Peace or Politics (pick one)

"But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace." James 3:17-18

Laurie: We're living in tough times. By "we" I mean "WE" as in "We are the world," "we" as in "we here in America," and "we" as in Paul and Laurie Mathers. We are all living our way through the Great Recession as we speak. Some of us are feeling it more than others. Some of us will be left with stories to tell our grandkids not unlike the ones my mom used to tell - but not really like them either. I'm not leaving my piano and silver on the side of the road on my way to California. I'm in California, in a house with food in the refrigerator in spite of the hard fact of my husband's unwelcome unemployment status. One of the best things to come from the Great Depression was the invention of safety nets. Unemployment benefits are one of those nets for which we are ever so thankful at the moment.

But I don't really want to talk about how much the government should or should not be involved in such things. What I have in mind is what ensues whenever someone does bring up that subject - the subject of government. In "These Tough Economic Times" it seems everyone is looking for someone to blame, which translates: it's the other political party's fault. Whichever party we are not a party to is to blame and we hate them for it. And on top of that we find that we are all part of a system which, if we are going to get any problem solved, requires us either to wait for the next election, or to work together with our political rivals in order to try and straighten things out now - which, if things are really bad, you would hope, for the sake of those who are hurting, we would be able to do. But, it's this last thing which we are very bad at. We are stubborn, independent-minded folks with heels calloused from the digging. We are perfectly capable of becoming so engaged in political tugs-of-war that we are blindly trampling the very people who are already being hurt the most.

Paul: Yes. Up to a few years ago I had a strict policy of avoiding the topic of politics altogether. As you may well imagine, this lead to years of peace, but there was a cost. So often I would find myself in the company of someone spouting opinions that I found completely objectionable and, even worse, by my silence they would assume I was in agreement. This is why it's necessary to talk about politics. First of all, we are civic creatures. Second, we have to look at ourselves in the mirror in the morning.  A person of integrity cannot give assent by being silent. However, if I understand the direction we'll be steering this topic, I believe one can have peace, integrity, and possibly be a force of influence for good in the world even in this sphere. I mean, you and I have total peace in our home over political matters.

Laurie: Well, yes, we do. And, as you know, I share your discomforts over political discussions. I, too, often find myself in disagreement with my friends over such matters, and because my friends are so precious to me I usually choose to remain silent in order to keep them. I've learned through painful experience that people are oft inclined to ditch friendships in favor of political alliances (or should I say, to confuse political alliance with friendship?) So, like you, I'm often torn by the love I have for my friends and that little matter of integrity which you bring up.

And so you do bring me back to my point. What I really want to talk about is getting along, for the sake of love, with those we don't agree with. We rarely discuss this publicly, but Paul and I are members of different political parties. In spite of this, we discuss politics quite regularly and, to my recollection, have never had a single argument over the subject. Why? Because I understand his viewpoints about as completely as I can without actually crawling up inside his skull. I understand why he holds them, what logic is behind them, and what a great and Christian heart it is which leads him to feel the way he does.Yet, I don't agree with him. Or, perhaps I should put it this way: I agree with him in theory, but don't think his ideals are practicable.

Paul:  Well, I'm under no illusions about the unlikelihood of a Utopia, but I am compelled by my integrity to hold my ideals nonetheless.

Laurie::  Yes, and I even envision your Utopia as you describe it, and admire it (regardless that I think it can never be), and respect your viewpoint as a result. And, in like manner, you respect my views, though when we disagree you are not shy to tell me so, and why. During the years of our marriage you have even managed to influence me somewhat to moderate some of my positions. I'm not sure I've ever gotten you to moderate any of yours though. But perhaps you are better qualified to comment on that.
  
Paul:  I think circumstance and our walk together has dictated some changes of course for both of us. As far as speaking to one another about the issues, I've found that it's not difficult to maintain peace while speaking about issues we have different views on. First, I think it's wise for anyone to come to the realization that they do not have all of the answers. I know from thirty-three years of experience two important points that I do well to keep in front of my eyes: 1) I am often wrong and 2) I often feel completely differently on issues five years in the future given experience, circumstances, and gaining a larger sphere of acquaintances.

So, I find conversations go better if I can maintain a level of humility and respect, remembering that another, fully equal human being is speaking to me. I can remove terms like "Clearly", "Everybody knows that..." or "Even a child could tell you." That sort of thing. Instead, I replace them with the more honest "So often I have found that..." "I've noticed that..." or the wonderful "In my opinion."  Another good one when disagreeing with what is being said is: "That may be the case when it's 'such and such,' but in this case I find that..."

Why do we want to do this? Well, as I said, so often I have found that I am not always right, so I don't want to presume upon it. Also, people can sometimes offer points of view I hadn't considered.  But more importantly, I would much rather have peace and fellowship than to be 'right' all the time.

Laurie: And peace begins at home.

If we could all learn to put people above politics we'd have gone a long way to solving all our problems. We'd then remember that we are all in this boat, sinking or floating, together. What we do to others we end up doing to ourselves. Our fates, like it or not, are intertwined with one another's and with the measure with which we measure it will be measured back again to us. Nowhere is this more quickly evidenced and quickly learned than in the home. And there is no better place to practice, because who you are at home is who you are.

"If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,' you are doing well." James 2:8

There is no better way to measure the respect and love with which we treat others than by this "royal law". How do I like it when no one listens when I speak? How do I like it when no one even tries to understand where I'm coming from? How does it make me feel when someone listens only with a mind to proving me wrong, rather than to gain true understanding? How do I like getting pat answers for my painful and most probing questions? How do I like my very real problems dismissed by someone's high-minded platitudes, telling me to "be warmed and fed" while refusing me food and clothing? How do I like my very real pains dismissed as unimportant, or my opinions as having no value? How do I like it when I speak to someone condescendingly and try cover it with a smile? How do I like it when I'm treated like an idiot simply for not agreeing with someone?

I'll tell you how I like it: I hate it! And I've determined to make this my guide. Love doesn't treat people in ways it hates to be treated. Our marriage is a little microcosm of our world. We our in our little life raft together. We do well not to sink it and we do even better than that when we learn to row together and make forward progress.

Paul:  Even a child could tell you this saying of Jesus', "And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them."

You mentioned before that peace begins in the home, which I absolutely find to be true.  It put me in mind of something you often say about how you treat your loved ones in the privacy of your own home is who you are. Or words to that effect.

It reminds me also of that Dave Barry quote we both reposted this week "A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person."

Or, as Christ put it, "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."  I don't want to be a mocker or one who disregards others, or arrogant, so it would behoove me to guard against falling into those dark places no matter where I find myself in my dialectical life.

Laurie: Paul, what you seem to do almost instinctually I've had to be taught, but it's been, in a certain sense, one of the most freeing things I've learned. In another sense it's been unsettling. Learning to listen and understand the viewpoints of others helps me care for them as humans, not just labels. It helps me remember they are who they are for lots of reasons and all of those reasons seem like really good ones to them. It teaches me respect for them. It frees me to love them for the imperfect struggling souls that they are. It shows me that they are more like me than I ever dreamed. But it's also unsettling in a number of levels. Sometimes what a person opens up when they explain themselves is a world of darkness, fear, and malevolence. Other times they reveal my own darkness, that I've been wrong, or, if not entirely wrong, unkind or insensitive. Sometimes I find things aren't as black and white as I liked to think and that the real situation is as uncomfortable as shade of grey as grey can be.

Paul:  All of which are true and, I would add, all of which are people and situations which we need to approach with love, respect, compassion, and with regard to them as our equals.


Laurie: Exactly.

And one last thing comes to mind. As the saying goes, "as iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens his friend." So when succeed in silencing our friends who disagree with us we may very well be removing the very friction needed to sharpen us into more useful instruments in this world.

Lighten up!

Paul: This week we had a little discussion about avoiding a potential issue that may be associated with our blog should current trends continue entirely unimpeded, which is to say becoming a blog about things we don't like and the way we feel things ought to be. I have some old tapes which took a great deal of searching to acquire, of old radio broadcasts by Alexander Woollcott. One in particular sprung to mind in what seems like may have been a rushed effort for that week's broadcast's content during the period when Woollcott was in London during the Blitz in an effort to convince America to enter the war against Germany.

Laurie: Wow, that was a really long sentence.

Paul: But grammatically unimpeachable.

That particular week, Woollcott chose to simply talk about a few things he'd liked and recommended. If memory serves, it was along the lines of "a meal, a play, a book and a song" or something like that. I thought it might be fun to attempt something similar on this blog.  I think the idea was also partly inspired by Laurie's recent blog post recommending her findings on the best products for cleaning one's home.

So, I'll pick a few categories, I'll leave Laurie to pick a few categories, and then we'll each give either our favorites or at least our recommendations in that category.

I choose: a product or service, a film, a book, and a beverage.

Laurie: Okay, I'm supposed to think of something now? I'm really bad at this sort of thing. You're the idea man; how about you choose some categories for me, and I'll accept or reject them?

Paul: No, we're both going to do one another's categories. So you're going to do the four I mentioned and also both of us will do some you are to come up with.

Laurie: What you seem to be missing here is that I can't think of anything. Maybe all those pop-quasi-christian relationship books are right and I'm just a "responder". Maybe this is also why I'm no fun at parties - that and my stubborn refusal to get drunk...

Okay, fine....hmmm...I'll choose: a musical genre, an historical era, a dream career, and an architectural style.

Paul: Yes, this is acceptable.

So, a Product or Service: I choose iTunes U. No matter who you are, if you have a connection to the internet (clue: you do if you're reading this) and you don't have excessively repressive time limits (meaning one of the few situations I could think of that would make this impractical would be if you are on a public library computer) you can access this world of knowledge. Simply get iTunes if you don't already have it. In the left sidebar is a link called iTunes U. This gives you access to thousands of lectures from hundreds of major colleges and universities around the world. You can go through entire courses or listen to specific lectures. There are major universities, minor ones, seminaries, other public lecture sources like the 92 Street YMCA in New York, and even some grade school and high school courses for those of you who could use such things. Some schools have vast libraries of lectures by great minds from all spheres and disciplines. Some have music or film or audio book resources. It is a wonderful resource which I encourage everyone to use. Probably 3/4th of our iPod is filled with material from iTunes U (and most of the rest is This American Life and Radiolab.)

Laurie:  Well I'll avoid the obvious choices of my practical nature (indoor plumbing, electricity, and internet - all of which I'm extremely fond of), and since you're not specifically asking for my "favorite things ever", but merely things I like and would recommend, I'll go with NPR - National Public Radio. I recently heard someone refer to it disparagingly as National Pagan Radio, which really made me wonder where they get their news. Besides my ongoing minor beef with Terry Gross's insistence on repeatedly featuring Bart Ehrman on her show as a representative of "Biblical scholarship", her attraction to Christian apostates, and her respect for any spirituality which is not Christian (That aside, she's one of the best interviewers I've ever heard, and highly recommend her show Fresh Air.), I've found NPR to provide the most balanced views on most every subject, far less slanted than any other network news source I know of. No, it's not Christian, but neither are the others. Through NPR I've been exposed to stories and subjects I'd never have heard of otherwise. I've also learned, by example, how to calmly and respectfully discuss difficult subjects and with people whose opinions differ from my own. In the three years I've been listening, I can only recall two times when I've heard anyone, conservative or liberal, treated in a verbally abusive manner. One was a caller to Talk of the Nation - the subject of the show was bullying - the caller was a self-described bully and proceeded to bully the host and the guest. The other was radio host Michael Savage, who was on NPR as a phone guest and abused a caller to the show who had politely stated why he disapproved of Savage's manner. Nowadays, when I happen to catch a glimpse of network news programming (you name it, FOX, CNN, MSNBC...) I feel like I'm watching a side show, a tacky, abusive, sensational, vitriolic, and biased circus.

Paul: I was listening to both of those shows on the days when they first aired as well and I shared your shock. Part of it was the contrast. But I know that whenever I find myself, for some infernal reason, in earshot range of a non-Daily Show major news source broadcast, I have the same reaction. It's sort of a new normal and I see it creeping into people's behavior. The television has told them to be unconfined, raging, frothy mouthed knee-jerk reactionaries and they are following orders. NPR is one of the few places I can still go to hear global news reported with an indoor voice.

Laurie: Really, is there any good reason we should be so shocked at the bullying in our schools, when this is the sort of behavior in which adults engage in the public sphere? But I don't want to open a new can of rabbit trails here. Beyond their generally wonderful example of respectful civic behavior, NPR also employs an independent ombudsman, to represent the public to the station, accept complaints and kudos, and to evaluate them for fairness, etc. Okay then. I'll hand you back your soapbox, Paul.

Paul: Now, A film: I am sort of a film buff, so it's hard to narrow this down, but if I were recommending a film to people across the board, it would be The Third Man. It was directed by Carol Reed and stars Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. It is probably my favorite movie and without a doubt one of the best ever made. I don't want to give too much away, but it sweeps you into a gorgeous but fractured world of post World War II Vienna, smack in the middle of a mystery with ominous undertones. But it's also fun, romantic, beautiful. Really, you must see it if you haven't and see it again if you have.

Laurie: Wow, this is hard. There's no doubt you are aware that I have the memory of a gnat when it comes to films. Every time I see one a second time, it's almost as if it were the first. So, I'm limited from the outset to the small subset that I can remember. As with my last recommendation I will bypass the obvious favorites of a female of my age (Gone With the Wind, Grease, Overboard, West Side Story...) and suggest something off the beaten path and wonderful: Criterion's collection of Rossellini's History Films. Each one is a work of Renaissance art come to life, velvety enough to convince you the world was then painted in oils. The history is insightful, provocative. I own The Age of the Medici, Cartesius, Blaise Pascal, and The Taking of Power by Louis XIV. It's hard for me to choose a favorite. Cartesius and Pascal made me long for a time when all the disciplines were still married, when mathematicians were philosophers, and science was not seen to be in conflict with faith. The Age of the Medici was a peek into a family whose name is woven like a long thread of intrigue throughout European history. And Louis XIV, well, I never realized the method behind the man I always pictured as the silly grandfather of Rococo. I was astonished at his genius in taking control of France, and current political parallels.

Paul:All of them are amazing and the former three come in a set by the Criterion Collection.

A book: I purposely gave myself one that I knew would be difficult for me and one that would probably change depending on my mood that day. Today I'm going to go with The Fever, by Wallace Shawn. Shawn is one of the more powerful working playwrights around today. His work grabs you by the collar and mercilessly shoves a mirror in your face. In a good way, in a way where you leave the work a different person than you were when you arrived, be it for better or worse. Don't let the word "play" daunt you. It's actually a one person narrative which revolves around someone traveling who suddenly becomes acutely aware of the economic, political, social and classist forces that dictate the world. I cannot recommend it highly enough, and you can read it in an afternoon. It explores our comfort and discomfort as well as the cost of our lifestyles.

Laurie: Sheesh, how do you pick? Should I choose fiction or non? Sacred or secular?

Paul: I picked by looking over at my bookcase and thinking "Yeah, why not? That's a good one." There are hundreds of books I would recommend given half the chance. In fact, that's mainly what I do on my blog. So, I would say just pick something.

Laurie: Hmmm? Well, the ones I've read the most are Gone With the Wind, East of Eden, and the Bible. I've lost count of how many times I've read them. No one should go through life without reading Crime and Punishment. But I want to highlight something off the beaten track.

Okay, you'll have to bear with two. The first is The Freedom of the Will, by Jonathan Edwards. It is a largely philosophical work addressing the largely philosophical problem of the nature of the human will. He was addressing a view of the will which was then prevailing and remains the predominant view of volition: libertarian free will. It is a fascinating discussion, once you've slogged through the necessary defining of terms that is, and really helped me shape a view of the human will which is more in line with both Scripture and reason.

My next choice is a 1995 work by health and science writer, Laurie Garrett: The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. This book comes extensively researched and heavy with footnotes, and as riveting as good fiction. It's a very good journalistic account of the emergence of new and deadly pathogens (AIDS, Toxic Shock Syndrome, Ebola, Lassa, etc) and the dangerous re-emergence of old ones (malaria, cholera, TB...), the causes, the responses of the epidemiological community, their various governments' successes and failures in addressing the crises. There are lessons to be learned from Garrett's work which we ignore at our own peril.

Paul: A beverage: Summer is coming and I have a recipe for a drink I make.  I discovered this by way of artist Jill Thompson and make it in the hot months. Walking is my preferred mode of transportation and for 5 months of the year this is a dehydrating mode of travel in Chico. So, you get a glass, put in the juice of 2 lemons, 1/3 cup water with some sugar (different people choose different amounts) microwaved together and thrown in the fridge to cool back down. Some ginger pressed in a garlic press (again, different people choose different amounts. I use an enormous amount of ginger.) Throw some ice in the glass, add the sugar water, and fill with club soda. Very refreshing!

Laurie: Wow, sounds interesting....But I'll stick with my ice-cold Diet Pepsi, if you don't mind.

Paul: A musical genre: You know, I was really close to saying Dark Cabaret, but I think I'll go ahead and be predictable and say Classical and Opera. Both are genres which tend to have the stigma of being only accessible to the affluent. False! Again, go to your library and, if you don't know what you're doing, go to the circulation desk and tell them that you want to see opera and listen to a lot of classical music. They can load you up with DVDs and CDs and inter-library loan anything you'd like to hear that they don't have on hand. It is an embarrassment of riches.Or, go here and download a bunch of great, public domain performances for free.
I can also tell you from having worked in theaters for years, if you want to attend a live performance, a good deal of theaters out there have what is called a "student rush." This is for 1) people with limited funds and 2) to try to keep the theater full. A half an hour before a performance, tickets will often sell for a nominal fee. Also, many theaters have what is known as a "pay what thou wilt" night where you can get in the door for $5 or less. All of which can get you into a symphony or opera. Although I am personally of Glenn Gould's camp in that I believe that the days of live performance are waning. The high quality of modern recording allows one to enjoy music of equal or superior sound quality to being in the music hall without the side effects of sitting next to someone with a high chest cold or chatty season ticket holders or older people who are compensating for their loss of sense of smell with increasingly liberal applications of perfumes.
The best advice I can give to one who is interested in Classical music is to jump in head first and listen to a lot of things. Find out what you like and what you don't. Listen to people you've heard of and people you haven't. Listen to ancient, early music chants and brand new compositions that sound like someone knocking a box of metal pipes down a stairwell, and everything in between. Look up information on them. Figure out what periods and composers you like.
Why? First of all, it's an expression of the highest aspirations of human kind, running the entire range of emotions and experience. The composition is structured with great care, art and skill. If you fill your head with greatness, the idea is that greatness is what will then come out. On top of that, you get to tap into a universal music type which transcends both age and geography. It speaks to everyone one of us as fellow humans.
And for our Christian readers of whom we seem to have many, this is where they keep the good Christian music. Conductor Robert Shaw once said, "Western art music was born in and nurtured by the Church." If you're anything like me (and I know I am!) you probably are underwhelmed by the praise music offerings on your local Christian pop music station. Well, throw on some Bach or Sibelius. For me, Gregorian Chant focuses up a room to the celestial way more effectively than any of last year's Dove Award winners.

Laurie: Well, here again we learn who is the real oaf in this relationship. I never go out of my way to listen to classical music, mainly because I need to hear it in a context to understand it or "feel" it. If I can watch the performance I can become engrossed, but that is not usually the case when it is playing in the background of my daily activities.

Paul: An unfortunate, gross misunderstanding and misapplication of some in contemporary times is the attempt to use Classical as background or "mood" music. It should be anything but. It should demand all of our attention and, indeed, our being.

Laurie:I agree, and admit I often lack the required attention. Which brings me back to my selection. My taste is very eclectic, but I don't listen to a lot of music these days. When I need a pick-me-up it's usually funk I turn to: Parliament/Funkadelic, Cameo, Ohio Players.... It makes me smile. And on a completely different note, for pure beauty, I recommend Loreena McKennitt's, The Mask and the Mirror album. I walked down the aisle to greet Paul to The Dark Night of the Soul. Hard to hold back the tears.

Paul: A song which will forever remind me of you on our wedding day.

An historical era: Oh dear, well, while I try not to romanticize periods, I think if I had my Tardis and was only allowed one trip, I would flip a coin and either go hang out with the Zürich era Dadaists or the art community of Fin de siècle France.

Laurie: Sorry to bust in here...but...well...I don't know what on earth you just said. Perhaps you could enlighten me.

Paul: Um, well, the Dadaists were a group of absurdist artists responding to the severe existential meltdown of the War to End All Wars: WWI.  Zürich was sort of the flashpoint when the major early players were all in the same place creating a movement. Fin de siècle France is around the turn of 1900, known also as the Belle Époque or Beautiful Era. Think Toulouse-Lautrec, Oscar Wilde, Proust, Debussy, Degas was still kicking around I think as a venerable old artist at that point, Edvard Munch, Paul Signac, Félix Fénéon. One of those pieces of space-time where a group of artists hit a boiling point. In this case, with sort of a doomed, birth of the modern tone that appeals to my sensibilities.  Also a huge collection of people I would like to have met in the same time and place.

Laurie: So, what would you say to them, besides "Hey, you're not going to believe this, but I'm from the future!"?

Paul: Well, considering who and how they were, I imagine that's the sort of thing they heard and said all the time. Mainly I think I would be interested in listening, observing the processes.

Laurie:Anyway, I'm rather surprised you didn't choose Shakespeare's England.

Paul:  I thought about it, and while I would like to see an original staging of a Globe production, I think I'd prefer a time and place without bear-baiting and with the custom of hand washing before meals and after toilet.

Laurie: Well, I've thought of this often, since there are so many fascinating periods of history, but I always find that in order to enjoy those times I'd have to not only travel through time, but undergo a sex change and wealth enhancement. The truth is, history has been overwhelmingly brutal to women in every way, in matters both big and small.

At what time in history would I like to be uneducated chattel living without rights, without the advances of medicine, indoor plumbing or feminine hygiene products, and for whom every pregnancy ran a high risk of ending my life? Whenever I've tried this thought experiment I've invariable come away thinking Right Now is not so bad after all.

Paul: Hm. As opposed to this enlightened age when women enjoy peace, freedom from oppression and fear of bodily harm, and equality in station and pay throughout the world? Hopefully the written word doesn't betray my dripping sarcasm here. I'm beginning to wonder if we wouldn't do better to take the optimistic road and both go dramatically forward in history.

Laurie: Listen, I'm not going to knock progress. The value of women and children in western society has made advances I'd hate to lose. It's fun to look back to "brighter days"- to Harriet Nelson. Truth is, wives were being battered and children molested back then and had no recourse whatsoever. Mommies popped "nerve pills" to help them keep up those perfect images we so wish to emulate. Black folk had their own water fountains and rode in the back of the bus. But as for looking to the future, people being what they are, I have little reason to believe the future generation will be any more a golden age than it is now. For all our progress, we are still vulnerable to holocaust.

But now, I think I've trod all over your good intentions, which is to say, your sympathy for the ongoing inequality women suffer. You are right, the world is still not a very friendly place for women, and in much of the world is as hostile and oppressive as in ancient days.


So, having cast that dark cloud, let's see if I can't cheer things back up by imagining time-traveler-Laurie gets to be a male....hmmm. Pretty much every era has been a brutal time for men as well. I wouldn't want to be Martin Luther, or John Calvin, or Henry VIII even. There really never have been any good old days. Oh boy, the cloud is back. Sorry. I'll try and get back into the spirit of the thing...being a Southern Belle seems like it might have been nice, if you could live with your slave-holding conscience.

Paul: You do remember that this category was your idea, don't you?

Laurie: Sorry. It's a fantasy I always start off enjoying until the side of my brain that remembers the billions of folk too simple to warrant a mention in the history books kicks in. That said, being an educated man, a philosopher or an artist, during the Renaissance would have been a great time. But there is one figure above all that I would have liked to have met in the flesh - Jesus Christ. I want to see him smile and ask Him questions - know what made Him laugh, hear His tone when he spoke to women and children, study His mannerisms. I've not given up hope of meeting Him.

Paul: Well done! You brought it around to the only positive point of view I could imagine. So I'll move on to A dream career: I just had this conversation with Stefan (Gina is my step-daughter and Stefan is her boyfriend, for readers who don't know and even for readers who do know) at my birthday dinner the other night. If I had a sack of money fall on me, I think I would start a classical theater company, mainly focusing on Shakespearean productions, but doing a great array of works, here in Chico. I think this town would embrace such a thing and, I daresay, I think such a thing would do this town some good. I would place myself as the creative director, probably direct two productions a year of my own and solicit other directors to direct other pieces throughout the year, (possibly in which I would act) hopefully making us a year round classical live theater company. We could do shows or workshops for schools, work with the college, be a very positive force in this community. If you're a wealthy philanthropist in Chico, email me.


Laurie: Well, the more romantic choice would be epidemiology. It's kind of like being an archeologist, but the hunt is for disease and it's causes rather than artifacts and theirs. My weakness in math, however, would likely preclude me from advancing far enough in my scientific education to get there. So, a more realistic "fantasy" career would be as a writer, lecturer, and historian with an emphasis on church history. How's that for lofty?

Paul: An architectural style: Oh, you know me. I'm going to say Gothic Revival or Neo-Gothic. I like it when a building bashes me over the head with how it is stunning.

Laurie: Again I find myself guilty of thinking too small! I like what you like, but I had homes in mind. It's a tight race for me between Victorian and Craftsman style homes. Gotta love those southern colonial mansions too, but I think I'll choose Victorian. We have a lot of both types here in Chico, and even one colonial that I can think of, down on Vallombrosa. I wish I could say our 1905 "charmer" fit into any of those categories, but I'm afraid I can't find one for it. It looks an awful lot like the house my mom grew up in in Maine. Anyone have a fancy name for our house of sticks?

Paul: Sort of a Bungalow which is a term for "no style, we just built a one-story house."

A Question About Gurus

Paul:  So, a friend of ours read our most recent post about gurus and asked (and I paraphrase), "how do you know the Bible itself is not just another guru?  There are so many interpretations and it was written by so many authors over so long a period of time.  On what basis do I believe one writer/book over another?"

I would like to attempt to answer some of that this week.  I'm not entirely certain my response will be satisfactory for all, but it will be honest and how I came to where I am.  Some of it will be personal and emotional, but some of it I hope will be more on the objective side in speaking to the veracity of scripture and the how and why of proper hermeneutics.  Although I would preface by saying many great doorstop, cookie-jar-reaching tomes have been written on this topic.  I don't expect we'll be exhaustive in our discussion here today.  It is also my intent to avoid the sort of cliche and cop-outs that I heard so often as a questioning unbeliever.  Phrases like "Well, that's where faith comes in."

Laurie:  Hmm, I feel the same way about the "that's where faith comes in" argument. I mean,  don't think it's helpful. Hopefully I won't get off track here, but I always believed the Bible was "God's Word" or the true "holy book" or however you might wish to put it. But for me, admittedly, (and I venture this is the case for many professing Christians) this belief had little to do with faith, and everything to do with geography and maternity. What I mean is, I'm a white Anglo-Saxon American. My mother was brought up Episcopalian, or so she told me, and raised me as a Lutheran.  I was told from Day One that the Bible was God's book, and that was that. It never occurred me to question that fact until much later, and, honestly, I thought questioning it was a dangerous, potentially unpardonable sin.

So I don't even think of believing that the Bible is God's word as a matter of faith. I think you can accept it as fact and not be a person of faith at all. There's believing, and there's believing. What I mean is, I accepted the notion that God orchestrated the writing of a book for humans, and that the Bible was that book, but I didn't much care about that God or His book. I'd say that faith cares. Faith loves that God and hangs on His every word. But, of course, if you don't accept the idea of God, let alone that he wrote a book...well I can see where believing such a thing would require a change of mind which some would call faith.

Paul:  Right, and I think I was a good example of that.  I went years with a high view of Scripture but without being a believer, as in a converted person.  The converse is also true.  The Gospel is the key point, the non-negotiable.

For me, I went, through a series of events, experiences and revelations, from full atheism to, at the very least the understanding that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy.  Now, I would like to point out a very important point for me right here at the beginning that just because something is emotional or breaking from consensus reality does not immediately translate to "false" or "not real."  We are all brains encased in skulls interpreting stimuli communicated by our senses.  It was an important realization for me that just because a person who is having a psychotic episode is "seeing" a four foot long cockroach on the wall doesn't mean it isn't real.  It doesn't even necessarily mean that they are "seeing something that isn't there."  Their brain is really seeing it just as much as I am seeing this computer screen in front of me.  So, just to make sure we're all on the same page, I'm going to do my best not to make sweeping generalizations about objective reality on both sides of the fence.

Laurie: Okay, I'm interrupting again, but, well...are you implying the imaginary cockroach is as real as a real cockroach? I always get hung up when you talk like this.


Paul: What I'm saying is: how can we really even measure such a thing?  Which sounds like I'm playing a mind game, but I assure you I am not.  I understand what you are asking is, correct me if I'm wrong, to the effect of "Is there really a giant cockroach there or not?"

Laurie: Right.

Paul:  What I'm saying is that we are all brains encased in skulls interpreting external stimuli communicated to our brains by our senses.  If someone has a wonky link in that chain and they are seeing something that the rest of consensus reality is incapable of sensing, that doesn't make them not see it.  They aren't making it up.  They really are seeing that giant cockroach just as much as I'm seeing a CRT Monitor right now (don't laugh, it was free.)

Put another way, Philip K. Dick was asked at a lecture he was giving "What is reality?"  He thought for a moment and said "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Which actually plays right into the hands of what I want to talk about. 

Speaking of sides of the fence, another common response I'd like to avoid is the one that says that the Bible is the infallible word of God because it says that it is the infallible word of God.  In my experience, that sort of argument is only helpful intramurally.  For example, if someone comes into the church and claims that they are a Christian and then claims that God told them that I need to give them money so that they can go buy meth, I can hold that up to the light of Scripture and examine it, see if it's inconsistent and deal with it appropriately.  Hypothetically speaking.  In the practical world, there would actually be a much shorter process to me saying "no."  I don't actually need to go break out my Bible to see if there's something fishy about that.

Laurie:  That reminds me of that line of reasoning I've always found suspect in which folks "prove"  the canon of Scripture is closed by pointing to the last book included in that canon, which happens to be the Revelation, which happens to end with a warning not to add or take away from it. Now, I understand the logic thread, but I think it's pretty clear that the intent of John when he penned the words "the book of this prophecy," was not an at-that-time-yet-to-be-canonized collection of Scriptures. It's never a good idea to misuse Scripture to prove Scripture.

In order not to be abused, Scripture should be used as it was intended to be used, read how it was meant to be read: as poetry, history, law, proverb, allegory, parable, letter of instruction, or prophecy. Each has its usefulness and it's limitations. But again, I think I'm straying from your point.

Paul:  But we're trying to speak externally at this point, so I'm going to talk about my conversion. This may not be entirely intellectually satisfying to some (I also apologize for being so apologetic), and there is an element to my own story similar to Evelyn Waugh's description of his conversion "It was either Christianity or chaos."  I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but as I've said elsewhere, the only thing that keeps me a Christian is the Gospel. Otherwise there's no way I would have chosen Christianity.  I find I believe the Gospel and I cannot not believe the Gospel no matter how fed up I get with Christianity.

I didn't exactly have a light-switch, road to Damascus conversion.  I had a conversion to assenting to the truths of the Bible in my early 20s and then a true spiritual follow-up where I started actually wanting to do anything about it in my late 20s.  We'll get to that in a moment.

Early 20's Paul was an agnostic, a poet, and a raging alcoholic (I don't place those three together to say that the former two are character flaws in and of themselves.  They just happen to be my three chief accurate specific character descriptions of that period.)  I'd done some pretty terrible things and would have gone on to do some more.  I became interested in attending church, a Quaker one in that case, for a number of reasons.  One was reading Albert Schweitzer, one was a girl who played the cello and went to the youth group, and one was the pastor whose sermons I found fascinating.  He would preach with historicity in the forefront, which greatly appealed to me.  He sort of preached how my brain works, which is to say in stories.  It was in winter that he started a series on the basics of the Gospel, which was one of those things I thought I knew, "Yeah, I get it. Jesus died for sinners."  But he started on a point I'd never heard before and it gripped me so completely.

The doctrine, although he didn't use this term (it was a Quaker church after all), was the doctrine of Total Depravity.  He started talking about sin nature, how we humans are all sinners by nature, how all fall short of the glory of God and how that keeps us separate from the divine, and I had about as close to an epiphany as I've ever had in my Christian life.  I thought "Wait a minute!  That sounds like me!  And on top of that, it sounds like an accurate description of human civilization!"

Much to the chagrin of my close friends, I went around for a while in that headspace, as sort of a One Point Calvinist.  Total Depravity and that's all.  When I tell this story it surprises some people that it didn't even occur to me to look further into it, to see if there was a way out.  I just wandered around looking at the world around me through those glasses, bleaker than late period Nietzsche.

I minored in Religion at Chapman University under Marv Meyer of the Jesus Seminar (which is the group of academics who are totally enamored with the Gnostic texts and who famously voted over the entire canonical gospel with color coded stones over whether or not what was being told in the text really happened or not.)  I found the story of the preservation of Scripture throughout history a very compelling story, the variety of authors with doctrinal unity, the clear path (mostly) of what would and wouldn't be canonized, and, in spite of what Bart Ehrman tries to shill to those whose religious curiosity extends only to what's available at Barnes and Noble, the constantly growing evidence for accuracy in the preservation of the ancient texts throughout history based on an ever growing store of ever older manuscripts.

Although, there is an important point I feel I need to make right now before we make the transition into my more recent history into church life.  Part of what keeps the infallible Scripture from being a rigid guru is that, in spite of what I hear so often, there is vast freedom in God's grace and Christ's imputed righteousness.  This is what made me fall so in love with the Gospel, as well as the key reason why I feel like an alien in Christianity so much of the time.  The Gospel tells me that God loves me and that I am regarded by Him as having Christ's righteousness.  I know that people are quick to take the next step to "but that means I'm going to want to behave myself and do good works," but let's camp here for a moment.  It's so refreshing here.  I can be a Gentile, I can approach God intimately, I can love un-apologetically anyone and everyone, in fact I'm commanded to.

When I first moved to Chico, I spent about a year in the Quaker meeting mainly because I had first gone my brother's former church, once.

Laurie: Once?

Paul:  Okay, maybe a handful of times right when I moved up here.  I was abridging for the sake of the flow of the story.  But I went a few times and then I went to one Saturday evening service and then didn't come back for a long time, around a year if memory serves, while I went to the Quaker meeting instead.

That was because the weekend music director at my brother's former church pretty much told me I wasn't welcome in his church because I was wearing a Jerry Garcia t-shirt.  So, I figured I would oblige him and take my congregating elsewhere. Since then I've noticed time and time again some set of behavioral expectations that Christians put on one another which make absolutely no sense to me. And, as I've said, so often I feel like if people in church really knew me, really knew what I think and feel, they wouldn't let me in the door.  Because, you see, there are a lot of people who turn Christianity into a weird, rigid set of actions, rules and orders.  But, the problem is that the expected points of views have nothing to do with the Gospel, which is the only essential point to Christianity. You can believe all kinds of bizarre accessories, but if you have the Gospel, if God has removed your heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh which seeks Christ, you're a Christian!  It doesn't matter if you baptize babies or think the wine turns into other things at communion, or sit in silence for an hour Sunday morning, or dance with the Hare Krishnas, or sleep all day and climb trees at night or wear a tin foil hat. In Heaven, there will be Communists and Monarchists.  There will be people of all skin colors. There will be people who go to churches that you don't go to. I don't understand why people feel such a strong need to take one thing that should unify us all and turn it into a point for division.  The Gospel is the only essential point.

Look, the Gospel is that we humans are sinners and that God is merciful.  He sent His Son to atone for our sin nature so that if we believe in Him we will live forever with Him and seek to glorify Him. Here's where I get in trouble with other Christians (as usual.)  The Gospel is not that the world was created in 6 literal days, or that evolution is false, or hating homosexuals, or the American brand of modern political Conservatism.  It doesn't call one to seek to destroy any work of art or thought that acknowledges unchristian actions or ideas or godlessness.  Just because we're allowed to eat bacon doesn't mean it's compulsory for a Christian to eat bacon.  In fact, in spite of how all of the above are taken as givens in modern American Christian behavior, I think all of the above are things that I personally reject. And yet I am a Christian. What do you make of that?

Laurie:  It's all so simple. Too simple, I think. I mean too simple for people to accept at plain old face value. We want to glamor it up. Besides that, if it's free (to us) we immediately devalue it. It's human nature. It's why we, or the Treasury, can't just go printing up new dollars when we run short. What amazing beings we humans are, for whom "taking something for granted" is a statement understood to mean something we don't value! When in fact the statement, at face value means "treating something as an un-earned gift".  We sure do know how to turn things on their heads. If given a gift we either de-value it, or else refuse to accept it unless we can find a way to pay back the giver, so that we get the glory for the possession of it rather than the one who gave it.

Paul: Yes, exactly.  And thus our very response to the gift is yet another symptom of how much we need the gift.

So, back to the guru thing, the Gospel is the means to salvation, an atonement with God.  Yes, returning to where we camped earlier, my changed heart as a Christian is going to direct my life in certain directions, but the Gospel is not a philosophy, nor is it a set of rules.  It's a gift from God. Part of how it naturally modifies one's behavior is that when shown such comprehensive undeserved grace, it stands to reason that one would also seek to extend grace.  And it would also stand to reason that one should try to keep aware of just how comprehensive that grace really is.

Laurie:  What do you mean "comprehensive"?

Paul:  That it encompasses our entire being, everything we have or ever will do or think.  Our works have absolutely nothing to do with achieving our justification.  Our justification is Christ's own imputed justification.

Laurie:  So, this grace has a profound effect on our lives, but the changes are internal and not imposed by the external demands of a guru.

Now, of course there remains the fact, which our friend brought up, that there is a sense in which Jesus Christ is a guru, in that people look to Him for wisdom, and for hope, and to be transformed, and especially in that He actually told people to do that very thing. He set out to gain a following, if you will. And, since the Bible is the book written to testify to this Jesus, and through which we learn about Him, and in which we are told to continue to draw followers to Him, it in that sense could also be viewed as a guru. Now this, of course, could be said about anyone who puts himself forth as a leader, along with any literature a leader produces with the intent of gaining and keeping a following. So, I think this is were we need to begin making distinctions.

Paul: Right, because we could have an infinite regression to the point of absurdity here where any scrap of truth or wisdom could be labeled a "guru."  

Laurie:  Yes, exactly. And where would we be no absolute or objective truth? There is a point at which we decide whether someone is worthy of following, whether their claims appear to be true and their teachings of value.  The "liar, lunatic, or Lord" argument has been around for a long time, and is useful here. If Jesus is not who he claimed to be, then he was either a liar or a lunatic. I will never knowingly or willingly follow a liar or a nutcase, and no matter which way I slice it, neither the testimony of Jesus or His apostles or their writings smack of either disingenuousness or insanity. Also the testimony of history does little to dissuade me from the truth of these claims. And so, as far as gurus go, and in that sense, I have found Jesus Christ to a respectable one.

But I would also distinguish the Christian message from others in another way, in that, as Paul has alluded to, Christ does the work. He does not gain from us. He only gives to us. He does not require that we pay debts to him. He pays them. He does not make demands upon us as a Lawgiver and Judge, but comes offering a reconciliation with God that is already bought and paid for - by him - to all who will accept it. A new-found peace with God will bring about changes in a person's life, not the least of which are love for God and mankind, but these are by-products, so to speak. This is pure and simple Christianity.

Sadly, though, there are would-be gurus in this world who lack the originality to come up with their own shtick. These folks will latch onto the work of another and use it as they see fit to manipulate others and bring them under their control. The Bible has been found by some to be very useful to this end, authoritative as it is, and exclusive as it is. But, they must abuse it to accomplish their ends, because the Scripture itself warns against having any "gurus" besides Christ, and against using his teaching to create gurus for ourselves.

Paul:  So, the short answer is something along the lines of "not if you're using it right."  Is that what you're saying?

Laurie: Exactly. We must take it as it is, for what it claims to be, and use it for what it's for - or else dispose of it entirely.  As you've said elsewhere Paul, a meal tainted with poison, no matter how fine a meal, is no longer fit to be eaten. So the Gospel message, as millennia has proven, when tainted is not just useless, but dangerous. But, when taken pure, it is life and peace.

Downsizing gurus and sacred cows

Paul: You know, one thing I've noticed in my Christian walk, which has been around a half dozen years now, is that Christians are by no means immune to the celebrity worship culture within their cultural faction. I am speaking specifically of those personalities within Christianity with whom we identify with what they say and how they say it, then take the step to identifying ourselves with those individual Christian celebrities. This is not a new phenomenon, but I've run into people who might say words to the effect of "I am of Al Mohler. I am of John MacArthur. I am of John Piper."

Laurie: "...I am of Mark Driscoll. I am of R.C. Sproul. I am of John Calvin. I am of Jonathan Edwards. I am of Martin Luther. I'm Reformed...NO, I'm Reformed. And whatever you do, don't invite Rick Warren to your conference!"....Sorry, I got a little carried away.

Paul: Now, I'm not meaning to slam those individuals by any means, and I purposely picked famous pastors with decent doctrine. Along with them, there's also a lot of Christian celebrities with horrible doctrine who are put on pedestals by other Christians.

I'm also not trying to be on any high horse. In the interest of full disclosure, I love listening to Steve Brown and John Frame. I'm sure I've been guilty of putting Martin Luther on too high of a pedestal at times in my Christian walk. It happens.

It is my, and I think Laurie's, intent to talk about gurus this week. Why do we follow other humans too closely? And why is it dangerous? I would also point out the converse of what I said at the beginning that this is not peculiar to Christianity. This is something humans do and it is my belief that it is a dangerous thing that humans do.

Laurie: Yes, it is a very human thing to do. There is nothing religious about it. Or should I say, there is something very religious about it. It is at the heart, really, of almost every religion I'm acquainted with.

Paul: Well, yes, but I don't think it's a novelty confined to the world of religion. I know when I was younger I had a version of this very same phenomenon with me and some authors who I idolized and whose careers and personalities I sought to emulate. And, in some of those cases, you end up holding the bag in sort of a Richard Cory situation because you don't really know these people. All you know is a highly edited product with their name on it.

Laurie: Yeah, me too. Only I wasn't as smart as you. For me it wasn't authors, it was musicians and celebrities. I had exceptionally poor taste in gurus. But, hey, it could have been worse. Look what happened to those Manson girls.

Paul: Well, that's part of what I'm saying and given the contemporary authors I was interested in, I wasn't exactly the pinnacle of wisdom. And there's a huge problem with saying "I love so and so" or "I want to be like so and so" when you don't know them personally and probably never will. This was shattered for me a few years ago when two of the contemporary authors I'd idolized in college both, entirely separately, killed themselves within a very short window of time of one another. Although by that time I'd moved into a life more independent from gurus, I have to say I was struck by the contrast of two men I once thought I wanted to be like who had both committed suicide.

Laurie: Well, there you go. What I was getting at was, that there is just nothing Christian about it. It is actually a very anti-Christian phenomenon. What I mean is, we are specifically instructed in Scripture not to do this very thing. As you said, it is dangerous. It destroys the church, and it destroys its people. I hope you, and those who read along who don't share our faith, will bear with me while I quote a bit longer from Scripture than I normally would in this setting:

"I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment....But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ...for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, 'I follow Paul,' and another, 'I follow Apollos,' are you not being merely human?...I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another....'knowledge' puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God....For we know in part and we prophecy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away..." (1 Cor. 1:10; 1 Cor. 3:1,3-4; 1 Cor. 4:6; 1 Cor. 8:3,4; 1 Cor. 9:9,10,12; 1 Cor, 13:9-10)

And notice all that talk of "the flesh". That means just what you were saying, Paul, that it's just base human nature to behave that way. But, like you said, behaving that "human" way is dangerous, and your namesake agrees. In another place Paul (the apostle) says:

"For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another." (Gal. 5:13-15)

The guru mindset is dangerous on a number of levels. I say "mindset" because it can apply not to just an individual guru, but also to a particular movement, or system - a "brand". In this case one will swallow just about anything said by anyone that falls under a particular umbrella, or carries the right "brand name".

Paul: Right, and this is what I think lays in the core of the matter. I see this time and time again. Dittoheading is very attractive to humans because we tend toward the lazy and the quick path to self-righteousness, self-assurance. It removes any need for original thought. You get a set reaction approved by the guru and you apply that knee-jerk reaction wherever applicable (and sometimes, embarrassingly, where it isn't. I can't tell you how often I've mentioned something about science near a Christian and had them blurt out of the blue something about evolution being false.) But I think I've opened a few cans and derailed a few trains here. You were talking about The Church specifically and the tendency toward following gurus.

Laurie: Yes, I was, but so are you, tangentially anyway. Anyway, you're getting ahead of me.

On one hand this brand-name type of thinking destroys Christian love and leads to us tearing each other and the church apart. I've witnessed, and to some extent participated in, much of this and let me say, we Reformed-types can be among the worst. We feel we have the right, because we are so concerned about doctrinal precision. But if the the authority of Scripture is really foremost in our hearts and minds, then why are we so quick to disregard to warnings of the apostle Paul in so many places? What I have in mind just this moment is the recent outcry against John Piper for inviting Rick Warren to speak at his upcoming Desiring God Conference.

Paul: Which, for the record, I applaud. We need more bridges.


Laurie: Oh yeah, me too. But, speaking of bridges, in response to this deal I heard a reformed-type whip out an R.C. Sproul quote: "The thing about building a bridge is that traffic comes from both sides." Whatever that means.


Paul: Well, who knows what the original context may have been, but in this case the quoter seems to imply that we don't want to build bridges because the rabble will come over to Our side and some of Our people will go over to Their side. Clearly we can't have that here on Elitist Isolationist Island!


Laurie: I have to admit, the kerfluffle over this has left me feeling a bit ill. I'm stunned really. I've yet to hear the reformed-types taunt Piper for his extensive and on-going admiration of C.S. Lewis. Why is that? Lewis was not Reformed, and even believed in purgatory of all things, and that's not all. (Now, before you jump down my throat here, remember, I love C.S. Lewis. I look forward to meeting him in Heaven. But he, too, was a flawed human being.) It's just so ironic to me is all. Oh, the complaints the Reformed have against Rick Warren! (And, yes, I understand them.) But, the man is not a heretic. He's just not reformed. He preaches Christ crucified, and whatever one may think of his methods, that is what matters. And here's a bit of sound doctrine to back me up:

"Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will....What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice." Phil. 1:15:18

I've finally come to the place in my Christian life where I'd rather participate in a group where Christian love is preeminent. If forced to choose, I will choose love over perfect doctrine. And I wish with all my heart that such decisions were not necessary. Sound doctrine without love is not Christianity, it is dead orthodoxy; Christian love is the truest form of doctrine, and the fulfilling of all God's commands.

Paul: At the risk of being labeled a liberal or Emergent or some other disparaging buzzword our Reformed brothers and sisters toss around like dodgeballs, perhaps love is perfect doctrine.

Laurie: It is the one doctrine that will never fail and the one most essential to the Gospel. "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34-35, See also 1 Cor. 13, 1 John 3:14-23) Seeing that love is this critical to the gospel, why is it that it's never more Christian love we are fighting for?

Paul: And why is it that I hear people concerned with right doctrine mocking things like "people who just want to hear about love", "just preaching the Gospel", or "being all about Grace"??? Why on Earth would any of those be bad things? Frankly, given the choice of fitting into a historical confession (I have yet to find one that I do) or fitting the bill of those three phrases, I'll take the love, Gospel and Grace, thank you very much.

Laurie: I'm so glad I married you. If it weren't for you, and the grace of God you're always extending to me, I'd be a miserable and intolerable legalist.

Well, I'd like to get back to that other point you mentioned - the danger of becoming a ditto-head, brainwashed, in a position of near-blind following. As you said, we begin to let our guru do our thinking for us, letting them become the filter through which we view everything. We begin to trust our leader to interpret Scripture and life's events for us. In a sense, we come to trust them more than the Scripture, in that we let them be the filter of what the Bible says rather than the other way around.

Paul: Clearly there are wonderful insights to be learned from others. Teaching from a variety of sources is a very illuminating thing and I think we ought to have more and more intramural conversation with varied points of view. It broadens our horizons and teaches us aspects we may not have thought of on our own. I have strong suspicions that the Gates of Heaven are far wider than any of us tend to imagine. But that's exactly my point. While listening to many people is of great value, no one of them is the final authority. Nor is any one group of them. I mean, I just think about how often I'm wrong and then apply that same flawed humanity to anyone who might become a guru.

Laurie: Yes, we need each other desperately, which is one reason why it's such a travesty when we allow ourselves to be divided over anything less than core gospel truths. Like limbs separated from a body become useless, so do we when we overestimate our capacities and cut ourselves off from the rest of the body.

Paul: I daresay that is one of the harms of idolatry in any form. Of course, the main being it's misplacing one's worship and the purpose of one's very life by worshiping something other than He who alone is worthy of worship. But idolatry also focuses us in unhealthy directions, limiting us to sort of a self-imposed intellectual retardation. As opposed to what neo-atheists might wish one to believe (in their defense, I suspect most of them have not encountered many earnest Christians), seeking to worship God is the one way out of that trap. People are otherwise putting things in small boxes or sometimes seemingly enormous boxes, but boxes all the same. I would give as an example the compulsive need some Christians have to discount and discredit any mention of science because they've bought the hype that science and religion are at odds. This is a very new phenomenon. A more classical view of science is that the more we learn about the universe as it objectively is revealed by our scientific findings the more we learn of God (to paraphrase Calvin's famous view of the two kinds of knowledge.)

In other words, my presuppositions are that there is ultimate truth and that I have yet to figure it out completely. And so has everyone else. But in its existence as ultimate truth, one must accept it on the terms in which it reveals itself, not on the terms in which one would wish. Which I think is somewhere in the same zip code where true science and true religion meet.

When we start building a box in which we view all of reality, idolatry is exactly what we are doing. This is what following a guru without question of any kind accomplishes no matter how close they come to truth. Reality does not fit in boxes and neither does God. We must accept Him on the terms in which He reveals Himself. While maps may be extremely helpful we should not confuse them with the territory.

Laurie: Well put, dear friend! And that is, I suppose, the deepest and most lasting danger - the subtle idolatry of it all. And as Christians it leads us to warp the gospel, sometimes beyond recognition. But there's another kind of danger that I don't want to overlook, it's the more immediate and obvious kind, the kind that causes unimaginable suffering in the here and now and shrouds the name of Christ in scandal. It is guru mentality that leads people to withhold medical care from their children as an act of faith; that leads many to refrain from any form of birth control even at the risk of a mother's life and health in a mis-guided understanding of what it means to be "pro-life", and an over-extension of a single Old Testament reference; that's apparently led to at least one child being literally spanked to death, because a guru taught that a spanking is not complete until the child is completely submitted; that's led to the deaths of 909 people in Jonestown; that's led to child marriages and polygamy, to "Christian" militias, to the Manson Family.... I could go on, but I think you get my point. The thing is, no one sets out to get themselves a guru, or to join a cult. They want some truth and some feelings of righteousness and end up settling for just that - some truth and a lot of self-righteousness. Once they have that, they are inclined to swallow whatever else comes along with it.

Paul: There seems to be no end to the examples available. I think, in conclusion, the lesson I glean from this is to listen to all kinds of people with all kinds of points of view. Keep an open mind and heart, keep questioning and thinking through things, hold people's ideas up to the light of Scripture and seek to draw closer to God. Although I'm no longer a carnivore nor specifically a Discordian, I think Robert Anton Wilson may have put it succinctly when he said "Sacred cows make the best hamburgers."

Laurie: Well, that certainly makes sense, seeing as they are no doubt the best fed and most lovingly nurtured cows of all....Vegetarian or no, every so often I get an overwhelming craving for tri-tip....

Watch your language!

Paul:  We start this week with an item that I would rather not be bringing more publicity.  However, it was our gateway into discussing the week's topic.  Please know we are in no way endorsing or recommending this film.  We are merely mentioning it.  Although I have my suspicions that our demographic of blog readers is most likely not a group we really need to worry about in this case.

Someone within the scope of my vision on the vast Twitter wasteland mentioned a forthcoming remake or "reboot" of the 1980s "classic" horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street.  Off I went to Youtube and squandered 10 minutes of my life in front of two trailers for said film for reasons that I am now at a total loss to explain.  I had a number of reactions, many of them were horror for reasons I assume were not the ones intended by the film makers.  One reaction I had was surprise at how much of the material I was familiar with.  It seems to be a compilation of favorite bits from the entire Nightmare on Elm Street series (the angry mob burning the human Krueger, the children with that imbecilic numerical song-poem about Freddy, the hand in the bathtub, the amazing, invisible, levitating evisceration) reenacted by the same caliber of teenage actors as the original (minus any Depp) and a version of Freddy Krueger played by a new actor made to look more accurately like a burn victim (Robert Englund, the original Krueger, is somewhere in his mid-60s by now.)

Laurie:  Well, I'm ashamed (or should I say "proud"?) to say that I've never seen a single one of those films.  I outgrew my love for the horror genre a year or so before these came out.  The horrors that I had enjoyed were never human.  They were zombies, ghosts, sharks, monsters, etc. The idea of replacing monsters with human actors seemed to me then as they do now, 1) too scary by way of being far too possible and 2) too scary by way of knowing this might just be putting sick ideas in the head of someone who sitting just a row or two away from me at that very moment. In fact, I would likely have avoided dating anyone I knew to be into those kinds of films...

Paul: First of all, zombies and ghosts used to be human just like Freddy Krueger used to be human, but I understand what you're saying.  It's gone even further with the more recent fad of torture-tainment movies like the "Saw" franchise.  I would like to say I wouldn't have dated anyone who was into such things, but you've seen my ex-girlfriends.

Laurie:  Well, not to be difficult, but I don't believe in zombies or ghosts, and do am not afraid of what they might do to me.  I do, however, believe in humans...
 
Paul: "Wait a minute," I hear our readers cry, "why are we talking about this?"  And why do I, Paul Mathers, know so much about this?  Well, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I would refer you to earlier posts regarding my mis-spent youth, although even I was a little surprised to discover how much of my brain is devoted to storing information about a series of slasher films, a genre that I've never liked.  The only explanation I have to give is that I spent a lot of my young years doing things I didn't particularly like or enjoy in the company of peers who at the very least pretended  they wanted to be doing those things.  Because people aren't exactly seeking out my company for my good looks.  In short, I was the textbook sucker for peer pressure.

So, it's another example of the stark realization of the many years I spent starving to death eating only Circus Peanuts while a nourishing and delicious feast was right in front of me for the partaking of.  Awakening to my jejune cultural diet was one of the key plot points and directional forces in my adult life.  Now I want to run down the street and grab people by the collar and shout "Do you realize Pride and Prejudice is so much better without zombies?!!?"   

Laurie: In the spirit of ongoing honesty, yes, that was the sound of me clicking the pronunciation tool at www.dictionary.com, while looking up the definition of "jejune".


Paul:  Now, more to my point, one could argue that the Nightmare franchise explored more varied and complex themes than other slasher films of its day (mind you, I am not personally making that argument).   They certainly didn't go into the rather Catholic morality of the Friday the XIII movies and did not quite hit the sadistic voyeurism of the Hellraiser films.  Instead they were firmly planted in post-Piaget, Spock, and Free To Be You and Me pop-child psychology, specifically exploring: neglect of children, fear, insomnia, mob mentalities and the destruction they cause, the long-term, far reaching effects of tragedy, cycles of abuse, cruelty to animals and the red flags that sends up in regards to a person's moral compass, perhaps one might say something about socio-economics in that Krueger was a lonely, working class janitor (the modern remake seems from the trailers to suggest he was falsely accused of child murder and killed as a scapegoat by bourgeois families in the area), and in the first and highly bizarre sequel (A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2) Freddy seemed to be a manifestation of a young man's latent homosexuality.

Laurie:  Ah, sorry, I know I'm interrupting, but you skittered over a topic that's on my mind a lot: "cruelty to animals and the red flags that sends up in regards to a person's moral compass".  I can't tell you how often I've observed in the course of 4.6 decades how reflective one's treatment of animals tends to be of one's treatment of humanity in general, and of children in particular. I don't want to open that can of worms right now, but perhaps we could in a future discussion.

Paul: I think we might be able to work ourselves into a whole blog post over that.

But I want to say that what I said above about the varieties of themes the Nightmare films discuss is way overstating a case.  This is what is referred to as "egghead" discussion akin to writing a doctoral thesis on the social dynamics of the Three Stooges or the feminist view of Baywatch.  It's an unfortunate marriage between the high and low brow which generally neglects the former, the sign of a mind mired in the latter.  Unfortunately, such things are epidemic in the modern academic community.  It's the "I can't believe we're actually talking about this in this manner" conversation and, I'll admit, I brought the whole subject up to elicit that response from you.  I apologize for the emotional manipulation in my attempt to drive my points home.  As it were. Which brings me to my point.

Laurie: Ah, there is a point. I was just wondering.

Paul:  Well, I'll let you be the judge of that.

I'm not entirely sure people should be using the word "classic" in this case and it is now my intention to explore the meaning of that word.  I'm not sure it's appropriate to assign the same term one uses for Cicero, Robert Burns, and Goethe.  It is not a Joseph Campbell style, eternally recurring archetype expressing fear of the unknown and man's inhumanity to man.  Let's not kid ourselves.  It is a series of films designed to make teenage boys say "Whoa!  Didja see how she got killed there?!!?"  And, indeed, any such discussion of more complex social issues within the series I assure you probably comprises about a 30 minute block of film out of eight full length feature films of episodic surrealistically violent eye-candy.

And yet we do throw that term around lightly.  We have classic cars, classic cartoons, carbonated sugar water called Classic, whole radio stations committed to the eternal replay of what they call "classic rock and roll". 

Laurie: Well, I think the word "classic" has come to mean anything from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to, well, the kind of thing you're talking about.  It has about as much range as the word "love" - (I love ice cream; I love Jesus; I love buttons, I love flossing my teeth, and I love you.) We really do seem to be suffering from a language dearth, and a bad habit of getting a word, falling in love with it, and, like an old 45 record, playing it over and over in every possible situation until it has lost its umpf and eventually its effect.   Anyway, classic can refer to Led Zeppelin, or to Huey Lewis - depending on who you ask.   It can mean "something so great, it has stood the test of generations". Or, it can mean "something that makes me feel nostalgic".  I think these days nostalgia is what most folks have in mind -  that is, whatever puts us in mind of "the good old days", which invariably translates into "the days when I had no real responsibility and was too young to know how bad things really were". (I've noticed, by the way, the time it takes for something to achieve "nostalgia" status is almost exactly two decades. Think Happy Days in the 70's, Vietnam war movies in the '80's, "'80's nights" in nightclubs in the '00's. It took 18-20 years before we could listen to the BeeGee's again without feeling ill, assuming we ever could in the first place.  Really.)

Paul:   Which is hardly "standing the test of time."

Along with "love" and "classic" one might add some other movable words like "life," "beautiful," "art," "genius."  All of those are thrown at a wide variety of subjects.  "Crazy" may fit the bill.  "Real life" or "reality" are getting a little fuzzy in some areas.  I would give a nod here to the many people reading this who I consider my friends whom I have never met in person and am not likely to.

But I wonder if this is good and wise to throw these words around so widely and undermine definitions.  Or maybe we're reaching the point where we might benefit from new, more specific words for clarification.  "Classic" does seem to carry some weight of qualitative judgment, but it's difficult to distinguish how.  I don't see people often calling something a "classic" if they hate it, even if it has stood the test of time.  Of course, "standing the test of time" is also becoming a movable definition.  I think a work should at least be old enough that if it were human it could collect Social Security before we consider whether or not we're going to call it a classic.  As it is, popular music that wouldn't even be old enough to buy cigarettes is being played on "Classic rock" radio stations.

Laurie: Oh, and that reminds me of that other definition of classic: old. Pretty much anything that was made in black and white gets called "classic", as does anything on vinyl.

Paul: Well, if we're talking definitions, there's also Classical in the sense of "in the manner of the Ancient Greeks."  But we're talking about the undermining of the association with excellence in the term "Classic."

But I think it would take a very rare person to put Wes Craven on the level of Beethoven. Some might say "apples and oranges", but most would probably agree that there is no need for future generations to be taught about Freddy Krueger in the classroom.  However, when something creeps into the collective consciousness and becomes a myth that we all share... But I'm doing it again, aren't I?  That egghead thing.  But believe it or not, there is a ripe, valid and valuable life lesson within plucking reach here.

Because we know about the very real, tangible power of language.  We know that at times and situations words can literally cure some diseases or at least curb pain, words can put people to sleep, words can cause people to fall in love with one another, to worship any number of things, to kill one another.  So, what happens to someone, or a society even, who can turn on one channel where a twee British man in a smoking jacket sipping 14 year old brandy from a snifter says, "Thomas Hardy wrote some of the greatest classics in the history of the novel form", and then press a button and an eyeblink later on a different channel  hear someone say, "Come on down and try our new dinner meal featuring Arby's classic roast beef sandwich."  Even if you've read Thomas Hardy and agree with the Masterpiece Theater guy and you hate Arby's sandwiches (or, at least, you're a vegetarian and won't eat them) that does something to a brain which I would think also does something to a society.

Laurie:  Hmm. You've brought something to mind..... Leveling. In the study I've been doing through Jonathan Edwards' lectures on Christian love, this week's lesson focused specifically on humility -  about love not being puffed up and parading itself and the like. One of the points Edwards made was that humility prevents "leveling behavior," meaning, true humility is happy to see true greatness recognized for what it is, and does not wish to see it brought low.  Conversely, it does not like to see what is ignoble raised up to greatness, and even more especially when it leads to the diminishing of that which is truly praiseworthy.  Love and humility are content to see everything great praised to the extent of its greatness, everything un-praiseworthy receive no praise, and everything in between regarded appropriately according to its true merit. Could it be, that what we are dealing with is a matter of arrogance - an unwillingness to evaluate things according to common standards of objective value and greatness, but rather to rank them by subjecting them to our own limited scope and understanding? In other words, "I have very good taste. I like it, and I've liked it for what seems like a really long time to me, therefore it is a classic." Everything becomes subjective. Everything means what I want it to mean, and has the value I place on it.

Paul:  This is what is at the heart of two of my most used phrases.  If you have a few conversations with me you'll inevitably hear me say either "Doctrine dictates lifestyle" or "Morality is not a movable feast" or both at some point.  So often we see words twisted to where hate is done in the name of love, war in the name of peace, selfishness in the name of compassion.  At the risk of opening a fresh barrel of worms here as we're trying to wrap up, oftentimes there is some guru, some twisted individual behind these twistings with an agenda, or at the very least a book to sell.  Cui bono?

Although not always.  Sometimes it's just the key symptom of an ailing culture as we see in the case of people who are willing to bring Caravaggio down and the Arby's roast beef sandwich up to the same level with a word.  If anyone's interested, I would prescribe very scant use of the word "classic" and instead stretch your vocabulary to employ words like "excellent."

Laurie: Or "lovely", or "delicate", or "carefully crafted", or "timelessly beautiful", or "worthy of emulation"....boy, my vocabulary needs work.  I'm more a product of the age than I care to admit. My first thought when you handed me the Cadbury Creme Egg just now was, "Ah, a classic!"

Paul: Whereas, were we being precise, which it is my argument that we should be, we would say "I find this to be excellent and it has stood the test of time!"  We say "Ah, a classic" because it is expedient, although if the word becomes diluted enough it ceases to have any meaning at all.  This importance on precision and sticking to actual meaning carries into all parts of our lives and characters. 

Laurie: Yes, it does. You know I'm a stickler for precision in language.  One thing that really drives me bats is ambiguous language, and even more so when someone (perhaps that guru you mentioned earlier) uses it intentionally to deceive, mislead, distract, or confuse. I've found such language used commonly in doctrinal statements of ministries.  I've heard it from the mouths of door to door cult recruiters. I detest hearing, for instance, the use of the word "grace" by a person who is trying to tell me how to earn it.

Paul:  Yeah, no kidding!  You want to talk about nightmares, I can think of little worse than if God required us to earn our salvation.  Nothing could be more hopeless.  Thank God for His undeserved grace.

More discussion of babies and bathwater

Laurie: Paul, I envy you the cleanness of your conversion....I'm not sure envy is the right word, but I think you'll get what I mean.

I started off Lutheran. I mean that's the denomination with which my mother affiliated us, and those were the schools I went to growing up. That's the religion I was told I was, and I never questioned that. I memorized the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, the Ten Commandments, the 23rd Psalm, John 3:16 and Romans 6:23, most of the Lutheran Liturgy and likely every hymn penned by Martin Luther himself. I believed every word. I mean I never doubted that mine, Christianity, was the right religion. Then, at age 17, I got converted to a different brand of Christianity, Word of Faith Pentecostalism. They said my Lutheran church was a "dead denomination". My new brand was "spirit-filled" - "alive". They showed me how to speak in tongues, how to speak faith (and whatever else I thought I was entitled to as a child of the King) into existence through repetition of promises from the Bible, how to nit-pick the sins, demons and stumbling blocks which blocked the power of the spoken Word of God from fulfilling the promises I'd been claiming. If my prayers weren't answered, or the promises people prophecied over me, or the things I'd been claiming by faith didn't come to pass - or if bad things happened to me - I was to blame. It was either my failure to keep my faith properly built up, or I'd let the devil in some how, some way. I learned, thank you very much TBN, that if you played the devil's music backwards it would sound exactly like Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven, and the Eagles, Hotel California, too. If TBN had heard of Parliament and Earth Wind and Fire, they'd have assured me that was of the devil too. Wait a minute...now that I mention it, I'm pretty sure they did mention Earth Wind and Fire, since their most recent album of the time was covered with ancient Egyptian symbols - but I know they'd never heard of funk. Anyway, all secular music was a potential demon portal.

Paul: And here all these years I thought that was Arnold Schoenberg's music.

Laurie: Perhaps you should hyper-link Arnold Schoenberg. So I can find out who he is.

Paul: Yeah, you see, you think you want me to do that right now, but... Oh, all right. It'll make an appropriate soundtrack for people to listen to as they read what you're about to say. But I'm also going to link to this science story which talks about how Schoenberg and his types are part of why no one can (or does) listen to modern classical.

Laurie: Anyway, thousands of dollars worth of vinyl went out with the Tuesday trash. I'd have set fire to it, but I was afraid to hear the demons' shrieking which I'd heard sometimes accompanied such burnings....No doubt there were a few records that deserved that treatment, maybe there were a couple of Osmond records left in that collection, but otherwise, well, I feel ill at the memory of such ridiculous waste.

My mother fell into the same brand of church as I did, just a few months after me, though I had nothing to do with it. Her demon portals were frogs, owls, wine coolers and colas. There were no doubt more, but those are the ones I can remember. She had the cutest collection of kitchen canisters with the cutest, happiest little frogs on them, and nifty '70's macrame owl art, all of which she learned were satanic symbols, all of which had to go. Allowing such things in the house was like hanging a welcome sign to the devil.

Paul: Before you go on, why are frogs and owls evil? Says who and where are they getting their information? I get the wine cooler thing.

Laurie: Hmmm, well, you're getting this from me three decades later, and at least third hand, but as I recall the frog thing had to do with Rev. 16:13: "And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet." As for owls, I really don't know, except maybe because it's nocturnal, and one of those critters, like black cats, that is sometimes associated with Halloween. The thing is, once my mom heard such a suggestion, she could no longer rest. The superstition and fear associated with these belief systems can be pretty powerful.

Paul: Clearly.

Laurie:  So, together, or at least in parallel fashion, Mom and I were learning about the Rapture, the Anti-Christ, the great Tribulation (remembering to always keep them in that order), Christian bookstores, Ken Copeland, TBN, Christian music, prophecy, word curses, a 6000 year old earth, the power of the spoken word, the threat of secular humanism, the "new age movement", and myriad forms of legalism. My mother was already a Republican, and so was I, again, by association, so we did not have any adjustments to make there. "Our" politics were permitted to remain intact. In short, we were indoctrinated to the Christian sub-culture, or at least one corner of it. I can't speak for my mother's heart back then, but I can definitely say for myself that, other than the trappings, I was the same person; nothing had changed for me, except the rules. I was not kinder, gentler, more patient. I was not holier, although I was "holier than thou".

Paul: I think one of the more disturbing elements that I run across so often in Christianity is when Christians tell other Christians that they shouldn't look at, listen to or associate with anything that isn't specifically in their official Christian idiom. "Look for the Christian label." Usually this is the sort of thing one hears especially from more cultic circles ("don't listen to anyone else's interpretations") which kind of amazes me that any vestiges of that mindset remain in more solid Christian circles. I mean, the whole phenomenon of "throwing away all of your secular music" at conversion is a manifestation of this same separationism. I know from personal experience that when I would bring a book with me to church, some people would expect an explanation when I wasn't reading something from the Christian bookstore. Especially if I were reading Christopher Hitchens or Nietzsche or something distinctly anti-Christian (not that that would stop me, mind you.)

Laurie: Exactly, and nothing ever has stopped you, thank God.

Truth is, I don't remember how I learned these rules. It wasn't as if someone sat me down and gave me the lecture. You pick up on it piece-meal - in sermons, passages in assorted books, and disapproving looks. Always having been both a reader and (until about 5 years ago) a TV watcher, I'm sure I picked up most of it in the Christian bookstore, and through TBN. You'll gather here, that I've yet to mention having learned a whit of this from the Bible - though there are verses used here and there to back all of this up - verses like 1 John 2:15, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." But the problem is, these Scriptures would be used so selectively as to render them meaningless. I mean, how is it you can preach that verse to mean I ought not have a glass of wine, or listen to secular music, but out of the other side of your mouth preach that God's people where meant to be healthy and wealthy, and that it's a better witness to outsiders if you have a BMW than a beat up Pontiac?

But, back to my little narrative: I had acquired a set of rules which made me feel quite spiritual and secretly a bit superior, but only for as long as I could keep them. I was exactly the same person as I'd been before, and it was only a matter of time before the excitement over being able to speak in tongues, and my new "discoveries" waned and began to be crowded out by my old excitements. You know there are a lot of great big plot points I'm skipping here. Along with all this, I witnessed a lot of garbage being done in the name of Christ, which I, even in the pathetic spiritual condition I was in, sensed was wrong as wrong could be. I gave up on church for years, went wild, got in a boatload of trouble which left me as a single young mother deciding that if I wanted life to go better for me I should start trying to "live like a Christian" again. So, first thing I do, besides going to church again, was...wait for it....I sold all the records I'd accumulated during my waywardness. Good-bye Billy Idol (everybody knows that the FFF acronym of, Flesh For Fantasy, really stands for 666); good-bye Cult (too obvious); good-bye Tears for Fears (they were into psychology); good-bye Smiths (vegetarians); good-bye Love and Rockets (spiritual sounding stuff I didn't know the meaning of); good-bye Prince (need I explain?)....

Paul: And I bet they were on vinyl too! We could have paid off our mortgages with some of those.

Laurie: Yes, vinyl....and all in protective plastic sleeves...

...and there was a lot more...some of which, admittedly I still would not listen to today - I hardly listen to music anymore anyway - but which I might get a kick out of looking at from time to time.

And, again, I was still the same person, trying again to live by the Christian rules, thinking that is what it means to be a Christian. During that particular iteration, someone gave me a book. I don't remember who gave it to me, but I remember the book. It was called "Grace Plus Nothing". It's message was that God's grace was sufficient to save us. Our works did not gain us favor. I only read far enough to get that point and threw it away thinking, "What a load of crap?" At this point in my life, following rules seemed easier.

Paul: Easier than free, undeserved grace?

Laurie: Maybe "easier" isn't quite what I meant. More like sensible, logical. I mean nobody gets something for nothing, right? You have to at least try to repay the debt, right? God forgives those who try real hard....What's that verse in the Bible? Oh, yeah, "God helps those who help themselves!" What?

Okay, that's Ben Franklin.  But he was an American, so that must mean he's a Christian, right?

So, where was I? Okay, 1992, I had little kids after all; my wild days were over. But then I fell into a different kind of legalism - the kind that goes through the Bible verse by verse converting everything in sight into a system of rules, really spiritual rules. On top of the rest, now I was supposed to not lust in my heart, always make the best choices, listen for the "voice of God" in every decision, "avoid every appearance of evil" which I was told meant, whatever anyone else could construe my actions to mean. So, for instance, I was not supposed to wash my boyfriend's laundry - because someone might find out about it and think we were having sex. I'm not making this up. I began to be overwhelmed with guilt. I couldn't even look at my Bible without a sense of dread. So I put it away until I was 40 years old - a whole marriage and divorce later.

But here's the thing, all those years, I thought the people who were able to pull off the "Christian life" were able to do it because they were good Christians. Now, don't get me wrong, some of them were, but what I later found out was that an awful lot of them were just, for whatever reason, a whole lot better at following rules. A lot of them just did well with that lifestyle. I, on the other hand, could never pull it off. And then it happened. At the age of 40 I really got saved. I really realized I was hopelessly lost in sin, that I really needed a Savior. But it wasn't just that, I realized, for the first time in my life that God was kind and loving, and that He really loved me. Suddenly, for the first time in my life I loved God. I was really a Christian - or at least I desperately wanted to be. I wanted to love God like that all my days, and die trusting Him and spend forever with Him. I didn't want to waste any more of my life, not one minute of it. So guess what I almost immediately did....nope, I didn't get rid of my music (that was one thing I wasn't going to do again); I got rid of hundreds of books. Now, understand, there were some things in my life that really did need to go, like the almost 12-pack of Bud Light I drank every night after work, and the Marlboros I smoked like a chimney....but books?! I didn't just get rid of the junky novels, but classics too, just because they weren't "Christian". It wasn't long before what had started as joyful love for God began subtly morphing into legalism. I didn't feel it happening, because it felt so good, at least for a while....I never have been any good at following a system.

And then you came along, Paul.

Paul: Yes, and I was getting saved at about the same time you were. I didn't get rid of almost anything, although I had years of awkward experiences with fellow Christians. And to this day most of my closest friends are not Christians.

The thing about me and Christianity is that I would not by any means be a Christian were it not for one thing: The Gospel. I am fully convinced of The Gospel. If I weren't, there is no way I would be a Christian. I would probably be a Buddhist or one of the neo-Atheists. One of the silly ones with with Flying Spaghetti Monster fish on their cars. The Christian accessories hold no attraction for me and, at the risk of getting more hate mail, the official Christian political party doesn't strike me as having particularly Christian attitudes.

The Gospel is the only thing keeping me a Christian. 

Laurie: And that is what I meant by the "cleanness" of your conversion. Because of the Gospel alone you became a Christian, and because of it you remain one.

Paul: Which seems a little strange to me as what you're talking about, what you're saying is "the cleanness" of my conversion, is probably the thing about me that I receive the most consistent criticism for in Christian circles.

Laurie:  Which is what exactly?

Paul:  Which is that I'm out of costume, character, uniform, whatever. 

Laurie:  Yeah, and that's a really, really sad thing.

But the truth is, it's the same for me, and for anyone else who is truly a follower of Christ - I mean that the Gospel and the Gospel alone is why we are what we are; but the purity of faith in Christ can get so cluttered up and so quickly confused with all the extra stuff we are taught to attach to it, or by the stuff we hope to gain by it. We end up putting on the "uniform" because it's what's expected, and then it becomes all about keeping up the appearance of the uniform, which was never required in the first place, and what's underneath gets forgotten. I guess it shouldn't come as such a surprise really. As long as there has been a Gospel, there have been people eager to pervert it with rules and regulations and use it to temporal advantage. As the apostle Paul said in his letter to the young church at Galatia:

"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel - not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ...." (Gal.1:6-7)

When I really began to get to know you well, Paul, I actually had some concerns about you, about your lack of legalism - although I wouldn't have put it that way. I thought of it more as a lack of spirituality. I'd see your Grateful Dead t-shirts, your CD's, and videos, and all those books you love so much. Very few of these things bore the Christian label. And, for Pete's sake, you aren't even a Republican!

Paul:  No, I'm registered with the Peace and Freedom Party if anyone wants to know. They've run a Black Panther, a socialist economist, and Dr. Benjamin Spock as presidential candidates before.

Laurie: Well, fortunately for you (I guess) you hadn't gone that far when I was getting to know you. You were just a Democrat (just! haha!) I wasn't really sure it was possible to be a real Christian and not be a Republican until I got to know you. I also had a hard time understanding how you live a life so free of guilt (as if guilt were the sign of a true Christian). I'd been guilty of thinking that feeling guilty is the necessary penance for sin - that the more guilt-stricken I felt, the more repentant I was. When I didn't see you walking around feeling guilty over every imperfection I was puzzled. But the more I knew you, the more I realized that your faith was real and true -  that you were freer of guile or hypocrisy than anyone I've known.

Paul: Well, the guilt manifested in acute regret before you and I were a couple, which I came to understand was unhelpful.  With Christ's imputed righteousness, I'm free in God's Grace.  Also, a much more helpful goal for me has been aspiring Godward rather than feeling guilt and shame over my blazing, glaring missteps on the road to sanctification.    

Laurie:  You are a Christian because of Christ alone. You remain a Christian because of Christ alone. Your faith in Christ lends grace and beauty to the rest of your life. You live a holy life, but it's nothing like what I thought a holy life was supposed to look like. You, my husband, are a friend of sinners. Imagine that- a Christian who's a friend of sinners!

Paul:  That's very kind of you, but I assure everyone out there that I occasionally have bad manners as well.  There's nothing good about me outside of the grace of God and the wife He's given me.