Paroxysms of Peace

The English word “paroxysm” is an oldie but a goodie. Literally it describes a sudden and/or violent outburst of emotion. You could have a “paroxysm of laughter,” though the term generally has negative connotations. Paroxysms of rage are more common.

The word itself comes from an old Greek word, paroxusmous, which, according to my Greek lexicon, means “stirring up, provoking”. It only appears twice in the New Testament.

The first appearance is in Acts 15:39. Here Paul and Barnabas have what the NIV calls a “sharp disagreement” and the KJV a “contention”. Literally, Luke says they had a paroxusmos so intense that they parted company. The fight, it turns out, was over John Mark (of the Gospel of Mark fame), who had deserted them on their first missionary trip over in Pamphylia. Paul felt he was unreliable and didn’t want to bring him on their next foray. Barnabas begged to differ—begged so sharply that a paroxysm of conflict flared up—begged so sharply that he and Paul parted ways, Barnabas to Cyprus with Mark in tow and Paul off to Cilicia.

It’s a sad story, to be sure, but then, those of us who have been doing ministry for a while now know that churches have split over smaller issues than the roster of the mission committee. And bigger.

But here’s the fascinating thing. Besides its use to describe the “sharp disagreement” in Act 15:39, the word paroxusmos only shows up another time in the New Testament. In Hebrews 10:24 the writer says, “Let us consider how we can spur one another on to love and good deeds.” This is how the NIV renders the verse. NASB says “to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.” Old KJV says, “Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works.”

Literally what it says is something like: “Let us consider one another towards paroxusmon-- incitements, provocations—of love and good deeds.”

Now, former Bible teachers of mine read this blog from time to time, so I need to be careful here not to commit the exegetical fallacy of semantic anachronism, but I find it worth reflection, at least, that the Bible uses the word paroxusmos once to describe a sharp disagreement between two Christian ministers, and elsewhere to describe (in what most biblical scholars would agree is an startling image) our duty to “provoke” one another to Christian love. On the one hand, a paroxusmos led to a deep rift between two friends; on the other hand it leads to Christian charity and shalom.

And I’m reflecting on this especially, because like I say, conflict in ministry is inevitable. Paroxysms of all sort are bound to come. And because we tend to prefer smooth feathers and shiny faces on Sunday morning, I think received wisdom is that they ought to be avoided, or at the very least resolved discretely, even if, in their avoidance or resolution, we find ourselves settling for false peace. At least the tomb looks white, right?

But Hebrews 10:24 and Acts 15:39 fly like two sticks between the spokes of Received Wisdom’s bicycle, sending False Peace head over handlebars. Because when you line these two verses up, they suggest that conflict is not by nature bad; nor is it to be avoided at all cost; and there are fates worse than ruffled feathers.

These two verses suggest that conflict can actually become a catalyst towards charity and service, if it’s entered into for Christ’s sake; and what determines whether or not it will is whether or not the parties involved are really provoking one another for Christ’s sake. (Even Paul and Barnabas’s paroxysm led to love and service in the end. In the short term, it expanded the ministry of the gospel by sending Barnabas to Cyprus and Paul to Cilicia; and in the long term, we have hints that things get patched up between Paul, Mark and Barnabas (see Col 4:10)).

This is hard work.  Paroxysms of any sort (ancient or modern) hurt. But then the cross itself teaches us that the Way of Christ has never avoided the suffering that redemption costs. And conflicts that redeem will cost us: utter humility and risky openness, and above all real, raw honesty about our own goals and agendas in any given dispute. But if well seek those treasures of his Kingdom, first, then we may find that redemptive Paroxysms of Peace are being added to us, as well.

More on Word Clouds

After my last post about preaching and word clouds, I was still wondering: what the word cloud for my whole preaching ministry over the last two years at the FreeWay look like?  Not a few cuts-and-pastings later, I had assembled all of my sermons to date into a single document and run it through Wordle's word cloud generator.  Here's what I came up with.  If you could visualize the cloud of talk hovering over the FreeWay these days, it might look something like this:

I find that curious and kind of fun; but it 's even more curious and more than a bit humbling when you compare it to this:  a (pretty stunning) glimpse at the word clouds of all sixty six books of the Bible: 

And because I couldn't resist, I also did this one: it's the word cloud generated by all the papers I wrote during my time at Seminary.    It's interesting to me to see how different the cloud is as it moves from the "Ivory Tower" down into the local church; but perhaps even more interesting are the similarities.

A Cloud of Witness(es)

The other day I stumbled across Wordle, a website that generates "word clouds" from any text that you paste into its word-cloud engine.  Essentially, it analyses the text, identifies statistically significant words and groups them together into a visually appealing clump; the more often the word appears in the text, the bigger the word in the cloud.  You can then play around with the font, color scheme, layout, and so on.

Word clouds give you a sense of a particular text's major themes, concerns and motifs at an aesthetically pleasing glance.  Someone used Wordle, for instance, to make word clouds of the 66 different books of the Bible.  Check them out here-- they are absolutely fascinating.

Of course, it didn't take me long to wonder the inevitable:  Inasmuch as the better part of my work lies in the world of words, what would the word cloud of my preaching look like?  Because I preach pretty much directly from manuscripts, this is a relatively easy question to answer.  Here, for instance, is a glimpse of the word-cloud hovering over the FreeWay during our recent 7-part series on the Book of Ecclesiastes.



And the next inevitable question, the question that may be, perhaps, the litmus test of a biblical preacher, wasn't long to follow:  how closely does the word cloud for my preaching match the word cloud of the Scripture I'm preaching from?  A humbling question, to be sure, but in some ways an arbitrary one. I could get the exact same word cloud by just reading the text and leaving it at that, and I wouldn't be preaching.  Nevertheless, it's a revealing exercise:  is the cloud of speech I'm raising each Sunday morning at all like the cloud breathing out from the Scriptures themselves?  Are my concerns its concerns, my hobby-horses its hobby-horses, my themes its themes?

For instance this fall I did a series on the "I AM" statements in the Gospel of John.  Here's the word-cloud that series generated:



And just to compare, here is the word cloud of the Gospel of John itself, produced by the good folks over at Sixty Six Clouds.  I will refrain from commentary and leave you to draw your own conclusions.

On Sentences and Theolo-tweets

If you're here today because you're like me and you're curious about the relationship between words and spirituality, do yourself a favor and listen to this. It's an interview Anna Maria Termonti had on CBC's The Current with acclaimed literary critic Stanley Fish, about the place and power of the sentence in our lives. He has some thought-provokingly insightful things to say about the power of a well-crafted sentence, and he says them articulately and eloquently. If nothing more, it will inspire you to try your hand at writing
a scintillating sentence.

If you don't have the 25 minutes to treat yourself today, let me offer you this sample of his musings, by way of tantalization:

"A sentence is an admission by each of us who writes a sentence, or reads one, that we are not where we want to be; that is: a sentence is a statement which indicates distance, both from the people we're talking to, and the objects we're hoping to commune about. And in a theological vision of unity with God, everyone is united, speech is not necessary, meaning is full, and sentences need not be produced. [In other words], sentences, and the need to write them, are signs of our mortality."

Later he will talk incisively about modern technologies like Twitter, and the limitations they place on our ability and willingness to express ourselves in sentences longer than 140 characters. He won't say what you might expect a literary critic to say (that Twitter has somehow irreparably "undermined" the sentence). But he will say this: "If your entire imperative or sense of obligation in relation to sentences can be summed up by words like brevity and concision, you've cut yourself off not only from the pleasures of reading other kinds of sentences, but from the pleasure of trying to produce them." (And he'll say that off the top of his head, too.)

But this brings me to the reason I haven't been able yet to shake this interview.

It's because recently, a rather well known, if controversial Evangelical Pastor from Michigan announced that he's got a new book coming out about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person who ever Lived. And he made his announcement by means of a brief 3 minute promotional video that did little more than ask rhetorical questions about the traditional Christian position on our prospects in the hereafter. And true to his controversial reputation, he implied that some sacred cows may be on their way to a theological burger-joint near you; or, put less metaphorically: that he was about to give the traditional doctrine of Hell some sceptical scrutiny.

The book's slated for release March 29th.

Before the book hit the shelves, however, another well-known, if vociferously straight-laced Evangelical Pastor from Minnesota saw a brief blog post which denounced the book (and its author), unread, as "universalist" (i.e. not "believing in" Hell). This third-hand, hear-say evidence prompted the pastor from Minnesota to tweet this cursive dismissal of the pastor in question: Farewell, Rob Bell.

Rob Bell trended, briefly. The barometer of the Evangelical blog-o-sphere plunged, briefly. Bell's publishers moved the release date for the book up to March 15th. And I think I heard laughing on the way to the bank.

But here's where Stanley Fish comes in, because I'm wondering today what light he might shed on this sordid business, with all his philosophical musings about the power of carefully crafted sentences to enrich our worlds and deepen our lives and humble us with a sense of our own limitation. Because a humble, deep, and generous contribution to theological discourse "Farewell Rob Bell " is not.

To be fair, the aforementioned pastor from Minnesota has tackled pastors that he's disagreed with in book-length dissertations, too (he's sort of the Michael Strahan of the Evangelical world when it comes to tackling pastors he disagrees with). But this 4-word dismissal of a man, an (unread) book, a theological issue and all those who are willing to engage it made me feel especially sad. After all: has Twitter really reduced theology to this? Is our dialogue about God and his plan for his creation worth no more effort and grace than we might exert in vetting the Oscars?

To paraphrase Fish quite liberally: "If your entire imperative in relation to theological issues can be summed up by words like brevity and concision, you've cut yourself off from more than just the pleasure of reading a well-crafted sentence." You've cut yourself off, perhaps, from the pleasure of really truthing one another in love.

Top Lyrics of 2010

The problem is that these kinds of lists are entirely subjective, and if I tried to explain why the following song lyrics hit me the way they did this year, I'd only betray them; so I offer them here with the simple explanation that each of the following lines hit me somehow or somewhere this year, on the heights or in the depths of ministry, and brought me out of the mire or back down to earth, as the case may be.


"I remember the day when you said you weren't afraid to die / I don't think you're brave for it / I just think you're more afraid of being alive" John Mark McMillan, The Medicine


"When I was all messed up and I heard opera in my head / your love was like a light bulb hanging over my bed" U2, Ultraviolet


"I'm so far from what I want to be / Oh I really am my own worst enemy / Please don't let me get the better of me / Take this earthly thing and make in finally / something heavenly" Downhere, Something Heavenly


"There's a man down here / somewhere in-between the Saturday cartoons and the dirty magazines / He's raising the dead in the graveyards / where we've laid down our dreams / and his name is hope" John Mark McMillan, Between the Cracks


"In an inter-stellar burst, I'm back to save the universe" Radiohead, Airbag

"The majestic voice of God I hear / saying this is the way. / Turn around and walk here / And walk here." Liana Klassen, The Way


"One day, I am gonna grow wings / a chemical reaction / hysterical and useless / hysterical and / let down and hanging around" Radiohead, Let Down

"You came to take us / all things go, all things go / to recreate us / all things grow, all things grow" Sufjan Stevens, Chicago (thank you to Jon Coutts for this one: it has become a bit of a family anthem for us).

The Gift of Understanding

The other day my son said to me in passing and with all seriousness, "Dad, now I understand what you do and how hard it is."


Perhaps obviously, this stopped me in my tracks. "What do you mean?" I asked.


"Well, I realized that, basically, you have to write an essay every single week." He went on to explain that his teacher had assigned him an essay that day, and since this was the second one in as many weeks, he had groaned inwardly. He said, "I thought, 'I don't want to write another essay, we just did one last week.' And then I realized, this is what Dad has to do all the time. Now I understand."


That was it: "Now I understand." And it's hard to explain, but as we talked, it was like I could feel a belt in my chest that had been two notches too tight for too long suddenly loosen; as if those two simple words, "I understand," had spoken balm over a place in my heart I didn't even realize was itching until they touched it.

And I think I understand a bit better, now, too. I understand why the prayer of St. Francis has that bit in it about being a channel of God's peace by seeking not so much to be understood, but to understand. Because if this moment of empathy with my son is any indication, then to really understand another person, and to let them know they are really understood, this is, or can be, a profound invitation to peace.

What the?

Once when I was teaching I happened to overhear a girl at the back of the room talking about her ex-boyfriend. This jilted lover was expressing her bitterness over the cause of the jilting, and then drew a somewhat crass parallel between her anger and sexual intercourse, using an expletive that started with the 6th letter of the alphabet.

In short: she dropped the "f-bomb." And then she likened her ex to an unmentionable part of the human body.

Of course, a teacher's ears are finely tuned to this kind of "inappropriate verbiage," and I called her on it. But rather than eating her words, as most students would have done, she stood by her work: "What's the big deal, anyways?" she demanded. "It's just a word."

I didn't really have an answer for her, except to appeal to rules made by higher authorities that I knew she wouldn't have acknowledged anyways (the school board, society, a dusty old book with gilt lettering on its cover). So instead I tried to explain that using taboo words like these were actually an indication of ignorance-- a sign that the speaker is either too lazy or too stupid to find more accurate, more witty, more creative ways to express himself. And then I added (for good measure) that because I knew she was neither lazy nor stupid, it was unbecoming of her to leave others with the impression that she was.

That answer got me through to the bell. But I've thought about that question off and on ever since: What is the big deal about these shocking words?

Even appeals to the highest authority will only get you so far. To be sure, in Ephesians 5:4 the Good Book warns us not to let "obscenity" sully our lips. But then, back in Ezekiel 23, God's own prophet likens Israel's political aliance with Egypt to "adultery"-- and then describes her Egyptian "lovers" in terms that I might blush to repeat in a locker-room, let alone behind the pulpit.

So the question lingers: what is the big deal?

If my student were to ask me that same question today-- why does it matter if I swear?-- I think I'd take a different tack. "It's because you're created in the Image of God," I'd say.

And when she looked at me sideways, I'd explain: there's this ancient story from the cradle of humanity that says when the Creator made the world, he made it by speaking. He spoke things into existence. And then when he made humans, he said: "I'm going to make you in my 'Image,'" which basically means we're given a special role by the Creator to carry on (in small ways) the work that he began.

And then I'd point out that, if God creates the World by speaking, and we are made in his image; then it sort of follows that, to a lesser degree, humans "create worlds" by speaking, too. And it's true: human speech is always "world-creating" because our words create the realities we inhabit.

So when we take a word, for instance, that literally describes sexual intercourse, and use it in ways that are shocking, violent, degrading or empty; then, like it or not, in that spoken word we're actually creating a world where sex itself is shocking, violent, degrading, and empty for us. At the same time, we're destroying that world the Creator is after, where sexuality is affirming and tender and life-giving.

So the question is not: "did you utter any of the phonemes found on this arbitrary list of taboo words?" The question really is: are you using speech to create, or to destroy? Are you Imaging God in your talk?

That's a better answer, I think. And when we ask the question like that, interestingly, we find that there may actually be times when using words that are shocking, even taboo, can actually be a creative act, a step towards answering our calling as creatures made in the image of the creator.

Ezekiel, I think, got this.

So did the author of the Hebrews. In one place he's talking to people who are experiencing God's "discipline" and asking why, and he says (according to the NIV): "If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons." But the word translated "illegitimate children" there is actually a rather shocking term in the Greek, a word not necessarily suited to polite society (it's not for nothing the KJV renders it: "If ye be without chastisement ... then ye are bastards and not sons"). Because perhaps it's only in the shock of this scandalous speech that we actually feel the scandal of wanting to enjoy the Christian life without without the sometimes difficult but always loving discipline of God.

Even the author of Ephesians 5:4, I think, understood this power of speech. In Philippians 3:8, after listing all the religious accolades and spiritual accomplishments he's accrued in life, he says: but I consider all that "rubbish" compared to the goal of winning Christ. That's how the NIV renders the verse, but "rubbish," it turns out, is not near earthy enough. The word in Greek--skubala-- though not quite an "s-word" itself--certainly would have raised more eyebrows in the Philippian church than mere "rubbish" does today. The KJV renders it "dung," but for dynamic equivalence, I've heard that "crap" (or its scatological synonyms) might not be too far off.


And if we could hear that shocking skubala with the ears of the Philippian Christians Paul's writing to here, we might actually discover ourselves standing in a fresh-made world where there really is no crown in heaven or on earth that looks gold, compared to the all-surpassing riches of Christ.

And that's a big deal. It's never "just a word."

On Logophilia and Faith

As the header of my blog suggests, offering reflections on "words" (along with God, life, faith, love, and spirituality) is a raison d'etre for terra incognita. And the "words" part wasn't included just so the header would scan; as a Christian I'm quite convinced that the words we speak are of profound spiritual weight and deep theological significance. Don't believe me? Just read Colossians 4:6, or Ephesians 4:29, or Proverbs 16:24, or Proverbs 10:11, or the grand-daddy of them all, Matthew 12:36.


As Jaques Ellul says, "Since the beginning of time, human beings have felt a pressing need to frame for themselves something different from the verifiable universe, and we have formed it through language. This universe is what we call truth” and "Truth assails me and circumvents me with mystery. Everything seems to depend on evidence; reality is evident; sight, naturally, gives me evidence. But the truth is never evident” and "the word is the creator, founder and producer of truth” and “nothing besides language can reach or establish the order of truth.” (from The Humiliation of the Word).

So I'm reflecting on words today. Just words. I've written before about the brilliant website Word Spy a website that tracks the emergence of new words in our culture. I'd recommend it to any logophiles like myself who take the Good Book to heart, when it says that "Pleasant words are honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones"; or to any Colossians 4:6 Christians out there looking for a little salt for the shaker.


Here are a few examples from Word Spy's top 100 entries, especially chosen and included here because they challenge me to think a bit more deeply about intersections between faith and culture. Like, for example, how does Christianity speak a word to the problem of "nature-deficit disorder" or challenge us to re-evaluate our "joy-to-stuff ratio" ruthlessly? Or: how does our faith offer a real solution to the longing to declare "reputation bankruptcy" or the malaise of "apocalypse fatigue"? Or (if we could replace "skills" with something more specific to the Christian life-- grace, hope, love, perhaps?) is the Spirit's goal in the Christian community to create disciples that are spiritually "T-shaped"?

Just wondering out loud, or, as they say in guitar playing, just "noodling."

nature-deficit disorder: n. A yearning for nature, or an ignorance of the natural world, caused by a lack of time spent outdoors, particularly in rural settings. Also: nature deficit disorder.

reputation bankruptcy: n. A theoretical system that would give a person a fresh start on the web by deleting all of that person's online text, photos, and other data.

apocalypse fatigue: n. Reduced interest in current or potential environmental problems due to frequent dire warnings about those problems.

joy-to-stuff ratio: (joy-too-STUFF ray.shee.oh) n. The time a person has to enjoy life versus the time a person spends accumulating material goods.

T-shaped: (TEE-shaypt) adj. Having skills and knowledge that are both deep and broad.

40 foci for preaching

When I was studying preaching, my homiletics prof, Blayne Banting, taught us about the importance of the sermon "focus." In biblical preaching (i.e. preaching that is focused specifically on a biblical text), the "focus" is that single sentence that distills, encapsulates, crystallizes and summarizes the message of both the text and the sermon. Ideally, everything in the sermon, in some way or another, feeds into or flows out of the focus, and anything that doesn't is shelved for another sermon. Hadden Robinson called it "the big idea"; Blayne Banting called it "the focus." In biblical preaching-- and Blayne Banting was quite clear about this-- the focus of the sermon must emerge from, and tie directly back to the focus of the text. Whatever the text says-- at its heart-- that's what your focus should say; the focus statement should be the result of careful prayer, thought, theological reflection and disciplined exegesis of the text.

The idea of a "homiletical focus" has been very important in my own development as a preacher, and I've found writing the focus statement to be one of the most arduous but invaluable and rewarding initial steps in my process of sermon prep. Sometimes the focus statement will go through up to 10 or more drafts before I finally have it clear.

Is it worth it, all this fuss about a 10-word sentence? I don't know, but I do know that a couple of weeks back, someone mentioned the first sermon I preached at the FreeWay, a year ago, and, without knowing any of this finicky stuff about "homiletical foci" she said: "I remember, you told us: we need resurrected eyes to see the resurrected Lord" (see item 1 on the list below).

So I preached my 40th sermon at the FreeWay this Sunday. I've mentioned before how I'm not one to let biblical milestones like 3s or 12s or 40s pass by unnoticed, and so today I'm thinking back through the last 40 Sundays in the pulpit at the FreeWay (Daniel might call it 40 sevens, maybe?), and mulling over the first 40 foci of my preaching. I admit that some are better than others, but here's the last 40 things I've told the FreeWay about God and life together with him.

1. Luke 24:13-33: We need resurrected eyes to see the resurrected Lord.

2. 1 Kings 19:8-18: God's promises never have to go back to the beginning.

3. Luke 13:1-9: If it don't bear fruit, it's time to uproot.

4. Luke 14:15-24: God is determined to throw the greatest party in history.

5. Luke 16:1-9: Be a scandalous spendthrift of God's grace.
6. Luke 18:1-8: Kingdom come prayers never fall on deaf ears.
7. Genesis 11:1-9: No height of hurt is impossible in the community built on sameness.

8. Jeremiah 29:4-14: God has peace plans for his people.

9. Amos 5:8-26: God rejects empty religious show.

10. Galatians 5:13-15: True freedom is servanthood; and servanthood is true freedom.

11. Mark 1:14-15: God's revolution is happening now, turn around now and believe it.

12. John 3:1-15: God's Spirit is birthing believers into his kingdom.

13. Luke 9:28-35: This chosen one fulfills the history of God's life with his people.

14. Mark 10: 35-45: The king of God's kingdom rules as the servant of all.

15. Acts 1:3-11: In the meantime the Spirit holds us out to the world.

16. Psalm 45: He will reign forever and ever.

17. Luke 1:67-80: The promising God has visited us.

18. Isaiah 7:13-14: God is with you in the mess.

19. Matthew 1:1-17: The Christ's family tree is rooted in scandal and faithfulness.

20. Luke 2:22-36: This little baby is the God-hope we've been looking for.

21. Matthew 2:13-23: The Son of God will weep and wipe Rachel's tears.

22. Luke 2:41-51: We'll find this child of destiny in his father's things.

23. Luke 2:52: The Son of God grew God-wise, God-strong, God-loved.

24. Job 41: 1-11: God's faced the chaos on a scale we can't imagine.

25. Revelation 22:1-5: A day's coming when all manner of thing shall be well.

26. Psalm 1: There's no two ways about it with God.

27. Psalm 26: We walk right with God because his Christ walked blamelessly for us.

28. Psalm 29: The Lord is the real life-giver.

29. John 12:12-19: Death is defeated when the king of love rides into town.

30. Matthew 27:50-54: It really is a good Friday.

31. Mark 16:1-18: God rolled back the stone because we were helpless to move it on our own.

32. Colossians 2:11-13: Baptism is our heart-circumcision.

33. 1 Corinthians 15: 35-49: The God who creates is the God who resurrects.

34. Colossians 3:1-11: You've been raised from the dead: make your life extraordinary.

35. Isaiah 49:13-16: The Lord God out-mothers us all.

36. Hebrews 9:11-15: Jesus is our perfect High Priest.

37. Acts 2:1-13: The Spirit of God has begun the harvest.

38. Genesis 48:8-20: God doesn't choose the way the big-shot executive world chooses.

39. 1 Timothy 2:1-8: Pray for them all, starting at the top.

40. Luke 11:9-13: The Perfect Father will give his children the perfect gift.

Words for People of the Resurrection

Colossians 3:1-10

The Real real You

Here's Sunday's sermon, and with it a few thoughts from the cutting room floor. In literary terms, Paul's ethical exhortation here, and especially the list of vices in verses 8 and 9, follows a literary form with a distinguished ancient pedigree, known as a "paraenesis." As a rhetorical device, paraenesis was pretty common among the moral philosophers of the ancient world, whereby they would exhort followers of their particular philosophical "path," by advising them on how best to follow that path. Paul seems to have co-opted the rhetoric of the moral philosophers here, though his ethical case rests not on some dead philosophy (see v. 2:8), but on the living reality that is ours through the death and resurrection of Christ.

But the thing that I wish I could have spent a whole other sermon on is the fact that the paraenetic exhortation of verses 8 and 9 focuses particularly on right speaking: slanderous talk, malicious talk, filthy talk, and deceitful talk are all listed among the dead practices of the "old self." Our everyday speech is one of the fundamental starting places where we genuinely begin to live out our new reality as people of the resurrection.

And this is not for nothing. Because Paul's paraenesis is all wrapped up in the Image of God theology that he alludes to in verse 10, the image of God theology that underlies his whole understanding of the resurrection itself and its meaning for us as Christ-followers (see 1 Corinthians 15:49). In the resurrected Jesus, we see the true Image of God, who himself fulfills the calling and reveals the destiny of humanity, in the ultimate fulfillment of what God meant when he said in Genesis 1:27-28: "Let us make man in our image." (Look at how Paul describes Jesus in Colossians 1:15ff., if you want more fodder for this canon).

Jesus is the Image of God, and in him, and through union with him by faith in him, the Image of God-- our calling and our destiny as men and women--is restored in us. This is deep stuff. But not too deep, because Paul seems to say: you want to follow this living philosophy? Then let it start with your plain, everyday, down-to-earth speech.

Because in the "Image of God" text that underlies this passage, God creates the world by speaking, and then creates humanity in his image and likeness. Without getting too technical, the idea in Genesis seems to be that somehow, as creatures made in the Image of God, we are called, in a very limited sense, to carry on and extend God's creative work in the world. And just like God created the world through speech, so too human speech has the capacity to "create worlds" -- the true or false, whole or broken, healing or hurting realities that we inhabit, and that are created for us through the everyday act of speech.

So: if the Image of God is indeed being renewed and restored in us through the creative work of Christ by his Spirit, it's no surprise that Paul says we should look for it especially in wholesome, healing, truthful and salt-seasoned speech. Because there we begin to discover our creative calling as creatures made in the Image of the Creator who brings reality into being by his flawless Word.

The Audiology of the Heart

I've been wondering a bit lately about my hearing, wondering if years of running a floor sander in my former life as a hardwood flooring guy, and years more listening to Van Halen really loud in my former life as a headbanger might have left some dents on my ear drum.

So I took a free online hearing test this week, just to find out how I'm doing these days. And basically what it told me is this: I don't need to see any of the expensive audiologists that the free online hearing test people were advertising. I figured that was a good sign, considering that, as far as I could tell, the whole point of the free online hearing test was to get people to visit one of their expensive audiologists.

But I'm still thinking about hearing. Because I notice that whenever Jesus talks about hearing, he always talks about it as though it was a deeply spiritual act.

Have you noticed that?

To the scoffers, he says: "Some people have ears, but they just won't listen for the things of God with them."

To the seekers, he says: "Pay attention to how you hear, because the same measure you use to listen. that's the measure it'll be measured back to you."

To the skeptics, he says: "Let my words sink into your ears: I have to be crucified at the hands of the wicked, and I will rise again the third day."

And to the students of God-- his disciples, his followers, his friends-- he says: "Your ears are blessed because they hear."

So maybe hearing is a spiritual act. I mean: to hear well, we have to be quiet, don't we? We have to trust that the Other will speak, and that what the Other has to say really matters. We need hearts that are completely open, and receptive and available to the Other.

And that's a spiritual way to be.

I'm trying to do a little spiritual audiology these days, asking how well I hear. Psalmist #85 sings: "I will listen to what God, YHWH, will say; for he will speak peace to his people, his saints." That's a daring thing to say: "I will listen." More daring than I know yet. Because to listen with obedience, we need first to really hear. We need quiet. We need ears made completely open and available to him.

We may even need our Heavenly Audiologist to put his fingers to our spiritual ears-- like he did with that deaf man in Mark 7-- to sigh deeply for us, and look up to his Father in Heaven, and say from the depths of his Spirit: "Ephphatha." Which, as Mark takes pains to point out, means: "Be opened."

May he give us ears that are truly blessed, because they truly hear.

The Paradessence of the Gospel

Word Spy is a fascinating website that tracks the coinage of neologisms (the making-up of new words) in the English language. It traces the emergence of such useful new expressions as "friendsourcing" (gathering information from a group of online peers), "furkid" (a pet treated as if it were a child), and "peep culture" (look it up). It's the kind of nanopublishing enterprise that appeals especially to a nooksurfer and occasional godcaster like me, whose logophila continually pushes him to expand his wordrobe, and who blogs convinced that words and spirituality are deeply connected. (I refer you to Word Spy's index of religious terms for a little spiritual-licorice-for-thought.)

So the most recent entry on Word Spy is "Paradessence."

Paradessence. n. In a product, an intrinsic property that promises to simultaneously satisfy two opposing consumer desires. [blend of paradoxical and essence.]

Earliest Citation: "'The paradessence of coffee is stimulation and relaxation. Every successful ad campaign for coffee will promise both of those mutually exclusive states.' Chas snaps his fingers in front of her face. 'That's what consumer motivation is about, Ursula. Every product has this paradoxical essence. Two opposing desires that it can promise to satisfy simultaneously. The job of the marketer is to cultivate this schismatic core, this broken soul, at the centre of every product.'" (Alex Shakar, The Savage Girl, Harper Colins, September 18, 2001.)

Now: the gospel is not a product, nor is its proclamation advertizing. At all.

But I've been musing a bit these days about this word paradessence, and how it might point us to the deeply compelling mystery of the Good News. Because our Lord invites us to come to him for perfect rest in our weariness, and there he calls us to take up the burden of our cross and stagger after him to Golgatha. He came inviting us to lose our lives in him, so that we might find life and life more abundantly. In his grace he meets us just as we are, and then calls us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.

This is the paradessence of the gospel. It's a proclamation that simultaneously offers us perfect freedom and an all-consuming cause; it offers both grace and cross. And any genuine announcement of the good news, I think, will seek to cultivate a deep appreciation for the paradessence of our faith. It's all the free, unmerited grace of God; and in that gracious embrace we discover one who calls us resolutely to give all we have, with him and through him, for the glory of the Father and the sake of his aching world.

And as I muse about this made up word, "paradessence," I wonder: what height and depth and breadth of life with Jesus could we know, if we let the paradessence of the gospel satisfy our "schismatic core," and mark us as his people?

Caedmon, Sing Me Something

Some time in the mid-seventh century, an Anglo-Saxon herdsman living in the monastery of Streonæshalch (on the north-east coast of England) had a dream. The monks of the monastery were at feast that night, singing and harping, but because he knew no poetry, Cædmon had wandered off early to sleep in the cattle stall with the animals he tended. In his dream, "someone" approached him, calling him by name and beckoning: "Cædmon, sing me something."

Knowing no songs, Cædmon refused, but the "someone" insisted: "All the same, you have to sing for me."

"And what must I sing?"

"Sing principium creaturarum"-- The beginning of Created Things.

Immediately Cædmon's mouth was opened and he began to sing praises to the Creator. Verses he had never heard before sprang out of him, verses for the Christian God, but sung in the (till then mostly pagan) poetic tradition of his country-men.

Translated into modern English, this is what he sang:

Now must we praise heaven-kingdom's Keeper,
the Measurer's might and his mind-plans,
the work of the Glory-Father, when he of wonders every one
eternal Lord, the Beginning established.
He first created, for men's sons,
heaven as a roof, holy Creator,
then the middle-earth, mankind's Keeper,
eternal Lord, afterwards he made--
for men, earth, the Master Almighty.
Cædmon woke with this song ringing in his head, and shared it with his foreman. The foreman took him to the abbess of the monastery, who in turn affirmed it as a gift from God. Cædmon took monastic vows and began to receive instruction in Christian doctrine, learning the "whole sequence of sacred history" which he would convert into sweetest song, song "so delightful that he made his teachers, in their turn, his listeners."

He died a revered poet-saint.

And the song he received that night in the cattle-stall of a seventh-Century Christian monastery on the north-east coast of England is thought by many to be the earliest example of Anglo-Saxon poetry we have on record. You can click here to listen to a reading of Cædmon's Hymn in the original Old English. (If you've never heard Anglo-Saxon poetry before, it's worth a listen. I got my English students to listen to a bit once when we were studying poetry-- they said it sounded like Elvish from the Lord of the Rings movies.)

But there's something haunting here in this ancient story of a simple herdsman, meeting with the Christian God and finding his mouth filled with distinctly Anglo-Saxon praise. "Cædmon, sing me something" called the Spirit of Christ in the stable that night; like an altar-hot coal he touched Cædmon's lips, inspiring him to translate that touch into the rich poetic tradition of his own culture.


And there, in the alliterated syllables and Old English kennings of Cædmon's hymn- now must we praise heaven-kingdom's Keeper- the Measurer's might and his mind-plans- we can hear the Spirit calling out once more to all the nations, tribes and tongues of the Earth. "Come," it cries: "Bring to me the richest and finest and most lovely your culture has to offer- its verse, its song, its art, its craft. Bring it now through the gates of the New Jerusalem. Lay it here at the feet of the Christ of God and find it divinely-claimed, blood-bought, purified and perfected there."

"Come Cædmon, sing me something."

The Fine Art of Listening

I've been thinking a bit about about this comedy routine by Brian Regan I saw a couple of months ago.

Funny and incisive.

True.

In his book Humiliation of the Word, Jaques Ellul suggests that it's only through the concrete act of listening (as opposed to merely seeing) that humans find themselves situated in the universe of truth, for "nothing beside language can establish the order of truth." In this sense, listening-- real active, receptive listening--is one of the most spiritually profound acts we can do.

Spiritually profound, and entirely counter-intuitive.

More intuitive is the impatient waiting for the other's lips to stop moving. "You? ME! See the difference?" Because to listen-- to listen well-- means assuming an entirely receptive posture, a posture of not-knowing, of genuine curiosity and generosity and self-awareness-- it means refusing to use others' stories as merely means to our own ends.

All of this, again, is counter intuitive; but it's there, in this risky openness to the other, that we find ourselves "truthing one another," as St. Paul put it for the Ephesians. And in that truthing, I think, there is the potential for real healing and spiritual growth together as Christian community.

In the Logic of the Heart

In math, a surd is an irrational number (the root of an integer), or an unresolved mathematical expression. In linguistics a surd is a voiceless consonant. I like this word, "surd"; it has a ring to it that's almost as obscure as the numerical and phonetic concepts it signifies. I didn't come across it first in a math or linguistics textbook, however, but a theological one. Theologian Donald Bloesch uses it when he describes the impulse in a certain kind of rationalistic theology that tries to overcome all ambiguities in our experience and knowledge of God, because we just can't tolerate a "surd in human existence."

Something like that.

And something about how the biblical theologian needs to learn to accept unresolvable paradox.

I wrote a song called "Surd" a couple of years ago when I was struggling with a lot of irrational, unresolvable and inexpressible questions of my own about God and faith and ministry. At the time it was a really important heart cry for me; helped me figure out what it meant to accept unresolvable paradox in my life with God. Thought I'd share it here. Speaking of paradox: the guitar part was inspired loosely by The Clash's "London Calling," so you can think of it as a bit of Donald Bloesch meets The Clash.

[ click here to listen]

Surd, in the logic of my heart,
No rhyme or reason help me please I don't know where to start
It's absurd that I don't know who I am
I fear to face the mirror see the child in the man

And I would give you my everything,
if I knew what my everything was
I'm sitting here with my dreams on a string
My heart was not for sale but it got rented for a while
And now I have to use my smile to hide my broken wings

Surd, in the silence of the night
I'm lying in the darkness and I'm trying to get it right
It's that word that you whisper in my ear
I miss it when I listen could you teach me how to hear

And I would give you my everything,
if I knew what my everything was
I'm sitting here with my dreams on a string
My heart was not for sale but it got rented for a while
And now I have to use my smile to hide my broken wings

Learning Wisdom in the Writing

When I was learning to play guitar, my teacher gave me this advice: as soon as you have three chords under your belt, start writing songs. One of the best ways to grow as a guitarist, he said, is just start writing. Experiment with what works. Discover what doesn't. Get comfortable making mistakes, and fudging it, and making music something creative.

It was really wise advice.

And I'm thinking about it these days because I've been thinking a lot about proverbs (the book and the genre).

I don't think modern western Christians really know what to do with Proverbs (the book), because proverbs (as a general genre) don't live in our culture the way they might have at one time. In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman describes an oral culture from Western Africa where the adjudication of civil disputes was a matter of finding in the common stock of oral wisdom the proverb that best applied to the particular case. Imagine going to court because your business partner had cheated you out of $150,000, and the judge passes sentence by referring you to the saying: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Now imagine all the parties involved (including you) left the courtroom sincerely believing that justice had been served.

Proverbs are not just catchy sayings to decorate our fridge magnets. They are ambiguous vessels of wisdom that somehow gather together and distill insightful observations about the world as it should be-- that somehow, in their utterance, actually invoke that world-- and that somehow give context and meaning for the otherwise confusing events of living. The wise application of the right proverb at the right time is a profound creative act that somehow participates in God's shalom.

And it's hard for linear, rationalistic thinking to make that kind of sense out of a proverb.

But I remember my OT prof saying once that he'd tried his hand at writing some proverbs, and I'm thinking about my guitar teacher's advice, and it occurrs to me that maybe one of the best ways to learn about proverbs is by trying to write some of my own. So over the last few days I've been trying my hand at gathering together and distilling some insightful observations about the world as it should be. And let me tell you: it's really hard. A proverb needs to ring true without cliche, needs to be pithy without being flippant, needs to be precise enough to enlighten but ambiguous enough to apply in any number of situations.

It has to sound like something you've known all along, but only just heard yesterday.

For what it's worth (and I don't think that's much) here's my list after a week or so of work. (The ones marked with a + are sayings that I've used often as a classroom teacher; the ones marked with a * are based on ideas from other sources.)

Happy is he whose heart is too big to fit on his sleeve.

He who seeks to dance alone can only dance to silence.

It is only the starving man who talks incessantly of food.+

"All I have is three chords and the truth"-- this is the fool's boast and the wise man's apology.

There is no provenience for the archaeology of the self.

The truth is in the telling when the teller is in the truth.

Wisdom crosses the desert with a stone beneath her tongue, slaking her thirst with her own saliva.*

To listen well is to find the child mature at last and the old man young again.

A good thing need not always be a pleasant thing.+

Only a hack cannot celebrate the masterpiece of another.*

When to end-- this is the second lesson of wisdom.

The true maestro is he who knows when not to play.

The question of modern art is not whether or not you could have painted it, but whether or not you did.

Only he who can manage his own website can choose to be a Luddite.

A mask may be inevitable, but not which one you'll wear.
Food for the mind and books for the body, as exercise is for the soul.

There are only four feelings-- mad, sad, glad and scared-- but O in what infinite combinations they come.

Narcissus and the writer: both alike stare into inky pools, searching for an echo of their experience.

Loving is knowing and knowing is leaving and leaving is coming back again.

The equality of unequals is inequality.+*

The only stupid question is the question left unasked.+

Sarcasm is the protest of the weak.+
Beware of both the connoisseur and the spendthrift in the marketplace of ideas. The former will buy only his brand, the later will buy anything.

Love and fear alike are a bird in a fist: to hold it hides it; to look must let it go.*

The secret to never having to stand in line is in only wanting things when no one else does.

He who fishes for truth alone will surely come home skunked.

It is impossible to say in a single picture that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Hope is a knife-edge sharpened by despair.*

Every statistic is but a mathematically narrated myth.

Only great folly shouts for silence.

Sanctimony is often the child of guilt.

An Hysterical Etymology

"Hysteria" comes only a few entries after "hysterectomy" in my dictionary. No mere linguistic coincidence, this. Both words have the same root: from the Greek, hystera, the womb.

Apparently the word "hysterical" comes from the not-too-old fashioned assumption that the womb was a source of weakness, inconstancy and instability in women. Having a womb, it was supposed, made one naturally prone to hysteria; such irrational outbursts and emotional breakdowns were just the inevitable result of the woman's hystera.

Now I've been present at the birth of all three of my children. And I can say with some conviction that, far from being a source of hysteria, the hystera is a source of mysterious strength and emotional endurance. In those three hospital rooms, I watched a woman centred and strong and determined push life out into this world.

No one was hysterical.

But one of the things we're convinced of here at terra incognita is that words always matter. They reflect our realities, but they also shape them. They show us how we see the world, but they also determine how we see the world. And this small word, this "hysteria"-- this flotsam of an androcentric patriarchy-- is no exception. There really was a time in our not-so-distant past when having a womb was considered a liability. An inferiority, really. Made you crazy, if you must know.

I've been sharing some random thoughts on gender and the Faith these days (here, here and here). My deep hope is that as we come to Jesus again and again asking him these kinds of questions, he will faithfully help us see what it really means to be made male and female in the image of God. He'll help us see what it really means to relate as biblical men and women.

But as he does, he will inevitably ask us to name and confess and repent of the barriers to seeing we've erected in our pride, our traditions, our guilt, our suspicion of the other. The kind of exclusive language game that a word like "hysteria" represents, is, I'm convinced, one of those barriers.

May Jesus give his sibling-disciples the courage to see such language games for what they are. And may he give us the courage to repent of the ways our words have driven us apart as men and women, instead of binding us together as the children of God.

Babbling French and Other Blessings

I learned to speak French as a high school exchange student in Quebec. A few years later, with the confidence of that "hands-on" learning experience under my belt, I walked into a drugstore in Paris and, in my best Quebec accent, asked if they sold razors. We'd been traveling for a month or so and I needed a new one.

The shopkeeper just gaped at me with a look somewhere between confusion and disdain. A chimpanzee might just as well have loped up to him and babbled something about wanting bananas. Though I don't know what I said wrong, I learned that day that there is more than just geography separating the French of Quebec and France.

I was reminded of this mis-fired linguistic exchange the other day when I heard a story on CBC Radio about Jean Charest's recent visit to Paris. The Parisian diplomat who was meeting him at the airport, earnest to be a good host, wanted to welcome him with a genuine gesture of linguistic goodwill. He did some research and discovered how to ask him if he was tired (after his long flight) using a unique Quebecois idiom. Unbeknownst to this well meaning Parisian, the particular idiom he used was a slightly crude expression not exactly suited to polite society: as Jean Charest disembarked the plane, he was greeted warmly and asked if he didn't have his "*slang term for female anatomy* dragging on the ground."

The story made me laugh a bit.

But mostly it made me think of the Tower of Babel.

From the illustrated Bible versions of the Babel story I was raised on, I always had the impression that God's original aim was to have one unified language, where we could all communicate unambiguously; and that the linguistic confusion, like the kind heard on the Parisian tarmac that day, was really God's curse on humanity because of their overweening pride.

Today I'm not so sure. Though we often talk about the "curse of Babel," it's important to note that the story never uses the word "curse." J. Richard Middleton points out that in Genesis 10, right before the Babel story tells us there was only one language, we're given this elaborate table of the descendants of Noah, listed "according to their peoples and languages." Middleton then points out that one of the imperialistic policies of Babylon-- a policy, no doubt, that the author of Genesis was well aware of-- was to enforce its own language on the people it conquered. We see this policy at work in the opening verses of Daniel (and, incidentally, throughout history-- from Stalin to residential schools to William the Conqueror, it seems an "effective" way to keep an oppressed people oppressed has always been to silence their language). Middleton argues that the story's vision of a "one-language state" is actually intended as a picture of the distopian structures of the Babylonian Empire whereby it enforced linguistic unity on its subjects.

If Middleton is right, then by confusing the speech of the tower-builders, God is judging the oppressive, imperialistic power structures of Babylon (and every Babylon-like empire since). By affirming and insisting on a rich diversity of human languages, God is actually unmasking and disarming those oppressive, dehumanizing systems that need us to all talk (and think) alike in order to maintain their power.

This would mean that the day I walked into a Parisian pharmacie and left without my razor, as frustrating as it was, maybe I was actually tasting one of God's blessings to humanity. And maybe the day Charest looked askance at a French politician who had just asked him innocently enough if he was "dragging his ass," maybe God was saying yet again: "I don't want human-life-together to ever be so unambiguous that it becomes tyrannical."

Maybe.

Words, Words, Words

I feel like I have a bit of a “word hang-over” this morning. Monday evening I had a long, rich visit with a friend where we sat and talked theology over coffee for about four hours. Tuesday, after talking as an English teacher all day, I meet with some friends and we talked deeply about God, life and ministry for about two hours. Wednesday night I had a long phone conversation with a candidating committee; Thursday I gave an hour-long, 1000 wpm lecture at Briercrest. And before I fell asleep last night (a little hair of the dog that bit me), my wife shared in Technicolor-detail the plot of a 400 page novel she just finished reading. Words, words, words. If words were wine, I’d feel like I really tied one on this week.

And I don’t use the wine metaphor flippantly; I think I’ve got pretty good biblical precedence. Paul tells the Ephesian church: “don’t get wasted on wine—instead, get ‘drunk’ by being filled with the Holy Spirit.” Then he goes on to say: “Speak to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” The NIV translates this “speaking” as a second command, but Paul himself actually connects it much more closely to “being filled with the Holy Spirit.” This spiritual (even musical) speech is the natural result of our being filled with the Holy Spirit, not just another imperative. Our “intoxication” with the Spirit in our midst, Paul says, will manifest itself in rich, edifying, gracious words. (With this in mind, go back and read his instructions leading up to this verse, and you’ll count no less than 8 different descriptions of how we must speak: speak truthfully, use words to build each other up, get rid of all unwholesome talk, slander, coarse joking, obscenity, foolish talk, empty words.)

So I think it’s only natural that I’m feeling a little hung over on words today.

Because here’s the thing: our sacred writings insist that the Divine Word became flesh and “pitched his tent among us”, that faith comes “out of hearing,” that with our mouths we “confess into salvation,” that our talk should be “seasoned with salt.” Rich Christian communities-- Spirit-filled Christian communities-- must be places where talk is anything but cheap.

I read a fascinating book by Murray Jardine a while back called The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society. Jardine traces the history of Western liberal capitalist democracy, and concludes that our current obsession with aesthetic self-expression through consumerism represents the great moral and existential crisis of our time. Looking for answers to this crisis, he points out that in the Christian faith, God creates the world by speaking, and then creates humans in his image to join him in this creative work. "Just as God creates a world by speaking," he writes, "humans can, in a very real sense, create worlds by speaking."

Jardine argues that in its affirmation of the creative power of human speech, the Faith offers real answers to the modern crisis of aesthetic consumerism. He holds that the word-oriented communities envisioned in the Scriptures-- communities where humans discover the power of our words to heal, transform and enrich our hearts-- is the vital alternative we need to the fragmentation and isolation of our time.

Of course, Solomon said it before him: "the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life."

Still nursing my happy hang-over today, I think he's right.