Creatio Ex Nihilo

5 Ideas for Ethical Social Networking

Recently I wrote a piece, “Communities or Commodities”  questioning the self-promotional nature of social networks.  We develop a compartmentalized view of our online relationships as if they are somehow detached from the realm of ethical behavior.  In most spiritual traditions, there are calls to die to one’s self and one’s ego.  Often, this concept is at odds with the very nature of Facebook or Twitter. 

Rather than just complain, I thought I would offer some suggestions.  Perhaps some of them are unrealistic.  These are rooted in my own tradition as a follower of Jesus, but I hope people of any or no spiritual tradition would find them helpful as well:

1. Take a Sabbath from yourself – Take a break one day each week from talking about yourself.  Only post good things and promote the agendas of others. Share and retweet messages that make other people look good. Just make sure that doing so is of no benefit to you.
2. Begin your status updates with “If God wills it…” or some variant thereof. Early Christians admonished one another not to brag about their plans for tomorrow because one never knew what the next day would bring forth.  Admitting the tenuous nature of our plans acknowledges how little we have control of our lives, and in turn, makes us less controlling.
3. Don’t slam with status – Jesus said if you have a problem with a person, go to them directly.  It’s tempting to write messages that are hidden jabs at someone we know will read them.  If you find yourself doing that – STOP.  Hit the delete key and walk away from your computer and go spend time playing with the kids or the dog.
4. Say nice things about people you don’t like – Jesus said to love our enemies and do good to those who attack us.  Having a dispute with a friend?  Post something nice about them.  On a larger scale, rather than post your latest insult about Obama or Palin, write something you admire about them.  You just might find it opens up a dialogue with those with whom you disagree.
5. Pray your Friend List – People always tell me they don’t know how to pray.  Right there, in your networking software, you have a tool to get started.  Spend time each day saying a brief prayer for each person in your friend or following list.  For those of you who are more popular, you may want to break it up over a few days.

I’m not so sure how good I will be at implementing these.  Perhaps some of you have other suggestions to add to the list? 

The Myth of the Young Progressive Christian

Word has it there is a new wave of progressivism among young Christians.  Supposedly, this new group cares about social issues other than abortion or homosexuality.  Many of them want to distance themselves from the Religious Right and instead focus of issues of justice, peace, poverty and the environment.  From what I hear, some of them even want to rethink some basic theological concepts such as the atonement, biblical inerrancy and eschatology.

I would love to sit down and talk with one of these new young progressive Christians.  Like them, I believe there is an alternative path to either conservative evangelicalism or atheism. I would like to think my church is a safe space that welcomes them to explore following Jesus on a deeper level.  The only problem is, I have never encountered one. 

Don’t get me wrong, as I travel and attend conferences, I encounter these young progressive Christians in other parts of the country.  But here in Orange County, NY, most of the under 35 year-olds who check out our church, seem to basically be looking for Saddleback East.

Granted, our area has few people under 35, since the cost of living is high and entry-level employment opportunities low.  So our sample size may not be large enough to draw any conclusions.  Also, I should point out, our church does have many people under the age of 35 who love Vision.  However, few of them resemble the graphic-tee-thick-rimmed-glasses character one encounters in literature about ministry.

Since Vision began eight years ago, I have been astounded by the disconnect between what I read younger generations are looking for in a church, and what many actually gravitate toward.  Although I read that they (forgive my use of the word “they) value authentic community and friendship, I find many are hesitant to commit to a community.  For years I’ve heard that younger generations aren’t looking for a church of programs, but one of relationships.  Yet most under-35’s around here still pick their church based on the size of its children and family programs. Supposedly these new progressives want to rethink some ideas about their faith.  Many even tell me how much they like Rob Bell and Donald Miller.  Yet, any sermon I preach that is the least bit theologically challenging, sends them running to the nearest Willow Creek clone.  More often than not, they seem to be as fearful of new ideas and as rigid in their theology as the stereotypical cane-wielding old church lady.  Ironically, I have a 95 year-old woman in our church who is more open-minded than those a third of her age.

Perhaps it is because we are located in an area of the US where few people even go to church anymore.  Maybe the only under-35 churchgoers around here are the last die-hard holdouts and as such are looking for that old time religion.   The many other under-35’s I do know have no use for church.  Contrary to Dan Kimball's book, they don’t even like Jesus. They would describe themselves as atheists and no amount of candles, meditation, Taize or dialogue will ever convince them to be otherwise.

My intent here is not to criticize anyone in that age group who is looking for something different than what Vision offers.  I only want to point out that much of we pastors read and accept as orthodoxy about the spirituality of younger generations, does not match what many of us actually encounter in real world ministry.

Is it possible that much of the expertise we hear in conferences and read in books is merely drawn from other books and conferences, and not from actual experience? Those of you who are under 35, do you feel you have been stereotyped as to what you are looking for in a church?  How many of you out there have experienced this in your ministry? 

Christianity Stinks

My son’s friend and his father were recently driving through Warwick past a cow pasture on a hot summer day.  Overwhelmed by the smell, they quickly closed the car windows and sped toward fresher air.  “Wait,” said the boy, “I want to go back and smell it again.”

“Why?” said his father. “It stinks back there.”

“Yea,” said the boy, “but it stinks real good."

Have you ever got in trouble over how you smelled? Whether you’re a teenager who smokes or a cheating husband, aromas can condemn you.  The scent of either tobacco or perfume, as different as they are, can make for a long night when you walk through the front door. For some people, the most useful accessories to have in their car are not a flashlight and road flares, but Altoids and a can of Ozium. 

Smells are pervasive. They are hard to get rid of.  There is something about smells that is difficult to cover up.  Scents seem to attach themselves to us, and even eminate from us.

Smells disclose how faithful we are to our promises to stop smoking, stop drinking or even to stop cheating on a spouse.  They follow us around, revealing where we’ve been, who we’ve been with, what we’ve done. But for all of their objective persistence, smells are also subjective.

Our sense of smell is very closely tied to our sense of memory.  Consequently, whether we find a scent pleasing or not, is subjective.  What one person likes the smell of, another may find objectionable.  Some people love the smell of gasoline, while others find it nauseating.  A perfume one women loves may conjure up the image of bathroom deodorizer in another.

Smells are both pervasive and subjective.  According to the apostle Paul, the pervasive nature of scents as well as the subjective reactions they produce, are much like the Christian life.  He describes himself and all Christians as the “aroma of Christ”. As such, our influence in the world is both inescapable and open to interpretation.  When we follow Christ authentically, we release the scent of God into this world.  It is a scent that gets into everything like the smell of gasoline, while at the same time both attracting and repelling people.

Apollo's Legacy: So This is the Future?

As we celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the first lunar landing, I feel a profound sense of disappointment.  Here I am, four decades after the amazing events of that July day writing not from the surface of Mars, as I had once envisioned as a child, or even from earth orbit, but from a house in the suburbs.  What happened to the future I was promised?  I’m not talking about fantastical future scenarios of flying cars and teleportation, but the never materialized future of space exploration or even a functional space transportation system.

Face it, for people my age, the future arrived and as far as space goes, it is somewhat pedestrian.  How in the world did American culture get bored with exploration of new worlds yet fascinated with death of Michael Jackson?  Why haven’t we returned to the moon, or gone to Mars? I know all the standard responses such as, “We should have spent all that money on the poor?”  or “We should spend that money here on earth?”

Two quick responses:  Don’t kid yourself.  First, back in the sixties, if the US had not spent that $25 billion on the space race it most likely would have been spent on Vietnam or the Great Society program.  And we all know what a stunning success those two projects turned out to be.  Second, there is no place in space to spend money. Funds allocated to space exploration are spent and create jobs right here on Earth.

Assuming for a moment that one thinks the government should spend money to stimulate the economy, why limit stimulus packages to bailing financial institutions and shovel-ready projects?  Why didn’t the stimulus fund tech-ready projects such as space exploration?  No offense to those who dig ditches, but is ditch digging and road building really a 21^st century dream for America?  Why wasn’t some of the stimulus money earmarked for a return to the moon or even a manned trip to Mars?  Wouldn’t the jobs and technology created by such programs be more beneficial to the future of our country than bank bailouts or new highways?  Why all this nostalgia for New Deal era programs?  What’s next, recreating the Dust Bowl?  Given his threatened cancellation of Project Constellation or any of its alternatives, it appears the only soaring America will do is in President Obama's rhetoric and not in reality.

As a kid, I watched each moon mission on NBC (quite heretically, I was a John Chancellor, not a Walter Cronkite kid) with my Saturn V models.  I led assemblies at Theunis Dey Elementary School explaining the missions to my fellow classmates.  My bedroom walls were papered with posters of Apollo memorabilia.  Why doesn’t our government spend some cash to reignite those dreams in our kids today?  Instead we bail out companies that should probably just be allowed to fail.  What kid is gong to hang a poster of AIG on their wall or spend hours building a Revell model of their local Bank of America branch?  The human spirit of exploration, curiosity and adventure is the real institution that shouldn’t be allowed to fail.

I still have hope.  Perhaps the entrepreneurial spirit of private space companies can lead the way in space.  It’s probably best that they do.  The Apollo program was one of the few big government programs that went right. Yet I still can’t shake the fear that, like Portugal, history will remember us as the country that explored the new world first, and then left its colonization to others.  Are we destined to become an earth-bound scientifically-illiterate country where people think moon landings are hoaxes and that dinosaurs and people lived at the same time?   Will the American presence in space be limited to hamburgers available on the children’s menu at a Chinese restaurant on Mars?

I think back forty years tonight, of me sitting in front of a black and white TV in a turquoise and pink motel room in Ortley Beach, NJ, and wonder if I will ever feel that sense of amazement and infinite possibilities again.  If there's one legacy Apollo 11 has left us, it's that the answer to that question can always be, "Yes!"

Healthy Church: A See-Through Community

Have you ever tried to get a straight answer out of a politician?  A few years back, I approached a local official about our church using one of the town’s facilities.  To this day, I’m still not sure what his answer was.  It was one of those “well yes and no” deals.  Although mastering the ambiguity of “yes and no” may be a shrewd trait in politicians, in almost every other aspect of life, it is frustrating and sometimes even hurtful to encounter.

Is there anything worse than inviting someone to a party at your home and hearing the response,  “maybe if we’re not busy that day.”  In other words, “If nothing better comes up, rest assured, being last on my list, your party is the first place I’ll come.”  Really makes you feel good about a friendship, doesn’t it?  Are you coming?  Well, yes and no.

That behavior is exactly what the apostle Paul was accused of by church in Corinth.  He had told the Corinthians he would be visiting them twice, once on his way to Macedonia and once on his way back.  As it turns out he did neither.  From Paul’s response in this letter we can infer that the Corinthians accuse him of being duplicitous and deceitful - of saying yes when he really meant no.

Why is it of any concern to us, two thousand years later, that an early church planter cancelled two planned changed his travel plans?  What possible importance could such historical minutiae carry?  The actual details of why Paul cancelled his trip we’ll examine next week. However, the way in which Paul responds to these accusations can teach us plenty about how followers of Jesus are to behave not only within a healthy church, but also in all of our relationships. 

Healthy Church: Finding Comfort Outside Your Comfort Zone

Every home has a sacred object in it.  Like a tree a life I the Garden of Eden, each home has an area which is forbidden.  As a kid, you touch it at your own peril.  When I was in Middle School, I had a friend named Jerry.  Jerry’s house was a fun place to hang out.  His parents were pretty laid back compared to those of everyone else (they had HBO).  Except for one unbreakable rule.  When we were in Jerry’s den, no one was allowed to sit in his father’s reclining chair.  If any of us, or even Jerry sat in it, his mother would come running in, almost in a panic, “Don’t sit in your father’s chair!  Don’t sit in your father’s chair!” Even worse than sitting there, was moving the TV Guide that was strategically placed on the side table next to the Lay-Z-Boy.

At the time, having such devotion to a particular piece of furniture seemed silly.  It reminded me of Archie Bunker, and his now Smithsonian-enshrined chair. However, as I got older, I too fell victim to the lure of the comfy chair.  In our home, there once was a big green chair that I loved.  It was where I wrote all my papers when I was in seminary.  It was where I used to sit with the kids when they were little.  It was where I was sitting when I received the phone call that my father had died.  For a decade, that chair was a place of great comfort for me.   It was my comfort zone.  Eventually there came a day when Pam had to break some bad news to me.  After enduring the punctures and fluids of three kids and two dogs, the green chair would have to go.  But, I loved that chair.  It fit me perfectly. I was losing my comfort zone.

We all want to have a nice comfy place where we can retreat from the troubles of the world, rest and feel better.  So at first reading, the apostle Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 1 seem reassuring.  After all, hearing that when we suffer, it is so that God will comfort us and we in turn can be a source of comfort for others.  It all sounds so - well, comfortable.