Four Women (Part 2)
It's been a while since I've blogged. It must be a seasonal thing, but with Little League, landscaping and new job duties taking up a huge chunk of my time, blogging has just gone to near the bottom of my priorities.

Today, however, my nose is running like a faucet; my head feels like a beanbag chair; I'm sneezing my face off; and I'm blowing my nose every ten seconds. So I'm pretty much bagging work and catching up on my blog until I decide to go home and go to bed -- which is going to be pretty soon, given how I'm feeling.

I wanted to get back to the subject of the 4 women in the genealogy of Christ, since I only got through the first one -- Tamar, daughter-in-law of Judah, patriarch of the tribe of Israel that produced King David, King Solomon and King Jesus.

The second woman whose name is in this significant genealogy from the Gospel of Matthew is the one I like to call the Ho of Jericho, or Rahab. I love the story of Rahab, especially her inclusion in the 'paternal heritage' of Christ, because I believe it gives great insight into the way God shows His mercy and chooses His people.

Rahab's story is told in Joshua 2, when Joshua sent two men from the army of Israel into Jericho to spy out the city, which was next on the Lord's hit list for Israel to conquer in taking over the Promised Land. These men were hidden by Rahab in her home, and she deceived the King of Jericho and sent his men on a wild goose chase by saying that the two spies were in her home, but had left the city at dusk. Before she let them out of her window to escape, she made the spies promise to spare her and her family when the armies of Israel conquered the city. They agreed, telling her to tie a scarlet cord from the window she was letting them out of as a sign to Israel to spare the occupants of that house. All whom she wanted to save had to be inside that room, or they were dead.

Now, Rahab was a prostitute, and I find it very compelling that God chose to single her out as the means by which anyone survived the sack of Jericho. First of all, anyone who knows the Bible can easily recognize that it was completely unnecessary for Joshua to send two spies into Jericho for any reason, considering that He knocked down the walls of Jericho supernaturally and that the people of Jericho were scared shitless already, having heard of prior supernatural conquests by the chosen people of the Lord.

There are two possible reasons that come quickly to mind in my reading of this text as to why God bothered to have Joshua send spies into Jericho. First, in making allowances for the doubts of Israel, God wanted them to know just how scared and vulnerable the people of Jericho were.

Secondly, he wanted to save Rahab for His own purposes, one of which was to be a progenitor of Joseph, the human father of Jesus.

I take great encouragement from seeing these kinds of stories in Scripture, but they also fill me with frustration at how little appreciation I see in other Christians for what's really going on here. God's in the business of saving morally bankrupt people. If He wasn't, I'd have no hope in this life. Here you have a whore, who sizes up the impending doom and realizes that she's on the wrong side. She seizes an opportunity to get in with the right people in order to save herself AND HER FAMILY.

Let me re-emphasize that last point. Rahab wasn't just engaging in a cynical act of self-preservation. She was a person who saw that her lifestyle, her culture and her leaders were all corrupt. Yet she had a concern for her family. Maybe she was doing what she was doing as the only available way to take care of her parents and other needy family members. Whatever the case might have been, she was willing to leave that life and start again among people with whom she had little in common. AND she was certain enough that this was the better path to take, that she chose it for her kin. Scripture doesn't tell us whether all of her people accepted this invitation to salvation from the army of Israel, but for sure Rahab didn't know how it was all going to turn out.

This is the essence of faith -- to throw away all that you have, to surrender your loved ones to the inevitable consequences of their own choices, and to trust that God will take care of you when the rest of your world is falling apart.

I also find it ironic that the color scarlet has come to be identified with prostitution, adultery and all manner of sexual sin in the lives of women. To my way of thinking, that is a perversion of its use in this story, which is to signal brightly to the conquering soldiers that those people covered under that symbol are protected from judgment and death. In my mind, this symbol has much more to do with the Passover blood that protected the Jews from the Angel of Death back in Egypt on the night Pharoah lost his first-born son.

Joshua 6 records that when Jericho fell, Rahab and her family were given safe conduct outside the city, but were camped in a place OUTSIDE the camp of Israel. We don't hear anything else about Rahab in the entire Bible until her name is mentioned in the Matthew genealogy. From these two facts we can infer that while Rahab started her new life on the outside looking in, she (and presumably the rest of her family) was adopted into the family of Israel in time to marry and have children -- particularly a son named Boaz who figures prominently in our next installment.
- posted by The Drake @ 9:02 AM 1 comments

 
Love Abounds
I fell in love this past weekend. This fetching woman showed up at my house on Saturday wanting to debate me about the validity of the tithe for the New Testament Christian. She came prepared, all right, a 34-page online white paper covering every explicit message in the entire Canon of Scripture regarding the laws, principles and ordinances of the tithe.

This woman had heard that I had begun to put 10% of my gross into my church's coffers, and she was concerned that I wasn't paying enough attention to more practical matters, like my retirement and the education of my children in the face of my Chapter 13 and at least 25% of my gross going into taking care of my children's immediate needs.

You see, my children now number 7. A and I, henceforth AI, were officially added to my brood this past weekend. Love abounds, people.

Love abounds.


The decision to do this has been gradually arriving for the past month or so. I've learned to harness the immense, destructive energies of these two for my own, pure purposes. They make their mother put on her seatbelt when she rides in my van, simply because I want it so.

It's so cool.

Two more male children abandoned by the father that looks like them, they cling to whatever form of male mentoring and affirmation they can get. They also adopted my eldest son, D1, so named because his name... No. Fuck it. I'm going to out my boy (and by extension myself) right now. By name. Because his name is the coolest male name in America, and I came up with it.

Dechlan Michael.

Both ch's sound the same. First's a variation on the Irish Declan. If you're Irish, you pronounce it slightly to the soft side of 'DECK lan', to where it almost sounds like 'DAY clan'. It's lovely to listen to in the native tongue, but we go with the straight hard version, because we're hard, American men.

It's the Gaelic equivalent of David, which ironically enough is the first name I share with my father, considering that we got into a ridiculous fight over the naming of my second son, Silas Rex. Si is named after Paul's traveling companion after his split with Barnabas over John Mark for the second (not sure on the number) missionary voyage. Rex is his maternal grandfather's name, a guy I really dug hanging out with.

Well, dad didn't like my tribute much.

For the uninitiated, my second wife and I did a naming thing with our four kids where their first name had to be unique. The standard was to ensure that they would be the only person in their daily peer group with that first name. And it had to pass the sniff test for artistry, meaning that we had to image it to a virtue or virtues that we, as Christians, espoused.

The middle name was always an homage to an individual whose life demonstrated those virtues put into practice. Our oldest daughter's first name was chosen to instill a sense of the majesty of life as God intended it. Her middle name was given in honor of my maternal great-grandmother, an saintly Irish Catholic woman born in Dublin, orphaned, adopted and taken to a life of wealth and prosperity in Woodlawn, Aliquippa, PA.

Sense a bit of an Gaelic theme here? You bet. Being almost a third Gaelic by virtue of Irish and Scottish ancestry, with the wife 100% Scottish, we were WASP's with an attitude. My great-grandmother must have been as well, defying her WASPish, adoptive parents to marry a working class Irishman steelworker. Not such a great decision, it turned out, as there was whiskey involved. The Murrays had 3 daughters, Patricia, Mary Agnes and Theresa, who went by Tess, and one son, the baby James.

While from all accounts, the children grew up well cared for, and safely. It was early adulthood that became the killer for the Murray children. It started when Tess had a nervous breakdown at age 19. I was never told the exact events leading up to this break from reality, but from the times I knew her afterwards, I could tell she had left something behind.

Patricia was next, following in her mother's footsteps and marrying a working man who loved drink a bit too much, despite the fact that his mother was DAR. There was a definite class structure in the Pittsburgh region back in the day, and my mother, the eldest product of this tragic union was always very proud of that.

But poor Pat would not have to endure the lifetime of trials with the wrong man. She died when my mother was 12, and the bereft girl was given over into the care of Gran'ma Murray because her father only wanted to raise her two brothers. More likely he couldn't stand the pain of seeing the emerging beauty that reminded him so much of his beloved.

Didn't matter, though. Not to her. She still needed his love and involvement, but he had his boys, his hunting camp, and his alcholism to soothe his pain in utter obliviousness to the pain of his own children. Children don't care about your issues, they need someone to be a grownup for them.

Anyway, my mom carried on the family tradition by marrying the next wrong man, my father, and I am the eldest product of that tragic union. Creepy for me, huh?

So my father was the wrong man, too. And stayed pretty much that way his whole life. Poisoned by anger over hurts too long gone and too trivial to cling to, my dad made me miserable.

There was no way he was going to make the list.

But back to Dechlan, the thing about his name is that I have been this huge fan of U2 since War came out in 1983. A huge part of my attraction to their music was, in addition to the obvious Christian worldview, that I perceived a deep, brooding spiritual ache in their very Irishness -- something with which I identified heavily. Therefore, I wanted to give my oldest son an Irish name that would set him apart from the crowd. His mom and I came up with the name Gaelen in the weeks before he was born, but I never really quite settled in on it. It seemed faux. Just the day before he arrived, I came across the name Declan in a byline from Hot Wax, an Irish rock journal that was all over the lads in the '80's.

See, I think that U2 is, and has been, the single, most significantly Christian, voice in popular music for the past 20 years. Their music is filled with rich, deliberate images from the Bible. The Joshua Tree? C'mon! Despite their public denials that it was a metaphor for the Cross, you'd have to be half brain dead to believe it's only a cactus from the American Southwest in their world.

So when I saw this name, I knew God had sent inspiration. I changed the spelling to look harmonious with the middle name Michael, which he shares with me.

So, dad, you got the left-handed honoring of having your name translated into Gaelic and used as a first name in the eldest son of an eldest son of an eldest son. Which I'm very cool with, because it's a metaphor for the transformation that's helped be from becoming the wrong man myself for the third time in my life.

Anyway, this mystery woman shows up this past weekend with her 34 pages of refutation for my decision to tithe. And, damned if she didn't convince me. At least in the aspect that obeying a purely Old Testament law is not an obligation laid on the Christian. Rather, God lends us His grace to give as able, with no pressure to drop our basic needs or neglect the financial consequences of past mistakes.

I do believe that the tithe is a standard around which Christians should order their finances and monetary priorities, but I saw that the stress of trying to give my tithe while struggling under the weight of bankruptcy, a too-large mortgage, and child support was robbing me of the joy of giving.

To the point where it was no longer giving, as I now saw.

This woman smiled at me with a warmth and kindness I have not seen in many a month. She sat straight with the dignity of a debate well fought and won, and the winning of a brother who began to recognize the real tithe of giving begins under one's own roof. As I gazed into her eyes and saw the gentle confidence and sweet concern, I fell through the ceiling and into the dream for which I've been praying for over a year now.

I looked up at this wonderful new woman with whom I had suddenly become smitten, there was something very familiar about her. When I rubbed my eyes and looked again, I realized that 25 months after the ceremony, my bride had finally shown up.

The next two hours were spent having the kind of fun we've been denying ourselves for what seems like forever. Let me tell you, there were some Hall of Fame moments this past weekend. I found myself lost in my mate, my partner, my best friend by the end of the day.

No one can tell me that God still doesn't do miracles. I found love with someone I wanted out of my hair only last week, and tender compassion for two boys who desperately need a man who cares for them, and will show them how to find their own love in this world.

I'm listening to "Love Rescue Me" from Rattle and Hum, and I can't think of a better thought with which to close.

Love has rescued more than one person in this house.

Shalom!
- posted by The Drake @ 5:05 AM 2 comments

 
Four Women
I had one of those moments last night that affirms my faith and the reality of my relationship with Jesus as I read Day 25 of The Purpose Driven Life.

Did you know that the Gospel of Matthew mentions four women in the human genealogy of Jesus? Rick Warren talks about it in the book, but it's something that's been an inspiration and source of hope to me for years.

Why, you ask?

Two reasons actually.

First, Matthew's Gospel is traditionally considered to have been written for a distinctively Jewish audience, often quoting Old Testament prophecy to prove that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. Considering the Hebrew patriarchal culture of the time, including women's names in a genealogy would have jumped off the page. Part of that point doubtless would be to point out that although the genealogy of Christ had to be culturally understood from the paternal side, the great men in that line -- Judah, David, Solomon -- passed along absolutely NO DNA to the Lord's human incarnation. Furthermore, the participation of the men mentioned above in the paternal 'heritage' of Christ was not such as to be held up as a shining example of righteous behavior.

Which brings me to the second reason, which is how God placed these women and their messy situations into this royal bloodline. Prostitution, adultery, murder and mixed marriages marred the lives of these women, yet God chose to show grace, forgiveness and mercy to those involved as a foreshadowing and example of how He would reconcile the human race to himself.

Let's meet these women, shall we?

First is Tamar, who was the daughter-in-law of Judah, one of the 12 sons of Jacob (aka Israel). This head of the tribe destined to produce the Savior was not always the best moral example. He sold his brother Joseph into slavery, suggesting to his brothers that it would be more profitable than just killing him and lying to their father about it. Apparently, he wasn't the best father in the world, either. Er, the husband of Tamar was struck down by God because he was wicked. Onan, the second born, was required by law to do the nasty with Tamar until she gave birth to an heir. However, he didn't like that idea, so he pulled out before delivering the payload, angering God and being struck down as well. Judah, seeing that he was running out of sons, blew Tamar off with a perfunctory 'your child's in the mail'.

Tamar decided that was a no-go and disguised herself as a prostitute to take advantage of Judah's weakness in the wake of the death of his wife. She took a couple of personal items from him in lieu of payment for services rendered and got herself knocked up. Three months later, the village wags came to Judah saying, "Dude, guess what? Your daughter-in-law's been a ho and got herself knocked up. Judah said, "Bring the bitch here, and we'll burn her for bringing shame on my family name." So Tamar is brought up to Judah to get hers, and Judah demands that she name the father -- presumably to get some vengeance on him as well. Tamar smiles a little smile, holds up Judah's personal effects and announces to the bloodthirsty crowd, "The guy who owns these is the father."

Uh-oh. After Judah picks his jaw up off the floor, he tells the disappointed crowd that Tamar is more righteous than he is, and she is restored to her rightful standing in the family.

Well, I'm getting into this way more than I anticipated, so we are going to have to go the installment route.

Next: The Ho of Jericho
- posted by The Drake @ 6:55 AM 1 comments

 
Blog Tag!
The Unseen Blogger just tagged me. I have to complete 5 of the sentences below, and tag at least one other blogger I know to do the same.

If I could be a scientist...
If I could be a farmer...
If I could be a musician...
If I could be a doctor...
If I could be a painter...
If I could be a gardener...
If I could be a missionary...
If I could be a chef...
If I could be an architect...
If I could be a linguist...
If I could be a psychologist...
If I could be a librarian...
If I could be a lawyer...
If I could be an inn-keeper...
If I could be an athlete...
If I could be a professor...
If I could be a writer...
If I could be a llama rider...
If I could be a bonnie pirate...
If I could be an astronaut...
If I could be a world famous blogger...
If I could be a justice on any one court in the world...
If I could be married to any current famous political figure...
If I could be a dog trainer...

Here are my five vocational fantasies.

If I could be a musician, I would be the drummer and lyricist of the next band to continue in the tradition of U2, Jars of Clay, POD and Switchfoot, meaning that I would be the creative voice and driving rhythm of a band whose worldview is Christian, but whose art is relevant, topical, connective and plugged in to life as it really is. There is no such thing as Christian music, only music that lives and breathes the love, passion and purpose of our Risen Lord to a seeking audience. I love the drums. I used to pound on them with all the passion in my soul, building up the sweat of longing, aching and reaching out to tell the world what a great life God has given me. I really despise most Contemporary Christian music because it's so artificial and propagandistic. Jesus doesn't need a marketing campaign. He wants to draw people to Himself through the passionate, meaningful and loving lives of His disciples. I want to let people know somehow that my life is full of struggles, that I am hopelessly broken, but that I experience such hope and meaning because of the God who loved me to death (literally) in spite of my sad, pathetic state.

If I could be an inn-keeper, I would own a cozy, but upscale, bed and breakfast in the Laurel mountains southeast of Pittsburgh. This inn would be surrounded by breathtaking natural beauty on acres of wooded, mountainous land and set up so as to provide a porch view of a neighboring valley stretching for 10 or more miles on a clear day. It would be isolated, but close enough to the better resorts in the area. I wouldn't want to be a resort, however. I would want the ambience to be rustic and intimate, replete with fireplaces and gathering areas for conversation and games. There would be no TV's, but an atmosphere of Christian warmth, hospitality and humility in service. I would run the place with my wife and children, and ensure that employees from the area would be paid well and have full benefits. This would be a place of refuge, solace, rest and relationship building.

If I could be an athlete, I would be a professional golfer. Combining the work ethic of Vijay Singh with the athleticism and creativity of Tiger Woods. I would travel the world year-round to play the greatest test of individual character in the sports realm, and hope to honor my Lord with a gracious approach to the game. I'd also hope to win a lot of money, of course, but would be very happy to have played with dignity, grace and tenacity in the face of the inevitable adversity that the game brings. In fact, I'd be ecstatic to be able to do that on my home course right now.

If I could be a world famous blogger, I wouldn't be feeling guilty about doing this during work hours. Blogging would be my work, and I'd be engaging, witty and relevant to a generation of evangelicals struggling to be salt and light in a very troubled world during a very troubled time. None of which I am at the moment, unfortunately.

If I could be married to any current famous political figure, I'd probably pass. I just don't think I would be up to playing the games that political types have to play in order to get something worthwhile accomplished. It just seems like too much moral compromise would have to be involved. However, if the question was that I could only be married to a currently famous political figure or I would be married at all, I couldn't not be married. So given my limited knowledge of women in the political spotlight, my list would be as follows: 1) Ann Coulter, for obvious reasons; 2) Condi Rice, because she has style and an undercurrent of steaminess that makes me wonder...; 3) Laura Bush (er... Drake), because she's beautiful, loyal and faithful; 4) Ainsley Haynes, the conservative Republican White House Counsel in Jed Bartlett's utopian Liberal administration on "The West Wing", as played by Emily Procter (currently seen in CSI: Miami) because a) she's totally HOT and b) I loved the story about how she came to be an employee of the only really good media vehicle the Democrats have had in at least 30 years; and 5) Dee Dee Myers, because she was the first woman AND youngest person ever to serve as White House Press Secretary, because she had (or at least that's how I remember) a cherubic sexuality that I find hard to resist, and because she's a creative consultant for "The West Wing" -- the sum of which compensates for her being a liberal.

Now that I've bored you with this all-too-revealing look at my fantasy world, I tag slcurbanprincess, Sara Zarr, and Sam to carry on this little game. Remember to tag your blogging friends!
- posted by The Drake @ 12:47 PM 2 comments

 
Even When I'm Right, I'm Wrong
Ever experience this? It's a daily occurrence for me. My relationship with D. is where it shows up the most. D. and I have had almost daily conflict over our belief and worldview differences, and it infuriates me because her views are often not founded in the teachings of Scripture. But because I am frustrated and not compassionate towards her, I end up saying the right things the wrong way -- with condescension, derision and sarcasm. Then she ends up feeling bad about herself, angry with me and discouraged from following the path that I desperately want to see her walk.

I also had another experience with this phenomenon during the first service at church yesterday, where a member of my recovery group announced to me that I had hurt his feelings with comments I made about his use of 'The Message', and the use by Christians of 'The Message' in general.

I am very passionate about preserving the purity of the Word, and I believe that I am totally right in questioning the wisdom of using a paraphrase of Scripture as a teaching and/or learning tool for the Christian life. There are sermons, books and commentaries available to all to enhance their process of learning Biblical truth, but they all assume a basic accountability to a credible translation of the Bible. Users of 'The Message' are reading someone's interpretation of a Scriptural passage, often without realizing how different it is from the standard, accepted translations. For example, the Beatitudes become virtually unrecognizable in the hands of 'The Message'.

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

becomes

"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you."

You might call me a traditionalist, or even a legalist, but I definitely think something is lost in this paraphrase. Yes, the essential intent appears to remain, but just the fact that the verse is transformed from the third person plural to the second person singular (or plural, but I think the natural tendency would be to think singular) is just plain bad hermeneutics.

However, this brother's feelings were hurt. He felt as if I had attacked him personally and demeaned his spirituality. Bad for him, bad for me. And so I need to seek his forgiveness. Not for having an informed opinion on the subject, but for creating a stumbling block in his relationship to God and myself.

This humility business is tough work, I'll tell ya. I've got a long way to go.
- posted by The Drake @ 8:53 AM 0 comments

 
Weekend Wrap Up
Today is my first official day as a full-time employee here in Fortune 500 land. The morning got off to a rough start when my card wouldn't work at the gate of the parking lot, got a little bit worse when I found out that the vending machine on my floor that dispenses the nectar called Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice was out of order, and reached a low point when I realized that my HR orientation is booked through lunchtime. Hopefully, they will be supplying something, but something tells me not to expect it.

The weekend, however, was yet another huge example of God's grace working in my life. D. and I had been on the outs for well over a month now, ever since the debacle surrounding the paying of our (my) income tax, and which found me coming home to a roomful of packed boxes three weekends ago. I, in turn, responded by informing her that I would surrender the house for foreclosure in the event that she left -- my only real option in my current Chapter 13 state. She grudgingly stayed, but things have been horrible ever since.

This past week has been particularly difficult for me, as I prayed -- at times through tears -- every morning on my drive to work for grace to respond to D. in a Christ-like manner. And every night, something would push my buttons and I'd either lose it or go off and be by myself.

At the same time, we've been participating in the 40 Days of Purpose in our church. This week's readings have all been about being part of the Body of Christ and fellowship, with particular application to individual relationships. In addition to my constant failures to consistently apply these teachings, I've been very vocal with D. about the need for BOTH of us to get on board or continue to suffer needlessly. We had a couple of bedtime discussions where we took opposite sides of the arguments. No big surprise in my experience, but for us to disagree on these fundamental propositions was mind-boggling to me. The first night, I made the statement that we have to come to the end of ourselves in order to be truly changed by God. The second one was right from the book, A Purpose Driven Life. This is a paraphrase, but the gist of it was that conflict was the pathway to true intimacy. That one she really couldn't get.

Friday morning on the drive to work, I became convinced that I was guilty of unforgiveness towards D., and that much of my recent reactivity was a result of accruing a bunch of little hurts from her over the past several weeks. The teaching program I was listening to made the point that the only reason that Christians don't have abundant joy, zeal and energy for living the Life is sin, and I quickly realized that my biggest besetting sin was angry outbursts born of a prideful and unforgiving spirit.

So I wrote D. an email, reciting an example of a recent tiff we'd had, and had been going on with me prior to, during and afterwards. I asked her forgiveness, and told her that I forgave her and would continue to try and demonstrate Christ's love.

I also told her that my study, prayers and circumstances convinced me that I was on the right path with the Lord, and that I wanted her to walk with me more than anything.

She was unable to formulate a reply and wouldn't talk about that night.

Saturday we had a long, long talk where we went around and around the same old arguments about why she thought we shouldn't be together. But this time, I was doing more than saying that God hated divorce and that obedience was the only way. The Lord had convinced me to regard these trials and conflicts as a blessing and a challenge from Him. An opportunity to grow and truly experience His Grace. There were tears on both sides, and finally D. became so angry about the whole inescapability of the truth that she just shut down and left the house for an hour or so.

That night we went to our 40 Days small group, and heard testimony from other members about how God used their own trials to bring them closer to God and their spouses. D.'s face began to flush, and afterwards she asked me for a hug. Compassion and warmth flooded into me as I embraced her, and I knew that God's Hand was heavy on her.

Sunday morning we got into the 3rd Purpose sermon, which is that we are meant to be like Christ. At one point, the pastor said something that I knew would hit D. right where she was living. My neck muscles had barely twitched when I heard her whispering into my ear, "Don't you DARE look at me!" It was so funny that I had to control myself not to disrupt the sermon with my guffawing. It was then that I knew she was back.

When we can joke with each other about our own weaknesses and not keep trying to pick out each other's, we can be very happy together. The rest of the day was relaxed and fun. We went out the the new Red Robin. I played catch with one of the boys and did some work in the yard. We had steak on the grill and watched a movie together.

I woke up today tired, but grateful to have had yet another opportunity to see the grace and power of my God in action.

Shalom!
- posted by The Drake @ 7:30 AM 1 comments