Vote for Science

According to the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we have until about 2030 to make drastic changes to prevent environmental catastrophe. If we can hold global warming to under a 0.9 degree Fahrenheit increase, then, as a story at PBS.org says,

·  Half as many people would suffer from lack of water.

·  There would be fewer deaths and illnesses from heat, smog and infectious diseases.

·  Seas would rise nearly 4 inches (0.1 meters) less.

·  Half as many animals with back bones and plants would lose the majority of their habitats.

·  There would be substantially fewer heat waves, downpours and droughts.

·  The West Antarctic ice sheet might not kick into irreversible melting.

·  And it just may be enough to save most of the world’s coral reefs from dying.

Meanwhile, a recent report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)—part of the Trump administration—says that Earth’s temperature will warm by 7 degrees by 2100. According to BusinessInsider.com, the report

was released with the goal of justifying Trump's decision to freeze federal gas-mileage standards for cars and light trucks by 2020. The report shows the administration believes this rise in temperature is baked into the global system, and freezing the aforementioned fuel consumption standards wouldn't make a difference.

In other words, the Trump administration says that we can’t do anything about the situation we’ve put ourselves in, so there’s no need to try. Besides, it might put some strain on the energy industry.

We don’t need such avoidance. We need a national and global effort to do all we can to take all available steps, including reducing carbon emissions by moving away from fossil fuels, to address the problem. This effort needs to be on the scale of what the Allies did to defeat the scourge of totalitarianism in World War II. Like then, the future of not just our nation but of the entire planet is at stake.

The IPCC report says that there are steps we can take, but it also expresses little optimism that we will. As a story in the Intelligencer (nymag.com) put it,

But creating the systems needed to clean dirty air on a global scale might be easier than convincing stubborn world leaders to join the effort. Jim Skea, a co-chair of the IPCC, says this report is all the scientific community can do. “Frankly, we’ve delivered a message to the governments,” he said in a press conference. “It’s now their responsibility … to decide whether they can act on it.”

So why don’t we do something about it? Why doesn’t our government join with other governments in doing more about it?

The biblical book of 2 Kings tells a relevant story. A delegation from Babylon came to Jerusalem to visit King Hezekiah of Judah. Wanting to show how great he and his kingdom were, he showed off their holdings.

When the prophet Isaiah found out about it, he told the king that the time would come when the Babylonians would take it all away. He also told Hezekiah that the invading armies would take his children away too.

Hezekiah said that all sounded good to him. His reasoning is shocking: “Why not, if there will be peace and security all my days?” (20:19).

In other words, he wouldn’t worry about what was going to happen to his children, so long as everything was fine for him.

I may live long enough to see the beginnings of the environmental calamity that our negligence is helping to bring about. My children certainly will. And I shudder to think what my grandchildren will face.

If this doesn’t trouble you, I don’t know what to say.

But if it does, and you’re wondering what you can do about it, one thing is to vote for the right candidates. In deciding who the right ones are, I suggest these three simple steps.

      (1) Find out where the candidates stand on science in general and on climate science in particular.

      (2) Vote for those who affirm science in general and climate science in particular and against those who don’t.

      (3) Encourage everyone you know to do the same.

Do it like your children and grandchildren’s future depends on it.

Because it does.

What Kind of Leaders Do We Want?

Jerry Falwell Jr. is the president of Liberty University. He is also a self-appointed spokesman for American “evangelical Christians,” many of whom accept his self-appointment and take what he says seriously. He gets a lot of press.

(I still think of myself as an evangelical Christian in the sense that I follow and try to share the good news of Jesus. But, since the label now refers to people who think that devotion to Christ is best expressed through an unswerving allegiance to conservative political positions and leaders, I can’t use it to self-identify anymore. So I don’t.)

On September 28, Falwell tweeted the following: “Conservatives & Christians need to stop electing ‘nice guys’. They might make great Christian leaders but the US needs street fighters like @realDonaldTrump at every level of government b/c the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps & many Repub leaders are a bunch of wimps!”

On October 1, he tweeted this: “That video of @JeffFlake in the elevator cowering and nearly crying as liberals screamed at him and then acquiescing to their demands for FBI investigation (hopefully not led by Comey/Strzok types) is the best illustration I’ve seen of what is wrong with the Republican Party!”

Falwell seems to be saying that Christians shouldn’t be concerned with whether or not our nation’s political leaders follow Christian principles, or even basic human kindness and consideration, in their governing. This helps explain how he as a “Christian leader” could be an early and enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump during the most recent presidential campaign and how he remains a cheerleader for the president.

When I was a student at a Georgia Baptist college and a Southern Baptist seminary a few decades ago, I learned that Baptists had throughout their long history championed religious liberty and separation of church and state. Many but not all Baptists have backed off of that conviction in recent years, but I still think it’s the American way, grounded in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

That amendment opens with these words: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...” Too simply put, the amendment means that the United States government can’t endorse any religion and cannot prevent citizens from practicing the religion of their choice.

But the amendment doesn’t mean that Christians (or people of other faiths) shouldn’t play an active role in the government, either as elected or appointed officials or as citizens. We have the same rights as anyone to support our positions, to advocate for our preferred policies, and to vote for our preferred candidates.

Falwell’s words set me to thinking about the ways Christians think about and try to influence the government. Some Christians would like to see what they regard as Christian principles be the law of the land. They are the culture warriors.

Many of them would evidently have no problem having their views of morality imposed through legislation. Some—maybe most—of them support President Trump, despite his personal failings that would in their eyes immediately and irrevocably disqualify others, because they believe he will further their agenda.

Other Christians—and I count myself among these—do not want Christianity (or any other religion) to be the nation’s official religion for several reasons, of which I’ll name just three.

First, the Constitution doesn’t allow it.

Second, if Christianity were the nation’s official religion, crusaders with a very narrow view of what constitutes morality would end up in charge.

Third, the kind of “Christian” leaders who would end up running things would, through mental and spiritual gymnastics I can’t fathom, find a way of ignoring Jesus’ teachings. They’d base their policies more on Leviticus than on the Sermon on the Mount. They would govern in ways that would indicate an apparent belief that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a warhorse rather than a donkey and that, rather than dying on the cross, he “called ten thousand angels to destroy the world and set him free” (as the old song says he could have, but didn’t).

This brings me back to Falwell’s tweet of October 1, in which he chastises Senator Jeff Flake for evidently being influenced by the appeals of two sexual assault victims to ask for further FBI investigation of Judge Kavanaugh. I fail to see how a “Christian” leader can criticize someone for feeling sympathy and showing compassion.

It seems that in Falwell’s view, sympathy and compassion signify weakness, while callousness in pursuit of “conservative” hegemony signifies strength. (I put the word conservative in quotation marks because I don’t think a lot of what the GOP is pursuing under Trump is truly conservative.)

I must admit, though, that even as I support separation of church and state, I find myself wanting my government and my country to act in accord with basic principles of justice and mercy that lie at the heart of Christian faith and practice.

I realize that this must sound odd. After all, can a government and nation that aren’t Christian really follow Christian principles? Is it possible for a non-Christian government to behave in more Christian ways than a “Christian” one?

A member of a church I was serving as pastor asked me, “If I’m trying to decide between two candidates, and one of them is Christian and the other isn’t, shouldn’t I as a Christian vote for the Christian?” I answered, “I can imagine scenarios in which a non-Christian candidate might support policies and practices that are more Christian than those that certain Christian candidates support.”

I had in mind policies and practices in the realms of healthcare availability, economic justice, gender equality, race relations, war and peace, and others. I still have such issues in mind when I vote.

Some Christians seem willing to support political leaders who lead in ways that violate basic human, much less Christian, principles because they think they will make the country in some sense “stronger.”

Others of us support those who will govern in ways that reflect basic human compassion and concern as well as the Christian approach—be they professing and practicing Christians or not—of doing all they can to help “the least of these” (Mt 25:40).

We do so because we believe such governing will truly make America stronger.

Follow the Leader

Jesus tried to help his disciples understand who he was and what it meant for them to be his followers. He’s still trying, and we who are Christians need to do better at listening to him.

One day, Jesus asked his disciples what they were hearing people speculate about him. They offered various answers. Then Jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was. A disciple named Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” (“Messiah” is a Hebrew word meaning “anointed one.” “Christ” is the Greek translation of “Messiah,” so when we say “Jesus Christ,” we are saying “Jesus the Messiah.”)

Jesus said that Peter’s answer was a good one. Then he proceeded to tell his followers what it meant for him to be the Messiah: he was going to suffer, to die, and then rise again.

Peter, who had given the good answer, took Jesus aside to tell him that wasn’t what he meant when he said Jesus was the Messiah. We’re not told what Peter meant, but we can reasonably conclude that it was the opposite of what Jesus said. Peter expected Jesus to exert military and political power through which he would drive the Roman occupiers out of the land and make Israel great again.

Jesus told Peter that he was very, very, very wrong: “Get behind me, Satan!” For years I read that as Jesus telling Peter to get out of his sight. But I now think he meant, “Get behind me and follow me; I’ll show you the way you should go.” Jesus called Peter “Satan” because Peter was trying to lead Jesus to go in a way he shouldn’t go, just like the devil did when he tried to get Jesus to take the easy way rather than the hard way in fulfilling his mission.

Jesus then described how his followers are supposed to live:

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels (Mark 8:34-38 NRSV).

Christians follow a Savior who gave himself away to the point of dying on the cross. He calls his followers to give themselves away too. We do that by living lives that are characterized by selfless, sacrificial service.

We Christians talk a lot about how Jesus died for us. We talk much less about how Jesus calls us to die with him. We should talk about that more. We should also do it by putting God first, others next, and ourselves last.  We should do it by regarding our lives as something to give away rather than to hold onto. We should do it by practicing radical love, grace, mercy, and generosity.

It seems to me that many people wear the label “Christian” but share Peter’s flawed view of who Jesus is. Jesus came to love, to serve, and to give himself away. He calls his followers to do the same. Failure to do so indicates that we are ashamed of Jesus and his words.

After Jesus was arrested, Peter said he didn’t know him. None of us would come right out and deny Jesus that way. But what do our lives show about how well we really do know him? What do they show about whether we accept or deny what he said about the kind of life we are to live as his followers?

We who are Christians need to consider how we live. Do we take up our cross and lay down our lives? Or do we refuse to carry our cross and to give up our lives?

We see and hear a lot of “Christian leaders” quoted in the press. We need to consider who among such “leaders” truly represent Jesus in what they say and do. Are they trying to gain worldly power or are they trying to engage in selfless service? Are they promoting hate or love? Are they focused on themselves or on others?

Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” We follow Jesus when we do that. We don’t follow him when we don’t.

We Christians need to follow Jesus. We also need to listen to and learn from leaders who follow him. And we need to ignore those who don’t.

A Lot About Baseball, A Little About Politics

The Atlanta Braves are five and a half games ahead of the Philadelphia Phillies in the battle for the National League Eastern Division pennant. Their magic number (the combination of Braves’ wins and Phillies’ losses that would give the Braves the championship) is seven.

The last time the Braves won their division was 2013. They’ve been in rebuilding mode since then. The conventional wisdom going into this season was that the team was at least another year away from being serious contenders. My expert opinion was that if everything went just right, the Braves might win close to half their games. The conventional wisdom was wrong. So was I.

Veteran players like Freddie Freeman and Nick Markakis have had outstanding seasons. Youngsters like Ronald Acuña, Ozzie Albies, Dansby Swanson, and Johan Camargo have contributed greatly. By the way, if Acuña doesn’t win the National League’s Rookie of the Year award, they should do away with it. While I’m on the subject of awards, I’d say the same thing about the Manager of the Year award if Brian Snitker doesn’t win it.

It’s been a long time since the Braves played meaningful games in September. Whether they make the playoffs or not (oh how I hope they do), this has been the most fun of any season since that of the worst-to-first team of 1991. I’m grateful, as all Braves fans should be.

I’ve been a Braves fan since the franchise moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta in 1966. That season, my parents took me to Atlanta Stadium, which held ten times the population of my hometown of Barnesville, to see a game. The Braves won, and I was hooked. I’ve followed them closely ever since.

We who have followed the Atlanta Braves from the beginning know what it’s like to go through cycles of winning and losing. They were about a .500 team during their first three seasons (1966-68). Then in 1969, which was the first year of divisional play, they won the Western Division pennant but lost to the New York Mets three games to none in the playoffs. From 1970-81, they never finished within shouting distance of first place. They came out of nowhere to win the West in 1982, but lost the playoff series to the St. Louis Cardinals three games to none. After a decent season in 1983, they went into a tailspin that saw them finish in last place in four out of seven seasons, including 1990.

But in 1991, the Braves won the Western Division championship and defeated the Eastern Division champion Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League championship series. They went on to lose the World Series in a classic seven-game matchup with the Minnesota Twins. This kicked off an amazing string of fourteen consecutive division titles (they’ve been in the Eastern Division since the 1994 realignment), four National League championships, and, in 1995, the Atlanta Braves’ only World Series Championship.

It’s been a mixed bag since the division championship streak ended in 2005. They won their division in 2013 and made the playoffs as a wild card team in 2010 and 2012. The three seasons leading up to the present one were bad, with records of 67-95 (2015), 68-93 (2016), and 72-90 (2017).

That brings us to the current season, which has been surprisingly successful. A winning season following several losing ones always feels like it comes out of nowhere. In fact, the team’s management has been laying the groundwork for such success by developing and following a long-term plan. If all goes well, this Braves season will be the first in a series of successful ones.

We who have been watching and participating in American politics know that the country also goes through cycles of winning and losing. We’ve endured a couple of years of serious losing. I’m optimistic that the groundwork has been laid for a turn in 2018 and 2020 toward better leadership.  

So go Braves!

And go 2018 and 2020 candidates who will offer effective, principled, civil, compassionate, and decent leadership!

Authenticity

Sometimes before a worship service in which I’m going to preach, I’ll tell the folks staffing the soundboard, “Try to make me sound better than I am.” We share a laugh. But I’m always suspicious that they’re thinking, “We would if we could!”

I don’t really mean it, though. I want my real voice to be heard. I furthermore want my real voice to reflect my real life.

In a recent RollingStone article, Eric Church was talking about losing the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award to Garth Brooks. He said he didn’t mind losing to Brooks. What he did mind, he said, was that Brooks lip-synched his performance on the awards show. The reason Brooks gave for doing so was that his voice was shot. But Church said that the Entertainer of the Year shouldn’t fake it. He said, “If I can’t sing, I won’t sing, or I’ll sing badly. But at least you’ll get what you get.”

Church’s point was that singers should give the audience what they have. They should be authentic. And if they aren’t at one hundred percent, then so be it. That’s what’s real, and you should give them what’s real.

I remember watching a SaturdayNight Live episode in 1978 (this was back when I was young and could stay up that late). I was excited because the Rolling Stones were going to perform. They opened with “Beast of Burden,” which was (and still is) a favorite of mine. The band played very well. Mick Jagger’s voice was shot. He croaked through it. It wasn’t good. But it was cool. It was real. It was authentic.

About ten years ago, Rolling Stone produced a list of the top one hundred singers of all time. Aretha Franklin (who died on August 16) was #1. Most of the others are generally acknowledged to be great singers. Here’s the rest of the top ten, omitting #7: Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, John Lennon, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder, and James Brown.

If I asked you to guess who #7 is, chances are you wouldn’t say Bob Dylan. But he is. We might wonder how in the world Dylan got listed along with those other marvelous singers. Let me quote what Bono (singer for the band U2) said in the article:

When Sam Cooke played Dylan for the young Bobby Womack, Womack said he didn’t understand it. Cooke explained that from now on, it’s not going to be about how pretty the voice is. It’s going to be about believing that the voice is telling the truth.

It’s all about authenticity. That’s what we need from our singers, our preachers, and our politicians. It’s what we need from each other.

In Praise of Old Southern Seminary

In some ways, what I want to say here doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. The past is the past and the present is the present. We can’t go back to the way things used to be, and we shouldn’t want to. Put succinctly, it is what it is.

But it also was what it was. And that’s what I want to talk about.

I have two degrees from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS). I earned a Master of Divinity degree (a professional ministerial degree, similar to a lawyer’s law degree or a doctor’s medical degree) in 1982 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree (Old Testament major, New Testament minor) in 1986. Those degrees in hand, I’ve spent the last three decades as a pastor, a preacher, a professor, and now, an editor. 

Those of you who are Baptists of my generation and earlier don’t need me to rehearse what happened to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) or to its seminaries, including Southern. For those of you who aren’t, I’ll just say that in 1979, right wing elements of the convention undertook a long game to gain control of the convention. By 1990, the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC was complete. During the intervening decade, the convention’s six seminaries in general, and its flagship seminary SBTS in particular, were repeatedly attacked. You are no doubt aware of how Donald Trump talks about the press as the enemy of the people. That’s how the people who orchestrated and led the takeover of the SBC talked about the seminaries. And they were as wrong about the seminaries as Trump is about the press. The seminaries fell with the convention. Those of us who attended them back in the day received a different kind of education than current students do. That’s why, when I tell someone that I graduated from Southern Seminary, I always specify that it was the pre-1990 version. 

This is all ancient history. It’s on my mind because I just read some things that some of my contemporaries recently said about their experience at SBTS. They spoke as if their experience at Southern Seminary was something they had to survive and overcome. I’m in no position to comment on their experience. We all brought our own lives to Louisville, and we all heard what we heard with our own ears, processed it with our own minds, and filtered it through our own experiences. 

I just want to testify that my experience at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was excellent. It was not just less negative than these contemporaries of mine say it was for them. It was the opposite of negative and hurtful: it was positive and helpful. One of the reasons is that I had already figured out before arriving at SBTS that a person, and especially a preacher and teacher, could (and should) simultaneously possess a deep faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, a profound devotion to the Bible, and a critical (meaning a carefully analytical) approach to the biblical text. I had learned that as a seventeen-year-old freshman at Mercer University in an Introduction to the Old Testament class taught by Dr. Howard Giddens.

Please understand that I was not prepared to hear what I heard Dr. Giddens say. The beloved church and pastor of my childhood knew nothing of critical approaches to the Bible, so I didn’t either. So when Dr. Giddens told us about how the Pentateuch developed over an extended period of time, which meant that Moses didn’t write it (or at least not much of it), I was a tad confused. When I told my father what Dr. Giddens had said, he gave me one of the greatest gifts he ever gave me (and he gave me many). Before I tell that part of the story, let me say that my father, while a very smart man, had only a high school education and was a lifelong textile mill worker. What he knew about the Bible, he had learned on his own. When I told him that Dr. Giddens had said that Moses didn’t write everything in the Pentateuch, his eyes glimmered as he said, “You know, I’ve always wondered how Moses managed to write about his own death.”

And the light came on that has never gone out. My high school-educated, textile mill-working father loved the Lord and the Bible as much as anyone I’d ever known. Now he was setting me free to take seriously what Dr. Giddens and other scholars, who loved the Lord and the Bible as much as he did, and who knew a lot more about Scripture than he did, said.

That was the mindset with which I entered Southern Seminary. What I found there were teachers who gave their lives in service to the Lord. What I found there were professors who had a burning interest in understanding what the Bible actually says and means. Yes, they used the best that current scholarship had to offer, but that was part of the wonder of it all. My experience was that they used such methods in service to the Lord, to Scripture, and to the church. I am and always will be grateful for how they shared their faith and knowledge with me and inspired me to engage in a lifelong pursuit of a growing, honest, Christ-centered, biblically-guided life and ministry.

As I said earlier, maybe none of this matters now. But when you read or hear preachers say bad things about their experience at the old (pre-1990) Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, I want you to remember that I always have said, still say, and always will say good things about mine.

Faces and Heels

I used to watch professional wrestling.

There, I said it, and I feel better.

Most of my viewing occurred way back before pro wrestling became the huge entertainment business it is now and before its scripted nature was publicly acknowledged. We’re talking the late 1960s, when I was ten or eleven years old.

I’d watch wrestling on channel 11 out of Atlanta on Saturday nights at 11:30. But the really entertaining telecast was on Columbus’s channel 3 at 4:00 p.m. on Saturdays. Jim Carlisle was the announcer. Promoter Fred Ward joined him on air. Ward always sent a special greeting to “all our shut-ins” hoping they’d “be up and at ‘em real real soon!”

Live wrestling took place every Friday night at the Atlanta Civic Auditorium. I’d beg my father to take me, but he never would. Then, miracle of miracles, around 1970 they started having wrestling on Saturday nights at the Sports Palace, which was on the Barnesville side of Griffin. My father agreed to take me one time. He sat there and laughed through the entire card, so I decided he was an unsuitable companion with whom to watch wrestling.

Luckily, my Uncle Dock Knight (he wasn’t really my uncle; his wife was a cousin to my mother, and I was raised to call them Uncle Dock and Aunt Bernice) and his son, the legendary Rudy Knight, regularly attended the matches, so I’d occasionally hitch a ride with them.

Those were the days of grapplers such as Joe Scarpa, Paul DeMarco, the Assassins, Ray Gunkel and Buddy Fuller, El Mongol, Buddy Colt, Bobby Shane, and the Professional Doug Gilbert, most of whom I saw in Griffin.

In pro wrestling, as in cowboy movies, you have your good guys and your bad guys. Good guys are known as “faces” and bad guys as “heels.” Occasionally there would be a “heel turn” in which a good guy would become a bad guy, or a “face turn” in which a bad guy would become a good guy.

These turns offered an interesting lesson in crowd psychology. Even as a child, I was amazed at how easily and quickly a crowd could switch from hating someone to loving them, or vice-versa. It didn’t seem logical to me, even as I went along with it, to cease booing and start cheering someone just because he switched sides.

The wrestlers were just following the script. So were we. We just didn’t know it.

We should beware letting that happen in other, much more important areas of life. 

Take politics, for example. Maybe the same mentality that lets wrestling fans believe that—a long history that proves otherwise notwithstanding—a heel is really a face and is therefore someone they can and should support, also enables a large group of Americans to believe that someone who has never shown any sign of being on their side now is.

This might be a good time to remind ourselves that a political narrative can be, like a professional wrestling one, fiction.