Entering the Cultural Dialogue
Hamas won the majority of seats in the recent Palestinian elections, yet another likely monkey wrench in President Bush's plans for American--style democracy leading to American--style values in the Middle East. Brokeback Mountain won a fistful of Golden Globes, and howling is filling the air on both sides of the aisle, albeit for different reasons. James Frey's memoir A Million Little Pieces brings notions of truth and memory and fiction and identity to the fore again, and in this climate, even Oprah can't quite figure out where to stand. The Chinese government is censoring Google, but Google's going to China anyway, reluctantly capitulating to one oppressive government after having just resisted giving up information to their own. John Kerry and Edward Kennedy are calling for a filibuster to delay Judge Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, fearing Alito might trigger a return to the backward days of pre-Roe v. Wade, but it looks like a futile exercise, and the controlling Republicans have won yet another round. Nobody wants to host the WTO meetings anymore...seems like little more than an open invitation to have your city trashed.
There's a lot to be thinking about, salvos coming from all directions. What to make of it all is a question we face every day, but seldom have the energy and strength to answer, at least not with much rigor or insight. By the time one set of issues has been wrestled to the ground, there are ten more waiting to tackle you.
Much is up for grabs in these early years of the 21st century. I'm not much of a philosopher, but it seems to me that all the major ideas of what makes for civilization and society are being rethought and made out to be the battlegrounds they are. "What is good?" is central. "What is worth fighting for?" "What is freedom?" "What is a human?" "What is life?" "How are human beings valued, and what makes them any different from the rest of creation?" "What is a family?" And perhaps most importantly, "What is love?"
And behind all these questions sits origin and destiny, and God. Empty universe, or full? Anybody home or not? Life after this one, or not, and what might it mean?
This morning is really just a hats off to all those of my friends who are so valiantly taking on all these issues in public forums of various kinds, the most obvious being blogs like this one. Just reading Dick Staub, and Jeffrey Overstreet, Barbara Nicolosi, and others inspires me, indicts me, makes me want to get up off my depressed fanny and get to work, joining them in the ongoing task of "engaging" the culture. Theological notions such as "Salvation" and "The Church" and "Christology" have always had deep, practical meaning for me--or perhaps I should say I wanted them to. The old saw "Ideas have consequences" make them worth fighting for, I suppose, and though I'm never sure I'm getting one thing right about the rain of craziness that falls on daily from the mass media, here's my new pledge to enter in more fully, and with more guts.
At the center of all this--for me--is the relationship of God to this world. If He's not there, then whatever. But if He is, and the Bible holds anything of His desires for His creation, a creation that burst forth from His love, His character, and His dream of extending the eternal community to include this new kind of being called human, then discovering what He has in mind for us needs to be paramount. For all us Christians out there, that seems obvious, but the subtleties of deception in the human mind (including the minds of the Christians) are endless, and the sincere desire to know God, I fear, is far rarer than we like to think.
Does Jesus really have the words of life, or not?
So here's to the brave souls fighting the good fight in all the ways they know, stumbling along after the Master.
God help us as we go...
9:17:18 AM
