An article last week in the Arkansas Times titled I Want My Faith Back stirred to life in me the political animal – sheep, by the way – once again.

I think that my most rabid reaction to the election is the indignity of being treated like a stupid sheep by the political process.

The pols didn’t trust me or you or any of our fellow voters to be able to understand complex issues. They treated us like we were voting on the outcome of an episode of “Survivor.”

We didn’t get presidential debates; we got sound bytes.

We didn’t get a platform; we got platitudes.

We didn’t really get candidates. We just got candy.

While it may be true that we’re not a nation of Einsteins – hence the state of network programming as its entropy increases today – it’s also true that people tend to live up to expectations of them, especially when they’re positive expectations.

Looking back, I wish I (and my fellow voters) had been less like sheep and had stood up and loudly protested our presumed ignorance; had roared like lions “We may be innocent as doves but we’re as wise as serpents!”; had bellowed right along with Peter Finch in the movie Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

_________________________

Well, I’m blogging out until Wednesday; flying to Indiana to celebrate my mom’s 80th with our family. Talk amongst yourselves; I’m verklempt.

Just don’t bleat. And if you can find it within in you, sign up.

The Vulcan faith is logical

though many of their rites

are ancient, biological

and held at mystic sites.

Good Romulans are wealthy

through Reman slaves and mines;

they value being stealthy

and cloaking their designs.

The Klingons swear by honor

and honor swearing, too.

Oppose, and you’re a goner

with howls respecting you.

Ferengi worship latinum

and being quite well-dressed.

Their enemies? They flatten ’em

unless they are gold-pressed.

El Aurians like listening;

their silence can perplex.

Humpback whales sing, glistening

while Deltans merge through sex.

Some species praise achievement

and if they don’t do well

they die from their bereavement

and hope to go to hell.

I’ve often told my Captain

diverse star-faiths are worth

becoming a Star Chaplain

– they’re fewer than on earth!

Epiphany must be one of the most ironically-named items among those in the liturgical year.

Check your dictionary; epiphany means:

1. a Christian festival observed on January 6 commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi.
   

2. an appearance or manifestation, esp. of a deity.
   

3. a sudden, intuitive perception of, or insight into, the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by something simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.
   

Simple enough, it seems, unless you Google it and find that in different fellowships it may be celebrated as a single-day festival, or the culmination of the Twelve Days of Christmas, or as an entire season after them but before Lent. It may also recognize the birth/nativity story of Jesus, His baptism, and/or the miracle of the wine at the wedding feast at Cana!

It seems that you have to have an epiphany in order to know which Epiphany to celebrate. The closest thing I’ve had is the thought that all of those events do indeed herald Jesus as Christ: to His mother, to the Magi, to the shepherds, to John the baptizer and his disciples at the Jordan, to His own friends at a wedding.

However you celebrate yours – and for however long – I hope you’ll spend a few moments of it examining an epiphany that Fred Craddock had, shared in a classic issue of New Wineskins under the title The Hard Side of Epiphany:

If you plan to herald Jesus as Christ, prepare to be opposed.

It’s been a while back, so I can’t remember on whose blog I first came across the question about how to refer to people who don’t believe in Jesus as the Christ.

That’s an awkward phrase, “people who don’t believe,” and begs for a good one-word synonym.

I have trouble with “unbelievers.” It makes it sound like they once believed, but somehow un-did their belief. I’m sure that there are those who feel it was good enough for Paul when he wrote I Corinthians in King James English, but it’s just not doing the job for me.

“Disbeliever” is okay, but also seems to imply that a choice has been presented and rejected.

“Faithless” makes it sound like they don’t believe in anything, or that they’ve been romantic scoundrels, and that can’t be universally true of them.

“Unchurched” sounds too institutional and also strikes me as a good synonym for “excommunicated” or “disfellowshipped,” depending upon your institution’s preference.

Off The Map has trouble with “lost”, and – at the suggestion of Brian McLaren – prefers “missing persons” or “people who were formerly known as lost.” But both of those terms are really gangly-limbed, too; and carry at least as much baggage. So the site usually settles for just putting lost in Italics – maybe until a new term presents itself.

The old advertising-agency-copywriter-marketer in me wants to coin something positive and optimistic, like “pre-believer.” That’s not very realistic. About as realistic as defining all of them as “seekers.”

Last year, my New Year’s resolution was to try to see everyone I met as “someone for whom Christ died.” That’s a snaggly phrase, too, but I like it because it includes those who believe and those who don’t. So it won’t work to describe just … uh, someone who doesn’t believe.

(This year I’ve resolved to try to relate to people the way they would like me to relate to them … and if I can’t figure out how, I’m going to ask. Greg Taylor inspired it with his post The Platinum Rule. I just thought you’d be curious.)

Let’s see: “the damned” … no way … “the excluded” … no … “outsiders” … no … “fertile soil” … no no no. “The ignored” … ouch … “the unreached” … better; not there yet …

I’ll bet Jesus had a good Greek or Aramaic term that Matthew quoted four times and Luke once.

And I’ll bet it didn’t come out to five separate words:

“O ye of little faith.”

Help!

Wade Hodges posts a link to an article by England’s Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, about the Indian Ocean disaster.

His source, pomomusings, posts another which places the responsibility for the disaster and deaths on God because He “could have stopped the waves.”

I guess I’m in the ignorant minority, but I believe that there are things that God allows to happen that we perceive as evil … maybe to remind us that Death is always waiting in the wings, and Christ is always dying to intercept Death and claim His own.

Maybe there are some things that God permits to remind us that sinleadstodeath sinleadstodeath SINLEADSTODEATH.

Maybe things like earthquakes and tsunamis (earthquakes, at least, are going to happen until the end – Jesus says – but aren’t particularly a sign of it) just happen. Maybe God wound up the clockwork globe and, instead of walking away disinterestedly, waits on the edge of His throne to see what we do with it.

Maybe how we react to disaster is what’s important: with compassion and generosity to the surviving victims, or by trying to blame God or Satan or offshore drilling for them.

Is it even possible that the earthquake/tsunamis that wiped out tens of thousands might have been acts of God’s mercy? That had He not rescued some by water (as He did for Noah) or shortened the days of the tribulation (as is also promised in another context), the disaster might have been many, many times worse?

The only clear message I get from scripture is that, like Job, we can ask all the questions we want to about such things. But that doesn’t mean we can understand the answers.

Claiming to have them seems dangerously arrogant.

One thing is certain: the disaster has already stirred the murky waters of mankind’s innate need to know how good and evil fit into our world.

If we as Christians can’t claim to have all the answers, the least we can do is offer to share in the struggle … ask questions of our own … assist in rescuing the physically and spiritually perishing … pray without ceasing … weep with those who weep; mourn with those who mourn.

And, yes, rejoice with those who survive.

We of all people should know what it is like to be rescued from utter disaster.

My kids – who have been cranky up until Christmas because it wouldn’t come quickly enough – are now calm and sated with more gifts, candy and food than anyone ought to have.

So is their dad. I’m just pleasantly miserable with all of the holiday excess of joy and blessing.

Angi has been slaving away in the kitchen all week, preparing gourmet masterpieces. With my mom and mom-in-law visiting, we’ve watched football and half-a-dozen Christmas classics, including my perennial favorite “It’s a Wonderful Life.” (My 8-year-old daughter Laura gave me the DVD early so we could watch it together on Christmas eve.)

I’ve rotated out of teaching in the Singles class on Sunday mornings, and though I will miss that awesome energy and youth and passion, I’m eagerly anticipating my return to sitting at the feet of two beloved elders and their wives in class again.

With the Singles, I’ve put some very out-there questions before them about what comprises true doctrine, suffering, leadership and holy living. We’ve studied James and I Peter this quarter; a study which seems incomplete without II Peter, where (like the progression in “The Lord of the Rings”) the story grows darker and more threatening. I couldn’t leave the Singles class without recommending that they spend some time in II Peter during the holiday … and if they couldn’t stand a story without a satisfactory resolution, skip on to Revelation.

For in his second letter, Peter struggles with the problem of false teachers, lambasting their empty words, blasphemies, boastfulness and arrogance. (I’ve wondered if some of the Gnostic “secret knowledge” teachings discovered at Nag Hammadi were among the heresies Peter was battling.)

About those teachers, he describes a truly miserable existence:

If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. – II Peter 2:20-21

It sounds like a tragic parody of the rescued George Bailey’s words from “It’s a Wonderful Life”:

“Maybe they’d have been better off if they’d never been born again. … I wish they’d never been born again.”

Whew! Now I’m really glad to rotate out of teaching for a while!

A news analyst commenting on the “Today” show earlier this week made an interesting observation about the terrorists/insurgents who bombed an alliance mess tent in Mosul: “They have an easier military objective than the peacekeepers.”

Isn’t that true, not only of the insurgents, but also of evil generally? It has an easier military objective.

A follower of Christ is called to walk a narrow path and enter a straight gate. To perfection without pride. To generosity without curiosity. To be a peacemaker.

Evil’s goal is not necessarily to turn us into Vaders and Valdemorts, but into Potters and Scrooges. Evil only demands a little. Thirty pieces of silver are not required to sell out our Savior. A ten-penny nail of greed will do. A thorn of selfishness. A pocket of lust in our hearts to strip and shame Him.

That’s all it takes to separate us from Him.

And if that was the only evil in our lives, He still would have come. He would have left it all and become nothing for us anyway. Innocent from cradle to grave to throne, so that we might be considered the same.

God’s most extravagant gift.

Is there a difference between something that is God’s will and something that is within God’s will?

Is there a greater good that includes the choice to do what’s right or what’s wrong?

Is there a need for evil to help define what’s good – just as darkness and light work together to define what’s visible?

Is God evil because He permits evil? Is He good because He permits choice?

Is it necessary … is it even possible for us to comprehend the full extent of God’s goodness; His providence; His wisdom?

Or do we just need enough of a taste of it to let us know what the banquet in heaven is all about?

A couple of weeks ago, my preaching minister began a message on the spiritual disicipline of guidance by showing a clip from “Cool Hand Luke,” where Paul Newman’s fugitive character petitions the “Old Man” in an abandoned frame church.

It wasn’t my favorite clip, nor would it have been my choice. Up until a few minutes ago, I’d have picked the scene in Martini’s bar from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when Jimmy Stewart’s desperate George Bailey pleads “God, I’m not a praying man … but if You will, show me the way, God. Show me the way.”

What has changed my choice is seeing a DVD press of “The Bells of St. Mary’s” in glorious, full black and white. I haven’t seen it since I was a kid, and I didn’t remember the scene near the end in which Ingrid Bergman’s Sister Benedict is wrestling with God over being sent away from her beloved St. Mary’s School. She doesn’t know why, and Bing Crosby’s Father O’Malley won’t tell her. “Remove all bitterness from my heart,” she begs first of all. Then, she too asks for God to reveal His will.

He does, of course. It happens in the movies. But art does not always imitate life.

At noon today, as my disappointed twelve-year-old son begged me to take him back to Blockbuster to exchange the NHL Hockey PS2 game that his mom mistakenly rented (it had been filed behind an NBA game cover), sleet began to fall while I was shrugging on a winter coat. I renegged on the deal, advising him that this might be one of those instances when it would be wiser to wait, and be grateful for what we have … which is not being stuck at the bottom of a ravine in our minivan as we were after the accident we had in sleety weather in January. “But I hate hockey!” he protested.

It’s a little after 3:00 p.m. now. We’re snowed in, and the blizzard continues. While the rest of us watched “The Bells of St. Mary’s,” my son has worn out his fascination with his sled, left his clothes on the hearth to dry, and bounded upstairs. The hockey game didn’t go upstairs with him (yet), but he has gained an appreciation for the amount of fun one can have on ice – safely.

Show me the way. It was a wordless prayer as I was putting on that coat, watching sleet collect on the deck and deciding whether to go: Risk our lives or risk my son’s perception of my courage, integrity and faith.

God had an answer … white, cold and wet.

Winter is here. The colder, snowy weather is scheduled to blow in from the northwest tonight, and my mom is racing in her Cadillac to blow in from the northeast and beat the weather to our house.

The weatherman on the radio has a good perception of it: “The days only get longer from here – at least for the next six months!”

That’s looking at the brighter side.

Some folks do that. They see that glass half-full. Others – and I am too often among them – see it half-empty.

My mom sees in a whole different dimension. She sees a dirty glass that needs to be emptied, washed and put away.

I often wish I could see through the eyes of others. (See Greg Taylor’s post yesterday, The Platinum Rule, to fully understand why.)

For instance, a friend of mine said he sees the banner on my blog in three dimensions after gazing at it for a few seconds. Apparently, the white letters seem to advance and the orange nebula recedes, while the nebula’s aqua “eye” floats somewhere between. I understand the principle behind the phenomenon. I just can’t experience it. I’m a bit cross-eyed, and even with corrective lenses can’t quite perceive the 3-D effect.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m more than grateful that I’m blessed with even flawed vision!

But I really look forward to the time when my gifts from above include nightless day … perfect vision … and flawless optimism.