Osler's Razor

For the first time in years, I watched the entire Oscar awards show, and boy am I glad I did. What a bizarre ending! Warren Beatty was given the wrong card, and had Faye Dunaway announce that LaLaLand won Best Picture-- which was wrong. Moonlight won. Mayhem ensued.

I guess now people will go easier on Steve Harvey:

TRW Joe, I can see it:

Bacon, eggs, toast, jam,
Papa loved this good breakfast,
all ninety-nine years.

Christine described one of my favorites:

Steaming bowl of oatmeal
on a cold winter morning
Warms me to the core.

I don't share the Medievalist's tastes:

Drinking ice coffee,
Cinnamon raisin bagel,
with peanut butter.

But I am all in with Craig A!:

Hot Coffee, western
Omelet with home fries, ketchup.
Morning paper: Heaven.

Last weekend, I gave the sermon at First Covenant Church here in Minneapolis. If you would like to hear the podcast, you can download it at the bottom of this page: http://www.1stcov.org/

It felt risky to talk about race, and it was exhausting. Important things are like that, though, in both ways.

I got a letter from a federal inmate this week that referred to something I had done as an "OG move."

The termed stumped me. What could that stand for? Old Grump? Organizational Graphing? Maybe Offensive Guard? None of it worked.

So, I asked my clinic students, who informed me that it was "Original Gangster."

I'm still not quite sure if that is good or bad...

My parents are visiting. And even if they weren't, I would still highlight my dad's haiku:

Sometimes I can't tell
if my children are sick or
having bad school days.

This morning at 9:30 I am giving the sermon at First Covenant Church in Minneapolis. The topic is race. Here is the part of the reading I have chosen, Luke 11:34:

Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light; but if it is not healthy it is full of darkness.

It's important to recognize that the "light" referred to here is not "light" color as a pigment, but rather the light of the sun that illuminates all of the colors and is necessary to see what is really before us. 

Our eye is the lamp. How do we see the world? Is it through a lens of racial assumptions, and what can we do about that?

I realize that it is odd to pick a white guy to speak about race (unless it is Bob Darden talking about the Civil Rights movement or something like that). It is  important to hear Black and Brown and Asian and Native voices-- we all need to hear from each other. But white people need to speak, too. If we don't, it is nothing less than asking the victims of racism to explain why racism exists. That's an unfair exercise-- they didn't create it and propogate it. We did. And if we don't try to voice that sad truth, explain how it happened, and set out ways to eradicate it, we are abrogating our responsibility.

I fear that sometimes what white people (including me) want more than anything is to just be told that they aren't racist and be done with it-- regardless of what their actions or attitudes are. Often, we pre-emptively declare it, like President Trump announcing this week that he is the Least Racist Person. The historical focus of our study of race sometimes inadvertently propels this. We watch movies or see pictures from the past-- right up to the 60's-- and feel good that things aren't like that anymore-- and then make an illogical jump to assuming we live in a mythical post-racial world. We are comfortable looking at photos of attack dogs going after protesters in Birmingham (that was the past, thank goodness), but not so much looking at the video of Philandro Castille. 

And that's because there is still racism. Along with our discussions of the past, we need to acknowledge the present, and accept responsibility for creating a different future together with those who have been oppressed by racism.

This isn't the sermon... to hear that, come by First Cov!

 

 

Yesterday it was 63 degrees here-- eight degrees above the record high for that day. It's really weird. I know there are people who think Minnesota is just too cold (i.e., pretty much everyone else in America), but Minnesota NEEDS to be cold! We have rinks that are melting, ski areas losing snow... it just isn't right.

In 2008, I got to serve on a committee with theologian David Gushee. He seemed like a thoughtful and interesting guy.  Recently Gushee wrote this:

A few weeks ago I was disinvited again.

To be disinvited is (or ought to be) a rather rare privilege. It happens when first you are eagerly invited to do something, like give a speech or write a book chapter. You say yes. You hold the date on the calendar, do some preparation, decline other invitations.

Then, some time later the invitation is suddenly withdrawn. The event will go on, but it turns out that you are no longer welcome. Something has shifted about you, or about whoever invited you, and now your presence is a problem.

To not be invited somewhere in the first place, that’s no problem. No one has a right to a speaking or writing invitation.

To be invited and then disinvited by the same group, that’s special.

This particular disinvitation was not the first I have received. But it was one of the most surprising.

Here’s the backstory:

From 1994 to 2014, I was one of the go-to ethicists in the evangelical Christian world. If there was a statement to sign (or write), I was usually invited. If there was a major conference on ethics, I was often featured. If there was a book project, I might well be asked to participate. It was a good run.

But then I made a mistake, at least from one perspective. In October 2014, I wrote a book called “Changing Our Mind.” In it, I gingerly explored the possibility that LGBT people should no longer be treated differently from others in the church. They should be welcome on equal terms, not more, not less. I tried to show it might be possible to get to this conclusion without compromising core Christian moral commitments.

From a certain liberal perspective the book was too little, too late. After all, it was 2014. But from a certain evangelical perspective the book was too much, too soon. I had crossed a bright red line that separates evangelical Christians from others of lesser orthodoxy.

The hailstorm of rejection I received after publishing that book will be described more fully in my memoir, which Westminster John Knox Press will be publishing this fall. It will be called “Still Christian,” a claim about myself that my fundamentalist and evangelical Christian enemies might well reject.

In it, I will describe what my life was like from 2014 to 2016. It included a bunch of disinvitations (and worse). Numerous events that were on the calendar were blown right off.

By fall 2016, I had imagined that the wall of rejections, attacks, criticisms, and exclusions had finally come to an end. While I came to understand that there was not a chance in any universe that I would ever again be invited to perform any kind of service for any evangelical body, I had thought the time of disinvitations was finally over.

But there was one last chance to make me pay for my sins.

I was scheduled to speak this coming April to the Protestant Church-Owned Publishers Association. This is a trade group of about three dozen Protestant denominational book publishers. In 2016, their representative invited me to be the keynote speaker at their annual trade meeting in Nashville, Tenn. I put the date on my calendar.

But then the other shoe dropped.

I received a note about a month ago from the same person who had invited me. I was now being disinvited to this event. The reason? One of the publishers from a conservative denomination had threatened to resign from the organization if I was allowed to speak to it.

This publisher also suggested that other conservative publishers might join them in walking away if I gave a speech. They wouldn’t just boycott that meeting; they would take their ball and go home. Forever. And ever. Amen.

This was apparently too much pressure for the organization to bear, and so they folded like a tent. I was disinvited.

I can relate; recently I was disinvited from a long-ago-scheduled date (yesterday) to speak at Baylor's chapel. I wrote about that on Sunday in the Waco paper; you can read it here.

Like a lot of things coming out of Baylor lately, this mostly left me feeling sad. Sometimes bad things happen with slashing and burning; other times it is a stain creeping slowly outward, consuming what is good little by little. 

So, there were a lot of great haiku about a Panda President last week, including the triumphant return of CTL. Welcome back!

However, this batch included one of my favorite haikus ever to appear on the Razor, for its succinct wisdom. It is this, from IPLawGuy:

Panda President
Manuchurian Candidate?
Already got one.

Next Sunday, I will be giving the sermon at First Covenant Church in Minneapolis-- all are welcome, and the service starts at 9:30.

This week, though, the liturgy for many churches will include a challenging passage from Matthew:

"Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”

To me, this is a pretty straightforward instruction not to take oaths, and I take it seriously-- I don't say oaths. It is awkward sometimes, but important to me.

Am I wrong? Do others read this passage another way?

I keep wavering between politics and pandas these days. So why not combine them? Our theme for this week will be "What if a panda was president?" (It is a theme we have previously explored, though not in haiku).

Here, I will go first:

President Panda,
The nation loves your AG:
Yogi's friend Boo-Boo!

Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 syllable pattern, and have some fun!

Donald Trump is doing a lot of (mostly dumb) things that no president has done before, but being angry at the judiciary for halting his plans is not one of them. Sure, his language ("so-called judge") was unusually dopey, but his tweeting out dumb things is not the same as undermining the judicial branch. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch was right in describing Trump's comments as "disheartening" and "demoralizing," but we must distinguish between that and gutting the power of the judiciary.

The danger of exaggerating and saying that his ignorant comments equate to undermining the judiciary is this: Trump is fully capable of actually undermining the judiciary, and it will be important to mark that moment when it occurs, to spur a full-fledged counter-movement.  Here is what can happen: If a court, even the Supreme Court, orders that the President cannot do something (like bar Syrians from entering the country as refugees under any circumstances) Trump has the ability-- not the right, but the ability-- to ignore that order and just direct his administrators to go ahead with the policy deemed unconstitutional. The courts don't have an army or police force. The executive branch controls both.

THAT's when we will have a real constitutional crisis, and this administration seems fully capable of that terrible mistake. 

So, I was all worked up for a political rant and went back over the events of the day, and it all was just too depressing. Then I started looking at panda videos. And that was better. So here is the best panda video I found:

So... I had a piece in the Waco Tribune Herald on Sunday, which basically recaps how I was wrong about Donald Trump.  You can read that here.

But, two other things really made the weekend. First, the Super Bowl... yeah, I did watch it. The whole thing. And I'm glad I did!

Second, there was this:

Sleepy Walleye got to the heart of it:

There are a couple
Key global commodities
Clean air and water.

While I knew EXACTLY what Craig A was getting at:

Mini-Cooper S
German owned, Brit inspired
Too much fun import.

And the Medievalist spoke for many:

I love Spanish wine,
Dark velvety red opaque,
Pleasure in a glass.

President Trump followed the tradition of other presidents and spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington this week, saying this (and no, I'm not going to quote the weird part about "The Apprentice"):

I will tell you that and I tell you that from somebody that has had material success and knows tremendous numbers of people with great material success, the most material success. Many of those people are very, very miserable, unhappy people.
And I know a lot of people without that, but they have great families. They have great faith; they don't have money, at least, not nearly to the extent. And they're happy. Those, to me, are the successful people, I have to tell you.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: I was blessed to be raised in a churched home. My mother and father taught me that to whom much is given, much is expected. I was sworn in on the very Bible from which my mother would teach us as young children, and that faith lives on in my heart every single day.

There is some truth in there. For whatever else you might think, Trump isn't over-scripted, at least.

A lot of people had a problem with what Trump said at the National Prayer Breakfast. My problem is with the National Prayer Breakfast itself. I have never liked the idea of a prayer breakfast as a Christian who cares about what Christ actually taught (as I have said before):

First, the centerpiece of a prayer breakfast is usually the very public prayer by an honored figure such as a governor or former quarterback (or in this case, the President). But how does this jibe with Jesus’ teaching? The truth, if you believe the gospels to contain truth, is that prayer is to be a private matter; Jesus’s instructions were that “when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” I am always surprised how easily some people dismiss this clear instruction (and they are often the same ones who decide who is and isn't a "real" Christian based on their interpretation of much more ambiguous passages).

Second, a truly Christian prayer breakfast would feature an utterly vacant head table. This is what Jesus taught about banquets: “When you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” Yet, somehow, the head table always seems full from the start.

Finally, the prayer breakfast is structured so that the primary speaker is presented as a heroic figure. He (and it is usually a “he”) is given a glowing introduction, a seat of honor, and more often than not a standing ovation when the prayer is concluded. How seductive this must be! Those of us with theological ambitions, meanwhile, cannot help imagining ourselves as one of these Super Christians as we watch from the back. Of course, like all who are honored, these Prayer Heroes are held to impossible standards and when subjected to scrutiny too often see their status dissolve in scandal or confusion. Is it the seduction of power and privilege? Could this be what Christ himself warned against in teaching “when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men?”

In the end, the prayer breakfast is structured to ignore the key nutrient of the Christian faith, which is humility. It is not in gazing up at the Super Christian (or the President as the President) that I glimpse God in others. More often, it is in a humbler scene, fraught with quiet and light: The silent circle of Quakers, the Catholics kneeling with reverence and cupped hands, the Mormons on bicycles, and the Baptists with hammers, building a home where once there was none.

Not that I am a nut for the NFL, but I usually find myself somewhat interested. That's especially true of the Super Bowl, which is a pretty good spectacle as those things go. But... I'm not feeling it this year. Maybe it is the flood on my Twitter feed of people either exuberant over recent developments or declaring that "We all live in Crazy Town now!" Maybe it's the weather. I don't know.

Yesterday, people were rooting around for information about Donald Trump's appointee to the Supreme Court, Hon. Neil Gorsuch of the 10th Circuit. I did some digging of my own (I have never met him), and what I learned was that Judge Gorsuch is well regarded in the legal community, especially by those who have worked with him. He seems well qualified for the job. Elections have consequences, and this appointment is one of them.

The other discussion point from yesterday won't have nearly the same long-term impact, but was still pretty fascinating. While giving a presentation to begin Black History Month, President Trump said this:

I am very proud now that we have a museum on the National Mall where people can learn about Rev. King, so many other things. Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.

People noticed, of course, that it seemed odd that President Trump seemed to think Frederick Douglass was still alive. Luckily, Press Secretary Sean Spicer was right there to clear things up:



So, "the contributions of Frederick Douglass will be more and more." Ok!

Also, The Iraq and everywhere, such as.

Well, I'm taking the day off of heavy subjects. We'll get back to that tomorrow. Here is a cat video: