A National Research Council report released last week concludes that the US could halve by 2030 the oil used in cars and trucks compared to 2005 levels by increasing efficencies in gas powered vehicles and relying more on cars that use alternative power sources (see NY Times Sunday March 24, 2013 Life After Oil and Gas by Elisabeth Rosenthal). What we are seeing is that the science is there. Or here. At issue in the main is the political and social will to do anything with the science we have. Listen to Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering and the main author of the Research Council study published in the journal Energy Policy: "It's absolutely not true that we need natural gas, coal or oil - we think its a myth. You could power America with renewables from a technical and economic standpoint. The biggest obstacles are social and political - what you need is the will to do it." What this tells me is that we need to ramp up the story-telling of our environmental liberty from fossil fuel dependence with the facts of just what is indeed possible....so that we continue to change our public's attitude toward the impossibility of making significant change for the good. Too many think "we can't do that...we need too many machines, buildings, vehicles that use fossil fuels....we can't change." Let's continue to look for and tell success stories of change. In this Holy Week....we see again, perhaps need to be and are reminded again that the Tomb is empty. This means life change is a gift and new life always possible.

Kicking the Water Can Down the Road

On the same day (Sunday Oct 14, 2012) that the Orlando Sentinel’s Aaron Deslatte writes in his “Capital View” column that our Agricultural Commissioner Adam Putnam is focusing his agency’s work on protecting water supplies as the way to ensure sustainable development for agriculture in Florida, we have the front page of the same paper chronicling the difficult and defeat-ridden road of protecting the Wekiva waters (“Despite protection, Wekiva River’s health, flow continue to decline” article by Kevin Spear). I have been reading columns and articles about the need to protect the Wekiva River basin for about 20 years now, and still to this day we have not had the political courage to match the environmental and scientific knowledge we have in order to craft policies that can stem the rising tide of pollutant damage. But we don’t need alarmist alerts to try to get attention to this problem. That only gets the base fired up, not the wide range of citizenry needed. What we need are tangible directions and solutions that increase the well-being of the individual property owner or citizen. For example, a while back I remember a state legislative initiative to improve septic tank standards (to reduce/eliminate seepage that contaminates the watershed) that ran into the roadblock of adding too much cost on to each individual homeowner’s upgrade of an old system or installation of a new system in new construction. That increased cost is a reasonable objection. But somehow we can’t provide an argument that includes the real cost (economists call them “externalities”) of not improving standards? We can’t show how investing in infrastructure does do that “well-being” thing? We can’t show how a loss of water quality jeopardizes economic vitality and growth? We Americans like to think of ourselves as realists with a “can-do” attitude that is up to any challenge. When it comes to environmental issues, like this one on water quality, we are thinking and not doing. Well, we are doing something. We are kicking the proverbial can down the road…..paying later instead of paying now.

Cars and Ethics

I listen to science as a theologian. I listen to the Union of Concerned Scientists, non-profit founded in 1969 at MIT, when it comes to the environment. According to a study released last month by the Union the effect on global warming of driving a Nissan Leaf is the same as driving a gas-powered vehicle that returns 55mpg in combined city/highway driving. For the Mitsubishi 1, 63mpg. Going electric means relying more, at least for now, on coal....not exactly the cleanest carbon-based fuel. But still, you have to love the 55-65mpg range....with fewer emissions from the cars even as input emissions from the coal plants are counted. Now, how can we continue to make purchases as consumers that will drive up demand for fuel efficiencies and so drive down the cost of the fuel efficient vehicles? We need to help and encourage each other to purchase and spend based on our environmental ethic.

Congregations Going Green

A congregation of any stripe....christian, muslim, jewish, hindu, buddhist and any other.....can get connected with a very effective way of growing environmental stewardship and going green. Check out Greenfaith at www.greenfaith.org and take a look at the Greenfaith Certification Program. I highly recommend it.

God as a Problem....Part 2

God As a Problem and Why I Don’t Blame People for Having a Big Problem with the Church: Part 2

Continuing on the topic of bad theology and misrepresentations of grace as a reason people see the church as boring….or irrelevant…(see my last posting for “Part 1”).
A couple of problems with seeing Christianity as all about sitting up and flying right: One, being nice simply is not a sure fire formula for things turning out right. It’s all too clear that the good do die young and the fair and caring often get the shaft. Secondly, even if temporal security and prosperity do work out for you and you do in fact attribute it to your fidelity, still, can you be certain of your eternal destiny? The payoff for faithfulness is always a bet, and not a good one at that.
We like to think the Devil is our problem and God is our friend who rescues us, when it’s really God who is the problem. God is just too “omni-everything!” Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent and all the rest, and all that we do and believe never consistently or determinately produces the results we want from Divinity.
I think most thinking and feeling people have figured this out and when they hear or see a church life and preaching/teaching that espouses what I am calling here a “Erasmusian theology” they figure it’s not worth their time. Others have figured it out, have seen the theological stumbling blocks, but still stick it out in churches where church gets defined as this place for the upright (or at least for those who admit they are not but who have gathered the gumption to say they are sorry and have enough faith to put them in the best light once again) because gaining a foothold for a decent life through being good is worth the price of suspending honesty from the pulpit (truth be told, being decent and fair is, actually, a good bit of the time, good for business and certainly good for the children to learn!).
But what if you want to be theologically and anthropologically honest? Is there any good word for us concerning our problem with God? Certainly there is, but I don’t think it’s heard enough in today’s church. I’ll finish next week with a thought on what that “good word” actually is.

God As a Problem....and Church Too. Part 1

God As a Problem and Why I Don’t Blame People for Having a Big Problem with the Church: Part 1

It’s possible, perhaps even probable, that the reason so many people are abandoning the church is because it’s theology and practice keeps trying to be Erasmusian in order to appeal to the “common herd” (Erasmus’ own term for the regular folk outside of the university and academic elite – see Luther’s Works Volume 33:45) and this “herd” is tired of being rounded up, corralled (and slaughtered?!).
Most preaching and teaching about Christ today makes Christianity about being morally upright and doctrinally correct. Erasmus, in his debate with Luther over the freedom of the will, was concerned that if grace were free there would be no motivation for people to behave decently and believe accordingly and the result would be societal chaos and degeneration. Erasmus argued that Christianity was about getting on the right track ethically and morally and Christ was required to get you there.
There are, of course, just a couple of problem with this approach! Next week I’ll lay them out for you, but in the meantime, why don’t you chime in and tell us all what you think.
Do you think grace is cheap or costly or free? And what would you say is the difference between the three? And how much difference does it make how grace is preached and taught on how much people give the church the time of day?
(I think that most people who have given it much thought have figured out that the Erasmusian theology is problematic and that any church that divies it out is not worth their time. To them, the church is boring and irrelevant)
“God as a Problem….” to be continued!

95 Reasons to Love Halloween!

If you caught Martin Luther at the grocery store, probably in the beer isle, and asked him “if you died tonight, would you go to heaven or hell?” he would look you in the eye and tell you in no uncertain terms that he has no idea and that is his dilemma if not also his angst and then in the same breath and as breathlessly as this run-on sentence is spilling out onto line after line he would tell you with greater certainty what he does know….and that is that he has heard the word of Jesus Christ, born, lived, died and rose again and that that word is simply is too good not to be true and he is going to trust that light over against the darkness of not knowing and not being able to do anything about his ultimate destiny.
I am a believer in that word too. And if you caught me in the beer isle, after asking if you like lager or ale I would tell you I have no idea what will become of me. But I do know this. I have heard the word of Jesus and he is sweetness to my sour soul.
And I will go there. Much like John watching Jesus approach the river Jordan and pointing to Jesus with “behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” I see Jesus and I am going there. The darkness is too deep for me and I have no answer nor can I provide any light. But God does. In Christ Jesus.
The notion that God is a Judge who holds court and decides who is in and who is out is an image we have fabricated out of our own deep sin of thinking we can take our destiny into our own hands by saying “yes” to a proposition about Jesus or others and fabricated out of our own deep despair at knowing we really do let ourselves down and let others down and so too we must be letting God down too.
The bible is at pains to let us know God is Love who holds court to throw us a feast if we but sit down and eat and drink!
Behold! God is not out to get us! God is out to give us….everything…including our future. But we will not have it! And in the case of our ultimate destiny, because we can’t impact that (why? Because we are not God! Only God is in the destiny business! So we are stuck….and do not know!) we are left in the hands of God. What is God going to do with me? I don’t know! But….God knows I do not know and in his love put on “clothes” in Jesus. And it.s really more intense and radical than that. God didn’t become Jesus. God is Jesus.
And even though I don’t know my destiny, and the darkness of not knowing and not being able to be God and determine that destiny is too dark for words, I have seen the light.
I have seen Jesus Christ. And he is my mercy. And I will trust Him and I will trust in Him.
On October 31, 1517 Martin Luther did not go trick or treating and he knew nothing of our “Halloween” but certainly did know that that day was “All Hallows Eve” from which we get our holiday name if not the way we observe the day, but he did go trucking down to the Castle Church on the opposite side of town in Wittenberg and, being the honorable Professor that he was, proposed a debate by posting his proposition publicly on the church doors. The Thesis for his debate numbered 95 and I mean to tell you they stirred up a hornets nest. Luther’s major contribution and the explosion of grace did not come, in my estimation, from the issue of indulgences of which the 95 are so famous. But that posting event and the Guttenberg press aid in distributing the printed document put him on the map. For me, the genius and power of Luther comes in his work on the freedom and bondage of the will….related to the “if you died tonight” discussion above.
As a closing Halloween treat, and no trick, and related to the beer isle discussions, I offer to you some thoughts from Guther Gassmann and Scott Hendrix’ The Lutheran Confessions (1999) from their chapter on “The Christian Life.”
“Luther agreed with Augustine’s decision and held the doctrine of predestination throughout his life. He acknowledged its danger, however. Conceivably you could believe in Christ and still not be saved because you were not predestined. Luther admitted that such speculation had once almost driven him to despair. Fortunately, he had been consoled by his monastic superior and counselor, John von Staupitz, who advised Luther: ‘Why do you torture yourself with these speculations? Look at the wounds of Christ and at the blood that was shed for you. In their light predestination will shine.’ Luther learned from his own experience that predestination, which belonged to the hidden will of God, was secondary to faith in Christ, which was revealed in Scripture as the way to salvation. He then advised others to put the revealed Word of God ahead of speculation: ‘Accept the present promise [of Christ] and predestination, and do not inquire too curiously about the secret counsels of God. If you believe in the revealed God and accept his Word, he will gradually also reveal the hidden God. For “he who sees me also sees the Father” (John 14:9).”
Happy Reformation Day 2010!
Happy Halloween!