The Southwest Conference Has a New Blog

I've begun writing for the Southwest Conference Blog. My first post is about white geek privilege.

Not Just Blowing Off Steam

Our church was in conflict, and I knew this meeting was going to be a hard one to attend. As I walked into the meeting, Brad sauntered across to me. He raised his hand, index finger pointing, pulled back his thumb, cocking the gun, raised it to my temple, and silently mouthed the words, "Bang! Bang!" I had never seen such hatred in a person's eyes. He went back to his seat, and glared at me for the entire meeting. Then, as I got up to leave, he spoke his only words of the evening, "Remember, I know where you live." *

I left the meeting, and went directly to the Sheriff's office. I told them what had occurred, gave them Brad's name and address, and received an assurance they would drive my neighborhood for the next few days. I then went home and called the key leader who opposed me in the church. I said, "I understand that you and some other folks are angry at me, and you're afraid you're losing your church, but you need to know what the consequences of your words might be." I asked this leader to help tamp down the rhetoric, "because it could turn out very badly for Brad and for me. You and I know that you sometimes say things you don't really mean, as a way of letting off steam, but I don't think Brad understands that."

I've been thinking about this incident a lot lately, as I hear about yet another mass shooting by an unhinged man who's been binging on hate. It's easy to blame the shootings in South Carolina and Louisiana on lone gunmen and their mental illness, while ignoring the atmosphere of fear and hate that has lead to their actions.

Blaming mental illness allows us to let ourselves off the hook. We can continue to watch our Faux news and listen to our angry commentators. We can let off steam by reading about conspiracy theories we know probably aren't true, but that make us feel more in control. Meanwhile, our neighbor is taking all that stuff absolutely seriously, and plotting a terrible crime that will leave him and many others devastated. We'll blame him, and his mental illness, but we were the ones who fed the flames that lit him and the world on fire.

My sacred texts say, "perfect love casts out fear." I believe the opposite can also be true. Perfect fear can cast out love.

So I'll say to you what I said to that church leader: I know you're scared and angry, but you need to recognize the consequences of what you and others are speaking into the world. We may know the pundits are just blowing off steam, but Brad doesn't.

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*Note: if you're trying to figure out who this Brad guy is, stop. Unfortunately, I've been a member of several churches that were in conflict, and I've changed the story enough so you won't know who I'm talking about.

Changing My Mind: Confessions of a Flip-Flopper

A couple weeks ago, a friend and I were having a conversation, and she said, "I think you and I agree on much less than we used to... but I think we still agree on the really important things... except, you seem to be a dang statist now." And then she laughed.

She and I went to the same university, where we both studied economics. More accurately, we studied Austrian Economics -- von Mises, Hayek, et al -- and she's right to notice that I'm less libertarian than I was when we first met. I wouldn't call myself a statist, but I now acknowledge the usefulness of government funding for some things other than police, things like roads and schools, and (most-unbelievable to my twenty-five-old-self) healthcare. 

In the intervening twenty years since I went to college, I came out to myself and to others as a gay man, got married to a liberal Catholic, went to a Quaker seminary (twice), learned about creative non-violence from SoulForce, moved to New Mexico to a town within a hundred miles of the border, opened a small business, joined the UCC and got ordained, met lots of people and listened to their stories, and became a hospice chaplain and listened to more stories. All of these experiences changed me, in dramatic and in subtle ways. All of these experiences taught me new ways of looking at the world, and new ways of thinking about theology and philosophy -- and economics.

I'm not the same person I was twenty years ago, or ten years ago, or eight years ago, or even five years ago. So why would I expect others to remain static? Why would I assume that the John McCain I voted for in 2000 (yes, I did) would be the same man I voted against in 2008? Why would I call Hillary Clinton a flip-flopper for supporting her husband's horrible record on gays in the late-1990s, and supporting marriage equality in 2015 (particularly when I made the same journey)? Why would I not embrace the journey of an evangelical like Tony Campolo, rather than bash him for coming around too late? 

SoulForce taught me to say (and believe) "my opponent is a victim of misinformation as I once was." As I once was. We are all victims of misinformation. I'm not the same person I was twenty years ago, and I'm not the same person I will be in twenty years. I am always taking in new information, and that new information changes my thinking. Knowing that, can I trust the people around me -- even politicians and preachers -- to do the same? I can, and I do.

Why I'm (still) a Christian

On April 2nd, 1999, I was listening to Fresh Air when Terry Gross asked her guest, Huston Smith, what he would say to young people who practice a kind of cafeteria-style religion, in which they take a little of this and a little of that. Huston Smith, an expert in world religions and author of a seminal work on the subject, said, "If you want to find water, stand in one place and dig as deep as you can." At the time, it was exactly what I needed to prompt me to attend seminary.

When I entered Earlham School of Religion in the fall of 1999, I made God a deal: I would stand in one place for three years, and dig as deep as I could. If I found water in Christianity during those three years, then I would stay. If I didn't, then I would move on to another religion, and start digging again. The happy news is that I found a deep well of living water.

Up to that point, I had a shallow understanding of Jesus and of the Church that came after him. Jesus was at best fire insurance to keep me out of hell, the baby born on Christmas who died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead on Easter. I hadn't spent much time with the Jesus who lived between Christmas and Easter and who taught us to love our enemies. He was a refreshing and challenging teacher. Sixteen years later, I still struggle to live up to the things he taught. The Law of Love is easy to grasp, but it's hard to master. Just seeking to understand and live into the Sermon on the Mount will be a lifelong practice -- ten thousand hours is not nearly enough time for this task.

Before seminary, I had also spent little time in the broad and deep world of Christian theology, tradition, and history. As many of us have, I grew up in a small branch of Christianity that liked to think of itself as the home for True Believers. My father is a theologian in the Wesleyan Church, and I had dug deep into that tradition, but I had not plumbed the depths of Christianity. I still haven't, and that's part of why I'm still digging. There's so much more to learn about Christianity, I honestly don't have time to become an expert in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam too. I could spend the rest of my life on Christianity -- and probably will -- and never learn everything there is to know about it.

In the age of Google, it's easy to think that having a little bit of knowledge about everything is good enough. We're excellent at trivia, because we can always ask Siri and she can look it up on IMDB and Wikipedia. But that's not enough for me. I need a religious practice that gives me water to drink every day. In Christianity, I've tapped into a vast aquifer, and I'm staying here for as long as it continues to bring me life.

I'm not a Biblical Christian

In Phoenix, a group of eight churches surrounding The Fountains Progressive Christian Church have put up signs announcing a coordinated six-part sermon series, answering the question, "Progressive Christianity: Fact or Fiction?" In comments on the Kissing Fish Facebook post about this event, Roger Wolsey laments the "use of 'Biblical Christianity vs. Progressive Christianity'" in the Fox 10 article. He says, "Progressive Christianity is just as (if not more) biblical than fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism are."

I've chosen to accept the labels 'progressive Christian' and 'post-modern Christian,' because I think they suit where I am on my journey. But I'm beginning to wonder if 'biblical Christian' or 'evangelical Christian' are labels I'm interested in holding onto anymore.

I certainly look to the Christian canon for wisdom and inspiration. As a Jesus follower, I've reordered my entire life according to his teachings as presented in the gospels. I'm one of the few Christians I know -- 'Bible believing' or otherwise -- who actually loves the Hebrew Scriptures and can give you a thorough reading of Jonah (or Genesis or Judges or Esther or...) complete with references to the Hebrew puns and wordplay. I'm even a strong advocate for taking Paul seriously, and see him as one of the first people to really understand the implications of Jesus' Law of Love. However, claiming to be a biblical or evangelical Christian seems to involve idolizing the text above God's active Spirit, and accepting the falsehood that the Bible is of one voice, and I'm not willing to do either of those things.

If God really intended to convey an Absolute Truth to the world, as evangelical Christians claim, then the Bible was a poor vehicle for doing it. One of the things I love about the Christian and Jewish canons is that they argue amongst themselves. I'm not talking about the usual nitpicks that atheist fundamentalists like to use to rile up Christian fundamentalists ("If the Bible is accurate in every word, then tell me how many times did the cock crow before Peter wept? Matthew disagrees with Mark. Gotcha!") I'm talking about more fundamental arguments.

Read the end of Deuteronomy, and then read the book of Ecclesiastes. Then tell me what the Bible says about whether or not God blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked. Read Romans and then read James, and tell me if a Christian is saved by faith alone or if holy living is also a requirement. Read Mark and read John, and then tell me what purpose I should find in Jesus' death. The author of Ecclesiastes argues against the teachings of Deuteronomy, which were widely believed at the time of his writing. The author of James was a Jewish Christian who didn't like Paul's loose relationship with the 613 Jewish rules for living, and wasn't afraid to disagree with Paul. And the authors of Mark and John, writing in very different times and places had different interpretations of the meaning of Jesus' death.

When Martin Luther set aside the Church's reliance on papal teachings with a cry of "Sola Scriptura," he was trying to find a Christianity that was more pure, free from the corrupting traditions of Rome. However, the evangelicalism (from the Greek euangelos or 'gospel') that followed gave up too much in favor of a rigid certainty. The fact is that Christianity is not monolithic and neither is the biblical canon. I'm not a biblical Christian, because I'm not sure what that would even mean, and I think it leaves out too much of the real ambiguity of life in the Spirit.

As a Christian, I'm invited to join a multigenerational conversation. That conversation includes the ancient Mediterranean who told a story of YHWH making people out of mud, and a later priest who told of Elohim speaking the world into being. It includes the Deuteronomist who tells us the person who follows God's law will be blessed, and Qoholet the proclaimer of Ecclesiastes who observes that he has seen the righteous perish while the wicked live long and prosper. It includes Hildegard of Bingen with her mystic poetry, and John Wesley with his insistence on rationality and method. And, of course, it means following Jesus who argued with the biblical literalists of his day, asked Peter, "What do you think?" and promised an Advocate who would lead us into more truth than can be contained between the covers of a book.

The Benefits of Justice

Today, I was visiting with Paolo Naso, a member of the Waldensian Church in Italy. He told me that after their denomination's 2010 decision to allow ministers to perform same-gender unions, they experienced an unexpected side-effect. In Italy, one can subscribe to a church on one's tax return, and the church gets a percentage of your tax payments. After the 2010 decision, the Waldensians had a 3,500% increase in subscribers. Essentially, for every member on their church rolls, they had 34 other people who told the government, "I'm a Waldensian. Pay them my tax percentage."

Another reason to like the Waldensians: The denomination decided to spend none of this windfall on church government. Not a penny will go to a pastor, or a building, or anything related to keeping themselves in business. Instead, all of the money is earmarked for justice projects -- like their work with immigrant justice, which is why I'm meeting with them this week.

A Poem

Small Grace

You know, I can’t explain it —
no reason, just chance.
I was walking, not thinking of anything
much, when I noticed
a copper spot in the black gravel,
maybe two feet away, just off the sidewalk.
So, I stopped
and bent to see if maybe —
and yes, it was heads up —
a lucky penny!
I dropped it into my pocket,
smiling — thinking.
That’s right,
the universe chose me.

The Fruits of Hell

Recently, a friend attempted to hire a new employee. The new guy was well-qualified, and seemed to be a hard worker. There was one small problem -- his record of violent crimes. He was an alcoholic who could be violent when he was drunk. He was also six-months sober, working a recovery program, and had a parol officer who checked on him every day, to make sure he was still on the right path. Believing in grace, my friend thought he would give the guy a chance, but another employee was aghast. "How dare you put the rest of us in danger like this!" The employee couldn't make the leap to accepting that the new guy might deserve a second chance, and that his violence was connected to his alcoholism. As it happened, this employee, who wasn't as committed to grace as my friend, was also an evangelical Christian.

Later that week, our church book group talked about eternal damnation. During the discussion, it became clear that none of us believed in a God who could give up on people for all eternity. "That God would be a monster," one person said, and I agreed with her. I cannot believe in a God who has less grace than many of the people I know. In hospice and in my work in the recovery community, I've seen people forgive their family members, even when the family didn't deserve forgiveness, and didn't realize what they'd done. Isn't God supposed to be better than us?

As it happened, capital punishment was in the news that week as well, because of an impending double-execution in Oklahoma (an execution that turned into a single, after the first one went terribly wrong). And the combination of these three things -- an evangelical employee unwilling to give a guy a second chance, a conversation about God's grace as opposed to God's eternal damnation, and yet another scheduled execution -- made me realize that belief in eternal damnation has damaged Christianity's soul.

It is no accident that 40% of self-identified practicing Christians believe in capital punishment, while only 5% of people in the same pole thought Jesus would be in favor. Considering we follow Jesus, and say we believe in grace, one might expect Christians to view the death penalty less-favorably than our non-Christian counterparts. However, our numbers are close to the same (and in fact just slightly more favorable) than the general population. Christians, with our longstanding belief in hell and eternal damnation, are just as quick to believe that some people are beyond redemption. If God can banish people to hell forever, then certainly it follows that those people don't deserve grace. And if some people are beyond grace, then why keep them around? Why not execute them, and let their eternal punishment start that much sooner? Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence would show that this lack of grace doesn't just extend to those on death row. When eternal damnation is your fallback position, it's hard not to be poisoned by it.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits." Belief in eternal damnation has yielded bitter fruit for Christianity -- hearts that lack grace. I think its about time this belief go the way of beliefs about slavery and religious pogroms. Even if it were biblical, it's certainly not good for our souls.

A Poem

Visiting the Living

"Bobby," she says,
"I don't know how many
people are in here,
but will you make sure
everyone has a seat?"
Bobby fetches
a folding chair for me,
so I can sit next to her bed,
sharing stories of her life in Lubbock
with a husband who died that day in May,
and who stands at the end of her bed now.
I don't see him,
but he remembers the details she can't.
"Bob," she says,
I couldn't do this without you."

Why I Don't Proselytize

Recently, I was talking to someone about struggles I've been having with our foster son. After listening to me for a while, this person asked, "Have you considered trying to convert him?"

No. No I haven't. And I won't.

That's not what I said. What I said was, "I hold with St. Francis who said, 'Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words." I feel my call, as a child of God and follower of Jesus, is to love. I must be a channel of God's love to other humans and nonhumans. I can also be a symbol of God's unconditional love in my work as a chaplain and pastor (and I often am). But it's God's job to draw people to grace in the right time and in the right way for them. I don't pretend to know what the right way or time is. It's hard enough to figure out the best way to love people, without feeling like I also have to preach at them, too. 

If there's one thing I've learned in my work as a hospice chaplain, it's that a loving act speaks louder than any words ever could. Often, I have no idea what to say to someone. I can't imagine what they're going through, as they change their mother's diaper. However, I can be present, and I can shine love from every pore of my being. And, when I do that, the crazy thing is that they find the words they need. They hear God talking to them in a language and with a theology that makes sense for them. They find their own way to grace, while I stand as witness.

So, I trust God with my foster son, as I trust God with everyone I meet. I'll keep loving, and I'll let God do the preaching. 

(By the way: It turns out, I was misquoting Francis, but I still hold with the sentiment, which I think Francis would have liked, too.)

Kindergarten Christians

Every time I hear about how American Christians are being persecuted -- because people don't wish us Merry Christmas, or we're not allowed to install a monument to our version of the Ten Commandments, or someone dares to suggest that maybe churches shouldn't get special tax breaks, or because we're told to stop praying "in Jesus name" at government functions -- I think about a friend's son, and how much trouble he had his first year at school. 

We American Christians are like that spoiled child who ends up in kindergarten and suddenly realizes (Oh, horror!) that there are other children. 

Too many Christians stand at the threshold of the 21st century and shout, "What do you mean I have to spend my time in a pluralistic society? You mean I have to share and cooperate with people from other faiths? Wait! You don't mean atheists too?! Waaaah..." And then they throw a mighty, mighty temper tantrum, hurling insults at everyone around them, and breaking things rather than share them with anyone.

I, for one, loved kindergarten. And I'm loving interacting with all the other people in this great-big, beautiful, pluralistic world. Its worth it, to me, to have to share my holidays with other people, and to learn to cooperate with the other kids on the playground, because the other kids are now my friends.

A Poem

I recently had a reason to go through my old poetry, and I found this poem, which I wrote in 2001. It had potential, so I revised it, and I'm finally happy with it.

for one who feels he has the voice of an ant in a field of lawnmowers
(or Ants against the War Machine)

I have seen ants
marching
in columns
across a road
in Africa
where a war raged —
these men against those men,
those men against these —
but every man
stepping aside
for the steady line of army ants
unaware of tanks
or guns
or men with rifles.

And after,
I have looked
to see
the bones of a snake,
overcome by the slow
garrison
moving in unison —
each too small
to matter —
together
swallowing the serpent.

Prayers against Poverty

Last Saturday, during the day, Rob and I took the Second Class bus from Oaxaca, where we were vacationing, to Teotitlan del Valle, an artist community about twenty miles outside the city. In Teotitlan, we had a very expensive lunch -- touted by friends as the best in the valley -- and after we got back, we spent the afternoon walking through the huge, real market that surrounds the second-class bus station (as opposed to the less-real-seeming markets in Oaxaca City, which appear to be mostly for tourists and wealthier Oaxacans). The contrast between our lunch in solidly middle-class Teotitlan, and the cramped alleys of Mercado Abastos couldn't have been starker.

When we got back to our five-star hotel, we saw that the "movie star" was back from her day as well, because her body guards stalked the lobby in baggy shirts and earpieces. In the splendidly manicured courtyards, two brides in hundred-thousand-peso dresses were getting their pictures taken in the perfect late-afternoon light. And that night, as I lay in bed surrounded by the rooms of a former convent now filled with wealthy Mexicans and Europeans, I thought a lot about the extreme contrasts in Mexico between the rich and the poor. I also admit I despaired a little at the enormity of the problem of poverty -- and felt guilty at my participation in it -- even as I prayed for for the welfare of the people I'd literally bumped into that day at the market.

Then this afternoon, as I caught up on email, I discovered that many other people were meditating on world poverty that night. October 16th to 18th was designated by the United Nations as a time for "a global call to action against poverty" called STAND UP and TAKE ACTION. A friend belongs to a religious society that had committed to pray at 9pm on Saturday night in every time zone "for the wellness of all impoverished," and she emailed me an invitation to join in the prayers.

I'm still overwhelmed by the poverty I witnessed in Oaxaca, but I also believe in the power of prayer (especially if its part of a plan that includes further action). And I'm glad I was able to participate in my friend's prayers, even if I did it inadvertently.