Original sin?

Some of the Eastern Orthodox blame it on Augustine (not "Saint" Augustine in their reckoning). Some blame Jerome for the Latin Vulgate's allegedly careless rendering into Latin of a key prooftext, influencing western thought on the topic ever since. Whatever the case, the Eastern Church and the Western Church took different paths very early over the issue of "original sin". Many in the west took the view that guilt itself is inherited through generations; this is without sound Scriptural basis and is being openly questioned even in many Western Christian circles.

But the doctrine that we are born imperfect (sinful) is commonplace -- and not just within Christianity. The Hindus teach rebirth after rebirth on a path towards our true and pure spiritual state -- the upshot of which is that we are far from that now. The Buddhist stance that we need enlightenment and that we should strive after right thinking, etc. stands testimony to a view that naturally we are comparatively in the dark and don't even think straight. The Taoist emphasis on the Way makes its own comment about how often we're on the wrong path. Confucius' constant examination of the ideal man, the gentleman or benevolent man, includes a lament that he has never met one. The ever-growing self-help/self-improvement sections of the book stores reflect the widely-held assessment that we are not what we should be. All the religions mentioned here have a teaching of how we are meant to be, what we are meant to become -- and imply how sadly and tragically and even dangerously we are less than that. This is "original sin" in the Orthodox sense, possible in the original sense: being sinful or separated from God.

Want a test for how far off the mark we are?

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength; love your neighbor as yourself."

Did you ever notice that, if this were really the fullness of our desires in life, we would always be glad? When would we ever lack a source of joy if this love filled us? What part would boredom or apathy have in our days? Mediocrity, pettiness, loneliness and futility would be banished. Would we even recognize our lives if it were characterized by a deep-rooted love of all around us?

I would not comment on "original sin" to make anyone feel bad about how they are. On a basic level, people recognize the fact of being less than we were meant to be.
To think that this is actually how God intended us strays dangerously close to blasphemy against the creator. The "total depravity" doctrine of some circles is an acknowledgment of how low mankind can and will sink when it turns wholeheartedly away from God. An honest and humble survey of every life I know shows not just the scars of sins done by others, but the shame of those we ourselves have done to the harm of others. Rightly taught, "original sin" gives genuine hope that this is not all there is to humanity, that in the future there will be a restoration. That we hope for something better requires an admission that something is wrong here and now.

My next-door-neighbor owes his life to 4 Katrina evacuees

Here in Houston, we're still picking up after Hurricane Rita which clipped us, helping our neighbors to the east as best we can ... and trading evacuation stories. The best so far was my next-door-neighbor.

He left Houston and like so many got stuck in horrible traffic in 100 degree weather. Being young and healthy, it never occurred to him that he could not drive out of Houston without stopping for water -- even after 10 hours behind the wheel, most of that in blazing heat. He passed out and hit the steering wheel. As he tells the story in his own words, "Four big black guys from New Orleans saw me, jumped in and doused me with water, got me some help." 90 or so people died during the evacuation, most of them from heat-related problems. We have the Katrina guests in Houston to thank that my next-door-neighbor was helped on the spot. As a side note, I can only be amazed what a selfless thing it would be to empty your water bottle under those circumstances ... trapped in 100 degree weather with no way to get more water and no idea how long you'll be stuck.

I've seen some disturbing posts around the blogosphere about what "those people" from New Orleans did, or will do in their new homes. It's a shame. A lot of the New Orleanians are heroes. One of the saddest parts of the New Orleans fiasco has been this: there has been relatively little notice of the thousands of people who did well and helped others and rose to the occasion.

The big problem with megachurches

I know my sheep and my sheep know me. - John 10:14

When Jesus describes his relationship to us, he repeatedly uses the picture of a shepherd taking care of the sheep. The shepherd knows who is lost, who is hurt, who is tired. He knows where they live and whether they have enough to eat. "He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out ... His sheep will follow him because they know his voice" (from John 10:3-4). There is a bond of love and trust that is the most important part of making sure nobody gets lost.

The biggest problem with the megachurch is not all the things which can go wrong with the theology or the leadership. The biggest problem is what is sure to go wrong because the leader does not know each of his followers well enough to do his job of shepherding. Teaching and inspiring are only parts of the job of a pastor. If the pastor does not know who is hurt, who is tired, who is lost, if he does not know his peoples' names and where they are staying, if he does not know who is hungry, then he is not doing his job. "He makes me lie down in green pastures" (from Psalm 23); the shepherd knows who is tired in this overworked, overbusy culture and insists that they get some rest.

The problems can be traced back long before the megachurch movement. Pastors may perceive their job as teaching their people or inspiring their people. While that's part of the job, some have forgotten that this is not their entire job. American mass culture is very efficient -- but people get lost in the shuffle. We have let church become a place where people can get lost in the shuffle, even though our communities should be the last place on earth, the light on the hill, that people can call home. This is more important than ever in this era where fewer and fewer people have families on which they can rely.

I do not mean to suggest that the problem is limited to megachurches; only that, in megachurches where people come and go unnoticed unless they fill out a form, the problem is inevitable.

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Update: To make the long story short, I think the missing ingredient is fellowship, which is the human aspect of it all. There's no fellowship between the pastor and the congregation, and most members have no fellowship at all with most of the other members.

Evacuated: Posting from a motel in Sugarland

Hi all

I've talked a couple of teenagers into giving me a shot at the computer but I said I'd only be a few minutes so I'll make this short: we evacuated just about 60 or 70 miles inland, which only took 3 hours despite the traffic because I'd put a lot of time into studying roads and alternate routes. I found what was apparently the last open motel room in Sugarland (which is a suburb on the west side of Houston). The storm was not much effect right here, maybe 40mph winds and not even the trailers are down, still have power and water where we are. Trying to get word about my home but that's hard to come by. Thanks for those who have expressed concern.

Mandatory Rita Evacuation ... 13% Probability of Strike

Local officials here, seeing that we are in the highest probability zone and the center of the probability projections for landfall of hurricane Rita this coming weekend, have ordered a mandatory evacuation of the suburb of Houston in which I live and all of Galveston County.

Problem #1: Though we're in the "highest probability" strike zone, that probability would be 13% at latest estimate. If you add in roughly another 12% for striking elsewhere but still too close for comfort, that still leaves a 75% chance of a miss.

Problem #2: The probability is only marginally lower than 13% for the entire Texas coastline all the way from Brownsville to Beaumont, a stretch of several hundred miles. A hit in Corpus Christi, much less Brownsville, would hardly affect us.

Problem #3: But if we're going to evacuate that many people in time, it means starting several days early. Starting several days early means there's a high probability that it's a waste of time.

If any of you outside of hurricane country have ever wondered why it's so typical to ignore warnings to leave, the reason is really very simple: most of the warnings are unnecessary. Playing the odds, people have won more often than not.

As for me, I expect to be evacuating. It's one thing to suspect that the current leaders are just a bit paranoid in the aftermath of Katrina; it's another to defy a mandatory evacuation order. I hope to be back before the start of next work week.

Update 09/21/2005 9:40pm
The above was written while Rita was category 2. Now Rita is category 5. This time, the call for evacuation seems to have been justified. As for me & mine, we're planning to head inland shortly. Our evacuation order calls for us to be underway by noon. Additional problem: roughly 1 million people are evacuating. The roads are parking lots. The inland cities receiving us probably do not have a combined population of 1 million themselves. And my original plan to head across town to stay with a relative on higher ground are now scrapped because she is also now under evacuation order.

Guilt, forgiveness, and regret

If you have lived long enough, then by now there will be something you have said or done that you truly regret. It may be unkind words that were out of your mouth and you could not call them back. It may have been something against your conscience. Maybe nobody knows about it except you.

Guilt is a miserable thing. And as awful as guilt is, it's strange how little comfort people -- even Christians -- draw from God's forgiveness. How often is God's forgiveness actually embraced with gladness and relief? How often is forgiveness, instead, looked on with suspicion and distrust? Distrusting God's forgiveness leads very directly to an apathy towards that forgiveness. How can you receive something gladly if you doubt that it applies to your own sin, or when you doubt that it is here to stay?

There are various reasons for this. The one on which I wish to focus now is regret. When we do something wrong, we regret it. We wish we had never done it, or said it, or felt it, or thought it. We imagine, because we still regret it, that we are not truly forgiven. When we are plagued with regret, we take it as evidence against our forgiveness. We imagine that, if we were in fact forgiven, that we would no longer feel that way.

But the more we look at that idea, the more plainly we see that it's wrongheaded. The more pure-hearted we become, the more we will regret ever having hurt another person or ever having contaminated our lives with sin. I would be much more worried about a sinner who never regretted wrongdoing. A pig who rolls in the mud doesn't mind being filthy. If he hates being filthy, it's a good sign that he's not at home in the mud anymore. The day will soon come when the mud disgusts them so badly that he can never go back to it. The more strongly we have repented of our sins -- the more we have turned away from what is wrong and turned again towards God -- the more strongly we will regret ever having done evil things.

Are we able to turn our backs on our regret? Should we even try? Turning our backs on regret does not mean turning our backs on a person we have hurt. If we have harmed someone, they should know our regret. If it is in our power to do anything to make things right again, we should do it. For whatever is beyond us, we should pray for God's help and healing as often as it comes to mind. And whenever we think of what we did, the proper feeling may in fact be regret. It doesn't mean we are not forgiven.

Two more things remain to be said.

First, this does not mean it is right to stay mired in regret. Our goal is not to feel regret, but to turn towards God. A mind filled with regret is a mind still filled with thoughts of the sin that is past. It's better if we fill our minds instead with God, reminding ourselves of his power, his majesty, his holiness -- and his compassion on our weakness. When we look at the world he has made and see how full of goodness it is, we know that all the sins of all of us combined will never destroy his goodness. So we can allow our hearts to be glad in God, even give the heart a nudge if it needs it.

Second, our regret may remain after we are forgiven. Regret does not mean that we are not forgiven. We have a covenant with God; Jesus is the covenant. That covenant is for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus is our ransom and our atonement. When plagued by regret, I remember the account of the sinful woman who came and wept at Jesus' feet. She was so full of regret that she couldn't hold it in, even in front of critics. Jesus told her, "Your sins, which are many, are forgiven." There was no "maybe" in his words. We might find that our minds trust in forgiveness sometimes and doubt it at others. Regardless of the whirlwinds in our minds, we can stand on God's promise: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us ..." (Been there, done that.) "... But if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:8-9). God will forgive us and cleanse us ... whether my spinning mind can grasp it or not.

Katrina Evacuees in Houston: A look inside a megashelter

It's been about 3 weeks since Katrina now. Anyone interested in how the megashelters are actually working, and how people are actually doing inside there?

After the initial scramble to get everyone situated here in Houston, things have settled into a bit of a routine. The various religious groups within the first few days coordinated the massive volunteer efforts, with each group having a designated day or set of days to staff the volunteer posts. (Mental note: next time someone goes on about how they don't like "organized" religion, tell them how nice it was to have this organized.) My group doesn't come into rotation until next week, but they put out a general call for extra hands for some special projects this weekend, so I found myself at the Astrodome/Reliant Park complex Saturday night. A number of people find homes or apartments daily, and some people are now able to go back home, so that now only a few thousand people are left in the megashelters. In fact, today they consolidated down to only one megashelter, from an original high of 4 megashelters in town.

Outside, dozens of national guardsmen in uniform made a very visible security presence. Inside, both the Houston Police and the National Guard had a visible presence. There obviously wasn't going to be much trouble with that much display of security. Volunteers were tagged with wristbands to identify us and cycled through orientation sessions beginning roughly every 10 to 15 minutes. Then we were staged much like day laborers in a pool of people waiting to be called. As I went through my orientation I could see the occasional people in Red Cross uniforms or various other official uniforms come call out their needs for jobs and number of volunteers, and the volunteers filed away to work. After my orientation, it was only 5 or 10 minutes waiting in the labor pool before I was put to work: evening food service. They formed us up into teams to work the half-dozen serving lines that were open. My team was four typical Houstonians (a white woman, a Hispanic woman, two black men) and a man who had driven all the way from San Jose, California to find some way to help, and had been helping all day every day since he'd arrived in town. Our team stayed intact during the entire evening meal service.

A TV camera crew was moving through the commons. Most people seemed bored with TV cameras by now. The camera crew sought out a family with an extra-cute toddler with her hair done up pretty sitting at a large table and picked up an interview. Some of the residents who weren't tired of cameras made their way over. One was the angriest woman I'd seen in the shelter. She got an interview. (Most people looked more bored and worried than angry.) Another man with an odd grin and shuffling walk followed the cameras around and tried to walk in front of the camera as often as he could. He did not get an interview. Mental note: glad they got the angry woman's interview *before* she saw what was for dinner.

Saturday night dinner: sweet and sour chicken over rice; bread; ice cream for dessert (really nice big individual-serving containers); bottled water or kiddie-sized juice or milk containers; granola bars; fresh apples. Special needs meals on request. Lots of funny looks for the sweet and sour chicken. Lots of people looking and walking off. Lots of people getting huge helpings. Policy: serve as much as they want. Comments: Chicken again? We had chicken for lunch. When I'm at home, I make red beans and rice. At the Superdome they fed us red beans and rice. I wish we could have catfish. The guy from San Jose mentioned that there had been many more people at dinner the day before. Later, when I was bussing tables, I noticed many tables with no signs of the sweet and sour chicken, but instead loaded with McDonald's bags, or Burger King, even the occasional KFC or Popeye's Chicken bag from a smiling person who had his red beans and rice. (That's a Cajun favorite, for anybody not from around these parts.) Luckily there are several fast-food outfits in walking distance of the complex. After all the residents had their fill, the San Jose volunteer took a large helping of the sweet and sour chicken and said it was great, went back for seconds.

For a short time I was sent as our line's official line helper to carry meals for people pushing wheelchairs or strollers. One fellow in a wheelchair wanted help carrying his ice cream and bottled water back to the dorms, which was my first view of any of the dorms. It was a huge open area, just a sea of cots. His family had a section of cots together.

How are they doing? Everyone had food and clothes, was clean and fed. Some are still looking for family. Most are worried about their homes and about how they will replace what they lost. All of them are tired of being in a shelter. Some are frustrated to still be here, had hoped to be out by now. The apartment waiting list is long, the city has only been able to place a few hundred people per day in apartments and other homes, as they're also trying to arrange at least basic furniture as well.

The resident kids were bored. Some of them had basketballs and were dribbling around. Two had "borrowed" unused wheelchairs and were having a wheelchair race. Someone put a stop to that pretty quickly, they were having a blast but it wasn't the safest thing for them to be zipping around that fast between tables in a crowded commons. A toddler had a push toy. Two tables full of teenage and pre-teen boys had an electronic game hooked up to a portable TV plugged into an outlet.

Bussing tables, I had the chance to see one thing mentioned in orientation. "Excuse me, sir, I'm clearing up the trash. May I take that?" "NO NO NO that's MINE." No problem, let me know when you're ready. After the same scene had recurred three or four times, it sank in: They've lost everything. Some of them cannot handle the thought of being parted from anything at all, even if it's just an empty chicken McNugget box. Eventually, maybe on the next trip through the commons, they were all ready to let me take their trash. After my third round of the commons bussing tables, it was about time I had to head out. My volunteer coordinator replaced me with another busser. A cloud of smoke outside the door, no smoking indoors. Outside, a man with a resident wristband who had saved basically only his clarinet from the flood was playing a bluesy tune. Reminded me of my last trip to the French Quarter. One boy was in the parking lot with a wheelchair he obviously didn't need, popping wheelies and staying like that longer than I would have believed.

Quite a mix of ok and not ok. It'll do for today.