Freedom (of Speech) of a Christian

A handful of years ago, a new chancellor came to power in a European nation. His election followed a politically tumultuous time, and many people were excited about his promises of prosperity and justice in a country that had seen its fair share of conflict and economic problems. Two days following this election, a young nobleman took to the airwaves to share his opinion about this election, which was less than supportive of the new regime. His broadcast was cut off partway through, and he was not allowed to speak his piece. Later, as it became more and more obvious to him that this leader was bad for the people, he began to publish writings protesting him, and meet with groups of people who were of like mind. Frustrated with the lack of response, he left his home country for a while, but continued to see the plight of his people and eventually returned. Upon his return, he was not allowed to speak in public, because he was known to be spreading subversive messages by the government. He was a troublemaker. Finally, ten years after his first radio broadcast, the young dissident was arrested, though he continued to write and communicate with these underground groups in prison. Two years later, he was hanged.

If you know much about 20^th century church history, you probably realized that the young dissident was none other than Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose tireless efforts to create a strong church body to resist the Nazi regime resulted in his death just days before the end of the Second World War. If you’ve been following the news from France in recent days, you have seen the debates about free speech/press and the many media outlets which are trying very hard not to lay blame on Charlie Hebdo while conceding that, yes, they probably did bear some responsibility for this incident. Charlie Hebdo is known for publishing outrageous religious and political satire, some of which takes a very offensive tone particularly to Muslims (though they published things about a variety of religions). This is seen as justification, by some, for the actions of extremists. However, as one author put it, allowing blame for this incident to be placed on the victims of this massacre allows Sharia law to reign. In other words, being silenced by terrorism, no matter how unpalatable you may find the content being censored, sends the message that it’s okay to use violence to silence voices you disagree with, the same way the Nazi party used silence to create an apathetic nation that allowed millions of Jews to be slaughtered.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the fears some people have about this triggering Islamaphobia. Those fears might be legitimate, especially given the hysteria that tends to follow terrorist actions. But despite those fears, this issue is not, in fact, about Islam. Muslims all around the world manage to peacefully practice their religion in secular nations that would never dream of allowing a minority group to impose their religious beliefs on other people. These people practice a faith of love and submission to God’s will, and most of them are wonderful, kind people, like Lassana Bathily who saved several people during the shooting spree by hiding people in the freezer of the kosher market where he works. The religion practiced by the alleged shooters is no more similar to true Islam than the Westboro Baptist Church is to mainline Christianity. This is a fact that has been pointed out quite vehemently in every story that I have seen on the topic. Some people may be conflating Islam and terrorism, but the vast majority of the world understands that there is a difference between a fanatic and a faithful person. 

This is not just a freedom of speech issue, as it has been framed in the media. That is part of this, but it’s a problem that is further reaching than just free speech. It’s about freedom in general, and mostly it’s about justice. Regardless of whether to agree with a message, protecting the right to say it protects everybody who dares to speak out against injustice. Countless people were taken away to be re-educated during the first five decades of Communism in China and Russia. These were people who dared speak out, maybe only to their immediate family members or friends, and were found to be a threat to the power of the state. The first abolitionists who spoke out against slavery spoke a message very contrary to the powers that be, but they spoke it courageously at sometimes great personal cost. Martin Luther King Jr. utilized free speech and civil disobedience as a way to sway a public opinion vastly different from his own, and despite being imprisoned for that civil disobedience, he continued writing letters that turned out to be quite influential. It is vital to the freedom of societies and to those not in power that this right be defended. Living in the US or other free nations has spoiled us: we have forgotten how dangerous it is to be silenced.

The situation in France is different from the United States; there are legitimate concerns about the rise of extremist Islam. These people want to force others to live according to Sharia law, to punish people who offend their religious sensibilities. I find it surprising that the same people who defend the right of Satanists to erect statues of the devil in public areas as an ironic protest of the overreach of Christianity in the US government are opposed to political satire that points to a very real problem. This problem is bad not just for secular or Christian French people, but also for the millions of peaceful Muslims who want to live their lives without the imposition of extremism in their lives. Justice doesn’t happen if laws from one religion are applied unilaterally to everybody—we live under a common moral law rather than a religious law for exactly this reason. This is a lesson we are still learning in the United States, but we are trying very hard (as witnessed by the recent wave of challenges to and victories over the bans on same sex marriage around the country). Extremism is responsible for the suffering of millions of people, from Hamas’ unwillingness to negotiate to Boko Haram’s kidnapping and sacking of villages to Afghani and other middle eastern leaders that persecute less extremist Muslims, Christians, and everybody in between. Extremism is dangerous business in any religion, and it’s irresponsible to frame this as an Islam issue when it is an extremism issue. You can be sympathetic to our Muslim brothers and sisters and still defend the right of twelve people not to be brutally murdered for daring to differ in opinion.

Yes, we should pray for those who committed these atrocious acts. Yes, we should understand that they, like us, are flawed and broken humans misled into acts of violence by their probably earnest desire to obey their religion to the letter. Yes, we should most certainly recognize that Islam is on the whole a peaceful religion filled with peace-loving people. But I believe our call as Christians is to seek justice for all people and to call out those who are threatening it. The staff at Charlie Hebdo had a grave injustice committed against them, and the people of France face the threat of injustice both from extremism and from the xenophobic far-right groups gaining popularity in response to it. I cannot, in good conscious, give anything but condemnation to the actions of these people who chose to respond to words with murder.

I hesitated writing about this issue, to be honest. I thought to myself “do I want to make this blog a political platform?” and the answer to that question is... yes. I don’t want this blog to be a place where I tell you what your political beliefs should be, or who to vote for. However, in the same way that Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work in forming the confessing church and resisting Nazi rule could not be separated from his theology, so are we people who must live in a political world based on our beliefs. But if I preach that I stand for justice and peace and yet stay silent in the face of what I see as injustice, I am a hypocrite. Maybe you have a different view on what is just and what is not. That’s okay. If you’re reading this, you’re probably lucky enough to live in a country where you are free to disagree with what I write here without threat of bodily harm or political repercussions, and who am I to argue with that? But I hope that you will consider that the freedom to “speak truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) is the freedom to enact justice, sometimes subversively, sometimes outrageously, sometimes even offensively, and that it is a right we as Christians ought to take very, very seriously, lest we forget the cost of our freedom, both political and Christian.

When Grace Hurts

“You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” -Ephesians 2:1-5a

Despite my innocent appearance and the well known saying about how clean preachers are supposed to be, I can be kind of a jerk. You should see me in bad traffic. We all can be at times, and unfortunately, the closer we are, the more likely I am to be a jerk to you. My husband can certainly attest to this; I’m a real grump before I’ve had my coffee. A couple days ago, I groused at him endlessly before food and caffeine had made their way into my blood stream, and like the amazing, sweet guy he is, he let it go. Later, he groused at me in a similar fashion because he was very tired, and I got unreasonably mad. It wasn’t until he was hugging me with love and forgiveness that I really realized what a jerk I had been. The grace that should have made me feel better actually made me feel worse in that moment, because it so fully convicted me of my wrongness.

This is something that I’m sure you have experienced at least once with a friend, family member, co-worker, or neighbor. There doesn’t even have to be a huge fight over it. You might snap at somebody and find they are apologizing to you for it, and suddenly you feel like the world’s biggest asshole. Grace is a funny thing that way. I know I’m guilty of this too: talking about grace as if it is an amazing, magical thing that cures everything. Why are we still acting the way we act? Don’t you know the good news of God’s love for you? But grace isn’t always a happy thing. Sometimes it’s a reminder that we have screwed up, and bad, and sometimes it surfaces all of that shame about our worth that we work so hard to hide.

Remember that scene in Good Will Hunting. You know the one, where Will’s therapist has been working with him for weeks on breaking down his defenses, and suddenly starts telling Will that the abuse he endured as a child isn’t his fault? It’s funny how he reacts to a statement that absolves him of his guilt for his inability to be vulnerable: he defends himself. He pulls away, backs up, actually swings at his therapist in an attempt to make him stop “attacking” with the words “It’s not your fault.”




There’s something really visceral about this scene, which is brought wonderfully to life by two great actors, but I think it truly hits us because most of us know how this feels. Even if you don’t know the context of the movie, you can still see the rawness of the shame and pain that this absolution dredges up for Matt Damon’s character. That’s because when we are told we are good and holy and beloved, it comes directly into conflict with all of the bad things we believe about ourselves. We are so full of shame sometimes that we don’t even realize it. I’ve written on this before, but we often spend our lives defending ourselves against the ‘not enoughs’ that are thrown at us. You’re not beautiful enough, thin enough, smart enough, talented enough, wise enough, important enough. We build up walls around that to protect ourselves. “I know I’m smart enough! How dare anybody suggest otherwise?” The crux is that when we finally hear the opposite, that we are good or smart or worthy or lovely, we don’t truly believe it. We may have everybody else fooled, but we know that deep down we just don’t buy it, and hearing “God loves you” when you think you’re a worthless sack of crap only makes you confront those feelings and fears about who you are.

Once when I was in graduate school, my first advisor in my long-ago psychology program told me that I needed to stop being so self-deprecating because I wouldn’t be here if the school didn’t think I was smart and able. I ran out of his office crying, and switched advisors a few days later, and until recently I couldn’t have told you why. I thought it was because he had embarrassed me by calling me out, and I said it was just a personality clash, but in retrospect it was because he was saying to me that I was smart and worthwhile, and that hit me deeply because I knew that in my heart of hearts I didn’t agree. It’s the same when you find yourself unexpectedly met with the graciousness of friends or family giving you money when you’re broke, or giving you forgiveness after you get drunk and start a fight about gun control at the holiday dinner table. Unconditional love challenges our very fragile sense of conditional worth.

I decided to write about this topic for two reasons. The first is that I think we often find it baffling when people refuse our overtures of love and care. Maybe there is a person you’ve been trying to love back to life who just doesn’t get it, who keeps on engaging in risky behavior or doing irresponsible things or continues to be way too hard on themselves. Sometimes you just want to scream: “WHY DON’T YOU ACCEPT MY GRACE DAMN IT?!” But I want to encourage you to be patient with those around you who just seem to never get it. I’m not saying that you should ever stay in abusive or dangerous relationships, but you never know how the love you give to those who are hurting, alone, or lost might surge back to them when their hearts are more receptive to receiving it. Understand that your love and care can be a painful thing for them. Love them anyway, in whatever ways they can accept, and slowly their hurts will be healed by grace. Give it time.

Secondly, I’m writing this for you. All of us have places where we don’t feel like we are enough. Maybe you think you aren’t a good enough provider for your family, or aren’t an active enough mom for your kids. Maybe you think you are working crap jobs and that reflects somehow on your worth. Maybe you were physically, sexually, or emotionally abused and you secretly think you must have somehow invited it. In your head you know those are lies, but I know that in moments of weakness your heart sometimes disagrees. For you I write: be loved. Because regardless of what that voice says, you are beloved. Carry on through the pain of confronting those beliefs. Talk to that voice inside your head with strength and courage and tell it: “I am enough.” Take it out of your head and imagine someone saying those things to your best friend, spouse, or child. Would you let somebody say: “Boy, you’re really stupid and worthless” to your best friend? Then don’t let you say it to you. Hear the words I’m writing for you today and hold them close when that voice comes to you. Grace is hard work sometimes; not getting it, but accepting it. But God’s love is a powerful thing that can and does heal our shame, and it is and has always been for you.

Who am I?

This post contains spoilers for Les Miserables. Read at your own risk!

It's really hard to see who people are sometimes. I unexpectedly made friends with one of the shuttle drivers that goes between the two campuses of my hospital. He is usually featuring some sort of classical music selection and I have an interest in music so I like to ask him what we're listening to. After a couple times, he started asking me about me. I'm a complete amateur but I know enough about music to be able to have some conversations about some of the technical aspects or history. This driver is usually the one who takes me back across the river to my parking garage at the end of the day, so we have been having these conversations for several months now, and I've pieced together bits and clips of his story. It turns out he has a Ph.D. in musicology and did some teaching, but because of the economy and the general climate of jobs in academia he's working this job and another unrelated one, both outside his field. At first, I was just making small talk because I was curious, but now I always ask him what we're listening to and what he's seen or purchased recently because I imagine that the history teacher in him is just dying to come out. If you just looked at him from the outside, you might think he was a bus driver with a passing interest in music. Instead, I have had the privilege of really hearing his story and witnessing the beauty of his passion and how he brings who he is to his unexpected career path.

On that note, I've been listening obsessively to the 10th Anniversary Dream Cast version of Les Miserables. I saw the recent movie and loved it with all my soul, and listening to it over and over (and over and over...) has been even more fulfilling, because I am starting to recognize which musical themes belong to which part of the story and notice the parallels intentionally drawn there. One of the things that I caught on this listen is the three or four repetitions of the question: "Who am I?" For a quick recap, the premise of Les Mis is kind of how it sounds: it's the story of the French Revolution and all the miseries that various people are facing in an incredibly unjust pre-revolution France. It follows a man, Jean Valjean, who stole a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving child and was sentenced to hard labor--literally to slavery--for almost 20 years. Upon his release, he finds the lawful Javert watching over him, waiting for him to slip up, which he does. Angry at his long imprisonment, Valjean spites the kindly bishop who gave him food by stealing the silver from the church. However, when he's caught, the bishop lies to Javert and gives Valjean even more of the church's valuables. Having received grace where condemnation was due, Valjean has a crisis and ultimately decides to dedicate his life to good.

Fast forward about five years, and Valjean has built a business which employs many poor people. However, a young woman there named Fantine gets into a conflict with another employee and unknowingly Valjean ends up allowing the man to unjustly dismiss her. With a child to support and her husband having left her, Fantine turns to prostitution to feed her daughter Cosette. Sadly, Fantine dies due to disease from her prostitution, but not before Valjean runs into her by chance and learns her story. He swears to right the wrong he committed by finding her daughter (who is being cared for by some greedy inkeepers) and raise her. The rest of the story is the drama unfolding from that. Valjean finds Cosette and they must hide to escape both of their pasts. Meanwhile, Cosette grows up and one day happens upon a young nobleman named Marius who is involved in the brewing Revolution. The French Revolution serves to highlight the bottom line of this story, which is that the world is not a just place for many people.

Through all of this, Javert, the lawman, continues to chase after Jean Valjean, and it's too complicated to explain it all, but the chief question that continually arises is 'who am I?' Valjean, who had been identified again and again by his prisoner number, asks it when he first receives pardon. Fantine asks it, the Revolutionaries are asking it, the young woman Eponine who loves Marius despite his love for Cosette asks it, and even Javert asks it in his final moments of spiritual agony. When I first saw the movie, I thought that the question was simpler, about behaving with mercy or "justice." But listening to it, I realized that the question is really who are we? We are a people living in the midst of agony, but are we a people of hope or of despair? Are we a people of love or hate? Are we a people of mercy or condemnation?

We spend a lot of our lives asking who we are, and defining ourselves both by our roles and by our works, and we do the same to others. Is it a lazy person or a person dealing with unimaginable financial burdens? Is it a bum, or a veteran? We define one another by our jobs and clothes and how well we adhere to a standard of success that is always moving a little further away. We look at the bus driver and see... a bus driver. Maybe we don't think much of his intelligence. Maybe we think he failed along the way. Maybe we don't think much about him at all because he's a servant, a prop taking me from point A to B. Maybe we are all so terrified of being judged by other people that we never actually reveal who we are to one another. Maybe we're afraid of who we really are.

Are we defined by the law--by eye for an eye? If you work hard, you will get this. If you do this, then this will happen. Or maybe, in the same way I got caught up in the details of these two opposing ideas of mercy and justice, we are just missing the big picture. What if the reality is that mercy and justice are not opposed to one another, because true justice is to know and be fully known. To hear the story, to see the 'who am I?' not defined by the label of a slave who fails to uphold the law, but by the question of 'who loves me?'

Luther wrote an amazing treatise called "Freedom of a Christian" which discusses the very backward and counter-intuitive understanding that to die to our old selves is to gain freedom. Jean Valjean was a prisoner, and all of the Revolutionaries recognized their prison within an evil system, and searched for freedom in different ways. But at the last, they all realized that they had to give up themselves to find themselves. This came in the form of loving others so intensely as to lay down their lives. Jean Valjean laid it down to save his nephew, and again to prevent an innocent man going to prison, Fantine laid it down for her daughter, and Eponine laid it down for Marius, Marius and the Revolutionaries laid their lives down for all of France's poor. And in the end they all finally learned that, to quote Fantine, "To love another person is to see the face of God."

The mercy/justice idea is a false dichotomy. Real justice comes through understanding the 'who.' It comes from seeing one another "face to face" as the apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians. It comes from loving another so much that you are transformed. And justice finally comes not from blindly following the rules, but from truly seeing the face of God in our brothers and sisters. Who we are, then, is a people who together wait for freedom from the agony of our bondage in evil systems, in pain, in despair, in grief, knowing that we are glimpsing paradise within our suffering. Who we are is beloved people recognizing the belovedness of other, and enacting justice by transforming the world one face, one life at a time. We go through so much of our lives seeing only dim reflections of ourselves in others, but what if we instead look for God? My challenge to you is to see. Go into your world, and see your bus drivers as people with hopes and dreams and struggles and pain. See your bag boys, your waitresses, your garbage men, your doctor or nurse, your husband or wife as a person full of as much love and fear and personhood as you, and so glimpse paradise through loving them all until tomorrow bursts forth to redeem all our misery.

The Sweet Reunion

I'm sitting in my bedroom, having just received word from my husband P that he arrived safely in Michigan for a work trip he's taking. I'm a big baby about him going out of town, so this is the day I have been dreading since pretty much the last time he went out of town. It's funny, because when I was single I probably would have laughed at myself missing and pining over somebody like this. I've grown a lot since then, and have come to realize that the beautiful vulnerability involved in loving another person is also gut wrenching and terrible, but the solution to the gut-wrenching-ness of it all is not avoiding loving fully, but to embrace it. And so here I am, waiting for Friday night when he flies back, when I can pick him up from the airport and hug him and kiss him and feel the sweetness of being together again.

It's fitting that today, the first Sunday of Advent, I find myself in this position. Advent is the time of year when we remember the anticipation of the coming child-savior, and also where we savor the waiting for the day of Christ's return and that ultimate reconciliation. That, my friends, is something easier said than done. I'm currently reminded of the situation in Ferguson, Missouri, where so many hearts are broken right now because of pervasive, systematic violence that has taken place against the black community there and around the country. Like the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. writing from Birmingham jail, they are tired of waiting for equality and peace. Our hearts are weary from injustice, there and worldwide. Our hearts are weary from the pain of crime, the pain of addiction, the pain of family brokenness... and here we are once again being told to wait.

It's frustrating. Do you remember circling the tree as a kid on Christmas morning, waiting for the family to gather? Has there ever been such agony as the minutes ticking by while your brother stumbles around finding pants or your sister simply must take a shower before appearing? The kind of waiting we do now--for good news from a doctor, for word of a ceasefire, for change in legislation--that kind of waiting is tinged with a different kind of agony, and lingers longer still.

But there is a sweetness in the waiting, too. Like waiting for a spouse to return from a trip, we look forward knowing how beautiful that future day will be. Hope is that which sustains us by promising that joyful reunion. For our hurting world, the culmination of that advent is reconciliation, wherein those without power are made strong and those who are powerful become servants. Reconciliation is where our bodies no longer betray us, and resources are abundant, and lions and lambs rest in the shade of trees with leaves which are for the healing of the nations. That future is where we feel God's embrace fully, face to face, and the only tears are of joy.

I suppose this is not my usual exegetical expose because as I sit here waiting, I understand the need for encouragement in the midst of your waiting, more than analysis of the biblical precendent. We don't need Bible stories to understand what that kind of unresolved tension feels like. What I really want to do here is to tell you that you are not alone in this. Christ is here, not just in churches but tangibly, visibly by your side as you wade through this river of discouragement and grief and whatever else you are facing. The only thing I know to do is to remember the sweetness of Christ's promise, holding to the hope that the last thing will be the best thing. As I sit in my pajamas missing my spouse, thinking of his grin and his adorable accent and all the little things about him that I love, I am trying to be grateful for the promise of his return and what it means that I have him in my life. I am holding to the wonder of our love and the playfulness of our relationship and the absolute mundane intimacy we share about our daily lives.

Mostly, though, I am practicing patience, knowing that even though the waiting for the time of equality and healing and wholeness and being reunited with those we have lost is far more painful than missing my beloved for a few short days, that the fruition is that much greater than even the sweetest kisses. And in this way, we too, can hold not to what we lack but to what we have; bread and wine and community and powerful voices working for peace and justice and wellness. We can hold these things knowing that Christmas comes every year, and the grave always ends up empty. As much as we may try to ignore or avoid the pain of that waiting, we know that fully embracing the discomfort of not yet is the only way to reach someday. And we will reach it; and Christ is with you while you wait.

Living through Death

I have been thinking a lot lately about the nature of suffering and evil in the world because of my work. It's impossible to overstate the sheer amount of human pain and tragedy one can witness in the hospital, from the agony of a long illness to the accidental death of a young child. If I hadn't believed in evil as a force before, I certainly would now. That's not to say I believe in a devil-with-pitch-fork type of character with little horns and a pointed tail. Real evil is far scarier than this. But the fact of the matter is that the more I find myself standing in the midst of tragedy, the more I am reminded of the sacredness surrounding us all the time.

Robot Devil

I read a truly exceptional article called Why God Will Not Die this morning, and I was really struck by it as I read, particularly thinking about atheist/secular humanist friends of mine who struggle with similar questions that I do, and whose life philosophy, though starting at a different point, ultimately converges with mine. The article talks about the author's young attempt to find meaning and purpose in his life, which in his 20s he framed using a Bertrand Russell quote that can be summed up much less eloquently through the phrase: "Life sucks, then you die." (Something my father was quite fond of saying in his younger years.) But as he got older, he began to see that his grasping of that idea was his (rather immature) attempt to find some sort of simple closure to the ongoing question which is being human.

The question is most often: "Why?" and "What?" Why are we here? Why did God/evolution/the Universe/chance create us? What purpose do we serve? Why do bad things happen to good people? What laws govern the universe? These are questions that humans have been pondering since we had the cognitive ability to ponder them. Wisdom literature wrestles with these questions in profound ways. Isaiah wonders: "What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?" (Isaiah 8:4) and Job asks the unknowable question to God, "Yet when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness." (Job 30:26) And we ask it: Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why do we keep killing each other? Why isn't there enough to eat? Why why why.

Slum in Mumbai

My view is that whatever happened at the fall of creation disrupted the natural order of God's world and introduced the power of death into our world. Ultimately, the root of most evil we commit to each other is committed out of the knowledge of our mortality, and the chaos of death is so ingrained in us that in permeates even creation where decay, illness, and natural disasters happen to us. And then there is this figure which stands up and says: "I AM the resurrection and the life!" Jesus says this defiantly, and acts defiantly against it by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, driving out demons, and fighting the inequality which kept people impoverished and outcast from those who would care for them. In a very real way, Jesus' ministry was spitting in the face of the power of death and the structures which lead to it, and the fear of it which binds us. 

This is why the gospel is so foolish, as Paul says. Because we live in death every day, watching our bodies grow weaker and older, watching our loved ones die off, seeing starvation and terrible disease, and witnessing atrocious acts of violence and war. And yet in the midst of it we have a story of this one figure who defies death one hungry person at a time, and then who himself dies only to rise. In the same way that Job came to realize his bigness to God through the smallness of being told: "Who are you to question me?" we realize our power by understanding our fragility.

Mother Teresa defying starvation

I said to a friend of mine that I believe we can "give the finger" to death through the act of living. By doing all the things we do, breathing, eating, thinking, we defy the death that surrounds us. And the irony of the gospel is that by our constant awareness of our finitude, we are empowered to cultivate life. Our despair actually has the power to give us hope when we start to see not how beholden we are to death, but how actively we can choose to fight it through service to our hurting world. Christ empowers us into this service, in the same way that he empowered his less than perfect disciples, so that through our dying we might live and live for others. And in knowing that we tiny humans can defy the tide of death a little, we may get a glimpse of the grandeur of God's ultimate victory over it.

Angels in the Outfield

I have probably mentioned this before, but I’m (more or less) a native Kansas Citian. I have lived on the Kansas and Missouri sides both at various points in my life beginning around 1990, and consider it my hometown. Despite having lived in the Twin Cities now for almost five years, there is one thing I simply can’t adapt to, and that’s Twins baseball. The Twins are fine, I guess, but they lack the personal something that I need in order to care about something that generally doesn’t hold my attention for very long (sports). They’re almost too good, having generally done pretty well during each season and have a large and loyal following that just makes them uninteresting to me. It’s no fun when winners always win! Even though I am a transplant to this area, one thing that will never change is that I’m a huge Royals fan. Why? Well, this article here pretty well sums it up.

The Royals are the ultimate underdog. Every season they start out with a pretty promising looking team, and somewhere around mid-season they totally choke and lose sixteen games in a row. Despite their epic losing streak stretching even before my birth, the Royals have something special, and it’s not just because I have fond childhood memories of the guys tossing baseballs to those of us close enough to the field during warm-up (which did happen, by the way). They play a clean game, and they live clean lives. I could be wrong, but I’ve never heard of some big scandal where one of the players beat up his wife or kid, or was put on probation because of his drug habit. What you hear instead are stories about how they buy game tickets for broke strangers on Twitter, and about how they buy drinks for people after games, and how despite their continuous losses, they still get out there and play the game because they love the game. And now here they are standing on the verge of the much envied title of champions.

We love a good underdog story. The movie Angels in the Outfield is a perfect example of the love of the little guy taking on the big guy with the right attitude and winning. It’s the Mighty Ducks, it’s the Bad News Bears, it’s David and Goliath, it’s Erin Brockovich and PG&E. Somewhere deep inside us, we have an understanding that sometimes the winner isn’t the biggest, the most powerful, the richest, or whatever, but the one who simply loves the game, or the one who just wants justice for the little guy. There’s a reason this story resonates with us, and it’s because we so often find ourselves as the “little guy.” Even if you’re accomplished in your career, rich, powerful, respected, or beautiful, we are all subject to the great equalizer. Working in a hospital is showing me that. When it comes time to die, the view from the ICU bed is pretty similar for the construction worker and the banker. We love a story about victory in unlikely circumstances because we live our lives, no matter how rich or powerful we are, subject to the randomness and the forces of death. We need to know that there is hope.

The Royals’ streak reminded me of this movie and how nicely it sums up this sense of the holy meeting the ordinary to transform lives. It’s about a boy named Roger who has lost his mother and whose father is somehow estranged. His father jokes that he can have a family again when the Angels, the dreadful local baseball team, win the pennant. Roger prays that the Angels will win, and his story is soon transformed by the appearance of real angels on the field helping the team, ultimately leading to a pennant and a family for Roger. This is a tale as old as time: in a situation of despair, we pray for intervention in our story. And the joke’s on us, because we often get it in ways we never would have expected!

I’ve been doing a lot of work with narrative therapy, theology, and the place where our narrative meets God’s narrative as transformative. I was, at first, thinking of this as an “intersection” but as I look back on my own life, I realized that this metaphor of two lines crossing is insufficient to explain the impact God has on us. Instead, I started thinking about the Hail Mary catch that Alex Gordon recently made in which he slammed so hard into the fence that he bounced about five feet while still holding the ball, and realized that this point is not an intersection but an all out collision. It’s the place where our underdog story, our lives with loss and sickness and failed dreams and missed opportunities and poverty and depression and despair and shame meet God’s story of victory. The result looks not like a continuation of the same old story of defeat, but like a totally new story in which thirty years of consecutive losses turn into a chance for a pennant, or where ten years of drug addiction turns into the ability to mentor others, or where the loss of your spouse turns into the strength you didn’t know you had.

We love an underdog story because we need hope. I certainly need it when I am bombarded daily in the hospital by the most tragic circumstances I can even imagine, and I need it in my own weaknesses too. That hope is brought by knowing that Jesus promises God’s story will transform ours. In some ways, this point here, prior to the World Series, prior to the ending, is sweeter even than the resolution, because it is pregnant with hope bursting into an unknown future. It’s the anticipation of that moment of two stories colliding that gives us the strength to carry on when it seems like the little guy could never make it. It gives me great pleasure to tell you that you are the Kansas City Royals. You are the little guy playing the game, even if you’ve screwed up a lot in the past, with the faith that it can be different. And that faith can move mountains, and change lives, and change you, because the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is your “angel in the outfield” making your life extraordinary. So I hope you can take a moment to stand in awe of the places where your story has been re-written, and wait with bated breath in the midst of the suffering of the cross and the world, for the ultimate Pennant victory.

Christian Identity and the Mighty Ducks

First, I recently posted a piece I did as part of my final independent study at seminary on my website. It is a theological look at how Christians can approach pop culture, and you can read it here. It's called Jesus Christ: Superstar! So you should check it out just for the clever title, if nothing else. :)

So onto the real post... 

I was recently watching D2: The Mighty Ducks because despite the awful cheesiness, it's a movie from my childhood and makes me feel nostalgic. In case you don't know, the premise of the movie is basically this team from Minnesota ends up being recruited to represent the US (with a few additions) in the Junior Olympic competition and Gordon Bombay, a jaded lawyer turned passionate peewee hockey coach, who had worked such a miracle before that he is offered a contract with a sporting outfitter to be the face of their gear as he coaches the team in. In order to get "the big contract" Gordon has to dominate in the tournament, and so when the team hits a snag, he turns into a jerk and works the kids way too hard. The kids and their tutor call him out, he has a "come to Jesus" type of moment and reforms his way. The point is that it's not about winning but about the love of the game and playing well. My husband kept pointing out how much bigger the other teams were from the ducks, and as I was watching Woo, a figure skater recruited to play, do a double axel over an opposing player in order to get close to the goal, my brain turned to theology, as it sometimes does.

I won't go into too much depth here, but the point of these movies, trite though they may be, is that good character and individuality are ultimately stronger than big beefy players that are in it to win it and don't care about how horrible they become to do it. So then I naturally started thinking about the Holy Spirit, and a conversation I had with scholar and professor Lois Malcolm from Luther Seminary, who says that the Holy Spirit acts not by creating conformity but by creating unity within diversity. In other words, if you look at the apostles and the early church, and particularly the teaching of Paul when he discusses the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians, it becomes clear that we are called to function with freedom within our own beautiful, God-given uniqueness for the sake of the church and the world. "For just as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body--though many--are one body, so too is Christ." (1 Cor. 12:12, NET)

This is important because it touches on a very common misconception about Christianity, and that is that it promotes conformity and insulation from the world. I read a very sad story of a woman who had been born into and living within the Quiverfull movement, which is a loose association of families within American Christianity that believe that the highest calling of a woman is to bear little Christian soldiers, and promotes a number of other harmful ideas about the roles of men, women, and children in the family and within the world. This woman had, understandably, felt extremely suffocated by the role that had been imposed upon her, and ultimately left both her husband and Jesus because she was sick of the message that she should conform to a certain way in order to be acceptable. I understand the frustration she must have gone through, but it's unfortunate that she failed to discover that this very fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian vocation is false. It's very common, though, even in less fundamentalist churches, to promote the idea of conformity: this is what a Christian looks like, acts like, or should be. Those who don't fit into this definition are excluded. Some do this intentionally in the name of protecting the community (and I have a whole other post about that), and some do it unintentionally, because they don't know any other way to be.

Despite that unintentional message, this is exactly opposite what the Bible says about how the body of Christ should be. According to Dr. Malcolm, some of the signs of the Spirit at work in a movement are expansiveness, inclusiveness, and diversity. God didn't create things to be the same. Just look at the diversity of plant and animal life on the planet. These things evolved in a million unique ways, and people are no different. To say that Christians should be in any way uniform is just silly. We live in a broken world carrying a variety of burdens that shape us into different people, and we are given different gifts meant to account for the diversity of needs around us. If we were all gifted healers, who would comfort those who don't get well? We need people with different gifts, talents, and skills to be a successful society, and the body of Christ is the same

Toward the end of the movie, we see Gordon, returning to his true self, gathering the team together with the duck call, reminding them who they are. In the same way that the lasso-swinging skills of the Texan and the figure skating skills of Woo or speed skills of Martinez ultimately make the Ducks more successful, the community of Christians is most able to live out our vocation of bringing about God's kingdom through service when we all act out of our uniqueness. That means that some of us are going to be very proper teachers who love grammar and hate swearing, and some are going to be spitting, cussing, tattooed bikers. Because the proper person is not going to be able to touch the world in exactly the same way as the swearing bikers and we need to serve the world in all places and ways. That's why we need the teachers and counselors and business people and accountants and musicians and stay at home parents and vets and janitors... If a community is calling you to uniformity, such as the Quiverfull movement, that is most certainly not a community acting out of the power of the Spirit of God. Rather, the Holy Spirit calls us to unity, bound by the transformative love of Christ which turns us towards others and brings new life out of our dead places, so that we may live out that common vocation exactly as we are individually equipped.

Who you are called to be is you, and to define your ministry not by the role but by the self that you bring to it. Now get outta here in peace to love and serve the Lord!