Phoenix Affirmations #8

8. Walking humbly with God, acknowledging our own shortcomings while honestly seeking to understand and call forth the best in others, including those who consider us their enemies;
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This one seems simple (though anytime I say that I end out writing more). The first part of the affirmation grows out of a familiar scripture:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

Humility has a bit of a bad rap in our culture, which is largely the fault of Christian preaching. In an attempt to avoid destructive pride, some teach that we should go through life thinking of ourselves as loathsome, worthless sinners who can accomplish nothing good.

That is messed up thinking, and a far cry from true humility.

I ran across a great insight in the Anglican BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER years ago. It said that the person who believes they are useless, worthless and ruins every thing they touch is suffering from pride as much the egotist. Both are completely unrealistic, and thoroughly self-centered ways of viewing life. Whether we try to put ourselves above everyone else, or beneath them, we're shutting ourselves away from any kind of healthy and loving relationships.

True humility takes down the barriers that false self-images raise up. Humility comes when you see yourself as you are, with all of your virtues and flaws. It comes when you understand that you are human, just like everyone else and it frees you to love others without judgment.

Which brings us to the second part of the Affirmation. This one is also based in a well-loved scripture.

You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that. (Matthew 5:43-47)

Loving a stranger is hard work, let alone loving an enemy. Freud once wrote that love should be confined for those people we consider worthy (I need to blog about that quote someday. For now, I'll just say the man had issues.)

Freud's idea fits with what seems the most common sense approach. We love people when we're going to get something out of it. Loving those who don't love you is a waste of energy, and loving those who hate you is just asking for trouble.

But that assumption doesn't take the power of love seriously. I read several years ago about a young man who, driving drunk, had killed a family's teenaged daughter. No one would have blamed the family if they had hated him and petitioned the court for the harshest possible sentence. Instead they got to know him, visited him in jail, pleaded for leniency in his sentencing, and took him in when he was released from prison. His life was changed by the power of their forgiveness. and so were the lives of the family. They said that reaching out as they did helped to make their daughter's death bearable.

Loving others, strangers, enemies, is the hardest challenge that God puts before us. It is difficult and dangerous, but it is also the only thing that can transform the world.

Aaargh!

I saw a comment by an old friend named Erik Kniffen but, when I tried to publish it, it disappeared!

I am a techno-dummy. :(

Erik, please comment again.

The Hermeneutics of the Stop Sign

this is something that's been floating around the internet for a few years. Just a bit of background: Hermeneutics is a study of how a text is interpreted. The name comes from Hermes, the messenger fo the Greek gods, and is used to describe an approach that iss meant to help readers get the full meaning from the text.

An exegete is someone who practices exegesis (pronounced like "eggs-a-Jesus") which is a disciplined study of a biblical text.

I'll leave you to figure out the rest of the fancy language for yourselves.
:)

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Suppose you're traveling to work and you see a stop sign. What do you do? That depends on how you, the exegete, interpret the stop sign.

1. A post-modernist deconstructs the sign (knocks it over with the car), ending forever the tyranny of the north-south traffic over the east-west traffic.

2. Similarly, a Marxist refuses to stop because she sees the stop sign as an instrument of class conflict. She concludes that the bourgeois use the north-south road and obstruct the progress of the workers in the east-west road.

3. A serious and educated Catholic rolls through the intersection because he believes he cannot understand the stop sign apart from its interpretive community and tradition. Observing that the interpretive community doesn't take it too seriously, he doesn't feel obligated to take it too seriously either.

4. An average Catholic (or Orthodox or Coptic or Anglican or Methodist or Presbyterian or whatever) doesn't bother to read the sign but she'll stop the car if the car in front stops.

5. A fundamentalist, taking the text very literally, stops at the stop sign and waits for it to tell him to go.

6. A seminary-educated evangelical preacher might look up "STOP" in his lexicons of English and discover that it can mean: 1) something that prevents motion, such as a plug for a drain, or a block of wood that prevents a door from closing; 2) a location where a train or bus lets off passengers. The main point of his sermon the following Sunday on this text is: When you see a stop sign, it is a place where traffic is naturally clogged, so it is a good place to let off passengers from your car.

7. An orthodox Jew does one of two things: a) Take another route to work that doesn't have a stop sign so that she doesn't run the risk of disobeying the Law; b) Stop at the sign, say "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, king of the universe, who hast given us thy commandment to stop," wait three seconds according to her watch, and then proceed. Incidentally, the Talmud has the following comments on this passage: Rabbi Meir says: He who does not stop shall not live long. R. Hillel says: Cursed is he who does not count to three before proceeding. R. Simon ben Yudah says: Why three? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. R. ben Isaac says: Because of the three patriarchs. R. Yehuda says: Why bless the Lord at a stop sign? Because it says, "Be still and know that I am God."

8. A scholar from the Jesus Seminar concludes that the passage "STOP" undoubtedly was never uttered by Jesus himself because being the progressive Jew that he was, he would never have wanted to stifle people's progress. Therefore, STOP must be a textual insertion belonging entirely to stage III of the gospel tradition, when the Church was first confronted by traffic in its parking lot.

9. A New Testament scholar notices that there is no stop sign on Mark street but there is one on Matthew and Luke streets, and concludes that the ones on Luke and Matthew streets are both copied from a sign on a street no one has ever seen, called "Q" street. The scholar has read an excellent 300-page doctoral dissertation on the origin of these stop signs and the differences between stop signs on Matthew and Luke. There is an unfortunate omission in the dissertation, however; it doesn't explain the meaning of the text!

10. A Hebrew Scriptures scholar points out that there are a number of stylistic differences between the first and second half of the passage "STOP." For example, "ST" contains no enclosed areas and five line endings, whereas "OP" contains two enclosed areas and only one line termination. She concludes that the author of the second part is different from the author of the first part and probably lived hundreds of years later. Later scholars determine that the second half is itself actually written by two separate authors because of similar stylistic differences between the "O" and the "P."

11. Another prominent OT scholar notes in his commentary that the stop sign would fit better into the context three streets back. (Unfortunately, he neglects to explain why in his commentary.) Clearly it was moved to its present location by a later redactor. He thus exegetes the intersection as though the sign were not there.

12. Because of the difficulties in interpretation, yet another OT scholar amends the text, changing the "T" to "H". "SHOP" is much easier to understand in context than "STOP" because of the multiplicity of stores in the area. She demonstrates that the textual corruption probably occurred because "SHOP" is so similar to "STOP" on the sign several streets back, that it is a natural mistake for a scribe to make. Thus the sign should be interpreted to announce the existence of a shopping area. If this is true, it could indicate that both meanings are valid, thus making the thrust of the message "STOP (AND) SHOP." She goes shopping.

13. A "prophetic" preacher notices that the square root of the sum of the numeric representations of the letters S-T-O-P (sigma-tau-omicron-pi in the Greek alphabet), multiplied by 40 (the number of testing), and divided by four (the number of the world — north, south, east, and west) equals 666. Therefore, he concludes that stop signs are the dreaded "mark of the beast," a harbinger of divine judgment upon the world, and must be avoided at all costs.

The Hunger Site

This is a post that I’m putting on both my blogs because it needs to have the word spread. You may know about these already, but, if you don’t, here they are.

The Hunger Site started in 1999 and is a click-to-donate website. What that means is that you can click a button on the site once per day and it will translate as a small donation to the famine relief organizations Feeding America (formerly known as America’s Second Harvest) and Mercy Corps. The action is free and, thought the donation is small, it adds up over time and is an effortless way to make a difference.

It is linked to a number of other websites with the same set up and similar missions.

The Breast Cancer Site gathers contributions for free mammogram screenings.

The Child Health Site focuses its efforts on providing medicine and medical care to low income children.

The Literacy Site uses the funds they gather to purchase books for literacy campaigns.

The Rainforest Site buys up areas of endangered rainforest so they cannot be developed.

The Animal Rescue Site purchases food to care for animals in shelters.

Each of them is worth a click a day. They are my first six visits when I go on line. I hope you'll consider them.

Phoenix Affirmations #7

The next on our list of affirmations is a controversial one, but is absolutely vital.

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7. Preserving religious freedom and the Church’s ability to speak prophetically to government by resisting the commingling of Church and State;

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The idea of separation of church and state in North America grew out of some bad experiences in Europe. My denomination, the United Church of Christ, is directly descended from one of these groups. The Pilgrims had a rough time in England because they had their own ideas about worship. That doesn't sound so sinister, except that their non-conformist approach came at a time when Queen Elizabeth I was consolidating her power as both Queen of the Realm, and leader of the Church of England. In her view, active membership in the national church was a necessary sign of political loyalty. People who wanted to worship in a different form were considered disloyal citizens.

The Pilgrims had a rough time in England because of this. They ended fleeing to Leiden in the Netherlands, and eventually chartered a ship called the Mayflower to bring them to North America. Unfortunately, the theocracy they set up in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was also intolerant of religious dissent, but we often move forward with baby steps.

The first principle we can see in this is pretty simple: The government has no business telling it's citizens how they should worship.

That one is fairly simple, and is a familiar argument. If faith is a decision of personal conscience and choice then it makes no sense for the government to tell people that they have to belong to a specific religion or denomination. As a rule every one agrees with this... with the exception of people who are pretty sure that their religion or denomination would be the one to come out on top. :)

The second principle is that one of the primary roles of religion (my religion anyway, I won't presume to speak for everyone) is to speak out when the state does something cruel or unjust.

In the Hebrew scriptures, the priests were supposed to be the servants of God, and to help the common people. The King of Israel was also supposed to be a servant-leader rather than an authoritarian despot. Unfortunately there's a lot of truth in the old saying about power corrupting. It wasn't long before the King and the Priests were a privileged class who exploited the common people and ignored their needs. You can see this starting to take shape in 2 Samuel 7 when King David announced his plan to build a grand Temple for God so that God will have a home as grand as the king's palace. No longer would God be worshiped in the glorified tent that was the Tabernacle. Now people would have to come to the big city to worship.

Lifestyles of the rich and famous.

The thing was, this wasn't what God wanted. God preferred being out among the people and had no use for a house of cedar wood. God stopped David's plans, and if the king had really been listening he would have given up his grand lifestyle and come back out among the people where God was.

Unfortunately, he didn't, and each generation of kings and priests got a little more removed from the concerns of God's people and a little more concerned about protecting their own power and privilege. That's what always happens with a state religion, it becomes all about power and privilege, and drifts far away from the valies of God.

That's where the prophets This was the case with the prophets in ancient Israel. God called them to go and speak out against the abuses they saw. As you might guess, they weren't popular. In fact, many of them were killed for what they had to say. Looking back, we can see that they were the ones speaking out for their faith while the blended religious/political leadership was not.

If you blend religion and government, then the church becomes so enmeshed in politics that it loses its soul. There have been many times that government and religion have come together like this in the history of the world, and I can't think of a single time when this hasn't happened. To remain true to itself, religion has to avoid this entanglement.

In Praise of Atheists

Here is yet another digression in my series on the Phoenix Affirmations. It'll be a short one because I need to get back to working on regular stuff for Easter.

I've had a number of atheists and agnostic friends over the years. One thing that I've discovered is that conversations with them have been very helpful to my spiritual growth. There are things that talking to them can give you that you usually can't get talking to a believer. Don't get me wrong, I love talking to other Christians, but they tend to be too polite to me and respectful to ask the tough questions.

"It says in Matthew that Jesus died on Friday, but in John he dies on Thursday. How do you deal with that kind of contradiction in the Bible?"

"I just saw that a famous preacher named (fill in the name) was caught (fill in the scandal). How do you deal with that kind of hypocrisy in the church?"

"I was reading the Bible and ran across a passage where God commanded the Israelites to commit genocide. How do you deal with that?"

Those are questions that need to be dealt with, and struggling with them has done a lot to shape and deepen my faith. They are the kind of questions an honest outsider will ask. Sometime the asking comes in the form of polite inquiry (I like that), other times it comes as angry accusation (not so much fun) but either way it raises important questions.

My sense has been that most atheists and agnostics are very honest in their questioning. There are a few who are just out to start a fight, or take a cheap shot, but they're a minority. You only ask questions about something if that thing is, on some level, important to you. Some are fascinated by the idea of faith; some are repelled by the fact that so many people allow 'irrational superstition' to guide their lives. Most take the questions they ask very seriously.

I do get frustrated when one of these conversations turns one-sided. Some of the atheists I've talked to seem to have very little interest in my responses to their questions, or their accusations. Some seem less interested in learning what my position actually is than they are in telling me it's wrong. I'm afraid I've let myself get short tempered a few times. That's been a mistake. Even when the tone is strident, the questions they raise still deserve serious consideration.

I've learned something interesting in these conversations. There are a lot of things they say that I agree with. When they tell me why they don't believe in God, they usually give me reasons that it's easy to respect.

"I can't believe in a God who would sanction genocide."

"I can't believe in a God who would condemn people to everlasting punishment for belonging to another religion, or for having no religion."

"I can't believe in a God who would sanction the bombing of an abortion clinic, or the shooting of an abortion doctor.

"I can't believe in a God whose followers are more interested in covering up a scandal than in caring for suffering people."

As it happens, I can't believe any of those things either.

The sad truth is that many Christians carry around false ideas of God. Those ideas are based on notions that the preacher is infallible, or the church hierarchy is infallible, or the church doctrines are infallible, or even that the Bible is infallible. They imagine that finding a flaw in any of those things is the same as finding a flaw in God so they shut their eyes to the flaws.

But God is greater than the preacher, or the doctrine, or the theology, or the hierarchy, or even the Bible. All of those things are tools to help us understand God. They can be wonderful tools but, when we forget that's all they are and start acting as if they are interchangeable with God we've made a terrible mistake. We've created a false idea of God and put it in the place of the real God.

It's these false ideas that atheists and agnostics are so good at identifying and criticizing, and they do believers an invaluable service. Honest questions are never the enemy of the true God; they are an important part of any healthy faith.

(That was not a short digression, was it? I'll work on it.)

Phoenix Affirmations #6

After a little break, I wanted to get back to the Phoenix Affirmations. If you're joining this program already in progress, the affirmations are an attempt by progressive Christians to say what we're all about. There are 12 points and they're divided into three categories based on the 'Great Commandment' and the Golden Rule'. Affirmations 1-4 are about love of God, 5-8 are about love of neighbor, and 9-12 are about love of self.

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6. Standing, as Jesus does, with the outcast and oppressed the denigrated and afflicted, seeking peace and justice with or without the support of others;

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One of the central parts of Jesus ministry in the Gospels is his focus on justice for the least powerful members of society. He lived at a time when the religious and political leaders of his community experienced great prosperity, while the ordinary people struggled to survive under the burden of high taxes. Like Micah, Isaiah, Amos, and so many of the Old Testament prophets before him, Jesus was deeply upset by the unfairness of this system.

While it is sometimes (too often) overlooked by preachers, social and economic justice is mentioned more them 2,000 times throughout the Bible. After faith in God, it is Jesus favorite topic in his parables and other teachings. If you claim to be a follower of God, but haven't picked up on this point, you've missed something vital.

Jesus doesn't flinch from this point either. In Luke 6:17-26 he says:

‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.

So God clearly has compassion for the poor, but there's more. Unlike Matthew's Gospel, which sticks exclusively to the blessings, Luke's account also lists some woes:

‘But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
‘Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.

Woe to you who are rich? Those are shocking words, especially to American Christians who like to equate wealth with our religious devotion. Why should Jesus say something so harsh? Does he mean wealthy people who are obsessed with their wealth? Does he mean just those who have gotten wealthy through ruthless or dishonest means?

It's easy to try to spiritualize those words away, with this and with other parables. The best example of this kind of creative interpretation is found in the parable of the camel and the eye of a needle found in Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, and Luke 18:25. Jesus says that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Interpreters have tried to make this parable easier on the wealthy for years by suggesting that the 'eye of the needle' is actually the name of a city gate in Jerusalem, or that the 'needle' mentioned is actually a special kind of needle with a very large eye, or that the word translated 'camel' is actually a mistranslation of the word for a slender rope.

All of those sound reasonable, and give the wealthy a much better shot, but there are no shortage of articles demonstrating that all of these explanations are wishful thinking. Jesus really was talking about something that is completely impossible. He wanted to drive home the importance of the idea that God cares for the survival rights of the poor far more than for the property rights of the wealthy.

You can find the same imperative in the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man as well. The rich man doesn't end out in torment because he was dishonest, or immoral, or cruel. His offense is simply that he is wealthy, and there was a poor man at his gate, and he never did anything to help.

There is an overwhelming movement to care for the poor and the helpless. It's not a call that lets separate them out so that we can care only for those we deem "deserving". The Gospels are much more basic than that. Simply put, poverty and injustice are intolerable in God's sight. If we really are God's people, they will be intolerable to us too.

Cliffs Notes Christianity

I've noticed something that other clergy have told me that they see too. Often we run into non-Christians who really 'get' Jesus better than many Christians. I've thought about this a lot and I've decided that it has to do with how we encounter Jesus.

A non-Christian is most likely to be familiar with the story of Jesus as just that, a story. Perhaps they've seen a few Jesus movies, or read the Gospels on their own, or something like that. In that case, the power of the story is able to capture them withour much interpretation of commentary. They are able to connect with the essential core of wisdom, compassion, courage and faith they find there.

Christians, on the other hand, have often had a lifetime of interpretation piled on the story. They've heard preachers and Bible story teachers telling them how they ought to read the story. They've got footnotes in their Bibles that tell them what everything really means. All of these tools are well-intentioned, and are designed to help, but they can have the opposite effect.

When I was in college I read Cliffs Notes for classes quite a bit. The little yellow booklets did an excellent job of telling me all the things I might miss in a difficult piece of literature. Of course I soon found that it was easier studying from Cliffs Notes than actually reading the book (some of those are long!)

You can do that, and even get a decent grade, but it will give you no real appreciation of the book, let alone any depth of understanding. To gain that you have to read the book. You have to struggle with it and think about it and get to know it.

Doctrines are the Cliffs Notes for Christianity. They can be helpful, but far too many people over-rely on them. They become a substitute for reading the Bible for yourself. Worse, they become a substitute for getting to know Jesus or God. This results in a shallow faith, one which can miss the whole point. Sadly, a lot of Christians are stuck in this rut and stubbornly insist that their doctrines are the last and only word on understanding God.

We can really take a pointer from those people, even outsiders, who have skipped the whole Cliffs Notes experience and actually 'read the book'.

Phoenix Affirmations #5

5. Engaging people authentically, as Jesus did, treating all as creations made in God’s very image, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental ability, nationality, or economic class;

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This affirmation is a big deal because excluding different people has been a shameful part of the history of Christianity for a very long time. Women have been (and still are sometimes) relegated to inferior status. There were (and are) places where people who were ethnically different were excluded. There are also many less obvious prejudices that show up. The very old and the very young can be shoved to the side, as can the mentally or physically challenged. And, of course, homosexuals still face terrible discrimination.

But that's not the whole story, and it never has been. There have always been Christians who have understood that this kind of discrimination is contrary to the loving God we serve and especially to the ministry of Jesus, who embraced and associated with people regardless of the prejudices of his time.

Since the beginning of Christianity there has been a struggle. On the one hand there are people who consider themselves better than others, and who find ways to shut others out. On the other are people who want to practice a radical kind of grace and acceptance, as Jesus did.

That's a witness as old as the faith, and one which we strive to continue.

Phoenix Affirmations #4

4. Expressing our love in worship that is as sincere, vibrant, and artful as it is scriptural.

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This is an easy one. Simply put it's saying that faithful worship can take a wide variety of forms and styles. There's nothing sacred about doing it the way we've always done it before. One of the implications is that, if the old forms of worship are making people feel alienated from God, they can and should be changed.

Lost Generation

I liked this so much I'm repeating the posting from my other blog.

Phoenix Affirmations #3

3. Celebrating the God whose Spirit pervades and whose glory is reflected in all of God’s Creation, including the earth and its ecosystems, the sacred and secular, the Christian and non-Christian, the human and non-human;

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One of the bugaboos of Christianity has been that its leaders have often claimed to have exclusive rights to the truth, and the only possible access to God. What I've heard most often is that all of truth is contained in the Bible, that anything which contradicts the Bible must be untrue, and that no truth can be known outside of studying the Bible.

That's a dangerous point of view for several reasons. First, by raising the Bible to the point of being the absolute and unquestioned truth, we effectively make it the center of worship. It's not a good thing for Christians to put anything, even the Bible, in place of God. In fact our word for it is idolatry.

What makes this worse is that the people who like to insist on the Bible being the absolute and only source of truth is that they actually mean their reading of the Bible. They will deny it, of course. Some like to claim that they don't interpret at all "we just take it as it is", but that is nonsense. It's impossible to read the Bible without interpreting, and even groups that claim to be literalist often get into arguments about what passages really mean. For that matter the way those groups understand scriptures have changed a great deal through history.

Human beings don't have the ability to read things "just as they are". The way we understand everything is influenced by the time and place we live in, the traditions that influence us, and even our own personalities. Any time a group says that the Bible is the complete truth, they are actually saying that their understanding of the Bible is the complete truth. In other words they have raised their understanding to the center of worship.

If it's dangerous to make the Bible your god, it's even more dangerous to make your interpretation your god.

To keep from falling into this trap, we do our best to keep our eyes and ears open for God everywhere. My church uses the motto, "God is still speaking". This takes scripture very seriously but reminds us that the fullness of God's wisdom and grace is too great to be fully contained in any single book. We are open to perceiving God's wisdom in the words of a talented authors, poets, songwriters, etc. We see God's glory reflected in the wonders of nature and the discoveries of science. God can speak to us using the words of Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, or Atheists.

That doesn't mean that we buy into popular culture wholesale. There are a lot of negative, destructive, un-Godly messages out there and everything has to be looked at faithfully and critically. But it does mean that we're not going to rubber stamp things as true because they're labeled 'Christian' or untrue because they don't have the ecclesial stamp of approval.

That's too lazy an approach for someone who is serious about exploring the truth that God has to offer.