For Every Teenager: It’s About Sex

[Who am I to give you advice?  Nobody special, that's for sure.  But I have been a teenager.  And I survived it.  And when I read folks giving you advice that is so bad it makes me cringe, especially in the name of God, I just have to offer my own voice as a reminder that the hard road you travel has others along the way to offer you some guidance.  I hope it helps.]

This is for every teenager I have known or will ever know and even for those I’ll never meet.  If you (even accidentally) come across a web site with dating advice, please, please, please, let someone with a little age on them that you trust read it first – especially when they bring God into it.

Why do I say that?

Because I just read one.  Please don’t read it (it was so foolish and wrong that while I’ll mention some of the things they said, I will NOT include the site in this post – it’s poison).  Please.  Or if you must, read this first.

*** 

You are more than your body parts.

You are wonderful.

God adores you.

God wants the best for you.

The best may not be what you’ve gotten.

That sucks.

If that’s true for you, somewhere in your life is someone with some age on them who can help.

Choose that person wisely.

They won’t lie.

They won’t tell you it’s easy.

They won’t feed you a line of crap.

They won’t tell you it’s your fault or make you feel like it is.

If they do, run from them as fast as you can.

Because those are lies and they are liars.

So . . . what do I have to say to the folks who pretend to be giving you good advice about dating?

***

Dear Hayley & Justin:

Words matter.

Given what you both do for a living, I know you get that.

They matter.

Always.

And especially with the young.

They may not know better.

But you do.

Here’s another simple rule: you can’t get a right result the wrong way.

Dr. King put it something like this: ends and means must cohere.

What’s my point?

Simply this: you can’t give sound advice to the young about their sexuality and its expression with crap advice about what it means to be male or female.

Crap advice about what it means to be male or female leads to crap decisions about interactions between male and female.

Get it?

So on to the specifics:

1. Your 1st rule for girls is to accept being a girl.  Okay so far.  But then you go on to define being a girl as being ‘soft’ and ‘gentle’.  According to whom?  Really – I’d like to know.  According to whom are girls, by definition, soft and gentle?  What about the girls who just aren’t?  Aren’t we girls too?  And since you’ve brought God into the conversation, just where in the Bible are girls or women defined as soft and gentle?  In actual fact, St. Paul calls all believers to a way that is soft and gentle.  He even uses the word gentle: Galatians 5.23 (fruits of the spirit); Galatians 6.1; Ephesians 4.2; Philippians 4.5; 1 Timothy 6.11 (speaking to a man); 2 Timothy 2.25 (how to deal with an opponent); 2 Corinthians 10.1 (describing himself and Christ as gentle); and 1 Corinthians 4.21.  And that’s just Paul.

2. Dateable girls aren’t downers.  It’s a fair point to speak about our inner beauty.  And to encourage inner peace.  But “dateable girls aren’t downers”?  Did you really just say that?  How about happiness for its or our own sake?  How about – just this once – not making our happiness, even as a goal, something to be striven for in order to attract a man?  How about it – just this once – being for our own sake?  How about pointing out that dating, sometimes fun, sometimes not, is not the be-all and end-all of our existence?  How about stressing our fundamental identity as child of God for its own sake?  Or even a little footnote about what to do if you find that you are unhappy all the time, instead of implying that unhappiness is somehow the ‘fault’ of the one experiencing it?

3. Believe in your beauty – doesn’t sound so bad – if you leave it there.  But you don’t.  “Dateable girls learn how to overcome the sins of the past that have been perpetrated on them.”  Are you kidding me?  Did you just advise a girl who may have been raped or sexually abused to get over it?  Did you really just tell her that it ain’t pretty to be affected by what’s happened to her?  Did you really make her experience trite by relating it to dating advice?  Really?  And it doesn’t end there, does it?  Because in comparing this to the advice for the guys, it’s clear that guys are actors and girls are the acted upon.  Neither is true.  We are all one or the other at different times.  The reason stereotypes are bad is because they’re not universal truths (which is what they claim to be); thus, for those for whom your stereotypes do not ring true, especially for teenagers, the result is often self-blame.  So the girl or guy who has been wounded and who can’t just get over it is left feeling as if it is their fault.  And it isn’t.  And then you tell the guys to believe in themselves while telling the girls to believe in their beauty.  You can say all you want that it’s about inner beauty, but we all know better, don’t we?  You’ve just told girls to believe in their looks or appearance, while telling guys to believe in their abilities.  Same old shit, different day.  Shame on you!

***

Ladies and gentlemen of the teenage variety, please, please, please, know some things:

1. Physical attraction is just that.  It has its place, but it is not defining of the whole you.

2. Nothing lasts forever – not this feeling, not this moment in time, not this stage in life, nothing.

3. It will get better.  Life is pretty hard for everyone, but these feelings of worthelessness, of not fitting into your own body, of feeling different from everybody else – these feelings largely pass away and it does get better.  Some days you know that.  But some days you just have to hang on and trust that we old fogies really have walked in your shoes and know a few things – like, it will get better.

4. God adores you.  You.  Just as you are you.  Even when you mess up.  Even when no one else does.  Even when you don’t.  God does.  Always and all the time.  Really.

5. We don’t tell you to wait because it’s bad not to.  We tell you to wait because it’s better – in every way (and yes, I mean that too) better – to wait.  It’s not about punishment.  It’s about gift.  Your body is an amazing gift.  Treat it like it is your very best friend.

6. Yes, we – your parents, teachers, adult friends, are all about being up in your business.  You don’t have to like it.  But it is our job.  If we’re not up in your business, we’re not doing our job.  That simple.  Be mad at us.  That’s okay.  But we’re going to keep doing our job because it is our job.  Some day it’ll be your job.  In the meantime, try to remember that it is our job because we know some things – really.  You’re smart.  You know that.  Even if you don’t like it, you know it.

7. If someone hurts you sexually, it is NOT – NOT, NOT, NOT – your fault.  And you deserve to be helped.  And there is help to be had.  There are hotlines.  And there are wise adults out there.  If you don’t find a wise one the first time, keep looking.

8. Trust is something earned, not demanded.  When someone demands that you trust them, that’s usually the time to run.  Trustworthy people do not have to even say the word trust, let alone demand that you give it.  If someone does something untrustworthy, they are not to be trusted.

9. Sex is not love.  Sex is sex.  Sex can become a part of the expression of love, but it is not love.  Love is caring for another enough to not have sex, not to insist on it.  When someone insists on having sex, they are thinking about themselves and not about you.  That is not love.

10. “I don’t want to” may not be a good enough reason not to clean your room, but it is ALWAYS a good enough reason not to have sex.  Married folk (in a good marriage anyway) know this – both partners are ALWAYS allowed to say no.  When it comes to sex, you do not EVER have to explain yourself.  No is no.  End of conversation.

11. You are beautiful simply because God made you and God does not make junk.  Sex does not prove you are beautiful.  Sex just proves you’re human.  But you already knew that, right?  So why bother proving it?

The Logic of a Woman Leading the Church

A man in my church championed me (without my knowledge) the other day.

He was at a Bible study (I don’t know where: he didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask).  The person leading the study (on 1 Corinthians) read the relevant passage and declared (or so my friend heard – I think his hearing is pretty good) that women cannot be preachers.

My buddy was so offended that he stood up to say how wrong that was.  He didn’t name me, but said that his pastor is a woman and that shouldn’t a pastor be one who is called and who can and does teach the word of God?

I so appreciate his defense and his calling to tell me, but here’s the thing that’s stayed with me the most – the teacher’s reply: well, that’s my opinion.

Hmmmm.

Really?

The gentleman in question had just been teaching and proclaiming from the word of God, couching his statements in biblical authority – until – until someone disagreed.

Then he retreated into what I fear is the disease of discourse in these United States: the belief that my opinion is the last and best bastion of defense to anything and everything we think and say.  We have, I fear, confused the 1st Amendment’s protection against governmental interference in our expression of our views with an imprimatur that those views have some inherent worth merely because they are ours.

It makes us stupid, as in not sensible or logical.  Merriam-Webster

***

So it is with interest that I read today’s blog post from Dr. Marc Cortez on Complementarianism versus Gender Essentialism, essentially arguing that one can dispose of ‘Gender Essentialism’ (the argument that there are fundamental or essential differences between the genders) as the basis for God’s [claimed] requirement that certain role(s) in the church be peopled only by men (Complementarianism).

Dr. Cortez’s point is that Complementarianism (that idea that only men can be elders and hence preachers) neither rises nor falls logically on Gender Essentialism; that is to say, there are many possibilities as to why God may have required only men to serve in such ways that might have nothing at all to do with gender differences.

I beg to differ with Dr. Cortez's logic.  Here’s why: as articulated and lived (and we live our scripture much more than we read it), Complementarianism inherently holds that there is a gender difference in the very rule itself.

To be more clear, the very fact that there’s a (claimed) rule that men can lead the church and women cannot, is, in and of itself, a gender difference that is innate to the genders.  God’s motive in announcing the difference, as complementarianists claim, is beside the point: the rule establishes the difference and it is understood to be innate simply because gender itself is innate.

Putting it into another context may be helpful: an African American friend and fellow seminary student at the time pointed out something to me that had never occurred (but should have): a church cannot claim diversity simply by having folks of color in the pews.  If there is no diversity in the leadership of the church, there is no diversity; there’s simply some folk of color who go to that white church.

If logic is to be the sole repose for our conversation (I’m not saying it should be; that’s simply how Dr. Cortez has framed his post on this particular point), we have to begin not with the process of logic (the drawing of inferences and conclusions from a set of statements or propositions), but with the statements or propositions themselves.

It’s always most telling when it comes to logic what statements or propositions we choose as our entry point in the discussion.  Dr. Cortez references Genesis, but a particular passage in Genesis, as a straw man (that which one puts up to tear down), but even in the straw man exercise, the choice is telling: that Adam was made first.

This overlooks the very clear texts, which give two narratives.  In one, Adam is said to have been created ‘first’.  In the other, it is said man and woman were created in the image of God – an indication of simultaneous creation.

For his argument to continue, Dr. Cortez asserts that folks of my point of view (whom he calls egalitarians) must concede that there is exegetical warrant for the proposition that women may not serve in the leadership of the church.

No, Dr. Cortez, we do not.

As you yourself point out, that something has been historically so makes it neither logical nor biblically warranted.

But perhaps I digress.

Here’s my main problem with the logic of the exercise, and that is what this is – an exercise – in seeking to separate the view that women are ‘different’ than (which at least implicitly Dr. Cortez recognizes to mean ‘less than’) men from the position that women may not serve in the leadership of the church, Dr. Cortez overlooks the fact that even in logic, thoughts, feelings and actions are not linear.  They are, as best I can describe just now, interdependent.  Thus the proposition that women may not lead in the church inevitably leads (witness that it has led) at least some to the conclusion that women are less than, not only in church, but in every sphere of life.  Complementarianism may not need Gender Essentialism to survive, but we must not overlook the fact that complementarianism has led to, if not caused, the very idea of gender essentialism in the first place.

Human dynamics seldom, if ever, flow all in one direction.  Whether logical or not, it is observable phenomena and thus, whether it has to be true or not, it is true (which is where we come to the limits of logic).

In terms of statements or propositions, the most telling are usually the unspoken ones – the givens.  In even addressing this article, for example, are unspoken assumptions that those being communicated to can (a) read and (b) read English.  That’s a pretty simple one.  More complex are the set of worldviews brought to the table that are so ingrained in the individual bringing them that not only are they not named, but often cannot be named, because so ingrained are they that they're taken to be as self evident as air.

Among these (unspoken assumptions) in this case are (1) the assumption that the reader shares a common belief with the author (implied) that Complementarianism is a valid point of view in enacting the realities of excluding women from serving in the leadership of the church (this is not the same as deciding ‘what the Bible says’ – this is about what we, as living, breathing, acting human beings actually do with what we understand the Bible to say); (2) that it is appropriate for a member of one group (men) to decide what is or is not appropriate for members of another group (women) to do or not do; (3) that the Bible is a singularity – that it is one book rather than many and has one coherent voice, at least on this subject; (4) that Complementarianism is worth ‘fighting’ for or adhering to; and (5) that scripture may be approached without a particular hermeneutic, so that universal understanding is possible and even desirable.

(1) doctrine is not what we say we believe so much as what we enact in our day-to-day lives.  Thus have I heard a preacher proclaim with utter good faith that women should not work outside the home while I, his lawyer at the time and a woman – married with children and working outside the home – sat in the congregation one Mother’s Day.  It would be easy to dismiss him as a hypocrite.  But it’s more complex than that: what he said he believed was X while what he lived as his belief was Y and they are opposites.  The problem isn’t with what we do so much as with what we think we should do.  For the simple fact is that when it came to choosing a lawyer, this man decided based on who would do a good job for him that was someone he could trust.  That that person was someone who should not be doing this, according to his worldview, mattered not at all.  Nor should it have.  Because I work outside the home, I’m probably not a good candidate to be married to this man, but that has nothing to do with whether I was a good lawyer for his needs at the time.  All of this is to say that when we begin a discussion founded on ‘logic’ when it comes to things of faith and living out that faith, what is of more import is not what we say we believe but what we do.  Good concrete example: were I a complementarianist, I would hold that women cannot lead in the church.  I would base that on biblical passages that say just that while also saying such things as (I paraphrase) women should remain silent in church and if women have questions, they should wait until they get home and ask their husbands.  While adopting the no-leadership rule, in every church with which I am familiar in the United States, I cannot name one that prohibits women from singing in worship and trust me when I tell you, singing is not a silent activity.  And while there might be some pastors that tell the women of the congregation to ask their husbands their questions when they get home, there aren’t many (they wouldn’t last long in our time, would they)?  Dr. Cortez may believe he does a service to the ‘cause’ of complementarianism, but I’m wondering why it’s a cause worth serving.  And logic is not the foundation upon which to rest: (1) we follow a scandal to logic – just ask St. Paul; and (2) there is no logic where there’s no exploration of underlying assumptions.

(2) It is not flip to wonder about men telling women what to do and calling it biblical.  When regulations about Wall Street are considered by the government, Wall Street representatives are actually included in the conversation, for the simple reason that they’re the ones to be most directly affected (I picked an unpopular example deliberately).  Whenever I speak about what a people group not my own should be doing or not doing, a great deal of humility is called for (in logical parlance, we’d call that, drawing upon the legal paradigm, a statement of self-interest, hearsay, meaning inherently unreliable, not trustworthy to be considered as evidence of anything).  The reasons should be obvious: (1) whenever I’m telling you that I get to do something and you don’t, the bias in my favor immediately renders my judgment on the matter suspect (and it should); (2) there are thousands of preaching examples of people learning an entirely new way to see, read and understand a biblical passage merely by listening to someone not of their own people group.  Slavery is an easy example.  Poverty another (particularly apropos today as St. Francis’ words on capitalism are responded to with violent verbiage even by practicing Catholics in the United States who are people of wealth and means).  A silly, perhaps, example from my own life experience: I always heard Jesus’ admonition about leaving certain folk behind like shaking the dust from our shoes as just that – leave them behind and get on with the real work, the good work, with people who will listen.  Maybe that is what he meant, but I no longer know for sure, for the simple reason that I’ve now spent time in the Middle East, walking the kinds of terrain Jesus probably walked and I learned quickly that it is impossible to shake the dust off your shoes, which is why folk in the Middle East never wear their shoes in the house – the stuff just will not come off.  So now I’m thinking that maybe Jesus meant something entirely different than what I had been taught – maybe he meant that whether we leave them or not, we will always carry these folk and our concerns for them with us wherever we go.  The point simply is this: I must recognize the fact that I am not a man and that makes a difference to my understanding whenever I interpret anything the Bible has to say about men.  As a woman, I would ask the same of men.  It’s only logical to acknowledge the limits of our abilities and understandings and presumptions.

(3) the Bible is not a singularity.  It’s a library composed of over 60 books written over thousands of years.  It has different voices speaking to different people in differing circumstances at different times.  Women should not lead, yet Deborah was a judge (a leader by definition).  Hagar is the first person to name God.  Huldah was a prophetess.  So too Miriam and Anna and Mary and unnamed women referred to by Paul.  Junia was an apostle.  Lydia was the leader of the house church in her home.  Priscilla was a leader of a church.  Esther was the savior of her people.  Mary Magdalene was the first proclaimer of the risen Lord.  There are more.  Some were in the church.  Some were in the temple.  Some were leading from home and some from the battle field.  Sometimes biblical witnesses feared foreign women and ordered the men to divorce them or proclaimed that God killed those married to them.  Other times the biblical witness honors foreign wives, including them in the genealogy of Jesus himself.  Some rules in the Bible are for all time and others are merely for a particular time.  The inherent danger of doctrine is that it makes an idol of one understanding of a myriad of witnesses.  Failure to at least acknowledge the provisional nature of any doctrine, including complementarianism, is to abandon logic before even beginning.

(4) it may seem obvious, but it’s important to acknowledge from the outset that Dr. Cortez’s piece presupposes that complementarianism is a view or doctrine worth defending and worthy to stand on its own.  Stating ones givens is the first step in any exercise of logic.  I have to recognize that I am probably not the intended audience for the piece.  It is, however, cold comfort to me to recognize that Dr. Cortez is probably trying to persuade its adherents that they don’t have to argue the difference (read inferiority) of women in order to adhere to their belief that only men may lead.  In spite of what may be coming from a good place, I think they’re more right than Dr. Cortez: to say that women may not lead in the church is to say that we are inferior.

(5) Our hermeneutics matter.  I have a sufficiently logical mind to strive for universality as much as Dr. Cortez.  But I have lived long enough to, most days, surrender my logical mind’s efforts at cohesion and recognize that universality of understanding ain’t always all it’s cracked up to be.  Line dancing, the waltz, or mosh pits – it’s all dancing.  So I’ll grant you the freedom to conclude that my kind may not serve in your churches.  I won’t try to convert you.  For good or for ill, I’ll just exist and let that be my witness.

Why this matters: a personal account: I don’t talk much about what it’s like to be a woman who has spent her entire adult life serving in traditionally men’s work, as a lawyer then a preacher.  But maybe now’s a time to share just a little bit to give you an idea of the cost of the ideals and doctrines about what women can and cannot do.

As a pastor, I have been told that I was not some folks' choice because I am a woman.  That one didn’t hurt too much because I’d already heard it a lot when a lawyer.  But it is a reminder that in the eyes of at least some, I’ve got something to prove that my brethren do not.

On one side of my family, although a pastor, I am first and foremost a woman, and so may not say grace at family gatherings.  5-year-old boys may say grace, but I cannot.  And in an ironic twist, sometimes those closest to me get mad at me because I will not make an issue of it with my family.

In one multi-church gathering, I alone among my colleagues was not allowed to offer prayer or read scripture, let alone proclaim the word.  I thought I was strong enough to simply be present and offer my own silent witness.  I was wrong.  It was one of the most wounding experiences of my life, all the worse for the lack of recognition of the wounding by people I know to be kind and loving and godly.

***

Doctrine matters not because it matters whether we get ‘it’ right, but because what we believe to be true affects how we behave towards others, towards ourselves, towards God.

Our presuppositions, our givens, matter, because they, more than anything else, including the Bible, shape our doctrine.

The Word we’ll be judged by will be the Word we proclaimed with our lives.

May it be always and ever be a worthy Word.

No, Mark Driscoll, God is Not a Pacifist – That’s Our Job

In his article (sermon) titled Is God a Pacifist?, Mark Driscoll rhetorically asks whether God should be considered a deity of peace.  My own, equally rhetorical, response:  of course God is not a pacifist - God is peace itself.  We, as the followers of, the practitioners, if you will of God and God's ways, are the pacifists – or not.

Driscoll bases his conclusion that God is not a pacifist (implying that nor should we be) on the commandment regarding killing or murder in what he calls the Old Testament and the book of Revelation.  Driscoll says, “In effect, the sixth commandment should be understood to prohibit murder, manslaughter, violent and unauthorized killing, and killing for personal vengeance”, going on to assert that all other forms of killing are apparently all right with God.

The question begs to be asked – unauthorized (as in ‘unauthorized killing) by whom?  Since this is the 10 Commandments we’re speaking of, isn’t it at least inferred that the ‘authority’ for killing (of any kind) is God?

And since the 10 Commandments were given at the time when God spoke rather more directly to God’s people than is most often the case today, might we not surmise that killing, always the exception rather than the rule, is to happen when and if and only if God so ordains?

Driscoll references wars as justified or permissible in God’s eyes using the Augustinian language of ‘just war’ as if it were biblical.  It is not.  Look high and low and you will not find the phrase there.  I’m not a literalist, but Mr. Driscoll seem to be.

So if just war is biblical, where do we find the warrant for that?  None of the wars of invasion for the taking of the Promised Land were based upon just war theory.  They were based on direct divine command.  So, to be quite literal about it, when and if God directs us with a clear voice from the sky, with a pillar of fire and a cloud of smoke to lead us, then might we go into battle assured of the justness of our cause from the divine perspective – or so the stories of our faith, if taken literally, would tell us.

But that really isn’t the point, is it?  It’s not Driscoll’s point to ‘prove’ that violence is biblically motivated or sanctioned.  Rather, his point seems to be to prove that Jesus is an Bruce-Willis-Die-Hard kind of guy, as evidenced by his claim in all caps:   “JESUS IS NOT A PANSY OR A PACIFIST”

Wow.  Really?  Really?  To be a pacifist is, in Driscoll’s eyes, to be a ‘pansy’?  Really?  And what does he mean by that, exactly?  That Jesus wasn’t a purple flower?  That Jesus wasn’t gay?  Wasn’t a ‘girlie boy’?  Was a real man’s man, whatever that may mean for him?  Or just that pacifists are cowardly, cry-baby scaredy cats?  Yeah – that one, I’m betting.

News flash, Mr. Driscoll: if you think pacifism is the same as being a pansy, however you may interpret that particular epithet, I suggest you give it a try.  Try standing before someone who means you harm and refuse to return hurt for hurt, jab for jab.  Try stepping into a violent situation in order to change or turn the course of events.  Go and live where the violence is and try to model a different way.  Think about whether you’re as willing to take a bullet as to give one.  Then you might have something to tell me about pacifists and pansies.

You actually gave me hope – for just a second there – when you referenced God’s coming kingdom:  “One of the defining attributes of God’s coming kingdom is shalom—perfect peace untainted by sin, violence, or bloodshed of any sort.”

But then you went on, “Such a kingdom is only possible if an all-powerful, benevolent Authority vanquishes his enemies. In other words, the Prince of Peace is not a pacifist.”

Really?  Why?  Because you say so?

“Such a kingdom is only possible if an all-powerful, benevolent Authority vanquishes his enemies.”  Well, let’s take that on at face value (I don’t agree, but let’s just take you at your word, for now).  The problem is that your next statement: “In other words, the Prince of Peace is not a pacifist” does not flow from the preceding statement.  It doesn’t flow logically, spiritually, biblically.  It doesn’t flow simply because you assert that it does.

Let’s simply review Jesus – I presume we would agree that Jesus actually is “the Authority” since he is the “Prince of Peace” to whom you refer.

What did Jesus do when it came to enemy vanquishing?  He did nothing.  Not in the terms you mean, anyhow.  For what he ‘did’ is actually what was done to him: he died.  Check the Greek in your gospels: the cross event was not something Jesus did, it was something that was done to Jesus [Then they led him away to crucify him.  Matthew 27.31.  And they crucified him . . . Mark 15.24. . . . they crucified him.  Luke 23.33.  There they crucified him . . . John 19.18].

Even the resurrection is something done to rather than by Jesus – the direct references to resurrection biblically are in the passive voice (as in Jesus was raised, rather than that Jesus raised [himself] – see, e.g., Acts 4.10, 5.30, 10.40, Matthew 20.19, 17.23).

Jesus is murdered (killed, by your reckoning – after all, he has been found guilty by the appropriate authority of his day) by humanity and resurrected by divinity.  He shares in both, yet when it comes to the dividing moment in history as understood by Christians, he is acted upon rather than acting.

It’s the jujitsu moment of Christianity and I can’t believe you missed it: Jesus took what was done to him (both humanly and divinely) and turned it into a gift he bestowed upon the world.  Jesus “vanquished his enemies” by turning them from enemies to beloved friends.  You read Jesus and hear a vanquishing general.  I read Jesus and experience a converting friend, a saver, a savior.

Peace does not come by force.  It’s a simple concept, really.  Chickens give birth to chickens, not to cows.  So peace gives birth to peace and war to war.

Peace comes by conversion, change.  After all, that’s the inherent meaning of ‘repent’ – the turning back to what we once knew (even if only from before the womb) and have forgotten – the peaceable kingdom is not pie in the sky – the peaceable kingdom is now because Jesus is now.

I’m very clear that God does not wish me to kill anyone.  I don’t know what God has in store for you.  Maybe my understanding is a universal truth; maybe it’s just my own calling.

But we must not put our human misbehavior on the back of God.  It just won’t do.  Recall that God has also said that God’s ways are not ours.  I take from that that we are not to presume to be gods.

As, perhaps, a side note, an anecdote about your exegesis of the words ‘kill’ and ‘murder’:  Dr. Bruce Metzger (considered by some to be one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the 20th century), who chaired the work that resulted in the NRSV, professor emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary (now deceased) was once sitting at table in the dining hall and I was privileged to join the group listening to him.  He mentioned the murder/kill commandment and this is what I remember him saying: there were two working groups – one for the Old Testament and one for the New.  The Old Testament scholars translated the phrase as “do not murder” and the New Testament scholars translated it (for as you note, the command is quoted and referenced in the New) as “do not kill” and Dr. Metzger as the chair had to settle on a choice.  Dr. Metzger chose “murder”.* After lunch, I was sharing the story with a friend while standing on the porch outside the dining hall, when a rabbi (whose name I cannot recall), scheduled to speak to a class later, joined us, having heard what we were talking about.  The rabbi agreed with Dr. Metzger, believing the best translation to be “murder” and gave us a short treatise on why this should be so.

In the space of an hour on a sunny day in Princeton, New Jersey, I was privileged to hear the thinking of some of the greatest minds of the time dive into this translation question.  It didn’t make the issue clear or settled for me; what it made me was humble.  And that’s what I remember most about what Dr. Metzger had to say: he himself was not absolutist.  He allowed for the reality that reasonable and intelligent minds could and did differ.  He was simply the one at the time who had to choose and choose he did, based on his own best understandings at the time, while acknowledging that it was a close call and not at all clear cut.

In that same spirit, I allow that you may be right: the best translation for the commandment in question may be “murder” rather than “kill”.  There are sound reasons for that understanding.

But I am left wondering whether you personally know any Christian pacifists or have read any seminal Christian works on pacifism by pacifists.  Because here’s the thing: Walter Wink doesn’t base his theology on the 10 Commandments.  Nor does Dr. King.  Nor do any other scholars with whom I am familiar.  The commandment, however it is translated, is not the bedrock for my own tending-to-pacifism theological understandings.  (I would self-describe as a pacifist in progress – it’s what I believe, but my practice, my actual living out my faith in this regard has a long way to go).

I note with regret that in your exegesis, which takes you from Exodus straight to Revelation, that you do not stop for at least a pause in the gospels.  Matthew’s recounting of the Sermon on the Mount, at the least, warrants a glance.

But I digress.

If you want to engage in a meaningful discussion about the call (or its lack) to pacifism, you have to engage pacifists and you have to engage us not based on the 10 Commandments, or not them alone.  You have to engage us with the Jesus event – his life, his death, his resurrection.  You have to engage us with the practices of the early church.  You have to engage us with the entirety of scripture in the realities we are living today.  Or not.

The same is true for me in engaging you.  I have said what is not true, from my point of view.  And here, in a nut shell, is what I understand to be true: Jesus Incarnate is God embodied, fully divine and fully human. . . fully human.  Thus does Jesus Incarnate show me what a full human being is to be like and act like.  Thus violence in my understanding is not merely being human; it is actually being something other than human, for the Prince of Peace engages in physical violence only once, in the money changer episode, which is told with wildly varying levels of violence in the gospel accounts.  And that violence involved no killing, if we’re going to be quite literal about it.

More importantly, Jesus encounters his enemies with truth, not strategies . . . with creativity, not the same old stuff . . . and thus does he take a self-described murderer like Paul and make a new man, really human for the first time, who surrenders everything of himself to follow The One in The Way.

Thus does Jesus take a betrayer like Judas and hold him close . . . thus does he take a thug like Peter and change him into the father of churches . . .

We may give up on him, but he never gives up on us.  Doubt it?  Recall the story of the (alleged) adulteress in John 8.1ff?  In bringing her to Jesus, the Pharisees actually name her outcome: if guilty, she is to be stoned (capital punishment).  What does Jesus do?  You know what he does:  he ‘buys’ her life with his wisdom.  But what was his motivation?  The story does not explicitly say.  Could it have been mercy?  Or was this just a vehicle for Jesus to show his smarty-pantedness to those tricky Pharisees?

And when you speak of the divine wrath promised in Revelation, did it never occur to ask what occasioned the predicted wrath?  Did it never occur to ponder whether it is our own failure to act our Jesus’ own peace that invites the divine winnowing?

Did it never occur that when it comes to separating sheep and goats, pulp and pith (pick your pairing), that the process won’t be separating one person from another, but rather one aspect from within each person from the other aspect?  In other words, did it never occur to think that the Revelation promise of destruction of all that is evil is the same process as the refiner’s fire (removing the dross and leaving the gold) as described in Malachi 3?

Or perhaps most important of all, how do you claim the divine prerogative of wrath (even if it be as you describe) as the prerogative of humanity?

On the particulars: implicit in the command’s permissive killing (as you view it) via capital punishment are the (unnamed by you) aspects of: (1) justice; and (2) mercy – hence the numerous biblical references, Old and New, to God’s justice (Amos’ promise of justice rolling down like a flood is but one example).  When it comes to capital punishment, it must be presupposed that it be done justly.  The most basic component of justice when it comes to capital (or any) punishment is that we got the right guy.  And too often, as the Innocence Project has demonstrated, we have in fact not gotten the right guy, nor have we administered the punishment justly by any measure – for surely it cannot be just as God would have us understand the word to have one standard for one group of folks and another for another, and yet we do – thus it is that a disproportionate number of people of color end up sentenced to death for offenses that get life sentences for the white folk.

It just won’t do to say that the Bible requires/authorizes/mandates capital punishment as a warrant to disregard a call for peaceful alternatives because ‘the commandment says so’.

And then there’s mercy – God also established cities of refuge for those actually guilty of capital offenses.  Where are our modern equivalents?  We don’t have any.  The issue with the cities doesn’t seem to be guilt or innocence – the cities are safe havens for the guilty.  The issue actually seems to be mercy – the allowance for a second chance to get it right.

You see, mercy in the eyes of the pacifist reading of scripture is not the opposite or negation of justice; rather, mercy is the fulfillment of justice.

You see pacifists and think of cowardice and weakness and refuse to have your Jesus associated with such.  But here’s the thing: Paul writes about Jesus as the one who counted his reputation as nothing, even to the point of a death on the cross.  Paul goes on to compare himself to that Jesus – the one who cares not what the likes of you and me think of him – and calls everything but his faithful following shit.

What I would hope and pray you might come to know about we pacifists is that it is neither cowardly nor weak to take the beating and not return it in kind.  But even more importantly, I would have you know that, if scripture is to be believed, Jesus cares not one whit whether you or I or anyone else think he’s a pansy . . . or not.

Finally, I agree with you: God is not a pacifist.  God does not practice peace.  God is peace.



_________
*In the NRSV, “murder” is used with a footnote that reads, “or kill”, reflecting the division among scholars reflected in Dr. Metzger’s story.

What Other People Say About Me Is None of My Business

Someone once dear to me returned from one of his first meetings at Alcoholics Anonymous and reported that a woman there had made the statement, what other people say about me is none of my business. 

We laughed together at her ignorance, so sure of our superior wisdom.  Boy, were we stupid.  Turns out she was right, that wise AA old timer.

It can sound silly, can’t it?  If it’s not my business, whose on earth would it be?  Isn’t anything that’s about me by its very nature my business?  Sure.  But here’s the thing: what other people say about me isn’t about me at all.  It’s about them.  What they think.  How they see.  What they understand – or don’t.

What I speak of others betrays my mind, my heart, my deeds, not theirs.

It’s so freeing to be rid of the desire for reputation.  It’s freeing not to have to worry about the whispers of others.  It’s freeing not to have to respond to the accusations or assessments of others.  It’s freeing to allow others, as friend and pastor Mark Davis recently observed, to think anything they like about me . . . to judge however fairly or unfairly they will . . . to simply allow others to think that I am an idiot if they so choose and be none the worse for it.

What others think and say about me is none of my business.

Now that’s worthy of a cross-stitch.

I think I’ll add it, coming to a total of two my imperatives for this stage of my life:

1. I might be wrong.
2. What others say about me is none of my business.

***

“Who steals my purse, steals trash . . .  but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed.”  –William Shakespeare [Iago in Othello].  The irony is that Iago means to do exactly that – steal the good reputation of Cassio in the eyes of Othello.

With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.  –Oscar Wilde

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:  Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:  But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men . . .”   –Philippians 2.5-7 (KJV).

10 Marks of Friendship

I listen to the radio this morning and hear the tail-end of something, so I may have missed the main thing.  But this is what I heard: you’re known by the friends you keep.  The speaker went on to talk about our sin and seemed to be saying to watch out for who we hang out with.

Fine advice, perhaps, for our teenagers, who may not yet have developed their resistance muscles sufficiently to stave off temptation to all kinds of stuff we’d rather they didn’t.

Maybe.

But I am more minded of Jesus and his collection of friends, who weren’t all that.  In fact, they were gluttons and drunkards (Matthew 11.19) . . . his betrayers (Matthew 26.50) . . . tax collectors (Luke 7.34) . . . those who could do nothing for him in return (Luke 14.12) . . . the dishonest (Luke 16.9) . . . those whose station in life gave them no right to claim him as friend (John 15.15) . . . the sinners (Luke 19.7) . . . those Jesus claimed as friends were unsuitable in every way.  Even being seen with them ruined his reputation.

In friendship, as with all human relationships, there is an unspoken assumption of mutuality – that we can and do do for each other.  There’s nothing wrong with that, so far as it goes.  But the reality of lived relationships is that there are times when one must carry the other, be the strength for the other, show the other the way.  Sometimes it’s my turn.  Sometimes it’s yours.  But sometimes, it’s always your turn.  Or mine.  There is no graph or chart by which to measure such things, for the fact is, it’s not only some days that my need is the greater; sometimes it’s a whole lifetime when my need is the greater.  And sometimes, as Henri Nouwen learned when he lived in the L’Arche Community, the one who thinks he’s meeting the needs is actually having his own needs met.  Things are not always as they seem.

I think Jesus knew that.

I think Jesus picked his friends based on their need of him more than out of his need for them, but in the picking, I suspect Jesus received as well as gave, learned as well as taught.

But back to the original point: there are marks of friendship.  Here are my top 10:

1. You say yes just because I asked.  Simple as that.

2. You meet me where I’m at, and don’t wait for me to get to where you think I should be.

3. You like my hair, my tattoos, my clothes, my house, because I do.

4. Yes, you tell me the hard things, but mostly you don’t – because you know that I already know.

5. You never have to say that anything is for my own good.  We both already know my good is all you desire for me.  It never need be said.  You’re my friend, so you never preach.

6. You rejoice when I rejoice.  My happiness makes you happy.

7. You have no agenda to change me.  You love me as I am.  And you are wise enough to know that for the stuff that needs changing, change will come because we spend time together, not because you tell me to change it.

8. You know I will let you down.  But you already forgave me for that when you decided to be my friend.

9. You don’t keep score.  You know that some days, maybe even most days, you’ll be a better friend to me than I am to you.

10. You know that while I may be what I do, I am not all that I do.

It all comes down to acceptance, doesn’t it?  Acceptance doesn’t mean that you jump into the deep end of the pool with me.  It doesn’t mean that you make my problems yours.  It doesn’t mean that you let me walk all over you.

But acceptance does mean that you take me as I am.  It does mean that you don’t worry to much about how good or deserving I am, because you’re wise enough to realize that I am a work in progress.  It does mean that you see my worth regardless of the judgment of the world.

It is a great gift – this gift of friendship that has been given me, for I have been blessed with many people along my life’s journey who have greeted me thusly.  I hope that I have been a good friend in return, saying yes to all your crazy schemes and dreams as you have to mine . . . been there for you as you have been there for me . . . or not . . .

So to all I call friend, thank you for carrying me when I needed it.  Thank you for your time.  For your caring.  For your forgiving in advance.  For knowing me just as I am and finding in that something to call good and worthy.  For being my friend.

I hope I live up to the honor.

Jesus Wept & Sarah Laughed

Jesus beheld the human condition and his response was to cry.

Sarah beheld the promises of God and her response was to laugh.

Jesus believed, too much, perhaps, in what he saw.

Sarah disbelieved in even the possibility of what she heard.

Jesus beheld death.

Sarah was promised life.

Maybe they were both right:

it is right to cry in the face of death

and to laugh in the face of life.