At an Epicenter

The church that I serve is mere miles (2.3) from the now famous St. Francis Prep, and the lives of many of the congregation and staff here are intertwined with the students there. I ask that you remember the community of Flushing in your prayers as we have frightened parents, school closings, general population anxiety, and most importantly people sick with the flu.

Thank you,

Justin

The Complexity of Faith

Stephen L. Carter in his NY Times Op-Ed Article writes about the complexity of the issues that face our nation and our tendency to simplify things to slogans and "applause" lines. He writes that "Whether we argue over war or the economy, marriage or religion, abortion or guns, we reduce our ideas to just the right size for the adolescent tantrum of the bumper sticker." Read the article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25carter.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=stephen%20carter&st=cse

In the article he notes:

Forty-five years ago, in his classic essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” Richard Hofstadter warned against this tendency, and worried that it would recur in every era. There is, he suggested, something in the Western psyche that too often makes us retreat to a vision of politics inwhich there is no complexity.

I fear that in the psyche of the church there is something that too often makes us retreat to a vision of God and faith in which there is no complexity.

My hope for us as a denomination is that we can be reminded by Carter's article on Democracy, that like Democracy, faith and religion need dialogue and complexity more than bumper stickers and tag lines to grow and be healthy.

Being Consistent

A lot of discussion in recent years in regards to faith and politics revolves around legislating morality. Abortion, gay marriage, taxes and spreading the wealth all seem to in some way fall into the category of legislating morality.

The question of pro-life/pro-choice is whether the government has the right to tell a woman if she can or can't have an abortion, and also how she should value life.

The question of gay marriage is similar, depending on how you view homosexuality. Banning gay marriage becomes an issue of legislating morality by decreeing who can and can't get married and if a homosexual lifestyle is moral.

Taxing the wealthy more in order to give to the poor (as has been a topic of earlier discussion on the Herald blogs) is an issue of legislating morality by mandating through taxes the spreading of wealth and caring for the poor vs. people doing it on their own.

One thing that is important to me is to be theologically consistent. Though it often seems that people (myself included) are not consistent in regards to what or how much morality the government can legislate.  I wonder if it is possible to determine how much the government should do and if we dare draw lines.

So I throw this out there.....how and when should government legislate morality...if at all?

This is my theological conundrum of the day.

Signs of the Kingdom

Lou Lotz in his February Signs of the Kingdom article makes a profound yet simple statement about sin, "God forgives us the consequences of being sinners, but not the consequences of our sins." Another mentor/friend of mine once told me that every Reformed minister needs a health doctrine of sin.....that there is still loads of it in the world. Both of these people have helped me in beginning to understand the world as it is today.

We are a world and a people redeemed by Christ. While sin no longer holds an eternal power over us, we still sin and have to face the consequences of that sin. Greed has left this country in one huge economic mess. Pride leaves us isolated and alone. Lust and Adultery destroy marriages. Just to name a few. While sin is not some sort of Karmic force where one good thing = one bad thing, to have a healthy doctrine of sin, is to know that we are still mired both in our own sin and other's sin day in a day out.

Last Sunday, one of the young men in the confirmation class said, "Before I am ready to be confirmed I need to know, why does God let the bad stuff happen. I mean why, if God loves us so much is there still all this war and destruction?" The short answer is sin. While Christ freed us from the eternal consequence of sin, we still need to live with the choices we make. We lie....people won't trust us. We lust....we se people as objects not as people. We place other things and gods before God.....we can't see the true joy that God has for us. People sin, nations sin, we all sin, and we are constantly dealing with the immediate consequences of it. "God forgives us the consequences of being sinners, but not the consequences of our sins." That was a good start for the young confirmand and he continued on and asked his next tough question.

To me, to be missional is two things. 1. Spread the good news that in Christ the consequence of being sinners is forgiven. 2. To be a community where sinners can find help to face and to find healing for the consequences of their sins. Maybe an oversimplification, but a place to start.

Heroes in the Church

Clayton Smith's article about emergency service personnel in the church struck home for me today. There is a young couple in our church with two young boys, and the father of the family is a firefighter. More times than not I'll see the wife sitting alone in the back of the church; her husband is at work. They stopped by the church this morning because their son was celebrating his birthday in the nursery school class across the hall from my office. She jokingly said, "pastor I'd like you to meet my husband" as a way of apologizing for his absence. I know him fairly well and I also know that when he is not working he is most likely spending time with his family, helping another firefighter or hunting by himself. (We get venison once a year from them.) I easily smile and catch up with him.

He told me story about his work. He was one of the firefighters on the fire boat that was rescuing the passengers and crew of the Airbus that crashed in the Hudson last week. He shared with me what it was like to be on that boat, working around the plane. He claimed not to be a hero, and that the real heroes were the pilots and crew of the plane. Even though they didn't know what brought the plane down they tied up next to it to save the people and the plane with what I imagine were the echoes of 9/11 still ringing through his head. A true humble hero.

Thank you Clayton for helping me to now approach this unique individual in ways that I didn't think of before.

Thank you to the brave pilots and crew who saved countless lives by landing in the water.

Thank you to all those who risked uncertainity and weather to save those on the plane.