The Boy with the Changeable Shirt (an Homage to Edwin Friedman)

Far, far away, in a remote hollow in the mountains, there is a tiny school for boys.  Every boy in this school, young and old, is on a team, and every day, those boys do everything with their team—eat, sleep, study, do chores, and play.  Each boy wears a shirt of the the color of his team from his first day at the school to his last, all the time, every day.  A boy on the Red team always wears red and never blue, and a boy on the Blue team always wears blue and never green.

But there was one boy in this school who was different from all the other boys.  This boy was very poor and only owned one shirt, but it was a special, magical shirt, for this shirt would change its color all by itself.  Unlike all the other boys in the school, this boy was part of all the teams.  When he was with the Green team his shirt turned green, and when he was with the Yellow team his shirt turned yellow.  He cared very much about the other boys.  When he was with a boy who smiled, he would smile too, and when he was with a boy who frowned, he too would frown.  On the whole, he was happy.  He enjoyed very much how all the other boys accepted him.

Now at this tiny school all the boys on all the teams look forward to the same wonderful event at the end of the year: a great tournament where all the teams compete against each other in games of strength, speed, smarts, and skill.  The boy with the changeable shirt looked forward to the tournament too and got more and more excited as the year went on, even though he didn’t know what games he would play when the day actually came or what team he would play them for.  He couldn’t wait to be with all of his friends at once.

At last the day of the tournament arrived.  The boy with the changeable shirt saw many of his friends early that morning wearing their best jerseys of Red and Blue, Green and Yellow, Purple and Orange.  He smiled back gleefully at each one as they smiled at him.  But soon the noise in the halls of the school began to diminish as the boys ran out of the building onto the grounds.  The boy in the changeable shirt tried to follow them, but he couldn’t move.  He stretched and strained after his friends, but he was stuck where he stood.  He called after his friends who were leaving him behind, but they didn’t hear.  And as the tournament began with every other boy gone, he became very sad.  His shirt became a drab off-white.  In fact, it ceased to look like a shirt at all, and he himself no longer looked like a boy.  For the boy with the changeable shirt didn’t know that he wasn’t actually a boy at all, and he didn’t wear clothes.  He was a mirror hanging on the wall of a hallway in the school.  His face and his shirt changed with every boy who walked past him.  And when they smiled at him, they were actually smiling at themselves.

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It can be easier to be what the people around us want us to be than to be ourselves.  Rather than being honest about who we are and what we think wherever we go, we look like our family when we’re with them, like our friends when we’re with them, and like church folks when we’re with them, and they love us for conforming.  But unless we wear allegiance to Christ boldly whomever we’re with, we have no part of him.  “Whoever acknowledges me before people, I will acknowledge before my Father in heaven.  But whoever denies me before people, I will deny him also before my Father in heaven” (Matt. 10:32-33).  Such persons cannot inherit God’s kingdom.  The more they compromise themselves along the way, the more they cease to be persons at all.  They fade with the rest of the world they once reflected that is passing away.

"Sin" through the Centuries

This is a graph of the frequency of occurrences of the word "sin" (case-sensitive) in a 5% sample of all American works in English in Google Books.

The volatile line in the 17th and 18th centuries is partly because there is a relatively small number of works available from that era.  It's interesting how the frequency of "sin" in written literature shoots up not at, but a bit after both the Great Awakening (ca. 1740) and the Second Great Awakening (ca. 1800).  I wonder how much of the decline of the appearance of "sin" through the 19th and early 20th centuries is due to the explosion of Christian publishing in antebellum America before secular publishing gradually caught up.  It's also interesting to note the small bulge during the post-WWII religious revival (during which time "under God" was added to the pledge of allegiance, for example) which tapered off in the 1970s to rebound slightly and remain basically flat since.

A few questions for the comment thread.  (1) How does this graph reinforce or challenge what you've believed about American religious history?  (2) What does this graph tell us about the era we're living in?  (3) What can this graph teach us about how we can proclaim the gospel effectively?

May Your Day Be Merry and Bright

The most enriching thing you are likely to read this Christmas Day is the pair of short devotionals by Charles H. Spurgeon that Zach Bartels has quoted on his blog.  Go on, click it.

Merry Christmas.

The Calling

On Monday and Tuesday nights, PBS aired a 4-hour documentary entitled The Calling, which follows the stories of seven people—two Orthodox Jewish, two Evangelical Christian (one in a Black setting and the other a Samoan in a White setting), two Muslim, and one Roman Catholic—on their path from seminary into the beginning of their ministries as clergy.  Each subject was documented by a filmmaker of his or her own religion, and then director Danny Alpert wove all their stories together.

I hope you watched this film.  Really the only thing I can say about it is that I wish it had been longer, like ten 1-hour episodes, because I found it so compelling and because there are some gaps and unanswered questions in some of the narratives.  That also might have allowed room for other subjects, like Reform Jewish, Mainline Protestant, Mormon, Pentecostal, and Eastern Orthodox clergy candidates.

Unfortunately, I don't believe the film is available in full online, but you can watch a special 85-minute cut here.

12 Questions (and Answers) of Christmas

He's done it again: Phil Vischer, co-creator of VeggieTales and mastermind of the current work in progress, What's in the Bible?, has released something terrific, "12 Questions of Christmas" by British naturalist puppets Clive and Ian.  Check out one of my favorite questions here:

This free web-based series of vignettes is predictably brilliant.  Vischer has a tremendous knack for explaining through story, and just like the What's in the Bible? series itself, he demonstrates his belief that kids are capable of grasping a heck of a lot more than adults often give them credit for.  Also like WITB, adults who watch these shorts along with their kids are pretty well guaranteed to learn something themselves.  Gather your brood and watch them all!

(By the way, my family hasn't kept up with the release of volumes of WITB very well, but when I get caught up I'll do a follow-up to my review of Volume 1.  Also, Vischer very graciously responded to my earlier post and engaged in dialogue about how concerns from me and folks like me might be addressed in WITB curriculum.  He's quite the class act.)

Christianese

If you are reading this blog (or writing it), you are almost certainly guilty of what is exquisitely lampooned in this video.  Please enjoy, and then define your terms.

Some Evidence for Paul's Authorship of the Pastoral Epistles

Some of the books of the Bible say who wrote them.  Others don't.  While scholars exert significant effort to figure out or hypothesize who wrote the anonymous works, they spend much more effort debunking or defending the authorship of the books that state who their author is.  This seems backwards to me, but there you go.  (Also, there is a third category: books that don't claim an author themselves, but other biblical books claim who authored those anonymous books.  The big example is the five books of the Torah, which are repeatedly attributed to Moses in the New Testament.  This is probably the most controversial ascription of them all.)

One area of intense wrangling is the "deutero-Pauline" letters—epistles that some claim were written by a "second Paul" in Paul's name.  The hypothesis is that Ephesians and Colossians (at least) were written by a disciple of Paul, and the Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus) were probably written by another disciple of Paul (which I guess would make them trito-Pauline).

With respect to the Pastorals, each side in the debate has a number of arguments.  Some evidence that I believe supports Pauline authorship is Paul's farewell address to the elders of the church at Ephesus in Acts 20:17-35.  This is a passage written by a "third party"—not the hand that wrote either Romans or 1 Timothy—that puts in Paul's mouth many of the same themes that we find in the Pastorals:

• Paul's autobiography of suffering and persecution (vv. 19, 22-24; 2 Tim. 1:8, 12, 16; 2:8-10; 3:10-12; 4:6, 14-16)
• Paul's integrity proclaiming the gospel (vv. 20-21, 24, 26-27, 31; 2 Tim. 1:8-12; 2:8-10; 3:10, 14; 4:17)
• Paul's desire to finish strong (v. 24; 2 Tim. 4:6-8, 18)
• Overseers/elders/pastors (vv. 17, 28; 1 Tim. 3:1-7; 5:17-22; Tit. 1:5-9)
• False teachers coming (vv. 29-30; 1 Tim. 1:3-7; 4:1-3; 6:3-5, 20-21; 2 Tim. 2:14-18; 3:1-9, 13; 4:3-4; Tit. 1:10-16)
• Holding fast to sound doctrine (v. 27 but implied elsewhere; 1 Tim. 1:10; 4:6; 6:3; 2 Tim. 1:13-14; 4:3; Tit. 1:9, 13-14; 2:1)
• Teaching that is "profitable" (v. 20; 1 Tim. 4:7; 6:6; 2 Tim. 3:16-17; Tit. 1:16; 3:8-9)
• "Testifying" to the truth (vv. 21, 24, 26; 1 Tim. 2:6; 6:13; 2 Tim. 1:8)
• Committing elders to the word that strengthens them (v. 32; 1 Tim. 4:16; 2 Tim. 3:14-17).
• Greed vs. giving (vv. 33-35; 1 Tim. 3:3; 6:6-10, 17-19; 2 Tim. 4:10; Tit. 3:14)
• Admonition/correction (v. 31; 1 Tim. 5:19-20; 2 Tim. 2:23-26; 3:16; Tit. 1:9-14; 2:8, 15; 3:9-11)
• An inheritance for those who persevere (v. 32; 1 Tim. 6:18-19; 2 Tim. 4:8; Tit. 3:7)

There are other themes in the Pastoral Epistles that aren't in Paul's address, but this comparison does show continuity between the content of the Pastoral Epistles and what a witness recorded Paul as saying during his life.  (And it is worth noting that Paul's exhortation was delivered to elders in Ephesus, over whom Timothy later presided.)

Not that this settles anything or changes anybody's mind, because few people if any are objective about this.  Someone who wants to believe that the Pastorals were written by Paul (like me) will see the parallels with Acts 20 and find confirmation for what they already think.  Someone who wants to believe that the Pastorals were written by someone else will conclude that their true author was a very loyal disciple of Paul or a very skilled writer who took Luke's account as the inspiration for his own work.  But no one (or a very tiny number) is actually weighing the evidence without a foregone conclusion.

Now, I know why people like me are biased toward believing that Paul wrote the Pastoral Epistles.  We are theologically committed to the principle that the canonical books are the word of God, on which we desire to base all of our doctrine.  If Paul didn't write a book with his name on it, then that ascription is a lie, which means that the book cannot have been inspired by God, who doesn't lie—at least not in its entirety.  That raises the question of whether the book is inspired at all or how we distinguish between the inspired parts and the uninspired parts of it.  That in turn raises the question of whether the ancient Church, if they mislabeled this book as canonical, mislabeled other books as well.  Eventually this line of reasoning challenges whether we have any heavenly basis for our doctrine at all or if it comes from fallible texts generated solely by fallible humans.

So that's why I have a bias toward Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles.  What I don't understand is why others have a bias against Pauline authorship.  I really don't get it—what's the principle that such people are guarding so defensively that they will predictably explain away all evidence for Paul as author?  (The same could be said for other things in biblical scholarship, like archaeological corroboration of history recorded in the Bible.)  From an outsider's point of view, it just looks like for the last 200 years or so a scholar isn't allowed to believe that the Bible was written by who it says wrote it and be taken seriously in the academic guild.  When academicians offer theories of what anonymous "community" produced the Pastoral Epistles or what some book's redaction history was, it just looks to me like they are trying to win the respect of their erudite peers and/or tenure.  Proposing alternative authorship theories is like a scholarly peeing contest, and the more creative the better.  (Yes, I just used the phrase "scholarly peeing contest.")  In the unlikely event that someone is reading this blog who has a bias against traditional authorship ascriptions (like Paul for the Pastoral Epistles) and I totally misunderstand your motives, please set me straight, because I'm at a loss here.

The Parable of the Minas

Jesus' parable of the minas (pronounced m'NAH or in Aramaic m'NAY) in the Gospel of Luke is parallel to but not quite the same as his better-known parable of the talents in Matthew.  Here are some various observations on the parable of the minas (perhaps better entitled "the parable of the citizens and the slaves").  Go ahead and read it first or better yet have the text available to refer to.

1. Jesus' kingship takes time.  Jesus tells this parable because the people with whom he was traveling to Jerusalem, expecting him to be the Messiah, "thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately" (v. 11).  This is a classic example of the "already but not yet" pattern in New Testament theology.  It was not unusual for Jesus to talk about the kingdom as already here (see for example Matt. 12:28), but at the same time it hasn't come yet.  He indicates here that it will take a while to happen, even though it is "near."  The coming of the kingdom requires both urgency and patience.  It reminds me of the saying, "Hurry, but don't rush."

2. Jesus brings his kingship.  You and I don't.  Nor do missionaries or social movements.  Nor governments or armies, nor marchers or wearers of hemp.  Jesus brings the kingdom.  Does he work through his church?  Of course.  But in the parable the slaves are working with what their master has given them while waiting for his return.  But his securing of the title and authority of king is really not their business.  He is fully adequate to take care of that himself.  The slaves' job is not to "usher in," "spread," "build," or "expand" his kingdom.  Their job is to be faithful with what is his until he comes back—and to the extent that they do, they are bearing witness to the legitimacy and reality of his kingdom in their own lives and actions.

3. Kingdom is kingship.  You may have noticed that I've been using these terms interchangeably in the foregoing paragraphs.  If you don't know why, it is because the Greek word basileía, generally translated "kingdom," does not mean a place (like the United Kingdom) but the right and authority of the king to reign, the king's "kingness" or kingship.  The situation in this parable reflects the Romans' willingness to manage their empire through cooperative client-kings like Herod the Great when possible rather than installing their own nobility as governors everywhere they went.  In Jesus' story an aristocrat in a Roman client-state is traveling to Rome to make a bid to be appointed as the next king of the territory by the emperor.  But "his [fellow-]citizens" (compare the Greek in Heb. 8:11), men of the same class as he, hate him and don't want him to be in charge of them, so they send a delegation urging the emperor to choose someone else to be their king.

4. Citizen or slave?  Everyone, and certainly Jesus' hearers, would naturally rather be the former than the latter.  But what distinguishes the two is that the citizens are unwilling for the aristocrat to be their ruler while the slaves (well, nine of them) obey him loyally.  There are two kinds of people in the world.  One sees Jesus as their fellow citizen, a human being not only just like us but merely like us with no authority to tell us what to do, and they live accordingly.  The other kind faithfully and humbly submits to whatever he wants.  When the aristocrat returns as king, the roles are reversed, and the divide in status is made more extreme than before.  The slaves, who were once despised, become rulers.  The citizens, who were once respected, become meat.  Which would you rather become?

5. Life is a test.  Each slave had a mina to work with—one to one-and-a-quarter pounds of silver, which today is worth $567 and then was worth about four months of wages for a day laborer.  It was not impossible for slaves, especially those who had sold themselves, to have this kind of money—some slaves bought their own freedom for five or six times as much—but it was still a lot, and some slaves weren't allowed to have money at all.  A mina might have seemed like an enormous amount to manage to a slave, but from the perspective of the wealthy aristocrat, it was "a very little thing" (v. 17).  It was simply a test given by a prospective king who would need trustworthy men to help him govern his kingdom.  The master didn't give the slaves minas to make money but to make rulers.  Proportionate to the skill, savvy, and most importantly faithfulness of his slaves he made them governors.  All that we have—our wealth and possessions, our relationships, our power, our health, our skills, our experiences—seem so huge to us; they are our entire world, all we can usually see.  But our worlds are tiny and rather insignificant compared to God's unfathomable wealth.  They are small gifts to test our faithfulness to Christ.  When he returns as King and recreates the earth, he will give us stuff to manage beyond our wildest imaginations exactly according to what we do with what we now have.

6. Opportunities are made to be multiplied.  What the aristocrat gives to each slave is intended to be multiplied.  The typical interpretation of the minas are things that God has given us (like talents—our English word comes from an interpretation of Matt. 25) to use for him.  I partly agree with this.  However, since the minas are to be multiplied, this can't strictly be the case—it isn't an application of this text to take one house we own and multiply it into ten houses or turn an ability to speak English into an ability to speak ten languages.  But all of these things that we possess do create opportunities to serve Christ; they can be used for him.  I think that each person's mina is the sum total of the opportunities to serve him.  Invariably, as we serve Jesus in all of our opportunities, the number and scale of the opportunities that we have increase.  If we make the most of the one person we have to touch with God's love, it won't be long before we have two, and so on.

7. Stewardship requires risk.  The one slave who isn't rewarded by his master is chastised for not investing the money he was given.  Let's think about the dividends yielded by the other slaves: as much as ten times what was invested.  That rate of return is astronomical.  The only way the first slave could have gotten a return like that was if he took big risks, gambles even, with the aristocrat's money and they paid off.  The one who took no risk in order to preserve what he was given was the one who remained a slave instead of becoming a governor.  Very often in my experience "being a good steward" is code in Christian circles for buying cheap toilet paper and keeping the thermostat turned down to 56°; it functionally means spending as little as possible.  But Jesus wants his servants to invest what they have in opportunities for him with abandon.  Jesus may be conservative in the sense of holding more tenaciously than anyone to the heart of Torah (see Matt. 5:17-20), but that must be the only sense in which he is conservative.  He doesn't want his servants to conserve but to take smart chances with what they have, even if that risks failure and waste.  Aggressive, high-yield, faith-straining attempts to give him glory and love the world are what stewardship is, and that certainly includes the choices we make with our "mammon of unrighteousness."

When It's Not Time for Asia

[Paul, Silas, and Timothy] went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been prevented by the Holy Spirit from speaking the word in the province of Asia.  When they came to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to do this, so they passed through Mysia and went down to Troas.  A vision appeared to Paul during the night: A Macedonian man was standing there urging him, "Come over to Macedonia and help us!"  After Paul saw the vision, we attempted immediately to go over to Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them [Acts 16:6-10].

For some time I have felt an unusual attraction to this passage in Acts.  The apostles Paul and Barnabas wanted to leave Antioch in Syria to check on the churches they had planted on their previous missionary journey.  Because they couldn't agree about whether to bring along Barnabas's cousin John Mark, who had quit early on their last trip, they split up.  Barnabas took Mark to Barnabas's old stomping grounds of Cyprus while Paul took Silas to check on the churches in the southern reaches of the Roman province of Galatia, which took them through Paul's native region of Cilicia.  (I wish I could find the perfect map to show you all this, but I can't.  Here are three maps that, put together, help you visualize where Paul traveled: [1] a map of the regions of ancient Anatolia [modern western and central Turkey] with Greek placenames; [2] a map of the Roman Empire in A.D. 125, about 75 years after Paul's journey; and [3] a modern satellite view of the northeastern Mediterranean showing the location of cities mentioned in the New Testament.)

After Paul and Silas checked on the southern Galatian churches (and recruited Timothy in Derbe) they began looking for the next thing to do.  It was only logical to begin preaching Christ in the Roman province of Asia (consisting of roughly the western third of modern Turkey), which included most of Phrygia and Mysia among other places.  It was the next unreached ring beyond where Paul and the gospel had already gone.  But the Holy Spirit wouldn't let them.  Then they wanted to go north into Bithynia on the southwestern coast of the Black Sea, but the Spirit wouldn't let them go there either, so they wandered down to Troas, still stuck in Asia with nothing to do.

How confusing this must have been!  How many cities and villages did Paul and his comrades walk through, watching Jews reading the Law and ignorantly waiting for their Messiah who had already come, watching Gentiles worshiping statues of false gods and the invisible demons behind them and committing detestably immoral acts, and yet the Spirit would not let them do anything.  How they hoped to go to new places to preach the gospel, and the Lord wouldn't let them!  How could this be?  What did God want?  Why wasn't this going as smoothly and easily as when Paul and Barnabas just hopped on a ship, sailed to Cyprus, and started preaching immediately?

The answer comes when Paul sees the vision of the man of Macedonia in what is today northern Greece calling for help.  This is what God had denied the apostles for, so that they could go even further than they had imagined to proclaim the good news, two provinces beyond where Paul had planted churches last.

But what may easily be overlooked is that even as God denied Paul what Paul desired and must have believed to be logical—preaching the word in the province of Asia—he was silently working in multiple ways to see that Paul's dream would be fulfilled.

First, in Troas Paul and the gang found a new traveling companion—the author of Acts, whom we believe to be Luke.  We know this because in verse 10 he says that "we" went over to Macedonia.  This may mean that Paul disobeyed the Spirit and spoke the word in Troas, and Luke was saved there and joined up with them.  But it seems more likely, especially because of the maturity they must have found in Luke, that he was already a believer in Jesus when they met him.  We know that there were Jews from the province of Asia at Pentecost who believed in the Lord that day.  Luke may have been one of them who then returned home or perhaps had heard the word from one who did.  (Luke is commonly considered the only Gentile author of the New Testament, but I think he was more likely a Hellenized Jew.  I have my reasons, but that's another topic.)  In any case, God was already at work in this "unreached" region before Paul passed through.

Second, once Paul and his crew arrived in the Macedonian city of Philippi, their first convert was a Gentile God-fearer (i.e., worshiper of Israel's God who was not a full convert to Judaism) named Lydia.  But "Lydia" almost certainly was not her real name but her local nickname to the folks in Philippi, because Lydia had moved there from her hometown of Thyatira, a city in the province of Asia on the border between the regions of Mysia and Lydia.  (I once heard of a guy nicknamed "Bama" because he came from Alabama; it's a similar thing.)  Even though Paul had not presented the gospel to the people of Asia in Asia, God gave him the opportunity to bring one of them to salvation in a completely different place.

Third, as Paul continued his trip, he ended up in the city of Corinth in southern Greece (province of Achaia), where he met two other Jewish believers in Jesus who had recently relocated there from Rome, Aquila and Priscilla.  After a year and a half, the three of them (with Silas and Timothy) sailed east for Ephesus, the most prominent city in Asia.  But now that Paul finally had a chance to proclaim the word there, he only stayed there briefly, leaving Priscilla and Aquila to do most of the work.  Again, even though it wasn't in God's plan for Paul to speak the word extensively in Asia as he wished, God still planned to spread his kingdom through the work of others that Paul had equipped.

Fourth, a few years later, it was finally Paul's turn.  On his third missionary journey Paul once again passed through the cities where he had planted churches with Barnabas, but this time he went straight for Ephesus and stayed there for two whole years.  During this time God did astonishing acts of supernatural healing through Paul such that he was renowned by humans and demons alike.  His ministry was so effective that through him and the believers that he equipped that the entire province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.  That's right: the whole thing.

So Paul got his wish many times beyond what he expected.  His desire was to proclaim the word to the people of Asia, the logical next step after his work in Galatia.  Inexplicably, the Spirit told him no for some time.  But meanwhile God had already placed some initial believers there, gave Paul the chance to do what he wished in an unexpected setting, enabled Paul to equip others to pioneer the work, and finally gave Paul his desire having prepared the ground so thoroughly that it was probably the most Spirit-empowered and prosperous period of his entire apostolic career.

Paul's example hit home to me recently.  I had applied with my church for a grant that would have enabled a remarkable learning and growing opportunity for me and for all of us.  We felt sure that applying was the right thing to do, but months later we were disappointed—we were not selected.  It seemed like an opportunity that would never come again; the timing would have been perfect, and now the moment was lost.  But coming in the mail at about the same time as the rejection letter and sitting on my desk unopened for some time was an invitation to a very different but equally remarkable opportunity that I never saw coming.  In addition to being as enthusiastic and grateful as Paul and his companions were to receive the call to Macedonia, I feel certain that my Macedonia will somehow lead back to my Asia in ways I never would have imagined and that once I get there I will be more useful for the kingdom than I ever could have been otherwise.

If you are experiencing a similar disappointment and confusion to what Paul must have experienced as he was wandering aimlessly through Asia to settle at the dead end of Troas, I hope that his example is an encouraging lesson to you.  When God frustrates our holy desire to serve him in the way that makes perfect sense, he has a reason.  Whether through one or all of the means he gave Paul, he will give you the desire of your heart.

A Day-after-Thanksgiving Meditation from a Guy Who Hasn't Paid His Way

At a family Thanksgiving celebration yesterday I became embroiled in an unpleasant argument about politics with a family member.  Without getting into the substance of the discussion, I felt lingering discomfort for some time later.  Part of it was the abrupt nature of the conflict itself.  But it was partly because it raised afresh gnawing self-doubt in me that I've had deep down for some time.

The household that I lead, love, and attempt to provide for receives much from the world around us.  Some of these goods come from the church that I pastor, as I am paid from the free, voluntary gifts out of the hard-earned wages of its members, not to mention other favors and blessings (like leftovers from a meal) that these generous folks give us.  Some of these goods come from family, friends of the family, and friends that are like family.  These include assistance that made it possible for us to get into our home, the vehicle we drive, the furniture we sit on that is almost entirely hand-me-downs, and much of the clothes on our backs, among innumerable other gifts of love that we've received since my wife and I got married.  Some goods that we receive are social goods that governments secure for their citizens.  Some of those goods are general and shared with other citizens, like the fact that I can leave my house and not be afraid that it's been broken into while I'm gone, that I can travel on interstate highways without getting killed (most likely), that I can eat packaged food and not be afraid that it's poisoning me, and so on.  Other goods from governments are specific to my family, like the insulin pump my diabetic son wears and the education my children receive.

I can't put a price on the goods that we receive from the world around us, but that's only because I haven't kept a comprehensive list.  But if I had, an accounting could be made: a monetary value set on all we've received annually or through our whole marriage.  But what have I paid for it?  Monetarily, next to nothing compared to what I receive.  It's been virtually all take and no give.

I try to justify this, especially what I receive from governments.  I want to believe that as a pastor I contribute intangibles to society that improve the community's well-being.  I look at my four good kids and hope that their existence in the world and what they will become is a contribution, at the very least to increase the population to shore up Social Security.  I expect that as the kids grow up and leave the house I'll pay more and more in taxes that will pay for the next generation and the one after that as others are now paying for me.  But I can't measure any of this quantitatively with any confidence.  I haven't served my country or community in other ways, like in military service or the police.  I can't make any case that I'm paying my own way, much less being prepared to do anything about the $266,000 that is my family's share of the national debt.  I can't refute the charge that I'm doing my own thing subsidized by others and not giving anything in return.

This makes me ashamed as a citizen and as a man who is responsible to provide for his family.  It is very humbling and makes me feel very small and weak to recognize that my entire life and that of my family rides on the gifts of others.  But if there is anything that makes me equal with those who are paying my way as well as their own, it is that everything that they have, they have received too.  As Paul pointed out to the Corinthian church (which my dad has often reminded me), "What do you have that you did not receive?  And if you received it, why do you boast as though you did not?" (1 Cor. 4:7).  A person who has paid a hundred times more to the public than the public has paid back to them has not paid for the breath moving through their lungs right now.  They haven't deserved where they were born and to whom.  They haven't earned their raw intelligence or physical advantages no matter how hard they have worked to develop or maintain those things.  They haven't paid for their health; no matter how much their wealth may have limited disease, much of that is out of all of our control.  And they haven't purchased any genuine love that they have received from others no matter how carefully they have fostered those relationships.  Surely, none of us has anything that we can't identify as or trace back to something that we received through no merit of our own.

This fact does not absolve me of my responsibility to my world.  Justice demands that I give all I am capable of giving, even bearing the burdens of others if I'm able, and take as little as I can.  But this truth does encourage humility and chase away any temptation to boast about what I deserve.  All such claim to what one deserves is foolhardy.  I deserve nothing.  Everything I have I owe to others and ultimately to God.  Far better to know this and be ashamed than to be a proud fool.