Miracles

Our pastor, Jeff, just got back from a trip to Nicaragua last week where he had the honor of teaching some local pastors at a conference and speaking at a churches worship services over the course of three nights. At the first staff meeting after he got back, the topic of miracles came up because he had seen two people that he had prayed for healed of illnesses.

And the conversation went the same way I have seen conversations like these go in the past. Something about how Christians in third-world countries experience more miracles than we do here in America. Something about how they are more in touch with spiritual things because they don’t have as many of the distractions that we do. Something about how technology and education have made us less spiritual. Then something about how those things really can still happen today, and we should strive to live more simple lives (like people in third-world countries do) so that God can actually do those things here too.

But I don’t necessarily think that the envy of, glorification of or over-simplification of Chrisitianity in third-world countries is necessarily the most full and truthful way of seeing miracles or of viewing our own spiritual story.

Yes, it is wonderful that God works in many poor churches in poor countries through healing illnesses and by performing miracles that have to do with their physical needs, since these needs seem to be so evident in these places (In fact, I believe that we should be doing more and more to bring miracles of love and compassion and generosity to them as well).

And, yes, God can certainly do these kinds of miracles here in the Western world as well. God can do anything God wants. But what if what God wants to do is perform different sorts of miracles here? Will we value and acknowlege them? Or will we only want “those” sorts of miracles? The grass is always greener on the other side…

In the old testament stories about the Israelites, God performed many peculiar miracles for them but it never seemed to keep them faithful for long. We always envy those sorts of miracles, but the Israelites had them all and were never satisfied by them. Which might be what lead Jesus to say, through a parable in Luke 16 “If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t listen even if someone rises from the dead.” In Matt. 16:2-4 Jesus says that only an evil generation would ask for a miracle instead of just observing the miracles that are already there and obvious.

See I don’t think we need better miracles, just better eyes, ears, hearts to see the ones that he has already given us… Education and technology haven’t made us evil, we are evil (equally as cavemen and technocrats). Education and technology can lead to evil, sure, but anything can. They can also lead to more and more miracles being exposed.

God made Abraham filthy rich–something I have always considered to be inherently bad. But miracles were revealed through his wealth. On the other hand though, Solomon was rich, wise, powerful and sexy, but miserable with all of it (check out the book of Ecclesiastes), since his success was, to him, void of the miraculous elements that Abraham’s had. I think the difference between the two men is perspective. Abraham was tested on the grounds of possession and passed (I’m speaking here of the story of Isaac’s “sacrifice,” where Abraham did not possess even his most beloved).

Anyway, I think instead of shaming science, philosophy and travel for making us less spiritual we should be open to the miracles they bring that wouldn’t have been possible without them (not possessing them, but, instead, keeping them in right perspective). Language makes poetry possible. Astronomy makes glimpses at other far away galaxies possible. Photography makes distant jungles, deserts and mountains available to us, and worship to God for seeing them possible too. Art is a miracle. Birth is a miracle. Beer is a miracle. We needn’t be preocupied with them, except as a means of dwelling more deeply with God, and experiencing everything else more deeply through depth with God.

The more I know and the more educated I become, the more strangely mysterious God becomes to me (where some would want to claim that knowledge, wisdom and growing up make us less spiritual by making us more prideful I find the opposite to be true in my life).

We watched “Planet Earth” all afternoon Sunday with friends. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a documentary series that takes place over the course of 5 years, 7 continents, anyway, very large project, and beautiful. It’s one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. On that same note the, the film “Baraka” (Filmed all across the world, meant to be a sort of global soundtrack, drawing connections between peoples, practices, and places) had the same sort of affect on me: beautiful and humbling.

Everyone Says I Love You (1996)

Is a hilarious movie. We saw it last week on In Demand and laughed SO HARD. Should’ve written about it sooner while it was fresh on the mind.

Woody Allen, Julia Roberts, Allan Alda, Natalie Portman, Goldie Hawn, Gaby Hoffman, Edward Norton, Drew Barrymore, a trully great cast.

It’s a musical set in New York City (obviously… it’s Woody Allen) about a well-to-do liberal family who are just so ridiculous. It all starts with Drew Barrymore and Edward Norton’s characters trying to get engaged, but she ends up swallowing the ring he put in her dessert as a suprise (the scene at teh hospital with the patients, doctors and nurses breaking out in song over the whole affair is a favorite). The mother (played by Goldie Hawn) is described as a guilty liberal (since she was born into wealth) who tries to help an ex-con who ends up seducing her daughter (the character played by Drew Barrymore). Her first husband (Woody Allen) has never quite been able to get over her (according to her current husband, played by Allan Alda) and has had a long and funny history with women since their divorce. So, while in Venice for the summer with her father, their daughter tries to set him up with a woman that her and her friends had been spying on while in counceling sessions (Julia Roberts, a frustrated married woman). The daughter knows a lot of bizarre facts about the woman, from spying on her, and is able to give her father quite an edge in romancing her.

Anyway… Such a strange and wonderful movie.

Brian’s Italian Chicken Sandwiches

Ingredients:
1/2 Recipe of our milanesas de pollo (breaded chicken), but this time, once the chicken is pounded, slice down the middle for longer strips before you bread them
1/2 freshly graded parmesan cheese
2 cups graded mozzarella cheese
2 cups marinara sauce
4 hoggie buns

-Spread the marinara sauce over both sides of the buns
-Insert the long strips of milanesa de pollo between the buns
-Sprinkle over the chicken: half a cup of mozzarella cheese and two tablespoons of the parmesan cheese
-Warm in the oven for 5 minutes on 400 degrees
-Served with a caesar salad it’s delicious

Serves 4

The Golden Compass

We went to see The Golden Compass last night with my cousin and two of the girls from our youth group. Keep in mind that we have not read the books, and this is merely our initial reaction to the controversy over the film based only on seeing the movie and reading some articles we found on the subject. We hope this is helpful.

Even before we went to see the movie, we felt like all the controversy over it was kind of silly. Any religious symbolism in the movie seemed to be criticizing a version of Christianity that is mean, oppresive, and anti-truth. And we just though, “Hey, we’re against that too.” If someone criticizes Christianity on the grounds of historic events such as the Crusades and the genocide of natives in the Americas, we’re not going to say, “Don’t say that. The Crusades were awesome!” These events were terrible and we are deeply ashamed that they attempted to have any connection with Christ and his message. So if Philip Pullman, the author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, wants to criticize a version of Christianity that is mean, oppressive, and anti-truth, we will join him in that criticism (not boycott this suprisingly faith inspiring movie).

First of all, we thought the movie was inspiring with or without any notion of religious symbolism. We used my cousin as a sort of experiment. She had no idea about any of the controversy and was somewhat innocent of any preconceived ideas about religious symbolism in the movie. It’s pursuit of truth and good and it’s attack on all that is against truth and all the ways that Pullman and the filmakers described what it is to be a human with those same pursuits (and the artistry and imagery and thoughtful characters) touched her more than any religious symbolism.

We were aware of the religious symbolism and, as Christ followers, found it wonderful rather that antagonistic towards us. But some excerts from an article by catholic theologian Donna Freitas from the Boston Globe say what we would say but better:

“… [On critisism of Pullmans books for being anti God] this is a sad misreading of the trilogy. These books are deeply theological, and deeply Christian in their theology. The universe of “His Dark Materials” is permeated by a God in love with creation, who watches out for the meekest of all beings – the poor, the marginalized, and the lost. It is a God who yearns to be loved through our respect for the body, the earth, and through our lives in the here and now. This is a rejection of the more classical notion of a detached, transcendent God, but I am a Catholic theologian, and reading this fantasy trilogy enhanced my sense of the divine, of virtue, of the soul, of my faith in God. The book’s concept of God, in fact, is what makes Pullman’s work so threatening. His trilogy is not filled with attacks on Christianity, but with attacks on authorities who claim access to one true interpretation of a religion. Pullman’s work is filled with the feminist and liberation strands of Catholic theology that have sustained my own faith, and which threaten the power structure of the church. Pullman’s work is not anti-Christian, but anti-orthodox. This emerging controversy, then, is deeply unusual. It features an artist who claims atheism, but whose work is unabashedly theistic. And it features a series of books that are at once charming and thrilling children’s literature, and a story that explores some of the most divisive and fascinating issues in Catholic theology today… in Pullman’s book, the two child protagonists help to defeat the rule of the Authority and the Authority dies. When critics say that Pullman’s series advocates killing God, this is what they mean. But that is the most literal possible reading, and misses the point of the books. The “God” who dies in “The Amber Spyglass” is not a true God at all. Pullman’s Authority is an impostor, more like Milton’s Lucifer than like a traditional conception of God.”

The following quote from Pullman (in an article from BBC.com) shows is disdain, not for what is good about faith, but what is awful and shameful: “It’s not the presence of Christian doctrine I object to so much as the absence of Christian virtue,” he added. “The highest virtue – we have on the authority of the New Testament itself – is love…”

Also, in response to questions about this controversy (on MSNBC.com) he says: “In the world of the story there is a church that has acquired great political power, rather in the way that some religions in our world have done at various times, and still do (think of the Taliban in Afghanistan). My point is that religion is at its best — it does most good — when it is farthest away from political power, and that when it gets hold of the power to (for example) send armies to war or to condemn people to death, or to rule every aspect of our lives, it rapidly goes bad. Sometimes people think that if something is done in the name of faith or religion, it must be good. Unfortunately, that isn’t true; some things done in the name of religion are very bad. That was what I was trying to describe in my story… it doesn’t matter to me whether people believe in God or not, so I’m not promoting anything of that sort. What I do care about is whether people are cruel or whether they’re kind, whether they act for democracy or for tyranny, whether they believe in open-minded enquiry or in shutting the freedom of thought and expression. Good things have been done in the name of religion, and so have bad things; and both good things and bad things have been done with no religion at all. What I care about is the good, wherever it comes from.”

We believe in a God who is not threatened by these questions but happy, because seeking the answers to these questions could lead us to the true God. Why would God want to be misrepresented or misunderstood.

Quoted in a Foxnews.com article Craig Detweiler, co-director of Reel Spirituality, a pop culture and religion think tank at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. says of Pullman, his books, and the movie: “In this era of the messy marriage of politics and religion, we desperately need more imaginative expressions of faith and doubt. [The movie] undoubtedly makes people question, but inspires them to look harder for more authentic religion, Pullman takes license in pointing out the scary, false gods and destructive idols we’ve created. In that sense, I think he’s doing a great service.”

For something, Revelations 2:2-5

I notice, in myself and in other Christians, a tendancy to be radical in a primarily negative, reactional way. “I don’t support [some Christian leader or author],” “I don’t support that God-hating movie,” “Hillary Clinton is going to turn America pagan, we must stop her,” “Bush is arrogant about progress and ignorant about the environment, his reign must end,” “I don’t feel like that group of Christians is really sincere,” “I don’t like [fill in the blank with anything about religion].” And we can get extremely passionate and revolutionary about whatever these things are that we are against, and forget to be for anything.

Maybe the only way to be passionate and revolutionary is by being “anti”. And here I am being passionatly anti about being anti. But bear with me. I think there is another way, and I think Jesus showed us this way. He came and fundamentally changed the very nature of things (the definition of radical) not just by being against the right things but by being for something far better than all the things he was against (and he was and is against some stuff, don’t misunderstand me, but even he said that he didn’t come to condemn the world but to save it).

In Revelations 2:2-5 Jesus said:
“I know all the things you do. I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know you don’t tolerate evil people. You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have discovered they are liars. You have patiently suffered for me without quitting. But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first! Look how far you have fallen from your first love! Turn back to me again and work as you did at first.”

We’re against all the right stuff. He congradulates us for that. But are we for what he told us to be for? He came and told us that the most important thing to be concerned with was love: for him and others. I think we can get so caught up being against the right stuff (in both conservative and liberal factions of Christianity) that everything about the way we relate to Christ and his teachings take on negative connotations instead of possitive ones. And this helped the church Jesus was talking to in Revelations miss the boat.

The Pharisee’s missed the boat too. They made careers out of being anti, and when Jesus came with a brand new message most of the Pharisee’s missed it because they were anti-Christ too. “Don’t listen to him, he is a blasphemer who calls himself God.”

Of course in order to be for anything, sometimes we have to be against other things. But we just seem to get stuck there a lot and don’t move on to being for anything again. Once we get stuck on the path of the negative revolutionary, we will never be satisfied. “They” are never going to be sincere enough, pure enough, conservative enough, or liberal enough to satisfy the negative revolutionary. We will run ourselves silly and to no avail, because nothing is ever going to be good enough to satisfy the negative revolutionary.

Let’s just be for what God has told us to be for, and when we are forced to be anti, do it always with one eye still on that which we are for: LOVE.

Luke 14:12-14

[while eating at the house of a prominent Pharisee] Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

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Sometimes I am suprised at the lengths we Christians will go to in order to please those in our own little groups, to satisfy their expectations, to be found righteous in their eyes, but we ignore those who could really benefit from our friendship or consideration.

I notice that at times “church” becomes about pleasing ourselves, and “ministry” or “pastoring” becomes about pleasing our congregations, never stopping to think about those who might be left out of our “fellowship” because they cannot repay us with the right living, likemindedness or affirmation about our religious pastimes that we seem to need so desperatly. Excuse the overuse of quotation marks.

I hope we can all remember this Christmas that Jesus came to party with sinners so that they would know they are loved, and so that we would know we are loved.