My last four columns

Dear Readers (and mom)

Sorry I've been late emailing these articles, but here you go

Recent events can challenge our faith

November 29, 2008
BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

At the risk of sounding like the spiritual version of a talk radio host, I offer three commentaries on current events.

Idolizing politicians
During the presidential campaign, many commentators warned of the danger of mixing religion with politics.

Few if any, however, warned against our human tendency to make politics into our religion. Yet, this is what some people did.

To accomplish this morph from politics to religion, it was necessary to name a god and a devil, and that we did. Not since we elected JFK have we demonstrated the propensity to paint one candidate as the political Messiah while labeling the opposition "the Antichrist."

The demonization and idolization of candidates brought on some of the same unhealthy consequences Moses warned against when he saw his people idolizing the graven images of people or animals.
He quoted God as saying, "You shall have no other gods before me."
The campaign was full of unhealthy "graven images," from the T-shirts we bought in bulk to the effigies some burned.

Both the incoming and outgoing presidents are men, made in the image of God. I never was clearer about this than I was during a recent visit to an Episcopal church.

During the service, congregants expressed prayers for our president by simply stating "We pray for George." They meant no disrespect. Their emphasis was on the fact that our commander in chief is a flesh-and-blood man. He's a man who needs God's help every bit as much we all need God's help.
The man that is leaving office is not a devil, nor is the one replacing him a god. Both are men. Both need our prayers and encouragement.

Bail money
Speaking of demonizing, I've not seen a better example than the auto executives appearing before congress asking for a bailout.

It's easy to dismiss these guys, who flew their corporate jets to D.C., as being the kind of fat cats who got us into this mess in the first place.

However, I have to ask: How much did my own greed play a part in this financial mess?
Did we refinance our house just to pay off the debt incurred during our past five Christmases? Were you one who claimed it wouldn't matter what kind of car you purchased as long as you could afford the gas?
In the end it did matter.

In looking at those auto executives, I could see my own greed, and I heard Jesus' advice that I remove the log in my own eye before I attempt to remove the splinter in the eye of another.

He's back
Ted Haggard knows a lot about splinters.
He splintered the mega-church he pastored in Colorado Springs, Colo., when it was learned that he had sex with a prostitute. His initial response was the Clintonesqe claim, "I did not have sex with that woman." Whoops, I mean, "sex with that man."

He quickly admitted his sins, however, and enlisted the help of a reconciliation committee to restore his life and family. Now, he's fired that committee and is selling insurance.

Recently, he made a cameo pulpit appearance, in which he criticized his community of faith for publicly discarding those who grievously fail. Haggard believes the church should use these public failures to demonstrate restoration and forgiveness "through the secular media."

Great concept, Ted. The point also could be made that God gives us opportunities to mess up real bad from time to time. We needn't avail ourselves of all of those opportunities.

Now that you're back, in the media's eye, don't blow the chance to demonstrate how far humility and restoration can bring you back.

God exists even in high school

November 22, 2008
BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

Last month, I accepted an invitation to speak at the Florida Air Academy, a college preparatory school in Melbourne.

Speaking to teenagers about spirituality isn't the scariest thing I've ever done, but it comes close. While it didn't qualify for hostile fire pay, it's something that should be limited to "a professional on a closed course," as they say on the automobile commercials.

Nevertheless, I pushed beyond my fears and the comfort zone of a 51-year-old columnist to define spirituality "as that sense of awe and wonder we all have about our world.

"It helps us question who we are." I asserted. "It's how we hope, how we pray and how we love. Spirituality is that piece of us attracted to something outside ourselves. It is that basic appetite or search engine that seeks our beginnings and helps us understand our endings."

After admitting that my spiritual search brought me to Christianity, I allowed an opportunity for them to talk about their search.

Two students affirmed my definition of spirituality by telling me about how they'd helped others outside themselves. Tenth-grader Thomas Brock told me he is an American Red Cross volunteer and he went to Peru to teach the people how to save lives in the water.

"Yes, that's a very rewarding spiritual connection," I affirmed.

Arthur Macalpine, 11th-grader, told me he is a member of the Kitty Hawk Air Society, and planned to serve as a crossing-guard protecting younger children as they trick-or-treated.

"Helping kids safely obtain candy. Is that spiritual?" I asked, squinting one eye.

"It can be," I said. "Even Jesus said, 'If you have done it unto the least of these, then you've done it unto me.' "

Since many people affirm that spirituality helps you process life and death, I asked the students if they'd ever come close to dying.

Dakota Best, an eighth-grader, raised his hand from his wheelchair.

Dakota was the victim of a jeep accident that nearly took his life. I was eager to hear his comments.
"I was asleep for two weeks, so I really didn't think about anything. When I realized what had happened, it was scary," he plainly pronounced.

Twelfth-grader Conrad Page talked about the sense of loss from a rollover accident.
"I knew the rest of my summer was lost."

But it was eighth-grader Alistair Blaha who turned the table on my spiritual quiz.
"Why is this happening to me?" he remembered asking as his father's private plane hurled toward the ground.

"That's a great spiritual question," I told him. "Sometimes, we're forced to conclude, 'Why not me?' "
Venturing further, I asked, "What do you think will happen when we die?"

I got many answers from the Christian perspective. Daniel Norris (sixth grade) said you go to heaven, but qualified that "You get there by faith."

Sam Scarpaci (11th grade) was quick to offer the assurance that "We are reunited with God, the father."
Vivian Shipman (11th grade): "Nothing happens after we die. I don't believe that our spirit separates from our body."

Andrew Woods (12th grade) offered the alternative perspective of reincarnation while Ching Wai Pang (11th grade) asserts that, "What happens to you is what you believe will happen. You will get what you expect."

At the end of the day, I had to wonder whether I'd ever do this again. Yes, I think so, because if we only look for spirituality in familiar places, we are going to miss God in a lot of places, especially in high schools.

Pain always prompts questions to God
November 15, 2008

Among self-described "gym rats" there is a common phrase: "No Pain, No Gain."

Several years ago in a Houston hospital, I met one such rat who sought to bypass his pain through the use of steroids. He was a sharing kind of guy who liked to share his needles -- now he would share his pain with his family.

He had come to our ICU suffering from pneumonia. In young men, this type of pneumonia is one telltale sign of AIDS. A quick blood test confirmed the diagnosis. The patient asked the doctor and me to share this news with his wife.

We found her in the waiting room and invited her into the consultation room. These rooms don't often contain good news. But here we were, just the three of us. How do you tell someone something like that?

This particular doctor had a reputation for blurting out bad news, but he found a clinical explanation, that third person voice that made it sound as if this was happening to someone else, but not to her. He told her she would need to be tested.

For several moments she just stared at us. Finally she broke the silence.

"I'm pregnant. Twins!"

Yes, chaplains can swear -- mostly under their breath -- and this was one of those occasions.
I'm sure she must have thought how unfair this was. Perhaps even uttering, "Why is God doing this to me?"

It is much harder to answer the "God-isn't-fair" question when it really seems like God is not fair. There was nothing that seemed remotely fair about this. Was this to be the reward for this woman's fidelity to her husband? Were the "sins of the father" to fall upon the mother and his children? The answer seemed a likely, "yes."

"Is this what God is like?" she might have wondered.

It was the same question C.S. Lewis had after the painful death of his wife. He said he was not worried about suddenly becoming an atheist. He was worried that his despair might lead him to conclude, "So, this is what God is really like."

The "Is God fair?" question is really one I like to defer to the CEO Himself. I'd like to tell people that I'm only in sales, not management, much higher pay grade than I, but I find some solace in the response given by C.S. Lewis to that fairness question.

While writing the book, "The Problem of Pain," he waged a losing argument with his publishers to entitle the book "God's Megaphone." His case for the title was that God does not cause our pain, but, if we allowed it, he would shape our pain into a megaphone through which he would speak to us.

His challenge to people was to encourage them to ask, "What can God say to me through the pain?"
The woman's initial tests turned out negative, and since chaplaincy is a bit like pastoring a parade, I never saw her again.

You can be assured that in the coming months, her question would go deeper than the surface question of "Why me?"

The task of those involved in ministry with this woman would be to redirect her question in the coming months so that she was asking not "why" but "where to from here?"

The question "Where to from here?" leads us to hear the voice of God calling us out of the darkness and into the healing and the purpose that can only be known in a deeper faith.

Military spouses also have to 'volunteer'

November 8, 2008

Veteran's Day gives me a lot to think about every year.

This Veteran's Day I couldn't help but think of the documentary I brought home a few months ago.

My wife doesn't especially care for documentaries, particularly the news this one brought. "Baghdad ER" is a documentary that HBO.com says "captures the humanity, hardships and heroism of the U.S. military and medical personnel of the 86th Combat Support Hospital . . ."

"I want us to watch this movie together," I said.

There was nothing subtle in my approach. My wife saw I was carrying some news of my own. Before she could respond, I answered the question I read on her face.

"The Air Force needs a chaplain volunteer for their hospital at Balad Air Base in Iraq. The hospital is specifically requesting a 'hospital-trained chaplain' for a four-month deployment."

I hurried to add: "It's a Level I trauma center, which does over 1,200 surgical procedures each month. They help everyone -- military, civilians and contractors as well as Iraqi soldiers, police, civilians and even detainees."

She stared into me, stuck on one word: "volunteer."

The thoughts of the military spouse upon hearing the word "volunteer" aren't normally as altruistic as those of the military member.

Who could blame her if she suddenly exclaimed, "What makes you think I'm not the volunteer here? I would be volunteering for four months of solo parenting! I'll be volunteering to be single for four months!"

Instead, Becky simply said, "We'll watch it after dinner."

Afterward, we talked about the mutual meaning of the word "volunteer." We talked about everything from kids to car problems.

We talked about updating our wills. I tried to soothe her with the fact that there hasn't been a chaplain killed in the line of duty since the Vietnam War.

Not surprisingly, she found that factoid devoid of comfort.

I told her the pay would be great -- especially with hazardous duty pay.

Again, I got nowhere, not even when I mentioned the $3.33 per day separation pay.

"Why do you want to do this?" she asked.

Ah, the "why" of a thing.

"If I retired, I wouldn't have to go." I said giving a commonly offered solution in the conflict between military members and their spouses.

She wasn't biting.

"Why?" she repeated. "Why do you want to go?"

"I want to go because I want to help," I said, unable to state it more profoundly than that. "They need hospital chaplains. I'm one. I can't sit here while they declare they need someone. It's a need I know how to fill."

After nearly a week of discussion, she said, "You need to go. You need to feel you've done your share. I understand."

It was at that point, I composed my e-mail accepting the assignment.

I called her to the computer and let her proofread the e-mail.

Then I asked her to do a difficult thing.

"I want us to share this decision. Would you be willing to press the 'send' button?"

Her index finger hovered over the keyboard in hesitation. Then, she clicked "send" with a definitive push.

She did understand.

So this month, I have a favor to ask. As you offer a grateful handshake to a veteran, turn to the spouse and say, "Thanks for your understanding."

After all, most of them have certainly done more than they ever "volunteered" to do.