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."