The Power of Place

Greg Kendall-Ball and Extremist and other readers have been having a nice little row about the effect of place and politics on faith and Christians’ responsibilities flowing from those implications. Their abstractions, which I respect and enjoy, speak to a real struggle my family has been feeling lately.

I’m not a Calvinist or “Reformed” in that Presbyterian sense, but I pine daily for some insight on the effect of our individual places in space, in history, in politics, in church. How does the Lord drop us into our circumstances over which we initially and ultimately have no control? Is our destination at birth by His design? Are our fates consigned by the accident of our births? I think that both of these questions have universal implications that may just end up in the same place.

Either way, Jesus taught us something that transcends the question of our destiny, whether we’re born in North Korea or the United States of America. He calls us to be salt and light, leaven in the bread, wherever we find ourselves. He calls us to faith and service in whatever and all circumstances, poor or rich, ill or well, and promises that He abides with us there, too. We spend a whole lot of time fretting over historical forces and macro-politics, and rightly so, probably, but we often neglect that salt and light business. We can appreciate and debate the wonder of our American republican democracy, but even if we were living in a feudal hut harvesting filth, we’d still be called to hospitality, love, charity and service to our neighbors, the very folks under our noses whom God has seen fit to give us to serve. What does it profit us if we get our foreign policy right, but our colleagues, secretaries, clients, cashiers, housekeepers, and next-door neighbors don’t know Whose we are?

One of my greatest temptations in life is the desire to be significant, globally, historically significant, worthy of remembrance for generations. I long to leave a mark on the greater mass of humanity. I believe He’s teaching me another lesson, though, because that one is rooted in vanity, no matter how righteous I hope the mark is. We pray and pray and pray for Him to lead us. Where are we going God? Where are we going God? Only to realize that we are where He’s leading us, because He’s been leading us all along. In one of our pained conversations on this subject, Kile said, “The Lord is the Lord, so His will will be done because of Who He is.” That’s true, so maybe I’m a Calvinist after all.

Go, Flight!

All I ever wanted to be was an astronaut. My dad is a pilot, and I’ve been flying with him since my infancy. I’ve been staring at the night sky for thirty years, dreaming, wondering, praying, falling in love. I’ve seen miracles and a thousand shooting stars, satellites, the International Space Station, the moons of Jupiter and unidentified flying objects, and that’ s not just wishful thinking. I was born in Rocket City, U.S.A., and my grandmother used to work for NASA. I had been to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center scores of times before I ever worked there. My first job was sweeping the hangar floor for my dad at our little airport, just down the road from a U.S. Air Force base and the second coolest people I knew.

My dreams of space flight and manned exploration were a cocktail of imagination, love, faith, patriotism, glory and fiction, speed, wonder, adventure, history and progress, photon torpedoes, the Bell X-1, Sopwith Camels, Magellan and Columbus, helicopters, war, the smell of jet fuel on a hot tarmac, adoration for my father and a general dissatisfaction with gravity and the human condition.

When I was ten years old, on January 28, 1986, my dreams took a jolt. We were summoned from class to learn that Challenger exploded on its launch, carrying the first civilian passenger into space. Ten year olds make jokes about Needing Another Seven Astronauts, because we couldn’t understand death, but I knew that my favorite space shuttle was gone. I learned that heady dreams necessarily risk complicated danger. Challenger’s last flight did not temper my heart’s desire to fly but only stoked my inspiration. Here were real heroes, dying in glory for the good of mankind.

Two years later, I went to U.S. Space Camp with my best friend with big dreams and the swagger of boys who know what they're talking about. I was mightily disappointed in my young grieving heart when he got to command the orbiter while I was assigned to be Flight Director. They assigned me to be in charge of the entire simulated mission, but I was heartbroken to be in Mission Control and not on board.

Ten years later, ten years ago, I became a counselor at U.S. Space Camp. In our counselor training, before we took charge of kids with big dreams and swagger, my old grief resurfaced with a surprising and embarrassing intensity. I had told that story of my boyhood disappointment as we trained for another mission, and when our assignments came down, they had assigned me to be in charge of Mission Control again. Curse my leadership and competence! A very graceful friend named Betsy had been assigned to command the orbiter, but, seeing the pain in my face, agreed to swap jobs with me. Do you think I was grateful? Do you think I hesitated to take her up on it? Just ask my daughter.

In the summer of 1996, after finally commanding the Columbia on a mission to repair a satellite in low earth orbit, the Good Lord introduced me to a real dream and true adventure. One of my colleagues at Space Camp was a girl named after a bird, and we had our first kiss at the base of the Saturn 1-B in Rocket Park when we had to run from a skunk. Five years later, she married me, and she still wears a lovely, ratty blue sweatshirt with a space shuttle over her heart. We haven’t been to space yet, but we experience wonder, glory, speed and adventure everyday in a rapidly expanding universe, and we both still cry when we watch a shuttle launch.

Hail, Challenger!

Principles

Our current foreign policy is driven by a desire to plant seeds of democracy and cultivate them so that they spread, thereby making the U.S. more secure. This rests on the conventional wisdom that democracies usually don't go to war against each other.

(Of course, Elrod used to note that no two nations with a McDonald's ever fought each other, but then along came the demise of Yugoslavia, thereby disproving the Neo-Golden Arches theory of international relations.)

So how do we react when a violent, terrorist (and social and political and religious) organization is voted into political power by democratic elections? Will we accept the mandate of the electorate? Will we question the validity of their elections? Will we declare that they must not really be a democracy at all because surely no democratic people would choose such a government? Will we acknowledge their legitimacy, then undermine our own conventional wisdom by treating them as enemies?

Ten Words

We Christians should pay attention when thoughtful Jewish people interpret God's Word, especially that part in the front that was written in Hebrew.

This piece from Beliefnet (from January 19, 2006) speaks to much of our conversation right now in the Church of Christ blogging community, even if we've stopped talking directly across the aisles.

The rabbi teaches that "taking the Lord's name in vain" may mean much more than "OMG!" parlance, but that we should tread carefully when we declare that God endorses our positions. We must evaluate ourselves to find whether we invoke God because we hope we're on His side, or because we want the heft of His imprimatur for persuation and victory in our arenas.

One

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl!

Highway Robbery

In the wake of a growing family, we surrendered to the call of practicality and adulthood and bought a mini-van. This is not the first new car that we've bought in Mississippi, yet we are astonished anew at a radically disproportionate and burdensome expense saddled on the people of this noble and illustrious state.

Our license tag cost $660.00. That's right, Six Hundred and Sixty Dollars, plus change, and that was with a rebate for 11 months remaining for the $400 renewal that we just paid for the Beetle we traded in.

I'm not a tax lawyer or an economist, but I have to wonder about this extortion. First, it's regressive to my mind, imposing a much greater burden on the poor and imposing a wild cost on operating a car, which often is a necessary tool for getting to work, school, child care, etc. Also, I cannot imagine that this does not adversely affect our economy and investment in the neighborhood. Yes, I'm a tax and spend liberal, but this is irrational.

Alas, we are the poorest state in the union, and although our tax burden is not relatively high by percentage, I cannot fathom that this tax works to good effect. This is one means of revenue for tax strapped counties in a dry and barren land, and, of course, we all pay it. Thus, unless we're all willing to drive cars that are at least 25 years old, then there's little hope of reducing the burden.

Our Lt. Governor, Amy Tuck, only recently defected to the GOP, announced this week that she'll back a sin tax on cigarettes. Is the license tag a sin tax? I don't know, but I doubt that Toyota will be as mad about our $660 contribution to the coffers as Big Tobacco will be.

Readers few, do you have experiences in other states comparable to this, or are we as strange as I think we are?

Prayers Answered

Brady is fine.

It seems that everybody's prayers were incredibly and quickly effective.

After two different doctors diagnosing Brady with a pinched colon and warning his mom and dad that he would at least need laproscopic surgery and possibly more to fix the problem it turns out that nothing is wrong other than some bad acid reflux.

When Brady got to the hospital further tests were done and it turned out that he would not need surgery after all. My brother called me later that night and told me that they were putting Brady to bed and that he was going to be just fine.

Thank you all so much for your prayers and concern.