The Guardians

Two weeks ago I took my kids to see Rise of the Guardians - a story about Jack Frost, Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Sandman who are all deputized by the Man in the Moon to watch over the children of the world.  They stand on guard against the "boogeyman"and the forces of unbelief - protecting the world from the darkness that comes from a loss of hope, faith, and love.  The religious connection is not too difficult to make - but that's not what interests me.  Like everyone else I was mortified by the events that unfolded last Friday.  So much so I couldn't listen or watch - I stayed far away from the TV and NPR.  I couldn't face it...still can't.  I have a five year old daughter, and the thought of sending her to school ...to think of her not coming home? - it's just too much for me.  I'm not strong enough...  Just as unbearable is the thought that my own child might be capable of unleashing hell on earth.  I'll admit it - I've thought much more about the shooter and his family.  It's too easy to characterize him as evil or disturbed - it's way too easy to start blaming guns and a culture of violence.  I blame the "boogeyman"... the forces of unbelief... the darkness that strips our children of hope, faith, and love. Sure our gun culture is nuts... but just as crazy are the expectations young people are burdened with.  They are forced to live up to our standards... our desire that they be "successful" or that they "fit in."  They are expected to produce... to perform... and they've gotten good at playing the game.  Only some of them buckle beneath it all - some of them reach a point where they just don't want to play our games any more.  Some of them decide that regardless of what they do or how much they try they just can't compete... so they check out.  Don't get me wrong - I realize that most misfits never even think about violently lashing out. I don't know anything about the young man who committed this unimaginable act of violence - I'm sure there are multiple factors known and unknown as to why he did what he did. Yet I can't help thinking about his father and his brother... I see his picture and I wonder about the demons he was fighting... I think about my own kids and the darkness that lurks.

Even in our Christian circles where the language of grace is used and abused we tend to set up our own forms of works righteousness.  We want our kids to measure up - morally, doctrinally, economically, socially.  We want them to meet our expectations... to believe like we believe... to live like we live, and if they don't we assume there is some problem or crisis.  You don't have to look too far to see that all of the worry and concern about young people "leaving the church" has just as much to do with adults freaking out that their kid's faith doesn't look like their faith.  So there is a "crisis" with our youth... they become a problem to be solved. This Christmas I suggest that we simply take the time to love em' up. To love on our kids, tell them we're proud of them - not because they perform, not because they meet our expectations, just because they are our kids and they need our love and acceptance. I know there is a time to correct, to teach, to discipline - but all of this has to be tempered with a love, grace, and generosity that is not dependent upon their performance. I realize that I might come off as the "perfect" parent with all of the answers - believe me, I'm far from it.  Which is why I need to be reminded to love on my kids... to love my students... unconditionally. We are the Guardians and it's our unconditional love that fends off of the "boogeyman" - it's our acceptance and generosity that holds back the darkness.  This is, after all, the message of Christmas - the incarnation as God's embrace of our humanity, not because we deserve it or because we meet divine expectations, it's an unconditional love shown to us in Jesus Christ. This Christmas our God invites us to do the same...

Believing in Santa

Had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day about his daughter's experience at preschool.  The preschool teacher took it upon herself to tell all the three and four year olds that Santa is not real. His daughter came home very upset - wanting to know if Sinter Klaas (the Dutch version of St. Nick) was fake too.  My kids are a bit older so my friend wanted to know how my wife and I have dealt with Santa Claus.  Our conversation took some interesting twists and turns - from mythology, Baudrillard and "hyper-reality", to whether we are setting our kids up for disappointment. It got pretty deep... "What do you say to a kid if they ask straight out:  Is Santa real?"  "Yes" I replied.  "With no qualification?" he responded.  "None." 

My kids all differ on how they think about things like Santa.  My ten year old daughter has always believed in fairies and mermaids, the birthday fairy who ties balloons on her door for her birthday, and Santa Claus who leaves stuff in her stocking.  Even at ten we can tell she doesn't want to let go.  The fairies no longer live in our backyard - she's moved them to some other planet.  And Santa?  We think she knows... but she doesn't want to let on that she knows.  She loves it too much.  Much son?  He's a skeptic.  Already at 4 he was telling our oldest that mermaids are not real.  Just a week ago I asked him about his favorite bible story, and in that conversation he asks, "How do we know these stories really happened?"  "What do you mean?" I asked. "You know - the three guys in the furnace. It says they didn't even have the smell of smoke on them. That can't be true."  After some discussion I finally affirmed his questions - letting him know it's ok to ask.  My five year old? She's just happy to be here.  She goes along with everything the kids do - so I can't quite get a read on her myth-o-meter.

Are such things harmful for our kids?  Do we set them up for disappointment?  No way.  What sets them up for greater disappointment is to paint a picture of reality that's coldly mechanical. Our imagination is the source of meaning, and I believe it is also the place where we encounter the divine. Santa, fairies, and mermaids paint the world as magical, which prepares the way for thinking of the world as miraculous.  Miracles or magic - there isn't much of a difference as far as I'm concerned.  Believing a fat man in a red suit leaves stuff in your stockings prepares the way for the magical belief that a tiny human baby born 2,000 years ago was God. As for me and my house?  We'll believe in Santa as long as possible. If you need to get in touch with me later today I'll be at The Rise of the Guardians with my kids.

Sandy and the White House: A Report from New York

Daniel Meeter writes today in place of Jason Lief. Thanks, Daniel.

On Tuesday, November 6, the people of the United States elected Barack Obama for a second term as President. For many of us this election had two stories — the election happened in the aftermath of Super-storm Sandy. Residents of New York and New Jersey and the surrounding region had to struggle to vote like in some undeveloped country. People were voting in tents set up with generators. People were voting in the backs of National Guard trucks. My wife and I live in Brooklyn, the largest and most populous borough of New York City, and it took us two hours to drive and walk the two miles to cast our vote. Most of us have been far more focused on living through the aftermath than on national politics. I spent the week after Election Day organizing volunteers to deliver food and flashlights and blankets to the victims of Sandy still without hydro or living in local shelters.

The two stories came together for the whole country with the visit of President Obama to New Jersey to survey the damage and destruction, not as a candidate, but the Head of State. His host was Governor Chris Christie, who had nominated Mitt Romney at the Republican convention. We watched the two of them, side by side, getting along, serving the afflicted and storm-tossed with power and compassion. Obama won a point for the federal government as a common good, and Christie did not deny it.

Romney lost and Christie won. I mean in terms of the Republican Party. Romney represented the GOP as a sort of Christian heritage party, with Mormons now included among the Christians. The Party’s platform was the public enforcement of personal moralities based on revealed religion, together with that unique American mythology of revolution, liberty, violence, race, and guns. But Christie represents the old pragmatic GOP, a progres­sive conservative party, anti-revolutionary, pro-federal government, and strong in favor of civil rights, the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisen­hower. The Republican Party will have to choose to be what Romney lost or rather what Christie won.

Romney lost, in great part, because of changing demographics. Romney appealed to the white male Christians whose majority is dwindling. Obama, though himself a converted, practicing, Trinitarian Christian, is a symbol of America’s increasing diversity of color and religion, for whom the sacred mythological heritage of America means little and for whom the US Constitution is not a sacred document (as it is for the Tea Party and the Mormons). They care more about the American future, and Obama represents that future.

It’s a fearful future. Super-storm Sandy symbolized climate change and global warming. More storms are coming. People fear there is no going back to normal, and what will the new normal be? Romney represented going back — even “taking back” America. What does that mean for the devastated Jersey Shore, and Atlantic City, and Coney Island? Building them back the way they were, or rebuilding them as “green”? Now, suddenly, new federal initiatives make sense, the kind Obama was talking about.

The United States is unlike most democracies in the way it combines the offices of the Head of State and the leader of the government into a single office, and directly chooses that office in a single national election. This election happens regularly every four years, so this quadrennial national referendum has become a huge ritual of national repentance, revival, judgment, damnation, renewal, and reconciliation. The American national character is so ideological that it’s virtually a secular religion. Canadians might “love” Canada, but Americans “believe in” America. The election was a test of American doctrines and a choice between two prophetic visions—one to repent and return, the other to revive and renew America.

The sacred mythology of America has two gospels in it: the original Gospel of the Revolution, of the War of Independence from Great Britain, and the later Gospel of the Immigration, of Ellis Island, and the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the sweatshops and the labor unions. These two represent the tensions of America, between the values of the patriot (individualism, the right to bear arms, hatred of the crown and distrust of government) and the values of the immigrant (community, hard work, the protection of the government against the rich tycoon). The tensions between freedom and equality and between liberty and justice are the tensions of democracy. Romney ran on one Gospel and Obama on the other.

In the Great Depression that followed the stock market crash of 1929, Americans chose for FDR, and they stayed with him during the War. In the Great Recession that followed the Wall Street debacle of 2008, Americans chose for the party of FDR and this November they stayed with it. They chose for the party that values compassion over righteousness, the commonwealth (emphasis on “common”) over the individual, the immigrants over the patriots, and the possible future over the Founding Fathers. It is a risky choice, but the electorate doubted there were any certainties anyway. Some Christians see the choice as a rejection of Christian values. Others see it as a return to the separation of church and state, for the good of both, and that the Kingdom of God is best served by a desacralized America.

Daniel Meeter is pastor of the Old First Reformed Church of Brooklyn, New York and a dual citizen of the US and Canada. His most recent book is Why Be A Christian (If No One Goes to Hell) [an ebook available from Amazon].  This originally appeared in the Christian Courier, a Reformed biweekly from Canada.

The Day After

Psalm 146

Praise the Lord.

I will praise the Lord all my life;
    I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
Do not put your trust in princes,
    in human beings, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
    on that very day their plans come to nothing.
Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
    whose hope is in the Lord their God.

I live in a very red part of a blue state.  Iowa went for Obama again this election cycle but I'm one of the 7% in my county who voted for Obama.  A majority of my fellow Sioux Countians see it as the their Christian duty to pull the metaphorical red lever, so I'm sure there were some who woke up the day after in despair - truly believing the sky is falling. I haven't seen anyone digging a bunker just yet but it's early. Yesterday a friend told me about his experience with some colleagues the day after the election.  They were bemoaning the outcome, wondering what they were going to do and how Christian people could even think about voting for Obama, when my friend pulled out a bible, opened to Psalm 146, and read out loud "Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings who cannot save..."  He slammed the bible down on the table and said "I don't want to hear another word about it."

This election season, more than any other, I have engaged in heated discussions with my "red" neighbors and friends. They have their reasons for why they voted for Romney - I'll even admit some of them make sense. I'm glad that many of my neighbors take their political duty very seriously, it's just that sometimes I wish they'd take the bible a little more seriously.  I know that's a strange comment given that many northwest Iowans are militant about taking the bible literally. Face value... it says what it says... our task it to read it, hear it, and obey.  While I don't think this is good exegetical method this is one time I wish they would practice what they preach.  The Kingdom of God is not red or blue (some might think it's green but that's even a stretch.)  Yes, we are called to exercise our political duty.  Yes, I believe that cultural institutions and practices are a part of God's good creation.  But like anything else these cultural practices have become warped by sin - weighed down by idolatrous ideological baggage.  The truth is that the kingdom of God comes in spite of our politics and our cultural preferences. This Sunday morning I'll attend my local congregation to hear the good news about the in-breaking of Kingdom into this world and to hear the call to take up my cross, love my neighbor, and follow Jesus "along the way." Whether we live in a red, blue, green, or pink state - that is the call that matters most for the Christian community.

He is the Maker of heaven and earth,
    the sea, and everything in them—
    he remains faithful forever.
He upholds the cause of the oppressed
    and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
    the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
    the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the foreigner
    and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
    but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

Some nights...

This is it, boys, this is war - what are we waiting for?
Why don't we break the rules already?
I was never one to believe the hype - save that for the black and white
I try twice as hard and I'm half as liked, but here they come again to jack my style

And that's alright; I found a martyr in my bed tonight
She stops my bones from wondering just who I am, who I am, who I am
Oh, who am I? mmm... mmm...

Fun.

"Earth remains our Mother, as God remains our Father, and our Mother will only lay in the Father's arms those who remain true to her. Earth and its distress—that is the Christian's `Song of Songs.'"

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Loyalty has been a hot issue on The 12 as of late.  I'm not a member of the RCA so I can't say I'm up on the different groups mentioned throughout the various posts.  I am a member of the CRC... and believe me, we have our groups as well.  In this political season it's fairly easy to get caught up in the rhetoric of a cause - to raise the banner for or against Obamacare or a stronger military. It's easy to invoke the names of Kennedy or Reagan - or Bush and Clinton for that matter, but they're still alive.  However, when push comes to shove... what does it amount to?  Come November it will all be over and we'll go back to our lives.. back to "the earth"... to what really matters.  We do the same in our denominational battles.  This group wants doctrinal purity, this group wants to be inclusive...but at the end of the day we return to the beautiful mess that is our lives.

This morning, after what ended up being a rather rough week, I opened my eyes to see these big peepers starting back at me.  My five year old daughter climbed into bed and laid right next to me... waiting for me to wake up.  So there we lay - laughing and giggling, with her telling me how bad my breath smelled.  (She's good at keeping me humble.)  Like a lightening bolt I was brought back to earth... back from all of the ideals and arguments I had been having, from the make believe world of causes and agendas.  This is what matters... the flesh and blood right in front of my face.

This morning Bonhoeffer calls us back from the nice neat world of orthodox categories and ideals back to the wonderfully messy world of reality.  This morning we remember that the Christ we follow was an outsider for the outsiders.  The Christ we follow shattered the oppressive orthodoxy of his day in the name of love and grace.  Devotion?  Our devotion belongs "to the earth" - and the glorious messy-ness of the crucified Christ who embraces it.