The Accidental Anglican

Robert Gagnon on Scripture & Homosexuality

Probably one of the best-reasoned arguments for the reasserter view of Scripture on this subject I've ever seen.  Gagnon takes some of the more common arguments in favor of a new view of homosexuality ("God made me this way," the shellfish argument, etc.) and dismantles them, one by one.  A good read.

Nabers v. Moore: How to REALLY be a Christian in the workplace

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.  Colossians 3:23-24

When politicians start me thinking about what it means to be a Christian, I get a little nervous.

After all, I remember hearing in a church history seminar that, in the early Church, politicians often put off being baptized until they were near death lest their actions in office caused them to commit mortal sin post-baptism.  The conventional wisdom was (and perhaps still is?) that holding government office all but required actions incompatible with Christian ethics.  Yow.

So when I ran across an otherwise innocuous news report about Phase II of an e-filing initiative in Alabama courts, I began connecting some dots in ways I hadn't before.

Why?  The program, modeled after the successful federal courts program which allows litigants to file court papers electronically via the Internet, is the pet project of appointed Alabama Supreme Court Justice Drayton Nabers - the guy who replaced Roy Moore a year and a half ago.

Remember Roy Moore?  For those of you not from here, he's the guy who started his career as a media darling by daring anybody to take his Ten Commandments plaque from his Etowah County courtroom.  His crowning achievement came later when he invaded the Alabama Supreme Court building in the dead of night, Trinity Broadcasting Network camera crew in tow, to install the now-famous Ten Commandments monument.  His defiance not only became the subject of another "separation of church and state" court ruling but ultimately cost him his job.

On the strength of that PR coup alone, Moore is now running in the June 6th Republican primary in the governor's race against incumbent Bob Riley.  The good news is, he's apparently not expected to do well.

I say "good news" because, whatever sympathy I might have had for Roy Moore's basic position was more than offset by my disgust over the showboat antics he engaged in when the cameras were on.  I often wondered if he ever set foot in his own office and did an honest day's work at the job he was elected to do.

Drayton Nabers, on the other hand, takes a distinctly different approach.

And he clearly has enough on his plate to keep him busy in the office.  In barely eighteen months' time, he's managed to get the ball rolling on one of the most ambitious projects the state court system's ever undertaken.  Most impressively, they're projected to finish by the end of this year.

The goal here is not just to save money (although the program promises to do just that).  It also makes life easier for those who use the court system - attorneys and ordinary citizens alike.  And I can just imagine how happy these court clerks are about reducing the amount of paper they have to handle daily.  (If you've ever visited the court clerk's office in any Alabama jurisdiction and seen the glassy-eyed looks on the faces of the folks who work there, you'd know anybody who offers to take most of the drudgery not to mention the paper cuts) out of their day deserves sainthood.)

At the risk of lapsing into a WWJD moment, I have to wonder: if Jesus was a state supreme court chief justice, what would he spend more of his time doing - calling press conferences and making public appearances, or improving the lot of ordinary people who use the judicial system under His office's direction?

I'm just asking.

What passes for wisdom in 2006

Today's USA Today had an interesting bit excerpting this year's (supposedly) notable commencement speeches.  Graduates - from universities and colleges both prestigious and not-so-prestigious - are being sent out into a world fraught with problems: war in the Middle East, nuclear arms in the hands of dictators, dwindling petroleum supplies controlled by foreign entities, the impact of continuing globalization.

So what kind of inspiration are tomorrow's leaders getting to energize them for the challenges ahead?

Well, let's see ...

• Jodie Foster tells this year's graduating class at the University of Pennsylvania not to worry too much if they spend the next six months lolling in bed, watching junk TV and feeling stupid.  (She also quotes the eminent philosopher Eminem.  Good to see a fellow English literature major who retained some of her undergraduate education.)
• Ellen DeGeneres gives four classic bits of advice to Tulane graduates: exfoliate, moisturize, exercise, and floss.  (My doctor and dentist would both say I should have heard that speech when I graduated.)
• Viggo Mortensen tells St. Lawrence University students to be sure to consider viewpoints other than their own. (Isn't that why they went to college in the first place?).
• Worried about whether you'll make the cut?  Never fear, says Billy Joel to Syracuse graduates: do what you love, and you'll be good at it.  (Great, these graduates must be thinking. Why couldn't somebody have mentioned that before I studied for four-plus years and amassed all that student loan debt?)

Granted, we're talking about McPaper here, not The Grey Lady.  It's a puff piece, and the content is appropriate for one.  But I can't help but wonder why any newspaper of national scope would, with a straight face, label these as "the best from this season's commencement addresses."  Dallas Willard is right: commencement speeches nowadays consist of people "saying nothing, and saying it badly."

Consider, by way of contrast, what Alexander Solzhenitsyn told the Harvard Class of 1978:

• Western society "upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which developed out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick."  (Keep in mind that Solzhenitsyn was talking - in 1978 - about Soviet Russia and the United States. But is history repeating itself in 2006?)
• "Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development. ... This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era. There is, for instance, a self-deluding interpretation of the contemporary world situation. It works as a sort of petrified armor around people's minds. Human voices from 17 countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events."
• "There are meaningful warnings that history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen. There are open and evident warnings, too. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy."  (Can you say "Hurricane Katrina?"  Sure, I knew you could.)
• Solzenhitsyn cautions against the current "calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness. To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. ... We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. ... If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism."

I could quote for days, so rich (and prescient) are his insights, but I think you see the contrast.

I have to believe that USA Today's insipid commencement round-up tells us one of two things:

a) Getting students (and faculty, for that matter) to even show up for commencement is more important to (and more difficult for) The Academy than giving the ones who do care enough to show up a meaningful experience. 

OR ...

b) We all really are this frickin' shallow.

My own private Terri Schiavo

As if I hadn't had enough of the "Terri Schiavo" dilemma in the national media this year, I had to get a taste of it close to home.

After seven weeks of radiation (and even more state-of-the-art chemotherapy), my stepmother's frontal lobe glioblastoma began manifesting itself again.  I'll spare you the long version, but May was an ugly month in more than one way.  A Mother's Day ER visit, a subsequent hospitalization, in and out of ICU.  Desperate attempts to get her sodium levels to rise, then stabilize.  Stupor, disfigurement, multiple infections. 

The heavily ironic twist was that her case of the shingles - an opportunistic viral infection that took advantage of her weakened immune system - basically locked my brother and me out of the room, since we'd never had chicken pox (the same virus causes both).  The most I dared do was insert my head in the door and crane my neck to get a glimpse of her.

But the most wrenching moment came one day toward the end.  My cell phone buzzed with a text message: "Call me when you can."  It was my brother.  He was usually loathe to call me at work, so this was serious.

Cell phone in hand, I stepped out into the hallway for privacy and held my breath.  "Well, I walked in on the tail end of a conference with the doctors," he said, "and [our stepsiblings] decided to reinsert the NG tube."

This was the same nasal gastric tube she had - accidentally or not - pulled out on Memorial Day.  "You've got an opportunity here," the doctor told my stepsiblings when it was discovered.  Much to our relief, and in agreement with her living will, they opted at the time not to have it reinserted.  We comforted ourselves with the knowledge that it would soon be over.

Now, three days later, it was a different story.  They wanted to give her every chance, they said.  Maybe she'll rally back.  Maybe.

There was disagreement in the room, but those who opposed (including the medical people) stayed silent.  We would all abide by their decision, painful as it was for all of us to witness.  Those in favor left town, asking that we notify them of any changes.

Hearing about the decision, I exploded.  "What do they think she's going to rally back to?  Why don't they think about what she'd already said she wanted?"  All my brother could do was murmur, "I know ... I know."

* * *

I hadn't gone to the hospital in several days - it was too frustrating.  I couldn't see her, I never knew who would be there, I didn't want to pull them out of the room to talk.  But Saturday that hospital room drew me like a magnet.  I didn't know what I was going to do.  But I knew I wanted to at least look at her.

As it turned out, only one person was there, a relative I'd never met before.  My stepsister, who had been keeping vigil at the hospital, had stepped out for a late lunch.  No one knew how long she'd be gone.

I took one lingering glance and left.

* * *

The phone was ringing Sunday morning as I stepped out of the shower.  "Well, I've got good news and bad news," my brother said.  It happened at 2:20 that morning.  My stepsister and her daughter were with her. 

Her breathing had begun to change after I'd left, and every hour, they noticed new signs of what was happening.  Finally, they awakened with a start, and both rushed to the bed just in time to see her take three shallow final breaths.

It wasn't until I was at church later that morning that I remembered.  As I had gotten out of the car at the hospital, I stopped suddenly.  "Please, God," I said desperately, sinking back into the driver's seat.  "Please don't let them do this to her."

* * *

I'd prayed these desperate prayers before.  For almost two weeks prior to my mother's death, I'd held out the hope that she'd come out of her seizure-induced coma.  I thought if I prayed hard enough, long enough, faithfully enough, God would reach down and miraculously heal her.  Such was the hope my two-year-old Christian faith clung to.

Finally, after days of little or no progress (save a brief waking that still haunts me - did she recognize me through all that brain damage?), I sank onto the couch in the living room and told God my father and I had had enough.  He can't take this anymore, and neither can I, I said.  And she's suffering more than both of us put together.  If it's your will, take her.  I give up.

The next night, she took one sighing breath while her neurologist stood over her, and then her head slumped over to one side.

Twenty-one years later - to the day - I stood over my father's bedside in the nursing home where he'd been for six months after his Parkinson's and dementia became too much for my stepmother to handle alone.  His first four months there has been mostly uneventful - he was alert enough to be conversational and surprisingly chipper - but a nasty blow to the head suffered during an evening bathroom fall was the beginning of the end.  I'd held out hope for weeks that, somehow, his brain would knit itself back together and, while I knew he'd never be completely healed, bring him back to at least his former level of functioning.

Now, looking at his inert body and glassy unfocused eyes, smelling the foul breath of a man who had begun to refuse all food and water days earlier, I found myself praying, "God, it'll be so good when he's not trapped in this failing body anymore."

Early that same afternoon, I got the call from my brother.  "He's gone," he said.  "They called me when they noticed his breathing start to change, but I couldn't get there fast enough.  I got there about ten minutes too late."

* * *

I understand all too well how controversial the Terri Schiavo case was.  There were mixed motives on both sides of the family (as is inevitably the case where large sums of money are involved) and way too much finger-pointing and media-posturing by everyone.  But I think any attempt by one side to demonize the other misses the point.

Watching someone you've loved - as a parent, child, spouse, sibling - occupy that borderland between life and death is gut-wrenching, no matter what side of the "culture of life/culture of death" debate you're on.  But these decisions, insofar as possible, belong with family and with medical professionals, not with government.  Although justice can, and often should, be dispensed impersonally, love cannot.  And making these decisions requires loving both well and wisely.  I believe that's all God really requires of us when we are faced with what we cannot be certain of.

(I began writing this in June of this year, and I hesitated posting it for several months.  The wound was too raw for a long time.  What the above lacks in immediacy, perhaps it makes up for in ... something.)