Engineering My Faith

Over the past few weeks, I have been doing a retreat in daily life, following the guidance from Creighton University. Week 4 is an exploration of the people you admire and the qualities that you admire about them. Both of my lists are pretty long, but a common theme emerged.

²⁵ But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. ²⁶ It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, ²⁷ and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; ²⁸ just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Matthew 20:25-28

A common quality of many of the people I admire is that they live out this form of servant leadership. In particular, though they are individually successful in their own fields, they use that success to build other people up. I owe a debt of gratitude to a few senior faculty who helped me along the way—both as a student and as a junior faculty member—and gave me opportunities to be successful. By and large, I cannot repay them, but instead must pay it forward by providing similar help to students and junior faculty as I am able.

In higher education, there are two broad classes of administrators. Some are climbing the ladder: chair, dean, provost, chancellor, president; switching institutions as needed to move up a rung; building their resume, taking credit for success, dodging blame for failures. The other broad class see themselves as faculty first, temporarily assigned to some higher duty. One symptom of the brokenness of this world is that the people in the first group get not only all of the glory, but also all of the money and power, while those who serve out of a sense of duty get used, abused, and discarded.

Servant leaders are still ambitious. The difference is in motivation. What is the objective of achieving success? The people I admire recognize that the people who can make a difference are the people who are in positions of power. Those senior faculty who helped me? They were able to do so because they were successful themselves and had resources and connections that they could use to the benefit of someone who showed promise.

In one of the assignments in my New Testament class, I commented that Jesus preached against the powerful, on behalf of the oppressed. The instructor agreed in part but noted that Jesus actually preached against oppressors specifically. He showed grace to a synagogue leader and even to a centurion, while railing against Pharisees who had influence rather than authority. In the same way, being an administrator or supervisor or other leader with power or authority is not inherently bad. What matters is how you use that authority, whether for your own gratification or to build a better world.

[WARNING: POLITICAL DISCUSSION AHEAD!]

I started paying attention to politics sometime in the Reagan era. Now, a person does not become president by being shy and unambitious. Regardless of how they arrived at the office, though, most presidents recognize that the benefits of office are far less than its obligations. America is a large, diverse nation with a unique global role. The office ages its occupant almost overnight—compare pictures of President Obama in 2008 with 2016. Yet, the presidency is still pursued by those who believe that they can make America a better place. I have disagreed with various policies and decisions over the years, but basically believed that presidents had good intentions.

I think that’s the root of what makes President Trump different. He never really embraced the idea of servant leadership, the idea that the presidency is more important than the president, the idea of obligations outweighing personal glory. He saw the presidency as a prize to be won, rather than as a job to be done.

President-elect Biden just gave a speech that went back to the traditional view. My hope and prayer is that he will maintain the attitude of a public servant, and that he can be an agent for change in the nature of politics. I worry that we are too far gone, but must have hope.

[POLITICS OVER!]

Another common quality of people I admire is that they care both about communities in the abstract AND about specific individuals. It’s easy to forget one or the other. Let me use The Rolla Mission as an example. Each person who comes in to spend the night, to get a meal, or to use the laundry has troubles in their life. Unique troubles, specific to their particular personal history. Figuring out what each person needs, and connecting them to the necessary resources, is time-consuming and sometimes heartbreaking. On the other hand, one of the great things about The Mission is that it’s open and available for people who are going through a temporary setback. That requires attention to the facilities, the staff, and the volunteers that keep it in operation, as well as the financial and other resources needed to support it. What is amazing is that the people involved balance BOTH the abstract needs of the organization that serves the abstract homeless community AND the specific needs of specific homeless individuals.

That is the kind of success that I want to be. Someday, I want to be known as a person who demonstrated caring by helping specific individuals achieve their own success, while at the same time contributing to the success of a bigger organization. Does that mean CREE, where I am currently the interim director? Or some other part of Missouri S&T? Or First Presbyterian Church of Rolla, or some other church or parachurch organization? I don’t know. We will see what opportunities God puts in my way. Until then, I will strive to remember the example set by Jesus, and by so many people in my life today, of putting the needs of other individuals and of the community above my own.

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about what I could do to help the LGBTQ+ community in greater Rolla. I’m a straight, cisgender man, so I’m clearly not a part of that community, which inherently limits my possible contributions. But I have resources and a desire to help, so for the past year I’ve been more seriously looking at needs.

The needs I’ve been able to identify are:

• Dedicated space. Someday, I hope that there is an LGBTQ+ resource center in town, a place people can go to just “be.” I suspect that there are some businesses in town that sort of fill that role, but not in an overt and dedicated way.
• Education and awareness for the larger community. From the “alphabet soup” of the acronym (LGBTQQIAA…), to the prevalence in the population, to the legal rights (or lack thereof), people who are straight and cisgender often have NO IDEA what the reality is. I see this piece as something that I can particularly contribute to, being an educator by profession as well as someone who is still partially (even mostly) clueless and therefore able to empathize.
• Visibility, of both the LGBTQ+ community and allies. Someday, I hope it’s non-controversial for someone to fly a rainbow flag. Someday, I hope that when a teenager comes out, they know they’re not alone. Someday, I hope that someone gay or transgender can confidently go to a doctor or other service provider with no fear that they will be treated poorly. Someday, I hope that talking about sexual orientation and gender identity is just normal, nothing out of the ordinary. Someday.
• Financial support. This idea came from a non-binary person I’ve been working with. They recognize that gender-affirming medical services are expensive and often not covered by insurance. I’m looking into mechanisms that can be used without running afoul of the IRS.

We were all keyed up to have an event today. This is LGBTQ+ History Month. October 11 is National Coming Out Day. We were going to have an educational afternoon, with discussions of the alphabet soup, legal issues, medical issues, and so forth. Ultimately, though, the pandemic forced us to delay. We discussed having a remote version, but that would not accomplish the visibility and community formation goals we have.

So, right now, we just have a Facebook page and a Twitter account (@LgbtqRolla). Better than nothing, but not really enough. We need to get some content out so that people will really engage with it and start forming a little bit of a community. Then someday, maybe we can meet up in person. I’m open to suggestions of other ways to get things started.

I am currently taking a course on the New Testament from the University of Dubuque. Our textbook reading last week was about Jesus and the Gospels, broadly speaking. In church, we normally use all of the New Testament together to get a view of Jesus. In scholarly study, however, each viewpoint is taken first as a self-contained description, and then in comparison. For example, Mark takes up the story when Jesus is baptized, so when studying Mark, we cannot speak about Jesus’s birth and early life. After understanding Mark’s perspective, we can ask, why did he start there? Why did he leave so many things out that are included in other Gospels?

It occurred to me that in a sense, it is like seeing artwork of the same subject by different artists. A good example I found is Mount Kilimanjaro. I found a huge variety of artistic renderings on Etsy.

Here we have a sparse but realistic representation. The artist describes it as “colourful and simple.” A similar option below replaces clouds with trees. Why? What do the two artists intend? This second option is even available with a wide range of colors for the sky, allowing the purchaser to put themselves into the scene, or to put the scene into their home in a way that has meaning to them.

Here we have a vintage map that portrays Kilimanjaro in a VERY different way. Different views for different purposes. All three that we have seen are beautiful in their own ways, useful in their own ways, and tell us about both the artist and the buyer—what they value, what they prioritize, how they expect the artwork to fit into their lives.

I could go on. Some versions have people or animals in them, with varying levels of emphasis relative to the mountain. Some are much more realistic, others much more abstract. Yet all address the same subject.

Humans are storytellers. From our holy books to our daily news, what captivates us is a story. When we hear a good story (or see a good piece of art, which is a visual story), we put ourselves into it. We imagine being a fly on the wall or being one of the characters. We feel what the storyteller wants us to feel.

If we’re not careful, we can easily be led astray by good storytellers who have hidden motives. They show us a warped version of reality, provoke the right emotions—empathy, anger, fear, love—to satisfy THEIR goals. It may be an accurate rendering from a certain angle, but told in an intentionally deceptive way to bring certain features into sharper contrast.

Our task, then, is to make use of different perspectives to get a truer view. A good Christian doesn’t read just one Gospel, but all four, and the rest of the Bible too. A good historian doesn’t just read the “official” version of events, but many writings from both the winning and losing sides, from nobles and commoners. A good citizen doesn’t revere a single news source, but rather gets information from many sources. (I discovered The Flip Side a while back. They send a summary each weekday of different perspectives on a single issue: left, right, libertarian, etc. I highly recommend it.)

One parting thought: Mount Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania. However, the best views of it, the views rendered by most of the artwork, are from Kenya. Make of that what you will.

In Common Call, we are working through the Phoenix Affirmations. These are a set of twelve principles affirmed by a particular group of progressive Christians. We don’t all agree with all of them, but they are excellent discussion starters.

This week, we discussed the second affirmation:

Christian love of God includes listening for God’s Word which comes through daily prayer and meditation, studying the ancient testimonies which we call Scripture, and attending to God’s present activity in the world.

The question becomes, though, how to read Scripture? Whatever religion you may be, there are ancient writings that are revered—the Bible, Koran, Talmud, Bhagavad Gita, Tipiṭaka, and so forth. These writings all date to now-dead cultures. Most began as oral traditions that were eventually written down. Early manuscripts are all fragmentary, and some words are difficult or impossible to translate.

One option is to hand the responsibility of interpreting Scripture off to experts. There is certainly logic in this approach. This was the default position for most of medieval times, if only because of widespread illiteracy in the relevant language(s). This is still the approach in many religious traditions. I will say that when I read certain sections of the Bible, I don’t get a whole lot out of it, without someone else more learned than me to interpret.

But if we are going to encounter the Scripture ourselves, we must be aware of three concepts: exegesis, eisegesis, and hermeneutics. Exegesis is the right approach: encountering the text through the lens of their original context without any pre-conceived conclusions. Eisegesis is far more common: starting with a conclusion and finding text to support it, or reading a given text in a way that confirms our pre-conceived notions. Hermeneutics is the way we perform exegesis. These three concepts need a lot more exploration than I can give them.

The essential notion is this: read the Bible the way it was written, and include the context. When I was young, Mizpah coin jewelry was popular. The Mizpah concept derives from Genesis 31:49: “It was also called Mizpah, because he said, ‘May the Lord keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other.’” People intend it to connote a beautiful emotional bond between friends or lovers who are separated from each other. Yet if you read all of Genesis 31, a totally different view emerges. Jacob is feuding with his father-in-law, Laban. They finally settled it by setting up a heap of stones to witness Laban’s pronouncement (Genesis 31:50): “If you mistreat my daughters or if you take any wives besides my daughters, even though no one is with us, remember that God is a witness between you and me.” So it’s not a sweet emotional bond; it’s a threat.

I’m scheduled to preach next Sunday, September 13. In preparation, I selected the Gospel text from the lectionary, Matthew 18:21-35. It is a parable about forgiveness. The parable itself has plenty of depth and nuance. However, the parable and message is much richer if read in the context of the whole of Matthew 18. Here, Jesus is giving his fourth discourse, instructing his disciples about how to live in community together. The discourse covers a lot of ground regarding our sinful nature, the way we hurt each other, and how to respond appropriately when someone sins against you. (Spoiler alert: we’re supposed to forgive them.) If you just read verses 21-35, you would get just the part about forgiving someone seventy-seven times. But if you just read verses 15-20, you would get just the part about casting out sinners from your fellowship. If you just read verse 20, you would hear Jesus’s famous maxim, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

The Bible is a thick book. The first part was written over a period of several centuries by a civilization that was destroyed. A few additional books were added as that civilization re-built. Then four centuries later, the New Testament was written, mostly by unknown authors (ascribed by tradition, not factual evidence).

So because it’s such a thick book, written by so many people with so many different goals and contexts, in such a foreign culture, it is possible to find scripture to support nearly any position. Eisegesis thrives because it’s easy. Actually encountering the words as written and intended requires humility and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. May God be with you as you strive to encounter God’s Word today.

What does it mean to be “inclusive”? I am part of a team that is working on a major proposal. My little piece of it deals with a “culture of inclusion.” This is supposed to be more than just a checkbox, how-many-women-and-minorities kind of thing. It is supposed to be a pervasive culture where every voice is valued. At the same time, I’m the advisor of a campus ministry that is attempting to be more inclusive. So I’ve given a fair amount of thought to the philosophical, theological, and ethical foundations of inclusion. Maybe that’s overstating it, but anyway, it occupies my thoughts.

A recent column discussed one of the challenges of being overly inclusive. One of the hallmarks of progressive Christianity is avoiding orthodoxy, but that can end up draining away all meaning from the title. That is, there are people who claim to be progressive Christians who do not believe in the divinity of Jesus, or who do not believe in his bodily resurrection. Where is the line?

Let’s go back to basics. Once, the only people who mattered in the Western world were white men. We were the political leaders, scientists, theologians, engineers, everything. Gradually, and certainly incompletely, that has changed. Now at least some other voices are heard: white women; Blacks, Asians, Latinx, and other races and ethnicities; and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Usually those voices are given far less weight than white men, but now it’s more than zero.

As it turns out, people who are not straight, cisgender, white men actually know stuff, too. How about that! Not only do they have something to say, something to contribute to “their” people, but also to society at large.

The foundation of inclusion is humility. A humble person realizes that they don’t know everything. A person can be confident and still humble. That is, they could be confident within some realm of expertise, while recognizing their limits. For example, I had a conversation with someone at another university recently who is putting together a research team. I could confidently say that I have expertise in solar energy and microgrids, but he asked about several other topics that are outside my bailiwick. Or for another example, I recognize that the six courses I’ve taken through the University of Dubuque’s program for certified lay pastors are not even equivalent to a single semester that an M.Div. student takes. I’m only marginally qualified to preach and lead a church—confident enough to try, but humble enough to listen to mentors. Going back to the column regarding heterodox (even heretical) beliefs, humility means listening to modern voices, but not imagining that all of our inherited wisdom is wrong.

A group, organization, community, or society has a culture of inclusion when that humility extends to the realization that knowledge, wisdom, and inherent worth are present in unexpected places. A person doesn’t need to be an insider to be valued. A person doesn’t need to look or act like the rest of the group to have a valid opinion, or to have an insight that others don’t have.

The opposite attitude is assuming that someone who is “other”—Black, or female, or gay—and successful must have cheated. Exhibit 1: the birther conspiracy about President Obama. Exhibit 2: Kamala Harris must have had an affair with Willie Brown and used him to get ahead. It is unfathomable that these two Black people were successful on their own.

Everyone is a product of both their innate capabilities and their environment, including the opportunities they were given. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to assume other people’s misfortune is due to their personal failings, while our own misfortune is due to bad luck or other people’s bad intents. To expand on the concept a bit, there is a tendency to assume that outsiders’ misfortune is due to their group’s failings, while insiders’ misfortune is due to bad luck or nefarious groups. Thus many whites believe that inner-city Black poverty is because their culture lacks a work ethic, while rural white poverty is caused by globalism and evil foreigners. A humble person would realize that the real world is messy and complicated, and that perhaps they should listen to actual Blacks and other people of color talk about their struggles against systemic racism.

I leave you now with a hymn by Marty Haugen, Let Us Build a House. I love his work—both lyrics and music. This particular version is an anthem that also incorporates “Come Build a Church” by Ken Medema.

August every year is a time of new beginnings. This year, for the first time, I have both of my kids out of the house and off at college; Jesse started class already, and Sam starts in a couple weeks. Rolla K-12 schools (which no longer impact me directly) and Missouri S&T both start classes Monday. This past week was Opening Week, an orientation for incoming freshmen.

This is a fall like no others. Both Pitt (Jesse) and Brown (Sam) are starting the semester online, with plans to eventually have some in-person classes, such as labs. UNC Chapel Hill had students on campus for just over a week before sending them home. Missouri S&T is starting out hybrid; for my class, the in-person classroom only accommodates about 40% of the students, the rest of whom will be online.

Anxiety has been climbing for years. The CDC data are eight years out of date, but other sources indicate that the upward trend has continued. On top of that trend came the pandemic, protests against racial injustice, and partisan warfare over fundamental voting rights. Young people (and older people, too) are right to be anxious about the future.

In a workshop today, Rev. Rodger Nishioka encouraged us to use a disruption framework to understand the COVID-19 pandemic. That is, our lives have not simply been interrupted, after which we would go back to the way things were. Instead, our lives will be fundamentally changed. Even if we have a magical vaccine next month, the fear and distrust will remain; new ways of communicating, behaving, and planning our lives will remain.

And yet in the midst of all this uncertainty, I have reason for hope. Why? Well, there are a few proximate causes. First, Common Call Campus Ministry, and the rest of the partners in the Campus Ministries Association, had an awesome Murder Mystery event for incoming freshmen. Many students had a chance to hear what we’re about and expressed an interest in learning more. Second, a project I initiated, to provide some education and other resources for the LGBTQ+ community in Rolla, suddenly has some momentum behind it. Third, I suddenly have a few new research project opportunities on campus—no money in hand yet, but movement in the right direction.

More fundamentally, though, my hope comes from my past experience with adversity. Eight years ago, Rhonda had MS, but it hadn’t taken over her life yet. Then from December 2012 to sometime in 2014, she went through pure hell with facial pain, and the rest of us went through it with her. Yet we came out the other side, damaged but strengthened. I know my relationship with my kids is different now than it would have been otherwise. They had to grow up fast but rose to the occasion and are better people because of it.

Hope is not some rose-colored-glasses, wishful-thinking good feeling. True hope comes from adversity. When I was young, I was over-confident in my abilities and intellect. It took a little bit of failure to make me appreciate the need for hard work to back them up, but also to realize that a little bit of failure is OK. It’s OK to try something and fail, as long as you keep trying. It’s OK to encounter some setbacks, some roadblocks, some unsolvable problems. Maybe my life didn’t turn out the way I expected it to, and the path I took was not the straight path to success I would have chosen. Looking back, though, I realize that the problems I encountered along the way made me who I am, and that there is a good future for me somewhere out there, even if I can’t see it yet.

²⁸ Do you not know?
    Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
    and his understanding no one can fathom.
²⁹ He gives strength to the weary
    and increases the power of the weak.
³⁰ Even youths grow tired and weary,
    and young men stumble and fall;
³¹ but those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.

Isaiah 40:28-31

Hope comes from being weary, being weak, and even falling, yet continuing on. God gives me strength. This fall, I don’t know what will happen, whether Common Call and the LGBTQ+ program will take off or the pandemic will crush them. Yet I know that no matter what, I will learn something, and come out better on the other side, as I have before, with God’s help.

According to Great Man Theory, history is defined by the actions of men (always men, not women) who both had innate greatness (skill, intelligence, charisma, etc.) and encountered situations that both developed and called for their particular capabilities. A couple of examples spring to mind: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Washington had a set of life experiences that made him into a great general, as well as the temperament to lead a republic instead of a monarchy. Would the United States of America exist without him? Lincoln also had life experiences that somehow prepared him for the presidency, along with the wisdom to surround himself with great statesmen. Would the Civil War have been declared had he not been elected? If so, would another man have succeeded in saving the Union? These questions are, of course, unanswerable. All we can say is that Washington and Lincoln were presidents who had certain achievements.

Humanity has been blessed and cursed over the millennia with good and bad leaders. They have both molded and reflected the conditions of their times. In most cases, we can only judge leadership in retrospect, long after the fact. In 1862, with the nation divided and war raging, would anyone have rated Lincoln among the great presidents? Probably not. There’s also the problem of leaders who did a good job at achieving terrible ends, such as Josef Stalin.

We are right now in the midst of a sea change in national and world affairs. In the 1980s of my youth, the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union defined international relations. Discussions of economics revolved around the growing threats of Japan as a technological powerhouse and Mexico as a manufacturing powerhouse. By 2001, the Cold War was over; China was emerging as an economic and political adversary; and Islamic terrorism was the dominant national security threat. As these external relationships shifted, domestic politics and the economy shifted as well.

Indeed, America in 2020 faces different, and generally more serious, political, economic, and interpersonal challenges than we did 20, 50, or 100 years ago. We have COVID-19, racial strife, a collapsing economy, and low levels of trust. We need great leaders at every level: national, state, local; in government, industry, the marketplace, education, and religious institutions.

What makes a great leader? The Bible is full of examples of good and bad leadership.

¹⁴ “Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. ¹⁵ Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

¹⁶ Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; ¹⁷ for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; ¹⁸ and the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.”

Joshua 24:14-18

The recurring theme throughout the Old Testament is that great leaders obeyed God’s commands and bad leaders did not. Yet it was not simply that the leaders themselves followed God; rather, it was the example they set. Great leaders like Joshua praised God and reminded everyone that they should also praise God and follow God’s commands.

The days of theocracy are long past. The US is not a Christian nation now, if it ever was. Rather, we are united by our civil religion, encoded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Great leaders now are those who elevate the principles of these founding documents and inspire others to live according to those principles, at least in spirit.

Reading the Declaration of Independence reminds me that no matter what I may think of a particular politician, the principles underneath our institutions are still inspirational: all people are created equal; among our rights are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Old Testament leaders like Joshua, David, and Solomon were complex men who often fell short of God’s desires for them and for their nation. Yet they were held up as examples because they measured themselves against God’s commands. Similarly, great American leaders make many mistakes, but should be judged by how they inspire our nation to live up to our ideals. Do they inspire us to treat all people as our equals, or to treat some people as our inferiors because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation? Do they seek the consent and support of all Americans, or use loopholes to achieve power by other means?

Other organizations have different founding principles, against which leadership should be measured. For example, Missouri S&T is a land-grant university, established under the auspices of the Morrill Act, “to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.” Obviously we have evolved since then, but at a very basic level, Missouri S&T exists for the sake of liberal and practical education, which are essential to the prosperity of a democratic society. All leaders must be measured by how well they inspire the faculty, staff, and students to achieve a better tomorrow through education. Land-grant universities should not be measured by their success in football or basketball, nor by their wonderful dormitories and recreational facilities for students.

I am at a stage in my life and career where I find myself increasingly in leadership roles. My hope, my prayer, is that I will be true to the principles of the organizations that I lead, and that I will inspire others to follow me.