True confessions: I lean Democrat on many issues these days. That has become my “default mode” for a number of reasons. But I don’t think Jesus is a Democrat. And I don’t think Jesus is any happier with my current persuasion than he was with my prior Republican default-mode.

True confession #2: I could vote for the right Obama challenger this fall. Obama fell far short of his promises to change the posture of America toward the world with respect to its militarism, for example.

But today there were two moments of radio listening that helped me pin down why I “feel” more at home with Democrats than with Republicans.

First, there was a piece on one of Newt Gingrich’s favorite stump trail lines, in which he accuses Obama of being “the food stamp president.”

I won’t mess around too much here with the fact that his claim is technically false: .5 million more people went on food stamps under Bush Jr. than Obama. But, really, if you’re only .5 million behind in 4 years, what do you think the numbers will be in 8? So this isn’t the part that rankles me.

The part that rankles me is that the idea that people receiving assistance with food is somehow an object of scorn. People cheer when Gingrich lambasts the president for extending food stamp aid?

These are people who are at their wits end, turning to the last option available to them in order, often, to buy food for their children.

These are women in low- to moderate-paying jobs on maternity leave. They’ll have money when they go back to work. But what about now?

I can understand the argument that government feeding people isn’t the ideal way for folks in dire need to be cared for. But the reason so many are turning here is that those “better,” “ideal” means aren’t coming to pass.

Look, conservative Republican, Christian friends. I get that there’s a better way. And we should be living that out. But if you (and I) were actually fulfilling that better way, then food stamps would not be needed. If you’re grumpy about food stamps, then let’s all take away the need for them by caring for the poor without them.

The other story was the Superior Court upholding the lower court’s ruling on the unconstitutionality of Prop 8 in California, which took away the rights of gays and lesbians to marry.

Again, I can’t get on board with the ire expressed by Republicans (mostly) and Christians (hi, friends) that the extension of civil rights to all citizens is a great evil.

Yes, the people of California voted to strike down the law allowing homosexual couples to marry.

News flash: the majority has never willfully extended civil rights without the courts of this country telling Americans that the Constitution forbids us from carrying out our discriminatory practices.

Left to ourselves, we would still be a segregated country whose representatives were voted in by men.

Does this blog post have a point? Mostly that I’m getting soft in my old age, I guess. I don’t buy that the limitations the Republican candidates want to erect on such issues as these are manifestations of compassion. I think people are deserving of greater compassion than corporations, and that exercising compassion toward corporations does not benefit many people.

I think it’s a good thing for desperate people to be able to find food; I think it’s a good thing for a state not to be run on the basis of the kinds of religious predilections that limit the civil liberties of its citizens (even where those religious predilections are my own).

I probably allow too much “do unto others as you’d want done to you” to creep into my politics these days. And somehow that makes mocking the food stamp president strangely foreign to me.

As always, but let me state it especially clearly in a post on politics: the views expressed here are my own, and claim neither the imprimatur of my employer nor of Jesus.

Mystery Number 1

It is widely celebrated these days that the proper method for measuring coffee is by weight.

Image: zirconicusso / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Thus, each day I measure out 20 grams of coffee for my single-cup, hand-poured morning ritual, ere I throw said beans into the burr grinder which has been carefully calibrated to grind just the right sized beans for my #2 cone filter.

However, coffee bean weight is determined, to no little extent, by the water naturally present in the bean. When you roast a coffee bean, one effect of the roasting process is that the bean dries out.

The longer you roast the bean, the drier–and therefore lighter!–the bean becomes.

This means that the darker your roast, the greater volume of beans necessary to add up to the same weight.

You following all this?

This means, that if you’re weighing your coffee, you will use more beans to make the same amount of coffee when those beans are darker and stronger to begin with–the very time you might think of backing off the volume in order to produce a well balanced cup of coffee.

So here’s the question: should we, in fact, measure coffee by volume rather than weight in order to produce more consistent coffee? Or, alternatively, should we vary the weight of coffee such that fewer grams are in play for darker roasts and more for lighter roasts?

Mystery Number 2

Do you find that your emotions run on a spectrum from good to bad? or on a parabola of intensity from high to low?

The way we normally talk about emotions is, I think, on a spectrum from good to bad: I’m so excited nothing could bring me down! and the like.

But I see in myself and certain little people I’m around regularly that emotions are often more like a parabola: there is an “up” of intensity that can one minute be excitement, another utter frustration.

Image: Mr. Pi

The slide isn’t from up to down, but a move from the “up” that we experience positively to the “upward intensity” of negative emotion. The “downward slide” from intense expectation to bitter disappointment isn’t a downward slide so much as it is a horizontal move from really intense eagerness to really intense disappointment.

Kids melting down on Christmas morning isn’t a crash so much as it’s a maintenance of the intensity without a positive direction to channel it.

Thoughts?

Mystery Number 3

How does a ballet bun with this much awesomeness end up falling out into a ponytail two minutes later?

These are great mysteries, my friends. Together, I think we can work them out.

What say you?

Both are t-shirts.

First, in honor of my breakfast making, E’s obsession with, and Halloween dressing, as Darth Vader, together with E’s choice of an “I am your father” Father’s Day card, there was this:

Then, in honor of… well.. my singular focus when it comes to music, there was this:

I commend them both for your consideration, and for your further insight into the man behind the blog.

Enjoy.

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “We ain’t goin’ study war no more.” This is the challenge facing modern man. (“Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” 31 March 1968)

Today, I am thankful that MLKJ was an 8.

At the same time, Laura was on birthday party duty with CM, attending the festivities for a classmate. The 7-year-olds were supervised by a room full of about 50% white, and 50% Middle Eastern, Latino/a, and African American.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In our San Francisco world, “normal” means racially mixed company.

Perhaps this feeds my dissatisfaction with CM coming home from first grade on Friday all prepped for MLKJ day with a new vocabulary word: “racism.”

It’s not that the topic isn’t important. It’s not that MLKJ Day isn’t a crucial time to talk about issues of race and the struggles our country has had and continues to have. But I wonder if MLKJ’s memory might not be better honored by my first-grader celebrating the diversity that she lives in every day (her class is, at most, 1/3 white) rather than giving her a category for people whose destructive prejudice have marred, and continue to mar, the social fabric of our country?

So that’s my honest question for debate as we honor the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. today: is his memory best honored by teaching our young children about the full darkness of racism upon which King shone his light? or is it better honored by celebrating with our young children the reality that he saw and that they are, in many ways, living into?

I am aware that questions of race strike deeply at the heart of many people’s identity. So please be aware of that and, as you my awesome readers often do so well here, let’s make sure we keep the conversation civil and constructive even if/as we disagree.

In stereotypical anti-pagan polemics in the ancient world, Jewish argument would go something like this: those guys worship idols, which leads to all sorts of sexual lasciviousness, which (of course!) leads to the further degradations we see in society such as thieving and drunkenness and rebellion.

You can see this reflected in Romans 1: they rejected God, served the creature and images of it; therefore God gave them over to shameful lusts; moreover they are treacherous, reckless, conceited, and the like. This, in turn, seems to be riffing off the wisdom of Solomon. See also 1 Thess, where turning to the living God from idols (1:9) entails, first and foremost eschewing sexual immorality–not living in lustful passion like those Gentiles (4:1ff.)!

Observation:

This is the exact opposite of how many of us in evangelical-like church circles think.

For us, it’s get those kids under control (they’re doing all these little tell-tale things like disobeying their parents) or next thing you know they’re going to be having sex, which is the step on the slippery slope that will keep them from church forever.

I’m not saying that the ancients or us were right or wrong, and I can set the countdown timer at 10 seconds, at which time I know there will be a comment telling me that people who have done these smaller things we look at have abandoned worship of God already.

The point, really, was simply an observation: we see things flowing uphill from little, pervasive failures, through the biggies like sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll, and finally up to a denial of God.

In the context where alternative worship, through idols in particular, was a live option, the ancient Jewish people (including Paul) saw things flowing downhill, from a fundamental denial of God through “big sins” like sleeping with your step-mom, and on to a life filled with every little annoyance and perturbation and sin you could think of.

Yesterday I saw this tweeted and flipped my lid: “If you want to stop human trafficking, make disciples.” It was attributed to Francis Chan at Passion 2012.

As a self-contained statement, I find this admonition to be incredibly damaging. What better way to distract people from the real human needs in the world than to spiritualize the needs of the people around us?

In the immediate context of the talk, Chan went on to speak of the people around us as possible perpetrators. And so, within these few sentences, the way we’re supposed to understand the world seems to be something like this: If everyone loves Jesus, we won’t have to deal with human trafficking and sex slavery anymore.

Such an assessment is naïve, to say the least. There are greater powers at work in the world than the power of individual human hearts that act out of accord with the will of God.

On Monday I was talking about the hot topics before us, and mentioned “the gospel” as a holistic entity as one of those hot topics. We continue to need to learn that the purposes of God are bigger than simply the rectification of persons.

I found that 90ish seconds of Chan’s talk to be dangerous for this reason. People who already assume an individualistic gospel hear an individualistic means toward overcoming a pervasive evil, and are sent on their way to ignore the problem by telling people God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives.

We hear what we already know, and I worry about how 40,000 college students and 1.5 million online viewers heard that snippet, or read it in Tweet form.

If you want to end human trafficking, work to end human trafficking. Give to International Justice Mission. Learn from Not For Sale, and support their work. Find out where human trafficking is likely at work in your area (find someone to show you the “massage parlors” with the bars on the windows and inward facing security cameras).

Disciple making in itself, keeping Christians from soliciting prostitutes, is never going to solve the problem of human trafficking.

Now, having said all that, the larger context of Chan’s talk leads me to believe and hope that he would agree with my concern, and with the trajectory of sending people to work, truly work, for the freeing of prisoners.

The talk itself was about believing the Bible and doing what it says. He tells a story about throwing a banquet for a bunch of poor people as a self-imposed exercise in obeying rather than explaining-away Jesus’ instruction to do so.

He exhorts the audience to believe that the power we see at work in Jesus is still at work today–to heal, and to free the captive!

The very beginning of the talk was Chan celebrating a talk that had come before his, one in which someone was talking about kids trafficked for sex, and he was passionately responding, stirring the crowd up again with the desire to respond and act to free those kids from slavery.

So what happened in that 90 second piece that got me riled up?

One more piece of context: the entire talk was shaped as a call to passionate, faithful, believing discipleship propelled by an individual’s own reading of the Bible without anyone telling us what it says other than what we can see for ourselves.

Individually faithful discipleship. Driven by individual Bible reading. We could talk all day about his hermeneutics and the like, but here’s what I think happened: the “stand against sex trafficking” piece was not part of the planned talk, but was something Chan was passionate about and worked into his talk at several points because of the previous, powerful speaker.

And, as several folks have alerted me to, Chan does tons, including giving millions of dollars, to help rid the world of this scourge.

But, the message of “be and make faithful individuals” is actually a poor container for holding the social justice message that Chan also finds to be biblical. In this brief, 2ish minute riff, the theme of his talk itself (be and make faithful disciples) was brought into conversation with an issue that didn’t fit the topic (end human trafficking), with unfortunate results.

The 90 seconds troubles me, because it captures one possible way of construing the relationship between personal discipleship and the world “out there” that I think too many Christians buy into. I fear that hearing those words from Chan has the power to perpetuate not merely wrong-headed engagement with human trafficking, but a divinely approved withdrawal from the issue. I don’t think it was the best of what Chan had to say that night about human trafficking.

Much better was his strong affirmation at the end: this Jesus we serve really does have the power to free prisoners–so let’s go do it.

The word is peliculate.

peliculate. verb. intransitive. to watch a movie. (from the Spanish, película: movie)

Why introduce another word into the English language? Because we have no elegant verb for watching movies.

Consider, for example, the song lyric, “Won’t you Charleston with me?” Note how seamlessly we could sing, “Won’t you peliculate with me?” whereas, “Won’t you watch a movie with me,” is entirely too clunky.

And although movie revenue might be down, most of us still peliculate on a regular basis, and peliculation remains an important dynamic in current American culture.

So please, let’s adopt this neologism as a salutary addition to our vocabularies. I don’t know about you, but after a long week there’s little I like better than crashing with the wife for a little peliculation.

Over the past couple of years there have been emergent or missional conversations that always provided ready fodder for conversation. But those streams have largely dried up as ever-present conversation pieces.

Here are a couple of things that strike me as continuing points of interest as I scan the blogosphere. But I’d also love to hear from you: what are you thinking about and finding yourself in vigorous conversation about as you strive to work out what it looks like to faithfully follow Jesus in 2012?

1. The Gospel. I know that sounds rather broad and… well… settled, but here’s what I mean: in the more or less evangelical circles in which I run, we are finding a good deal of traction in conversations that press us to articulate a holistic gospel that affirms the “spiritual” dynamics of a restored relationship with God through the death and resurrection of Jesus while also affirming that the spiritual work of being at work in the world for the good of all God’s creatures is integral to the faith.

   Recent books by Scot McKnight, Tom Wright, and yours truly are all working to contribute to such a recalibration of the evangelical gospel, that has been too long denying what it should have been affirming (in many circles). The gospel is good news for the whole world.

2. Human origins after evolution. As denial of evolution becomes a rallying cry for both religiously and politically conservative movements, it moves certain brands of Christianity into more of a backwater. Too many Christians now have too much education for this non-viable position to continue to hold sway among thoughtful evangelicals.

   But, this means that we are confronted with a monumental task. And here is where the conservatives are right: to affirm evolution entails a reconfiguring of the narrative of humanity in significant ways. What can Christians say about the significance of humanity’s place in the cosmos once the story of evolution displaces the story of one-off creation? What can be retained? What must be replaced? Pete Enns’ book, and the interest it is generating even prior to publication, is one piece of bookish evidence about the continuing significance of this issue.

3. Gender in the church. Here’s one for which I have no direct evidence in terms of tell-tale books. (I apologize.) But, with the continuing surge of the neo-Reformed movement, there has been a concomitant surge theological conviction about male dominance of the church.

What do you think? Are these issues the ones that are active points of conversation in your world? Are there others? I started to wonder if “what the Bible is” might not be another significant point where evangelicals are entering a new place (cf. Christian Smith’s, The Bible Made Impossible), and if folks find themselves increasingly in conversations about sex and sexuality?

Anyone?

“Contagion” is a fancy way of talking about something being contagious. In particular, we talk about contagion as how things become “unclean.”

If an unclean object comes into contact with a clean object, the clean becomes unclean. Uncleanness is more powerful than the cleanness an object might carry around.

Priests are holy and eminently clean. But they can’t go into the same room with a dead person: the unclean dead defiles the living clean.

Jesus messed all this up.

Jesus came and touched the unclean, declaring to them, “You are cleansed.”

The unclean leprosy did not defile Jesus. The purifying touch of Jesus cleansed the leper.

How relevant is any of this to us? After all, we don’t live in a world whose boundaries are marked by laws of purity and impurity. We don’t come to a temple for cleansing.

But, in general, Christians still struggle with the fear that we will be defiled by the unclean.

A few years ago I was gently ribbing a friend on Facebook who was describing their “quiet evening at home,” on October 31. They had gotten some candy, bobbed for apples, sipped some hot cider, made a bonfire.

Two things were equally clear: (1) they were celebrating Halloween. (2) They weren’t calling it Halloween because it’s a pagan holiday.

See also: every church that allegedly has a “Harvest Festival” even though nobody in our post-industrial age even knows what difference an ingathering of food would make compared to any other day of the year.

Christmas presents similar problems for us. We get all bent about Christmas celebrations that are less than what we would idealize as “Christian.” Many of us get worked about taking Christ out of Christmas and the like.

And so we’ve resorted to believing that the power of the world’s contagion, the power of the world’s uncleanness, is an overwhelming power to be feared, rather than being willing to embrace, participate with, and (either literally or figuratively) rubbing shoulders with the non-believing world around us.

Jesus is more powerful than the forces of the world that would defile us.

There is no power in non-Christian music or movies or celebrations that the cleansing power of the resurrected Christ (who is Lord over all) cannot overcome and purify.

So lighten up. Proclaim Christ. Worship Jesus in that old tavern or Masonic lodge or Druid temple if you’re fortunate enough to get the space.

He whose purifying power we bear is greater.