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.