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Saturday afternoon, I joined son Neil and his family to see "The Chronicles of Narnia," the wonderful C.S.Lewis story, now a big-screen movie. Wonderful movie, although a little puzzling for our 9 year old twins. "Grandpa, why is the lion roaring?" "Why did the lion die?" That sort of thing. As we exited the theater, I was remembering how my children were introduced to Narnia and why we did not venture very far into that land of fantasy and allegory.
It was the mid-70s and our children ranged in age from about 7 to 13. Thanksgiving weekend, our family had rented a cabin at the Tishomingo State Park in Northeast Mississippi. The air was wintry cold and just right for a blazing fire. On Thanksgiving morning, while mom was preparing breakfast, I said, "Kids, come here. I have something I want you to hear." They had no idea what to expect. I began reading page one of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," the first volume in Narnia. We literally had to force them to come to breakfast, they were so caught up in the story. After breakfast, I read some more, then we all went for a walk down the wooded trails. They could not get back to the house fast enough; they had to know what happened next. C. S. Lewis has long been one of my favorites, but more for his theological writings than for the fantasies. The kids, now adults with families of their own, and I have great memories of that time. However, I think, if you asked them, they do not know why we did not progress too far into the ins and outs of the Narnia tales. But I know. They got too complex. Too many characters, too much symbolism, too hard to keep straight.
I admit to being a little puzzled by groups that have printed up religious literature about Narnia to hand out in their neighborhoods and in the malls. I admire their evangelistic zeal, only wonder if they are misreading the curiosity the movie will provoke about its deeper meaning. We remember when Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" appeared, churches set up counseling centers near cinemas and stationed their people near exits, ready for them to emerge with yearnings to know this Savior. In most cases, the response was minimal. Again, I appreciate their willingness to be used of God, just question the effectiveness of these movies in presenting the message of Christ. My opinion, for what it's worth, is that the best these movies can be expected to do is stir one's curiosity so that he will go read the book. I cannot tell you how many times I have walked out of a theater and gone straight to the library to learn more about the subject. One of the first times was "A Man For All Seasons" about Henry VIII. Later it was "Khartoum" on Chinese Gordon. These days, it happens several times a year. We hope that's what "Narnia" will produce, people wanting to know more about the meanings of the allegory. If some progress from that to knowledge of the Savior, it will be worth everything.
Sunday morning, I attended Riverside Baptist Church in River Ridge, a mile from my house. This was one of the first churches to begin ministering after the hurricane. Pastor Jim Caldwell literally lived in the church yard handing out food and water for weeks, alongside church members and volunteers from around the country. I was thrilled to see the church filled and the worship service vibrating with vitality. Shortly afterwards, I preached for Faith Baptist Church, meeting temporarily in the chapel of Rayne United Methodist Church on St. Charles Avenue. They welcomed back their displaced worship leader, Lori Wagner. Lori is choral director of Newman High School in Uptown, but was temporarily laid off when Katrina scattered their student body in every direction. "They've called me back to work," she said, and resumes her choral work at the school early in January. I said, "You're going to have a hard time telling people where you evacuated to." She laughed. She spent the time in Paris.
Lori has friends who pastor a Baptist church in the French capital. When they heard of her situation, they called and said, "Great time to visit." In the meantime, the Paris church's music minister, another Louisianian named Scott Sontag, was returning to the states for a short visit and had said, "Don't worry about another music director; the Lord will provide." Then Lori walked in and took up where Scott had left off. Her days were free for browsing the streets of Paris, sitting in cafes, visiting museums, driving in the countryside. "I had only high school French," she said. But there's nothing like living with the French to learn the language. And there's no place like home, either.
The local reports indicate that our citizens are really getting into the Christmas season at the stores. What stores are open say their sales are up forty percent or more. Is this the old thing of trying to assuage our grief by spending money? Or is it simply that with fewer stores open, the ones that are in business get all the business? Someone probably knows.
Soon after Katrina, some people began spreading a rumor that "they" had dynamited the Industrial Canal levee in order to protect the French Quarter, Uptown, and the Garden District. Last week, a displaced resident by the name of Dyan "Mama D" French Cole testified before a Congressional Committee that this is what happened. No matter that the flooding destroyed homes of the rich as well as the poor, whites as well as blacks, the rumor persists that the "powers that be" did this to the Blacks to protect the Whites. Another puzzle to me: the city of New Orleans has been predominantly Black for decades, and it has elected mostly African-Americans to power positions for as long. So it would appear that the "powers that be" would be Black. But charges of racism seem to be racist themselves, at times. Monday morning's Times-Picayune ran a long feature explaining how the bursting of concrete levees as well as a barge beating against one that finally collapsed would all sound like explosions. No one has any evidence of any levee being dynamited. But that's one of the rumors making the rounds.
A Black columnist in New Orleans writes Monday morning that anyone who knew Mama D could have predicted her testimony. "Her outbursts at school board meetings are so contentious and unreasonable as to make me wonder whether she is interested in education or air time." Lolis Eric Elie went on to say, "I don't believe the levees were bombed." They weren't necessary, he writes. Poor engineering and shoddy workmanship were sufficient to blow these levees. When asked why Mama D was chosen to appear before Congress, a congressional aide for Representative Cynthia McKinney said, "Sometimes you need people to stir up the pot, to get people talking." Elie says, "The problem is, they're talking about how crazy we are (down here)." The result, he writes, is that the testimony before congress gave the nation one more reason to doubt that the people of New Orleans deserve their sympathy and support.
Another story occupying a lot of air time on local talk shows is the cursory examination which the levee system received just only a few weeks before the hurricane. Officials from the Orleans Parish Levee Board joined with engineers from the State Department of Transportation and Development and the U.S. Corps of Engineers for the annual inspections. Experts say this group should have been able to examine no more than 10 miles of levees a day. But they did 120 miles in one morning, most of it from inside their vans. Official records document the exact times they met, left, arrived at various locations, walked around, and arrived at the restaurant for lunch. Lunch, I believe was about 1:30 pm, then they were done. The levees were pronounced sound. You can understand why the citizenry is outraged. A letter in Monday's newspaper calls for the names of these groups to be printed so the public can deal with them.
A couple of years ago, the Times-Picayune tried to raise a ruckus over the baffling system of tax assessors to be found only in New Orleans. While every other parish in the state has one assessor, New Orleans has seven. The result is contradictory assessments for houses of the same size and age on adjoining blocks but in different districts. To no one's surprise, your assessment had to do with who you knew. The legislature just could not bring itself to stopping this outrage, however, presumably because of the political power of the assessors, some of whom inherited their jobs from their parents. As the newspaper said, "Keeping them on the payroll (in the past) wouldn't drive the city into beggary," so nothing was done.
It's different now. Mayor Nagin has laid off half the city's work force, and the city has lost most of its population. It's time to correct this outrage. We'll be watching the state legislature. But let none of us down here in the bayous wonder why the rest of America thinks this is a land of corruption and deal-making. We earned that reputation and now have to deal with it.
When FEMA awarded contracts to companies to provide trailers for displaced citizens, a couple of odd things occurred. They handed out multi-million dollar contracts to companies that had just been created and did not even have Louisiana licenses. A couple of brothers in my community who owned a motorcycle shop received a contract for--get this, now--$108 million. Another outfit, that claims to be Louisianian, was a shell corporation actually headquartered in Jacksonville and had no license to operate in this state. Meanwhile, established companies say they're having trouble getting business from FEMA. Plus, it turns out the local brothers are related to the state treasurer of the Democratic Party and a state legislator.
How did that line from the old Pogo comic strip go? "We have met the enemy and he is us."
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Joe: We enjoyed Narnia this weekend, too....glad you enjoyed it and it bought back fond memories of the snowy, wintry holiday time with your children.
My friend Lee King, whose company AFTER DISASTER has been hard at work at the VA Hospital there in the NO area, tells me that a clinic will be opened there within the next 2-3 weeks. If you don't already have this word, it might be helpful to know. Hopefully this will help that segment of the population who depends on VA services for their medical care.
I'm praying for your holiday time...that you can have moments of deep joy as we remember our Savior's birth and our Creator's loving gift to us.
Jan
Posted by: Jan Hill at December 13, 2005 02:26 AMThis whole urban-legend about bombs blowing up the levees to save the Quarters is amazing. That one is the better than some of the ones I grew up with, like mixing Pop Rocks with Coke will explode your stomach. Or that Mama Cass choked to death on a ham sandwich. Check out www.snopes.com for a list of some of the Katrina rumors. God, in his infinite wisdom, blesses us with a great stress-buster called "a sense of humor". I feel led to pray for some very hurting, angry people right now. I pray that God will restore some peace, laughter, and happiness back into their lives. And that he will bless them with new homes and the opportunity to move forward from all this controversy once and for all.
Posted by: Michelle A. Worley at December 13, 2005 02:43 PMJoe,
I read thru most of you e-mail “To Get The Right Answers, Start With The Right Question”. I hope to add some insight to what you wrote. Your example of suffering that brought Paul before Caesar was good. It provides a setting for some of the background whereby Paul received an answer to his request “...that I might know Him and the fellowship of His sufferings...”
We really get a glimpse of a deeper knowledge of Christ when we suffer, experience difficulties, grief, and sorrow. In that place, for example, when I feel the pain of grief from the loss of a loved one, and feel like it can’t be endured, I think of Christ. I may be separated from a sister in the Lord for a few years, but He is separated from millions He loves for eternity. What depth of pain! Only because He is God can that be handled. Knowing he went thru this also, and is in our situation too, as our High Priest, we not only can’t say “You don’t understand how I feel” but we can see He experiences these things and to a much deeper, more hurtful degree. “Sympathize with our weakness..”? He knows them intimately. And in those times of suffering He calls us to come to Him. For even He “with loud crying and tears” called to His Father. Paul as a roman citizen, unjustly accused, as Christ, may have tasted that feeling of being wronged. But likely had the sense of his own unrighteousness juxtaposed in his mind frequently. Christ was simply wronged. There was never any error on or in Him. In our moment of false accusation, we can know He knows what we feel. But we can also put our eyes on Him and get a glimpse of what He experienced and know Him more.
You brought up the example of the man born blind, John 9, and called it a faulty premise that all suffering is caused by sin. Some dissecting is needed here. I don’t call it suffering if I’m tiring in an exercise workout. My kids might! Nor is it suffering to mow the lawn and sweat. Some could argue this one, but I call it rewarding garden keeping for now. We’re talking of things like hurricane disasters and disease. It’s not the definition of suffering that is the question, but its cause. Never mistake that I disagree with Christ. He said it was neither the man nor his parents. I therefore agree, it was not either of these that sinned and brought this on. Jesus continued and indicated a Godly purpose for it. But this does mean God caused it nor does it exclude sin as the cause of the blindness. You brought up if they had heard of Job, and while I’m not exactly sure why you did, it seemed to implicate God brought on Job’s suffering. Sin was exactly the cause of Job’s suffering. God may have not stopped Satan, pulled away the hedge, but that is not the same as being the cause. You can be sure Satan’s judgment will include his attack on Job. The Sabeans and the Chaldeans that killed Job’s servants will not be guiltless, claiming to God, “You said we could”. Was God glorified thru it, absolutely, and Job’s Godly character displayed and refined.
But to go on, sin and its effects (affects?) have spread to all creation, causing it to groan. Hurricanes, tsunami’s, earthquakes, are all consequences of sin. We stumble with feeling towards God in these times because of the responsibility question. We’ll praise God when He stops them. When He does not, we often either blame Him for causing it or for not stopping it since He has the power to do so. The real culprit is us. Sin has spread in us, from the time of Adam, now and until He returns. The consequences of our sin will affect our lives. So will the consequences of other people’s sin affect us. Here is where we have difficulty accepting God’s actions. First, in our sinful nature we want to be able to sin, and not have consequences. Second, we want other people’s sin not to hurt us. As Christians we stumble in this second point, thinking He should protect us, and often He does. We forget that it is God’s mercy when His hand stays a disaster. But Mercy is not a requirement, but an action of Love above Law. He does not lack love when He doesn’t heal, but He is glorified when He does or does not heal. We seem to have acquired the idea that God will protect us from all evil. That may sound like Ps121:7, but did the Psalmist mean that? There is going to be pain in this world, tribulation if you will, that apart from God we can not endure without falling away. In Him we are secure, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be hurt. The security is the sealing in Christ for the sake of eternity with Him. As Paul said, nothing can separate us from His Love. And to the Psalmist the keeping is of the soul, not the body. Maybe the question people should ask is: Would I have been ready if it was me? Luke 13:4
You mentioned getting cancer under the tongue. I pray God heals you of this now. Time magazine reported that 476,000 people in the US died of cancer in 2002, topping heart disease. It is only one cause of suffering that eclipses the sum total of a number of recent natural disasters. Yet this and others are quietly out of the daily front page media voice. It is not meant to be discouraging to you, but we are simply surrounded by suffering due to sin, and it is going to hit us, as you know. The ease of normal American life seems to over shadow that fact, until in some way the facade is shattered. Then we are often poorly equipped to handle the challenge to our faith, being stuck in a heaven on earth expectation of God. The hope we have is in Christ to lead us thru this life, to where we are to set our mind, on thing above. There our healing is total, the suffering gone, and our life complete.
Last year my wife was diagnosed with cancer. We prayed for her healing as a church and we sought God every step. She is totally healed now, but she had to pass thru that broken down wall of death to receive it. For me her temporary loss has been a pain impossible to bear were it not for Christ. I have run thru hundreds of questions with the Lord (He has come out clean I might add). It is not what I wanted. This is not the way He wanted it. But He will turn it for good. But He made provision for it, planned for it, before the foundation of the world. I am happy my wife is healed but my greatest joy is that she is free from sin, sinful nature, and restored to God in Christ. No earthly thing, event, or physical healing can ever compare to that. For now, I can say I know him better. That is not loss. And it is true that “where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more”.
Jason Kerkeslager
Posted by: Jason Kerkeslager at December 18, 2005 10:58 PM