The eCrozier

I first read Robert Merry’s work in his wonderful 2005 book: Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition. In that book, he made a compelling case for why our foreign wars end up thwarting the very values and outcomes we desire as a nation. Merry now writes for The American Conservative, an online publication I read regularly. He wrote a recent column that turns his astute observations about American foreign policy to the domestic crisis at home between our two rival political cultures. The election of Donald Trump isn’t the problem, Merry argues. He just exploited the pain many people were experiencing. Although Merry sees Mr. Trump as “supremely unfit for his White House job,” he contends that the election was but a symptom of far deeper crisis in the soul of America.

Merry believes the crisis is caused by how out of touch the prevailing elites of our rival political cultures are with the lives of most people in this country. Merry quotes economic consultant David M. Smick, author of The Great Equalizer, who described what happened after the Great Recession at the end of the last decade. Smick says it was “the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial interests in the history of mankind.” This further exposed and accelerated the growing income disparities between these elites and the rest of the country. Merry says this has “contributed significantly to the hollowing out of the American working class—once the central foundation of the country’s economic muscle and political stability.” The recent proposals for tax and health care policy changes, if adopted, will further the accelerate the disparity and serve to create even more instability in our country. For much of the country, modern democratic capitalism is simply not working for them anymore. This isn’t capitalism’s fault, per se. It’s the fault of those who manipulate the system (without any consequences) for their benefit at the expense of others.

The prophet Amos spoke eloquently about people enduring persistent economic injustice. Amos, prophesying in 8th Century B.C. Israel, condemned the elites who manipulated the poor through debt and financial deceit. Amos writes: Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, ‘When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’ The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely, I will never forget any of their deeds (Amos 8:4-7).

The ephah was a measuring unit for grain. By making it small, the elites were deceptively selling less grain than they promised. Likewise, in making the shekel great, they were overcharging their customers while underdelivering what they promised. Making the ephah small and the shekel great, in other words, was the way the elites in Amos’ time increased the financial disparity between them and the rest of the people. No culture can endure such disparity forever. It creates social and political instability and eventually more pain and suffering for more people.

+Scott

“The key isn’t to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
— Stephen Covey

When I first read that quote from Mr. Covey, I said to myself: “Oh great, now that’s one more thing I’m doing wrong in my life. I need to start scheduling my priorities. But my schedule isn’t my own. I have commitments to keep and others counting on me.” Makes me kind of sound self-important, doesn’t it? And that’s what I want others to think. But maybe you and I have far more control over our schedules than we care to admit? Maybe we use our busyness to avoid facing certain truths about ourselves? Our schedules become nothing other than a distracting drug narcotizing us from ourselves.

Recent labor data show that, in the aggregate, we work longer hours than we used to. We also work those longer hours with increased productivity, but we do so for less pay than in the past. And we don’t take all the vacation time we’re allowed. Such busyness in our work lives must then be a surrogate for something else. Maybe it’s our way of proving our self-worth to ourselves and others? Bragging about how busy we are has become a new status symbol. And that must make us important, right? It proves we’re indispensable. Yet, it might be just another way we engage in self-justification.

Earlier this year, Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, reported on some ironic practices by experts whose jobs are to help us find appropriate work-life balance. Kathy Simons, the Director of the Work-Life Center at MIT, has advocated for years for more humane workplace policies and family-friendly benefits. Her research indicates that people who don’t take vacations are 30%-50% more likely to suffer heart attacks than those who take vacations. And yet for five years, Simons herself hasn’t taken a vacation. Talk about “physician heal thyself!”

And Phyllis Stewart Pires traveled the world helping people who worked for her global tech company to improve their work-life balance. One day she found herself in an ambulance racing to hospital. She later said: “I was missing family events. My friends were calling me out on being AWOL. My husband was calling me out on not doing my share. It was almost like I was obsessed with this idea that people were counting on me to really make a difference in their workplace. I couldn’t let them down.” So, she let her friends and family down instead. We all have this need to justify ourselves, don’t we?

”Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing” (Luke 10). As my Daddy would say: Jesus has her number, doesn’t he? Martha was using her busyness as a distraction; as a way for her to avoid facing her anxiety about her life and relationship with God, which is the “one thing” needed. And Jesus has our number, too. But rather than exploiting that, he simply says:” Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11). Jesus offers us an eternal vacation from what seems to be our life project at justifying ourselves. That’s a vacation we all need to take.

+Scott

“It’s good to be the king”
Mel Brooks in The History of the World, Part 1

There’s a group called The Daedalus Trust. It’s named for the character, who in Greek mythology created wax wings with which his son could fly, but warned him not to fly too close to the sun because it would melt his wings and he would fall. His son, Icarus, however, didn’t heed his father’s admonition. He was too captivated by his flying prowess. He thought himself incapable of crashing. Icarus’s hubris led to his downfall. As a leader of the Daedalus Trust contends: “There is a growing body of opinion that the exercise of power can distort thinking and create personality changes in leaders that affect their decision making. The Daedalus Trust’s mission is to raise awareness of such changes and understand them better.”

This, of course, isn’t new in the human family. It’s as least as old as the story of King David in the Bible, who desired Bathsheba as his own, and so had her soldier-husband killed in battle. He could do that because he was the king. The above quote from Mel Brooks satirizes King Louis of France whose exercise of power bent his conscience and led him to despicable abuse of the poor. There’s historical evidence in every generation of people in power behaving like Icarus (It appeared in Greek mythology for a reason. The writers of such myths probably saw such distorted thinking among their leaders).

In more recent times, we’ve experienced the hubris of leaders that led us into the Iraq war. We’ve seen how some leaders of our financial institutions created the conditions for a world-wide financial crisis in the last decade. We all watched in horror as hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico because everyone connected with Deepwater Horizon, from BP to Transocean to Halliburton, were convinced that nothing would go wrong because they were who they were. The U.S. District Judge who later presided over the legal case described their behavior as “reckless.” And “reckless” is one of the important words used by the Daedalus Trust to define what they refer to as the Hubris Syndrome. When people in power get in the grip of this syndrome they engage in high risk behaviors and make reckless decisions. For example, think of Bill Clinton recklessly deciding to have sex with an intern in the Oval Office. Who would ever think that was a good idea? But yet he did it. These behaviors and decisions also escalate over time until the perpetrator is stopped by a disastrous event, which always happens, and often to the detriment or death of the people around the one with Hubris Syndrome.

The Daedalus Trust claims that Hubris Syndrome is a legitimate psychological disorder. They want to assist governments and businesses with how to recognize the signs of this in their leadership, thus encouraging them to engage in prophylactic efforts to prevent such behavior in the organization’s culture before disaster happens. I wish them luck in their efforts. I’m afraid, however, the human condition will continue to churn out many a modern-day Icarus. That’s why we don’t need Jesus to affirm us as we are. We need him to forgive us for what we do to ourselves and others. He most graciously does.

+Scott

David Brooks’ column in the New York Times on April 17th is an insightful reflection on people and the institutions that shape them. He describes two kinds of institutions: “thick” and “thin.” He writes: A thick institution is not one that people use instrumentally, to get a degree or to earn a salary. A thick institution becomes part of a person’s identity and engages the whole person: head, hands, heart and soul. In “thin” institutions, on the contrary, there’s an ever-present utilitarian calculus — Is this working for me? Am I getting more out than I’m putting in? — that creates a distance between people and the organization. Stanley Hauerwas has posed the difference in another way. He says people will die for their faith. They’ll die for someone in their family or community. But they won’t willingly die for the phone company.

Brooks contrasts the two types of institutions, writing: Thin organizations look to take advantage of people’s strengths and treat people as resources to be marshaled. Thick organizations think in terms of virtue and vice. They take advantage of people’s desire to do good and arouse their higher longings. In other words, thin institutions tend to see themselves horizontally. People are members for mutual benefit. Thick organizations often see themselves on a vertical axis. People are members so they can collectively serve the same higher good.

Brooks is describing what the church is called by Christ to be. We’re in the identity forming business as we lead people in Gospel practices that define our purpose in the world. Church, when we get it right, connects people’s heads, hands, hearts, and souls as we come together for Eucharist, for the Church’s Daily Office, and for regular reflection on our life’s purpose. We call people transcendentally to the vertical axis while much of the rest of their lives are lived out horizontally in quid pro quo transactions. Only as we get that reordered, are we equipped “to love our neighbors as ourselves.” As Evelyn Underhill wrote: One’s first duty is adoration, and one’s second duty is awe and only one’s third duty is service…Unless your life is a movement of praise and adoration, unless it is instinct with awe, the work which your life produces won’t be much good.

We’re about grounding people in the “thickness” of our faith and its practices, otherwise we’re just the phone company with some nice music, colorful windows, and elegant haberdashery. Church leaders have the primary task of shaping parishes into such “thick” cultures. Yet, too often, we spend more energy trying to be CEOs, community organizers, psychotherapists, political activists, or social directors because those roles are, if we think about it, easier to inhabit. When we lead in such a disordered way, we often then complain our people aren’t committed enough to the church. If we shape a “thin” parish culture, then we shouldn’t be surprised if people have a “thin” commitment to it. It won’t matter much to them at all. It’s just another group vying for their limited time and resources. They’ll pay their monthly “bill” to the church without much thought or passion, just like they pay their phone bill when it comes due each month.

But we’re not the phone company. We’re the Church, for Christ’s sake.

+Scott

Then the disciples returned to their homes. (John 20:10)

It was his face that first caught my attention. It was filled with a combination of fear and awe. The face in question was on a painting of the crucifixion I saw years ago. But that face wasn’t the face of Jesus. It was the face of the Roman soldier nailing Jesus’ to the cross. That face was haunting. I wondered how the artist came up with that face. He had no idea what this Roman soldier should look like. So, how did he come up with that haunting face? After reading the background on the painting, I discovered an amazing thing. The artist had used his own face for the Roman soldier, the one who drove the nails into Jesus.

55 years ago, instead of painting himself as a Roman soldier crucifying Christ, Andy Warhol painted his self-portrait alongside stylized versions of Campbell soup cans. Today, our culture has taken Warhol a step further by adopting the selfie as our modern-day icon for self-promotion and self-flattery. Some profound changes have occurred in our culture, and they should give us pause. We now see ourselves at the center of the portrait rather than off to the side driving nails into the Savior’s hands.

Placing our self at the center of the portrait is both flattering and attractive, helping us to believe that the world really should be about the self. Such self-deception profoundly removes us from the witness we have in Scripture. The selfie, like the painting I saw, are examples for us. They represent competing narratives about what it means to be human. The painting’s story tells us that human meaning is found in the forgiving love of God for sinners like us on the cross. While the selfie’s story tells us that human meaning is found in our ability to promote and flatter ourselves.

That shouldn’t make us against the culture. There’s much good in our culture, especially as we learn and grow in our respect for all people, especially for those different from us, and deepen our compassion for those who are lost or left out. So, there’s a lot of good out there in the culture. But we should not be fooled by the pervasive promotion of the self in our culture. If we’re not attentive, we can lose touch with our identity and purpose in Christ, which calls us to be truthful about human nature, which means thus rightfully placing ourselves in a portrait of the crucifixion with hammer in hand.

That portrait paints a story that tells us the truth. The Good News of Jesus is a story that comes to us first as bad news. Before we can truly know it as “good” news, we must first recognize the “bad” news about ourselves.

Frederick Buechner makes this point in his book: Telling the Truth. He writes: The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the news that we are sinners; that we are evil in the imagination of our hearts; that when I look in the mirror what I see is at least partly a chicken, a phony, and a slob. But the Gospel is also the news that we are loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for.

The Good News doesn’t make any sense until we accept “the news that we’re sinners.” If, however, we go home today and look in the mirror and not see that truth, then what that artist painted and what I’m preaching will seem nonsensical.

I’m afraid the Church hasn’t always told people that amazing and outrageous truth in such a way that people have really heard it. Well, my job is to tell you the truth, so I’m going to do my best to change that this morning. The truth is God forgives us and loves us and there’s nothing we can do about. You heard me right. There’s not a thing we can do about it. It’s called grace and it’s outrageous. The cross of Jesus tells us that God forgives us and the resurrection of Jesus tells us that God loves us, and not just for a little while, but eternally. And again, so it sinks in: There’s nothing we can do about it. Our sin, no matter how awful it is, will not stop God from forgiving and loving us, because Jesus on the cross has taken away the sin of the world.

But some people think there must be a catch. There’s got to be some fine print at the bottom of the contract. Sorry. You’re welcome to create your own fine print, your own conditions and exceptions, but just don’t count on the Gospel to back you up. OK. I admit there is one condition and it’s a simple one. We must die. We must die to self. We must take our stinking old sins and pile them on the back of Jesus so he can hang with them on the cross. We must be dead to our sins and trust Jesus, that in his death, our sins die with him.

I began this Easter sermon with what might seem as a rather odd verse to quote from St. John’s story of the resurrection. With all the rich imagery of the first nine verses, you might have wondered why I quoted verse 10, which reads: “Then the disciples returned to their homes (John 20:10).” After receiving the Good News of the resur­rection, the Disciples still had to go home. That means they still had to sleep, and eat, and live each day even though they had begun to realize that the entire world had just been turned upside down.

Just like the disciples, after our celebration of the resurrection today, we will go home and live our lives. The question is: Will we go home believing that we’re alive in Christ only because our sin has already died with him? When we leave for home, will we leave the burden of our sin on the strong back of Jesus? When we’re back home and we look in the mirror, will we see a selfie or the cross of Jesus next to our hearts?

There’s a difference between what the world tells us and what Jesus tells us. The world says, “mind your own business.” Jesus says, “love one another.” The world says, “follow your heart and be happy.” Jesus says, “follow me and take up your cross.” The world says, “drive carefully, for the life you save may be your own.” Jesus says, “whoever would save their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” The world says, “law and order.” Jesus says, “Love your enemies and turn the other cheek.” The world says, “Get.” Jesus says, “Give.” In terms of the world’s definition of sanity, Jesus is crazy. And if we think we can follow Jesus without being just as crazy, then we’re only fooling ourselves.

This doesn’t mean that we should be against the world. After all, in John 3:16-17, Jesus says God loves the world and that he came into the world, not to condemn it, but to save it. But it does mean we should name things for what they truly are. The “world,” or as the Greek New Testament calls it, the Cosmos, is a beautiful place. It’s, after all, God’s creation. For all its beauty, however, the Cosmos isn’t congruent with God’s intent. It’s in open rebellion. God has decreed love, but we’ve practiced hate. God’s demanded we forgive, but we’ve trafficked in vengeance. In terms of how the Cosmos is currently ordered, Jesus does appear to be crazy, while the world’s leaders seem to be acting prudently and in the best interests of their people.

But let’s assume for a moment that the opposite is true. Let’s assume that the world has gone completely crazy and that Jesus is the one who’s sane. That changes everything, doesn’t it? But that places us in a dilemma. We can’t follow Jesus faithfully by playing both halves to the middle. We can’t say that the truth is somewhere in between the Cosmos and Jesus. We can’t claim that the world’s just a little crazy, but mainly sane and that Jesus, too, is on the crazy side, but mainly sane. We can’t have it both ways.

It might be easier to have it both ways if all we were talking about was the sleight of hand trick of changing water into wine (John 2). It gets tougher when we’re speaking about feeding five thousand people fully from a few loaves of bread and some fish (John 6). It becomes even harder when we’re talking about new sight to those born blind (John 9). And it becomes downright impossible when we’re speaking of the dead being raised (John 11). So, what’s it going to be? The Cosmos? Or Jesus? There’s no possibility of choosing both, because Jesus is either completely crazy or he’s the Lord of Life. He either raises people from the dead or he doesn’t.

Jesus never met a corpse he didn’t raise. If you doubt that, then read the four Gospels. In every instance where Jesus is confronted with a corpse, that corpse doesn’t remain a corpse very long. Whether it’s Jairus’ daughter in Mark 5 or the Widow’s son in Luke 7, the result is always the same. It’s like in John 11: “Lazarus come out, get out of that grave.” Now, why does Jesus do that to every corpse he meets? The answer is simple. It’s God’s will for us to be raised from the dead and receive the gift of new life. I’m just crazy enough to believe that. Are you?

+Scott

In reading The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty by Dan Ariely, I learned how our dishonesty in personal and professional relationships is nearly universal. Yet, we still contend we have high moral standards. Ariely writes: “we cheat for our own benefit while maintaining a positive view of ourselves — a facet of our behavior that enables much of our dishonesty.” So, ironically, a “positive view of ourselves” while we’re being dishonest “enables” us to be more dishonest. We absolve ourselves of our dishonesty by steadfastly insisting we’re “good” people. St. Paul wrote as much in Romans.

Ariely’s research shows having laws against dishonesty help, but they don’t (obviously) end dishonest behavior (not a news flash). In one experiment he conducted, people were given a 10-question quiz and then told to grade their own answers. Participants were then paid for how high they scored. The higher the score, the more money they received. They self-reported their scores to the quiz monitor and were given cash on the spot. Ariely says he’s done this experiment many times and each time about the same percentage of people lie about their scores. But, if study participants were given a copy of the Ten Commandments before taking the quiz, later they lied less about their quiz scores. It seems when we’re reminded of our moral code, we’re more likely to follow it.

The most fascinating part of Ariely’s book for me, however, is how we justify our own dishonesty. Ariely researched how often people leave restaurants without paying their bills. He asked wait staff how easy it would be to get away with it. They said quite easy. All they’d have to do is excuse themselves to the restroom and then duck out the side door. But the data show it rarely happens. Switching gears, Ariely asked a classroom of his students how many of them downloaded music on their electronic devices that they had not paid for. Most acknowledged they had done so and saw little wrong with it. Again, many studies confirm this behavior. Both leaving the restaurant without paying and not paying for downloaded music are easily done, but one rarely occurs while the other is commonplace. What’s the difference between these two?

Ariely contends it’s about proximity and relationship. In a restaurant, we see the staff working. We’ve made eye contact with them. There’s a human connection. Their job depends on our paying our bill. With music downloads, we don’t see the artists who wrote and/or performed the music. It’s harder for us to imagine how our dishonesty will hurt them. Ariely also says it’s about the threat of being caught. Although it’s easy to walk out of a restaurant without being caught, we still might be. Behind the anonymity of a computer, we feel the odds of us being busted are much less.

So, we do better, honesty-wise, when we’re reminded of the moral codes we’re called to live by and when we stay in proximity and relationship with others who’ll help us do that. The great UCLA basketball coach John Wooden said: “the true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.” It’s seems however, it really helps us if we’re not left to our own devices. We need others to watch us, or at the very least, be present in our lives reminding us who we are and who Jesus calls us to be.

+Scott

The Principle of Complementarity states that a person’s emotional state tends to evoke complementary responses in others. When a spouse is depressed similar emotions are induced in the other. Likewise, when one is happy, the other is inclined to be as well. We have a propensity for deducing the emotions of others and matching them in ourselves. Such complementarity shows itself in our normal interactions. For example, if a waiter serving our restaurant table is pleasant and charming, we’re likely to be so in return. The opposite is also true. A rude and unfriendly waiter will naturally draw from us a like reaction. This isn’t limited to people with whom we have close relationships. When we’re around strangers, if the emotional vibe is strong, we’ll find ourselves being caught in up those emotions, for good or for ill, that is if we don’t check ourselves.

Complementarity makes sense from our social evolution in tribal cultures. It’s a way we’ve evolved to be in tune with others and to build alliances. So, we tend to go along with the emotions around us without reflecting on them. It’s an effective bonding response within groups. Most often the stakes aren’t very high when complementarity is unconsciously occurring. But, of course, it has a shadow side. It explains how quickly mob behavior forms and just as fast turns mean or deadly. With the advent of social media, mobs also occur in cyberspace. Read comments to new stories on social media and see how emotions get ginned up and shared with each additional comment posted.

It takes considerable self-awareness to notice how our emotions are driven by those around us and to not always go along with them. Those emotions may lead to harmless behavior (and thus we can ignore them or just enjoy them). But if such emotions are leading in a sinister direction, we can try to exercise non-complementary behavior. Jesus was a master at such non-complementary behavior. It’s throughout the Gospel.

Consider Jesus with the woman caught in adultery. The self-righteous emotions of the people around him build until they are determined to stone her. Jesus doesn’t “fight fire with fire.” Rather than “complement” their anger with his own, he calms the situation down by kneeling and doodling in the dirt. He then turns the emotional tables and says: “If any of y’all are without sin, then go ahead and cast the first stone.” In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the father, the older son, and the entire household upon seeing the younger son return could’ve said to him: “You little degenerate, go to the bunkhouse, take your place with the hired hands.” Given what the younger son had done, that would’ve been a justifiable emotional reaction to his behavior. But the father turns the tables and declares the young man will have the finest garb put on him, a feast thrown, and his place restored.

The Good News is God’s non-complementary behavior toward us. Jesus doesn’t “complement” our sin with judgment, but rather with grace. We don’t get our “just deserts.” And he calls us to such non-complementarity with the world. Love rather than hate our enemies. Be tender when others choose toughness. Exercise mercy when those around are calling out for blood. Forgive when others want to condemn. We’re going against powerful evolutionary forces when we do. Still, it’s God’s way with this world.

+Scott