Podcast

After several years of thought I finally have started podcasting my Sunday morning sermons.  As one who listens to a number of podcasts each week, I know that there are also some really bad podcasts out there.  It takes a bit of ego in order to put yourself out on the web, to think that you have something to say, when in fact there are a hundred thousand other podcasts out there, all put out by people who think that they have something to say.  I'm not expecting my podcast to rocket up the iTunes chart list, but neither do I think that I have nothing to say.

The very act of preaching is based on the belief that God has called me to speak something to people that they need to hear.  As most of us who preach are not really 'prophetic' in the sense that suddenly a feeling comes over us that makes us think we can't control ourselves, we choose to preach.  Some of us even do it for a living.  Each week we need to have enough nerve to stand up and say, 'listen to me, because God wants you to hear something'.  I continue to preach, even though I wonder if people listen, because I still feel called to do so.

So why not podcast?  In this day and age technology offers us the opportunity to let our sermons go out to a wider audience than only those sitting in the pews on a Sunday morning.  For many years preachers have had their sermons carried through the printed word (once upon a time, even in city newspapers!), over radio and TV waves, and now through computers.  Some churches even livestream their entire service over the internet to be watched (and participated with) by people on the other side of the planet.  Amazing that people will listen far away, even when people in your own town (or even your own church) are not listening.

When I was considering starting this I polled some Facebook friends to see what they thought.  More than a few were not sure what a podcast was; it's not as widespread as I thought it would be.  One friend, an old college roommate, told me thought that this might be an ego trip, and perhaps he's right.  He also mentioned that maybe it is like another faulty form of 'evangelism', something where we think it's what people want to hear when in fact people couldn't care less.  Maybe it is...but then again, there are enough people who actually want to hear me speak that they will share the sermons (or knowledge) they hear with those who are not believers.  It's not that I have a great ability in my own, but God does use me to his service for whatever reason.

So...the podcast is alive.  And we'll see if anybody actually listens.

What Is Extremism?

I'm currently reading an interesting book from the library called American Extremists, by John George & Laird Wilcox (Prometheus, 1996).  Basically it's a brief history of many of the far-right and far-left extremist groups in the United States, from communists to John Birchers.

What really caught my attention, though, was a section on trying to identify if one can be considered 'extremist'.  In it the authors give 22 general characteristics, and as I was reading I started thinking about not only others whom I think a bit loopy, but also myself.  Am I an extremist in how I criticize others?  "If it's a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed."  (Kahlil Gibron, 1923).
On most of these I will just list the headings, but I will make other notes in italics that are mine, and quote interesting things the author says about some of the points.
1. Character assassination.
2. Name calling and labeling.
3. Irresponsible sweeping generalizations.  "The sloppy use of analogy is a treacherous form of logic and has a high potential for false conclusions."
4. Inadequate proof for assertions.  How many emails are written each day that people forward on assuming they are true?  "They tend to project wished-for conclusions and to exaggerate the significance of information that confirms their beliefs while derogating or ignoring information that contradicts them."
5. Advocacy of double standards.
6. Tendency to view opponents and critics as essentially evil.
7. Manichaean worldview.  There is no middle-ground, everything is absolute.  Thus, your candidate is wholly evil, mine is wholly good.  
8. Advocacy of some degree of censorship or repression of their opponents and/or critics.  "Extremists would prefer that you listen only to them."
9. Tendency to identify themselves in terms of who their enemies are.
10. Tendency to use argument by intimidation.  How much do we do this in the church?  Quickly when somebody says something we don't like, we threaten their position or seek to kick them out of the church.  
11. Use of slogans, buzzwords, and thought-stop cliches.  Like, 'Freedom is not Free!'?
12. Assumption of moral superiority over others.
13. Doomsday thinking.  (Whatever problem they predict), "it's just around the corner unless we follow their program and listen to their special insight and wisdom, to which only the truly enlightened have access.  For extremists, any setback or defeat is 'the beginning of the end'."
14. Belief that it's okay to do bad things in the service of a 'good' cause.  "Defeating an 'enemy' becomes an all-encompassing goal to which other values are subordinate.  With extremists, the end justifies the means."
15. Emphasis on emotional responses and, correspondingly, a de-emphasis on reasoning and logical analysis.
16. Hypersensitivity and vigilance.  See my previous post on John Waddey, who saw himself as the sole guardian against the heretical barbarians at the gate.
17. Use of supernatural rationales for beliefs and actions.
18. Problems tolerating ambiguity and uncertainty.  "The more laws or rules there are that regulate the behavior of others--particularly their 'enemies'-the more secure extremists feel."  Particularly, when it comes to many Christians, there is a need to be able to interpret every Scripture within a particular framework.  To deny the ability to do this makes many, many people nervous.
19. Inclination toward 'groupthink'.  "Groupthink involves a tendency to conform to group norms and to preserve solidarity and concurrence at the expense of distorting members' observations of facts, conflicting evidence, and disquieting observations that would call into question the shared assumptions and beliefs of the group.  Right-wingers (or left-wingers), for example, talk mostly to one another, read only the material that reflects their own views, and can be almost phobic about the 'propaganda' of the 'other side'."  It is remarkable to me that the same people who continually think of the news media as having a liberal bias will only listen to Rush Limbaugh and watch Fox News.  Anything else is to be ignored.
20.  Tendency to personalize hostility.
21. Extremists often feel that the system is no good unless they win.  "For example, if they lose an election, then it was 'rigged'.  If public opinion turns against them, it is because of 'brainwashing'....The test of the rightness or wrongness of the system is how it has an impact on them."
22.  Extremists tend to believe in far-reaching conspiracy theories.

The Death of John Waddey

John Waddey died recently, according to an obituary in the Christian Chronicle.  After reading about his death, I got to wondering how we are to respond when somebody dies who was a terrible and corrupting influence on the church? 

For the past decade or so both churches for which I preached received every month this little rag called ‘Christianity Then and Now’, which was a nasty little polemic against any kind of post-1957 change in the church.  It was put together by one man, John Waddey, and mailed to who knows how many other churches in this country and around the world.  It was complete and utter garbage and seemed to serve the singular point of making Christians suspicious of one another.  In almost every issue Waddey would speak about the nefarious methods of ‘change agents’ in the church.  In Churches of Christ, these are those who dare to challenge the dogma about instrumental music, women’s role in the church, fellowshipping with ‘other’ kinds of churches, and basically any kind of move to make the church not seem like a monument to the church methods and structures popular during the Eisenhower administration. 

Not long after I moved here, for about a year I would respond back in a letter each month to Waddey, pointing out his continual misuses of Scripture, his oversimplification of the issues, and how he was instigating divisiveness within the church.  For two or three months he wrote back angry and bitter letters about how I must certainly be one of those change agents and why didn’t I want to just leave the church rather than pull good people down with me.  Eventually, though, he stopped writing, and I decided after a year that this garbage wasn’t worth my time.  It was just getting me mad that somebody could find those willing to pay to have crap like this sent out even while so many other needs were being unmet in the church.  I sought to apply the principle of Romans 16:17-18, in which Paul told them to ‘watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them.  For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naïve.’  I’m not sure Waddey was ever smooth or flattering, as he seemed to hate just about everybody, but from my conversations with other preachers it did appear that he had gained something of a following of those who were naïve. 

So, how can we speak of Waddey, if we do not want to speak ill of the dead?  When I was in grad school at Harding back in the 1990s I often had conversations with some of my fellow students about rags like this (and sadly, there have always been too many to keep track of) which seem to do little more than boast self-righteously about how right their own little group is and how wrong and condemned everybody else is.  Going all the way back to magazines like Arthur Crihfield’s Heretic Detector and continuing on through the 1990s to Ira Rice’s Contending for the Faith, we’ve had far too many magazines dedicated to dogma and destruction rather than building one another up.  But in those days, I used to be on the side of thinking that those magazines were helpful, as 1)they gave an outlet for disaffected malcontents and 2)helped keep those of us who were more progressive in line. 

As I have gotten older, though, I have become much more cynical about the place of these kinds of magazines.  Through their writings malcontents enable themselves to be paper popes and drag others into following them (and thus make them suspicious of others); they become much like the church in Corinth in which everybody has somebody whom they follow instead of all following Christ first. 

What may be worse, though, is that after reading these rags for several years I find how untruthful they are about what the motivations and teachings of the progressives usually are.  It’s hard to have an open and frank conversation with somebody steeped in hyper-conservative dogma when they are convinced that those on the other side are Satan-inspired heretics who are out to destroy the church and nothing will convince them otherwise.  Thus they feel compelled to proof-text Scriptures that have nothing to do with the issue at hand, misrepresent the motivations of those calling for change, and even distort the Bible to make it say something that the Biblical writers never intended to say.  I remember one time with John Waddey when he had used Galatians 1:6-9 to condemn change agent liberals on some issue, and I pointed out in a letter that he was using that Scripture to mean the opposite of what Paul intended (for in Galatians Paul is opposed to the legalists, not the liberals).  He wrote back and basically tried justify what he had done because liberals were the great danger and he had to find something in scripture that would point out the error of their ways.  In the end, his argumentation became even more ridiculous and desperate and unbiblical. 

I’d like to think that there were some whose faith was strengthened by Waddey’s magazine.  Once a year there might be something worth reading, and I’m hoping that the little good it contained was more read than the many other worthless articles.  I doubt that happened, but I can hope.  Regardless of how horrible his writing became in the last decade of his life, though (and in recent years it went straight into the trash), I think that the Chronicle and others who memorialize him will hopefully remember whatever good he did.  He did train preachers and preach (though I can only imagine what that was like and shudder), after all.  Surely some came to Christ by his efforts.   

Most importantly, though, in his death he will have learned that his salvation was not dependent upon his own works-righteousness or his ability to root out error (imagined or not).  Rather, he will have learned in eternity that he is saved by the grace of God, that it is by the blood of Jesus Christ that he had any hope at all.  If Jesus can save me in my wickedness and Paul who was the ‘chief of sinners’, then surely God will also save a divisive and angry man who at one time accepted Jesus and died with him in baptism to be raised forever.  Maybe this is what the death of John Waddey can teach me today.

Max and Ruby, a background study

Ruby (age 10) and her younger brother Max (age 4) live alone in a well-kept house in a small village.  They appear to have no family except for their maternal grandmother, a sweet elderly woman widowed four years previously.  Ruby and Max seem to have an acceptable level of social life with their peers; Ruby engages in girl scouts-like organization and regularly has friends over to play; Max likewise occasionally has friends with which to play.  Ruby appears to be the one who is the caregiver for Max, regularly bathing him, dressing him, and feeding him.

Their living arrangement brings about several questions:
-Why is Ruby seeming to be the sole caregiver for Max?
-If there are no parents around, why do the children not live with their grandmother?
-Why are they not allowed to attend school?
-What will happen to these children?

The situation of Max and Ruby appears to stem from a tragic event in the months before we first watch their story.  Max and Ruby came from a generally stable household with loving parents...until one day when the parents disappeared.  What happened to them?

I suggest that Ruby somehow was responsible for the deaths of her parents.  Perhaps they perished in a car crash when she distracted them with a tantrum.  Perhaps they died when she accidentally mixed some bathroom chemicals into a cake she made for them.  Or perhaps they tripped over and broke their necks when they encountered the legion of Ruby's stuffed animals in the living room.

Ruby might have been responsible, but she was not guilty.  Her actions greatly divided the family.  The paternal grandparents were upset with what happened and refused to forgive Ruby, and by extension Max, for their son's death.  They refuse to have any contact with the children.  The maternal grandmother, however, loves the children deeply and has chosen to forgive.  While in her elderly state (and perhaps displaying the first signs of dementia) she does not have the ability anymore to raise the children herself, she continues on with the traditional grandmother role of looking in on them and spoiling them when she can before sending them to their own home.

But why does society refuse to provide proper adult supervision for these children?  In their particular rabbit community, children who are orphaned, particularly those who caused the death of their children, are not provided foster parents.  Rather, the children are left to fend for themselves without the benefit of a proper education.  The children may be blessed to have a few neighbors courageous enough to allow their children to play with Ruby, who has generally been ostracized for the death of her parents, but these are the exceptions.  Ultimately, their lives within this rabbit culture are not honored as humans are, for rabbits reproduce far too quickly to sustain a stable population count.  Rabbit children, particularly orphaned children who had a role in the deaths of their parents, are considered disposable by society as a whole, and if a few die due to neglect, others will soon replace them.  They breed like rabbits, after all.  

Ruby, however, is still reeling from the loss of her parents and feels especially guilty for their deaths.  She has vowed to her rabbit-god that she will care for her brother until he reaches adulthood.  Thus she cooks and cleans and tends to his every need, even as she lives off the trust fund that her deceased parents left in their care.  She may have the body of a 10-year old, but the scars of her youth have already made her into a middle-aged woman emotionally.  Certainly her friends come around occasionally to give her some youthful company, but Ruby will never marry, never find love, and die at a relatively young age due to the stresses of her youth.

Max, having lost his parents at a very young age, will grow up into a young man with many emotional issues.  His sister will have done well to have raised him to this age, but having not the parental support he needed he will continually see women as objects for displaced affection.  He will go through a series of short-term relationships, often producing bastard rabbit offspring, but rarely will have any contact with his children.  His sister Ruby will seek to be a good aunt to these children, but again, being rabbits, there are too many of them to count.

Max and Ruby is a tragic story whose difficulties have only begun when we first begin to view their story.