am stunned by the beauty of what God has done and is doing through Jesus Christ. My goal as a teacher is to help students see that beauty in ways they may never have glimpsed before. That work of teaching is strengthened by researching and writing about the beauty of the gospel spread through time and space.”

Jones was recently asked to speak about her teaching role in the Wheaton Alumni. She said that she wanted all her students to understand how doctrine works in the everyday world. She says: “Perhaps the most important thing I want my students to recognize about Christian theology is that it matters for Christian life. The study of doctrine is life giving, a fruitful way of connecting to the truth that is in God” (Wheaton Alumni, Autumn, 2011, 60).

Jones noted that deep within the evangelical impulse is a populism that drives us to share the gospel with the whole world. This populism pushes us to share the gospel in terms that most people can understand. It urges us to speak to people where they are and to witness to the transforming power of Jesus in ordinary lives and situations.

Jones expresses a deep concern that we have separated academic theology from vocation, or divine calling, in everyday life. This is a profound concern of mine and of this daily blog.

The evangelical tradition has always opted for engagement with the culture over against the temptation to separate from culture. For this reason it understands wisdom in a nuanced way. While St. Paul speaks about the foolishness of human wisdom in 1 Corinthians “it is never wisdom that God destroys, but only the wisdom of the world” (italics in original, Wheaton Alumni, Autumn, 2011, 60).

Upon discovering the considerable gifts of her undergraduate students Dr. Jones sees them all using theology as they give their lives to Christ and his church. Only a few will become professional theologians but, she adds, “I expect them all to be engaged in the theological work of making doctrine work in the world” (Wheaton Alumni, 60).

Holy Sexuality

I continually seek to understand both the Scriptures and culture with regard to the very hot subject of human sexuality. I cannot think of a single issue that threatens to divide us and defeat us more than this one. We debate this in convoluted ways that are framed by paradigms never employed in previous debates void of modern notions about “rights” and true freedom. Some want to frame this entire debate entirely by a "civil rights” paradigm while others insist that homosexuality is an “abomination” that must end all further discussion. While the civil society debates this topic the church stands in the middle, so it seems, dividing one from another in ways almost beyond belief.

I am clear (in my mind) about several things in this debate.

1. The debate is hurting us on every side. Generations are divided, families are divided and churches are now divided. I see no end in sight.

2. The cultural debate is growing and will not stop. Everything will very likely change. There is very little that you or I can do to stop this even if we want to stop it. This is not “defeatism” but a recognition of the real dynamics of the issue and how things are changing with each passing year.

3. Each church will very likely have to choose how it will handle marriage and then realize that the government will make laws that have nothing to do with our sacred witness. Would it be so bad if the church conducted “religious” (Christian) ceremonies for weddings and the state only did the “civil” ceremonies and the two were not the same? I think not. I have never bought into the idea that I am a servant of the civil state when it comes to officiating at weddings. In most cultures, and throughout most of (modern and ancient) human history, the two were not the same.

4. The church must talk much more clearly about sexuality, all sexuality. The human person is a sexual being. We have avoided this for too long. We respond to same-sex inclinations (whatever label we put on this) and same-sex practice as a type of separate category of sexuality from the rest of our sexual nature. This is a huge mistake. The church or pastor that teaches on this subject must not settle for a series on homosexuality without putting this into the larger context of all sexuality.

5. Sexual needs are not the same as the need for food and water. Without food and water we will die. Without sex we might have trials and struggles but we can survive. We might even live a better life without sex in many instances. Where did we get the idea that sexuality meant God gave this desire to us to be used as we please, whenever we please, and always for our personal pleasure? Even with food the church has always taught that fasting had a place in growth. The big issue then is our lack of a solid biblical understanding of sexuality in general, not homosexuality.

6. We must teach about holy sexuality. The Bible clearly condemns sexual promiscuity. The debate should not be about whether this is true. Everyone knows that it is. The debate is about whether or not a person with strong sexual orientation or inclination toward the same-sex can act on this inclination and remain holy before the full-orbed teaching of the Scripture.

My friend Christopher Yuan, who was at one time a practicing homosexual, says he searched the whole Bible, after being converted to Christ in prison, to see if he could find “justification” for his sexual practice. He says that he found none. He says his decision was thus to stop practicing his homosexual relationships with other men and ask for liberation through Christ. His life is a powerful statement about this decision and the love of God.

He writes, “As I continued reading the Bible, I realized that my identity shouldn’t be defined by my sexuality. . . . My primary identity didn’t have to be defined by my feelings or sexual attractions. My identity was not ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual,’ or even ‘heterosexual,’ for that matter. But my identity as a child of the living God must be in Jesus Christ alone” (“Holy Sexuality,” in Wheaton Alumni, Autumn 2011, 57, italics mine).

Chris says that what gave him clear direction was the simple biblical requirement that God had clearly said, “Be holy, for I  am holy.” He realized this meant he was to be holy in his sexual life as in everything else. He adds:

I had always thought that the opposite of homosexuality was heterosexuality. But actually the opposite of homosexuality is holiness. Therefore, I realized that I shouldn’t focus on homosexuality or even heterosexuality, but on the one thing God calls everyone to: holy sexuality. Holy sexuality was not focused on orientation change—becoming straight—but on obedience (Wheaton Alumni, 57).

What this means is that celibacy is appropriate for all single people. Holy sexuality is ultimately about being chaste before God because of who God is and who he made me to be. It is about living life the way God intended for you to live. It is not about having no feelings or attractions for the same sex, or for the opposite sex for that matter. It is about acting on those feelings in an appropriate way. God created us as sexual beings and as a result we have natural (good) desires for intimacy. But each one of us should express these desires in God-honoring, nonsexual relationships that can and do exist within and between both genders.

Perhaps the most positive thing that will come from all of this confusion is a whole new generation of Christians will arise who do not judge people the way mine did; e.g. the color of their skin, the status of their background, the amount of money they have, their sexual orientation, etc. I welcome this part of the sexual revolution. 

But holy sexuality cuts across all social norms and accepted practices, both between same-sex people and opposite-sex people. Holy sexuality affirms intimacy but reserves the practice of sex for marriage. This is done for several very important reasons.

You might ask, “But what about marriage? Cannot two people (regardless of gender) get married if they love each other deeply?” My purpose today is not to define marriage. (I’ve done that elsewhere.) But everyone engaged in the present debate who takes the Scripture and Christian tradition seriously must admit that marriage between persons other than an adult male and female is not what we see in Scripture or in church history. This new idea of marriage is a modern innovation that is built on very shaky (Christian) ground at its best. This is why this debate will never go away. It is unlike debates about civil rights and slavery. Most Christians will never embrace homosexual marriage for every good reasons. Our friends who disagree need to acknowledge this and recognize that we are not responding as we do because we are homophobic but because we believe holiness demands that sexual practice be reserved for a man and his wife. This has always been the Christian position and all the debates in the world will not fundamentally alter this understanding. Why? Because marriage is defined and explained in Scripture in a way that does not include the various modern innovations. The church that embraces holiness will necessarily stand for love for all people, including homosexuals, but it will also stand for marriage between one man and one woman.

Sadly, this debate is being carried out in ways that preclude honest disagreement, at least at this point in time. Christopher Yuan recently spoke at Yale University and was demonized by college media for holding to positions that he clearly rejects and has never taught. If you enter this part of the modern public space, and express a Christian viewpoint on holy sexuality, expect to be attacked. But Christians know how to respond when attacked.We are called to love, turn the other cheek and never attack back in kind. I am thankful for a friend like Chris who understands the message of love and grace and has the courage to speak the truth as a gay HIV-positive man who embraces holy sexuality in both his teaching and sexual practice.

Chronic Fatigue and the Challenge to Education

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal underscored the problems schools and parents face whose children suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). Amy Marcus tells the sad story of increased conflicts between parents and school districts as they seek to educate children with CFS who cannot cope with the daily routines of class and study.

By federal law public schools are required to provide a “free appropriate public education” in the “least restrictive environment” to children with special needs. But is CFS a “special need?” Most agree that it is. But it was not always this way. Until the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDPC) took CFS seriously this was not the case, perhaps for several decades at least. The CDCP estimates that one million Americans have CFS. As many of you know I am one of those Americans.

Amy Marcus correctly says CFS is a condition characterized by debilitating pain and severe fatigue, among a cluster of other related symptoms. These related symptoms include many things but the Mayo Clinic, which at one time did not recognize this illness seriously, now recognizes the illness in the way that has become common in the medical community.

Besides the central condition, from which this illness gets its name, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has eight (additional) official symptoms:

1. Overwhelming Fatigue
2. Loss of memory or concentration
3. Sore throat
4. Enlarged lymph nodes in your neck or armpits
5. Unexplained muscle pain
6. Pain that moves from one joint to another without swelling or redness
7. Headache of a new type, pattern or severity
8. Un-refreshing sleep
9. Extreme exhaustion lasting more than 24 hours after physical or mental exercise

Reports on CFS are numerous but a recent one in the UK proved helpful to me. There is no diagnostic or blood test for CFS and no known cure. Diagnosis is based upon a pattern of self-reported symptoms, which tend to flare and subside, or ebb and flow. For me there have been times when I felt “almost” normal and times when the illness seems to overwhelm me like a force that wants to make me give up on life. One has to fight with the emotional and mental aspects of this almost every hour of every day. My best moments are times when I am so absorbed in something that I enjoy, like a baseball or football game, a movie or a book (though concentration is extremely difficult), that I forget (for only a moment) that I feel so badly. I have come to believe that living with a CFS patient is extremely difficult and acquaintances cannot completely grasp how much this has impacted my wife, family and friends. My wife bears the worst of this since she sees me at my very worst and hears me confessing how badly I feel more than almost anyone else.

Increased awareness of CFS has led to more and more calls for research, especially among adolescents. This is particularly related to the problems created by students who cannot cope with school but who want an education and have good minds. Researchers at DePaul University in Chicago now suggest that as many of one in one hundred adolescents have CFS. For educators CFS is one of a growing group of “hidden disabilities” that are increasingly diagnosed in children. Many of these are not “visible” so how do schools deal with them? (Some illnesses included in these include fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivities, Crohn’s disease and migraines.) It is quite likely that you know someone, or have a family member, who suffers from such an illness. If you do you are aware that these symptoms are very real yet the sufferer can do little about them but find ways to cope and face each day without hope of really getting a lot better. (This is especially true if you’ve had the illness for more than a decade!) The good news is that many younger adults will likely improve over time.

A Washington-based institute on research in education says that students diagnosed with various chronic health impairments that sap energy is one of the fastest growing groups of special-education students in America. Their numbers have doubled since 2004. Only autism has grown faster in number.

One high school student with CFS says of her trial, “Some days I can talk about Plato’s Republic. And some days, I don’t remember my address.” That says it quite well as far as my experience goes.

You try to come up with a plan that works for you. There are days that begin well and by 10 a.m. you are done. There are other days that do not begin as well and somewhere, during the day, you find some strength. There is no rhyme or reason it seems. Changing diets, climates and doing nothing have had no great impact on me. I have been to seminars on the mind, classes on biofeedback type thinking and healing sessions. I have been prayed over by gifted Christians and leaders. I have supplemented my body with so many things a list would be too long to provide. Worst of all I still have people who insist they know “the cure” for this strange illness that is most likely rooted in a virus of some yet to be identified type. The best research lies here but even if we discover the virus, and the way it enters the human system, there is no guarantee we can treat it.

There is one medication that helps me cope to a limited extent. I am considerably better with this medication than I am without it. I struggled mightily, for several years, with taking this drug because I was taught that an illness like this is mostly in my mind and I should simply trust God more. I had to fight this until one evening I prayed and took the drug and have never looked back. I’m glad I made that commitment and now give thanks for the moderate help this medicine provides in granting me restful recovery by slowing down my nervous system.

One of the most insightful discoveries has been the suggestion that CFS brings about the inflammation of the central nervous system. I am fairly convinced this is true. I respond to stressful moments, and even to ones that are not all that stressful, as if I feel under intense (unexplainable) pressure all the time. I can’t explain this but things that come at me quickly cause me to shut down and react in unhelpful ways. It seems my system is overloaded. I must learn to sort out things into manageable small doses and know when to say “no.” For me this is a huge learning curve to be managing so late in life.

For children there is less adult experience and maturity to handle this trial. If your child has CFS learn the signs and symptoms and be prepared to cope (with great difficulty) when your adolescent has no desire to engage with activity and mental work. You will need grace and patience to cope. Find people who understand and work at this with all your might in the Lord’s grace. It will be a huge trial I assure you.

God Is Looking for Man

I have always thought one of the more impressive and important things our Lord ever uttered is recorded in Luke 17:10. Here he says:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

It is the last sentence in what is attributed by Luke to our Lord that I find the verse that has sustained my thinking for many years now. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Jesus is the seeker. We hear a lot about seekers, and so we should. But we must not forget who the real seeker is—Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord. He seeks for the lost!

St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan (339-397) writes: “As in Paradise, God walks in the Scripture, seeking man.”

And Peter Taylor Forsyth (1848-1921), an all too little-known Protestant theologian of immense importance, adds, “The Word of God is in the Bible like the soul is in the body.”

The fundamentalist pays too little attention to the historical formation and literary forms of the Bible by defending it in an unnecessary and fruitless way. When this is done the Bible becomes the center of a debate. Ambrose and Forsyth, Catholic and Protestant, both agree—the Bible is powerful precisely because it fulfills its purpose, namely to reveal Christ to us through divine revelation. The human form of words, and the interpretation of those words in a literalistic manner, is not the primary issue. The primary issue is the purpose of Scripture. This is true with everything under heaven. We ask, “What is the purpose of this or that?”

The purpose of Scripture is to reveal the seeking Christ to lost mankind. Pick the book up and read it, not for debate and polemics but rather to see Christ. It will transform you if you read it the right way. As Ambrose said God is walking in these pages “seeking man.”

The Challenges of Unity in the Local Parish

I am regularly told that the biblical doctrine of unity is primarily about the unity of the local church, not the universal or global church. I reject this distinction as false. But I also want to challenge the notion that somehow evangelical churches are united in the way Jesus and the apostles taught.

Congregations face many challenges today but none more difficult than that posed by the American phenomenon of individualism. In a culture where fewer and fewer people do fewer and fewer communal activities our faith in Christ still calls upon us to live and serve as one. Without liturgy churches are even more prone to abject, privatized individualism being the ubiquitous sea in which the church functions week-to-week. Most evangelical churches do not celebrate weekly communion, they rarely participate in actions and practices that unite their people in mission and they infrequently pray together as a church. What is left is a large gathering of individuals who come to be “fed” and “helped” by a preacher and the music. Even when a group of leaders seeks to educate a congregation about the reasons for liturgy and community the congregants oppose the effort.

One significant problem is the pervasiveness of popular culture. Pop culture is not all bad but it tends to overwhelm everything that is ancient, distinctly confessional and deeply Christ-centered. Contemporary individualism is nourished by the day-in and day-out impact of American culture. Centuries old customs and values are replaced in a matter of minutes or days. This practice breaks down unity in a practical and palpable way.

Add to this the widespread impact of culture through the social media and individualism presents an even greater challenge to unity.

Families are smaller and smaller and fewer children grow up with any meaningful social experience with adults and children. And in a single-parent home children grow up in an individualistic environment through no fault of their own. They spend thousands of hours in front of the television and a computer screen and have little or no socialization with other bodied persons.

There are signs of hope, however. One change is being introduced through the creation of new immigrant cultures inside America.

The bottom line is this—churches face a serious challenge to the clear teaching of the New Testament about the unity of real persons in the good news of Jesus Christ. It will not be easy to change this movement but every effort needs to be seriously undertaken by our leaders.

“I’m Not Religious, but I Am Spiritual”

Brian McLaren, in his new book  Naked Spirituality, raises this intriguing question: Why do so many people say “I’m not religious but I am spiritual . . .” And what do they mean when they say this to us or to others?

McLaren reasons that he began as a religious young man but he was plunged into spirituality one night under the stars where he countered the living God in an experience that he describes with great care and caution. He then says a lot of folks he meets feel a real tension between religion and spirituality. I have discovered the same thing in my conversations and experiences with people. Brian says he follows this comment with a question and I’ve done the same. “I’m curious. What do you mean by ‘spiritual’?”

Brian says that four answers come up again and again. As I read these I ticked off each one and said, “That is precisely what I’ve also discovered.”

First, people say “I’m spiritual” with reference to secular science, politics and other areas of thought that do not have answers that satisfy their inner longings. They believe life must have a sacred dimension that can’t be reduced to formulas, rules and numbers. They have deep hungers and desires that cannot be fed by facts. (He adds more about what he calls the quasi-religious “invisible market.” I’ve asked Brian to elaborate on this kind of terminology and remain convinced he is reacting to a stereotype of the market that I believe fosters the expression of human freedom. When I once asked him what kind of economic system would be most likely to life the truly poor out of poverty in Africa his answer, in effect, was some version of the free market. My own guess is that Brian has not studied market theory or seen the importance of freedom in the same way that I have.)

Second, people who answer in this way mean that organized religion doesn’t have all the answers either. They are convinced that religious institutions are too complicit in many of the world’s problems and this leads religious adherents to often miss the point. I agree with this reason completely.

Third, the word “spiritual” signals for people an inner sensitivity to aliveness, meaning and sacredness in the universe. They cannot assign God, heaven, meaning, values, souls, worship and the afterlife to the sacred while things like human bodies, animals, plants, the earth and daily life are secular. People want to wed body and spirit, creation and spiritual life, eternity and now. McLaren right notes that the correct word for what people want is communion, not union. Union focuses on the fusion of the two and the separation and division of the other. But the two remain two, but in love are intimately joined in communion. This is clearly a Christian way to express this reality people long for spiritually.

Fourth, spiritual people seek practical ways to nourish that sense of integration and communion spoken of in number three. Spiritual people have, or wish they had, a set of moves, practices, rhythms, habits or practices that allowed them to live with a greater sensitivity to sacred aliveness.

The truth is, McLaren right notes, these four characteristics are at the very heart of all true religion, especially the Christian religion. He notes that different denominations and families have differing ways of describing and relating how to know God and relate to him but they all seek for the same goal. This bonding and uniting again with God and his created world is deeply Christian spirituality, not some bizarre mysticism from somewhere else. McLaren demonstrates this very plainly and helpfully.

All of this search for spirituality is summed up in love. When we love we know God and others in the way he desires us to know them.

Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Steps

I have read about half of Brian McLaren’s published books. Some have moved me and some have left me puzzled and have not proven entirely helpful. Brian is an eloquent man, a good thinker and a serious Christian. My personal relationship with Brian has included both private and public conversations. He has always proven to be vulnerable, gentle and receptive.

When Brian’s well-known book, Generous Orthodoxy, was published I read it with great interest. I even required a grad class of mine to read it as one of our texts. There is much in it to like. There is some in it to question. I think Brian intends this, at least so far as I understand both his thinking and his writing style. Eventually, I decided to devote a serious group of review articles to this book that were published in our quarterly journals. (The journal is no longer published, sadly. It suffered the fate of most print journals during the last five years or so. If you want to do some searching you can find this journal online for free.)

One of the things that impressed me so much about Brian was his complete willingness to encourage these reviews and to personally engage with them. He later reflected positively on the tone of these critiques. I was pleased because I thought we accomplished a real service without attacking (and dividing) the church or Brian's ministry.

Well, I recently picked up Brian’s new book, Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words (HarperOne, 2011), at my local library. I have read about half the book as of today. I heartily recommend it and believe it is one of Brian’s best books to date.

Brian, like any author, writes from within his own life journey and perspective. He grew up in a fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren context. This showed in his earlier work. In this book there is nothing of the old style and a great deal that is old, or ancient, in the best sense. This is by far the most ecumenical of Brian’s books. He draws from the whole Christian tradition—Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox—to give us a simple, readable and compelling account of learning to live in God’s presence moment-by-moment. He leaves old debates aside, uses nothing remotely like polemical theology and in general gives us a great book on how to slow down and know God. The book is wise, clear and easy to read.

Brian McLaren, like him or not, is a committed ecumenist who seeks to build bridges with all Christians. His evangelicalism has been roundly attacked from many quarters but the result is a wiser, more mature and deeper thinker who still has a lot to say to the church, all of it.

Thanks Brian! I am willing to be misunderstood once again by saying so but I do believe your journey reveals a genuinely hungering soul joined with a deep love for Jesus, the Jesus who saves and loves those who truly seek him. You live with real grace and this book reveals how God has helped you to do it.

Overregulation Cuts Across Both Parties: The Real Danger of Xenophobia

Republicans routinely criticize the Obama administration for overregulation. I believe this criticism is just in many instances. It is interesting to see this administration back away from a whole host of regulations in the present recession because they realize (pragmatically) they cannot defend these and be re-elected in this bad economy.

But the Republicans are sometimes guilty of the same problem, just in different ways. Consider the immigration issue. Recently the House Republicans have made noise about trying to counter the costs of their own version of restrictive policies. The House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith has routinely fought what he calls “cheap foreign labor.” One of Smith’s pet political projects is to harass American business into becoming the line of defense in keeping immigration laws in force. The Texas congressman recently introduced what is called the Legal Workforce Act, a bill that would require employees to run the names and Social Security numbers of all new hires through E-Verify, a federal database. Employees can use E-Verify voluntarily at the present but they tend to rely heavily on ID documents to verify the immigration status of their workers.

Smith’s Republican bill has produced a huge business backlash from agricultural producers for good reason. As many as half to three-quarters of the workers who pick America’s fruits and vegetables are undocumented workers. Farmers says Smith’s bill could do great harm to a $300 billion industry.

The case for the farmers is very strong in my view. The Wall Street Journal reports that there are “chronic problems with speed, cost and accuracy that bedevil E-Verify.” The Immigration Law Center has studied this issue and believes that with all the inaccuracies in the database up to 1.3 million U.S. Citizens and legal workers will be mistakenly flagged for problems if E-Verify passes. The Wall Street Journal adds, “Good luck to those who will have to sort out their records at the local Social Security office.”

The greater problem here for farmers is that this bill will scare away workers. This will result in labor shortages and leave un-harvested crops in the fields. We already know that one state, Georgia, implemented E-Verify. The results are clear—11,000 agricultural jobs left the state.

Several weeks ago Smith introduced a new bill that would provide 500,000 temporary visas for workers. California Republican Dan Lungren plans to introduce a bill that would allow guest farm workers. This is a huge step and one I personally hope is pursued.

I am glad some Republicans are waking up to the hard reality about immigration reform but it is still too little and, even now, a bit too late. We should already have an expanded guest-worker program in place if it were not for Republicans who worked so hard against it.

I am convinced that this is one of many consequences of pursuing immigration problems without a comprehensive solution in place. Listening to both parties talk about this heated issue, especially Republicans, is at times hard to handle if you have a conscience at all about people and the multitude of human persons who are tragically caught in this mess. Simple answers will not solve this problem.

One bright light in the recent Republican presidential candidate discussion has come from Governor Rick Perry, a leader who has rather powerfully shown us why a wall will not work on the Mexican border. This is one thing Perry seems to understand quite well—after all he has been the governor of a state where the largest and longest border with Mexico and America exists. I hope political conservatives will listen to Governor Perry and not to leaders like Texas Congressman Lamar Smith. But I am not sure they will since President George W. Bush had a truly wonderful program for total immigration reform but his own party killed it. Conservatives really need to rethink this issue before things get much, much worse. Christians should especially rethink this issue, and as Christians first, not as Americans who fear losing their culture to an outside group. The mission of the church is involved in this national debate and I despair of hearing this stated clearly from most Christian conservatives.

I believe that xenophobia is really at the heart of this problem. Xenophobia has been defined as "an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners/strangers.” It comes from the Greek words xenos, which means "stranger or foreigner" and phobos, which means "fear." Xenophobia will often manifest itself in ways that are very particularly related to the relationships and perceptions held by an in-group towards an out-group. It includes the fear of losing our identity. (In this case as “real” Americans in response to these “illegal” criminals who broke our laws!) Sometimes xenophobia reveals itself in the form of an “uncritical exaltation of another culture" in which a culture is ascribed "an unreal, stereotyped and exotic quality” (Guido Bolaffi. Dictionary of race, ethnicity and culture. SAGE Publications Ltd., 2003. Pp. 332, taken from www.wikipedia.com).

Make no mistake about this—xenophobia still has a major impact upon a great deal of how we think and respond to immigrants in this country, especially if we hold to strongly conservative political views. Christians should lead the way in challenging xenophobia but I’m not holding my breath right now because we would rather defend our nation against these foreigners than include undocumented workers among the people who are within the mission and love that Christ has given to the church.

Why We Do Evangelism: What Does Hell Have to Do with It?

In the recent debates about hell, stirred by the book Love Wins and the various blogs, articles and books now written in response to Rob Bell, I have heard many rather ridiculous arguments and statements on every side of this debate. At some point I may say more but there is one argument I want to take up today that I’ve heard all my life and find completely lacking in biblical evidence.

The argument goes like this—if people are lost eternally without consciously knowing and hearing about Jesus then if we remove this doctrinal point, namely that they must “hear” or they will burn in hell forever, we destroy the/a primary motive for our doing evangelism. My point here is not to open Pandora’s Box about the destiny of the un-evangelized but rather to ask a simple question: “Is this motive about saving people from hell who have not heard really a necessary and biblically given motive for evangelism?” So far as I can tell it is not.

To ask the question in another way, “Why should we take evangelism seriously?”

1. Because of the commission Christ gave to his church; that is the mandate he gave to all of us as members of the body of Christ. Matthew 28:18-20 says this commission is rooted in the “authority” of Jesus. The primary reason the church ought to go and make disciples is because Jesus told us to do so. If we love Jesus then we want to do what he tells us to do. If that is not motive enough something is desperately wrong in our understanding of Jesus and his love.

Evangelism is not the last step in making disciples but rather the first. We cannot “make disciples” unless people hear the good news and believe it. Jesus calls people us all into life-transforming relationship with him and his followers (i.e. the church). He does this through a message that must be shared (preached/proclaimed) with people. Simply put, Jesus tells us directly and indirectly that the church is to spread the good news. But note carefully—it is the church holistically that spreads the good news. Not every single Christian is an evangelist. But every single Christian shares in the work of evangelism as part of the mission of Jesus, namely by being a vital part of his church on earth. This is at the heart of a missional understanding of the church and the Trinity.

2. If we keep this gospel message to ourselves then we fail to share  the most power life-giving message that brings meaning to life now through forgiveness and positive hope for eternity to come. Is sharing this news an act of love? How does the love of Christ actually inform our personal and collective actions in this regard?

3. Playing off number two above I believe one of the most loving things that we can ever do, if not the most loving, is to share this good news with needy and broken people. There are many things that we can and should do so that we truly love our neighbors as we love ourselves but for the Christian evangelism has to be very high on the list of things we do when we love our neighbor.

We should collectively and personally ask God to give us a passion for the spiritual welfare of others. We should pray for a longing to extend his kingdom (reign of grace) into the lives of all people everywhere. This starts right where you and I live. And it extends to all people everywhere according to the New Testament (cf. Revelation 5:6-10).

The desire of God’s heart is to seek and to find the lost, as we saw yesterday. We act in accord with God’s seeking heart when we join him in seeking for the lost. This is THE motive for evangelism. And if understood and correctly taught it will motivate people to evangelism.

But where, I must ask again, does hell come into this picture? Jesus warned about judgment and hell for sure but nowhere can I find him telling his disciples “You must now go tell everyone this message or they will die and go to hell because you failed to do this work.” This is a huge deduction. It is a powerful leap from one category to another. It is common but it needs to be challenged.

I have personally known two missionaries who went overseas to preach the gospel driven by this sense of obligation that they had to go or they would answer for those who perished without them going and warning them about hell. They spoke graphically of multitudes plunging into hell unless they went and preached. It was convicting stuff when I was a young minister. But I’ve always wondered about this appeal, especially the logic and motive behind what they appealed to in these stories.

Sadly, both these missionaries left the field and their wives. Both gave up the mission and quit. I’ve lost track of them both.

I am not saying they quit their mission because they believed this way about hell as a motive for doing evangelism but it makes me wonder. I am sure of this—you cannot sustain, at least in a healthy emotional and spiritual way, the logic and fear bound up with this kind of appeal. It is not plainly biblical and it is clearly not healthy.