Do you matter?

It is a life and death question, in a way. Do you matter?

No, I am not asking Hamlet’s question: To be, or not to be? Hamlet was suicidal. He was obsessed with death, not life. So far as I can tell, the question of personal significance was not on Hamlet’s radar. And most people I know are glad that the tortured, brooding, insufferably indecisive Hamlet is dead!

My question is not about why I do not just kill myself. My question is about life. It is a question for the living. It is for you who want to live, but who wonder whether your life really matters.

I know you probably do not want to go there. Who does? Like me, you have probably learned how to bypass the question. But it is there, nevertheless, this honest yet uncomfortable question. It belongs to all of us. Whether we like it or not, it is a vibration under our feet, it is a tremor under our shoes, it is a shaking of the foundations beneath our every step. We might as well face it: “mattering” is a fundamental human need.

Status tells you that of course you matter. You get a good job. Or you come into money. Or you get some degrees. Or you have some success. Or you make a home and start a family. These things make the claim that, indeed, you must matter. And there is nothing wrong with any of these things. For a time, maybe a long time, these things can ward off the question. These things steady the tremors. They distract. They stabilize. They promise. But if your heart is like mine, it still wonders: Why then, if these external things mean that I really matter, won’t the dreaded question go away?

What if we look at it from the other side? What if you had nothing? Picture yourself with no status. What if it was all gone, all the things that boost your ego, all the things that prop you up, all the things that tell you that you are worth something, everything that sustains your sense of pride and human dignity? Strip these things away and stand there in naked humiliation, if you can. Now ask yourself the question. Now maybe we are getting somewhere. Would you matter if, in utter failure and loss, with no net under your unraveling tightrope, you had nothing?

I realize no one wants to really end up in circumstances like that. Yet, how many millions of people are today in those exact circumstances? My last blog was about homelessness, and they first come to mind when I think of people managing the margins of insignificance.

Do you have a car? Then you are only one of seven people in one hundred who own a car—7%. Please do not feel guilty! I do not feel guilty for having a Jeep. I am just saying that 93% of the people on the planet get through the day somehow without a car. And I am just wondering what it would do to my ego if I did not have one.

Do you make more than $10 a day? Only one in five people on our planet does. 80% of earth’s population makes it somehow on less than ten bucks a day. Please do not feel guilty if you’re in the fortunate 20%, though. I do not mention this to shame myself or you. I am just saying, today there are a whole bunch of people living life, many of them finding significance, with less than $10 a day. Could I?

If my sense of self-worth were really dependent upon how much money I made or whether I owned a car, what does that say about me? Billions of people will go to sleep tonight without a car and a ten dollar bill. And I am so accustomed to having a car and a good salary that I actually wonder if life would be worth living without them, even though I know the huge majority of my brothers and sisters spinning with me through spacetime have neither, and they have neither every day, and they will likely have neither the day they die.

So, here is the deal for me personally, and I do not mind admitting this: I am so sheltered and privileged that I find myself asking why all these people even wake up in the morning. I stupidly want to know how they could have any joy and feel any significance day in and day out without a car and ten bucks. How can the vast majority of earth’s populace feel that their lives matter, though they lack what I feel are essential to my own sense of self-value and spiritual wellbeing?

I think this is worth pondering. Think about your family and friends. What if everything went south for you, to the point that you can no longer face them for shame? Or what if some of your family and friends start to turn away from you because they do not want to face the question of significance themselves, and they do not appreciate your humiliation reminding them to ask it? Or what if some of them merely grow philosophical about you, your misfortune, your pain, and quietly close the book on you as they plan sunshiny Fourth of July cookouts to which you do not get invited?

Perhaps, however, despite what anyone thinks, including beloved family and friends, you might actually continue to matter to yourself, no matter what. But why? It cannot be self-respect when you have lost your self-respect. Self-preservation, perhaps, but why? Just to exist day-to-day? Why wake up, shuffle around, go to sleep, and then do it all over again? What would be the point?

Perhaps you would matter to God. But how can you matter to God when he allows you to be utterly humiliated? Does he want you to be humiliated? Is he punishing you? Is it some Job-like test of your faith? Does humiliation teach me something—anything—important, something spiritual, something divine, some great “secret of life” that I am supposed to figure out through suffering degradation?

Again, believe me, I am in NO way asking this question to guilt you or myself for not trying hard enough. Trying harder does not fix some things in life, and the search for significance is, it seems to me, one of those things. And accumulating more stuff certainly does not fix it. I am asking whether you matter in the face of losing everything in order to clear the clutter. Take everything off the table, and what is left?

I have an ability to draw. I only have one piece of art that I have kept over the years, a fairly large, golden-framed, charcoal rendering of Michelangelo’s statue of David, one of the most famous works of art ever. I did not store it with my stuff in a pod in LA on Monday. I packed it carefully in my Jeep and brought it with me. Why? Yes, it is rare, in that it is the only piece of my art that I own, and since I do not really like drawing all that much, I do not anticipate creating more pieces. So it is a special piece. But it is more than that. Yes, I am proud of it and I like it. But it is more than mere pride and aesthetics. I think I value it because of the message it sends to me, and perhaps others who see it. It says that Bert matters. It says God gave me a valuable, quantifiable gift. If it did not exist, how could I prove to others or to myself that I have a significant capacity, an admirable talent, that says to me and to whomever, that I count, and that I contributed something tangible and even beautiful during my short life? But that answer bothers me.

I once participated in a men’s event about personal significance. It was a religious program that focused on your death. I am not kidding! Apparently it is all about your epitaph. The macho speakers presented a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps approach to “men’s Christian spirituality,” one aimed at redoubling your effort to be “a good man,” so that your family, friends, church, and community will say good things about you at a ceremony while you lie dead in a casket. A well-meaning program perhaps, but also horribly misguided.

That is my problem with my drawing of David. Did I throw myself into that drawing—it took a month of daily, intense work—so that when I die people will say something nice about me? Was that really my motivation? Is that why I keep it and move it carefully across America? Is the value of my life to be measured by the future admiration of what I produced when I am dead and gone?

Listen. Why does what we do, whether it is art or work or giving or serving, have to have a selfish, eulogistic, ulterior motive? What does being a Christian—a term that means following Christ—have to do with doing stuff to boost my image in preparation for my funeral sermon? Can’t living for Jesus be its own good end? And isn’t it about life and living, not self-serving image-making focused on death and obituaries?

I do not think there is anything wrong with leaving a legacy, in and of itself. I particularly enjoy funerals that truly celebrate a person’s life in specific terms and stories. I hate going to those one-size-fits-all services where the person’s name is mentioned but little more about him. What a wasted opportunity to remember and grieve and celebrate and learn together! And, in my biased opinion, any eulogizer who does not take the time to sit down with grieving family and friends to ask questions, listen carefully, take good notes, and write a fitting remembrance to be delivered in the context of worship, is not worth his salt.

In the end, however, if Jesus is right, it is not about death. Death loses. In Jesus’ resurrection and in our promised resurrections, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” Jesus came to give us life, here and now and forever. We pass from life to life. Death has no power. It has been swallowed by life.

2 Corinthians 5:4   For while we are still in this tent (this mortal body), we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

Moreover, the Jesus of Scripture is life. He is not just about life or the mere giver of life. He is true life itself in the here and now.

John 14:6   "I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

I never read Jesus saying that real life is dependent upon external circumstances. These things together—what we eat, drink, and wear—are in his view a spiritually dangerous source of worry that steals life. Yes, we have to have them. But our incessant worry about them kills our trust in God’s providence. Jesus warns us about what “wealth” does to us. He was concerned about greed and an attitude of self-sufficiency. Unwarranted attachment to things is like barnacles on our souls. He warned us that having stuff can create arrogance and false superiority. “Having” can desensitize me to “have nots,” to the point that I can walk right past starving and sick Lazarus at my own gate and not even see him. I can be so busy building bigger barns for my bumper crop that I never consider sharing a single kernel with anyone else.

You know, the cross of Christ alone should teach us this. All that Jesus owned was stripped from his back and gambled over by Roman soldiers. He died naked with nothing. Most of the people who watched him die laughed and made sport of him. If the measure of his life’s worth was merely external circumstances, he and his life were worth nothing at all.

So was Jesus about legacy-making? Did he go around doing good so that people would say great things about him when he died? It that what really fueled his life and living?

This brings us to the key question concerning your life’s significance, as I see it, especially if you are a Christian:

Why did Jesus’ own life matter to him?

It cannot have been popularity. He was quite popular, yes, by all biblical accounts, especially in the villages of Galilee. But the Scriptures go to great lengths to tell us that he did not trust the crowds, that he escaped them at times, and that he did not respond to flattery at all. Popularity is a fickle mistress. Where were the masses of adoring fans when he was executed?

It cannot have been success. While he learned a trade, he abandoned it. While his preaching and healing ministry could be described as successful, he had no income and he depended on a group of loyal, generous women for daily bread. He did not own a home, depending on friends in Capernaum and Bethany for lodging. He slept on the road, having “no place to lay his head.” He left behind, so far as we know, no properties, businesses, or inheritances of any kind. These things could not have been the source of his sense of self-worth. His last week involved being arrested, being incarcerated, being found guilty of sedition, and being executed for that crime—hardly a successful legacy by any earthly standard of success.

From what I can tell, Jesus’ sense that his own life mattered came from one thing: Doing the will of his heavenly Father. Nothing else seemed to matter to him. God is love, wrote John. And Jesus just loved. He loved and loved and loved, no matter what. And by love I do not mean a warm, fuzzy feeling. I mean a love that adored people while at the same time did not shrink from saying no to people, and even chastising them for their hypocrisy and heard-heartedness. He loved with a true and tough love that cuts through failure and rejection and humiliation and loss and even death. He was alive with God’s love, a love that serves and sacrifices and lays down its life for a friend.

Jesus loved large, and therefore he lived large. That was what mattered to him. And I think that is why his own life mattered to him. Love mattered so much to him that he even gave up his own life for the sake of it. Jesus lived and died for love.

Man, maybe he was on to something.

[I wrote this blog in California and posted it from Mississippi. I have a stupid cold that I got in snowy west Texas on Wednesday. Tonight’s Friday forecast here in Mississippi? Snow. Yes, seeing Mississippi friends yesterday and today has warmed me. But today, I am aware that “I left my heart” in sunny California because she made me think long and hard about life’s real significance. I didn’t find a job there, but I found something more important. I found new life and new friends. I dedicate this blog to the people on the west coast who loved me and prayed for me and helped me in innumerable ways. I pray that I contributed to your lives too. I love you, California. Stay in touch.]

A surgically pampered, bleached-haired, sun-bronzed couple in their forties posed in beachwear, staring at my license plate: State of Mississippi, Jefferson Davis County. I said hi as I clicked to unlock the door.

My first job interview in the Golden State was this summer in Long Beach, and I was headed back down the Pacific Coast Highway to the couch of a friend in Oceanside. I stopped for gas in laid-back Laguna Beach, and went inside to grab a soda before going back to my Jeep.

“You’re a long way from home, man,” the dude observed.

“Yeah,” I said opening the door and leaning on it, “I moved out here in June looking for work. I’m just taking the scenic route back to Oceanside.”

“You don’t have a southern accent,” the chick complained.

“No, ma’am, not much of one. I’m originally from Atlanta. My dad was an English major. My grandmother taught English. Maybe that explains it.”

I waved and started to get in when the guy called out, “Hey, Dude!” And with arms outstretched and sporting a toothpasty grin, he said:

“Welcome to paradise!”

He had a point. Mild sunny temperatures almost all of the time. Beaches and beautiful people luxuriating in a lack of urgency. Palm trees and tropical drinks. Mountains, deserts, and marinas. Hikers, bikers, and bikinis. Sailors, skiers, and skaters. Maybe California was paradise. But for me, so far, it is paradise without a job and without a home.

Atlanta had plenty of homeless people in the mid 1980s when I last lived there, and, as I recall, churches as far away as Druid Hills began installing security systems because the homeless were moving east and found themselves wandering unaccompanied through church halls. My only contact with them was twice volunteering at a soup kitchen. There were disabled vets and single moms with kids. I did not enjoy the experience.

Homeless, transient, drifter, hobo, vagabond, vagrant, tramp. I do not know the proper words or their definitions. But as a pastor of small-town Mississippi churches near interstates, the “homeless” in my life were always passing through. Some were actually trying to get from here to there. But some were just homeless people who preferred moving to staying. Almost all of them asked for money when they called from the gas station or showed up at my door, but cash was against church policy. I bought them gas or groceries. On an inclement night, I got them a room.

When my own money ran out in Oceanside this summer, I walked up the beach two miles to the pier to worry and pray at sunset. I felt a panic I had never felt. Up on the pier, I leaned back on the railing and stared at two benches. I said to myself, Bert, you are one step away from sleeping right there, which probably was not reality, but the fear was.

At that moment, a man my age with a backpack staked out the bench on the right. He lay down for the night, putting his head on a pillow, and pulling a blanket to his chin. It took a moment to register that his face was sending me a message from God. On his face, a face the same age as mine, was infinitely more peace than on my own. I heard Jesus say to me, Son, I am taking care of that man. I love him. And I am taking care of you too.

After that I began seeing homeless people everywhere. And I gave them something every single time. The lady passing my sidewalk table at the coffee shop. The skinny guy on the bank steps. The old guy with a sign at the traffic light. The young woman with two daughters sitting on the curb at the gas station. The brash punk with the shakes at the marina. The drunk with one shoe who sleeps in a doorway. I gave because I had to. I absolutely had no choice. If I had not given, my heart would have gone cold and died. I had become somehow connected to the homeless in paradise.

I got a check for some writing I did for Plain Truth Ministries, and my folks sent a check, so I thanked my buddy in Oceanside for putting me up, and I got an efficiency in Arcadia. My daily walk on Oceanside Beach turned into a daily jog in Arcadia County Park near the famous Santa Anita Racetrack at the foot of Mt. Wilson. The homeless there found me, but I did not see them at first.

I suspect he had been there all along, but the park is not tiny, over a mile around. I finally took note of a little white-bearded guy. He was sleeping during the day in a tiny army-green tent next to a cart covered with black plastic, all but invisible in the deep shade of a huge park tree. Then I began to see others. The scattering of people who lay in the grass? They were not sunbathers or picnickers or joggers cooling down. Homeless people slept there by day, and they slept alone. Arcadia County Park is a bedroom community.

At sunset, however, the sleepers awake and congregate. Lone dreamers by day, they gather by night at picnic tables, under pavilions, and on steps to brag, laugh, argue, drink, and smoke until the morning light separates them again.

I met a Chinese nurse in the park who told me that when the homeless end up in the emergency room, she is required to send them to a shelter, but they rarely go. The evening weather is too gentle and the midnight company too sweet to waste indoors.

I am a homeless guy, in a way. My dad was an itinerant Methodist preacher, so we moved from parsonage to parsonage. Union City, Atlanta, Oxford, Athens, Cartersville, Decatur, Oxford again, Decatur again, Oxford a third time, and back to Atlanta. Then I joined the ranks of wandering theologians in Mississippi. Newton, Maben, Magee, Jackson, Flora, Florence, and New Hebron. Then with the nest empty and a marriage over, I took my homeless heart to paradise to heal, and hopefully work and write. After five months, I still have no job, I only have a one-room apartment, but I am writing. And healing.

Moving makes you cry, does it not? You go through old photos. Packing and hauling boxes to the truck is bad for the back and the soul. Driving away is the worst. It is like turning your back on a friend. I read somewhere about top stressors: a move, unemployment, a divorce. I have them all at the same time in paradise.

When I find a job, I will get my own place, but whether it will be in California, I do not know. I am now finally OK with that. California or not, I have a dream of taking my furniture out of storage, moving it in and arranging it, and sitting in my own leather recliner. I dream of hanging some pictures. I want to shelve some books. I want a job of meaningful service. I want to be a good father, son, brother, and friend. I thirst for it. I yearn for home.

The Bible talks a lot about our abode being in God. It talks a lot about abiding in him. What this abode and abiding means, I think, is that our only real home is in him. And in the Scriptures, our abiding in him is fundamentally and finally rooted in the “incarnation” of God—God become one of us.

We did not make the move. He made the move. The incarnation means that God packed and moved. He made his home with us. So that we humans could forever be at home in God, God chose in Jesus Christ to be forever human.

God perfectly and humbly united with humanity in actual human flesh. Imagine! God packed up everything that God is and moved into our skin. The pre-existent, non-corporeal Word of God was pleased to dwell/abide with us bodily. God became an itinerant preacher with dusty sandals, a man with no place to lay his head. He laid aside equality with the Father and emptied himself taking the form of a human servant. Do you understand what that means?

It means that God was raised in a small, isolated, mountaintop village that, at around the age of thirty, he chose to leave. It means that when he returned there, they rejected him and some tried to stone him. It means that his mother and brothers were so concerned about his behavior in Capernaum that they traveled there to restrain him, fearing he had gone insane. It means God had to deal with homelessness too!

Jesus, however, spoke of a home that transcended geography. He spoke of a home in his Father and his Father’s will. And he said that we have a home in him and his Father too. “Who are my mother and brothers?” he asked. And he answered, “Those who do the will of my heavenly Father.” And what is his will? To love one another as he loves us.

We all yearn for home in a place that is larger than a brick and mortar house, and larger than a plot of land, and larger than any town, city, state, or country. Behind my yearning to be intimately beloved by someone, behind my yearning for abiding friendships, behind my yearning for meaningful work, behind my yearning for experience and adventure, behind my yearning for life full and rich and abundant, is my yearning for home in Jesus’ love.

The intimacy of conversation with him and his healing touch deep within me is everything. No other person, place, or thing will do. If I have become certain of anything on my California journey, it is that intimate union with him drives all my other passions, while also keeping all my other passions in their proper perspective. All loves that I might put before love of him are the prison of idolatry and the fire of Gehenna. And to expect of someone else or something else or someplace else to provide what I can only get from him is to find disappointment and even damage. To be without him would be the worst homelessness of all.

Maybe that is why I have developed a heart for the homeless, especially here in paradise. It is because of the spiritual homelessness that I believe we all feel, if we are honest. My heart aches for those who, just down the street from me tonight, are guarding everything they own in a bag or buggie, and who are huddling for safety and companionship in the park in which I will have the luxury tomorrow to jog. Lord, bless them and keep them all tonight.

Are you laughing at me?

Winston Churchill, a personal hero of mine, said something to his officers that struck me as profound when I read it many years ago, though I don’t think I understood its important implication for me personally until today.

“Laugh a little and teach your men to laugh--get good humor under fire--war is a game that's played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.”

I’ve never been able to laugh at myself. “War” has always been serious business in my world, and this life has always been a battle to me, going back as far as I can remember.

Glenn Moffett is my favorite cousin, against my better judgment. This guy can laugh, and he has always been able to make me (and everybody else) laugh, sometimes when I didn’t want to. He is actually closer to my dad’s age than to mine. Glenn and my dad were like brothers growing up on Hollywood Road in Atlanta.

Glenn and his wife came over for dinner when I was about five or six, and when I finished my meal, I ducked under the table to pretend I was a lion to impress him. I growled and pawed at him. I must have been horribly distracting to the adult conversation going on above me. Though my parents were practiced at ignoring my obnoxiousness, my cousin Glenn obviously wasn’t. He took his butter knife, scooped up a generous dab of soft butter, reached under the table, and smeared it on the nose of the king of the jungle. I came out from under the tablecloth defaced, mortified, crying huge tears at the cruelty and humiliation of it all. But I got no sympathy. My parents, Glenn, and his beautiful wife, Linda, all burst into laughter. But not me. No, by God! I ran from the room, crawled into bed, and through unrelenting tears, planned my revenge.

The next time Glenn came, I hid behind the kitchen door with a stick of butter. My mom apprehended me before I could implement the plot. But I didn’t give up. I tried again and again. My life was, at least for a time, consumed with the seriousness of my favorite cousin’s malicious slight. I was driven by the humiliation of being laughed at. I was owned.

You can laugh now, if you want to. I’m laughing a little myself. But laughter for me, unlike tears, doesn’t come easy. I was born, apparently, with a sad little disease: The inability to laugh at myself. And now, at the age of fifty, I’m certain that I’ve robbed myself and those I love of so much joy. I really can’t even add up—and don’t want to—the pain in my relationships that could have been avoided if I’d had the capacity to take myself less seriously. My parents. My brothers and my sister. My dear friends. My children. The women that I’ve loved.

As I look back, when people have laughed at me, I’ve done one of two things. On some occasions I pretended to laugh along to keep from making a scene, but then disconnect from them emotionally. On most occasions, however, I made war. What I mean is that I employed my God-given intellect and eloquence to destroy the enemy, whoever it was. I made casualties, especially of those I loved. No one will laugh at me and live to tell it, I determined a long time ago. And it wasn’t Glenn’s fault. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault. It was mine.

How did I suddenly learn this? What triggered this great insight today? Yes, I said today.

I’m in a mess right now, and, as usual, I take the messes I’m in very seriously. I feel as lost right now as I ever have, and I’ve been paddling like crazy to fix it. Exhausted, and unable to continue, more stripped of my dignity than I ever was standing there with butter on my nose, I lost heart. I collapsed. I asked the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to forgive my interruption from whatever it was that they were busy with, and I bared my soul, poured out my guts, utterly naked before the universe without a claim, without a hope, and without a prayer. (I know it’s funny. You can laugh freely. I don’t have any butter handy at the moment.)

I told God and myself exactly where it hurt. In my belly. My solar plexus. My diaphragm. And I said, “I don’t care how much it hurts to let you see this. I don’t care how much it hurts to face whatever this is that’s killing me. Pour your light on this pain. Show me what it is, no matter what it is. Touch it. Heal it. I’m ready.” I braced myself. (Stop laughing at me!)

Then, thank God, I realized bracing myself was the wrong thing to do. So I let go. I let my belly have its way. I surrendered myself to whatever hidden pain and tears were to come out. Believe me, I expected a world of hurt! It’s OK, I kept saying to myself. I know pain. I’ve come to expect pain, I told myself. The pain that this is going to cause can’t be worse than what I’m already feeling. So bring it on!

I totally let go of my belly, leaving it exposed and unprotected. The muscles in that spot twitched in an unusual way that scared me. Then they spasmed in a way that made me want to sit up and clutch them to make it stop. But I resisted the urge. I had to trust what was happening. I breathed and let go again. Whatever was happening got more intense. I had no idea, of course, what was happening or what to expect, but I was completely convinced that, whatever was about to happen was going to hurt really bad.

Then it happened. My diaphragm exploded in the most bewildering way imaginable. I busted out laughing! I kid you not. If I’m lying, I’m dying.

For a long time, I lay there belly-laughing like a nutcase. I couldn’t stop laughing at myself—me, laughing at me, imagine!—and I didn’t want to stop. Deep, funny, healing, hopeful laughter came from nowhere, came from the center of who I am, came from heaven. I don’t know. “I’m so confused,” I said, which made me laugh harder. It was so hilariously confounding. What a stunning surprise! Laughter became an unexpected yet most welcome visitor in my sea of seriousness.

Another one of my heroes and teachers, Edwin Friedman, said once, “The only antidote to seriousness is humor.” I liked that quote enough to memorize it fifteen years ago. I knew at the time that it was true circumstantially. But I didn’t know how true it was for me personally until today.

Winston Churchill, too, was more right than I consciously knew when I first read his stirring encouragement to his men. It’s funny that it never occurred to me, in all my years of accumulated wisdom (ha!), that laughing could be so important—essential even, spiritual even— and that something so wonderful and beautiful can come from the sheer, grace-filled release of knowing that I really can laugh out loud and unashamed at my stupid self.

So what’s next? I think I’ll try this out in public.

Pews Stink (a black and white satire)

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Church pews had an innocent enough beginning in 1622, in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Mayflower companions built a small wooden sanctuary for the purpose of Sunday worship. But chairs were few in the Pilgrim outpost. Luxuries like chairs were too difficult and time-consuming to make, and there was an unforgiving ocean between them and the nearest furniture store.

The minutes from the November 21 church council meeting that year record a unanimous decision to commission the only Frenchman in the settlement, Pepé Le Pew (unmarried), to make benches for seating in the church. Tall, straight pine trees were felled, and rough planks were hewn. The crude pine picnic-style benches were placed in straight rows in the rustic sanctuary, and they were put to use for the first time on November 27, 1622.

No, the benches weren’t comfortable, but the discomfort only lasted an hour or so, and the stoic society considered this discomfort to be congruent with their rather austere theology. They felt it their duty, even in small things, to deny the flesh, to share in the suffering of Christ, and to live a lifestyle as plain and simple and straight as the pine planks themselves. Life in Plymouth was cold and hard, and so were the benches.

All furniture in this early Pilgrim sanctuary had liturgical names. The pulpit. The altar. The baptistery. Calling these crude seats “benches” seemed too secular to the Plymouth faithful, so it was decided at a church council meeting, November 28, to call the benches “pews,” after Pepé Le Pew, the unmarried Frenchman who fashioned them.

The only controversy surrounding the church pews is recorded some ten years later. The community had grown significantly due to continuing European immigration. An unmarried Frenchwoman named Penelope Félin had immigrated alone to Plymouth that year. She brought a formal complaint and a motion to the church council in 1632, as recorded in the minutes. She accused congregant Pepé Le Pew of unwanted advances, and she demanded that the church leadership address this outrage by removing Le Pew from the church.

When her motion failed, she made another. She noted that times had changed, and pointed out both the availability and affordability of chairs in America, and she moved that the church pews be replaced with more comfortable seating. The church council saw this as no more than sour grapes on the part of Penelope, for everyone knew that it was Le Pew who made the pews. This motion was also denied. The pews stayed. Penelope in haste packed and left Plymouth under cover of darkness. The next day, Le Pew declared his undying amour for Penelope, then packed and set out in pursuit of her.

In the years following, as more and more European Christians immigrated to America, nearby settlements built churches and made pews. They were blindly following the practice at Plymouth, ignoring the affordability and availability of chairs. In the late 17^th century, every sanctuary in New England had Le Pew’s pews.

For one hundred years the pew remained in use and unchanged in America. And it is unknown when the first back rests were added to the pews for the comfort of the congregants. But it was a popular emendation, essentially turning a picnic table bench into a park bench.

Then during the 20^th century, pews were accessorized. It started with the availability of hymnals. Stacking them at the end of the pews made it necessary to pass them down and pass them back. A spice rack maker in Boston attached his creations to the backs of his church’s pews and called them hymnal racks. He made a fortune. Slots for offering envelopes were added too. But a new invention, the pencil, was needed to fill out the envelopes, so new slots were designed with little wells in which to place the pencils. (The greatest accessory of all, the pew cushion, came later. Pews are pretty uncomfortable, with or without cushions. But cushions must have helped somewhat, because by 1980 most of the pews of America were cushionized.)

The wood from which the pews were fashioned was upscaled in most 20^th century sanctuaries, too. Mahogany and maple were in use, making the pews both heavier and more expensive. While the cost of chairs had continued to drop, the cost of twenty-foot, quarter-ton, mahogany pews skyrocketed.

It is not clear why pews in America were, in the span of a mere decade, bolted to the floors of sanctuaries. Some reports say that fear of theft was the reason for anchoring the expensive pews. Some reports note that someone always had to straighten them after worship; people bumped and scooted them, and the pews had to be perpetually repositioned in equidistant, straight rows. One report, strangely enough, said that there was a concern that pews weren’t particularly stable when at full seating capacity, and that some legal types in a congregation in Washington D.C. were worried about law suits should one of those pews tip over backwards spilling the elderly ladies’ Sunday School class on the backs of their heads. Whatever the reason, America’s expensive, heavy, accessorized pews were screwed to the floors of nearly every church in America by 1950. The price of chairs, really comfortable ones, was at an all-time low.

Were there complaints about these fancy pew accessories in 1950? Yes. There are always those who resist change. Were there those in 1950 who, on the other hand, questioned the money spent on expensive, heavy, accessorized pews fastened to the floor, when chairs were cheaper and more comfortable, and chairs can be rearranged or removed so that the space can be employed for a wider variety of uses? Not many. For 350 years, pews had held worshipers in America. Pews had become the familiar though uncomfortable furniture of God. Prayers made from chairs? It seemed suspicious, almost unsightly.

Then a simple study was done by an obscure doctoral student in a Dallas seminary between 1999 and 2004. He tracked the population of nearly 300 churches in the Dallas metro area. Out of curiosity, he included in his data whether the worshiping communities used pews or chairs. The result was shocking. Churches with pews were losing members. Churches with chairs were growing. The statistics were dramatic. Pew churches had an 11% decrease in membership in only five years. Chair churches had an astonishing 54% increase in membership in only five years.

When the study was picked up by the Dallas media, Gallup took note. They designed a five-year study of 10,000 congregations nationwide. Among the data collected between 2004 and 2009, there was a question about seating: pews or chairs? Again the results were stunning. Pew churches nationwide declined in membership 24.5% while chair churches increased in membership by a staggering 177.5%.

..

Then came the now famous cover story in the nation’s largest selling Christian magazine. It explored Gallup’s findings on the pew versus the chair. As you might expect, the churches with chairs were predominantly newer congregations. The majority of them didn’t own buildings and had no need for a board of trustees. And their worship services were informal and contemporary. The averages ages? The average age of the pew churches was 65. The average age of the chair churches was 35.

Nothing in the article was so surprising, really. Church in America was changing fast. And, as the article said, there was no magic in using chairs. “Chairs don’t change churches. But it does appear that changing churches choose chairs.” No controversy or argument there. Statistics don’t lie.

The buzz wasn’t about the article, however. The buzz was about the cover photo. On the cover of the number one Christian magazine in the country was a family of three seated on the front pew of a stained-glass sanctuary. From left to right is a father, a son in his late teens, and a mother. The father, in his gray suit and black tie, is nodding off with his mouth open. The mother, in a gray dress and white pearls, is chewing on the inside of her lips, picking at her fingernails, and cutting her eyes at her son. Seated between them, the son is looking very 2009, with spiky hair and piercings and long baggy shorts. The expression on his face is a mix of frustration and yearning. But none of these things caused the buzz. The buzz was all about the teen’s T-shirt.

The son’s T-shirt is white. There is a cartoon character on the front, and beneath this cartoon character are two words. This cartoon character and those two words in bold black letters are considered by some to be the 21^st century equivalent of the 95 theses said to have been nailed by Martin Luther to the door of the Wittenburg Chapel, October 31, 1517. The T-shirt may not have sparked a modern-day reformation, but it galvanized it.

Now that it’s the year 2059, the church looks back fifty years on that iconic magazine cover from 2009 as the beginning of the end of traditional Christian worship in America. Yes, traditional worship continues today, but the faithful in the pews are few, now only about 2% of Christian worshippers. You can add a back rest to a pew. You can accessorize a pew. You can cushion a pew. But the pew will always be the pew: a heavy, immovable, uncomfortable bench that would not go away even when better and cheaper seating was available.

The Plymouth church should have listened to Penelope Félin in 1632 when she made the motion at the church council meeting to replace the uncomfortable pews with chairs. Whatever happened to her? No one knows. And Pepé Le Pew, what of him? He also disappeared from history. Their names, however, resurfaced around 1950, at about the same time that pews were being bolted to church sanctuary floors. Two cartoon characters, a skunk named Pepé Le Pew and a cat named Penelope Pussycat (Félin in French), became favorites of children and adults.

I don’t need to tell you who the cartoon character was on the front of that teenage boy’s T-shirt. Everyone knows today. But for the sake of thoroughness and posterity, I record it here. Seated on a pew between a dozing father and a nervous mother, a frustrated and yearning teen wears a white T-shirt. On the front of the T-shirt is a cartoon skunk named Pepé Le Pew, and he is lounging atop two words that changed Christian worship for the better. And those two words were . . .

Pews Stink

To be sung to the tune of “Love Stinks” by the J. Geils Band. Amen.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE:

.. ..

Where is my grandmother (1908-2007)?

Photo of “Minkie,” Christmas 2000(?) with clockwise from left: me, bro Mike, sis Susan, bro Bill

I no longer have any living grandparents. Homer Gary died of pneumonia in 1936 so, sadly, I never knew him. Gussie Gary died at the age of 96 in 1992. Bob Segers died of a heart attack at the age of 82 in 1986. And Susan Segers died in her sleep shy of her 100^th birthday on November 1, 2007.

As firstborn grandkids often do, I nicknamed my grandmother. I was a toddler. I’d been to the doctor, and he had a picture of Mickey Mouse on the exam room door. I got Mickey Mouse and Grandma mixed up in my little brain, and I called her Minkie Ma. The name Minkie stuck. (Or should I say Susan Segers got stuck with the name Minkie?)

Everyone reading this has likely lost a loved one. And we Christians have attended funerals where bold assertions are made about where our deceased loved ones are right now. That’s what I want to write about here. And I want to make it personal. I want to ask the question, Where is Minkie right now?

Because we’re all stuck here in the flow of time, there seems to be a time gap in our Christian belief in resurrection on the last day, doesn’t there? It is a gap between our deaths and our future resurrections. This time gap has bothered Christians for centuries, and many explanations have been invented to account for it.

Keeping it personal, Minkie passed away in 2007. Her resurrection will occur on the last day, according to Scripture. But what about the meantime? What about now? If my grandmother is dead and buried, where is she until* the resurrection of the dead on the last day promised by Jesus?

1. Is her soul dead, too, until* resurrection day?

2. Is her soul asleep until* resurrection day?

3. Did her soul leave her body and go to an “intermediate heaven" until* resurrection day? (see my other blogs: Paul didn't go to heaven; The psychic medium of Endor was a fake; and The soul doesn't leave the body at death)

4. Did her soul get an “intermediate body” (a loaner body?) to wear until* her buried body can be resurrected and her soul reunited with it? (The loaner body must be disposable.)

5. Did her soul go to Purgatory to wait and to be purified until* resurrection day?

6. Did her soul go to Limbo to remain a wanderer or be punished until* resurrection day?

*UNTIL - a temporal term you have to use if you think of time in Newtonian terms.

None of these six imaginative inventions are in Christian scripture. I want to take a fresh look at the question of where the dead are right now. I want to propose that we look at time differently—a way that makes none of these biblically foreign inventions (1-6 above) necessary. And, strangely enough, Albert Einstein helps us see a biblical answer to our question.

Is there a tiny span of time when it seems to me experientially that Minkie is in the ground and nowhere else until the resurrection day promised by the Bible? Yes. But the important word is "seems" from an eternal, biblical perspective and from Einstein’s perspective, which “coincidentally” agrees.

I admit, here in the seeming flow of time, Minkie is seemingly no where else but in the ground, body and soul. That is, of course, not a very comforting prospect for me, as one who loved her. But I don’t believe that it’s true. Albert Einstein’s mind-blowing explanation of time, believe it or not, which most people have never heard or understood, illustrates a biblical view of time.

From Einstein’s paradoxical perspective, Minkie is a toddler learning to walk right now, she’s giving birth to my mother right now, she’s being nicknamed by me right now, she’s burying Papa right now, she’s dying in the nursing home right now, and she’s risen with the Lord at the future general resurrection promised by Scripture right now.

Each of these Minkies, every Minkie-moment, if you will, is literally in the spacetime loaf of our universe, all past moments, the present moment, and all future moments. All here. All happening. All real. In God’s universe, the one Einstein tried to explain to us Newtonian terrestrials, everything is happening.
  
Moses and Elijah, for example, visiting Jesus at the transfiguration are not ghosts, Scripture insists, but are men who are glorified. That means that they are resurrected human beings. But if the resurrection of the dead is a future event, how could Moses and Elijah already be raised? It’s because the resurrection slice is in the universe-loaf from the beginning. These glorified men not only visited from somewhere else. They visited from some-when else.

You can’t think chronologically to see this. You have to try to see the whole. Resurrection seemed like a "not yet" moment at the time to Peter, James, and John on that mountain with the glorified (resurrected) Moses and Elijah and Jesus standing before them. But the “not yet resurrection” revealed its truth to them by breaking into their present from the future.

Resurrection day seems like a “not yet” moment to us now too, an event disconnected from us in a distant, unknowable future. But from God’s universal eternity, and in Einstein’s universe that IS, a universe that IS happening, a universe that IS whole and complete, the future resurrection has happened, is happening, and will happen. It was and is and is to come, now and forever.

I’m going to give an analogy that helps me, but first, here is a key insight from what Einstein has taught us. Our universe does not just contain every where. It also contains every when, including (if you believe Scripture) the future resurrection day. Space (all wheres) and time (all whens) are inseparable. If all wheres exist, then all whens must exist, because space and time are one thing designated by one word: spacetime. Our universe is spacetime. Everywhere and everywhen compose our physical universe.

In spacetime, however, we creatures are only wired to experience one "now" at a time in the seeming flow of chronological time. But time doesn't really flow. Your past is really still here in our universe, not just a memory. Your future is here in our universe, though you haven't experienced it yet. Our universe includes all space and all time.

Here’s an illustration that helps me visualize this. Picture a movie theater strip on a platter (a horizontal reel—pictured), let’s say the movie Titanic. Here are Jack and Rose in a single frame from the movie.

We experience a movie one frame at a time as it passes in front of a projector lamp. But that doesn't mean that every frame we've already seen isn't still sitting up in the projection booth on a platter (pictured). Nor does it mean that every frame we're about to see isn't sitting up there in the projection booth on another platter. The movie, every frame, is whole and complete up there, but we can only experience it now-frame by now-frame.

We experience time like this because of our human, creaturely, design limitations. But the risen Jesus has no such limitations in the Bible. Neither does anyone resurrected. As the Apostle Paul insists, we will be like him in resurrection, and the risen Jesus is not bound by space and time.

Do you see the problem? Just because we perceive the universe one “highlighted now” at a time, argue physicists, does not mean that the universe exists in this way.

It flies in the face of our experience, but the physical universe appears to be one big present mega-moment. What we call past, present, and future all resound equally together across the vastness of all space and time. The Loaf shows no partiality to any one moment. It is we who do that. All nows are equal in the eyes of the universe. It is not so for us. That seems to be because we are designed to experience one note at a time. With one note at a time, we can we hear the melody. Without it, all the notes blare at us in unison dissonance.

So the universe is complete. Everything is happening in here. We live in a vast “eternal now.” And there are many "you moments" in our universe, all of them you, and all of them real, from your birth to your death to your resurrection.

Have you ever wondered, How can the risen Lamb of God be slain from the foundation of the world if the crucifixion and resurrection didn't happen until around 30 AD? It sounds contradictory. This biblical claim flies in the face of a conventional view of chronological time.

If the universe contains every when, however, then what we believe is the key event in the history of the universe---the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus---is the key "now" among all nows that exist from eternity---from Alpha to Omega. A man born around 8 B.C. and executed around 30 A.D. is slain from the foundation of the world? Scripture says yes.

The reason that Jesus can be "slain from the foundation of the world" is because the whole of the universe (past, present, and future) came into existence whole. When the universe came into existence, it wasn’t just all wheres that came into existence. All whens came into existence too, including the crucifixion. The crucifixion of Jesus, the pivotal moment in our universe as we Christians see it, was and is and always will be present to the whole. It’s the linchpin moment in a forever-complete salvation-history.

From this perspective, the crucifixion-now can be seen as "simultaneous" with the creation-now and with the last-day-resurrection-now. They're all here together in the spacetime loaf, the complete physical universe, all whens from beginning to end are just here.

Consider this the key point: I see no problem with what Jesus means when he speaks from the cross, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise. ”Luke 23:43) The Lord is present to every day in the universe. They are all his simultaneous todays. And when we experience our death-nows as he did, we "skip" or "fast-forward" instantaneously to our joint resurrection-now with him. Therefore, the today of our deaths is literally the today of our resurrections. ( That's because from a heavenly perspective as well as an Einsteinian perspective, both days (like all days) are eternally simultaneous.

So when resurrection-Jesus popped in on the disciples behind locked doors, he wasn't just appearing from some-where else. He was also appearing from some-when else: the future resurrection of the dead. He transcended space and time to appear to his friends. He transcends spacetime still. He reigns over all spacetime in his kingdom of heaven. He is the resurrection. He is the Alpha (A) and the Omega (W....).

All this is to say that Minkie, the finest Scrabble player who ever lived, is both in the ground and alive forevermore at the future resurrection of the dead. She is dead yet alive. The kicker is, if the Bible and Einstein are correct about creation, then in our universe right now I am at the future resurrection of the dead with Minkie too, and so are you.

The Only Functional Family

Admit it. You have to have it. You look for it everyday in the face of your spouse or in the face of a stranger. It’s something that’s nearly impossible to find, it’s something you cannot keep, and yet your radar is on high alert for it all day long.

You need relational union, and you’re lying to yourself if you think you don’t. Blissful, intimate union. It’s what you have to have.

But here’s the crazy part. I’m fifty years old, and I’ve rarely had it, yet I still look for it every day. No matter your age, you’ve rarely had it. Yet you’re craving it right now like it is right around the corner. You desperately need “this thing” that you’ve rarely experienced, if ever. And even if you’ve experienced it, you know that it doesn’t last. So here’s my simple question:

Why is it that you forever hunger for a relational union and bliss that you have rarely experienced and that never lasts?

There are biological, chemical, anthropological, sociological, and psychological answers to this question. Let me try a theological answer—by that I mean, an answer that begins with God, in whose image we are said to have been created. In the Bible, God is three persons in utter union. Maybe that’s not a coincidence.

If it is true that God is three in union, three persons yet one substance, then our being created in God's image has a profound implication for our question about relational union and why we need it.

If three-in-union is God's image, and if we are created in this image, then perhaps we are wired at the factory (as a friend of mine once put it) for union in relationship. Is this possible? If so, then it raises powerful questions.

Could that be why our broken relationships almost drive us to despair, because they violate the relational union in whose image we were created? Could that be why our relationships hurt us so badly, because we are wired for union, desire union, and seek union, all because we are created in the image of the Tri-union of the Tri-unity?

When it comes to my broken relationships (and human relationships are always broken), I get tantalizingly brief glimpses of the union that exists between Father, Son, and Spirit. "They" know they are distinct persons with no blurred lines and no unhealthy enmeshments—what some psychologists call codependences. But humans are prone to codependent, invasive, relational enmeshment, and that’s not healthy union.

It’s infuriating that I cannot catch and keep this experience of healthy union, no matter how much I desire it and no matter how hard I try to sustain it. It always slips through my fingers. I lose my healthy sense of self by letting myself be used or abused by others, including those who really love me. But, of course, I end up using and abusing them too, though I don’t want to. No matter how much I wish it to be otherwise, the healthy union that I MUST HAVE cannot be self-created or self-sustained. It is delusional for me to think otherwise.

The union we see in the Trinity, however, is both healthy and sustained. Throughout the NT Jesus is crystal clear who he is, a very strong sense of self, clear that he is not the Father or the Spirit, but also clear that the Three are One. The Three Musketeers is a “literary type” of this ideal tri-union. “All for one and one for all.” I might add, “All the time.”

I realize that the word Trinity is an oxymoron. It’s an utter contradiction, at least by human reckoning. Tri- means three and –nity (unity) means one. How can three be one? How can one equal three? This is the mystery of God’s very image in the Bible. God is the great Three who are One. Tri-unity. How can we even begin to make sense of this? Perhaps there is a way.

Marital intimacy is a reflection of the union in the Tri-unity, though we manage to screw it up, of course. It's a sin thing. It's our human dis-ease that we lose our sense of self, that we try to recover it in needy manipulation, and that we use one another for selfish purposes. Yet, every once in a blessed while, the union we are wired for is blissfully experienced and enjoyed. We get a glimpse now and again when “the two become one.” The perfect union that I (and undoubtedly you) yearn for cannot be sustained, however, even in the healthiest of marriages, as you are probably painfully aware.

How do I describe this perfect union? It fully protects and affirms my unique selfhood while connecting me with other selves in mutual joy, love, and respect that affirm their unique selfhoods. No blurred lines. Healthy boundaries. Embracing and being embraced without invasion. Loving others fully as much as you love yourself. Willing to lay your life down for a friend.

Have I been able to do this or experience this in my lifetime? Yes and no. I live in hope that I'm getting better at loving and respecting and serving others, and live in hope that the union that Jesus says is mine really is mine, even though I don't always feel it and I often mess it up. I choose to believe that my promised union with Christ on resurrection day will fulfill my lifelong yearning for union with him and with humanity, and that this same promise can help me grow in this love in the here and now.

Are all families dysfunctional? All but one, as I see it. The only functional "family" is the Father, Son, and Spirit, and this union is ours by the biblical new covenant promise. In Jesus' flesh we are adopted into this functional family. Faith is required, however, to trust that this union is yours when your wrecked relationships are telling you otherwise. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

The Bible, however, is not nearly as negative about flesh as is often portrayed. Is it weak and flawed? Yes. But all things were made in, by, for, and through Jesus, the incarnate Word of God. This means that Jesus created flesh, if you believe the Bible. And John's Gospel makes a point of saying that the one who created flesh became flesh.

The biblical Greek word is sarx. Flesh. God became sarx, flesh, like you and me, feeling everything we feel, experiencing fully the same weaknesses and temptations we feel. How could Jesus save all flesh (which he made) unless he became fully flesh? This was God's plan from the foundation of the world.

A husband and wife becoming "one flesh" is not a bad thing, is it? It's a union blessed by the Tri-union God. And Jesus came to save all flesh. And all flesh shall see it together. Jesus was born in the flesh, embracing our flesh, and taking all flesh to the right hand of his Father through his death, resurrection (of his flesh!), and ascension. If these biblical claims are true, then what is the result?

Jesus is forever human: resurrected flesh and bones.

Luke 24:39   Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have."

He said the bread that he gives to the world is his flesh. Is his flesh evil? No, it's a sacrament! It's sacred! In Romans 8 Paul wrote:

Romans 8:3   For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,

Jesus didn't condemn flesh. He became flesh to deal with sin and death in the flesh.

Hebrews 2:14 & 17-18   Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,  15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.  17 Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people.  18 Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.

What this means is that the God of the universe chose to unify us with him in the flesh. Rather than blending us together like a drop of water blends into the ocean, God chose a union in the flesh that defends unique, personal identity forever.

Is the image of God in which we are created a relational Tri-union of distinct persons? Is that why we're wired for relationship and yearn for union with someone, with something, with Father-Son-Spirit? Is God’s coming to us in human flesh our adoption into the only functional family? I have come to believe that the answer to each of these questions is yes.

If I am correct, then why do adherents of the world's monotheistic religions, including Christianity, prefer a solitary god, a monad, a remote singularity? And how can a deity who knows no relationships have made us, or even want to make us? For what purpose? How can a mono-god whose image is non-relational create humans wired for relationship? Why would a self-contained uni-god create relationships, much less desire union with lowly, needy creatures like us?

What if the answer to this mystery is that God passionately desires to enlarge his Triune Family by including us and by wiring us to yearn for that inclusion? What if now, in the flesh, we are included in The Only Functional Family, The Relationship behind all relationships, The Family in whose image we are made, and The Union---blissful and passionate---that we desperately desire in our heart of hearts?

Paul Didn’t Go to Heaven

The Apostle Paul is believed by many to have made a round-trip visit to heaven—either bodily or via his soul leaving his body. But did he?

A quick look at Paul’s words in context says otherwise. The subject he is writing about is “visions and revelations.” Those are his words.

(painting by El Greco, 1606)

Paul complains that the Christians in Corinth are forcing him to boast again:

2 Corinthians 12:1-7   It is necessary to boast; nothing is to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.  ² I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven -- whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows.  ³ And I know that such a person -- whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows --  ⁴ was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.  ⁵ On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses.  ⁶ But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me,  ⁷ even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. (emphasis added)

By “third heaven” Paul means God’s abode, which in the ancient world was believed to be above the air in which birds fly (first heaven) and beyond the level of the sun, moon, and stars (second heaven).

Eason’s Bible Dictionary: According to the Jewish notion there were three heavens:  (a) The firmament, as "fowls of the heaven"  Ge 2:19 7:3,23 Ps 8:8 etc., "the eagles of heaven"  La 4:19 etc.  (b) The starry heavens  De 17:3 Jer 8:2 Mt 24:29   (c) "The heaven of heavens," or "the third heaven"  De 10:14 1Ki 8:27 Ps 115:16 148:4 2Co 12:2

Though the Corinthians again put him in the uncomfortable position of having to use his own extraordinary visions and revelations to shame them for their constant crowing about theirs, he still refuses to give details. He says that he “heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.” He says this not only out of humility, but also because he has no permission to share the details of his experience. Apparently it is his opinion that to repeat the revelations he received would be wrong.

Also out of humility, he speaks of himself humbly in third person as “a person.” (The Greek word anthropos can be translated as person, human being, or man.) He distances himself from his extraordinary vision/revelation in modesty by referring to himself as “a person.”

[This mosaic is the oldest known image of the Apostle Paul (late 300s A.D.), found in the catacombs of Rome on June 19, 2009.]

Moreover, Paul unassumingly claims to have been unable to tell whether what happened to him was in his mind’s eye or whether he was taken bodily to the third heaven or Paradise. In other words, the vision or revelation was so real that he couldn’t tell whether it was internal or external. That fact alone makes his experience superior to the Corinthians, he claims.

And further, if Paul had wanted to share knowledge of this “trip” in order to boost himself in their esteem, he could have. It’s as if Paul is saying, OK, if you want to play the boasting game, fine. I win! But he bests them not to subordinate them, but to shake them out of their arrogant self-sufficiency and delusional superiority.

I know that this is one of the New Testament passages quoted by the “disembodied-soul-going-to-heaven” crowd. But this verse doesn’t support a pagan Greek, Platonic, bodiless soul. (See The Soul Doesn't Leave the Body at Death)

Don’t read into these verses something that’s not there. Paul isn’t talking about the immortality of the soul. He’s not talking about his soul leaving his body. He didn’t mean to write, “I don’t know whether I went to heaven bodily or as a disembodied soul.” That’s just wrong, though that may be the way it’s usually read. Paul is a Christian. Christians believe in the resurrection of the body, not disembodied souls.

Paul is saying that he had an experience of heaven. He calls it a vision or a revelation. The experience was so vivid, so real, however, that if it was an inner vision (a mental panorama), he found it indistinguishable from an actual visit (a physical panorama).

So, if it was a vision, the vision was inside him, internal, in the body—that is, within himself, within his mind’s eye. But if he had an actual visit to heaven, the visit was a reality external to him, a reality outside of his body.

It is not Paul who was in or out of his body. It is what Paul saw that was either internal or external to his body. He’s saying that his inward vision looked externally real to him. It was so crystal-clear that it could have been an actual physical environment.

What’s his point? Paul is trying to show the Corinthians that it’s futile to compare revelations and visions, to rank people by how flashy their visions and revelations were. Paul is telling them they can’t win because they can’t top this:

His vision of heaven was as real as his waking consciousness—so real, he says, that it seemed the same as being there bodily.

(Revenna mosaic, late 400s A.D.)

Let me say it once more. Paul’s experience was so convincingly realistic that he honestly couldn’t tell whether he envisioned heaven or actually went there. He emphasized twice:

I do not know; God knows. Whether in the body (an internal vision or revelation) or out of the body (an actual physical experience), I honestly don’t know. I couldn’t tell the difference. (paraphrase)

These are the only two possibilities he considers. And these have nothing whatsoever to do with what is called today “out of body experiences” (OBEs). His soul leaving his body was not an option given by Paul. That would not have even occurred to him.

Paul wanted the Corinthian Christians to see that while it was true that he’d had a spiritual experience (a vision or revelation) that outshined all of theirs, he was unwilling to use details of his experience to justify himself or his apostleship. He was uninterested in a vision contest. The very idea of a revelation competition repelled him. It would be using God’s gift for personal glory.

Paul may have had another concern, however. Surely he didn’t want his “boasting” to result in Christians getting the idea that extraordinary experiences like his were necessary (prerequisite) to becoming a “real Christian.” Paul knew that the only requirement was trust in the message of grace to the cosmos through Jesus’ crucifixion. He avoided even the appearance of saying that anything other than belief is required to become a believer. Faith in the crucified Christ is enough.

(Catacombs of Praetextatus, fresco, fourth-fifth century A.D.)

Paul is making it clear that no great vision or revelation makes you more Christian than the “ordinary believer” who has had no such experience. No experience, no gift, and no ability give you an advantage over other Christians. There are no grounds for comparison.

Scripturally, everyone is visited with the full measure of heaven’s grace.

I called 911 today (a true story)

(Note: The drowning girl found this blog and commented on it below. Her name is Heather.)

I start to punch 9-1-1 but then in the urgency of the moment I realize I’ve forgotten the name of the park. I unzip my backpack and pull out the brochure I got from the Ranger at the gate.

Gaviota State Park, California. It’s a sunny seventy-eight degrees. I’m sitting on a cliff ledge almost a hundred feet above the Pacific. The waves are only two feet high, but inland winds, accelerated to thirty miles per hour by the narrow park canyon walls, sweep across the waves, whipping up white tops and mist. To my left, a rusting train trestle, still in use, spans the small beach. Emerging from the right end of the beach is an even older looking wooden pier reaching out into the waves about five hundred feet. The happy fishermen on the pier seem unaware of what is happening less than a half mile from them.

I use my binoculars again to make sure she is still there. It takes a few seconds to find her because she has now drifted farther out, but she’s there. Treading water. No life vest. I know she is a young woman because I saw her paddling a small white boat earlier. She passed the pier heading up the coast. But then I saw her go in. She just lost her balance and rolled out. I watched her try to climb back in. I rooted for her, and believed at first that she was in no imminent danger, but she must have gotten tired. She lost her grip on the boat, and the wind took it away from her. That’s when I got concerned, because she swam so weakly trying to catch it, which was a futile effort in that wind. A wave helped the wind flip it, and it was capsized and on its way to Indonesia.

She watched the boat for a few helpless seconds. Then she turned toward the shore, toward me. I was too far away to see her expression, even in the binoculars, but something about the way she didn’t even try to swim ashore---the way she bobbed in the water looking at a distant beach she could never reach---made my heart sink.

I punch 9-1-1and put the cell phone to my ear. The operator's voice breaks up, but I’m pretty sure she’s asking me what the emergency is.

“There’s a girl in the water at Gaviota State Park. She’s about a half mile out and drifting out to sea. I don’t think she has a life vest on.”

She says I’m breaking up. I stand and repeat. I notice a heavy man on the pier sprinting toward the beach. Good, I think. Someone else has spotted her.

The operator connects me to the Coast Guard. I repeat everything. She wants details. While I’m talking a man on an orange surfboard is paddling toward the capsized boat.

“OK, there’s a guy heading out on a surfboard now.”

“Is it a lifeguard?” she asks.

“I hope so. But he’s going the wrong way. He’s going for the boat. He can’t see her. She’s drifted out and up the beach.” She asks me for my name and cell number and we hang up.

Another guy hits the water on a shorter blue surfboard. Both boarders are headed for the boat, not the girl. I whistle as loud as I can and point up the beach, but they can’t hear me. I whistle and yell and point but it’s no use. All I can do is watch now. I sit down and raise the binoculars.

She’s bobbing and drifting away. The boarders are paddling for the boat. But the orange boarder stops and raises himself up to look for her. Good! He paddles and rises up and paddles and rises up. He spots her and puts the nose down and paddles hard in her direction. I cheer and give thanks thinking that maybe this thing is over. Maybe my emergency call was for nothing.

He reaches her. They’re pretty far out now, and it’s hard to see exactly what is happening, but it looks like she’s having a hard time getting on the board. She makes it on about the time the blue board reaches them. Then both boards turn and start paddling for the pier. I decide to time them.

After ten minutes, the orange board, now with two passengers, is making zero progress, and the guy on the blue board is losing ground. They’re separated. But a third boarder, this one also orange, is going out to assist. In maybe ten minutes he’s speaking with the other orange boarder, but then paddles out toward the blue boarder. He ties a chord to the blue board and starts to try to tow him in. Five minutes later they’ve made no progress. The wind and currents are too strong. It’s easy to get out there, apparently, but not so easy to get back.

"They’re not going to make it without help,” I say aloud. I look left and right for the Coast Guard. Nothing. Ten more minutes pass and I hear a helicopter back inland. I stand up and turn as the chopper blasts past me and heads straight for the boarders. But it’s not the kind of helicopter that can land on water, so I’m wondering what he will do. I lift the binoculars and see a frogman standing on the runner, ready to go in. But he doesn’t jump. They just hover.

As if by magic, the presence of the helicopter makes the guys paddle harder. “Guys really hate being rescued,” I say with a smile. I watch them make slow progress as the helicopter hovers right behind them. Then I hear sirens. And more sirens. And more still. Then a jet ski cranks up all of a sudden and heads out from the beach. He hitches up the orange board with two passengers and begins towing them. When they approach the pier, I pack up, climb up the rocks, cross the tracks, and follow a trail down to the beach. Is she OK?

Two fire trucks are parked at the beach. Three utility trucks, one with a trailer for the jet ski. And an ambulance. As I reach the beach, I gasp when I see the young lady strapped to a stretcher. She’s so pale. Her trembling hands clutch the blanket to her cheeks. Then as they load her into the ambulance, she pulls the blanket over her face and presses it tight. I didn’t expect that. She’s hypothermic and exhausted. And fortunate.

I identify the first orange boarder. He’s the beach lifeguard. I hear someone call him George. We exchange stories, mine from a cliff top and his from the beach. The pier obscured his view, he said, and he didn’t know she was in the water until the heavy man ran down the pier yelling. The guy on the blue board was her boyfriend, and his inexperience with paddling on the shorter board got him in trouble. They had to send the jet ski back out to tow him in too.

Every fireman and frogman on the beach is smiling and slapping George on the back. The frogman in the helicopter gives George the thumbs up as they head back inland from wherever they came. George earned his paycheck today.

I stand there pondering the irony. I had been feeling down about not finding a job. I’d been out here in California since June, and despite hundreds of applications and calls, still nothing. A friend said I should go somewhere, maybe the beach, and pray and listen and take a moment for myself to just be. So, wanting to go to the Santa Barbara area, a beautiful area on the coast but not too far from Arcadia, I looked online and found Gaviota State Park. The cliffs, the rocks, the trails, the beach, the old trestle and pier looked just right. So I headed out.

I had checked out the beach, then a reedy area full of birds on the east end, then bought some water and decided the best place to be alone and pray might be up on the cliff. I walked the road and a trail, crossed the tracks, and found my way over the lip and sat on a ledge. Kelp danced in the waves. Pelicans dive-bombed silver fish from above while seals picked them off from below. I had been sitting there for thirty minutes when I began to pray.

I don’t usually close my eyes to pray. I just talk. I was sitting there talking when I saw her boat. To my naked eye, something appeared to be wrong. I raised the binoculars. You know the rest.

While I am still standing on the beach watching the firemen and frogmen and one frogwoman laughing and loading up, an older couple comes up to me.

“Are you all right?” she asks.

“Yes, ma’am. Why do you ask?”

“I overheard you talking to the lifeguard. Were you alone up there?”

“Yes, ma’am.” And suddenly I’m wondering whether I am all right. I choke up a bit, feeling grateful to have had my binoculars and cell phone with me up there, grateful that George was on the job, and grateful for all the men and women on duty round the clock ready to risk their lives to save someone else.

I assure the woman I’m fine, and as she walks away I look around at the sunbathers and picnickers and wonder if there is a message in this for me. Is God talking to me? And if so, what is he saying?

Then it hits me. As I had watched her from the cliff, I had put myself in her place. She went out on an adventure alone and got in over her head. Perhaps she was me. I had gone on an adventure to California alone and was certainly feeling in over my head this weekend.

I walk back up the cliff to my Jeep and get in. At the park entrance I meet the truck with the jet ski on its trailer. They wave me to go first. I do. I’m pulling onto the coastal highway and I realize that what I just witnessed was exactly how I feel.

Does anyone on the pier see me bobbing in freezing water? Is there a guy on the cliff with binoculars and a cell phone watching over me? Will the lifeguard or the Coast Guard come for me?

At moments like this, what else can you do but wait and trust and hope?

I’m back in my one-room efficiency in Arcadia now, typing the events of today. I’ve told no one about this, and I thought about keeping it that way. But then again, I thought, this is a story that needs writing, and writing it has been good.

What Color is a Green Apple?

a parable of perception

Things aren’t always as they seem.

Take your favorite coffee cup and put it on the table in front of you. Now look at it. Let’s say for the sake of the argument that you have “normal,” non-corrected, 20/20, human eyesight. Your eyes are giving you information about the cup. Your image of it is sharp and clear. You assume that what you are seeing is the cup. But is it?

An enormous number of living creatures on earth have eyes. Elephants, eagles, dogs, hammerhead sharks, and houseflies all have eyes. But are their eyes identical? When other creatures look at your cup, do they see exactly what you see? Do they see shapes and colors the same way your eyes do? If not, then which image of your cup—the elephant’s, eagle’s, dog’s, shark’s, housefly’s, or yours—is “correct”? Which one is really the cup?

When you examine the problem this way, you begin to see that all of these images belong to the cup, but none of the images are the cup. The cup is a reality that is more than merely what your eyes can see. Your eyes only see a narrow band of the full spectrum of light. For example, your eyes can see no light from the ultraviolet or the infrared spectrums. Your eyes “see” the cup, for sure, but only in the spectrum of light that your eyes are designed with which to see.

What you see, your visual image of the cup, is limited by your eyes’ design. In fact, your eyes are sieves that filter out the chaotic light frequencies that interfere with your survival—so you can hunt a deer, spot a crouching lion, and avoid walking off a cliff. Therefore your image of the cup is incomplete. The cup’s cup-ness is more than what your eyes in their limitations can perceive.

When an apple appears green to you, it is not because the apple is actually green. The surface of the apple happens to absorb blue and red wavelengths of light while it reflects green. The apple then appears to your eyes to be green. But if you were significantly colorblind, you probably would not be able to tell a red from a green apple!

One in every 100 males has some “red-weakness” (Protanomaly), meaning shades of red are difficult to distinguish. Five in every 100 males has a “green-weakness” (Deuteranomaly). (Colorblindness in women is very rare. Tritanope is even rarer.) A colorblind person who looks at a colorful map of the world will see “the world” differently than you. The following four maps of the world demonstrate this.

Normal                 Protanope            Deuteranope       Tritanope

When your eye sees the green apple, the really weird thing is that a green apple is actually absorbing every other color but green. Green is the only light wave that it rejects! Your eye sees the apple as green because green is the only light color it can’t keep (absorb).

To state this even more accurately and boldly, when you look at your cup, you’re not really seeing at your cup at all. Your eyes are “reading” the light reflected off of the cup’s surface. If you put your cup in total darkness, the cup is still there even though you can’t see it. Does the cup exist in the dark? Yes, obviously. So your cup is more than its mere appearance. Cup-ness is a reality in and of itself apart from your visual perception of the light bouncing off of it. The fact that a blind person can drink from your cup should have told you that! The cup is more than meets the eye.

We are “seeing things” because of light. Eyes are organs that process light. Light enters the eye, shining on what are called cones and rods, and the light triggers a chemical reaction in the rods and cones, and the chemicals turn into electrical impulses that are sent to a certain part of the brain where these impulses are received, organized, and transmitted to other parts of the brain for analysis and communication.

So when you look at your cup, are you seeing your cup? Yes and no. “Yes” because the image your eyes provide is an actual image of your cup. “No” because the image is not your actual physical cup. Like a camera, your eye catches light and provides a “photograph” of that light bouncing off of stuff like your cup. Light bounces off of the cup and goes into your eyes, and you “see the light” bouncing off the cup. You do not see the cup itself. For everyday purposes everyone seems to assume that the cup they “see” is the actual cup. In a very real sense it’s not.

Why?

Because light is the only thing eyes can see. Eyes receive and process light, not cups. Your eyes are light processors, not cup processors. The “photograph” of the cup is not the cup.

Let’s make things worse! Think about light. If light bounces off of things (like your cup) and then goes into your eyes, then light has speed, right? What is that speed? Light travels at 186,282 miles per second (or about 670 million mph). It travels fast enough to circle the earth more than seven times a second. To put that speed in perspective, light coming all the way from the moon’s surface only takes 1.28 seconds to reach the Earth. That’s really fast. The moon is 238,857 miles away. A quarter-million miles in a-second-and-a-half. The implication of this is just wild.

What this means is that when you look at the moon, you are not seeing the moon as it appears right now. You are seeing the moon as it was one second ago. Merely by gazing at the moon tonight you are actually looking back in time one second.

The moon, however, doesn’t give off its own light. It merely reflects the light of the sun. So how long does it take sunlight to travel from the sun all the way to the Earth and its moon? Eight minutes. We’re talking about 93 million miles at 186,282 miles per second in about 500 seconds (or a little over eight minutes). So when you look at the sun—hopefully you don’t stare at it!—you aren’t seeing the sun as it is, but as it was eight minutes ago. You’re looking eight minutes back in time.

When you look at the planet Saturn with your naked eye—easily done if you know where and what to look for—you aren’t seeing Saturn as it is, but as it was . . . one whole hour ago.

The nearest star to our sun (our sun is a star)—Proxima Centauri (Alpha Centauri C)—is 4.3 “light years” away. A light year is the distance light travels in one year. It takes light from Proxima Centauri four years to reach us. So when you look up and see Proxima Centauri, you are not seeing Proxima Centauri as it is, but as it was four years ago.

On a clear, cold, moonless night, drive out away from the lights of “civilization” and look up using only your naked eye. The sky is a virtual canopy of stars—thousands of them. Some of the dim stars you are looking at are 2000 light years from Earth. But you are not seeing those distant stars as they are today. You are seeing them as they were 2000 years ago when Jesus of Nazareth walked the Earth. Moreover, when Jesus gazed at these distant stars, he saw them as they were 2000 years before his time, or near the time when Abraham walked the Earth.

Now there are 200 to 400 billion such stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. But, as the Hubble Space Telescope has so dramatically shown us, there are at least 100 billion galaxies out there too, each with on average 200 to 300 billion stars of their own. That brings an even more bizarre fact.

When the Hubble “looks” at a galaxy at the far edge of the known universe and provides us with an image of it, that image is not one of what the galaxy looks like now. It is an image of how it looked billions of years ago! To look at such distant galaxies is to look back in time well before the creation of telescopes, before the presence of humans on earth, before even the formation of our own solar system. How strange! The telescope orbiting Earth is viewing a time prior to the existence of Earth.

Again, things aren’t always as they seem. We can’t see anything in the heavens as it “is” right now. To stand in your backyard and look up at the stars is to leave “the now.” To stargaze is to travel backward in time. But this raises yet another oddity.

Look at your favorite coffee cup again. Not only is the cup in its cup-ness more than what your eyes can perceive, but the light traveling from your cup to your eye takes time to get there. It’s a very, very short amount of time, granted. But it takes time. Therefore, you can’t even look at your own coffee cup and see its image in “the now.” It’s nearly instantaneous, yes. And you can’t perceive it as anything other than instantaneous. But it’s not instantaneous.

When you look at your cup, you are seeing an image of it as it was a fraction of a second ago. In fact, because the speed of light is finite, there is no image that you can ever perceive visually in the actual present. Everything you perceive with your eyes is in the past due to a finite speed of light. How far in the past the object is seen depends on its distance from your eye.

Because light has a speed, you see the cup in front of you as it was fractions of a second ago. You see the moon as it was one second ago. You see the sun as it was eight minutes ago. You see Saturn as it was an hour ago. You see Proxima Centauri as it was four years ago. You see distant stars in the night sky as they were 2000 years ago.

My point? This blog—What Color is a Green Apple?—is a parable of perception. When it comes to seeing, perception is not reality. But what about God? Is perception reality when it comes to God?

After much study and thought, I’m convinced that at the core of Jesus’ mission was his intent to provide for us corrective lenses. He came to reveal his heavenly Father as he really is. He came to correct our perception of God.

We tend to see the Son and the Father as different, do we not? The Father is seen as distant and judging while Jesus is seen as accessible and forgiving, even though the Jesus of the Bible insists that “when you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” (For more on this, see The Un-Religion.)

This creates a rather bizarre dilemma, doesn’t it? If you are a follower of Jesus or want to be, and if you take what he says in the Scriptures seriously, then you can trust your own perception of God, or you can trust what Jesus is telling you when it comes to seeing his Father. Is Jesus’ image of his Father direct, clear, and correct, or is yours?

Faith is the willingness to trust his eyes instead of your own. Faith rests in what Jesus sees rather than what you think you see.

Every head bowed and every eye closed

A priest, a minister, and a guru sat discussing the best position for prayer, while a telephone repairman worked nearby.

“Kneeling is definitely the best way to pray,” said the priest.

“No,” said the minister. “I get the best results standing with my hands outstretched to heaven.”

“You’re both wrong,” said the guru. “The most effective prayer position is lying down on the floor.”

The repairman, unable to contain himself any longer, said, “Hey, fellas. The best praying I ever did was when I was hanging upside down from a telephone pole.”

(author unknown)

When Jesus prays prior to a miracle, something he rarely does, he looks up to heaven (once in Matthew, twice in Mark, once in Luke, and once in John). For example,

Mark 6:41 Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven (ouranos = heaven or sky), and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all.

Mark 7:34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened."

John 17:1 After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you . . .”

Why did Jesus look up to pray sometimes? Is the heavenly Father really “up there” somewhere—implying that he is somehow absent “down here”? Did Jesus believe like other ancient peoples that God’s heaven is beyond the sky’s dome of blue waters? Or was Jesus’ sense of God’s Spirit that, like the wind, it comes from everywhere in the air around and above us? The Bible neither emphasizes nor clarifies why Jesus on occasion looked upward when he prayed.

What’s strange to me is that while Jesus prayed with his eyes opened looking up, we Christians pray with our eyes closed and our heads bowed down! The next time someone says, “Let us pray,” sneak a peak. Watch the heads bow and the eyes close automatically. Some pastors go so far as to specifically instruct worshipers with the words, “Every head bowed and every eye closed.” Why is that?

Heads bowed and eyes closed may be the customary posture for prayer among Christians today, but it’s certainly not biblical. Jesus never gave instructions to bow your head and close your eyes when you pray. Neither did anyone else in the Bible. So why do we do it?

I have a theory.

In Jesus’ parable of the Praying Pharisee and Tax Collector, the Pharisee stands where he can be seen as he thanks God that he’s better than other people because he fasts a lot and gives a lot of money. But . . .

. . . the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' (italics mine) (Luke 18:13)

Maybe this is why we Christians face downward and close our eyes when we pray, so as to imitate this tax collector’s humility. We avoid looking up to heaven by bowing our heads.

Is there any other place in scripture where someone bows his head to pray? Sort of. Though prayer is not specified, it could be implied in four verses in the Old Testament (Gen 24:26, 48; Ex 34:8; Ps 35:13) where someone bows his head to worship.

What about the New Testament? Matthew says that Jesus once prayed with his face to the ground (Matthew 26:39), which is sort of like bowing your head. A man healed of leprosy bowed with his face to the ground and begged Jesus to heal him (Luke 5:12), which sounds like a prayer. A healed Samaritan fell with this face to the ground at Jesus’ feet (Luke 17:16) expressing thanksgiving, which could be seen as a prayer. And the disciples once took hold of Jesus’ feet and worshiped him (Matthew 28:9), perhaps including prayer.

Paul also wrote:

^NET 1 Corinthians 14:25 The secrets of his heart are disclosed, and in this way he will fall down with his face to the ground and worship God, declaring, "God is really among you."

So there is evidence in the Bible, though weak, that sometimes people bowed their heads when they prayed. But are there biblical references to closing one’s eyes to pray? No. While there is some precedence for falling on your face for worship, perhaps meaning to include prayer, I can find no biblical instructions specifically to bow your head and to close your eyes when you pray.

Frankly, I don’t think Jesus intended to regulate praying postures with his parable of the Praying Pharisee and Tax Collector. It was the man’s heart—not his posture—that was “justified.” Should you press your palms together or fold them? Should you stand or kneel? Should you raise your hands or hold hands with others? Do you want to know what I think? I think you could pray standing on your head wearing a pink tutu if you wanted to, but it wouldn’t help. Prayer’s effectiveness has little to do with body position, though the creator of this imaginative chart obviously disagrees.

Nevertheless, on several occasions our New Testament says that Jesus looked up to ouranos (sky or heaven) when he prayed. Is that why his prayers always “worked”? Is there magic in looking heavenward? Was he showing us how to properly posture ourselves for prayer? If so, why do so few Christians today do it that way?

I often open my eyes when I pray. I like looking outward or upward because it reminds me that I have come to believe that the kingdom of heaven is near us, around us, among us, and within us, as Jesus insisted. I don’t have to close my eyes to imagine the kingdom. I can see it all around me with the eyes of faith.

On the other hand, many whom I’ve spoken with about this topic have told me that closing their eyes to pray helps them to block out distractions.

So, do we avoid looking toward heaven as the tax collector did in Jesus’ parable? Or should we pray with eyes heavenward as Jesus did on occasion?

Again, I don’t think it matters. I’ve never had the sense that the position of my eyelids makes God any more attentive. If it did, I’d pray upwards every time, rub my rabbit’s foot, avoid stepping on any cracks, and contort myself into the Lotus position—whatever worked.

Standing? Kneeling? Prostrate on the floor? Eyes closed? Eyes opened? Head raised? Head bowed? It doesn’t really matter, it seems to me. I doubt that posturing manipulates God. And I doubt that anyone but a religionist would monitor your prayer posture.