Calendrical Conundrum

There's no astrological marker for days of the week. Did you know that? This troubles me, because, assuming days of the week were ordained by a literal six-day creation, (Don't ruin this with your serious doubts about a literal six-day creation. It doesn't change the conundrum.), we're only still on track if we kept up our count accurately for the past 10,000 years. That's 520,000 weeks. That's 3,640,000 days to have kept up with. It's easy now, because we have so many people keeping up with it. If someone sleeps through a day and thinks that Friday is Thursday, many people and newspapers can easily correct him. Not so easy when it was just two of them and maybe a few completely unaware children running around. I know from experience that a young married couple with a small child can lose track of a lot of time very easily.

Surely there was a day when Eve said, "Hey honey, did you feed the pterodactyls?" and Adam replied, "No, we feed them on Tuesdays." And Eve said, "But it IS Tuesday." And Adam said, "No, it's Monday." And Eve said, "Are you sure?" And she looked down at Cain for a little help, but he just paused for a minute to drool and then went right back to being overly aggressive with his pet velociraptor. And Adam (of course) said, "Absolutely I'm sure. I'm the man, and I never forget things like that." And Eve had no Washington Post with which to check his arrogant masculine omniscience.

The website that hosts this blog will timestamp this entry "Thursday." What if it's really Friday? What if the whole world is behind? I posed this question to my friend Jamey, and he said, "But Jesus rested on the Sabbath with everybody else, and He would know if it wasn't the right day." Then I pointed out that Jesus broke Sabbath a lot. What if this was because He knew it was really just Sunday? All the disciples just thought Jesus was prone to significant laziness on Fridays because it was the end of the tough work week. Maybe it's because he knew what day it really was.

MAYBE that's why Jesus could say with confidence that no one would know the day or the hour of His return, because He knew that even if they got it right, they would be a day behind, and He would come a day earlier and surprise the crap out of them anyway. He's got the odds fixed, because we're all walking around here thinking it's Thursday. It's really Friday, friends, and you're all deceived. But not me; I've got a friend in Australia, and he knows what day it really is. I called him last night, and I said "Hey Chris, what day is it?" He replied, "Thursday." I hadn't even told him my theory.

The Truth in Love (aka A Christian Beat-down)

My marriage (and yours also, for that matter) is not metaphysically big enough to display the entire glory of God's love for us. Because I realize this, I can say both with deep conviction and without abandoning absolute truth that some marriages should be egalitarian and others should be complementarian and we're just all going to have to be ok with that.

An egalitarian marriage gives the world a radically intimate picture of the kind of mutual service and love between its members the church is entreated to share. Equally submissive, equally empowered, equally responsible to God for their share. It's a beautiful thing.

A complementarian marriage gives the world a radically veiled image of the kind of extreme selflessness the all-powerful Christ acted out of in surrendering to the needs of His fully submitted Bride.

Both models are Biblically defensible and supremely beautiful. Those whom God invites to partake in the sacrament are not worthy or capable of bearing the image of God completely or faithfully. We are only asked to do it to the best of our ability and to His glory alone.

So I say again: my marriage (and yours also, for that matter) is not metaphysically big enough to display the entire glory of God's love for us. Because I realize this, I can say both with deep conviction and without abandoning absolute truth that some marriages should be egalitarian and others should be complementarian and we're just all going to have to be ok with that.

Brush off those haters.

For Where Your Treasure Is...

TOWSON, Md. - They seemed like an ideal Long Island family: William Parente was a lawyer, his wife Betty a stay-at-home mom active in the community. Their daughters were well-liked by teachers and classmates. They lived in a neighborhoodof million-dollar homes in Garden City, N.Y., next to a golf course. William, 59, was a tax and estate planning attorney who commuted to his Manhattan office. Betty, 58, volunteered. They were in Maryland to visit older daughter Stephanie, 19, a sophomore at Loyola College in Baltimore. With them was her sister, Catherine, 11, a sixth-grader at Garden City Middle School.

On Monday, after they failed to check out of their room on time, a housekeeper found their bodies. Baltimore County police said they were investigating the deaths as a murder-suicide. “In the last few months, she said, "there's a clear rash" of such killings,” stated Kristen Rand, legislative director for the center, a nonprofit gun control advocacy group. Richard Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania claims, “They can be tied to the nation's
economic woes.”

[Excerpt from Associated Press April 21, 2009]

I was ashamed not to be more shocked and horrified when I was first made aware of the incident. I then realized that it was because I identify with this man. If my god decided to leave me, I would probably end it all too, and since I wouldn’t want to hurt my family, I’d have to take them with me. I am still not shocked, but I have grown more horrified: not at William Parente, but at human nature (specifically my own). I can only thank my God for His grace that sustains me and His Holy Presence which will never leave or forsake me. Lord, have mercy on us all.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest, Are Embyos People?

The problem is as follows: "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" For the first several times I heard this, I turned my nose up at its "obvious" sophistry. It seemed to me to be no more than a skeptic's metaphorical attempt to convince one that experience is the only true means of knowledge. Recently, however, I have begun to reexamine the question in question. What is sound? Surely the impact of a felled tree produces waves, which when passing through the ear canal are processed as sound, but if the waves are never processed, are they sounds? Or merely sound waves? The well-crafted analogy eventually leads one to answer this most basic question: Is potential actual? One's answer has far-reaching implications. If potential IS actual, then "pre-crime," (unmanifested criminal intent such as that surrounding the plot of the sci-fi film Minority Report) should be a punishable offense. If potential is NOT actual, then how does this affect our view of frozen embryos? I humbly admit I don't have a black and white answer here. I guess I'm just suggesting that the world is a much more complicated place than I ever imagined back when I knew it all...

The Memphis Messiah, (or Coach Cal and Christ)

Now that the dust has settled a bit, I'd like to share some thoughts regarding the recent departure of University of Memphis basketball head coach John Calapari. When the announcement was made that our Coach Cal was considering the position at the college basketball Mecca University of Kentucky, our city was thrown into an uproar. My wife and I gave one another bewildered glances as the newscast informed us of the candlelight vigil outside his home.

This was a huge blow to the morale of those Memphians who had seen a great deal of healing and unity across racial and socio-economic lines centered on a powerhouse home team. Our impending 2009-2010 season of glory was evaporating before us like Marty McFly's hand in Back to the Future. Gone were the hopes of many that Cal would then retire and run for a landslide victory as mayor of the newly formed Memphis/Shelby County Metropolitan Alliance. Cal would surely take his golden-child recruits with him and leave us in the wake of his Lexington legacy. Emotions ran the grieving gamut, from disbelief and anger to pleading, acceptance, and so on. Our Hope was moving to a new tax bracket.

As this was all taking place, I was reading about the four hundred years of silence between the last prophet Malachi and the birth of Jesus Christ. Time and time again, Israel would experience small victories under leaders such as the Maccabees, only to be forced into subjugation once again by the evil empires of the day. Zealots would rise up in the spirit of Joshua and the ancient judges to take back in glorious battle that which belonged to the Lord, but it was to no avail. They awaited the promised Messiah to deliver them once and for all. Then Jesus Christ came onto the scene, kindly and repeatedly revealing to them, "Right desire; wrong method." But His followers were thrown into an uproar when they realized he was not meeting their hopes as they had expected. Even Peter, close as he was to his friend the Savior, used futile Maccabean methods to the end to act out his deep-seated expectations for the way the Kingdom would come.

To all the sentinel hearts out there, longing to see things set right, I give this kind and repeated revelation: "Right desire; wrong method." Memphis has a messiah, and while the anglicized version of his name IS Joshua, his last name is not Pastner (although I do pray he would lead us to a championship win soon) The luster of a title will soon wear off and people will resume their disdain for all things Memphian. We will see mayors and coaches come and go, but ultimate deliverance is in the hands of our Almighty God, who gave us the way of peacemaking to prepare for His triumphal and final entry to rule His kingdom, soon and very soon. And THAT will be our “One [eternally] Shining Moment.”

Discourse on Worship with a Good Friend

I'm still wrestling with how to best understand and communicate worship. What follows is a transcript from a recent text-messaging conversation with a close friend and fellow thinker/saint/artist:

HIM: I have another "R" for you. Revelation, REFLECTION, response. Think about it. Miss you.

ME: I like it. reflection should be implied within response, but I like the idea of being more explicit. Response is sometimes thought of as being mindless, like a reflex. Good.

HIM: Now you can effectively teach it because it is "threefold." haha [Editor's note: I am infamous for trying to shove ideas into threes. He is rightly making fun of me here.]

ME: And alliterative! (Editor's note: I also think alliteration is neccessary in all situations of life.]

HIM: It is implied, but I think it is important to note a periond of realizing that God is revealing Himself AND realizing that something must be done because of it, which leads you to a response. Haha. That's my Easter present for you.

ME: I agree, as long as the recognition is under the banner of response. The idea is that, like Jesus, we do nothing until the Father reveals. Christlike worship. Recognition is certainly the first response, though.

HIM: It's trinitarian in that none of them can BE without the other two. God's always revealing Himself; we are always responding. It only becomes worship when we recopgnize that it is in fact God's revelation and recognize the proper and holy response. We might not agree on this because I'm not as calvinist as you.

ME: You must agree that God was displaying His love before and without need of our response to it. He can BE without us. P.S. I'm not as calvinist as I am either.

HIM: Haha. I agree with that, but it seems that God needs something to reveal Himself to. He doesn't need us, but His revelation does.

ME: That's the ole' "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it does it make a sound?" problem. [Editor's note: remind me to blog about that sometime. I think I have a good thought on this one.]

HIM: It is nit-picky, but that's what we do. Haha.

ME: It's a debate well worth having. I do agree that PROPER response is a must, and that does require reflection. But I do not think our part in worship is as important as His.

HIM: Well of course not. The only true trinity is THE trinity. God is revelation, but within the context of worship He needs something to worship Him. Without it, he is unworshipped glory.

ME: If we do not, even the rocks will cry out. While I do very much like your distinction that reflection is the key difference between worship and selfish existence, the idea that God somehow lacks something without us is a bit on the icky side of liberal for me. (There certainly is a non-icky side of liberalism too. It's called freedom and compassion.)

HIM: Yeah, I agree. I guess it's only dependent from the bride's side.

ME: Well said.

First Things First

Passover precedes the Exodus. Metaphysically speaking, this means the law was written on blood-stained door posts, and not vice-versa. Let our lives reflect this order; I assure you it was intentional.