The main reason this case interests me is not the future of Penn State football, but the public outcry caused by the scandal, particularly in the media, and what that tells us about America’s current ethical framework. I honestly found it surprising to hear CNN contributors and anchors use terms like moral, right, wrong, etc. Opinion columnists repeatedly stated that Paterno fulfilled his legal responsibility, but completely failed his moral responsibility. Talk show hosts and anchors spoke in shocked tones about the moral depravity and the categorically evil actions of all involved. Moral responsibility? Seriously? From media sources who go out of their way to report on oppressive religious systems that shackle their adherents and society with bothersome ethics?

Perhaps I should take heart that we still has some sense of ethics, regardless of how far we’ve strayed within that sense. But I know better. Morality, like most other 21st century American virtues, is based solely on fashion appeal. And, as is true for most fashion trends, the church is only a few years behind.

Earlier this year I read through the Pentateuch which, of course, includes laborious pages of the Levitical law. Not all of the reading failed to inspire, however. Especially the grand indictments against the oppressors of the poor and the widows. God has something to say to those who take advantage of the poor, and it’s not too pretty. God obviously cares about socioeconomic justice as evidenced by sabbath years and the Year of Jubilee.  Farmer’s are supposed to leave the corners of their barley fields for the poor. The foreigner is to be welcomed. Slaves are to be respected and offered freedom at some point.

The laws that didn’t connect with me much were the ones about how to bathe before a ritual. Or the ones about who can touch what in the tabernacle and how. Or the ones about when, where, and how to defecate. I don’t mean to be crass, it’s there. We enlightened moderns, postmoderns, or whoever we are cringe when we read these laws because they feel so burdensome and pious. So puritanical. So religious. So Amish. So unspiritual. People who live this way aren’t real. We just need to come to God as we are with all our messy baggage and let him sort it out while we go make more messes. Messy is the new holy. We suspect the morally upright person of hypocrisy but absolve without question the one who works for social reform in a developing nation.

If former generations have failed to appreciate the gospel’s social impact, my generation’s failure will be our depreciation of the gospel’s personal impact. We are masters of worthless dichotomies. The trouble with paradigm shifts is not the shift but our inability to zoom out as we do so.
So the question is this: Does our current sensitivity to public morality demonstrate a better and broader (I refuse to use the word “robust”) understanding of the Gospel and the Kingdom, or does it demonstrate our tendency to take our moral cues from a system so confused that today’s evil could become tomorrow’s good?

The Levitical law reveals a God who makes no distinction between public and private ethics. Jesus reveals a God who came to save sinners and proclaim justice to the oppressed. Same mission, different ramifications. James sums it up nicely when he says, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world (1:27, ESV).”

But I have an insecurity. Automotive maintenance.

Now the key to insecurity is to be passionately insecure. Just act like the stereotype of a man under a car in a garage full of tools doesn’t even remotely appeal to you. Better yet, point out all the areas of weakness in such a man. He probably scored 200 cumulative points on his SAT, voted Tea Party Republican in the last election, and shot a thirty-point buck last hunting season.

Despite my bravado I always winced when I entered the automotive section in Wal-Mart to get air fresheners or, the apex of my automotive endeavors, windshield wipers. These short forays into hostile territory always left me feeling inferior at best and guilty at worst. I knew that could just as well spend the $20-$30 that I shucked out at NTB every several months on actual oil and oil filters and save some money. And honor.

Of course, I always excused myself with a rather convincing argument from the standpoint of economics. In order to change oil, I would need car ramps. Car ramps probably cost a small fortune. At least it would take numerous oil changes to make them profitable. Therefore, it was impractical for me to change my own oil.

Mostly, I was terrified about journeying into the land of the unknown beneath my car. Beneath the hood is dangerous enough. Live and let live became my motto.

The argument from economics worked until I saw a pair of car ramps at a yard sale. And they weren’t selling for a small fortune.

Now that I had car ramps I made a mental list of all the other items I would need and swaggered into the automotive section at Wal-mart. I soon realized that I was still in hostile territory as shelves full of oil and oil filters stood rank and file, row after row, brand after brand, mocking me with their uniformity. Now I’ve worked in the small equipment industry long enough to know that same in appearance can be so very different in function. Numbers mean something, and examining them with a pseudo-professional squint only works so long before it becomes obvious to the other customers that you have no clue what you’re messing with. Fortunately, after consulting one of those small computers (and paying for it with swagger), I had what I needed.

A few days later I changed my car oil for the first time. I won’t go into detail about the actual process. Instead I’ll simply list a few tips for beginners. I hope this helps.

1. Remember the age-old maxim, “right-tight, left-loose.” Lying on your back underneath a car can disorient even the most directionally adept. Perfectly good tools often suffer unnecessary abuse and sometimes even permanent damage under the zealous conviction that they are being turned the right way. Most often they are. Just not the right kind of right.

2. Always keep a firm grip on the old filter while removing it, or use a filter wrench. For good measure keep your upper body (particularly head) away from the used oil pan while performing this procedure. Used oil is still, well, oily.

3. Never push your car off the ramps by yourself, especially if the driveway is on a slight downward incline. A lot of potential energy can convert into a lot of kinetic energy over a very short distance. Also, due to the relationships between force, mass, and velocity, the force required to stop even a slow-moving car is nearly impossible without a simple machine (which of course in most cases has not been prepared beforehand and is, therefore, unavailable when the need arises).*

*If you do push the car off the ramps by yourself, your best mode of recovery is to exceed the car’s velocity, calmly settle into the driver’s seat (adjust it if necessary), and apply pressure to the brake. Use this method only if you have the time to spare. If on the other hand, the car is within several feet of a solid object and approaching, you need to throw aside all your manly dignity, race alongside the car, vault into the driver’s seat, and mash the brake for all your car’s worth. Dollar for dollar, dignity is much cheaper than auto-body work.

Forty minutes and barely a quarter mile later, the seven bags were full. That’s a disgusting, gluttonous amount of soda cans, beer bottles, McDonald’s bags, grocery bags, cigarette butts and packages, Slurpee cups, and diapers.

Don’t wait for Earth Day to do something. Stop littering now!

Jean gave me this,

and this (yes, the special CD/DVD edition).

With the b-day money  from parents and grandparents I got this,

and with gift cards from friends I got this (not this particular set),

and this.

On my birthday we went to see this,

then we sat here,

and talked about church and state, patriotism vs. nationalism, America as a culture vs. America as an empire, and the various threads that develop from these topics. I married a brilliant woman–a free thinker (in the good sense)–who isn’t afraid of sharpening, toning, or outrightly debunking my ideas in accordance with their respective levels of heresy. Did I mention she can cook too?

Then we left the big city and ate here on our way home.

It was a grand time.

Now it’s her turn. She got this from her husband.

The flowers and a round of miniature golf are coming.

But with all good things come stress, so I unwound (ha, ha) by flying some kites I found in the school shed. The manufacturer’s packaging designers were definitely better than the kite engineers, but I managed a few successful flights before they were completely destroyed. Now I didn’t grow up flying kites all that much, but anybody who isn’t mesmerized by watching a kite grab a breeze and climb into the welkin has ceased to live.

Coming up next week: “Celebrations” My birthday already happened; I’ll just be blogging about it a bit. The title is definitely not definite. I’m really bad at this whole teaser thing.

Oh, and I did survive the earthquake yesterday. Like everybody else. Though, I’ll bet I was closer to the epicenter than most people. Ha! Survivor superiority.

Cumberland Island is accessible only by ferry which makes two, sometimes three, 45 minute trips to and from the island every day. Reservations need to be made in advance. No stores exist on the island. The one campground is a half-mile from the ranger station. Its bathhouse does have running water and cold showers, so it isn’t exactly the setting for a 21st century Robinson Crusoe novel. But after living in a honeymoon suite for a week it sure had that feel.

While on the ferry I began to notice a growing sense of camaraderie among the dozen or so campers. It wasn’t anything obvious. More of a spirit. It had the feel of a teenage boys group camping trip. We were all bound for some semi-unknown adventure on a remote island, and even though none of us had met before, this common experience birthed a temporary community quite organically. Call it evolutionary or Freudian or just plain selfish, but I suspect that deep in our psyche we knew that we might need each other at some point; therefore, we were nice and friendly with each other.

We weren’t even finished setting up our tent before a neighboring camper stopped in. He was terribly sorry, but they had forgotten their bug spray. Could he possibly borrow some for his family since they were getting bit up something awful? We were more than happy to help, although by the end of our stay, our once ample supply of spray was uncomfortably low. Run out of food, wood, and water if you must, but do not run out of bug spray on Cumberland Island.

Later that night a distraught young lady tentatively walked into our campsite and asked if we have some pain meds that she could borrow or buy from us. Her boyfriend was battling a severe headache. We were sorry but we couldn’t help. In our efforts to pack light we whittled down our first aid kit to a box of Band-Aids and peroxide. She said it was fine; she would just ask other campers.*

“Living in community” has become a sort of buzz phrase in postmodern-era Christian evangelicalism. I’ll be the first to admit that as an Anabaptist millennialist (that title says nothing about my eschatological leanings) it’s kind of nice to be well-versed in an increasingly trendy idea that’s being “discovered” by mainline Protestantism, not the least of which is the label-phobic, oft-denounced, yet wildly hip, Emerging Church.**

Seriously. I worry sometimes that we (disciples of Christ) miss the point when we overanalyze the idea of community and force its implementation. Granted, we need to ask some good and necessary questions. How do we cultivate a vibrant community within our 21st century, affluent, American context?

I suggest the answer isn’t as hard or even as profound as we sometimes make it. We simply need to need. Somehow, I don’t think the 1st century disciples spent a lot of time trying to make community happen with small groups or prayer/share times, as wonderful as those ideas are. More likely, they banded together because of the physical and spiritual needs they faced. On Cumberland Island we didn’t have to create a sense of camaraderie; we simply knew that we would very likely need each other. It was organic. We can’t expect real, vibrant communities if we pursue American Dream independence with hedged, overly-manicured lawns, and tons of insurance policies. We can’t expect real, vibrant communities if we pursue Anabaptist-American Dream independence with a huge farm house, a fat savings account, and all our progeny living along the same lane.

I’m stereotyping.

The point is that we need to need.

Recently, while listening to NPR’s All Things Considered, an intelligent-sounding political scientist/sociologist guy talked about a study of his that showed that natural disaster victims who have lots of neighbors (and who presumably have good relationships with them) fare better than those who don’t have neighbors. Makes sense.

To borrow the analogy from Michael O’Brien, we are all stranded on this “island of the world” spinning in a vast, cosmic sea. And we need each other whether we realize it or not.

•••••••••••••

*I did remember too late that I had an outdated bottle of Ibuprofen buried in my cosmetic bag. I just don’t take pain-killers unless I’m being, well, killed, and I don’t keep a very good inventory on the contents of my cosmetic bag. Jean talked to her the following morning just to make sure they were still doing okay. They were. They had found some Advil, and all was well.

**This is side note/rant that may or may not have anything to do with heart of this post, but I want to say it. I’m weary of theological fads and overreactions to the fads. I wish the hardline traditionalists would lighten up a bit.  At the same time I wish the hardline emergents would solidify a bit. If you don’t want to be stereotyped then don’t create one. Go comb-over instead of skinhead. Write complete sentences periodically. And maybe swap out the lumberjack outfit for a good old Mennonite straight-cut every once in awhile. But now I’m being cynical and pretending to be above the fray. And that’s proud.

The red X tradition seems to have become something of a morbid to-do list. Take out the trash. Check. Throw away the moldy bread. Check. Scrape the soap scum from the bathtub. Done. I wonder whose blood-smeared face will appear next. Ahmadinejad? Ghadaffi? Rob Bell? What we do know is that we are slowly but surely cleaning up our global suburbia so that we can get our scripted lives back.

I couldn’t help but notice that TIME’s symbol for the elimination of a wicked person is the same symbol that represents Christianity. A bloody cross. I wonder if Jesus would have been on a TIME “housecleaning” cover had the magazine been around back then. Probably so. In fact, with his dark skin and beard he likely would have resembled bin Laden. Jesus died a murderer’s death under a hypocritical religious system much like ours and under a legal system from which many of our American ideals flow. Several thousand years later we can look back and shake our heads at the injustice of an innocent man dying a criminal’s death, but I’m sure we would have done the deed given a chance. Indirectly, we all did contribute. And several thousand years later we are still killing off people, under the delusion that we have it within us to decide whether or not somebody is worthy of life. I’m not excusing Osama’s treachery, but the fact is, Jesus loved him and wanted redeem him as much as wants to redeem any of us. If we would really serve justice, all of us would be buried in the sea with bin Laden.

The whole bin Laden story has got me to thinking about this whole justice thing. Never have the politicians been more united. On this one point Obama, Glenn Beck, and sane people agree–justice has been served. The man who has claimed responsibility for killing thousands and disrupted our peaceful Clinton-era lives has finally been killed. Justice has been served.

At least this is the line from the intellectual politicians and news commentators. The pictures and videos of revelers in the streets seem to tell a different and much truer story. Apparently, it’s not justice that we’ve wanted all these years but revenge. We were out for blood, and by George (and Obama) we got it. Good old America does it again the American way! Where are the pictures? Show us the bloodied corpse.

And then, as we gaze at the blood-spattered room and read descriptions of bin Laden’s bullet-ridden body, we feel good about ourselves because we at least are not as evil as he was. Killing an obviously wicked man in the name of justice removes the uncomfortable focus from the terrorist that hides in the deepest caverns of our civilized and pathetic hearts.

Nietzche was on to something when he stated that our conscience “truckles to the tyrant within.”

May God help us.