Inconvenient Truth Is Uncomfortable

I wasn’t going to write this. Actually, I tried not to. Several times. But enough is enough. There’s an imposter in our midst, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A shill wrapped in the cloak of ecumenical authenticity. Someone like Simon the Sorcerer mentioned in Acts 8.
Who is this pretender? John Pavolitz, blogger extraordinaire and author of Stuff That Needs To Be Saidand the invitational-sounding A Bigger Table.”
Self-acclaimed “pastor” John Pavlovitz gets a free ride from thousands who read his cleverly appealing posts, sharing them on Facebook and Twitter to demonstrate some vague notion of progressive compassion. Inconveniently for the Truth, his followers rarely actually question his commentary. Because … politics.
Pavlovitz first gained notoriety after being fired from his church (for, well, not exactly specified reasons) and then posting a commentary on how parents should face the possibility of having gay children. The post went viral. Later, he published a “day-after” diatribe following the 2016 Presidential election immediately making him a darling of the Left who breathlessly proclaimed “at last! A Christian we can agree with!”
In the months since, Pavolitz has found another church to pastor and become something of a Johnny-One-Note, his posts dripping insults, ridicule, hatred (he seems to particularly love the word “hate”), and general disdain for anyone who actually reads and believes Scripture as they written. One of his favorite topics (more on this in a moment): the current President of the United States.
Perhaps at one point in his life Pavolvitz actually believed in the Word of God. Maybe he felt called to proclaim the full Gospel of repentance and salvation. In more recent times, John has traded whatever pedigree he may once have had as a true pastor and minister of the Gospel for the worldly applause of internet fame, cable news celebrity, and book sales.
Pavlovitz passes off his unique brand of Christian-bashing as “enlightened,” hiding blatantly partisan commentary behind the twin shields of faux religiosity and modern social justice bumper stickers. A recent post even attempts to strike an awkwardly fake self-deprecating tone with ham-fisted satire. Rather than humorous, it comes off as, well, desperately seeking.
I generally ignore writers like Pavlovitz and the mirth-filled followers they attract. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and their beliefs, regardless of how they may stray from reality or common decency. But out of sheer morbid curiosity I visited his site recently and saw the post entitled Trump’s America Would be a Living Hell for Jesus.”
Let the richness of Pavlovitz’s arrogance hover there for a moment. He has apparently tapped into a direct line with the Jesus of the same Bible he rarely, if ever quotes! He’s seemingly found the secret thread into the mind of the Savior of Creation and discovered that this mind would be as focused on hating an elected civil servant of a 21st Century nation state as Pavolvitz himself appears to be.
This type of mindless claptrap could easily be shrugged off, relegating it to the endless chatter of modern online wind-shouting it has become. However, this post crossed a line for me. Mostly because those slavishly following his every pressing of the “send” key might actually believe his baseless assertions.
So, for the record, here are three of his comments from that post, each followed by a dose of reality.
First, he tries aligning the Jesus of the Bible with three popular victim identities in current culture:A dark-skinned, itinerant, refugee Jesus wouldn’t be allowed in Donald Trump’s America.”
In truth, we have no idea what color Jesus’ skin might have been. Any suggestion would be speculation (yes, even idealized portraits of Jesus as a fair-skinned blue-eyed Caucasian). He was Jewish, born in 1st Century Palestine. Perhaps he looked like current Egyptians. Perhaps he resembled other Northern Africans or Palestinians. Or maybe he was as fair-skinned as Golda Meir, David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Yitzak Shamir, or Shimon Peres (all Jews and all Prime Ministers of Israel). Throwing the “dark-skinned” reference is pure pandering and offers nothing at all in the way of informing us on the identity of Jesus.
“Itineracy” seems to be a badge of impoverished honor for Pavolvitz in attempting to prove his point. As though Jesus’ synagogue and teaching missions were somehow the same as modern day itinerant workers moving from farm to farm harvesting crops for domineering overlords.
In actuality, many synagogues in 1st Century Galilee (the home of the most religious and well-educated Jews in the world at the time of Jesus), were not large enough to support a full-time rabbi and so traveling, teaching, “itinerant” rabbis were common. These rabbis typically supported themselves with a trade (such as, say, carpentry), and while they were prohibited by the Talmud from charging fees for services, they were free to accept gifts. If John would like a brief lesson on this topic, I recommend this.
And as for refugee? Tugs at the heart strings, doesn’t it? Sadly, it’s simply false scriptural interpretation.
The only time Jesus even closely fit this description was as an infant when his parents fled to Egypt to avoid religious extermination because Herod believed Jesus threatened his right to the throne of David. Once they returned to Israel after the death of Herod, Jesus was a known member of the Jewish community, his family openly traveling to Jerusalem every year to worship.
It would be enlightening for Pavlovitz to cite examples of any refugees being turned away from the United States (even under proposed changes to current immigration law) when faced with the certain threat of death of their children because of religious affiliation. Take your time, John. We’ll grab some popcorn.
Next is this gem: “He’d be denied healthcare, detained at the airport, separated from his family, trolled relentlessly on Twitter by his followers, accosted by torch-bearing marchers, vilified by pulpit-pounding preachers, and branded a terrorist by the President himself in incendiary fake videos and fear-baiting Tweets.”
Where to start. Jesus never asked for a single shekel of government support, including healthcare. His “family” was mankind, as he himself declared in Mark 3:32-34. He was, in fact, “trolled relentlessly” by the Twitter equivalent of the day – the Scribes and Pharisees. He was ultimately branded a terrorist by the Temple itself and rather than parodied in fake videos was arrested, brutalized, and executed.
Then this: A subversive, homeless rabbi who lived with the street people and publicly condemned and challenged every move by the political power-holders perverting religion to line their pockets.”
Subversive? Yes, to the Pharisaical and Saduceean regimes that had corrupted the true faith of the Covenant – not of Rome. Jesus had no commentary whatsoever about the governments of men other than his single response regarding paying Imperial taxes to Caesar. Perhaps Jesus was the original author of our highly-cherished “separation of Church and State” doctrine.
Here’s the truth, the “stuff that really needs to be said.” Whatever happened in John Pavolvitz’s past to create the caricature of the blogger we read today, his current claim to a progressive interpretation of God’s Word is, bluntly, misguided at best. He neither accurately interprets nor discerningly communicates the scripture he falsely proclaims. He’s simply a clever online wordsmith tapping into a despondent secular audience behind the label of “20-year ministry veteran.”
John’s followers “like” and “share” his posts because they, just as he, are focused on imputing Jesus’ message onto secular institutions and culture rather than what Jesus actually says. For John, the Word of God and the truth of the Kingdom is not sufficient – the mind of man is ascendant. John’s interpretation of social justice, tolerance, and morality are inventions of modern secular society. Perhaps compassionate for cable news, but untethered to God’s word. The Kingdom of God stands apart from governments of men.
A final comment John, if you’re reading this. Please know I have no personal animus toward you. Being in the business of digital marketing technology, I enjoy a good online success story. And no doubt you probably believe your mission is to speak to the “woke” folks among us. So you do you, brother.
That said, your definition of Jesus’ message is, in my view, self-serving and has little to do with the real faith of authentic Christianity and grace-filled salvation. I guess I just have this involuntary reflex against what I see as hypocrisy and blatant consumerism.
Believe what you may, but while I do respect the office of the Presidency and support many of the policies of its current incumbent, I’m not stupid, uneducated, bigoted, “ist-is,” phobic in any way, or uninformed. I don’t stand on soap boxes touting my personal moral virtue to sell books but I’ll match my private efforts to “live out the red-letters of Jesus” with you anywhere, anytime.
You can find me at www.miafede.com or @rdgreen on Twitter.
Oh, and I counted ten links to your website in this post. Do I get a referral bonus? I already bought your book so we’re set there (oh wait – that’s eleven).
Peace.

Beakers and Bibles – God vs. Science

Electric pickles, homemade snow and slime – just the stuff boyhood dreams were made of (at least my boyhood with the chemistry set mom gave me for my 9th birthday). I loved experimentation and discovery, the reduction of things to smaller things, getting to the “heart of heart,” as a one of my junior high science teachers once said.

For our next experiment, let’s create the known universe from these five ingredients!

Eventually (as with all things in my life) this experimentation and discovery journey led me back to God, the original source of all truth. I wish there had been a book like Tina Houser’s “Beakers, Bubbles & the Bible” back then! Nothing like experiments with magnets and paper clips to explain God’s love for us.

Which brings me to a recent post I made reflecting on a few thoughts around Good Friday. As usual, I ran the full social media spectrum spread including FB, Twitter, email, and other sources.

Apparently it got some traction, probably because I mentioned Brussels Sprouts in the title! Someone (not a follower of mine) saw it on Twitter and re-tweeted to their timeline.  At some point, someone else makes a comment (including my Twitter name) ridiculing the post asking “Why the hell is there religious s%$t on my timeline?”  Not to be outdone, someone else replied “They’ll probably follow up with a Bible verse,” followed by a third comment saying “They can’t help themselves, for them it’s faith over facts.”

Faith over facts…. Now, I’d normally ignore silly comments like these but hey, it was Good Friday.  So I messaged all three individuals saying I’d be delighted to discuss facts and faith with them anytime.  As is typical with what social media folk refer to as internet trolls, only one actually got back to me with a tired attempt at a pithy comment about not needing fairy tales but still gave me his email address with a comment something to the effect of “bring it on!”

This was my reply (if this gets a little eye-rollingly dense because I was attempting to speak to a guy professing an understanding of science, feel free to skip to the end):

“You know, @SokhavySheik” (not his real Twitter handle), “I was raised by an ardent atheist father and have had to defend my views on faith since I was in elementary school. I get the whole ‘I’m too smart to believe in mythology’ stuff, I really do. Heck, I did a stint during college in comparative world religions and even went through my staunch Deist phase.  Perhaps you did, too.

There must be an answer…

“So let’s try this a different way, a way which might appeal to your need for facts versus Faith. I have no conflicts in believing the Universe came into existence some time around 13.8 billions years ago (we don’t really know, of course), and at just around the 10−43 seconds  mark (that’s about one quintillionith of a second) into this new Creation quantum mechanics engages, generating dynamic cosmic inflation which in turn creates quark-gluon plasma, eventually (over the next 299 seconds) leading to the supremacy of matter over anti-matter, and then sometime around the first 300 seconds forms helium, lithium, and heavy hydrogen (deuterium and Helium 3) from nascent protons and neutrons by a process called nucleosynthesis.  From there, nature sort of starts the chain reaction of laws balancing laws and matter reacting to matter and *boom* here we are debating the nature of reality (told you I was once a Deist).

“Center ball can do it all …”

“Yet I also have no conflict believing a creative life force (aka “God,” aka “El-Shaddai,” aka “Jehovah,” aka “Yahweh”) purposefully willed all of this into being and has been personally interacting with Creation over those same last 13.8 billion years. To believe that, I ascribe extra-natural causation. To wit: ‘In the beginning …’ and so forth.  This approach doesn’t negate scientific law but rather allows for intent and design. If you’re a billiards guy, think of it as the pool cue striking the cue ball with just the right angle, velocity and trajectory to set the table in motion.

“You, on the other hand, believe in a science maintaining that for eternity there was nothing except, perhaps, an infinite expanse of quarks and leptons swimming in helium-4, helium-3 and deuterium which somehow spontaneously coalesced into what we refer to as this same Big Bang, combusting into everything we know today including that keyboard you spend so much time with.  Your scientific basis for this (if you didn’t already know) is founded mostly on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, an essentially unsolved equation requiring the introduction of quantum potential (a sciency-like term basically saying ‘we don’t know but we think it could be this or that’) and a probabilistic explanation for the nature of reality.  Your equations rely on unquestioning belief in String Theory (by definition unprovable and for which to-date there remain no predictions that can validate its truth) and hypothetical Planck-length particles. See all the conditionals here? Hoo-boy.

“Setting aside little questions like ‘where did the quarks, leptons, helium-4, helium-3, and deuterium come from?’ I’m struggling with your equation that ties it all together. Did your guys ever solve that inch-long ‘Theory of Everything’ equation Einstein couldn’t figure out?

“Better yet, let’s try something a little simpler, something your chemistry-set religion can surely solve.  I believe God is the sole author of all Creation, existing uniquely outside the constraints of our 4-dimensional minds (and I’m including time here just to keep things interesting), yet capable of reaching into Creation at will. You believe in the intention-less superiority of science.

“So here’s my challenge: show me how your science can spontaneously grow a single strand of human hair using only the basic elements of 18 amino acids, lipids, sterols, fatty oils, sphingosine, triglycerides (yeah, that stuff your doctor probably told you was too high), squalene, melanin (you pick from eumelanin or phaeomelanin), some water (I won’t ask you to create Hydrogen or Oxygen – that’ll be a gimme between the two of us) and a few trace mineral elements.  You know, kind of an ‘Iron Chef’ competition for Creation.

Ultimately, science resolves into the same “unknowns” as Faith

“And no, I’m not talking about duplicating Angela Christiano’s 2013 experiment of taking cells from the scalps of prematurely balding men and grafting them on the backs of mice to mimic hair growth. I’m talking the real deal – take some beakers of raw materials, work your sciency magic and grow me a strand of hair.  Then we can talk about faith vs. facts.”

Yes, I know I threw a lot at @SokhavySheik. But as I mentioned, it was Good Friday, so there’s that. And the response to date? Crickets. Because ultimately, science simply resolves into the same “unknowns” as Faith. I just choose to believe there is a benevolent, loving, intentional God at the center of Creation rather than random noble gases and theoretical particles.

Here’s the thing. Believers need never fall into the faulty-logic trap of arguing God over Science. Our God is big enough to provide us brains to hypothesize any Universe we care to imagine. Or, in the words of Baylor University Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and proponent of intelligent design Robert J. Marks: “Saying the Bible is not a book about science is like saying a cookbook is not a book about chemistry.” They’re sort of the same things (at least certain parts, such as the entire first chapter of Genesis). And that God is patient enough to allow our ponderings and debate and arguments and science-ing until we find ourselves intellectually exhausted and right back where this story starts: “In the beginning…”

The events of Good Friday (and of the entire Biblical Story) are about an entirely different metaphysical currency: the currency of Redemption. There is simply no science, no hypothetical phantom bits, no equation, no String Theory, no Quantum Effect, no Multiplex Universe that will ever explain the circumstances and aftermath of Calvary, nor fully describe the simplicity and infinite complexity of John 3:16.

I kept my chemistry set a long time, along with the super cool physician-grade microscope by dad bought me when he still had hopes I’d grow up to be a doctor (sorry, Dad).  I never forgot the lessons of wonder these instruments of man taught me. And the love for accepting the unknown universe around me, allowing room in my tiny brain for the greater recognition that God was, is, and will be all things.

Try sliming that, @SokhavySheik!

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

Men and the Messy Business of Relationship

I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.” – Genesis 28:15

Boys” (*dad-shudder*). As the undeserving father of two beautiful, vibrant daughters I can say with confidence that for fathers the “B” word may well be the second scariest plural noun in the English language. Beginning sometime around the second month of fifth grade and continuing non-stop until an unbearably long, tear-filled walk down an inevitably too-short aisle when “boys” becomes “husband,” we dads struggle continuously with the Barbarians at the Gate we once worked so hard ourselves to be.

Which brings me to what may arguably be the scariest word in the English language for dads everywhere (and men in general). The “R” word – Relationship. Yes, it’s true. Even the strongest men, backyard bruisers who can grill for 20 with perfect temperature control while swilling a cooler full of iced Heineken and reciting every line from Braveheart and Gladiator, even these guys can become wobbly puddles of man-goo at the thought of the R word.

We guys dread R things. Like meeting “the boyfriend” – the one with the bad hair and the entirely too shifty eyes (you’ve met him – you may have been him). We draw blanks when our spouses or partners want to sit down over a glass of wine and have the “R” conversation. And when do guys ever talk about our “relationship” with Bob or Jim or Pete?

“I don’t care if I’m Toby Maguire – no shoulder rubs!”

Most guys simply don’t “do” relationship (the verb, not the noun). We have our poker night buddies, the guys we hang out with during each Season  (Sports, not Fashion or the latest binge-watching series), the dudes we see at the gym, the significant others we tolerate at parties, heck – we’re even on first names with our hairstylists (we used to call them barbers). We “know” guys, we just don’t always have “relationships” with them.

Relationships are messy businesses. They’re hard. Done right, they require advanced socialization skills like listening, considering, actual discourse. They take empathy and understanding. They take, well, they take love. Another word that sends shivers down many of our steely spines. It’s just so much easier to assume than to act.

Relationships don’t “complete” us, they refine us.

Yet relationships are the essence of human interaction. With apologies to Jerry Maguire, relationships don’t “complete” us, they refine us. Relationships allow us safe refuge to cycle out the psychological toxins pumped into our psyches by 21st century living. We get to wrestle with someone else’s view of who we are, try it on for size, checking out the view in a virtual 3-side mirror of love and trust and respect, only to realize the sleeves are too long or too short, or the color just doesn’t suit us, or there aren’t enough pockets. Relationships give us the freedom to grow or not. They can bring us together, or drive us apart.

Turns out God has more than a few things to say on this subject. In fact, one might argue that God is entirely about relationship. Relationship with Him. Relationship with each other. Relationship with our own fractured selves.

The passage from Genesis I opened with was not accidental. From the very beginning of His narrative defining the human experience, God set the tone: “I am with you. I will watch over you wherever you go.” Unqualified. Unbound. Unending.

Imagine for a moment if our relationships with each other were this pure, this transparent. Imagine if we honestly said to one another “I’m right here, right beside you. I’ll be here when you need me.”  Not in some touchy-feely Facebook way, and not just with those closest to us.  But with everyone we meet, every living, breathing soul with whom we share this experience of life.

God is very direct on the subject of relationship. Throughout man’s unfolding story of awareness in God and His plan of Salvation, one theme has reverberated again and again. We are the vessels of grace bestowed by God. It’s our interaction with and relationship to one another that breathes life into the promise of the Kingdom. “The kingdom is among you,” Jesus tells us.

Men – and women – can learn endless lessons from how Jesus demonstrated the art and practice of relationships. We can all follow his example, even those of us who struggle with the enormity and, yes, messiness of the religion that has evolved over the centuries in his name. And it’s really quite simple if we get our heads and self-focus out of the way. Try the following exercise with me sometime in the next week.

1) Think of three people you know, three people you care for, but whom you’ve not connected with in a while. Perhaps they are close friends, perhaps they are people you just met.

2) Write down their names and something meaningful about them. Study that a moment, feel it. Imagine seeing the world from their eyes and from their lives, rather than your perception of it.

3) Reach out. Email, phone, handwritten note, maybe even get in the car and pay a decidedly pre-21st century actual visit. Tell them you were thinking of them. Tell them you care. Invite them into your life.

4) Encourage them to do the same, paying it forward to three of their friends and acquaintances.

God tells us He will always be with us, watching over us wherever we go. He does that for all of us, freely. How much less it is for us to do the same for each other.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

Now. No, Really – Now!

The time has come. The kingdom of God is near.” Mark 1:15

I’ll admit it, I kind of like Twitter – I kind of like it a lot. In fact, I kind of like the entire notion of all things digital, real-time, and social: TwitterFacebook, Pinterest,  Skype, even *old school alert* SMS  (aka “texting” for my online-challenged pals), phones.   Apparently, given the entry of “Tweetstorm” into the modern lexicon, I’m not alone.  Just listen to cable news any morning for breathless reporting of that latest 140 character missives from at least one very well-known social media aficionado.

Many of my friends, especially those people a little *ahem* older than me, don’t “get” the Social Media concept. “Seems like a waste of time,” says one. “Just another form of stupefied TV watching,” opines another. Or this one: “Twitter’s a glorified altar of narcissism from which voyeurs and provocateurs alike can shout ‘here I am! Look at me right this second!’”  They clearly haven’t figured out I’m in that business.

To be sure, a casual romp through the Twitter Public Timeline can produce a mind-numbing litany of apparently meaningless chatter, a kind of digital “white noise” punctuated by voices emptying any and every immediate thought into the virtual stream of consciousness that is the online world.

Yet Social Media concepts like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tumblr and others offer another face to those who look just a little deeper. For the emerging class of the online fluent, these and other sites are opening new doors on communication in the 21st Century, and redefining our very understanding of relationships.

The immediacy of these tools, their “now-ness,” creates a real and altogether novel form of intimacy lost from our past, when we used to gather in market places every day for one-to-many interactions. Unlike email or its gray-haired daddy snail mail, Social Media provides an opportunity to instantly connect with like minds anywhere, all the time.

In a sense, Social Media is like a pervasive, omnipresent force into which all of us can tap at any time and connect – like, say, electricity.

Which brings me to a sermon I recently heard based on the passage above from Mark. In his remarks, the pastor compared the Kingdom of God to electricity – something tangible, right here, right now, available for all Christians to “plug in” to.

I’ve thought a lot about that message. It seems intuitively “right” to me. Indeed Jesus’ entire message and ministry has always seemed to have an immediacy about them, a sense of doing more than just “believing” in an invisible God.

The Kingdom of God is already here, surrounding us, within us, in our midst. Like electricity, it flows through us, available to everyone.

At the core of the Gospel, at the very center of the message preached by Jesus, is a simple yet simultaneously confounding concept. The Kingdom of God – that unfathomable promise of Salvation and Grace bestowed on creation by a loving and benevolent creator – is not simply some distant, beyond-the-stars destination we’ll get to one day with our First Class Ticket on the Salvation Express purchased by the blood of a martyred prophet. The Kingdom of God is also already here, at this moment, actually present in the “now” of our lives. Surrounding us, within us, in our midst. Like electricity, it flows through us, available to everyone.

Quite different from the notion that we should repent out of our sins in exchange for a free upgraded suite at The Hotel Paradise after checking in with St. Peter down by Pearly Gates Junction (try finding that on Yelp).

Time and again Jesus demonstrated that his Kingdom ideas were verb-ish, rather than noun-ish. Over and over he describes the Kingdom of God in terms of doing something right now rather than a destination to pursue: a farmer sowing seeds (Matthew 13:3-8); a man planting a mustard seed (Luke 13:19); yeast worked into dough (Luke 13:21); a man separating weeds from wheat in his fields (Matthew 13:24-30); a fisherman pulling in a net overloaded with catch (Matthew 13:47-50); casting out demons by the Spirit of God (Matthew 12:28); sending his disciples to preach the Kingdom of God (Luke 9:2); healing the sick so that the Kingdom of God has arrived (Luke 10:9). To Jesus, the Kingdom of God seems to be something we live here and now. There is an urgent immediacy to his teachings.

Viewed through this lens, how different might our response be to God’s Kingdom invitation? Think about this a moment. Really pause (you online addicts, I know how hard that can be) and consider. What would your life look like if you lived in the Kingdom now, not at some future time after you leave this existence? What would be different? How would you interact with your family and your friends and even those who are not so much your friends? What if we were already citizens of the Kingdom?

Something jumps out me in reading the New Testament, something that screams out in every act and deed Jesus performed, and seen throughout the Acts of the Apostles. God’s plan is to work through the body of His Church – you and me. His plan is for us to do unto each other every day.

How many of us learned in Sunday school that we should believe in God and not commit sin because that’s how we get into Heaven when we die? “Sin management,” some folks might call it. What if we take a different view? What if we believe in God because we already live in the Kingdom and Kingdom citizens have a responsibility to connect with each other and those in need right now – not after we all die? In other words, what if we focused on the outcomes of our relationships with God and each other rather than the rules and regulations of religion?

Try something new this week. Instead of waiting for Sunday to “do church,” find an opportunity to “do church” on your morning train, or at the grocery, or at your kids’ football game on Friday night. Talk to someone. Ask how they are doing – and listen when they answer. Share your own story with them if they invite you. Live as though you are already in God’s Kingdom. Plug into the electricity of God’s love and feel how connected you are to everyone, all the time.

And in the meantime, make time to meet some new friends. They’re all around you in the Kingdom.

Peace (via @rdgreen on Twitter, or maybe @rgaustin on Facebook).
Colossians 1:17