Christians and Violence

 

What makes the Christian perspective on violence different is the goal. Christians believe the future is a world without fear or death, a world in which violence does not exist. Our goal is not to minimize violence – we have not succumbed to the death-dealing notion that it is inevitable – we believe there is an end to violence, that it will be completely eliminated.

Christians take a long view on these things. The world which is coming may not (almost certainly will not) be realized in our lifetimes. We are committed to a lifestyle that may produce no visible results before we die. It may seem pointless and foolhardy in our present; this is why it’s called faith.

In light of that, killing can never be justified. Taking a life should be something with which the killer wrestles for the rest of their days. It should be conflicting and troubling; feelings of guilt should not be unexpected. Whether it is abortion or war or self defense, killing may, in fact, be the preferred option in a given scenario, but that does not make it “right.”

It’s never heroic to kill, even in the name of justice or the defense of innocence, even if you never regret doing it. Heroism is an action of discipline or creativity or plain dumb luck whereby someone stumbles into a non-violent means of making a real difference in the world. No action ever makes a person a hero or a villain, because no human being can ever be entirely defined by what they do.

History has shown us that opposing violence with violence only compounds the problem, even if some short term benefits are realized. If the goal is to minimize violence, there’s some argument for force opposing force, but if the goal, as it is for followers of Jesus Christ, is to realize a world without violence; it is never the answer.

Yes, we live in a world where killing exists and one where there will continue to be people who kill with the best of intentions. Our response, though, should not be to absolve them of guilt or normalize those actions – it should be to wrestle and grieve alongside them as they process the primal violation of existence that is the taking of life. Our job, as it is at all times, is to love unconditionally, because it is only love – especially love of those we would like to kill – that will ever end violence.

The Temptation of Democracy

This post originally appeared at Misfits Theology Club.

Democracy muddles the Christian ethics of power. In a world where most people have no say in or control over the selection of governmental leaders, it’s relatively easy to determine how God’s people should respond: give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Follow the laws so long as they don’t violate the gospel and be willing to suffer the consequences gracefully when you must disobey.

Democracy changes the equation, though. It gives each voter a position of power. Christian ethics move from a discussion of our relationship to power to a discussion of how we use the power we’ve been given. Whether we hold elective office or not, by voting, we become part of the power structure.

There’s an argument that this is a positive development. By receiving a place within the power structure, God’s people have some ability to shape it, perhaps in ways that reflect the Kingdom of God. The question I’ve been pondering, though, is whether or not the Kingdom of God can ever be served by the use of coercive power.

The power of God, as demonstrated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is entirely non-coercive. God loves us and forgives us and bears with us in radical patience as we continually refuse to be shaped by that love. God is relentless in love, returning over and over again with a divine faith in the power of love to outlast all opposition.

By that I don’t mean God’s love will eventually wear us down in the end – that would be coercive – simply that our power to reject God’s love and refuse the transformation it offers can never outlast God’s ability to keep loving. Christians believe in a world that never ends, because God’s non-coercive love can never be exhausted.

What does that have to do with democracy and power? Well, even the most benevolent governments are coercive. The very nature of worldly power is its ability to force reluctant participation. There will always be some part of us (both individually and collectively) that spurns coercion, even for the common good.

The most good for the most people is still coercion, because it doesn’t allow real freedom for the minority who are negatively affected. It might be the best any human authority can muster, but it falls short of the gospel ideal and of the Kingdom of God.

So, when we vote, aren’t we just contributing to the coercive authority of whoever happens to be in charge of government? Yes, one could argue one candidate is better than the other for the majority of people, but that’s still a short sighted goal achieved through coercion. The Kingdom of God promises a world in which all people live together in peace and love; there is no human system that can promise or produce this eventuality by way of coercion.

I wonder if the opportunity to vote is not the same temptation faced by Jesus when he was shown all the kingdoms of the world and offered authority to rule them all. Certainly the reign of Christ would be preferential to whatever human leaders would emerge in those kingdoms. There would be less suffering and more freedom is Jesus were on the literal throne.

Jesus refused that option, because to take it would be to endorse coercion, even perfect, holy, divine coercion. This was, evidently, unacceptable to the mission of Jesus Christ.

When we vote in elections, we’re expressing a preference. We believe the government of one candidate or party would be better than the government of another. That is almost certainly true (even if we make the “wrong” selection). But neither government could ever advance the Kingdom of God, because coercion is anathema to God’s eternal future.

What if one government would alleviate the suffering of one or more oppressed groups? Shouldn’t we be able to choose the best available human government for the thriving of the most people AND also work for the coming of God’s eternal now and future Kingdom?

You’d think so. I’d hope so. And yet we’re left with the decision Jesus made on that mountain. He forsook the immediate help he could offer to the suffering and oppressed in all the kingdoms of the world to embrace a non-coercive mission of love that led to his own torture and execution.

Couldn’t Jesus have chosen to rule the kingdoms of the world and usher in the Kingdom of God? One would think so and yet he didn’t. The fact that Jesus did not choose both immediate and eternal good leads me to the conclusion that perhaps both are not possible – at least on the level of governmental authority.

I can surely feed the hungry and clothe the naked and work for the freedom of the oppressed in my own individual ability, but to employ the means of coercion to that end on a grander scale just isn’t morally responsible given Jesus’ example.

I don’t like it, but that’s the only conclusion at which I’ve been able to arrive. Voting is an endorsement of coercion and even if that coercion is in line with the principles of God’s Kingdom, it violates the principle of non-coercion and thus can’t be the means through which the Kingdom is fulfilled.

I wonder if, like with issues of violence, there are moments where voting for (or against) a particular candidate or party might be preferable to abstaining. I don’t think, though, in those moments, we can justify our actions as “right” or “moral” or “correct.”

It just seems impossible to believe voting is a particularly Christian or moral duty when Christ himself had the ability to be elected King and refused. He rejected coercion and I think, no matter how reluctantly, we should reject it, too.

**Edited for clarification: 1) This applies largely to Presidential elections (and to a lesser extent, Governors and Mayors) – the notion of singular executive authority is one that pretends (even unintentionally) to compete with God.  Politics, in general, is just how we get along with each other.  At the neighborhood level, we talk to each other and work things out.  As we get into larger societies, we have to elect representatives – there’s a different power dynamic there, although I see elective office as more important, the lower the level.

2)This shouldn’t be seen as abdicating the importance of political action.  Christians should continue to march, protest, advocate, and evangelize on behalf of food for the hungry, equity for the foreigner, and release for the prisoner.  We should do so, though, not with an aim at changing laws, but with an aim at inviting people into the Kingdom of God.  As our collective heart is changed, our laws will follow; they just shouldn’t be driving the ship.

Anti-Abortion, Pro-Roe v Wade

 

Abortion is always tragic.

It’s a loss of life. We can get into biological and theological arguments about when exactly cells become an individual life, but those cells – all cells – have always been a part of the collective reality we call “life.” Our modern, individualistic world focuses on individual life as if that’s the only life that exists. I’d argue individuals are only bit players in the grand reality of existence.

When we say Christians value life, we’re not (or at least we shouldn’t be) speaking only of individual life. Individual lives are indeed important, but only insomuch as they point us to a larger understanding of life. We want to be life-giving people, but that doesn’t mean our primary aim is procreation. It means we are contributing to the health and well-being of all life – usually through interactions with one or more individual lives, but with a higher purpose.

This is evidenced in the traditional evangelical approach to abortion: ban it. We want laws changed to criminalize the practice, not necessarily to put women in jail, but to fearfully discourage abortion as an option. We’re willing to lie to pregnant women about science, laws, health outcomes, and whatever else it takes to influence their choice away from abortion.

If the purpose of our efforts was to limit the number of individual abortions, this might be justifiable on a purely numeric scale (although these tactics remain morally suspect). The Christian aim, though, when it comes to abortion is not to limit the practice, but to eliminate it. Even one is too many!

Laws, fear, and coercion will never eliminate abortion. Making it difficult, scary, or unpopular will indeed stop some women from following through. Desperate women, though, will revert to back alleys, homemade poisons, coat hangers, and “falling” down the stairs – all common abortion practices in times and places where traditional evangelical approaches to abortion dominate.

Legal limits can never stop abortion, because they do not address the desire to have an abortion.

The only means to remove the desire for an abortion is to provide social conditions that preclude the desire. If women and children and families (and men, who are an integral factor in, and often root cause of, every unwanted pregnancy) were supported in true, loving community, there would not be a need for abortion. That’s the goal: elimination, not moderation.

That doesn’t mean Christians can’t or shouldn’t address individual life. Coming alongside vulnerable women, supporting them during pregnancy, and demonstrating your commitment to the value of their life and the value of the life of their future child is important. Adoption, especially adoption out of foster care, adoption of older children, and adoption of those with special needs, are important.

These things are not important, though, because they might limit abortions. These individual actions are important because we have a Christian duty to provide such loving care for all people at all times. There are hundreds of millions of vulnerable women around the world who’ve chosen to have their babies and still live unsupported and unloved. Abortion is irrelevant to the call for us to care for the vulnerable.

The point of life itself is to be a life-giving presence to all people in all circumstances, especially those most vulnerable to the insidious tentacles of trauma, pain, and death. Being present is not a means to an end, but an end in itself. THE end itself.

Guilt, shame, fear, and coercion cannot get us to the Kingdom of God – which is what Jesus called those optimal social conditions that prevent the desire for abortions. This Kingdom is also the future we have been promised. At the core of Christian faith is a belief that the Kingdom is not just a possibility, but a reality. Jesus announced and makes possible the world we seek; we must live into it as it comes into being around us.

The “end” Christians seek, the Kingdom of God, cannot be realized through guilt or shame or fear or coercion. We cannot achieve our goals through those means. The means by which we seek the Kingdom is the goal. We must do all things in love, because love is the only law in the Kingdom of God.

If you are calling guilt, coercion, shame, or fear “love,” because you have good intentions, you have missed the point. That is transactional morality; it is not what Jesus taught.

These conclusions can be infinitely expanded upon, but they are a good start for those who wish to end abortion:

The mandate to love means working for systems that fully support mothers and children.
The mandate to love means ensuring safety and equality for all women.
The mandate to love means holding accountable all people who abuse and manipulate women.
The mandate to love means working to change systems that oppress and disadvantage women.
The mandate to love means naming and addressing racial inequities that disadvantage women of color.
The mandate to love means naming and addressing economic inequities that disadvantage poor women.
The mandate to love means providing community and support to all women in all walks of life.
The mandate to love means organizing society in which every child is treated as if they were yours.

I was raised in a very conservative household. I picketed an abortion clinic when I was barely old enough to remember it. My parents remain, to this day, largely one issue (anti-Roe v Wade) voters. Many of the members of my denomination would largely be appalled if they knew our own Manual of Christian life and practice allows for abortion after much prayer and counsel with a pastor.

My creativity on this issue was sparked by reading John Irving’s novel, The Cider House Rules, which powerfully illustrates not the value of abortion, but the tragic realities out of which women seek abortions. I began to see the problem not as the intellectual moral debate over abortion itself, but the deficiencies of a society that immorally withholds life-giving options from desperate pregnant women.

I began to study the scriptures more directly and think about how to apply Jesus’ words on the Kingdom to this particular issue. All you’ve read above is the summary of that process – a process that’s boiled down to one troubling conclusion:

The Christian mandate to love means ensuring safe access to abortions for those who desire them.

I believe this not because I’ve become persuaded that abortions are acceptable or justified or moral, but because I don’t believe it’s Christ-like for the most vulnerable in our society to pay the price for our collective sin and indifference.

The woman caught in adultery was not justified in her actions. Jesus did not excuse her behavior, but he refused to allow her to be the scapegoat for a society’s sinful indifference.

An abortion is not the “fault” of the woman who seeks it or the doctor who performs it. It is not the “fault” of the child’s father or the laws that allow it. Every abortion is a condemnation of our collective failure to provide the healthcare, emotional support, education, housing, validation, purpose, and physical protection every member of our society is entitled to as a beloved child of God.

We ALL bear collective AND individual responsibility. We don’t ignore individuals in need, but we can’t limit our scope to fixing individual problems. Christian faith calls us to a higher purpose: to embody a people, God’s people, who exist to be an example to the world of God’s Kingdom – a place where, among other things, abortions don’t exist, not because they’re illegal, but because they’re unnecessary.

If you think this perspective on the world is fantastical or unrealistic or impossible, please, let me introduce you to Jesus Christ and the wonderful message of the gospels: the Kingdom of God is at hand. If we fail to see it, it is only because we fail to live into it.

Kingdom Ethics and Government Laws

Last week, my friend Jeremy Scott (no relation), asked, on Twitter, about Kingdom ethics that speak to a maximum wage." As is my wont, I answered quickly and without enough thought. I said, essentially, that forcing people to do anything is not really a Kingdom value; we should love people and allow their actions to be transformed through that love. I know, it's a bit optimistic, but I' ma believer in Jesus Christ, what can I say - I think things will work out in the end.

What I failed to take into account is this idea I struggled with earlier this year - and one that could use a bit more working through - that a big issue with being a Christian in a democracy is the assumption of responsibility. We feel, somewhere deep down, that we can't really pass judgement on the value or morality of a law, policy, or government action without also proposing an alternative. Because it's nominally a government of, by, and for the people, democracy requires something of us beyond support or opposition.

This is really where our citizenship in a nation comes into conflict with our citizenship in the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom doesn't have a government, other than the benevolent grace of God; and it doesn't have a law, other than the law of love, exemplified in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In many ways, nations give us an out. We're less inclined to sacrifice or suffer with or change our lifestyles very much to help others, address needs, or express radical, Christ-like love, because we've got this government over our heads with nominal responsibility to take care of people. Maybe we get off the hook by saying, "if everyone just acted like me, things would be ok," and hopefully we're making choices and living lives that bear this out, but that's far from certain.

Getting back to the question at hand: I think Kingdom ethics speak just as strongly to the dangers of wealth as they do to the dangers of poverty. They might be different physical situations (deprivation vs indulgence), but both are harmful and both lead to pain. So, in one sense, it's very easy to say Christians could support a maximum wage, in which the earnings of folks are simply limited.

I'm not so sure, though, you could make that claim and also be in line with the US Constitution. In other words, for the government to institute a maximum wage, they might have to appeal to a morality the first amendment specifically prohibits them from enacting. This gets into all sorts of grey areas and arguments about the relationship of the US to Christianity and the Kingdom to the nations of the Earth, but those are really discussions beyond the immediate.

I believe Christians need to be able to make ethical and moral judgments about the laws, policies, and actions of the government without feeling obligated to propose a government solution. It is not the duty of Kingdom citizens to ensure the survival or orderly operation of the nation in which they happen to live. We certainly have responsibility to our neighbors, but that relationship does not need (and probably should not be) mediated by the government.

Do I think people would be better off with less? As a general rule, I do. Is a maximum wage one way to help the richest among us live with less? Sure. Does that make it good policy? That's not really a question Kingdom ethics can or should answer. I mean, you can have a similar Kingdom conversation about whether a maximum wage really helps anyone else beyond the few very rich folks it effects. Does increasing the coffers of the government do anything to further the Kingdom? Probably not. Would additional funds for health care or education be beneficial to people? Absolutely. Will the consequences of this potential action be as we envision? Almost certainly not.

Of course, that's the rub with everything.

I believe Kingdom ethics dictate a communal responsibility to provide people with a love, a family in which they are nurtured and valued.
I think this manifests itself in things like meeting basic human needs: nutritious food, shelter, medical care, education, and work. Of course, Kingdom ethics say you shouldn't need money or taxes to do any of those things.

In the end, maybe that's the solution: to just continue to preach the Kingdom - sharing, sacrifice, hospitality, love - and let the distinction between those ideals and the realities of the world be a judgment in and of themselves. Compare the Kingdom that's lived out among God's people to life in the nations of the world. I'm not sure either party will come out looking so rosy on that one.

Power and Control

I don't typically share my sermon's like this on the blog, but this is the one I preached two days ago in Chestertown, Maryland. It's timliness is obvious, I suppose. The only comment I'll make is that I'm aware of the position I'm in even addressing such things as a well-educated, straight, white male - that comes with its own problems and blind-spots. I apologize in advance for how that colors my response. I agonized over this, far longer and with more prayer than any other sermon I think I've ever preached - but at some point, you have to say what you have to say - and this is it. The sermon text is Romans 12.


I was asked to preach today the weekend of the violence in Charlottesville. I imagine I’ll associate that event with this passage for a while. The whole thing is troubling, obviously, for a number of reasons, but I’ve been haunted these last few weeks by one line I heard in an interview with one of the participants. The man said, “These people are worthless; they’re making the country worse and they should go back where they came from.”

I want to be careful here. I don’t want to get into the “both sides” game that’s become so problematic. However, I do think this quote is a good illustration of where this passage is going today. When it comes to the ideology of race – there is a clear right and wrong – it’s because this is an issue with such a clear distinction between opinions that I think it makes a good illustration.

You see, that quote above – “these worthless people should go back where they came from,” – is the kind of hate we might associate with racists and bigots, but it came from one of the leaders of the counter-protest, the defenders of equality.

Now, let’s be clear, being the subject of hate and scorn does not give any credence whatsoever to this “alt-right” movement or whatever they’re calling themselves. We are all human beings. There is just one race: the human race – and we should, collectively, be lamenting the thousands of years we’ve spent acting otherwise and the terrible toll it’s taken on people around the world. We, especially we, should be working to heal and repair that damage as much as we’re able.

But, as much as there is a right and wrong ideologically, it pains me to see how often those in the right have used hate to condemn hate. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am a student of non-violence – many of my personal heroes are leaders of the civil rights movement, not just because of their cause, but because of their commitment to non-violence and the belief that love wins.

It’s troubling, mournful, to see how this generation – my generation – seems to be abandoning those ideals. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard language not just advocating the destruction of racism, but the racists as well. I’ve been seriously conflicted with how to affirm that the cause of justice and equality is righteous, while also rejecting the means by which it is so often delivered.

This is a timely and difficult example of a much larger problem. It might not be what you expected when we read that familiar verse from Romans – Be not conformed to the pattern of this world – but this is what I think of immediately, at least in our current context and reality. The pattern of this world so ingrained in us we don’t even know there’s an alternative, the pattern that we’ve largely come to think of it as part of our faith, when it is the exact opposite:

Power and control.

These are weapons of strength, rooted in fear. White supremacists fear the loss of power and privilege that’s long been the purview of white men. It’s a real and justified fear, even if it is completely lacking in perspective. White men do have less power, even if we’re still, by far, the most powerful group on the planet. But the fear is real. In fact, it’s basically the same fear that sparked the counter-protests: people with a real vision of justice and equality who are afraid that whatever progress has been made on those fronts will be turned back or snatched away. That’s a real fear, too.

When we are afraid, our first reaction is to recover control. That’s human nature. If someone is mugged on the street one night, they might respond by taking self-defense classes, or they might respond by never leaving home again – both responses are attempts to take back power they lost at the hand of another. They are fear reactions. It’s the pattern of this world.

It’s this notion that we should be in control that really gets us in trouble. And this is at the heart of Jesus’ gospel message: the actions of others are not your responsibility. That might sound strange, since Jesus didn’t say any of those actual words, but perhaps it’s more familiar this way:

Do not be afraid.

Our fear is entirely based on our inability to control other people. Even when we’re afraid we can’t do something – I’m not strong enough to be a good parent, I can’t do this assignment the boss just gave me, I don’t have enough money to make rent this month – the fear is not about our inability, but about how other people will respond. We’re afraid of being judged; we’re afraid of being fired; we’re afraid of being left alone and abandoned and exposed.

Even those existential fears, about food or money or shelter, are really fears that no one will provide for us if we can’t provide for ourselves. It’s not about our actions, but about how other people respond to them. We’re afraid of losing control.

So Jesus comes in and says, “You aren’t in control, and you never will be.” And that’s supposed to be our hallelujah moment for today, our good news. You aren’t in control and never will be; Praise the Lord! I know it sounds terrible, but that’s because we’ve spent so long being conformed to the patterns of this world. We’ve been so ingrained with the idea that we need to be in control of as much as possible as often as possible that we don’t see the good news when it’s right in front of our face.

We never look at it from the other side of the equation. Even if we control everything in our lives we could possibly conceive of controlling, it’ll never be enough. People will still die. We still argue with spouses and kids. Jobs are lost. Mistakes are made. Control is just an illusion.

When Paul says here, “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice,” he’s saying, “stop trying to control everything – in fact, stop trying to control anything at all.”

Why are we challenged to give sacrificially? Most of the world, if they’re generous, is taught to make a budget, figure out what you need to live, and then spend a sizeable portion of the rest on others. That’s sort of the worldly principle of generosity. Christians are different, though – Jesus calls us to give everything, even, quite literally the shirt off our back, if need be. We’re called to give until it hurts and then give some more. We’re called to figure out what others need to live and then budget for ourselves with what’s leftover. Why? Why do we do this?

I’m sure there are a lot of reasons, but one big one is simply to remind ourselves that our bank balance does not equal control. No matter what’s in the investment fund, our future is more dependent on the grace of God than the sweat of our brow. We have a different motivating factor than mere survival or even personal happiness. And that is foolishness to the world around us.

We are living into the Kingdom of God and this vision of the world in which there is no fear. Attempting to shout down an angry, hateful mob does not eliminate fear, it heightens it. God has instilled within us a greater creativity than that – we have the ability to respond to hatred with love and to violence with peace, if we’re willing to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

I struggled for the longest time trying to figure out why verses three through eight are where they are in this chapter. If you skip from verse two to verse nine, it makes total sense with what I’ve been trying to say. “Honor one another above yourselves” is exactly the kind of outrageous thing Jesus calls us to. The world tells us to secure our oxygen mask before assisting others – because it makes sense – but Jesus has a different way of life in mind. “Be joyful in hope and patient in affliction. Bless those who persecute you. Be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not repay evil with evil. If your enemy is hungry, feed him.”

You can move from verse two to verse nine seamlessly, yet Paul puts this thing in between – something we’ve seen him write in many other letters as well – we are part of one body with many members; we’re all different, but important. He talks about spiritual gifts and contributing to the people of God through your strengths. But why is that here, in this position?

Well, after some time pondering, I think it’s about fear again. We’re afraid because we don’t know how other people will react to us. We’re afraid of what they’ll do – or not do –so we try to gain and maintain control. We try to wall ourselves off, if not from people, than from needing people. We love having friends, but we hate to depend on them.

This is precisely what Paul is telling us we have to do in verses three through eight. He says, You can’t do it all yourself. No matter how hard you try, how much you work, all the effort in the world, you do not have everything you need. We need each other. In fact, you’re not even ‘you’ without me.

We forget this sometimes, because in English “you” is both plural and singular, but 99% of the time we see “you” in scripture, it’s plural. “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.” It’s something we do collectively. We’re in this together.

So ,what does that mean when it comes to Charlottesville? In that case, you’ve got a group of people saying exactly the opposite. “If you’re not white or male, we don’t need you.” It’s a message of hate spawned from fear – it might even be a universal fear, that we’re not needed, that we are worthless – and out of that fear, we attempt to grab power by making those around us worthless and lesser. Hate flows naturally from fear – that is the pattern of this world.

Too often our response to hatred and fear is doubling down, is meeting hatred and fear with more of the same. Christians are called to end that cycle – to be not afraid – and we show our trust, our lack of fear, not by acting powerful and in control, but by responding in love. When someone comes at us with hatred and violence, the Christian response just might be, “You may not need us, but we still need you.”

This doesn't mean we allow hatred and violence and evil to go unopposed, but we must not oppose them with power and control, but with love. It’s a dangerous position, for sure, but it’s not weak and it’s not backing down – it is the turning of our actual bodies into a quite literal living sacrifice. It is putting our money where our faith is, believing that sacrificial love, in imitation of Christ, can really change the world. It is showing, with our bodies, that we are not in control, and breaking the cycle of hatred and fear.

It sounds impossible, but it starts here, folks. We aren’t just transformed into living sacrifices at the drop of a hat. The whole purpose of the Church is to be a place where the Kingdom of God is lived out as an example to the world. We have to love each other, before we can love our enemies. We have to reach across whatever divides exist here – class, race, gender, income, age – as a means of training ourselves to take this good news to the world around us.

The people of Jesus Christ do life differently. We are not conformed to the pattern of this world. We remind ourselves of this every week as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. This is a small scale enactment of what Paul calls our true and proper worship, which is to live our lives like we really believe what we’re doing here today. We come to the table together, one body, one family, united – everyone is welcome and everyone is equal – then we have to live like it, even when it hurts.

Charlottesville and Christian Counter-Culture

I'm against nationalism, not just white nationalism. Trump's statement that Americans of every color salute the same flag is just as dangerous as the hate-filled bigotry shouted by the Klansmen and Nazis in Charlottesville last week, even if its morally less-repugnant. I know it's important to state opposition to racism and violence, to call out specifically organized hate-groups by name and denounce their position, but I'm not sure we're doing it with much real thought to what we're saying and its effects.

I recently read this fantastic book called The Patient Ferment of the Early Church. It's essentially an otherwise stuffy religious history focusing on the first 200-300 years of Christianity, but the thesis is unique and powerful. Alan Kreider argues that the sole, key distinctive of early Christianity was patience. The first Christians were actively discouraged from what we might call evangelism today - they were convinced that faithful Christian witness was all that was needed. If they lived in the mode of Christ, people would be drawn to that lifestyle without the urgency or outcome oriented focus that's marked Christianity in the 1500 years since.

The moral quandry most prominent for Christians in this time was the exposure of infants. Unwanted children born in the Roman Empire of the time were simply left at the dump - exposed on the trash heaps. Christians took a stand against this moral outrage. They refused to expose their infants and they often wandered the trash heaps, rescuing and adopting those babies left to die. They did not make this a cause, protest, or fight. They simply lived differently.

I recognize that things are different 2,000 years later. We live in a world with free speech and the ability to share it widely and easily.
We live in a world with long traditions of activism. We live in a world where the established morality, at least in large part, aligns more closely with Christian morality than it did in Rome. Violent racists are now the minority and rejected by polite society. Things are different.

At the same time, listening to the rhetoric of opposition in Charlottesville, it was very difficult to differentiate the sides of the debate.
"These ideas aren't representative of the America I know and these people don't belong here." In our attempts to denounce racism, violence,
and hatred, we're exhibiting the same exclusionary ideas we're protesting (or at least, it's easy to do).

From a Christian perspective, protest and counter-culture means more than just choosing a different side; it means choosing a different means of fighting altogether. In general, it means being more creative with our words and actions. This has been a struggle for US Christians in most of the last century and probably the Church as whole over its entire existence. We protest consumerism, but end up with huge chains of "Christian"
stores, full of useless trinkets covered in crosses and music that's more worried about making money than facilitating real worship. The same goes for our approaches to violence, voting, and evangelism.

In Charlottesville, we're rightly outraged that so many people feel free to openly and publicly proclaim ideas and actions so entirely contrary to that of Christ - sometimes in the name of Jesus - but the response cannot be to isolate, condemn, and dismiss the people themselves. Showing up to protests with counter protest might be the right move, but it's got to be done differently. Opposing a mob with a mob - even one committed to non-violence, is still playing games of power - our numbers trump your numbers. It's an invitation to violence. Our voices don't need to be louder or angrier if we're embodying a counter-cultural presence. There is no point to spewing hate at the haters.

Saying, "I stand against racism" is better than saying nothing, I suppose, but it might not be if those of us with privilege aren't willing to sacrifice a bit of it to make our actions match our words. That's where much of the problem comes from. When the only times in which we white people interact with more than token members of the African-American community is when we drive 20 miles to volunteer somewhere for a few hours, we're not making much of a statement.

Early Christians change their entire lives, rejected respectability, often embraced poverty, simply to live out the counter-cultural gospel of Jesus Christ. Earlier this year I read the graphic-novel trilogy, March, that tells the story of John Lewis, one of American's Civil Rights heroes, as he engaged the movement and eventually participated in the famous march across Selma's Edmund Pettis Bridge. One of the things that struck me, was how much emphasis those books put on training for non-violence. It was not a movement where anyone could show up - they endured long periods of practice in non-violence and not everyone had the discipline to make the cut. It was a lifestyle change, a personality change - it was more than just falling in line.

Part of the reason the Early Church put so little emphasis on making converts was because the process was so long and arduous - catechumens endured years of training and observation before the Church deemed them worthy of baptism and the name of Christian. This wasn't so the movement could be exclusive, but because counter-culture is hard.

It's not enough for us to simply say, "Racism is bad. Violence is bad. Hatred is bad." We've got to understand what it means to live that out - not just in our safe little, privileged enclaves, but in the wider context of a very troubled world. We've got to work diligently to shape and form ourselves and our creativity to react differently than even those with whom we agree on some particular issue.

I've resisted giving specifics about ways in which Christians can faithfully engage in issues of immediate and ultimate importance in the world -
issues of race, violence, justice, life, and death - because I do think those ways exhaust and expand beyond my realm of vision. I do think,
though, that Christians must work to fully embody not just the emotion of the moment, but a truthful and fair representation of Christ. In this instance that includes the insanely difficult task of embodying true equality - not just in words or moments, but for the long haul.

Kreider recounts that Christianity lost its emphasis on patience when it adopted the mindset of ends justify the means. Instead of waiting for the truth to win out over time, heretics were persecuted, prosecuted, and executed. Politicans were brought in to use their power to favor one faction over another, to make decisions of right and wrong when it came to Christian thought and practice - this has been our habit ever since. We adopted the mode and means of the culture around us, but because we did so with a religious veneer, we've failed to see the compromising error of our ways.

I am continually troubled by the challenge to use my body, my lifestyle, to make statements of truth and justice, while also remembering the words of Paul, that I too, was once an enemy of God, and recognizing that my transformation was not wrought by violence, anger, or shame, but by the love of Jesus Christ. This is not a pushover faith, but it's also not a popular one; results are slow and it requires suffering - may I have the wisdom and creativity to make it my suffering before the suffering of others.

In the end, I don't have answers, but I pray that I'll have a gospel-infused patience that manifests itself in sacred, selfless action. Lord, have mercy.

Nothing is Worth That

You should know by now, I'm not on any "team" when it comes to elections. I encourage you to vote for me, where you can. I'm even fine if you don't vote. What I would like you to do is not vote for someone in order to register a vote against someone else. That's not cool.

What's more, it's not ethical, especially for Christians. That's who I hear talking the most about this. I've tried, over the last few months, to figure out exactly what Hillary Clinton did in the '90s to raise the absolute ire of the evangelical right. I know she did something, because I grew up with the impression she was one of the worst people on Earth. I couldn't, though, even at this point, figure out why. I've heard her called a liar a lot, but I haven't found evidence of egregious falsehoods - at least not any more than the typical politician making empty promises kind of way.

Anyway, I'm not here to defend her, just explain that lots of conservative Christians hate her with an inscrutable passion. This is what leads so many to tacitly support Donald Trump this time around. What I hear most often is the old Roe v Wade argument - "we need a republican President to save the Supreme Court." It's a pretty universal reason for Christians to vote GOP.

These Christians need a reason, because the guy is almost universally recognized as unconscionable. He's crass, selfish, mean, and immoral.* I might say he's more amoral, because I'm not sure Donald Trump possesses the typical human ability to differentiate between right and wrong. People don't like the guy; Christians can't excuse or defend him - and points for actually admitting it (for the most part).

It's the power game, though, that's troubling to me. The argument becomes one of power, particularly the Supreme Court and the underlying message of abortion - the single greatest motivating factor for conservative evangelicals. It is the only issue for so much of this particular part of the electorate - and it's giving Trump some life in this election. It's pretty much the only thing. Without that fear, I'm guessing the electorate might look a little more like Utah - with the religious vote largely going to someone with a very slim chance of winning.

I don't much care who someone votes for in this election. Someone will win and someone will lose. Life will get easier for some people and more difficult for others. Life will go on and things will, on the whole, change very little - even if there are some very noticeable differences that make for good headlines. I do care, however, why people are voting.

To be consistent, at least ethically, Christians really can't use this Supreme Court excuse to vote for Trump. If you genuinely like the guy or his policies, please say that. If you just simply don't trust Hillary Clinton and are terrified of her winning, say it. Don't - please, please please don't - say you're voting for Trump to save the Supreme Court.*

What you're saying there is that the ends justify the means and I know I've written the ethical, theological, and real life problems with that idea into the ground. I searched for "ends means" in my blog directory and found a full 15% of my posts at least mention them both. That justification is bad. It's terrible. We can't justify our means by the ends - that is the very antithesis of the life and teaching of Jesus. The whole point of Christian life is to make the good, right, ethical, and loving choice now, regardless of the consequences. We believe in a world without end and thus the ends are decidedly irrelevant.

I believe some important guy once said something about gaining the whole world while losing your soul.

I suspect the religious right in the US has already lost its collective soul by reckless pursuit of power - that's probably a decades old occurrence at this point. It doesn't have to be the future, though. This is why I so strongly oppose the idea that we have some moral or theological obligation to vote. That's a trap set by the powers that be, attempting to force people to choose the lesser of two evils - to put the ends before the means. You don't have to do it. There is more to the world than elections and government and courts and laws. Life is about relationship, specifically the relationships you have with your coworkers, friends, and neighbors - the people you see every day.

There is nothing - no court case, no law, no election, no cause - that is worth the sacrifice of principles, conscience, ethics, or soul. We can't; we cannot allow the means to justify the ends for us who follow Christ or we have been converted away from the gospel we long to live out.

Vote or don't. Don't feel obligated. If you like one candidate or another, please, by all means, vote for them. If you like neither, vote for someone else. If you're in Colorado, you can just fill in the bubble next to my name. If you're in a dozen other states, you can write me in and it will count. I promise, I won't win. I'd probably be a terrible President anyway - but if I were, I guarantee it won't be because I put the ends above the means.

Please, you don't do that, either. The faith we profess is bigger, better, stronger, and more powerful than anything we might win by betraying it.




*Please understand that these arguments equally apply to people pinching their nose and voting for Clinton because they can't stand the idea of President Trump - I just don't know many people in that situation. It's largely my Christian friends using Christian excuses to violate what I see as a core part of the gospel message. If there's a choice between Clinton and Trump, I'd rather have Clinton, but there's never just an either/or choice - there is always another option - that's part of the Good News of Jesus, too.

Prescriptive Faith

Using faith in this context is probably narrowing the discussion too much. I hope there aren't readers out there who just generally skip over my religious or theological stuff and miss this one. Perhaps the title would be better as "Prescriptive Life," but what I'm trying to get at is the idea we often have that "this worked for me, it should work for anyone." Maybe in our enlightened state we make it "...work for anyone in the same situation."

Because of our inherent tendency to generalize, we look to categorize everything into an already accepted paradigm. We find a box we know (ie redheaded people or solutions to an unhappy marriage) and put whatever is in front of us into the most appropriate box. It's how life works if we let it.

I've often argued that we need to take things individually, never assuming one person, group, or situation is like any other. That's not to say we can't learn from other people or the experience of others (or, similarly, that we have nothing to provide someone in what appears to be a familiar situation), but we must work hard to make sure that similarity serve the larger purpose rather than becomes the larger purpose. We get great security knowing that out decisions hold up outside the context in which we made them. I'm no psychologist, so I can't begin to explain it, but I've often found great comfort in confirmation - if it works for someone else, maybe I did handle things the right way.

I was thinking about that today in regards to John Wesley. Wesley was an 18th century English Anglican priest and the founder of the Methodist movement - its largely from his teaching and writing that the theology of the Church of the Nazarene emerged. I've been reading this book - Renovating Holiness - that came out a few years back (and to which I was privileged to contribute). It contains a hundred or so essays about this thing we call "holiness," but provides about as broad a continuum of understanding as one could imagine.

I've been reading a lot of these articles, and it seems really easy for us to slip into a prescriptive kind of faith. That is a "do ________ and __________ will happen" sort of thing. Certainly much of the early leaders who became Nazarene operated in that mode; there was very much an orderly solution to all life's problems, which was pretty consistent with the scientific and mechanical revolution happening all around them. I was interested to see often John Wesley is included in this very prescriptive kind of idea. Certainly much of his methodist practice was prescriptive. He instituted several layers of participation and accountability for his followers, with strict requirements in each level and swift consequences for falling out of line. Sometimes there's a fine line between prescription and discipline.

Modern faith practice seems to operate on a continuum from prescription to description - with one extreme mandating a specific course of action universally, while the other is open to total uniqueness and individuality. I'm thinking of this in the context of faith, but it certainly applies anywhere - from the way in which a person of particular racial, cultural, religious, or sexual orientation should approach the world to what it means to build a business or educate a child. We're all in some sense prescriptive and descriptive - attempting to balance two things that don't tend to get along very well.

Particularly, in the case of Wesley, it seems he evolved greatly over time. Much of that comes from personal experience. He grew up doing faith in the prescribed way - he achieved what he was supposed to achieve, but it left him empty. He found a new and different way of doing things, one that fulfilled him, so he set about instructing other people in that way. Over time he came to realize that the process was less important than the end goal and became far more open to descriptive theology and practice. He still had rules and regulations - "advices" in the vernacular of the time - and Wesley was certainly not shy about giving his opinion on what you should do and how you should do it, but there was also a recognition the prescription was not a solution.

In a sense, this was his second conversion. The first, for Wesley, famously happened in an instant - with his heart "strangely warmed." The second, I'd argue, happened gradually, as he was faced with the diversity of people and experiences that exist in the world. People often ask me where to find a "definitive work of Wesleyan theology," a big, thick book that explains our family of religious thought in a clear, straightforward way. As often as smart, well-meaning people try to write it, Wesleyan theology doesn't work that way, because Wesley didn't. He changed and grew over time - and that willingness to critically engage and reshape theology and practice is really, itself, the hallmark of Wesleyan theology.

That's difficult for a prescriptive person. People who are comfortable with orderly, routine definitions don't tend to enjoy something, especially something as formative as one's perspective on practical truth, that can't be entirely nailed down. At the same time, it's not the realm of individualism either. Being alive necessarily involves relationship - with people, institutions, the world at large. We can't be isolated wherein our decisions affect only ourselves. The whole, "whatever works for you" idea is not exactly the same thing. Absolute relativism only works on paper - or maybe in your head - it can't play out in the real world.

We've got to find some balance in between. We need to be able to see the individual circumstances that make each person and situation unique, respect them, and be willing to give leeway for people to live, believe, and understand in ways that ring true to them. At the same time, we have to hold each other accountable (to themselves if no one else) for ideas, actions, and understanding that actually provides some semblance of good life. In other words, there's just as much danger we'll delude ourselves with idealism as there is in us imprisoning someone else with the same thing.

It's not so much being satisfied with "I'm ok; you're ok," as it is not being satisfied until we are indeed both "ok." That's the balance between prescription and description. What it means to live well in the world can't be static or defined; it's not a puzzle to be solved, but an adventure to be lived - lived together, yes, but with and understanding that life's adventure for each of us is interconnected, but not interchangeable.

Beyond One Dimension

This is the second post inspired by a quote my Dad shared on Facebook the other day:*

(I wrote in the first post more about how these types of statements function within societies and individuals. This post will be less deep and more a working out of my own sociological categorization of political positions.)

Guns, for or against, is not the issue. Sin is the issue. Jesus is the answer for all of us. He is the Prince of Peace!

"Put simply, today’s liberalism cannot deal with the reality of evil. So liberals inveigh against the instruments the evil use rather than the evil that motivates them." – WILLIAM MCGURN, The Liberal Theology of Gun Control, Guns are what you talk about to avoid having to talk about Islamist terrorism., The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2015

This statement is certainly true and descriptive of a certain type of person. We may know people who resemble this depiction, more likely we know people who come really close. Everything is a continuum, right? There are very few instances when people embody an extreme (and when that happens we tend to make them the extreme, even if it's conceivable someone could go beyond - a la Hitler).

That being said, I do think this underlying point can be a good left end of the political spectrum. At it's core, the extreme left comes from a place where the people in power (or those who aspire to power, be it dictators or voters) assume "people are basically good and we just need to provide them with a society that allows them to make good choices." At the other end of such a spectrum, the extreme right can be roughly defined by those in power (or aspiring to power) assuming "people are basically evil and must be constrained in order to behave rightly."

"Wait,!" you say, "I don't like either of those positions."

Right you are, by their very definition extremes are repugnant. This particular articulation of extremes, though, essentially assumes protectionist control over people, either because people need protection from outside forces or because people need protection from each other. This is why talking about a one dimensional continuum is problematic.

For American politics we might add a second axis to the grid. For clarity sake we'll call it Top and Bottom (you'll see why later). The extreme top assumes everyone is basically capable of taking care of themselves and just needs to be left alone. While the extreme bottom believes people are inherently incapable of individual existence and need the larger community to ensure basic needs.

To define the corners of a grid like this is a study in absurdity, but you can generally look at it as more control to the left and right and more freedom to the top and bottom, with varying definitions of how freedom and control work themselves out in relationship to other people.

Like any good, unbiased chart maker, I see myself precisely in the middle. Ultimately, the extremes betray the same fears. Left and right are terrified of being unsafe and fall into the trap of either trying to create a world where no one would think of hurting anyone or a world in which no one is actually capable of hurting anyone. Top and bottom are each afraid of not having enough and fall into the trap of either creating a world where no one will hold us back or one where no one will let us fail.

In every scenario, the system becomes the bad guy, even if that system is to have no system (as the extreme top position holds). To me, the solution is simply to say every system is functional and dysfunctional. People are basically good and basically evil - if left to live in a vacuum, they will continue to do both awesome and tragic things. We're also all inherently capable of a lot and really, really incapable of a whole lot, too; left to live in a vacuum, we'd be both terribly responsible and terribly irresponsible.

I guess this post should've come first, because it's from here you delve into the kinds of things I said on Tuesday. But what I think is more telling is that we can't really stop with two axes either. I mean, there will be an up and down axis and a south-southwest by north-northwest axis and any other conceivable axis until we've got a sphere - which, in my corniest heart of hearts I want to stand for the world on which we all live.

It would be a great illustration for the idea that beyond any system or ideology we might profess, we have to live together, and very likely there's no "right" way to live - or if there is, there's very little chance we'll figure that out. We can only be present with the people and in the places we are present and try to do "right" by them. The one thing I think we really can't afford to do, is create categories of "other." I'm not saying we have to all be the same (that's pretty much the opposite of what I'm saying), what we have to realize, to embody is that no one is entirely different and no one is entirely alike. We have to push back against these inborn desires to categorize and define people as anything other than individuals. We're all beyond one dimension (or two, or three), so we need to stop treating each other that way.



*This should in no way imply I am accusing my father or anything other than having good taste in quotes. I've seen a lot of people use the quote to make various inferences about policy and beliefs that I'm not sure are implicit in the quoted statement above. We all sort of have to deal with our reactions to it honestly.

What is Truth?

As I've been taking this Peter Rollins course, I've been reading his old books as a refresher. I ran across this seemingly long-forgotten concept that really made me happy. Rollins posits that truth is an act and not a state of being, which isn't so novel until he fleshes it out with examples. He defines the act of truth specifically as one that positively transforms reality. This is in contrast to a typical definition where truth is an empirical description of reality.

The example he uses is SS agents coming to the door of a home during Nazi occupation and asking if there are any Jews present. The owner, knowing there are Jews present, but not wanting to turn them over, faces an ethical quandary. In reality, some people did in fact tell the "truth" and leave those Jews they were protecting in the hands of God. Others "lied" and continued to hide the Jews. Rollins argues that denying the presence of Jews is actually the truer statement, because it positively transforms reality.

Coming from a scriptural perspective, if Jesus is "the truth," then anything resembling Christ or in line with his life and teachings would also be truth. Rollins argues that saving Jews during the holocaust is inarguably true, no matter what factual inaccuracies one must espouse to do it.

Yes, it's a convenient example - one difficult to disagree with, but I think the larger notion of truth as an action that positively transforms the world helps in a lot of situations.

There's the old trope of a wife asking her husband if a dress makes her look fat. As a husband, you know there are some realities to navigate there. It may very well be that the wife has chosen a dress that is unusually unflattering and she would look (and feel) much better in something else. Saying as much is an important truth in the moment, because there's a potential she'll be embarrassed later on. Now if the wife has simply chosen one of many dress options that all make her look equally beautiful (even if she might actually be overweight), you say as much, because it is also true. There is no other answer you can give which will positively transform reality.

Again, this is a convenient and common example that doesn't always translate to real life - but I imagine you can imagine a lot of scenarios where this is a helpful guide (certainly more helpful than asking yourself, "is this an accurate description of reality?).

Putting our words up against some arbitrary definition of "true" or "factual" is ultimately pointless. The point in life is not to be accurate (especially since we've long entered a period where bias and perspectival error are well accepted and few people believe truth, by that definition, is even possible), it is to positively transform the world.

Of course, this adds a layer for Christians (or really anyone) when debating how to speak truth. It certainly seems easier to say whatever will make our own lives easier and, in a way, one could argue that positively transforms the world from my perspective. Using this definition of truth, though, requires a willingness to submit our own preferences and ease to the greater good. Something we're not always very good at.

Then again, using the standard definition of truth requires much the same thing - only it gives us less room to justify our actions and correct or ethical. This idea from Rollins makes more space for interpretation and disagreement, but we live in a world where that's reality anyway.

In any event, I'm not at a place where I'm adopting this notion of truth wholesale anyway, but I do think it's worth thinking about - or perhaps the larger point it's making about how we approach ethics. I'd love to hear what other people think, though. Chime in.

Killing: Abortion and Guns

Lately, since our election season seems to have kicked into full swing more than a YEAR before the actual election, it seems like there's been a rapid increase of both abortion and gun related memes on Facebook. Now a Facebook meme is a great way to further trivialize the already trivial, but it's a terrible place to insult the intelligence and morality of people with whom you disagree on important issues. If people (read: Christians) are really concerned about the increasing divide in the US, the first move is pretty much anything, but demeaning and demonizing those people you believe to be "on the other team."

It seems even more silly to me when it feels like (and granted discerning the tone of a meme is somewhat difficult) everyone is really just talking about one thing: killing.

Now there are of course some gun advocates who genuinely want to preserve the right to hunt and are worried that new gun laws would make that more difficult. However, I don't see much virulent rhetoric from these people, in fact, most of them are pretty confident we're not headed that direction. The real ire comes from those people who are afraid gun restrictions will prevent them from defending themselves in ways they deem fit - while there aren't too many non-crank-wackos who talk about this in the language of killing, it is ultimately the extension that must be discussed when talking self defense - people want the right to kill in defense of their life or the life of a loved one.

And, there are, of course, some abortion activists enamored with the notion of family planning by abortion, contraception after-the-fact, if you will, who make the debate pretty callous and unfeeling - but these, too, are very few and far between. Most people recognize the physical and emotional toll an abortion plays on a woman (and those who love her, if they know) as well as the moral complications of such a decision - and would rather have as few abortions as necessary. Many people would rather not outlaw abortion simply because they're not comfortable making that decision for another person - likewise, you don't see a lot of rhetorical engagement from these people. Again, the rhetoric rarely gets formed in the language of killing, but it is the extension of the debate - even if one doesn't recognize a fetus as a person, it is certainly living tissue that might potentially be forced to stop living.

Ultimately, these are both discussions about in what circumstances killing is appropriate. In the end, such positions are just value judgments - either this "bad" person has done enough to deserve a self-defensive death (self defense, being itself, a value judgement) or the life into which this child might be born will not provide the kind of love and attention each human being deserves (which is, again, a value judgement in itself) and preventing that birth is the best choice.

There is an argument about someone who's alive and made choices vs someone not yet born who didn't - and that's certainly a valid argument to have - but it skirts the subject. In both cases, the counter argument is simply speculative: you never know how this "bad" person might respond to being treated with love and care as opposed to violence and death; you never know how this child or this mother or the larger community would respond to the love and life of a new baby. These counter arguments are, of course, equally powerful and valid.

Then there are also the arguments of how these decisions affect the larger society. Do we want to be a part of a society where human life is so devalued that virtually anyone can make unilateral decisions about ending it - whether at the end of a gun or of medical instrumentation? Likewise, do we want to be part of a society that stands idly by while people are threatened or killed or while children are raised unloved or under-resourced?

There are consequences to any action.

That is ultimately my response to discussions of this kind. We need to think more. We need to recognize both the value of life and the necessary interconnectedness of all life. There is no individual life on this planet. We all impact each other in ways seen and unseen. We are all in this together. Life is important and the decision to take a life is equally important. It is not a flippant decision. Too often our debates about such things make it an easy answer, "of course I can shoot someone who break into my home," "of course I can choose whether to have a child or not." And there's strong historical precedent for both.

At the same time, there's also a strong historical precedent that people wrestle not only with the decisions themselves, but with the morality of the decision itself. What does it mean to choose life? What does it mean to choose killing? This plays out in a number of other ways as well - military service, police work, capital punishment, euthanasia - even health care and nutrition debates. Life is a pretty big deal. Ending it, even more so. This shouldn't be something we settle easily... especially when it interacts with reality.

As a Christian, it's pretty easy to take a theoretical stance. Killing is wrong. Jesus makes the case pretty clear - "do not resist an evil person," "love your enemies," "turn the other cheek." The Christian stance is always one of self-sacrifice over killing. But those theoretical answers prove far more difficult when we put them up against real life scenarios - usually scenarios that spring upon us unexpectedly. We just can't say what we would do or even what we should do, because living in the midst of that chaos is part of the process. We can follow the words of Jesus, but in the real world, it is rarely without some reservation (not to mention our various competing interpretations of what exactly Jesus meant).

We can use our beliefs to engage in practices that help form us into the kind of people who will respond as we so choose - but in the end, actually experiencing such a decision makes the difference. Listen, I pray for a world where no one will feel the need to get an abortion and no one will feel the need to own a gun, but until that world comes, I live in this one.

There are sensible gun laws out there to be had. There really are. There are sensible abortion regulations that could exist. We constantly get push back on these issues around the notion of freedom. I believe in freedom. I do think, as much as possible, people should be able to make their own decisions. What I don't believe, though, is that this notion of freedom should supersede the consideration of life. Guns may not be the only way to kill a person, but they make that killing much easier - that needs to be part of the discussion. Abortion may be the choice of a woman (because even when abortion is illegal, it still happens a lot), but it is the ending of, at the very least, potential life. The decisions we make around these topics are not and should not be easy.

I've never heard anyone talk more openly and honestly about the realities and potential of guns than police officers, who face those decisions every day. I've never heard anyone talk more openly and honestly and about the realities and potential of abortion than doctors who perform them. You don't often hear casual definitive statements from these people, because they live lives in the midst of the mess. They see the realities of life on both sides of these decisions. They take killing seriously. They understand these issues are about life and have no easy answers. In other words: they're not meme-worthy - and it's our making them so that is the real tragedy.

How Do We Pick Evangelical Celebrities?

To start, I've taken to using "evangelical" to describe the sort of amorphous, generically Christian subculture that sort of dominates American conservatism (when it deigns to touch on religious or moral matters). I still call myself an evangelical mostly because I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ can and does have a life-changing impact on people. I certainly don't line up politically (and increasingly, troublingly, theologically) with what has come to define the group - yet it is still my group. These are my people, for sure - like it or not, we're in the same family.

Growing up in this evangelical subculture (specifically the traditional Nazarene one from which I hail) we'd often be handed "our" celebrities, to celebrate and follow with the same fervor everyone else supported the mainstream pop-culture celebrities of the day.* As a sports-loving evangelical child I remember getting Sports Spectrum magazine (which, low and behold, still exists). It was full of athletes (many famous) who were also Christians.

This is where things became incredibly confusing for me. Yes, these guys talked about God and went to that special baseball chapel and did team bible studies, and huddled for prayer after games - they used the right insider lingo and, no doubt, genuinely seemed to find Christian faith an important part of their identity.

But I also read the sports section of the newspaper (ha! newspaper - I'm old) and I knew that the on and off field lives of these same guys would never pass muster in my church. Now I'd been lectured about the differences in denominational theology and how different people can believe different things and still be Christian (although this rarely seemed to apply to Catholics, but whatever), but as a child who was taught growing up (something I believe to be pretty central to evangelical thought) that what you do says a lot more about what you believe that what you say (something I still believe to be true), it was incredibly confusing.

Guys impregnating waitresses, cheating on their spouses, getting arrested for some drunken brawl, visibly swearing with the TV cameras on them. I didn't get why these "celebrities" should be celebrated any more than anyone else, just because they said they loved Jesus. If anything, evangelical culture, as I know it, deems people like that worse than those other generic sinners.

I know some of those christian celebrities really did fit the bill - David Robinson was pretty prominently featured and, by all accounts, he lives up to the evangelical hype. I'm sure there were others, but it always felt like a real (and unnecessary) tension - as if evangelical culture was trying to say, "look, we're just like you, only Christian," when that is pretty much the opposite of what it means to have a Christian culture. The difference is important.

Things all went to heck with Amy Grant. She was the evangelical celebrity darling, who not only sang well and got popular, but crossed over into mainstream pop music and kept talking about Jesus (for the most part). Then, famously, she left her husband to marry country-star Vince Gill (who also left his wife at the same time). If this was anyone in my church, it would've been a huge scandal. It became more like a secret scandal amongst evangelicals. People didn't want to give up the Christian cache of claiming a big star and some people were willing to give her a pass on judgment because of it.


Now, in the end, you know what, marriages are often broken. I believe in marriage. I think divorce is really sad and shouldn't necessarily be undertaken as easily as it sometimes is today (even among Christians) - at the same time, I recognize how unfair it is to put the kind of pressure on someone like Amy Grant to be perfect. I recognize perhaps that kind of scrutiny and pressure contributed to her relationship problems - she wouldn't be the first evangelical to have that happen, famous or not. Plus, she's still pretty vocal about her faith and has, by all accounts, been a pretty good example of marriage and health relationship for decades following.

And I know that a 23 year old guy (who seemed so old, grown-up, and mature when I was reading about him in a magazine when I was eight) who gets a million dollar check with almost no accountability, might get himself into a fair bit of trouble, despite his religious commitments and upbringing. I also recognize that some people really do have a cultural faith that fits pretty well within the realm of generic american evangelicalism - and most people are (rightly and graciously) willing to forgive a few flaws and failures.

In other words, things aren't actually as black and white as we'd like to believe.**

Life is far more intricate and convoluted, but that doesn't seem to stop the evangelical celebrity machine. I saw this article about Jim Gaffigan a few weeks back. Jim is the kind of Christian you'd love to promote - he's a sort of progressive catholic who's just trying to live out his faith well. It's a great story to have out there (and surely it helps promote his new show, which he and his wife did on their own and can use all the promotional help it can get).

But it's utterly confusing why he'd be lifted up as an evangelical celebrity (even beyond the whole catholic thing, which we seem to be getting over, finally). Yeah, he works clean, but in interview after interview he talks about how he's not against swearing (and swearing while he does it), explaining it just doesn't make sense to do jokes about his kids full of profanity. He's not on the evangelical side of any political issue and he's all but refused to really speak about anything theological ("I know nothing. And so I don't want to be presented as someone who knows what they're talking about.").


Maybe this is all a good thing. Maybe I'm picking nits about evangelicalism being lax on famous people, when really it's a transformation of grace and openness. Then again, I do read the news - plus I spend way too much time on Facebook.

Maybe I'm just being selfish - maybe I'm just uptight because I can (and do) conform to most of those quintessentially super-Christian lifestyle choices and yet I'm constantly prodded and pushed and challenged when I happen to espouse a theological (or political) position that might be a little outside what's expected.

It's as if evangelicalism wants to include anyone who might make them look cool, but exclude anyone who might make them think. Well, I guess maybe we've gotten this celebrity thing down after all.





*Now. obviously there's a real critique about celebrity and celebrity culture itself that's problematic in this instance, but that might be subject for another day.

**Man, it took a long time to get around to something so seemingly simple.

***There's no corresponding reference to this above, but if you're in the mood for a pained groan today, google "evangelical celebrity" on image search. Rough.

Defunding Planned Parenthood Means MORE Abortion

Listen, I'm no fan of abortion. Well, I'm not sure anyone is really a "fan" of it necessarily. I certainly wish we didn't have abortions. I grieve every woman who feels unsupported, scared, or alone enough to make such a choice. It's a societal tragedy that we've not created a space to welcome every and any child into the world for a decent life. Sadly, though, we just haven't.

I'm no fan of abortion. I'm also no fan of making it illegal. Beyond the philosophical and theological issues with legislating morality, for me it's quite pragmatic: legal or not, there will still be abortions and I'd rather have women getting them in safe, healthy places than the dirty backrooms and coat hangers which I hope are things of the past (at least in this country).

As a Christian, I am adamantly opposed to killing of any kind. I don't believe killing is ever justified - although I do admit, sometimes, the pressures of the world (or a particular situation) and our oft-deficient imaginations, lead us to make the regrettable choice to take life. As much as it's wrong and unjust, occasionally, in this messed up world of ours, taking life seems the best of many bad choices available.

We can judge and argue over when those times arise - we can talk about things like war and execution and self-defense and suicide - and we'll likely disagree. We're always looking for other options, other ways to protect life (or at least we should be) - and that's great. But we're all going to find those tricky situations where taking life feels like the best option - as sad as that is.

I don't think the legality of abortion will change that dynamic for many women, if any. I also don't think it's consistent with a Christian response to such tragedy. I want to work for a world in which fewer and fewer women find this choice the best one for them when encountering a difficult or unexpected pregnancy. There are a lot of ways to do that.

One of the ways people have come up with lately is the notion of defunding Planned Parenthood - and organization that facilitated 327,615 abortions in 2013-2014 (the full annual report is available here). And there's a case to be made there. About 3% of services PP provides are abortion services - and figures hover around 10-12% for the percentage of PP clients who receive these services. Planned Parenthood gets 41% of its revenue from governmental sources (much of it Medicaid reimbursements for its poor clients, who are most of the population PP serves). Cutting those funds might make a real difference.

However, the Hyde Amendment, routinely attached to Federal Appropriations bills since 1976, prevents the use of federal funds for abortion services, unless there is rape, incest, or the mother's life is threatened. Yes, there are some ways to get around this, but any federal funds that do trickle through are minimal, at best. Planned Parenthood spends virtually no federal money on abortions. Defunding Planned Parenthood on the Federal level will not change the number of abortions PP facilitates at all.

If something like a defunding happened, PP could make up a good portion of the money lost through increased private fundraising - any remaining shortfall would likely mean less money for STD testing and treatment, PP's largest service area and also contraception. Contraception - providing free or reduced cost birth control - accounts for 34% of Planned Parrenthood's work, more than 10 times the number of abortions provided. Contraception is the single biggest way to avoid pregnancies most likely to end in abortion.

Yes, freeing up PP money for other organizations that don't facilitate abortion at all would be a great option. Unfortunately, most of the areas PP works, they are the only place for women to go for cancer screenings, contraception, and other health needs. PP is a real asset to many poor communities who have no other medical services. The other organizations who would get the federal money after a defunding are largely outside the poorest, most vulnerable communities - we'd be abandoning the very women who need the most help (not to mention putting lives at risk as those women determined to end their pregnancy will lack safe, healthy ways to do so).

This option does put us on the right track, though.

I don't like the way some proponents of abortion (including Planned Parenthood in many cases) are working for an attitude towards abortion that makes it no different than having a wart removed. I don't think there should be a stigma attached to anyone or anything, but I'm not opposed to making sure people understand what they're really doing when they end a pregnancy. It shouldn't be an unemotional, stress-free decision any more than serving on a jury in a death-penalty case or sitting on the front lines of a war might be. Life is a big deal (for a more in depth discussion of how and why I use the word "life.")

But, let's say society changes. Let's say people really understand the "pro-life" position and chose to continue their pregnancies, we have to recognize the great repercussions. Adoption would go up, sure, but not nearly enough. Anyone who's ever had a child understands the bond that exists. I don't think I'd ever be strong enough to give up my child, even if I knew I couldn't give her a proper upbringing. It takes an amazingly, crazy-strong individual to give a child up for adoption - these parents are the strongest of human beings. There is just no way every abortion can be traded for an adoption. It won't happen. I'd be surprised if 10% went that direction. Adoption is great and there are lots of kids in foster care right now who need a family, but it's not a viable solution.

What we'd have is an influx of kids living in very difficult situations, many in situations that, quite honestly, aren't preferable to abortion.

If we, as Christians, believe in the importance of life strongly enough, it's in those situations where we have to intervene. Frankly, we do a pretty poor job of it for the kids who are already here, let alone the ones yet to come. If we'd stop wasting our money on politicians and lobbyists, there might be enough to make a real difference. More importantly, though, we need to begin investing our lives. Christians and others opposed to abortion should be starting and supporting health centers in poor neighborhoods (maybe those that could eventually be worthy of funding, taking grants away from Planned Parenthood based on merit rather than legal action) - but not just health centers, daycares and afterschool programs - community centers that educate parents and help children succeed. These services are far more important to ensuring a real and true life for everyone around us.

Making abortion illegal once again might make us feel good in our worship services each week, but it does nothing to further the loving community Christ came to institute. Until we're willing to invest our lives in the lives of others we have no hope of creating the kind of loving community capable of truly valuing every human in the way it deserves.

If you want to end abortion - and believe me, I do - the enemy is not planned parenthood, it's selfishness and fear. If we want to combat those real enemies, we need to start with ourselves. We need to start with finding those around us who need our love and support and inviting them into our lives. The challenge of the gospel is to step out of our comfortable, self-sustaining existence and actually link our futures, our health, our well-being with the poor and the suffering. This means not running away when we get hurt or things get tough; it means surviving together or not surviving at all. This is what God did for us and it is what we're called to do.

So let's stop getting bogged down with bogeymen and get to loving people. Laws don't solve problems. Love does. We've got far more important things to do with our time.