first year in seminary

i’ve avoided writing this since school finished because i just don’t know what to say. 

i know i’ll resort to my pretentious, buck the system, rob bell wannabe, refusal to use capital letters in my post, but aside from that, what am i going to say? 

long story short... i have been considering seminary for the past five years, i went for a year, and now i’m going back to teach algebra 1 in helena, arkansas. 

how did all of that come about? that’s a question i am still trying to answer for myself. 

i came into this whole seminary business a bit unsure about what i was doing. i thought i wanted to work in a church for about five minutes and then quickly realized that was not my path. 

i then spent a lot of time asking the question, "so what is it i am doing here?" the fact that i could not form an adequate answer to that question made for a pretty challenging first semester. 

this difficulty was compounded by the fact that i was taking classes in which i was constantly engaging in the social injustices and societal ills that run rampant in our society while so many of us go about our daily lives and sip on our lattes. i was fired up, ready to change the world, i missed my students, and i ran back to helena every possible chance i got. 

i was ready to fix to world. right now. 

i like to claim that i calmed down second semester, but that is not true. i spent the months of january and february planning out the rest of my life and just exactly how i was going to fix the world. i was looking for the perfect church or non-profit to serve in my second year so that i could simultaneously solve poverty in atlanta and transform everything about the church. 

i had a hard time finding that placement. 

in the midst of all that i got a phone call from a good friend from helena informing me that she would be taking over the school in which i worked last year. she requested that i come back and join the school’s leadership team. 

here i was, in the midst of attempting to find a placement where i could make a real and substantial difference in people’s lives, and i got a phone call offering me an opportunity to do just that. 

so i said yes.

then i said no.

then i said, well maybe.

then i said yes again. 

(i think this process likely continued a few times over, as those of you who know me well can attest)

so, here i am, taking a year off from seminary. 

i know that statistics and probability says that i will not return to seminary, but i don’t really like to let statistics tell me what to do. all i know is that i am grateful for the opportunity to come back to a place that is dear to my heart and work with kids who i care about deeply. 

now back to this “saving the world” business. it wasn’t until i was working on my final sermon for my preaching class that i realized my high-and-mighty desire to fix everyone and everything was a bit problematic. 

this urge to fix poverty, people, and all the world's issues is problematic for several reasons, all of which i won't discuss here, but allow me to give a small sample. 

my final sermon was based on a text in the gospel of mark when Jesus (yeah, that’s right Jesus gets capitalized ;) ) casts out a demon. 

here is a small excerpt... 

“Because friends the good news of the gospel, the good news of the resurrection, is that injustice can be overcome.

Evil and death do not get the last word and healing is available, but friends it does not come solely through us.

Healing comes from the risen Lord and the second we start thinking its up to us to save the world we’ve missed the truth of this gospel we proclaim. 

Because who is it that casts out demons anyway?

It wasn’t the disciples. It certainly is not me. But I hope you will join me in continuing to fight against those demons in our society today and continuing to pray.”

i cannot fix the world. i will not fix the world. but i will find a place where injustice and pain are real and i will fight those ills knowing that i do not do it alone. 

it took a year of seminary for me to learn that its not up to me to save the world, but that in no way diminishes the need for me to try.

i’d say that’s a pretty good lesson.

Standing with the Gun Lobby

This is a letter I wrote to the editor of a couple of newspapers in Arkansas concerning Senator Mark Pryor's vote on universal background checks.


Senator Pryor,

I am writing to voice my extreme disapproval toward your vote against the Machin-Toomey bill.

In the wake of the horror that was Newton, we listened to the President stand up and speak about the need to come together and and take meaningful action.

I was hesitatingly optimistic that you all could get something done.

The gun lobby a wielded its immense political power in order to ensure that issues like a limit on high capacity magazines and a ban on assault rifles did not even make it to the floor for a vote. All that was left was a single, common sense law, that I was convinced Congress could pass.

I thought it should not be difficult for Congress to pass legislation supported by 90% of the American people.

I was wrong.

Background checks are common sense. 84% of your Arkansas constituents agree with me, yet you decided to stand with the NRA's Washington lobby. In the wake of your vote, criminals will continue to have easier access to guns without having to navigate their way through the background check system. Thirty three Americans will continue to be murdered with guns every day. This legislation would not have eliminated gun violence, but it would have been a step.

Now, as opposed to taking steps forward in memory of those who have lost their lives, we remain stagnent. We remain caught in the grip of the gun lobbyists who have a choke hold on our government.

I am ashamed of the Senate. I am ashamed of your vote, and I will do what I can to elect representatives who will vote in line with their constituents and not gun lobbyists. You not only defied those in Arkansas, you defied your party. In doing so, you stopped common sense legislation from passing.

I hope the 84% of Arkansas citizens who you ignored with your vote will stand against you in the next election cycle. I hope we will put someone in office who is unafraid to cast votes that save lives and not political careers.

Levi Rogers

perplexed by easter

luke 24: 6 - 12 

“he isn’t here - he’s been raised! don’t you remember? while you were still in galilee he told you that the son of man must be handed over into the hands of sinners, and be crucified, and rise again on the third day. and they remembered his words. they went back, away form the tomb, and told all this to the eleven and all the others. it was mary magdalene, joanna, and mary the wife of james, and the others with them. they said this to the apostles; and the message seemed to them just stupid; useless talk, and they didn’t believe them. peter, though, got up and ran to the tomb. he stooped down and saw only the grave-cloths. he went back home, perplexed at what had happened.”

perplexed

perplexed is usually not a word i associate with easter. when i think easter, i usually think joyful, excited, relief, praise, etc. none of these words describe the reaction of the first disciples. 

peter was perplexed. 

i kind of like that. i think we might need to claim a sense of being perplexed by this whole thing. 

those who, like me, have been going to church sense they were born might forget to take time to think about how absurd this story we are celebrating is... 

so this guy died, like dead... legit dead, and then came back to life and that is supposed to be meaningful for me and i am supposed to be celebrating it? “yes sir, you bet. praise the Lord, hallelujah!!” we might answer without missing a beat.

but maybe we could instead take just a minute to slow down and say... what? 

i think when we are too quick to jump to the “yes sir, praise the Lord hallelujah!” we miss a chance to be confounded.  i don’t know that this  story is supposed to be so easily internalized, watered down, and blindly accepted. i think maybe on easter sunday we might take a second to marvel at the overwhelming, illogical nature of the story. 

i am coming to worship this morning with an attitude of being a little perplexed. sure, i’ve heard this story my whole life, but come on.. its madness. 

and i think that is the point. 

in luke’s resurrection story we find ourselves - showing up confused, unbelieving, not getting it, but unable to let go of the power of the story. the story of resurrection is not supposed to fit neatly into our categories and worldview. it is, rather, intended to disrupt our entire way of viewing the world. 

that is not something that should come easily or quickly. 

easter should not be an end, but rather a new beginning, one which cannot come without a bit of sitting, bewildered by the madness of this story. i hope we can see today as beginning of a new story...

a story that might be a little crazy, but one on which we continue to ponder. 

a story that gives light to our lives in ways that don’t always make sense. 

a story into which we seek to live, not always knowing what that means in a world of chaos and confusion. 

today we praise the power of that story. we celebrate the fact that we believe it gives us life. we rejoice in the truth that “Christ the Lord is risen today. alleluia. amen” 

however, let us not loose sight of the baffling nature of that proclamation. 

prophetic sequesters and bad examples

... and i thought the fiscal cliff was bad. 

i am tempted to just write a blog post bemoaning the unfathomably ridiculous nature of this sequester, but many have already successfully taken to that endeavor. ie here and here. 

this thing was designed to be so bad that the white house and congress would be forced to come to a deal. yet somehow we have reached a point in american politics that even indiscriminate, senseless, deep, hack job style budget cuts are not enough to allow for the political grand bargaining for which we all long. (at least in theory... we want to “cut spending” but oppose cuts to each specific area... except foreign aid of course. smh)

 oh how i could continue my frustration with this whole thing. 

republicans in the house say the whole thing was the white house’s idea (what i’ve read says it did originate with lew, so they seem to be right there.) 

democrats (and noble prize winning economists) argue that austerity is not the solution; europe seems to agree.

republicans are arguing against revenues, “you got what you wanted with the cliff,” they complain. (true, but come on $400,000 is not middle class, we still have a 16 trillion dollar debt, and mcconell is still saying “read my lips, no new revenues?”) 

how on earth someone could be arguing against a deal and for completely senseless, across the board cuts is simply beyond me. the statistics of this are overwhelming: $30,000 teachers loosing jobs, 70,000 kids may not get head start, over 100,000 people are displaced from low-income housing, and mcconell has the audacity to get up and say “no new revenues” because we taxed people rolling in over 400,000 in january? sequester cuts the bad with the good, but we're just going to take it because revenues are off the table? wake up folks. 

look its easy to tell which side of the debate i fall on, but the “debate” seems to be flawed in and of itself. 

in talking about this nasty little predicament our country has found itself in, the president of my university made a suggestion that we come together and find some common ground. 

sounded like a good idea until he chose to use the most degrading example of political compromise possible. 

there is absolutely no excuse for his choice of example. it was horrible and infuriating. he should not have said it, and i think he probably needs to just stop talking for a little while. 

what's additionally frustrating about this is that, he was actually trying to make a good point. due to his choice of example, he utterly failed to make his argument, and his point was justifiably overshadowed by his awful example. 

in hopes of not-affirming, but attempting to reconfigure his argument... allow me to suggest a couple of non-horrifying ways to say what i hope he was trying to say. 

with the dire stakes of this sequester, both sides are digging their heals in the ground and spewing out the same rhetoric we’ve heard for years. 

we need fresh voices in this conversation. 

in my preaching class we’ve talked out how certain modes of reality cloud out the possibility of a “vertical dimension”. 

an example of a vertical dimension might be the truth and reconciliation commission brought about by president mandela and desmond tutu (hey.... there’s a good example for your piece president wagnor!!!) 

these vertical dimensions are realities, solutions, positive steps forward that we miss when we dig so deeply into our ideologies that the entire political process becomes little more that dragging people begrudgingly closer to one side or the other. 

like this... 

i just drew this online. i am proud of it. you get the point? its like we are arguing from one side or the other, trying to get one another to come a little closer to our side, when there is another reality possible if we’d get off that damn line.

i think this is what wagnor was trying to say, unsuccessfully. he should have just drawn a picture. he needs to hire me. 

here’s another good example that seems more appropriate than the president's...

some of the prophets in the old testament seemed to have been dealing with similar realities. 

the very nature of hope for the exiles in babylon seemed unthinkable. 

the israelites had seen the destruction of their land, been forcibly removed from their homes, and wondered if Yahweh could still be present in a foreign place. 

then along come prophets like isaiah, who were running around telling the israelites that there was still hope in the midst of the chaos of their current predicament. 

theologian walter bureggeman discusses this hope in the prophetic imagination, “the hope that must be spoken is hope rooted in the assurance that God does not quit even when the evidence warrants his quitting... the prophets were not changing external politics but reclaiming Israel’s imagination.” 

the prophetic voices cried out that God was still moving and present even in the midst of what seemed like hopeless destruction, frustration, chaos, and despair. 

perhaps we need some prophetic voices today to call us all to a higher level of thinking, remove us from the confines of gridlock, reclaim our imagination, think creatively about new possibilities, and hope for a new way forward. 

“Remember not the former things, 

nor consider the things of old. 

Behold, I am doing a new thing; 

now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” 

Isaiah 43:18 - 19 

inequality

i read an interesting npr article the other day. i seem to be doing that more and more these days. 

this article got me to thinking. i also seem to be doing a lot of that recently. 

here is the article. 

to save those who do not feel like reading, it details the extreme inequality in the wealthiest county in the united states. 

in this county there is a deep divide between two different worlds: an exorbitantly wealthy greenwich and the a desperately impoverished bridgeport. the inequality described in this county is not an anomaly, it is pervasive in our country. 

it is this type of inequality that is perhaps the largest moral, spiritual, and economic issue of our time. 

the inequality in the united states is among the most extreme in the world: see our gini coefficient

the financial crisis and ensuing recession seem to only have made these matters worse. 

the article encapsulates the real problem of this inequality in a few short sentences. 

here’s the excerpt. 

“The idea that Greenwich residents should feel somehow responsible, or even concerned, about the plight of 145,000 people in Bridgeport strikes many as odd — if not absurd.

"I don't think of it at all," said Karen Schiff, a well-dressed young woman heading home from the Greenwich train station from her job in New York. "I don't think I've ever even met someone from there. Maybe I drove through, I don't know."

"Funny thing is that lady probably meets someone from Bridgeport every day," a resident from Bridgeport said. Turning toward Greenwich Avenue, with its Baccarat jewelry shop, Apple store and dozens of expensive boutiques, she said, "I used to ride in from Bridgeport with the people who work in those stores every day. As long as we go home at night, I guess, it's OK. It's like we're invisible."

what a great glimpse into a huge part of this problem.

we can have all the debates we want about the efficacy of welfare, non-profits, charity, and education reform. 

we can talk in circles about what works, what doesn’t, what makes people better off, and what continues cycles of poverty. 

but at the end of the day, this seems to sum it up. 

i am assuming that many of those reading this post are far closer to greenwich than bridgeport, and far too often we take the attitude of the karen schiff. we don't see. 

we have become blinded. 

we do all we can to make sure those who represent the unpleasantness of poverty do exactly what the article says, “go home at night.” 

this cannot be ok. there are countless ways to begin to combat inequality, but before we can start, we have to open our eyes. 

we have to see. we have to stop pretending that these realities do not exist. 

the realities are there. this is not just an issue for the hood, the backwoods, the ghetto, the slums, the swamps, the boonies, or the sticks. this reality is manifest in the wealthiest county in our country. it is all around us if we have eyes to see. 

in atlanta, helena, savannah, boston, new york, auburn, birmingham, mobile, philadelphia, chicago, nashville, knoxville, and huntsville... inequality is there. 

our gates, suburbs, and barriers might not keep us secluded from this reality forever. 

yesterday, the president echoed one of my favorite quotes by the reverend doctor king that applies directly to this issue, “our individual freedoms are inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.” also see, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." 

i firmly believe the future of our economy, morality, spirituality, and vitality rest on our response to the growing issue of income inequality. 

we may choose to combat this problem in a variety of ways, but once we have seen the reality of inequality we cannot unsee. the only question becomes how will we respond. 

“how do we respond?”

it is my hope that more and more of us can sit with that question, let it penetrate our being, and answer accordingly. 

peace. 

just can't leave.

over the break my mother grounded me from helena. 

that’s right, twenty-six years old, and i got grounded. the beneficial part of serving a grounding sentence by your parents when you are 26 is that you don’t actually have to serve it. 

mother grounded me from helena at christmas, but i went back anyway. 

i was grounded because my mother would like for me to finish school, a reasonable request. the problem is that when i go back to helena, i always want to stay. 

the children, they just pull at my heartstrings. 

oh the joy of returning to these ridiculous, restless, hilarious, awesome, attitudinal, beautiful children. 

the KIPP school i worked at last year is currently short staffed, so i have been filling in as the math teacher for the past three weeks or so. it has reminded me of all the joys and frustrations of being a teacher. 

joys: hanging out with one of my favorite students on her birthday, co-planning a punishment strategy for a poor report card with a parent, convincing another parent not to pull her child from KIPP, having mrs. sanders yell at me/dishing it back, dinners with friends/students, philosophical discussions about education reform, tutoring until 6:30 on a friday followed by frozen pizza/coors light/sleep, do-now music, the letter "r" in inexplicable places in words (ie - mursic, compruter, refurse), teaching two-step equations and slope-intercept form, reminding a classroom full of students that “they are some bothersome little suckers,” over the top speeches about the woes of talking during independent practice, and watching students succeed. 

frustrations: attitudinal children, the general stress of a school day, hearing the frustrations of teachers working hard while not feeling successful, witnessing a lack of sustainability lead to negative outcomes for kids, feeling pressured to teach in a uniform way, and watching students feel unsuccessful. 

its a crazy world in helena, arkansas, but its a world i love. 

over the semester, i often felt frustrated by constantly reading about the urgency of tackling injustice without actually “doing” much. the past few weeks have been a needed  anecdote to my restlessness. 

while i wasn’t teaching i read two books that helped shape my thoughts on future plans and future hopes... 

1.) how children succeed - paul tough - all about our societal obsession with intelligence as the key lever that will lead to positive outcomes in students’ lives. tough highlights seven character traits that may be better predictors of success than IQ (grit, curiosity, optimism, social intelligence, gratitude, zest, and self-control.) the KIPP network is attempting to inundate these character traits into its curriculum, but its a tough battle. 

haha - “tough” battle. get it?

2.) toxic charity - bob lupton - deals with the inadequacies and fallacies in charities, churches, non-profits, etc. we think we are helping - but are we actually? lupton started an organization in atlanta (focused community strategies) that i am going to try to work for this summer. 

overall, its been a good break. i’ve missed this place and these children much more than i realized. it’s going to be difficult to step away again, but i know ATL is where i need to be at the moment. also i sort of have a feeling i'll be back sometime soon (sorry cinge.) 

i’ve got some good classes lined up next semester, including an awesome sounding preaching class. one of my fellow seminarians convinced me to drop my (eventually) required historical theology for this elective. it should be good, although i’m sure my students would say the last thing i need is a class on how to do more preaching. 

“mr. rogers’ always be preaching.” 

yes i do children, and hopefully the best sermons are to come. 

The Irritating Cliff

Sometimes one might think the danged world is coming to an end with this fiscal cliff business. Every time I open a news sources, there is another article about what it is going to take to avert the fiscal plunge that automatically comes at the beginning of next year with deep spending cuts and expiration of the Bush tax cuts.

This whole story frustrates me for a number of reasons.

First it seems to be just a giant microcosm of the mess of a political system we have. Fresh off a Presidential campaign where we heard all about desires to work together and such, the White House is already deeply embroiled in this mess with Congress. Both sides don’t seem interested in budging unless they get everything they want. It sort of reminds me of two of my former students battling over who gets to go over the Do-Now before class.

“Compromise” comes the rhetoric, but “hold firm to your position” comes the action. The result is the entire country holding its breath and preparing for what the media claims will be the end of the world as we know it. (Although this seems to suggest we may survive the even if we take the plunge.)

I am not naive enough to think if everybody was just nice to each other the whole thing would work out. I understand that a lot of this is just political maneuvering, but I remain frustrated watching the giant power struggle that involves a bunch of punting back and forth.

Second, the fact that so much of this is predicated on tax increases for the wealthiest two percent of our country. I mean seriously though House GOP? In this respect, I certainly appreciate the President holding his ground on these tax hikes unlike 2010.

My degree from what might as well have been a Libertarian Economic think tank still does not allow me to affirm the ludicrous idea that increasing taxes on the top two percent of income earners is going to plunge our economy into deep recession. Warren Buffet says you can tax the mess out of his wealth, and he’ll be just fine. He’ll continue to pursue investment opportunities even with, gasp, a significant tax increase. That seems to make sense.

Third, this battle is so disconnected from the plight of those who are still experiencing the worst of the pain of the 2008 collapse. Despite the rhetoric from the Presidential debates, the middle class was not hit hardest with the collapse. Guess who was? The poor. American’s poorest neighborhoods lost 91 percent of their wealth during the great recession. 

Yep. Ninety. One. Percent.

My guess is folks in the two-percent who are worried about the Bush-era tax cuts expiring did not loose that much. And by gosh, even if they did, they are still in the two percent. They’ll be ok.

This debate is sure to continue to dominate the news cycle during the holiday season. My request/prayer/hope for the President and Congress…

Please work this thing out, and then get to the business of doing something that has a larger affect on the 98%, preferably those that lost almost everything they own.

While they do that, I plan on looking for ways to ease the plight of those for whom the "struggles" of two percent are quite distant from reality: Kiva Cards and Grameen Bank

Join me?

Savannah

When I meet folks and answer the obligatory, “Where are you from?” question, I am unusually interrupted in the following way…

“I grew up in Savannah….”

“Oh, Georgia?” the other person says.

“No, Tennessee”

“Where is that?” comes the inevitable response.

I have rehearsed this line so many times its like clockwork. “Its where Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi all come together.”

Folks do not usually know about Savannah, TN.

It’s an interesting place.

It is a place I have taken for granted.

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to go back home and preach at First Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Savannah. Upon reflecting on my short time being home, I have come to realize just how incredibly blessed I am to have been brought up in Savannah by two of the most ridiculous, incredible parents one could imagine.

I do not always see just how blessed I am…

As with most small-towns, Savannah certainly has a penchant towards conservatism that often manifests itself in folks holding some closed-minded ideas. I often found this frustrating.

However, I have come to realize that in reaction to what I saw as closed-minded thought, I can become equally as guilty if I choose to swing to the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. 

As I prepared to speak this past Sunday, I found myself presupposing folks’ response to my sermon. I tried to season my words to the nth degree. I assumed people might not enjoy my call to take up the cause of fighting for justice.

… the assumption of the haughty.

The outpouring of love and support I received yesterday was truly phenomenal. As I stood in the
back after the service, folks came by shake my hand. Person after person told me how much they appreciated what I had to say.

I thought back to my preparation…

“Well, people are not going to like this.” I thought.

… the assumption of the haughty.

Many of the members of Savannah FUMC came to show their support. First Cumberland Presbyterian welcomed me with open arms. Both were incredibly receptive and supportive.

I think about the beauty of this experience combined with my brief time at home with my family this

weekend.

Cindy Rogers shrieks every time she sees me, listens to me as I go on and on about the same thing for hours on end, and showed me a workout at Elite this weekend that still has my legs sore.

(Erin once you have put a little more effort into  an improved spirit of sibling congeniality I will fill in all your merits here :) Jk- Erin is cool)

Then there is Dad with his newest building project, his incredible stories about boats going through windshields, unknown chair craftsman, and his new and astounding penchant towards constant communication.

What an incredibly loving, supportive, absurd, awesome support network I have.

Savannah, TN was good to me this weekend.

Good work Savannah.

Thanks to all of those who were present yesterday. I hope I did not let you down :)

Evolving Ideas about the Old Testament

I have struggled over the past couple of months to figure out what to do with some of the knowledge I have been given in seminary. Seminary busts up a lot of the conventional wisdom when it comes to reading the bible. If you do not like having conventional wisdom busted or think that that bible must be read literally at all times in order to have authority, you may want to quit reading now.

So in Old Testament we are given lots of theories that inevitably lead to the conclusion that… wait for it, “these stories likely did not happen the way they are presented here. This writers of the bible may not have intended for it to be read for literal, historical accuracy.”

I have found these theories profoundly reassuring. I have always had trouble with the massive amount of violence that is carried out in the Old Testament, much of it being attributed to God. It seems God is either smiting somebody over here to telling somebody else to kill another person over there. I was not always cool with that. So, I have learned that maybe, just maybe it did not quite go down exactly like that. However, I have been left thinking, “So what do you do with all this?”

I have come nowhere close to that answer, but I had a small epiphany as I was riding my bike this morning, listening to 2 Samuel. Preface, the theory we have been presented claims this book was likely written or compiled in a time period much later than the events it is describing.

2 Samuel 6:6-7 “Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it. The anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah; and God struck him there because he reached out his hand to the ark; and he died there beside the ark of God.; so that place is called Perezuzzah, to this day”

Prior to coming to seminary I might have had this thought on this passage: “Jeez, God, the dude just touched the ark. Also, why is it that God went around striking people down back in the day, but he does not seem to do that today? This story makes no sense and sort of makes me want to believe that this Old Testament stuff is a bunch of made up nonsense.”

To me, saying that this text must only be read literally and historically produces an arbitrary demonstration of God’s strength that is completely disconnected from modern reality.

However, seminary has allowed me to discover a slightly different approach to stories such as this. In Old Testament, we have been trained to hear phrases like “so that place is called Perezuzzah, to this day” as etiologies, stories explaining how things came to be.

 So maybe what we have in 2 Samuel is a group of people using their resources, cultural understandings, and stories of the past to describe their relationship to God.

To me, understanding the cultural context of the story allows me to relate to the authors. They were a people trying to understand and grapple with the Unfathomable. In their attempts to understand how this town “Perezuzzah” received its name, they tell this story.

Their story seems insane to modern ears, but an attempt to describe the Divine will always end in craziness.

Their output may seem crazy to us, but I imagine that when people thousands of years from now look back at the ways in which modern communities attempt to understand and wrestle with the Divine, it will likely seem ridiculous.

God was present and moving then. He is present and moving now. I do believe that God was moving in a unique way in the coalition and authorship of Scripture, and thus I see the Scripture as holding an uncommon authority. However, I am learning to be careful about conflating "authority" with "inerrancy."

This specific story these writers told was meant to give voice to God’s power, a claim I can certainly affirm. The way in which we choose to give voice to God’s power today may sound crazy in a thousand years, but that does not diminish the power and presence of God. God moved then, and He moves now. It may sound absurd, but that does not diminish the power and presence of Yahweh. 

Idealism and Presence

I have been called an idealist. It’s a badge I wear with pride.

After three years of teaching in some pretty difficult environments, I claimed that teaching “grounded my idealism” and it did. But it seems that the past six months has shown me that my idealism is still very much alive. Anyone who has been following any of my social media outputs can plainly see that my idealism manifests itself in an outpouring of my opinions online.

I have gone on so many tears that I can’t even keep up with them all. I’ve railed against churches, politicians, the media, schools systems, and on and on. I’ve found myself creating a system of elevation in which my “enlightened” opinion is superior and those that disagree “just don’t get it.” Grounding was needed.

A bit of the grounding came after a sermon I preached while I was in Helena on fall break. A good friend, who is well versed in bringing me back down to earth, told me she was distracted by the strong content of my sermon by my punchy delivery.

“But I’ve learned all these great things, and its my time to set people straight,” I thought to myself.

“Do you not understand yet?” Jesus said to his disciples over and over.

I hear him saying the same to me.

"Yes, of course I do! I’ve got this figured out, and its time to go change some folks’ minds!" I think to myself.

I see Jesus smiling and laughing my way… “Haha, just keep going. One day you will see just how much you have yet to understand.”

As I think back on all my rallying points, my self-righteous indignation towards those who refuse to see the world the way I see it, I hear Jesus words “Do you not understand yet?”

The answer to that question is no. I do not. But I will keep moving forward, hopefully with a bit more humility.

I firmly believe there are issues about which I should scream loudly to anyone that will listen. But I am simultaneously reminded of a story about a boy who cried out so many times that people stopped listening.

My idealism tells me to cry out all day everyday, in whatever manner I feel compelled. If folks are offended, they need to get over it.

But the problem with idealism is that it doesn’t always work so well in reality.

Regardless, the point where the beauty of idealism meets the harshness of reality is the point where I feel called to exist.

It is to that point I will bring all my frenzied, hyper, shouts for justice.

It is to that point I bring who I am and marvel at what can happen when I allow myself to become truly present in the fullness of a situation.

“Vocation is where our greatest passion meets the world's greatest need.” As I search for that vocation, I am reminded of the necessity of my presence here.

In a season of learning, rest, and discernment, I pray that I can simultaneously ignite my passions while cultivating the seasoning of my words.

Amen.