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Steve Went Looking for Grace

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The angels rejoiced when Steve finally laid down his burden and surrendered his life to Christ. He was 39 years old, which is older than many converts, but his switch from death to life was clear, and not a person who knew Steve before could stop from marveling at the change they saw come over him. Though he was once a hard taskmaster at the shipping company he owned, his demeanor gradually shifted to one that thought of others’ needs before his own. He got better at remembering names and even the names of employee family members. Someone even saw him tear up when Martha in accounting shared her mother was in her last stages of cancer.

That never would have been Steve before.

But Martha’s mom’s was not the real case of cancer in accounting.

“Sharon, I don’t understand what I’m seeing here,” Steve said to his office manager one day.

Sharon Gibbs, who had been with Steve from the founding of Presto Shipping, could only shake her head. “Those are the numbers we got from Bergenthaler & Bergenthaler. I know they seem a little off, but I’m not sure exactly why or how.”

Steve had known Wilfred Bergenthaler for years. He and Bergie had gone to high school together.

So he got on the phone and placed a call. Bergie didn’t pick up.

Steve returned to the numbers. If what he was seeing was right, a million dollars had up and vanished from the books. A one followed by six  zeros. It was January, but sweat began to trickle down Steve’s back.

By the time the newspaper broke the story of CPA Wilfred Bergenthaler and his disappearance with the funds of several local companies, including a good chunk of Presto Shipping, the boards on the windows of Steve’s warehouse had already started to gather dust and the stench of failure.

Steve stood outside the only work he had ever known and thought about the 47 people who now had nowhere to go. Including himself. It wasn’t like the economy was booming, and the Bergenthaler blowback was proving tough for the entire region.

You work and build a good name for yourself and then, one day, you wake up and all you see is taint. You were on watch when it all came down. Doesn’t make a difference who the real villain was. It was your company.

Steve found that his phone calls to other shipping companies in the area yielded nothing in the way of work for someone who had fallen asleep at his post. He’d never been a money man. He just knew how best to get a package from one place to another faster and in better condition than the other guys. It’s why he left almost everything financial in Bergie’s hands.

That’s the script Steve kept running in his thoughts.

When Steve tried to get a loan to start a new Presto, banks had their own two-word script: No way. They had no proof the new Presto wouldn’t go the way of the old one. Besides, the same name would be at the top of the paperwork. And when Steve approached a few old buddies about putting their names there instead, the look he got again and again was one of disbelief.

After a couple months, Cassie, Steve’s wife of 19 years, decided she and the kids had had enough. Getting out to the mall a couple times a week was good for her psyche, and not having that critical need fulfilled was too painful for her to bear. Though Steve was a changed man for the better, this accompanying financial fortune shift sort of overrode everything else.

The courts didn’t take kindly to a man who seemed unable to manage his own affairs, so Steve woke up on a Saturday in July to a sprawling, empty house he could no longer afford. No arguments between twins Cicely and Celia over which boy in their class was cutest, and no yelling from the basement from Ben, “Dad, what happened to my mitt? I put it down here after my last game!” Nothing but silence.

For a while, Steve ignored the pile of bills on the kitchen island. He knew if he opened them they would all read Final Notice.

Steve picked up the church directory and ran his finger over the names. He called Stan Brantley first. Stan ran a florist shop. “You need a delivery driver?” Steve asked. Stan didn’t. He’d let his only driver go and started delivering everything himself. Bill Cahill was next on the list. Steve asked about a job repairing computers. He had some skills. Nothing with a certificate, but decent nonetheless. Bill said no.

The names trailed on, and so did the rejection.

The next morning, Steve opened his Bible and read that grace was sufficient. Grace. He thought about grace that entire morning.

One day, Steve forgot to get the garbage cans from the curb fast enough, and some neighbor complained. Others complained that the grass had gone uncut for just a little too long. No one had priced gas lately, Steve thought. He could still cut, but he had to wait a dozen days between cuts now. That was just reality. People would just have to deal.

Steve showed up in church one Sunday and people commented that he had failed to shave. It wasn’t planned, though. You get to thinking about things the way they are and other things slip from your mind. There was no intention beyond simple distraction. Can’t a guy be distracted? Didn’t he have good reason?

Steve also found his role on the church’s financial team had up and blown away. He wasn’t sure how it happened. They just didn’t remind him of the next meeting. They knew he was not a money genius, he had not pretended to be, nor did he ask to be on the board, but he had been a respected businessman in the area and that looked good. Or so some must have thought. Once.

With so little to do, Steve asked around about volunteer opportunities at church, but there never seemed to be any openings. It felt strange, and so did Steve, since he still wanted to be a part of the church’s life, yet at the same time he seemed to be drifting away. He hadn’t planned that. People just didn’t call. And there wasn’t much to talk about apart from problems. Without his kids with him, he now felt lost on Sundays.

The sermon series for the past month had been on grace. Steve thought back to that verse on grace being sufficient. Each week, Steve found it harder to rouse himself from bed to sit in the pew and sing songs and hear about grace. The topic nagged at him.

When he finally approached Pastor Gene to talk about the sermon series, the pastor said, “I’ve been praying for you daily regarding your needs, Steve, and I just wanted to share that the Lord still asks us to remain faithful to tithing, even in difficult times. It’s how we show we trust Him. And God won’t send any blessings our way if we don’t trust Him.” Gene patted Steve on the shoulder. The pastor seemed not to see whatever it was that was brewing in Steve’s eyes.

Three weeks went by before Steve made it out of bed on Sunday. Instead of going to his church, he just got in his car and drove till he couldn’t stand to be behind the wheel anymore. The church he stopped at wasn’t anything to behold. In fact, it looked a little beaten down, just like he felt. He had no feelings for its particular denomination either. He just stopped the car in the lot, got out, and walked inside.

A cheery older lady in a floral dress that seemed to be alive handed him a bulletin and said, “Are you visiting?”

Steve nodded. He then realized his shirt wasn’t pressed, so he kept his gaze on the floor.

“I am,” he said.

“Well, we’re glad to have you,” the lady replied.

Steve suddenly could not move. The woman bore with this for a moment but then asked, “Sir, are you OK?”

Something broke inside Steve and he could not prevent the tears that now formed in his eyes.

“I keep hearing about this thing called grace,” he said, his voice wavering, “but I can’t seem to get any. Do you have any here?”

The Church, Tech, Ethics, Jaron Lanier, and the Destruction of the Middle Class

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Jaron Lanier - www.jaronlanier.comAfter reading my recent post “‘Free’ and the Destruction of Worth,” reader Brian Auten sent notice of a compelling Salon interview with tech futurist Jaron Lanier—“The Internet Destroyed the Middle Class”—in which the polymath suggests he and other prognosticators underestimated the negative impact the Internet would have on our lives.

As a musician, Lanier thought the personal freedom offered by the Internet would enable music makers to take greater control of their careers and enhance their freedom to create the kind of music they wanted to make, free from corporate interference. Sadly, the Internet has instead reduced the net worth of musicians and created a career wasteland for many of them.

In a bold confession, Lanier admits he was shortsighted concerning the negative impact, saying his naiveté helped fuel the downturn.

Lanier goes on to note that rather than freeing people to do what they want, the Internet has destroyed aspirations—especially those related to jobs. The promise that the Internet will let us pursue the job we want to create for ourself has instead been replaced with the reality that it and other tech tools are allowing fewer and fewer people to do the work that once employed thousands, leaving no options for the displaced.

While many will just nod their heads and say We told you so, Lanier brings up an ethical issue raised by the destruction of middle class jobs that few are discussing:

Do corporations have an ethical responsibility to society to create jobs simply to employ people, even if technology has rendered those jobs less essential?

This is a question that has bothered me since the economic meltdown of 2008. Because it seemed that at one time companies DID stay loyal to employees whose jobs were less essential. There was a long view that a working middle class was universally better than a nonworking middle class that would slide gradually into poverty. And it may very well be that attitude of support for the less essential employee made America great.

Globalization and the race to the cost bottom may have put pressure on companies to abandon this ethic, but the 2008 meltdown pretty much sealed the deal in their collective minds.

Which brings me, as it always does, to the Church.

In the fin de siècle period (around 1900), the American Church was actively addressing many changes in American business. As more women entered the workplace, the Church was concerned for their welfare, especially in what could have become a predatory environment for young, inexperienced women moving from farms to the burgeoning big cities. And this was only one area of concern and active involvement. Speaking to the business world was a huge concern for the Church.

Today, the Church seems more concerned with how to start a workplace Bible study than any greater vision related to social change and the general welfare of employees.

This paradigm shift has worked against the Church in the long run. American Christians no longer prioritize general human welfare. In the case of the typical workplace, the Church’s concerns are not the ethics and operation of that workplace and how Christ can impact it, but the Church thinks solely of how to preserve some aspect of institutional church operation within that sphere.

I contend this is a wrong, selfish mentality. We Christians should be less concerned with preserving traditional church functions and more with the general welfare of people. It’s as if we have no more confidence that the Church can survive because we are afraid of the world’s successes against traditional Christian bastions. So we operate from a position of desperation instead of from our position of strength in which all the riches of heaven are on our side.

What is today’s Church saying about the ethics of hiring people simply so those people can have a job? And how can this NOT have an impact on the Church itself? The starving man is more concerned with food than with the Gospel, but give him that food in the name of Jesus and his ears will suddenly open to the message of Christ. We see this demonstrated again and again in the Gospels and the Book of Acts.

What is the need? Meet the need. Then speak about Jesus. It could not be more simple.

In addition, the Church has decided in the last century that it has nothing to say to corporate leaders about other aspects of employee welfare. And where is the boldness, in the midst of the ongoing ethical meltdown in big business, from a Church that should be able to promise those businesses that if they give them their people, the Church can return a more ethical employee?

Instead, the primary Church goal is relegated to fighting the corporation to ensure that a handful of employees can enjoy a lunch break Bible study in a back room someplace. Yes, that may be needful, but God help us, the vision is so vanishingly small!

What tech has done to the workplace and general employment MUST be something the Church, like it once did 100 years ago, speaks to.

Tech is increasingly outpacing the ethical answers the Church once provided to society. In other news, it is now possible to print guns with 3D printers, those printers available to the average consumer. What does this or any other tech-driven issue mean for the Church?

Are we Christians asking these questions? If so, where are the answers?

Is the Church simply in survival mode—or are we Christians actively working toward addressing the most intractable issues of our day, issues that, in the end, affect every person on the planet?

If the Church can’t answer these questions, who will?

Irrelevant Relevance

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Over at World Magazine, Anthony Bradley has generated some brouhaha over his piece “The ‘New Legalism.’” Up-to-date Cerulean Sanctum readers will note Bradley’s article reads like a rehash of my recent “Kids, Systems, and Success (A Response to Brant Hansen’s ‘Your Kids Don’t Need Your Stupid Success Track’)” and its follow-up, “Radical for Jesus: What Does That Look Like in America?”

Church ruinsThe Bradley article is good and got trackbacked extensively. As always, read the whole thing. I do think, though, that he puts too fine a point on it by centering the angst he notes in the lives of young people alone. As I’ve noted elsewhere, my peers are laboring under that burden of relevance as much as anyone, and perhaps more. We’re the ones who are trying to be faithful to the mission of God…while we try to get back into the workforce after being pink slipped for being “old,” caring for increasingly decrepit parents kept alive by modern medicine, dealing with our own health failings, and still raising children.

Bradley mentions the self-pummeling meted out by our adoption of the words missional and radical. I want to add a third: relevant.

Google relevant church sometime. The pages stretch on forever.

As for the guts of the three links above, all of it comes down to relevance. In light of this, I don’t believe that Bradley’s diagnosis is right. Young people are not leaving the Church because they are being challenged too strongly to live a radical life. They’re leaving because the challenge is posed by a Church willing to challenge but unable to help achieve the goal. And in those cases where a local church is NOT challenging people, it’s also NOT providing answers to the most pressing challenges of life.

For all our talk of relevance, the fact remains: Our churches are not helping us meet the relevant challenges of the times.

And people are NOT going to hang around to hear messages about a watered-down salvation that can save mostly from a problem that doesn’t seem to be the most pressing problem they face. Or the third most-pressing problem. Or even the tenth.

Yes, Jesus Christ came to save sinners from their sin. Sin still matters. It’s the problem that must be dealt with before any other problem gets addressed.

But for all our talk of relevance, what is the solution from most churches for dealing with life once one has dealt with the problem of sin?

Hmm.

Your spouse lost a job in a corporate downsizing and has been out of work for eight months. Your bank account has taken a major hit, and you’re starting to eat into your kids’ college funds. Your teenage daughter was diagnosed with full-blown depression, and the meds she’s on do weird things to her personality, which make you wonder which is worse, the cure or the disease. Your mother is in an extended care home and has maxed out her benefits. You don’t know how you’ll pay for her care, and you sit there on Sunday morning wondering what will happen when you have to bring her to live with you in the midst of all the rest of this.

Meanwhile, they found a heart murmur in you that may require a valve replacement and you don’t have the insurance coverage because it was on your now-unemployed spouse’s policy. The prices at the grocery store keep going up. The cost of repairing the car you depend on keeps going up. The cost of repairing you keeps going up. You may have to change your own job just to keep up and also look into a master’s program because everyone wants a master’s degree, and that costs so much in dollars and time and…

And the preacher is telling you you must be radical or else you’ll be the lukewarm person spat out of the Lord’s mouth.

In the midst of all that, what does relevant mean?  I don’t think the contemporary Church in the West has any idea.

If we want to know why people are looking elsewhere, the answer is simple. For all their talk of relevance, our churches are not addressing the struggles of most people today. And if people can’t find answers to life’s issues in Church, they will find someplace else that will give them answers, even if those “answers” are lies.

In the wake of the death of Pastor Rick Warren’s son due to suicide brought on by mental illness, Christians talked about mental illness for a  few weeks. While that’s better than nothing, I’d like to see what the lasting fruit of that discussion will be on a practical level within our churches.

Because THAT is relevant.

But I’m not holding my breath.

You see, I’ve been waiting for a decade for someone in the Church with some level of clout to speak out on the employment issues facing us in America. Because if you want relevance there is nothing more relevant than talking like adults about the one issue that makes or breaks more people in this country on a day to day basis. And yet for how dominating the issue of work is in the lives of average Americans, I have yet to see or hear anything from a national-level Christian leader talking about our work lives and the sheer amount of time we devote to that one aspect of daily living.

My great fear for the Church in America is an increasing drift into total and complete disconnection from daily reality. Yet that is what I’m seeing.

Most of the relevance I hear about is irrelevant. It has little to do with real people and real lives.

Hey, massively relevant hipster church, you want to help couples with their sex lives? Great. Help dad find a better job. That’ll do more for mom and dad’s sex life than anything else. Far more then sexy readings of Song of Solomon.

You want to keep teenagers? Get them deep with Jesus and stop trying to outduel the world on trendiness. And start addressing the mental illness rampant in young people today.

You want dad to come to your men’s event? Find a practical way for him to deal with the longterm care of his aging parents.

And no. No one said any of this will be easy.

There will be people who say all this is outside the bounds of what the Church is supposed to be about. I contend that unless the Church stops being an ostrich with its head in the sand on issues like these, all the talk of relevance will stay talk and functionally remain irrelevant.