Juxtaposition

It is a very interesting place that I find myself. During my senior year of high school, I did what practically every other senior in high school did: decided whether or not to go to college. And since I wanted a good job with a good salary that involved more than flipping burgers, I without thinking said yes. Oh, how I wish I had known then what I know now.

For the last nine and a half years I have known beyond the shadow of the inkling of a doubt (that’s even more stringent than just a shadow of a doubt) that I wanted to be involved in full time Christian ministry. There just is no question in my mind. There wasn’t any then. There hasn’t been any in the last nine years. And there isn’t any now. So, I did what I thought any aspiring minister would do: I went to a Christian college and got a degree in Bible. And it was FABULOUS. I absolutely loved college. I finished in three and a half years, a little early. But it was good timing for me. And I don’t think I’d trade those three and a half years for anything.

During those years, I became enthralled with my professors. And I decided I wanted to be just like them: have a Ph.D. so that I could teach in a college or seminary that was located in a small town where I could also be a bivocational staff person. Most of my professors did something like that (at least some of the time), and I wanted my ministry to be like theirs. So I did what they told me to do: I went to seminary, with the expectation that I would move from seminary to a Ph.D. program. They even told me to go somewhere that would solidify my grounding and then follow that in a doctoral program that had a name I wanted (whatever it might be). Which I still think is great advice.

Anyway, so I did that. But seminary wasn’t exactly all that I thought it would be. For one, it was pretty repetitive with what I had done in undergrad. Believe me, there weren’t that many others who set in the eight-week intensive two-mini-mester Greek classes that passed the time in class by doing their homework for the week (like six weeks’ worth or something), then spending the rest of their time reading magazines and grading Hebrew. Yes, Hebrew. In a Greek class that was killing others. And don’t take that as a sign of my intelligence. I had just already had 18 hours of Greek as an undergrad.

And the rest of seminary kind of went that way. All it all, it was a pretty disappointing experience. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I went. But by the time I finished, and especially now with a couple of years of reflection, I’m not so sure that a professor is my career of choice. Don’t know what my professors would think of that, but, hey, it’s my life. And I think my time would be much better spent with the people, by serving in a church, than in arguing the finer points of inflection of the Greek article in a certain context with other theologians. (Don’t ask if you don’t know. Just know that I CAN do it, and I DO have an appreciation for the need for it. I’m just convinced that it is not for me.)

So now I’m out of seminary. I’ve done everything that I know of to do. I even served on staff at a church – both in college and at another church in seminary. I worked in a hospital for a summer (since much of a minister’s time is spent in hospital visits). I spent a summer as a missionary. I’ve taken all the right classes, crossed every “T” and dotted every “i”.

So I find it a cross between funny and really disturbing when church committees look at me and, in all honesty, worry that I am too educated. That’s right TOO educated. And it hasn’t been just a committee here or there. It’s been every committee I’ve talked to. And, if you are wondering, I’ve talked to several, and I’m still looking. Here I am, a reasonably intelligent guy who has done nothing but pursue what he thinks would help him in ministry – the one thing in all of the universe that he wants to do, and I cannot get a job in ministry for anything I could offer. Because I’m too educated. I don’t have the right experience. I’ve been a music minister, but I don’t have a music degree. I have a great educational background, but I have only been a music minister (for something like education or pastor position).

So I sat today and watched a good friend of mine get ordained. (Well, I did more than sit – I played the piano and led the music for the service.) And I wondered if that would ever happen to me. If a church would ever look at me, who has no desire greater than serving the church, and say, “We recognize God working in your life. Serve Him here with us.” (I feel the need to clarify this, there are churches abundant who are willing to let me serve – I’m in one now – but a worker is worthy of his or her wages, and none of these churches can do that for one reason or another.)

300 resumes on (and I don’t think that is an exaggeration, though I haven’t exactly kept count), I begin to seriously doubt. And I don’t have anything in my background that would help me do anything else, even if I had the desire to do it. I’m an intelligent guy with a 3.85 GPA in a master’s degree, and all that anyone sees me good for (in a full time position) is basic data entry or flipping burgers.

So I resonate with the story I linked to above, linked to here again. It is five reasons to not go to college. Two years after finishing my masters degree, neither of my degrees has done me a bit of good. Maybe I should have just apprenticed with a carpenter. I hear that’s a good profession.

Books of interest

So today I picked up two books that I started reading, both of which have intrigued me.

First is At the Corner of East and Now: A Modern Life in Ancient Christian Orthodoxy by Frederica Mathewes-Green (ISBN 0874779871). The prologue really engrossed me: a woman who grew up in a nominal Christian home, left that as a teenager, decided in college to be Hindu, and then had a radical encounter with God on a trip to Scotland. Her husband soon had his own encounter, and he eventually came to be ordained in mainline Protestant denomination that he served for fifteen years. Now? He is an Orthodox priest at a small church outside of Baltimore. The book is Frederica Mathewes-Green’s reflection on the goings on at their church, and I find it incredibly invigorating. Her descriptions of the Orthodox faith are refreshing to me. Hopefully I will blog more about my reflections as I get deeper in the book. She speaks of Orthodox’s firmness that what is Orthodox is what all people believe at all times. It is very different from my experience in the Baptist world, where we are currently allowing even the most minuscule of things to divide us.

The other book I found is The emerging Christian Way (ISBN 1551455218). It is a reflection on what in evangelistic circles is known as the Emerging Church, but (at least from my reading of the first chapter) hails from a mainline (what fundamentals would call “liberal”) background. I have only read the first chapter, but I look forward to more from this, as well.

I have become very frustrated of late with my Baptist tradition. I grew up Southern Baptist and now attend a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship church. And many of the experiences I have had lately seem to show that I don’t belong in either place. So I guess I’m searching for where that place might be. Mathewes-Green and Marcus Borg (who wrote the first chapter of “emerging”) have struck chords with me. I don’t know that I can walk the whole path with them, but it is good for conversation along the way.

It’ll be interesting to see where we wind up.

The Sea Inside

So I’m not quite sure what to make of this movie. The DVD case described The Sea Inside, a film from Spain, as the story of a man who spent 30 years fighting for the right to die. As a seminary graduate, the movie intrigued my Christian ethics roots, so I added it to a stack of movies I was collecting to watch over the next week.

The movie is based on a true story. The main character, Ramon, broke his neck in a diving accident at around 20 years of age, resulting in his becoming a quadriplegic. He refuses a wheelchair and only leaves his brother’s house once or twice a year – and that only after repeated insistence from his caretaker and sister-in-law, Manuela. He spends his days daydreaming of the sea, listening to the radio, using a tool he devised to write with his mouth, and developing inventions which his father and nephew then make into reality.

And most of his time is contemplating the one thing he wants most: to die.

So I guess I was expecting the movie to raise a lot of questions, to have its characters debate the topic some. I don’t know. But it didn’t happen. In the end, the high court of Spain rejects his petition to be allowed euthanasia (as a quadriplegic, he cannot even commit suicide on his own). In an argument with a friend over his desire to die, Ramon says, “Life is a right, not an obligation,” but he is ‘forced’ to live even though he does not wish to.

A Catholic bishop (I believe he is a bishop), also a quadriplegic, comes to the house to reason with Ramon, to no avail.

With the court’s rejection, Ramon is forced to suffer his fate of laying in bed endlessly until his body finally gives out. Except that he and some friends – including a group that is fighting for the “right to die” – devise a plan where many different people do small things, not illegal in themselves, to prepare a cup of poison that Ramon can drink. He is one person short of accomplishing this. A woman who comes to visit him and falls in love with him agrees after Ramon argues that if she loves him, truly loves him, she will honor his wishes and help him to die.

So the last scene of the movie is Ramon videotaping himself with a cup of potassium cyanide next to himself. He addresses the court, then lifts his head and drinks the entire contents. And dies.

There were three of us watching the movie, and we were just left speechless at the end. We never really connected with Ramon’s plight. We did not emotionally involve ourselves with any of the characters. The movie was presented so matter of factly…it was very odd.

Anyway, I can’t say that I recommend the movie necessarily, but maybe it will spark some discussion. Let me know what you think.

Knowing God

Before JI Packer wrote a book about it, there were these verses in 1 Samuel 3:

Verse 7:

“Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD: The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.”

Verse 20:

“The LORD continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word.”

I’ve read through the historical books before. All of them – Joshua through Esther. But I had never been struck before in 1 Samuel 3 like I had today. Well, I had been. Just not by these verses. We usually focus on God speaking out loud to Samuel and wonder if that will ever happen to us. We kind of long for that sort of experience with God. Or we read and study the terrible consequences the line of Eli faces because he has not reined in his two evil sons who have been abusing their positions at the tabernacle. Or we marvel at Samuel and the fact that his mother, Hannah – after praying so long and hard for him – gave him over once he was weaned, only to see him once a year during her visits to Shiloh.

Never before had I seen these two verses that speak of God revealing himself to his people. The prophet of God – Samuel, the one who anoints David king of Israel – learns about God not through the word of God.

We learn about God no differently today. And in America we have the privilege of reading God’s word in so many different ways that it can be confusing. Shakespeare’s English make no sense to you in Holy words any more than from the mouth of King Henry V? There are a multitude of translations to choose from. Whatever your reading level, cultural background, interests, or walk of life, a publisher has made a Bible that conforms particularly to you. And each one of them is the Word of God, which He intends for you and me to lean about Him.

Relationships evolve through shared experiences and conversations – living and talking. And God talks to us through His word. It’s amazing. We can know God. He has made Himself readily available to us – just open up His Word and start the conversation.

Because the world needs to know

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Incredibly interesting. I’ve already spent an hour and a half of my life looking at it.