The American Dream

Today in my Communication and Culture class we talked about The American Dream: it's characterisitics, its mythological appeal, and how it is revealed and countered in the media. Interesting to do this in the week after The Oscars, in which The Pursuit of Happyness (classic rag to riches story) gets Will Smith a nom and Little Miss Sunshine (everyone in the van has a dream, but . . .) is up for Best Picture. When Forrest Whitaker won, he bascially preached the gospel of the Dream, recounting his hard childhood and his ultimate success. And the royal characters (the Queen, The Last King of Scotland, and Marie Antoinette) are displayed as significantly flawed--a great presentation to the scrappy descendants of the American Revolution.

But I told my 18-22 year olds that theirs is the first generation that will most likely not succeed beyond their parents in terms of wealth. The fable presented by the American Dream is just that: a fable. But we all want it to be true, which is why we imagine ourselves winning Oscars and hold up our soccer trophies from 1983 and say, "I'd like to thank The Academy..." We all want to live into the narrative. Hence the success of American Idol: a nobody can become a star. And the 1347th season of Survivor: regular people can achieve great things.

This is also why it feels so wrong when you aren't chosen, when things don't go your way, when the Simon Cowell's of our world get their delicious glee from dashing our dreams.

Simply stated, the American Dream is all about Hope. Hope that you will do well. Hope that things will turn out okay. Hope that my life a year from now will be better than my life now. Hope that my children will have happy lives. Hope.

I once heard a Nigerian student remark that the most amazing thing about living in America was the pervasive optimism. Everyone seemed to assume that things would get better. He found this remarkable.

It is. What is more remarkable, perhaps, is that this desire has theological foundations. Hope is what God instilled in humanity when God said way back at the beginning that sin would not have the final say. God gave his people hope. Hope is what has sustained God's people through the centuries. Hope is what sustains us now.

In fact, at times when the realities of daily life seem to defy the audacity of hope (to crib from Barack Obama) and faith is shaken, I find that I believe in Christianity simply for the eschatology. To believe that yes, someday, Jesus will return and all will be well. That death does not have the final say. That there is more to this life than this life. That Satan will lose and evil will lose and sadness will be no more.

Sometimes, when the day to day goes from bad to worse, this is our only hope. Our only comfort. The story does not end here. The story does not end badly. The story ends as all good dreams end: the poor are made rich, the oppressed are set free, injustice disappears, the feast is spread for all. It's a good dream, this one. And an even better reality, thanks be to God.

On Waiting

I'm waiting for something.

And waiting.

It's sucking the life from my bones, this waiting.

Tick. tick. tick.

I've watched 7 movies in the past 14 days, plus the entire Oscars show. And in the last two weeks I've watched all of Seasons 1 and 2 of The Office. Can you say 'escapism'?

I have things around my house, things for my teaching, assorted other things that all need to be done, but I have not the will nor motivation to do them.

I find myself starting up random projects and getting them 87% finished before I tire of them. I cleaned the cold extra bedroom, for example. The room that holds old sermons, files, books, floppy disks, CD-Roms. I don't remember deciding to clean it. All of a sudden I was in the middle of sorting things and throwing things away. Putting in order this room that I hardly ever enter.

What I am waiting for is news about my future, my next life, possibilities for working and living and being. And because of this, it seems as if to enter into the life I am currently living simply takes too much out of me. As soon as a movie finishes, the anxiety spikes like a fever and I have to decide What To Do Next.

I finished teaching this morning and fatigue washed over me like a wave. I have no real physical reason to be tired. But I guess carrying this wondering and worry around all the time can wear a person out.

This morning in class I read from Matthew 14, where Jesus goes off to pray and then finds the disciples on the lake struggling against the wind and waves. His presence scares them and they are afraid. "Take courage, it is I! Do not be afraid," he says to them. Peter attempts the water-walk and falters, but Jesus reaches out his hand and grabs him. "O you of little faith," he asks, "Why did you doubt?"

Oh, I am of little faith these days. Little faith and much anxiety. Little faith and big waves. Little faith and shallow breaths.

Good to know that the Savior still reaches out to snatch me up; still comes alongside in our fear and anxiety and says, "Take courage, it is I! Do not be afraid."

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Low Blogging Week Ahead

I'm interviewing in the early days of this week, and traveling to beautiful Burlington, Ontario, for CRCNA board of trustees meetings later this week, so the blogging will be limited. (Why Burlington? Because the CRC is a bi-national church and the Canadian headquarters are there. For one of our three meetings, we all gather there.)

Also, my laptop hard drive gave up the ghost. Readers with good memories may remember when this happened before. Turns out, just before Christmas Vince from Circuit City literally banged my hard drive into place (they joked that as a result all computer repair specialists were now going to be given hammers). I retrieved my documents and squeezed two more months out of the thing. These measures were enough to say goodbye but not enough to save the life. So, in the midst of everything else going on I need to get that taken care of. Good times.

Ah, computers. New-fangled technology always seems to get the best of us.

On "Graphomania"

For all you blog readers who also read your news online, have Google in your task bar, and can't remember when you last actually held a book in your hands, this one's for you.

An excerpt from ‘Ulysses’ Without Guilt By STACY SCHIFF
Published: February 13, 2007 The New York Times (Yes, I read it online!)

By one estimate, 27 novels are published every day in America. A new blog is created every second. We would appear to be in the midst of a full-blown epidemic of graphomania. Surely we have never read, or written, so many words a day. Yet increasingly we deal in atomized bits of information, the hors d’oeuvres of education. We read not in continuous narratives but by linkage, the movable type of the 21st century. Our appetites are gargantuan, our attention spans anorectic. Small wonder trivia is enjoying a renaissance. We are very good on questions like why men fall asleep after sex and why penguins’ feet don’t freeze.

Recently Cathleen Black, president of Hearst Magazines, urged a group of publishing executives to think of their audience as consumers rather than readers. She’s onto something: arguably the very definition of reading has changed. So Google asserts in defending its right to scan copyrighted materials. The process of digitizing books transforms them, the company contends, into something else; our engagement with a text is different when we call it up online. We are no longer reading. We’re searching — a function that conveniently did not exist when the concept of copyright was established."

I love the line "increasingly we deal in atomized bits of information, the hors d’oeuvres of education." We want our bits of information, if you will, sized so that we can pick them up with toothpicks, barely chew them, and then scan the platter looking for another sample.

When I call up my homepage in the morning, I scan down the list of headlines quickly to see if there's anything worth reading more about. But even this list itself has been culled according to my interest. No gossip pages, please. Three different news sources (including the BBC to get me out of the isolationist and navel-gazing American press) and one for sports. Local weather along one side and my favorite comic down below. In about 28 seconds I can ascertain if anything has occurred overnight that I Need To Know More About. If not, I check my email and then go on about my day.

We search rather than read. With our homepages, our email inboxes, our news sources. What do I need to know now? What requires a response? What will people be talking about that I will want to chime in on? We search in order to chat. We don't read in order to discuss.

The next move to make here would be to remark about how I see this in my students, that they don't dive into deep discussions easily, that they scan their assigned reading, that last semester's evals said that they really needed a reading guide because the book was so booooring they just didn't know how to get the information out of it.

But the more honest move is to remark upon myself: my scanning, my searching, my gleaning the edges rather than harvesting the full crop. How is this affecting my teaching? My thinking? My writing?

My soul?

Do I, if I can make another turn here (and yes this is getting long but your whining about it only proves the point herein--so THERE), do I do the same thing with scripture? Scan, glean, search rather than read, chew, ponder?

And if this is the method people are turning to, than how do we teach or re-teach people to engage with the Word? How do we slow down the worship service so that the reading of scripture is not a means to an end? How do we make space around the dinner table for the regular reading of the Bible with the people we love most? How do we as disciples seek out greater imitation of our Lord if not through the reading and re-reading of how he lived and taught and died and rose?

I can go to a bible study website and quickly find a verse to suit my purposes. But do I let the Word pervade my soul so that I may suit God's purposes?

We are a week away from Lent. Perhaps rather than taking away something, it's time to add it. Read the Word. Read through Luke. Read the Psalms of Ascent or the Passion narratives or Exodus. Learn a psalm with your family. Learn a psalm for yourself. Meditate, dwell, ponder.

Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly.

Teaching in Translation

Today was the last day for my winter quarter elective at the seminary, "The Rhythms of Preaching: How to Prepare for a Year in the Pulpit." Last time I taught this course it was to 15 North American students at Western Theological Seminary. This time it was to 6 students: 3 North American MDivs and 3 Korean ThMs at Calvin Seminary. (A ThM is a Master of Theology, a post-MDiv degree that can be used to strengthen applications for PhD programs or used to hone a person's ability within a particular field. Most ThM's can be completed in a year of full-time study.)

This presented some challenges--the varying levels of English competency was one--but I also learned so much about the Korean church. Korean pastors, for example, rarely get vacations. They have one day off each week that is closely guarded, but the three in my class mentioned one pastor who had two weeks off each year. "That's a really good church," they said.

This would be challenge enough, but my students also taught me that many Korean churches have 14 (!) services a week and the pastor is expected to preach--even briefly--at every one. When my fellow N. Am's and I looked agape at them and said, "How do you survive?!", they chuckled and said, "That's why we're here."

Koreans also refer to Good Friday as "Suffering Friday." "Why do you call it 'Good'?" A legitimate question. I actually like their term better. Ours seems to rush right to the redemption. Most Korean churches also fast through holy week, celebrating Easter with a feast.

At Calvin Seminary, the Korean Student Association meets every day at 6 am for prayer. Every Friday evening they have a gathering with worship and food. Koreans make up the largest group of non-North American students at Calvin Seminary, with many of them working on ThM degrees. In my class, ThM students are required to preach twice, so each of these students had to preach twice in a foreign language. I couldn't preach once in any language other than English, and at 6 am most days I am still happily hunkered down in bed.

As I walked through the 10 weeks of the quarter with my Korean brothers, I was repeatedly impressed by their passion for the scriptures, their longing for knowledge, and their ability to survive and even thrive in a culture so very different from their own.

As each one left the room today, he stopped to shake my hand, bow slightly and thank me for the class. I had the feeling that from time to time at 6 am over the past few weeks, my name was on their lips in prayer.

Singing Your Theology

I was listening to a free CD I picked up at the Worship Symposium and one of the songs went like this:

Lord there is none like you.
You alone can (blah, blah, blah)
You alone cannot be tempted
You alone can never die
You alone can (blah, blah, blah)
Lord there is none like you....

And as I was driving I said aloud, "WHAT?!" and scrolled the CD back to check if I had heard correctly. I had.

So, is this a song sung to two-out-of-three of the persons of the Trinity? Because according to Holy Writ, the second person of the Trinity was indeed tempted and did indeed die. This is why his sinlessness and his resurrection are pretty significant realities within Christian theology. Not a big deal to be sinless if you can't even be tempted. Not a big deal to resurrect if you can never die.

Listening to this song made me question the theology of the entire CD, a collection of songs from a rather well-known singers/songwriters group. Who let this one through? I wondered. But that's a key challenge with generic, non-denominational Christian music: there's no one to proof the theology.

We can talk about how great it is that so many "regular" Christian folk can write and record music and how the internet in particular is letting these tunes spread far and wide, but what then happens when songs such as the one above are picked up by Christian radio, and then by youth groups, and then by praise teams? Suddenly the pastor is singing along to the song in worship (trusting the worship leader's choices) and realizes that she is singing lyrics that open up all kinds of theological black holes.

Yikes.

Pastors then fall into the role of "lyric police," attempting to explain why the theology of Buffy's favorite praise chorus is "binitarian" or Arminian or maybe just uses really, really bad poetry (e.g. "you alone are the real joy-giver and the apple of my eye." Shudder.)

The move toward congregationalism in song does indeed allow for new worlds of creativity, but there is something wonderfully reassuring about picking up a hymnal and knowing that the songs contained therein had to pass muster with the musicologists as well as the theologians on the hymnal committee. And hopefully, a poet or two as well.

I love new music. I love many "contemporary" songs. But I also love really good, well-articulated theology. I think there's a "both/and" world in there somewhere......