Barney Wiget's Blog, page 28

Finally, Some Good News in Bad Times (The Re-gifting of Government Checks)!

Good news these days is like a Spring-like day in a North Dakota January. So I’m taking advantage of it for as long as it lasts.

As you know, free money is on its way from the Federal government to make up a little of the difference for those whose jobs have been shut down to keep as many Americans as safe as possible during the pandemic. That’s a good thing, but not the best of the good things I had in mind. What I’m thinking about is not only the money that will be delivered to those who need it most, but that which will be passed on to them through those who need it least.

Just think of it. The millions of Americans who already have pretty pudgy savings accounts, out of the goodness of their hearts, re-gifting the checks that they receive from the government to those who need it more than they do!

This epiphany came to me when a Facebook friend posted a message decrying how much people in our country “enjoy getting their free money.” She is a hyper-conservative, a strident critic of the “welfare state” and those who take advantage of any government assistance. It made my day, thinking about how, given her predisposition, she would undoubtedly not keep her free money but give away to the poor or ministries that serve them, and that millions of other Americans would do the same!

Not knowing her financial situation, I suppose it’s possible that my friend is for the first time in her life in need of government assistance herself just to pay her rent and buy food for the family. In such case, it makes me happy for the check coming her way, but even more than that, I would dance a happy dance that for the first time in her life she would feel a tiny piece of what the 46 million impoverished Americans feel 24/7 whose economic prospects are interminably bleak and need our government’s generous helping-hand every month. In that case, she would get her own epiphany as she begins to identify with the crisis of the poor.

This whole scenario is such a recipe for empathy, something many Americans (American Christians included) haven’t felt much of for a long time! Millions get the first government money they’ve ever received in their lives and for the first time they actually need it, and not just so they can keep up the payments on their timeshare, their sailboat, or 60-inch flat screen TV. But now that they need it for their own necessities they aren’t able to re-gift it as they’d like. But once the virus is handled and they’re back to work, don’t you just know that they’ll be poised to share their bounty with those who need it most! Hallelujah!

I can hardly contain my happiness that people, whose needs are paltry by comparison to the truly poor, will learn the truth that Franklin Roosevelt shared with the country during the Great Depression: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

The good news in these very bad times is that our country is about to “progress” into a more egalitarian culture and free of class distinctions. We will realize that as Martin Luther King preached, “God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty. God intended for all of his children to have the basic necessities of life, and he has left in this universe ‘enough and to spare’ for that purpose. So I call upon you to bridge the gulf between abject poverty and superfluous wealth.”

As awful as the virus is to the health of millions and as terrible as its consequence to the economies of the world, this is a glimmer of hope for many Americans going forward.

For the first time, they’re in a situation, temporary though it may be, they will realize that they’re no different from those whom they’ve always judged as simply lazy people. It reminds me of the guy who is pinned under his car and his neighbor comes out and yells: “Why don’t you get off your lazy butt and cut the grass? I cut my grass. Fred cuts his grass. People who don’t cut their grass are just lazy.” Now these days a lot of people are beginning to get what it’s like to be pinned down and unable to make a living. And once they get out from under it they’ll be more compassionate toward their neighbors who are still unable to extract themselves from their circumstances.

I predict that we will all be motivated to live a simpler and more generous life from now on. We will take advantage of the opportunity to more fully identify with those for whom limitations have always been a daily reality, way before COVID-19 ever invaded our little worlds. The more-well-off and the not-at-all-well-off will become closer to each other, both economically and relationally, and will level our cultural playing field.

Good news in these bad times!

Do you believe it or am I just being silly?

Unrestricted Love

Loving our “own kind” and those who already love us is easy love. Where’s the “surpassing righteousness” or reward in that? It brings God maximum glory when our love is as expansive as his.

I admit that the enemy-love message is not exactly what you’d call “attractional.” Sadly, it’s easier to gather a crowd with the message about a God who blesses our battles and hates our enemies as much as we do. Fear, anger, and hate are more popular than love and more natural to our darker selves. Unrestricted love is neither popular nor natural. It might fit nicely on a billboard or in a country song, but when it comes to actually practicing the kind of love Jesus commands, we’d much rather love in the abstract.

Those whose ego is so relaxed by God’s love, needn’t claim superiority to those unlike them or despise those who dislike them.

This is an excerpt from a book I hope to publish in the near future on the Sermon on the Mount called: What In The World? Some Moral, Social, and Politically Disruptive Implications of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

As such, I’d appreciate your feedback on this post and others to come in order to make the final copy publish-worthy.

Learning the Language

The commission Jesus gave his disciples to make disciples could be compared to learning a language.

As brilliant as they both are, my two four-year-old granddaughters don’t need English grammar lessons quite yet. The definitions and proper use of indirect objects and predicate nominatives don’t seem to stick. The best way to teach them how to use the best grammatical forms and speak with good diction is for us to speak well to them. They’re like sponges, these little pixies. They imitate quite well, which is a good reminder not to swear in front of them! The rules of grammar come later, if at all, for them to nourish and sustain the art of speaking and writing well.

This applies also to passing on to others a mature Christian morality. We often make the mistake of leaning too much on teaching the rules and not enough on just showing people how it’s done by living in front of them.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but we already have too many people who identify themselves as Christians that don’t actually have Christlike characters, people who know the “rules” but don’t seem to care much about following in Jesus’ footsteps. They can quote the Nicene Creed and know how to parse the Greek verbs, but don’t seem to care about the poor or to treat people who are not like them with love and dignity.

The old maxim, “Do as I say, not as I do,” meaning, “Don’t imitate my behavior but obey my instructions,” doesn’t actually work in the disciple-making business. Surely you’ve noticed that children (and adults) are much more likely to do as we do than do as we say.

It’s not like we can wait till someone’s years into their faith before we start teaching him or her stuff. Disciple making is like the elementary school activity called “Show and Tell.” Maybe we should put a little less emphasis on the telling and a little more on the showing. (That is if we actually have something to show.)

Plus, we have to give the Spirit more credit to do what he alone can do to detoxify our disciples (and us)––otherwise known as sanctification. After all, he’s the One who engraves “the rules” on our hearts and sets up circumstances whereby we remember them when harassed by temptation.

If you want to make disciples who live and speak “Kingdom” then live and speak it in front of them. And if you’re lucky they’ll be inspired to follow suit and maybe even want to learn some grammar along the way.

The Heavenly Weeper

Though ranting over the evil of the world and rushing headlong into the penalty phase may make us feel righteously superior, it actually exposes our spiritual childishness. It is lamentable that no amount of brainy people working together, no politician or party, and no innovation of science can hold back the tide of our sin against one another. We weep with God as a concession that we have no quick fix for our loveless world, and we trust him to intervene.

Jesus is a “Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” If we want to be better acquainted with him we have to be acquainted with what grieves him. Knowing him exceeds theological fact checking. It involves tuning in to his emotions, what makes him laugh and what makes him cry––and then laughing and crying along with him.

Failing in the recovery of the art of lamenting is to fate ourselves to a diminished capacity for Christ-like compassion.

Our connection with God deepens to the degree that we join him in the “fellowship of his sufferings,” which positions us to receive redemptive remedies for other weepers. While our sadness may or may not result in silver bullet solutions to a world dilapidated by sin and Satan, it will undoubtedly lead to some kingdom advancing response to the heart of God.

This is an excerpt from a book I hope to publish in the near future on the Sermon on the Mount called: What In The World? Some Moral, Social, and Politically Disruptive Implications of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

As such, I’d appreciate your feedback on this post and others to come in order to make the final copy publish-worthy.

Sharing Shalom

While some people conflate their preferred party’s platform with their tribe’s exclusive right to righteousness, political alliances are virtually useless in our definition and demonstration of Jesus’ surpassing righteousness. His idea of what is right is transcultural, where parties and platforms are fickle and die slow deaths. They decompose and produce soil in which the next fad is planted.

Many Christians are hungrier to have a better life for themselves than to lead a better life for the glory of God and the good of others, let alone to leave a better world than the one they inherited. They savor shalom for themselves and their tribe but are slow to share it outside their own cultural and geopolitical boundaries. The peace they experience “passes understanding” yet fails to pass over to people outside their social class or national borders.

This is an excerpt from a book I hope to publish in the near future on the Sermon on the Mount called: What In The World? Some Moral, Social, and Politically Disruptive Implications of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

As such, I’d appreciate your feedback on this post and others to come in order to make the final copy publish-worthy.

The President and the Prayer Meeting

I love a good prayer meeting. When two or more are gathered to ask God for things the faith that travels like electricity from person to person and accumulates to light up the room is exciting and effective for the advance of the Kingdom of God. I’ve been in a few not so good prayer meetings too.

My first ministry assignment after college was as an interim pastoral position in a small church in a rural town in Northern California. I was only 22 years old and the first service in which I officiated was a Wednesday night prayer meeting. Things were going along smoothly until a man in the back of the sanctuary asked to share something, which I assumed was a prayer request and that he would do it from his seat. But when he came to the podium, stood next to me, and unfolded a page full of notes I knew this wasn’t going to turn out well.

It was worse than I expected when I realized his whole purpose was to denigrate the former pastor’s performance, who was a friend of mine. The worst of it was that the pastor’s wife and children were in the room! After the longest couple of minutes in my life I could stand it no longer. I put my arm firmly around the brother (maybe a little more than “firmly,” I don’t remember), offered a terse prayer of little spiritual value, and gave him a nudge back to his seat. (It might have been more of a shove. I don’t remember.) And we proceeded with what actually came there to do: Pray!

Many years later I was leading a prayer meeting in which two of the most outlandishly outspoken people in our congregation got into a I-can-pray-better-than-you contest. It was like a “pissing contest” only with prayer! Their “prayers” got louder and weirder until I finally stepped and shouted: “Stop! Stop it!” It was no use after that trying to recover the “move of the Spirit,” so I gave the benediction and made for the door.

Though I’ve had many great prayer meeting experiences, at least I learned a few things that shouldn’t be part of such gatherings. And I’m here to say that what the president did at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 6th was unacceptable, and can’t let it go without comment.

While I may not know anything about how to run a country or how to conduct business in the Oval Office, having led hundreds of prayer meetings over the years, I am pretty familiar with what they’re supposed to look like. And what Donald Trump did at this one by waving newspapers and denigrating his enemies is NOT what a prayer meeting is supposed to look like!

From where I sit, it was inappropriate and offensive by turning the gathering into a combination: victory lap, gripe session, and stump speech. Yet, the worst of it was when he followed David Brooks’ speech on “loving our enemies” by saying he disagreed with him. Disagreement on politics is one thing, but all Brooks did was quote Jesus and apply Jesus’ command to love one another to the national conversation. Yet during a meeting whose purpose was to ask God for help, the president had the audacity to disagree with the Word of God–and his acolytes cheered!

In his speech Brooks’ referred to Jesus as his “personal Lord and Savior” and then quoted him from the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

He went on to refer to a speech he had given to another group asking them to remember that people on the other side of the political aisle:

“…are not stupid, and they’re not evil. They are simply Americans who disagree with you about public policy. And if you want to persuade them — which should be your goal — remember that no one has ever been insulted into agreement. You can only persuade with love.”

He said, “In politics today, we treat each other as worthless, which is why our fights are so bitter and cooperation feels nearly impossible,” and then suggested three homework assignments: 

“First: Ask God to give you the strength to do this hard thing — to go against human nature, to follow Jesus’ teaching and love your enemies. Ask God to remove political contempt from your heart…

Second: Make a commitment to another person to reject contempt… and ask someone to hold you accountable to love your enemies.

Third: Go out looking for contempt, so you have the opportunity to answer it with love… I’m calling each one of you to be missionaries for love in the face of contempt.”

AMEN! and AMEN!

The president followed Brooks with his own tirade of how terribly he’d been treated during the hearings, called Nancy Pelosi a liar, and accused Mitt Romney of “using religion” to justify his vote against him in the Senate. As if that weren’t nauseating enough, what I find particularly revolting is that he bloviated these things in a gathering supposedly devoted to invoking the Creator for his help in governing our great country!

I’ve been in a lot of prayer gatherings in my life (some good ones and some not so good) and I don’t remember anyone ever waving a newspaper with their picture on it––a Bible, maybe, but not a newspaper. And I have definitely never seen someone stand up and flat out reject the teaching of Jesus! To me, the most disturbing thing was the cheers and applause that came from those in attendance at such outlandish behavior.

This wasn’t a debate on the Senate floor, a press conference, a stump speech, or a photo op in the West Wing. This was a National Prayer Breakfast, a place to lay aside differences, recall the words of Scripture, and pray for the country. Instead, our president childishly attacked his enemies and brazenly denied Jesus’ demand that we love them!

And his cronies cheered.

Disgraceful!

(Maybe next year it’ll be better. A better president might help.)

See this… 

Othering vs Belonging

We take the first step in the direction of the kind of righteousness that outshines and outstrips its faux versions when we decline to pigeonhole people in conveniently labeled boxes and begin to love them based on our commonality. “The opposite of Othering is not saming,’” says John A. Powell, “it is belonging. And belonging does not insist that we are all the same. It means we recognize and celebrate our differences, in a society where ‘we the people’ includes all the people.”

“The Rule” sums up this Sermon and possibly all of Jesus’ sermons. It is the mantra for God’s new society, the oft-repeated refrain in the Christian anthem. It reveals the way that Jesus’ kingship burrows itself into how we do relationships, manage our resources, formulate our politics, and resist the temptation to exploit one another for our own gain.

Maybe we call it “Golden” (or Rhodium) because of how much it costs us to obey it. Only those ravenous for righteousness, those who are dying to be like Jesus, will make discernible progress in its direction!

This is an excerpt from a book I hope to publish in the near future on the Sermon on the Mount called: What In The World? Some Moral, Social, and Politically Disruptive Implications of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

As such, I’d appreciate your feedback on this post and others to come in order to make the final copy publish-worthy.

The “Rhodium” Rule

Though commonly known as the “Golden Rule,” I suggest it’s more like Rhodium (ˈRōdēəm), the rarest of metals on the planet. Though I doubt my idea will catch on, my point is that the actual practice of Jesus’ rule is as rare as rhodium. You have to look high and low to excavate even the tiniest samples of it among humans.

Power corrupts and privilege is blind. If power is the ultimate stimulant, privilege is the most common anesthesia. Most of us are so accustomed to our advantage that we are tone deaf to our less fortunate neighbors. Because, as someone said: “Privilege is when you think something is not a problem because it’s not a problem to you personally,” it’s difficult to detect in ourselves.

Most of us are so used to having all the toys at our disposal we get peeved when required to share them with the other kids in the class. That’s more than selfishness; it’s entitled privilege. We have the choice to exploit it for our own advantage or, as the Rule orders, steward it to the advantage of our less prosperous neighbors, i.e., for the common good.

This is an excerpt from a book I hope to publish in the near future on the Sermon on the Mount called: What In The World? Some Moral, Social, and Politically Disruptive Implications of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

As such, I’d appreciate your feedback on this post and others to come in order to make the final copy publish-worthy.

A Thank You Letter to Donald Trump for Helping Me Be a Better Christian (Part 2 of 3)

Dear Mr. President,

In my first letter I began thanking you for some of the ways you’ve been helping me tunnel deeper into God’s love and purpose for me. I hope you’re encouraged to know that your amoral lifestyle is strengthening the moral fabric of at least one U.S. citizen. Though I assume the same is true for millions of us, I’m afraid for a large number of others the opposite is true, those who’ve become even more emboldened to throw off the loving restraints of Jesus’ yoke. But I digress. My letter is to you is about how you’ve influenced me toward my better angels.

In my previous letter, I addressed how you, by way of anti-example, have inspired me to pray more often for government leaders, tell the truth, and live with integrity. I’d like to refer to a few other lifestyle choices of yours that have moved the needle in the right direction for me.

First, there’s the God-awful way you treat people who disagree with you or who are different from you in some way. With you as a counter example, I can’t help but run to the Lord with a repentant heart to remove my own prejudices. Thanks for helping me see my own deficit of kindness and civility.

The way you employ petulant name-calling to dehumanize people on the “other side” gives me pause about how destructive that practice can be, both to the dehumanized and the dehumanizer. You seem to have an inexhaustible supply of bile that can be called up at a moment’s notice to degrade your fellow human beings, not to mention a dictionary-full of insults to go with the bile. You might consider publishing a book someday on it. You could call it: Insults With Impunity. You’ve called your adversaries, “crazy,” “psycho,” “slimeball,” “fat,” “dummy,” “sleazy,” “pencileneck,” “lowlife,” a “maniac,” a “monster,” and a “nut job,” and on and on and on.

“The power of life,” Mr. President, “is in the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). Jesus went so far as to say that denigrating name-calling can put us in some serious trouble with God (Matthew 5:22). Still, I’m grateful because when I look at your total deficit of civility I’m inspired to not abuse and belittle my fellow humans after your appalling example.

Sir, your egocentric, which some would call “sociopathic” behavior, is another reminder to me to press into Jesus. When I listen to you I can see on full display the negative consequences of one whose orbit is a circular pattern around himself. Though I don’t understand how one could be so entirely bereft of the virtues of modesty and humility, it looks to me like you’ve turned unbridled narcissism into a goal to achieve instead of an evil to avoid.

My apologies for being so blunt in my critique of your character, but it’s hardly a secret and you seem to experience no shame about it. Self-confidence and courage is one thing (actually two things), but apart from a moral governor of some sort, it’s all too easy to step over the line into arrogance and entitlement. I often have to repent of my own ungodly pride, and your horrific example motivates me to repent more frequently and more deeply.

I suspect that the privilege into which you were born has had something to do with your mobster mentality and your habit of threatening and bullying anyone who opposes you. You’ve been “in charge” all your life and it’s undoubtedly taken its toll. I urge you to give your life to Jesus and let him have his way inside you. In addition, though I claim no expertise in psychoanalysis, I strongly urge you to see a therapist for a minimum of a hundred sessions for your grandiosity, paranoia, irritability, impulsivity, and any number of other dangerous psychiatric symptoms.

In the meantime, again I thank you for this quite nauseating quality of yours, because it makes me want run in the opposite direction and fall into the arms of Jesus who is gradually replacing my own meanness with his kindness.

The way you treat women, Mr. President, is despicable. Not only is the Access Hollywood tape proof of that, but in public your disrespectful attitude toward women is glaring. The way you demean them with vulgar comments about their looks is disgusting. Your multiple marriages and affairs are one thing, but cheating on your wife during her pregnancy with a porn star and then paying her off to keep her quiet is way over the top!

From where I sit, you view women just as objects to be used for your pleasure instead of as co-equal carriers of the divine image. The good news is that your anti-example motivates me to treat women with the respect they deserve as sisters.

When it’s all been said and done, sir, it looks to me that your behavior is never governed by any substantial moral standard. If you have a standard at all it is malleable enough to be form fitted to your desires. It seems to me that you can no more understand the language of morality than a person listening to someone speaking a foreign language for the first time.

While on one hand your behavior awakened a semi-dormant contagion of ugliness and barbarism among many Americans, I believe that God is using your amoral approach to everything from wealth to women to arouse a new devotion among his people (like myself) to model a kingdom way of living.

When I look at you I see a man who has no anchor, no ballast to keep you righted, which makes me so grateful to God for giving us values by which to evaluate our lives. So, thank you, Mr. President for helping me be a better Christian!

My apologies, Mr. President for how long this thank you letter has become, but there are so many areas in which you’ve inspired my renewed quest for personal sanctification. That said, I hope you will permit me one more letter to express my gratitude. I trust that you’re cheered by how your anti-example has done me so much good, and I hope also for the rest of the Body of Christ. Until then, God bless you and God bless the United States of America!

Better Chain or Gentler Dog?

I recently visited an old friend who lives way out at the end of a Northern California country road. As I got out of my car and approached his house I noticed an enormous Saint Bernard sitting in the shade of a great old oak tree. More importantly, I noticed him noticing me. As they are the ones you always see in photos at the ready with a small keg of brandy fastened to their collars for the random fallen skier, I was under the impression that this particular brand of canine is a laid back human-friendly sort. I abandoned that impression at first snarl. This animal was no “saint”!

Though he outweighed me by a great deal he advanced toward me, lumbering faster than I retreated running backward. Just as he lunged for me I screamed like a little girl, so claimed my friend. (I’m pretty sure he made that up.) Anyhow, as the creature rose to his hind legs the industrial strength chain that held him fast to the sturdy old tree trunk magically stopped him cold and all but broke his neck in the process!

Religious rule keepers are those who depend on laws, like chains, to hold back their ferocious nature. The chains don’t turn their evil predispositions into something good––from vicious Pit Bulls into gentle Collies––they just restrain them from doing more harm than good. It’s the strength of the chain not the nature of the dog that keeps them in check. Jesus came not to upgrade the rules by giving us a bigger chain; instead he transforms our nature into something increasingly better.

This is an excerpt from a book I hope to publish in the near future on the Sermon on the Mount called: What In The World? Some Moral, Social, and Politically Disruptive Implications of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

As such, I’d appreciate your feedback on this post and others to come in order to make the final copy publish-worthy.