Lives That Matter

Any time a single group is singled out for anything, a backlash of indignation erupts from other groups. And yet, from time-to-time some specific group—religious, ethnic, cultural, generational, gender—needs special focus for valid reasons. Such special focus usually (sometimes validly and of necessity) becomes relatively exclusive in order to call attention to the specific and critical concerns of that group.

Most recently the “Black Lives Matter” emphasis has caused a stir of backlashes, which in reality confirm the issues that motivated the movement in the first place. The movement is about racism, which for many of us is an undeniable structural reality that is pervasive in America today. The backlash more or less proves that reality.

And yet, there is some validity to the concerns behind the backlash. I don’t have the data, but I sense those concerns are about comparisons and perspectives: how many lives (of any gender or ethnicity) were ended by a peace office shooting an unarmed person, compared to how many peace officers’ lives were ended in the line of duty? And how many lives (of any gender or ethnicity) have been ended by a peace officer validly defending his/her or other lives?

Racism is undeniable (although many continue to deny it, anyway). I struggle daily with the residue of my own racist upbringing. Although I name it as sin, confess it, repent of it and reject it almost daily, I cannot deny that it impacts the way I react internally. I pray that my actions and my words reflect the path I choose, rather than the sin that weighs heavily on my soul. I choose to be active in community efforts to confront racism and to raise awareness; and I pray that my chosen actions and words will not be perceived as paternalistic.

Having confessed the reality of racism, however, I sense an additional demon at work in the testimony/counter-testimony surrounding “Black Lives Matter”. I think there is as general insecurity within Western culture that too often is manifested in a world view that says “The only way I can feel good about myself is to ferret out the shortcomings of others.”

Thus, “Black Lives Matter,” triggers a backlash litany of other lives that also matter. The litany is designed to point out the ethical and moral omissions of a movement that singles out one socio/ethnic group. In a sense it is that insecurity raising its head and whining, “Where’s mine?” At the infamous bottom line, of course, the backlash is a smoke screen devised to distract attention from the racism that is endemic within most human cultures.

The weakness of both the movement and the backlash is that each is reactive rather than pro-active. “Black Lives Matter” is a necessary response to a national crisis; nevertheless, it is reactionary in nature, and thus its effectiveness will be limited at best. The backlash is a predictable, but indefensible reaction that also will be ineffective, if not counterproductive.

What we lack at a national level is a proactive approach to countering racism. I have no illusion that my own ingenuity will produce the ultimate solution; but perhaps I can plant a seed that will be watered and fed and weeded by others who can nurture it to fruitfulness.

How about this as a basic proactive platform from which to deal with human life: “Every Life Matters!” To say that a life matters is not the same as affirming that life; nor is it necessary first to demand that it conform to one’s own standards of right/wrong, good/evil, etc. before it matters. To say that a life matters is not to deny that every life also lives out the consequences of its own choices. 

To say a life matters is to affirm that it has intrinsic value and potential.

To say “Every Life Matters” means, ontologically and a priori:

·         Black lives matter

·         The lives of Police and their families matter

·         The lives of Fire Fighter and their families matter

·         The lives of Emergency Medical Technicians and their families matter

·         The lives of Military personnel and their families matter

·         The lives of Conscientious Objectors matter

·         The lives of medical professionals and paraprofessionals matter

·         LGBT lives matter

·         Heterosexual lives matter

·         Heroic lives matter

·         Cowardly lives matter

·         Native American lives matter

·         Hispanic lives matter

·         Asian lives matter

·         Caucasian lives matter

·         Male lives matter

·         Female lives matter

·         Old lives matter

·         Middle-aged lives matter

·         Young adult lives matter

·         Children’s lives matter

·         Unborn lives matter

·         The lives of children born into poverty matter

·         The lives of the poor matter

·         The lives of the wealthy matter

·         The lives of the educated matter

·         The lives of the uneducated matter

·         The lives of the responsible matter

·         The lives of the irresponsible matter

·         The lives of the employed matter

·         The lives of the unemployed matter

·         The lives of the unemployable matter

·         The lives of employers matter

·         The lives of the healthy matter

·         The lives of the ill matter

·         The lives of the mentally ill matter

·         The lives of the differently abled matter

·         The lives of the strong matter

·         The lives of the weak matter

·         The lives of Pro-Life advocates matter

·         The lives of Pro-Choice advocates matter

·         Politically correct lives matter

·         Politically incorrect lives matter

·         Politically ignorant lives matter

·         Lives representing Free Enterprise matter

·         Lives representing Capitalism matter

·         Lives representing Socialism matter

·         Lives representing Communism matter

·         The lives of the innocent matter

·         The lives of the guilty matter

·         Christian lives matter

·         Jewish lives matter

·         Muslim lives matter

·         Hindu lives matter

·         Shinto lives matter

·         Buddhist lives matter

·         Baha’i lives matter

·         Tao lives matter

·         The lives of Democrats matter

·         The lives of Republicans matter

·         Tea Party lives matter

·         The lives of Libertarians matter

·         The lives of Independents matter

·         Your life matters

·         My life matters

This list of Lives That Matter is offered as a conceptual starting place. I feel relatively certain that other life categories could—and should—be added to the list; and I’m sure that there are those who are poised to pounce upon the list and judge it on the basis of its omissions. So, can we work together to complete the list, so we can get on about the business of building a world of peace, justice and love in which Every Life really Matters?

That’s how I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

Let's You and Him Fight

Between me and any other human there are infinitely more similarities than differences.

That’s a bold statement, especially in a culture that has become obsessed with eliminating differences—in a culture that is persuaded that differences and disagreements are bad and assumes that conformity is good (as long as I am the standard to which everyone must conform)—in a culture that does not recognize or accept the enrichment that emerges out of diversity—in a culture in which defenders of differing ideologies demonize each other.

Nevertheless, I maintain that we agree much more than we disagree—about almost everything.

We all agree that justice is better than injustice.

We all agree that good is better than evil.

We all agree that right is better than wrong.

But we don’t always agree on the definitions of justice, good and right.

Christians generally agree on the reality of God, and agree that God is the Creator of the Universe, the Redeemer of all that is broken in creation, and the Sustainer of all that is eternal. If we humans could leave it there and simply stand in awe before that reality and respond in adoration and praise and in commitment to live in harmony with the redemptive, sustaining work of God in creation, life would be as God intended life to be.

Moreover, Christians generally agree that Jesus of Nazareth completely manifested the redemptive work of God.

But (and you can pick almost any other point in Christian history as a starting point), within the first generation of Christianity somebody said, “This is specifically how God accomplished redemption through Jesus, and you must agree with my assessment or you’re wrong.” And immediately there was established the dichotomy of orthodoxy vs. heresy.

The need to identify heresy is an act of insecurity, and manifests a need to be in control of our eternal destiny. It's the fruit of the tree of which, when we eat it, we will know the difference between good and evil (Genesis 3:1-5). When we know what we have to do, then we won't have to trust some mysterious creator deity. If we obey the rules, that deity will be obligated to favor us in our eternal destiny.

Orthodoxy replaced the pure response of awe and adoration and praise and shifted the focus from the awesomeness of God to human works; and no matter how high we fly the grace flag, the message we send with our lives is "you've gotta' jump through my hoops or you're out". The focus shifted from relating to God to being right and demonizing those who don't affirm my perception of right. And we've been fighting ever since.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…” (Genesis 1:1). That should have been enough. But somewhere along the way somebody decided to limit the possible ways God could have accomplished that task, and orthodoxy and heresy were created: “There’s only one way God could have done it, and you agree with me or you’re out.”

So to this day we square off and fight over “creationism” vs “intelligent design” vs “evolution”, and God gets shoved into a corner and essentially forgotten in the preoccupation with being “right.”

And in the process of eliminating disagreements, the larger arena of our agreements, upon which we could work together collaboratively to fulfill our divine calling to build a more just, good and “right” world (“…on earth as it is in heaven…”), gets lost in the shuffle. And God is neither adored nor praised—nor impressed.

"And I will show you a still more excellent way.  If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal" (I Corinthians 12:31-13:1).

That’s how I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

In God We Trust?

“In God We Trust.” But we trust more in our guns and in our violent ways of enforcing our ways. It’s been that way consistently, regardless of the governmental or economic system in place, in every culture since human history has been recorded.

We trust in violence and we persecute those who advocate any alternative in dealing with social and interpersonal disagreements and problems. Even our films and television shows constantly rehearse the necessity of violence as the only effective way to bring about “justice” (retributive justice) and to ensure our safety.

Even our Scriptures proclaim violence as a way of maintaining order. The Holy Writ attributes violent jealousy and vengeful wrath as a part of God’s character and nature.

Well, at least part of the Scriptures do.

Many of the Hebrew prophetic writings project a compassionate God whose love engenders faith and loyalty in those who seek Him (sic). But most readers of Scripture and practitioners of Christianity choose to ignore those parts, or at best to privatize them. The most common (almost unanimous) assimilation of that message is that God offers love and compassion only to those who are faithful to Him and who jump through His hoops. God’s love is conditional; and that message continues to leak through even our loudest pulpit-pounding about God’s grace.  And those who are outside God’s grace are still doomed to violent retribution by this “loving” God.

The greatest tragedy is that so many of us use Scripture to justify our trust in violence. We have approached the Scriptures on a legalistic all-or-nothing basis, when the Scriptures themselves are not presented as such. Too often we have seen the Scriptures as self-contradictory, and then proceeded to “protect” the Holy Writ from itself by inventing all sorts of incongruous rationalizations and justifications to avoid what we see as contradictions.

But, instead of contradictions, the Scriptures present an ongoing courtroom-like debate among God’s people. On one side is the testimony of those who see God as a hero/warrior who competes with other gods over people and territory. Even after Judaism—or at least most of the religious leadership of Judaism—had become monotheistic, that God image persisted.

On the other side is the counter-testimony of those who understood God as one whose love is universally inclusive. They called upon Israel to be a “light to all nations” (Isaiah 60:1-3, et al).

The reader is the jury, and must decide which testimony to believe. Historically, God’s people consistently have chosen to reject the vulnerability of love in favor of the seemingly more secure use of violence and retributive justice.

Jesus made the unpopular choice. He chose to reject the violence in the Hebrew Scriptures and chose instead to lift up love: compassion, restorative justice, reconciliation and enemy love. And the power people of his time found his message so confronting to their own lives that they killed him. Power people still persecute all who challenge them.

At best, again, we privatize those words of Jesus that call for restoration and healing and love, and we wrap them in conditions. As a society we still trust in violence. We think it keeps us safe; we think it makes us strong.

The problem with a system built upon strength and power is that eventually somebody stronger always—ALWAYS—comes along. Love does not need power, for love is the strongest force in the universe. God is love (I John 4:8).

For all these reasons, it will not be enough simply to point out the harm that comes from violence. That harm will simply be called “unfortunate-but-necessary collateral damage.” We will need to demonstrate to the world that there are viable nonviolent alternatives to dealing with societal problems—“ways that are not only effective, but in fact are more effective than violence at resolving conflict and keeping us safe.”[1]

There are numerous historic manifestations of effective non-violent confrontation of injustice and evil. Even in my own life-time names like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela come to mind. Yes, Bonhoeffer’s and King’s non-violent strategies, like Jesus’, cost them their lives; nevertheless, their effectiveness in weakening the evils they confronted is unquestionable. I know no one who denies that love is risky. And those who have challenged violent defense and retributive justice continue to be persecuted.

Maybe we’ve been asking the wrong questions: instead of asking, “How can we be safe and protect ourselves?” maybe we should be asking, “How we can be loving as Jesus was loving?”

That’s the way I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did (San Francisco: Metanoia Press, 2014), Kindle edition, Location 2289.

Spiritual Fruits, or Just Religious Nuts?

“By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” ~ Galatians 5:22 (NRSV)

The sermon ended with a simple question: “What fruit does your life bear?” Afterward, she confronted me in the narthex: “You totally omitted all the context that goes before that verse—that stuff about the fruit of the flesh and all that sexual immorality.”

Never mind that of the fifteen listed fruits of the flesh, only three made any reference to sexual immorality. Of the dozen remaining fruits (idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing), most of which she (and I) commit regularly, if not daily, eight relate to animosity in human relationships.

We tend to specialize when it comes to sin; and I suspect it’s the sins we don’t regularly commit that show up most frequently on our list of “worst” sins. I want forgiveness and pardon for my jealousy, factionalism, strife, enmity, etc.; but throw the book at him for his sexual immorality.

And never mind that the New Testament is abundantly clear that there is no hierarchy of sins. Sin is sin, and “the wages of sin is death.” The breaking of one law—one sinful act—makes us sinners. How fast do you drive in a 65 mph zone? If you drive 66 mph you are a law-breaker.

Yeah but…

So, out of a list of 15 fruits of the flesh, she picked out the three that relate to “all that sexual immorality.” She wanted me to damn the sexual sinners to hell.

My response was, “Yes, I recognize that there is a list of fruits of the flesh. My question for us today is, ‘Do our lives bear fruits of the Spirit?’”

“But, what about those sins of the flesh?” she countered. 

“Don’t do them.” I responded. “If your life produces Fruits of the Spirit you won't have to worry about fruits of the flesh?”

“But aren't we supposed to rebuke and correct sin?” Now I was beginning to get it. She felt safe in her righteousness; so, she wanted the bad guys to "get theirs."

“I’m wondering if you’re confusing the task of Scripture[1] with our task. Our task is to bear fruits of the Spirit.”

She persisted, “Well, we can’t be soft on sin,” and turned on her heels and left in a huff.

It’s been my observation that in a culture smothered in the residue of Puritanism and Victorianism, most people already know all about sin. But threats of hell and other fear tactics never seem to make a dent in the preponderance of sinful behavior. Fear tactics, however, do produce a lot of guilt and self-justifying behavior; and one of the easiest ways to justify oneself is to condemn others: “his sin is greater than mine.”

Among the prophetic writings of the Hebrew Scriptures, far and away the most frequently named sins of Israel were idolatry/unfaithfulness toward God and injustice toward the poor. Jesus most frequently condemned the hypocrisy of the religious leaders and their unjust treatment of the poor. Yet in many Christian circles today injustice toward the poor has become a scripturally sanctioned institution by blaming the poor for their lot. 

The obsession over "welfare fraud," [you don't work, you don't eat (II Thessalonians 3:10)] justifies the withholding of all assistance in all forms from all people. Yet it is documented repeatedly that welfare fraud accounts for a minuscule portion of monies spent on public assistance. Administrative embezzlement accounts for much more.

The strategy I infer from the confrontation in the narthex is, “Don’t let anybody get away with anything!” It’s a diversionary tactic to focus attention away from my own brokenness.

We are not responsible for the sin of others (Ezekiel 18:3, 17, 19). Our calling is part of “the more excellent way” of I Corinthians 12:31. Love calls us to bear faithful witness—with integrity of words and actions—to the Love of God. And Jesus was crystal clear: we will be known by the fruit we bear. But by emphasizing the sin of others, we risk neglecting the orchard.

That’s the way I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk

Jim 

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[1] A reference to II Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…” The reference apparently was wasted on her.

The Mind of Christ

I've spent most of my life studying the Bible and related sources in an effort to discover who God is and what God wants to accomplish through me. The longer I live the more important it seems that I continue to do so. That activity is called theology, and everybody, even agnostics and atheists, has “a theology.”

The greatest difficulty with theology is keeping ourselves out of it. What passes for Bible study too often is really an exercise in finding justification for what we already are doing or have decided to do. As the old cliché goes: “You can prove anything with the Bible.” In seminary we called that “seducing the text.” Sometimes it’s more like “raping the text.”

Perhaps the most egregious—and at the same time the most denied—abuse of Scripture and theology is how it is twisted to support the use of violence or the threat of violence to inflict and enforce specific doctrines or practices; and it makes little difference whether the enforced doctrine or practice is religious, political, economic or simple greed—even the enslavement of other humans has been justified through the rape of Scripture.

In other words, the history of theology is filled with intrusions of human fallibility. Theology and faith have been shaped by human need, desire and ambition to a much greater degree than they have shaped those human foibles. While most theology emerges as a way of shaping human relationships and culture, in virtually every case, culture eventually shapes theology, rather than the other way around.

The bottom line is power and control. In a recent blog, Kyle Roberts develops the idea that throughout Christian history theology has served “to empower certain persons over others and to inscribe authority in one way of theologizing over another way, one way of thinking of Christ over another, one way of understanding salvation over another way.”[1]

Why drag out all the dirty laundry? Isn't it more uplifting and constructive to lift up Christ and his grace? Absolutely. But, if that’s what we've been doing, we've done a terrible job! We've been long on condemning the sins of others, and short on any kind of self-evaluation.

For a couple of generations people by the droves have been bailing out of virtually every manifestation of organized “religion.”

And the reason they’re leaving? They point primarily to a lack of integrity between what religion preaches and what it practices.

Of course they often generalize the entire religious world on the basis of some single manifestation of religion—quite likely one particular experience related to religion. But the tragedy is that those counterproductive experiences of religion seem to outnumber those of religious integrity.

In short, the church has lost its power, and none too soon! The problem with a power-based ideology is that power eventually runs out. The church has reacted to its loss of power simply by redoubling its investment in ineffective and counterproductive strategies of institutional maintenance.

Three quarters of a century ago those strategies spelled power, and “success.” But success increasingly was measured by the standards of the marketing industry, rather than by biblically-based theology. When “the customer is always right,” the church cedes its power to the market.

Power was never a part of Christ’s agenda in the first place! The truth is, we humans have gotten it wrong—over and over and over!

We’re not perfect; and one of the greatest manifestations of our imperfection is that we don’t always recognize or acknowledge it. It’s always the other guy who gets it wrong (you know, that cinder in the other guy’s eye…).

But the cry from the “spiritually yearning, institutionally disillusioned public”[2] is simple: “Show us how to follow Jesus.”

WHAT A CONCEPT!!!

How does one “follow Jesus?” Many of us have spent the greater part of a lifetime trying to do, and we still don’t get it right on a consistent basis. But how about starting simply by adopting one quality of Jesus at a time? For some of us even that will be a life-long struggle; and for most of us it will be an ongoing exercise in one step forward, two steps back.

I propose the quality of humility as a starting place. Fair or unfair, accurate or inaccurate, one of the most frequent stereotypes of Christians today is arrogance. It’s easy to see in some people (please don’t show me a mirror!)

In contrast, consider my favorite passage in the Bible:

 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

6 who, though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8     he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—

    even death on a cross.              ~ Philippians 2:5-8 (NRSV)

Humility, in this text, involves surrender of status, acceptance of a life of servanthood and remaining obedient to the life of service to which God called him.

How about that as a starting place for following Jesus?

That’s the way I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] http://www.longlooking.com/2015/04/theology-is-about-power/

[2] A phrase coined by Thomas G. Bandy and used in several of his books.

A New Paradigm of Faith (which I think is a carbon copy of the original)

• "I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love." ~ Wendell Berry

• “Choose being kind over being right and you’ll be right every time.” ~ Richard Carlson

My heart aches to the point almost of tears when I dwell on “man’s inhumanity to man”. Jesus ate with sinners of every variety, touched the untouchables, healed the unclean and even reminded those in Nazareth that when there was famine in Israel, God sent Elijah to feed a woman from Sidon; when there were many lepers in Israel, God had sent Elisha to heal a Syrian named Naaman—both of whom were heathen aliens!

Jesus refused to condemn a woman caught in the act of committing adultery (a capital offense in that culture), he visited in the home of Zacchaeus, a treasonous, embezzling Publican, and he advised carrying a Roman soldier’s pack not just one mile, as the law allowed, but two miles.

 Jesus called upon his followers to forgive others 70 X 7 times (literally 490 times, which is more than any of us would ever attempt; but which in the numerology of the day was probably intended to mean an infinite number of times) and never, ever to retaliate or seek vengeance. He even forgave the ones who nailed him to the cross.

Jesus reserved his strongest reproof for those who openly boasted of their piety and moral superiority and then used their considerable religious authority to dominate all who dared any divergence from their dogmatic pronouncements.

The Pharisees boasted of their righteousness. Perhaps they even kept checklists of the laws they obeyed. They dotted every “i” and crossed every “t”; but Jesus said, “…unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20 NRSV).[1]

But so many who claim to follow Jesus call others the foulest of names over disagreements about political ideologies, and seek legal authorization to discriminate against people they judge to be the vilest of sinners (but will gladly serve sinners of every other category). Then we all assemble at church and congratulate each other on our moral superiority.

We tend to read Scripture selectively. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Jesus read Scripture selectively, too; and so did Paul. The crux of the matter is not whether we read the Bible selectively, but rather, which texts we select. Jesus selected those that lead to compassion, healing, restoration, reconciliation and love. He rejected those Scripture passages that lead to vengeance, retaliation and violence or domination of any kind.

Theologian, Walter Wink, begins the 9^th chapter of his book, The Powers that Be, with these words:

“American culture is presently in the first stages of a spiritual renaissance. To the degree that this renaissance is Christian at all, it will be the human figure of Jesus that galvanizes hearts to belief and action, and not the Christ of the creeds or the Pauline doctrine of justification by grace through faith. And in the teachings of Jesus, the sayings on nonviolence and love of enemies will hold a central place. Not because they are more true than any others, but because they are crucial in the struggle to overcome domination without creating new forms of domination.”

As I said earlier, we all read the Scriptures selectively, and that’s not necessarily bad. Having surrendered all anxiety over my eternal destiny to the one who said, “My grace is sufficient,” it is my intention, and my prayer, that my reading of Scripture will always put me on the path of following Jesus, even in—especially in—the selection of Scripture texts I choose as my standard for living.

Having arrived so late in life at this paradigm of faith, I have a deeper sense of freedom and joy in Christ, and I have a smidgen of resentment for all those years wasted in the old pattern of reading the Bible to find evidence that I’m right. I’ll never be totally right, except in the act of entrusting my eternal destiny to Christ and moving on to serve him.

That’s how I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] I believe the Pharisees were totally sincere in their attempts to be faithful; but, their faithfulness had become misdirected toward legalistic and unquestioning obedience to a set of laws, and their manipulation of those laws pointed them away from their intended purpose, which was to describe a relationship with God that resulted in loving treatment of persons.