Jesus Schooling the It Boys

Matthew 23.4-10:  They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.  They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.  They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues,  and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.  But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven.  Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. [NRSV]

“Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’  “Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ. [The Message]


Religion cannot be about showing off, or it isnt’ religion at all.

Showing off shifts our faith away from the worship of God (its very purpose) to the worship of ourselves.

The most insidious, the sneakiest way we have of doing this fools (even) ourselves.

The sneaky voice of the pretender is the voice of condemnation: look how bad he is! . . . I cannot believe she goes to church and acts like that! . . . And she calls herself a Christian! 

Here’s the thing: whenever I recognize myself in your sin, I am much quicker to lean toward mercy, forgiveness, compassion, love, understanding, forebearance, grace.

It is only when I do not see myself in you that I feel so free to condemn and judge.

In this way might we understand that our condemnation of others is just a slick way of pointing out how wonderful we are, for surely in our condemnation of others is at least implied a celebration of how very lucky we are not to be (like) them.

Remember how much Jesus liked that?  Not so much.

Why should it matter so to God?  After all, aren’t we better than some folk?  Aren’t there people just begging for a little healthy criticism?

Perhaps.  But by whom?  Is not God the judge?  And if God is THE judge, then who are we pretending to be when we get all judging?

Exactly.

Because once again, we are making ourselves the focus (spiritual narcissism), making of ourselves gods (or at the least, demi-gods), to be admired (which is perilously close to being worshiped) for our wondrous selves, if for no other reason that at least we’re not that guy.

But we are not the judge.

If it’s a legal model we so desire, what we, all of us, are, are co-defendants.  But the metaphor will only take us so far.  Life is not a courtroom.  And we do not get off more lightly for our wrongs by rolling over on the other guy.  It doesn’t work that way.

Condemnation of others is the adult version of tattling – we’re the kid and God’s the Dad.  And he doesn’t want to hear it.  The only person’s inventory we are responsible for is our own.  And God isn’t just Dad.  God is The Dad.  And he already knows.

Ultimately, condemnation of others is evidence of the absence of love in our hearts for another.  And we are commanded to love others, just like we love us.  To condemn another is to find them wanting in the courtroom of our own minds and appoint ourselves the judge.

And there we are, slipping into the judge’s chair again, forgetting that our job, our only job, when it comes to other people, is simply, merely, only, to love.

Anything else just isn’t our business.

Hobby Lobby: The Good News Just Keeps on Coming

I wrote yesterday about my reaction (angry) to the Hobby Lobby decision of the Supreme Court (they aren’t cool enough to warrant the SCOTUS appellation - this is no rock group, folks).

In on-going FB and elsewhere conversations, I have reason to be even more hopeful today than yesterday.

Here goes:

Did I Just Hear Justice Alito Say Single-Payer is Constitutional?  Fact is, I think I did.  It goes something like this (fact check me, please – this is too important to get it wrong):

• Privately-held corporations can get out of certain ACA requirements because they are privately-held

• nothing in this ruling can let people get out of obligations to the government based on religious beliefs because those are taxes and this ruling does not apply to taxes

• flash back to Chief Justice Roberts’ decision upholding the constitutionality of ACA, finding that it is essentially a tax

Starting to get it?

• Health-care requirements are a tax – except when they aren’t

• People have to pay taxes whether said taxes violate their religious beliefs or not – except when they don’t

In spite of the nonsensical result, and without meaning to, I am sure, it would seem to me that Justice Alito has just opened the door very wide for the constitutionality and workability of a single-payer national health plan.  If his friend and colleague Chief Justice Roberts’ ruling holds true (and why would it not?  He is, after all, the Chief among the justices), the Alito + Roberts formula seems to be

private + religion = opt out

public + religion = too bad, everybody follow the same rules

And before my conservative friends go all crazy on me insisting that you don’t want the government up your . . . just remember this: according to Justice Alito, somebody gets to be up  there, so the only question remaining is who.

I know you don’t want it to be the government.  But really, do you want it to be your boss?  I’m going for the folks who have so many people to deal with they can’t even remember the view up mine – but that’s just me.

More important to me is the ‘everybody follows the same rules’ proviso.  I am a woman, so I do not have constitutional protections like Hobby Lobby (and yes, I am going to be a very, very, very long time getting over that one).  But even though I don’t have those constitutional safeguards, for some crazy reason, I keep thinking that I should.  Call me closed-minded.

But the good news in all this is that by holding that government action is distinctly different than private action in terms of the ability to opt in or out, Justice Alito has laid some very nice groundwork for nationalized health care.

It might go something like this (hint to Congress: pay attention):

WHEREAS [Congressional bills that are a big deal often have a whole bunch of whereas clauses – they tell you why this is being done] over 50% of the population of these United States of America have no constitutional safeguards;

WHEREAS those 50% plus citizens are women;

WHEREAS women and women only thus far in our development [notice the avoidance of the language of evolution so as not to alienate certain folk who would otherwise be for the bill] are capable of bearing children and thus are the only part of the population subject to certain health issues, risks, and focus, religious and otherwise;

WHEREAS the private sector has had decades of opportunity to provide adequate and fair health care to all our citizens but has yet failed to overcome obstacles to universal and fair coverage, as witnessed by the present ability of certain privately-held concerns to opt out of certain coverages out of their religious beliefs, which adversely impacts female citizens in a way that male citizens are not and cannot be impacted;

WHEREAS, the government, being as it is constitutionally prohibited from making any laws of establishment relative to religion;

WHEREAS the decision in Hobby Lobby, et al., inadvertently establishes a religious rule in carrying out the terms and conditions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), an inevitability so long as ACA coverage continues to be provided by employers:

NOW THEREFORE WITNESS: Congress does hereby hold and act to end this unintended consequence of the Hobby Lobby ruling by enacting Single-payer Universal Health Care, to be implemented forthwith, that no longer may the injustice of women’s health issues being subordinated to the health concerns of men under the guise or out of the rubric of religion.

___________________
*Recall if you read yesterday's piece, I predicted that this decision would head in directions its author and signers never envisioned.  Let the madness begin.

Dear Hobby Lobby, et al.: Jesus Is Not a Legal Fiction

[This piece is a reaction to the Supreme Court's ruling in the Hobby Lobby et al. cases, finding that for-profit corporations can have religious views and can opt out of certain laws as violative of those views.  I am furious -- hence this piece.  Working titles included -- The Good News of Hobby Lobby . . . or . . . Ladies & Gentlemen: I Give You Hobby Lobby World do not even get close to the heartbreak I experience over this case and its conclusion, to which I react much more as a Christian than I do as a woman, although both are in play.  If I offend, so be it.  I will not ask forgiveness in advance, which suggests an intention to sin while seeking to blunt the consequence to me, which is exactly what I perceive to be happening here, as self-interest prompts the highest ruling body in our land -- the Supreme Court -- to actually take faith and make it a joke.  God does not need my defending.  But my nation requires my participation.  To the decision . . . ]

So let’s all of the so-called liberal ilk*, and especially the women among us, just take a deep breath and look for a little bit of humor, a little bit of justice, a little bit of common sense in the Hobby Lobby Debacle.

***

First, to the humor:

Corporations are now not only people, but religious people.  This is GREAT news for us!  Finally, now, we women persons can form our own for-profit corporations, declare our religious views and exempt ourselves from a whole host of laws we find problematic.

1. Corporation Beth will not allow for nor pay for any employee of Corporation Beth to be away from work serving his or her country in the military.  It violates Corporation Beth’s pacifist religious tenets.  Sadly, that does not mean my employees might not be required by their government to serve.  But hey, the good news is that I as Corporation Beth, won’t have to pay for it.

2. Maybe Corporation Sally doesn’t care for certain styles and fashions popular to the day – so Corporation Sally might require men to wear loose-fitting pants so as not to be unduly distracting in the work place because Corporation Sally's God does not like tight pants on men!

3. Corporation Joan has read that addiction is one of those nefarious behavior-based diseases where the person may not know of their susceptibility to it until they imbibe.  Being a reasonable religious person and deeply caring for her employees, Corporation Joan may now institute a policy that in order to receive health care under her plan (her plan, her rules, remember, so long as it’s religious), all employees must refrain from all consumption of alcohol or drugs, prescription or otherwise (which quite handily gets rid of the prescription drug coverage requirement in one fell swoop).

4. In Corporation Every Woman in the United States, Viagra coverage is gone, gone, gone, because for sure, that violates ALL our religious faiths.

5. Corporation I Am Your Mother eliminates caffeine (bad for you and keeps you up at night); all fats in the diet (what, you want to have a heart attack before you’re 30?); cigarettes (need we say more?); driving too fast (I should pay for your suicidal behavior?); well, you get the point.  And it doesn’t matter one little bit whether we follow these rules or not (this is, after all, Corporation I Am Your Mother – CIAYM for short and in CIAYM, the order of the day is to do what I say and not what I do – Mom, after all, knows best).  So, to all you conservatives and libertarians, we hope you’re as pleased as we are – you’ve traded in your ‘Nanny State’ for Nanny Corporation.  And our freedom of speech guarantees you’ll be hearing from us even in your sleep.  Sweet dreams, cutie.  Love you, Mom.

6. Corporation Gladys eliminates all blood pressure medicines and treatments from coverage under her plan as most affected by such things are men and they have brought it on themselves and Gladys’ religion prohibits, absolutely prohibits, rewarding anyone, but especially men, for their own self-destructive behavior.  Corporation Gladys will send a representative to the visitation at your funeral.  But she will not be paying for your own self-destructive behavior.

***

As for justice, I’m with Dr. King on this one – the moral arc is indeed a long one, but its bent is one-directional.  The fact is that over time, this ruling will inevitably be taken to its logical and ridiculous conclusion and some future mothers and fathers will come to their senses and undo this nonsense.

I know that simply because, having been a lawyer, I know that my own kind can never, never, never, leave well enough alone.  Some creative cuss will inevitably come up with the silliest and most dangerous (from the State’s point of view) interpretation of this legal joke and it will work and the Supreme Court (keeper of the traditional values of the nation – never think otherwise) will recoil in horror at what their own ancestors have wrought.  The thing will be undone and all will be well – well, of course, except for all the folks in the meantime for whom it was not well.

And understand this about justice:  perception is as important as reality.  We cannot know with any certainty the intentions of those bringing these cases or those deciding in their favor.  But we can know that many women across this land feel disenfranchised, dismissed, attacked, minimized, disappeared from public discourse, simply because they are the target.  This action does not, cannot, affect health coverage for men.  It is only about women, as the 'keepers' of the reproductive cycle.  Argue all you like:  the fact is that many women experience this decision as discriminatory.

***  

Common sense – that oh, so rare commodity, is right scarce these days, it seems to me.  Maybe I’ve missed something really important.  But I don’t think so.  So I offer a few personal bromides in the (most likely vain) hope of assisting those whose own common sense seems to have fled:

1. Jesus neither requires nor desires bouncers.  You do not have to (in fact you cannot) act to enforce Jesus.  It just doesn’t work.  In fact, it has the opposite effect.

2. Think mote and plank.  If this is really about religion (and we all know it’s not – it’s about money – but let’s play along and pretend that you really are honest brokers of your own truths), I humbly (okay, I’m not all that honest either) suggest you recall Jesus’ own words about the mote and plank and devote yourself to some time reading the Desert Fathers and Mothers (who were quite clear that their own breaches were so extreme that they were in no position to condemn the actions of others).  More directly, did you survey all your shareholders or trust beneficiaries to determine whether or not any of your women use IUD’s or other comparable means of birth control?  Clean your own damn house before you go snooping around in the houses of your employees is a more direct way of putting it.

3. There are always unintended consequences – put another way:  Know that you will pay for this – and not in a good way.  I alluded to this above, but I’ll be more clear: making law ALWAYS has unintended consequences.  You lack the imagination to even begin to comprehend where this law will go.  But there are lawyers and activist groups out there now plotting away.  In the long run, you will not have protected the sanctity of your own religious beliefs.  What you will do is make anything called religious a joke, as companies far and wide seek new and interesting ways to make themselves ‘religious’ so as to avoid their financial obligations (remember: it is ALWAYS all about the money).  If you really care about the practice of your religion, this was a very bad day for you and I am only sorry that you lack the insight to understand that.

4. Beware of any action taken by one group that affects the rights of another.  This is supposedly about religion.  But hear the women.  And hear them clearly.  This rule applies ONLY to women – men, thus far, cannot have children, so by definition, this rule is about women and women only.  The opinion is written by a man.  The dissent is written by a woman.  That should tell you something.  At a minimum, it should tell you that when one group (in this case, men) makes a rule that only affects another group to which they do not belong (women), great humility and caution are called for.  Listening to the voices of the other group is called for.

5. Moral ambiguity is the land of grown-ups.  You live in the land of grown-ups.  That means things will not always go your way, simply because you are not the only inhabitant of this land.  Just sit with that one for awhile.  You might ask yourself what we who see otherwise on this issue than you have had to put up with from the likes of you over the centuries to get some idea of what is intended here.

***

To Justice Alito and all the signers-on: I thought you were a Christian.  As such, I gave you credit for understanding how very ridiculous it is to claim that a corporation has religion**.  I never considered for an instant that you would take the rule that allows for non-profits to opt out of this provision as ‘evidence’ that corporations have religion.  But you did.

You may be a wonderful Justice (I am not in a position to know), but sadly, I must conclude that you aren’t much of a Christian, because you have made the Christ I follow a joke by doing that most insidious thing we lawyers can do: you have made Jesus a legal fiction.

And you have broken my heart.



_____________
*When it became ‘liberal’ as opposed to conservative or even libertarian to keep the government out of my vagina, I really would like to know.  When it became liberal as opposed to conservative or libertarian to favor the creeds of my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters (contraception equals sin) over the creeds of oh, say Jehovah’s Witnesses (blood transfusions equal sin) or Christian Scientists (all medical treatment equals sin), I really would like to know.  When the ‘religious’ rights of a fictional character (a corporation) became more important that the religious freedoms of its employees (real, actual, living, breathing people), as a stated value of the conservative and/or libertarians among us, I really, truly, genuinely, would like to know.

**Hobby Lobby  My own Hobby Lobby analysis – turns out (according to the majority of the Supreme Court) I was wrong.

9 Misconceptions Non-Believers Seem to Have About Christians

1. Only stupid people believe in God.  Yes, there are people of not much intelligence who believe in God.  And there are people of stellar intellectual brilliance who do not.  But there are bright people who do believe in God and not-so-bright people who don’t.  It’s not about intelligence, so get down off your high horse.  Need some examples?  C. S. Lewis.  J. R. R. Tolkein (you know you love his books).  James Polkinghorne (physicist).  Jesus (pretty significant philosopher and teacher in his day).  Immanuel Kant.  Galileo.  Pascal.  Descartes.  Newton.  Francis Collins (genome project).  Martin Luther King, Jr. All Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc., etc., etc. 

2. Religion (particularly Christianity) is responsible for the ills of the world.  Really?  And I thought you were bright.  It’s never that simple, is it?  People manipulating others to their own ends and to great destruction happens through the agency of religion, yes.  But would you really assert that the religion is the cause (as opposed to the means)?  To so hold, you must actually believe that but for Christianity, Adolph Hitler would have been a nice guy or that there would have been no Holocaust.  And then, of course, you’re left to explain the holocausts visited on their peoples by Stalin and Mao (avowed believers in no religion or god).  The role of religion in doing harm should never be taken lightly.  But it’s a bit glib to simply blame religion as a way of understanding the ills of the world.  God or no God, we humans have proven very capable of all kinds of horror.

3. It doesn’t make any sense.  I’ll grant you that: faith doesn’t make much sense.  But you say that as if we (practitioners) don’t know that.  It may or may not be news to you, but Christianity’s founding documents (the New Testament) include statements to the effect that the claims about Jesus are nonsensical by the world’s standards  by one of its premier thinkers (and most prolific writers of the texts we have today): Paul calls the Christian’s claims about Jesus and the cross to be foolishness to those who do not believe it (1 Corinthians 1.18ff), inexplicable to the ways and wisdoms of the world (1 Corinthians 2.14); and says that if we’ve gotten it wrong, we are the most pitiable of all people (1 Corinthians 15.19).  

4. There is nothing good about it.  We might argue about ‘good’, but I’m going to take as a given that we probably agree on some things.  So consider: the next time you visit a hospital whose name contains the name of a church or synagogue or the name of a saint or person of faith, that hospital was begun by people of faith because of their faith – that is, because of their faith in God, the people who began that hospital were moved to provide care for the sick, especially those who were poor, when no one else was.  Do you think universal education is a good idea?  A fundamental right or privilege of living in a free society?  Thank a Christian.  Universal education was born out of the Reformation idea that all should be allowed free access to the holy text of their faith.  In order to do that, all had to be taught to read.  Universal education was brought about so you could read the Bible for yourself.  The Civil Rights Movement was born in the African-American churches of the day.  The movement and the way in which it was conducted were based on scripture.  Dr. King was a prophet preacher.  Every word he spoke he understood to be divinely given.  Every reference he makes that so stirs even today comes from his interpretation of the biblical texts he often quotes.  

5. Social justice happens in spite of and not because of the church  Seeking to change the world is one of the great contributions of the church to the world.  Missionary women (and yes, missionaries have much to answer for, but you already know that.  What you may not know) in China ended the practice of foot-binding and in India the practice of sati (the wife being thrown upon the fire at the death of the husband).  They brought hospitals and books and perhaps most of all, the idea that universal education is for girls as well as boys.  So when you’re standing at an Occupy protest or fighting for the Imolakee tomato pickers or marching against war, or donating to Amnesty International, look around – chances are a bunch of the people there alongside you or who got there before you are people of faith who are there because of their faith.

6. Christianity squelches creativity  Much of the great art of the western world is inspired by, thematic of, and paid for with the dollars of Christians.  Maybe that’s a mere accident of history.  Maybe it’s because the artists were grappling with big issues.  Maybe it was God-inspired.  But like it or not, there is no running from the great tradition of Christian art.  

7. Church makes everyone be just like everyone else  Church is an institution.  And it has all the problems and foibles of one.  They are not inconsequential.  But there is something in the very structure of that peculiar institution that breeds protestors and world changers too, even as it would attempt to squash them.  

8. Church is a tyranny  The structure of the Presbyterian church was the model for our form of government in the United States.  If we appreciate that model, we must appreciate from whence it came.

9. Church uses laws to force its ways on others   Sometimes.  And sometimes that’s a bad thing – a very bad thing.  But sometimes it isn’t.  Do you think child labor was a bad thing?  Thank a Christian that you don’t have to go to work at age 6.  Think prisons should be humane?  Thank a Quaker.  Think the Magna Carta (as a check on royal power) was a good thing?  Thank the Archbishop of Canterbury.  

It’s one thing to have examined the ‘evidence’ and made your own clear-eyed conclusion.  It’s quite another to engage in the very same small-mindedness non-believers so often accuse believers of having.  Ignorance is ignorance, regardless of its peculiar bent.  And many non-believers I encounter who carry bitterness, anger, or garden-variety resentment are speaking not out of a general belief that religious people are perpetuating a harmful myth so much as out of the effects of a negative encounter in their own personal journey.

Those negative encounters matter.  But here’s my problem with negative encounter being dispositive of the question of God or no God for anyone: I don’t know about you, but I’ve had at least my share of negative encounters with all kinds of folks: teachers, physicians, lawyers, journalists, and yes, even church folk.  But those encounters did not make me stop ‘believing’ in or seeking education, health care, justice, freedom of expression for everyone, or God.

So if you’re someone who’s had a negative encounter of the religious type, I am sorry – sorrier than I can put in words – that such happened to you.  I do not take such things lightly nor do I suggest that you should.

That a religious or spiritual journey was made unsafe for you is unconscionable.

But please, please, please remember that the person or persons you encountered in such a harmful way are not themselves God.  Nor are they representative of God.  They should not be allowed the final word when it comes to faith and things religious any more than the physician breaking his or her oath should have as to things medical.

For my own part, I will share, debate, wrestle, with you any time you care to, but I will not proselytize.  If I have anything of value to share when it comes to the life spiritual, you will know it by the fruits of my life.

In short, I will refrain from sentences that begin with “All atheists . . .”  Won’t you do the same for me?

If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, 

I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.

                                                                        –Kurt Vonnegut, author and secular humanist

12 Reasons Not to Come to My Church

Churches these days, in the United States at least, seem to desperately seek out new members.  That makes sense spiritually as well as practically, for Christians are called to evangelize, that is, to spread the word of God’s love to the world.

And in the face of dwindling numbers, as a church professional (translation: I’m a preacher/pastor), my FB page is full of posts about how to attract more people into the church, how to go where the people not in church are, how to be ‘relevant’ to the unchurched, how to market one’s church, etc., etc., etc.

But every church is not for every person.  So if you’re thinking about or looking for a church community to call your own, be warned: this may not be the church for you.

My own list of 12 reasons why you might not want to come here:

1. We’re small. . . really small . . . tiny even.  And small ain’t for everyone.  Because here’s the thing about small: it really is up to you.  So if you want a church where you can plug in to what’s already going on, slide in and slide out with little fuss, well, we’re just not the church for you, for the fact is that if you’re coming to this tiny church, you will be called on.

2. As a corollary to #1, there is no anonymity here.  There’s nowhere to hide, to be invisible, in a church this size – there just isn’t.  You will be noticed.  You will be welcomed.  And hugged.  And while hospitality is a good thing, not everyone is comfortable with being noticed.  That’s okay.  We’re just not for you.

3. Another corollary to #1, if you’ve got a great idea but no time or energy or interest to implement it, this place is definitely not for you.  This pastor loves new ideas and most times, we’ll all jump in behind someone who’s got one – but, and it’s a big thing – really – if it’s your idea, it’ll be up to you to make it come true.  We’ll help you.  But if it’s yours, baby, you run with it or it won’t happen.

4. If you insist that the church you attend have a predictable ending time, you really need to go somewhere else.  You can stare at your watch all you want; you can even install a clock where the preacher just has to see it (trust me, it’s been done) – it will make no difference.  Services end when they end.  It’s not an all-day thing, but I’m told it can feel like it.  So if you need an hour a week and no more for your spiritual sustenance, you really need to be somewhere else.

5. If you don’t want to hear about money, or be asked to give of your money, go somewhere else.  Enough said.  (I can give you the longer version some other time, but chances are if this is a deal breaker for you, we won’t get that far in the conversation, will we?)

6. If it’s all about you and your needs, please do me the favor of going somewhere else.  I have neither the time nor the energy nor the ability to meet all the needs of all the people all the time.  And it’s not my job.  Nor is it church’s job.  So you’ll just end up disappointed and angry and who needs that?  You don’t and neither do I.

7. If you need things spiritual to be clear cut, with no room for differing views, this is definitely not the place for you.  Doctrine and dogma may have their place, but we’re a rag tag bunch of current and former Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Unitarians, Reformed and Presbyterians, gathered under the Presbyterian umbrella.  And most of us are just way too old to want to arm wrestle ourselves into one worldview.  We’re pretty content, most days, to make room for each other.  We’ll make room for you too.  But none of us get to design the room alone, so it can end up looking pretty funny after awhile, with windows where there should be doors and vice versa.  If you need certainty, we are certain of a few things, but they are very few and everything else is up for discussion.

8. If you’re offended by laughter, you’d better just keep on driving when you get here.  We’re the kind of folks and I’m the kind of preacher, who like to laugh.  We celebrate communion sometimes with chocolate.  We come to the table joyous.  And we like it that way.

9. If a woman preacher is a problem, better keep moving.  Isn’t it obvious?

10. If you require entertainment, this place is not your place.  While I think I’m pretty witty, nobody is that entertaining week in and week out.  I know I’m not (and when I forget that, the folks here are quick to remind me).

11. If you’re just not that interested in things spiritual or consider yourself ‘spiritual but not religious’ - definitely give us a miss.  People come to church for all kinds of reasons.  No one here will judge your reasons.  But we are definitely about our Father’s business.  If that’s of no interest to you, there are civic clubs and groups and volunteer organizations that can better feed your desire to be of help to the world.  If you’re looking for friends, there are better places to find them.  We’ll do our best to make you feel welcome, but we won’t always get it right.  We’ll make room for you, but not always in the ways you would like.  And we are unapologetically religious as well as spiritual, spiritual as well as carnal.

12. If you think politics have no place in church or church in politics, you will not be happy here.  This is not a church that preaches on who you should vote for, but its preacher is definitely one who will challenge you to think about and enact your understanding of God as the Lord of all in the entirety of your life, which includes your life as a citizen.  So if it’s personal piety to the exclusion of public concerns that you seek, this is not the place for you.

If you’re someone living in the mountains of western Virginia and seeking out a church, I hope and trust you’ll consider McDowell Presbyterian Church and Headwaters Chapel.  We’re charming.  We’re historic.  We’re (mostly) pretty nice people.  We love Jesus and follow him the best we can.  We get mad at and fall in love with each other over and over again every day.  We’re part of the body human and the body divine.  And we’d love to have you.  But please, oh please, do think about whether you’d really love to have us too and if not, really, do give us a miss.

How to Know You’re Religious: Hobby Lobby, Corporations, Personhood and Religious Liberty

So claims Hobby Lobby in its law suit against the obligations of what’s been nicknamed Obamacare: that the corporation is, under the laws of the United States, a ‘person’ and as a ‘person’, it is a religious ‘person’ with particular ‘religious’ belief which preclude it (he?  she?) from providing certain types of birth control insurance coverage to its employees.

So the question now seems to become whether a corporation, a legal ‘person’, can be ‘religious’.

Well, there actually are ways to know whether an actual (as opposed to a legal) person is religious:

1. To what religion does the person adhere?  When a person is religious, it’s actually an easy question to answer.

2. What church/synagogue/mosque/meeting house does the person attend?  Ditto #1.

3. What are the tenets of the religion to which the person adheres?  Ditto.  Whether they’re sensible to others isn’t actually the question.  But what the tenets actually are is.

4. What are the religious texts applicable to the person’s beliefs?  Ditto.

These are fairly straightforward questions for a genuine person.  But what does a corporation read?  Nothing.  It cannot read for it has no eyes.  What worship house does a corporation attend?  None.  It has no legs and a wheel chair will not help it get there.  Where does a corporation tithe?  (Trust me when I tell you that if this corporation were an evangelical ‘person’, it would be a person required to tithe.)  To what religious authority does the corporation submit for discipline?  A person’s behavior can and does come under the discipline of its religious authority.  But there is no body to discipline, for a corporation is an idea put to paper.  Ideas may be condemned, but they are notoriously difficult to discipline.  To what church/synagogue/ mosque does the corporation belong?  None.  It can’t.

Think this is silly?  Then let’s ask when the corporation was baptized.  To belong to any evangelical Christian church with which I am aware, one must be baptized.  It’s a non-negotiable.  I don’t know about you, but I’m trying to imagine what a corporation’s baptism would look like.

And there immediately arises a very practical differentiation that must need occur: this ‘exception’ that Hobby Lobby seeks, could always and only apply to privately-held corporations.  There are many such entities, but it is impossible (at least under currently existing laws as I understand them) for there to be anything approaching religious unanimity of the stockholders of a publicly-traded entity: in order for that to be so, save the extremely random element of chance, the entity would have to discriminate against those seeking to acquire publicly-traded stock on the basis of their religion.

And it wouldn’t be enough that the stockholders even be all Christian, for example: they would all have to be Christians of the particular view that birth control is wrong/sinful/immoral.

Public activities overseen by the government cannot discriminate against persons on the basis of their religion/religious beliefs.  That’s the very point of the law suit brought by Hobby Lobby.

And here’s the practical problem with even a privately-owned entity: how does one know that the claims of religiosity are universally held by the private shareholders?  Hobby Lobby says that in its trust documents, all trustees must be ‘Christians’.  It does not say that they must all be evangelical Christians who are against certain forms of birth control.  And I’m willing to bet (although I could be wrong) that there are at least a few women among the family that set this business up in the first place who actually have used the IUD (one of the forms of birth control that would be problematic according to their ‘theology’ – assuming women are given any voice in the company).

What the folks filing this law suit are actually trying to say is that some or all of the people who are stockholders (or in this case trustees) of the legal entity we call a ‘corporation’ themselves hold certain religious view which conflict with the obligations of Obamacare when it comes to providing contraceptive care insurance coverage.

I feel their pain.

When it came time to ‘sign up’ as a minister, I wanted to opt out of Social Security because I did not want to provide any monies to my federal government, directly or indirectly, that would be utilized for our war efforts.  Plain and simple, that violates each and every tenet of my faith as I understand it.

But then I read the rules of opting out.  What they said was that I had to be able to state (remember the part of Christianity that says your yes is to be yes and your no, no) that my religion prohibits participation in Social Security.  The fact is that my religion does not prohibit participation in Social Security.  Nowhere close.  So I had to participate.  Or I had to (at least be willing to) go to jail by simply refusing to comply.  I thought about that.  I still do, every tax day.  Thus far, I’ve not been willing to make that sacrifice.  That may make me a coward (trust me when I tell you that I feel that condemnation deep in my soul).  But it also makes it my choice.

I am a person.  Not a theoretical person.  An actual person.  And I am free to choose when, where and how to take my ethical stands.

If a corporation is a person, it too can make such decisions.  It can ‘decide’ to make a moral stand and face the consequences.  That, actually, and contrary to what Hobby Lobby asserts, is a choice.

Jesus never promised us good choices and neither did the United States Constitution.

So, Hobby Lobby, if you are a person and this really does violate your moral conscience, woman up and make the choice and face the consequences.

Religious people have been doing that for a very long time now.  You’ll be in good company.

But it’s a problem for you, isn’t it?  Because you’re not a person; you’re a legal fiction and your particular legal fiction sets your ultimate reason for existing the serving (financially) of your owners/stockholders/ trustees in a way that does nothing to hurt the financial standing of your shareholders (trustees).  It actually has a name, this concept:  fiduciary duty.

It would be immoral for you to violate that duty according to your own construct, your own reason for being.

What a conundrum that must be for you.

Life is My Religion*

Not mine . . .

Life is my experience,
but it is most definitely not
my religion.

my life is how I worship
but it is not what I worship

I celebrate my life,
but I do not worship it.

I celebrate your life,
but I do not follow it.

Even the more amorphous but broader ‘life’
does not claim my allegiance – my allegiance
is to God – and thus do I honor, respect and
rejoice in life, because it is God-created

Life, wonderful life, finite
with an end-date
a wind-down-the-clock
bound-by-time
frame
out of or around which
I cannot see
for all of us,
and not just for me

I don’t spend much time
thinking about or even
talking about my religion –
my ways and means of
observing, celebrating,
co-creating, entering,
living into –
the reality that is God

God is the subject
as well as the object
of my worship

religion is how I go
about that

it’s the day-to-day
of it all
so maybe life actually
is my religion
my how-to
my show-and-tell
of the guy-gal I call
God


____________________
*FB friend Jim Palmer has a blog Life is my religion.  Jim posts many amazing photographs to accompany his FB posts.  They always catch my eye.  They are often accompanied by the simple one-line tag:  life is my religion.  My own reflection above was a literal journey of words, thoughts, movement away from and movement towards.  Here's where the journey took me:  whether life is or is not my religion, religion is not my religion - of that I am sure.  So perhaps life actually is my religion, my steps both towards and away from, God -- the ways in which I worship God, describe and enact my experience of and encounter with God.  I think Jim may be on to something.

Enough Shame to Go Around

R. Cort Kirkwood, managing editor of the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record, writes this*

Given the refusal of Moslems [sic] to assimilate**, as well as the range of successful Moslem demands upon European elites for heretofore unimagined 'rights' and public and corporate policies, one wonders when Christendom’s benighted lands will relent and sanction not only honor killing but also bride burning, genital mutilation and the other merry folkways the Islamic horde brought with them...White Swedish women are suffering a wave of unprecedented rape and mayhem at the hands of their country’s Mohammedan [sic] guests***. ... The inevitable Islamic conquest of Europe and its affiliated horrors would never have been possible had Europe remained true to its Catholic faith, the bulwark that stood firmly against Islamic conquest for 10 centuries...Until the West awakens from its spiritual slumber and raises the Cross, it will continue losing the fight not against 'terror' but against Islam itself.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) originates not with Islam, but with Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs and the Roman Empire.  Wikipedia: FGM Indeed, some Islamic scholars have issued fatwas (legal ruling or interpretation of Islamic law by one in authority to so rule) against FGM.

Rembrandt portrays himself as the Levite
placing his concubine on an ass to be
carried home and spark a war

The majority of so-called honor killings in the world today are committed by Muslims, until one expands one’s definition of ‘honor killing’ to include what in the West are called ‘crimes of passion’ (the husband who kills his wife in a fit of rage over her real or perceived infidelity, for example).  Then the shift is dramatic.  Moreover, there is a history of honor killings across Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism.  The Bible contains what modern-day feminists refer to as ‘texts of terror’ against women, one of the most notable being the murder of the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19).

In this story of a woman who is sacrificed by her husband for rape and murder in order to preserve his own honor and life, it is worthy of note that at the beginning of the story, the woman is identified as being ‘unfaithful’ to her husband.  Her offense?  She left him and returned to her father.  Why include such a detail in the first place?  Perhaps to suggest that her death and mistreatment by all in the story was somehow warranted or justified.

Mr. Kirkwood, you may have forgotten your own religious history, but trust me on this: women have not.  Even today, orthodox Jewish men insist in the United States that they should not be required to ride the bus with women (does this remind anyone of a woman in Alabama who sparked a revolution by staying seated?).  Christians around the world – the majority of them, in fact, as most Christians are Roman Catholic – insist that women are inferior to the point that they may not serve in leadership roles within their own church, based in part on the teachings of a man (St. Augustine) who held that women do not have souls.

And by the way, the Catholic faith that was, as you put it, “the bulwark that stood firmly against Islamic conquest for 10 centuries” is the same faith that gave the world the Crusades.  And ten centuries later, the people of Iraq still remember, carrying as they do the genetic reminder in the random child with red hair or green eyes, the invasion of their lands ‘for Jesus’.

That you still insist on using the language of ‘Christendom’ says much.  Your language choice reveals a willingness and desire to cling to the worldview that Christianity is a conquering force engaged not in spiritual, but temporal, battle.  This, sir, is the worst kind of theology, betraying the man who did not use his cross as a sword, but mounted it as a shield behind which we all may stand.  God may require my allegiance, but the Divine neither needs nor requires my defense, especially when that defense would require me to do violence against others whom God has also created in the divine image and declared ‘very good’ from before the beginning of time.

Do I support the mistreatment of women under any guise?  Of course not.  But please, please, please, do not make your arguments against Islam in general and believing Muslims in particular, on the mistreatment of women.  The mistreatment of women knows no religious, social or cultural bounds.  It is an issue not of religion, but of power.  So, please, climb down off our backs and make your arguments elsewhere.  For the fact is your own heritage, which includes burning women as witches, the torture and murder of Joan d’Arc for the ‘offense’ of wearing trousers, the exclusion and excoriation of women throughout history, the modern-day sanction against women for daring to get on yet another bus and speaking their minds (Nuns on the Bus), the erasure of women from the history of our faith, is one in which you can take no pride, sir.****


__________________
*Taken from a FB entry on We Are All Harrisonburg.  Best research indicates that this appeared as part of a blog post by Mr. Kirkwood in 2007 at Taki's Magazine.  In the posting, Mr. Kirkwood also claims that what he calls Western Europe's 'Catholic culture' of chivalry and the good treatment of women was eroded by Islam.  One hardly knows where to begin.  Medieval poets may have waxed eloquent about chivalry, but women were hardly 'elevated' as Mr. Kirkwood claims.  In point of fact, until very recently in the history of the world, violence against women has been viewed as a male prerogative.

**I never know what folks mean about someone’s refusal to ‘assimilate’.  I can only guess Mr. Krikwood’s intentions here, but I also remember growing up in Fairmont, West Virginia, where there was a huge immigrant population formed during the heyday of the coal mines, when workers were needed to go underground and were sought after from far-away lands.  Thus growing up in Fairmont, many of my friends’ grandmothers did not speak English.  They were all Christians, largely from southern Italy and central Europe.  And I have never taken it as a negative to society as a whole or to me personally that these women largely remained at home.  The impact on them is another question.  But we cannot overstate how very hard it must have been to enter into a society whose language they did not speak and whose ways they did not know.  If there was a problem, maybe it wasn’t theirs.  Maybe it was ‘ours’ – for not making the women more welcome.  In my mother’s hometown of Williamson, West Virginia, an immigrant family from the Middle East rejected the church denomination they had been accustomed to and instead came to the Presbyterian Church my mother attended as a girl because the women there, unlike the other church, made his wife welcome.  Whatever happened to hospitality, Mr. Kirkwood?

***This claim is widespread amongst conservative media outlets in the US, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to locate any accurate, unbiased reportage on the claimed phenomena from any source.  One source reported a gang rape by children against children, claiming that authorities had not released the identities of the perpetrators, but ‘we all know they were Muslims’.  This is hardly objective reporting.

****And if there is to be religious shaming, let us not forget the systematic rape of Bosnian Muslim women by Christian Serbs during the Bosnian War of the 1990s.  Wikipedia

The Hunger Games: Allow A Minister Who Can’t Help Herself to Kvetch

Some months ago, as a fan of the television series Grey’s Anatomy, I actually spent about half of a day trying (without success) to locate a way to communicate a programming idea to the producers.

The idea?  Simply to include a hospital chaplain as a (even if seldom) recurring character.

Most, if not all, hospitals of comparable size in the United States, actually have paid chaplains on staff.  The absence of such a character is, at least to me, a jarring absence, particularly when the drama engages matters of a spiritual nature.

Not even having dialogue that references the chaplain who just left is to literally erase such a figure and such a dimension from the real-time plane of existence for the characters.

It is an absence not unique to Grey’s Anatomy.

Having finished The Hunger Games trilogy of books (there are definite advantages to having an extended time off work – catching up on light reading is one of them), I find the same absence, the same lack.

In a tale of the upheaval of an entire society wrenched by violence and war, religion is notable for its absence.  Things spiritual simply aren’t there.  The rituals are the ceremonies of the soldier.  Gatherings are the collective of oppression.  Friendship is the cement, if any there be, of human relationships.

I struggle to name what troubles me.  After all, Susan Collins, the author of The Hunger Games books, the writers and producers of Grey’s Anatomy, as well as the myriad of writers of fiction for stage, screen and the printed page, are free to write whatever narrative strikes their fancy.  And I am free to view or read or not, as I choose.

But the vacuum, the dearth, of things spiritual in our fiction, argues for a problem that shakes me down to my soul: it isn’t that such things aren’t true or valuable; rather, the absence seems to suggest that in our common sphere of imagination, such things are simply irrelevant.

And that does more than make me sad; it makes me frightened – not wrath of God frightened – more that-which-has-no-name frightened – the fear that we are losing something so dear without even knowing it – the ability to imagine that even in the midst of our immediate concerns, something larger than ourselves looms ever present, calling out for our attention, calling out for us to be more than we are, better than we are.

It is the feeling that we who have so much are settling for so much less.


_________________
No doubt, a better theologian than I is already hard at work on the next Gospel According To . . . tome, celebrating the deep spiritual meanings to be found in The Hunger Games trilogy.  To that author, I hope my ignorance is forgiven.  And please know that I did not overlook the benedictory language about odds, but allow me to call to mind Mark Twain’s much more eloquent and True (the capital ‘T’ is intentional) The War Prayer for finding spiritual challenge to the collective wisdom of the day when it comes to war and violence and the ‘odds’ of winning and losing in what has always been a fixed game.