The Fruit of Coercion

“We live in a globalized world where partly overlapping and partly contradictory visions of flourishing life coexist in the same public space.”[1] (Emphases mine)

If the above quote accurately describes the reality out of which today’s social interaction emerges (and I believe it does), then the choices and challenges before us become clearer.

1.     We can choose to do nothing: continue to live in a pluralistic environment in which some are comfortable, some are uncomfortable, and some are fearful (their fear falling along a spectrum from slightly uneasy and irritated to paranoid and enraged) because they can neither tolerate nor control the differences.

2.    We can choose the fight/flight response: declare that our vision of flourishing life is, indeed, the only right vision, and demand that everyone else agree and conform to our vision. When there is resistance to our demand, we can choose either to fight to inflict our vision on everyone else, or we can retreat from society and congratulate one another that we’re the only ones who are right.

3.    We can raise the reality to a new level: we can enter conversation with these “partly overlapping and partly contradictory” visions. Conversation leads to mutual understanding and to an openness that leads to mutual trust.

It arguably is true that humans will never be totally reconciled or united; nevertheless, God has, in Christ, reconciled the world to God's self, and has called all God's people to the work of reconciliation.[2] If God is reconciled to the world, and we are reconciled to God, then we also are reconciled to the world. Our lack of reconciliation with the world--or at least with one another--is one symptom of incomplete reconciliation with God. 

The third option above, which this blog is written to advocate, provides the only context in which any level of resolution and/or reconciliation can happen. Even if we assume ours is the only valid vision of flourishing life, and if we feel compelled and led to establish our vision as the basis and norm for all human society, this third option is the only context in which there is any hope of doing so.

One counselling model calls this context the “no-problem area” of human relationships. In education it’s called the “teachable moment.” A teacher may work all day (administrative, legislative and parental intrusions notwithstanding) to produce a five-minute window of eyes widened in wonder, brows furrowed in contemplation of new understandings. It is the only context of human relationships in which effective teaching, learning, playing, productivity, growing, and loving can happen.

In a combative or competitive atmosphere, where fear and mistrust dominate, none of the desirable ends described above can emerge.

One of the reasons the church has declined in the last three-quarters of a century is that evangelism and witness grew increasingly confrontational and coercive—even to the point of attempting to legislate morality and doctrine. In the face of sin and evil, while confrontation may in some instances engender conformity to a different standard and set of behavior, it never really creates a change of values or a change of heart. The more likely fruit of confrontation and coercion is resentment, anger, retaliation, and even an urge for revenge.

This is not to say that Christianity and the church should not have standards or boundaries. Moral and ethical norms are valid and necessary topics within the Christian faith; but there are effective ways, ineffective and even counterproductive ways to present our testimony and to address differences. Too many in the church have been counterproductive in addressing disagreements.

To be fair, there is merit to the evangelical critique of progressive Christianity, viz., that progressives too frequently present (intentionally or unintentionally) a moral anomie in which “anything goes.” Again, perhaps we progressives should focus more intentionally on the standards of Jesus (and grace and love were not his only standards); however, we cannot afford in the process to slip into patterns of counter-productive confrontation. Instead of coercive pontifications, we are called to “lift up Christ,” trusting that it is Christ, and not our power of persuasion, that will draw all people to him. [NOTE: “To Him,” if not to the church, per se.]

“The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world in the same way they do.” ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

That’s how it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] Volf, Miroslav. For the Life of the World (Theology for the Life of the World) (p. 32). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[2] II Corinthians 5:18-20, et. al.

If at First You Don't Succeed

There’s a story about a new, young preacher whose first sermon at his new parish was well received. The next week, he repeated the same sermon.

The people weren’t too worried. After all, he was young and probably nervous. They spoke among themselves, “We just need to encourage him,” which they did.

But when he repeated the same sermon on the third consecutive Sunday, the elders took him aside. “We understand that you’re young and new and inexperienced. What can we do to help you develop other sermons?”

The young preacher replied, “Oh, I have other sermons ready; and, as soon as I see evidence that you’ve heard this one, I’ll move on to the next one.”

Boy, Howdy! Have I been tempted to do the same thing!

There’s an issue before us as Americans and as citizens of the Earth, that needs to be addressed over and over and over. I’m not arrogant enough to believe I have the definitive Word on the subject, even though I have addressed it many times in this blog and in other venues.

This time I thought I’d broach the subject with several quotes from another, more influential source. Jim Wallis[1] is founder, editor, and publisher of Sojourners magazine. I abandoned a major writing project on the subject when I discovered Wallis’ writings, because he says exactly what I feel, and does so in a manner much less adversarial than my own efforts have been (ironically, my campaign against adversarial partisanism could not avoid adversarialism!)

Wallis’ passion, like my own, is for bipartisan collaboration for the common good. His presupposition, like my own, is that both the right and the left have important gifts to offer in the pursuit of the common good, and that the ideological warfare[2] that has replaced civil debate is perhaps history’s greatest barrier to that common good.

The quotes that follow are from two of his books:

·         Jim Wallis, On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned About Serving the Common Good (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group) 2013.

·         Jim Wallis, Conservatives, Liberals and the Fight for America’s Future (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group) 2013.] This little book contains excerpts from On God’s Side, listed above.

I use a Kindle, which gives “Locations” instead of page numbers.

“The day after the 2012 presidential election brought a great feeling of relief. Most of us, no matter whether our candidates won or lost, were so weary of what elections and politics have become that we were just glad the process was over. Many were disappointed with how the dysfunctional and bitterly partisan politics in Washington had undermined their deep desires for hope and change. Politics has severely constrained those possibilities by focusing on blame instead of solutions, and winning (ideological confrontations) instead of governing [italics and parenthetical mine]. … But the election results produced neither the salvation nor the damnation of the country, as some of the pundits on both sides seemed to suggest. Instead, they called us to go deeper.” [Opening words of the Preface of On God’s Side, Location 165].

* * *

“Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” ~ Reinhold Niebuhr [from Conservatives, Liberals and the Fight for America’s Future, Location 39].

* * *

“I am a democrat [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government… The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows…. I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.” ~ C. S. Lewis [from Conservatives, Liberals and the Fight for America’s Future, Location 44].

* * *

“Perhaps the greatest loss is to the common good—because I believe that both conservative and liberal insights and commitments are necessary for it to exist. In short, I am convinced that the common good requires us to be both personally responsible and socially just (italics his). These are the two best big ideas of conservatism and liberalism respectively.” [from Conservatives, Liberals and the Fight for America’s Future, Location 52.]

* * *

“The 24/7 news coverage today… doesn’t really “cover” the news but rather fuels the audience’s already-held prejudices about what is happening. Almost all of it is biased, much of it is distorted, some of it is just plain lies, and too much of it is downright hateful. Unfortunately, we are losing genuinely important ideas that the other political side has, which are often critically needed to find more balanced answers to our complex social, political, and economic problems. We’ve lost our integrity in the public arena, substituting ideological warfare for genuine and rigorous political debate, replacing substance with sound bites…

“In such a polarized, paralyzed and increasingly poisonous political environment, it is very difficult to find or even discuss the common good. But I believe that both the conservative and liberal philosophies have critical contributions to make in solving our problems and that the best ideas from both are essential for reestablishing a serious public discourse about the common good.” [from Conservatives, Liberals and the Fight for America’s Future, Location 73.]

Most of my political exposure, other than the virtually universally biased media, is on Facebook, where some of my friends complain constantly about the “liberal press” or the “leftist media,” etc., with virtually no critical evaluation of the biases of their favored conservative sources. At the same time, other friends continuously point out the inconsistencies of the conservative media without critical analysis of their favored liberal sources.

I can think of few Facebook friends who share my own passion for trying to find balance and bipartisan collaboration—for seeking reconciliation and healing of our land. Most just want to win the fight, and for their side to prevail.

I recommend—no, I implore my readers (both of you!) to read carefully the writings of Jim Wallis referenced in this blog, as well as his earlier book, God’s Politics: When the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It. I also recommend Parker Palmer’s Healing the Heart of Democracy as a call to healing, reconciling collaboration to replace the current culture wars.

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] Since I first published this blog, Wallis has become virtually a persona non grata among conservatives, and many conservatives categorically dismiss and refuse to read or hear anything they anticipate will be counter to their own ideological cocoon. But that’s precisely the point and is the reason I quote him here. It is so crucial that we read and listen to all perspectives. No single person—no human group of any size—is totally right or totally wrong about anything. Every person, and every human group, has something of value to contribute to the common good, and to cut them off without a hearing is to abandon the common good to a closed ideology.

[2] Since this blog was published the first time, the ideological referenced above has become so pervasive that now it has its own label: “culture wars.”

A More Excellent Way

On September 10, 2012, I published a blog in which I listed positive accomplishments of every American president, beginning with Harry Truman.[1] I was determined to find something good and positive about each of the twelve men who have occupied the Oval Office since 1945. It wasn’t difficult at all.

While each president made positive contributions to history (some more, some less. Even the presidents whom I least respected had their share of positive contributions); nevertheless, those contributions were discounted universally and absolutely by the opposition party; indeed, opposition parties are rife with a virtually absolute absence of anything good to say about a public official or candidate in the “other” party.

Does anyone really—REALLY—believe that anybody is totally bad or totally good; always wrong or always right? Is there absolutely no common ground, no mutual values, no shared vision upon which we stand together as a nation? Does everything have to be all-or-nothing?

And, what about the supporters of those maligned public figures? One might expect them to come to the defense of their partisan heroes. But it occurred to me very recently that the more common response, rather than to defend one’s fellow partisan, is to counterattack the opposition! Does no one believe in one’s own cause anymore?

A case in point occurred yesterday morning on social media. It’s no secret that President Trump’s personal morality, ethics and character are under attack from Democrats and others to the left of center (in the same way President Obama’s character and integrity were attacked by Republicans and others to the right of center—and so forth and so on as far back as history is recorded—including Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth.) The issue is compounded when so much vile is from conjecture and assumption, and/or simply wishful thinking, and when it is believed carte blanche without question by those who want it to be true.

The social media response to which I presently refer made no attempt to defend or justify the President. Instead, the responder published a list of Democrat sins that went back several years. Having been a child myself, and having helped rear three sons, eight grandchildren and dozens of surrogate sons and daughters through the church, it’s my memory and my ongoing observation that the most common childhood defense when one is without excuse or justification is to deflect: “But, he did it, too!”

Agreed! As a theologian and a student of the Judeo/Christian Scriptures, I affirm that there is none without sin. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). As a theologian, it falls my duty to point out that our duty related to sin is to confess our own sins before (and perhaps even instead of) pointing out those of others. There’s that thing about the speck in our neighbor’s eye and the log in our own.

In the denomination I serve, we observe Communion (Eucharist, Lord’s Supper) every Sunday, and it is open to all who hunger and thirst for the presence of Christ in their lives. The Table unites us, because at The Table the one thing we all have in common is our need for God’s grace. It’s an act of humility to receive the loaf and cup, as we remember the humility of Christ.

While it won’t appeal to the general population, can we who claim to be people of faith begin in that common sense of humility? Can we come to any event in life, not in certitude, and certainly not in arrogance, but in humility—as one has said, as one beggar telling other beggars where bread has been found?

It’s true that Christians are called to confront sin; however, there are effective ways, ineffective ways, and counterproductive ways to approach any task. An entire generation has rejected Christianity (although most retain a belief in God and a desire to follow Jesus of Nazareth) because of the counterproductive approach that comes across as judgmental and condemning, when a more effective confrontation might be to offer a “still more excellent way” (I Corinthians 12:31-13:13).

That’s how it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] Here’s the link: https://flawedglass.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/yesterday-morning-i-stopped-to-smell-the-roses/

Roots of Discord

Like most people who are not in denial or defending some vested interest, I see the racism, misogyny, and xenophobia that are endemic in much of American culture and blatantly rampant in some quarters of national leadership. And while I deplore them as much as anybody, I don’t believe these traits are chosen—they are not intentional or premeditated—as some would imply. 

I see us beating each other up with accusations of these evil, even demonic, qualities; however, short of mental illness or demonic possession, I don’t believe anyone would, upon reflection, decide: “I’m going to be a racist.” In fact, most people deny they are racist. For the most part, I repeat, it's not intentional or premeditated.

More than individual traits, these character flaws are systemic. They are embedded in the human ethos and have been manifested in virtually every human culture at least since the emergence of the conquest cultures during the Bronze Age. The conquest cultures, with their characteristic myth of redemptive violence, were clearly articulated and described as early as the Babylonian creation myth (The Enuma Elish), which dates to the 12^th and 13^th centuries BCE.

 Walter Wink describes that myth of redemptive violence, which he began to discern while watching the TV cartoons with his children during the 1960s. He writes:

“I began to examine the structure of cartoons, and found the same pattern repeated endlessly: an indestructible hero is doggedly opposed to an irreformable and equally indestructible villain. Nothing can kill the hero, though for the first three quarters of the show he (rarely she) suffers grievously and appears hopelessly doomed, until miraculously, the hero breaks free, vanquishes the villain, and restores order until the next episode. Nothing finally destroys the villain or prevents his or her reappearance, whether the villain is soundly trounced, jailed, drowned, or shot into outer space.”[1]

In the Babylonian myth, creation itself is an act of violence, and that mythic structure spread from Ireland to China. Wink continues:

“Typically, a male war god residing in the sky fights a decisive battle with a female divine being, usually depicted as a monster or dragon, residing in the sea or abyss (the feminine element). Having vanquished the original enemy by war and murder, the victor fashions a cosmos from the monster’s corpse. Cosmic order requires the violent suppression of the feminine, and is mirrored in the social order by the subjection of women to men and people to ruler.”[2]

If the Babylonian myth of creation describes a very early example of acculturated misogyny, the testimony of endemic racism dates at least a millennium earlier to the Hebrew Scriptures, where it emerges from the feud between Abraham’s jealous wife, Sarai and his concubine (Sarai’s handmaiden), Hagar. Ishmael, Hagar’s son and the source of Sarai’s jealousy, is banished with his mother, and became known as the father of the Arabic peoples. Ishmael hated Abraham and his tribe because of his banishment, which essentially cut him off from a rather affluent inheritance as Abraham’s first-born. That hatred became the basis of the relationship between the Israelites and the descendants of Ishmael (which continues today) and is an early depiction of acculturated racism.

In every manifestation of misogyny and racism, whether systemic and cultural or individual and personal, the root is an intolerance of differences—xenophobia. I submit that xenophobia is the foundation of virtually every human relations dysfunction, and I would emphasize the “phobia” part of that word.

In recent writings and addresses fear consistently is identified as a major factor behind the animosity that festers like an open wound and divides the American people.

The antidote to xenophobia, I submit, is that people simply become better acquainted. In training for pastoral care, a primary principle was (and still is) that between me and any other human there are infinitely more similarities than differences.  But it’s human nature to focus on the differences. And that focus eventually leads to fear.

When people become better acquainted with each other, it’s common for them to discover those similarities—common interests and hopes and ideals—that become a basis for cooperative, peaceful relationships. I suggest that the same is true in group and community relationships.

What are your hopes? Your dreams? What do you want to accomplish? If you share your responses with me, I suspect we’ll discover that I have the same kinds of hopes and dreams and objectives, and the foundation will have been laid for the growth of trust and friendship.

Sound too good to be true? Too easy? I don’t know. Has it ever been tried? Really?

Really?

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] http://www2.goshen.edu/~joannab/women/wink99.pdf

[2] Ibid.

Collateral Damage?

I’m not opposed to guns. In case you missed that, I’ll repeat it: I’m not opposed to guns. Period.

I like Beto O’Rourke; but he shot himself in the foot (sic) at the Presidential debate: “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used on fellow Americans anymore.”

He should have stopped with his set-up: “If it’s a weapon designed to kill people on a battlefield; if the high-impact, high-velocity round when it hits your body shreds everything inside of your body because it was designed to do that, so that you would bleed to death on a battlefield so that you wouldn’t be able to get up and kill one of our soldiers. When we see that being used against children. And in Odessa I met the mother of a 15-year-old girl who was shot by an AR-15, and that mother watched her bleed to death, over the course of an hour, because so many other people were shot by that AR-15 in Odessa, in Midland, there weren’t enough ambulances to get to them in time.”

In the first place, “we” can’t take away people’s guns, unless the 2^nd amendment is rescinded. As I’ve said and written many times, there’s no possibility—NO POSSIBILITY—of that happening. It would take a two-thirds vote of both houses of congress even to present a proposal for rescinding. That proposal then would have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states! Count them. Use your fingers if you need to: 13 states could defeat the proposal to rescind the 2^nd (or any other) amendment of the Constitution. In your wildest fantasy, do you think that fewer than 13 states would vote against rescinding the 2^nd amendment? And that question presupposes prior approval by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress! In your wildest fantasies, do you believe that could happen?

And, about that “slippery slope” the NRA keeps talking about: it’s hypothetical presumption—the rhetoric of conspiracy and paranoia, “based on the theory that too many firearm regulations could ultimately result in the loss of Second Amendment rights entirely. Take one type of weapon designed specifically for maximum killing impact off the shelves and next thing you know all our guns are gone.

“For me, the larger issue is not whether AR-15s or AK-47s will be confiscated; they won’t be in my lifetime, and maybe not ever, largely because that’s logistically and legally impossible. California alone houses at least a million assault weapons. American firearms are not on a slippery slope to confiscation.”[1]

Your guns are safe! Barak Obama nor Beto O’Rourke nor anyone else is coming to take your guns. So, relax. Breathe.

I think I’ve I addressed both sides—pretty much the entire spectrum—from Beto to the NRA. At least that’s been my attention. There already is too much attention paid to one side to the neglect of the other.

To my friends to the left: relax. Breathe. Nobody—NOBODY—is happy about the 302 mass shootings in the United States this calendar year. Nobody believes it’s OK for slobbering maniacs to shoot large groups of people, whether innocent children in schools or festive music fans attending a concert, or unsuspecting shoppers at a mall. Senator Chris Coons (D) from Delaware said, “I respect [O’Rourke’s] passion. Anyone who has had to sit with the parents of victims of gun violence, parents who have lost their children, as I have, after the Sandy Hook shooting, after the Tucson shooting. ...To sit with a parent who has lost a child and have no answer about how we’re going to make the country safer is a very hard experience.”[2]

My concern is that “to have no answer” status. As a nation, we’ve made it a guns-vs-no-guns issue, while that’s not the issue!!! The people who support unrestricted gun ownership point to mental illness and/or sinfulness as the problem. The real issue is that everybody is pointing to “the problem,”[3] but there is no cooperative effort, nor any apparent initiative or desire, to find a solution!

Bill Leonard, continuing from the above quote, wrote,

“No, the real tragedy of the frenzy over O’Rourke’s remarks is that the national conversation they sparked seems more intent on saving guns than on saving human beings.[4] …

“Other than Coons, and of course O’Rourke, I’ve not heard anyone else on cable television or social media give serious attention to “a 15-year-old girl,” her body shredded by gunshots, whose “mother watched her bleed to death” waiting on an ambulance.

“Responses to O’Rourke’s comments are, I think, confirmation of where we are as a nation in the year of our Lord(?) 2019. The American Republic seems so bound by the Second Amendment as a ‘God given, sacred right,’[5] that mass shootings increasingly seem a regrettable kind of collateral damage, the sad reality of non-negotiable weaponry.”

Leonard concludes that congress “could at least fund more ambulances.” It’s a pitiful reality check for a nation that is too focused on guns, pro and/or con, to attempt to find solutions to the bloodbath that seems increasingly acceptable as “collateral damage.”

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1]  Bill Leonard, “Beto O’Rourke’s Debate Invective And The New ‘Back To School’ Video Are The Jeremiads Of Our Time,” Baptist News Global, September 20, 2019. This blog is but an extension of my resonation with Leonard’s column, and his “larger issue” will be discussed below.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Even though we can’t agree on what the problem really is!

[4] I would add, “or restricting guns in some way”.

[5] A direct quote from our President.

Transformation--My Testimony

I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church during the 1940s and 50s. I cherish and honor that heritage, even though I have moved a considerable distance from it, theologically, politically (sic), and biblically. My passion for the faith and for the teachings of Jesus came from that background. I literally do not remember a time in my life that I didn’t believe and accept that “Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so.”

Undeniably, my dependence upon the Bible as the standard of measure (canon is the official word for that) for matters of faith and Christian living came also from that legacy.

Ironically, it also was the study of the Bible that began my shift away from my native church. I have an inquisitive mind. It’s in my DNA; but it proved a liability in my early years in the Southern Baptist Church. From my earliest memories I had questioned specific applications of Scripture; but those questions were discouraged. I was even told, “There are just some things we’re not supposed to know.”

I didn’t accept that then; and I don’t accept it today. During my last year in high school and through my undergraduate years, I frequently said, “I’m not fully a Southern Baptist; but, I’m closer to them than anybody else.” The truth was that I really didn’t know much about what anybody else believed.

It has been said, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Well, I’ve never been close to being an atheist; nevertheless, when I was sent to Vietnam by the Unites States Marine Corp, my dependence upon my faith was at perhaps it’s highest level.

I took it upon myself to “be in the Word” as much as possible, and since I was assigned to headquarters company, headquarters battalion, 3^rd Marine Division, I had time and some level of security in which to do so. I decided to begin with Paul’s epistle to the Romans: you know, where Martin Luther found such discrepancies between what he had been taught and what the Bible says.

Well, I was letting the Bible speak to me because that’s what my preachers and Sunday School teachers had told me to do; but very early I began to note that what I thought was in the Bible, really wasn’t there. I even found some things that actually were counter to what I had been taught. The more I read the Bible, the less I could reconcile everything I had learned with what I found in the Bible.

At first it was a troubling experience—even frightening. After all, I was supposed to believe what I was taught, wasn’t I—not to question God or the Bible? What I came to realize was that the real message I was taught was to not question what I was being taught about God or the Bible. There is a difference.

But, in the Epistle of Romans I discovered that my relationship with God is not dependent upon believing right doctrine. It is dependent upon my accepting Jesus’ teaching that God already loves me and wants to make my life full and complete, regardless of—sometimes in spite of—what I believe at any given moment. Faith, then, is not a set of beliefs or doctrines, but is the willingness to live as if I truly believe what I say I believe.

Indeed, those moments of anxiety began to be transformed into a sense of comfort as I began to realize I had been trusting correct doctrine instead of trusting God as the basis of my relationship with God. Out of a fear of hell I had been driven to cling to doctrine—to put my faith in it rather than in the God revealed in Jesus. That realization is both freeing and motivating. In recalling that transformative time in my life, I am reminded of John Gillespie McGee’s poem, “High Flight:”

 Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

It was in reading the Bible that I slipped the surly bonds of my faith culture. And, time after time, it has been in reading the Bible that I have discovered new understandings of God’s unlimited, unmerited grace in contrast to the restrictive, legalistic, and exclusionary doctrines that are born out of human fear and lack of trust in that same grace.

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

Rantings After a Road Trip

Jo Lynn and I just returned from a 2850-mile road trip to the Colorado Rocky Mountains. I love mountains, from Pinnacle Mountain in Little Rock to Turkey Mountain in Tulsa; from the Boston and Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas to the Appalachians to the Rockies to the Sierras. And when I leave, it’s always with a touch of grief that I watch in my rear-view mirror as they sink below the horizon.

It was a great trip: an escape from the oppressive heat and humidity in Arkansas. We drove through Rocky Mountain National Park, past the highest point on Trail Ridge Road (elevation 12,059 feet according to our GPS).

Columbine Lake ~ Arapaho National Forest (My Photo)

I hiked from the trail head (elevation 10,095 feet) to Columbine Like, sitting beautifully in a glacial cirque at 11,060 feet above sea level. The air was crisp and cool and dry; and thinner than the air in Arkansas.

It was a tranquil time of peaceful appreciation of God’s creation.

But then we had to come home. Home, of course, is not the issue. To channel the late Joan Rivers, “Can we talk?”

Speed limits are a joke. Virtually everybody ignores them: most drivers (and, yes, that includes me) and the police officers charged with enforcing them. It’s universal knowledge that there are two speed limits: the posted one, and the enforced one. On Interstates and major highways, the latter is generally 8 – 12 mph faster than the former, depending upon the traffic conditions, road conditions, the weather, and the current mood of the enforcing officer.

Inconsistency of enforcement is my primary gripe. We’ve all driven through radar at 80 mph and been ignored. On the other hand, my last traffic citation (in 1969) was for speeding. I was driving 58 mph in a 55-mph zone. Decades later, my nephew was cited for impeding traffic. He was driving 58 mph in a 55-mph zone. Inconsistency! It’s difficult—it’s impossible—to know what to expect from other drivers, as well as from those who are charged with enforcing the traffic. Still, we all think we know what we can “get away with”.

I generally set my cruise control around 5 mph over the posted speed limit. By actual count over several decades (I’m a statistics nerd), when I set my cruise at 75 in a 70-mph zone, I’ll be passed by 22 vehicles for every vehicle I pass. That puts me in the slowest 5% of vehicles on the road—when exceeding the posted speed limit—breaking the law!

When the posted speed limit is 55, and I set my cruise at 60, I’ll be passed by 9 vehicles for every vehicle I pass. That puts me in the slowest 12% of traffic.

A rule of thumb offered publicly and frequently by law enforcement representatives is to “go with the flow” in traffic. But, which flow? On Interstate highways the flow in the right lane is usually slower than the posted speed limit, while the flow in the left lane may well exceed it by 15 mph—or more! How often have you been trapped in the right lane behind a vehicle driving 68 mph, and had to wait while a line of cars in the left lane blast your doors off at 85 mph?

And the timing! You’re in the right lane as you’re supposed to be, approaching a slower vehicle, and in your rear-view mirror you see the rabid race driver wannabe bearing down on you. You try to judge; you have to decide: is there enough time to pass the vehicle ahead without impeded the driver bearing down behind? Do I speed up? Do I simply touch my brakes, disengage the cruise and wait for Dale Jr. to pass ? Or, do I change lanes to pass and let the speedster behind me deal with it?

An apparent sense of entitlement is assumed by many drivers. Yesterday on I-40 I was completing a pass of an 18-wheeler when a pickup roared up behind and tailgated within five feet of my rear bumper! The vehicle had been about a half-mile behind me when I began the pass, and there was no other traffic on the road at that point. It’s not an unusual experience. Am I obligated to speed up to get out of his way (which I did in this case)? Is he entitled to travel at 85 mph while everyone steps aside and bows as he passes?

To some degree I don’t think the mph is the issue. The issue is “Get out of my way!!!” I know frustration runs rampant on the highways. I get more frustrated than some. The extreme, of course, is road rage. I certainly don’t want to be the source of frustration, because frustration leads to traffic mishaps. Frustrated drivers become aggressive and dangerous. So I must choose: do I accept the frustration and deal with it; or do I forget that driving is a team activity that requires coordination and cooperation, and simply do what I want to do and to heck with the rest of those sharing the road? The latter is the choice of too many drivers. 

There’s nothing that ruins the tranquility of a mountain vacation quite like having to share the trip home with entitled wannabe road racers on the verge of road rage.

Like I said, speed limits are a joke.

Anyway, that’s my whine for the day. Would somebody please pass the cheese.

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim