Unintended consequences...

In Wake County, (Raleigh, NC) there is a nasty battle being waged in the Wake County School System. It is a results of the "unintended consequences." The Republicans supported a slate of four new members who won seats on the school board. With one Republican already on the board they suddenly had the majority. They immediately began making complete changes to the whole school system. Last week the Superintendent of the School System up and resigned. He says he cannot and will not be a part of the changes that "politicize the educational process." He has spent the last five years working and directing the board in the direction that the new board has completely reversed. He will not be a part of tearing up what he has worked to create. Now the Republican majority is considering firing him for "insubordination." And so it goes.

It seems to me that it is one of those "unintended consequences" of our zeal for a position that does not allow us to "compromise" or to "debate" positions. I think I first saw a clear example in talking with a middle-aged Baptist minister who had preached long and hard about "Family values;" "Christian Marriage;" "Faithfulness and Divorce." The only problem developed when his own wife left him and he ended up divorced. Then in a few years he met a woman and they decided to marry. Now he was a divorced, remarried, adulterer who wanted to be a Christian preacher. He found that none of his "kind of churches" wanted him as a preacher. He had "unintentionally" made himself unemployable.

A more moving story is told by Tony Campolo about the "unintended impact" of our doctrines and convictions which put us in conflict with our real lives. Tony Campolo is an evangelical preacher who is widely known and is a very exciting speaker. He also is an evangelical preacher who understands the consequences of his faith and so is open to conversations. He does not share the right wing religious exclusion of homosexuals or gays. He said one Saturday night about 10:30 he got a call from a very distraught woman. She said she had a very important question. "Does the judgment of heaven take place individually as people die, or is the judgment all together with everybody there at the same time?" Dr. Campolo said he was very tired, it had been a long week of travelling and speaking around the country. He said, "Lady, I don't know how you got my number, and I am very tired, but the way I read the Bible, the judgment takes place all together at one time. Everybody before the throne at one big meeting. Now, why did you call me up at this hour to ask that kind of question." She said, "Well, her son died recently with aids, he was homosexual, and she was hoping that at the time of judgment she was going to be able to stand next to her son and tell Jesus what a wonderful young man he had been."

We so often get so rigid and dogmatic in our doctrines and faith that we cannot see the "unintended consequences." The new school board members could not see that their agenda was an insult and destruction of what the Superintendent had been working on for years. The minister could not and would not see how his position on marriage and divorce was excluding and insulting people until it affected him, and many cannot see that their focus on the sexuality of a person excludes so many wonderful people from their fellowship of faith.