Randy Greenwald

I’m excited that the Rays and Phillies will be going to the World Series. As much as I’d like to do that, however, those dreams were put to rest this morning. Here are the ticket prices. Whoa!

That’s alright. My couch works. It’s cheap, but it’s not the same as being there!

I paced and fumed from the seventh inning of game five, and went to bed early during game six ready to put it all away for this season. With some reluctance, I prepared to watch game seven, and enjoyed a very tense but remarkable 104th victory for the Tampa Bay Rays.

I watched alone because through the kindness of a friend, Barb got to watch from row T of section 302 at Tropicana Field. (Pictures forthcoming!) She will not soon forget that!

UPDATE: Here is some pics from last night’s game.

Really, someday I want to explain the title of this blog. For now, I found the conclusion of a David Brooks column in the NY Times, as he reflects upon the qualities of Barak Obama, speaking a word in praise of dullness.

We can each guess how the story ends. But over the past two years, Obama has clearly worn well with voters. Far from a celebrity fad, he is self-contained, self-controlled and maybe even a little dull.

Here’s how to forget the greatest collapse in any postseason game in 79 years. (My thanks to friend Dave Sturkey for the trip and to the Lord of the wind and waves for a picture perfect day.)

Here’s hoping that the Red Sox go 7 wins and 2 losses in elimination games since 2004!

I picked up a book last week which looks wonderfully intriguing and insightful, and if the introduction is any hint of what is to come, it is. The book is called Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity and is written by former Wheaton, now Notre Dame, history professor Mark A. Noll.

The book looks great, but what has stuck with me is a segment of his introduction in which he articulates four reasons for us to study the history of Christianity. I’ll use his words and then comment briefly.

1. In the first instance, studying the history of Christianity provides repeated, concrete demonstration concerning the irreducibly historical character of the Christian faith.

That is, Christianity is if anything the ongoing record of the work of God among people. It is not simply the action of men and women in time. Christianity is God at work among us, and the study of history is the study of his continued work of building his church.

2. A second contribution of church history is to provide perspective on the interpretation of scripture.

To see how Christians in other eras mishandled scripture because of the blinders of their cultural setting and presuppositions breeds in us a humility and care in our own handling of scripture, realizing that we might be no more free of our own cultural biases than our forebears were. This perspective cautions us and demands a greater level of care as we come to the scriptures.

On the other hand, positively, when we face a question of interpretation, or when we face a crisis or decision for which we are looking at scripture, it is helpful to know that others before us have faced that same issue, and a knowledge of history may gives us ears with which to hear their wisdom.

3. The study of church history is also useful as a laboratory for examining Christian interactions with surrounding culture.

We are not the first generation to struggle with how to engage the culture around us without losing the heart of the gospel message. Maybe we can learn how others handled, say, worship music. Or immigration. Or abortion. Or peace and war.

4. …historical study fairly shouts out loud, that God sustains the church despite the church’s own frequent efforts to betray its Savior and its own high calling….

He sees two things here, really, both which should give to modern Christians a deep sense of humility. First we should realize that the riches of our understanding and practice are not newly discovered, but are inherited. We are the heirs of those who have thought deeply, and bled profusely, to bring to us what we know and enjoy.

But secondly, it leads us to look to God with a sense of wonder, and deeper humility, that the church continues through all the error and sin and idiocy which has dogged it throughout its history. Because of God’s providence, it ever shall prevail.

I can’t wait to read the book. Maybe I’ll do that tonight instead of watching the Rays game.

Yeah. Right.

Technorati Tags: History

I make it a policy to always take something to read when going anywhere, especially if I’m going alone and there may be the chance of a traffic jam or car trouble or some other delay. That is just what readers do.

Stephen King is a reader first, and a writer second. And though he has a house on Siesta Key he is apparently a Red Sox fan. (This photo is of King at game 3 at Fenway.)

But what does a reader do when they are at Fenway and the home boys are losing 11-1? Great shot from last night’s Rays thrashing of the Sox was of King sitting in the stands reading a book.

I’m impressed that he was prepared. He brought a book to Fenway, just in case.

My suspicion is that he got a lot of reading done.

I am a sucker for tongue in cheek ad campaigns. The recent champion in my opinion is VW’s marketing of their minivan, the Routan.

The ‘claim’ of the ad, presented with the greatest of deadpan seriousness by Brook Shields, is that there is an alarming baby boom happening in America spawned (he-he) by couples’ desire to have a family with which to fill a Routan. I’m sure there are those out there who don’t get it and thus try to take it seriously. Watching them try would be funny in its own right.

“Have a baby for love, not for German engineering,” the ads insist.

And the ads work. I now know what a Routan is. I think I’m even spelling it right.

If you’ve not seen the ads (because you are not, like me, obsessed with the American League Championship Series) you can get a very satisfying taste here.

And while you are there, you can try their BabyMaker 3000. I’ll not even begin to try to explain that. I keep thinking of fun things to say, but this is a family blog and not all of you understand my sense of humor.

*****

FOOTNOTE: for the first eight or ten years of our life in Florida, we drove a VW Vanagon, the granddaddy of today’s minivans (and thus the direct ancestor of the Routan). When we had our fifth child, we joked that that was our limit because, as everyone knows, Psalm 127 says regarding children, “blessed is he whose Vanagon is full of them.” The Vanagon, you see, would only seat seven – a mom, a dad, and five children.

We eventually exchanged the Vanagon for a full-sized van, and proomptly adopted another child to fill it.

In retrospect, I’m awfully glad we laid off the fifteen passenger van….

My son lives outside Cleveland, Ohio. He is a Rays fan, and he was home alone last night, his wife having to work. So, he sat down to watch the game, previously recorded.

In the third inning, the Rays blew the game wide open with a 3-run homer by B. J. Upton. Matthew lept up and shouted, and then realized that there was no one to be excited with. So, he sat back down, called me, to see where I was in the game (which I, too, had recorded). We compared locations, and he told me to call him back when I was at the top of the 3rd inning, so we could then watch it ‘together’.

After Upton’s home run, I called him and we gloated together, as we did the rest of the game, now and then touching base on the phone for a virtual ‘high five’.

This is a somewhat trivial but revealing example of what Chris McCandless painfully and desperately learned in the recent movie Into the Wild. Toward the end of that film, McCandless, alone by choice and trapped by weather in wilderness Alaska scrawls into his journal something like this: “Happiness is not real unless shared.”

In the movie that is a poignant and powerful message: we are created for community. Happiness is not real unless it is shared. When discovering something great and wonderful, its power and joy is dulled if there is no one with whom to share it.

When our team plasters the Red Sox with two back to back 9-run games, it is wonderful. But it is made all the more wonderful when that is shared.

And to realize that there is a God who has loved us and drawn us to himself is special. But we must worship together to celebrate Him, because our happiness is simply not real unless it is shared.

This is being posted live from my seat on the couch as the Rays are beating the Red Sox at Fenway 5-0. So, I’m in a good humor.

Just a few moments ago, TBS aired a segment from an interview with Rays manager Joe Maddon. What he said is so wise, and should be so obvious to any who manage people (which is what a baseball manager does). I can only paraphrase what he said, but this is its essence:

“It’s all about relationships. If you are going to criticize – have a conversation with someone to tell him something to make him better – you have to have a relationship with him first. If you have that relationship, then you can tell him what you need to tell him, but you must have that relationship first.”

That’s why I want to get a WWJD bracelet. “What would Joe do?”