This I Believe

There's a series on NPR from time to time called "This I believe." It's very interesting to hear these passionate people proclaim their beliefs - I highly recommend it.

The following is NOT an entry from that program, but perhaps it should be. It is a prepared message by Dr. Lee Camp (yes, again) which was delivered this past Wednesday at a worship service at Otter Creek.

I've transcribed the whole thing (300-ish words), but here's a link to the audio. Again, I claim all typos and bad punctuation as my own.

"I believe in God the Father and Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit and the holy catholic church. Which is all to say, I believe in the Creed. I believe God is love - a love greater than my self-condemnation, greater than my lusts and greed and ambition, greater than armies and terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. I believe God is nearer than my very breath, knows me better than I know myself and desires good for me beyond anything pride or ambition could ever devise.
"I believe there are no tears more bitter than those that precede repentance, grieving the loss of our old ways. I believe that detoxing from the old man is a hard and narrow road, like grieving the death of an old friend who has kept us company for many lonely days.
"I believe there are no tears sweeter than those that come spontaneously while sitting on the porch alone early in the morning years later when one realizes how good God has been, and kind and merciful, keeping me from pits of death which would swallow me whole.
"Which is to say that the day comes when in grieving the loss of the old, we learn that we have been grieving the loss of but an illusion, a lie. And that what we thought was our friend was in fact our mortal enemy. And then, deep laughter swallows up the tears. And then one is free to live.
"I believe that I am like the demon-possessed man, set free from his bondage and sent home to tell how wonderful are the works of God.
"I believe the fact of my freedom does not mean the old man has left me. He is always there, looking over my shoulder, seeking always to engage me in pleasant conversation, offering me poisons which taste and smell, at least at first, like good wine.
"I believe the world desperately needs people set free from fear - fear of shame and isolation, free from the fear of prison and the fear of social stigma, free to love, to speak the truth, to share all things needful, free to sing and laugh and to tell good stories.
"And I believe that God is good. I have tasted and I have seen. And I love this Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Though so poorly do I love. But I do.
"Amen."

Neither Conservative Nor Liberal

Yesterday, Dr. Lee Camp presented a sermon at the Otter Creek Church of Christ (where I'm a member). Here is a portion of that sermon. I transcribed it, so if there are any typos or bad punctuation, that's my fault.

Here's a link to the audio of the whole sermon.

"[W]e need to be a church, it seems to me, that is neither right nor left. Neither conservative nor liberal.
"We do not need to be a conservative church because we know that the status quo of the world does not need to be conserved. For the status quo and conventional wisdom often opposes the will of God. We cannot be a conservative church for there will be, even this hour, even today, there will be somewhere in the world, lots of places in the world in which a mother grieves the death of a starving child or one more child that dies of diarrhea because they didn't have clean water. We cannot be a conservative church that seeks to preserve that status quo. We cannot be a conservative church because today in Nashville there will be another young girl who sells herself to some more empty and broken man, himself. We cannot be a conservative church because there are still young men and young women who are sent off to wage war. We cannot be a conservative church because bullets still tear through inner-city homes. We have nothing at stake in conserving any of that. We cannot find our identity in being a conservative church because we don't want to preserve the margin, the gap between rich and poor. We don't want the continued marginalization of women. We don't want an idolatrous trust in swords and tanks and weapons of mass destruction. We do not wish to be conservative as such. Only until the Kingdom of God has come, in its fullness, can we ever be conservative as such.
"And yet. We cannot be a liberal church. We cannot be a liberal church that plays these games because we know that the way, THE truth, THE life has already come in the midst of human history. We know that THE way, THE truth and THE life has granted us all things needed unto life and godliness. We cannot be a liberal church because we have something better than tolerance: we have hospitality. The world doesn't need more tolerance; the world needs more hospitality. The world needs more people who will sit down at the table with people who have no one to sit down at the table with, and eat meals with them, to break bread with them, to drink wine with them, to share with them the goodness and the wisdom of God. We cannot be a liberal church because secularism will not save the world. Rather than humanizing the world in all of its arrogant conceit, secularism has simply taught us to demonize the other. Secularism has taught us how to slaughter the unborn and to slaughter men, women and children with an industrialized efficiency never dreamed of in the history of the world.
"We cannot be a conservative church because the Kingdom of God has not come. We cannot be a liberal church because we've been given the Way, the Truth and the Life in Jesus of Nazareth. We've been given this incredible calling to be the Body of Christ."

Amen.

Wish I had it on video

This morning I was driving on 440 East. Traffic was moving significantly more slowly than usual because of the rain. Understandable. Up ahead I saw that there were a few cars off the sides of the road - maybe a fender bender. Traffic slows for rubber necking, of course. Then. I saw a car - maybe two or three cars in front of me swerve off the left side of the road. Huh. Then the driver got out before the car stopped moving. Huh. He proceeded to run with the car as it swerved back into traffic - probably going 6-8 mph at this point. Evidently, we were going down a slight hill because the car picked up speed, but Mr. Driver did not. There was an unmanned car careening down the road at about 10-15 mph. Obviously, we all stopped to watch for a number of reasons. Eventually, the car swerved off to the right and struck a road sign. Mr. Driver catches up with the (now wrecked) car and calmly pulls out his cell phone. Perhaps I should've stopped to see if I could help, but I didn't. There were probably a half-dozen other cars already stopped right there anyways - not sure why.

Weird start to the day.

P.S. I tried to fit this into a 140-character twitter post. Wasn't happening.

Music

I love playing guitar. Not like I love baseball or love going to the pub. It is a romantic love - like being in love. On my way home from work, I daydream about playing - I can't wait to get there. When I'm finally there - just me and my inanimate friend making music together - I feel less lonely - like the angels are gathering to watch another creation. Love and music (and probably other things I haven't experienced) are like that - there's something entirely "otherly" about them that is a beneficial addiction. I really can't get enough.

At work...

This just happened:
Coworker sits across a cubic-hall from me.

Coworker: "Hey [boss], I got an extra sausage biscuit. Do you want it?"

Boss: "No thanks."

Coworker (to the whole department): "Hey! Does anyone want a sausage biscuit?"

[Pause]

Me: "Sure, I'll take it!"

Coworker (mumbled to boss): "You sure?"

Boss: "Yeah."

Then I get the biscuit.

Does that seem weird or am I just paranoid?

Funny to me

Last night I was hanging out with some friends. One young lady was telling a guy (who happens to be African-American) about a restaurant she recently visited: "Yeah, it's called Cuisine of India."

I said, "Actually, it's call Queen of India, she just translated it into ebonics for you."

That was really funny to me... and nobody else.

Surrounded

I just thought of a metaphor. I know metaphors are really overused these days, but every once in a while they're useful. I'm not sure this one fits in that category or not, but I wanted to jot it down anyways.

Being a Christian in this world is like being on second base. (By "this world", I don't mean 21st century America - I mean on Earth, post-Easter, pre-second-coming.) Follow me on this one. On second base, you are surrounded by the opponent. You're in peril, but you're "safe". You can't get too comfortable because you haven't reached your goal - you're waiting for something to happen so you can go home.

Yes, kinda cheesy, but anything that involves baseball and Christianity grabs my eye.