Worship Wednesday: Christianese

I hate, detest, and despise Christianese.  But, rather than subject you to my diatribe against Christianese--and also, because I've been sick this week--here's a few videos that describe Christianese and will leave you with a good laugh:

And this last one, about Bubble Creek Canyon, hits closer to home than some of us would like to admit:

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Manic Monday: Refugees

My heart goes out to the refugees that are fleeing the current unrest in Syria.

And at the same time, I'm suspicious.

I want badly to help those who are innocent, who are caught in the middle of turmoil.

At the same time, I worry that there are those who will take advantage of this turmoil to cause mayhem.

Since today I've been dealing with general malaise, I'm just asking one question:

What do we do to help these Syrian refugees while at the same time protecting our own homeland?

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Family Friday: My own 9/11

Today, while those around the US are observing the 14th anniversary of 9/11, I'm observing a 9/11 of my own.  My father died 22 years ago today.

Daddy died of Lou Gehrig's disease.  This is a neuromuscular disorder that attacks the spinal cord, resulting in slow, insidious, and permanent paralysis, and eventually, death.  Lou Gehrig's disease is the informal name of amyotropic lateral sclerosis (ALS), named after its most famous victim, baseball player Lou Gehrig.

My own 9/11 began on Saturday, February 29, 1992.  I still remember driving home on a cool February day in Miami, Florida, driving past the Office Depot at State Road 826 and NW 103rd St, heading home after working my Saturday shift.  I was the librarian at a small psychology school at the time.

I got home, and the answering machine light was flashing.  When I played the tape back, I found a message from my mother.  So I called back, got my dad, who said that he hadn't heard from me in a while.  We chatted for a few minutes, then he handed the phone to my mother.

Her next six words punched my gut.

"Your father has Lou Gehrig's disease."

My reaction:  "Oh, my God!"

She told me that they'd known since right around Christmas--and I'd been there, and I didn't pick up on anything.  Perhaps that was a sign of exactly how self-centered I was. She told me that Daddy was on sick leave, and that he was going to retire from teaching.  When she said that, I knew that it was bad.  Daddy never got sick and he never took time off for being sick.  She also said that he was "in good spirits."

I don't remember anything else she said . . .and then she asked me, how are you doing?

I thought, how do you think I'm doing?  You just told me that my father is dying.  I knew what Lou Gehrig's meant.  I knew it was a death sentence.  I knew there was no cure and no treatment.

When I hung up, I spent the next hour on the phone with friends.  I called my two best friends, and I called my now-husband.

That day, I wrote my father a letter.  I told him how much I appreciated what he taught me, one of them being that no one owed me a living.  And I told him I loved him.  The next week, I went to see my family and my father told me, as soon as I walked through the door, "I sure did like that letter I got."

He never complained, never talked about his illness.  To the end, he maintained his humor and his spirits.  Right before he died, I showed him the directions I'd written out for my mother to come to my wedding, and when he saw that I had had to spend a full paragraph directing her through the Golden Glades Interchange in Miami, he gave me a look that said, "All that?"  I busted out laughing.

He died on the night of September 11th, 1993.  I heard the phone ring just before midnight but just figured that it was a wrong number or prank call.  The next morning, the phone rang again.  This time I answered it.  It was my mother, saying, "Your Daddy's gone."

My fiance drove me to St. Petersburg.  The funeral took place three days later.

I have written all of this down as cold fact.  This happened, that happened, this happened, that happened.  Perhaps, even after 22 years, I can't completely bring myself to totally face reality, to totally face my feelings about that horrible time in my life.  How do you write about the loss of the first most important man in your life?  The one who gave me half my genetic material?  The one who raised me and taught me so many things?  Who loved my mother and worked for his family and tried to take care of them?

On this day, there are exactly two things I'm sure of:

I hate ALS.

And I miss Daddy.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Worship Wednesday: It's Okay To Scream

I've been following the story of a young couple, married only a few months, who are living out the meaning of the phrase "for better or for worse . . . in sickness and in health."

The husband suffered a severe brain injury several weeks ago.  His wife has been at his side ever since.

Originally, the brain injury was described as "devastating".  I had expected to hear of this man's death . . . and yet, as time has gone on, I hear reports of his improvement.

His wife keeps people updated regularly on Facebook.  She's regularly assured by her social media friends that they are praying for her, and she's often complimented on her "strength and faith".  And it's true.  The faith of this young woman, and her inner strength, shines through in her postings.

But I wonder, as I read her posts, and as I read the comments of people on social media . . . has anyone told her that it's okay to scream?

Has she been told so often, "You're so strong," "I admire your faith," "God is taking care of you and your husband," "We're believing God for a miracle," that she may not feel like she has the right to scream, "Why me?  Why us?  Why now?  Why, God?  Why did you allow this to happen?"

Do we, in our desire to encourage those going through difficult, almost incomprehensible times, squelch those who feel the need to scream, to cry out, "Why?", to demand an answer from God?

And when they do break, when they do scream, what do we do in return?  Do we chastise them for not having "enough faith"? Do we criticize their attitude? Do we react like Job's "friends" and accuse them of sinning when they demand an explanation from God?

Job screamed before God.  From the second chapter of the book of Job, up until the the time God spoke to him out of the storm, you hear a dialogue between him, his friends, and the unseen other listener, God.  You hear a demand for an explanation, an insistence that "I have not sinned, I have done nothing wrong."

Paul, in the book of 2 Corinthians, spoke of being "under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure."  (So much for the interpretation of I Corinthians 10:13 as meaning, "God won't give you more than you can bear."  Paul and his companions DID suffer more than they could bear!)

David, and other Psalmists, screamed in their Psalms, "God, I cry out to you, but you do not listen."

Jeremiah demanded to know why the way of the wicked prospered.

Even Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, told his disciples that his soul was overwhelmed to the point of death.  He did not want to die.  He was willing to do it, for our sakes, but he did not want to die.

Why should we put a burden on others--to remain "so strong", to remain faithful, to not ask questions--when there are those in the Bible who did break, who did ask questions . . . and who God did not condemn for doing so?

If the young woman is reading this, and no one else has told her, I will tell her:

It's okay to scream.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Family Friday: Kevin

(I have changed the names of certain people in this post to protect their privacy.)

When we moved to Florida, one of the first friends my mother made was Sandra Rivers.  Her family and my family attended the same church.  Sandra had three kids, Kevin, Ricky, and George.  I got to be friends with Kevin because we were the same age and the same grade in school.  In fact, the three boys even stayed overnight with us one time when their parents were out of town.

In fourth grade, though, Kevin turned against me and became my enemy.  To this day, I don't know why.  It was more than just "girls have cooties".  His behavior was a 180 degree turn from what I'd known.  I remember sitting outside school, in a group he was in, while we were doing some sort of classwork, and hearing a graphic description from him of someone having a bowel movement.  He also started calling me "Feeny Fargent" (a form of my name, Tina Sergent), and ordering me to, "Say a cuss word!  Say it!"

That summer, I went to a church camp.  One day, after lunch, we in the girls' cabin came back from lunch to find the place totally trashed.  We suspected it was Kevin and his friend Billy, because they were the last people to eat that day.

Kevin left me alone when we got in junior high.  We went to the same high school, and I understand his behavior got worse.  In fact, a girl from my high school was harassed by Kevin to the point where she transferred schools for a semester.  

Kevin eventually dropped out of school.  I have no idea where he is now or what happened to his family.

It's only been recently that one question has come to my mind:

Was Kevin abused?

His behavior had to come from somewhere, and one sign of abuse is a sudden shift in behavior.  I don't know why he directed his behavior shift at me.  Also, the conversation he engaged in--such as the description of someone going to the bathroom--was so foreign to what I knew about him that, again, it had to come from somewhere.  The girl from my high school whom Kevin harassed, he threatened her with rape.  That is not normal.  Something had to trigger it.  (Sexual curiosity is normal.  Threatening rape isn't.)

Kevin and I grew up in the 1970's.  We didn't talk about abuse then.  We never talked about sexual abuse.  In fact, in many families, people didn't even talk about sex, period.  Perhaps that was out of a belief that talking about sex was going to make kids more likely to do it.  As we've seen in the recent Josh Duggar scandal, not talking about sex isn't a guarantee that your kids will grow up to have a healthy attitude towards sex.

My speculation here is just that--speculation.  I don't know what happened with Kevin.  I don't know if he was abused, or if something else happened to him.

I do know that, sometime in the early '70's, the person I knew became a person I didn't know.

I hope that, somehow, he got the help he desperately needed.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Worship Wednesday: The Hills We Die On

I find it interesting, in Christianity, the hills we choose to die on.

There's instrumental music (a major issue in the Churches of Christ, where I worship), baking cakes for gay couples, issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, whether or not the earth is young or old, what constitutes "modest" dress . . . and I'm sure, if give enough time, I could fill an entire page front to back with similar issues.

People argue back and forth, bicker, gossip, name call, and--in extreme cases--disfellowship or excommunicate over some of these issues.

There are hills we need to die on in Christiandom . . . but I wonder if, in our desire to defend the positions we hold, we're neglecting the greater matters of Christianity.  I'm reminded of the Scripture in Matthew 23:23, where Jesus says to the Pharisees:  "Woe to you, you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You give a tenth of your spices--mind, dill and cumin.  But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness.  You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former."

In I Corinthians 8, Paul addresses the question of food sacrificed to idols.  Instead of laying down the law, that "no, you should not", or "yes, you can," he starts first with the concept that "knowledge puffs up while love builds up."  He goes on to explain that an idol was "nothing at all in the world" and that "there is no God but one".

But then he reminds them that some people are "still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled."

Paul says that "food does not bring us near to God . . . be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak."  He ends the chapter with an appeal to the Corinthian Christians to not cause their weak brother or sister to fall into sin.

His emphasis in this case was not in laying down the law--in providing a law that would tell them what to do or not to do--but rather, in how you treat and respect each other.

Paul spends a lot more time talking about how Christians should treat others rather than the "laws" or "beliefs" we should follow.  Come to think of it, so did Jesus.  Both of them did have principles they emphasized--"Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength," "Love your neighbor as yourself", "Love one another as I have loved you," "Love does no harm to its neighbor," "Hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil".

Maybe, if we start there, we can figure out what hills we need to die on.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Dear Mr. Luther . . .

I recently heard about an online petition written by someone who has grievances with a particular church.  Among other things, the petitioner wants the leadership of that church to resign.

I don't know if the petitioner is a member of that church or not.  Maybe they are, maybe they are not. Maybe they have presented their grievances to the leadership and felt like they didn't get a fair hearing.  Maybe they're an outsider who is honestly concerned about the actions of this church. Maybe they're someone who just wants to stir up trouble.

What I found interesting was the name on the petition.  I don't know if it was the name of the petitioner or the name of one of the signatories.

The name on the petition?

Martin Luther.

Yep, THAT Martin Luther.  In other words, the person used a pseudonym in posting/signing that petition.

I'm using the remainder of this post to directly address the person:

Dear Mr. Luther:

When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church in 1517, he was calling for a public debate on the issues about which he was concerned.  He signed his name to those theses.  The people that received them and read them knew who was behind those writings.

Luther knew that by placing his name on those writings, he was risking excommunication from the church and could possibly be executed as a heretic.  He was willing to do so.

You, on the other hand, have chosen--for whatever reason--to remain anonymous.  While you have used the modern version of the door of the Wittenburg Church--the Internet--to post your "theses", you have decided to hide behind the use of a pseudonym.

Your concerns may well be justified.  But if you are so concerned with the practices of the church you're criticizing, then at least have the courage to attach your real name to the petition you have posted.

Martin Luther, your namesake, went public with his concerns.  He risked a great deal by associating his name with writings that were controversial, to say the least.

It speaks volumes to his character that he was willing to sign his name to his concerns.

It speaks volumes to your character that you are not willing to do the same.

Sincerely yours,

Tina A. Seward

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.