Repo man

About seventeen years ago, I was living in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where I was a resident missionary with STEM Ministries.

STEM is a missions organization with a focus on the North American church. By providing groups from the United States and Canada with short-term experiences in third world nations in the Caribbean and South America, it hopes to awaken the church in two of the wealthiest nations on Earth to the global scale of God's work.

In other words, it might seem really pressing to build a state-of-the-art nursery with a cappuccino bar for the workers, but there are Christians in the Dominican Republic where they'd be grateful for a corrugated tin roof to keep the rain and sun out.

It's a pretty straightforward proposition: Show American Christians what the rest of the world is like, and let God challenge their preconceptions. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you forget right away, sometimes your experiences in the third world stay with you for the rest of your life.

While I was there, one of the nationals we worked with came to the ministry with a problem. He needed money, or the bank would take the land he and his family had been living on. Seventeen years is a long time, so I don't remember all the details. What I mostly remember is Steve Schmidt, our base director, mentioned that another missionary he knew would categorize this fellow's problems as the wealthy ignoring the plight of the poor, if not outright taking advantage of them.

Steve dismissed that as nonsense, since as he (correctly) pointed out, the fellow in question did have the money for the bank payment, or at least he used to. Like many people, he had used the money for other things, including things that he hadn't needed.

That's actually a common situation in Haiti, I'm afraid. A boujwa will come and buy a piece of property from someone for a handsome price, and tell him that he's going to build a house there in 10 years or so. Ten years will come and go, and then the boujwa will start building his house.

The former owner of the land, sadly, will still be on the property and will no longer have the handsome sum, which he theoretically could have used to buy land elsewhere, buy some goats or pigs to start a business and raise his family out of poverty, or something of the sort. Sadly, the owner usually will have done none of those things, and now has nothing left to show for the money he once was paid. It's all gone, and soon they are not only out of the money, they are out of the place they have lived for years.

There's no denying that the fellow who sold his home and then frittered away the money -- aside from any money that was put to a good use, like sending the kids to school -- made some really stupid decisions with his money, and in the end has to shoulder responsibility for his plight. On the other hand, it's a pretty cold thing to throw a family out of their homes, and leave them to fend for themselves.

Steve isn't that cold. He gave our national colleague some of the ministry's designated mercy money -- not enough to cover the whole payment, but a good chunk of it. The idea was that he would have to earn the rest of the money somehow, and make some adjustments, rather than us encouraging dependency on the "rich white missionaries."

Still, the story has stuck with me for the past 17 years because I can't shake the fundamental wrongness of evicting people from their homes. That feeling has stayed with me, and in recent months has grown still stronger, as banks that essentially preyed upon people by offering them mortgages that they couldn't afford, all in the name of making a buck. And while those homeowners have been thrown out onto the street, figuratively or literally, the executives responsible for the mess have been raking in huge bonuses even as the economy comes crashing down around the ears of the rest of us.

One fellow I know -- a dyed-in-the-wool God-is-a-Republican sort of Christian -- insists that capitalism is biblical. I'm not sure entirely how he justifies that, but there you have it. American-style capitalism unquestionably grew out of the Protestant work ethic practiced by groups like the Puritans and the Moravians, but it's quite a stretch to my mind to see Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" as being in sync with a text that never really got into particulars of economic theory beyond things like stressing the value of honest weights. At best, I can say that it is an extrabiblical economic system that can be shaped by biblical values of compassion (as opposed to the greed that drives the market most times).

But you know, home ownership is one area where capitalism keeps running afoul of biblical values, I think. In the U.S. economy, if I default on my mortgage, the bank theoretically has the legal right to foreclose on the mortgage and kick me, my wife, and our children, out onto the street.It doesn't matter if I've lost my job because of what the financial giants have done to the economy, it doesn't matter if they sold me a predatory mortgage for a market price that is three times the house's actual worth. If they have my signature on that mortgage contract, theoretically they have the legal right to kick me out of the house and try to sell it to recoup their losses.

There's something else at work here, though. While the hardcore apologists of a free market will expound on the virtues of tough love and making people take the consequences of their bad choices like parents disciplining an unruly child, it's not hard to find public sympathy for homeowners who are falling prey to economic forces that they have no control over.

There is something fundamentally unjust about evicting people from their homes. Not just unfair, but unjust. There is a fundamental connection between people and the homes they live in that we violate at our peril and to our shame.

The Bible backs me up on that. In ancient Israel, where my friend sees evidence of capitalism at work, that relationship was inviolate. An Israelite could buy the land of another Israelite, it's true, but only for seven years. Levitical law requires that when that seven-year period ended, the land had to be returned to its previous owner. The Torah also instituted the Jubilee, a period that came once every 50 years, where all debts were canceled, all slaves were set free, and all property rights were restored.

And therein lies a challenge for the American church as we stand on the cusp of what may blossom into the Second Great Depression. As we move forward, we must be mindful that we do have neither the right nor the authority to dictate to the rest of society how it should function.

But we should -- we must -- champion justice, and we have an obligation to advance alternatives to what our society practices, alternatives that respect and safeguard the basic dignity of everyone, especially those whose lives so often are chewed up in the cogs and gears of the systems that make our society work.

Some countercultural groups like The Jesus People in Chicago, or A Simple Way in Philadelphia, have explored the power and strength of communal living in contemporary society. Clearly that's not for everyone, but the alternatives are limited only by our faith and our imagination.

In the name of the one we claim to follow, we have a calling to do better.



Copyright © 2009 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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A more common way

And now I show you the most common way.

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, at least I am in good company.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I still will be impressive and people will respect me for my authority on distracting irrelevancies.

If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I still will have something to brag about to make others ashamed in comparison to me.

Love is impatient, love can be unspeakably cruel. It is jealous without provocation, it boasts of all the sacrifices it makes, it is proud.

It is rude, it is self-serving, it is easily driven to exasperation, it holds grudges and remembers wrongs committed years ago.

Love tries not to delight too much in the misfortune of others when they get what's coming to them, or at least not to show how much it's enjoying it.

It usually protects, often trusts, occasionally hopes, and perseveres about half the time.

Love fails much more often than we would like to admit.

Where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; and where there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

Now we see through a glass, darkly; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall fully know, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. Some day we will understand what love really is.

Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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What we can learn from a sacred cow

I heard a story once about a Christian missionary whose neighbor was a devout Hindu who greatly venerated a cow that the Hindu family owned.

I think most Westerners, particularly monotheists, would agree that venerating a cow is at least foolish, and probably counts as some form of idolatry in the eyes of God. Still, when the cow died, its owner was devastated, so the missionary went and mourned with him. He knew what its death meant to the Hindu man and his family, even though the missionary himself regarded that veneration as at least a foolish superstition that kept the man from Jesus.

In the same way, I think we are called to identify with other groups, when they experience discrimination or prejudice, even when we consider their defining traits to be sinful. We don't need to identify with practices that we consider sinful, but we certainly can relate to the relationships that they have, and their desire to be connected to another person, and even to have children. I don't see how we can afford not to.

The morality or im- of homosexuality (or its sinfulness, if you prefer, though I won't abide a gunpowder word like "evil," even for the sake of argument) is irrelevant to how society as a whole and how Christians specifically treat gays and lesbians. We have the example of Jesus, who held up pagans as examples of faith, children as examples of understanding, and reviled Samaritans as examples of compassion. We have a larger biblical mandate to weep with those who weep, to mourn with those who mourn, and to rejoice with those who rejoice.

Right now some goons are getting headlines because of their unconscionable reactions to the passage of Proposition 8 in California, but by and large in American society today you're not likely to encounter meaningful repercussions to disapproving morally of same-sex relationships.

You may disappoint or anger a few people, but you're not likely to be marginalized or beaten and left for dead, disowned, ridiculed and mocked, or experience the laundry list of other forms of discrimination that gays still encounter in most of this country (or the far worse punishments that await gays in other nations).

But there again, the issue isn't "Who has it worse?" any more than "Is this activity moral?"; the real issue is how Jesus would treat people.

How would Jesus treat people? Well, however you think he might view the morality of a loving couple in same-sex relationship, it's pretty clear from the record of the gospels that Jesus would commend their commitment to one another, respect the emotional and spiritual support they give to one another, and defend them against any who would discriminate against or punish them.

Shame on us if we would do any less.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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The healing faith of a child

God shows up in some astonishing ways when we're opening to seeing him.

Like many children, my daughter Evangeline has plenty of stuffed animals, none of which has mattered much at all to her. That changed when her grandmother died. Suddenly, Evangeline bonded with a handmade stuffed rabbit that she has had since she was born, whom she calls Cinderabbit. Evangeline has slept with Cinderabbit every night since Grandma's funeral, and for a while she took her everywhere she went as well.

As my close, personal friend Rykie once observed about the divine love that shone through her own imaginary friends, so I have seen with Evangeline and Cinderabbit. Cinderabbit demands nothing in return from Evangeline for the comfort she gives. She stays as close as Evangeline wants, loves her unconditionally, and listens to the moans and sighs Evangeline doesn't know the words to express.

She is the very expression of God's love in my daughter's life, and couldn't be any more real if her coat were made of velveteen.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Not the gospel: Finding the cause of the conflict between church and world

What's striking about the uproar in Acts 22 is what it's not about.

A quick bit of background. In Acts 21, the Apostle Paul had shown up in Jerusalem with some Gentile Christians and had gone to the Temple. A group from a rival sect of Christianity that was decidedly less liberal than Paul on matters of Torah, told people that Paul had defiled the Temple by taking Gentiles there and that he had been preaching anti-Semitism wherever he went. The ensuing riot was bad that the Roman commander had to bring his army into the city and arrest Paul to save his life.

So, in Acts 22 Paul addresses the crowd from the relative safety of the soldiers' barracks. He starts speaking in Aramaic, the popular language of Judea at this time, and the crowd calms down immediately. "Didn't someone say this guy has been spreading hatred against the Holy City?" someone says. "That can't be true, listen to him talk. He speaks our language with a native accent. He's one of us."

Paul begins talking about his credentials, and they're impressive. He was taught by Gamaliel, a well-known and respected member of the Sanhedrin. Probably by this point people are starting to feel a little uncomfortable about how  they've been acting. Paul shares his story. He mentions that he persecuted followers of the Way, even going all the way to Damascus to have them thrown into prison.

Back when The Point was first launching its North Brunswick congregation, I remember Tim the pastor guy asking why we thought non-Christians were so hostile toward Christianity and the gospel. There were the expected answers about pushy Christians engaging in drive-by evangelism, like the annoying fellow who tries to strike up a conversation so he can give you a tract.

There were all sorts of other reasons too. Somebody mentioned some of the scandals that rocked Christianity in the 1980s, like the Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggart, or the more recent scandal of child molestation in the Catholic church. Someone else mentioned the sometimes pugnacious behavior of prominent evangelical leaders like James Dobson and Jerry Falwell.

And of course someone probably mentioned that the gospel runs counter to all the values of the world.

If that's the case, if people are supposed to greet the gospel with hostility, I'd expect the crowd to lose it somewhere between verses 6 and 16. That's where Paul talks about his surprising conversion to the Way, his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, his miraculous healing, and his decision to be baptized. These are all things that mark Paul's conversion experience.

It's not like people are going to miss that. The Way began in their city some 20 or 30 years earlier. The book of Acts notes that when Peter preached on the Day of Pentecost about 3,000 people became believers. The Jews who were not followers of the Way still knew them. They were related to them, bought and sold with them, and worshiped with them at the Temple or (in the suburbs) at the synagogue. If anyone in the world at this point in history knows the story of Christianity, it's the people of Jerusalem.

Truth is, no one seems to care. If Paul had stopped here, it seems like they would have said, "Eh, it's OK. Sorry about the misunderstanding."

But of course, Paul never did know when to stop. Look at what gets everyone's outrage. It's in verse 21, when he says that God told him to go and preach to the Gentiles. And that's when people start clamoring for his blood. It's not the gospel that drove them to a fury: It was racism, plain and simple.

Even the Sanhedrin, in Acts 23 didn't really care that Paul was a follower of Christ. The Pharisees, who got short shrift in the gospels, are completely willing in verse 9 to let Paul go, since — as far as they're concerned — their only difference with him pertains to his interpretation of the doctrine of the Resurrection. (That Jewish-Christian relations are not as close today as they once were owes a lot to the last 1,700 years.)

So I think about that question that Tim asked, maybe three years ago. The answer I gave is "the chip on our shoulder." I've talked with many people, including Jews, about Jesus and what I've found in him. Over the years I've noticed that people don't mind an honest discussion about religion and spirituality. Many even find it interesting.

What they don't like, of course, is being lectured, and pressured, and being beaten with the hell stick. And of course no one likes getting into a discussion with someone who expects there to be a fight and so is ready with the biggest stick, best stock answers, and nicest boxing gloves so they can be guaranteed a win.

Paul's audience reacted badly to his message because of their issues. Christians' audiences today react badly because of ours.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Let's Pretend. Actually let's not any more

My experience with evangelicals is that there is a game of Let's Pretend afoot that the faith has been largely consistent from the time of Abraham down to the present.

Clearly there is some truth to this, but let's not kid ourselves. Our interpretation of Scripture, our concepts of morality and justice, and many of our doctrines have changed, sometimes drastically over the past two millennia. Not only do we like to believe that extrabiblical concepts like capitalism and democracy were important to ancient Jews and ancient Christians, but we also have changed our understanding the Bible itself.

Honest faith must also admit honest doubt, and honest doubts need to be acknowledged and explored. God is big enough to handle tough questions, and it's not as though he's surprised when we ask them. Refusing to voice them leaves us with unresolved questions and a lingering, festering suspicion that we've been sold a bill of goods.

Satan's one example. Popular Christian culture has a lot to say about the rebellion in heaven, the way the highest of all the angels led a rebellion that ended with a third of the angels cast into hell and becoming demons. This is a great story, and I love it as much as the nice guy, but it's not exactly in the Bible. It's older than John Milton and "Paradise Lost," but as far as I can tell, the story first gained traction a few centuries after the canon was complete.

The gospel presentation has changed too. These days we share the gospel by describing how all have sinned against God, putting us under sentence of death because God is holy and cannot abide the presence of sin or sinful people. The good news is that Christ stepped in and took that punishment in our place, satisfying God's need for justice, so that we can be spared the pains of hell as long as we accept Jesus as our personal savior.

That's quite a bit different from the older doctrine of Christus Victor. It also differs quite significantly from the first recorded creed "If you confess with your mouth 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. For it is with the heart that you believe and are justified, and with the mouth that you confess and are saved" (1 Corinthians 10:9-10).

Unlike our modern gospel presentation, which requires personal confession of sin, there's nothing in that creed about confessing sin. It's all about confessing Jesus' sovereignty and resurrection. See the difference?

There's also the matter of sexual mores and morality. For centuries, the Christian concept of marriage looked radically different from our Western norm of getting married in church before having sex. In older times, couples would cohabitate and have children before getting their union blessed by the a priest, sometimes years later. The church in some parts of Christian Europe even recognized trial marriages that aren't that different from today's practice of premarital cohabitation.

Nowadays it's heterosexual married families ûber alles. The insistence on marriage-vows-first very well may be closer to what God desires, but I don't think we're kidding anyone but ourselves when we claim that the way we do things now in the West is how they've always been done or properly should be done always.

And so it is with hell. When Jesus talks about hell, he's describing the city dump outside Jerusalem. When we talk about hell with its picturesque and exquisitely grotesque torments for the dammed that go on day and night without stop, we're influenced by the Dante's hauntingly beautiful poetry in "The Divine Comedy."

We owe it to ourselves to do better than supporting a folk version of Christianity. It's essential to chase down the original meaning and intent of the Scriptures. Scrape away the barnacles and see what the hull of the ship is like underneath.

What does the Bible really say about hell, about heaven, about demons, about Jesus, and about even itself?

One quick example of how hell has been developed, away from the biblical teaching. Matthew 25 shows the exalted Son of Man judging the nations, and separating them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. To the goats, the wicked, he says, "Depart from me into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels."

The funny thing is, the audience to that particular speech was a group of people who clearly believed in him. They recognized the Lord when they saw him, and asked in bewilderment, "But did we not heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out demons in your name?" If the term Christian has any meaning in the context of that parable, this group was in like Flynn.

Or there's the servant -- not an enemy, but a servant -- whose talent of gold is taken away and given to another; the servant whose debt was forgiven and then was beaten and thrown into prison. I've never heard these understood as anything but metaphors for hell, and yet the people being thrown there are all servants of the king/master/lord, thereby marking them as people whom today we would identity as Christians. So who is hell for?

Quite often, the Bible does not say what we have been taught to think it does, and though the investigation often leaves me with more questions than answers, I find that I prefer the uncertainty of faith to the cold hard certainty of what I was once taught to settle for.

We've been playing this game of Let's Pretend for far too long. Isn't it time to rediscover for ourselves what the Bible really says, and let that shape our faith?



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Mike and me

Several years ago, my friend Mike told me that he was transgendered.

At the time, I recall, it made little impression on me. He's a good friend of mine, and I knew he was a good person, and that was what mattered. I didn't know much about gender dysphoria, only the old cliche erroneously attached to homosexuals, about "being a woman in a man's body." We had some lengthy discussions pertaining about gender and identity, and life moved on. He was determined to remain a man for the sake of their three children, and that appeared to be that.

Of course, where identity is concerned, that is never that. When a person is required to be something other than what they are, the strain of the pretense builds over time and takes its toll in one area or another. Depression and withdrawal ensued, demanding their pound of flesh from his marriage and every other relationship he had.

And so, some months ago, Mike decided it was time to begin transitioning. He started taking antiandrogens, a prescription drug that suppresses male hormones, and something broke that had survived fifteen years of a sometimes tumultuous marriage. Earlier this year, Mike and his wife, Lynn, formally separated. He moved into an apartment of his own, started taking female hormones, and began going out increasingly as Shelly.

It's been rough. While she has found several transgendered friends in the city where she lives, Shelly has had to face the bigotry of people who see her as a predator or a pervert. Her own parents recently cut her out of the will without even having the courage or the decency to tell him in person that they were doing so. Her father had the indecency to heap abuse on her when she decloseted herself to them about four months ago, calling her a despicable parent who was abandoning her kids, when the truth is that she's probably more involved now -- still as a father -- than when she lived in the house with them. The sickening irony here is that her father has been emotionally distant, verbally abusive, adulterous and a drunk most of Shelly's life -- and yet he has the audacity to lecture Shelly on how she's a bad parent.

And, despicably, a minister told Shelly's mom that they were right to disown her, that it was what God would want them to do. I don't get that. I really don't. Where does Jesus advocate or model any such moralistic stance with anyone? The gospels present Jesus as someone who stands by people, no matter what. Prostitutes, adulterers, thieves and lepers with hideous open sores all felt comfortable and welcome in his presence.

And so, even as people ask me how I can do it, I'm standing by Shelly, because she's been my friend for years. I can't imagine not sticking by her. I've been genuinely upset by some of the stuff that other people have done in reaction to this decision to transition, but all the same ... I feel rather left adrift at sea by this whole thing.

It's odd in some ways that it's rattled me this much. I've had other friends, both men and women, tell me that they're gay, and it didn't even make me blink. In some cases, we've become better friends afterward. I've known Mike [Shelly] is transgendered for years, and yet this turn of events has left me unsteady, uncertain and, in a sense, staggering. I intend to stand by her, because we've known each other for so long and have always been close, but it's a challenge all the same. As much as I'm supportive of her, I just don't "get" it, probably because I've never felt that I was anything but a guy. It's a mystery to me how she can feel that she's actually a woman in a man's body and that these exterior changes are changing anything.

Yet there's no denying that she's happier, and more alive than I've seen her for years. I'm glad she's got friends, and I'm glad she's found a support network, and I'm glad that I can continue to be a friend for her. I'm glad she's willing to take the risk on me that I won't be a royal bastard and dump her too, to escape having to deal with my own confusion over her gender identity.

In the end, after all, my confusion is my problem and not hers, and given that she's paying such a heavy price for her own situation, it would be unfair and unreasonable to demand that she pay mine as well.

I just wish there were a chart for these waters I find myself sailing with her. I wish the sun were out, and that these uncertain clouds weren't darkening the sky. I wish I knew where we were going, and I hope the ship is seaworthy enough to get us there.


Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.

It's called 'self-righteousness,' not 'tough love'

They disowned him. They freaking disowned him.

Back in February, my friend Mike came out to his parents. He explained that he is transgendered and that he and Lynn were separating as he transitions into life as a woman. This went about as well as one would expect it to. His mom was crushed that he had decided to live a "homosexual lifestyle," and prays that he'll return to Christ, and his dad -- who routinely cheated on his wife and was emotionally absent from and uninvolved with his children -- castigated him for being selfish who was and abandoning the kids.

That was about what he expected. Mike had figured that since they've known him for 40 years, have seen him with the kids, and will have the chance to see him continue to be involved with his kids, that they would come around in the end. Or at least his mom would.

Well, surprise, surprise. Today he got a certified letter letting him know that his parents had revoked him as executor of their estate, removed him from their will, and left everything to his children instead.

They didn't even have the integrity to talk with him about it. His parents sneaked around behind his back, with his sister, and then they had the gall to claim the moral high ground, saying that this was his decision, and that he had left them no choice.

What. The. Actual. Hell.

How can people do things like this and still sleep at night? They're treating him like a moral and spiritual reprobate without even listening to him, they are changing family dynamics to exclude him, and they effectively are trying to drive a wedge between him and the rest of his family. And then, worst of all, they blame it all on him, probably in the name of "tough love."

One by one his supports are being kicked out from under him: church, friends, and now family. I don't get it. This is supposed to be love? Or is it a moral message? "Look kids, this is how you should treat someone whose choices you disagree with."

He told me all this and was so overwhelmed by the sense of outrage I felt on his behalf that he started to cry. Aside from his therapist, who is paid to take his side, no one else has seen him as a wonged party.

Mike told me he plans to talk with his parents some time soon, about the way they went about this. He thinks his mother's conscience is bothering her. She wrote the letter explaining what they had done, and its tone suggests to him that she was going along with her husband's Morally Righteous Anger for the sake of avoiding a fight, rather than following her own heart.

Me, I'm just appalled ... and I'm glad that I can be there for a friend when he needs me.


Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Drawing the line that separates canonical from not

I have a question for friends and readers who have been to seminary or otherwise have studied such things: How exactly is the line drawn between canon and noncanon?

At the time the Christian Scriptures were being written in the first century, there was a host of other communication, discussion and even writing going on that formed the context in which the church understood the epistles and other books we now regard as canon. Take the book of Enoch for example.

Ostensibly written by Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, the book of Enoch dates to about 300 B.C.E. It tells the story of the watchers, a group of angels who fathered the Nephilim in Chapter 8 of the book of Genesis. Other parts of the book include a series of eschatological parables that include references to a righteous messianic figure called the "Son of Man," a detailed work of astronomy that lays forth a 364-day solar calendar, and finally a series of visions meant to foretell the history of Israel down to the Maccabees.

Protestants and Catholics alike take their lead from the Council of Nicea, which in 325 C.E., rejected the Book of Enoch from the canon. But at the time the New Testament was being written, Jude didn't know that. He cited the Book of Enoch twice.

The first time Jude cites the Book of Enoch, he refers to a dispute between Satan and Michael over the body of Moses. Jude uses this as a caution against judging one another. Later in the book, he refers to God binding angels in chains of adamant for their rebellion, as an assurance that God will judge those who teach unsound doctrine.

We can get the essentials of Jude's message without knowing the particulars of the Book of Enoch, but surely familiarity with the book helps.

This isn't like reading a commentary by Charles Spurgeon or John Wesley to understand a parable or a difficult passage of the Bible. In this case, one of the authors of the Bible was familiar with a book that we reject and saw so much value in it that he drew on it to make his point. How much wisdom are we meant to draw from the Book of Enoch when we read it to illuminate Jude's writing?

This isn't confined to Jude. There are a lot of ahas we either miss or misunderstand because we lack the background noise that the writers took for granted. Noah flips out because Ham saw him passed out naked. Zipporah stops God from killing Moses by circumcising her firstborn son and throwing the foreskin at his feet, How much do you want to bet these passages would make sense if we had more extrabiblical material from that era?

I'd really like to know how that line was drawn, and what implications it has for understanding the Bible the way we do today.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Christians and profanity

From "Toward an Evangelical Theology of Cussing":

Conservative evangelical Christians have long been known for shunning all sorts of behavior considered by others to be morally neutral or enjoyable. Whether it’s drinking alcoholic beverages, smoking tobacco products, playing cards, going to movie theatres, dancing, or even drinking coffee, “fundamentalist” Christians are often viewed by outsiders as having a God who is not only a white-clad, frowning prude, but also a “Cosmic Killjoy.”

However, the study of cussing, kakalogology, has a less refined history among Christians in general and evangelicals in particular. This lack of definition has caused many outright offenses and some extremely awkward social situations. These range from blurting out words that sound mischievously like curse words but are, in fact, not, to a teacher or preacher’s hesitancy to utter the word “hell” in reference the place of eternal torment.

What does the Bible teach concerning cussing? Can there be a Christian consensus on kakalogology? How are we to determine, in an age of words that did not exist in biblical times, what is appropriate and what is foul? If the Christian is to avoid uttering certain terms, we need to know what those are so we can at least keep an eye on them. And if there is a world of vocabulary available for communicating God’s message, shouldn’t we also be free to use it?

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The kind of Bible study I'd like to lead

I'm hosting a weekly Bible study on the book of Judges starting this Wednesday, but it's anyone's guess whether anyone besides me actually will attend.

I'm trying to do mine a little differently from how I've usually found Bible studies to be done in the American church. Specifically, I want to set aside many of the preconceptions we bring to the Bible when we read it.

Some of them are Golden Book assumptions; for example: "Why did God save Daniel from the lions? Because Daniel was faithful."

Others have to do with our assumptions about the morality of the Bible heroes. We assume that Joseph was a virtuous man whom God honored because he was faithful to him the whole time, or that Samson killed all the Philistines as an act of devotion to God.

Neither of those is a particularly deep reading. The Genesis account is clear that Joseph wanted nothing more than to make his brothers suffer for all that they had done to him once he had them at his mercy. As for Samson, he killed the Philistines he did mostly because his pride had been hurt and he wanted to get even. Neither of them is much of a role model in those stories.

Beyond that, I can see plenty of exploration of the character of God himself. If we question and explore the motivations of the characters in the Bible, at some point we have to remember that God himself is a character in the Bible, with motivations stated and unstated, goals and conflicts that he must face and overcome.

And if we're giving the Bible an honest reading, we have to admit that there are some shocking things in there: the genocide of the Canaanites, the near total destruction of the human race in a global flood, and even young men getting mauled by bears for making fun of a prophet's baldness. We need to recognize problem passages when they come up, and face their problems honestly.

Even without getting into the odd passages like "Zipporah at the Inn," where God plans to kill Moses until Zipporah circumcises their son, there are times we have to stop and ask "Is this really God we're talking about, the same God we sing those nice songs to on Sunday morning?"

These are questions that make us stop and reassess what we mean when we say that Scripture is divinely inspired, infallible and inerrant. They even make us stop and ask whether God really is good, or if he just has good publicity agents.

I've found over the years that raising those questions is an important part of growth and of faith. Proverbs cautions us, "Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him." Doubts drive us into deeper faith because questions make us seek meaningful answers.

That sort of exploration is something I've seen to be largely absent in Bible studies I've attended, not just at the church I now attend, but elsewhere as well. What I have seen instead is a lot of contentment to repeat things we've heard before and to pass them off as deep insights, or to get sidetracked into discussions that have nothing to do with the passage at hand.

The truth is, the Bible is one of the most widely misunderstood books in Western literature, probably because it's actually a piece of Eastern literature. It's misunderstood by non-Christians who react to it based on unpleasant experiences with Christians, and it's misunderstood by Christians themselves.

That's a shame, because it really is a phenomenal piece of literature, and like all phenomenal pieces of literature, there are some deep currents that flow through its pages. If we're willing to pull up our oars, stop rowing our way, and just let those currents carry us where they go, we'll all find it to be a much more fascinating and spiritually insightful book than we've ever realized before.

This sort of honest search is something that I think will engage people who consider themselves to be spiritual but not Christians, and it should engage Christians as well. One attitude I consistently have encountered is contempt for Christians who swear unswerving allegiance to the Bible yet have no idea what it actually says or make no attempt to deal with issues like Paul's apparent sexism, the appallingly strict penal code in the Mosaic law, and so on.

I'd like to lead a study that does those things. Naturally, I can't get the church to promote it along with the other Bible studies.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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weeds among the strawberries

I looked at my strawberry patch last Sunday and realized that most of the plants growing there aren't strawberries.

I've put a lot of time into that patch of ground. I dug up the flat and tepid grass that used to wasted that space, pulled rock after useless rock from the dirt, and added one load of compost after another until the soil was rich and loamy more than a foot down. I've tended that space for the past eight years, trying one crop after another on it, until we finally settled on the strawberries.

The girls love the strawberries we grow there each spring. For two seasons now, it's saved us a tidy handful of dollars at the supermarket for fresh produce, and it's even convinced me, who never met a strawberry that he liked, that those little fruits are something to savor.

Still, a strawberry patch is like a marriage. If you want to keep it healthy, you have to work at it. Keep the plants covered during the chill of winter, make sure they get enough water when those dry periods come, and feed the soil where they live, and you'll be fine. But above all, you've got to watch the weeds.

Weeds are nasty little things. You don't plant them, you don't cultivate them, but they appear all the same and take for themselves all the resources you want the strawberries to have. They suck up the water, they spread their roots into the soil, and their main ambition is to take the sunlight the real plants need to survive. The longer you wait to pull them out, the bigger a problem they become.

It was last year when I really started to fall behind on the weeding. I had other things on my mind, other problems that required my attention, other issues that needed tending. I had stories and essays to write, a free-lance job to work on, questions and doubts I needed to explore, and one thing and another that occupied my attention. I had no shortage of reasons not to concern myself with the ho-hum affairs of weeding.

The worst offender in my strawberry was a weed that almost looks almost like a strawberry plant. It has similarly shaped leaves, grows tiny fruits on stalks, and spreads along the ground like its more reputable cousin. It looks too much like a strawberry plant to be told apart at first glance, while offering none of the rewards.

It's hard to say why I let it go so long. Did I think its fruits would be just as satisfying to us as real strawberries? Was I fearful of pulling up a few good plants by accident? Was I worried that, deeply entangled as they were, that I might damage the strawberry plants if I pulled up the imposters? Or was I just too lazy to be bothered? It's not as though the strawberries weren't still producing a good amount of fruit last year. We were eating fresh berries from our patch the entire season last year.

It doesn't matter. I looked at the patch two weeks ago, and realized I had neglected it for too long.

While I slept, English ivy from my neighbor's yard had crept past the hedge and wound its tendrils into the heart of the strawberry patch I'd planted. Another, inoffensive but aggressive weed had burst into the empty spaces between strawberry plants, and clover had sprawled lazily across the ground. And of course, the unraked leaves from last fall had let maple seedlings sprout by the dozens in the once-hallowed ground.

Once you've let weeds get established, they're difficult to get out, especially those strawberry pretenders. I've found from experience that if you pull the plant from the top, you're only treating the symptom and not the underlying problem. You won't see the weed anymore, now that its stem has been broken off, but as long as the taproot remains, the weed can grow back, and chances are good that when it does, it will come back in more places.

The only solution is to reach down into the soil, get your hand around the knot where stem grows from root, and yank it out. It's a time-consuming process, and when you're done, there's no guarantee you'll be proud of a job well done. A strawberry patch, like many other things, suffers when it goes untended for so long a time. Other people may not know the damage your unfaithfulness and neglect have caused, but you will -- every time you see the spaces and the emptiness where your strawberries are not growing, you'll remember.

God is gracious. Our failings can be forgiven and wiped away, and every time we make the effort to set things right, we can find a new beginning in the garden.

Happy weeding.

Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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Clobber passage

There's a place or two in the New Testament where the Apostle Paul takes it upon himself to compile a list of human behaviors in an attempt to show that no one reasonably can expect to get into heaven by virtue of good behavior.


These passages, particularly in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6, are known in the gay community as "clobber passages." It's not hard to understand why. If you've been around evangelicals enough, you've probably seen them wielded more than once like a club in the hands of a caveman.

It's something about the human condition; we like to believe that we're more moral than another group, whether it's gays, Republicans, evangelicals, or Muslims. So we find a passage of Scripture, pop culture, or philosophy, and we lift it up in the air and bellow, and we start swinging it.

The bellow is what gets everyone's attention. It's a bestial sort of sound, coming from the throat of someone who's not quite evolved enough to handle human speech.

It's a cry of loathing, meant to alert everyone that a monster has entered our midst and needs to be put down immediately. Before long, that club comes crashing down on the skull of its victim not once, not twice, but as many times as it takes to bring the brute down.

It's a hideous thing to see, and no matter what group you belong to, you've seen the horror visited upon your own group. The loss is that Christians recognize when pop culture is clobbering them, but not when they themselves are clobbering someone else; and vice versa. I've seen a number of people slam Christians down with rather crude and unwarranted caricatures. Lost in this quest for monsters to destroy is the irony that the monster lies in all of us and how we treat those who differ from us.

Today I had the ironic task of reading one of these clobber passages in church.

Apparently people in church like it when I read Scripture. I do try to avoid the dry matter-of-fact readings we usually hear, where the reader could be reading "War and Peace" by candlelight or zipping through the shopping list at the Kroger's.

I read passages with intonation, add gestures when appropriate, and even change my voice to reflect a change in speakers. Maybe I make God's words sound more plausible than usual, I don't know, but last week I was asked if I would mind doing this on a regular basis.

Today, when I was asked to read the famous clobber passage from 1 Corinthians 6:9-20, I choked. A good friend of mine is a lesbian, and I know how badly people have beaten her with this passage from a misguided sense of what love is. Former co-workers of mine who were gay kept their distance from me for the longest time because they knew that I was a Christian, and they'd long had their fill of Christians who "hated the sin but loved the sinner."

How can you read something like this in church without feeling like you're contributing to the pain your gay brothers and sisters suffer every time the subject comes up of how their chosen lifestyle is in direct rebellion against God?

I read it, and then stewed in my seat for the first half of the sermon as the preacher answered this week's "Tough Question" about the reaction Christians should have to homosexuality and homosexuals.

No, Sodom was not destroyed because there was gay sex going on. Ezekiel 16 is pretty clear that cruelty and inhospitality were the main offenses. Certainly raping visitors to the city isn't exactly the most welcoming act the city aldermen could have come up with -- but it has as much in common with homosexuality as men in prison raping newcomers to humiliate and degrade them. It's about power and dominance, not about the sex.

A lot of my attention at this point was consumed with thoughts of how I would explain my decision not to leave the church if I ever ran for president, but there was a ray of light. The preacher challenged everyone present: "No one in the gay community has any doubt what Christians think about homosexuality. What we're missing is showing them God's love."

He even got specific that he wasn't talking about a general sort of "Gosh, we love you" sentiment, but actual tangible actions: attending a Gay Pride parade, for example, to give cold water to people. Or being friends with people and not letting it affect you one way or the other what their sexual orientation is.

Damn straight. Jesus -- and I know this will come as a shock to some -- Jesus wasn't a moralist. He wasn't about telling people how to behave, and he didn't give us a list of rules to follow if we wanted to please God. What he said was pretty simple: "I'm the Lord. Follow me."
Wish I'd hear more of that and less of people being clobbered.


Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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everything must change

From the Wittenburg Door and its recent interview with Brian McLaren, regarding his new book, "Everything Must Change":

 What I want to do is take the idea of the kingdom, which I tried to make as clear as I could in The Secret Message of Jesus, and then I want to try to apply that message to our contemporary global crises. I'm going to talk about different ways that our civilization is set up in terms of ecological suicide, religious suicide, political suicide, and economic suicide.

Read the entire interview

First Awakening: The Christian 'gets' the God idea

My earliest memory of God has less to do with church than it does with a bicycle accident the summer I turned 10.

I've never had a particularly good relationship with bikes. They're a bewildering concoction of gears and wheels, handlebars and chains, spokes and frames. I rode a bike daily on my Pittsburgh Press newspaper route, but I never felt completely at home with it. Ours was an uneasy relationship, born of necessity, rather than a match ordained in the stars.

You couldn't ask for a sharper contrast than with my older brother Bill. Bill could patch holes in the inner tubes of his bikes when he was 8; I'm almost 37 now, and I still don't know how to grease the chain. When he was in college, Bill would take off all day to go mountain biking. When I was 29, I lost control of my 21-speed and knocked myself out in the parking lot.

Somehow, the summer of 1980, Bill convinced me to go on a bike ride with him and his friends to the McDonald's in Murrysville. I'd like to say that he enticed me with sweet promises of how much fun it would be to spend time together and strengthen the deep fraternal bond between us. The truth is probably that our mother, who was working at the toy store that day, made him take me, and that he made sure I knew what a loser I would be if I kept him from going by refusing to leave the house.

The journey from our parents' home in Level Green to the McDonald's in Murrysville takes about 20 minutes in a car. It begins on roads with comforting names like Old Gate Road and Home Drive, but takes a turn for the worse about a mile into the journey, once you reach Murrysville Road.

As its name implies, Murrysville Road exists primarily to get people from Level Green to Murrysville, and back again. It's a road made for cars, not bikes, and because it's the principal route to retail shopping and professional services in downtown Murrysville, it's a busy road, with cars going 35 or 40 mph once they clear the residential area in Level Green. Sometimes even sooner.

Murrysville Road crests about a quarter mile after you leave Home Drive. From there, for the next two miles, it's all downhill on a narrow, winding and often poorly paved road made scenic on the left by a gorge, and on the right by the sheer rock that workers cut through years ago when they built the road. If you weigh just 60 pounds, lack the natural confidence to coast without braking, and you ride a clunker of a bike, it's a terror.

I braked the whole way down the hill, biting my lip, tensing up any time a car came near me, and feeling every inch the loser because I couldn't bear to go faster than 15 mph. At every bend I heard them up ahead, urging me to ease off on the brakes and just coast so that our trip to get lunch wouldn't become a trip to get dinner.

When the bottom of the hill was almost in sight, I finally gave in to their prodding. I eased off the brakes and let myself go. The bike sped up right away — just in time for the pot hole. The bike went in and wrenched to the side, and the long metal rods that made it easy to adjust the height of the seat caught on the edge of the hole. In an instant the bike went from 20 mph to a complete stop.

I didn't.

Thanks to Isaac Newton's Laws of Motion, I continued to move in the direction I already had been going. I slammed into the handlebars, twisting them so far forward that they practically touched the front tire, and landed on the pavement headfirst.

At that point, I mostly remember screaming. My brother got help at a nearby house, where an EMT from the local ambulance base happened to be visiting his parents. Bill and his friends went on their way to McDonald's, while an ambulance took me to the hospital, where doctors removed gravel and dirt from my forehead before stitching me up.

And it was there that I first became aware that God could be more than a character in my children's Bible. My mother, who had left work when the call came in about my accident, remarked that God had been looking out for me that day, since there had been no cars on the road when I took my spill.

Nowadays I probably would ask why he couldn't have looked out for me a little closer and keep me from having the accident in the first place, but I was a little less cynical at 10 than I am today. My mother said what she did, and it triggered a new line of thought for me.

Suddenly God wasn't just something we talked about in church. He was real, and he mattered. It was nothing meaningful or life-changing, but the first ray of light from a deeper reality than I knew had broken through, and my spirit for the first time in my life began to stir.

It would be another eight years before the light would be bright enough that I would awake.

Copyright © 2007 by David Learn

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Good Friday and Human Rights

Good Friday is almost over, but before Easter comes in just two days, there's something I want you to do.

Think back on the news pictures we saw of Abu Ghraib and the scandalous mistreatment of the Iraqi prisoners there. Think of the men who were imprisoned there, humiliated, leather hoods pulled tight over their heads, led on leashes like dogs. It's been a few years since the scandal broke, and we did our best as a nation to express outrage, sacrifice a few low-level soldiers on the altar of accountability, and then move on, but I want you to think back and recall those news pictures as well as you can.

Okay. You see the Iraqi in the picture? He's Jesus. Offended? Don't be. I'm just getting started.

Think of the hundreds of detainees our government has gathered as part of the war on terror. Four hundred of them have been kept under lock and key at Guantánamo Bay for five years, denied legal counsel or due process of law, under our government's supposed right to hold them indefinitely.

Allegations of torture abound. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed acknowledges his role in planning in 9-11 and in the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl; he also claims to have been compelled to make the admissions. Canadian-Syrian citizen Maher Arar was tortured for two years with cables and electric cords, and ultimately was found to be innocent of any wrongdoing.

Perhaps Arar's situation is unique, and every other prisoner of the "war on terror" is as guilty as sin. If so, I don't deny that they deserve to be punished, but not until their guilt has been established in a fair trial of the sort our society supposedly prides itself on.

When Jesus was arrested by the agents of the Sanhedrin — in the name of national security, no less — he was beaten, mocked, humiliated, insulted and demeaned, until he finally was executed, without ever once having got a fair trial.

When we take a suspect and deny them a trial or even legal counsel — when we do things like put Joseph Padilla, the alleged "dirty bomber" in a nine-foot cell and leave him there for four years without sunlight, bombarded by harsh light and pounding sounds and no human contact but his interrogators — we assume the role of the Sanhedrin.

And every prisoner becomes as Christ. To abuse the least of them is to abuse him as well.



Copyright © 2007 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Halloween

I love Christmas, I celebrate Easter and I honor Hanukkah, but Halloween is the only holiday that makes me mad.

It's not the jack-o'-lanterns that burn me up, nor trick-or-treating that ticks me off. Ghost stories don’t get my goat, and costumes suit me fine. After Christmas and birthdays, Halloween has to be the most child-friendly day on the calendar, and unlike a birthday, everyone's in on the game for Halloween. With that level of buildup and excitement, you'd be hard-pressed not to enjoy it.

But the church manages to annoy me every year.

For some reason — I've never entirely understood why — some Christians just can’t cope with Halloween. Something about the day terrifies them. Somehow, to the Legion of the Easily Offended, the thought of boys and girls carving goofy faces into pumpkins, bobbing for apples, and dressing up in costumes, conjures up a satanic effort to lead them into witchcraft and sorcery.

Reality check for those baptized in vinegar: If sugar overload and wearing a pointy hat is the most cunning plan the Devil can come up with to lead children astray, maybe it's time Old Scratch called it quits and retired to Cancun to watch the sunsets. He's clearly past his peak.

Not that the church is much better. Christian alternatives to Halloween include "harvest festivals," which are nothing but Halloween under a different moniker; and "Hell Nights," with a fixation on evil and gruesome eternal punishment that puts slasher films to shame. I'd suggest the church retire to Cancun as well, except that Satan is already going there, and such a combination would be worse for the place even than tourism.

The loudest criticism leveled against Halloween from Christian quarters is that the day outright glorifies witchcraft and Satan, because most Halloween customs have their roots in pagan practices that involved divination and animist beliefs.

There is some truth to that. The ancient Celts, whose harvest festival Samhain provided the template for modern Halloween, believed that spirits could cross into the natural world on this night. Livestock would be slaughtered to preserve meat for the coming winter, offerings of food would be left out for the spirits of the departed, and any number of rituals from bonfires to jack-o'-lanterns were put in place to ward off evil spirits.

The question we have to ask ourselves is whether to reject traditions rooted in these ancient beliefs, or too see them as something that points to Christ. When we ask, we should remember that Jesus himself seized on the customs of his culture and reinterpreted them in light of his own claims about himself. During the seder meal, he linked the breaking of the matzoh and the wine of redemption to his impending death. In Jerusalem during Hanukkah, he proclaimed himself the shamash of the world, and connected his message with the renewal of the Temple.

We also should remember the example of Paul the Apostle. At Mars Hill in Athens, Paul saw the idolatry of the people as evidence of their great spirituality. He linked an obscure altar left over from a plague generations earlier to Christ, and gained an instant audience intent on his message.

So the question is, do we alienate ourselves from the culture at large by refusing to observe its holidays, or do we find a common ground that points everyone toward deeper truths?

For me, it's no contest. Halloween's pagan origins reveal a day that finds its ultimate fulfillment in Christ.

At its simplest, Samhain was a celebration of community, a celebration that included members of the community both living and dead. The dead were not feared, but revered; their lives and histories were celebrated in stories, and those still living could gain wisdom and insight by recalling the dead.

We could benefit from a similar attitude. In Christ, we have a communion not just with believers around the world today, but with the entire church triumphant, which spans not only space but time as well. If Christ is the Resurrection and the Life, our community includes those who have died over the two millennia since Christ, and many others who awaited his coming. Their lives and their stories contain wisdom and encouragement for us, and their example can inspire us to greater faithfulness.

Jack-o'-lanterns, originally carved in turnips or other similarly sized Old World vegetables, were meant as a ward against evil spirits. My children know that Christ has triumphed over evil, once and for all. So when we carve a jack-o'-lantern, whether it has a frightening face or a goofy expression, we do it as a statement of faith that Christ has defeated Satan, that Light has triumphed over Darkness, and even though autumn is the dying season, there is no need to fear.

Today it's a children's game to dress like Spider-man and Harry Potter as they go trick-or-treating; originally it was the druids who disguised themselves, to lead malicious spirits away from the village, to protect the people. Halloween costumes are a fun game of Let's Pretend, but here also we can see a deep truth: Putting on Christ's likeness, in faith, safeguards not only ourselves but those around us from spiritual harm; living a life of compassion brings great good to everyone.

Trick-or-treating itself has its roots in another Samhain practice, where families would leave offerings of food and drink out for the spirits of their departed loved ones, to make them feel welcome. Practically speaking, this ensured that the needier members of the community would have food and drink. I hope to perpetuate that attitude in later years by taking the girls to volunteer at the soup kitchen when Halloween isn't on a school night; in the meantime, I also remind that that the search for candy brings fleeting pleasure, but the search for Truth brings lasting joy.

Like any of our other holiday traditions, there is no meaning intrinsic in our Halloween customs beyond what we give them. I really don't understand why some Christians prefer to live in fear that having fun trick-or-treating or carving faces in a pumpkin is going to set their children on the road to perdition.

At their simplest and most basic, these are harmless and essentially fun distractions when the weather starts getting cold; but when we take the attitude of Christ toward our society, and work toward its redemption rather than absenting ourselves from things we don't like, we can find ourselves involved in the community instead of being deliberately isolated from it.

That act alone is enough to teach our children some valuable spiritual lessons, and it's more likely to keep them interested in Christ than a dozen "safe alternatives" ever will.

Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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Jacob's Well

Following a link or two the other day, I discovered an article on Christian Century about an emerging church in Kansas City called Jacobs Well. It's worth reading.

 

The "emerging church" is a movement within Christianity that many are hailing as the Gen X version of the church, a postmodern, inclusive understanding of Christian spirituality that reconnects with the church's ancient roots, finding ways to be relevant in practical and meaningful ways, being welcoming to and inclusive of people who feel unwanted in traditional evangelical churches, and with a renewed appreciation for faith as an experience rather than a dogma.

 

Jacob's Well is about a thousand members strong, led by pastor Tim Keel, who generally is regarded as one of the leaders of the emerging movement. (Brian McLaren is the other; ironically, Dan Kimball, who first coined the phrase "emerging church," is not.)

The article describes the worship as participatory rather than passive, and "edgy, closer to grunge than to praise-chorus music" -- a pretty good sign, I think, though I'm not partial to grunge -- and talks about the church's efforts to embrace the arts, to the point that the sanctuary functions as a gallery, and Keel regularly incorporates the art into his sermons. And of course, the church has been hugely successful at drawing members from Gen X, who are generally down on organized religion in general, and evangelical Christianity specifically.

 

The article is good; it also touches on some of the suspicion that evangelical leaders have of the emerging church movement, which lacks evangelicals' preoccupation with "right" doctrine and dogma -- an Enlightenment approach that works in some cultures and generations, but not in others.

 

All told, it sounds like an interesting church, and it's a good article.

 

Read the story

Visit the Jacob's Well web site

 

Praying for peace, not for victory

I'm not praying for our troops.

That's not exactly true. I am praying for our troops, just as I'm praying for Iraq, and for the members of the insurgency there. I'm not praying for coalition troops to visit a crushing defeat on the heads of their enemies, and I'm not praying that President Bush will bring our troops home tomorrow, nor that he'll announce a timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq.

And I'm certainly not praying that the quagmire we've turned Iraq into will continue as it has been, sucking in more lives every day as neighbor turns upon neighbor and the holiest, most sacred and most mundane duties become life-endangering.

What am I praying for then? If you rule out a decisive victory, a sudden or gradual withdrawal, and the perpetuation of the mess we've made of Iraq, what is there left to pray for?

I've realized something over the last few days: War is outside the nature of Christ. Completely outside. Not just this abominable mess where people are raping young women and destroying families to cover it up, where suicide bombers are blowing up religious services, where one person cuts off another one's head and calls it a righteous act, but war itself -- where one member of the family of Man fires a weapon at another member in hopes of ending his life -- is a horrible abrogation of what God intended his creation to be. It is outside the nature of Christ. It is not what God desires for his creation.

The prophets, looking ahead to the Kingdom of God, saw a time when the nations would lay down their swords and shields, when we would beat our weapons into plowshares and study war no more. They saw it coming from far off, and they rejoiced to see it, if only at a distance. I realized today that I've been doing the same thing, waiting for a pie-in-the-sky time when the poor would receive the Kingdom of Heaven, when the meek would inherit the earth, and when peace would come.

There's no need to wait. The Kingdom is here. It's now. It's arrived.

Speaking to the stunned congregants of his hometown, Jesus declared, "'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

"Today this scripture is fulfilled in your presence."

If we believe that the Kingdom of God is incarnated in the person of Jesus, and if we also believe that Christ is in us and we are become the Body of Christ, then there is no need for there to be war, poverty, hunger, or other such afflictions among us. They are there because we allow them to be, because we accept that they are a part of life, and because we have failed to engage the world around us and address the root causes of these problems.

Peace — note that I did not say appeasement — is not easy. It is far harder to maintain the peace than it is to go to war. Peace requires understanding your foe, meeting his needs and making sacrifices yourself, something we are woefully unprepared or unwilling to do.

Peace, not war, is God's dream for the Middle East, just as it is his dream for every tribe, nation and language.

I'm not praying for victory in Iraq. I'm praying for peace.




Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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the apolitical church

I have just read a fascinating and thought-provoking article from the New York Times about the Rev. Gregory Boyd and his decidedly apolitical approach to the gospel.

In an era when the gospel has been co-opted by political and social conservatives, where the word evangelical conjures no thoughts pertaining to evangelism and where Christianity is equated throughout the United States with the Religious Right and the the Republican Party, Boyd appears to be one of a minority of evangelical leaders actually to be letting some light into the smoke-filled back room.

What has Boyd done? Nothing too unreasonable, I suppose, when you consider the gospel. He's just pushed hard to keep Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minn., from getting entangled in any of the political discussions that increasingvly have mired down and distracted the American Church for the last twenty years.

Some of the stuff Boyd did is obvious, like refusing to introduce politicians from the pulpit, something one megachurch in New Jersey actually did last year during the gubernatorial primaries there. Other things only seem obvious once I've seen them in print, like telling pro-life groups that they may not put their literature in the church lobby. (Such displays have been a fixture at many evangelical churches ever since the Summer of Mercy in the late 1980s.)

The usual justification for the politicking is that Christians have a duty before God to be salt and light and spread Christ's influence in all areas and all spheres, including the political arena. Still, as Boyd points out and as I've said at times myself, it's not like there's anything essentially Christian about Christian involvement in politics. People of all faiths (and even of no faiths) desire justice and a better society; what advantage is there is tacking the Christian label onto a political effort or even a specific politician's platform? It identifies Christ with one platform with one party, and with one dogma, when he is someone who embraces everyone.

And that doesn't even touch on some of the more egregious infusions of nationalism into the religious world. I'm not just talking about American flags in the church sanctuary -- although, like the pro-life displays, that (wrongly) is another fixture at many U.S. churches -- but a tacit endorsement of the war in Iraq in some churches, including once cited in the story where the church showed a video that mixed images of the Cross with fighter jets. (News flash: "Onward, Christian Soldiers" is a hymn -- not a military strategy.)

So thumbs up to Boyd, and a big wet turkey to all those on the Right (and Left) who are pushing the lie that America is a Christian nation and arguing that everyone therefore has to listen to them. Boyd preached a six-week sermon series called "The Cross and the Sword" that drove away about twenty percent of his congregation, including a number of church leaders.

I wish more pastors shared not only his perspective, but his conviction and willingness to preach the gospel, and not side issues.

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Old Stories through New Eyes

It always begins like this: The pastor is at the front of the church, casting the opening lines of his sermon out to the congregation. He baits us with some sort of joke or anecdote, and slowly he begins to reel it in. It's going great. We're all hooked on what he has to say.

And then it happens. He starts talking about Psalm 23 or the Parable of the Mustard Seed, and he's lost me. In no time at all, I've broken free and swum far away from lead-me-beside-still-waters. By sermon's end, I'm vaguely aware that there was a sermon on something from the Bible, but I've no idea what it was about.

It's like the cliché says, familiarity breeds contempt, and some passages are so familiar that it's hard to imagine there's anything there that I haven't heard before. Think of the Good Samaritan, and if you’'re like me, it's hard to see any message but "Love your enemies."

The funny thing is, the Parable of the Good Samaritan has been familiar almost from the first time it was told. It didn't even originate with Jesus. It was so well known that his audience would have recognized it immediately.

I imagine Jesus standing in the Temple court as he is questioned by the expert of the law. The expert asks, "And who is my neighbor?" and the crowd, eager to witness the verbal sparring that has made Jesus so famous, pushes in close to hear his response.

"Ah," someone whispers in satisfaction once Jesus begins speaking. "The wounded man on the road to Jericho. That's a good answer." Heads around the Temple nod in approval, and soon everyone's eyes have glazed over. The story follows its familiar rhythm as the traveler is waylaid by bandits and left for dead.

Everyone knows the story. After the first couple of travelers ignore the wounded man, he'll be rescued by a model citizen, the sort of person they've been taught all their lives to admire, respect and emulate. The moral? Your neighbor is any countryman in need.

By the time the first person walks past the wounded man, some people already are thinking about the Passover celebration. At the edge of the crowd, someone starts haggling over the cost of apples, but no one really minds. Everyone knows that a heroic and virtuous Pharisee is about to come along and save the wounded man.

Imagine their surprise at what comes next. The Pharisee doesn't help. Instead, he minds his own business. He doesn't get involved. He plays it safe. Suddenly everyone is listening. They couldn't have heard that right.

Then Jesus delivers the final knockout punch, and shocked silence gives way to angry gasps and a few strangled cries of protest. The hero of the story isn't respectable. He's not even one of them at all. He's an outcast so low that decent people would throw stones at him if they met him in the street. And didn't this all start with as a question over what to do to get eternal life?

With stories like that, it's no wonder people wanted to kill Jesus.

Today of course, we do exactly what that ancient audience wanted to. We think that we're righteous because we understand brokenness like the tax collector did, and we're proud not to be self-righteous like the Pharisee. We see ourselves in the prodigal son who's come home, rather than as the son resentful over his younger brother's unearned favor.

And we identify with the kind and neighborly Samaritan, even though practically no one in Galilee or Judea would have thought of Samaritans as either kind or neighborly. The surprising twist on whom God considers righteous and who receives eternal life is completely lost on us.

If Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan today, I wonder if it would go something like this:


On one occasion, a Christian stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"What does the Bible say?" he replied. "How do you read it?"

He answered: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind' and 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

"You have answered correctly," Jesus said. "Do this, and you will live."

But the Christian wanted to show that he was justified before God, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

In reply Jesus said, "A man was driving through New Brunswick, when he fell into the hands of carjackers. They took his wallet, his cell phone and his laptop; shot him, and went away, leaving him for dead.

"A Republican happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed on the other side. So, too, a pastor, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

"But a Muslim, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He put the man in his car, getting blood all over the seats, and took him to the hospital. The next day he paid the hospital three thousand dollars. 'Look after him,' he said. 'And when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"

The Christian replied, "The one who had mercy on him."

Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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Slices of Grace

My daughter Ruth met two girls at the park today, named Destiny and Nicole. This is important, so that's why I'm writing it down.

It's important, because Destiny and Nicole weren't the children we had hoped to meet. We had a play date today with several friends of Ruth's from preschool, and none of them showed. Not one. Not her best friend, not the boy who always has to have his way, not the shy girl, and not even the boy whose mother was so excited about the idea that she practically cried.

For more than an hour Ruth and I ran around the playground by ourselves. I chased her from one playset to the next, and we laughed like monkeys as we ran. We flew down slides, swung across monkey bars, spun on the tire swing and sang as much Stephen Sondheim as we wanted. Still, her friends never came.

I'm sure their parents had good reasons for not coming, and although I was disappointed, my hopes were never set that high in the first place. Sometimes preschool classes are closely knit, and even the parents become friends. Sometimes the classes aren't so close, and you're lucky if you know the names of the other parents when school is over.

Ruth's class this year was decidedly of the second sort. Everyone liked the idea of having informal play dates at the park once school was out for the year, but great ideas rarely work out the way you want them to. That's just life.

We had been there about an hour when a little girl named Destiny showed up. Even though she was two years older than Ruth, and even though she had never seen Ruth before, they started playing together immediately. They barely had exchanged names before Ruth was chasing Destiny around the playground, up ladders and down slides, and Destiny was offering to let her ride her bike.

This had gone on for about ten minutes, and it even included a trip on the tire swing, when Nicole arrived. In no time she had joined the troupe and they found their rhythm. Up the ladder, across the platform, down the chute. Up again, down again they moved, one after the other in a steady blur of giggles and dresses.

The girls played, they had fun, and then it was time for Ruth to go. It wasn't until we were in the car and on our way that she realized her that no one from preschool had come. She was crushed, and she cried. For a 3-year-old like Ruth, this was like being stood up at the prom.

Still, this is just the warm-up act. As Ruth gets older, she's going to have her share of dashed expectations. Friends will break their promises, deals will fall apart, success will be elusive, and from time to time she'll see treasured dreams come crashing painfully down. Sometimes the grief will belong to her, and sometimes it will belong to others.

When life hands her a bitter pie to eat, it’ll be easy for Ruth to make grief and self-pity her only companions, and to miss entirely the sweet slices of grace that Christ slips in, unnoticed. Easier still to miss is the chance to carry that grace to someone else. These displays of grace come unexpected and unannounced in the most unlikely and unexpected places, and their presence can make all the difference.

Today that grace came on the shoulders of two girls, named Destiny and Nicole, and I say it's important that they be remembered.

Copyright © 2006 by David Learn

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