Author Archives: Bo Grimes

A Legacy of Faith

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legacy of faith coverI was just handed a copy of this book by my pastor, who won’t have time to read it until after Lent. Apparently Rick Hathaway lives somewhere near me, and he came by the church and gave the pastor a copy. I’ve skimmed it and read the first two chapter just now at lunch, and it is one of those right-books-that-fell-into- my-hands-just-when-I-needed-to-read-it kind of moments.

I’ve been struggling with the concept of blessings. I’ve been praying that God make me able to be trusted with good things. Life has been a real struggle the past couple of years, not least of all on the financial front, and this book is a much needed tonic that takes “a fresh look at blessing.”

I am not and have not been looking for abundance, only “provision and preservation” (31), and I have been struggling with the theology of providence for some time. This book isn’t so much about that as it is a reworking of the concept of blessings, contra Jabez, I suppose, but he has yet to mention that particular book, and also morality, self-esteem and mentorship.

Of late I have also been praying that God’s grace be sufficient to me (2 Cor 12:9) and today’s reading in Streams in the Desert is on just that. The devotion comes from someone who had just been saying the same prayer when it it him:

In one moment the message came straight to my soul, as a rebuke for offering such a prayer as, “Lord, let Thy grace be sufficient for me”; for the answer was almost as an audible voice, “How dare you ask that which is?” God cannot make it any more sufficient than He has made it; get up and believe it, and you will find it true, because the Lord says it in the simplest way: “My grace is (not shall be or may be) sufficient for thee.”

Legacy of Faith came right on the heels of that reading today.

[more later, saved for now, back to work]

The Unchanging God Moved By Love

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A discussion I first saw at Ancient Hebrew Poetry and then followed over to MetaCatholic on theopaschitism and the impassibility of God reminded me of something that I “grasped” in a meditation on the death of Christ a few Easter’s back but never developed and promptly forgot about.

Doug at MetaCatholic writes:

The mystery of the cross is that God’s free choice and action is to be done to, to be made the recipient of human action and hostility, to be made passive and to suffer. But if this is not a free choice, above all in his divine nature yet also in his human, but is instead a consequence forced upon him by others and their actions, then it loses, I think, its real power.

I think this is true. In the circles I ran in years ago in undergraduate school it was commonplace to hear people say “Jesus didn’t have to die on the cross. He could have called down legions of angels…”

He could, of course, have chosen not to die. He could have come in judgment. However, and here’s what I grasped during my meditation on the cross: He did choose to die, but He chose it before the creation of the world… and yet, chose to create the world anyway, knowing the consequence of that free act in His divine nature was to also choose the cross as a free act in His human nature.

I don’t know from theopaschitism, and the technical theological aspects of impassibility are beyond my pay grade, but I do know this: At the death of a friend, God wept. There’s more mystery than meaning in that, and all I can do is worship the unchanging God who is moved by love.

Why I am Lutheran—Part II: Baptism

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Last month I started a series on why I am Lutheran, explaining that I wasn’t raised Lutheran but drifted towards it while studying the Reformation and then fully embracing it after attending a Lutheran church.  In Part I, I described the importance of the liturgy and how it helps to enable me to worship God in Spirit and Truth.

In no way in this series am I trying to diminish any other Christian worship tradition or to suggest that they “do it wrong” or “don’t get it” or even that they don’t share some of the same elements, priorities and focuses as Lutherans.  I simply wish to examine why I am Lutheran both as a way of helping me to refresh my own faith journey and, hopefully, as a way to help others revisit and re-encounter their own.

When I first began attending a Lutheran church it didn’t take me very long to notice something quite extraordinary, and I don’t think anyone can worship in the Lutheran tradition for very long without realizing this:  Baptism is not seen as a one time past event but a living and on-going present reality.

Because we see the outward sign of the inner grace when a person is baptized, it becomes easy to see that sacrament as a one-time event and to see the Eucharist as a more frequent sacrament because we celebrate it weekly or bi-monthly or quarterly.  But not so!  Baptism, rightly understood and practiced, is a daily, even hourly, sacrament.

In Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther, Jonathan D. Trigg explains that in Luther’s thought, “Baptism’s ‘present tense’ is central – its abiding force in the Christian’s life [is] ever available for an encounter with God.”  Luther insisted that Christian progress is not onwards “from” baptism, but a repeated return “to” it.

So removed in time, many people are unaware that the Reformation was a slugfest that would make today’s “culture wars” look like cotillions.  Luther’s biographer, Roland Bainton, once wrote that Luther would have been a “troubled spirit in a tranquil age,” and the Reformation was anything but a tranquil age, and much of the turmoil centered on the sacraments.

Luther struggled mightily with himself, his age and even other reformers to develop a view of the sacraments as mystery rather than magic and as means of grace rather than mere signs and symbols.  It was a hard balance to strike with the Catholic Church on one side and both other reformers and the Anabaptists on the other.  It was through this struggle that Luther developed a view of baptism that is complex and nuanced but quite scripturally sound and rich.  It can not be understood, let alone dismissed, in an instant.

To dismiss Luther’s view as “works righteous” as some other protestant denominations do (see Fred G. Zaspel’s 1988 “Baptism: A Reply to a Lutheran Catechism“) is to misunderstand that baptism is God’s act, a divine testimony to what “grace alone” really means, whereby He imparts the blessings of forgiveness, life, and salvation.

To exclude children is to misunderstand that grace precedes faith.  Luther argued against the Catholics that the sacraments did not work through some power of their own, but through faith.  “I may be wrong on indulgences,” Luther declared, “but as to the need for faith in the sacraments I will die before I recant.”[1]  That faith, however, is itself a gift of God, and there is no indication that He withholds it on the basis of age or that it is merely individualistic in nature.

Faith is both individual and communal.  We celebrate Holy Communion in community but not as community.  In the Eucharist we stand alone before God, each one eating and drinking, the faith of the individual, given as a gift from God in baptism, appropriating the further grace offered in the meal.

Baptism, on the other hand, is celebrated not only in community but as community.  Bainton called it the “sociological sacrament” which “links the Church to society.”[2] In baptism we have the baptized, the sponsors, the family and the local congregation all participating together as the called and gathered body of Christ.  Luther would argue that it was not only the unarticulated faith of the child, like that of the faith of a sleeping adult, but the faith of the community undergirding the child which is present in the sacrament, which is still exclusively the work of God.

And so the baptismal font is an integral and indispensable part of Lutheran worship every Sunday and every season.  Throughout the church year we return to it again and again, and not just when someone is baptized.  We also spend years preparing a child for confirmation, which is really the utterly miraculous moment when the child affirms her baptism, publicly professing his faith in Christ before others, literally confirming that the faith of the family, sponsors and congregation is now his and hers.

No where else have I ever been so continually reminded and aware of the joy and wonder of my own baptism and that of others as I have in a Lutheran church.  Thanks be to God!

  1. quoted in Bainton, Roland H. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, Pierce and Smith, 1950, p. 107 [↩]
  2. Ibid, p. 110 [↩]

Marriage, Abortion, Fatherhood

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Yesterday, I stumbled across a quote by Tertullian on abortion at the same time that I received an email promotion for two movies on abortion. Today I was going through some old files, and I found a letter I sent to “The Guardian” (the one at WSU in Ohio, not England) back in 1996 when my wife was pregnant with our third child. I was responding to a letter or article by someone named Craig Naiper.

I’m posting the letter as it was written as a way to preserve it for myself, because I find it interesting that my views haven’t changed, and I am dismayed that abortion is generally not a relevant political topic in 21st century America. I also can see the seeds of a way of thinking that have since solidified. I dislike abstractions. Jesus always dealt with the concrete person before him.

Mr. Craig Napier
c/o The Guardian

Mr. Napier:

In your brief note in the May 1 issue of “The Guardian,” you wrote, “I don’t really believe words by a man are relevant in a situation that he is not bonded to by body or blood.” In other words you are rephrasing the current trendy cliché that when it comes to abortion, “men should have no say.” (At least that is what I believe is implied in your statement. If it’s not, then most of what follows will be wasted space.)

The problem with your thinking, and with the reasoning of those who think this way (I usually refer to them, for convenience sake, as liberals even though that word has been so devalued and distorted it has lost any real meaning), is that you create generalized, abstract conceptual frameworks and then seek to impose them, by force of law if necessary, upon concrete people in particular circumstances.

The major problem with “liberalism” in the waning of the twentieth century is that its practitioners believe themselves to be beyond moral categories, so they anoint themselves the arbiters of truth for the “unenlightened.”

Well, no one has anointed you, or anyone else, with the authority to tell my wife and me that I, as a man, have no say what-so-ever in choices that effect our children while they are in her womb, and no one made you, or anyone else the arbiter of whether or not I have anything relevant to say?

I am the father of three [now five, two adopted]. One is as yet unborn, but she has a name already; it’s [deleted for safety]. She has a heart that beats, two kidneys, ten fingers, ten toes, and a normal, fully functional brain. I can feel, and actually see, her move inside my wife. She is due on June 30th.

All this is not particularly relevant to my point, but it is very relevant to me, so forgive the digression. My point is this: my wife and I decided before we ever married that all of our decisions would be mutual. Now you might say that she merely allows me a say in this regard which means that she is the real decision maker, but this is not true.

If I may make a comparison. Let’s say there is a family and the man works outside the home, and the woman, by mutual consent, stays home with the kids, or vice versa as in my case, and they have a joint checking account, and the woman goes out and buys an orbital sander. (Well why not? What did you think I was going to say- a dress?)

Since she did not “earn” that money in the marketplace, is the man merely allowing her to have a say in how it’s spent, making him the real authority? To argue this is to misunderstand the fundamental nature of marriage- oneness. This is not just some meaningless buzzword found in poetry and music; it is as much a descriptive statement of the reality of marriage as πr2 is a description of the area of a circle.

This is why sex and child rearing should wait until after marriage. If you do not understand how two people can actually be one in all aspects, thus giving both a say in all decisions, then it is because you are bounded by a cultural worldview that won’t allow your mind to make the necessary paradigm shift. However, please don’t presume to tell my wife and me who gets to make which decisions in our relationship, and don’t tell us which of us has anything relevant to say about our children’s well-being.

In trying to reason in a general, abstract way about mankind, or humankind if you would rather, you actually end up engaging in tyranny in a particular way; by telling concrete men and women everywhere, in all times, and in all circumstance that despite what they as individuals may choose for themselves, there is only one “correct” policy, which is that men have no say, and that only certain people have relevancy to policy debates in a democracy.

This is the exact same flaw, just a different form, as the one made by those who protested the newspaper’s inclusion of a particular advertisement [context of Napier’s letter, I presume. I have forgotten.] They were arguing that their belief, pro-choice, be imposed, in the form of censorship, on those who disagree. You are arguing, if in fact you believe that fathers should have no part in the abortion decision making process, that your belief be binding upon me. My wife and I can decide for ourselves.

Besides the above argument, there is another reason, one extremely vital to our country’s current social problems, why your statement about men’s relevance is wrong-minded. One of our gravest problems is that we are becoming a fatherless nation. I do not have any current statistics on hand, but more and more children are being fathered by men who, in many cases, are already fathers to other children through different women, and who, in few cases, take any responsibility for any of the children they father.

On top of this, there are abusive fathers who beat their children, dead-beat dads who skip out on them, and workaholic fathers who ignore them. All your statement about men’s relevancy does is make it easier for men to shirk their responsibilities and ignore their mistakes. You can’t argue that a man has no say in whether his children even get to live or not and then expect him to hang around and raise them.

There is another fallacy in your brief comments. You use a line from the poem, “Just Becuz U Believe in Abortion Doesn’t Mean U’re Not Pro-Life,” where Laini Mataka writes, “I thank Mother-God for the technology that allows a woman to free herself from the possibility of becoming a horrible mother.”

Can’t you see the glaring contradiction in this reasoning? You can’t stop being a horrible mother by becoming a hideous one can you? Can she become better by becoming worse? Maybe stating it as an oxymoron would help: you suggest she becomes a life-giving murderer, a nurturing destroyer, a benign cancer or that she engages in benevolent infanticide.

Abortion is an absolute, complete, and final act of violence against a child for an adult’s self-interest. Ms. Mataka, and you (since you offer her quote as a homily for our edification), argues that a woman who knows she would make a bad mother somehow redeems herself by killing her child.

If she knows, with enough certainty to kill her child, that she would make a bad mother, then she should abstain from intercourse, period. If she doesn’t do that, then she doesn’t somehow elevate and ennoblize herself by killing the child, as you and Ms. Mataka suggest.

Your reasoning in both regards discussed in this letter shows how your arguments are, if I may be allowed another oxymoron– a flash of darkness.

Sincerely,
Bo Grimes

Ancient Wisdom on Abortion

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I ran across this quote today in a completely unrelated search, at The Tertullian Project, found in Tertullian’s Apologeticum:

“To us murder is once for all forbidden ; so even the child in the womb, while yet the mother’s blood is still being drawn on to form the human being, it is not lawful for us to destroy. To forbid birth is only quicker murder. It makes no difference whether one take away the life once born or destroy it as it comes to birth. He is a man, who is to be a man; the fruit is always present in the seed.”

Vision Video has a resource that they emailed to me just today about abortion:

I Was Wrong — Norma McCorvey, “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade, never could have imagined the outcome of her deception: 4,000 abortions a day since 1973. Norma never had an abortion, but her Supreme Court case brought abortion on demand to America. Darkness and disillusionment plagued her life with baby parts, alcohol, drugs, and suicidal attempts. The power of prayer plus the loving actions of a little girl and others drove Norma from working in an abortion center into the arms of Jesus.

Joyce Zounis’ choice of abortion, not once but seven times, nearly cost her life. Tormented by disbelief, she lived a nightmare of anger, guilt, and disconnection. She grieves not only for her seven children but also for the heritage of their children. Touched by the truth of God’s tender love through a radio show, Joyce now shares her gripping story to reach those who desperately need hope and healing.

I Was Wrong captures the changed hearts of two women restored by the redemptive forgiveness of Jesus Christ and brings a deeper understanding of how abortion strikes at the heart and soul of America.

Distant Thunder (Special Edition) — Things are not always as they seem… especially when entering the halls of a desperate mind in this gripping supernatural thriller. Struggling to keep her fragile sanity from unraveling, Prosecutor Ann Brown is offered a murder case that will challenge everything she believes to be true. Uncertain at first whether to accept the assignment, a harrowing encounter with Defense Attorney Tom Condan convinces her to meet the challenge. The deeper she investigates, reality and tormenting delusions collide as she encounters an evil force as unnerving as it is foreboding. In this award-winning movie, terrifying secrets are exposed, and you’ll discover the shocking twist which reveals the chilling and unforeseeable truth.
 Time: 1 hr 5 min | Production Year: 2006

Which Theologian Are You

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You scored as a Anselm.  Anselm is the outstanding theologian of the medieval period. He sees man’s primary problem as having failed to render unto God what we owe him, so God becomes man in Christ and gives God what he is due. You should read ‘Cur Deus Homo?‘

Anselm 100%
Martin Luther 87%
Augustine 80%
Friedrich Schleiermacher 80%
John Calvin 73%
Karl Barth 73%
Jonathan Edwards 60%
Jürgen Moltmann 47%
Paul Tillich 33%
Charles Finney 27%

Real Excellence

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Chuck Colson recently commented on the performance enhancing drug epidemic in professional sports in “Monsters of Our Own Making,” an article he wrote for Breakpoint. Colson was a strong influence on me years ago, especially his book Loving God, in which he introduced me to William Wilberforce. Colson acknowledged his debt to Wilberforce by creating The Wilbeforce Forum, and if you haven’t seen “Amazing Grace” you should watch it tonight!

With all due respect to Colson, however, I didn’t think his reasoning about the distinctions between real and false excellence in “Monsters of Our Own Making” was very nuanced or convincing.

He asks, “As our capacity to reengineer the human body grows, what kind of society will we become? Then he quotes Leon Kass of “The Washington Post” who wrote “We might lose sight of the difference between real and false excellence, and eventually not care.” Colson goes on to talk about the model of Eric Liddell, the runner who wouldn’t “compete in the Olympic 100-meter event because it was scheduled on a Sunday, so he trained for the 400-meter race, which required completely different skills. And he not only won, he set a new world record.”

Liddell said : “I believe God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.” And Colson agrees “that’s a pleasure we can all feel when we use the abilities God has given us–when we reflect His image, not the image of our own making or a chemists.”

That’s fine as far as it goes. I do not approve of the use of steroids or other drugs, and I agree with his premise that the society is partly responsible for the use of steroids, but I think his analysis does not go any where deep enough.

What is the distinction between “real” and “false” excellence? Is it “real” excellence when an affluent parent can afford to pay for a personal trainer, hours at the batting cage or skating rink, or private coaches? Is it “real” excellence when a high school athlete uses legally prescribed drugs to “push through the pain” when another may not have access to basic health care or nutrition?

What we choose to call “real” excellence reflecting God’s image is conditioned by many socially and culturally unexamined presuppositions. I admire Liddell, too, but human history only honors and remembers the victors. My kids love “Remember the Titans,” and it’s an inspirational story, but would it have been any less inspirational if the Titans had lost? No. Would it have been told? No, again. Liddell’s act of conscience would have been just as pleasing to God had he not run and won the 400 and had we never heard of him.

Real God-pleasing excellence is stopping to help up the runner who was pushed to the side of the field, even if it cost you the race, or even if he comes back and wins, beating you in the process.

The rampant drug use in professional sports is truly a “monster of our own making,” but  the  “monster” is that our model for excellence is warped.  Steroid use is only a reflection of that.  It could vanish tomorrow from sports forever and athletics would still be a flawed model for “real” excellence.

True excellence, real excellence, is seeking the pleasure of the Creator over the pleasures of His creation.

“But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” (1 Sam 16:7)

Advent Romantic

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Most people have no idea I’m a Romantic, in the classical sense (irony intended) but I’m just flat hopeless. I believe in Great Love, High Adventure, Noble Causes and Glorious Death! I’m right there with Thoreau wanting to suck the marrow out of life. Like Gatsby I have “a heightened sensitivity to the promise of life,” a promise that is never fulfilled, at least not this side of paradise, but I still keep expecting to see it, watching for it, waiting, only to be disappointed again and again.

It makes me mad. Unfortunately, I am often an angry person. It’s something I’ve been struggling to change for a long time, and in the struggle over the years I have come to see that often my anger derives from disappointment, disappointment that the promise is broken, but not by He who gave it, but sadly by those who received it.

I want to scream at the world: “Wake up! Can’t you see that this isn’t all there is, that this can’t begin to compare with what can be, what should be and what will be! Why do you drink your own urine and call it ambrosia when there’s Living Water for the asking!”

In The Great Gatsby, Daisy is corrupt at her core. Like her namesake, she is white on the outside, creating an expectation of purity, but her core is yellow, like gold, the love of which is the root of all evil, and she is corrupt, rich beyond avarice, but morally bankrupt. And so the world, too, is broken and corrupt, and I should have no expectation that it is otherwise, but , but, I also know that “There is hope for [our] future,” that He will “turn [our] mourning into joy; [He] will comfort [us], and give [us] gladness for sorrow.”

And so I watch and wait, each time hoping to see just a glimmer of what may be because one day it shall be. It’s rare and fleeting, but it’s there for those with eyes to see. When you see it you despair because in His grace He sometimes allows us to see what could have been had we but not turned away from paradise to gaze back on Sodom. Oh, but when we see it we also rejoice because in His grace He gives us the hope, the certainty of knowing, that one day the glass will no longer be dim, and what we only glimpse occasionally now we will one day gaze on eternally.

And so it’s not wrong to watch for those glimpses of the Gospel, those “patches of Godlight” we sometimes see as we walk “in a gloomy wood, astray gone from the direct path.” Each and every glimpse of Godlight we get is worth a thousand shadowy disappointments.

What does it say about my character? It says I’m a broken human, and it says I’m a hoping saint. It says I’m a Advent Romantic, and I say come on in, the water’s fine.

Why I Am Lutheran—Part I: Liturgy

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I’ve never agreed with the statement that familiarity breeds contempt. I have found that all too often familiarity breeds inattention, not apathy or callousness so much as forgetful neglect. Unfortunately, we humans all too often take for granted that which is most precious and familiar to us.

And it’s not just “stuff” we do that with, is it? We do it with practices, traditions, rituals and even beliefs. We get so familiar with them that we stop noticing. And then a child asks “Is God real?”, or a friend asks “Why is God silent in my grief?”, or a neighbor asks “Why are you Lutheran?” In order to follow Peter’s injunction to “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15) we are forced to notice again that which we ceased truly seeing.

I wasn’t raised Lutheran. I chose Lutheranism after first studying Reformation history in graduate school and then actually worshiping at a Lutheran church, so I was forced to think through many of those aspects of our faith traditions that we tend to take for granted. As we begin this new church year, I thought I would begin an informal series on why I am Lutheran, both as a way of helping me to refresh my own faith journey and, hopefully, as a way to help others revisit and re-encounter their own.

From the title, it may look like I have a systematic plan for this series, but in reality I chose this title after I saw where my thoughts were going, and I have no idea what aspect I may focus on next. Other Lutherans may have different priorities and preferences, but liturgical worship was one of the most powerful factors that drew me towards Lutheranism.

As Jesus taught, the only “right” way to worship God is “in Spirit and Truth,” (John 4:24) so I don’t want to imply that liturgical worship is the One True worship. There are liturgical churches, like the Roman Catholic, where I do not feel I could worship God “in Truth” because of profound doctrinal differences. I do not think liturgical worship is—in and of itself—somehow superior; however, I do feel it has within its form the potential to be more rich, connected and elemental than more modern forms of worship.

Too often those who are unfamiliar with it argue that liturgical worship is dead or canned or overly ritualistic or boring. As Simon Chan, in Liturgical Theology, argues, these “concerns should not be dismissed lightly, as [they] grew out of the deeply spiritual sense that the Spirit can not be domesticated.” (126) However, any worship that is not “in Spirit and Truth” is dead, period.

Before I even knew it, I was drawn to liturgical worship by its “work.” In The Church’s Liturgy, Michael Kunzler explains that in its profane origins “Literally translated ‘liturgy’ means ‘work of the people/ for the people’.” However, “on account of the unique character of Christian worship people at first… avoided a general concept for it. When ‘liturgy’ was adopted for it, it was not however forgotten… that liturgy first of all is the work of God, who brings about salvation in the world through Christ in the Holy Spirit.” (13)

There are actually two senses in which the term liturgy is commonly used, and this sometimes causes confusion. In the more specific and formal sense, it is restricted to the Holy Eucharist. When an Eastern Orthodox Christian speaks of the liturgy he is most likely referring only to the Eucharist Service, what Roman Catholics refer to as the Sacrifice of the Mass, and what Lutherans and other Protestants might call The Great Thanksgiving.

On the other hand, especially in Protestant churches, “liturgy often means the whole complex of official services, all the rites, ceremonies, prayers, and sacraments of the Church, as opposed to private devotions. In this sense we speak of the arrangement of all these services in certain set forms, used officially by any local church, as the liturgy of that church. So a service of evening prayer is also part of the liturgy.”

The Lutheran church uses both in theologically meaningful ways. Thus, in the more formal sense, the liturgy refers to the part of our service devoted to communion and is the work of Christ alone on the cross. However, the liturgy is also “the work of the people,” not as a means of grace but as a “duty and delight,” in a worship and thanksgiving response to the work of God through Christ.

If a Lutheran service often feels like a lot of work it is and should be. Too often we think of work as either a bothersome chore or a theologically dirty word. In the sense of the work of worship and praise as a response to God’s grace, it’s neither. We are, after all, God’s “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” (Eph 2:10)

Properly done, liturgical worship is embodied worship. As we prepare to celebrate the Incarnation, it is appropriate to see worship as an act which involves more than our minds and spirits. It is an offering of our “bod[ies] as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God,” which is our “spiritual worship.” (Rom 12:1) It engages our bodies and senses as well as our thoughts, words and feelings.

We truly are like children (in all ways both good and bad). As any teacher will tell you, if you engage children’s bodies and senses they’ll learn more than if they just sat there and listened. Learning is work, so is worship. School is full of ritual, so is worship, even in non-liturgical worship. The best way to keep living ritual from becoming dead rote is to engage the whole person in the work of worship and thanksgiving that “is indeed right and salutary” in response to the work of God through Christ Jesus.

By changing the theology without discarding the ancient and common mode of corporate worship, Lutheranism allows me to most closely approach in this life the perfect worship in Spirit and Truth that I will only truly be capable of in the next.

Note: While I differ from Catholics substantially, many of them, like Merton, Nouwen, and Neuhaus, have had a profound influence upon my spiritual development. One way I do not differ is in my love of liturgical worship. Read “…But Isn’t Liturgical Worship Dead” to see a Catholic brother’s (David Bennett) viewpoint on this topic.

The Path of Worship

The Worlds Of Christopher Columbus

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There are few historical figures as controversial as Christopher Columbus. If public debate since the five hundredth anniversary of his first voyage is an accurate indication, how one sees Columbus is not a matter of historical analysis but rather one’s personal political views.

It is already difficult enough to piece together the details of Columbus’ life given his lost original journal, the biases of early biographers, and the absence of documents, but when you interject contemporary political posturing into the historical debate, it becomes impossible. One side wants to blame Columbus for all the horrors of the modern world, and the other side wants to give Columbus the credit for all of the advances of the modern world.

Was Columbus a hero or a villain? One can not even begin to answer that question without an understanding of Columbus’ historical period. That is probably why William and Carla Phillips title their book The Worlds of Christopher Columbus. It is as much a biography of an age as it is of a man with Columbus being really just a case study of the age.

The Phillips never come out and directly answer the question as to Columbus’ status as a hero or villain. However, after reading the book, one gets the sense that if they were asked directly they would reply that he was neither; he was human with both strengths and weaknesses, and as such he was neither a mythic hero nor an evil villain.

Columbus had perseverance, but he was stubborn. Unlike the mythic Columbus the human Columbus was not the first to conceive of reaching the East from the West, nor was he the only one to believe the Earth was round- most people did. However, as the Phillips write he “was the first, not to conceive the plan, but to persevere until he found backing for it” (p.104).

Perseverance in Columbus sometimes went too far, though, and it turned into stubbornness. This hurt him at times and was almost fatal at others. For example, Columbus was convinced that Asia was closer than it was. Even when more educated geographers disagreed, he stubbornly refused to change his view; this could have been fatal. If there had been no land between Europe and Asia, Columbus and his crew would have died. It was his error that inspired him to proceed with his plan (p.100).

This error also demonstrates another of Columbus’ flaws- his lack of judgment. This lack of judgment shows itself in several ways. One example was when Columbus was faced with the rebellion led by Roldan. In settling with Roldan, Columbus granted the labor services of chiefs to his men. This far exceeded his authority to grant land grants according to merit (p.223).

This is also connected to Columbus’ lack of judgment with slavery. He consistently displeased the crown by taking slaves or proposing to take them and sell them. This contributed to his fall from grace as it angered Queen Isabella (p. 239).

Columbus may have lacked judgment at times, but the other side of that coin is he was intelligent. He was not intelligent like Thomas Jefferson, though, more like Abraham Lincoln in that he learned what he needed to know in order to do what he dreamed of doing. Psychologists today recognize several different types of intelligence: abstract, rhythmic, artistic, mechanical, physical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. It seems that Columbus was at least intelligent mechanically, physically, and interpersonally.

That he had interpersonal intelligence leads directly to another pair of Columbus’ traits; he was a good salesman but overly ambitious. That he was a good salesman seems obvious. He convinced Ferdinand and Isabella to back him and to continue to back him. He was also able to convince many ordinary men (not fleeing criminals) to sail with him, and he was able to sell the idea of developing the New World, although not always honestly, but more on that later.

Also the way he used the eclipse to gain the cooperation of the Jamaicans can best be described by a word associated with salesmen (and politicians if there is a difference), and that is slick. On the other hand he hungered for wealth and status. The Phillips suggest it was this drive that prevented him from writing about his early life as his family was of humble origin (p.87). It also kept him from marrying Beatriz and thereby legitimizing his son Hernando.

It was this drive that acted as a catalyst for one of Columbus’ most serious flaws- his deceitfulness, of himself and others. He constantly mislead the crown as to the resources and profitability of the New World. The Phillips describe one of his letters as “a tissue of exaggerations, misconceptions, and outright lies” (p. 185). He played up all the good and downplayed the bad (accentuated the positive and eliminated the negative as the old Johnny Mercer song goes).

He used evidence to suit his purposes, and if there was no evidence, he made it up. It was this deceit combined with his ambition that caused him to set up unfulfillable expectations that eventually caused him a great deal of trouble.

The Phillips’ view of Columbus can be summed up by saying that Columbus was a good sailor (sailsman if you will pardon the pun) but a terrible administrator. All of the traits that made him a good explorer (perseverance, intelligence, salesmanship, optimism, and religious belief) made him a bad administrator (poor judgment, stubborn, egotistical, deceitful and ambitious).

The Phillips write that “when reality intervened, Columbus needed the practical skills of a manager and administrator; not only did he lack those skills, but he seemed to lack the temperament to develop them” (p.186). They also, after giving a list of Columbus’ strengths, write that “Columbus was always more interested in continued exploration than in the humdrum satisfactions of careful administration, and the new tasks constituted a challenge that he was unwilling or unable to meet”(p.194).

The Phillips’ account of Columbus is not like most of the information I have read about him. They do not try to use historical evidence to shore up their own ideological view. Instead they try to see Columbus and his times as clearly as possible as he and they really were.

It is hard to disagree with them. I found it interesting that while they discussed slavery and disease they only discussed it as it occurred at a particular time without trying to make any broad generalizations about it. Why? Because it is pointless and misguided.

No one can take the blame or the credit for all that has been laid at Columbus’ feet, and rather than credit or blame one man, it is much more interesting and exciting to try to see the big picture of the times and how so many advances seemed to converge at the same time to facilitate Columbus’ voyages. It’s like trying to put together a difficult jigsaw puzzle without seeing the picture.

If you accomplish the task of completing a historical jigsaw puzzle, it’s much more rewarding and information yielding than just asserting a position because it supports your personal political agenda. The Phillips put together a good puzzle, and I think they hit the nail on the head.

Columbus was like most people. He had strengths and weaknesses, and when he was doing a job that utilized his gifts he did a good job, but when he attempted to do the things he had no aptitude for, he failed miserably.