The Gospel Changed Marriage, Not the Gays

The following is my essay, excerpted from the book: Why the Church of the Nazarene Should Be Fully LGBTQ+ Affirming.  A lot of people have asked me to explain, scripturally why I feel gender should not be a factor in marriage.  Well, this is it.  Hopefully you'll read it with the spirit of reverence and respect with which it was written.

The Gospel Changed Marriage, Not the Gays

by Ryan Scott

"Surprisingly, the most compelling scriptural argument for Christians to affirm marriage between two men is our understanding of women."

During my time in seminary, I dove deeply into the scriptures for support of our denomination’s stance on gay marriage. If I was going to be a pastor in the Church of the Nazarene, I wanted to be prepared not only with a statement, but with a solid explanation for our beliefs. I found, though, the more I studied, scripture gave me fewer and fewer reasons to oppose same-sex couples and more and more reasons to affirm them.

At the core of everything is our understanding of marriage itself.

When it comes to a theological argument about LGBTQ+ inclusion, you can throw out the issues of sex and biology—the Church of the Nazarene already affirms that the most appropriate context for sex is within a committed, Christ-centered marriage. The answer to who should be sleeping with whom is simple: spouses.

From there, the only remaining questions are ‘Who should be in a marriage and why?’

If you look at the history of marriage and the evolution of theology both in scripture and after it was written, you’ll see a stark difference in how God’s people have answered those questions. There’s an obvious movement from marriage as a social institution to marriage as a fully religious commitment, and it mirrors the movement of women as property to the recognition of women as full equals (at least in theory).

While our wedding liturgy talks about Genesis 2:24 as the foundation of Christian marriage, citing Adam and Eve becoming one flesh, it’s an interpretive leap that may not be wholly appropriate.

There’s no mention of marriage at all in Genesis 2 (there’s no separate word for ‘wife’ in Greek or Hebrew, it’s the word for ‘woman’ that becomes the English ‘wife’ when translators think it’s appropriate). In this passage we find only the kind of holy commitment to one another we now associate with marriage. But it took human society, as well as the Church, a long time to get from one to the other.

Early human marriage was a simple transfer of property. Women were objects to be owned—first by their fathers and then by their husbands. In fact, this social arrangement was so unseemly to God’s people that priests wanted nothing to do with performing or solemnizing marriages until the late Middle Ages, when the power of the Church was waning and requiring clerical approval of a marriage proved a particularly effective means of social control.

The religious rules around marriage all had to do with property rights. Fornication was a violation of a father by ‘defiling’ his property (daughter) and adultery was a violation of a husband by ‘defiling’ his wife—again, a property crime.

There’s no scriptural prohibition of extra-marital sex by men, so long as these other rules are observed. There was no written recrimination for, say, a man sleeping with a prostitute or his own servant girl, until Paul started calling it out by name in 1 Corinthians.

Modern conservative Christian sexual ethics essentially took the scriptural chastity rules for women and applied them to men, where it just as easily could’ve gone the other way (which is essentially what modern liberal Christian sexual ethics look like). In either event, things changed because we went from viewing women as property to viewing them as people.

Galatians says there is “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.” It’s not saying that these distinctions don’t matter, that men and women are the same; it’s saying these distinctions are not of degree. Jews are not better than Gentiles. Slaves do not have a different status from free people. Men and women are not fundamentally different in value.

Many use this verse to support LGBTQ+ inclusion. I do not. I don’t believe inclusion can be proof-texted, just as exclusion cannot be derived from any one or series of verses. Affirmation of gay marriage arises as the necessary theological conclusion of broader arguments made in scripture. Our understanding of marriage has changed because of the massive theological shifts made in the process of God’s people better understanding how God has called us to live.

We see, even in the Hebrew scriptures, the beginning of the marriage analogy for the relationship between God and God’s people that continues through the New Testament. The Church is the bride of Christ and God’s faithfulness to us becomes the template for our marriage relationships with one another.

Paul introduces the notion of mutuality in marriage that was earth-shattering for the time. 1 Corinthians 7 teaches that women share ownership, not only of their own bodies, but of their husbands’ bodies as well, and that sexual practice in marriage should be by mutual consent. He’s tearing apart the notion of marriage as property exchange and recognizing the relational aspect, something we take for granted today, but is a relatively recent development.

Up until the last 100 years, almost no one married for love. Sure, spouses might have loved each other and certainly love can grow in any relationship where it’s fostered. But love as a primary motivation for marriage wasn’t even contemplated at any point in the Bible’s writing.

The point of marriage was to solidify or improve social conditions, to secure peace between powerful families, or to enhance the economic status of one or both parties. This was built primarily around having children. The purpose of marriage was to produce heirs, which is why barrenness is seen as such a curse throughout the bible.

For most of human history, if you wanted love, you looked outside your marriage. This is, again, why Paul’s words are so ground-breaking: husbands love your wives as Christ loves the Church. For Paul, and subsequently for Christian theology, marriage was not just about meeting your wife’s physical needs to enable child-bearing, but to care for her as a person. Your beloved is God’s beloved, and you must care for them the way God cares for them.

This modern, thoroughly scriptural, thoroughly Christian understanding of marriage is then read back into Genesis 2. As God declares “the two become one flesh,” we understand a far deeper meaning than anyone at the time of its original writing could’ve comprehended.

Genesis communicates the human need for connection and community. We are not designed to be alone. We need partners. We need each other. Marriage has become our best earthly approximation of the connection we were created to have with each other.

We embrace Jesus’ teaching from Matthew that in the Kingdom “people will neither marry nor be given in marriage,” because we’ll be able to love everyone as God intends. Until that time, we commit to focusing on one relationship above all others.

Thus, our understanding of Christian marriage is about as far from the social regulation of female property transfer as it could possibly be. We have completely transformed the institution into something beautiful and important and good, but also something unrecognizable to the writers and first readers of scripture.

So, no, Paul doesn’t talk about gay marriage, likely because he couldn’t en- vision it. It wouldn’t make any sense in his social context. He was just beginning to apply Christian principles to what was an entirely secular economic and social system. At the same time, though, gay marriage makes perfect sense in our contemporary context, largely because of the ways in which Paul himself reframed the Christian understanding of marriage.

The final piece of this puzzle is gender. Genesis talks about a man and a woman. Male and female biology fit together for procreation in obvious ways. The analogies in scripture are gendered, referencing husband and wife. But, if Christian marriage, as we understand it, is two people committing to God, and to each other, to love their spouse as God loves God’s people, does it matter what gender those two people happen to be?

It can’t matter—not unless we’re willing to require men and women to inhabit specific and differentiated gender roles. If there is some innate difference (beyond our sex organs) that makes men and women truly unique from each other, then there’s some reason to make a gender requirement in marriage.

But scripture doesn’t support that differentiation, not anywhere from Genesis to Revelation.

Sure, scripture was written in the midst of a patriarchal society; but much like the theological evolution of marriage, it also challenges the faithful to a broader, more egalitarian understanding of men, women, and humanity in general.

There’s insufficient space here to fully explain the equality inherent in Genesis 2, but the literature is voluminous that the spouse God crafted for the first human was an equal and complementary being. For years, we’ve gendered this complementarity, relying on stereotypes that women are sensitive and men are strong, women are carers and men are conquerors, that women and men possess uniquely different traits that must fit together for marriage to work.

We don’t have to deny this complementary picture of marriage to expand its definition beyond a man and a woman. If anything, those gendered stereotypes limit both men and women from being the full, beautiful creation God intends them to be. How much pain and misery have we caused by communicating there are only certain ways to be “real” men and women?

Things are never that simple.

I do most of the cooking in our home. I do the shopping, and I stayed home when our daughter was young. My wife asks for power tools for her birthday, makes most of the money, and enjoys getting her hands dirty far more than I do.

Yet she’s also the decorator, finely attuned to aesthetics, while I spend much of my
free time watching sports. We don’t fit any gendered stereotype or its opposite. We’re unique individuals who happen to be male and female. What’s more important is that we complement each other in ways that make our marriage stronger than either of us could be on our own. We got married because we were convinced we could do more for God’s Kingdom together than we could do separately.

I know plenty of same-sex couples for whom the same is true, whose marriages are a blessing to them, to God, and to the world. I see no reason to deny them an equal place in the Kingdom of God or in the Church of the Nazarene. Christ calls us to break down barriers, cross lines of division, and embrace that self-giving love of God which is the only hope for the salvation of the world.

The Church should be at the forefront of recognizing, affirming, and embracing marriage for all people as it is the natural next step in the Spirit-led transformation of marriage from misogyny and oppression to freedom, equality, and love.

Adam, Isaiah, and Paul may not have understood what they were starting at the time, but God is always at work among the faithful to transmit and trans- form God’s world into what it was created to be. Recognition and affirmation of LGBTQ+ couples is not a capitulation to culture, but a gospel-infused counter-cultural movement to further welcome God’s coming Kingdom.

Open and Relational Theology by Thomas Jay Oord

My first impression upon beginning to read Open and Relational Theology, the newest book by philosopher Thomas Jay Oord* was simply that it feels like a lot of the same material covered in his recent book, God Can't.  In many ways, it is repetitive.  For those of us who read and study theology and philosophy quite a bit, there's not a lot of "new" in Open and Relational Theology (although I believe its the introduction of Oord's new word "amipotent" - which alone might be worth the price of the book, especially for the curious).  However, for the intended audience, whom I believe to be "regular" folks struggling with some of the "big" questions of life and belief, it's probably really helpful.

While God Can't deals specifically with the problem of evil - why evil exists in a world where God also exists - Open and Relational Theology addresses the whole of faith more broadly.  It comes across as an evangelistic tome, of sorts - not one in which Oord is attempting to covert traditionally theological Christians to a new way of looking at God and the world, but one in which he's attempting to provide a path to faith for people who may be struggling or have given up entirely on a Christian world view.

It is, as the subtitle explains, a mere introduction - probably more basic and less deep than even God Can't and certainly a good entry point for those looking to explore different ways of answering religion's big questions.  If you're already familiar with Oord's writings or those of other Open or Relational thinkers, Open and Relational Theology probably shouldn't be a high priority on your "to read" list - but if you, like me and many others, struggle to explain these unique and different approached to theology to other people, it may be a book you should buy multiple copies of to keep on hand and pass out.

Oord provides discussion questions at the end of each chapter, and links to accompanying videos, as well as an extensive list of further reading resources, all of which are great starting points for additional exploration.  I'm not really the intended audience for a book like Open and Relational Theology, but I'm really glad that one of our best thinkers is dedicating so much time and effort to writing books accessible to everyday people.

*Full disclosure: I was given a free copy of in exchange for this review - although no preconditions were placed upon said review.

The Power of Why

This is a post I published at Misfits Theology Club.

 

I snapped at her – the small, gracious woman who gave so much of her life to children’s ministry in our congregation – I snapped at her in a way that was most definitely cruel, if instinctual. I was the associate pastor at a very traditional, conservative-leaning congregation.  Seminary trained.  Third generation. Pastor’s kid.  I was supposed to know, to go along, to say the right thing.

We were discussing some lessons we were planning, maybe for VBS. I brought up that one particular passage may be a little complex for younger children to fully understand. She responded that children are used to being told what to do, that sometimes you just need to obey. Kids can be told “God said it, we don’t need to understand.”

“I do.”

Innocuous words, but the tone was unmistakable.  I regret the way they came out, but certainly not saying them.

The very background that was supposed to form me into the guy with all the right responses, the one to toe the party line; the background that was supposed to provide me with an endless supply of Sunday School answers, did just the opposite.  I can’t stand them.

In the years since this particular awkward conversation I’ve learned to be more diplomatic, more “pastoral,” as they say.  I try not to crush the faith and spirit of generous, good-natured servants of God quite so quickly.

But the point remains.

I do need to know why God is asking me to do something.

Maybe it’s a failing. I’m willing to entertain that option.  Perhaps I simply lack the faith I’m supposed to have and rely too much on my own intellect. I’ve definitely been guilty of that before.

I’ve found, though, that when people dismiss the question “why” on matters of faith, it tends to limit the experience.  Those “trust and obey” traditions feel empty and deficient and entirely unsatisfactory.  When the “why” is encouraged, though – or at least tolerated – the expansive nature of God and faith becomes real; the power and potential of the divine in the world seems limitless and worthwhile.

“God said it and that’s good enough for me” is a profound statement of faith… if you’re 100% confident God did, in fact, say it.  AND you’re 100% confident you correctly heard what God said.  AND you’re 100% confident you perfectly understood what God meant.

We create false certainty, because uncertainty is so terrifying, but there are other choices beyond blind obedience and the scary unknown.

I’m more and more convinced that if we’ve searched for the answer, really struggled and prayed and studied and searched to answer why God might be asking us to do something and we still can’t figure it out, maybe we’re missing the point.

Back in Genesis, God accepted Abel’s offering and rejected that of Cain.  Why?  It doesn’t say.

Your pastor or your mother or your Sunday School teacher might’ve come up with an answer, but the truth is they don’t really know any more than you do.  Scripture doesn’t tell us.

That uncertainty can be scary, if we think the point of Genesis 4 is to teach us what offerings are worthy and which ones aren’t.  But maybe that’s not the point?  Maybe Genesis 4 is teaching us that our offerings matter far less than whether or not we are our brother’s keeper, that our responsibility to God and to each other is not dependent on our favor or status or situation?

An unanswered ‘why’ might simply mean we have to dig deeper, look closer, take a different perspective, and get creative.  Too often we’re limited by the either/or boxes our biology tells us everything should be.  Reality is not black and white and there is always another option.

1 Peter instructs us to always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ.  I don’t think “God said it” will be good enough for any “outsider” who asks, so it’s not good enough for me.

I still believe what I eventually got around to saying in that meeting where I reacted so strongly to the dismissal of the “why:” Our kids deserve the limitless possibilities of this magnificent creation in which we live, and that comes only if the “whys” are encouraged.

This is my first post here at The Misfits Theology Club. I hope everything I write and every conversation I have revolves around the question of what God is calling us to do and why.  That is the core of faith and life.  That is how we become the people God created us to be.

Lover or Maniac

Here's a story for you:

A woman meets a man (think your typical RomCom meet cute) - he loves her from the first moment. Nothing obsessive, just perfect - the way anyone would want to be loved (again, think RomCom). He cares for her needs and puts her above himself and works hard to make sure she's fulfilled in every possible way. He loves her so much the story becomes literally unbelievable, because the guy just seems too perfect.

Eventually, she wakes up one morning in a state of dread and knows precisely what to do. After dinner that evening, she breaks up with him. "It's not you, it's me," she says, "I literally can't wrap my head around why you love me. I'm just not capable of believing I deserve it. I need time to work on myself and reach a point when I feel worthy of this love."

He responds in the best possible way - not pushy or getting upset, but understanding - he says he'll move away and not contact her, but always be waiting for whenever she's ready. "That's not good enough," she says, "I couldn't live with myself if I knew you were not living your life. Please, move on; find someone new."

For fifty years they don't see or hear from each other. Neither one ever finds anyone else, but she's so fulfilled with the healthy life she builds, she never thinks of him again. He doesn't intend to wait for her - he tries to pursue his life and has other relationships - but he never stops loving her.

One day, decades later, both are going into the same cafe in Budapest. He holds the door for her and their eyes meet. They instantly remember each other and sit down together to catch up. He doesn't tell her all the time he spent loving her from afar, knowing it will only make things difficult. He does suggest they continue to see each other and make the most of their remaining years. She declines again - their life would undoubtedly be great together, but she's had such a wonderful life without his love and she doesn't want to change.

As they get up to leave, he leads her to a back door, with a staircase, where he's prepared a torture chamber for just this moment. Using the best advancements in medical science, he keeps her alive for years and years, indefinitely, really, and all the while he tortures her - painful, brutal torture as repayment for rejecting his love. She pleads for him to stop, agreeing to spend eternity with him if he will, but it's too late - and the torture continues to this day and probably will go on forever.

I know it takes a bit of a gruesome turn there at the end, but it's supposed to catch you off guard. I thought about writing the whole thing up like a movie script, but I think there's enough here to get the idea. I came up with story while I was pondering heaven and hell. This feels like the traditional evangelical conception of God - at least in the way it was colloquially communicated to me growing up.

I know that the woman in the story is perhaps a little to good to be true. There's no way she could really have a happy life without God and all that, but she's not really the point. In fact, she's not the point at all. I'm more concerned with how we talk about God. Is God really someone who would bend over backward for a period of time to express selfless, perfect love only to entirely change personalities at an arbitrary hinge point? It just doesn't make sense - on any number of levels.

It's a bit sacrilegious (in some directly literally sense, in that it's only really offensive to a particular kind of religion) to ask questions about judgement, eternity, and the end of the world as we know it. At the same time, those questions have always been asked and debated, if also suppressed. Things are just not ever as neat and tidy as we'd like them to be.

One thing I don't think, though, is that God would change who God is simply because some new era has begun. I know dispensationalism is pretty popular (even if people don't know they've embraced it), but I don't think it holds mustard scripturally or logically. I hope this story illustrates that in some way. Perhaps it makes more sense (and a better Lifetime movie*) if it ends this way.

As they get up to leave, the man vows to himself to change the very fabric of time, to seek out ways to both keep his beloved alive, well, and healthy, but also to stay out of her life, as she requested. He succeeds in his endeavors, spending his life, and eternity thereafter, simply keeping her happy and alive from afar, all the while hoping one day she'll come around.

*Let's be honest, Lifetime would make it with either ending - or maybe with both. They're pretty shameless.

Talking to Kids About Difficult Things

I have a five year old daughter. As a result, I've spent far more time than I ever expected talking to parents of young children. One of the issues I've run into lately has been the debate over when kids are "ready" to talk about various topics. There's often a sense that the outside world is just waiting to stream into our children's lives and overly complicate things.

That's probably true, although that same danger exists for us, as adults, and every other human being on the planet. The world is a confusing, difficult place for anyone to live in - but maybe that's the whole point? I wonder if perhaps we seek to keep our children "innocent," as we like to say, because we, ourselves, aren't quite comfortable understanding, let alone explaining, complex ideas to them (especially when they have varying levels of ability to understand in the first place).

One of the kids in my daughter's preschool class has two moms. My daughter's never mentioned it; I'm not sure she's even really noticed. I have heard parents, though, lamenting their frustration about having "that" be forced into their child's life when the parents would rather save "that" for a later conversation.

I'm not sure "that" would be my approach to parenting, but I certainly understand where they were coming from. Then I got to thinking. My daughter wasn't even two yet when she could articulate what a princess was and understood that a princess goes with a prince. She still doesn't have even the remotest understanding of what "romance" is, but she knows that moonlight boat rides, evening strolls, and late night magic carpet adventures are the kinds of things that bring two people together.

She doesn't have much capacity to understand attraction, orientation, dating, or marriage, but she has some semblance of knowledge about what a relationship is. She's already been shaped and formed in the language of relationships and we've never had a conversation about it. In light of that, it doesn't really make sense not to bring up complex topics, because life has already done it.

Sure, she's not going to understand, at five, what it means to seek out a spouse, but she's forming the foundation from which she'll make those decisions in the future.


Like my time talking to parents, I've spent far more of my life than I ever expected working with teenagers, both in and out of the Church. The most important lesson I've learned from those experiences is that kids always have more knowledge and exposure to things than their parents ever suspect.

This is why I've always tried to answer every question my daughter has as completely as I possibly can. We've had conversations about death and dying, about homelessness, poverty, and violence. I don't think she understands much, if anything, about those topics other than they exist and they're problematic. Then again, on the way to school this morning she told me, "Dad, if Mimi (her best friend) and I had lived a long time ago, we never would've been friends." When I asked what she meant she said, "A long time ago they didn't let black people and white people live near each other and if we didn't live near each other we wouldn't go to the same school."

Did I mention she's five? Yeah.

We try to avoid talking with our kids about difficult things until we absolutely have to, because we love them and we want them to be blissfully unaware for as long as possible. But they're going to be aware long before we ever know they're aware. I know we think our kids will be different, but my experience tells me that's just not true.

I've long proposed that the most important tool for Christians to practice and possess is creativity. Creativity allows us to think outside the systems and structures we're given and respond differently to the world around us. It's a gospel creativity that lets us cut through the divisive and partisan nature of our world to present the beautiful alternative that is the Kingdom of God.

It's that creativity we must foster in talking to our kids about difficult subjects while also presenting the hope that we have in Christ. It is the middle way, between sheltering our children and leaving them exposed to the world. As parents, we know them best, and it should be our job to introduce them to the already-not yet world in which they live, one full of great sorrow and tremendous grace. I don't believe there's anything we can't say to our kids, so long as we foster this creativity to speak to them in ways that make sense for who and where they are in life.

Avoidance sends a message of fear. Addressing topics, even difficult ones, puts legs to our faith claims that God is in control, that the victory has already been one, that love and peace and hope will win out in the end. Yeah, it's not always simple, but our kids need to know we wrestle beside them and aren't afraid to wade through the mess together.

One of the more difficult things I've done as a parent was also the most rewarding. I sat down with my daughter and read through her (age appropriate) "how does my body work/where do babies come from" book. The most difficult part was reading all of the proper biological terms without pausing or stumbling or otherwise letting on that this was something to be embarrassed about. In the end, she asked a few questions, but we've had to go back every few months and read it again because she could care less about these topics. At least I know, though, when she has questions, there's a foundation to discuss them together.

A few weeks ago my daughter came in crying about something - probably neighborhood kids being mean - whether it was embarrassment, fear, or confusion, she just wouldn't talk about it. I found myself telling her something spontaneously, and, as I was saying it, realizing, deep down, that it was one of the truest things I've ever said. I told her, essentially, there are lots of things you'll do in life, some things I'll like and some things I won't, but the single most important thing to me, as your dad, is that you'll always be able to talk to me.

I mean that. At least I'm working towards that in my own life. If she makes decisions about boys (or girls), drugs or beliefs or money or any number of other things I may not want for her, I'd much rather she do them and talk to me, than avoid them and not. I don't think this is the typical attitude our churches take towards parenting, but I can't imagine any other way to do it.

Listen, I'm under no delusion that we'll always be able to talk to each other about difficult things - she's only five and it already doesn't go as well as I'd like - but I know these early moments, when the stakes are much lower, are great practice for shaping both of us into the kind of people who can have the best possible relationship later.

I'm convinced it starts with telling the truth - all the time. I answer every question as honestly as possible. So far she understands very little of it, but she knows I'm not hiding anything. I want her to ask questions, to know nothing is off limits, that every question is a good one.

As parents, we've got access to a God-given imagination and an incredible creativity to meet our kids where they are. If we do mess something up, we have great faith in a God who reconciles all things and draws all people - young and old - to God's self. Our children don't need to be sheltered; they need to be prepared, not irresponsibly, not beyond what they can understand, but we're the ones who know what's out there and we have to be the ones preparing them to face the world. If they can't count on us before we think they're ready, they won't count on us when we don't know they're ready.

Parenting is the single most difficult thing we'll ever do, but I'm coming to realize, it's not something you do for your kids, it's something you do with them. Good luck and God speed.

Non-Violence and Competition

A few weeks ago I had someone ask if my commitment to non-violence and rejection of nationalism affect how I view sports (which are something I view a lot). I'd never really put those things together before, but there's a chance these things are analogous. My personal development in these philosophical and theological (not to mention political) directions have corresponded to my development away from specific rooting interests. I connected them theologically in a different way in a previous post, but this is something a bit different.

I've never been drawn to the violence of sport. I don't watch football for the hits; in fact, I never watched football until I started playing fantasy football and, if I were to stop playing fantasy football, I'd watch the NFL an awful lot less. Like most teenage boys, I had a brief flirtation with professional wrestling, but even then I knew it wasn't real; I was more intrigued by the physical punishment those guys take purely for dramatics. I'm similarly curious about boxing and MMA, so I watch occasionally, but not for the violence.

This is probably most indicative of how I watch sports: for the individual perseverance. I enjoy most the testing of one person against the limits of their ability. One of my favorite events to watch is something they rarely televise anymore: adventure racing.* These are multi-day team races where four people have to orienteer through rugged environment using rock climbing, biking, kayaks, and any number of other modes of transportation to complete courses often hundreds of miles long.

I like cycling, skiing, and track quite a bit. Yes, these are competitive sports where people try to beat each other at almost a base level of competition, but the real drama is individual, it's competing against one's self, the record books, and the limits of human possibility. I suppose there's some connection between this and my commitment to non-violence - a belief that victory doesn't have to come at the expense of another - but at this point, I think it would be disingenuous to claim a correlation. I might just be naturally predisposed to both non-violence and individual competition.

The nationalism bit is a little more overt. In the US, football, our #1 sport, has committed so deeply to wrapping itself in the flag. Sporting events, but especially big football games, like the Superbowl, have taken on a national identity, whirling our love of national superiority, consumerism, and celebrity culture into a frenzy of consumption. There is no more common venue for the liturgy of nationalism than a football game. It is a core part of our civic religion and it does create some separation with regards to how involved I feel comfortable being.

I used to be more conflicted about the violence inherent in the game itself, but there really does seem to be a cultural shift towards safety. I don't believe someone's choice to make a living in a dangerous way entirely absolves societal responsibility, but I don't think it's automatically a societal condemnation either. That's an unsettled issue at present, but I know I get less an impression of Romans watching gladiators kill themselves for sport than I used to, which, hopefully is a step in the right direction (although, I acknowledge it could be exactly the opposite).

I do think the nationalism thing becomes an issue only when its connected to the cultural or political zeitgeist. The team I follow most closely is the US Men's National Soccer Team (USMNT) - but soccer has never embodied the US cultural ideal the way football does. Despite being our most popular youth sport, people still make fun of the ties, the small stature of many players, and the tendency to be knocked down rather than fight to remain on one's feet. As soccer permeates the US, I'm not sure it will ever feel like a "national" sport.

When I say I'm opposed to borders, it doesn't mean we have to get rid of countries - nations often help preserve and uphold cultural and historic traditions that define a particular people from a particular place - I just mean that no one should be treated any differently because of where they reside. My rejection of nationalism is a rejection of power games and competition, not cultural identity. You don't have to be better than someone else to be proud of your own history and traditions.

As I said, this does align pretty closely with the way I watch sports. My greatest memories are of individual achievements. I cried when Tiger Woods won the Masters, again when Tony Hawk first landed the 900; one of my enduring memories is watching a young Simon Ammann announce his presence to the world with a double gold in ski jumping at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City (still one of the least likely Olympic accomplishments in history). Hard working individuals accomplishing things beyond their perceived ability is why I love sport - it's why I choose to follow NCAA Division III basketball over its more prominent bretheren and why I can hardly stand to watch regular season contests in the NBA, NHL, or MLB - those pros just rarely go all out unless absolutely everything is on the line.

Even those few moments of communal euphoria I've experienced in relationship to sport have been more about experiencing something unique than about defeating an opponent. I recall waking up in Boston on days when Pedro Martinez was pitching for the Red Sox. The air was different; there was a palpable, joyful tension permeating existence. He won a lot, but I don't remember wins, I remember the feeling. The same one driving back to Boston late on a snowy night after the Patriots won their first Superbowl. I'm not a Boston sports fan - those aren't my teams - but the enjoyment of accomplishing what was thought impossible was beautiful. I remember watching Vince Carter hit his first career game-winning shot to beat the Celtics in Boston. People were still euphoric, having seen what everyone thought at the time to be the birth of a new superstar.

If anything, my enjoyment of sports has been influenced by my theology because of my strong belief that everything we do, from the mundane to the exceptional, points to a greater truth. We all long to live in those moments. Some take them from defeating an enemy or flouting their superiority; I tend to find them in someone being as completely human as their capable of being.




*Crazy enough, I was at the barber a couple months ago, and met a retired ESPN cameraman who had covered the first X Games Adventure Race, which I remember watching. He said the cost to cover those things is astronomically high and no where near cost effective for the few people who will tune in - which explains why you can't see coverage of them on TV anymore.

Nazarene Catechism, Part 3

Based on the drop off in page hits from part 1 to part 2, I want to thank the 13 of you reading this third part of my response to the Nazarene catechism document that's come out recently. Part 1 dealt with the overall format and perspective of the piece and Part 2 addressed the false sense of unity into which it plays.

In Part 3, I'm hoping to just address some specific problems, questions, and disagreements I have with what was expressed. This is essentially a catch-all and very personal. I would expect anyone reading the document to have similar, if not the same, issues with any number of answers. I am not attempting to make argument, but simply express my opinions as a member of the Nazarene clergy in response to what was presented. I think this goes chronologically through the piece, but I apologize if I got something out of order.


In the answer to Question 11, the catechism states that God creates "motivated by holy love." This is problematic because it separates God from love; I'd argue the witness of scripture says God is love. There is nothing else that can motivate God, using the verb in that way implies otherwise. This answer specifically separates love from both God's perfection and creative activity.

I'm pretty uncomfortable with how Question 15 is answered. It's awfully, uncomfortably presumptuous for us to claim that "human authors of sacred scripture... wrote down what God wants to teach us." It might be an attempt to skirt verbal inspiration, but it does an equally adequate job of removing the human element from the process. "What God wants to teach us" implies interpretation and doesn't directly address the text itself. I'd argue God continues to teach us new things through this living and active text - things that previous generations of Christians may never have or been able to know. Similarly, future Christians will undoubtedly discover and learn more than our accumulated knowledge - and thus, what we know from scripture, cannot be all God wants to teach us. We need to keep our answer to these kids of questions to statements about the text itself - "it is sufficient" being the primary descriptor - instead of making claims about the interpretation of such.

Not to be entirely critical, I think this project does a pretty good job of addressing original sin (Question 35 and some around it). These days, I prefer talking about sin as lack and I don't think our traditional conceptions of "Fall" adequately reflect scripture or reality, but an emphasis on self-centeredness and alienation are both strong and consistent starting points.

That being said, the answer to Question 45 talks about "restoring the image of God in humankind." I don't believe that image is or can be lost. I know at some point I heard theological arguments about a strong reformed position (wherein the image of God in humanity is completely lost) versus a moderated position in which it's partially lost, but I don't find either of those options particularly compelling or very Wesleyan (let alone scriptural). It's much more appropriate to speak of humanity, and creation in general, as moving towards something - that creation begins perfect (in the Hebrew sense of the word: fit for a purpose) and continues to grow in perfection as it moves towards completeness or fulfillment. I think this "lost image" business plays into a notion of "Fall" that's not very reflective of scripture or reality. This comes up again in the answer to Question 71.

The Ephesians passage used in the answer to Question 56 is a quotation of Psalms to talk about the ascension of Christ, but that passage makes no mention at all of other people (or "souls") also ascending (which the answer includes with Christ's ascension). This is irresponsible exegesis and irresponsible theology - no matter how popular and common the idea might be.

The answer to Question 64 talks about an eternal separation from God, which is certainly possible given our Articles of Faith, but is not a required belief.

In the answer to Question 72, it speaks of individual Christians as "temples of the Holy Spirit," when the scripture itself clearly speaks collectively of the Church as THE temple of the Holy Spirit. I get that we, in the Western world, are perilously stuck in our individualism, but this is basic Biblical scholarship. It's fairly frequent mistakes like this (or, worse, playing fast and loose with scripture to preserve commonly held beliefs) that make it difficult to trust this document as a reliable source of theological instruction. It causes me to doubt the vigorousness (vigorosity?) of its theological review process.

I mentioned it in Part 2, but I want to reaffirm my approval of the answer to Question 91 and its strong implication that no one should be "re-baptized." I happen to believe no one CAN be re-baptized, but this is as clear a statement on the matter as we've ever had. It's still probably inappropriate for the piece to do so, give our polity and practice, but at least its a mistake I agree with this time.

The answer to Questions 111 and 141 imply that love of God and love of neighbor are somehow different. Why would we do this? Jesus holds them together and scripture routinely connects them. The very fact that we affirm a relational God of self-giving love should precipitate the affirmation of our role as relational, self-giving creatures. We cannot be individual Christians any more than we can be individual humans. Perhaps there's some nod to the old hierarchy of God, Family, Church, World, etc - but there are far more scripturally aware and creatively constructive ways (check this book out for one of them) to talk about priorities without sacrificing this pretty important theological concept.

In the answer to Question 120 we use a Torah reference to describe the new covenant in Christ. Why? If that reality was already revealed to God's people at or around the same time as the original covenant, why is there a need for a second? Obviously we do need a new covenant or we wouldn't have one, but this answer doesn't really address the question (and sort of creates a new one); it's more an issue of confusing wording than real theological problems.

We should not make the fifth commandment (Questions 133 and 134) about the nuclear family, but remember the tribal culture in which it was given. This enforces a faulty priority system (mentioned above) that doesn't properly reflect scripture or theology very well.

The sixth commandment (Question 135) says "thou shalt not kill." Translating it as murder is a terribly irresponsible theological interpretation that allows many to justify evil in the name of God (which is, itself, a violation of the third commandment).

The answer to Question 136 compares homosexual acts to rape. I recognize I'm in the distinct minority in the Church of the Nazarene in advocating for treating each person as a unique individual, ignoring categories of gender and sexuality as means of categorization, however, this is still a pretty uncharitable means of dealing with an issue that is far from definitive and probably worth more than a throwaway question towards the end of a giant document like this.

The legalistic weaseling in the answer to Question 137 is staggering. We've somehow made this broad, complex commandment into a defense of modern, western notions of private property (including an overt reference to 'intellectual property,' which doesn't actually mean anything outside a contemporary legal context). I believe a scriptural position might define stealing as a child of God claiming ownership of anything.

The answer to Question 140 restricts coveting to thoughts and desires that lead to stealing or adultery - which unnecessarily limits the notion of discontent inherent in the commandment. Coveting is anytime we're unhappy with our situation or find ourselves deserving of something better - it's a lack of humility and an abundance of self-centeredness.

As mentioned before, the answer to Question 141 says, "Our most ardent desire should be a longing for God alone." I disagree - our most ardent desire should be fully giving ourselves to the other in love. Which might be solved if we didn't separate love of God from love of neighbor. They've made this sentence a full-page graphic in the catechism; I think this is full of good intentions, but theologically and practically problematic. A document of this nature needs to be beyond good intentions.

The spiritualizing of "give us this day our daily bread" (Question 159) is offensive to Christ. It drives our attention from the realities of our physical world and distracts us from genuine trust in God. It lets us off the hook for trusting ourselves for everyday needs. Yes, a balance of idealism and realism is required for Christian ethics in this time between Kingdom's institution and fulfillment, but we must continually challenge ourselves to live into that Kingdom, not make excuses for those injustices in which we have almost no choice but to participate.


I'm really not sure what to make of this document over all. At the beginning of Part 1 I talked about how I don't feel like we should be content with efforts like this, which are well-intentioned, but almost completely useless. Yes, you might be able to use some of these questions as starting points for discussion on various theological themes, but this is no better a document than dozens of others out there which could be used for the same purpose. Furthermore, it just so infrequently feels like genuine care is put into the theology behind these attempts, at least less care is put into theology than packaging or simply the internal drive to create them.

Then again, maybe I'm just screaming into the void. If so, well, that's really all I ever intended this blog to be anyway. Sorry to have wasted your time.

Nazarene Catechism, Part 2

This will be Part the Second of three outlining my response to the Nazarene catechism document that's been floating around the last week or so. Part 1 can be viewed here. In that post, I talked about how the format itself and much of the perspective of the writing were really not appropriate for theology in present and future days. While I applaud the effort, the result seems a bit short-sighted and short-lived.

This post is more a reflection on the influence of what seems to be a concerted effort from our Board of General Superintendents to push 'unity' throughout the denomination. Not that I believe unity is bad - quite the contrary - it's just that this push for unity seems more an effort to silence discussion on things in which people are very much in disagreement about. Rather than stress those things which arise from and promote actual unity, we tend to provide a party line and then act as if everyone is on board. That's troubling, if not unexpected.

The catechism document, "One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism" has this notion infused throughout. One of the most innocuous examples is the continued references to "unfermented grape juice" when discussing communion. I know 99% of Nazarene congregations use unfermented grape juice, but the Manual says "unfermented wine," which is actually different. They've basically just interpreted the Manual to say what they think it means - not a problem on the grape juice front, but more troublesome when issues are of greater import.

The best example of this is the answer to Question 123, dealing with our core theological distinctive: sanctification or holiness. The answer here is simple and defensible, but it seems to work against the traditional Nazarene position that something happens in sanctification that is different from salvation. This answer talks about a journey that starts on the cross and culminates at the resurrection, which doesn't sound much different from those other non-holiness explanations of sanctification.

I think this presentation is better than what we've done before, which leads to a sort of nebulous sinlessness, no matter how much we renounce the word. At the same time, I wouldn't want to stop wrestling with the difficulty of communicating a second work of grace, which is a real danger in this presentation. I appreciate that this answer provides cover for the proposed Article X changes at the upcoming General Assembly (although I wish we could avoid wording that basically marginalizes crisis entirely), having this answer in this place feels like putting the cart before the horse. Just because this answer maybe seems more appropriate and responsible than what we've said in the past, doesn't mean it isn't glossing over real differences among our membership - about our most central theological doctrine!

I'll include a few more examples of these at the end of this post, but the unity problems in this catechism run a bit deeper than just internal disagreements about interpretation or practice. There's a stronger undercurrent of forced unity and overgeneralization that's real problematic for scriptural and theological discussion.

Page 15 of the document gives an almost full page quote from one of the answers on scripture: "The Holy Scripture offers us a unified understanding of God's self-revelation to humanity." I guess I get what that is supposed to mean, but, in reality, the lack of unity is one of the important hallmarks of scripture. Our tradition has given us diverging voices specifically so that we remain in dialogue with each other, build a relational theology and don't get too comfortable (or propositional) and assume we've mastered Truth.

The very fact that different denominations exist is pretty strong evidence scripture isn't "unified" in its understanding. Even at its very basic levels, there's going to be disagreements on interpretations and, more importantly, implications for life. This statement, and its prominence, is just not a great start.

Continuing, I don't know how many theologians would agree with the answer to Question 25 that "'I believe in God' is the source of all other truth about humankind and the world." I'm almost positive Truth has to begin with Jesus - and probably more about his life and example than his identity. Again, Christian faith is a lived faith, not a propositional one. It's only from God's self-revelation and interaction with humanity that we could understand anything about God.

However, it also feels like theological overreach dressed up in grandiosity to make such a statement. I'd be down with saying that any truth people discover about humankind or the world is because of God - but that doesn't require belief. God's existence is often one of the last things people are willing to accept on a journey to faith. This answer is very confusing; It's almost as if the true complexity of reality leads us to put on a show - Wizard of Oz style. "Big words and firm declarations! - pay no attention to the complexity behind the curtain."

I think the answer to Question 26 is great, but it doesn't really make sense in the context of this piece. We're using God's own words to define God, which is a logical fallacy. Plus, while I love, will defend, and joyfully affirm Tertullian's statement that "If God is not One, He [sic] is not God," that statement itself is based on the assumption that unity is a universal good, which is not an opinion all people share and really an opinion one can only come to through experience.

Maybe what bothers me is that this answer treats Christianity as a particular truth, rather than a universal one. True Christianity explains a reality above, outside, and beyond itself, inviting all people to rid themselves of religion and embrace the Kingdom of God. Institutional Christianity tries to create a specific, self-sustaining reality and invite the whole world into it. Stealing from Bonhoeffer's idea of religionless Christianity, I'd argue that just as the Council of Jerusalem held that you don't have to be Jewish to be Christian, the message of the gospel for today's world is similarly that you don't have to be Christian to be Christian - there's a divinely revealed universal truth beneath the dogma that doesn't invalidate the dogma, but should call us to hold it in a specific way that invites both unity and diversity. This answer is good, but it's closed off, rather than open and inviting.

It's as if the creators of this catechism were looking to reign in discussion, setting artificial (but comfortable) boundaries around which we can talk. It feels like a fear reaction that unnecessarily chokes off real discussion and doesn't trust the Holy Spirit to guide our conversations. I'd like to see us welcome perspectives even far outside our comfort zone, but we don't seem to be able to abide even differences that have long been part of who we are as the Church of the Nazarene.

Baptism is a great example. The catechism refers to both infant and "believer's" baptism. The name of the piece itself includes the words "One baptism," yet we maintain this long-held dichotomy that contributes greatly to our inability to articulate a real, consistent, scriptural theology of baptism. On top of this, there's a strong statement, in this catechism, that people should not (and theologically cannot) be re-baptized.

I believe baptism is a symbol of God's saving grace - it applies to all and is NOT contingent upon our acceptance; we should celebrate our acts of commitment to God, but baptism is not the way to do that. But this is far from a universal perspective within the denomination and the discussion can't simply be glossed over because the powers that be finally found it appropriate to agree with me.

In reality, if we're supposed to be learning about the basics and essentially of Nazarene theology here, there are just way too many questions. Or at least way too many answers. We could simply say "The Church of the Nazarene includes members who believe a variety of things on this issue, here are some of the ways our people answer this." I know it might get repetitive, but I think this comfort with diversity would really help our unity.

Here are a few head-scratching examples:

The answer to Question 97 unnecessarily provides day-of-the-week details on the Last Supper and crucifixion even though the historicity of those details don't matter theologically and the gospels don't even all agree. It seems like a strange choice to be included and completely unnecessary.

In answer to Question 79 on who has authority to forgive sins, there is no mention of John 20, where Jesus gives such authority to the disciples. This is a difficult passage to understand or explain in light of traditional protestant theology - probably a reason to address it, not ignore it.

The answer to Question 125 references the rich young ruler, but conveniently neglects Christ's command to sell all his possessions. It's very disingenuous to use this reference without including all of it. Maybe there is a better way to answer this question? It seems "What must we do to gain eternal life?" is a pretty important question to answer thoroughly and well.

I know I'm getting real nitpick-y here, but there's a couple pet peeves that just seem unnecessary for a document meant to teach:

Different sects hold different divisions of commandments in the Decalogue (I did a lot of research on this when writing a book about it) - why would we bother choosing one definition over another, AND, if we do choose, why not provide rationale for the choice?

Sunday is not the Sabbath; Jesus didn't change the Sabbath day. We traditionally gather for corporate worship on Sunday to remember the resurrection of Christ; it has nothing to do with "keeping the sabbath" as much as we like to appropriate it that way.

What all of this says to me, beyond just the desire for people to be unified when they're not, is that this whole catechism was put together more because someone felt like it should be done than because there was a real desire to provide guidance in growth. It just doesn't seem super helpful and perhaps its more likely to work against its stated purpose than for it, because it embraces an artificial unity.

Nazarene Catechism, Part 1

Last week I received an email from the Church of the Nazarene about a new document they've created, essentially a catechism - a series of questions and answers to explain some finer and more specific points of our theology. It's called One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. On the one hand, I find it really cool that we've engaged in this way - something that might've been considered "too Catholic" several decades ago, and something that's in line with the historical tradition of the Church.

At the same time, I'm a little disappointed as well. This is the kind of thing we really could've benefited from 40 years ago. However, in our current cultural context, where the vulnerabilities of both propositional and systematic theology have been made plain, it seems a bit short sighted to choose them as the means of communicating theology. Perhaps it works well in different parts of the globe - those places where the Church of the Nazarene are growing strongest have very different theological and cultural contexts, so I don't want to diminish those possibilities - at the same time, speaking from my own context, it feels a bit like answering today's questions with yesterday's answers.

I'm going to respond to this document in a series of three (maybe four) posts that address specific issues that seem, to me, a bit problematic. The first, here, is the format itself, and some of the conceptual structures that underlay it. I know, when I've shared these concerns in other places, the response has been something like, "at least they're trying" or "this kind of specific, low-impact document is what the denomination has always done." Those are both true and valid, but I suspect my patience is running thin (and I'm only 35 years old - Lord, help me). I've seen my beloved denomination spinning its wheels quite a bit when it comes to innovation and bravery in facing the future. We're very much in institutional preservation mode (as I wrote about recently) and I think some of it comes from an adherence to a safe, albeit outdated, mindset.

For starters, I'll address the notion of propositional and systematic theology - these are constructs built upon logic. They are not bad, by any means, and come from a long tradition of honest wrestling with scripture and attempts to divine a faithful ethic from scripture, reason, tradition, and experience. It's just that they're products of an for a modern mindest - one built on certainty and foundation. They do not meet the requirements of belief in a post-modern age that questions institutions, authority, and certainty, while being infinitely more comfortable with doubt, ambiguity, and mystery. It is my opinion - and absolutely just an opinion - that a theology built on narrative and relationship makes more sense in our current environment. As I said before, this catechism is a callback to a passing age.

One of the hallmarks of this mindset is a focus on belief as intellectual assent and the world of ideas over embodied belief and action. Many of the answers to early questions and introduction of the catechism refer to verbal or written ideas, using words like "proclaim" or "communicate," as if the gospel itself is something other than a lifestyle. When we relegate "living the word" to just one facet of the Church's mission, we compromise the whole thing. None of our attempts at interpretation or decision-making make any sense without being rooted in lifestyle. It is the very reduction of the gospel to propositions and logic that hinder the passing of Christian faith from one generation to the next.

(I recognize that a focus strictly on lifestyle can also hinder the generational transmission of the gospel and I don't want to be seen advocating for that - simply that all of our theological work must be rooted in and organized around how it functions in everyday life. As much as I love to live in my head and the world of ideas, theology cannot survive there.)

To illustrate my point, the answer to Question 14 in the catechism talks about how the good news (gospel) is transmitted. The answer recognizes a "verbal witness" and also written scripture, but doesn't even mention the Church, which is the actual, scriptural means by which Jesus himself commissioned the gospel to be transmitted. This opens the door for an idolatry of scripture and neglects a pretty key aspect of both Christian tradition and present reality.

The answer to Question 73, on the other hand, provides a surprisingly outstanding description of the mission of the Church, but one that seems very different from the implications of the answer to Question 14. It's as if the catechism believes that being a faithful community in imitation of Christ is but one part of Christianity. That confuses me and, I suspect, distracts from faithful witness and practice.


The very way the catechism is constructed also reflects a more propositional direction - it focuses on the Apostle's Creed, the Sacraments, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer - not that these are bad influences, but this catechism leaves out the Sermon on the Mount, which is Christ's formative lifestyle guideline. I suspect this is left out because it leaves so much open to interpretation and doesn't really lend itself to definitive or propositional statements. Wrestling with the Sermon on the Mount requires nuance and, perhaps, real disagreement - which I'll cover more in Part II.

Not to argue against myself here, but if the attempt of this catechism is really to formulate a Nazarene-specific propositional theology, wouldn't it make more sense to use the Nicene Creed than the Apostles Creed? The Nicene Creed is the result of several hundred years of theological debate and an apt description of Modern Western Orthodox Christianity. I tend to prefer the Apostles Creed because of it's genuine openness to all of Christian tradition, but it doesn't even affirm the divinity of Jesus or the Holy Spirit - at least not in the kind of Trinitarian way that tradition might demand.

It just seems a bit careless given the stated purpose of the piece. In the same way, one could entirely affirm the answer to Question 18, on the importance of the Old Testament, and still claim it is subservient or of lesser importance to the New Testament. We should have some affirmation that we consider the whole thing equally important, right? Similarly, the answer to question 19 seems to say the gospels are more important than the rest of scripture - also problematic.

Ultimately, I think this reflects a propositional perspective on scripture, rather than a reliance on the whole as a collective witness to God's work in the world. If we're going to use scripture to interpret itself (which is not a terrible idea), it can't just be a battle of proof texts, or else we have to prioritize some parts over others. However, if we read the whole thing as equally important and make attempts to interpret scripture in light of our best knowledge of genre, author intent, etc, these issues become less of a problem. This is, most definitely, the process and perspective of most leaders in the Church of the Nazarene, but it's not the process implied in this catechism and this fact is more indication that our leaders are not entirely sure the general membership can handle the kind of uncertainty that comes with honest wreslting with scripture.

This lack of trust comes up again in the answer to Question 102, which talks about preparation for the Lord's Supper by "reaffirming our complete trust in Christ's sacrificial death on the cross." This gives the impression that intellectual assent is somehow part of salvation, an idea foreign to scripture and informed by Greek and modern western philosophical echoes of gnosticism. Belief is action, not assent. Trust does not exist without action; even if you were to argue that it does, that argument doesn't belong in a paragraph on the Lord's Supper, which is, in itself, an action. It feels like those in leadership don't trust our members to wrestle honestly with the difficulties these ideas present.

The entire catechism has such a reliance on what would've been "old hat" theological assumptions from decades past, rather than incorporating more nuanced and sometimes-ambiguous understanding of God and scripture that mark the movement from modernity to post-modernity. The answer to Question 114 assumes a dichotomous pre-history in which humans had some miraculous ability to freely choose between good and evil. Scripture never says or even implies this - it's a conclusion of systematic theology created to make the logic fit. It's the kind of answer you give to a first grade Sunday School class, but not the kind of thing you teach to adults who are much more capable of dealing with complex issues.

Additionally, that same answer strongly implies that only Christians can make good choices, which reflects a naive, shallow understanding of both humanity and salvation - one I doubt anyone involved with the production of this catechism actually holds. For a people "of the book" as it were, we seem loathe to wrestle with scripture and happy to accept the conclusion of people who claim to have done it for us.

I know I come off sounding angry and bitter, but I hope it's really just my frustration that shows through. This catechism looks basically like my Sunday School lessons from the 1980's and fails to reflect mature dialogue, theological and interpretive advances, or the assumption of adult capacity for deep thought - let along any understanding of post-modern society. It's like the last 30 years just haven't happened. Maybe that is the intention of the denomination - as I'll outline in my next post, it feels like our leadership is trying to shoehorn "unity" into us without consideration for actual, genuine, rational, real differences.

It begs the question of why we're trying to dig down and flesh out any of these ideas beyond what we've agreed is essential. The Church of the Nazarene has an Agreed Statement of Belief - why can't this be the formative theology of our denomination, allowing each of us, in context, to explore what they mean for our life and service, trusting the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth (even if it doesn't look the same around the world)?

We believe in one God—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We believe that the Old and New Testament Scriptures, given by plenary inspiration, contain all truth necessary to faith and Christian living.

We believe that man is born with a fallen nature, and is, therefore, inclined to evil, and that continually.

We believe that the finally impenitent are hopelessly and eternally lost.

We believe that the atonement through Jesus Christ is for the whole human race; and that whosoever repents and believes on the Lord Jesus Christ is justified and regenerated and saved from the dominion of sin.

We believe that believers are to be sanctified wholly, subsequent to regeneration, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We believe that the Holy Spirit bears witness to the new birth, and also to the entire sanctification of believers.

We believe that our Lord will return, the dead will be raised, and the final judgment will take place.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

As a pastor in the Church of the Nazarene (and maybe other people are on this list, too; I don't know), we get semi-regular emails from the Board of General Superintendents, the six ministers who lead the denomination. They trade off writing little articles of interest that are, most of the time, of little interest. Still, it's a good way to keep communication with people who literally need to be in 200 places at once.

Last week sometime, there was an email from David Busic, one of our General Superintendents I knew and interacted with before his election to the office. I appreciated what he had to say and I agree with much of it. I think congregations would do well to discover what leads young people to leave regular participation with a congregation or faith altogether upon reaching adulthood; it's an important issue of which to be aware.

I'm not sure, though, that discovering and replicating the reasons young people continue with congregational involvement is the right approach. In fact, I suspect this is precisely what we've been doing all along. I tend to think that the things we do that keep some young people involved are the same things that make it easy for others to leave. I'm not sure its healthy for anyone.

Within pastoral circles, Moral Therapeutic Deism isn't even a buzzword anymore, it's a cliche. It's very much a description of our civil or cultural religion - God wants you to be happy and behave, if you do, you'll go to heaven. It's a faith, as Scott Daniels likes to say, that's like Parmesan on the pasta of life, rather than the meal itself.

This is the faith we have largely passed on to our young people. Not to keep quoting Scott Daniels, but it changed my life when I heard him preach one Sunday, "Our children are desperate for us to give them something worth dying for and we refuse to do it." I think this is the issue with young people leaving congregational life AND those who stay.

We've set up a system of rules, boxes to check to confirm morality and goodness and salvation. If people follow the rules, they get the reward. This segregates faith from a lot of areas of life that aren't specifically covered in the rules; sometimes it lets those outside influences create the rules. But the bottom line is the rules: this is how you're supposed to live and if you do, you're in God's good graces.

Many of the young people who move seemlessly from adolescence to adulthood in congregational life are doing so because the rules work for them. Those who leave often do so because they have questions about the rules or the lack of depth and meaning contained therein; sometimes, those young people study the scriptures and question why some of the rules even exist at all, given those things we claim to believe.

I'm not saying every person who stays or goes does so because of this, but it's a significant influence and simply packaging the rules more attractively or selling them better is not actually going to address the problem. In the end, Christianity is essentially counter-cultural, even if that culture is one that labels everything "Christian." The notion of "fitting in" or "following the rules" works against the personal formation to which Christ calls each of us to undertake - even if those are "good" rules.

The best thing you can do to encourage all your people, young or old, to participate in the ongoing body of Christ, is to be comfortable with challenge and questions and uncertainty and doubt. People leave because they don't feel welcome, because they don't "fit in." The gospel of Christ calls us to welcome all, to not have any standard but love. The bar for entry in the Church of Jesus Christ is inconceivably low.

I know that makes running an institution difficult, which in turn makes our General Superintendents lives difficult (you know, since they run an institution), but maybe each of us needs to hear that perhaps the ongoing functioning of our religious institutions shouldn't be the goal. I'm not saying we should work against it, but perhaps the best way to keep these religious organizations working in sustaining and healthy ways is to be a little less worried about their sustained success and a little more focused on embodying the counter-cultural love modeled for us by Christ.

Rights and Freedom

So there are some basic human rights - things I believe philosophically and theologically and existentially are owed to every human being by virtue of being alive. I've stated them here before, but simply, people deserve: nutritious food, a safe place to lay their head, education, basic health care, a meaningful day's work, and a loving community.

I believe a society (however one defines such a thing) is obligated to provide these things to everyone within the society or sacrifice mightily in the effort. That doesn't necessarily mean a government is obligated to provide such rights, especially if society has other means of doing so. However, governments, in a modern sense, are all-encompassing; they claim sovereignty over borders and all (human or otherwise) that lies within. To me, and I understand where some might disagree, this obligates them to be rights-provider of last resort.

Hear me: I don't think a government has to be all-encompassing. In fact, on the political spectrum, I'm much closer to a true anarchist than anything else. However, where a government makes such a claim without any major resistance (such as in the US), certain responsibilities come with such claims.

That's sort of the round about way to get to where I'm trying to go today - how I've come to, shorthand, claim that people living within the US deserve certain things - not because citizenship or residency automatically earns such things, but because their humanity demands them and their government, in a roundabout way, inherits the responsibility for ensuring they're provided.

I'd be all for society structuring itself in ways that provide for basic human rights without the need for heavy-handed top-down intervention. But until we have those systems working consistently and near-universally, responsibility remains. If you want the power, it comes with (Spiderman-like) responsibility.

Problems come when we focus our society around freedom. Yes, we like the wind-in-our-hair vitality of choosing our own destiny; and we love to have that coupled with the security of a nanny state. Make all your free-spirited decisions and trust that the social safety net will be there to catch you. It's the glory of celebrated self-sufficiency. Freedom is only real if we're capable of being self-sustaining individuals of true independence. I'm just not sure how anyone can believe that's the real state of humanity. It's wonderful wishful thinking and it might make for top-notch idealism, but a great ideal is not something you can eat for dinner.

I like the classic philosophical argument for the existence of God that says God is that of which nothing greater can be conceived. It's beautiful in its simplicity - the point being that while we can imagine the most gracious, benevolent, loving cosmic being, a real one is infinitely greater than the one in our head. That assumes, of course, limitless possibilities. It fails to take into account the very real world in which we live.

I have always considered myself an idealist. Those who (appropriately) nicknamed me Debbie Downer might disagree. However, I like to say I work my idealism within the parameters of reality. I believe the world contains greater things, profounder possibilities, and more infinite beauty than our senses can currently conceive - but that doesn't make the world completely open, because it still contains us and all our feeble human frailties.

We have and need rights precisely because we cannot achieve our aims, wants, and desires by ourselves. Self determination most certainly exists, but freedom does not. Our self-determination always comes with a cost and is contingent on our willingness to pay. That's precisely why we must secure, confirm, and provide these basic human rights to one another: because we can't supply them for ourselves.

We want to conflate rights and freedom, but really they're at the opposite end of the same spectrum. One is all about individualism, while the other is communal. As much as it would be nice (speaking as an introvert) to be able to wall ourselves off and survive, reality is as reality does, which means we're stuck with each other - for better or worse.

I choose better.

Post Election Political Philosophy

I'm disappointed, but it doesn't change my mind. I had a lot of people subtly and no-so-much ask, "Are you happy now - your privileged non-involvement got us Trump?" I mean, yeah, it's almost impossible not to have a preference when presented with the choice between two things - and the candidate I would've preferred to win, lost - but as Brian Zahnd is fond of saying, "Does anyone know the name of the 45th Roman Emperor?" (It was Probus, by the way, but the point remains.)

I don't think its necessarily wise to elect a sick person President of the United States, but Lord knows he's not the only narcissist to ever hold the most powerful office in the world (you can go back to that Roman Emperor list and throw darts). I certainly don't agree with his overarching philosophy or "me (or 'us') first," but that political philosophy is hardly new, it's just been stated more plainly.

This isn't an apology for Trump, either - I think those "respect the office, if not the man" arguments are way misguided. Our tradition has been "respect the office, if not the politics." Personal moral failure has been cause for resignation or impeachment in modern Presidencies.* I do think, though, people have too thoroughly conflated politics and personal morality, using Trump's abhorrentness to justify a vilification of everything he says. This is typical practice in political debates (regardless of whether the person in question has questionable morality or not) and thus holds little weight with the other side.

What I've been saying, and continue to believe is that there is no such thing as good and evil when it comes to gov'ts and elections. The pure pursuit and wielding of power is harmful to the world, unless its rejected and given away. Pope Francis is confounding everyone simply because he's refusing to use his power for anything other than loving people. Neither the conservatives nor the liberals can quite understand why he's not using the power he's been given to do more - of anything. I suspect he's just trying to wield power in a way that might be consistent with the theology that is supposed to run the Church.

We get seduced by celebrity and by power. It's no different if its Obama or Trump, just because we happen to like the ways in which one or the other uses that power. As I've said all along, the emperor has no clothes - the position is so revered and powerful because WE, THE PEOPLE, have made it that way. When we play into the power games, we support them. It can't just be something we pick or choose depending on our perspective.

In that sense, I have no problem separating Trump the man from a Trump administration. Power is generally nameless and faceless anyway, despite our desire to personalize it. I feel it will be pretty easy to critique both without having to mix them. It's different for my generation certainly because we've had Presidents our entire lives who were generally kind and decent people. Yeah, nobody's perfect - and one of them was, at best, super creepy, and at worse a serial sexual predator - but we've not generally had real moral issues with the personal lives of Presidents. It's new, and it's hard to deal with. I don't know that I'll ever be able to say the phrase "President Trump," out loud - it just doesn't compute with my life experience - but that's an entirely different thing than critiquing power or how its used.

I see it as the same kind of debate as abortion - the popular practice is to argue over its legality, but people rarely pause to consider its place within a larger moral framework of life and death - we're too individualized. When it comes to Presidents, we're much too consumed with arguing the minutia of bills, and executive orders, and judicial precedent, than we are about how these fit within the large framework of humanity and our responsibility to each other.

This power, and participation in it, is seductive. It makes us forget that the Affordable Care Act is, and always was, a giant travesty of legislation, argued by committee and amended piecemeal to get passage, and never really tackling the core issues of healthcare costs in the first place. It was, however, a grand step forward for the philosophical ideal that all people should be taken care of. Read the stories; people were well aware of that difference at the time; few are today. It's become a political football, not representative of the issue itself, but the struggle for power. That doesn't make it unimportant, but it does, perhaps, I'd argue, illustrate that the halls of power are not the means by which we should work to achieve whatever large ideals we hope to see embodied in the world.

The very magic of power is that it leads people to forget that other options exist. It is the Turkish Delight that blinds us to reality. That doesn't change just because it starts going badly. In fact, it's much easier to have an emperor who's an enemy than one who seems like a friend. Just look what Constantine did to the Church the first time around? Or Henry VIII? Or King Cyrus?

It's far too easy for us to imagine that power and empire are the way to get things done.

I am certainly a pragmatist at heart - in many ways, too much so - but I've learned, through this faith journey, that idealism matters. Not even that one should take precedence, but that one should never be sacrificed for the other. You have to do that in power politics, which is why I like to steer clear - and why I'd recommend others do also.

We are not called to do big things - maybe the creation of the nation state is our modern Babel - we are called to love those around us, and whatever we do in the realm of elective politics, those personal, everyday relationships can never take a back seat.

I've been thinking all along I'd just avoid the Inauguration coverage - and I'm not going to go out of my way to see it - but it is interesting and it feels almost like ignoring something both historcially significant and personally fascinating out of, I don't know, spite or personal offense, is playing directly into the hands of power I just spent all this time denouncing.

I have to get a haircut today. If I miss a speech or two, oh well, and I'm headed out this afternoon to the giant, public, welcome home party for Joe Biden - someone I respect a lot for keeping his sanity in the midst of insanity (even as I regret his choice of where to place a lifetime of energy and effort). I'm going to treat it like a regular day, because that's what it is.

During this week of MLK celebration, I agree with his famous quote, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." I just feel its far too limiting for politicians to invoke it as support for policy. Justice and peace and goodness and love are much bigger than that - we have to remember.




*And the revelations of Kennedy's bedroom antics took him off the list of "great Presidents" and put him on the list of "interesting historical celebrities."