The Troubling Use of “Information”

For some time I’ve noticed a perplexing quality of college student word use.  Here are a couple of examples:

“I have to miss class tomorrow and I was wondering if I could get the information that you’re going to cover.”

“I want the professor just to give me the information without his/her opinion so that I can make up my own mind.”

I hear some version of these remarks fairly frequently and they alarm me.  In the second one, I can see the student’s concern for not being force-fed ideology and I’ll give that one to him.  It’s a legitimate concern, but in a broader sense reflective of a fundamental misunderstanding of what should happen in a college (it was a political science) class.  Secondly, referring to course content as “information” sounds utterly lifeless and sterile, having no more than instrumental value, available only to be manipulated for some pragmatic aim.

(Disclaimer: I believe in the importance of facts and information.  I am not a rank subjectivist.  In fact, I hold an “externalist” view of truth – that it is really “out there” and available.  With that qualification, back to my point.)

How did we get here?  Well, clearly, the “information age” of personal computers and the worldwide web has helped dramatically.  I love the technology, but if we don’t pay attention to the paradigmatic control these computer metaphors are working on us, I can hardly imagine how impoverished, even perverse, our lives will become.

The other culprit is hiding in fifth or sixth grade classrooms, where students are indoctrinated with the fact/opinion distinction.  Certainly, there is a difference between facts and opinions and I applaud the intention, but I’m worried about the misleading implications.  A “fact” is evidently something beyond need of interpretation because it is “neutral.”  We trust facts.  ”Opinions,” by contrast, are squishy and subjective and, most damming, idiosyncratic.  How many times have you heard, “That’s just your opinion,” as if the mere fact (yes, I meant that word) makes the whole thing dismissible?

It’s a short step from “fact” to “information,” Same feeling, same attitude, same problem.  First, it seems to assume that people are neutral information processors, a self-evidently absurd notion when one pauses to think about it (but who’s pausing?).  Likewise with facts.  Facts have to be applied and application requires interpretation.  We have to figure out what the facts mean. They tell us nothing in and of themselves.  Do students understand how important this step – from facts to meaning – is?

In this context, campus ministers have a crucial role to play.  The world needs wise, well-formed disciples of Jesus.  Wisdom requires thoughtfulness, the habit of taking into consideration a range of opinions, weighing evidence judiciously; most of all, it means applying truth lovingly, with the heart of Jesus.  In other words, to think well requires a well-formed character, which involves far more than “getting information.”  ”Just getting the information” simply won’t cut it.

Campus ministers: we’re supposed to be about developing well-formed followers of Jesus.  We may not assign grades, but we’re still educators in the best sense of that word.  Precisely because we are not giving exams and assigning grades, we have the luxury of helping students learn, untrammeled by the pressures of academic demands.  Let us not squander this sacred opportunity.

Affirm People, Acknowledge Diversity

Working on a college campus puts one in the position of hearing lots of talk about diversity: racial diversity, national and ethnic diversity, cultural diversity, religious diversity, gender diversity.  These are among the standard referents for folk in higher education.

In a chapter on the importance of student affairs programs for developing college students’ spirituality, Jennifer Capeheart-Meninghall writes, “Programs and services that offer activities that affirm diversity (emphasis added), establish and hold students accountable for conduct, celebrate campus traditions, and join various constitutencies together will help build community,” (Spirituality in Higher Education, p. 35).  For all the value and importance of her aim at building community and developing spirituality (an aim I completely support), I’m stuck on the difficult notion of affirming diversity.  Who sets the criteria to determine that diversity has been affirmed?

As much as I appreciate the sentiment, I think it is ultimately misdirected.  I think what we should affirm is people.  People are diverse.  Because we are diverse racially, ethnically, socio-economically, culturally, and so on, we should affirm people as they demonstrate a wide range of characteristics and qualities.  We affirm people and, in doing so, acknowledge that we’re different, diverse.

Some people might consider my point nothing more than pious cant, a clever-sounding rhetorical sleight-of-hand.  (Some may find it completely obvious and not clever at all!)  In the current climate, am I just one more white, male, middle-class traditional/conservative complaining about losing power?  I don’t think so.  I hope not.

Maybe I’m splitting hairs.  Maybe “affirm” and “acknowledge” mean the same.  A quick check of the dictionary suggests the contrary.  To affirm something is to state it positively, to validate it or legitimate it and, furthermore, to “express dedication” (Webster’s 9th New Collegiate Dictionary) to whatever is being affirmed.  To acknowledge is to recognize, to own up to (Ibid).

Because all people are created in God’s image, we value them.  We value their characteristics, cultural and otherwise.  We affirm them.  We recognize that we come from a wide range of nations, backgrounds, worldviews and religious commitments.  We accept our diversity, but we value people and we commit ourselves to living together in peace.

Why does my distinction matter?  Well, in my little mind, it seems to be a step in the right direction of disentangling us from some of the political animosities that infect Christians.  It’s too easy to come up with the grocery list of qualities that “proves” one “affirms diversity.”  (By the way, how diverse is the group making that list?)  Then people can make preemptive judgments: if you don’t accept the list, you don’t accept diversity and you’re disqualified from the conversation.  If, on the other hand, we affirm people while acknowledging diversity, then we don’t prematurely disqualify.  We listen with compassion and generosity – and take their ideas seriously.

“Diversity,” sadly, is a politically loaded term.  It shouldn’t be.  We are a nation of diverse peoples.  That’s an uncontroversial fact.  What we value is people, who always bring with them their cultural, ethnic, and other (diverse) qualities.  We don’t ignore diversity.  We acknowledge it; accept it.  But we affirm people.

When Do We Become Adults (and Why Does It Matter)?

The distinction between college ministry and youth ministry is based in part on the assumption that college students are young adults, living more or less on their own, and dealing with more adult-like challenges, while youth are still under the control of their parents/guardians.  Notice the qualifiers in that sentence: “more or less” and “adult-like,” for example.  Two books with two distinct theses are having a fight in my head.

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s, Emerging Adulthood, has been making the rounds for at least a couple of years.  Based on social science research, he describes a new phenomenon in the 18-28 year-old age range, which is encapsulated in the book’s title.  The young people he studies neither define themselves as “young adults”  nor as older youth.  By their own self-description, they are taking longer to become adults than earlier generations and that “adult” has less to do with chronology than the old “18″ or “21″ threshold (depending on the legal drinking age) and more to do with having achieved or arrived at certain markers points in life.  One is not fully “adult” until one has one’s own place, a more-than-temporary job (one that is starting to look like a career) and sufficient income not to be dependent upon parents.  Such criteria are used by young people themselves for deciding when they are adults.

A counterpoint to this idea is offered by Philip Markham, a British psychologist in another Oxford Press book by the title, The End of Adolescence.  Most of this author’s work is based on research in the UK, but his thesis still stimulates thought.  He argues that adolescents (teenagers) have been badly stereotyped through popular media (TV, movies, magazines) as spoiled, volatile, hormone-driven miscreants.  Quite the contrary to this picture, most of them are reasonably happy, well-adjusted, responsible human beings.  Furthermore, by early teens, they are quite able to handle complex ideas and life challenges.  In fact, he relates how some teenagers are taking care of disabled parents, for example, and carry on quite well, with a mature sense about the challenges life has dealt them.

Now to the really provocative claim from Markham: he believes that 14 (yes, fourteen) is, generally speaking, the age at which young people ought to be considered as adults.  Obviously, this blog cannot spell out how he qualifies his claim, but all things considered, he believes young people at this age should be able to do virtually all the things that adults do.  He doesn’t recommend that 14 year olds get married, of course, but he does say that they should be able to engage in other “adult” activities, like voting.

For a long time, I’ve worried about how we (especially parents) have prolonged adolescence.  Labor laws originally designed to protect children from sweatshop situations also prevent able-bodied and interested teenagers from undertaking gainful employment.  Until kids turn 16, if they don’t live in rural areas where they can do farm work, or if they don’t belong to a family running a business, the only options for working are pretty well limited to having a paper route (which can be a dangerous occupation when you try to collect – my son and I were literally run off a place one evening).

These books have implications for college ministry.  Are we working with adults or with youth or with “emerging adults?”  Answering this question helps to determine the ministry we undertake.  What do you think?  If you work with 18-28 year olds, how would you describe them?  What kind of ministry do you think we should do with them?

If you are in the 18-28 range, how do you see yourself?  Your friends?  Your age group?  And would you tell your experience and your opinion about the kind of ministry offered for people like you?  Are we on target?  Missing the boat?

A Harsh Assessment of Young Adults

I just finished a book by an author not so enamored with the effects of technology on the “net generation.”  Entitled, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, (Penguin, 2008), it mounts massive data from various surveys and organizations to argue that, for all their tech savviness, most young people use the internet for entertainment and social networking and not for (the author’s main concern) “expanding knowledge.”  Hence, the claims made for the educational benefit of the internet are badly exaggerated, even dishonest.

Mark Bauerlein, the author, is not “anti-young.”  He acknowledges regularly throughout the book how curmudgeonly he sounds, but his point is not to run down young people.  It is, rather, to sound the alarm about the myth-making by educators about the educational benefits of various forms of computer and internet-based entertainment.  Worse, he’s concerned about the way some of these educators are talking about plain, old fashioned paper-based books, as if we don’t need them any more.

Perhaps the most damming chapter is “The Betrayal of t he Mentors.”   Here he uses the term “Twixters” to refer basically to the same age period that Jeffrey Arnett calls “emerging adulthood.”  Bauerlein mentions an article from Time magazine (24 January 2005) that describes this demographic category: “22 to 30 years old, have a college degree or substantial college coursework; come from middle-class families and reside in cities and large urban centers.”

There’s the demographic.  Now the problem.  Bauerlein continues: “What makes Twixters different from other people with the same demographics from the past is the lifestyle they pursue after college. [ ] Instead of seeking out jobs or graduate studies…they pass through a series of service jobs as waiters, clerks, nannies and assistants.  Instead of moving into a place of their own…they move back home with their parents or into a house or large apartment with several Twixter peers.  Instead of forming a long-term relationship to marriage, they engage in serial dating. [ ] They have achieved little but feel good about themselves,” (170).

And the betrayal of the mentors?  Here we turn to Bauerlein’s deep concern: teachers who jump on the bandwagon of disdain with their own toward books and more traditional forms of learning.  Bauerlein again: “In casting Twixter lifestyle as genuine exploration and struggle, neither the author nor the researchers nor the Twixters themselves whisper a single word about intellectual labor.  Not one of the Twixters or youth observers mentions an idea that stirs them, a book that influenced them, a class that inspired them, or a mentor who guides them,” (172).

I still don’t know what I think about this book, but I’m inclined to share Bauerlein’s concern.  As he says, there is no question that this generation is bright and full of talent.  But they seem more achievement-driven than thoughtful and they’re (generally) impatient with intellectual struggle.  And the thoughtful ones turn too easily to dismissive sarcasm for ideas that don’t seem immediately to match their beliefs.

The internet isn’t going away.  We need to learn how to use it educationally, with good means of assessing learning without buying the hype of vendors.  At the same time, I’m solicitous for the leisure of slow, thoughtful reflection, for young people.  How else will they become wise?

Two-tiered Witness?

Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians has been holding me for weeks.  I’ve blogged already about Paul’s vulnerable, transparent witness: “You are our letters of commendation,” he says to the Corinthians (chapter 3).  Paul has no structural, organizational props for his ministry, just the effective witness of a life lived before others that he can point to it and say, “See here?  This [my life] is visible proof of God’s transforming work.”  I like it.  Or do I?

Then I read chapter 6: “We have commended [there's that word again] ourselves in every way…” and then a long list of sufferings: “through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities,beatings, imprisonments,” and on and on.  Now, I’m not liking it.

Which prompted this thought: is there a qualitative difference between the witness of “regular” Christians and people called to full-time ministry and then, by extension, even more so for people in apostolic-like ministries of the sort that Paul had?  My question is too long, so let me try again.  Is there one set of witness/lifestyle expectations for regular Christians and another set for people in full-time ministry?

The standard Protestant answer is no.  We like to tout the priesthood of all believers, which I believe myself.  But then I start thinking about how a middle-class American guy with a wife and kids and job and other such commitments reads and hears Paul’s testimony.  What is God’s Word for that guy when he reads 2 Corinthians 6?  By the way, we evangelicals love 2 Cor. 6:2, “…now is the acceptable time [for salvation].”  It really preaches well in evangelistic settings.  But immediately following is this “commendation.”  Paul is challenging the Corinthians: “Look at my life.”  So, “now is the day of salvation” is connected to “look at my life.”

Maybe that is it.  Maybe the key is, “Look at my life.”  I live within a particular set of circumstances.  Am I a transparent Christian there, in that context?  Paul’s calling was his and mine is mine.  Different time, different circumstances, different callings.  Of course, it is true.  But then I start to worry a little that I am too-easily letting myself off the hook.  I’m not an apostle, after all.  I’m just a regular Christian.  God doesn’t expect that sort of witness from me.  Or you.

What did we just do to our reading of the Bible?  On the one hand, we should read carefully and not just woodenly lift “life principles” out of the text in some mechanistic way.  On the other hand, I’m concerned about how the trajectory of this sort of “interpretation” always seems to soften the call.

I think, in practical ways, we do have a two-tiered witness among even Protestant Christians.  We love reading about the Jim Elliotts and the Amy Carmichaels.  We are inspired by their passion for the Kingdom of God and their sacrificial commitments.  But…we wouldn’t do it ourselves.  So, when we read Paul talking about his sufferings, do we blunt God’s Word  to us by putting Paul in a different category?  He’s an apostle and we’re just regular Christians, after all.

Is there a de facto two-tiered witness among all Christians?  Is it OK that there is such, if there is?

“What Hath God Wrought?”

This question my friend, Dan McFarland, asked in prayer as he prayed for us at the CornerStone dinner last Friday evening.  The question comes from the Bible (Numbers), but we Methodists also associate it with John Wesley, who used this question to reflect on various circumstances relative to Methodism in the 18th century.  For one, he asked it when the new City Road Chapel was opened.

Dan asked it in regard to the transition in my life and in the CornerStone’s.  I have departed from my usual blog topics and have shared more personal stuff of late.  This past weekend was another doozy.  After being associated with the CornerStone since 1981 (Joni and I went to Italy under their auspices) and having served as board Chair since 1991 (hence 18 years), I resigned.  This past weekend was my final board meeting.  What a weekend.

As I wrapped up our meeting yesterday, I told the board members once again something I’ve said many times: “CornerStone is nothing like anything else I’ve ever experienced.”  From the first time Joni and I met with the board as they considered us for service in Italy to Saturday’s final meeting, that sentiment holds rock solid.  I told them that I don’t have adequate words to describe my sense about this group, but let me try.

I think that it comes as close to pure Christian community as anything I’ve ever experienced.  The CornerStone is a mission organization.  We receive candidates, screen them and send them to various fields of ministry.  CornerStone is tiny by comparison to the better-known mission organizations, but we have staff on five continents and in some of the most “on the ground” places in the world.  Many of the ministries combine acts of mercy (medical work, orphanages, working with AIDS children) with sharing the Gospel.  Every board meeting we receive reports from our missionaries and the stories are always touching and convicting.  (See www.cornerstoneinternational.org.)

This description sounds pretty much like any mission organization any of us knows.  It’s the community.  In large part because we’re small (our board numbers less than 15), everything is personal.  We share our hearts with one another.  We pray with and for one another.  We look each other straight in the face and speak hard truth sometimes.  And underneath it all there is a fundamental conviction that each person is a trusted and valued member of the group, a brother/sister in Christ.

A couple of the members of the board talked about how I had helped them and the organization grow up.  (We’ve gone through a couple of major changes in the past fifteen or so years.)  At least, that is what I understood them to be saying.  But when I look at the years and how I changed because of associating with them, it’s really the other way around.  That community of expatriate Christians in Italy helped me to become a pastor.  I was just a kid trying to follow Jesus and they – in part because of circumstance – took me in.  When the organization was floundering, I became the board Chair.  In so many respects, CornerStone helped to draw out and develop my leadership gifts.

I will forever be in their debt.

Getting Used to the New Place

Well, I’m now in my second day of work at my new place of employment.  What a week it has been.

First, I miss my family, I miss my wife (and now, let’s all sing, “Rocket man, rocket man”) and I miss my friends in Winfield.  Second, I’m already starting to feel at home among my new colleagues and in the new work environment.  Third, moving into a new residence after living fourteen years in the old one is just plain weird.

For several reasons, I’m here in Texas weeks in advance of Joni and virtually all our furniture.  The sellers of our new place graciously agreed to be my landlords for two or three months while we get our place sold and our daughter married.  So, Monday morning, June 29, I climbed into my little red Chevy Colorado, loaded with books, files, clothes, toiletries and a mattress and box spring across the top of the truck bed, all covered with a gray plastic Wal Mart tarp and bristling with ropes and bungy cords holding everything in place.  Oh yes, I had my guitar behind the seat and two more boxes of files.  I have to admit, when I drove into my new neighborhood and pulled up in front of the new “home,” I was imagining the Beverly Hillbillies.

By the way, my new “house” is on the fourth floor of a twenty-two story (I think) high rise.  I park in the parking garage and take the elevator to my “house.”  We have a gorgeous view of downtown Dallas, which is about 6 miles to the south.  I can drive to work in about 7-8 minutes.  If traffic is really heavy and I hit the lights wrong, it can take 10 or 11.  I love it.

I’ve learned a couple of things about our new place already.  First, the chandelier in the dining room is really, really low.  The first night, I came out of the kitchen with my head down (stupid) and clunked right into the chandelier.  I really made the thing swing. The second night in the new place, I came out of the kitchen with my head down and…well, I shouldn’t repeat myself.  When I go in the bathroom, I’m still feeling around to find the light switch.  When I go into any room, I’m still feeling around to find the light switch.

First day on the job, I get a parking ticket.  I thought I parked where the Park ‘N Pony desk clerk instructed.  I even had a campus map!  I now know where to park.  Went to my first meeting of the Student Affairs division.  Good people, I can tell.  Yesterday was the first of several orientation sessions for new students, acronym AARO.  I sat at lunch table with new kids and parents and told them I’m a new kid, too.  The student leaders taught us some of the SMU spirit routines – the fight song, etc.  Pony up!

Ah, my references!  At dinner yesterday evening, I kept referring to Southwestern College in the present tense, as if I still worked there.  Awkward.

In spite of the intensity of concentration the simplest of acts takes right now, I’m amazed and thankful for how smooth the transition has been so far: from the sellers of our new home who are willing to be landlords for a few months while we sell our Kansas house (ergo we only have to move once), to my new staff on the SMU campus welcoming me with open arms, to my new boss and colleagues who are helping me feel like I belong.  As the logistics of the move begin ever so slightly to recede, I find myself thinking about beginning to put my hands on the plow, about next Monday’s meeting with my staff, about ministry.  The juices are starting to flow!

Challenging One’s Sense of Self

Usually in my blog posts I’m trying to think about some theological or religious or ministry issue.  This time, it’s more personal.  This move to Dallas has me rattled in unexpected ways.

I’m a preacher’s kid.  Preachers’ kids and “army brats” have something in common.  We moved a lot as kids.  I think these experiences give us a sense of rootlessness that people who grew up in the same place have a hard time understanding.  In high school I remember feeling very envious of my friends who had known each other since kindergarten.

We’ve been in Winfield 14 years.  Our kids all graduated from Winfield High School.  Three of the four are or have been students at Southwestern College (one “escaped” to the U. of Kansas).  While I wasn’t looking, I developed roots.  And now I’m pulling them up and trying to re-plant them in Dallas.

To clarify: I’m not surprised about the grief I feel about leaving SC and Winfield.  SC is a great place to work and the community (in the theological sense) is precious to us.  At the same time, I’m excited about the job at SMU.  I’m getting acquainted with my new colleagues and looking forward eagerly to working with them.  I’m confident God has called me to this new work.

What has me rattled is the lifestyle change that is challenging my sense of self.  I like to call myself a hayseed.  I grew up in very remote, rural places and small towns.  I’m not really a farm boy, but I went to school with them, stayed over at their houses, drove tractors and hauled hay and cut wheat with them.  I’ve spent a fair amount of time horseback and working cattle.

So, this move to Dallas has the feel of the country boy moving to the big city.  Coming home from a house-hunting trip to Dallas a couple of weeks ago, I was talking with Joni about the challenge to my sense of self this move was engendering.  I started thinking about her dad, who, except for a stint in the Army, lived in the same rural area his entire 89 year life.

Even as I write this blog, I struggle for the appropriate terms.  I like to think of myself in a certain way, but it’s probably not very accurate.   Thus, at a deeper level I am coming to terms with myself in this move.  I’m kind of embarrassed to realize that people who know me understand it better than I do myself, though isn’t it often the case that others see us more clearly than we do ourselves?

I’m beginning to get it.  In some fundamental, near-visceral way, this move to Dallas – and to the new ministry – is a mysteriously providential fit.  Still, it challenges my sense of self.  Clarity is sometimes a scary thing.

John Wesley, Earthquakes and God’s Providence

Reading John Wesley’s Sermon (actually, it’s Charles’, I recently learned) , “The Cause and Cure of Earthquakes,” reminds me again of how societies’ assumptions can change.  The title alone strikes today’s reader as quaint, to say the least.  An earthquake is a completely natural disaster.  How does one “cure” earthquakes, unless some sort of controllable natural cause can be identified?

But, of course, with Wesley, it’s always about God, so our interest is theological and it raises the question of God’s action in the world.  Wesley’s sermon clearly indicates that God directly causes the earthquakes for the sake of judgment: a holy God uses natural disasters to judge and awaken wayward peoples.

The sermon to which I refer was published in 1750, in response to an earthquake that the English themselves had felt.  Wesley is capitalizing on this moment with an evangelistic appeal.  And here is where the rub begins.

As I read, I was struck by how people today (in America) would likely respond.  They probably would be quite offended with Wesley’s tone and claims.  How could a loving God do such a thing?

So, we face two conflicting worldviews.  Wesley’s view, shared by many of his day, was of a holy, just, God who is Governor and Judge of the world.  God has every right to use all means available to bring about God’s holy purposes.  ”Our lives are in God’s hands,” and God can do as he sees fit.

By contrast, listening to folks today, even “conservative evangelical” Christians, God sounds more like an Attentive Helper, waiting to do our bidding.  I may be overstating some, but how much?

Reading a sermon like this one (or any of Wesley’s, to tell the truth) provokes questions.  Virtually all Christians would agree that God can do things like cause earthquakes, but we likely would conclude that God does not directly cause them.  God’s loving nature does not will such evil on people.  God uses other, more gentle means.  Natural disasters like earthquakes are an inevitable part of the kind of world God created, but not directly relatable to human sin nor to God’s direct action.

Question #1, then, has to do with how God uses power.  The harshness of Wesley’s view may trouble us, but so should the God-as-Attentive-Helper view.  Practically speaking, it holds that God always uses power for our benefit according to  (here is the kicker) how we understand “benefit.”  In this view, we expect God always to avert disaster on our behalf.  And if not, we have every right to be angry with God for not coming to our aid.

Two standard options arise to get God off this hook.  We can conclude that God is not powerful enough to prevent such disasters.  Or we can conclude that God isn’t good in the way we think God ought to be.  God’s power can be used – from our vantage point – capriciously.  Thousands of innocent victims can die in a natural disaster and God doesn’t seem to care.

Two bad choices, it seems.  Either we have a God who is able and willing to interact with us in real life, or we have a God who is either only remotely connected or is unable to prevent horrible circumstances from happening.

What do you think?  I know that we would prefer God to act according to our feelings and desires, but God is independent of our preferences.   In this light, what do you think?

New Job, New Challenges

Among the requisite qualities for my new job as SMU Chaplain, I find these three: (1) passionate commitment to Christ, (2) strong United Methodist identity and (3) openness to people of other faiths.  The third point is particularly important because of the number of Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and other students.  I am eagerly looking forward to getting acquainted with them, but I am also aware of the tension in the aforementioned job requirements.

One might reasonably ask, “How can you be passionately committed to Christ and be open to other faith expressions?”  Part of the way one would answer that question depends on how one defines “open.”

Some religious beliefs have universal implications, meaning that if I believe ‘A,’ then by believing ‘A’ I cannot coherently believe ‘B.’  I think the belief in God as Trinity and the Incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus of Nazareth fit this logic, which prevents me from believing certain other beliefs about God and Jesus.

Drawing these conclusions, how, then, do I “be open” to other faith expressions?  When we lived in the Chicago area during graduate school days, our next door neighbors to one side were Chinese Buddhists and our neighbors on the other were Jewish.  They were our friends.  Period.  Did we talk about Jesus?  Yes.  Did we manipulate conversations and twist and turn them in order to “witness”  about Jesus?  Absolutely not.  You don’t treat friends that way.

Part of faithful Christian witness is the appropriate use of power inherent in relationshps.  We are both powerful and vulnerable in real relationshps.  We can uplift or harm others and they can do the same.  In addition to my beliefs about Jesus, I have other beliefs (that come from Jesus), about how to treat people.

In the sermon, “On Living Without God,” Mr. Wesley has the following to say (Warning: it’s a long quote in 18th century idiom):  ”Let it now be observed that I…have no authority from the word of God ‘to judge those that are without [i.e. outside Christianity];’ nor do I conceive that any man living has a right to sentence all the heathen and Mahometan world to damnation.  It is far better to leave them to Him that made them, and who is ‘the Father of the spirits of all flesh;’ who is the God of the Heathens as well as the Christians, and who hateth nothing that He hath made.”

My translation: It’s God’s job to judge, not mine (thank God!).  God made all people, so we can leave the sorting out of people’s eternal destinies to God.  Since God made all people, God loves all people. Furthermore, Jesus commands us to love our neighbors.  Hopefullly, I embody the love of Jesus for all to see.  When I am given the opportunity to talk about my faith in Christ, I will do so with clarity, passion and gentleness.

In other words, I am not a pluralist.  I’m not interested in “blending” or matching doctrines from diverse religions for the sake of peace.  This approach demeans the integrity of all religions.  As a passionately committed believer in the Triune God, then, I am eager to undertake my responsibility to welcome people of other faiths, to make sure they have all appropriate means to exercise that faith as they see fit and to learn from them as God continues to work, however mysteriously,  in us all.

There is much more to say on this matter, I know.  I’ll keep thinking about how I should say it.