I was originally going to write this post yesterday, following up on my previous look at the upcoming elections from August.  But I decided I’d better do a little extra studying of the present-day situation before writing — and boy, am I glad I did!

I use the words “present-day situation” for a reason.  See, most of my thoughts lately regarding the coming election haven’t been about Obama, Romney, Gingrich and Bachmann — they’ve been about Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy and Nixon.  I’ve been reading a lot on previous presidential elections — Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals (about Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet), Donald Ritchie’s Electing FDR: The New Deal Campaign of 1932, Theodore White’s The Making of the President series (I’ve finished 1960 and 1964, am still working through 1968, and read 1972 years ago but plan to re-read), Michael Lewis’ Losers (about the 1996 Republican candidates) and of course Heilemann and Halperin’s controversial Game Change.  These books and others, while not perfect, are helping give me some perspective on what’s going on out there, and have led to some interesting insights that I’ll deal with down the road in this space.

But let’s leave the past be for the moment and look to the present — the 2012 GOP contest — as the January 3 Iowa caucus quickly approaches …

When I wrote about it four and a half months ago, I’d figured that in the wake of Texas governor Rick Perry joining the race and the Ames, Iowa straw poll, the leading candidates were probably Perry, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, Minnesota representative Michelle Bachmann and Texas representative/libertarian standard-bearer Ron Paul.  Which might have been the case at the time, but a lot changed and changed quickly.

First, Perry took the lead in the polls, only to immediately get hit with two problems — people started looking at his public statements on what he’d do in the White House (including major changes in the Constitution), and the other candidates began targeting him in debates.  Perry is not a particularly good debater, and was soon tripping over his own tongue on a regular basis (most notably the time he tried to name the three Cabinet-level departments he’d get rid of as President, and couldn’t remember one).  In Iowa, Perry went from leading in mid-September to fifth place a month later, and his poll numbers still haven’t recovered.  In the meantime, his entrance took the wind out of the Bachmann campaign’s sails; her numbers haven’t returned to their earlier levels either

Then ex-pizza magnate Herman Cain began picking up steam, but soon his candidacy was snowed under by allegations of sexual harassment that he did almost nothing to refute; he finally gave up and shut down his candidacy in early December.  Suddenly onetime Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (whose candidacy I had declared deader than a canned sardine in the summer) rose in the polls, taking the Iowa polling lead only for him to become the new debate target, and for some of his more morally-minded supporters to be reminded that he’s on his third marriage and cheated on the first two wives.  (In his defense, he seems to be faithful to wife #3.  As far as we know.)  In recent days, his numbers in Iowa and elsewhere have been dropping, although he still leads in South Carolina (primary, January 21) and Florida (primary, January 31), both of which border his home state of Georgia.

This may sound like chaos, but there is a pattern to it.  Take a look at this graph of Iowa poll results from Real Clear Politics.  Early on, Romney led, but with only 15-20% support — a lot of people were still choosing “none of the above” at that point.  The Iowa-born Bachmann jumped into the lead in mid-July (with Romney in second) and held that spot until late August, then plummeted as the Perry campaign came up to speed.  Perry was on top (with Romney and, for a while, Bachmann close behind) until early October.  When Perry sank, Herman Cain’s numbers spiked, and he took over the front-runner’s position in mid-October (with Romney in second again/still) and held it for a month until the harassment stories began popping up.  Cain’s spot was almost immediately taken by Gingrich, who was #1 for the last third of November and first half of December (with Romney following and Paul picking up steam).  Now Gingrich has fallen back to the pack, his support apparently being divided between Paul and ex-Pennsylvania senator/bete noire of the LGBT lobby Rick Santorum.

See, there are three parts to the Republican Party — in order of constituency size, the social-conservative bloc (largely concerned with issues such as homosexuality and abortion), the pro-business social-moderate wing (more focused on economic issues), and the libertarians (anti-centralized-government).  There is some overlap between the groups, but that’s basically how the GOP rolls.  Romney is the social-moderate candidate, and son of a previous social moderate, George Romney.  (Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. is in this group as well, but as he has yet to poll even 5% in Iowa, or almost anywhere else, I think we can set him aside.)  Ron Paul is the “hipster” libertarian — he hated Big Government before it was cool.  But pretty much every other candidate running for the Republican nomination is from what some call the “Religious Right” section of the party.

So what’s happened is that the social-conservative portion of the GOP, which has been its main force going back to Reagan, has been trying to unite on a candidate … only each person they get behind is falling apart.  Bachmann came across as very weird, Perry scared people and couldn’t recall his own talking points, Cain didn’t keep his zipper up (allegedly!), Gingrich had his own zipper history and was perceived as fudging more than a little, and all of them ran into trouble in public debates.  The current move toward Santorum, I suspect, isn’t because the social conservatives think he’s a great candidate; it’s because they’ve tried everyone else.

And meanwhile, Romney has been holding steady with 15% to 25% support, campaigning against Obama instead of his Republican rivals, refusing to sling mud (though he’s been willing to have others do it for him).  He’s had to fight charges of flip-flopping, most of which has come about because he’s a moderate trying to appeal to conservatives. Still, he’s been looking more and more like John Malkovich’s description of Matt Damon in Rounders.  If, like Damon’s character Mike McD, Romney “flops a nut straight” — wins the Iowa caucuses or comes close — he’s in the driver’s seat for the nomination.  Especially considering that on January 10 comes the primary in New Hampshire (right next to Romney’s Massachusetts base), and for most of the last ten months he’s had more poll support there than the next two candidates combined.  Then with his winner’s status and his own natural social conservatism (he is, after all, a Mormon), he could easily ride a wave of support into the next two primaries.

A strong showing in Iowa gives Romney a big future — but for some of the others, they need the same just to have a future.  Perry, Bachmann and Santorum are all polling below 5% in New Hampshire and Florida, and below 7% in South Carolina; the last two in particular are betting the house on Iowa.  Any of those three are dead in the water if they don’t come through big next Tuesday.  Gingrich’s numbers are trending down, but he’s still strong enough in the South that he doesn’t need to win Iowa or New Hampshire, just do well enough to survive until South Carolina and Florida.  (And start spinning the press his way again.)

And Ron Paul?  He’s been gaining slowly for months, staking his position as the candidate with a firm stand on what he believes.  He’s always had to fight the media (and public) perception that he’s a fringe player, an extremist, a man without broad support.  (The code word here is “unelectable.”)  If he finishes first or second in Iowa — eminently possible, as his core backers tend to be passionate, loyal, and just the type who can take over caucuses — he can put the lie to that perception.  He won’t win New Hampshire, but in this scenario he doesn’t need to — just do okay and move on to the two Southern states.  If Gingrich keeps slipping, Paul could steal some of Newt’s support (his side has been pounding Gingrich hard), win over social conservatives who also don’t trust Washington, and set himself up as the “stop-Romney” candidate.  Which might be enough this election cycle.

What’s going to happen next?  We’ll see come the 3rd.  But I don’t think the roller coaster that the Republican presidential race has become is going to slow down anytime soon …

Now you may be thinking, “whaaaa?  It’s two months away — whaddaya mean, we’re already into it?”  Well, what I mean is, we’re already into it.  Because the Oscars are only the culmination of a three-month-long orgy of the film industry and ancillary businesses patting each other on the back for another year of consistent profits and slightly less consistent artistry.  Plenty of awards have already been given, and numerous groups will be giving out more of them all the way up to the big Academy shindig 60 nights from now.  Heck, the screeners (special DVD copies of film) have been going out for weeks already, and sites like The Wrap and Gold Derby are currently festooned with enough “For Your Consideration” ads to choke Louis B. Mayer (and maybe even Oscar Mayer, no relation).

To date, trophies (real or metaphorical) have been handed out by the National Board of Review (the traditional first-awarders), the New York Film Critics Circle (this year’s first-awarders, as they bumped their announcement up to swipe some glory from the NBR), the International Press Association, and the film critics societies in Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Detroit, Florida, Indiana (!), Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, San Diego, the Southeast, Toronto, Utah (!!!) and Washington, D.C.  And there are plenty more to come as other critics’ group throw in their two cents, culminating in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe awards on January 15.  After that, the reviewers give way to the Hollywood (and elsewhere) guilds and a few independent groups, who’ll be passing out shiny baubles up to the eve of the Oscars themselves.

But already, a few trends have begun to emerge in the voting of the various groups, which give some indication as to who the Academy will nominate, and perhaps even who will win come 2/26/12 …

Let’s do this one category at a time:

(Well, after my usual caveat … I haven’t seen most of the films that are in the running for these awards.  The only people who have, to be quite frank, are film critics, a small percentage of Academy members, and folks who live in New York or L.A. and spend all their time and money watching movies.  Thankfully, you don’t need to have actually watched the films to know about them — you can read all about them in some detail on the Internet — or to follow the Oscars race.  In fact, sometimes one is better off not having watched them, so your own biases don’t get in the way.  You do have to pay attention, understand how things usually work in the field, and spend a good amount of time — and time, I have.  Last year, without seeing the vast majority of nominated movies, I still picked 18 of the 24 Oscar winners correctly, more than a lot of movie experts.  Okay, onward …)

Best Picture: The leader in the awards season so far has been Michael Hazanavicius’ The Artist, a tribute to Hollywood in the 1920s, silent films and the people who made them.  Of the 19 groups I’ve cited above, eight gave it their top honor, and it’s been duly anointed as the early favorite for the Best Picture Oscar.  The problem (as I see it) is, The Artist is itself a silent film, done in black and white, and I suspect that when the rubber meets the road, many voters will see it as a too-cute novelty rather than a legitimate Best Film of the Year.  And I don’t know they’re wrong.

There are other contenders, though.  Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, about a Hawaiian real estate mogul dealing with his wife’s near-death, some embarrassing revelations about said wife, two daughters with whom he’s never been close, and a possible big land deal, has pulled in four best-picture awards of its own.  Martin Scorsese’s children’s film Hugo (an orphan makes some amazing discoveries while living in a train station in 1930s Paris) and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (a middle-aged man reminisces on growing up in Texas while trying to figure out his place in the universe) have also received multiple nods; The Tree of Life also won the Palme d’Or for Best Picture at the Cannes Film Festival (beating out, among others, The Artist).  And there’s a growing wave of support for Nicolas Winding Refn’s crime drama Drive, about a getaway-car driver who finds out a contract has been put on his life.

Of these, there’s a good chance all of them will get nominations for Best Picture at the Oscars … though it’s hard to say, as the Academy has changed the nominating rules again.  The last couple of years, the top ten vote-getters in the initial balloting got a nom; starting this year, it’ll be the top five, plus any other film that gets at least 5% of the vote.  We could end up with ten nominees, or five, or anywhere in between.  At this point, I’d say four movies – The Artist, The Descendants, Hugo and The Tree of Life — are pretty much locks, with the other one-to-six coming out of a pool that includes Drive, The Help, Moneyball, War Horse, 50/50, Midnight in Paris and maybe even Bridesmaids.

Best Director: Look no further than the first five flicks I mentioned in the Best Picture discussion.  So far, from the aforementioned 19 critics’ societies, five have chosen Hazanavicius for their director’s prize, five picked Scorsese, four Malick, four Refn, and one Payne.  (Refn also won the director’s award at Cannes.)  None of them could be considered the favorite, though at the Oscars the Best Director voting tends to correlate with Best Picture, which might give Hazanavicius the lead.  (Or it might not.)  This group looks like it might be the five the Academy nominates as well, though Payne could lose his slot to Steven Spielberg (for War Horse), Woody Allen (for Midnight in Paris) or George Clooney (for The Ides of March).

Best Actor: Clooney, as the land baron in The Descendants, looked like the awardee apparent for a while, but he’s got stiff competition from Michael Shannon (a family man either anticipating an apocalypse or suffering from schizophrenia in Take Shelter), Michael Fassbender (as the functioning sex addict in Shame) and Brad Pitt (as the stern father in The Tree of Life, and/or something resembling Billy Beane in Moneyball).  So far Clooney has won three, Shannon four, Fassbender three and Pitt two, with the rest split among The Artist‘s Jean Dujardins, Drive‘s Ryan Gosling, 50/50‘s Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy‘s Gary Oldman and Win Win‘s Paul Giamatti.  At this point, I’d say Clooney and Shannon are the only shoo-ins for Oscar nominations; Fassbender would be if Shame wasn’t rated NC-17, but he’s still close.  The other two spots — you could pick any pair from the rest and not go wrong.

Best Actress: Since last February, this was supposed to be Meryl Streep’s year to pick up a third Oscar (she won her second back in 1983!) and seventeenth nomination, for her dead-on portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.  But like two years ago, when her Julia Child got passed in the final lap by Sandra Bullock, another actress has snuck up on Meryl’s blind side (sorry).  This time it’s Michelle Williams, whose role as another 20th-century female icon (Marilyn Monroe) in My Week with Marilyn has pulled in nine wins to Meryl’s two.  Also in the mix are Tilda Swinton (as the mother of a school shooter in We Need to Talk About Kevin) and Elizabeth Olsen (Mary-Kate and Ashley’s big sister, as an escapee from a cult in Martha Marcy May Marlene).  I’d be surprised if any of these four didn’t make the Academy’s final five; the fifth nominee is anyone’s guess, but The Help‘s Viola Davis probably has the best shot, followed by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo‘s Rooney Mara, Young Adult‘s Charlize Theron, and Glenn Close for Albert Nobbs.

Best Supporting Actor: Finally, an easy one, as this already looks like a two-man race between Christopher Plummer (as a septuagenarian coming out of the closet in Beginners) and Albert Brooks (as a volatile mob boss in Drive).  Plummer (seven wins so far this year) is 82 and didn’t get an Oscar nomination until two years ago; Brooks (11 wins this year) is 64 and has never gotten one, so they’re both sentimental favorites.  I’m pretty confident one or the other will win in February.  Possibles to round out the nominees list include Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn), Jonah Hill (Moneyball), Viggo Mortensen (A Dangerous Method), Nick Nolte (Warrior) and Patton Oswalt (Young Adult).

Best Supporting Actress: At the other end of the spectrum, this category is a total crapshoot.  Jessica Chastain has won awards for The Tree of Life, for Take Shelter, has a Golden Globe nod for The Help, and received one trophy (from the L.A. Film Critics Association) for all SIX films she was in this year, so I guess she’ll get an Oscar nomination for … something.  Shailene Woodley is likely too, as the contemptuous older daughter in The Descendants.  Others in contention: Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer (both for The Help; there’s a debate about whether Davis’ role was lead or supporting), Berenice Bejo (The Artist), Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids), Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs), Carey Mulligan (Shame), Vanessa Redgrave (Coriolanus), Amy Ryan (Win Win) … the list goes on.  The only guarantee is that a lot of people will be up in arms over who doesn’t make the final ballot.

Best Screenplays (Original and Adapted): Believe it or not, the early favorite for Original Screenplay is Woody Allen, who could be looking at his fifteenth Oscar writing nomination (and third win) with Midnight in Paris.  (And you thought he was dead.  Ha!)  But it’s a wide-open category this year, with other potential contenders such as The Artist‘s Hazanavicius, The Tree of Life‘s Malick, 50/50‘s Will Reiser, Win Win‘s Thomas McCarthy, Margin Call‘s J.C. Chandor and Diablo Cody for Young Adult.  The Adapted Screenplay race is another two-horse affair at present, with Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (The Descendants) leading by a nose over Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian (Moneyball).  George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon (The Ides of March); Hossein Amini (Drive); Tate Taylor (The Help); and Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan (Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy) also have good shots at an Oscar nom.

Technical awards: A lot of the critics’ groups don’t bother with the technical categories, and the rest pick and choose, but there are a few trends.  The Tree of Life‘s Emmanuel Lubezki has all but swept the cinematography awards.  Hugo has picked up the majority for visual effects and art direction, though The Artist is giving it a good run in the latter.  Ludovic Bource’s musical score for The Artist has snagged four of the nine citations in that area, with no one else getting more than one.  And watch out for The Muppets in the Best Song category, as both “Man or Muppet” and “Life’s a Happy Song” have won already this season.  (Speaking for myself, if “Life’s a Happy Song” doesn’t at least get an Oscar nomination, I’m going to be extremely ticked.)

Special categories: The race for Best Animated Feature is all but over — Rango has won thirteen of a possible seventeen awards so far.  (The Adventures of Tintin has three, with Arthur Christmas snapping up the last one.  Sorry, Po and Lightning — it’s not your year.)  The foreign-language film winners are (as usual) all over the place, but a consensus is building for Iranian film A Separation and Spain’s The Skin I Live In.  (Now watch neither of them get nominated.  The Academy’s method for selecting foreign films is tres screwed-up.)  And while there are a lot of worthy candidates for Best Documentary Feature, three films — Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Project Nim and Senna — have scooped up the majority of the awards so far.

And the key words on all of the above are “so far” — because we’re a long way from the finish line.  Here are the remaining critics’ awards:

• January 2: Online Film Critics Society
• January 5: Central Ohio (yes, Central Ohio — hey, I’m just the messenger) Film Critics Association
• January 7: National Society of Film Critics, Houston Film Critics Society
• January 8: Kansas City Film Critics Circle
• January 9: Denver Film Critics Society
• January 12: Broadcast Film Critics Association (Critics Choice)
• January 15: Hollywood Foreign Press Association (Golden Globes)

And then the professionals — the people who actually make films — start giving their trophies, beginning with the Producers Guild on January 22.  Then the Academy Award nominations are announced on the 24th, and things really heat up.  I’ll do my best to update this whole mess on the 23rd, and maybe even throw in some Oscar-nomination predictions.  But for now, I think you’ve got enough to chew on, yeah?

In fact, you know what I’m gonna do tonight?  I’m gonna watch The Tree of Life and see if it’s as good as everyone seems to be saying it is.  (Hopefully, that won’t throw off my prediction-making process too much …)

Now I’m not going to play Scrooge and pretend I don’t like Christmas, because I do.  I love  remembering what God did for us in coming to live among us in the person of Jesus, and how much He loves us that He was willing to be with us dirty apes at all.  I like the talk about peace and joy, and the reminders to give to those less fortunate (I need those reminders).  I enjoy the old hymns and stories — Christmastime is the only season where you get to hear 200-year-old songs on most radio stations, and it’s nice to see Charles Dickens and O. Henry get some attention.  And I enjoy spending time with family (my wife’s family these days, to be precise) and catch up on the year that’s past.

Furthermore, while I know many of them have pagan antecedents, I enjoy many of the secular traditions as well.  We always have a good-sized and very busily decorated tree in the house (a Douglas fir, always — for the price and the smell), and set up other holiday decor besides.  I can’t indulge in my wife’s baking as much as I used to — had to cut back on the carbs to avoid rampaging indigestion — but the season’s first batch of gingerbread is still much anticipated.  And I really, really like buying gifts — even more than getting them!  (This year, it was my daughter Charlotte who hit the jackpot — a 21-speed bike from Mom & Dad, an Snap Circuits electronics set from the grandparents, and a Kindle from her great-aunt and -uncle in Florida.  But she got me a book on the Giants’ 2010 championship season, which was perfect.)

But what makes the days after Christmas the most wonderful time of the season?  Easy.  We have all the thoughts about God and Jesus still in mind, all the decorations still up, all the gifts (which now we can enjoy) … and none of the spectacle.

The spectacle is the part of Christmas that I don’t enjoy anymore — and never really did, not as much as it seems others do.  It bothers me that people try to make Christmas — an important event, into a BIG event.  Not big in terms of significance, but big in terms of noise, drama, media coverage, distraction and pseudo-importance (as opposed to real importance).

I said I like buying gifts, so we’re clear on that — but I don’t get a thing out of “Black Friday,” “Cyber Monday” and all the other media-constructed foofaraw about the Christmas shopping experience.  (Incidentally, the REAL busiest shopping day of the year is either the Saturday before Christmas, or if Christmas lands on a weekend, December 23.  It’s been documented.)  Truth be told, we did most of our present-buying where and when we usually do it — online, in early November.  The only exceptions were my daughter (who likes hitting the malls) and our gift for my in-laws (since we made them a gift basket full of Trader Joe’s chocolates, and didn’t want them to get stale), both of which were accomplished on December 17.  Neither Black Friday nor last minute.

And we did it on a budget — no maxing the credit cards to buy someone a Toyota — er, Lexus! — with a bow on it.  (We don’t even have credit cards.)

I also love remembering that God came to Earth to be with us and save us — but if I never see another Christmas movie, TV special, pageant, cantata, living Nativity or “special presentation,” that’ll be just fine.  It was interesting to me as I thought about it last week — I don’t have a favorite Christmas media item!  It’s a Wonderful Life seems worn-out and simplistic to me (besides, the sight of Jimmy Stewart giving Donna Reed a shaking … it makes me uncomfortable).  I don’t care if that little brat gets a Red Ryder BB gun, and Christmases where I grew up and still live are usually gray, never white.  And How the Grinch Stole Christmas and the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer were real entertaining … when I was eight.  But even my kids think they’re dullsville now.  (The only exception is Linus reading Luke 2 in the Charlie Brown special — I’ll take a double helping of that!)

Likewise, if I’m visiting a church for the first time, I’d rather get an idea of what their regular service is like (so I’ll know if I want to visit again) than see half the membership walking around in bathrobes, pretending they’re on Broadway for one night.  How about telling the story of Immanuel — “God with us” — and what it means for us?  Is that really too boring to share with people, that it has to be gussied up with badly acted drama?  I’ve acted in those dramas, and I’ve sung in those choirs — I’ve put in months of my life preparing for those presentations.  But in my heart of hearts, nothing improves on just reading aloud, “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed” and rolling on from there.

So the spectacle, the turning of the Incarnation into a loud, obnoxious attention grab, I can do without.  And I like to think God feels similarly.

Because, when the first Christmas happened, how did He choose to present it?

• Location — not in Rome or Alexandria or Athens, not even in Jerusalem, but outside of Bethlehem, a town too small to accommodate all the visitors for a simple tax levy.
• Site — a stable out of town, probably a cave.
• Production design — whatever was sitting around the stable at the time, plus a lot of blood and screaming (human birth is beautiful, but not pretty).  A feed trough got pressed into service for a bassinet, well below the standards of even the paltriest church play.
• Immediate audience — whichever animals were too sick to be out to pasture that night, I guess.
• Announcements — okay, a chorus of angels is pretty impressive.  But the only people they told were a few shepherds, guys who as a group were so untrustworthy that a shepherd’s testimony was inadmissible in a Jewish court of law.
• Distinguished visitors — no Roman rulers, no priests, no kings.  Even the foreign astrologers who showed up probably did so much later.

If anyone would have made His advent a Big Event, you’d think it would be the Creator of the universe.  But He chose not to.  (Just as well, considering the biggest bigwig who found out about it decided to exterminate every little boy in the vicinity in order to get rid of Him.  Thankfully by then, our hero had been carted off to another continent.)

And even as an adult, Jesus seemed averse to the big splash.  He’d heal people of grave diseases, even raise them from the dead, and then tell them and those around them not to tell anyone.  He’d get blackballed in one town, shrug and walk to another town.  When He got a big crowd around Him, He’d talk in parables or say incomprehensible or offensive stuff just to whittle the numbers down; once, He even asked His closest followers if they wanted to take a hike too.  His “triumphal entry,” so-called, was done on a donkey, tromping over some palm leaves and people’s jackets, in front of a crowd not even big enough to alarm the easily-alarmed local Roman legion.  Out of all the people who would’ve liked to see Him after His resurrection, how many did He appear to?  About five hundred.  And no one was around for the big return itself except some Roman soldiers — who were conveniently knocked unconscious.  Author Spider Robinson once called Jesus an a**hole, because He “staged the most important event in history and forgot to invite the media.”  He didn’t forget — He decided not to.

So if we’re celebrating the birth of Someone who by all accounts was positively allergic to making a gaudy presentation … why do so many of us do it anyway?

Me.  I’d rather not.  I’d prefer to let the peace of Christmas be just that — peaceful.  And that’s why, for me, the days after Christmas are the most enjoyable.  Some things are just better done on the down low.

Even if that’s not how we’ve been taught they should be done.  I’m thinking back to Christmas day, when my mother-in-law was putting out food for dinner — no huge feast, just enough sliced turkey, mashed potatoes, yams and whatnot for the six of us who were there.  She almost apologized for it not being a more elaborate meal than it was — that it wasn’t a big spectacle.

As far as I was concerned, it was just right.

Hitchens is not someone whose work I enjoyed — or even respected.  I read a number of his essays and found them to be mean-spirited, insulting, and bereft of logic or evidence to support his assertions.  He was militantly anti-faith — one of his books was entitled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (I wonder how he explained all the hospitals, rescue missions, rehab centers, etc.) — and came across as sort of an atheist “Tailgunner Joe” McCarthy.  Some say he challenged people’s faith; I tended to find that he spit on it and considered that a challenge.  (This is what I experienced of him; your mileage may vary.)

So upon reading of his death, I did have the obvious mental picture of Hitchens suddenly finding himself in the presence of the God he had so stridently denied.  Several ideas for Twitter tweets or Facebook statements came to mind, making light of what would seem to be his awkward position vis-a-vis the Omnipotent.  A few times I even typed them out …

… only to delete them, unposted.  Because I realized that there was nothing funny about it.

Now, in case you had any doubts about where I stand … I do believe that after each of us dies, we are called to account before the God of this universe.  Those who chose to give their lives to Him and live in relationship to Him will live with Him forever; those who chose not to will live separated from Him forever.  (Those who didn’t have the opportunity to choose … I have no idea.  I’m open to arguments.)  I believe, thus, in Heaven and Hell.  Whether Heaven is a place of clouds and angels strumming harps, or Hell a literal lake of eternal fire, I don’t know (I suspect it’s much more complicated than that).  But I do believe that we live once on Earth, and then forever in the place we chose based on our decisions while on Earth.  That’s one of the basic tenets of the Christian faith, and it’s based on the record we have of what Jesus taught.  (He talked about Heaven and Hell a lot.  Clearly, He considered it important.)

Now you might disagree with all of that, but that’s where I’m coming from, and I want that clear from the outset.

If that is the case, then there is nothing to joke about in regard to the death of an atheist.  Because that death means he’s missed the last chance he had to change his mind.  He chose to oppose God throughout his life, and stuck with it to the bitter end; by extension, that means he chose to remain separate from God for eternity.  I wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.  God, I believe, is infinitely wonderful, infinitely creative, infinitely loving — He’s someone I want people to know (no matter how inept I am at presenting that desire to people, which is very inept indeed).  To never have the opportunity to interact with Him, ever, strikes me as the ultimate tragedy.

In the first paragraph of his obituary for Hitchens, Associated Press writer Hillel Italie said:

Cancer weakened but did not soften Christopher Hitchens. He did not repent or forgive or ask for pity. As if granted diplomatic immunity, his mind’s eye looked plainly upon the attack and counterattack of disease and treatments that robbed him of his hair, his stamina, his speaking voice and eventually his life.

Two things struck me about this passage.  One is the second sentence: “He did not repent or forgive or ask for pity.“  Okay, not asking for pity, I understand.  Not repenting … well, that fits in with his worldview; I get that.  But not forgiving?  Forgiveness, in basic, is refusing to weigh yourself down with the things other people have done to you.  It’s, by releasing them from their sin toward you, releasing you from it as well.  On that level, unforgiveness is punishing yourself for the evil of others, to the benefit of no one.  It’s not a pleasant way to go through life, I can tell you.  I hope for his own sake that Hitchens did some forgiving before his passing.

But it’s the start of the third sentence that gives me greater pause — “As if granted diplomatic immunity, …”  Because no one, in their mind’s eye or any other part, is granted that.  We all have to face the end, one way or another; no one is exempt.  The only difference is what will happen after the end — what will happen in Act II of the drama of our lives.  And that, I believe, depends on how we played Act I.

From the world’s perspective, Christianity has a … I don’t know how better to put it, a bass-ackwards way of looking at death.  From the Earthly perspective, death is It — the termination of everything that person was besides a collection of atoms.  “You’re born, you live, you go on a few diets, you die,” as Opus in the Bloom County comic strip once put it.  To bring back my previous analogy, it’s a one-act play, and while some people believe there are sequels (reincarnation), the original story is done.  But in Christianity, it’s just the start of something bigger; it’s the setup for the real story arc in Act II (and maybe other Acts after, who knows).

Thus, from the Earthly view, death is a tragedy, because the story’s over.  From the Heavenly view, death is a time for rejoicing for those who belong to God, because their story continues in a better place, with fewer impediments to the performance and much better sound and special effects.  It’s a good thing in the long term.  There’s a reason that in the Catholic church, the feast day for a saint usually commemorates the day they died (Saint Patrick, for instance, died on 17 March).  Well, of course that’s when you’d have a feast in their honor — it’s their graduation day!  They’re movin’ on up … to someplace even better than a de-luxe apartment in the sky-y-y.

But at the same time, for those who do not belong to God, chose not to belong … from the Christian perspective, the tragedy is even greater.  Not because the story is done, but the opposite: because the story is now set on a path from which no good can come.  Literal brimstone or not, it’s an eternity of knowing that the chance for a better plot is forever lost.  Eternally separate from God means eternally separate from the good of which He is the only ultimate source.  It’s not something you’d wish on a friend.  It’s not even something you’d wish on a man you’d never met, even if he did make a career out of mocking you and your beliefs.

So I can’t bring myself to crack wise at Christopher Hitchens’ expense.  And while he may not have asked for pity, he nonetheless has mine.

Now, I hesitate to leave it there, because to give this general theological stance a single name is kind of misleading — there are dozens of differing opinions even among self-proclaimed complementarians as to where the line between what women are and aren’t allowed to do in ministry should be drawn.  To some, no public ministry is allowed for women, ever.  To others, women are not allowed to preach or teach except to other women, or except to small children, or at some church functions but not others, or in hiding where the neighbors can’t see it … and so on.  I saw one report recently where a prominent evangelical leader, in answer to a question of whether it’s OK to listen to female Bible teachers on the radio, said that it’s probably all right … as long as the woman in question wasn’t the guy’s “primary teacher.”  (He left “primary teacher” undefined, so who knows what he meant.)  In regard to women in ministry, there’s a lot of that kind of hair-splitting in Christian circles.

One of the commenters on the article (credit where it’s due) was a fellow who calls himself “Eagle” — an outsider like myself, only more so.  He shared something he’d gotten from elsewhere, that was too pertinent for me not to steal and share with you.

Top 10 Reasons Why Men Shouldn’t Be Senior Pastors

10. A man’s place is in the army.

9. For men who have children, their duties might distract them from the responsibilities of being a parent.

8. Their physical build indicates that men are more suited to tasks such as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be “unnatural” for them to do other forms of work.

7. Man was created before woman. It is therefore obvious that man was a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment, rather than the crowning achievement of creation.

6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. This is easily demonstrated by their conduct at football games and watching basketball tournaments.

5. Some men are handsome; they will distract women worshipers.

4. To be ordained pastor is to nurture the congregation. But this is not a traditional male role. Rather, throughout history, women have been considered to be not only more skilled than men at nurturing, but also more frequently attracted to it. This makes them the obvious choice for ordination.

3. Men are overly prone to violence. No really manly man wants to settle disputes by any means other than by fighting about it. Thus, they would be poor role models, as well as being dangerously unstable in positions of leadership.

2. Men can still be involved in church activities, even without being ordained. They can sweep paths, repair the church roof, change the oil in the church vans, and maybe even lead the singing on Father’s Day. By confining themselves to such traditional male roles, they can still be vitally important in the life of the Church.

1. In the New Testament account, the person who betrayed Jesus was a man. Thus, his lack of faith and ensuing punishment stands as a symbol of the subordinated position that all men should take.

Now, you may be thinking, “how absurd!  This is obviously a joke!”  And it is.  But the joke’s on us — because if you swap “men” and “women” in the above and change a few references (“home” for “army,” Eve for Judas, etc.), then you have almost all of the complementarians’ arguments as to why women shouldn’t be senior pastors!

And they’re no less absurd then, either.

I don’t want to belabor this point, so I’ll keep this short.  The complementarian position(s) that women should not be allowed to engage in certain types of ministry is based on two short passages in Scripture (in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2) that are wrenched out of context to support what I believe is a view that is not in line with the rest of Scripture.  In numerous passages in both the Old and New Testaments, women are shown in positions of leadership — including preaching and teaching members of both sexes — and given tacit endorsement for their actions.  The apostle Paul, who wrote both 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy, ministered alongside women such as Priscilla, and entrusted the delivery of his greatest written work, his Epistle to the Romans, to a woman (Phoebe, who was a deacon — part of the leadership — of the church at Cenchreae near Corinth).

To take two small sections of the Bible and build one’s theological viewpoint on it, against the teaching of the whole unified story of the Bible, is to use Scripture the way a drunkard uses a lamppost — for support instead of illumination.  It is, I think, to subordinate God’s Word to the whims of man, and to place man’s will, not God’s, as paramount.  And it explains why there is so much hair-splitting and argument even among the position’s supporters — because that’s what happens when the evidence to support your position really isn’t there.

If you want to dive into this topic further, I highly recommend Scot McKnight’s book The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible, which uses the issue of women in ministry as its main example of how Biblical content gets twisted out of context, and how a better view of the Bible can give us a better idea of what God has in mind for His church.  But I’d like to conclude here with my heartfelt thanks to Heather Sato and Duffy Napper, to Karin Hulbert and Sandy Freitas and Chrissy Navarro, to Lynn Krogstad and Mardell Shebley, to Kay Arthur and Cynthia Tobias (over the radio — were they primary teachers?) … to ALL the women who over the last quarter-century have ministered to me, taught me God’s Word and helped me grow closer to Christ and to His people.  Preach it, sisters!  (And don’t listen to the haters.)

Today, the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs fired head coaches Tony Sparano and Todd Haley, respectively.  This follows the Jacksonville Jaguars’ canning of Jack del Rio a couple of weeks ago.  A move like this always seems weird to me — if the season isn’t lost, why not wait until it’s over and see if the current guy can turn it around?  And if it IS lost, the only reason to boot the current fellow is to see if one of your current assistants can be The Man — but how can you tell that in only three games?  I dunno — to me it smacks of an owner trying to appease a fan base (or maybe a player base) that’s seriously disgruntled and out for blood.  “Here, tear this guy apart!”  The Owner says as he chucks the poor guy over the wall to the rampaging barbarians below, figuring that might stall them long enough for him to spirit his family out of the castle to the waiting escape ship …

Anyway, so three coaches gone, with three weeks still to go in the NFL regular season.  And it got me wondering, how many could end up gone by the time we reach the Super Bowl?  I took a few moments to look over the current standings and checked a few lifetime coaching records, and …

… and wouldja believe, as many as twelve?!?
Seriously — there could be a DOZEN coaching vacancies to fill come early January!  Let’s walk through the potential carnage for a moment, shall we?

(Disclaimer: just because a coach is fired doesn’t mean it was the coach’s fault the team is terrible.  Some coaches take the fall because the owner thinks he should be able to fix his team with a magic wand, or because the general manager wants someone else to take the fall so he doesn’t have to.  But sometimes a coach isn’t a very good playcaller, or has risen to the level of his incompetence, or has lost the respect of his players.  I’m not saying the men listed below should be terminated, just trying to divine how likely it is that they will be.  Feel free to voice objections in the comments section; I’ll make a good-faith effort to answer them.)

* It’s becoming common knowledge that St. Louis Rams coach Steve Spagnuolo is gonzo at season’s end.  His team is 2-10 going into tonight’s game against Seattle, in a season where many expected them to run away with the division.  Furthermore, it’s his third year, and his overall record is 10-34 despite his team being in possibly the league’s weakest division.  You can’t blame the Rams for thinking they can do better.

*  A consensus is building that the San Diego Chargers’ Norv Turner has overstayed his welcome.  Every year, the Bolts seem to end up a disappointment (usually in the playoffs).  This year, they didn’t wait for the playoffs; the team has not played well, and is only 6-7 in a mediocre division.  And San Diego GM A.J. Smith is not a patient man, by all accounts …

* Indianapolis Colts head honcho Bill Polian is a patient man, but I have trouble imagining that Jim Caldwell will be kept on if (as expected) they finish 0-16 or 1-15.  Yeah, I know they lost quarterback/de facto offensive coordinator Peyton Manning for the year, but other teams have lost future Hall of Fame QBs in the past, and none of them ended up 0-for-the-universe.  Caldwell’s sideline demeanor (inert) doesn’t inspire confidence either.

We’re already up to six, and that’s just the ones who a) have already been dumped, and b) almost assuredly will be dumped.  There are eight more who appear to be on the hot seat.  Going roughly east to west:

* Andy Reid has been coaching the Philadelphia Eagles for 13 years, and has weathered storm after storm, both personal and football-related.  And if they can’t sweep the final three games, this will be only his third losing season (and first in six years).  But he was handed what appeared in August to be an All-Pro squad, and seems to have mismanaged it through his use of players and coaches in unfamiliar roles, and his much-documented weaknesses in clock management.  His long term of service may protect his job … or Eagles ownership may decide that things need to be shaken up, and where better to start than with the NFL’s longest-tenured coach?

* Mike Shanahan got off on the wrong foot last year with the Washington Redskins, and still hasn’t found the right one.  In almost two seasons in D.C., his record is 10-19, and he’s jerked his quarterbacks in and out like an NBC executive trying to reprogram Tuesday night.  Worse still, ‘Skins owner “Chainsaw” Dan Snyder is possibly the most impatient guy in the league, always trying to solve his team’s problems with a couple of “quick fixes.”  And there’s no quicker move one can make than replacing the dude with the headset …

* Chan Gailey doesn’t really have much to work with on the Buffalo Bills roster, so it probably shouldn’t be held against him that after a surprisingly strong 5-2 start, they’ve sunk back to their usual level of ineptitude and lost their last six.  That doesn’t mean his job is safe, though.

* Raheem Morris was thought to be in over his head with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from the day he was given the top job; he was only 32, had never been a head coach at any level, and was bumped all the way up from defensive backs coach.  After a horrid 2009 season (call it on-the-job training), he led the Bucs to a 10-6 record and a near-miss of the playoffs last year.  Big things were expected in 2011.  Big things have failed to happen — Tampa is 4-9 with games against Dallas and Atlanta still to come — and the blame for that could land on his shoulders.

* Leslie Frazier‘s job with the Minnesota Vikings is probably safe, since despite the team’s 2-11 record, it’s only his first full year as coach (he was 3-3 in 2010 after replacing the departed Brad Childress), the team is recovering from various problems and wasn’t expected to contend, and owner Zygi Wilf (a name I am totally not making up, honest) tends to be the patient sort.  But the possibility exists.

* Jason Garrett is in a similar position to Frazier (first full year with his team after taking over as an interim in mid-2010), but with three major differences.  One is that the Dallas Cowboys are one of the more talented teams in the league, and were expected by many to win big this year.  Another is that his boss, owner/GM/plastic surgery aficionado Jerry Jones, does NOT tend to be patient; he keeps his coaches on the shortest leash of anyone not named Snyder.  And third, while the Cowboys are no longer “America’s Team,” they do work under a far bigger spotlight than, say, the Vikings.  Add in that Garrett hasn’t helped his argument with some foolish decisions (like accidentally icing his own kicker a week ago), and his team has blown more than its share of leads, and it makes for an unstable situation that belies their 7-6 record.  My guess: if Dallas doesn’t make the playoffs, Jones will probably be looking for a new victim coach.

* Ken Whisenhunt is three years removed from taking the Arizona Cardinals to the Super Bowl, a feat comparable with turning Bangladesh into an economic superpower.  But the NFL is a “what have you done for me lately?” league, and over the last two seasons, the Cards have gone 11-18 and have failed to find a quarterback who can stay healthy and play consistently well.  I don’t know if that’s entirely the coach’s fault, but if I were him, I’d update my resume, just in case.

* Pete Carroll is probably the least likely one on this list to be gone; he’s only in his second season with the Seattle Seahawks, and they did make the NFC Championship Game last year (albeit with a 7-9 regular-season record).  But this year they’re 5-7 going into tonight’s game versus the Rams, his personnel decisions have often been questionable (he appears to be the only person outside of Tarvaris Jackson’s or Charlie Whitehurst’s immediate families to think that either Jackson or Whitehurst is a good pro QB) and at some point ‘Hawks owner Paul Allen is going to want a winning record or something.  The clock is ticking, it’s just a matter of how fast …

Add that all up, and you’ve got fourteen teams that could potentially be hiring new skippers in the next few months.  And adding to the uncertainty is that there are a lot of veteran NFL coaches available for hire.  Bill Cowher, with nine division titles, two AFC championships and a Super Bowl ring on his resume, is doing his bit in the CBS studio every Sunday, but you know he’s listening for the right offer to head back to the sidelines.  Brian Billick and Tony Dungy won Super Bowls too, and might decide they’d like to get back to coaching.  There are plenty of co-ordinators out there like Josh McDaniels, Marty Morninghweg and Scott Linehan, who have been head coaches in the NFL and could do so again.  I could go on and on, but you get the picture — if a coach gets the heave-ho, there are dozens of qualified candidates ready to take his place.

It could be a verrrrrry interesting off-season for the NFL coaching carousel.  Because it is nowhere near stopping now …

It’s kind of a funny thing, the holiday season around our house.  (And if anyone from the evangelical thought police is bothered that I just said “holiday season” instead of some other phrase, all I can say is — tough beans.)  We never planned it this way, it’s just how things worked out.  But starting Thursday, almost every commemorative event in our lives — and all the attendant celebration and gift-giving — will land in the next twelve weeks.

Don’t believe me?  Here’s the rundown:

• November 24: Thanksgiving
• December 9: my birthday (I’ll be 42 this year)
• December 25: Christmas
• January 3: my wife’s birthday (I guess I’m not supposed to say how old Nina will be, but as young as she looks, you’d never guess she was turning 41 anyway, so …)
• January 17: our son Sean’s birthday (the Bruiser’s turning 8)
• January 23: our wedding anniversary (lucky 13th)
• February 14: Valentine’s Day

And I’m sure there are a couple I’m forgetting at the moment.  Needless to say, that’s a lot of stuff to plan for, and more than a few gifts to buy.

Over the years, Nina and I have learned to pace ourselves when this season comes around, so that we don’t end up collapsing by the end of it.  Most of our Christmas shopping gets done before Veterans’ Day.  We don’t do anything for New Year’s Eve; in fact, we’re usually in bed by 10 p.m. We pretty much skip Dr. King’s birthday, as well as Chanukah, Kwanzaa and Groundhog Day.  The Super Bowl isn’t a big deal either, though that may change if Nina’s 49ers make it this time.  My father-in-law has settled for getting a phone call on his birthday (February 7).  And participation in Christmas pageants was dropped after a particularly involved one back in 1999 that left me so exhausted I had to take a week off work to recuperate.  (Not joking.)

But nonetheless, for the past several years Valentine’s Day has been a low-key affair for us, because after all the other events, we’re all celebrated out for a while.  Thankfully, there’s time to recover, because the next big whoops in our lives are June 19 (anniversary of the day Nina and I met) and July 4 and 6 (Independence Day, our daughter Charlotte’s b-day).

This year, it could be even more hectic, as certain other events are landing in that same period:

• Sean has a gastroenterology appointment on December 2.
• On December 17, Nina hosts her first CMT support group meeting (contact us for details if you want to attend).
• I’m working on finishing up some time-intensive projects, that I’d like cleared out before year’s end — including getting the mountain of photos my mom left behind sorted and put into albums, and updating a massive statistical spreadsheet for the fantasy league I’m a part of.
• Our landlord’s back in town (just arrived last weekend), and will want to do some work on the house in the coming weeks.
• And with two kids in school now, who knows what scholastic obligations will arise?

So yeah, batten down the hatches, ’cause the storm’s a-comin’.

Not, of course, that I mind all this activity.  There’s nothing on the above list that I don’t consider fun, except maybe the GI appointment, which is just plain necessary.  But it can be a bit draining.  And there’s the money issue to consider.  I’m obligated to provide transportation, cleaning services, dinners and the like for the rest of the family, so I can’t do much toward actively seeking work (alas, my skills are in the general office genre, thus there aren’t too many swing or graveyard positions where I fit.)  At the same time, the school district Nina works for has been cutting all over the place, so she’s only had one day of substitute work this month.  Come December, we could be feeling a pinch — and that’ll only add to our already whopping stress levels.

But while I worry, I’m not really concerned.  God has brought us through the “busy season” a dozen times so far (often in far worse financial straits), and every time we’ve survived.  It doesn’t seem likely that He’ll punt us now.  He certainly won’t let us starve — I have that on good authority, both from experience and Scripture (Psalm 37:25).  So while I get the collywobbles about the state of our checkbook, or the calendar ahead, I can’t really take those collywobbles too seriously.  He’s done it for us before, and He’ll do it again.  I’ve got confidence, as Brother Andrae would say.

But I’m still gonna strap myself in for a busy, if not bumpy, ride the next several weeks.  ‘Cause faith doesn’t mean not being prepared.

For the last few days, I’ve wanted to write regarding the situation at Penn State University.  Easier said than done.  A lot of writers, far better than I and with far more information and insight, have written about it.  I won’t attempt to duplicate their work — I just have a few things that have been sitting on my chest, and that I want to get off.  Forgive me if this comes out as a jumble, but my mind is a jumble when it comes to this, so bear with me …

* I wonder what goes through a man’s mind when he is walking through a locker room, sees a pre-adolescent boy being sodomized by someone old enough to be his grandfather, and then sneaks quietly away and does nothing except report it to his supervisor.  I’m something of a physical coward, and not too coordinated besides, but if I were to come upon a situation like that, my first instinct is not to steal away and hope I’m not noticed.  It’s to shout at the top of my lungs, “HEY!  WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?  LEAVE THAT KID ALONE!”  My second instinct is to run at the assaulter and start flailing away.  Mind, I’d probably get beat up, but hopefully it would give the kid time to run away.  And then I go to the cops.

Call me crazy, but silently slinking off and hoping someone else deals with it just doesn’t come up on my list of logical solutions.

I know Mike McQueary was just a graduate assistant, and Jerry Sandusky was a former defensive coordinator and a pillar of the Nittany Lions community.  There’s a possibility McQueary was fearful of losing his job and perhaps his future prospects in college football.  If that’s the case, all I can say is that I hope he really enjoys his career, because he sold his soul for it.

* Apparently Bob Costas did a telephone interview with Sandusky, where the latter claims he only took showers with the boys under his charge and “horsed around.”  I made a point of not listening to it, or any excerpts from it, as I try to avoid things that will cause me to fly into a rage.  Mr. Sandusky, with all due respect (i.e., no respect at all), you are going up before a grand jury on 40 counts of sexual assault against eight different kids.  This doesn’t happen based on some guesses and hearsay — I’ve known people who served on grand juries, and it takes a good amount of strong evidence to even get an indictment handed down.  Do you honestly expect anyone to believe your newly-minted cock-and-bull story?

For that matter, what in blazes is a 60-year-old man doing even showering with 10-year-olds?! ?  If you knew someone who was doing that, wouldn’t you find it more than a little suspicious?

If I were Sandusky’s friend, I think the best thing I could do for him would be to give him a razor blade and a diagram showing the location of his carotid artery.  Because as bad as that might be, what is likely to happen to him in prison is almost assuredly worse.

* And in case you still have some doubt as to Sandusky’s guilt, I invite you to read this excerpt from the latest column by ESPN.com’s Gregg Easterbrook, a man I greatly respect for his intelligence and insight:

Regarding Penn State, in advertising that aired during the Penn State-Nebraska contest on Saturday, Rodney Erickson, the university’s interim president, began by declaring, “My heart goes out to those who have been victimized.”

Wait — how does Penn State know there are victims? A retired Penn State football coach is accused of pedophilia, while fired Penn State officials are accused of perjury and failing to report child abuse. Arrests aren’t proof, and accusations may be false; whether the alleged crimes occurred must be decided by a judge or jury. The legal system has not yet determined if in this case there exists a group of “those who have been victimized.”

Yet the school’s interim president spoke of child molestation at Penn State as factually established. So what does Penn State know that it is not telling? If Penn State already knows there are in fact victims, this scandal is even worse.

Erickson’s “those who have been victimized” statement makes sense only if the college was in possession of proof of child molestation well before the moment, about 10 days ago, when the grand jury presentment was unsealed and arrests occurred. The presentment and the arrests in and of themselves prove nothing, while Penn State could not possibly have gotten to the full truth of the matter in just 10 days. So if Penn State already knows children have been “victimized,” the cover-up is worse than assumed. And if Penn State already knows children were victimized, then the Penn State interim president went on television to ask for the nation’s sympathy, yet is not disclosing everything he knows about the school’s involvement.

* If there is any good that can come out of this (and that’s a big and very debatable “if”), it is that a message has been sent to the world: there are some situations where common human decency prevents you from being an innocent bystander.

I know Pennsylvania is not one of the states that requires people who witness a crime to report it.  Frankly, a law to cover that shouldn’t be necessary.  If you know that somebody has committed a murder, a rape, a molestation or anything of that sort, you owe it to your conscience, to the victims and their families, and to society to say something.  Think of how you’d feel if it had been your kid that had caught Jerry Sandusky’s eye, what you would think of a person who knew your son was being traumatized like that, but said nothing.  Don’t be that person.

Unfortunately, it looks like several key figures at Penn State were that person — men who knew something was going on, or had enough clues to make a guess, and yet didn’t take steps to stop it.

* At which point I think it’s fair to ask why they didn’t.  And one very distressing possibility looms as to why — not surprising, just distressing.  Money.

According to one source I’ve seen, Pennsylvania State University’s football program brings in about $70 million per year.  $70 million is about what the president of the United States would pull in if he served for 175 years.  It’s more money than you or I will see in our lifetimes.  That’s a heck of a cash cow.

And at Penn State, like many schools with big-time football programs, it’s become a sacred cow as well.

More and more, I’ve been realizing that on many college campuses, the football team is the tail that wags the dog.  Millions of dollars in donations get poured into football, while academic programs at these academic institutions are often neglected.  Many athletes end up coming to campuses — on full scholarships, as many as 85 per year — who have no desire to get an education, are not pressed to get one, and leave after four years without graduating.  Some even commit crimes, which are covered up for the sake of keeping them eligible for football.  And of course there are the millions being paid to football coaches and their 20-man staffs, while assistant professors, actual teachers, get a pittance.

There have been lots of arguments about how football players, since they work for the university, should receive compensation for their work.  But I wonder why institutions of higher learning are in the football business in the first place.  If someone wants to get an education but lacks the funds, they have the option of studying hard, getting good grades, earning academic scholarships, and applying for student loans and grants.  (That’s what I did.  Got my degree too, cum laude.)  If they want to learn football, there are plenty of semi-pro teams out there, and there’s no reason the NFL can’t support minor leagues like Major League Baseball, the NHL and (to a much lesser extent) the NBA do.  Where is it written that colleges should take in kids who have no interest in learning anything but football, hire staffs that have little interest in anything but football, and serve as the NFL’s minor league?

So who do colleges use so much of their resources on football?  Because it makes money.  Why are some athletes allowed to skip classes, have others take their tests, perform illegal acts?  Because football makes money.  And why was a potential scandal involving little children being molested on campus by a former employee of the football program, one that some people in very high places in the university apparently knew about, quietly covered up?

Well, I don’t know for sure.  But I can make a guess.

* The thing with a betrayal of trust like this is that it will have far-reaching effects, well beyond what one can usually imagine.

I mentioned earlier that many better writers than I are tackling the Penn State scandal as it unfolds.  One of them, Michael Weinreb, writes for the Grantland website.  Michael’s dad works (or worked; I’m not sure) for Penn State; he grew up in State College and went to school with kids named Paterno.  One of the things he’s dealing with is the shattering of his own childhood recollections, the recasting of his memories of seemingly idyllic Happy Valley into newer, darker forms.  I can’t really do his work, or his hurt, justice; it’s here and here if you want to read it for yourself.

But the repercussions aren’t limited to central Pennsylvania. My wife, as you may know, has Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT), a progressive degeneration of the nerve endings in her extremities.  The largest center for the study of CMT is at — wait for it — Penn State.  So the CMT Association, which is also based in State College, PA, is having to deal with the fallout from this scandal as well — not because it’s in any way involved, but because it’s in the same blast radius and people are asking questions.  Because Nina is a facilitator for a newly-forming CMT support group, she’s on the head office’s e-mail list, and recently received their official statement on the matter, one which according to her said a whole lot of nothing.  Who knows what effect this will have on the study of that disease — or on any of the thousand other things that Penn State does besides suit up kids in plastic armor and have them run into each other.

* Finally, I admit that this is a sensitive area for me.  Because I’ve seen, firsthand and secondhand, how a betrayal of trust like this can damage people.

See, I was an abused child.  Physically and emotionally, not sexually (and for that last, I’m thankful), at the hands of my dad.  I’ll spare you the details — and even to this day, I’m sure I’ve blocked a lot of them out.  It took me until I was over 30 before I could even begin to grasp the extent of the damage he did to me, and I will likely spend the rest of my life working on undoing it.  Every day, I have to deal with the lingering effects of his abuse.  Every day, I have to do everything in my power to make sure I pass as little of it as possible onto my kids (and every day, I worry about precisely that).  God has helped me a lot in dealing with what happened, in forgiving my father, in changing my behavior to not be like his.  But it’s not a complete healing, and this side of Heaven, it probably never will be.

Further, I’ve known people who have been sexually abused, and if anything, the scars that leaves are even worse.  One lady I know is still working to untie the knots left in her soul by a single act of sexual abuse, committed a quarter-century ago.  Nor is that kind of pain even remotely unusual.

What has been done to those kids in Pennsylvania, barring miracles, will negatively affect them for the rest of their lives.  There’s no getting around that.  There’s no making excuses for that.  There’ s no covering it up and pretending it didn’t happen.  And there is no apology, no statement to the press, no resignation, no firing, no lawsuit, no jail term, that will undo the damage, or take away the pain.

Randy Stonehill once put out a song about people like Jerry Sandusky and those that enabled him to continue in his crimes.  It’s called “Can Hell Burn Hot Enough?”  At times like this, I know exactly what Uncle Rand meant.

The reason?  Because I was having trouble thinking straight enough to write.  And the reason for that was a serious bout of pain in my right leg.

I was diagnosed earlier this year with “chronic tendinosis.”  What that phrase means is that the tendons in my right ankle and lower leg can get stretched out of shape very easily and will hurt like nobody’s business, causing problems with activities like walking, standing, sitting and lying down.  What that phrase ALSO means is that a long battery of tests, my doctor can identify the symptoms (no duh, so can I!) and slap a label on them, but she doesn’t have a clue what causes it or how to cure it.  As diagnoses go, “chronic tendinosis” is about as helpful as what Warren Zevon was once told by his doctor.

So since just before Halloween (for which I had a blog post prepared, which now will have to wait until next year), I’ve been limping around in great pain, with my ankle swelled up to almost the size of my calf, often unable to relax the muscles or flex it in any direction because of the pain.  I had prescription Naproxen and Flexeril around from the last flare-up; the Naproxen had no effect, while I can’t tell if the Flexeril helped because it knocked me unconscious.  Finally I resorted to a steady diet of three ibuprofen every four hours plus occasional applications of Icy Hot, and things started improving.

As of today, you’ll be glad to know (well, I am!) that my ankle is at about 95% of its normal, or about 62% for most people’s ankles.  There’s a little tension in a couple spots, but I can do all the stuff I regularly do, like mop floors, climb stepladders and walk without looking like I’m preparing to be Igor in an upcoming Young Frankenstein reboot.  It’s not perfect, but I’ll take it – and I have a better idea for what to do next time this happens.

And while it was going on, I learned a few things:

I learned that pain’s collateral damage is distraction.  That bit I said about being unable to think straight enough to write?  Dead serious, not exaggerating for a moment.  Writing takes a lot of concentration for me, so I have to be in a place where there’s nothing pulling my attention away (door closed, no noises, et al.).  Pain, though, is designed to pull your attention away from other things.  God gave us a pain system so we’d know something is wrong and needs to be dealt with.  But when there’s nothing that can be done about it (or we don’t know what to do yet), there’s no way to turn off the alarms.  We’re not like Commander Data – we can’t just switch parts of ourselves off when it’s convenient.

Over the last two weeks, when the pain was bad, I’d sometimes be talking and have trouble finishing sentences.  A throb would hit, and I’d freeze mid-word – and occasionally had difficulty remembering where I’d left off.   Reading, I could do … most of the time.  Cooking, not too hard as long as I could sit down for most of it.  But typing and composing sentences in such a way that they could be understood?  Aw, heck no.  It wasn’t until yesterday that I was able to rattle out anything longer than a Facebook status.  It gave me some sympathy for people who deal with continuous, intractable pain – the mental wear and tear must be as bad as the physical.

Which leads into …

I learned that my wife is tougher than I thought.  Last week, there was a moment when I’d been sitting in bed for about ten minutes, trying (without success) to get my ankle muscles to unclench.  Nina (aka the Supermodel) came in to get something, and I described the pain to her – “like someone stuck a knife in below my ankle bone, yanked it halfway up my shin, then left the knife in there.”  (She was nice enough to wince sympathetically.)  Then I asked her, “when was the last time you felt something like that?”

She replied casually, with no change in expression, “earlier this week.”

Oh.

I knew that Nina’s Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT) made it hard for her to do a lot of physical stuff like long walks, heavy lifting and standing in one place.  I watch her put on her leg braces every morning, and grab her cane before going to work.  I urge her to sit down at every opportunity.  But for some reason, it never got through to me how much pain was involved.

Me, I’ve had two bouts of tendinosis this year, each lasting two or three weeks.  Bad enough.  But she has similar experiences, for a day here or an afternoon there, year-round – and has had them for over three decades, increasing in frequency as she gets older.  Think about what that must be like.  Think about how it would affect your work, your leisure, your sleep, your time with your kids, your sex life.  Think about living with that, and with the knowledge that there’s no cure and may not be one in your lifetime.  (For that matter, imagine that the biggest research center for finding a cure is at Penn State University.  No lie.)

Well, that’s Nina’s life.  And yet, she keeps on keeping on, working as many hours as her employer will deign to give her, taking care of her children, organizing a brand-new CMT support group (first meeting scheduled for December 17, if’n you’re interested), following her God and doing her level best to enjoy life.  I don’t always recognize how much she does or how hard it is for her to do it, and I often get too caught up in her imperfections.  (She has some – not as many as me, but some.)  But when I stop and think rationally about it … I tell you, she’s my hero.

I learned that maybe it’s stress (at least partly).  Over the last week, my hero and I have been talking about our various maladies, mostly the stuff that’s cropped up in the last two or three years.  And we both started wondering if many of them weren’t stress-related, and that perhaps that’s why our doctors haven’t been able to do much more than slap diagnoses on them and prescribe pills to blunt the symptoms.

There’s something to the theory.  The last time I worked outside the home was a three-week temp job, part of a usage survey for the local bus utility.  In the main dispatch office was a big poster about stress, along with a formula for calculating your “stress index” by adding up numbers corresponding with the stressful events you’d experienced in the previous year or so.  I tried it and found that my stress index number was 292; 300 or more was the highest stress level.

That was in June 2009.  Two months later, my son contracted Leigh’s disease, spent a month and a half in the hospital, and almost died.  Then my mom died, and I was the only one willing/able to take care of arrangements, sort out her possessions, square away her accounts, cancel her subscriptions and deal with certain relatives who wanted to demand stuff (but didn’t want to help).  Then my wife’s employer decided they could get away with shorting or forgetting people’s paychecks; meanwhile, I couldn’t work because I was dealing with my son’s illness and my mom’s estate.  Since then, Nina has been scrabbling for work, I’m still too obligated otherwise to take a job, Sean’s recovery has proceeded – but slowly, with a lot of intensive care on our part – and the economy has remained in the toilet, negating all that hope and change we were promised three years ago (and didn’t quite buy even then, but still).

So could all this be affecting my physical health?  Yeah, I think it’s a possibility.  Nina and I are now discussing looking into massage therapy or maybe chiropractic care to see if they might be of assistance.  She’s got a doctor’s appointment Monday and plans to ask about potential referrals; I may have to drop in and see mine as well.

But in the meantime, I can walk again in a more or less normal manner, and I’m thankful to God for that.  That, and the ability to get back to writing again.

So I’ve been thinking about the possibility of checking out Sunday morning congregational services again — not to analyze the state of the American church, but to be part of an organized body of believers.  Granted that in most Sunday morning services, the opportunities for fellowship (what I discovered I was really missing, as I delineated in part 1) are often limited.  But what fellowship there is, I find I miss.  I’ve been out of the picture for 30 months now, and while I’ve been able to stay in Christian fellowship via a few close friends, plus contact online with other believers, it would be nice to have more.

But there’s something about the whole liturgy of a Sunday morning meeting that still makes me uncomfortable.  It’s also what keeps those fellowship opportunities down.  In a word, it’s liturgy.

For those of you who aren’t sure what that means, “liturgy” refers to the customary traditions of public worship of a particular religious group.  In essence, it’s what one does every time a congregation meets — what takes place in the service, and in what order.  The word comes from the (I think) Greek leitourgia, which means “the people’s work,” and referred originally to the responses of the congregation to the priest or minister.

In practice, liturgy is a systematized schedule for the weekly (or whenever) congregational meeting — the Mass in Catholic, Orthodox and Episcopalian/Anglican churches, for instance.  There are usually a few different schedules/”rites” used by a given congregation, but that’s almost all the variation you’ll ever see.  Most of what will happen, in some cases all the way down to specific statements, passages of Scripture and congregational responses, are set in concrete, repeated every week, and are never changed without the equivalent of an act of Congress.  I’m not sure what happens if someone in the rank and file goes off the pre-arranged plan, but I’m pretty sure it involves being removed from the building by burly ushers.  Liturgy is a serious business.

I grew up with that.  My mom (God rest her soul) was Episcopalian, and I spent my childhood in that tradition.  When I gave my life to Jesus, however, it was in an Assemblies of God (Pentecostal) campus group — very different.  And one of the ways I was told it was different was that there was no liturgy.  Pentecostals believed in letting God work on them directly, in letting the Holy Spirit lead the meetings and take them wherever He wanted.  That was a breath of fresh air after a youth full of Rite Two from the Book of Common Prayer.  And at the time and place — among a group of current and former-but-recent collegians, in the late 1980s — it was more or less true.

It took almost two decades for me to find that that argument was largely false, something that was confirmed in spades during my Congregational Journey in early 2009.  In fact, I took to referring to The System (note the capital letter) — namely, the order of service in almost every Pentecostal or evangelical congregation I saw.  I realized I could go into any Sunday meeting of a Pentecostal or Baptist, and without thinking about it know exactly what was going to happen and in what order.  And what (few) variations I found were between one congregation and another, not between services in the same congregation.  All these congregations that claimed to disdain liturgy were in fact practicing it — not to the same level of detail as the Catholic church down the road, but doing it just the same and just as rigidly. And largely had been since the end of the Jesus Movement over three decades ago.

I’ve referenced this before, but bear with me … Graham Cooke once remarked that God is consistent in who He is, but unpredictable in what He does and how He does it, and that the problem with the Church today is that we tend to be inconsistent in who we are and totally predictable in what we do and how.  That predictability most manifests itself in that tendency toward embracing liturgy in practice even as it’s condemned in concept.  And if the Holy Spirit wants to scrap the usual proceedings and do something else, 99 times out of 100 He’s going to be ignored if not actively resisted.  II’ve watched that happen — even heard people defend the resistance.)  We know what we’re going to do, and we’re going to do it — whether God likes it or not.

Any wonder that when God made it clear to me in April 2009 that he wanted my search for a congregation to stop, my immediate reaction was relief?

Now, I have friends who have left evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, and have found homes in more traditional congregations — Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, even Roman Catholic.  (It’s common enough nowadays that it’s acquired a name: the “ancient-future” movement.)  They talk about the beauty of the services and the music, the ornate buildings, the celebrations of the church calendar.  They point out how much Scripture is incorporated into the service via the prescribed readings, the hymns, the build-up to Communion.  They revel in the thought of centuries of church tradition on which the practices of their congregations rest.  Like me, they’re so relieved to have escaped the blank walls and shallow music and “practical” sermons of their previous experience.

And I must admit, my gut reaction to all of their rapturous statements is “oy, gag me with a thurible.”

But I grew up in traditional congregations.  I did it every week from the time I was five until I left for college at 17.  I had the music, the celebrations, the tradition … and I was as dead as Henry VIII, spiritually speaking.  It was only when I got away from it that I found new life in Christ was even possible.  So it always feels to me like a dead end.  And in addition, that the people who take that route are simply trading in a hidebound liturgical system that dates back to the 1970s for one that is rooted in the 1870s, or 1570s, or 1270s.  Not what I’d call progress.

Again, that’s how I’ve felt — that doesn’t automatically make me right.  But there were points when I’d read the words “ancient-future” and my eyes would glaze over.  I loved my brothers and sisters in Christ who’d taken that route.  I was happy they’d found a home.  But I was not joining them — no more liturgy for this little black duck, thankyouverymuch …

But at the risk of making this post unconscionably long (and I just hit the 1150-word mark, so the risk is there), three things happened recently that are causing me to rethink my position:

• Allen Krell’s June 29 blog post at Internet Monk.

Krell is a fellow blogger, one who went from evangelicalism to (eventually) a Lutheran congregation.  And in his post, he talked about the Lutheran concept of the “theology of the cross” (having Jesus and His work as the focus of the Christian life) versus the “theology of glory” (focusing on what we do, and on God making our life on earth better).  I knew the basic concepts (though not with that nomenclature), but Krell’s presentation of it sunk my battleship.  I realized that the theology of the cross is the antidote for almost every problem in American Pentecostalism today — so much of which is legalistic, or racked by the “prosperity” false gospel, or just plain self-centered instead of Jesus-centered.

• Finding something I wrote after my only visit to a Roman Catholic Sunday service.

That visit was on Easter Sunday, 2007.  At the time, God was leading me on a sort of Congregational Journey, just giving me an idea of the types of congregations in my hometown of Stockton, California.  That Sunday, He spoke to me about what He called “the Church in tradition,” and I did my best to write down what He seemed to be telling me.  I had kind of forgotten about that until a couple of weeks ago, when I was sorting through some old Microsoft Word files and ran across my notes.  This is some of what I wrote at the time:

Traditions in the Church cannot be sustained only by human will – the Church is Christ’s body, and He has ordained its history (“His story”).  Those who bash historical churches (like those who bash modern ones) do not know either the Scriptures or the power of God, for it is stated clearly that regardless of denomination, “wherever two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst.”  God has given 2000 years’ worth of wisdom to His saints, and no one should despise His gifts.

There are traditions of man as well as of God – nothing in a fallen world is an unmixed blessing – but just because gold is mixed with clay does not mean you should throw out both. Keep an open mind to old ways of doing things, judging them by Scripture and prayer rather than personal background or inclination.

Ow.  (That’s the sound of me being convicted by the Holy Spirit.)  In giving the cold shoulder to older forms of liturgy — to liturgy in general — wasn’t I doing exactly what God told me NOT to do?  In rejecting those traditions, wasn’t I “despising His gifts”?  Wasn’t I closing my mind to old ways of doing things, and judging them by “personal background or inclination”?  Sure looks that way.  Ow.

• And then, last Sunday, I was making my schedule for the next week.

I’ve talked in previous entries about my current practice of having a Monday-Friday schedule, to keep me on track and help me accomplish stuff.  (I’m a guy.  Guys have a deep psychological need to accomplish things.)  I haven’t been all that consistent in sticking to it, but it’s good to have around to fall back on, and I get a lot more done with that schedule than without one.

But six days ago, as I was making the adjustments to the sked for the week to come, it hit me between the eyes: what was the difference between what I was making, and a liturgy?

What does a liturgy do?  It puts everything in a set order, so everyone knows what to expect, and so everything they desire to do gets done.  And the point of it is to honor God.  What is my schedule supposed to do?  It’s supposed to put everything in a set order, so I know what to expect, and so everything I want to do gets done.  And the point of it is to get me in a place where I better honor God with my life.  Not a lot of difference.  So, Ray … why is it okay when you do it for about 75 hours a week, but something’s wrong when First Episcolutheterian Church does it for two hours a week?

I repeat: ow.

Because all of a Christian’s life is meant to be lived in Christ.  Yes, I know that for some people, those two hours in a pew are all they want of God, so that’s all they get.  But that’s not me.  There may be little time for fellowship or allowance for innovation in a congregational service — but there are another 110 or so waking hours where God is still present, where Jesus is in my heart, where there is plenty of room for whatever He cares to throw at me.  It’s not like that one bit in a pew or a folding chair — at most, 2% of my week — is keeping God from working on me.

If anything, maybe I’ve been missing out on things He wants to do with me, just because I wasn’t able to receive it in the context of a Sunday service at that point.  Maybe he called me out for a while so I could see the situation more as He does, so He could prepare me for something I couldn’t have accepted before.  It’s possible.  I’ve learned so much in these 2-1/2 years, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.  But I find that I’m now considering the possibility that Outside-the-Camp is not my final destination, that part of my reason for being out here was to cure my Liturgical Fidget, or at least manage it better.

I’ll likely continue to be (as the banner on this page says) a “professional outsider” — I always have been, and I’ve learned to accept it.  But maybe it’s coming time for me to be an outsider on the inside again.

More on this as God leads … I’ll keep you posted.