Curt Hinkle

When Life Throws Us a Curveball

I never got to play baseball (as I have mentioned previously). It wasn’t conducive to life on a dairy farm. So, I never learned how to field ground-balls or hit fastballs and curveballs. My college roommate was a really good fast-pitch softball pitcher. I asked him how good. Russ’ response: “You’d never be able to get a hit off me. In fact, I bet you never even get a piece of the ball.” Game on! How fast could he possibly be?

I was soon to discover that speed wasn’t his strength. It was his curveball. I stepped to the plate ready for a fastball. But Russ threw me a curveball. Keep in mind that as a batter, I’d never seen a curveball in my life. I swear it moved 3-4′ left to right as it came to the plate. Since I hadn’t ever seen a curveball, my instinct was to get out of the way of the ball that I was sure was headed right for me. I took one step forward and, thud, the 80 mph ball hit me square in the thigh.

Fast forward to March 2020 – life has certainly thrown us a curveball! A curveball, indeed! A mere three months ago, an animal novel virus mutated and infected a human. Now, a few mutations later, we are experiencing a pandemic that has disrupted life as we know (knew) it.

I have often wondered what attracted first century followers to Jesus. I suspect one of the attractions was the way he lived life. He lived and ministered during a time of tumult and uncertainty – religiously, politically, and economically. He lived amidst urgency. Thousands flocked to him for healing and comfort – many more than he could accommodate. Yet he never appeared frantic or overwhelmed.*

Recall Jesus sleeping in the stern of the small fishing boat that was about to be swamped by a storm (Mark 4:37-40), causing his friends to ask, “Who is this guy?” He possessed a peace that transcended normal understanding – a peace which people desired. He passed that peace onto his followers, anticipating they could live likewise – “Peace be unto you. As the father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21) with the charge to develop other disciples (see Matthew 28). So, how do we, as subsequent Disciples/Christ-followers/apprentices, do life during a life-disrupting pandemic?

Two of my grandson’s play baseball through the MN Blizzard Baseball Academy. Since I have accompanied them to various out-of-town tournaments, I receive some of the same Blizzard emails that my grandsons receive. This week Adam Barta, the owner of the MN Blizzard, sent an email to the kids with some reminders of who they are as young leaders and how they can live well during this time of uncertainty. I want to share a few of his thoughts, based on the Blizzard Academy’s Big 5:

We’ll control our attitude, our effort and our preparation. Playing catch with our family isn’t cancelled. Learning the game isn’t cancelled. Working out, eating right and getting a good night’s sleep isn’t cancelled. Talking to your friends isn’t cancelled. Life isn’t cancelled. It just threw us a nasty curveball on an 0-2 count and we will keep fouling it off.
We’ll keep the faith! Keep the faith that everyone will do their part in this crap situation. It takes a team to win a game and we are ALL teammates now. We are down 10-0 in the first inning. We’ll all keep playing hard the rest of the game, keep clawing our way back and walk this thing off in the bottom of the 9th. And ‘yes’, this is the only time we can talk smack to the opponent – The Coronavirus.
Your CHARACTER is what you are doing when no one is watching and how you deal with adversity. This is not the time to play the ‘too bad, so sad” card. Everyone can handle hitting a bases clearing double and striking out someone with the bases loaded. How you going to handle striking out in a big situation? Throw your helmet or suck it up and get ready to play defense.
Synergism – The total is greater than the sum of it’s parts. We cannot win a game or this situation alone. Nor do we have to. Everyone is going to do their part – including the Blizzard. We are going to be great, not good.
Kaizen – Getting better in small increments every day. This is going to give us all a chance to get better at something else whether it be a better brother, better worker, better anything. We’ll get better for this. Sometimes it may not feel like that on the front end, but we will on the back end.

I can imagine Jesus giving his followers a similar talk as he prepared them to spread the message of the Good News of God’s Kingdom having broken into history, an adversarial history at that. He at no point suggested it would be without trouble. In fact he warned them that there would likely be trouble and no one would be immune. He also told them that he would be with them in the middle of it all: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Keep the faith. Keep fouling off those curveballs.

* Look for an upcoming post entitled “Uncharted Waters.”

Adam Barta (far left) and grandson Oran (front row, third player from the left)

A Perspective on Perspective

This is a follow-up to the previous post about Perspective. I could say a lot about the illustration below, but I fear I might detract from it’s value. So I won’t!

Perspective

Several years ago I facilitated a training session of volunteer youth ministry people in the community in which I lived. We talked about how perspective is important to what we do and to the outcomes we hope for. In an earlier post I included a worthy saying that reminds us that perspective affects how we see things, which in turn affects what we do, which naturally impacts outcomes. My point was this: If we want to experience different outcomes in life or ministry, that only happens with a changed perspective, not just by doing things different.

To drive the point home, I showed the group the drawing of the woman below. The participants were given the task of planning an evening with her. What might they do and talk about? One younger person said she would ask this older woman what life was like as a teenager “back in the day.” An older gentleman (60ish) in the group, looking puzzled, said, “I was thinking of asking her, as a young woman, what she thinks her life might look like when she is my age.” Each person planned an evening for the woman based on their perception of her age. What they planned to do was based on their perspective.

Our perspective as to why Jesus came to our planet has a huge impact on how we do life, on all that we do. Of course the orthodox understanding is related to our salvation (or soteriology, to use the theological term). I suspect the overarching soteriological perspective of western evangelical Christians is this: Jesus came to save us so that we can go to heaven when we die. Actually, it probably sounds more like this: Jesus came to save me so that I can go to heaven when I die. We call this good news because it is. But the Good News of Jesus is much bigger.

If my perspective is “Jesus came to save me so I can go to heaven when I die” then what do I do with the rest of my life while I wait to go to heaven? If I have already accepted Jesus into my life or given my life to Him (or whatever terminology we choose to describe how we participate in his saving work), then what is there left to do? I suspect if we are honest, far too many of us simply live out life, waiting to go to heaven, maybe wishing we could go sooner than later. We hear it all the time – life will be so much better in heaven.

But then guilt sets in. We should be doing something, shouldn’t we? We hear a sermon that suggests we aren’t doing enough. Or we read a scripture that suggests a need to change something we are doing (or not doing). So we try to make changes to what we do. We work on changing the behavior that seems to need tweaking (we all need to change, right?). Problem is that behavior modification leads to moralism and moralism doesn’t work!

What if our perspective is wrong or, at least, incomplete? What if being a Christian is much bigger than simply going to heaven when we die? What if heaven is only a slice of a bigger pie? NT Wright would suggest a perspective amiss: “people often imagine the main purpose of Christianity to be getting people to heaven and teaching them to behave along the way.” * He goes on to reminds us that heaven is a big deal, but it’s not the end of the world.

So, what perspective did Jesus want his followers to come away with after hanging out with him for three years? It’s important to understand because it affected all they did and said as they went “into all the world.” Jesus did not tell his disciples to go into the world and tell people how to get to heaven. It was never his message. Read the Gospels – its not there! Jesus did not leave his disciples with a self-focused perspective of simply getting to heaven.

Here’s the thing – A theological perspective that Jesus simply came to save me so I can go to heaven when I die will not serve me well in this world. Nor will it serve those around me. Moralism is the natural outcome. Moralism doesn’t lead to loving neighbor well. And it certainly doesn’t lead to loving our enemies. We all would agree that American Christians don’t love our enemies well, which should tell us something is amiss. I would suggest it’s our perspective. The result? The Good News simply becomes good advice and the world is left wanting.

* Wright, N. T. (2017). Simply good news: Why the gospel is news and what makes it good. New York:Harper One. P. 22, Kindle Edition

Why Moralism Doesn’t Work

People like to be right and like to get it right. I’m that way and I’m guessing I am not alone. I remember back in high school and college the standard question was asked, “Will this be on the test?” I certainly asked the question as well as others. Truth be told, we were more focused on “getting it right” than on learning.

I went back to school a few years ago in pursuit of a doctorate in education. It was one of the best learning experiences of my life. I honestly think I was beginning to toggle over from “getting it right” to purely wanting to learn. My (much) younger cohort were always referring to the course rubrics when writing papers. I found myself writing first, based on the assignment prompts, and periodically consulting the rubrics to see if I had some glaring misses. When I was satisfied with what I was learning, grades become secondary.

The more I dig into the adverse effects of moralism, the more I realize that we naturally tend to focus on the rubrics and miss the intent of the prompts, especially Jesus’ prompts.

Moralism doesn’t work for a variety of reason, primary of which is a natural tenancy toward law and legalism. If we have a bent toward wanting to “get it right,” then we naturally want to know what the rules are, the rubric which defines right living. God provided a rubric for his people, the Israelites, which we know as the Law. However, the law was not to be an end in itself. The purpose of the law was to provide a framework for people who were learning to live in a covenant relationship with the one true God. When the law, especially the 10 commandments, were given to the people, living in a covenant relationship with any god was foreign to their ears and lives. Prior to leaving Egypt, their religious understanding was of many deities, none of which desired a covenant relationship with their subjects.

The law was a framework, a rubric, for learning – learning how to live in a covenant relationship with God and with each other. God didn’t desire the law to become an end in itself. It was to lead to something more. In learning to live in a covenant relationship with God and each other, the rescued Israelites could then become the good news (blessing) to the rest of the world, as intended. Love of God and neighbor was embedded in the law (see Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18). The law, seen as an end in itself, actually kills love.

Good parents develop a rubric for how their family can live in a covenant relationship. “We clean up our messes, we do our chores diligently, we treat each other with respect, etc.” If the family members simply see the rubric as an end in itself, then it becomes a checklist that leads nowhere, however they might have the cleanest house and the most (seemingly) polite kids. Yet the house may lack evidence of a loving, covenant relationship. Love is learned and simply keeping the law doesn’t get us there.

Can you see where this leads? The purpose of a rubric is to facilitate learning. I can write a paper to the letter of the rubric (law), get an “A” and miss out on all there is to learn. If moralism is my de facto understanding of the Christian faith, I can look good on the outside and miss all that Jesus is saying about living in a covenant relationship with the one true God and with those around me. And worse, I will only hear Jesus’ prompts and parables as law – checklists that I should try to perform – and never quite learn and become someone who can naturally….

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Jesus

Dishwasher Broke!

Our dishwasher broke a couple weeks ago and just got fixed this week, thanks to CenterPoint Energy’s Home Service Plus program. It wasn’t a huge inconvenience, except that it required us to wash our dishes by hand for a while. The nice part about washing by hand is the built-in opportunity to ponder (as I am wont to do when involved in menial tasks).

One day I was washing glasses that our grandsons had used after eating something sugary. The outsides were sticky, clear evidence of the sugar. As I started to wash the glasses, I realized something interesting was taking place. In the process of washing the inside, the outside naturally became clean. I wasn’t focused on washing the outside. I was focused on washing the inside. The cleansing of the outside was a natural outcome. I began to wonder if Jesus’ dishwasher might have broken once because he talked about the same thing. Sort of…

When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not first wash before the meal. Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?” (Luke 11:37-40)

In his Gospel, Matthew records a similar discourse between Jesus and some Pharisees in which Jesus concluded, “Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean” (Matthew 23:26). The context of Matthew’s narrative? Prior to 23:26, the editors of the NIV translation added the heading, Seven Woes on the Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees. Seven times Jesus said “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” Ouch! Jesus wasn’t mincing his words with the religious leaders. Seven times he called them out for their hypocrisy, for missing the mark. And they knew it. It would have been difficult for the hearers to respond, “I wonder what he meant?” They knew exactly what he meant. And they didn’t like it. It was around this time that they stepped up plots to kill Jesus.

What was the sin of the religious leaders? I would suggest moralism. The religious leaders had reduced God’s steadfast love, mercy, and faithfulness (hesed and emet) to a recipe for moral improvement. In the 21st century, we can also succumb to the (some would say seductive) false gospel of moralism. Moralism in our context is the reduction of the Gospel – the outrageous, extravagant, radical, unconditional, love of Jesus – to moral improvement.

How might we know if we have culturally or personally succumbed to the false gospel of moralism? What might be some indicators? We might have been seduced by “christian” moralism:

If we find ourselves using the word “should” to describe the state of our faith journey (i.e., I should pray more or I should read the bible more, etc.). Brennan Manning always used to say, “Thou shalt not should on thyself.”
If we find ourselves reading scripture and seeing our own character flaws and missing the character of God.
When we read stories about bible heroes, wondering if we could ever have that kind of faith and miss that the stories are actually telling us about who God is.
When we miss the fact that the Gospel accounts were written to tell us who Jesus is and not just what he can do for us.
When we think living the Christian life looks like “Do good; try not to do bad.”
When we read a scripture passage and think of others who ought to be reading this. Ouch!
When we tell people (especially younger people) how Christians should act. (We want to keep in mind that the Greek word for hypocrite is actor. Jesus was calling out the religious leaders for being actors)

Read the tenets of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism and you can see the results of 50 or so years of the presence of the false gospel of moralism. Listen to sermons. Are they about who Jesus is – his character? – or do they lean toward moral improvement and how we should act? The Gospel of Jesus and the “gospel” of moralism are diametrically opposed to each other. Don’t be fooled into believing the false gospel of moralism. It’s more prevalent than one might suspect. Be aware. Be wise as serpents. I don’t know about you, but I would never want to hear Jesus say to me, “Woe unto you!”

The Wittenburg Door

During the 1980s, I was a subscriber of the now defunct Wittenburg Door, a somewhat bi-monthly Christian satire written by, I believe, frustrated youth ministers. Being highly satirical, some content was funny, some serious, and some just plain irreverent. After a few years, I let my subscription lapse. I discovered the satire was not healthy for my psyche.

Letting my subscription lapse meant I no longer had access to the famous Door interviews, the best part of each issue. One of my favorite interviews was with the late Brennan Manning, in the October-November 1986 issue. If we desire to become deep thinkers, Manning made some poignant statements to which we might pay attention over 30 years later…

An itinerant preacher of God’s unconditional love, acceptance and grace, Manning’s life never qualified him as that ‘victorious Christian’ that western evangelicalism might judge should be realized. He struggled with alcohol addiction his entire life. But he knew one thing – the outrageous, extravagant, radical, unconditional, love of Jesus. And because of his understanding of God’s mercy and grace, coupled with his willingness to share that with others in the midst of his messy life, there are millions of us that now have a better understanding of God’s raging love for us. For that I will be ever grateful!

Back to the Wittenburg Door interview: What I remember most about the interview was Manning making an interesting statement, wondering when the liberals and conservatives might figure out that they are all in the same camp and are really in agreement. Manning suggested that what unites these opposite ideologies is the proposition that Jesus is impractical in the real world.

Manning was speaking about theological opposite ideologies, but I suspect it translates to any ideology in which Jesus is set aside in favor of said ideologies. We err in setting him aside because we deem his directives of 2000 years ago as impractical today. We cannot turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, or love our enemies because that simply doesn’t work. So we set Jesus aside. Or, at least, we commit the same sin of Thomas Jefferson who literally cut out of his bible the words of Jesus that he didn’t want to see. Maybe we don’t set him aside, but we choose to ignore those things that demand deep thinking or a change in our thinking.

Manning: “When are we Christians going to be honest enough to admit that we don’t believe in Jesus Christ?”

Harsh? I’m not so sure. If we are willing to set Jesus aside or ignore him in favor of our own ideologies, is that not the same as unbelief? This is where becoming deep thinkers plays out practically in our everyday lives in the 21st century. Thinking and belief are intimately connected. If we don’t learn to become deep thinkers, then we let ideologies (be they theological or political) shape our beliefs about Jesus – who he is, what he did and said – maybe even unbeknownst. We don’t allow him to transform us in to his likeness. Instead, we attempt to transform him into the likeness of our ideologies.

In the United States we have officially entered into another election cycle. We must allow Jesus to shape our political ideologies. That or admit that we really don’t believe in him because he is impractical. Something worthy of our deepest thoughts.

(If you are interested in reading the Brennan Manning interview in the Wittenburg Door, you can access it here. It’s a worthy read.)

Addendum April 2025: I received an email from folks at The Wittenburg Door. They said.”Thought you might be interested to know that The Door has since reopened, albeit in an online-only format at www.wittenburgdoor.com.”

Thinkin’

Circa mid-1970s. We started every Young Life club with the same song – Thinkin‘, page 90 in the old brown Young Life Songbook. We would sing the first verse (see below), then allow the kids to yell out what they might be thinking about and then we’d insert that instead of “Thinkin‘” in subsequent verses. Without much thought, they would yell out things like, “Hockey, girls, fun, basketball, boys,” etc. Not much depth, but we sure had fun!

I fear that we live in a time in which deep thinking has waned to a dangerous point. Several years ago, James J. Howard III, the CEO of NSP (now Xcel Energy) was speaking to a group of engineers, applauding their creativity and depth of thought. He wrapped up his speech with: “And if [this information age] seems overwhelming, there are a number of spin doctors eager to package the information for us. Our political candidates talk in sound bites, interpreted by political pundits.” He went on to name some of the pundits (both political and non-political) as “whoever’s putting the latest twist on the story.” He closed with a powerful and telling statement – “We don’t ever have to come up with an original thought.” It reminds me of something I heard the late Howard Hendricks say several years ago…

Hendricks was known for his famous comment that 70% of Americans don’t think, 20% think they think but merely rearrange their prejudices, with only 10% of us actually thinking. (He ‘claimed’ it was a study – I’m guessing he was speaking from personal observation.) The day I heard this adage (about 20 years ago), I determined that I wanted to be part of the 10% that actually thought. I still aspire to that (maybe someday 😊).

All his life Hendricks challenged people (mostly seminary students) to become deep thinkers, to not simply buy into the company or party lines (speaking mostly from a religious perspective). One of Hendricks’ favorite scripture passages was Romans 12:2 – Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world but be transformed by the renewing or your mind. One of the claims-to-fame of modern Christians is an ability to name and push back against the “patterns of this world.” However, we then settle for and conform to another set of patterns, which is not what the Apostle Paul was suggesting!

In this passage and throughout his writings , Paul encouraged people to become deep thinkers – to think through what they believed and why they believed – leading to renewed minds and thus transformation. Jesus walked into a religious world where the leaders quit thinking and simply focused on conforming to the party line. Jesus challenged them with hard questions to which they had no response except to repeat the party line. They were 1st Century pundits! Jesus didn’t have much patience with people that focused on conformity (I think, for example, of the sevens woes he leveled on the religious leaders – Matthew 23:13-33).

Jesus wanted thinkers, not regurgitators and conformers. So did Paul. I encourage all of us to become thinkers – its transformative. And directional. This is the second half of Romans 12:2 – As a result, you will be able to discern what God wills and whatever God finds good, pleasing, and complete.

Can you imagine what our world might look like if Christians became deep thinkers?

That’s My King!

I just got home from the Mission Inn Resort at Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida. I was there taking a five-day, intensive theology class – Christology, Soteriology, and Pneumatology. In lay terms, its the study (ology) of Christ, Salvation, and the Holy Spirit. After full days of class plus six writing assignments, I don’t have much left. However, I do have a treat for you…

During class one day, I was reminded of a classic, short “sermon” by Dr. S.M. Lockridge entitled That’s My King! It is an amazing 4 1/2 minute summary of the doctrine of Jesus Christ – well worth your time. Enjoy!

Happy 2020

Several years ago I thought an interesting exercise would be a read through the Apostle Paul’s Epistles in the order in which they were written, a possible time span of 15-20 years. I thought it would be edifying to gain a feel for Paul’s core message, discovering how his theology developed over the span of time. I began the experience with 1 Thessalonians. Below is Eugene Peterson’s introduction to the Thessalonica letters in The Message paraphrase. It seems an appropriate read as we move into a new year…

The way we conceive the future sculpts the present, gives contour and tone to nearly every action and thought through the day. If our sense of future is weak, we live listlessly. Much emotional and mental illness and most suicides occur among men and women who feel that they “have no future.”

The Christian faith has always been characterized by a strong and focused sense of future, with belief in the Second Coming of Jesus as the most distinctive detail. From the day Jesus ascended into heaven, his followers lived in expectancy of his return. He told them he was coming back. They believed he was coming back. They continue to believe it. For Christians, it is the most important thing to know and believe about the future.

The practical effect of this belief is to charge each moment of the present with hope. For if the future is dominated by the coming again of Jesus, there is little room left on the screen for projecting our anxieties and fantasies. It takes the clutter out of our lives. We’re far more free to respond spontaneously to the freedom of God.

All the same, the belief can be misconceived so that it results in paralyzing fear for some, shiftless indolence in others. Paul’s two letters to the Christians in Thessalonica, among much else, correct such debilitating misconceptions, prodding us to continue to live forward in taut and joyful expectancy for what God will do next in Jesus.

May you live 2020 in taut and joyful expectancy!

Veritas (Emet)

As you may know, I am a woodworker. I fell in love with woodworking at an early age when my parents gave me a Handy Andy tool chest of woodworking tools – saw, square, coping saw, block plane, hammer, ruler, etc. I remember finding scraps of 1×2 pine and cutting them into 2″ lengths to make play bales of hay. I think I may have maxed out at about 250 “bales,” enough to make a pretty good sized haystack. If my memory serves me right, that might be the era when my dad was continually frustrated when unable to locate a 1×2 when needed.

My love for woodworking intensified in 8th grade when I took wood-shop, taught by one of my all-time favorite teachers, Mr. Briggs. It further intensified when I married my wife, Barb. Her dad was a a really good woodworker so I learned from him. I ended up inheriting many of his power tools 15 years ago when he ‘retired’ from the hobby. Over the past 10-15 years (thanks to my son, Nate) I have complemented my power tool collection with a plethora of hand tools – some old (i.e. 100+ years), some new. Veritas Tools is one of my go-to manufacturers of quality hand tools. I have contributed a fair amount to Veritas’ bottom line as I’ve expanded my hand tool collection. Here are a couple examples…

Combination Plane, Left; Skew Rabbet Plane, Right

I learned a new word recently – verity. Verity, I discovered, is derived from veritas, the Latin word for truth. In the last posting (Hesed and Emet) we looked at hesed, the powerful, rich, and robust Hebrew word describing God’s steadfast love and mercy toward his people. We looked at an example from the Psalms: “Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other” (Psalm 85:10, ESV). The word faithfulness in this passage is emet, another rich and robust Hebrew word describing God’s character

The Theological Workbook of the Old Testament suggests that emet can be translated into English as faithfulness or verity (truth). Emet carries an underlying sense of certainty and dependability. As with the example above, emet is often coupled with hesed, creating a synergism of two of God’s strongest attributes. (Keep in mind the definition of synergy – the combined effect is greater than the sum of the individual attributes.)

I get the chills when I ponder this. Hesed, combined with emet, provides a powerful glimpse of who God is – love and faithfulness, mercy and truth. We can be certain of and depend on his steadfast love.

Then we remember that Jesus is the visible expression of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), the God of hesed and emet. Maybe John had hesed and emet in mind when he said that Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). Ponder this for a while. Maybe you’ll get the chills, too.

Addendum March 2025. Psalm 117, the shortest psalm in the Psalter, is all about hesed and emet…

¹Praise the Lord, all you nations;
extol him, all you peoples.
²For great is his love [hesed] toward us,
and the faithfulness [emet] of the Lord endures forever.

Addendum July 2025. The correct term for the linking of hesed and emet is hendiadys: the expression of a single idea by two words connected with “and,” e.g., nice and warm, when one could be used to modify the other, as in nicely warm.