Getting It Right

I spied the downed branch as I entered the driveway. It was still attached—barely—to the trunk. I did not see the boy standing on it for another few moments. He looked about nine years old.

I prayed. I honestly prayed. I wanted God's help in handling the situation graciously. I wanted to help that boy. He just moved in across the street. His grandma knows I am a minister. So I also wanted to be as good a witness to the love of Jesus as I could.

I see everything that followed as an answer to prayer. As I got out of my truck I said to the boy, “Looks like you broke our tree.”

“No I didn't,” he said.

I asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

I said, “Do you have anything you want to say?”

“No.”

I turned and walked into the garage. I grabbed a saw and walked back out to the tree. He was still standing there. I tried one more time. “Did you break the branch?”

“No.”

I bent down and started sawing the branch off at the trunk. After a few seconds, the boy tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I'm sorry.”

I said how great it was that he had admitted it, and I wasn't mad, in fact, I was glad that he had done the right thing. When I finished my cut I said, “Tell you what. How about you drag this branch back to the stack you can see in the back yard and we'll say we're all even?”

He said okay and started off with the branch. I told him to wait a second. “Don't forget this,” I said, and pulled down the super soaker he had left stuck in a higher branch.

He smiled and said, “Oh yeah! I forgot!”

I am ashamed to admit that I often do not act graciously. It is a very good thing my truck does not have a microphone and loudspeaker for all the world to hear what I say about other drivers. I can say mean things to my wife. Sarcasm and cynicism are my fall-back positions.

But every now and then, with God's help, I get it right. I know this sounds like one of those contrived lessons we used to read in Sunday school. But it actually happened exactly as I have depicted it. And I thank the Lord it did.

Guns

Guns.  Once again they demand our attention.  One guy uses them to kill randomly at yet another school.  Another guy speaks of them yet again as the root cause of such tragedies.  Before typing another word allow me to stipulate that I believe President Obama sincerely meant what he said.  I disagree with him, but I could be wrong.

Surely all honest people would agree that guns have become one of the most powerful symbols in our nation.  On the far right guns get wrapped up symbolically with baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.  They belong to our glorious heritage.  To people on the far left guns stand for what they view as the cancerous qualities of the Marlboro Man: violence, machismo, isolationism, arrogance.  I venture to say most of us fit someplace in between on this spectrum.  But to me the whole conversation completely misses the point.

The point is that our culture has produced significant numbers of loners who are desensitized to violence and enraged by their obscurity.  They have no hope.  They believe their lives--crappy as they are--are the best to which they can ever aspire.  Some are mentally ill.  Others have substance abuse problems.  Still others have been seduced by radical Islam.  

The common thread running through all these men (no women yet) is despair.  

If I have correctly diagnosed the root cause of random school shootings, the antidote must address that despair.  But contemporary American culture has gotten dangerously close to bankruptcy on what it takes to ease despair.  It takes faith.  It takes faith in grace, mercy and forgiveness.  It takes faith in God.  Soren Kierkegaard, the 19th century Danish philosopher, wrote far more eloquently of this, especially in his work The Sickness Unto Death.  I can offer only a shadow of his thinking.  But shadows are where we are.  

We need light to eradicate the shadow that has fallen over the souls of so many young men.  We need the light of the love of Jesus.  Without it no law, no speech, no nothing can prevent the next shooting.  

You SURE it's been thirty years?!?

One of my spiritual gifts is showing up. I blame my parents. They showed up for each other. They showed up for their church. They showed up for their family. They showed up for their community.

So I have a genetic predisposition to show up, plus two excellent role models who taught me to do so by example. Last Sunday a bunch of people showed up to honor the thirtieth anniversary of my ordination into the ministry. People who have just won some award will often say they are humbled by the experience. I admit I have scoffed when I heard that. No more. Humbled is exactly how I feel.

My wife Linda planned a celebration of my 30^th year of professional ministry and kept me in the dark about it. We held our worship service last Sunday in a lakeside park. It took a little logistical preparation, so I worked on it for a couple of weeks. Linda apparently worked on the secret celebration for months.

I suppose I should have tumbled when the bagpiper climbed out of her car and started warming up in the parking lot. But I was in the midst of rehearsal with our praise band and had time only to think, “What in the heck is she doing here?”

Maybe I should have tumbled when the retired denominational official who had supported me so powerfully when we struggled to start our new congregation arrived. I had not seen him in a couple of years. But I thought, “Well, it is the lake service and he always used to love it.”

Then my college roommate stepped out of his car. Then one of our elders touched me on the shoulder, and with a twinkle in her Celtic eyes told me just to let things happen, I was not in charge that Sunday, for once. Then Linda raised her hand at the end of the announcements, when we ask for birthdays and anniversaries. “We'll have one more anniversary at the end of worship,” she said.

Oh.

All summer I had occasionally thought of the approach of my 31^st year of getting paid to preach and teach and lead youth groups and listen to grieving souls and all the rest of it. I had heard nothing of any recognition and if asked, I would have discouraged it. But Linda felt I deserved it. I think perhaps she also knew I needed it.

Every person who shows up year after year can get a little melancholy about it. Does anybody see what I'm doing? Do they care? If I draw attention to myself and then they thank me that's not really gratitude, is it? Like many young hot-shots I started out convinced I would set the church world on fire. I would pastor big churches and make them bigger. I would win.

But the insults and the professional sidesteps mount up and, like most preachers of my acquaintance, I gradually accepted that my calling was to do my best to stay faithful to the Word of God, and to God's people, come what may. Yes, people often leave when they don't get everything they want. They leave marriages, they leave businesses, they leave churches. Yes, people with no understanding of my calling believe they understand it completely and—often angrily—do not hesitate to enlighten me. Yes, I have made many, many mistakes.

But I have kept showing up. And if pride is a sin, this makes me a sinner. When people loved me enough to show up last Sunday they scraped a lot of the discouraging barnacles off my hull. Thank you, every one of you, even those who showed up through a card in the mail, an email, a Facebook message. I feel humbled. I feel blessed. I guess I'll keep showing up.

Something Beautiful

I have written a series of earnest essays. I have addressed vexing debates and political issues. But now I have decided the time has come simply to list a few things I find absolutely, utterly beautiful. After reading these, please add one or two of your own.

Beautiful Things:

Watching a six decade-old marriage work around itself in the kitchen

My wife's forgiveness

You and I Again, James Taylor's new love song to his wife

A bald eagle circling in the sun high above a lake, fishing

Ray Tolbert running a fast break baseline to baseline in about six strides with a huge smile across his face

Birch trees

The sun rising beyond a shelf of clouds above the horizon, breaking out in endless oranges for a couple of minutes before climbing behind the next layer.

Young people working to exhaustion to rehab a house for a single mom and her two children, whom they will never see again

My mom's smile when we first arrive for a visit

The smell of a freshly-split spruce log

(Please add your own):

Great Schools

My politics: fiscal conservative, anti-federalist, socially a moderate libertarian, and all of it informed by my faith in Jesus Christ to the best of my ability.

So why would I would write this piece extolling the virtues of our local public school system?

I do so, first, because Traverse City Public Schools deserve it. Both its high schools rank in the top flight. West rates a 16 out of 687 in the State of Michigan; Central comes in at 45^th (see link below). They accomplish this despite receiving pitiful funding when compared to downstate schools. (This happens due to a cynical piece of bait and switch known as Proposition 1.) Our two children received a solid college preparatory education at West. They had dedicated teachers. They benefited immensely from the unbelievable choral/theater program. Over the years we have watched a long line of young people graduate from West and go into engineering, teaching, medicine and other careers that require serious higher education. We have watched others who did not choose more intellectual pursuits do equally well in a wide range of life directions.

I praise the public schools, second, because I support their mission. I believe the entire community has the obligation—no, the blessing—of giving every young person a genuine opportunity to get educated. I can make a biblical case for this. I actually see it as a covenant. I see it as a God-given calling. If some see this as a violation of the Conservative Code, so be it. I make no apology.

Jesus made it clear that we must love one another. I can think of precious few ways to make His love more real than trying to give EVERY child the chance to learn. Our public schools do a better job of educating all the children handed to them than their press sometimes indicates. They deserve less critical rhetoric and more support all the way around.

Sure, the public schools fail individuals. In some places they fail virtually every student. Some families have the resources and determination to home school. Private schools can work best for some.

I have no use for the teachers' unions. They have forgotten their purpose and become money conduits for one political party. I have even less use for bloated school administrations that suck money out of the classroom and into the pockets of the few who play the school politics game with unusual skill.

Yet I staunchly support the public schools. I believe God does, too.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/michigan/rankings?schooltypepublic=y&int=987308&schooltypemagnet=y&state=MI&schooltypecharter=y&page=3

Toleration?

I believe in God. I honestly do.

I believe God loves even me. I often wonder why. I have lived long enough, made enough horrible mistakes, to wonder how anybody can love me. Yet I believe God does. Thank God.

I believe God loves all people. I know quite a few people who seem to have earned that love more than I. I also know some who seem not to have earned it. But who am I to decide who God loves and why?

I pray—literally—that I live my life in a manner that supports my beliefs. I pray that I would manifest the love of God for all. I know I fail in this. But I sincerely try.

This is why the flap over Indiana's new law protecting the free exercise of religion grieves me deeply. I am a Hoosier. But I happen to live in a state, Michigan, that passed the same law years ago. Nobody seemed to care then. Nobody seemed to care when President Clinton signed the same law on the federal level twenty-two years ago. But times change, and so do political calculi.

For decades now “tolerance” and “diversity” have been taught in our schools. They have received ever-greater play in the media. But I put those words in quotation marks because in my experience the tolerance extends only to certain people. Christians who try to live according to a traditional interpretation of the faith—no matter how lovingly—are not tolerated by many.

As a Christian I have often felt condemned by the tolerance folks. I have never felt this more keenly than right now. The bitter irony of their judging my beliefs in the name of tolerance seems to escape them.

I understand that many people sincerely believe that these laws are meant as an attack against gays and lesbians. I disagree with them, but I grant their genuine feeling.

Can they grant my genuine religious convictions? I can live with them; can they live with me?

I thought I lived in a country founded in part on the protection of my right to practice my sincerely-held religious beliefs. If a law meant to defend that cannot stand, then where can I go? I know of no place.

In that case, God help us all.

Journalism--or what passes for it

This week our local newspaper waged a campaign against a city official. The articles have divulged personal information better left unprinted—for the sake of him, his family and the rest of us. The attack has been personal and mean. It has been blatantly self-serving. (How many papers and clicks can we sell if we slop around down here in the sewer?)

I have decided not to read the newspaper in question, not in print nor on-line. I hope others will make the same choice.

I recognize this merely represents the latest in a long line of media fails. Once-proud networks have fallen from Murrow to Williams, from investigative to yellow journalism. I remember watching actual reporters breaking actual news while sweating humidity and bullets in Viet Nam. Now I feel I must consume at least three outlets just to get the facts. Everybody has an agenda. Everybody's bottom line colors their editorial policy.

Many moons ago I had the opportunity to interview Bob Knight, the basketball coach at Indiana University. He intimidated me into preparing for the experience with a rigor I have matched only once: when I took the board exams to qualify for the ministry. (Well, I was pretty nervous when I went to dinner the first time with my eventual wife's parents.)  I made absolutely certain every word I printed about Knight was accurate. If only reporters--and editors--always took this approach.

We live in media ghettos. We tend to consume only what agrees with our preconceptions.  I urge you to turn to Fox, National Public Radio, the Atlantic Monthly, the National Review—oh: and the Bible AND Discover magazine. Think about it. Test it with your B.S. meter. Listen to people you respect with whom you disagree. Repeat with me the vital incantation, “I could be wrong.”

Our local newspaper seems oblivious to the irony of its rage against any person or organization it feels might be spinning information. It has made me feel a little slimy just from reading certain headlines. It has done the same number when crusading against the local school district and community college. Its "coverage" of a lengthy debate about how best to serve the homeless villainized decent people on all sides.  I have given up thinking it can clean up its act. That leaves only the question of whether I can clean up mine. And you, yours.

Football Follies

How do I hate the Patriots? Let me count the ways: I root for the Colts, therefore I must. Their quarterback has too much snark and lives with Giselle. They have a history of bending (and breaking) the rules.

Yet after further review, the ruling on the field stands. I have concluded the funky formation the Pats used against the Ravens in last Saturdays' playoff game—and the quick snap count that QB used to get the plays off before the defense figured things out—were completely legal.

If you care, check out this link, helpfully posted online by the Baltimore Sun: http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/ravens/ravens-insider/bal-nfl-rule-5-section-1-changes-in-position-20150111-story.html

Once again coach Pats Coach Bill Belichick walks two steps ahead of the herd. What will he do this week against My Colts? Close the windows at your practice facility, Coach Pagano. Put your players on total social media lock-down. Call in the NSA to do counter-surveillance.

Why do I dislike Des Bryant? I have no use for loud-mouths who taunt and act like divas begging for encores every time they ACTUALLY CATCH A PASS! But if the rules state he did not make that catch in yesterday's playoff game, the rules need changing. Spare me the explanations. He made a fantastic catch.

The Patriots would likely have beaten the Ravens even without the touchdown that capped the drive in which they got their funk on. But could the Packers have retaken the lead had Bryant's catch stood and the Cowboys scored the probable touchdown to follow? We'll never know. For shame, NFL.