Loose Change

There are a few last words I want to leave you with:

Women are equal to men in all ways - in value, in position, in the ability to fulfill all leadership roles. In a time in which women were objectified and undervalued, Jesus spent time with women and recruited some into a band of close female disciples, including Mary, Martha and Mary Magdalene.

Hormones, Body type and the capacity to bear children distinguish men and women, and these can influence the ability to do certain jobs and the relationship of individual parents to their young, during gestation and afterwards. However couples bond, in whatever gender configuration, there is no greater responsibility than raising a child, which should be valued by men and women.

Whatever transpires in the future, the key New Book description of the relationship between men and women declares that in Jesus there is neither male nor female. This trumps culturally influenced passages which ascribe an inferior/subordinate position to women, passages which have created a "behind the veil" mentality among certain Christian groups. Women should attend seminary if they choose and should be afforded every opportunity to be a senior pastor in a Church, where they will have the occasion to teach men.

Islam is alarming, if only because it doesn't seem to have a peaceful core. I am no expert on that faith, and I have no reason to speak against the prophet, but I don't see moderation among those who lead the faithful and interpret the Qu'ran. The values of Christianity - the ones represented by the Sermon on the Mount - are about loving, resisting non-violently, being persecuted for your faith, praying for your enemies, being meek, sharing your faith in love. The New Book is seldom bellicose. Islam, as I have seen it manifested in my day, is normally bellicose, punctuated with violence, committed to Sharia law and Theocracy, alarmingly militant in its evangelism and totally intolerant of other faiths. Moreover, it has great appeal in the confused West, where the faithful embrace the freedom found in rigid values, and women find peace within the veil.

I would feel much better if I knew there were those who viewed the expansion of the faith and the resulting changes which follow did so in the framework of a pluralistic society. I have friends who are dead afraid of the expansion of Islam, and I believe that there will be many more Christian martyrs in areas where militant Islam is expanding. There have recently been trials in Islamic Nations of people whose only crime was their faith, and Christians have been murdered in Afghanistan because "they were Christians." Whatever the supposed justification of such actions, the religious community needs to unite against it, as it must unite against persecution in all forms in all nations. The values of Jesus may not be the values of the nations Christians live in, but they are our values, which we should express, whatever the fall-out.

Evangelical? After months of traveling around ideas, theology and faith, I am ready to say that I no longer see myself as an Evangelical. That statement is only significant for two reasons. First, I know what the term means and so do my Christian friends. Evangelicals have strong views on how a person becomes a Christian and on many other theological issues, but most importantly, their faith is wrapped up in a narrow view of what the Christian life is, i.e., a continuous opportunity to share the gospel with everyone you encounter.

I would like to share the reality of my life with everyone, and am most interested in sharing Jesus with those I encounter who hurt, are lost, sick and seeking something. There are many commissions from Jesus, and I'd like to be sensitive to all of them.

Second, what does an old Evangelical become? I don't think anything in this blog makes me any less of a Christian than I was when I started it, but what label does a non-Evangelical Christian put on them self? Catholic? I wasn't raised a Catholic, so it's easy for me to say I like the Catholic Church, but I do like parts of it. I like God's Grace coming through the sacraments; I like the formality and the rituals, the robes and incense; I like liturgy and rote prayers. I like History. I want to take that into my life, but I don't need to be a Catholic to cherish part of what they are.

I must say: I'm not high on praying to Mary, celibate priests or an infallible Pope.

What about Liberal Protestantism? I do admire much of the work that liberal groups that meet in Protestant Churches do, but there's just not enough Jesus and way to much money and building.

I like the name Orthodox, but people think of the Greek or Russian Orthodox Church when you say that.

As much as the name has been soiled by a violent history and political present, I guess being a Christian will have to do. Not one who holds hard doctrine, a closed mind, a repressive spirit or judgmental thoughts, but Just a Christian.

Not such a bad thing after all.

Kindness

I can't shut this down without recognizing the kindness resident in most of the people I know. I know it would be an insult to tell some dear people - including neighbors, family and friends who have read this blog - that the good they do is from God. That seems to be the message today which masquerades as orthodox Christianity. The companion line - that it is through man's sin that the world is evil - gives Christians the easiest of worlds - one that strips man of the right to take credit for good, while assessing him as the culpable party in the performance of us evil.

I don't think you can have it both ways, and certainly God wants man to walk according to what is actually in his heart, whether good or evil. There is no indication that anyone can be good enough to earn a ticket to the promised land, but good does have redeeming features, including its instructional value: good is better than evil; the after taste of doing good is sweeter than that when you do evil; good can't be eradicated by evil; good seems fragile, but it isn't; it seems absent, but it isn't; it exists in all societies throughout history, and it doesn't need a vocabulary word to identify it; it is a choice, an ongoing series of choices. But there is nothing supernatural about good. It is a completely natural response to the circumstances you're in. The easier life is, the easier it is to do good.

Think you are better than machete-wielding Rwandans, SS Storm Troopers in German Concentration Camps, , apartheid enforcing security forces in South Africa, Islamist extremists on 9/11, Christian Crusaders in the Dark Ages? These were probably mostly good people making evil chooses, in an atmosphere that encouraged such choices. They are responsible for what they did.

The kind of good I want is the good of turning the other cheek, of giving someone my jacket when they ask for it, of denying myself, taking up my greatest obstacle and following someone I can't hear or see. It's the good of meekness, of hope, faith and love, of being a peacemaker and bringing the kingdom of God in this world.

As good as good is, the higher call to something akin to holiness is better. I like being good, being kind, being enthusiastic, but I am challenged, and sometimes even pursue, something more impossible to achieve than anything I can do on my own. It's only fair that those who don't believe God and Jesus are real judge me not on my development as a natural man, but my development as a spiritual one.

They were first called Christians because people could see they had been with Him.

I don't want to strip you of your kindness.

Look at me carefully and see if there's a visible sign that I have been with Jesus Christ. I will settle for no lower standard of judgment.

Heading Up Lancaster Way

I'm heading up Lancaster Way
That's in Pennsylvania not LA
Going to see the Amish, man
Raise a barn?
Yes, I can.

Tired of Stock Market, Emergent church
Tired of Economy's constant lurch.
Took the plunge and sold GE
Heard about them, have to see

Going to see the Amish, man

Forget my TV, designer shoes
Honda Wagon, got to lose
Forget Obama, voting too
Speaking German, God and you

See the denim, hats and tan
Going to be an Amish man

Who decided, I want to know
To disconnect so long ago
I come humble, but I can see
We need to disconnect after automated farming machinery.

Can we compromise? How about low horsepower motors?

Going to be an Amish Man
A post modern Amish man.

Geetch, Bread, Moola, Cash, Dough, Money

You know Jesus never even contemplated that Caesar might give money to His church. The transaction was the mouth of the fish, the hand of the disciple, the palm of the tax collector, the coffers of Rome. Nothing was coming back the other way, nor was that expected.

The first amendment of the US Constitution established freedom of religion in the United States and is ultimately the basis of both the church's tax exempt status and the extension of tax deductions on gifts to the church. 501c3 Non Profit Status is relatively new, and is an attempt to regulate organizations looking to escape taxes by claiming to be churches. It establishes some standard regarding exactly what non-profit means and attempts to separate non-profits from partisan politics. There are a number of people who feel that 501c3 interferes with freedom of religion by establishing boundaries, and that it sets a precedent for future restriction on how the church can operate.

Sounds like something for the courts. I only know what any idiot in America knows: the church is rich and doesn't do much good with its money. There are hundreds and hundreds of churches in Portland, Oregon, occupying thousands of buildings on close to 5,000 acres of land. None of that is taxes. If it was taxed, millions of dollars would go into state revenue, at a time when millions of dollars are desperately needed. Taking away the Federal tax exemption on charitable contributions, another good idea, would increase National Revenue nationally by billions of dollars.

Government has not extended tax benefits to the Church out of generosity. The Church has helped tame the Frontier, pacify Native Americans, give hope to slaves, provide sober workers for burgeoning industry, fill an army with eager patriots and give moral superiority to a country that was often absolutely amoral.

The United States doesn't need the Church now. It doesn't need rapid population growth, or people who object to viable ways to keep birth rates down. It doesn't need rigid belief systems, but free thinking and minds open to bizarre solutions for problems not yet encountered. We need people without ties, who can be given to multi-national corporations and can move anywhere anytime on their way to the top. We don't need the family or community or old concepts of humanity. There is a new world order. Buck up and get over it.

It takes decades for radical change to occur, so the Church has some time to get its act in gear.

There is no reason that churches shouldn't be taxed on the value of their property, less the value associated with legitimate academic education or the cost of facilities used to perform a designated function for those at or below the poverty line. I'm no lawyer, but I know it's time to let go of buildings and grounds congregations couldn't afford to operate or own if they had to pat taxes on them.

There are few nations that address philanthropy the way the US does, and fewer who provide tax relief for those supporting its churches. It is important that some giving be encouraged - ministries from missions to disaster relief and beyond, but money given for the cost of operating a church should not be tax deductible.

It's time for Christians to feel the pinch that comes from sacrificial giving. It's time for facilities to be occupied by multiple congregations and for new congregations to meet in available public facilities. Church in a tavern on Sunday morning; in a rec center; in a public school; in the park.
It's time to preserve resources by sharing with members of the body. It's time for less square feet; for multi-generational living situations, for common meals, shared rides and community gardens.

The Church can lead, follow, or get out of the way. Isn't it time to lead? Can't the Church show that we're not about money, status, appearance? The reality of a Century that disavows the need for God is upon us. It's time to take every deliberate action we can to weed ourselves off the largess of America, and not return to the trough to gorge ourselves again. If the State doesn't demand a change in taxes/deductions, let congregations and denominations do it intentionally and voluntarily, and let the money that should have been paid in taxes be given instead to a fund to provide for the desperate needs of our world: hunger, disease, natural calamity, and bankrupt spirits.

American Christian need to understand that the party's over. It's our time to stand up and get moving, and never look back to Caesar for anything, no matter how hard he calls. We're no one's errand boy any longer, no matter what the pay.

Early Morning Christian Radio

I intentionally listened to social conservative leader and influential religious radio broadcaster James Dobson this morning, wanting to get his take on this week's election of Barack Obama to the US Presidency. I was surprised how shocked both he and his panel of commentators were at the outcome of the voting, especially since strong indicators showing how likely an Obama landslide would be were available days before the polls opened. They were worried about how Obama's total endorsement of reproductive rights would derail attempts to get Roe v. Wade reversed and result in the unrestrained push for abortion on demand at every level of government. Hunkering down together, the six vowed to keep fighting for the life of the unborn, in every courtroom and voting booth in the country.

Because the Presidential news was so dismal, conversation shifted quickly to the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which defined Constitutional marriage in the state as being between a man and woman only. No legal same sex marriages in California any more. Proponents of the bill spent $39 million to gain its passage. They gathered 7200 pastors to support the measure, and had massive prayer gatherings to petition God for the bill's passage. This included a 33,000 person, all day rally at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego days before the election.

So God lost one and won one in 2008, just about His success ratio in the passage of Civil Laws identifying themselves as His Will over the History of Western Civilization, and profoundly higher than His success ratio on legislation proposed and passed in the United States since 1900.

God is easily defeated, it seems. He is unable to muster enough juice to get McCain the 7 states and 5% he needed to become a President who supported right to life. I am a linear person; I have a hard time understanding how things fit together in space, but I do believe that they fit together differently than is being determined by Dobson and friends.I again question the efficacy of trying to maintain civil laws that support moral values that have probably never been supported by the majority of Americans, while using that imaginary support as the validation of the effort.I question time, money, organization, and religious furor being invested in legislation to keep people from getting married, at a time when marriage is in a steep decline.

I fully support life, and would like to see synergy in moving towards a non-legislative commitment to life, which would be built on the almost universal dislike of abortion. Is opposition to Obama and his abortion stand an effort to reduce abortion through partnership, prayer, education and investment, or an ongoing, fruitless attempt at an impossible to enforce legal eradication that sets up an endless series of legislative battles, that take time and energy from what can be done now to keep 15 year olds from the brink of a life altering event?

If Obama is President for 8 years, he will see a medical revolution regarding abortion. There are pills being developed that will bring safe, effective, non intrusive pregnancy termination to a woman's bathroom. Cheap, with little side effects, these will eliminate the need to visit abortion clinics, and will be much safer and convenient than the "morning after" pill. This technology, which the church will battle relentlessly, may desensitize pregnant women to the trauma of abortion, but it will also make later term abortions the one visible sign that procedures continue to be done. Such procedures will become even more questionable, and it may be that ongoing opposition by Christians will lead to some regulation of late term abortions.

But this is just more legislative stuff. Facing the future of reproductive rights issues, the Christian Church needs to do what it should always do: fragment into the world surrounding it, sharing the value of life and the time it begins; caring for those who have decided to follow the difficult choice to give birth; comforting those who are mourning a decision to terminate; teaching birth control to anyone who will listen and getting birth control devices into the hands of young people who are sexually active or about to be.

The task is simple and direct if the issue doesn't financially drive an organization. You wonder if people running family ministries really want the church to change its world, and positively influence abortion decisions from the bottom up. Success could cost them their prominence, and the political power that has brought them.

A Hope For Bridges, Not Walls

I commend the tens of thousands who came out, with passion and commitment, to support Prop 8, California's anti-gay marriage measure on the State's Nov. 2008 state ballot, for a one day rally in San Diego, the Sunday before the election. I question whether a mass gathering of like minded people on a bright day in a receptive city compares favorably (as some have claimed) to the sacrifices of anti-apartheid demonstrators in South Africa, of abolitionist leaders in the United States during slavery or of the civil rights fighters in the Southern US in the 1950s and 60s. Prop 8 is the kind of approach that typifies rendering to Caesar. It is a calculated effort to change a law to accomplish a goal. Jesus never called anyone to change one of Caesar's laws, or the laws of the Jewish leadership in Israel, for that matter. He was truly a revolutionary, and His way confronted while explaining that something more than the point of confrontation needed to be changed. If the evil in this world comes from principalities and powers, shouldn't the effort to deal with these evils be conducted in the realm of God's spirit, where such warfare is waged?

For those at the rally in San Diego, was it only the challenge to bring legislative change that created the zeal to demonstrate, resist, and revoke existing human edict? For, in the end, God's law does not need to be validated by man's law. The eagerness to make human law of God's law is an over assessment of the importance of Caesar's law. That law needs the light of God much more than God needs secular approval. Scampering along, yapping at the master to let us jump on the bed or couch is not a model I like much. The only model of secular change that appears to hold some semblance of how God works is found in long term, non-violent, persecuted protests like those of the American Civil Rights Movement and Gandhi's resistance in India. Both were centered in religious faith; both called for fundamental change regarding human rights. Both were vigorously attacked by opponents to change. An untold number of protesters were killed. The movements called for personal change of everyone involved in the struggles as much as legislative adjustments.

There is nothing noble or generous regarding Prop 8. It reverses law that allowed loving couples to marry. Defining marriage as a union between a man and a women is certainly a society's right, but if it is built on an unrealistic concept of what family is, it is just plain foolish. Family is mostly not Mum and Dad, brother and sister, dog and cat. It is more likely divorced, hyphenated parents, blended siblings, pet iguana. You can vote for how you want things to be or how they are. "Want things to be" regarding homosexuality brings together the haters and the doctrinaires, and anything that pushes you together with the haters should make you reconsider your doctrine. But those of you who have read this blog know that I support homosexuality and marriage. My greatest hope is that loving homosexual partners will have the opportunity to be married, and that they will take it. Not allowing them the right to be married is a nasty repudiation of something the society supports on all other levels. Perhaps Civil Union agreements and Church weddings can mute the pain while efforts are made to dismiss this law.

The pro-life movement is not Prop 8. It has the staying power of abolition, and a great amount of moral support throughout the world. The movement, however, lost some of its moral"higher ground" when abortion sites were turned into confrontation zones, where outraged defenders of the unborn turned nasty against the poor women whose lives had reached the point of making an unbelievingly difficult decision. If you don't win the hearts of those you are trying to convince, you have to win politically.

Christians hardened those contemplating abortion with hurled vials of blood and beakers of aborted fetuses. Each person who entered a clinic and had an abortion realized when they came out, that those haranguing people going in were not people they wished to share their pain with coming out. Whoever the victim is in the abortion debate, it is certainly not the demonstrators outside the clinic.

I believe God's model regarding abortion is two fold: silent, non violent, all night prayer vigils in police/community designated areas near abortion clinics, and the most comprehensive health/sex education push the world has ever known. Condoms, and other forms of birth control, should be given away like Halloween candy. There should be graphic illustrations on condom wrappers of how to properly use the device. The entire population should be told, in slick, Hollywood ads on MTV, VH1, pay channels and Network TV that smart, sophisticated, successful people don't get pregnant unless they choose to. If people don't like abortion, the best way to minimize it is to make it an unattractive option. The "Choice" part of pro-choice needs to be moved back to the point of intercourse, because abortion is the worst result of an irresponsible decision. Let's do away with the "I didn't know" defense and bring responsibility back into the equation.

And let the Church re-define its position and pray for right choices and to become a support group for people looking for emotional fulfillment in an idealized baby. Let the love of God so envelope those who are forced to that most awful choice that they, and their circle of friends, see that God's love promotes right choices and forgives wrong ones. There has been little grace in the Abortion debate. Pro Life folks are outraged that innocent blood is being shed; pro-choice people are adamant that their right to rule their own bodies be revered.

Once dialog goes, the lawyers move in. Law rules the day, and if the Church wins, it has lost because it won by making Caesar the final arbitrator. Not what the fish expected when it gave up its coin to pay Imperial taxes. Not what any person desiring unity in love outside of secular law can be joyful about.

Barack Obama: Anti-Christ

There are desperate religious leaders working tirelessly tonight, putting together books which interpret the New and Old Books in a way that prove that Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ.

If any of you hear about or read such books, please:

*never again listen to the station presenting such views;
*immediately suspend support to any ministry presenting this idea is true;
*destroy any and all books presenting this view.

If you have a conversation with anyone who has such a view, reprove the person expressing those ideas in the most extreme way.

The Anti-Christ was identified by the early Church as a couple of people, most usually Nero. If the Anti-Christ is yet to come, he will be an exceedingly evil man, who will pervert and prostitute the Christian Church.

Christian leaders, Theologians and Popular writers have been playing guessing games about who the Anti-Christ was/is since the rise of pre-tribulation, pre-millennialism in the mid-19Th Century. Juan Carlos of Spain was the leading candidate for decades (1960s-70s).

The self serving manipulation of various verses can prove almost anything in the vague world of prophetic understanding. Remember, there are many members of the Religious Right, Religious Extremists and Racists and Opportunists (who write the books), who want Obama to be someone truly evil. It will relieve them from the guilt caused by the anger and hatred they feel for the man..

I don't know if Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ, and if he is an evil man, I will resist evil as I'm told to do. Non-violently. As the President of this Country, he will be under the microscope all the time. I don't think anything is going to catch us by surprise in the next couple years.

Obama is already a marked man. The vitriolic rhetoric about the man has created an environment which could certainly result in some act of violence toward him. If that act came out of the ministry of some deceived Christian leader, I believed draconian regulations could very easily change Christian broadcasting permanently.

A new President is a new birth: Obama wants to work with the Church; embrace it; in fold it. I take his desire at face value. Let's put away the malice, open our hearts and welcome a new leader. And lets ignore and reject incendiary hack jobs, which have risen up from the cesspool of haters, vile talkers, evil thinkers and greed drunk profiteers.

They ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow. They don't deserve anything civil from those of us soiled by their rantings.

Render and Persecution

I have prayed for the freedom of believers around the world; prayed that Mao and the KGB and the Stasi and Castro would fall. That there would be free elections and new liberty of speech, the reporting of news and freedom for religious worship. Political Parties have told the American Church that it needed to support their policies to guard religious freedom abroad, and at home. Voices from the Right bring panic when they portray the Christian Church as powerless facing the challenge of Muslims, as their ideology runs unfettered across apostate Europe towards our shores. Military Islam is bad enough, but spiritual Islam?

In light of this, what do American Christians want from our government? Surely there are economic benefits to living in this country; physical protection; possibly personal status; infrastructure; a place in world order. I don’t know how much of that Jesus was buying when He offered the coin to Caesar, but I’m sure it was the minimum amount. The Romans, unfortunately, wanted the maximum, and ruled remote regions directly, with Roman rulers supported by Roman troops. And they killed people who agitated against them. In this light, Jesus said give to God that which belongs to Him. But your heart isn’t given to Caesar - your heart belongs to God. In the end, millions of believers died because they rendered their hearts to God.

For this is the real hatred Caesar has of Christ: he cannot have the heart of Christians. The Church is not to love Rome, or Washington, or Moscow or Canberra; it’s to love God, and the value of the State rests in its ability to facilitate that reality. We have a misplaced love issue in America, and it impacts all of our missions and thinking about God’s relationship to the world.

The State can feed the Church with peace and prosperity, or with persecution. Our attraction to the politics of this world seems driven to maintain personal peace and affluence, and avoid any trouble or persecution. But compromise of the values of the faith is often the bi-product of pursuing peace and safety. The Civil Rights Movement brought together faith, a desire for justice and civil disobedience. The violence that ensued protected the peace and prosperity of many Southern Christians, who watched fire hoses and attack dogs cut down their brothers and sisters. They justified their positions by saying that they were required to remain obedience to the laws of Caesar, but I wonder how much a fear of the persecution they could see on their TVs every night motivated their silence (and sometimes shrill cursing).

The American Church has made an alliance with the American political system to keep it safe from God’s attempt to change and refine it. It acquiesces to injustice and wars that have no moral rationale. It overlooks torture to get the names of terrorists and detention replacing due process.

I have no desire to spend my time fighting on ever moral issue that is confronting the country, nor do I believe that proper rendering requires that. Rendering that requires political interaction is just another form of manipulation: ignore injustice to preserve personal peace and affluence; embrace resistance to injustice as a political club against the state.

It may be that resistance is the appropriate response to unearthed injustice, but I want my marching orders to come from the place Jesus wants us to be, in the world of the spiritual, in the place where most things are rendered to.

If we don’t render properly, we face a very real possibility.

We become the Amish.

Render and Persecution

Behind the Curtain

There is nothing for Christians in government or the political process. If we were even supposed to invest significant energy in this process, there is such little difference between policies and people, that it would take a gnat strainer to determine what candidates really stand for and who to support. The most compelling problem with the United States is that the myth of our Democratic roots overshadows the fact that a small cadre of powerful economic groups, representing multi-national corporations and big money, run the Country.

Elections are 18 month ordeals that give people the impression they make a difference in how the nation is run. They bring hope to the moderately disenfranchised, who are buoyed by the experience of casting what they are sure is a meaningful ballot. What they really are is a continuing testimony that the state maintains the faith of its members. The act of voting indicates that people still believe that there is a particular path that leads towards continuance/change, a path (the party line insists) that can be achieved by a particular way of voting.

Knowing that the government of this nation depends on the idea that people really run things, perhaps “rendering unto Caesar” as it applies to voting can be seen for what it really is, participation out of the reasonable expectation of the nation we live in, not some spiritual responsibility carried deep in God’s will. In fact, the key to understanding the Caesar/God tension, is to see that so many things Christians value so deeply are relatively meaningless to the God who reigns not only over the 200 nations in this world, but the many rooms in His mansion somewhere in a hidden dimension. Our God is so terribly small. We insult God by investing praise and worship into a particular symbol (like a flag?) of past wars, conquests and colonial dominance, thinking that the symbol is more valuable than some other nation’s symbol.

As I have said a number of times, the most important thing American Christians have to overcome is their belief that they are especially anointed by God, who has revealed the mysteries of democracy to a sliver of people, who are to pass it to their descendants, who will honor it in perpetuating the franchise and the special place of religion in The United States and Canada.

Christians live from the cross to the throne, and everything in between is about the love of Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Christianity is an international religion that should be addressing cultures in similar ways around the world. What does the political agenda of any nation matter: democratic, autocratic, Marxist, socialist, monarchy, republic or plutocracy? The grinding wheels of the country demand different things from religious groups. Problems arise for the Church when Marxists insist that Christians can’t meet together. They are stealing a “render to God” area, which Jesus said wasn’t their’s to steal.

In religious democracies, the problem is blending the mechanism of governing with the values of the religion. The United States is a Theocracy: the values of the New and Old Testament saturate the documents the country is built on. God’s order is separation. He doesn’t want to be Lord of any nation’s institutions, and He is not interested in imperialistic efforts to make the world a series of countries all modeling a particular expression of Christianity.

More . . . .

What I Saw

I was drifting today, the way I drift. Soft, fluid, awake but spacey. I have fears, and they move in from time to time, and I have ongoing fear of death. I have an infected leg right now, and my fear wafted me to the emergency room, and the infection had moved to my brain, and I went into code and I moved towards the light, and I saw Jesus.

And He wasn't mad at me. I was a different person when I started this blog. The discoveries I have made as I waded through theology, the church, doctrine and future things have been real and they have transformed me into someone I could never have imagined being: Supporting homosexual marriage and accepting that sexual orientation; bringing cultural context into the evaluation and interpretation of the book; seeing that there is a loving Jesus outside of being a rigid evangelical, and understanding that His call is all encompassing, and involves every part of my life.

These changes have bothered and scared me. and although the musing vision I had today was far from being an epiphany, it was important in its assurance that I could keep on speaking. In fact, the impression I got in fact was that God was telling me to instruct others, and get ready, it will be instruction and the bathroom sink from here on in.

Behind the Curtain

Say it ain't so, Joe

I'm sorry to deviate from my carefully planned sequence of blog entries as I prepare to shut down on November 15, but a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll about the Presidential election jumped out at me tonight. It stated that evangelicals support McCain/Palin over Obama/Biden by a 76 to 20 percent margin. I could debate those numbers and honestly say that I know there is a shift to the center among many evangelicals, but the numbers are bloated beyond any sane explanation.

A young baseball fan encountered Shoeless Joe Jackson after the Black Sox betting scandal of 1919 and reportedly said "say it ain't so, Joe" to the accused, soon-to-be banned for life Chicago slugger.

Evangelical Christians please, say these numbers ain't so.

Nothing against John McCain, a courageous man, an American hero - a person it will be difficult to vote against. McCain is at heart a Goldwater libertarian, whose perception is that Federal Government exists to promote and protect the political, economic and military interests of the United States. His belief always has been that less government is better government, and because of this he has never pursued the very conservative agenda present in the strident voices of the Right - Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Robertson. Those three support McCain now because they hate Obama, not because they agree with McCain on the issues. McCain has always had a libertarian view on two issues that still strike to the heart of Evangelicals: Roe v. Wade and Gay Marriage. Goldwater wanted nothing to do with the Religious Right or the sort of fanaticism it brought to the Party. This year, McCain attempted to quell the revolt against a perceived lack of fervor regarding these two "stains on the soul of America" by nominating Sarah Palin as his running mate.

What an awful decision that was. I don't care if she's pretty, energetic, charismatic, doctrinally pure, dead right on the issues, she is still ill-equipped to be President; probably the least qualified running mate in my lifetime. Dan Quayle was pretty bad (1988&1992 with George Bush the elder), but Quayle was a US Senator at the time of his nomination.

Palin's ignorance of domestic and foreign policy, clearly seen at critical points in interviews with the media and in taped gaffes on the campaign trail, leave little doubt that she hasn't a clue about the job she will get if McCain wins in November or, god forbid, if she inherits the Presidency due to a recurrence of McCain's melanoma.

I don't know how reasonable, intelligent people (and I believe most Evangelicals are both) can ignore the consequences of Palin's election and continue to support her. As for her evangelical politics, it is folly to think that legislation will end abortion in America. Ever. It is wishful thinking that gay marriage will be derailed by any legislation. I fully expect that it will be legal in at least 45 states by 2025.

Evangelicals are looking to the wrong institution to change the world. Politics and Government both like whitewash and bullshit. They approach problems on the macro-level, and spiritual concerns, emotional hurts and mental problems are best addressed on the micro level. It's so easy to get duped by politicians who promise things that can never be, and to get consumed with solving things by changing law and electing candidates.

If you honestly think 4 decades of political action by evangelicals has accomplished earth shattering things, think again. The Jesus Movement (1968-1973) concentrated on conversion and clean living, not politics, and it had a tremendous influence on tens of millions of people. Micro change happens in discussions in your living room, through your character at work, by serving the poor on the streets and in rescue missions, by listening and responding to the needs of your neighbors. If you want to stop abortion, work to prevent pregnancy and provide an option to someone facing unexpected, and unwanted, motherhood. If you have problems with homosexuality, engage homosexuals, especially those in long term relationships, the very people evangelicals want to deny marriage to.

Politics is ineffective, but it's easier. You can hide behind bills and attempted legislation. But you don't change anything most of the time, because change happens when people change, and people change when they catch the vision, joy, commitment, passion and zeal of other people. All of this occurs "off the radar," where change is a process not a law.

I admit, I don't believe that living in a democracy makes any difference to Jesus' command to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. Civil authority, however it is arrived at, should never be expected to trumpet the Kingdom of God, and if it does, look out the window, we're in Tehran pushing Islam's Sharia Law. Or on the set of the 700 Club, where Pat Robertson is pushing for Theocracy in Washington.

In spite of my belief in micro versus macro models, I haven't shaken my addiction to casting my ballot. I will vote for a Democratic Presidential candidate this year. I have voted for Republican and third party candidates in the past, but never for a Democrat.

I really like John McCain, but if you have followed Sarah Palin during this campaign and have decided that you are confident in her ability to run the Country in case something happens to 72 year old cancer survivor, all I can comment is:

"Say it ain't so, Joe."

Who Lives in Tel Aviv?

One of the most fundamental dictums of today's Evangelicalism is that because the Jews have returned to Israel, the end of this age on earth is at hand. This conviction is at the center of American Christians' ongoing, and often blind, support of everything that has transpired in that nation since its inception in 1948.

There is no question that the United States needs an ally in the Middle East, or that Israel has some historic right to inhabit the territory it now occupies, but whether the return has reversed the Diaspora of the Old Book is debatable.

Part of the fall-out of Hitler's eradication of six million European Jews was a secularization of the Jews that survived. Returning to the homeland after the war was more Zionism than the fulfillment of prophecy. The Jews that returned sought refuge from a world that had rejected them. As hostile as the Arab world was to them, Palestine became a port of entry to modern statehood and a beacon to the rest of Judaica.

Much of the controversy in Israel since its establishment has been the relationship of the pragmatic Jews that initially settled the land and the religious ones who followed. Current disputes about the Golan Heights and the West Bank are not just about defense, but also concern the physical boundaries God gave Abraham when He promised him a nation and innumerable descendants. As much as Israeli leaders now wish to accommodate Arab leaders and bring some modicum of peace to the region, fundamentalist Jews want to settle parts of the West Bank they feel they are entitled to under the Abrahamic Covenant.

Christian leaders want Israel to be the fulfillment of past prophecies. They want the ongoing survival of the nation to be a sign of God's providence and cite the 7 day war as an indication of God's protection. This might be true, but the returning Jews recognized in prophecy are messianic Jews, which means modern Israel can not be considered the answer to past promises from God about the return of a Jewish nation to this land.

This doesn't mean that Christians should advocate the rejection of Israel, especially in light of our mutual concern about Arab hyper-nationalism, but it does mean that we judge Israel's treatment of Palestinians according to the standard we hold with other friendly nations, allies and states we are antagonistic towards. A blank check to Israel, regardless of its sometimes oppressive policies isn't right. As little or as much as Christians are involved in decision making in American politics, we must be consistent in our stands, not fearing the economic leverage of China or the antagonism of Israel.

If Christians are to operate in a new relationship with politics and power, we need to be even handed, honest and just. Unafraid of the truth or of the response generated by our commitment to it.

The Eve of Destruction

After I committed my life to Jesus, I was concerned about the eternal destiny of my relatives. Or at least I told myself that. In retrospect, I wonder if what I really was looking for was affirmation that my decision was the right one; that mine was the true path for their lives. I don't know when my concern became legitimate - probably as my parents got old and frail, but by then I was trying to impact people with the testimony of my character, and often failing.

It's easier when you are selling an idea, a philosophy, a dogma. Selling the reality of your life is really difficult, but that is the cogent thing today, which puts all those who say they follow Jesus to the test. Does being a Christian mean different decisions, different reactions, different choices, different consequences, or is it only that famous slogan: "Christians aren't perfect, only forgiven?"

I look for some perfection these days, for some indication that results are connected to the declaration of faith. What is the "word of your testimony" other than this? Do Christians distance themselves from wrong; do they speak out against oppression and injustice; are they proactive in their assertion of the truth and determined in their personal conduct?

I would the answer were yes.

But in 1972, the answer was prophecy. I watched my brother-in-law, Joe Yanovitch, read THE LATE, GREAT PLANET EARTH the summer of '72. Joe wasn't a believer, but he was fascinated by prophecy the way many people were then and now. Like all discussions of future things, Bible prophecy is real, but murky. Words written in the past were interpreted later in a certain way, and now are interpreted differently. Hal Lindsey, who wrote TLGPE, asserted that passages in the Old Testament books of Daniel and Ezekiel and the New Testament book of Revelation were being fulfilled uniquely in the events of that time, specifically in the situation in the Middle East and most specifically in the return of the Jews to Israel.

If prophetic scripture written thousands of years before was actually being fulfilled, it would be a legitimate proof that the Bible was true and that God and His Son were real, and alive. The fact that TLGPE made assertions about the interpretation of certain verses that differed substantially from those presented by virtually all Biblical scholars prior to the 19th Century didn't deter Lindsey and his fellow premillennialists at Dallas Theological Seminary, from selling precise explanations of opaque passages.

In the end, the fact that Jesus didn't return in 1976 (as Charles Taylor announced), or in 1981, as many prophecy teachers taught, or any time yet has only testified of the stupidity of the church, and of those who follow its teaching.

The 20th Century was a time of extreme anxiety. People dealt with the anxiety differently. I smoked a lot of dope and ingested every drug that came my way. The Church pursued theological escape, following teaching that it would be in Heaven prior to the arrival of Armageddon. It didn't matter what was coming down, the Church would be delivered.

But the church wasn't delivered in Darfur or the Congo, in Rwanda or Zimbabwe. The Church was ravaged and Jesus didn't intervene. What happened in those nations was truly apocalyptic, and to continue with a Western Church centered worldview regarding persecution is prohibitively obscene. I recognize the outworking of evil in the world, and I don't demand that God intervene at any time outside His will, but I'll be damned if I'll let any theologian overlook what the annihilation of Christians meant on the landscape of modern prophecy. If God spoke in the past about the future, I can't imagine that He was mute about the atrocities of the last 30 years.

Looking to Biblical prophecy as an important element in verifying the Christian faith is another way of relieving the Church of its responsibility to live righteously as the major way of substantiating its claims.

Like it or not, the lives of believers matter, and Jesus isn't coming anytime soon to relieve it of its responsibility of being powerfully different than the world around it.

On November 15

On November 15, 2008, I'm shutting this puppy down. My goal in having a blog was to collect my thinking about being in the Christian faith (which is constantly on my mind) and present that to an audience. At times, I thought about influencing an audience, but I am not devastated that this didn't occur. Thinking you are writing to someone makes you care more about how you communicate. I have made mistakes in grammar along the way, have jumbled thought by misplacing or omitting a word, and I've let it stand. Let everyone be equally confused.

I have future plans for some refined version of the blog, but you have been the very motivation for me to attempt to plow through some pretty difficult stuff. I have never stopped being what I believe I am (a Christian), but I have communicated things that would make some doubt the authenticity of my faith.

Ironically, the obvious stuff is the easiest stuff. Homosexuality, the "O" word, drinking, smoking, dancing, cards, movies, dress, piercings, tattoos, grooming, purity, celibacy, and any other lifestyle issue is easier than the process of disengaging from the dysfunction of the American Church and finding an Identity as Christians in this world, and these are the things I'll be writing about between now and when I put a wrap on this blog.

Next: What the Future Will Bring
Then: Tell A Story, Tell a Joke - In Tel Aviv
And: Freaking Islam
So: Fear Is An Option
In a Set Of Five: What The Amish Tell Us

Loving Your Body

I have been told by friends and family that I can no longer discuss orgasm, and I am ready to wrap up this important topic. I am happy that talking about this has made so many people uncomfortable (the faithful and those on more "sex-friendly" paths), but am surprised as well.

I am almost 60, and I think some people are disturbed that someone my age is talking about this stuff. Discussions among mixed (male/female) groups produce uncomfortable squirming among the ladies, then unexplained, abrupt, departure. Groups of men are more at ease and usually have bemused, then coarse reactions, but then orgasm is a given for men, and we've been lying about our feats of endurance to each other in locker-rooms since we were 14. We have said it all and heard it all.

I am now seen as even more odd than I was seen before, and it has been made clear to me that the subject is not appropriate in most group settings. I am concerned that it is not a topic discussed by many people ever, especially by those in the faith.

I used to love my body. For years, I was lean and quick. I was nimble and sensuous. I liked to watch myself in the mirror. I am old and fat now; bloated by years of prescription medicine and bad choices regarding exercise and diet. I don't look in the mirror much these days. I feel like a whale mostly, which does nothing for my desirability quotient.

I discovered nudity in the day: in the middle of my LSD blitz; having brushed the sky with Zen gurus in San Francisco. I came back to Boston the summer of 1969, ready to teach the masses. I would have never known how liberating being nude in front of people was if the group that sought me out in my bed in Cambridge hadn't found me. I had no clothes; I invited them in anyway - and the crowds grew bigger; the frequency of gatherings increased; the venue changed. I got out of my bed but not into my clothes.

This is the sort of freedom I wish for those blanching about discussing orgasm. For those with multiple sexual partners, I invite you to the variety of sex available with one partner, IF YOU WANT IT. Monagamy is about more than one issue, but sexual boredom does not have to be a deal maker, if you will pursue orgasm and epiphany with your partner.

Married Christians - you have so many obstacles to sexual freedom. First, you have to want it and not fear it. I had dinner with a friend last night, who told me he feared that igniting his passion might lead him into a state where his released sexual appetite caused him to desire women other than his wife.

What happens in 20 years when he concludes that it is his wife, not his fear, that led him into sexual frustration and apathy?

What have I missed, he then asks?

No. Why have you missed it, I want to know?

Because you didn't buy a copy of the illustrated Kama Sutra?

No, because you never sat down and talked about what gives your wife and you pleasure. Because you thought if you knew too much and got too good at the craft of lovemaking,
you would be vulnerable to wander from your family. We don't resist temptation by avoiding the possibility of being tempted. Being sexually frustrated by the reality of other options is best taken care of in the bedroom, where you bring everything together: the best craft, the most ambitious exercises; love, commitment, trust, desire for something beyond great, curiosity, patience, forgiveness. The fruit of the Spirit present in lovemaking - what a concept.

I wish we could get it right. I wish that Christian couples could stay in bed all day, making love and meeting each other's deepest needs and not feel guilty about it.

"But I have more important things to do."

That's the problem in a nutshell.

I say get the lotions; the Kama Sutra; sex toys (available on line); condoms (as birth control if no other precautions are being taken); Barry White, Al Green, Marvin Gaye Cd's ; farm the kids out; put no trespassing signs on the door; turn off all electronic devices, unplug land lines and get to it.

By the way, honesty and openness can lead to hard issues, among them erectile dysfunction, frigidity, premature ejaculation, the size of the equipment - all of which can be dealt with in various ways. Vitamins, medicine, therapy, hypnotism, surgery, to name a few. There is no problem you can't overcome together. That together is the center of it all. Nothing worthwhile is easy, and orgasm and epiphany is worthwhile. I think most Christian couples understand the concept of God revealing Himself (epiphany), but fewer share orgasm, and if you can't share it, what's the point?

You could be masturbating in the shower.

Someone has to say it. Why not a 60 year old grandfather?

Orgasm as Orgasm

I believe that there can and should be more in sex than just Orgasm. Physical union provides an opportunity for deep spiritual and emotional connection, and good sex can be so good that it facilitates this. Personal spirituality, a desire to find intimacy, life-long marital commitment, a belief in monogamy, patience and friendship - these united can bring about the meeting of spiritual epiphany and physical orgasm, in the most monumental sex ever.

My friend Paul Nelson, a gifted youth leader, would often share at "True Love Waits" conferences we attended together that God makes sex "you wait until marriage for" better than any sex you can experience outside matrimony. Sounds good for the Christian side, but almost certainly not true (sorry Paul). There are sex professionals out there who really know about intercourse. They are really, really good at it. Over time, the epiphany connection during intercourse is bound to slip or get lost - thus second honeymoons and "make-up" sex - and orgasm rests alone. At this point, technique and performance really matter, and everyone (common grace), can learn how to perform better in bed than they currently are, if they determine that this is important.

Orgasm is a non-spiritual, explosive joy for many Christians. For Catholics, it has, historically, been a limbo sin redeemed by the chance of reproduction. The Apostle Paul encouraged married believers to have intercourse so they wouldn't "burn" with lust. I don't feel that this is Paul at his most inspired, but won't go overboard about 1 verse.

But if you begin in a system that restricts intercourse and orgasm to those who are married, it is easy to think that the issue is about sex, while it is really about obedience. Sex is good - damn good. Most people want and enjoy this activity, which has been created by God to bring us joy AND guarantee the continuation of our species. I don't understand the additional whys of abstinence and monogamy pounded at during Church youth gatherings. Sure, STDs and worse are out there, but the correct use of condoms provides protection against most disease and birth control of all kinds will usually prevent pregnancy, which bites a large hole in the rhetoric of the Abstinence movement.

I questions any movement that does anything that demeans sexual intimacy or discourages anyone from embracing this part of their life. To make it very clear, I think the Church needs to own the sex education of its children, and I strongly urge every Congregation to serve up the real deal. Accurate information about the hows, whys, whats, and wheres regarding intercourse and full disclosure about diseases and birth control. I think exposure to a spokesperson from Planned Parenthood to explain birth control options and availability; to volunteers from Crisis Pregnancy to help students understand support options for pregnant girls/women would be very helpful.

Church youth know most of this stuff already. This is not new to most of them. They must be thinking, "Are these guys going to try to scare us into purity?"

No scaring into choosing to wait to enjoy your sexuality in marriage; instead choosing to walk His walk, doing what He wants you to do. Got complaints? Take them up with Him. He only wants you to follow Him towards eternal and abundant life. He only wants everything good for you. Remember, He invented sex. He created your erogenous zones.

If Christians can get the young taught the right things about sex, maybe the married can enjoy it more, or, for many, at all. Thus arrives the Kama Sutra.

One more entry on this . . .

The Kama Sutra

I have waited months to write these entries. My desire to address the value of the Kama Sutra is one of the reasons I started this blog. Finally, I have the opportunity to embrace real controversy.

I once dreamt of church adult Sunday School rooms plastered with copies of pages from the sexually explicit ancient Indian sex manual (the Kama Sutra) demonstrating numerous
(24-39) positions that can help maximize the joy of intercourse. I've come to see that the clamor against such an action would minimize its value. I do think something has to be done to help the Church re-think its attitude towards orgasm - something that would energize its members' sex lives.

Is it even right to look at the book's anatomically correct drawings of almost entirely clothed Indian couples having intercourse in a wide array of positions? Is this pornography? If you sit alone masturbating at the drawings, I guess it's pornography. If you use it to bring joy back into unrelenting monogamy, I'd say it's instruction.

The question is, why do American Christians need so much help to enjoy sex? It starts with a faith that is often confused about the relationship between the body and the flesh, which teaches a high standard about fighting lust "in the heart." It continues with a founder who was abstinent and encouraged His disciples to serious consideration of this form of sexuality and a later Apostle, Paul, who followed Jesus' encouragement personally and was reluctant to endorse marriage in one area of his travels (the city of Corinth).

If sex is not sinful, why all this energy to have people restrain themselves? Jesus understood several important things: the expansion of the Kingdom of God would not come through procreation, but evangelism; there would be a great need for mobility and quick relocation among His First Century disciples as they grew the faith; everyone would be persecuted; and there would be little time for quality family time while ducking stones fired at you by irate, displaced workers in the idol makers' union.

more, more, more . . .

Foxes have Holes

"Pete, where the hell is Jesus?"

"I don't know John, He was with us a couple minutes ago."

No, He was with the Samaritan woman by the well, gently exposing her immorality and extending to her an invitation to follow Him and, in doing so, find everlasting, living water;

Or He's with the prostitute Mary Magdalene and the crowd of religious extremists surrounding her, holding heavy, jagged rocks, ready to stone her to death. When Jesus asks that the man without sin throw the first stone, all the men disperse, and Jesus tells Mary that He doesn't condemn her and all He asks is "that you sin no more;"

Maybe they should look at their friend Matty's house, where they were with Him at dinner one night, with all the tax collectors of the region and their very unsavory friends.

"Johnny, you don't think the Romans took Him?"

"Petey, the Romans will never get Him."

True enough, but He was accessible to Romans and one time He even healed a Centurion's daughter. He would talk to Pilate and be fearless when the toughest army in the world beat Him to a pulp and willingly be hung on one of their crosses.

"What if He's walking on the water again, or gathering a huge crowd of poor people who need food or raising someone from the dead or entertaining people from the Old Book who have been processed into our time or turning over Friday Market in Temple Square?"

"Pierre, you can be sure that He is somewhere, doing what He feels He's called to, completely different from what we think He should be doing. He may look different; may have cut His hair; He might be saying words I don't really understand; or revealing the meaning of Old Book truths that I've never really understood."

Aslan is a wild lion, C.S. Lewis said. And Jesus is as wild as the wind and elusive as a ghost and yet wants desperately to connect with the human race.

"Yo, John, Pete - hey, it's me, Nick, here - from the 21st Century. Let me tell you where we find Jesus in our world: with the hungry and sick; in Darfur and Rwanda; in Congo and the Palestinian State; in missions and orphanages; on soup lines and under bridges; in prayer and praise; in the New Book and the men who honestly teach it. He hangs with Bono, reads Sojourners Magazine, worships in a small, black church in the inner city, listens to Rich Mullins, howls at movies like ARMAGEDDON and THE DAY AFTER, walks through our cities, unnoticed, and preaches on its corners, unheard.

Mates, we know it's difficult to find Jesus in big Churches; on Christian TV and in Bible Book Stores. Won't find Him on both sides in armed conflicts; won't find Him on either side, actually; He's not networking on the Golf Course or running to be Mayor of Jerusalem or leading armed insurrections against Rome. He's not setting policy for lobbyists or doing strategic planning for large corporations.

Guys, Jesus is everywhere we don't want to be: broke, homeless. consumed with a zeal to serve the insignificant. And doing everything without the need or desire to be acknowledged."

Take all that you have been taught about Jesus: His voice, face and features and throw it out and insert the image displayed in PASSION OF THE CHRIST. Even resurrected, He shows scars of the crucifixion.

Not an appropriate sight at a Country Club; but a welcome presence at Portland Rescue Mission.

Self Deceived

If I wasn't a follower of Jesus, I think I would worship my ancestors. I am wrapped up in history and in my family's place in it, and I could easily take that to the point of offering pieces of apple pie to a picture of my father.

My dad's been dead almost four years, but I still feel him close to me. I can't imagine dishonoring his memory by discarding the values he fleshed out in his life. Although I have no reason to live in the light if I don't believe in the power who created that light, I do have an obligation to my father.

My days in the drug culture - the arrests, courts, stealing, squandering his money - were not pleasant ones for him, and he never really recovered his trust in me. In the thirty-four years after my commitment to Jesus, I learned a lot from him regarding the old ways - honor, truthfulness, straight shooting, kindness, patience, compassion and generosity.

If I had a reason to dis-believe tomorrow, I would live a life that mirrored that of my father. No dope; no old broads; no hardness and cynicism; no pessimism about the future; keeping my word; treating people fairly; supporting that which is just; and always, always voting for Democrats.

Some things rest heavy on me, and after years of peeing on what my dad held important, I am certain that I would go down screaming rather than meekly acquiescing to values contrary to his.

That's what I can do to keep him close.

Although I made cogent arguments in my last blog regarding "doing good for good's sake," I was deceiving myself about who I would be if I didn't believe. As much as I could in my own strength, I would live in the image of my father.

Love Should Be Its Own Reward

I love to get comments on a blog entry, and I want to respond to one I got to a recent entry entitled "Forever." I had a harsh and dramatic reaction in it to the idea that living a good life was a fulfilling path even if Jesus wasn't God and had not risen from the dead.

It's a good question: "Shouldn't love be its own reward?"

At the highest point on the triangle of human needs, in the world of self-actualization, love may be its own reward. I have never been to the realm of self-actualization, save by the power of Jesus, but I know there are altruistic people who do live in that rarefied atmosphere. It's hard for me to understand that, for the theology of the New Book indicates that sin should prevent that sort of selflessness, but I'd rather be challenged by the life of Gandhi than deny its value on some distorted view of the New Book. Jesus remarked on an occasion that "those who aren't against me are for me." There is value in good, whether a person does it with a pure heart or distorted one. Good and truth exist outside pure theology, and people can experience those things whether they are believers or not.

As we try to be unified in doing good, we need to be accepting of those who do it for different reasons. I can't find in myself the motivation to do the kind of good I want to do outside the power of Christ. In the 60s, the end result of my absolute commitment to a loving, caring community was to break into my friends' houses and rob them. I came to Jesus because of the gap between aspiration and execution. For thirty eight years, I have looked to see if I have come to a place where obedience to His instructions was my major motivation, not the desire for a reward or to avoid punishment.

If it's all a sham, I don't think I would walk a sacrificial life of service. I like carnal pleasures, and I'm not denying them out of the kindness of heart. I'm continuously trading baser instincts for higher ones, because Jesus wants that. Eternity plays a part, as I said in the original blog.

I love people who do good, who have a heart for the poor, orphans and the disenfranchised. People live that way for different reasons. With or without New Book faith. For me, if Jesus isn't risen and eternity is a fantasy, out of the way, I'm rolling joints and cruising retirement centers.

But Wednesdays and Thursdays, I'm still watching my grandchildren Greta and Calla, for some things will never change. My unconditional love for them is at the top of that list.

Bar Keep or Circuit Rider

The American Experience bred a different kind of Christian than is found in the rest of the world. Our cultural retardation comes from the American West, where two great institutions collided - the Saloon and the Church.

The Saloon pre-dated the Church on the frontier: the danger of Indians and outlaws on the fringe of expansion encouraged husbands to leave their families behind as they forged a new identity, hundreds or a thousand miles from wife and children. Working cattle drives and life on a ranch were occupations that discouraged normal family life; mining was long,tough work that made brave men hard; all this played out in a dangerous environment, where crime and violence were all-to-present realities.

The Saloon was a refuge for men alone on future's edge. They could drink freely, and to excess. They could gamble, blowing their monthly wages on crooked tables. They could dance all night, stopping occasionally to expectorate the juice of their chaw into omnipresent spittoons. They could watch burlesque on large stages inside the saloons, and bone the chorus girls afterwards, because the Saloons were almost always brothels as well as watering holes.

Frontier preachers - aka Circuit Riders - saw the depravity of the moving edge of America and arrived in numbers to minister to its lost souls. They were received with indifference until wives and children arrived from back East, and when now reassured families settled there. The Church was the second institution established in Dodge City, Ogalalla, Silver City and Tombstone, and the battle between the Church and the Saloon was on.

There was no question who would win, at least in the immediate run. If there are stages of settlement, and there certainly are, the danger of original conquest is followed by pacification. The railroad wanted peace and predictability. The Federal Government wanted an end to Indian wars. Small business owners didn't want cowboys shooting up their store fronts every two weeks.

Churches were the instruments of pacification - in towns, with church meetings and events and the establishment of schools; on the reservation, with missionaries who "civilized the savages."
The Saloon had reduced influence on the frontier after the arrival of the Church, and eventually it was shut down by Prohibition.* The American Church continued to vilify the Saloon and made its attributes the main enemies of faith; i.e., the aforementioned WOLBI Statement of Conduct - no drinking or smoking; no card playing; no social dancing; no shows/movies. This was all about Saloons, not New Book teaching.

After WOLBI, I was shocked to learn that C.S. Lewis, probably the pre-eminent theologian of the 20th Century, drank Scotch, freely and openly - with no guilt - and that Charles Spurgeon, the great English preacher, smoked cigars "to the glory of God. But these were European Christians, never under the spell of the Saloon, so never needing to discard it.

They realized that you don't break the power of something by attacking its components. The problem with the Saloon was how it existed as an agent for "Spiritual Wickedness in High Places," not the drinking, smoking, card playing, dancing and shows that flourished there. These things didn't make the Saloon. They were merely present there, and if you think smoking in my office, having a beer at a sporting event, playing Bridge in my parlor, square dancing at the Elks Lodge and going to see the Chronicles of Narnia at the movies speaks to my spirituality one bit, you are deluded and deceived, and drunk on the need to legalistically judge others.

"You ain't going to make it with anyone, anyhow" - the Beatles once more. Oh my god, the Beatles? Were they believers?


* Bars came back after Prohibition, but Saloons, with their expansive reach and influence, didn't. We have specialized places of relaxation now: strip clubs, dance clubs, dinner theater; all selling alcohol and, in the past, encouraging smoking, but few places (Las Vegas Hotels?) that do it all.

don't smoke; don't chew; don't go with girls that do

Want to know how screwed up the American Church is? Check out the Conduct Statement students at Word of Life Bible Institute (WOLBI) in upstate New York have to sign. See Wolbi.com.

It's an horrific view of the past; it's like the one I agreed to when I was a student there in the early seventies. Yes, I was there. I agreed not to drink, smoke or take illegal drugs. I agreed not to play with a standard deck of cards; or to go to movies or plays; to never dance socially and to wear a one piece bathing suit (quite a sacrifice that).

Because of changing standards, hair length, facial hair, piercing and tattoos are not mentioned, but I'm sure that WOLBI will police its students, striving to have the most conservative, "Christian looking" student body possible. I forgot, they had better be listening to appropriate (insert Christian, rapless, moderate rock beat) music also, because rock music unfettered is "The Devil's Diversion."

I didn't care much about WOLBI's restrictions in 1971. I was coming out of the counter-culture, and it all meant nothing to me. I was beamed into Jesus, and everything was secondary to that.
But within a year, the spirit behind the regulations had captured me. Christian legalism is a system that establishes that Christians can, and are, to judge fellow believers by their appearance and actions to see how they match up to the testimony of Jesus. This system inevitably spills over to judgment of those not following Jesus as well.

Legalism is an awful thing. It separates people who have the same faith on the basis of choices regarding mostly unimportant issues. In that it creates confidence in those not practicing these evil actions, it takes focus away from moving to accomplish positive things for Jesus. You don't do good by policing those doing bad. You don't do good resting in the knowledge that you have prevented someone from doing what you perceive as evil.

Christianity is a quagmire much of the time, but never more than when children of the same father kill each other with words and deeds. I may have to speak very harsh things about prosperity theology and Joel Osteen, but I have no joy in doing it, and I don't feel I gain anything from that action. Joel Osteen may be a godly man - I hope he is - but prosperity theology (think, act, believe prosperous and God is required to make you that) is a complete distortion of Jesus' teaching in the New Testament. The theology is wrong - Joel Osteen may or may not be - but calling him out does nothing for the integrity of my life. That is determined by my actual life, and the things I do that advance God's love on earth.

Just so you have ammunition to judge me, Word of Life friends and alumni: I drink beer, wine and Scotch - once a week, usually; I smoked a pipe for years, now I do a couple of cigars a month; I play cards indiscriminately, but don't gamble; I would dance all night if I could do it well - I like to be close to female flesh (my wife's specifically); I have three tattoos - two are huge, in vivid color; I love movies and theatre - I have been known to watch questionable programs on TV, most recently "The L Word," and I deal with God's conviction when I give myself access to programs that distract me from the task at hand.

I care about Christians squandering their sexuality, getting DUIs, being dishonest in business transactions, abusing their spouses and children and getting easy divorces, but I don't sweat the small stuff, nor do I think I gain anything from an other's failure.

Jesus said it was right to address brothers and sisters caught in sin - quietly, meekly, with absolute humility. I see no humility in WOLBI's Conduct Statement, and very little of Jesus either.

Inadvertent

Neither Gandhi nor Martin Luther King were accidental in their commitment to non-violence. Each of them, publicly and privately, acknowledged that his choice of this method of resistance was intentional. It would only work in a society with a free press, basic humanity and a democratically elected government. When British soldiers killed unarmed Indian protesters, it was reported to a morally outraged British public who demanded reform of the nation's colonial policies. Failure to comply with the demands threatened the ongoing viability of the party in power.

Fire hoses and attack dogs did more to advance the Civil Rights movement in this country than MLK's eloquence. Injustice to a defenseless crowd of peaceful demonstrators activated a sensitive television audience more than history or rhetoric ever could, and sweeping legislation gave civil rights to blacks, women and perhaps, in the future, gay Americans.

The fact that non-violence was pragmatically chosen does not invalidate its morality. Jesus is absolute about turning the other cheek. He is not trying to evoke some response in doing this. Non-violence is for the cameras and the jungles; reported by the JERUSALEM NEWS or secretly practiced in the bowels of the Soviet gulag; never to gain support; always to gain God's presence.

Christians tend to have big agendas - the greatest being to win others to Christ. But if you can't turn the other cheek, what are you winning people TO? If Jesus can't change you once He owns you, why should He own anyone else? And if you don't want to be owned and do the things asked of you - in the spotlight and in blackness - why continue under an inappropriate description? Being a Christian involves knowing the way and trying to walk it. Lacking either of these two things, all you can ever be is inadvertent, a random flicker in a world that needs floodlights.

Forever

As I watched an Amy Winehouse video this morning, I couldn't help thinking of how difficult it is for the truly gifted to make it through this life. There is a seemingly endless list of famous people who have drunk, drugged or eaten themselves to an early grave and an equally impressive group who have ended things by their own hand. Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison, River Phoenix, Sid Vicious, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Poe, Dennis Wilson, Kerouac, John Candy, Hunter Thompson, Ledger, Chris Farley, Belushi and Marilyn Monroe all died hard and young.

Someone once told me that even if Heaven was a lie, the Christian life was the best life to lead anyway. Sheer and utter garbage. The Apostle Paul said if Jesus hadn't risen from the dead, Christians were the most foolish people in the world, and they should embrace eating, drinking and being merry with everyone else. I personally would be smoking lots of dope, chasing skirts and committing larceny (for amusement and profit).

Following Christ is equal measure playing out this hand and playing out different cards in eternity with God, in one of the 8 other dimensions super collider scientists have isolated.

There is only so much intrinsic joy in selling your possessions and giving your money to the poor; only so much cheerful interest in being burned alive; only so much peaceful anticipation of being disemboweled like William Wallace; only so much steely resolve to endure torture behind the iron or bamboo curtains.

Following Jesus includes eternal life in a spiritual place where time blurs into a mysterious, personal experience with God. Heaven is forever without boredom or endless
repetition. I don't understand all of it, but I don't get where the matter given life by the "big bang" came from either.

Heaven is irrelevant to many in our culture. We are smarter; we live longer; we are not persecuted. Before my father, not a Christian, died - three years ago at 88 - he often commented on how ready he was to die. He was tired and wearing out. He was ready to sleep. Older people are less interested in converting to a religion that promises activity after death than a thirty year old, cut down by the bubonic plague in his prime. We don't often huddle in the corner of a jail cell whimpering to God for help or have the occasion to cry out from the chopping block, waiting for the axe to fall. Westerners die in our beds, doped to the gills with pain reducing agents, easing us out through the last stages of metastasized cancer. We are numbed into eternity - or into nothing.

As important as Jesus' teachings are, the lynch pin of his life was the resurrection. This validated His miracles, the authority of His words, His promises about the future, His assurances about eternal life and His warnings regarding a future without His involvement in an individual's life.

Forever is a long time, with or without Him.

Molasses

American Christians are slow to change their attitudes and churches are like molasses. Theology and church doctrine is either too cumbersome or too rigid, and because of that change is invisible.

So far the Presidential election of 2008 is not about abortion and homosexuality, key arguing points in 2000 and 2004, indicating two things: people are most interested in fear issues - the economy and the war, now; and that religion is contrarian, fighting against change because it is change, not because right and wrong are at stake - when things calm down, the church often disappears.

I had lunch with my good friend Jordan Disko last week. We talked about my blog entry on homosexuality, and he suggested that homosexuality was less of an issue today in the church because that institution had taken a "don't ask, don't tell" approach to gay involvement.

Church members, once so intent on fighting "the homosexual agenda," don't want to fight anymore. They are tired of bad press, nasty characterizations on TV shows, the embarrassment of "outed" clergy and a general mood shift in the Country towards the legalization of gay civil unions.

Some ministers actually see gays as an important mission field for their churches and are ramping up gay friendly programs while ramping down "God hates fags" signage.

God brings things into our consciousness that challenge our moral definitions. It takes a William Wilberforce to see through the economic benefits of the slave trade and fight for the Abolition of Slavery in England. It takes an Abraham Lincoln to see that Emancipation was the the correct policy for American slaves in the Civil War. It took a Susan B. Anthony to activate the process that led to a woman's right to vote. It took a Winston Churchill to personalize the nobility of all or nothing resistance and later Gandhi to epitomize the power of non violent resistance. It took a Martin Luther King to spur legislation that brought to Black Americans the voting rights they had been mostly denied since their Emancipation.

Many British shippers embraced abolition even though it ended much of their livelihood.
It meant ruin for White plantation owners to free their slaves, but some did. Women lost jobs and marriages because they were suffragettes, but they stayed the course. Pacifists in England and militant revolutionaries in India submitted their agendas for the unity of the moment, regardless of their positions after the conflicts ended. Southern whites marched with black Civil Rights leaders knowing they would be beaten outside Selma, Alabama.

The question is, what sort of prescience prepares the Church to be on the right side of these sorts of issues, in that it has a history (in a majority of the aforementioned cases) of coming down on the morally incorrect side of them? It has not usually been through malice, but by a tendency to want to rest in the status quo. The process of understanding would be acceptable except the church generally immediately turns opposition into a political position, making it one of the most conservative parts of society.

I will ring the bell proclaiming the Church is free from the role of political watchdog of the morals of our society. I can tell my neighbor there are options to abortion. I am compelled to, in fact. but throwing the contents a vial of blood on Juno as she tries to sneak into Planned Parenthood "ain't going to make it with anyone any how" (thank you Beatles). Mob mentality can never show the piercing power of the love of God, and when you exchange the vulnerability of one-on-one sharing for the gurgle of a group, the most important part of that encounter is lost, and advocates of life look like bullies.

Perhaps Christians should start preparing for the future moral issues we will be facing: bestiality; the age of consent - as defined by statutory rape and other "sex crimes;" sibling marriage; polygamy; physician assisted suicide; decriminalization and legalization of marijuana and other recreational drugs; tax exempt status for churches and charitable contributions; mandatory military service; defining and dealing with pornography and prostitution; divorce (an ongoing issue everywhere); models of child rearing; and many more I can't even think of yet.

The first thing I want to do when viewing an issue is set it next to the New Book. Pornography, for instance, is people having sex - nothing wrong with that; people are watching that act, nothing in the Book specifically against it, but weird; the participants are casually or anonymously coupled, which is against fidelity and monogamy(share our message); some women have been exploited by involvement in pornography (how does the church help?); some men are prone to addiction to pornography (how can church help?); certain areas should be pornography free for sake of children/addicts (partner in community to insure zones; reasonability reigns; work towards consensus among all parties involved); owners of pornography stores aren't the devil (businessmen; treat with respect and love; win to Jesus and let them decide future of establishment). That would be a beginning outline/strategy. I'd leave the picket signs at home and start working at the parts of the concern that would bring a true change in the industry, not just the shuffling of porno stores into another location in town. The Jesus Way is always harder, for it's built on changing the entire mess, not just lambasting or denying it.

The Gang Plank

After three years study, I have come to the conclusion that the argument among Christians regarding homosexuality and the New Book comes down to 2 verses in Romans.

An accurate translation of Romans 1:27-28 is:

For this cause God gave them up into disgraceful passions, for their women exchanged the instinctive use (sexual intercourse) into that which is contrary to native disposition

Likewise also the men, laying aside their instinctive use (sexual intercourse) of the women burned in their lust one towards another, men with men, working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves the recompense of their effort which was meet.

For thirty years, I never questioned that homosexuality was a sin. I believed that the "know," in the story of Sodom, meant the same as the "know" in Genesis, i.e., sexual intercourse. This seemed a clear illustration of homosexual sin that was judged by God accordingly. I was not a vitriolic opponent of homosexual rights, I just presumed that gay men and lesbians were unwilling to renounce their sins and be converted into Christian heterosexuals. I guess I believed that there was a "gay agenda," which was attempting to usher in a new wave of repulsive sexual spectacle, ignoring God's condemnation of sodomy and other disgusting acts.

I started to waiver three years ago, when after meeting my son's college roommate, a gay ,Christian kid from Minnesota, I had an epiphany. You could be a sincere Christian and be homosexual.

All I'd ever really known about gays was bath houses, nude parades, anonymous sex, uncontrollable lust and a general antagonism to Christianity. Forgive me Mike for knowing so little and judging so much.

There are 10 passages in the New Book about homosexuality. Verses like 1 Cor. 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:10 and Jude 7 that have been used to condemn homosexuality are pretty hollow, for key words in the passages have been fairly well mishandled, reflecting translators' predisposition to be homophobic. I examined Old Book passages, and how the story of Sodom could have been about distrust, dishonor, violent anger and disloyalty of the people of Sodom, not about homosexual mania. I have no problem with other OB passages, because I reject their authority after Jesus' arrival before John the by Baptist at the River Jordan. I find claims about David and Jonathan' sexual relationship and assertions that it was Adam and Steve in the Garden of Eden not Adam and Eve ludicrous (and amusing in their earnest awkwardness).

The OB is clearly about "going forth and multiplying." The NB is about "going forth and making disciples." Homosexuality was an abomination to the Jews. So were Gentiles, Samaritans and any food that deviated from God's instructions regarding diet regulations. Circumcision was sacrosanct. All this was changed in the NB: there is no male or female in Christ; no slave or free; no Jew or Gentile. Circumcision was not required of Gentile believers and the dietary laws were lifted. It was a cataclysmic revolution; Jesus was more disruptive than any figure in world history.

It could be predicted that the chasm between homosexuality and heterosexuality would be eliminated as well. The early church had homosexual covenants. The world of the NB is rife with homosexuality, and very little is said about that sexual orientation. The infamous passage in Romans is seen by some as an admonition to not yield to bi-sexuality. The word translated "nature" in most translation is best defined as "native," indicating that the actions described are not contrary to inherent rules for all human behavior, but for individual behavior.

Paul attempts in this passage to call heterosexual believers not to leave their native orientation to embrace entanglement in same sex affairs solely because of pressure from a bi-sexual culture.
Although I am not fully satisfied with this interpretation, the scarcity of passages regarding homosexual practices, the obvious parallel between bond and free, male and female, Jew and Greek, the absolute ability of God to love everybody and the reality of homosexual Christians, famous and obscure, who remain homosexual, even after attempting every means of purging this indelible part of their lives, makes me conclude that some people are born gay, and should be embraced by the faith, not abandoned by it.

This is another area in which many have defined the church as homophobic without having any basis other than changing moral standards behind their own conduct. Christians are servants of Christ and must hear the promptings and instruction of the New Book. If you say you are only going to follow the words of Christ and reject the writings of Paul, you are rejecting the work of the First Century church and its earliest referenced body of sacred writings, detailed in 79AD.

The moral principles of the New Book regarding marriage apply to everyone: celibacy, monogamy, faithfulness, lifelong. The failure of Homosexuals to follow the aforementioned moral principles should be handled the same as heterosexual failure. The bar is the same for everyone, and it is high.

Bi-sexuality is a moot point, because marriage is monogamous and lifelong. Transgender situations should be handled with compassion and understanding. I have no biblical position on this, but I believe in inclusion and support.

That's it. Glug, glug.