First Things

I'm just getting back into the tech world after flirting with it a while back. I'm inspired by lots of colleagues and friends who do this far better than I do. I've recently re-activated my Facebook-life, and yesterday signed up for Twitter. Facebook I can handle; I'm not the best at it, but it's growing on me.

Twitter is another story. I'm having some technical difficulties with "following" people. (I'm having some theological difficulties with it, too... but that's pretty normal for me.)

The main problem: 140 characters. Seriously? I'm a preacher by trade, a debater by avocation, and an essayist by style. Economy of words has never been my gift. Besides, I find that anything I'd want to comment on in the Twitter-verse (or is it a "sphere"?) is too complex for 140 characters.

Some of it is about controversy. I'm a public leader in an ideologically diverse community. I've often gotten into "trouble" by commenting on a matter of religious/spiritual/theological and/or political/economic import in a manner unbecoming to my role as a pastor/preacher. Some of that is due to hypersensitivity on the part of the listener/reader... but mostly it's due to the fact that when I do practice "economy" of language, it's often flippant or sarcastic.

So, if I'm going to use Twitter, I will have to learn how to choose words even more wisely than I'm learning to do. Or, I will fill my feed with nothing but meaningless drivel about what I'm eating or the shows I'm watching (I'll probably do that), or cute pictures and snippets of joy from my life as a father of two beautiful little ones (that will surely happen, too). And, of course, shameless links to sermon recordings.

Then I realized that I'm not alone. Many of my friends/colleagues use Twitter to redirect to longer blog postings - which probably cuts down on readership, but it does allow for more thoughtful discussion. Hence, I'm now the proud owner of a free blog - like every other person who is deluded enough to think I have something meaningful to say to the electronic community.

If this goes well (and judging from my experience in the past, I'm doubtful that it will), here's what I hope to accomplish with this blog:

I'm slowly learning what it means in a public/political/religious sense to be "simul justus et pecator" - Luther's famous reduction of the anthropology of the baptized: 100% saint and 100% sinner, all the time. In my personal life, this has always been clear to me: I do not do what I know I should do; I do what I should not do; by God's grace I am forgiven and (occasionally) equipped by the Spirit to actually do something good and holy with my time.

In a public sense, though, what this means for me is this: I wish I lived in a world that is simple enough for me to be an ideological purist. I used to believe I lived in that world. In high school, I was (in)famous for having a (I thought) well-informed opinion about everything. And I would share it, in writing and speech, at every opportunity, with doctrinal clarity and the force of unbridled passion.

This worked well. My friend group clustered around shared ideologies - or, in some holy instances, people who were equally doctrinaire and had the verbal and emotional fortitude to spit it right back. I wore it as a badge of honor that everyone knew what I thought about everything. Every social, political, or theological issue - I had a settled, logically infallible (:)), and forceful opinion. Take it or leave it.

This is, for the most part, still pretty much the case. I still have an opinion about everything, and I'm prideful enough to think that I'm mostly right - and well-justified. What's changed is that I am much more hesitant to share those opinions - and definitely with much less force and certitude.

Why? The nagging self of my childhood ideological purity tells me that I've "sold out." For fear of losing my job, I keep my opinions to myself, not wanting to alienate any of the people I am in ministry with who happen to disagree with me on any number of things.

That's the same nagging self that projects this fear onto people like President Obama, who I consistently deride for what I see as an all-too politically-motivated inclination to compromise (I'll blog about yesterday's same-sex marriage declaration later). Grow a backbone, brother!

But the reality is much deeper and truer than that - and far more complex than 140 characters could summarize.

1) I might, in fact, occasionally be wrong. (Actually, I often am.) This is shocking to me, as one who has always believed that I have all the right answers. But in all things - from theodicy (the reality of evil in a world held in the powerful hands of a loving God) to economics (what role does government play in assuring that all people have access to daily bread?) - I have discovered a capacity to grow and evolve in my thinking. Rabbi Michael Lerner once said that the key to religious leadership is to understand the difference between certainty and commitment. I can be 100% committed to a perspective (same-gender marriage, for example); but whenever we claim 100% certainty about anything, we are entering into dangerous territory. That's where fundamentalists rear their nasty heads (and lo, they are abundant on all sides of every issue). That's where political systems become intractable cesspools of unclear thinking lobbed with vile certainty like grenades across the aisle. Complexity of thought, intellectual honesty, and empathy are regarded as cardinal sins in the world of FoxNews and MSNBC (both of which I detest, btw); I'm convinced, however, that life is more complicated than Twitter allows.

2) Even when I am right - or I'm pretty close to being certain that I am - that does not negate the dignity and personhood of people with whom I disagree. And, more importantly, there are things about which I am virtually certain, but there are places and people among whom it is meaningless to be right. And to constantly reduce life and people to ideological checklists is to vastly oversimplify the beauty and brokenness of real human life. And - ! - one can actually learn from people who think differently, even if an opinion remains unchanged.

In the past years, especially since beginning a second call in a radically different context than my first one, my respect and admiration for the apostle Paul has grown by leaps and bounds. (I, like most "liberal" Christians, used to detest Paul, but straw-men are easy to detest. I'll probably write about that some other time...) Suffice it to say, here was a guy who knew what it was to struggle with doing and being good when it's so damn hard to follow through; who knew how to parse out what is essential from what is non-essential (and yet to fail to do so more often than not); who knew what bear to poke and which to leave alone (and yet he failed at that from time to time, too). Most importantly, he knew the limits of his (and all) human wisdom, and endeavored to know nothing except for Jesus Christ - and him crucified - as the one thing that holds this mysterious communion together, even when we disagree.

This struggle has become most clear to me in pastoral care. I was once privileged to preside over the funeral of a man who was at times crusty and crotchety, and at others gentle and thoughtful. He loved his wife and missed her dearly. He had struggled for success in a suburban context and had failed to achieve more often than he was able to admit. He agonized over the decision to stop receiving treatment for cancer, engaging both pastors with deep searching questions about whether this qualified as suicide or not - and whether God could forgive him. He went to Bible study, he loved devotional books, and he longed to receive Communion as often as he could. He loved his kids but missed them and thought they could visit more often than they did. He had great stories about his time in Europe in the service of his country. He was a good man - if there is such a thing.

He also selected his hospice care company on the sole criterion that they would never assign him a staff member who was a "person of color" (not the terminology he chose...). And he exclusively watched Fox News to learn about the world that existed beyond the confines of his assisted living facility, from which he could scarcely escape.

Based on that last paragraph, every fiber of my ideologically pure self would want nothing to do with this man. We would not attend dinner parties together. I would publicly make fun of his "simple" and "reactionary" worldview. This is not my kind of person.

But he was, by God's grace, exactly my kind of person. A sinner (like me) washed into the Body (like me) who struggled to live a holy and faithful life in a complex world (like me). Was he wrong? You bet - often. Have I ever been? You bet - often. But would my life be diminished had I never had the privilege of sharing Holy Communion with him - and joining his fellow saints and sinners in carrying him to the grave? Absolutely.

So this blog is an attempt to muse on the news with some measure of complexity and compassion - even though I will certainly be wrong 90% of the time (except, of course, when posting laudatory things about my children; they're every bit as wonderful as I say they are - and probably more so).

So that's a bit about me and what I'm up to.

Peace,
pj