Author: J. Barrett Lee
Just Do It
There are some living parables that simply tell themselves. Neither illustration nor explanation is necessary. Nevertheless, I’ll go ahead and engage in a little pedantic theological overkill, just to make sure the point is driven home.
This article was sent my way by Matt Grove:
Highly Religious People Are Less Motivated by Compassion Than Are Non-Believers
Go ahead and read it. Then compare the results of that study to the words of the Dude himself (with all due respect to Jeff Lebowski):
[Jesus said:] ‘What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” He answered, “I will not”; but later he changed his mind and went. The father* went to the second and said the same; and he answered, “I go, sir”; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?’ They said, ‘The first.’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, the tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax-collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him. (Matthew 21:28-32)
Finally, here’s a video from Derek Webb, one of the only ‘Christian’ artists I can stand to listen to anymore:
Why I Don’t Believe the Ordination of Men is ‘Biblical’
This is, of course, a tongue-in-cheek argument.
Nevermind that I hate the word ‘biblical’ in all of its pretentious and coercive glory. I find that it usually has nothing to do with the Bible and a lot to do with arrogant jerks who don’t like to have their authority challenged.
You want to know what’s really unbiblical?
Bacon. And I’m not giving that up either.
Anyway, here’s a list of farcical reasons that appeared in Sojourner’s Magazine. One of my seminary profs had an almost identical list on his office door. The purpose of this joke is to show how absolutely ridiculous are the hermeneutical arguments of those who fight against women in ordained ministry.
“We’ll have Nun of that!” (or “Is the Pope Catholic?”)
It seems to me that His Holiness is having a hard time of it as of late.
Apparently, having run out of every other kind of human being to alienate, he’s had to turn against his own once again. I wonder, at what point will ole’ Benny answer the question, “What’s wrong with Catholicism?” with the response, “All those damned Catholics!” or, better yet, “Jesus.”
When he first took office back in 2005, he blamed the pedophile priest scandal on gay men sneaking into seminaries (Benny likes to assume that every gay man is a card-carrying member of NAMBLA). It struck me then that those sounded like awfully strange words, coming from a man in a sequined dress.
Before that, during his days as the head of the Inquisition, he presided over the silencing of Fr. Leonardo Boff, a liberation theologian who dared to suggest that the hierarchy of the church existed in order to empower the laity, not vice versa. For this, Boff was branded as a communist and eventually excommunicated. Galileo is spinning in his grave.
These days, the newest threat to Catholicism comes from another unexpected source: nuns. I can imagine Jon Lovitz in papal regalia, shouting, “That’s the ticket!”
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has produced a fabulous column on Papa Benny’s latest witch hunt. Click the link below to read it for yourself:
If you’re into signing petitions, you can support this one at change.org:
Drawing from my years of experience working with the mentally ill and chemically dependent, I typically find that one is most insane when you think that you’re just fine and it’s everyone else that’s gone mad.
Having turned the spotlight of accusation on every other Catholic but himself, I think the rhetorical question, “Is the Pope Catholic?” is worth asking.
Cartoon History of Race Relations
I found this on Facebook. I can’t tell where it came from or who wrote/drew it. If I find out, I’ll post it in the comments below. But I think it’s absolutely brilliant.
Maybe we’ll get comments from our white-supremacist friends who commented last year? I love reunions…
Sola Gratia
This week’s sermon from Boonville Presbyterian
Click here to listen to this sermon
1 John 3:16-24
Back when was in college, I lived in a little town in western North Carolina called Boone. It’s nestled way back in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which form part of the ancient and gentle Appalachians. Once you get up into the High Country of Christmas tree and tobacco farms in the hills around Boone, let me tell you: you will meet some “interesting” people. We had one guy named Joshua who lived in a tent in the woods and sold poetry on the street corner. We had Satanists, Neo-nazis, drug dealers, apocalyptic conspiracy theorists, and fire-breathing preachers galore. Don’t forget: this is the same region of the country that produced snake-handling churches. I think there are even a few folks left in that region who (still) might not have read the memo saying that the Civil War is over.
One such “interesting” person that I had the singular privilege of knowing was a guy named Mike. Mike was a reformed drug user who lived in a trailer way back up in the woods. He attended a particular church that holds the unique belief that theirs is the one and only true church left on planet Earth. All others have either forgotten or corrupted the true gospel of Christ. They believe that strict adherence to the dogmas and morals that constitute the membership requirements for their one, true church is what could secure one’s status as “saved” in the eyes of God.
Mike himself was an intense and energetic loner who felt drawn to their form of religious belief and practice. Their robust conviction and die-hard certainty was attractive to him. However, Mike was a person who struggled in many ways. He wrestled with substance abuse and mental illness. His church, unwilling to bend their strict rules in the name of pastoral sensitivity, was constantly excommunicating him and then readmitting him to membership. Whenever I would bump into him in public, Mike’s customary greeting was, “I got saved again!” Mike believed that his status before God was constantly in a state of flux because of his inability to adhere to his church’s code of faith and conduct. That inflexible code, I think, only served to increase Mike’s anxiety and make him feel alienated from the Source of life and love that could truly help him on his quest to become a better person and a more faithful Christian.
Now, I don’t think many of us are likely to find ourselves in Mike’s position. While we too might very well wrestle with problems like addiction and mental illness, this church does not exclude or condemn people for being human. However, we do live in a time when it is quite likely that you will encounter someone (in person, online, or on TV) who will try to send you the message that you’re not “saved” or “born again,” which is to say that you don’t count as a “real” Christian or a child of God. Let me tell you right now that I think that’s a bunch of baloney.
In the interest of full-disclosure, I should probably take this opportunity to also tell you flat-out that I am a universalist. What that means in theological terms is that I believe in the doctrine of universal salvation. What it means in plain English is that I don’t believe in hell. I find the idea of eternal punishment after death to be completely incompatible with the nature and purposes of the God of Love who is revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ. This means that I believe everyone, everywhere, regardless of their religion or their behavior, is “saved.” I’m going to come back to this point later, but I think it’s important that I lay it out now, just so you all know where I’m coming from and where I’m going with this.
Those who try to draw lines in the sand between us and them (i.e. the saved and the damned, the religious insiders and the secular outsiders), typically do so using one or both of the following criteria: belief and behavior. They might say that there are certain ideas you need to accept before you’ll count as a “real” Christian in God’s eyes. They might also say that there are certain things that you need to do if you want to be “saved.”
Folks like this have been around for a long time. In fact, I think it’s probably fair to say they’ve been around for as long as organized religion has been part of human society. We can definitely see their tendencies emerging within the pages of the Bible itself.
In the earliest decades of Christianity, there were two influential groups that developed within the church, each with its own ideas and ideologies. The first group is now known as the Judaizers. These were folks who had a very high degree of respect for Christianity’s roots in Jewish religion and culture. So great was their love for this heritage that many of them began to insist that every new Christian should become Jewish first. They thought this would limit the amount of cultural perversion and assimilation that might happen among Christians. The Judaizers insisted that Christian believers of all ethnicities should make certain that they follow all 613 of God’s commandments in the Jewish Torah. The leaders of the early church, however, decided together that the doors of the church should be flung as wide open as possible in order to welcome people from every tribe, language, people, and nation into the community of Christ. Christianity’s honored roots may have been Jewish, they said, but its future would be international and multicultural. You can read about the details of this conversation in chapter 15 of the book of Acts in the New Testament. The apostle Paul confronted this controversy head-on in his Epistle to the Galatians (also in the New Testament). He had a lot of passionate things to say about it (he was against the Judaizers). Even though the issue seems to have died down in the later part of the first century, we can still hear echoes of that conflict in today’s reading from John’s First Epistle. John’s words about “obey[ing] the commandments” may well have been a reference back to the controversy with the Judaizers. With their strict emphasis on following the commandments, one can easily see how the Judaizers were the ones who said that there are certain things that people need to do in order to count as “saved” in God’s eyes. We could say that they believed in self-salvation through behavior.
The second influential group in the early Christian church was actually a collection or series of different groups that had common characteristics. Collectively, they are now known as the Gnostics. These were folks who came into their Christian faith from the Greco-Roman side of the equation. They brought with them a love of philosophy and wisdom as part of their cultural heritage. As they began to explore their newfound Christian faith, they tried their best to understand Christianity through the lens of philosophy. Popular philosophical thought at the time saw the physical world as completely evil and the spiritual world as completely good. The Gnostics saw Jesus as a kind of divine messenger who floated down to earth and appeared to take on human form in order to teach humanity the secret knowledge that would allow them to transcend above the realm of the physical and enter the spiritual realm, where God lives. The early church leaders, especially the author of John’s First Epistle, were extremely uncomfortable with the idea that this world is totally evil and Jesus wasn’t a real flesh and blood human like you or me. With their emphasis on “secret knowledge” as the source for salvation, the Gnostics were like those who insist that a person has to accept certain ideas or interpretations of scripture in order to count as a “real” Christian. We could say that they believed in self-salvation through belief.
Now John, writing as a pastor to his congregation in his First Epistle, challenges both of these false assumptions, but he spends a lot more time being concerned about the Gnostics (probably because that was the bigger issue with this congregation).
John counters these ideas with one, huge, over-arching principle that trumps both belief and behavior: Love.
John is the writer who famously wrote, “God is love.” God’s love, given freely and unconditionally to those who neither deserve nor earn it, is the basis of all authentic Christian faith and action. Another word for this kind of unconditional love is “grace.” That’s what we mean when we sing, “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!” The Protestant Reformers, our forbears in this church, were following in John’s footsteps when they leaned heavily on the principle of sola gratia or “grace alone” as one of the central foundations of their faith. In theological terms, grace is the “unmerited favor” of God. In plain English, it means “God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
For John, the Protestant Reformers, and all of us in this church, the primary revelation of God’s love is in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus embodied love. He lived and died for others. He set for us an example of what love looks like and what the power of love can do in this world.
According to John, the only way to respond to this free gift of unconditional love is to give love freely and unconditionally. When we love like Jesus, we remind ourselves and others that love is the Ground of our Being. Love is the heartbeat at the center of the universe. When we love like Jesus, our hearts beat in time with the cosmos.
Love is so much simpler, yet so much more difficult, than following a list of prescribed beliefs and behaviors. We would much rather have an itemized creed to which we demanded adherence from everyone. That’s way easier than loving. We would much rather have a code of conduct that spelled out every possible contingency and application for each regulation. That’s way easier than loving.
Love is a fluid and unpredictable thing. Love keeps us creative and flexible. Love is difficult, but it’s also so sorely needed.
You and I live in a society where dogmatism and litigiousness run rampant, but real love and community are on the decline. Just as the Beatles found out that “money can’t buy me love,” we’re finding out that we can’t legislate it either. It would be so much easier to simply draw our lines in the sand over belief and behavior, keeping us in and them out.
The one thing that’s lacking in this land is a sense of love and community. People are longing to belong.
In spite of our exponentially accelerated rate of communication and information exchange in our culture, folks are feeling more isolated than ever. This is a time when the recovery of love as our central principle for faith and action is needed more than ever.
Because of this great need in the world and the great love that is in us as the people of God, I am ordaining and commissioning you all this morning as evangelists and missionaries of love to Central New York and the North Country. I’m not asking you to go proselytize your neighbors or try to win converts at the grocery store. There are enough folks out there doing that already.
At best, those “missionaries” and “evangelists” are only trying to get people to “believe that” certain ideas about Jesus are true (i.e. that he is the Son of God who was born of a virgin, died on the cross, and rose from the grave). Those pamphlets of religious literature can never really get people to “believe in” Jesus in a real way.
I can say “I believe that” about any number of facts. I believe that I am standing in a pulpit right now. I believe that there is a stack of paper in front of me. I believe that I can see our organist from here. All of those are simple statements of fact.
But to say “I believe in” takes a much more personal commitment. I believe in this church. I believe in you. It’s a statement of personal trust and relationship. It goes way farther than simply giving intellectual assent to a list of statements on a piece of paper.
Into this isolated and isolating world that knows so little of real love, I want to send you all as evangelists and missionaries of unconditional love in word and action. Show your faith in love through loving deeds, not creeds. Help people to believe in that love which we hold most sacred.
I commission you in the words of another, more famous, American Universalist named John Murray, who preached during the 1700s:
Go out into the highways and by-ways. Give the people something of your new vision. You may possess only a small light, but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men and women. Give them not Hell, but hope and courage. Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God.
Ways Through Time to Eternity
Fascinating thoughts on pluralism by philosopher John Hick.
Warning: Liberal warm fuzzies ahead. If you don’t want those, feel free to stop reading now.
The future I am thinking of is accordingly one in which what we now call the different religions will constitute the past history of different emphases and variations within a global religious life. I do not mean that all men everywhere will be overtly religious, any more than they are today. I mean rather that the discoveries now taking place by men of different faiths of central common ground, hitherto largely concealed by the variety of cultural forms in which it was expressed, may eventually render obsolete the sense of belonging to rival ideological communities. Not that all religious men will think alike, or worship in the same way or experience the divine identically. On the contrary, so long as there is a rich variety of human cultures—and let us hope there will always be this-we should expect there to be correspondingly different forms of religious cult, ritual and organization, conceptualized in different theological doctrines. And so long as there is a wide spectrum of human psychological types—and again let us hope that there will always be this—we should expect there to be correspondingly different emphases between, for example, the sense of the divine as just and as merciful, between karma and bhakti; or between worship as formal and communal and worship as free and personal. Thus we may expect the different world faiths to continue as religio-cultural phenomena, though phenomena which are increasingly influencing one another’s development. The relation between them will then perhaps be somewhat like that now obtaining between the different denominations of Christianity in Europe or the United States. That is to say, there will in most countries be a dominant religious tradition, with other traditions present in varying strengths, but with considerable awareness on all hands of what they have in common; with some degree of osmosis of membership through their institutional walls; with a large degree of practical cooperation; and even conceivably with some interchange of ministry.
Beyond this the ultimate unity of faiths will be an eschatological unity in which each is both fulfilled and transcended—fulfilled in so far as it is true, transcended in so far as it is less than the whole truth. And indeed even such fulfilling must be a transcending; for the function of a religion is to bring us to a right relationship with the ultimate divine reality, to awareness of our true nature and our place in the Whole, into the presence of God. In the eternal life there is no longer any place for religions; the pilgrim has no need of a way after he has finally arrived. In St. John’s vision of the heavenly city at the end of our Christian scriptures it is said that there is no temple—no Christian church or chapel, no Jewish synagogue, no Hindu or Buddhist temple, no Muslim mosque, no Sikh Gurdwara. . . . For all these exist in time, as ways through time to eternity.
–John Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths
The Other Definition of Homophobia
Me and my big mouth!
I’ve reminded myself once again of the dangers of blogging in a pre-caffeinated state of mind. Something strikes you as funny and insightful, but then you look at it later and go, “Why did I think that was a good idea?”
Early this morning, I posted a picture from Facebook that defines Homophobia as “the fear that gay men will treat you the way you treat women.” That was seriously not cool of me.
In a much-read blog post from last week, I wrote that people of all ideological stripes should be conducting their conversations about this issue “in a spirit that is consistent with our highest shared values.” Posting that image was not consistent with those values. Nobody called me on it or prompted me to write this. It’s just one of those moments for honest self-reflection and confession.
I want to appeal to the best in all of us, not the worst.
The picture made me chuckle a little when I first read it because I agree that our society’s historic prejudice against LGBT people is ultimately rooted in our longstanding degradation of women. Hence, we attach hurtful labels like “butch” and “sissy” to those people who don’t conform to our culturally-formed preconceived notions about gender roles and behavior. In that sense, the picture makes a point. But I think there might be ways of communicating that truth that don’t resort to bumpersticker slogans and uncivil language that continues to lower the bar of mutual degradation.
So, with all of this in mind, I’d like to offer another definition of the term Homophobia.
Literally speaking, phobia means “fear” and homo means “same.” Hence, I would define homophobia as “fear of the same.” Beneath the labels by which we identify, the categories by which we organize, and the shibboleths by which we exclude one another, we are all humans who have to share this planet. Last night, I was listening to a sermon by Desmond Tutu where he proclaims that we are all “God-bearers.” He asks the congregation repeatedly, “What if we really believed that?!”
This, the deepest truth about us as beings, is common to all in equal portions. As we draw up our ideological battle lines and develop our conservative/liberal conspiracy theories out of this demonic paranoia, we are all bowing down to the spirit of homophobia: fear of the same. We are choosing to fear those who are fundamentally the same as us: fellow children of God and co-bearers of the divine image.
We can do better than that. I can do better than that. I want to do better than that.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 