Obstinate Is As Obstinate Does

People are obstinate. There you have it. The encapsulation, in three words, of human behaviour. I reckon it ought to be the first sentence in every psychology textbook.

Take Saddam Hussein, for instance; a poster boy for obstinacy if ever there was one. Here we have a man who preferred to let the world believe he had weapons of mass destruction to simply allowing inspectors to enter his country and reveal that he did not. What was the result of this obstinate behaviour? Well, ultimately he was hung, wasn’t he? After being pulled, rat-like, from a hole in the ground, dirty, haggard, pitiful, ruined. Of all possible outcomes, Hussein managed to achieve the very worst.

Ring any bells? Of course it does. Moammar Khadafy, Hussein’s mulish compatriot and contender for the throne, refused to heed voice of his people and was of course just recently pried from a grimy drainage ditch, beaten, shot and killed.

Do the obstinate learn from these examples? Of course not. Otherwise they should cease to be obstinate (and thereby disprove my theory). But in fact there are more candidates waiting eagerly in the wings -- in Syria, in Yemen, in Iran and elsewhere -- granting awareness of recent events not so much as a nod, as if they will somehow do stupidity right this time around. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not logical, is it? But I guess that’s my point. People are obstinate. We are made that way. Hard-wired, helpless, doomed.

Take the Christians in Bogor, for example. What? The Christians in Bogor? You mean those from the Yasmin church who persist in holding services on the sidewalk outside the building from which they’ve been barred? Those who stubbornly wait for the obstinate mayor of the town to obey an order from the highest court to desist in prohibiting them their service in that place? Yep, those are the ones.

We are inclined to rebel against that which seems unfair, to throw out the chest, to lift the proud fist, to proclaim our cause to be right and holy. We don’t like being pushed around, and by God we’re not going to budge an inch.

But hold on a sec. Did not the Lord himself point out that foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head? What’s all this fuss then about one street and one block in Bogor? What, other than obstinate pride? Lets think it through. Where is The Church? On this block alone? In this building alone? Does it reside in a legal document, or is it written in the deed to this particular tract of land?

“Where is your kingdom?” Pilate demanded of Jesus.

“My kingdom is not of this world,” he answered.

Where is it then?

“Where two or three are gathered in my name.”

No mention of a building there, or a temple, or a church, but only of human fellowship.

Do I excuse the Muslim hard-liners and their curious, senseless coveting of this same patch of earth? Not at all. One thing about obstinacy is that it is equally available to every race, religion and creed.

“We want this church building to be gone next week,” Ahmad Iman, head of the hard-liners, has said. “If it still stands, we will bring it down.”

Really? Is it that important? Is the foundational coherence of your beliefs so weak that you must fear and dispel a few Jesus freaks? Or are you merely offended by the presence of this sort of infidel trailer trash in your neighbourhood?

Oh well, that’s okay. There are people in America who feel the same way about black folks. They’re called the Ku Klux Klan. They wear white robes with pointy hoods and shout things like God is great and nigger go home. Sound familiar?

We who are not Muslims do not know the Muslim scripture, nor do the Muslims know the Christian. If they did, they would know that Christianity has from its beginning thrived on persecution. What better way then to make many more than to persecute the few?

Do you want that church to go away? Try ignoring it. At the very least peace may be had, and no one need be harmed.

Ah, but that would be less than obstinate, wouldn’t it.

Unholy Smokes

I know and am perfectly sure on the authority of the Lord Jesus that no food, in and of itself, is wrong to eat. But if someone believes it is wrong, then for that person it is wrong.
--Romans 14:4

This last Sunday, the young assistant pastor at our church, in the course of delivering an otherwise excellent sermon, yet got stuck, as so often happens, on cigarettes. I am always amazed at this recurring confusion about tobacco and the linkage of the same to anything having to do with the Lord or with the Christian life.

Where does this come from? We are talking, after all, about love, peace, and joy in the holy spirit--that and nothing else, as so explicitly and patiently put down by Paul in the Book of Romans, chapter 14 in particular.

How has tobacco smoking sneaked into the mix? Isn't Paul saying to keep such things out of the mix? The people to whom he is speaking are worried about various foods, whether they should be consumed or not. They are worried about the preparation of foods, whether meat has been sacrificed to an idol, whether this day or that day ought or ought not be observed.

And Paul, to paraphrase, is saying Wake up, for Christ's sake! None of these things make a damn bit of difference! Is this what you make of the glorious freedom to which you've been called? More rules?

And so here we are, still stuck on the same non-pertinent nonsense. Frankly it irritates me, which I guess you can see. One longs to fellowship in the love and tolerance of the Lord, and yet suddenly finds himself shunned and judged on the grounds not of his relationship with Christ, but because he put a freakin' cigarette in his mouth.

Good grief.

Allah Adalah Kasih

Last night our Muslim house guest decided to pray. This in itself is not surprising, for he prays five times every day. It is a rule, you see. What was different last night was not that he decided to pray, but that he decided to pray very loudly, and moreover decided to do so until 1 or 2 in the morning. I'm not quite sure when it stopped, because at some point along the way I buried my head under the blankets and the pillow, and then the Labrador, forever the kind-hearted sort, laid himself on top.

I guess the idea would be that it's never too late at night to talk to God, and that is a good and honorable way of thinking. Still, it occurs to me that God, who needs no sleep, is sacrificing little in listening, whereas we human beings are weak vessels and must eventually nod off for our own good health even while there is so much remaining to be praised and adored and generally hollered over.

Now maybe, just maybe, a soothing sort of chanting and shouting would be bearable, and yet our particular Muslim's voice is not made for lullabies. The sad truth is--and no fault of his own--that his vocal chords and lungs have been constructed in such a way--praise Allah--that the resulting intonation resembles more closely that of the adult cow, which in prayer sounds as if it is being internally tormented in some manner, perhaps by a peptic disorder, a stomach ulcer.

This is how we know that God's ways are truly not our ways, His thoughts above ours--for apparently he finds these tortured groanings pleasing to the ear.

I conclude therefore that if I were God, I would have slept last night like a baby.

Be thou perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect.

Under the circumstances, this seems perfectly good advice.

The Christians, of course, have another take on this prayer thing. It goes like this:

"And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.

"Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him."

Now that I can sleep to. To be perfectly honest, I know of no better place on earth for the quick cat nap to be had than on the pew during sermon at church.

A Walk Among the Gods

A rare occurrence took place in Portland on Saturday. The sun came out. Moreover, it stayed out.

This is something that our exchange students had not yet seen during their stay thus far in the Pacific Northwest, so it was very exciting. We took the opportunity to teach them the English word, sun. Sun. Sun. We pointed to the sky. Sun!

No Portlander has seen this particular heavenly body in a good long time, and so the word, I think, sounded nearly as foreign to us as to them.

The weatherman says this phenomenon will likely last one more day.

In any case, I took the opportunity to chaperon Roy, our Japanese student with the unpronounceable name, around some of the nearby sites of interest in our neighborhood. First we drove to the top of of Rocky Butte, from which one can enjoy a panoramic view of the city and the distant mountains. Then we drove back down the hill to the Grotto.

The Grotto is a Catholic shrine with trails and statues, fountains and flowers, a book store and a church, all nestled within the embrace of tall Douglas Fir.

We saw Jesus, of course (in stone, I mean), and Mary, and assorted Saints (most of whom I am unfamiliar with, not being a Catholic). We saw Jesus as the baby, Jesus as the man, Jesus on the cross.

And as we walked, I was struck by the utter hopelessness of trying to explain this religion to someone who speaks very little English. Yes, there he is as a baby, and that's his mother, Mary. Who was he? Well, see God . . . you know God, right? . . . well God came to earth as a man and lived among us. He did many great works and taught people about the love of the Father. And then, uh . . . well, then they killed him. On the cross, see?

The people killed God?

Well, yes, but of course God cannot die. Jesus rose again from the dead. After they killed him on the cross.

Frankly, the whole thing sounded ridiculous to me. And I'm a believer.

There was one stone column that bore only the word peace.

What is peace, Roy asked?

Yes, what is peace? What indeed?

Is it the trees, the flowers, the pathways, the fountains? Is it the quiet in the air except for the howling of the leaf blower nearby?

Or is peace simply something that is in short supply, and getting shorter all the time?

Living Water, II

Wellington Boone was wrong. Or was he?

He had said, in the space of 200 pages or so, that if a man will go out of his way to serve others, then others will acknowledge the effort in like manner, i.e. the natural response to giving is to give in return.

Now, having afforded the theory a trial run of some 10 years' duration, I can say nothing other than that the results have consistently failed to support the hypothesis. Rather, extravagant giving would appear to create in others an extravagant appetite for receiving.

People do not see the force of will behind self-effacement. They simply conclude that you are weak. They do not see the strength in forbearance. They simply conclude that you are foolish. They do not understand that generosity is powered by love, nor that true love elevates the one who is loved above the common elements of personal recompense.

I have become, therefore, the proverbial doormat. Or so they will say, even as they continue to benefit by every property they have deemed foolish, weak, callow, obtuse.

What's up with that, Mr. Boone?

The answer, as it happens, is a bit beyond the mere ink that ended up on the page.