 I like calling North Carolina home. (I know, it sounds like I stole a line from James Taylor or the Allman Brothers, but I actually think it's from a old PSA for traveling to N.C. ... sung by none other than North Carolina's own: Andy Griffith). But seriously, I like calling North Carolina home.
I mean, what's not to like? We have majestic mountains for snow skiing. Beautiful, uncrowded beaches that are perfect for sunbathing or bodysurfing. Over 120 colleges and universities. We are “first in flight” with the Wright Brothers and we are the site of the Woolworth Sit-in (which is now the home of the International Civil Rights Museum). We also have the preacher who told his congregation to knock the gay out of their “limp-wristed sons” and the guy who became a YouTube sensation by blowing holes in his teenaged daughter's laptop for complaining like a... well, teenager. And, we are voting in just a few days to make same-sex marriage, which is already not legally recognized in the state, a constitutionally prohibited thing. Ah, soak in the goodness and machismo of the Tarheel State. Come in and stay awhile. Ya'll come back now, ya' hear?
Oh... and our state bird is the Cardinal (almost forgot).
Yep, the Cardinal is a gorgeous bird, particularly the males who are a brighter red than the females. Considering the beautiful landscapes of our state, what a perfect bird to represent us! And the Cardinal is a terribly aggressive bird. Considering the machismo of some of our residents (even some of our preachers), what a perfect bird to represent us.
Don't get me wrong, I really do like calling North Carolina home, but I'm not going to pretend like we don't have our problems. As a minister, some of the problems are terribly concerning to me. Recently, one particular problem keeps floating to the top – machismo.
My concern began growing stronger when this guy started blowing holes in his daughter's laptop as a way to teach her a lesson:
I'm not sure what lesson he was trying to teach her, but the one she was likely to walk away with was: Violence solves problems. Or maybe: Many men prefer to solve problems with violence. The first conclusion is sadly wrong and the second is sadly sometimes true. But that's not what I found most concerning about the whole thing. What bothered me the most was the way the dad was cheered on by so many other parents. Even those of us who tried to point out the aggressive and violent nature of his actions received aggressive and violent responses from people who were defending their right (need/desire?) to be... well, aggressive and violent. Then, along comes Amendment One. An attempt to make it constitutionally illegal for two people who are in love but happen to be of the same sex to get married. Which is a stereotypically hyper-masculine thing for which to advocate all by itself, but the language of the amendment is so vague that it actually makes it harder for a woman, who is being abused by a man she is living with but not married to, to get protection via the state. Fantastic, a constitutional amendment that not only tries to normalize the false Christian notion that the Bible prescribes marriage to only be between one man and one woman, but also makes it easier for one man to abuse one woman (or quite frankly, more if he feels so moved). Seriously, whoever picked the aggressive Cardinal as a state bird was some kind of a soothsayer... or, more probably, male and he simply self-identified. The most resent national display of this hyper-masculinity of the Tarheel soul comes from Pastor Sean Harris who in a sermon which told his congregants to vote for Amendment One (can someone please get the IRS to revoke their tax exempt status?), also told them to knock the gay out of their “limp-wristed” sons. Yes, really. He, of course, now says it was just a joke, has apologized and even sort of retracted his statement, but why don't we let you decided if it was a joke or if it sounds like he didn't really mean it. You can listen to him here (as welll as the laughter of the congregation). Or just read the transcript below: | “So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is 4 years old, and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, 'Man up, son! Get that dress off you, and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do!' you get out the camera, and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female, and then you upload it to YouTube, and everybody laughs about it, and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid, is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed ... Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. OK? 'You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male, and you are going to be a male.'”
| You can almost feel the testosterone oozing through your computer can't you? Well, I'm tired of sitting by and simply shaking my head over all of this or just posting a particularly well worded Facebook status update to express by deep sense of disdain. So, Rev. Zac Bailes of libsandcons.com and I came with a campaign to let people like Pastor Harris know that there are Christians out there who not only disagree with advocating for bullying LGBT folks (particularly kids) but that the bullying frequently has horrible outcomes. We are asking you to send a letter (even if it's only a few lines) to Pastor Harris and along with it, send a page from your Bible or a photocopied page with a verse highlighted. It might be the verse that Zac and I are using, Micah 7:8, or you may chose Micah 6:8 or Mark 12:31 or even Psalm 23. Then across the page write the name of a child who committed suicide due to bullying. I added the age and date of their death to mine. Here's picture of the page I'm sending to him and the page Zac is sending. | |  Rev. Zac Bailes of libsandcons.com | Send your pages and letters to:
Sean Harris
Berean Baptist Church
517 Glensford Drive
Fayetteville, NC 28314
Here's the letter I'm sending:
| Dear Pastor Harris,
Greetings to you in the name of the One who called us to a vocation of serving the Prince of Peace! I hope this letter finds you doing well, even if troubled by your latests proclamation against children who are, (how did you put it?), “limp-wristed” and “effeminate”?
Let me start by saying, I am with you 100% in trying to help our congregations understand what it is that God calls them to in this life. After all, God made it. Who would know better than God about how it best works?
I do need to say, however, that we seem to disagree on what it is that Jesus was trying to teach us about God. Admittedly, with the constraints of pastoring my own congregation, I have never attended one of your services, but I have read the words from your most recent sermon and even parts of your blog. In doing so, I'm left to wonder how is it that you justify not only preaching and exclusive faith, but a violent one?
The things for which you advocate, from Amendment One to knocking the gay out of a kid, are wrapped in the clothing of privilege and exclusivity and, dare I say, even hate and machismo. It is more than just difficult to justify this when paired with the teachings of Jesus which told us to love everyone and to seek out equality for all, it's impossible.
Kids who are bullied for being who they are, you might say who God created them to be (and, yes, having their parents knock the gay out of them is a form of bullying), find themselves very conflicted between knowing who they are and wanting to please others. The lack of love and support, the lack of core Christian values, for which you are being an advocate, eventually pushes some of them to believe that it is better not to live than to live in the constant conflict and bullying for being who God made them to be. To put it as simply and directly as possible: their deaths, their blood, are on your hands and on the hands of others who advocate or practice this kind of bullying.
I've included a page from the NKJV Bible. On it you will find the name of one such child. As a collegial favor, I'm asking you to keep it on the desk where you research, reflect and pray over your sermons. May it be a reminder that God loves us all and asks us all to love one another.
Peace and blessings,
Rev. Mark A. Sandlin | Finally, while I will not ever address it directly from the pulpit. I would like to make my position clear on Amendment One. As I've referenced once already, the idea of many Christians that same-sex attraction and acting out on it are against what the Bible teaches is simply and utterly false. While it is true that our English translations were made to read that way, as I have demonstrated in my blog post “ Clobbering 'Biblical' Gay Bashing,” which draws on the best scholarship available on the topic, it is also true that the authors of the Bible never tried to address homosexuality as we understand it today, nor could they have. Amendment One, not only tries to push this false Christian belief on the rest of society regardless of their own religious beliefs or lack thereof (which seems like a very unloving and unChristian thing to do), but because of it's poorly worded dictates it also further marginalizes folks who are already looked down upon by certain groups of people and it opens the door for those who are abused to find themselves less protected and more at risk than ever before. When I read the teachings of Jesus, a man who reached out to those society marginalized, I find no way to justify supporting Amendment One. Amendment One is nothing more than hate on a page, legalized discrimination. It is divisive, damaging and disingenuous for those who truly seek to follow the teachings of Jesus. There is nothing loving, supportive or nurturing about it. Its end results will only be to limit love, to hurt those who are already being hurt and to further divide the Body of Christ. As a Christian and as a minister, I cannot, I will not, vote in favor of it. I will be voting against Amendment One and I am asking you, in the name of the One who loves us and asks us to love one another, to do the same. I really do like calling North Carolina home. I just want it to be a place everyone would like to call home.
I wish...
I wish for peace. Real peace. If only for a moment.
I wish for that space
to open up
here on Earth,
so that the fullness of that moment may be known -
so that humanity may experience, if only for a moment,
what it means to love –
all.
I wish for us to drop our pretenses
and our need to manipulate others.
I wish for us to find our way past
our games of one upmanship
and to a place where equality reigns-
not because we are
equal in all things,
but because we are
equally loved in all things.
I wish...
I wish for that moment of peace,
experienced around the world,
that in that moment,
in that gifted space,
humanity might see the value
of all life -
that we might see past
race,
gender,
disability,
age,
wealth -
that all our false measurements of value
might,
if only for a moment,
be wiped away
and, in that moment,
we each see clear to the heart
of each other.
I wish...
I wish for a moment of peace
to break out upon the world,
if only for a few breaths,
to strip away our false gods of power
to pull back the curtain
on the falsehoods that divide us
and pits us against each other -
that the judgments and convictions
that trap our souls
would be released
as we exhale in those moments of peace
and be replaced with the makings of peace...
love,
grace,
forgiveness,
compassion.
I wish...
I wish that we would carry that moment
with us -
that we might
lavish in its comfort,
grow in its freedom,
be enriched in its wisdom,
be joyful in its protection
and be at peace.
I wish...
that we might extend that moment
into each of our relationships -
that we might trust each other more,
hurt each other less,
accept each other for who we are
and not what we wish each other to be.
I wish for you.
I wish for me.
peace.
That is my birthday wish.
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 I like the idea of Lent. While it is one of the oldest observations of the Christian Church, it seems particularly helpful for our very busy and very full modern lives.
The idea behind Lent is to take a look at our lives, to do an honest assessment of our journey to/toward/with God and to repent of the things that are distancing us from God – to turn away from those things. Considering how many things we have in our lives today, the distractions, the obstacles, that get between us and our ability to follow the teachings of Jesus, I just can't help but think that Lent may actually be more needed now than it has ever been.
But I also have to say, I dread THAT question. You know the one. It pops up about this time every year. Say it with me, “What did you give up for Lent?” Ugghh.
It has almost become a benchmark of righteousness.
“I gave up alcohol.”
“Oh. Well, I used to give up alcohol, but it was too easy. So, I'm also giving up meat and television.”
At times, it feels like a one-upsmanship of devotion. “I'll see your night-time glass of red wine and raise you red meat and the bliss of zoning out to American Idol.”
I know this game so well because I fell into that Lent trap many years ago. It just feels so right, so normal, so … self-righteously-holy. It got to the point one year that, and I kid you not, I gave up all beverages other than water, all meat, TV (except for the NCAA tournament – a boy's got his limits), sweets (except for my Birthday Cake – c'mon, it's my birthday!), late night snacks (even ones of the non-sweet persuasion), and I added daily exercise and daily devotions, increased my giving to charities and told at least one person a day how good they were at what they do.
Why so much? Well, I'd been giving up and adding things to my life during Lent for quite awhile. It was my understanding that a big part of doing it was to identify with the sacrifice that Jesus made for us (you know, atonement theology stuff). Each year the “giving up stuff” was easier and easier, and just felt like it wasn't much of a sacrifice. So, I went from easy things, to harder things, to adding as many harder things together as possible, in order to feel the sacrifice. (I actually did give up the NCAA tournament one year... AND my birthday cake – you have no idea how much I love cake).
Upon reflection and in all honesty, I think part of giving all that stuff up was also so that when THAT question was asked, even if I didn't “win” the righteousness game, I would at least finish strong.
Then one year for Lent, I gave up... Lent.
 One of the fun things many bloggers miss out on is figuring out what Google searches bring a person to their blog. Until recently one of my favorites for The God Article was “is Mark Sandlin gay?” I had just posted my Clobbering “Biblical” Gay Bashing piece (which was ultimately picked up by Believe Out Loud) and it would seem that someone thought the best way to to disprove what I said, would be to prove that I am gay. I know, the problems with that kind of logic are mind-boggling, but it happens all the time. If you can't attack the message, attack the messenger. In this case, it also happens to be impossible to prove, because I'm not. And, at the same time, it really shouldn't matter if I were. It's like arguing that Newton's theory of gravity simply can't be believed because he directly benefits from it being real. Hogwash. So, as I mentioned, Believe Out Loud picked up my Clobbering “Biblical” Gay Bashing piece and it kind of had a second life. I've even heard that it's making its rounds in some Mennonite circles. That's pretty cool. Along with it came a whole new set of Google searches bringing people to this blog. And among them is my new favorite. Are you ready?... I'm a PROPHET!!! Woo hoo! And there was much celebration and general-merrymaking. Actually, the Google search was for “false prophet mark sandlin.” But still, "prophet" – woo hoo? And there was mild joviality and arbitrary-frolicking. Like I said, if you can't attack the message, attack the messenger. So, someone doesn't like what I say, or doesn't want to grapple with whether or not it is actually biblical, or whatever – so they Google “false prophet mark sandlin.” So, now that's a thing. Google databases have me and “false profit” forever linked. And I just don't care. I am no prophet. False or otherwise. Big surprise, right? But I am just the littlest bit humbled by the whole thing.
 ... or Re:Hashing #MarkDriscoll Okay. Mark Driscoll hasn't actually said, “Jesus was a cowboy” (yet), but let's face it, that's what he thinks. Or, at least, he might as well. Let me back up. If you don't know who Mark Driscoll is, I'll help you. I will try to be nice. It will be difficult. Of course, Driscoll would tell me not to worry about it, to go ahead and slug him in the chopper, because that's what it takes to be a minister. (I told you this was going to be hard). Mark Driscoll is the lead minister of the largest church in Washington state (where men are manly and ministers are manly-er-er.... I told you this was going to be hard). He has devoted followers across the US and probably around the world watching his YouTube videos, reading his books, Tweeting about him ( #MarkDriscoll) and going to his conventions (“re:tool and re:load, “reGeneration,” etc.). He believes that we've got this whole Christianity thing wrong. That we have gone astray and that our misguided teachings are, in large part, to blame for the slow death of the institutionalized Christian church. Now at this point, you may be thinking to yourself, “Hmmmm, I like the sound of that!” No. You don't. Remember? “Jesus was a cowboy!” True, that's not exactly what he said, but he did say this:
and this: If he believes that about Jesus, you just know he believes that Jesus would have been a cowboy. The hyper-masculating of Jesus (and, it would seem in his mind, by extension ministers... who, I suppose by the same argument, must be male) is a product of the same over-masculated mythological storytelling that gives us the manly-men type cowboys of the silver screen.
Once, at a conference he was doing in Huston, Driscoll invited five ministers up to the stage, put his hands behind his back, and told them to slug him in the chin. “I won't hit back,” he said. Following what I can only assume they saw as the teachings of Jesus, not one of them hit him. Driscoll kicked them out of the conference and preceded to pound his own face. Go ahead, re-read that last sentence. I'll wait. (Okay, admit it, you completely believed that right? So did I. But it's from a spoof site. But it just shows how crazy the guy is that it sounds completely plausible that he'd do something like that).
Driscoll seems to think Jesus was a macho man, tough guy, testosterone freak... a gun slinging cowboy.
 God sat in a pitch-dark,
can't see your Divine hand in front of your face,
darkness
and had this thought.
This Divine idea went off in God's head
and that spark of God's imagination
was unleashed on the darkness...
and 'bang,' a very BIG bang, God-sized even.
“And God saw that the light was good.”
One of the very first things the writers of the Bible tell us is that the light is good. In God's words of creation, in the actions of the Creator, light is brought forth and it is good.
Just a bit further into Genesis, the Divine has this other thought, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” We, it would seem, are made in the image of the Bringer of Light. We are made in the image, the likeness of God, of the one who not only brings light to the world but who delights in the light.
From Isaiah: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.” This is the beginning of a series of “songs” in Isaiah that are known as the Servant Songs. Isaiah is writing to a people who have been marginalized. They've been run out of town and have been marginalized in Babylon. They've been there as outcasts for two generations and by this time this Servant Song is written, you can imagine the vision of the land they thought was given to them by their God must seem dim at best, if not completely dark. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.”
There's this thing about being marginalized, it is almost like being forgotten. You feel terribly alone. It is like a darkness has set in on your life. Hope seems like a pinprick on the sometimes all too dark horizon. You long for grace to yank off the blanket of oppression that is smothering you so that you can see the light of day.
That's where the descendants of David are. The people of YHWH are in a dark and difficult time. Just a few short verses after the scripture I just mentioned Isaiah says, “For all the boots of the tramping warriors (those who have conquered you) and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom.”
In those words they find hope. In those words the pinprick of hope on the dark horizon becomes a burning light in the heavens just as darkness was divided by the Divine with light at the moment of Creation ... and God said, “It is good.”
We Christians now see this beneficent ruler in which Isaiah rested the hope of Israel and by extension the hope of the world as Jesus Indeed, at Christmas and at Easter we co-opt these texts to remind us of what we have in Jesus - Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace.
It would do us, and by extension the world, a great deal of good to remember the context of those titles. In these texts we are told, "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined."
We live in a land of deep darkness, a world where people are swallowed up in darkness every day. Each one longing to be nearer the pinprick of hope on the sometimes all too dark horizon; lying in wait for some grace to yank off the blankets of oppression, depression and recession that divide and limit us, smother us and keep us from realizing the fullness of the potential planted in us by our Creator; hoping to one day see a better and brighter future.
 (This article is also posted as audio file read by the author at the end of the post).
Ah.... I LOVE this time of the year!
Some people wait with bated breath for duck season, some for deer season, but for me it is all about Christmas season. That's right I'm one of those lefty, liberals that have declared a War on Christmas. That's right! Sign me up for the War on Christmas! … but maybe not for the reasons you might imagine.
You see, while I am signing up to help in a War on Christmas, I'm not on, what by default gets called, the “non-Christian” side. I’m also not signing up for the side that news pundits falsely purport as the “Christian” side. If anything, I’d make the argument that the dominant face of Christianity, as it is seen on television and promoted through news programming, is itself far from what Christianity is supposed to be about. It is a sort-of white-washed, sanitized version of Christianity that every year presents an increasingly cleaned up version of the Christmas story to the viewing public.
You see, the baby we remember this time of year, was not part of the dominant culture the way the religion he started now is. The religious stories that were told in those days were told under the shadow of the dominant culture. They were stories of oppression and hardships, stories of overcoming unthinkable odds, stories of hope for a people living in times and cultural positions that – well, quite frankly felt hopeless.
But today, our stories are told from places and positions of power. Today, Christianity is the dominant culture. So, instead of story of a olive skinned middle-eastern, unwed, pregnant mother, who was seen as little more than property, giving birth to what the world would surely see as an illegitimate child who was wrapped in what rags they could find and placed in a smelly, flea infested feeding trough in the midst of a dark musky smelling animal stall… instead of that story, we end up with a clean, white skinned European woman giving birth to a glowing baby wrapped in impossibly white swaddling clothes and laid to rest in a manger that looks more like a crib than a trough in the midst of a barn that is more kept and clean than many of our houses.
So, “War on Christmas?,” sure sign me up. I'm pretty sure I'd prefer the elimination of what our modern “celebration” has become to the increasingly white-washed version we hear every year.
The Christmas story has been hijacked by a dominant culture. Places of power and positions of prestige have warped the comeuppance sensibilities of the original Christmas story. God’s vision of liberating the oppressed, the down trodden, has been slowly replaced year after year with a story that no longer brings fear to the Powers that Be, but rather supports the big business agendas of profit and mass consumerism.
“War On Christmas?” – come to think of it – they’re right. There is a “War On Christmas,” but it is actually waged by many of the very people who think Christmas is getting squeezed out of our culture in the name of plurality and other religions. If the Christmas they support wins – well, I for one, would have to say all is lost. So, yes, there is a “War on Christmas” and we Christians have been supporting it. If the present day, white-washed version of Christmas continues to be the dominant version, then I believe a great darkness will smother us in a sea of privilege and perverse oblivion to the struggle of those most in need – the oppressed, the downtrodden.
If the Christmas Present, with it's full on worship of consumerism, continues to masquerade as Christmas Past, our Christmas Futures will increasingly become a time when we give out of our abundance rather than out of a response to need and out of a response to God’s love – the kind of Christmas where we give to those who already have abundantly while the oppressed, the downtrodden, watch our overindulgence and rightfully judge us by actions that run contrary to our words of a child born to bring light into the dark corners of the world.
 This is a bit long for a blog post, but some may find it to be a helpful resource. I wrote the piece for another project and it just wasn't a good fit. Honestly, if you are well read on the issue of the Bible and its take on homosexuality (or lack thereof), there is little new in here. For you, I hope this can be a quick reference. If you are not well read on such things, this may be a bit of a bumpy ride, but bumpy rides can be a lot of fun. Either way, I hope I was able to take what is sometimes thick reading, albeit important reading, and make it at least bearable and mostly straight forward.Christianity and “Biblical” HatefulnessWe Christians are good at a lot of things. Helping others. Dressing up on Sunday. Quoting scripture. Pot luck meals. Taking care of church members. Weddings. Funerals. Worship. But perhaps the thing at which we are the most persistently exceptional is misinterpreting the Bible then running amuck in the world because of it. Honestly, mad skills. And history backs me up on this one. We have used the Bible to support, promote and act upon some pretty un-Christian things: slavery, holocaust, segregation, subjugation of women, apartheid, the Spanish Inquisition (which, no one ever expects), domestic violence, all sorts of exploitation and the list could go on and on. Oddly, if you ask theologians to pick one biblical theme to rule them all, most of them would say “love”... well, love and grace. Okay, love, grace and forgiveness. Fine. They probably would not specifically agree on a single term, but they would most likely name something that is, in every way, the opposite of the oppression, belittlement, hatred and marginalization represented by the numerous atrocities committed by the Christian Church. More times than not, these atrocities are the result of trying to play God, pretending as if one group of people has complete knowledge of God's will and is more blessed or chosen by God. Not surprisingly, the people who see the world this way are always exactly the people who also happen to belong in the group they believe to be the uber-blessed. Lucky them. Time and time again, Jesus made it clear that we should not put ourselves in the place of playing God and that, unlike far too many humans, God welcomes and loves us all equally. Period. But we keep doing it. We keep doing it even though each time after we argue, name-call, suppress others and fight for centuries, falsely playing the role of heavenly judge and jury, we slowly realize that we got it wrong. We realize that, in fact, Paul was not promoting slavery. We learn to contextualize his statements and letters. We become more skilled at interpreting the original Greek and, over time, we decide to stop quoting the Bible to support slavery (or the subjugation of women, or racism, etc.) because we finally come around to realizing that, as Rob Bell's book points out, biblically love wins. Always. And so we find ourselves here again. Doing the thing we do best: misinterpreting the Bible and ruining lives with it. We are, once again, ignoring the biblical bias for those who are marginalized, abused, belittled and negatively judged. Ignoring the biblical directive to show all the children of God love (and grace... and forgiveness). Hate By Any Other NameOh sure, this time around we have “softened” our approach, saying things like “hate the sin, love the sinner,” but we fail to recognize that what we are calling a “sin” and the person we are calling a “sinner” are one and the same. A person whose sexual orientation is homosexual, or bi-sexual, or queer can no more separate themselves from their sexuality than a heterosexual person can. It's like saying “hate the toppings, love the pizza.” It's just not the pizza without the toppings. We just aren't loving the person if we don't love the whole person. I suspect the “softening” of the language we use has everything to do with making us feel better and very little with making LGBTQ folk feel better, because it certainly doesn't make them feel any better. As a matter of fact, the love/hate (emphasis on hate) relationship that the Church continues to push on this group of people only serves to push them into closets and into even darker places, which sometimes leads to suicide. The Church and its approach to this issue are at fault for most of the hurt, anguish, self-doubt, abuse and death associated with being LGBTQ. Not very loving. Not very grace filled. But it certainly leaves us in need of forgiveness. Many Christians have lost their way in this twisty, turny maze of how to practice our faith. We would much rather reinforce the things we want to believe than believe the sometimes difficult teachings of Jesus. Who, on a side note, never said a word about homosexuality but did tell us to gouge out our lustful eyes. Which seems to me is more likely to leave us all blind than the “eye for and eye” thing.
 I've mentioned a time or two before, that the Church is dying. And because of the research presented in books like unChristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, we know a lot of the reasons for it. While some people in the Church like to point to the economy as the chief reason reason for struggling churches, it's time to get real and just admit that while it really is terribly convenient to be able to say, "Really it's not us; it's that gosh, darned economy," it's just not true. Sure the economy necessarily effects most churches, but our problems have been going on much longer than that. And we are the root of our problem. As Kinnaman points out, there are several problems that keep most young people who consider themselves spiritual from darkening the door of a church, but the big one is hypocrisy. And like it or not, part of that hypocrisy is tied up in politics. For decades now, the loudest voice in Christianity (or at least the most persistently visible) has been from politicians on the right. Let's face it, they have owned the national Christian voice. Touting Jesus as if they had been one of the original disciples, they have twisted the reality of the Gospels and God's biases for the oppressed, the marginalized and the undeserved into a pro-Americana doctrine that promotes the rights of the haves over the needs of the have-nots. They've actually figured out how to make it seem sinful to question war and capital punishment. And the dominant part of the Church has, at best, sat idly by as the political right has used the name of Christ to take God's name in vain by marginalizing more and more people as they pass laws that make it more difficult to obtain basic human rights like health care, reasonable access to shelter and the ability to feed our families. We need modern day prophets to walk in the footsteps of Isaiah, Amos, Micah, Jesus and, yes, even Dr. King. People to stand up to, and to stand over and against the status quo. Voices calling out into the modern day wildernesses of plutocracy, militarism, white privilege and so many other anti-Biblical movements that serve only to marginalize and hurt specific groups of people. In this age of social media, it might be that the Voice In The Wilderness that the world so sorely needs, might just be Voices (with an 's') In The Wilderness. It might just be your voice, my voice, our voices in a collective cry saying, "Repent! God does not love straight people more than gay people. God does not love the wealthy more than the poor. God does require us to DO justice. Not to just say it is a good thing, but to insure that it is a reality for all people." We must stand up to the Religious and Political Right who have been allowed to own the voice of Christianity for far too long and we must reclaim it.
 “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” For Dickens, those lines are meant to set the stage for a novel that takes place during the difficult times of the French Revolution. It is also a novel that struggles with the social injustices that come along with war and the pursuit of power. It is sort of a call to arms for the characters that will be called upon to live out another of the book's themes – self-sacrifice. It also can be argued that the opening line is an inverted foreshadowing for one of the predominate themes of the book – resurrection.
Now, from what I just told you, you should be able to deduce two things rather quickly. 1) My first undergraduate degree, indeed, was in English (yes, I am a book geek) and 2) in his themes of social justice, resurrection and self-sacrifice, Dickens is clearly flirting with topics near and dear to the heart of the New Testament.
That is where the Spirit of God drives us, toward lives focused on social justice, metaphorical resurrections and, when even necessary, self-sacrifice. But increasingly, that is not the case in many traditional churches in the U.S.
Part of our problem is that we have attempted to domesticate the Spirit of God. The very ruah (breath of God). The wild winds that ignited the flames of creation as they whipped recklessly over the face of chaos – in the beginning; God's essential nature described in Deuteronomy as a devouring fire; the radiant and elusive Spirit that gave the revelation of Jesus' messiahship at his baptism; the Spirit Jesus himself would describe to Nicodemus as being mysterious and unpredictable like the wind; the winds that rushed into an upper room ripping the windows open, resting as a flame on the disciple's shoulders, causing them to speak in tongues and be looked upon as if they were drunk; that Spirit scares us because we can't control it. So, we have attempted to domesticate God’s Spirit – much like the common dog. We tried to tame it, teach it to curl up beside our hearths and be obedient. We want to quantify it, objectify it, demystify it - train it, contain it and constrain it. Like our children, we want it stop being so wild and uncontrollable. We want it to lose its propensity to form something new out of a world in which we feel comfortable.
The Spirit however is unruly. It is apt to doing a “new thing,” to bringing about a change on God's people and on the world which God created. Should we really expect anything less out of the Spirit of God – not the God we created in our image, but the God that said, “behold, I am about to do a new thing,” the God who used chaos to form this world, the God who did the unthinkable and became human flesh, the God who overcame death itself...should we really expect the Spirit of that God to be docile, domesticated and dormant? In churches throughout the U.S., we seem to.
Churches throughout the U.S. must ask themselves, which Spirit do we follow? The one we, as a society, have created out of our own needs? The one that allows us to trust in ourselves? The one that plays nice and gives us warm fuzzies? Or are we ready to celebrate the Spirit of the biblical text? One who is willing to grapple with chaos. One that is unruly, unexpected, unconventional and unconcerned with what we want or how things have always been done. Which one do we truly celebrate?
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