Blessed to Be A Blessing

"A church is an organization that exists for the benefit of nonmembers"
- Archbishop William Temple

"Blessings not just for the ones who kneel... Luckily."
- U2, "City of Blinding Lights"

I've been struck time and time again by the fact that the spirit of Christianity - at least its intention - is a deep concern for the Other. Over and over the Bible reminds us that we are not to be about ourselves, that the riches and goodness bestowed upon us by God are to be shared not hoarded, humbly given to others rather than proudly worn as a badge. When God "called" Abraham, he said, "All peoples on the earth will be blessed through you."

This calling to the Other is pronounced throughout the Bible in a variety of ways:

"When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." - Lev. 19:33-34

"But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.- Matt. 5:44

"Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse." - Rom. 12:14

Abraham was blessed to be a blessing to others. Israel was blessed to be a blessing to others. The Church has been blessed to be a blessing to others.

This is what "calling" or "election" means. Too often, election is branded as an "us versus them" signification, a delimiter that lets everyone know who is on God's side and who is not. But that is not at all what it entails. Election is not a position of significance or special importance, but a position of service. Emmanuel Levinas, Jewish philosopher, writes:

"It is the Infinite that appoints me... in order to designate me the unique and the elected, in the face of the other... As a call of God, this does not found a relation between me and Him who spoke to me. It does not found that which, by some sort of right, would be a conjunction... In the call to me, I am referred to the other man through whom this call signifies."

This is how Jesus said the same thing: 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' (Matt 25:40).

What would this look like if our organizations, churches, ministries, Christian companies, Christian lobbyists (which do exist!), and we ourselves as individuals took this message to heart? What would America look like if those who claimed to be Christians actually lived this message?

What would a church's budget look like if it committed to spend more of its money on people outside its walls than within?

What would a church mission look like if we were more concerned with blessing our world rather than shoring up our defenses and trying to add to our numbers?

What would happen if our country spent more money on humanitarian aid than homeland security and militarty expenses?

What would our friendships look like if we were more concerned with the person as such - their needs, dreams, pains, and life circumstances - than trying to convert them, or determining if their opinion on some political or theological issue was the same as ours, or making sure our opinion was known?

In Philippians 2, it says that Jesus "emptied himself." The Greek word for this is kenosis. He was not concerned about his own preservation. He lived by this strange irony that serves as a mysterious principle in the cosmos - that one must die in order to live. What if all of our lives were lived through a lens of kenosis?

If you think about it for a while, you realize how far the church has gotten away from this. The Church today is an empire, an institution, an organization. Churches construct massive buildings to preserve their identity in society. Don't get me wrong. I love going to Europe and seeing the beautiful cathedrals. But the paradox of Christianity is that its supposed to always be on its last breath, always on the point of extinction for the sake of the Other, always giving away to those who cannot give back so that it must desperately pray for "daily bread."

I admit, I fail miserably at blessing others. I am a scrooge when it comes to my money. I want to save and preserve my assets so I have them in the future for myself. I don't misunderstand election as a badge to be worn and proudly displayed, but neither do I readily take up the basin and the towel and serve as a conduit of God's favor, blessing, and grace.

I must ask myself, if God's self-emptying Spirit lives in me, why is this way of life so stinking difficult?

First Lullaby

The prospect of being a father has reinvigorated my creative juices,
leading to my first attempt at writing a lullaby for my son-to-be. Here
are the lyrics:

Do you know your mommy loves you
As she rocks you through the night
When she holds you to her side,
Do you know her love is true?

Do you know your daddy loves you
While he sings sweet lullabies
When he lifts you to the skies
Do you know his love is true?

Do you know your mommy loves you
Through her whispers as you cry
By her gaze into your eyes
Do you know her love is true?

Do you know your daddy loves you
When he keeps you snug and warm
He’ll protect you from all harm
Do you know his love true?

We hope you know our loves is true.

I had planned on providing a video of that included me singing the song for those of you who can't stand to know the lyrics without the tune, but alas, after dozens of tries in uploading the video with blogger rejecting it, I have given up. If for some reason, blogger decides to be nice in the future, I will post it then. Grr... This week has been one frustrating event after another. Hopefully I'll find the $20 of bus tickets I lost this morning too...

Anyways, speaking of the baby, Amber and I are driving to Lafayette this weekend for a baby shower with friends and relatives in our hometown. Should be a fun time, and a lot of people are excited about seeing us (if only we had more time for everyone!!), but its going to be a lot of driving. Amber took at job in Erie, PA for Friday, which means we'll be driving 2+ hrs to Erie on Thursday night and staying in a hotel (at least its being paid for!), then driving 8+ hrs on Friday night to Lafayette, and driving 6+ hrs on Sunday morning to get back to Pittsburgh. Ugh. But it will all be worth it, right!? For all of you who will be there, we look forward to seeing you!!

Why Write in Third Person?

For those who read my previous blog post regarding the "25 things about me" and noticed that I wrote the whole thing in third person, well here's my philosophical explanation for the supposed "creepiness" (here's hoping this makes sense to those who aren't in to philosophy!):

It begins with an analysis of time. We often perceive time as a series of sequential moments happening one right after another. Time is dissectible, one millisecond is completely distinguishable from the next millisecond. This commonsensical notion of time is a bit problematic, and does not accurately depict how we engage time in lived experience, for if each moment in time were completely separate from one another, if each present was an entity unto itself, we'd have no idea how to string a series of events together into a complete whole.

Take this sentence you're reading right now: if each moment in time were completely distinguishable, if each word you read were a completely new experience, you'd have a lot of difficulty making any sense out of what you read. In comes Edmund Husserl. Husserl formulated a way to speak about time to solve this "problem," basically stating that every present, every now, is "thick," containing what Husserl called "retention" and "protention." "Retention" is our ability to retain what has just preceded the now, while "protention" is our ability to anticipate what is going to happen in the immediate future. In other words, in every present moment, the immediate past and future are indistinguishable from the present. This is absolutely necessary or we'd have an incredible difficulty knowing how to comprehend the combination of syllables (which occur in different moments in time) into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and so forth.

Enter Jacques Derrida. Derrida studied this notion of retention and the now, how the living present is "always folding the recent past back into itself" [Lawlor]. In a sense, this now and this retention are indistinguishable, but they must also be differentiated - memory is different than perception. Thus, in every moment, there is difference, there is a momentary gap that occurs in the blink of an eye.

What does this have to do with my previous blog? Well think about when you talk to yourself, think to yourself, or even, the fact that when you read something (like this sentence) you are also saying the words "in your head." In these moments, you become both the subject and object of the action simultaneously. When you speak to yourself, you speak as if you are another person, you objectify yourself. "In other words," Leonard Lawlor states, "in the very moment, when silently I speak to myself, it must be the case that there is a miniscule hiatus differentiating me into the speaker and the hearer." When you talk to yourself, there is a kind of differentiation what goes on, a brief instant in which your brain distinguishes between you (the current thinking agent) and you (the thought being thought). You are yourself and someone else at the same time!

If this hasn't made any sense to you thus far, think about what often happens when you reflect on your past experiences or a past time period in your life. This happened to me recently as I was cleaning off my bookshelves and I was trying to find anything that could be cleaned out and recycled. I started going through the shelves and shelves of notes from classes in college, notebooks full of sermon notes, the original notes of songs I wrote (and other songs I started writing that the world is better off for never having heard!), prayer journals, and so forth. As I read who I was then, I was taking a step back, imagining someone else (my previous/past self) writing down those things, thinking those thoughts that were written on the page. And while taking this step back, while objectifying myself, I could say, "That's not me, that's somebody else!" (i.e., that's not who I am today). This is precisely how autobiographies are written (and how they are so easily embellished!) - the individual reflects back on who they were as if they were somebody else.

Translation - we do the exact same thing nearly every second of our lives as we talk to ourselves, think to ourselves, or even read something on a page and at the same time are telling ourselves what we're reading.

So, my "third person" blog was basically an experiment of this truth, to point out that when I wrote down 25 things about me, I was, in effect saying, "Hey Brock! Yeah you, you like this. You like this thing about you. You had this thing happen to you - what did/do you think about it? You prefer this. You are like..."

So now, the question is: How can we ever achieve an objective standpoint from which we view our subjective selves?

The Whole "25 Things about..." Shindig

Ok, so here's to jumping on the whole "25 random things..." bandwagon:

1. Brock wonders what this says about our culture, about human sociality, about personhood that people will find out these 25 things about him on a blog/facebook rather than in a real life conversation.

2. The first time he finally got the courage to drive a stick shift (the same car he still has by the way, 8 years later!) it was on the way to youth group on a Wednesday night. At one light he stalled the car some 8-10 times (he lost track after being stuck at the same intersection for three stop lights). Then on the way home, with his brothers and a younger cousin in the car, he ran over an opossum (which, seconds before, looked straight at his car), because he had no idea what else to do.

3. He loves using parenthetical phrases in his writing (as if #2 didn't already demonstrate that point).

4. He secretly (until now) mourns the fact that he was prevented by his parents from listening to any music growing up that wasn't "Christian." Many have told him, however, that he didn't miss out on much.

5. Brock used to be a Bible study fiend. Seriously. Throughout high school and college, he would write entire commentaries (we're talking 100+ pages) on books of the Bible for his personal devotions, quoting other commentaries, studying the original language, and the whole nine yards. He has kept these commentaries (which his wife has, at times, tried to throw away) which include studies on Judges, Ezra, Nehemiah, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Hosea, Zechariah, Matthew, 1&2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1& Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, and James. He used to have pompous visions that someday he would become a famous author in the Christian world (now, he's just shooting for "author" and of a different genre).

6. When he gets tired, he tends to get very emotional, and any question that appears remotely complicated or any remotely difficult circumstance will make him cry (he about had a mental breakdown last Sunday at the grocery store when his wife asked him to pick out a couple salad dressings).

7. He has had the same style cell phone for over three years.

8. During high school, Brock once worked at Lake Ann Baptist Camp in Traverse City, MI as "support staff" (aka janitor). An entire summer of cleaning toilets and emptying trash barrels (well, at least it builds character, right?). It wasn't so bad until the infamous "week of the yammy." Some parent let their kid come to camp even though he had the flu... and he gave it to everyone else. The camp had to quarantine 130 of the kids (and some counselors) into certain cabins. Yammy was everywhere. Then, one night, all the other campers were made to sleep outside in their sleeping bags, and Brock and the rest of the support staff team "quat-cleaned" every nook and cranny of the campgrounds using those weed killer sprayers.

9. Brock is the second oldest of five boys, all with names starting with "Br." Although, its a bit controversial, since his older brother is adopted, he considers himself the "firstborn" (and besides, all those birth order explanations are all messed up when one sibling is
adopted anyways).

10. On his high school choir trip to England, he was kissed in a bar by a drunk woman (it was a fellow choir member, but he doubts she remembers it).

11. As he writes this, Brock doubts he will have any good information left about himself to use for the game "two truths and a lie" with his friends.

12. Brock, his older brother, and a couple of his friends, were once being hunted by the local and county police in Lafayette, IN... for drive by shootings.... with cap guns (true story). His parents were not all that happy. He had to do a lot of cleaning around the house that summer.

13. In 7th grade, Brock rode his bicycle to school... 8.5 miles... without telling his parents... at 6:30AM. It was one of the only times he was ever early to school in his childhood. When he got to school, there was a sign posted on the door: "Brock, call your mom." All the teachers and parents thought he was going to be in REAL big trouble. Thankfully, he only had to apologize to his brothers for being a bad example.

14. Brock was a catcher for 8 years. He has bad knees as a result of it.

15. He didn't have a curfew until he went to college. Dumb Christian school....

16. Brock is pretty sure he'll never have a "most favorite" movie, song, band, book, etc. Can one really think about all the things they've ever watched or heard or listened to and make an accurate assessment of such things?

17. Brock has over 40 cousins on his dad's side of the family. He has two on the other side.

18. He's had a number of jobs over the years: Burger King, chauffeur (in high school, his mom paid him to drive his brothers around), janitor, camp counselor, landscape architect, church intern, a number of positions in vocational ministry, RA in college, library assistant, a secretary at Duquesne, and now an editor. In many ways, what he does now is his favorite job so far.

19. Brock is learning to cook. Most of the time, he is the "prep" cook for when his wife makes things, but now there are a number of things his wife defers to him to make including French Toast and Shrimp Etoufee.

20. He still brings PBJ for lunch sometimes - and likes it.

21. Brock has written over 40 songs that he (perhaps delusionally) hopes will someday be recorded.

22. The first occupation he wanted to have when he was a kid was a pediatrician.

23. Brock likes it when its cold outside (but not too cold) because he loves to wear sweaters. Fall is probably his favorite season.

24. Brock is an addicted LOST watcher. He has even posted comments on the Lost.com forum.

25. For Brock, each day is a crisis of faith. Perhaps, one day he'll have an idea of what to believe.

Addendum to "Gifts and Awards"

So, its been brought to my attention that calling the baby shower gifts "crap" might come across as extremely ungrateful and belittling to those who provided us with the wonderful and most generous gifts that were given to us, for which we are very happy to receive and which have made the reality that we're going to be parents all the more vivid. Allow me to iterate that this was not my intent and to anyone offended by my poor choice of words at 11:30PM, my apologies. To me, "crap" is idiomatically used in our day as synonymous to "stuff" or "things" or "items" and need not necessarily carry any negative or pejorative connotation.

Nonetheless, such an example of confusion and misunderstanding that can occur in language - even within the same language which all those who read my blog have been educated and utilize in their everyday lives - bears testament to the fact that philosophers like Derrida, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and others need to be granted a hearing. We do not instantly understand one another; rather, everything involves interpretation, which makes charity all the more important when interacting with and speaking to one another.

Gifts and Awards

Well, this weekend was quite eventful for Amber and I. Actually, we're still pretty tired from all the eventfulness even after sleeping in today and taking a nap this afternoon! On Friday after class, I drove to West Chester, PA (about 4.5 hrs from Pittsburgh. ) for a philosophy conference I was scheduled to present at on Saturday at the University. I was set to stay with a friend of mine's in-laws, as he was also scheduled to present. So, after a long trek on the Turnpike, a brief drive through Lancaster (which, consequently is a much bigger city than I had ever imagined), seeing three Amish buggies (with flashing lights on the back!), and getting lost once, I was there. Unfortunately, I got there a couple hours before my friend, Greg and his wife. Not that his in-laws were scary or unfriendly or anything like that. Its just that there's only so much Bill O'Reilly I can take.

Anyways, on Saturday, I presented at the conference a paper which happened to be a further development of two blog posts I had written (see the posts "What is Hospitality?). In other words, this was not a paper I had written for a class but one on a topic that I was simply passionate about and decided I might as well try and turn it in as a submission for a conference. Well, needless to say, it went over extremely well. During the session in which I presented (if you don't know, philosophy papers are usually presented in groups of three, 20 minutes to present and 10 min of Q&A for each presenter), of which I was the first to go, the room was absolutely packed - which is saying something for a philosophy conference to begin with! There were even a handful of professors from the university sitting in. Now, let me point out that in all my other experiences of presenting at a conference this is, indeed, not what happens. In fact, the last time I presented, I think there were maybe eight other people in the room, three of which I personally knew.

So, I presented the paper. Yup, at philosophy conferences you just sit and listen to people read papers. However, I've realized that my previous experiences of preaching and speaking to people gives me the added benefit of knowing that projecting my voice, using hand gestures, and making eye contact are enough to turn a simple reading into a good presentation (afterwards, my friend Greg said, "wow, that was actually moving." Who knew a philosophy paper could be that!?). Even the Q&A time was quite different than my previous experiences. At the end of my paper, numerous hands shot up, all the questions were extremely relevant, and there was a lively discussion afterwards. But what was really odd was that after my Q&A was done, more than half the audience left before the next speaker got up. They all came to listen to me? I totally wasn't expecting that.

After the other presentations during my session, we went to a different building for lunch and the plenary session. Before the main speaker was introduced, they were set to announce an award for the best philosophy paper at the conference. While we were in line, I jokingly said to Greg, "Well, it would be nice if I win the award and the $100 that comes with it because I need the cash to pay the Turnpike so I can get home!" And well, twenty minutes later, they announced my name for the "Distinguished Philosophy Paper" at the conference. To be honest - I know this sounds ridiculous, perhaps even bizarre, but I actually had a feeling that my paper would be the one awarded. Perhaps it was the fact that several people came up to me and said that I really liked the paper or that several professors showed up for it...who knows... Nevertheless, it was nice to have enough money to get home (you should have seen the lady at the toll booth when I paid with a Ben Franklin in my beat up 95 Honda at 11:15pm)!

I guess the moral of the story is, write and do what you're passionate about not necessarily just what is asked of you or you're supposed to do in order to get a grade. Not that doing what you desire to do will translate into awards or that that should even be your motivation (although it is nice to get some affirmation every now and then that confirms that you're doing what you ought to be doing in life), but its a whole lot easier to be who you are and not someone else. And you'll probably do it better to boot. I, for instance, know that there are a whole lot of people a whole lot smarter than me, people who can talk about calculus and generative metaphysics and use symbols from logic to explain their work. On the other hand, I know I'm too intellectual for the common person or for what the stereotypical church expects from their pastor. So... I'm not sure where that leaves me or what that will lead me, but at least I'm enjoying it while I get there.

On the other side of things, Amber was thrown a baby shower at our church on Saturday. Yeah, she wasn't too happy my conference was the same day (I swear I told her the date!), but marriage is full of miscommunication (so you learn to be forgiving) and winning the award seemed to make things better. Anyways, she got a carload of baby stuff - clothes, baby toiletries, toys, and so forth. No diapers though, which we could definitely still use (and from what I've heard, LOTS of them). Our baby room is getting more and more ready by the day, but now we've got a bunch of stuff that we're not quite sure what to do with. Looks like we might have to finally purchase a real piece of furniture to store all this crap. So I'll have to post some pics in an upcoming blog of the baby room.

Why Its OK to Have Hope in Today's Inauguration

Today, along with perhaps a couple other billion people in the world, I watched the inauguration of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. Afterwards, I watched the "facebook drama" unfold in much the same way it did the day after Obama won the election. And alas, after watching numerous Christians make naive or unresearched, I felt motivated to write a response.

Over the last couple months, and particularly today, I've seen this recurring line of thinking among Christians responding to the fact of Obama's presidency that goes something like (and no, I'm not making these statements up):

["You shouldn't put your trust in a man. Obama is not the Messiah. You should only put your trust in God. All this hype about Obama is a sure sign that we as a nation have forgotten God's Truths and no longer follow him, and we need to get back to the faith of our founding fathers who proclaimed 'in God we trust' and 'one nation, under God'."]

You've probably heard similar statements yourself. Now let's be straight here: I don't think one should place the kind of trust in a man that ought to only be placed in God. I'll go even further: I agree that there are issues in which it is right and proper for a Christian to disagree with some of Obama's positions (and I'll get to some of those in a second). But the trite, sound-byte comments swiriling around in Christian circles that I mentioned above need some critique because they're seriously problematic. Allow me to respond to these issues in the reverse.

One Nation, Under God?
People, before you make statements about the founding fathers, please do some researching first. "In God We Trust" was not something our founding fathers developed. Its not in our Constitution or in our Declaration of Independence. In fact, it didn't appear on a US coin until 1864 and wasn't our national motto until 1956 under President Eisenhower (who, by the way, was never a member of a church until he began running for President, because it was a sure way to connect with voters - cause who wanted a non-churchgoer to be President in the 50s?). Eisenhower was also the one to have "under God" inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance. Just think, millions of Americans said the pledge of allegiance before the 1950s without ever saying "under God."

America's historical trust in God is not as cut and dry as people want to make it. I wouldn't put too much bank in the faith of our Founding Fathers. Many of them were deists, secular humanists, and/or products of Enlightenment Rationalism. Jefferson wrote his own version of the Gospel account (removing the miracles and the Resurrection). Jefferson once wrote, "The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it... In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills."

Thomas Paine, one of the most influential figures of the American Revolution (his name probably sounds vaguely familiar to you as the author of the pamphlet, "Common Sense"), was a deist who advocated against Christian doctrines and once said, "There are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story."

James Madison, the 4th President of the US and principal author of the Constitution, once said, "Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and all of which facilitates the execution of mischievous projects. Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." Apparently, he didn't have much use for the Church.

Consequently, the "God" of many of our so-called founding fathers is not the God that the majority of Evangelicals have in mind in our contemporary situation. And the formidable documents of America make this very clear. The Declaration of Independence does not speak of the God of the Bible but of "Nature's God." And the statement, "We hold these truths to be self-evident," bears witness to the immense influence of Enlightenment Rationalism - and the philosophies of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, and others - during the day. Man is at the center of such "self-evident" ideology, such trust in Reason, not God.

We have forgotten God's Truths?
My beef with this comment is that inherent in the statement is a presupposition that before the majority of Americans (and the rest of the world) desired Obama to become President, the American people, generally speaking, did seek God's direction and wisdom in choosing a President - a presupposition that simply cannot be verified. Why is it, now that a Democrat is in the White House, that Evangelicals suddenly believe America is no longer in God's favor, no longer depending on God? The majority of people in America, whether they're Democrats or Republicans, don't vote based on "what God wants" (as if we were capable of getting into his mind and knowing for sure!) - they vote based on the economy, desire for protection from terrorism, or some other more practical, tangible reason. There is simply nothing to indicate that America is farther from God today than it was four years ago when it reelected Bush.

These comments assume that Obama is anti-Christian, that he's self-reliant, and egotistical, when in reality, he himself claims to be a Christian who seeks God's wisdom. At least give him the benefit of the doubt on this one as was given to Bush and previous Presidents - men who all made very dreadful decisions that would seem to lack any real seeking of the face of God. Indeed, we should be grateful for a President who has a wife that has told interviewers that she sees it as her job to help keep her husband humble and make sure he doesn't get too big of a head (a quality every wife needs to have).

Now, there are definitely some things about Obama that make me wary. When he spoke today about how "we will defeat" our enemies and all those who oppose democracy, I cringed, because, while I think its necessary for the President of a nation to be a proponent of bearing arms (when it is indeed necessary!), I do not feel that it fits within the spirit of Jesus who called us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. And when Obama said that "America is now ready to lead the world once more," I thought, "You don't get it!" The world is sick of us leading (although, because of our prosperity and power there are areas in which, unfortunately, we are the de facto leaders of the world). The world is sick of us thinking we have to be in charge. The spirit of humility is not to proclaim ourselves as the leaders of the world. Instead, America ought to now be ready to listen and learn from the rest of the world - two qualities Bush was notorious for not having.

The Hype and Hope
Now, to those who constantly remind us that Obama is not the Messiah, I agree with you - and I think most of those Christians who voted for Obama and Obama himself agrees with you. What gets me, however, is this presupposition that the hype/hope related to Obama is somehow worse than what has been placed in past Presidents. 4 yrs ago, I was working at an Evangelical church and when Bush won reelection, my coworkers danced in their chairs, wore American flag lapel pins to work (how's that for separation of church and state?), and hung on every word of his victory speech. How is that any different? How is the trust and hope Evangelicals placed in Bush any different - and where has it gotten them?

But we are called to trust people, to hope in people, to have faith in people. 1 Corinthians 13:7 reminds us that love "always trusts...always hopes." We place faith in people everyday when we trust that they will come through on their promises, when we believe that what they say they will do. We place faith in people every time we get behind the steering wheel of a car, that the people coming from the other direction won't swerve into my line. Life incessantly involves trust. And if Obama indeed pulls through on many of the promises and dreams he has envisioned, we ought to be hopeful about that. We ought to have hope that America will truly walk alongside the poor countries of the world, as he said today. We ought to have hope that the people held prisoner in Guantanamao Bay will finally be treated as human beings. We ought to have hope that Obama will help restore the reputation of America in the world that Bush and previous Presidents tarnished and hope that he will bring more justice and equality to the world. These are not bad things to hope in.

Furthermore, its hard to distinguish the hope "in the man" and the hope and awe and wonder people have simply in the event itself and the symbolism Obama portrays. Whoever you voted for, there is something good and true and beautiful about the fact that an African-American is now the President of the United States, that millions of people who would have not been allowed to vote 45 years ago were able to see this event come to fruition. There is something inspiring about that story, something redemptive about it that we should rejoice in. There is something amazing about the fact that we live in a country where Rick Warren and Reverend Lowery and pray for our nation. For all the atrocities that progress has brought, we can rejoice that America has progressed this far and hope that more success will be made towards the end of racism. For all the horrible events that have occured in our nation's history, all the countless minorites who have beem mistreated in the name of America's God, we can shed a tear of jubiliation for witnessing what has occurred today. Just think about all the African-Americans who were at the Memorial Mall today. Think about all the African-Americans who participated in the Inauguration festivities. Think about all the descendants of slaves who finally have a good reason to be excited about being a part of this country. These are not bad things to be thankful for.

And yes, in a way, Obama is a messiah, just like every person who follows Christ is called to be a messiah, a "little Christ," a liberator of the broken, a lover of the crushed in spirit, and a helping hand to those in need. God always loves to use people to make his presence known, to bring about his work, to achieve good in the world. That was his goal for Israel - they were supposed to bring God's hope and blessing to the world (Gen 12:2). And so too with all who are members of God's church - we are God's ambassadors and God is making his appeal through us (2 Cor 5:20). It just so happens that Obama has a tad bit more influence than most of us to bring about a spirit of liberation and justice in the world.

So here's to hoping our brother in Christ, Barack Obama, comes through by making this world a better place, a more just place, a safer place, a more humane place, and an environmentally sustainable place so that there's something left for our grandchildren.