Author: Jeff

Watching last night’s episode of Top Gear was a rather interesting experience. For those of you who’ve never watched Top Gear, it’s a British Car show which is currently watched by about 350 million viewers worldwide – over twice as many people as watch the Super Bowl – each week. The three hosts test cars, engage in silly challenges, and do crazy things in general.

Last night they flew to America to do one of their cheap car challenges. In the past they’ve bought Porsches for £1500, cars for less than £100, and even mid-engined Italian supercars for less than £10,000. Generally they end up buying cars that are old, break down, and are junky in general. This time, of course, was no exception. They were given $1000 to buy a car and then drive it from Miami to New Orleans, with a series of challenges along the way.

In general, the whole adventure was very funny, and a pleasure to watch. There were two parts, however, that made me cringe. The first occurred in Alabama, where they pulled into a gas station and were nearly killed by local rednecks. Granted, they partially brought it upon themselves by driving through the state with slogans like “Hillary for President” painted on the side of their car. When they pulled in, they were promptly accosted by the owner, who called “the boys” to come and settle the situation. Rocks were thrown at the television crew, and the presenters and the production staff ran for their lives, chased by a gang of hooligans in pickup trucks. Of course, all of this is caught on film and shown for all the world to see. The gas station owner was, of course, classic. “What do you expect?”, she said, “You’re in a hick town.”

As if that made assault and battery ok.

The irony, of course, is that this occurred in the South – what is considered (as was pointed out) the bastion of Christianity and conservatism in the United States. One of the things the presenters were jokingly poking fun at was the intolerance that is often associated with those two particular ideologies, and unfortunately it was proven in an all too dramatic fashion.

But as I watched, I thought two things – first, what does it say about the subculture in the “red states” that drives the perception of many people to assume that intolerant and bigoted attitudes are the norm? Many people will say, “Well, but it’s not really like that…”, and in many places I’m sure that’s true, but the evidence captured by the BBC was fairly convincing, and I don’t think they picked that gas station simply because they thought it would cause a stir. Intolerance is not unique to America, nor is it unique to the South, but there exists a (I think accurate) perception that many people in the South are far less tolerant of others than in other regions.

Second, it struck me as sad that this occurred in what claims to be the most Christian part of the nation, and the part of the nation with a mandate on moral values. I don’t know if the impromptu lynch squad was full of pew-filling Christians, but there’s a part of me that wouldn’t be too surprised to find out they were. Can we really justify intolerance to people who believe differently than we do to the extent that we threaten them with physical violence? We often try to distance ourselves from events like the Spanish Inquisitions and the Crusades, saying those were “back then”, but unfortunately I think there isn’t that much that separates us from the people we try to eschew.

The final segment of the show ended with them driving through New Orleans. They’d planned on selling their cars when they got there, but instead were confronted with a scene of massive damage and destruction, even one year out. In the words of James May and Jeremy Clarkson:

May: Finally, though, we made it to New Orleans, and my word, were in for a shock. We had seen on the news what Hurricane Katrina had done, but seeing the devastation for real was truly astonishing.

Clarkson: This is extraordinary… every house… I’ve been driving now for fifteen miles – there isn’t a pavement, there isn’t a building, there isn’t anything that isn’t smashed. It’s such a vast scale of destruction.

A year had passed since Katrina had blown through, and we had sort of assumed that after twelve months, the wealthiest nation on earth would have fixed it, but we were wrong.

How can the rest of America sleep at night knowing this is here?

I was reminded of the quickness with which we forget. How can the rest of America sleep? Because in a very real sense, we don’t know that it’s there. We don’t know it’s there just like we didn’t know about the tragic levels of homelessness and poverty and hopelessness that existed in New Orleans before Katrina hit. We are a nation that ignores what we don’t want to see because it helps us sleep better at night.

There are times when I’m proud to be an American, and there are times when I wish America were more worthy of being proud. Tonight was one of the second. I wish my country’s ideals were not only words on paper, but were modeled daily by her citizens, rich, poor, black, white, red, blue, Christian, atheist. There is so much here that is good, and no place I would rather live, but tonight I was painfully reminded that we have so far to go before America is a place everyone can be proud of.

Tell my people Israel of their sins!
Yet they act so pious!
They come to the Temple every day
and seem delighted to learn all about me.
They act like a righteous nation
that would never abandon the laws of its God.
They ask me to take action on their behalf,
pretending they want to be near me.
‘We have fasted before you!’ they say.
‘Why aren’t you impressed?
We have been very hard on ourselves,
and you don’t even notice it!’

“I will tell you why!” I respond.
“It’s because you are fasting to please yourselves.
Even while you fast,
you keep oppressing your workers.
What good is fasting
when you keep on fighting and quarreling?
This kind of fasting
will never get you anywhere with me.
You humble yourselves
by going through the motions of penance,
bowing your heads
like reeds bending in the wind.
You dress in burlap
and cover yourselves with ashes.
Is this what you call fasting?
Do you really think this will please the Lord?

“No, this is the kind of fasting I want:
Free those who are wrongly imprisoned;
lighten the burden of those who work for you.
Let the oppressed go free,
and remove the chains that bind people.
Share your food with the hungry,
and give shelter to the homeless.
Give clothes to those who need them,
and do not hide from relatives who need your help.

“Then your salvation will come like the dawn,
and your wounds will quickly heal.
Your godliness will lead you forward,
and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind.
Then when you call, the Lord will answer.
‘Yes, I am here,’ he will quickly reply.

Sometimes as I read through scripture, I feel like we ignore some of the more messy bits. We’re often quick to look back and analyze the text and the tone and the style of the passages without listening to them and allowing them to enter our own hearts. I think in many ways, this is one of the most dangerous trends in our modern Christian society – the failure to be introspective and allow the word of God to convict. We are generally so busy looking for how what we’re reading “applies to someone else” that we often miss the message God has for us.

This passage is an excellent example of that. Sometimes I wonder what the prophets would say if they were here, and what the Gospels would sound like if they were written today. I wonder how Jesus would cater his message to us, and whether his harshest words would still be reserved for the religious establishment. I have a feeling in many ways they would be. I wonder if God would come down and look at us today, view our services and say, “Do you really think this will please the Lord?”

God’s response is striking: free those unjustly imprisoned, be a fair employer, stop oppressing people, share your food and possessions, and don’t run away from people who need your help. Often we have very little to say about these types of social issues. We make excuses to absolve ourselves of the responsibility of helping those around us while thinking our worship “at the temple” makes up for other shortcomings.

I wonder what God would say.

Instead of patting ourselves on the back, I feel as though we should each take a hard look at our lives and our actions, both as a church body and as individuals, and evaluate what Christ’s words to us would be, were he here today. If I am honest, I feel as though this passage, and many other similarly humbling ones, apply to me much more than I would like to admit.

What is the most basic article of faith?
This is not all that we are.

I think this simple statement sums up the most significant difference in core philosophies in our world today. Many of our disagreements in the realm of morality, religion, ethics, justice and economics trace their roots to our affirmation or denunciation of this ideal.

Certainly there is no way to empirically prove some intangible soul inside us that makes us any different from a cleverly designed machine executing its programming. There is no objective experiment we could run that would yield a satisfactory answer and let us know of life after death, or of an eternal or even elevated nature – something that places us above mere animals.

Perhaps I just don’t want to believe in an empty and meaningless universe, but it is hard for me to conceive of this is all there is. Art and beauty and love in particular seem so wasteful in a universe governed by logic and survival and chance. Without the possibility of something beyond what we see and experience it’s hard to justify how hope could be anything other than delusion, integrity could be anything but weakness, and compassion anything but folly. Yet almost every person and every society would call hope, integrity, and compassion virtues, not vices.

Perhaps faith is blindness, and perhaps only the weak and enslaved believe in something beyond what they can know and measure. It is possible that love is a farce, and that poets and writers for thousands of years have been naïve and foolish, guiding others on an ultimately futile journey of emptiness.

But somehow I suspect deep down the reason so many people in so many cultures across all of history believed in and recorded their suspicions of the intangible nature of life beyond “what we are” is not because they were more foolish and less enlightened than liberated modern man. I wonder if in our desire to master all there is, we jettison intangible things we cannot know or understand in order to make our quest appear that much simpler, but in reality that much farther away.

Pride.

It’s an interesting phenomenon, and one that I’ve spent a good bit of time thinking about and wrestling with over the past few weeks.

In a lot of ways, I think studying about pride is somewhat like reading a nutrition textbook that says you should eat healthy food – it doesn’t really tell you anything you didn’t already know, but neither does it really help you out very much. Also, it isn’t very easy to be objective about pride in your own life, seeing as how if you knew you were being prideful, you would no doubt change what you were doing.

In addition, a certain amount of pride is often a healthy thing – being defined by Merriam-Webster as “a reasonable or justifiable self-respect”. There is a part of pride that causes us to feel a belonging to a certain group, or look rightly with favor on some particular thing we’ve accomplished.

It isn’t in fact pride, but rather hubris that is often condemnable. It was seen as a crime in ancient Athens, and was often the predecessor to the tragic fall in Greek tragedies.

When we say “pride” we usually mean either hubris or arrogance – both of which are rooted in an exaggerated sense of self importance. In the Christian sense, I think truly the most insidious danger for each of us is perpetuated by the lie we call “The American Dream” – that if you work hard enough and long enough you can accomplish anything. With that societal cry in our ears, we begin to trust and believe so highly in our own merit and ability that we leave little room for God’s grace, and even in a social vacuum without realizing it, we fall victim to the most serious sort of Christian pride – one that doesn’t involve others, but only ourselves and God.

On an interpersonal level, I think often we confuse humility with self-deprecation. It is not humility to pretend we are less than we really are – it is perhaps false humility, but a better word might be dishonesty. Remembering Merriam-Webster’s definition, pride can be a reasonable or justified self respect. When Paul writes to the Romans, he cautions them to “not think of yourselves more highly than you ought” – something we often simply read to mean “don’t think of yourself highly”. I think Paul advocates a healthy and sober recognition of the gifts God has given each of us.

In Philippians, he writes what I think may be the key to balance – “Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others too.”

As I’ve thought and struggled the past few weeks, I think the place I am beginning to arrive is here: interpersonally, pride is not about denying who you are or the gifts God has given you so people feel more comfortable around you. Jesus certainly didn’t do that. Even though he gave up his divine privileges, he didn’t simply pretend to be “just another human” so everyone would like him. He performed miracles, spoke truthfully, and acted consistent to his character, and in fact, contrary to what we would like to think, there were no doubt people who considered Jesus a bit on the “prideful” side – “Who does he think he is? Only God can forgive sins!” (Luke 5:21).

On the other hand, just as we’re called to not think of ourselves more highly than we ought, so too we are called to not think of others as being less than ourselves, remembering that we are all truly equals before the Cross of Christ. We often take comfort in playing the comparison game, feeling that as long as we’re doing just a little bit better than somebody else out there, we’re at least not the worst. For many of us, I think interpersonal pride manifests itself less often in overvaluing our own gifts and achievements than in undervaluing the gifts and achievements of others. In pretending our gifts, talents, and accomplishments are more important than someone else’s, we lose perspective on the fact that all gifts, talents, and accomplishments exist only by the grace of God.

No matter who we are, hubris is our constant companion. Often it is so subtle we don’t recognize it. Even when we look at “prideful” people, there is usually a small part of us that says “I’m glad I’m not *that* prideful”, in turn making us just a bit more prideful than we were. Again and again, I am reminded of the words of Nietzsche – Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein. – “He who fights monsters must take care that he not become a monster himself. For when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you.”

At the the end of the day, when I evaluate myself and am tempted to look around at people who “aren’t quite as good” as I feel I am, I hope I am constantly reminded of this reality – that I am not very far from being any of those people; that there, but for the grace of God, go I.