mellow yellow

Hi kids!

Because I had nothing better to do and was taking a break from my latest photoshop binge, I created a GOOD BOOKS page you may notice up at the top.  Enjoy!

So… this has been a summer of tackling new things so far.  First, there’s been golf. 

Oh, the suckage.  It’s amazing how bad I am at this game.  A few trips to the driving range and another nine holes later, and I’m not quite as embarrassingly horrible as I was, but that’s not saying much.

Luckily Brandon and my brother came with us over the weekend, and I was in great company.  I wouldn’t want to mention any names, but SOMEONE threw his club a few times.

(Ok, you twisted my arm.  It was Brandon). 

Also, this guy may also have shown small signs of frustration:

It was awful fun to have them along with us, though.  And once we finished the 9th hole, we shot golf balls into the pond for a while  (It’s far more fun doing that on purpose).

Because golf hasn’t quite offered my out-of-shape body enough punishment, however, I’ve begun bicycling.

Not just on any old bike, but on this sweet Craigslist find!

(I heart Craigslist, btw.  I found my awesome job and now this bike there.  And I’ve heard of people’s roommates putting up Craigslist ads and getting them a girlfriend that way).

Mellow yellow!  I am still in awe of its girly perfection — all without committing the cardinal sin of being pink.  (Blech.)

All in all, between a ride with Kevo up to Western’s campus and through downtown on Saturday and riding back and forth to work all week, I’ve put in almost 30 miles.  Hey, I know it’s not exactly the Tour-de-France, but it’s a start, right?  My legs are sore, to say nothing of my poor hiney, but other than that I feel fantastic.  Plus I feel uber-ecoconscious to have driven my car a bare minimum on a week when gas hit $4.49 a gallon.  (Other than that 24-hour trip down to Poulsbo for Justin’s mom’s wedding.  I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count).

From now on, you can all call me LiveStrong.

Snicker. 

book gluttons, unite!

Some people hit the mall after Christmas, trying to score that amazing deal.

Not us.  J and I, we hit the used bookstores.

(Twice.  I decided to sell some books the next day so I’d have an excuse to bring more home).

Here are some of my finds:

The Little Prince — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I can’t accurately describe to you how excited I am to have this book in my home!!! 

A story about a boy and his rose!  My first exposure to The Little Prince was last quarter in my Writing About Lit course.  I had never heard the story until my prof Michael beautifully read a portion of it to us in class.  One of the genius aspects of the class: every day starts with a reading, anyone from Annie Dillard to Shel Silverstein to Stephen King.  Those readings were among some of my favorite moments last quarter.

If you’ve ever read The Little Prince, the conversation between the boy and the fox about what it means to “tame” something… phew.  I nearly cried in class.  And now I have a copy for my very own. 

Corrections to My Memoirs — Michael Kun

I have never heard of this author, but bought the book because of the cover, which I thought was pretty damn funny.  I gobbled up James Frey’s Million Little Pieces, and a few months later watched Oprah devour him live in front of a studio TV audience for taking what some circles deemed, shall we say, inappropriate creative license.  We’ll see.

Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality – Thomas Lynch

Found this one randomly in the essay section at Michael’s Bookstore downtown, and loved the title.  Once I got home and started reading it, I realized there was much more to it than a neat title.  This guy is an undertaker/poet/essayist.  Undertaker.  Poet.  Essayist.  Need I say more?  I’m only a few essays in, and I’m completely hooked.  If anyone has a solid perspective on death, I think someone working in a funeral home for over 25 years would.  And the writing.  Augh!  Lovely.

 

Where the Sidewalk Ends — Shel Silverstein

I’ve meant to own this book (and A Light in the Attic) for a long time now.  My lit class gave me just the inspiration I needed.  I think it nearly impossible to read a few of the poems and not walk away in a better mood.  I dare someone to try!

PS…  Justin tells me Shel Silverstein wrote Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue.”  Pretty rad.

The Gift of Asher Lev — Chaim Potok

When I love a book as much as I do My Name Is Asher Lev, I’m a little hesitant to read its sequel, in fear that the sequel will be far inferior to its predecessor and will leave me with sadness in my heart and a regret that I didn’t leave well enough alone with the first novel (some of those crappy rip-off sequels to Pride and Prejudice come to mind, although it doesn’t take a genius to stay away from the sacrilege that is someone writing a sequel to another person’s novel.  I refuse!).  My Name Is Asher Lev was mind-blowingly powerful to me; a treatise on the dark places artists must journey to fulfill their God-given calling.  Even following their gift away from what their own community and family would approve of.

I stepped out on a limb this time, read some reviews, and if this book turns out to be crap, I’ll never heed another book review again.  Probably.  In the meantime, I have high hopes that Mr. Potok wouldn’t let such an amazing character falter. 

I also filled in some holes in my Harry Potter collection, although I accidentally bought a duplicate of Book 4 and sheepishly had to return it to exchange it for 5 the next day.

Hooray for books!  We need new bookshelves already.  Sigh.

the samurai’s garden

Two days after the suckage that was finding out Justin had to work through most of his week off (and part of our trip home), we’re doing alright.  I was obviously disappointed, but this was one of those times where I could: A) mope around and pity myself; or B) suck it up and support J the best I could by making the best of it.  I chose option A for a couple of hours, but B seems to be working better.  We’ll drive down tomorrow and hopefully still squeeze everyone in. 

In the meantime, I’m getting to know my brother-in-law Roger better (he’s staying with us — up from Oklahoma for Christmas) and introducing him to the glory that is The Office in binge doses.  We’re both brilliant companions for each other during the day in that we are both up for relaxing as much as possible.  It’s been great to have the time to chat and laugh together.

While he’s been nursing his growing addiction to playing this tank game on the Wii, I’ve been enjoying this book.  There were also a few others on my to-read list, but this novel’s length lends itself to finishing before the new quarter begins and I’m once again barely able to keep up with what is required reading, much less any other books.

I can’t adequately tell you how lovely the writing is, but — it is simple and rich.  Soothing and peaceful.  A friend I trust with book recommendations directed me to this book a few years ago, and I am just now turning its pages — but she was right.  It’s a great book, centering in on a young Chinese man recuperating from tuberculosis in a small Japanese coastal village — and the relationships he develops with three older people as he hears bits and pieces of their stories.  This doesn’t remotely do it justice — but check it out if you get the notion.

bad things happen when I get bored…

So… I decided to organize our books by color this past weekend.

Seeing as how my book collection nearly doubled about a year ago, this was a lot harder than the last time I tried it.

Yes, I’ve done this more than once.

Yes, I’m a nerd.

You should have seen Justin’s face, watching me organize like some mad thing.

But I think it looks cool and think it will be funny the next time Justin’s looking for a book.  “What color is that binding again?”

random bits

Yeah, I know.  A new look.  I got bored today and had some time to play with my new camera.

It’s snowing outside!  Yay!

Oh, and by the way — this would be a great read over the holidays if you get a chance:

If you’ve never been exposed to some David Sedaris, you haven’t lived, at least, not fully.  I’ve never read something that made me — literally — laugh until tears were running down my cheeks.  He kills me.

This is a little book comprised of essays to do with the holidays (if you couldn’t tell from the title)… and if you speak sarcasm fluently and find all the holiday cheer a bit much to get through — this will help.  Trust me.

Among my favorite stories:

SantaLand Diaries (recollections of working as an elf at Macy’s)

Dinah, the Christmas Whore (I’ll leave you in suspense on this one)

why I heart Frederick Buechner; also, why I am still in school getting that silly Creative Writing degree

 

from “The Calling of Voices,” The Hungering Dark

…enjoy, writers and teachers everywhere

When you are young, I think, your hearing is in some ways better than it is ever going to be again.  You hear better than most people the voices that call to you out of your own life to give yourself to this work or that work.  When you are young, before you accumulate responsibilities, you are freer than most people to choose among all the voices and to answer the one that speaks most powerfully to who you are and to what you really want to do with your life.  But the danger is that there are so many voices, and they all in their ways sound so promising.  The danger is that you will not listen to the voice that speaks to you through the seagull mounting the gray wind, say, or the vision in the temple, that you do not listen to the voice inside you or to the voice that speaks from outside but specifically to you out of the specific events of your life, but that instead you listen to the great blaring, boring, banal voice of our mass culture, which threatens to deafen us all by blasting forth that the only thing that really matters about your workis how much it will get you in the way of salary and status, and that if it is gladness you are after, you can save that for weekends.  In fact one of the grimmer notions that we seem to inherit from our Puritan forbears is that work is not even supposed to be glad but, rather, a kind of penance, a way of working off the guilt that you accumulate during the hours when you are not working.

The world is full of people who seem to have listened to the wrong voice and who are now engaged in life-work in which they find no pleasure or purpose and who run the risk of suddenly realizing someday that they have spent the only life they are ever going to get in this world doing something which could not matter less to themselves or anyone else.  This does not mean, of course, people who are doing work that from the outside looks unglamorous and humdrum, because obviously such work as that may be a crucial form of service and deeply creative.  But it means people who are doing work that seems simply irrelevant not only to the great human needs and issues of our time, but also to their own need to grow and develop as humans.

…To Isaiah, the voice said, “Go,” and for each of us there are many voices that say it, but the question is which one will we obey with our lives, which of the voices that call is to be the one that we answer.  No one can say, of course, except each for himself, but I believe that it is possible to say at least this in general to all of us:  we should go with our lives where we most need to go and where we are most needed.

Where we most need to go.  Maybe that means that the voice we should listen to most as we choose a vocation is the voice that we might think we should listen to least, and that is the voice of our own gladness.  What can we do that makes us gladdest, what can we do that leaves us with the strongest sense of sailing true north and of peace, which is much of what gladness is?  Is it making things with our hands our of wood or stone or paint on canvas?  Or is it making something we hope like truth out of words?  Or is it making people laugh or weep in a way that cleanses their spirits?  I believe that if it is a thing that makes us truly glad, then it is a good thing and it is our thing and it is the calling voice that we were made to answer with our lives.

And also, where we are most needed.  In a world where there is so much drudgery, so much grief, so much emptiness and fear and pain, our gladness in our work is as much needed as we ourselves need to be glad.  If we keep our eyes and ears open, our hearts open, we will find the place surely.  The phone will ring and we will jump not so much out of our skin as into our skin.  If we keep our lives open, the right place will find us.

 –Frederick Buechner

four posts in four days… can it be so?

Hi kids!

You’ll notice that to the left of your screen, you’ll see a shiny new goodreads link.  (Thank you Cecelia, for opening my eyes to one more great use of the internet).  A list of a bunch of the books I’ve read, books I’m currently reading, books on my to-read list (see also: books I couldn’t walk out of the used bookstore without purchasing).

I lost an hour this morning listing a bunch of my books, and then I discovered that you can enter the date you first read it!  Circa 2002, I began writing the date in my books along with my name, so I basically tore apart my bookshelf this morning, writing down the dates in my book journal.  I lost at least another hour there, though it was well worth it.

I think it’s clear at this point that I have no life.  That, and I’m an incurable nerd.  Having married an incurable nerd, I am at peace with this.

If you are also a nerd and/or book glutton, you can be my pal on goodreads, and I’ll see what you’re reading when, what you thought of it, etc.  I’m all for avoiding crap books, and finding good ones, so this could prove helpful to me.

Alright, off to grab some food items before work.  Have a good day, all. 

I leave you with a few new favorite t-shirts I found online at threadless.com and bustedtees.com:

No Perfect People Allowed, Part 45: God’s Fairness

God the Artist amazes me.  It rained and showered and blustered at intervals today (which I am getting a little sick of, truth be told), but all day long as we looked out our windows, we just saw rainbow after rainbow after rainbow.  We might get snow by week’s end (sigh), but there’s a brave, tiny daffodil that just bloomed two mornings ago in my flowerbed, whispering a tiny reminder that spring can’t be far off.  I’m glad.

***

Okay, back into what will probably be the last little discussion on this book that is rocking my brain.  Again, if you have any interest in helping people bridge the gap from the culture we live in to finding faith in Christ, I can’t recommend it enough.  You guys know my story well enough to know that I’ve fought cynicism where the church is concerned, but I am finding hope and encouragement within these pages — like there might just be a home for outsiders, a place where people can show up as-is and be embraced, just as Jesus would embrace them.

As I mentioned before, the mother-load question that people in our generation often ask of us is this: “How can you say Jesus is the only way to God?” which has a question buried just below its surface: “How can it be fair that Jesus is the only way?”  To ignore the question-beneath-the-question and simply enter into a debate with a person is risky at best, foolhardy at worst.  You might win the argument, but come off so arrogant that you lose the person (A cocky, know-it-all Christian?  Say it ain’t so).

This question of what-happens-to-those-who-have-never-heard-of-Christ is one that I was never comfortable with, try as I might to come to terms with what I’d been taught.  It was so black and white — you’ve either said the sinner’s prayer or you haven’t, you’re either saved or you’re not saved when you get into that car accident on your way home from church. 

Now, please hear me, I’m not saying that there are no absolutes.  (I can hear people wondering if I’ve gone on some relativistic rampage).  I’ve just been challenged in recent weeks to believe that God and God alone determines those absolutes, and that maybe Christian tradition hasn’t had it right all along after all, when we look at the Bible.

The measure that I was always taught for a person’s faith was whether or not they had said the sinner’s prayer and asked Jesus into their heart.  No prayer, no digs.

Here are some of the points from John Burke’s sermon on God’s fairness… I feel stupid for not considering these thoughts earlier, but here’s to new perspective.  To be truthful, I’m still processing, still wrapping my head around what this is saying.  I’m not going to present it as gospel itself.  But I do know that it’s challenging me to take another look at the Christian tradition I grew up with.  Some of the ideas that were presented as hard-and-fast Biblical truth — ideas that I never questioned except quietly in the back of my mind — well, they aren’t holding up.

Ultimately, we don’t know exactly how God will judge others.  We don’t know their hearts.  But there are certain things we know and don’t know from Scripture, according to Burke.

1.  Scripture claims that God is the God of all people, and that all people know about God simply through nature.  We also know when we’re screwing it up — our consciences tell us.  So no one has an excuse for outright ignoring or rejecting God.  God looks at the heart, not religion, of every person.  (2 Chronicles 16:9; Romans 1:16-2:16).

2.  There will be people in heaven made right with God, who never heard the name of Jesus.  (Why did this thought never cross my mind?  All the heroes of the faith who preceded Christ… are they S.O.L.?)  Abraham, Noah, Rahab the prostitute, were all made right with God by faith, which Jesus acknowledged (Hebrews 11 & Romans 4:16-17, John 8:56). If Jesus is the only way, then God took the faith they placed in the knowledge revealed to them (recognizing their need for God’s forgiveness and leadership), and God looked ahead to Jesus’ death on the cross on their behalf, applying Jesus’ sacrifice to them.  (Again, it’s not such a leap for me to believe that God can apply Jesus’ sacrifice 2,000 years ago to my life.  Can he not apply it to others as well?)  Scripture tells us that people from every tribe, tongue and ethnic group will be in heaven — not because they lived a good life or were sincere, but only because of God’s gift of forgiveness and relationship made possible through Christ — accessed by faith.  Burke says, “So I do not know exactly how God deals with those who have never heard of Jesus but are humbly seeking God, but I’m confident that everyone has an opportunity to choose life with God (Genesis 12:1-3, John 1:7-12, Acts 14:16-17, 17:30-31).”

3.  God cannot be unfair.  God looks at the heart and will not unfairly judge a person because of lack of knowledge or cultural or religious conditioning.  God will not send anyone to hell for these things — it would have to be because they truly did not want God’s leadership in their life.  God will let them have their way in this case.  Really, we shouldn’t worry about God’s fairness, since we can’t accurately judge the heart of another, or play judge of the fairness of God.  Jesus continually talked about how surprised people will be when all is said and done (Matthew 7:21-23)… we should take that into account.  It may be that grace is much bigger than we’ve sometimes allowed ourselves to believe.   

4.  Finally, God wants people to find confidence assurance that they are right with him, so he sent Christ.  As John wrote in Scripture, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life (1 John 5:13).”  God wants everyone to know with confidence that they can approach him without fear of condemnation because of what he’s done through Christ.  Scripture is clear — that Jesus is the only provision God has made to justly forgive us for doing our will rather than his — so if God sees the heart of a person who never heard of Jesus but is seeking to be forgiven and made right with God by faith, and God somehow does for her what he did for Abraham — it is only through what Jesus did on the cross.

He closes with this thought: “Finally, the important question for you and me is not, ‘What about other religions?’ or ‘How will God judge those who have never heard?’  We really don’t know.  But I promise this, he cares more about them than you do.  Christ gave his life for them; I doubt any of us care for those people that much, so rest assured that God will be more than fair if he didn’t spare his own Son for their sake.  The better question is ‘What will I do with the claims of Jesus now that I’ve heard?’ “

This is why we share our stories of finding grace… this is why we point people to Christ.  In Christ we have confident assurance that we are right with God.  Jesus did what we all demanded, that God show himself to us… and he revealed himself as God of the humble, broken, dependent soul.  The more we speak with authority on what we do know — what God has done in our broken lives — and admit our limitedness and God’s sovereignty on the things we don’t — who exactly is right with God and who isn’t — the more we remove barriers to people finding that same grace and truth in their own lives. 

I’m learning to be perfectly okay admitting to someone that there are things that I don’t know.  I know enough about God — through Scripture and through what he’s done in my own life — to trust him with the rest of it.  I’m sure he’s got it under control, and I’m at peace with that.  I’d like to be a person who helps other people be at peace with it, too.

My job is done here.  Wrestle a little.  And shoot me a line with your thoughts if you’re so inclined.

Blessings, S.

part 3: aren’t they all the same?

Chapter seven goes on to say that we must be able to help people understand the world’s religions because “most everyone assumes they say the same thing.  We have found it very important to diffuse the accusation of narrow-minded intolerance by giving credence to the similarities they do have and explaining the key differences.  Some Christians act as if there is no trace of truth in the world’s religions because they do not proclaim Christ, but this view is not biblical.”

(Personal note: while reading this, I realized that before helping to educate others on the key similarities and differences in the world’s religions… perhaps it would be good for me to understand them first.  That’s the beauty of this book.  It is helping me to understand the gospel more clearly, even as it shows me ways to help others toward faith.)

Burke goes on to relay Paul’s words to the men of Athens (Acts 17).  Rather than zealously condemning these people for their many idols to Greek gods, he walked around among the idols, until he found a trace of truth.  He affirmed them and said to them, “Men of Athens!  I see that in every way you are very religious.  For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.  Now what you worship as something unknown, I am going to proclaim to you (Acts 17:23-24).”

Burke makes this point, which I think is worth trying to wrap our heads around: “God has been at work behind the scenes in all cultures, and we can find remains of truth everywhere to build bridges of faith in Christ.”

Now, on to what the world’s religions do say.  Rather than butcher what I read, I’m going to provide an excerpt from one of his sermons on the subject.  It’s a long chunk, but I think you’ll find it worth it:

Without a doubt, there are common moral truths taught in all the great religions of the world.  Mortimer Adler, editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, who was not a Christian, wrote a book called Truth in Religion.  In it he states, “In spite of the possibility that all religious faiths in the world may be factually false, or that only one may be factually true, nevertheless … there is a common core of sound morality and prescriptive truth in all or most of the major religions.”  And many Christians don’t realize this even though it is revealed in the Bible.  When people say, “Aren’t they all basically saying the same thing?” I think this is what people mean.  Scripture tells us that God has written his moral law on our hearts: “Even when Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, instinctively follow what the law says, they show in their hearts that they know right from wrong.  They demonstrate that God’s law is written within them, for their own consciences either accuse them or tell them they are doing what is right (Romans 2:14-15 NLT).”  If this is true and there is a Moral Law Giver — that’s the most reasonable explanation of the similarities we see throughout every culture and religion.  And so, in most all of the major world religions, we see evidence of this similar moral law that God has written in our hearts, which comes out in our religions.  So in this aspect of declaring moral law, they appear to be saying the same truths.  In fact, here’s a summary of what they all basically say morally — taken from moral laws given in ancient China, Babylon, Anglo Saxon culture, American Indian culture, Judaism, Christianity, ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Hindu culture:

Don’t do harm to another human by what you do or say (the Golden rule)

Honor your father and mother

Be kind toward brothers and sisters, children, and the elderly

Do not have sex with another’s spouse

Be honest in all your dealings (don’t steal)

Do not lie

Care for those weaker or less fortunate

Dying to self is the path to life

Now, let’s take a time-out and see what this teaches us.  In just about every culture and major world religion since antiquity, we see this common moral law — stated in various ways, but basically saying these things.  So we all basically agree on what’s right and wrong — it’s within us, and always has been.  God’s written it on our hearts.  So let’s look at how we’ve done.  How well have we kept this common moral law of humanity?  Let’s make this participatory — you just give me a thumbs-up if you think humanity has pretty much kept that one.  Thumbs-down if there’s evidence we haven’t done so well.

“Don’t do harm in word or deed.”  What do you think?  People have been pretty darn nice, haven’t they?  We don’t pick on each other on the playground.  We don’t gossip about others or think hateful thoughts or say hurtful words.  We don’t fight or do mean things or hold grudges or murder or start wars — do we?  What do you think — thumbs up?… No?  Watch the news — we’re still not doing so well…

So what do all of the world’s religions teach all of us?  We’re royal screw-ups — myself included, Jews and Christians, Muslims and Buddhists!  The world’s a mess!  We all know the right things to do, they’ve been in our culture or religious tradition, they’re in our hearts — and yet, the history of humanity shows us that we fall short!  We can’t live up to what we know to be right.  So in this sense, there is a universal truth communicated through all the world’s major religions.  Here it is: people have a problem, and it’s affecting all of us.  We need God’s help!  We cannot become who we know we were intended to be without God.

The Bible claims that the problem is that all people, in all religions, know enough about the one true Creator God and what is morally right or wrong, but we’ve all turned away from him, thinking we know better at some point — in every religious tradition.  Scripture says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — havve been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that [people] are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened (Romans 1:20-21).”

So does the Bible teach that all other religions are wholly wrong and Christians are right?  NO!  It teaches that every single person is wrong and God is right, and our problem is we all tend to turn from God and go our own way rather than humbly seeking God and his will.  So all the religions may basically say the same thing about people and what’s right and wrong.  But they definitely do not say the same thing about God or the solution to the human problem.  And if you think they are all saying the same thing about God, you just haven’t read or studied the claims of the original founders of the world’s religions.  They don’t say the same thing.

So the real problem is that we need God!  We need his forgiveness and his help.  And here’s something that very few people realize.  Not all the world’s religions claim to be revealed from God.  And you would think that if God exists and loves us, he’d care about our plight.  And he would give us a solution — a way out of our predicament.  But because God is infinite, beyond our discovery — our only hope is if God has chosen to reveal himself.  In other words, God had to take the initiative to communicate.  And if God has, the natural place to start looking would be the claims of the world’s religions — right?  But if you read the sacred texts of the major world’s religions and take them at face value — most do not claim that God has revealed a solution to the human dilemma.

Mortimer Adler says, “Only three religions claim to have a supernatural foundation to be found in a sacred scripture that [claims] to be a divine revelation… among the other religions… only some claim to have logical and factual truth, but the truth they claim to have is of human, not divine, origin.”

What Adler, who was not a Christian, discovered is that if you just read the sacred texts of all the world religions, only three even claim that the one, unique Creator God has revealed himself or his will directly: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  Interestingly, all three speak of a Messiah.  The other religions claim to be wise human solutions to the problems mankind faces, or they are devotional poems and songs and stories, but do not factually claim God has revealed himself.  Now, if this upsets you and feels narrow-minded or judgmental toward other religions — take it up with the founders of the religions — but don’t assume they say more than they really do.”

Phew.  That was a lot of typing, but I hope it’s helpful.  I welcome your thoughts.  Please.  Let’s make this a discussion.

Tomorrow: the motherload question — “What about people who have never heard of Jesus?” — the question about God’s fairness.

NPPA, part 2: Questions of Tolerance

Ah, Eggos in the toaster.  I love Saturday mornings.

So, jumping back into No Perfect People Allowed.  It was recommended that I begin with Chapter 7, and that’s exactly what I did.

It spoke.  Spoke loud.  What follows are some of the thoughts John Burke explained, and my reactions to them.  It may be somewhat lengthy, but that’s okay, you’re used to that, right? 

This chapter deals with what it calls a “tolerance litmus test.”  Meaning, people in our culture who are seeking spiritual truth will often ask certain questions to ascertain whether we are accepting or intolerant (most probably lean more toward the latter, based on what they’ve seen, and I can’t say that I blame them).  The actual questions are genuine curiosities in and of themselves, but there are often questions beneath the questions that are important for the faith community to grasp.  Recognizing and being able to respond openly and honestly to these deeper, unspoken questions is absolutely necessary if we are going to remove barriers that stand in the way of people embracing faith.

The question he addresses in Chapter 7 is this: “What about other religions?”

The questions beneath it probably sound something like this (taken from the story that opens the chapter): “[Christians are] just so narrow minded and arrogant.  I mean, who are we to say one group or culture is right or wrong?  To say Native American Indians, for instance, were wrong in all their beliefs because they knew nothing about Jesus?  That’s ridiculous.”  “Every culture has it’s own customs, beliefs, and values that must be respected.  I see the biggest problem with religion is it divides people and creates hostility.  It seems all religions are basically saying the same thing, so why argue and fight about who is right or wrong?…”

The questions deal a whole heck of a lot with questions of open-mindedness (a HUGE value in our generation), arrogance (a huge turn-off), and questions of God’s fairness (How could God send someone to hell simply because they’ve never heard about Jesus?).

I can’t say these same questions never crossed my mind myself, and I was raised in church.  None of the answers ever satisfied.  And the reigning attitudes did little to foster open-mindedness, much less humility.  In my childhood church, other denominations of Christianity couldn’t escape ridicule (I’m so sorry, Baptists).  With that kind of judgmental attitude toward other Christians who, despite some differences in the small points of theology, were the same in all the essentials, it should come as no surprise that other religions were held in absolute contempt.  Or worse, they were viewed with a kind of condescending pity.

Were these well-meaning Christian people?  Absolutely.  Good-hearted, God-loving folks?  For sure.  Doing a whole hell of a lot of damage, for all their good intentions?  Don’t even get me started.

We are ten kinds of evil when we let Jesus be anything but completely central.  Being good and being like Jesus are so wholly different.  Being good doesn’t necessarily make you like Jesus.  Being good, you can still be arrogant, uncaring, judgmental, and harsh; we saw this with the Pharisees in the New Testament, and we also saw that Jesus reserved his severest anger for them.  In relationship with Jesus, as we become like him, we begin to care about the things he does –  humility, grace, sacrificial love, forgiveness, servanthood — just to name a few.  We begin to care about the people he cares for — the outsiders, the poor, the broken, the lonely, the sick, the unlovely, the unloved, the imperfect.  It’s in this way that he makes us good… good, but in the right way — grace and truth in equal balance.

Okay, enough personal commentary for the moment.  Here’s what he said (I can’t do it all justice here, so go ahead and read the book, for Pete’s sake, but in order to stretch some brains, here we go):

When people in our generation hear Christians say that Jesus is the only way, what they hear us saying is “We’re right and everyone else is wrong because our way is always right.”  They hear that and think of the same pride and arrogance that led Christians in the Middle Ages to slaughter those of other religions and ethnicities.  This attitude of religious superiority doesn’t fly with a culture that has learned to value diversity of belief.

Burke says, “The way to address these concerns is head-on.  I’ll say flat-out in a message, ‘One of the biggest problems people have with Christianity, I find, is this idea that Jesus is the way to be made right with God.  It feels so narrow, so intolerant, so religiously snobbish — kind of a “we’re-right-because-you’re wrong” kindergarten mentality.’  Anticipating and openly voicing this question-beneath-the-question often diffuses people’s resistance to even listen.  This allows them to relate to you and actually want to hear your answer.  When you affirm where tolerance is needed — you can also show its natural limits.”

“Tolerance is a good thing when it comes to differences in people, tastes, or preferences.  We should be tolerant of others’ opinions and even beliefs that differ from our own.  But this doesn’t mean we have to agree that everything the other person thinks is true.  You can be tolerant and disagree.”  Burke goes on to use the example of preference (one person liking a red car and another liking a black car) vs. reliability (one person insisting on a Ford Pinto, which Ford discontinued because they blow up, while the other person chooses a Honda). 

“The question is — where does religious thought fit?  Is saying ‘I believe Muhammad’ or ‘I believe in Jesus’ the same as saying ‘I like red’ or ‘I like black’?  Or is it more like saying ‘I believe Pintos are reliable’ or ‘I believe Hondas are reliable’?  That’s where the real question lies.  My experience tells me that most people these days think religious belief is more like a preference thing — red or black — whichever makes you happy.  And I will acknowledge that they are right — it is just preference, if God has not revealed himself to our finite, fallible world.  But what if God took the initiative to show up?  That would take away a lot of our subjective opinion.”

Burke says that we must understand that when asked about other religions, the underlying question is really “Do you always think you’re right and everyone else is wrong?”  This is a litmus test for arrogance, and the only way to pass is to show a humility and willingness to learn, “remembering that all truth is God’s truth, and truth has nothing to fear.  I have found when leaders humbly acknowledge that we don’t know everything, and that religious arrogance has caused problems in the past, it helps people drop their first defense.  As we acknowledge the good aspects of tolerance, yet differentiate tolerance from agreement, we can better communicate the right heart.”

Once it is clear that we are more about caring about people than about “being right,” we can move forward to the next question, which many in our world assume to be truth: “Don’t all religions basically say the same thing?”

Til tomorrow, hopefully.