Simul Justus et Peccator from Johnny Cash

Don't think I could add any commentary to what the man in black has to say here....

Sinner + Saint a la simul justus et peccator......

"The Beast in Me" (Sinner)

"Redemption" (Saint)

Frasier Crane, Forgiveness, and "One Too Many"

This is the third in our blog-series "Frasier Crane, Human Nature, and The Good News." Part I can be found HERE, and Part II, HERE.

In the aptly-titled second season Frasier episode "The Show Where Sam Shows Up," Sam Malone (Ted Danson), Frasier's old friend and bartender from Cheers comes to visit him in Seattle. We learn pretty quickly that Sam's there running from his impending nuptials. He's engaged but afraid. As an inveterate womanizer, his basic argument is "ME? MARRIED?" When Niles (David Hyde Pierce) is horrified that Sam flirts with Daphne (Jane Leeves) while engaged, Frasier responds, "Of course he's flirting with her. He's a sexual compulsive. He flirts with everyone!" Those of us who know Sam from Cheers know this all too well (Kirstie Alley, anyone?).

Through normal machinations of the plot, Frasier meets Sam's fiance, Sheila (Tea Leoni). When he sees her, he realizes that, only a few months ago, after she and Sam were engaged, he slept with her! He met her in a bar, and one thing led to another. She reveals that she is a sexual compulsive, too, and that she and Sam met at a 12-step meeting. Frasier decides, in the interest of saving their relationship, that Sam and Sheila should be honest with each other, and ask for forgiveness. "Honesty," he says, "is the cornerstone of any healthy marriage."

Sam confesses an infidelity to Sheila, and she forgives him. Sheila confesses an infidelity to Sam, and he forgives her. Everything seems to be back on track until Sheila says, "I have another one." "It's okay, don't worry about it," Sam says, "this is what it's all about...honesty and forgiveness." But then she says that it's someone from Cheers. Frasier, of course, is terrified that she's about to reveal their tryst. However, the name she blurts out is...Cliff (Cheers' frumpy mailman, John Ratzenberger). "CLIFF?!?!?!" Sam explodes. This is over the line, he can't take it, storms out of the room, calling off the marriage. "CLIFF?!?!?!" This is too often how we think of God's forgiveness, and why assurance eludes us.

If God said, like Sam, "Oh, it's okay, don't worry about your transgressions," we'd always be worried that one day, one of our transgressions would be a Cliff. What then? What if it stopped being okay? But God doesn't say it's okay. St. Paul says that God "made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross" (Col 2:13-14). He nailed our indiscretions, our infidelities, our trespasses to the cross. He paid the ultimate price, laying our sins on the shoulders of his son. He doesn't ignore them...he pays for them.

Thank goodness our God isn't like Sam Malone!

Terrapin Worship

I have a hard time with most aspects of hippie culture.  That said, I used to be one.  I have a solid resume in that department, multiple Grateful Dead concerts included, and still drive an Hybrid (which gives me some street cred in the Whole Foods parking lot), but that's not really what this post is about...

Have you already come across the video footage (below) of a recent Rainbow Gathering? Watching it made me both laugh and cry.  Then it made me wonder.  You only need to watch a few seconds of it at random to understand this post, btw.  The entire clip features 101 minutes of pure, unadulterated, modern-day "pagan worship."  Therein we find humanism, pantheism, secularism, antinomianism, atheism, romanticism, sentimentality, and mysticism, among others. It epitomizes the type of stuff that turns my stomach (in a human sense), but it also intrigues me (i.e., in a Christian sense).  

What to say about it? If you prefer a more traditional form of worship to that of contemporary stuff, you may feel affirmed in watching this.  The reason has to do with the obvious fact that, in some ways, this material resembles (at least in style) a huge percentage of contemporary Christian worship.  Yet it could not be less Christian.  I don't necessarily think there is a connection between contemporary styles of worship and the loss of faith, but there there may be.  Tangent: the band Joy Electric simultaneously present a strong argument for and against such a stance.

Either way, it is also worth noting that worship is not a uniquely Christian phenomenon.  These people are indeed doing the same kind of thing Christians do on a Sunday, yet the theological material that governs the two philosophies could not be more divergent.  

If you were to suggest that, on an ideological level, sound Christian doctrine is just the opposite of whatever it is that these people believe, I would be inclined to agree with you, even without a detailed analysis.  Perhaps I should be more careful.  But these are the kinds of thoughts that come to mind as I watch these folks doing their thing.  

Similarly, if the Gospel can be defined at all apaphatically (i.e., through opposites) by looking at all the things that it is not, then this video may even be an avant-garde form of preaching the Gospel. Now I'm really out in left-field.  (Note: these are just thoughts, meditations, not doctrinal statements ripe for confession.) 

But does the Lutheran notion of subcontrario, have any relevancy when dealing with/making sense of this material? I do think opposing forces have an impact upon much of our inner life (see also: Romans 7, Gal 5:17).  Does being repulsed by the opposite of Christianity drive a person into the cross of Christ?  If nothing else, it seems to help move things along in that direction.  

It is material that begs the question: does riding in a VW Bus make you want to buy a Volvo? Does it inspire a new-found open-mindedness where yachting is concerned? How many former deadheads now wear Weejuns? And how many of them now put their faith in Christ? And, for that matter, what is to be said about jam bands who try to reconcile the two extremes into a popped-collar-hippie hybrid? Is that the most secular position of all, uniting hippie theology with materialistic instinct? For what it's worth, my band in college, Three-Way, once opened for Moe, and my return to church involvement at that point was imminent.  For that reason, I associate jam bands with the prevenient grace of God. Don't you?

RAINBOW SPIRIT - Watch more Funny  Videos

July Playlist

A bit more current than I prefer, but nonetheless pretty darn summer-lovin':

1. Flipside - The Sountrack Of Our Lives
2. Ain't That Enough - Teenage Fanclub
3. Baby You're Blind - God Help The Girl
4. Good Ol' Fashion Nightmare - Matt & Kim
5. Doctor My Eyes - Jackson 5
6. How Long - Honeybus
7. Walls (Circus) - Tom Petty and Lindsey Buckingham
8. Ballad of a Well-Known Gun - Elton John
9. You Got To Die - Mark Miller
10. Let Go - Frou Frou
11. Born Again - RPA & The United Nations of Sound
12. Lovefool - The Morning Benders
13. Mirror Ball - Jay Bennett
14. Marley Purt Drive - Bee Gees
15. The Mermaid Parade - Phosphorescent
16. Statue of Jesus - The Gear Daddies
17. Arkansas - Damien Jurado
18. The State I Am In - Belle & Sebastian

Sad news....

Anne Rice

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Anne Rice As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen. ...

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Yesterday at 6:41pm

Anne Rice For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

Yesterday at 6:36pm

Joel Osteen: Crazier Than We First Thought?

Proofs that can be derived from this video:

1) We always thought Joel Osteen interpreted the Bible wrong. Now we can rightly assume that he has simply never read it before (especially the New Testament).

2) If Joel Osteen is going to live under the law, at least he has the moxy to live under all of it, including the dietary laws.

3) If I could attain righteousness by switching to Turkey Bacon, I'm still not sure I could attain it.

4) Joel Osteen has moved up on all our lists from nuisance to Judaizer- an old Christian legalist heresy that said Gentiles must become Jewish and obey the Laws of Moses to truly be Christians- a heresy that's explicitly condemned in the New Testament (see Acts 15, the Council of Jerusalem).

5) Quote of the Decade: "Now, would all y'all quit being so rebellious?".

Any thoughts on a new MB segment entitled: "Joel Osteen Quote of the Week?" Talk about your low hanging fruit...

Bound and Determined, Part Two: God on the Hook

Part two in our series: Bound and Determined to be Free.

Although it will be argued that the notion of the bound will, the belief that human beings are fundamentally powerless before God, is a wholesome and comforting doctrine, like with the law and gospel, the diagnosis proceeds the cure. In this case, as much as we would want it otherwise, our first problem is with God himself.

In The Limits of the Coded World, David Egginton writes:

Theologians have spent a great deal of time ruminating on the problem of determination. The Catholic response to the theological problem of theodicy — that is, of how to explain the existence of evil in a world ruled by a benevolent and omnipotent God — was to teach that God created humans with free will. It is only because evil does exist that humans are free to choose between good and evil; hence, the choice for good has meaning. As the theologians at the Council of Trent in the 16th century put it, freedom of will is essential for Christian faith, and it is anathema to believe otherwise. Protestant theologians such as Luther and Calvin, to whom the Trent statement was responding, had disputed this notion on the basis of God’s omniscience.

Indeed, Luther considered his book, On The Bondage of the Will, his most important work, and Calvin’s insistence on the absolute sovereignty of God is well known; nevertheless, few contemporary churches, even those who are self-consciously protestant, would fall under the condemnations of Trent, because while major Christian churches can’t agree on a common creedal confession, most can all rally around the one truth that we know to be self-evident: whatever is wrong with the world, God is not to blame. 

The answers to who is to blame, however, and how God fits into that situation are many and varied. Some will try and mumble something about God’s permissive vs. perfect will on their way out the door, others will say that God chooses to self-limit so as to protect our freedom, while others say that God is not all-knowing but really on our side, sort of like a really cool older cousin who might buy us beer if we behave.

Why does God need such apologies? This does not seem like the God of the Bible, the one who thundered to Job out of the whirlwind, ““Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?,” or the one who said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Exodus 33:19). It is this very God before whom the Apostle Paul was laid low in Romans chapter 11, when he, quoting this verse from Exodus, writes:
[CONTINUE READING]

Mike Tyson: The ULTIMATE Anonymous Christian?

This one comes to us from Mockingbird's legendary man-in-Shanghai, Bob Guterma, aka The Gute:

The other night, I was arbitrarily surfing the web and somehow made my way to a Wikiquotes page full of the truth bombs of "Iron" Mike Tyson. While a great many of the quotes were irrelevant (i.e., "Being a champion opens lots of doors—I'd like to get a real estate license, maybe sell insurance."), I quickly found myself immersed and hanging on every word. When it comes to judgment and love -- or at least the devastating effects of a lack of love -- this guy gets it.

Mike Tyson is known for ripping people's heads off, and readily admits he is a pretty troubled dude. He is also a Muslim. But if his self-understanding is to be taken at face-value, Tyson may also be the ultimate example of what controversial Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner controversially calls an "anonymous Christian," someone who "in [their] basic orientation and fundamental decision accept[s] the salvific grace of God, through Christ, although [they] may never have heard of [or even rejected] the Christian revelation." In other words, the lamest of sheep in the clothes of the biggest, baddest wolf. Let's warm up with a few not directly relevant Mike Tyson classics to properly contextualize what follows.

"One minute I'm robbing a dope house. Next minute I'm the youngest heavyweight champion of the world. I'm only 20, 19, with a lot of money. Who am I? What am I? I don't even know who I am. I'm just a dumb child who's being abused and robbed by lawyers. I'm just a dumb pugnacious fool. I'm just a fool who thinks he's someone. Then you tell me I should be responsible."

"Don't be surprised if I behave like a savage. I am a savage."

"I'm addicted to perfection. Problem with my life is I was always also addicted to chaos. Perfect chaos."

Now the directly relevant stuff:
[CONTINUE READING]

Wednesday Morning Indietronica and the Death of Striving

From Frou Frou's 2002 Details album comes "Let Go," a beautiful/enchanting/hypnotic meditation on one of the main themes discussed on this blog: the idea that (the Christian) life is primarily about death and resurrection, rather than human striving, growth through effort, or moral improvement via sheer determination. The chorus goes like this:

So, let go, let go/Jump in/Oh well, what you waiting for?/It's all right/'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown.

You may have heard it expressed like this:

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit (John 12:24).

Listen here:

Another One from Cozzens' By Love Possessed

From page 66 of the great novel by James Gould Cozzens, italics by Mockingbird:

Mr. Woolf said, "That's the thing that interests me about history, Judge. Most of what you read's ex parte -- we're used to studying evidence, so we see that right away. What aren't they telling you? A lot of men they put up statues of might not look so good if we knew what they really did; or why they did it. Or some of the other things they did that they managed to keep dark or have hushed up."

"Yes; men, perhaps unfortunately, are men," Judge Lowe said. ... He went on: "If all hearts were open, all desires known; and if no secrets were hid -- each of us, I think, might do well to consider just where that would leave him personally, whether he'd still be quite so well regarded as he may be now."

David Foster Wallace on Cruises, Ambition and the Discontented Self

A few more priceless quotes from the book-length interview Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, pg. 256-57, this time touching on the black hole of ambition, inwardly-speaking, in regards to the law:

The great lie of the [ocean-liner] cruise is that enough pleasure and enough pampering will quiet this discontented part of you. When in fact, all it does is up the requirement... I can remember being twenty-four years old and having my, you know, smiling mug in The New York Times Book Review, and it feeling really good for exactly like ten seconds.

And then you're hungry for more. So that, clearly, I mean if you're not stupid, you figure out that the real problem is the discontented self. That all this stuff that you think will work for a second, but then all it does is set up a hunger for more and better. 

And... that general pattern and syndrome seems to me to get repeated, at least in our culture, for our kind of plush middle-class part of the culture, over and over and over again in a million different arenas. And that we don't seem to get it. We do not seem to get it...

It may be that those ambitions are what get you to do the work, to get the exposure, to realize that the original ambitions were misguided. Right? So that it's a weird paradoxical link. If you didn't have the ambitions, you'd never find out that they were sort of deluded.

Bound and Determined to be Free

Freedom. Few words conjure up more abstract connotations. Like love, in the name of freedom people have killed, been killed and moved to Portland. Enshrined in countless songs, ballads and stories, to be free, it seems, is a universal good. However, as fruitful as it is as a source of motivation and inspiration, and as much as we all want to “live free or die,” behind the scenes, philosophers and theologians have always doubted whether it exists at all. At the heart of the debate lies a very simple question: who is responsible? Are we more William Henley or Alexander Pope, the captains of our own souls or hapless “bubbles on the sea of matter”? 
 

Over at The Stone, the NY Times philosophy forum, this very question has been discussed over the past week in two different ways. In Your Move: the Maze of Free Will, Galen Strawson found himself compelled to present a rather intricate argument against the existence of free will. Based upon a variation of Rousseau’s “society corrupts,” argument, Strawson presents his “Basic Argument”:

1. You do what you do — in the circumstances in which you find yourself—because of the way you then are.
2. So if you’re going to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you’re going to have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are — at least in certain mental respects.
3. But you can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.
4. So you can’t be ultimately responsible for what you do.

In other words, only those who have had complete control over their own cognitive formation can, in any meaningful way, be considered free. Since we all have parents and were picked on in middle school, we are all products (victims) of our environment; therefore, we are not free. 

In response, William Egginton, in an article entitled The Limits of the Coded Word, opens his by recounting a recent experiment done with monkeys in which "researchers were able plausibly to claim that the computer could successfully predict the monkeys’ reaction." Despite the questions this raises (see the article) about the existence of free-will, he assures us—by way of Trent, Luther, Calvin and Kant—that these arguments about free will vs. determinism, both in philosophy and religion, are a result of overextending our conceptual/epistemological reach with regards to what can be known. In conclusion, he argues: 

As much as we owe the nature of our current existence to the evolutionary forces Darwin first discovered, or to the cultures we grow up in, or to the chemical states affecting our brain processes at any given moment, none of this impacts on our freedom. I am free because neither science nor religion can ever tell me, with certainty, what my future will be and what I should do about it. The dictum from Sartre that Strawson quoted thus gets it exactly right: I am condemned to freedom. I am not free because I can make choices, but because I must make them, all the time, even when I think I have no choice to make.

Indeed. With Egginton, theological questions over the “bound will” have rarely been about what actually transpires on a day-to-day basis, because most of us are clearly neither robots or puppets; however, Swanson’s argument over where to place blame in the absence of free will comes closest to the beating heart of the enduring argument, because as inveterate moralists, and as the literature can attest, the only question of any importance to people is how to make sure that everyone (except for me) gets what they deserve.
[CONTINUE READING]

Monday Morning Karl Holl (pt. 6): Creativity, Heart, and 'Situation-Ethics'

In The Reconstruction of Morality (1979 Augsburg edition, as cited last week), Holl brushes up fairly close to what later American theologians would call 'situation-ethics'. What we came to know in the 1960s as 'situation-ethics', the effects of which are still with us, sounds a little like what Karl Holl is saying when he talks about the 'creative', 'flexible' 'genius of the heart'. For myself, Karl Holl's version reads true to life, while the contemporary version of 'situation-ethics' sounds more like a rationalization of evolving fashions in behavior.

This is what Holl says, on page 133. The italics are Mockingbird's.

"For Luther, part of the freedom of a Christian was the right to decide which course of action should be pursued at a particular moment...
There is here in the context of everyday life a manifestation of that creative action which Luther pointed to as the epitome of morality,
namely the art of sensing what the situation demands, according to the 'genius of the heart', and thus to replace rigidity with the flexibility of life."

This is not 'situation-ethics' as I hear it, because 'situation-ethics' seems to be a rational sizing-up of situations, followed by a choice among possibilities of potential responses. Holl, on the other hand, credits Luther with crediting the Christian person, governed by his heart, with an ability to 'sense what the situation demands' and then act flexibly to deal with it.

There is much to be said about this 'classic' Holl passage. Where is the Holy Spirit? (I think the prompting presence of the Holy Spirit is implied.) Could not the 'heart' mislead and deceive? (Not the forgiven, conscience-stricken, humbled heart, I bet.) Is 'continuing indwelling sin', the simul iustus et peccator reality of every single person, including convinced Christians, being factored in here? There's a lot to discuss.

See if you can get Holl's book. It's a masterpiece, a 'book for all seasons.' Or we can talk it over more on the Mockingbird blog. With Holl's immense output, this six-part series has only touched the surface.

"We've only just begun" (The Carpenters).

Nick Saban and the Doctrine of Imputation

At a wedding shower for my wife and me, the hosts played a game where they asked my wife and I the same questions about one another to test how well we knew each other going into marriage. With my wife out of the room, they asked me who my favorite superhero was. I quickly responded, “Nick Saban.” As the game went, my wife was brought into the room and asked the same questions about me. When asked who she thought my favorite superhero was, she immediately replied, “That’s easy. Nick Saban.”

It’s true: I’m pretty much obsessed with Nick Saban. On January 3, 2007, lying prostrate before the television, I came to tears when ESPN announced that Saban would accept the position as head coach of my beloved Alabama Crimson Tide. Thirty-three wins, two SEC West Titles, one SEC Title, and a BCS National Title later, my epic man-crush has done nothing but grow. I beam when I hear the man’s name.

Anyone with an objective, discerning mind reasonably may ask why I, a youth minister, adore a man that CNN rated the ninth most hated man in sports in 2009. Let’s be honest, outside of his success in football, Nick Saban is best known for his tendencies to humiliate journalists, never smile, and berate players and officials. Many people- especially journalists- would describe Saban as a jerk.

With that being said, I literally would beam with joy if Coach Saban called me tomorrow to come to his house to shovel dog mess and scrub his bathrooms with a toothbrush. My obsession knows no end.

The easy explanation to why I adore Nick Saban is the Christian doctrine of imputation. Really? Let me explain. On a recent trip to Texas, I had a swagger in my step that certainly would not have existed in the dismal Shula era, pre-Saban. Each day, I wore the most flagrantly obnoxious Alabama gear I could find. I was in the territory of our latest victim, the Texas Longhorns, whom Alabama toppled to secure their most recent national title. And when people in Texas asked where we were from, I couldn’t help myself, I had to say, “Alabama, home of the national champions.”

Even though, I am a slow, middle-class, unathletic, weak, average youth minister, I am a freakin’ national champion in my warped reality, when I don my worn, mesh Alabama hat. I have contributed absolutely nothing to attain this status. Nick Saban, his staff, and some unbelievably athletic and committed young men worked endless hours and performed in an exceptional manner to win fourteen straight games, including the BCS National Championship Game in Pasadena. Through the efforts of these men, I have been given the status as national champion (in my mind), in spite of the fact that I added nothing to their cause.

This, my friends, is the nature of the doctrine of imputation, one of the more critical concepts in Christianity: the accomplishment of one person is credited to another. Christ lived a perfect life and died on the Cross, not just to forgive our sins, but to give us new identities. In spite of the fact that we make no contribution whatsoever.

I have one more month to enjoy my inherited status as the national champion until college football kicks off in early September. Thanks be to God, my status as a son of God will last through the fall into eternity.

"Mad Men" Season Premiere Tonight

A thoughtful interview with Mad Men creator and writer Matthew Weiner with some insights into what to expect this season. Season four begins as an almost brand new show. There is a new ad agency, a new office, a new apartment for the now single Don, and a new set of challenges. Yet Weiner admits that the central theme of the show remains unchanged. The question of identity is alive and well as we are left wondering "who is Don Draper?"




And if that wasn't enough, here's an official preview from the AMC website:

Another Week Ends: Conan, Benefits of Tears, Don Miller, Romantic Comedies, TRON

1. An insider's perspective on Conan O'Brien's final days on The Tonight Show by Todd Levin at GQ. Beautiful stuff. It would appear that, freed of all expectations, creativity and fun thrived on the set. Go figure (ht JD):

We produced some of the show's most memorable moments in those last weeks, like the $1.5 million Bugatti Veyron dressed as a mouse, and Andy's public plea for work. It was a relief to be freed from the tight constraints of format and the ebb and flow of the daily news cycle—now our show was creating, rather than following, headlines. That's when The Tonight Show officially ended for me. My abstract idea of it no longer mattered, nor did the invisible weight of its legacy. We were writing for a completely new show—one that was honest and edgy, and surprisingly mainstream. Conan's Gospel of Fun, for all its simplicity, worked.

2. An alternately scientific and poetic look at The Health Benefits of Tears by Judith Orloff over at The Huffington Post. Dr. Orloff seems to suggest that the way we become liberated from 'negative emotions' is through experiencing those negative emotions fully, rather than avoiding or trying to prevent them. She also notes that humans are the only creatures known to shed emotional tears (ht JZ):

It is good to cry. It is healthy to cry. This helps to emotionally clear sadness and stress. Crying is also essential to resolve grief, when waves of tears periodically come over us after we experience a loss. Tears help us process the loss so we can keep living with open hearts. Otherwise, we are a set up for depression if we suppress these potent feelings.

3. A lengthy and surprisingly sympathetic profile of evangelical author Don Miller (Blue Like Jazz) over at CNN, including some touching thoughts on father-son relationships, as well as some inadvertent yet powerful examples of horizontal imputation. Believe it or not, the best quotes come from Brian McLaren:

Miller appeals to evangelicals because there is a "profound starvation for honesty," says Brian McLaren... "What sells radio and television time is sentimentality and promises of easy answers," McLaren says. "He is honest about his pain and his doubts and his life being messy. But he's also honest about his hope and faith."

4. According to an Australian survey via The A/V Club, romantic comedies ruin real-life relationships:

In an Australian survey ironically intended to promote the DVD release of Valentine’s Day, half of the respondents claimed that watching romantic comedies with all their warm-and-fuzzy happy endings has ruined their idea of what constitutes a perfect relationship. "One in four Australians said they were now expected to know what their partner was thinking while one in five respondents said it made their partners expect gifts and flowers 'just because'.

5. Very awesome new trailer for TRON Legacy is up!

6. We have been delighted by the enthusiastic response to our new DVD, Paul Zahl's New Persuasive Words. We're already down to the last 20 copies, so if you'd like one, you need to either order here or reserve it by emailing us at info@mockingbirdnyc.com ASAP. We hope to do another run at some point in the future, but there are no firm plans just yet. 

Shock and Law

Perhaps spurred on by the recent tribute to Orwell (or our past treatment:), like many of you, I have been following the ongoing coverage (or lack thereof) of the Journolist imbroglio with some interest. Although there have been predictable responses from all sides, politics aside, it has a lot to say about how the law operates in everyday life. In one incredibly candid admission by Sarah Spitz, a producer for an NPR affiliate, with regards to Rush Limbaugh, we see this clearly manifested. When asked on the listserv what one would do where they to see Limbaugh having a heart attack, the Daily Caller reports: Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment. In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote.
Anyone who has participated in a listserv can sympathize with Ms.Spitz's candor, and her regret over being caught is doubtless sincere; however, in this moment of unintended self-disclosure, she revealed something deep and profound about the reality of human nature and its relationship to the law and gospel, because there is no line between righteous anger and, in this respect, negligent homicide, because they share the same root.


This is not to say that there are not absolutes or that people should stop working for justice and peace; however, uncritical law-based attempts to formulate “the greater good” will always end up sacrificing people to an ideal, elevating what could be over what is, and result in the candid (and honest) admission that we could laugh as our enemies choked before our very eyes. The law did not come to guide or to instruct, but to stir up our murderous thoughts, expose our patronizing self-deceptions and bring us to the foot of the cross, which stands as a constant reminder that, although Ms. Spitz may have been shocked by her level of animus, there's one who isn't.


Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
(Matthew 11:28-30)

Frasier Crane, Casuistry, and Freedom

I tried to warn you. I got onto a Frasier kick after my recent Frasier Crane and the Day Spa of Death post, and my wife and I are watching the entire series from the beginning. What a treasure trove of wonderful comedy and Gospel insight! Today's entry comes from the first season, episode 9, called "Selling Out." Frasier is offered the opportunity to make some extra money by personally endorsing products on the air. First a Chinese restaurant, and then a hot tub company. At first, he refuses, seeking to maintain his medical ethics. Then, enticed by the amount of money he's been offered, he agrees, on the condition that he try and like the products that he is endorsing.

Before long, the Holy Grail of endorsements is offered: television. This throws him back into a quandary. He doesn't especially like the product (snack nuts) and the commercial includes a blow to his ego (he must pop out of a giant foam peanut shell). As is his custom, he goes to his brother, a psychiatrist in private practice, for advice.

"I'm afraid that I'm compromising my integrity as a psychiatrist," Frasier explains. "I don't see this as a problem," counters Niles. Frasier replies, "You don't think this is the selling-out of Frasier Crane?" "Oh, certainly not!" laughs Niles. "You sold out a long time ago. The moment you agreed to do that call-in show you sold out." Frasier is horrified. "Niles, you are such a purist. Granted, i can't do the kind of in-depth analysis one can with a single patient, but my show literally helps thousands of people a day!" "Let's face it, Frasier," comes Niles' retort. "You talk about wanting to safeguard your professional dignity, but the first time you went on the air you got out of medicine and into show-biz." Niles likens Frasier's show to an actress to did a nude scene and then complained that no one took her seriously as an actress. Crestfallen, Frasier asks, "So what you're saying is that I shouldn't do it?" "No, no, no," concludes Niles. "I'm saying it doesn't matter. Let's face it, Frasier. They've already looked up your skirt and seen everything there is to see."

As is the norm with Frasier, there is meaty human-nature stuff here, all couched in hilarious dialouge and situations. The first thing we see is Frasier's casuistry. Loosely defined, casuistry is the practice of finding exceptions. We tell children who play the piano poorly that they play well because we feel it is heartless to be honest in this situation. This is casuistry. We know that lying is not "right." But we do it, because we find the exception to be worthwhile. For Christians, casuistry is a dangerous practice. God's law does not leave wiggle room. There are almost no exceptions made in Scripture. Frasier is being casuistic when he claims that his ethics are intact because he has tried and liked a product. As Niles points out, Frasier is being casuistic in his claim that his ethics even still exist! He's using an "ends justify the means" argument: I cannot break my ethics...UNLESS a huge number of people is helped in the process!

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Thursday Afternoon Blues: Blind Willie McTell and Mark Miller

Mockingbird friend Mark Miller has just released an amazing record called "Ain't It Grand: The Gospel Songs of Blind Willie McTell." It's really quite astonishing - gospel blues of the highest order with some jaw-dropping slide guitar. Get your copy today, and then tell everyone you know! We need to support this very worthy project. The music speaks for itself, as do Mark's powerful liner notes:

My fascination with the music and life of Blind Willie McTell began on a seemingly mundane Tuesday morning in September 2009. I was searching through my iTunes for songs when a title that both intrigued and humored me caught my eye. It was "Sending Up My Timbers" by Blind Willie McTell. Almost immediately, I fell in love with the lyrical wit, the complexity of the twelve-string guitar playing and the passion of McTell's vocal performance. Within a couple of months, I was planning a recording session of Willie McTell's songs.



McTell recorded 149 songs from 1927-1956. Hidden in the midst of his most famous blues compositions, such as "Statesboro Blues" and "Your Southern Can is Mine" are about a dozen profoundly simply gospel songs. Some are original while others are re-treatments of traditional spirituals. Although McTell did give up singing and playing the blues for gospel singing and preaching a few years before his death, his gospel songs come from every period of his creative output.

In McTell's day there was a sharp contrast between the secular and the sacred. You would NEVER play the blues in church (it was the devil's music) and you would NEVER disgrace a song from the church by playing it at a dance hall or fish fry. I think it was the fact that McTell wrote, played and sang with the same genius and conviction, whether he was recording "Savannah Mama" or his final gospel song "Pearly Gates", that spurred my interest in him as a musician and a man. In the same way Ray Charles brought gospel/church music influences into his mainstream music (to much chagrins), McTell brought the raw and unbridled honesty of the blues into his gospel music:
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From Marilynne Robinson's "Puritans and Pigs"

Quite a quote from her The Death Of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought...

"People who are blind to the consequences of their own behavior no doubt feel for that reason particularly suited to the work of reforming other people. To them morality seems almost as easy as breathing. Fish-eating water-drinkers who confront their geriatric disorders in long anticipation -- we could all be like them."

Orwell and the English Language

I was watching PZ’s first talk in his New Persuasive Words series and he got me thinking of a tremendous essay by George Orwell called “Politics and the English Language.” They are both concerned with defaced words, language that has been drained of power and vividness and immediate connection to everyday life; that and the Bible!

Orwell writes:

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

... As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.

...Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them.

... The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

[Ed. What happens if we replace the word writing above with preaching?]

Speaking of Thornton Wilder...

The great author expressing a similar sentiment as the one which inspires PZ's new DVD (below), slightly elucidated, and touching on some of Mockingbird's core concerns. This comes from the final paragraph of the foreward to his book of short plays The Angel That Troubled The Waters:

"The last four plays here were written within a year and a half. Almost all the plays in this book are religious, but religious in that dilute fashion that is a believer's concession to a contemporary standard of good manners. But these four plant their flag as boldly as they may. It is the kind of work that I would like to do well, in spite of the fact that there has seldom been an age in literature when such a vein was less welcome and less understood. I hope, through many mistakes, to discover the spirit that is not unequal to the elevation of the great religious themes, yet which does not fall into a repellent didacticism. Didacticism is an attempt at the coercion of another's free mind, even though one knows that in these matters beyond logic, beauty is the only persuasion. Here the schoolmaster enters again. He sees all that is fairest in the Christian tradition made repugnant to the new generations by reason of the diction in which it is expressed. The intermittent sincerity of generations of clergymen and teachers have rendered embarrassing and even ridiculous the terms of the spiritual life. Nothing succeeds in dampening the aspirations of the young to-day--who dares use the word "aspiration" without enclosing it, knowingly, in quotation-marks?--like the names they hear given to them. The revival of religion is almost a matter of rhetoric. The work is difficult, perhaps impossible (perhaps all religions die out with the exhaustion of language), but it at least reminds us that Our Lord asked us in His work to be not only gentle as doves, but as wise as serpents."

The Davis House

Lawrenceville, N.J.

June, 1928.

NOW AVAILABLE! New Persuasive Words DVD by Paul Zahl

We are very proud to announce the release of a new resource! Our first ever DVD:

"The revival in religion will be a rhetorical problem -- new persuasive words for defaced or degraded ones."

The great American novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder made this incisive observation in the midst of the Great Depression. His stray diagnosis has taken on undeniable prophetic significance in the intervening years.

Wilder is referring to religious words that have been freighted with negative association, words originally meant to be joyous and inspiring but which have instead become signposts for ways of life that are repressive, confining and guilt-inducing. Doozies like “Evangelical” and “Justification,” even “Gospel,” not to mention slogans like “Jesus died for my sins”; at best they’ve been rendered impressively quaint/irrelevant, at worst they have been turned into weapons of exhaustion and judgment. Wilder understood the devastating consequences of such a semantic crisis. With understanding for a defensive modern audience, he applied himself to devising new ways of telling the old story.

Dr. Paul Zahl found more than inspiration in Wilder’s ideas; he found a summation, and he found an assignment. Indeed, as his many books and countless sermons will attest, Dr. Zahl has devoted his life to “translating the religious dimension into gut-level, fresh terms that speak today.”

But the task is more than a linguistic one. Language is only important in so far as it effectively communicates the “heart of the matter.” Dr. Zahl is after the message; his interest lies in what Christianity has to offer suffering, grieving and lonely people when it comes to the deepest problems of life – the elusiveness of love and the inevitability of death, and the innumerable fears and anxieties they generate. He says, “religion fails people when it doesn’t touch the essence of human nature and human healing that is rooted in the New Testament.” These five talks represent a handful of his attempts at redressing Wilder’s “rhetorical problem.”

Believe it or not, this is the only such footage that exists of Dr. Zahl “in action,” and fortunately, it captures him at his unguarded best: free-associating and self-deprecating, scholarly and warm, provocative, personal, and best of all, uproariously funny. These talks were given in January and February of 2009 at All Saints Episcopal Church in Chevy Chase, MD (which may account for the DC-specific references sprinkled throughout). Between services each Sunday morning, Dr. Zahl held hour-long “Rector’s Forums” where he would give a 30-40 minute presentation, followed by Q&A with his audience. These are five of those sessions. As the title suggests, his formal theme was New Persuasive Words for Defaced of Degraded Ones: Mercy, Grace & Hope in an Age of Recession. The first four chapters of St. Paul’s Letter to The Romans were the text, or springboard, from which he was speaking.

These DVD packages - each contains three discs - are available for a suggested donation of $20. To pay with a credit card, click here:

If you'd prefer to pay by check, you can send one, made out to "Mockingbird Ministries" to 100 W. Jefferson St, Charlottesville, VA 22902. As a preview, we've uploaded the first of the five sessions to youtube, which you may view in five ten-minute installments, the first of which being:

(Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 - Q&A)