Bumper Sticker Watch

If you come here often you know that I have a soft spot for bumper stickers. In fact, I've written on my love of bumper stickers (even if that "love" is a bit facetious) more than once. [note: check out these three posts to catch up on the subject]

Today while I was driving my son out to visit with his "Me Me" (my mother-in-law got that name because every time she leaves a message on our answering machine, she starts with "Yeah, it's me...") I saw a bumper sticker that was so good, and so appropriate, that it merited some kind of mention. It read:

I'm in Favor of the Separation of Church and Hate

Conservative Christians love to say that they "love the sinner, but hate the sin." And, perhaps they really think that they do, but you'd have a hard time convincing anyone that they identify as sinners of that. While I was being railroaded by the conservative congregation that a pastored, for instance, they certainly did not communicate (by and large, though there were some wonderful exceptions who I will treasure forever) the love that they professed to have for me. They identified me a sinner not because of any moral or immoral actions on my part, but because I preached a vision of God with which they disagreed. They could not reconcile their religious views to the messages they received from the pulpit, so they decided that I had to represent some kind of demonic conspiracy to get them to abandon the one true faith.

But the phrase "love the sinner, hate the sin" is most often used on the subject of homosexuality. Conservative Christians for some reason have identified sexual orientation (as opposed to, say, war mongering) as the most pressing moral issue of our day. Because of this they have made it the centerpiece of their Culture War. Perceiving some sort of liberal conspiracy to undermine their moral values conservatives have launched a campaign against homosexuality, and in doing so they have in effect launched a campaign against homosexuals.

When homosexuals, as a group, are denied equal protection under the law; when they are beaten and killed for their sexual orientation; when they are discriminated against in almost every level of our society; when their most formative relationships are denied legal recognition and when the law allows for the families which disowned them to have precedence over the life partner who loves them unconditionally; and when the church not only supports but demands this, it is no wonder they do not feel loved by us.

The very structure of our society has bound the gay community together against a common oppressive enemy in such a way that homosexuality is no longer a matter of sexual behavior, it is a matter of ontology, of being. You cannot, in the issue of homosexuality, separate the sin from the sinner (and not just because I don't believe that homosexuality is inherently sinful). You cannot separate the actions from the actor. This is because the actions - as they stand over and against mainstream society - have come to identify the actor.

This is the greatest ill done by our society to homosexuals. Too often they are, because of our obsession with sexual orientation, defined by their sexuality. They are not individuals who happen to be attracted to members of the same sex. They are now gays; they are now lesbians. As such one aspect of their lives takes precedence over all of the others. When you attack the moral value of that aspect you attack their very being, their identity in the world. You cannot attack someone's self-identified fundamental nature and claim that you love them, if you expect the word "love" to hold any meaning.

This is why, morally speaking, it is so important for mainstream society to recognize homosexual relationships. As those relationships (whose moral value I addressed here) are legitimized in our eyes the people who are in those relationships will no longer have to constantly fight for our (as a society) recognition of their love. Then they can worry about other things, and no longer have that one aspect of their being so completely dominate.

It is, in this case, impossible to "love the sinner" and "hate the sin" and like the bumper sticker says:

I'm in Favor of the Separation of Church and Hate

How Theology Affects Ethics: A Post 9-11 Look at Kierkegaard After Watching a Depressing Movie About Wal-Mart

We live in an age in which, it seems, religious people can justify all sorts of immoral and/or amoral behavior because of their great "faith." Some of this was made apparent to me while, as I pastor, I was personally attacked by members of my congregation because they didn't like what I preached about. Some of this was brought to my mind as I thought about the political scandals in my beloved Commonwealth of Kentucky, in which a group of pious Christians (so self-righteous that they named themselves "the Disciples") trampled on state laws protecting workers from being fired or demoted for their political affiliation. This afternoon I watched the documentary film Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, which offered a critique of the business ethics of the devout Walton family, who made their money on the backs of their workers.

According to the film, Wal-Mart workers - who can hardly be called affluent - have given over $5 million from their paychecks to the Critical Need Fund, a program designed to help Wal-Mart employees who are experiencing some sort of crisis. The Walton family, by contrast, has given just $6,000. Bill Gates, who does not claim to be a religious person, has given 58% of his income to charities. The Walton family, who have made their fortune in part because a certain segment of our population sees them as righteous, gave less than 1% of their income to charities in that same time period. As an Episcopal priest interviewed for the documentary said, I'm sure that the Walton family considers themselves to be good Christians, but their apparent faith seems to have little impact on their ethics, if the way in which they build and handle their wealth is any indication.

Thinking of the distance between faith and ethics I am reminded of the treatment that the existentialist Soren Kierkegaard gave to faith and ethics. As an undergraduate philosophy student I wrote a paper on a passage from his great Fear and Trembling, which - as I used to be an existentialist and an admirer of Kierkegaard - used to speak to me. Here is a slightly edited version of that paper. You can thank the current gubenatorial administration in Kentucky, cold weather, sheer boredom, a chillingly good documentary and a severe case of missing academia for my decision to revisit it here.

On Kierkegaard's Teleological Suspension of the Ethical

Problema I of Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, titled Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical? contains two main ideas, which complement each other and come together to form the way that Kierkegaard approaches the relationship between religion and ethics. The first is Kierkegaard's concept of faith, and the second is the teleological suspension of the ethical.

Kierkegaard holds Abraham up as an example of faith, particularly for the event recorded in Genesis 22, in which Abraham demonstrates that, at the command of God, he is willing to sacrifice, in a very literal way, his only son Isaac. Earlier God had promised to make Abraham into a "great nation," and it is through Isaac that Abraham believed that God intended to keep his promise. After all, even when Isaac was born Abraham and his wife Sarah were long past their child bearing years. Surely they could not have another child. One miracle child ought to be enough. But, God asks Abraham to take his son to the mountains in the land of Moriah, and offer him as a burnt sacrifice, and Abraham agrees to do this. This willingness to follow the commands of God is central to Kierkegaard's concept of faith.

But, his concept of faith is not limited to one's willingness to follow the ridiculous commands of God. In addition to being willing to do what God has asked him to do, according to Kierkegaard, Abraham had another kind of faith. Abraham "had faith that God would not demand Isaac of him... He had faith by the virtue of the absurd, for human calculation was out of the question, and it was certainly absurd that God, who required it [the sacrifice of Isaac] of him, should, in the next moment rescind the requirement." And so Abraham, knowing what God required of him, yet, according to Kierkegaard, believing that God would not really require it of him, went up to the mountain prepared to slit the throat of his own son, yet also prepared for God to not require this of him. And so, Kierkegaard says, "Abraham had faith. He did not have faith that he would be blessed in a future life but that he would be blessed here in the world. God could give him a new Isaac, could restore to life the one sacrificed. He had faith by the virtue of the absurd, for all human calculation ceased long ago."

Abraham had "faith by the virtue of the absurd." What a strange statement. What does it mean? Does it, perhaps, mean that Abraham believed in impossible things? Perhaps, but faith here seems to mean far more than belief; even impossible belief. Perhaps it means that, when "all human calculation ceased," Abraham stopped thinking, and living, for himself. Perhaps faith here means that the one who has faith trusts that God is God, and that he/she is not God. Perhaps faith means acknowledging that God knows best, is in charge of the universe, and holds all the cards. As such, whatever God wants is what should get done, what must get done, and, in fact, in the end, what will get done.

Faith, then, is far more than belief, though it entails belief, and, in fact, makes belief possible. Faith is more like trust; trust which manifests itself in action. Trust which undergirds itself with a belief in the impossible. Faith is, by human standards, "absurd," because it removes all human values from the equation. Faith is about God, not about humans and what they can and cannot believe, what they can and cannot justify. Faith is being willing to do whatever it is that God requires, because God requires it. Faith is totally trusting in, depending on, and acting for God.

But, Abraham's situation is not only described in terms of faith, and the description of his situation matters. Kierkegaard points out that "the ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he meant to murder Isaac; the religious expression is that he meant to sacrifice Isaac." There is a tension between these two expressions; between these two descriptions of the same event. If the killing of Isaac can reasonably be described as murder, and if it has been commanded by God, has God commanded Abraham to do something immoral? Is God capable of such an act? Can a man, acting out of faith, by following the command of God, sin?

Is there, in other words, a tension between faith and ethics? And, if there is, which side should win? Answering this question, in light of the escalating level of religious-inspired violence around the world, is very important. Kierkegaard's approach to this is found in his idea of the teleological suspension of the ethical.

To understand this phrase, first we must understand what is meant by "the ethical." According to Kierkegaard, "the ethical... is the universal, and as the universal it applies to everyone, which from another angle means that it applies at all times." This is a very Kantian understanding of "the ethical," and the problems that arise from that may be dealt with later. Here it is sufficient to understand that this is what Kierkegaard means by "the ethical." It is a moral imperative that applies to all people at all times in all situations.

But, Kierkegaard's concept of faith causes problems for this view of "the ethical." "Faith is... the paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but as superior"; and, later, "...the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute." In other words, the man of faith stands above such universal concepts as "the ethical," and this causes a teleological suspension of the ethical. The story of Abraham is a good example of this suspension. Abraham, as a man of faith, is, by virtue of acting on the command of God, superior to the universal imperative to not murder, as well as the universal notion that "the father shall love the son more than himself." In "suspending the ethical obligation to [his] son," Abraham "transgressed the ethical altogether and had a higher telos [end, purpose] outside it."

In other words, the claims of faith, the claims of God, are superior to ethical claims, because God and faith are superior to ethics. They exist outside ethics. Someone acting out of faith in God, then, is justified in doing something which is unethical. This creates some problems, both morally and religiously, as well as problems of description.

The first problem dealt with here should be the problem of description, because it is the simplest problem and the easiest one to deal with. At the beginning of this passage Kierkegaard says that events can be described with two different expressions, the "ethical expression" and the "religious expression." The ethical is "universal," but the religious is superior to the ethical. Why, then, are there two expressions? And, if the religious expression is superior to the ethical expression, can the ethical really be universal?

This seems to me to be a problem of description. Kierkegaard has an important idea that he wants to communicate, but the way in which he has communicated it clouds the meaning and creates some unnecessary problems. Perhaps Kierkegaard could have said that God, as the creator of the universe, is the author of all that is ethical, the determiner of right and wrong. As such, whatever descriptions there are of "the ethical," it is best described as "what God has willed." If this is the case, then the revealed word of God could be added to the ethical description of any event. And so, the simple ethical expression of Abraham's situation is that he intended to murder Isaac, but, since God told him to do it, the better ethical expression is that Abraham intended to sacrifice Isaac to God, at God's request, and even command. Then, because murder is not merely the killing of a human, but, rather the unjustified killing of a human, and because the request of God would justify the killing of a human; that Abraham intended to murder Isaac would be an inaccurate ethical expression of that event. There would then be no tension between the ethical expression and the religious expression, because the ethical expression would take religion into account.

I do not think that this is inconsistent with what Kierkegaard meant, though it goes against the specific language of this passage. But, this description does point out the religious and moral problems with Kierkegaard's idea, and it demonstrates why the 22nd chapter of Genesis causes so many problems for people. In both Kierkegaard's concept of the teleological suspension of the ethical and in the 22nd chapter of Genesis, what appears to be a heinous action is justified. God asks Abraham to slaughter his only son, and it is OK for God to do so, because God is God, and not bound to human morals. Fortunately for Abraham, Isaac, and Soren Kierkegaard, God, who caused the problem in the first place, comes to the rescue and provides another sacrifice. And so, at least here, no real harm is done, unless you consider the kind of psychological damage that must have been done to both Abraham and Isaac, as well as poor Sarah. In other parts of the Torah, people are not so lucky.

In the 31st chapter of Numbers, for instance, God demands that the Israelites "take vengeance on the Midianites." And so the Israelites form an army of twelve thousand men, and kill every Midianite man, only to be reprimanded by God for not killing all of the women and children, too. In the end, they do not have to kill all of the women. They only have to kill all of the women who have "slept with a man." The virgins they can take home as sex slaves. This is another teleological suspension of the ethical. The Israelites are justified in their actions because they are acting under direct orders from God.

This concept, though, has real moral and religious problems. After all, how can we know that the orders really came from God? Every time a bomb explodes in the streets of Israel; every time a car bomb blows apart a crowd of people in Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or some other Middle Eastern country, someone claims that it was ordained and commanded by God. When the hijacked planes flew into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, many people claimed that the will of God had been done. If one religion justifies suspending the ethical, how can that religion deny that claim to another religion? On what grounds can a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim claim that someone else is unjustified in suspending the ethical on orders from God?

These questions are important questions to answer in a time that is marred by the threat of global, religious-inspired terrorism. They are questions that should have been answered earlier as well, during the Inquisition or the Crusades. They are questions that ought to be answered any time someone kills in the name of God. And they are questions which Kierkegaard's theory, whatever its internal merits, cannot answer.

Jeremiah and Abortion: Morality in a Plural Society

Ever since I wrote "Boldly Going Where No Man Ought to Go" I've been in the uncomfortable position of defending a practice which I find at the very least distasteful. Personally, I believe that abortion is, under most circumstances, morally impermissible. In that post, however, I made the claim that abortion is also an extremely complicated moral issue which is not easily reducible to a tasty sound-bite such as "abortion is murder."

This debate over abortion illustrates the problem with discussing moral issues in a plural society. If everyone (and I do mean absolutely everyone, down to the last person) in a community agrees on a particular moral issue then it is easy to make that position normative for the whole community without any sort of critical discussion. But abortion is not such an issue. There is no uniform consensus, even in the community of faith which claims that the Judeo-Christian scriptures are authoritative, on the moral value of abortion - no matter what the bumper stickers say.

Additionally, our community of faith - even if it could reach a consensus on abortion - does not exist in isolation, and does not have the authority to impose its position on any issue onto the broader secular community in which it finds itself. In America, as in any plural society, there are a great many communities which are attempting to come together to form a common moral and legal code. For any one of those communities to seek to impose its will on the others without serious collective discussions would be to violate the mutual cooperation which keeps the peace in any plural society.

Yet this violation, this imposition, is exactly what the culture war is about. The culture war is an attempt by evangelicals to impose their morality on all of the other communities within our plural society. This attempted imposition is not made through rational argument which focuses on some common ground, but rather through political force.

So, within the evangelical community, while I personally do not like the practice of abortion in most cases, I defend abortion. This is because I understand that just because I find something distasteful that does not give me the right to make a moral norm which prevents anyone from doing it. When we try to make moral norms for a plural society we have to bring the voice of every community into the discussion. That is the price we pay for living in peace.

But, even given the assumptions of evangelicals - particularly the authority of the scriptures - there is still no obvious reason to hold that abortion is in all cases morally wrong. The argument has been advanced that Jeremiah 1:4-5 demonstrates that in abortion a person with a soul is killed, and it is assumed that all such killing is wrong because were it not then any one of us may at any moment be killed without recourse.

But, I have to ask, what (if anything) does that passage from Jeremiah say about abortion? Let's look at it. Jeremiah 1:4-5, in the Jewish Study Bible, reads

The word of the Lord came to me [Jeremiah]:

Before I created you in the womb, I selected you;
Before you were born, I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet concerning the
nations.

I chose the Jewish Study Bible because, personally, I think that it is the best translation of the Hebrew Bible (though I am no expert). I also chose it because I thought that perhaps looking at an unfamiliar translation might help us see some of the main points of this passage, apart from the way in which it has been highjacked by the culture warriors.

This passage, understood in its cultural, textual and historical context (or even, properly speaking, understood literally) has nothing at all to say about abortion, as far as I can tell.

To make this passage speak to abortion you have to yank it out of its context and interpret it per some modern assumptions. You first have to assume that, rather than speaking merely to Jeremiah as the text indicates, the Lord is actually addressing the metaphysical nature of all humans. Because the Lord "selected" or "knew" (as in the more familiar translations) Jeremiah "before" he was in the womb, the soul must precede birth. If this is the case then killing a fetus is killing an ensouled being.

But, first, the passage is addressed only to Jeremiah, and we will get to the reasons for this later. Also, there is here no mention of soul for the obvious reason that there is no concept of soul in Judaism before it came into contact with Hellenism. The idea that we are principally souls trapped in corruptible bodies is a Greek idea, not a Hebrew idea. Jeremiah would have held, like any other Jew, that human beings are physical bodies, not eternal souls.

This emphasis on the body carries on into early Christianity. The apostle Paul was so concerned with the doctrine of the resurrection of the body because for him that was the only hope for eternal life. To Paul the notion that we are souls which are freed at death from our bodies was neither Christian nor Jewish, though it might be heresy.

Of course this does not mean that we don't have souls, or even that I don't believe that we have souls. Watching my wife's ninety-year-old grandmother's body slowly betray her reinforces in me how comforting the notion of a soul is. Surely the essence of this saintly woman is not limited to her quickly deteriorating frame. I certainly hope that in that frame there is an eternal soul which will leap for joy to be freed from its mortal coil. But soul is a theologically bothersome concept, as it leads us to de-value the body. It is also a concept which is not essential to Christianity, and would be foreign to Christ or Paul, much less Jeremiah, who surely had never been exposed to Greek philosophy.

So, whether or not we are, in fact, accurately described as ensouled bodies, Jeremiah certainly had no concept of soul. Therefore the passage from Jeremiah which has been used to argue that abortion destroys an ensouled body cannot possibly really say that. The meaning of Jeremiah 1:4-5 has nothing to do with abortion or souls.

So, what does this passage mean, and why is it such a shame that it has been (like so many other passages of scripture) highjacked by culture warriors and made to speak to issues which it was never intended to address? To answer that question we have to understand what it is that the passage is saying, so that we can then understand its significance.

The passage is at the very beginning of the long book of Jeremiah. The purpose of this introduction is to give the rest of the book some kind of legitimacy. Verses 1-3, which immediately precede the passage that we are considering, tell us a little bit about who Jeremiah was, what stock he comes from, and roughly when he lived. These verse also tell us that the words which follow are Jeremiah's own words, a statement designed to give the text itself as much authority as the prophet.

Verses 4-5, which we are considering, are the beginning of a kind of dialogue between the Lord and Jeremiah. This dialogue can be seen as the calling and commissioning of Jeremiah as a prophet.

"Prophet" is a word which is often misunderstood. Nostradamus, for instance, is often hailed by the secular world as a "prophet" because it is claimed by some that he could see into and predict the future. Because of this view of prophets as seers who predict the future, and prophesy as a kind of foretelling people often look to the Biblical books of prophesy as divine premonitions of "end time" events. But, understood Biblically, prophets are those who speak for God. In this passage Jeremiah is called by God to be the voice of God in the world, which is why so much effort is put at the beginning of this book into legitimizing Jeremiah as a prophet. This passage, and the context around it, is designed to convince us that Jeremiah is a messenger from God, and that this, his book, speaks for God to us.

This dialogue between the Lord and Jeremiah doesn't just speak to our doubts, it also speaks of Jeremiah's doubts. Verse 6, immediately after the verses we are considering, says:

I replied:
Ah, Lord!
I don't know how to speak,
For I am still a boy.

Jeremiah feels neither worthy nor able to carry the Word of God to the nations. The Lord then puts Jeremiah in his place, ordering him to do as he is told and to live up to his calling. Verse 9 then cements the character of prophesy:

The Lord put out His hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me: Herewith I put my words into your mouth.

Thus, understood in its textual context, Jeremiah 1:4-5 immediately speaks to two things:

1. The majesty and sovereignty of the God who knew Jeremiah even before there was a Jeremiah to be known.

2. The unique and special calling of Jeremiah, who has been appointed and anointed by God to carry the Word of God to all the nations.

Jeremiah 1:4-5 tells us, then, that there is a God whose awesome majesty extends beyond even the wildest powers of our imagination. This God knows beings, such as Jeremiah, who have not yet even been made. This divine foreknowledge speaks to God's eternal plan for creation, a plan in which Jeremiah, by virtue of his divine calling as a foreknown prophet, has the privledge to take part. These two verses also tell us that this God chooses to speak to us through us. Jeremiah is a human, yet he has been called by God to carry the Word of God to the nations. God respects humanity enough to use humans for divine purposes. This is (as I taught for my entire ministerial career) not because God needs us, but because God desires to bless us by making us feel useful.

This Word of God is so much more spiritually vital than the way in which it is misused to speak to a contemporary moral debate. The Bible ought not be taken captive by those who would use it to out "proof-text" those who disagree with them. Passages from it ought not be taken out of their context and robbed of their riches so that spiritual bullies can claim that God agrees with them. The Bible - and all of the stories, songs, poems, sermons and collected sayings in it - ought to be respected as one of the ways in which God speaks to our spiritual community and many of the spiritual communities which came before us.

Abortion is a serious and complicated moral issue. There are no verses in the Bible which speak directly to it, though it is possible that some insights from the Bible can be used to help us treat abortion properly. But for the Bible to speak to abortion it must be allowed to speak as the living Word of God, understood properly in context rather than as a collection of fragments which can be yanked around to support what we already believe.

Abortion is also a problem not just for our spiritual community but for our entire plural society. We who hold the Bible to be the Word of God must respect those around us who do not see the Bible the same way. Therefore, even if it were possible (which it isn't) to pick a single verse out of the Bible and say that it demonstrates that abortion is in all cases morally impermissible, we would still not be justified in imposing that view on others in our society who do not hold the same assumptions we do.

For Christians to be able to live in peace with our neighbors we must stop trying to impose a Christian ethic (if there is such a thing) on a plural society which contains many non-Christians.

If you really wish to stop abortion, don't try to change the law without the consent of those governed by it. Instead try to change the hearts, minds and circumstances of those who might be tempted to have abortions. And, when you do, remember, as the character from the movie Saved so famously put it, "This [the Bible] is not a weapon!"

I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag?

Yesterday marked the 60th birthday of the Pledge of Allegiance, which was officially recognized by Congress on December 28, 1945. The Pledge has been a source of great controversy lately, with the words "under God" being challenged as a violation of the US Constitution's anti-establishment clause. But that controversy, while important insofar as it speaks to the issue of whether or not a person must recognize the existence and supremacy of a deity to be a good citizen of a secular nation, may blind us to the greater trouble with the Pledge of Allegiance.

I remember in elementary school being forced (though socially more than officially - I never had the inclination or the courage to challenge this practice) to recite the Pledge from memory. Its words - much like the words to the Lord's Prayer or the Apostle's Creed at church - were burned into my brain against my will. Did that forced and rote recitation ensure that I would be a loyal citizen of the United States of America? I doubt it. In fact, other than perhaps having some sort of unconscious symbolic value, I can't see what saying the Pledge did other than reinforce a sense of powerlessness in the face of authority.

In our country at this moment feeling powerless in the face of authority is a very dangerous thing. The executive branch of our government, inexplicably still feeling drunk on its post 9-11 glory despite a string of abject failures, is testing the limits of its power. US citizens inside the United States are being spied on by our government without warrants and without the consent of the legislative or judicial branches of our government. US citizens are being held indefinitely as so-called "enemy combatants" without legal recourse on the orders of the executive branch.

These breaches of civil liberties (even civil rights!) are being brought about by the unilateral decree of a single branch of the government, which grows increasingly unchecked by the other two branches. This expansion of executive power - supposedly necessitated by our perpetual war against an idea and our unjust war in Iraq - makes me fear that the real purpose of the Pledge is to subtly train the resistance out of our children before they have a chance to cry "foul" at the injustices being perpetrated in their and our names.

But, even if that is not the case, I still don't like the Pledge of Allegiance. This is not because I don't feel loyal to our country. I am a loyal citizen of the United States - though I feel that part of my loyalty to this country is to hold it morally accountable when it tramples the God-given freedoms of its citizens and members of the international community. I don't like the Pledge of Allegiance, first and foremost not for any ideological reason, but simply because, on the surface, it doesn't make any sense.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag..." The flag! I have just sworn my undying allegiance to a piece of fabric! I know that I have been getting on my own religious community for being too literal minded and not seeing symbolism, but come on! I don't see another way to take that statement. Before you pledge your allegiance to the nation for which the flag stands, thus obtaining the symbolic value of the flag, you have to pledge your allegiance to the flag itself.

But how would that flag hold you to your oath? What would that flag get from your allegiance, and what would it offer in return?

I'm not saying that the language of the Pledge is some kind of evil scheme to get us to idolatrously pledge ourselves to fabric. Rather I'm saying that aside from being an unnecessary imposition on the free wills of children, the Pledge of Allegiance is a shabby and hastily written composition which is literally meaningless because it binds us by our oath to a piece of fabric.

Oh, well... Happy birthday, Pledge. Now, go away!

"Merry" Christmas! Another Assault in the Culture War

This holiday season we learned that Christmas has been taken captive by our beloved culture warriors. Bill O'Reilly is famous (or infamous) for his declaration that Christmas in America is under attack. This attack on Christmas is another example of how evangelical Christians are persecuted in America for their faith. As an evangelical (even if a liberal one) I must ask: Who is doing this persecution?

Evangelical Christians now control all three branches of the federal government and also hold positions of power in most state governments. Evangelicals were behind the box office success of Mel Gibson's religious snuff film The Passion of the Christ and have their own media empires. Anyone who is not an evangelical Christian must, after seeing the political, fiscal and cultural power accumulated by evangelicals, feel at least a little bit threatened. Far from removing religion from the public sphere as many "persecuted" evangelicals claim, America is creeping toward a frightening theocracy. Sure this theocracy is more a de facto than de juro development, but that must be cold comfort to the many Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, atheists and agnostics in America.

But, the argument goes, evangelicals are being persecuted for their religious beliefs, which are scoffed at by the majority of Americans. One example of this persecution, which is part of the secularization of America, is that in polite (or politically correct) society the phrase "Merry Christmas" is being exchanged (like an unwanted gift) for "Happy Holidays".

Stephen Nissenbaum, historian and author of The Battle for Christmas, reminds us of the origins of "Merry Christmas," the phrase which is evidentially under attack by the demons of political correctness who keep liberalizing and secularizing America. The word "merry" came into use in "merry old England" in roughly the time of Shakespeare. In England of the 16th century there were two days which were considered "merry"; Christmas and May Day. On May Day, of course, people would dance around a giant fallic symbol and then go copulate in the woods, so what do you think "merry" means?

A 17th century English language dictionary claims that "drunk" is "a polite term for what most men mean by 'merry'." To "make merry" is, essentially to get wildly drunk and then act recklessly, often sexually. Merriment is not for the pious or virtuous.

Christmas was, when it was "merry," quite merry in deed. Nissenbaum quotes a prominent figure in the Anglican church of the 17th century as saying that more sins are committed in the 12 days of Christmas than in the rest of the twelve months of the year combined. But this merriment was not limited to merry old England. Christmas was so "merry" in the "New Land" that many of the Puritan colonies outlawed it because it was irreligious.

I have noted here before that Christmas was not a celebrated in the early church. This is in part because the scriptures do not tell us when Jesus was born, and in part because the early church was more focused on the scandal of the cross and the celebrated mystery of the Easter resurrection. Christmas was eventually celebrated, but more for cultural than religious reasons, and its celebration today is still very secular in nature.

There is no new "war on Christmas." There is only the never ending war - as old as religion itself - between the secular and the sacred. This war is fought within religions, denominations, congregations, cultures, states and individuals. There is nothing in this world which is purely sacred, as everything has in some way been profaned or corrupted. But, because everything has been inspired directly or indirectly by God, nothing is entirely secular, either.

The now sacred phrase "Merry Christmas" has, as we have seen, its bawdy origins. The apparently secular phrase "Happy Holidays" (the bane of Bill O'Reilly and other self-righteous, hypocritical culture warriors) also contains something of the sacred, as it reminds us that some days are made "holy" ("holiday" = "holy day"), to be set aside for God. So, even though it is past Christmas, let us not forget to "make merry" this season, while also setting aside some time to happily be holy.

Christian Meditations: Christmas Edition

A few years ago, inspired by my grandfather's excellent devotional books (so far there are two, Creekside Chats and Creekside Conversations, with a third on the way in the new year) I decided to write a series of devotionals myself. The devotional format is difficult because the short length of each entry requires a kind of disciplined and economical writing style that I have never had. I titled the now dead project Christian Meditations, with the idea that my job as a writer is to inspire others to meditate on the implications of their faith.

My two favorite meditations were on Christmas, a holiday which I have been trying unsuccessfully to take back from Wal Mart and shopping malls for as long as I've realized that there's more to it that the toys I got as a kid.

Christianity, first and foremost, is the religion of incarnation. In the Christian doctrine of incarnation we have the simple but profound idea that God is not just some sort of distant cosmic organizer. In incarnation we understand that God came near to us to show us love, and to give us fuller, richer, more meaningful (abundant, not just eternal) lives.

While Christmas was not celebrated in the early church (Easter, the celebration of resurrection, was once the dominant Christian holiday - Christmas has only recently overtaken it in part because of all of the gift giving which drives our economy), Christmas is the day of incarnation. At Christmas we celebrate the coming of God incarnate in Jesus the Christ.

I'm taking a bit of a vacation for Christmas, so instead of writing new posts I am instead giving you my two Meditations on Christmas, "Jesus Wept" and "Prince of Peace". Each of these brief meditations are designed to help reclaim the holiday (and "holiday" means "holy day," a day set aside for a sacred purpose) from the commercial elements which are sucking the sacred out of our world more than any of the so-called liberal attacks on Christmas.

I hope that you have a Merry Christmas, and I hope that these Meditations on Christmas will inspire you to more fuller consider the implications of your faith during this sacred time.

Jesus Wept

The words “Jesus wept,” in John 11:35 are perhaps the most profound words in the Bible. In them we see the God of the universe, in the humble form of a Jewish carpenter, sharing a most human moment: grief. Jesus’ friend Lazarus has died. He is now standing at his tomb. As our Lord and Savior he knows what fate awaits Lazarus. He needs no one to tell him about the fragile nature of this life. He needs no one to tell him about the glorious nature of the next life. Also, as the Son of God in our world, he knows that he has been given the power over life and death, the power to work miracles. He knows that, in a moment, he will call Lazarus from the grave and Lazarus will answer, becoming a timeless example of the resurrecting power of God.

And yet, as he stands at the tomb of his friend, though he knows that death certainly does not have the last say, Jesus weeps. He has, in fact, come to this Earth to do just that. He has left his throne in glory to become a mortal man, subject to pain, subject to frailty, subject to brokenness, subject to grief, so that, in this moment he can share in our experience of humanness. And, as he shares our experience, so too, we can share our experience with him, confident that the God to whom we pray knows first hand what we are going through.

But, as profound as these words, “Jesus wept,” are, their place in scripture would have come as no surprise to Joseph and Mary. After all, the man who would become God’s plan for the redemption of our world began his life the same way as everyone else; as a baby. And, if there is one thing we can be sure that babies do, it is cry. This is not a bad thing. Crying is, in fact, a test for a healthy baby. You know that if your baby is crying then his or her lungs are working, and that things are going to be OK. And so the Jesus who so profoundly wept for his friend as a grown man, sharing in our experience of grief, must have bawled many times as a baby.

It is, I suppose, appropriate that tears are a sign of healthy life. After all, our lives are seemingly characterized at times by so much suffering. And yet, in the tears of the baby Jesus, as well as the adult Jesus, we can take comfort in that, when God decided to share our experience of life, he shared it all the way. Not just as a triumphant Saviour, nor even as a suffering servant, but as a baby, crying in the arms of his teenaged mother, interrupting the sleep of his carpenter father.

Prince of Peace

Perhaps none of the scriptural titles which Christians claim for him fit Jesus better than one which was written hundreds of years before he was born; the title “Prince of Peace” from Isaiah 9:6. Jesus is truly our “Prince of Peace,” a divine agent of the peace of God in this violent world.

There is no time at which we need the peace of God more than the holiday season. Our streets are filled with perpetual bumper to bumper traffic, making each excursion from our homes a festival of pain and an experiment in the creative expressions of “road rage.” Our stores are claustrophobically packed with impatient shoppers standing elbow to elbow hoping to nudge the person next to them out of position so that they can snatch up whatever hot new item it is they are hoping to give to a nephew, grandson, lover or friend. Our radios are perpetually trying our nerves with constant and tedious renditions of mediocre Christmas carols whose giddy melodies stand in stark contrast to our depressingly mad Christmas rush. The sheer wattage of our neighbors’ Christmas lights compete with the airport’s runway lights making us wonder which will happen first; a 747 landing in our front yard or a power outage.

Christmas, while a celebration marking the coming of the “Prince of Peace” to our world, has become a time of stress and anxiety. We worry about what to get for that special someone, forgetting that our love is enough. We worry about what to wear to the party or the church service, forgetting that our presence is enough. We worry about anything and everything, and so get distracted from the real meaning of this Christmas season.

In an age marred by the violence of terrorism and preemptive wars, perhaps we need to take time this Christmas to refocus on the peace that comes from the “Prince of Peace.” Perhaps, this Christmas, we need to lead lives characterized by the peace of Christ that passes all understanding. Perhaps this Christmas we need to escape from the mad rush of the holiday season and find the peace that comes from resting in our Savior.

Finding Community in the Dignity of Difference

When I wish to be (or to be seen as, or to see myself as) a unique thinker or a misunderstood radical it is very distressing to realize that everything that I could ever think, say, or write has probably already been thought, said or written by someone who did a better job of it than I ever will. But this desire to be so unique is an unhealthy desire, because not only is it egoistic, but it cuts me off from the community which is so essential for healthy living. C.S. Lewis once defined friendship as being able to say "Oh, you think that too. I thought I was the only one." That kind of friendship, built on intellectual and spiritual camaraderie, brings the lone wolf pseudo-intellectual into a community built on common ideas.

Lately, as I've written before, I've been reading Jonathan Sacks' The Dignity of Difference. I recommend this book as highly as I can recommend anything. Each chapter, each page, each sentence has been an epiphany, a revelation. While Sacks identifies himself as a conservative (and he says nothing in his book which makes me question that self-identification) and while he belongs to a different religious tradition, in reading his ideas I've found myself often exclaiming that line which C.S. Lewis claims is the basis for friendship. In Jonathan Sacks, or at least in this book, I have found a true friend, a friend which calls me into a community.

Sacks, in this book, is a pluralist in the same way that I am a pluralist. He is not the sort of patronizing pluralist who says that all religious expressions are equally valid or that all religions are really saying the same thing. He clearly understands the uniqueness of his own Jewish tradition as well as the respective uniqueness of each other tradition. There may be points of commonality, but each religious tradition is distinct, saying its own thing. Rather, his pluralism, like mine, is an acknowledgement that while we are all different we occupy the same space, and must learn how to share that space in peace, respecting each other not in spite of but because of our respective differences.

This morning I read a passage from The Dignity of Difference which summed up my project with this blog better than I could have said it myself. I am loathe to allow others to speak for me. When I was a youth minister and later the pastor of my own church I rarely used any kind of standardized curriculum because I wanted to be able to find and use my own voice. But I am losing my need to be so unique, and I am losing the pride that I have in my own abilities. If Sacks can say what I wanted to say better than I could have said it, then let Sacks speak. So, at the risk of turning this blog into a storehouse of quotes, here is Jonathan Sacks, in The Dignity of Difference, saying what I wish that I had said:

Religions do not agree with one another, nor with secular philosophies, when it comes to some of the great moral issues: abortion, euthanasia, in vitro fertilization, stem-cell research, homosexuality, cohabitation outside marriage and many other divisive matters. It is this very potential for bitter conflict that leads people to embrace moral relativism on the one hand (if religions do not agree, then morality is mere choice), libertarianism on the other (society should pass no collective judgement on moral matters; morality is a private affair). Both of these positions are, I believe, false. We argue about morality in a way, and with a seriousness, we do not about matters that are really relative (how to dress for a dinner party, for example). And we do not truly believe that moral issues are private - if we did, there would be no protests on environmental or human rights issues, no public moral debate at all. Yet the question is real and urgent: how do we live with moral difference and yet sustain an overarching community?

The answer... is conversation - not mere debate but the disciplined act of communicating (making my views intelligible to someone who does not share them) and listening (entering into the inner world of someone whose views are opposed to my own). Each is a genuine form of respect, of paying attention to the other, of conferring value on his or her opinions even though they are not mine. In a debate one side wins, the other loses, but both are the same as they were before. In a conversation neither side loses and both are changed, because they now know what reality looks like from a different perspective. That is not to say that either gives up its previous convictions. That is not what conversation is about. It does mean, however, that I may now realize that I must make space for another deeply held belief, and if my own case has been compelling, the other side may understand that it too must make space for mine. That is how public morality is constructed in a plural society - not by a single dominant voice, nor by the relegation of moral issues to the private domain of home and local congregation, but by a sustained act of understanding and seeking to be understood, across the boundaries of difference.

In a plural society - all the more in a plural world - each of us has to settle for less than we do when we associate with fellow believers. A Catholic may believe that abortion is murder, a Jew or Muslim that sex outside marriage is forbidden, and these convictions are given life within our respective communities of faith. But we cannot seek to have them imposed by force of law on those who are not members of our community if there are other groups who seriously disagree and make a compelling case for the right to construct a life along different lines. Yet what we lose is more than compensated for by the fact that together we are architects of a society larger than we could construct on our own, one in which our voice is heard and attended to even if it does not carry the day. Just as community is built on the willingness to let the 'I' be shaped by the 'We', so society is made by the readiness to let the 'We' of our community be constrained by the need to make space for other communities and their deeply held beliefs. Society is a conversation scored for many voices. But it is precisely in and through that conversation that we become conjoint authors of our collective futures, rather than dust blown by the wind of economic forces. Conversation - respectful, engaged, reciprocal, calling forth some of our greatest powers of empathy and understanding - is the moral form of a world governed by the dignity of difference.

I have but little to add to this. As I read it, it occurred to me that while Sacks is speaking on a large scale, with interactions between religious groups within nations and across national boundaries, his insight, particularly on the need to distinguish between conversation and debate, also carries over into smaller, more intimate interpersonal relationships. The most difficult aspect of marriage is trying to fit two distinct wills into one living space. Marriage is cohabitating in life-partnership with the "other." This other may compliment you nicely, but is also different from you, with different values, intentions and expectations. Most of these differences are not fully explored until well into the marriage because there has never been a need to bring them up. But, when they arise (and they do arise, they always arise) they must be dealt with appropriately or they will poison the relationship.

My wife and I, in the midst of the chaos which has followed our joint decision for me to leave the ministry, are learning the value of distinguishing between conversation and debate. We are learning to converse, but it is a slow and painful process. I have a will, and she has a will, and conversation requires the mutual submission of our individual wills for the good of our family. For this to work, we are discovering, we each must be willing to listen more intently and less judgmentally than we have ever had to listen before. We must also learn how to communicate authentically by welcoming the other into our own perspective without making them feel threatened or guilty. We must learn how to share pain without blame. We must learn how to open up without exploding. We are learning this, and I am very encouraged.

I expect that, in this respect, what is true of us is true of others as well. The mutual submission of wills is the most difficult necessity for any interpersonal relationship. And we are made for relationship. The songwriter David Wilcox argues that relationships, with the mutual submission of wills which they require, are the way in which we learn to be fully human. Here (rather than, say, in quantum mechanics, which is crazy!) what is true of the small is also true of the large, and vice versa. Human relationships, whether they are between individuals, communities, or societies, require the approach that Jonathan Sacks has laid out for us, as they are all about not only overcoming but even respecting and loving difference.

"I Can't Decide": An Ode to Our Commercial Society

A couple of years ago I thought I might want to be a songwriter. I love music, but I have little aptitude for it, a fact which is frustrated by the musical genius of my twin brother. Armed with my love of music, and my ideas about what a good pop song (as opposed to the crap I hear on the radio) should sound like, I penned some words and told my brother roughly what I wanted the music to sound like ("this is a quarter-time, bluesy feeling tune"; "this one's in six, kind of a rip off of a Sixpence tune," etc). He, of course, mostly disregarded my musical advice and crafted a few songs which felt rather than sounded like what I wanted. We hastily recorded them so that we wouldn't forget them, and haven't really done anything with them since.

This morning, while I was reading Jonathan Sacks' The Dignity of Difference, I thought of one of those ill fated, stillborn songs. In this book Sacks, a Jewish rabbi (is there any other kind of rabbi?), deals with the difficulties of globalization in an attempt to avoid the "clash of civilizations." Here is a passage that I read this morning, which reminded me of my stillborn song:

The great metaphors of our time - the supermarket, cable and satellite television and the Internet - put before us a seemingly endless range of options, each offering the great deal, the best buy, the highest specification, the lowest price. But consumption is a poor candidate for salvation. The very happiness we are promised by buying these designer jeans, that watch or this car, is what the next product assures us we do not yet have until we have bought something else. A consumer society is kept going by an endless process of stimulating, satisfying, and re-stimulating desire. It is more like an addiction than a quest for fulfillment.

My last post - my Christmas list - ought to tell you that, like Sacks, I am observing a trend rather than necessarily condemning it. Or, if I am condemning it then I am also condemning myself, because I certainly crave the endless supply of superficial material goods that our society mistakes for the "good life." Struggling to be an authentic person in this society of contrived goods and services, I wrote a song called "I Can't Decide." It ain't poetry. It's just a pop song, with some blues and some funk mixed in courtesy of my musician brother. But it's the best I could do. Here are the words:

I Can't Decide

I've got 10,000 cell phone plans
But none of them I understand
Too many choices on my hands
I can't decide

Which greaseburger should I eat?
'Want fries with that? How 'bout a drink?
These choices all seal my defeat
I can't decide

No, I can't decide

I pig out at a buffet line
While the starving masses bide their time
I can't see them - I'm doing fine
and I can't decide

Which gas-guzzler should I drive?
As SUVs go nationwide
Wildlife should run and hide
I can't decide

No, I can't decide

As I go through these TV plans
With the satellite and cable man
All my choices seem so bland
and I can't decide

The things that matter are ignored
As I keep choosing more and more
From shiny junk that I can horde
and I can't decide

No, I can't decide (ad nauseum)

Not quite as powerful without the music, but I'm not techno-savvy enough to put music on here, and even if I were I'd have to know you a lot better before I let you hear me sing!