Due to the fact that the Pastor's page articles and archives are getting a little too unwieldy Rev. Mark has begun blogging.  This allows for more frequent updates and more user friendly archiving.  If you want to keep up with the winding corridors and random brain flashes check out: www.revmarkthinks-quoheleth.blogspot.com

Keep it here for announcements, schedules and church life.

Paganism holds all the most valuable advertising space.

-T.S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture

It is a peculiar thing; Newtonian physics, the laws that govern the movement an object as simple as a stone or a lead weight, seem also to apply to our spiritual lives.  For example: inertia, the tendency of an object at rest to remain at rest and an object in motion to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.  If you pray, read scripture, worship regularly and participate in the life of the Church, you will tend to continue to do so, in that case your spiritual inertia is in favor of motion, you have momentum.  If you routinely find reasons to neglect spiritual growth, spiritual inertia begins to act against you. You may sit down to pray, you may try to quiet your soul but find that the forces of other vectors is simply too much, they pull you back and forth and hinder your progress.  These tangential vectors represent the action of another law of physics, entropy, the tendency of chaos to increase as energy is added to a system.  Water is the easiest example, in solid form it moves very little, the molecules have very little energy and remain fairly motionless, in a crystal matrix, orderly and solid.  Add some heat and it becomes liquid, more chaotic, in fact the symbol of chaos in Genesis: “the darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”  Add more energy and it begins to become steam, airborne molecules moving rapidly, motion and chaos exemplified.

            If entropy is not somehow controlled everything we know would fall apart, undirected energy produces chaos, witness the state of our living room after Jack and Cate have been playing for a couple hours.  Energy must be directed to undo the resulting chaos.  There are two primary paths that can receive our energy: the way of the world or the way of God.  The way of the world, also known as the secular, materialist or pagan way, may appear to create order but the order is only an illusion, a sleight of hand designed to mask the general increase in chaos.  The way of God is what Jesus referred to as the Kingdom of Heaven, this is a directive force that pushes our energy into line with God’s creative power and counteracts entropy.  If you imagine pipes that carry water, the world’s plumbing is random and confused, prone to freezing and bursting, leaks are considered normative especially when the intense chaos of steam pressure is introduced.  God’s plumbing, however, is well thought out and consistent in plan and direction, there are few branches and turns (Jesus said, “enter by the narrow gate”).  God’s love does not allow us to freeze and His mercy can hold even the most pressurized chaotic steam.

            History demonstrates our tendency to follow the secular/pagan systems, which represent the path of least resistance.  The world monopolizes the obvious and the intuitive.  It scoffs at the difficulties that God willingly overcomes for our sake.  Gravity will naturally help us fall, God’s will calls us to rise and walk.  Sometimes it seems impossible to avoid the fall into Godlessness, sometimes it’s difficult to see the right path for all the choices and distractions, it is in those moments that the tools of Scripture, prayer, worship and the relationships of the body of Christ become our most reliable guides and our best and only hope to find the good path.

Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.

–        Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

How much would it take for you to become a rebel?  I mean, how much injustice must occur before you stand up and say, “NO!”  I do not ask the question of corporate humanity, I ask it of the individual, of you, of me.  It is not a question that can be answered at the polls or through the work of lobbyists because they are all part of the machine.  Rebellion cannot, and change of any sort generally does not, come from within a diseased or decaying system.  If we try, as many do, to work with the system it is not the system that is changed but rather the edges of outrage that are ground away by the sheer mass and inertia of “the way things are.

            I admire Thoreau for his momentary flares of independent thought: his grand experiment in economy and self-sufficiency at Walden, his night in jail to protest the war with Mexico, his prescient fervor for the abolition of slavery.  But very few of his contemporaries even bothered to hear his voice.  For all his courage and principle his life produced very little friction.  If he had not written an account of his thought no one would have known him as anything more than Ralph Emerson’s gardener.  In his lecture on civil disobedience he describes an eerily familiar image: “The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.”  The machine is what wages war in the interest of the few, inferring the wealthy, at the expense of the many.  The machine is what excuses injustice with words like expediency, practicality and necessity.  Thoreau pointed out then that slavery, for instance, was far more unjust than Britain’s tariffs and taxes ever were, yet Americans of good conscience were not willing to rage against that particular machine.

            I can’t help but translate a little, I can’t help but put Iraq in place of Mexico, I can’t help but think that even with the election of a black man to the presidency we are still a long way from racial justice.  I can’t help thinking about immigration, poverty, genocide, inadequate health care and bloated bureaucracy.  I can’t help thinking about $700 billion bailouts, golden parachutes and CEOs who ride off with millions of dollars, while Frank the factory worker has to figure out what to do now that his pension has “disappeared.”  I wonder how many lives are going to have to burn from the heat of the friction that it will take to stop this machine of greed and materialism.  I shiver to think that almost two hundred years have gotten us almost nowhere.

            If our nation was inhabited by men like Thoreau, who had the integrity to live out the idea of responsible citizenship, then we wouldn’t be in this fix.  But he was a rare bird, who seemed to be willing to take upon himself any rigor in the name of community, even living apart from it, even going to prison (albeit only for a night).  He reminds us at several points in the lecture about the teachings of Jesus, and he’s not misquoting or proof-texting, in fact there is a certain natural quality to his use of Jesus’ teaching that does not require actual quotation.  It reminds me that many of our most civilized and humane characters have been Christian.  It also reminds me that too few Christians have the same internalized and synthesized vision of Christ’s teaching that Thoreau had.

            We make so many excuses for why we can’t change the world that we often don’t even get around to changing ourselves.  We spend so much time lamenting oppression and violence of others against their neighbors that we forget to act responsibly and loving towards our own neighbors.  I find in Thoreau a very peculiar yet familiar blend of optimism and cynicism that hopes the world can and will change but puts little stock in the idea that it will be through human means.  It will require sacrifice by many to provide enough “counter-friction” to stop the machine of modern culture but, as time goes by, it becomes clearer that it must be stopped indeed or else we will derail.  Perhaps revolution is needed, though it seems unlikely given the physical comfort and relative security most of us enjoy.  Revolutionaries are not mainstream, they are a fringe element, the machine is strong enough to keep them at bay or grind them down.  Jesus and John the Baptist illustrate what happens when revolutionaries, even of the spiritual ilk, come up against the machine: crucifixion and beheading.  They show us that perhaps our only victor will be in the Kingdom of Heaven, but they don’t alleviate the responsibility we have to be friction against the machine.

The majority of the people are not so afraid of holding a wrong opinion, as they are of holding an opinion alone. – Soren Kierkegaard

It seems like everything is becoming a poll these days.  Television shows have latched on to the voting mechanism, letting the viewers decide on the best singer, best dancer, most talented.  You can vote by text message, by cellular phone, over the internet.  You can answer inane questions or important ones, you can participate in polls that mean something and polls that mean nothing.  I fear it won’t be long before some entrepreneur places his or her entire life under the control of voters who will pay for the privilege of deciding what Sam from Decatur Illinois eats for breakfast: “Will it be scrambled eggs or Frosted Flakes?  You decide! Vote online and log on to Youtube at 7:23 AM to see the exciting results of the vote.”

            In Politics things have already reached (perhaps exceeded) this level of absurdity.  Candidates develop platforms in response to the polls of their constituents.  Thus our leaders are elected, not because they have developed innovative solutions to problems but because they agree with opinions held by the majority.  Majority opinion is not always wrong but when it’s wrong it’s really wrong.  Racial violence and genocide spawn in the horrible confluence of ignorance, fear and majority opinion.  Yet politicians blithely play the numbers game in order to convince the masses, not so much that they are right or righteous, but at the very least most people agree with them.  It’s not supremely important whether a person’s opinion on an issue is right or wrong (who has the capability of making such complex moral judgments anyway), the only issue is whether at least 51% of the people agree with you.

            This is where we are and perhaps where we’ve always been (seriously, as I wrote this last sentence I had to stop and answer a phone poll).  Consensus is more important that substance; one gets the feeling that if we ever get it right it’s just a happy accident (or more likely God’s providence).  We trumpet our independence but we don’t have the courage of our convictions and are all too willing to be browbeaten and intimidated by the opinions of others.  Perhaps I’m too cynical (25.7% of the people I know think so), but it seems to me that the majority of people form their opinions based on atmospheric impressions and heavily slanted information.  Then again I could simply be too optimistic about the potential of human society (14.6% of my acquaintances and 46.3% of the theologians that I read think so) but I have to believe we can do better than the current state of affairs.  89% of my conscious mind tells me that, in order to solve any of the world’s big problems we’re going to have to stop following the herd and learn to innovate on a much larger scale. (The other 11% is thinking about dinner)

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.  - T. S. Eliot

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.
Karl Marx

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.  - Will Rogers

The reason why monarchy has been such a powerful force in history is because democracy is difficult.  Americans don’t seem to understand very well, if at all, that subjects of a king, even a bad king, have a certain attachment to the person of that king that is deeper than the relationship we have to our politicians.  When Jefferson and his wealthy, landed, white, male compatriots began drafting our Constitution the thing they feared almost as much as the British crown was actual majority rule, which would have been anarchy in their minds.  So the time came again for an idea from ancient Greece and Rome: the democratic republic: balance of power, buffers between the proletariat and the seat of power, bureaucracy as a safety measure, the very fabric of our society.  The design called for “checks and balances” so that no one branch of government could wield too much power.  These men had learned firsthand how dangerous a king could be and they sought to avoid a return to monarchy and the corruption of absolute power, what they underestimated was the strength of the people’s desire for a king.  Over the years the office of President has morphed from essentially a part time job to a lifetime position as imperious leader.  As the national election kicks into high gear, we begin the task of selecting the next occupant of the oval throne room (I mean office).

            Don’t get me wrong, I think our system of government is a sight better than any of the alternatives, it’s just human nature in general that troubles me.  The above quotation from the amiable Will Rogers reflects exactly how I feel during the week that the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is in session (thankfully that’s only every other year).  I become anxious that we are going to damage something, or perhaps injure ourselves, as I think we have done this year.  Whether it’s the Presidency, Congress or GA, the task of government reveals how depressingly slow human progress really is.  There’s this little story in the Gospel of Matthew where some tax collectors from the temple (religious and civil authorities) come to question Peter about whether or not Jesus paid his taxes.  Jesus comes back and he and Peter have a little conversation that gives us some valuable information.  It’s a personal conversation between Jesus and Peter, not a public teaching, not something that was said to a crowd of people, just to Peter.  Jesus tells Peter to go catch a fish and in the fish’s mouth will be a coin, which will apparently be enough to pay the temple tax for both Jesus and Peter.  The reason for this, “so that we do not give offence to them.”

            Jesus demonstrates a sort of playful compliance with the authorities of the world.  He knows that human sin and stupidity is only a symptom of the evil he is actually fighting.  He lets the baby hold the handle of the hammer, but keeps the business end firmly in his grasp.  This is why the authorities had such a difficult time making even trumped up charges stick.  We take politics very seriously.  We attach a certain sacredness to our right to vote because, in worldly terms, freedom and democracy are expensive and difficult virtues.  But Jesus seemed to look at politics with either wry amusement or mild sadness, and generally tried to avoid getting wrapped up in the whole mess.  Yet he did participate, he put in his coin, even if it did smell fishy.

            The dilemma has remained the same since the time of the Judges in Israel: God is in charge but people want a mascot of authority.  The reason democratic republics, (i.e. Rome under the control of the Senate, the U.S. and the United Kingdom in the modern parliamentary system) have flourished historically is because the weight of leadership is diffuse and we change figureheads often.  In the U.S. we have perfected a system for changing our ruler without bloodshed, while maintaining an effective oligarchy (control by a few) that provides stability and a sense of security to the masses but which is not terribly different from good old monarchy.  The trick is to keep the balance tilted in favor of security, and keep people satisfied with their place in the process.  As William Penn once said, “Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.”  The reality is that humanity as a whole cannot handle the freedom that God would give us, we have spiritual agoraphobia (fear of open spaces), and thus always seek the confinement of human systems of government, we demand our kings, princes and rulers.  Thus far our progress has brought us to a place where we have some small choice in our leadership although one wonders how much of choice we actually have.  This is the first presidential election since I turned 18 where there isn’t a Bush or a Clinton on the ticket and we only narrowly avoided a Clinton, say it with me boys and girls: “oligarchy.”

            The Gospel is the Good News and it may in fact be the only news that really matters.  Do not approach this season with fear in your hearts but trust in God who is truly our sovereign (Read Psalm 2).  Remember what a blessing freedom and democracy are compared with the alternatives but know that it is better to be a doorman in the house of God than a king in the world.  Trust God, don’t worry, and get ready to vote.