Hoarder Theology

So I got on the Hoarders bus pretty late; I watched the first episode yesterday (the A&E series first aired in 2009). If you’re unaware, hoarding is considered a mental illness, where people are compelled to keep almost everything they have, worthless or not. The result is human beings living in houses that resemble nothing so much as landfills.

The premise of the show is the hoarders face a reckoning: either clean up, or lose their houses, lose their children, get evicted. A crew is available to help them clean up.

My first reaction was visceral: I was watching mentally-ill people live out their worst nightmare. I felt almost as sickened by that thought as by what some of them were hoarding: rotten produce, dirty laundry, used paper towels.

I also couldn’t help but relate it to sin, especially the secret kind that lives in our hearts.

Sin, like hoarding, is mental illness.

Sin, like hoarding, involves holding on to worthless things.

Sin, like hoarding, isolates us.

Sin, like hoarding, requires drastic measures.

More to come…

Pastors and Elders are Ambulance Drivers

I just got finished reading Eugene Peterson’s excellent book, Under the Unpredictable Plant: a Study in Vocational Holiness.There is much to consider in this short volume, but two principles struck home especially: 1) pastors, elders, and church leaders are susceptible to the temptation to demand Christ’s glory for themselves, trying to be the Messiah instead of pointing people to him, and 2) we must choose our metaphors with great care, because we look through them in order to understand the world.

So I wrote this short story about ten years ago called “An Ambulance Driver, a Weather Girl, and an Ugly Couch.” Subconsciously I was probably thinking about Hemingway and his work as an ambulance driver in WWII. The main character of my story was, as you’ve guessed by now, an ambulance driver, and also a messed up, ADD, single twenty-something who drank too much and struggled with control issues (was the main character a poorly-drawn portrait of my 23-year-old self? Most likely.)

When I say control issues, I mean that he would make a mark on his living room wall for every patient he lost on the way to the ER. He took responsibility for their deaths. He was a weird kind of perfectionist. It was part of his problem. And it became a sort of contest between him and God. He was wrestling, I guess, with his hyper-Calvinism–was he rushing the patient to the God who heals, or the God who wills everything to pass, including death?

Anyway. I never published it, except on a blog, but when I was thinking about metaphors for ministry, this odd metaphor was the first to show back up. Because if the church is a hospital, and God is the healer (let’s work with that side for now), what is the pastor or elder, but an ambulance driver?

Think about it. Ambulance drivers may be paramedics, so they have some medical training. They can do a small amount of healing. But they are rushing the patients to the more qualified healer: the doctor. They try to make the patients comfortable, but there is a sense of urgency. And when the doctor arrives, the ambulance driver steps aside.

Now, replace every instance of the words “ambulance driver” in the previous sentence with “pastor,” and every instance of the word “doctor” with “Jesus.”

The thing I like about this metaphor is that it keeps the emphasis on the right thing, I think. Are ambulance drivers important? Absolutely. But less essential than the doctor.

And what is required to be an ambulance driver? Not much. In fact, anyone with a driver’s license can get someone to the doctor.

But who knows? Maybe the ambulance driver knows a quicker way to get there.

Tags: Sticky

A Punk Preaches Still

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The Shame Flute

“The sestina villanelle is a dull thing. Many modern poets have tried their hands, or feet at it, as they should. Unfortunately, some have published the results.” –Michael Baldwin DB, unfaithfully paraphrasing Michael Baldwin

Pick up a flute, I dare you, and try it,

in olden times when they honor the singer.

They fit you with something to help with your diet:

A tight metal collar, locked on your gullet,

A false flute protruding, with locks for your fingers.

Pick up a flute, I dare you, and try it.

This gadget will make you a bit more compliant.

Molest not the muse! Harass not the singer!

Injure their ears and you may start a riot.

Bury your music, and learn to be quiet.

Learn sewing or dance if you cannot sing, or

Pick up a flute, I dare you, and try it.

Find you a woman to help to you pry it

from your shivering neck and sore fingers.

Nurse your rage. Let ego supply it,

Then play, fool, like everyone’s listening,

And shape your shame into melodies defiant.

Pick up a flute, I dare you, and try it,

Or bury your music, and try to be quiet.

A Punk Preaches Yet

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A Punk Keeps Preaching

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In Defense of “Christianity”

Novelist Anne Rice, ten years this side of her conversion to Christianity, has finally abandoned what she seems convinced is a flying Dutchman faith: a doomed ship, populated by horrors and believed in by fools. And she has her reasons. Like many of us, she has read one too many feature stories about Fred Phelps and his pack of mixed nuts, or ex cathedra pronouncements by the likes of Pat Robertson. And so she is done. She wants to retain her faith in Christ but relinquish her identity as a "Christian."

Tempting. In fact, in the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that in 2004, I wrote a post on this very blog espousing very similar ideas (my objections were more aesthetic than ideological). Christianity, as the world's largest religion, is bound to contain its share of crazies. As a seminary-trained thingamajig with a little knowledge of the bible, I find that many of the Christians who get the most coverage actually severely misrepresent the scriptures, either misunderstanding the content or the context. Worse yet, many overcook aspects of God's character (aka Fred Phelps, his anger), and leave the opposite aspects (his overwhelming mercy) out of the recipe. 

None of this is surprising; it does seem as if the lunatic fringe has won the day recently. And that is tragic, because Christianity has a wonderful heritage of people who have done incontrovertibly excellent things from within the folds of the faith: Christians like Henry Noeuwen, a self-described celibate homosexual who quit a productive academic career to care for disabled adults; or or geniuses like Chesterton, Tolkien, Lewis, and Sayers; or saints like Mother Theresa and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 

The problem is that the faithful do not tend to promote themselves, and there are faithful Christians everywhere. Sure, they are hypocritical and inconsistent, but so is every atheist, Muslim, and Jew I've met. Inconsistency to our ideals seems a part of the human condition; even those who claim to believe nothing but death and futility are unable to keep themselves from acts of kindness and beauty. 

Jesus came not only to ransom individuals for himself, but to build a community. He speaks of it over and over in the scriptures: we are Christ's bride, the body of Christ, Christ's family. Do we like all of our family members? Probably not. Would we like to slap some of them? Absolutely. But Christ is not ashamed to call them his brothers.

The old Augustinian saying goes this way: "the church is a whore, but she is my mother." Who are we to abandon her? Shouldn't we stay and work for her good, instead of harassing her from without?

What a Calvinist Isn’t

I've heard a lot of misconceptions about Calvinism from my non-Calvinist friends, and so I finally decided to write something about it. I don't write a lot about Calvinism–mainly because I take it for granted–and I am not a lover of fruitless theological arguments. But I am tired of being misrepresented, so I'd like to set a few things straight.

• A Calvinist is not a fatalist. A true Calvinist believes that God's sovereignty and man's responsibility are both clearly taught in scripture. We do not entirely understand how they correspond, but we trust that they do. We know that we are called to behave as free, responsible agents. God's hidden will that brings some things to pass and frustrates others is none of our business. We trust scripture, but do not go further than scripture teaches. Interestingly, most critiques of Calvinism by Arminians are based on philosophical, not scriptural proofs (ie, God cannot be completely sovereign and completely good, because He would have to be the author of evil, etc).

• A Calvinist is not opposed to grace. I'm not sure where this one came from, but it keeps popping up, maybe because people mistake hyper-Calvinists (see item 1) with true Calvinists. A Calvinist believes we are saved by grace alone, and that grace upholds us even now. 

• A Calvinist is not opposed to evangelism. Many assume that since God has elected some (not all) for salvation, we may as well forget about evangelism, but this is not what Calvinism teaches. It goes back item one: we do not know who God, in his wisdom, has chosen, so we preach to any and all.

• A Calvinist is not a worshipper of Calvin, any more than an Arminian is a worshipper of Arminius. Calling someone a Calvinist is simply a way of saying they are a Reformed, Orthodox, Augustinian Christian. I have no allegiance to a term, but please stop saying you are neither Arminian nor Calvinist, but simply Christian. You have a view of soteriology. You can call it what you like, but I guarantee you: it's not new.

Ok, I feel better. In a later post, I'll talk more about what a Calvinist is. 

Prayer Before Eating Fast Food

Lord,

Bless this food-like matter, designed to fill me up,

dope me on fat, sugar, and salt,

and help me forget my hunger–

help me forget that hunger is natural,

that my stomach will always growl,

my heart always yearn for love and hope,

my mouth will always be an open wound

A Punk Preaches On

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