Glorifying God

When I was newly ordained, I was required to teach confirmation classes using a standard “catechism”. At that time it was important for the confirmands to know the correct answers to these questions. I remember reading in the Westminster Catechism, one used by several reformed theology protestant churches, that the “chief end of [man] was the glorification of God.” Of course, in addition to that “end”, faithful humans also were in line to receive the reward of salvation in the process. But the purpose of life and, by extension, the purpose of the church was ultimately to glorify God. I must confess to you that I’ve been struggling for a long time even to figure out what glorification of God is supposed to look like. To many religious people it seems to have something to do with giving credit to the only One who deserves credit for anything. Somehow, human obedience, refusal to succumb to temptation, piety, and gratitude also helped to add up to the glorification of God. While the word is still used, even in liberal protestant liturgy and worship, I wonder how many people are left who still see the glorification of God as their primary purpose, or how many are left who still go to church (if they go at all) to get support in this holy task.

Bear with me; there’s a question embedded in all this. Is the glorification of God the only way to understand the purpose of creation, and not just human creation, either? And furthermore, what role might the liberal Christian church play in helping people work toward some alternative end?

If, for the sake of argument, glorification of God is not really about how we behave or how we believe, then could it have something to do with who we are or who we are becoming? If we assume that we are created in the image of God (or even that all creation embodies the image of God in some way), then who we are or who we are becoming takes on primary significance.

For me, this question is best addressed by edging out onto the bridge that hangs between the theological notion of creation and the scientific notion of evolution. In many Christian circles these have been cast as opposites for so long that it is difficult to connect them. I have believed for a long time that evolution could be seen as the “how” of creation, but the question about the purpose of creation invites us to take another step and embrace evolution as a sacred process.

Recently, I have been rereading a book by Loren Eisley called “The Immense Journey”. It was written 40 or 50 years ago and I haven’t looked at it for a long time. I remember, however, from my initial introduction to this beautiful book how moved I was at Eisley’s profound, almost sacred, respect and amazement at the wonders of the evolutionary process. I’m sure I’m not the first one to come to this conclusion, but, aided by Eisley’s images, I find myself believing that the sacred purpose of life is to evolve. What makes this a fascinating idea is that human beings have attained a level of conscious awareness that makes it possible for us to observe, think about, and intentionally participate in the evolutionary process.

No doubt, there is plenty of room for growth and development in the human race. For one thing, we humans tend to operate at a relatively immature level of ethical development. The lion’s share of ethical thinking seems to revolve around either not getting caught, or around the potential rewards or punishments that we deserve as a result of our behavior. Even the catechistic “glorification of God” is too often construed in reward/punishment terms, or in terms of the need to survive at the expense of others. Such thinking supports all sorts of violent attempts to address the problems of the world.

So, how might life and society be different if we based human behavior less on selfish pursuits and more on improving our abilities to relate and cooperate at more profound levels? For humans to embrace a higher ethic, it will probably be necessary for us to allow our image of God to mature, too. It won’t work for us to continue to see God as a demanding (though probably loving) parent, who throws divine temper tantrums when we don’t behave.

A radical Christian idea is that we embody the divine and that the divine is in an evolutionary process of coming into being in and through us. If we see it that way, then our ethical task is to become as fully our unique selves as we can. We honor God, not by obedience or by giving credit. We honor God by maturing and taking responsibility for our lives, our relationships, our social systems, and even our destiny.

We must be honest, though. Maturity is scary. We may find it necessary to make sacrifices. We may even need to get out of the way as a human race so the evolutionary process can go on. As Jesus died so we might live, maybe in time, we will die so life can go on. This, of course, is only speculation. Evolution is a very slow process.

Still, I have come to believe that Healthy Liberal Christianity will help people and cultures mature, even beyond their need for the church – and even beyond their need to cling selfishly to life. We liberal Christians have a lot of work to do if we are to mature in our understanding of Jesus’ sacrifice, but it’s difficult work, and not for the faint of heart.

If you’re interested in a somewhat dated but poetic treatment of the evolutionary process, read “The Immense Journey” by Loren Eisley. And if you are interested in exploring some startling speculations on the purpose of life and it’s possible sacrifices, take a look at “Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics” by Diarmuid O’Murchu.

I’ll be away next week, so the next post will be during the first week in July. Thanks for reading and for the comments you have made. They mean a lot to me.

Wayne Gustafson

"Our Faith is 2000 years old, our thinking is not." United Church of Christ

Gay Pride

This Saturday, June 14, is the annual Gay Pride Event in Elmira. For some (perhaps even most) religious groups, the demonstration of pride by those of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual orientation, is seen as an affront to God. For other religious groups (The Park Church among them) a Gay Pride event is a way that a radically disenfranchised group can affirm their human dignity, and is therefore worth our support and our advocacy on their behalf.

As we consider these positions, perhaps we need to take a look at this word “pride”. An incorrect understanding of the word simply adds fuel to the fire of the controversy. In English, we use the term in two very different ways. One has to do with pride over an accomplishment, and the other has to do with pride in being who we are. Complicating matters even more, each of these meanings can be used in healthy or unhealthy ways. For example, we teach our children to be proud of their accomplishments, seeing that as a way to encourage their development. On the other hand, we don’t want people to use pride in their accomplishments to elevate themselves over others (or even God, for that matter) in an arrogant way. In the same way, we teach one another to have pride (perhaps more like dignity) about who we are as human beings, but at the same time we don’t want people to use their self-pride to set themselves over others because of certain human qualities like is done in racism. As dignity and affirmation, pride is good. As arrogance or as evidence of superiority, it qualifies as one of the seven deadly sins.

From everything I’ve ever known about gay pride events, the purpose is to give appropriate space for human dignity, so that people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc. don’t have to hide their identity away in shame. They can stand in the light and be who they are, and it has nothing to do with arrogance or superiority. That’s what we support and encourage, and that is why this church co-sponsors these gay pride events.

Some may think that The Park Church is trying to change what we perceive to be the narrow minds of others. But that is not our purpose. We, simply, support this event on behalf of a segment of the human population that has received way too much judgment. While we don’t expect to change any one else’s opinion, we can at least say how we have come to believe as we do about the issue of homosexuality and the church’s response to it.

I will speak for myself and not presume that others, even from Park Church, would describe their beliefs in precisely the same way. So, here are a few random thoughts of mine about why this congregation has chosen to be identified publicly as “Open and Affirming” when it comes to sexual orientation:

First of all, at judgment day (whatever that might be), I believe God would be more interested in why I was not more compassionate rather than why I was not more judgmental.

This church’s Open and Affirming stance is based on our compassionate response, not on believing that we are right and other positions are wrong.

All theological positions find their biblical support in the particular passages they select (while others are ignored). Here are some that I choose to use.

“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” I John 4: 16b

“Love does not insist on its own way.” I Corinthians 13: 5b

Therefore, regardless of my interpretation of right and wrong, who am I to proclaim that God wants God’s own way, and that I must enforce it.

Jesus says nothing about homosexuality.

But, he says a lot about being judgmental: “Don’t!”

Paul also addresses the dangers of judgment in Romans 2:

Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. ²You say, ‘We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is in accordance with truth.’ ³Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? ⁴Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? ⁵But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

And finally, from Luke 6: 36, Jesus says, “Be ye compassionate (sometimes translated “merciful”) as your God is compassionate.”

Many people (gay and straight) have told me that their orientation was clear to them at a very young age. That fits with my experience of being aware of my attraction to girls when I was only 4 or 5 years old.

According to my reading and according to thousands of conversations, I can’t come up with any reports of people being talked into adopting one particular sexual orientation or another. It is true that someone might be encouraged to experiment, but I have been told by gays who try the straight life that they soon find out that it is not natural for them. Straights who experiment with the gay life, also learn that it is not natural for them.

Without going into too much detail, there also appears to be a serious problem with Biblical translation. It is not appropriate to apply a 21^st Century interpretation onto words that belong to another age, language, and culture. The best scholarship I have been able to find indicates that

• the sin of Sodom was lack of hospitality,
• that the words used in the New Testament refer either to ritual prostitution or “man-boy” relationships where there is a serious power differential. (And those are problematic for other reasons that have nothing to do with sexual orientation.)
• Those words do not refer to adult loving relationships. That said, strong arguments are made that we really cannot know precisely what Paul meant.
  

Leviticus is the one exception. Homosexuality is punishable by death. But then, so is eating lobster or wearing clothing made of a polyester blend! We must, therefore, put those proscriptions in their proper context.

Clearly we do not believe that homosexuality (broadly understood) is unnatural, and while we do not understand why people are born with different sexual orientations, we believe that they must determine what is authentic for them. Our job is to love them and to help them have a place in the world where they can be who they are. That the existence of diverse orientations might cause discomfort or confusion does not provide adequate reasons for us to judge them.

So, we will continue to affirm the dignity of human beings, we will continue to identify ourselves publicly as an “Open and Affirming” congregation, and we will continue to support gay pride events.

Images of God

There are so many things to write about that I hardly know where to begin. Political, economic, social, and religious controversies abound. But for today, instead of getting caught up in one controversy or another, I want to write about a fundamental perspective that may affect how we view all of the above issues. I am thinking about how we imagine God to be.

Of course, because God is beyond all direct knowing by humans (my assumption, anyway), human experience and imagination generates a myriad of images. In Healthy Liberal Christianity, we consistently remind ourselves not to confuse our images with the realities they attempt to describe. Still, our images are moving and profound, and they do affect how we see things.

For example, some divine images are associated more with “theism” or “deism”. Oh, you don’t know the difference? Well, theism sees God as having something like a human personality (although necessarily bigger and better) and that personal God shows caring by being involved in human affairs. This God heals, chastises, teaches, and intervenes, often in response to human requests (prayers). Deism posits a God who created the universe, who set it into motion, and then who went on vacation. The deist God is sometimes referred to as “the divine clockmaker” who builds the clock, winds it up, and then stands back to let it run.

There are other divine images that are less person-based and might include “life itself”, or “love”, or “energy”, etc.

Thinking about the theist images for a moment, I have noticed that images can mature and change over time. Let me give you a few examples. Many people believe in “The Santa Claus God.” You know, the one who is “making a list, checking it twice, going to find out who’s naughty and nice.” This is the God who is most interested in whether or not we are behaving ourselves and who will reward “niceness” and punish “naughtiness.”

Others believe in the image of God that I call “the genie in the lamp.” This is the God who intervenes in human affairs on request (or perhaps on demand). We “rub the lamp” by our religious rituals and prayers, the divine genie pops out, does the requested tasks, and then returns to the lamp until needed again.

In my counseling practice, I have anguished with the confusion that many of my abused clients have carried for years about why God didn’t intervene to rescue them from their abusive experiences. They sometimes wonder if the Santa Claus God was punishing them for their naughtiness, or why the Genie refused to come out of the lamp to work in their behalf. With only those images to draw from, then the ongoing abuse must mean either that the victim is being punished or that God is somehow unable or unwilling to help. These are terrible prospects.

So, it becomes necessary to identify yet another image of God. I call this one “The God of Presence.” The God of Presence neither punishes nor rescues. This image of God shows caring by being intimately present throughout human experience – including the best and the worst. God’s presence is more than companionship. It’s more like God experiences every bit of human experience along with us and brings divine meaning to it. No matter what we go through, we are never left alone.

Is it really possible for God to be God without having to intervene in order to show caring? This is a much debated point between conservative and liberal positions, but I don’t think there is any way to declare a clear winner in either direction. We must, instead, remember that all images of God are inadequate, whether creator, clockmaker, parent, judge, or any other image. Still the imagination continues to generate divine images. For example, one possible image of God is creation itself, including its embedded evolutionary process. From this perspective, creation is not completed, nor has God ceased speaking to creation (“God is still speaking”). Perhaps, then, our task of co-creation is to mature into divine fullness – beyond our prejudices, beyond our fear-based reactivity, and beyond our attempts to measure human acceptability by means of obedience. Perhaps we have the capacity to develop a richer and deeper ethical foundation for our communities and our relationships. Perhaps, as Jesus intimated, we have the capacity (and the responsibility?) to become more godlike in our Evolutionary Process. Perhaps we will discover that the divine maturation process in creation is actually indistinguishable from evolution.

For now, it simply feels right to keep learning, to keep growing, to keep healing – in short to keep evolving.

Blessings on our divine journey.

Wayne

Why Jesus?

Before beginning this week’s topic, I want to respond to a comment left on the blog by Steve. He wrote:

But my experience is that liberal Christians only want to hear about the experiences of other liberals or members of nonchristian faiths -- never from conservative members of their own faith.

Sadly, I agree with Steve in two ways. Much of liberal Christianity is not of the healthy variety, and, in my experience, deep listening to someone who sees things differently is almost non-existent in all quarters. For me, however, Healthy Liberal Christianity is a direction worth pursuing. Therefore, I recommend that we all engage in lots of respectful listening, where the objective is to gain a deeper understanding of how the other person came to see the reality in such a way, rather than judging their position or requiring agreement. Real listening must always be more about honest curiosity that looks for new information rather than being a test of someone’s orthodoxy (or heterodoxy, for that matter). So Steve, thanks for underscoring that important issue and for this opportunity to remind you that Healthy Liberal Christianity is something we strive for, not something we necessarily possess already.

As I prepare to go on to the issue of “Why Jesus?”, or asked differently, how we understand the question of “Atonement Theology”, it strikes me that this issue is a perfect occasion for learning about what makes respectful listening so difficult. Let me begin by articulating a couple of very different ways that people understand Jesus. This issue is a major fulcrum around which conservative and liberal Christian positions often revolve. Without noting the differences in the positions, any real dialogue is virtually impossible. So, here is my short (and therefore necessarily oversimplified) version.

From the more conservative perspective, humans were created as good (does that mean, obedient?) people. Disobedience (as described in the events in The Garden of Eden) destroyed the possibility of that life in Paradise After some 1200 years of unsuccessful human effort to use adherence to “The Law” as the means of salvation, God finally responded graciously to this impossible human task by becoming a human being in Jesus Christ. “The Son”, then, sacrificed himself on the cross to pay the ransom (to atone) for all human sin, so that God (The Father) would not be required (by the divine sense of justice) to punish (banish) humanity eternally. and the concomitant introduction of evil made salvation impossible to attain without divine intervention.

When Jesus was subsequently resurrected, his own eternally restored life became the sign that his sacrifice qualified as an acceptable payment for human sin. All we humans need do, then, is accept this “truth” and ask for Jesus to be our “personal Savior”. In this way, gracious salvation from eternal punishment is to be had simply for the asking. (My apologies for any inadequacy in this summary.)

For many liberal Christians, atonement theology is replete with stumbling blocks. Let me summarize some of them with these three questions:

1. Is obedience the primary way to measure a proper relationship with God?
2. Is God really that mean (some would say, abusive) that Jesus must sacrifice his own life to protect us from God’s wrath?
3. If God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ is not for the purposes of atonement, then what, if anything, might it mean?

The problem with the liberal perspective is that so many people have either not made the effort to articulate a different Christology, or, armed with the best of intentions, they haven’t known where to begin. So the two default positions become atonement theology on the one hand or vague comments about the impossibility of resurrection or the infinite kindness of God on the other.

For liberal Christianity to be healthy, we have to work a lot harder to articulate an alternate vision. This is where healthy and respectful listening is so valuable. First of all, when you listen to someone else’s carefully constructed position, and ask them questions about how they got there, you benefit from hearing some important foundational ways of looking at things. At the same time, you are encouraged to think more deeply and clearly about your own foundational positions. It is never enough to say, “I don’t agree with you,” without getting down to the level where your axiomatic beliefs differ from the other. Then it truly becomes a matter of faith – that is to say, a matter of your personal fundamentals.

When liberals and conservatives do the hard work of excavating the foundations of their opinions, then their real differences come to light. Now, there is another possible outcome. Sometimes, when we look at the level of fundamentals, we discover that we are coming to conclusions based on axiomatic positions that we do not even believe. And our deep and respectful listening to one another then might affect life changing modifications in our positions.

You see, when you listen deeply, you can never guarantee how you will be changed by the experience. Perhaps that’s why people resist listening in that way. To paraphrase a common saying: “My mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with any deep truth that will cause me to change how I see things.” If we are to be healthy liberal (or conservative) Christians, then we must take the risk of listening to one another.

We may learn more about how to evaluate the health of human/divine relationships. We may learn more about the varied images of God we carry. And we may even learn more about why Jesus came.

Wayne

"Our Faith is 2000 years old, our thinking is not." United Church of Christ

Religious Belief and Religious Pluralism

Greetings

If I were to write from a particularly arrogant stance, I might try to persuade you that Healthy Liberal Christianity is inherently superior to other forms of religious belief and practice, including other forms of Christianity. And I would be wrong to try to do so!

On the surface, it seems that Liberal Christianity contains a fundamental contradiction, for on the one hand, a person might say “This is what I believe with my whole heart”, and on the other hand, that same person would also be prepared to affirm the legitimacy of other spiritual paths. Don’t I have to believe that something is “right” in order to believe it? Not necessarily, for it turns out that the issue is not about who is right.

Let me illustrate my point in this way. When meeting a couple for the first time, my wife and I have often been interested in finding out how they got together, fell in love, and decided to get married. And everyone’s story is marvelously different. If I listen carefully and respectfully, I might even find out how their lives were enriched and broadened by virtue of the new room that the very experience of falling in love created in them. Each lover discovers the capacity for deeper understanding, compassion, intimacy, and appreciation for life that goes even beyond the immediate connection with the beloved.

Now when someone tells me how they fell in love and they identify the object of their love, should I take offense that they didn’t fall in love with the same person that I fell in love with? Of course not!! You see, the experience of falling in love at all is much more significant than the identity of the particular beloved. So, too, is it with faith and belief.

Falling in love is a dimension of growing up. Falling in love helps us to grow beyond the selfishness and narrowness of our ego-based perspectives. Falling in love opens us up to the realm of the miraculous. Falling in love engenders hope in the face of a challenging future. Falling in love elicits the divine image in a way that brings us to the most sacred manifestations of our own humanity. Falling in love is really important.

But of course, I’m not only talking about a romantic version of falling in love. I’m talking about falling in love with God, not necessarily as a separate being, but as the underlying reality of love, relationship, creativity, connectivity to the whole universe, hope, purpose, and all the rest that might define our spirituality.

The development of a romantic relationship serves as a useful template for our relationship with the Divine, too. All relationships, (perhaps especially those that float on the wings of romance) begin with a large measure of what might be called “projection.” In other words, we see in the other person much more than what is actually there. In the first throes of love, we are blinded to some of the realities of the situation by the experience itself, while that same blinding experience prepares our inner being to perceive life more deeply and magnificently than we could have seen it before. Over time, the layers of unconscious expectation (you know, like our expectation that the beloved will always see us as the center of their universe) that we initially laid onto the beloved must be peeled away and integrated into ourselves if we are to develop a real relationship with the real person who is “behind” the overlay of our projections. In the process (that takes years, by the way) we learn more about this other person, and as a bonus, we also learn more about ourselves.

As a result of our acculturation in a largely Western Christian environment, we are trained to expect that God will manifest certain attributes. When we withdraw our projections and set aside our preconceived notions, we then find that the idea of God is much more complex, comprehensive, and (sadly) indistinct than we expected. This can generate a crisis that gives us the choice between digging in to defend our old images of God and the alternative of embracing the uncomfortable truth that the reality of God will always refuse to be limited by our definitions. I believe that staying in the relationship promotes maturity, even if we don’t know where it will lead.

Healthy Liberal Christianity affirms that relationship with God is always dynamic – one might say, alive. So, fall in love with the divine, and then value every opportunity to hear other people’s stories of how they, too, fell in love. And when you read the Bible (or the sacred text of any other faith, for that matter), consider reading it like a love story. You might learn a lot, and be enriched by it, too.

Wayne Gustafson

"Our Faith is 2000 years old. Our thinking is not." The United Church of Christ

UCC Sacred Conversations on Race

I’ve been reading a number of articles and postings regarding the United Church of Christ’s call for churches and communities to enter into a nationwide sacred conversation about race. (I invite you to consider reading some of this material yourself from the resource page that the UCC has created to support this endeavor. See info and link below.) I think this is a terrific idea.

Once again, as I indicated in my last installment, I find it’s a bit daunting for me to dare comment on essential issues when so many wise, experienced, and learned voices have already produced so much thoughtful and useful writing on the subject. Still, there is a particular angle that I do not find being addressed, and this concerns me because I believe it is one of the grounding elements of Healthy Liberal Christianity. Let me say it this way: While there are so many significant issues that we are compelled to address (and certainly race is one of them), it seems to me to be grossly unfair to send people into dialogue around thorny issues without their being equipped with appropriate tools and the skill to use them.

What I fear is missing from any dialogue around race (or any other divisive issue) is the ability to communicate well. How can we have a fruitful conversation if we believe that communication simply involves becoming more articulate so as to get our point across to others more effectively? Before we can claim mastery of communication, we must first learn to listen; and we must listen deeply enough so that we can excavate beneath the superficiality of one person’s poorly formed (and poorly informed) opinion that is pitted against the equally inadequate opinion of another person. Now, you might wonder I think this issue is central to Healthy Liberal Christianity. Extreme conservatism attempts to hold onto the status quo, and so any competing perspective that might be challenging is seen as a threat to be defended against. Unhealthy “left wing” Christianity plays out as just another version of such conservatism. Your old idea and my new idea compete to see who wins. I make use of the term “liberal” (and healthy liberal, at that) to refer to a very different quality of communication between and among differing perspectives. A true liberal wants to come to understand as many perspectives as possible. The goal is integration, learning, healing, and growth - not winning!

It disturbs me greatly to observe that the apparent purpose so much religious, political, and social communication is primarily to “win the argument.” So the only reason then to listen to your opponent’s line of thought is to refute it, not to learn from it!

Wait a minute, are all conversations then actually arguments? If we observe the quality of most communication, that’s exactly the conclusion that emerges. People tend to go into meetings and other conversations with the goal of winning others over to their previously determined position.

What if instead, our conversations were really about learning something new? What if we put more energy into learning about how our adversaries came to their understandings and conclusion, rather than working so hard to convert them to ours? Do we really believe that to learn something from our “enemy” is tantamount to failure?

Any theological position that comes without a healthy side order of humility, by which I mean a willingness to learn something new, will necessarily increase the presence of communication-killing of violence. If we are to be healthy, however, in our liberality and in our Christianity, then Jesus call for us to “love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us turns out to be more for our benefit than for the benefit of our enemy.

Good tools for communication actually exist, and they’re not even all that complicated to learn or to utilize. For example, check out Nonviolent Communication at

http://www.cnvc.org/

or at http://nvctraining.com

For now, find below some information about “sacred conversations.”

Wayne

from http://www.ucc.org/sacred-conversation/

“On Sunday, May 18, many pastors across the UCC will be preaching on race in hopes of beginning a sacred conversation, a dialogue that is needed in our pews, our homes and the hallways of power across our country. After May 18, congregations are encouraged to develop a months-long process in order to set aside the necessary time and attention needed to structure a sacred conversation about race.

The UCC is holding this national dialogue in order to foster a spirit of healing and unity in our churches and communities. While much has been said during the past few weeks about the Rev. Jeremiah A Wright Jr., this dialogue among our members is intended to be a larger conversation, one not focused directly or exclusively on the recent controversy, but one certainly influenced by it.

Sacred conversations are never easy, especially when honest talk confronts our nation's painful past and speaks directly to the injustices of the present day. Yet sacred conversations can, and often do, honor the value of diverse life experiences, requiring an openness to hear each others' viewpoints. Growth often happens when honest conversations are communicated in a respectful environment.

In the coming days and weeks, this webpage will be a repository for resources to assist with preaching preparation and worship planning for May 18. In addition, you will soon find materials to assist your congregation with how to plan church-wide and community-wide dialogues that will enable "sacred conversations" to take place.

While May 18 is an opportunity for UCC pastors to preach collectively on a common theme, it's impossible for a sacred conversation on race to be a single-day event. Instead, pastors and lay leaders are encouraged to begin thinking how the coming months can be used to appropriately plan and organize your congregation's role in facilitating a sacred conversation on race.”

Healthy Liberal Theology and Politics

I write this installment with no small amount of trepidation. People who are much more articulate and learned than I am have weighed in on the present controversy surrounding Barack Obama and The Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I have read a good many commentaries and essays on the issues, but still, I feel motivated to add my voice to the chorus.

I begin with the deep sorrow I feel at the quality of discourse in our supposedly educated culture. And, if I am not careful at this moment, I can, just as easily as anyone else, be guilty of adding even more heat to the conversation without benefit of adding light. The moment we begin to judge the inadequacy of another, real conversation tends to stop and all that is left is name-calling, superficiality, and a likely increase in resentment and distrust.

What is at stake in this controversy? Is the argument mostly about Barack Obama’s qualifications for the U.S. Presidency? Has our electoral process come to the unfortunate place where the only value any issue has is its power to cripple “the enemy”? Is the conflict rooted in a desperate hope that we might legitimately expect and receive fairness and justice? Is it about the freedom to say whatever we choose, without taking any responsibility for the impact of our words? Is it about the still potent American shadow of slavery and racism? Is it about the place of the church in present-day culture, a church that no longer enjoys the status it once enjoyed as the centerpiece of every community’s religious and social life? Who really knows?

It may be that all these questions add some fuel to the fire, and increase the levels of sweaty discomfort. I am still naïve enough to believe that real discourse is possible. And furthermore, that if we are willing (and able, of course) to listen to each other and are interested in excavating the underlying issues, we can grow and learn both as individuals and as a culture.

In this context, I want to think about the relationship between church and state. Let me begin with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

You will notice that there are two parts to this amendment, known respectively as the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. So, government cannot establish a religion, not can it prohibit the free exercise of religion. This does not mean that government and religion have nothing to say to each other. Nor does it mean that they might not hold to some common values. We must, however, be clear (and here is the point of my argument) that the purpose of religion and the purpose of government are not identical. While they may use similar language in describing their efforts to address societal problems and issues, their respective definitions of what constitutes a healthy community can vary widely, and can even be diametrically opposed.

To give an example, I recently preached a sermon about Jesus’ time of temptation in the wilderness by the Devil. I argued that his temptations were essentially around comfort, safety, power, and status. I also argued that temptations for Jesus are temptations for us, and that they distract us from our spiritual mission. Politicians and governments (particularly democratic governments), however, promise to improve lives by means of those very things! This is not to say that the values of government and the values of religion are always opposites. There can be a great deal of overlap in what they work towards. This perspective also does not assume that the values of religion are necessarily better than the values of government. But, for the sake of our thinking about these issues, let’s just remember that religions and governments do not exist for the same fundamental purposes.

This brings us back to the Obama/Wright controversy. Barack Obama is a politician who is running for political office and Jeremiah Wright is a Christian minister. To judge one of them on the basis of the words or beliefs or values of the other simply makes no sense. It may, however, be useful to make use of each perspective as an opportunity to shed some light into the dark corners of the other. The founders of The United States had suffered severe religious oppression, mostly at the hands of state-sanctioned religion. They wisely challenged any religion’s capacity to impose its beliefs and values on everyone. The free exercise of religion is a fundamental value. On the other hand, religion has a long history of challenging the tendency of governmental power to increase the oppression of the disenfranchised. Certainly, the Judeo-Christian tradition is filled with prophets and saviors who challenged governmental oppression wherever they found it, (often in the strongest terms imaginable). There are so many examples of this condemning language in the Bible’s prophetic literature.

Here is just one example from the prophet, Hosea 10: 13-15

You have ploughed wickedness,
you have reaped injustice,
you have eaten the fruit of lies.
Because you have trusted in your power
and in the multitude of your warriors,
therefore the tumult of war shall rise against your people,
and all your fortresses shall be destroyed,
as Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel on the day of battle
when mothers were dashed in pieces with their children.
Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel,
because of your great wickedness.
At dawn the king of Israel
shall be utterly cut off.

(This doesn’t sound like a blessing of the government to me! It sounds more like the opposite!)

Even though the dialogue between government and religion is always important, there are some essential limitations. It is not the legitimate role of religion to bless (and by that I mean, validate) governments. Still, it is a powerful temptation to religion to do just that, although the cost of succumbing to the temptation is the loss of its soul. In the same way, it is not the legitimate role of government to sanction (positively or negatively) any religion, although, likewise, whenever governments succumb to their own temptation to do this, they tend to become despotic.

So, what’s my point? Of course, Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright don’t agree. Barack is a politician, not a minister. Still, he could benefit from observing the light that religion casts into government’s dark corners. At the same time, Jeremiah is a minister, not a politician. He has been the champion of the cause of a largely disenfranchised segment of the population for decades. He speaks on behalf of a human race that has been oppressed, marginalized, and treated unfairly in countless ways by America’s economic and governmental structures. To do his job properly, it is most appropriate for him to advocate on their behalf.

It saddens me that so many in the media and in certain political camps do so much to blur this important distinction. We are capable of much healthier discernment than that. So, don’t be bullied into settling for their superficial and inflammatory interpretations. You know better.