Prof. John Stackhouse’s Weblog

My eldest son, a fan of both films (he is a budding filmmaker) and sports (he is a nut about NFL football and NHL hockey), writes on his blog about whether God cares who wins the Super Bowl, or an Oscar, or whatever, in the field of entertainment.

(In fact, didn’t some team win some championship recently? Ah, yes: South Africa won the rugby World Cup. Or was it someone else winning something else…? Doesn’t matter. Don’t care.)

Anyhow, I refer you to his blog and the entry of October 24, “Thou Shalt Not Thank Me for Football Excellence,” with the usual parental caution that sons sometimes express themselves in ways that fathers don’t always approve–but I like what the kid has to say this time!

Here’s an excerpt from a press release issued by the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada earlier this week:

The Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism (CRCE) released the first issue of Church & Faith Trends, its online journal, on October 18, 2007. Church & Faith Trends will help the CRCE improve the accuracy of both scholarly and public representations of Canadian Evangelicals and assist ministry leaders in their work.

Church & Faith Trends is a publication of the Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism, which is an initiative of The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC).

This important new journal is a must read for pastors, ministry leaders and culture watchers,” said Bruce J. Clemenger, president of the EFC. “Anyone who wants to understand the character and dynamism of evangelicalism and church trends in Canada will benefit from its content.”

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Being a “red-letter Christian” sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? Tony Campolo, professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University, activist, pundit, and provocateur, tells us that he wants to obey the very words of Jesus, those words that in previous generations of Bible publishing were printed in red.

His comrade Jim Wallis of the Sojourners Fellowship, also known as an activist, pundit, and provocateur, shares this self-designation and thinks that such an approach to Christian discipleship will transcend the division of American political culture between the left and right, Democrat and Republican.

So isn’t being a red-letter Christian (RLC) a good thing?

Well, first, let’s agree that Christians should try to follow Jesus. No problem there. But the trouble with the RLC concept begins immediately afterward.

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More and more of us are spending more and more time commuting. “Super-commuters”–those who take 90 minutes or more each way–are now in the millions in North America. What are we doing during those hours upon hours in our cars, buses, trains, and the like?

Some of us are getting dumber: listening to (bad, which is to say, typical) talk radio or pop music; fuming at other drivers while trying to shave a few minutes off the commute; or simply letting our minds idly flit from one vaguely anxious or annoying or trivial thought to another.

Let’s get smarter.

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The great science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, whose most famous work is 2001: A Space Odyssey, wrote a powerful short story that has stuck with me for the thirty-plus years since I first read it. What if, he asked as his premise, the stars came out only once every thousand years? How would we react to, and value, such an occurrence?

The Stackhouse family recently celebrated two birthdays, those of our younger two sons. Coincidentally, we read through several books of the Torah this past summer in family Bible reading, with many chapters dealing with ancient Israel’s tabernacle and its elaborate system of worship. Such chapters are full of restrictions about who can do what, where, and when–and yet they describe the amazing opportunity for at least the representative of the people to actually meet with God, with no intermediaries, in direct communication.

I found myself wondering: What if every year on your birthday you yourself–and not just a high priest–were allowed to dress in special robes and go to a special room in your local temple and there, for five precious minutes, you could say anything you wanted to the God of the universe and be guaranteed that he would hear you?

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