'O Little Town of Bethlehem'

Christmas is coming, and if you want a deeper worship experience in church, that's good news. In addition to the latest worshiptainment song from the radio, chances are good that you're going to hear actual Christmas carols. And by “hear,” I actually mean “sing.”

Traditional Christmas carols have several advantages going for them that popular and trendy worship songs don't. For starters, because American society is largely influenced by Christianity, people usually are familiar with Christmas carols even if they grew up outside the church. They probably recognize with the tunes, and if they have the lyrics in front of them, they almost certainly can sing along with confidence from the start.

Secondly, unlike many contemporary songs which deal strictly with a reductionist gospel of loving God and receiving forgiveness of sins, most Christmas carols are heavy lifters when it comes to doctrine. They'll carry their own weight in every verse, if not on every line.

Carols like “The First Noël” retell the story of the first Christmas around the supporting cast of shepherds and magi, while “O Come All Ye Faithful” teaches good doctrine on the hypostatic union. “We Three Kings” explores the coming life of Christ down to his death and Resurrection, and “O Holy Night” reflects the gospel call for social justice.

And then there's “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” a four-verse meditation on the Nativity itself.

Written in 1868 by Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal priest from the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia who had visited the Holy Land three years earlier, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” is a song people know of but don't know. Without the lyrics in front of them, most people can sing the first line with great enthusiasm before trailing off into “Da dee da dee dee dum” on Line 2.

If you sang “O Little Town” in church as a child, you probably sang it accompanied by a battered and tuneless organ. When you finished singing, you may even have looked at the carol itself with a measure of pity for all the trauma it had just suffered. Many songs suffer horribly during congregational worship in church, especially when they're sung without enthusiasm and played on an organ.

If your church still uses hymnals you're more likely to find “O Little Town of Bethlehem” than a carol like “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” but there are no guarantees you'll sing it during Advent, on Christmas or during the days leading to Epiphany. It's more of a bench-warmer than a Christmas titan like “Silent Night.”

That's a shame, because this song has what it takes to be a winner. The melody fits comfortably within a one-octave range, and proceeds at a steady, easily managed pace. The carol is lyrically unassuming as well, starting out like the opening montage of a Hollywood movie before delving into its deeper themes.

The first verse of “O Little Town” begins with the camera tracking slowly across a field of stars against the cold night sky before it drops down toward Bethlehem. It's a small town, scarcely more than a village. Many of the houses are hovels, owned by working-class families, although a few are bigger. Winding through the village are roads made of dirt and frozen mud, beaten paths made by the steady footsteps of people and their livestock over the years.

It's night, so as the camera pans through town we see the darkened windows of the houses. The only light comes from the stars and moon above, except for one mysterous source. As our field of vision steadily shifts leftward we perceive an unearthly light, small but steady, coming from the edge of town.

The second verse takes us to a closeup of the manger. Mary is lying on a pile of straw. Her face and her entire body are streaked with dust and dirt, and she is leaden with exhaustion. It's more than 100 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and if it weren't for that Roman census, she and her husband wouldn't have made the trip. It's too much to manage when you're nine months pregnant, but it did have one benefit. All that travel made labor a lot faster than it would have been otherwise.

The scene in the manger is perfectly idyllic, the proverbial calm after the storm. A moment ago Jesus was screaming fit to raise the dead, but he has finally settled down. Right now he's nestled in the crook of Mary's arm, latched onto her breast and lazily drinking colostrum as his eyes close and his tiny body unclenches.

In a moment Jesus will fall asleep and then Mary will too, but that won't last long. He's going to wake up a lot the next few nights, and aggravate his parents to no end. That's how it works when you have an infant.

Now the camera pulls back from the manger scene, and pans up toward the heavens again. It's quiet in town. Aside from Joseph, who is trying to decide if he puts too much stock in his dreams, pretty much everyone in Bethlehem is asleep right now.

That’s a shame because the people in the town are missing quite a show. The gates of heaven are open wide, and the angelic host is looking in amazement at the scene below them. While the stars themselves announce the birth of Jesus to anyone who is watching, the angels are lost in worship to the God who is at once too vast to comprehend and yet so tiny and vulnerable that it beggars description.

As rare as it is that we sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” it's rarer still we sing the third and fourth verses. That's our loss. The third verse contemplates the unassuming gospel, which by its nature comes silently and without fanfare or acclaim to the meek; rather than with the might and bluster we ourselves often rely on to advance it.

The fourth verse moves to entreaty, asking for our own transformation. Two things I find compelling about this verse: Rather than focusing on the crucified Christ we focus on so much, it welcomes the infant Christ into our lives, and it does so with the title Emmanuel, God-with-us.

Why is this important? I can't speak for others, but too often I take the adult Man of Sorrows for granted. I pause, consider his death for my sins, breathe a quick prayer of contrition and ask for forgiveness, and then I move on, my life largely unchanged. You can't do that with a child.

I became a father 17 years ago. I can think of nothing that upended my life more than the arrival of my daughter on that October afternoon. My wife and I had altered our lives to accommodate one another, but either one of us could and often did manage just fine without the other around when it came to day-to-day living.

I went to work in the morning and came home in the evening, just as I had done before we got married. My wife did the same with her studies and teaching post at graduate school. The big change in our lifestyle after our wedding was that now, when we returned to the apartment for the evening, somebody else would be there. That was it.

Not so when Oldest Daughter arrived on the scene. She required our presence in her life constantly for food, for comfort, for cleaning and for education. If she was hungry, we had to drop everything and feed her. If she was upset, we did our best to comfort her immediately. As soon as she started babbling, we started babbling back to encourage her to speak. Even a trip to the supermarket or to a friend's house was altered fundamentally by her presence. She didn't run the house, but her well-being became our highest priority, even above our own. If she couldn't sleep because of an ear infection, we didn't either.

It's been 17 years now and Oldest Daughter has learned remarkably well to stand on her own two feet. She gets herself food, works her own job, and pursues her own learning at high school and at home. For all that, our lives remain ordered around her needs, her goals and her for her own sake, because we love her. The same is true for her sisters.

In that sacrificial and occasionally selfless devotion to her life and well-being, I see a shadow of the life-upending transformation that Christ can bring when the unassuming infant from the manger arrives in our midst and compels us to place someone else truly first.

That's not just singing a song. That's worship.



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

You may also like:
"'O Holy Night: Christmas Remembered"
"Rudolph the Red-Nose Savior"

The lyrics:

O Little Town of Bethlehem

1. O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie. Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee tonight. 2. For Christ is born of Mary, And gathered all above While mortals sleep, the angels keep Their watch of wondering love. O morning stars together Proclaim the holy birth! And praises sing to God the King And peace to men on earth.

3. How silently, how silently The wondrous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of his heaven. No ear may hear his coming, But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive him still, The dear Christ enters in. 4. O holy child of Bethlehem, Descend to us, we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in; Be born to us today. We hear the Christmas angels The great glad tidings tell. O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel.

Advent: Anticipate

It's good to live and love in the moment, because we've no idea what tomorrow may bring. In the dramatic tension of existence, it's also good to anticipate what's coming: a delicious meal, a warm bed, the touch of your partner's hand on your own. These things disrupt the oppression of now with promise of things to come.

Other things we don't welcome but still must anticipate so that we can be ready to resist, to take a stand, to hold fast and to drive back the darkness.

Whether we look forward with joy or with uncertainty, both attitudes are infused with joy. God intrudes on history, and when we are faithful to his vision for justice, the desert flows with water and life flourishes.



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.

Tweet

Advent: Alert

This was the view through my windshield this morning as I drove my daughters to school. The sun is no threat to my well-being. Quite the opposite, actually. I love to be in warm, well-lit areas. But today its glare demanded my attention, and kept me from focusing as well on other cars, pedestrians and conversation with my girls. We got to school safely, but it took longer and it wasn't as much fun.

Life gets so hectic, and lately there have been so many things demanding my energy and attention, and not just the Circus of Perpetual Outrage. It's not enough to be awake. We also need to be alert. Time to let go of the distractions and focus on the things and the people who truly matter.



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.

Tweet

Advent: Prepare

Our yard has terrible soil, so every year I prepare for the spring by gathering up the leaves that fall and tossing them into the compost pile. It's a yearlong process that involves mixing in vegetable scraps, eggshells, weeds and other biodegradable waste, but most of the work gets done by the worms, and the molds and other fungi that live in the pile.

Some of the most important tasks that need to be done are nightmarishly oversize. They require a lot of work to complete, but a simple act of preparation can make the task so much more maneagable. I'll still need to pull weeds and the weather can make or break this year's crop, but when you're in it for the long haul, this sort of routine preparation makes a big difference. It can set in motion forces on your side that you never even thought about and lay the groundwork for results that surpass your expectations.

"The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice."



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.

Tweet

Advent: Wait

It seems like I'm always waiting for something: the line to move, my kids to get ready, for things to happen.

I try to bear it with good humor, but the worst is when I have to wait idly. We were created to tell stories, to love, to make art, to sing, not just to be alive but to live. We can't shorten the wait by our activity, but when we wait idly we begin waiting to die.

The magi studied and scoured the heavens, and Simeon lived a life such that the gospel calls him righteous. How are we waiting?


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Advent: Watch

I'll admit, I rarely have found the comfort others want me to during times of distress when they remind me that God is watching over me. God's eyes surely are on the sparrow, but aren't two of them sold in the market for one penny? He may know when they fall, but that doesn't keep them from falling. In the same way, God has sat enthroned between the cherubim during holocausts, genocides and other unspeakable horrors. He doesn't even intervene to keep parents from losing children. He can be hard to have faith in.

And yet I do. He urges us to have hope, and to watch for signs that he is coming. He never promises life will be easy -- that's a lie peddled by Hallmark Cards -- but he does say that though his justice tarries, to look for it. The wicked, he assures us, have fortified themselves on a muddy slope and guaranteed their own ruin, and the ruin of all those who work with them.

In the end, the prophet Isaiah promises, God will justify his servant, who will see the light of life and be exalted.

Wait for it. Wait for him, and keep watch.




Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Advent: Awake

Sometimes it's easier to stay asleep. Asleep we can stay warm, cozy and comfortable and ignore for a while longer all the responsibilities that are calling for our attention: personal, professional and to others.

Life doesn't give us that option. It may coax us gently awake with sunlight or coffee, or it may jar us awake with the screech of an alarm clock.

Ultimately, being awake is the only option. Awake to the wonders of God, awake to the problems pressing down on us, and awake to our responsibility to fight for one another.

Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Advent: Hope

Christmas cactuses bloom this time of year, but not every year. Like many plants, they bloom best under stress: not enough light, not enough water. From these stressors come beautiful flowers as the cactus strives to ensure the continuance of its line. Things look bad, but Advent is a reminder that hope, like beauty, endures.

Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Advent: a season of waiting in faith

My youngest daughter can't wait for Christmas. She's 7 years old, and it's all she can think about. It might be during breakfast, it might be when she comes home from school, and it might be after dinner, but she has one question guaranteed to come up every day: How long until Christmas?

She's like this with everything. A week ago it was “How many days until my birthday?” Last week it was, “When am I going to see Emma?” Some people wait patiently, like a match that slowly burns its way to the end. My daughter waits like a forest fire. All she wants is what she wants, and when she wants it is right now.

To her, the worst thing imaginable is having to wait. On Sunday, she was scheduled to see a friend at four o'clock. It wasn't even lunchtime before she started asking how long it would be until four o'clock. By one o'clock, the question was coming every 10 minutes.

If you could turn impatience into a person and give it a face, it would just look like her.

Some people have no difficulty waiting. Tell them it'll be 30 minutes, and they'll pick up a magazine and start reading, clean up a mess, or tackle some quick and easy chores. They'll grab a pen and paper, and write a quick to-do list, or maybe a letter if they're the old-fashioned sort. They'll find a piece of paper, pull out a pencil, and doodle the time away in an act of silent contemplation.

People like this find ways not just to kill the time but to use it wisely, because they know that all their fussing and fretting won't move the hands of the clock across its face any faster. The sun still will crawl its way through the heavens at a beggar's pace, and things will work their way to their inevitable conclusion in the proper time.

For such people, whether waiting is a discipline they have learned or a skill they were born with, it is a practice that scarcely troubles them.

Life itself is often about waiting, and how we wait reveals pieces of our character. An engagement is announced, and with excitement we at once begin counting down the days to the wedding. Other times we wait with dread, as our stomachs twist into knots and drop through the floor below our feet: A police officer approaches the car after pulling us over, or we pace in the waiting area while a loved one is in surgery.

Sometimes waiting is an idle kicking of the heels before a job interview or doctor's visit, or as we wait for a loved one to come downstairs so we can leave. Sometimes waiting is an active process, as we work hard, apply ourselves and learn so that our dreams will come true.

The gospel of Luke tells the story of a man who spent his life waiting for God to keep his promise. His name was Simeon, and according to the gospel, God had told him that he would not die until he had seen the messiah.

The gospel doesn't say how old Simeon was when this finally happened, but I've always imagined him with far more gray hair than black as he cradles the infant Jesus in his hands and realizes that the work of redemption has begun. How many days did he show up at the Temple, hopeful that this would be the day at last, only to go home disappointed? I imagine they must have numbered in the thousands.

As day stretched into day, did Simeon ever despair? Did he wonder if God had broken his promise, or changed his mind; or if maybe Simeon hadn't really been promised what he thought he had been after all?

A lot had happened, much of it bad. Pompey the Great had conquered Judea in 63 BCE. By the time Simeon held the infant messiah, Judea had been a vassal state of Rome for 59 years. Herod the Great had been king for about 36 years. The messiah was going to change all that, of course, but in the meantime, the people were oppressed and entire generations had known nothing but tyranny.

For Simeon and those around him who anticipated the coming of the messiah, the birth of Jesus had been a long time coming. It had been nearly 450 years since the Word of God had echoed in the hearing of his people and the last of the great prophets had grown silent. And now in the coming of this baby, Simeon saw the first stirrings of the promised redemption of his people and of the Gentiles around them.

From the vantage point of history and with the perspective of faith, we can attest that Simeon's trust in the promise of God was vindicated, and his long wait ended gloriously. It's easy enough to imagine him going home that evening, contented and filled with wonder that he had held the messiah in his own arms, and then dying peacefully in his sleep.

The messiah, according to prophecy, was going to usher in a new era in the world, one that would see the mighty brought low and the powerless raised to new heights. Like other people of his period, Simeon probably anticipated a messiah in the vein of the Maccabees, one who would drive out the Roman occupiers, defeat the Gentile nations, and rule in justice for all time.

I wonder what he'd make of the messiah the gospels present to us instead. Executed by the Roman governor at the age of 33, Jesus never led the Jewish people to freedom. Forty years after his death, the Second Temple was destroyed by Titus, following a siege that had lasted for four years. Some messiah. Even the Resurrection was limited to him, rather than being the expected worldwide event.

At this point in history we too are waiting for the messiah, not for his arrival but for his return. The wait can be just as hard for us as it must have been for Simeon. The kingdom of God, Jesus taught us, is in our midst. The unveiling of God's grand design has begun in him. It exists and is coming, in a state of here-and-not-yet.

By sight we see untrammeled greed rewarded at the highest places, and the hard work of the masses accumulating nothing but poverty and debt slavery. By sight we see a world where a liar and a bully can become president by fanning the flames of fear and racial resentment. By sight we see a church that allies itself with him in hopes of gaining influence.

But by faith we see a much better world, one where women are treated with respect and not dishonor. By faith we strive for a time when all nations, peoples and races are uplifted together and never demeaned, and their voices are respected rather than dismissed; where people are honored not because of (or despite) their status or behavior, but because of the Imago Dei that they carry. By faith we imagine a society and a church where the wealthy and the powerful exert all their efforts on the betterment of the powerless and disenfranchised.

Like Simeon, we also are waiting for the vindication of our faith, for the Redemption begun on the first Christmas to find its fulfillment.

As an observant Jew, Simeon would have known that righteousness is far more than mere religious piety. Study of the Torah and the writings of the Hebrew prophets would have taught him that the pursuit of justice is the sine qua non of religion, that mere belief in God is insufficient for righteousness. It requires action.

The wait is so long. By faith, let us make the one who is coming proud with how we have filled the time.


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Ghost of the Civil War

I've been haunted a lot by a ghost these past few days – not one of those terrifying Hollywood ghosts, nor a cutesy friendly children's ghost either.

The ghost I've been haunted by is the sort who makes you stop consider how well we are meeting the challenge of our times, compared to how well the ghost faced theirs. When this particular ghost was still alive, there was a war on, and his country needed him. Eleven states in the South, fearful that the president would abolish slavery, had declared themselves free and independent of their brothers in the North. So one morning he got up, kissed his mother and father goodbye, and left the Pennsylvania farm he had known his whole life.

He is an ancestor of mine whom I've only known through a family legend. As his ghost has drifted through the house, I have wondered at how little I know about him. Did he enlist because he had a moral conviction that the Union must be preserved at all costs, or was there another reason? Did he think the war would end soon, or was he expecting to be away for years? Did he ever wonder if it would be worth it in the end?

To tell the truth, until recently I didn't even know his name. All I knew was one horrifying detail of his life.

“I have an ancestor who was a prisoner of war at Andersonville,” I once told one of my best op-ed columnists. Marc Kelley wrote for the Cranford Eagle while I was its managing editor, and also worked as a Realtor in the downtown.

“Did he survive?” Marc asked. “That was an awful place, you know. The commander of that camp was the only Confederate officer to be executed for war crimes after the Civil War ended.”

“He did,” I said, “and it's a good thing for me, too. After the war, he went on to get married and have children.”

That was all I really knew about him. For the longest time, I assumed he was a Learn, since I knew he was an ancestor on my father's side. A few weeks ago an email from my father set me straight. His name was Samuel Bowman, and he was the father of my Grandmother Ruth Learn's father.

With a little searching, I was able to find an online database of records pertaining to the Civil War, including a list of POWs at Andersonville, more formally known as Camp Sumter. I'd checked before but had been unable to find anyone named Learn in the database. Now that I had the right name, I went back to see what I could find. It wasn't encouraging.

According to the database, a Pvt. Sam Bowman died on July 20, 1864, while held at Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Ga. The cause of his death is listed as diarrhea. No other information was listed, aside from his unit — 147th New York Infantry, Company H — which told me nothing. Most likely Pvt. Bowman was buried in one of several mass graves on site.

The snippet of genealogy my father had included in his email mentioned that Samuel Bowman, born in 1842, had enlisted in the Union Army with his older brother James "J.J." Bowman. It also reported that Sam and his wife had one child, a son.

The Andersonville records do not list a James Bowman, who is buried at the Cambria Mills Cemetery in Fallentimber, Pa. I assume that J.J. made it home after the war had ended, and I hope that he lived a long and happy life with his wife, Eliza, and however many children and dogs they had.

But Sam! The story of his family seemed too painful even to consider. If he died in 1864, Sam couldn't have been more than 22 when he died. Was his wife already visibly pregnant when he left, or was she not yet showing? Did they even know?

Maybe their son already was born. Just imagine the tableau: She stands there in the early morning as J.J. and her Sam leave together. As she watches him go, never to return, she cradles their young son in her arms, or maybe feels him tug at her dress from where he stands next to her on the porch.

It's easy to picture her, young face darkened with foreboding; and just as easy to imagine the grief that would have pierced her heart when news came that her husband had died. She would never take another husband. When her son became a man himself, he married and continued the Bowman line. Picture the single mother, raising her son with the help of her late husband's family, reminded daily of the man she had loved as the son he had left her grew daily into his likeness.

But then, history smiled and I was pleased to discover that my original story was more correct. There was more than one Samuel Bowman at Camp Sumter. Pvt. Bowman died, but my ancestor Sam didn't.

When Sam left Camp Sumter and made the long trek home, he stopped along the way and courted Elizabeth “Fanny” Swain, and married her. They had one son, whom they named Edgar and raised together. When the time came, Edgar married May Cartwright. Together they had four children of their own, the second of whom was named Ruth Virginia Bowman. She was my grandmother.

Of the approximately 45,000 Union prisoners held at Camp Sumter during the war, nearly 13,000 died, primarily from scurvy, diarrhea and dysentery. When rescue finally came at war's end, the prisoners' deliverers described them as skeletal, emaciated, and covered with filth and vermin. There are pictures on the Internet. They could just as easily be pictures of Holocaust survivors.

As Marc had told me, the general pardon that President Lincoln extended to the rebel soldiers at the end of the Civil War did not extend to the commander of Camp Sumter. The record shows that Capt. Henry Wirz was tried and hanged for war crimes, the only Confederate official to be so tried and convicted.

(To be fair, some historians dispute that Wirz was responsible for the conditions at Camp Sumter, and instead blame the overcrowding and infectious disease, both due to circumstances beyond his personal control.)

In many ways, Sam Bowman is the perfect ancestor at a time like this. Like Lincoln, Gen. Ulysses Grant strode through his time like a titan. By dint of his position, his character and his drive, he moved the river of history from one bed to another. Claiming him as ancestor would be an exercise in vanity, like trying to make myself better by the association. Sam, on the other hand, was a nondescript nobody from central Pennsylvania.

My great-great-grandfather saw the end of the Civil War and the assassination of Lincoln. He saw the nation quit its half-hearted attempts at Reconstruction, and may have heard about the rise of jim crow justice and how by brute force the resentful South undid much of the hard-won work the Union did in liberating the slaves.

Sam may even have heard stories about the Great Migration as blacks fled a reign of terror in the South that would have put ISIS to shame, and ran North to places like New York and Chicago in the hopes of life, liberty and a future.

I only can imagine how he'd react to hearing that the Republican Party, once the Party of Lincoln, had forsaken that heritage and descended into what it's become now; and how it had elected a man as unstable as Donald Trump and so openly racist that the Ku Klux Klan was celebrating his election as their vindication.

Sam Bowman fought to save the Union. I'd hate to think of what he'd say to see it now, and I wonder how he would fight to save it again.



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

So you voted for Donald Trump

I'm writing this to all my friends and family who voted for Donald Trump to be president.

Let me start by saying that I'm not mad at you. We've known each other for years. We've broken bread together, watched one another's kids, laughed at one another's jokes, and even worshiped together. Through the years we've learned to trust one another, and sought one another out when we needed wisdom and guidance.

Your friendship means the world to me, and this election has not changed that. I'm not mad at you. But I am terribly disappointed.

Why? Because of what Trump is and what he represents. Because of what he's going to do over the next four years to our country and the people who live here, and because of what he's already doing. It wouldn't bother me nearly as much if he had presented himself as an angel of light and tricked you, but he didn't do that. He showed himself for what he is, and you still voted for him.

I could go through a litany of his abuses, but I won't.

I could regale you with example after appalling example of his racism toward Hispanics and blacks, his anti-Semitism, and the ways he has mocked the disabled and vilified Muslims.

I could remind you that he encouraged violence at his rallies, telling his supporters that in the good old days, protesters would have been carried out on a stretcher.

I could remind you that we all heard him boast about sexually predatory behavior, that he has cheated on every one of his wives, and that he once described his own daughter as “a piece of ass” and even said he would date her if she weren't his own child.

I could get into all this with you, but why bother? You already know it. Many of you were appalled by these very things, and yet you were willing to vote for him anyway.

That's the part that I don't understand. Trump made it clear that in his America, ethnic minorities and minority religions are second-class and viewed with suspicion. I know you don't feel that way yourself, but when you voted for him, you said it was OK that he does.

You've taught your kids to treat everyone with equal respect, but you voted to have a president who wants to institute a religious test for immigrants and who shares racist, inaccurate statistics from white nationalists.

You would ground your son for a month of Sundays if you heard him talking with friends about grabbing my daughter “by the pussy.” If he tried to explain it was just a joke or “locker room banter,” you would scream at him so loudly that they would hear you in the next ZIP code. You heard Trump say that, and you voted for him to be president.

Trump insults those who criticize him, loses his temper if they one-up him, and mocks anyone who opposes or disagrees with him. If your daughter were dating someone like that, you'd want her to leave an abusive relationship. Instead, you just agreed the country should marry him for at least the next four years.

What's the message people should take from this? That as horrible as all these things are, you can live with them? That the dignity of your black neighbors, your Hispanic neighbors, your gay neighbors, your female neighbors, your Muslim neighbors, your Jewish neighors, is something you're willing to see take a hit? That their respectability is negotiable?

That's not the message you wanted to send but that's the message that was received.

I know the response: Hillary Clinton is just as bad. We both know that's not true. For years Trump has been as involved in the political system as she is, and when it comes to lies and corruption he has been playing in the majors for years. It's time to stop arguing for moral equivalence. We're too honest for that.

Being paid money to give speeches is is not the same thing as regularly refusing to pay bills to small businesses and threatening to bury them under an avalanche of litigation if they protest. Using a private email server is not the same as dealing in one oversize lie after another and stoking racial hatred.

For that matter, being married to an adulterer and forgiving him is nothing like being the adulterous spouse and leaving your partner for the woman you cheated with, and then repeating that process a few years later.

I've heard some of you cite abortion as the reason why you just couldn't vote for Clinton. That's a complicated issue, and it's one we can and need to discuss some time soon, but let's admit that this has become an idol on the Right.

Abortion is an ancient practice, but it is never once condemned in the Bible. The behaviors Trump practices are condemned roundly and repeatedly. In fact, Scripture makes that condemnation a major theme throughout.

But here we are. There is nothing to gain by arguing the merit of one candidate or another now, and that's not the point anyway. The dilemma is that we are being asked to accept a president-elect whose conduct and attitudes are morally abhorrent and have left people legitimately frightened for their safety and security.

Already the ugliness reported in Britain after the vote to leave the European Union is rearing its head here. Muslim women — easily identified by the hijab they wear — singled out and attacked. Kindergartners telling their peers they'll be deported soon. Blacks being called by the N-word openly.

Donald Trump did not create this ugliness, but through his campaign he brought it out into the open and gave it legitimacy. This is not something you wanted, but it has happened. By electing him, we have affirmed that this behavior is something we can live with.

We should not.

With the Republicans now in control of both chambers of the Congress and the White House, we likely will see a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which means that millions of the most vulnerable members of our society are going to lose their health insurance. We also may see further cuts to the protections of minorities as the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts are chipped away.

And that's just the beginning. The Republican Party in the last 16 years has systematically opposed both maintaining our social safety net and opposed setting watchmen over big business. Expect more children to go hungry, more school funding to be slashed, and more abuses by big business as wages drop and the wealth divide grows.

From where I'm sitting, it looks like our country is entering a dark time. I'm appalled that many of my fellow Christians – a reported 80 percent of white evangelicals, who claim to have a close and personal relationship with Jesus – decided that they could live with all that Trump has said and done about women and minorities if it means they might have a say in appointing Supreme Court justices.

As a Christian myself I have to note that the people likely to suffer under a Trump presidency are the people whom Jesus stands with and among.

On Jan. 20, Donald Trump will be our president. I understand that, and accept that there is nothing I can do about it. I cast my vote, and though a majority of Americans agreed with me, Trump has won the election by the book.

But let us remember that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. There are times patriotism means standing firm and saying "This is wrong."

Yes, let us come together. There is work to be done. There are people who will need advocates and there are things coming that we must oppose. I'd like to start by inviting you, my friends who voted for Trump, to get on board. Come together and stand with us, for the good of the nation.



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Facing a Trump presidency in faith

Let's talk for a moment about our president-elect.

During the past year, Donald Trump has maligned Hispanics, villified Muslims, mocked the disabled, spread racist lies about blacks and Jews, advocated violence against his critics, and bragged about sexually assaulting women. This is not a man who ran to be president of all America, but only of some of us. His entire campaign was built on excluding "the other" from his vision of America.

During that campaign, Trump regularly attacked the legitimacy of major institutions in this country: the news media, the Congress, both parties, our political process, our intelligence agencies and our military. He has indicated he would like to weaken the protections of the First Amendment itself, to make it easier to sue people who criticize him or who he feels treat him "unfairly." He has shown support for ending marriage equality, and for chipping away at the recently enacted protections for transgender youth at schools.

His business record is an open drain, one where he once lost nearly $1 billion in a single year and and where he has filed for personal bankruptcy not once but multiple times. He regularly has cheated small businesses by reneging on contracts and burying them in litigation to prevent them from collecting what he owes them. He also is subject to ongoing litigation over his business practices, particularly Trump University. This is someone whom we have elected to preside over our economy.

He has run a campaign not on substance and ideas but on innuendo, personal attacks, and one outsize lie after another. We have entrusted him with our international standing, our military and economic alliances, and with partnerships that go back decades if not centuries.

He has advocated violence at his rallies, directed it toward protesters and minorities; and when his supporters have engaged in violence he has praised them for their enthusiasm. As president, Trump will be the chief law enforcement officer of the nation.

Trump's supporters have commended him for "honesty" and not bowing to "political correctness"; but he has not pushed aside the bounds of political correctness to allow a free exchange of ideas, but to mock, humiliate and belittle others. He has not emboldened us toward greater discussion or honesty. He has instead encouraged us to indulge our worst impulses. We have given him the largest bully pulpit in the world.

And now that he's been elected to the presidency, I'm hearing from people that we on the Left are acting hysterically. Conservative Christians are telling us that we need to have faith, that God is on the throne.

This is not hysteria. This is a reasoned, calm and rational assessment of the existential threat that a Trump presidency poses to the Republic.

My 6-year-old is worried that her friends are going to have to leave the country because their parents are here without proper documentation. I comforted my 14-year-old today because she is worried about the increased bullying she fears her LGBTQ friends will face now, and because of the heightened threats to her friends and classmates of color.

Yes, God is on the throne, and by faith we attest that all these things work toward his greater glory. But God was on the throne on Aug. 20, 1934, and we all know what cold comfort his sovereignty proved to be to those who lived under the Führer. God also was seated on the throne on Oct. 29, 1929, when Herbert Hoover presided over the greatest economic crash in world history; and he was on the throne when George W. Bush presidend over the second greatest. God's sovereignty does not lessen the burden of enduring the things that happen in this world.

This isn't about faith or lack of faith in God's sovereignty. It's a recognition that we're about to see a lot of progress ripped up as millions of our most vulnerable citizens likely will lose their health insurance, as a right-heavy Congress votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act; as it further rips up the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts; as our gay and trans neighbors, friends and relatives face losing the legal protections and recognition they had begun to win; and as an unpredictable demagogue very possibly will get to make multiple lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court.

This is not panic, and it is not hysteria. This is recognizing what our country likely will have to endure, and it is the start of understanding the monumental task God has called us to in pursuing his justice here on earth under an unjust government.


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.

Jack Chick Considered

Jack Chick, the creator of more than 250 of the world's most infamous evangelistic tracts, reportedly died in his sleep last Sunday night. He was 92.

Even if you've never heard of Jack Chick, you're probably familiar with his work. Over the past 50 years, his company has printed an estimated 800 million of his comics, little pamphlets about the size of a Tijuana bible. They're frequently found in bus stations, Laundromats and other public areas where people are bored and will kill a minute or two reading a religious tract if there's nothing else to do.

The tracts are not known for their sensitivity, nor for their accuracy. On both fronts they make InfoWars seem as down-to-earth as a Ken Burns documentary.

Once you have read a few of his comics, you will begin to understand that Chick saw the world in very stark terms. In his view, the road to hell is not only broad, it also has frequent on-ramps in places like rock music, Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons, public school, trick-or-treating, and even the Bible if it's not the approved 1611 King James Version.

Judging by his tracts, the only people Jack Chick considered to be decent were fundamentalist Christians like himself. They dress nicely, act and speak respectfully, and unflaggingly labor to tell people important truths that they don't want to hear, in order to keep those people out of hell. They overcome earthly obstacles no matter how sorely they're put upon, and they persevere and tell you that you need to ask Jesus to forgive your sins.

Non-Christians, on the other hand, are foul-mouthed, vulgar and often treacherous. Their faces are misshapen and angular, their teeth are crooked, and their mouths are twisted perpetually into grotesque sneers. They are nervous or angry and brittle, and explode whenever they hear someone mention Jesus. It's impossible to be ambivalent about Christianity, according to Chick. You either embrace it or you hate it with a passion.

Other things to know as you navigate this strange world: The truth is out there. It's just suppressed by a vast conspiracy aided and abetted by scientists, educators, the courts, liberals and the newspapers. The wicked always bray “Haw haw” like an infernal donkey when they laugh; and the most evil organization of all isn't the NFL. It's the Catholic Church, which over the years has created communism, your local Masonic lodge, the Ku Klux Klan and even Islam.

For all that they have offended and inspired mockery, Chick tracts also have gathered a perverse fandom. One of them even inspired a full-length movie adaptation. As a whole they reached the point years ago that they have become iconic pieces of religious Americana. His comics are so obnoxious, so over-the-top offensive, that they're like a joke he didn't know how to stop.

Except to Chick, it wasn't a joke. He was completely serious. He honestly believed that “true Christianity” was under siege by Catholicism, by secularism, by science and by falsified Scriptures. He saw himself and others who thought like him as the only guardians of an endangered truth.

Chick had some interesting beliefs, to put it mildly, the sort that forces you to take sides. The Southern Poverty Law Center includes Chick Publications on its list of hate groups, and the Christian Booksellers Association in 1981 considered expelling him from its ranks. (He withdrew his membership first.)

To Chick and his supporters, the angry reactions and denunciations his work received only justified their sense that he was right and was being hated wrongly by the people he was trying to rescue; while his inability or refusal to see how hurtful his tracts were only justified the beliefs of his critics that Chick was small-minded and hateful.

The divide left two groups of people, each convinced of the moral, spiritual and intellectual inferiority of the other. Given the potency of religious beliefs, difference of belief over his tracts and whether they had a place in evangelism was enough to sunder relationships within some churches. In many ways it parallels the partisan divide in American politics today.

In March 2004, Catholic Answers published an article by Jimmy Akin, a Catholic apologist and evangelist who met Chick at the world premier of the movie “The Light of the World.” Akin, a self-professed fan of Chick's work because of the bizarre fascination it elicits, recalls spotting Chick and wanting to debate him on his theology or even to goad him into disowning the conspiracy theories in his tracts.

But then he had an interesting, Christlike thought: “I decided that, if it was Chick, the most charitable thing I could do was simply be nice to him and chat,” he wrote.

What follows in Akin's article is one of the most thoroughly human and down-to-earth conversations imaginable. For perhaps a half-hour or more, the two men talked about writing, about illustration and art styles, about tracts and even about some of Chick's more outrageous conspiracy theories.

The article doesn't leave readers with the impression that the two men became friends, or that Chick suddenly disavowed a lifetime of conspiracy thinking and anti-Catholic sentiment. But it does suggest that the two men left one another a little more aware of their common humanity and perhaps even a little more inclined to view one another sympathetically. That divide, which to some might see impossible to cross, had been bridged, however tenuously, through the simple act of talking and listening to one another.

“Chick came across as a kind, gentle old man,” Akin wrote. "He was nothing but polite. He smiled. He laughed. Unlike the characters in his comic books, he didn’t say 'Haw! Haw!' when he laughed. From meeting him one would never suspect him to be the most infamous broadcaster of hate and paranoia in the Christian comic book world.”

Make no mistake: The overriding arc of Jack Chick's faith was one of fear. He was afraid of Catholics. He was afraid of music. He was afraid of gays and lesbians. He was afraid of Bible translations other than the King James Version. He was afraid of other religions. He was afraid of progress. He was afraid of Halloween, of evolution, and probably of Christmas too.

Behind all these things he saw the dark hand of a satanic conspiracy that had overtaken the entire world except for him and a few others, and that constantly threatened even them. At the age of 90, he apparently believed that the Catholic Church was monitoring him and even had plans for his assassination.

A faith that leads us to the summit of fear and then stops there, is not a faith that is reaching its potential; and I admit, I like to think that Chick is going to feel a little abashed to discover that God's grace is wider and different from what he imagined. But a faith that lets us feel better than somebody else isn't much of a faith either. It's not enough to save anyone.

I rather recall the question a teacher of the law once posed to Jesus about what was necessary to be saved. After Jesus answered, he told his interrogator the Parable of the Good Samaritan, where a wounded man was saved by somebody he hated more than anyone else in the world.

The message of that parable is one that his ancient audience needed to hear; it's one that Jack Chick needed to hear; and it's one that we would benefit from today, in these times of division between supporters of Hillary Clinton and supporters of Donald Trump.

The person you hate the most also happens to be the person you need.


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Closing the distance

Let it be known that I have far more in common with my gay friends than not.

Like them, I enjoy the pleasures of a good night's sleep, keeping warm during the winter, a nice meal, the presence of loved ones, and the new "Luke Cage" series on Netflix. And let's not forget that I'm also a snazzy dresser. There is much that we share in common; that's why we're friends.

One thing I do not share with them, and never will: I'm not gay. I'm not attracted to other men, and never have been. When I've fallen in love, whether in my teens or in my twenties, my overriding concern has been a fear of rejection, not a fear of discovery. I've never needed to fear for my safety if strangers see me with my partner. No one has ever told me that I'm going to hell for wanting to be with the one I love.

And while adolescence was rough, people generally assumed that I was straight and eventually would find a nice girlfriend, and I did. I never experienced the disorientation that comes from realizing that such fundamental expectations are all wrong. I'm not gay, so all those things are outside my experience.

Thank God for good writing. It has the power to close the distance.

A bad book can treat me to an adventure in feudal Japan where all the people talk, behave and interact like 21st-century Americans, right down to their moral sensibilities. An adequate book will at least try to explain feudal Japan and its customs, while a good book will present me with fully realized characters and a setting so that I gain a better understanding of life in feudal Japan.

A truly amazing book is one that not only will help me to understand feudal Japan and the people who lived there, it will give me a personal connection to the era. By the time I'm done reading, I'll have a hunger to know more, and I'll know whether I would be a samurai, a peasant, a ronin or a monk burning incense to the Buddha. Literature can make all these things real and accessible to me.

I can't overstate how important this is. If a book, a movie, a musical, a poem or a song deepens your appreciation of the humanity you share with someone else and it fires a new connection where none had existed, then the creator of that work has accomplished the work of God.

That was my experience with “Fun Home,” a coming-of-age autobiography by artist Alison Bechdel. Originally written in 2006, “Fun Home” depicts Bechdel's childhood growing up in the living quarters of a funeral home, her teen years, and her early adulthood at college and afterward. The book is an odyssey of discovery. Through her experiences, Bechdel comes to understand not only her own identity but also that of her father, a distant and inscrutable figure throughout her childhood.

A little over a year-and-a-half ago, my daughter left a copy of “Fun Home” on the kitchen table. It's like she was trying to tell me something. Dad, look! A comic book without a single costumed hero or ridiculous supervillain in sight. You should check this out.

Not only did it avoid superheroes and their melodrama, "Fun Home" was a comic book with a complex plot and complicated characters. In only nine pages, I fell in love with the writing and kept reading until I had finished. As I recall, I didn't leave the bathroom for about two hours.

Not surprisingly, “Fun Home” was adapted for the stage. The show, which won both Tony and Obie awards, opened off-Broadway in 2013 with a script that weaves its way back and forth among the different periods of Bechdel's life, with a few surprises along the way.

Toward the end of the play, when Adult Alison is starting to truly understand her late father, she hears him ask her younger self to join him on a car ride and spend some time together. And then to her wonder, she realizes that Small Alison is no longer on stage; her late father is talking to her. I'm told that the ensuing song, “Telephone Wire,” is considered one of the most moving of the show.

That may be. I haven't listened to the entire cast album, and so I don't know the music particularly well. Still, the one song I do know well is one that affects me powerfully. It's “Ring of Keys.”

In this song the Bechdel character, Small Alison, is in a cafeteria with her father when she sees a masculine-looking woman enter. This stranger is wearing jeans and lace-up boots, instead of properly feminine clothes; and moves with confidence. Small Alison is enraptured with what she sees, and wonders why no one else in the cafeteria responds as she does to this unconventional woman.

“Ring of Keys” isn't a love song. It's a song of recognition. In seeing her, Small Alison for the first time sees something in herself that she had never been able to notice before, because it never occurred to her that it could be there. For the first time in her life, it hits her that she is not the prototypical girl of tea parties and fancy dresses. She's different. She's like this woman.

For all that I have in common with my gay friends, associates and colleagues, I'm not gay. A physical or romantic attraction to another man is something I've never known, which means that there are sizeable pieces of the gay experience that I'll never share.

I take what bridges I can. At times I've been allowed a front-row seat to the misery they've endured when they've come out of the closet and been rejected, and I've invited them to come to my home and join my family. Other times they have shared their hurt when lawmakers and Christians have proclaimed a moral right and obligation to deny them a place at the marriage table, and I've screamed like hell at their side against that prejudice.

But I've never understood how liberating it must be to have that moment of self-discovery when they discover the missing piece and unlock the secret of how they are different. That essential piece of the gay experience in America has always been foreign to me. It never even occurred to me.

“Ring of Keys” changes the equation. The song helps me to get it. I listen, and I'm able to perceive and to understand that aha! moment, and through that discovery, I enjoy our common humanity anew, through an experience I can't relate to. It's a wonderfully moving and deeply humbling encounter.

Right now in the United States, we're at a point where our nation is splitting into factions incapable of or unwilling to understand one another. A lot of that animosity and distrust would dissolve if we would make the effort to reach out listen to one another, and grasp the things we can't relate to.

That common humanity has always been what's kept us together.


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Sympathy for the Devil

It looks like studio executives at Fox have decided to give the devil his due, at least for one more year.

Now in its second season, the TV show “Lucifer” builds its premise around an idea originally presented in “The Sandman,” an award-winning comic book by Neil Gaiman. In the TV show, as in the comic, the devil has grown tired of overseeing the torments of the damned. He has abandoned the war with heaven, moved to California, and opened a nightclub. In order to hang a weekly series around this concept with Lucifer as the main character,  20th Century Fox made it a police show.

I first heard of the show mid-season last year, when I read that the American Family Association and its affiliated web site One Million Moms had objected. I object too, but not that the show has sown “spiritual confusion,” as the association claims. My concern is that the show has been squandering a great idea. I mean, a police procedural? Really?

In “The Sandman,” Lucifer marked his abdication by throwing the damned out of hell along with their tormentors. The next time we see him, he is lounging on a beach in Perth, Australia, admiring the sunset. Later, in the penultimate story arc to the comic, we find him running his nightclub and playing Cole Porter tunes on the piano.

Try and tell me that you don't find that idea at least a little amusing.

When we first read “Seasons of Mist,” my best friend and I spent days imagining other career paths the devil could have opted for. Plenty of possibilities suggested themselves. Studio engineer or record producer for a major record label. President of a fantasy roleplaying game company.

For a while we even pictured him as the managing editor of a local newspaper who would enjoy playing folk music on his acoustic guitar during open mike nights at the local coffee house. As a bonus, he would be oblivious to the bar fights that unfailingly would break out during his set.

It wouldn't matter whether he sang “Imagine” and “Give Peace a Chance,” or “Oh My Darling Clementine”; conflict was inevitable. The devil might be tired of running hell, but we were less optimistic than Gaiman about his ability to quit being who he is, no matter how hard he tried.

One thing we were sure of, though: Lucifer Morningstar would never seek political office. There are some depths even the devil won't sink to.

Amusing as all of this may be, and as fascinating a story as it can be in the hands of a talented writer, none of this exactly matches the traditional story of the devil as understood in popular culture. And that is without doubt the source of some of the opprobrium the American Family Association has directed at the show.

In traditional understanding, Lucifer was first in the order of creation. Of all beings, he was second only to God in power and majesty. He was captain of the other angels, the light-bearer and leader of worship in heaven. He was proud, and he was beautiful. There was none like him.

When Lucifer discovered that God intended to create humanity, and to elevate humans to a place of honor higher than the angels themselves, it was too much to take. He disagreed with God so sharply that he actually rebelled, intending to depose the Almighty and take the throne from him. Such was his beauty and magnificence that fully a third of the other angels joined him.

The rebellion went the only way it could. A match would have had greater success extinguishing a hurricane than Lucifer had against God. The angel was cast into hell, and all his followers fell with him.

Since then, Lucifer has been Satan, the Adversary. The very avatar of evil, he has continued to war with heaven, determined to mar Creation as thoroughly as possible. Christians see him as the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve to disobedience in the Garden of Eden, and often perceive his hand in the slaughter of Hebrew infants in the time of Moses, and in the Massacre of the Innocents in the gospel of Matthew.

In the devil's war with heaven, earth is the battleground and the souls of mortals are the prize. Every soul that finds itself in hell is a victory in his campaign against God Almighty. But in the end, of course, the final victory goes to God, along with all the glory. The story ends in the book of Revelation when the devil is thrown into the lake of fire, and God makes his dwelling with humans, as he had planned all along.

As stories go, this is one of the best. Obvious themes include the majesty, sovereignty and glory of God; the dangers of arrogance and pride in one's position; and the folly of resisting God's purposes and will. By incarnating sin and evil in the person of the devil, the story presents us with a moral lesson about sin and rebellion so that his story serves as a warning to us.

Add a motivation – some people say Satan rebelled because he was jealous that God intended humanity to be higher than the angels, though I've also heard suggestions that he disagreed with God's notions of justice – and you have a character in an eternal drama who serves as a potential rebuke to our own sense of entitlement and moral absolutism.

The “Lucifer” writers have turned this into a weekly police procedural where the devil is a funny but likeable social misfit who, instead of marring Creation, helps the cops solve drive-by killings and kidnappings. Rather than opposing the will of the Almighty, his chief concern is that the officer he works with keeps rejecting his advances. It should surprise no one that a petition on the American Family Association web site to stop the show garnered a reported 134,331 signatures before the first season pilot even had aired.

There's just one problem with outrage over “Lucifer.” The story about Satan's rebellion and subsquent fall from heaven is found nowhere in Scripture. It's all told in a poem by John Milton called “Paradise Lost.”

Once we understand that, we stand to gain a lot more spiritual clarity than we ever would have lost from a simple TV show.



Copyright 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

'thus says the lord' (part two)

I feel I should say that I no longer have doubts about the fitness of our church youth group leader for that role.

If you're a regular reader of this blog -- though, to be honest, I wonder at times if I am the only person still to use this platform -- you may recall that back in June, I had some concerns about the things Paul G. was teaching in youth group. At the time, I even described his teachings as Froot Loops and suggested that the activities he was encouraging were too extreme even for Socially Awkward Penguin.

I no longer have doubts. They are resolved, and I am determined that he will not be teaching my children anything. I'm meeting with a few church leaders to make the case that he needs to be removed.

Youth group at our church meets Friday nights. Last night, he approached a few of the teens -- and it just hit me that every teen I've heard whom he approached was a girl, why are they always girls? -- with a word he had received from the Lord about what they should do with their lives. I wasn't there and I don't know exactly what happened, but since Middle Daughter was one of the children approached, I asked her repeatedly to tell me what he said. I wanted to know the wording, because that can make a big difference.

Middle Daughter is an actor. She aspires to be one professionally. Now a student at a performing arts high school, she plans to attend college in New York and launch a career performing on Broadway. She's passionate about this. If you talk with her for five minutes you'll discover that it's so.

So it's not surprising that Paul G. knows. And while it might be a little odd for him to weigh in on her career goals, that's what he did Friday night. From what my girls told me, Paul G. approached Middle Daughter and said, "I was praying, and I think God wants you to go to Hollywood."

And that is completely inappropriate.

Let's not make any mistakes about what is going on here. Paul G. has been entrusted with providing some spiritual education to the teens of a church. It's one thing to use teach doctrine like "it is impossible for the unsaved to understand the things of God," it is something else to get sidetracked into irrelevancies like six-day creationism, and something else again to get into extrabiblical mysticism like claiming authority over and rebuking spirits, and visualizing people to verbally harass at Walmart.

There is no justification or excuse that will ever cover claiming to speak on behalf of God and tell other people what they should do. And let's not be coy about it, that's exactly what he did. He may have added a qualifier like "I think," but when you are talking to someone under your authority and a potentially impressionable child, the take-away is not "I think" but "God wants."

There is nothing positive to say about this. At its worst, such talk is abusive, controlling and manipulative. Even viewed charitably, it is horribly misguided and shows a tremendous lack of good judgment. If you're going to presume to speak for God, you'd better be prepared to put your divine imprimatur on the table for inspection. I have left churches over this sort of thing.

So I am talking to the lead pastor-guy on Monday morning, more in his capacity as a friend of mine than as the pastor-guy. And then I plan to speak to the elder in charge of the youth ministry, and I expect I'll talk to Paul G. as well. I need to talk with them by Friday, because Friday evening the youth group leadership is going to talk with the parents during the youth group meeting, and I really would rather have this dealt with before Friday than blow the whole thing up on Friday. But the truth is, this has to be discussed in the open, and it needs to be clear either that church leadership is OK with this kind of teaching going on at youth group, or it needs to be clear that they are not OK with it, and are dealing with the issue head-on.

I am not OK with it. If he continues to lead youth group, my children will not attend; and I know one pair of parents that's even angrier than I am.


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet
Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.

'Thus says the Lord': Overstepping our authority

Twenty years ago I was a member in good standing of Easton (Pa.) Assembly of God. That all came crashing down in one Sunday school class.

Laverne Webber, the wife of our church's pastor, was teaching a class on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is a fairly significant doctrine in the Assemblies of God; essentially it holds that there is a special encounter with God made manifest by glossalalia, the ecstatic utterance in unknown tongues.

I had questions. I still do. That's how I work. I ask questions until I understand, not to someone else's satisfaction but to my own. So I asked, and when the answers weren't satisfactory, I pressed. Other members of the class I found wanted to hear the answers too.

Well, Laverne kept leading the class, and I kept attending; and you know, I never did start speaking in tongues, and neither did anyone else in the class.

One week Laverne approached me. She had been praying and God had spoken to her. About me. The way he does.

"David," she said, "I really feel the Lord is saying you need to stop questioning, and just have faith."

I nodded agreeably, but inside I was thinking "Well, four more weeks, and then this session of children's church is done. I'll wrap up my commitment, and then I'll go."

I had helped to lead the children's ministry at church for two years. I had helped to write the curriculum because what we had been given was so stupid. They lost that commitment and support. I was headed toward a breakup with this church for a number of reasons, but two things hastened that split.

One, don't ever tell me to stop thinking and just "have faith."

Two, don't ever tell me what God wants me to do unless you're prepared to show me proof that he has authorized you to speak on his behalf. That is abusive and manipulative at its worst; and when it's at its best and just misguided, it still is the key to messing up impressionable minds.

If you are actually going to claim to speak for God -- even if you try to couch it terms of "I think God wants you to do thus-and-such" -- then you don't have the maturity to be in any sort of leadership.


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

life in the desert

The Taklamakan Desert may be the most hostile place on the planet to live.

By day the sun hangs overhead like a hot coal that burns the eyes and the skin, and scorches the earth below the traveler's feet. There is no water to be found, and sand dunes stretch in every direction. At the end of the desert lies another desert. The Taklamakan's name may come from the Turkish phrase “The place of ruins.” When he set a story there in 1992, Neil Gaiman offered a more picturesque name: If-You-Go-In-You-Won't-Come-Out-Again.

The worst part of the Taklamakan is its winds. During the summer temperatures pass 100 degrees, and during the winter, they can drop below zero. During the spring, as the ground begins to warm, the air begins to move and gale winds arise with the force of a hurricane. Sand and dust blow and fill the air, creating a fog of dirt that reaches heights of 13,000 feet.

In these conditions, the sky can get so dark that visibility is imaginary. Your only hope of survival is to stay together, and your only hope of staying together is to affix bells to the camels and to one another so that you can hear how close you are to one another. The sand dunes constantly rearrange themselves, so your only hope of staying on your path is to set up a sign each night before you go to sleep so you can be sure to continue in the same direction when you waken in the morning.

Try to imagine living in those conditions. Try to imagine crossing a desert like that. The Taklamakan is a no man's land. It is a nowhere that lies between two places, an empty space that no one claims for their own. If you go in, you won't come out again.

Deserts come in all degrees and varieties. Far to the north are deserts where rain never falls and plants struggle to grow, but the ground is cold and frozen year-round. There are deserts where rains come often enough for cacti to grow and to bloom, and even for trees and animals to grow that have adapted to the climate.

Other deserts used to be green and fair, until men came and felled the trees and overgrazed their flocks until there was nothing left but wasteland. These deserts may be among the worst. Their desolation bears silent witness to the violence we have done to the land and to ourselves because we refuse to see what we are doing.

And then there are the deserts we make of our own societies, spiritual wastelands where we strip away justice and allow those with power to wield it with only a pretense of accountability. Executives loot the pensions of their workers and never face jail time or admit their wrongdoing. Government officials cut support for the needy and refuse to require a living wage. Power exists to serve the powerful and not the powerless.

In this desert, the victims of police violence are legion. Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. Walter Scott. Tamir Rice. John Crawford. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. The list of names is too long. It goes back too far to remember, and it joins the names of others martyred to white fears of a black country. James Byrd. Emmett Till. Greenwood, Okla.

Justice denied fuels anger, and as violence begets violence the body count begins to rise, and the voice of God rises in reprimand. “What have you done?” he asks, as he has since the first story was told. “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”

In the desert we rally to support a man who ridicules the disabled while he belittles and savages women. We rush to elect a man who lies outrageously, encourages violence, and incites hatred of Muslims and Jews, Mexicans and blacks.

In this desert, our nation's most avowedly religious Christians support this man, while we make a tremendous point of displaying our piety around the flagpole and at the National Mall, and everywhere we go. We shout our faith to the heavens, but heaven is a place that demands justice first and foremost.

From the book of Amos:

“I hate, I despise your feasts,
    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings,
    I will not accept them,
and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts
    I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
    to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Justice. That word sounds threatening, but it doesn't need to. What is it that makes the Taklamakan so dangerous? It's not the wind, or the sand, or the soft geography. It's not even the sun. It's the lack of water.

The Taklamakan lives in the shadow of the Himalayas, mountains so tall that they block rain clouds from ever reaching the Taklamakan or the rest of the Gobi Desert region. About an inch-and-a-half of precipitation gathers in the West, and less than half an inch in the East. Even cacti find the Taklamakan too extreme. Most of the area is barren.

Most, but not all. Even that inhospitable desert comes to life where the water rolls down. Around the edges of the desert region are river valleys and deltas, and places where the groundwater comes close enough to the surface to ease the oppression of the desert sun. Herds of gazelles run free through these open spaces, and wild boars live among the river valleys, where even wolves and foxes hunt.

Justice is not a force of destruction. It is an agent of renewal. Where the river flows through the desert, trees put down roots. They grow fruit when it's the season, and even in the summer heat their leaves do not wither. The trees that line the river provide shade for the weary, the grass along the river is easy on the feet, and there is food to eat.

In the desert, an oasis like this is a place to rest, to recover, to heal and to stay a while, perhaps even to put down roots of our own. The justice of God is a shelter in our society, a place where black lives matter as much as white lives, where everyone is welcome to be themselves, and where no one is viewed with suspicion because of race or color.

Here in our desert, Sunday morning remains the most segregated hour of the week. Perhaps we don't know the burdens people of color face in our society because too often we still haven't taken the time to let them share, nor believed them when they've told us.

Hate evil, and love good; establish justice in the gate.

Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Let it begin with me.



Copyright 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Together 2016

The youth group at our church is planning to take a trip next Saturday to Washington, D.C., to attend Together 2016.

What is Together 2016? I'm glad you asked, because it took me a while to find anything approaching a useful description! The event's web site invites you to "Fill the mall! Be one of a million standing for Jesus on 7.16.16." It also notes that 315,976 have "joined the movement," as of 10:53 p.m. July 6. What movement is that? I'm really not sure. I only heard of the movement a week ago, and have not been able to find any identifiable goals.

There are a lot of amazing things that movements have accomplished, based on the life and teachings of Jesus. The Society of Friends, a christocentric movement also known as the Quakers, is legendary worldwide for its commitment to peace, to the abolition of slavery, and to the advancement of civil rights and women's suffrage. Susan B. Anthony and Clara Barton are two well-known Quakers. The Civil Rights movement also drew heavily on the teachings of Christ, and on theologians who influenced Martin Luther King Jr,, such as Richard Niebuhr.

What social issues is Together 2016 going to tackle? Maybe there's something about income inequality, gun violence, or the current issue of police brutality disproportionately affecting the black community. Maybe there's something about the xenophobia and white nationalism whipped up by presumed Republican nominee Donald Trump. If so, you can't tell by reading the web site. It says nothing.

"Our generation is the most cause-driven in history. But our causes are pulling us apart. Even religion doesn’t unite. We believe only Jesus can bring us together," the site declares on its About page. "July 16, 2016, is the day our generation will meet on the National Mall to come together around Jesus in unified prayer, worship, and a call for catalytic change."

Change sounds exciting, especially with an unfamiliar word like "catalytic" in front of it. But change can mean different things to different people. Stepping up regulation of abortion would be exciting to some Christians and perfectly alarming to others. The same is true for gay rights and same-sex marriage. Is it part of a concerted assault on marriage, or is it welcoming our gay friends and relatives into community with us, and recognizing the importance of belonging with another person?

The site doesn't take a position. It doesn't even acknowledge the subject.

Together 2016 isn't like Burning Man or a trip to a popular Christian music festival like Creation or Cornerstone, in that you know more or less what to expect. It's being called a worship gathering, with speakers and worship leaders, which is fine; but it's being held at the Mall, in D.C.

I've scoured the web looking for more information, but the most I can find, even after reading all the free articles I could find at Christianity Today is that organizers say there is no agenda, just "resetting the country for Jesus." That sounds nonthreatening enough, but we all have different ideas on what that means, don't we?

To many of our nation's older evangelical leaders, that would mean resetting America to a time like the 1950s, much like Donald Trump does when he says he wants to "make America great again." I doubt many blacks would like a return to the days of legalized segregation, or that women would want to give up their careers for a June Ward existence, or that gays and lesbians would want to return to the terror of the closet. And no one from a religious minority is going to want to return to the days when a civic Judeo-Christian religion was expected.

I read about a half-dozen articles on Together 2016 today, and one of them noted that speakers will avoid entirely hot-button issues like same-sex marriage and abortion. A friend of mine summarized her thoughts for me: "Just looks like a big dumb prayer meeting," she wrote. "Big. Dumb. See You At The Pole X 20k. It's an excuse to go to D.C. and hang out with other teens/have over-the-clothes groping on the bus." (It sounds like her youth group had more fun than mine.)

In all fairness, the leaders of the movement probably do mean it to be exactly like a giant Meet You at the Pole event. But if that's the case, they really should have picked somewhether other than Washington, D.C., to host their event. As soon as you've set something in the capital, you've just guaranteed that it has agenda, if for no other reason than the eyes it has decided to attract.

And that often is the whole point of these gatherings. It's to send a message to the community, to the nation, to our leaders: "We are here. We are many. Don't ignore us when you vote." Expect the message to be co-opted as soon as you start to gather. There are people lined up right now to tell politicians that all those Christians support greater trade with China, oppose environmental regulation of America's rivers, and think the color green should have a little more yellow in it.

If that's what you want, that's fine. Feel free to knock yourselves out. But don't expect the gathering to reset America for Jesus. He talked about public declarations of faith, and by and large he wasn't impressed.

"When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."

In the end I started to wonder why I was bothering trying to figure out what the goal of Together 2016 is. My kids are probably going to have zero interest in attending.


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet