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.