Last night we were doing a Bible study with our Middle School kids. The focus was on the resurrection of Jesus, and we were reading the account in John 20 when Mary Magdelene finds the empty tomb. I had one of our leaders read the story out loud, so that the kids could focus their energy on putting themselves in the shoes of the disciples.

After the passage had been read, I asked the kids what was unique about the state of the tomb when Mary and the disciples started exploring it. I was trying to get at the description of the linens.

3So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. 8Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

So I ask the question and a boy raises his hand. I call on him. He answers (in all seriousness), "Jesus' head was separated from his body."

Well that would have some interesting theological implications. The young man apparently got John's account mixed up with Wes Craven's Nightmare in Jerusalem: The Legend of Ichabod Christ.

Renew and Restore

I'm a little bummed these days. For the past few months I have been a huge cheerleader for Roman Catholic/Protestant relations. Having worked in churches for the past few years, it always bothered me how worked up Protestants get over things that they view as being "too Catholic". Honestly. Roman Catholics love Jesus. That's a pretty big deal in my book. And while I might not agree with all of the tenants of Roman Catholic tradition (hence the fact that I haven't actually joined the Roman Catholic Church), I tend to think it to be way more ally than foe. In fact, there are some aspects of Catholic theology and practice that Protestants would do well to adopt.

Thus, my peppy ecumenical bubble was certainly burst last week on the heels of the Pope's comments. Perhaps the comments weren't all that surprising, but they certainly don't help my lobbying efforts in Protestant circles. I think we probably should have seen this stand coming, however. This Pope has been very vocal in his disappointment that the Roman Catholic church is losing converts to Protestant denominations. His remarks in Brazil recently said as much. And so there seems to be a sort of "rally the troops" mentality emerging where he is seeking to define what Roman Catholicism is about and strengthen the base.

This is certainly happening in other areas as well. As I read through the Pope's book on Jesus, there is a back-to-basics paradigm working where he is leading us to rediscover the wonder of the life and works of Jesus. It's a helpful read for Catholics and Protestants in this current theological climate where Jesus is being doubted and overly redacted.

I guess my prayer for Protestants right now is that we chill. Don't trip. Do...Not...Trip. Don't make any rash anti-Catholic rants. Don't go out and buy a Glasgow Rangers jersey just to spite your Roman Catholic friends. Understand that the conversation happening right now in the Roman Catholic church is not one that will be helped by us wigging out and lobbing insults at Rome. The goal of ecumenicism is a difficult goal to reach, and it is attained through patience and listening.


Fair Dinkum

Well, there goes that Presidential campaign. I took a lot of time to figure out what my official campaign song was going to be yesterday. I thought I actually did a fine job of it as well. And then, my dreams and hopes were crushed. It appears as though my artist selection was a bit on the demonic side. "Worse than Marilyn Manson", they say. And by "they", I mean the people on the new hit website http://www.godtube.com/ . It's where all of the real Christians go to post their videos and spread truth.

The truth of the matter is that U2 is evil, heretical, satanic, and part of a deliberate plot to lead Christians astray. It goes to figure that if I would chose a U2 song as my campaign song, I am obviously the Antichrist. Think about it. I'm beautiful. People love me. I'm really smart. The complete package. All I need is an office that would allow for world domination and the prophecy would be complete.

I won't be offended if you can't be my friend any more. Sometimes it's not that good of a career move to be associated with the Antichrist. I get that. Just know that I will soon be the most powerful and evil person in the world. Buahahahahahaha. You must excuse me now. I'll be listening to the mouthpiece of the devil. Don't believe me? Check out this video.



Fair Dinkum

There are many things I appreciate about my county government. They do a good job with their schools, which is no short order considering our urban environment. They have done well in the last few years when it comes to economic development, pretty much trumping all other development projects in the metro area. Overall, I am a satisfied citizen. Though, as big a supporter as I am, I am currently disgruntled over one issue.

Gambling.

Wyandotte County is proposing two questions for the June 26th election. The first is whether or not we should have a $250 million casino and the second is a request to put electronic slots out at one of our classiest destinations, the local horse track. I'd be slightly annoyed if it was a fair fight and they were giving people space to explore the issues, but that is far from the case. The local government has turned into the biggest cheerleader for the passing of both questions and has thrown all of their resources into promoting their cause.

The main website that is promoting gambling in Wyandotte County tells you all you need to know. It's a really slick site. Sharp and well done. My favorite part is the About Us page. First and foremost it lists the Citizens for Gaming in WyCo Honorary Chairs. Clausie Smith, Heinz Rodgers, Joe Reardon are listed under that heading which is interesting because they also happen to be the mayors of the three cities that make up Wyandotte County. Classic.

But that's not the worst part. The thing that really infuriated me was when an official Wyandotte County newsletter showed up at my house the other day. The thing was practically an infomercial dedicated to getting these two questions passed.

I was pissed. And I don't say that lightly. But seriously, it made me want to cuss. Nothing like your tax dollars at work to support gambling.

At the end of the day, gambling is a justice issue for me. I don't think that God wants us to get caught up in the idea that we should seek opportunities to get a lot of money really quickly. This obviously sounds a little hypocritical coming from a guy who made a butt load of cash in 30 minutes on national television, but for the first time ever I'm going to play the trump card that most of those winnings were funneled back into something that I believe honored God and the paradigms of restorative justice that run throughout the Bible. If I'm out of line and being a hypocrite, then call me out.

I also have a big problem with people benefiting from somebody in a way that feeds into addiction and values that are not helpful to sustaining and building strong families and communities. But that's what casino's do. Yeah. I'm really impressed that 2% of the casino earnings will go to fight gambling addiction. Someone certainly deserves a cookie for that. I'm not sure that one of the kingdom ethics we see in scripture is that it's ok to contribute to social dysfunction as long as you make a half-hearted effort to help the people you are hurting.

What really disappoints me is that I used to go to church with one of the honorary chairs mentioned above. It's sad to see Christians in government who throw their entire weight behind principles that are anti-justice. And it makes me really mad. So mad that if this thing passes, I will absolutely refuse to vote Reardon back into office.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to call MTV. I'm going to ask them to make a reality show out of this whole deal. We'll call it Pimp My Constituency. It'll be a huge hit.

Fair Dinkum

I'm always amazed that Catholics and Protestants can't get along a little better in America. We don't kill each other like the groups have been known to do in other parts of the world, but the overall climate of the relationship seems to be far from polite. Honestly. We both profess Christ, which is a pretty big common denominator. We were talking in my worship class a few weeks ago about how it can be hard to branch into some worship practices, because people will view them as being "too Catholic". I've actually heard that in churches before, and it disappoints me.

I understand that Protestants can feel alienated by the Catholic Church. Many people have expressed how frustrating it is to have to sit out communion, especially when you grow up Catholic and then marry outside of Catholicism. But I also think that it is a bit presumptuous for Protestants to discount an expression of loving Christ that predates our own (fill in the blank..."religion", "denomination", "movement"). That's cutting out a huge chunk of Christianity and not showing it the validity and respect it deserves.

This whole discussion has been going on between the voices in my head this week as I have become very excited about a couple of things that have gone down in the last couple of weeks. First, Pope Benedict XVI appears to be close to abandoning the doctrine that unbaptised infants go to limbo instead of to heaven. A report from the Catholic News Service noted that "There is greater theological awareness today that God is merciful and wants all human beings to be saved. Grace has priority over sin, and the exclusion of innocent babies from heaven does not seem to reflect Christ's special love for the little ones."

It might seem like a small concession, but you must understand that when you are talking about a movement as large and as old as the Catholic Church, change happens slowly. To loosen the doctrine concerning baptism is a huge deal, and I believe it shows good signs about how people are taking to heart important paradigms of God's character.

The other big development is the release of The Pope's new book. In "Jesus of Nazareth", he offers a personal meditation on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ...criticizing the "cruelty" of capitalism's exploitation of the poor but also decrying the absence of God in Marxism."

That's what I'm talking about. If you can read Latin, pick it up now. The rest of us will have to wait for the English version to drop in Mid-May.

Fair Dinkum

The traditional phone book is pretty much an endangered species in my life. I am so wired that I typically just look things up online. I rarely ever crack the Old Yeller open these days, even though it seems at least three different companies court my business by delivering their edition to my doorstep each year. I think they need a little better demographic research.

For some reason I decided to go back, way back, back into time and flip through the Yellow Pages to accomplish my goals. As I was going through, I noticed an ad for a traffic attorney. It had a remarkably huge Jesus Fish on it. I thought it was a little bit funny, considering traffic lawyers are not known as the most reputable and upstanding folks in the world. And yet, I found that numerous traffic lawyers had Jesus Fish in their ads.

After mentioning the irony to Stacy, we thought of a couple of companies we know of whose owners are stud Christians. One of the owners we know personally, and he is hugely active and generous in his faith. He's really into missions and has a great spirit. Well, we were amused to find that neither of these businesses had ads that included any mention of Jesus or religious fish of any kind. It would seem they let their reputations as business people and Christians speak for themselves without the use of Christian symbols to sell their services. There's a novel idea.

The whole exercise reminded me of a quote from a Business professor we had in college. His feeling was that you could measure how much a car dealership was going to rip you off by how big their American Flag was.

Fair Dinkum

So, I'm in class yesterday. It's pastoral counseling, and this particular session is about premarital counseling. Ho hum, ho hum. Then, we get to the inevitable question about how pastors should speak to couples about sex. Now we're getting somewhere. But then we end up getting to a whole lot of nowhere, so my neighbor and I start whispering to each other.

Neighbor: You know, some churches pretty much view sex as a sacrament.

Me: I'm almost to that point (thank you very much, Lauren Winner for enlightening my mind with your book)

Neighbor. Yeah. At least on the first Sunday of the month.

And that folks is what I like to call "Grade-A Seminary Humor". Don't forget to tip your waiter.

Fair Dinkum

I'm usually not a huge fan of Charles Krauthammer. He has a syndicated column that appears on Op-Ed pages all over the country, so he obviously has a lot of people out there who are huge fans of his. It's not that I dislike his writing per se, it's just that he tends to spend most of his columns talking about one specific topic and I prefer writers who are more balanced in both subject and content.

Mad props to Krauthammer this week though for this article that showed up in Time. It essentially calls the wealthy to task for using their vast wealth to outsource environmental responsibility. I didn't even realize you could do stuff like this, but apparently it's common practice.

I'm all for environmentalism. It's a big part of my faith as a person who views the Earth and all that is within it as gifts from God. I'm also a big fan personal responsibility, however. Really internalizing the ideals you are convicted of, and then going out and living out those ideals. If we are doing this thing right, then we are going to be convicted of things that align our thoughts and actions with the heart of God, thus living out the Gospel in ways that are real and tangible to the people around us.

So as I was reading this article last night, it brought up some questions concerning how Christians and Churches possibly outsource certain things that we claim to be important to us. For instance, this whole idea of helping the poor. It's a pretty en vogue subject these days, especially since it is a subject that people in their 20's seem to be passionate about. As churches reach to become for edgy or emerging or whatever they want to call themselves, the rhetoric about helping the poor has escalated.

Here's the problem...how many people are actually living amongst the poor? Is it enough to preach sermons and support ministries that do work amongst the poor? Is it enough to occasionally volunteer for ministries who help the poor? Or should be be radically reconfiguring our lives so that we are really living out this ethic in a real way? Tough saying. I will say this, however. If you find a church that talks a lot about justice and helping the poor AND has a pastor that live amongst the poor, you should let me know. That would really excite me. What I tend to see however, are pastors who live comfortable to extravagant lives while preaching about justice. That pretty much does nothing for me, but maybe that's just me.

Fair Dinkum

Last semester I took a class on New Testament and Hebrew Bible hermeneutics that was team-taught by two professors from the Seminary. Team teaching is great in theory, because it draws on the knowledge and experience of multiple individuals to give a more robust educational experience. In practice it is pretty tough to pull off though, mainly due to coordination issues and egos.

There are a lot of professors out there who act like they know just about everything. I have witnessed acts of arrogance and insider politics in higher education that have made me cringe. It can be tough to get professors to work together within a department or school, so it would be assumed that to get them to work together in a single class would exasperate these issues.

It is easy to imagine an Old Testament professor and New Testament professor tyring to pull students over to their own "side" and throw sarcastic barbs at the other profs discipline. It's kind of like on Sunday mornings when the Baptist minister tells a joke about the Methodists and even though it's a joke everyone knows it is told at least slightly out of animosity. In the end, nobody wins because of the infighting.

For the record, my professors pulled this off magnificently with grace and dignity. (Please note that this does not count as brown-nosing because the class is over, I have received my grade, and the way my degree shakes out I will not encounter these profs in a class again) What made the class was enjoyable was that they were actually learning from each other. When you do academic work in one part of the Bible it tends to dominate your time, and both profs were really good about sharing with the class how what the other prof was saying illuminated their view on their own specialty. It made for a great learning environment and was a good lesson in how leaders need to be teachable and humble.

Fair Dinkum

Willow Creek Community Church has a sermon series available to churches called Just Walk Across the Room. It is a campaign to encourage Christians to step outside of their comfort zones and share their faith with their friends. Our church is currently going through the series, which is my first experience with the material.

After yesterday's sermon however, I left wondering if the series is asking the wrong question. At it's basic level, it's asking if we are ready to go across the room and share our stories of faith with others. That's fine and dandy, but what if a lot of Christians have really sucky and uncompelling stories? What if God has invited us to participate in larger and more profound stories but we have been content to live in small stories that aren't all that moving.

What makes a good story? Tension. Plot shifts. Words and actions that are unexpected.

Look at the way Jesus and his disciples interacted. The ministry of Jesus was counter cultural and risky. It risked social status, it risked Jesus' personal safety and it risked upending what just about everybody wanted from a savior. It invited people into a whole new way of life. The reason so many Jesus movies are boring is that they don't address much of this stuff. They reduce Jesus to this soft-spoken man who gently preached sermons and flashed infomercial smiles. Whatever. Jesus lived life. He expected his disciples to live life. He expects us to live life.

At the beginning of Luke 10, Jesus sends out 70 disciples. He doesn't tell them to go to their friends and share their faith. He tells them to take nothing with them, go from town to town and spread a message of peace. He tells them that the work will be hard and that they might not be met with reciprocal feelings of peace. Honestly, I think the process was as much for the disciples as it was for the towns they were visiting. I'm sure they had days when they didn't know if they would be able to eat or have a place to stay, but then experienced God's provision. Not because they had an American Express Black Card, but because they had nothing and so anything they were given was obviously a gift from God. It was an exercise in trust. That's pretty hardcore.

The difference between what Jesus is calling us to do in walking and what we do now is that currently Christians are really interested in being safe. A lot of Christians live and worship in places that are not risky. They move out of dangerous parts of town into stable and homogeneous populations that have the appearance of stability. They seek convenience and comfort. Honestly, how do you expect to do justice and love the poor when everyone in your community is stable and self-sufficient. It's possible, because I work with people who do it but it's hard and a lot of us don't do what is necessary to make this concept a reality in our lives.

And so our lives are so antiseptic that our goal is to simply move out of our comfort zones and walk across the room to talk to people. Fine. But I think a better encouragement would be to walk across the room and live life. Instead of having a conversation that takes me out of my comfort zone, maybe I should be living a life that takes me out of my comfort zone. Because when I do that, I'm relying on God. The story of my faith becomes a story that is compelling and has a lot more to do with God sustaining me and giving me space to live than it does with the trite things we usually talk about when it comes to our spirituality and our relationship with God.

Fair Dinkum

Sometimes it’s tough to get things out of your head. Songs, slogans, images. Last week, I had two quotes that just kept bouncing around. Sometimes the bouncing hit nerves. Other times the energy of the bouncing caused outward actions. The quotes and my thoughts…

You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.
-John Ortberg

This quote came up a few weeks ago at my silence and solitude retreat. It then made an encore appearance on someone’s blog, though I can’t remember which one I was reading at the time. Ortberg’s words really struck a chord with me because there are times when I really hate the pace of my life. The most frustrating time as of late was the period between Thanksgiving and Dec. 22 this past year. We were running all over the place like crazy and we never really got our feet under us. We didn’t even decorate our house for Christmas because we didn’t have the time and energy. I was terribly frustrated by the whole thing because I had no time for Jesus during Advent until we went to Portland and got away from all the commitments that were dogging us.

I thought it would be better after the New Year. And it was. For a while. But the past week and a half have been crazy and wild and I’ve been busting around all over the place. When I hurry then I start to grip, and when I start gripping then everything feels like it’s spiraling out of control. It’s like life starts moving so fast that I feel like I have to hold on tightly before everything flies all over the place, but that just wears me out even more.

So I have a new strategy. I only have so much control over my schedule. We are a busy family that has seasons of chaos and seasons of calm. Right now is a season of chaos. That being the case, I can still eliminate hurry from my life. I don’t have to run around like the sky is falling. I don’t have to be frazzled and disheveled. I don’t have to be a lunatic. You should say that to yourself every morning. It’s liberating.

Yesterday was a mad crazy day. Drop Elli off at daycare. Drive to class. Have three hours of class. 12:30 staff meeting. 1:30 prayer time. 2:15 kids start showing up for the first day of programming. 8:00 go home without feeling so trashed and tired that I can talk with my wife about my day and my thoughts and my feelings.

I didn’t hurry once all day. I just resolved not to be that guy. I resolved to walk at a leisurely pace. I resolved to not speed or ride anybody’s bumper. I resolved to take deep breaths. It was so good. There was no grip and there was no chaos. There was indeed a lot to get done, but it all got done and I wasn’t late to one thing all day.

And when it was all said and done I felt good.

The church is never a more peculiar people than when it points to the alternative of the peaceable reign of God
From Ducking Spears, Dancing Madly (p. 92)

Ok. This war thing is killing me. From the start it has been ill-conceived and poorly executed. As life would have it, we are where we are and I have no time machine, so we have to figure out a solution.

But what’s a Christian to pray for? More troops and a swell of violence that will hopefully restore order and eventually bring peace? A withdrawal that will stop fighting between the US and the insurgents, but that will leave Iraq a disaster for decades to come? Maybe we should just pray for some kind of miracle to get us out of this thing.

Granted, if I had a macro answer it would fall on deaf ears. VP Cheney made it abundantly clear on national TV last Sunday that this administration refuses to run the war by committee because nobody has constructive ideas. So they are disregarding the diplomatic suggestions that the Iraq Study Group made, as well as the feedback from their own generals that they need 30,000 more troops to get a leg up on the situation as opposed to the 20,000 that the administration is sending. Essentially, the administrating is doing everything it can to listen to nobody.

So if the macro solutions are going to be perpetually flawed, there must be some people out there who are living incarnationally doing what they can to lend a reconciliatory hand to the Iraqis. If anyone has heard of any ministries or individuals who are doing that kind of work in Iraq please let me know because I would like to pray for them and support them.

Fair Dinkum

Last night, justice was served. Saddam was put to death, and rightly so. He murdered many civilians in the 1980's, and did so with the use of chemical weapons. He was a terrorist. He was a killer. He was found guilty of his crimes and now he has paid the price for them.

Sometimes justice can be a pretty tricky thing. In this case, it was quite simple.

Not only was Saddam found guilty, but so were some of his cohorts. Two were sentenced to death, one will spend life in prison, and three will spend 15 years in prison. That's justice. Because if you don't cut off entire networks of terror, then terror will continue to thrive. You must punish the terrorists as well as those who empower them and assist them. The hand of justice must extend to all those responsible, or it is rendered weak. It's just that simple.

At this point, we must finish the job. Now that they aren't threatened by Saddam, people will start talking. They can start telling us who supplied Saddam with his weapons in the '80's and who he was working with. Then, we can find those people and execute justice. It should be an open and shut case now that Saddam has been found guilty. If you are an accomplice to murder, you are a murderer. Plain and simple.

What's that you say? That must be a mistake. They didn't mention that in the paper this morning.

The US provided Saddam with chemical weapons? ("Officers say US aided Iraq despite the use of gas", August 18, New York Times) Regan and Rumsfeld helped Iraq battle-plan these atrocities so that Iran would be less of a threat in the region? The US helped Iraq develop its chemical and biological weapons programs?

Yeah, about that justice thing. Maybe it's not that simple. Maybe we'll just make sure justice is executed over there. We'll take a large helping of grace, please.

"Saddam's execution punishes a crime with another crime."

-Cardinal Renato Martino

"Grace is contagious, just like violence. I always say that if we believe terrorists are beyond redemption, we can rip out half of our New Testaments, since it was written by a converted terrorist who became an extremist for grace. It's what happens when we discover that God has a desperate love for losers just like us."

-Shane Claiborne in The Irresistible Revolution (p. 272), making reference to Paul (aka Saul) in Acts 8-9.

If you have been reading my blogs for a while, you know that my favorite editorial writer is Leonard Pitts. His Miami Herald columns are syndicated across the country, and he appears in the Kansas City Star each and every Tuesday. If you don't usually read my blog, then you just learned something that you will be reminded of on a regular basis.

About every six to eight weeks, Mr. Pitts writes something that I find to be absolutely wonderful. Welcome to my Bi-Monthly Leonard Pitts Fan Club meeting.

For the last few years I have been really wrestling with how the church should respond to the issue of homosexuality. I've prayed about it, I've read books about it, I've written papers about it. And yet, I'm not to a place of complete certainty. If you continue to read this entry, please know that I'm not just pulling this stuff out of my butt. Much effort has gone into my discernment process. The process isn't over. For the sake of time I'm going to drop some sexual, racial and theological bombs and then walk away. Just know that I'm always game for respectful, adult conversation on the issue. Drop an email or give me a call.

Bomb #1: I don't think that God created us with the intention that we would engage in homosexual sexual relationships.

Bomb #2: I think that churches who agree with me on Bomb #1 have been obscene in the ways in which they have treated the homosexual community. Bomb #1 does not entitle us to strip a group of their dignity and treat them like second-class citizens. Churches have been venomous, hateful and spiteful. This includes churches that have jumped on the constitutional amendment bandwagon and attacked the homosexual community in both explicit and . Jesus was a master at being gracious to people who were social outsiders, and restoring their social and public dignity.

Bomb #3: I have a hard time dealing with people who agree with me on Bomb #2, but then use the Black Civil Rights movement as the basis of their argument. Part of the problem is that a lot of the people who do it are White. I don't think that if you are a part of the group that did the oppressing that you can rip a symbol from another group and then apply it to whatever cause you are trying to promote. Is that a racist statement? I hope not. Since I'm mixed, I'd like to think that I could make that statement and have it be an ethical rational statement that doesn't make people think I am picking on them. Does it create a double standard in that I can deal with the rationale better if a Black person makes the argument? Probably so. Is that appropriate? Not sure about that one.

Ok. That's enough bombs for now. Back to Mr. Pitts.

He addressed the issue of Homosexual rights in his column this week. As a black man, he talked about the connection between his race, his meta-ethic and his feelings on this issue. It was one of the first pieces I've read in a while that I found to be really helpful. It's well nuanced, it's funny, but it's also honest and transparent. It didn't bring me to a point where I have everything figured out, but it certainly enlightened my worldview and brought some interesting points to an ongoing conversation.

Fair Dinkum

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/leonard_pitts/16243773.htm

Last night we had our monthly leader's meeting at The Hope Center. During the first part of this meeting we always gather together to discuss an article or part of a book. Last night the main topic was the Year of Jubilee, and how we are supposed to apply it in our current social context.

The Year of Jubilee is a concept from the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) where every 50 years land would go back to its original owners. It's talked about quite a bit in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Is one of the laws that was built into ancient Israelite society in an effort to prevent class stratification. There are actually quite a few of those laws in the first few books of the Bible, demonstrating the passion that God has for people to retain their dignity as God's creations.

Well, the hardest question for everyone to wrestle with was how we can apply concepts like the Year of Jubilee today. Land redistribution would be pretty messy because with the globalization of the world, people would own tracts of land (or partial tracts) all over the world. Plus, since so many people (mostly brown-skinned people) had their land forcefully taken from them both on this continent and on other continents, it would be pretty impossible to make sure everyone got their fair share.

That being the case, I still think it is of the utmost importance that Christians find ways to obey the spirit of the law. The issue behind the issue with Jubilee year is upward mobility within society. When the law was written, one needed land to be considered a viable member of society. Poor people sometimes had to sell their land, or sometimes land got taken away from people because of social customs (ie, women couldn't own land, so they were in trouble if their husbands ever died or left them). Thus, returning land to people became a avenue to make sure people had opportunities to be upwardly mobile in the society. It was also a safeguard against a few people owning most of the land and social capital.

And this becomes the hard part, because the bar was set pretty high. At the risk of being called a Communist, I have to contend that we must be more radical and proactive with are giving. We must also combine this with strategies that attack the systems that contribute to problems of class stratification as opposed to just attacking the signs that those systems are indeed working in harmful ways. Macro-solutions can be pretty unappealing because they can drastically change the ways in which people who hold power and wealth live life, but as a person who has a relative amount of both I don't really care. But I guess our passion on the issue is going to depend on how much we believe that poverty and inequality are things that God is really passionate about.

Middle school students are funny. They are funny and I love them. One of the highlights of my former job was the Tuesday afternoon Bible study at Panera Bread. It was always good for a classic quote, as well as opportunities to see students have light bulb moments on a weekly basis. There's nothing quite like having a 7th grade girl inform you that "Did you know that Paul Newman owns a salad dressing factory? He was so hot when he was in The Outsiders." When you then reply that Paul Newman is, like, 80, you then get put back in your place. "Well, 20 years ago he was hotttttttt!"

One of the most intruiging conversations we had came a couple of weeks ago. The kids started feverishly debating the plot of Esther, which is a short book in the Old Testament. They busted out their Bibles and made valiant attempts at proof-texting each other in an effort to prove their mental brawn. You have to realize that Middle School is the time when one's theological constructs are rapidly changing, because you begin getting the "real" versions of Biblical accounts. One of the boys realized this when he exclaimed, "Wait a minute!!! In Veggie Tales, everyone gets sent to Tickleland, but in the Bible they get HANGED!!!"

Ding, ding, ding.

For those who don't know, Veggietales is a CGI kids show that teaches Bible Stories and life lessons. One of the things they do though, is take some of the more scandalous Biblical accounts and sanitize them so that they are appropriate for kids. For instance, there is a story in the Bible where King David has an affair with a married woman named Bathsheba. She then gets pregnant, and Kind David ends up killing her husband so that he doesn't get caught. Well, the VT version has a king taking someones rubber ducky (get it??? BATHsheba) in an effort to teach kids about not being selfish. Cute, but perhaps not doing kids many favors when it comes to Biblical literacy.

So the Bible is not an entirely benign book. It's a messy book. It's R-rated in many places. It shows our faults, it shows our shortcomings, it shows the parts of life that exist in the grey and outside of the black and white. It's complicated, but I think that's a good thing. It's good because it engages us. It shows us that being in relationship with God isn't something that requires us to go through the motions. It's a relationship that calls us to get into the middle of the mess and deal with it.

Fair Dinkum