Doubling Down

Today I saw a dirty pickup truck with a huge TRUMP: Make America Great Again flag flying in the truckbed.  I laughed, and my first thought was that this was a guy who doubling down on stupidity.  I know that there are some honest Trump supporters out there, who genuinely believe he is standing up for America or bringing back some kind of greatness, who voted for him with a real hope that things would change (or more likely, return to what they imagined the past to be). 

But what happens when you continue to believe in something, long after it's been shown to be a lie?  There's something within our human nature that even as the evidence comes out, some people won't believe it.  The old joke about how Trump could kill somebody on 5th Avenue and his supporters would still back him is becoming more and more true.  We tend to confirm what it is that we believe, even when it is certainly not true. 

Many years ago I served on a jury in which a man was charged with aggravated assault.  It became clear early on in the trial that the prosecution had nothing;. The story was basically denied by the initial accuser, the prosecutor didn't really press things, and most of us went into the jury room convinced that there was nothing there.  But one juror, a woman, was absolutely convinced he was guilty.  Maybe it was because the defendant was black and the jury was all white, but she wanted him guilty.  It took us awhile, but finally she changed her vote, if not her mind.  What was obvious to the rest of us was almost impossible to convince her of. 

I remember seeing that Nixon still had a 25% approval rating even as he was resigning.  There are some diehards who could walk on the moon and think that the moon landing was a fake.  And some will believe that 'no, really, h'e's a good person, I know it!' even as a guy is going back to jail for the 9th time.  We double down on our delusions more than our stupidity, I guess.  Hopefully it won't destroy us in the end. 

Being Right

Today an old college friend of mine posted onto Facebook one of those White Conservative Male whine articles about how unfair everything is against Trump and his cronies.  I have no sympathy for any of these people, but that's not what this is about. 

Instead, it's a confession that I simply can't shut my own mouth when I need to stay silent.  At the end of the day, the foolishness of this article is likely apparent to anybody not delusional, and those who are delusional and will lap it up won't be convinced by anything I say. 

Yet I still had to say something.  I justified having to give somebody a piece of my mind.  I had to convince them of how Right I think that I am.  This is pure arrogance, but my failure as a Christian is sometimes still so shocking that it requires me to confess my failures. I don't know that I will really learn from this...but maybe being conscious of these things will help me in the future. 

Slow TV

One of my favorite TV shows is Norwegian, called 'Slow TV'.  It's a series of broadcasts that are now on Netflix in which basically nothing happens but the slow processes of time.  I've watched National Firewood Evening, in which wood is cut and then burned in a fireplace, a show in which a week-long cruise through the Norwegian Fjords is shown in real time (on Netflix sadly condensed down from almost 200 hours to just a few), and yesterday while trying to relax for half an hour or so I started the salmon fishing episode in which various cameras in a stream in Norway film fishermen (and women) trying to catch salmon (and, not surprisingly, rarely do). 

My favorite episode, however, is the original: a 7-hour train ride from Bergen (on the west coast) to Oslo.  Basically they put a GoPro on the front of a train and recorded every bit of the trip...from the stops at isolated outposts, the cabin announcements describing the snacks available in the dining car, the many tunnels (in which the screen would go black for however long the train was in it), but most of all the beautiful valleys and mountains of Norway.  I have had it on as background several times and have watched through the whole thing at least twice. 

There's something about Slow TV that speaks to me.  No plot, no conflict (except for the fish being caught), no rush to get through anything.  There are times I am way too over-committed, but letting the river valleys or the fjords or the fireplaces simply run their time gives me a sense of peace.  It's not something I want all the time, but I need that sense of calm in my life. 

Theology and Christian Doctrine

Years ago when I went to one of our Church of Christ universities I was informed that instead of taking a class in theology, ministry students would be taking courses in systematic doctrine.  For years, decades even, I didn't even think about it, thinking that this was just an argument over semantics. 

As I have gotten older, I have started to see how wrong I was.  The very name 'theology' tells us that one is studying about God...his nature, his attributes, his actions.  But my experience through the years is that systematic doctrine in Churches of Christ is a very different thing.  Rather than speak of God in terms of theology, most of that time is spent on ecclesiology, which is about the study of the church.  Thus rather than speak of the creator, we spend much of our time discussing the minutiae of the church...its organization, its leadership, its actions.  This, I have discovered, is a very different thing than speaking about God. 

I guess I should not be surprised.  Far too often in Churches of Christ we have spent our time navel-gazing and criticizing other groups not so much for what they believe about God (since, in many ways, we didn't know about the nature of God ourselves), but rather about what the church does.  I understand that theology (and christology and pneumatology) can become matters of speculation that really lead us nowhere.  But the more that I study Scripture, the more I realize that unless God is considered (and glorified and honored), all the rest doesn't matter. 

Reading the 10 commandments, one doesn't begin with 'thou shalts'.  Rather, it begins with "I am the Lord your God...".  Christian faith, likewise, is not so much about an ethic as it is about a relationship with God and a discipleship with Jesus as our Lord.  To overlook this and consider it as a given, and run instead towards what we do in the church, is to miss much of the point of what it is that we believe.  Faith is not about our own actions; it is rather faith in the Creator, Redeemer, and Advocate. 

Lord, forgive us for forgetting about YOU. 

Downsizing My Childhood

I called my dad yesterday to wish him a happy birthday, and after talking for a bit he told me that they had some news...they are selling their house and have already bought a new house.  Downsizing, they call it.  It's time, I suppose, as two and a half acres it too much for him to keep up with now; the new house has a tiny yard.  The house isn't that much smaller than their current house, but it's probably more compactly laid out and it's not so much out on the edge of town.  It's also not far from the college campus that my dad attended so many years ago, so he's probably happy about that. 

And I'm happy for them...I thought they would probably go to a residential community next, but they don't think they are ready for that and this is a good thing.  They have talked about this for awhile, and while I am shocked that it has happened so quickly, especially since they are not exactly change lovers, this is not the first house they had looked at and hopefully they can have a few happy years there. 

I'm still a bit reeling, however.  We moved to that house the summer before I started first grade, when I was not even six years old; they have lived there now almost 43 years.  I don't remember much of any house before that, and this is where I played and lived and called home for almost two decades.  It's where I was playing nerf basketball and landed on the sharp handle of my closet and cut my butt open.  It's where I hit golfballs out in the lot off of the big metal barn.  It's where my friends would gather so we could play some hoops out in the driveway.  And it's where I was loved by parents and siblings and had many happy days.  Even my son, who's a bit sentimental like me, is a bit sad..."Where are we gonna place flashlight tag with our cousins?" So yeah, it's gonna take time getting used to a new place when we go down and see them. 

Rationally, a house is just a thing, a piece of land with some construction and some decorations.  For most of my adulthood I have tried working hard at the concept of not storing up earthly treasures at the expense of what is more important. But when those earthly treasures finally go away, some of them still hold a large place in our hearts.