What is the State of the Union?

The State of the Union is really just one big pat on the back/rose-colored glasses sort of thing. There's nothing like listening to the President talk about what he's done and his grand ideas about what we need to do. It's one man/party's opinion and that's fine but any person's argument sounds great without any input from the other side, which is basically what you get with these things.

I have to say that there were parts I enjoyed listening to. I'm glad the President is talking about environmental issue. We may differ on how dire the situation is or even what needs to be done but his desire to reduce fuel consumption by 20% is admirable. I was glad to hear him talk about alternative fuels and he even acknowledged the seemingly obvious fact that our environment is being negatively impacted by our own actions. That was a shocker and it seemed like it shocked his own party a little bit as they were not nearly as quick to jump up and applaud as Democrats were.

His thoughts regarding health insurance are an interesting prospect. The idea of giving a deduction for money spent on insurance is a good place to start, a good place to start if you believe that private insurance is the ultimate answer I suppose. I can't say that I'm sure that's the case. When he trumpeted a deduction up to 15K for people paying insurance costs he conspicuously left out the part about people paying over 15K for insurance getting slapped with an increased tax. That will actually affect more people than you might think. I'm blessed through my state job to get a generous benefit allowance to cover the cost of my family's health insurance (which makes up for the fact that public employees make much less in the bring-home column) so I don't have to pay anything out of pocket, but the cost for insurance just for myself and my wife comes out to over $11,000 a year and it is anything but "Gold Standard." It is sufficient and a blessing but if we had children that cost would increase to $16,000. Which means that middle-class Paul, if paying his own insurance for a basic HMO, would pay an additional tax for the insurance he carries. So...while some might be helped others would be hurt. And this is in Oklahoma where the cost of living is one of the lowest in the nation. I can only imagine it would be worse in places like New York and California. In truth, I don't think private insurance is going to be the answer. I think we've gotten way beyond that possibility so I hope Congress will block the President's plan. (At this point I'd like to give props to the governor of our state who is seeking to make healthcare more affordable for individuals and the small businesses they work for. His plan has the government helping to shoulder the burden of what is typically a major cost for people in this category. It also can relieve some burden from those already insured as they often have to cover medical costs for the 1 in 5 citizens of this state who are uninsured and need medical attention. Way to go Gov!)

The President was predictable on education. Everyone wants to improve education. Everyone wants better schools and better equipped teachers and all that. Everyone claps when he talks about those things. However, he also wants parents who are displeased with their children's education to have the choice to move them somewhere else (and of course take their tax dollars with them). I must say that such thinking really angers me. It's typical upper class, upper middle class thinking that seems to believe that anyone can improve their lot in life if they just work a little harder. Some people just don't have that option and won't ever get the breaks it takes to have that option and when the people with money decide to take their money and find a "better" school it hurts a lot of people who are stuck with the hand they've been dealt. So in response to that I'll quote the Scripture he used in another context in his address, "To whom much is given, much is required." Many of use have been blessed with much and we should see it as our duty to improve education for everyone, not just for ourselves and our kids. Parents who are dissatisfied with the quality of education their kids are receiving are more than welcome to move them somewhere else but as those who have been given much they need to use their finances, their influence, and whatever else it takes to see schools improved for all children. Maybe they could start a campaign and call it "No Child Left Behind" or something catchy like that.

Talk of the war was typical. He seemed to be begging a bit, like a man desperate for one more chance to prove himself. I just don't know if he's going to get it this time. He is sure going to try though. And if his demeanor reveals anything, it seems like his confidence in himself and his ideas aren't lacking. We'll see what happens as he faces major dissent not only from a Democratically controlled Congress but from a doubtful public as well.

So that's my spin on the State of the Union. And did you see Senator Webb's opposition response? Wow, that was pretty intense. I couldn't tell if he was going to swallow the cameraman alive or burst in to tears. It seemed like it could go either way.

The State of the Union

Can I just say how much I LOVE the State of the Union? It's one of the more incredible things about our country. It's a night of mutual respect from two opposing parties. It's a night of respect for an office and a form of government that celebrates the separation of powers and a brilliant system of checks and balances. Just some useless trivia that makes it even more cool.

The President cannot come until he's invited. That's right, he has to be invited because he isn't allowed to enter the House Chamber without explicit permission from Congress.

All the branches of government are there and each play a distinct part. The president's party members stand and ovate over and over again. The opposing party stands and claps at times as well. What is really cool are some of the other players. The Joint Chiefs and other members of the military are there. They stand and clap when the president talks of issues of war and foreign affairs. They specifically do not stand and clap when the president speaks of domestic matters because it isn't appropriate for the military to involve itself in domestic affairs. The justices of the Supreme Court are present too however they do not typically stand and clap because it is believed that the Court must keep an appearance of impartiality. Now how cool is all that? There is a decorum and a respect. It doesn't mean individuals don't have their own opinions, it simply means that those individual opinions give way to respect for the roles and offices of our government.

--Side note -- Woohoo!! The President just mentioned taking action in Darfur! Sweet. Now he's quoting Scripture and talking about those who are hugry and needy and those dying of AIDS in Africa. This is the good part of the speech.

Anyway, another cool part of the speech is that the President is never mentioned by name. In his introduction by the Sargent at Arms to his welcoming by the Speaker of the House he is recognized simply as "The President of the United States" and people on both sides of the aisle clap and cheer and smile and shake his hand because of such great respect for the office. How cool is that?

Usually the President recognizes "regular people" who do extraordinary things as part of his speech. Its sort of a pat on America's back and is always good for chills or a lump in the throat. Interestingly these people are referred to as "Lenny Skutnicks" because Lenny was the first one of these regular people back in 1982.

Finally, this particular State of the Union is even more cool because it is the first time a female has welcomed the President as Speaker of the House. And she even got her own standing ovation. That's just awesome.

I'll talk more about the specifics of the speech in a later post but when you see what happens on this night you just have to smile and give props to this great country we live in.

Oh Dear...

An alarming chain of events is unfolding, or has unfolded at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth. I won't go into all the details here as that has been done more succinctly than I could ever hope to do, but I will hit the highlights. In 2002 Sheri Klouda was hired as a Professor of Hebrew in the seminary's School of Theology. Since that time she been praised by students and colleagues as a fine academician and teacher. In addition to that she has been published several times over. Nevertheless she was refused tenure when the time came, saw her class load reduced to nothing, and so was eventually forced out by the administration of the seminary.

Based on the history I've seen the only thing you can fault Dr. Klouda for is her timing. She had the misfortune of being unanimously approved for hire by the trustees of the seminary a year before Paige Patterson was elected as president. Despite his assurances to the contrary it seems that it has been his mission from the beginning to get rid of Klouda and to free the School of Theology from the "taint" of having women serve in the role of professor. In his estimation it is unscriptural for a woman to teach a man and so not befitting the seminary to have a female serve as a professor in this particular school. True, there are other women faculty at Southwestern, but none teaching theology.

I take major issue with President Patterson over this situation. True, no professor is ever guaranteed tenure, that is the nature of working in an institution of higher learning. Nevertheless, there is no attempt to shift the blame of her not receiving tenure to anything other than her gender. So then a person who was unanimously approved for a position by the trustees of the institution finds herself out of a job, not because of the quality of her work, but because God, in his infinite foreknowledge made her a woman.

Wade Burleson does a great job of laying out the history and the facts of the case. He also does a fine job of exegeting Scripture in looking into the issue of women teaching men and serving in positions of leadership inside and outside of the Church. While others have chimed in, I link solely to his blog as he has proven himself to be a seeker of facts, unwilling to bend to the political machine that is the SBC. You can follow the trail from there.

Paige, as quoted in a Baptist Press article, uses I Timothy 2:12 in relaying his belief about the diminished role of women in the church (not that he would refer to it like that). Wade does a great job of pointing out the inability to be absolute in our understanding of that passage as it is built on a word from the Greek (authority) that is not found in any classical Greek or literature of the day. In other words we are merely interpreting here and cannot say with absolute certainty what Paul was saying when he said that women must not teach or have authority over a man. It certainly opens a door for the possibility that his instruction was contextual and not universal.

Second, Paige goes on to say that the highest calling of a woman is as mother and grandmother. I have to say that this is quite alarming. What does that say to the many women who will never be married or to those will not ever be able to have children? What is the purpose of their lives? Better yet, what of those who are not yet mothers and grandmothers? Are they simply biding their time because they cannot know their true purpose until then? I'm sure Paige would say I'm putting words in his mouth or exaggerating his statement but what I'm doing is asking logical questions based on the statements. And I wonder where he can find the Scripture to back up what he's saying. The truth is that the New Testament is full of stories of women serving valuable roles in the ministry of Jesus and in the early church. They didn't just sit at home and raise the kids. They engaged the culture in ministry, teaching and serving for the cause of the Christ.

I think I'm alarmed by this turn of events because I consider myself blessed to have known some pretty incredible women in my life. When he talks of women as second classes citizens in the hierarchy of the Church I think first of my own wife, incredibly gifted with wisdom and leadership abilities. I think of other women I've known like Kim and Natalie and Rachel and Rikki and Alicia and Pam. The names may mean nothing to you but to me they represent women of wisdom who have each taught me quite a lot and even provided leadership in my life...God forbid. I also think of some of the women who came through my ministry as teenagers. They were young women at the time but even then it was easy to see the anointing God had placed on them, girls like Rachel and Holly and Julie and Becca and Ashley and Beth Ann. They were leaders in our group then and they are a value to the church, whether they ever get married and have children or not.

I have to scratch my head in wonder at a God who empowers and equips such people and then holds back their abilities to serve because it violates the order of things. Why give them such great skills of leadership and never let them use it in the most significant entity on the planet? The truth is that the Church speaks out of both sides of her mouth on this issue. We speak of proper roles for men and women and yet seem perfectly fine to let the wives/moms wear the spiritual pants in the family. If they weren't around imagine the condition our already battered families and churches would be in.

I'm open to a healthy debate of these things but when men begin to speak in absolute terms as if their interpretation is the be-all end-all I begin to wonder if healthy debate is even possible. I've mentioned this before but for far too long we've had all the answers in the church. We know, absolutely, the correct interpretation of every passage. Our systematic theology is as inerrant as the Word of God itself. The powers that be have effectively said, "There's our side and the wrong side, which side are you on?" It's time to take a fresh look at Scripture, specifically on this issue, and ask some hard questions.

What instruction of the New Testament is contextual and what is universal? Why does God seem to so equip these women if having them use their gifts is sinful? How much of what we believe is really just the effects of thousands of years of living in a male-dominated culture? How relevant will a church be that doesn't allow women into positions of leadership when we see them leading so often in secular society?

I'm sorry this post has been so scattered. I wanted to get something down before the moment passed but haven't really been able to fully think through everything. I just have so many questions...and so much doubt about the state of the Church I've always known.

Ch-ch-changes

I'm trying hard to break out of the funk I wrote about a few weeks back. In some ways I'm getting there, in other ways I'm still mired in the muck. I mentioned back then that one of the main reasons for being stuck in the rut was there was a lot up in the air. I wasn't very specific then but now I can be just a little more.

First, back in November my wife and I became apartment-dwellers again. We hadn't lived in an apartment since our first year of marriage and the transition back was difficult, especially in light of the fact that this apartment was in a college town, which always drops the median age (and maturity) by a decade or two. Generally speaking the place is nice but we have missed our house, our home. We built that one from the ground up (well not personally but you get the idea). We picked out the colors, chose the floor plan, and added in all the features that we wanted. Many times we got frustrated because our house was less than perfect, but in the end we were sad to say good-bye as it was truly ours. Nevertheless, convenience and logic dictated that we sell it and move to Norman so my wife could be closer to school as being a PhD student demands all of your time, usually in random chunks that make it hard to commute such a distance.

So we made the move. However, apartment life is difficult to return to when you've had your own house. You give up your garage, your privacy, your peace, and so much more. At the time an apartment seemed best as we weren't sure what the future held for us and we were fearful of making a long-term commitment in Norman. But in the past few weeks we've gotten a peace about finding a house. I'll save the details for you, whether its buying or renting, timing, location, and all that stuff but the point is that there is a sense of resolution now regarding making Norman our home and I think that makes both of us breathe a little easier.

Another major holding pattern going on in life had to do with my job. For the past year I've worked at a small/medium sized state agency as their Network Administrator. I have enjoyed my time there and it was good therapy following my season in ministry but it felt like it was time for a change. Computer work is something I've been good at, which is nice because it pays pretty well, but it's not exactly a passion of mine and I spend my time doing it usually to pay the bills. That's a difficult thing when you're trying hard to not get caught in the cycle of just doing a job for the money, which could easily have become the case there. Add to that my commute, literally from the far south side of Norman to the north side of OKC and the time for change seemed to be quickly upon me. Fortunately an opportunity opened up at OU and so in two weeks I will begin a new position there. It's strange how things worked out. I didn't seek the position and yet as I learned more about the job I began to see it as something I could get passionate about. It is still in the IT realm, but it is much less hands-on technical support and more management. I will be overseeing all the student labs on campus. I've yet to see a single one but they tell me there are about 100 of them, ranging in size and scope. I'll be supervising all the lab employees which will be a great experience for me and will give me the chance to work with students again. The IT department in the process of trying to re-think their computer labs and work to make them fresh and exciting and visioneering is definitely a passion of mine. OU is one of the Top-10 wired campuses in the country and was ranked on the list of the top 100 places to work in IT in the business world so the environment is awesome. And so I'm very, very excited about this new work that I'll be doing. I'm sad to leave the wonderful people I've worked with. You couldn't ask for better co-workers, but in the end this will be a good change.

So as you can see, some major life "stuff" has now been settled and that helps to stir me from my funk. We'll see what comes from here.

Peace
-Paul

Who to Root For?

Well I'm wrestling through the quandary of trying to figure out who to root for in the Super Bowl in two weeks. Both teams I care about have now officially been eliminated. Dallas was officially eliminated when they lost to Seattle in the first week of the playoffs. They were effectively eliminated back on December 10th when they were embarrassed by the Saints at home 42-17 and shown to be the pretenders that they were. And just now my other team, the New England Patriots, were eliminated by the Indianapolis Colts. So now we have the Bears vs. the Colts, two teams that haven't been in the big game in a very long time. This is exciting as a major barrier has been shattered as not only will this be the first Super Bowl featuring a black head coach, it will feature two. How incredibly cool is that?

Indy should be the favorite when the lines come out (as if they haven't already). Manning is in a class all by himself, especially when put next to Rex Grossman. The Bears have a stout defense and feature several former Sooner stars. Both coaches are quality guys and good friends and both teams bring with them a storied history. I hate to go with the favorite but in the end I think I'll root for the Colts. It seems like Manning has just missed out at every turn in his career and it would be cool to see him win one. Add to that the fact that Dungy got dumped on by the Bucs after raising that team from the dregs of the NFL and he's had a rough year, losing his son. I'm a softy so call me a Colts fan for the next two weeks.

Indy - 33
Chicago - 20

Breaking the Silence

It's been a long time since anything has been posted here, an even longer time since anything of value has been written, some might say. I'd like to be able to say that it's because I've been really busy, which is probably partially true, but what is also true is that you take time for things that are important and if saying something here had been important then I would have made the time to say it. In actuality I haven't posted here because I haven't really had anything to say. I mean, there have been points along the way where a stray thought of posting has come, but in general nothing compelling enough to block out the necessary time for pondering, penning, and editing that is required.

The sad thing is that being busy is what usually sparks the creative juices but that just hasn't happened this time and I've resigned myself to the realization that I'm in a funk. I'm apathetic to the core, which is very unlike me. Usually, even when I'm apathetic I'm passionately apathetic (if that can be). I'm restless and uncomfortable in my apathy. However, this time I've settled in and now I'm really just wallowing in it.

Probably a major reason for the apathy is that I've been in transition for awhile. In the past several months the wife has started her PhD program, started a new job, we sold our house and became apartment dwellers again, been through some medical issues for myself, and other upheaval has struck with members of my family and remains in limbo. I hate transition. I like things to be done. There are two places where I find great delight, the imagination of new things and the completion of them. The process in between is a difficult place for me evidenced by the fact that I tend to rush changes and force things so that I can get from one place of great delight to the other as quickly as possible. So...the extended cliffhangers of life have me running for my protective shell. Well, at the very least, I have a learning opportunity here and maybe there'll be some important lessons for this thick-headed, muck-wallowing person that I am.

I just thought I would give you a little heads up on where I'm at. Transparency is good for the soul...or the ratings if you're in politics or Hollywood I hear. I leave you with two of my New Year's resolutions.

• Three paper towels instead of four. Every day at work when I wash my hands after using the restroom I pull four paper towels out of the dispenser (yes I wash my hands, I'm sure you're relieved to know). Starting today I'm giving it a go with only three. It's a challenge. Four is the perfect amount. Three can leave your hands damp and five is just excessive. Nevertheless, feeling the need to do my part for the environment I am attempting to get the job done with three. It may cause me to have to stand idle in the bathroom longer which could lead to more awkward conversations (see previous post) but it's a price worth paying.
• Drink more green tea. The stuff is amazing. I don't really know what exists inside the little baggy but apparently whatever it is has been revealed to increase the length of your life. That's really important for people like me who've spent the last few months in a funk. At least if I drink more green tea then that's less time wasted on self-indulgent pity, right? Don't you just love the way my brain works?

With that, happy new year! I wish the best to each and every one of you. "Even me?", you ask. Yes, even you.