My Wallet

            Just over forty years ago my grandfather, Arend Schuil--Opa, as we used to call him—put on a heavy apron, picked up his sheers, and cut into a piece of rawhide. He knew what he was doing, since he had spent his life cutting leather to make the special orthopedic shoes he sold to customers all over the Netherlands. But now that he was retired, the shoe molds and rubber soles that used to fill his shop were long gone. Instead of leather uppers, this time he cut the leather to make wallets for his grandchildren. I received mine, my last gift from him, in 1967.

I still have that wallet in a drawer of my desk. I keep special papers in it. Opa sewed it together using tiny, perfectly symmetrical, stitches. Even now, the leather is soft and supple—the softest thing I own.

I only met him twice, for a few weeks each time, on his rare visits to Canada. He taught me to play chess on long summer afternoons under a shade tree beside our house. We didn’t talk much, since my Dutch was poor and his English non-existent. Still, it never felt awkward. Quiet with him was restful, relaxed and happy.

Genealogy is my hobby, so by studying old church and civil documents in the Netherlands, I’ve learned that my Opa’s ancestors had been making shoes in the Dutch province of Groningen for the better part of three hundred years. But now my wallet is the only tangible link I have left to all those centuries of toil.

I’ve also learned that some Schuils wanted more out of life than making shoes. Among my great- and great-great grandparents there was one who helped buy a new house for the local preacher. Others were volunteer organists and choir directors. My grandfather would have loved to become a preacher himself.

But back then most people didn’t have a choice about what they would do with their lives. Formal education was a luxury. Most people did what their fathers did; you took up the business and learned as unpaid child labor. And that was if your family had a trade. My grandfather on the Suk side had to quit school to work the potato fields as a day laborer by the time he was eleven or twelve. His father peddled groceries door to door out of a dog cart. They got by, but sometimes only barely.

And my wallet reminds me of all that. My wallet is like a hinge, really. It connects me—with all my opportunities, choice, and postgraduate education—to an era in the very recent past when what you did with your life, workwise, wasn’t a unique “calling” you had the luxury of making a decision about. No, in those days, people didn’t have “callings.” They had “tellings,” and did as told, workwise, whether they wanted to or not.

That wallet reminds me that having the opportunity to go to school, and choose a career is a big privilege. Thinking back on my family history, my hope is that my grandkids will understand just how great a privilege that choice is. Of course, they’ll have to study hard borrow money and work hard to make their dreams come to pass—but I’ll urge them to do so.

             But, at a deeper level, that wallet also reminds me that whatever job I land on God’s good earth, my ultimate vocation there—and always—is to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [my] God,” (Micah 6:8). Just as my grandfather, the last of the shoemakers, always tried to do no matter what he did to earn a living.

A Wretch Like Me

            I just paid a big speeding ticket in New York State. The officer pulled me over at the Gananoque bridge, wrote a ticket, smiled and left. He was pulling over people at a sneeky speed-trap where drivers have to slam on their brakes to slow from 65 to 40. This officer never gave me an opportunity to argue my case. The bill arrived in the mail two weeks later. I felt wretched—the dollar damage was more than I dare admit in public.

            This reminded me of a speeding ticket that I talked my way out of, a few years ago. One Sunday, when Irene and I lived in Manila, The Philippines, we were on our way to a lunch engagement on the other side of town, after church.

Unfortunately, on Makati Avenue I ran an amber light that turned red by the time I was through. A guy in a funny yellow t-shirt tried to wave me down. Without thinking I swerved round him and continued on. I said to Irene that he looked an awful lot like a street-sweeper. But deep inside I suspected he might be a policeman. Like an idiot I made a few unscheduled turns in the hope of losing him. Soon I was stuck in traffic.

Unfortunately, my intuition was rewarded when my yellow-shirted policeman on a 100 cc scooter pulled up beside me, easily weaving in and out of the cars that surrounded me. He motioned for me to roll down my window.

            I told him I mistook him for a street cleaner. This did not impress him. He asked me to hand over my license. I refused, knowing that he could demand a huge bribe if I asked for it back. So I said the law did not require me to ever hand over my license, even to a policeman. This was true, but made him angry. He suggested we ride over to the police station to resolve matters. I asked him if there was anyway we could avoid the trip and settle matters now. I was hoping he would just write me a ticket. He looked up at me with narrowed eyes and asked “what do you mean?” He was hoping for a bribe.

I suddenly remembered how, years ago, a Nigerian driver I was with had refused to pay a bribe to a teen-aged soldier who just happened to be waving a machine gun through our car window, roughly in my direction. “Christians don’t pay bribes,” my driver said. The soldier scowled and let us through the roadblock. Inspired by the memory,  instead of offering a bribe, I said, “Please officer, forgive me.”

The Manila policeman was even less impressed than the Nigerian soldier had been. I forged ahead with the him anyway. “Sir, forgive me. I did wrong. Kasalanan ko. It is my fault. Will you please forgive me? I will not ever go through a red light again. I have learned my lesson. Sir, please forgive.” All in one breath.

Ask and you will receive, says scripture. I’ve never heard a sermon that tried to explain those words as literally true, and strictly speaking, they didn’t apply in this situation anyway. All the same, they came to me as the police officer told me that if he ever saw me go through a red light again, he would throw the book at me. Then, shaking his head, he got back on his bike and left.

I’m not sure what went through his head. Was he sad to have missed out on a bribe? Did he figure a day in the police station, arguing about fines, would cut into his opportunity to extract bribes from other, more willing, traffic violators? Was he utterly amazed by my non-Filipino willingness to lose face by admitting guilt and begging for forgiveness? Or perhaps I just misread the situation from the start, and he wasn’t looking for a bribe at all. Maybe, he was just a gracious person.

I’ll never know, for sure. But I guess a wretch like me was saved! 

Ontario Election

The provincial election is just around the corner. I’ve been thinking about how to vote. Naturally, my values and faith contribute to my decision. So I’ve come up with a list of Ten Commandments for voters. The focus is on Provincial issues, so you won’t find much here about Federal matters such as trade, defense, foreign aid, or pensions. But there is still a lot of ground to cover.

1. The Lord God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, and—within  memory—most of Ontario’s voters or their ancestors from some other far-away land. Which parties make embracing new immigrants and their unique challenges a high priority?

2. The Judeo-Christian God doesn’t want us to bow down to images. That’s because humans are his real image bearers. And what did God create his image bearers to do? The prophet Micah says humans must act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. For that matter, they should so walk with their neighbors too. Which party's values best match that high, human calling to be like God?

3. The third command warns against misuse the name of the Lord. Language matters to God, and it should matter to politicians. Civility doesn’t have much of a role in question period anymore, judging by my last visit to Queen’s Park. Which candidates are committed to dialog rather than personal slurs and negative campaigning?

4. The fourth command mentions that God made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, including people. Then he told Adam and Eve to take care of it, nurture it, and keep it beautiful. When you vote, remember that according to the Creation Story God’s first command to humans, even before the ten, was to take care of the earth and its creatures. Which parties take this responsibility for creation care as seriously as God does?

5. Honor your father and mother. They are getting older and so, by the way, are you. A host of policies impact our elderly neighbors. Which party will best protect universal health care for all, regardless of wealth? Which party will do the best job making sure that retirement homes, nursing homes, and home care for the elderly are designed to allows the elderly to be as independent, engaged, and healthy as long as possible?

6. You shall not murder. In my tradition we like to restate this command positively, like this. To keep the sixth command is “to love our neighbors as ourselves; to be patient, peace-loving, gentle, merciful, and friendly to them; to protect them from harm as much as possible; and to do good even to our enemies.” Political parties seem to think that voting is about me, myself, and I. It isn’t. Spiritual voters have the best interests not merely of themselves, but especially of their neighbors in mind when they vote. It isn’t about my pocket book; it is about building a just and loving community.

7. You shall not commit adultery. Vote for the party that is willing to make a long-term commitment to the people of Ontario, rather than a short-term affair until the writ is next dropped. Vote for the party willing to speak the truth in love and strive for the ideal rather than the one that falls into bed with the tempting policy flavor of the day.

8. You shall not steal: The Bible has more to say about how Christians should handle wealth than any other moral issue. Steven Colbert—not usually noted for his religious commentary--put it this way on network TV. “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.” Vote for the party that puts the poor first, because most of us have way more than we really need.

9. Do not give false testimony. When you vote, don’t just consider a party’s promises about the changeable future; consider how they did—or did not—keep their promises in the unchangeable past

10. You shall not covet. Every party covets power. But when you vote, consider which party or candidate is nevertheless the most committed to serving those out of power: the least, the last, and the lost. For ultimately, these citizens have always been God’s favorites.

The Strangers in Our Midst

I live a few blocks from Cobourg’s Victoria Park, right on Lake Ontario. Every weekend this park is full of new Canadian picnickers. I can’t be sure, of course, but as I walk through the park, I think I’m seeing immigrants from Pakistan, Jamaica, The Philippines, and beyond. I’m glad to see them. Partly, it is for purely selfish reasons. These new Canadians, most of whom are young, are the same Canadians who will be contributing to my Canada Pension Plan when I retire. If Canadians had relied only on Canadian-born to make those contributions, there wouldn’t be enough to go around!

But I’m especially glad to see them because they remind me of my own family history. Nearly sixty years ago, my parents immigrated to Canada too, from the Netherlands. On Saturday afternoons, my family and our Dutch-immigrant friends in the Niagara Peninsula used to take over huge swaths of parkland in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Now I wonder if the people who lived in that village complained about our barbecues, cars, noise, and garbage. 

Further back, my ancestors immigrated to the Netherlands from Germany, France, and Switzerland. I immigrated--for nearly twenty years--to the United States. It is the human way, I suppose. We’re all immigrants or the children of immigrants.

No nation or group has ever been able to claim any patch of the earth as their own, forever and ever. Roman legions retreated before the barbarian--European--tribes that swept into their empire fifteen hundred years ago. Europeans shoved America’s first citizens aside to take over the Americas. These days hungry Somalis trudge to Kenya, Mexicans try to scale the border fence into the United States, and people from all over the world look for a better life here in Canada, just as my grandparents did after war had ravaged their homeland.

In a way, all this moving back and forth across the face of the earth is perfectly understandable from a Christian point of view. Christians believe that ultimately, no land can really be said to be ours alone because it is all a trust from God. We’re just workers in the vineyard. “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (Psalm 24:1). According to the Bible, Christians, in particular, are strangers and aliens to the world (1 Peter 2:11) who are actually ambassadors of reconciliation sent here from the Kingdom of God (2 Cor 5:20).  

Unfortunately, most of us, including Christians, nevertheless struggle with prejudice. We forget where we’re from and what our lives are supposed to be all about. We’re unsure, perhaps even afraid, of those who look and sound different than us. We are impatient for newcomers to lose their distinctives and become just like us. We blame strangers for upsetting our apple carts. 

Borders may be a pragmatic way of regulating the flow of people back and forth over the earth for the benefit of all. But Christian hospitality, kindness to strangers, and forbearance in the face of what seems to us to be odd habits and dress--Christian love for neighbors--all these are God’s way for making sure that immigrants to Canada find a new home away from home.

Introduction to Not Sure by John Suk

         
                   The introduction to my book, Not Sure: A Pastor's Journey from Faith to Doubt, is available by clicking the title link. The introduction explains why I value doubt, and tells (in part) the story of how I arrived at that conclusion. Check it out!


          You can order the book from Eerdmans.com, or Amazon.com or .ca. You can also buy it at, or order through your local bookstore.

Wish I Could Be Afraid

I wish I could be afraid. Like Peter was afraid, once.

It happened this way. One day, after a fruitless night of fishing, Jesus told Peter to throw the nets out on the other side of the boat. Peter thought, "No way. Wrong place; wrong time." But to humor Jesus — who had, after all, just healed his mother-in-law — Peter did as he was told. And according to the story Luke tells, Peter caught a huge load of fish. It seemed a miracle.

The next thing Peter knew, he was stepping out of the boat and falling on his knees before Jesus. Something about what had just happened — something about Jesus — terrified him. So Peter said, "Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man."

I wish I could be afraid like that. Even if it only happened once, for a minute, I wish I could feel the breath sucked out of me like Peter’s must have been when he guessed, before he had words to say it, that Jesus was the Christ, of God (Luke 9:20).

This is why: my life is all about Jesus. I have gone to church all my life. I spent twenty years going to Christian schools, including seminary. I now preach about Jesus weekly. I pray to him daily. He is rarely far from my thoughts.

Yet I have never held his hand. I have never laid eyes on his face. I have not put my hands in his wounds. I have not heard him preach. I can't get him to slap me on the back or pass the wine or even to tell me where to fish. He seems distant — almost unreal. Just once, just for a moment, I'd like to taste that mysterious, awful, painful, fear that seized Peter when he guessed who Jesus really was.

I don't know how exactly to say it. I think this would be a good fear, even if I could only hold onto it for a minute or two. A good fear — maybe like the longing fear a virginal bride and a virginal groom have at the foot of their wedding night bed as a whole new world of intimacy and trust opens up to them.

I think Peter's fear must be something like that of a teacher facing her first classroom alone. She trusts her training and doesn't doubt her skills, but she is terrified by the enormity of her job and all the kids she'll help shape. She's just one, all alone, at the beginning of the rest of her life.

I think this fear is something like the fear that those who love extreme sports look for. They want a rush, a brush with death, the exhilaration of being on the verge of losing it even as they know they will make it to the other side.

This good fear is deeply spiritual. It is rooted in wanting more life than a body can stand, in wanting to look around the corner, at death, maybe even touch it — without having to embrace it.

Some Christians claim to have encountered Jesus in this way — to have tangibly felt his immanence and the holy fear that it inspires. I can’t speak, of course, about the truth or falsehood of anyone else’s claim to have experienced this kind of fear. All I know is that I’ve never felt it. Not like Peter did.

But as I carry on in faith, which for me includes this persistent struggle with doubt and uncertainty, I wish I could know — even for a moment — what Peter felt that day, and what Jesus' words cured.

(This post appeared earlier this week on Eerdword, at http://eerdword.wordpress.com. Check it out!)

End of Summer Booklist

Labor Day is just around the corner, and so perhaps you are looking for that one, last great book of the summer. I've read a few, and maybe one of them will appeal to you.

My wife, Irene Oudyk-Suk, is a couples and sex therapist (couplesinstep.ca). One book she asks many of her clients to read (or watch on video) is Canadian therapist Sue Johnson’s “Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love.” The book is a popular and practical exposition of the new neuroscience of love. Her approach to therapy is based on John Bowlby's attachment theory, and is usually called Emotionally Focussed Therapy. Don't let the ten-dollar terms scare you, though. This is a very practical and readable book about committed relationships. If you want to figure out how love actually works, pick it up.

One book that has been making waves in Christian circles this summer is Rob Bell’s Love Wins. In this book Bell tries to explain why the heart of Christianity has to be the story of God’s grace, and how the heart of Christianity has nothing to do with eerie tales of hell and punishment. A noted Evangelical leader, his book has upset the status-quo apple cart. You’ll need to read it to make up your own mind, but I thought it was a great read.

My PHD is in Communication Theory. One question receiving a lot of attention in those circles is, “does use of electronic media effect how we think?” Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges’ Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle argues that we have traded the world of ideas for one of “comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans and a celebration of violence.” Stanislas Dehaene’s Reading and the Brain, looks at the issue from the perspective of neuroscience. Amazon just delivered Shane Hipps’ Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith. I haven't read it yet, but he asks what this all means for Christians who are, after all, supposed to be “people of the word.”

No summer reading list is complete without fiction to fall asleep by--or not! I’m a fantasy and science fiction buff, and really enjoyed reading bestselling George Martin’s A Game of Thrones. This summer I also found Robert Sawyer’s Hominids, which combines my interest in human evolution and sci-fi. Sawyer is easily Canada’s best known science fiction writer. With the upcoming provincial election in the air, I’ve also purchased Terry Fallis’ Best Laid Plans. This book, about the inner machinations of Canadian politics, was CBC Radio’s 2011 Canada Reads contest winner. I'll read it over Labor Day weekend in preparation for Ontario's upcoming provincial election.

Finally, a bit of a dream. I'm trying to talk Irene into retiring to a sailboat--at least for a few years. I'm not sure when we'd do that (I'm thinking soon, Irene wants to wait fifteen years!). But in the meantime, we should probably learn to sail! So I bought, and devoured The Sailing Bible: The Complete Guide for all Sailors. Living on a boat sounds like it could be a blast. Not much in there about being becalmed and swarmed by flies, which I hear is one of the occupational hazards of being out on the great lakes, at least. We'll have to see--maybe Irene and I will try sailing for a week next summer?

What late-summer good-reads would you add?