In The Midst of Change

Yesterday afternoon Yvonne and I took a short walk over to some friends to see their newborn baby. The little guy was born last Wednesday AM into a family that includes a three year-old brother, six year-old half-brother, his dad Chris, and a very relieved to no longer be pregnant mom Jen.

As Yvonne and Jen discussed all things baby, commenting on little toes, wrinkles, nails, and very small clothing, Chris and I discussed the changes that are upon our respective families. Chris and Jen are in one of the beginning phases of family life. Yvonne and I are in a place where we are phasing out of the roles we have been playing as parents, and into uncharted territories of our own.

As our Jenn heads rapidly toward marriage, and Dillon moves in that same direction at a slower pace, Yvonne and I find ourselves in a place that we welcome with open arms. Watching my children move through the different stages from adolescence into adulthood has been quite enjoyable for me. Seeing their maturation, improved decision making, and growth gives me a sense that we’ve done some things the right way.

In addition to Jenn’s and Dillon’s growth, we are watching Alyssa develop towards young adulthood in her own way. This summer she is traveling with the Blue Devils B Drum and Bugle Corps. For two months she will be traveling, rehearsing, training, eating, and sleeping with her corps. When she returns home I expect to a “new and improved”, more mature, more disciplined, more driven version of our sixteen year-old.

Some have asked if Yvonne and I are struggling with all of these changes. The answer is simply, “no”. The process of Jenn’s “moving out” began seven years ago when she went to college in Missouri. She has had a couple of stints when she has come back to live with us, but for the most part has been out of the house since 2003. Dillon moved out of the house and into the dorm in 2005. His process of becoming his own man is the type that I wish for all young men. He has had ups and downs, but has persevered and grown through his challenges.

Others have questioned whether Yvonne and I are having trouble “letting go” of our kids. That answer is another resounding “no”. Alyssa is at a stage where she needs to grow and make some of her own choices; her time with the Blue Devils is a great opportunity for that. Seeing Dillon become his own man is something I have looked forward to for many years. My dad died when I was eighteen. He never got the chance to see me grow beyond my teen years. I appreciate every aspect of Dillon’s maturation process. Jenn and Andy’s process of becoming a couple has been fun to watch. As she “leaves” us and “cleaves” to Andy, we are witnessing a process that is not only natural, but also fun to watch. Any case of struggling to let her go at this age, and stage of her life, would be nothing short of unhealthy.

I once heard hilarious speaker at a pastor’s conference talking about these types of changes. He said something like, “You know what freedom is? Freedom is when the last kid moves out and the dog dies!”

I told Yvonne the other day that I would like to get a dog someday down the road. She gave me a look that said, “Are you kidding?”

"Others"

The back of the red F-150 read “others”… It’s probably the most peculiar bumper sticker I have ever encountered. Driving on the roads and freeways in and around Southern California can elicit numerous thoughts and emotions. Every so often bumper stickers will cause me to smile, or shake my head, or think. This one reading “others” seemed to really hit home.

So much of my day is all about me. My thoughts are about my diet; my pleasure; my interests; my studies… So, what is this guy with the red truck trying to say? What is his point? Why is he picking on me?

It’s Thursday morning and I am fulfilling my carpool duties. I ask Alyssa, “What is the agenda for school today? Any tests or quizzes?” She replies, “We are having the fiesta in Spanish class. And, I forgot the (nacho) cheese sauce.” As she completed her sentence I could see that she was discouraged. Her discouragement was almost matched by my displeasure. It was for that cheese sauce that I went to the store the evening before, and paid for it myself. To make things worse, I’m on a diet and can’t eat that stuff, so there’s no bonus for it being left home. I asked if we should turn around to get it. She said no, that it would make them late for school.

As I drove back to the coffee shop to do some work for my ethics class I started thinking about that cheese. “If I go home, get it, and bring it to school, it will cost me thirty minutes, not to mention the two bucks in gas”.

Others

So, I drove past Starbucks and headed home. I called Yvonne and asked her to bring the cheese out to me when I pulled into the driveway. She did. I sent Alyssa a text instructing her to meet me at the turn around during her snack break. I pulled up to the school at five minutes to ten, Alyssa waiting by the curb. She opened the passenger side door, grabbed the cheese, and said “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Others

I’m not really sure what long-term affect this cheese delivery of mine will have on the relationship Alyssa and I share. I doubt that while she is on tour this summer, on a long night-time bus ride, that she will remember my heroic act and shed a tear because her dad loves her so much. Nevertheless, I did do something for somebody else, which may lead to another time to help somebody, which may develop into a habit. Maybe that is the best thing.

Others

A New Kind of Christianity: The Third Question

After spending nearly three weeks on a two-week job, I find myself with a few minutes time to reflect on McLaren’s third question, The God Question. McLaren divide’s his thoughts in two chapters entitled: Is God Violent; and From a Violent Tribal God to a Christlike God.

Since we are free to eliminate the effects of the Greco-Roman distortion of the biblical narrative, we can read the Bible as a community library rather than as a constitution, and we can bring into the focus the stories of God as good creator, passionate liberator, and reconciling king, but we are still left with the fact that there are some much less palatable images of God to be found in scripture – ‘violent images, cruel images, un-Christlike images’ (98). So, now what do we do?

McLaren suggests that the answer is to recognize that the Bible presents the reader with an evolving understanding of God across biblical history. This is evident in five different areas: 1) God’s uniqueness found in the development of an exclusive monotheism; 2) Ethically, in the shift from a preoccupation with ‘religious and ceremonial fidelity’ to a concern for social justice; 3) In God’s universality, found in the development from tribalism to universalism; 4) In God’s agency, changing from sporadic and exceptional intervention to a more balanced providential presence; and 5) In God’s character, specifically the maturation process among biblical writers, and their evolving understanding of God’s character from violent and capricious to gentle and compassionate. McLaren sums it up here:

I am not saying that the Bible reveals a process of evolution within God’s actual character… I am saying that human beings can’t do better than their very best at any given moment to communicate about God as they understand God, and that Scripture faithfully reveals the evolution of our ancestors’ best attempts to communicate their successive best understandings of God. As human capacity grows to conceive of a higher and wiser view of God, each new vision is faithfully preserved in Scripture like fossils in layers of sediment. (103)

To take it one step further McLaren adds: “… we cannot, we must not, assume that we have arrived. In other words, if we can look back and see the process unfolding in the past - in the Bible, in theological history - then we have no reason to believe that the process has stopped unfolding now (105).” Just like you and I see our world through the lenses of the lives we have lived, McLaren claims that the human beings who produced the passages of scripture “would naturally see God through the lens of their experience (106).”

McLaren takes time to compare the biblical stories of destruction to the narratives being told in the ancient Near East at that time. Primarily the Gilgamesh Epic vs. the flood story. He notes how the biblical story is, at minimum, an improvement because the flood story has some morality within it. The understanding of God then progresses, somewhat like how an understanding of mathematics progresses from one subject to the next. Continuing through the Old Testament and into the New Testament, and the stories found within them, he adds: “This approach helps us see the biblical library as a series of trade-ups, people courageously letting go of their state-of-the-art understanding of God when an even better understanding begins to emerge (111).” He later sums up his line of reasoning by concluding: “we can only discern God’s character in a mature way from the vantage point of the end of the story, seen in the light of Jesus (114).”

Ok, so what do I think? I have been trying to wrap my head around all this stuff for about a month, and am still trying to process it. Nevertheless, I think that McLaren has given us a very intelligent, and biblical, framework for understanding the nature of God. As I deliberate these thoughts, and what I know of Jesus, I am drawn back to a saying attributed to Quaker scholar Elton Trueblood found in this book, “The historic Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ does not simply mean that Jesus is like God. It is far more radical than that. It means that God is like Jesus.”