called to stand here

Congratulations to the MSU women's basketball team for winning the NCAA Division II national championship last week. The media around here has been full of it. We all needed something positive to focus on in this bleak news era we're currently inhabiting--floods, economic meltdown, etc. One quote especially got my attention. In The Free Press, Mankato's newspaper, the coach Pam Gohl is quoted : "What a great game for the advancing of women's basketball," Mavericks coach Pam Gohl said. "We couldn't figure out how to stop them. Thank goodness, we scored more points than them." I was so amused by this last line that the Free Press used as a pull quote in its print edition on Saturday morning that I pointed it out to others around the breakfast table. But that same sound byte was rendered differently in The Reporter , MSU's student newspaper: "What a great game for the advancement of women's basketball," said MSU head coach Pam Gohl...

American Idol is based on the spectacle concept. Only those who have the stomach to be in the spotlight (no matter how bad their act is) are willing to go there. Maybe this is Madonna's and Andy Warhol's wisdom played out. (If I recall, it was Madonna who said, "All publicity is good publicity," and Warhol who made the famous " 15 minutes of fame " quote.) But the spectacle concept has ancient roots. It is one of the signs of a biblical prophet. From Noah's spectacular boat-building project to Jesus' death on the cross, these men of God followed his instructions in such a way that they made themselves spectacles in a world that heaped derision on them for their other-worldly priorities and defiance of the world's values. Noah's ark Abraham's circumcision Moses' plagues , the Exodus , and the wilderness wanderings David's dance (2 Sam. 6:14-22) and Bathsheba-related sins (2 Sam. 11, 12) Job's suffering Solomon's extravage...

Last week an essay was posted in Campus Technology , a journal I read regularly. It responded to an essay published last summer in The Atlantic Monthly by Nicholas Carr that received wide attention. Its title was pretty compelling:   Is Google Making Us Stupid? So I did what I often do when I run into a discussion in print that raises theoretical and neuroscientific issues, I sent an email to my sons who are in the business to take on such issues. And, as often happens when they respond, I get challenged to think more about this than I ever would have without being in such a dialogue. As a result I reread the Carr with a critical eye that its depth deserves, and found that I appreciated his concern that was the occasion for the essay, but saw that he, like many of us, starts running with his arguments when he gets in the groove, and logic can take a back seat. I know when I get enamoured to a concept, it can take on a life of its own... In his essay, Carr argues that Nietzsche transit...

It didn't take long; I was getting weary of my constant attention to the grief of Job. But all it took was spending some time with real people who are confronting the reality of unrelenting pain, and the meaning of the Job dilemma came back into sharp focus. Tonight is was Venita. Other days (and nights) it's been Margy. An old friend who inhabited a wheelchair once declared, "You're only temporarily able bodied." She called those of us who walk without assistance TABs. That's a hard thing to hear when it's starting to look like you're getting a chronic illness. The hope that health and freedom from pain is in your future starts fading into a fog. These joy-filled women who used to glow with life are starting to grow desperate with dread that this is a corner turned, and they might become one of those who limp and wince into their futures. The words of Elihu ring out: "Take care; do not turn to iniquity, for this you have chosen rather than afflic...

Overheard in the breakroom: "The police will sometimes come up right behind you at night, hoping to get you to speed so they can give you a ticket. I hate that; it's wrong!" This sounds similar (maybe not equivalent...) to a female police officer standing on a street corner in a red-light district soliciting sexual services. When she catches a john, he gets the same outcome as the car driver who went over the limit. There is a price to pay for yeilding to base urges. Our boundaries are a blend of internal and external forces. In our culture, the tendency is toward external forces. When the pressure from headlights behind me makes me break the speed law, I have demonstrated external weighting on my boundaries. If I maintain my speed and tolerate the tailgating (that is wrong!), or maybe just pull over and let the impatient driver pass, that's evidence of strong internal boundaries on my value of abiding by posted laws. I wish I responded this way every time. Unfortunat...

Elihu really is a very complete composite of all the elements Job's friends present in the first half of the book. Their key argument is that God doesn't punish people without cause. If you're getting afflicted, you have some evil, whether it's hidden or apparent (4:7; 34:11, 12, 26, 27). Subordinate to this is that nobody is perfect; no one can stand before an almighty, perfect God and say they are without fault (4:17; 33:12). He takes on Job's assertion that living a righteous life doesn't bring a person any greater benefit than living as a sinner (35:3ff). Like most people of faith who acknowledge to their friends the insights and understanding they've experienced, Elihu shares his perspective on right living. Each of Job's other friends have done that, too, and he's felt the harsh blows of their condemnation: he isn't living like they think he should, and they consider it their obligation to let him know. So the let him have it. Their common ...

Premise: Elihu is a type of the soulish church (as opposed to the true Church/bride of Christ). And Elihu doesn't know what to do with Job. As Job is a type of Christ (true suffering servant, afflicted without cause, interceding for others), Elihu reveals much about the church throughout the past 2000 years. Elihu bursts on the scene from nowhere as a response to Job's tragic affliction, just as the soulish church shows up as a cultural response to the incredible circumstances of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. Every spectacular (and supernatural) phenomenon draws a crowd. Elihu's first response is burning anger. Three times in 32:2, and once in v. 5, he is described as burning with anger. Although he is never mentioned as an observer, apparently he accompanies Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar at the end of chapter two when they meet to console Job. Or maybe not; maybe he showed up later because 2:11 is explicite that Job's three friends — not four — made an appointm...

As I mentioned earlier, Elihu has been an object of interest as I've revisited the Book of Job once again. His role at the end of the book has been ignored or misunderstood from the dawning of this story on the human consciousness. Elihu? here's what Strong's Hebrew dictionary shows for H453:   אליהוּא    אליהוּ   'ĕlîyhû  'ĕlîyhû' (el-ee-hoo', el-ee-hoo'); From H410 and H1931; God of him; Elihu, the name of one of Job’s friends, and of three Israelites: - Elihu. God of him. I did a little search on the name Elihu in Wikipedia turned up 13: three characters in literature (one of them our subject in this blog), and ten individuals with Anno Domini birth certificates and social histories that can be researched and debated. The first one that got my attention is Elihu Yale , the namesake and one of the first benefactors of Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Here's his signature: One of the other significant Elihu namesakes is Elihu Root , an Amer...

Archibald MacLeish started writing a play in 1953 -- the year I was born -- that won the Pulitzer prize for drama in 1959. Its title is  J.B. , a modern adaptation of the biblical Book of Job. Carl Gustav Jung published his book, Answer to Job , in 1952. It was translated into English in 1954. Both of these works take the view that traditional religion (Christianity especially, is being indicted, I think) offers inadequate doctrines addressing suffering, calamity and affliction. Jung depicts God as cruel and unjust on one hand, and on the other, a poor card player to Satan the shark by unwittingly letting him get the opportunity to inflict evil on such a good and upright man as Job. Neither author appears to see the connection between Job and Jesus, or if they do, it is to affirm their rejection of the fact that God has sovereign control over a universe that delivers such horrors into the lives of good people. I'll need to revisit both works, as it's been over 30 years since re...