c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. He lives in Durham, N.C.)

UNDATED _ On Friday evenings, we eat takeout Chinese food in front of a video. It’s a nice end-of-week family ritual.

My assignment is to bring home the food. For years we had excellent choices just down the street. In our new home, I am struggling to find anything interesting.

Tonight, on a friend’s recommendation, I fight for a parking space near a student hangout that does both Chinese and Vietnamese. They don’t accept credit cards, so I have to walk three blocks to a bank machine for cash. They have only a handful of steam-table choices. The owner serves the main dish and allows it to cool while the egg rolls cook.

In the end, we sit down to small servings of tepid, bland food. As a meal, not much.

My son, meanwhile, has selected”The Mummy”for our family video. The acting is so awful I have to leave the room at one point. Scenes of flesh-eating beetles keep my son up all night with nightmares. As entertainment, not much.

If we were using Jesus’ distinction between the”emperor’s things”and”God’s things”as our guide, this evening would be a bust in the”emperor’s things”department. But”God’s things”are wonderful. Being together, rubbing my son’s back, talking after the video, the blessings of ample food and a safe home _ not even poor cooking can take away such delight.”Quality”has become a buzzword, as in”total quality management,””quality control,””quality assurance.”We talk about”quality of life”and parents spending”quality time”with their children.

Who could object to the shift from quantity to quality? It’s great to have automobiles that run reliably, rather than balky hulks of metal with monster engines. But it also raises a dilemma, namely a mounting one-dimensional prickliness about the quality of everything.

Quality Chinese food isn’t the same as quality time with family. Making an excellent cup of coffee isn’t the same as listening to one’s spouse. Walking in trendy shoes isn’t the same as walking with a child. Having a quality desk isn’t the same as feeling one’s work is worthwhile. A tightly worded contract isn’t the same as integrity. Being spoken to with correct language isn’t the same as being treated with respect.

In the image of the gospel, quality in the”emperor’s things”isn’t the same as quality in”God’s things.”Some things matter more than others. Some things are of the world and others are of God. Even among the things that are considered to be of God, some have large value and some have small.

Jesus’ enemies, after all, weren’t notorious sinners, but the ultra-religious. These Pharisees, Sadducees, chief priests and doctors of the Law had lost perspective on what matters.

They obsessed about small religious rules but ignored God’s commandments. They put law above person, tradition above faith, safety above sacrifice. In their one-dimensional world, everything was the same.

Their doctrinal cousins are still lost in a one-dimensional desert. The creationists’ one-state-at-a-time assault on modern science, for example, seems to treat the wording of science textbooks as of ultimate importance, while ignoring larger questions of whether students are interested in science at all, whether minds nurtured by sitcoms and video violence have the slightest capacity for science of any stripe.

The”PC police”worry about the wording of worship, but seem uninterested in whether people mean whatever words they say. Traditionalist and modernist musicians fight over hymnody, but don’t seem to notice whether anyone is singing. Liturgical warriors perfect religious forms, without touching lives. Bible warriors fight over interpretation, but overlook depth of conviction. Leaders fight for control of congregational purse strings, but don’t seek a vision for spending dime one.

We seem afraid to lose, as if walking away from a religious argument meant turning one’s back on God. We seem, in other words, lost in the wilderness called pride, where being right matters more than being in love, and proving the other guy wrong matters more than kneeling together before a God who has yet to govern creation according to our opinions.

DEA END EHRICH