I have to say that at the end of listening to the hour-long interview, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, it's hard not to admire people who don't accept a salary at their church and give 90% of their book profits to helping the poor. Rick says that his desire is to use his money and influence to help the poor and oppressed, which is really not what most of us have come to expect to hear from evangelicals. Kay talked about her spiritual journey, growing up in a conservative Baptist home, categorizing and labeling everyone she met, living an all-around comfortable life....and how in the last several years she has been exposed to great suffering, and how that has opened her heart and changed her. These are good things! I want to honor these things.
On the other hand, as Krista Tippett pointed out and tried to illuminate, you don't get to be the pastor of a huge mega-church and the author of one of the best-selling books of all time without an ego! And wow, did Rick ever show that ego. There was no question that Krista asked him that he didn't turn into a teaching opportunity, usually with cleverly-alliterated points tightly backed up by Bible verses. I felt like he would have had a neat rebuttal to any, absolutely any argument anyone tried to pull. He had a quick answer for every question Krista asked, and while my disagreements theologically were actually rather minor, there was something in the performance that rang way too sure.
Krista asked him, "What do you say to 15,000 Rwandan refugees who have been homeless for 10 years?" And he said, "What you say to them is..." and then just answered the question. His answer was a pretty good one, in a way, but I don't know man, there is something off-putting about someone who has an answer, a quick answer, for that depth and breadth of suffering. And yet, he and Kay are putting their hearts and energy and money and time into doing what they can to try to alleviate the suffering. And with their influence, they can do quite a lot.
Of course it's not up to me to decide whether Rick and Kay Warren are sincere, good, decent people (which I'm rather sure they are, after seeing the interview). I'm writing all of this as a way of trying to feel out what matters--spiritually, existentially, in how we live our lives. You know? I hear or see certain people and think, "whatever path that person is on, that's the one for me" and then I see and hear other people and think, "hm....I'm not so sure about this." What throws a person off is when the path you're not so sure of is the path so many other people are so sure of!
So remember how at the top of this post I said that I was typing for my Dad when I was listening to Speaking of Faith? Well, I've been doing some typing for Dad. What I have been typing this week is the 18-page grocery order list for my family's summer fish camp. We're talking groceries for about 26 people for an entire summer, ordered all at once because it's not like you can go down to the corner store when you're living on a tiny island in a virtually-uninhabited bay in Alaska. I typed up over 1,100 entries, everything from taragon to AAA batteries to Oreos. It took me 6 1/2 hours to type it all up: a record of what's been ordered in past summers, how much was left over at the end of the summer, that kind of thing. And the whole time I thought so much about growing up on that island, what we ate. What you eat as a child is so intimate, such a formative part of who you become, actually. Although we don't think much about it, do we? Unless we're parents of young children ourselves, we don't think about just how formative the diet of our family of origin was. And not just diet, but eating rituals. Eating at the table (which was always did as a family), or at the television, as some families do. Picnics, special birthday meals, prayers before meals, occasional breakfasts in bed, and all the other ways that meals and food shapes our experience, particularly our early childhood experience. Yes, there was a lot to think about, typing up this list.
In other news, tomorrow I'm flying to New Orleans. I know I know, my carbon footprint is the size of Saturn. But really, Bill Clinton's is bigger. So is Rick Warren's, now that I think about it. I'm not trying to be flippant. This is my life. I'm not going to reconcile all the contradictions, not yet, not ever.
The book my Dad has been writing for 10 years (2 months each year though, he points out!) is being presented at a huge conference that is this year held in New Orleans. The conference is called the Society of Biblical Literature. I've been to SBL once before, two years ago in San Diego. It made quite the impression on me! It's a pretty big deal in the biblical-academic world. Anyway, so I'll be there at SBL, from tomorrow til Monday, and much of what I'll be doing, it turns out, is manning (womaning?) my step-mom's sales booth, surrounded by about a b'zillion booksellers from all over the world. In any spare time I have, I will be trying to get together with old friends from Israel, and maybe we will get to listen to some New Orleans jazz! Just another weekend in my life, donchaknow. The only downer is that Jon isn't able to come with me. Which is a big downer!
And that, folks, pretty much makes this blog post a wrap. Thanks for tuning in!
Posts
