Someday

On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. 3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”6 Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.[a] 7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.8 And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. 9 When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11 This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.12 After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers[b] and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.

I am to be married soon, to a woman who makes this passage come alive to me! Why did God give me such a remarkable woman? The answer is the same as the answer to the why question provoked by this passage. The quick answer is that God is the author of pleasure, a feasting God, a God who loves love, and loves to give good gifts to undeserving people! And there may be no other reason for what transpires at this wedding, or mine!

Jesus scolds his mother about the impracticality of the requested miracle. As I see it, Jesus makes it clear that the time is not right for His public ministry to begin. There is no ministry benefit to such a miracle, and so the question is clear: Why does Jesus do it? Was he guilted into it by his mother? My theory is that Jesus did it simply because it increased the pleasure of this great celebration of marriage. He did it to miraculously magnify the merriment, to enlarge the dimensions of the feast to supernatural proportions. 

Wine is an important biblical symbol of pleasure and community. During the passover seder, Jews consume four glasses of wine. The imagery of abundance everywhere in Scripture includes wine as a central instrument of the pleasure associated with abundance. But there is no more central passage on both the symbolism of wine and its role in pleasure than John 2. Here Jesus supplies the wine, no doubt the finest ever made upon the earth, and here He does it for the sake of love and pleasure and for no other reason! One could perhaps say that He does it to magnify His glory, but that glory is not separated from pleasure here. In other words, He is glorious in this context because there is no greater vintner on the planet and no greater founder of the feast! He must be exalted as the author of pleasure! 

"You have reserved the best wine until now." It is so unassuming a line that one is tempted to ignore it as irrelevant, but it is profound to me in these days beyond my ability to express it. Anyone who has been wine tasting knows what the master of the feast is saying here. When one goes wine tasting, one notices the subtleties and elegant complexities of the wines being tasted, until the third or fourth winery. After awhile, one's senses are dulled by the wine and can no longer appreciate the subtle artfulness of the wines served at the end. People know this at dinner parties and will bring out the worst wines if people choose to keep drinking to the point of revelry. 

And here is Jesus, supplying a wine that stuns the master of the feast. He wants to know why a wine of this quality and depth is given to buzzed people at the end of the feast. Think of the last wedding you went to, where some wines of decent quality were perhaps served for a few hours, then imagine that the master of the feast brings out cases of Chateau Petrus (a wine that goes on auction for $4000 a bottle) for the remaining guests at 10 o'clock. Surely Jesus' wine was at least as good as the best of Bordeaux! It was probably so good that even in a stupor the guests were shocked by it's power into silence and moved to appreciate its beauty. They probably had tasted nothing like it, and the taste of all other wine was cheapened by its singular excellence. 

Why has he saved the best for last? Because that is what God does! He saves the best for last! This first miracle is a foretaste of things to come, especially the telos (end/purpose) of Jesus' ministry, which is to lead sinful people to the great wedding feast of the lamb, where our work of bold penultimate wreckage of the world is answered at last. This beautiful story is yet another in the collection of stories that God tells of His final word! Indeed the whole universe languishes in misery, broken because of the enervating effects of human sin, but God will see to His glory in the end! And this story tells us that included in His glory is the fact that He is the author of all joy and pleasure and feasting, pleasures we hold now with trembling hands in the knowledge they cannot last. But God's answer to this is that all the pleasures of earth are mere shadows of things to come for His people. They exist to train us to love what we ought to love, and to cast our eyes ahead in hope to the source of all good. 

The theme of my wedding to the incomparable Amy Dobson is a word that early became important to us. That word is "Someday." What we mean by it is that one can trust that God will save the best for last, and that He will give peace and patience while we await His timing. Misery will never be an end for God's people. It may be a winnowing, a pruning, but it will always be temporary. Perhaps it is simplest just to say that I waited a long time for my fiancé. I say this because my noble, lovely and true fiancé is the Wine of Cana for me. She is the best that God has reserved until now for me! Just as the attendees of the feast of Cana didn't possess the rational equipment or imagination to think wine could be so good, nor could they anticipate God's timing in providing it, so I didn't possess the rational equipment to visualize a woman of such complexity, beauty, intelligence, and spiritual depth. Behind the appearance of a gentle woman of soft words, modest dress, and kind eyes is a universe of  soaring, exultant attributes at the extremities of human expression. She is a luminous masterwork that God saved and lavishly gave to this miserable sinner at the age of forty-seven. 

God indeed has reserved the best wine until now!

Falling In Love

One runs the risk of causing others to involuntarily gag when talking on such a topic, but I promise to try to make this of general interest.

The first thing to note about falling in love is that it shows us that we are not purely rational beings. That is not to say that one should allow one's heart to override one's mind, but it is equally true that one's mind should not quash the heart either. And in truth, when the mind and heart are working together in the matter of love, the heart's portion is greater, not less. In other words, if the heart's infatuation makes sense, then its infatuation is magnified. What is one to do when one finds another in whom resides every sublime quality that could exist in a woman? How can the heart resist a woman that the mind has assessed to be luminous in every meaningful way? Philippians sums up the list with "noble, lovely, and true." Is it appropriate for the mind to release its authoritarian hold for a season so that it may be trained by the heart; trained not merely to assess what is good, but to abandon all in pursuit of what is good?

The second thing to notice about falling in love is the investment. One really does feel that one could lay down one's life for the beloved, without the slightest hesitation. There is almost an instinctive self-sacrifice when one really falls in love. It comes out in pre-meditated service, the sacrifice of sleep, attentiveness to the needs of the other. One wants to give away time and treasure for the sake of the beloved, and the simple reason is that the lines that separate begin to blur. It is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

The third thing to notice about falling in love is that it is oddly painful. In my recent experience--and I truly had forgotten this, perhaps had never really experienced it before--the feeling of being in love is almost like some thrill ride or risk taking adventure. It feels like you are dying a little while also feeling so alive, so energized, so heightened to everything. You are operating on the margins of yourself, the extremities. The pain comes from the risk involved. Lewis once said, "why love when losing hearts so much?" Indeed that thought must come to all lovers in the intensity of the season.

A fourth thing is something profound to me and perhaps not to any readers. The great problem with promiscuity, or the generic lust for variety, prized by so many men in our sexually indulgent culture is that they never really learn to see a woman. They only learn to see the traits they want to see in every woman. They look for one or a few fungible parts in all woman. They come to see the same color in great numbers of women. They are one dimensional; or more to the point, they make all women one dimensional. But falling in love as I have in these days has taught me to see the infinite colors in one woman. Just the other day, the light at dusk caught her features as I've never seen them before. The day before that she wore a sweater that accentuated the subtle green at the interior rim of her eyes. Recently I noticed a kind of elegant glide to her walk. She is always changing. She really is a thousand incarnations, limitless in the various manifestations of her glorious beauty! It occurs to me that men who seek out multiple women have never really seen one as I see this one extraordinary woman!

Another comment about beauty: The other day I was in a winery and saw a group of young women come through on a Bachelorette party. They were all dressed the same, showing every attribute with bold--and in some cases unwarranted--confidence and crass neglect of their subtler qualities. It occurred to me that many men are attracted to a blatant hedonistic display of flesh, but I was simply put off by the whole tottering, drunk, preening, nails-clicking-against-phone-screens, selfie-taking, college-educated-stripper routine! Their beauty was propped-up, artificial, and superficially sophisticated. It was all tight, short, plunging, made-up, faked-up, flattering, giggling clonery. They all apparently sent a text to each other about the false eyelashes.

But the woman I've fallen in love with is truly beautiful, in the most thoroughly authentic sense. And yes, I am speaking about the physical alone here, not the cheap slogan that she is "beautiful inside," which she is. She is more beautiful physically than all because what is seen is who she is, from her simple make-up, which is just enough to accentuate naturally beautiful features, to her healthy and flawless skin, which she only displays modestly, in the subtlest hints. She is fashionable, but restrained. She is fit, but not a show off. There is mystery in her various fashions and displays of her body. She possesses the brightest eyes and smile, and radiates an energy that elicits a chivalrous response. Men can see that she is lovely, perhaps among the loveliest creatures they have ever seen, but also that she is so pure in her beauty that they cannot offend against her beauty. Men react to the women in the winery with cat-calls and gawking. Men react to my girl with hushed reverence. That is the difference between the false beauty of the age and the beauty of an authentic beauty.

And finally, I must comment that falling in love has taught me about the powerful vulnerability of an intimate kiss. It really is peculiar, but sex can be merely animalistic, driven by one or both partner's need for pleasure. A kiss never seems to be about mere pleasure. You can know that intimacy has gone out of a relationship not when a couple stops having sex, but when they no longer kiss meaningfully. The souls of two people touch when they kiss, especially in a passionate way. Of course, the great travesty about sex is when two people turn it into something less than it should be. It is still a great sin, and in fact is seen as a sin when acted upon prior to marriage where an intimate kiss is not. My point is limited in this regard. I'm only suggesting that it is easier to make sex about pleasure alone, thereby corrupting it, than it is to corrupt an intimate kiss. It is a strange thing that an intimate kiss is less risky in the sense of making one vulnerable to sin, but more risky in the sense of opening one's heart to the beloved. Think of it thus: Who is more wounded emotionally at a break-up? The couple who never intimately kissed, had some fun having sex a few times, then parted ways; or the couple who kissed deeply and intimately a few times, never had sex, and then broke up? Does it not seem obvious the the latter would suffer more at the break-up than the former?

Polemic Against the "Privilege" Video

I am surprised by what many Christians take to be thoughtful analysis of a subject. There is a video that I have seen posted by many of my friends on social media that is a perfect example of dreadful reasoning on an important topic. In no way do I intend this to be a smack down on anyone. I merely want to encourage discernment. 

You can find the video here. 

And you can find my logical analysis of the video below: 

As a summation, I must dismiss the argument as ineffective on the grounds that it is among the worst analogies I've ever seen. It is in the same neighborhood as Judith Jarvis Thomson's argument from analogy for abortion. We should remember that arguments from analogy are meant to connect two relevantly similar states of affairs, and say that what is true of one therefore must be true of the other. So what is the comparison here? The comparison is between a fictional race for a $100 dollar bill and the "race of life," or life itself. How does the analogy fare? Here are several serious defects in the comparison between the race scenario and life:

1. The analogy communicates a Marxist worldview. Envy and greed are palpable in the video. The envy of those without the head start is made to be understandable. And the winner is lectured to remember that he got there easily and many others are without his advantages.  

Note well that the goal is some uniform commercial outcome (the $100 dollar bill… presumably undefined prosperity, probably something like suburban bliss). What if one of the runners said, "I don’t need to run that far because I can be content with $60 as a coach." And not only that, if the analogy is real to life, then one shouldn’t arbitrarily exclude athletic talent (or any other talent) that immediately catapults a person to the front for no other reason than they have a natural talent. And is that fair? 

2. Note the title is “privilege” and not “white privilege,” but the editing means it to be an attack on “white privilege.” Obviously the people who made the video know that the term “white privilege” is going to be received as morally reprehensible by many, but the creators of the video still believe white privilege is the issue, and so they say the same thing visually and trim the word white from the privilege. Clever, but also predictable and pedantic. All of the shots of the advantaged are white kids; all the shots of the disadvantaged are people of color. At one point the lecturer calls everyone's attention to "some of the black kids" in the back who could "smoke" the rest in a race if the race were fair. 

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3. We know nothing about the sample chosen. Where do these kids come from? One could conceivably do this very exercise at a predominantly black school or Hispanic school and you will still have considerable disparities of advantage there.  

4. The assumption is that everyone should be equal. And if the pressure on the privileged works well, then the ultimate utopian vision of equality can be reached. But what if the video only shows us that we can expect inequality from the complexities of life. Is everyone born with equal intelligence, or equal physical stamina, or equal emotional or spiritual strength? Are the complexities of moral training and parental guidance ever going to be equal even in intact families? Again, people who make videos like this seem to be calling for what Thomas Sowell calls, “cosmic equality.” To illustrate, let’s assume I could forcefully take the $100 dollar bill from the winner of the race, then distribute it to everyone in the group so that equality was the outcome of the unfair race. Say everyone received two dollars as a result. Are we sure that after two years everyone will have an equal increase in their wealth? And then are those with more going to bequeath those advantages to their children? 

5. Note also that he says, “you are here for nothing that you did…” That is true, but they are there for many things that their parents and grandparents did for them. Should those contributions be discounted? Why not conclude from this not that the privileged should feel guilty about that privilege, but instead that the people who put these young people in positions of disadvantage through miserable moral choices should feel all the guilt?

6. It makes the assumption that there is only one prize. In life, it is possible for me to get the $100 now and someone else to get a different $100 later.

7. Work can provide compensations for the advantages listed. The point here is that if this is meant to be an analogy to life, then it is silly to say that regardless of starting position, everyone runs at the same speed or even cares to run at all or runs in the same direction. Some will just sit there while others run. Some will run towards different goals. Also, it is meant to be an analogy to life, which means every person brings their whole life to the race, and others with them as well. What if the race started with a math puzzle? What if it starts like the Iditarod, with family providing our mush team ahead of us? What if it started with a person’s ability to form a team? The race of life is infinitely more complex than a 100 meter dash and arbitrary factors placing people in various positions of advantage all headed in the same arbitrary Marxian direction.

God Thinks You Are Amazing, And So Do I, Satirical Interview Series, Part 1

This week our interview series takes us to New York, where we meet up with motivational speaker and celebrity Christian, Clancey Devereux. Her new book, titled, God Thinks You Are Amazing, And So Do I, just landed on the New York Times best seller list.

Monomaniac: Tell me, Clancey, what is the problem with American Christianity today?

Clancey: People believe in God, but they no longer believe in themselves. They no longer seize their internal divine energy and live authentically. They live in hovels of self-regret and self-abnegation because of confining and constraining theological systems. If all of us could see how resplendent we are, how we all pulsate all through with vibrancy and authenticity and beauty and color and love, then we could seize our birthright.

Monomaniac: I don't mean to be rude, Clancey, but I may need some help understanding what you just said.

Clancey: Our task is to scale the heights of Olympus, or perhaps the heights of Sinai. Many, perhaps even you, are still mired in the Catacombs of your own shame and regret and judgmentalism, shut off from love, shut off from people. No world crusher, such as I am, can find such places accommodating. They are too small for us. Are you not suffocating in your tiny world of theological correctness?

Monomaniac: I don't think so... Again, please help me to understand what you are saying. I have perhaps been raised in a different tradition than yours, so pretend you are evangelizing me to your brand of Christianity.

Clancey: You see, that is exactly my point--I'm not evangelizing anyone to anything! There are no brands of Christianity! I want to bring people back to themselves instead of the constant beggarly search for some leader to make everything easy. All the world's religions and peoples deliver to us stories, like premature babies of an endangered species, tenderly born into our care. It is our charge to nurture them, to embrace them as though we alone can provide them the breast. They mature to full blossoming only under our care. You would not commit infanticide?

Monomaniac: Um, well, no, but... you said you are a Christian. What do you think of those Christians who seem to think you are a heretic for saying that Jesus is only one of many "ideas impelling us toward love and authenticity."

Clancey: (Pausing) (Deep Pondering) F--k them! That is what I say.

Monomaniac: Yeah, F--k them! Christians are pretty judgmental! I mean lots of things work if you want to "seize the day" and "kill it" and "own it" and "crush it" in your relationships and in your work and your service and in cross fit and the like, am I right?

Clancey: You are mocking me. How adorable. I love you anyway (Hugs me for an uncomfortable duration).

To answer your cynicism, I just want it to be about love and building a life story and not rules and exclusionary judgments. I'm done with it! I've had it with Christians policing my behavior. Jesus embraced prostitutes and beggars and tax collectors. He embraced and validated their stories. He didn't hold people accountable! Today we have a whole professional contingent of pseudo-scholarly critics. When will they feed the poor? When will they step away from their studies for awhile to go out and do the good Jesus asks us to do? When will they stop critiquing my theology and start living like I do?

Monomaniac: Can I ask a question, delicately, that may seem confrontational?

Clancey: If you must.

Monomaniac: Do you think your disgust for the "theological caste" (as you call them in your book) is anything like a moral judgment? Do you think that you are correct and they are not? Are you validating their stories? Perhaps their passionate interest in Biblical theology is their authenticity, yes?

Clancey: I see what you are trying to do. You are trying to play linguistic games with me. It won't work. Look, you strike me as one of the members of this theological caste. What has drawing lines and condemning people ever done for you? Look to the people, as Jesus did!

Monomaniac: Do you think that Jesus first "looked to the Father," and then "looked to the people?" Did Jesus find the Father in the people? Or did He find the people in the Father? And did Jesus encourage people to express their authentic selves, or did He pledge to absorb the wrath of God justly leveled against them for their miserably sinful selves? Did He offer the slightest promise that people could live worthily without Him?

Clancey: What?

Blood Legacy

“If you were buried with him in the likeness of his death, surely you will be with him in the likeness of his resurrection.” Romans 6:5

Blood Legacy


They found a man reviled for his effeminate kindness,
and they beat him,
spraying his cowards blood so that it became a viscous rain,
smearing it sadistically upon their smiling faces,
painting themselves war heroes with his inferior blood.

One said, “Should we laugh?”
Another answered “Should we not take pleasure in justice?”

The weaker he became at the ferocious flurry of pummeling fists,
the more intoxicated with power they became.

A synergy of sadistic hedonism moved them,
so that their voices became a crazed, incoherent symphony
of hatred.

Shrieks of pain
and waves of laughter
rose to cacophonous crescendo
until the broken man gave up his impotent soul.

Stillness settled over the scene, for even a just killing
can create a mood of contemplative dissatisfaction.

As they shuffled back to their homes, heads hung low,
the dead man called to them in love,
having risen from the dead.

Incensed that he was still alive,
and that he would dare address them again
with patronizing compassion,
they destroyed him again,
confirming their strength.

And again he rose and called to them in love.

Their anger grew into irrational, spitting vituperations
of malice until they killed him again,
this time hacking him to pieces with swords.

And again he rose and called to them in love.

But they kept killing him, because that is all they knew,
and that is all they knew to teach to their children.
Every generation killed him,
and with increasingly evolved methods.
They made it their destiny as descendents to destroy him
once and for all.
Killing him became their legacy.

But each time he rose and called to them in love,
only to be destroyed again,
and again and again.

One bright day after generations of this rabid bloodthirstiness;
after a river of this
one man’s blood had flowed,
a child of this murderous brood
in trembling empathy embraced him,
only to be destroyed with him.

But he raised them together

and proclaimed…
“Enough of my blood has flowed.”

November, 2007

Traffic

This poem was written before we moved into a much simpler life here in Bakersfield, CA. It was inspired by an all too common occurrence in our overcrowded harried lives when we lived in the big city. The "serpent" reference is significant because the devil is described as the great deceiver.

Traffic
Hollow faces turn their passionless gaze
Toward the crowded horizon…

Long ago, a liars voice beckoned and somewhere someone responded, the
rest herded after.

Generations following this path have cut a groove into our humanity.
we all spill into it, pressing upon
each other, competing for progress toward prosperity,
all energy of resistance to the voice
dissipated.
Sheer momentum has taken over.

No one questions the migration of this mob,
each assuming his place in the endless line,
each child of the scientific age mechanically clinging to his place, only
questioning relative position and not the destination.

It does not feel the sublime, this serpentine demigod.
Its poisonous breath stifles sensation.
It assimilates individuality, expanding its mass through augmentation.
It grows while the people shrink.
It converts the autonomous into automation.

Each looks to the other only for help in their movements toward
The unnamed, unknown and unworthy goal.

No one pauses.
No one thinks.
Individuality is swallowed up
as vermin before The Serpent…

But the traffic grows.



May, 2006