Month: May 2008

There are one or two real theologians who drop in now and then.  They are invited to skip this post.  It’s really a rather simple minded discussion of what it means to talk about our immortal souls and whether only “believing” Christians are eligible to receive eternal life.  

Where did the idea of the immortality of the soul come from?  Plato certainly understood it well, but it doesn’t seem to have a place in Hebrew thinking at all, and maybe I’m not smart enough, but I don’t see it in the New Testament either.  Yet we commonly hear preachers and others proclaiming this or that about our immortal souls.  I’ve even heard myself say something like that now and then.  As far as I can tell, there is nothing in the sacred texts of our Christian tradition that should lead us to think that we have immortal souls.  Immortality of the soul is not a condition of human life.  Which is not the same thing as saying that in this life only are we able to find and be found by God.  We know nothing of what sort of life the soul might have independent of the body, even if we confidently assert that the fullness of human being is to be an embodied soul.  The gift of eternal life, if that is the same or similar to immortality, is one that is given only by God through Christ; all are invited to receive it but none must.  If that is true, then what happens to someone who refuses the gift?  Do they simply cease to exist as if, apart from a handful of dust, they never were?  There are those who say the only way to receive the gift of eternal life is to accept Jesus Christ as one’s personal savior.  That seems to me to be quite heretical not only because it places the entire burden on human beings but also because it places conditions and restrictions on God’s freedom to act.  I think that Calvin may have been on to something to proclaim that we are not in a position to make any statement at all that would in any way limit God’s freedom to offer the gift of eternal life to whomever God chooses.  Contrary to Calvin, it also seems to me that God has made it clear that this is a gift that will be offered universally, unrestricted by time, geography or condition of life.  It comes from no other source, but we are not competent to judge how it is that any one person will come face-to-face with that offer nor what the nature or conditions of acceptance might look like.  Perhaps it does not even have to come in this life time. If that is true then the role of Christians, as the body of Christ, is not to be the triumphant community of the saved as over against those who are not, but to be the humble bearer of the good news of God in Christ that the gift of life is offered to all, and to invite all to join with us as followers of Christ in the sure and certain hope that we are already living into our eternal lives. 

We moved here eight years ago and the first words we heard were, “This is very unusual weather.”  In all those eight years not a day has gone by that we have not run into someone saying, “This is very unusual weather.”  It took awhile to realize that the usual weather in our valley is unusual, not occasionally but always.  I am going to be stunned, awed, amazed and struck dumb the day someone says to me, “Now this is our usual weather.”  Today has been another of those unusual days.  We started off the morning in rain with cool breezes.  I left on a bike ride in a long-sleeve tee shirt with my rain jacket in my saddle bag.  Within an hour I was overly warm in bright sunshine.  By mid-afternoon I was in shorts, but before sunset back in my long sleeve tee with the breeze picking up and rain clouds over the mountains menacing a good storm.  It may be weird weather, but we don’t have tornadoes, hurricanes or earthquakes.  Windstorms, often with a lot of dust, and forest and range fires are our biggest threats.  Other than that, I cannot think of a better temperate climate that the unusual weather of our valley.

I had a short conversation the other day with a guy I know a little bit, but not especially well.  Still, it confirmed some thoughts that have been rattling around in my head recently and it has to do with gluttony, which, as legend has it, is one of the deadly sins. He is among those who make fun of smaller, fuel efficient cars and thinks that anyone who wants an F-150 V8 4×4 should have one without regard to whether it might have any utilitarian value. Until the current gas price and mortgage loan issues came to a head, I don’t think we thought very much about our national gluttony.  Which is not to say that from time to time someone wouldn’t write about the dangers, or sinfulness, of excessive consumerism, or that we would not be made aware of some small group or a celebrity or two who touted a simpler way of life that often looked rather silly and very unappealing.  

For most of us those moments were an easy brush off.  And Al Gore?  It’s easy enough for him to write about inconvenient truths; he’s rich and lives in a mansion.  What does he know about the ordinary person?  However, in the last year or so I’ve been thinking that in a nation of rights we have become a people who have fearlessly asserted our right to get any car, truck, tv, computer, houseful of furniture or whatever that our credit cards and loans could handle.  You want to take away that right and you’ve got some fighting to do. That’s a ditch we are willing to let somebody die in – not us of course, but somebody.   We’ve been aided and abetted in our all consuming gluttony by an abundance of advertising enticing us to buy even if our credit was poor, bad or non-existent.  As heinous as those enticements are, they have themselves been aided and abetted by private and public economists who keep reminding us that the health of our GDP depends on consumer buying.  Isn’t that what the president said, to take your stimulus check and go buy something?  

So now, with sky-high energy prices in a nation flooded with foreclosed houses, the question is not how to conserve but how to increase supply at a cheaper price so that we can continue our usual and customary habits of national gluttony.  My heart really aches for the families of very modest means who have been duped into acquiring the latest and best that Wal-Mart has to offer.  In my work I find myself in their homes stuffed to the gills with things I know they cannot afford and recognizing that the distance between today and bankruptcy is not just a paycheck, it’s only a matter of time.  The anxiety of living like that must be excruciating.  But isn’t it our right to have all those things, and doesn’t the new flat screen tv hooked to expanded cable with my choice of premium channels promise me that if creditors get on my back I can call a handy 1-800 number to get all my debts consolidated or even eliminated? 

My heart aches even more for the farmers and ranchers in our valley and the craftsmen in our communities who really do need gas guzzling equipment in order to produce the food we eat and the necessary things of life.  In a very real sense, they’ve been ripped off.

I don’t think we suddenly need to become a nation of peasants wearing homespun clothes.  And we are always going to have the frivolous rich with us, but the rest of us should not be following in their footsteps.  I just think we need to use a little national common sense, and that a national common sense must start with national thought and opinion leaders who are willing to become prophetic truth tellers.   

This afternoon at the pharmacy I was in line behind two men.  One looked to be middle age, the other was elderly.  When the first man was told the price of his medications he just hung his head and walked away.  The pharmacist called after him, “You need this medicine, want us to keep it for you?”  He just muttered that he’d try to work something out and kept on walking.   The second man blanched at his payment of nearly $200 for four or five medications.  “What would it be if I didn’t have insurance,” he asked.  “Oh, around $400,” she said.  He hung his head too, but paid – with a credit card.  How insane is this?  And yet I hear some of my friends brag about how the U.S. has the best health care system in the world.  What world do they live in?  Then they tell me about all the Canadians who come to the U.S. for treatment because they can’t get it in Canada.  What treatment are they seeking?  Elective surgeries that are important to them but perhaps not urgent?  How much money do they have to spend whatever it takes to get what they want when they want it?  I can do that too, but it doesn’t make it right that others have to suffer or go without!

When an atheist asks for a prayer to be said for her loved one, what is she asking for?  That’s a real question.  When she agrees to allow her loved one to be buried from a church following a Christian service, what is she agreeing to?  That’s another real question, which brings me to the third and final real question.  When a person says that he/she is an atheist, what are they saying?

It rained today, a long, long soaking rain.  It felt good.  Our valley is green because it is watered by dozens of small streams flowing out of the mountains that lie mostly on our eastern flank, and they depend on the winter snows.  This year there was a lot of it.  Outside this valley to the north, west and south the steeply rolling hills are nearly treeless.  Without irrigation the main crop would be sagebrush.  In some places that’s mostly what there is, but this is also the land of the Snake and Columbia whose waters have been made to turn desert into productive farm land.  Still, we can never forget that we are in are in the high desert of the Intermountain Plateau.  Average precipitation around here, apart from the mountains, is between 10 and 15 inches, which is half or less of what one might expect in the Midwest, and a third or less of areas on the East coast.  Our dry season will begin in June and we will not expect any significant rainfall again until sometime in September.  The biblical references to the early rains and the late rains are very real out here.  So today it rained, a beautiful, long soaking rain, and it was good, it was very, very good. 

OK, let’s ditch all that Lambeth stuff and talk about something happier.  How about death and dying?  Now that’s a subject right at the center of our faith, but one that we generally try to avoid at all costs.  Why is that?

On the one hand most Christians seem to have a basic understanding that life is not ended at death but changed, and that in Christ that change is one of new life and wholeness of being.  On the other hand, it seems to me that most of us have a very hard time letting go of loved ones who are nearing their time of death.  Extreme efforts are made to apply every possible medical option to keep a body from dying, and “hope” is never relinquished that our loved ones will recover and become well again.  

Modern medicine has enabled us to live longer healthier lives, and it is not always possible to tell when one is nearing the end.  All of that is good.  But keeping someone from dying is not the same thing as making them well, and I wonder about what is going on.  If our lives are sacred gifts of love from God, why cannot our deaths be the same?  A recent New York Times article discussed the growing practice of “slow medicine” for those who are nearing their natural end.  We’ve had a lot of practice with that in the hospice movement, which treats those dying of terminal diseases with the loving dignity they deserve.  Now something like it is also being practiced with the elderly for whom extraordinary measures are more than unlikely to produce restoration to health and only prolong their period of increasing dependency on chemicals, machines and high levels of support from aides of all sorts.  It is not a matter of casting them into some sort of dump of uncaring.  It is just the opposite.  It is a matter of surrounding them with love, the best of palliative care, rejoicing in the many blessings of their lives and fully living with them to the very gate of heaven.  

Henri Nouwen (Bread for the Journey) suggests that the dying can do something to help as they prepare themselves with grateful hearts, grateful to God and their families and friends, to make their deaths gifts for others.  What about the bereaved who are literally left behind?  Can they also help to make the deaths of their loved ones to be moments of grateful thanksgiving to God full of all the dignity we can offer?  

Well meaning but unrealistic expectations of renewed youth and vigor in which to enjoy restored relationships of years gone by too often lead to greater pain and suffering for both the dying and the living.  So how do we, as pastors and ministers of God’s redeeming love unto eternal life deal with that?  That’s a question.

In preparing for a workshop on Lambeth I took a look at each of the resolutions considered by the Conference since 1867.  I was particularly taken with this statement from the World Council of Churches included in the 1968 record, and offer it for whatever value it may have to you. 

Lambeth 1968

Resolution 16

Racism

The Conference commends the following statement of the World Council of Churches meeting at Uppsala: 

Racism is a blatant denial of the Christian faith. (i) It denies the effectiveness of the reconciling work of Jesus Christ, through whose love all human diversities lose their divisive significance; (ii) it denies our common humanity in creation and our belief that all men are made in God’s image; (iii) it falsely asserts that we find our significance in terms of racial identity rather than in Jesus Christ. 

The Conference acknowledges in penitence that the Churches of the Anglican Communion have failed to accept the cost of corporate witness to their unity in Christ, and calls upon them to re-examine their life and structures in order to give expression to the demands of the Gospel (a) by the inclusiveness of their worship, (b) by the creation of a climate of acceptance in their common life, and (c) by their justice in placing and appointment. 

Further, the Conference calls upon the Churches to press upon governments and communities their duty to promote fundamental human rights and freedoms among all their peoples.