Some Things Never Change - RJ Heijmen

Continuing with our series of entries from Judgment & Love, here is RJ Heijmen's chapter. RJ is head minister of St. Paul's Church in New York City - you can subscribe to his terrific podcast here. Again, J&L is a collection of 35 true-life stories illustrating the powerful truth that when love is shown in the face of deserved judgment, lives are changed. To order your copy at the reduced price of $10, go here or click on the button at the bottom of the post.

"We love because he first loved us." (1 John 4:19)

A few weeks ago, I was in the kitchen with my wife Jaime, and it had just happened again. For the umpteenth time in our nine-year marriage, she had told me how something was going to turn out, I hadn’t believed her, and, of course, she had been right. Again. What exactly she was right about is beside the point, and I can’t remember anyway. What mattered was that, once again, in spite of her long track record of levelheaded, accurate prognostication, I had in my foolish pride doubted my wife and, once again, she had been one-hundred-percent correct.

Humbled and frustrated with myself, I took a deep breath and sighed it out. I turned to her and asked, “Am I ever going to believe you?” She looked at me with love and a bit of mischief in her eyes and said very matter-of-factly, “No.”

This may not seem like an important marital event, but it is a moment I will always remember. In her simple one-word response, Jaime let me know that, in spite of myself, she loved me and she always will. While she uttered only a single word, her delivery spoke volumes. What Jaime was really telling me in that instant was that she accepted me as I was, loved me in spite of my arrogance and lack of trust, had come to terms with the fact that I would probably never change, and wanted to be with me anyway. If that is not God-like love, I don’t what is. It broke my heart and set it ablaze all at the same time. With one word, Jaime’s love crushed my pride and self-loathing; it put me in my place and raised me up.

A friend once told me the best marriage preparation wisdom he had ever heard came from a speaker who, as the first order of business, looked into the audience and asked the question, “How would you feel if ninety-five percent of your spouse-to-be never changed?” There was an uncomfortable silence as the room full of people preparing to make vows of eternal love all recognized the extent to which they were secretly hoping to mold their partners into something more desirable. Relationships do not require people to be flexible, to change and grow. What people need is unconditional acceptance and love, the kind of love that says, “Even if you never get any better, I will still love you.”

This kind of one-way love can become the inspiration for change. This is true in all relationships. Although I could have never predicted it, my father only began to be the father I always wanted when I let go of my expectations and started loving him for who he was. My wife would have been completely justified to be angry with me for my lack of belief in her, but that would have only created greater defensiveness on my part. I wish this were not the case, but it is. Yet by some miracle, Jaime withheld righteous anger and judgment and offered something unexpected and undeserved in their place, forever changing me.

I Wish that I Could Hate Justin Timberlake

He's also supposed to be amazing in "Social Network"

If Once Were Nothing

A good friend and member of my church recently won the 2010 International Arts Movement Prize for Non-Fiction. His story, centering on the truly harrowing misadventures of a group of friends spending a week in Prague, is riveting and can be found here.

Enjoy!

P.S. Prize, to be collected at the Mockingbird Conference, for the first to identify the image! (Reading the story will help)

Son of Hamas Converted

A friend of mine sent me this article from the Wall Street Journal last week, after which I promptly ran out and bought Son of Hamas, the story of the life and conversion of Mosab Hassan Yousef, the child of one of the Islamic group's founders.

A few choice quotes from the article:

"I converted to Christianity because I was convinced by Jesus Christ as a character, as a personality. I loved him, his wisdom, his love, his unconditional love. I didn't leave [the Islamic] religion to put myself in another box of religion. At the same time it's a beautiful thing to see my God exist in my life and see the change in my life. I see that when he does exist in other Middle Easterners there will be a change.

"I'm not trying to convert the entire nation of Israel and the entire nation of Palestine to Christianity. But at least if you can educate them about the ideology of love, the ideology of forgiveness, the ideology of grace. Those principles are great regardless, but we can't deny they came from Christianity as well."

"The problem is not in Muslims," he continues. "The problem is with their God. They need to be liberated from their God. He is their biggest enemy. It has been 1,400 years they have been lied to."

Whoa.

NetFlixPicks (vol 1)

Subscribing to Netflix, a mail-order movie rental service, also entitles you to unlimited online viewing (with Mac, PC, PS3, Xbox and, coming, soon, Wii) of a fairly wide selection (thousands) of movies and television shows. From time to time, I will offer my picks of the best of online streaming. Just to put this into perspective, with a Netflix account (they start at $9/month) and a high-speed internet connection, you could watch any of these right now, for free. That is cool.

Today's picks:

Friday Night Lights, seasons 1-3. Along with Mad Men, Friday Night Lights is my favorite drama on TV today. Revolving around High School Football in small-town Texas, it features a killer soundtrack and the best marriage you will ever see on any screen. An absolute must see. Watch the pilot and you'll be hooked.

This American Life, season 1. Ira Glass' much-loved public radio show about the extraordinary lives of ordinary people comes to the screen, to great effect. If you want to know what people are actually like, watch this show.

Dexter, seasons 1&2. If you can stomach a drama about a serial killer, this show compellingly illustrates what we Mockingbirds call the bondage of the will.

A large selection of Kirosawa just became available as well, but I haven't jumped in yet. Enjoy!

Haiti Earthquake Relief

Here are a couple of different ways to support relief efforts in Haiti.

To give online: Anglican Relief & Development Fund (many Mbird contributors are Anglican/Episcopal, but I'm sure that just about every denomination has set up some sort of relief conduit): www.anglicanaid.net

To give $10 via text message through the Red Cross, text "Haiti" to 90999.

Of course, above all, pray.

From the New Yorker: What we Think God is Like

Jesus in Matthew 6 (the Sermon on the Mount):

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you?

Punishment and Crime

From an article in The New Yorker about the murderous streak in American history:

Long ago, Beccaria (Cesare Beccaria, the Italian author of 1764's "On Crimes and Punishment") pointed out the meaningfulness of the correspondence, over time, between crime and punishment, between one kind of violence and another. If the history of murder contains a lesson, Beccaria believed, it was this: “The countries and times most notorious for severity of punishment have always been those in which the bloodiest and most inhumane of deeds were committed.”

Rom 5.20: "The law was added so that the trespass might increase".

Less Law, Less Trespass - from the Automotive Dept.

We've got more than a few gearheads here at Mockingbird, and I thought that the following post from autoblog was a wonderful illustration of St. Paul's words that "where there is no law, neither is there violation" (Rom 4.15).

When the Utah DOT raised the speed limit on two pieces of I-15 from 75 mph to 80 mph, it discovered that driving habits didn't change. When the limit was 75 mph, the Utah DoT found that drivers were going between 81 and 85 mph. And now that the maximum limit is 80 mph, it has found that drivers are going between 83 and 85 mph.

You can look at that as less speeding, as the UDoT has, or simply the fact that people didn't automatically start going 10 mph over the limit, having found a speed that satisfies 85% of them. This shouldn't be that surprising – even when Montana had stretches of highway with unlimited speeds, it was only a few folks, mostly out-of-staters, that raced at max velocity. And most folks on unlimited sections of the Autobahn aren't even going 150 mph.

According to the Deseret News, a UDoT official said that accidents haven't increased, either, nor did they expect an increase in fender benders. What he said has increased, though, is speed differential, which we don't quite understand. Apparently, the difference between the fastest and slowest vehicles has widened. We can only imagine he was speaking of the 2 mph difference between the slightly higher lower average speed of 83 mph vs the 81 mph from before. Even though one Utah legislator wasn't happy about the increased limit, saying speed kills, the proof appears to be... well, not necessarily.

For an illustration of 1Co 3.13-15, check out this post.

Pandora as Judgment-Free Zone

There is a very interesting article in this week's New York Times Magazine about Pandora, the free internet music service that creates custom playlists based on your personal music preferences. I am a huge Pandora fan.

Most interesting, for Mockingbirds, is how the absence of judgment (i.e. law) in Pandora creates the space for love (of music) to flourish. Pandora's entire system depends on a group of music experts evaluating songs in the most objective, least judgmental way possible, which often leads to unexpected musical connections for listeners, as is recounted in the following humorous anecdote:

Westergren (Pandora's founder) likes to tell a story about a Pandora user who wrote in to complain that he started a station based on the music of Sarah McLachlan, and the service served up a Celine Dion song. “I wrote back and said, ‘Was the music just wrong?’ Because we sometimes have data errors,” he recounts. “He said, ‘Well, no, it was the right sort of thing — but it was Celine Dion.’ I said, ‘Well, was it the set, did it not flow in the set?’ He said, ‘No, it kind of worked — but it’s Celine Dion.’ We had a couple more back-and-forths, and finally his last e-mail to me was: ‘Oh, my God, I like Celine Dion.’ ”

This particular listener would have never realized the horrifying, liberating truth that he likes Celine Dion if Pandora had rated music based on taste, which is, by definition, judgmental. As the author writes:

What Pandora’s system largely ignores is, in a word, taste. The way that Gasser or Westergren might put this is that it minimizes the influence of other people’s taste. Music-liking becomes a matter decided by the listener, and the intrinsic elements of what is heard. Early on, Westergren actually pushed for the idea that Pandora would not even reveal who the artist was until the listener asked. He thought maybe that structure would give users a kind of permission to evaluate music without even the most minimal cultural baggage. “We’re so insecure about our tastes,” he says.

Simply put, the absence of judgment in Pandora creates the freedom for people to discover what they actually love, rather than what they're supposed to. As a pastor myself, I see my role in the spiritual formation of my congregation as fostering the type of non-judgmental, gospel-induced freedom that allows for love and creativity to blossom. I may have my ideas of what "living by the Spirit" looks like, my own personal "taste", but imposing this on others will invariably quench the movement of the Spirit in their own lives.

Of course, whether or not liking Celine Dion could be called a fruit of the Spirit is another question...

Obama's Nobel: Law or Gospel?

I was struck today by the following excerpts regarding Barack Obama's unexpected, and perhaps undeserved (according to Obama himself), Nobel Peace Prize:

AP: President Barack Obama was praised Friday as a worthy Nobel Peace Prize winner although many admirers said the award was based on his potential, not his accomplishments.

Former Finnish president and 2008 Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari: "We do not yet have peace in the Middle East... This time it was very clear that they wanted to encourage Obama to move on these issues...".

Is the prize, in this case, a powerful example of grace and imputation, i.e. treating someone as better than they are, giving a gift that is undeserved?

Or is it a powerful example of law, of burdening a man with something that he cannot live up to, of saddling with crushing expectations?

Perhaps both? What say you, Mockingbirds?

Thoughtful Faith Pieces from the New Yorker

Over the past couple of months, I have been really impressed by a couple of different book reviews from the New Yorker that center around issues of faith. The authors have not always reached the conclusions that we might hope, but their honesty and insight have been quite striking. Below are a few quotes with links:

From an article about the recent glut of books on the so-called Gospel of Judas:

Cumulatively, the commentaries on the Judas gospel are amazing in their insistence on its upbeat character. Jesus ridicules his disciples, denounces the world, and says that most of us will pass away into nothingness. Hearing this, Judas asks why he and his like were born—a good question. Jesus evades it. The fact that liberal theologians have managed to find hope in all this is an indication of how desperately, in the face of the evangelical movement, they are looking for some crack in the wall of doctrinaire Christianity—some area of surprise, uncertainty, that might then lead to thought.

From another article (only the abstract in currently available online) about the well-publicized New Atheists (Dawkins, Hitchins, et al) and the response(s) to them:

For Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, among others, the God most worth fighting against seems to be a hybrid of a cheaply understood Old Testament, a prejudicially scanned Koran, and the sentimentalities of contemporary evangelicalism. For the new atheists, as for many contemporary American Christians, faith is assumed to be blind. The new atheists do not speak to the millions of people whose form of religion is far from the embodied certainties of contemporary literalism. Indeed, it is a settled assumption of this kind of atheism that there are no intelligent religious believers. Oddly, despite God’s general discrediting, serious theological argument is being done by literary and cultural theorists alike. Terry Eagleton’s “Reason, Faith, and Revolution” attacks the new atheism as a kind of secular counter-fundamentalism. It makes a sharp, limited case against Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, better than any previous book of its kind has. But its own incoherence is symptomatic of the frailty of what might be called the new anti-atheism... Eagleton shows little interest in the central claim of Christian belief that Christ was God incarnate. Jesus is less important to him as the Son of God than as a proto-Marxist. Heaven is not really about a world to come but about the transformation of the world we have.

In the full version of the latter article, which will be online shortly, I imagine, the author goes so far as to say (quoting St. Paul!) that a Jesus who didn't rise from the dead isn't worth believing in!

Imputation from John Hughes

From a touching and thoughtful remembrance by Molly Ringwald in the NYTimes:

John saw something in me that I didn’t even see in myself. He had complete confidence in me as an actor, which was an extraordinary and heady sensation for anyone, let alone a 16-year-old girl. I did some of my best work with him. How could I not? He continually told me that I was the best, and because of my undying respect for him and his judgment, how could I have not believed him?

(Christ-like) Passivity in Iraq

From an article in today's NYTimes:

Shiite clerics and politicians have been successfully urging their followers not to retaliate against a fierce campaign of sectarian bombings, in which Shiites have accounted for most of the 566 Iraqis killed since American troops pulled out of Iraq's cities on June 30.

“Let them kill us,” said Sheik Khudair al-Allawi, the imam of a mosque bombed recently. “It’s a waste of their time. The sectarian card is an old card and no one is going to play it anymore. We know what they want, and we’ll just be patient. But they will all go to hell." (anyone else think that that last line is funny?)

"But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." (Mt 5.39)

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. (Is 53.7)

Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. (Rom 12.19)

From The New Yorker: Obesity, the Bondage of the Will and Antinomianism

From an article reviewing a few recent books on obesity:

...The elasticity of the human appetite is the subject of Brian Wansink’s “Mindless Eating” (2006). Wansink is the director of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, and he has performed all sorts of experiments to test how much people will eat under varying circumstances. These have convinced him that people are—to put it politely—rather dim. They have no idea how much they want to eat or, once they have eaten, how much they’ve consumed. Instead, they rely on external cues, like portion size, to tell them when to stop. The result is that as French-fry bags get bigger, so, too, do French-fry eaters...

...So what’s wrong with putting on an extra pound, or ten pounds, or, for that matter, a hundred and ten? According to the contributors to “The Fat Studies Reader” (forthcoming from New York University; $27), nothing... According to the authors of “The Fat Studies Reader,” the real problem isn’t the sudden surge in obesity in this country but the surge in stories about obesity. Weight, by their account, is, like race or sex or bone structure, a biological trait over which individuals have no—or, in the case of fat, very limited—control...

Beauty and Longing in Aston Martin

A couple of us Mockingbirds (Sean Norris and I) are serious petrolheads, as they say across the pond.

I'm not quite sure what to say about our (silly?) obsession, but what follows is perhaps the most beautiful auto-related piece of art I have ever seen.

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. (Phil 4.8)

The Power of "Free"

In a recent issue of the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell (of Tipping Point fame) writes a not-too-flattering review of Chris Anderson' new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, which is about the trend towards "freeness" in technological products and services and the psychological significance and impact of "free."

One passage from the article (cited from the book) caught my eye:

“From the consumer’s perspective, there is a huge difference between cheap and free,” Anderson writes. “Give a product away, and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you’re in an entirely different business. . . . The truth is that zero is one market and any other price is another.”

This quote is about the Gospel, and particularly about the Gospel as Mockingbird tries to present it. We believe that, in Jesus, God's love, forgiveness and salvation are 100% free, full stop. Put another way, the Good News of Christianity is that the most valuable thing in the universe is also the most freely given.

The quote also sheds light on why Christianity, when rightly proclaimed, "goes viral", and why any version of the faith which tells us that we must do something, anything, to earn God's favor (no matter how small!) is not authentic Christianity. To paraphrase: zero is one faith and any other price is another.

The Return of Laissez-Faire Parenting

A post from Mockingbird friend Daniel Heijmen:

Fascinating article from NY Times magazine about a general trend in parenting, a verb the article mentions most likely wasn’t invented until the latter half of the 20^th century. The piece talks about a new wave called “’free range parenting’ a return to the days when childhood was not ruled by fear” and in which parents are unburdened by the need to constantly be running their child from point A to point B and instead allow themselves, and their kids, to just be.

I will say that I am not a parent, but I can already imagine myself trying to win father of the century award and succeeding only in providing my children with fodder for my ridicule. Instead the author talks about parents letting go of their need to be perfect parents, realizing that its something they can’t do.

“Over coffee and out in cyberspace they are gleefully labeling themselves 'bad mommies,' pouring out their doubts, their dissatisfaction and their dysfunction, celebrating their own shortcomings in contrast to their older sisters’ cloying perfection.”

Does this sound familiar? The article also mentions a new book called The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids by a Brit named Tom Hodkinson where the front cover shows a picture of a mom and dad drinking martinis while their kid makes another for them on the floor. HA, admittedly this could be a little overboard, but I think the gospel message comes through here. No one is the perfect parent, and killing yourself trying to be one isn’t good for you or your children. But through an admission of our imperfections we can forgive ourselves, and perhaps be forgiven by our kids. After all I’m sure they’d rather have a mom or dad to hang out with than one pulling their hair out and cursing other drivers on the way from soccer practice to their tutor!

Birdman Crashes... and Takes Flight

Here at Mockingbird we talk a lot about Law & Gospel, death & resurrection, about how God is constantly putting to death and raising to new life, how He is active in and through suffering and grace.

I was reminded once more of the power and truth of this paradigm by a story in today's NYTimes about Chris Andersen, the 6-10, tatted-up, faux-hawked reserve for the Denver Nuggets, who are currently battling the Los Angeles Lakers for a spot in the NBA finals (that's basketball, in case you're not sure:)

Andersen had a very troubled childhood, including a four-year stint in a home for boys. All the suffering eventually took its toll, expressing itself in broken relationships and, eventually, drug use that led to a two-year suspension from the NBA. That might have been the end for Andersen, but a (Christ-like) friend stepped in, inviting Andersen to live with him, his wife and children, and supporting Andersen through rehab and counseling.

Looking back, Andersen (who has become something of a fan favorite, even role model) said the following:

"If it wasn't for what led to that suspension, and me having to go through the suspension, and then me rebuilding my life, I wouldn't be in the position that I'm in right now."

Sounds like good news for sufferers.

For we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose... (Romans 8.28)

Sam Raimi on "Drag Me to Hell" (and Preaching)

After three action-hero blockbusters (Spidermans (Spidermen?) 1-3), cult director Sam Raimi (Evil Dead 2) is back to his old ways with "Drag Me to Hell", which, not being a fan of gore, I will probably never see.

However, there was a very interesting quote from Raimi in the NYTimes (full article here) in which he explains what he was trying to accomplish with the movie, which centers around a young woman whose tragic error is denying an elderly woman's loan application:

The torments the poor young woman suffers sometimes seem a little excessive compared with the relative smallness of her crime — she’s hardly a Bernie Madoff — and that’s part of Mr. Raimi’s intention. “This is a young woman who thinks she’s a good person, but she acts out of greed,” he explained. “That’s what seems relevant — the greed. I tried to make her someone you identify with, because at the moment she has to make her choice, I want the audience to make that choice with her. They sin with her. They know they’re culpable, and now” — he lowered his voice so it sounded like the voice-over of a horror movie trailer — “now they know they’re going to be punished.”

In preaching, we often try to do the same thing, namely to coax people, by way of examples, into an admission of their own guilt, their own suffering, under the Law. That being said, we (hopefully) have something different to offer - not punishment, but grace.