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.