non-metaphysical stephen

I was in an awkward situation today in which I had to listen to one of my colleagues make anti-Obama comments. It was one of those tense moments where you find yourself thinking, “I wish I didn’t know that about you.” I found myself getting riled up, but since it wasn’t my conversation and since it was someone I work with on a regular basis, I had to act as if it didn’t bother me.

But why did it bother me? Why do I find political disagreement so much more aggravating than religious disagreement? Why am I tempted to write off people whose politics are different from mine? Is that would Jesus would do? Is that what Jesus did? (more…)

Huzzah!

My Proof of Faith: The Human God

Let me know what you think!

And congrats to Candace and her support team for winning the Great Nonprofits Pride Choice 2009 Award for the SE region!

A few weeks back the Sunday morning Gospel reading was the story of the woman with the hemmorhage who touched Jesus’ clothing and was healed. Rev. Bob mentioned that the insertion of this story within the story of the synagogue ruler Jairus is interesting because it means Jesus would have been ritually unclean after she touched him. Yet Jairus brought Jesus back to his house anyway. That’s a pretty powerful story in itself–that Jairus put aside his knowledge of the Law and trusted in Jesus’ purity. I wonder if her healing had any external evidence for the crowd to see.

Then I noticed an interesting variation between the accounts (Mark 5, Matthew 9 and Luke 8). (more…)

Are you effing kidding me????

The American Patriot’s Bible

Here’s the publisher’s description:

THE ONE BIBLE THAT SHOWS HOW ‘A LIGHT FROM ABOVE’ SHAPED OUR NATION. Never has a version of the Bible targeted the spiritual needs of those who love our country more than The American Patriot’s Bible. This extremely unique Bible shows how the history of the United States connects the people and events of the Bible to our lives in a modern world. The story of the United States is wonderfully woven into the teachings of the Bible and includes a beautiful full-color family record section, memorable images from our nation’s history and hundreds of enlightening articles which complement the New King James Version Bible text.

Quelle horreur!!!!!

I’m glad I didn’t know about this before July 4th. I had to give the opening prayer at church the following day and this information would have really set me off!

Thankfully, a lot of people are seeing this in the same way I do–as idolatry. (more…)

David’s relationship to Saul’s reign has always fascinated me. On the one hand, David refuses to kill Saul, on the grounds that Saul is still God’s anointed and therefore it is up to God to remove Saul from the throne. On the other hand, David spends a significant amount of time with Saul’s enemies, the Philistines. David is even willing to go to war with them against Saul; the only reason he doesn’t is because the Philistines do not trust him and send him away.

Still, if we think about what David’s actions must have looked like to those loyal to Saul (i.e., loyal to the government), he gave every appearance of being a traitor. I have to wonder how David’s actions would look to us today in the States–would David ever be accepted as a legitimate ruler given that he almost went to war against his own nation? Can you imagine anyone becoming President–a great President at that–after having joined up with our military enemies?

Interesting stuff. But today, as I read 1 Chronicles 12, I noticed something else. David was not alone! (more…)

Another interesting column from the same paper as the previous post, this one by Bob Gourley. He notes how the “battle for the Bible” has been tossed aside in favor of issues that have no connection to biblical teachings:

Associated Baptist Press - Opinion: Losing the Bible.

Today, the agenda of the Religious Right, including many prominent fundamentalist Baptists, lies outside the Bible. That their politically conservative but extra-biblical agenda is a construct of modernist thinking seems to be of no concern: they proudly pledge overarching loyalty to the human construct of inerrancy  and fidelity to unrestrained capitalism.

And later,

Rising hand-in-hand, Baptist fundamentalism and small-government Republicanism are adrift together, struggling to stay above water. Unable to reverse the demographics, Republicans hope to “increase their share of the minority vote“ (including Southern Baptists), while one fundamentalist Baptist response to denominational decline focuses on making more Baptist babies and Liberty University recently banished Democrats from campus. For some Baptists, procreation and political correctness offer hope where an inerrant theology has failed.

So true, and not just for Baptists….

Nice to see this kind of editorial in a Baptist paper — but look how predictable the comments are….

Associated Baptist Press - Opinion: Truly supporting our troops.

We Christians should be against all forms of deception, and yet, in an attempt to impose mandatory heterosexuality, we force many of our men and women in uniform to deceive their fellow soldiers. Besides the immorality of forcing our troops to lie, the present policy is placing them and our nation in greater peril. Since the policy was enacted in 1993, almost 800 specialists with critical skills needed for the defense of the homeland have been fired, of whom 323 are linguists — 55 of them Arabic experts. Think of the backlog of thousands of documents that cannot be translated — documents that, conceivably, could save American lives — because we are more concerned with whom a soldier loves than we are with his or her ability to do their job.

(Though I have to admit that I think the first commenter has a point about Christians and militarism. I don’t know if defensive campaigns are compatible with Christianity, but I do know that the early church kicked out people who joined the military. And even if defensive campaigns are okay (I think of the Israelites re-building the city wall with a sword in their free hands), I do not believe for one second that our actions in Iraq were justified in God’s eyes.)

When I was in Athens, I noticed that the supermarkets in the less-wealthy neighborhoods had noticably fewer options regarding healthy food. If I wanted something as simple as lo-fat cheese, I could find it at the Publix and the Kroger but not at the Bi-Lo. And even then, the healthier food was pricier.

A new study by the US Dept. of Ag confirms this phenomenon: Gross inequality in access to healthy food | theGrio.

According to the report, 2.3 million Americans live more than a mile from a supermarket and do not have access to a vehicle. While this number might seem small, this number should ring some alarms, as the report goes on to say that the “urban core areas with limited food access are characterized by higher levels of racial segregation and greater income inequality.” People of color and low income communities are the ones most affected by America’s food crisis, and in the current economic downturn, this is not something to turn a blind eye to.

May God have mercy on the poor and raise up people to address and change the situation.

There’s an interesting piece over at Time Magazine about the Pope’s recent comments on economics: The Pope on Capitalism: Encyclical ‘Charity in Truth’ - TIME.

I’m glad to see comments like this coming from one of Christianity’s major leaders:

Benedict denounces the modern corporate business model, taking on the global Wall Street and its super bonuses, which lead to financial speculation and labor outsourcing. “In recent years, a new cosmopolitan class of managers has emerged, who are often answerable only to the shareholders generally consisting of anonymous funds which de facto determine their remuneration,” he writes. “Profit is useful if it serves as a means toward an end. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.”

But I’m curious to see how the “capitalism is God’s will” crowd will react to this revelation (emphases mine):

Indeed, according to Stefano Zamagni, an economics professor who was a consultant on the encyclical, Benedict believes that capitalism as such is now effectively “obsolete” and must be replaced by a new form of market economy whose driving force is not the maximization of profits.

“Capitalism is an old idea, where the market was supposedly morally neutral … where efficiency becomes an ethos,” said Zamagni during the presentation of the document in the Vatican press office on Tuesday. “This encyclical aims to overcome a dichotomy that characterized the 20th century between the economic and social spheres. If we can instead incorporate the idea of the social element into the economy, the market itself becomes a force for civility.”

I don’t know a lot about economics, and I’m certainly guilty of making Adam Smith into scripture (even before I had read him). But I’ve realized that capitalism is not really a biblical concept and may in fact be opposed to the spirit of Christianity.

May God continue to raise up leaders for the church who can point us towards a more biblical understanding of economics. Amen.

This morning at church I was asked to give the opening prayer–and of course it’s July 4th weekend, one of my least favorite holidays of the year. Thankfully, the service had almost none of the usual Holiday trappings–no patriotic songs, no American flags on display, no sermon reminding us how great this nation is. In fact, I may have given the service the only mention of the holiday–now THAT is ironic! Still, this is my first July 4th at this church, so I didn’t want to launch into a Jeremiah Wright style attack on our nationalist pride and arrogance–not sure how that would go over!

So, here’s the holiday portion of my prayer, as best as I can remember it:

Gracious God, on this 4th of July weekend, we lift up a special prayer for our country. We thank you so much for the freedom you have blessed us with, for the power you have given us to do great good in the world, and for the unbelievable wealth we have in this nation.

God, have mercy on us. Help us to use our wealth and power wisely to do good in the world. Instill in us a spirit of humility, a spirit of charity and a spirit of compassion, so that we might be agents of love, freedom and justice in this world.

In the name of Christ our Savior,

Amen.

I ran across this article from The Daily Kos, which reflects many of my own complaints against my former political party: a seemingly complete lack of compassion for other peoples, especially for peoples who have been prevented from having equal access to opportunity and/or denied their status as full human beings, and who are in many ways still aren’t given a level playing field.

To go one step further than Kos, I believe that empathy is a Christian value, and it’s one of the reasons I get so annoyed by hearing people on the Right spout off about Christianity this and God that. I left the Republican Party because I realized that the Bible seems more supportive of the values found today amongst the left: charity, compassion, humility, respect for differences, etc. In leaving behind the GOP, I broke out of the restraints that kept me from truly loving others.

The post also contains another thing that REALLY grates on my Christian nerves: American exceptionalism, as seen in the passage quoted from Liz Cheney. I first noticed the ugliness of this belief years ago in a copy of The Limbaugh Letter, and I still can’t see how you can justify it as Christian. My Bible is quite clear that nationalism is a rebellion against God, a sure way to bring judgment upon the nation. (Just in time for July 4th–huzzah!)

May God have mercy on us and not deal with us as we deserve. Instead, may God instill within our hearts that compassion, humility and generosity of Christ Jesus. Amen.