Less than the gospel is not the gospel

As headlines go, this one was a doozy: "Manhattan church evicted for preaching the Bible."

The blog post was about The Gallery Church in New York. The church recently was asked to leave the space it had been renting from a restaurant. I'll let Denny Burk, the author of the blog, explain why:

Last April, I preached at a church in New York City called The Gallery Church. It’s a small evangelical congregation meeting in a restaurant right in the heart of Manhattan. Pastor Freddy T. Wyatt had planned a series on sexuality and gender, and my contribution was on the meaning of marriage.

A few weeks after my part in the series, another speaker brought a message on what the Bible teaches about homosexuality. As a result of that message, the owners of the restaurant informed The Gallery Church that they could no longer meet in their establishment.

I'll state right now that I don't know exactly what the sermon said, though it's probably safe to guess that the message wasn't "It's OK to be gay; God made you that way." It's possible that the sermon included suggestions like "The compassion of Christ is boundless, and being gay is no barrier to have a relationship with God."

And I definitely feel frustrated on account of Freddy T. and the others of his church who found themselves out of a space they (presumably) had planned to be in for a while. I feel for them, but I’m not sure I see much cause for the outrage I'm seeing in Burk's post.

Here's how the situation appears to have unfolded. First, the Gallery Church had a sermon in which it outlined a "tough stand" on homosexuality. Second, management at the restaurant, which is based in New York and must be mindful of its the views of its customers, decided it would be bad business to be associated with the views expressed in that sermon, and asked them to leave.

If a church wishes to espouse a view it can expect others will object to, but chooses to espouse that view anyway, there’s no cause for complaint when that backlash comes. In fact, when it comes to more serious matters, like the actual gospel itself, Jesus told his followers to expect not just pushback but actual persecution, and the biblical authors enjoined their readers to count it joy to suffer for the gospel.

The gospel, it's worth noting, is not a moral standard. It's a message of reconciliation between God and humanity, and among humanity. It led to the early Christians being persecuted for a number of reasons, not just because they didn't worship the official gods, but also because they stopped paying as much attention to social niceties about whom to eat and drink with, and crossed all sorts of social lines.

So I have to challenge the notion that the Gallery Church was evicted for preaching the Bible. Homosexuality is barely a footnote in the Bible. Given that telling people “Your lifestyle is a horrible sin” is going to alienate people, and given that the message of Jesus and the Apostles was not “You are sinner” as much as “God is calling all people to be reconciled to him through his son, who has risen from the dead,” I don’t think this reaction indicates any antipathy to Jesus or the gospel, as much as it does fatigue with the evangelical message of “You are a sinner and deserve to go to hell.”

Most of American society is familiar with the evangelical message on homosexuality, as it has been proclaimed many times by many people, from many pulpits. What’s lost, because we never get around to saying it, is Jesus’ message of, “I’d like to come have dinner with you. Does this Friday work for you?” or “I’m sorry your parents told you that you couldn’t live in their house anymore when you told them you were a lesbian. Do you need a place to stay?” or even “Want to watch the new Superman movie with me?”

Try a message like that, and people just might start beating the door down to come to church.

Copyright © 2013 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Knowing your own voice

It happened late last Wednesday night as we were driving along a country road that seemed to be a thousand miles from anywhere. The girls in the backseat asked where we were, and my wife answered: “Driving through Whykickamoocow.”

Whykickamoocow. It's a word my wife picked up from me, and a word I picked up living in New Zealand 25 years ago. It means “out in the middle of nowhere,” but it says it so much more picturesquely than “Podunk” or “the boonies,” and it says so without the condescension in those other two phrases. It's one of a handful of linguistic and behavioral tics I've held onto all these years that still say how much my AFS experience meant to me.

I keep thinking of language as a way to communicate with other people. That Wednesday night I realized, that's not the whole story. My words aren't just how I communicate, they're my voice. They literally are a record of where I have traveled and the experiences I have had. They show who I am.

I grew up outside Pittsburgh in the 1970s and 1980s. You won't hear me say “warsh,” except as a joke; my parents both came from outside the area, and as a consequence, the added R always has sounded wrong to me. Still, you can be sure I'll order a hoagie if we go to Subway together, and I just might wash it down with some pop.

And if yunz tell me that “Kennywood's open,” I know you want me to check my zipper, because you sure aren't talking about the amusement park.

I lived in New Zealand for all 1987, and it left its mark on me in ways other than having a pastoral word for remote locations. Thanks to the relentless teasing of my younger brother, I no longer use British words like “boot” and “bonnet” for the rear and front of the car. On the other hand, I still pronounce my host country's name as New Zilland.

Also, to this day I will not let anyone in my family eat a kiwi. A kiwi is a small, flightless bird, and a Kiwi is a native New Zealander. Those green fruits with a brown skin? Those are called kiwifruits. Calling them kiwis in my presence is a big no-no.

For that matter, I'm as likely as not to remind my girls that they need to wear their gumboots when they go outside during the rain.

After I graduated college, I moved to Haiti, where I lived and worked with a cast of missionaries from the Twin Cities. In their company, I learned to stop asking “Do you want to come with me?” and just ask people, “Do you want to come with?”

Among its many other gifts, Haiti itself gave me my first second language. From Haitian Kreyol I took the word “degaje,” meaning “to make do with what you have.”

I use that word often; my children also hear other phrases with stunning regularity: Ban-m men ou when I want them to give me a hand before we cross the street, or Tann ti momann, oui, when I want them to wait a moment.

And none of this even considers the bits of accent that flavor my speech and the speech of my children.  Sometimes, but usually only when we've been visiting her friends or her brother, I can hear the Southwest in my wife's voice. Often I've heard the city in the tones and cadences of my daughters' speech.

The way we speak can speak worlds about where we come from and where we've been. And as my wife inadvertently demonstrated last week, our words even can say something about whom we've been with and the company we keep.

Do you ever wonder what your words reveal about you?

Copyright © 2013 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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Stand with the Outcast

I want to start by saying something that should be obvious: Religious discrimination is an awful, awful thing.

It is a horrible thing to demean someone because you don't like her religious beliefs. It is a horrible thing to demean someone because you don't like what you assume her religious beliefs to be. Religion is one of those things that define us as individuals and as communities. Belittle a person's faith, and you are not only belittling and demeaning them, you are belittling something that defines them, inspires them, and connects them not only to the Transcendent but to the teeming masses of humanity.

Mocking that, belittling that, or discriminating against a person because of their religious beliefs is wrong, wrong, wrong. I wish everyone could see that.

Which is what makes what is happening in Washington state right now so aggravating.

Washington state Sen. Sharnon Brown (R-Kennewick) is sponsoring a bill that would grant an exemption to the state's anti-discrimination laws, so that business owners could refuse to serve customers if doing so would violate their religious principles. As reported by Rachel La Corte of the Associated Press, the bill has its genesis in a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union has filed against florist Barronelle Stutzman.

Stutzman, you may recall, made national news on March 1 when she refused to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding, because she believes homosexuality to be sinful, and gay marriage immoral. (Stutzman has told TV station KEPR that she is a Christian. I regret that this disclosure does not surprise me.)

Of the law that Stutzman ran afoul of, and that Brown is trying to amend, Joseph Backholm, executive director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington state put it like this: "The government is now saying if you have a conviction about an issue that we happen to disagree with, then you as a business owner are going to be fined or shut down because of that. People should and do have the right to their own convictions."

Well, yes; people do have a right to their convictions. There is nothing in the law that says that people can't have their convictions. Our Constitution guarantees all of us the right to our convictions, and even our right to express those convictions. That's a cornerstone of our free society, and it's been put to the test repeatedly; only last year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of Westboro Baptist Church to proclaim its virulent hatred of gays even at funerals.

It's really hard not to appreciate the irony here, that Brown essentially is arguing that Stutzman has a right to discriminate against gays and lesbians, and that denying her this right is discriminatory. But let's be clear about this: No one's convictions give them the right to decide who they'll do business with. If Stutzman and her attorney want to argue that she has that right, then they're on shaky ground. Deep-South segregationists also wanted to decide whom they would and wouldn't do business with, and they also claimed that their convictions were based in Scripture.

I'm also really curious to know what Bible Stutzman and her supporters are reading from that give divine sanction to take this stand. It's safe to say that Jesus encourages his followers to stand by their convictions, but it's also plain to see that the most basic conviction Jesus wants us to have is one of compassion.

See a man who's blind, heal him. Bump into a woman who has been bleeding for years, then you not only heal her, but you also stop and pay a little attention to her. Hug a leper, commend the faith of a heretic, eat and drink with gluttons and drunkards, love the hookers, and welcome the outcasts. Whatever Jesus' view on the righteousness of any given behavior, the gospels make one thing clear time and time again: Jesus valued people more than he was bothered by their sin.

It's worth noting that there was one group in the gospels that was really offended by the sins the people committed, and they were shocked that Jesus allowed prostitutes to come near him. They would go to great lengths to make sure that people knew what God thought of their sin, so that they could repent and be forgiven. I suspect they would approve of Stutzman's decision not to serve a gay couple. This group was called the Pharisees, and Jesus had some harsh words for them. Their words were even harsher; and, in the end, they had him killed.

Perhaps no one gets to the heart of the issue like Victoria Childress. Back in 2011, Childress, who runs a bakery from her Iowa home, refused to sell a wedding cake to a lesbian couple. As she explained to KCCI-TV, "It is my right, and it's not to discriminate against them. It's not so much to do with them, it's to do with me and my walk with God and what I will answer [to] him for."

Exactly. Christians believe that we ultimately will stand before God and have to answer for the choices we made, including the choice to devalue the worth of another human being because we don't approve of their lifestyle, exactly the choice that Jesus rejected, and exactly the choice he castigated the Pharisees for making.

Discrimination is wrong. Cloaking it in the mantle of religion and claiming divine sanction for it is even worse. We need to stop justifying morally reprehensible behavior, and we need to hold accountable those who want it to be legal.


Copyright © 2013 by David Learn. Used with permission. All rights reserved

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Faithless Google, Google-less faith

My faith is under siege today, because Google honored Cesar Chavez today instead of celebrating Easter. At least that's what I'm told.

Google has a custom of altering the logo on its main page to mark major holidays, significant events and anniversaries, and just because it can. A lot of these doodles are fun, like the time it replaced the Google logo with a functioning Pac-Man game. (My daughter still plays that.) Others are educational, like the time Google honored M.C. Escher. Other times, they're just odd, like the logo honoring the 150th birthday of L.L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto. (For what it's worth, I speak the language, and just shrugged at that one.)

But heck, it's their logo, they can do whatever they want with it. Right?

Apparently not. On Easter Sunday this year, Google honored Cesar Chavez, a labor activist born on March 31, 1927, and not the Resurrection, and that, apparently, was too much. Glenn Beck got all snarky at the imagined disrespect; other Twitterfolk suggested that Google was elevating Chavez over Christ, or even found it a tremendous insult to their religion.

Come on, really?

I fully understand that Christians on Easter may greet one another with cries of "He is risen!" and "He is risen indeed!" But it's silly, it's pointless, it's completely un-Christlike, to demand that everyone else celebrate the Resurrection with us, and to take offense when a corporation like Google, with users who are Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, agnostic, atheist, Jainist, Shinto, Sikh and Wiccan as well as Christian, does not take the time to affirm our particular set of religious beliefs, or even to celebrate our holiday with us.

The empty tomb on the first Easter is foundational to my faith. It is the basis for my belief that Jesus is the Son of God, the foundation of my hope that one day I too will rise from the dead, and for my conviction that God's dream is for us one day to live in a world free of pain, disease, death and infirmity, for us to walk with him as his people and for him to walk with us as our God. I don't need a Google Doodle to affirm my faith today, and even if Google actually savaged Christians today with a doodle that declared "He's dead, you nitwits," my faith would be unrattled. (Though at least in that case I could understand being upset.)

But, in fact, Google's choice of doodles today is one that affirms my faith, and if you're a Christian you also should find it encouraging.

Cesar Chavez, after all, was a tireless advocate for the rights of poor workers. Himself an American farm worker, Chavez was a leader in the labor movement in the 1960s and also worked for civil rights, encouraging Mexican Americans to become registered voters involved with the political process. With Dolores Huerta, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, a labor union that worked to ensure laborers were paid well and treated with dignity. One of the hallmarks of his activism was his strict commitment to nonviolence.

Chavez, it should be noted, was a devout Christian, He drew his inspiration for all these stands and for his actions from the person, the teachings and the life of Jesus Christ.

And isn't a transformed life the best way to honor the man we believe rose from the dead?



Copyright © 2013 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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The 'Djesus Uncrossed' flipout

So were you offended by “Djesus Uncrossed,” Saturday Night Live's riff on Quentin Tarantino's latest film?

I wasn't, but judging by the reaction of the nation's culture warriors, I should have been. Once the sketch aired last weekend, the Internet erupted with the predictable cries of foul. Fox News ran an opinion piece by Todd Starnes melodramatically claiming “NBC Declares War on Christians.” Michael Farris, chancellor of of Patrick Henry College called it the “worst possible attack on the person and character of Jesus Christ.” Seriously?

For its part, the American Family Association, in its official statement, essentially consigned those involved with the sketch to the flames of hell.

Something is missing amid all this outrage: a sense of perspective.

“Saturday Night Live” hasn't stayed on the air the past 40 years for its biblical scholarship. It is a variety show built around short comedy sketches. Comedy works on its ability to surprise us, and the strength of its surprise often lies in the unexpected juxtaposition of unrelated ideas, especially if the link breaks a taboo.

That is why we laugh at a faux commercial for edible Pampers. This is why it was funny to listen to a Eddie Murphy and a reggae band sing about killing white people, at an American Legion fund-raiser. The images are too bizarre, too contradictory, too exaggerated. They make no sense. So we laugh.

In the case of “Djesus Uncrossed,” the writers at Saturday Night Live link the excessive and gratuitous violence of Quentin Tarantino's movies – “Django Unchained” and “Inglourious Basterds” specifically – to the figure of Jesus. The joke requires viewers the recognize the jarring disconnect between the violence of “Djesus Uncrossed” and the essential pacifism of Jesus in the gospels.

Quentin Tarantino's movies routinely make a spectacle of violence. Compare that to Jesus, who went peacefully when he was arrested, rebuked his disciples when they raised arms, and told his followers “Do not resist an evil person.” Pairing Jesus with Tarantino's love of violence isn't blasphemous; it's humorous. It works because we know that Jesus isn't the kind to cut someone's head in half.

Put simply: The joke would fail if the writers didn't count on us to respect Jesus as a peaceful man. Where's the blasphemy in that?

Is the issue that Saturday Night Live used the likeness of Jesus in a manner that doesn't match the preapproved evangelical manner? That's a narrow attitude to take. Christianity has provided the framework for Western thought for nearly 1,700 years. In America its influence predates the founding of the Republic.

With that sort of legacy, it's only natural to use the language and the symbols of Christianity to communicate and to critique Western thought, civilization and art.

Is the issue that Saturday Night Live portrayed Jesus specifically in a violent manner? Perhaps it is. Either way, I think we have deeper problems than “Djesus Uncrossed.”

Years ago, some people complained that Jesus too often was being portrayed in popular culture as a hippie sort of flower child, powerless and weak, the sort of guy who gets sand kicked in his face at the beach. The Jesus pushed by the Right has the opposite problem. The Right too often has used Jesus to stoke up people's anger, to justify invading Iraq and other Muslim countries, to marginalize gays and lesbians, and even to deny women access to contraceptives. This Jesus is no milquetoast; he's the guy who's going to kick sand in your face at the beach.

The difference is that Saturday Night Live portrayed the vengeful Jesus as a joke, while the Right is completely serious about theirs. Who's committing blasphemy now?

Starnes asks rhetorically why Saturday Night Live never pokes fun at Judaism – I guess he never saw“Harry Hanukkah Saves Christmas” – and never tells jokes about Islam. I'd wager it's not because they're afraid of offending Muslim viewers, nor because they hold a special regard for Islam, as much as that it's rude to pick on the little guy.

Because the truth is, in America at least, Islam remains a minority religion, with only about 2.6 million adherents in a nation of 300 million people. For all the complaints of the Religious Right that Christianity in America is under siege, Christianity remains the dominant narrative of our culture. Christmas is a federal holiday, not Eid al-Fitr. Everyone in America knows what Easter celebrates; I doubt you'll find one Christian in 10 who knows what Shavuot is, or what its relationship is to the Day of Pentecost.

The Religious Right loves to play the persecution card. The message it has been hammering for years is pretty simple: Be afraid. There's a war on Christianity, and we're losing. Liberals are attacking God. Our culture, our heritage, our legacy, are all under attack.

Faith should lead us to reach out to other people and to forge connections with them. If the most it inspires someone to do, is to tell you to be afraid, do yourself a favor.

Tune them out. Their attitude is the most offensive thing of all.

Copyright © 2013 by David Learn. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

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Resisting grace

"All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful."
-- Flannery O'Connor

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Light a candle

When night falls, as it so often does, we often fall into one of two errors. The first is simply to shake our fists at the night and inveigh against the darkness. In doing this, we forget the light as well, and make our darkness even deeper. The second is to cast well-meant but empty platitudes upon the wind, and to assure the afflicted that an inscrutable purpose is at work, that God is in control, and something good will emerge in time. This denies the very presence of the night, and it cheapens Day into a tawdry bauble of little worth.

When night falls, and it does, there is only one way to respond; and that is to take the hand of those next to you, hold them, and say nothing. Weep with them if they cry, make their grief yours and howl along with them, and never let go, no matter how bad it gets.

I have walked in darkness myself, and I say that this is the only way that night can come to an end, and the sun rise once more.

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1 Soccer

Paul, called to be an apostle of Soccer by the will of God. To the Nova Bastille Soccer Club, to those who love Soccer, together with all those everywhere who love the game. Grace and peace to you from God our coach.

I always thank God for you because of the talent God has given you. You have been enriched in every way, in all your dribbling and tackling and kicking. You do not lack any talent as we wait for the end of this great Soccer game we call life.

I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, that all of you will agree with one another so that there will be no divisions among your team. Some have informed me there have been quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One says, "I want to win." Another says, "We should have fun." Another says, "I want to make great plays." And another says, "Everyone should get a chance to play."

Is the game divided? Should we have one team for the jocks and another for the clueless? I think not. But we should all play together in love and fun.

When I came to you, I came not as an expert in Soccer, but as someone who loved the game. I could not make spectacular saves. I did not make any amazing plays. But I came preaching joy, and fun, and love for the game. You are not ready for more complicated lessons, because you haven't even learned how to play as a team.

It is actually reported that one of your fullbacks made five goals in a row, running all the way down the field to sink the goal into the net. And you are proud! Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief? Your boasting is not good.

Now for the things you wrote to me about. It is good to use the broken-in soccer ball; but sometimes, since some of your members have trouble kicking that one as far, it is good to use the shiny new one. And play in Nova Bastille, but for those who live in Hoover Point, play there sometimes too.

Now about athletic gifts, I do not want you to be ignorant. To each is given talent for the good of the entire team. Some can pass well; others tackle. Some make leaping catches; others kick a great distance. Some play offense; some play defense. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and the Spirit gives them to each one just as the Spirit determines.

The team is a unit, though it is made up of many team members. The team is not made up of one member, but of many. If a fullback would say, "Because I don't get to shoot any goals, I am not part of the team," he does not cease to be part of the team. If a forward were to say, "Because I do not defend our goal, I am not part of the team," she would not for that reason cease to be part of the team. As it is, there are many members, but one team.

If I make amazing midair catches and keep the opposition from scoring a goal, but have not teamwork, I am worthless. If I can receive a pass when two fullbacks and a center are crowding me, and send that ball soaring into the goal right past the goalie, but I have not teamwork, I am nothing.

Teamwork is patient and kind, teamwork looks out for all members, teamwork is not self-glorifying but is willing to give up glory for the sake of another. Teamwork always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, and teamwork always shares the ball with the weaker members.

I, Paul, write this with my own hand. If anyone does not love Soccer, a curse be on him or her. My love to all of you.

Amen.

Copyright © 2012 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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Prayer of Saint Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

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The Christophany of the Least of These

When I first saw her, Nakosa was a quiet child, easily overlooked and eager to avoid notice.

Nako was hardly friendless -- Mawoole in particular was her partner in silliness and little-girl escapades -- but there was no denying that she found our presence intimidating. We were loud, expansive intruders into her home. We threw her off her routine, spoke a language she didn't know, and possessed items and did things she couldn't entirely grasp.

New to the House of Blessings in Callebasse, Haiti, since our visit the previous August, Nako was literally from next door. She had been living with her aunt, her mother and other relatives, in a house that we had stuccoed on our previous trip last. At some point during the past year, she made the move into the orphanage while her mother, who is blind, remained with Nako's aunt.

Friday night was bingo night, and the other children played bingo with us with enthusiasm. Nako, for her part, clearly wanted to, but she had no idea what she was doing. She sat next to me, a bingo card before her, and watched, silent and unsmiling, as everyone around her laughed and joked and placed tokens on their cards as I called out the numbers.

I noted that she was having difficulty, but it was Joshua who stepped up and helped her. While everyone around us laughed and teased one another and played, Joshua sat next to her and made her his whole focus. As the game continued, he did everything he could to bridge the language and experience barriers, so Nakosa could play along. As I called the letters and numbers, he'd repeat them to her and help her find them on her bingo card. When it became evident she didn't know her numbers or letters well, he'd repeat them again, and slowly try to teach her.

That night, after bingo was put away and our team had all gathered around for evening devotions, I shared with the team what Joshua had done, how he had passed over the older, friendlier girls whom he already shared a rapport with, and let others play with Christina, our little snuggler. Instead, he had focused his time, his effort, and -- most of all -- his attention on the girl who had nothing to naturally draw us to her and, in the process, had shown her the heart of God, directly and powerfully.

I'd like to say that Nako was utterly transformed by her experience with Joshua that night, but she wasn't. Id like to say that the dogged and haunted expression left her completely over the next few days, and that every time we saw her, her faced glowed with the beauty within that wanted only to be awakened. But that didn't happen either.

I'd love to say that Nako became as ubiquitous in our experiences as Christina and Sarah, but that also never happened.

What she did do, though, was to become less reserved around us, particularly around Joshua. In her own, halting way, she engaged. She let Joshua show her pictures of her that he had taken the previous year, and she smiled and waved a lot more when she caught us looking at her.

It's not the end of the journey, but it is a good step.



Copyright © 2011 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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We are his hands

Once in Haiti, I asked God, "Don't you see this?" I've shared his response many time with other visitors. "Of course I do, that's why I showed it to you. And now that you see it, the question is, 'What are you going to do about it?"

By its very nature, omnipotence is limited only by the character of the Deity. We can assume that God will put his omnipotence on display at some point in history and forcibly eradicate those who exploit the poor and oppress the powerless, but that narrative ultimately invalidates the life and teachings of Jesus. Such an attitude suggests that even God is going to come to the conclusion that this "turn the other cheek" and "Do not resist an evil person" and "Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me " stuff just isn't practical, and doesn't work.

On the other hand, if we accept that God has chosen to limit himself to what we will do in partnership with him, suddenly Christ's invitation to join him in the redemption of the world takes on a new sense of urgency.

Prayers like "Your will be done on earth as in heaven" aren't empty phrases about a distant time, and statements like "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God" take on new meaning when our nation is involved in three separate wars.

So it comes back to the question that I am answered with when I ask God how he can allow injustice to stand. In the example of Jesus, we see a God who identifies with prostitutes, with the needy, with the hungry and with those who are being crushed by those in power.

And the question is this: Where am I going to stand?



Copyright © 2011 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Christophany of the lowly

When I first saw her, Nakosa was a quiet child, easily overlooked and eager to avoid notice.

Nako was hardly friendless -- Mawoole in particular was her partner in silliness and little girl escapades, but there was no denying that she found our presence intimidating. We were loud, expansive intruders into her home, throwing her off her routine, speaking a language she didn't know, possessing items and doing things she couldn't entirely grasp.

New to the House of Blessings since we visited last August, Nako was from Callebasse, literally from next door. She had been living with her aunt, her mother and other relatives, in a house that we stuccoed last summer. At some point during the past year, she made the move into the orphanage while her mother, who is blind, remained with Nako's aunt.

Friday night was bingo night, and the other children played bingo with enthusiasm. Nako, for her part, clearly wanted to, but she had no idea what she was doing. She sat next to me, a bingo card before her, and watched, silent and unsmiling, as everyone around her laughed and joked and placed tokens on their cards.

I noted that she was having difficulty, but it was Joshua who really helped her. He stepped in, sat next to her, and as the game continued, he did everything he could to bridge the language and experience barriers, and helped Nakosa play along. He'd ask me to repeat the numbers in Kreyol so he could say them, and ask Nako if she could find them on her board, guiding her along the way.

That night, after bingo was put away and our team had all gathered around for devotions, I shared with the team what Joshua had done, how he had passed over the older, friendlier girls whom he already shared a rapport with, and let others play with Christina, our little snuggler. Instead, he had focused his time, his effort, and -- most of all -- his attention on the girl who had nothing to naturally draw us to her and, in the process, had shown her the heart of God, directly and powerfully.

I'd like to say that Nako was utterly transformed by her experience with Joshua that night, that the dogged and haunted expression left her completely over the next few days, and that every time we saw her, her faced glowed with the beauty within that was wanting only to be awakened. But she didn't.

I'd love to say that Nako became as constant in our experiences as Christina and Sarah, but she didn't do that either.

What she did do, though, was to become less reserved around us, at least around Joshua and me. She engaged in more word play with us, she let Joshua show her the pictures he had taken of her last year, and she smiled and waved a lot more when she caught us looking at her.

It's not the end of the journey, but it is a good step.

Copyright © 2011 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Some actual good news

Following the example of the scriptures and the early church, the gospel is not "Christ died for your sins," but "God has raised Jesus from the dead and has made him lord over all." What a difference that makes, and what a much more powerful message.

Why the distinction? Because while both are good things, only one of them corresponds to the actual definition of good news?

The Greek word evangelion, which we translate as gospel or good news, originally was used in cities, territories, and towns that the Roman Empire had annexed. It wasn't a declaration of forgiveness, but that Caesar was lord, and because Caesar was lord, there would be peace, and prosperity, and roads, and a general improvement of life. 'Good news! You are now Caesar's subjects, and all your troubles are over. Ave imperator."

Of course, there also were oppressively high taxes, sons and daughters were taken away as slaves, men were conscripted to fight Rome's wars. This good news came at a high price. The only people who enjoyed it were collaborators with the Romans, the already-wealthy and powerful, and other corrupt people.

By declaring its own evangelion that "Jesus (not Caesar) is Lord," the early church subverted Caesar's message of good news with a much different one. And just as you could tell when Caesar had come to town by the general increase in misery and increased presence of Roman insignia and customs as people lived the way that Caesar commanded, you also could tell when Jesus had come to town, because of the way the social order was upended and people of no importance took center stage.

Forgiveness is an important part of the gospel, but from what Paul writes in the book of Romans, it's an effect of following Jesus, rather than the first step. "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" (Romans 10:9-10.)

It's also how Jesus and the early church invited people to follow him. But don't take my word for it. Check out Peter's sermon on Pentecost, Paul's sermon at Mars Hill, Jesus' invitation to the Apostles in the early chapters of John, Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well in John 3, his dialogue with the rich young ruler, or really any of his other declarations about his mission.

See for yourself how many of them are based on an appeal for people to accept his death for their sins, and how many are based upon his claim to be Christ, a king. People's sin may come up, but it's not the primary focus of the discussion.

I became a Christian because I was convinced I was a sinner in need of forgiveness; I imagine you did too. This has become normative in the church, but it's more a reflection of God's desire to reconcile all things to himself than it is a faithful representation of the message Jesus and the early church presented when they proclaimed the evangelion.

And really, why would we want to have a different focus from the one Jesus has?


Copyright © 2020 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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First light

My earliest memory of God has less to do with church than with a bicycle accident.

I have never understood bikes the way I do words. Words are intangible, but there is something reassuring about them. A word, whether spoken or written, carries the weight of meaning. Properly wielded, they heal, they inspire, and they leave the world a more beautiful place than they found it. Not so bicycles. Bicycles are a bewilderment of gears and wheels that interlock and move in mysterious ways; they are tires that lose air for no reason, and harsh chains that bite pants and scrape skin. As a child, I rode my bike daily on my paper route, but ours was an uneasy relationship.

Somehow, in the summer of 1980, my older brother convinced me that I should go with him and his friends as they rode to get lunch four miles away, in Murraysville. I'd like to say that he enticed me with sweet promises of the fun we would have together, and how we would strengthen the deep fraternal bond between us. The truth is probably that our mother, who was working that day, told him he couldn't go anywhere without me, and he made it clear that I had better come.

The journey from Saunders Station to Murraysville is about three-and-a-half miles. It begins on roads with comforting names like Old Gate Road and Home Drive, but takes a turn for the worse about a half-mile into the journey, once you reach Murraysville Road.

As its name implies, Murraysville Road exists primarily to get people from Saunders Station to Murraysville, and back again. It's a road made for cars, not bikes, and because it is the principal route to retail shopping and professional services in downtown Murraysville, it is a busy road, one where cars drive 35 or 40 mph once they are past the residential area in Saunders Station. Sometimes even sooner.

Murraysville Road crests about a quarter mile after you leave Home Drive. From there, for the next mile, 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.

While my brother and his friends were relaxed and in their element, I braked the whole way down the hill, biting my lip, tensing up any time a car came near me, and unable to bear going faster than 10 mph. At every bend, I heard them from up ahead, urging me to ease off on the brakes and allow my speed to pick up.

When the bottom of the hill was almost in sight, I finally gave in to their prodding — just in time for the pot hole. The bike went in and wrenched to the side, and threw me off. I slammed into the handlebars, twisting them so far forward that they practically touched the front tire, and landed headfirst on the pavement.

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 eventually  went on their way, 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 come at once 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, 2011 by David Learn.  Used with permission.

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An Open Letter to the Easter Bunny

Dear Easter Bunny,

I have one special request for Easter this year, and if you would honor it, I will be ever so grateful. Please note that aside from the incident with the garden hose and twenty gallons of tapioca pudding, my behavior has been excellent. I've helped other people whenever they've needed me, even if it meant changing my plans; and I've gone out of my way to live in peace with everyone, even the people I don't like.

I know things are busy at the Nest right now, and you've got all the little bunnies working overtime laying eggs and painting them up all shiny, what with Easter being only a couple days away, but I'm really hoping you can help me out. After all, it's about Easter.

Now you know me. I've never been one to be worked up over your backstory as the spring goddess Ēostre. You've been a tremendously good sport about taking a back seat to the new narrative for your holiday, to the point that virtually no one today knows what your story was, or that you even had a different job before you were bumped down to the children's department. When Christianity came along, you just went along with the flow of the thing, and let people reinterpret your customs about renewal, and got a minor but entertaining role in a much larger and more enduring story.

And you know, it's that larger and more enduring story that I want your help with. See, it's at times of year like this one that I feel like I get mugged by fellow Christians. In more extreme cases they hand out tracts with titles like "The Five People You Meet in Hell" or "Homosexuals, Liberals and Other People God Hates," and in better cases, they still like to explain how a lie is just as horrible to a holy God as making cookies out of Girl Scouts.

I know their intentions are good, and I know that people driven to exercises like this often are driven by a very real desire to see people reconciled to God. I just wish the message weren't so often "God loves you, you worthless son of a bitch."

Even the mildest forms of this sort of evangelism still feel like a drive-by shooting. "God is ready to forgive your sins," one may declare with the joyous rat-tat-tat of a Tommy gun. "It really is that simple! All you have to do is ask."

I mean, good grief, Easter Bunny, that kind of delivery is just nuts! A person who is suffering from depression may feel like she deserves to go to hell, but if that's the case, it's hardly the right thing to encourage her self-destructive attitude. For most of the rest of us, it seems genuinely unbelievable that we would belong in hell with the likes of Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden. After an hour of listening to an increasingly frustrated true believer argue that our sins really are that bad, the message becomes what musician Larry Norman widely quipped was, "So have you heard the good news? You're going to hell!"

Where did we ever get the idea that Christianity was all about escaping hell? Jesus healed people who were still alive, he fed the hungry while they were still alive, he treated people with compassion and uncommon dignity while they were still alive, and when he did speak to people about hell, invariably it was to warn people who were already following him against things like pride, hard-heartedness and indifference.

We're way off message. The whole thing comes across as an advertising campaign that is so nearly brilliant that it's appallingly stupid. Just picture a strikingly beautiful woman in a shimmering black dress, snuggling up to Jesus, while in the opposite panel a mousy brunette is screaming in the torments of the damned. Underneath is the caption, "Choosing the wrong deodorant to wear doesn't make a difference ... until it does." That's about the size of it.

And as religious as I am, if this annoys the stuffing out of me, I can only imagine how it makes other people feel, who aren't half as religious as me, if at all.

And so, Easter Bunny, while you're usually concerned with things like hiding psychedelically colored eggs in strange places to make little kids feel all trippy when they find them, I'm hoping you can beat some sense into us this year with those big ears of yours.

Remember back when Easter was all about you? I don't want to go back there, but it did have some nice stuff going for it. It was a celebration of renewal, fresh starts and new beginnings. Horses had their foals, ewes had their lambs, and cattle their calves. The days grew longer, the sun got warmer, the grass was greener, and everywhere there were signs of new life: flowers blooming, trees budding, ice melting and the weary drab running from sight.

When the earliest Christian missionaries arrived on those shores where the pagan Easter was practiced, before you grew those ridiculous floppy ears and joined the Playboy set, your worshipers saw a connection between their Easter celebrations and the story the missionaries were telling about Jesus. They saw a temporary, yearly renewal as the shadow of a permanent renewal. They understood the idea of personal rebirth, and they understood, despite the absurdity of the story, that a belief in the Resurrection had altered the priorities and the focus of the Christians in their midst, so that they cared about the people with the least status.

Our focus on how sinful everyone is has affected us, too, but not in a way that inspires people to seek redemption, as much as to escape the unpleasant troglodytes who give out unsolicited moral lectures.

So that's my big request this year, Easter Bunny. I don't need any chocolate, even if it's fairly traded; and I've never had any use for jelly beans. And let's not get started on those marshmallow peeps. But I'd really like it if you could help us all rediscover what Easter is about, to appreciate what Jesus' life, teachings, and death mean for this world and for the people with whom we live in it, right now.

You'd better hurry, too. It's Good Friday, and the muggings have already started.

Copyright © 2011 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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God's ex-wife

So, have you heard about God's divorce?

A recent article in Time magazine skims the surface of the rather complex issue of how monotheism developed in ancient Israel, by discussing with a few religion historians the nature of God's relationship to Asherah. The implication of the article is that Asherah was worshiped as the consort of God at one point in Judaism, and then eventually was edited out of the Bible by patriarchal apologists appalled by the notion that their male deity would ever have a dalliance with a female deity.

And you know, I think they're half-right.

Stuff like this is why I'd love to get a full scholarship to attend seminary, and study progressive revelation. I'd love to get the broader picture of how Judeo-Christian thinking has developed over the past few millennia, beginning from the straightforward relationship of a group of nomads to their tribal god, down to this really complex theology we've got now, with all that it entails about redemption, social justice, labor unions and the Trinity.

Because there's no doubt that our understanding of God has changed considerably since Moses came down from Mount Sinai carrying the Ten Commandments, and I wouldn't be surprised to discover that there were many Yahwists who worshiped Asherah and understood her to be the wife of their male god.

Let me explain.

The books of 1 and 2 Kings in the Bible relate the history of Israel, beginning with the end of David's reign and continuing down to the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.E. Along the way, the writer rates each of the kings in terms of how faithfully they served the God of Israel. Kings like Hezekiah and Josiah, who made religious reforms that favored Yahwism and desecrated the altars of other gods, were rated highly; other kings like Manasseh, who erected altars to other gods, sometimes in the Holy of Holies, were viewed as wicked.

Religious life in ancient Israel went back and forth a lot during this time. One king would come in and destroy all the altars dedicated to foreign gods, then the next king would come in and build new ones. And, undoubtedly, each king thought he was doing the right thing. In essence, it was an multigenerational battle over the soul of Yahwism.

Asherah gets a lot of press in these pages. A fertility goddess, Asherah was the consort of the Phoenician deity Baal. Baal was the head god in his pantheon, making him in a sense the equivalent of Zeus. One of Asherah's titles was "Queen of Heaven." People all around Israel -- and even among the Israelites -- worshiped Asherah, Baal, and other gods.

In contemporary religious experience, monotheism is normative. Ask someone if she believes in God, and you're more likely to be told yes or no than you are to be asked, "Which one?" In the time of ancient Israel, monotheism was anything but normative. Yahwism was utterly unique in its disavowal of other gods. A Canaanite might be relocated to Assyria, to Greece or to Egypt, and although he might find they had unusual names and statues, he'd still recognize some form of his familiar gods in his new land. That's one of the reasons the Romans were able to adapt all the Greek myths so easily. In terms of religion, the Yahwist would find nothing in common with his new neighbors, which is one of the reasons the Jewish people didn't assimilate when they were taken to Babylon or fled to Egypt after the Temple was destroyed.

The difficulty of maintaining your religious uniqueness in these situations, is that you can't help but pick up some of their practices and attitudes over time. This process, called syncretism, is why Hanukkah has become such a major holiday to Jewish Americans, despite its relative unimportance in Judaism. It's why a lot of churches today have worship led by rock bands, and why people who have no idea that Easter used to be the name of a divine rabbit, go to church and hide colored eggs for their kids to hunt.

And in ancient Israel, where most people couldn't read and were guided in their religious practices by oral traditions of how their parents had done things, syncretism led people to equate their all-powerful deity with somebody else's almighty deity, and then pick up some of the trimmings. Like his wife. (Or even his identity. There was a place in ancient Israel named Jobaal, or "Yahweh-is-Baal.")

It scarcely seems imaginable today that changes so fundamental to the nature of a religion would fly, but for much of Israel's history, there wasn't much of a Bible against which to measure such practices. Even the Torah -- the first five books of the Bible, traditionally ascribed to Moses -- didn't reach its final form until around 450 B.C.E., more than 500 years after Israel's Golden Age under David and Solomon, and about a thousand years after the Exodus. All you had to go by was "how things had always been done," and what the priests told you. And if you had one set of priests saying that God was married, and another set saying he wasn't, it became a matter of which set of priests you listened to, and more to the point, which set of priests the king listened to.

2 Kings notes that during the reign of Josiah, one of the last kings of Judah before the kingdom fell to Babylon, the priests "found" the book of the Law, which no one had seen in their lifetimes. And not surprisingly, the discovery led to a number of reforms that favored the sort of primitive Yahwism that they espoused, one without all the syncretic additions like his marriage to Asherah.

Prophetic writers like Isaiah, a contemporary of King Hezekiah, who had made significant religious reforms that favored Yahwism, took the notion of God's marriage in a direction radically different from where the pro-Asherah faction had taken it. One of the central tenets of Yahwism had been the special relationship between God and the Israelites. He had been their king and their military leader; now he became their suitor, and Israel, not Asherah, was his intended bride. Any attempt to claim that God had another consort would be to diminish the relationship between him and Israel.

It was after the time of the Babylonian captivity that the Hebrew Scriptures as we have them today took their final form. The canon wouldn't be settled for hundreds more years, but the redactors had the final word. Asherah was out of the picture, and the only wife God wanted was his people.

Copyright © 2011 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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In search of

The room I'm in has two doorways. One led me in, and the other leads out.

I've been in this room for a while now, but I've been going through rooms like it almost for as long as I can remember. I'm looking for something, and all I know is that it is in one of these rooms. If I keep searching, sooner or later I'm going to find it. When I do, I'll be able to stop, but until then my feet burn and there is no rest.

The rooms come one after another in a regular procession, each a little more spacious, each a little better lit, each a little more unsettling than the one before it. And though I enter the room nervously, the result has been the same each time. After a few weeks, I relax and feel at home until, eventually, I notice a pungent smell and I'm forced to move on, further up and further in.

Sometimes I don't know where my journey is leading me, whether to a frozen sea with men submerged in the ice up to their necks, or even deeper a few miles further; or to the warm brilliance that outshone Beatrice. But wherever it leads, this is the journey I am walking, and will follow it to the end. Once you pass through the wicker-gate there is no way to leave the road, not even when the light fails, as it often will.

I feel like I'm getting closer, that the end of my search may lie just beyond the next door, but I've felt that way before.

And now I am at the door, and my hand is upon the handle. In all probability, one of two things lies in the room beyond: a body, badly decomposed, or Nothing. And if there is another door on the far side of the room, my search will continue.

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Seeing the stitches

I wonder what it was that first made Victor Frankenstein view his creation with such horror.

He was in a state of euphoria as he worked on the monster. It was the culmination of his work in natural philosophy, the act by which he was surpassing every scholar who had gone before him. It was going to lay the foundation for his remaining life's work. He worked, he gave the creature structure and form, and he gave it life.

And then, Shelley notes, he started to hate it.

Was it the size of his creation that drove him mad? Now that it had come to life, was it too big for him to properly understand? Now that it was living, had it suddenly grown into something too large and too complex for him to wrap even his great mind around? Did he foresee that this simple idea of creating, now that he had invested himself in it, would take him places he never would want to go? Did he realize even then the grief it would bring him?

Or maybe it was, now that the blind zeal of his initial faith had worn off, that he noticed imperfections he hadn't allowed him to see in those months leading up to its creation. Its skin was too thin, the toes weren't on straight, the arms weren't the same length, and overall it lacked the grace and polish he had convinced himself that it had.

When he looked at it objectively, perhaps Frankenstein realized that what he had achieved, what he had believed in, and what he had dedicated his life to, made no sense.

The monster lived, and moved, and breathed, but it had no business doing any of those things. It was assembled piecemeal from different sources that had too little in common with one another to give the creature true coherence. Here was an eye from Albrecht the doctor, there a forearm from Kleber, and there was a heart from Herr Blücher. Still other pieces came cobbled from one grave or another, from places and persons he never knew, but that surely weren't as radiant as those he did.

By the evidence of his eyes and his reason, Frankenstein knew the parts didn't belong together, no matter how he had tried to edit them together. He could see the thousands of sutures it took to hold them together. The sheer folly of attempting to cobble together a living creature from all these different sources, imposing harmony where none existed, drove him to despair.

One wonders how each of us will respond when we have such moments of clarity about our life's work. God grant that we are spared Frankenstein's fate.

Copyright © 2011 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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On the road with the pilgrim

The pilgrim emerged from the valley just as the sun was breaking clear of the mountains on the eastern horizon. He stopped for a moment, to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and to steady his shaking hands.

"You look like you've had a rough time of it," said a voice, and though its tone was gentle, the pilgrim started from the rock where he was sitting and drew back a space.

"I'm sorry," the man said. "I didn't mean to startle you."

The pilgrim nodded nervously, and took his seat on the rock again, a small space from where the man now sat. His face was warm and concerned, and the pilgrim relaxed a little.

"It was a difficult voyage through the valley," he finally said. "I thought I would never make it out."

He looked back over his shoulder at the ravine he had just come through. Even now with the morning light spilling over the cliffside, the valley was remarkable more for what its shadows concealed than for what the light revealed. He could see motion in the shadows, and heard the echo of long, sibilant hisses that came from the creatures that lived in the darkness. Something scuttled along the wall, almost seen; while other things slithered or scraped their way across the valley floor.

Somehow, he had gained safe passage through that, and at night. Even now, with the morning sun warm on his face, just the memory of the mouthless whispering that he had endured in the dark was enough to make the pilgrim shudder. He put his hands to his face and held them there a moment, until he regained himself.

The man placed his hand on the pilgrim's right shoulder, and that human touch nearly pushed him over the edge.

"I had to go through it, you see," the pilgrim said desperately, more to himself than to the man beside him. "I was following the path set before me, by the lord of the road, and I thought it would be safe."

"Was it?" The man took the cloak from his shoulders, and draped it over the pilgrim, to warm him.

"At first." The pilgrim shuddered, and as he drew the heavy cloak about himself, a deep pain crept into his eyes. "At first it was easy. I'd followed his directions before, and had come to no real harm, and I thought it would be the same this time as well. But by the time I had gone a quarter-mile, the sun had begun to set, and by the time I had walked an hour, it was gone completely, and the only light I had was from the few stars I could see."

The man said nothing, but as the pilgrim talked, he began a small fire for the pilgrim to warm himself at, and produced a biscuit for him to eat and a flask of brandy to drink.

"I didn't know what to do," the pilgrim said, and it seemed even now as he spoke that he was back in that darkness, lost and struggling to find his way. "I knew if I went back that I would never find my way again, and I knew that if I stayed, then the things I could hear rustling in the dust around me would take me. I didn't have any choice but to take one step, and then another, and then another, never knowing if each step would be the last one."

"That must have been difficult," said the man.

"That wasn't even the worst part," said the pilgrim.

"No?"

"No." The pilgrim laughed bitterly. "The worst part," he said, "was that I was not alone. I was being followed. It was moving in complete silence. It didn't breathe, and it didn't disturb even the smallest stone as it moved, but I knew it was there the entire time, just a few steps behind me. I didn't dare look back, or it would have me, and if I tried to run, I would only trip and be caught. So I had to walk the entire night, with this thing stalking me, with all the patience in the world. It seemed like months, and while it was going on, I wished and hoped so hard to be out of those shadows that sometimes I even convinced myself I had escaped, only to realize a moment later that I had deceived myself, and I was still trapped."

"It's all right," the man said. "You've made it through. You're safe, and it won't get you now."

As soon as the words were said, the pilgrim knew they were true, and he relaxed, and soon fell asleep. When he woke, the man gave him cakes baked on the coals of the fire, and let him drink his fill, until at least it seemed the terror of the valley was gone. As a new day dawned, the pilgrim tied his satchel to his walking stick and glanced back one final time at the valley and its shifting shadows.

"I hope," he said, "that I never go through a valley like that again."

The lord of the road sighed.

"You will," he said. "And some of them will be far worse. By the time you have finished, you may even curse the day you set your foot on my path."


Copyright © 2011 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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