What is the Matter with Us?

Recently I heard that the First Lady was booed at NASCAR Event promoting "Joining Forces" a program to support Military families. It seems to me that there is now no lower limit on how disrespectful we can be.

I believe that much of this disrespect stems from a common root cause. Whatever the social ill: booing the wife of a president, political gridlock, bullying, class warfare, sexual aggression, human trafficking, ethnic, religious, and racial hatred, it all stems from a lack of respect. Obviously a lack of respect for others, but less obviously, a lack of respect for ourselves. As human beings, we should recognize our common humanity, our common vulnerabilities and our need for mutual support.

We may not and most likely cannot respect all the actions of our fellow humans, but at least we can acknowledge their humanity. It amazes me how quickly that we, who consider ourselves "nice", civil, and even religious people, can so easily go from laughing with others to laughing at others. How quickly we disdain those who think differently than us, who believe differently, or who have fallen into some misfortune of circumstance or personal weakness.

For those of us who consider ourselves believers, how much more that awareness should be. In the book of Genesis, we read that human beings are "created in the Image of God". If we are believers and premise human existence on that statement, then we must accept that we and every other human being has infinite value. If each human being has infinite value, then they are entitled to respect. If we believe the "Good Book" and accept it as the explanation of our present existence and future hope, then we should take heed to the Psalm:

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers...

For those who are not religious, but otherwise consider themselves "respectable" people, then consider this quote from Immanuel Kant:

“Men are respectable only as they respect.”

It is not a great distance from occupying the "seat of mockers" to becoming the object thereof.

One of a Kind

Moses Feliciano Ricardo Boquiren (1960 - 2011)

A friend passed away recently and not just a friend to me, but a friend to all. I could not let the end of his life pass by without comment.

I first met Moses back in 1999 at a church spaghetti dinner. My wife and I were visiting (first time visitors in fact), and we did not want to be presumptive about including ourselves in the spaghetti luncheon. We were about to leave when Moses caught us and invited us to stay. We declined and told him "go and have lunch with your church family". Moses said, "you are family" and so we stayed..... for years.

That was Moses. Radically inclusive. Radically welcoming. He was one of those very few people who was always "fully present" with you. When you were in his presence, you felt like you were the only person in the room.

Moses not only made you feel welcome, he made you laugh. He always had a joke on the tip of his tongue. He was a story teller and you found you could listen to his stories for hours. You left his presence feeling glad about the encounter.

He had a way of ingratiating himself with any person or any group. We took a trip to Ohio once and had dinner as the guests of an Amish family. The Amish children were fascinated with his Asian features. They asked him about his obviously non-Amish appearance. Moses explained that he was a "Flexican"....a Phillipino-Mexican.

At his standing-room-only funeral (which is a statement in itself), I saw so many different people, White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, white collar, blue collar, and clerical collar. I heard stories about how he helped people, encouraged people, inspired people, and led people to faith.

In my estimation, Moses demonstrated living a Christian life better than most. His life and the testimonies about him have been an inspiration to me. I hope that I can learn from his example and become more inclusive, more encouraging, and more fully present with those who I encounter. By so doing I hope I can honor his life and honor the gift of God that he was to so many.

Freedom from Tyranny

On this particular 4th of July (2011), I was thinking about the greatest tyranny we have ever faced.....ourselves and "our way of life." Over the past half century, we have relied on government protection, government entitlements, government assistance, and armed intervention in foreign lands to secure these "blessings of liberty" and "our way of life". The trouble is that we have consumed more of life than we were been willing to pay for at the time. And now the bill has come due.....$14,000,000,000,000.

One way to put that number in perspective is see what it would really take to pay it down compared to other nations (see Sovereign Debt Chart). To reduce our debt to only 60% of GDP by 2026 will require 94% of our GDP (our entire economic output)! That is astounding figure!

The amounts being debated in Washington are downright paltry compared to the sums needed to get ahead of the growing debt. As absurd as it is to say we are not raising the debt ceiling this year, it is equally absurd to say that taxes breaks are not going to be cut or that taxes are not going to be raised for all of us.

Before we get our righteous indignation riled up at "big government", we should ask ourselves have we ever taken our turn at the government trough? Have we ever used a government subsidized housing loan? student loan? collected SSA benefits? filed a medicare claim? eaten clean food? drank clean water? breathed clean air? advocated for involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan? Those two wars alone will account for $4 trillion of our debt.

So this fourth, let us celebrate the blessings of our liberty and our way of life as Christmas in July, but with an eye towards "February" when the credit cards come due. The greatest threat to the freedom of our nation is not some cell of terrorists. The greatest threat to freedom is insolvency.

"The borrower is servant to the lender" - Proverbs 22:7

A Son-in-Law’s Memories

Van Zissimos March 30, 1920 - March 18, 2011

I first met Van Zissimos when I started dating my wife in 1980. Two months later, I proposed. Knowing that I was marrying into a traditional Greek family, I went to my future father-in-law and asked for permission to marry his daughter. He replied “If you love her enough.” Though the reply caused me a short bout of cold feet, I soon became his son-in-law. I also gained a father-in-law…..the best father-in-law that anyone could ask for!

My Boy
Once I was in the family, I was really in. You only had to watch the “Greek Wedding” movie to understand. He fondly referred to me as “My Boy.” I was always welcome in his house as he was welcome in mine. We only lived two miles from each other, so he was a continual presence at our home. So much a presence that the conception of my children hung in the balance.

I’m Having a Problem
I was so welcomed and so included in his family, that he had no problem calling me when he had a problem. “Alex my boy” he would begin, “I’m having a problem with my…..car, furnace, TV, ….”. On the surface of it, it sounded like he was just asking for advice, but this was really a coded request for me to come over and fix it for him.

Coffee and Pie
Van enjoyed his pie and coffee after dinner. I often shared pie and coffee with him, usually at his kitchen table. Sometimes I would bring dessert over and sometimes he would get a pie at the grocery store, but to sit at the same table and fellowship over a pie and coffee was his joy.

Rails and Ties
You did not have to hang around my father-in-law long to learn that he was a railroad man through and through. Through the years Van taught me all there was to know about railroad switching, braking, conducting, and “humping cars”. Before you let that phrase leave a questionable mental picture in your mind, “humping cars” just means pushing rail cars to the top of the hill in the yard and then allowing the car to roll back down, using switches to route them to the train you were building.

Red Lobster
Though I now live 30 miles away, I still go to the same family dental practice near father-in-law's home. Following the afternoon appointment, I would drop by and ask him if he would like to go out to eat. Sometimes he was in a funk when I first got there, but after a while he would brighten up and say, “Alex my boy, do you want to go out to eat? How about Red Lobster?” So off we would go to Red Lobster. Rainbow Trout was his favorite. After Red Lobster, we went over to Culver’s for his favorite treat, a pineapple sundae. As an added bonus, Culvers has free Wi-Fi, so I would bring my corporate laptop along, and we would catch up on the latest pictures of his great-grandson on Facebook.

Thankful
My father-in-law was always thankful for his family. He lived for holiday gatherings and meals. As patriarch of the family, he often took the lead to say grace. In fact, he took the lead no matter whose house he was in and that was OK. He never forgot how he came to this country with nothing and how God had blessed him with children and great grandchildren. I will never cease to be thankful to God for bringing him into my life that I might marry his daughter and be blessed with a family of my own.

His Faith and Hope
The most important thing you would learn about my father-in-law was his faith in Christ. It was unshakeable. Despite all the struggles he had been through, he maintained a solid faith and confidence in God, even to the last days of his life. It was a confidence that could not be faked, especially in the throes of a terminal illness.

See You When I get There
Just before he passed, I told my father-in-law that I would see him when I get to the other side. And I fully expect to. My confidence is in the same God who brought us to together. When you consider the series of coincidences that allowed the paths of Van Zissimos and Mary Cutrubus to converge at a Coney Island on the southwest side of Detroit, you realize how improbable, how unlikely it is that I have my family today. It has been said that coincidences are miracles where God chooses to remain anonymous. It was a miracle that I met my father-in-law at all. And I am confident in the miracle that will allow me to see him again.

The Lord's Table

The other day, our "small group" met after a long hiatus from formal meetings during the summer. Many of us have been busy with travel, visiting out-of-state family, children's high school activities, college graduations, exchange student host family meetings. You get the idea.

So, we finally met on a Saturday night and had Pizza together. Usually, we have a more formal study in the living room. But somehow, this day we started our meeting around the kitchen table. We pulled up a few more chairs and began to read the devotional prepared by our small group leader and dear friend. Our devotional was a prayer by Henri Nouwen:

Dear God,
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!
Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?
Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?
Please help me to gradually open my hands
and to discover that I am not what I own,
but what you want to give me.
And what you want to give me is love—
unconditional, everlasting love.
Amen.

As I thought about our gathering around the kitchen table, it occurred to me:
- a lot of love, forgiveness, and grace have kept us together at that table over the last few years
- we are struggling to make it in this economy....
- we have been disappointed with people and circumstances...
- we all want to honor God with our plans and our service and yet....
- our lives are being led in directions we would not have chosen for ourselves....
- we continue to look out for each other (job referrals, car repairs, house-sitting, prayers)...
- we have visited each other in hospitals and emergency rooms...
- we know if we were in trouble and had just one phone call, who we would call...

It was good to sit close around that table, look each other in the eye, and realize how much we love each other. The pizza may not have been "eucharist" in the technical, theological sense, but it was the bread we broke together.

While we are on that thought, why wouldn't the table we gathered around be the Lord's table? How would such a table where believers gather in His name, forgiven, in peace and unconditional acceptance not be the Lord's table? How is it that at times we allow ourselves to succumb to the dualism where we separate new life, forgiveness, and restored fellowship at the Lord's Table from the reality of life shared around any table?

A Moving Event

I recently helped my son and his family move from an apartment to a condo in Chicago. I knew that members of his church were going to help, but on the day of the move I was unprepared for what I saw. Here it was, 9 am on a Saturday morning and 20 people showed up! All it took was an announcement at a previous Sunday service.

Passing boxes and pieces of furniture along a human chain, it took only an hour to empty out their 1200 square foot apartment. After driving over to the new address, the human chain was re-formed from the truck into the long hallway, material was unloaded, and passed along to their destined rooms.

I've been intrigued by the idea of Christian community as described in Acts 2:44-46, perhaps even a bit obsessed. I had been trying to figure out why community is so hard to ignite and maintain in the church. To be honest, I had nearly given up hope that such a life is even possible in modern society...until I saw a quarter of the church turn out for a move of one of their members! What is remarkable was that this level of mutual helpfulness is a common occurrence in their congregation. At mile-posts on the road of life, they are there for each other.

Coincidentally, I have been reading the book Peculiar People by Rodney Clapp. It is a book about the church as culture in a post-Christian society. One quote in particular captures the essence of what I have been looking for: "Reclaiming Christianity as culture enables us to move from de-contextualized propositions to....inhabitable truths."

Much of our difficulty as the Church or as individual believers is that the gospel we share is a de-contextualized proposition: "Jesus is the Answer!" we proclaim. "What was the question?" would be the response of many. They might add, "so how does what you proclaim make a difference in your life? You go to work, go home, roll-down the garage door, watch hours of TV, surf the Internet, and live in relative isolation.....just like the rest of us!"

Modern society, culture, and the church (as organization) leaves little space for friendship. Our relationships for the most part derive from utility. We maintain just enough relationship, just enough cordiality to get what we want: a task completed, some help, or a commitment to service. Once the task or service is complete, so is the friendship. If we are not intentional, then we will follow that path by default. Unfortunately that is not the path of true friendship, the friendship Christ offers to us, enables through us, and what ultimately the world will recognize as something different.

If we desire a better life, a life that is truly life, a life of following Christ, what are we to do? Rodney Clapp suggests we begin where we are. In our job, in our neighborhood, in our church. He suggests making space for friendship and relationship. To deliberately slow down in favor of a deeper relationship, even if tasks don't get done quite as fast as we would like. Once we are aware of how the world with its task-oriented, get-as-many-things-done-as-fast-as-possible-at-all-costs attitude poisons us, we are in a position to reclaim true friendship and community.

How are We Different?

If we worry about the future like the rest of the world, have no peace like the rest of the world, if we love our friends and hate our enemies like the rest of the world, then how are we different than the rest of the world?