Faith Venture

I’ve noticed a shift in terminology using the word evangelical in news accounts of groups of Christian believers. Then I heard a speaker from Sunday talk about what it means to be an evangelical. Except he didn’t explain. He just mentioned he had studied it.

I thought it was a term rooted in the New Testament referring to spreading the “good news”, euangelium or evangelium.

I thought, how about doing a little research before writing this post.

Well, some time later after a deep dive into Wikipedia and other sources…I have no clue. The term sort of started in the 16th century. Then was adapted in 1731. Then again in the 1800s.

In the 1970s, I joined a loosely organized group, Evangelicals for Social Action–a group that said “What if Jesus really meant what he said?”

I still like that attitude.

Evangelical seems to be a rebranding of the older term “fundamentalist” these days, most often referring to those with a conservative political bias. That leaves me out.

The Good News is that Jesus lived, died, and resurrected. It is also that we follow Jesus as a disciple follows a master. We try to do what he said and live like he lived.

I think I will just give up on whatever the meaning du jour is and just be a follower of Jesus. Sounds simpler. Maybe he really did mean what he said and meant for us to live that life!

We had this little spring-time rhyme when we were young, “March winds bring April showers; April showers bring May flowers.”

This year, the winds came in February. As did the showers. The flowers? Looks like many will be March.

I bought a nice larger size snow blower. We have a driveway and live on a corner lot with lots of sidewalk. We had been visited by a few heavier snows that did my littler snow blower in. Last year I never started it. This year–once. At least so far.

Weather patterns change. Now the snow visits about 100 miles to the south that used to visit us.

Many of us grew up in small towns. Then there was a great migration to the cities. People in rural areas and people in cities have different views of the world. And now in many countries of the world, the views have shifted toward the city view from the rural view.

This is all neither good nor bad. It just is.

The question is, how do we deal with it?

Anger? Despair? Resentment? Many choose this path.

Anticipation? Embrace the change? Excitement? Others choose this path.

People who study people scientifically have concluded that adaptability increases a person’s chances for success in life.

Good leaders adapt to changing circumstances and adjust accordingly.

People adapt to changing circumstances and learn how to live and thrive in them. For thousands of years farmers have learned to adapt to changing technologies and changing weather patterns–or they have gone hungry.

There was great spiritual yearning a couple of thousand years ago among the people in the ancient eastern Mediterranean. Then came a rough looking guy named John followed immediately by a different kind of guy named Jesus. People who adapted to the new spiritual direction thrived–maybe not always physically but definitely spiritually.

How are we adapting today?

“The teapot whistled merrily on the stove.”

I have no idea where I read this sentence. It was during my childhood. I think of it every morning when I’m home.

Typically, I rise at about 5:30, proceed to the kitchen, and (since our Keurig died) filled the teapot with enough water for the morning’s coffee in the French Press.

I begin my morning reading only to be interrupted by that annoying whistling noise emanating from the direction of said teapot.

I am distracted…and annoyed.

There are times I love to work at a coffee shop. The people and conversations and espresso machine provide a welcome sense of society. That is, until one voice stands out–maybe talking too loudly into the mobile phone or one of “those” laughs.

Then, I’m distracted…and annoyed.

This morning, one peaceful morning between flights, trying to find my “normal” routine. I have three devices open on the breakfast bar–laptop, iPad, iPhone. The MacBook Pro did not make the trip to Amsterdam. I want to do my daily writing discipline. But, my latest updates to OmniOutliner from the iPad are not reflected in the file on the MacBook.

Switch into trouble-shooting mode.

Recall my original purpose.

Back to focusing on the One thing. Writing. Thinking.

I had just tried to show my grandson the relationship of thinking and writing. About using a mind map to organize thoughts.

Writing and thinking require focus.

Which requires dissociation from distraction.

Intentionally. Close all devices, but one. Concentrate.

I’ve heard it said that the story of Jesus visiting Martha and Mary where Martha complains about Mary not helping with the cooking is really a story about distraction. In fact, Jesus said, “Martha, you are distracted by many things.”

Eliminate distraction, intentionally focus on what matters at the moment, do better work. Or thinking.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. –George Santayana

The history of Ohio where I am from does not extend much before 1750 or so. A few roaming bands of Native Americans (actually people who immigrated earlier than Europeans) and a few French beaver trappers populated the forests.

I’ve talked about the Amsterdam Museum that we visited a couple of days ago. Although there was history before, much of the tour started at around 1200.

Beginning seriously in the early 1500s with Martin Luther’s 95 Theses and continuing with John Calvin, John Knox, and several other thinkers, a movement began that divided Europe, led to the very nasty Thirty Years’ War, and echoes even unto today.

The ideas were one thing. But the result was firing up people under the guise of belief. Lines were drawn. Families split. People who found themselves in the minority in a region emigrated to other, safer regions.

Catholics prided themselves with ornate art. Statues of saints and Jesus and Mary adorned buildings. The Protestants were plain people. They regarded such things as idolatry. Dostoyevsky pondered such a division in conversations between Ivan and Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov.

The result as revealed by paintings from the time on display at the museum showed mobs of people attacking a Catholic Church and tearing down those statues and other religious trappings. One painting I recall showed the “renovated” church at a Sunday Protestant service where the focus was on the pulpit where the pastor preached rather than on statues of Christ on the cross.

The faces on the mob shown in the paintings are what struck me. It may have been ideas to Luther, Calvin, et.al., but they inspired action definitely not in keeping with Jesus’ commands.

In America, we have become much more idea-centric trying to stir up masses to political action. Does this really reflect the growth of the church as revealed in Acts 2? Have we forgotten that political wins can readily turn into political losses? Those who live by the sword….

As for me, I’d love to see the term evangelical return to its root meaning describing one who spreads the “Good News.” I am hopeful.

Vacation is one of my ideal times for reading. I do have to fit it in amongst the sightseeing that my wife prefers. Although we walked almost 6 miles yesterday, the temperature was in the low 20s F and with wind chill felt like 6 F. But we also toured Anne Frank’s house and the Van Gogh museum, had Dutch pancakes, and I was hit by a car backing up (not a problem other than momentary flash of “what the heck are you doing”).

The book I finished was Jordan B. Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos. The book is filled with wisdom from a practicing clinical psychologist and top rated university lecturer. He does delve deeply into mythology, brings in the New Testament, and explains much from Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, and others. It is also humorous at times, deeply personal, and wise.

He concludes with these questions he asked of himself and a final plea:

What shall I do to strengthen my spirit? Do not tell lies, or do what you despise. What shall I do to ennoble my body? Use it only in the service of my soul. What shall I do with the most difficult of questions? Consider them the gateway to the path of life. What shall I do with the poor man’s plight? Strive through right example to lift his broken heart. What shall I do when the great crowd beckons? Stand tall and utter my broken truths.

I hope that my writing has proved useful to you. I hope it revealed things you knew that you did not know you knew. I hope the ancient wisdom I discussed provides you with strength. I hope it brightened the spark within you. I hope you can straighten up, sort out your family, and bring peace and prosperity to your community. I hope, in accordance with Rule 11 (Do not bother children when they are skateboarding), that you strengthen and encourage those who are committed to your care instead of protecting them to the point of weakness.

The skateboarding rule regards the problems generated by overprotective mothers (and sometimes fathers) who refuse to let their children grow up, develop strength, and leave the nest. This is definitely a boomer parent problem that I have dealt with on the soccer pitch and my wife in the classroom.

I have no idea where I developed the idea at a young age that the duty of a parent is to develop strong adults out of the children entrusted to us who become contributing members of society. Since they both (unfortunately 😉 ) read these thoughts, they can comment a rebuttal. The bad part is they are no longer dependent. The good part is they are no longer dependent–probably since their mid-late teens, just when developmental psychologists say they should. If you are raising kids, there are several of the rules that you should definitely read. If you are developing yourself, the entire book is for you.

We are vacationing in Amsterdam this week. Yesterday following a brief “power nap” we headed out to explore. The main stop was the Amsterdam Museum. Here was represented the history of Amsterdam.

This brought memories of the first half of the 20th Century. Today is a visit to Anne Frank’s house.

We in America have experienced yet another rage of angry young men (boys) with arsenals. Very quietly in the late 1800s and first half of 1900s witnessed a more widespread, but hidden, rage against people of African and Jewish heritage. Think Ku Klux Klan hangings and shootings out in the “piney woods.”

Then you come to Europe and are reminded of the very public, and thorough, rage against Jewish people. The idea once again grows that the whole thing was just fiction–like the moon landing was a fiction–perpetrated by those who would like once again to vent rage against those who are different from them.

Those of us who meditate to experience God’s presence often also experience knowledge of the depths of sin, depravity, and violence that lies within us, ready to capture our consciousness. It seems you have to understand just how much capability lies within you before you can experience truly God’s grace and enlightenment.

In the midst of finger-pointing and denial, it is instructive to us all to ponder whether we could participate in a society’s rage against others.

Perhaps to paraphrase Willy Nelson “I’m Looking for Ideas In All the Wrong Places”. However, I read somewhat widely. I’m also fascinated by philosophers and psychologists whose ideas passed on to those who would misuse them and thus earn them a bad reputation among proper Westerners.

I was captured by a thought and a line of argument from Karl Marx, for example, that I would have done well to explore to the completion of my masters (even though the university closed the graduate department while I was there). He explored how humans had become alienated from their labor due to industrialization–the demise of craftsman and the rise of workers. As fate would have it, I’m a writer and analyst specifically on industrialization. But Marx was driven by his passions–how else to explain ignoring his wife and many children while burying himself in the London library researching how businessmen and capitalist economics (then somewhat new) oppressed workers. His followers–even more passion.

But I came today to talk about Nietzsche. Talk about your screwed up guy–he was a preacher’s kid raised by his mother and her two sisters. Need I say more?

I spotted this essay by Scotty Hendricks in my daily dose of a site called Big Think about the psychology of Nietzsche. Many scholars believe that Freud and Jung both began their investigations because of him.

Hendricks says:

He also understood that outside influences could have major effects on the of psyches of individuals. He explains in Human All Too Human that “Direct self-observation is not nearly sufficient for us to know ourselves: we need history, for the past flows on within us in a hundred waves.” Hinting that he understands that our deeper selves are influenced by many more factors than meets the eye. He lists among those factors culture and history, alongside our upbringings and a multitude of drives.

That we still have animal drives is a fact we often try to suppress. But one that Nietzsche saw as a mere fact and one to be dealt with. Dubbed “The Beast Within” by Zarathustra, these drives towards sex and aggression were being suppressed by an archaic morality which saw them as wicked. Nietzsche saw this repression as causing potential energy to go to waste. He argued that it was much better to understand that we have these primal drives and that’s alright, so long as they can be subdued and harnessed.

I think we ignore these basic ideas at our peril. If you read ancient Christian writers, for example John Climacus one of my favorites, you pick up some similar basic ideas.

We have these drives and emotions. We are living in a time of wallowing in our emotions–just check out your social media stream if you dare. The shouting and division that occurs daily changes only due to the topic of the day.

We ignore at the peril of our spiritual health and development that little phrase, “so long as they can be subdued and harnessed.” Climacus wrote “The Ladder of Divine Ascent” analyzing each of the drives and emotions and how to overcome them with spiritual formation some 1,500 years before Nietzsche. Someone should do another one for modern people. Living in the spirit is not for the faint-hearted.

We are in another cycle of shouting–different topic, same emotion. We shout “hooray for our side” on our social media, watch our favorite mass media, get all worked up. It is a self-reinforcing cycle of hype and emotion. Media and social media companies study how to keep the cycle going so that they earn the all-important attention of users/viewers. It’s all about money.

We learn that snack companies have chemists working on non-nutritive enhancers that exist only to cause addiction–we won’t be able to “eat just one.” It’s all about money.

Humans have a region of taste that craves sweet. Food processors add sugar or sugar substitutes in order to make their product more appealing. We eat more, they add more. Next thing we know it’s a self-reinforcing cycle. We get fat. Food processing companies make a profit. It’s all about money.

Jesus advised us to beware of whom we serve.

He thought that serving God first was a better idea.

When we step back and take a breath, we can gain perspective. We can make better choices.

Maybe we can love and understand rather than shout.

Maybe we can choose how we use social media–and how much.

Maybe we can make better food choices and live healthier lives.

Maybe living with-God is a better idea. It leads to other attitudes like love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. A better way of life.