THE BLOG AND GOD LANGUAGE

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about my hopes for this blog, and I’ll say a quick word about language.

Starting today, I hope to post twice a day. That might be an overly ambitious goal for me since I start a new job today, but I hope not.

In the morning, I hope to write about where God is throughout the gimcrackery and finery of the world. In the evening, I hope to write about God. So my second post will be more theological.

I have been struggling about whether or not to comment upon the issues of the day. I suspect I cannot keep quiet about that, so when I do I will attempt to be apologetic, that is, keeping naysayers and yea-sayers honest about God when they are speaking about god.

That’s what apologetics are:  stepping up and making a defense for God. If Christianity is going to continue another millennium, or everlastingly as I would hope, then we must speak up wisely.

I may be polemical. I suspect at least that much. I shall try not to disrespect anyone, but I can’t promise that I won’t ridicule stupid ideas, howbeit in a kind and funny way. That’s a good thing. I really would like to make my readers laugh a lot.

I should be liquid like a creek. I am not interested in dwelling on one or two issues.

I will be analytical. I will call attention to the way ideas are expressed. I’m pretty good at that.

So, to sum up, twice a day I hope to post. In the morning this blog will be more spontaneous and in the evening it will be more theological.

Now, let us think about god language.

Jack Kingston lost his primary bid to be the Republican candidate for the senate seat once held by Saxby Chambliss.

In the newspaper today, it was reported that he said he would be waiting for the Lord to open another door of opportunity for him.

Now, I am a Baptist. I would be a whole lot happier if politicians did not mention God at all except in an Abraham Lincoln kind of way. Even that is a bit troublesome.

If you give a religious person an inch in the political world, he or she will take the state. If you give him or her a foot, he or she will take the country. So I get a little twitchy when a god is invoked by a politician.

The language of god opening a door is a cliché among fundamentalists. It points to opportunity knocking, another cliché, and any of us opening the door.

That cliché did not enter my mind this morning as I perambulated, but it should have. My mind felt uplifted, and the feeling radiated out of my chest and tingled throughout my arms as I pondered the new job I begin today.

I am a high school English teacher again. I will be teaching again and going to football games again and basketball games again and baseball games again and pep rallies again and school concerts again and and and and…

I am excited fit to be swatted with a yard stick across my butt. For three years in this town, only three interviews came my way. That was because I started looking during the recession.

This year, English teachers left their positions in droves. I got calls for three interviews. I actually chose between two offers. God did not so much open the door as raise the entire wall.

Now, I’m not convinced that God actually goes to the trouble of making things happen. All that is resides and happens in God, and God’s fingerprints may well be all over everything, but my life unfolds in accordance with natural and social laws and patterns.

I got the job because of two things.

Persistence won the day. I did not get discouraged and quit. I kept looking.

Also, the right time, what the Greeks called kairos, eventually came around. We must wait and be ready for it.

The only direct hand in this new good fortune for me would be my wife’s. She checked the web site for jobs daily. She and her friends kept other friends throughout the district aware of my situation. One principal, the one whose job I accepted, already knew of me before I interviewed with her, and she wanted me at her school. I have my wife to thank for that.

Of course, our God of love is working where there is love. The door that has opened for me did so the way our God of love opens doors…through the love and effort of another.

I number myself among the fortunate husbands.

Blessings…