Tag Archives: Institutional

Me and Babel 2.0

August 17, 2021 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.
John 17:15-16 (NIV)

Earlier this year Wendy and I were on the back patio with friends late into the evening. One of the things we like to do in the dark of night is keep our eyes peeled for meteors, satellites, constellations, plants, and other interesting objects in the night sky. On that night I spotted a satellite, which basically looks like a moving star, trekking slowly from west to east. Then there was another one right behind it. I’d never seen two of them so close and moving in the same trajectory. Then came another, and another, and another, and another.

Pulling up the internet on my phone to find out what we were looking at, we learned that evening about the satellite train. The brainchild of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, it is a long string or “train” of 60 satellites that follow one another in orbit. SpaceX plan to eventually have 12,000 of them in low orbit to provide internet service everywhere from space. Fascinating.

It’s an amazing time to be alive and to make this earthly life journey. In the course of my lifetime, the world has arguably changed more rapidly and drastically than in any other time in human civilization. Advancements in technology and science are beginning to outpace our ability to comprehend the effects of all that it possible.

Along with the “progress” has come a sharp decline in the number of people who adhere to traditional Christian belief systems or attend institutional Christian churches. One of the things that I read consistently about this trend is the criticism that believers and churches in America haven’t done enough to address social justice issues and the problems of our world.

Today’s chapter is traditionally known in theological circles as “the high priestly prayer.” John records Jesus praying just before He was betrayed by Judas and arrested. In the prayer Jesus acknowledges two important things. First, that His followers are “not of this world.” In my experience, Jesus is acknowledging that those who follow Him have expanded their world-view beyond this earthly life to God’s eternal Kingdom. After acknowledging this, Jesus consciously chooses that His followers not be removed from this world, but protected from the same prince of this world that will see Jesus crucified within twelve hours of this prayer.

To quote Hamlet, “ay, there’s the rub.”

In this world, not of it. How do I, as a follower of Jesus, hold that tension?

That’s what my soul and mind are chewing on in the quiet this morning. And here are a few of my thoughts…

I confess that critics of Christianity are not wrong. Followers of Jesus and the institutional churches of history have not done enough adhere to personally fulfill Jesus’ mission of crossing social boundaries, loving the outcast, and caring for the poor. Mea culpa.

At the same time, history has taught me that revolutions and reformations typically paint complex realities with broad-brush generalizations, and then throw babies out with the bathwater. Despite the moans and wails of how awful of a state the world is in, here are a few undisputable facts:

In 1966 (the year I was born), 50% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. In 2017, that’s dropped to 9% despite population growth.
When my parents were young, average life expectancy was between 30-40 years. In two generations it’s risen to 72, and still climbing.
In 1975, 58% of children with cancer survived. By 2010, it was 80%.
In 1980, 22% of one-year-olds received at least one vaccination. In 2018 the percentage was 88%.
In 1970, 28% of the world’s population was undernourished. In 2015 that number had dropped to 11%.
In 1900, roughly 40% of children died before the age of five. By 2016 the percentage was down to 4%.
In 1980, 58% of the world’s population had access to a protected water source. By 2015 the number was 88% and climbing.

It’s easy to cast a stone at the institutional church, its members, and cast stones regarding all that it hasn’t done. I also know many believers in my own circles of influence who, led by their faith in Jesus and dedication to His mission, have given their lives to contribute to the numbers I’ve just quoted.

Scott and Marcia have helped mobilize native efforts in Eswatani Africa to care for unwanted babies, lower the spread of HIV, increase access to clean water, and improve agricultural yields to feed the local population.

Tim and an entire host of individuals in our local gathering of Jesus followers have done a similar work in Haiti. Learning from the mistakes of the past, they are helping native Haitians create sustainable and healthy life and community systems.

My college suitemate, Tim, has dedicated most of his career to helping care for impoverished children and single mothers around the globe. He’s now leading a non-profit to address the 12% of the world’s population that still need a protected water source.

I have long believed that with the technological age I may just be witnessing humanity’s next great attempt at building a tower of Babel. Instead of bricks and mortar, we’re using processors, fiber optics, CRISPR, and satellite trains. The goal is the same: nothing is impossible, and we ascend to be our own god. I find it fascinating to observe what I perceive to be “Babel 2.0” is that we largely still speak the same language but our transmission and translation are increasingly confused. What one intends to say, what they say, and what the other hears and interprets to have been said are incongruent. Language is hijacked and redefined in a moment by part of the population. New words are created, defined, and trend within one part of the population while everyone else in the population failed to notice. They are therefore ignorant and confused when they are discussed.

So what does this mean for me today? I don’t run an institution, nor do I want to. I am a follower of Jesus and, as such, I have a world-view that sees beyond this world and incorporates God’s Kingdom into my earthly existence. I seek to accomplish His mission of “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth” and I take that responsibility seriously. This earthly journey is not about biding my time until death and eternity, but rather trying to bring a Kingdom perspective into my every day intentions, choices, work, actions, and relationships.

I am in this world, a world which remains the dominion of the prince of this world, which is why Jesus prayed for my protection on that fateful night. Jesus asks me to affect this world with love, service, and generosity that He exemplified. He told His followers to be “shrewd as a serpent and gentle as a dove.”

And so, I enter another day of the journey with those intentions.

Note:
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Chapter-a-Day, Wayfarer Podcast

That’s Qadosh

January 13, 2021 Tom Vander Well 6 Comments

Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy.
Psalm 99:9 (NIV)

While being in quarantine has frustrated my extroverted need for interpersonal interaction over the past ten days, I have also been mindful each day to appreciate the opportunity it has afforded Wendy and me to spend lots of time with our grandson, Milo, who normally resides across the pond in Scotland. Yesterday, my exercise monitor informed me that I’d set a new personal record for exercise in one day. If you’re having a hard time getting into that New Year’s workout routine, I suggest finding someone to loan you their three-year-old for a few days.

One of the more endearing developments during our extended time together has been Milo’s desire to go to sleep at night in Papa and Yaya’s bed. Last night, Wendy and I climbed onto the bed with Milo between us. We read three books together, then turned out the light. We sang softly in the darkness. Wendy reached over Milo and held my hand as we lay and sang with Milo nestled between us. Even with my hearing impairment, I could hear Milo’s deep breaths as he drifted to sleep. We then whispered a prayer over him before slipping out of the room.

That, my friend, was a special moment. I wanted to just stay in that moment forever. If only I could bottle it up and hold onto it. I immediately knew that it was a memory I will remember and cherish always.

Today’s chapter, Psalm 99, continues in this section of ancient Hebrew praise songs. They were likely used for liturgical purposes to call the Hebrews to worship in the temple. The lyricist of Psalm 99 layered this call to praise with metaphorical meaning that casual readers in English would never pick up.

Remember in yesterday’s post/podcast I shared that “everything is connected?” The Hebrews found spiritual connections with numbers. Each number had meaning. Seven was a number that meant “completeness.” Three was a number spiritually connected to the divine. There are three stanzas, each with four verses (4+3=7). Seven times the songwriter uses the Hebrew name of God, Yahweh. Seven times he uses Hebrew independent personal pronouns. Three times he refers to God as “holy” (Hebrew: qadosh).

I confess that “holy” is a word, and a spiritual concept, that I failed to fully understand, or flat out got wrong, for most of my journey. The concept of holiness as communicated by the institutional churches I’ve been involved in my whole life made holiness out to be simple moral purity in the utmost sense. The equation was “no sin” plus “going to church” equaled “holiness” (x + y = z). Which meant that holiness, unless you were Mother Theresa, was pretty much unattainable.

I have come to understand, however, that qadosh has a much larger meaning. There are moments in life in which everyone in the room knows there is something meaningful, something special, something larger that is happening in the moment.

Our daughter, Taylor, has an audiotape of the moment she entered the world in the delivery room. You hear her squeaky cries. You hear Dr. Shaw announce it‘s a girl. You hear me talking to her on the warming table. That moment is qadosh.

Last October I stood with our daughter, Madison, in a courtyard. We watched the congregation stand and turn toward us. The beautiful bride, whom I taught to walk, I now walked down the aisle to “give her away” to the man she loves. People smiled and wept. That moment was qadosh.

I sat in the dark room of the nursing home as my grandmother’s life ebbed away with each strained breath. Through the wee hours I kept watch over her. I held her hand. I sang her favorite hymn. I read the final chapter of the Great Story to her and I realized in the moment that it was like reading a travel brochure for the trip she was about to take. That moment was qadosh.

Last night as Wendy and I held hands and hovered over our peaceful, sleeping grandson lying in our bed. We sang. We prayed blessings over him. It was a holy moment. That’s qadosh.

Throughout the Great Story, when God made a special appearance (theologians call that a theophany) the person to whom God appears is mesmerized, speechless, dumbfounded, or overwhelmed. To be in the presence of God, described by lyricist of Psalm 99 as the royal King of Kings. That moment is qadosh.

When the psalmist calls me to worship, he’s not religiously demanding that I dutifully “go to church” in an effort to attain some pinnacle of moral purity. In fact, when I meditate on the fullness of all the qadosh moments I’ve recalled, then all my old notions of what it means to be “holy” are silly in their triteness. The psalmist is calling me into the mysterious, beautiful, meaningful moment of qadosh.

Chapter-a-Day

Divine Call, Human Reluctance

May 15, 2020 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

But Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”
Exodus 4:10 (NRSVCE)

The first time I publicly spoke about my faith I was just shy of 15 years old and had been a follower of Jesus for two months. I was young, uneducated, inexperienced, and naive. It was a church “youth” service and I was one of three young people who each had ten minutes to share. Within months I was unexpectedly given more opportunities to speak, which turned into even more regular opportunities. Again, this was not something I expected at all.

I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I still do. I also learned a lot of valuable lessons in the process.

In the past few years, I’ve volunteered to lead and mentor others who give messages among our local gathering of Jesus’ followers. The vast majority of individuals express fear when they start, which is natural given the fact that public speaking is one of the most common fears in all of humanity. There’s the fear of not knowing enough, saying something stupid, looking stupid, people pushing back, offending others, et cetera, and et cetera. It is not hard for people to find reasons to decline the opportunity.

I have always loved the story in today’s chapter. Moses, on the lam and living as a shepherd in the land of Midian, is confronted by God and called to return to Egypt and lead the Hebrew people out of slavery. As I have already noted in the previous chapters, Moses “has ‘hero’ written all over him.” In today’s chapter, we find our hero receiving a clear, miraculous “call” from God to lead a historic and heroic endeavor.

Moses doesn’t want to do it.

“What if my people don’t believe that you called me to this? What if I get pushback?”

“I’m not a great public speaker. I struggle enough in regular conversation. Speaking in front of a group of people would be a disaster!”

“Seriously. PLEASE call somebody else.”

It is such a human moment. Fear, reluctance, pessimism, and defensiveness are common human responses to the call. Moses is like all of us.

Along my journey, I’ve had three interrelated observations:

First, God’s Message makes it clear that every follower of Jesus who “answers the knock and invites Him in” is given a spiritual “gift” by the indwelling Holy Spirit with which they are to serve the larger “body” of believers and carry out Jesus stated mission to love everyone into God’s Kingdom. This is true of every believer regardless of age, gender, race, education level, social status, economic status, or experience. Peter called every believer a member of a “royal priesthood.”

Second, most human beings are, like Moses, reluctant to embrace the notion that they have any gift, talent, or ability. They are quick to decline any opportunity to take responsibility for serving the larger “body” or accepting the responsibility of loving others like Jesus in their circles of influence.

Third, for 1700 years the institutional church has largely entrenched the thinking that serving the larger body is almost exclusively a professional career for a select group of educated individuals who have successfully navigated the prescribed institutional education and bureaucratic hoops. Those who have not done so (all the rest of us) are, therefore, largely off-the-hook other than regular attendance and financial giving necessary to provide for the livelihood of the aforementioned ministry professionals.

That third observation is bovine fecal matter. And, I believe that it contributes to the impotence and decline of the Jesus Movement being witnessed in current society.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself appreciating Moses the reluctant hero. I also find myself appreciating the fact that God both made allowances for Moses to depend on the giftedness of his brother-in-law, Aaron, to accomplish the task. That’s the very picture of the “body of Christ” the Jesus Movement adopted. Everyone has their “gift” and contributes to the whole of the mission. Moses was a gifted leader. Aaron was a decent public speaker. They depended on one another.

I can always find an excuse to not serve. There’s always something that I can conjure up as an excuse that I am “lacking” (education, knowledge, experience, calling, opportunity, training, etc.). The truth is that all God requires is simple trust and obedience. Which brings to mind a song from many years ago…

Then in fellowship sweet we will sit at His feet,
Or we’ll walk by His side in the way;
What He says we will do, where He sends we will go;
Never fear, only trust and obey.