unChristian

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a time of reflection on our shortcomings in preparation for Easter. Jesus taught that one should take the log out of one's own eye before removing the speck out of someone else's eye. Thus, this is an appropriate moment for the Christian church to take a long hard look at itself. If the research done recently by the Barna group is correct, the church has an urgent need to change if it is going to remain viable into the future.

This fall, the president of the Barna Group, David Kinnaman, published the findings of research on the opinions of 16-29 year-olds about the church in a book titled, “unChristian.” They found that the most common perceptions of Christianity by young non-Christians were negative, led by judgmental (87%) and hypocritical (85%). In fact, even half of the young Christians surveyed agreed that the church is judgmental and hypocritical. The churched and un-churched alike pointed to one particular issue that leads the way in shaping this opinion. The most common perception today is that Christianity is "anti-homosexual." The Barna Group web site reports, “Overall, 91% of young non-Christians and 80% of young churchgoers say this phrase describes Christianity. As the research probed this perception, non-Christians and Christians explained that beyond their recognition that Christians oppose homosexuality, they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians.” Young Christians frequently complained the church's teaching has made homosexuality a “bigger sin” than others and not equipped them to deal with their relationships with their homosexual friends.

This is an issue causing great divisiveness within the church itself. Not all Christians agree that homosexuality is a sin. A fair inference from the survey findings would be that many young Christians are questioning this teaching as well. Those who do believe that this behavior is sinful must consider whom is harmed by it. If there is no victim where is the crime? Once before, the church led a movement to outlaw a sin to improve society. The church-based Temperance movement led to Prohibition. Legislation was clearly the wrong method for helping drunkards to mend their ways. If your goal is to help others see the wrong in their behavior, publicly judging them will only move them away from your concern.

Lent is a season of fasting, typically marked by denying oneself a pleasure or giving up a negative behavior. Perhaps this is a good moment for all Christians to fast from judging others. It would be an opportunity to practice the teaching of Jesus that only those without sin are permitted to cast stones at sinners. People of all faiths and people of goodwill of no faith should be able to come together in a free society to serve and improve the common good. This lofty goal should not be derailed by a misplaced focus on judgment that detracts from the reputation of an institution well positioned to improve society, the Christian Church.

It Takes Two to Gospel

Therefore, sisters and brothers, since the blood of Jesus makes us confident to enter the holy place by the new and living path opened for us through the veil--that is to say, the body of Jesus--and since we have the supreme high priest presiding over the house of God, let us enter it filled with faith and with sincerity in our hearts, our hearts sprinkled and cleared from any trace of bad conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Let us keep firm in the hope we profess, because the One who made the promise is faithful. - Hebrews 10:19-25

In a recent meditation by Martin Copenhaver, he wrote:

In other religions one’s encounter with God can be an individual matter.

Not so with Christianity. God created Christian community for the same reason that God created Eve: it is not right that we should be alone.

He wisely observed that the writer of Hebrews used plural pronouns. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that most of the instructions in the New Testament epistles are given to the group of believers, not individual believers. Beyond that, when the instructions are given to individuals they are generally about how to relate to others. Ours is a relational faith.

I also believe that our best faith practices are from internal to external. I think that we need always to be seekers; seeking better to know and be known by God. It is in self-awareness that we can come to spiritual growth. And that growth will necessarily make us stand out in the world, which is why we need to be in the company of like-minded seekers. Collectively we can make an impact on changing the world, saving it if you will.

When our faith practices are dictated by externally imposed directives they are weak against outside challenges. For instance, if a literal interpretation of scripture argues against the earth circling the sun (i.e. God made the sun stop moving in the sky for Joshua and the Hebrews) then Copernican theory becomes a challenge to true faith. On the other hand, if faith practices move the opposite direction, then when external forces push upon it internal faith finds a way to respond without a need to dominate the other. The strength found via internal spiritual practice can never be taken from the practitioner.

The risk inherent in internal spirituality is that it can be groundless, wandering in the ways of unchecked egoism. Thus I come back to my original point, we can't walk this path alone. Internal spirituality should drive us to find our place in the body of Christ, realizing that each of us is incomplete on our own. Ultimately, as someone once observed, it takes two to gospel.

Armed and Dangerous

Many people are surprised to learn that Tai Chi is a martial art form.The gentle, wave-like motion of the gestures doesn’t appear aggressive.Indeed, they are not aggressive in the manner to which we are accustomed.We typically think of fighters as trying to find an opening to attack.Tai Chi is more of a defensive style.A Tai Chi master would be unlikely the one to begin a fight.Tai Chi is about protection of one’s space, maintaining balance throughout every gesture, and utilizing the power that comes from having all the parts of your body working together in a concerted effort to focus the force of the movement.

Unfortunately, many people today are unsurprised to hear Christianity described in terms of warfare.Much of the most vocal and celebrated portion of American Christendom focuses on alleged attacks from the secular world.There is an aggressiveness about much of this that I find troubling.I don’t think that we are called to be milquetoast Christians, we have a responsibility to spread the gospel, and it is a troubling message at times.The good news of the Bible is good only insofar as you find yourself in need of salvation.We all are sinners and thus require salvation, but the accompanying message of repentance requires behavioral change.The gospel message accomplishes H. L. Mencken’s maxim for journalists: it comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. So in the culture wars, I hope that we are messengers with an offensive message, not offensive messengers.

Do people see you as armed and dangerous? Are you grounded in the traditions and teachings of the faith? Can you deliver words of challenge and words of hope that come from the scripture? It is not necessary to memorize verses to deliver the good/offensive word. It is, however, necessary to know the word of God internally. If you arm yourself with the spiritual practices of prayer, scripture reading and worship you will be prepared to be dangerous for God when the opportunity comes to share the gospel.

In fact, if you truly internalize your spiritual discipline it will become something akin to a martial art. You will be in control of the power it gives you. You will realize that the power is actually external to you and flows through you. We speak of the Holy Spirit in a similar way that martial art masters speak of chi, the life force. If you have studied a martial art perhaps you have already made this connection. The greatest martial artists are those who control themselves, not needing to prove anything by fighting. If only we could similarly master the spiritual power available to us. Perhaps then we could work with all members of the human family to change the world for the better instead of choosing sides and battling in a culture war.

The Power of ONE

This morning I'm preaching on Isaiah 58. I'm doing a series on chapters 58 through 62 featuring the metaphors about light. It is a powerful read if you think about America today receiving the prophet's warning.

Today we will hear the words:

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

And if we heed the message, then what?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

There is good news in "right worship" (the literal meaning of orthodox). I believe there is also hope in individual action. The promise of "your light" breaking forth is not plural in the Hebrew, the promise is that your personal light will shine. Jesus would remind us not to put it under a bushel!

I'm moved by the wisdom of the ONE Campaign. Check it out here They are putting forth a belief in the power of ONE. Here is a part of the pledge they encourage each of us to take:

We believe we can beat AIDS, starvation and extreme poverty.

We recognize ONE billion people live on less than ONE dollar a day.

We commit ourselves - one person, one voice, one vote at a time - to a make better, safer world for all.

The power of ONE is the power of ONE person who believes that all the people of the world are ONE and that together as ONE we can build a better tomorrow. In this philosophy I hear the wisdom of the theology I proclaim that we are all ONE body with many parts, living our lives to the glory of the ONE God.

Mystery

I shouldn't be surprised to find agreement with a Franciscan priest, since St. Francis has long inspired me. Nor should I be surprised that an appeal to faith in mystery would express quite well something that I also believe.

NPR has been airing weekly essays in a series called This I Believe. Today's was another gem. It was called Utterly Humbled by Mystery by Richard Rohr. You can read the entire transcript and/or listen to the essay here I was struck by this quote, "We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite.” Think about that for a minute; the contrast between the certitude of resolution (even about theological issues) and the nature of faith.

Father Rohr ends his essays with this profound paragraph:

People who have really met the Holy are always humble. It's the people who don't know who usually pretend that they do. People who've had any genuine spiritual experience always know they don't know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind. It is a litmus test for authentic God experience, and is -- quite sadly -- absent from much of our religious conversation today. My belief and comfort is in the depths of Mystery, which should be the very task of religion.

Musicians, storytellers, and artists of all types understand the value of mystery, it is their stock-in-trade. I also believe that the best preachers know this as well. As we try to prepare ourselves once again to peer into the lowly, dirty, cold and smelly stable to see if there really is a baby in that manger, may we all value mystery.

ADDENDUM: I discovered that Father Rohr is a Red Letter Christian when I visited Jim Wallis' God's Politics blog. Yet more reason to explain the kinship I felt with him. I also checked out his organization, Center for Action and Contemplation, a place I will definitely visit when I get to Albuquerque. Here is a wonderful prayer I found on their web site:

A Prayer for Prophets

“I will send them prophets,” the Wisdom of God says, “but you will kill them and afterwards build monuments to them.”

—Jesus according to Luke 11:49 (alternate translations)

God of the Great Gaze,

We humans prefer satisfying un-truth

To the Truth that is usually unsatisfying.

Truth is always too big for us,

And we are so small and afraid.

So you send us prophets and truth speakers

To open our eyes and ears to Your Big Picture.

Show us how to hear them, how to support them,

And how to interpret their wisdom.

Help us to trust that Your prophetic voice

May also be communicated through our words and actions.

May we practice a spirit of discernment

And a stance of humility,

So that Your Truth be spoken, not our own.

We ask this in the name of Jesus the Prophet,

Whom we also killed and will always kill

In the name of our little truths.

We desire to share in Your Great Gaze.

Amen.

A Leg (or four) to Stand On

In an earlier post I alluded to the Wesleyan quadrilateral as a way to help grasp my understanding of scripture. The four sources Wesley cited for coming to theological conclusions were: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience. I have to admit that I have not been Wesleyan in my theological development, rather that Wesley's quadrilateral has been a tool to help organize my theological thinking more or less "after the fact" (although I'm obviously never done developing my thinking).

After my radical break from a belief in scriptural inerrancy, I had to reintegrate the Bible into my beliefs. I realized that the most important check on my behavior, even when I believed in inerrancy, was the community of faith. By committing myself to walk with fellow Christians as they also struggle to find meaning and apply that to their daily lives that I am more likely to grow spiritually than if I were to lock myself in a room with my Bible. The application of Biblical truth to contemporary situations best happens in a group, not as individuals. If we are to take the Biblical image of the church as the Body of Christ seriously, then we must value all the input of all the members. Why should I expect to be the only person receiving God's revealed truth in scripture? Of course that is absurd. So the covenant community provides a check to any interpretation errors I may make influenced as my thinking will always be by my ego.

So when I learned that experience, both personal and communal, was a piece of the Wesleyan quadrilateral I felt an immediate resonance. I also resonated with the obvious inclusion of reason as a source. Our rational minds are wonderful gifts from God. I cannot imagine that God would expect us to use reason to improve our conditions in every area except in theology. Why should logic be excluded from the realm of the spiritual? In my personal experience, I recognize that the more I learn, the more I realize that I have yet to learn. The more I contemplate reality, the more I appreciate that it is filled with mystery. Reason and faith are not mutually exclusive. Indeed they each mutually enhance the other. But that is likely a topic for another post.

Finally, tradition is used to establish authority by every theological camp that I can think of. Even in the narrow confines of Fundamentalism there is the appeal to "the fundamentals." While the list of things considered to be fundamental is drawn from an interpretation of the Bible, it is not like there is a list to be found in a particular chapter and verse in scripture. No, that list comes as a result of reason being used to interpret the Bible and then passed along by tradition within the communal experience of the church.

The four legs of Wesley's quadrilateral are always at play in the lives of Christians who choose to affiliate with others gathered in churches. The differences between individuals and groups tends to be based on how much weight is placed on each leg. I doubt that any of us distribute the weight equally (certainly not all the time). For me, I'm biased toward the experience leg, specifically on the communal side. I don't throw out the Bible in this process, I just take the time to examine it with a variety of lenses.

Another Dove in the Flock

I read this blog post from a kindred spirit over at God's Politics. You know this really might be a movement!

A Map for the Way

So, what can be done with this complicated human creation, the Bible? Is it inspired? Is it the word of God? I would say “yes” and “yes.” Is it the only way that God has communicated with humanity, or ever will? To these I say “no” and “no.” How do I know these things? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else, we only have our beliefs. Even those who say that the Bible is the only true, complete record of God’s instructions to the human race that is free from any and all errors in relation to any and all doctrines necessary for salvation, only do so out of a belief that that is true. I can’t put that amount of faith into a human creation. The facts that the books of the Bible were written by dozens of people over centuries; that a good portion of the earlier books were first passed on through oral tradition; that original texts are not extant; and that different groups of believers believe that different texts belong and others don’t all lead me to the conclusion that the Bible can’t live up to the extremely high expectations of those who claim it is inerrant. On top of that, there is the circular reasoning of arguing that the scripture is inerrant because it says it is. I could say that this blog is the word of God, filled with true doctrine that is free from error. If someone were to post a comment pointing out reasons not to believe that, all I would need to do is point to the fact that the blog itself stated that it was inerrant to prove the inerrancy of the blog. Doesn’t make too much sense does it?

On the other hand, the fact that the Bible even exists today as an intact, generally agreed upon text considered holy by a vast number of people is reason to believe that it is one of the greatest efforts in all of human history to attempt to speak about the relationship between the human and the divine. This is a grand story telling marvelous truths. Read as a whole, the Bible speaks of a divine plan in which God shows exceptional love to some rather unlovely sorts (i.e. people just like you and me). It also clearly shows that this God chooses underdogs and consistently makes a preferential option for the poor (you can hardly turn a page without reading about caring for the widow, orphan and/or sojourner). Some of the stories are riveting and awe-inspiring; what greater liberation story is there than the Exodus? It is in the details where things fall apart; not so much because of the details themselves but because of our tendency to nit-pick and lord over one another.

Jews have always had a wonderful tradition of struggling with the holy texts. They interpret and re-interpret and listen to each other’s sides, living with the differences in interpretation (this is the Talmudic tradition). Christians have not typically followed suit. We have a long tradition of excommunication (and even executing) heretics. But when we read the Gospels, we see Jesus move away from the law as restrictive, replacing it with the grace to live life abundantly. He calls for the giving of the full measure of our lives. If we are serious in our discipleship, following Jesus as revealed in the scriptures, then we won’t have much time at all for finding specks in the eyes of our brothers and sisters since we will have to pay to much attention to being lumberjacks getting the logs out of our own eyes.

The Bible may be only a human creation, but it is the creation of humans just like you and me, who longed to know God and to be godly in their living. It is a book that I can relate to. It is a book that inspires me to be better than I can imagine being on my own. It is also complicated enough that I am forced to use my God-given rational mind to understand it. It is also challenging enough that I know that I need to be among the gathered faithful to live out the life it calls me to. To follow Jesus is to follow “the way.” I need the Bible as the map, my mind to make choices, the wisdom of those who have gone this way before, and the company of fellow travelers to share the burden of the journey. All the pieces are necessary and the most important one is the one that is missing at the time.

The B-I-B-L-E

My theological journey has taken me from solid Calvinism and complete Evangelicalism including a belief in the inerrancy of scripture to someplace left of center influenced by Liberation Theology and the Social Gospel. The journey pivots on my relationship to the Bible. I suppose that nearly all Christians define themselves (knowingly or unwittingly) by their relationship to this collection of writings. The Bible is also clearly one of the most critical documents in the current culture wars, so I think it behooves me at the outset of this blog to attempt an explanation of my understanding of this vital document.

I have realized that a sometimes intractable obstacle to right-left dialogue is the often intransigence of the right on their understanding of scripture. I don't want to debate the issue of inerrancy as much as I want to explain my own position and how I got to it. My intent is to demonstrate that many of us who reject the principle of inerrancy still hold the Bible in high regard and use it as a guide for living. The implication for the culture wars is that there may be a number of valid Christian positions in the public square. I don't want to shout down the voices to the right of me, I just want my voice to be heard and validated as genuinely Christian.

Let me start with my reason for rejecting inerrancy. I had found myself "jumping through hoops" in sorting the cultural influences out of scripture (you know, things like seeing Paul not so much as a sexist but a product of his time) when I finally came up against something I couldn't find anyway to excuse within the confines of a belief in the divine authorship of scripture: cherem. For those of you not knowledgeable in Hebrew, that is the word used to describe the style of warfare used in the conquest of the Promised Land. Simply put, the principle is if you win victory over an enemy by your own power you are entitled to the booty (e.g. the land, the cattle, the gold, the people...) BUT if you are outnumbered or out-gunned and you pray to your god for victory and receive it then the booty belongs to the deity. The way that the god claims the spoil was typically through burnt sacrifice. I describe this generically since it was the prevalent form of warfare on all sides during that time. But that means that we read of a number of massacres (at least a half-dozen) in the Bible that are directly ordered by God. There is even a verse that I mercifully can never seem to re-locate that says that YHWH was pleased by the aroma of the burnt human offering.

Now I could have responded by saying "that was then, this is now" but that would fly in the face of the equally biblical principle that God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow (actually, there is a good evidence in the biblical story that God does change, but that is clearly not part of Evangelical theology). I found myself faced with a choice between obedience to a bloodthirsty god, a slippery slope of a potentially ever-changing god, or an acceptance of the Bible as a human document in which the victors write the history. I chose the last position as the most viable way to retain the reality of the personal relationship I had with God. That left me with the danger of "throwing out the baby with the bath water." It also meant that I could now read the Bible as our human attempt to understand what we can never fully understand instead of as God attempting to explain the inexplicable to mere mortals. The change in perspective is liberating, frustrating, exciting and frightening all rolled into one.

The good news is that I'm not alone in this journey. Many, many Christians today (as well as in the past) take this approach. In my next blog entry I'll address the way that other elements strengthen my faith and mold my theology. If you want a preview, consider the Wesleyan quadrilateral.