"A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush." That was a circulating sentiment during the 2000 presidential election. I can remember one of my good friends telling me about his voting experience (he was an outspoken Republican) and joking that he almost voted for Nader since he heard the saying so often in the days before the election.

I recently read a haunting book by Ephraim Radner, A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church. I found this book challenging but ultimately very helpful in identifying the ways in which the Christian Church has failed throughout the centuries. I even thought to myself--I wonder if this is the kind of book that D. S. Warner would have written if he was alive today and had studied a lot of historical theology. (For example, Warner wrote about the problem of the divisions in the church as ultimately sinful and Radner repeatedly includes the phrase, "division is murder.") Unfortunately, Christians have given Radner plenty of examples to illustrate and demonstrate the sins of the church. And yet, there was something bothering me throughout the first part of this book. Perhaps, he was just hitting a sore spot with me by critiquing William Cavanaugh--a theologian whom I find very compelling--but the outcome was what bothered me the most. Radner is not the first writer who has led me to this feeling. I remember having the same thoughts while reading Nathan Kerr's book, Christ, History, and Apocalyptic. This is a thought that I had while reading these two books (and others too): "I really like what you are going for, but why do you have to cut down these other alternatives that don't seem to me to be the real problem?"

Back to the Radner/Cavanaugh example. Radner is concerned that Cavanaugh oversells his thesis in The Myth of Religious Violence. I think Cavanaugh is well aware that there has been too much religious violence. He instead wants us to quit using a problematic category of religion to describe some violence as religious, and thus irrational, and other violence secular, and thus rational. The further along that I read in Radner's book, the more I appreciated what he was trying to do--but I still think Cavanaugh's book should be read more charitably. Put differently, I'm not convinced that "a vote for Cavanaugh is a vote for Radner's enemy"--(denial that the church has sinned in being complicit and active in violence).

I refuse to limit the world to Us vs. Them. It leads down a bad road. I think we should strive more often for creativity in the face of situations and drawing charitably on a variety of insights. Certainly, we can only engage "them" if we know who we are and have a foundation of Christian identity and understanding of our lord and savior, but we should try not to fear everything that is not exactly like us. We might just find ourselves with the good Samaritan instead of the dangerous one.

I recently read an interesting book by Tim Suttle, a pastor and frontman of Satellite Soul. This book brings the work of Walter Rauschenbusch to bear on the Evangelical tradition. An Evangelical Social Gospel?: Finding God's Story in the Midst of Extremes raised several interesting issues that face the church today. One of the biggest issues that he challenges is the three-fold problem that he sees getting in the way of the church actually living out its true mission. Individualism, Nationalism, and Consumerism undermine the full gospel life. But the image I wanted to share here was one that I found really helpful for communicating our calling to witness to Christ with our lives.

He invokes the images that were so prevalent during Saddam's Iraq--pictures of Saddam holding bread in the market, and holding books in school, and holding a gun outside the government buildings--all images to remind the people that whatever they are participating in, Saddam was behind it as provider of the food, knowledge, and safety. In other words, these images serve to point to a deeper meaning. Suttle then turns to our creation in the image of God. This sets up the framing of the Christian Mission as being to Image God wherever we are. I like that idea. What if we took seriously the reality that our lives do point to the deeper truth that inspires them. If our lives reflect the values of individualism or consumerism, then our lives will present icons to them. On the other hand, our lives should flow from our understanding of the gospel. Obviously, many people are rightly frustrated when the church does not imitate Christ and live in a way that points to God (hear hypocrisy).

A while back, I used the phrase--Windex for our Witness--to think about cleaning up the reflection of Christ that we are bearing to the world. I don't really think that the guy behind the counter at Alterra will look at me as an icon. But shouldn't we approach life in such a way that when people do look at the way we live (you know: treat our families, approach our work, spend our money, and respond to neighbors), they can see that something stands behind our lives and there is a deeper truth behind it.

Maybe this Lent, you can focus upon some way that your life as icon can better point to the reality behind it.

A friend sent me a link to an article today. His email subject heading said, "memory is more than a theological virtue." A subject line like that reminded me of one of my favorite books, The Memory of Old Jack, by Wendell Berry in which you might expect a theological lesson. However, if you clicked the first link, you might be wondering what an article about Michael Jordan's birthday has to do with theology or virtues, but the author (Michael Wilbon) demonstrates a wonderful point about our tendency to forget the past in favor of the most recent. Especially for those of us here in Milwaukee, I appreciated Wilbon's reference to Oscar Robertson's season when he averaged a triple-double.

A different friend and I were recently devising our own list of the best 10 NBA players. When he didn't want to include Oscar Robertson, I accused him of having no sense of history. Certainly, we shouldn't allow our history to enslave us to flawed understanding and approaches in the church, but a lot of times, it takes a sense of history to truly understand the opportunities and challenges that are before us.

Memory helps us to hold things in perspective. It can serve to provide us with hope in the midst of despair (because we remember a similar challenge that we, a friend, or our congregation overcame). Memory is also a source of wisdom, oftentimes enabling us to see a situation in such a way that the benefits and dangers are on the table when a community decides how to proceed. Memory can also help us to appreciate what is happening in the present. If there is nothing to which we are comparing the present, it is hard to really know if things are going well or not. So, just like Wilbon said--let's be careful or a lack of memory might just lead to a situation that reaches out and reminds us, "just how dumb it is to forget."

The Live Nativity set is up! We had great weather for it so there were fewer frozen fingers putting on all those bolts. Along the way, the roof just wasn't sitting right until we corrected the way the back piece was sitting into the framing post on the southeast corner. Framing matters.

Today as I was doing some dissertation research, I came across this statement by Ephraim Radner in Leviticus: A Brazos Theological Commentary. He wrote that instead of the title in our Christian bibles, Leviticus, which brings the idea that we are about to read an instruction manual for the Levites, “the Hebrew title Vayikra [“and he called” i.e., the Lord called Moses] is a far more accurate way of naming the purpose of the book.”

The title in one sense does serve to establish our expectations. In Genesis, we expect to read about the beginnings of the world and God's people. In Exodus we expect to read of Israel's exodus from Pharaoh. So if we see the title, Leviticus and expect to read about the priests, that is probably what we will spend our time emphasizing as we read. I think the book of Leviticus becomes more appropriately situated with the Hebrew name that invites readers to think in terms of being called by God to live in a particular manner instead of expecting an instruction manual for the Levites. Now I'm not out to change the names of Bible books--but I'll gladly go on record to say, we can change our expectations for what we'll read in Leviticus to "and then God called..."