Author Archive

Just this week, I had the opportunity to visit the boyhood home of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints.  Work had taken me to Rochester, NY, so I drove to Palmyra.  There I saw his farm, the Sacred Grove where God the Father and God the Son appeared to Smith, and Hill Cumorah, where the Angel Moroni eventually deigned to allow Smith to dig up the Golden Plates.

As I visited, I was very open to what the Mormon missionaries there had to say to me.  I was greeted by a Bible open to James 1:5, where Smith himself understood from Scripture that if any man lacks wisdom, he should ask of God, who will grant him understanding.  I had good fellowship with several missionaries, all of whom were just flabbergasted that a Baptist could be respectful and even acknowledge the depth of feeling on which Mormon faith rests.

Mormons really do understand feeling well.

What they miss, I fear, is authority.

Theirs is personal. Mine is far wider than that. Theirs is a man. Mine is bigger than that.  Theirs ultimately rests on a question of whether or not one feels Smith is right. Mine rests on a tradition that is frankly longer, wider, and even more bloody than Smith’s.

While I toured Smith’s own house (the one that was purchased by a friend and rented back to his family after it had spent the rent completing his dead brother’s frame leaving them unable to pay the rent due, only to be later repossessed), I learned of Martin Harris, one of the three witnesses to the Golden Plates. I learned of the “lost 116 pages,” a document which when shared with Harris’ wife, broke a pledge to keep the document secret.  I learned of the faith of the men who continually had to hide the new “Scriptures.”

Then, I learned of the story of Lehi and Nephi, who had been given a divine compass that guided God’s chosen from Israel to the New World.  I learned the story of Helaman, who, after his own people had renounced war led their children to bloodless victory over their enemies. I learned of Moroni who hid the Golden Plates so conveniently near where Smith resided.

I cannot fault them for outrageous claims. After all, I believe a man was whipped, hung, asphyxiated, pierced, and dead, and then he wasn’t.  (Grant you, I can look at DNA that says there were Jews in Palestine, but not in North America, but I digress.)  Still, I take comfort in understanding that men have travelled the whole world to return to that place where God became man. It is a backwater conveniently like every other, so I cannot say that it lacks authority because of its place of origin.

I heard the witness of Smith’s wife proclaiming that he was incapable of manufacturing any decent sentence on his own, and thus he had to have received this from a higher power.  (This, despite his portrayal as a clean, articulate, handsome man in the Mormon movies, made me glad to know that cheesy religiousity in film is not restricted to Christians.)

And, sad to say, as open as I was to the depth of feeling and ardent belief, I couldn’t bring myself to believe a word of it.  Indeed, I truly believe my Mormon brethren feel far better than I do, but their Scriptures lack authority.

Why can I say that about the Book of Mormon, but not the Bible, you ask?

In fairness, let me cast out my primary defense of the Bible.  I believe in the authority of the Bible mostly because I have seen it change lives.  I have seen men return to their wives because they were convicted of God’s love for them in Corinthians and John.  I have seen drunks give up the bottle because they understood God is a sober minded judge who is bound by a divine logic evident in Romans.

But I say, I cannot fault my Mormon brothers on this – for I have seen lives transformed by their Scriptures as well.  When it comes to depth of feeling and experience, frankly, they have me beat.

But I also know something more about feeling.  It is good, but it must be tempered.

I know that in my own life, Jeremiah speaks truth when he tells me “the heart is deceitful and wicked above all things – who can know it!”  I know that left to my own devices, my heart is too willing to make a God and a world who suits me, rather than an external God in an external world who shapes me. Like a written constitution, it sets the boundaries past which my interpretation may not stray.

But as I say, I cannot fault my Mormon brothers on this, for they too have Scriptures which proscribe their activities.  They do not drink coffee or cola, let alone beer or wine.  They understand that God’s rules give structure to their lives.

So, what differs between my Bible and theirs? Many things, but the chief of which is authority of those who promulgated it to me..

Of the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon, all spent the majority of their lives disassociated from the Mormon Church.  True, two of the three reconciled, But none played a major part.  In contrast, of the eleven disciples who were with Christ, all endured to the end.  I can too easily explain away disagreements between Chowdry, Harris, Whitemer, with Smith. I also know that Peter and Paul had disagreements.  And, I cannot so easily dismiss that neither Peter nor Paul claimed any special headship within the church.  When Peter and Paul disagreed, they did so within the authority of the Living Word, Jesus Christ.  They acknowledged and agreed with each other in their writings – and even in spite of their disagreements, commended one another in Christ.  They pointed to an authority beyond themselves.

There are three witnesses to the Golden Plates. There are none to the original manuscripts of the Bible – but guess what? Here too, the authority of the Scripture is subordinated to that of Christ.  Where there is unanimity of authorship within the Book of Mormon (and the Qu’ran, and the Buddha), the very disparate nature of the individual revelation of Scripture to men over the course of 1500 years has an authority that rests on more than one man. That there are differences of opinion lead me to suspect a greater strength of purpose.

My pastor is not a perfect man. When I was a pastor, I was not a perfect man. (Trust me, the only prophetic statement I ever really made was “Jesus is Lord, I am not. Everything else is theology.”) But even in our imperfection, we recognized that our faith was not the product of one Man, but of something revealed over a much longer time.

I can’t help but wonder about those 116 pages.  Was it a rejected draft? Did Harris and Smith decide to change their theology?

In contrast, my Bible was assembled over a period far greater than the life of any one man – or even any one kingdom. There could be no revision (and, yes, I hear that gag) because there was too much time for any one draft.  (No, Jesus did not change the law! He fulfilled it.  Can we move on?)

In the end, Smith, and James, were right.  Ask God for wisdom – it will be given.  Wisdom is fundamentally the ability to try and test the authority of given revelation. I believe not in the witness of one or three or eight, but many.  It is not the authority of twelve disciples but of twenty, forty, and sixty generations. It is the authority not of 200 years, but 2000.  (And is it not interesting that Mormonism converges back to the Bible?) The authority that has transformed lives is backed up by not by a man but by a Scripture that transcends them all.

That my friends, is the beauty of the Bible.  It is ugly. It is both short (in length) and long (in time.) It is partial, but it is not exclusionary. It is assembled over time by men who disagreed but recognized the authority of one over them.

In that disagreement and messiness, a certain authenticity of subordination to a common Christ reassures that this thing is real.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:3 that none can say “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Spirit. The point is not that our mouths cannot form these syllables unless there is some kind of divine intervention – but rather that this confession is a radical statement of our priorities. You see, in the Roman Empire, one could be made to regularly confess “Caesar is Lord,” and to fail to do so would death. Even our Lord, Jesus Christ, did not provoke Caesar. Rather, he said, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and render unto the Lord that which is the Lord’s.” The problem, of course, is that ultimately, “no man can serve two masters,” and if Jesus is Lord, Caesar cannot be.

As I have worked my way up the chain of command as a lowly software developer to the point where I am now the lead of our Network Operations Center, I am daily reminded of this dichotomy. To say “Jesus is Lord” is to model servant leadership. It is to care for the weak and lowly. It is to be meek – having the power to demand your own way, but not exercising that preogative. It is, in short, to put the welfare of others before myself, for as it has been said elsewhere, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.” (Sorry, sometimes Star Trek has good theology – and you gotta give it its due!) That attitude will carry a company far – but lets face it. It will get your career moving – right out the door.

In private industry, the workplace is a cut-throat kind of place. Gone are the days when you spend your entire life working hard for one employer, who in turn will take care of you until you die. Nowadays the closest you’ll ever get to a golden watch is a radioactive time clock. In a dog-eat-dog world, the dogs are more than happy to let you call yourself a Christian (preferably not at the office, and definitely not when HR is watching!) as long as it is nothing more than a meaningless commentary on your hobbies. The other dogs may enjoy brewing beer, going to baseball games, or painting minatures. If you like to spend your Sunday mornings dressed up in uncomfortable clothes listening to some dork drone on endlessly about irrelevant matters – well, hey, different strokes for different folks. That’s the only religion that everyone agrees to!

But, when you want to start acting like a Christian is business, that’s another matter entirely. We all talk about ethics, and only a very few are actually willing to break them – but remember, if Jesus is Lord, ethics aren’t rules and boundary lines; instead, they are guiding principles. They animate what we do. In the blog What’s Best Next, Matt Perman (formerly associated with John Piper’s Desiring God Ministries) loves to show how truly Christ-Centered management practice is radically different beast, promoting the lowly and bringing out the best in people. In contrast, the workplace is far too often a battlefield where the only thing brought out is bile. If you need proof of that, you need only peruse our sister site, workplace.stackexchange.com, where you can see “par for the course” in management.  When Jesus isn’t Lord, you see:

• People entitled to legal benefits are threatened with being let go if they are exercised
• Colleagues who are actively asked to cover up mistakes
• Families being shortchanged of time with their parents
• Agreements becoming null and void because of changes in leadership

On and on, it seems the regular experience of many folks is that the workplace is an exercise in the state of nature – a place that is as the phrase goes, “nasty, brutish, and short.”

Even in government, where you really can have a job for life, I’ve run into this same pattern – that Christianity is a fine hobby for the weekends, but not something you do in the office. As part of working in the intelligence arena in the U.S. government, citizens who desire a security clearance are afforded the wonderful privilege of sitting for a polygraph. You are seated in a chair, interviewed, and then the same questions will be asked as they put a blood pressure cuff around your arm and basically turn off the circulation for 10 – 20 minutes each session. It is an uncomfortable exercise in intimidation as you are forced to convince a machine that no, in fact, you haven’t done drugs (I really haven’t), don’t like to expose your private parts to little children (really, they ask that!), and generally are so patriotic that George Washington makes up corny stories and songs about you. It was in this environment that I was asked, “Do you have any concerns about this polygraph?” when I sat for the first time. I answered, “Yes. I am afraid you will ask me – ‘Is my highest loyalty to my God or to my country.’ because the truth is, my highest loyalty is to my God. When I say ‘Jesus is Lord,’ I mean it.” The polygrapher thought for a second and then answered, “Well, I don’t think there is any conflict between the two.” As I really wanted the job, I didn’t correct him – but really, if my government asked me to lie, cheat, steal – there is. There is always a conflict when you have two masters.

You see, Christianity is not a hobby that you do on weekends. “Done right,” it permeates everything we do. It means even as we attempt to move up the corporate ladder, it constrains our behavior – reminding us that we are “ambassadors for Christ.” I’ve seen the power plays that people have done to get where they are. Many of them would get me made a “persona non grata” if exposed to the daylight of public scrutiny. As a former government employee, the line between “patriotism” and godliness is not always as clear as my naive polygrapher would liked it to have been. As one who knows that he is “an alien and a stranger” and is seeking “a city whose builder and founder is God,” I know that while I can and should contribute to and love my country – ultimately, I am less vested in any given kingdom of this earth than in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Ultimately, in the workplace, that is our dilemma: we are passing through. This planet has strange customs. We are expected to “look out for number one,” and yet encouraged to poison that selfsame person at a bar (really – check the science for yourself – alcohol is a mild poison that attacks the body) in order to find a mate and draw closer to your colleagues at work. We are expected to fight even though most of us desire harmony. Competition must always be “fair” (at least in public), but we also know that “Winning’s not everything – it’s the only thing.”

This is not to say it is impossible to be an ethical businessman. Christians can and have found ways to work within the system and be successful. Some hide and compartmentalize their faith, and many of the best have found ways to succeed as Christians. The Franklin-Templeton group, for example, has been highly successful at investing, and also invests in “religous advancement” through its annual Franklin-Templeton Prize. Much has been made of Chik-Fil-A’s refusal to compromise on Sabbath work (leaving aside the question of whether that’s Saturday or Sunday). And, even some (non-US!) governments have realized that they needed training in the ethics that comes from religion. But the fact that these are the “exceptional,” “top-of-mind” examples shows how out of the norm it is.  Seriously – when you think of “corporations,” which comes to mind first – Enron or Templeton?

As Christians, then, we have a fundamental question to answer. Is Christianity a hobby – something we’ll secretly practice on the weekends, or is Jesus the Lord of our Mondays as well as of our Sundays? Don’t be fooled; it isn’t an easy question. Being an overt Christian is not the “boost to your career” it may have been in our parents and grandparents’ generation, when the church was much like the local Kiwanis club. One way or another – Jesus is Lord or Jesus is a Hobby.

As a former Baptist, we were always big on “bringing all things in submission to Christ.”  It’s a serious question. Admittedly, as an Episcopalian now, I see less of that talk – and sometimes it scares me. In the older prayer books, the concept was decidedly present, but it my sense is that as the church has moderated and modernized, I wonder how many of us do see our faith as our hobby.

In the workplace, the rubber hits the road. My faith is either something I do from time to time, or it is something I am.  If Jesus is Lord, he is the Lord of my work and of my Sundays. If not, he’s just a hobby.

When I was in seminary, I took a class on Christian worship. I didn’t take it at the Baptist seminary I was attending. Instead, I got permission to take Worship with a personal friend who was far, far more liturgical than I was. I knew that my Baptist class would dig deep on the theological foundations of worship, I wanted something more. I wanted something deeper. I wanted to experience the historical worship of the church at my core. I wanted know what it means to feel worship.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Baptists. I still believe we are the most cerebral, most thoughtful group of scholars out there. But what I fear we miss is the heart and soul of what we study.

That class was my first exposure to the Church calendar – the cycle of birth, suffering, death, and life that played itself out every year. There was a time to feel the anticipation of Christmas. There was a time to put away at Lent. There was the burst of excitement that is Easter, and there was the humdrum of Ordinary Time. And then, there was Good Friday. The one day that encompassed it all.

Wendy, of course, knew that I was a Baptist, and so when I would submit worship service plans, she’d encourage me to make them in a way that my church would be able to use them. But then she assigned the final project. The assignment was to write up plans for five worship services. One for Palm Sunday, One for Easter, and three for Holy Week.

I had to call Wendy. “Wendy, you realize that my little Baptist church probably couldn’t even name three Holy Week services that weren’t Easter or Palm Sunday?”

“You don’t do the Great Vigil? That’s an amazingly Scripture-filled service!”

“I agree. More Scripture is read there than a lot of churches I know will preach in a month!”

“How about Maunday Thursday?”

“Well, I suppose I could do a Christian sedar. I could use that as a teaching about the Passover that Jesus was celebrating. My church will like that.”

“Ok. Do that. And then, I guess all you need is Good Friday.”

“Problem, Wendy. My church wouldn’t ever do Good Friday. Its just not their custom!”

“What do you mean they don’t do Good Friday? How can you possibly do Easter without Good Friday?”

How did I ever do Easter without Good Friday? That question haunted me for quite a while. Indeed, I probably didn’t get over that question until I, like Wendy, became an Episcopalian.

Oh, to be sure, I still love Easter. What Christian doesn’t feel a little stir when they gather in the church parking lot just before Sunrise, pulling out the hard, uncomfortable sitting chairs, waiting for the organist on the little portable piano to start tapping out “Up from the Grave He Arose!” (With a mighty triumph o’er his foes!) If you’re a Christian, you know that feeling of hope meeting reality on Resurrection morning. The Christ was was crucified is alive! We celebrate know that the victory is won – O grave, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? It is a happy rebirth of all that we hold dear.

But without Good Friday, can we really say that?

You see, before you can celebrate the Resurrection, you must first mourn the death.

When I became an Episcopalian, I started seeing how we would have a simple reflection period on Good Friday. From noon until 3 – as Jesus was hanging on the cross. We put aside our busy schedules and simply sit in silence. Our rector will, every half hour, read a small meditation on what Christ did for us, but mostly, it is corporate silence. We are free to focus on just one thing – the depth of Jesus’ love.

That feeling, that experience, speaks to my heart in ways that are deeper than those thoughts which might fill my head. Sitting on that worn bench, the cerebrial thoughts can percolate down to my cardiac core. Realizing that the Messiah wasn’t engaged in some theological sophistry as the thorns pierced his brow or the whip lashed his back. Good Friday beckons me to contemplate not the theology but the physicality that he endured.

Before the Resurrection, there was death. His, mine, and ours.

As Christians we want to skip to the end so fast. Jesus is back! Jesus is Alive! Jesus is going to be our friend and be with us in heaven! What glorious news!

But how can we really appreciate how good that news is until we appreciate what our fate should have been.

We were the ones supposed to be on that cross. We were the ones who should have died. But Jesus took our place. He was mocked. He was beaten. He was stripped. He was forced to wear a crown of thorns. He was violated and crushed and bruised. All for us. All for me.

It was the ultimate act of love. There was no good feeling on the cross, but it was the ultimate act of love. As Johnny Hart, the late writer of the comic strip B.C. once wrote: “Why do we call Good Friday good? A term too oft misunderstood. You who were bought by the blood of his cross. You alone can call Good Friday Good.”

When we realize what was lost. When we realize what was bought. When we realize that the bleakness of Good Friday is all we had – only when we have internalized that everything truly was dead – only then can we truly celebrate Easter.

The Public Library of Science recently printed an article that showed the contraceptives we use directly reduced frogs’ ability to mate. Viewed through an environmental lens, contraception is a disaster for the frogs. That’s an interesting fact to me, not so much because of the direct harm to the environment, but moreso because it is such an unintended consequence. All technologies invented by man have effects – if they didn’t, we wouldn’t use them. But most affect us in ways we can’t always grasp – and as such, everything we do should be examined.

When in the last few weeks, the President of the United States (POTUS) decreed that the Catholic church must pay for contraception in opposition to its own teachings, he too found that there were unintended consequences to his actions. From a health perspective, we can debate if he was right or wrong, but viewed from a religious liberty perspective, it’s pretty clear this decision was an unmitigated disaster. Catholics and Baptists are often at odds theologically, but when it comes to the government forcing someone to violate their conscience, there is no disagreement.

Interestingly, the Constitution of the United States does not prohibit the church from interfering in matters of state – it is rather the opposite – that the Congress “may not pass any law respecting the establishment of a church” (in this case a term referring to setting up a state-sponsored church) or “prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. When the state meddles in the affairs of the church, bad things are bound to happen, and so it was here.

One could argue that the state makes religious laws all the time. As the Economist said in its 2/7/12 issue, Muslims can only take one wife, for instance. In the cited case of polygamy, secular law is merely a curb to a freedom afforded by religion. In the case of contraception, the secular law is forcing adherents to give material assistance to a practice that is completely prohibited. Polygamy is like your dad saying you can have ice cream, but your mom saying you’ve had too many sweets already. What the President is proposing is akin to saying that you, as an animal-rights vegan, are required to butcher the family pet and serve it for dinner to the rest of the family. One prohibits something you could do, the other compels you to do that which you ought not.

As an Episcopalian, I have a natural bent for seeking out the “via media,” the Middle Way. Generously speaking, we often seek to find theological positions that take from the best of the Roman Catholic and Protestant worlds. Less generously, we’re usually stuck in the middle of the road, getting hit on both sides. When it comes to contraception, Episcopalians are far more likely to be using it, and far less likely to think anything’s wrong with it – but perhaps we should. Viewed through the lens of health, I can see the President’s logic. But the Via Media teaches us to see through multiple lenses, and as such I have to look at it from the unintended angles as well. From a religious liberty perspective, it was a flop.

And, as a Christian, I also try to look at any issue through the ultimate lens – the lens of a God who is bigger than I can imagine, but who has given me as much as I can handle – in Scripture.

In the very first chapter of our bible (okay, second – but its pretty early), we believe that God gave us a simple command: “Be fruitful, and multiply.” God gave us a big, blue planet, and he wanted us to fill it. He made sex quite pleasurable in order to goad us in the right direction. For centuries, we had the desire for sex, but it was always tempered with the knowledge that it could have very drastic consequences.

To be sure, we’ve always found ways around it. As early as Genesis 38, we find Onan trying to have sex, but not children. Sheepskin condoms go back a long way and for years, we’ve tried to substitute a calendar and a rhythm for getting our groove on. But it wasn’t until the 20th Century that we found a method that was easy, safe, and really, really effective. We could finally separate sex from responsibility.

But have we? I find it funny that every birth control pill has to come with a warning: “Note: Contraceptives do not stop sexually transmitted diseases.” (Did anyone really think they did?) But see what’s happening – people forget that unwanted pregnancy is not the only danger of sex.

We also live in an age where people are more alienated from each other than ever before. In marriage, sex is supposed to bring people closer together. When two people have a child together, they are bound for life by a third. But sex without consequences provides alternative options. In a bad relationship, these are good. But in a good relationship, the mere presence of these alternatives can lead to even innocent speculation about “what else is out there.” Again, I’m not saying that it is unmitigated bad thing that there are “out clauses” but realize that the unintended consequence is the pitfall.

In the end, the warning of the frog is simply this: Contraception is bigger than you think. If its just a personal freedom issue, look outside your lens to religious liberty. If religious liberty is your lens, look up to what God is doing. You might be surprised at how big this really is.