Taking the Ring

E-mail with Kattie Coon

2011-08-27T13:28:00.001-07:00

"Kattie Coon", a blog commenter who claims she is orthodox but who relentlessly takes the progressive point of view, had an e-mail conversation with Viola Larson, and when Viola cc'ed me, I joined in. (Kattie Coon is not her real name, and she says her employer requires her to be anonymous on her personal blog.) Kattie has been complaining on her blog that Viola did not post the entire e-mail conversation, but only parts of it, and she thinks that Viola must be trying to hide things. So I am posting the whole thing here.

Read from the bottom. And notice that Kattie set up proposal to do something, with a condition attached, and when Viola chose not to participate, but remain in the status quo, Kattie called that Viola wanting war.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Oh, what a surprise, my comment was deleted. So asking why your employer wants you to remain anonymous is some form of not respecting what your bio says about your employer not wanting you to divulge information? I don't get that at all. Things sure do get intricate. I guess there is no explanation you are allowed to give? It's apparently a very strict employer? I think your rights are being violated. You ought to consider that. If it's true, that is.

________________________________________
From: dmberkley22@hotmail.com
To: kattiew.temp@hiwaay.net
CC: v.larson@att.net; davemoody@mac.com; jimberkley@msn.com
Subject: RE: talking
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:18:43 -0700
Kattie, looking for your answer on your blog, then.

> Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:42:13 -0500
> From: kattiew.temp@hiwaay.net
> To: dmberkley22@hotmail.com
> CC: v.larson@att.net; davemoody@mac.com; jimberkley@msn.com
> Subject: RE: talking
>
> Debbie,
>
> Don't walk into my private domain and pick an argument with me. This
> email account was set up for a conversation between Viola and myself.
> She chose to have you all listen in, not me. I made that concession
> to her. I wouldn't have done it on my own.
>
> The ball is in Viola's court. Either she wants to make peace or she doesn't.
>
> If it's war she wants, then this is just the kind of thing that will
> turn my conservative friends away from the Fellowship. I have good
> friends in leadership in another large congregation of the NAP that is
> sending representatives to MN too. There are also people in their
> congregation, not in leadership, interested in hearing my report. What
> would you have me tell them? The truth I hope. Don't answer that
> Debbie, it was rhetorical.
>
>
> Quoting Debbie Berkley :
>
> >
> > But that's the whole question I asked, Kattie. Why should it be
> > secret, even just between you and Viola? You are dodging that
> > question. I'm not asking you to tell me your name, just to tell me
> > why your employer requires you not to have freedom of speech on your
> > own time.
> >
> >
> >
> >> Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:43:02 -0500
> >> From: kattiew.temp@hiwaay.net
> >> To: dmberkley22@hotmail.com
> >> Subject: RE: talking
> >>
> >> Debbie,
> >>
> >> I'm sure you noticed that I'm trying to negotiate all this with Viola.
> >> Let it be between she and I.
> >>
> >> The blog problem has me baffled. I can administer my own blog, but I
> >> can't make comments without logging in as Name/URL. When I log in to
> >> make comments with my blogger ID it says I don't have access.
> >>
> >> Kattie
> >>
> >> Quoting Debbie Berkley :
> >>
> >> >
> >> > Kattie, I just asked you this question on your blog, and here it is,
> >> > in case you delete it. Notice I'm not asking who you are, only why
> >> > you can't say.
> >> >
> >> > Kattie, why does your employer want you to be anonymous? Surely you
> >> > can answer that question while remaining anonymous. Do you work for
> >> > a CIA-type employer?
> >> >
> >> > We know you live in the USA, and employers in the USA are legally
> >> > required to give their employees freedom of speech on their own
> >> > time. I worked at Microsoft for 11 years, and while being a
> >> > Christian did not help me there, and may have even subtly harmed me
> >> > (it is a determinedly secular corporation), I was not forbidden to
> >> > speak of it on my own time.
> >> >
> >> > Many of us are wondering if you perhaps actually work for an
> >> > evangelical church or organization where you do not want the others
> >> > there to know about the disdain in which you hold groups such as the
> >> > Fellowship. It's hard not to think that unless you explain yourself.
> >> >
> >> > It's also weird that you said I was welcome to comment here, and
> >> > then apparently blocked me. I'm having to use "anonymous" to take
> >> > you up on your welcome.
> >> >
> >> > Debbie Berkley
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >> Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 12:39:19 -0500
> >> >> From: kattiew.temp@hiwaay.net
> >> >> To: v.larson@att.net
> >> >> CC: jim@bethelpcseattle.org; dmberkley22@hotmail.com; davemoody@mac.com
> >> >> Subject: Re: talking
> >> >>
> >> >> Viola,
> >> >>
> >> >> Wow,rebuffed even before the details are spelled out.
> >> >> One of the things I was going to suggest was that we become facebook
> >> >> friends with full access. I have facebook friends who cover the gamut
> >> >> also, and our interactions aren't insulting to each other.
> >> >> Oh well, I guess you can't put the past behind us. I am making
> >> >> overtures of being willing to try, and find a way that we might be
> >> >> able to do that. I won't beg, but I really don't think you
> >> >> appreciated the offer, and I say that because you didn't know where I
> >> >> was headed with this.
> >> >>
> >> >> I'm still willing, but I need your promise first.
> >> >>
> >> >> Sincerely, in Christ's name,
> >> >> Kattie
> >> >>
> >> >> Quoting Viola Larson :
> >> >>
> >> >> > Dear Kattie,
> >> >> > I appreciate the offer but that would mean aligning myself with one
> >> >> > person who
> >> >> > dislikes the Christian brothers and sisters I am close to. It
> >> >> would create a
> >> >> > separation in real friendships that I care a great deal about. I
> >> >> > don't live in a
> >> >> > secret world and do not want to now.
> >> >> >
> >> >> >
> >> >> > I wish you all the best with love in Christ, but I feel extremely
> >> >> > sorry for you.
> >> >> > I have other friends, even on Facebook, who are extremely
> >> >> > progressive. They do
> >> >> > not feel the need to insult me nor I them, we simply disagree and
> >> >> debate the
> >> >> > issues. If you have to hide yourself that is one thing-but to hide
> >> >> > yourself and
> >> >> > at the same time make snide remarks on other blogs about people I
> >> >> care about
> >> >> > puts you in a whole different category.
> >> >> >
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Sincerely in the love of Christ,
> >> >> > Viola
> >> >> > ________________________________
> >> >> > From: "kattiew.temp@hiwaay.net"
> >> >> > To: Viola Larson
> >> >> > Sent: Fri, August 12, 2011 9:22:47 AM
> >> >> > Subject: Re: talking
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Hi Viola,
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Thanks for writting.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > I am willing to share information about myself with you, and you
> >> >> > alone. But I
> >> >> > require a promise from you that you will never divulge any of that
> >> >> > information
> >> >> > with anyone else without first getting my permission.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Kattie
> >> >> >
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Quoting Viola Larson :
> >> >> >
> >> >> >> Hi Kattie,
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> What did you want to say in private?
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> Viola
> >> >>
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>

Spiritual Violence

2011-04-20T19:09:00.000-07:00

A certain Presbyterian minister says it is spiritual abuse to tell people that if they don't accept God's free gift of love offered through Jesus Christ, they will die in their sins, and they will not live eternally in heaven. This minister says that it is essentially spiritual violence to warn people that the consequences of not turning their lives over to God is eternal death--a loss of the joy they could have forever with God.

What a strange definition of spiritual abuse!

Let's look at an analogy. Suppose there were a road that everyone needed to take. This road has a fork, and one direction leads to a sudden hidden precipice. Suppose further that someone wants to place a warning sign at the fork saying "Look out! If you continue along this direction, you will fall off a precipice and die." Would placing that sign there be mental abuse? Would it be mentally violent? Or would it actually be helpful and saving to the people taking that road?

That is the case with those who want to tell people about God's offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. They want to be helpful and offer what is lifesaving to those who don't have it.

Moreover, it is actually spiritually abusive to deny this offer to people. The minister who claims that God does not exist (he says, "No deity exists. Not Jesus Christ, not Yahweh, not Baal, not Marduk, not Allah, not Zeus, not the Flying Spaghetti Monster, not the Wizard of Oz. None of them exist. All figments of imagination. They are fun. But none are worth the spiritual violence they cause.") does not have a shred of proof to back up his assertion. It all rests on his own faith claim that this world is all there is, his own 21st-century weltanschauung.

He is like the stubborn medieval people who couldn't see that the world was round, so they insisted it was flat. This minister can't see or feel God, so he insists God is not there. And so he becomes spiritually abusive toward his parishioners, and the readers of his blog and newspaper articles, by denying them the saving knowledge of all that God has to offer them.

True spiritual violence is done to people when God's love is kept away from them.

Passion Week

2010-04-02T00:14:00.000-07:00

There is a moment in the St. John Passion by Bach when, after Christ has been arrested and Peter has denied three times that he even knows Christ, the Evangelist (narrator) says that Peter went out and wept bitterly. This is sung in a hauntingly beautiful tenor voice, with a long, slow melody on the German word for "wept".

Who does not know the same kind of wretched despair that Peter felt at that time? We do things wrong. We fail again and again. We resolve to do better, and yet we find ourselves repeating our mistakes. Well we know what this music expresses. If not literally, then figuratively, we weep and weep and weep. We are trapped in our human failings. Even Peter, who has just been with the living Christ, repudiates him. How can we ever do better?

Miserable sinners that we are, who can rescue us from this body of death, from this pattern of repeated failure?

But there is one who can. It is for this that God became man in Jesus, came to earth, and took upon himself the punishment for all our failings, endured the denials, the mocking, the pain, the weight of all of everyone's sin. Who can rescue us from this body of death? Who but God? Thanks be to him through Jesus Christ our Lord! May we never take this lightly!

(Romans 7:24-25a)

Assuming Intentions

2009-12-15T00:08:00.000-08:00

Suppose Pat, a Christian, believes that a certain group of people (Group X) should be able to do things that haven't previously been allowed, and that it's a matter of human rights for Group X. Suppose that such a belief by Pat would require interpreting the Bible in a different way from how it has been interpreted before, but Pat believes that this new interpretation is legitimate. Furthermore, Pat is passionate about giving Group X what Pat believes are human rights.

Meanwhile, suppose that Lee, also a Christian, does not believe that the new interpretation of the Bible is legitimate, and, although Lee is sorry not to be able to give members of Group X what they want, Lee cannot in conscience go against what Lee believes the Bible says. Lee believes that to do that would not only be wrong, but would also encourage the people in Group X to do things that are actually sin and thus harmful behavior, according to Lee's interpretation of the Bible. Therefore Lee believes that allowing these things would not be doing the people in Group X a kindness.

When Pat and Lee are discussing this issue with each other online, not knowing each other personally apart from the discussion, would it be legitimate for Pat to assume that Lee has malicious reasons or motivations for holding Lee's beliefs? Would it be legitimate for Pat to flatly deem Lee a bigot or prejudiced?

Similarly, would it be legitimate for Lee to assume that Pat has malicious reasons or motivations for holding Pat's beliefs? Would it be legitimate for Lee to flatly deem Pat is immoral or loose in Pat's beliefs?

I contend that none of the above assumptions is legitimate. Without evidence otherwise, both Pat and Lee should be assumed to have arrived at their beliefs sincerely and with good intentions.

Why an Angiogram Doesn't Scare Me

2009-05-20T22:29:00.000-07:00

I'm having an angiogram in the morning, and it doesn't worry me. I had one almost 4 years ago, and it spooked me that time. But this time I feel quite different, and it's all because of what happened the day of that first angiogram.

The angiogram I'm having tomorrow is a precursor to probable open-heart surgery for me in perhaps a few weeks. I have a couple of heart valves that just aren't up to the job any more. But even the prospect of the open-heart surgery is not daunting to me in the long run, and it's all because of what happened the day of that first angiogram.

Maybe you'd like to know what that was. If so, take a look here: http://takingthering.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-god-started-my-cancer-journey_15.html.

Blogs from "Cops": Don't Hurt the Kids!

2009-03-04T23:03:00.001-08:00

I'm now at the fourth and last of my blog posts on things I've observed on the TV show "Cops." This time I'm not going to write about a specific thing I've heard anyone say, but instead about a general attitude. And it's about an attitude of the cops themselves.

What I've found, from maybe 25 years of watching this show, is that cops hate it when kids get hurt. That makes them madder than anything else. They have a special kind of anger towards the people that do bad things to children.

They are also always on the lookout for protecting children. When they're chasing some guy, and he throws his gun out the car window, later when they've caught the guy, they often say to him, "What if some little kid had picked up that gun?" Or when they go to someone's house to arrest him, and they find drugs lying around openly, and there are little children in the house, they usually give the adults a thorough enraged lecture about what could have happened to the kids if they'd gotten into the drugs.

Sometimes when they have to arrest a guy, and his little kids are nearby, they ask the mother to take the kids inside so that they won't see their dad in handcuffs.

The cops really care about the safety and well-being of children.

I got to thinking that we are God's children. If cops care that much about kids that aren't even their own kids, how much more must God care about us, his own children? He must hate seeing any of his children suffer from injustice, or poverty, or war, or terrible disease, or broken relationships.

What a powerful motivation for us to help others! They are God's children that he loves. I recently stood in a grocery checkout line and looked at all the other people around me, and as I looked at each one, I thought, "God loves her as much as he loves me. God loves him as much as he loves me."

It's easy to get caught up in our own lives, not caring about others. But just like the cops, God wants all his children to be safe and protected. God doesn't want his children to be hurt. God doesn't want them to be victimized. I know that I need to remember that God loves all his children and cares about their safety and well-being. When I remember that, then maybe I will do something about it.

Blogs from "Cops": That's Not Mine!

2009-03-03T23:31:00.000-08:00

This is the third posting in a series I'm writing on things I've heard people say on the TV show "Cops". Today it's not about something just one person has said, but rather something I've heard countless people say in many, many segments of the show.

The situation may be that the cops have found a little bag of weed in a person's wallet. Or perhaps they have found a loaded handgun in the console of a person's car. Or maybe they have found a large amount of crack in a person's purse.

Inevitably, what that person will say is, "That's not mine! I've never seen it before in my life! I have no idea how it got there."

Obviously the person hopes to convince the cops that he or she is innocent, and that the incriminating bit of evidence was planted there by someone else. The person in question claims that he or she is just a victim of (somewhat unbelievable) circumstances, and has done nothing wrong.

Well, we may not be driving around with loaded handguns in the consoles of our cars or stashes of crack in our purses, or otherwise flagrantly breaking the law, but I think we still have something in common with all these people on "Cops." What we have in common with them is that it's pretty hard to admit to our sins, even to the little everyday ones.

When we're caught in the act of doing something wrong, even something small like being careless with someone else's things or not doing a chore we had promised to do, our first reaction is usually along the lines of "That's not mine!" In other words, we usually want to either say that we didn't do it, or else find some excuse for why what we did wasn't bad.

It's even more the case if what we have done wrong is big, such as betraying our spouse, or embezzling. We try to deny that we've done it; we say, "That's not mine! I've never seen it before in my life!" and hope that we will get away with it.

It's even true that we try to deny what we've done when we're faced with God, just as we do when we're faced with another person who is disappointed in us. We make excuses to God as well.

But when the cops hear people say, "That's not mine! I've never seen it before in my life!", those cops are never fooled. And God is not fooled either, when we make excuses to him.

But there is one difference between the cops and God. The cops are usually going to haul the "subjects" they're dealing with off to jail for what those subjects have done. God also knows that what we've done deserves punishment. But God decided to take the punishment instead of us. So because he did that, now all we have to do is be sorry for our sin (admitting that it is ours and that we have seen it before), and accept his love. Instead of trying to pretend that our sin is not our sin, if we acknowledge that it is ours, we can be rid of it forever! That's a pretty good deal.

Blogs from "Cops": The Police Ruin Your Life

2009-03-02T23:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I began a series of blog postings on things I've heard people say on the TV show "Cops." It may be an unusual source for theological reflection, but I guess that's the way my mind works. So here's the next posting.

Just this past Saturday night, the broadcast included a segment where the police had stopped a woman who did not give them her correct name. She said that the car she was driving belonged to someone else, and so did the purse in the back seat, and all the other things in the car. But funny thing, the picture of the woman on the driver's license in that purse looked just like her! Eventually she admitted that she was that person and that the name on the driver's license was actually her name. The cop asked her why she didn't give her real name to begin with, and she replied, "Because I hate police! They ruin your life."

Well, as it turned out, there were several warrants for her arrest, so no wonder she didn't want to give her name. And in addition to that, she had some meth in the car. Wow, those police sure do ruin your life!

What irony! In her view, she was just having a great time, doing the things she did that caused arrest warrants to be issued for her, and using meth. What fun! And then those cops came along and ruined her life by arresting her for all that fun she was having.

But it's not just those who have run-ins with the police who think this way. What this woman was doing was getting upset that there were consequences for her behavior. She thought she had a right to do whatever she wanted, and she hated the consequences, even though she knew that what she did was not allowed.

To some degree, we can all fall into this type of thinking. We know that there are things that God does not want us to do. For example, we know that God does not want us to speak unkindly to our spouses, but we do it anyway, because it feels good at the moment. And then after we've done it a lot, when we have problems in our marriage relationship, we get angry with God: we wonder why a loving God would allow us to have relationship troubles. Or for another example, we neglect our relationship with our children, thinking only of our own work, because that seems more interesting at the moment. And then when our children become rebellious and troublesome, we get angry with God: we wonder why a loving God would allow us to have parenting troubles.

These are simplistic examples--marriage and parenting problems have multiple causes--but the principle is true. Our actions have consequences, but sometimes we blame God rather than realizing that our own actions have led to these consequences. We can sometimes be just like the woman in the "Cops" episode who said, "I hate police! They ruin your life." We weren't the ones who messed up, oh, no: it was that mean old God who let these bad things happen to us.

How good it would be to remember that the consequences of our actions are just that: consequences of our actions, and not something mean that God has done to us. Then we can turn to God for his loving help in getting ourselves back on track. He is willing! He's the one who loved us enough to die for us.

Blogs from "Cops": I Ain't a Crack Ho

2009-03-01T22:04:00.000-08:00

One of the few shows that I watch regularly is "Cops". I come from a family of police-radio listeners, and I guess it's in my blood. Anyway, recently I've heard a few of the "subjects" (that's what the cops call the people they're dealing with) say some thought-provoking things. I thought I might write about them. So here's the first one.

One night the cops were talking to a woman working at a truck stop. She wasn't actually working in the truck stop; she was working out in the parking lot. In other words, she was a prostitute looking for truck-driver customers. In the course of the conversation they asked her if she ever accepted payment in the form of drugs. She was quite indignant and said, "I may be a ho [whore], but I ain't a crack ho." In other words, she had her standards! Only a woman with no standards, she implied, would be a crack ho.

This illustrated to me, in a pitiful way, that everyone wants to know that they have standards--that they are not at the bottom of society. Everyone wants to feel that they are worth something. We may be a ho, but we ain't a crack ho. But what a sad thing for this woman to base her worth on. She sells her body, but she only sells it for money, not for drugs. That's her basis for finding self-worth.

I wish I could have reached through the TV set to tell her about a better way to know that she was valued. She is worth so much that the God of the universe died for her. When we really know that, when we really understand how much God loves us, we don't need to find our self-worth in other things, such as in material possessions, or in who we know, or in being better than someone else, or in not being a crack ho. We know that we are worth something because God loves us enough to die for us. That is the most liberating knowledge! It frees us from the need to prove our self-worth in any other way.

May we all realize this: we don't have to prove our self-worth! God gives it to us by loving us. Since the God who created the universe loves us, we are worth something! Thanks be to God for that gift! And I will pray for the woman at the truck stop, that she will know that, too, and find liberation in God's love.

Unknown Future, Known God

2009-01-23T21:50:00.000-08:00

This is a scary time here in our country, and even around the world. True, many people have been rejoicing in the last few days over the inauguration of President Obama. But that hasn't made the economic crisis go away. I work for one of the most well-known companies in America, generally regarded as safe and secure: Microsoft. But yesterday, two days after the inauguration, Microsoft laid off around 1000 people, and announced that more jobs would be eliminated in the next 18 months. My job is still intact. But who knows what the future holds?

My husband lost his own job four months ago. The non-profit Presbyterian renewal group he worked for was a victim of the economic climate, and had to eliminate several positions. Now I'm our sole breadwinner, working for a company that is planning reductions in staff. And there are so many other families like us.

The papers are talking about the possibility of a second Depression. We're approaching retirement age. What does that mean for us? What does it mean for our children, for our three-year-old granddaughter, or the other grandchildren still to be born? It's easy to feel fear thinking of this possibly cloudy future.

At work yesterday, the Christians at Microsoft were talking via e-mail about the layoffs. Some of them were among those who had been let go. One of our Christian brothers in India sent the words from a poster he used to have. The poster had said this:

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

We certainly have an unknown future right now! But we also most certainly have a known God. His constancy, love, and care for us are known from the Bible. But they are also known from our experience with him. I know from going through cancer a few years ago that I can absolutely rely on him to get me through any hard time, to sustain me and support me and give me what I need to get by. He doesn't leave us when we're in need.

In fact, God's goodness and love are so great that, when I had cancer, I found that he can make a hard time into a time of blessing and relationship with him that can bring joy beyond imagining. It was a surprise; I hadn't expected it. But it was a wonderful surprise! Others have had this same experience. The hardness of the hard time fades away next to the joy--the joy that comes with the deepening of the relationship with God that happens in the hard time.

So, yes, he is a known God, and what is known about him is so wonderful that, when I read that sentence, "Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God," it actually gave me a thrill. It made me remember that I don't need to fear. In any future, he'll be there. So even if that future is hard, we'll have him with us, and that will make it good.

Presbyterians in Wonderland

2008-10-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

Imagine that your car has been stolen, and you find out who took it--let's say it's someone named X. Then picture the following scenario: You go to the police and make a complaint. The police investigate, and determine that the facts are as you have reported them: your car is no longer at your house, but is at X's house. But, the police say, they cannot charge X with theft. They explain that the title to the car shows that the car belongs to you. Since the title clearly shows that the car is yours, X cannot possibly possess your car. Therefore they cannot charge X with stealing it, since it is not possible for X to acquire possession of something that X cannot possess.

At this point you would certainly think that the police were in collusion with X, or that you had somehow stumbled, like Alice, into Wonderland.

A similar thing has just happened in the PC(USA). The Rev. Janet Edwards, who officiated in 2005 at a marriage ceremony between two women, has been acquitted in ecclesiastical court of performing a marriage between two women. She has been acquitted by the Pittsburgh Permanent Judicial Commission because the Presbyterian constitution defines marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman. Therefore, says the PJC, since the constitution says a marriage is only between a man and a woman, Edwards could not possibly have performed a marriage ceremony between two women, and so she cannot be charged with it.

This is the same so-called reasoning that was used earlier this year by the GA PJC to acquit the Rev. Janie Spahr of performing a same-sex marriage ceremony.

Just as in my hypothetical example above, either the PJCs are grasping at any way they can find to get an acquittal, because that's the side they're on, or the PC(USA) has stumbled into some sort of Wonderland.

Justice is no longer obtainable in the PC(USA), it seems.

We must all hope that this sort of reasoning does not spread to the criminal courts, or no law will be enforceable.

______________

Since first writing this post, another analogy has occurred to me. Human trafficking is a problem today, and unfortunately sometimes instances of it are discovered in the United States. The U.S. Constitution prohibits slavery. Suppose it were discovered that some people had been enslaved somewhere in the U.S. When those people were rescued and freed, we would expect that the people who had enslaved them would be charged with a crime. But according to the reasoning used by the PJCs described above, it could be possible for the authorities to say that since slavery is prohibited by our constitution, it is impossible for anyone in the U.S. to enslave anyone else. Therefore no one can be charged with enslaving anyone, because slavery in the U.S. is impossible.

Such an analogy shows how ridiculous and unfair these PJC rulings are.

A Presbymeme

2008-08-30T21:55:00.000-07:00

I have been tagged by Viola Larson at Naming His Grace to participate in a "Presbymeme" that she saw on the PCUSA Moderator's blog. So here goes:

What is your favorite faith-based hymn, song or chorus?

I can't name just one. I love hymns by Ralph Vaughan Williams for their beautiful music, and so two that I will always name right away are "Come Down, O Love Divine" (with the wonderful 15th-century words by Bianco da Siena) and "For All the Saints".

There are two aspects of the words of "For All the Saints" that I like. One is the encouragement in the midst of our troubles on earth. It's the same feeling I get from The Lord of the Rings, or The Last Battle:

"And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the air the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong,
Alleluia! Alleluia!"

(A note here: The warfare mentioned is spiritual warfare, and the triumph is triumph of good over evil.)

For this same reason, from modern hymns, I love "In Christ Alone", by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty. The last verse sets me tingling:

No guilt in life, no fear in death,
This is the power of Christ in me.
From life's first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand.
Till he returns, or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand!

The other of the two aspects of "For All the Saints" that I like is what I like the most in my favorite hymns: I love hymns that praise God's majesty and glory, and that envisage the beauty and grandeur of heaven. So the last verse of "For All the Saints" always uplifts me:

"From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
Alleluia! Alleluia!"

This is why I also love hymns such as "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name"; here is its last verse:

"O that with yonder sacred throng we at His feet may fall!
We'll join the everlasting song, and crown him Lord of all!
We'll join the everlasting song, and crown him Lord of all!"

I thrill to picture myself one day amid that sacred throng, joining in that everlasting song.

Now on to the rest of the meme.

What was the context, content and/or topic of the last sermon that truly touched, convicted, inspired, challenged, comforted and/or otherwise moved you?

I can't remember; I hear good sermons all the time, but I have also been hearing a variety of preachers at different churches this summer, and it's getting mixed up in my head. But here's something I noted down from a sermon last May by Scott Dudley, our senior pastor. He said that what people long for most is transcendance, community, and significance. (I think he got this from John Stott.) However, people go running after our culture's trinity of pleasure, comfort, and happiness, and what they end up with is fear, envy, and loneliness.

If you could have all Presbyterians read just one of your previous posts, what would it be and why?

I would want them to read my post "The Atonement Is Good News." The Atonement is the best news ever, and people need to know about it.

What are three PC(USA) flavored blogs you read on a regular basis?

I'm afraid that I don't read any blogs on a regular basis, but the ones I read the most often are The Berkley Blog, Naming His Grace, and the blog of Mark Roberts.

If the PC(USA) were a movie, what would it be and why?

I guess I can't be specific here, but I'd have to say it would be one of the many World War II movies that focuses on a particular group involved in a particular struggle--but of course they are not the only ones; there are many other struggles going on all over the world at the same time. And the outcome is not yet known at the time the movie is made.

This leads me to end this post by repeating one of the verses from "For All the Saints":

"And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the air the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong,
Alleluia! Alleluia!"

An Evangelical with a Conscience?

2008-06-27T18:34:00.000-07:00

(This post was originally written for Presbyterian Action's General Assembly blog.)

Thursday morning at General Assembly, various elected positions were filled for entities such as the Permanent Judicial Commission and the board of the Presbyterian Foundation. Each position had a nominee proposed by the General Assembly Nominating Committee (GANC).

For some positions, there was also a nominee made from the floor, and for those positions, each nominee (both the floor nominee and the GANC nominee) was presented in a three-minute speech by a person familiar with the candidate.

One person describing a nominee chosen by the GANC said that the nominee liked to describe himself as "an evangelical with a conscience." Undoubtedly this was meant to be seen by the voting audience as a positive quality, but it is in fact a slur, though veiled, against evangelicals.

I am a linguist. Linguists know that some terms in language are "unmarked,” and others are "marked." The unmarked terms, the ones without anything overt added to them, are considered basic and normal and definitional. The marked terms are considered unusual and remarkable.

For example, "president" is an unmarked term, and "lady president" is marked, because the word "lady" has been added to it. Therefore, due to the linguistic structure in "lady president,” it is implied that the normal, basic president is a man, but it is unusual to find a president that is a woman. This is why the women's movement has worked so hard to remove from our language the type of distinction such as "president" versus "lady president.”

Similarly, the term "evangelical" alone is unmarked. Therefore a phrase such as "evangelical with a conscience" is marked, because the phrase "with a conscience" has been added to it. By finding the marked term "evangelical with a conscience" a significant way to describe the candidate, the speaker was implying that the normal, basic, definitional evangelical is one without a conscience, because the unusual type of evangelical is an evangelical with a conscience.

I don't know if many people picked this up or not. Probably the speaker didn't even realize that evangelicals had just been insulted. If so, this may be because the speaker's prejudice against evangelicals is so ingrained that the speaker unconsciously assumed that everyone agrees that there is a lack of conscience in evangelicals.

The conscience that the speaker implied that evangelicals lack is most likely a social-witness conscience. In fact, however, a recent study has shown that evangelical churches give more money and participate in more actual social-witness programs (as opposed to doing social-witness political lobbying) than progressive churches do. The idea of a lack of conscience for evangelicals is not only insulting and prejudiced, it is based on incorrect information. Sadly, this shows up in everyday conversations and news stories all too often, and, as I saw Thursday morning, even in our church assemblies.

How Do We Love Our Neighbor?

2008-06-27T18:29:00.000-07:00

(This post was originally written for Presbyterian Action's General Assembly blog.)

Wednesday morning at General Assembly I had the chance to listen to a short talk by the Bible scholar Robert Gagnon, who is the foremost authority on the Bible and homosexuality. He reiterated some important points in the ongoing debate.

Often people will say that since Jesus hung out with prostitutes, who are we to judge anyone? Jesus didn't condemn them, so neither should we. They use this argument by extension to say that Jesus did not condemn homosexual activity.

Dr. Gagnon pointed out, however, that the reason that Jesus hung out with these people was not that sexual sin was so inconsequential; it was rather that their sin was so serious that they needed his personal attention in order to be rescued from it. So he hung out with them, but not merely to say to them, "You're fine just as you are." Instead, he said, "Repent, and sin no more." He said this because he loved them so much. He loved them so much that he wanted them to live, and it was only through their repentance, their turning from sin, that they could find life.

One important way that we love our neighbors as Jesus did is by pointing them away from their sin--from what is injurious to them--and towards life. But Dr. Gagnon said that if we don't know what is injurious to them, we can't know how to love them. In fact, we may actually act in a way that is in truth hateful towards them, if we don't know what is injurious to them. So we need to know what the Bible tells us: that sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman is sin, and that sin is injurious to us.

In Ezekiel 13:19b it says "By telling my people lies they wish to hear, you bring death to those who should not die." This is something that we need to remember. Love isn't just saying, "I love you. You're special. You're fine the way you are. Do what feels right to you." People do want to hear that; they don't want to hear that their behavior is wrong. But hearing these "lies they wish to hear," and believing them, brings them death, and they should not die. So telling them lies is not love; it is hate. Instead, love is reaching out and bringing our neighbors back from the brink of the pit.

Dr. Gagnon said that if we speak this truth in order to extend this love, we will doubtless be abused by those who disagree with us. But, as he said, behind us lies the cross; before us is the Lamb who was slain. We must go ahead and bear the abuse for the sake of our neighbors and our Lord.

What Might God Be Doing?

2008-06-24T00:13:00.000-07:00

(This post was originally written for Presbyterian Action's General Assembly blog.)

There are a lot of people all over the USA who believe a lot of untrue things about the IRD. Without speculating about who started these rumors or why, I'll just say that the gist of it is that the IRD is supposedly just masquerading as a Christian renewal group, but in reality is a conservative political group whose aim is to silence or sabotage the liberal social witness of the mainline denominations, or, failing that, break up those denominations. Supposedly the IRD has deep pockets and takes orders, according to some of these rumors, from the Bush White House itself.

Of course this is all nonsense, but it's surprising how many people believe these things.

I found this out in person Saturday here at GA when another volunteer and I were manning the Presbyterian Action (IRD) booth in the exhibition hall. A woman started to walk by, and then stopped and said that we had no right to be there. I said that we were Presbyterians, and she said, no, we were not. I replied that I had been a Presbyterian for 34 years, and she still insisted that we were not really Presbyterians. She started to talk about all the evil that she "knew" about that the IRD had done to the PCUSA, and I started to tell her that those things were all myths, but as her voice became more and more raised, I realized that conversation would not be fruitful. So I told her that we would pray for her. She angrily replied that she would pray for us, and then she left.

My fellow volunteer, who had been unware of the anti-IRD rumors, was stunned, as were the people in the neighboring booths, and even I was left a little shaky.

Later that day, walking along the sidewalk outside, I passed the same woman, and we eyed each other uneasily and exchanged wary smiles.

The next day, Sunday, which was yesterday, committee meetings began, and, to my surprise, I discovered that the same woman is a commissioner member of the committee that I am observing. I started wondering if God was placing her deliberately in my path, and began wanting to reach out to her.

That evening, I prayed about the situation, asking God that if he was putting this woman and me together, that he would make it clear, and that he would help me know what to say.

This morning, Monday, I sat in on her committee meeting again. During a break, I was washing my hands in the restroom, when I looked to the right, and there she was, at the very next sink. It could hardly have been more clear that God was putting her and me together! So I said hi, and she said hi too. We ended up telling each other our names and having a conversation right there.

We did not convince each other of anything in that conversation. She still believes that the IRD has no right to be at GA, and that the IRD is harming the PCUSA. But she knows my name, and she knows that I love Jesus. She knows I'm a linguist, not some IRD automaton. I know her name, and that she has been a presbytery moderator. We told each other a little bit about our views. We named each other sisters in Christ. We even hugged. I hope that in her mind, I am not the enemy; she is certainly not the enemy to me.

I saw her again across the balcony this evening at the worship service held across the street in the civic auditorium. I'm interested to see what God is going to do with this. Or maybe I'll never know, but whatever it is, it should be good.

Faithful or true?

2008-06-22T17:18:00.000-07:00

(This blog posting was written for Presbyterian Action's General Assembly blog.)

As a member of the Presbyterian Action GA team, I was one of the observers last night (the 21st) in the back of the hall when Bruce Reyes-Chow was elected Moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Reyes-Chow has a broad appeal due to his youthfulness and engaging manner. He injected an air of freshness and humor into his remarks. Much of this, in addition to his positions on theology and issues, undoubtedly went into his election. However, as I listened to his 5-minute statement, and to his answers to questions posed by commissioners and advisory delegates, one remark struck me and caused me to ponder its meaning.

Reyes-Chow said he wants the PC(USA) to be a church that "cares more about being faithful than about being right."

I understood this to mean that he hoped Presbyterians would care more about being faithful than about being doctrinally correct--care more about being faithful than about what they are faithful to. Later my husband said that he thought Reyes-Chow meant that he hoped that Presbyterians would care more about being faithful than about being the right one in a dispute--care more about being faithful than about winning an argument.

Let me discuss this second view first.

If Reyes-Chow meant that he hoped that Presbyterians would come to care more about being faithful than about winning arguments, this implies that he believes that now there are at least some Presbyterians who do care more about winning arguments than they care about faithfulness. No matter who he might have in mind, this is a patronizing attitude to take towards any group of people, let alone fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

If this is indeed his meaning, it implies that there are some Presbyterians that he has not gotten to know well enough to understand their motives. It is also disappointing to think that a candidate for Moderator--who now actually is our Moderator--would have such an uncharitable attitude towards any group. One always hopes that anyone would attribute the best possible motive to anyone until there is concrete evidence of a worse motive.

If this was indeed Reyes-Chow's meaning, let us hope that, as he grows into his role as Moderator, he will get to know all groups in the PC(USA) well enough that he will understand their motives and support them as fellow Presbyterians, even if he disagrees with them. I think he has expressed such intentions at least, and, since Reyes-Chow has shown kindness to our family in the past, I do not think that he intends a putdown to anyone. Perhaps the full implication of his words--if this was his meaning--have not occurred to him.

I thought, however, that what Reyes-Chow meant was that he was looking forward to Presbyterians caring more about being faithful than about being right or wrong in their beliefs. And after he said it, it struck me that--if that was his meaning--I didn't know how that could actually be possible in a meaningful way. How can anyone be faithful to anything if they don't know whether or not they're right about it? Or, at least, how can their faithfulness be meaningful in such a situation?

Faithfulness needs to be faithfulness to something. It's wonderful to care about faithfulness. But if we don't know whether or not we're right about what we're faithful to, then no matter how much we care about our faithfulness to it, we may actually be doing harm in the world rather than good, if we are wrong about what we're being faithful to.

For example, white supremacists may be very faithful to their cause. But, as I'm sure Reyes-Chow and most people reading this blog would agree, the white supremacist cause is both wrong and harmful. Faithfulness alone, without being right, is not sufficient.

Rightness, and truth, matter if we want to love the world with God's love, rather than blunder through it willy-nilly, even while being faithful. When we care about being right, we don't care about it for the sake of winning arguments, or for the sake of pride in the correctness of our doctrine, but rather we care about it so that we can serve God in the way that God knows best, to his glory, the furtherance of his reign, and the better love and care of all his people.

It sounds very friendly and inclusive to hope that Presbyterians will care more about being faithful than about being right, but it is actually careless and dismissive. I hope to hear better things in the future from our new Moderator.

A Fun Little Tag

2008-04-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

I've been tagged again, by Judy at Stitch Along with Me. This time I need to give answers to a bunch of categories, and they all need to start with the same letter as my first name. So here goes:

What is your name? Debbie
Four letter word: deer
Vehicle: Dodge
TV Show: Dr. Kildare (OK, it's old, but he sure was cute!)
City: Downey (where I grew up)
Boy's Name: David
Girl's Name: Diana
Occupation: developer
Something You Wear: dress
Food: dim sum
Something Found in a Bathroom: dental floss
Reason for Being Late: disaster
Something You Shout: Don't jump!

No to Torture

2008-04-14T21:35:00.001-07:00

Because of a comment that was left on my blog recently, I want to make sure that my position is clear to everyone: I am categorically against torture. Moreover, my husband, Jim Berkley, director of Presbyterian Action at IRD, is categorically against torture, and IRD itself is categorically against torture.

Also, here is an example of another IRD staff person stating his position on torture, which is that he is completely against it:

http://www.newsobserver.com/663/story/481121.html

People who say that IRD supports torture have misinterpreted what IRD has written. Sometimes it's just because of their prior assumption that IRD is evil. Other times it's because they misinterpret the facts, which are the following: 1) IRD does not want to join people who blame only the US for torture, since the evidence that the US does indeed engage in officially sanctioned torture is not clear, and 2) IRD wishes that people who are against torture would focus on nations that are truly egregious torturers. The people who misinterpret these facts take them to mean that IRD is for torture. This is logically fallacious thinking. It's analogous to this situation:

Group A: "There's a guy that we know, and we think he killed another guy. Join us in a campaign against him!"
Group B: "We don't know that he killed him, and we think efforts should be focused on known murderers, so we won't join your campaign at the present."
Group A: "From what Group B just said, we can tell that Group B is in favor of murder, and we will now proclaim this to everyone."

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who have decided, on faith, without any facts to back up this faith, that IRD is evil. And so whenever they read or hear about anything that IRD says or does, they do so through an IRD-is-evil filter, and they interpret what they read or hear accordingly. It thus becomes extremely difficult for IRD to do anything at all that is not interpreted as more evidence of evil. For example, my husband once wrote to Steven Martin, who has made an anti-IRD film. His note to Martin was polite and kind, and Martin acknowledged that it was when he wrote about it in a comment on the Talk2Action website. The politeness and kindness was, to Martin, evidence that Jim was similar to Osama bin Laden. So, Jim was condemned ahead of time. There was no manner in which Jim could have written to Martin that would not have been taken as evidence of evil. IRD has been pre-judged (what stands at the root of the meaning of prejudice) as evil.

It is a sad state of affairs to see people who consider themselves to be open, liberal, and broadminded, fallen into prejudice, suspicion, and poor reasoning, and it is more than sad when this leads them to do injury to others.

I can't imagine

2008-04-08T23:09:00.000-07:00

For years, I have been praying the Lord's prayer in my own words. I don't think that Jesus meant it to be something that we learn by rote and then recite to God; I think he meant it as a template for the things that we should pray about. When I restate it in my own words, I really think about what I'm saying to God when I pray it.

I have learned a lot in the process of doing this, and one of the things I've learned just came to me the other night. It was when I was asking God for his kingdom to come soon, and for his will to be done here on earth, perfectly and all the time, just the way it is in heaven. I do long for that, because I think it will be the most wonderful thing imaginable to have everything happen all the time only in accordance with God's will.

But then a little stray (and very immature) thought of my own wandered in, and I thought, "What if, when God's will is the only thing that is ever done, I don't ever get to sit on my comfy chair and do my favorite puzzles any more?"

First the part of me that thinks I have everything all analyzed responded back to myself that, whatever I can and can't do then won't matter, because it will be so glorious to do God's will, and everything will be on such a different plane, that I won't think about comfy chairs and puzzles and things like that.

But then I remembered (or perhaps God reminded me of) something else. I have a relative who is an alcoholic. She has been sober for a few years now. But before that, she has told me, she was reluctant to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, partly because she thought that life would be too boring without drinking. What she couldn't imagine, until she became sober, was how much more fun, fulfilling, and interesting her life was without alcohol. She just didn't know how to picture it, but once she got there, she loved it. She would never go back to her old life. She is so happy being sober! Her life is so much better now!

I think it will be like that when God's kingdom comes. We just don't know how to imagine what it will be like, and sometimes, with our small imaginations, we fear that it might be boring or that we might not get to do the things we like to do best, because, perhaps, like my favorite puzzles, they're not centered around serving others, or worshipping, or so on. But what we can't picture is how much more fun and fulfilling and interesting our lives will be once we experience the fullness of God's kingdom, whenever that will be, at our death, or when he comes again. We won't want to go back to our old lives. It will be so much better!

Actually, already I can't wait. I'm so excited to be where glorious and perfect worship is taking place; it must be magnificent. And to catch a glimpse of God himself! One day....

A Gracious Response in the Midst of Controversy

2008-04-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

My husband, Jim Berkley, heads up Presbyterian Action, a division of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). Jim's goal in his work is to bring the PC(USA) back to Biblical faithfulness as he understands it, and to influence the social witness of the PC(USA) so that it is not merely a reflection of certain secular political ideologies, but instead represents the membership of the entire PC(USA) and reflects the whole biblical witness.

I have probably stated the above somewhat poorly, so please do not take it as definitive.

Unfortunately, the IRD has become the bête noire of many progressives (progressives are those with a theologically liberal point of view). For some reason, these particular progressives (not just Presbyterians, but from many denominations) have decided that the IRD is not what it says it is. Instead, they claim that it is only masquerading as a theological organization, and is instead a rightwing secular political organization, deeply funded by rightwing politics, and led by Catholics, that aims at destroying mainline denominations. In their view, my husband and his coworkers do not care at all about faith.

Amazingly, the people who propound this theory of a supposed IRD conspiracy do not have any facts to support it. (The closest they get to facts is that there are Catholics on the board of IRD. The board meets once or twice a year. By the way, the objection of these progressives to Catholics is quite unecumenical of them.) Nevertheless, these anti-IRD progressives have been able to convince all sorts of well-known people, such as Bill Moyers, or John Thomas (the head of the United Church of Christ), that their theory is true.

Now, I do not take offense at people differing from me theologically. Of course I would love it if everyone agreed with me! But realistically I know that there won't be complete theological agreement among Christians this side of heaven. So I'm not upset that many progressives deplore the goals that the IRD works for. However, it does upset me for some people to state as fact things that they do not know to be true. For example, they state publicly that my husband, or others of his colleagues, spend their time figuring out how to destroy churches, or that they get secret orders from Bush's White House. But when I have communicated with many of the progressives who promote these ideas, to try to persuade them to look at facts instead of conspiracy theories, they have ridiculed me (for example, John Dorhauer of Talk2Action tells me that he responds with any random thing that he thinks will make me angry) and refused to listen seriously to anything I might have to say.

That's why I was so happy that, yesterday, I had a really great e-mail conversation with a progressive acquaintance about this topic. He had been commenting on the blog Shuck and Jive, which is currently hyping the anti-IRD dogma. He had mentioned my husband, and I had told him how we had understood what he said. He hadn't meant what we thought, and we both discussed how written communication can sometimes go awry. He ended up, on his own initiative, writing a blog posting in which he said he would no longer discuss IRD, and apologized for any personal offense he might have caused.

This was a truly gracious and generous Christian reaction to what is going on, and I wish that all progressives would be as reasonable as he is about the IRD situation. (I am also sure that there are areas in which evangelicals need to take a closer look at their public reactions to situations.) I am looking forward to my husband's seeing it when he returns from a mountain conference where he is presently.

Thanks to my progressive friend and brother in Christ!

Manning the Gate of the Soviet Embassy

2008-03-01T20:34:00.000-08:00

I have been asked to explain item #3 in the list of 6 quirky items about myself that I posted on my blog last night, so here it is.

In 1970-71 I spent my college junior year in France, and for spring vacation, I took a tour, designed for American students living in Europe, of Prague, Moscow, Leningrad (now back to its original name of St. Petersburg), and Warsaw. It was thrilling because very few Americans at that time had ever been to these cities, and I was stunned with the beauty and charm of Prague, which few living Americans had as yet discovered (now it is overrun with Americans.)

Anyway, after our 3 days there, at the airport for our flight to Moscow, I discovered that all my money and papers were missing; I had apparently been pickpocketed. The tour guide gave me some money, and then everyone flew off and left me there. They did at least leave me in the hands of a couple of Czech college guys who had been our official escorts (in those days in those countries, Western tourists didn't go anywhere on their own.)

I was allowed to stay in the same hotel with a group of Swedish students who were on a tour, and then the Czech boys helped me go around to the Czech police, the American embassy, and the Soviet embassy, in order to get a new Czech exit visa, a new passport, and a new Soviet entry visa. The American passport was the hardest, that is, they were the least willing to give me new papers, because I had no proof of who I was, but I think I must have looked pretty harmless, because they finally relented. (It was cool having a passport issued in Prague; I was sorry when I had to surrender it when it expired and I needed a new one.)

It took 3 days to get everything, and in the interim I went places with the Swedes, or the Czech guys, and was mildly romanced by the Swedish tour leader's very handsome son, so all in all it was kind of fun, and I fell head over heels in love with Prague. One day one of the Czech boys and I stood talking on the Charles bridge for an hour or two, and no one ever passed by. Now the Charles Bridge is filled with tourists and hawkers selling trinkets.

Finally all I needed was the Soviet visa, and at the Soviet embassy they said that they were waiting for a telegram to arrive saying that it was OK. It was getting late in the day, and they were going to lock their gate. So they suggested that I walk down to the end of the driveway where the locked gate was (the embassy was like a mansion in estate-like grounds), so that I could let the car in that was bringing the telegram.

So there I stood, a 20-year-old American girl, with the power to give access to the Soviet Embassy to anyone I wanted to! It was a funny feeling. Of course I didn't let anyone in who didn't belong there, and I got my visa, and then that evening I flew off to Moscow on a plane full of Russians, and another part of the adventure began (it started with an official in the Moscow airport saying to me, "What are you doing coming into Russia ALONE?")

The postscript to this episode is that as soon as I realized my predicament, I sent off a postcard to my parents telling them that I was in Czechoslovakia (as it was called then) with no money or papers. Then three days later I sent them another postcard saying I was fine and was rejoining my tour group. But that postcard was delayed for two weeks, and so they spent two weeks worried about their daughter, lost behind the Iron Curtain. Now that I'm a mother, I know how awful that must have been!

I've Been Tagged

2008-03-01T00:12:00.000-08:00

I've been tagged by Viola Larson at Naming His Grace. Apparently a tag is kind of like the game of tag, and now I'm It. I have to do what the tag is about (if I want to.) I'm supposed to tell 6 quirky or unimportant things about me, so here goes, in no particular order.

1. My favorite food is cereal.

2. I always know how many days old I am. This is a result of my liking to play with numbers in my head, whenever I'm not doing anything else.

3. In 1971, fully in the midst of the Cold War, I once (as a 20-year-old American college girl) manned the gate of the Soviet Embassy in Prague, allowing vehicles in and out. This was behind the Iron Curtain.

4. Several times, to accompany the church choir I sing in, I have played a percussion instrument called a VibraSlap.

5. In college I studied Mandarin Chinese for two years. I took Sanskrit, too.

6. I know all 50 states in alphabetical order. Also backwards alphabetical order. Also their capitals.

That's it! This is trivia. Now I think I will tag Judy Shaw at Stitch Along with Me.

Health Update--Mystery Solved!

2008-01-12T17:33:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I wrote about this and much has happened. As I said in my last health update, which is now several months ago, I had been continuing to get very out of breath after doing just about anything. This included things like walking up stairs, but also things like loading clothes in the washing machine, turning the wheel of the car, etc. Early last fall, the cardiologists looked over my test results again and said it wasn't my heart, and that my pacemaker was just fine, so they sent me over to pulmonology across the lobby.

It took a while to get in to see the pulmonologist, but once I started with him, he put me through a bunch of tests, one even necessitating being checked into the hospital. Everything revealed that my lungs were just fine, too. Finally, last Monday, the pulmonologist discovered that when I was exercising, my heart rate never increased. So he walked me then and there back across the lobby to cardiology, and had them adjust my pacemaker settings. Bam! I was immediately better. I could walk fast, go up stairs, do whatever, without getting out of breath and turning all white like I had the past several months. My colleagues at work noticed it right away later that day.

We are very happy that, aside from discovering that there is yet another function that my heart is unable to perform on its own (speeding up), I don't have some awful disease (cancer, etc., is eliminated). We wish the cardiologists had thoguht of this several months ago, but at least I'm back to normal!

Thanks are due to God that I have no dread disease, that there are such things as pacemakers (which keep me and many others alive), and for making the pulmonologist smart enough to ferret this out!

Loss and Love

2008-01-03T22:33:00.001-08:00

Our dog, Hana, died right after Christmas. She had been part of our family for almost 13 years, ever since she was a year old. This photo, taken by my daughter Mary, shows her with Mary a few days before her death.

I have found that I have been grieving quite a bit, almost as much as if she had been a human family member. She was a good companion over the years, especially when my husband was gone on the many trips he must take for his work.

One night when I was praying, I thanked God for giving me Hana in my life. She had brought me much love and friendship. I feel sure that God has made dogs (and cats) especially for people, to give them love and many other benefits. But while I was thinking about it, I asked God why dogs' lives are so short. Why do we have them to love and cherish, only to lose them a relatively few short years later?

It seemed to me that an answer came while I was praying. I'm not sure if it was God speaking to me, or directing my thoughts, or if it was just something that I thought of. But this is a possibility that occurred to me.

Perhaps the reason we love our animal friends, and then lose them after their short lifespan, is so that we can better understand what God feels about us. It is very painful to me that I now have just an urn of ashes instead of my dear dog Hana. I don't want to be separated from her forever. And, similarly, God doesn't want to be separated from us forever. I feel grief at my loss of Hana, yet my grief is only a small likeness of the grief that God feels at the possibility of losing us. That's why he sent Jesus--who is really himself--to die instead of us, so that we wouldn't die and be lost to him, if only we will respond to that loving sacrifice.

I wouldn't die for Hana. I don't love her that much. Yet God died for me. His love and grief over losing me is so much greater than the love and grief that I feel about losing Hana. What I feel now, hard as it is, is only a shadow and an echo of the love that God feels for me.

Just Photos!

2007-09-30T23:42:00.000-07:00

I'm just posting a couple of photos so that I can use one of them as the photo in my profile. This is the way that the Blogger instructions say to do it and I'm not technically sophisticated enough to figure out another way!

This is my granddaughter Elliot (22 months at the time) and me September 9 in a restaurant in Port Angeles, WA. Elliot thought she was tickling my neck, and I was pretending to react in an exaggerated way. Elliot loved it! And so did I.

Whatever--and I mean it

2007-09-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

When I wrote my second health update yesterday, I mentioned that I was still "hanging on to that 'whatever.' But it actually took writing it to make it true. In the past 3 days or so, I had gotten caught up in the frustration of feeling that my cardiologist was not taking my symptoms seriously, and I felt cast adrift. I started becoming anxious and focused on my problem.

However, yesterday when I wrote my second update, I remembered my previous experience that I had written about, where I had been utterly trusting God for my health situation. I remembered that I had known that God would be there in whatever the situation was, good or bad. And I realized that at the time I had thought of the situation in a sort of binary way: either the doctors would tell me I was fine, or they would tell me I had some specific problem and would get to work on solving it.

What I hadn't taken into account was a situation where I would still be having troublesome symptoms, but the doctors might seem indifferent. And when this situation came into being, I forgot about trusting God and started getting upset.

But when I wrote the second update yesterday, I remembered my "whatever". And then I remembered that God can handle this situation, too. That doesn't mean, now that I am handing the problem off to him again, that it will instantly be solved. But it does mean that I can fret less and remember who is holding me in his arms.

I saw a series of cartoon drawings yesterday where a bunch of people were carrying crosses, and one of them kept asking God to make it lighter for him to carry, so God kept chopping a bit of the end of this guy's cross off. But eventually they all came to a chasm that they had to cross, and everyone else was able to get across by making their crosses into bridges, but this guy couldn't because his cross was too short now. So maybe there is some way in which an instant solution to my problem would not be helpful to me at this time. Or maybe it will be solved soon. I don't know--but I do know that God is trustworthy.

Update #2

2007-08-31T11:14:00.001-07:00

I realized I need to do a second update. This is feeling really narcissistic, however.

I'm not recovering as expected after getting the pacemaker. I'm extremely winded after doing just about anything. For example, I walk up a flight of stairs, and I'm so out of breath that I have to grab whatever is nearest and lean on it while I get my breath back. I've been back to the cardiologist, and they're baffled; the pacemaker is working properly and it should have solved this. They have done tests and there is nothing they can see wrong with me.

So if anyone is so inclined, I would appreciate prayer that this would get figured out. It's causing too much anxiety to my husband and parents, for one thing.

But I'm still hanging on to that "whatever." God is in this, and his ways are not my ways.

Update

2007-08-26T22:27:00.000-07:00

This is just a quick health update on me, for those who are wondering since my last post. I had worsening symptoms (for example, extreme fatigue after walking up a flight of stairs, or getting out of breath just from walking from one room to another), and so I went in to the cardiologist on Wednesday August 22. A new EKG revealed that I had something called 2nd degree heart block--although my atrium (top half of heart) was beating at 98, my ventricle (bottom half of heart) was only beating at 50. This had not shown up on previous EKGs--apparently it comes and goes, and also it was getting worse.

The solution for that is a pacemaker, and they wanted to get it in as soon as possible, since the condition seemed to be worsening. So two days later, on Friday August 24, I checked into the hospital and got a pacemaker! It was more complicated than for most people because I had had a chemo port previously, and it had left scarring on the veins they would normally use. So I've got a bit more bruising and tenderness than usual, and I'm taking more pain medication than usual, which is leaving me a bit more sleepy and lightheaded than I had expected to be at this point. But I should be back to normal before long.

Mostly I'm still amazed at God's goodness: it's wonderful that there are such things as pacemakers, that I could get one so quickly, and that I had such good doctors and nurses taking care of me, not to mention my loving family and friends.

Thanks to all who have prayed for me! I'd love to hear about ways that I could pray for you!

Whatever

2007-08-02T23:54:00.000-07:00

Today I was on the floor again.

Syncopal episode is the term that the doctor uses for it. I just say "I fainted." It happened on Saturday evening when I was exercising, and it happened again today after I walked up some stairs at work and sat down at my desk. Today, once again, I found myself wondering why I had lost control of my thoughts, and then I realized that I was actually down on the floor, waking up.

After the first time, I had gone to see the doctor. That was yesterday, and she had ordered an EKG. When the EKG was done, the nurse looked at the results and said, "It's abnormal, but I don't know what it means." Then she left the room.

A year and a half ago, I was going through breast cancer treatment. Now with the nurse's announcement of an abnormal EKG, it looked like maybe I was going to have another health issue. So I decided it would be a good time to pray.

"Dear God," I started, and then paused, and then the thing that seemed right to me to say as I continued was: "whatever!" And what I meant by that was, "whatever the outcome of this is, whether I have heart problems, or something else, or nothing at all, it's in your hands, God, and I'm OK with that. I don't actually need to ask you for an outcome of any kind, because I trust you with anything. I'll just wait and see what happens and try to be your witness to the people I encounter in whatever the situation is." And although I only used the one word, "whatever", I think God knew what I meant.

The reason I was able to pray this prayer, instead of asking God to keep me from illness or harm, was because of the cancer I had just gone through. He had been with me in a strong and loving way throughout that time, and had shown me in many ways how much he cared for me (see http://takingthering.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-god-started-my-cancer-journey_15.html and http://takingthering.blogspot.com/2007/04/dogs-attitude.html). Because I knew this, I had suddenly realized, when I started to pray, that I had no fear of any new illness.

The doctor then came in and told me that the EKG looked identical to the one I had two years earlier, so it wasn't really abnormal after all. However, she wanted me to see a cardiologist. And I was actually in the process of making that appointment when I fainted again today. And Microsoft Security came, and the paramedics came, and off I eventually went to the ER!

Now I'm sitting in a hospital room, admitted for observation and tests, and I still feel the way I felt when I prayed yesterday: I am not afraid. A new illness might even be a new adventure in learning more about the depth of God's love. For what can separate us from the love of Christ? Certainly not illness. "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor heavenly rulers, nor things that are present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39).

No, I still say, "Dear God--whatever! I'm with you, and that's all that matters."

Seeing with God's Eyes

2007-06-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

Last week my husband and I both underwent a routine medical screening test that involved our eating a restricted diet for 5 days. (We did it at the same time so as to minimize the meal-planning inconvenience.) We both found the restricted diet very annoying: we could still eat full meals, but we couldn't always have everything that we liked, and we had to postpone our regular Friday night pizza because we couldn't have some of the ingredients. Can you think of anything much worse than that? (Sarcasm intended.)

When we were done, during my nightly prayer time, I thanked God that it was over, even though I knew that was a pretty trivial thing to be thankful for. And then God spoke back to me and made me realize what I should REALLY be thankful for. When I say he spoke back, I don't mean I heard a voice or anything like that. But it was like our senior pastor Scott Dudley describes it: thoughts that are like our own thoughts but yet are not our thoughts. That's what came to me. And here's what God reminded me of.

Instead of thanking God that I didn't have to be on the annoying restricted diet any more, there were other things that I needed to thank him for, and for which I truly am grateful. First, I live in a country where there is such great medical care, that I have screening tests available to me so that I can prevent dangerous illnesses such as various types of cancer. If I lived, say, in the Congo, I might not be able to have a test like this and would run more risk of serious disease. Second, I have plenty of food to eat; I am not in danger of starving, as are so many of the world's poor people. Third, I have such a diverse selection of food at my disposal, that I can vary my diet if I need to restrict it, and when I'm done with the restricted diet, I can go back to eating food that I enjoy. Many people around the world have to eat whatever they can get. I get to choose what tastes good to me. And last, the screening test had a good result; I'm not at risk at this time.

It really put the whole thing in perspective for me. When I looked at it with God's eyes, I saw that what had been annoying to me was actually a blessing, and that there were other blessings that I had failed to notice. It showed me that praying is something I need to do more often, if only to ask God throughout the day to help me to see with his eyes. And when I see with his eyes, the result that I want going forward is that it will lead me to act in ways that accord with his will, including doing more to help those who do not have the food and medical care that I have.

How God Reminded Me He Would Be With Me

2007-05-15T00:06:00.000-07:00

May 15 is an anniversary for me. On May 15 a year ago, I had my last treatment for breast cancer. Remembering this made me think that I would like to tell about how my cancer experience began.

In the summer of 2005 I happened to mention to my daughter that my inner elbows ached whenever I exercised or took my migraine prescription, and she urged me to tell my doctor. This led to an EKG, which looked pretty good, but still my doctor wanted me to see a cardiologist. Meanwhile, I was called back from my routine yearly mammogram because they had spotted something suspicious.

So, I went through two series of escalating tests: stress EKG and electron beam tomography; and second mammogram and ultrasound. Finally a weekend came in September 2005 where, on the Friday, I had a needle biopsy on the lump that had been found. Then, on the Monday, I was scheduled for an angiogram (cardiac catheterization) for my heart.

The cardiologist had told me that there was a slight risk of death associated with the angiogram. Normally I have no fear of death, ever since, at the age of 20, I first read The Last Battle in the Narnia series. What could be better than to go on to a place more beautiful than the most beautiful place on earth, and be with God? But the upcoming angiogram spooked me for some reason. Perhaps it was because our first grandchild was due to be born in November, and I didn't want to miss knowing her. At any rate, I was nervous. The night before, we went over to Seattle (we live in a suburb across Lake Washington). As we crossed the floating bridge, I remember looking at one of my favorite sights, the lights on the other floating bridge, strung across the lake like a mile-long strand of jewels, and thinking that I might never see them again.

The next morning the angiogram went smoothly, and the cardiologist found that my heart was perfectly healthy (so my arm aches are just a mystery). Afterwards as I was recovering from the sedatives they had given me, I discovered that the two nurses who were caring for me were Christians, and that each of them sang in their church choirs, just like I do. I thought that this was an amazing coincidence, because there are not many Christians in the Seattle area. It then hit me that God was telling me something. He was actually saying to me, "You were scared of this angiogram, but you had forgotten how in control I am. I am so in control that I can arrange, in an area and in a time when there are very few Christians, that not just one but both of your nurses will be choir-singing Christians."

Then I went home to recover further from the angiogram, and about two hours later, my doctor called to tell me that I had breast cancer.

Although at first I was a bit overwhelmed by the news, it was not long before I remembered the message God had given me that morning. The striking thing about it was God's timing. He had let me know that he cared about me and was in control BEFORE I got my cancer diagnosis. I still didn't know if everything would be fine or not; I still knew that I could die of this cancer. But I did know the most important thing of all, and that was that God was with me in the midst of it. That set the tone for how I experienced the whole following 8 months of cancer treatments.

As it turned out, the surgery that I had removed all the cancer I had at the time, and with chemo, radiation, and hormonal therapy, I have an 85-90% chance of being cancer-free in 10 years. So I have been blessed in the outcome. But even had it not been so, if I had only a slim chance of survival, I would still be able to go forward confidently, because God has assured me that he is with me and loves me. And I really didn't need a special message from God to tell me that. He has told us that throughout the Bible. He has told us that in the person of his son Jesus. I just hadn't remembered that very well before my angiogram. Since God was kind enough to give me a little extra help to keep it in mind, I want to share it with everyone else. There's nothing so bad or scary that God can't be with us in it and bring joy to us in the midst of fear and pain. That was certainly my experience with God in the midst of cancer.

A Dog's Attitude

2007-04-28T22:55:00.000-07:00

Friday was a good day: I got the magenta tray at the cafeteria.

The cafeteria in our building at work has lots of gray and yellow trays, some brown ones, and a few blue ones, but there is only one magenta tray. Since pink is my favorite color, I always hope that I will get that tray, and when I do, I really enjoy it.

Maybe if you're reading this, you're thinking, "What's the big deal about what color your cafeteria tray is?" True, it's not a big deal. But I like to take pleasure in all sorts of little things. Savoring them makes my day more enjoyable.

The other day I once again came across a line in The Fellowship of the Ring that I really like. Gandalf the wizard has just told the hobbit Sam that he is going to accompany Frodo on his journey, which means that Sam will get to see Elves, something he's always longed to do.

"Me, sir!" cried Sam, springing up like a dog invited for a walk.

I love the image because it immediately conveys a great deal of excitement. Yet when we think about it, what are dogs so excited about? Just a walk! But they get a great deal of pleasure out of it.

My dog Hana waits every morning for me to sit down with my bowl of cereal, because she knows I will give her two pieces of it. It's only two pieces of cereal, usually Cheerios, so not a big deal, but to her it's a very happy moment.

Dogs are optimists, too. Every time I prepare a meal, Hana thinks, despite the mountain of previous experience, that this time, maybe the meal is going to be for her. And her tail is almost always ready to wag; she expects good things out of life.

I think that we can learn a lot from dogs' attitude. With God as our father, we can expect good things out of life, too. That's not to say that everything will always be rosy. But we can know that he is with us and will see us through any hard times. I found this out a year ago as I was going through cancer. God didn't make the cancer magically disappear, but he did sustain me as I underwent surgery, chemo, and radiation. I knew that in the long run, whatever the prognosis (mine ended up being good), God was going to be there in the end.

And then there were those little things, like the magenta cafeteria tray. God put a lot of them in my life, and when I looked for them, I found them. Things like the kindness of fellow co-workers, or a daffodil that the radiation oncology center gave me. It made a big difference to how I experienced a year of cancer treatments. I could have looked for the unpleasant, difficult things, or I could have just not looked for anything. But instead I looked for the little fun or nice things, and they were there to be found, and so my days were more pleasant and enjoyable than they might otherwise have been.

What's more, because I found those little good things, I was able to give thanks to God. I knew he was there helping me get through a bad time. In fact, I felt his presence more closely during that cancer year than I ever had before. That in itself brought joy to me beyond what I can describe.

I know it sounds silly to say I had a good day because I got the magenta tray at the cafeteria. But I have a fun life. And a lot of it is because I take pleasure in the little things.

The Atonement is Good News

2007-04-21T00:22:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about the Atonement lately. The doctrine of the Atonement has been coming under attack in recent years. It shouldn't be surprising, since by many who hold to progressive theology, personal sin has been denied or its extent or gravity has been lessened, and the second person of the Trinity (Jesus Christ, the son of God) has been devalued (his divinity is denied, his actual resurrection is denied, and/or obedience to him is no longer sought). So in such a climate, an act by Jesus Christ that takes away the consequences of personal sin is bound to become a target for elimination.

For example, a recent attack on the Atonement occurred not long before Easter, when Canon Jeffrey John of the Church of England was slated to speak about it on BBC Radio. In his view, the traditional doctrine of the Atonement, in which Jesus takes the punishment for the sins of humankind, so that, when we acknowledge that he has done so, and submit our lives to him, we can be forgiven and live eternally with God, "makes God sound like a psychopath". Instead, he suggests that Christ was crucified merely to share in our suffering.

If that's all Christ has to offer us on the cross, it doesn't give us much hope. If he just hung there and died so that God could say, "There, there, I understand how much it hurts," I don't think I'd be all that grateful. I'd rather have a God and a Savior who could really do something about the mess we're in, and fortunately, that's what we've got, because of the Atonement.

People who see God and Christ in this way--people who deny the Atonement--necessarily have a vision of God as a weak God. This is because they're saying that the Bible got it wrong all these years when it described Christ's death on the cross as paying for our sins. So that must mean that God was not powerful enough to make sure that the Bible got written correctly. Unfortunately for him, it ended up written wrong and was misunderstood for all these long centuries, and he just wasn't able to inspire the writers to get it put right. But now, at last, people have come along who really do know what is right--they know that the Atonement is not true! This implies that we are fortunate to be living in a time when there are really intelligent people who at last know the truth. In fact, God should be grateful to these people who can finally correct the Bible and do what he has been unable to do all these years.

Of course, I disagree with this point of view. So let me attempt to answer some of the arguments that have been made against the Atonement.

1. Argument 1: God wants to kill us because we wronged him. Why is it that God is supposed to be more merciful than we are, yet almost none of us wants to kill those who wrong us? Answer: God isn't out to kill us. This is stating the problem the wrong way. Here's the right way: God is out to keep us from dying eternally. The problem is that God is utterly, completely good, and evil cannot exist where he is. Once we have sinned, we are tainted with evil. Evil cannot live forever with God; it has to die, because it cannot be where God is. However, God loves us and wants us to be with him, and he is so merciful that he has worked out a way to make that happen, via the Atonement. God, as Jesus, takes the consequence--death--of sin, and we are counted as good if we accept what Jesus did for us.

2. Argument 2: God's killing his own son makes him the ultimate child abuser. Answer: This separates God and Jesus too much. God and Jesus are both separate and the same, as part of the mystery of the Trinity. Because God and Jesus are the same, God himself died for us when Jesus died. Moreover, Jesus did it freely, and not under compulsion. Jesus chose to die for us because he loves us and wants us to be with him forever.

3. Argument 3: Jesus' suffering isn't sufficient because it's not the worst suffering the world has ever seen; other people have suffered more. Answer: It's not the degree of suffering, it's who suffered. Jesus wasn't just a man, he was God. If God takes our punishment, it has been taken to an infinitely greater degree than if it were taken by a mortal. But also the degree of suffering must be greater than any suffering any other person has ever endured. At the moment when Jesus bore all the accumulated guilt and shame of our past, present, and future sins, he was separated from God's love, and that is suffering that is magnitudes beyond what anyone else has ever undergone.

4. Argument 4: It doesn't make sense that nobody is able to be perfectly good and that all people need salvation by God; why should all people be sinful and none be good? Or at least, aren't there some sins that don't need atoning for, that wouldn't keep a person out of heaven? Answer: God apparently didn't want perfect robots, preferring us to have free will. Thus we were left free to sin. But this is a mystery, and I assume that God's mind is bigger than mine, so I don't pretend to understand why we inevitably sin. But as for there being some sins that aren't so bad, and that shouldn't keep us out of heaven, I like what I heard our pastor Scott Dudley say once. He suggested thinking about what heaven would be like if people were let in with the sin that you think isn't too bad. Suppose you thought that irritability wasn't so bad and shouldn't keep you out of heaven. Would it still be heaven if irritable people were there? Maybe for some thick-skinned people it wouldn't be so bad, but for some others it might make it hell. Besides, all sin is a grave problem to God, who is perfectly good, and to whom we owe thanks for everything good in creation. When we commit even little sins, we repay God's goodness with evil, and by doing evil, we work against his good will for creation.

5. Argument 5: The Atonement requires a view of God as an angry, bloodthirsty God. Answer: Again, the Atonement is not something that God did because he's out for blood. It's true that sin makes God angry, but not in a bloodthirsty way. God is angry with sin because of the hurt that it causes people and his creation. Sin causes death, and God doesn't like death. So, to rob death of its victims, and give us a chance to be with him forever, God provided the Atonement. All we have to do is acknowledge what he did for us. He has made it very easy for us. Rather than being a bloodthirsty punisher, because of the Atonement, God is actually the most tender, merciful, loving God that can be imagined. (Of course, we want to respond to this love by obedience and service, but that's another part of the story.)

As I've said above, it is predictable that the Atonement should be targeted for disposal, since the doctrine of personal sin is also unpopular now among many people. This is a pity, because when we don't acknowledge our own sin, we miss out on being forgiven by God. And forgiveness is a beautiful and precious thing.

I thank God for the Atonement. Because of it, I will have life forever with God.

Trust

2007-04-06T22:33:00.000-07:00

I have been dealing with some worry in recent months. My husband Jim works for a renewal group that has been fixated on by theologically liberal factions in the greater church as the root of all that they consider wrong in the mainline denominations today. They have built up a mythology about his group (IRD) that has taken firm hold among mainline denominational leaders, seminary faculty, the National Council of Churches, etc., and these people believe that Jim and his colleagues are actually not really Christian activists, but instead are ultra-right-wing political operatives bent on destroying the mainline denominations in order to silence their liberal social witness. These false ideas are spreading more and more widely. See www.talk2action.org for many examples.

This has worried me in many ways. I'm afraid that these untrue things will become widely believed and that it will become impossible to refute them. I'm afraid that my friends who are politically liberal will hear about it and will start looking at us askance. I'm afraid that if Jim ever wanted to leave IRD and do something else, such as return to pastoral ministry, he would be unhireable, because working for IRD would attach a stigma to him and everyone would be suspicious of him. And my worries go on.

Yesterday I was thinking about it more intensely due to a letter sent to all SMU faculty in which some other website had been falsely attributed to IRD. We had been to Maundy Thursday service, and I was getting to bed late. I usually read the Bible every night before bed, but last night I thought I might skip it, since I'd read Scripture during the Maundy Thursday service. But I kept getting this nudge feeling that I ought to read it anyway. So I decided that if God was telling me to read the Bible, I would. And here's what I found: I'm currently reading through the Psalms, and in the Psalm I had gotten to last night, the Psalmist was writing about people lying about him, and how God would eventually make sure that justice would be done about that, and that meanwhile God would bless those who had been lied about. Wow! How appropriate was that? I was very grateful to God for nudging me into reading that Psalm and showing me that he cared about our situation.

However, today I was still in worry mode. Tonight, though, during our Good Friday service, during the last of the seven meditations on the seven last words of Christ, our senior pastor was speaking about "Into your hands I commit my spirit." He talked about how Jesus was trusting God, and about how God could be trusted even when the situation felt the least like God was trustworthy. And I started remembering how trustworthy God has always shown himself in my life. He has seen me through breast cancer in a wonderful way, and has done many other good things for me all throughout my life.

I realized that I have been being very inconsistent. All my life, I have always trusted God that I would never lack for anything I really needed, and so I have never really worried about money or jobs. So why didn't I trust him in this situation? And when I started thinking of it that way, the burden lifted. I realized that I can trust him to be with us in this just as much as I have trusted him in any other situation. He's big enough for this problem, too. What a great feeling that was! It's still going to be hard to deal with all these slanders and lies that are being told about IRD. God isn't going to make it easier all of a sudden. There may be rough times in store for us. But I know that I can trust that he is in control, so that it will all come right in the end, and that means I don't have to worry.

Thanks be to God for his great mercy in showing us how he cares for us!

Fighting for the Truth as Taking the Ring

2007-03-08T22:48:00.000-08:00

Another hard part of taking the ring involves fighting for the truth. While Frodo struggled towards Mordor with the ring, eventually going alone with just one companion, his other friends became involved in desperate struggles against evil. These battles were thrust upon the peoples of Middle-earth by the forces of Sauron (the Dark Lord) and his followers, who attacked free and peaceful peoples in order to subdue them to his will. Because Sauron's attention was drawn away from his own land while he conducted these battles, Frodo's friends who engaged in these battles were supporting his effort to take the ring.

Engaging in conflict is not pleasant. Yet sometimes it is necessary. Some conflicts are forced upon us, and we must defend the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is why, as I write about taking the ring, I will sometimes be taking part in the struggle for the heart of the two mainline denominations to which I have belonged, the PC(USA) and the Episcopal Church.

Taking the Ring

2007-02-23T23:24:00.000-08:00

In The Lord of the Rings, the hobbit Frodo has come into possession of a powerful magic ring. If this ring falls into the hands of the evil Dark Lord, all of Middle-earth will fall under his power. What is more, no one else can use the ring without falling themselves into evil, and the ring cannot be destroyed except in one way: it must be cast into the fire in which it was forged. Unfortunately, this fire is the fire of a volcano in the heart of Mordor, the Dark Lord's well-guarded land.

Frodo takes the ring to Rivendell, home of Elrond the Elf, where he listens as a council of wise and powerful representatives from many peoples and places of Middle-earth debate what to do about this ring. The council realizes that the only solution is for someone to secretly take the ring into Mordor and throw it into the volcano. But at that point the council is stymied. Who could do that? No one, it seems. At length Frodo speaks, almost in spite of himself.

"I will take the Ring," Frodo said, "though I do not know the way."

This is my favorite quotation in the entire three-volume story. I like to consider that taking the ring can stand for God's purpose in our lives. In that case, it is what every Christian is called to do. Frodo the hobbit is the smallest, least learned, least powerful person present at the council, yet he is the one who steps forward and volunteers, not even knowing how to accomplish the task.

And that should be our response to God. Sometimes we may feel he is asking us to do something too hard for us, or something we don't understand. But if God has asked it of us, he will give us the help we need. Indeed, Frodo received the help of eight companions who accompanied him as he set out for Mordor, including the wise and powerful Gandalf, and more help was given him on the way, but he did not know that he would have that help when he first spoke.

When the angel told Jesus's mother Mary that she would have a child before she was married, doubtless this seemed hard to her. But her response was not unlike Frodo's: "I am the Lord's servant," said Mary; "may it be as you have said." (Luke 1:38) I have often thought of that when God's will seems hard.

Now whenever I feel that telling people about God's amazing love is impossible in a climate where Christians are viewed as intolerant bigots, I also think of Frodo setting off on the road to Mordor to do a seemingly impossible job, and I say to God, "Nevertheless, I will take the Ring, God, though I do not know the way!"

On this blog, I hope to write about what I discover as God shows me the way to take the ring.