Signposts

I think that the projector has replaced the hymnal and as the saying goes, what we’re left with is a ‘Seven – Eleven song service’ (singing seven choruses eleven times each). Some of the songs don’t even have a reference to God at all.
The loss of some of the most precious hymns to this generation is robbing congregations of a depth, breadth and richness that is becoming more necessary in these times when faith is being challenged in every avenue of life.
On the other hand, I feel that the church should take advantage of every type of multimedia presentation of the Gospel including contemporary Christian music that appeals especially to the youth but that’s all ‘frosting on the cake’ and does not mean it has spiritual depth.

Seth,

For once your visage matches the sentiments in your latest post. Yes, acquisitiveness can be a problem, but so can poverty! Have you lost your mind? Clearly, the obsession with material things creates a moral emptiness. Compare that though with the emptiness in a family as another newborn dies from cholera.

Some people, probably single people, may thrive in poverty, but I don’t know of anybody who writes next to “Career goal”, “abject poverty”. Similarly, I don’t know of hordes of immigrants breaking down the fences to get into Sudan.

I’m sorry but I sense certain psychological needs are met by the sentiments in your scribblings. Frequently, people adapt their views to their circumstances. The intellectuals of late 19th century Russia embraced radical socialism as they were increasingly frozen out of pathways to higher status. Just as some people are blinded by their material possessions, are you blinded of the impact of your circumstances on your views?

As that great social philosopher, Forest Gump, once said, “Life is like a box of chocolates”. Frequently, our choice is between 2 problems: poverty with a greater likelihood of famine and disease, and a level of wealth that could result in moral emptiness. Roll the dice. Which problem would choose? I, like most people, would avoid the poverty and risk the moral emptiness.

Seth, come on. Happiness is not the monopoly of people having no other option than to drink infected water.

R. Graf

Happy New Year Seth!

I share some of you struggles in this area. I grew up in Hanford in the category I would call lower middle class. My dad worked at Pirelli and my mom didn’t work. We had 6 kids so you do the math. Mom’s parents farmed 80 acres in Earlimart and dad’s parents were basically drifters. We grew up in an old 2 story house near Woodrow Wilson in central Hanford. Not poor, but not middle class either.

Went to college, worked hard, built our business and now I live in a big house in north Hanford with a pool and two dogs. Not rich but I can buy a new carbon fibre bike as needed without taking out an equity loan.

Gaining some assets is a double edged sword. On the positive side you gain independance. But that is also a negative. You have less worries about paying bills but you have more worries about losing your stash. I pay insurance in case I die, get sick, get disabled, get sued – more so than some people take home every month. I have money to travel but no time to do it.

Does all this become a problem for my spiritual life? If Jesus walked up to me said “sell all this stuff and follow me” I ‘think’ I would would but I’m not 100% sure. Maybe not my Ketrel but most things. I’d like to think it doesn’t take my focus off the Lord but maybe it does. I’d like to think that having extra money to help my parents and my church makes it all right but maybe that is a cop out. It’s a struggle. Maybe that is the Holy Spirit saying “watch yourself, bud.”

If you want a back to basic, church in the raw experience, check out Calvary Chapel Hanford’s sunday night service in Lemoore. They are seeding a new church there. One classroom with a handful of people, metal chairs, a guy with a guitar leading music and no jumbotrons!

Hi Seth. I like the new look. I really enjoyed this post. My husband and I had the opportunity for 5 years to teach a marriage and family class at our church. There was a lesson on money and budgeting and one thing that I always brought up because it wasn’t always the same people… was that we seem to be happier when we have less money. I know to most people that sounds crazy because who doesn’t like money. We do fairly well. We have a roof over our head, food to eat, clean clothes to wear, warmth which is so important in our crazy cold Northern Nevada weather. But I have found that when we are doing a little better than that, that is when the “I wants” start. And we just don’t seem to be as happy. But when we don’t have that we more able to remember the more important things in our lives and are able to be more thankful for those things.

The other thing that I wanted to say was about how you said the mass was mostly in spanish and that didn’t bother you. We used to have a missionary in our ward that was from Tonga. One Sunday he got up to bear his testimony of the gospel and Jesus Christ. He stated talking in english but the more he talked he slipped back into his native tongue and while I didn’t understand what he was saying I have never felt the spirit stronger than I did at that moment. It was an experience that I will never forget. So I think everyone should take the opportunity if ever presented to them to hear about the gospel in another language than their own. I heard someone say a couple of months ago… ” You can be deceived by what you see, hear, and what you read but you can’t be deceived by what you feel. “

Seth,

You have deified poverty! Just as you have decried bourgeois spirituality, you have gone to the extreme of placing poverty on a pedestal. I am reminded of the Jacobins and their attempt to replace Christianity with the “republic of virtue”. There were these scenes of a woman on a throne dolled up as “virtue” and being paraded about on the shoulders of the equivalent of altar boys. For you, the woman would be “poverty”.

For someone who blasts materialistic conceptions of the “good”, you seem to have adopted one to plant the stake of spiritual authenticity. This may come as a shock but “poverty” is a material condition. This conviction of yours that is based on a material conception, as you so readily admit, has more to do with your own comfort level. Those with less might have a sense of awkwardness amongst those with more, and vice versa. Now we have gotten of the crux of the problem: How do we get people to rise above this damaging self-awareness? The mega-churches with the jumbotrons may not be the real issue. The presence or absence of these things has very little to do with it. It’s the hearts of the participants! How accepting, caring, open, and humble are they? That is the key.

Your rants remind me of the bohemian attacks on bourgeois respectability. Self-described artistes flaunted their superiority over the mere striving for upward mobility. Similarly, the old, dinosaur rich resented these new upstarts within their midst. They were said not be cultured enough. Have you been poisoned by the ages old combination of class envy and prejudice? Knowing you, I doubt it … but I am beginning to wonder.

R. Graf