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Fresh with a mostly useless degree in American history and without a clue as to what to do with the rest of my life, I took a job in a gritty factory town just west of Chicago working at a sheltered workshop for retarded adults. Today we’d call them the developmentally challenged.

I was a supervisor for a small group of “clients,” maybe a dozen or so, whose job was to count out 10 plastic picks and bundle them with rubber bands. To this day I don’t know who these bundles were for and thus why we needed to bundle them, but that was what we did.

I learned a lot from the clients. They were like children except that they weren’t. They certainly had their challenges, ones we “normals” typically don’t have, but there was something truly compelling and, indeed, attractive about them.

For one thing, they were real.

Continue reading “The Scandal of the Particular”

It’s been a while, so the specifics are a bit vague, but I can tell you it was plush, believe you me.

I’m referring to the “classroom” where we met one fine day in the office of the “master” of one of Yale’s fourteen residential colleges. (“Master,” I’ll have you know, was recently changed to “head of college,” to accord with the current fashions of political correctness.)

Normally, the class was held up Prospect Hill, at the divinity school, but on this particular day we were treated to the master’s palatial digs. It was opulent in that understated, clubby way – stuffed chairs and muted academic tones, as if a Hollywood set. Cigars and snifters of brandy would not have been out of place.

The occasion was a lecture by an acquaintance of our professor’s, a gentlemanly psychiatrist hailing from Lima, Peru. For the full hour, we were granted entry into the appalling conditions found within the slums of Lima. It sounded truly horrific, and I have no doubt what he reported was accurate, if not insufficient in describing the human tragedy born of such degradation.

Continue reading “The Slums of Lima”

In the opening scene from the 1993 movie, Shadowlands, we see C.S. Lewis (played by Anthony Hopkins) lecturing students at Cambridge University (UK).

A lapsed Christian and onetime atheist, Lewis returned to the faith at the age of 32 while teaching at Oxford. He went on to become the greatest Christian apologist of the 20^th century.

At the start of the movie, Lewis is lecturing his students on Christian doctrine concerning death and eternal life. His tone is authoritative and confident, his words reassuring and redolent of orthodox, New Testament beliefs.

Later in the film he meets an American, Joy Davidman Gresham, whom he married in 1956. Four short years later, however, in 1960, she had died of cancer. Lewis’ experience of this loss eventually inspired the book, “A Grief Observed,” a classic in bereavement studies.

Continue reading “The Cost of Discipleship”

This past Sunday our local professional football team, the New England Patriots, played a conference championship game against the Kansas City Chiefs. Naturally, the game was televised.

Having watched football on television from an early age, I’ve seen many changes in the coverage, most of it due to technological advancements.

Back “in the day,” there was no such thing as an “instant replay.” The play happened in “real time” and that was it. You either saw it or you didn’t. Reliance on the referees, those on the field, was essential in getting the call right. Today, there are cameras all over the place. Each play is captured from multiple angles. And in slow-motion to boot!

On a day noted for questionable calls (especially the penalty NOT called at a critical juncture in the Saints/Rams game), there was one play during the Patriots’ game that seemed especially notable. To the naked eye, the play appeared to go one way but on closer inspection just may have been the exact opposite.

Continue reading “Armchair Quarterbacking”

The 20^th century is over. On the face of it, this seems pretty obvious. Very few are unaware of this fact. But do we really think and act as if it is?

In 1844, James Russell Lowell wrote a poem entitled, “The Present Crisis,” itself an argument against slavery. It later inspired the hymn, “Once to Every Man and Nation.” The poem reads as follows:

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;
Lo, before us gleam her campfires? We ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future’s portal with the Past’s blood-rusted key.

In case you haven’t noticed (though I’m sure you have!), I frequently object to the mainline church’s embrace of the Social Gospel, a movement that began in the mid to late 19^th century but hit its stride in the early 20^th. Its effects are with us still.

Continue reading “Our Present Crisis”

Years ago, I went to the local hospital to visit a church member who had been admitted into the ICU (intensive care unit). As per protocol, I went into the waiting room and dialed the nurses’ station to be admitted. The person on the other end asked me what my relationship was to the patient. I said I was his pastor.

After I hung up, someone in the waiting room immediately sought me out. “I’ve always wondered,” she said, “what does the word ‘pastor’ mean?” The answer, of course, is “shepherd.”

The pastor is the shepherd of the flock. Yes, I know, it sounds a bit clichéd, if not cornball, but it has real import. The shepherd is called not only to feed the sheep, but to protect them.

Continue reading “Fairy Tales”

In the days leading up to Christmas, our daily newspaper published an article by a local pastor entitled, Uncomfortable Truths in This Season of Light. As it turns out, the title gave the plot away.

The subject was the nationally reported story of a Roman Catholic church in Dedham, MA that’s outdoor creche featured baby Jesus inside a cage, with the surrounding wise men barred from reaching him because of a wall. The sign above the creche read, “Peace on Earth?” Here the obvious reference is to the current hot-button issue of immigration on our southern border.

In explaining the priest’s decision to erect the controversial creche, the author quotes him as saying that he was “just trying to start a conversation.” In the same vein, the author herself argues that regardless of whether one agrees with using the creche to raise the issues or not, the “bigger question” is “how do we talk about this.”

And yet, ironically, her article, along with its reproving title, does more to shut down conversation than start one. What one finds instead is soft-pedaled contempt for those who see things differently than she.

Continue reading “As I Was Saying…”

Though not commonly known, we Christians currently are in the liturgical season of Advent, not Christmas. Christmas always starts on December 25^th and lasts…for 12 days.

Even less well known is that Advent, historically, is a season of repentance! In fact, it’s been referred to as a “mini-Lent,” a time for self-reflection and introspection, the purpose of which is to PREPARE ourselves for the  arrival of the Christ child.

But the 3^rd of the 4 Sundays in Advent is known as Gaudete Sunday. Its theme is joy. It’s supposed to be a break from our preparations so that we might consider why we’re preparing in the first place. And that is the joy of Christmas morn.

Continue reading “Leinbach Lines – 1987”

In his 1989 book, The Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, Canadian author Modris Eksteins characterizes the famous Christmas Truce of 1914 as the metaphorical last stand of the West, perhaps even its apotheosis. What was to follow unleashed sweeping changes that would define the 20^th century.

The Great War had broken out in August of 1914 and by December a wholly new and monstrous form of warfare had developed along the entirety of the Western Front. As the first truly modern war, and thus the first to employ advanced technology (most especially machine guns and heavy artillery), the loss of life on both sides was unprecedented. It resulted not in quick advances, as both sides had reason to expect, but a long, grisly standoff.

Reportedly, at certain points along the front, enemy combatants were as close as 70 feet away, holed up for days and months in makeshift trenches. Facing heavy losses, fatigue, insufficient supplies, rats, and the unusually heavy and sustained rains of fall and early winter, the soldiers’ constant companion was death and mud.

Continue reading “End of an Era”

Probably the worst accusation my father could level at anyone was to be deemed a “phony.” And this from someone who almost always kept his criticisms to himself.

“Just make sure you’re alright,” he would repeatedly caution his four children, an obvious appeal to modesty and circumspection.

Foremost, he was a humble man. My mother frequently would urge him to take more credit for his achievements, which were many. She chalked up his reticence to a case of low self-esteem, though I personally never saw it that way. For me, he was just genuinely humble. Continue reading “Being Better than Others”