St. John Studies

I had a long conversation with a church member not too long ago about a couple of people in their Sunday school class.

It seems that comments had been coming forth from people about other denominations and this person was really upset. The denomination that was denigrated was the home denomination of this person.

All I could say was “We should never do that. It is not appropriate to be making such comments in a Sunday school class or anywhere else for that matter.”

We all know that Jesus was a Jew, yet He was not one who spoke ill of other religions. When confronted by the Centurion who seeks a miracle for his ailing servant, Jesus says “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.” Then Jesus said to the Canaanite woman with the demon-possessed daughter, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

If His Disciples had their way, Jesus would have ignored the woman. They said “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”  He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”  The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”  “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”  This was when the daughter was healed.

Jesus did not demand that people become Jewish before He worked a miracle for them.

When one of the Apostles saw someone casting out demons in the name of Christ, they told Jesus that they tried to prevent him because “he does not follow along with us.” Jesus said, “Do not hinder him; for he who is not against you is for you” [Luke 9: 49-50].

Why do we refuse to see more differences and ignore the similarities? It happens all the time.  Take a diverse group of people and put them in a big room to sit at picnic tables.  What do they do?  Most will gravitate to tables where people who look like them are sitting.  That drives me crazy!  How are we ever going to learn anything about how other people experience life if we just hang out with people who are just like us.

Instead of focusing on differences and similarities, and using such generic terms like diverse, let’s use the word rich. The Christian experience is a rich one.  I have a good friend who just joined the Catholic Church and the proud traditions of the church really appealed to him.  I have another friend who is non-denominational and his services are truly alive with the Holy Spirit.  The music is very lively, people will get up and shout their praises and the singing is in a word, “exuberant.”  My Aunt Babe was a rector in the Episcopal Church and attending her services, one was exposed to a liturgy that was truly poetic and proper in its performance.  I have visited African-American churches that are so supportive of the preacher, their shouts of encouragement are uplifting and you never fear that they are not listening.  The shouts always come at the right places because they are engaged with the message.

Jesus assured that where two or more are gathered in His Name, He is with them [ Matt. 18:20].

He did not say two or more Jewish people, or Catholic people, Baptist people or United Methodist people. He said PEOPLE.

Pastor Hamilton says in Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White:  “The truth is that all of the branches in this tree called Christianity are a bit defective.  But each adds to the beauty of the whole.  What a tragedy if we were to cut off all but one of the limbs.  But what riches are to be found if we can humbly listen and learn from one another, appreciating our differences, while together seeking to follow Jesus Christ.”

In 1991, Rodney King [a taxi driver in L. A.] was brutally beaten by L. A. police. It was caught on camera and when it played on television, it caused riots in the African-American community.   King was attributed with going on TV and saying “Can’t we all just get along?” in response to the unrest his beating ignited.

The “can’t we all just get along” plea is a good one. It is a wish for all people all the time but today we need unity in the Christian community more than ever before as the scripture “You are the light of the world” [Matthew 5:14] takes on great meaning.  In short, the world needs a moral beacon, especially today.

Sadly the “can’t we all just get along” plea falls on deaf ears within the Christian church.

The truly sad thing about this is it has been this way almost from the very beginning. I have been blessed to have some time to read since I have retired and one of my “must reads” was Brian Moynahan’s The Faith: A History of Christianity.  Moynahan pulls no punches in his book as he takes Christianity to task for the lack of unity in the faith.  Adam Hamilton does the same:  “Though all claim to be followers of Jesus, most have divided over matters of doctrine or ways of practicing their faith.  Each feels that their doctrine and practice is more faithful than the others.”

The truly sad thing about the history of our faith is as Christianity became the adopted faith of the Roman Empire in the Empire’s last years; Christians began to turn on each other as they tried to root out heresy in their religion. The irony of this fact is that the Roman Empire made martyrs of Christian believers as emperors refused to allow Christianity in the Empire.  As Emperor Constantine found his way to Christianity, he refused to persecute non-Christians [for a while].  Eventually in the 340’s he came under so much pressure to persecute pagans that he allowed pagan shrines to be desecrated by Christians.  Moynahan says “it took little enough time for Christians to turn from persecuted to persecutors.”

It was not long until Christians turned their attentions to heretical Christians. In 386 at Trier [in France] Christians set fire to a group of their own because they had been critical of Christian church practice.  They imposed the penalty of burning at the stake which was a popular form of execution used by Emperor Nero.  Moynahan does not recount many burnings in the next years but he admits “a precedent had been set.”

You might wonder why do I go back to Christian history, to times that seemed so long ago? What is the point that I am trying to make?  Well the point is after Christ left this earth and man took over how the church was run, it has been a splintered mess.

I get so disheartened when I consider the influence the church could exert on the world if we all worked together. Hamilton cites such powerful scripture when he turns to Matthew 23:24 “You blind guides!  You strain at a gnat but swallow a camel.”  Rightly so, he understands the important thing about our faith is its focus on justice, mercy and faith.    Jesus says “It is these you should have practiced without neglecting the others” [Matthew 25].

Instead we have a spirit of competition as each church tries to draw in the unchurched in any way possible. We have to fill the pews.  We have to have heavy collection plates.  Moynahan states Christians “have fractured their faith beyond repair, as each church claimed its own right to reach to heaven, they were heedless of an earlier and grimmer miracle.”  The tower builders of Babel made an effort to build an edifice that reached to heaven, making the tower a prime example of human pride and self-sufficiency.  The Lord was not happy with the effort and he confounded their single language.  He made it where they could not understand each other.

We have done that to the church. We have taken a powerful institution and we have fragmented it due to our own desire to “be right.”

Chapter two begins with a multitude of clichés but they do apply:

We can’t see the forest for the trees.

We win the battle and lose the war.

We struggle to keep the main thing the main thing.

We make a mountain out of a molehill.

“While this is a universal affliction of all human beings, religious people excel at it” [Hamilton, 9]

“Can’t we all just get along?”

No…we can’t.

This first week I have spent a lot of time posting on our government that is not productive due to politicians not finding a way to get along, the fact that there is such a thing as middle ground between extremes when it comes to politics, the idea that politics and spirituality are strange bedfellows and finally the role of the pastor in all of this political mess.

Today I want to pull back and discuss this black and white stuff.

Why do we talk about the world in extreme terms? Why do we like to use ideas like white [a color due to the reflection of most wavelengths of visible light; the opposite of black:] and black [of the very darkest color owing to the absence of or complete absorption of light; the opposite of white].

What is the value of all this extreme thought?

Well you might be surprised but the greatest value is it helps us to use our brains less.

I don’t know what happens to some people. As they get older, life gets to be a struggle and they want to “cut to the chase” to use a common cliché.   They want the “quick and dirty” answers.  They don’t want to examine issues which are difficult.  Too often they just want someone to give them the answers.

This is where black or white comes in. People want to classify others as black or white or liberal or conservative but let me tell you, as Pastor Hamilton says, “we humans are an odd and somewhat confused lot.  We defy black and white categorization.”

He cites Pastor Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, you know that church that likes to station church members along routes going from funeral homes to cemeteries. Those church members have controversial messages about homosexuals and how America is being punished for tolerating them.  In Christian County, Kentucky [where I live] the county passed an ordinance banning this type of display since they were going to do this at a military funeral.

Fred Phelps was a lawyer who fought for civil rights for African Americans after he left law school. He was highly regarded by the NAACP due to his work opposing discrimination based on race.

He defies black and white categorization.

A few years ago a very good friend in my Sunday school class loaned me a popular book about Fox New founder, chairman and CEO Roger Ailes [Roger Ailes, Off Camera].   This friend knew I was different than him because of how I reacted to news of the day in Sunday school.  When he gave me the book, I wondered “what is he up to?”  Out of respect for him I read it from cover to cover and I was shocked.  I figured a man like Ailes only dealt with extreme right wing people but I soon saw that he did not.  He had relationships with all kinds of people from all over the political spectrum.  He called up liberals and conservatives daily and had friends from the left and right and worked hard all his life to understand the world of television, irrespective of any party affiliation.  I began to see Mr. Ailes in a whole new light.

He defies black and white categorization.

To be honest, life is like that. I don’t want you to jump to a conclusion that all moral choices in life are gray.  I am not advocating that.  I just want to point out that making decisions takes work, work that we often don’t want to do.  We want to shut our brains down quickly.  It is a strain to take the time to think through issues.

We have a candidate running for president now who is evolving right before us on the television screen. He defies description from time to time because he does one thing and says he believes another.  His “track record” says one thing because of the money he has given to support various causes and now he says he is the opposite of that.  His political party, from time to time, does not know what to do with him.  He does not fit their mold.

He defies black and white categorization.

Pastor Hamilton says “Many of us are liberal on some issues and conservative on others. Someone more conservative than you thinks of you as a liberal; likewise, your liberal neighbor considers you a conservative.”

These terms are of little use except to shut down the human mind. Pastor Hamilton will hopefully show us in upcoming chapters that Jesus offers a way to take our energies and be bridge builders, peacemakers and healers.

Get ready, it may require you to crank up your cranium.

That’s the opposite of shutting it down.

Remember, we are trying to avoid those extreme terms.

Sorry, the pollen has got me.

This pic tells it all.  Today’s Post will go out tomorrow…..

The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

The First Amendment is a good thing for a nation that seeks to “separate church from state.” I can’t imagine that many American pastors would want a government that would tell them how they have to preach.

But in times of political turmoil, I also can imagine that it would be hard to not take the pulpit and comment on the times, especially when our culture needs words of guidance.

Pastor Hamilton cites two cases of pastors who represent opposite ends of the political spectrum and how their expressed views did not help.

I have lived long enough to remember Pastor Jerry Falwell, Pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg Virginia and one of the founders of Liberty University. I am less familiar with John Shelby Spong, retired American bishop of the Episcopal Church.  He is a liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator and author.

If you have had a television set for the past thirty years or so, you have seen Reverend Falwell on his “Old Time Gospel Hour”. Sadly he grabbed headlines a few years ago by saying things from the pulpit like 9/11 was caused by the American Civil Liberties Union, abortionists, gays and lesbians.

Spong has been made famous to some by declaring that most of the historic doctrines of the Christian faith are bankrupt. In fact, what most Christians believe has been thrown out by Spong [a sample is the virgin birth (understood as literal biology); Spong states that the virgin birth makes Christ’s divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible].  To understand more about him, look up his “Ten Points of Reform”.  Talk about controversy…

What is the role of the pastor today? What can they say and do to help the situation in American Society today?  Does a Pastor need to influence his or her congregation in the voting process?  Is it important for them to discuss their own political views from the pulpit or should they avoid such topics?

I have been sitting in congregations when pastors made statements about politics and I have never seen it turn out well. In fact, I have talked to parishioners who left the church due to a political comment made by a pastor.  One woman left due to one sentence in one sermon.  It was a judgmental sentence and she felt it judged her.  That was enough.

Yet, Presidents have sought pastors for their guidance; probably the most influential pastor has been Reverend Billy Graham, who has counseled every president from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush [eleven in all]. What did Graham do that impacted these world leaders?   They know and God knows.  You can bet he had an influence.

Despite reports to the contrary, President Obama has a spiritual caucus of five pastors that he consults and prays with on a regular basis. The details of their relationship with the President are not well known but he reaches out to them to keep himself spiritually grounded.

I have had private conversations with pastors who have talked politics.   When they do, I always get uncomfortable, like they are making pronouncements that they should avoid.

Still the question is there, what can they do? What is their role?

I liken their job to that of the watchman. In Isaiah 21:6 the Lord said to Isaiah “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.”   Isaiah was a prophet in the Kingdom of Judah, probably between about 740 B.C. and 698 B.C.   In this verse, he is prophesying about the fall of Babylon.  He is warning of impending doom, for Judah has not been doing what God has demanded.  God wants total dedication from His people and they have been worshipping idols and doing unspeakable acts against God.

Our culture needs a watchman, a person who keeps an eye on our culture and warns of repercussions for our behaviors. My pastor skirts the issue of politics, by not talking about it at all, preferring to discuss “higher” issues than American political affairs.  When Adam Hamilton is asked whether he is a liberal or conservative he answers “yes” to that question.  Obviously he cares about America or he would not have written Seeing Gray but he does not feel compelled to take sides.

What was the role of the watchman? Like the Old Testament prophets, they warned Israel and Judah that they were doing wrong in the eyes of the Lord.  They warned that God was going to punish them if they did not repent of their sinful ways.  Judah did not listen to Isaiah.

America may not get it.

America may pay the price for ignoring its watchmen.

I am so blessed to have close friends and family members who are pastors. I am so blessed to have so many solid Christians in my life who are friends.  I am so blessed to be a member of a Christian church family.

And I wonder from time to time where we all fit into the world of politics today?

Then they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Him in order to trap Him [Jesus] in a statement. They came and said to Him, “Teacher, we know that You are truthful and defer to no one; for You are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay a poll-tax to Caesar, or not? “Shall we pay or shall we not pay?” But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why are you testing Me? Bring Me a denarius to look at.”   They brought one. And He said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” And they said to Him, “Caesar’s.”   And Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” [Mark 12].

“My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it” [John 17].

These two scriptures are very popular and may mean different things to different people but in Mark, I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that Jesus is trying to relay the idea that what the government demands of man is much different than what God demands of man.

In John, Jesus is specifically praying for his Disciples to realize they are not of this world. Several times in the Bible He refers to Christians as being in this world but not of this world.

But politics?

To me, the word has such a “worldly” feel about it.

As Americans, we are told by many in other cultures that we should appreciate our vote, our ability to participate in government, our means of expression.

I don’t advocate that we just quit participating but I do advocate that we educate ourselves as much as we can about what is going on with a candidate.

This may be a very inconsequential metaphor, but it is just like clicking “like” on someone else’s Facebook post.   Be very careful what you like.  Your liking indicates something about you.  [of course, voting is much more serious than that.]

Keep in mind that politics can be about “being used.” Adam Hamilton in Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White says: “Too often faith has been used by Christian leaders and politicians to further a particular political party or political agenda.”   For many political operatives, the Christian Evangelical group of voters is just a demographic group.  I don’t know how many times I have heard a pundit or a politician say that such and such candidate has locked up the Christian Evangelical vote.  I don’t want to be a voter in a block of voters, just voting like others in my demographic group.

More than that, in the minds of many people who are unaffiliated with a religious group, the more controversial topics like homosexuality, abortion and the Biblical origin of man drive people away from the church. You may recall what I said at the beginning of this post about the many Christians I have in my life.  Guess what; I have many non-Christians among my family and friends and many of them won’t have anything to do with God because of their feelings of disgust about the church and a single controversial issue.  Often they are not fully aware of the position of the church.  They just think they know.  As Hamilton says, “Christianity has become a wedge that drives people from Christ, rather than drawing them to Him.”

I want to vote with my head and my heart. I want to vote for the candidate that reflects the best choice for me.  I want to vote for the candidate that reflects how I feel about my faith.

Is the perfect candidate out there?

Sadly no.

They all have flaws.

You may have to make the slightly square peg fit into the round hole and it takes work sometimes.

It is important work however as you deal with the fact that your vote does matter. It matters because it reflects on you and your faith.  It matters because we have the right to vote.

Today especially, it is important for Christians to be actively, intelligently involved in our governmental process. What we need to give to Caesar is our vote because we have a nation that allows it and we never want to give it away. What we need to do in the world today [in my estimation] is never to forget that we are people of God, people who advocate peace and love for one another.

Our political activity should be positive rather than negative. We should discuss and act as citizens who want to offer “the balm that can heal” a divided country rather than citizens who want “to divide our nation” [Hamilton, XV].

I wonder from time to time where we all fit into the world of politics today?

Well, like that square peg and that round hole, we don’t seem to fit, but we need to do the best we can to be a positive force, to offer that balm.

I had a super intelligent aunt who was shocked one day when I told her I had attended an “ultra-liberal” church a few times. She was a rector in the Episcopal Church, a denomination that is not a bastion of conservatism.  However, I will never forget what she said when I told her I had attended this church.  “Oh David, you don’t want to go there.  They don’t believe in anything!”

In reality, they did. Did they agree with her theology?

No.

I suspect that was really where she was coming from. They were very accepting of wide ranging faith ideas and their ultimate concern was for social justice.  Let’s just leave the name off, please.  It doesn’t matter.

The not believing in anything part; that is the set up for my comments.

People today think that the only way you can believe anything is you have to be associated with extremes. If you are conservative, you have to be extremely conservative.  You have to “toe the line” of the conservative world view.   If you are liberal, you have to be extremely liberal, I mean “flaming liberal”.   You have to be this way because it tells everyone what you believe.

Often in the minds of people the extremes are pitted against each other and neither side wants anything to do with the other.

Of course this leaves the middle.   What some call the “mushy middle.”  I really think many people don’t think the middle position exists but let me tell you it does.  People may think that the mushy middle “does not believe in anything” but it does.  In my opinion, the mushy middle has to mean something for a Christian to survive in today’s political times.

For me, the mushy middle is where the core values of Christianity exist.

You might think that wrong but I have many, many conservative friends. I lean a little more to the left on the political spectrum than I do to the right but let me tell you what allows me to have some fine relationships with my conservative friends: I feel we are all Christians.  Our Christian core values of God, salvation, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit [the Christian life], beliefs about eternal destiny, the church, faith, baptism and communion are the really important values that we all have in common.  Other cultural values [especially those about politics] are just not that important.

Christian values cut across party lines or at least they should. Yes folks, there are liberals who are Christians, born-again Christians at that.  Of course there are conservatives who are Christians, for that political persuasion seems to have hijacked Christianity.  That’s not true; they really haven’t.  Christianity is a big tent that refuses to be limited to one thing called a political party.

What I have developed with all my friends is a language that focuses on our mutual interests. We tend to not debate politics or when those topics of the day come up, we don’t use language that creates barriers.  I try to understand what another person says, why they say it and the value of their ideas.  In communication this is called other-centeredness, or taking the position of the other.  It takes work.  It takes time.  It takes empathy.  It takes thought and sometimes a great deal of patience.

Today, we have so many opportunities to communicate but we don’t take the time to think before we speak, chat, tweet or fire off that text. The tongue controls so much of the body.  In James, he writes “when we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal.  Or take ships for example.  Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go.  Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boast.  Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.  The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body” [James, 3: 3-6].

Let me close by imploring you to find a way to use your expression gifts for understanding others, for learning their position, for finding a way to build a bridge instead of erecting a wall.

There is value in discovering mutual interests even if you have to learn to live in the mushy middle.

You might learn something there.

You might learn that love for your fellow man is possible.

In the mushy middle.

My wife Susan joked about Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White.  She said I would be excommunicated.

Well maybe, if I was a Catholic but I am Methodist.

I may just be asked to leave our church…in a loving manner.

Seriously though, why this book? Why now?

My first use of Seeing Gray was several years ago.  It was published in 2008 and we had a speaker series loosely based on parts of the book as a Wednesday night program.  I think that was around 2012 as President Obama was running for his second term.

Things were tense in church. People did not see eye to eye on politics at all.  Politics had invaded the four walls as people expressed very angry feelings in response to some of the presenters.  I even did one program myself and I found myself confronted by people who refused to understand any point of view other than their own and they told me so.

Things are worse now.

I feel pretty justified in saying that. Our country is divided more than ever. Even our political parties are divided among themselves.  The Democrat party has two very different people running for president, one an independent senator and the other a former Secretary of State who is under federal investigation.  The Republican party front runners are embroiled today in a spat of disrespect for each other’s wives.  A third candidate is trying to stay above that.  That is today.  Who knows what will be happening tomorrow.  It has been that kind of election.

We are living in a wild, wild election world folks.

And I don’t know about you, but I have a very serious question about all this…

As a Christian, where do I fit in?

I am confused because I buy into the idea of voting as important. I try to stay informed about domestic and world events as much as I can.  I am aware of the “slant” of the 24 hours “news” networks and I try to sample all of them with my “bias detector” on as I watch.  This country was based on freedom and I don’t want to live anywhere else but how do I choose among the candidates?  When I take my Bible and what I have learned about God and Jesus Christ and apply it to politics where does it apply?

At times, it seems it does not apply at all.

And then I hear that “the evangelical vote” is important.

That would be me. If you have read my blog, you know I am a “born-again Christian.”  I was 45 before Jesus became number one in my life.  I know the politicians think my evangelical vote is important because I am always hearing that the Republicans are depending on that evangelical vote.  They are working hard to get it.

Am I being used? If they really want me to vote for them, why don’t they act like they know Jesus.  Jesus was asked the greatest commandment and he said “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”  It would be so much easier if I saw a little of that.

I have spent my whole adult life trying to get people to talk. I love talking [ask my wife].  It is the art of exchanging ideas; having a dialogue.  Too much of politics today is monologue.  Too much of politics today is heated rhetoric.  Too much of politics today is lack of cooperation and lack of understanding.

All this is the opposite of what I have spent my whole life trying to get people to do.

St. John Studies has a small readership. That’s ok.  I appreciate everyone who logs on.  I really do.  In this first post, I want to pledge to my readers that I want to stimulate dialogue, not pour gasoline on a hot monologue, fan heated rhetoric or encourage lack of cooperation and lack of understanding.  My position in this blog will be to have a productive conversation about religion, morality and politics, all in a Christian context.

That is my context. I look at the world with a Christian lens.  I understand the world from a Christian perspective.  When a person runs for office and expects me to vote for them, I look for a person who shows me some Christian values.

I hope when we are through with Pastor Hamilton’s book, e know where we fit into the political process.  As we begin the book, politics seems today as unseemly and unsavory as ever.

Can we find a way to converse about politics in a civil way?

That is my hope; that is my prayer.