keeping the questions alive

over the past several weeks i have been questioning my previous assumptions about my relationships with people who are not following Christ. last week i had a conversation with my co-worker Krista, who is more interested in reading tea leaves (literally) than the gospels, about my internal resistance to particularistic (i.e., through Jesus only) salvation.

i told krista that on the one hand, when Christ says that "no one comes to the father except by him," i want to simply take him at his word. the road is indeed narrow, i reason, so i should set my dissonance with particularism aside. yet, on the other hand, when i hear these same words i cannot help but make qualifications. surely, when Jesus wrote these words, he wasn't speaking of melvin, my mentally handicapped friend whose primary source of identification in a nominally christian community is that he is jewish not christian. so, though scripture is silent on the salvation of the handicapped who have not made an objective decision to follow Christ, we can assume that God's grace is sufficient. moreover, although he didn't explicitly confess Christ, surely Christ's reconciliation was incarnate through and eventually extended to ghandi...and on and on i went.

in the midst of the conversation, i began to wonder whether krista and i should be having this conversation at all. after all, as my missions and evangelism teachers at lcc would have reminded me, my job is not to raise further doubts for unbelievers but through intellectual argument, personal testimony and reliable companionship to woo them to Christ. thus, part of me believes that i should be ashamed of myself for creating roadblocks instead of straight roads for the gospel. yet there is another voice within me, which is much quieter than the voices of either tradition or professors past, that reminds me that such vulnerability and personal revelation is essential to proclamation. perhaps, as someone i read this week surmised, my job as a pastor and sojourner is not to provide answers, but to keep the great questions alive.

anyway, that is a ridiculously long introduction to a quotation from henri that i would like to share. in this passage henri speaks of 'reverse mission.' as i read this passage i could not help but think of friends like krista, melvin or mark who do not follow Christ, yet may have a mission that i need to receive and a message that i need to hear.

"...i have become aware that wherever God's Spirit is present there is a reverse mission.
when i marched with thousands of black and white americans from selma to montgomery in the summer of 1965 to support the blacks in their struggle for equal rights, martin luther king already said that the deeper spiritual meaning of the civil rights movement was that the blacks were calling the whites to conversion.
when, years later, i joined l'arche to live and work with mentally handicapped people, i soon learned that my real task would be to let those whom i wanted to help offer me--and through me many others--their unique spiritual gifts.
this 'reversal' is a sign of God's Spirit. the poor have a mission to the rich, the blacks have a mission to the whites, the handicapped have a mission to the 'normal,' the gay people have a mission to the straight,' the dying have a mission to the living. those whom the world has made into victims God has chosen to be bearers of good news.
when Jesus heard that eighteen people had been killed when the tower at siloam had fallen down, he was asked whether these men and women were worse sinners than others. 'they were not. i tell you,' he said. 'no, but unless you repent you will perish as they did.' Jesus shows that the victims become our evangelists, calling us to conversion. that's the reverse mission that keeps surprising us." ~Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, pgs. 58-59.

brushback pitches , personal reflections and unsolicited opinions

in lieu of doing real work, i have decided to pen another random post. aren't you among the lucky ones?

• it's official: the redbirds are 15 games over .500 and I'm a believer! this cardinal's team seems to have all the elements that make up a champion, including: surprising contributions by veterans (see chris carpenter and tony womack), sufficient starting pitching (yes, with the way morris and williams have been pitching this area requires a leap of faith), a dependable bullpen, world class defense (everybody repeat after me, 'defense wins…') and gaudy offensive production. i haven't believed like this since '96.
  
• around 6:45 this morning, before escorting kellie to the commuter rail, i tried to catch the cards-cubs highlights on sportscenter. as per usual sc failed to satiate my need. instead of the highlights I was looking for they offered a segment on the worst calls in sports history. the last heart wrenching clip they showed was, you guessed it, the dumbass call don denkinger in the sixth game of the '85 series. after watching the this clip for the umpteenth time and realizing that it has been 24 years since our last world series victory I am tempted to say something like "at least don denkinger is dead!" but I'm a christian gentleman, so I won't say that.
  
• yesterday was my grandfather's 83rd birthday. happy birthday papa! when I consider the significant part that papa (who shares the honor of being my favorite person with my wife) has played in my life one experience often comes to mind. I must have been eight or nine years old when my grandparents took me and my cousin amy on a short business trip to ft. smith, arkansas. on friday afternoon, after papa had finished his business in the area, he took amy and I down to the hotel's indoor pool for a little swim. while we were playing in the water papa kneeled down and had me climb upon his shoulders and then amy climbed upon mine. papa was the firm foundation of the little pyramid that we built there in the holidometm and he has continued to be our foundation for the 19 years that have followed. papa, you are a man above reproach and my co-favorite person on the planet. words are unable to express my love for you. happy birthday! i hope that God grants us a few more years together. Wow, this room just got a bit dusty…
  
• last night at homechurch we said goodbye to ben russell for the summer. ben is our virtuoso violinist and budding theologian who is going to spend his summer gracing the koussevitzsky concert shed at tanglewood. tanglewood is the enchanting summer home of the boston symphony orchestra and the boston pops. if you are interested in joining our home church for all-inclusive evening out at tanglewood (multiple samuel smith four packs and various white wines will be included) let me know. we'd love to have you join us!

this blog post has been brought to you by the good people at Christianbook.com. at christianbook.com we pride ourselves in enabling our employees to piddle on the job.

reflection on a midnight confession

although i meant what i said last night, there is little doubt that if i had left the second bottle of Wolaver's I.P.A. in the fridge and revisited my wording in the clear light of dawn i could have offered a more complete (not to mention concise!) confession. however, i suppose there are times that writing is more akin to ventilating a furnace than shaping an equation. last night was one of the former, and it felt good.

as i read my post again this morning, looking for typos or syntactical snakes, i remembered a quotation from merton's Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander which clearly expresses what i was trying to say in my own convoluted way.

"In Louisville, on the comer of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I was theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. I have the immense joy of being human, a member of the race in which God himself became incarnate. The sorrows and stupidities of the human condition can no longer overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. If only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun."

a long overdue confession

over the past few weeks i have realized that more and more LCCers have been reading this blog. friends, your presence has warmed my heart and the resulting thaw has flowered forth in confession.

first, i would like to apologize for the way that i treated you during our four years together. i realize that my attitude often suggested a superiority complex and my psuedo-intellectual interests often smelled like snobbery, but neither my attitude nor my apparent snobbery were intentional. rather, these unsavory elements of my character were products of my fear of vocational transition as well as a deep seated-sense of inadequacy. i harbored such a deep passion for self-identification that i was often uninterested in identifying with the group. so in the process of trying to find myself, i alienated myself from my community...and suffered as a result.

second, i would like to share with you a snapshot of the journey that saved my life. on my senior year 'week of e' and for the summer following graduation i served as an assistant with the l'arche daybreak community of toronto, canada. though my time at l'arche taught me many things, the most important lesson that i learned was that everyone, from my non-verbal housemate michael to my staunchest enemies (it probably will not be hard for you to believe that i have always had a few) have a gift to give. each life, insofar as it is created in the image of God, has overwhelming value. l'arche taught me that my role as an assistant was to be a midwife to the core members, as i assisted them in giving birth to their own identity and their own unique giftedness. in the end, i realized that they (especially michael) were midwives to me. i left l'arche with a true sense of my identity as a servant of christ, but, more importantly, i left there with the understanding that every person has an irreplaceable gift to give to the community. moreover, to fail to recognize and to celebrate that gift is to fail to love our Creator God.

third, and most importantly, i have specific apologies to make:

jaimie, i am sorry for my uncritical rejection and, at times, condemnation of you. i thought that loyalty to my friend required me to condemn you. this was not an expectation he placed upon our friendship, but my ignorant assumption. i was so wrong. because of my blindness i failed to see the gifts that you brought to our community. please forgive me.

wentz, i was rather jealous of you. you walked into our community during my sophomore year and were immediately recognized as the man of character and wisdom that you are. for some foolish reason i thought 'success' for me would eventually lead to competition with you. nothing could be further from the truth. i have since realized that competition is not a christian virtue, but a heinous vice. i am sorry that i let such faulty thinking stand in the way of getting to know you. i am also sorry for trying to dash your innate sense of mystery and wonder. if i remember correctly, and it was sin--so chances are quite good that i do, there was an occasion on which you pointed out to me the intricate beauty of one of the earthworms that liked to call our sidewalks home. i didn't respond to your reflection but rejoiced in stomping the earthworm into oblivion, as if such an action would quench the quirky wonder that characterizes your spirit. that was incredibly foolish...st. francis would have been ashamed of my action and i am as well. please forgive me.

em-em, you probably don't read this, but it needs to be said anyhow. i am sorry for the way things played out between us. i had every intention to treat you like a younger sister, with absolute purity, but i failed more often than not. if i could only change one thing about our friendship, which meant more to me that my year long silence would lead you to believe, it would be the ending. i was shocked that someone other than myself announced to you something that i would have rather shared in a more personal way. i hope that it doesn't pour the proverbial salt in the wound for me to wish you the best as you head to philadelphia. i have little doubt that through your gifts numerous corners of the developing world will be introduced to the wonderful majesty of God's Kingdom.

undoubtedly there are more things to say, but i trust that you can hear the cry of my heart. i long to realize the reconciliation that Christ has effected between us and hope that in some small way we can experience the community that i so foolishly neglected some years ago.

peace of Christ,

gentry

interested in burt rutan's excellent adventure?

if so, click here.

cracking the calvinism code

the following list is designed to help those who are trying to enter into a splinter cell of presbyterians, are preparing to attend gordon-conwell theological seminary or have friends who are planning to name their first child 'piper,' engage in meaningful conversation.

these are the keywords that will enable you to crack the calvinism code: sovereign, sovereignty, irreducible glory, double predestination, jacob or esau, antinomian, compatibilism, piper, piperian, imputed righteousness, sola fidei, sola scriptura, sola gratia, soli deo gloria, han sola, delight not duty, glorify by enjoy, total depravity, inerrancy of the autographs, godward, complimentarian, extra calvin nulla salus, christian hedonism, ordo salutis, praying the promises, supremacy, future grace, savoring jesus, supralapsarian, predestined, assurance, indelible grace, god entranced, god intoxicated, once reformed always reforming, original sin, substitution not moral persuasion, schismatic, dordt, westminster, decretive will, effectual call, superficial conversion, covenant, unregenerate, potter's freedom, paedo-baptism, simply irresistible.

i would like to dedicate this list to dr. david wells, who always warned us that the worst response to truth is to laugh at it.

the fog of war

after watching the fog of war for the second time, i was quite stunned by one of robert mcnamara's "life lessons." the first lesson that he provided was "empathize with your enemy." in that section mcnamara goes to great lengths to explain how the kennedy administration's ability to empathize with khrushchev's predicament was absolutely essential. in a later segment he notes the johnson administration's failure to empathize with the vietnamese leaders as a primary reason for the escalation and ultimately the failure of the vietnam war. furthermore, as if mcnamara's detailed and engaging narratives were not enough to press home the importance of the first life lesson, errol morris' entire film is a testimony to the centrality of this lesson. before seeing the film i bought the prevailing cultural assessment about mcnamara (i.e., that he was a warmonger, prideful to a tragic degree, responsible for vietnam, etc.) but by the end of it i was able to see him as a brilliant, willful man, who was as proud of his successes and as prone to mistakes as the rest of us. the only significant difference is that his responsibility was much greater and, as a result, his mistakes had much more significant consequences. i do not mean to suggest that i do not consider mcnamara in some sense responsible for the travesty that was vietnam. however, the movie helped me to understand how he found himself in that terribly difficult predicament.

all of that is to say that i have yet to learn mcnamara's life lesson. i do not often show empathy to my enemy by giving them the benefit of the doubt, assuming that their intentions are pure or even trying to understand how their familial/social/psychological context lead them to embrace a particular position. instead of trying to understand their worldview i tend to hammer away with them with what i believe to be the 'facts' as well as my (often shoddy) analysis. by doing that i do not develop a deeper understanding of their position, nor am i able to more fully nuance my own. this inability to empathize with my enemies has been readily evident in the way that i have processed the iraq war. i have not attempted to understand the philosophy that underlies neo-con policy, the fear that seems to drive much of the civilian response or any of the other reasons that reasonable, decent people consider this war just. as a result, my desire and ability to dialogue about the war has slowly abated and i have found myself on more than one occasion wondering "how any christian in their right mind could support this war" or "how in the world this administration could make a reasonable connection between the decentralized 'war on terror' and the need to make war upon and rebuild secular, islamic nation state." although it sounds, and is, cliche, i need to work on truly understanding others before seeking to be understood.

Lord Christ, forgive me for unwittingly playing the role of the elder brother, who couldn't seem to set aside his understanding of righteousness in order to empathize with and embrace his repentant brother. by your grace, help me to empathize with my enemy, as you did, believing that our Father can indeed make all things, even our enemies, new.

if you've seen the the fog of war i'd love to hear your reflections.

every time i try to soften my cynical perspective on evangelical culture...

i run across something like This. thank you dr. james!

i found the following quote on simkin's blog, which includes some of the finest christian writing on the net, and i decided to paste it here for the sake of further reference.

"You have to have a certain shamelessness to write. You have to be willing to drop your pants in front of anyone that might want to look. And you don't do that because you're proud of it, you do that because you have to write. It's not a choice.... You write because you have no other option."
-Rich Mullins

i wonder if after saying this rich literally dropped his pants and paraded around the reporter singing "old grey mare he ain't what he used to be, ain't what he used to be, ain't what he used to be..." ala the simpsons. that action would be far more in character for rich than stroking his chin like a two bit philosopher or striking the pose of "the thinker."

enough silliness...i must turn my attention to satiating the needs of the christian consumer.

reflecting on 1st Hornby

do i listen to folk music because i am miserable, or am i miserable because i listen to folk music?

currently spinning in the CD-Rom: Ani, The Cowboy Junkies, Tori and John Hiatt. maybe a little Weezer (blue or green, not pink) is just what the doctor would order.

Random Brushbacks and Additional Reflections

• after three straight come from behind wins, two occurring in the ninth inning-which is something they hadn't accomplished all year until thursday night, the cardinals are now 14 games over .500 and three games over the scum-sucking little bears. this is a bit belated, since i promised such a proclamation when they reached the 10 over mark, but here it is: I believe in the 2004 Cardinals.
  if we can pick up a serviceable pitcher on the market, ala, garcia, benson or rogers (though i doubt the latter is available) we might be on our way to the pennant. yes, the scum-sucking little bears will be tough, but i'm banking on baker over-pitching Zambrano & Prior as well as Wood staying on the DL for quite a while (considering his injury history that's not an unreasonable hope).
  
• at this point in the season, who do you think the Phils would rather have, bowa or rolen? booting rolen instead of bowa is starting to look like broglio for brock or bagwell for anderson.
  
• i've heard the giants are now selling rubber chickens so that their fans can heckle other teams for walking bonds. the proceeds of all chicken sales will go to their charity organization. i don't know what magowan was thinking! the proceeds should be added to their coffers so that they can find a hitter to protect Zeus. hey sabean, am i the only one who's thought of a pierzynski/alfonzo or rodriguez for beltran trade? you have the money you silly monkey and the west is wide open. so make it happen!
  
• yesterday afternoon my good friend mark paris took us to see 'rent.' sound problems aside, i thought the musical was pretty powerful. the narrative thrust of the story wasn't that insightful, but it probably packed a bigger punch in '96 when it was released. by the way, if you ever get an opportunity to catch a performance at the Wang Theater in boston, don't pass it up. that is one remarkable setting.
  
• yesterday, i also had the opportunity to visit the boston public library for the first time. i was overwhelmed by the entire experience, including the unparalleled lamps hanging from the exterior, the mosaics in the main entry way and the absolutely regal main reading room (which like everything else in boston, was restored with federal funds. no one knows how to work the appropriations committee like our patrons on beacon hill). okay, i need to run. my wife's dishwasher isn't working, and if i'm not careful, she might slap it:). i'll try to finish these reflections later this evening.