Author: mhelbert

Recently, I wrote a post about knowing God. In that post I mentioned a bit about the changeability of God. I stated my thought that God does indeed experience change in many ways. I made a brief case against those who say that God is above any human understanding. God does not have emotion. God is so transcendent that it would cause God to become somehow contaminated if God engaged with people on a human level. This thinking came to fruition during what is called the Scholastic period of Church history. Thomas Aquinas was the primary mover in this. The primary error of Aquinas and Anselm, (and, later in the Reformation, Calvin), is that they began with a Hellenistic (Aristotelian) philosophy to define God by reason rather than by revelation in Christ. By regarding human reason above Divine Revelation, these thinkers got off on the wrong foot. And, the Church has suffered for it ever since. This so-called Classic Theology of God simply creates God in the image of humanity. This has left us with the obvious corollary that reveals the gross error of reason before revelation, “God hates the same things that I hate.” Aquinas et al. may not have used those words, but the end result is the same. God is reduced to human reason. Therefore, it is insufficient in helping us understand God.
The most important change I said was how I believe God’s experience of the human condition in and through Jesus was new. God could not completely understand humanity. Just as we, not being God, cannot understand the Divine Reality of God. God, however, was able to come to a solution by “pitching God’s tent among humankind.” In this way, God was able to experience all that we humans experience. From being an infant with dirty diapers to a teenager with raging hormones, Jesus was truly human. He had friends that he played with as a youth. Jesus may have even had a crush on that cute girl who lived up the street. You know, the baker’s daughter. Every thing that we experience as people, Jesus experienced. This must include experiencing Sin as we experience it. In this way, and only in this way, was God able to finally and effectively destroy Sin and Death.
There are other instances in the Scripture about how God interacted with people and, in many cases, changed His mind. In these instances language like, “and, God repented of (you fill in the blank)” describe God changing direction and not allowing something to happen. There have been many arguments made that allow God to somehow remain impassible in the face of these texts. I don’t buy them. I think that God did indeed change God’s mind in response to humans changing their actions at the time.
There is one aspect of God, though, that I do think could be considered immutable. There is, in fact, something about God that God has chosen NOT to change. It’s the one constant that runs through the Biblical text like a red thread.

God’s Character.

I think that God’s character remains the same from age to age. It is the one guarantee that God is Who God says that God is.
That, of course begs the question, “What does God’s character look like?” Fortunately, we have a living example of God’s character. The One who came from God and returned to God. Jesus of Nazareth is that One. In that previous post I mentioned the words from the Gospel According to John where the writer said that God came and pitched God’s tent among humanity. Actually, the text says, “The Word pitched his tent.” The Word in John’s story is Jesus. He is the Word who lived with God and was, himself, God. So, God did come and join with us on this pale, blue dot. God did that through Jesus.
In this way we may see glimpses of God’s character. Like a person adrift in the ocean who sees something out of the corner of their eye. Realizing that it is land, hope blooms and the person finds themself casting a longing eye at the promise of salvation. So, too, we may glimpse God’s character in Jesus and place hope in the unchangeableness of that character. In Jesus we see that God’s character is made of Love. Love is the center of who God is. It is the force that inspired God to engage with the world and with humanity in the beginning. It is what sustained God’s people as they tried to follow God’s commands. God’s tender touch lifted Israel and guided them in the wilderness. And, it was God’s love that caused God to go to the cross so that we might finally be free from the power of Sin and Death.
God’s love is immutable. It can never change or weaken. It is what allows us to know God as God’s children. It is that glimpse of God’s character that causes our hope to bloom and blossom into the reflection of God’s own Glory.
So, while I still contend that God engages intimately with us and is capable of emotion and change, I stand firm in the belief that God’s loving character will always be the bedrock of hope for all people.

Am I the only one who thinks that local newscasters should probably try a little harder? I don’t mean that they don’t work hard. In fact, I think that their jobs are sometimes thanklessly difficult. These poor folks are required to fill a fixed amount of time day after day. Sometimes, those days are pleasantly newsless. You know the days when the only story to be told is that someone’s dog got loose and dug up the next door neighbor’s petunias. How does one transform that into a complete newscast? So, yes, I have sympathy for them.
What I find questionable, however, is how poorly many of these news professionals communicate their stories. While they are all able to speak English, they don’t always speak it in ways that are comprehensible. Most newscast attest to this. The person read something from a teleprompter that makes little sense. This may be caused by poor grammar, mixing tenses, lack of coordination between subject and predicate, and language that simple doesn’t match the person speaking. This is obviously caused by poor writing or editing. Now, I could give this a pass for most folks. We have not chosen public communication for a career. Nor, have we spent time and money at university learning communication skills.
They have.
So, there’s no excuse for the aural abuse we viewers are subjected to every day.
The most egregious errors are made by those who don’t work from a teleprompter. You know, those who report from remote locations and, perhaps the worst offenders, Meteorologists. Yes, those weather folks who try to educate and communicate the fraught world of climate. I suppose that I should give them some slack. After all, they are speaking without the benefit of a prepared script. There reports are supposed to flow seamlessly from one projected graphic to another. And, they have to do that in a finite amount of time or risk the Wrath of Khan, er, the Producer. I get it.
What I don’t get is how a weather caster can take a 30 second tease and turn it unto a word salad that no one can possibly understand. I watched that happen not long ago. The person was, I think, trying to describe an event called an Atmospheric River flowing out of the Pacific Ocean. Somehow he presented our risk in Ohio in terms that, well, I don’t really know. He made no sense whatsoever. Now, I think that he is truly a wonderful person. He seems like it in his interactions with others on the set. His butchery of the English language, however, is difficult to listen to. “Titrate?” Really? Who talks like that? I have a pretty fair vocabulary and I had to look that up. It reminds me of a sign my Dad used to have over his desk, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance; baffle them with bullshit.”
Part of the problem is that these folks try too hard to impress us with their knowledge. They have spent large sums of money to learn the science of weather. So, they naturally want to prove to themselves, (and their parents?), that the money was well-spent. However, the very best meteorologists on air are the ones who are their genuine selves. There is one person in our market who sometime jerks and stammers through the weather like any regular, blue-collar person would. It works for him. His entire persona is regular, blue collar guy. He rarely wears a jacket and many times appears without a tie and his sleeves rolled up. His presentation and character match. He doesn’t try to appear as something he is not.
There is another who appears completely unpretentious. He jokes with others on set and presents the facts in a way that allows viewers to feel like they are friends.
There are too many others who don’t seem to know the difference of East from West. And, please, don’t get me started on the overuse of the word “corridor” when speaking about geography. “Rain will impact those west of the I-71 corridor” is something that should be spoken by no one, EVER! Especially when the rain event is actually happening EAST of I-71!
While I’m on a nice rant, let me mention one more thing.
Who ever told local news outlets that watching someone play with a computer is entertaining? I say this about how stations turn over their broadcasts to meteorologists for hours on end during sever weather events. Please don’t misunderstand me! I get it that sever weather can have devastating impacts on people. We just need to look at how that Atmospheric River affected millions of folks on the west coast. Warning people is a public service that must be engaged in.
But, not for hours on end by weather folks who have absolutely no aptitude for it. They are trained, and paid, to fill a time slot of several minutes. They prepare for that and form a weathercast that will inform and entertain people. When the weather turns severe, however, they are called on to ad lib while showing various views of radar and wind and all sorts of mean, nasty things. Then it becomes painfully obvious that they are totally out of their depth. No one trained them to speak coherently and meaningfully for that length of time. It would absolutely be more effective to live report the initial risk then run a crawler at the bottom of the screen with necessary details. If conditions deteriorate, break in for a few moments to update live. Then, back to the crawler that actually reveals more than the droning on and on about things that truly have little meaning for the lay observer.
Sorry. That’s a pet peeve of mine that I really needed to get off of my chest.
All in all, most people who inhabit the world of local news perform a service that our communities need. Especially, with the collapse of national news into sound bites that try to create fear so that viewers will not change the channel. Local news can truly present stories that have real meaning to their viewers.
But, really, could ya try a bit harder to communicate in language that is clear and understandable?

Oh, and quit with the “Breaking News” already! It’s like that boy who cried Wolf! No one listens anymore!

Ok, I’m done now.
Thank you for listening!

I’m not exactly sure what to write. I was out walking last week and said as much to God.
“You want me to write,” I said. “Ok, so, what do I write?”
The response?
“You will know when it’s time.”
That is so God! I think that God enjoys putting me into positions like that. God is sitting in
the divine recliner laughing. I, too, had to laugh.
So, here I am. Sitting at this machine poking at lettered keys trying to make some sort of sense.
Not feeling inspired right now.
I think that is also part of God’s joke on me. You see, I keep putting off writing anything. I feel totally inadequate to the task. Who do I think that I am? I don’t know anything of any real use to anyone.
Hell! I spent my working life if commercial printing! Commercial printing is simply a way to keep landfills in business. Nothing to see there.
But, God got me to promise to sit down and write. Sneaky, that God. Always good for a joke.

I think that we all tend to take God too seriously.
No, seriously, I do!
I say, that if God is God, the Creator, then God must have invented humor. As they say, just look at a platypus! If that doesn’t prove God’s sense of humor, I don’t know what will.
I don’t see God as a Big Bully or a Cosmic Killjoy. I know, I know…someone’s gonna say something about “Have some respect! That’s God you’re talking about!”
Yeah, whatever. Prove me wrong! I dare ya! I double-dog dare ya!
You can’t do it, can you?
No, because if God is all and in all, then God must be in humor. Period.
To further prove my point, I am in my office with a one year old German Shepherd mix who demands all of my attention. I gave her a chewy to keep her busy. Now, she’s walking around my office, whining and looking for a place to bury it. She will gladly chew the walls and the woodwork. She takes special delight in chewing on my shoes. But, a chewy that has only one purpose in life, to be chewed on by a dog? No. Let’s bury it in the cushions of the furniture. Or, like just now, next to some dumb bells.
At least she’s happy now.
See? More of God’s humor. Give the guy a task, then do everything possible to make it difficult.
Ha! Ha! Ha!

This is more like the God that I’ve come to know in the last several years. This God is large and
expansive. This God loves the World so much that nothing is to much to give. Nothing is so low and profane that God will not engage. I think that there is always some kind of dirt and grime under the Divine Fingernails. This God laughs with us, (And, sometimes at us!). God walks with us when all is good. And, God cries with us when things aren’t.

I don’t know if I’m making any kind of sense.
Then again, God didn’t say anything about making sense.
“Write,” God said.
So, here I am trying to oblige.

My hope, I guess, is that anyone who decides to take the time to read this far will realize that I am not someone who takes himself too seriously.
I do take God seriously, though. Seriously enough to do what I can to break down the walls and barriers that the Church has erected over the centuries in order to keep “those people” out.
And, to attempt to keep God’s so-called purity from defiling. If you hadn’t noticed, God really doesn’t need our help with that. God doesn’t need us to have state-sponsored prayer or any other kind of special treatment. God’s perfectly capable of protecting God’s own identity and character.
Nor does God need any one nation or culture to be God’s chosen. Nope. Not. At. All.
God has already chosen from every tribe, people, and nation as God’s own.
Oh, BTW, those who are chosen?
EVERYBODY!!!
That’s part of what’s Good about the Good News!!!
God loves and chooses everyone to be the Chosen.
So, let’s live like it and stop worrying about what we can or can’t do to please God.
That’s already settled. We can, however, show God our appreciation and gratitude by being
Mindful that God is near. That God loves us all unconditionally. That we are cherished.
That, too, is part of the Good News.

I don’t know about you, but I’m just about done with the political world. It seems that for the last several months we’ve been barraged with ads for this candidate or that one; this party or that other one.

And, they ALL LIE!

They lie about each other’s stance on the economy, immigration, election monitoring, redistricting, blah, blah, blah.

WILL IT NEVER END!!!!

AARRGGGHHH!!!!

Whew! Ok. I’m back.

People want to be heard. Yeah, I get it. Me too.
So, they take to social media to find like-minded folks to reinforce their own ideas and opinions until they think theirs is the only opinion worth considering. We call that being in a ‘silo’ or an ‘echo chamber.’ You only really hear the sound of your own voice reverberating all around you.
This is endemic to any and all political ideals. I don’t care if you call yourself conservative or liberal; Republican or Democrat. People want to be heard. More than that, they want to feel that they are RIGHT. So, as I spend all my time in the silo of my choice, my opinion is heard and amplified by all of the voices that sound just like mine.

That’s a problem.

When we become so entrenched in our “Side” we forget that there are other “Sides” out there. We forget that ours is NOT the only voice. In fact, there are more voices in the world than we can possibly imagine. Society, and surely not politics, is a black/white; either/or proposition. Like everything in life there are myriad voices and ideas out there. We can never, ever assume our own superiority in the field of ideas.

That requires something that is hard to find. Especially, in our special brand of Western culture in the U.S.
That something is Humility.

Yep. There, I said the “H” word

Humility.

Before you all have a conniption, let me explain just a wee bit.
First, humility is not allowing anyone to walk all over you. You are not being humble when you consider yourself a worm. That’s something that might require some counselling to help out.
Neither is humility remaining silent while everyone else talks over you. No, your opinion is important and necessary in any conversations we have about our World.

Humility in this case is simply listening.
Not listening like, “Yeah, I here a noise.” But, listening with the intention to really Hear what each other has to say. Nor, is it simply listening while forming a rebuttal to whatever the other person is saying.
We all want someone to:
PLEASE HEAR ME!!!

All of us want that.

When I think about the divide that the media seems to want to describe, I think not in terms of Right/Left; Conservative/Liberal.
Hell, I don’t even know what those terms truly mean.
I think rather of Conservatives as people who don’t want to be pushed. I can visualize them as rank upon rank of people marching slowly toward some unknown, yet desired, future. They are working hard in their lives to keep things from moving too fast. Fast and Change are not good words for them. Yet, change will come. Eventually. Hopefully, on our terms.
On the other hand, I find Liberal to also be a misnomer. These are folks who are like a river flowing to that still unknown, yet desired future. They meander and rush over rapids and over falls. They pick up a lot of stuff along the way and carry it with them. They don’t always see beyond the next bend. But, ‘Hell, Yeah!’ we’re going there!

Both want to move forward.
Both want to be seen and heard.
Both want peace.

I’m writing all of this for the simple reason that for me this is therapeutic. I need to get these thoughts out of my head so my head doesn’t explode. No one wants that. It would be a hell of a mess to clean up.
Plus, I don’t think that I’m alone in these thoughts.
Feel free to comment with your own ideas.
After all, your thoughts are important for all of us.

Last week I wrote a bit about how I am encouraged by how things at St. Barnabas have been going. Activity is active; Attendees are attending; Spirit is Descending.

All Good.

While my life is not as wrapped up in church life as it was in the days of the evangelical grist mill. I still work hard and smile when it appears that God is smiling, too.

This past week has seen a different part of life here at the Old Homestead in the Suburbs. Life has been tossing the proverbial lemons. But, they’ve been rotten. No lemonade here.

I don’t recall spending much time on this here Blog-thingy writing about personal events. Yeah, there have been the milestones of seminary graduation and birthdays and holidays. But, in general I choose to keep my personal life personal. I mean, I don’t want to be off-putting. But, my life in general is no one’s business but mine.

However, sometimes what we experience may be something that resonates with others. How we deal with these experiences could just be the tonic that someone else needs. Or, it could just state the obvious that we’re really not alone and our experiences aren’t so weird. Others experience the same kind of stuff. So, what I experience might encourage someone else.

Over the last six weeks we’ve been dealing with health issues that have been as frustrating as they are serious.

(No, I’m not the one with the issues this time.
But, that doesn’t lessen them.)

There have been 4 trips to the ER, 2 inpatient stays in hospital, several rounds of tests and scopes and such, and multiple doctor appointments.
There has been a lot of pain and discomfort.
And, like I wrote above…
FRUSTRATION.
We now have a handle on most of it and there is in fact a positive end in sight.
While that is encouraging, it doesn’t cover for the sheer exhaustion, both physical, mental, and emotional that this has taken.
We are well and truly Tired!

On top of that we recently lost two members of my extended family to domestic violence.
It’s a situation that sux horribly.
A young mother and son gone in a senseless act of madness that should never have been allowed to happen.
Yet, it was.
We have gathered around our family member to support and protect as best we can.
But, the pain lingers and the anger burns.

We humans are a resilient species.
We have to be.
We are a very breakable creature that must be cared for carefully.
Yet, even in our fragility we have developed the ability to heal and bounce back.
Sometimes, (most times?), stronger and more capable than before.
I am sure that all of us will walk or crawl through the adversity that we find ourselves in.
I am equally sure that our relationships with one another will grow strong and be more than able to support the weak, infirm, and hurting.

Yeah, life’s hard.
But, we can, we must, live it as it is.