Limited imagination?

     I am the oldest player on the court of the racquetball game. I am not fast, not quick, just there.  One of the better players served me the ball once, and like a miracle, I hit a excellent kill shot. As he turned to take up the defensive position, he said, "I didn't see that coming." (He probably won't see another one like that for a very long time, either.)
     "I did not see that coming."  It was the same thing the family of the gun enthusiast said when the woman, who believed in carrying a loaded assault weapon with her to the grocery store, to the bank, with her all the time, loudly defending her so call 'right to bear arms" went home and shot her husband.  "We knew they were having trouble. They had filled for divorce, but we did not think this could happen. We did not think she was that troubled."
     That seems to be a very common reaction to the great tragedies in our society.  We humans seem to be unable to imagine the ultimate worst happening.  Many of us, we acknowledge that we are sinners, that we partly evil and partly good, that there is a kind of selfishness that pervades all of our actions.  But we just are not willing to believe the worst.
      Three mile island disaster happened, I am told, because the workers just could not believe what the instruments were telling them. Pearl Harbor happened because the look outs just could not believe what they were hearing on the radio. Twenty children and six adults were killed in Newtown two years ago because the doctors, the parent, the "system" just did not believe it had gotten that bad. They did not see that coming.
        In a meeting with some other Democrats one of the professionals was telling us about what preparations needed to be made to make sure the election was fair and law abiding.  Several of the members kept shaking their heads at what they were being told.  They repeated over and over that they would have never thought of that kind of dirty trick.  We concluded that we just did not have the kind of imagination that could think that way.
        Perhaps one of the great powers of evil is the power to convince us that evil is not really that bad.  Torture is really just "enhanced interrogation."  Bernie Madoff got by with his scheme because nobody could really believe that he would cheat, steal, and embezzle that much from all those friends, Jewish charities, and widows.  How could anybody be that evil?  How can human beings slaughter rhinos for their horns when they are so rare?  How can anybody be that evil?  Ah, we have a tremendous failure of imagination. We refuse to believe humans are capable of that kind of evil. So we seldom see it coming.

Only One?

     I would find it hard to believe that I am the only one. I found myself very sad and disappointed after the election of November 4.  Not the results.  Well, I was very disappointed in the results, but even more than that I looked back and looked across the country and was disappointed that most of the Democrats ran away from their principles.  Democrats have often proclaimed that they have the best ideas.  They have the ideas and programs that would help most people: minimum wage increase, equal pay for equal work,  open voting, health care, immigration reform, wanting to acknowledge and respond to climate change, and the list could go one.  But the Democratic candidates did not preach those issues. At least, not in North Carolina.   When one looks at the President's record it is impressive: job growth for six years, inflation under control, wall street at all time high, profits meeting or exceeding the estimates, health care program working, deficit having the largest reduction in 8 years.  But Kay Hagan let them make her votes with Obama a problem. Why she did not proudly say I voted with Obama because he has the best programs for people.
     If Democrats had run on their principles and their accomplishments and lost then that would have been one thing, but the candidate in Kentucky would not eve admit to having voted for Obama in the 2012 election.  The Democrats did not make the Republicans the ones responsible for the gridlock, did not hit them on their opposition to everything proposed, on their cuts to social programs, to their failure to support repairing of our infrastructure, refusal to give help to hurricane victims, their refusal to fund Veteran affairs at the level suggested by Obama. Did not focus on the dangerous growing gap between rich and the rest of us.
     If we had run on these issues and lost, then swallowing the loss would have been a lot easier.  But we ran away from all those. In NC all we hear about was the evil money from the Koch brothers.

The Anatomy of Marriage!

         The long standing tradition in the United States was that people would be married in a church. The minister always demanded that there be a marriage license before doing the service. Because a marriage in a church was a two part event. The two people getting married were, with the license from the state entering into a legal partnership contract. They were also receiving a blessing upon a promise, a vow they took to each other before God and witnesses. Those two parts: the legal contract and the blessing of the vow, were both done at the same time in the same service.

          The legal contract opened up to that couple certain legal rights, privileges and obligations. The two became responsible for each other’s debts. They could buy property together. They became covered by state laws with regards to inheritances. They became defined as a legal entity and when companies offered health insurance for families they were both covered. Wherever there were limits and restriction put upon the population but exemptions were made for “family” they were included. This legal contract becomes the great issue when it comes to the question of divorce. The lawyers have to work to dissolve a past legal agreement.

          The religious blessing upon the vow taken is the aspect of a marriage that is given by the religious ceremony. The service may have many different aspects. It may be done in many places now, but most religious service focus on the taking of the vows. “I.....(name).... promise, before God and these witnesses, to be thy loving and faithful..... (husband/wife) (and then follows lots of possible conditions) in sickness and in health, in plenty and in want, as long as we both shall live.”

          This two level service has been the tradition in the United States for a very long time. It is not always this way in many other countries. In many other countries, couples have to go to the government and have the legal part done at the courthouse or judges chamber, and then if they would like to have the religious blessing upon a vow, they go to the church for a separate service. Our neighboring country Mexico has the two parts separated.

          The recent decisions by many courts is that the state cannot prevent same sex people from the legal contract part of marriage. They are citizens who are entitled to the same legal rights and privileges as other citizens. They should be allowed to enter into the legal contract part of marriage. The religious claim that their relationship is sinful has no bearing on the their legal rights to enter into this legal agreement. The state does not prevent adulterers from getting the legal license to marry. The state does not prevent greedy people from getting legal papers to marry. The state does not prevent prideful people from getting legal linked. The sinful aspect of the applicants has no bearing on the states granting two same sex people from entering into this legal relationship that is called marriage.

          Faith communities are certainly entitled to have their own opinion on whether or not they will grant to the same sex couple the religious blessing on the vow that they grant to heterosexual couples. There is no legal requirement that a church hold a service of witness to the taking of the vow or no legal requirement for the church to bless that union. This religious dimension of the wedding is separate and apart from the legal aspect. The churches that have decided to bless the union have probably moved in that direction because they believe that all of us are sinful people and that the sinful nature of the applicants should have no bearing on the blessing of a vow of love. Those churches that have agreed to have wedding services for same sex couples have decided that they will not have a different set of standards for one sin than for the other sins. We are all sinners who live by grace and these sinners, like all sinners, need all the grace from others that they can get. The keeping of this promise to love and be faithful is not easy to keep. Look at the heterosexual divorce rate. Those who are willing to make this vow, either just the legal contract or the contract and the religious part, need all the help they can get to keep it.

How easy we make our own God!

It has always been an article of faith for me that God is most present in the things that are opposite of what I think.  Because I believe that we have an incredible ability to make God into our own image. That we tend to claim God's actions in the things that happen as we hope they would, and to ignore the things that do not go as we would like them to.

There are lots of examples of this creating God in our own likeness. There is the prosperity Gospel where God is made into a large Warren Buffet who wants everybody to be rich and happy. There is that false assumption as well that riches make you happy.  There is the political God who is a great American patriot.  There is the nice liberal God who wants to have everybody get along with everybody and does not seem to have anything that constitutes sin.

So those things that go against what I think, what I want, what I think God would be doing, suggest to me the presence of another force, another power, another personality who has another agenda.  It is what happens when I read the Old Testament and see there a God who is much more violent, much more partisan, much more righteous than a God I would like to see.  Who wants to try to be friends with a God who expects his Servant king to slaughter whole towns?

There are those who want to claim that the New Testament and Jesus makes that Old Testament God obsolete. But still the New Testament God is a God who expects his son to be willing to die. The New Testament God is God who makes his own son suffer on the Cross and does nothing to help him.
It is very enlightening when we start to look at the God who is our opponent first, the one who moves against us, the one who puts up road blocks first as the nature and personality of God.  It would certainly result in a whole different direction in faith for a lot of us.

She asked me.

The Charlotte Judge had just voided the state amendment one that had banned same sex marriages and defined marriage rights as limited to heterosexual couples. We were at the start of a Session meeting, and right out of blue the woman asked me in a loud voice, "What do you think of the Judges action in overturning the same sex ban?"

My first reaction was to wonder why she had asked me that so loud in the session meeting. We could have discussed this quietly after the meeting.  This is a small rural county and this is a small rural church which has been very kind and affirming to me, and so I was not sure where they might be on this issue.

But I do have an opinion on that subject and so I took a deep breath and said, "For me this has always been a human rights issue. Do we give all people the same legal rights of society?  It seems to me that we do not consider the sinfulness of the human being as a matter in granting most rights.  We allow sinful adulterers to marry. We allow sinful greedy people to marry. We allow sinful gluttons to marry. We allow sinful robbers to marry.  Why should the sinful of homosexuals be a reason for not allowing them to marry? (I am not one of those who believes the homosexuality is a sin, but I prefer to argue on the rights issue rather than morality.)

Why should heterosexual couples be allowing to have family insurance and homosexual partners not be able to cover their partner in company offered insurance?  Why should heterosexual partners be able to visit in ICU's and homosexual partners not be welcomed?  Why should partners who die without will not be afforded the same division of property that is given to others?  There are so many legal benefits that heterosexual married couples get, that homosexual couple are not permitted to get because they are not permitted to be joined by the state law in marriage.  Remember marriage ceremonies may be two parts: one is religious blessings and the other is a state contract.  Marriages by the Justice of the Peace is simply a state contract and has no religious blessing upon it at all.

The woman and the others around the table nodded and agreed and seemed to find that my answer matched their thinking as well. I thought to myself I had been a little guilty of not expecting the best from other Christians.

Side Bar:
Pat Robertson has been quoted as saying that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was the sin of homosexuality.  As I read the story it is the sin of violation of hospitality.  The people want to have sex with the stranger who is under the protection of Lot.  They wanted to violate the code of hospitality. The fact that Lot would offer his daughters shows how precious Lot thought the need to protect his company.  The story says that the guests were "angels" which does not give their sex. The city folks do call them men and do say that they want to have sex with them, but the great evil that was being contemplated was the violation of the code of hospitality.

Ray Rice - they did not ask me.

It will be very interesting to watch the future of Domestic Violence in professional sports.  What Ray Rice did that was wrong was that he got videoed doing his act. Because the problem of Domestic Violence is a problem everyday for thousands of families.  It is a horrible dynamic complex situation. That fact that Ray's wife is out there begging people to stop hurting her and her family is one of the complexities.  When Ray is terminated, her life and her child's life is dramatically changed as Ray no longer has a pay check coming in. She and her family are now constantly in a spot light she does not want to be in.

I can appreciate the public's reaction to this video, but where is our outrage for the family down the street where the woman gets punched around and nobody sees the blows.  This is like the public's reaction to Michael Vick's dog fighting history.  The local humane society finds a farm with ten horses and 20 dogs that are starving and the TV shows it on the five o'clock news and we calmly express disgust and go to dinner.

I am not trying to defend Ray Rice, what I am trying to do is to say that the NFL will not be able to solve this societal problem.  The public outrage that the Commissioner ought to resign because he did not do enough, the Raven ought to be punished as well, is just excessive over reaction to this story.
Notice how much of the Penn State punishment is now slowly being rescinded because it was an over-reach.

There is a very fine line to teach aggressive and violence behavior for 8 hours a day on the field and then to be able to be kind, gentle and loving at home.   One can well imagined that being married to an intense and professional athlete is very difficult.  Domestic violence has deep roots, I am told, in family histories.

This is one of those situations where what Ernie Campbell, who used to be pastor of the Riverside Church in New York talked about. Just because you convert somebody to the Christian faith, just because a person accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, does not mean that they will know what to do and how to be loving and helpful.   How do you "cure" domestic violence?

This case will certainly bring more attention to domestic violence and the professional sports can play a role in making a statement that they do not want their players to commit it, but they cannot solve it and they will not be able to prevent it from happening. The drug policy has not stopped players from violating that policy.

The focus on the tape and Roger misses the whole opportunity for an in-depth and comprehensive reporting on the whole issue of domestic violence in this country.

Made the List

When I was a senior in High School my American history research paper was on the "30 day administration of William Henry Harrison."  He is the president that got pneumonia and died immediately following his inauguration.   It was a fun research project and it was the right size for a high school senior project.

Reading in the Old Testament I have been reminded of another research project that would be about the same size. The Seven Day Reign of King Zimri.   We are talking I Kings and the history of the two kingdoms.  So as the kings come and go and God is picking and choosing these kings right and left and then throwing them out when they misbehave.   The story speaks of a General name Zimri who conspired against Elah and murdered Elah.  So Zimri declares himself King. When the Army of Israel hears the Elah is died, they decide that Omri, their commanding officer, should be King. Omri  kills Zimri a week after Zimri has declared himself king. So Zimri is king for seven days.

The delightful thing is that I Kings brings to a conclusion this piece of history by saying, "The rest of Zimri's deeds and the plot he carried out, aren't they written in the official records of the Israel's kings?'  How many deeds do you think there could be written there?  How much can a King of Israel do in seven days?

Throughout these stories there is the same universal fact, it is the Generals who lead these revolutions.  It is the General who becomes the strong man who murders and establishes a new government.  Latin America, Africa,  and Asia the saga goes on.  The leader rises to power in the service of the elected leader who puts the strong man in charge of the army, and the General takes over.  Egypt cannot escape the military leaders. Mao in China,  Castro in Cuba, and the list goes on and on. Hitler in Germany.

The Lesson whether from Eisenhower or from History needs to be learned that there is great danger in the military power.  Bush and Cheney and the military power got the US involved in great trouble.
The Military minded forces are again trying to push the country into more military responses when wisdom suggests that caution ought to be the by word.

Zimri got only seven days, but he made the list of the Kings of Israel. He is in the Generals' Hall of Fame.

The Hypocrisy of Sexual Sins?

     One of the most consistent retorts that I have received about homosexual behavior and those in the gay community is that they are not repentant.   When it is pointed out that "even if" homosexuality is a sinful condition,  it is not the only sin listed in the Scriptures. Why is so much more made of it, than the sins of greed, lust, pride, power, hate, robbery and such?  The response is that those people acknowledge they are sinners and try not to do it again, whereas the homosexual does not repent and promise not to be homosexual.    

     Of course, the demand that gays repent and turn around and not do it again flies in the face of the science that acknowledges that they are born this way. It is their natural disposition and is not a choice. Even evangelical agencies which operated for decades trying to "reform" and "convert" have closed and acknowledged that homosexuality is a natural born disposition.

     But there exists one major glaring contradiction to the righteous charge that other sinners repent and promise to try not to sin again. There are clearly passages in the New Testament that describe divorce and remarriage as adultery.  That is a sin, by the way.  So there are thousands of couples in thousands of churches living in adultery who have not repented and changed their ways. They continue to live in adultery or they get divorced and do it again. 

     I am not advocating that churches dismiss all their divorced and remarried people.  Nor do I want the church to declare that divorced and remarried people cannot be ordained or be leaders. What I want to do is to point out that there is a major heterosexual sin that is staring the church in the face and it is not getting any noise or criticism, while the homosexual sin, if it is a sin, is being battered and attacked all over place.  This seems to be a log in the eye of so many Christians. 

Why all the cuts to early pre school programs?

     The reports keep coming out that show that early intervention, early education programs for pre-schoolers make a dramatic difference in their success.  That should have been a no brainer. The sooner you read to your child the better they are at reading. The more you work with them in terms of numbers, colors, letters and behavior, the better they do.

     So why do our N.C. legislators keep cutting the funding to those programs?  Why do they keep changing the eligibility  requirements?  The current legislators seem determine to make as many changes in education as they can possible make. They want to change the standards. They have voted to do away with Common Core. They want to cut teacher aids. They have created hundreds of chartered schools. They have just recently voted to allow the people being paid by the charter schools to be on the boards governing the charter schools.  For example, if a charter school is paying a company to provide janitorial services, it will be permitted for somebody from that company to be on the board of governors of that same chartered school.  Can you say conflict of interests?

     Early education, pre-school education has been the engine that has pushed our education forward. It takes 12 years for the results to show up.  The results was beginning to be visible, and now it is being killed.   Obviously these leaders did not get the benefit of good early education.

Another dimension to God?

     Sometimes I think we "New Testament Christians" have a tendency to make God like Santa Claus and to "declaw" the Holiness Righteousness of God.  In reading I Samuel 5 and 6 one gets a different dimension of God.
     The Ark of the Covenant is captured by the Philistines and they try to display it but run into problems. Everywhere the ark goes trouble comes to the people in that town. In the temple of Dagon, the statue of Dagon keeps falling down before the ark. Finally it falls down and its head and hands come off. The Dagon Priest say "Get that thing out of here."  So they move it to five different cities and five different cities have plagues.
     Finally they decide to send the ark back. But they have to send some kind of "hostess gift" to Israel for having kept the ark.  The Scriptures seem to interject some levity as the gifts are gold statues of tumors and mice. That is what it says Tumors and mice. God wants compensation for being housed in Philistine country and needs five statues of gold tumors and five golden mice.
     The obvious message here is you don't mess with the Holy Ark. It is not nice to handle the ark. In fact, when the cows come up the road with the ark and the people of Beth Shemesh welcome it back to Israel, it is still not safe.  The people burn the cart, sacrifice the cows and worship the Ark. You would think that God would be happy, but he kills seventy people of Beth Shemesh because they looked into the Ark.
     This is no pussy cat God who is being dealt with here.  Taking gold mice for payment and killing 70 of his own people for looking in the ark gives us a little different picture of the Holiness of God than we get with just the New Testament.

Prophet before His Time

     Many of us read Paul Ehrlich's book The Population Bomb back in the 70's and were worried. But the Green Revolution came about and food production soared and we went back to doing what we were doing.  But the battle to contain our population growth has not been successful in many places. There are predictions that the earth will have 10 billion people by 2100.  There will not be enough food for all of them. There is already not enough water for all we have now. Our lakes are shrinking, our rivers are backing up and salt water is coming upstream.

     Where birth control is available and health care enables the children born to live, women gladly accept birth control options. They do not want to be pregnant all the time. They do not want to watch their babies die. They gladly take the pills, they gladly have IUD's inserted. They welcome condoms. They even seek out illegal abortions when they can no longer deal with unwanted pregnancies. There are many countries where the birth rate has fallen below the replacement rate and that is encouraging.  It is estimated that about 6.2 billion is the number of people on the planet that the planet can sustain and sustain the biodiversity that is good for all creation.

     The population we have now and the growth of population that will continue for a while even if all countries reached replacement figures will severely impact the quality of life for all people and animals.  In many ways we are seeing some of the predictions happening. The people in the Southern hemispheres are coming up to the developed Northern hemisphere.  Children on the border is a perfect example.  The wars in the middle east are partly caused by too many people, too many people and too few resources, young men without work, and great frustration at the governments that try to solve the problems.

     This is not big brother trying to tell people what to do. There are a great number of reports in Weisman's Countdown (a book) that show that when given the possibility and the resources: pills, education, devices, women gladly choose to limit their pregnancies.  All kinds of people in all kinds of villages around the world see that there are too many people fishing their rivers, drinking their water, spoiling their water with their discharges, cutting their forest for wood to burn and build, just too many poachers killing their animals.  They all see it and need help.

     The biggest obstacle in the way of providing these kinds of resources to those who want them are religious organizations. Particularly the Roman Catholic Church and fundamentalist of Islam and Jews.  The very people who declare that we are to be stewards of creation and protect creation and care for it are promoting a position that is leading to great harm and suffering.

Isn't Marijuana Capitalism Great?

     Saul Alinsky used to say that the morality of an action depended upon the verdict of the people in power.  If the people who make the rules say something is legal, good, acceptable, then it was. If they say it was illegal, bad, unacceptable, then it is.
     Nothing illustrates that better than the growing wave of legal pot. For decades when the war against drugs was being fought, thousands of poor youth from the ghettos, from the slums, from the fringes of society would be rounded up, taken to court, sent to prison, and end up with a criminal record that would prevent them from getting a good job, maybe prevent them from getting into a college.   Lots and lots of people and their families had their lives changed for the worse because of the war on drugs.
      Now with nothing more than the vote of a few legislators, the law is changed and a number of capitalist are getting ready to make lots of money selling pot.  The morality of selling pot all depended on the verdict of people in power. Now corporations will be farming, packaging, distributing, and selling pot legally. Doing exactly what hundreds of people went to jail for for decades.
     If this small reality does nothing else, it ought to remind us that we do not need to be so self-righteous or dogmatic when we talk about the morality of issues.  The smoking pot is the same activity it has always been.  For decades it was called illegal. Now it is legal and probably a bunch of business people will make lots of money off of it.  There are many things that we get all "bent out of shape" and claim that they are horrible, illegal and immoral, and then a law is changed and it is all okay.  We do need to be careful with different issues because what is illegal today may be legal tomorrow and what is legal today may be illegal tomorrow and the morality of the action may really still be the same.

So where does it get you to call homosexuality a Sin?

     For the sake of this blog, I am going to concede the debate about whether or not the scriptures call Homosexuality a sin.  I am aware of the passages that have been quoted and argued about. I have read much of the literature by different Biblical scholars who explain those passages in many different ways.  But for the sake of this blog, I will concede that Homosexuality is a sin.

     Now that I have done that, and those of the more conservative persuasion have rejoiced that their position has been accepted. Homosexuality is a sin.  So now that that is settled where did that get us? Because it seems to me that calling Homosexuality a sin does not make any difference. I am a heterosexual sinners. I have those lusty thoughts that Jesus talked about.  And judging from the commercials, the TV programs, the movies, and the pornography on the Internet, there are a lot of us heterosexual sinners.  So homosexuality is a sinful. Heterosexuality is sinful.  Just because I marry a female does not mean that I stop being a sexual sinner in my thoughts, dreams, and fantasies.

     But that is not all. For the sake of this debate I have accepted the claim that homosexuality is a sin. I have countered that the heterosexuality is sinful too.  Now if we are taking the good book at its word, the concern about homosexuality is always included with a lot of other things.  Along with homosexuality the Bible talks about greed being a sin. The Bible talks about anger being a sin, it got Cain into trouble. The Bible talks about gluttony as being bad for you.  covetousness, robbery, drunkenness, extortioners, idolaters, adultery (that is my heterosexual sinners), abusers of themselves, (we haven't even begun to chastise them and call for self-abusers to be banned from society). Revilers, would that be bullies?  Why don't we demand the same treatment of bullies that we are yelling for for homosexuals?

     So it seems to me that calling homosexuality a sin does not get us very far.  It just means they are human beings. Sinners like the rest of us. Why should we be treating that sin any different from all the other sins we have already accommodated ourselves to?  Divorce is no big deal, right?  Babies without marriage looks like the mark of a celebrity.  Drunkenness is now a sickness. Greed is good according to Wall Street, and most of us want our money to be doing more, more, more.  Why do we think we invade Iraq in the first place?  Oil.

     Homosexual may want to claim that their sexual preference is not a sinful condition but in the theology of the Christian faith they are sinners anyway like the rest of us because they are humans.
Calling them sinners does not really get you very far.  They are sinners so what, so are all of us, how are we going to allow them their full human rights/

The Sin of Too Much

THE SIN OF TOO MUCH

July 13, 2014

Fountain Presbyterian Church

Rick Brand, Supply

It is merely to state the obvious that for most us, the world we live in has undergone some massive changes in our life time. Maybe it hasn’t even been a life time, more like just the last forty years.  These changes are happening in all phases of our lives, in all different directions.  From old homes with high ceilings with big windows, and built so that the breeze, if there was ever a breeze, it could go all the way through the house. Homes with the kitchen and bath rooms outside.  The kitchen out there so that the heat of the oven would not heat up the whole house.  Now we want small homes, small double pained insulated windows, and central air conditioning.  We have gone from sitting on the porch and visiting with neighbors to sitting inside and watching programs about remote places on the other side of the world, but we may not know the name of our next door neighbor.  From reading about events in Washington in the paper once a week, to being able to watch the action in congress on t.v. while it happens, if we want to, and there is 24/7 commentary and criticism of the events on social media.  We used to have real money in our pockets and now we have plastic cards and bitcoins and deposits by wifi. And one of the biggest changes for most of us is that our small towns have gone from being primarily all protestant Christian communities in the great southern bible belt to having real live Jews, Roman Catholic, Moslems, and Hindus living and trying to worship in our community.  And the business gods of the economy have pushed and pushed so that there are no laws about what might be done on the Sabbath. 

The UNC Professor of Religion Bart Erhman knows exactly what the British Theologian name John Hicks is talking about when Professor Hicks talks about the changes in his religious life.  Maybe you have experienced something like they have. Professor Hicks says that in his college days, he encountered an evangelical group which led him into a dramatic personal conversion experience and introduced him to an extremely conservative, fundamental Calvinist theology. John Hicks said he confessed his faith in the uniqueness of Christ, and the necessity of faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation,the verbal inerrancy of Scripture and a harsh and narrow description of judgment. 

He was hired to teach in Birmingham England at the university there and suddenly he encountered real live people who believed and lived by other faiths and traditions.  Professor Hicks watched and pondered and he realized that there was this common core, “it was same in all religions” The common activity, whether in Christian worship or mosque or synagogue, was an opening of the mind and heart, the presenting of oneself before the holy, opening the mind and heart to the Ultimate divine reality with the resulting moral effects of a new love and a new righteousness.”  He said it seemed to him that all religions were trying to bring people into the presence of a Holy God so that the encounter with the Divine would result in more moral and just behavior. 

It is this very powerful experience that Paul is writing about in this whole letter of Romans. Paul is telling about what happened to him and what is possible for all of us when we encounter the living power of Jesus Christ and by experience we become part of Christ through our baptism and faith, we are transformed.  We are made into the image of Jesus Christ, we are changed,freed from sin and become servants of God’s Kindness. We meet the living Christ, become one with Christ by faith and baptism, and we become joint heirs with Christ, and agents working for the building of the Kingdom of God.  John Hicks suggests that is what all religions are seeking, to give us an opportunity to encounter the power of the Holy one and by that encounter we are transformed from being self-centered, self-concerned, self-satisfying to other centeredness, to service to the neighbor, to a spirit that regards the whole world and those around us as important and as beloved by God as we are. 

Paul knows that transformation is not easy, it is not rapid, it is not permanent, it is a life long struggle for all of us. Paul focuses on that struggle by talking about the battle between the flesh, the self, the individual desires, my own selfish interests, lusts, wants and desires and the Spirit, the body of Christ, the creation of God, the communion of saints, the union with Jesus and thus my sharing with him His love for all creation and all people.

It is not an easy struggle. It is not a once and for all victory we can achieve. It is an on-going battle. “The good that I would do, I do not do.” It is a painful and difficult struggle because the temptations come in so many attractive and reasonable forms. The hit song about a devil in blue jeans knows about temptation in attractive forms. The battle is so often a battle between the best and the good. We are surrounded by the sirens of temptation. There is no reason in the world that Lebron James should not be paid at the level of the finest basketball player on the globe. Except that there is no reason in the world that Lebron James needs another 127 million dollars for the next five years.  The only reason Lebron James wants that much money is a status thing. It is about his reputation, about his ego.  But we say that is the American way. Charge as much as you can get. Everybody has to look out for himself.  That is the nature of capitalism, everybody is competing with everybody else. When was the last time you heard of anyone saying that they had enough money and did not want a raise?  What CEO in fortune 500 companies have refused to take more pay except when the government was bailing out their company.  Where is the concern for the community, for the neighbor, for the sharing of the wealth with others?  All around us there is this sin of personal greed that is always wanting more or too much. Where do you hear any voices calling for a contentedness with a sufficiency? I have enough. Others need more.  Paul knows how hard this struggle is to be transformed from always operating out of a me first place to loving and caring for others as much as we care for ourselves.  We are deeply into the sin of wanting too much for ourselves without any sense of what is appropriate or what might be useful for others.  We deceive ourselves and others when we try to call our American Capitalism a Christian nation. As long as capitalism is the competition of one against another and everybody is on their own to get what they can, and greed is the secular virtue, then we have yet to be transformed by our relationship with Jesus Christ.  Greed is the flesh, Sharing is the new transformed spirit.

This struggle between the flesh and the spirit, between our self-oriented, self-concerned, self-preservation and the spirit of community in Christ, the being a part of the royal priesthood, a chosen people, you are united with Christ and now are a part of the kingdom of God, the communion of saints, salvation is not an individual redemption, but a being united in the spirit with a redeemed people. Christ calls us to a salvation by freeing us from our isolated, individual, alone life, and uniting us with the believing fellowship, the called out ones. 

Paul is so right. The good that we want to do, we do not do. The resistance to the change is us come from so many places. The invitation of Christ to become new is so hard because there are so many good things that seem to compete with the new creation in Christ.  It seems to me that even in our public education system we have powers and influences working against the transformation.  Over the last couple of decades the jajor operating principles for our education system seem to have become the desire to see the self-actualization of the individual child.  It sounds like a good thing: We want each child to maximize her individual talents and abilities.  So now the school is pushing in the direction that makes each child worry only about her own end of grade tests.  Yet, school performances go up where there is a developed school spirit and children care about the whole school and not just their individual scores.  Self-actualization is secular, Paul would call it flesh, virtue. Discipline, cooperation, school spirit is the new creation virtue.

At the heart of the religious experience is this question of transformation by an encounter with the Holy that results in our being changed from being self pre-occupied to being focused on the community, others, and the common life together.  The hunger of the heart is for that experience with God that will change us to being his people in the world. To become one in Christ so that we share His Compassion for his creation.

Of course, for John Hicks and others if the central concern and common core of all religions is to confront a person with the power of the Divine so that they are transformed from being selfish to being concerned about all creation and others, then why worry about Jesus?  Why isn’t Buddha or Moses or Hindu just as good?  If Buddhism and Hindu, Islam and Judaism are all asking the same questions, are seeking the same conversion of the heart from the flesh to the spirit, what does Jesus offer that the others do not?

Ah, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.  The good news in Jesus Christ is that God in Christ is making that transformation a gift.  That is the power of Jesus Christ to come into our lives and by the power of the Holy Spirit set us from from our preoccupation with ourselves.  We are set from from the flesh by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The power that enables us to be transformed is a gift to us from God in Christ.  My grace has made you free. This transformation is not a conversion we are on our own to accomplish. Paul testifies that he could not do it by himself. The good I would, I do not, and that which I do not want to do, that I do.  This is not a matter of quitting smoking cold turkey.  By our own will power. This transformation is not the result of suppressing all of our desires and hungers along the way of Nirvana. It is not achieved by keeping all of the laws of Torah or Koran.  It is by grace and not by works.  This conversion is an ongoing gift of the Holy Spirit. It is a gift from the grace of God in Jesus Christ. We are set free from the power of the law, from the bondage of the flesh by Jesus Christ.  It is the life and death of Jesus Christ in the flesh that shows us how deeply we are in bondage to the things of this earth, and the power of his living grace brings us the freedom from having to save ourselves by whatever means we think will accomplish that: our wealth, our fame, our power; even our good works. We are freed from even the necessity to be right on the issues around us.  We are given the gift of grace that enables us to cease to worry about whether or not we are good enough, smart enough, kind enough, or whatever,  we can enjoy what we have, share with others, celebrate their gifts, welcome the strange, care for the weak, and let God be in charge of all the other issues.  The Christian joy is that the life in the spirit is a gift of God’s grace and love to all who will simply receive it a s a gift. 

There is this common thread running through all religious questions of life. What must I do to inherit eternal life? Professor Hick says it looks to him that almost all of them answer “stand before the almighty and in response to the encounter with the divine go out and love the world as the Holy loves creation and you will achieve salvation.  

The good news of the Christian faith is that God is at work for us and in us making the transformation of our lives a gift to us even as he Has been at work to destroy the power of evil and to reveal the power of love and mercy in the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Christian answer to “how do we get changed?” is that we allow the spirit of God to come into our lives and invite that Spirit to work its change in us.  The Christian faith answers is that conversion is a gift of God’s grace. we are saved by Grace, we are transformed by grace. Wherever men and women get together to rejoice and celebrate God’s gifts to them and to trust and believe that God is moving from his side to bless and change us, the Christian faith knows We are not far from the kingdom of God. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Render Unto Caesar? It is not your money!

     I have constantly been struck by what we hear when we listen to Scripture.  Should I be greatly concerned about Jesus' words to the people in the Temple when he tells them that there will be horrible things that happen before He comes again. There will be persecution, killings and torture, but all of those will give the disciples a chance to bear witness, to testify, to proclaim the good news. He says even your family will forsake you and let you down. But then he says "Still, not a hair on your heads will be lost." (Common English Bible).   You see, that worries me because I have already lost most of the hair on my head. Does that mean I am not among the chosen, the saved, those written in the book of life?
     
     The second issue that I found in reading Luke 19 was that passage about paying taxes.  What fascinates me it the fact that Jesus says the money belongs to Caesar. It is the government's money. When I look at our money in the USA it says it is the governments money.  The money has all over it the claim that it is the government's. Federal Reserve Note.  "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private. "  The United States of America is across the top of it.   But when it comes to paying taxes in this country most people seem to think it is their money. Listen to all those radio people and they say "It is your money, you should be able to spend it like you want." Jesus says if it is the government's money give them what they want. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Give to the government the things that are the government's.  If the government needs money to pay for the things that are for our common good, render unto the government the government's money.

    It is not my money and it only has value as long as the government stands behind it. There is a lot of confederate money running around that now has no value (except as Antique Roadshow) because there is no government backing it up.  It is not my money and it will not be in my use for very long as the foolish farmer who built more barns found out.   It is the government's money and Jesus does not seem to be concerned about how much of its money it wants back.

Radical Economics : Business in a non-growth world

     The big picture of the ever expanding population, the climate change, the shortage of water, the ever increasing solid waste problem, and the limits of the earth size makes for incredible problems for those who spend time thinking about them.
      There have been a few efforts to get our attention and works like "Small is Beautiful" have pushed the idea  of living and having smaller things.  But the radical reality for all business, cities, countries and economies is that we are going to have to stop the constant and demanding pressure to grow larger.  Businesses, cities, economies of nations are going to have to start pushing for this years business to be less than last years. That this years sales are equal to or less than last years sales. That the population of our community is 2 % smaller now than it was five years ago.  Henderson, where I live, is dealing with a community whose population is stagnant and there is no growth.  This world cannot survive if population growth continues, there will not be water enough, there will not be enough of anything for India and China and Japan and Africa to become roaring economies like the USA and Europe.
       The standard for business leaders will be how to manage a company that is not focused on growth. In Vance County we have had a number of companies close their stores because the growth in our outlets did not meet the corporate goals of a certain level of growth.  But they were profitable and people were working in them. They were just doing the same level of business year in and year out.  That will have to become the new target. How to maintain a business without focusing on growing the business.  Or even better if we can begin to lower the population and reduce the demands on the earth, it may be that businesses will have to focus on how to remain profitable in a steady decline of sales.
        The idea that there will be constant growth and that there will never be a time or a place where there is an end to that growth is delusional.   It seems to me from what I read that Business leaders in graduate school need to start thinking about how to teach new leaders to manage companies in a non-growth manner.

More Precious than Gold

      There is now a population in the earth planet of about 7 billion people.  The United Nations predicts by 2020 there will be 10 billion people living on the earth.  There is one reality that has nothing to do with politics. That reality is that there will be more and more fighting over water.

     There are already fierce battles over water in Palestine. The west coast has been wrestling with a drought and their limited supply of water. The African desserts are suffering for lack of water.  Water is essential for all life.  Not just water, but water that is drinkable. Polluted or contaminated water is not good for humans or plants.

      This issue of water will not get any better regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are in political power.  There are at least two major issues before the state of North Carolina that involve the question of water.  One is the coal ash spill on the Dan River and the existence of coal ash storage places near a number of other water ways. Those sites have been found to be leaking as well. The other issue is the issue of Fracking.  The history of Fracking in other states is not without problems. The testimony concerning Fracking seems to depend on whether or not you think we need the energy or you have an economic interest in doing it.

     The long history of Progress Energy, Duke Power, Carolina Power and Light, whatever you name it with the state government has been very beneficial to the power companies.  The state regulators under Democratic leadership were very cosy with the power companies. When the regulators cited the power companies for violations in their storage ponds, there was little support for enforcing those fines.  The spill in the Dan River has motivated a few people to sound tough, but Duke Power continues to claim that they will have to raise rates to pay for all the clean ups.

      One of the things that makes me very frightened about what I am told by spokesmen for the various energy people is that their track record is not very good.  BP claimed they did not need to put the safety device on the Gulf well. Duke Power tells us that their ponds are safe and one spills. Hog Farmers say that the hog waste ponds are good, but there are spills. Japanese atomic energy people claimed that their power plant could withstand everything. Then the tsunami washed it away.

      Tornadoes, Hurricanes, earthquakes, a lot of the natural disasters can be rebuilt, but when we have contaminated our water,  depleted our water supplies,  or changed the landscape so that the water does not perk, then we are going to be in serious, serious trouble.  Water is going to be more precious than gold and we better begin to put protection of water ahead of a lot of other concerns.

Ever Changing

The report card is in from a number of places on the quality of high school students in the USA.  Despite what many parents claim about their child being overworked, the evidence is that they have not been overworked in the class room. Maybe it is all those extra curriculum activities, or sports, or parents taking them on vacations before the school gets out, but the evidence says that they are not very good in math and their verbal skills are horrible thanks to the tweets and twitter and social media.

Who knows all of the reasons why our students are failing badly. David Brooks does a report on a study UCLA does every four years.  There is trouble in the class room. No wonder it is such a hot political issue. Everybody wants our children to do better, but nobody knows how to make that happen. So every year there is a new effort made. No Child Left Behind, Common Core Curriculum, unlimited Charter Schools, reduce the number of teachers, Race to the Top. This is a partisan issue because both Democrats and Republicans think they have a new answer.

It will not get better as long as we keep changing the game plan every two or three years. It will not get better if we keep insulting the teachers. It will not get better if we do not start demanding that children read and write at 3rd grade level before they get promoted to the next level.  We may have to double the size of our elementary schools and create 3B, 3C, 3D levels to hold all of them, but until we do, we are going to have drop out rates,  GED, remedial, and all kinds of problems in education.

UNC was terribly upset when Mary Willingham said that a few jocks could not read. Here comes these studies that say most of the High School students can't do math very well. I wonder how they will react to that.

The Needy

It has been more than twenty years ago, but I remember it well. It was a study of the history of evangelism and the periods of growth for the Christian faith.


The author took the simple description of society. It is a well known division of people. There are the 10 % of the people who make things happen. The movers and shakers of society are this group. The CEO's, the Political leaders, the bankers, doctors, educators and entertainers.   We still talk about the top 10 % of society as the major hitters.  Then there is a second level of people.  Maybe 10% or 15% of the population makes up this group.  They are the people who do not make things happen, but they know what is happening and they know some of the people who are making things happen.  These do not sit in the meetings and make the decisions but they know the names of the people who do and they feel like they could call up the top  10% and those movers and shakers would talk with them.

And then there are the rest of us. The people who are barely able to remember our own schedules, just getting by on what we have to do, these are the people on food stamps, the people who collect the garbage, these are the people who clean the hospitals, these are the farmers and the truck drivers. These are the people who get called and can make up juries for Oliver North and O.J. Simpson because they don't pay any attention to the news. These people get talked into mortgages that have balloon clauses, and encouraged to charge over their budget. These are the poor, the lower middle class, the struggling people.

The historical evidence is that every revival and growth period of the church has happened when the preaching focused on this lower 75% of the population.  Paul told the church at Corinth, not many of you are anybody. God takes the poor and the weak and the nobodies to prove His power and to reject the proud, the powerful who think they can make it on their own.  The Reformation was a powerful movement of the peasant whom Martin Luther mobilized. The Great Awakening in the USA was a movement of the people, the settlers, the farmers, the land poor, and the war weary.

This matters because when you look at most of the main line Protestant and Catholic Churches they are made up of the people in the top 25% of the population. At one time there used to be great pride taken in the fact that so many senators and congress people were Presbyterians.  Looking at the churches losing members it is the churches who have no interest and would not welcome those in the 75% group.
The Pentecostal revival of the Christian faith around the world is in third world countries where they are appealing to the masses.

When this history was study in a church study group, the people in that study group looked at the facts, acknowledged them and then said, "Next book." The study and the reality of what was said did not make a lick of difference to how they conducted ministry.  A friend once laughingly told me, "God got along great for 1500 years without the Presbyterian Church, he can probably do it again."  Indeed, He may get the chance.

What is with this, Abraham?

In a habit of reading the Bible over and over, it is interesting what steps out and gets noticed each time I read it. As I was reading through Genesis this month, one was impressed by the compassion and determination of Abraham to save the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Abraham went back and forth with God hard and heavy. Abraham got God down to being willing to save the city if only five people could be found who were faithful and upright.

But then a few chapters later, after we have the miracle of the birth of Isaac, we have this story of God telling Abraham to take Isaac out and sacrifice the child. What struck me as so unusual was that this bold, feisty Abraham does not say a word in behalf of Isaac.  Abraham does not try to talk God into accepting five lambs to spare Isaac. Abraham does not negotiate with God about sparing Isaac's life like he did to try to save Sodom and Gomorrah.  Would you take five bulls instead?  Would you accept twenty?  Not a word from Abraham.

There have been lots of discussions about this story. What kind of God puts his friends to that kind of testing?  What kind of child will let himself be tied up without a fuss?  What kind of promises does God make to Abraham that he hasn't already made to him earlier.  Does suggest that God's promises may not be promises if he has to keep making them over and over again?   But this morning as I read this story it was the lack of Abraham's resistance, his lack of fight for his son that struck me as disappointing.