Minivan Discrimination! Someone Call the Authorities!

Beth went back to work today after 12 weeks of maternity leave. During her leave, we switched cars - she drove the minivan while I took the MINI cooper. For me, it was a nice change of pace. I started driving the van about three years ago when I stayed home with our girls and wrote my doctoral dissertation. You may think that driving a van is strange for a guy. I suppose so…but I just spent 3 months driving the MINI while wearing an Express for Men wardrobe. Trust me – that raised some eyebrows, too.

I want to discuss an alarming trend in our country today: minivan discrimination. Now, don’t get me wrong – I like the van. However, a certain stigma does follow it. Minivans are known for erratic driving and illogical traffic behavior. I used to hate minivans as well for these reasons. Until I became the van driver: handing sippy cups and snacks over the seat, spending the majority of my time looking in the rear-view mirror to referee a fight, and rifling through toys while driving with my knees. Each van is accompanied by this type of behavior, compounded with speeding since (of course) vans are late to every engagement all the time.

However, as you become what I am now – a van ninja – you can do all these things without signalling to the outside world what is going on. Van ninjas look as if they are driving calmly down the road, never steering into the next lane by accident. But don’t be fooled, people. This state of perfection is more difficult than the game of golf. However, I have noticed a disturbing trend now that I have achieved van excellence. People pull out in front of vans constantly. At least 90% of the time, though there is no car behind me, a driver will pull out in front of me without hesitation.

Most other drivers assume that all van drivers are slow and incapable of efficient driving. That’s hardly the case. I drive my van like Jeff Gordon. Chances are that van drivers are doing twelve things at once – something that most regular drivers would never do…nay…could never do.  And there’s also a good chance that there are no children’s songs blaring in the background. I may be listening to the newest praise and worship CD…but it’s much more likely that we are rocking out to Cheap Trick or the Foo Fighters.

So, this is a plea to all other non-van drivers in the world. Give the minivan a chance, bro. There are van ninjas out there everywhere just looking for the chance to show off their mad skills. Don’t pull out in front of the van. Pull out behind it, knowing that the driving you will be witnessing in front of you is a work of art.

I Take Back What I Said About Facebook…

A while back, I told you here my reasons for not joining Facebook. I suppose those all still apply to me. I still don’t like surface friendships and I don’t particularly like small talk whether it be cyber-talk or not. But some things have happened recently that have slowly impressed upon me that I need to join this ridiculous social networking site:

1) There are groups of people discussing theology and my academic areas of interest on Facebook. And I am not in those conversations. There are professional/academic societies that I belong to that have Facebook groups. I am not on there. Therefore, it makes more sense to join in…particularly since I won’t be “road triping” to any conferences this coming year.

2) More importantly, I need to keep up with extended family better. I just got back from God’s Country. All my extended family was there. They jumped mid-stream into conversations that had already been started on Facebook. I looked like a nefariously insufferable dolt. I knew absolutely nothing that was going on in their lives. It became clear that if I want to be involved in their lives, I need to join Facebook. Face-friggin’-book!

So, there you go.

I’m on Facebook.

Happy?

Life Lessons Learned From TV

My wife loves “So You Think You Can Dance.”

I (by contrast) hate it.

Yet, while feeding the baby or folding laundry, I am subjected to an unconscionable amount of this show. I really don’t mind that much – sometimes I get into it. But the most interesting thing about the show is the critiquing of the judges. I know, I know. You were thinking it was the dancing that fascinates the nerd within. Sorry to disappoint… 

We were watching last week and the judges said some things that really interested me as someone who deals with people’s perception of right and wrong on a regular basis. Channing Cooke with Phillip Attmore had just finished a jive routine that seemed to be done well. It’s early in the program so the judging tends to be a little softer at this point. I perked up at Mary Murphy’s comments. She was impressed but pointed out that the couple’s leg movements were not up to par. Now, this is the part that caught my attention: she attributed their lack of sharpness to laziness. There’s something significant about that. Mary attributed their deficiencies to a personal lack of internal moral motivation. Nigel Lythgoe went next. He commented on the same lack of sharpness, but attributed it to the couple not quite being in shape for the dance style. In essence, he said their tiredness resulted in the lack of sharpness - a much softer critique attributed to external factors, not their personal integrity.

As a minister, I began to reflect on how such a simple change in perspective can make criticism harsh or constructive. The church walks a fine line in this regard. We deal with issues of the heart but have to be careful not to make a difficult situation look hopeless. If I was physically incapable of performing a task and was told that my failures were intrinsic/moral, I would feel crushed under that assumption. And that’s all it is – an assumption. We don’t have access to the motivations of others. We merely have the outward manifestation of those intentions. Often times, bad intentions are easy to spot based on the actions that follow. But there’s plenty of gray area where intentions are hidden. Some people automatically chalk up the suspect behavior of others to time-honored doctrinal catch phrases like “Original Sin” or assume that failure is always preventable. When tarred with the moral brush, that will always be assumed. But sometimes people are just weak and scatter-brained and frail. Grace gives the benefit of the doubt in those situations. “Bad” does not always equal “weak.” After all, Jesus gave rest for the “heavy laden,” not the morally corrupt.

That’s why I liked Nigel’s critique better. When you’re a world-class dancer (or anything else for that matter) it’s easy to moralize/spiritualize the amount of work required to be the best in a given field. It helps us tolerate the extreme conditions in which that expertise is developed to the detriment of other areas of our well-being. Mary, at least at this moment, seemed to be trapped inside that paradigm. Nigel transcended above it. He gave grace by attributing that weakness to joints, ligaments, and muscles – something to be strengthened – rather than to inherent laziness – something to be ashamed of. Preachers know that both of these can motivate. But which one preserves the dignity of others? As Christians continue to confront sin, we need to spend less time making sure we call “a spade a spade” and more time concerned with making sure we never call something a spade when it’s really just a heart or a club. Guilt can motivate – there’s no doubt about that. But grace preserves and strengthens. I’ll go with Nigel’s approach anytime.

Come Join the Revolution!

I have a unique opportunity to share with you during the upcoming Advent season…

A few years ago, TFUMC (as part of the Advent Conspiracy movement) launched something called Advent Revolution. We asked our congregation to spend $50 less  on Christmas gifts per person and give that money to an international cause. We chose World Help - an organization that helps fight poverty, disease, and lack of education in over 40 countries. We have raised roughly $25,000 each year to build homes for orphans and families affected by the Rwandan genocide. It’s been one of the most rewarding events our church has ever undertaken. Along with our yearly Advent Revolution ministry, we have sent groups of missionaries to help build the homes and minister to the locals on a personal level.

The most rewarding part of the process is the personal connections we’ve made with the people of Rwanda. We’re no longer giving money to an idea or concept or even images on a brochure cover. We’re now giving to people with names and faces who know us as well. For example, recently a church member gave money to help a former prostitute named Diana finish her university education. Since Diana’s personal conversion, she has also led several women out of that same bondage. Our team met Diana on our last mission trip and heard her testimony of receiving Christ. She brought a friend with her that day and the team prayed with him to receive Christ as well.

We’ve managed to cause a stir in the process.  The United Methodist periodical The Interpreter is featuring Advent Revolution in this month’s issue. We’re excited about the exposure the ministry will gain – but more importantly, we hope other church (Methodist and otherwise) will join in. Visit our website www.adventrevolution.com for more details on the movement and how it’s impacted our church in such a significant way.

An Eastern Family in a Western World

The Bible is an Eastern book. It has Eastern culture, economics, social stigmas, literary style, etc., at its core. I believe that without this contextual “lens,” the ultimate meaning of the Bible at best is less impacting than in Jesus’ time.

However, some aspects of the Bible’s Eastern flavor seem to find their way into our lives without searching for it. Two of them are 1) the Eastern understanding of family roles and 2) the Oriental emphasis on shame and honor. It’s significant to me that there are technically two types of “shame” in Eastern societies. One is negative and the other is positive. The negative one condemns inappropriate behavior and the positive one helps individuals “save face” when confronted with a difficult situation. For example, with the persistent friend in Luke 11:5-8, Westerners assume that the friend banging on the door late at night has commited a cultural taboo. But actually, it’s the man who refuses to open the door and provide food for a town visitor that would have infuriated Jesus’ listeners. He violated basic Oriental cultural standards of hospitality.

Though these Eastern ideas don’t make it into our Bible interpretation very often (which means we usually miss the intended point), the Christian family can easily adopt these Eastern cultural norms for their own simply by reading the Bible together. My family did. We were different than other families I knew just based on emphasis of lifestyle. Though it certainly had to do with our Christianity, it also stemmed from living like an Eastern family in a Western world. Just by studying scripture, my brother and I absorbed Eastern understandings of right and wrong. We valued time, honor, authority, family rank, and so on without really understanding that the cultural emphasis for these concepts came straight outta scripture (not Compton). When I went out with friends or on a date at age 16, I fully understood that my family’s name and honor were on the line with each decision I made. I understood “losing face” without knowing what to call it. That was a greater deterrent than any punishment that may have followed an infraction. My other friends often saw themselves as individuals apart from their families – doing their own thing. I saw myself as part of a larger picture. Honestly, it made my decisions look weird to my friends.

Sometimes, those same cultural understandings, though appropriate for a family unit with children, become burdensome later in life if parents still enforce them on their adult children. But that doesn’t invalidate their usefulness during the parenting years. In fact, they may be vital to helping a child understand the impact his/her decisions have on others. Some of those “Eastern” family practices are still used with my two daughters now. Others aren’t. But I know this much: families with an Eastern understanding of honor are aware of one another. They respect each other more. And that makes them treat one another better, something all families could use a little more of.

The Best Decision a Methodist Pastor Can Make…

Several weeks ago, I heard about a Methodist pastor who did something radical this past year. Those of us who are not  involved in a plant or an overly contemporary Methodist church work through a number of committees and groups who help foster the growth of our congregations. For the record, I don’t think this is a bad idea. I welcome accountability and input from those I am attempting to serve. At the same time, interaction with these committees can be precarious at best. Ministers must balance progressive ideas with the amount of change they believe a congregation is willing to undertake. Every church has a saturation point. Depending on the circumstances, sometimes that’s not very much. I’m blessed in that our congregation is open to innovative ways of church growth and has done a great job of balancing a vision for the present and future.

Anyway, back to this Methodist pastor. He did something amazing. He put a 35-year-old woman with three children as chairperson of the administrative board at his church. Female. Mid-thirties. Children everywhere. Family-oriented. So, why is this such a big deal? For two reasons, really. First, who is typically in that position in traditional Methodist churches? Male. Mid-forties and fifties. Empty nester. Business-oriented. After all, he can run a business – certainly he can run a church, right? And because of this, many of the programs and mentalities that receive attention by the administrative arm of the church are the ones that meet the needs of that demographic. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course…unless that’s the only ”type” of leader to ever be appointed to that position. This pastor broke rank. He appointed a homemaker. What type of programming do you think receives attention/vision from the chairperson of their administrative board? Children’s ministries. Relationally-oriented programming like small groups. Gender-based accountability groups. Marriage enrichment programs. In other words, the areas most often experiencing atrophy in traditional church environments.

Second, their change of personnel and subsequent programming direction speaks to a truth often lost in contemporary leadership discussions. People, not systems, lead the church. Now, I love systems. I love efficiency and forward-thinking models that anticipate church growth and beat it to the punch.  But in every fast growing, progressive, innovative ministry environment, there is always a charismatic, personable visionary who drives that ministry forward. You can copy Northpoint Community Church…but you need Andy Stanley to do that. Like Mars Hill’s model? Go find a Rob Bell. Like Cornerstone in Simi Valley? You need Francis Chan for that model. All of those churches exist because those leaders were there first. Leadership is not a program or a system - it’s a person. And that’s a common mistake – investing in the system rather than in the leadership utilizing that system. Systems merely complement a well-established vision carried out by someone who is relentless in conveying it. That Methodist pastor changed the game…not when he changed systems…but when he changed leaders. And their church culture is being re-made in the process.

Is this type of change the best decision a Methodist minister can make? Maybe not. But I thought it was nothing short of genius.

Life Update…

 Life has been drastically different over the last seven weeks or so, mostly because this the view I see when I’m at home. Of course, Beth sees this more than me while on maternity leave. Ella Gray is a sweetie. Her sisters love her and think she’s fun. They are however, a little annoyed when she cries since they immediately equate that with “whining.” After a few weeks, Annagale asked a particularly pertinent question for her. In a moment of sound logic, she asked why we encourage her new baby sister to burp and then tell her that when she does it, it’s rude. I don’t think she found my answer to be satisfactory.

Being thrust back into baby world has also made us aware of something interesting about TV watching. The shows that we get the chance to watch can now be divided in to two categories: baby-friendly and baby-unfriendly. The determining factor between these two categories is whether or not we can follow the plot without listening to the dialogue. Ella Gray has her “fussy time” from 7-9 p.m. each evening. So, what shows are shallow enough that we can watch them in the middle of fussy time? NCIS and Grey’s Anatomy. But shows like The Mentalist and The Good Wife require us to actually pay attention to the dialogue…and they are arguably better shows anyway.

After a rough week or so at work, I took off to the Catalyst Conference this past weekend. In the past, it’s been nice to go…but this year I really needed to go. Turns out it was a great weekend and as always I learned so much from speakers who had already been in the seasons of life I now frequent. Some of my favorites: Andy Stanley, Rob Bell, Malcolm Gladwell, Shane Hipps, and Francis Chan. I also made some great contacts and reconnected with some friends. I also got to meet the Anglican bishop of Rwanda, John Rucyahana – what a gracious and kind person.

I’ve been reading a good amount over the past few months, though that came to a screeching halt when Ella Gray was born. I read several books on violence in the Old Testament – two of my favorites were: Gundry’s Counterpoints book Show Them No Mercy  and Susan Nidditch’s War in the Hebrew Bible. The rest has been a hodge-podge of topics: Vincent Brummer’s Model of Love, Richard Rohr’s From Wild Man to Wise Man, Pam Leo’s Connection Parenting, Richard Swenson’s Margin, and Patrick Lencioni’s The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family.

Claire Grace and Annagale have been enjoying a strange selection of music lately. They are really into Sam Cooke’s Greatest Hits and Shania’s Twain’s song “Up.” But the most interesting CD playing at our house right now is an Opera sampler. The girls enjoy it, particularly some of the up-tempo pieces like “La donna è mobile” – Puccini, Verdi, Bizet and the rest – they totally dig it.

Reconciling Faith and Science: Final Thoughts

Well, I think I’m done with faith and science – at least for now. I sure have learned a lot about it all. My goal wasn’t to learn how to work the mathematical equations involved in a particular scientific discipline, but rather to investigate some of the thought patterns and paradigms that inform our view of science. So, really, this was more about a “philosophy of science” than about actual laboratory procedure.

Three things really rang true for me personally in the midst of all this:

1) The “humanness” of humanity: As humans, we are incapable of laying aside our presuppositions about life and our universe. It’s just impossible it seems. Yet it’s this same human element of our lives that lead many to believe (errantly, I think) that a gulf exist between science and religion. From what I can tell, that division is artificial, just like the Cartesian dualism from which it originated. In fact, some of our most notable scientific discoveries were discovered on a “hunch” that something exists or can be explained beyond the limits of empiricism. Call it Polyani’s “Tacit Dimension” or whatever you like - all elements of humanity (including the subjective/intuitive), when equally integrated, are the future of scientific inquiry. And that includes faith in something else discoverable, whether that discovery concerns God or the natural order.

 2) The depth abyss of discovery: One of the most amazing phenomenons over the past century? Science continuing to shatter our presumptions about the unknown. We used to believe that when we came to the edge of scientific discovery, the answers lay just a few feet in front of us. But now, particularly in the areas of biochemistry and quantum physics, when we shine the light of discovery ahead of us, the answers are miles away. If anything, our continued ability to measure objects on a smaller scale has at the same time reinforced our own limits of measurability. For all our efforts, we still understand very little about our universe.

3) Humility. There’s something good about dropping all the posturing and smoke screens and just saying, “We don’t know. Maybe we’ll know in the future. To draw conclusions otherwise is not only premature – it’s arrogant.” Science and religion need constant doses of humility to guide them. Otherwise, both disciplines can fly right over the top of something grounded in the simplicity and humility of life because they are obsessed with their own pretensions. It’s also what causes science and religion to speak past each other.

Okay. Back to normal topics of life, love, family, and theology… 

Reconciling Faith and Science: Quantum Physics

One of the most interesting topics about faith and science to date is quantum physics. First, some background. For the majority of the history of modern science, scientists operated on something called Newtonian physics – based on the work of Isaac Newton.  For centuries, physics was understood in broad sweeping terms – big, simple, measurable, systematic, mechanistic, etc. According to Newton’s world, the universe could be measured in large scale equations. And rightfully so. Everything seen with the naked eye looked big and vast, so the physical properties underneath were assumed to be big and simplistic as well.  And anything that was worth investigating could be measured using classical methods of science. This is part of the reason that those who embraced the view that science and religion were not compatible had no qualms about dismissing God. He did not easily fit into the classical physics mold.

But then quantum physics was born through the work of Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg. Quantum mechanics describes physical things at an atomic and subatomic level. For example, a quantum is the name for the smallest unit of energy – and it’s tiny. Add to that more particles like quarks, gluons, and hadrons and things change drastically. Rather than try to measure things as we have in the past, Planck came up with a constant that made measuring anything very, very small. Planck’s constant looks like this: 6.626176 x 10^-34. The number I want you to notice is the 10^-34. That’s an infinitesimal number. To measure our world, we had to stop using kilometers – now we use nanometers. Heisenberg added to this confusion (or revelation) by introducing the uncertainty principle. He said that when you are measuring two physical properties against each other, the accuracy of one eventually restricts the accuracy of another. In other words, the more you can measure one thing at the quantum level and use it as a reference point for another, the more the second object becomes immeasurable. And scientists have also discovered something called superposition – that these particles can jump from place to place – sometimes existing simultaneously in two different places.

So, what does this stuff mean for people attempting to integrate faith and science? It changes everything, actually. Science in continuing to discover more about our world also exploded our previous understanding of how the world works. The stable uniform world we thought we knew for the past several centuries is now a whirling mass of infinitesimal particles that won’t stay still long enough for us to learn anything about them. Furthermore, general relativity and quantum physics are basically incompatible. So, not only do we have a new way of seeing the world, we can’t even reconcile it with previous models that we know also have supporting data. Scientists are presently attempting to reconcile general relativity and quantum physics with something called string theory (which states the world is made of ridiculously small strings that operate not in three or four dimensions, but in nine or ten). But string theory operates on a scale 16 orders of magnitude smaller than anything we can currently measure.  As with other areas of science, the more we delve into the complexities of the life, from the universe to the structure of a cell, the more issues are raised for which we have no answer. But I want to point something out to you: string theory is considered a rational scientific field of study. Yet, there’s no empirical evidence for its existence other than a hunch or two derived from our inability to perfect quantum mechanics. So what guides the day to day experiments of physicists working in that area? Faith. Faith in the idea that string theory will be able to reconcile all other physical disciplines.

Here’s something else to notice in all of this. In the area of quantum physics, the unknown or “gray” areas of conceptual thought are considered not only appropriate, but are expected. Yet, when theology is experiencing a “gray” area, it is often dismissed as unscientific. In fact, theology is held to a stricter standard of proof than those investigating string theory or chaos theory, much less some grand unified theory. For science, the unknown gray areas somehow represent progress or hope while for religion, they are conceived as doubt. But they both represent the humanness of our endeavors and should be treated with the same level of respect and care. There’s a great verse that Jesus spoke about removing the beam from your own eye before mentioning the speck in another’s. We don’t do that with science and religion – instead, we parade our experts across the stage to discredit the other. We fire shots across the bow or each other’s ship. But both ships are floating on a sea of philosophical beliefs, assumptions, worldviews, and…well…faith. Faith sends one person to church on Sunday while it sends another to the laboratory. And for many scientists who have accepted faith as part of being human, it sends them to both places in the same week.

Reconciling Faith and Science: Cosmology and the Origins of Life, Part 2

Along with the Big Bang I described in my previous post, another scientific method is gaining ground to help us understand the universe: the anthropic principle. It counters a widely held belief called the Copernican principle: the idea that the earth is nothing special in the larger scope of the universe. The implication is that if the earth is nothing unusual compared to everything else, then we are the product of a similar purposeless set of events that resulted in our eventual existence. The anthropic method has raised some serious doubts to this idea simply because of the number of constants required for our existence. The “weak” anthropic principle states that we should be able to observe conditions (expected and unusual) that are necessary for our existence. A few examples of these “fine-tuned” conditions are listed below:

1. If the initial explosion of the Big Bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 10⁶⁰, the universe would have never expanded and collapsed upon itself, or expanded too rapidly for chemical processes to create our present universe. Life would have never begun.

2. Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force that holds an atom together had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be not exist.

3 If gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 10⁴⁰, stars would not have formed. Coupled with the understanding that life requires favorable conditions created by the Sun, life may not have formed.

There are several others like these - I think about twenty in all. These conditions in and of themselves are significant barriers, However, if we calculate the likelihood of these constants all coming to rest in a state of equilibrium in our universe, the statistical probability becomes ridiculously staggering. Once again, science while answering some questions about life, is perfectly capable of opening a can of worms in the process as well.

Other options exist for the origin of the universe other than a single point of origin:

Multiverse – This theory explains our existence by expanding the number of possible universes that exist in order for life to occur without causative agency. Rather than account for the statistical possibilities within one universe, this theory states that there are an infinite number of universes in which abiogenesis could occur. We live in the universe where it did. Therefore, we are able to see the conditions for our arrival. In other words, rather than having a billion trillion acts on one stage, multiverse entertains the idea of having just a few acts occurring on a trillion stages. The stage/universe upon which we exist obtained the statistical probability necessary for our existence.

Panspermia – Panspermia is the belief that life in the universe exists before us and presently. Somehow, transference of life occurred in our universe either through the collision of non-living matter carrying life (asteroids for example) or direct intervention by extra-terrestrial life. In other words, our planet was “seeded” some other type of life organism, simple or complex. Obviously a couple of problems with this scenario come to mind. First, seeding by complex life would still require intentional causative agency and, secondly, simple life organisms have always existed. Panspermia does not explain where those life forms derived.

So which of these are easier to believe? Causative agency, an infinite number of dimensions, or extra-terrestrial seeding of our planet? There all about the same, actually. They are all beyond empirical verification. In other words, the jury is still out…and looks to be for a long time. Yet, that doesn’t stop anyone from choosing a multiverse explanation over a metaphysical being. That’s because we’ve been conditioned to believe we must make a choice between science and religion. Why? It makes us antsy to not have all the answers. That has nothing to do with science or religion. That has more to do with being human.