Last week I was at a gathering for the purpose of talking through issues related to “Doing Hermeneutics in a Postmodern Culture”. There were about a dozen of us there. Most from the Maritimes, one from Ontario, a couple from the U.K. via British Columbia, one from the U.S. and the facilitator/lecturer was from South Africa.

As we talked through the issues it occurred to me that one of the struggles in the Church in the Western world is that we basically have two separate sub-cultures worshipping together in most churches: the Encyclopedias and the Wikipedias. The Encyclopedias are the folks most affected by modernity. For them, it’s about protecting the text, keeping it safe on the reserve shelf so it’s there for everyone to get what they need from it when they need it. The text is set, you don’t change it, you just read it and gather the info you need for your speech, report, exam or general interest. Simply put, information does not change. If it was true yesterday, it is true now and it will be true tomorrow.

The Wikipedias are the folks most affected by post modernity. For them, the text was made for man, not man for the text. They understand truth to be somewhat fluid and best arrived at by community rather than an individual or even a small group of contributors or editors. Everyone gets to join in on the wiki and they feel comfortable in trusting the community for any course correction necessary to keep the integrity of the text. They believe that what was true in 1960 is not necessarily true today. Boundaries change, discoveries are made, new information about old events requires quick change if the text is to be maintained with integrity.

The Wikis ask, “Is that true?” and the Encyclos say, “Of course, it’s right there in the text.” The Wikis say, “The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.”

I’m chewing on this today and finding it resonate with so much of the geography of where my own walk with Jesus has led me to…

“As Moses found out on the peaks of Mount Sinai, the closer he journeyed to God, the more he was enveloped in mist and “unknowing.” As Aaron discovered at the foot of Mount Sinai, the farther people journeyed from God, the more they became certain what God looks like and cast the golden calf.”

Lately I feel heart-sick over the emails I receive, almost daily, that focus on ‘destiny’, ‘transferring the wealth of the wicked over to the righteous’, ‘revival’ and Christian numerology that reveals an immense boredom with Jesus. He, even more than the elusive Donna to whom I am married, proves to be bigger on the inside than on the out, simple and complex.

I’ve been thinking lately about the tendency we have to want a paint by numbers way to follow Jesus rather than the jazz improv he calls us to.

I love the picture above. I don’t know if Van Gogh would be relieved or a little disappointed to discover that Starry Night was in that mid-range between easy and difficult.

I’ve been thinking lately about the English word, “sin”. I’ve been thinking about what we mean by that word. And it’s funny and sad all at once that just like the word “love”, it has come to mean so many things, has been appropriated by so many, that it almost loses it’s value as an expression of reality.

In the context of the Jesus story it’s especially frustrating as it plays such a key part and yet, as an English word, it fails miserably to convey the real denotation and connotation of the original story-tellers. (I’m not implying that the Jesus story is FICTION by my use of the word “story”.) So how do we now, in an age and culture that knows not sin, convey the message, tell the story, in words and images that reveal the reality behind the expression?

This is a follow up to yesterday.

Clearly, from the responses, yesterday’s post wasn’t of great interest but I’m doing this follow up because, well, I can.

I’d love to interview my graduating class and write this book. I think we were caught in a cultural “perfect storm” and I’m intrigued by the idea of following up to see how life has unfolded for us. I can only hope it would be half as interesting as Woody’s class.

Enjoy.

Here’s a re-post of a post from a couple years ago. I’m posting it while I’m running as fast as I can to keep up with my life at the moment. I sort of knew it was going to be like this coming back from holidays but circumstances are snowballing quickly and turning the approach of fall into something exciting and overwhelming all at once. And I wouldn’t want it any other way!

In the midst of all this I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic in between projects. Honestly it all started a few weeks ago when I suddenly realized (and I wish this was a joke) how old I was. The elusive Donna just turned my age and will stay that way for a few more months until I crank it up to 46. I was sure I was turning 45 this year. 46. I don’t know why but that seems a whole lot older to me than 45.

We’re also hitting our 25th anniversary this month and we were reminiscing about a 25th anniversary party my brother organized for my parents that I managed to get some credit for. My parents seemed so old at that party and now here I am, it’s not possible that I’m as old as I thought they were then. I don’t feel older and my wife often assures me that I don’t act more mature. Weird.

So I was thinking about the past and thought I’d toss this up and thank you for stopping by…

First Five Crushes (Revisited)

Here’s the list. It follows a chronological order and I’m not giving away any last names in order to protect the innocent. I know it must shock many of you that there would have ever been any unrequited love in my life. Well, here’s the first five:

1. Debbie. My babysitter. I knew it was love when she painted her Barbie Car black and gave it me to be my Batmobile. I was 3. My memories of this relationship are pieced together from stories my mom would tell and the photographic evidence of me on the jet black Barbie car. (Think Paul Bunyan on a Ford Fairlane.) Unrequited love: the theme of my romantic adventures most of my life.

2. Ann. The little red-haired girl. She gave me a ring as a sign we were going steady. On the way home from school I threw it down a storm drain to show my friends how cool I was. I still feel bad about that. I was 6. Years later she was in my Poli-Sci class my first year of Uni. She sat right behind me and had no idea who I was. Thought about stalking her on Facebook recently. Resisted. Still, I think of the scene in the Woody Allen movie where the kids in the memory of his grade school class stand up as children and describe where they are now. Sometimes it’s an irresistible image to me. A big part of me would like to write that book about my generation that’s fallen in the gap.

3. Laura. On the way by her desk I dropped a note that read, “Do you like me: ___yes, ___no please check one.” She laughed out loud at me and at recess she told her friends who all laughed at me. I was in grade 4 and swore off girls for 2 whole weeks after this. Still traumatized by this experience. Whenever I see a group of women or girls laughing together I immediately assume they’ve heard about this note.

4. Missy. She was the new girl at school so I thought I might have a chance. Plus she had long blonde hair, a cute nose and was painfully pretty. She would beat me up during recess and I figured any contact with a girl was good contact. Other boys started paying more attention to her and she stopped punching my arm. I was in grade 5 and it hurt more when the bruise finally faded. I’m told this memory is not so true and that I wasn’t beat up. I’ll maintain that I felt beat up and liked it.

5. Dianne. An “I don’t like you like that” friend who I felt pretty sure I would eventually sway with my relentless, meandering phone calls and desperate puppy dog pursuit. Eventually she moved to Chicago with her family, which I try not to take personally any more. No, she never got a restraining order. Grade 6 through grade 9 (However, I’ll confess to infidelity to that crush during my grades 7-9 years). The most painful part of this crush is that I really think we would’ve been friends our whole lives if I hadn’t become an extreme and unpleasant religious geek for a brief period of my life post high school. Thankfully, Jesus saved me from that.

Bonus Crush…
6. Shellie. A great friend (written about elsewhere) and ultimately worth more to me as a great friend than the ultimately pulverized relationship that would have resulted from attempts to pursue her romantically. That and her boyfriend who would’ve kicked my butt.

If this was worth the read how about leaving the names of your first 2 crushes below…

Hi, swamped with my to-do list at the moment. Will return to regular posting soon. Lots to talk about and stories to tell but no time to do it right now!

I’m following an interesting discussion started by Frank Viola (author of Pagan Christianity, Reimagining the Church, From Here To Eternity). It started over at Out of Ur, a great blog to keep up with, and continues on some of his own blog sites. The comments are as interesting and insightful as the posts themselves.

Frank observes…

“There is a growing phenomenon in the body of Christ today. Alongside of the missional church movement, the emerging church movement, and the house church movement, there is a mode of thinking that I call “postchurch Christianity.”

The postchurch brand of Christianity is built on the premise that institutional forms of church are ineffective, unbiblical, unworkable, and in some cases, dangerous. Institutionalization is not compatible with ekklesia. So say postchurch advocates.

But the postchurch view goes further saying, “any semblance of organization whatsoever . . . any semblance of leadership…is wrong and oppressive. Church is simply when two or three believers gather together in any format. Whenever this happens, church occurs.”

I made the mistake of posting a comment suggesting that “post church” was the logical conclusion to Frank’s writing in Pagan and Reimaging. He took exception with my remark (in a kind way) and asked how I could come to that conclusion when he spoke against “post church” in his writing. I told him I should have said, “inevitable conclusion” rather than logical. And I don’t think it’s so much what he wrote but how what he wrote has been used by people who’ve been hurt by church or who have become bored with church or who have always wanted to be “in charge” of a church.

There are some issues here that I don’t think Frank really gets because it’s so far from where his heart is. He wants to draw a distinction between me meeting with my friend at Starbucks for a coffee and calling that “church” and me getting friends together in my living room on a regular basis for worship, prayer, etc. Clearly there is a difference to Frank but for those who’ve been burned, abused or hurt by church or are just pissed off and don’t want to deal with that reality, the distinction is completely unclear.

Frank says, “In my personal judgment, the postchurch view fails all six tests. The postchurch paradigm is rooted in the attempt to practice Christianity without belonging to an identifiable community that regularly meets for worship, prayer, fellowship, mutual edification, and mutual care.”

The problem is that Frank is working from his definition (which he would insist are biblical) of all of those criteria) but others who I’ve talked to or read who are very “post church” would feel they do all those things (even at Starbucks) they just wouldn’t apply the same definitions that Frank does.

Is there a difference between 2 or 3 and 12? If so, then is there a difference between 12 and 100? Or the 500 that followed Jesus to hear his final words and see his final appearance before ascension? The problem in this conversation is that we don’t all use the same words to mean the same thing anymore. Neither English or Greek. A quick read through the comments on Frank’s posts reveal that we all may be reading the same thing but we don’t seem to be reading the same thing.

It’s startling to how a question so easily becomes an attack in this discussion. But then, that’s nothing new in Church is it?

Mostly this is for all my American friends.

I grew up in the U.S. Born and raised there. Loved it. I went to the doctor there. I’d call for an appointment, get one, show up on time and then wait and wait and wait until the doctor was able to see me. That is about the only similarity I’ve experienced between the U.S. healthcare system (paid out of pocket) and the Canadian Medicare (paid by taxes) system.

We’ve lived in Canada for about 18 years now. Our first two children, boys, were born in the U.S. When our first was born we didn’t have health insurance. A Christian friend, who was a doctor, set things up with other Christian doctors to do everything from our ob-gyn, anaesthesia to the c-section delivery. Because of our meagre income, the hospital forgave the cost of our hospital stay.

My firstborn developed an illness when he was very young and had to be hospitalized. The church I worked for didn’t pay me enough to buy health insurance and they didn’t pay me enough to pay my medical bills out of pocket. The cost of his stay would have done us in but for family bailing us out with the bills.

It was shortly after this time that we discovered that our American born and trained family doctor had been making things worse for our son. To make him “better” he kept giving him stronger and stronger doses of penicillin. Turns out the swelling and welts and mucus were all because he was ALLERGIC to penicillin. Penicillin we’d been paying for.

When my second son was born we were in a similar situation only this time we made enough to buy health insurance and pay for the additional “pregnancy rider”. CHA-CHING. Of course the beauty of this was that all that we paid for still left us with at least 20% to pay ourselves for our healthcare. We made, for us at the time, hefty payments with each visit to the OB-GYN – outside of our insurance costs. When our son was born there was a spot on his lower back that worried our doctor so he ordered some tests to make sure he didn’t have Spina bifida. He got right in for his MRI and we discovered there was no problem. At all. Other than an incredibly HUGE bill for the hospital stay plus MRI and other additional and unnecessary tests. I figured, “No problem, we’ve got insurance.” Turns out that if you’re born with something it’s an “existing condition” and you have to nearly threaten to blow up the insurance company offices to get them to pay back some of the money you’ve been paying in to them. We argued, complained and got rude and eventually they worked out a deal with us. The bill was still HUGE but not as big as they had wanted it to be.

Then we moved to Canada. My daughter was born here. 3 out of 3 for C-sections. I was the first husband the hospital let in the delivery room (during a section) at the little hospital where we lived. Shortly after our daughter appeared the loud voices of celebration turned to hushed whispers and I knew something was wrong. The Paediatrician there for the birth (besides the OB-GYN, Anaesthetist, nurses and our family doctor) walked over to us and explained our daughter had been born with Cleft lip and palate. A pre-existing condition if there ever was one.

We were very well cared for during the hospital stay. Within days of getting home we were off to the Children’s Hospital where we met with a team of Specialists. They outlined the kinds of surgeries, treatments and care we could expect for the next 18 years. A month or so later we were back at the Children’s Hospital for Em’s first surgery. She has since had plastic surgery, oral surgery, bone grafts, dental work, tubes in and out of her ears, speech pathology, hearing tests and general exams for health. Total bill from the hospital: $0. Care and kindness: Priceless. She’s never had to wait for anything that left us feeling like we were waiting too long or even just “long”. Ever.

In my occupation I am around a lot of sick people. I’m around families who are dealing with illness, both mental and physical. Sometimes you experience a bad doctor or a bad situation but nothing worse than anything we ever experienced in the U.S. I am not saying that sad or bad stories never happen here but those stories have more to do with human error than system error. Our healthcare system here is not perfect but you’re likely never going to find a perfect system. I do know that, from my own experience in the U.S., the money driven healthcare system definitely can work out quite well for those with a solid income. Not so good for everyone else.

I’m posting this today because I’ve just seen/heard/read an avalanche of criticisms of the Canadian Healthcare by people in the U.S. who clearly are presenting a side of the story but not the whole story. This, is my story and my family’s story here in Canada.