A Christian Worldview from Silicon Valley

In the sense of foretelling the future, I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. Eli Stone can’t say that, but I can.

There have been times, though, when I have — and I know this sounds very strange — “known” what was going to happen in the future. Call it insight, call it deductive reasoning, call it a hallucination, or call it a lucky guess, but I have known. You might even call what I have known “prophecy,” but I stick with my earlier statement about neither nor the son of.

Was Minister Louis Farrakhan acting as a prophet when he called Barack Obama “the Messiah?” To be fair, his statement might have meant that Jesus (the Messiah) was speaking through Obama. The proof he offered for his outrageous statement, in either case, was that young people were listening to Obama. Young people also listen to rap music, Shrek, and Big Bird, but I digress.

My point is that I foretold Obama’s ascendancy to the Oval Office years and years ago, probably during the 1996 DNC. (I used to live in Illinois, and the boy made a splash when Carol Moseley Braun was the first African-American woman to win a senate seat and he was credited with helping her do so.) Had I been a betting man, I would have known to call Ladbroke’s and get down 10 quid on Obama to win. Then on January 21, 2009, I could have retired. Instead, I’ll be continuing to work and pay taxes, only now I’ll probably pay more of them.

Obama himself is prophecying a “changed” future. That’s pretty easy — there is a new sheriff in town, so change seems likely — but what is tough is figuring out where the change will occur. One place that might happen is within Obama himself.

In fact I’d predict that, except that I am not a prophet.

Keith loves his shirts, especially the ratty, comfy ones. I’ve given up suggesting he throw them out or convert them to rags because he just says no, or, when pushed, “I prefer not.” I can’t fire his speaking coaches, Nancy Reagan and Bartleby the Scrivener. And I can’t just throw his stuff away without permission; I have my own integrity to maintain. What to do? I’m hoping a new strategy, admittedly passive aggressive, works: I leave the shirts hanging in the garage, where they stay in perpetuity, and he doesn’t see them because they are not in his closet. (Not gone, just “missing.”)

So today I put my plan in action. I went through our laundry limbo, the place where shirts are hung up upon their removal from the dryer. Instead of grabbing the whole lot to put away, I inspected each specimen for ragged collars and cuffs to leave behind. Mwoohahaha: I am woman, hear me roar.

Two men’s shirts stood out from the others. One, with a collar so frayed that only an outer layer of fabric remained attached, had been a $35 LL B–n catalog purchase for Keith’s birthday. It had shown significant signs of wear within a few months of acquisition (though two other Oxford shirts of exactly the same model and vintage still look great after a couple years’ wear). The other shirt, a Ralph Lauren Polo long-sleeved button-up, had been given to me 25 years ago, by my friend Patti Strawn, who scored it working an on-campus special sale; it still looks pristine.

I would have guessed that both of these shirts were high quality, but I would have been wrong. The costlier one was a complete waste of money (well, except that Keith really, really, really liked it), and the freebie would have been well worth the high retail value.

If you don’t have experience with fill-in-the-blank, it can be hard to judge what is treasure and what is trash. You’ll see what I mean at any garage sale. Sometimes you just have to hang out with something for a while before it becomes apparent what is what. But when you figure it out, for heaven’s sake — no, for your own sake — take out the trash!

Jesus had his own way of figuring out what had worth. As he put it,

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (NIV)

As an adult, I’ve learned to extract a lot more fun out of life than I ever did as a (boring) child. At almost every minute of the day, there is entertainment to be had, no matter whether a person is working, eating, talking, walking, or whatever. Don’t you agree?

One potentially amusing activity people naturally do with folks they like is called “mirroring.” As a way of establishing rapport, we imitate each other or respond in kind to a given statement or action. When I say, “Well, hello, Mr. B!” Bill, if he feels like playing along, will respond, “Well, hi, Mrs. M!” (We don’t imitate each other too exactly because that looks and feels like mockery, an expression of disdain.)

Sometimes people don’t want to engage in this verbal and behavioral play. Maybe they don’t like us, don’t get it, or can’t be bothered. When I visited Paris, France, several years ago, I would get radically different responses from waiters and shop clerks depending on whether I first engaged in light pleasantries (”Ca va?” “Ca va bien.” “Bien.”), or cut to the chase in my efficient American way (”Two baguettes, please.”) In the former scenario, whoever I dealt with would be warm and friendly for the rest of the interaction. In the latter, they would turn cold and taciturn, even brusque and rude.

God engages in this kind of play with us, where the initial kickoff occurred “in the beginning” when he created us “in his image.” He placed us in the best arena ever conceived, and explained the one rule of the game: “don’t eat from that tree.” It wasn’t long, though, before the beautiful symmetry was broken. By chapter 3 of the story, we had eaten from it, felt fear, sewn clothes, and hidden. Most of the rest of Scripture is devoted to showing how God tries over and over again to reestablish that early relationship of naked trust and delight. His all-hands-in appeal is made when he joins us in the physical form of Jesus, a form we recognize and relate to.

It’s a long, slow dance from where he started in making us like him to the incarnation when he made himself like us. But it’s all mirroring and all for the purpose of drawing us to him for life, for play, for fun and joy.

The question is do we have the will, wit, stamina, and spiritual discipline to respond in kind? How can we deliberately mirror God?

I’m having one of those rare weekends alone. My daughter is making new friends at a camp for happy teenagers, while my husband and son are scout camping at a black sand beach in Northern California. I enjoy these moments almost too much, burrowing into my home and tuning out the world with loud music and escapist fiction.

Email is one channel that breaks through my isolation. After following the stories on Sarah Palin, John McCain’s VP candidate, I was intrigued by a forwarded email: “25 things you might not know about McCain.” Written by the Associated Press, it was published in multiple news outlets August 28ff, 2008. Most of the insights are silly trivia, but one line grabbed me: “10. He talks to fellow prisoners of war, those with whom he shared a cell in Vietnam, almost daily.”

I like to stay in touch with friends and family, but the number of people I deliberately interact with daily is quite small. What would make a man chat with his cellmates at this frequency, so many years after they were all released? I found some clues in McCain’s 1973 description of the POW years and in this interview of McCain’s cellmate, George “Bud” Day. (more…)

It is entirely possible to build a house on a foundation that seems solid, that will hold in most circumstances, and in fact may hold the house for decades. Likewise, it is possible to build a life on a foundation that has some good properties, but isn’t sufficient for the trials of life. Jesus knew both of those truths, and he combined them in one of the most famous illustrations of all time: building a house on rock, or building a house on sand.

That story is found in both Matthew 7 and Luke 6. The Bible in Basic English translates the Matthew passage this way:

Everyone, then, to whom my words come and who does them, will be like a wise man who made his house on a rock; and the rain came down and there was a rush of waters and the winds were driving against that house, but it was not moved; because it was based on the rock. And everyone to whom my words come and who does them not, will be like a foolish man who made his house on sand; and the rain came down and there was a rush of waters and the winds were driving against that house; and it came down and great was its fall.” (Matthew 7:24-27)

What does a life built on sand look like? In the world, it looks like relying on natural talent without adding hard work. As a former tennis professional, and even as someone who has a bit of natural talent, I know something about that. Natural talent — some people might call it a gift — is great fun at first. People praise you, you win quickly, and the sky seems to be the limit. But the missing link, the failure to work, keeps many naturals on the ground.

The corollary in Christianity is the one who has been in the church for a long time, for whom Christianity is “natural,” but who fails to work at following the teachings of Christ. As a minister — and a long time Christian myself — I know something about that, too. Jesus can be part of your life, you can be a declared Christian, and you may be able to quote a lot of the Bible. But the missing link is that you don’t consciously work at applying the teachings of Jesus in your daily life, because your “natural” Christianity already makes you better than most, and that is good enough for you.

If that sound like you, here’s the good news: the link doesn’t have to stay missing. Find it and you can be part of a modern day miracle — the miracle of turning sand into rock.

Praying that you do…

If you haven’t already, go read Vivian’s post. Right now. And comment, too, because we live for comments. Anyway, the following thoughts were inspired by what she said, and it would be grossly unfair to her to start here just because mine is at the top of the pile for the moment.

Nearly two years ago, I read Why Men Hate Going to Church. It opened my eyes to several things that had been right in front of me forever, yet I hadn’t been able to “see” them before. The book made me wonder if some church practices (passive activities, sweet songs, and so on) had become unduly feminine. As I grappled with that thought (continuing to this day), I came across an oddly titled book, Jesus: Mean and Wild. I had to buy it — that characterization was so different from Jesus as I had understood him to be, yet I wondered what a “mean and wild” Jesus might look like. Confession: I tossed it on my huge TBR(ead) pile of books and didn’t read it for a long time. But I looked at it. And I talked about it. Every time I mentioned the title, I’d get that, “You’re crazy!” look. Okay, whatever. Some people don’t recognize hyperbole for what it is.

At Lewis’ suggestion, I agreed to co-teach the Sermon on the Mount with him, but I told him up front, “This is not my favorite topic. I don’t get it, and I don’t like reading lectures.” He told me, “That’s okay. You’re gonna love it when we’re done, because it’s my very favorite thing!” Okay, the gauntlet had been thrown, and I picked it up.

But I am so far from the “Bible is simple. All ya gotta do is open it and read it and do it. Done deal.” Maybe I’m just thick-headed, but a lot of times when I read the Bible, I’m like, “So? What did that mean? How am I supposed to do that?” Did Jesus really want me to pluck out my eye or chop off my hand? (Interesting how most of us do recognize the hyperbole here; at least I haven’t noticed any one-eyed, one-armed Christians running around, though I bet they have sinned through their seeing or touching.) Most of the Bible is told in stories. The stories reveal — obliquely!!! — the heart of God, his goals and purposes for people, his disappointments with their actions, his irrational love for downtrodden, ostracized, marginalized groups (like Israel). (more…)

I’ve been thinking for many years about the idea of freedom, and I’m certain that there are nooks and crannies I have yet to discover, as well as many rooms into which I’ve only glanced.

One of those rooms is human slavery, a condition in which one person becomes the legal property of another and is forced to obey that person. On my own I can only explore this room intellectually, having never been a slave or a slave owner. I can explore it emotionally with the help of those who have known slaves or been slaves, and one who has helped me do a little of that is the poet Elma Stuckey, mother of my friend Sterling Stuckey. Her work in The Collected Poems of Elma Stuckey has touched me and taught me.

But there is one room at the intersection of freedom and slavery that I do know something of, and that is the spiritual room. The apostle Paul knew about it too, and what a person to write about it! He was, of all men, most “free.” He was an Israelite, a Pharisee, highly educated by the best of Rabbis, and he was also a Roman citizen. In his culture, in his time, no one could be his master.

Except that he made himself a slave to Christ, because he realized that otherwise he was a slave to sin.

There is amazing freedom in being a slave to Christ, and it is a condition I highly recommend. Most of us don’t, of course, think of our relationship to Jesus Christ in that way. We think of him as our brother, our savior, our friend. We sometimes even say that he is our Lord or our Master, but that doesn’t mean we are his slaves.

Or does it?

Getting to know people well is like a treasure quest to me. Meyers-Briggs notwithstanding, we’re all uniquely talented, quirky, marked by experience, and it’s my task to discover the special qualities of the people who cross my path. But the quest doesn’t always end with the person in front of me. Sometimes I get to meet the parents, and then the real fun begins:

So that’s where he got that verbal expression.
No wonder she’s paranoid about germs.
Ah, his dad is artistic, too.
And so on.

On April 1, as I sat outside the KLM gate in the Amsterdam airport, I saw the best example of a Bahiana (by-uh-nuh) that I have ever seen with my own eyes. The epitome of a traditional Bahiana is a large black woman from the state of Bahia (bah-ee-uh) in Brazil who dresses in a sumptuous dress and turban that enables her to carry a basket on her head. Because I was getting ready to board a flight to Uganda, East Africa, it dawned on me that I was not looking at a Brazilian, but an African. That was my first clue that I was about to meet Mama Africa.

Having spent eight years of my childhood in Brazil, I was intimately aware of the unique attributes of that country. It was obvious from history that the years of importing slaves had marked the culture in profound ways. However, I hadn’t expected the deluge of comparative details that assaulted me when I woke up the next day and began exploring Africa. I noticed similarities in architecture, engineering, clothing, handwriting, geology (red dirt=iron!), crafts, meals, plants, and so on. How wonderful to know the child and have the opportunity to meet the mother!

Jesus left heaven to dwell among us in order to give us a similar Aha! experience. He even uses the parent-child analogy, saying, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” All people reflect God to a certain extent, since we are all made in His image, but the goal of a Christian is to grow more and more like God the Son, and thus, God the Father.

Do people look at you, just being yourself in your everyday activities, and think, “I know why she’s behaving, speaking, dressing, concluding in those unique, counter-cultural ways. It’s because she lives under the influence of her Father.”

Do you look at those around you and wonder, “I’m hearing certain language and seeing certain behaviors and observing certain thought processes in him that make me think he is a child of God.” Then what do you do?

On Easter Sunday I said in my message that Easter was the most important Christian day, more important than Christmas. Christmas is a big deal to me (not just for the presents), and I don’t mean to relegate it to some second class status, but I think it is important for us to recognize the differences in these two incredibly significant events in human history.

At Christmas we celebrate the coming of God to earth in human form as Jesus. At Easter we celebrate the return of Jesus to heaven to sit at the right hand of God. At Christmas we marvel with the shepherds who are told by angels that Jesus is here. At Easter we marvel with those at the tomb who are told by angels that Jesus is no longer here. At Christmas we are filled with joy because of a birth. At Easter we are filled with hope because of a resurrection. At Christmas we know that Jesus is with us. At Easter we know that we can be with him.

Christmas is comfortable, Easter is comforting. In religious terms, Christmas is fairly non-threatening. It is all about the baby and the wise men and the miracle of the virgin birth. Who, other than Herod, is threatened by the babe of Bethlehem? Oh, yes, it is also about Jesus, but only in the sweetest, gentlest way.

Easter is not so comfortable, preceded as it is by the terrible flogging of Jesus, his crown of thorns, his torn flesh, his blood, and ultimately his horrible crucifixion, including nails in his hands and feet and later a spear in his side. But for those who believe, all of that pain leads to something that is amazingly comforting.

So which would you have? Some say that without Christmas there would be no Easter, but the truth is that without Easter there would be no Christmas.

The worldview from Silicon Valley and the surrounding environs hasn’t always been about technology and money. Sometimes it has been about love, flowers, and very often it has been about music.

A little over three weeks ago, one person who was influenced by and influential in the world of music — and in the world of Jesus — died.

He was Larry Norman, and some at the Palo Alto Church of Christ had a “one degree of separation” relationship with Norman without even knowing it — he was the discoverer, early mentor, and friend of Randy Stonehill, who performed at PACC on December 2, 2007.

Larry Norman was, by all accounts, an amazing and powerful force. According to an obituary in the Guardian, he claimed to have had the idea of Jesus Rock in 1956 when he was just nine years old, “when he was as excited by the sound of Elvis Presley as he was by the words of Jesus Christ.”

But it was about 10 years later when he actually began the revolution that became Christian Rock.Behind and beyond the music, however, was Larry’s genuine love for the Lord and heart for the lost. According to his Gospel Music Hall of Fame biography, he started The Vineyard Church, which met in his living room in Los Angeles on Wednesdays. It is now comprised of more than 600 churches. He also led Susan Perlman to Christ, and with Moishe Rosen she founded Jews for Jesus.

(For a look at Larry at work, with a reference to the aforementioned Randy Stonehill, watch this YouTube video. Randy’s own memories of Larry are posted here.)

The Huffington Post obit included this paragraph:

While Christian Rock is sometimes assailed as formulaic and derivative, Norman was anything but and his admirers included Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, The Pixies, Van Morrison, John Mellencamp and Sammy Davis, Jr. among others.

Among Norman’s amazing list of songs is one that many Christians know, I Wish We’d All Been Ready. Based on what I know of the life, work, and death of this incredible artist, he most definitely was.Here is what he dictated to his friend the day before he died:

I feel like a prize in a box of cracker jacks with God’s hand reaching down to pick me up. I have been under medical care for months. My wounds are getting bigger. I have trouble breathing. I am ready to fly home.

My brother Charles is right, I won’t be here much longer. I can’t do anything about it. My heart is too weak. I want to say goodbye to everyone. In the past you have generously supported me with prayer and finance and we will probably still need financial help.

My plan is to be buried in a simple pine box with some flowers inside. But still it will be costly because of funeral arrangement, transportation to the gravesite, entombment, coordination, legal papers etc. However money is not really what I need, I want to say I love you.I’d like to push back the darkness with my bravest effort. There will be a funeral posted here on the website, in case some of you want to attend. We are not sure of the date when I will die. Goodbye, farewell, we will meet again.

Goodbye, farewell, we’ll meet again
Somewhere beyond the sky.
I pray that you will stay with God
Goodbye, my friends, goodbye.

Larry

See you in heaven, Larry. Thanks for the music.