A conversation full of light, mercy and grace

A while back I posted some thoughts on one of the most compelling books I've ever read: The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield.

This week's White Horse Inn podcast is a conversation between the author and Michael Horton. I hope you check it out.

An Interview with Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

What evolution can't explain (Chesterton)

It is not contended here that these primitive men did wear clothes any more than they did weave rushes; but merely that we have not enough evidence to know whether they did or not. But it may be worthwhile to look back for a moment at some of the very few things that we do know and that they did do. . . . we do know that they did have pictures; and the pictures have remained. And there remains with them, as already suggested, the testimony to something that is absolute and unique; that belongs to man and to nothing else except man; that is a difference of kind and not a difference of degree. A monkey does not draw clumsily and a man cleverly; a monkey does not begin the art of representation and a man carry it to perfection. A monkey does not do it at all; he does not begin to do it at all; he does not begin to begin to do it at all. A line of some kind is crossed before the first faint line can begin.

Quote from the chapter called "Professors and Prehistoric Men" in The Everlasting Man

Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967 - 2014)

When I heard the news of Philip Seymour Hoffman's death on Sunday afternoon it hit me harder than I would have expected. The melancholy has lingered and I couldn't have said exactly why until reading Ross Douthat's tribute, where he captures why Hoffman meant so much to those of us of roughly the same generation of film buffs.

So his greatness was not the kind of greatness that we’re used to from our actors, and its full measure seems fully apparent only in hindsight, now that he’s been taken from us. Or at least that’s how it seems to me, and maybe this is mostly just a highly personal reaction … because Hoffman began to deliver great performances around the time I began to really appreciate the movies — during my late teenage years, so that “The Big Lebowski” and “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (“Tommy — how’s the peeping?”) are all clustered together in my memory, and he stands out as one of the first contemporary actors whose work I really, truly noticed. But in noticing it, I also came to take it for granted, as something that would always be there, something to be counted on, something as essential to the moviegoing experience as previews and popcorn, blockbusters in the summer and Oscar bait in the fall.

That's it. The last few days I've been recalling memorable Hoffman performances and it's funny how many of them came in films that were revelatory experiences during the time when I was morphing from casual moviegoer to devoted lover of motion pictures. The first Hoffman role I thought of when I saw the Breaking News headline on CNN was the hospice nurse Phil Parma in P.T. Anderson's Magnolia (I can remember exactly where I was sitting, stunned, in the movie theater as the closing credits rolled on that one). Happily someone has uploaded one of Phil/Philip's scenes to YouTube. I post it here as tribute.

Eight lies, or maybe ten (depending on how you count)

"President Obama issued a statement today to mark the forty-first anniversary of Roe v. Wade. A mere paragraph long, it contains enough euphemism, evasion, and outright falsehood to serve simultaneously as a model of dissimulation and concision." (Matthew Schmitz @ First Thoughts)

CONTINUE READING

An average day

Here's a sampling of the headlines from my local newspaper this morning.

TWO CARS EXCHANGE GUNFIRE IN BELLE GLADE NEAR SCHOOL

THREE DEAD IN SHOOTING AT N. INDIANA GROCERY STORE

DOLPHIN'S QB'S WIFE LEAVES RIFLE IN RENTAL CAR

FATHER OF TEENS KILLED BY WIFE ASKS PUBLIC TO DONATE MONEY TO DREYFOOS SCHOOL OF THE ARTS (the wife shot the teens to death before shooting herself)

I wish these stories were unusual, but in reality they're the new normal in a gun-crazy society where even modest attempts at regulation are met with howls of outrage (see the story I posted on Tuesday). Future generations will look back on us and ask "what were they thinking?!" in the same way we look back at previous eras and wonder how they could blithely accept social evils that seems so obviously wrong in the light of history.

In the meantime here's the body count from yesterday.

A case study in pro-gun extremism

@ PoliticoMagazine

Love is a losing game

Monday night while the rest of America was watching a thrilling BCS championship game I was up til the wee hours of the morning suffering through another kind of football match that took place earlier in the day in Rome. Thanks to the magic of DVR it was like watching live. On this night my beloved Inter Milan lost to rivals Lazio in the worst possible fashion on an 82nd minute goal from a German goal-scoring machine named Miroslav Klose. As I trudged off to bed in the foulest possible mood I had to ask myself: "Why do you put yourself through this?"

This was the second unhappy chapter in a depressing footballing weekend which began on Saturday with my other love, Tottenham (polygamy is allowed in football), losing to their north London rivals the "vile legion of scum" otherwise known as Arsenal. It's been a roller-coaster ride of emotions for Spurs supporters and we're only halfway through the season. Three days before we'd been on top of the world after a stirring New Year's Day win over Manchester United at their once-invincible fortress called Old Trafford.

So why do I invest so much emotional energy into supporting not one, but two clubs that play across the ocean, in time zones that make watching their games a logistical challenge? Again, thank God for DVR! Well, once I have the answer I'll write about it, but for now here's the beginning of a terrific piece by another American football fan, Aaron Wolfe of Brooklyn, reflecting on another day of ignominy involving the hated Arsenal, which paradoxically turned him into a "til I die" Spurs supporter.



This past Christmas and New Years I traveled with my family and a large group of friends to a cabin in Upstate New York. We drank, we ate, we were merry, there was hiking, singing, laughing, games, and good fun all around.

But there was one thing that was a steady topic of conversation: the bewilderment that all of them felt by my need to wake up at 8AM to watch the Football on TV.

Over and over again I was asked “why football?” and “why Tottenham.” It’s a nearly impossible question to answer when you are an American being asked by other Americans that, like you, have all been raised on Baseball and the ‘other’ Football. Never mind the ‘Tottenham Question’ which for me has to include a treatise on what it means to be a ‘Jewish Team’ and how I don’t care about that, but how there is this bar that used to be around the corner from my house which was the official New York Spurs supporters bar, and how I was dragged there against my will, and something about marauding style, and Modric, Bale, Adebayor, Redknapp, etc, etc...

Usually their eyes glaze over around the eighth minute of explanation and I get to go back to punching the couch in disgust as we give the ball away, or yet another attack fizzles out.

But in truth, there is a much simpler reason why I’m Tottenham: that horrible game at the Emirates a few years ago. You know the one: 2-2 at the half, and then 3-2, and then 4, and then 5-2 as the whistle blew.

At the half I had stumbled, shell-shocked, into the street to stand with the smokers (I’d long quit but I still feel some sort of solidarity with the rest of my lung-destroying comrades). Next door to the Spurs Bar is an Arsenal Pub, as though it was the perfect scale recreation of North London in sleepy Brooklyn.

A single lone gooner stood outside smoking, while dozens poured out of the Spurs bar. He grinned an evil grin, then mumbled something about “there’s only one team in London” and then nervously went back inside the minute he saw the hate and fury on our faces. I thought then, as I do now, about the passion we felt, all 300 of us, packed into that bar craning our necks to see the game on screens that were way too small and way too old to handle the number of us. I thought then, as I do now, how the Arsenal bar was practically empty despite the shiny new HD screens that lined the wall behind the booze. I pictured then, as I do now, that that is how it is in North London — a place I’ve never been but a place I spend my weekends dwelling in, living as though on GMT despite being so many miles away.

As I watched our team turn glory into pain at the end of that game, the crowd began to sing. An arm was thrown around my shoulder “I’m Tottenham til I die, I’m Tottenham til I die, I know I am, I’m sure I am...”

I’ll admit, now, that my eyes teared up. And when the song changed to “Tottenham when I’m dead...” I knew it was true. I had no choice in the matter, the baptism by fire had been performed and there was no turning back.

CONTINUE READING

Hope for the New Year

Are you optimistic or pessimistic going into 2014? Is the glass half-full or half-empty? Earlier today I posed this question to the lady that cuts my hair. She didn't give a clear answer, but she did offer that "this country is going down the drain" (she's no fan of Obama) and that "all you can do is take care of your family." Her attitude tracks with a new poll that indicates most American are pessimistic about the ability of our leaders to solve the big problems facing America, but at the same time feel pretty good about how their own lives are going.

That's about where I am too. I see lots of reasons for gloom in Washington and the world at large, but I'm optimistic that the year ahead will be mostly positive for me and my family. I'm also optimistic that 2014 will see further growth and flourishing in my church family. Which brings me to my main question. How should followers of Jesus approach the New Year?

I once heard someone say (it might have been Tim Keller) that Christians are short-term pessimists and long-term optimists. From Abraham to the Apostle Paul the witness of Scripture shows us that the life of faith usually means things get worse before they get better, and the Bible is clear that following God as he's revealed to us in Christ means we will suffer. It's part of the deal. In fact -- as Pastor Dan reminded us last Sunday in a sermon on 2 Timothy 1 -- if we're not willing to suffer for the gospel we're in danger of abandoning the gospel.

While the "suffering piece" might be hard for the American church to accept, it's not hard for the persecuted church in Egypt or Syria or Iraq. Indeed, as the atheist-turned-believer A.N. Wilson wrote on Christmas Day: "the Arab Spring was the Christian winter." For our brothers and sisters whose churches are being bombed it's impossible to be anything but pessimistic about the near future, but if the gospel is true then their persecution "is preparing for us [believers in the gospel] an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)

Is the Christmas story true, or is it just a lot of sentimental claptrap? Is Christianity the stuff of a bygone age or does it still have the power to transform lives and bring genuine reason for hope and optimism? How one answers those questions changes everything (though one must admit that here in the West it's possible to conceive of a low-cost low-risk faith that goes about as far as the Jesus fish on the back of my SUV).

Here are the final paragraphs of Wilson's brilliant piece "It's the Gospel truth - so take it or leave it".


Huge numbers of people clapping in a square – even if they are clapping the Pope – do not tell you anything about whether Christianity is actually true. Nor does the dwindling congregation at the 8 o’clock Communion at Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh undermine the truth of the Word Made Flesh – if it is true.

The Gospel is hard, and it contains within it, not the fear but the absolute certainty, that persecution and misunderstanding will always follow in its wake. It is based on the idea of dying in order to live; of losing life in order to find it; of taking up the cross, that instrument of torture, and finding therein not merely life but glory.

Yes, the hype and sentimentality surrounding the funeral of Nelson Mandela’s funeral were embarrassing, but at the core of it all was the central idea, embodied by a figure such as Archbishop Tutu, that it is possible to ignore the poison of hatred bubbling in your heart and forgive your enemies. The ANC, for long – yes – a terrorist organisation, changed its mind, and behaved, not like Jihadists, but like Christians. South Africa, riven as it is with every kind of human problem, got that thing right largely because Mandela in his prison years decided to risk all on what was a fundamentally Christian idea.

Yes, the Arab Spring is the Christian Winter because there is no truth or reconciliation apparently at work in Israel-Palestine, nor in Iraq, nor in Syria… But the Christian writings, beginning as they do with a refugee mother and baby surrounded by invading armies, and ending with world conflict, the utter destruction of Jerusalem, and the coming of apocalyptic death and plague, are not comfortable.

The paradox is that growing or shrinking numbers do not tell you anything. The Gospel would still be true even if no one believed it. The hopeful thing is that, where it is tried – where it is imperfectly and hesitantly followed – as it was in Northern Ireland during the peace process, as it is in many a Salvation Army hostel this Christmas, as it flickers in countless unseen Christian lives, it works. And its palpable and remarkable power to transform human life takes us to the position of believing that something very wonderful indeed began with the birth of Christ into the world.

Wisdom from Thomas Merton (sounding a little like Wendell Berry)

Under the pretext that what is "within" is in fact real, spiritual, supernatural, etc., one cultivates neglect and contempt for the "external" as worldly, sensual, material, and opposed to grace. This is bad theology and bad asceticism. In fact, it is bad in every respect because instead of accepting reality as it is, we reject it in order to explore some perfect realm of abstract ideals which in fact has no reality at all.

Very often the inertia and repugnance which characterize the so-called "spiritual life" of many Christians could perhaps be cured by a simple respect for the concrete realities of every-day life, for nature, for the body, for one's work, one's friends, one's surroundings, etc.

A false supernaturalism which imagines that "the supernatural" is a kind of realm of abstract essences (as Plato imagined) that is totally apart from and opposed to the concrete world of nature offers no real support to a genuine life of meditation and prayer. Meditation has no point unless it is firmly rooted in life.

Quote from Contemplative Prayer (Doubleday/Image Books, 1971) as published in Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups, edited by Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith

Providence's "beautiful history"

Once again, in returning to John Flavel I'm reminded of the value of reading the English Puritans. Giants of the faith like Flavel and John Owen are spiritual heart surgeons, and their writings like spiritual smelling salts for sleepy Christians, of which I am one. Keeping the Heart -- an extended meditation on Proverbs 4:23 -- is a prime example. Here's a great quote from the section where Flavel talks about the importance of tending to one's heart in times of adversity.

We are clouded with much ignorance, and are not able to discern how particular providences tend to the fulfillment of God's designs; and therefore, like Israel in the wilderness, are often murmuring because Providence leads us about in a howling desert where we are exposed to difficulties; though then he lead them, and is now leading us, by the right way to a city of habitations. If you could but see how God in his secret counsel has exactly laid the whole plan of your salvation, even to the smallest means and circumstances; could you but discern the admirable harmony of divine actions, their mutual relations, together with the general respect they all have to the last end; had you the liberty to make your own choice, you would of all conditions in the world, choose that in which you now are in.

Providence is like a curious piece of tapestry made of a thousand shreds, which single appear useless, but put together they represent a beautiful history to the eye. As God does all things according to the counsel of his own will, of course this is ordained as the best method to effect your salvation.

BTW this book is available in a Kindle edition for 99 cents. If you can overlook the many typos it's a terrific value.