Archive for August, 2009

Books you should read – 3

Monday, August 31st, 2009

S.D. Gaede, When Tolerance is No Virtue. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993.

In our culture, there is considerable confusion about how we ought to live with our differences and a cacophony of contradictory justifications for one approach as opposed to another. All appeal to the need of tolerance, but there is nothing like common argument on what that means. The question our culture raises by nature and development is what is truth and what can we believe? Our culture doesn’t know the answers. In fact, we have lost confidence in truth and have come to the conclusion that truth is unattainable. Thus, tolerance moves to the forefront. C. K. Chesterton wrote: Toleration is the virtue of the man without convictions. The Christian Response: A. We need to understand the culture in which we live–one in which relativism is growing which leads to injustice. B. We must know what is right and do it. C. We must seek justice–we cannot turn a blind eye to the injustices related to multi-culturalism. D. We must affirm truth and not tolerate relativism. E. The church must be who it is–it must express its convictions about truth and justice and practice and express tolerance (i.e., love) to the multi-cultural body of Christ.

Postmodernism

Friday, August 28th, 2009

I read in the paper yesterday that Pete Rose, convicted of gambling in 1989, may now be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame because “in light of the steroid scandal his crime does not seem so bad now.” Interesting argument–isn’t it? Sin that was bad in 1989 is not so bad today. Fasten your seat belts, saints. we are in for a post-modernism ride!

Post-modernism is a term used to describe Western culture that emerged since 1990. Post-modernism, according to social analyst Walter Truett Anderson, is an anti-science movement that emerged at the end of the Cold War. To Post-modernism, reality is always subjective. It invites people to define their own reality. As a song I heard yesterday explains, “You only have to please me, you only have to please me.”

Anderson, in his book Reality Isn’t What It Used To Be (San Francisco HarperCollins, 1990. 288p) describes six stories competing in Postmodern era: 1) Western myth of progress; 2) Marxism and Revolution; 3) Christian Fundamentalism; 4) Islamic Fundamentalism; 5) Green; 6) New Age. I would add one more: Christian home school evangelicalism. Post-modernism diverges, like romanticism does, from a notion that reality occurs from empiricism (Aristotle) or from knowledge (Plato).

We evangelicals stand squarely in the way of Post-modernism. We reject the notion that reality is subjectively defined by each individual. No, Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Period.

Books you should read – 2

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

S.D. Gaede, When Tolerance is No Virtue. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993.

In our culture, there is considerable confusion about how we ought to live with our differences and a cacophony of contradictory justifications for one approach as opposed to another. All appeal to the need of tolerance, but there is nothing like common argument on what that means. The question our culture raises by nature and development is what is truth and what can we believe? Our culture doesn’t know the answers. In fact, we have lost confidence in truth and have come to the conclusion that truth is unattainable. Thus, tolerance moves to the forefront. C. K. Chesterton wrote: Toleration is the virtue of the man without convictions. The Christian Response: A. We need to understand the culture in which we live–one in which relativism is growing which leads to injustice. B. We must know what is right and do it. C. We must seek justice–we cannot turn a blind eye to the injustices related to multi-culturalism. D. We must affirm truth and not tolerate relativism. E. The church must be who it is–it must express its convictions about truth and justice and practice and express tolerance (i.e., love) to the multi-cultural body of Christ.

BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

The Modernization of Protestant Religion in America, Leonard I. Sweet

These are exciting times in which we live! More and more Americans began their walk with God outside their denomination church and stayed there. Why? Sweet, nor I, are being critical of the denominational church but we both are wondering what happened.

Factors that contributed to the decline of the mainline churches are: the growth of individualism, high criticism professionalization of the clergy, unwise and unpopular decisions made by denominational bureaucrats, ecumenism, actionism, pluralism. The end result of all this has been the decline of the mainline churches–both numerically and spiritually. Evangelicals, fundamentalists, and Pentecostal moved to center stage as modernism has been forced into retreat. In characterizing the mainline denominations during these five decades, Sweet notes: “With everything gone, there was little reason for people to stay.”

Sweet gives much attention to the relationship between the denominational leaders and the church members, were growing increasingly distant. This led to the leadership taking stands without considering the beliefs and feelings of the people in the pews, which then resulted in a growing distrust by the members of their leaders. Sweet describes these developments as a loss of mastery and mandate–that is, the loss of mastery of the common touch and mandate of the common faith.

Some have thought these to be exciting developments. Others see these as a dangerous trend toward existentialism and away from confessional faith. You will have to decide.

HOME

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

In The Odyssey, Homer emphasizes the importance of family and home. After being absent from his home and family in Ithaca for almost 20 years, Odysseus sits daily on the shores of Calypso’s island, Ogygia, “wearing out his soul with lamentation and tears” (63) because he longs to return to his home. Athena, who argues with Zeus to allow Odysseus to go home against the wishes of Poseidon tells her father Odysseus “would be happy to see as much as the smoke leaping up from his native land, and then to die” (12) knows how much he wants to be with his family again.

I have lived six weeks on the road–literally six weeks–I have not lay in my bed or scratched my dog’s ears–in six weeks–I miss home terribly. I “wear out my soul with lamentation.”

That feeling was more than mitigated, however, last week when I had the privilege to stay with a home school family, the Chows, outside San Francisco. They are some of the finest people in the world. Hospitable, generous, and loving, they made their home my home. And I am grateful.

It felt a lot like home. Thank you!

Odysseus further conveys the significance of his family relationships by refusing the appealing bargain of “Calypso, a radiant creature” (11), which would give him immortality under the stipulation that he must forget his family in Ithaca and stay with her for eternity. When Odysseus is set free from Calypso’s clutches by Hermes and informed that his journey to Ithaca would be a challenging one, he still chooses to depart so that he can be with his family once again. Odysseus’s homeward bound takes ten years and involves several tumultuous experiences with mortals, gods, and monsters. Odysseus saves his men from the blissful drugs of the Lotus-Eaters and the wicked enchantments of Circe. Also, he rescues them from the Laestrygonians, who were a cannibal race of giants. Odysseus led his men pass the enticing Sirens and in addition, he surpasses the six-headed monster Charybdis. He even lands on the treacherous island of Ogygia again after his ship gets wrecked all before stepping foot in Ithaca.

Not only does Odysseus battle his way through hordes of dangerous instances to reach home, he also brawls with the suitors in Ithaca to reclaim his abode. Odysseus valiantly slaughters the sinister suitors who laid siege to his house with help from his son and Athena. This was the greatest obstacle that Odysseus triumphed over so that he could be with his family.

I have found in the homes of people like the Chows, a gentle song, more appealing than the Sirens!

An Excuse To Be Redeemed

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of my favorite philosophers. No, I do not agree with him. But I really appreciate that he called the hand of the naturalists. If life is a struggle for existence in which the fittest survive, then strength is the ultimate virtue–to call “strength” a virtue truly was even too radical for the naturalists/evolutionists. But, Neitzsche is right. For the first time, virtue is not connected to knowledge (Plato). Good is what survives, which wins; bad is what gives way and falls (Will Durant). The naturalists were brave enough to reject religion, Nietzsche said, but too cowardly to reject Christian morality.

Nietzsche warned us, though, that with the collapse of Christianity and the rise of nascent naturalism, a totalitarian state was inevitable. We see in the life of Adolf Hitler the dark fulfillment of that prophecy.

The good news, however, is that there is strength in weakness, in Christ. We are crucified with Christ nonetheless we live . . . Gals. 2: 20. Nietzsche got it wrong. Christianity is not an excuse to be powerless but an excuse to be redeemed. Within that theological concept–something that cannot be duplicated philosophically–the believer is more fulfilled that Nietzsche taunted superman.

Back Corner Part 3

Friday, August 21st, 2009

With surprisingly little compunction, Big Daddy banned Uncle Roy not only from the bathroom=2 0but also from the house.

A king snake, however, was too valuable a thing to loose permanently so Big Momma skillfully won Uncle Roy’s forgiveness by depositing half-dead, acquired from mouse traps, mice behind the ice box. Eventually Uncle Roy sullenly returned to the back of the ice box–a true ice box–full of block ice from Mr. Badgett’s ice house and on top of little mice. From this newly acquired launching point Uncle Roy effectively protected his, and my mother’s domicile. He occasionally protruded his nose from under the ice box, but only on the rarest occasions, like when a large roach wandered by. The naturally reticent Uncle Roy could not resist this delicacy. The family hard knew he was there although when the new kitchen disappeared Uncle Roy allegedly was the miscreant who disposed of the feline pet. However, this was never proven and a king snake was more difficult to replace than a kitten.

Despite Big Momma’s reptile approbation, the downside of having Uncle Roy in the family was the growth of a pervasive herpephobia that appeared in all my mother’s clan.

My mother’s childhood home was an old army officer barrack house moved by huge six wheeled trucks from a World War I Greenville, Mississippi, Airfield placed incautiously on eight concrete cinder blocks, it was a nature refuge for a menagerie of unwelcome visitors. Nonetheless, during the Depression years, this abode was more the rule than the exception.

Unceremoniously the movers had deposited this old barrack hut on buckshot ground by Macon Bayou, which also was the city sewage. The house was mortally wounded and exhibited a quarter inch crack all the20way across its middle portion. During the winter, when the ground swelled with moisture, the crack closed. In the summer, when the buckshot cracked so did the house. Over the years, the winters grew dryer and the summers hotter until there was a permanent crack behind Big Momma’s china cabinet to the edge of the screened in back porch.

A generous house for most families, the old army barracks was never big enough for my mother’s family. Three boys and five girls lived together in three-bedrooms. Big Momma and Big Daddy lived in one room, the boys in another, and the girls in a final room. Gender, not chronology, determined commorancy. Mercifully there were more girls than boys.

Back Corner Part 2

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Nonetheless, both the Graystone and Back Corner were approximately of the same species, but the Back Corner Hotel had bragging rights–every Friday night the Back Corner Owls, our high school football team ordered steaks, fries, and milk shakes before the big game. This blessed dispensation assured the proprietors of the Back Corner Hotel that they would have a steady stream of customers. If the apex of Back Corner power and prestige chose the Back Corner, who in the general population would argue? To show solidarity with the football team, hundreds of residents would wait in line to eat black-eyed peas, gumbo, collard greens, and fried chicken before the game. They wanted to stand beside their heroes in body as well as spirit.

In addition to our two motels, there was one drugstore that gave credit and dispensed viscous chocolate sundaes to waiting patrons. The great attraction of the drugstore was the proprietor’s daughter whose bosom was the lodestone for dozens of excessive testerone endowed Back Gate male youth. There were two department stores: Wolchanskies and Martins.

Wolchanskies was run by Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Dark, dreary, and always smelling different, like a scene from Casablanca, Wolchanskies had the latest fashions. Only stores in Greenville, Mississippi, could compete with Wolchanskies.

My mother grew up 10-12 blocks from Wolchanskies. Big Daddy’s house was only a little bit better than a shack. Born in a rambling clapboard house next to the city sewage, mom always understood limitation and constraint. Her home sat on buckshot clay that cracked and buckled every summer. The smell of feces and mildew intensified every hot summer afternoon. Behind her house was a wood-lot too often the victim of unscrupulous foresters. Enchanted trails and moss covered paths that would pique the imagination of most children were compromised in my mothers forest by young locust trees unimpeded by shade and larger competition. Sunlight was everywhere abundant. Since there was no reason to grow up and clasp sunlight, the young trees grew out, and selfishly deprived all the pretty things in the forest of light and life.

The forest was hardly a forest at all–it was a tangle of bush size trees– and since it was warm and dry enough on the western edge, cane rattlers loved to slither in the shadows of the deadly Arkansas summer sun. On the eastern edge, joining the sewage reservoir, moccasins hissed warnings at mockingbirds, snapping turtles, and inquisitive little girls. My mother learned very early the advantages of limitation and constraint. She learned to measure each step carefully, a lways looking at what was in front of her. Controlling, as much as possible, where her next step would land.

Not all snakes were my mother’s enemies. One huge, black and red king snake named Uncle Roy, lived under the old piano. Actually the piano didn’t carry a tune at all. Big Momma kept it around to house Uncle Roy. An aggressive king snake brought all sorts of advantages to my mother’s family–mice were noticeably absent. And no mocassin would dare bare his fangs!

Enjoying the only cool place in Big Momma’s house, occasionally Uncle Roy slept behind the family toilet during the inferno Arkansas summers. This very nearly was his undoing, however. Once, when Big Daddy was enjoying a respite and the latest Back Corner Times, Uncle Roy affectionately licked Big Daddy’s right achilles’ tendon.

Such unfeigned, if unsolicited affection was even too much even for Big Daddy, Uncle Roy’s most fervent supporter. While his admiration for Uncle Roy’s rodent venery skills were second to known, he could not tolerate this violation of his most private savoir faire. Saltating with no thought of modesty, Big Daddy, in all his sartorial splendor, quickly hopped out of the bathroom into the dining room where the whole family was gathered for supper. Then, with his pin-stripped railroad overalls around his legs, he ignobly fell to the ground with his uncovered derriere signaling his unconditional surrender to man and to reptile alike. Uncle Roy coyly retreated behind an old ceramic garbage can.

This was the first only time my mother saw her father in such a vulnerable state.

Back Corner

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Back Corner had 4081 residents when my mother was born in 1931. By that point she had four siblings ahead of her and three, all brothers, were still to come. Big Momma had five girls and then three boys. Like her husband, Big Momma’s family was slightly off-center but at least they came in gender order. This made housing assignments much easier.&nb sp; One daughter, Patricia, the youngest died, and while she was sorely missed, her presence set off an equilibrium that was critical to my mother’s fragile household.

Back Gate began at the railroad stock yard north of Edgar Dempsey’s Pepsi Plant and ended at the railroad round house south of Tip Pugh’s Rice Dryer. When the railroads stopped depositing customers and picking up cotton bails, Back Corner weakened and never really recovered. By the end of World War II huge Harvester Trucks replaced the Steam Clippers.

The illness was not fatal, however, and as I sat this last early December enjoying my mother’s last few weeks, Back Corner was still about 5002. By now, though, the tired town had deteriorated to a critical mass of old people too tired to move and young children too young to think about it yet.

When my mother was growing up, in the 1930s, Back Corner boasted of two hotels, the Back Corner Hotel and20the Graystone Hotel. If strangers stopped in Back Corner, they were stranded between more comfortable boarding houses in Greenville, Mississippi, and Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Most gladly traded the ebullience of the Sam Peck Hotel in Little Rock for the pecan pies of the Greystone Cafe.

The Greystone Hotel was strategically placed between the train station and the pool hall. It’s marble floor and chandeliers promised its patrons a luxurious evening with some equally roseate late evening activity at the pool hall.

My Uncle Cutter, married to my mother’s oldest sister, Aunt Mary, ran the pool hall. Besides being of the wealthiest men in town, and being an inveterate and successful bass fisherman, Uncle Cutter sold one of the best collections of girlie magazines in southeastern Arkansas. In a town where there was no real thing for white patrons unless they wished to cross the color line–prostitution in Back Gate was esseentially an African-American trade–Uncle Cutter’s pool halll was a veritable den of inequity. As a young visitor (Uncle Cutter was careful not to let me look at the magazines) I never understood why it was called a pool hall–virtually no one played pool in it. So much of life was like that in Back Gate–smoke andd mirrors. The genuine article was hard to procure.

The Graystone Hotel looked like what I imagined a Little Rock or Vicksburg hotel to look like–it was a four story white brick structure–th“the largest building in town. We were all proud that it greeted train visitors as they debarked from the train.

The Back Corner Hotel, on the other hand, was a one level Ranch that looked like most of the houses in which we lived. That disappointed most of the local people–who wantedd to stay in a hotel that looked like your house. But many visitors found it modern facilities–the Back Gate had toilets in each room–the Graystone asked itss patrons to share one on each hall–the Back Gate even had a coffeee peculator in each room–more appealing.

Big Daddy

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

My mother’s father, James Jesse Bayne, I called him Big Daddy, had run away from his 2 room, Louisiana pine barren home when he was eight. For the next 7 years he lived in woods and swamps in the wild Delta bottoms. Living on the outskirts of early 20th century southern towns, he experienced poverty that was sublime in its intensity.

Southern cuisine and lifestyle are the epitome of conservation and economy. Practically nothing is discarded from any animal: intestines, gizzards, stomachs–it all was eaten. There was precious little left for hoboes like Big Daddy, who ate crawdads and red-bellied brim.

There was not much that was big about Big Daddy. At 16 His blond–almost white–hair blue-eyed headd oversaw a body that was not symmetrical. His left arm was at least 2 inches longer than his right.

It was not easy being a vagabond in the South. There was not much left for Big Daddy. Therefore, in those early years–far tooo early–Big Daddy lost all sentimentality and forgot the meaning off metaphor. Life was harsh and unforgiving.

The first complete meal he had was when he was drafted into the army during World War I. While in the army, he drove steam driven trains all over western Europe. He even enjoyed a little intruigue: he drove troops over to fight the Bolsheviks in 1919.

He returned to marry my grandmother who was a student at a Bastrop Finishing School for Young Ladies. Much impressed by his good looks Big Momma, also ironically called Jessie Louise, married Big Daddy in th e middle of the Great Flu Epidemic. They wore sanitary masks as they stood at the altar in their local Baptist church and exchanged vows. Some snickered later and wonder if they consummated their vows later wearing the same masks!

Big Momma taught Big Daddy to read.

The marriage was shaky from the start. Big Momma, a southern belle in consciousness if not by vocation, found it hard to adjust to the poverty that post-World War I railroad wages engendered. Besides, she had a potent temper and he was a closet alcoholic. This was a volatile combination and there was an undercurrent of tension in my mother’s family.

They moved to Back Gate where my mother and her eight siblings were born.

Mom had lived all of her sixty-eight years in the same un pretentious, Southeast Arkansas oxymoron/small town named Back Corner. Back Corner neither backed up to anything and nor was it on anyone’s corner. It lay half way between Memphis, TN, and Vicksburg, MS.