[Yes, I love puns. Sorry.] My main concerns today can best be expressed in two questions:
1. Is it EVER a good idea to loan family members money?
2. What will I say about Old Testament and Modern Prophets on Saturday morning to a Church group?
First, those of you who know me know that I am usually pretty cryptic (or just plain disdainful) about my youth. I make no secret that my father ran the family into the ground financially and emotionally with a series of bad decisions and bad behaviors. Into that authority-void, I stepped as a 15-year-old with a part-time job and a solvent bank account. I worked. I paid a lot of the bills. I tried to be the parent. And, when I got the chance to go to college (on scholarship and a lot of loans), I jumped at the chance and essentially ran away from home to get an education.
I have been running ever since.
Today, my brother, whom I love and worry about, has teleported me back 25 years, by asking me for a loan. His need is real, but my eagerness to remain untethered financially to the family I stopped saving years ago is strong. Can this turn out well? Someone will come out of this resenting someone for something. I hope I am wrong about that. I will probably take a leap of faith and loan him some money.
Second, what can I say to my Church's Men's Group about Prophets three days before the Presidential election? What should I say? What should I NOT say?
Prophets of the Hebrew Bible appear, on the surface, as wholly depressing and grouchy. No doubt. But I have found that they are often trying to slap a sleeping populace out of their stupor and their slavery to whatever idols they have recently created for themselves, and hope to make said populace reassert their relationships with God and each other. Community (big 'C') does not work if we stare nightly only at TV. I believe that our Golden Calf is really a flat-screen made by LG or Samsung. In an analogy I repeat often, if aliens landed on an abandoned planet (perhaps after a surprisingly inclusive Rapture), they would reconstruct our belief structure as the worship of TV and indoor plumbing. The glass/plastic god and the porcelain god.
Are there prophets around us today? Has God gone silent, or are we the numbed and zombie-like masses who can't understand the calls when we hear them? Facebook.com, of which I am a new member, is neither a Face nor a Book.
Question of the day: where are the voices, the original and troubling voices that challenge you and me to get up off the sofa and DO SOMETHING? Prophets are, by my definition, those who tell us truths we don't want to hear. Phrased another way, they do what some sermons used to do for me, which is 'convict' me; they cut into me and make me uncomfortable in my action and inaction. Some prophets speak with conviction, total self-confidence and persuasiveness. Their prophetic voice is only measurable by the discomfort they inspire and the awakening they can sometimes facilitate.
But we have to decide to wake up and not hit the cultural 'snooze' buttons (you pick yours from the myriad choices that modern society has dreamed up). Dreamed up. Interesting that we even talk about actions of our modern culture as if happening in a dream-state. To quote a Kate Bush song from Hounds of Love: "Wake Up! Look who's here to see you."
1. Is it EVER a good idea to loan family members money?
2. What will I say about Old Testament and Modern Prophets on Saturday morning to a Church group?
First, those of you who know me know that I am usually pretty cryptic (or just plain disdainful) about my youth. I make no secret that my father ran the family into the ground financially and emotionally with a series of bad decisions and bad behaviors. Into that authority-void, I stepped as a 15-year-old with a part-time job and a solvent bank account. I worked. I paid a lot of the bills. I tried to be the parent. And, when I got the chance to go to college (on scholarship and a lot of loans), I jumped at the chance and essentially ran away from home to get an education.
I have been running ever since.
Today, my brother, whom I love and worry about, has teleported me back 25 years, by asking me for a loan. His need is real, but my eagerness to remain untethered financially to the family I stopped saving years ago is strong. Can this turn out well? Someone will come out of this resenting someone for something. I hope I am wrong about that. I will probably take a leap of faith and loan him some money.
Second, what can I say to my Church's Men's Group about Prophets three days before the Presidential election? What should I say? What should I NOT say?
Prophets of the Hebrew Bible appear, on the surface, as wholly depressing and grouchy. No doubt. But I have found that they are often trying to slap a sleeping populace out of their stupor and their slavery to whatever idols they have recently created for themselves, and hope to make said populace reassert their relationships with God and each other. Community (big 'C') does not work if we stare nightly only at TV. I believe that our Golden Calf is really a flat-screen made by LG or Samsung. In an analogy I repeat often, if aliens landed on an abandoned planet (perhaps after a surprisingly inclusive Rapture), they would reconstruct our belief structure as the worship of TV and indoor plumbing. The glass/plastic god and the porcelain god.
Are there prophets around us today? Has God gone silent, or are we the numbed and zombie-like masses who can't understand the calls when we hear them? Facebook.com, of which I am a new member, is neither a Face nor a Book.
Question of the day: where are the voices, the original and troubling voices that challenge you and me to get up off the sofa and DO SOMETHING? Prophets are, by my definition, those who tell us truths we don't want to hear. Phrased another way, they do what some sermons used to do for me, which is 'convict' me; they cut into me and make me uncomfortable in my action and inaction. Some prophets speak with conviction, total self-confidence and persuasiveness. Their prophetic voice is only measurable by the discomfort they inspire and the awakening they can sometimes facilitate.
But we have to decide to wake up and not hit the cultural 'snooze' buttons (you pick yours from the myriad choices that modern society has dreamed up). Dreamed up. Interesting that we even talk about actions of our modern culture as if happening in a dream-state. To quote a Kate Bush song from Hounds of Love: "Wake Up! Look who's here to see you."
2 comments:
I'm certainly curious: what did you say about Prophets?
Rick: more like this. -Bill
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