A Personal Struggle

I have been attending a church for about two years now, and I have really enjoyed it.  Until very recently.

I love the music, the worship service.  The pastor is an excellent theologian, there are many exciting guest speakers.  There are many opportunities there, classes and activities and productions.  I helped with the youth program in the summer and seriously want to do that again.  I was baptized there, the church led me to my school which it is connected with.  We attend classes in the building they outgrew five years ago.  And I became an official member this summer.

And then Donald Trump happened.  What does he have to do with church?  Well, the answer should be nothing whatsoever.  But that isn’t the answer.

I can handle the fact that my political views are in the minority.  That I get.  I can handle the fact that this is a very conservative congregation, but until now, I thought that even though they were conservative they had room for other people.  Now I am not so sure.

I know that Evangelical now means a political movement.  It used to mean a person who proclaims the Good News, it comes from a Greek word, and this is actually the meaning.  A person who tells the world about Christ.  It also came to mean a person who believes in being saved by grace and faith, rather than by sacraments and good works.  It doesn’t mean that anymore.  Okay, fine. 

But then I watched a whole lot of people who should have known better vote a monster into office on the vague promise that he might appoint a Supreme Court judge who might vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.  Even though Roe v. Wade isn’t an issue right now.  Even though by the time any cases went through the court system for it to be an issue, this president would probably be out of office.  Even though the Supreme Court acts on legal grounds, not moral issues.

Okay, fine.  You guys don’t understand the judicial system, and you’ve made an emotional decision, and you’ve made a mistake.  You have ignored every other issue about this horrible person because you are passionate about one issue, and you say God can use an imperfect vessel as your write off.  God could have used the other imperfect vessel just as well, but okay. 

But then that excellent theologian stood in the pulpit and proudly announced that he had been on the Spiritual Advising Committee for Donald Trump with several other religious luminaries (at least one of whom I now know for a fact is frigging nuts) and they had been on conference calls every Monday for the last three months, and he hoped to continue to do so.

And the crowd went wild.  I felt like the whole church, and it’s a very large church, was rising up, folding in half and coming down on top of me.

For the last three months, while that man was spewing hate and lies, you excellent devout fellows had his ear.  What good did it do?   And now this excellent theologian was proudly leading over 20,000 people down the abyss with him.  Someone was in bed with the devil, I just wasn’t quite sure who it was.

It was a hard week after that.  I loved this church, but I just didn’t feel like I could be there anymore.  I can’t completely cut off from it.  Twelve hours of my degree plan come from working there.  They are gifting me money to attend the university.  I didn’t want to believe bad things about the pastor.  I didn’t want to.

So I went to a different church the next week.  It was like returning to an old friend.  The music isn’t as good.  They aren’t as joyfully worshipful.  But the message was exactly the message I needed to hear.

When I started school, I didn’t really know what I was after, except knowledge.  But it didn’t take long to figure out that my focus was going to be some kind of mission work.  I want to be with those who are really struggling, who really need help.  And that my job would probably not be at a megachurch.  Now it’s possible, I could work at a church in some capacity and do other work outside, at a homeless shelter, or a women’s shelter, or with a prison ministry, or dare I say it, with the LGBT community.  See, there’s the problem.  I don’t have a group of people I will not minister to.  I don’t have a group of people who are outside my realm of possibility, and that puts me at odds with the conservative church business.

And it shouldn’t.  And that’s what Craig Groeschel of life church talked about on Sunday.  That some people draw the line and they put the good people on one side and the bad people on the other, and Jesus crossed the line, and so should we.

So I will be attending life church from now on.  At least for a while.  I won’t cut myself completely from the other church.  And I will go forward knowing that God does use imperfect vessels, and that if things do get tough for Christ followers in the coming years, then I am busy being armed for the fight.   

And Jesus said to him, "What do you want me to do for you?" -- Mark 10:51 (ESV)

Let Us Act in Love

I have heard three sermons lately on the same subject.  Usually when that happens it means something’s up.  There’s something that needs my attention.  And this time there is.  All three sermons were saying that as Christians we have to speak the truth.  We have to call a spade a spade, so to speak.  And I agree with that.  But the spade this time was the whole transgender bathroom issue.  And I’m not sure I know what truth is in this case.

I have never spent any serious time with a transgender individual, that I know of, only know what I know from tv and radio.  I am not a Bible scholar, and I don’t know that the Bible addresses this issue, although I’m sure there are Bible scholars who could point it out.  I do know that the two verses that I try to keep foremost in my mind, God is Love and Judge Not, don’t allow me to disparage someone just because they have made choices I wouldn’t make.

But back to the speaking the truth thing, we should call a sin a sin.  We shouldn’t pretend for the sake of being nice or politically correct that we don’t believe the things we believe.

But not everyone agrees what a sin is.  I believe a sin is an act that hurts yourself or someone else or shames God.  Harming yourself or others is usually pretty obvious, and while there may be grey areas and wiggle room, it’s not too hard to figure out that punching someone in the face, using heroin or gambling away the kids’ lunch money are all sinful acts.  Shaming God is a little trickier.

But if I were ministering to someone I think it would be more beneficial to them to say Here is God, Here’s how much He loves you, Here’s what He wants for you.  Here is Jesus, Here is His Truth, Here’s what He’s done for you.  And not address any particular sin, and let the love of God direct them to less sinful behavior.

One of those Bible scholars might jump up and say But you can’t ignore Verse Such and Such.  No, I can’t ignore it, but I may not necessarily lean on it either.  Truth might not change, might not, but interpretation does.

And times change.  Society changes, what we need from God changes, our relationship with Him changes. 

Paul said women were to keep quiet in church.  It’s right there.  It’s in the Bible.  But women’s role in society has changed.  So now women speak in church.  And that’s not against God.  Things changed.  Our relationship with God changed as our needs changed.  And if you don’t think someone like Joyce Meyers has the anointing just because she was born female, you are not paying attention.

When the Supreme Court decided the Marriage Equality Ruling, a lot of people who wanted to oppose it chose verses from Leviticus particularly , as their support.  I don’t want to get into a debate about whether the Supreme Court has the right to determine the legal definition of marriage in this country.  They have, and they did, so that argument is over.  And I don’t like politics preached from the pulpit, and for what it’s worth, this is my pulpit.

Put that aside. 

Whenever someone quotes one verse to support their position, I always want to know if they’ve read the whole passage.  Everything that went before it and all the verses after.  Many verses can be misrepresented when taken out of context.

But when someone brings up Leviticus, I want to say Read the whole book.  Read all of it, and I promise you that at least once you will say Wait a minute, if not That’s just crazy.

Almost everything is a sin in Leviticus, and many of those sins are punishable by death.  I’m sure none of us would have a problem not offering our children up to Molech, whoever he might be.  We don’t have to worry about trimming our beards unless we’re Sons of Aaron, who are basically rabbis.  Tattoos might be an issue for some of us, but according to Leviticus, we can’t wear a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbow.

All sexual sins are punishable by death.  Men with men, having sex with your in-laws, bestiality.  All punishable by death, for both parties, including the animal who probably had no choice.

But let’s be honest.

If we are going to write laws according to Leviticus, which we can’t because we’re not a theocracy, Verse 19:34 ends the whole Immigration Debate.  “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.”

Oh, you say they aren’t talking about Mexicans crossing the border illegally, and I’m gonna say My point exactly.

So, you say How can you, who profess to be a Christian, dismiss the Book of Leviticus.

Here’s how.

I am a Christian of the New Covenant.  The Old Covenant, the one that Leviticus was part of, is gone.  The Israelites couldn’t do it, and there is no longer a need for symbolic and ritualistic purity.  There is a new covenant.  And the new covenant says that the Law will be written on our hearts.

And my heart tells me to act in love.  And love says to accept people as they are, and listen to their point of view.

Return to me and I will return to you.  Malachi 3:7

His Love Unfailing

There was an article recently on the internet about a pastor who decided to spend a year as an atheist and at the end of the year, he no longer believed in God.  And I wondered how could that happen?

I don’t understand how you can just turn God “off”.  God is not just the one I go to worship on Sunday, or the one I turn to in times of need.   He is an energy that runs through my entire life.  I see how you could pretend to not believe in order to understand a point of view.  “Now, if I were an atheist, I would think thus and such about that situation.”  But I don’t see how you could actually walk away from it.

And then I remembered a conversation I had with my son regarding faith.  His contention was that if you know, absolutely know, that there is a God then that is not faith.  And I probably should have said that absolutely knowing did not rule out faith, because faith was acting on the knowing, on the belief in God.

But I didn’t.  What I said was Don’t you have things that you know in your head and things that you know in your heart?   And he said No.

 

If you turn off your heart and only listen with your head, you could lose a lot of things.  Like love and intuition, and maybe God. 

If you chose not to see God, you will not see Him.

How could God let this man go?  Why isn’t God just shaking him and saying I am Here.  Maybe He is.

The man let Him go first.  Romans 1:18-32, the verses that some people use to condemn gay people, talk about people who used to know God but turned their backs on Him, and God, rather than grab them back, has decided to let them sink as low as they can.  Maybe when they hit rock bottom, they will remember that God was there for them before, and they will call on Him again.

 I hope that this is what happens to this man.  I hope that he remembers God.  I hope he does it before something really bad happens to him.  I pray that that happens. 

I was reminded that recently I was praying that the Lord handle certain situations for me, but I was really just going through the motions of belief.  I was essentially saying I am asking You to do this because I want to believe that You will, because I am supposed to believe that You will, but my past experience is telling me that You’re not going to.  And He said to me, How can I do this for you, when you have no faith that I will?

It was back on me.  How many times did Jesus tell the person He had healed that it was actually their faith that did the work?

 

I prefer to attend services in Chapels on the backside of racetracks.  For one thing, I like to go where the congregation is so small that I know everyone’s name.  Generally, know where to find them during the week if I need to.  One is in Barn A3, one in Barn C7 and one in the Racing office.  And I like that people don’t dress to the nines, some of us show up straight from the barn.  We’re not there to impress anyone.  And I like a group so small and informal that people aren’t afraid to speak up, to give a testimony, to shout Hallelujah or Amen.

 

But recently, my husband and I have been attending a huge church.  This is like Church on the Industrial Scale.  We went there originally because he was instructed by the Lord to put $10 in a collection plate, and this church has three services on Sunday, and one of them is at 12:30.  It’s close to the apartment, and we don’t have to get up early.  That was initially its selling point.

 

 

But we are enjoying it. They have an excellent music and worship service before the sermon. And while small churches are still my preferred home, it is so inspiring to be among 500 people, all with their arms raised, swaying and singing and loving the Lord altogether. To become part of that, to feel it, to know that we are united in that love, that I can love every one of them and they me.

I had an amazing experience there just yesterday. During the praise and worship, we were singing a song that had lyrics that caught my attention. I wish I remembered it exactly so I could quote it, but it was a beautiful song, and the chorus said something like Your love unfailing. When I sang that I had this thought that He is unfailing for some people, but I am living in a hole, my career is going nowhere, my dreams are all being put to bed, and every time I step into a new endeavor thinking this is the time it’s going to work, it falls apart, just like all the other times, so He has failed me. And Jesus reached down to me and He said, I have never failed you.

You can think I’m crazy if you want to, but Jesus reached me, and He hugged me, and He reassured me that He is always there, He has always been there, He will always be there. Things may not work out the way I want, but it’s not because of Him.

The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.  Exodus 14:14

Be Strong, Be Kind, Be Reasonable

I haven’t done this in a long time.  For one thing, no one was reading them, so no one was missing them, but mostly because I just didn’t feel moved to say anything.  But I am moved to continue now and then to work on them, so I am going forward, assuming that someday these things are going to be of use to someone.

 

I thought about writing one after I saw Heaven Is For Real.  As a movie, I suppose it was okay, but I couldn’t really watch it, because I was distracted by the attitudes of some of Greg Kinnear’s parishioners.  Maybe this was just added for plot twist, but I was bothered by how much they were bothered by the idea of someone saying Heaven is for real.  And by the newspaper giving credit for the boy’s recovery to a prayer circle.  If they didn’t think the prayer circle was going to work, why have a prayer circle?  And if they did think it was going to work, why not give credit where credit is due?  What kind of witnessing is that?  Hiding your light under a basket, that’s what that is.  But I suppose there are people professing to be Christians and sitting in pews every Sunday and not really believing that the things they are saying they believe will come to fruition.  I don’t get it, but I suppose it happens.  And I didn’t have enough to say about it to create a post.

 

And maybe I don’t have enough to say this time either.  But lately, I have been running into a lot of non-believers, and I have been having a hard time figuring out how to deal with them.

 

I know that there is a very small chance that anything I say could change their minds, but I also feel that I must say something.  We are supposed to bring as many people with us as we can, and it would be wrong not to try.

 

And I also know that someone who has decided not to believe will use whatever they can as a reason to do so.  Or not do so.  And I know that anything I say to them will only sound foolish in their minds.  But I still feel that I should try.

 

On the other hand, it feels almost like walking into a trap.  I don’t want to debate specifics with someone who doesn’t believe the whole.  They want to talk about the pieces when they don’t understand how the pieces fit together.  And since they don’t understand it, any answer you give is dismissed.  And I am getting tired of being attacked by people who don’t understand what they are attacking.

 

Generally, I just feel sorry for people who can’t open their minds or their hearts or step away from their calculated logic long enough to experience the true joy and wonder of God and Christ.

 

And I try to remember that most people who are hostile towards Christians feel that way for a reason.  They have history with people who didn’t understand or misrepresented the word and try to impose difficult beliefs upon them.  And I am sorry for that.

 

In one of his sermons, Joel Osteen said “You are the Lord’s Personal Representative”.  Personal Representative.   That’s important.  I don’t just represent a faith, I represent Him.  If that weren’t such a long phrase, I would write it on my hand, so I would see it and remember it whenever I am about to open my mouth and be rude.  You can’t be rude, you are the Lord’s Personal Representative.  What will this person think of the Lord if you are tacky?

 

So before these non-believers all I can think to do is Represent.  Be strong, be kind, be reasonable.  Listen, nod and present my point of view.  And walk away.  Represent by example.  At least that’s what I think I should try to do.  I try to remember that we have been promised that the Holy Spirit will supply the words when we don’t know what to say.

 

And I try to remember when someone asks those What If and Why Does He questions, whether they just don’t understand or they are trying to trip me up, that Jesus said we were not to put God to the test.  That may not be the answer they are looking for, but it will have to do for now.

 

For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.  Ephesians 5:8 

A Point of View

It was brought to my attention recently -- because my daughter posted a link on facebook -- that the Salvation Army does not include gay people in their organization due to their interpretation of Romans 1:18-32, which they believe states that homosexuals, particularly homosexual parents, which I assume means gay people who adopt children, should be put to death.

This raises a couple of questions. 

First, do we discard everything the Salvation Army does because we don’t agree with them?  I made a joke on facebook about not buying my work jeans there anymore, but the truth is I don’t shop at the Salvation Army.  I don’t find anything there.  I shop at Goodwill and commercial second hand stores.  But I do put change in the bell ringer pots, and I’ve done the Angel Tree a couple of times.  And if we all stop doing that, then people who need our help, maybe to have a Christmas dinner or Christmas presents under the tree or a warm coat, could go without.  And I remembered the passage where a couple of the disciples tell Jesus that they saw a guy casting out demons but not doing so in the name of Christ and they told him to knock it off, and Jesus said No, don’t do that.  Let him be. 

So, I decided that as long as the Salvation Army was doing good things, and there wasn’t anyone else offering the same thing, it was okay to drop change in the bell ringer pots.

And then I looked at Romans 1:18-32.

I am not going to type it out here, because it’s a rather long passage, and that’s a lot of typing, and I wouldn’t want to infringe on any translation copyrights, and some of it is not pertinent.  But it is a rather inflammatory passage.

The first thing you have to do before looking at anything that comes out of Paul’s letters is to remember who they were written to and why.  According to the notes in my Bible, Romans was written to Christians living in a dangerous time, in a city that didn’t particularly want them and had already demonstrated this through violence.  Paul was trying to convince them to remain true to their Christian ideals while not drawing too much attention to themselves.

I thought it was very interesting that they go all the way back to verse 18 to start, because like all good Topic Sentences, verse 18 lets us know who we are talking about.  “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.”   Verses 19 through 23 talk about those to whom God was revealed but who chose to reject him.  Verse 21 says “for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.”  And then he talks about idol worship, and he says that God gave up on these people and let them be as wicked as they wanted and let all the bad things that their bad behavior created fall on them.   That particular thought is repeated a few times.  God just let them fall into degradation, because they chose to ignore him.

Homosexuality isn’t mentioned until verses 26 and 27. “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions.  Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another.  Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”  (The notes in my Bible say that this isn’t actually talking about homosexuality but about people whose sexual appetites have gotten out of control.)

Then there are a whole list of people who are worthy of death.  Including gossips and rebellious children.  I am a terrible gossip.  And I don’t know many children who would make it past the age of fifteen, if we got rid of everyone who rebelled against their parents.  The list also includes haughty people, and boastful people. 

I looked at three different translations, King James, God’s Word and Revised Standard Version, and none of them say the words “put to death”.  They say worthy of death and deserve to die.  But there is quite a difference between those statements.  Put to death implies the act of killing. 

We also need to remember that when Jesus talks about death and dying, he was usually speaking of the spiritually dead.  As in Let the Dead bury the dead.

So what I get out of this is that there were people who became Christian, confessed to loving and knowing God, understood what it was all about, but turned their backs on God to become idol worshippers and porn addicts and evil nasty people, and God said if that’s how you want to be, okay, be that way.  I will let you sink into the muck that you are making.  And you deserve the spiritual death you are experiencing.

That’s what I see.  Someone who wants to see God condemning a particular group of people that they don’t care for or fear or who creep them out could possibly see something else.  If they shut one eye and turned the page sideways.  I have been listening to sermons recently by a man who is really on about traditional churches who in his view are misrepresenting the message of Christ, and he’s seeing the church symbolized in every passage, every parable.  I don’t see it, but he’s looking for it, so he does.

We have the choice of how we decide to interpret the Bible.  We can look at verses with an angry, militant view, and we will find what we want to find.  We can be directed by our fear and our anger.  Or we can look at the verses with love in our hearts. 

 

The Kingdom of God is among you.  Luke 12:17

The Situation and the Terrain

Chaplain Carl said something really profound the other day. Something so meaningful that I felt it needed to be expanded upon. By me.

He said, “I can lead you into a world of Legalism, and you will live lives of sin. Or I can teach you about Grace, and you will sin no more.”

A religious life centered on a list of do’s and don’ts, rights and wrongs --Legalism -- will indeed lead us to a life of sin. Because we will make mistakes. We will mess up. And then we will have Committed Sin.

But a religious life based on Grace and immersed in God’s never ending love of us will lead us to lead lives filled with goodness and mercy and kindness and compassion and right thinking. Sure, we’ll still mess up, but we will not have lost any of God’s love or moved away from Him or be less entitled to his Grace.

Some people want the list of do’s and don’ts. They like the certainty of always knowing exactly what is right and what is wrong. But life isn’t that simple.

A lie is not always a sin. It’s very easy to imagine circumstances where a lie is actually an act of kindness and compassion.

Long time ago, I had a friend who liked to say that in Tactical Theory Class at West Point the correct answer to almost any question was “It depends on the situation and the terrain”. Here’s a situation where I should have thought about that.

Many years ago, I worked at Pizza Hut as a waitress. This was back when pizza was a big deal. There weren’t any five dollar hot and ready deals. No cheap buffets. For some of us, eating out at a pizza parlor was a big night out. I can remember when my kids were small, counting pennies to see if we could also get a salad. When I was waiting tables there, they also offered a pasta dish. Wagon wheel pasta and your choice of what went in it, onions, pepperoni, green peppers. In a little dish that looked like a boat.

 

So this man came in with his three kids, and they each ordered one of these pasta dishes and each one wanted it a different way.  No onions in one, pepperoni and sausage in another.  I don’t think the man ordered anything but the terrible coffee we served there.  And then a few minutes in, he calls me over and tells me that each dish was wrong.  The kids looked uncomfortable.  I offered to make them over or give him the meal for half price.  He opted for half price.  A week later, the same thing happened.  And then again.  The third time, I made very sure that the dishes were make correctly, and when he started to complain, I said no.  No, I know they’re right.  And we never saw the man again. 

In my mind at that time, I was doing the right thing.  I was playing by the rules, and he was lying.  I was standing up for a principal.  But now that I have children and I’ve been poor, I understand that he was just trying to feed his children, give them a treat he could not afford.  My loyalty should not have been to a corporation but to a father who was struggling.  I should have cared less about the rules, the principals, the Legalism, and more about kindness to a person.  I should have said, Oh, I’m so sorry, I don’t know why we can’t get this right.  Comped his meal and sent him home with a pizza. 

 

For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.  1 Corinthians  1:25

Keep it Simple

On a recent episode of “Bones”, Temperance justifies Booth’s anonymous act of charity by quoting an abbreviated version of the Love Verses from First Corinthians.   But instead of “love”, she inserted “charity”.

Charity is patient.  Charity is kind.  It doesn’t sing its own praise.  It doesn’t keep score.

Which is all well and good.  Except that the Love Verses aren’t about Charity.  They are about Love.  This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this.  In fact, I raised a bit of a stink during a Bible Study class when someone else tried to do this.  The Love Verses are about Love, not Charity.

Maybe you could say Love and Charity are interchangeable, but I won’t buy that either. 

I myself used the Love Verses on my wedding invitation, which is also a misrepresentation.  I knew it, but I did it anyway.

It’s a misrepresentation because the Love Verses are about God’s Love for us, Agape love.  They could be used as a model for how we should love each other, which was my justification for using them in my wedding invitation, but they are about God’s unending, unwavering, nonjudgmental love for us, his terribly flawed children, and viewing them as Agape gives them even more strength.  Especially I think the one about not keeping score.

 

We do this a lot.  We take a piece of scripture out of context or with liberal interpretation and we pervert the original meaning until it says what we want it to say.  Some verses do stand on their own, but others need to be in context, or they can only be properly understood when you know who they were spoken to or what the circumstances were that Paul was addressing in that particular letter.

This is generally more scholarship than most people have time for. 

I myself have said “Judge not” when someone is being catty about someone else.  But the real warning of the Judge Not verse is that God will use the same yard stick that we use to judge others by when He judges us. 

 

I watched a news program the other night which featured a reporter spending a week end with the Westboro Baptists.  He questioned one of their signs which said “Fags are Beasts” and used 2^nd Peter 2:12 as the basis for that scripture.  The reporter said I don’t think that’s right, and the kid holding the sign, who seemed a little unsure to me, said it was “an interpretation”.

That could cover basically anything.  If I say 2^nd Peter 2:12 says that Apples are Oranges, I could justify that by saying it’s an interpretation, when what I really mean is it’s a mis-interpretation.

For my thinking, if you have to go more than two steps past the original meaning you’ve over interpreted the verse.

But be that as it may, let us look at 2^nd Peter 2:12.  I wasn’t familiar with it, so I looked it up.  On my phone.  I just love having a Bible in my pocket.

Second Peter, Second Chapter is about “False Teachers and Their Destruction”. 

This is the NIV version:  But these people blaspheme in matters they do not understand.  They are like unreasoning animals, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like animals they too will perish.

Verse 10 says These People are those “who follow the corrupt desire of the flesh and despise authority”.  So maybe you could say that These People are Homosexuals.  Maybe.

But to get from Verse 10 to Verse 12, you have to read Verse 11:  yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not heap abuse on such beings when bringing judgment on them from the Lord.

Interpret that how you will.

It is easier of course to just refute everything the Westboro Baptists preach with one simple verse.

 

God is Love.  1 John 4:8