four

Yesterday was an exciting day at our house. Easton turned four! I arrived home from Notre Dame in time to celebrate with the family. Indeed, we have much to celebrate. Our baby is now dressing himself, brushing his own teeth, done with diapers, and riding without training wheels!

A few weeks ago Easton asked Dad to take the training wheels off of his bike. We were a little surprised, but he insisted, so we tried it. On his first try he kept telling Dad to let go. Within 24 hours he could start, stop, and turn, and now he's an old pro. This distinguishes him as the youngest member of our family to reach this milestone. (Danny was 10, Carmen and Eliana were 8, and Emma ... well, after seeing her brother take off on 2 wheels she decided she'd better try it, too. So Emma, at 6-1/2 has followed in her brother's tracks). That means we're a family without diapers and without training wheels.

For those of you who don't have the joy of watching Easton grow up before your very eyes (that's most of you), he is an adorable kid.  He loves to figure out how things work, and often asks for a screwdriver so he can check out the insides of his toys. We'll often find him during his "nap" time with a flashlight all taken apart. He loves to try putting it back together to see if it will still work. It usually does. When given the opportunity, he would almost rather "study" the instruction manual ("map") than play with a toy. He pours through his Thomas the Train catalog, memorizing the names of all the best trains, and carefully examines the instructions for his remote control car set, showing us which parts are missing and how everything works together. Yesterday he got real tools of his very own and two toys that needed batteries installed, including a fire truck and a train (among other things). He was such a happy kid!

Easton's Birthday Lunch at Two Toots Train Restaurant
in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, where your food is delivered to you
 on a model train. A little boy's dream come true!

Trains, tools, musical instruments, books, school, "time with Mom," helping Dad, and hanging out with his sisters are all high on his list of favorite things. And he's high on ours. What a blessing to have been entrusted with Easton! He hasn't lost his baby cheeks, in spite of his other accomplishments, so we'll keep kissing them while we can.

do Catholics have true faith?

Basilica of the Sacred Heart
Notre Dame, Indiana

I’m blogging from the campus of Notre Dame, where I am taking a course in Christian Doctrine from Dr. John Cavadini. Each post in this series will examine an area of disagreement (or perceived disagreement) between Catholics and Protestants. My hope is to grant you access to particular points of Catholic theology that you may have found confusing. Because while a particular matter may seem odd to us as Evangelicals, chances are good that it actually makes sense when taken as a part of a bigger picture. In my first two posts I examined an unexpected (to me) area of disagreement: the role of Natural Theology. Today I want to discuss an area of perceived difference: faith. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I've lived on the East Coast, West Coast, Rockies, and now the Midwest. I've lived in a predominately Catholic country (the Philippines) and traveled to others (Panama and Venezuela). My impression in each place (though I'm no expert) has been that Evangelicals have a dim view of Catholic theology. Many might even say that Catholics believe in salvation by works, while we believe in salvation by faith. Another version goes something like this: Catholics have (dead) religion, while we have a living relationship with Jesus Christ. Whatever the reason for this misperception, I cannot say, but it does not square with official Catholic teaching. I suspect it has something to do with age-old Reformation battles. Maybe, too, there is a sense in which – at a popular level – it is true, at least for some. But when I look around me in class I see Catholics (all or most of them, I presume, are Catholics) with a vibrant faith in God and a desire to lead others to saving faith in Christ. And when I read the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) I see so many things I can joyfully affirm.

Listen to this beautiful selection:

“By his revelation, ‘the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company.’ The adequate response to this invitation is faith.” (§142)

Did you catch that? Catholics believe that God invites us into intimate relationship with him, and that our response must be one of faith. But even faith cannot be considered a good work, because “Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him” (§153). Luther, I’m told, didn’t want to call faith a virtue. But in the way that Thomas Aquinas understood it, faith is wholly dependent on God’s grace. Later the CCC says, “Believing is possible only by grace and the interior helps of the Holy Spirit” (§154, §179).

What, then, is the nature of saving faith? Is it simply an intellectual decision about who God is?

Dr. Cavadini answers this with an emphatic “No!” For him, faith is not just belief in the sense of an intellectual assent. It is not just knowing something. It involves submission (§143), putting our trust in Jesus (§151), obeying him, and giving ourselves fully to a relationship with him. He says, “believing is a kind of seeing that allows you to see farther than you really can” (cf. §164). You might think of faith the way a pilot responds to his instruments in a fog. He cannot see the landing strip with his own eyes, but he trusts the accuracy of the instruments that tell him what his angle and speed and altitude should be. His faith in the instruments is not a dead assent to their truthfulness. Faith requires him to take action on the basis of what the instruments say, to entrust his very life to them.

Cavadini says, “There is no way around faith if you really want to see God.” Faith is absolutely necessary to be a Christian (§161). We can never prove the existence of God, because if we could do so, then he would cease to be God. If our prayers evoked a reliable and audible response, then he would no longer be God because we could evoke him at will. His divine qualities are precisely what make him outside the grasp of our senses, of our reason (§157). He is free. He does not depend on us. We must admit that he is bigger than what we can comprehend, and that we depend on him for life itself. That’s faith. And whether you are Catholic or Protestant, faith is the key to entering into a living relationship with the God who made you, loves you, and gave his own life for you so that you could really live.

pizza and natural theology: a follow-up question

So my Protestant readers (most of you!) may have a follow-up question on the issue of Natural Theology. At least, I did. My question was this:

Do Catholics consider the process of becoming open to revelation (through the use of natural reason) a work of God?

If so, it would be somewhat equivalent to the Reformed doctrine of irresistible grace, or to the Methodist doctrine of prevenient grace. Is our desire to know God, which we work out through human reason until we encounter revelation, evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts? Is our spiritual quest of God preceded by God’s quest of us?

From what I’ve read so far, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) does not address this question exactly, but it says that people are “made to live in communion with God” (§45), and our “free response to his grace” is part of his “eternal plan of ‘predestination’” (§600). In that way, grace plays a key role in our coming to faith somewhat analogous to that described by Reformed Protestants or Methodists. The CCC explains it this way:

“Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome the revelation in faith. The proofs of God’s existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.” (§35, emphasis mine).

Catholic teaching is clear—even our faith in God is a gift. Without his grace, we would not be able to put our trust in the God who has revealed himself to us. Perhaps, too, Natural Theology does not sound so foreign when situated in its context. The main difference between Catholics and Protestants on Natural Theology is the degree of depravity that resulted from the Fall or the degree of optimism that remains about human reason. On one thing we agree—grace is always necessary for salvation.

pizza and natural theology

I’m taking a 3-week course at Notre Dame on Christian Doctrine. In our first class together, Dr. Cavadini pointed to a key difference between Catholics and Protestants. It has to do with the answer to this question:

How much can we know about God without the help of Scripture?

The fancy name for this is “Natural Theology” (theology is ‘the study of God’ and by ‘natural’ we mean ‘without divine intervention’). In short, Catholics tend to be more optimistic than Protestants about how well Natural Theology works (or at least about its potential). Some Protestants reject it completely. Before I lay out the differences, an illustration may help.

Imagine you arrive home from work one day and find a pizza on your kitchen counter. You are thrilled, because you are hungry after a long day of work, but you are also puzzled because you live alone (if you don’t, just pretend) and you have no idea who brought you pizza. You look around for clues, but see nothing. The kitchen is clean, as if no one has been there, but when you open the oven you notice it is still very hot. Whoever left the pizza cooked it in your kitchen and did a very good job cleaning up! You take a closer look at the pizza. It has your favorite toppings! Whoever made it knows you well, and their sense of timing is exquisite. It’s hot and ready. How did they know when you would be home? Then you notice something else—this is no frozen pizza. It has a homemade crust, hand-tossed by the looks of it, with sauce carefully spread and lots of gooey cheese, but none of it spilling over onto the pizza pan. Whoever made this pizza was an artist! 

You decide that they evidently wanted you to eat it, so you grab a couple of slices and sit down to eat. While eating, you keep thinking about who it could have been. You have a growing list of words that you could use to describe this person, but no name and no face, just a big question mark. You have that warm and tingly feeling, knowing that you are loved, but you can’t get the question mark out of your mind. You just have to figure out who it was!

So far, the story illustrates Natural Theology. You have been using the powers of human reason to figure out the identity of the pizza-maker. You are certain that the pizza didn’t show up by chance. It was intentional, and someone did it. You’ve figured out certain qualities of that person: he or she is loving, kind, careful, conscientious, timely, creative, and thoughtful. But you still don’t know who it is. Dr. Cavadini follows early Christian writers (Justin Martyr, Origen and Augustine) who point to Socrates as the ideal example of someone engaged in the search for truth using human reason, that is, Natural Theology. Socrates is open and proceeds from one question to another to see what he can discover, but the quest is never-ending. At the end of Natural Theology there is some certainty, but also still a big question mark. Who made this pizza for me?

Imagine, then, that you finish eating, put the leftover pizza in some Tupperware, and head to the fridge. When you get there you find a note on the door that you missed earlier. It reads:

Hi hon!

I hope you liked the pizza! Sorry I couldn’t stay to eat it with you. I had a dinner appointment with friends, but I wanted you to know that I love you.

Love, Mom 
(p.s. just because)

Suddenly it all makes sense. Mom has a key to your house. Why didn’t you think of that before? She knows your favorite toppings and what time you get off work. You were right: she really is loving, kind, careful, conscientious, timely, creative, and thoughtful. Now you have a person to link with that list, and now the knowledge you gained without the note contributes to a stronger relationship with someone in particular: your mom.

The note on the fridge is like Scripture (revelation). In Scripture God reveals to us his name and his intentions for us. Natural Theology only gets us so far. If we’re thinking well, we can figure out a lot of things about God, but we still can’t really enter into a relationship with him until we know who he is. A Catholic would say that Natural Theology gives us certainty, but not completeness. You were certain that someone made you pizza. You knew a number of things to be true about that person, but you didn’t have complete knowledge. You didn’t know who made it or why. After you read the note, those things became clear.

Natural theology prepares us for revelation. And though God gave all of us the gift of reason (§159*), the proper use of it is up to us. Catholics do not think that this faculty is totally damaged by sin. It has the potential of working properly, though without revelation it never works perfectly. If in our quest for God we are truly open to him and don’t close off the search prematurely, then we will attain understanding. This knowledge can be certain (under the right conditions), but not exhaustive (§46–47). Many (most?) versions of Protestant theology have little place for Natural Theology. The Reformed doctrine of 'total depravity,' for example, sees our reason as totally corrupted by the Fall, unreliable and guaranteed to lead us astray. But on one thing Protestants and Catholics agree. Both groups believe we won’t have saving knowledge of God until we encounter special revelation (i.e. the Bible). In spite of the value they place on Natural Theology, then, Catholics still recognize that our reason can only get us so far. We cannot know God fully or intimately without revelation. We can think about pizza all day and never know who to thank for it.

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Hopefully this vignette has given you a (pizza-flavored) taste of what I'm learning at Notre Dame. My goal for this course is to understand more clearly what Catholics believe from their perspective. Too often we rely on caricatures of each other's believes without really stopping to listen. Our assignments for the class are to re-explain parts of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) to a particular audience, and I picked YOU! If there are particular areas of Catholic Doctrine that you would like me to write about, leave a comment and I'll see if I can work it into an assignment. Thanks for learning along with me!

*section numbers in parentheses refer to the relevant section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church

seeing Jesus in 3-D

Almost a year ago Gordon-Conwell asked if I would contribute to a weekly e-devotional celebrating 20 years of ministry at the Charlotte campus. I was honored to have this opportunity to reflect on how my studies at Gordon-Conwell transformed the way I see Jesus. The devotional was released today, but you can read it right here:

[Jesus said], "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he [smeared over] the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam." So he went and washed and came back seeing.... They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, "He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see." Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath." But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?" Then they turned again to the blind man, "What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened."...Then the man said, "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him. Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind."

John 9:1-39, selected

I first saw Jesus in 3-D at Gordon-Conwell—Charlotte. Just as Jesus appears to be stepping right out of "The Sower" fresco and into the chapel, so he stepped off the pages of Scripture during my studies.

Again and again I found the key to understanding him was the Old Testament. Most of Jesus' life and teaching is unintelligible without it. With the Old Testament close at hand, Jesus' identity comes into sharp focus. He intentionally does things to fulfill prophecy and signal that he is the long-awaited Messiah. Not only that, he does what God alone is expected to do!

An example is found in John 9. The story there is familiar—Jesus heals a man born blind and the Pharisees are disgruntled. How does the Old Testament help us understand this event?

Jesus announces that he is the light of the world.
     We know from Isaiah that Yahweh is the light dawning (Isaiah 60:1-3).

Jesus smears mud on the blind man's eyes.
     Isaiah, too, was told to besmear the eyes of Israel as a picture of God's judgment (Isaiah 6:9-10).

The blind man sees.
     Isaiah tells us the blind will see when God's kingdom is established (Isaiah 35:5).

In this event we encounter Jesus as a prophet who brings judgment on unbelieving Israel. But he is more than a prophet. He inaugurates the kingdom of God the prophets only foretold, and claims to do what Yahweh alone can do: illumine the world.

Our response can go one of two ways. We can accuse him of blasphemy like the blinded Pharisees or we can worship him like the man who can now see.

May we have eyes to see Jesus clearly today!

finding our vocation

One of Eliana's 5th grade teachers asked her what she wants to be when she grows up. She gave the same answer that I did for most of my childhood: "a missionary in South America." If she'd had more time, she would have given the longer answer: "I want to be a lawyer working with the International Justice Mission in Ecuador, helping the poor fight for land rights and providing safety and freedom for women who have been raped."

That, my friends, is a great dream for an 11-year-old to have. If she aspired to be a professional basketball player, I might be concerned, because it would be so out of the blue. But this is a dream that fits her -- with a keen ability with languages, a love for travel, and a heightened need for justice -- she's got what it takes.

A clear sense of vocation fuels daily discipline. It gets Eliana up in the mornings to do Rosetta Stone Spanish before she heads off to school. It motivates her to work hard to earn good grades, and then keep working even when no one is watching, like when school's out. Yesterday she received a Presidential Academic award bearing President Obama's signature. Today we spent our first morning of summer vacation (by request) . . . homeschooling. Eliana (11) taught Easton (3) to write lower-case letters while Emma (6) and I worked on cursive. Next came math and vocabulary. What a blessing to have such motivated children!

Teaching is a vocation that took me a while to discover. It wasn't until an education class in college that things clicked for me and I realized what I was born to do (though Mom and Dad knew it all along). Now, more than 16 years later, I'm in the thick of preparation for a teaching ministry. Being a woman in academia brings unique challenges (childcare chief among them), and so I was delighted to discover a newsletter designed with women just like me in mind. The Well, published by InterVarsity, is "a virtual gathering place for graduate and professional women to receive wisdom, care, challenge, and inspiration as they seek to follow Christ in the academic or work world." If you check out their current featured articles, you might be surprised to see that you know at least one of the contributors. I was delighted when they asked if they could publish a recent blog post.

I'm reminded of Paul's words to Timothy: "Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you . . . Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all" (1 Tim 4:14-15). It's one thing to decide to be a lawyer, or a college professor, but quite another thing to become one. Natural talents and spiritual gifts must be nurtured and shaped by daily discipline over a long stretch of time. Nobody wakes up in the morning and finds themselves in an academic career. It's the culmination of thousands of daily choices, the fruit of discipline nurtured by mentors who are a few steps ahead of us on the journey. That's why I'm so glad to have a resource like The Well, a companion for the long pilgrimage of finding and fulfilling my vocation.

How about you? Do you have a passion buried inside you just waiting for the right season to take action? You may not be able to throw yourself into it completely at this stage of your life, but perhaps there are tiny steps that you can start taking now . . . so that when the time comes you'll be ready to roll.

dutch treat

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth . . . I just hopped over to another time zone for a few days. My parents, brother, and I spent the past 5 days in Lynden, Washington, where we moved my Oma (Dutch for Grandma) into a retirement home.

The guys moved the heavy stuff, while Mom and I got
things settled just the way they had been in her old home

Danny and I have moved 11 times in our 14 years of marriage, but this was the quickest move I have ever seen. John and I arrived Thursday before noon, and by bedtime the whole house was packed. Friends showed up with a truck at 8am the next day and by noon she was all moved in her new place. By bedtime on Friday her boxes were all unpacked, beds made, and pictures up on the walls. It looked just like home. That left Saturday and Sunday to help Oma find things in her new apartment and get into a new routine. At first she kept saying she felt "like a cat in a strange warehouse" but by the time I left she was settling in and said she would like it there.


Along the way we discovered lots of treasures: photos, memories, friends old and new, and humor. Inviting my brother along to help guaranteed that humor would be on the menu. My kids call him "Uncle Hilarious" and know him for his tickling. Tickle he does, in spite of my protests. He and I flew the Denver-to-Bellingham leg of my trip together, and collected our first jointly owned barf bag. I add a bag to his collection almost every time I fly (he has a whole box of them in his basement -- it's an inside joke). We commemorated this trip by writing on the barf bag about our first flight together (that one we had when he was still a baby doesn't count).

Humor turned out to be an essential element to an otherwise difficult transition. Oma liked living on her own and didn't see any need to move. But at 91 years old, with a very unreliable memory, dizziness, diabetes, and incontinence, we all agreed that we couldn't wait any longer. The residents of her new home were more than welcoming, inviting us into their apartments and into their hearts. We soon figured out that "all the cool kids" had rolling walkers with a place for a meal tray, and that most of them took a good month to figure out the floor plan of the building. If Oma forgets her room number or how long she's lived there or what her husband did for a living she'll be in good company. Peer pressure already persuaded her to put her keys on a bracelet and a name tag on her cane. We're hoping that she'll soon realize she doesn't need to drive.

A sketch of Oma I made a few months ago

I love it that I had 4 days to eat meals in the dining hall and get to know all of Oma's new neighbors. John, Winifred, Elaine, Liz, Francis, Anne, Jack, Bob, Catherine, Loretta, Berdita, Janice, and the others are dear, dear people with stories to tell and smiles to share. I loved the way they lit up when I remembered their names. The staff who work there are so friendly. I hate it that I can't drop in every week to see them all.  If I didn't already have a career in mind, I would seriously consider something in geriatrics. It was an absolute treat to stay there with Oma.


A dutch treat, that is. Only in Lynden is the "V" section of the phone book longer than any other letter. There are enough Van- and Vander-something-or-others to populate a small planet. Nowhere else do people reply to "What's your name?" with their last name and then their maiden name before they divulge their first name (as an afterthought). I met one lady who groaned when I asked her her last name. "Jones," she sighed, and we all laughed. To fit in all she'd need to do is add "Vander" to the front of it! Dutch coffee flows freely in the dining hall, and you can even pick up Dutch conversations at times. When I left for the airport, Oma was singing hymns in the lobby with other residents.

Oma's new home overlooks a golf course and she can see
Mt. Baker from her living room window

I'm thankful to be home again with Danny and the kids, but really grateful to have been part of this important transition for Oma. Given some time, I'm confident that she'll be happy in her new home. The new apartments being constructed across the street will obstruct her view of Mt. Baker somewhat, but I reminded her that the best view is yet to come. While she wasn't too excited about this move, she's very much looking forward to that one. Meanwhile, she's in good company.