Category: Longform
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Thanks, G.
My friend Geof has been writing a series of “letters” blog posts this month, addressed to family and friends. I’ll admit to idly wondering whether I’d rate a letter or not, but when I saw “Dear Chris” show up in my RSS reader, and then read his post, I was a little bit challenged to know what to say.
One of these days I’m going to return the favor and distill my thoughts into a letter/blog post for Geof, but for now I’ll just say that I’m blessed to be able to count him as a friend, and that I wish there was a way we could merge the awesomeness that is Geof’s Huntsville, AL, crowd with my Iowa-based career path.
Are we overly focused on the cross?
There’s a thought-provoking post by Bo Sanders up on Homebrewed Christianity today wherein he asks what might be to many a startling question: have we overdone the crucifixion?
Sanders thinks that we may have. He observes that, for evangelicals on the blogosphere (and, I’d add, in the current publishing market) it’s “all atonement theory, all the time”.
He goes on:
Here is my concern: in the resurrection God spoke a new word over the world. I would like to live into that new word and participate with God’s Spirit who was given as a gift and a seal of the promise.
To obsess on the cross and related atonement theories is to live perpetually in the old word and to camp in the final thing that God said about the old situation.
As I reflect on my own journey, I can see how the churches in which I grew up did focus on the cross and atonement to the great neglect of the resurrection. Not that we didn’t have amazing Easter celebrations, but somehow we never connected the dots between Christ’s resurrection and our own eternal future. That omission is the reason that when, at age 30, I finally read N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope, it so rocked my theological world.
So I think it’s a question worth thinking about. Do we overly focus on the cross as opposed to the other symbols of our faith? Is the focus on the cross a reflection of the evangelical personal sin/death/redemption focus, whereas a focus on the empty tomb and resurrection might drive a more corporate kingdom/social perspective?
To look at it another way: one of my daughter’s favorite stories from the Jesus Storybook Bible (highly recommended if you have kids) is the one on the crucifixion. But if she requests that story, I make sure we have time to read two stories, because I refuse to stop reading with Good Friday; I want to get to resurrection morning. Is our focus on the cross a grown-up theological equivalent of continually reading the Friday chapter without the Sunday chapter? Food for thought, for sure.
My brain is full: a quick clarification
I realize after writing these last couple of posts that they may make me sound like I’m deeply unhappy or unsatisfied with my current church. Given that lots of my local church friends read my blog, let me assure you that it’s not the case. I’m happy with where we are as a church. I’m encouraged and challenged by the teaching on a regular basis. I enjoy serving as a part of our music team. I’ve made some good friends in the three years we’ve been at Stonebridge, and I know those relationships will only deepen as time goes on.
We’re also involved in a community group (which is a new addition for us this year). It’s possible that as we get to know our group better it will serve as some of the fellowship I’m looking for. But those relationships take time to grow. We’ll see how it goes. And I’m also enthusiastic about the spiritual goals that our church leadership has set out for us this year. They’re good ones. We just have to follow through on them and make them more than just words.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if I get an email from my pastor sometime within the next week saying “hey man, read your blog, anything we can talk about? How can we minister to you better?” I love my pastor deeply and greatly appreciate the fact that he will notice it and be faithful as a shepherd to get with me and see what’s up.
But here’s the thing. I don’t think that what I’m looking for is someone or some group to minister to me in a way that I’ve been missing. What I’m looking for is a community of believers who can join, side by side, in agreement that we are all broken and in need of the Gospel to minister to us on a daily basis.
[My apologies: 300+ words is hardly a quick clarification. sigh]
My brain is full, part 2
Yesterday’s post wandered a bit in talking about the relevance of God’s Word even as it is found in the daily readings and prayers of the church. When I started writing I was aiming for an appreciation of the BCP daily prayers and how they have ministered to me even in just the bit I have used them privately. Where I wandered, though, was to the observation that “my brain is full; it is my soul that needs fed”, and I’d like to work through that thought a little bit more today.
Certainly my personal quirks and characteristics help cause this condition: I read a lot. My mind never seems to let go of details and trivia. (Let’s put it this way: I was the kid who at the age of 9 or 10 was reading through encyclopedias in the morning when I’d wake up early.) I do a lot of synthesizing, by which I mean that I’m not so good at creatively staking out my own position, but that I can listen to two or three other positions, evaluate them, and then pull together the pieces into a unified whole that makes sense to me. I also don’t re-read much, because my brain says “yeah, been there, read that”, and it becomes hard to slow down and concentrate on something for a second time.
As a teenager and into my twenties my voracious book appetite combined with the wealth of good books on theological subjects served me well. I read a lot, learned a lot. My bookshelves are still filled with Lewis, Piper, Keller, Wright, Chesterton, and Spurgeon. I read through a lot of Schaeffer. I had a hard time finding the patience to appreciate some of the older theologians; how can you use so many words to say seemingly the same thing over and over? I could sit and talk theology with my church leaders, and before long that desire and aptitude, combined with the ability to apply it in practical ways, drew me into church leadership myself. (Somewhere along the way we had three kids, I over-committed to almost everything, burned out, and changed churches. But that’s another story.)
Our current evangelical culture, and especially the neo-Reformed subculture within it (wherein I find currently myself) seem to highly favor this intellectual, bookish approach. Pastors like John Piper pen profusely. Pastor Mark Driscoll established his own publishing line of theological literature. Tim Keller seems to crank out a book a year (at least). It’s as if you’re not anybody until you’ve published a book. But with very few exceptions, these books don’t seem to really say anything new; the publisher is just pushing an update or a rehash with new cover art and the current big-name pastor as the author.
Now that I’m in my mid-30’s, things seem to have changed in my reading appetite. I can think of only three or four books I’ve read in the past 5 years that have really made me just stop and go “wow, what did I just read?”. Now, maybe I’m just failing to choose the right books. (In that case, I’m open for recommendations, so please leave me a comment or send me an email, FB message, or tweet with your ideas.)
But maybe I’m at a plateau where more head knowledge is not the answer. And this is where I file my desire (expressed yesterday) for the daily corporate practice of Scripture, prayer, and worship. Even that is undoubtedly not the magic answer. Maybe the struggling pursuit of the seemingly elusive daily “quiet time” is a more practical answer. But that, by itself, seems to private and insulated to me. I need community to go with it. Not community for study purposes; I just want to be with people who, like me, have that need in their soul to pray, worship, confess, and hear the Word on a regular basis. If you know where to find it, please let me know.
My brain is full; it is my soul that needs fed.
BHT patron and Twitter friend John H posted earlier today about the “Flash evensong” he participated in last night in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Since St. Paul’s has been closed due to the Occupy London protests happening nearby, there was a “flash” decision to hold a standard Anglican evening prayer service in public outside of the cathedral. (John can be seen in this video, in the back row, wearing a blue, open-collared shirt.)
John notes how relevant even this standard, everyday service was for the situation:
What really struck me about the service, though, was this: the service was nothing more than the Church of England’s standard evening prayer for tonight, with the psalms and lessons taken from the lectionary, and the hymns and anthem being pretty standard fodder as well. And yet large portions of what was said, sung and prayed seemed to speak very directly to the context in which the service took place.
And further down in the post:
I think it is that “crunchiness” [the against-the-mainstream aspects] of the word of God that turned an exercise that may have had an element of whimsy to it – or at least could have been seen as nothing more than a bunch of mostly white, mostly middle-class, mostly Anglican people being “well-meaning” – into something transcendent.
A few thoughts prompted by, if not directly related to, John’s post:
First, this not-quite-comfortable evangelical would’ve loved to be a part of that service. I was greatly moved just watching the short video.
Second, I, too, have been struck by how often the “everyday” readings seem to speak with the subversiveness of God’s kingdom directly to the events of the day. The past few months I have tried, on a maddeningly infrequent basis, to start and end my day with the Book of Common Prayer morning and evening prayers. Even practiced as just a personal reading and prayer, the Scripture and prayer elements of the service have spoken directly to my heart with surprising regularity with regard to the events of my day, both personal and public.
Finally, there is a part of my soul that yearns for a daily corporate practice like this. I would dearly love it if there were some local early-morning gathering around which I could schedule my day. What I really don’t want is the (for me) awkward, informal Bible study and prayer groups that seem to abound in my evangelical church culture. Sitting around in a circle waiting for someone to come up with some thought on the day’s passage and then sharing shallow prayer requests doesn’t feed me in the near the way that the morning prayer liturgy could. I need that daily practice of praise, confession, Scripture and prayer, and the opportunity to do it corporately rather than off by myself.
My brain is full; it is my soul that needs fed.
Jesus as the great "I Got You"
Far down in the comments on an excellent post on cross-gender friendships (which is worth reading in its’ own right) is this paragraph by commenter Andrew:
…I love the stories of Jesus. As you probably know, he is always telling people to leave their work, their money, their families–all the things tied to very worldly desires, ones often thought to be fixed into the very nature of what it means to be human. Jesus steps between those narratives that seek to tell us what our nature is, and he tells us to leave it all to follow him. “Not that,” he says, “Me.” “Don’t worry about that,” he says, “I’ll take care of it.”
He is the great “I Got You.”
What a great expression of Jesus’ promise of provision as he calls us to unreservedly follow him.
On parenthood and life
Tech blogger Jeff Atwood took a detour from his usual nerd programming yesterday to address a nearly universal topic: parenthood. He expresses something about the joys of parenting in a way I completely understood and couldn’t have said half as well:
When I am holding Henry and I tickle him, I can feel him laughing all the way to his toes. And I realize, my God, I had forgotten, I had completely forgotten how unbelievably, inexplicably wonderful it is that any of us exist at all. Here I am with this tiny, warm body so close to me, breathing so fast he can barely catch up, sharing his newfound joy of simply being alive with me. The sublime joy of this moment, and all the other milestones – the first smile, the first laugh, the first “dada” or “mama”, the first kiss, the first time you hold hands. The highs are so incredibly high that you’ll get vertigo and wonder if you can ever reach that feeling again. But you peak ever higher and higher, with dizzying regularity. Being a new parent is both terrifying and exhilarating, a constant rollercoaster of extreme highs and lows.
Jeff’s oldest is only 2 1/2, so I won’t spoil it for him, but it doesn’t stop at age 4. The delight of parenting and seeing your kids learn those new things and experience life in new ways is still a joy when they’re 5 or 6 or 7. Even through the lows it is an amazing experience.
Yesterday afternoon we sat down on the couch with the girls to tell them that their Pops had passed away. Laura, at 7, immediately broke into sobs and cried for a good 5 minutes. And then she was OK. No more words. I wonder how she’s internalizing it, and if we’ll end up talking more about it later. She’s so much like me, it’s scary. But little Addie, only 5, didn’t have tears. She started to think about the news, and to talk through it. “So,” she said, “mom’s dad passed away.” Pause. “I’m glad I still have a dad and mom. I’d be sad if my dad passed away.” Then we talked about how Pops is so much happier and healthier now that he’s in heaven with Jesus, and about how we will see him again someday.
After that we spent a beautiful fall night in the backyard with burgers on the grill, cold beer (for me, not them), a fire in the firepit, marshmallows roasted, and friends who came by with ice cream. Then it was inside for pajamas, hugs and kisses, prayers, books, and bed. And quickly they slept, fresh to wake again as I was leaving for work this morning at some ungodly hour.
Some day future, God willing, my daughters and their families will sit out under the sky and raise a glass in memory of me. My prayer is that, when that time comes, they will be just as thankful and blessed as I was last night. God’s goodness continues from generation to generation.
Robert Esher Hubbs III, 1939 - 2011
My wife’s father [Yes, that’s right - Becky’s maiden name was Hubbs, my last name is Hubbs. It’s unusual, and we’ve heard all of the jokes.] (“Bob” to his friends, “Pops” to his grandkids and his kids-in-law who couldn’t quite come to call him “Dad”) passed away this morning after a short illness. I’m sure I’ll learn much more about him through the stories of family and friends over the next few weeks, but I wanted to get a few thoughts and memories down now while things are fresh.
Pops was a man of quiet faithfulness. After serving in the US Marine Corps he followed God’s call to go to the mission field, taking his family through language camp in south Texas (resulting, among other things, in his youngest daughter having her father’s name listed as “Roberto” on her birth certificate) and then to the jungles of Indonesia. When health issues forced them to come back to the States, he and his wife served with JAARS for another 20+ years at the US headquarters location in Waxhaw, NC. He worked in the Construction and Maintenance department as a buyer, and he well knew his projects and materials. He was a fixture as an usher in his section of the Calvary Church balcony, and was a regular participant in a multitude of bowling groups, Bible Studies and prayer meetings.
Pops was a meticulous, detail-oriented man. When there was a job to be done, there was a correct tool to be used for it. Better to take more time and do it right than go for half-measures. He perpetually carried a notebook to record daily expenses. He always wanted to make sure he took care of any costs he incurred, sometimes to a hilarious extent. (Just last week we deposited a check that he sent to replace a lawn chair after one of ours tore slightly when he sat in it during his last visit here.) He was an extraordinarily generous and giving man; a trait which was passed down to all of his children in delightful ways.
I first met Pops in 1995 as an incoming freshman at LeTourneau University. At the time it was mostly a novelty, since I’d never met another Hubbs that wasn’t a relative of mine. (I took care of that 3 years later when I married his youngest daughter. Now I still haven’t ever met a Hubbs that I wasn’t somehow related to.) During the past 13 years as his son-in-law I got to know him better, and was regularly challenged by his patience, his faithfulness in service, and his disciplined consistency in the Word. (You could find him every morning up early reading his Bible and praying. Every. Single. Morning.)
Pops’ greatest gift to me, though, was the 20 years that he invested in his youngest daughter before she became my wife. Becky’s detail-oriented brain, her love for God, her consistent, faithful service, her enjoyment of travel and adventure, and her love of softball were all inculcated by her loving father in a way that all daughters deserve and very few actually receive. Our three daughters and I are all the richer thanks to his faithfulness.
Pops will be greatly missed, but we do not despair as those who have no hope. We look forward to the day when we will again laugh, run, bowl, and play softball with him in the resurrection. Well done, good and faithful servant.
Trying Someplace New
Went to The Flying Wienie for lunch today; my first time ever at this local Cedar Rapids institution. It was amazingly tasty. It won’t be another 12 years before I go back.