AT&T and ALS

Speed of access is like that mirage of an oasis in the desert: it promises so much but delivers so little.

Consider how impatient you and I have become in the last several years while in the car, while on our computer, and with other people. We are just impatient. Downright rude. We are gaining the world of digital media while losing the soul of space and peace and a deep breath.

Consider this AT&T commercial right now which proclaims that the speed of keeping up with others was "so 42 seconds ago" or even "17 seconds ago," as if those increments of time actually meant anything to real accomplishment (video embedded below). The company proudly proclaims the speed of their 4G network with obvious parody, but they wouldn't sell the product to us in that way if it weren't appealing.

What would we give up if we gave up our smart phones? What would we gain instead?

The collision of speed and painful slowness derailed my own sense of time last week. As a part of my pastoral privilege, I had the opportunity to visit a lady dear to me that's a part of my church. The unendurable tragedy of her body is that it has slowly succombed to ALS (aka Lou Gehrig's disease). She remains in a body bound by slowness, patience. Oh, patience. I do not wish to go into further detail out of privilege to her own life and story. Suffice to say she can't move on her own.

What was so 17 seconds ago was her simply trying to turn a wheelchair or some other routine task that now takes minutes and hours. But she blessed me, because I had to wait on her. I was forced to. The life she and her husband lead was only a glimpse of slowness for me. And, oh, the unspeakable riches of the slowness of that time!

In the slowness, in the forced slowness for all of us, that's where God dwelled.

The speed of access that promises so much to us only robs us of our ability to listen: to others, to ourselves, to God. 42 seconds ago was important only if it was leading me somewhere slower, perhaps.

You see, I could point you to several studies that show our increase in technological capacity only makes us busier. Or I could tell you to put yourself in the experience where you must slow down. Find that place today. Your soul depends on it.

More Religious Freedom vs. The Obama Administration

The political news of the week has certainly been the Obama Administration's mandate (in particular, the department of Health and Human Services) of the use for contraceptives, the morning after pill, and many other sundry reproductive technologies by health providers for patients desiring them. Naturally, since reproductive technologies are the definition of a controversial issue in America, attaching a mandate to it's conveyance is especially contentious for health providers that are opposed to such measures. And guess who those health providers are that are opposed to this mandate? Religious health providers.

HHS essentially declared that "religious institutions" are those who guide the worship and prayer of adherants, and not quintessentially a hospital or health-provider. Not only is that a regretful overreach of government power-by-definition (since when does the government get to decide what constitutes someone's free exercise of the practice of one's own religion?), it's a classic evasion of history. Hospitals emerged as powerful institutions in the Middle Ages because of the Christian conviction that body and soul both mattered. Caring for the poor and infirmed, that shibboleth of how deep the gospel roots itself in the human heart, brought about the innovations of bodily restoration known as hospitals. Religion and health service is not so inseparable as the Obama Administration would have us believe.

And so, in a period of only a few weeks, we have the second assault on religious freedom (see last week's post) from the Obama administration. The irony of this affront to religious freedom is that, as Obama touts and as I'm wont to agree with, Obama is a deeply religious person. He does use his faith- probably most akin to a liberation theology version of the social gospel and definitely not run-of-the-mill Christian orthodoxy- to inform his view of politics. He admitted to such this week in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast.

So, what's the deal with this seeming contradiction? Though one can only conjecture, it seems Obama's views of the social good are informed by his religious views, but carried out by his view of the most appropriate vehicle: the state. So, if other's religious views contradict his own, he desires the coercion- yes, force- of the state to make sure people have access to free "justice" (read: abortion) even if the provider of such a service does not wish to do so. Obama's view of the state subordinates others' views of the free exercise of their religion. This view provides not just an assault on religious freedom but individual freedom of conscience.

In a column I wish that I had written, Charles Krauthammer writes:

Let’s stipulate that Obama’s prayer-breakfast invocation of religion as vindicating his politics was not, God forbid, crass, hypocritical, self-serving electioneering, but a sincere expression of a social-gospel Christianity that sees good works as central to the very concept of religiosity.

Fine. But this Gospel according to Obama has a rival — the newly revealed Gospel according to Sebelius, over which has erupted quite a contretemps. By some peculiar logic, it falls to the health and human services secretary to promulgate the definition of “religious” — for the purposes, for example, of exempting religious institutions from certain regulatory dictates...

Therefore: To flatter his faith-breakfast guests and justify his tax policies, Obama declares good works to be the essence of religiosity. Yet he turns around and, through Sebelius, tells the faithful who engage in good works that what they’re doing is not religion at all. You want to do religion? Get thee to a nunnery. You want shelter from the power of the state? Get out of your soup kitchen and back to your pews. Outside, Leviathan rules.

Religious Freedom Can Erode Slowly, But Not Yet

Last week, a monumental piece of news went mostly unnoticed. It regarded a U.S. Supreme Court decision (Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) that the Obama administration was contesting against a religious establishment. You can read the details of the case in many other places. Essentially what was at stake was a religious organization's freedom in hiring and firing whom they want without government interference.

Does the government have a stake in a religious organization hiring whom they want? Of course they do. In this particular case, it was about a person with a disability. This was a dicey situation, to be sure, but if the government can tell a religious organization whom they can hire and fire, even in this case, what's to stop the slow slide into greater breaches of the 1st Amendment (wherein religious persons and organizations are guaranteed the "free exercise" of their religion)? What's to stop the government from pressing ideological concerns into religious hiring and firing, particularly of pastors, priests, and ministers? For instance, how far are we from the government intervening in a church by demanding it hire someone as a pastor who disagrees with certain sexual mores of that church's beliefs?

It is precisely at this crossroads where the myth of an impassioned "secular" government must forever die. The government- and particularly the Obama administration and the Justice Department- wants to apply enforcement standards on religious organizations. They wish to force an ideological- not an impartial- agenda on religious organizations. There is no magical middle ground free from the influences of any worldview- religious or otherwise- and there will always exist the certitude that someone is going to influence the government on his or her view. It isn't just the church that tries to influence the state, but everyone is trying to influence the state. Secularists who decry the mixing of church and state misunderstand the inherently evangelistic nature of their position.

So what of the outcome of the Supreme Court decision then? Well, the Supreme Court unanimously (that's 9-0 for folks scoring at home) struck down the EEOC and the Obama administration's argument. Fortunately, this is a pretty simple reading of the 1st Amendment to the Bill of Rights, and that means that two of the Justices that Obama nominated disagreed with him.

The lesson in all this is that religious freedom is a tenuous venture. Even in a country with supposedly guaranteed religious freedoms, those freedoms can erode slowly, imperceptibly. The very imperceptibility lies in the fact that this news- news the Wall Street Journal called the most significant Supreme Court ruling on religion in over 50 years- was barely covered by mainstream media.

But, alas, we have Supreme Court Justices who can read, and so religious freedom is spared the slow decline into autocracy, at least for the foreseeable future.

Tim Tebow and the New Evangelical Witness

Image by Time MagazineThe original sin of the blogosphere is commenting on a popular piece of news without saying anything original. Such is the case with Tim Tebow, where plenty of cyber ink has been spilled. And yet, in the most unlikely place, I read something original on Tim Tebow yesterday. The highlight of the analysis (from Time writer Jon Meachem) is this:

"What is new and what makes Tebow an intriguing figure...is the scale and scope of his witness. With Billy Graham on the cool side of the mountain and George W. Bush living quietly in Dallas, Tebow is perhaps the most significant Evangelical Christian in the country."

The thought hadn't occurred to me before, but consider the history. The first and second Great Awakenings brought us high-profile pastors that spoke to large crowds. In many ways, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were both the first evangelicals and the first celebrity pastors. Charles Finney brought more hype, excitement, and innovation to what it meant to be evangelical a hundred years later. And then we get to the 20th century, where the newer evangelicals brought us Billy Graham and, apparently, Christian evangelical Presidents.

The interesting thing about Tebow, then, is not so much about what Tebow says but about what Tebow says about us. Consider how the leading evangelicals in each stage matched the era's style of communication. Whitefield and Edwards would preach for much longer than an hour, to large outdoor audiences, living in a verbal culture with the only major form of media being the newspaper. Billy Graham entered in the era of radio and television, and thus preached to massive audiences via those media while also utilizing the stadium "crusade." And now, we have an evangelical who actually plays in a stadium every week.

This isn't to ridicule Tebow at all, but to point out his method of influence. The Time writer Meachum called him "perhaps the most significant Evangelical Christian in America." Why not a pastor or evangelist or writer? Because we live in an entertainment culture, and Tebow by trade is an entertainer. That's what sports- for how much I admittedly love them- are. They are entertainment. In a culture where influence is touted by soundbytes, and less than 144 charaters in Twitter, and by a pristine image, Tebow has risen to the fore not necessarily because of his message but because of his charisma and his profession.

It's not that I think Tebow is an unfortunate advocate of evangelical Christianity. In fact, I think he does admirably in his role. It's just that Tebow might be the most significant evangelical because he plays by all the media rules of our culture. He speaks in soundbytes and he looks good. He does well by playing by the rules.

It's just that I wish these weren't the rules.

Anarchists are Capitalists Too

It's fashionable today to be a localist, or against free trade, or for more direction and force in the economic affairs of the world. And then there's always the weird minority of people that would consider themselves anarchists. Besides the fact that I'm not entirely sure what a localist is (someone who trys to walk everywhere, buy local food, etc.) and how that is entirely possible, I'm left wondering why these related trends are so fashionable.

The easy answer is that Barack Obama was elected as President 4 years ago by a majority of the people. The more difficult, and probably more accurate, answer is that our increasing global awareness has made us aware of the hypocrisies and evils of businesses and governments around the world. Thus, the more we know about a product and the less gas used to ship it to us, the better the product. And the more we trust it. And, despite the fact that the inevitable conclusion to such localism and opposition to free trade manifests itself in more government control, people prefer the sensibility of more top-down order but the actuality of more choice.

The confluence of such ironic trends is found at the large used bookstore I frequented over the holidays. The type of clientele germane to this particular used bookstore is varied, to be sure. And yet even still, our friendly localists and anarchists somehow seem to congregate more at this particular store than anywhere else, say a chain restaurant, the mall, or even the library. The type of art in the store is most definitely anarchist, or localist, or at its bare minimum, agressively progressive.

Why is this so ironic? Because this is such a successful- and large: we should always poke fun at the localists for going to a large store- store. What makes it successful? Well, how should we say it? Well, it makes a lot of money. Lots of it. So much so, that it even had to triple in size by moving locations over 5 years ago.

The market plan of any used bookstore is simple. Take people's used books, CDs, and movies, give them a price for them either by store credit or actual cash, and then sell those books, CDs, and movies for more than you paid for them. It's a simple, and ingenious, market plan. It works. And it's all quaintly  capitalistic.

Wouldn't an internally consistent anarchist, or localist, or agressive progressive, eshew such a store? Not necessarily? Okay, let's say the store gets even bigger because of it's successful market plan. Then it sprouts more stores (as such a thing has happened to this used bookstore, adding 3 more locations in 3 new cities). Let's say all of those stores become even larger in the physical square plan.

How many stages are left until the localist-friendly bookstore becomes Wal-Mart? After all, Sam Walton was a localist, convinced that he was providing common goods at cheap prices for the people of Benton, Arkansas. And, if it be an economic evil for the used bookstore to share the economy of scale that Wal-Mart occupies, who should stop that from happening?

The beauty of this real-life example demonstrates that anarchists are capitalists too. And so are localists. And yet, it's the localists that try to bind our consciences to what is right and wrong in a simple economic choice.

I prefer individual responsibility, and treating others as if they have liberty. Incidentally, so do general Christian ethics, where we are to bind our own selves in ethically gray areas, but we are to give others the liberty in that same gray area. In ethically absolute areas, we ought to clamor for truth and justice, but in areas such as localism, let's all just get along.