Pastors' Blog

In Japan, the land of my birth, the public has been stunned with the number of deaths linked to its culture of notoriously long work hours. So severe are the mounting statistics that the Japanese have coined a word for it, karoshi—“death by overwork.” It is estimated that more than 2000 suicides in 2015 were the result of work issues, chiefly overtime and overwork (www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-13/japan-s-bid-to-stop-death-by-overwork-seen-falling-short).

And when the court ruled that the suicide of a 24 year old female employee of the giant Dentsu ad agency was the result of illegally long hours on the job (105 hours of overtime per month!), the government scrambled to respond. Last month Prime Minister Shinzo Abe led a government panel to recommend that “an employee’s overtime should be kept under 100 hours in any single month, and average no more than 80 hours a month over any two- to six-month period, with an annual cap of 720 hours.” But activists have vigorously challenged that recommendation. Noriko Nakahara, a member of the National Association of Families Concerned About Karoshi, whose physician husband’s suicide was ruled karoshi, protested that “the 100-hour limit is too high and could legitimize a culture of excessive work that hurts the mental and physical health of employees” (ibid).

In an effort to promote “a healthier work culture,” the Japanese government has instituted what it calls a “Premium Friday” campaign—encouraging companies to allow their employees to leave early “on the last Friday of every month” (ibid). Well. At least it’s a start.

Truth is we in this nation can’t exactly point fingers at the Japanese. Our own can-do culture that applauds its overachieving, overworking sports heroes, entertainment and music stars, and business icons seems to bestow its highest laurels for all who are driven to succeed never mind the cost.

Could it be that what both nations need isn’t a “Premium Friday” once a month, but a restful Sabbath every week? “Come to Me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest,” offers the Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 11:28 GNT). “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth . . . but He rested on the seventh day” (Exodus 20:11 NIV). The Creator embedded within our DNA the universal need to discover in tandem, in relationship with Him our deepest and most satisfying rest—physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual rest.

Marva Dawn is right: “In an age that has lost its soul, Sabbath keeping offers the possibility of gaining it back. In an age desperately searching for meaning, Sabbath keeping offers a new hope” (in Gregory P. Nelson’s A Touch of Heaven 22).

But as Wayne Muller explains: “Sabbath is more than the absence of work; it is not just a day off, when we catch up on television and errands. It is the presence of something that arises when we consecrate a period of time to listen to what is most deeply beautiful, nourishing, or true. It is time consecrated with our attention, our mindfulness, honoring those quiet forces of grace or spirit that sustain and heal us” (Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives 8).

Plain and simple—God’s gift to us of the seventh-day Sabbath offers this civilization the very rest we’re dying for—a Sabbath rest for the rest of our lives. 

Plain and simple—won’t you take it?

Thanks to a faculty member of an engineering school in Italy (who with his wife has been watching our worship service), I read a fascinating piece this week by Tom Harford, “The Problem with Facts.” Couple it with this week’s TIME magazine cover story, “Is Truth Dead?”—and it is clear growing suspicions are becoming public conversation. Are we witnesses (even participants) to a dramatic shift in public ethos regarding truth telling and fact checking? 

Harford opens with the 1953 narrative of how Big Tobacco pulled off their stunning public relations coup by dissuading the public from believing the mounting evidence smoking causes cancer. In 1995 a Stanford University historian detailed the tobacco case closely. “This is the study of how ignorance is deliberately produced. . . . The facts about smoking—indisputable facts, from unquestionable sources—did not carry the day. The indisputable facts were disputed. The unquestionable sources were questioned. Facts, as it turns out, are important, but facts are not enough to win this kind of argument” (http://timharford.com/2017/03/the-problem-with-facts/).

In the on-going tug of war between the news media and the President, the question of truth and truth-telling, of facts and “alternative facts,” of news and “fake news,” has hit an unprecedented fever pitch. As a consequence the miasma of “he said-she said” has effectively obscured not only the public’s knowledge of “truth” but also its trust in the heretofore generally regarded reputable truth-tellers of the news media and the White House. That there are those who argue it’s always been this way—and after all, the Brexit proponents across the pond resorted to the same distortion of facts and truth to achieve their victory—hardly mitigates the obvious paradigm shift we now witness regarding public integrity, ethics and truth-telling. “In the radical democracy of social media, even the retweets of outraged truth squadders [those defending truth] has the effect of rebroadcasting false messages” (TIME 4-3-17 p 37). And so it goes. And it only gets worse.

But why be concerned with this food fight between our media and our politicians? Because truth really does matter. Pilate’s “What is truth?” dismissal, when the One who was and still is “the way, the truth and the life” stood before him, is a reminder of the high stakes fall-out when leaders waive truth aside in favor of expediency (see John 18:37-38; 14:6; 19:16). And if the crucifixion of Jesus portends the end result of when church and state collaborate to rid themselves of uncomfortable truth and uncompromising truth-tellers, then we do have reason to not only care about truth-telling today, but to also be concerned, deeply concerned.

Concerned that a public so easily persuaded by Big Tobacco marketers to reject what was “obvious” scientific evidence could just as easily become a public dissuaded by other “marketers” from believing compelling biblical evidence championed by a band of truth-tellers one day yet to come. The truth is—truth matters.

So how should you and I be living in these days of prevarication? (1) We must always tell the truth—“You shall not give false testimony. . . . Do not spread false reports. . . . Do not lie to each other” (Exodus 20:16; 23:1; Colossians 3:9). And (2) we must always live the truth—“Let your good works [words]  shine before others that they may glorify your Father in heaven” (see Matthew 5:16). Notice how high God raises the bar: “A glance, a word, even an intonation of the voice , may be vital with falsehood. Even facts may be so stated as to convey a false impression. . . . Everything that Christians do should be as transparent as the sunlight” (Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing 68 emphasis supplied).

Why? Because  truth matters. So in a world running out of it, I say let’s stand up and let it shine!

How can you heal someone’s pain, when you can’t feel someone’s pain? There is pain deep within our faith community and our university campus. And the truth is most of us can’t feel it. How could we possibly feel it? We’re white.

Years ago a friend gave me a book that I never got around to reading. Until a few days ago. It’s Paul Kivel’s exploration, Upending Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice. One glance at the title and I knew that this wouldn’t be for me—since I’m not a racist, since I see little if any racism around me, so why should I worry? That was over twenty year ago. Now the book speaks volumes:

It is not necessarily a privilege to be white, but it certainly has its benefits. . . . Privileges are economic “extras” that those of us who are middle class and wealthy gain at the expense of poor and working class people of all races. Benefits, on the other hand, are the advantages that all white people gain at the expense of people of color regardless of economic position. . . . [J]ust because we don’t have the economic privileges of those with more money doesn’t mean we haven’t enjoyed some of the benefits of being white. (28)

Kivel runs through a checklist of such privileges: we’re able to count on police protection rather than harassment; we’re able to choose where we want to live with safe neighborhoods and decent schools; we’re “given more attention, respect and status in conversations than people of color”; in news, music, history books and the media “we see people who look like us” in a positive light; we have more access, credibility and recourse with lawyers and courts; “nothing that we do is qualified, limited, discredited or acclaimed simply because of our racial background,” et al (28-29).

And white privilege begins in childhood: people around us will have higher expectations for us as children; more money will be spent on our schools; we’ll get called on more times in class; we will see people who look like us in our textbooks; “and if we get into trouble adults will expect us to be able to change and improve, and therefore will discipline or penalize us less or differently than children of color” (29).

Kivel concludes: “All else being equal, it pays to be white. We will be accepted, acknowledged and given the benefit of the doubt. Since all else is not equal we each receive different benefits or different levels of the same benefits from being white” (29).

How can you possibly heal someone’s pain, when you can’t feel someone’s pain? 

Ask the Good Samaritan. The crime victim was a Jew, and Jews hated Samaritans—so why should the Samaritan bother at all? He couldn’t feel the victim’s pain. But as Martin Luther King, Jr. observed about Jesus’ parable: Whereas the priest and the Levite fretted, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”, the Samaritan asked, “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” (Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. 140).

What will happen to her, what will happen to him if I don’t stop and pour myself in their pain? It’s the Golden Rule hammered out in the crucible of another person’s pain. The Samaritan knelt beside the victim and administered (ministered) to him the emotional and physical intervention the brutalized man desperately needed. And in his self-sacrificial love for his “neighbor,” we see not only the truth about Christ who knelt beside us, but the truth Christ calls His radical followers to embrace: As you would have others treat you, you treat them.

There is a pain deep within our faith community and our university campus. It may not be your pain—but until it becomes your business, the pain—plain and simple—cannot and will not be healed. In the school. In the church. In our own hearts.

Update: Since this blog was posted, the University has released the following videos as part of the ongoing dialogue on this campus - Official University Response | President's Remarks During Thursday Chapel

A friend of mine put me onto the Christian philosopher James K. A. Smith (Calvin College) and his book, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. Smith’s book, as it turns out, is “an idiot’s guide” (my words) to the massive tome (900 pages) of the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, Secular Age—a work recognized as a definitive analysis of our secular age. Smith describes Taylor’s work as “a genealogy of the secular and an archaeology of our angst” (ix) and sets out to make Taylor’s provocative conclusions accessible to the rest of us mortals.

Both Taylor and Smith turn to the memoir of the English writer Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened Of, a book Smith describes as “an existential map of our secular age” (4). In it Julian Barnes admits, “‘I was never baptized, never sent to Sunday School. I have never been to a normal church service in my life’” (5). I.e., his is the life most of us would consider secular.

And yet consider the poignant depth of the confession Barnes makes: “I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him” (5).

How many people today would identify with his confession: “I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him”?

The striking point James Smith’s book drives home is that the world the church occupies today is a very changed world. The answers we’ve prepared in order to witness to our faith are questions seculars aren’t even asking. For many of them nothing is “missing” from their lives—“so you can’t just come proclaiming the good news of a Jesus who fills their ‘God-shaped hole.’ They don’t have any sense that the ‘secular’ lives they’ve constructed are missing a second floor” (vii). I.e., this isn’t Paul’s Mars Hill (Acts 17) world where even the intellectuals are surrounded by their gods. “No, it seems that many have managed to construct a world of significance that isn’t at all bothered by questions of the divine” (ibid).

And yet in Julian Barnes’s confession we hear the faint longing of the secular heart. “I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him.” It’s what Taylor and Smith describe as the “haunting” of the secular mind, a longing for the transcendent (God) while embracing only the immanent (this world of here and now). Most of us, Smith observes, live in the in-between of these two worlds, “where both our agnosticism and our devotion are mutually haunted and haunting”(4).

So shall we abandon any effort to connect with this secular age for Christ? Not at all. First, I think of John Stott’s counsel to Christians who want to witness to their faith, “Remember—the other man’s conscience is always on your side.” I.e., the Spirit of God impresses divine truth via the conscience. Thus the “haunting” that Julian Barnes’s confession intimates reflects the light planted deep within the heart, “the true light, which enlightens everyone . . .” John 1:9 NRSV emphasis supplied). Or as Paul put it: “God has dealt to each one a measure of faith” (Romans 12:3). Good news—no one you meet is beyond the reach of God.

Second, the power of love may be the most persuasive argument God can make—through you. A 900-page tome would be enough to scare anyone away from plunging into our secular world for Christ. But intellectual prowess is hardly ever overcome by a matching wit. The power of change is embedded in selfless love. “The strongest argument in favor of the gospel is a loving and lovable Christian” (Ministry of Healing 470).

Two reasons why you are just what God needs to love the Julian Barnes’s of this world back to Him. They don’t believe in Him, but they miss Him—you know Him, and you love them—talking about a match made in heaven—let’s go!