Plaiditude, Plaititude, what's the difference?

Platitude plat·i·tude
noun \ˈpla-tə-ˌtüd, -ˌtyüd\
1. the quality or state of being dull or insipid
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/platitude


Took this picture at LA Live, near staples center. The Target billboard is part of a ad campaign for their fall fashions, all of which pun off of fashion and clothing terms (e.g. Jeanius, Knitorious) all of which are highly groan worthy and of dubious efficacy. The Plaiditude one takes the cake in my book however. My first reaction was to wonder aloud why on earth the marketing folks made a pun on the word platitude. Do they really want to imply "Shop Target where our fall fashion line-up celebrates sartorial banality!"?
My always more astute wife replied, "I think they were shooting for attitude/plaiditude, get it?"
That made me even more depressed than I already was.

Reflection on Lent

While visiting family in Michigan last week we attended morning chapel at Calvin College (my alma matter). It was Friday, which in Calvin tradition means the whole chapel service is dedicated to worship through music. Early on in the service the worship leader noted that we are entering the season of Lent, a time in which we seek to realign our appetites.
Fasting is something I have never quite understood, so this was a helpful way to think about Lent and fasting. Through this practice we acknowledge that our appetites (both literally and figuratively) are all too often improperly aligned and malformed.

It was a mildly jarring experience to be lead from this reflection on the meaning of Lent and the nature of our appetites and inclinations into several songs in the "As the Deer" vein. What followed were songs expressing a hunger or desire for God, for His justice, etc. The contrast between these songs and the reality of human longing was striking; I had not realized before how so many of our songs assert a longing and desire that our lives and actions too often betray.

I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. (Romans 7:21-25)

There are times when I truly do feel that my soul longs for God as strongly as a parched deer thirsts for water; Lent reminds me how conflicted and ephemeral such longing often is. Perhaps a more appropriate psalm for the season would be along the lines of "create in me a clean heart, o God, and renew a right spirit within me."

Singing worship songs during Lent it becomes apparent how seldom we put the truth expressed by Paul into worship songs. Judging by popular worship music it would be possible to conclude that Christian theology affirms that human beings are naturally inclined to love God and neighbor; or perhaps more damagingly, that there is no room here for those who find their hearts conflicted and their desires mixed.

Lent has a bit of an image problem, indicative of a larger image problem that historic Christianity has in today's culture. Lent is about discipline, abstinence, reflecting on our sinfulness and the brokenness of human nature. Yet there is a holy irony in the fact that these somber features are among the strongest sources of hope; irreplaceable components of the good news the church bears witness to. For without these affirmations of human frailty and imperfection there is no room for broken people. A community that rejects Lent must also reject the broken, ambivalent creatures who cannot claim at all times to perfectly desire the good.

Exhibit 1 on why our schools fail

At the youth center where I work I was approached by one of our 9th graders to help him with some homework. He wanted me to explain the question that was being asked of him on this one assignment, which read as follows:

Assess yourself on the rubric and explain here how your work on Evidence 1 demonstrates understanding and mastery of the Habit of Collaboration Indicators.

*blink*

*blink*

I do not doubt the intentions of the person or organization responsible for this question; in fact the question is part of the homework for a program intending to help students get ahead and gain important life skills. However, does anyone in their right mind think that a ninth grade student can be expected to answer a question that looks like it was designed by that elite clique of lawyers who specialize in writing software EULAs? Demanding excellence in communication skills from the youth of this nation is a noble cause, but this curriculum itself fails to measure up as a quality attempt at communication.

Climate change confusion

Compare these two published opinions on climate change, one a classic "conservative" denial the other a "liberal" hand-wringing call for awareness.

I read these separately, about a week or so apart. I am biased towards those who acknowledge climate change. My initial response to the First Things article was disappointment that the journal published the piece. Far from clarifying the reasons for why some continue to deny climate change the author, the author makes many unsupported claims. Example:

“The science is in, settled, or enjoys overwhelming consensus.” One needs to know nothing of the physics, chemistry, or biology of climate science to judge this frequently heard assertion as plainly false. Catastrophic change has believers and skeptics of equal eminence and probity. To claim consensus by excommunication from the lists of fair debate is despicable as well as logically untenable. More than that, science is never finally settled, and consensus is the stuff of politics.

Really? One needs to know nothing about basic science to casually dismiss this assertion? And which skeptics of great eminence and probity are you referring to? Who has been excommunicated from the list of fair debate?
The bulk of this article consists of questioning the validity of the "scientific consensus," the integrity of the peer review process, the quality of the data, and the intentions of those who make climate change warnings. However the author seems to glibly conflate bald assertion and groundless questioning with demonstrating the questionability of these issues. To merely question something is not to discredit it unless such assertions are based in demonstrable fact. Mr. Anderson does not back up his assertions with examples, studies or data.
In contrast, the Slate piece points to well documented attempts by appointees of the Bush administration to censor a prominent climate change scientist. (Complicating the picture that Mr. Anderson of First Things paints in which it is only the climate change skeptics who are unduly censored.) Furthermore, in the Slate article Mr. Hari actually backs up his assertions with examples, e.g. on the political side the fact that an independent investigation by the Inspector General later confirmed the rewriting of NASA's mission statement by Bush appointees to remove language committing NASA scientists to protect the earth, and on the science side things like the prediction in 1971 that continued warming and polar ice melt would result in the opening of the North West passage.

A few things frustrate me about conservatives and climate change. First, I've never understood why climate change has become a convenient litmus test for one's political stance. Why should concern for the environment exclusively be a concern for either the left or the right? Indeed, why must conservation be anathema to so many who consider themselves conservatives? (some, like Patrick Deneen, make compelling arguments that this ought to be quite the other way around).
The practical reason for this seems to be conservatives fear that admitting human action causes climate change validates a liberal social agenda. Cross that--they believe that science supporting climate change is merely liberal propaganda invented to create a catalyst for a liberal social agenda. This strikes me as misguided for two reasons.
First, there is no reason that accepting scientific evidence for human created climate change binds one to a liberal social agenda. In fact, many people choose to accept the science behind warnings of climate change but argue we can address these challenges through scientific or technological means. This raises other debates, but at least it moves us to discussing different solutions to our potential problems. If someone wishes to play the devils advocate and argue from scientific data that climate change is overblown or not real I do not begrudge them, but at the very least do not argue this from a position of ideological fear.
Secondly, let's suspend our disbelief for a moment and consider the possibility that these "liberal propagandists" actually have their science right. If one thinks that widespread public belief in climate change today would result in widespread social upheaval, how much more disrupting will it be if we do nothing and the catastrophic prophesies come about? If the solution to climate change is more social change than you are comfortable with, how much more drastic social change would take place if the scientists are right?
Another way to look at this would be to suggest that perhaps the "liberal" environmentalists are attempting to avert a cataclysmic social upheaval in response to cataclysmic climate destruction. I just finished P.D. James' book "Children of Men" which paints a picture of the sort of social changes human beings will accept when faced with a severe catastrophe (in this case the sudden infertility of all humans) to maintain some semblance of security and comfort. Her study of human nature is compelling, and it disturbs me when I think of what an even moderate climate disaster would do to our political system.

Acts 10

Here is the rough draft for a sermon on Acts 10, more hastily written than I prefer but a text that I quite enjoyed working on:

[note: Before reading the text, instruct the audience to be listening for the theme and the main character, like the old English 101 exercise. Perhaps some contextual notes, Luke and Acts written by the same person, in the genre of historiography, etc. In the larger context, a couple of chapters before this we have heard about Philip and the Ethiopian, then the conversion of Saul, and a few short episodes including Simon the Sorcerer. Shortly after this the focus will shift from Peter to Saul/Paul.]

The job of a story teller is to take the naked facts and events of life or history and clothe them and arrange them in relation to one another so that meaning and beauty begin to emerge. As humans we are drawn to stories, whether through songs or books or movies, because they help us to transcend the realm of fact or even of meaning and to enter into a realm of beauty and understanding. At their best stories not only bring us this sense of pleasure but are able to help us make sense and beauty out of the plain facts of our own lives. The most powerfully written stories are not simply well written, but have power themselves to cause us to write and re-write the story of our lives in new ways.
Sometimes I fear that we approach the bible with a much smaller vision than this. Sometimes we read the bible as a collection of facts or truths, as if the main purpose of the bible was to communicate sheer fact. Other times we read the bible because we want a simple and easy answer to a question or a challenge that we face--how to raise our kids, or how to vote in an election.
One of Satan's old tricks is to get us human beings to settle for less than what God intended. He is quite happy to have us get part of the way to where God intends for us if it means we never get all the way there. This is quite tricky because he does not even have to get us believing or doing anything explicitly wrong, he just has to get us to settle for not going all the way right. For example, he is quite happy to have us raise obedient, compliant and polite children, provided they never come to love and honor their savior and Lord.
And so with reading our bible--Satan is quite happy for you and I to read the bible, as long as we don't read it in such a way that our very lives are transformed. He is quite happy for us to read the bible as a set of rules for our lives, even good rules, rules God would certainly want for us to live by, as long as that is all we ever get out of it.
As a mater of fact, I'm sure Satan would be quite happy for me to preach a sermon tonight titled "Peter's five Practical Proselytizing Principles for a Pentecostal People" (it's only too bad there isn't a number that starts with P...), including five true and biblically based methods of evangelism, if it meant that you and I went home tonight with a few nice ideas to try out but with our life stories fundamentally untouched by the transforming power of God.
The reality, people of God, is that God did not inspire the Holy Scriptures simply to communicate some historical facts and some basic rules for living. His intention is that by reading this book he might shake up our very lives; that by reading these stories and accounts the story of our lives and even the grand story of human history might be re-written.
So as we reflect for a few moments on the story we have just read I would like us to first off open ourselves up, to be ready to encounter something that has the power to inspire and shape us, and then look closely at the story itself.
Before we read the chapter together I asked you to keep your ears open for hints about who the main actor is and what the events are all about. And as I've just said, there are many levels we can look at here. At the most simple level, these words tell us that sometime over two thousand years ago a Roman Army officer who prayed to the Jewish God had a vision that told him to call the Apostle Peter to his house, and the events that followed this vision (Peter's own vision, the trip to Caesarea, Peter's message, baptism). On this level the key characters would seem to be Cornelius and Peter, and the main events are their visions and then the meeting that takes place because of them.
If we were to stay at this level of the story we could probably find some good lessons in how Peter acts: he prepares for his ministry through prayer for one, he listens to the spirit of God when it directs him, he demonstrates an amazingly humble leadership when the other Christians question him in the next chapter. All of this is worth noting and important, but if we do not bother to go any deeper we actually miss the main character of this story. Peter is not the main character, neither is Cornelius. The main character in all of Acts is as subtle as he is powerful, like the air he is both vitally important and yet so easily overlooked, and we meet him in verse 19: "While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him..."
The Spirit of God is the main character of Acts and is certainly the primary character in our story today. To illustrate this, think back to your high school or college English class and what you learned about plot and story. The main character typically is the character that gives unity to the story, the one around whom all the episodes hang. Often you can look for who drives the action of the story and in doing so find who the main character is. It is the main character that the author wants to tell you something about.
So in Acts, if we step back and take a look at the whole, at both Luke and Acts, we see that the big picture is about the movement of the Kingdom of God. The first book, Luke, takes as it's main character Jesus, the Son of God. The whole of the book is about the birth of Jesus, events of his life and ministry, and ultimately his death and resurrection--all of which are portrayed to show us the even bigger picture that the Kingdom of God has come to earth and that God is establishing his Kingdom here. So in this second book we find that the main character is the Holy Spirit. What does acts start with? The ascension of Jesus and his promise that he will send the Spirit. Almost in perfect parallel with the book of Luke we read about the advent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost in chapter two, just as we read of Jesus' birth in Luke 2. And just as the rest of the first book was filled with stories of the ministry of Jesus, the rest of Acts is filled with stories of the ministry of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit goes ahead of us into the world and empowers the church to minister, spreading the message of the Kingdom out like ripples from Jerusalem all the way to Rome.
All of which brings us back to our text tonight. If there is a unique message from this chapter I would say it is something like this: I am there ahead of you and where I am present there is holiness.
I am there ahead of you. As we spend this month focusing on prayer and on evangelism it is crucial that we recognize this point. In our passage we read that Cornelius is a "God-fearer" or a gentile who respected the Jewish religion, prayed to it's god and attempted to live by the most basic ethical standards. In fact, when we look at the rest of Acts we will find this is fairly typical: the Ethiopian to whom the Spirit sends Philip is reading Hebrew scriptures but doesn't know the god of whom they speak; Lydia, whose story Pastor reminded us of just this Sunday, was also called a "god-fearer," the philosophers at Mars Hill who Paul preaches to have statues to all kinds of gods including the one they did not know but presumably sought all the same.
How many of us have friends or family like Cornelius? People who believe in God, maybe even in Jesus, who pray, who try to live ethical lives, but at the end of the day do not have a real relationship with the living God? When the Spirit tells us, "I am there ahead of you," he reminds us that we are not bringing God to these people. God has probably been right there with them for a long time; but the Spirit will call on you and I to bring in the harvest that he has already ripened.
And the Spirit reminds us that wherever the Spirit resides is holy. As the Spirit tells Peter, "do not call anything impure that God has made clean." The key theme of the book of Acts is tracing how the Kingdom of God is moving not just in Israel but even to Gentiles and to the ends of the earth. Chapter ten and eleven mark a crucial turning point in that story, a point where Peter and the rest of the church leaders begin to realize where the Spirit is moving them.
To me, perhaps the most astonishing part of the story in chapter ten is how readily Peter accepts the movement of the Spirit. Peter, a life long Jew who followed Jesus believing him to be the Jewish messiah, almost seamlessly accepts the fact that the Spirit of God is working in a very different way. The old religion, it's laws and customs and the distinction between Jew and Gentile no longer apply.
In practice this message means that God will mess with our most deeply held convictions and our dearest prejudices; not simply prejudices we have about other people, but perhaps most pointedly prejudices we have about who and what God is and how he is allowed to act.
Peter's example of total obedience and the deep awareness of the Holy Spirit's activity raises the question: what was it that enabled Peter to respond the way he did? What made it possible for him to have a vision one day and accept Gentiles as brothers and sisters the next?
One way of answering this question takes us back to the beginning of this sermon, to the power of stories. Peter was able to respond so quickly because he had spent years living with Jesus, had spent hours and days in prayer after Jesus left. For Peter, the story of the Kingdom of God was something that had shaped and defined his life, it's story was his story. First walking with Jesus, then deep in prayer and communion with the Holy Spirit, Peter was a person shaped by the main characters of Luke and Acts, one who was inspired by the theme of this amazing story he found himself caught up in.
The story of Luke and Acts therefore supplies us with both our method and our message. The method we see here for evangelism is to allow ourselves to be inspired and captivated by the Gospel story of the Kingdom of God. It is only once we are truly inspired [an interesting word: literally, in-spirited, breathed into by God like the dust that made up Adam] by the story that our own lives begin to be rewritten. Perhaps most important is to learn to allow the main character of this story to be the main character in your own, to learn how to live as a supporting character and not the star.
The story also provides our message, because the story is the message. It is the same story that John the Baptist preached—the Kingdom of God is moving on earth! It moved decisively when the Son of God took on flesh; a new movement started that day in the upper room when the Spirit was sent to lead and inspire the church.