Christophobes vs. Homophobes

You might want to view this video of Rick Warren (click here) for some clarification of his views on the sanctity of heterosexual monogamy. Of course, I agree with him. I also agree that he has the freedom of speech to state his beliefs. What is glaringly absent here (and in much of the heat coming from gays and liberals) is a discussion of the real issue, civil rights. Warren says he loves gays, so his problem is not "homophobia." It is a civil problem. The pressing issue is the question: Do gays have the right to the same civil protections and advantages governing and given to monogamous hetero couples?

Most evangelicals say no, because they are afraid we are redefining marriage and giving state sanction to it, thus offending God. But no state can redefine what God has set in place. The problem we have here is our concept of equality under the law. "Equality" doesn't favor Christians or anybody else, in the civil sense. If people are law-abiding and commit no obvious crimes, they can do what they want under constitutional protection, and should enjoy the rights given them in our secular, pluralist society. That's where the real debate is here. It is not theological, it is political and social.

I don't know if Rick Warren has thoroughly vetted this angle of the debate. It wouldn't seem so. I think many evangelicals entertain the myth that we live in a Christianized society and all laws should be dictated by theological principles. Warren says he loves everybody. I'm sure he does. But actions speak louder than words, and, in this case, the problem is about justice more than biblical morality. Can you have true justice in this world when you create a legally mandated caste system of preferred people and pariahs? Aren't you saying, "I love them, but I don't want to give them any rights?" Isn't that an Old Testament system of sequestering people? Maybe God says, "I don't agree with this, but under the present systems, treat one another with fairness." Is the way to lead gays to Christ to persecute them and place them in leper colonies?

The other problem here is the evidence of science. Christians have branded homosexuality as purely a behavioral problem (free will). Science seems to be finding that they tend to be born that way (predestination). The argument then is resolved, for many, by saying you are genetically predispositioned to have gay preferences and can't help it. Thus, you are a minority that enjoys all civil rights afforded anyone in a democratic/pluralistic society. Theology, in our society, generally fails to trump science, since science is objective (hopefully) and theology is more subjective. We can believe something, but we can't force that belief on everyone else. We Christians need to "deal with it" and focus our attentions on doing the business we are commissioned to do: love our neighbor as ourself.

Thy Will Is Complex

If It Be Your Will by L. Cohen

If it be your will

That I speak no more

And my voice be still

As it was before

I will speak no more

I shall abide until

I am spoken for

If it be your will

If it be your will

That a voice be true

From this broken hill

I will sing to you

From this broken hill

All your praises they shall ring

If it be your will

To let me sing

If it be your will

If there is a choice

Let the rivers fill

Let the hills rejoice

Let your mercy spill

On all these burning hearts in hell

If it be your will

To make us well

And draw us near

And bind us tight

All your children here

In their rags of light

In our rags of light

All dressed to kill

And end this night

If it be your will

If it be your will.

Comment: No question, Leonard Cohen was one of the great singer-
songwriter poets. He often wrote, actually, scathing commentaries on
religious belief, particularly Christian. This one seems to plumb the
depths of the problem of predestination. Paul said, "Who has resisted
His will?"

Romans 9:
18 So God does what he wants to do. He shows mercy to one person and makes another stubborn.
19 One of you will say to me, "Then why does God still blame us? Who can oppose what he wants to do?" 20 But you are a mere man. So who are you to talk back to God? Scripture says, "Can what is made say to the one who made it, 'Why did you make me like this?' "—(Isaiah 29:16; 45:9)

So even a skeptic like Cohen can see the problem.

Saving Little Richard

"If God can save an old homosexual like me, He can save anybody."
~ Little Richard


No doubt what Little Richard is saying here means a lot to him. He is kind of saying, "I've been one bad dude, folks, and God has saved me."

The question that bugged me for a long time was, "What exactly do we mean by the word saved?" I began to notice that what people meant by "being saved" was in the eye of the beholder. The line between the "saved" and the "unsaved" was not easy to find. In the eyes of some, there are not many saved at all. In their eyes, often, the vast majority of the human race is headed for everlasting hellfire and brimstone, and that would likely include poor Little Richard here who has deluded himself. In other words, it was hard for me to pin down what exactly being saved meant.

I finally reconciled this, in my own mind, by observing that, according to scripture, salvation comes by faith and it is a gift of God. But the actual arbiter of this condition was confession: "No man can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit." That is, our confession is what identifies that we are followers of Jesus no matter what anybody ~ including other Jesus followers ~ thinks of us. I am not judged by you. My confession, like Little Richard's, is that Jesus has saved me.

But that doesn't go far enough. We've seen the signs in our lifetime that say "Jesus saves." And we saw the graffiti that said He saves green stamps (which nobody saves any more.) The point is, to say "Jesus saves" is an open-ended question: what does He save?

The answer is, He saves or is saving the world. He is in the process of saving this whole thing that has been, like Little Richard, polluted and destroyed. But Christians have tended to deny this. We sift this good news through a screen that says, "Only the righteous will be saved." Yet, there is none righteous, no, not one. That includes you and me and Little Richard too.

So is Jesus saving a part or the whole? And if He is the savior of the whole shebang, what difference does it make if we follow Him? Because, in following Him, we are way ahead of the curve and we are in on a secret. But it is not to remain a secret. The truth is, "Jesus saves it all." We were ruined and Jesus is the savior: that's the good news (or the gospel, if you will.)

The salvation issue becomes uncomplicated and not up to the arbitrary criteria that various persons and leaders might construct from their "private interpretations." This also frees us, as believers, to love our neighbors, our fellow human beings. We are no longer bringing a message of condemnation to the world, condemning everyone who doesn't fit our worldview. What we are really saying is, "Do you see this world? It is passing away. God is replacing it, through Jesus Christ, with a far superior system."

This is fabulous, and hard for many to grasp. In fact, for many it sounds like heresy (a belief that offends God.) I wasn't comfortable with it either. But now I can say to Little Richard: "You're right, bro. God can save anyone. In fact, He has."

I have long said that it was not the birth of Christ but the cross that was the crux of history. Whatever happened before, it all changed when Christ died and rose again. How radically did it change? We don't see it all yet. But, like Paul said, "Every knee shall bow." Wow.

Confessions of a Riffaholic

Indulge me here (or not): I was thinking about my weaknesses. It mystifies me that people can endure Swing. He don't give a damn about any trumpet-playing band/ It ain't what he calls rock'n'roll...We're the Sultans/ Play Creole... ~ Dire Straits

I don't know whether it was the Kinks or the Who that finally defined, for me, what music was. I still watch the British bands to see if anybody still gets it. I watched The Who documentary the other day about the tragedy that was their journey. But it was defined, for me, in those first four chords of "Can't Explain" or the odd two-chord riff of "You Really Got Me." It was all jellin' at that point back in '65. Even more minimal was the three-note mantra of "Satisfaction." That song was number 1 around the world for a year. It's still on the radio every other day, though it is almost mindless. But that, for me, was the definition of why God made the electric guitar. It seemed like there was no limit to what you could do, and I think Keith Richards has been proof. Even today, one of the best things going has been The White Stripes, with Meg White's monotone thud and Jack's one guitar at gutter-level distortion, working riffs under his tortured singing (Jack works with Loretta Lynn, by the way, famous friends). There is a market for this called "garage band." Jack White is very rich.

I wanted to see it in Christian music, but never did (with the exception of X-Sinner). That kind of energy was somehow considered ungodly. God likes boring. But that approach to music still gets my head banging. It just doesn't seem to get any better.

The other side of the coin was Bob Dylan who was really working a different field (from anybody). He single-handedly revolutionized the lyric and no-one ever topped him. He opened up a whole new world, though, and his copycats are still legion (I'm one of them). He made it possible, lyrically, to go where no man had gone before.

Of course, concerning guitar genius, who was more influential than Hendrix? His acid-influenced blues extravaganzas launched the electric guitar into a new nirvana.

I realize there is greatness outside of rock, but I am still stuck inside of that Mobile. I still listen for that certain something that hit us all back in '65. I didn't mention The Beatles because I think they were actually a rare chemistry that channeled it all into something quite astounding. There are umpteen big rock acts today that are still "Beatleesque" like Jet, the Foo Fighters, The Shins, Panic At The Disco, British Sea Power, and on and on. Lennon, for me, was the hinge-pin, but McCartney is the total genius as was their producer, George Martin. Lennon-McCartney was really the Rodgers and Hammerstein of the rock age.

I don't think it is just some nostalgic yearning for my youth: it was a defining moment in musical evolution. It was an injection of creativity into the musical spectrum that I don't think was rivalled before or has been realized since. I even hear extensions of it in today's Country music. I think we now worship to it. And the anointing landed on those lads and lasses back in '65. Or, as Kiss once sang: "God gave rock 'n' roll to you..." It was amazing to have been there. Thank you, Lord.

So, yes, I am a weak man. I got a rock-hard boogie on my finger and I can't shake it off. The other day I was in the store and I heard the opening chords to "You Really Got Me" and the Chuck Berry solo by Dave Davies and I was transported. I always think: "That's it!" So I am still on that musical quest ~ the search for the next riff exploding into a glorious train-wreck. There is probably something better up ahead somewhere, but I ain't heard it yet.

A few weeks ago, a Kansas rock station sponsored a battle of the bands to see who Kansans thought was the best rock band ever. The laurels finally went to AC/DC. Why? Because they got it. They single-mindedly devoted themselves to THE RIFF. They never backed down. They could hear, from down in Australia, the echoes of The Who and The Kinks, and they threw themselves totally into that zone, really only producing one endless song that reverberates to the ground of the soul, the growling chord that expands into an orchestra of tone and hangs there like a sonic Aurora Borealis.

Historic Population Wipe-outs

"I'll be right back, Eve. I need to use the restroom."

A recent AP article says this:

Wells is director of the Genographic Project, launched in 2005 to study anthropology using genetics. The report was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Previous studies using mitochondrial DNA — which is passed down through mothers — have traced modern humans to a single "mitochondrial Eve," who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago, but little has been known about humans between Eve and that dispersal.
The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.
The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.
Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently.
Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction."

My comment is this: The Genesis text does not easily jibe with these kinds of numbers. We have a biblical chronology in two ancient texts that veers considerably from this scientific speculation. Who is correct, then: ancient scribes who wrote down what they learned from oral tradition or modern scientists skrying the contents of the DNA puzzle? Neither method of dating the human prehistory would seem to be completely accurate; but the emergence of DNA information is certainly intriguing and plays with our assumptions about these things.

What we do have here is the possibility of fluctuations in populations of the developing homo sapien. This means that there were possible near wipe-outs in that long and arduous journey of man. Further, it would be possible that a real flesh-and-blood man named Adam could have come on the scene in one of those population dearths. He would then have provided us with both a symbol of all humanity as embodied in one man and as an actual person whose existence was passed on by oral tradition.

The rest of the story gets a bit murky back there. We can't really count on "facts" at that point, so we are left to speculate. Still, Adam need not be dismissed as a fairy tale.

Old Guys Hacking It

Can old guys still hack it?

I sampled four new releases and give my two cents worth.

The Rolling Stones are out with a Martin Scorcese film called "Shine a Light". There were no samples, but the album A Bigger Bang proves that the Stones haven't gathered moss. The C. Watts back-beat, the K. Richards riff-machine and the Jagger wail are still intact, so these guys are still good for one of the best rock chemistries ever conceived. I heard "Satisfaction" the other day and still believe it was perhaps the most phenomenal single ever made in that it reigned at number 1 worldwide for a year. Still, I am only mildly interested in seeing these guys or hearing their new stuff. It is mostly just to hear what new riff Richards has cooked up in his telecaster meth-lab.

I recognize REM as another one of those rock chemistries. They also have a new release called Accelerate and, while it is an intriguing bunch of songs and the same sound, it didn't sound like it accelerates enough. REM lyrics, though, are poetry. In that department they beat the Stones, but the Stones never said they were poets. However, Jagger/Richards have delivered some real poetry on occasion. REM is a great band, no doubt.

Van Morrison is back with Keep It Simple, another phenomenal record, I can tell. The guy just has it, and he is an original. There is that voice like hot chocolate that never fails. It gyrates and escalates and swoons and chatters like its own instrument. Morrison is also a spiritual man with faith in Christ and his lyrics often reflect that sensitivity. But he doesn't come across as religious, ever. The fact is, though, that his jazzy, bluesy, Celtic-tinged music is always inspired and fantastic. But it was his output in the '70s that is the most mind-blowing. Age has moved him into smooth, with a bit of a Sinatra feel. And, for me, he still made the number one rock piece of all time with his band Them, it was that 3-chord masterpiece "Gloria." The first real punk song? I think so.

Only one record I might conceivably buy out of this group, though, and that is Moby's new one called Last Night. Years ago I got a copy of his masterpiece Everything Is Wrong and it is, in my estimation, still a brilliant record. There is that driving industrial electronic beat, the repetitious new-age inflected synthesizer, that wailing female black voice, and often cryptic lyrics that make the best Moby stuff a delight, a kind of cerebral voyage. I found a Moby CD called 18 in a garage I was cleaning out the other day, and I had never heard it. It was a good find. Moby is a Christian who is known as a political activist, but the politic is just not obvious on the records. He doesn't come preaching at you. It is sheer artistry in the alchemy of cool disco inferno. You can exercise to this stuff, too. I am a guitar-band, garage-rock kind of guy, but Moby found a niche in my musical universe.

I guess these guys just go to prove, if you got it you got it, and stay with your groove. That's what you are. It pays off.

The Truth Hurts

The recent book UnChristian, by the Barna group, explores demographics with regard to the church. In recent years, the data has been increasingly negative, especially with regard to the young who are regarded as the hope of the church in the future.

The focus of the studies was on "outsiders." The polling and surveying yielded a fairly consistent picture that provided the six main themes of the PR problem the church is experiencing:

HYPOCRITICAL ~ We tend to project a morally superior attitude and an innacurate, polished image that is "unreal." We tend to think that the church is only for the virtuous and morally pure.

TOO FOCUSED ON CONVERTING PEOPLE ~ Outsiders think we don't really care about them, that they are simply targets. Most of them have tried church and found it wanting.

ANTIHOMOSEXUAL ~ They perceive us as bigoted. They see us as enemies bent on curing them and gaining political leverage against them.

SHELTERED ~ We are perceived as boring, old-fashioned, and out of touch with reality, preferring simplistic answers to the complexities of the world around us. We shy away from the grit and grime that is people's lives.

TOO POLITICAL ~ We are overly motivated by political agendas, promoting only conservative interests and issues.

JUDGMENTAL ~ We are quick to judge, hasty. We seem dishonest in our approach to others. They doubt that we really love them.

From UnChristian, pgs. 29 & 30.

My comment: This book gives teeth to the idea that the church is having a public relations problem in this generation. Some might say, "So what? Preaching the gospel is not about popularity."

But this isn't about Christians becoming "popular." We are 2 billion strong and growing (1/3 of the world's population) so that's a fairly popular religion. What it is about is that the world is shifting and changing, and we aren't changing with it.

I believe the Holy Spirit wants to do what He said in Habbakuk 1: 5 The Lord replies, "Look at the nations. Watch them. Be totally amazed at what you see. I am going to do something in your days that you would never believe. You would not believe it even if someone told you about it.

It is time for the Body of Christ to examine itself to see whether it is actually walking in the faith, displaying the attitude of Christ to the world. The Barna research is a useful read in helping us discern what is wrong. And we can't fix a thing until we know what's wrong. Thanks, Barna.

Trip Album

LSD was the catalyst of a very creative moment in music history, and particularly rock history. You can read in Jack Kerouac's On The Road how the Beatniks liked to get stoned and listen to jazz. Pot had a way of making music sound sensational. And it could produce a kind of visionary experience, like watching a technicolor movie.

The Beats passed their torch of counterculture exploration on to the hippies in the '60s. For the hippies, the music of choice was not instrumental jazz but rock. In about 1965 an explosion took place. The British Invasion in rock was becoming purloined with psychedelia. I remember when I first started hearing this stuff I was about 15, and I picked up an album by Bob Dylan called Highway 61 Revisited. This record seemed to have arrived from some other planet.

It was the Beatles, though, that fired the shot heard round the world with a brilliant record that is still a classic: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. History has it that Dylan turned the mop-tops onto acid and the mops began to grow out. So did the music.

What happened here? Did LSD do this?

At the time, LSD was still a legal drug (not for long). It's dangerous properties were still not fully understood. But it was known that it could mimic psychosis. What it did was to sort of cause the synapses in the brain to misfire, creating a wondrous world in the user's brain that could either be like heaven or turn into hell. It also seemed to be a kind of catalyst for creativity.

Dylan opened up a new kind of fantasy-fueled lyric which, when put to rock music, was tailor-made for psychedelic excursions on drugs. Along came fantasy albums of all stripes, and colors, and spots, and flowers that grew so incredibly high. These albums became the prize of hungry hippy kids with the mad munchies.

I don't know if the Beatles actually created the single most amazing psychedelic album with Sgt. Pepper's: the Rolling Stones were not going to be left out of the phenomenon, and, with the help of eclectic pioneer Brian Jones, they produced Their Satanic Majesties Request. This album is still fantastic, and the most bizarre creation the Stones ever made. It was their only contribution to psychedelic rock. They went back to making the best rock they ever devised during the Beggar's Banquet period, saying the genre they tried, in competing with the Beatles, was just not their thing. The Beatles didn't stop the psychedelic stuff until they later split up.

TSMR is still amazing. It is so highly textured, so original, one does not need acid to have one's mind completely dismantled and reassembled (i.e. "blown"). It holds up superbly. It should be among the best rock albums of all time, in my opinion. But I may be slightly addled.

Videotape by Radiohead

Videotape
When I'm at the pearly gates

This will be on my videotape, my videotape

Mephistopheles is just beneath

and he's reaching up to grab me
This is one for the good days

and i have it all here

In red, blue, greenRed, blue, green
You are my center

When i spin away

Out of control on videotape

On videotape

On videotape

On videotape

This is my way of saying goodbye

Because I can't do it face to face

I'm talking to you after it's too late

From my videotape
No matter what happens now

You shouldn't be afraid

Because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen.

This Radiohead lyric is from the album that is right at the top of all charts as the best rock album of 2007. They also had the number one album of the '90's, OK Computer. The group is not only phenomenally good, but their style is unique. They actually have an approach to melody that I have never heard anywhere: a kind of haunting, ethereal, slow jazziness to it. Get the picture? You won't waste your bucks buying this album, In Rainbows.

Valentine Thinking

Love
Romans 12: 9 Love must be honest and true. Hate what is evil. Hold on to what is good. 10 Love each other deeply. Honor others more than yourselves. 11 Never let the fire in your heart go out. Keep it alive. Serve the Lord.
12 When you hope, be joyful. When you suffer, be patient. When you pray, be faithful. 13 Share with God's people who are in need. Welcome others into your homes.
14 Bless those who hurt you. Bless them, and do not call down curses on them. 15 Be joyful with those who are joyful. Be sad with those who are sad. 16 Agree with each other. Don't be proud. Be willing to be a friend of people who aren't considered important. Don't think that you are better than others.
17 Don't pay back evil with evil. Be careful to do what everyone thinks is right. 18 If possible, live in peace with everyone. Do that as much as you can.
19 My friends, don't try to get even. Leave room for God to show his anger. It is written, "I am the One who judges people. I will pay them back,"—(Deuteronomy 32:35) says the Lord. 20 Do just the opposite. Scripture says, "If your enemies are hungry, give them food to eat. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. By doing those things, you will pile up burning coals on their heads." —(Proverbs 25:21,22) 21 Don't let evil overcome you. Overcome evil by doing good.

A Valentine for the church, with a message of love.
Verse 9 says, "Hate what is evil." The problem here is that we love to hate what we think is evil, without actually identifying evil or knowing what it really is. Hate is the opposite of love and evil is the opposite of love: so we should hate hate. Osama binLaden "hates" evil, and yet employs it to please God. You can't use any kind of evil or hatred to please God. God is love.

Hatred doesn't belong in Christianity. The minute we hate anybody we have joined sides with evil. Jesus even said we are guilty of murder. But what many Christians think is "hating evil" is really being hyper-conscious of sin. What this tends to do is cause us to focus on sin as our cause. Our cause is not exposing sin: our cause is to love as He loves, which is total. When we love, we overcome sin. Sin is dismantled by love.

We often preach a message of strife, both in the church and to those outside. Why? Because we are focused on being right: we are trying to prove something. We are trying to "get even." But that isn't God's justice: getting even. God is patient, kind, putting up with evil in order to bring redemption to those destroyed by it. His whole operation is based on pulling people up not putting them down.

Verse 10 says, "Love each other deeply." "Each other" is those who believe and those who don't. But this is not what we often see. We often see favoritism for those who are like us and exclusion of those who aren't. It is because we don't really understand what God is like. He doesn't have any favorites.

We should look deep into our hearts and see what festers in there: see if we feel superior to others, see if we are peacemakers or dividers, see if we, in the name of resisting evil, actually promote it.

Happy Valentine's Day.

End Obsessions

The apocalypse is an epic tragedy, but it's also a fantasy of cleansing and regeneration wherein everything inessential and inauthentic is swept away so that we can build afresh among the ruins. It's a convenient untruth. "I've been struck by the number of New Yorkers who have actually said to me, 'God, it was so much fun watching the city fall apart like that,'" says Weisman. "There is on some level a secret longing that people have, saying 'Let's just give it up. What a mess we've made just by being alive.' We all have this footprint now. We've redefined original sin." TIME magazine, Jan. 17, 2008, "Apocalypse New"

There seems to be, in us, an appetite for the sum of all fears, for judgment day. I realize that I have been a bit obsessive about it through my life. Musing about it has taken up a great deal of my mental space (which is vast and empty).

When I was six, I saw Godzilla (at the movies, not in reality) and was flooded with pleasure with the thought of a gargantuan beast tearing up the world. Also, when I went to school, we would practice "duck and cover" down in the basement, with the teacher telling us that the sirens meant the A-bomb was coming.

We were an "apocalyptic" generation, the baby boomers. Perhaps the hippy thing was the attempt to shed the mad dash of civilization toward self-annihilation. Drop out before it's too late. Do something! Turn on! Blow your mind! Make the world anew with a new mind-set. Hail the Aquarian Age!

Thus, when I entered the strange new world of Christianity, I found this same dynamic there: the fascinating apocalyptic clues and images of incredible cataclysm. Godzilla was alive and well in the Bible.

I haven't seen Cloverfield yet, but I probably will. As the producer, Weismann (quoted above) was saying, there is something perhaps cathartic about it all. We feel helpless in the face of a psychotic universe, a world seemingly drunk on evil and injustice. We all die. The end floods our existence on every level. Life is fragile. And yet we endure, and sometimes even do good things.

In a movie, we view the raging monster from a safe distance. The heroes in the movie generally become the masters of their situation or else the final tombstone of mankind is erected: Rest In Peace. In the end, they are all alike. How many times have we seen a Batman or Superman save the world? It is a kind of Messianic hope in all of us.

The word "apocalypse" does not actually mean "the end of the world." Apokalupsis (Gr.) is actually more like an "epiphany" than the usual visualization of incredible holocaust. Jesus himself is the apocalypse: he is the disclosure of something unbelievably grand in scope. It is he that dissolves the hopelessness, the existential despair, the absurdity, and the lonely fear of a universe gone nuts. It is he that brings justice into the wild injustice of life.

Perhaps it has been wrong for so many in the church to concentrate on the "end of the world." For one thing, the scriptures say also that this is "world without end."

Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen. Ephesians 3: 21

We do seem to live in a fragile world today: a world with incredible potential for a massive rupture of all things seemingly secure. Yet we cannot live with that constant sword of Damocles over our heads: the looming blade of annihilation. Jesus said, "The worst that can happen to anyone is they can die", and all of us do that sooner or later. So what if the world ended today?

In a vibrant way, this old world ended almost 2,000 years ago at the cross. The sting of death was removed by the final offering of the Lamb of God. At that moment, all was made aright. All vengeance was satisfied. Ultimate justice was procured. Hardly the end of the world. This is only the beginning.

Obama's Religion

I'm not offering this as an endorsement of the candidate (below) but just a look into what he believes since he has been railed on in certain sectors of the Christian body. What is more interesting to me is what he is saying here (from Beliefnet.com ):

This is a delicate subject because there's been this smear campaign against you via email, alleging that you're Muslim. But do you think the fact that you attended a majority Muslim school in Indonesia or that your biological father was raised Muslim resonate with someone in the Arab street, a Muslim there?

Let me just sort of be as clear as possible in terms of what that background is. You know, I was raised basically by my mother, who came from a Christian background—small town, white, Midwesterner. But, she was not particularly religious. My father, who I did not know—I spent a month of my life in his presence, otherwise he was a stranger to me—was raised in a household where his father had converted to Islam. But my father, for all practical purposes, was agnostic.

My mother remarried an Indonesian and we moved to Indonesia. But for two years I went to a Catholic school in Indonesia, and then for two years went to a secular school in Indonesia. The majority of children there were Muslim. But it wasn't a religious school. So almost all the facts that have been presented in the scurrilous emails are wrong. And I've been a member of my church now for almost 20 years and have never been a person of the Muslim faith.

Now, having said all that, I absolutely believe that having lived in a country that was majority Muslim for a time and having distant relatives in Africa who are Muslim, that I'm less likely to demonize the Muslim faith and more likely to understand that they are ordinary folks who are trying to figure out how to live their lives and raise their kids and prosper just like anybody else. And I do think that that cultural understanding is something that could be extremely valuable.

I'll really be surprised if Obama makes it, but I like his understanding of Muslims. Many in the church do demonize Muslims, as if they were inferior in God's eyes. Many of these have never once explored actual Islamic teachings or are unaware of what average Muslims are like. They all become stereotyped as terrorists. We need to pray for them instead.

The Religious Jigsaw

A little slow on the blogs this month. Also, I am still blogging around material found in Brian McLaren's book: Everything Must Change, pg. 91.

McLaren says there is a conventional view of Jesus and an "emerging" view. You have to think of this "emergence" as ongoing to get a correct perspective.

McLaren begins the book building a case for what he calls the imperial narrative. This is the story the world around you is going by because it is enforced by a government, whatever form it takes. You live with that story. That story definitely influences you.

He then goes on to elaborate about some forms of narrative you can adopt in reaction to the imperial narrative you're in:

1. The imperial or dominant narrative: you work for or are in league with the dominating power (in Jesus' day that would be Rome).

2. Counter or revolutionary narratives: you work against the dominant story.

3. The dual narrative: you work for the dominant party by day and another way in private.

4. The withdrawal narrative: you try to get away from the dominant narrative.

Finally, McLaren cites that Jesus came with number 5: an alternative narrative that was none of the above. This alternative was the kingdom of God.

He illustrates the difference between the conventional Jesus narrative and the emerging one by using a picture from his friend Steve Chalke, involving a jigsaw puzzle.

The picture is of a jigsaw puzzle you are trying to use, but someone has put the wrong lid on it. You look at the picture and try to put the pieces together so that they resemble the picture. But it is the wrong picture. Therefore, we do different things to deal with our frustration.

For one thing, we may try to still make the pieces fit our picture. This means we brush some aside and others we may alter to make them fit. And we patiently keep working even though we are greatly frustrated by how the puzzle is going. It gets more, not less, puzzling.

Others throw the whole puzzle out. It is too difficult to do, so they go seek something else to do.

Others still decide that the lid is "orthodoxy". They declare anybody who doesn't accept the lid as is are "heretics" and "apostate."

But there are those who notice the picture on the box doesn't match the pieces in the box. So they question the lid. They assume we are using the wrong lid.

Jesus, then, was a fifth narrative that was truly outside of the imperial narratives. The other four stories in some way relate to the imperial story: people react one way or the other. But the narrative that Jesus brought was a different picture altogether ~ it was a "new and living way."

What we need is a right picture (a correct narrative) by which to put our pieces together.

But suppose your eyes are bad. Then your whole body will be full of darkness. If the light inside you is darkness, then it is very dark! ~ Matt. 6: 23

Upon My Father's Looming Death

And death shall have no dominion

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

Wealth, Poverty, and the Church

James 5: 1 You rich people, listen to me. Cry and sob, because you will soon be suffering.
2 Your riches have rotted. Moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver have lost their brightness. Their dullness will give witness against you. Your wanting more and more will eat your body like fire. You have stored up riches in these last days.
4 You have even failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields. Their pay is crying out against you. The cries of those who gathered the harvest have reached the ears of the Lord who rules over all.
5 You have lived an easy life on earth. You have given yourselves everything you wanted. You have made yourselves fat like cattle that will soon be butchered. 6 You have judged and murdered people who aren't guilty. And they weren't even opposing you.

Proverbs 22: 2 The Lord made rich people and poor people. That's what they have in common.

There is a great disparity in the world between the rich and the poor, and the gap may be widening. This is even happening in the U.S. Consider some statistics:

1. The richest 1% of the world's population owns 40% of the world's wealth.

2. The richest 5% owns 70%.

3. The assets of the world's 3 richest persons exceeds the combined GDP of the world's 48 poorest countries.

4. In 2000 the world's developed nations contributed 3% of their GDP to aid developing nations. In turn, those nations had to pay back over 6% of their GDP in debt repayment, more than twice what they received. The result was that the developed nations gained from the transaction while the developing nations lost ground.

5. Africa is worse off than it was two decades ago.

6. 1 billion of the earth's poor face a decline in their current living standards.

7. The US is in the bottom 25% of all nations in terms of wealth distribution, and dead last among industrialized nations.

8. In 1960 the average American CEO made 12 times more than the average laborer. Today he/she makes more than 300 times more.

And such statistics go on and on, revealing the sad disparity in our world. And, of course, the rich are richer and getting richer because they work harder than everybody else ~ harder than the miners and the factory workers and the kids in the sweatshops and the field hands. Surely Jesus is proud of their accomplishments.

James, the Lord's brother and apostle in Jerusalem, was tough on the rich. Why? Was he against them having money? Didn't he realize how hard they worked to get their holdings?

I don't think it was that. He was pointing out the injustice of gross inequities, of people and nations hoarding wealth while exploiting the poor. In other parts of his epistle James says, "Isn't it the rich who throw you in jail and stack the cards against you in court?" He was telling the people of the church they were favoring the rich and dishonoring the poor in the way they treated them. He was pointing out hypocrisy and injustice, not just in the world at large, but even among the people of God.

Greed is the source of all evil, according to Proverbs. And greed dwells at the core of our beings. By it we rationalize, create injustice, wage wars, exploit labor, neglect the poor, sequester the rich, bend laws, and ignore our neighbors be they individuals or nations.

When empires do this for too long, the poor rise up, destroy their captors, and then repeat their mistakes. It is like a historical vicious cycle.

In Kenya, at this writing, this is the very dynamic that is taking place. Even men of the same race and color hate each other, kill each other, and the central problem behind it all is greed.

Jesus was the antithesis of greed. He became poor to make us all rich. He identified with the lowest and died with the malefactors with whom he had been compared. It wasn't because he was lazy or rebellious: it was because he was a lover of justice. It was because there were no rich or poor in his kingdom: no disparity between the high and mighty and the rejected and low. Jesus was outside of that whole system.

We say sometimes, "What would Jesus do?" I guess we ask it because we really don't know. We usually think what we are doing is what he would do. He deserves a closer look. Because the church today still favors the rich and even teaches doctrines that encourage us toward greed.

It isn't that we are to all become monastics. We need to understand justice and pursue it, though, because God is just. We need to really seek parity and equity in our churches, in our businesses, in our government, and in our world. We need to defend the downtrodden. We need to demand equality and practice fairness wherever we go. We need to seek to end the systems we create with our greed.

Above statistics taken from Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren.

The End: The 2 Competing Models

The Bible speaks of the "end times." The fancy word for this is the eschaton. The study of the eschaton is called eschatology.

In the late 1800s, there was a developing eschatology called futurism. This method of understanding scriptures about "the end" developed some widely embraced scenarios for the return of Christ.

1. There will be a global apostasy and revival going on simultaneously.

2. The Jewish temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem.

3. The dead and alive in Christ will fly up to heaven in an event called the "rapture."

4. There will be a man who essentially assumes power as a global monarch, who opposes God and poses as the world's savior.

5. He will institute a financial system in which no one can buy or sell without his mark.

6. There will be a tribulation period of seven years that includes cosmic disturbances.

7. There will be the final war of history that will play out at the place called Har-Meggido in Israel.

8. God will send two prophets at that time to torment the earth.

9. Finally, Christ will appear in the clouds on a white horse with an army of resurrected saints to finish the job on earth.

This is a basic scenario that is argued among futurist believers and is constructed from a literal reading of the biblical text, particularly "apocalyptic" verses sprinkled throughout the Bible, but most evident in Daniel and Revelation.

In more recent times a method of interpretation has been under construction that is called preterism, which means it views the eschaton as a done deal, a past event. This method takes the same collection of scriptures and applies them to the first century world in which Judaism met its symbolic end with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD. At present, this construction looks something like this:

1. The Jewish religion experienced apostasy and the Christian religion surged.

2. The temple destroyed signalled the end of the Jewish age. There will be no new one constructed in the future.

3. The event called "rapture" (from the Greek, harpazo) occurred at that time when there was a spiritual resurrection occurring in the earth through the leavening of Christ. That is still ongoing and ascending.

4. The Antichrist (or "little horn" in Daniel) was fulfilled in Nero and his persecutions.

5. The mark of the beast is the imagery used to describe the Emperor worship of the time.

6. The 3 1/2 years of tribulation occurred at the time of Nero.

7. The war symbolized by Armageddon occurred at the time of Titus sacking Israel.

8. The two witnesses symbolize the two covenants, old and new.

9. Christ's "appearance" is the apocalypse or his revelation in the "saints" or the believing people that would follow in his stead.

The two scenarios are now the primary war that is being waged within the church over the meaning of the eschaton: did it already happen or is it still ahead of us? The resolution of this conflict is important since these ideas, particularly futurism, still influence the world even to the extent of American foreign policy.

The above futurist scenario is what is most suspect. Is it an accurate portrayal of what the Bible says will happen, or is it another imaginary myth that is popularly believed? And popular beliefs don't go away easily.

The real question, for me, is, What will replace it? What does the Bible really say about the future? Does it then give no clue? And are we then to expect there might be no actual physical return of Christ with a physical resurrection?

Does history just play itself out as a script acted by the ascending church until everything ultimately comes under Christ, or do we expect a kind of futurist convulsion in which God says, "Enough is enough," and initiates a quick and final end to things?

I don't see any air-tight conclusions to this conundrum yet. I wonder if there is truth in both scenarios; but the concept of "double-fulfillments" is hard to prove. I do see the possibility that the futurist concepts outlined above could go the way of the hula-hoop. However, the hula hoop is still around, just not as a market phenomenon. Old ideas are like oatmeal, they stick to your ribs.