Quarantine Corner: Curated content for life on lockdown - Week 3

Written by Michael Worrall

“So is Tiger King spoiled meat?” My buddy Andrew sent me that text in reference to the meat and bones conversation from last week’s article. Though I haven't watched the wildly popular new Netflix docu-series, I think the question draws attention to a fascinating phenomenon - we live in a time of viral media. 

Viral means quickly and widely spread (an ironic term in our current moment)--media that seemingly pop up out of nowhere and shout for our attention. Tiger King is the newest in a lineup of Serial, Making a Murderer, and Birdbox. Viral media (or at least the conversation surrounding it) is often gone as quickly as it arrives, but while it lasts it is demanding - like a waiter insisting you try a certain dish. 

How do you know whether or not to indulge? You could do a tasting (watch 20 minutes and then stop and review) but often unhealthy choices are sweet & alluring. Let me propose that you ask good waiters, connoisseurs, men and women who have palates developed through years of tasting & seeing that the Lord is good. In humility ask, “What would you recommend?”

Here is week 3 of Quarantine Corner from an amateur connoisseur. Might I suggest you try…

Listen: Fall & Winter by Jon Foreman 

These six song EPs are half of a four-part project called Seasons. Though spring is in bloom, Fall & Winter seemed the more fitting choices on the eve of Good Friday. With lyrics like, “Thought I was learning...how to live not how to cry, but really I’ve been learning how to die” and “O my Lord, to suffer like you do...it would be a lie to run away” Fall & Winter are a beautiful, thoughtful, folksy lament to lead into your Easter celebration.

Read: Untangling Emotions by J. Alisdair Groves & Winston Smith 

Speaking of lament, Untangling Emotions is a fantastic practical theology of emotion. Whether you tend towards stoicism or emotionalism you will benefit from this read. Groves & Smith help readers to see that emotions (even “negative” emotions) are good and needed while giving tools to help readers engage and understand emotions rather than being ruled by them. This was one of my favorite reads of 2019. I’d recommend reading it alongside the Psalms.

Watch: Inside Out (Disney+ or Rental on Amazon)

Keeping this train on the emotion and lament tracks, Inside Out is a Pixar movie about the mixed emotions of a young girl who moves to a new city. Though Inside Out paints human beings as primarily “feeling things” that are ruled and run by our emotions, it is nonetheless a creative, thoughtful story that helps us see the beauty and value of our emotions - even sadness and lament.

If you watch with your kids here is an article with some helpful conversation points at the end.

Habits of a Gospel-Centered Household - Pt. 2

Written by Pete Schemm
[This continues Pete’s piece from last week.]

2. Reading Scripture Together 

Holy Scripture is the most important source for training in the Christian household. Scripture alone is sufficient to form our understanding of salvation and every aspect of Christian living (see 2 Tim. 3:10-17; Pss. 1, 19, 119). Jesus taught that God’s Word is sufficient when he said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matt 4:4). 

Scripture is not our only source for improving our understanding of God and Christian doctrine, but it is our only perfect and ultimate source. Every other resource we might employ is subject to the authority of Scripture. Because Scripture is the ultimate source of authority in all matters of life and doctrine, we see Scripture as the primary means for Christian formation. 

How to Read the Bible in the Christian Household 

The important thing to note about our second habit is simplicity. Reading Scripture together is not a Bible study or a lesson. It is quite simply a time to read the Bible together and listen to it—to read and learn as a family. Read Scripture regularly—not necessarily daily but consistently. It has been my experience, mostly with fathers, that a daily goal is counterproductive. They fail to meet this goal and then give up altogether. A better goal for the habit of Scripture reading is “life together under the Word.” Reading consistently as a family, along with faithful participation in a local church, can accomplish this goal. 

Read Scripture appropriately. Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggested that we ought to read the Bible more like novices. Those who are familiar with the Bible often take on the character of the person who is speaking— whether God or a human being. In so doing, they tend to distort the reading of Scripture. Readers become “rhetorical, emotional, sentimental, or coercive” and direct the listeners’ attention to themselves instead of toward God’s Word. Ironically, it becomes difficult to hear God speak from his own Word. When the Bible is read appropriately, in humility, our families have a better chance of hearing from God. 

Read Scripture in unity. I recommend the same Bible translation for everyone, children and parents. Bible story books may be helpful at times, but in the end our families ought to learn the Word of God using the same grammar. Of course your seven-year-old is unlikely to grasp the significance of the word justification as it is used in Paul’s letter to the Romans—but that’s not the point. Honestly, who among us understood justification the first time we read it? It is our responsibility, as parents, to build a grammar of faith. And we hope to do so in a manner consistent with our belief in the gospel. 

3. Rehearsing Truth Together 

Our third habit centers on truth and doctrine. How can we help our children discover sound doctrine? How can we help them be ready “to make a defense to anyone who asks” for a reason for the hope we have in Christ (1 Peter 3:15)? And to do so with the allure of gentleness? Well, the good news is that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel of Christian doctrine. 

I recommend using a catechism to rehearse the time-tested truths of Christianity. What is a catechism? A catechism is a summary of Christian belief put in the form of questions and answers. It is a tool designed for personal interaction. It may be used at the breakfast table, on a car ride, or at bed time. 

We found that the habit of asking a question or two each week naturally opened gospel-oriented conversations with our children. In addition to that, it naturally stocks your child’s warehouse of biblical and theological concepts. It is one of the most effective means I know of to be “trained in the words of the faith” (1 Tim 4:6). 

There are several good catechisms available. For years our family used A Catechism of Bible Teaching (1892) written by John A. Broadus. It is written from a distinctively Baptist perspective. These days we use a more recently published catechism—The New City Catechism. We like it because it comes in full-color, digital format. Download the app and check it out (www.newcitycatechism.com). As Baptists, we may find the need to tweak an answer or two but don’t let that keep you from the value of the entire catechism. It stands squarely in Christian orthodoxy. 

Here is a sample question from The New City Catechism to give you an idea of how this works: 

Question 1: What is our only hope in life and death? 

Answer: That we are not our own but belong, body and soul, both in life and death, to God and to our Savior Jesus Christ. 

[Continued next week.]

Deferring Easter? A Thought Experiment

Written by Rhys Bezzant

So here is the thing. Easter this year is going to be flat. The emotional twists and theological minefields of the week before Easter are captured in Matthew’s account of the last week of Jesus’ life, where Jesus persists in making the Kingdom of God--not the law, not the Temple, not the Jewish nation--the centre of discipleship. Some of these themes will be communicated in online services with skill and wise preparation, and our own personal devotions can dwell on some of the horror and hope of the events. However, the rhythm of readings that take us through the week of Christ’s passion, with all its ups and downs, won’t climax as in other years with the reflective services of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, or an Easter vigil for some on Holy Saturday. The exuberant joy of Easter day will be curtailed without the possibility of joining together to break the Lenten fast and to shout in unison that “He is risen indeed.” How wonderful that some Christians have placed a palm cross in the front window of the house, in silent protest that there were no fronds waved in triumphal procession this year. But we all know that it is not quite the same.

Here is my wild blue-sky-dreaming thought. Perhaps we could honour Easter in restrained ways this week and postpone our celebration until later in the year. I understand that the church calendar sets Lent as forty days from Ash Wednesday (not including Sundays), but why couldn’t we extend Lent this year? After all, the word “lent” means “lengthening” of days which happens in the spring-time, so celebrating new birth in April in Australia, when all the leaves are falling off the trees, has always struck me as a mixed message. We may not choose to fast until the spring, but we could decide that foregoing the Lord’s Supper until then is one way of showing solidarity with Jesus who fasted forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. And anyway, the date of Easter is a moveable feast, falling on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox. I know that conversations are happening (beyond my pay grade) between different branches of ancient European churches to set a regular date for Easter. Not sure what I think about this yet. But in the meantime we could, just could, cash in our chips and go full steam ahead and plan for a September celebration.

So here is my next crazy thought: Easter celebrations normally build on the date of Passover. But the book of Hebrews makes a powerful connection between Jesus’ death and the Day of Atonement as well, which this year is being commemorated by our Jewish friends on Sunday, September 27. We are reminded by the author of Hebrews that, just as the high priest enters the holy place once a year with the blood of animals, so Jesus entered as a high priest into the most holy place with his own blood as a sacrifice of atonement, not once a year but once and for all. Jesus is the better sacrifice, who makes a better covenant: “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb 9:14). The Lord’s Supper, which on the night before he died Jesus commanded us to perpetuate, is not merely an updated version of the Passover without the lamb, but a new practice which combines many threads from the Old Testament, such as Exodus 24 and Jeremiah 31. The Lord’s Supper is no longer a domestic rite like the Passover but a public one, taking this cue from the Day of Atonement which was national in its scope. Blood poured out to cleanse by a divinely ordained priest in the order of Melchizedek is not something that the Passover ever saw as its foundation idea. 2020 is turning out to be an upside-down year, so why not reinvent the church calendar too?

The most amazing thing about conversations and online interactions in the last couple of weeks is that ecclesiology is cool again. As someone who has spent the last twenty years researching and writing on what the church is about, I am overjoyed that an often undervalued doctrine is getting its day in the sun. Taking away the regular pattern of Sunday services, or at least substantially reinventing them in a digital age, has made us rethink what we do and why. Some social commentators are already calling 2020 the Great Pause or the Great Disruption. I like the idea. We have to face our own lack of control of the natural environment, and spend more time at home with those closest to us, even if they aren’t necessarily the ones we would by preference choose to hang out with in a log cabin in the hills. So pressing pause on so many things that we hold dear might turn out to be for our deep emotional refreshment and spiritual recalibration. Pressing pause on the liturgical high point of the year, the celebration of Easter, might just be a blessing in disguise. Or in the best case scenario, we might get to celebrate it twice.

The Anguish of the Ordinary

Written by Ty Hopkins

1/31/2020, 2:00 AM  (COVID-19 Lockdown day 17 or 18 or thereabouts, depending on what you count as the starting date)

Yesterday afternoon, with homeschool 75-percent complete for the day, (yes, that’s how even we dads mark the passage of time these days) my 12-year-old shuffles up to me, all slumped shoulders and dejected lips, and moans, “Dad, what is the point of even existing?” He is a little bit like Calvin. (As in Calvin and Hobbes, from the comic strip, not his namesake the French Reformer.) I failed to have a ready answer. I was caught off guard.

Well, if you're an enneagram type four (romantic, sometimes hopeless) like I am, there’s no better time to tackle such a riddle than at two a.m., which it is now. At least, that’s the time a decent answer is most likely to finally come to you. So, picture me hunched over a typewriter in film noir lighting at two a.m., swilling black coffee and chain smoking. (Though in real life I only do one of those at a time.)

Of course I don’t actually own a typewriter, and right now I wish I were hunched over an expensive device. But times being what they are, I can’t find my laptop, because my children have been serially swiping it to binge watch PJ Masks, Wild Kratts, and YouTube videos about handicrafts or cats. So instead, I am writing this by hand with a cheap Bic pen. Strangely, that is actually not ordinary anymore.

“Why Exist?” Hmm. I suspect what my 12-year-old is struggling with, as he daily slogs through homeschool and chores only to wake up and do it all again the next day with no hope of a game of laser tag or a romp in the woods to break up the monotony, is that a prolonged period of nothing but the daily grind with little to look forward to starts to feel frighteningly close to meaninglessness. We just get overwhelmed with the ordinariness of it all.

I fear to dive too deeply into the waters of contemplating the holiness of the ordinary, since I’ve heard that some women in my church are studying a book on that subject which is doubtless a more well-digested and erudite exposition on the matter. So I’ll content myself with a monologue that is more wryly ironic. Or at least you can read it in one sitting. And besides, as all the enneagram books tell you, what the hopeless romantic (me) fears more than anything else is being ordinary, so I really have a hard time believing all that business about the blessedness of dishwashing and diaper changing. (See? My enneagram reference at the outset wasn’t just a gratuitous nod at the currently trendy and Twitter-worthy in Christian circles.) I am actually particularly disposed to fear the ordinary, which we are getting an outsized serving of these days.  

Probably you’ve noticed that being on lockdown takes from us all the special occasions and festivities, all of which happen in relationships and community (spring baseball games, Passover seder, Easter dinner, anniversaries and birthdays, graduations, and just plain old parties, movies, and game nights). Not only have we lost the special but we have even lost the slightly-interesting-but-still-mostly-ordinary things like getting coffee or going to the bank. We have moved from the ordinary to the ultra-ordinary. The stay-at-home directive doesn’t just leave us with only the ordinary but actually emphasizes the ordinary. Does anyone else feel like there are now somehow more counters to wipe and doorknobs to fix than there used to be?

Anyway, rather than extol the sacredness of dishwasher unloading, what I actually set out to do here was to acknowledge that it’s pretty easy for repetitive ordinary routines to feel meaningless. Mr. Downtrodden-12-year-old is right: we are just going to have to do it all over again tomorrow. What’s the point? What’s the meaning of it all?

This question gives me pause. For two reasons. One, my feeling overwhelmed by the ordinary causes me concern for the baseline health of my soul, because intuitively I know those people are right. There is something sacred about diaper changing, and I would do well to just embrace that. And two, why is it that we (and my 12-year-old type four and I in particular) are just so insistent that things mean something? Moreover, this overdose of the ordinary seems to make every one of us crave meaning all the more.

I need to puzzle this out in a second entry at some future uncivilized hour of the morning, but just as a start: intuition tells me that this aching desire for meaning is closely linked with our desire for goodness, which we just can’t live without. We seem to be born with our intense and intuitive sensitivity to goodness. It is right at the very core level of our essence, because our insatiable thirst for goodness is an expression of the fingerprints of our Good Creator on our hearts.

I’d like to explore the relationship between meaning and goodness in a follow-up cobbled together at another two a.m. session later this week, because who can find the mental space to compose clever commentary during daylight hours with six people crammed into your house ALL DAY LONG?

Quarantine Corner: Curated content for life on lockdown - Week 2

Written by Michael Worrall

Last week I said we want to be choosy eaters, not gluttonous consumers. Being a choosy eater doesn’t only involve choosing which foods, but also portions and parts. When having fried chicken (or fresh fish), a choosy eater will eat the meat and leave the bones. If you’re vegan - eat the pistachio and leave the shell. 

Many things we consume in our listening, reading, and watching will contain some bones, shells, gristle, or stems - that doesn’t necessarily mean we shouldn’t consume them. It means we should make sure what we chew and digest is nourishing. 

With that, here is week 2 of Quarantine Corner - eat the meat, spit out the bones. 

Listen: This Cultural Moment - by John Mark Comer & Mark Sayers
(Available on any podcast platform - Spotify, iTunes, etc…)

This Cultural Moment is a podcast about following Jesus in the post-Christian world. If you are curious about how to wholeheartedly follow Jesus amidst the shifting sands of our social, political, and cultural landscape you will find this podcast engaging and enlightening. Make sure you begin with episode 1 entitled - “What is Post-Christian Culture.”

Read or Listen: The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin Jr. 
(Audiobook available on Hoopla)

The Book of the Dun Cow is technically young adult fiction, but don’t let the genre dissuade you. Walter Wangerin Jr. portrays the battle between good and evil in a vivid and heart-wrenching story. There are few stories that better depict the corrosive and corrupting effect of sin, pride, guilt, and shame. Likewise, there are few stories that better depict the beauty and power of compassion, sacrifice, and love. Read or listen and be swept up into longing for the restoration and reconciliation of all things.

Watch: Dunkirk (for Rent on Amazon)

Sticking with the “Dun” theme. Dunkirk tells the story of Allied troops trapped on the French beaches of Dunkirk awaiting rescue by sea as the German army closes in. The film creatively follows key characters to give you a full picture of the rising tension between hope and fear, sacrifice and safety. Will rescue come? Can the Allied troops hold onto hope while they wait? Watch to find out and to be formed in your own longing & waiting.

Bonus Read or Listen: “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace 
(Listen here)

“This is Water” is David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement speech to Kenyon College. Wallace reflects on much of life and culture in this speech, but he powerfully addresses the importance of thinking with compassion and charity in a world that breeds self-centeredness. While Wallace ultimately concludes that life and truth are subjective, his speech is nonetheless worth your time and consideration.