Faith Venture

Arrived home from San Diego last night about midnight. Slept in almost an hour. But still went over to the fitness center for workout and whirlpool. Finishing my bowl of steel cut oats when my wife exclaims, “There’s a dog on the patio!”

I play with dogs. I don’t own dogs. There is never a lost dog in the neighborhood. She thought maybe it was our neighbor’s Pomeranian mix. But one look, and no. And no neighbor chasing it.

I looked at it. Definitely not Mochi. And it looked strangely bedraggled. Oh, someone had started shearing the thing, got about half-way, stopped. There was a strange basket thing on its neck. Later, the police officer said it was supposed to be on the snout. The dog was a biter.

I spent the next hour-and-a-half on the dog. Went outside. It barked and snarled at me. Usually dogs will come to me. I’ll make friends. Tell it to go home, and lead it home. This dog snarled, bared its teeth, and was going no where. It liked our patio.

Posted on the community Facebook pages. Wrote to the association management. They said call the police. Did that. She comes and tries to get the thing. Neighbor sent her grandson with bacon. Nothing worked. Finally got it with a lasso thing.

Oh, the dog had no identification on it. I posted on Facebook that the dog was now in police custody if anyone could find an owner. I had looked around the neighborhood to see if someone was looking for a dog. Nothing. Later the association posted a picture of an incarcerated dog.

My morning was now shot. And errands and blog posting were all out of the window.

No sense worrying about lost productivity. Some days are just that way, and you live with it. Just don’t let it be a habit.

I began a practice while still quite young of treating every human that I meet on their own. I almost always initially allow some level of trust. Then they can prove their character one way or another. I never seek revenge, but there are many I’ve chosen to stay away from rather than get argumentative or angry.

Gender matters not. Nor race, age, ethnicity, disability. I’ve just never had occasion to doubt what the writers in the Bible tell us about all of us being children of God. He loves each of us. He, according to Paul in Romans, has already worked for us.

This month has been set aside by someone as International Women’s month, and I guess I missed International Women’s Day. I’m not good at these observances. But since it came into my awareness, I thought I should consider how many have misinterpreted the role of women in the New Testament.

I think of Jesus bantering with the Syro-Phoenician woman. Probably unheard of action of a rabbi. He was touched by an “unclean” woman, she was healed. He was now ceremonially unclean. But that didn’t bother him. He treated her as a child of God. He dealt compassionately with Mary Magdalene and the woman caught in adultery. His relationships with Mary and Martha may not have been too surprising, but that his followers wrote those stories is amazing.

There is more. And although patriarchists cite sentences from Paul to support male domination, try reading his letters completely. How he cites and complements women leaders in the early movement. How he told women that it was OK to pray in the assembly (the head covering thing is totally misinterpreted).

Respect and uphold the women in your life. They are children of God loved by him.

In this time where media (both mass and social) strive to exploit strong emotions such as fear and hatred in order to drive more traffic, I appreciate the words of Philip Berrigan who, along with his brother and also a priest Daniel Berrigan, exhibited leadership I respected back in the day.

I don’t gather that God wants us to pretend our fear doesn’t exist, to deny it, or eviscerate it. Fear is a reminder that we are creatures – fragile, vulnerable, totally dependent on God. But fear shouldn’t dominate or control or define us. Rather, it should submit to faith and love. Otherwise, fear can make us unbelieving, slavish, and inhuman. I have seen that struggle: containing my fear, rejecting its rule, recognizing that it saw only appearances, while faith and love saw substance, saw reality, saw God’s bailiwick, so to speak: “Take courage, it is I. Do not be afraid!”

Philip Berrigan

He does not talk of avoiding fear. Nor should we try to ignore it. Rather, like I wrote yesterday about where to focus our life, walk with God.

Easy to say. Difficult to live. I, in my security of suburban American life, wonder how I would face being in the Ukraine staring at Russian tanks. Could I live my faith?

Paul, the Apostle, wrote almost three-fourths of his letter to the Roman gathering of Jesus-followers describing how bad we humans are and how good God is.

Paul didn’t write in chapters—those were added later so that people could find their place and refer quotes to others.

But, at what we call chapter 12, he writes, “So…”

Whenever we see words such as so or however or therefore, we should pause. In the original, letters were read aloud. I can imagine the reader got to that point and paused. Then said, “So…” or the Greek equivalent.

Some people (and theologians) read 8:28 and stopped. But Paul went on to write 12-15 (16 is personal notes). These are after the “So.” And it begins:

So here is what I want you to do. Take your normal everyday life and place it before God as an offering.

What do we do every day upon rising from sleep? Pause and offer the day’s life for service to God. Whatever we do and however we do it needs to be ultimately in God’s service.

Why? Because we remember what God has done for us. God made us right with him. We didn’t do anything to earn it by following rules or offering animal sacrifices.

Paul offers a bit of practical advice:

Fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out.

Where you look is where you’ll go.

Have you met anyone who knows perfectly the mind of God?

Let’s make it easier. Have you met anyone who thinks or acts like they know the mind of God? Someone so smart that they think God asks them for advice?

I will answer for me—Yes. I have met such people. Or, maybe like Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, they wish God would take their advice.

So had the Apostle Paul as he wrote these words to the Christ-followers in Rome:

Is there anyone around who can explain God?

Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do?

Anyone who has done him such a huge favor that God has to ask his advice?

Romans, from The Message translation

I read those words this morning and they hit me like that soccer ball struck from a few yards away directly into my nose. Down I went.

Meditate on these words that Paul writes next:

Everything comes from him,

Everything happens through him,

Everything ends up in him.

Always glory! Always praise!

Romans, from The Message translation

The best guides I have discovered are humble. Best advice is to emulate that.

I am reading Paul’s letter to the Roman gathering of Jesus-followers in a different translation (The Message) as if it were a personal letter from him to me. I wish to capture the flavors and subtleties.

I began what is labeled chapter 10. I’m struck by how hard he is striving to get across the idea that the work of setting things right between God and me is God’s work. And work he has already done.

Any trying I attempt is in vain. It is much useless thrashing about.

[The Jewish people] don’t seem to realize that this comprehensive setting-things-right that is salvation is God’s business, and a most flourishing business it is. Right across the street they set up their own salvation shops and noisily peddle their knockoffs. After all these years of refusing to really deal with God on his terms, insisting instead on making their own deals, they have nothing to show for it.

Romans 10

What a colorful metaphor.

It reminds me of the Red Queen in Alice and the Looking Glass who said that they had to run faster just to stay in the same place. But we could get off that treadmill and let God do God’s thing.

We don’t have to run faster, follow ever more rules, try harder. We just let God be God. And just live within his spirit. That will guide us to the most fruitful life beyond what we can imagine.

Philosopher Ken Wilber wrote, “Civilization is a competition to overcome testosterone.”

My contemplations lately have centered on the results of testosterone meeting ego meeting fear meeting need for power. The resulting compound includes will to power, struggle, destruction, loss of life.

Jesus presented his way of living in the kingdom of God as a stark contrast to the world of power. Perhaps the power was that of the religious rule makers and enforcers of the day. The larger competition was Rome and its worship of power in every relationship.

We think we can change the entire world. We can see real-time events from everywhere around the globe and want to change everything.

The reality is that we must change ourselves. That, in turn, helps others to change—not by preaching or teaching, but by the way we live. As others change, it spreads as if by contagion. It happened from about 35 CE to about 350 CE. Then, the church gained power.

Today, we are presented the same choice of the way to live as those who met Jesus face-to-face. We can live in the kingdom of God (peace, freedom, relationship) or the kingdom of power (others make rules, fear, struggle).

I made my choice many years ago whom I will follow. What about you?

Her name was Joanne. She had a husband and two children. Her personality was on the quiet side. Her demeanor was gentle. Overall an attractive person in every dimension.

Then the family decided that it would be good for her to get a job. She found a position as a dispatcher for the city police. She left interactions with women at the church and book club. Every working interaction was with every troublemaker in town. She knew the guys who physically assaulted their wives / girlfriends. She knew the drug users who were continually arrested for theft. Every interaction was negative.

When I talked with her a couple of years later, she was negative, cynical, darkly moody. A changed person in almost every way.

We teach balance in almost every practice I’ve studied. Our professions can lead us into a false understanding of the state of the world. It can also influence your very personality. Finding balance in our associations becomes the linchpin of an integrated personality.

That is why wise people have taught the value of periodically stepping outside ourselves and seeing ourselves as others (and God) see us. Vision gives us the ability for course correction.

Choose your associations carefully.

Tomorrow begins the 40 days of Lent. A period of time on the Church calendar set aside for adherents to search their hearts, confessing those areas of life where they fall short, and looking with anticipation of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus.

Without the resurrection, Christianity is nothing. A false dream. Even as an adolescent as I met some followers of “liberal Protestantism” and read books on the subject, I wondered what they preached if not the resurrection. Why call yourself Christian? God-follower, maybe, but Christian, no. And I was raised in the Methodist Church (not United Methodist), a semi-liturgical church. Some vestiges of Anglicanism left but not as liturgical as the Lutherans down the road in our village. And I classify myself a liberal, except for that.

Today is the day historically when people would clean out pantries to eat up food that might spoil during the next six weeks of fasting. So, people got fat celebrating the beginning of Lent, lost weight by fasting for 40 days, then gained it all back Easter Sunday.

Easter is spring in the northern hemisphere. The time of rebirth. Growth beginning. Jesus returning to life. The Church beginning its spectacular growth.

So, today, I started off with a traditional Polish Fat Tuesday treat, Paczki (poonch-key, approximate pronunciation, I’m not Polish and don’t have the right ‘a’ vowel on my keyboard).

I’d better celebrate, because I’m already deep in reflection on areas where I’ve fallen short of the target. And Lent doesn’t even begin for 20 hours.

The scene is imprinted in my memory. High school. Lunch. Teacher sitting at a table with several of her students. Someone pointed out she was not eating with the same etiquette as she taught.

“Do as I say, not as I do,” she replied.

At 16, I thought that was inappropriate. Years later, the new me concurs.

Yet, I wonder if that could be said of many (or most?) of us who point to Bible verses that someone else should follow?

Or the advice we give. “Eat right and you’ll lose weight and be healthier” said just before we snack on potato chips.

What is your view of Christians in general? Would it resemble that? If so, where is the failure?

My nephew just wrote to me that he is studying the ancient book of Job. I responded, “Oh, the book that shows the limits and futility of giving advice.” Only half joking.

Telling other people what to do or how to do it can deflect back to indict the speaker. Take care with freely giving advice. Parents know that children learn more by watching them than by listening (or not) to all the admonitions freely distributed.