Hopeless

I'm seriously contemplating deactivating Facebook - at least through the end of the election this year.  I am stunned at the level of downright hatred and vitriol I see - sometimes from people with whom I even agree and often have great respect for.  Not this time.  When someone can actually post a photo which decries "I feel safer in the hands of ISIS than I do in the hands of a white cop,"   I recognize all this for what it is:  complete and total insanity, lacking in any shred of reality or truth.  People will say anything these days, and I challenge anyone to say face to face what they find no problem posting in the relative obscurity of the internet.

...and all of this leaves me feeling hopeless.  In despair.  I find no hope for our world at least in its present form.  I was growing up in the 60's but as a student of history, find that the divisions along racial and political lines are now as worse as they've ever been - even the '60's.  And we have no one to blame but ourselves.  WE have brought this about with our own hatred.

I recall one of the great life lessons I learned coming at the hands, of all people, from my high school cross country and track coach.  Ken Jakalski was an optimist.  Even in the face of reality which perhaps wasn't always that good, especially when it came to team talent, strength, and outlook, he always accentuated the positive.  "Envision yourself winning.  See yourself doing the best yet.  Enthusiasm is the key to success."  It was always a positive attitude so that no matter the expected outcome - we worked for and envisioned the best we could.  And it paid off numerous times.  That life lesson continued in college with the same kinds of attitudes coming from Coach and English Lit professor, Paul Olsen.  "Focus and work toward the positive, not dwell and obsess on the negative"  was the lesson to apply in matters of training and competition, to be carried on into life as well.  Oddly enough, that lesson comes from Scripture, where St. Paul says "do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good"

Today, no longer.  It seems that as a society, we want to focus on the worst in people, and not the best.  Certainly we have lost sight of any semblance of potential that exists within any individual, and we use our flaws, failings - our sins - to divide us, often with a "holier than thou" attitude along the lines of "well I would CERTAINLY never do that!"  Frankly, this is at the heart of our problem.  We live in a world that defends societies that believe in killing anyone with whom they disagree.  Islamic culture has this tenet as a core of its beliefs, and yet we support and defend such countries as Saudi Arabia as a matter of course, and then attacking the religious core of this country - Christianity - which teaches all people to "love one another" (and the aforementioned overcoming of evil with good), and who takes on the philosophy that we are willing to die for our beliefs, rather than the Islamic tenet of being willing to kill for them.  Right along with that, society is attacking the foundational premises of this country, that all rights derive from God, because when we place that responsibility into our own hands, humans can just as easily grant rights as take them away.  Humans can just as easily create rights that exist more within the realm of evil than they do those in the realm of good.  It's why the founders appealed to God, knowing that for humanity, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Why is our society the way it has become?  Because it is also becoming increasingly godless and a-moral.  The two go hand in hand.  Take God out of the equation, and the net result is seen time and again throughout human history.  What is the solution?  It is to find hope in the midst of hopelessness in turning to Christ Jesus.  Yes, one would expect me to say this.  Yes, as a pastor, I certainly ought to have this as my focus.  But it goes beyond that, in that the corrections we've had to make in this own country's history have always been because of recognizing that we were not, in fact, living up to the premise that rights come from God and not by our own hands.

Now I have failed at this throughout my life thus far as well.  I am one who can indeed only obsess over the negative, and not work toward the positive.  Yet I resolve, because my faith in Christ demands it, to be one who remains positive about the future.  I resolve to re-learn those life lessons from my high school and college coaches, and to see the good as best as I can, and to live it in my life.  I resolve to apply Romans 12 and to the best of my ability overcome evil with good.  I guess that also means that Facebook stays on for now, and from this moment forward, I pray, work, and live toward a brighter future.  Will you join me in this pledge?

There Be Dragons Here...

So last night we went to see the new Disney movie "Pete's Dragon."  Honestly, it was well done, and a great, if quite predictable storyline.  In short:  it is a movie about a boy (Pete) who at the age of about 4 is the sole survivor of a car crash deep in the forests near mountains, and as he wanders away from the crash site, is saved from the wolves by a lone dragon who lives in the forest, and presumably was separated from his dragon "clan."  The boy is then helped by the dragon to survive for a number of years in the deep forest.   The heroine is a forest ranger, and the "villain" is played by Karl Urban - the new McCoy in the reimagined "Star Trek" genre.  If I were a movie critic, I would rate it well, and certainly somewhat family friendly.  Of course, it contained some moral implications for society as well:  BUT all within the bounds of a purely fictional tale that is fantasy and not reality.

The movie got me thinking, however, about how we live in a society in which reality and fantasy are often skewed when it comes to the natural world, and sometimes even completely mixed up. Conversations with a parishioner last week centered on all of the wildlife encounters in Yellowstone that end badly for the tourists and even sometimes for the wildlife.  "Buffalo selfies" in which the buffalo gores the unsuspecting selfie-taker while their back is turned are becoming commonplace.  Such an incident happened late last summer, in fact.  multiple people are gored, mauled, or otherwise attacked by wildlife each year, and mostly because they are approaching the wild animals or presenting a threat when young are present.  Replace buffalo with any number of other wild animal (i.e. bears, grizzly bears in particular, elk, moose, and so on...) and it seems our society has become completely ignorant of the reason we call it "wildlife."  Granted, with proper respect and caution, most chance encounters with wildlife end well:  I've had several chance run ins with bears, rattlesnakes, mountain goats, moose, elk, and even buffalo, in which they were always given a wide berth, and all passed without incident.

The prevailing theory from the aforementioned parishioner is that Disney has skewed society's perception of reality when it comes to wildlife.  Let's face it:  "Bambi" portrays wild animals as benign, loving, and pacifistic, while man becomes the villain - ever ready to destroy any and all wildlife at a moments' notice.  Whether the reason or not, the majority of society do not have any respect for the "wild" nature of wildlife.  For whatever reason, many people have no concept that a wild animal can quite possibly kill you, if not injure you severely, which is why in our national parks there are abundant warnings to stay a minimum distance away from such animals.

Now, for some (I would include myself in this), we can see Disney as just entertainment that exists within the realm of fantasy.  But many cannot, and take a fictional movie quite seriously as gospel truth.  It honestly made me wonder how many people might now go out in search of the mythical forest dragon.  For whatever reason, the lack of respect for God's creation (specifically here:  wildlife) is what gets us in trouble.  This lack of respect goes far beyond wildlife, I would add.  We need to know that the more we mess things up in nature, the more it will come back to haunt us.

So go see "Pete's Dragon," and be entertained for a good 1.5 hrs.  But for heaven's sake, whether real or not, recognize nature as what it is:  containing animals and forces which we do not have the capacity to stand in the way of.

The Culture Clock Strikes Midnight

If we compare culture or society to a 24 hour day as some have done with the history of the universe, the results are not promising.  It is unclear who first said it, but the sentiment is a valid one:  "those who repeat history have failed to learn anything from it."  Our society and world are crumbling around us at an alarming rate, but it is not from the reasons that some would identify.

And yet there are generations (or at least classes) of people who believe that the world is a fine place, and that we are getting better as a humanity.  The clock is not about to strike midnight, they might say, but the morning of a new day is just dawning.  Oddly enough, the question of midnight blackness vs. morning sunrise was taken up by C.S. Lewis in his fictional novel "The Great Divorce."  In it, passengers catch a bus which takes them from hell to heaven.  In hell, everyone fights, no one lives on the same block because hatred of neighbor runs so deep, and the twilight is about to give way to total darkness.  In heaven, however, the twilight is giving way to dawn, as all those who made the journey are asked to give up and reject everything about them from hell that they carried with them.

Now without getting into any theological discussions on the merits of Lewis's book (I for one find that as a work of theological fiction, it is a fantastic little read, not for it's theology so much but for its' portrayal of the chasm between heaven and hell, and the total contrast of the two as it applies to human existence and behavior.  And it is that behavior that I see here, that tells me that the culture clock is about to strike midnight.  The "classes" of people who believe in the goodness of humanity are varied, but often they comprise the more socially and politically liberal elements of society.  It is one thing to see this in society, but when those who are theologians fall into such a category, it is absolutely baffling.  Why?  Because it is a complete and total denial of the human condition - one which is clearly and articulately spelled out by the church time and again.  Christianity as a rule does not believe in the "goodness" of humanity, but rather the complete and utter depravity of it.  The greatest and best of history are still, in the final analysis, sinful - having committed errors, sins, and negative acts toward others.  And so for theologians to take such a view is, in the final analysis, a denial of the Christian belief in the power of Christ to save, not to mention that any "goodness" on humanity's part comes only through our collective wills being captive to God's.

Take the recent San Francisco 49'ers quarterback controversy:  Colin Kaepernick's refusal to stand for the national anthem.  Many of the same people who laud him for his courage in publicly making his statement absolutely ridiculed Tim Tebow a few years back for praying on the field.  If you are one of those people, YOU are what is wrong with America.  This is the problem today:  right is wrong, up is down, and good and evil have been thoroughly confused.  Many want to compare society to the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, and while that comparison might have merit, quite simply history shows that any affluent society eventually develops apathy toward the very thing our founders point to as the source of all rights:  God.

So where do we go from here?  How do we get to a new day dawning?  It's pretty simple, really.   What made America great once was it's religious conviction at the core of its existence.  That has been lost today.  So as the old country preacher says, "its not where you've been, but where you go from here."  Want a new day?  Want to make America great again?  Want to be stronger together?  It starts by getting out of the hell that C.S. Lewis depicts, and seeking once again the presence and providence of God, along with all the necessary changes to the human ego and behavior that are demanded of those who are captive to the will of God.   Stop being offended by everything and everyone.  Start living as though life and others truly matter in this world.  Start living in accordance with the will of God who calls us out of the evil of the human heart, and into the goodness of the Christ who teaches us to love one another as we have been loved by God.

If the clock strikes midnight, we have no one to blame but ourselves.