Hannah Coulter

May 16th, 2012

Why You Should Read Hannah Coulter: Russell Moore

— Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011 —

This week Christian Audio announced that Wendell Berry’s novel Hannah Coulter will be its free download for August. I think that’s a great move, and I’d encourage you to listen or, better yet, to read this book. Those of you who are regulars around these parts know how strongly influenced I am by Mr. Berry. Hannah Coulter, along with Jayber Crow, is among my favorite Berry novels. Here’s why you should read this book.

Some time ago, I critiqued the genre of “Christian romance novels,” and came under a lot of criticism for it (mostly by Christian romance novelists). I was amazed that some of the criticisms attacked me for things that are actually the opposite of what I believe. Some assumed I was saying that fiction was wrong because it’s “not true.” Hardly! I read more fiction than I do non-fiction, if you exempt the Bible from consideration, and I consider it, most often, truer than anything in the world. Some also assumed that I thought one should only write about explicitly Christian themes, and that human love is not worthy of the Christian pen. God forbid.

I think fiction is good, necessary, and God-glorifying. I teach my theology students to read good fiction for the sake of their preaching, if for no other reason. Those without the imagination to read fiction usually lack the imagination to hear the rhythm and contours of Scripture, much less to peer into the mysteries of the human heart. I just think schlocky fiction does just the opposite of all of that. I also think human love is a more than worthy subject of writing, including Christian writing. I just think it should be done with authenticity and honesty, and should look at love, not the hormonal utopia our culture has taught us to long for. I can think of no better contemporary example of doing this well than Hannah Coulter.

This book is a testimony of a woman widowed, twice, once by war. There are several ways the book is counter-cultural in classic Berry style. First of all, the book is indeed a romance, but written from the perspective of a seventy year-old woman. This isn’t the kind of book in which the elderly woman sees her life in the past tense, back there in the romance of youth. No, the novel honors her voice as a real human being, deserving of being heard. She isn’t an “old lady,” but a person whose character deepens as the years go by.

Second, the book roots love in place and community. Again, this is a central emphasis of Berry’s, and it is nowhere clearer than here. So much of our cultural concept of “love” is about the couple alone and their “feelings for one another.” This shows up in the isolated and unhealthy patterns of courtship we see all around us. For Hannah, though, love isn’t simply about her husband and her, and it certainly isn’t about their private emotional world. She reminisces:

“The love he bore to me was his own, but also it was a love that had been borne to him, by people he knew, people I now knew, people he loved. That, I think, is what put tears in his eyes when he looked at me. He must have wondered if I would love those people too. Well, as it turned out, I did. And I would know them as he had never known them, for longer than he knew them. I knew them old, in their final years and days. I know them dead.”

The book also provides beautiful insight into the darker aspects of human existence and, particularly, of what it means to be a man. I find gut-wrenching and convicting Hannah’s comments on her son Caleb who left the farm to pursue a Ph.D. and a career out there in the big world:

“He didn’t love farming enough to be a farmer, much as he loved it, but he loved it too much to be entirely happy doing anything else. He is disappointed in himself. He is regretful in some dark passage of his mind that he thinks only he knows about, but he can’t hide it from his mother. I can see it in his face as plain as writing. There is the same kind of apology in him that you see in some of the sweeter drunks. He is trying to make up the difference between the life he has and the life he imagines he might have had.”

That’s some insight into the human psyche, and it’s written with a biblical sense of poignant longing. It reaches something we often know, but just can’t describe or name. As Hannah puts it, “People know more about each other than what they tell each other.”

True. Read (or listen to) Hannah Coulter. You’ll find yourself in a far distant land, and you’ll long for the distance to close.

I took Russell Moore’s advice and read Hannah Coulter. It was one of the most satisfying novels I have read – a masterpiece! If you haven’t read it then go out and get a copy or download it. You will not be sorry.

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Michael Horton on Same-Sex Marriage

May 16th, 2012

Michael Horton in The White Horse Inn Blog (May 11.2012) posted this brilliant piece on the world-view behind the right of same-sex couples to marry.

The media is still buzzing with President Obama’s recent announcement that he personally favors same-sex marriage. In 1996, he favored it. In 2004, though, he rejected it (affirming civil unions) on grounds of his Christian convictions that marriage is a “sanctified” union of a man and woman. Now he has reversed that position, again offering his Christian convictions (loving neighbors and being in a church community that accepts same-sex couples) as a rationale.

Speculations about political motivations aside, the President is hardly alone in his waffling over this controversial issue of significance for American society. Nor is he alone among those who say that they affirm same-sex marriage—or their own homosexual lifestyle—as something that is affirmed by God and their Christian commitment.

Makes a Lot of Sense?

Both sides trade Bible verses, while often sharing an unbiblical—secularized—theological framework at a deeper level. If God exists for our happiness and self-fulfillment, validating our sovereign right to choose our identity, then opposition to same-sex marriage (or abortion) is just irrational prejudice.

Given the broader worldview that many Americans (including Christians) embrace—or at least assume, same-sex marriage is a right to which anyone is legally entitled. After all, traditional marriages in our society are largely treated as contractual rather than covenantal, means of mutual self-fulfillment more than serving a larger purpose ordained by God. The state of the traditional family is so precarious that one wonders how same-sex marriage can appreciably deprave it.

Same-sex marriage makes sense if you assume that the individual is the center of the universe, that God—if he exists—is there to make us happy, and that our choices are not grounded in a nature created by God but in arbitrary self-construction. To the extent that this sort of “moralistic-therapeutic-deism” prevails in our churches, can we expect the world to think any differently? If we treat God as a product we sell to consumers for their self-improvement programs and make personal choice the trigger of salvation itself, then it may come as a big surprise (even contradiction) to the world when we tell them that truth (the way things are) trumps feelings and personal choice (what we want to make things to be).

Plausibility Structures

The secularist mantra, “You can’t legislate morality,” is a shibboleth. Defenders of same-sex marriage moralize as much as anyone. They appeal to dogmas like freedom of choice, individualism, love, respect, acceptance (not, tolerance, mind you, but acceptance), and excoriate religiously traditional opponents as hypocritical in failing to follow the loving example of Jesus. The agenda is plainly as ethical as any other. Whatever is decided at state and federal levels, a certain version of morality will most certainly be legislated.

What this civic debate—like others, such as abortion and end-of-life ethics—reveals is the significance of worldviews. Shaped within particular communities, our worldviews constitute what Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann coined as “plausibility structures.” Some things make sense, and others don’t, because of the tradition that has shaped us. We don’t just have a belief here and a belief there; our convictions are part of a web. Furthermore, many of these beliefs are assumptions that we haven’t tested, in part because we’re not even focally aware that we have them. We use them every day, though, and in spite of some inconsistencies they all hold together pretty firmly—unless a crisis (intellectual, moral, experiential) makes us lose confidence in the whole web.

Every worldview arises from a narrative—a story about who we are, how we got here, the meaning of history and our own lives, expectations for the future. From this narrative arise certain convictions (doctrines and ethical beliefs) that make that story significant for us. No longer merely assenting to external facts, we begin to indwell that story; it becomes ours as we respond to it and then live out its implications.

I’ve argued that in Christianity this can be described familiar terms of the drama, doctrine, doxology, and discipleship. But you see it in every worldview. Take Friedrich Nietzsche, for example. The late 19th-century philosopher believed that we came from nowhere meaningful and are going nowhere meaningful, but in the middle of it all we can create meaning for ourselves. Freed from an external creator, law-giver, redeemer, and consummator, we are finally on our own. The parents are on holiday (if there is a parent), and it’s party-time. In Romans, Paul identifies our fallen condition as a pathological inability to be thankful. After all, if reality is an accidental given of a random and impersonal universe rather than a gift of a purposeful God, then the only meaning we have is that which we design and execute for ourselves.

It’s something like Nietzsche’s narrative—the “Nowhere Man” poised to make something of his own individualism and will to power—that creates the plausibility structure of contemporary living in the West. Its central dogma is the will to power and its doxology is actually self-congratulatory, like Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” It yields masters and consumers rather than pilgrims and disciples.

The fact that “moralistic-therapeutic-deism” is the working theology of Americans—whether evangelicals, Catholics, mainline Protestants, or agnostics—demonstrates the pervasiveness of secularization even in our churches. The old actors may still be invoked: God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit. Bits of the old narrative may still be mentioned: creation, providence, redemption, salvation, heaven. However, the shift is evident enough. These old words are mapped onto an essentially human-centered rather than God-centered map. The map is the autonomous self’s striving to create a sense of meaning, purpose, and significance. Each individual writes his or her own script or life movie. “God” may still have a meaningful role as a supporting actor in our self-realization and peace of mind, but we’re the playwright, director, and star.

So when we come to debates about same-sex marriage in civic debates, even professions of deeply held Christian commitments can be invoked without the biblical narrative, doctrines and commands, doxology, and discipleship actually providing the authoritative source and structural integrity to our arguments.

Conservatives often appeal to self-fulfillment: gays are unhappy. They don’t realize their own potential to mate with the right gender and produce pleasant families like the rest of us. To be sure, there are other arguments, like referring to the decline of civilizations that accommodated homosexuality. However, this is just to extend the pragmatic-and-therapeutic-usefulness presupposition of individual autonomy to a social scale.

On this common ground, same-sex marriage is a no-brainer. Some people are happier and more fulfilled in committed same-sex relationships. There’s no use trying to refute other people’s emotional expressions of their own subjective states of consciousness. Do same-sex couples wrestle with tension, anxiety over a partner losing interest and being attracted to someone else, infidelity, and so forth? Looking at the state of traditional marriage, how exactly are these couples uniquely dysfunctional? A 2006 Amicus Brief presented to the California Supreme Court by the nation’s leading psychological and psychiatric bodies argued, “Gay men and lesbians form stable, committed relationships that are equivalent to heterosexual relationships in essential respects. The institution of marriage offers social, psychological, and health benefits that are denied to same-sex couples…There is no scientific basis for distinguishing between same-sex couples and heterosexual couples with respect to the legal rights, obligations, benefits, and burdens conferred by civil marriage.” Well, there you have it. The new high priests of the national soul have spoken.

How would someone who believes that sin is unhappiness and salvation is having “your best life now” make a good argument against same-sex marriage? There is simply no way of defending traditional marriage within the narrative logic that apparently most Christians—much less non-Christians—presuppose regardless of their position on this issue.

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Taxes and De Tocqueville

May 10th, 2012

In the light of recent elections in France and Greece, and the problems presented by having to borrow enormous amounts of money to finance national budgets, the words of Alexis De Tocqueville in his famous book, Democracy in America, published in 1834, need to be heeded.

He comments on the tendency of expenditure to increase, not to diminish. “As the great majority of those who create the laws are possessed of no property upon which taxes can be imposed, all the money which is spent for the community appears to be spent for their advantage, at no cost of their own; and those who are possessed of some little property readily find means of regulating the taxes so that they are burdensome to the wealthy and profitable to the poor, although the rich are unable to take the same advantage when they are in possession of the government.

In countries in which the poor should be exclusively invested with the power of making the laws no great economy of public expenditure ought to be expected: that the expenditure will always be considerable; either because the taxes do not weigh upon those who levy them, or because they are levied in such a manner as not to weigh upon those classes. In other words, the government of the democracy is the only one under which the power which lays on taxes escapes the payment of them.

The disastrous influence which popular authority may sometimes exercise upon the finances of a State was very clearly seen in some of the democratic republics of antiquity, in which the public treasure was exhausted in order to relieve indigent citizens, or to supply the games and theatrical amusements of the populace.

When the people is invested with the supreme authority, the perpetual sense of their own miseries impels the rulers of society to seek for perpetual ameliorations. A thousand different objects are subjected to improvement; the most trivial details are sought out as susceptible of amendment; and those changes which are accompanied with considerable expense are more especially advocated, since the object is to render the condition of the poor more tolerable, who can not pay for themselves.

Moreover, all democratic communities are agitated by an ill-defined excitement and by a kind of feverish impatience, that engender a multitude of innovations, almost all of which are attended with expense. When a people begins to reflect upon its situation, it discovers a multitude of wants to which it had not before been subject, and to satisfy these exigencies recourse must be had to the coffers of the State. Hence it arises that the public charges increase in proportion as civilization spreads.

The last cause which frequently renders a democratic government dearer than any other is, that a democracy does not always succeed in moderating its expenditure, because it does not understand the art of being economical. The state spends sums out of all proportion to the end which it proposes to accomplish.”

What would he say if he studied the finances of his native France, or Greece, or the United States, today? “I told you so!!!”

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Talking with Mormons

May 5th, 2012

In his new book Talking with Mormons: An Invitation to Evangelicals, Richard J. Mouw — president of Fuller Seminary and a pioneering voice in Mormon-evangelical dialogue — shares his insights on whether (and how, and to what extent) evangelicals and Mormons can transcend doctrinal differences to discover common ground.

In the following post, Mouw explains why he wrote the book — and why he intends to keep on engaging in friendly conversation with Mormon theologians.

* * *

Whenever there is any published reference to something that I have said about Mormonism, I get quite a bit of email — most of it containing expressions of disagreement with my views. This happened again a while ago, when I wrote an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times dissenting from the views of some evangelical leaders who insisted that a vote for Mitt Romney is a vote for a member of a “cult.” I wasn’t intending to defend Mormonism as yet another version of orthodox Christianity. But I was meaning to encourage folks not simply to write off Mormonism as a deceptive and sinister religious movement.

I received many emails in response to that published piece. Mostly these came from angry evangelicals, but a few expressed agreement with my views. Two emails in particular stand out, especially since they both arrived in my inbox at about the same time.

The first was straightforwardly hostile. The writer could not fathom why I would say anything good about Mormonism. Don’t you know that they worship many gods? he asked. And even worse, he said, they think they themselves are on their way to becoming gods. There is nothing about true salvation in their religion. If they mention Christ at all it is a false Christ!

The other was from a Mormon. He thanked me for my article and said that he knew I would be taking a lot of flak from people who despise Mormonism. Then he touched upon some of the same points made in the other email. Your critics will say, he affirmed, that Mormons think that they can become gods, and that the atoning work of Christ has no real role in Mormon teachings.

He then offered his candid appraisal of those criticisms. Actually, he said, some of what they say is the kind of things he himself was raised on as a Mormon. “We did hear a lot about becoming gods and that sort of teaching,” he recalled.

But, he also testified, things are changing. Mormons like him are hearing much more about being sinners who need salvation by God’s grace. More importantly, he said, in many Mormon cirlces these days there is a much more Christ-centered emphasis. “We hear messages about being sinners and about the importance of the Cross — and about the need to become more Christ-like in our lives.” He encouraged me to hang in there and continue in dialogue with LDS leaders.

I wrote my book, Talking with Mormons, precisely because of people like him. Do I think he represents a form of orthodox Christianity? Probably not. If I were to push him more on the details of his overall theology, I know there is much that I would find disturbing. But I do take encouragement in his kind of testimony. And it does inspire me to keep the conversation with Mormons going. At the very least, it strikes me as important to listen carefully to what Mormons are actually saying these days about what they believe.

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The Search for Compassion (2)

April 28th, 2012

More from Dr. Andrew Purves, The Search for Compassion: Spirituality and Ministry. In his chapter, A Theology of Compassionate Suffering, he writes:

“Jesus alone is the compassionate person, the one in whom compassion is an actuality. This means that compassionate ministry is possible for us only if we are in a relationship with Jesus Christ. Through our relationship with him we participate in his compassion. We recognize that apart from him we can do nothing (John 15:5).

Suffering can cripple us. No matter how sound our theology is, or how intense we make our piety, or how firm our faith remains in spite of real difficulties, suffering can squeeze us dry. Suffering can destroy us as lively human beings.

Compassion involves suffering. There is no way around the blunt fact that compassion will increase our experience of suffering. To suffer with another is still to suffer. What is to prevent us from being squeezed dry? Left to itself, suffering, even in the most noble of causes, can cripple us as we buckle under the weight of accumulated pain.

Our natural response to suffering in others and in ourselves is to turn away from it in some way. Our instinct is to avoid suffering if at all possible. We avoid suffering because the suffering of others is painful to us. Apathy is a form of the inability to suffer. In the officially optimistic society suffering is denied and repressed.

Compassionate ministry has the responsibility of entering into the loneliness and loneness of those who suffer. The Bible gives voice to suffering in the form of the lament psalms.

Alternative models of the Christian life and ministry can be derived from the parable of the Good Samaritan. According to the first interpretation of the parable, God charges a person to be compassionate and to go and pick up wounded people. The person then moves in obedience into a ministry of tending to wounded people. This understanding of ministry tends to set up a Ping-Pong match in which the minister bounces back and forth between two extremes. If he or she picks up every wounded traveler, exhaustion will soon set in, to be accompanied inevitably by anger, disillusionment, and despair. In other words, the minister will experience what we now call burnout. If, on the other hand, he or she does not pick up every wounded traveler, guilt will cripple his or her ministry every bit as quickly as exhaustion. This model of ministry leads, then, to a two-step dance as one beats a rhythm between burnout and guilt.

There is another way to understand ministry in the light of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Here we see God is the minister. Only God in Christ can take on the suffering of the world in compassion and not be destroyed by it. Only God can heal the world’s brokenness. All ministry is God’s ministry, or, more accurately, God’s ministry in Jesus Christ, so the glory of the Father, in the power of the Spirit, for the sake of the world. Ministry is not a pragmatic attending to human need whenever that arises for us. Rather, ministry is first of all God’s work of healing and saving in Jesus Christ, and our ministry finds its identity, goal, and possibility entirely from that actual prior ministry.

As we look at this second model, it is important to understand that we are, first of all, the persons lying in the ditch and in need of divine help. God in Christ ministers in compassion to us, taking the first step. Outside of our life in Christ, ministry really becomes impossible for us, for it becomes our ministry and not God’s ministry in which we by grace participate. Spirituality and ministry always belong together. To attempt to relate to others outside of our being in Christ would be to claim false autonomy for ourselves.

Jesus is the sufferer. His suffering defines our suffering. And his suffering allows us to be secure in the knowledge that God is a God who suffers

In 2 Corinthians 4:7-14 we are presented with the image of our life as a jar of clay that is filled with the treasure of Christ. The power belongs to God not to us. The life of Jesus is ministered in and through my body. It may be death in me, but life to others. God brings new life from death for the believer. We participate in the suffering of Christ. “

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The Search for Compassion (1)

April 26th, 2012

Andrew Purves, Professor of Reformed Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary has become one of my favorite authors. In reading his more recent bestsellers, The Crucifixion of Ministry, and The Resurrection of Ministry, I found that he had written a book in 1989 entitled, The Search for Compassion: Spirituality and Ministry. It is a classic and deserves to be better known. Here are some extracts from it.

“Life is hard. Certainly, there is more to life than suffering, but suffering is inevitably part of the story. The case for our exposure to suffering hardly needs to be made.

It is evident that what we and everyone else in the world need in our suffering and sorrow are people who will care for us. It may not be the only thing we all need, but it is always a part of what is needed. Wolterstorff, in his book, remarks:

‘But please: Don’t say it’s not really so bad. Because it is. Death is awful, demonic If you think your task as comforter is to tell me that really, all things considered, it’s not so bad, you do not sit with me in my grief but place yourself off in the distance away from me. What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is. I need to hear from you that you are with me in my desperation. To comfort me, you have to come close. Come sit beside me on my mourning bench.’ (Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, p.34)

Wolterstorff’s plea is for a renewed compassion.

How is a renewed compassion possible for us? It is probably a matter of time before the intensity of suffering in others leads us to harden our hearts against it. After all, there is only so much suffering any of us can take before we are simply overwhelmed by it. We can only sit on the mourning bench for a while. We who would suffer with others can become casualties of the very acts of our love. Our compassion recoils, as it were, making us its victims. We begin to realize, perhaps, that exposure to too much suffering will destroy us as well. It will drive us mad. And so we shut off, or at least very carefully control, our sensitivity to the suffering of others, often being unaware that we are doing so.

There is a profound confusion over the nature of ministry. The ministry of the clergy is in a state of deep and damaging confusion. What is a clergyperson supposed to do? He or she is a worship leader and a preacher, a teacher, a student and theologian, an administrator, a program director, a pastor, and, if possible, a pastoral counselor, a community organizer, and perhaps even the person who fixes the boiler and turns off the lights at the end of the day. He or she should also be a paragon of virtue, constant in prayer and study…In the face of all this, many clergy today suffer from a plummeting sense of personal self-respect and an acute loss of professional identity and satisfaction.

The practice of compassion is the practice of ministry. Compassion means ministry. It is not simply sympathy or the expression of well-meaning good intention. Compassion means getting involved in another’s life, for healing and wholeness.”

Purves describes how compassion featured in the ministry of Jesus through a treatment of five miracles. He concludes:

“Compassion, as we see it in these texts, is a ministry of presence. To be present for another is to be available for him or her. It is to relate to another with all of one’s attention and energy. And it is to invite that other into a relationship with oneself.

At various times all of us have been on the giving and receiving end of both presence and lack of presence. To experience presence is to feel that another is really taking you seriously. You matter to that person. His or her attention is really on you. You feel that you are significant to that person. This gives you the feeling of personal worth. To experience lack of presence is to feel that your personhood has little value. It is to feel self-esteem diminish and anger rise. You feel put down.

Compassion as presence involves patience. As patience, presence is the gift of one’s quality time. One gives away one’s time to another. One ‘wastes’ time in compassionate presence. Patience is presence with fortitude. It is walking with another and not giving up when the going becomes difficult or even dangerous.

Simone Weil once wrote,

‘those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: “What are you going through?” This way of looking is first of all attentive.’ (Simone Weil, Waiting for God, p.75)

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Bubba Watson and the Master

April 12th, 2012

April 8, 2012 – Before Bubba Watson came up with the shot of his life, a 155-yard pitching wedge from the Augusta National woods to win the 2012 Masters in a playoff, the Christian golfer shared how following Jesus has changed his life.

“For me, it’s just showing the Light. There’s people who want to put down Christians. I try to tell them Jesus loves you.”
— Bubba Watson, 2012 Masters champion

By Trevor Freeze

There’s something different about Bubba Watson.

And he doesn’t care if you know it.

The winner of the 2012 Masters golf championship realizes he’s not like most famous athletes.

In fact, he welcomes it.

“People always ask ‘Why is Bubba different?’” said Watson during a phone interview from Scottsdale, Ariz. “They’re just trying to figure it out.”

Watson’s identity is not wrapped up in his freakishly long drives from his lanky 6-foot-3, 180-pound left-handed swing — he leads the Tour with a 315-yard average.

Rather, take one look at his Twitter profile and you may figure out what’s different about Watson.

@bubbawatson: Christian. Husband. Daddy. Pro Golfer. Owner of General Lee 1.

And pay close attention to the order.

Watson is an outspoken Christian golfer and he uses his Twitter account — along with his platform as one of the PGA Tour’s magnetic personalities — to share about his faith in Christ.

“For me, it’s just showing the Light,” the 33-year-old said. “There’s people who want to put down Christians. I try to tell them Jesus loves you. It’s just a way to be strong in my faith.”

Twitter Outreach

Last April, just before teeing off on the final round of the Masters, Watson took advantage of his social media platform to Tweet out two Bible verses on Sunday morning.

He followed that up talking about his faith, his relationship with God, Tweeting out more verses and the impact of Christian artists on his iPod.

Some started complaining about his 140-character witnessing tactics, but Watson’s response was simple: Feel free to unfollow, but the talk about God wasn’t going away.

Some 100 people quit following him and in true Bubba style, he reached out and wished them well with goodbye notes.

This past month more Christian haters have tried to derail Watson’s testimony — or as he mildly puts it, “write bad stuff.”

But Watson doesn’t take offense, even when it’s the sole intent.

When someone tells him “Your God Tweets are lame,” Watson responds with, “I will pray for u and ur family.”

Among the 39,000-plus messages he’s sent into the Twittersphere, he’s sure to spread the Gospel message: God made everything & saved us from our sins & gives us hope and gives us eternal life! #Godisgood

Sometimes he’ll Tweet out some of his favorite verses: “Hebrews 13:6 So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere man do to me?”

Or he’ll use his PGA platform — like the day after taking the lead with a headline-grabbing 10-under-par 62 at last month’s Cadillac Championship — to bring God into the mainstream conversation.

Watson’s Tweet before his third round: The most important thing in my life? Answer after I golf 18 holes with @JustinRose99. #Godisgood

Later that day: Most important things in my life- 1. God 2. Wife 3. Family 4. Helping others 5. Golf

“Lecrae said it the best,” Watson said of the Christian rapper he listens to on his iPod. “He doesn’t want to be a celebrity. He doesn’t want to be a superstar. He just wants to be the middle man for you to see God through him.”

‘Bubba Golf’

As golf’s official major season bloomed this week, and Watson winning a major for the first time — only his fourth PGA Tour career victory — Watson seemed like a long shot. His best finish at Augusta National has been a tie for 20th in 2008.

But winning is no longer everything for Watson. There was a time in his life where drives slicing into the thick, 5-inch stuff or birdie putts rimming out would get the best of him and his blood pressure.

Watson will tell you, Angry Bubba was not a good look. Unbecoming, for sure.

“I was so wrapped up in ‘Why am I not winning?’” Watson said. “It created frustrations in my head and in my life.”

Things got so heated on the golf course, Ted Scott, his caddie since 2006, finally gave him an ultimatum.

“My caddie finally stepped up and said, ‘You’re going to have to change, or I’m going to quit,’” Watson said.

Watson’s temper-laced decorum was replaced with what some call “Bubba Golf,” which stresses golf mechanics less and puts a heavy focus on just playing golf and having fun on the course.

And it’s working.

Watson won the Travelers Championship in June of 2010, the Farmer’s Insurance Open in January of 2011 and the Zurich Classic a few months later.

Last month, Watson led the Cadillac Championship after 54 holes before fading in the final round, missing a 9-foot putt by inches on the final hole that would have forced a playoff.

Old Bubba may have let that one fester for weeks. New Bubba brushed it off with a satisfied smile and slight head-tilt.

Watson credits three strong believers — Scott, along with his trainer Adam Fisher (“Fish”) and Watson’s wife Angie — as the difference in his attitude.

“I’ve really got a good team around me trying to help me succeed,” said Watson, who has long supported many charities, including the upcoming Bubba’s Bash and the infamous “Golf Boys” video project. “Not just in golf, but off the golf course, to be a light for Jesus.”

PGA Bible Study

Perhaps the most powerful Christian impact Watson has experienced has been the PGA Tour’s weekly Bible study, held every Wednesday night during tournament weeks.

Rickie Fowler, Matt Kuchar, Zach Johnson, Jonathan Byrd and Webb Simpson, along with Watson, are some of the regulars, with attendance ranging from 16 to 50 on a given week.

“For me it’s a way to get back connected with the Bible and with God and Jesus,” Watson said. “Now you know other people you can talk to, ask questions to, tell them what you’re thinking, tell them what’s going on in your life.”

The one-hour study is something Watson looks forward to regularly: “Getting more in the Word and realizing that golf is just an avenue for Jesus to use me to reach as many people as I can.”

Newly-Adopted Son

Watson’s journey to Christ isn’t uncommon.

He grew up in Bagdad, Fla., as one of the good guys: “Didn’t cuss, didn’t cheat, didn’t steal, didn’t lie, didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs,” he said. “I was doing the right things but I didn’t know what that meant.”

It wasn’t until his senior year in high school when two twin neighbor girls, from the house directly behind his, invited Watson to their youth group. He went and found a place where he belonged.

“The girls asked me to go to church,” he said. “And after a few times going I realized this is what I wanted to do. This is truth here. And I gave myself to the Lord.”

But with all the pressures of college golf, especially on the weekends, it wasn’t until 2004 that Watson became serious about his commitment to Christ at the University of Georgia. He began dating Angie Ball (former WNBA player) and the two began living for God as a couple.

“We wanted to be Christ followers,” Watson said. “We wanted to do the right thing. We started turning to the Lord for our decisions.”

The couple married in September 2004 and were both baptized later that year, the day after Christmas: “I would say 2004 was my true time of becoming a Christian,” Watson said, “and shaping me into the man I am today.”

And just this week, Bubba the Man has become Bubba the Father. The Watsons began another chapter of their life, adopting a 1-month-old boy (Caleb), a journey that began several years ago.

Fittingly, Watson broke the news on Twitter: Everyone @angieb1433 & I are proud new parents of a 1 month old baby boy name Caleb. Been a parent for 2 days. #amazing

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Anonymous Criticism

April 4th, 2012

Abel Harding writes in the Florida Times-Union today on the perils of anonymous criticism of pastors. First Baptist, Jacksonville church member Tom Rich, had anonymously posted a criticism of the value of his pastor’s home, a dollar amount that wasn’t out of line with the median price of Jacksonville homes at the time. His pastor, Mac Brunson, subsequently accused Rich in an interview of having an obsessive-compulsive problem, and of being a sociopath. Those descriptions led to a defamation lawsuit which was eventually settled and included a public apology at last Sunday’s service by Brunson. The dispute lasted four and half years after Rich’s identity was disclosed by a subpoena served on Google. Rich was forced out of the church.

Harding, in his article today, reminded his readers that personalities – ministers, politicians, athletes and the like - have every move scrutinized and motivation challenged. He grew up in a preacher’s home and saw how tough church battles were on his Dad. Pastors are human. They have family members they try to protect, egos that get bruised and feelings of frustration when they don’t believe they are getting a fair shake. He asks how Brunson must have felt being subjected to anonymous criticism, some of it rather vicious, on an ongoing basis.

I was advised many years ago never to read anonymous letters. If they weren’t signed then they weren’t to be taken seriously. Criticism that comes to me second or third hand also cannot be given credibility if the critic isn’t willing to speak to me directly. The story is told of famous preacher Joseph Parker who was harassed by unsigned letters from a church member. One Sunday when he entered the pulpit he found a note in her writing with one word on it – “Fool.” He said, “Usually I receive anonymous letters but today it has no message, only a signature!” 

Harding says that there is a place for anonymity to expose corruption, greed and abuse of power, but that it is often overused. Unless one’s life or livelihood is at risk, criticism should be leveled respectfully, and not behind a cloak of anonymity. Jesus said, “If you brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listen to you, you have won your brother over.” (Matthew 18:15)

I appreciate it when critics talk to me and not about me nor down to me. I am human. I make mistakes and I am willing to admit it and ask for forgiveness. No one is perfect.

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Does God Care About Sports?

March 31st, 2012

Timothy Dalrymple, in his blog on Patheos writes about Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin. I commend it to you.

“Isn’t it degrading to suggest that God cares about sports? Isn’t that anthropomorphizing? Are we, like the ancient Greeks with their stories of gods who did all sorts of silly and petty and naughty things, really supposed to imagine that God dons a cheese-wedge upon his head and roots for the Packers?

With war and famine, death and disease, doesn’t God have better things to do? Aren’t sports beneath his dignity, unworthy of his time and station?

In the process of writing Jeremy Lin: The Reason for the Linsanity (official release date is May 8th), I had abundant opportunity to reflect upon these things. Tim Tebow had been congratulated by many in the media for not talking as though “God gave us the victory.” He thanked God less for the outcome of games than for the opportunity to play in them. When Jeremy Lin first came upon the scene, there were some criticisms even when “Linsanity” was at fever pitch. Jeremy seemed to talk as though God were involved in his basketball career in very intimate ways — as though God not only gave him abilities and opportunities, but gave him successful outcomes — hitting a shot, having a great night, getting the win.

Jeremy’s spiritual mentors and teachers have generally been Reformed. The books he cites as favorites are from John Piper and C.J. Mahaney, and Jeremy’s reflections on his life and career consistently refer to a close and careful divine sovereignty. It’s what theologians have called providentia specialissima, God’s most fine-grained care in the minutiae of our lives.

When people protest the notion that God should care about sports, they tend to be (1) atheists or agnostics who doubt God’s existence in the first place and find the notion of God caring about sports particularly ridiculous, (2) de facto Deists who believe that God created the order of things and then sits back to watch it all unwind, (3) people of faith who believe that God guides history (through natural or supernatural means) in the broadest sense but does not get involved in the sordid details, or (4) just people of faith who really haven’t thought it through.

Of course God cares about sports. The Christian God is not a God who refuses to get in the trenches, not a God whose dignity prohibits him from getting involved in the sordid details of human life. The single most distinctive doctrine in all of Christianity is the doctrine of the Incarnation. Not that God drinks and frolics in the heavens, but that God entered into history as a human being, fully God and fully man, sinless but suffering, enduring all the meager indignities of human existence. This was the scandal of Christ in the ancient world — a God who stooped into the muck of our common condition, who entered the world in the blood and detritus of birth, an incarnate God who (not to put too fine a point on it) had runny noses and infections and diarrhea and who got that goop you get in your eyes in the morning. He died naked and mostly abandoned, with spit and blood and grime upon his body, with thorns puncturing the crown of his head and nails piercing his hands and feet, and…well, I could go on.

God cares about the details, if for no other reason, because God cares about us. We should affirm common grace: that just as God ordains the sun to shine upon the righteous and the wicked alike, God ordains victory for believers and unbelievers. God does not simply give the victory to the most righteous individual or team upon the field. We should make clear that we cannot manipulate the outcome, as though the right formula of prayers and genuflections and “aw shucks” humility can compel God to grant victory. But we should also affirm, whether or not we’re Reformed, that God cares about the details and working through sports is not beneath God’s dignity.

Perhaps we can be a bit more precise. God does not care about sports in themselves. God cares about the people who play them. God cares about the people who watch and enjoy sports and whose lives are affected by sports. And God works through sports, as God works through all things, for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Training the body is, or can be, a profound and necessary school for the spirit. And in today’s age, when so many Christians live lives of comfortable complacency, when the rigor and striving of faith have been so terribly deemphasized, sports can serve an important role in reminding us of the importance of discipline and collective sacrifice in the pursuit of a greater goal.

So if sports can help us grow closer to God and more mature in our faith — and they can — then yes, God cares about sports for what can be accomplished through them.

What, then, can be accomplished through them? How do sports help us, as athletes and as spectators, to understand God, to witness God, to love and live with God better? Tune in tomorrow for my thoughts on that question.”

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Unbelieving Preachers and Pluralism

March 17th, 2012

Frederick Buechner, the author of more than thirty books, both fiction and non-fiction, and also an ordained Christian minister, writes in his memoir, Telling Secrets, about the time he taught preaching at Harvard Divinity School. He found the students in his class a diverse bunch, including some who were atheists. This is how he described them.

“A number of them were Unitarian Universalists who by their own definition were humanist atheists. One of them, a woman about my age, came to see me in my office one day to say that although many of things I had to teach about preaching she found interesting enough, few of them were of any practical use to people like her who did not believe in God. I asked her what she did believe in, and I remember the air of wistfulness with which she said that whatever it was it was hard to put into words….. I felt somehow floored and depressed by what she said. I think things like peace, kindness, social responsibility, honesty were the things she believed in… it was hard for me to imagine giving sermons about such things. I realized that if ideas were all I had to preach, I would take up some other line of work.

I had never understood so clearly before what preaching is to me. Basically, it is to proclaim a Mystery before which, before whom, even our most exalted ideas turn to straw. It is also to proclaim this Mystery with a passion that ideas alone have little to do with. It is to try to put the Gospel into words not the way you would compose an essay but the way you would write a poem or a love letter – putting your heart into it, your own excitement, most of all your own life. It is to speak words that you hope may, by grace, be bearers not simply of new understanding but of new life both for the ones you are speaking to and also for you. Out of that life, who knows what ideas about peace and honesty and social responsibility may come, but they are the fruits of the preaching, not the roots of it. Another Unitarian Universalist student said once that what he believed in was faith, and when I asked him faith in what, his answer was faith in faith. I don’t mean to disparage him – he was doing the best he could – but it struck me that having faith in faith was as barren as being in love with love or having money that you spend only on the accumulation of more money. It struck me too that to attend a divinity school when you did not believe in divinity involved a peculiarly depressing form of bankruptcy, and there were times as I wandered through those corridors that I felt a little like Alice on the far side of the looking glass.

Harvard Divinity School was proud, and justly so, of what it called its pluralism – feminists, humanists, theists, liberation theologians all pursuing truth together – but the price that pluralism can cost was dramatized one day in a way that I have never forgot. I had been speaking as candidly and personally as I knew how about my own faith and how I had tried over the years to express it in language. At the same time I had been trying to get the class to respond in kind. For the most part none of them were responding at all but just sitting there taking it in without saying a word. Finally I had to tell them what I thought. I said they reminded me of a lot of dead fish lying on cracked ice in a fish store window with their round blank eyes. There I was, making a fool of myself spilling out to them the secrets of my heart, and there they were, not telling me what they believed about anything beneath the level of their various causes. It was at that point that a black African got up and spoke. ‘The reason I do not say anything about what I believe,’ he said in his stately African English, ‘is that I’m afraid it will be shot down.’

At least for a moment we all saw, I think, that the danger of pluralism is that it becomes factionalism, and that if factions grind their separate axes too vociferously, something mutual, precious, and human is in danger of being drowned out and lost.”

These are important words for us to ponder on as we engage one another in argument and debate about what we believe or do not believe.

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