Less than the Least

As she described Santa Maria delle Grazie, the Milan church that houses da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” our tour guide said she so much preferred the name in Italian to its English translation—Saint Mary of Thanks—that she would stick with the Italian henceforth. “Grazie” does seem a prettier word than “thanks,” but I also wondered later if the connection in Italian between thanks (grazie) and grace (grazia; and graces is grazie) also figured in the preference. Grace and thanks are not the same thing, of course, but they are inextricably connected: our thanks are a response to God’s grace. Although I would locate the grace in the work of Christ, rather than Mary, I love the idea that a church “delle Grazie” might refer (if I’m not confused about the Italian) both to God’s manifold grace (or graces) in Christ, and to the thanks of his people, the body of Christ—as expressed generation after generation in the joyous worship in the church.

Yesterday I found myself in an Italian language service in Milan. The church—the Chiesa Cristiana, which doubles as Milan Bible Church in the afternoon-- was a thirty minute walk through nondescript neighborhoods (a reminder that Milan was heavily bombed during World War II) from my hotel. I ended up in the Italian language service because of the timing of the services—certainly not because of proficiency in Italian, which is still years away.

Through a quirk of scheduling, I was in Amsterdam a week ago for a corporate law conference and (after a brief return home) am now in Milan and Rome for nine days with the twelve students in my Globalization of Corporate Governance seminar.   The combination of corporate law conferences and side trips to several of the world’s great art museums has gotten me thinking—however ill-informedly—about the relationship between markets and art.

Phil Ryken, the pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church, the church of which I and my family are members, was just named the eighth president of Wheaton College.  The first excitement came even before the official announcement, when the website of Christianity Today magazine released the news yesterday before it was public.  Dr. Ryken informed the elders of our church yesterday morning, at roughly the same time as the faculty of Wheaton was informed of the choice in a confidential meeting.  The plan was to wait until after the move was announced to Tenth’s congregation this morning before making it public. A vibrant debate ensued on the CT website as to whether CT should have posted the news.  Although it would have been far better for Tenth’s congregation if the news had not been leaked, I side with those who think CT acted perfectly appropriately in posting it.  Only in rare circumstances—such as national security threats—should journalists withhold breaking news.  If there are villains in the story, it is the people who leaked the information, not the reporter who published it.

Thanks to the East Coast blizzard, we’re now in day two of a six day weekend (otherwise known as an eternity) with our two high school sons. This means lots of spirited debates about how long the boys can stay on the computers. In our house, we’ve arrived at a rule that that they can’t go on the computer before 12 noon, and must get off by 10 p.m. My wife and I are pleased with this system (the boys are rather less enthusiastic, and frequently tell us so), but it still means policing the noon and 10 pm boundaries and lots of discussion about how long they can stay on during those hours in between.

James Wood had an interesting op-ed (here) in yesterday’s New York Times. Wood, as many readers may know, is a critic and novelist who was raised in an evangelical household but rejected the faith. He argues that that Pat Robertson’s suggestion that the earthquake in Haiti was a punishment suggests that “God is punitive and interventionist,” and that President Obama’s suggestion that “there but for the grace of God” we would have been the ones devastated makes God “as capricious as nature and so absent as to be effectively nonexistent.”

Although Wood is being a little unfair both to Christianity and to President Obama, I do think he wisely points out the dangers of trying to identify God’s will in a disaster. Jesus himself warned about this.  Referring to eighteen people who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell, Jesus said “do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you.” The real moral, Jesus said, is that we all need to repent. (Luke 13:4).

It’s hard not to think of Franklin Roosevelt (Roosevelt-and-water, perhaps) as President Obama criticizes the Wall Street banks, welcomes Paul Volcker (who argues that the banks should be partially broken up) back into his inner circle, and condemns the Supreme Court’s new campaign finance decision as a threat to democracy. Roosevelt did break up the banks (a successful reform), and he wanted to “pack” the Supreme Court with new New Deal friendly justices (a disaster).

At the end of each year I wonder whether I and my family’s giving for the year fully reflects the Bible’s teachings. It isn’t so much the question of how much to give that I puzzle over. While the New Testament doesn’t specify the amount we should give, it strongly suggests we should give at least as much as the ten percent tithe (before-tax, not after-tax, income) called for in the Old Testament.

More puzzling for me is which giving should count. Our principal giving should be to our church, of course. But should we think of giving to other Christian organizations—say a crisis pregnancy center or a Christian magazine or a soup kitchen-- as part of our giving or not? I tend to finesse this a little by directing a substantial majority of my giving to the church, while also giving to these other Christian organizations. It seems to me that the work they are doing is also a crucial part of the church’s mission, even if the particular organization is not directly involved in worship. 

As I understand it—and this is a serious qualification, because I’m not sure I do—the principal difference between the treatment of abortion in the House and Senate healthcare bills is this: the House Bill would prohibit government funding of health insurance policies that cover abortion, while the Senate Bill would allow the coverage but require anyone who wants the coverage as part of a government-subsidized policy to make separate premium payments for the basic policy and for the abortion coverage. It would be a terrible thing for the government to fund abortions, which argues decisively for the House approach.

Am I imagining it, or is the old cliché “back in the day” enjoying a renaissance?  I seem to see it everywhere, even in “objective” newspaper stories.  When I was a kid (back in the day, in other words), it was one of two phrases people often used to link the past to the present.  To compare the old days to the present, they said “back in the day” (as in: “Back in the day, that pot-bellied man was the fastest sprinter in the state”).  To compare the present to the old days, they said “anymore” (as in: “Anymore, you pump your own gas; they don’t pump it for you”).