Football Schools

Vandy was the runner-up in yesterday's SEC Tournament Championship game against Ole Miss. Today, my 'Dores are a 2-seed in the College World Series. Eight, count 'em!, eight SEC teams make the field.

Go 'Dores!

A Tale of Two Churches

Thanks to Kile for this article addressing the different roles of religion in Europe and the United States.

I question whether the dominant Christian effort now in the US forebodes the same secular marginalization that the church suffers in Europe. That is, do decades and centuries of efforts to dominate political society and policy by religion and religious identify result in failure and backlash?

Yes. History reveals it cyclically.

Yes, because policy and policy domination is not what Jesus ever had in mind. We can blame this sad corruption of faith on religious wars and oppression by religious-states. We could say, if the European church had dealt in charity and humility, reconciliation and teaching, if the European church had been more like Jesus, it would not be marginalized; it would be relevant and thriving, shaping culture from within, like, say, salt or yeast or light.

The back-sliding Europeans are not godless, and they are not immoral or heathen. They are the descendants of violent, corrupt religion and religious states. If that were the face of the church, what righteous, godly person would want to be associated with it? That church, the church of political gamesmanship, state corruption and inquest, the church of vast wealth and scant moral authority, the church that became a tool of kings as it played their games, even that repentant church is reaping the fruits of its history.

Europe isn't backslidden and blasphemous. Europe is a cautionary tale for the Kingdom.

Slippery Slope on the Hill

No, don't worry about the 4th Amendment. We trust the President to tackle the GWOT and to respect the privacy rights of "ordinary Americans."

Oh, wait! That's not the 4th Amendment! That's the Separation of Powers! Get out of my office!

Means, Motive and Opportunity

I just wouldn't be a fulfilled blogger without dropping a few lines about The Da Vinci Code. Everybody's doing it, even people who say they don't care or haven't read it, or seen it, or even who have never been to Paris.

As a fiction reader, writer and lover, I'm all about the willing suspension of disbelief. Storytelling may be the highest art. Even so, I have two big gripes that strain my susceptible, gullible mind. (This piece neatly explains many more.)

First, our protagonist is roused from his hotel room at about 1:00 in the morning. By 5:30 on the same day, he has unraveled a 2000 year old conspiracy, driven to the Louve, investigated a crime scene, ran for his life, escaped from the Louve, walked, ran and scurried his way across and out of Paris, stopped in the woods, sneaked into a mansion in the 'burbs and got a little teaching from a handy English expert. Then the sun comes up. He and his new friend leave the mansion, sneak to an airport, catch the handy jet to England, with no super-secret ramjet necessary to get to London, walk around for a while, from the Templar's joint, to Westminster, again running for his life, then on the way again to Scotland, making his way out of town to the countryside to Roslyn, then solving said mystery. Then the sun goes down.

Second, let's set aside for the moment the extraordinary means by which the historic conspiracy and counter-conspiracy allegedly transpired. The Templars were serious dudes and could have done it. Here's my problem: for all the cloak and dagger hubbub, the book, its proponents and critics seem too easily to ascribe a single bad motive to a huge church and religious movement. That is, men in charge were so afraid of women that they worked very hard to change a religion fundamentally, and secretly, by great conscious machinations to keep them oppressed. I don't buy it.

Now, to be sure, women have been and are still oppressed. Patriarchy is the dominant cultural trait in nigh upon every culture, in just about every time of known humanity. In or about 500 A.D., in the Roman Empire and Hebrew culture and all those societies who surrounded them, women were oppressed and in a lower caste than men. This wasn't a church thing; this was a global cultural, social thing. To be sure, Jesus declared that in His Kingdom, there are no men or women, that all such social, cultural and gender barriers are dissolved in His grace. In harsh reality, though, as in most things, His will and grace are corrupted by its recipients.

Thus, the church had no reason to take such malicious steps to cover up the messianic message regarding women, because there never really was any threat. The male power structure would not have recognized or appreciated a threat on its borders. The "male power structure" could not have acted corporately, because it is a cultural factor, not an organization.

Even more basic, perhaps, is that men certainly are prone to act selfishly, to grab power, to defend our turf ruthlessly and to compete with other relentlessly for power and prestige. Over history, however, those fights occur between men, among men, among tribes and countries run by men. In short, men could not work together collectively to conspire against women, and men would not, could have felt collectively threatened by women collectively. That sort of sexism or feminism would not have occurred to anyone in that age.

Am I wrong? Can any of our feminist historians set me straight? Do I underestimate the capacity of men to wage consciously such a subtle war on women? Does anyone believe and can they support that the men assembling the canon even once rejected a book because of its feminism? An adverse result is not necessary the product of an evil plot; it might just be the unfortunate product of long-standing (and still standing?) cultural forces.

(For the record, I'm a gender justice kind of guy and believe that Paul meant what he said and that Jesus in fact dissolved those barriers, whether we like it or not.)

Joe Biden and Peaches Cafe

It's early yet, but so far, I like what I hear from Joe Biden. Here, from the Jackson Free Press, is the most recent piece I've read covering his fledging campaign for the White House. All politics is local, and maybe I'm just impressed that a Yankee Democrat has the wherewithal to campaign in Mississippi.

Anyone out there have any gripping insight? Any Democrats out there from New Castle, Delaware?

At this point, I'd like to see McCain v. Biden in 2008. Biden says that he wants to see it, too, that the American people would be in for a "treat," a campaign between two friends debating ideas and unwilling to go "ugly" on each other.

Maybe I'm still a little naive, too.

Romans 13

In the heated debate over immigration and immigration reform these days, we read a lot of talk about illegality and, among Christians, Romans 13. Romans 13 seems to say that breaking the civil law of a secular government translates to sin before the Lord because He has established the governments who enact and enforce the civil law. Thus, Christians, especially Christians in a constitutional democracy which venerates the Rule of Law, can comfortably claim some righteousness for not breaking the law. This position also permits convenient rhetoric against those who would dare commit a crime by entering this country by means other than those authorized by the government.

These folks would condemn Jean Valjean to prison for decades because he stole a loaf of bread to feed his hungry family under a corrupt royalist regime. The common reading of Romans 13 quickly runs against tenets of compassion and mercy in any such hypothetical scenario, where a poor person would break the law of the land to feed her hungry family. Only the rich condemn their efforts, and Jesus said much more about the state of rich souls.

For one, I do not feel myself bound by the law of the Republic of Mexico. When in Rome, however, I must submit to Italian law if I am to remain free and unhindered. In Bejing, my friends might just be arrested for smuggling in Bibles and teaching the gospel under the guise of teaching English.

Crime begets crime for the undocumented migrant worker in the U.S. Although Romans 13 may not bind US immigration law on a Mexican standing south of the river, he apparently is bound to those laws as soon as he swims north. First, he breaks the law by entering illegally. Then, he will break the law by driving without a license because he can’t get a Social Security number, then by driving without insurance because he can’t get a drivers license, then working for cash because he can’t get a Social Security number. This is the nature of most crimes committed by the illegal alien, and it seems starkly different than that the crimes committed by illegal CEO’s or illegal terrorists or illegal rapists or illegal drug runners.

Against these heinous acts, we face another factor. They are here, and they are coming. Unless or until the USA is poorer, less stable and weaker than its neighbors, they will come. Across the span of human history, we see this law at work: when poor people become aware of greener pastures where they may relieve the privation of their lives and their children’s lives, they will go. Let’s call it Manifest Destiny. We do not see folks flocking through the Canadian woods into North Dakota, because Canadians have it just fine. How many of the people from New Orleans’s Ninth Ward are returning when Katrina gave them hope of starting over? Not many.

Thus, I share two proposals:

First, once they get here, let them not run for their lives and drive without insurance. Let’s grant some asylum to those who seek refuge from poverty. Yes, let’s reward them for breaking the law. We should force them to register with the INS, to receive an identification number, to be given a conditional Social Security Number and a conditional Drivers’ Licenses. In return, they will agree to make minimum wages and report them to the IRS, to obey the law, to get insurance, to pay taxes. If they don’t, let us impose a zero-tolerance penalty of deportation. If they prove themselves worthy, let’s make them citizens in ten years, then really start to tax them. Assuming that they are coming anyway (and they will), we will eliminate the motive for their crime and instill provocation to productivity.

Alternatively, let us remove the circumstances that drive them to our doors. If poverty, instability, injustice, corruption and hunger drive them to us from South and Central America and Mexico, then we need to get busy making South and Central America and Mexico less impoverished, more stable, more just, less corrupt and well fed. (Oh, but we would bemoan that much foreign aid while our own kids are left behind.) They are here, and they are coming because of the aforementioned Manifest Destiny. That is, unless they have less from which to run north. How much effort, how much diplomacy, how great the incentives, how expensive the investment to build richer societies in Guatemala, Nicaragua or Mexico? Would it be more expensive than big fences? Would it be more expensive than Homeland Security? Would be more expensive than uninsured motorist coverage? Would it be more expensive than educating the children of parents who pay no taxes? Would it be more expensive than public health care for the illegals who cannot pay and who are not eligible for Medicaid?

Would it be more expensive than driving a car that gets 17 miles per gallon? Would it more expensive than a corporate campus with lawns like Augusta greens? Would it be more expensive than poultry by the pound produced by American union workers?

Would it be more expensive than a cool cup of water or an extra mile?

Romans 13 says that we should not break the law, because the Lord has established the state. Here in our America, the Constitution says that We, the People, are the State. We have no government but that which we constitute ourselves. If the Lord would judge the sin of a migrant worker who enters illegally, what might He have to say to the rich Christians who enact and enforce such a law?

Deliberate Calm

Waiting is a spiritual discipline that we cannot conjure for ourselves. Waiting is enforced on us, against our will. If one is happy to wait, then the waiting does not bear the weight of discipline, because it causes no pain. Waiting is painful if one is not willing to wait, but must, in order to realize the fruit of the dream.

Waiting may provoke paralysis or panic without increasing measures of discipline. Productive waiting requires trust. Without trust, waiting is torture. Trusting the Lord Who Provides infuses the season of waiting with a measure of meaning, of learning and of hope. Without trust in the Lord Who Provides, waiting tumps competence over and confuses clear thinking and fair loving.

Constant anticipation is exhausting. Waiting in trust may require deep breaths and plenty of caffeine, but surely the season of waiting in trust is a blessed gift itself.

Talent

I'm not a big NFL fan, but I did grow to love the Titans in their Super Bowl year when I was in Nashville. Two of the other contributors on this blog live a mile above sea-level, so we have some justification to root for the Broncos. For these two reasons, I am pleased with the NFL draft this year, even though I rarely every pay attention once these kids leave college.

Jay Cutler to Denver.

Vince Young and LenDale White to the Tites, to work under Norm Chow. (With Steve McNair almost bound for the Ravens, Mr. Young may get to prove himself quickly.)

Go 'Dores!