Mr. B's Christian Counter Culture

Suppose They Gave a War and No One Came?

2011-02-01T14:43:00.001-05:00

“Suppose they gave a war and no one came?” That question was first asked in 1966 by the writer Charlotte E. Keyes in an article for McCall’s. In 1970 “No One” was changed to “Nobody” and the phrase became the title of a 1970 comic drama. There is nothing inherently funny in the question, so I don’t know how easy it was to laugh at the film. I do know that these days many of us are being treated like a bunch of nobodies. At least that is the way most of the media — and certainly the new House of Representatives — is treating anyone who dares to question or care about the growing underclass in our country — a class that now extends well into what used to be the middle class. The very idea that everyone should have basic rights like medical care is mocked as socialist: “How ’bout a little personal responsibility there poor boy! What were you thinking getting sick without health insurance? Buck up and die with some dignity.”

Some writers, like David Brooks of the New York Times, like to call our new cultural regime a “meritocracy,” as if redistribution of wealth and influence to a small minority at the top is a natural result of their superiority, and not of rigging the game so they inevitably win. This “blame the victim” strategy goes back to Old Testament times when the poor and sick were seen as getting their just desserts for having in some way incurred God’s disfavor. And there is some truth to it being our own fault — as long as we stand by and let ourselves be victims, we do get what we deserve.

Coming out of the so-called “60s” many of us felt optimism that our culture would move steadily in a more spiritual, less material direction. People would think and create, and become all they can be. We would define ourselves by deeper values and be at peace with ourselves and each other. For some who have actively sought to become one with this intention there has been a measure of success. But for most, the culture has become more material and dominant, and deference to celebrities and the rich more prevalent. We become weaker and smaller while our “betters” become intimidating giants. We can barely go food shopping without expert approval of our choices. We sometimes fake enough backbone to whine and complain about wars fought for little reason or lament those left behind by a weak economy, but most of us follow along and accept that those who grab the lion’s share must really merit what they have.

That’s the situation. But what’s the solution? I’ve heard murmurings of armed rebellion, but let’s get real. Most of us in the opposition are pacifists anyway. We do know that since the 60s working within our established political system has been an abject failure, but many of us keep doing the same things: organizing for our political party, standing on street corners, essentially defining ourselves in opposition.

But suppose they gave a war and no one came? Suppose they built a culture and no one participated? Suppose we said, “Thanks but no thanks; I don’t think I want any of that.” Suppose a significant number refused, said “hell no, we won’t go,” and crafted our own culture. What would that look like, and how long could the mainstream stand it?

Gary Broughman operates CHB Media, which provides book development, editorial and publishing services. He has lived in Volusia County since 1983.

We Are Not Alone

2009-09-08T02:00:00.004-04:00

A few years ago a good friend set up an elaborate plan to commit suicide but stopped before pulling the string on her own trap. It took months for her to recover and as she languished in mental hospitals she was consumed by the illusion she was actually in hell. She had been raised Roman Catholic and thoughts of what she had longed to do filled her with guilt. I was angry that the church’s condemnation of suicide was now forcing her to pay a second price.

But it wasn’t her understanding of church doctrine that made her stop at death’s door, it was the thought of her children finding her. Later, when she was well, it occurred to me that if fear of “going to hell” dissuaded some from suicide, that’s not a bad thing. When one is trying to save someone’s life, anything is fair practice — even lying to them.

In the first centuries of the church many Christians martyred themselves by openly defying the Roman government’s prohibition of their faith. The penalty was death and these Christians eagerly pursued a trip home to be with Jesus. The early Bishops spoke against this practice, and maybe that was the beginning of the church’s injunction against suicide.

Last week a second friend did commit suicide. She said in her farewell note that she was going home to be with God and her father who had died when she was in her mid-20s. I found myself wishing desperately that I’d been given one last chance to talk her out of it. I would gladly have lied and told her she would go straight to hell if that would have stopped her. Of course, what I really believe is that God gladly welcomed her troubled spirit.

My friend’s suicide note also cited her crushing financial position. She was broke, jobless, effectively homeless and facing bankruptcy. She had just turned in her car. She’d been unsuccessfully seeking work for more than a year and wrote that she was “so tired.” I spoke with her bankruptcy attorney, who was saddened by the news. “I’ve seen so much of this lately,” she said. Shouldn’t it be clear that bankruptcy and financial failure are nothing to be ashamed of and suicide is not a logical response? Especially in times like these? Some of the biggest names in the American Parthenon, including Henry Ford, have suffered bankruptcy and started over.

One of the most debilitating mystiques of the American psyche is this belief in individual achievement often called “rugged individualism.” And if achievement is individual, so is failure. Taking failure as a personal fault can trigger suicide. Spurred by the Great Depression, FDR advocated a new vision, a social compact in which we share responsibility for each other, but the cult of the individual has fought it ever since. God also condemned the “I did it all myself” school of braggarts when the Israelites first entered the promised land, warning those inclined to boast that their achievements were not their own but were built on God’s actions and those of the people who worked the land before them.

Of course, remembering we’re not in this life alone is easier said than done when hard times arrive. Europe, we know, is more advanced than America in visioning a culture of shared responsibility, but even in Europe rising unemployment has been shown to increase a sense of isolation and the incidence of suicide. A study released earlier this year by researchers at Oxford University, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of California San Francisco, and other institutions in the UK and Europe proved that Europe is not immune to financial despair.

Between 1970 and 2007, 26 EU countries were assessed, providing more than 550 country-years of data. The observations revealed that for every 1% increase in unemployment level there was a 0.79% rise in the suicide rate among people under 65 years. When the authors looked at the effect of mass unemployment (more than a 3% rise), the increase in suicide rate among those under 65 years was 4.45%. This was potentially 250-3220 excess deaths across the EU. In addition, there was a 28% increase in deaths from alcohol abuse.

I wish I could wrap this up with wisdom to take the sting out of last week’s chilling news of my friend’s departure. We — her friends and family — will never fully understand. We do know she had lost hope, that she feared life more than death, that she was exhausted and wanted to go home to God’s peace. But if I know anything about God’s intentions it’s this: God didn’t create the world as a place of suffering. Our world is meant for joy and pleasure. Making it so should be our social compact. We are not alone. God is with us and we were created as social creatures, meant to live for each other. Let’s learn to step out of our individual skins and give God’s plan a chance.

Dreaming God's Dream for the World

2009-08-26T09:50:00.006-04:00

Synchronicity. You may have heard the word. It means a coincidence of events that seem related but are not directly caused one by the other. People who experience synchronicity often walk away convinced something much greater than random coincidence is at work in our world. It’s not exactly the old “God has a plan for each of us” formula. It’s more like sensing a force of intention in which we all move and have our being. Difficult to put in words, but real just the same.

Spirituality is making a comeback in America. For many people the old salvation formula built on ancient Israel’s cult of animal sacrifice is no longer sufficient. Many people of faith, including Christians, feel themselves in harmony with a purposeful, optimistic and spiritual energy that flows throughout the world. That energy is always there for us if we will only open our eyes. When we do, synchronicity is revealed.

Spiritual presence is a continuum. It doesn’t come or go; it is always at hand, wherever you may be. Jesus called this spiritual dimension the kingdom of heaven and even Jesus resorted to metaphor and parable to describe it. I think of it as a river always in motion, always nearby, welcoming us in.

But we do have a choice. We can choose to stay on the river bank, to turn our backs and stare into the woods, or we can wade into the waters and see where they will take us. When we do, we find that much of what we dream is dreamed by others. In fact, the dream begins not with any one of us but in a greater dream shared by all. Synchronicity: Sharing in God’s dream for the world.

Of course, coincidence should not be dismissed. This is the trap believers fall into when they see God’s “hand” guiding every little event and outcome. On occasion a series of coincidental events will conspire to produce a predictable conclusion. This may be the case for me in this blog. But who knows? Maybe this is the time and place where these words are to be written, and I am the one given over to writing them. If you are a believer, maybe this is your time to hear them. If I look at it that way, there’s quite a responsibility to get it right, but also quite a force assuring I will. So here goes.

A frequent reader of Mr. B’s Christian Counter Culture took me to task over my most recent blog, criticizing me for too frequently picturing Jesus as a political activist standing up to the power structure of his day. Why not more of the compassionate, reconciling Jesus? Why not the Christ who forgives all, who rejects none? Fair enough. I won’t deny that also is a true picture of Jesus. Then Sunday in our worship service we sang the old standard Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus. If you’ve ever been a church-goer you know the hymn. One of our members felt its confrontational, almost militaristic tone was out of step with who we are. We are a reconciling, affirming congregation. Our motto is, “Wherever you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.” The hymn “sounds like the crusades,” the member complained. “It's all military and strength, not a thing about love, compassion, justice, forgiveness or even praise.”

"Depends on how you read the words," I replied. I was thinking of Barry Goldwater’s words: “…let me remind you that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Shouldn’t we be militant in defense of the values Christ taught, values such as peace, equality, justice, mercy, compassion? Should we sit by in moderation, trying to be reconcilers while others reject and scorn reconciliation? Should we practice acceptance, accepting even those who refuse to accept anyone outside the mainstream? Jesus said turn the other cheek to those who slap us, but what if the one being slapped is not us but another too weak to endure the slap?

I thought again of that valued reader who said too often I dwell on the confrontational Jesus. What about Jesus the teacher who said, “blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth,” and “blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.” And what about the mystic Jesus whose ministry began one day in the Jordan River when God’s Spirit descended on him like a dove. In that moment he was changed and became one with God’s great dream for the world.

Is it synchronicity or mere coincidence that when lessons are to be learned, teachers come along? Here in this place of thinking and speaking out that I call Mr. B’s Christian Counter Culture, we can take a lesson as well as give one. So here’s what I’ve learned: There are many faces to this Jesus of Nazareth, this Jesus Christ by whose name we are known. He is teacher, mystic, political activist. Some days it is good to sit and listen to his words, other days are good for feeling the calming peace of God’s spirit, and still others are good for putting on the armor of justice and taking to the field.

We Could Use a Dose of True Populism

2009-08-15T14:51:00.002-04:00

Great peril comes with being the party in power. You immediately become the establishment even if you did run on a platform of change. Throw in a few errors like sticking a bunch of Ivy League elitists in the cabinet and other positions of power and you’re ripe for the kind of phony populist movement we’ve seen rising up whenever frightened citizens tune TVs to Fox News or radios to Rush’s rants.

Let’s be clear. This tea party nonsense is no populist movement and Glenn Beck is no populist leader. Beck is nothing more than a person of great privilege and wealth doing everything in his power to make sure he maintains his advantages. The sad legions that follow people like him and Rush are people of relative middle-class privilege duped into believing there must be losers for them to feel like winners. These false populist masses are more like the Southern whites, in fact some might be the very same people, who were told that allowing black people some scrap of dignity would somehow diminish their own dignity.

What is populism? It’s a political philosophy and movement that sees societal systems as broken or corrupt, and slanted toward people of privilege and influence. Fixing a broken health care system that awards billions to insurance executives while denying adequate coverage to 40 percent of the nation is populism in action. Trying to protect the broken system and the fortunate ones it benefits, is not populism. It is the exact opposite of populism. That the media insist on calling Beck and the tea partiers “populists” just proves that health care isn’t the only broken institution in our culture.

When I think of a populist, the late newspaper columnist from Texas, Molly Ivins, comes to mind. Molly understood that when it comes to advancing the cause of the powerless, it’s not a matter of siding with government on one hand or corporations on the other, the point is to break the conspiracy between them. Since we get to elect our political leaders, they are the ones from whom we can demand change. As Ms. Ivins once wrote:

“What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols.”

She also argued, “It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.” Those two statements serve as a pretty good definition of populism. Trying to protect the privilege of those blessed by our cultural institutions is not populism, no matter how loud Rush screams into his microphone.

Populist leaders often come from modest backgrounds and know first-hand what struggle feels like. They’ve also seen how hard the poor and working class labor to survive or get ahead. They spot the lie when people like Beck and Limbaugh claim we all get what we’ve earned. What defines real populist leaders is they don’t look back and say, “I worked hard and made it, so can you. If you don’t it’s your own fault.” They look back and see that the game shouldn’t be so skewed, that fundamental systems need to be repaired. This tendency helped define the prophet Jesus. He could have used his fame and talent to claim fortune for himself. Could have said, you take care of yourself and I’ll do the same. But he didn’t. He was born poor and died poor after dedicating his life to denouncing the corrupt aristocrats of his culture who made deals with the Romans to feather their own nests and then betrayed their own people, using religious dictatorship to suppress them. They liked the order of things “as is.” Jesus answered with a resounding “No!” And that got him killed.

I see this same sensitivity to failed systems in President Obama’s drive for health care reform. The broken or corrupt system—take your pick—failed his own mother when she needed it most. You don’t forget something like that.

As for Beck and Limbaugh, they definitely are not populists leading a tea party rebellion like the one of Boston Harbor fame in the days of our revolution. They are King George, drawing to their flag those fearful of change.

When Church and Culture Merge, Goodbye Church

2009-08-06T22:22:00.003-04:00

I had a chance to preach at the United Church of Christ in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, two Sundays back. I love preaching. It really fires me up to see people moved, to see their faith grow. If that’s an ego indulgence, I apologize.

In my sermon on claiming the fruits of grace, I quoted several luminaries of recent times going back into the 20th century: Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Marcus Borg. I even had a Martin Luther reference. The subject was grace, you have to mention Luther!

The thing all four of these gents have in common is they were all, to one degree or another, counter-cultural. In Luther’s day the church was everything. Emperors bowed down to it. When the Pope said jump, people said “how high?” Talk about extraordinary rendition. Talk about torture. The Pope’s guys could make a secret CIA prison in Bulgaria look like a week at a Girl Scout camp. And yet Luther stood up to them in the name of the truth.

Bonhoeffer’s enemies were just as lethal. When Hitler’s Waffen SS got hold of you, it was time to put your last will and testament in order. And yet Bonhoeffer and what was known as “the Confessing Church,” that is the church that wouldn’t bow down to Hitler, were prepared at any moment to feel the iron boot on their throats. Their numbers were small but their hearts were large.

Marcus Borg plays an important role in championing the true confessing church of our time. He hasn’t faced torture and execution but, like Tillich, has been targeted as a heretic by entrenched forces within the traditional ranks of Christianity—the very people who have let the realm of faith shrink ever smaller. A leading voice among the often silenced ranks of progressive Christian thinkers, Borg teaches at Oregon State University.

Tillich, who died in 1965, was also a victim of Hitler, but unlike the executed Bonhoeffer, Tillich escaped to the United States and taught at Union Theological, Columbia University and the University of Chicago. He is considered one of the great thinkers of the 20th century and did his best to rescue Christian philosophy from shallow subservience to simple formulas of faith. But the continued dominance of the American Evangelical Church demonstrates that neither Tillich nor Borg have been as successful as we would have wished.

As much as I admire all these heroes of the faith, none of them ever became a household name like Billy Graham or, I hate to say it, Jerry Falwell. But I can live with that. Earlier this week I joined a meeting of an interfaith group known simply as The Theology Club. I’d been meaning to sit in on one of their sessions and this was my first. They are an intelligent, progressive group and I enjoyed the discussion immensely. As the 90-minute session was winding down, someone observed how sad it was that so many seats in the lecture hall were empty. Why weren’t people coming?

I told the leader, a wonderful gentleman known as JJ, that maybe that’s the way it’s meant to be. I recounted Jesus’ parable of the sower in Matthew 13. The sower tosses seeds in four locations, but only one leads to a harvest. Maybe that’s just how it is, I suggested, maybe those who embrace the truth will always be a small minority. That was not a welcome thought for JJ. “That could be true,” he said, “But if it is, I fear for the future of our planet.”

We have good reason to fear for the future of our culture and our planet. I’ve asked previously why the church after 2,000 years has been so unsuccessful in changing the world. One reason could be a devotion to amassing numbers, leading to such complete compromise that the church and the larger culture became indistinguishable. And being the same, who needs the church? The heroes I admire refused to do that. They were counter-cultural at every turn.

Many claim the truth, but not all truth is created equal. If truth is like a tree, you know authentic truth by the fruit it bears. We’re called to carry that fruit to all people and to feed our hungry world. The future may well depend on our success. But if the world won’t eat, we should feed those who will, small though their numbers may be. And we shouldn’t apologize for it. As the scripture says, “many are called but few chosen.”

Walking Through a Wall of Fire

2009-07-27T20:16:00.004-04:00

Ask most people to describe what an “apocalypse” is and they're likely to paint some kind of frightening picture. You have the dark Vietnam War film “Apocalypse Now,” which was a takeoff on Joseph Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness.” You also have the various “end times” scenarios popular with foggy-minded Christians that begin with a worldwide calamity or apocalypse. Some might even mention the closing book of the Bible, Revelation, which is also known as “the Apocalypse.”

Apocalypse. Apocalyptic. Since noon I’ve been trying to launch this July 27 edition of Mr. B’s Christian Counter Culture. It’s now almost 6:30 p.m. I’ve been stuck because I gave myself a daunting task: write something that takes an optimistic view of our future. I even put on some smooth jazz to help myself break free and ride the evening breezes that blow off the ocean here on Florida’s Atlantic coast. It worked, and now I’m underway and the first thing I come up with is “apocalypse.” You might be temped to ask, “What’s up Mr. B?”

Well, it turns out that an apocalypse is as optimistic a vision as I can manage right now and that ain’t all bad because most people are pretty balled up in their understanding of what an apocalypse is all about. But before untangling that twine I want to mention that I just came back from visiting my family in Detroit.

You might be thinking, “If you want to talk about apocalypse as most people define it, Detroit is a good place to start.” Here’s the scoop on Detroit, which just might be the canary in the coal mine for the entire country: Not long ago Detroit had 1.8 million people in the city itself, not counting the suburbs. Now it’s down to 900,000—roughly half. They’re working on a plan to raze large areas of the city, moving the few people still living there to other sections. Right now these neighborhoods look like those post-apocalypse movies where desperate scavengers suddenly discover some isolated enclave of survivors holed up in an urban desert. Detroit’s new idea is to group the people and cut expenses for public safety and other municipal services. The land would be restored to its natural state and hopefully farmed. Of course, some older people don’t want to go.

I suppose there’s something positive in creating urban farms from man-made blight (I don’t think women will object to the gender-specific adjective), man-made blight in neighborhoods which not long ago housed families enjoying good paying jobs and a clear path to upward mobility for their next generation.

The New York Times recently reported one of the saddest stories coming from our current depression in places like Detroit: the death of the black middle class. This nation’s major industries had provided the jobs that fostered upward generational shifts for black American families, just as they had for working class whites. My own family is a good example. You don’t get that in second- and third-world countries because all family members have to pitch in just to survive. Those industries—autos, steel, building trades—created the tremendous wealth that made America powerful, and expansion of the middle class possible. As they slipped away we’ve continued to prosper by recycling that same wealth. But now those days are coming to an end. What’s next? No one seems to know. Thomas Friedman of the Times offers vague and nebulous visions of technological advances and new vocations for the clever. There’ll be some of that but I can’t see tweeting and social networking as wealth-building substitutes for our great manufacturing industries.

Oh yea, I almost forget. I promised an optimistic vision of the future and to explain how it connects with the word “apocalypse.” Well, it turns out apocalypse understood as an end time is misunderstood. Apocalypse is actually a time of transition from an era of strife to an era of peace and tranquility, a wall of fire we must walk through to find a better world. It’s even that way in the New Testament book of Revelation. Check it out.

But don’t get me wrong: A time of apocalypse is a time for extreme vigilance. We are in such a time right now and those of us able to love our neighbors as we do ourselves must make sure that the selfish hoarders don’t have their way as we move toward a new, more inclusive economy.

What will the world look like on the other side of our wall of fire? I can’t say for sure. I know it will be different. Perhaps less materialistic, less object-oriented, a place that celebrates the pleasures built into creation, into our own bodies.

I keep picturing those urban farms and pastures they’re dreaming of in Detroit, of man-made decadence returned to natural beauty. Who knows, maybe on the far side of that apocalyptic wall, Detroit’s “canary in the coal mine” which signaled the end of our 20th century expansion will become a dove carrying an olive branch of hope.

Pope Declares World Capitalism "Obsolete"

2009-07-11T17:34:00.002-04:00

Once again, proof that it’s always dangerous to stereotype. Pope Benedict XVI, the conservative Roman Catholic pontiff I was about to blast for Vatican inquisitions against American sisters (nuns if you will) for activities as mainstream as practicing Reiki, came out this week with an encyclical on the world economy that is literally earth shaking. The radically progressive declaration was the biggest news story of the week, maybe of the year, and almost no one covered it.

Titled Charity in Truth, the encyclical was so radical in its renunciation of prevailing economic wisdom that it made Bush vs. Obama and Olbermann vs. O’Reilly look like locker room squabbles between Ivy League teammates. And almost no one covered it or gave it the weight it deserved.

What did the Pope have to say? The catchphrase of the 144-page document is ethical capitalism and in the words of economics professor Stefano Zamagni, a consultant on the encyclical, the phrase is more than the kind of “sentimental” porridge fed to business school students. According to Zamagni, as reported online by Time/CNN, the Pope believes “that capitalism as such is now effectively ‘obsolete’ and must be replaced by a new form of market economy whose driving force is not the maximization of profits.”

Quoting Benedict directly, the idea most Americans were fed from childhood — that the pursuit of individual profit magically works to the benefit of all — is a falsehood. It is not “ethically neutral,” Benedict writes. “Profit is useful if it serves as a means toward an end. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.”

Introducing the long-awaited encyclical on behalf of the Pope, economist Zamagni says, “Capitalism is an old idea, where the market was supposedly morally neutral … where efficiency became an ethos. … If we can instead incorporate the idea of the social element into the economy, the market itself becomes a force for civility.”

So the Pope, the leader of the world’s largest Christian body, has declared our current economic system “obsolete,” and not “ethically” or “morally neutral.” Praise God! How long have we waited for someone from the spiritual realm, someone charged as a truth teller — someone outside the sphere of politics, economics or government — to step forward and speak with forthright courage. Now it has come from one of the most conservative religious leaders we have known, which I suppose gives it even more weight. It is the most dramatic challenge to economic powerbrokers at least since FDR’s New Deal. The Pope steps up and says for the sake of social justice the rule of world capitalism as we know it must end. It’s time for a radically different economic system.

The entire Christian church, itself in danger of becoming obsolete, has needed this moment. Now we should run with it. Jesus never shied away from telling the truth, but the church has. Is it not obvious why this is so? And when Benedict stepped out and declared the emperor naked, isn’t it just as obvious why the mainstream media on both the left and right ignored him and refused to cover the story?

By This They Will Know You Are My Disciples

2009-07-04T17:48:00.002-04:00

Some six months ago I launched a Friday night coffee house called The Spirit Café. Our tag line is “where all paths come together,” and my desire was to attract people who are spiritually thirsty, whether or not they have a practice of faith. We all know people who claim to be “spiritual but not religious,” and it was my plan to give them a place to feel spiritual without hitting them between the eyes with whatever it was that drove them away from organized religion, usually sometime in their youth.

I had—and still have—a vision of bringing together people who know there is something beyond us, what many faiths call God and theologian Marcus Borg calls the dimension of “More.” Every practice of religion or spirituality, east or west, recognizes this dimension beyond our mortal limits. That common thread is what separates faith from simple philosophy.

It’s my experience that most people who claim an affinity with Taoism or Buddhism—the two most popular among the eastern faiths admired by westerners—don’t actually practice their faith in an active way. Of course, that’s also true of many Christians. But being the social creatures we humans are, I counted on an innate desire to validate “truth” by sharing it with others. And so I opened the doors of the Spirit Café to any and all who wanted a place to express their sense of spirituality, to say, “Yes, I feel the force of goodness that flows through the universe and it’s flowing in me.” I knew that bringing together individuals in whom a spiritual force was present would increases the flow for all, and each would benefit from the strength of the other.

Not surprisingly, most of the people who come to the Spirit Café are Christians, but they are Christians who feel comfortable sitting next to someone who honors Jesus as a great prophet but sees the Buddha the same way. As I said, the Spirit Café is a place where all paths come together.

I have a purpose in telling this tale beyond describing the Spirit Café experience. When I first launched the Café I sponsored a thorough publicity campaign that included visits to many local churches and news releases to local media outlets. Among those were Christian radio stations. A day before the Café was to open I received a call from a pastor who hosts an interview show on our most conservative Christian radio station. Along with our “all paths” tag line the press release had included words like “inclusive” that tipped him off I was dealing from the same Christian deck he usually played with. He called, purportedly to determine if I might make a good guest for his show, but I think he already had his answer on that. What he wanted was a debate. “Do you mind if we talk awhile?” he asked, “I get lots of opportunities to talk with people who agree with me but not many to talk with someone who doesn’t.”

And so we talked for maybe two hours. He pressed me the whole time with his literalist understanding of scripture and I responded with my comprehensive context approach. “What do you do with this scripture,” he would ask, quoting some stalwart text in his literalist lexicon, and I would respond by trying to help him understand it in the context of Jesus’ mission to open doors to the kingdom and not to close them—especially for those most in need of God’s love.

Finally I began to tire of it all and said, “Pastor Mel, if you decide to have me on your show I promise I won’t come on and deliberately say anything to make your listeners uncomfortable. On the other hand, if you feel I’m not the right messenger for your show, I won’t judge you, I won’t feel you have the love of Jesus in your heart any less than me.” For the first time in two hours I had caught him off guard. That wasn’t my intention, but I could tell he didn’t know how to respond. Finally he said, “Well, that’s big of you.” “Not really,” I replied. “That’s just me doing what Christ calls me to do: opening my arms in love to my brothers and sisters. God bless you pastor,” I concluded. He was quiet for a moment and then replied, “God bless you.” We said goodbye and the conversation ended.

I tell this story because there’s so much pain in the world and so much hunger for spiritual healing. Some, in their honest desire to get it right, will follow paths that by their very exclusiveness run outside of God’s intentions. We should smile on them and assume their good will. My own pastor recently wrote in her column for our local newspaper that God casts the net of love wide enough to take in all of creation, wide enough to take in all people regardless of any of the particulars by which we humans in our limited understanding might define them, such as sexual orientation.

Many churches, denominations and individual Christians in their blindness to God’s true nature still struggle with this issue. Another pastor, at a more conservative church, wrote the newspaper asserting that God’s net had some limitations and one of those is homosexuals. How do we respond? By condemning the condemner? No, God’s net reaches every corner of creation. We respond by opening our arms in love to all our brothers and sisters. “By this,” Jesus said, “they will know you are my disciples.”

Peace Within Us, Peace Among Us

2009-06-27T11:03:00.003-04:00

Imagine this if you will: The Jesus we call Christ could have chosen not to follow a radical path. He could have put on the Parasitic robes, found himself a nice seat in his local synagogue and grown old opening the scriptures to his people. In his village, maybe for a generation or two, people would have recalled what a wonderful Rabbi he had been, so wise, so caring. But we who now call ourselves Christians would have no inkling of who he was. History would show no trace of him. Jesus—just another small town Rabbi who served his people well, then died.

Imagine who we would be. Maybe we would practice some kind of pantheism, worshipping nature. Some might ask “what’s wrong with that?” Maybe we’d all be agnostics. Maybe we’d be chanting “Allah Akbar,” although I’m not sure there’d be an Islam if there hadn’t been Christianity. The God shared by the three great Semitic faiths may have remained the God of the Jews.

Fortunately, Jesus was a man of courage who rejected the conventional for a radical path. He confronted the authorities of his time in the name of the poor and oppressed, in the name of God’s true way of selfless mercy and compassion, and he was killed for his efforts. In his death we found inspiration for a way of life.

Imagine this: The Buddha decided not to forego the life of luxury he knew as a member of his culture’s aristocratic elite, decided not to make a radical change, decided he would instead try to influence the “system” from within. In his father’s kingdom, maybe for a generation or two, people would have said, “Oh that Prince Siddhartha, wasn’t he a kind man? So much more understanding and selfless than most of the wealthy.” It’s true; he might have helped make things marginally better for awhile, but he would not have left behind the path to meaning we know today as Buddhism.

For all their differences—one a poor boy, the other a prince—Jesus and the Buddha shared this in common: they both felt the breath of the great beyond, the eternal more, God’s breath if you will, blowing on their necks. And they didn’t run from it. They didn’t try to convince themselves God was just trying to cool them off when in fact God was trying to fire them up. They accepted the challenge, radical as it was, and each in his own way set out to make God’s will known in the world.

Radical. For some it’s a frightening word, but it works well to describe either Jesus or the Buddha. Both call us to radical change. Many times people ask or even debate whether the goal of peace is best reached by promoting a peace within each of us or a peace among all of us. Do we project a world of peace, love and compassion by first building such a world within our own hearts, or do we follow the existential path of publicly demanding peace and compassion and then find peace for ourselves in knowing we’ve done what God asks? How people answer often influences which of the two prophets is most appealing. My answer is that the paths are parallel, if not the same path. Choosing between the two is a false choice. We build the worlds of peace within us and peace around us together. Jesus, who in his ministry confronted the power structure in the name of peace and fairness, also taught a simple love between neighbors and the solitude of prayer, a form of meditation. The Buddha, who we think of as encouraging meditation as a path to enlightenment, broke radically from his class and culture after he was exposed to the terrible suffering of the masses. Despite their differences in style, both prophets call for radical departure in the quest to become one with God.

Each of us must decide for ourselves how to begin the journey to peace. What is required is that we journey with radical intentions. And along the way we must nurture both the peace within and the peace among us or our journey will be fruitless.

I was inspired to write about radical intentions by two articles I read this week, the first from the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Palestine who sent an open letter to President Obama which reads in part: “On Tuesday June 15th, you said of the protests in Iran, ‘When I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, whenever that takes place, it is of concern to me and it is of concern to the American people.’ For the last 13 years, Christian Peacemaker Teams have witnessed the brutal suppression of peaceful dissent here in Palestine. … Every day, Palestinians hold nonviolent demonstrations and defy curfews and closed military zones. They rebuild demolished homes and work their land despite the threat of arrest and attack. Though their struggle is largely ignored by the media, we find inspiration in the way Palestinians are working for justice and peace. …”

The second article was a column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times warning that the eager-to-compromise approach of the Obama team on health care reform would likely lead to a measure so watered down as to be useless. Now is the time to do the job once and for all, Krugman argues, and that means showing the courage to act with radical will.

What is the purpose of faith? Why do we seek enlightenment? Is it so we can rest easy in our own cocoons? Study the lives and teachings of Jesus called the Christ and Siddhartha Gautama called the Buddha, and you will see that the purpose is radical change and nothing less than a restoration of a world stripped of its glory by humankind.

If We Must Imagine, Why Not Dare to Dream?

2009-01-13T13:23:00.004-05:00

Imagine. “… you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.” -- John Lennon. Imagine.

Maybe I am a dreamer. I’ve been accused of it more than once. Maybe those who mock my dream of a better world are the wise ones after all. Maybe. But whether you believe faith can make the world a place of harmony where we “live as one,” or think that dog-eat-dog is human destiny, you can’t escape imagining what the future will bring. If we must plan for the future, why not look toward the light? If we anticipate darkness, darkness surely is what we’ll get.

Last Sunday on Meet the Press former congressman David Bonoir, now a professor of labor studies at Wayne State University, asked the panel and viewers to imagine what the world will look like when we emerge from our current shakeout. It seems certain, with our financial institutions failing and government absorbing unthinkable debt, that radical structural change is coming. We have no choice but to imagine what it will be. If we don’t imagine, others will impose their imagination on us. We people of faith have been letting self-interested unbelievers do this throughout history. This may be our last, best chance to take the wheel.

So I ask you to indulge yourself for an hour or two and do some imagining. If you were “king” or “queen” and could create a new realm, what would it look like? Don’t be fanciful. Be realistic, but don’t be a quitter. Don’t assume powerful interests can stop you. Assume that we live in a genuine democracy where the people are entitled to a society that benefits the majority and not just the elite few. Here’s what I imagine …

Imagine … that contentment prevailed for all people. Imagine anger, jealousy, depression and resentment replaced by feelings of completeness and personal fulfillment; imagine our ability to love the people in our lives unfettered by constant comparisons in which we always seem second best. Imagine the concept of superiority and inferiority, of black hats and white hats, being replaced by the confidence that each has become all we can be in mind, body and spirit. Imagine the relationships that could blossom between people who welcomed each other as equals. It brings a smile to my face.

Imagine … unlearning the habits of subservience and recognizing our ability to connect directly to God’s creative urge. We would no longer, as Jeremiah wrote, need to study religion. Why would we, when we hold in our hearts the intuitive understanding of spiritual truth? And being bathed in creative power, we would feel free to recognize and admire the creative expressions of others. We would all be living in a creative free trade zone. Sorry Hollywood.

Imagine … that all material poverty and scarcity have disappeared. In truth, the scarcity of basic resources we see today is a deliberately created condition. The world holds sufficient resources to clothe, house and feed its people, and to provide medical treatment as needed. Scarcity results from hoarding by some whose insecurity leaves them fearful of not having enough or of being personally insufficient. That fear of inadequacy, perhaps biological or sexual in origin, causes us to hoard material items as a measure of our adequacy. Others, in their desire to be “winners,” feel they must push the majority of men and women into an inferior status. “How can there be winners,” they ask, “if there are no losers?”

Imagine … removing all the guilt and second-guessing from pleasure, and accepting that God built us for pleasure -- ears for the song of the nightingale, eyes for the colors of fall, a nose for the scent of the rose, other parts for … well, you know about those other parts. They are the ones we feel most guilty about, and yet they are no better or worse than any of the pleasures God designed for us. As with all our pleasures, our capacity for sexual pleasure becomes a problem only when transformed from natural gift to object of commerce. Imagine the pleasure Adam and Eve knew in the garden, enjoying the birds and flowers, enjoying each other, walking naked before anyone convinced them they had no right to enjoy life so much. Imagine all that was lost … imagine

Angel Words and the Search for Optimism

2009-01-06T20:39:00.002-05:00

We drew angel words on the way out of church last Sunday. Without looking, each of us drew a single word to guide us in the coming year. Funny how it works, everyone seemed to get a word that met their needs. For instance, a young single mother recently laid off from her job received the word “support.” A blind draw, but a perfect match -- you might want to call it a “God thing.”

My word was “contentment.” Strangely enough, I was already telling myself I needed to work on finding more contentment. My recent columns have been confrontational if not pessimistic. Although I prefer to think of them as calls to action, some might picture me as cynical about the state of the world. “Next time you sit down to write,” I told myself, “write something intentionally optimistic.” And then I drew the word contentment. That seals it, I thought, let’s bang out something upbeat about this old world of ours.

So I started racking my mind for an optimistic perspective. Well, we have the new president coming in. Everyone seems real hopeful he’ll turn things around. The news media is pumping up the atmospherics, making comparisons to the Kennedy era with the young children in the White House and all. Smiles all around. Nice pictures. Happy Days. You almost expect to spot Richie and Fonzy rounding the corner. But as soon as those pictures roll off the screen, here comes footage of the Gaza invasion, or more on how Bernie Madoff made off with everyone’s money, or worse yet, our general financial collapse, or housing collapse, or manufacturing collapse and jobs collapse. The only healthy sector of the economy is medical care, and how are we supposed to feel good about having a lot of sick people?

But let’s not give up so easily. There has to be some news to encourage me. We did have a good turnout in church the other day -- I liked that. And those angel cards gave me faith there’s some order to the universe. At the very least, our pastors were taking a concrete step to keep everyone focused. In times like these it’s easy to get disoriented and run around helter-skelter. It wasn’t easy but I managed to come up with a few items that make me hopeful for the future. Here’s my list:

> Disappointment breeds citizen activism. With politics and economics both in disarray, fewer people are willing to sit by as usual and trust our leaders and systems to serve our interests. We should have been taking personal responsibility all along, but better late than never. A popular Democrat in the White House makes no different. We all need to keep standing up on issues of war and peace and economic justice. If we don’t demand it, we won’t get it.

> Worldwide conflicts down in last decade. It might seem hard to believe with all the news of the past eight years, but war historians say that armed conflicts worldwide began trending down in 1989 and continued down through the 1990s. Levels reached their lowest rate since the 1950s. Many long-running wars, including those in Latin America, finally came to an end. Some doubt we can maintain the trend. Maybe they’re right. Let’s hope not.

> Speaking the Truth. In Philip Jenkins’ article Recovering Church History, Christianity Today reported that the Iraq War has decimated Iraq’s Christian church and population. It seems Christians were prominent in Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, preferring it because it was avowedly secular. Now, in a nation dominated by Muslim-aligned parties, Christians have found themselves “cleansed” or have been forced to flee the country. Why is this a cause for optimism? Well, Christianity Today is a conservative publication telling a story that has been suppressed by the media in general. Truth is the beginning of healing. Hats off to Christianity Today.

> The recovery package. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman keeps raising the ante. He now says our economic conditions are looking more and more like the beginning of the Great Depression. That may not sound like positive news, but it may take a total emergency to get our leaders to act quickly and decisively in the short term. Many are still refusing to admit the facts of what went wrong because that would argue for permanent changes to patterns of self-interest that caused the crisis.

Well I did my best. Finding causes for optimism is hard these days, but here’s the bottom line: as Christians we’re not allowed to be cynical or to lose hope. We can be honest and we can stand up forcefully for change, but faith requires that we are always hopeful God’s will for the world will prevail. We are called not to despair, but to believe it can happen, and then to go out and see that it does.

Getting Ready to be Radical in 2009

2008-12-30T12:41:00.004-05:00

If you like chaos, if you thrive on wild emotional swings, if you love mind-boggling complexity, then you probably thought 2008 was some kind of fabulous year.

As I look back on the year past and the challenges ahead, I’m left to mumble Paul’s famous question, “What then can we say about these things?”

In a recent online message, the progressive evangelical magazine Sojourners asked its readers what they hope for in 2009, suggesting the following possibilities:

> Peace on earth?
> Spiritual renewal?
> A responsive new government?
> Unity in the church?
> The end of extreme global poverty?

The tone of their message was optimistic, and despite everything that has happened since early November, Sojourners clearly pins its hopes on changes they see coming from the last election:

“A post-election poll we (Sojourners) co-sponsored revealed that a clear majority of evangelicals and Catholics believe a broad political agenda best represents their values. This poll echoes what we hear from Christians across the nation - that we are exhausted by the limitations of having only one or two issues dominate the focus of our politics.”

Sojourners’ “Vote All Your Values” campaign did indeed resonate with many faith voters in the 2008 election and helped shift the balance in Washington, but as jazz singer Esther Phillips observed, “What a Difference a Day Makes.” Since November 4th we have realized the great issues debated in the campaign were not so great compared to those waiting just over the horizon. We've reached one of those moments seen infrequently in human history, a time of turmoil that could produce dramatic positive change, or throw us into a worldwide chaos of economic collapse and wars among people fighting for scarce resources. Just two months after the election, the promises that informed the winning campaign are being exposed as insufficient. Reactionary conservatives are seizing on the new president’s promise of a less virulent form of politics to suggest the failed ideas of the past eight years still have merit. They can’t be allowed to get away with it, and that means seeing the voters’ “call to change” as a sweeping agenda, not just a shift in atmospherics.

Yes, many Christians and Americans in general are exhausted by the political fights of the last several administrations. But under the emerging circumstances, believing we can bring change with a policy of polite mutual acceptance is like believing we can stop a forest fire with a garden hose. Of course, times like these lead many individuals to hunker down and try to protect their personal interests. That’s the garden hose approach. It won’t work and it’s unacceptable for people of faith. Here’s my prescription for how we must change our thinking:

Let the truth run free. Journalism as we once knew it, or think we did, is dead. That may not be bad, but it means we need to work harder to find the truth. The mainstream television media from which most people get their news is not only corporate owned and controlled, it is afraid to ruffle the feathers of powerful political groups. That’s not surprising, since corporate accountability is a fiduciary responsibility to stockholders, not to the facts. Take the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Don’t expect to hear TV interviewers ask Israel’s representatives how a year of closed borders and denying daily necessities to the Gaza Strip may have led the people to finally lash out in frustration. The information is out there on the internet, but you’ll have to look for it. The networks don’t want you to ask that question. The same is true of how Washington and New York insiders are lining up to make personal fortunes on the financial bailout. The New York Times, to its credit, did run a story on the subject, but treated it as nothing to be ashamed of -- just business as usual.

Stop following and start leading. Let’s be honest, our leadership has been a dismal failure. Many people who voted for Barack Obama want to trust him to make changes for the better. I agree he’s a good man, but our mistake is in thinking change should come from the top down. Significant change can come only when government and the culture is pushed to the tipping point by the populace. The civil rights and labor movements are prime examples. Don’t expect success to come easily, but we can start by changing the way we think and live. We may never be more than a small minority, but if we avoid being elitists or isolationists the nation may learn there’s an attractive, more spiritual, alternative to our materialistic me-first culture. And who knows, if people with resources reject the lure of ostentatious living, it may even impact Sojourners’ goal of ending extreme poverty.

Get ready to be radical. Most of us have stood in church or at a praise meeting and sung, “I have decided to follow Jesus,” but few of us have dared to be as radical as Jesus was. I’m not saying we should court martyrdom, and I’m certainly not suggesting the kind of violent revolutions that have often ushered in radical change. But change is coming and we can either steer it or be run over by it. In the discussions of our financial meltdown, some have reluctantly begun to note that we may be witnessing the collapse of economic principles we’ve trusted. This presents a time of both opportunity and of danger. As Christians we should be ready to push for an improved system more in line with God’s values. If we fail to do so, the void may be filled by people of ill intent as it was in Europe in the 1920s and 30s. As the status quo falls away, we must make sure that the arc of history continues to bend toward justice, compassion and equality.

Hope Comes Riding a Pale Horse Called Truth

2008-12-23T12:15:00.004-05:00

I intended to write something hopeful for Christmas, whether or not the times warrant it. Then I received the news story reprinted below and realized that if our hopes ever do arrive, they'll come riding on the back of truth. Without truth our hopes for a just world will remain a fairy tale.

I first told of this terrible incident in a blog published December 6. Here's the full story as told by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

Twilight Zone / Non-Jews need not apply
By Gideon Levy

The Israeli national flag flies high, defiant and arrogant over the Palestinian home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. This flag has never looked as repulsive as it does in the heart of this Palestinian neighborhood, above the home of a Palestinian family that suddenly lost everything. The head of the house, Mohammed al-Kurd, died 11 days after the eviction. Now his widow lives in a tent. The house is reached via a narrow alley: Here Moshe and Avital Shoham and Emanuel and Yiska Dagan live happily. They are the settlers who managed to expel the Palestinian tenants and take over another outpost, in the heart of East Jerusalem. House after house, the transfer here is especially quiet: The media barely report on these houses of contention.

Israeli greed knows no bounds: It sends its tentacles into the homes of refugees who already experienced, in 1948, the taste of expulsion and evacuation and being left with nothing. Now they are refugees for a second time. Another 27 families here can expect a similar fate, and all under the aegis of the Israeli court system, the lighthouse of justice and the beacon of law, which approves, whitewashes and purifies deceptive and distorted ways of evicting these children of refugees from their homes for the second time. The family keeps, as an eternal souvenir, the keys to the house in Talbieh that was stolen from them and the banana warehouse in Musrara that was taken from them. Now they have another key that opens nothing: the key to the home in Sheikh Jarrah, which they received decades ago from the Jordanian government and the United Nations as compensation for their lost home.

The right of return: The original owners of those houses, the Sephardic Community Committee, has this right forever. There is no judge in Jerusalem who can explain this double standard, this racist right of return for Jews only. Why is the Sephardic Community Committee allowed, and the committee of Palestinians not? What are the tycoons and the politicians who stand behind this hostile takeover thinking to themselves? What is going through the minds of the judges who permitted it? And what about the policemen who violently evicted a sickly man in a wheelchair in the middle of the night, without even letting him remove the contents of his house? And what are the Jews now living in these stolen houses feeling?

White smoke rises from several corners of the empty lot a few steps from the American Colony Hotel. The lot was cleaned this week before Christmas. These are the twig bonfires on which they are baking pita with za'atar, heating coffee and preparing tea for the many guests who have come to visit the new refugee encampment. On Sunday several delegations of Israeli Arabs from the Galilee came to express identification with Fawziya and the 27 families who will probably soon join her in this tent. Israel does not like this encampment, the municipality has already tried to evacuate it. Photographs of refugee tents in the heart of the unified capital are not good for Israeli public relations. Such pictures, which have already been splashed across several international newspapers in recent weeks - of course not in the Israeli press, which turns a blind eye - remind their readers of similar tent camps, those of 1948.

The Arabic poster at the edge of the lot leaves no room for compromise: "Al-Quds [Jerusalem] is Arab, Muslim and Christian." The refreshment tables are full of the best Palestinian cuisine from the Galilee: labaneh, majadera of rice, lentils and onions, baked goods and more, including olive oil from the recent harvest. Guests mill around. Prof. Jamal Amro, former head of the architecture department at Birzeit University, attracts a crowd. The last time we met was in 1999, inside the American Colony. Amro told me then about his torture by Shin Bet security service interrogators, when "Captain Dvir" came to his home in the middle of the night and told him: "Say goodbye to your wife and children."

Amro underwent a terrifying, 25-day interrogation, including 15 consecutive days without sleep and a sack reeking of urine over his head. The Shin Bet tried to recruit him as a collaborator, and as usual all means were fair: "Suck, dog, suck," one of the interrogators told him, "many men are now doing the same thing to your wife." Captain "Martin" placed his foot on Amro's neck and told this professor and architect: "You're like a dog on the floor."

Amro, an impressive, refined man whose son died of cancer just a few days ago, compares Shin Bet scars on his arms with another visitor, a refugee from Lifta who was also tortured.

Print worker Nasser Ghawi, a native of Sheikh Jarrah, relates the story in literary Hebrew: He is 46 and was born in the house now scheduled for eviction. I was born in the house, he emphasizes, not in the hospital.

"The claim of the other side is that they came here 120 years ago, although our houses were built 52 years ago." Ghawi's family fled to Jerusalem from Sarafand (Tzrifin). In 1956 the Jordanian government and the UN Relief and Works Agency built these 28 homes of refuge in Sheikh Jarrah for the families of the new refugees, in exchange for waiving their refugee cards. Nobody can compare with Ghawi when it comes to telling their story in English, especially the events since 1972, five years after the capture of East Jerusalem, when the Israeli court declared them "protected tenants" in the houses that according to the court belong to the Sephardic Community Committee.

Because these families refused to pay rent to the Sephardic Community Committee and to the Committee of the Knesset of Israel - both religious bodies - which transferred the property to the Nahalat Shimon settler association, they were doomed to eviction. Just as with the more famous "House of Contention" in Hebron, there are suspicions of forged documents and biased judgments, Jewish tycoons and MKs who encourage disagreement, a nearby religious site (the grave of the Jewish saint Shimon Hatzadik, which Palestinians say is in fact the grave of a member of the Hijazi family) and nationalist motives - to "create a barrier" between Sheikh Jarrah and the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. But above all, the inequality in the discussion of the right of return conducted in the Israeli justice system cries out from afar.

Whatever the case, Ghawi's family was forced to leave its home in 2002 by court order. In 2006 they won the right to return to it, after drawn-out and expensive legal deliberations. Now they are once again facing eviction. Ghawi's father, Abd al-Fatah, 87, could be sent to prison, like the father of the neighboring Hanun family, who has already spent three months in jail for contempt of court.

The weather is deceptive, one moment sunny, the next moment the skies darken above the row of tents and a cold wind whips against your face. On November 9, the Kurds were evacuated from their home of 52 years, since it was built. Fawziya will never forget that night. "I wish nobody had seen it and nobody had ever experienced it, what I went through that night."

She is 56, a mother of five and grandmother of 16. She was born in the Old City, to which her family fled in 1948 from Talbieh, in West Jerusalem. In 1970 she married Mohammed, a refugee from Jaffa, and moved to his home in Sheikh Jarrah.

Their troubles also began in 1972. Since then she has seen everything. She says MK Benny Elon came to her house a few years ago, offering an enormous sum for the house. A pistol was placed in the yard in an effort to frame her. Dirty diapers were thrown at her doorway. The sewage pipe was blocked by her uninvited neighbors. She was forced to pay their electricity bills when they tapped into her meter. The settlers frequently held noisy parties in what had been her childrens' home. Fawziya says that since their eviction in 2001 there were new settlers every few months - Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia, Yemen, America, in her backyard.

The eviction: "Everything I had experienced until then was nothing compared to that night," Fawziya related. "They knew I had a sick and paralyzed husband." At 3:30 A.M. they heard knocking. She was holding a bedpan for her husband. Several dozen local police and Border Police officers burst in. "What are you doing?" she shouted, and then two police officers grabbed her arms from behind and dragged her outside. She says her husband slipped and fell off the bed. They took her by force into the street, far from the house, and dragged her husband to the neighbor's house.

Everything was left behind, all their belongings. Her husband in pajamas, she in a nightgown, that's all they had. "I asked a policewoman for water and she shouted: 'Shut up!' They were so violent, that's why I'll never forgive them. My husband was crying and they were laughing."

The next night they were already in the white tent. "Had you been in my husband's place, all his life in this house and suddenly in the street, what would you have said? What would you have felt? If you lost a cell phone - how angry you would be, and he lost his home. All his money and his entire life and suddenly he is thrown out into the street."

Mohammed stayed in the tent, but on the 11th day his strength ran out. He was rushed to the French Hospital in East Jerusalem, after refusing to be taken to an Israeli hospital.

"If they don't show any mercy to me in my home, they won't show any mercy in the hospital," he told his wife. A few hours before he died, Mohammed asked Fawziya: "If I'm discharged from the hospital, where will I go?" Fawziya says God took mercy on her husband and took him away. She says she would like to meet Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert, to look them in the eye and ask: "Why did you do this to us? Only because we're Palestinians."

"Close your eyes," she tells me quietly. "What do you see? Darkness. That's what I see." Since the eviction she has not dared to approach her house.

Claiming a Right to Love and Respect Ourselves

2008-12-15T11:15:00.006-05:00

My mind keeps drifting back to something David Brooks told PBS’s Jim Lehrer early in the 2008 election cycle. Looking ahead to the key issues facing the nation, Brooks listed “failure of the leadership class” at the top. I wonder now if Brooks understands the full import of his words. He is among those applauding as president-elect Obama fills his cabinet and other top posts with the same Ivy League cabal that sat by fiddling as America burned.

It seems fair to ask whether one can bathe in this wellspring of American elitism without taking on an elitist view. When the media paints the public face of current or recent leaders — from Bill Clinton to Michelle Obama to Barney Frank — the features of note have nothing to do with what makes them unique, like being raised on the south side of Chicago or in a poor family in Arkansas, or sensitivity to a certain disparaged group. Those are challenges to overcome. The words that matter are Harvard, Yale, Princeton. For the news media elite, that’s all that matters.

But then, amazingly, along comes William Kristol, conservative editor of The Weekly Standard. Before the election, I would never have bothered to read anything he wrote. In fact, if I saw him on a TV news panel, I’d change the station. But he, among almost all the commentators, seems to have grasped the implications not only of the election but of America’s economic troubles. While the old William Kristol was a doctrinaire conservative, the new model comes across as a common sense populist. As a Republican, Kristol may be showing his party a path back to relevance. It’s ground that Democrats Kristol calls “limousine liberals” shouldn’t cede.

In Monday’s OP-Ed column in the New York Times, titled Right and Left, Piling On, Kristol uses the words “disdain” and “contempt” to describe the way media and political elites have ganged up on the American automakers: “… I say this as someone who grew up in non-car-driving family in New York, and who is the furthest thing from an auto aficionado — there is a kind of undeserved disdain, even casual contempt, that seems to characterize the attitude of the political and media elites toward the American auto industry.”

He’s right of course. How many times have we heard political or media elitists totally ignore quality and mileage improvements while asserting Detroit is building cars “no one wants to buy.” Apparently, the millions of Americans who buy cars each year from domestic auto makers are a bunch of nobodies — certainly not graduates of Harvard or Yale or Princeton.

Kristol goes on: “As Warren Brown, who writes about cars for The Washington Post, recently put it, ‘There is a feeling in this country — apparent in the often condescending, dismissive way Detroit’s automobile companies have been treated on Capitol Hill — that people who work with their hands and the companies that employ them are inferior to those who work with their minds and plow profit from information. How else to explain the clearly disparate treatment given to companies such as Citigroup and General Motors?’”

Let's be clear: America's war against its workers didn't just begin, but finally — and thankfully — the carnage is spilling into public view.

I recently heard my own pastor, whose credentials as a pacifist are beyond dispute, use the phrase “spiritual warfare.” She even preached a sermon around Paul’s admonition to “put on the armor” of faith. I’m not saying she agrees with all my opinions, but I think we agree on one point: Being a believer clearly means operating out of love, but it doesn’t mean being soft. In fact, it means having the courage to stand up for justice.

On a recent show, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews brazenly raised the specter of “class warfare” to contrast the treatment of manufacturers and bankers. Surprisingly, no one chastised him. Discussing class warfare has been as taboo in the media as in our churches. Sometimes it takes a crisis to allow people to speak the truth.

Discussing class warfare from the pulpit makes some angry and others uncomfortable, but it’s central to the salvation history recorded in Jewish and Christian literature. Class oppression was the main fault God found in the people who occupied Canaan before the Israelites; it was at the heart of why the kingdoms of Israel and Judah failed; and it was the backdrop against which Jesus’ ministry played out. We shouldn’t forget that fact if we are going to borrow his name. So let’s say it out loud: The ministry of the prophet called Christ was to the lost, the last and the least. That means more than throwing a few old clothes to the homeless. It means claiming a right to love and respect ourselves.

Looking for Inner Peace? Take up Your Sword

2008-12-10T18:52:00.002-05:00

You may be familiar with the many spiritual leaders working the marketplace these days by specializing in a message of personal peace and anxiety-free self-satisfaction. You may even take solace from one of them. Some are Christian, others represent forms of eastern practice. Their methods differ but the common goal is finding a path to inner calm. What’s not to like about that?

I hate to be spoilsport since I agree that most of us suffer way too much anxiety, but I don’t think the problem can be solved on an individual basis. Think about it: If these treatments work so well, why do people keep needing more treatment? We need cures not comfort, and that requires cultural change.

I’m not saying there’s no value in the work of someone like Joel Osteen or Deepak Chopra, although I cringe when any spiritual leader crosses the line and sells their path as leading to material prosperity. If you’re looking to build your financial profile, get an MBA or talk people into selling you their gold at depressed prices. If you’re looking to build your spiritual profile, find a good prophet -- preferably one who doesn’t fly first class. If a teacher promises you both, you’re probably looking at a false prophet. Five days at the Chopra Center will cost you $4,000. If you don’t end up with prosperity, at least someone will.

Let me suggest an alternative path to reducing fear and anxiety: take the fight to the enemy. Go on the offensive. Anxiety is a trait of victims. Fight against those who would victimize the powerless. Fear comes from being on the defensive; going on offense breeds elation.

Jesus, we know, is often called the Prince of Peace. Christians, like myself, who oppose war as a form of foreign policy have been known to wield that name against those who would excuse violent tendencies by mixing God and country. But when it comes to standing up for justice, Jesus says being too peaceful, too calm and complacent, is no virtue. Check out these words from Matthew’s Gospel:

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (Matt. 10:34-39).

Now that’s some powerful stuff. Remember those Spartans in the movie 300? Here were these 300 dudes about to die and knowing it was inevitable, but each of them is feeling really fulfilled. Why? Because they were answering their passion. They were taking it to the evil doers in the name of the one thing they loved more than life. But Sparta was only their country, or really just a city. We are called to be champions for a greater cause, the greatest of all causes: to match our intentions with God’s wish for a world of beauty, justice and compassion. Now there’s a real path to harmony.

Do you want to find true freedom from anxiety? It won’t hurt if you start by finding a little inner peace. Then when you feel nice and calm inside, take up your sword. As Jesus said, if you want to know life to the fullest, be ready to put your life on the line.

How to Sort out the Truth in Complicated Conflicts

2008-12-06T09:02:00.004-05:00

Just before the election Charles Barkley was a guest on Larry King’s show along with Ben Stein. It was the usual setup: one from one side, a second from the other. Charles B. was the Obama man and Stein the trumpet for McCain. Like I said, the classic setup: left vs. right, Democrat vs. Republican, liberal view vs. conservative view. This method is often called a dichotomy, which means separating a single thing into two contradictory things. We all know it’s too simplistic, but in theory you can look at an issue that way and see both sides, as if there’s no chance of a third side or a fourth, or … you get the picture.

Barkley made an surprising point by saying he didn’t see America divided as liberals and conservatives, or, especially, as black and white. He sees it as rich vs. poor. From his point of view, I suppose we’re more likely to have a class war on our hands than the race war some ardent Obama haters predicted. Given the state of the economy, that makes sense. It’s hard for a working class white person to care much about issues like affirmative action when he sees a Harvard grad throwing him under the bus. And who does he find with him under the bus but his black brothers and sisters.

But, as I said, there’s usually more than two sides to all this. Given the way stock portfolios are tanking, much of the Ivy League crowd may soon be under the bus too.

But the subject here isn’t the economy, it’s seeing things as dichotomies. A friend who has a real name but also is known as Stardust the Clown is currently in the West Bank, home of the world’s most famous dichotomy -- Israel/Palestine -- working with the nonprofit Bethlehem Christmas Project. Her purpose is to bring cheer to Palestinian children and she’s been doing so by entertaining wherever she goes, including a dialysis unit for poor children, which I guess is a redundancy because most all Palestinian children are poor. She’ll have more to do as the Christmas project hits full swing. By the way, her host in Palestine is an organization sponsored by the Lutheran Church. Apparently not all Christians in the Middle East are hoping to stir up the apocalypse.

Stardust, whose real name is Dana Humphrey, has her serious side too. She has become involved in a showdown between Israeli authorities and a Palestinian family that was forcibly evicted in the middle of the night from an east Jerusalem home they’ve occupied for more than 50 years. Jewish settlers immediately moved into the house. Which brings me back to this false sense you can divide everything into two sides with everyone on one side or the other. One of several groups standing up for the Muslim Palestinian family is Friends of Sabeel, The Voice of Palestinians Christians. Another is the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a group of Israeli citizens with no stomach for injustice and the courage to oppose their own countrymen. Not everyone fits neatly into one box or another.

The Rev. Richard Toll, a spokesman for Friends of Sabeel, found two aspects of the eviction especially obscene. One was seeing this family violently dragged out of their home at 4 a.m. by 30 to 40 Israeli soldiers, which tragically led to the death by heart attack of the Palestinian father, Abu Kamel. The second was that one of the Israelis who took the Palestinian home taunted remaining family members by dancing before them in triumph -- in effect dancing on Abu Kamel’s grave.

Subsequent news reporting helps cast a light on bias in the American media. While this story got almost no notice, another in which Israeli settlers were forcibly deposed from a Palestinian property was played large by the New York Times and others. Nothing wrong with that story being told, and I guess it adds still another perspective to the debate, but it’s telling that one story is highlighted while the other is buried.

“Politics,” Tip O’Neil famously once said, “ain’t beanbag.” It’s usually down and dirty. And it’s complicated -- not easily divided into neat dichotomies. But that doesn’t mean we throw up our hands and say, “it’s too much to sort out.” We still have to take our best shot at deciding what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s not always clear-cut, but history tells us that those who hold power will usually cross the line to impose injustice on those who don’t. That’s what Charles Barkley was warning of -- that the poor shouldn’t expect fair treatment from the rich in America unless they demand it and are willing to go to the mat for it if necessary. It’s not simple, but if you believe in justice, you probably can’t go wrong by believing those with less power usually are the victims.

To follow Stardust's work in the West Bank, go to www.stardustinbethlehem.blogspot.com

Nurses on the Battlefield or the Point of the Spear

2008-12-02T11:05:00.003-05:00

If you’ve followed this column over the past year, you know I’ve been very hard on church leadership, especially progressive leadership, for failing to find ways to translate our values into political change. The God’s honest truth is my disappointment on that score runs all the way back to Viet Nam. I’m not apologizing or changing my mind, but I do believe in giving credit where it’s due.

Last night I attended a World AIDS Day vigil and healing service at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Daytona Beach. Several hundred people were in attendance representing various faiths -- and not only Christian. I felt proud to be present as a believer in God, and proud to see the faith community taking the lead. There was no such parallel secular event. If you wanted to honor and remember those who have suffered and died, and recognize the progress being made in treatment and care, this was the only place to do it. And people of faith were behind it. So I say, hats off … but …

I’ve been thinking lately, in this time of worldwide economic unraveling, that the looming upheaval offers a choice of paths that can lead either to collapse and chaos, or a positive rebirth of our world culture. The church must decide whether it wants to be the point of the spear prodding us to a new, more compassionate order, or a nurse on the battlefield caring for the wounded. Just as no secular faction was capable of organizing World AIDS Day gatherings, no other institution has proved able to lead us beyond self interest to a vision of our culture as a common-good covenant with God and each other.

Of course, I’m not talking about supporting specific political parties or candidates; that is a violation of nonprofit status, among other things, and just serves to divide people. But, as wonderful as last night’s event was -- and it truly was healing for many -- it was another inside-the-walls event. Somehow, we have to find a way to carry our message of God’s love and its world-changing power beyond the walls of our sanctuaries. Evangelicals have been adept at getting their voices heard in the public square but, unfortunately, the things they say aren’t very helpful. When we on the progressive side pierce public consciousness, it’s usually in our role as nursemaids to the hurting, such as the hungry and homeless, or those touched by HIV/AIDS. That’s admirable and much needed, but it’s reactive. It’s not the point of the spear.

The stakes have never been higher. We stand at a moment in time when the Evangelical voice is losing force because of its narrowness and exclusiveness. Even the Republican Party is asking them to step back. So we have a soap box waiting, open to someone who can drive the right spirit-driven leadership straight into the heart of an eager populace.

Beyond opportunity, we have an obligation to act. God calls us to it, and the people desperately need us. Our secular leaders have failed and I believe there’s hopeful celebration in heaven as a corrupted and inadequate political/economic vision fades away. Sure there’ll be short-term pain, so we do need to be on the battlefield binding wounds of the fallen. But we also need to be the point of the spear as we prepare to rebuild the kingdom once more. With enough faith, this time it may emerge looking a little more like God’s kingdom.

How Can We Plan While We Still Lack Vision?

2008-11-25T09:23:00.000-05:00

A few remain among us who remember the Great Depression. Except for those few, none of us have ever seen such a time of uncertainty as we have now. Even World War II, for all its deprivations, was a time of economic boom. Everyone was working, and very certain of who we were as a nation.

For those of us who didn’t actually endure the 1930s depression, the era carries a certain romantic appeal because it produced a vision for America that carried us through the end of the 1970s. Since then we have been chugging along on the fumes of a fading vision. Yes, we had the Reagan vision of neo-rugged individualism, but that was really a mini-vision, more like a convincing Madison Avenue sales hype than a true vision.

So now we come to a time of crisis that goes well beyond falling stock markets, and in our wish for vision we turn hopefully to a bright and personable young man who promises change we can believe in, but we’re not sure what that change will look like because we still lack vision.

Our new president, now less than two months from taking office, has been busy making plans. But plans are not vision. Plans are process. Vision is an understanding of what kind of people, what kind of nation we want to be. How can we craft an effective plan to get somewhere if we don’t know where we’re going?

In fairness, this is not a question that should be dumped on President Obama, and it’s certainly not a question best answered by economists and politicians. It’s a question that asks us to make a wish and to imagine if our wish did come true, who we would be as people. What would America look like? Finding answers will require more of the spirit’s warm-blooded intuition than the mind’s cold-blooded analysis. And while bank portfolios hang in the balance, we won’t find satisfaction unless we search our souls. For now we walk in the dark, seeking light, our spiritual leaders having failed us just like our economic and political leaders.

Over the past days two stories have dominated the news, starkly contrasting the throes of two dying visions. The first is the story of the automakers and their economic troubles. Much of the nation turns up its nose, accusing the companies of having created their own problems. But their problems are the remnant of that first powerful vision which carried us from the 30s to the 80s, a vision of great companies with well-paid workers who retire with health and pension benefits. That vision handed a steady and sturdy nation to what we call the baby boom generation. Then comes the story of Citigroup, emblematic of our financial meltdown and the vision that came from the Reagan era. That vision took the wealth created by the first vision and trusted the financiers to make it grow. But it turned out more like a trip to a casino where a few got rich and everyone else left dragging their feet. The broad benefits the new vision promised turned out to be a lie perpetrated to provide a shroud of hope to the many while the greedy elite gorged at the trough.

So now we hesitate to bail out the first vision because we wonder if it has any life left in it. And the second, though its stench fills our nostrils, we hold on to pathetically, fearful it will die without a successor and bring total chaos to the world. Suddenly aware that we don’t know where to turn next, we become angry -- and afraid. Confidence ebbs. The answers coming from our leaders are not believable, because they have yet to articulate a vision.

If there’s one laughable bright spot in this, it’s that we finally found something the right and left can agree on: We’ve all lost faith in our “experts.” Did you see President Bush and Secretary Paulson announcing the Citigroup bailout? They both looked liked wounded fighters trying to survive the 12th round. As for the incoming team, it’s been said that FDR didn’t begin with a vision but developed it by trial and error as his administration went along. Let’s hope that can happen again.

So why don’t we help them out? If you are a church leader or just a person of the spirit, work on a vision. You have a right. When Jesus came on the scene he didn’t wait for the leaders of his culture to come up with a vision. He knew that would be as fruitless as it has proven to be today. He picked up the book of Isaiah and found in it God’s vision of what the world would look like if the “the year of the Lord’s favor” came to pass. Then he shared it with anyone who would listen. Can’t we do the same? What’s your vision for America’s future? Where do we want to end up? When you think you know, tell your neighbor or your pastor, the people next to you in the pew, your congressman and the president, or write a comment telling me. God knows we are in need of vision, and it’s just as likely to come from the bottom up as from the top down.

Normal People Know About Rusted Floorboards

2008-11-18T13:19:00.002-05:00

Like many Americans I listened to Barack and Michelle Obama being interviewed on 60 Minutes Sunday night. Of all the things that struck me, the one which most warmed my heart was their description of his old beater of a car with rusted out floorboards and a clear view of the road passing below. I had a car like that myself, and when he claimed they were the most normal people ever to occupy the White House, it sounded like the truth to me.

The Democrats’ last two presidential nominees rose from more aristocratic backgrounds and were defeated by a fellow aristocrat in George W. I don’t want to craft a complete study from two cases, but it seems when the masses feel the need for someone to truly represent their interests, they turn to someone who might understand them. Bill Clinton, the last Dem to reach the White House, was raised in circumstances even more “normal” than Barack’s.

Of course, one doesn’t have to come from working class folk to be an agent of change or to champion common interests in demanding times. Abe Lincoln was a self-taught, poor frontier boy, but FDR was a child of privilege. Others have come from backgrounds somewhere in between.

The record is similar for God’s prophets. Jeremiah was a born aristocrat, Isaiah not, and Moses the child of slaves who was raised in Egypt’s royal family. The Buddha was a child of great wealth, which he gave up, while Jesus never owned anything to give up -- other than his life. It just goes to show, it’s not who you are but what you do. It’s not where you start that counts, but where you finish.

Still, it was comforting to know that Barack owned that car with the rusted out floorboards. I can picture him and Michelle driving on the streets of Chicago, cold air blowing up through the floor, both of them laughing, just happy to be alive in this great country with an opportunity to make it even better.

The story of Barack’s childhood is pretty well known but I see Michelle’s as more typical of the nation as a whole. Her story is America’s story. Her father held one of those good-paying blue collar jobs -- yes, a union job -- that allowed him to imagine a better life for his children. Because his job provided a decent wage and benefits, he and his family were not overwhelmed by the fearful burdens of poverty and were able to look upward with hope for the next generation. Success was no given and required ambition and hard work. Michelle wasn’t handed a legacy that would make her comfortable no matter what she did. She had to achieve for herself or it all would have slipped away, but at least she had a chance.

We Americans, maybe all humans, love heroic myth making. Ultra-conservatives like former senator Phil Gramm are struggling right now with the failure of their mythology. Most of them may never admit they were wrong. But most Americans have learned our lesson again: unbridled capitalism doesn’t automatically lift all boats. The altars at which we worshipped the cult of the individual have proven once again to be altars to a false God.

What surprises me is the easy way Christians can be persuaded to worship at those altars. Most of us own a Bible, some of us two or three. If we’d spend less time searching for passages on homosexuality -- or sex in general -- and more time digesting the full message we’d see that God has a bias for the poor and underprivileged. In fact, God is the original architect of upward mobility and must be smiling to know that this winter two of his humble children won’t be feeling the chill Chicago air blowing up through rusty floorboards.

Time For Our Money Men To Look In The Mirror

2008-11-14T12:43:00.002-05:00

In 2004, at the peak of the Florida real estate run up, a woman I know quit her management job with the local convention bureau to become a real estate agent. She was tired of watching others pick bushels of juicy low-hanging fruit while she endured politics and long hours to make a mere middle class wage. Two years later, still working in real estate but in a much diminished market, she added a job as a retail clerk. As they say, timing is everything.

Now, as our economy collapses, those in power scurry to find an explanation that excludes their own greed, and we learn the real culprits are teachers and unions. Amazing. Who would have thought it? It wasn’t the market manipulators after all. You know who I mean, the ones who perpetrated one easy-money scam after another? Here’s a partial list of scams that you can to if you’d like: the tech bubble, the stock bubble, smoke and mirrors financial derivatives, multi-level marketing, the real estate bubble, media and sports billionaires, elimination of basic industries to be replaced by ... just trust us -- and all of that coupled with the replacement of worker benefits with easy access to credit, a pat on the back and assurances it will all be OK.

Still, turning a blind eye to all of this, columnist Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times traces the national tailspin back to the 1970s when the high school graduation rate began to stagnate, and concludes the cause is strict certification standards and tenure for teachers -- both concepts championed by teacher unions. I’m still trying to figure why so many think hiring uncertified teachers is a great idea. In fact, getting rid of the uncertified was one of the most agreeable actions taken by radical reformer Michelle Rhee, the Washington D.C. public schools chancellor. Apparently, for some on the right, any idea the teachers support is a bad idea.

Getting back to the 1970s, if we’re simply going to match trends with dates and pretend to see causation, that was also the time when our basic industries began to move offshore and our traditional work ethic began to unravel. I’ve never been a big supporter of the protestant work ethic claim that wealth is a sign of God’s favor, but I admire the part that says productive work should make you feel good about yourself. In the new American paradigm hard work that doesn’t produce big bucks makes you feel like a fool. Is it any wonder top graduates of top colleges opt to make easy millions on Wall Street rather than a mere 100 grand to start in engineering or scientific research? Or, to take it further down the food chain, why kids dropped out of high school to peddle drugs or master other criminal pursuits?

Scripture -- both the Old and New Testaments -- warn against a world view that places the highest value on generating personal wealth. I always took this to mean that a life focused on accumulating wealth would crowd out spiritual possibilities. Now I’m beginning to think Jesus and the ancient Hebrew writers knew more about economics than they let on.

So here we are in the middle of this mess, with employment numbers tumbling along with 401k balances, and we turn for answers to the very people who first betrayed us by creating wealth for themselves instead of the nation. Reminds me of the way we turn to the military establishment for answers on war and peace. Is it any surprise when they say “make war?” It’s equally no surprise when the money men say “give us some taxpayer cash and we’ll fix it for you.” Trouble is, they’re not fixing it; they’re just making themselves richer -- and already asking for more.

Meanwhile, most of our church leaders stand around with eyes cast down, scuffling their feet on the ground, saying, “well geez, they’re the experts,” all the time hoping they’ll get their little piece of the action.

Election Brings Hope, Now We Need Love

2008-11-07T10:38:00.002-05:00

Hope is a powerful medicine. Paul placed in among the big three in his first letter to the Corinthians. Faith, hope and love, he wrote, open a path to joyful living filled with fruits of the spirit.

Often we view words like faith, hope and love like pretty pictures, or hear them as sweet musical notes that charm us but carry no deep meaning. Doing so allows us to go on leading the pedestrian lives we seem to prefer.

But they have real meaning for those who wish to feel their power. Faith is the conviction that all of God’s creation was meant for good, and hope persuades us that with enough faith we can restore that goodness. But this is possible only if we live our lives with love for God and one another. The big three: faith, hope and love.

So now we have a new president. The nation -- and the world -- is full of hope that changes we’ve wished for will come to pass. But do we have enough faith and love? Without faith and love, hope can accomplish nothing. Paul ends the 13th chapter of First Corinthians by saying that of these three, the greatest is love. Do we have love? Without love, neither faith nor hope will prevail.

So now we have a new president. For many there is a great euphoria of victory. Among some who did not support the winner there also is hope -- even if faith is lacking -- that a restoration can begin. Almost everyone agrees that change is needed.

Most of us like to believe our answers are the right answers. So when our side prevails in a presidential election, we are swept up in hopefulness for a new and improved era. Ronald Reagan’s devotees called it “morning in America,” and I still recall hoping that that the Carter and Clinton victories would restart the march to freedom begun under FDR. But morning gave way to afternoon showers, and the march forward bogged down in economic self-interest and the mire of distant battlefields. So here we are in 2008, full of hope but wondering whether there will be enough faith and love for hope to win out.

Jesus said the antidote to fear is belief, and I do believe in God’s goodness and the power that comes from embracing it. I do not fear, but I do doubt. Doubt, I suppose, is the opposite of faith. Fortunately, there is a correction for doubt, which is called Love.

As Paul writes to the people of Corinth, in the end it is only love that can carry us through:

“If I speak in the tongues of mortal and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal. … Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. … And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

As we look around the nation and world in this post-election time, hope seems to be rising like the phoenix. If you watched the faces in Chicago’s Grant Park Tuesday night, or listen to the voices of those for whom the new president is a dream come true, you might see a possibility of faith taking hold. But what of love? Listen to our news media and you hear a “noisy gong or clanging cymbal.” Love? That’s church talk. Maybe even crazy talk. Certainly not the job of those reporting the news. So the charges and counter-charges continue.

Hope? Yes, we have it. Faith? Maybe we can get it. But love? Without love hope and faith will whither on the vine. Jesus says that if we desire to be a special people, we must go beyond greeting our brothers and sisters with love. Anyone can do that, he says. The true test of love is to love those who oppose us. That is what makes us true children of God. That is what will make us the great nation we aspire to be. Let’s hope that with enough faith, love will overcome our doubts and fears.

Jesus's Actions Speak Louder Than Our Words

2008-11-04T12:22:00.004-05:00

Talk is cheap! Actions speak louder than words! I’m sure you’ve heard both of these scraps of wisdom. Here’s my favorite, learned from my father: “He talks a good game.” A star in the locker room, a flop on the court.

If I’m repeating myself, I apologize, but over the years I’ve become less and less interested in theology and more interested in results. I could say the same about political philosophies. I’m hoping on this election day we see the beginning of a new pragmatism and a silencing of ideologues preaching political “theologies” which have been proven not to work. We all know what we want this country to look like. Why don’t we just do it?

I wrote in an earlier column of how representatives of the Methodist Church ranted against homosexuals at their 2008 General Conference in Fort Worth while a predominately gay and lesbian Methodist congregation in Chicago ignored the brickbats and continued living the Gospel message in service to their community. I could picture God in heaven looking down on the Fort Worth gathering and muttering, “they talk a good game.”

It doesn’t matter who we say God is, God is not confused. While I believe God is still speaking, I don’t think God’s intentions for good have changed since creation. It’s really quite simple and only gets complicated because we make it so as a sleight of hand to advance our own selfish interests.

Let’s be honest; if you read scripture with a biased heart you can find an isolated proof passage to support your prejudices -- as slave owners once did. Read with an open mind and the true beauty of God’s glory will shine through. I was raised Lutheran and was educated in their schools and colleges, then later became a United Methodist, serving for many years in UMC churches. I now worship in a United Church of Christ congregation because their inclusive spirit appeals to me. When others try to probe the theological nuances of these different denominations and how I can jump between them, I say “it’s the same Jesus.” And it is. He’s easily recognizable: teaching a spiritual path, healing and loving all who come seeking the true heart of God. The very same Jesus.

When we read the Gospels it’s easy to see who this Jesus is and who he isn’t. Certainly, he’s less complex or conflicted than most of us. Historically, we’ve struggled to describe his dual nature and his place in the Trinity, but the Jesus of the Gospels is a pretty clear-cut character. He is a man of compassion, uniquely connected with God’s creative and holy spirit. He is a man of courage who doesn’t back down from the establishment’s threats of danger or suffering. He is a man with open arms, welcoming all to come and place their burdens on him. No one is rejected by him, although some disqualify themselves. He is in the business of opening doors, not closing them. The only people who seem to irritate him are those who are always looking to exclude others from God’s kingdom -- like the Pharisees.

Because Jesus is the Great Includer, I’m often surprised to find Christians still dictating who can be forgiven and who cannot, or teaching a theology that designates who can and can’t be saved. Jesus himself says that kind of decision is up to God, not us. Jesus himself had a crystal clear vision of how the world would change if it could be reborn in God’s image. He acted to make it so. Philosophy and theology? He said keep it simple: Love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. Enough said. We -- especially we Christians who would seek to carry our faith into the political realm -- will be well served if we do the same.

Feeling a Little Too Good in a Shaky Time

2008-10-24T12:10:00.001-04:00

My friend and I were discussing the current financial chaos when he paused to measure his words, reluctant to say out loud what he’d been thinking. “I know you and I think alike most the time,” he said. “We usually have pretty much the same visceral reaction to things.” I agreed and he continued, almost apologetically. “Well,” he said, “I’ve been feeling something like exhilaration at what’s been going on. It doesn’t make sense since I have a bit of money in a 401k myself, but that’s how I’m feeling.”

I did understand. Just that morning I’d told a different friend I had mixed feelings about what was happening. I’d been suspicious of our economic system for some time, and not just that it was a house of cards built on a foundation of smoke and mirrors. I had watched the broad economic opportunity of post-World War II America, built on FDR’s concept of social compact and shared prosperity, become dog-eat-dog America posing nobly as a land of individual responsibility. But speak of it and someone would scream “socialist” or “class warfare.” The facts, however, were undeniable: the income gap was widening and health benefits were becoming an endangered species as CEOs and hedge fund managers laughed all the way to the bank. Most Americans seemed ready to accept this as the new reality, even ready to blame the victims as not smart enough, or industrious enough, or for having chosen the wrong profession.

No one seemed able to articulate a temperate path back to the “covenant” America I grew up in, so when radical change through economic collapse appeared on the horizon, it was natural to feel something good might follow. After all, that’s how the Great Depression worked to give us the social safety net Americans once took for granted.

And where has the church been on this great moral issue of economic disparity? Either totally silent, or speaking with its wee little voice for fear of offending the beneficiaries.

The Bible presents a clear view of a culture’s responsibility to the least of its people. It’s easy enough to see when the blinders of self interest are removed. When God gave the land of Canaan to Israel, the gift was contingent on building a covenant culture where no one would be allowed to fail. If you don’t believe it, read the books of the law. Open your eyes and you can’t help but see it. Later, when the people of Israel and Judah turned greedy and failed to follow God’s vision, God didn’t hesitate to bring radical failure as a precursor to change. The Book of Ezekiel is a good example. Written from within the Exile, the prophet’s tale of “fat sheep” who took the rich pasture for themselves and pushed aside the weak helped explain why God allowed the people to fall before the Babylonian onslaught. .

So, my friend and I are discussing the financial meltdown and are perhaps a little too happy that crisis is at hand. Trust the markets, we had been told; deregulate the financial institutions and let them do what they do best. It turns out “what they do best” is promote their own interests without concern for the nation as a whole. Maybe what we need is a total shaking. It worked for God’s people in the Old Testament. They would fall away, God would shake (usually with the help of a foreign power), the people would repent and God would restore. Since there’s no foreign power capable of shaking our great nation, perhaps the shaking must come from within. It will require more than changing the political party in charge. It will take systemic changes, equal to or greater than those FDR instituted. Maybe that’s why my friend and are feeling exhilaration at such bad times. Could such a moment be coming?

Unfortunately, as my second friend reminded me, it’s not the fat sheep but the lean sheep -- the poor and middle class who’ll suffer most in a collapse. True enough, but that also was true in the 1930s and few would argue the changes that emerged -- such as Social Security -- were not worth the agony people suffered

The time for laying blame on individuals is over. The kind of tweaking we’ve seen lately won’t get it done. That is designed to protect the status quo and its beneficiaries. As was true for the people of Old Testament times, our leadership class has failed because they themselves are so vested in the great disparity.

It appears the people will vote for change in November. We’ll see whether it is the kind of radical change that can right our foundering ship and restore our moral compass.

In Search of a Better Cure for Mental Illness

2008-10-06T23:02:00.001-04:00

You may have heard that a so-called “mental health parity” bill was attached to the financial bailout package that passed into law last week. The bill affects more than one-third of Americans, and requires insurance coverage for most mental health conditions to be substantially equal to coverage provided for physical illnesses.

Of course, this is a positive step and a victory for a dedicated group of legislators and advocacy groups that fought for the changes. But the fact that it covers just over a third of Americans shows the sad state of health coverage in the world’s richest nation. Companies with 50 or fewer employees are exempt from providing the parity coverage and most people with privately acquired insurance are unlikely to see much benefit due to large deductibles. Or, to say it another way, their coverage for mental illness will be just as flawed as their coverage for physical illness.

I’ve had personal experience with severe mental illness and I’m not convinced this bill will make a giant difference. When we needed help in my family, we couldn’t get it at any price, despite good insurance coverage. Everyone in the medical establishment who we asked for help turned their backs until a final crisis arose. Which leads me to believe that simply requiring such care be covered is no guarantee effective care will be delivered. Even after treatment, I was left wondering whether a non-medical remedy might have been better than doctors experimenting with pharmaceuticals.

Anyone who has suffered from chronic disease knows that if you don’t manage your own treatment, the medical/health insurance industry won’t do it for you -- at least not well. When it comes to mental illness this is doubly true. It’s hard to describe the dark shroud severe mental illness can throw over an individual or a household, except to say it is worse than impending death. Many sufferers long for death or seek it out, and when the treatment involves incarceration in a mental health facility, the treatment can make the suffering worse. Depending on doctors and nurses -- even dedicated practitioners -- to do their jobs is often not enough.

Mental illness is not new to modern times, although there seems to be consensus that the numbers are growing. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in four Americans will experience some form of mental illness. Many of the sick people Jesus cured suffered from what the Bible calls “demon possession,” a phrase most modern scholars view as an ancient description of mental illness. I know some people still believe in the presence of supernatural entities on earth -- angels and demons alike -- and I can’t prove them wrong. I do know that time and again Jesus was able to provide relief.

Modern psychiatrists insist mental illness is a biological condition. They will tell you, and I’m quoting here, “if an organ like the heart or kidney was ill, we wouldn’t talk to it, we’d medicate it. The brain also is an organ. If it is ill, we take the same approach.” In other words, they use drugs to restore what we think of as normal function. I’m not saying that’s a bad idea; in fact I’ve seen it work. But I have to wonder why, despite improved treatment options, the number of mentally ill keeps rising.

Jesus once told a parable of a demon expelled from a person that returns to find its former “house” swept clean and put in order, but empty. After the demon was removed, nothing good was put in its place. And so the demon moves right back in. Had the demon come back to a house filled with God’s spirit, the demon would have found his former house a most unwelcome residence.

Why was it that demons, or mental illness, fled at the sight of Jesus and the sound of his voice? Could it be that his presence was so filled with God’s spiritual power that all doubt, fear and despair were chased away? Could it be he was able to convey such a sense of joy that confidence in the goodness of life was restored?

Christianity was once a faith filled with spiritual consciousness. But when the scientific age induced Christian thinkers to substitute salvation formulas for salvation power, spirituality as a discernable life force began to whither. Jesus once described being “born again” with metaphors of faith and feeling. We know the wind is real, he said, even though we can’t say where it comes from or where it goes. But in the modern era we began to substitute simple formulaic statements for intuitions of spiritual truth. To be born again became nothing more than a matter of signing on to a group of specific beliefs.

That is all nice and tidy -- like the house the demon reoccupied -- and easier to explain to others, but it lacks the potency of a spiritual power that fills every corner of your being with a light that washes out all darkness. Night can’t prevail when the sun is at its zenith, just as “demons” couldn’t survive in the light of Jesus’ love.

To offer a metaphor of my own, the difference between knowing God through belief statements and knowing God through spiritual rebirth is like the difference between describing sexual arousal and feeling it. The first is an academic exercise while the second overwhelms. Can someone filled to overflowing with the bright joy of God’s spirit also suffer the darkness of depression? Perhaps so, but it’s my guess that it would be rare.

Our Last, Best Shot at a Covenant Culture

2008-10-01T11:41:00.001-04:00

You hear the word “crisis” used regularly these days to describe the nation’s financial mess, although most of us “regular” folk feel no regret that the boys and girls playing on Wall Street fell off the monkey bars. But as much as we enjoy seeing these narcissists get their due, we as a culture have no choice but to fix the mess before their pain trickles down in a way their gain never did.

In the short term Congress will craft a fix that keeps the boat afloat without addressing the basic design problem. We will remain a nation in absurd contrast to our vision of ourselves. Hopefully, at least, the bailout cost will prevent us from starting any more foolish wars around the world. Sometimes it takes a crisis to initiate change.

When I look out on the landscape of our country, I’m reminded of Jesus looking upon Jerusalem and calling it, “… the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often,” he said, “have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate.”

These words in the 23rd chapter of Matthew conclude a long section in which Jesus rails against the religious leaders of his day, calling them “blind guides” who strain out gnats while swallowing camels whole. And since we in America have become more and more like the Judea of Jesus’ day, a land for the privileged few which he saw as neglecting “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith,” it’s no surprise our churches are indecisive about our own social-economic plight. Like the Pharisees, they strain out gnats while swallowing camels.

As our modern Jerusalem falters, the boys and girls at Focus Action, the James Dobson political group, are sending out dire warnings on what will happen if Democrats capture the White House. Their main fear is that gays and lesbians will be allowed to seek God’s face in peace. Talk about straining out gnats -- here we are at a watershed moment when religious leaders could join forces to encourage the true covenant society described in the Old Testament, but all they can think of is whose zipper is up or down. By the way, just decades after Jesus’ warning, Jerusalem became a dust heap.

Something like a year ago, as the presidential campaign was warming up, conservative NY Times columnist David Brooks said the central issue we face as a nation is the failure of our leadership class. His message is similar to the one Jesus brought to Jerusalem, and Brooks also has been proven correct. Fortunately for him, he hasn’t been crucified for his words, which I guess shows we’ve made some progress in two thousand years. But like Jesus he has been pretty much ignored.

Still, I’m going to take this moment to think positively -- not about the crisis melting away, but about the change it might bring. Jesus couched his criticism in spiritual terms because he knew that was the only quarter from which true reformation could emerge. It’s no different today. But our churches must quit worrying so much about gnats and focus on camels.

We see now what comes to us when we allow the material to dominate the spiritual. Masters and servants both suffer. Marx predicted that capitalism would sow the seeds of its own destruction. The one things he didn’t count on was the power of God’s love to moderate the forces of selfishness. This might be our last, best opportunity to recapture a society that truly embraces what Jesus calls “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.”

My Simple Plan for Deciding How to Vote

2008-09-08T12:59:00.003-04:00

Saturday evening a friend told me she’s looking for a new church because her current pastor preached a sermon on how a Christian should decide for whom to vote. The preacher, she said, made an effort to keep his criteria generic -- not favoring one political party over the other -- but somewhere during the sermon he tipped his mitt and my friend saw he was really saying, "vote Republican." When she called him on it privately, he admitted his preference and she went church shopping.

Ironically, she and I had once been members of a different church where the pastor was criticized for leaning too far to the left. She left that church for a different reason, but many other long-time members left because the preacher there failed to endorse the Iraq invasion. I guess everyone wants to believe God agrees with them.

It’s the job of the Internal Revenue Service to make sure non-profits like churches don’t shill for one candidate over another, or for a particular political party. Unfortunately, under this administration those rules have been skewed to favor one side over the other, but I’d better not say more on that subject since Christian Heartbeat also is a non-profit subject to those same judgments.

I’m not suggesting that churches or individual Christians should isolate faith from politics and paste a happy face over the radical face of Jesus. Since God is a God of relationships, God is political by nature. Same was true of Jesus. In fact, being politically incorrect is what got him killed. The failure of the church to follow courageously in Jesus’ footsteps is part why it seems so irrelevant today to so many people.

So, getting back to the preacher who outlined some basic principles for voting but couldn’t help showing his prejudices, here’s my quick and non-partisan one-two-three on how to bring your faith to bear in casting your vote:

One: Know your own prejudices and don’t try to pass them off on God. So often people start with hearts full of hate and bias and then search scripture for ways to attribute them to God. If you’re a socialist who hates the rich you can find passages that support your feelings. If you’re a homophobe who hates gays and lesbians you’ll find passages to support you. Know yourself and don’t say your attitudes come from God when they really come from your own dark heart. We should all be able to agree that Christians shouldn’t cast votes motivated by hatred.

Two: Keep it simple. Throughout history great trends and great issues like life and death, peace and war, wealth and poverty have divided humanity, and for the most part broken God’s heart. To God the choices are clear as crystal waters, but we always try to muddy everything. So in Israel and Palestine both sides say they favor peace over war but each has its nuanced argument for why the other side makes peace impossible. Keep it simple and quit saying, “yes but.” Keep it simple and choose. You are either for peace over war, for life over death, for the right of all people to materially sustain themselves, or you are not. Jesus says you’re either with me or against me. Don’t make excuses; stand up and be counted.

Three: Know who God is. Have you ever put together a puzzle without first seeing a picture of how it should look once completed? It’s almost impossible yet many Christians approach their faith that way. They take the little pieces in the form of proof passages, assemble them as they see fit and sit back feeling satisfied. Unfortunately, what they’ve created looks nothing like God. If we read the entire scripture we come away knowing some specific things about who God is. First of all, God is the God of all people. Any time two people stand against each other, it’s two of God’s children facing off. Doesn’t matter what faith, if any, either person claims. Second, God is the God of love. If I have to explain that one, you really don’t know your Bible. And third, God is the God of compassion. Any time one human causes another pain or looks down on them as less than themselves, God’s heart fills with sorrow. If you’re asking yourself, “what would Jesus do,” or how would Jesus vote, start with the full picture of who God is.

I’ve avoided discussing the specific issues of this election. If you read between the lines, like my friend did listening to her pastor’s sermon, you may think you know how I’ll cast my vote. But I’m not asking that you vote like me; I am asking that you be true to God’s true principles. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that we’ll never change this world until we each take personal responsibility for knowing God’s will, and then step forth in courage to do it.

Goodbye to being Lukewarm on War or Peace

2008-08-16T15:09:00.001-04:00

Anyone who has an ear for the news knows a small war has erupted on the eastern edge of Europe. In response our State Department blusters about territorial integrity, condemning our traditional enemy Russia while ignoring the provocative role played by the other side. The result is another example of the moral jumble we‘ve made of foreign policy. Once we've labeled you a good guy you‘re home free, and vice versa. It's the reverse of what Jesus taught about good fruit not coming from bad trees. If our government has declared your tree good, your fruit is sweet by definition, no matter how it tastes on the tongue.

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not defending Russia, just stating the obvious: Standing up for peace looks a bit foolish when you’ve ignored territorial integrity to conduct a war in which hundreds of thousands have died. I suspect that just like in Iraq, war in Georgia could have been avoided if leaders were committed to other strategies. But as long I can recall, propon
As a follower of Christ, I have the habit of looking to our scriptures for insight on political situations. As I read of the new mayhem in Europe the verse which came to mind is Jesus saying his preference is that we be hot for God’s ways, but if we’re not hot, being cold deserves more respect than lukewarm. Since that scripture comes from John’s Revelation, I’ve never put much stock in it as an authentic saying of Jesus. But just the same, I love the sentiment it expresses.

I have no doubt that God’s way is the way of peace. I don’t believe any other conclusion can come from a thorough reading of scripture. You can argue otherwise if you’d like, but in my informed opinion that places you firmly on the other team (and we know who captains that team!). In the Revelation passage, John’s visionary Jesus says he respects people more if they admit who they are, than if they pretend to with you when they’re really against you. It’s a little like letting Joe Lieberman caucus with the Democrats.

After the last presidential election many progressive Christians found it difficult to converse with brothers and sisters who supported President Bush’s war policy. I still find it difficult. When the fudged explanations begin, when unprovoked, preemptive strikes are interpreted as defending oneself against an actual attack, I know the conversation is over. I simply can’t accept our right to decide who might be a threat and then hand out death as a legitimate way of dealing with them. All of us, Americans as well as every other people, carry too many biases to do that with any reliability. The result is that behavior we condemn in our enemies is excused in our friends -- a hypocrisy that breeds cynicism and more destruction. The simple solution is to act from courage, not fear, in a foreign policy that chooses peace over war.

So now when I discuss war and peace with my brothers and sisters in Christ, I avoid letting them cloud the air with details that usually prove false anyway. I simply ask the question John the Revelator had Jesus ask: Are you hot or cold? Are you with me or against me? Are you on the side of peace or the side of war? Isn’t it time we stop excusing those who makes excuses for war? Isn’t it time to get hot for Jesus and choose peace?

Living Together to Feed the Spirit

2008-08-09T14:42:00.002-04:00

The Associated Press recently circulated a story about “intentional communities,” a kind of communal arrangement in which residents share living space, expenses and responsibilities. According to The Fellowship for Intentional Community, a nonprofit that follows such groups, at least 100,000 Americans are now enjoying this lifestyle.

The AP article focused on an urban community on Chicago’s north side called the Keystone Ecological Urban Center, but nationally two-thirds of such communities are thought to be rural.

I came across the article in the Detroit Free Press while visiting my parent en route from Chicago to Florida. The article appeared in the Detroit paper under the headline, “Americans save by living simply, together.” It included quotes from a 31-year-old woman who lives in the Keystone community. She explained that she pays a total of $775 a month to cover her rent, food and utilities. Her private living space is essentially a very small one-bedroom apartment. But she shares bathroom facilities with other residents, and the entire community eats together in a common dining room. Even though the woman in the story, Keri Rainsberger, works in a fairly low-paying nonprofit position, she says she has no problem making ends meet. Of course, she also rides a bike as her primary mode of transportation, and Chicago, unlike some cities, has an extensive public transportation system that can take a traveler almost anywhere in the city or suburbs.

I happen to know Ms. Rainsberger a little, having worshipped at the same church. The article said she tithes, which I was never able to do even though I tried to live economically in my traditional way. My point in saying I know her a little, is that when I saw how the story focused on financial economy, I knew right away they had missed the heart of the matter. If she is any example of what motivates people to seek such communities, living cheaply is just part of the story. Feeding the spirit also has to be part of the inspiration. Living a life that extends God’s intentions of compassion, justice and mercy to others must also be part of the motivation.

According to the AP, 28 residents share facilities in the Keystone Center. Ms. Rainsberger says she often jokes, “It’s like a college dormitory but with better conversation.” Among the 28 are college professors and young professionals. Certainly some could afford to choose a more expensive, more conventional lifestyle. I’m confident they get more from the experience than the thrill of living like college students.

The article quotes author and environmental activist Duane Elgin on the benefits of living simply: “It isn’t just cutting back on things. It’s about people not needing so many things and putting more attention into their personal interests and their family and friends, being creative, being of service. As a result, they are richer people.”

Those are values we could all embrace, values from which we could all benefit -- us and everyone around us -- no matter how we are housed.

Looking for a Door? God's Got One for You

2008-07-19T01:21:00.005-04:00

If you’ve ever tried to explain the Trinity to someone accustomed to seeing God as three distinct “persons,” you may understand why Jesus taught mostly through imagery. Unlike Paul, Jesus avoided getting mired in details of theology. Read Jesus’ words and it becomes clear he intended his listeners to shape God’s story into something that made sense to them. Early Christian teachers knew this, which is why they stole the winter solstice from the Romans and called it Christmas, and turned Druid worship of trees into our most prominent symbol of Christ’s birth.

I remember a wonderful woman in a Disciples class who lashed out at me because I said her picture of the Trinity as three individual Gods amounted to something like the Greek deities of Olympus. In her mind there was no conflict between her scheme and monotheism. So I shut up and apologized.

The more I taught people about God, the more I learned from them. It led me an analogy with that familiar theory on methods of learning: Some learn by seeing, some by hearing, others by touching. Actually, most of us learn by a mixture of the three with certain methods being stronger in each individual than the others. A good teacher discovers which styles dominate in each student and caters to them. A bad teacher says this is how I do it, you adjust.

The same is true I think of helping people find their door to spiritual enlightenment. Many of us grew up with a top-down style of believing in which some authority figure dictates what to believe. But I’m convinced Jesus wants us to participate in discovering God’s presence for ourselves. If that wasn’t so, why did he tell us to seek and knock instead of just saying, “this is what you need to do?” And why would he describe God’s realm in terms of parables instead of just giving us hard facts?

A few years ago, even as I was feeling the spirit more powerfully in my own life, I mistakenly thought I could advise others on how and where to find those doors Jesus told us to seek. But my list of doors kept growing until finally I realized that for all who seek and knock God would provide a door to fit their needs. If I hadn’t let myself get carried away with my own sense of revealed truth I would have noticed right away what Jesus had made clear. “Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will open,” he said. It’s that simple. To seek and to knock are enough by themselves. We don’t need to put in words what is on the other side of the door; seeking by itself guarantees we will find it.

Following that same path, I came to understand how simple Jesus’ message is if we stick to the heart of it. He says that seeking a way to the healing waters of God’s will is more important than knowing where the journey ends, and hungering and thirsting for righteousness is an end in itself. Being righteous -- or thinking you are -- means you‘ll quit seeking.

All of this falls in line with our fickle nature and how Grace is God’s way of giving us a pass into heaven’s realm. God’s intentions are rock solid and always play out as planned. Ours, on the other hand, are distinctly human. We often don’t arrive where we mean to go. But God accepts our good intentions as success. To seek and knock, to hunger and thirst is good enough. I can’t explain how that works, just like I couldn’t explain the mystery of the Trinity. Maybe the seeking keeps us so busy we don’t have time to get in trouble. That’s just a guess. But as the old classroom saying goes, God gives us an “A” for effort.

Ready for Honesty on God's Wish for Peace?

2008-07-16T13:29:00.004-04:00

A letter this week to online subscribers of Sojourners Magazine begins with this scripture:

"Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." –Isaiah 2:4

Sojourners is edited by Jim Wallis, one of the leading voices for sanity and honesty in the Christian community. So let’s declare Jim Wallis Day and join him in a moment of honesty: Our scriptures demand peace and to pretend they mean some future time when the world is less dangerous is fundamentally dishonest. It’s been almost three thousand years since Isaiah wrote. If the time of peace hasn’t come yet then I guess it never will, unless of course, we make it come.

Wallis and Sojourners are also voices for common sense, but voices crying in the wilderness. It should be obvious that who we are comes from what we do. To claim we are people of peace while making war defies reason. Can a drug user call himself clean because he intends to quit right after his latest fix? Drug addicts use drugs, war makers make war.

The Sojourners letter goes on to state:
America, Iran, and Israel have been playing war games this summer: Showing off warships in the Persian Gulf, launching missiles, and testing aerial maneuvers – it is like watching a bad game of one-gunmanship.

But it’s not a game. Once again, the talk of military action against Iran has reached a fever pitch, with demonstrations of force on all sides. But this saber-rattling is a dead-end street for the United States and the Middle East.

The letter suggests we contact our government representatives and tell them how we feel. I’m all for that, but I doubt it will do any good. The bias for using military power and threats of annihilation as foreign policy is so deeply entrenched in our culture that it has now infected our latest prophet of change, Barack Obama.

Embedded in the nebulous promise of change which drew so many young people to Obama was the promise we would no longer divide the world into demons and angels, casting ourselves as angels wielding swords of justice. That promise was the implicit bigger picture in his call to end the war in Iraq. But now Obama finds himself so overwhelmed by our national compulsion for military solutions and self-righteousness that he could never endorse a statement condemning “America, Iran, and Israel” equally. The media would annihilate him.

Many believe improving prospects in Iraq take the war off the table in the campaign. But how the war started remains the more important issue, not whether it may finally end well. If you don’t believe it was a mistake to choose war over diplomacy, then you are likely to make the mistake again.

Three thousand years ago we heard God’s will spoken through the prophet Isaiah: God’s way is the way of peace. If we don’t walk it, how can we declare ourselves clean of our addictions?

To read the message from Sojourners click or paste the link below:

http://go.sojo.net/nd.html?r=LdSN2bnqkihd&n=27897552

To Serve the Nation, First Seek God's Spirit

2008-07-12T11:27:00.004-04:00

In my last column published in this space I talked about how God's plan for equality among the people of our world was central to the founding documents of our democracy. I also discussed how various definitions of democracy and equality affect the shape of our society and whether we truly arrive at anything close to actual equality.

I also observed that because the founders couched their equality statements in terms of God's intentions for a created people with natural rights, that we as Christians are perfectly within our rights when we apply our beliefs to the marketplace of public opinion. In fact, it is our obligation to do so. Unfortunately, I noted, we don't agree on which issues should get our attention, and from opposite sides of the values divide, we often view the other camp as corrupted and manipulated by secular political interests.

Christians are much better at singing songs about being "one in the spirit," and proclaiming "one baptism" and "one Christ" than we are at actually closing the gaps that divide us. The truth is we've seen more dividing recently among Christian groups than uniting. It's not my purpose here to measure the pros and cons of the current fractures over sexual orientation issues, except to say those who opt for inclusion always stand a better chance of standing with Jesus. And if we look beyond the church to how Christians influence our democracy, we come back to the statement in that original declaration which says "all," not "some" are created equal.

Looking upon the landscape of our democracy and culture, it seems that acknowledging God-given rights -- and assuring they translate into civil rights -- is no more than a good first step. As disciples, as Jesus people, we must go further in our own lives if we expect our society to become the beacon of light we dream of. Let's be honest, for all its virtues we live in a nation which has traditionally celebrated the self. We are proud of our "rugged individualism." And we live under an economic system that enshrines the pursuit of self interest. But as Christians we are part of a faith system, and claim a scripture, which teaches the denial of self. Deny yourself and follow me, Jesus says. Make your neighbor's interests equal to your own. Paul teaches that unity with Christ begins with the death of the self. In the Old Testament God warns the Israelites against coming into the promised land with its wells they did not dig and groves they did not plant and taking credit for the self. We can't have it both ways. Something's got to give. As Jesus said, no one can serve two masters.

Clearly the founders wrote from a universal perspective, reflecting the emerging enlightenment of their time, when they spoke of an equality endowed by our creator. They would have said that what is true for our young nation should be true for all. One of the best proofs for believing that all who seek spiritual enlightenment seek the same Spirit is that all the enduring faiths share this emphasis on folding the self into God's universal intentions. Of course, America is a nation, not a faith system. But Christians who are also Americans carry two passports. Which master will we serve? If we serve God first, I believe we will also serve the future of our great nation.

Don't Apologize for Swimming in Political Waters

2008-07-10T23:38:00.002-04:00

If there’s one thing Christians on the right and left seem to agree on, it’s that our culture leaves a lot to be desired and could do with some radical change. I’m not saying all Christians think that way. There are some in the middle who are generally happy with the shape of things. They’re doing fine financially, living in the dream house, and steadily reducing their golf handicap. Their greatest wish would be for conservatives and progressives to stop fighting amid the pews and leave politics to the lobbyists where it belongs. Then we could come to church minding our manners like they did the 1950s, sit quietly while we sing a few hymns, listen to a nice polite sermon and go home to the real world.

Unfortunately for the comfortable middle, those on the extremes agree that taking action for social change is part of our calling from Christ. We fight because we don’t agree on what that change should look like. We all know that evangelical issues have had the limelight these past decades and been portrayed by secular media as the core concerns of Christians. That’s changing as progressives find their voice on issues like war and poverty, and evangelicals look to expand their horizons.

Please don’t let this get around, but I have friends who are conservatives. Some are even Republicans; and I don’t think they have horns and tails. Not all of them anyway. When we look beyond issues to the philosophies which divide us as a nation -- and as Christians trying to follow Christ’s example toward a just world -- we come up against the promises of democracy embedded in our founding documents. “Created equal” implies that God intended us to be treated as equal by each other and by our institutions. “Endowed by our creator” implies we have a God-given natural right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It’s clear that the founders saw the world through God’s eyes and envisioned God’s wish for equality as central to the natural order. The tradition in America of religious people taking their beliefs into the political arena goes back to the beginning.

One of the questions eternally debated by citizens and believers alike, is what does democracy and this so-called “equality” require. Some would argue that equality means equal opportunity; others would say we must achieve at least a rough equality of results or there isn’t true equal opportunity. Those who have excelled materially in our society often justify their privilege with a certainty of their own merit. Conversely, the poor are poor because they lack merit. In other words, it’s your own fault baby. Proponents of societal democracy argue that when a culture consistently produces great disparities between citizens, something is probably wrong with the culture. I tend to belief that our creating God doesn’t turn out a ton of garbage. Failure should be the exception and not the norm.

But it doesn’t need to be an “either/or” proposition. It may be more productive to pursue God’s values under both interpretations of democracy. We can demand equal opportunity for members of dispossessed groups, while simultaneously advocating systemic change in our culture. These two tracks often dovetail together to the detriment (or benefit) of individuals and society. For example, the American Medical Association this week offered an apology for past offenses in deliberately keeping black doctors from joining their organization. But beyond the injury to individual doctors, the AMA is convinced that its actions played a role in the poor quality of health care available to blacks throughout the society. Now the African-American doctors are welcome in the AMA but black citizens still lack adequate health care. Apparently, individual rights are easier to restore.

What if Steelworkers Ran the World?

2008-07-05T13:30:00.001-04:00

I read earlier this week about a federal government official, a lawyer, who has been nominated for an important judicial position. It seems that several significant examples of plagiarism have been found recently in his academic writings. Some in congress have said the plagiarism issues demonstrate a disqualifying lack of integrity. Those who support the appointment cite the man’s professional experience, and that he is a graduate of Yale Law School.

It hit me as amusing that being a graduate of an Ivy League college should be a positive credential. I mean, haven’t grads of Ivy League schools like Yale and Harvard, along with other elite universities, been the ones leading this country? And look where they’ve led us. Maybe it’s time we stop accepting “graduate of Yale Law School” as a badge of honor, a credential conferring a right to leadership. Maybe it’s time we start searching news stories for words like, “a graduate of Eastern Carolina University,” of Northern Illinois, or Berea College. Can you imagine a voter leaning over the back fence to tell a neighbor about a congressional candidate and saying, “you know she was tops in her electrician apprenticeship class.” The neighbor nods and you can hear him thinking, “that’s good enough for me.”

There’s a commercial running on television right now that asks the question, “what if steelworkers ran the world?” It’s meant to be humorous, but in the ad this group of dirt covered, burley men fairly and efficiently take care of business in a manner you have to admire. What if steelworkers ran the world? The answer seems to be that it would be a better place.

There is little doubt we’ve become an increasing divided society. The most obvious marker has been the growing income disparity between average workers and top management. But economic equality is the smallest hope we’ve lost from democracy’s promise. We now readily accept education as occupational training, treating our children as future bricks in the road of commerce connecting industry and consumer. Respect for the arts, music and literature are gone, except when they lead to a commercial product. All that matters is generating workers with the tools in science and mathematics to keep the machine running. Why would a worker need the arts and humanities to do his or her job? These things are liable to encourage too much independent thinking.

It once was charged that nations encourage religion in order to drug the people and keep them in line. True enough, the practice of religion has often been stripped of its spirituality and made into a method of behavior control. Today the church has been eclipsed as chief “opium of the people” by action films, virtual reality games and mixed martial arts fighting. But inside many people lives a hunger for meaning that these cheap, hollow thrills can’t satisfy. If leaders in the church have their eyes open, they might see this as an opportunity to reassert the original purpose of faith, which is to create a new form of being out of simple flesh and blood.

Since the days of Machiavelli we’ve known that people who have enough of the expected comforts don’t often stop to consider how much greater life could be. But we could now be entering a new era in which our culture’s ability to deliver material benefits is in doubt. Instead of asking “what if steelworkers ran the world,” it might be time to imagine how the world would change if faith in God’s will drove reality. Can you imagine a world in which we awoke each day bathed in the joyful light of God’s Spirit?

When Scriptural Truth is Found, Grace Prevails

2008-07-01T12:44:00.004-04:00

When sports teams fall on hard times they often get back on course by going back to basics. In football that would be blocking and tackling; in basketball, defense and rebounding. If you’re failing with the fundamentals, nuanced systems and fancy plays aren’t going to help.

Going back to basics could be good advice for the Christian faith at this moment in time. Lord knows change was needed even before conservatives started pointing fingers over their exclusive little manias. We took a step closer to the breaking point this week as angry Anglican conservatives met in Africa to stomp their feet over gays in the church and women in the pulpit. They claim to be doing this in the name of Christ, but as one prominent politician said recently, “Some people aren’t reading their Bibles.”

I don’t remember much from my college class in Principles of Biblical Interpretation (insiders call it hermeneutics to scare off lay people), but the one principle I do recall is really the only one worth recalling: Rule No. One -- “Let scripture interpret scripture.” This means that any individual verse or point of belief has to be understood within the comprehensive message. As I said, when in doubt, go back to basics.

I suppose not everyone is going to agree, but it seems to me the main defining ingredient of the Christian faith is grace. Some people, following the footsteps of those who opposed Paul’s message, hate that fact. They would prefer to give obedience to the law equal standing in a kind of offsetting tension which keeps us from going overboard. Unfortunately, that’s not the Bible’s message. That’s the message of men who lack faith in the message. The message of scripture is freedom, not constriction. God asks us to have faith that freedom will lead to better behavior, that grace and freedom will transform us into spiritual beings with a new capacity to follow the fundamental commands: to love God and our neighbors as ourselves.

Unfortunately, while many have faith in God they lack faith in other men and women. So just in case grace doesn’t get the job done, they start making rules such as no women in the pulpit and no gays or lesbians at the communion rail. I guess they figure Jesus -- and God -- must be so naïve that they need a little help understanding just how bad these humans can be. Still others, desperate to justify their human doubt, try to find little passages to support themselves, or attribute grace to Paul and say Jesus never mentioned it. To those people I repeat, you aren’t reading your Bible. Grace is there from cover to cover, and certainly in the teachings of Jesus. To illustrate how grace is central to Jesus’ teaching, this quotation from Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Assurance of Grace:

“… The knowledge and the certainty of God are a gift to those who strive after perfection without the illusion of having attained it — the ‘poor in spirit,’ and those who ‘hunger and thirst after righteousness’ (Matt. 5:3, 6). Those who imagine themselves righteous are consistently condemned. Those who strive after pure spirit are consoled in the inevitable frustration which attends their striving, because in their very search after perfection they are initiated into the true character of spirit and realize that perfection is love and not justice. Thus they obtain mercy while they learn to be merciful.”

As I said, back to basics: The message of God’s word is trusting love over justice, knowing we have the gift of God’s mercy and the power to pass it on. In the shorthand of our faith, we call it grace.

I’ve been on sports teams where players who insisted on being divisive, who ignored the fundamentals and did things their own way, were allowed to say goodbye and go their own way. With the doubters gone, the team was able to pursue its true potential.

So, let them seek their twisted little pathways. I plan to stick with the basics and walk in God’s grace. If God has a better road to success than the one in scripture, wouldn’t we have been told of it?

Will Economics Revive the Dreams of the 1960s?

2008-06-28T14:00:00.003-04:00

You’ve probably heard George Carlin died this seek. With his passing goes one of the last counter-culture icons of our time. Carlin was an early and enduring darling of the 60s generation. Irreverent to a fault, Carlin always refused to kiss the imperial ring. As America moved into the post-Vietnam era, trading bell bottoms for Brooks Brothers, Carlin maintained his loose and casual style. He turned gray but he never grew old.

HBO is playing a special this week of vintage Carlin performances, and while I could do with fewer f-bombs, he still seems relevant. As he wound through one of his anti-war, anti-church tirades on how killing people is applauded while having sex is a sin, he paused shook his head and said something like, “We’ve got a great country here, but a ridiculous culture.” Like I said, he’s still relevant.

But the positive values of the 60s haven’t totally passed away with Carlin. In fact, they are enjoying a rebirth right now thanks to the oil crisis. As Paul Krugman of the Times pointed out this week, the environmentalist community -- itself a remnant of 60s values -- has welcomed higher oil prices as a motivation for burning less fossil fuel and developing less polluting forms of energy. Citizens struggling to make ends meet will no doubt have difficulty sharing their joy. Indeed, a few might wish they’d join Carlin wherever he’s gone.

Eventually we may come up with forms of energy and transportation that allow us to return to ever expansive consumerism and materialism, but in the near- and mid-term we may be witnessing the best shot in decades for real spirituality to make inroads. Some may not see the logic of this, but it seems self evident to me that the more our lives are tied up with material objects the less room there is for the spirit, for enjoyment of God’s creation, or for the true expressions of self which are part of our nature.

Near the beginning of Jesus’ most comprehensive belief statement, his Sermon on the Mount, he says the first step to being filled spiritually is to hunger and thirst. In other words, if you want to be full, first you must be empty. Near the end of the sermon he returns to the subject, speaking more specifically of the risks of a life focused on filling up with material. To paraphrase, he says, “look I know you need some things, I know you can’t live like a bear in the woods, but if you want to feel the power of the Spirit in your life, you need priorities. Seek God’s realm first, and enough stuff will come to you. If you go for the stuff first, there’s no chance you’ll ever know the spirit.” It won’t matter how much of you toss in the plate on Sunday.

So maybe we are at a time of opportunity, although I’m not sure we can get there from here. In the 60s, spiritual exploration grew when war and a national admission of racial injustice caused us to question our values. But in the long run spirituality was no match for the consumer culture. Who knows, maybe this time shifting economic realities will open room inside us for the true life God intended. We can always hope, and like George Carlin taught us, laugh at our failures.

Followers Become Leaders in a Time of Change

2008-06-24T18:58:00.004-04:00

Imagine that doctor of an earlier age who treated his patients by the prescribed method of bleeding but noticed them getting weaker and weaker. Perhaps in the back of his mind he was thinking, “this isn’t working,” but he feared saying so. After all, this was the method his superiors taught in medical school. I tend to think it was some family members who finally stepped forward and said, “wait a minute doc, every time you visit he moves closer to death.” Maybe the professors had seen this too, but to dispute accepted practice might have cost them power and position. So they stayed silent.

Or imagine the religious leaders of Jesus’ time, or Martin Luther’s. Men who heaped rules and responsibilities, forms of discipline, on the people. Young teachers like Jesus and Luther could see that these methods brought the people no closer to God. In fact it drove the people from God while bringing benefits in prestige and wealth to the religious leaders. How reluctant the establishment must have been to give up its advantage. And there's Jesus and Luther being asked to go along with the charade. Thank God, they didn’t.

Now imagine the Christian elite of today, watching the church shrinking and their leadership being directly questioned by the people. How will our leaders react? Will they voluntarily change to save the church, or will they insist on being right as the people turn away to search elsewhere for the face of God?

This past Monday a study was released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life which showed once again the people are leaving the leadership in the dust. If religion was like Parliamentary government we’d be emptying our seminaries of professors with a vote of no confidence. Most democracies recognize that leaders can’t lead when the people won’t follow. According to the Pew research, many of our leaders are getting a vote of no confidence, but refusing to listen. To be fair, the wise ones are already ahead of the curve on what the people are saying.

According to Pew 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation believe their own faith is not the only path to salvation, defined by Pew as “eternal life.” The number was even higher for Jews and most Christian groups. Even Evangelicals and Muslims topped the 50 percent mark at 57 and 56 percent respectively. In a sense, the Pew researchers showed themselves to be a bit behind the curve by using “eternal life” as their measure. Many people of faith are already redefining belief in terms of spiritual enlightenment in the present lifetime. But that’s an issue for another day.

If 70 percent of believers feel there might be ways other than their own faith to reach God, it’s not surprising that 68 percent said there’s more than one way to interpret the teachings of their own religion.

These numbers reveal fractures in the twin pillars of conservative Christian belief: Christ as the only way to salvation, and an absolutist, literal interpretation of scripture. (And by the way, we’ll tell you what it is.) If those pillars fall, can the fundamentalist, authoritarian strain of belief survive -- whether in Evangelical or Roman Catholic churches?

With such a threat facing them it’s no surprise that some theologians and church leaders reacted with disdain or hostility to this tolerant attitude among the rank and file. As reported by the Associated Press, Roger Oldham of the Southern Baptist Convention said, “If by tolerance we mean we’re willing to engage or embrace a multitude of ways to salvation, that’s no longer evangelical belief.” And Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput rejected nonconforming opinions from so-called Catholics as uniformed. “Being Roman Catholic means believing what the Catholic church teaches,” he said.

Not surprisingly, a day after the Pew story, an article by the same AP writer, Eric Gorski, described the hostile reaction of Dr. James Dobson to the religious thoughts of presidential candidate Barack Obama. Dobson, most know, leads the conservative Christian organization Focus on the Family. He is uncomfortable with Obama’s attempt to do what the Pew research shows most Americans are already doing -- hoisting a big tent when it comes to spiritual belief.

Obama had questioned the literalist’s approach to the scripture by pointing out that if we followed Leviticus we would approve slavery and prohibit eating shellfish. If we followed Jesus’ teaching in Matthew, we would be compelled to make peace and not war. This may have chafed a little since Dobson’s organization has taken a pro-war stance. At any rate, Dobson accused Obama of “… dragging Biblical understanding through the gutter.” He said Obama was “distorting the traditional understanding” of scripture by speaking of Old Testament and New Testament passages as if they were somehow equal. Of course, Dobson has no problem using Old Testament verses to condemn homosexuality. I guess that’s different because he says so.

It seems that whenever a cleansing of the faith community comes due, it comes from below and not above. That was true for Jesus; that was true for Luther. If the research is right, it’s happening now. Eventually the church will catch up or it will perish.

Of Logs, Splinters and Jumping off Cliffs

2008-06-20T20:19:00.001-04:00

When I was a kid, 12 or 13 years of age, my city would host Friday night teen dance sessions at a park which we, for obvious reasons, called the band shell. They would play that decadent music called rock and roll, and boys and girls would learn to think of each other as something more than schoolmates. My mother would never let me go. She saw Friday night at the band shell as the very cradle of corruption.

By the time I was old enough to ignore my mother, they had either discontinued dance night or I had found my own form of corruption. I don’t remember. I do recall that I would be furious at my mom and would whine to her that my friend Ricky’s parents let him go! My mother’s response -- this may sound familiar -- was “if Ricky’s parents told him he could jump off a cliff, would you want to jump off too?”

My mother figured that church youth group was a better place for me to meet my friends. Soon after those days, certain that our neighborhood was a breeding ground for juvenile delinquents and their molls, mom sent me off to Christian High School at Detroit Lutheran West. And she was right. The guys I met there were more thoughtful than those in my neighborhood, and the girls not as free with their favors.

My own children went to public high school but I also immersed them in church life and encouraged them to choose a certain kind of friend. As much as I hate to admit it, my mother’s wisdom, if not her paranoia, wore off on me. And her strategy of finding a world apart, a healthier soil if you will, in which to raise her crop of children, turned out to be a good one. Bringing up kids in our culture is no rose garden. You need to look for an edge.

Maybe it was because she always saw herself on the defensive, but my mother did what she did without ever teaching us to think ourselves morally superior to anyone else, or the others morally inferior to us. Assigning white hats and blacks hats was never the game. It was always just a matter of carving out our own space where we could have freedom do the right thing. To paraphrase her “jumping off a cliff” metaphor, she was saying “we’re not talking about them; we’re talking about us.”

Jesus has an oft-quoted though infrequently followed parable along those same lines which suggests we focus more on removing “the log” from your own eye and less on taking splinters from the eyes of our neighbors. I don’t know if it was my mother, Jesus, or a Christian upbringing heavy on the idea that we’re sinners in need of God’s grace that makes me distrustful of people and nations who claim the moral high ground. I can generally see enough logs in their eyes to keep them busy. But while I’m working on my own logs, they are jumping ahead to their neighbor’s splinters without first clearing up their own vision.

I was reminded of all this by an obscure story I read earlier this week, in which the question of logs vs. splinters was implicit. Our president dined with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and among the guests was British historian Simon Schama, who long before our current Middle Eastern intervention observed that Europe regards the moral rhetoric of America as a cover for self-interest. Apparently, everyone behaved themselves at the dinner because that part of the story never made the cable newscasts. One wonders whether our news people have the nuanced power of perception that would allow them to comprehend such a question.

But even if they don’t, it doesn’t absolve us as Christians from seeing a better way to a better world. We lead, if we are to lead at all, by example. We lead by being honest with ourselves, and not by trying to fix the game so we look good winning. We lead by sincere devotion to our own standards, by dedication to our own gardens. We lead, as my mother did, not by condemning the neighbors for letting their kids go wherever they wanted, but by simply saying “in our house, this is how we do it.”

Show Me the Door that Leads Beyond Myself

2008-06-16T11:32:00.004-04:00

A few years ago I first picked up a book called The World’s Religions, written by Huston Smith. The book is recommended by Bill Moyers as a primer for understanding what Smith calls the world’s “enduring religions.”

Many Christians are eager to know how other faiths envision spiritual dimension, especially in comparison to our own faith. Often, Americans who set out on this quest journey toward the east, drawn perhaps by spiritual conceptions fundamentally different from the way Christianity is understood, although perhaps not so different from the way Jesus understood spirit.

Others are intrigued by Islam and Judaism, which, with Christianity, are often called the Semitic religions. With growing Muslim populations here and the conflict in the Middle East, many people are asking themselves, “what do they really believe?” A friend recently told me of a class she’s taking called Meeting Judaism on a Voluntary Basis. She has a personal motivation. There are many reasons for interest.

Whatever spiritual traditions we may investigate, it’s usually not about converting. That in fact would be self-defeating because it would lead back into the practice of religion. We investigate because we are seeking something more -- more freedom, more inner peace, more sense of real spiritual power and presence in our lives. One of the principle problems with Christian practice as we know it is that it has devolved into a set of belief statements. Those statements put a cap on our faith system and make it finite. Yet we know instinctively and intuitively that believing is all about finding a way beyond the finite into the infinite, into the realm of the more.

Reading Mr. Smith’s book, I discovered that while practices among the world’s faith traditions vary wildly, they all seem to be driven by a similar wish: to elevate the essence of life by folding the limited self into the expansive dimension of the more. Or conversely, to enlighten the lesser world of self and form a new creature by welcoming in the more. It is almost magical the way a study of other faiths, even the supposedly foreign faiths of Asia, increases understanding of Christianity and the Bible. I could provide some comparison passages here, but I’ll just say it’s no coincidence that the word “Tao,” which means “the Way,” is the exact same word by which our faith was known in the early going.

For some of us, indoctrinated from youth with precepts and dogma, it is hard to imagine a new form of belief that preserves the old but understands it in a new way. We are very comfortable with the formulas we have learned. If they work for you I would never dream of saying they are not legitimate. But the biggest challenge we all face is how to give potency to our spirituality, how to make it something more than a pleasant attachment, like a weekend golf game, to a life essentially material and locked up by our objects.

How can we reach the realm of the more? How do we get there? Show me the way. Whatever hemisphere we live in -- east, west, north or south -- this is what we truly want from true religion: show me the way. Show me the door that leads beyond myself.

Where is Zorro When We Need Him?

2008-06-11T16:26:00.000-04:00

One of the best things about old stories is that they are driven by old values. And what I find especially satisfying is that the old values still resonate with people of all ages.

Last Sunday I attended a stage presentation of The Mark of Zorro at a small professional theater on Chicago’s north side. It was an entertaining show and, although it’s not my purpose here, I think it would be great for the world if more people went to live theater. Somehow, I think when more people like actors and playwrights get to express their creativity it leads to a more spiritual world.

But the real significance of The Mark of Zorro was it suggested an answer to the day’s great question: if the nation is clamoring for change, what kind of change would that be? No, I’m not saying the answer is more live theater. The answer I see is a return to the old values of personal responsibility. That may sound familiar, or surprising coming from me. Christians conservatives have been nibbling the edges on this cookie for years, but without ever biting into the center.

Maybe it’s time to let Zorro lead. I grew up on the Zorro legend and Robin Hood too. As I was watching the show Sunday, it hit me that in our current culture Zorro makes no sense. In Zorro’s world, the suffering of the poor was directly traceable to the ruling class. So, when Zorro saw peasants living in great duress while those for whom they worked lived in the lap of luxury, it was obvious that injustice was being perpetrated by individuals. Someone was personally responsible. To right that wrong, Zorro took up the sword not against a system, but against individuals. Same with Robin Hood.

But in today’s economic system no one is responsible. If today’s values ruled Zorro’s world, the land owners would tell Zorro, “sorry masked man, that’s just how the markets work.” Some benefit and some don’t. No one is personally responsible. There’s no one at whom to point a sword.

As I sat in the theater watching Zorro render justice, I knew those around me got it. Even those much younger than me. So why are we so quick to accept impersonal explanations for today’s inequities? Perhaps we’ve come to believe the system is too complex to be questioned. Perhaps we are so sold on old fantasies about our society that we’re simply unable to recognize or accept what we see. We tell ourselves, that’s not how this country works, so I must not be seeing what I think I’m seeing.

On Monday morning I read the story of giant losses for the investment bank Lehman Brothers. After making billionaires of its principals in hedge funds and other risky endeavors they had posted a loss of several billion dollars. It’s a familiar story on Wall Street, told at a time when wages of working people have fallen or at best stagnated. The disparity between a contemporary hedge fund manager and a typical American worker is much greater than between the gentlemen and peasants of Zorro’s day. But no one objects. It’s just the markets; it’s not personal, so hey, don’t take it personally.

By the way, Lehman’s answer to its financial problem was to raise more capital. You can be assured that no one suffered poverty as a result of their personal failing -- no one at Lehman that is. In the rest of the country jobs are disappearing and the cost of basic commodities are sky rocketing.

Our economy is not a machine. It is a system operated by individuals. Unfortunately, it has been operated for their individual gain and not for the good of the country. Maybe it’s time for the rest of us to say “live and learn” and demand real change. How about a little personal responsibility? Where is Zorro when you need him?

Walking (with Alice) in a Christian Wonderland

2008-06-07T17:37:00.004-04:00

Sometimes I fear we all live in a kind of wonderland, where a world view which makes sense to us seems like utter nonsense to others. This week, reading online magazines from conservative and liberal sources, I was struck by the absolute incompatibility of their positions. If one set of ideas is true, then the contrary must be nonsense, right? I was reminded of Alice’s words during her lost time in Wonderland:

“If I had a world of my own,” Alice said, “everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?“

I hope that didn’t make your head ache. In general, it’s better not to think too deeply about Wonderland logic. Just take the sense of it and move on. Unfortunately, the world we inhabit sometimes seems much like Wonderland. For instance, I read this week in Focus on the Family’s online magazine that liberal Christians are motivated by pure selfishness, while middle class conservatives are really caring and responsible individuals unfairly maligned in the press. It’s true, and author Peter Schweizer claims he found the proof by analyzing existing social research. He published the conclusions in his new book, Makers and Takers. Here’s what he discovered:

“… conservatives are more reflective in terms of responsibility and they think about larger-picture issues. And that’s one of the things that really handicaps modern liberalism. Conservatives believe there are things larger than themselves; for many people, it’s faith in God. But modern liberalism really is about self.”

But then, in the liberal publication, Faith in Action, I discovered contrary observations. The first was a quote from the famed liberal Roman Catholic Archbishop, Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was assassinated in 1980 for his courageous opposition to the military dictatorship in his country, a dictatorship supported by American conservatives. Romero said:

“A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, what gospel is that? Very nice, pious considerations that don’t bother anyone; that’s the way too many would like preaching to be.”

In the same article United Methodist Bishop Ken Carder presents a similar assessment taken from Rethinking Wesley’s Theology for Contemporary Methodism. He writes that a middle-class ethos permeates the Church. According to Carder: “The poor are absent from most local churches and denominational structures; and whenever they are visible, the poor tend to be treated as objects of charity more than as special friends of Jesus Christ and persons with whom God closely identifies.”

“Too often,” the article goes on to assert, “we put niceness above all else in the church. ... The Sunday sermon must be a place where our pastors give us both the pastoral and prophetic word. Many of our preachers are downright scared to preach the word because of the reaction they fear from angry laity, who think they own God’s pulpit. We need to affirm the freedom for our pastors to share the Word of God with us.”

So which is it? Liberals say we need a confrontational sense of the gospel that refuses to tolerate a world where the few prosper while most suffer. Conservatives argue they offer a model which the world should copy -- taking personal responsibility in their own lives and not acting as selfish individuals like liberals. To which liberals respond by asking, “how does that translate into a world more fair to all?” And conservatives answer, “if you want to change the world, why don’t you start with yourselves?”

And on it goes. Is your head spinning? Do you feel like you’ve joined Alice in the wacky world of Wonderland? “If I had a world of my own,” Alice said, “everything would be nonsense.”

Is everything nonsense? Or do some people profit from making us think it is?

The Changing Face of Being Christian

2008-06-04T11:35:00.002-04:00

If asked for a single word to describe Christianity today, I would say “diverse.” To call oneself “Christian” is to claim a place among a body of believers which grew from the oral teachings of a charismatic prophet who preached briefly in an obscure corner of the world two thousand years ago. Beyond that, agreement slips away.

Just take a look around and you’ll find enough letters to fill a bowl of alphabet soup: UMC, ELCA, UCC, UBIC, just to name of few. Baptists, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Episcopal and Anglican, Presbyterians, etc. -- we didn’t get all these variations because we agree on everything. Quite the contrary.

But now, in what might be a parallel to our political landscape, some young Christians are calling for a truce in this fighting among ourselves.

There was a time when all “Christians” had to agree. Disagreeing could get you killed in a most painful way. That kind of forced allegiance to the church’s version of truth undermined the faith, and most of what was good about the Gospel disappeared. The Reformation brought a correction but also divisions. Denominations fed their flocks a diet of doctrinal nuance, and arrogance became inevitable: “if we’re right (and we are), you must be wrong,” which led to, “we are saved and you are not.”

Is it any wonder that a culture grown weary of political infighting would also tire of religious wars? We should all thank God for this new generation of believers who would rather open spiritual doors than close them.

I’m not saying Christians should turn away from public policy debates. But political alliance does pose a problem. The phrase “Holy Roman Empire” should ring a bell. It’s one thing to take political stands -- Jesus himself championed the poor and oppressed -- it’s another to ally oneself so closely with the establishment that you become the establishment. Do so and you’ll lose your edge.

But it’s a hard habit to break. Witness “evangelical” Christianity and how its social platform became a political platform under the Republican banner. But now many evangelicals are refusing to make dogmatic political loyalty the ultimate test of faith. A story this week in the New York Times says many younger Evangelicals are rejecting the dictates of party and church elders. The article, by Neela Banerjee, describes a generation of Christians looking for ways to unite rather than divide. Banerjee writes:

“The Journey, a megachurch of mostly younger evangelicals, is representative of a new generation that refuses to put politics at the center of its faith and rejects identification with the religious right. They say they are tired of the culture wars. They say they do not want the test of their faith to be the fight against gay rights. They say they want to broaden the traditional evangelical anti-abortion agenda to include care for the poor, the environment, immigrants and people with H.I.V., according to experts on younger evangelicals and the young people themselves.”

The article quotes Notre Dame sociology professor Christian Smith to say young evangelicals reject using the church to enforce political orthodoxy: “Evangelicalism is becoming somewhat less coherent as a movement or as an identity. Younger people don’t even want the label anymore. They don’t believe the main goal of the church is to be political.”

One of the most public rifts among evangelicals is the dispute over environmental activism and global warming. Dean Inserra, a young Southern Baptist preacher from Tallahassee, Florida, says older leaders have felt threatened by grass roots “green” initiatives because they’ve allowed themselves to become too entangled with “the right-wing agenda.” According to the Times, Pastor Inserra asks, “How is taking care of God’s creation a political issue? Since I am pro-life, I am pro-environment.”

Despite their willingness to move toward a wider set of concerns, these young Evangelicals remain a fairly conservative bunch: still literalists in their understanding of scripture, still judging homosexuality as sin.

I would have to disagree with them on that last point. I believe that when God looked on creation and declared it good, God was including all genders and all sexual orientations. Machines in factories sometimes kick out rejects, but God is not a machine.

Still, let’s give credit where it’s due. The movement toward greater diversity by caring Evangelicals is a good thing. As the proverb says, “the longest journey begins with a single step.” And while the journey from that village in Galilee has already covered many miles, it is far from over.

A Simple Formula for Opening Spiritual Doors

2008-05-31T12:34:00.003-04:00

A few years ago, when my sanity was threatened by severe illness in my family and the sudden loss of my job, I relied first on inner strength to keep me from going under. Raised in a city environment where individual strength and self-reliance were prized, I was able to convince myself I had the mettle it would take to survive. I did survive; and my children survived with me.

When I look back now on those days I realize they were no catastrophe; they were a blessing. Soon after I had steadied myself against the onslaught, I was met by wave after wave of caring people reaching out, wondering if they could in some way provide a life jacket. I would come home from a long day of working and visiting my loved one in the hospital and listen to my phone messages. Often there were as many as a dozen, mostly from members of my church living the love they understood to be at the heart of our faith.

I learned to cry in those days and ever since then I’ve been more vulnerable to tears than any self-respecting, tough-guy Detroit boy should be. The tears were not over the pain I suffered but in response to the acts of love. I cried because in those days I learned that love is real, love is possible and love can triumph.

As a Christian teacher and searcher, one of my fascinations has been to understand how we can open doors to the spiritual presence Jesus described when he said: “Seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened …” Even before the days of which I write here, it had occurred to me that suffering might be one door into the spiritual rebirth Christ promised. It seems clear that the “kingdom of heaven” Jesus reveals in his parables is a state of spiritual elevation to be enjoyed here on earth -- not just when we pass on to whatever realm awaits us after physical death. And people who sense intuitively that there is a truth that exceeds mere knowledge are as hungry today for an answer as they were in Jesus' day.

As I said, I had put suffering on my short list of “doors” even before I came into my time of suffering. And certainly I came out of that time as a more spiritual being than I went in. But I discovered that it wasn’t actually the suffering that made the difference. If I had stood alone against the tide and prevailed, it would only have inflated my sense of self reliance. What made suffering a door-opening experience was the way it connected me in love with others. I began to realize that the other “doors” on my short list, like service for example, were only doors because they involved a love connection with someone beyond myself.

Someone once wrote that God is like a force for good that exists but, like a car in neutral, doesn’t move until someone puts it in gear by acting in love toward another being. In that moment God becomes real and active, and can be seen moving upon the face of the earth. If you want to be lifted into God’s realm, lift someone with you. If you want to open the door to spiritual rebirth, love someone.

A Peculiar Village for a Peculiar People

2008-05-29T18:42:00.002-04:00

A woman fighting to be a good mother goes online and uses special software to explore her son’s “history” on the internet. A week earlier she walked in on him and a friend looking at pornography and warned her son against doing it again. Now her clandestine investigation reveals he’s not only looking at porn but at bondage sites. She explodes and threatens to disconnect their home from the internet even though it will hurt her too. He’s none too happy that his mom is spying on him and swears it must have been a friend who went to that site. She takes his word for it and keeps her internet connection, not sure she’s doing the right thing. The son, by the way, is 18 years old. He’ll soon graduate from high school and leave home for college. She’s worried about him, and that she has failed as a mother.

A father and mother in Florida with a son in middle school and a daughter in the ninth grade are a pretty typical American family. They are strong Christians who attend church regularly but they have other interests in life. They are by no means the kind of separatists who hole up on ranches in Texas. But one night, watching television with their kids, they begin to realize how meaningless the shows are. Even those not chock full of violence or indiscriminate sex really contribute nothing to building a healthy psyche or a sense of spiritual purpose. They decide to cancel their cable subscription. The son, who always surfed, surfs more and becomes one of the top wave riders on the East Coast. The daughter resumes her music lessons and soon her singing is the envy of all her TV-obsessed friends. The mom and dad continue sitting next to each other on the couch but with no TV to watch they fall into ... well, let’s leave it at that!

Both these stories are true and I’m sure there are a million more like them. The African saying borrowed for Hillary’s book says, “It takes a village,” and most of us do raise our children in the midst of a village. We can’t live in isolation, but we wish it was easier to choose our village. Is it any wonder families home school in order to better control the “village” their children live in? Many believe that if we teach our children good values at home they will carry these into the world. Maybe so; but it’s no slam dunk. Parents who dream of their children cutting their own path and walking the way Jesus describes in the beatitudes -- peacemakers, merciful, pure of heart, thirsting for righteousness -- know how hard it is to compete with the pop culture’s enticing triviality.

A 24-year-old artist who emigrated here from Russia five years ago told me of the frustration she feels working as a nanny for well-to-do American families. Recently she took her young American charges on a day-trip to Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. Excited by the prospect of seeing the exotic animals, she imagined herself delivering a lesson on the remote parts of the world from which various species come. But the children wanted to ignore the animals and spend their day roaming the gift shop looking for things to purchase. Although she grew up in Russia with very little, she said she would not trade her childhood for the so-called advantages of the American kids. You might say the absence of things allowed room for her human potential to flourish.

Most of us would agree that followers of God inhabit two kingdoms, one spiritual and one material. But when those kingdoms are at odds, to which does our loyalty belong? In the early church (as in the stories of the Old Testament) it was clear that believers made loyalty to God their first priority. Christian people still worked and moved about in secular culture as we do today, but they held their spiritual values so dear that no one had to ask if they were Jesus people. Their care for each other and their gentle approach to outsiders defined them as a peculiar people, not just Xerox copies of everyone else who also went to church on Sundays. I’m guessing even the pagan majority saw them as a superior people who were not easily compromised. I can almost hear one Roman singing to another, “… and we know they are Christians by their love …” But I can’t imagine a Christian getting all dolled up for the big show at the Coliseum -- at least not voluntarily!

When the children were removed recently from the separatist religious community in Texas, some commentators acted as if the children were being given their freedom. What a wonderful world is waiting for them! “Imagine,” one of them said, “many of these children have never been allowed to watch television or to explore on the internet.”

Yea, I thought, imagine that.

A Time for Feeling Warm and Fuzzy Inside

2008-05-24T21:44:00.003-04:00

The winds of change are blowing. Nothing makes that fact more obvious than our presidential campaign. And change is more than just a candidate's slogan. In truth the winds were moving before the campaign began but now everyone is feeling them. The four-year span between presidential elections makes it easy to see that, yes, things are different than in 2004.

But sensing atmospheric change is easier than explaining it, understanding its significance, or determining whether the change is a plus or a minus. One thing is clear: we have become less tolerant of intolerance. That has to be positive. In Christian circles, this has meant divisive religious leaders -- especially those with political agendas -- have fallen into disfavor. Christian publications have reported this trend for several years, but now it has popped onto the mainstream radar in the person of firebrands like John Hagee and Jeremiah Wright. The media simply won’t have it, even though some of the people would. And the merit of the rant doesn’t matter. Unless your preaching on the importance of free formula for poor babies, you have to tone it down.

The new code requires being inclusive, or at least looking like you are. This applies especially to pastors claiming to represent that great inclusive prophet named Jesus. Remember Billy Graham? It didn’t matter which party held the White House; he was there with his soft-spoken spiritual support. Style matters. The sweetness of Joel Osteen fills seats with euphoric worshipers, while the combative tones of a Jim Dobson begin to grate on the ear. I’m not sure there’s much difference between their political positions (Osteen recently refused to meet with the LGBT group Soulforce), but when Osteen speaks, people feel warm and fuzzy inside; when Dobson speaks you look around nervously, feeling an attack is imminent.

The days of getting elected by inciting certain religious elements, like fundamentalist Christians, are over. Religious groups, such as the Jewish voters Obama is courting, can still make a difference at the margins, but they can’t control elections by single-handedly overwhelming secular concerns. Witness the religious right’s inability to derail the campaign of John McCain, one of their least favorite Republicans.

Hopefully this sweetness and light will shine into newsrooms with a progressive tilt. It’s no secret the conservative side expects their man to sneer more than smile, but the biggest threat facing Obama may be acid-tongued supporters in the media who give the lie to his purported new era of good will.

Toning down the debate may be good for our national blood pressure, but I’m not convinced it’s good for the nation. There’s still much to be fixed in America and I’m afraid that setting aside differences will mean agreeing to do nothing, or at least very little. Many of the Old Testament prophets worked in times of relative prosperity but still raised their voices in loud indignation against inequities. Jesus too could have gone along to get along and saved himself a painful end.

Granted, it would be nice to silence the hate mongers poisoning the airwaves. But if that means the just must also be silent, it could be a bad bargain.

Spirit, Wisdom, Signs, Rebirth. Call it the Gospel

2008-05-21T11:02:00.003-04:00

In a recent column I wrote about an extensive Willow Creek survey which revealed the complex problems facing churches today. The results are leading Willow Creek away from a strategy of contemporary flavored, high production value worship to a more studied approach designed to feed mature Christians throughout the week.

According to a Christianity Today report on Willow Creek’s evolution, the former method failed in the long term. It worked to light a fire in new believers, but these new fires didn’t grow or spread to new prospects as the church had intended. The study showed more effective evangelism coming from seasoned church members, but unfortunately also uncovered a high degree of dissatisfaction in this core group -- to the point that many were thinking of leaving the church.

Most importantly, Willow Creek’s study showed that they share this problem with most churches. After detailing the problem, I promised some answers. What was I thinking!?

The survey results are no surprise to pastors and church leaders throughout the country. Declining church attendance is a well-known phenomenon, and many have tried to define a remedy. In fact, the Willow Creek approach of layering smooth secular forms on top of sacred content was one hopeful solution that still produces results.

At the end of my column I asked readers to comment with their answers. One gentleman wrote to say, paraphrasing, “forget pragmatic approaches and simply preach the gospel.” I liked that. It might in the short run lead to a smaller church, but God has produced victory in the past by stripping down to an intense remnant. Remember Gideon’s three hundred? People don’t prune rose bushes because they want small bushes forever.

I also was reminded of Paul’s famous words to the Corinthians, Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified …” In other words, don’t try to succeed with the intellect or an impressive show, just tell Jesus’ story.

When Jesus’ story is told in its fullness, it includes both wisdom and signs. Remember that wisdom is a way of knowing which exceeds knowledge, giving us a profound awareness of truth, and a peace that “passes all understanding” -- something all the world’s doctoral degrees can never deliver.

As for signs, many believers witness the kind of healing signs which marked Jesus’ ministry, but the most telling sign for attracting new Christians is simply the way rebirth in God’s Spirit visibly changes a person. Friends, family members, and everyone else will recognize a new creature, no longer standing alone in a hostile world but confident of our connection to something much greater than ourselves. Can they fail to ask, “what does she have that I don’t?” Inevitably, they will want some of it too.

I hope these thoughts offer insight, but I know we all like short and simple “bullet” answers to complex questions. So, to the question, “How can we encourage people to turn to Christ and the church in their search for meaning?” These answers:

> Emphasize spirit over theology, heart over head. You can stuff the brain full of knowledge without knowing anything.

> Go ahead and lift people with inspirational preaching, energetic music and other performing arts. But while you have them in the air, build a foundation under them with day-to-day loving kindness.

> Teach, preach and model acceptance. People don’t turn to Christ for judgment and rejection. There’s plenty of that around. Make sure everyone in the pews understands acceptance is standard operating procedure among the followers of Jesus.

If those three bullets aren’t concise enough, then just take the advice of my reader and preach the gospel. I think that’s what I was saying anyway.

Is Willow Creek Just Shifting the Titanic's Chairs?

2008-05-16T21:24:00.003-04:00

If you go by the numbers, the church is in trouble. We’ve reported it before. Statistically, the population of people going to church is shrinking. Now a major survey of people still attending church suggests the problem could get worse before getting better -- and getting better isn’t guaranteed.

On Thursday, May 16 Christianity Today Magazine led with a story about how Willow Creek, the Chicago area the mega-church, is making major changes in an attempt to halt the exodus. Willow Creek’s actions came in response to a four-year study called, “Reveal: Where are You?” Here’s how Christianity Today reported the situation:

“Since 1975, Willow Creek has avoided conventional church approaches, using its Sunday services to reach the unchurched through polished music, multimedia, and sermons referencing popular culture and other familiar themes. The church's leadership believed the approach would attract people searching for answers, bring them into a relationship with Christ, and then capitalize on their contagious fervor to evangelize others.

“But the analysis in Reveal, which surveyed congregants at Willow Creek and six other churches, suggested that evangelistic impact was greater from those who self-reported as "close to Christ" or "Christ-centered" than from new church attendees.”

Here’s where the real problem comes in: a quarter of the "close to Christ" or "Christ-centered" group describe themselves as "stalled" or "dissatisfied" with the role of the church in their spiritual growth. Worse yet, about one-quarter of the "stalled" and 63 percent of the "dissatisfied" are contemplating leaving the church. So Willow Creek is using its findings to shift it’s focus away from showmanship, and toward serving “mature believers seeking to grow in their faith.” But this group isn’t happy either. Sounds like “damned if you do, damned it you don’t.”

To learn if the problem was unique to them, “Willow Creek expanded its research into churches of varying geographic locations, sizes, and ethnic and denominational backgrounds” and found similar patterns everywhere.

Let me pause to say many millions are still attending church in America and being fed spiritually. For all its faults and failings, the church is still the greatest force for good in our culture. I haven’t seen many atheists or agnostics banding together to build hospitals. But this isn’t about what’s good for the church, it’s about healing a broken world and discovering how the church can best shape itself for the job.

To stay vibrant -- and reverse the growth trend, the church needs to make some essential changes. Simply revising musical or preaching styles isn’t going to do it. Refocusing on keeping the old guard rather than drawing in newbies won’t be enough either until basic questions are answered about the essence of what has gone wrong. Why are people “stalled or dissatisfied?” The tendency at times like this -- the tendency we’re seeing at Willow Creek -- is to fall back rather than ask how can we leap forward in a truly different way. So Willow Creek decides to drop its “fire ‘em up” Wednesday service in favor of some good, old-fashioned Bible study and theology classes. The question is, what will happen in those classes that makes a difference for the “stalled and dissatisfied,” or for newcomers trying to decide if this church or any church can feed their spiritual hunger -- tomorrow as well as today.

The Willow Creek study seems to say that mimicking contemporary forms isn’t the answer, and neither is nostalgia for that old-time religion. We in the church, we in this community which exists to sustain spiritual health, look out upon a cultural landscape that everyone, even the young, can see is an empty shell satisfying no one. We can‘t succeed by copying such a model. And only tired and unimaginative minds think the answer lies in a return to the old school. The old school had it’s chance and didn’t cut it.

I’m happy to report that our problem is also an opportunity. We get to go back to the drawing board with a chance at an exciting new beginning! Next time in this space, “where should we go from here?” I’ll give my thoughts, whatever they’re worth. Yours are welcome too. Just click on “comment” below.

Dreaming of a Future for "Neural Christianity"

2008-05-14T13:16:00.004-04:00

In my world the phrase, “favorite conservative commentator” might be considered an oxymoron. But I want to give credit where it’s due. David Brooks is one of the most thoughtful, least biased of all commentators in the popular media. And his reach goes beyond partisan politics. Yesterday’s column in the New York Times is a good example. He describes recent trends in neurological research which suggest a native tendency in our species toward goodness:

“Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.”

That’s great news and what he writes should help feed optimism for our future. But what Brooks says next shows what a poor job we in the progressive church have done in spreading our enlightened understanding of Christ to our culture. “The cognitive revolution,” Brooks asserts, “is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going end up challenging faith in the Bible.” He goes on to say that this new research will most likely “lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.”

Now, Brooks doesn’t explain his concept of Buddhism so I’m not sure what he means, except to imply from his other comments that he views it as a kind of loving instinct for good that transcends our personal biology. We can all say “amen” to that.

What he doesn’t seem to understand very well is Christianity. Or more accurately, he understands Christianity the way the Evangelicals have taught him to understand it, which is no surprise. Speak of James Dobson and everyone nods in recognition. Say the name Marcus Borg and you get a quizzical look. “Faith in the Bible,” as Brooks describes it, is the literalist belief in the word-for-word inerrancy that Dobson peddles. Somehow Brooks has failed to realize that millions of Christians have a more sophisticated view in which Jesus is a transcendent spiritualist, and a social activist. When it comes to biblical faith, we don’t labor over the syllables but interpret intention in the full light of the God’s message of love, mercy and compassion.

Brooks could open his horizons by reading Borg’s side-by-side comparison of very similar teachings from Jesus and Buddha . And Borg isn’t the first to link the two. Christian teacher, philosopher and pastor Paul Tillich, recognized by many as among the leading thinkers of the 20th century (not just religious thinkers), often yoked Jesus and the Buddha together as the greatest spiritual prophets in human history.

I don’t blame Brooks for any of this. I blame our inability to move our progressive message outside the sanctuary and into the public spotlight. Interestingly, when we do, it is often in the form of confrontation with the Evangelicals. An article in Dobson’s online publication this week told of the Christian gay rights group Soulforce traveling to six so-called mega-churches around the country as part of its American Family Outing campaign. They kicked off the journey with a visit to Joel Osteen’s church on Mother’s Day. Osteen refused to meet with them. Now the others are trying to figure out how to handle their turn in the barrel. A spokesperson for Dobson’s organization Focus on the Family advises they should try to balance “the inerrant truth of God's word regarding sexual behavior and the compassionate grace of our Lord Jesus toward those living outside of it.”

“Living outside” of God’s grace? Foolish me, here I am thinking that even under the Evangelical definition Grace belongs to all who accept Jesus as God‘s son. I think that’s what Paul said -- that all of us on our own fall short of God’s glory but thankfully are justified by God’s Grace. Maybe Grace sounds to them a little too much like what Brooks described: an instinct for good -- in this case God’s instinct for good. Funny how inerrancy can ebb and flow as it suits one’s political purposes.

What I long for is a time when groups like Soulforce can just bypass the Evangelical mega-churches as irrelevant. In that day, hopefully, there will be no more mega-churches, only faithful communities of believers embracing and sharing God’s loving spirit. Soulforce would disappear into the mainstream in the true church of Jesus Christ, a church known by Jesus’ commandment to love one another as he has loved us. Brooks would no longer need to speak of undermining faith in the Bible, and could predict an age of “neural Christianity.” If he wanted to include the Buddha, that wouldn’t bother me.

When People Meet as Angels

2008-05-10T11:41:00.001-04:00

I have a friend who sees the active hand of God in everything. Things always happen “in God’s time.” Because she’s looking for someone to share her life, she says, “God will send him when God is ready.” In general, she believes God has a plan, a kind of master script in which our lives play out.

I used to chuckle over this theology and call it God of Marionettes, as if we were all puppets worked on strings. At my church in Florida a publications person was fired for running an article in the newsletter about a 9/11 survivor who claimed to have prayed for God to save him, and believed he survived because at the last moment God reached out his mighty finger and pushed the plane upward to strike the building two floors higher. Apparently, God had no use for the people on that floor.

I once scoffed at this interventionist view of God. “We are God’s hands and feet,” I would say. “We are God’s toolbox.” I do still believe God needs and uses us to carry out divine will. And I can’t accept God picking winners and losers in sports contests or in terrorist attacks. But I now believe that if we keep our eyes open, and process what we see with our hearts more than our minds, we will see the force of God’s love moving constantly on the face of the earth.

Some spiritualists refer to the intersection of our needs with the force of God’s good will as synchronicity. You may have experienced it. You are hurting over some event in your life and have nowhere to turn. While shopping, you happen upon a long-lost friend who is particularly good at listening and sympathizing. After an hour over cups of coffee, you feel unburdened. Or, you are wishing you could do more to help the less fortunate, and you have this old dining room table cluttering your garage. The two things have nothing to do with each other until … along comes a poor, old woman in a wheelchair who lives in public housing and desperately needs a table. Ah, but have no way to get it to her until … along comes a man with a pickup truck who also is looking to do good in his life. Synchronicity or simple coincidence? God at work or simply God’s followers serving as God’s toolbox?

Earlier this week I wrote a column for this space discussing actions taken against gays and lesbians at the United Methodist General Conference in Fort Worth and how they failed to meet the criteria of Christ’s great commandment. I contrasted this with the reconciling church I attend in Chicago, where people of various sexual orientations, races, ethnicities and physical abilities, worship and serve together without ever stopping to ask if they should be disqualified as God’s hands and feet.

Soon after I posted the blog, I received a comment from a woman who had been in Fort Worth with her partner protesting the church’s actions and felt “heartbroken” by the results. She said I was “like Jesus” for speaking up for justice. Little did she know I’d been feeling doubt and discouragement over whether my work was bearing fruit. To me she was an angel, saying “yes, you are helping.”

Just when she needed to hear someone say God’s will for her is greater than any church body, I appeared. And when I needed someone to say keep it up my friend, you are helping to heal broken hearts, she appeared. Synchronicity? The hand of God? Or just two people trying to live out the great commandment? Maybe it’s a distinction without a difference.

Diversity Prospers Despite Hits from Fort Worth

2008-05-07T12:34:00.002-04:00

The news from the United Methodist Church’s General Conference in Fort Worth was not good. The delegates had voted to retain language in the church’s constitutional Book of Discipline describing gay and lesbian people as out of step with Christ. Meanwhile, in my reconciling Methodist Church in Chicago, gay and lesbian people continued to share their love of God and bask in Jesus’ healing grace, undeterred by the bias in Texas.

In Fort Worth delegates used the word “integrity” to describe positions hurtful to Christians different from themselves and obviously inconsistent with Christ’s great commandment to love one another. In Chicago gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender Christians substituted faithful actions for statements about faith, obeyed Jesus and treated each other with love and kindness.

In Fort Worth heterosexual people firmly told homosexuals they are not welcome; in Chicago homosexual believers joyfully worship along with their straight brothers and sisters confident that all serve the same God.

In Fort Worth, the Methodist Church posted a slogan claiming, “Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors. ” In Chicago gay and lesbian disciples actually practice what the church preaches, opening their hearts, minds and doors to anyone and everyone.

In Fort Worth the church voted down a majority report which at least acknowledged that, “Faithful, thoughtful people who have grappled with this issue deeply disagree with one another; yet all seek a faithful witness,” and substituted minority language retaining statements in the Social Principles that the “United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” Meanwhile, in Chicago, having heard of the church’s actions, believers lifted their voices in praise and exchanged the peace with each other, confident that no human body is authorized to separate them from the love of God.

In Fort Worth delegates stood in their self-righteousness to mouth old clichés about gays and lesbians, with one describing them as “from the devil.” In Chicago, loving brothers and sisters basked in the righteousness of God’s healing grace, rolled up their sleeves and prepared to go on working to bring the message of Jesus and God’s unconditional love to all that need it.

As a straight man, I feel honored to worship in an atmosphere of loving diversity at Broadway United Methodist in Chicago. As for those in Fort Worth who seemed blind to the Spirit of Truth … it’s not mine to judge. Thankfully, we all serve a most forgiving God.

Let's be Honest, Messiah is a Tough Calling

2008-05-02T16:00:00.001-04:00

It will soon be two thousand years since the days of Jesus’ ministry teaching and preaching among the peasants of Galilee, Judea and Samaria. Another fifty years and we’ll reach two thousand since the books of the New Testament began to appear. It’s a good time to stop and ask, has Christianity made a difference, and how should we expect our faith to impact the world over the next two thousand years.

Debating what might have been different if Jesus never lived makes an interesting parlor game. I’ve played it in Bible Study classes. Most believers assume Christianity has had a significant and positive influence but others think the good done under the guise of Christian love would have happened anyway -- that people motivated by altruism would have assembled under some secular banner. On the flip side, the religion haters point to the wars and atrocities perpetrated in the name of our faith and the others.

Let’s deal with the haters first. Take Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great. Heard him speak? He’s a hater by nature. If he didn’t have God to dump on, he’d target Bambi. Fact is, our wars and atrocities would have happened regardless of religion. Power and wealth are the motivations for war and oppression. Religion is just an excuse.

On the other hand, you have the hospitals built, the orphans cared for, the children educated under the auspices of various Christian groups. Good work indeed. But would it have happened anyway, under some non-religious motivation? Believe it or not, some atheists are caring people, and given the absence of religion as a counterpoint, who knows what kind of quasi-spiritual regime might have developed. Like I said, an interesting parlor game.

A more serious question for the future is whether Christianity could have done more if it hadn’t been so timid. Can we deny we haven’t lived up to Jesus’ vision? The Jesus of the New Testament is an apocalyptic figure, a confrontational prophet who condemns the culture of his day -- economic and religious -- and declares the coming of a new age, which he calls “the year of the Lord‘s favor.” But instead of fighting to the death for this new age, we Christians did just what the church of his day did -- made peace with the powers and principalities of the world and settled for incremental improvements.

When Jesus described “the year of the Lord’s favor,” he used very concrete terms: the oppressed and the captives would go free, the blind would receive sight and the poor would get relief. He didn’t say the poor would be a little poorer, or the oppressed a little less oppressed. He promised radical change and was killed for saying it was possible. Anyone eager to take up his mission?

When Barack Obama first stood and promised a new age, he was received as almost a messianic figure. But just as we stood and watched Christ’s message shrink to a size comfortable for the culture, Obama’s message has been reduced by others to a plaintive copy of Rodney King’s “why can’t we all just get along.” Jesus was willing to die rather than just get along. Maybe a guy like Jesus doesn’t come along every two thousand years. But if Obama wants to see his message live, he should be ready to speak the full truth and, if need be, let his candidacy die.

Courage Needed to End "Zero-Sum" Thinking

2008-04-28T17:28:00.002-04:00

There are some words best left unspoken. If the so-called “N-word” just popped into your head, that’s a good word to forget but not the one I meant.

The word I had in mind is “dialectics.” I’ve watched many a pair of eyes glaze over at it’s mention. Most people have heard it but have only a vague idea what it means -- and no desire to learn more. I promise to keep it simple.

In our contentious culture, we tend to look at life as a contest of opposites in a zero-sum game. If one side increases, the other must decrease. This balance sheet thinking leads people to a cynical world view expressed in phrases like “it’s either you or me,” and “us vs. them.” For every winner there has to a loser, and as bluesman Howlin’ Wolf famously said, “I’d rather go to your funeral any day than have you come to mine.”

In the world of opposites, people hold to their opinions like God had etched them on tablets of stone. To have their positions threatened is to invite anger, depression and a general sense the universe is tilting out of kilter. I had that feeling recently when reading about the case of Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at a Goodyear Tire plant, who for almost 20 years was paid less than her male counterparts despite having more experience. When she learned she’d been cheated she offered to settle for $60,000 from Goodyear. The company said no and Ms. Ledbetter went to court, where a jury awarded her $223,776 in back pay and more than $3 million in punitive damages.

But eventually the case went to the Supreme Court and the company won on a technicality. Congress then tried to correct that technicality, but enough senators saw it as bad for business and blocked "doing the right thing."

I say “doing the right thing,” because I believe even the people who scuttled Ms. Ledbetter’s chance for fair treatment knew she had been treated unfairly. I don’t think they did it because they are just mean, hate women, or hate women taking “men’s jobs.” I think they got caught up in the world of opposites. To threaten their pro-business, traditional gender roles world view is to threaten the very ground they tread. In other words, they are afraid and immobilized.

The same day I read about Ms. Ledbetter I’m listening to some jazz vocals by Ann Hampton Callaway. She doing a Stephen Sondheim song called No One is Alone. If you’ve been around at all, you know that’s a crock. Lots of people are alone with no one to care about them. Some are even more alone than Ms. Ledbetter felt when the Supreme Court and Congress let her down. But as I listened I thought, “that’s how it ought to be, a culture where no one feels abandoned, a place where if you fall someone will catch you.” Then I’m thinking, some people oppose that culture. They oppose medical care for children, and social security, and fair treatment for Ms. Ledbetter. Didn’t we grow up hearing about the New Deal and the social compact? Now I’m the one feeling angry, afraid, and ready to fight rather than have the secure ground beneath me begin to quiver.

Do you see where I’m going with this? On one side in America, the pro-business, personal responsibility gang. On the other, the social covenant folk who say the culture should make sure life is safe and fair -- that no one is alone. The result is two sides locked in a war of opposites. Which brings me back to dialectics, a formula for moving society forward that says, “have hope; life is not a zero-sum game. We can take the best of both sides and form something new and improved.” But progress requires the return of good will, and that can’t happen if we continue to hole up within our fearful skins. Which is why we need God, or at least faith in a truth bigger than ourselves. On our own we'll never find enough courage and humility to break the stalemate.

Dreaming a New Age of Spiritual Transcendence

2008-04-25T16:50:00.002-04:00

If I still expected the world to make sense, I’d say it’s ironic that the one presidential candidate too young to be part of the 1960s has sparked the most memories of that historic American era. To be clear, the decade we think of as the “sixties” actually ran from the time after JFK’s assassination through 1975 when we scampered out of Vietnam. The earlier part of the sixties is usually considered part of the fifties … you know: Ozzie and Harriet and all that.

The sixties are so interesting because they fostered so many crosscurrents that seemed at odds. It was a time of loud confrontation with the status quo over the war and civil rights, but also a time for quiet transcendence in a nation for which the “promise of America” had come to mean a house in the suburbs and two cars in the garage. The flowering of spirituality in the sixties intersected with pop culture to provide one of its sweetest names: “the Age of Aquarius.”

The sixties produced many trends that could be of value today. One was the tendency to distrust mainstream media and consider it propaganda. Freedom of thought flourished and alternative paradigms no longer had to square with science in order to have value. People tended to dig deeper to find “truth,” and the decade spawned a short-lived resurgence in spiritual reliance. Spiritual truth was embraced as satisfying our profound longing for understanding in a way simple information cannot.

The embers of the sixties have begun to glow again in the candidacy of Barack Obama. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman described Obama’s message as the politics of “transcendence,” but wonders whether enough Americans are seeking transcendence to make him a winner in November. There is much more to Obama’s candidacy -- he clearly stands for traditional Democratic economic issues, but it’s simpler for the mainstream to just “brand“ everything and everyone. Sorry Mr. Obama, one brand to a customer. If he tries to fashion a more complex platform mixing counter-culture and traditional messages, he’s taking a chance. Guys like Wolf Blitzer are easily confused. And anyway, America prefers to swallow its counter cultures, not learn from them. Look at how the sixties were co-opted by Madison Avenue and made over into one more marketing ploy. Maybe Mr. Obama should launch a line of tie-dyed tee shirts while he’s still hot.

Having seen the sixties dream of a more spiritual world whither away, I’m not overly optimistic that Mr. Obama can bring it back. But that doesn’t mean giving up. Jesus said seek and you will find. To seek means doing more than turning on CNN or Fox News, or for that matter clicking on Christianity Today’s online magazine. Once the truth reaches the surface it’s rarely the truth anymore.

A friend, Pastor Larry Davies, publishes a weekly meditation online that holds more truth in a few paragraphs than can be found in all the establishment seminaries in Dallas. In a recent posting he spoke about how, after Peter’s fear-filled desertion of Jesus at Gethsemane, Peter wanted to give up on the spiritual kingdom Jesus had promised: “Maybe I need to walk away,” Davies imagined Peter saying. “I can quit. I'll go back to doing what I do best. ‘I’m going fishing.’” That’s what happened as the sixties came to a close. So many walked away, went back to what they knew, and stopped seeking spiritual answers.

Perhaps the young Americans inspired by Mr. Obama would not describe it this way, but the spirit of the sixties is at the heart of his promise. Strip away all the negatives of that fabled era and what remains is faith that God’s spiritual presence can light our lives. Maybe the dream isn’t dead.

Could We Prove Our Culture is Healthy for Kids?

2008-04-21T22:06:00.001-04:00

There’s nothing complicated about whether 14- or 15-year-old girls should be placed in marriages to men in their 40s or 50s. I think we can all say, “No way!” But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing complicated about the child custody battle unwinding in Texas. On one side, the state says it’s a simple child protection case, on the other hand much of what the state has done -- and is doing -- doesn’t feel like what we expect in a democracy.

After the judge continued state custody Friday night, one of the attorneys appointed by the state to represent the children said it would be “a tragedy” if parents lose custody of their children because of something that happened “three doors down” within the compound. For those parents who didn’t force their daughters into mismatched marriages, what is the essence of their crime other than membership in an unpopular religious group? Will the innocent have to prove their innocence?

Hopefully, children who need protection will receive it while the others will be restored -- along with their right to religious choice. A subtext in all this is a prevailing belief that raising children in the narrow world behind those walls is unhealthy by itself. These kids should be exposed to mainstream American culture. But is that in their interest? If you’ve raised kids in contemporary America you might wonder. What if we in the mainstream were forced to show some outside authority that our culture is healthy for children? Could we? Here’s a few factors we might need to explain away:

> TMZ. This is a television show in which supposed adults -- admirable members of our society -- degrade themselves by sneaking up on pathetic cultural “celebrities” for the purpose of dishing out humiliation. I’m sure other shows could be nominated for this hall of shame. And should I mention the violent simulation games we’ve fed a generation of children privileged to grow up outside that Texas compound.

> A culture of wanton death. Any shortage of examples? Abortion for convenience? A needless and murderous war in Iraq which so many love to embrace? A capital punishment system the rest of the world has banished. A love of weapons that empower crazies to create their own killing fields. And then there’s our prisons. More people behind bars than any other nation on earth, with a third of black men doing time at some point in their lives. Yea, let’s make sure these people in Texas don’t deny their children exposure to this wonderful world.

> A culture so materialistic that the very word “success” is defined by our financial portfolios. Don’t deny it. “He’s very successful,“ means he’s loaded. If Jesus walked our world spouting off on the spiritual kingdom he’d be soundly rejected, just like he was in his own day. We’d dance around his sayings like, “no man can serve two masters,” and when Jesus said “no, it means what it says,” we’d toss him out like a can full of rusty old nails we finally admitted we’d never use.

Maybe those people in Texas are the lucky ones. What if we were all threatened by child protective services if we didn’t change our world? Oh, I know it’s a pipedream, but the thought of it makes me want to hug a child.

The Fine Art of Avoiding the Spiritual Hospital

2008-04-16T11:41:00.006-04:00

I grew up in a working class, “lunch pail” neighborhood of Detroit. I’m proud of that, not bitter. Don’t get anxious, this column has nothing to do with guns or presidential politics, although it does touch on religion. In my neighborhood a kid had to at least pose as a tough guy or he was a target. Most young men learned to fight -- with boxing gloves on and with them off. Fights on the street were frequent but few people ended up in the hospital. That’s because we understood the fine art of ending a fight with both guys saving face.

This thought came to mind over a script I’m editing. It’s a sequel to our short film Feel the Joy and contains some combative exchanges between evangelical and progressive Christians. I’d written this some months ago and as I read it I wondered if maybe I could soften it a little, find some way -- at least in my script -- to end the fight with both sides saving face. Easier to do in a script than in real life, of course.

For years I worshiped, studied and taught in what you might call a “mixed” church. We had people conservative in theology and politics mixing with dyed-in-the-wool liberals. We managed to get along because we made tolerance of each other’s views a prime value. And let’s give credit where it’s due, this is harder for conservatives because they are naturally more structured in their understanding of truth. Sometimes in a pointed discussion the only way out was finally to just say nothing.

What we never did was question the legitimacy of the other person’s faith. This worked because we all accepted that individuals must seek, knock and find on their own or their path into God’s presence won’t produce the joy and assurance God promises. If a person has knocked and they believe God has opened the door, who are we to say God hasn’t or that it wasn‘t a true door? This for us was the fine art that kept us from sending each other to the spiritual hospital.

I wrote in this space recently of making a pact of acceptance with each other. We usually think of truces or peace treaties as being two-sided agreements. But now I’m thinking, why wait for the other side to be ready? Since I’m certain of my place in God’s heart, they can’t hurt me. Why not just accept those who disagree with me, even if they don’t volunteer to join the pact? I could just trust God that they’ll eventually come around.

I like the feel of that plan and I think that’s what I’ll do -- with God’s help. I’m tired of fighting with my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Having Fun While Being Christian is No Crime

2008-04-09T11:17:00.004-04:00

I grew up in a very Christian family. I can say without doubt we had traditional family values. We loved baseball with dad and mom’s apple pie, and we really liked laughing and having fun. You might call it, “feeling God’s joy." At times we could even get a little silly. Now I’ve learned from the Voice of Christian Youth America radio network that we weren’t Christian at all. The getting silly part did us in. That must be in the Bible somewhere. I haven’t seen it, but it’s a big book.

The radio network rallied to an up-in-arms alert last week over a harmless bit of fun called “Wacky Week” at a Wisconsin elementary school. It’s a dress silly concept that most of us are probably familiar with. Wacky Friday and a Wacky Parade are variations I’ve participated in. Afterward I checked with Jesus and he said he still loves me. “I’m not going to hell?” I asked. Jesus replied, “At least not for that.” We shared a laugh at his answer. Seems Jesus has a better sense of humor than the Voice of Christian Youth America radio network.

To be fair, what made the self-appointed guardians at the radio station angry wasn’t the entire Wacky Week but only Friday's wackiness. The elementary students had proposed and voted that Friday’s wacky theme would have boys and girls dressing as each other. None of the kids imagined any sexual implication in this exchange of costume, but apparently adults at the Voice of Christian Youth America radio network are prone to naughty thoughts. And it seems when they get their naughty thoughts, they can’t just suppress them; someone has to pay. In this instance it was the children.

I’m sure all of us can think of a time we’ve undermined traditional family values by having fun with just such a theme. An American Cancer Society (Relay for Life) fundraiser I’ve attended for years features a “Mr. Relay” contest in which each team sends forth a man to dress as a woman in a mock beauty contest. It’s hilarious. We never knew our laughter was a violation of traditional family values or an affront to Christ. Unfortunately, the Voice of Christian Youth America radio network can’t police everywhere at once.

The whole story would be nothing but a hoot if it wasn’t for the way puckered up Christians like those running the radio station have managed to cast themselves as the voice of our faith. Why would any sincere, caring person want to join us in doing God’s true work, when it appears this kind of nonsense is what being Christian is all about?

Jesus Would Have Stayed With Rev. Wright

2008-04-07T12:05:00.002-04:00

It’s an old and trusted trick, getting someone from a group claiming oppression to say it just ain’t so. Want someone to argue against a woman’s right to choose? Find a woman to do it. Want someone to say anti-discrimination laws shouldn’t includes gays and lesbians? Get a “healed” homosexual as your spokesperson. Enter Juan Williams of Fox News to criticize Barack Obama.

I’m not trying to take away Mr. Williams’ rights or to claim blacks in America must speak with one voice. African-Americans have as much right to an independent perspective as anyone. But by the same token, Juan Williams’ criticism of Mr. Obama should carry no more weight than Bill O’Reilly’s or Rush Limbaugh’s. Mr. Williams is above all a conservative commentator. But, since he is black, he has every right to speak as a black man.

What I do find objectionable is Mr. Williams’ presumption to speak for Jesus. He declares that if Jesus had been in the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he would have walked out in protest. I’d like to say this to Mr. Williams: Jesus is a friend of mine; I know Jesus and you’ve got him wrong when you say he’s soft on injustice. He would not have walked out of Rev. Wright’s church; he would have recruited him as a disciple. Jesus included many firebrands among his followers, even among the twelve. Remember the Apostle called Simon the Zealot?

Over the centuries we’ve rewritten Jesus to make him a friend of the comfortable status quo, just as many would now rewrite Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy. When minority victims in a culture suggest that the majority’s comfort comes at their expense, it can make the comfortable uneasy. At such a time it’s always good to have a Juan Williams or a sanitized Jesus on hand.

I’ve listened to some of the preaching for which Rev. Wright has been criticized and it pretty much seems to hit the mark. Maybe he should have skipped the stuff about the atomic bombs on Japan. But if you think black Americans don’t continue to feel deeply wounded by America’s racial history, you don’t know any blacks well enough to be trusted with their deepest feelings. By the same token, if you think deep-seated racial animosity among whites has magically disappeared, you haven’t sat in enough blue-collar bars.

It seems to me Mr. Williams has turned Jesus upside down. It was Jesus’ main adversary, the Jewish religious aristocracy, that sought accommodation with the rulers of their land. Jesus was an advocate of confrontation. I didn’t hear Rev. Wright call for armed conflict and neither did Jesus, although he allowed among his disciples those who did and then showed them a better way to stand up for justice.

The reaction to Rev. Wright is no more than a refusal to confront the truth about America and the role racism has played in politics as recently as the 2004 elections. Until we acknowledge our sins we will never move to the post-racial era of redemption Mr. Obama seems to promise.

Let's Make a Pact to Believe in Each Other

2008-03-28T11:59:00.000-04:00

I often find myself battling a tendency to turn negative about our world. I bet I’m not alone in that, given the state of things. But fortunately, I know God doesn’t welcome such self indulgence. To “turn negative” is just another way of admitting a loss of faith. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that God intends us to find joy in this world. And if it’s God’s will that we enjoy life, then I have to believe God will provide a way.

One hopeful sign: a generous understanding of our faith is spreading to corners of Christianity where it was once scarce. I’ve always put my eggs in the church’s basket and believe that if the church isn’t preaching a gospel of positive possibilities, no one will. It’s exciting to picture a world where the joyful voice of God‘s spirit can be heard far and wide.

Cynics might call it a blogger’s fantasy to imagine a world where war is no more and people no longer suffer from a scarcity of food, shelter or medical attention – a world where individuals and the culture can “be all that they can be.” If you don’t believe it’s possible, check the state of your faith; I’m confident this is the kind of world God imagined at the creation.

Getting back to hopeful signs, if you’ve been in enough churches for enough years you’ve heard the Christian message interpreted in many ways. I spent Easter in a Lutheran Church (one of the conservative “synods”) and was overjoyed to hear Christ’s mission interpreted as a mission of inclusion: the poor and shunned, women, even pagans were the among the first to be welcomed into Jesus’ presence.

For many years religion has been more a roadblock than a highway on the march to a more perfect world. Going back to Old Testament times, humankind was viewed as fallen and inherently wicked; God was seen as a vengeful being, and sickness and poverty were signs of disobedience. The book of Job was written to dispel these myths but people went on believing it right up to modern times.

In this punitive world view Jesus’ mission is reduced to his redemptive act on the cross, and all his teaching on love, peace, spirituality, wealth and resistance to injustice are brushed aside as nice platitudes rather than a guide to restoring paradise. Being Christian is about the reward of the next world; this world is simply to be suffered as best we can.

In my view, that’s a quitter’s theology that undermines faith in God and God’s creation. My prayer is that God will stop me in my tracks any time I turn negative about the possibilities for this world. So here’s my offer to all God’s children: I’ll believe that God made you for goodness and ask you to believe the same of me.

Easter: Imagine Believing Peace is Possible

2008-03-22T19:41:00.003-04:00

Within hours it will be Easter Sunday. Whether you are a Christian who believes without doubt in a physical resurrection, or someone who accepts the possibilities it promises as symbolically true, Easter is a moment when hope is reborn.

I'm in Detroit visiting my parents for the holiday weekend and today my mother, now 83 years old, mentioned she was having John Lennon's album Imagine converted from vinyl to CD. "I really love that song," she told me, "and I don't have a record player anymore." Yes, I thought, just imagine a world like the one Lennon imagined. Imagine the possibilities for a world where love, caring and peace were a dream come true. Isn't Easter a great time to begin believing dreams can come true?

I recently heard a public radio discussion of the ongoing quest to establish a federal Department of Peace. Some 65 members of the House of Representatives have signed on to a bill introduced in 2007 to create a new cabinet level department. It's an idea that goes back to the administration of George Washington. Imagine what could happen if we had a department equal in influence to the Department of Defense (once known as the War Department) to suggest solutions other than those we habitually seem to favor.

Take for instance our current conflict. Recent estimates peg the eventual payments at well over a trillion dollars. We have already spent 600 billion. What if we had a cabinet level department to say, "maybe we can solve this situation with honey instead of vinegar." Maybe we could have skipped the bombing part and moved right to the reconstruction part at a fraction of the cost. Oh I know, people will say "that would never work; you can't deal with madmen." But the fact is we never tried. Why? Because we lacked the imagination for peace. We lacked a true advocate for peace.

What if we had a cabinet level department charged with imagining the possibility of peace. Isn't Easter the perfect time to start imagining such a possibility? You might call it a resurrection of hope. Imagine.

A Utopian Vision: Believe and Don’t be Afraid

2008-03-20T17:22:00.002-04:00

Those who follow my blog may have noticed its been a while since I posted anything new. I’ve been immersed recently in a new project, writing and recording an exciting audio drama hopefully destined for broadcast on radio. Working with a group of talented actors in a Chicago studio last weekend, we laid down the tracks for the first two of four initial episodes. I can hardly wait to finish and preview the drama here at www.Christianheartbeat.org.

I mention this not to make excuses or explain why I’ve been away from the blog, but because the drama, Adventures on New Eden, reflects a path I’ve found myself following of late: partly utopian, as on the distant planet dubbed New Eden by the earth colonists of a future century, and partly apocalyptic, as in the eleventh chapter of the novel Which One of You? -- which will be posted this weekend. In both cases I feel God tugging me toward of vision of discipleship which can only be described as radical.

In the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul writes, “When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”

Yes, some might say, and what’s more childish than to believe in utopian dreams, or to think some apocalyptic moment is going to put an end to the suffering world we now know and usher in the glorious new age described in Revelation -- a new Jerusalem here on earth. Is it any wonder so many, lacking the faith to believe such things, interpret Revelation’s New Jerusalem as representing the next life, or fashion fanciful tales of Christ returning to earth in the flesh to lead a great conquering army?

So we continue practicing the faith in the limited way we always have: as an organizational structure, as a set of moral principles to live by, as a promise of a reward in the next life for allegiance here to the name of Christ.

But lets take Paul at his word … “When I was a child I spoke, thought and reasoned as a child …” What do we know about Paul prior to that fateful moment on the road to Damascus? We know he advocated a religion that emphasized obedience to an organizational structure and a set of moral principles. When he became an adult he realized that “faith” holds the center of the spiritual universe. And what is faith but the belief that when God created the world and said “it is good,” God meant every word. God created the world as a kind of utopia, mosquitoes included, that exceeds any utopia described in the fiction of humanity.

In the eleventh chapter of Which One of You? Pastor Dietrich gives this definition of apocalypse: “The end of an age marked by man’s values and the beginning of a new age marked by God’s, separated by a wall of fire.” Paul found himself in the middle of that wall of fire and often spoke of the suffering he gladly endured to reach the promised land on the far side -- a place where God’s values flourish. He describes our new earth, our new Jerusalem with the word “grace.” Jesus calls it “the kingdom of heaven.” In either case faith is the garment we wear to pass through the fire without burning up.

As is usually the case in scripture, what seems wise is actually foolish and vice versa. The first shall be last, we are told. And what would seem the conventional “adult” way of thinking, Paul calls the reasoning of a child.

We’ve been promised a utopia, a kingdom of heaven, a graceland here on earth. It’s up to us to claim the promise. Put on the garment of faith. Become an adult. Believe and don’t be afraid.

Healthy Sex? The Answer is More, not Less

2008-03-08T17:44:00.003-05:00

Christianity Today’s online version led this week with a series of articles on sex addiction. Before anyone gets defensive, I’m not saying there is no such thing, even though the writers admit it isn’t a recognized disorder. One of the articles dealt with a California megachurch that’s running a small group for men who feel afflicted by sex addiction. These guys aren’t sexual criminals or pedophiles, just guys who believe they’re spending too much energy on their sexuality. If these groups help them find a new level of peace and contentment, God bless them.

But I get a little nervous whenever the word sin is too closely linked to sexual pleasure, an association Christianity Today describes as being embraced by men in the groups. This has been a habit of Christianity forever and I’ve always suspected it was more about controlling people than helping them. If spending lots of time and money on an activity becomes the definition for a harmful addiction, all you golfers will be in trouble.

In Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth the angels look down from heaven and mock humanity for the way we’ve turned God’s intentions upside down about sex. Here’s this great gift of pleasure God built into our bodies -- perhaps God’s crowning achievement -- and we’ve turned it into our greatest source of shame.

God created the libido as such an irresistible imperative that it can’t be wished away, or saddled with such a sense of guilt that it will just shrink away. Witness the outcome of the Catholic Church’s mandate of celibacy for its priests. For some it worked, but for others the sex drive simply couldn’t be controlled and emerged in perverse ways. As Joe Lewis said about Billy Conn, “you can run but you can’t hide.”

I’m no Greek scholar, but I know from my studies the word translated as “flesh” in New Testament scripture doesn’t refer, as is commonly assumed, to sexuality. Its real meaning focuses on material greed, and self-interest supplanting love of neighbor. I’m also not ready to provide the final answer on how everyone can get so right with their sex drive that it becomes the positive powerhouse God meant it to be. I do know the answer to a healthy sex life isn’t in suppression but expression.

Some would say “yes that‘s true,” but that expression must be in marriage. Certainly, more marriages would prosper if a vibrant sex life was part of the relationship. But as long as we label everything except sex between husband and wife as sin, deviance and addiction, we will continue to confound God’s intentions for this great creative gift.

Without the Spirit the Game Can't Be Played

2008-03-01T11:50:00.004-05:00

This may be hard for some to believe, but lately I’m worn out on politics. I’ve grown tired of watching reports on the primaries and I’m wondering how I’ll ever make it through the election season. I’ve especially grown tired of the way politics has become so much a part of my being Christian.

I know some people would say “it’s about time.” But they’re probably people who never read my stuff anyway. I wish I could escape this compulsion to always ask how our faith should influence the shape of our society, but unfortunately it can’t be done. When you read the Bible carefully, it’s obvious that political values, what we might call God’s politics, are at the heart of it.

But just for today, in the dead space between primary elections, I’d like to think for a minute about the foundation on which God’s values depends: the presence of the God’s Spirit in each of us, and in our relationships with each other.

One of the things which unites Christians is the belief in the Trinity -- God the Creator, God the redeemer, and God the Holy Spiritual presence in our lives. You can confess your obedience to the creator, and declare your allegiance to the redeemer, but without the Spirit, God is invisible in this world and our faith becomes an pleasant nursery rhyme recital. This may startle some people, but the need for the Spirit’s presence is greater than the need was for Christ to come into the world. As Jesus himself told Nicodemus, unless we are reshaped according to the spirit, God’s kingdom has no chance in this world. You might say that Jesus’ main purpose was to introduce God’s Spirit.

Many claim to have God’s Spirit, but how do we know if it’s truly present? Well, we see it in the kind of people we are. How do we know what kind of people we are? We see it in how we treat each other. As John wrote, anyone who declares love for God but doesn’t display it toward brother and sister is fooling themselves. Unfortunately, the church has let a lot of fooling go on over the years by focusing more on obedience and redemption than on lives reshaped in the Spirit. Welcome the Spirit into your heart and you’ll no longer search for obedience and redemption. They will come to you naturally.

But God didn’t send the Son and the Spirit into the world for the small work of changing each one of us, but for the great work of changing the world. If we as individuals are changed but do not change the relationships and politics of this world, we are no more that what Paul in First Corinthians calls “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” On the contrary, Paul says, the gifts of the Spirit are given “for the common good.” And Paul clearly marks the path to change. A life in the Spirit and a world reshaped in God’s Spirit, will have three main characteristics: faith, hope and love, “and the greatest of these is love.”

Wesley's Words Leave Little Time For Rest

2008-02-22T15:44:00.002-05:00

Life can be demanding on a person who listens for God’s guidance on how to live in this mixed up world. You end up saddled with two very difficult questions: How much can I really do? And, how much does God expect me to do?

We all have limitations but we can all do something. Choose something and do something. Some of the world’s injustices will have a personal dimension that leads us to make that our special cause. A mother who has lost a son in the war might make peace her crusade, while a gay man who has known discrimination is inspired to fight for equal treatment under the law.

None of us can do everything but each of us can do something. A very few have a special calling. They simply can’t stand by at all while God’s values are being undermined. They will try to do everything and anything they can in the interest of mercy, compassion and justice, even if it costs their life. Jesus was one of those. He was one of a kind.

But we can and should strive to be as much like Jesus as God makes us able. It’s said that the word “Christian” was first used by the church Paul founded in Antioch. It means “Little Christ.” Perhaps you’ve had the experience of applying Jesus’ words and actions to question a seemingly unchristian reality of our culture, only to have some mainstream “Christian” respond with, “Well, you’re not Jesus.” As if not being able to do all Jesus did, frees us from doing anything. The unfortunate message is, “Go to church on Sunday, confess the name of Christ, and otherwise don’t make waves -- go along with what our secular leaders say. If they weren’t smarter than you, they wouldn’t be our leaders.”

Maybe I‘m wrong, but it seems to me that if the word “Christian” means “little Christ,” and we know Christ was one heck of a wave maker, we should at least be little wave makers, or we shouldn’t call ourselves Christian. Make sense?

Going back to the original questions on how much we really can do as individuals, and how much God expects us to do, John Wesley offers an answer which suggests that if we always keep trying, we‘ll have God‘s approval. Wesley‘s words:

“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”

Sorry folks, but in a world like ours, in a culture like ours, there’s little time to rest.

Church Admits: We Beat the Drums of War Too

2008-02-19T09:53:00.007-05:00

“How many false statements were made from the pulpits and in the Sunday school classes of United Methodist churches in the months before the war? We beat the drums of war, too.”

The question and admission quoted above were part of a speech by Jim Winkler at a United Methodist Conference called “Finding the Church’s Voice in a Violent World.” Winkler is General Secretary of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society. Following are frank admissions on how the war in Iraq was sold and how the church, the Methodist Church in this case but truly most Christian Churches, was complicit in that wanton sales job. This excerpt ends with links to consecutive issues of Faith in Action, where Winkler’s words to the peace conference can be read in full.

“(In late January), a study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism counted 935 false statements in interviews, speeches, briefings and other venues by the Bush Administration prior to the war. On at least 532 occasions, President Bush or his officials stated flat out that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction, or was trying to produce them, or had links to al Qaeda, or both.

“The study concluded, “The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to the war.”

It was difficult to stand up to this hurricane force and a great many of our church leaders failed to do so. How many false statements were made from the pulpits and in the Sunday school classes of United Methodist churches in the months before the war? We beat the drums of war, too.

“Before the war, a United Methodist pastor serving one of our congregations wrote to tell me that Jesus supported war and condoned the use of violence. He pointed out that Jesus had acted violently in overturning the tables in the Temple and authorized His disciples to carry swords to Gethsemane. The pastor then said, “But then, I forget, you don’t take the Bible literally — you decide what it says for yourself.”

“But as Paul Harvey says, "Here's the rest of the story": Yes, they carried swords to Gethsemane. When a disciple used his, though, Jesus intervened and, in fact, healed the wound inflicted. That's the Savior I know and love: healer, peacemaker. I believe Jesus' actions speak as loudly as his words.

“Many did stand against the hysteria and nationalist conformity that preceded this war. They have been proved right by their words of caution and peace. Our bishops have spoken repeatedly against the war. Even in the midst of their powerful calls for the war to end, 109 of our bishops signed a statement of repentance two years ago acknowledging they did not speak up early enough due to our focus on institutional maintenance.

A letter to the editor in one of our annual conference newspapers recently said, in part: “I have always firmly believed that our pastors and bishops were supposed to remain neutral and not get involved in politics,” but in the same letter the writer states, “we should be supporting the president of the United States in our decisions.” Hmmmm.

“This war must end. We are in the midst of a tragedy of historic proportions, and we will be castigated in some quarters for raising the banner of peace. So it has always been.

We have invaded a country, made the local people angry, and then said we will not leave until they’re no longer angry with us. The U.S. must leave Iraq so that Iraq can begin the process of healing because the United States of America cannot fix Iraq. We cannot bring peace to Iraq. We cannot bring democracy to Iraq. But we can stop bombing and killing the people of Iraq.

“The war in Iraq must end and we will continue to work for that end.”

Faith in Action, Feb. 1 edition. Click or paste to browser:
http://www.umc-gbcs.org/site/apps/nlnet/content.aspx?c=frLJK2PKLqF&b=3879657&ct=5011021

Faith in Action, Feb. 8 edition. Click or paste to browser:
http://www.umc-gbcs.org/site/apps/nlnet/content.aspx?c=frLJK2PKLqF&b=3891943&ct=5025025&tr=y&auid=3381395

Muslim, Christian Leaders Exchange Peace

2008-02-13T21:01:00.004-05:00

We have all during our lifetimes seen how easily religious differences can be exploited as an excuse for war. Sometimes it takes as little as different interpretations of the Christian message to provide reason for carnage. In the present time a divisive atmosphere between Christianity and Islam is giving opportunity to absolutists on each side. Recently, 138 Muslim scholars authored a conciliatory message addressed to Christians worldwide. A group of Christian leaders has now responded in the same spirit of reconciliation.

Some Christian leaders, especially conservatives but not all conservatives, have denounced this effort. Thankfully, the signatories to the Christian response includes such prominent Evangelicals as Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, David Neff of Christianity Today, and the President and Vice-President of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Part of the “Christian Response” is quoted below, along with a link to the entire statement and a list of signatories.

Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to “A Common word Between Us and You
In the name of the Infinitely Good God whom we should love with all our Being

Preamble
As members of the worldwide Christian community, we were deeply encouraged and challenged by the recent historic open letter signed by 138 leading Muslim scholars, clerics, and intellectuals from around the world. A Common Word Between Us and You identifies some core common ground between Christianity and Islam which lies at the heart of our respective faiths as well as at the heart of the most ancient Abrahamic faith, Judaism. Jesus Christ’s call to love God and neighbor was rooted in the divine revelation to the people of Israel embodied in the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18). We receive the open letter as a Muslim hand of conviviality and cooperation extended to Christians worldwide. In this response we extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbors.

Religious Peace—World Peace
“Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world.” We share the sentiment of the Muslim signatories expressed in these opening lines of their open letter. Peaceful relations between Muslims and Christians stand as one of the central challenges of this century, and perhaps of the whole present epoch. Though tensions, conflicts, and even wars in which Christians and Muslims stand against each other are not primarily religious in character, they possess an undeniable religious dimension. If we can achieve religious peace between these two religious communities, peace in the world will clearly be easier to attain. It is therefore no exaggeration to say, as you have in A Common Word Between Us and You, that “the future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.”

http://www.yale.edu/faith/abou-commonword.htm

Wanted: Leaders with Courage to Dream Bigger

2008-02-09T16:20:00.000-05:00

Those of you who are parents may understand when I say becoming a father helped save me from myself. Through the late 70s and into the 80s I had become pretty cynical about our culture and especially its leadership class. But as my children began to grow, it occurred to me that if they wanted to be cynical about the world they should have the right to earn it themselves. They shouldn’t inherit it from me.

Granted, you can find a share of cynics and pessimists in any generation, but in general young people are hopeful by nature. This helps explain why so many have flocked to support Barack Obama with his optimistic message of a new direction. But Obama’s wider popularity may stem from a loss of confidence in our leadership class and the basic institutions of our culture. Conservative pundit David Brooks, of the New York Times, says the failure of our leadership class will be the number one issue of the next election. I tend to agree. Mr. Obama is a skilled and inspirational speaker. But more importantly, because of his race, his youth and his limited time in office, he’s also is the candidate least associated with past failures.

In his column today, the Times’ Bob Herbert writes that up to now none of the candidates have laid out the vision for which the nation hungers. Until someone does, elections can be won but the bitter divisions within our nation will continue. Eventually, those divisions will lead America into decline. It is fair to estimate that a third of the country believes that modern liberalism is a failed philosophy. Another third believes the modern conservative philosophy is fatally flawed. The remaining third thinks both should be tossed on the scrap heap. However you figure it, two-thirds of the people believe the two philosophies which have defined our nation through the 20th century are now defunct.

Herbert writes: “There are moments in history that demand not just talent in a nation’s leadership, but greatness — men or women with the courage to dream bigger and the ability to convince others that those dreams can be realized.”

Finding that new dream, that new vision to inspire faith, is the challenge facing our political leaders — and our spiritual leaders as well — in this new century. Without that vision the election will still be won, but the nation will remain broken, church attendance will continue to decline, and spirits will not be healed.

Tolstoy's Cautionary Warning on Human Nature

2008-02-06T22:51:00.000-05:00

I try to make tolerance of others number one on my ethical hit parade. I honestly do. And it’s not always easy, especially when dealing with people who have little respect for the concept. The liberal’s credo goes something like this: I can be tolerant of almost any personal freedom except the freedom to be intolerant. Making that exception seems justifiable, even logical. But like it or not, it leaves us in the same place -- being judgmental toward those with whom we disagree.

We, meaning we humans, have a tendency to assign black hats and white hats to the characters of our lives, whether they’re playing on the local, family or international stage. Avoiding hats in shades of gray makes demonizing our enemies and excusing our own behaviors easier. You could call it the “by definition” method. We are good “by definition” so what we do is good. Enemies, like various Arab peoples, get the opposite assignment. This is especially handy for fighting wars. Once the hats are handed out, we can be sure who’s right and who’s wrong.

Sometimes, when it comes to hat assignments, I talk a better game than I practice, which is not to say we should throw discernment on the scrap heap and declare all values equal. Of course not. God has pretty clear values and they’re spelled out in scripture if we’ll only look for them. But when it comes to divisions among political parties and the various branches of the church, it‘s good to remember no one is perfect. I recently came across a quote from Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s novel Resurrection that sounds a cautionary alarm for us all. Tolstoy writes:

“One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special, definite qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, oftener wise than stupid, oftener energetic that apathetic, or the reverse; but it would be false to say of one man he is kind and wise, of another he is wicked and foolish. And yet we always classify mankind in this way. And this is untrue. Men are like rivers: the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every quality, and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.”

To which we might all say, “amen.”

Christianity for the Few, not for the Many?

2008-02-01T12:25:00.000-05:00

Famed Christian historian and teacher Martin Marty appeared recently on a Chicago public television station to discuss his new book, The Christian World. The retired University of Chicago professor is distinctive for his balanced approach to the faith. He is both an unbiased scholar and a fervent believer.

In the book and interview Marty followed the same pattern, telling both sides. He touts how the Christianity grew in 2,000 years from a veritable handful of followers to become the world’s largest religion boasting over two billion adherents. But at the same time he discusses how membership in the faith is currently in decline.

If you want to know why Marty believes Christianity is shrinking, you’ll need to read the book. The question that fact opens in my mind is, should we be concerned?

In its early centuries Christianity was not only a minority practice, it was very much an outsider religion. Christians felt themselves differentiated by their faith from other members of their cultures. That all changed early in the fourth century when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of Rome. From that point on Christianity began to integrate with the cultures in which it was practiced. In Paul’s New Testament times, Christians wondered how they could accommodate their secular lives -- such as membership in professional guilds -- to lives centered on their Christianity. After Constantine the question became how Christianity could accommodate itself to majority status. As a result Christians became much less “a peculiar people.”

So the church is shrinking. Should we be concerned? Or should we just smile and say, “so be it?” I’ve long puzzled over the so-called Great Commission passage: “Go ye therefore a teach all nations …” It seems at odds with Jesus’ attitude in “pre-Easter” gospel accounts in which he calls people to change essentially if they care to follow him. If they are unwilling to give up much, he lets them walk away without regret. Jesus in his wisdom seemed to know this is a faith for the few, not the many.

By contrast, the majority voices in American Christianity today carefully craft their message to isolate the powerful majority from their slings and arrows while picking off the weaker minorities. So we receive constant barrages from organizations like Dr. Dobson’s Focus on the Family against tiny minorities like the gay and lesbian community while messages like Jesus’ challenge to the rich young ruler to give up his many possessions seem to have been stripped from their Bibles.

In a recent issue of its online magazine Dr. Dobson’s group attacks Barack Obama for something he once said about marijuana use. Yet they have remained quiet or have tried to justify the devastation caused by our current war. On the smaller issues that won’t offend their constituencies, they cry out. But on the great issues of life and death, war and peace, economic injustice, compassion for oppressed minorities? Silence. Many true spiritual seekers who were born into Christian homes spot the shallow phoniness and want nothing to do with such a church.
What should it mean to be Christian? I’ll answer with Jesus’ own statement, made at the beginning of his ministry and recorded in Luke 4:18, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”

Finding the Church's Voice on the Violence of War

2008-01-29T22:19:00.000-05:00

I’ve now lived long enough to see our nation engulfed in two protracted wars in which hundreds of thousands lost their lives. While the two wars -- Vietnam and Iraq -- have significant differences, they share these things in common: both were justified by clear deceptions, massive numbers of people died who otherwise would have lived, and many more had their lives thoroughly disrupted. In both situations the church either stayed substantially silent or waved the flag as if it had forgotten its special mission.

This weekend I’ll attend a Peace Conference in North Carolina sponsored by the Southeast Jurisdiction of the Methodist Church. I’ll drive some 600 miles to be a part of it because I want to add my “amen” to the effort.

I know many heartfelt Christians will disagree with me on this, but it’s my impression from careful reading of scripture that of all the betrayals of God’s intentions the one most likely to bring a tear to God’s eye is the violence we practice against each other. In Genesis it is central to the way we strayed from the beauty of creation and the primary reason for God’s overwhelming disappointment in the story of Noah and the flood. “I have determined to make an end of all flesh,” God tells Noah, “for the earth is filled with violence because of them.”

Many would argue that violence perpetrated by governments is essentially different than that of individuals. I would say yes; it is worse. If the church will not join God in deploring this violence there’s little chance anyone will.

So it is a sign of hope that at least one corner of one of our major denominations is holding a conference to address a question many individual Christians have asked: why isn’t the church’s voice more audible on this subject? By no means am I suggesting nothing is being done or that I’m the only one who cares about this issue. In September I attended a rally which brought many believers together at a local church to celebrate the International Day of Peace. In fact, I believe it’s because a ground swell of individual Christians have rejected our government turning so quickly to war as an answer to political conflict that the institutional church is now facing up to the issue. Whatever the motivation, I’m pleased to see it happening.

The conference will feature a series of workshops on practical questions facing clergy, lay Christians and congregations on the local level, such as Preaching on Difficult Issues, the Local Church as Peace Advocate, and Building Communities of Nonviolence, as well as presentations on international action involving peace through the United Nations, peace in Palestine and how the church played a crucial role in South Africa’s peace accord.

Dr. Peter Storey will launch the program with a conference opening message titled Finding the Church’s Voice in a Violent World. I hope it happens soon. I don’t feel it’s hyperbole to say if the church is unwilling to cry “peace” loud enough to shake the halls of congress and rattle all the news networks’ talking heads, then we should simply admit we haven’t the courage to champion God’s values. We could close the doors, reconvene at a local sports bar and get ready for a real religious event like the Super Bowl.

Injustice Anywhere Threatens Justice Everywhere

2008-01-25T00:02:00.000-05:00

I had a chance to witness first hand last Monday how the annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration has become a rallying point for an entire spectrum of people who feel our culture treats them as less than fully welcome, less than equal. I was part of a Dr. King Day “poetry jam,” and along with African-Americans generally associated with the civil rights movement Dr. King led, the performers included Hispanics, gay men and lesbian women -- do I need to say why they are concerned -- and a Middle Eastern woman who read poetry describing how the author had been treated with suspicion ever since September 11, 2001. This was not in any way a complaint session, but rather a celebration of those things that make us different, coupled with an insistence that those differences shouldn’t be a liability.

I had written a performance poem titled “Why I Want my Dr. King’s Day Say,” and as the evening wore on and those who had suffered genuine discrimination took the stage, I began to wonder if I had made a mistake. Why should I, a straight white male, a straight white Anglo-Saxon male, need to speak on such a day as this. Actually, that thought had bothered me from the moment I first signed up to perform and now seeing how people had suffered for being themselves, I wondered if maybe I should just sit back and feel either sympathetic or guilty -- or a little of each.

But I did have something to say, a view of racial and ethnic relations based on experience. I won’t go into my bona fides but the fact is I knew I had something concrete to add to the discussion. And on top of that, when my turn came I remembered the words of Dr. King had written from the Birmingham jail in 1963. “Injustice anywhere,” he wrote, “is a threat to justice everywhere.” I knew that included me; if one could be victimized by a self-serving culture, then all are vulnerable. Just speak the unpopular truth and you may learn the hard way -- and you don’t need to be black, Latino or Latina, gay, lesbian, Native American or Middle Eastern to find yourself paying the price of freedom.

Still, as I stood to perform my poem (which ran on this page last week) I wondered how I would be received. Like a friend or an enemy? I’m happy to say I was given a very warm welcome. I was not “the white man,” but another person who cared enough about justice to go out on a cold Chicago evening to join in celebrating this special day. Apparently, those who have felt the sting of intolerance are not quick to turn the needle on another, even when he is a straight white WASP of a male. For that I am thankful.

Why I Want My Say on Dr. King’s Day

2008-01-18T12:19:00.000-05:00

(I wrote the following performance poem for a poetry jam this Monday celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday. Hope it has meaning for you)

Why should I get my Dr. King’s Day say? Look close or just glance my way. My skin even in the palest light. White. White man, white American, white baby, white boy, white man grown, always white, never wrong always white. Never a worry, never a fear. Never denied my right to books. Never denied my right to vote. Never suspect behind a Mercedes’ wheel. Never had a Mercedes to wheel but, in a suit and tie, I’d look right in that leather seat. Never had to watch from the corner of my eye walking with a woman not like me. Never fear. Never worry. Never the different one here. Why should I get my Dr. King’s Day say? My skin even in the palest light, white.

Tell me your truth and I’ll tell you mine. Young man in Detroit, hearing the slurs in my younger years, lucky later to learn the truth, not from hearts of stone but flesh and blood that flows. Found myself in a two race world. Black friends then, I have to say, most more middle class than me, but no matter, born black, had no choice but to be black and so tried to teach me. Traded the Beatles for Bobby Blue Bland, grew long hair to piss off the boss, drove a big American sedan, wore a sharkskin suit, took up jazz and understood … what a difference a day makes, only 24 hours … smoked Kools, drank Johnny Walker Black and smoked something cooler. Came to Chicago and chanted with Jesse, “I am somebody,“ taught inner city kids, and learned to dance so smooth acid-gyrating hippies asked is he one of us or one of them and everyone sang, “different strokes for different folks.”

But let’s tell it right. Still I was white. Still am, still was. Still the majority man waiting just a haircut away. Put on the blue suit and a winning smile, I’m no longer black if I ever was but the golden boy ready to rise. So why should I get my say on Dr. King‘s Day?

Please indulge me if you will … even if I haven’t suffered in full. Why is it that I want my say? Well, I’ve watched how this world turns … together we rise, apart we fall. If they can come for one, they can come for one and all. Because when God’s creating word made woman and man and named us good … no mention was made of this race or that. Don’t try to hide, don’t try to run, check your heart and you’ll know it’s clear, all the sisters and brothers here came up from one.

My skin even in the palest light. White. So why on this day should I want my say? This simple my friends: The story is ours, not mine or yours, and there’s more to be written -- much, much more.

Bridging Divides of Faith, Within and Between

2008-01-17T15:19:00.000-05:00

I don’t know whether or not the Justice Department has anything on this former Republican congressman they’ve now accused of aiding terrorists. I do know their conviction record is pretty poor when it comes to actually proving their accusations against so-called terrorist sympathizers.

It’s also a little curious that this gentleman from Michigan, former congressman Mark Siljander, is an evangelical Christian writing a book about closing the rift between Christians and Muslims. We know the Justice Department is supposed to be apolitical, but “supposed” hasn’t always meant “is.” I don’t know what the congressman may have done, but a little skepticism is in order. Many in the political class have benefited since 2001 by pointing fingers and creating fear of Islam wherever the faith may exist.

Wishing to dampen animosity toward our Muslim brothers seems to me an appropriate Christian sentiment. I applaud Mr. Siljander for his instincts in that direction. What surprises me -- and seems distinctly contrary to the ways of Jesus -- is the desire by some Christian leaders to fan the flames of distrust between the two faiths. I’m not advocating adding their holy book as an equal to our sacred documents any more that I would suggest such status for the Book of Mormon, but in the minds of Muslims the God they worship is the same one we worship. Abraham, Moses and Jesus are among their greatest prophets. Why not start with that fact and try to build bridges? It might save lives.

Speaking of crossing divides, I had this fantasy recently of conservative and progressive Christians sitting down in a negotiation aimed at finding two contemporary issues we could share to strengthen the nation’s moral fiber. Actually, it’s not really a fantasy; I’ve actually done this with Evangelical friends. I let them go first and right away they toss abortion on the table. I say yes, I’m very troubled by abortion and I think those of us on the left have not been forthright enough in telling our secular allies “no, we have to step back from abortion on demand. It can’t always be a matter of the mother’s choice. The right must be carefully circumscribed and not casually used for birth control.”

Now it’s my turn. I place war on the table. Like abortion, I say, the use of war must be carefully limited to only the most extreme situations. Look at our current war: hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, rampant ethnic cleansing, and really no improvement in the standard of living for the people. As Christians, I tell my negotiating partner, you must do like us on abortion and stand up to your secular allies and tell them unnecessary death does not fit in Christian morality.

But they’ll have none of it. Somehow they’ve massaged Christ’s message until war becomes an easy fit. They would prefer making gay men loving each other a greater sin than the death of innocents. I don’t get it. The world seems upside down. It’s the kind of world in which advocating better relations with Muslims might get you arrested.

The Change We Seek is a Change of Heart

2008-01-12T21:31:00.000-05:00

“Change” has become the buzz word of the current political season. It’s almost always used the same way President Bush uses the word democracy -- without reference to what it really means. It’s reasonable to assume that change in America means something different than what we have right now, just like a change to democracy in the Middle East suggests something different that what they have now. In either case the words “for the better” are implied. Change for the better is what we’re looking for. That only makes sense.

In its early days Christianity was sold as systematic change. The Greeks and Romans Paul encountered practiced primitive polytheistic systems more as a culture than a faith. For them Christianity was a step from a theatrical religion to one demanding a true commitment of the heart. In other words, these educated Gentiles didn’t really believe their stone and metal idols were Gods, so Paul’s Christianity offered to exchange something real and powerful for something they knew to be imaginary. He managed to entice more than a few.

For the Jews who became Christians it was quite another story, and this is the part that’s instructive to understanding what people may be yearning for when they embrace the word “change.” The Jews very much believed God was real and embraced an elaborate system for getting right with God. Christianity also believed in the truth of God but offered a radically changed approach to joining in God’s righteousness. You might call a contrast between the logical and the intuitive, head vs. heart, or as Christians describe it, achievement of righteousness vs. righteousness by the gift of God’s grace.

Paul, an elaborate theologian, is the source of much of what we teach about grace, but the intuitive, heart-centered approach to knowing God might be better described in the simple words of Jesus: “Seek first the kingdom of God.” Do that and the way to all the rest will become apparent. This I believe embodies the kind of “change” we desire in our national fabric -- not a change in policy but a change of heart.

Over the years I’ve seen the following excerpt from Benjamin Reist’s book on Dietrich Bonhoeffer help many understand how grace works to recreate who we are and empower us to change our world. I offer it here, hoping it can help bring a change of heart. Take the time to read it carefully, especially the last sentence.

“Bonhoeffer characterizes the Pharisee as ‘that extremely admirable man who subordinates his entire life to his knowledge of good and evil and is as severe a judge of himself as of his neighbor …’. The Pharisee’s problem, to which he devotes the entire momentum of his life, is the problem of this conflict (between good and evil) and the decisions necessary to overcome it. This explains the continuous and unresolvable argument between the Pharisees and Jesus. The Pharisee is preoccupied, anxiously so, with an issue Jesus has left behind, and Jesus is speaking in terms of a reality the Pharisee cannot or will not recognize. ... for the Pharisee the problem is for man to reach God by way of the integrity and constancy of his own decisions; for the Christian the challenge is to make decisions in the light of the fact that God has reached him.”

The Bradley Factor is Simply the Human Factor

2008-01-09T20:58:00.000-05:00

Much election night analysis of why the polls were so wrong in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary focused on what is called “the Bradley Factor.” That’s Tom Bradley, the black losing candidate for mayor of Los Angeles who the polls predicted as a sure winner. Like Barack Obama. Bradley isn’t the only example, but the theory goes something like this: People don’t want to admit they harbor racial biases so they tell pollsters they are going to support a black candidate they know they would support, if not for his or her race. But when the curtain closes they vote otherwise -- or they just stay home.

The same phenomenon in reverse might be called the David Duke factor. The former Klan kingpin always ran better than he polled. That’s the beauty of the secret ballot. You can be yourself, even when you‘re ashamed of who you are. Notably, by Wednesday the TV news outlets had dropped this line of speculation. We remain as a nation unwilling to face our chronic prejudices.

The “Bradley Factor” might also be called the “human factor,” and it’s not uniquely American. The apostle Paul put it something like this: “those things I know I should do I don’t do. And those things I wish I wouldn’t do, I do.” It’s not easy being people. Reading the early part of the Bible you get the impression God thought he did a pretty good job of creating us. We proved God wrong on that one, which is how we ended up needing this thing called grace, where we’re not dependent on being better than Paul, or Duke supporters, or Bradley deserters.

The other day Christian Heartbeat received a generous donation from a personal friend who has been reading our publication. I was very thankful and proud that he and his wife support our work. He called our mission here “noble.” Paul writes in Romans that our actions in life should “take thought for what is noble.” I’d like to believe that’s what I’m doing but sometimes I wonder if I’m just completely full of myself. When I do, I console myself with the knowledge two of Christianity’s great heroes, Mother Teresa and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor killed for opposing Hitler, also challenged themselves with the same question: Are my actions, which look sacrificial to others, nothing but a giant ego trip?

Neither was ever sure -- probably an indication in their favor, but that speaks to the impossibility of really knowing what makes any of us tick. So we struggle on with the “Bradley Factor,” never fully sure what motivates our brothers and sisters, and with the “human factor,” not even sure how we are motivated ourselves.

Lost Faith in Leaders Could Signal Hopeful New Era

2008-01-04T15:05:00.000-05:00

Thursday night. The Iowa caucuses are about to convene. The drumbeat countdown to the 2008 primary season is finally over. On PBS and the Jim Lehrer News Hour conservative columnist David Brooks makes a comment that seems to come out of nowhere and disappear unnoticed: the most important issue of the 2008 elections will be the failure of the leadership class. If there’s any meaning to the results in Iowa, where the two candidates closest to being outsiders finished on top, maybe Brooks is right.

On most news agency radar screens the economy and the war in Iraq register the biggest blips. But these are limited issues compared to what Brooks is seeing. He speaks of something more comprehensive, a perception by the people of failed political, economic and moral systems. Wars like Iraq and a slowing economy usually call for corrections. What Brooks senses is a call for reformation. We are now, in America, at the most apocalyptic moment since World War II, bigger for many reasons than the Vietnam era of the 60s. Even then, we believed better leadership was possible. Now many have lost faith the leadership class has answers, and worse yet, any genuine concern for their country and its people.

For months I’ve said the time is ripe for the church to develop a new vision for the nation and step forward to lead. In fact, like poet T.S. Eliot, I’ve argued that no institution other than the church can provide the necessary leadership. But unfortunately the church is part of the failed leadership class, fiddling over marginal issues like ordaining homosexuals while the fires of lost faith continue to rage.

Fortunately, when a season of discontent reaches full ripeness it usually means the beginning of a new era. This is the path of apocalypse: the uncomfortable end of a rejected era ushers in a new era more in tune with the people’s needs. The church must be ready to participate in shaping that new era -- not in the inappropriate sense of supporting one political party over the other -- but in a fullness that speaks to economic and political issues as well as morality and faith. It is often in the political and economic realm that morality and faith take form.

The bankruptcy of leadership is visible throughout our culture, from our fear mongering film industry to economic systems designed to undermine the middle class and push the hard working poor deeper into poverty while profligate hedge fund managers bury their heads in the feeding trough.

Thankfully, scripture provides us with a detailed blueprint. At any time in history, in any corner of the world, God’s values as expressed in God’s Word offer a vision for a happier, more prosperous culture. In fact scripture could be described as a roadmap to apocalyptic change. We’ve been moving toward it since Israel entered Canaan, but always it’s been two steps forward and one step back. What choices do God’s values demand? Courage over fear, hope over despair, peace over war, love over hate, generosity over selfishness, inclusion over exclusion, opportunity over oppression, fair distribution of resources to the many over hoarding by the few, forgiveness over condemnation, and creation over destruction of natural resources.

God provided enough that all the world might live in abundance and joy. Christ came to shine a light on that destiny. What the people want now is leadership committed to God’s goals whether expressed in the language of faith, politics or economics. The church should do everything it can to make it happen. This may be the moment of rebirth scripture promises.

Can We Join Hands to Rock the World in 2008?

2007-12-29T10:11:00.000-05:00

I had planned to run with the pack and write a feature on the top 10 faith stories of 2007. Believe me, as a newspaper reporter I’ve filled many an inch of newsprint with these year-end remembrances. Filling the “news hole” while employees enjoy the holidays with family may be the main purpose of the year-in-review genre.

But as I compiled my list for 2007 it hit me we should be looking forward and not back. Two trends I saw in 2007 convinced me of that. The first is the continuing rise of the emerging church; the second is the softening of the evangelical movement. “By God,” I thought, “we could have a convergence be in the works!”

Much has been written about the “emerging” movement, but mainly looking from the outside in. Many Christians I know in mainline churches would fit nicely into the category without ever having heard the words “emerging church.” So here’s my take on the emerging movement derived not from the writings of religious academics or major publications, but from the pews and meeting rooms of local churches:

Emerging Christians are action oriented. We see scripture, and Jesus himself in a historical context as someone affecting change in the here and now. We want to do the same. Scripture therefore is not an ancient document to be studied and revered, but a record of action on God’s behalf that can be used in our current context as a guide for our own actions.

Emerging Christians are spiritual, even mystical. We don’t believe in the separation of heaven and earth. We believe God’s Spirit is a real and present force in the world that can be felt in a tangible way. We know that those who followed Jesus sensed this presence in him, observing that he spoke with authority not seen in other religious leaders. Some reach this spiritual consciousness through deep prayer that is more like meditation than the word prayers familiar to traditional Christians. Others reach spiritual heights through intense action in the way a marathon runner reaches a “runner’s high.” As a pathway to a higher spiritual plane, scripture is seen as metaphorical and not subject to easy intellectual dissection. Notice how Jesus used word pictures we call parables, and not academic statements, to describe the “kingdom of heaven.”

Finally, emerging Christians seek political progress. We believe God meant it when creation was described as “good.” We understand that God intended fairness, compassion and justice for all people of the earth. Emerging Christians recognize that Jesus stood up against abusive elites, including the Romans, in defense of the poor, the disabled and other oppressed people. We believe we must do the same in our own culture. We don’t see life on earth as a “vale of tears” to be endured as we wait for our reward in heaven. We will never restore Eden, but we can make this place more like God intended -- or die trying as Jesus did.

Emerging Christians are evangelical by nature, that is we believe in spreading the good news that Christ brought to earth. The traditional church as we’ve known it over the past two or three hundred years has a fairly formulaic definition of the good news: believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and gain the reward of eternal life. But now the more conservative Evangelical church is starting to see beyond this simple recipe. Mission work is no longer focused only on “winning souls” for Christ but on relieving suffering. And when new thinkers in the Evangelical community championed an environmental “green movement,” traditionalists were unable to defeat them.

There’s much work to be done and divisions that defy compromise, but it seems clear to me that emerging Christians and traditional Evangelicals have these two things in common: an intense love for Jesus and an overwhelming dedication to the Christian life. Could 2008 be the year we begin setting aside our differences? If we did, we could really rock this world.

Bhutto's Murder Calls Us to Stand Up for Peace

2007-12-28T10:48:00.000-05:00

Benizer Bhutto’s murder is being viewed by some in this country as proof we must stand even more violently against extremists who would do such things. Nothing could be further from the truth. When we line up with Mao Tse-Tung in his belief that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” we become the comrade of murderers and not their enemy.

Since this political murder has occurred on the Asian subcontinent it’s appropriate to recall the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” The contrast in the words of Mao and Gandhi present a choice. Which path will we follow as Americans? As Christians? Sure, a few in the American church have spoken from the pulpit against death and destruction as foreign policy. But where is the committed call for active resistance? Who but followers of the Prince of Peace have the organization, the voice and the standing in the court of public opinion to make such a call?

Ms. Bhutto now takes her place in a long line of murdered prophets who put serving God’s wish for the world above their own personal safety. The list stretches back into history and includes Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. As with the others, she knew she would die for her beliefs and didn’t shrink away. We wonder why so many view the church today as an impotent shell; we need look no further than the streets of Baghdad and Pakistan.

Of course, it will be politically safer for American preachers to rail against Ms. Bhutto’s murder. No well-heeled parishioner is likely to huff off over that one. But if death is acceptable for us as a tool of regime change, then it’s acceptable for them. You are what you do, baby. Any other claim is pure sophistry.

Many called on Jesus to lead a military rebellion against the brutal Roman occupation. If ever violence could be justified as a path, this was the time. But Jesus made a conscious decision for another path. He knew that to take up the sword would fundamentally alter him and his mission. He had come to embody God’s peaceful wish for the world and knew he couldn’t have it both ways. So he sacrificed himself to serve God and to “be the change” he wanted to see in the world.

Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi political activist and a former prisoner of Saddam Hussein. In her book City of Widows she describes how the American invasion and the prior sanctions have decimated her country. According to Ms. Zangana, the best numbers from sources within Iraq -- sources ignored by the western press -- count over one million war-related fatalities in Iraq since the invasion in 2003, most of them men. In Baghdad alone, she says, there are 300,000 war widows. But events in Pakistan prove that those who believe in enforcing their truth with bullets and bombs don’t really care about the gender of their victims.

The Church as Champion of a New Vision

2007-12-22T13:57:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week I wrote about the price the church has paid for continuing to walk hand-in-hand with the culture. In the world of Richard Land, the Southern Baptists' ethics czar, Christianity’s struggle with American culture shrinks down to one word: Sex. I’m not Richard Land. Which is not to say I’m untroubled by the crass sexuality our culture peddles, but that’s more a symptom that the root of America’s lost vision.

More at the heart of our confusion is our simultaneous practice of two religions so different that there’s really no room for them to co-exist. Jesus acknowledged this when he said “no man can serve two masters.” Many Christians choke on these passages in Matthew’s 7th chapter, especially when Jesus goes on to say, “You cannot serve both God and wealth, You’ll either hate one and love the other.“ Even to discuss these words risks whispers of “socialist!” and accusations of being un-American. But the point isn’t that we should all take a vow of poverty, or that having wealth is ungodly. Later in the same chapter Jesus says, “God knows you need these (material) things.” Christians who care enough to explore these “two masters” admonitions are often eager for a way to make serving God compatible with our acquisitive society. A first step might be to admit the essential difference between the universal laws of an infinite God and finite economic systems that are man-made and subject to human manipulation.

Princeton economist Paul Krugman wrote recently of how a religious belief “in the perfection of free markets” facilitated the sub-prime mortgage collapse that now threatens the entire economy. Krugman described federal regulators as “blinded by ideology,” noting then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s allegiance to the principles of Ayn Rand, the “high priestess of unfettered capitalism.” At the heart of their faith system is the belief that each individual’s pursuit their own self interest will inevitably benefit society in general. As Greenspan wrote in an article for Rand’s newsletter, “it is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product.”

That sounds logical, but apparently you can’t count on it working every time, like for instance God’s love and compassion. What would a free enterprise system based on God’s values look like? The answer is laid out in the books of Moses. It’s a society that balances the interests of the many, especially of the most vulnerable, with the self-interest of the powerful few. In fact it was for the exact purpose of establishing such a caring culture that God supplanted the Canaanite oligarchy with the covenant people of Israel. Jesus continued the fight by challenging the spirituality of religious leaders who prospered financially by throwing in with the Romans while their people suffered in poverty.

Our challenge as an American church is to champion a vision that puts God’s values first, a vision with clear priorities whenever we see God‘s intentions at odds with human self-interest. It will give us authenticity we have lost. No man can serve two masters.

An Apocalyptic Vision: Can a Remnant Prevail?

2007-12-19T09:55:00.000-05:00

I wrote in a recent article on divorce among Christians that the church has lost membership since the sixties. The best studies show it’s true and anecdotal evidence from local congregations supports the studies: a smaller percentage of Americans are in church week to week. Some would say, yes, but the people still practicing the faith do so with greater fervor, which may be a worthy tradeoff. God has worked with remnants before.

Many remember a time when the church and the culture walked hand-in-hand. Guys named Ike and Jack were in the White House, Andy was taking care of business in Mayberry and that darn Beaver was always in trouble. Maybe we were deluding ourselves even then, thinking God and American culture shared the same values. But even if we weren’t, those days are gone.
This is not to say the culture hasn’t seen some progress on equal opportunity issues like racial equality, women’s rights, gay and lesbian visibility. It has. But progress has come because people were willing to take risks and stand in opposition to the status quo.

Many in the church, good middle class folk, still cling to a baby blanket belief in the American promise that almost everyone embraced after World War II. In fact, they’ll die still believing and therein lies the problem. Who’ll take their place in the pews? For younger generations the church has become irrelevant. It is not a natural fit with the culture, because it’s values are clearly not the same. And it hasn’t generally shown the courage to offer an alternative vision by standing against the wasteland of our modern material culture. It sits impotently in between, the Monarch of Nothingness, a shell of it’s former self and a shadow of what it might be.

If the church is going to prevail in the war for hearts and minds it first needs to realize it is at war -- which is not to say we should put on the angry xenophobic face of those who prosper from the death and destruction of bullets and bombs. As usual Jesus provides a good model. Jesus wore God’s heart on his sleeve, which infuriated the religious leaders who had traded control of their church for a life of luxury. They were willing to turn their backs on Roman oppression and the poverty of their own people as long as temple taxes were paid and their bellies were full.

But Jesus would have none of it and his answer was apocalypse: confrontation to end the current corrupt system, and the beginning of a new era where God’s values of justice, compassion and love would prevail. In other words, restoration of God’s intentions for creation and for human kind.

Right now the battle has been joined on a guerilla level. The church I’m attending has declared itself a “reconciling” congregation and opened its doors all shapes of people. And guess what, those once shunned in both the church and the larger culture are coming in and feeling at home. The Episcopal Church has taken a stand by ordaining homosexual clergy and has paid a price for doing the right thing. These are good starts but only skirmishes if the church is to embrace the kind of covenant responsibilities described in scripture. If the church wishes to inspire a new vision for a new era, it must offer something radically different than the selfish materialism that is the current religion of American culture. I’ll write more about that later this week.

Jesus' True Teachings Could be Good Politics

2007-12-15T20:19:00.000-05:00

Here I am in a “Disciples” class a few years back trying to explain grace and why it’s so superior to “reaching God” through the law and by avoiding all those naughty things named in the 10 Commandments and other parts of "the Book." A friend in the class, a school teacher and all around pretty bright woman, was scratching her head over the idea of grace and salvation coming as a gift through Christ’s sacrifice. It seemed just too mechanical. She felt there had be another way, a fresh way, to talk about what it means to be Christian.

Maybe she's right. Maybe we’re balled up like a sweaty sheet from theological tossing and turning over how obedience to the law fits with God’s grace. She steps in, smart but no trained theologian, and sees there has to a third way.

I was reminded of her resistance to my “grace formulations” by Judith Warner’s opinion piece titled “Holier Than They” in Thursday’s NY Times. She takes a lay person’s peek at the faith and wonders why the core concerns people on the street would call “Christian” seem to be missing:

“These days … for all the talk of religion, there is little public soul-searching about the absence of care and compassion, love, acceptance and inclusion – the things that many consider to be the essence of Christianity – in the words of our purported Christian leaders.”

And while she sees what we’ve previously pointed out in this space -- cracks in the conservative movement’s solid wall of propaganda, she wonders if it may be too late:

“The Christian conservative vote is, apparently, splintering. Younger evangelicals are increasingly said to be interested in putting their faith to greater use than bashing gays, promoting guns and putting God on the presidential ticket. That would seem to indicate that we’re facing a moment of opportunity: a chance to expand and amplify the reach of the voice of religious moderation. The silence I’m hearing makes me think, though, that as a society we’ve come to accept the slippage of prejudicial and hateful attitudes into religious doctrine as somehow normal.”

That slippage, while deplorable, is facilitated by ordinary means. Most of us are set up for it the first time we write a research paper in high school or college. You propose an idea and then look for a “proof passage” in the literature. Too much of that approach in studying the Bible can obscure scripture’s true essence and open the door to deceivers. My Disciple class friend was suggesting a little less theology and a little more ardent application of the KIS theory. If we’re ready to defend the soul of Jesus’ message -- that we love God and our neighbor as ourselves -- it’ll be harder for the haters to play their game.

Warner borrows a phrase from a Times editorial condemning “Islam’s silent moderates” for inaction in the “appalling, brutal and bigoted” case of a Saudi woman sentenced to prison for being gang raped, and asks when Christian moderates will end their silence:

“It would be nice today to hear a candidate step up and oppose all that is ‘appalling, brutal and bigoted’ in the limited religious views that substitute for spirituality in American politics today. Who knows — it might even be good politics.”

Why Did Break Away Diocese Choose This Fight?

2007-12-12T10:43:00.000-05:00

I grew up in a blue collar place where almost every male learned to fight. It was a matter of survival. Some liked to fight for the fun of it and I was one of those. There was something very exhilarating about feeling your blood boil.

As I matured and my horizons began to expand, physical fighting lost its appeal, but the desire to feel my blood boil didn’t. I found I was pretty good at rhetorical nose punching, so the intellectual argument took the place of flying fists. Politics, sports, you name it, I was a ready teddy. But as I moved further along in my evolution, I began to realize the wisdom of choosing your fights. You can tell a lot about a person by the fights they choose.

This week an Episcopal diocese in California chose to fight over whether homosexuals can be as fully Christian as heterosexuals. That’s probably not how they would phrase it, but that’s really what is shrinks down to. The Episcopal Church in the U.S. is part of a worldwide Anglican fellowship that traces its roots back to the Church of England.

Over the weekend delegates at the annual convention of the San Joaquin diocese voted to secede from the national Episcopal Church. Clergy and lay delegates alike voted in large majorities to secede in objection to the right of partnered gay and lesbian believers to serve as Episcopal ministers. The move is likely to have dire spiritual and legal consequences. History says the parent church will fight to retain the property of individual parishes within the diocese. It’s not a small fight and choosing it speaks volumes about who these people are.

Let’s be up front; there are a few verses sprinkled through scripture that speak against homosexuality. Most are set in a historical context quite different from our contemporary context of gays and lesbians in committed and monogamous relationships -- the type of sexual relationship we generally find acceptable for heterosexual clergy. But the passages are there. The question is, when did perfect compliance with all scripture become a prerequisite for being Christian? The church, after all, is often described as a club for sinners. Admitting you are one is the price of admission.

Why have they chosen this fight rather than, say, Jesus’ frequent admonition against lives devoted to the accumulation of wealth? Their choice speaks to who they are and, while I could guess what it says, in their own hearts they know and I’m afraid it ain’t pretty. One thing it might say is they’re not fully committed to believing God’s grace is the umbrella under which all Christians stand.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, elected last year as the first woman to lead the U.S. Episcopal Church, had warned San Joaquin Bishop John-David Schofield against voting to break away from the denomination but did not threaten specific consequences. Jefferts Schori supports ordaining partnered gays and lesbians.

"We deeply regret their unwillingness or inability to live within the historical Anglican understanding of comprehensiveness," she said in a statement after the vote. "We wish them to know of our prayers for them and their journey."

Time for Us to Admit God Plays No Favorites

2007-12-08T18:18:00.000-05:00

I don’t spend as much time pondering theology as I once did, but I’ve long believed that if the this doctrine called “original sin” makes any sense at all (and I have my doubts), it’s as an admission there will be times when the interests of two well intentioned people collide. When they do, the tendency to act in our own interest -- rather than defer to the equally just interest of the other -- might be a flaw in our design that could fit the definition of original sin. Of course, this human tendency could be seen as biological, nothing more than an expression of our survival instinct. And maybe it’s not even inevitable. You can find examples of people overcoming the inclination to put ourselves first. Jesus comes to mind.

An article in Saturday’s New York Times (Young Israelis Resist Challenges to Settlements) offers a good example of dueling views over a claim to justice. The story tells of a particular house in the West Bank and 17 acres of adjoining land planted mostly with olive and almond trees. The land belongs to a Palestinian family, but they can’t so much as harvest olives from their trees without threats of harm from the young Israelis. The young settlers have occupied the house and are renovating it. This action -- taking the house and land -- is illegal under Israeli law, but sympathy for the settler community runs deep and in this case no one has taken action against them.

Many young Israeli settlers are deeply idealistic and religious. Generally admirable people. They are, no doubt, consistently caring in their relationships with each other. And most westerners, especially Christians given the part we’ve played in an abusive history, are instinctively sympathetic to both the Jews and Israelis. Still, I believe intellectual honestly, if not justice, would be better served if the settlers would just step forward and say, “Yes, this Palestinian family has a just complaint. They are being treated with great unfairness, but I can’t help it. In this case I’m simply going to put my own interests first.” That would be understandable, and human.

But that’s not what they’ve done. Instead, they’ve appropriated God for themselves, as if the Palestinians are not also part of God’s creation, declaring that they don’t really care whether this family loses its rights or is forced to become refugees in a foreign land. In fact, that’s their very recommendation for them. Worse yet, rather than accept their own selfish humanity, a spokesperson tries to put it off on God: “God gave this (land) to us,” he said. “Now that we’re here, I don’t think we’re going to move.”

In fairness to the young Israelis, the idea that God can be made small and limited to a particular land or nation is just as rampant among Christians in America where “for God and country“ is still a favorite theme. Mitt Romney is not the only politician to seek advantage from draping the flag over the cross. The idea of “gods” who reside in a certain land, favoring their resident nations is a primitive concept prevalent throughout the world in the years prior to Christ. This is one of the misunderstandings swept away by Jesus’ teachings. Recognizing that God plays no favorites is an absolute prerequisite to God’s values of peace, justice and compassion taking hold throughout creation. Nothing less should be tolerated: whether in America or in Israel and the West Bank.

Is it Time for Combative Christians to Seek Peace?

2007-12-06T11:06:00.000-05:00

It has happened before. Allies who once marched together now moving apart, one choosing reconciliation while the other continues on the path of confrontation. Recent articles reflect that possibility for two of the powerful online voices of American Evangelicalism.

Earlier this week Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink.com published an account of its continuing war with the American Psychological Association (APA) over Focus’s insistence that gays and lesbians choose between their sexual orientation and their faith. But just as we were about to scream “give it a rest” to combative Christian conservatives, Christianity Today.com offered a sensitive suggestion we Christians stop asking Jews and other non-Christians to say “Merry Christmas” or else get off the planet for the holiday season. Enough of this “War on Christmas” chatter they said; to which we say “Amen.”

Written by Ted Olsen, the Christianity Today piece (titled Do They Know It’s Hanukkah?) mocks the passion of self-appointed defenders of Christmas:

“One organization is selling bumper stickers that read, "This is America! And I'm going to say it: Merry Christmas!" and "Merry Christmas! An American Tradition." (I don't remember the American part of the Christmas story, but I haven't re-read Luke 2 yet this year.) Also for sale: "Just Say Merry Christmas" bracelets. ("They're guaranteed to ward off the evil spirits of the ACLU grinches," says the ad.) Just say Merry Christmas? To everyone? Regardless of whether they actually celebrate Jesus' birth?

Olsen goes on to tell two stories of Hanukkah -- one the historic Jewish tale of revolt and miraculous victory, the second a story of Christ recorded in John’s Gospel of Jesus walking in the temple during the Feast of Dedication, a festival derived from the victory celebrated in Hanukkah. Because Jesus is already known as a religious revolutionary, his very presence in the temple provokes the established religious leaders, and his words push them to the edge. They insist angrily that he tell them plainly if he is claiming to be the Christ. Jesus sidesteps the showdown they would force on him, saying, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. You do not believe because you are not part of my flock.”

So, Olsen offers advice on the “Christmas Wars” that works in most situations: Be like Jesus. “The Jewish Hanukkah story is one of triumph over a culture that wanted to force the Jews to assimilate against their will. The Christian Hanukkah story is one that starts with Jesus asking provocative questions, but retreating rather than forcing the issue.
To insist that non-Christians say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays" runs against the lessons of both Hanukkah stories.”

That ‘live and let live” attitude might be a good one for Focus on the Family to take in its war against the APA. We’ve all seen what happens when science is forced to conform to religion. Instead of spending so much energy visiting guilt on gays and lesbians they would be better served to visit the heart of their own faith. They might discover there’s joy to be had in taking Olsen’s advice to be more like Jesus.

Judas Dispute: One More Empty Religious Pursuit

2007-12-01T12:07:00.000-05:00

A fascinating story on today’s New York Times Op-Ed page reveals how political motives can distort scholarship. If you’d like to read the piece by April D. DeConick, professor of Biblical studies at Rice University and author of “The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says,” click the link at the end of this story. Here’s the main contention in professor DeConick’s Op-Ed tale:

“Amid much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples. It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.”

DeConick say’s National Geographic made numerous errors, some perhaps intentional, that completely changed the document’s meaning. She speculates they might have been motivated by a desire to help heal the ancient rift between Jews and Christians, and to avoid offending mainstream believers with certain Gnostic understandings of Yahweh, Christ’s relationship to the “supreme” God, and Christian atonement theology.

If she’s right, we should feel troubled. It would be bad enough if “truth” was sacrificed for some higher “truth;” but when it give way to political expediency, then religious studies -- like politics in general -- have entered what one Iraq war commentator called the “post-truth era.”

But, what’s doubly disturbing is that this kind of dispute is the low place to which Christianity has fallen. This unfortunately is how our faith has evolved, starting with a religious outsider who by the spirit became God’s imprint on earth and, armed only with God’s values, stood up against the culture in defense of the poor and oppressed. From that beginning we come to a time when religious insiders become the focus of the faith by debating the meaning of obscure Coptic texts. I have to believe that somewhere Jesus is crying, if not vomiting.

Thankfully, for those who would practice the real Christian faith, Jesus spoke directly to vacuous religious elites who neglect “the weightier matters … justice and mercy and faith.” His disappointment is clear: “You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” That’s Matthew’s Gospel; the translation I believe is undisputed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/opinion/01deconink.html?ex=1354251600&en=91c478a2d5fb0116&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Churches Moving Ahead of Nation on Tolerance

2007-11-28T08:34:00.000-05:00

If you're a regular reader of Mr. B's you've noticed I've been a little slow lately with the commentary here on the Christian Counter Culture blog. A couple of things have slowed me down, including my oldest daughter's wedding in November. But the main thing has been a rather drawn out move from Florida to Chicago. I had to be out of my place in Florida two weeks before I could move into my new home in Chicago.

In between I was a transient, visiting friends and family in Kentucky and Michigan. Viewed from a political perspective I left a red state, stopped off in a red state that recently overwhelmingly elected a blue governor, then went to the deep blue state of Michigan where one house of the legislature is red and red governors are not rare, en route to the blue state Illinois, which also has been known to elect governors from the right.

Spending Thanksgiving with my family in Detroit, we ended the day with a spirited political argument with the reds and blues in the family showing their colors. It's a confused situation all around. Here's my father for example; he's both a retired UAW member and a lifelong Republican. Go figure.

My journey also has taken me into worship with a variety of churches: Methodist, Pentecostal and Lutheran. In God's houses I found more sensitivity to differing views on the nation's politics. The prevailing attitude is something like, "no matter how you feel about the war in Iraq, we need to be tolerant of each other and pray together that our troops will stay safe and the killing will end as soon as possible." Maybe it's a bit of a dodge, but it seems to express a desire for binding the church together. I witnessed the same on doctrinal issues over which people were once eager for a fight. Maybe all the fighting over politics has dulled the taste for fighting over insignificant differences within the body of Christ. I hope so. Leadership has to come from somewhere in our troubled culture, and the church divided can't get it done.

Giving Thanks That It's Time for a Showdown

2007-11-21T08:12:00.000-05:00

If we work at it, everyone can find at least something small to be thankful for. Jesus said, "Don't fear, only believe." In God's parlance that means believing God meant it when he looked down on creation and declared it good. Even in times of fear, believers know God intended us for joy. With faith we can take hold of it. Even in the darkest times, that's something to be thankful for. It's up to us to find our particular, personal door to God's joy. If you're having trouble finding the latch on your door check out Jesus; he can help you put your hand on it.

That's my take on personal thankfulness. But as believers we have some shared reasons to give thanks this year. Tops on my list is that the church seems to be inching toward reconciliation and perhaps taking the nation with it. The poet T.S. Eliot once surveyed the "Wasteland" of our culture and saw only one institution, the church, that had any chance at all of reversing our slide into empty materialism. He wasn't hopeful enough to think it probable the church would succeed, but if it didn't, we might as well admit that the values of justice, compassion and spirituality are now nothing more than a quaint memory.

Maybe I'm deceiving myself, but I've had opportunity to visit a variety churches recently and have noticed a willingness to jettison doctrinal differences in favor of fostering a sense of God's spirit moving among us, giving of strength and perspective. With that gained perspective I believe the church is seeing how it has been used to support the politics of personal gain. The deal the church has made, especially the evangelical branch, has turned out to be Faustian in nature -- a deal with the devil -- that traded promises on a few isolated issues for permission to rape the many in favor of the few. This is the same deal the church of Jesus' day made with the Romans, and a deal made by the Christian church with political and economic elites throughout the centuries.

John wrote that Jesus brought a light into the world darkness could not overcome. We're starting to see now how true that is. Believers everywhere are starting to see that it's time for a showdown, a time to stand up for God's values, in God's Spirit, and insist that the light of God that radiated from Christ will also shine in us. For that I offer a prayer of thanks. It is never too late.

What, no Love? That Can't be God's Voice!

2007-11-06T09:51:00.000-05:00

On our home page at www.christianheartbeat.org you’ll find a feature story about hearing God’s voice. It asks the question, “What does God’s voice sound like?” This may be the most important question facing the church today. It appears that we have intuitive knowledge of God’s voice written on our hearts, and trying to substitute another has as much chance of succeeding as fooling a baby with a voice other than mommy’s.
We know instinctively, without a single visit to a Bible study, that God’s voice is loving, forgiving, calming and comforting, inclusive, and perhaps most clearly, expansive of the human experience. God intends us to live large -- to love passionately and enjoy creation. God made the world for joy and laughter, not for fear and sorrow. Although some of that is inevitable, God gives us the resilience to bounce back. And if we’re living in God’s image -- speaking with God’s voice -- we’ll be out there helping others to do just that.
When people hear voices from the church and from Christian leaders in the media that just don’t sound like God’s, they recoil from so-called “organized religion,” especially organized Christian religion. Church membership declines and spiritual seekers begin to look elsewhere.
That’s the dilemma facing our evangelical media leaders and the unfortunate result of their public position on homosexuality. While the public may agree that legal bonds between homosexuals shouldn’t be exactly the same as traditional marriage, they also know instinctively these Christians are not speaking with God’s voice on the subject. If when the church speaks loudest it’s not speaking with God’s voice, why would anyone seek God in the church? It’s a no-brainer.
That perception of Christians as unchristian emerged from a recent survey by the conservative Christian polling group Barna, and is reported in a new book by Barna Group President David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons called, of all things, unChristian. Kinnaman recently told the news outlet of Focus on the Family that on homosexuality at least, the public no longer believes evangelicals are speaking in God’s authentic voice: “… that really is the perception, that Christians have lost the ability to love and to deal with and to have meaningful friendships with these individuals,” he said.
If these prominent media Christians aren’t speaking authentically on an issue they have made their priority, why would they be trusted on anything else? Because they lack love, the full Christian message loses credibility. And we all suffer -- including God.

God's Warriors? God's Name Taken in Vain

2007-11-03T19:19:00.000-04:00

God’s Warriors: Christian, Muslim, Jewish. You might think the world has trouble enough from the ungodly without fanatics making war in God’s name. God can’t be pleased.
“God’s Warriors” is the three-part Christiane Amanpour series that’s been running -- and rerunning -- on CNN. Ms. Amanpour is fair and balanced in her treatment of the three extremist groups, not to mention more generous to them that they deserve. Whether it’s the Muslim, Jewish or Christian segment of the investigative series, the “warriors” show themselves to be self-interested posers pretending to do God’s work without the slightest idea of who God really is. But their threatening presence casts its dark shadow on the Middle East and the peace summit now being championed by U.S. Secretary of State Condalezza Rice. Crossing them can be punishable by death.
I’ve watched enough of Ms. Amapour’s series -- it’s hard to stomach for long periods -- to know all three groups share the same problem: they’re dedicated to “God’s word” instead of to God. Each group confuses the “sacred documents” of their particular faith with the infinite wisdom that is the true word of God. And because they fail to seek God’s heart, they misunderstand their documents
I know I’m not going to cure this ill. The problem has corrupted all the Middle Eastern or Semitic religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- from the beginning, mostly out of a desire to enforce orthodoxy. The greater the certainty the “word” is absolute revelation, the easier the task of enforcing orthodoxy. And it seems to follow as day does night that “God’s Warriors” emerge from the most constrained and orthodox branches of their respective faiths. The one thing they share is a divine belief that they are right and the other guy isn’t.
The Judeo-Christian religions have been as guilty as our Islamic brothers in substituting devotion to religion for devotion to God. In his sixth chapter the prophet Hosea speaks a truth repeated often in the Hebrew scriptures: “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offering.” Jesus repeats this sentiment in the New Testament. Accused of lacking devotion to the Torah in his attitude toward the Sabbath, Jesus says the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
Just read the scriptures for God’s sake! You can’t miss it: God intended us for love not war. How sad God must feel to hear a phrase like “God’s Warriors.” Could God’s name possibly be taken more in vain?

Not Time Yet for a Smile and a Haircut

2007-10-31T21:29:00.000-04:00

Reading The Evangelical Crackup, David Kirkpatrick’s Times Magazine article in which he details the waning power of the religious right, stimulated sad memories. I was reminded of the bittersweet end of the Viet Nam War in 1975. Those of us who actively opposed the war were finally getting what we wanted, if not in the way we wanted it. But without “The War” to be against, we were left asking, “who are we?” Most eventually got a haircut and a job, and joined the middle class.
For many progressive Christians the fundamentalists on the religious right provide a powerful bogeyman to rally against. Here are people who are exclusionary in their approach, strident in their style, pessimistic in attitude, with tunnel vision in their choice of issues. Activists in the so-called Mainline Protestant churches have been vigorous in opposition to these fellow Christians because we see them as misrepresenting the faith. Politicians who share or support their views are driven by the interests of their constituents. In that context, their actions are reasonable. But Christians should be driven by God’s bias for justice and compassion.
Kirkpatrick cites the War in Iraq and a general weariness with politics from the pulpit as reasons why ultra-conservatives have been losing ground in the evangelical movement. Even the Southern Baptist Convention has begun to push back against the conservatives who have controlled it since the 1980s, electing a moderate president at its last convention. While the tradition evangelicals tended to see Christianity as a set of theological beliefs coupled with specific moral imperatives (mostly involving sex), the newer leaders are taking a broader approach, according to Kirkpatrick:
“Falwell, Dobson and their generation saw their political activism as essentially defensive, fighting to keep traditional moral codes …. But many younger evangelicals — and some old-timers — take a less fatalistic view. For them, the born-again experience of accepting Jesus is just the beginning. What follows is a long-term process of “spiritual formation” that involves applying his teachings in the here and now. … They talk more about a biblical imperative to … the betterment of their communities and the world. They support traditional charities but also public policies that address health care, race, poverty and the environment.”
Sounds pretty progressive. So you see what I mean about trading protest signs for haircuts? With enemies like these, who needs enemies?
But before we go too far in writing off the religious right, let’s remember the power they still wield in the popular media. Yes, Falwell is gone and much of his generation of clergy is aging, but Dr. Dobson and his Focus on the Family organization still dominates Christian radio. Despite the ascendancy of more moderate conservatives like Bill Hybels of the Willow Creek Association and Purpose Driven Life author Rick Warren, many evangelicals feel the movement is simply suffering a mild downturn--inevitable after riding so high for so long. Kirkpatrick writes, “Conservative Christian leaders in Washington acknowledge a ‘leftward drift’ among evangelicals, quoting Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and the movement’s chief advocate in Washington. He (Perkins) told me he believed that Hybels and many of his admirers had, in effect, fallen away from orthodox evangelical theology. Perkins compared the phenomenon to the century-old division in American Protestantism between the liberal mainline and the orthodox evangelical churches. ‘It is almost like another split coming within the evangelicals,’ he said.”
What many of the conservative evangelicals resist admitting is that may of us on the left--Jim Wallis being a good example--consider ourselves evangelical in the original sense of the word: advocates of the good news of Jesus Christ. Maybe if we could agree on that definition, we could heal all the splits and march en masse to the salons and barber shops.

Untrue Condi Chasing a Beau Called Peace

2007-10-25T22:10:00.000-04:00

“The word is out, (sing along if you’d like) all over town, Condi’s been seen, out running ‘round …”
Yes, it’s true, Condi’s been untrue. Who’s the lucky guy? Well, it’s not exactly a guy. Whoa, wait a minute, say it ain’t so! You wouldn’t want to shake the foundations of Colorado Springs. Well, it ain’t so, but what she is accused of is just as abhorrent, maybe more so, than someone proving Condi is one of those people who loves her own kind.
What is Condi accused of ? Dare I say it? She’s been running ’round pursuing a path of peace over war. In fact, you could say she has been accused of loving her own kind--humankind. Condi’s main sin right now is that she has continued negotiating with North Korea over its nuclear program while the xenophobes in the administration call day after day, louder and louder, for some kind of hostile action against … well just about anyone. Certainly someone needs to be blown up.
Interestingly, in recent days Condi has been speaking very publicly about her Christian faith. Maybe God has been getting her ear. Maybe God’s voice is convincing her of the futility of our current antagonistic strategies. Maybe she has been reminded that nothing upsets God more than to look upon creation and see violence everywhere. Maybe she is finally ready to stand up and say the time for peace is now, and when it finally arrives, it will not come from the barrel of a gun.

Jesus and Joe Torre on the Same Team

2007-10-24T11:50:00.000-04:00

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus clearly states that God recognizes our need for material things. Let’s get that straw man out of the way up front: when progressive Christians reject the materialism of our culture, we are not suggesting a universal vow of poverty. Most of us aren’t cut out for that.
The social welfare system, for which I once worked, thinks of the central necessities as food, shelter, clothing and medical care. These are the essentials for a life that isn’t a moment-to-moment struggle for survival. Such a struggle is not fertile ground for spiritual growth and Jesus says so. In Matthew 6:31-32, he tells his followers, “Therefore do not worry, saying ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.”
With the word “Gentiles” Jesus is separating believers from non-believers, and the operant verb in his sentence is “strive.” As I'll explain in a minute, it's a concept illustrated by Joe Torre's departure from the New York Yankees.
Earlier in the passage Jesus had stated, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will … be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” Jesus concludes his sixth chapter remarks with this advice: “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” This is not a promise of wealth as some prosperity preachers would have it, but a promise that a life spent seeking God’s spirit will not lead to material destitution.
Of all the many perspectives that divide Christ’s church today none is more important than this question of what motivates us. If the means of salvation was the great issue for the reformation, the path to success in God’s eyes is the great issue today. Much of the American church refuses to separate itself from the secular scoring system that defines “success” as the accumulation of wealth. But Jesus clearly says if you’re playing that game, you’ll never play on his team.
I don’t intend in any way to say that wealth itself is a bad thing; Jesus’ question is what inspires you, for what do you strive? Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology and author of The Costs of Living: How Market Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life, employs a sports analogy in a New York Times editorial today which seems to underscore Jesus’ point. Schwartz says that the main reason Joe Torre felt insulted by and rejected the Yankees’ contract offer was the inclusion of financial bonus incentives for doing what he would have endeavored to do anyway.
Schwartz writes that of course people want to get paid for their work, “But people aren’t working only for money. They are also working because they think their work serves a purpose, or they are devoted to excellence, or they love what they do. When you offer people bonuses for doing their jobs, you are telling them that money is not just one of many reasons to work, but the only reason.”
Jesus says that if material success is your main motivation in life, forget about God’s presence in your life. You aren’t meant for the kingdom. Joe Torre would understand.

FDR: Self-Interest is Bad Morals and Economics

2007-10-18T23:49:00.000-04:00

Do you believe we are our brother’s keeper? That question was asked this week during a TV news discussion of the S-CHIP program that assures lower income children will get medical attention when they need it. The answer may be more crucial now than ever before in our nation’s history. How we answer as a people, how we answer as Christians, may well determine whether or not we continue toward the destiny we imagine for ourselves or go the way of nations and empires which have turned their backs on God’s values.
Many believers would like to separate their faith in God from the political/economic system in which they ground their convictions. They would like to hold in one hand a theology of markets and individual initiative that governs life on earth and in the other hand a theology of salvation that governs life after death. By stretching their arms as far apart as possible, they imagine the two theologies never touch. Unfortunately, it’s a plan requiring willful self-deception. It’s just not be possible to know God and scripture and not know that God’s is saying “yes, here on earth, right now, we are our brother’s keeper.” In the conflict between the common good and self interest, God’s word is clear.
And here’s the surprising irony about God’s position: as is so often the case, when we follow God’s will and obey the command to be our brother’s keeper, we inevitably prosper more as individuals. Just another example of how God is so much wiser than us.
There was a time, during the war years and thereafter, when America at least pretended it believed this. The country had a sense of common purpose, a sense of common possibility. President Roosevelt had inspired belief when he said, “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals. Now we know that it is bad economics.” But with finger-pointing cries of “socialism,” the proponents slowly turned crass self-interest into a virtue. And the church, for whatever reasons--financial, fear of confrontation, a false understanding of what it means to be born again--has been unwilling to stand tall and say, “No, God intends us to be our brother’s keeper, and by the way, FDR was right, heedless self interest is bad morals--and bad economics.”
Some might leave the church over such a show of courage, but, who knows, others might see the church flexing its muscle and say, “now that’s what I’m looking for!” Someone has to lead before it’s too late. If not God’s people, then who? If not now, when? If we are now a nation that won’t even guarantee our needy children medical care, we’re saying as clear as can be, “No, we are not our brother’s keeper.”

The Crazy Contradictions in Being Christian

2007-10-15T17:47:00.000-04:00

I live with this crazy contradiction that I think of as being Christian: I want everyone to like me, but at the same time I don’t mind a good fight. I try to give the benefit of the doubt to people -- who they are and what they think, but at the same time I don’t hold back from defending my own convictions, even when I know it‘s going to tick someone off.
If this contradiction is going to lead to trouble it usually comes from wanting everyone to like me. It can lead me to give people more credit than they’re due and assume their good intentions for too long despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Then when the truth becomes obvious things can turn nasty.
CNN’s Jack Cafferty recently published a book called, “It’s Getting Ugly Out There,” and any observer of the American scene--either the political or religious landscape--would have to agree he’s right. The reason may be that no one cares anymore whether the guys on the other side like them or not. No one is interested in giving the benefit of the doubt. Everyone is quick to hand out black hats to those they disagree with while perching a bright white Stetson on their own dome.
Just below Jesus Christ on my heroes list is Princeton economist Paul Krugman. I’ve seen Krugman in action and believe his natural tendency is to give people the benefit of the doubt. But last week he wrote a column suggesting we’ve been closing our eyes to the truth about the political right for too long, that memory is too short about facts like Barry Goldwater’s support for Joe McCarthy, Ronald Reagan’s opposition to the Voting Rights Act and the National Review’s support of White Supremacy in the segregated South. Maybe he‘s right. Maybe we should forgive but not forget, reach out in friendship but not let the wolf fool us into thinking he’s Red Riding Hood’s grandma. After all, it was Reagan who said, “trust but verify.” It’s a tricky business, figuring how to get along and avoid self-righteousness without giving in on important principles.
How do we work with this crazy contradiction? We want to reach out in love but not give the impression that all things are equal, that a life driven by self interest is as good as one driven by compassion. Taking my cue from the way Jesus worked, I think it may be in the tone of voice. Jesus had a “tone” about him that welcomed people to step into his circle--even those who came with bad intentions. I have to believe that some of those were changed just by being near to him. It happens even today. But he also knew when to say goodbye to those he saw weren’t candidates for the kingdom. And yet from the cross he forgave even those who crucified him. It’s funny, but the only people who ever make him mad were self-absorbed religious leaders who seemed more interested in closing doors to the kingdom than in opening them. That was one thing he was willing to fight over.

Filling in the Blanks in Christian Obedience

2007-10-12T10:39:00.000-04:00

David Brooks of the New York Times, one of the likeable guys among American conservatives, offered a brief history and defense of the conservative philosophy in his column earlier this week. On the Times OP-ED page Brooks set out to show that flaws in American conservative policy have nothing to do with an unsound premise for conservatism in general.
Brooks is a well-intended man, as are many conservatives, so I gave him a read. He traced his movement back to the Englishman Edmund Burke, whose Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) was once a staple of a liberal arts college education. “What Burke articulated,” Brooks wrote, “was not an ideology or a creed, but a disposition, a reverence for tradition, a suspicion of radical change.” Roll that around in your mind a bit and you might understand without reading the rest of how Brooks says our conservative politicians jumped the track.
Put in a positive frame, “a suspicion of radical change,” could be described as a love of discipline and order. Which brings me to the impact on Christianity today. At a party recently a Christian woman in her mid-40s, widowed with two teenaged daughters, described to me how devoting herself to the Lord had given her the anchor she needed in her time of turmoil. As we began talking about faith she asked me, “What is at the center of our faith?” I answered, “the confidence to love.” She shook her head “no.” I tried again: “to serve.” Frustrated, she said, “No! Obedience! God wants our obedience.”
Obedience is a favorite concept among conservative Christians, a religious parallel to Burke’s love of order and discipline. And I’m all for it. But the word “obedience” by itself is at best an empty shell and a blank check; at worst it’s an invitation to be “good Germans.” We all know where that can lead.
“Yes,” I told my Christian friend, “I believe very much in obedience, obedience to God’s law of love--love the Lord with all your heart and all your soul, and your neighbor as yourself.” It seemed to trouble her that I had converted her answer into my original answer. At a time of chaos in her life she craved the order and discipline of submitting herself to God’s authority. She wanted boundaries that made her feel safe, not an admonition to do something like living God’s love. I understand and respect that. I have no doubt she is a good and caring person.
But I also have no doubt that the obedience I described is the same as scripture describes. Return to the law of Moses, to Deuteronomy, to the first principle, to what Jews call the “shema,” Hebrew for the word hear: “Hear O Israel: … You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Leviticus 19 adds the second part -- “love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus later puts them together in the great commandment. “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,” he says in Matthew. So yes to obedience! But obedience has to mean something or it becomes fertile ground for tyrants. For Christians it means obedience to the law of love. Imagine that, obedience and love are the same thing. Maybe one day we Christians will bridge our differences.

Can Christian Unity be More Than a Pipe Dream?

2007-10-07T17:50:00.000-04:00

This morning in worship we sang that hopeful old tune, “We are One in the Spirit.” You know, the one where “we pray that our unity will one day be restored.” You may remember a time not long ago--back when the main dispute between Christians was baptism by sprinkling infants vs. immersing adults--when we could sing that hymn with a sense of possibility. Now, as Christian factions square off over issues like the war and whether homosexuality is the unpardonable sin, Christian unity seems like a pipe dream. And I'm not talking tobacco in that pipe.
But the dream lives on. Last night I attended a candlelight celebration for a “fourth day” community that is completely non-denominational. This one happens to be an Emmaus community. You may be familiar with Via de Cristo, or one of the other transformational weekend walks. Those who complete the weekends continue to gather periodically under the umbrella of God’s love. Our particular community has members from almost 30 denominations or independent congregations. When we meet in one sanctuary or another, no one can doubt that God’s spirit is in the house. We pray, we sing, we celebrate communion, we love one another. Some people lift their hands in praise, others don’t. No big deal. When we join in communion, no one asks why grape juice instead of wine, or whether anyone believes the elements are symbolically or in fact the body and blood of Christ. What joins us is more important than what separates us.
Although we have clergy participating in our gatherings and in our weekend walks, our community is essentially run by lay people. I hate to say it, but maybe that’s the secret. Take a look at the people sowing dissention in the Christian community and almost all of them are making a living by marketing their divisive opinions. Not that there’s anything wrong with making a living being clergy or running a Christian ministry. The question is, with whose voice do you speak? God’s voice or your own. I’ve spent many years learning to recognize God’s voice and I believe I know what it sounds like. It’s a voice of loving inclusion, not one of angry rejection. I’m trying to watch my own voice on that score. If we all could, maybe some day we truly would be "one in the spirit" again. Which brings me back to the chorus of the hymn: "And they'll know we are Christians by our Love." I believe Jesus said that.

Christians Must Set Their Own Political Agenda

2007-10-03T10:28:00.000-04:00

As a tax exempt non-profit, the group I lead, Christian Heartbeat, is prohibited from supporting specific political candidates and parties. That suits me fine. I suppose I could try to fudge the issue by endorsing here on my blog and not in my web magazine at http://www.christianheartbeat.org/. Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family seems to have gotten away with that sort of sleight of hand, having been cleared in a recent investigation of his obvious partisanship. From my perspective that’s his problem and a problem for his integrity I’d rather not have. I guess he has the lawyers to do it.
Identification with one political party or the other is self-defeating for conservative and progressive Christians alike. Ask a conservative evangelical how they can be so against destruction of a frozen embryo that shows no resemblance to a human being but have no problem with bullets tearing apart a fully formed child and they start to mumble some remote scriptural nonsense. Ask a progressive how they can get so incensed about the war in Iraq and still support nine months of abortion on demand and they too will spin into intellectual gyrations.
Believe me, I’m not a head-in-the-sand Christian who thinks our faith should be apolitical. I take my lead from Jesus on that one, and anyone who thinks I’m wrong simply doesn’t understand the historical Jesus. Our Lord was harassed and crucified because he opposed both the Romans and the Jewish aristocracy which aligned itself with the occupiers against the good of their own people. But Christ was original in his opposition, his point of view distinct from the Roman-friendly religious class and from the angry zealots who yearned to drive out the occupiers by force.
Peter used the phrase “a peculiar people” to describe Christians. He calls on us to set ourselves apart in our perspective--not in a way that makes us invisible, but in a way that makes us powerfully uncorrupted. When we do, our thoughts, our goals and our politics will clear like the sun melting away the morning mist. Then we’ll truly be worthy to call ourselves Christians, and we’ll begin to understand how to bring God’s values to a world much in need of redemption..

Don't Let the Innocent Get Treated Like Jesus

2007-10-01T11:07:00.000-04:00

Christianity is a faith descended from a man falsely accused and falsely executed, so it’s natural that fairness in our criminal justice system should be a top priority for a predominately Christian nation. Among all the areas in which God’s values and God’s politics have been distorted by our culture, justice for the falsely accused finally appears to be moving in the right direction.
A New York Times article of Oct. 1 notes that all but eight states now have laws on the books allowing convicted criminals to access DNA evidence for testing that wasn’t possible at the time of their trials. And because the tide has begun to recede from a pervasive bias against the accused--often because their race or class made them look guilty to the majority--other evidence like eyewitness testimony and jailhouse snitches also is becoming suspect.
A 2005 study by Law School professor Samuel R. Gross of the University of Michigan uncovered 340 prisoners sentenced from 1989 to 2003 who now are exonerated. The majority were convicted of murder or rape. Almost half were cleared by DNA evidence and more than half the cases involved faulty eyewitness testimony. Another study this year by Professor Gross identified 86 death row inmates sentenced between 1973 to 1989 who were exonerated through 2004. While Gross concentrated on the most egregious felonies like rape and murder, he concluded it was certain many more innocents accused of lesser crimes occupy our jails.
The Times article, which can be reached at the link below, contains a great deal more about how states are pursuing clarity in the criminal justice system. So many of the concerns in our culture that run contrary to God’s values--like poverty and the failure of compassion--defy short-term solutions. Fairness in our justice system is one area in which action can yield results. Because Christ spoke out against just such a system and paid the price for it, we who follow Jesus should be energized by this fairness movement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/us/01exonerate.html?ex=1348977600&en=36c60fe4165c0c00&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink