ENOUGH ROPE

For the Joy Set Before Him: Or, Jesus is not my Boyfriend

2006-07-03T07:27:00.000-07:00

Hebrews 12:1-2 "Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfector of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

The cross is what separates Christianity from any other faith, any other worldview. It's the cross that draws the line between truth and myth, between reality and wishful thinking, between a historical faith empowered by an authoritative Word, and what we can call mere paganism in contrast to C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.

It is the story of a God who creates. That's not news.

It's the story of a God who is Holy. That's not news.

It's the story of a God who loves. That's not news.

It's the story of a God whose creation rebels. That's not news.

It's the story of a God whose justice demands the shedding of blood. That's not news.

It's the story of a God who becomes man and sheds his own blood on the cross to save his beloved. Now. That's news.

"For the joy set before Him, he endured the cross."

The cross is the inspiration to live the incarnate, illuminated life we are called to live in Christ in order to reach the joy that is set before us. Incarnate because real, in the world, functioning in the now, and, by illumination, knowing we are pleasing Him because we obey Him, not perfectly, but personally, actually, not vicariously. Our atonement may be vicarious but the pleasing is real-time, bonafide, non-virtual. And so too the joy.

Can there be a more inspirational passage than Hebrews 12:1-2? Here's the gist:

We are inside the stadium in the home stretch of our marathon, rounding the turn to the finish line, and a cloud, a crowd of bold and raucous, delirious witnesses has assembled for one express purpose: to cheer us to run with endurance the race set before us. An entourage of fans, our fans, not critics or opponents, more boisterous, more loyal, more insane with joy over our approach to the finish line than any Brazilian, Ghanaian, or Ukrainian at the World Cup. The whole stadium is filled, and with our fans, and not a one is sitting on his hands.

Who are these fans? A righteous remnant who have gone before us, having embraced and endured the cross, and now experience the joy firsthand, the one set before us. They are teaching us how to endure the cross to reach the joy.

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

May I speak candidly? Is there any amount of "future joy" for which you yourself would endure the cross? Do you know what enduring the cross "means"? For that matter, do you know what endurance means? Or "the joy"? Attempted answers to these questions follow. But to endure the cross to get the joy, the text plainly says, we should "lay aside every encumbrance. . . every sin that entangles us"

Sin, that we can understand. Sin can and will trip us up. We're on guard. But what's an encumbrance? A weight, an obstacle, a barrier. In this case, a self-willed one. How foolish it would be to try to run a marathon and purposely inhibit oneself, laying little traps, and plaguing one's own pace with extra weights, adding to one's natural resistance some bonus friction, and, for good measure, an extra, extraneous obstacle and hurdle here and there, randomly placed like a steeplechase. And how about a blindfold?

What's an encumbrance in spiritual terms? An encumbrance could be a false metaphor, a foolish image, a confusing pattern that contributes to a misunderstanding of Who God Is. And who we are.

Sins are bad enough—but encumbrances, they can be avoided, rectified, withdrawn, removed, if we can name them and can deny their hold on our view of God and of ourselves before him.

The pagans had a multiplicity of Gods and Goddesses. And therefore a multiplicity of images and metaphors. Which pagans? Some were animists with their river gods and sky gods and bird gods—Egyptians and Vikings and Nubians. Some were more enlightened in the Western sense, and personified their gods and gave them names and personalities and laws to constrain them or powers, like fate, to damn them, names and stories we still can recite today—of Zeus and Odin and Neptune ...

Their alleged behaviors and conspiracies affected the way Pagankind viewed themselves in relation to each other. . . and to their gods. It led them to believe, rightly, that a man or a woman could be, indeed, most likely was, wiser, more noble, more just, more peace-loving, more kind, more patience, more worthy of devotion and honor and love than any god. Because in the stories, their stories about their gods, the gods were selfish, snide, arrogant, vain, prideful, avaricious, faithless, as much captives of fate as their human progeny. No wonder Hercules or Achilles or Odysseus could be seen as triumphing over the credulous, crude, and conniving crew of deities they had to deal with.

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

The cross is that line between Christianity and paganism.

Christ died for us, yes. . . but it's the next line that will get us: while we were yet sinners, enemies in our minds.

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

The cross is that line between Christianity and paganism.

We will not be more wise, nobler, patient, kind, worthy of love and devotion than this God, this Jesus, Son of God. Prince of Peace. Lord and Savior. For the joy set before Him, he endured the cross. That settles it. That disarms the pagan who thinks he is better than god, who think he is wiser than god, more righteous than god. Pagan man may be better than Zeus or Odin or the river god, but he is not better than the One Who Lays Down His Life for His friends, who looks Death, Treachery, Loneliness in the eye and does not blink.

There was a day back in Jerusalem, where Jesus asked that question, "Are you ready for the joy set before you to endure the cross," after two of his more ambitious associates nodded with complete and utter idiocy of which only those with little faith can actually achieve, that, indeed, they were ready.

Matthew 20:20 Then the mother of Zebedee's sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him.

21"What is it you want?" he asked. She said, "Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom."
22"You don't know what you are asking," Jesus said to them. "Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?" "We can," they answered.
23Jesus said to them, "You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father."

But they were emphatically not ready to drink that cup. They could not know what was in the cup, though he had patiently, daily, consistently showed them, and even on the way to Jerusalem, and none save Thomas, caught his drift. They did not know what he was talking about and most of the time, we do not know what we are talking about either. In that cup was suffering, self-denial, fixing their eyes of the author and perfector of their faith.

Before I take up this point and tie the Hebrews 12 passage back into the main theme and weave a conclusion—permit me a sidebar that is really more than a sidebar, and it has to do with what I call the peril of false intimacy. Let me unpack that sentence.

Peril is not good.

Falsehood is not good.

Intimacy is good.

False intimacy is not good. The peril of false intimacy is that it will displace true intimacy and replace it with a shallow substitute, and this will rob us of "the joy set before us," for which we should endure. False intimacy is what the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee had, the kind of easy familiarity with holiness that propels one, not with confidence in a relationship built on a true understanding of Who he Is, but constructed upon an encumbrance, a distorted image, a wrong metaphor. A kind of paganizing of Jesus.

If you secularize Jesus, you make him a very good albeit human teacher who knows how to curve final grades to make sure everyone passes even if he's not enrolled in the course. This is not false intimacy, this is false exaltation, a parody of what it means to be redeemed and sanctified by the Holy One of God.

To paganize Jesus you must bring him down to our level, a buddy, a pal, side by side at our lockers at lunch, sharing our special secret wishes and crushes and who we're going to vote for Prom King.

But Jesus was not some cheapjack Eastern potentate with favors to dispense—right hand here, left hand there. He was the Son of God come down to redeem humankind of its wickedness by His own blood.

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

For Mrs. Zebedee and her sons it was the reverse: for the cross set before them, they endured the joy. The joy of knowing Him as he is, of being one with the Father and Spirit, of seeking first his kingdom, of walking in righteousness. That's the joy. They had it reversed. The crown before the cross.

What am I saying? What's false intimacy? It is intimacy ill-gotten, gimmicky, intimacy illegitimate, intimacy predisposed to favor our emotional state, a relationship founded on our terms, based on how we feel about God rather than how he witnesses to us through the spirit through His word.

False intimacy is contrived, imbibed, a bait-and-switch from an unauthorized source. It's what Satan offered the Lord in the wilderness; you remember: a false intimacy with His Father, based on feeling so safe so that he could toss himself off the temple and know that God loved him so much he would send his angels to catch him like Willie Mays caught Vic Wertz's drive over his shoulder in the 1954 series; or a false intimacy based on his feeling so affluent that his friend Satan could deliver at his signal truckloads of the world's gold and silver like he was Richie Rich's cousin or a 4th nephew to Uncle Scrooge's fortune; a false intimacy based on feeling so powerful, because Satan could Fed-Ex him the all governments of the world, or every advanced degree from the most prestigious universities, all of Microsoft's stock. . . False intimacy, because they are based on false images, false data, false metaphors. This Jesus, whom Satan sought to subvert, Is He in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden, is He who created all things and Who, by the cross, and his triumphant resurrection, would own all things, rule all things, judge all things.

The great thing about our salvation is that "feeling saved" is a bonus. I am saved whether I feel that I am or not, because my position in Christ means that it does not depend on how I feel or He feels but on what He has done, and I what I enjoy as a result of acknowledging what He has done. It's Tuesday morning. Do I feel saved or righteousness or holy? Doesn't matter. That's part of the source of the joy set before us.

The feelings, they're beside the point. I am saved. I am righteous. I am holy. The joy set before me? I am permitted live like its true of me, because it is. To live an incarnate life, an illuminated life, for the joy set before me, taking up my cross.

Feelings are nice, but fickle—and even worse if we ascribe them to Jesus, if he must have a strangers-in-the-night-exchanging-glances sort of countenance toward us. Jesus, please tell us, your feelings for us are reciprocal! Aren't they? That's not Christianity, that's paganism.

That's what makes a lust for intimacy, or a certain kind to which we think we are entitled, so dangerous. So pagan. That's what makes even the lyrics we sing and the prayers we concoct crucial in spiritual formation. May I speak dangerously? I want to risk saying something here that may offend you, or at least make you feel offended. . . two different things. It's a pet peeve of mine, which doesn't make it automatically one of yours—but I offer it to you for free. Peeve away with me if it kindles your personal ire-counter.

The new trend in worship songs, driven somewhat by Dove Awards and Christian-Hit-Radio and studio execs who know how to woo the teenager in all of us, is to appeal to a certain vanity in us, to lead us to think that we know God better than we do, more intimately than is possible, more romantically than is healthy. Like Mrs. Zebedee. Sometimes our songs try to evoke a sentimentality that is stillborn from the start because it starts with the wrong metaphor for God and image of man, an encumbrance to our running the race and finishing it smoothly.

The songwriters are only partly at fault here. They are only responding to our pervasive seeker-sensitive age in which closeness to God is equated with the absent closeness and intimacy we long for in our partners, our parents, our siblings, our friends. It's the closeness we feel we have been cheated of, like the pagans whose gods they wanted to adore but instead were flirtatious, whimsical, arbitrary, and, sometimes, downright mean.

We lack that intimacy here or there, or everywhere, and have been told for so many years that Jesus is the answer, it is an easy jump to, "Jesus is my boyfriend, my confidante."

The trouble is, you can't tell Jesus anything he doesn't know. He doesn't need our heroic transparency, our breathless whispers, our shoulder under his head; he did need it, once, in Gethsemane, but we when we were there, representatively, we didn't give it to him. Neither did his Father. He wasn't in Gethsemane to cuddle. And he did not descend into Hades to coddle. He was there to endure, for the joy set before him.

I would be the first to say that the bride of the bridegroom should be in love with the bridegroom. But, please keep in mind that even when this metaphor was introduced a majority of marriages were arranged and weren't the free choice of the lovers. Did romance follow? Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. (That's why Paul, you'll observed, COMMANDS husbands to love their wives. . .)

Whether or not that metaphor comfortably translates into worship songs that make our hearts beat faster depends on your point of view, but I confess lyrics that make it sound like we are, for better or worse, Jesus's really neat girlfriend who thinks he is just dreamy and swell, well, I do not know if that kind of intimacy is worth the price, and I am absolutely convinced, it has nothing to do with enduring the cross for the joy set before us. I know that it creeps me out to sing some of the songs that we sometimes sing, not because intimacy isn't good and wholesome, but that the prevailing metaphors for it kind of cross a line of familiarity that demeans Him and lifts us up. The line that presently gets to me is, "I am so in love with you." "In love," Really?

"So, in love" is so teenage-angst-driven, 20th century, so full of itself, so look at me, I am blushingly, sanctimoniously, more intimate than thou. To love God, yes, that is our calling, our devotion, our determination. To be "in love" with God? A false premise, a false sentimentality, a false intimacy whose trajectory is mirrored back toward me, not God. It's a needy love, a greedy love, a nerdy love. Look at me I'm Sandra Dee.

I have never talked to anyone who willingly has seen Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ more than once. I have seen it twice, both times in the theatre, one week apart. It's too bloody for most people—too masochistic. It's extreme we say, and maybe it is. Maybe it is. Or maybe not. That bloody Jesus, dragging his body and his cross up to Golgotha is too bloody. And our tendency is to turn away; that's not the bridegroom whose hugs and kisses we want to surround us. Clean up, Jesus, then we'll hug. Wash up, get a towel for gosh' sakes, and we'll meet you on the sofa for the sweet nothings part.

What's wrong with these songs, are we not making too much of it. No, because it opens us up to a kind of entitlement that holds the cross hostage for the joy delivered now. We want our cup to be filled and running over—but not with suffering. But, sorry, folks, that is the cup he says we must drink first, for the joy set before us.

What is the joy set before us?

What was it for him?

We can start a list. The joy set before him must have been our redemption. That is why he came, isn't it? Aren't we his joy? Yes, in a way. The apple of his eye. Therefore, it is for his people that he endured the cross. I concede that it is a true statement that he endured the cross so that he could cleanse us of our sin, but, in the context of Hebrews 12, I don't think that's we're joy set before Him. We're the beneficiaries of the joy set before Him.

So what it is it, then? What is the joy? Let's cut to the chase.

The joy is reunion with, oneness with the Father and Holy Spirit, unity in the purposes of God in time and eternity: the same joy of the prodigal son, the joy of returning to one's homeland, and having a big party with everyone there who should be there. Revelation refers to Jesus as the lamb slain before the foundation of the world. That's a long time to endure the cross. But it all depends on what the joy is set before you.

For the pagans it was immortal cavorting with the Gods, not because they were made in their image, but because they held the keys to all the fun, all the power, all the laughter.

For Jesus, it is doing the will of the Father. Which brings us full circle to the incarnation, why we were born, why we have to die, but only once, and why we have to live in this world in the shadow of the cross.

For the joy set before us, of comforting to the image of Christ, we endure the cross, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfector of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame," sitting down at the right hand of the throne of God."

13 paradigms shifts

2006-05-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

Don Miller's 13 paradigms shifts in pagan culture and implications for sharing the gospel. . . what do you think?

Just the Kind of Help We need, When We Need it

2006-05-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

How the British Do C S Lewis

2006-04-28T06:51:00.000-07:00

Overheard from a keynote speaker at Cambridge University, commenting on CS Lewis's monumental 1936 work, The Allegory of Love: "It's not negligible."

Typical British diffidence and demurral. . . wouldn't want anyone to get too much credit now would we? She succeeded Lewis in the chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, resigning it to teach at Notre Dame University for a time. Had nothing good to say about American students. Had very little good to say, period. Ah, jealousy and denial, thy name is "Professor _______"*

*Name withheld lest she get the notoreity she wants from her debunking efforts.

How I Spent My Easter Weekend. Or: Postmodernism is the Priesthood of All Believers

2006-04-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

This was by far my most ecumenical Easter weekend to date.

Last Thursday I spent the day with a consultant for collegiate journalism programs on our campus who used to be a Southern Baptist, but came to the point where he considered himself "more conservative, theologically, than Protestants" (his words) and decided to join the Eastern Orthodox church.

Late that night, I joined my Baptist turned Roman Catholic brother for a campfire behind his home in the country, to enjoy the full moon and reconnect after having been caught up with relentless schedules for a few months. Maundy Thursday services were over for the night, but our remembrance of the Lord's service and suffering carried on into early Friday morning.

Friday evening my family attended a service at a local United Methodist Church.

Saturday night, to satisfy a curiosity we've had for some time, we attended the 5:30 Easter service at our local Vineyard Church.

Sunday morning was with our "regular" Baptist church, but we were in our newly built worship/activity center for the first time.

The Vineyard service was incredibly uplifting and joyful. My Catholic brother made the claim that the Catholic Church seeks to make following Christ as simple as possible, not wanting anyone to strain for what it means to be His disciple. Mysteries abound in Him, yes, but there should be no mystery about how one repents, is saved, and goes about persevering in Christ. Our Sunday morning Baptist service was earnest and perplexingly timid in its exuberence on this day, of all days.

My Eastern Orthodox consultant said once he took a class in church history which explored for the entire semester one question: Could the Protestant Reformation have happened apart from the invention of the printing press? He's one of those guys who likes to make the provocative quip to get an intellectual rise out of you: Protestantism was born in modernity and is thus plagued with the problems of modernity. All postmodernism really is is the priesthood of all believers.

Oh, what would Donald Miller have to say?

My First Allegiance

2006-04-11T12:58:00.000-07:00

Who is this Scuba Red Drew, posting all the time like he owns the space, with so much (good stuff) to say and so few who will engage him?? (Wait-I guess I'm the only other one around here to do the engaging. OK - so enough silence already.)

You can listen to four excellent tracks on Derek Webb's excellent new album, Mockingbird, at his site. I played those tracks over and over for a few days last week, then got the whole album. And I'm glad I did. Here's a conscience-after-Christ's own wedded to melodies and chorus hooks that you won't get out of your head for a while. Note the Donald Miller connection when you look at his site, too.

don't teach me about politics and government
just tell me who to vote for
don't teach me about truth and beauty
just label my music
don't teach me how to live like a free man
just give me a new law
(A New Law)

I'm at one of those higher education institutions which has a "Standards of Conduct" statement to sign every year. Each year the wording gets tweaked a little, usually toward good ends, but this time there's this sentence:

"We, as a university family, stand opposed to those cultural influences that have an unwholesome effect upon the church, the family, and the cause of Christ. For example, the majority of media entertainment in our day is blatantly opposed to biblical thinking and behavior and should be viewed as a great threat to spiritual maturity."

Say what? Is this new? I'll have to go back to last year's document and check. But no matter about the past for right now. What do I do with this? The example of an unwholesome cultural influence is media entertainment? Well, sure. It's an example. And much of it is unwholesome. But shall this be our example of what the enemy is up to?

I haven't been able to get these words out of my head for a week either: majority, blatantly, biblical thinking, great threat. To have Derek Webb and the Standards of Conduct swirling around together in your head creates some serious noise.

there are two great lies that i’ve heard:
“the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die”
and that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class republican
and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him

but nothing unifies like a common enemy. . .

my first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man
my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood
it's to a king & a kingdom

So if my first allegiance is to Him, what does that mean for second, third, ninth and seventeenth allegiances?

And what about allegiances to Standards of Conduct?

PCC and the Future of Christian Higher Education

2006-04-05T09:41:00.000-07:00

The recent Chronicle feature on the, uhh, unique mission and curriculum, not to say student life environment, at Pensacola Christian College, gives one pause--or is that "paws"?

The school, one that considers Bob Jones University "liberal," takes a defiant stand as depicted in the Chronicle piece, which is remarkably understated, given the out-of-the-mainstream nature of the school, even when compared with most conservative, evangelical, Christian campuses. (PCC is the one that wants to credential students without any kind of accreditation or state sanction.)

In some ways, PCC is a remarkable successful story--remarkable in maintaining enrollments and faculty retention and overall unanimity of vision enforced by a strict code of behavior and worldview for both faculty and staff--and certainly students. Easy to bash, not so easy to explain away. There is a market, sorry, congregation for such an approach, clearly. But. . .

What is the future of Christian higher ed? And what is its future when viewed from Pensacola? Does it get narrower--returning to the roots of separatism and pan-fundamentalism? Or does it become inclusive, incisive, and infectious--with a mere Christianity core?

A lot depends on what one means by "higher education." Is it to prepare oneself and equip one's students for a knowledge-productive, creatively inquisitive, Christ-emulating, faithful life of service and leadership, drawing on the resources of God-given, unbusheled talent and the conviction of a redeemed sinner sharing bread with other "beggars" or is it to live a cloistered, holier-than-them life of privatized, sanitized, provincialized faith that reduces to and appeals to one mind-set, an of-but-not-in the world anti-climax of predictable outrage and self-imposed exile from world and the World?

PCC is no doubt made up of well-meaning people who have a respectable rationale for their blueprint for building a community--one that resists modernity and abhors new sins of the flesh. But its unlikely impact on culture--under a dispensationalist regime of who-cares-i'm-only-passing-through--betrays a fatal attraction, the desire to be different, and to be seem as different, in a way that calls attention to itself and overrides the already dubious value of such difference. "Holiness," Jesus says, in effect, belongs in the closet, away from the madding crowd and not shoving it in their faces. And rather than blowing trumpets to herald it, He admonishes us to do our good works quietly, even anonymously. This is because, simply put, holiness paraded as such doesn't look like holiness, but its opposite--prideful rule-mongering and scornful scorekeeping.

But, one can protest, PCC didn't ask for the attention of the secular press. In the sense that no one called The Chronicle and asked for feature story, yes, I am sure that is true. On the other hand, PCC's very public stance on who and what it is to be as an institution is loud and clear. And places institutions like, say, Cedarville University, which is mentioned in the article as a kind of city of refuge for those ostracized by PCC, in the awkward position of showing sympathy for PCC's mission while distancing itself from the more draconian student code.

Staying out of the 21st Century is a full-time occupation, and it's clear PCC has its hands full in recruiting enough 20th Century students to stay pacified under its spiritual anesthetics.

To Be Young, Catholic, and Wheatonesque

2006-03-30T17:13:00.000-08:00

Alan Jacobs has published a thoughtful article in First Things on why you can't be evangelical and Catholic as a faculty member at Wheaton College--but you can be Arminian or Calvinist and still be in good standing, even though, presumably, one position erases the other. . . and neither ensures that you will be a good teacher of the subject matter for which you were hired.

The president at Wheaton is bound to be unhappy about this. I wonder if he has a blog?

O To Be Rich, Young, & a Ruler

2006-03-15T14:01:00.000-08:00

So, I was telling the guys, I walk up to him, and I give him this speech I have been preparing for sometime, you know, "Hey, I think you're really cool--loved the part about the meek inheriting the earth. My sister thinks you've got great eyes (not that I have noticed myself). It'd be really neat to hang out with you, maybe on the next tour, you know?"

Then, he gets this look in those same eyes I was referring to, like, "so just who do you think you are talking to, buddy? Who do you think I am?" And man, I am thinking, hey, I just paid you a compliment mister--I don't just walk up to just anybody and tell them that I think they're neat. So he goes ahead and gives me a hard time about what it really means to be "cool" and all, like obeying my parents and stuff, and I say, listen, I've been doing all that stuff since I was a kid, so hang loose, will ya. I'm trying to be your buddy and friend and you are giving me all this flak.

And then he says something I will never forget. He says, "So, if you really want to hang out with me, give everything away, and then you're free to come along."

Everything, man. Everything. Can you believe it? Who does he think he is? God or something?

Aiming 2 Please, Aiming 2 Misbehave

2006-03-13T16:59:00.000-08:00

What do you do when, dreams dashed in your local collegiate Christian environment, what you envision as Christ-honoring, "provoking unto love and good works," is misread or misexperienced as rebellion or concession to some malady or other mis-masquerading under the pesudo-charge of some form of "postmodernism"? What do you do?

What do you do when you want to "engage the culture," but, when you do, it is regarded as surrendering to it, giving in, or bailing out?

What do you do when your heart aches for your academic leadership to climb down off the high horse they have ridden up to the ivory tower in order to have a real, simple, down to earth collaboration on how NOT to equate worldview with the fundamentalist status quo that thinks it is "evangelical" but really is a dressed-up ostrich-in-the-sand with new technology for distributing its dictates? What do you do?

One thing you can do: document, wryly, your encounters here, here at 4ChristsSake.

The tag line for this blog entry comes from Capt. Mal of the good ship Serenity, the marvelous movie (best of, really) from 2005 based on the ill-fated FOX-SF series, Firefly. He says, at one point, "I aim to misbehave." And I took that as one of the most Jesus-inspired phrases uttered in a movie last year. There He is, standing at the Temple, whip in hand, and ready to "misbehave," driving out the moneychangers. Who are the new moneychangers? Blog here, I say, under a pseudonym if you must, but tell us, tell your brothers and sisters, what you are experiencing on your outpost on the edge of chaos and ambiguity. --Scuba Red Drew