Cloture

The Senatorial grindstone has produced a slow-mo show.
Is it health care for the masses, or the end of the world we know?
Will it save us lives and dollars, as the months stretch into years,
Or are tea-bag shouts and hollers right to call forth all our fears?

There’s a battle raging, surely, for the public heart and mind.
Pundits, pollsters get up early in the hopes that they will find
Your opinion turning slowly toward support or toward rejection
Of the most important matter: not your health! The next election.

God and Mammon

One of the pastimes that goes on in my feeble brain, almost without me noticing, is coming up with titles for books I would like to read, or would like to know how to write.  I’ll toss this one out in the hopes that somewhere in the ether-tubes will be a person with the right expertise to actually put it together.  Ready?

God and Mammon:  The Big Business of Evangelical Religion In America

Or, for a slightly different emphasis:

God and Mammon:  Christianity and Capitalism in America

This book would review the history and current state of churches, denominations, individual religious superstars, and mega churches, and would provide analysis of how much money is involved in these various organizations, where it comes from and especially how it is spent.  Under the second title it might actually go broader, dropping the rubric “evangelical” from the subtitle, so as to also look at mainline churches, the Catholic Church and its various organizations, questionable cults, non-Christian religious movements, and so on, but that would be a much broader project.

One focus of such a project might be to try to understand how it is that somehow in the United States Christianity has become wedded to capitalism, whether that has always been the case, exceptions to this rule, and how such an emphasis has developed over time. I would definitely buy and read such a book. It could also,of course, do some analysis of the extent to which funds are actually spent on human development, healthcare, housing, education, nutrition; how much on political activism, left and right; how much on real estate, salaries, and other measures of institutional maintenance.  Then, of course, the question would have to be asked, to what extent these things map to the priorities actually laid out in the New Testament by Jesus of Nazareth, who said:  ”where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Associated Baptist Press – Fear Not: What does virtual rumor-mongering say about Christians?

Associated Baptist Press – Fear Not: What does virtual rumor-mongering say about Christians?

So, why are Christians so willing to believe unsubstantiated rumors? And more troubling, why are Christians, who should hold the highest standards of truth-telling, so eager to spread such rumors — and even downright libels?

A detailed, thoughtful review and analysis of a disturbing, ongoing phenomenon in American culture.  Recommended.

Stories

Over on a friend’s blog, I saw some musing which included comments about the purpose of stories, and it got me thinking. I actually stopped reading, mid-paragraph, so as to see where this thought would lead me, so here it is, after mulling for a few days. I’m going to make a rather sweeping generalization, but I think I can defend it. Here goes.

The purpose of every story is to create community.

Each of us, as a human being, which is to say, an animal that talks and thinks in words, or, if you will, is reflective of the Divine act of creation that begins with a Word (as above, so below), lives inside a story, or really a vast cycle of stories, partly of our own making: The story of my life, my family, my tribe, my town, my county, my valley, my nation, my planet, my dog, my dreams. This personal story in all of its particularities is what we are talking about when we talk about personal identity. It is of the intersection of personal stories that community is forged, and it is the overlapping of communal stories that creates a sense of individuality. We tell stories, we hear stories, and a person who does not have a story does not yet feel like a person, does not yet have a place. Some stories are powerful, and shape us. Religions and mythologies are essentially the stories that are broad enough that hearers and tellers see themselves as living inside of them; the same with political ideologies.

Of course there are larger stories and smaller stories, just as there are larger communities and smaller communities. Stories within stories. Variations, versions. But having a story in common is what binds people together. Marriages dissolve when the story of his life and the story of her life begin to diverge from one another into mutual unrecognizability, it is said, then, that they have become estranged.

When the stories a person tells himself are unintelligible by anyone else, that person becomes —has become — isolated, alienated, alone. When such a person is able to bring someone else into the circle of those who can understand, you have something else: a new community, a cult, perhaps.

What drives the debate?

Talking heads all over cable have spent a week parsing out the question of whether racism is having an undue influence on political discourse in this country. Former President Jimmy Carter has weighed in, attributing to racism an “overwhelming portion” of the ugliness directed of late at President Barack Obama — who, for his own part, has offered his predecessor a gentle rebuke, insisting that the heated arguments are really all about policy. This morning’s Washington Post offered parallel views of people in two South Carolina congressional districts; one represented by “You Lie!” shouter Joe Wilson, and the other, right next door, by the man most responsible for bringing congressional disapproval of that outburst to a vote, Majority Whip James Clyburn. Each appears to fairly represent the views of his constituents. Who’s right?

In my own irenic way, I’d like to suggest that everyone is right, sort of. Let me explain. No, is too much. Let me sum up:

Eight years later

I was in my office on the morning of September 11, 2001, and the phone rang. It was one of my leading church members, who said: “Go home and turn on the TV, something has happened.” The urgency in her voice was enough that I dropped what I was doing, and a short time later I was standing by the television with my teenage children, watching the news unfold on CNBC: smoke rising from the North tower, news reporters not sure what they were reporting on yet. Watching the screen, at one point I saw something, an airplane flying low, and followed it across the screen with my finger. Then an angry plume of flame burst out the other side of the second tower.

On justice vs. compassion

Today, the Scottish government has released, on compassionate grounds, former Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people. He has been serving a life sentence for this crime in a Scottish prison.   He is now dying of cancer.

The United States has expressed dismay over this release.  Apparently, however, there is a provision in Scottish law allowing for such action on the basis of compassion. The talking heads on television are all over this today, drumming up outrage:   How in the heck can a government write compassion into law?

Can it have anything to do with the lack of separation between Church and State in a place like Scotland?  Are we, in the US, which sometimes styles itself as the first  country in  the world to be founded on Christian principles, horrified that in this instance, through an instrument of law, the teaching of Christ, famous for his compassion, has trumped our sense of Justice?

Can anyone hear the admonition:  “Go and learn what this means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice”?

Or do we really believe that compassion has no place in law, no place in government?  And if that is true, have we not effectively excluded God from our way of life, whatever we do or don’t print on our money or recite in our pledge?

Let me break it down like this.  To Christians, at least, the injunction is given:  “Do not repay anyone evil for evil.”… and, “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written:  ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.”   But in our secular society, we turn this exactly on its head, and say that we humans must exact vengeance and leave it up to God to forgive if he wants.  Christians, at least, are required (not just permitted) to forgive.  Will “Christian” voices now become among the loudest to shout how wrong the Scottish government is in failing to exact the fullest repayment of evil for evil?  If this occurs, I can only then return to the words of scripture:

They will have justice without mercy who have shown no mercy; but Mercy triumphs over (=trumps) Justice! (James 2:13)

False Prophets

I feel the need to quote myself again.  Consider whether this commentary on Jesus’ warning against false prophets, penned by me back in 1998, resonates with anything concerning current news accounts surrounding “town hall” meetings this August.

Consider a preacher or politician who sets out to raise the alarm about some threat to the comfort or values of his audience. He tells stories of horror or atrocity designed to arouse fear or revulsion. He identifies as dangerous some individual or group that is clearly foreign to the persons to whom he speaks, whether it is a racial group, or an ideology, or an opposition political party, or a religious movement, or a foreign political or military leader. He calls his hearers neither to repentance nor to reconciliation, but instead seeks to arouse anger and indignation against the identified source of threat. He proposes ways his audience can protect themselves, warn their friends, and counterattack against the threat described. Note that the content of this type of preaching could be almost anything. The individual may be denouncing religion, or atheism, or big government, or liberalism, or conservatism, or Satanism, or pornography, or fundamentalism, or communism, or capitalism, or sexism, or feminism, or homosexuality, or homophobia, or militarism, or pacifism. The fruit he produces, however, is the same in all cases: fear, mistrust, alienation and ultimately hatred.

Or, in this instance, health care reform.

Are Christians too judgmental?

I took part in a panel discussion a few weeks ago on this topic.  A discussion ensued in a private forum where some posters expressed views that suggest people like me, who insist on emphasizing the love of God for all persons, are, let’s say, not really Christians at all because we appear not to have any standards, and because we don’t simply state whatever the Bible says.  I think I hold myself and others to a very high standard, however, and I think I am pretty clear on what the Bible says also.  Here’s my response, in part:

What then do we make of Matthew 7:1, Luke 6:37, John 8:15, and Romans 2:1?

Jesus was faced with people who ultimately condemned (judged) him because he refused to judge a sexual sin (the woman taken in adultery: immediate context for the John 8 passage) even though they could point to chapter and verse to say she should not only be condemned but punished; because he was so lacking in (their idea of)  discernment that he tolerated uncleanness (eating with unwashed hands) and moral failure (eating with tax collectors and “sinners”). These were the sorts of things that incensed the moral gatekeepers of the day, the Pharisees. He healed indiscriminately; touched a leper, refused to rebuke a woman known to be immoral (at the house of Simon the Pharisee, the muttering round the table was, “If he knew what kind of woman she was….”, obviously a question of their judgment concerning his evident lack of discernment). Of course, Jesus knew in every case what was going on, and made conscious decisions not only to do these things but to use them as occasions for teaching about the scope of God’s love for people and the nature of love and forgiveness. He speaks without compromise about the absolute condemnation from God which is to fall on those who, having received mercy, fail to offer it to others in turn. “So will my heavenly Father do to you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” This says to me that love and forgiveness, not moral rightness or knowledge, are the essential beginning-point of any real discernment “in the Spirit.”

One day soon I will lay out my understanding of the thrust of the argument present by Paul in Romans chapters one through three, which I take to be an extended exposition of Luke 6:37, remembering that Luke the evangelist was Paul’s traveling companion, they worked together, and are likely to have  drawn from one another’s material.

Who’s in charge here?

On whether taxpayers have responsibility for the well-being of their neighbors, by means of government programs:

In the theocratic state envisioned by the Hebrew prophets (or even, in their critique of every nation) the responsibilities of kings was clear:  plead the cause of the fatherless and widow, demand justice for the poor.  See, for example, Psalm 82:3-4:  Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless, maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.  Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. Nations were judged by how well their rulers implemented these simple principles.

In the United States of America, “we the people” (the voters and, yes, the taxpayers) are sovereign.  Therefore “we, the people” are under divine judgment if we fail to use our sovereign power to take care of the elderly, the disabled, the orphan and widows of our world.  “We, the people” as sovereign refers to our corporate role as king, which is to say, the government.  It is laudable for individual persons to do what they can by means of “charity,” but “we, the people” are not just an aggregate of individual persons.  We, together, are king, and as such are answerable to God for how well we rule.

Been meaning to say this for quite a while, but I think it is well worth bearing in mind this August as “we” (in the royal sense) debate with ourselves about health care.