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.