Dissipation

I've always kept an unwritten list of "Bible words". These are terms that really lack any significance outside of the Bible but within the Bible they literally ooze with meaning. Things like Redemption, Glorification, Santification, Justification, Resurrection, Salvation, Reconciliation. This Sunday marks the beginning of Advent where we look to Who has come and Who will come. Forward and Back. A time of waiting and expectation.

In the Gospel we encounter another one of my "Bible words"--one with a little more negative connotation than the ones listed above. An excerpt from this week's pericope:

But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man. (Lk 21:34-36 ESV)

The word is: dissipation. There is a three-fold exhortation for the people of God in this passage: "Do not be weighed down (itself a deep phrase) with dissipation, drunkenness, and cares of this life."

Drunkenness is easy to identify and avoid both in ourselves and others. Being weighed down by the cares of this world can also be identified especially in the busy Christmas shopping/party-going season.

But dissipation is different. Dissipation is the stuff you miss. The stuff that was there once but now is gone. And it has disappeared without us noticing it. In one way, it is like our family. We live day-to-day together and walk through our daily lives without taking the time to notice and enjoy each moment. One day we wake up and the kids are gone or our parents health has deteriorated and they pass from us. Dissipation.

In another way, it is what we *could* have been enjoying but don't because we have opted for a more convenient replacement. Like eating store bought tomatoes instead of home-grown. We don't understand what the fruit should taste like because we have accepted an easier or more convenient alternative. Or it's like eating fast food because it is quick and tasty but over time lacks the nutritional value that "slower" foods deliver. Our health, our enjoyment of food has dissipated without us knowing it until one day we notice that we can no longer walk up the stair without getting winded or that the cold we get each Winter seems to hang on longer and longer.

Of the exhortations in this Sunday's Gospel, dissipation is the most dangerous because it unlike the others, comes upon us "as a thief in the night". It isn't about the things we see or do; it is about the things we have forgotten. The things that we've grown numb to. The things that slip through our fingers without being noticed. "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone."

I love the word "dissipation" because it points me to those things that are unseen yet endure. The only things that produce lasting satisfaction and contentment in this life. They point me towards the Things to come.

And that is what Advent is all about.

Manufacturing

I just gotta set the record straight. I was listening to NPR this morning and they were talking to a video game designer who had created a virtual farming video game. One of the things they mentioned was the dwindling number of people who are engaged in agriculture. There just aren't as many farmers anymore and people wish they could farm but you really can't these days. [On a side note, he talked about how the game is free but charges you real money to bypass some of the things that "take a long time on the game". People don't want to spend a whole day getting things done so they can just buy it and it's instantly done. The irony of this as it relates to actual farming was not lost on me.]

While there is some truth to the idea that it is much more difficult to "decide to start farming" today than it was in the pre-modern era it has nothing to do with whether or not agriculture is a thriving industry or not. It has much more to do with the economies of scale that dominate agriculture now that make it very difficult for the small family farm to compete.

I say all of this because I work in manufacturing which is another industry that is regularly characterized as one that is losing jobs or dying. There is truth to that statement--there are fewer manufacturing jobs--but the industry is far from dying. America still makes tons of stuff everyday and the jobs that people have in manufacturing today are highly-skilled, rewarding, and stable. The job "losses" are due to advances in technology and automation rather than an elimination of need. In fact, there are many segments of the industry that are starved for properly trained employees. Manufacturing suffers from a poor image as dead-end, monotonous, dirty, mindless, physical labor. We envision dirty-faced, uniformed zombies shuttling parts off a conveyor hour after hour, day after day, year after year.

But it isn't so.

If you're young or you know of a young person who is exploring different career options, maybe you could include a manufacturing option. In a world where so much of our effort is directed towards services it is refreshing to expend effort in a tactile activity that produces a tangible, durable result. Something to show at the end of the day.

"I make this!" It's a good feeling.

Neither A Borrower Nor A Lender Be

I lent money to a couple guys when I was in college to help them get out of a pretty tight spot. When the loan was requested, there were promises of repayment. Also, since the money wasn't actually being spent--more being placed as a deposit--there was a better chance of recovering the funds.

But...

One of them only paid back a portion. The other I received no repayment.

Unwittingly, that has formed me. I don't loan money to people I know anymore. I'd rather just give it and forget about it. (Well, really I'd rather not get into the situation in the first place but...sometimes needs arise.)

This has had an unfortunate side-effect, though. I don't like to borrow either. And I'm not just talking about money. I don't like to ask for any type of assistance. There is this incurable independence streak in me that keeps me isolated... "neither a borrower nor a lender be."

I don't want to owe anyone anything. I don't want anyone to owe me anything. We both work for our own and that's that. It keeps things simpler between us.

Not that this precludes sharing of any form. It's just that sharing should always be done with an open hand. Given not to be returned. That keeps things simpler, too.

That all said, I'm not sure this is the best way to go.

Hell. Really?

When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, the progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what's more, you reflect what you worship not only back to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners, or customers rather than human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sexual objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors, or pawns. These and many other forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they touch. My suggestion is that it is possible for human beings so to continue down this road, so to refuse all whisperings of good news, all glimmers of the true light, all promptings to turn and go the other way, all signposts to the love of God, that after death they become at last, by their own effective choice, beings that once were human but now are not, creatures that have ceased to bear the divine image at all. With the death of that body in which they inhabited God's good world, in which the flickering flame of goodness had not been completely snuffed out, they pass simultaneously not only beyond hope but also beyond pity. There is no concentration camp in the beautiful countryside, no torture chamber in the palace of delight. Those creatures that still exist in an ex-human state, no longer reflecting their maker in any meaningful sense, can no longer excite in themselves or others the natural sympathy some feel even for the hardened criminal.

Surprised by Hope; Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright p. 182

N.T. Wright is an amazing New Testament scholar and has done more to speak into the heart of the church and draw it back to its Biblical foundations. And, by his own admission, this book is not about Hell. He has not studied the topic in death and he even states that he has little desire to do so.

But...

The "theory" he presents here of Hell (which is strikingly similar to the view presented by another fine Anglican, C.S. Lewis, in his book The Great Divorce) has absolutely no foundation in the Bible. Surprised By Hope contains a refrain that consistently and accurately draws our theology back to the actual content of the Scriptures. He debunks traditions, myths, and secular philosophies that have infiltrated out interpretations of the Biblical texts. He exposes the mis-reading of many verses that have led the church down many errant paths.

Given that context, he probably should have left this passage out of the book.

He presents it against a "traditional" view of Hell as a lake of fire and a place of eternal torment, a "universalist" view of Hell as not really being a place to actually contain any souls because God, being a god of love, could never send anyone there anyways, a "annihilationist" view of Hell where people who reject salvation are not punished for eternity but rather destroyed (annihilated) and cease to exist.

His foundation is to define sin as behavior that is dehumanizing. First of another and then ultimately of one's self. This laid against the concept that to be found in Christ is to become fully human, fully alive, and to have life to the full. To be redeemed from a lie that enslaves us to a life that is less than what we were intended for. The Good News, therefore, is the answer or Truth that sets us free.

So he takes his revulsion of the idea of eternal punishment coupled with this thought of being fully alive and arrives at an idea of becoming something that ceases to be human at all.

Hell is a tough topic. Partially because the Bible often uses symbolic language to describe it and partially because the Bible (and Wright) places much more of its emphasis on the redemptive, re-creative, Good News of Jesus Christ.

I understand how he misses it here and in his defense he bookends his points here with disclaimers that these are opinions and he would gladly be proven wrong.