Lord God, why do we insist on putting boundaries on your limitless love? You create us and call us good, made in your image even, and yet we refuse to see each other as the beloved children You claim us to be. Forgive us when we fail to see You in each person we meet. Forgive us when instead of saying, “They are good,” we assume they are bad and somehow outside the purview of Your care and ours. Help us, Heavenly Father, to notice those thoughts that creep into our consciousness: judgments, assumptions, disdain or even hate. Suspend our prejudices and open our eyes to the very good, God-created, Christ-sustained, Spirit-infused world in which you have placed us. Guide us, Mothering God, in the ways of peace, compassion and mercy, especially to those with whom we are least inclined to like. Risen Christ, if we are on any journeys of persecution, please stop us cold, render us helpless, send us guides and removed the scales from our eyes. Interrupt our false righteousness and give … [Read more...]
The persistent pursuit of perfect programs
My book club is reading John Steinbeck’s novel “East of Eden.” A passing description of a passing character caught my attention: “Mrs. Edwards was persistently if not profoundly religious. She spent a great part of her time with the mechanics of her church, which did not leave her time for either its background or its effects.” I see myself in the description: While I may care about the church’s background and effects, I direct my time, energy and mindshare to the church’s mechanics – to the day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month and year-to-year programs, worship services, budgets and pastoral needs. I leave myself little time to consider the effectiveness of said programs, worship services, budgets and responses to pastoral needs. Do our adult discipleship programs truly help people move toward spiritual maturity? Or have we simply created an array of spiritual time fillers? Likely, the answer is somewhere in between these two extremes. But, I find that I have little time or … [Read more...]
A time to speak and a time to remain silent
I recently came across this quote attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still maintain the ability to function.” If Fitzgerald is correct, our current cultural ethos isn’t very smart. It stuns me to see, repeatedly, our collective inability to hold two or more ideas in tension. Our thinking (and our debate) is as gerrymandered as our voting districts, with extreme voices drowning out more nuanced sentiments. Even within church groups of mostly like-minded people, there is an increasingly narrow path that must be followed if one doesn’t want to be called out as disloyal, unfaithful or even anti-Christian. We are quick to judge one another’s righteousness, forgetting that none of us is without sin. James Davison Hunter, in his book, “To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World,” writes, “In public discourse, the challenge is … [Read more...]
Reflections on marriage
It’s June – the most marrying month of the year. I‘ve long since lost track of how many weddings I’ve officiated over the years (a hundred?). And I have no idea how many of those couples are still married. I’m too chicken, I suppose, to find out. I have wondered, though, if premarital counseling is too little too late. (I may have come to this realization when I got engaged… at age 47.) Pastor, just look in their eyes. They are gaga. Their minds are made up. They are inclined to tell you whatever they think you – or their intended – want to hear. Don’t worry, I will keep using that marital assessment inventory and meeting with the couple multiple times in the hopes that they have a better of idea of what they’re getting into, but I’m somewhat skeptical about the result. Because, as a New York Times Opinion piece put it last year, while not intending to, we “marry the wrong person.” In fact, I’m almost entirely convinced that the wrong person is all there is! For those who … [Read more...]
Envisioning the church of today
We must get over our denominational depression. The Lord has work for us to do on behalf of the Kingdom of God. Since the reunion of the Presbyterian Church in the United States and the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1983, we have lamented losses, both perceived and real. While many blame membership losses on the denominational merger, it must be noted that both denominations began losing membership in the early 1970s, years before reunion in 1983. There are two significant conclusions that emerge in my thinking in this data: Our 1983 reunion is not the primary reason for the PC(USA) membership decline; and during the same period, other traditional institutions were experiencing decline in both significance and effectiveness. For example, public education has struggled with emerging technologies and changing communities. In addition, redlining of transportation and jobs eliminated many inner city employment opportunities. Communities and ways of life … [Read more...]
Two letters to a middle school youth group of years past
Editor’s note: Andrew Taylor-Troutman’s article on narrative medicine appeared in our recent issue on cancer (and is online here). Before seminary, he was a middle school youth director for a Presbyterian church. These letters arose out of his self-exploration work while studying toward a degree in narrative medicine. Dear middle school youth group, Remember how once a month after church we would carpool to that assisted living facility? How the staff would wheel a couple dozen residents into the cafeteria? It’s been more than 10 years now and you are all adults, so you might not recall the seasonally appropriate crafts I designed. Maybe that’s a good thing. My repertoire was admittedly limited. We did the turkeys out of cutouts of our hands and snowflakes with plenty of glitter and shamrocks with just as much all-green glitter. Pretty bleak, I know, especially under the harsh florescent light illuminating the dirty linoleum floor. It wasn’t so long ago that I was in middle … [Read more...]
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