PunkIsrael

Signs of God: Wedding Dance

I find signs of God's grace in strange places. Today, I ran across this video.

My first thought, I'm ashamed to say, was "they're doing this in a worship service?"

Then I remembered 2 Samuel 6:14, where David danced before the Lord, and how his wife hated him for it. And I remembered Isaiah 62:5: as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

And as I wiped a tear from my eye, I thought, "how beautiful."

Running Out of Polemic

One reason I've been avoiding this blog is that for the last year or so is that I've been running really low on polemic. I'm still a fairly young man, but I can't seem to summon the vitriol for the oddities and failings of Christ's church these days. I was so much better at it in my late 20's.

When I was leaving seminary, it was obvious to me that the church suffered from an overabundance of theological navel-gazing. Then, in South Carolina, it became just as clear to me that the church needed better teaching, more theology. I became enraged about all manner of far right silliness: theonomy, Westboro Baptist, the South Carolina secessionists.

These days, I'm more mellow, I guess. I'm philosophical about the failings of Christianity in America. It fails because I fail. It's unbalanced, unreasonable, reactionary because I am all of those things in turn, or I enable those things, directly or indirectly. I encourage the liberals. I give the conservatives reason to be nervous. We all do. We're all part of this odd, skittish animal. We cannot judge it from without, and we cannot continually harass it from within.

Part of the reason I named this blog "PunkIsrael" is that, despite never having been an actual cultural punk, I felt like a troublemaker in seminary, the guy who would ask the questions that were off-limits, would refuse to fit the template of a conservative seminarian. I see now, in retrospect, that some of that was my personality and a lot of it was insecurity. I felt out of place among so many godly people, so I pulled in the opposite direction. I criticized the church because I didn't truly believe I belonged there.

I still have plenty of opinions about Christianity and culture, about the eccentricities of the church, and about life in general, but I expect them to be more positive as a rule. I've found my way back to the PCA, and I'm happy in our little church. I'm exploring ordination. And day by day, I'm learning more about what it means to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

You got a problem with that?

Belleville

Here is a link to a short story of mine that was published in Bartleby Snopes magazine earlier this summer. I don't want to interpret it for you, but see if you can find the spiritual thread running through the tale.

Reboot

A lot has changed since I started writing this blog in 2004. Then, I was in seminary, living in the city in St. Louis, newly married, broke, confused, and full of questions. Now, it's 2009, I'm out of seminary and out of graduate school, seven years married, not entirely broke, and still confused and full of questions.

For a long time I wondered if this blog still represented me. I tried to start blogs on professional communication, rhetoric, even pop culture limericks. But this one stayed up. I couldn't seem to cancel it.

As I read back over the 250 posts in this blog, I am reminded of the journey. I repent of some of those posts, but generally hold to most. I believe that the gospel is sufficient even for me, but that my understanding of it is as imperfect as my own life. Even so, I keep wrestling.

When I started writing this blog, I was disenchanted with theology. I thought it was overly structured, pedantic, divisive. I thought it was a way for control freaks in the church to inscribe the paths of others.

I no longer believe that to be true. Having been in a few churches where the theology was weak or non-existent, I've seen what it means in Proverbs 29:18: for want of vision, the people perish. My theology remains strongly covenantal and reformed, though my social and political views remain moderate.

Practically, that means I have the ability to tick off just about everybody.

Shalom.

It Hurt in My Chest

We would go here in high school to be frightened and somehow feel the awful presence of God.

I didn't know Mr. Rice died, but I think the world (or whatever tiny percentage of the world visits this blog) should see and remember the Cross Garden.

Defense

So we like end-rhyme. Sue us. We never
thought this free-verse crap would last forever.
And maybe we cover our confusion
about modern verse with bad allusions
to things barely remembered: satyrs, odes.
Maybe our syntax is hard to decode.
And likely, yes, we remain determined
to burn every poem since the march of Sherman.
We may occasionally be guilty
of trading humor for profundity,
and if that's not bad enough, we tend to
wear it as honor when we offend you
with sighing muses, appeals to Orion.
Well, give us a break. At least we're trying.

Jesus Kitsch

One day, I'd love to write a book about Christian kitsch, the product of sweaty, backseat love between somebody's idea of Christianity and good, old-fashioned, All-American consumerism. Usually these artifacts are tacky, and sometimes they attain the rank of baffling, but every now and then, they reach ironic proportions that boggle the mind.

Here's one I ran across just now: enjoy.

Check Engine

I'll admit it: I like control. Not control over others, or even myself, but control over my environment. I like things to be smooth and orderly or I like to remove myself from the situation. It should be no surprise, then, that driving home for the holidays is almost always hell.

Last night as I was packing, I checked my email and learned that a student I reluctantly failed in one of my classes has filed an appeal. This was a kid that I bent over backwards to help all semester, but she ultimately failed to cut the mustard. Immediately, of course, I thought about my reputation and wondered what kinds of accusations she was making: was I a terrible teacher, a heartless human being? I wrote a series of frenzied responses to the dean in an effort to clear myself.

This morning, not ten minutes into the trip, the check engine light came on in our 2002 Toyota Highlander. This baffling little light can mean almost anything on a continuum starting with "your coolant tank cap is loose" and ending with "your engine is on fire." After the usual popping of the hood and surveying of the bared engine with an air of doomed melancholy, searching, I suppose, for a helpful little sign pointing to a part and saying "your problem is here," I decided to keep driving.

Later, I paced around a rest stop talking to the dean on my cell phone about the grade appeal.

When we got to my in-laws' house tonight, there was an email from another student I failed, accusing me of ruining her life and forcing her into community college and a career of thankless servitude at Taco Bell. After auditioning a series of acerbic responses, I decided to take the high road and simply deleted the email.

Not a good day. In one fell swoop, my fairness is questioned, my sense of control challenged, and my good heart and fine intentions called into question. No pats on the back for me. No accolades for upholding an ethical code of teaching or making a good packing list. Not the way I wanted to start a Christmas holiday, which should be about control, and peace, and good intentions.

Or should it? What is driving me this Christmas season, I wonder, and does it have anything to do with joy and gratitude for a baby born to poor parents in a backwoods town, one who happened to be the Son of God, and would later hijack the entire course of my life? Is this the engine that drives me, I wonder, or the simpler, blander hope of cookies, presents, and chats with family?

Maybe I should check my engine.

Writing: The "Give-a-Crap" Theory

As someone who spends a large portion of my day trying to teach writing, I've naturally read a lot of theories about writing. Writing is innate and unteachable. Writing is a skill that can be taught. Writing is malleable and culturally conditioned.

Writing is irrelevant.

Writing is everything; everything is a text.

And so on. Yet none of these theories ring entirely true to me, though they have been hatched by minds (in most cases) far sharper than my own. It seems to me that writing, just like thinking, is done well when writers give a crap.

Writers who give a crap read, and think about what they have read. Writers who give a crap pay some attention to how their sentences are constructed--all of their prose does not look like textspeak. Writers who give a crap take ideas and communication seriously. Writers who give a crap are willing to teach and willing to learn. Writers who give a crap do not embrace anti-intellectualism out of cowardice. Writers who give a crap find dignity in human expression of ideas.

Now, not all writers who give a crap write well, but most are capable of writing at least passably well, because writers who give a crap try. Writers who give a crap respect themselves enough to express themselves as well as possible, and respect others enough to make themselves understood. Writers who give a crap understand that writing is work as well as art.

It's true that not all writers who give a crap will be great writers, and some may never even write well.

But those who do not give a crap will never write well, no matter what.

Fingerpainting

This semester I've been teaching a composition class with the theme of "Christianity and Pop Culture." We've been reading Ashby's With Amusement for All: A History of American Pop Culture since 1830 and WIlliam Romanowksi's Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Pop Culture. I've been trying to get them to look at pop culture from a Christian lens.

But, like all of us, the college students are gnostics, loving the spirit and hating the flesh in word, but loving the flesh and hating the spirit in deed. Glancing up from their Facebook pages, they argue that the real point of the Christian faith is to avoid wrongdoing--to keep ourselves separate. But come on, these kids are anything but separate. Their media defines them. They are digital natives, inhabitants of Facebook, Myspace, Youtube. They are not distant from media, and therefore pop culture--they are immersed in it.

In a postmodern culture that multiplies interpretations, these students ironically search for the one "real" interpretation of things, as though we don't see through a glass darkly. They struggle with knowing what a work of art "means" and throw up their hands in despair, returning to the comfortable, unambiguous world of digital social interaction. In a world that grows increasingly entropic, they search for order amidst the ruins.

But what are they looking for? Truth? Because I'm just looking for interpretation; I know where truth is.

A seminary professor used to say that the Bible was God's "baby talk" to us. It occurred to me tonight in a flash of insight that if scripture, our normative text, is mere baby talk, than our art can be no more than fingerpaintings. How many 4-year-olds do you know who agonize about whether their scribbles accurately reflect reality or not? Or whether they've depicted God correctly? They merely do the best they can with passion and utter sincerity, and their parents consider the source.

Isn't it possible that God does the same?