Election Rhetoric and the Genius of James

Election year is a season of rhetoric complete with intermittently inspiring ideas and frequently disappointing realities. Aristotle defined rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." Translated into the vernacular of today, rhetoric is telling people what they want to hear so that they in turn will do what you want them to do. Perhaps this election year is a good time to invoke the genius of James: "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." (James 1:22, 27 NIV). In other words, powerful rhetoric is word wedded to action. It is noun and verb together creating an unforgettable and unavoidable statement of truth. In this election season pray with me for our nation and choose wisely our next leader. More than anything else, refuse empty rhetoric and insist on truth validated by action.

Grace as Potential

First day of a new school year... Not a Western phenomenon but certainly a Western obsession. Some face the day with knotted stomachs, while others enjoy a Type A adrenaline rush toward over-achievement. No matter the individual response, collectively it is a rite of passage, more substantial than New Year's for change resolution. Lived now vicariously through daughters, grandchildren and university students, I cannot refuse the growing connection for me of first days with grace. Perhaps due to a better grasp of grace's saving grip on me, I detect grace in every moment of potential. How often we think 'If only...', 'I would have...', 'I'd give anything if...' Grace secures another chance, another first day of school--endlessly. Enormous potential resides in first days, and grace extends potential in every breath we enjoy.

Longing To Feast

The awful hollowness of a day lived absent of the conscious awareness of God's presence is excruciating enough to create an insatiable longing to be enveloped by Him. King James English expresses it, "As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after Thee, Oh God." A more familiar modern declaration is, "Lord, I'm desperate for You..." Either expresses the recognition of a bankrupt heart, bending in desperate humility, clinging to the hem of His garment. St. Bernard of Clairveaux states it well: We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread And long to feast upon Thee still: We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead And thirst our souks from Thee to fill. Never surrender experiential heart-theology in favor of smug self-sufficiency. Long to feast upon Him still...

Perpetual Incarnation

This moment perches precariously on a knife edge, animation suspended between memory and mystery -- tip-toeing a tightrope of chronology & dimension. Lean too far behind and tumble into remorse, regret, reprise, repeat. Stretch too intensely toward tomorrow and drift into fog, fantasy, make believe, fairy tale.  Either behind or ahead is dysfunction. To live this breath in healthy tension with present attention, this is the divine mandate--nothing less than perpetual incarnation. Relentless intersection. Created in the image of "I am", "we are."

Advance To Abandonment

Lent compels us: advance to abandonment.  Whereas we often confuse abandonment with passive inactivity, the Lenten season insists that we take action, cutting erroneous ties and re-lashing our moorings to Christ.  With the Prodigal, "I will arise and go to my father..."  I will arise-- I will wake up, get, up, grow up, and climb up.  I trash and discard the garbage piling up in my heart and mind.  Ruthlessly, I inventory motive and attitude and address each in desperate fashion.  I recalibrate my attention to Christ each day with savage intentionality.  "Reckon yourselves dead to sin..."  This is no valley of ease; this is a summit to scale under harrowing and hellish conditions.  Lent places me precariously on a rocky crag with no safety net below, and bids me ever higher.  "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me, and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)

What's Up Doc?

(12:56 am) It's either much too early or much too late to be writing, but either way I'm much too awake to avoid the urge.  My teenage daughter was invited to see a late feature with friends which meant a 20 minute drive into town at 9:20 pm, the same back home, and all over again at midnight to retrieve her. Such are the parental moments that add purpose to the thinning & greying hair, and discoloration to the bags suspended and inflating below my eyes.  I've somehow reached a stage of geriatric limbo--I fall asleep in my chair while "watching" TV, then can't find my way back to lala land after a midnight paternal run to town.  This somehow reminds of Paul's words in the New Testament, something to the effect that I do the things I don't want to do and fail to do that which I should--call it a kind of senior disequilibrium.  Now, if only I can summon the 'umph' to translate insomnia into productivity.  Whoever said you're only as old as you feel wasn't old or he wouldn't have said it; he would either have been drinking coffee to stave off the dropsies or been hitting the fridge in search of a slumber-inducing combination.  What was it Bugs Bunny used to ask, "What's up Doc?" Perhaps understanding this is too much to ask and I should self-content with knowing that at least I won't have long to toss and turn before bracing for another round of life.

Open Letter To President Obama

Dear President Obama:

As your constituent, and on behalf of the nonprofit organization I represent, I urge you to oppose limiting the deductibility of charitable donations - whether in deficit reduction legislation or funding for jobs programs. The donations we receive are used to help those in our community who are most in need. Tax deductibility of donations to charities is an important incentive for Americans to invest in the works of charities who benefit fellow citizens of our country and those around the world. That incentive makes it possible for charities to return much greater benefits to those in need. Americans historically have given a greater percentage of their income to charities than most other nations, and our government has encouraged and fostered those efforts. The gifts we receive - whether in good or in difficult economic times - reduce the burden on government to assist citizens in need. In turn, the deductibility of charitable gifts helps charities reduce the demand for government services, helps us invest in our communities and helps us improve the lives of our fellow citizens.

I appeal to you not to support removing this important incentive for charitable giving. Do not increase the demands for government assistance because charities must pull back their programs. Do not end the long-standing American commitment to encourage supporting nonprofit programs that help those less fortunate than we are. Placing the burden of deficit reduction or funding for jobs programs on the backs of the neediest Americans is not the direction our country should take. Please oppose any attempts to undermine our work and hurt our beneficiaries.

Sincerely,
Dane W. Fowlkes, Ph.D
Director of Major Gifts
East Texas Bapttist University

More Than What I Need

Resist the tendency to define God by what you need. We often hear, "God is all I need." While that sounds pious, the truth is that God is far more than what I need and what you need and what the whole world ever has needed or ever will need. When I self-prescribe blinders so that all I see is my need or hurt or wish, and then err by understanding God only according to the light of my own experience, I reduce Him to a shadow of myself. Does God care? Absolutely! Is God the solution? Without a doubt! But the Creator and Redeemer and Sustainer cannot be contained by my imagination or confined by my despair. Instead of asking God to act the way you want at any given moment in order to meet any given need, bow before Him and surrender yourself unconditionally to Him, then allow Him to reveal His glory and plan in your situation.

Consumerism to Generosity

When will the American Church awaken from her narcissistic coma and return from consumerism to generosity?

Leadership Is Like...

Leadership is much less like Captain Horatio Hornblower shouting commands to those below while scanning an open horizon, and much more like explorer Allan Quatermain slashing his way through dense rainforest with a mere two feet of visibility.