Hot topic I

Operation Castle: Wikipedia

As I did my homework for my BSF study on Revelation 15 and 16 tonight, my observation was that Biblical scholars have come to some very different conclusions about what things mean in Revelation. My notes on Babylon and the 144,000 repeat the phrase, “This could mean…or…or…” Somehow I found this comforting. Even the experts are still learning, still debating, still changing their minds. I am free to look at the evidence and come to my own conclusions.

I was at a friend’s house, and I noticed the various magazines laid down on the coffee table. I find magazines (and books, especially comic books) at friends’ houses irresistible, especially if they focus on news or ideas rather than recipes and people, though I’m curious about those, too. The magazine was Decision, and as I flipped through it, I noticed an article on a current hot topic I’m interested in because it relates so much to cross-cultural mission. I skimmed through the article (in a break in the conversation; tea was being made or something, and I can skim fast), and took note of the categorical answer the contributor gave to the issue. He was the president of a Southern Baptist seminary. He has not been to my BSF class.

Earlier in the day, I had received an email bulletin put out by Christianity Today dealing with the exact same hot topic. The bulletin, however, approached the topic quite differently. It reminded me more of my BSF notes. It had drawn opinions from some thirty contributors, all of whom had some experience with the topic. Some were Biblical scholars and seminary profs. Some were missionaries or heads of missionary organizations. Some worked in Bible translation. Some were Christians who had come out of another religion. All of them had wrestled with this controversy and cared deeply about mission, but they certainly did not all agree. As I read through the articles, I began to form my own opinion based on what they were saying and my own experience. My opinion will put me at odds with some of the contributors and in agreement with others. I have a feeling that the contributors of that bulletin would be ok with that.

Before I tell you what the topic is, I need to introduce two terms that helped me navigate the controversy. Ontology refers to whether something exists or not. Anselm in 1078 gave Christianity its most famous ontological argument for the existence of God, which goes something like this: God is the greatest “thing” that can ever be imagined. Even atheists can imagine God, whether they believe in Him or not. But He has to exist, because a real God would always surpass the imaginary God in the atheist’s mind.  Later philosophers refuted this argument in several ways: for example by claiming that existence doesn’t imply superiority (hmm. I’ll take existence, thank you very much. And believe me; I had a choice).  Notice we aren’t saying much about what we know about God.

Epistemology refers to how we know things, how we arrive at our beliefs about God, for example. Epistemologically, all the religions of the world say very different things. Christians rightfully claim you can’t know God without knowing His Son as Lord.

The problem with the controversial question covered in the two magazines I read is that although it is a simple yes/no question, it doesn’t have a simple answer. It has two answers, one ontological and the other epistemological, and these answers contradict each other. You get yes or no, depending on what you are really asking.

More on this later. Meanwhile, I’m thinking about how questions that seem so straight forward can produce different answers when you enter new cultures, because what you think you are saying isn’t what people in other cultures are actually hearing. How do we help people realize this and relax around the paradox?

Family Day

Rashad was in fine form, motioning us all into his small apartment, “Welcome! Welcome,” and cracking jokes as much as is possible if you only know six words in English (makes me think he’d be full of fun and jokes if I spoke his language). He was pleased as punch to have all of us there in his home on Family Day. We, the twelve people in his support group are his new family, and he was almost giddy with pleasure that we were all gathered together for a family meal.

“Sit down, sit down!” he insisted. He had a small kitchen table, but that wasn’t where we would eat. He gestured toward cushions on the living room floor where Manal had set out places for all of us on two plastic tablecloths laid on the carpet, using paper plates and cups. One cup held forks, for those who needed them. It reminded me of Mixtec meals that you eat by using your tortilla as a spoon. Syrians use pita bread the same way. Some of us had trouble getting down on the floor with our creaky knees, and we admired the nimbleness of our hosts. Rashad had insisted this was to be a Syrian meal and didn’t allow any of us to bring a thing. This was his way of saying thank you.

Manal had been cooking since the day before and the spread was lavish and artfully arranged. We had cigar-looking things wrapped in grape leaves and filled with rice and lamb (I think). We had chicken and cashews served over seasoned rice baked in yogurt. We had another chicken dish with noodles. We had what looked like samosas but weren’t called that in Arabic (sorry, Rashad kept telling us the Arabic words and we kept saying them and forgetting them, saying them and forgetting them. I know that is what it feels like to them as they try to learn our language. Reminded me of learning Mixtec. I understand! One world I am teaching Manal is "FRUSTRATED!") We had fritters and salad and fruit and drumsticks. We ate well, every bite delicious. There was much left over, and Rashad suggested everyone come back the next day for more.

It was the first time I’d seen Manal dressed up. She wore a floor-length sun dress over a long-sleeved sweater and an azure scarf that set off her black eyes. As she brought out tray after tray, insisting we eat more and still more, I admired her willing, servant heart. I was warmed by her gracious hospitality.

The group requested a prayer over a meal, and in English, we blessed it in Jesus’ name. Rashad was fine with that. “Messenger of Peace,” Rashad calls our Jesus, our Prince of Peace. In times like these I am filled with gratitude that my Prince stands for peace even for those who don’t know him as Lord. I’m also grateful that while my own family has been halved and sent along their way, (how I miss them!) God has given me this new one to love for a while here in Canada. God brought this orphaned family here to join me in my own exile.

Family Day is not a Canadian invention.

Ghosts

Henry Fuseli 1780

“Oh, my prophetic soul.” This is what Hamlet cries out when he sees the Ghost, his father, who had been murdered by his own brother. Hamlet had had his suspicions about the guy, and now his nastiest ones were confirmed. He’s torn up inside, and when he sees his uncle kneeling in the chapel, he wants to run him through right then and there. But he doesn’t. Because he isn’t content with seeing justice served. No, he wants punishment. He wants his uncle to burn in hell. So he waits. And because he chooses revenge, he brings his whole world down around his ears. He’s responsible for the death of his girlfriend, her father, her brother, his own mother, and finally, his uncle. And the kingdom is lost. Sure, he gets his revenge in the end, but at what cost. Everyone close to him dies. Innocents die. As Shakespeare well knew, “If you live by the sword, you’ll die by it.”

In these days of wars and rumors of wars, we have ghosts walking among us. They wear the faces of those who have died, and they call out to us “hard things.” They mean to have blood, and they provoke us to violence toward those who have done nothing. And they are Christian.

“End those people before they walk in!” they cry. “Holy War!” And they appeal (just as Paul said they would)  to “Peace and security.”  

We have all seen these ghosts. And because they wear the faces of people familiar to us, wearing our skin and speaking our language, we are seduced. We are powerless to resist them. There is only one voice that counters, but we can’t bear it.  The message is too hard.

Today I was invited into the home of Mohammad, an Algerian who has lived in Canada with his family for twelve years. He was the security guard at a pizza place near where my Syrian friends live (four year old Hammudi thinks that all pizza is called pizza pizza). When one of our group went there to order pizza, she met him, and he offered to help the family with translation and anything else he could, even finding Rashad a job. The next time she went to order pizza there, he paid for the entire order before she got there, drinks included. He treated us all, and we hadn’t even met. When I entered his home today, his wife had snacks and drinks on the table. They have their own Arabic version of “mi casa es su casa,” so I now have a home in Canada where Muslim Algerians welcome me. At one point in our conversation, I must have said something that he especially agreed with, because he grabbed my hand in both of his and said, “Yes, sister.” I was startled, since Rashad won’t shake hands with women. Maybe my surprise showed, so Mohammed added quickly, “We are all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.”  And so we are.

Mohammad’s daughter is 26 and suffers from some unpronounceable disease that causes pain even when she breathes. She wants to go to college, but she can’t leave the house to ride in a car.  What do you say to someone with such suffering? “I will pray for you,” I said. And here is my prayer: “God, heal Fatima from this disease. And may she know you did, for love.” She wore a long red velvet gown, and since she’s unmarried, she had her hair down. She has enormous black eyes, and she translated from Arabic to English for me when the group was laughing because Rashad had played a joke on me, getting me to say nonsense that tickled them. She was eager to help. The whole family was. “Call me anytime,” Mohammed said. “I can go to the apartment if they need me.”

I am friends with two Muslim families. Syria and Algeria live in my back yard. They do not fill me with foreboding. They cheer me. They dispel ghosts.

Come dispel your ghosts with me.

Lent

I guess even cancer treatment can become routine. Another round in the chemo lounge. Check. (Three to go, yay!) Procedure on the heart. Check. Appointment made with rheumatologist. Check. Appointment made with surgeon. Check. (Apparently he’s a plastic surgeon. Why in the world plastic? That sounds like I’m trying to recycle something, maybe my nose or chin or something, instead of retrieve some lost fingers.) Tickets bought to go to Mexico for a week of training Mexican missionaries and return in time for the next treatment. Check. Visit to Dr Blue and Brown. Check. ((I did the unthinkable this time. When he said both, “I’ve never seen such a thing before,” and “You’re asking me questions outside my area of expertise” (Canadian doctors actually say such things), I couldn’t restrain myself and burst out with, “Doc, you know all those movies where someone dies and someone else spends the entire movie trying to find out how it happened, because she just wants to know why? Well, I might not be able to find a solution to this condition, but at least I want to understand why!” He stared at me for a bit. Patients don’t usually analyze movies around him, I’m sure. Can you just imagine him going home to Mrs. Blue and Brown that night? “Dear, you’ll never guess what happened to me at the office today. This old lady actually started talking about movies!”)) (Double parentheses. Always wanted to do that.) Check. Check.

You know, even this can become routine, and I can let it define me, absorb me, weigh on me. In fact, I don’t really see any way to avoid this from happening.  It just does, and I can’t control it. I’m just not that tough.

Except that it’s Lent. In our parents’ era, evangelicals didn’t celebrate Lent. Too Catholic. In fact, evangelicals in Mexico don’t celebrate Lent. Many of them don’t even celebrate Easter Sunday itself because they think, somehow, Catholics invented it. But in our day, many evangelicals have found value in setting aside a time every year to reflect on the Passion of Christ and how it has revolutionized our lives. Some of them (like Former Hostess Mom) give 40 days of thanksgiving. Others (like Husband) fast from some preference like cake or coffee to remind themselves of Jesus’ sacrifice.

And when you look at Jesus, the way he lived, the way he died, the way he just couldn’t stay dead, things don’t stay the same. They don’t stay where you put them. They shift. And where before you looked up to see only a blank wall blocking your vision, now you see sky, light, eternity.

In George MacDonald’s The Princess and Curdie, Curdie is given the gift to feel a person’s soul by touching their hands. In a flash of insight, he knows whether the person is growing pure or beastly inside. Lent can bring this flash of insight, a sixth sensing of passion and glory. Somewhere in these 40 days, may the Lenten season be this flash to you.

Two thousand years ago, a man hung on a cross. At the hour of noon, the world went dark. The ground shook. The rocks split. The tombs opened. Nature itself put its hand over its face and screamed in horror. How could the universe know this was all birth pangs?

Let us live the suspense of these day. Peer through the darkness. Wait for that first morning light.

Idiopathic

Robert and I like detective shows, especially if they are English (Foyle) or Swedish (Wallander) or Scottish (Rebus) or something. What I thought of today was how much doctors are like detectives. You give them the clues the best you can, and they find the culprit. Often the crimes are as irreversible in either field. There’s no happy ending, and you have to be satisfied with just knowing “why.”

Today my family doctor was stumped and told me he’s never seen such a thing. The x-ray technician said the same thing (after he gave me heck for walking into his room texting on my phone.) He also said I was old. This happened because I asked why there is a lead apron on the machine only from the waist down. He said this is because it protects your reproductive organs. “Not that I am going to be having a baby,” I said. “No,” he said. “When you’re old…”

I looked at him. His eyes widened. “Not that you’re old,” he said, “I’m your age.” “How do you know my age?” I demanded. “I saw your chart,” he said. “I look at the ages of all the women who come in here.” Hmmm. See what happens when you turn 55?  

So the textbook symptoms for trigger finger (which I now have in all my fingers) are that your fingers joints lock up in a closed position, and when you use your other hand to force them open, they “click.”  It’s not arthritis. “They” don’t really know what it is. So if eight of your fingers start triggering pretty much all at the same time after chemo, what would be your guess when something goes wrong with the other two? What would be your guess about the connection between trigger finger and chemo? Yes. Of course. That is my guess, too. I can play the detective if I have to.

The problem is that, of course, my thumbs don’t show the textbook symptoms. They are locked open. The first person I saw was my doctor’s intern. She actually opened her medical data base to research the situation. (I’d love to have that password!) “So what causes trigger finger anyway?” I asked her. She started to explain the bit about the tendon getting stuck in the sheath… “Yes, I know that, but what causes it? What causes trigger finger?” Tap, tap, tap on the keys. (I’m making this poor intern learn something. I am a teacher, even in the patient’s chair. Yay!) She looks up. “Oh, it’s idiopathic.” Right. Did she just say, “idiopathic?” “And what is that,” I ask. I am making her day, I’m sure. Doctors, never turn your intern who has access to a data base over to a teacher. “It means the cause is unknown. It just happens.” Right. It just happens. In other words, stump the doctor. “Motiveless,” a detective would say. I had a very difficult time biting my tongue at that point. I felt like a prime witness not being listened to. “It’s the CHEMO!” I said. “Isn’t that obvious?”

So the intern called in the doctor. “Not the textbook symptoms for trigger finger,” he said, “Maybe it’s a kind of paralysis,” he said, and he checked for neuropathy, running his finger down the inside of my hands. “No problem there.” (I already knew that. See, I actually know something. I have experience. I have neuropathy in my feet.) He sent me to meet the x-ray guy my own age. As I got up to leave, I tried to protest that it had to be trigger finger, because my fingers kind of lock open like my thumbs are doing, just not so bad, “And, Doctor, I just went to see my Dad in Florida, and he told me he had frozen thumbs, and “they” did surgery on them, (Dad, when?!!!!) and now he’s fine, and his fingers had locked open just like mine.” Sorry, are you following my argument here? Because the doctor wasn’t. He’s a kind man, and I wouldn’t trade him, but I could hear the impatience when he interrupted me. My father, see, had nothing to do with this.

Oh, but I know. I may not be using the right words, but I know. And he’s not listening.

It's frustrating when the guys with the titles and data bases stop detecting, stop listening.

And I'm not just talking about doctors.

Peripheral vision

Wikimedia

So there I was, Sunday afternoon, along with one hundred million other watchers, waiting for the Superbowl to start. The host family had left delicious chili warming in the crockpot, so you could get up and serve yourself supper any time you wanted. Daughter made this awesome spinach dip (Robert and I both wondered how that spinach came out so perfectly square in the bowl. We’d never seen frozen squares of spinach before. So practical). There were corn chips to munch on, and that sour cream/salsa/cheese dip that you can just keep eating forever. The mom gave us all those questionnaires to fill out before the game. Who will win? What will the score be? (My guess was only off by one point! Should have gambled on that one! Here’s a question. Even if you have an inkling the other team will win, do you still gamble on your own favorites out of loyalty? Loyalty to whom, really?) How many safeties? (Safeties? What are those?) And what songs does Cold Play even sing, and how would I know what color Beyonce’s boots could be. Are they always black? Because I guessed red. Unfortunately that was Lady Gaga. Did you happen to notice eyeshadow? I want some of that! The guesses were made, the couches were soft and full of people, and the game was on.

Big theme for the Superbowl: “Football is family.” All those Superbowl kids from throughout the years singing out their birthright. And I suppose it is. Family. It was for us in that living room, me snuggled next to a husband who is trying to have a conversation with the other dad, and the other family in its entirety watching together. I guess it was fun to try and follow the plays and figure out who passed to whom, and why flags flew, and why people kept walking on and off the field. It was as tricky and suspenseful as any storyline I’d tackled recently. And I felt sorry for those poor quarterbacks when they got the ball slapped right out of their hands, and for the poor guys (probably some other kind of “back”) who kept reaching, reaching, reaching…and failed. I groaned with the crowds, whatever the team was. I felt sorry for the guys that got their necks twisted around when people pulled on their face guards and for the ones that limped off the field after probably getting “concussed.” I doubt that is what the game was about, but I couldn’t help that. I saw what I saw and felt what I felt. Reminds me of Stargirl.

Remember her? She’s one of my favorite characters in literature, a creation of Jerry Spinelli (along with Maniac Magee). I was just reading about him: Did you know that at 16, when he started to write (and Maniac started to run) he went to a football game, and when his team won a big game, and everyone else went cheering through the streets, he went home to write about it? Like me. Anyway, Stargirl joins the Cheering Squad at her school and entertains the entire crowd with her antics, but unfortunately, she can’t just cheer for her own team. She cheers the losers, and the ones that get broken on the field, and she definitely cheers the “wrong” side. Read the book to see what happens next. I always tell my class Stargirl is a Jesus figure. They cock their heads and wrinkle their eyebrows at me.

See, there’s always more than just the game. And maybe that’s what we forget most often and can least afford to forget. After the game, I saw all these posts about all the peripheral issues haunting the Superbowl. You know, the ticket prices. The salaries. The corporate profits. The homeless displaced and ignored again. The lifestyles and adulation. The women and children brought in the area to service so much testosterone. Exactly how much of the Superbowl is about family, really? I found out people boycott the event to make a statement. I guess I’ve kind of done that all my life. Just now taking a peep to see if I was right, and finding it’s a mixed bag.

I like stories. I like drama and excellence and shows. I like to see what humans are capable of accomplishing. We were made for splendor and awe. But it’s never that simple, is it, as Stargirl well knew. Show can be seductive, too, like sex. Isn’t that American politics in a nutshell right now?

Jacques Bertaux 1793

There’s this great scene in Tale of Two Cities where Defarge takes the Mender of Roads to see the king. The peasant is dazzled by the spectacle and cheers, “Long live the king.” He eats it up. Never has he seen such a thing in his life, and he loves the show. Defarge holds him by the collar to keep him from “flying at the objects of his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces.” (Does this sound like any fans you know?) Defarge is pleased because, as he says, “You make these fools believe that it will last forever.”  Remember, it’s the eve of the Revolution. Madame Defarge comments with utter sarcasm, "You would shout and shed tears for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?" The Mender is oblivious to everything that is happening behind the scenes in the Royal Palace. “I think so,” he says. In his day, the spectacle was as seductive as a Superbowl.

I ask God for good peripheral vision.

Fundamentalists

We hear so much about fundamentalist Muslim groups in these days. We see a lot in the news about how they fight for Islam to return to a purer, simpler state. But up until recently, the only fundamentalists I’d ever heard about were…us. The fundamentalist Christians. The ones who hung on to an orthodox faith, a belief in a risen Christ who was born of a virgin and did the miracles his disciples claimed he did. But I keep wondering, why are we called fundamentalists like those others who strap bombs to their chests and throw planes into buildings? How can we share this name? I have to admit, it makes me uneasy. What do I share with fundamentalist Muslims who provoke such hatred in my country? Is it that we are both so confident that what we believe is true? Is it that we would die for our faith? Is it that we struggle to maintain orthodoxy in these modern times? This has been bothering me, and Robert and I have gone round and round.

I have been reading a book that gives some explanation. Let me give you some of its ideas and see what you think. Keep in mind that for me Jesus is IT. Period.

Here goes: According to my book, fundamentalism is not a timeless component of this or that religion but a reaction to a perceived threat. So it’s a modern phenomenon. Up until the modern age, people didn’t question their religions. These just were. The book gives this great example of how a tradition can be so taken for granted at one time.  Two queens, Victoria and Eugenie (Empress of France but not born into aristocracy) were at an opera together. They were both regal in their bearing. When Eugenie went to sit down after accepting people’s applause, she looked behind her to see that the chair was there. Victoria did not. She just knew.

What the author says is that in the Modern Age, we still believe the chair (tradition) of religion should be there, but we can no longer take it for granted in our society. Now we have to make sure. Fundamentalism is an attempt to get that taken-for-grantedness back, an attempt to take society back to that golden era when the “state” chair (religion) was never questioned. Of course this is impossible, but fundamentalists are the ones who keep longing, who keep trying and trying.

To do this, fundamentalists make rules for their constituents. First, fundamentalists must have no significant interaction with outsiders because these might alter their view a shade or shake their certainty. Second, fundamentalists allow no doubt. You have to be sure. You must be absolutely confident you are right and not in any need of insight from people outside your tradition. If you start listening or questioning, it means your tradition can't be that taken-for-granted "chair." You see this in fundamentalist Muslim groups. They are fanatically right, and they don’t care to talk to you about it. You are a threat and should be eliminated. Anyone who doubts or questions is a threat and should be taken care of. Violence is an option. "Shoot them before they shoot us."

We condemn this behavior in Muslim terrorists. But when I watch the news, I sure see the same seeds of hatred and violence being sown in our own soil.  Even among Christians.  Are we afraid Jesus will lose ground? Is he only Lord of the past?

I am utterly committed to Jesus as my risen Lord and Savior. I love his miracles and words. I am a missionary for life wherever I happen to live. But I sure don't want to be counted as a fundamentalist if the fruit is such anger, judgment, violence, deafness, isolation, fear, longing for the past, and the idolatry of trusting my own certainty. Somehow it just doesn’t square. I am ashamed.