Column worth reading

A blog I read regularly featured this recent column by John Kass at the Chicago Tribune. I wanted to share it.

"No doubt about Easter's true meaning" Published April 16, 2006

It is Easter Sunday for millions of Western Christians. Those of us on the Eastern Orthodox side of Christianity will celebrate next week.

And somehow, whether this week or next, writing about colored eggs and butter lambs and avoiding the Jesus Christ part of it just won't do.

Obviously, I work in the secular media, and we're usually skittish about spiritual matters. But we're quite dogmatic when it comes to some other things. For example, we're almost severe in our collective belief in scientific progress, in the ability of government officials and technology and reason to solve the problems of the modern world. The mention of Christianity, except in an anthropological context, is often avoided. It carries certain risks.

One problem is that you might insult or infuriate those of other faiths, or those who are firm in having no faith, or those who are ambivalent and want to keep it that way. Please, no offense is intended here. I'm no theologian. My sins haunt me, and what they've left behind reminds me that I'm nobody to tell others about what should be in their hearts.

Still this is Easter Sunday for so many of you and the beginning of Holy Week for others like me, and millions upon millions of people are being driven to their knees.

Just think about that. All across the world on Sunday, and again next Sunday, millions of folks will confirm their belief in something that can't be proven by scientific means. That yearning is news, isn't it? Even though it takes place year after year, it's still news.

What drives us to our knees has little to do with cute bunny rabbits and tiny marshmallow chicks. It has little to do with Easter bonnets, or Earth Day. So while reading the papers on Friday, considering this, I glanced at the front page of USA Today.

"Hollywood turns to divine inspiration," said the headline, and above it was a photo of actor Tom Hanks and a French beauty in the new movie "The Da Vinci Code."

I hope the headline about divine inspiration was a pun, since the Hanks film appears to be a response to Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." But Hollywood wants inspiration to produce movies that make almost $400 million, as Gibson's did, especially since Hollywood refused to help Gibson with his movie.

Most of you know that the Hanks movie was taken from a badly written book, informed perhaps not by the Holy Sprit, but as conservative writer Tom Roeser said the other day, by feminist politics. Also, that the new Hanks movie involves one of those Jesus conspiracies. In this one, Jesus has a child with Mary Magdalene, the first in a line of French nobles, and conservative Roman Catholics dispatch a crazed albino monk to assassinate anyone who may reveal the big secret.

Recently, there was news that trumpeted the discovery of the so-called Judas gospel. This gospel apparently expiates Judas' guilt. He can't be a betrayer if he and Jesus were allegedly in the conspiracy together. Although early Christian bishops ignored that book, it is being offered, again during the Easter season, as an archeological find, as a goad.

I usually skip such news. The incredible lengths to which the anti-Catholic "Da Vinci Code" has been marketed and the coverage of the Judas gospel as if it were a missing companion to the other four prove me right. It's always so relentless and familiar. It always revolves around the same basic premise:

Doubt.

And doubt sells.

A few months ago, a newsweekly ran a portrait of Jesus on the cover. Such magazines give prominent play to Christian themes in winter and spring, and the portrait was from the Renaissance, and he wore a crown of thorns, and there was this headline:

"How Jesus became the Christ"--as if what happened after the Crucifixion was merely a matter of good public relations.

A friend who worked at one of those magazines had a theory about all of the new Jesus news.

"Jesus saves--circulation," he said.

Surely their numbers don't lie. Casting nagging doubts must drive newsstand sales, or they wouldn't do it.

Some hands that reach for such stuff are thrilled, their own positions validated. Others who don't reach are wounded, wondering why there is so much constant effort made to whittle at belief.

This year is no different. Next year there will be something else. That much is certain. It's been that way for almost 2,000 years. It's always the same, and it goes like this:

A group of strong men rolled the rock away from the tomb, the Resurrection didn't happen, and it defies scientific reason, which is the new church to many.

But in countless other churches, in storefronts and cathedrals, there is a response to such doubt. It comes from the Last Supper, when Christ speaks to his disciples and says: "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

For those of you who celebrate today, happy Easter.


----------jskass@tribune.com

Who wants $130.00?

I can't make a payment on my student loan this month. I want to make my payment. I have the money to make a payment. BUT MY STUDENT LOAN COMPANY SOLD/TRANSFERRED MY LOAN TO ANOTHER PARTY AND NOW I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT IS! I logged on tonight to pay my loan, since it is due tomorrow, and it says I can't make a payment because I no longer have a balance with them. As of Tuesday I did. But today I don't. And I have no idea whom to pay. And now I'm going to get punished for late payment because, right now, I have no idea where my loan even is. GRRR!!!! No respite tonight - only a very frustrated Jessie.

Afraid to move

"...an irrestible desire to be irrestibly desired" I can't remember right now where the quote comes from, but it's splashing up against and violenting reacting to my dreams of the freedom to go wherever, whenever, in the pursuit of a life lived recklessly for God. I love Jesus so much, and I want to go wherever He calls, and as His call seems to be pulling me towards full-time ministry, perhaps over-seas, perhaps of an itinerant nature, I can't help but think the devotion to husband and family would prevent me from such ventures. I would put all dreams of husband and children aside for the work God has set aside for me, but, even so, to be irrestibly desired by someone here on earth, someone in the flesh who desires me at the end of the day, to be someone else's one and only - that is a blessing I want, a blessing I covet. I'm not saying Christian service and family life are incompatible. I'm not saying that at all. But, realistically, unless someone's dreams and careers are very closely aligned with mine, I just don't see how it could work. I'm scared to pursue anyone - or allow myself to be pursued - for fear that I will just have to give it up in the end, leaving two people hurt. And even more than that, I fear that I wouldn't give it up even if I knew I should, and then settle for a desire that was less than what God wanted to give me. So, I'm pretty much afraid to move. Is there anyone else out there feeling like this?

Dose of reality

Something about this short blog entry from a reporter in Iraq struck me. Please read: http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/2006/04/no-politics-in-combat.html

Impact

There are four and a half weeks left of school, which, when you take out the week for finals, means that there are only three and a half weeks left of instruction. Being conditioned to do so since kindergarten, part of me is jumping up and down, squealing inside that summer vacation is almost here. However, the other part of me is simply stunned. Three and a half weeks. Only three and a half weeks in front of my captive audiences is left. Only three and half weeks left to give my students everything I want them to know. After three and half weeks, it's over - my opportunities will be gone. It is literally now or never.

I think we all meander back and forth from doubting of the real impact of our lives to self-inflating the influence we have on those around us. In other words, we somehow simultaneously come to view ourselves as gods while questioning the significance of our existence. We think the world cannot continue without us, yet we question whether we make a difference at all. The tug of war between stress and depression leaves us, well, stressed and depressed.

I had an incredible weekend last weekend. The final performance of the spring play was Friday night, and, for added poignancy, it was Jane and I's last play as well. There were flowers and tears and hugs, hugs even from students I know cannot stand me in the classroom. I believe I had more affirmation from students on that one night than I have had in the three years I have been teaching. I will never forget how one girl came up to me after the play, though. She had tears in her eyes, and suddenly she started gushing forth what impact I had made in her life. Well, the truth is, although the impact may have been great, there was no extraordinary action on my part. It was simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time with the right background. In other words, it was a total God thing.

Last Friday night brought serious questions to my mind. Did I make the right decision to go to seminary? In seminary, and later working in a ministry, will I have meaningful relationships with people who aren't Christians? What kind of access will I have into people's lives? If I work for a ministry, what doors will slam shut? What will happen to the kids I am leaving behind? Will anyone else care for them and nurture them?

It's easy to be stressed. Yet, the entire point of the story about the girl was not that I am a genius with kids in a public high school (trust me - I'm not). It was that my encounter with her was a God thing. I was in the right place at the right time not by coincidence or luck, but because God gave me the privilege of being the one to recognize something and having the resources to nudge, just nudge, her in a certain direction. And if that is true, if there is a Lord who is master over my days, then I must trust Him as He leads me elsewhere. I have three and a half weeks left of instruction, but my impact is nothing without God's hand. The fruit of my work is dependent on God's power. To be disobedient to God for the sake of serving God better is a ridiculous, and fruitless, idea.

To know that in Christ we have value can keep us from circumstantial depression. To know that it is in Christ alone that our days have significance can keep us from undue stress. I am to continue on away from teaching knowing that, in Christ, my worth in inestimable. I am to continue on away from teaching knowing that each day is His, and He works through my obedience. I am to continue on knowing that it is by His power that people are comforted and encouraged and healed. I am to continue on, trusting, for it is by His own power that my life will glorify His.

Spring Break

Spring vacation is just a mere 48 hours away. Just 48 more hours. 6 whole days of family and sleep and reading and journaling. I can make it.

800 E. Center St.

I didn't go to church this morning. Right before I left I went to my email to send my co-teacher some information about lesson plans for tomorrow, and I received the following email from my mom:

It is about 2 a.m. here. I just came in the house to get warm for a minute. Sarah and Dan's house is burning down. We gave Vickie our car to take Abbie to Vickie's mom's because she cannot get theirs out of the garage.. Abbie is a wreck. The house has been burning for about two hours. I really do not know what else to say. Very sad. Love you, Mom

Living just two doors down, Sarah and Dan were like grandparents to me and my brother, and Morgan, Evan, and Lizzie next door. Sarah babysat us when we were little and watched over us when we were sick and Mom and Dad had to go to work. Our parents were always over there or they were always over here. Every single day Sarah and Dan and my parents would sit and talk somewhere. If it was nice outside, it would be on their patio around the picnic table. If it was semi-nice, it would be in the little nook just off of the kitchen. And, in the winter, it would be around their dining room table. There were Christmas Eve gatherings and New Years Eve parties and cookouts and birthday parties. Sarah collected pigs, and I would periodically count every pig in the house to keep an accurate tally of just how many pig figurines she had. I remember Dan helping me make a wooden lute for a school project down in the basement. We played flashlight tag and ghost in the graveyard in their backyard, cards in their den, and hide and seek throughout their entire house.

During my sophomore year in high school, Sarah and Dan moved back to the Rockford area in order to be closer to their kids and grandkids. Still, Sarah and Dan came back for my high school graduation, my brother's high school graduation, and other important events along the way. They have still been part of our neighborhood, and though they've been away for over ten years, their house stood as a monument to the memories we shared there.

It's sad. Time is marching on in a hurry, and, no matter how deep my sentimental attachment, time and nature is dealing its blows. So, goodbye 726 E. Center St. Thank you, Father, for the love and the memories that were provided in that house.

beginnings of thoughts on the difference between manipulation and discipleship

Have you ever been in a discussion with someone, and then something, perhaps just a very small detail, lodges itself in your brain and sends a sense throughout your entire body that something is just not right? I had that experience today when talking with someone who I have always thought to be a Christian. In chit-chatting with her today, casually talking about my seminary plans for next year and my desire to equip people in the church with the knowledge, means, and encouragement to be effective ministers in their own environments, she started talking about her own church and small group and peers within her congregation. Something she said about the small group didn't sit right with me - something about a family that just wasn't committed in their faith. The evidence was that they often did not come to small group. I started thinking, wow, how many times have I cut out on small group. Sometimes I'm sick, sometimes I'm exhausted, sometimes I have play practice or am up against a deadline or something like that. Gathering with other Christians on a regular basis is important, and my small group record isn't stellar, but should small group attendance be the measure of spiritual committment? Then, she said something about the International Church of Christ. hmmm, I thought. That probably explains it. I knew some Churches of Christ are mainstream non-denominational Christian churches and some Churches of Christ are manipulative and cult-like. I couldn't remember which category the International Church of Christ fell into. I looked it up. Yup. It's the cult-like one.

If you don't know about the International Church of Christ, research about it. It embraces a form of compulsory dicipleship. First of all, one is not truly saved until he or she is baptized by an International Church of Christ member. Secondly, once one is saved and therefore a member of the church, one must be discipled by another - and here is the really scary part- one must be fully subordinate to the one who is discipling him or her. Therefore, whether the issue is marriage, work, major purchases, church involvement, etc., the one who is being discipled must submit to the authority of the other.

I'm saddened now. I don't really know where my friend stands in all of this. Does she fully embrace this doctrine or is she ignorant of it? I really don't think she's ignorant of it, which leads me to wonder what she's been thinking of me all this time. Am I saved in her eyes? Or, does she think I believe the same things she does? And, when I was talking today about discipleship and equipping, what was she thinking about? I'm sure we think of very different things when the word discipleship comes up, and right now I am sick to think that she might believe I actually endorse controlling people's lives as true discipleship.

It's a scary world out there. I hate cults. I hate groups that use the name of Christ to manipulate and control. I hate groups that use the most freeing message in the world to put people into bondage. I hate groups that manipulate so much that people lose their sensitivity to what bondage really is and then joyfully lead others into their own captive state.

My friend means well. But, it's just all so wrong.

I'm going to have to comment more about this later.