Kneading Bread

Well, I’m in my Jan-term now and I don’t have tons of time to post or read anything but the assigned work. The course is a missions course and is taught very well, the classes themselves are thoughtful and engaging. My only criticism would be the amount of rote memorization required (not my strong suit). This means however that any substantive blog posting is delayed, yet again.

On a rather non sequitur note, I’m on my way up the coast in the Downeaster out of Boston to Dover, NH. I have taken this train once before (all the way to Portland, ME) and the upgrade to business class ($8) is worth it; It is by far the most pleasant trip on a train in the entire northeast.

Now, back to memorizing most of the countries in the world!

Gratia et Pax!

The book is written care and precision that is almost unparalleled in much war writing. It is not simply the account of the events with some anecdotes from witnesses, but rather there is a much larger story arc present throughout the work; a story arc of a reluctant world power, unsure and confused as the the path forward internationally when it came to projecting that power against threats. Halberstam is scathing in his criticism of both General Almond and General MacArthur as well as the entire pre-war and early conflict intelligence filtered through General Willoughby’s intelligence service.

I was most struck by the pedagogical intent behind much of the work – it was as if Halberstam felt our involvement in Iraq was a clear sign that we had not learned our lessons, neither in Korea nor in Vietnam. The Coldest Winter was not simply critical, but hopeful; The valor of the enlisted men and officers who fought at the front lines, the eventual democratization of South Korea, and the enduring American spirit for democratic freedom and liberty were positives that can also be learned from.

Ultimately the work is a massive (736 page) read, which carried me though a story I thought I knew and blew my mind with his detailed descriptions and overarching understanding. The work was both a story of individuals and their units, but also a story of great powers finding their way in the early atomic age. A definite must read for anyone seeking to fill a gap in their knowledge regarding the Korean War or someone seeking a read that will leave them a little different at the finish than at the beginning.

Well, I was going to get back to blogging… and I’m currently without Internet access (posting from my iPhone). I’m taking the time off from classes to read “fun books” for me. I just finished “In harm’s way” by Doug Stanton; it was a soul wrenching read telling the tragic story of the events surrounding the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in the dusk days of World War II. An excellent naval history written with a strong narrative style that kept me captivated throughout it. I was initially reluctant to read “In harm’s way” due to the already knowing how the tragic story would end, however the tale, although gruesome, is one well told and had well be told for generations to come.

A close aunt passed away yesterday morning so today was hectic… Combined with the need to head south early to avoid a storm has kept me from writing something more refined. I have several reviews planned and I can’t wait to post them! I’m laptop-less, so I’ll be posting from my iPhone.

After a brutal course load over the spring, summer, and fall I’m finally recovered and ready to return to the blogosphere! No need to whine, just a need to post. My goal is be concise in future entries so I don’t get too overwhelmed.

I’m taking a crash course in Greek this semester so I’ll likely have next to no time to post. I’m just giving fair warning. Peace.

The previous post expressed some pent-up frustration that felt really good to let out (wonderful, actually) and helped me decide that this blog should be more than a vent, it should be a locus for my interests.

The focus of this blog will move towards bringing to light many of the lost writings of German Pietism, especially those relating to Halle and Herrnhut. I have deep emotional ties to both the Moravian and Lutheran traditions, and have found these writings to be of immense help to me, and plan to focus my academic career around developing a greater understanding of them. It is my hope to bring many lost gems into the postmodern awareness, bringing forth a personal reality of a risen, living, and eternal God in those who read them.

I feel that there is a lot of attention being paid to the great reformed tradition of England, Scotland and Wales, but the Northern European writings of the same era have not received much consideration at all. Part of the problem has been that they exist almost exclusively in the “scholarly” realm, a place removed and inaccessible to the hungry Pilgrim (who wants stale bread when you can have a fresh biscuit with jam from such wonderful and gifted contemporaries such as John Piper, Mark Dever, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller as well as scores of others – in addition to the volumes of devotional material reprinted from the Puritan and later Reformed movement.) My hope is to provide a truly pastoral sharing of these works, with my heart inclined to well-being of the reader and not just the historicity of the writings.

Why the long title?

Well, for the most part it is because I’m trapped. I’m without the spiritual elders of earlier years, and without their wisdom I’m flailing around searching for a rock. All the while knowing that the rock is ultimately Christ, my hope, and I’m trusting in it, but I’m nervous about all the details.

To start at the beginning, for my first sixteen years of life I was an atheist, raised by agnostics, knowing little of the church (I was quite happy that way.) I was baptized as a baby at an Episcopal church, the denomination of my father, but never really knew anything except the Lord’s prayer. We recited it as a family before bed until I was about 4, but something happened and it simply stopped. All religious “truth” was set aside in a rush of self-driven intellectualism, the real God of my home.

I converted thanks to the work of the Spirit and the well-spoken words of Mennonite friends who introduced me to a life of Christ that was holistic, real, and working to redeem values and people to a “Truth” that wasn’t being handed to them from a source outside the Bible. I needed a local church, and being in the part of Pennsylvania I was in, it happened to be a Lutheran church. I had no particular ties to the church at first, but I began to read the words of Luther and was inspired by the fire and passion in his words. I stayed with the Lutheran church for the few years before college, gleaning what I could from the theological scraps from preaching and feasting on the words of Luther.

At college in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania I was introduced to the Moravians, and quickly became one, singing at Central Moravian for three years before becoming a member of Edgeboro Moravian. I loved their traditions, their history, their words and daily practicality. Zinzendorf placed a heart-driven passion at the center of my theological world (herztheologie) and he continues to be the main influence on my theological direction (much to the chagrin of my more puritan-style reformed friends.) I met my wife around this time and often attended two church services every Sunday, one at the Moravian church I was a member of and one at the church she had grown up in, a highly charismatic world of flags, praise guitars, and prophetic words. Although I never felt at home here, they did show me something amazing about the fact that the expression of faith can be emotive and celebratory, it is OK to jump up and down in worship (they did it on Palm Sunday, of that I am sure, if ever there was a rock-styled event in the Gospels, it was then.)

Time to step aside for a moment to address the “calling of Christ” in my life. Early on, maybe a year after conversion, I was leading an emotional friend through the Lord’s prayer, she wanted to leave the church, she hated the hypocrisy and the lies. In bringing her through this she was brought to tears, I could sense the tension of faith and self that I often find in my own heart. As I got off the phone I felt overwhelmed, I broke into tears, I knew that this is what I was called to. I was called to speaking the Gospel’s truth into people’s lives. I was scared, excited, and firmly convinced that I had a direct experience, hearing God’s say, “This is your calling, now GO and follow it.” As I progressed through college, helping to lead worship, and as an elder of the campus fellowship, I began to pursue candidacy in the Moravian church. I eventually found myself at odds with some of the extra-scriptural elements slinking in at the edges. I decided not to complete my final candidacy paperwork and took a job in Virginia, far away from the Moravians and all the craziness that made me sick to my heart and stomach. For two years in Virginia I helped lead worship at a small Baptist church, living and loving in an urban context quite unlike the part of Pennsylvania I grew up in. After two years in Virginia we moved to Massachusetts when my wife took a job at a small Christian college, a college near the seminary that appealed to me the most, Gordon-Conwell.

We’ve worked at paying off all our debts and now I stand on the precipice of Seminary, without official denominational backing, although I am attending a Lutheran church that is a member of LCMC.

I’m scared to death – I don’t fit in any molds that I’ve met.

I have love for all those folks I’ve met:
Charismatic: for their unrestrained passion to experience God in worship
Evangelical: the Word must be proclaimed, there’s no getting away with whitewashing Christ’s truth for the world
Lutheran: the fire of the Spirit changes not just your actions, but brings you to repentance and the grace of God
Anglican: God is Holy, and the mind is a tool, not just something to be avoided or turned off
Baptist: your life is a reflection of Christ, the little things do make a difference
Mennonite: we are strangers in a strange land, we can’t just agree with the “powers” of this world and forsake the truth
Moravian: this world is our ministry field, we can’t avoid it, but we can bring light to places of darkness

Sure, there are parts where I disagree (For example I can’t bring myself to have a second baptism, both on grounds of the Nicene creed and on a covenantal belief in the nature of the baptism itself), but ultimately I just want to find a church home. One that holds to truth, but seeks out an holistic expression of it, a world-changing expression of it, and a hope in the life of the world to come. Any ideas where this seminarian can find a place to lay his head?

Dobson says “no” to Giuliani - Thanks to Mere Comments for starting this thought train! The positions of this coming presidential election’s Republican candidates (pro-torture or pro-abortion) shows something that I hope will wake Christians out of their blanket support for the Republican party into a Christ-centered politic that never will fit into Rome’s little boxes. In the words of Derek Webb’s song, A Love That’s Stronger Than Our Fear:

 if you were pushed that way
to betray yourself to keep yourself alive
is life worth so much?

False Teachers – A great find from Old Truth.com.

I confess the hypocrite may act his part so well that he may accidentally do some good. His glistening profession, heavenly speech, and eloquent preaching might bring to the sincere seeker a message of real comfort. Like an actor at center stage who stirs up passion in the audience by counterfeit tears, the hypocrite, playing his religious role, may temporally spark the believer’s true graces. But that is when the Christian may be in the most serious danger, for he will not readily suspect the person who once helped him spiritually.

If the meaning of Jesus is this different from what he was understood by his Palestinian disciples and adversaries to mean, and if those ordinary meanings need to be filtered through a hermeneutic transposition and replaced by an ethic of social revelation? Is there such a thing as a Christian ethic at all? If there be no specifically Christian ethic but only natural human ethics as held to by Christians among others, does this thoroughgoing abandon of particular substance apply to ethical truth only? Why not to all truth as well?

-John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 2nd ed.