Torn Raccoon

I was driving in my car and listening to the local evangelical radio station. Someone was interviewing a Muslim, a foreign born Arab, who had converted to Christianity. This fellow had been responsible for running a prison mosque and apparently had quite a dramatic conversion experience.

He talked of a vision in which he saw all the world’s sin and suffering. This image drove him to tears and drove him to Christ as well. I am ashamed to say that at this point I became skeptical. His story sounded so melodramatic that I suspected that it was contrived. Besides, his vision seemed exaggerated – the sort one reserved for Christ or the saints.

Rounding a bend I confronted a grisly sight. Strewn across the middle of the road lay a gruesome mess, a small animal cut exactly in two, the double yellow lines of the highway running perfectly between the bloody red halves of the poor creature. It was, or had been , a raccoon, the distinctive striped tail and masked eyes quite visible even at 40 miles per hour.

This sadly grotesque image is a sight so familiar that I usually take it for granted. Today it struck me; the elements of this picture are not much different from what many on this war-wracked world see daily. Except that those horribly mutilated and brutally eviscerated bodies are of men, women and children. Husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, children… babies.

I don’t know if the timing was coincidence or not. But now I can understand how maybe this Arab gentleman had seen enough violence and sorrow in his life so that his vision was not at all fantastic. Perhaps my sense of security, this safety I so nonchalantly enjoy, blinds me to the world’s awful reality.

Just War: A Theological Cop Out?

Over on the Sojourner’s blog they have posted an interview with one Father George Zabelka who was a Roman Catholic chaplain stationed with the Army Air Force on Tinian near the end of the war in the Pacific. Over the years he has come to seriously reconsider his position at that time, his complicity in the atomic bomb attacks on Japan as well as his own faith. Here are just some of the things he shared in the interview::

“The whole structure of the secular, religious, and military society told me clearly that it was all right to “let the Japs have it.” God was on the side of my country. The Japanese were the enemy, and I was absolutely certain of my country’s and Church’s teaching about enemies; no erudite theological text was necessary to tell me. The day-in-day-out operation of the state and the Church between 1940 and 1945 spoke more clearly about Christian attitudes toward enemies and war than St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas ever could….”

“…. seventeen hundred years of Christian terror and slaughter should arrive at August 9, 1945, when Catholics dropped the A-bomb on top of the largest and first Catholic city in Japan. One would have thought that I, as a Catholic priest, would have spoken out against the atomic bombing of nuns. (Three orders of Catholic sisters were destroyed in Nagasaki that day.) One would have thought that I would have suggested that as a minimal standard of Catholic morality, Catholics shouldn’t bomb Catholic children. I didn’t.”

“…as I see it, until the various churches within Christianity repent and begin to proclaim by word and deed what Jesus proclaimed in relation to violence and enemies, there is no hope for anything other than ever-escalating violence and destruction.”

Father Zabelka has much more to say on this subject, and unlike most of us, he has the first hand experience to back up his position. I highly recommend reading this moving interview. You can find it here :

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=advanced_search.article&issue=soj8008&article=800812

Usury: Another Sin the Church Chooses to Ignore

Wow! Someone is finally talking about one of my pet peeves. cut throat banking policies that go against every biblical teaching about money lending. On the blog “Decompressing Faith” Erin and friends provide a righteous rant against a travesty that has gone unchallenged for much too long.

www.erinword.com/2007/07/quick-rant-about-banks.html

Here’s what Cindy had to say:

 

“Last Christmas i got busy and lost track of when i made debits relative to deposits. (very very unlike me- i usually update the account every day). when i went in to the bank to have them explain all the charges I couldn’t believe what they told me.

Not only did they do as the article said, manipulate the posting order of debits and credits to maximize the potential for overdrafts but, GET THIS, they charge the $37.50 when the initial red debit was received electronically (but not yet posted) and then when they officially posted the debit the next day, they charged the $37.50 again. I went through it 3 or 4 times to be sure i understood them correctly. 2 charges for the exact same overdraft. And somehow they had manipulated the loopholes to make that legal!

Then they thought they would be able to coerce me to take out a loan that would cover potential overdrafts in the future, although it was clear from our account that by that time we were in no danger at all of overdraft. I remember when the bank would just move some money from your savings to cover overdrafts. No more. That’s far too resonable and good for the consumer apparently”.

Sound familiar? And then there is the credit card side of this business, luring people into taking loans with low interest rates and then jacking up the rates and hitting them with late charges, charging over limit fees after they drop the credit line (using the magic “Credit Report” as an excuse for doing so). They ain’t got nothin’ on Don Corleone. (Of course some of their victim…er, customers are weak and lack the discipline to handle credit responsibly. But isn’t there a moral prerogative in place here as well? What would we say if liquor stores made it a point of handing out coupons at AA meetings?)

I’ve said this before; if Business chooses to be ‘all business’, driven solely by profit, refusing to regulate themselves (as many other professions do) then eventually their customers (otherwise known as citizens) will step in and take away some of their freedom. Of course, the bankers are not breaking any laws and apparently they are not drawing much attention to what they do. But what would you expect from a culture that has elevated Donald Trump to the position of business role model, entertainer and sage.

 

Why is it that there are so many damn sermons about sexual immorality but never have I heard one against financial immorality? Didn’t any of these preachers read Ezekiel in seminary? Why are we constantly picking on prostitutes, alcoholics, drug users and porn addicts when these predators in Prada get to run around guilt free? And I’ll bet most of them are flaming heterosexuals.

 

Is it because they can be found sitting in the front pews? Is it because they make boatloads of money and are known to fill the offering envelope every week? OK, I’ll buy that. Expedience wins. But what about all the other bank employees, stockholders and shareholders? Shouldn’t they be made to feel a little hot under the collar about where they work or invest? I once sat in a church pew next to a very pretty, yet very overweight, young lady. I remember sweating nervously while our well intentioned young (and very thin) pastor gave a scathing sermon on the sin of gluttony.

 

No wonder our churches hold such little credibility with today’s ‘un-churched’.

Shoot the Messengers (Why Fire and Brimstone Preaching is Evil)

In what is often seen as the most famous sermon in American history, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741) Jonathan Edwards paints this vivid portrait of our Father in Heaven;

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

Jesus told us to spread the Good News. He told us that people would know us by our love for one another. Jesus was a man of forgiveness, peace, compassion, non-violence – love. When asked what God the Father was like, he told his disciples that because they knew him they would know the Father, that they could see the Father by seeing him. He called our Father abba, or daddy.

Of course, God the Father is not a man in flowing robes with long curly blond hair, light complected and with blue eyes. (Neither was Jesus) But you get my point. And we should get Jesus’ point as well. The only part of the Father that Jesus could reveal to us was that of God’s nature, his ‘personality’. He did this through what he said and more importantly what he did, especially what he did for us on the cross.

So why have we had to endure the terrifying and vile language of those such as Edwards and his spawn? Of course, Edwards was not alone. Many, perhaps most, leaders in the Christian (and Muslim) church have preached of hell and damnation. The medieval Roman Catholic church was so obsessed with God the torturer and inquisitor that they nobly and piously followed his ‘example’. At the First Great Awakening (1730-1740) there was a great upsurge in Protestant fire and brimstone rhetoric which has lasted to this day, though there have been those who have long stood apart from this philosophy, such as the Quakers.

Rabbis Michael Shevack and Jack Bemporad, in a book called “Stupid Ways, Smart Ways, to Think About God”, have coined the phrase “Marquis de God”. They suggest that he’s regarded by many as the ‘proverbial God of wrath, ready to show how much he cares by punishing you, the Marquis de God, despising sinners so much he exterminates them”.

(Not very long ago there was a church convention being advertised on the radio, a convention devoted to discussing the qualities of hell. Somehow their researchers had determined that the fires of hell burned at more than 2,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit! Yet no one would die in those flames, they would merely burn like candlewicks for all eternity. What type of monster is their God?)

But where do we get these crazy ideas? Even more importantly, why do we embrace them?

I don’t believe it is because of anything that is expressly stated within the Bible. Many of these hellish concepts are not biblical in the least, having been tacked on throughout the ages. I have heard many say that this is the result of a natural tendency on our part to project ourselves onto the nature of the deity, subconsciously endowing him with all the malevolent characteristics that we naturally abhor in ourselves and others. But, I think it is more sinister than that.

Throughout history there have been leaders – pharoahs, kings, queens, presidents, dictators- who have been more than willing to stretch the truth beyond any rational breaking point merely to maintain their rule of authority. This is a natural tendency of man and we know that power will almost always corrupt the powerful. Jesus’ message always stressed the strength in our weaknesses, our brokenness above the whole and strong. Yet the Church has always had a way of forgetting that particular thread that runs through the Gospels and even the Bible as a whole. The Church becomes strong and rules the rulers of the western world. Even after splintering into 10,000 limbs that live apart from each other, each individual denomination strives for dominance over the others. Our leaders become popular, powerful, rich and famous, bending the ears of millions as well as those who rule those millions.

Like all leaders who begin to doubt their abilities to govern based upon the merits of their philosophies, they inevitably resort to fear as the primary incentive for loyalty. In the past the Church has used the threat of horrifying torture, both in this world and in the next, to keep people in line. Protestants generally have relied solely upon the threat of eternal torment in the after-life(although they have been known to burn a heretic or two themselves).

“As the souls of heretics are hereafter to be eternally burning in hell, there can be nothing more proper than for me to imitate the divine vengeance by burning them on earth.”

~ “Bloody” Mary, Queen of England, 1553-1558

Today the stick is still used more often than the carrot. Sure Joel Osteen and friends preach the Gospel of prosperity, but they are only using reverse psychology. If you don’t do things their way you will not only miss out on prosperity but you will very likely remain mired in the trap of poverty. Even some elements of the liberal wing of the Church have found success in using scare tactics to meet their agenda, using the threat of global warming to frighten people into embracing a socially active Gospel.

To what good is it to preach the Gospel if we are not at least trying to live the Gospel? And how are we living the Gospel, how are we emulating Jesus, when we bully and scare people into turning towards God? How many of us, because of this style of ‘evangelizing’ know the message with our heads but not by heart?

When it comes to spreading the Good (or the Bad) News it would appear that the messenger may actually be the message.

The Inherent Goodness of Mankind

Are we inherently good or evil? Generally, most arguments seem to fall into one of two theological camps.

On the one hand there is the belief that man’s nature was originally good but that due to disobedience this nature changed to one of being inclined towards evil. This disobedience had the side effect of bringing ‘sin’ into creation, and every person is now afflicted with this disease. So though man was initially good he has now inherited an evil nature by being born with ‘original sin’. In this case it seems that ‘sin’ is a tangible force somewhat along the lines of gravity or magnetism, invisible, powerful yet corrupt. The corrupting influence of this force acting upon man can be seen in the way even small children will slip easily into cruel and selfish behavior patterns and it is up to parents to (hopefully) teach them how to behave kindly towards others. But where did this force come from? How could a created being’s actions bring such a deadly and destructive entity into nature?

On the other hand some say that every child is born innocent and pure yet learns to become selfish and ‘sinful’ by those who have authority over him as well as his family, friends and enemies. What we call ‘original sin’ is nothing more than the self preserving and naturally selfish instincts that we are taught to cultivate when we first become self aware. If children were born into cultures that truly were in accordance with God’s design then there would not be the opportunity for them to learn how to become ‘sinful’. Many of us who are parents would tend to disagree with this argument yet our pride may blind us to the fact that our children learn selfish, as well as kind, behavior from us.

I feel a strong pull towards this second argument. What sways me most is the amazing quality that humans have of naturally developing relationships. We instinctively crave companionship and in the process cultivate love between ourselves and others. This goes counter to what is found throughout the animal kingdom and how Darwin, Freud and Nietzsche describe mankind. It is not ‘natural’ to love, yet it is the most natural thing that man can and will do. It is only through the corrupting influences of others that we learn to sacrifice love, the true reward, for rewards of more immediate and material gratification.

As Henri Nouwen puts it in ‘Jesus and Mary: Finding Our Sacred Center’, “Before I am sinful I am innocent: that is, before I participate in the evil of the world, I am touched with goodness….I have to claim that goodness in me. It belongs to my deepest self.”

The idea that we are completely flawed at heart and require a divine savior works well for those of us who struggle with our internal demons. However, when we stress the inherent evil nature of mankind, inflicted upon every living person through the descent of original sin, we risk trivializing the passion of humanity and in the process may push others away from the open arms of God.