Read All About It!

Let me offer a short take on three news items from this past week.  They have to do with marriage, fundamentalism and the dark night of the soul. 

Marriage

On Wednesday the  Post-Gazette reported that the three-month marriage of 84 Lumber founder and local philanthropist Joe Hardy and his 23 year-old wife has come to an end.  Read all about it.  The unhappy couple reports that their marriage is “irretrievably broken.”  No one seems to know the terms of the split, but at the very least, the former Mrs. Hardy should be able to keep the engagement ring and the Porsche she was given before she signed the pre-nuptial agreement.

“Let marriage be held in honor among all,” Hebrews 13:4 reads.  We live in an culture that is hardly marriage-honoring in any way, and somehow think that a constitutional amendment will cure our ills.  Mr. Hardy may be a great entrepreneur and seems to have given away a fair amount of his fortune.  But he mocks marriage.  No role model he. 

So, any ideas on how Park Church might help strengthen marriages in our marriage-mocking culture?

Fundamentalism

Did you see any of this week’s CNN series, “God’s Warriors,”  with Christiane Amanpour?  It replays this weekend.  Read all about it.  

The series looked at the extreme edges of the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.  I saw most of six hours of coverage (sorry, I had to watch “The Office” during the first half hour of last night’s program) and believe that it was an important journalistic effort. 

Some critics have accused the very format of promoting a sort of moral equivalence among God’s Jewish, Moslem and Christian “warriors.”  It’s a fair concern and one I don’t think the producers worked hard enough to avoid.  There is a huge difference between the Jewish lobbyist who works hard and legally to advance Israel’s interests, no matter how questionable, in the halls of congress and a suicide bomber on a bus in downtown Tel Aviv.  There is a yawning chasm between the Christian parents who have chosen to homeschool their children and Iranian mother who would gladly see her last surviving son die as his older brothers died when used as human shields to clear landmines during the Iran-Iraq war.  And it can only be called a cheap shot when Christiane Amanpour likened Teen Mania, a conservative Christian ministry that is certainly too “out there” for my taste, with the Taliban, just because it promotes chastity until marriage and modest clothes for teenage girls. 

The program was flawed in some significant ways, but deserves a careful viewing.  We Christians should not be quite so quick to defend ourselves against perceived attacks and a little more prepared to ask ourselves what we can learn in seeing how others see us. 

Any ideas on ways that Park Presbyterian Church might have a witness to the world that is not based on confrontation but on taking our light out from under the bushel?

The Dark Night of the Soul

The current Time magazine features a long article based on a recent book taken from the hitherto unpublished letters of Mother Teresa who died just 10 years ago.  Read all about it. 

In her letters, Mother Theresa talks candidly about the spiritual dryness and theological doubts that marked most of her ministry years.  The article quotes the tiresome professional atheist Christopher Hitchens as delighting in Teresa’s “realization that religion is a human fabrication.”  Having quoted Hitchens, Time’s writer wisely ignores his sophomoric analysis for most of the rest of the article. 

The article spends more time with the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, himself a member of the Missionaries of Charity, and the editor and compiler of the letters.  We are reminded of the “dark night of the soul,” a phrase made famous by the Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross.  We are told that “Kolodiejchuk produced the book as proof of the faith-filled perseverance that he sees as her most spiritually heroic act.” 

Mother Teresa’s dark night of the soul was agonizingly long, but her faith-filled perseverance, a gift of God, outlasted the dark night. 

Any ideas on how Park Presbyterian Church might minister more effectively to those living through the dark night of the soul?

I’m eager to hear from you.

See you Sunday,

Bill