Moving Decisions

My beloved and I have decided we ought to move away from our little house in the northeast corner of Vancouver across the Second Narrows Bridge to North Vancouver. As we are in the throes of packing things up to store or sell or give away in order to present our house better for selling, we keep coming across stuff we forgot we had, yes, but especially stuff we haven’t paid much attention to.

And now we have to pay attention.

Some of it is junk we should have thrown away long ago. What were we thinking when we shoved it in the basement or the attic, instead of out in the trash?

Praying for Your Enemies

One of Jesus’ most unexpected and difficult commands comes to mind as both Canada and the United States are embroiled in elections, and as my normally rather sedate blog has endured some intemperance by both the blogger and some commentators!

So here’s a thought: Before we write a blog post or a comment on some else’s, and especially if we’re angry, let’s pray for objects of our irritation or outrage first—really pray.

More truth in love, and less selfish I’ve-gotta-get-this-off-my-chest-you-jerk communication would surely result.

Amen?

Sarah Palin and the (White) Evangelical Binary Mind

The question I set before myself today is the one I threw out a few days ago to y’all, namely, what does it say about American evangelicals that the vice-presidential candidacy of Gov. Sarah Palin has been described as “galvanizing” them. So here are a few thoughts about that.

Let’s start with the observation that evangelicals tend toward a binary mind (as historians Mark Noll, George Marsden, and others have delineated in detail). Some things are appropriately thought of in binary terms, to be sure: “Jesus is Lord,” “Ye must be born again,” and so on. But the world of politics is the world of assessing a situation and making the best of it with what, and whom, you have to work with. Binary thinking rarely helps get anything done, because politics rarely presents an actual choice between Good and Evil. More specifically, political campaigns never present a choice between Jesus and Satan.

So this year evangelicals were torn between some impressive candidates who also have impressive drawbacks, as well as a few whose candidacy was unlikely to appeal to more than a minority–pretty much the usual situation in American presidential contests. Why, then, didn’t evangelicals seem to get involved much until recently?

The Boomerangs of Sarcasm and Self-Righteousness

I’ve been struck in the exchanges some of us have been having about American politics (see the previous entry and comments) about the curiously reflexive nature of both sarcasm and self-righteousness—of both of which rhetorics I am, alas, an experienced practitioner!

Regarding sarcasm, I notice how often those who object to it resort to it in return. “Oh, and I suppose that’s not sarcastic!” would be a very mild version of such a retort.

Likewise with self-righteousness: “I hope my esteemed colleague won’t continue to presume to judge other people from his presumed position of moral superiority,” says one—with flatly self-contradictory self-righteousness.

Oh, dear, dear, dear. To “speak the truth in love” continues to be the standard, and how often I fall short. Alas, I make it worse by falling short particularly on matters of genuine substance and sensitivity, when accuracy and charity are all the more important if one has any hope of being truly and fairly heard by others who might disagree.

So in this political season in both Canada and the United States, I shall try harder to speak only “a word in season” (Isaiah 50:4), one that, as the apostle says, “gives grace”–literally, gives a gift–to those that hear (Ephesians 4:29). And you, too?

If Sarah Palin Is What It Takes to Galvanize American Evangelicals…

…well, what else is there to say?

Gilles Duceppe, Opus Dei, and the Ghost of Old Quebec

Gilles Duceppe, head of the Bloc Québecois (the separatist party in the Canadian province of Quebec), is fuming that Nicole Charbonneau Barron is running in the next election for the Conservatives when she formerly served as spokeswoman for Opus Dei. Why is that a bad thing?

The Globe and Mail quotes Mr. Duceppe as follows:

“My problem is that Opus Dei is a rather secret society,” Mr. Duceppe told reporters in Quebec City. “Those people certainly share an ideology, a narrow ideology, that doesn’t correspond at all to the modern times in Quebec…. That candidate said very openly that self-whipping is a sacrifice they have to do. I question myself on such practices.”

Allowing for Mr. Duceppe’s uncertain grasp of English (one presumes he doesn’t mean that he questions himself on whether or not to practice self-flagellation), what he means is quite startling—and apparently self-refuting.