The Supreme Court is hearing arguments about this, so I will weigh in. I know my opinion means so much to them.
So...what do we do about gay marriage? The general consensus is that it is more and more acceptable in our culture. People aren't threatened by it like they once were. Most of us have friends and family members who are gay. Should it be legal?
As a Christian, I firmly believe that the Bible condemns homosexuality. It's not just that it's not a good 'lifestyle choice', but that it is wrong, a sin. Two scriptures in Leviticus and three in the NT cannot be spun in any other way...it's not just about pedophilia, or about temple prostitutes, or about inclinations. No, it's about acting on homosexual behavior, and Scripture is uniformly consistent that it is wrong. The fact that there are only five scriptures (many less than condemnations of heterosexual immorality, or greed, or injustice to the poor) should not convince us that this means nothing to God. Continually we see that it is an abomination (Leviticus) and keeping one from the kingdom from God (1 Corinthians). It is against our human nature (Romans) and against sound doctrine (1 Timothy). So Scripture is clear about this...it is not a behavior that is acceptable, especially for those who claim to be children of God.
But in recent years I've come to think that maybe homosexuals ought to have the right to marry. It's not that I think it any more right, and I would refuse to perform a homosexual wedding if I was ever asked. But here's why I think they ought to have marriage equality.
-1)If everything in our countries is about 'rights', then should people not have the right to marry whom they choose? The same people who are against gay marriage are the same ones who will scream if you take away any of their own rights. To be brief, let me just say that 'conservatives' really need to work out their idea of freedom, because right now it is a mess. They can't just pick and choose what ought to be legal, especially when many of their desires for freedom (to smoke, to buy handguns, etc.) are especially harmful to others. Gay marriage has not destroyed my family, an American family.
-2)If we have made marriage a cornerstone of civil policy, with many rights and advantages going to people who are married, then are homosexuals to not have the same opportunities? Should we not be affording people equal protection? We make marriage to be a tax advantage...should gay couples not have the same rights? We make it where marriage is a sacred bond that identifies two people as being their 'most important'...should a gay person not have the right to say who should be able to make decisions in regards to their lives in times of trouble?
It's not a perfect argument to be sure. And indeed, it leaves many questions about adoption and foster care policy, about issues of discrimination (which are usually overblown, BTW), and about the right of free speech (since, those of us who believe it to still be wrong are accused of 'hate speech' since we are holding an increasingly unpopular opinion). Two issues particularly concern me: First, what about polygamy? If we have changed the definition of marriage from 'one man, one woman' to 'two consenting adults', why not change it to whatever we want it to be? Why cannot a couple become a triad? Or any number of people desiring to enter into covenant relationship? I can guarantee that this will become an issue of civil rights within my lifetime now that gay marriage is mostly seen as a possibility. Second, what of those of us who do marriages who will refuse to marry a gay couple that asks us to? Or works for the county clerks that have to issue marriage licenses but in good conscience cannot? When will we be sued for discrimination? Will we have to stop doing marriages at all, and just make it matter for the JOP?
The battle is just about over; gay marriage activists are going to win. How Christians handle this will be interesting to see. Will we live and act in love and grace, or will we continue to act in hate and spite? I find it interesting that the real sin of Sodom that got God's attention and wrath was not homosexuality. Rather, as Ezekiel 16:49, it was about injustice, about ignoring the poor, about being gluttonous. In how we treat homosexuals, will we sadly fall into the same trap and treat them poorly? This will certainly not be a faithful witness to Christ.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Landmarks on the journey
It was 10 years ago last week that the Dixie Chicks made their now-infamous statement in a London concert that they were embarrassed to be from the same state as George W. Bush. Conservatives went nuts. They started burning the Dixie Chicks album, the group never fully recovered, and now likely will never produce another album.
In retrospect I suppose that this was about the time that I was starting to wake up after my years of conservatism. I had been a Rush Limbaugh-listening member of that group for a number of years. While I don't ever remember feeling quite the vitriol that some felt about liberalism, Bill Clinton, and the rest of the world, I can remember thinking Clinton ought to be impeached, liberals weren't quite patriotic enough, and that we as America had the right to rule the world, since we, of course, were better and more moral than anybody else.
Yet at some point, about the time I was also starting to pay attention to soccer (some would say the two were related, that moral degeneracy comes due to that wicked sport), I began to see that there were a lot problems with conservatism. I began to see the hypocrisy of it all...they demanded freedom for people to do all sorts of things, yet denied people other kinds of freedoms that they didn't approve of. "Compassionate conservatism" could only be pushed so far as it got to the wealthy's pockets, and then it came to an laughable end. I became amazed with their continual griping that their views were not being reflected in the 'lamestream media', but then they would quote anything Fox News or Glenn Beck said as gospel truth. And maybe most of all, I began to see that the things they thought were vitally important as American values were not necessarily (and usually not at all) Christian or Biblical values.
Who knows how many things pushed me along the road to suspicion. But I do remember that the whole hullabaloo of the Dixie Chicks contributed to it. I was amazed that people who decried the totalitarianism of other nations couldn't stand any free speech or dissent from popular opinion here. Remember, W was still riding high here. Not only had he looked like the big man standing at ground zero a year and a half earlier, but his two wars were extremely popular: we wanted some Muslim blood, and we wanted it now. It was still unpopular to say that he was wrong, even if the rest of the world believed it. It began to dawn on me that people who can't handle hearing criticism need to be criticized all the more: what were they really hiding? More reflection and thought over the years since made me feel as I continue to do now, that conservatism as it has become is full of crap. It's a tightly controlled ideology of the wealth class with no real concern for genuine Christian values.
Someday I'll look back on other landmarks which took me in other directions. But it's interesting to look back and see where I've come from.
In retrospect I suppose that this was about the time that I was starting to wake up after my years of conservatism. I had been a Rush Limbaugh-listening member of that group for a number of years. While I don't ever remember feeling quite the vitriol that some felt about liberalism, Bill Clinton, and the rest of the world, I can remember thinking Clinton ought to be impeached, liberals weren't quite patriotic enough, and that we as America had the right to rule the world, since we, of course, were better and more moral than anybody else.
Yet at some point, about the time I was also starting to pay attention to soccer (some would say the two were related, that moral degeneracy comes due to that wicked sport), I began to see that there were a lot problems with conservatism. I began to see the hypocrisy of it all...they demanded freedom for people to do all sorts of things, yet denied people other kinds of freedoms that they didn't approve of. "Compassionate conservatism" could only be pushed so far as it got to the wealthy's pockets, and then it came to an laughable end. I became amazed with their continual griping that their views were not being reflected in the 'lamestream media', but then they would quote anything Fox News or Glenn Beck said as gospel truth. And maybe most of all, I began to see that the things they thought were vitally important as American values were not necessarily (and usually not at all) Christian or Biblical values.
Who knows how many things pushed me along the road to suspicion. But I do remember that the whole hullabaloo of the Dixie Chicks contributed to it. I was amazed that people who decried the totalitarianism of other nations couldn't stand any free speech or dissent from popular opinion here. Remember, W was still riding high here. Not only had he looked like the big man standing at ground zero a year and a half earlier, but his two wars were extremely popular: we wanted some Muslim blood, and we wanted it now. It was still unpopular to say that he was wrong, even if the rest of the world believed it. It began to dawn on me that people who can't handle hearing criticism need to be criticized all the more: what were they really hiding? More reflection and thought over the years since made me feel as I continue to do now, that conservatism as it has become is full of crap. It's a tightly controlled ideology of the wealth class with no real concern for genuine Christian values.
Someday I'll look back on other landmarks which took me in other directions. But it's interesting to look back and see where I've come from.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Grace is messy
A dear sister in the church contacted me recently to let me know she did not like my sermon on Tamar from Genesis 38. It really is a rough story, 'R-rated' almost. I can understand her difficulty with it, and before I preached it I thought long and hard whether or not to do so. I've had some self-doubt after her comments, and it may well be that it wasn't well put together, or made the right applications, or was just poorly presented. That could well be the case...sometimes I realize how unworthy I am to preach.
But this was not her point...she's always been positive and encouraging to me; her problem was with the story itself. Maybe a general Sunday morning crowd is not the place for a story like that. Maybe it belongs in a small group of older, mature adults. Maybe.
Or maybe not. As I've thought about this today I've thought about all the stories from the Bible that we would have to not preach about if we were nervous about the 'mature' content, and the list continues to grow. Much of Abraham's story, out. How do you preach about a guy who is so nervous about his own security he sends his wife to another man twice? Later on he then tries to kill his son! Most of the Judges (and Samuel and Kings...) is out...too much bloodshed. David and Bathsheba is certainly out, as it involves the triad of lust, immorality, and murder. The story about the other Tamar and Amnon and Absalom likewise is a story of rape and murder. Hosea buys his wife back after she spends time as a prostitute.
And then what do we do with Jesus? He's accused of being a drunk and a glutton. He hangs out with whores, tax collectors (the mafia of the day), and various sinners. He argues with people and causes a riot in the temple and is followed by scandal wherever he goes. He dies a bloody, gruesome death.
I'm sure that some would be content with a bunch of homilies about being a good person. James is a nice book, we might think...not a lot of stuff in there could make us nervous. And Proverbs, that's nice too...until you see foolishness described as an alluring, wayward woman.
But when we take it as a whole there are a lot more stories in the Bible that are objectionable than we would care to admit. Maybe we're just too squeamish today, but I think it has more to do with the fact that we think that grace is clean and sterile. God comes in, lysols our tiny little mistake, and we move happily on.
The more I preach, though, I see how foolish that vision is. Grace is messy. God doesn't just have to make a minor course correction to our lives, he spends time cleaning up after us like we are an infant with a bad case of diarrhea. It's nasty, and we don't want to talk about it, but it's real, and that messiness is reflected in all these stories. As much as we want to explain these stories away, we can't, because then we have to ignore our own stories of sin. There's nothing in the lives of people I have served with that isn't reflected by the Bible.
More importantly, though, there's no mess in our lives that can't be saved by grace. Most of these stories ultimately are about redemption of one sort or another. As messed up as people are, God comes in and makes things right, even when it seems impossible to us. We may not like to admit it, but we need to read these messy stories to remind us of God's great blessing.
But this was not her point...she's always been positive and encouraging to me; her problem was with the story itself. Maybe a general Sunday morning crowd is not the place for a story like that. Maybe it belongs in a small group of older, mature adults. Maybe.
Or maybe not. As I've thought about this today I've thought about all the stories from the Bible that we would have to not preach about if we were nervous about the 'mature' content, and the list continues to grow. Much of Abraham's story, out. How do you preach about a guy who is so nervous about his own security he sends his wife to another man twice? Later on he then tries to kill his son! Most of the Judges (and Samuel and Kings...) is out...too much bloodshed. David and Bathsheba is certainly out, as it involves the triad of lust, immorality, and murder. The story about the other Tamar and Amnon and Absalom likewise is a story of rape and murder. Hosea buys his wife back after she spends time as a prostitute.
And then what do we do with Jesus? He's accused of being a drunk and a glutton. He hangs out with whores, tax collectors (the mafia of the day), and various sinners. He argues with people and causes a riot in the temple and is followed by scandal wherever he goes. He dies a bloody, gruesome death.
I'm sure that some would be content with a bunch of homilies about being a good person. James is a nice book, we might think...not a lot of stuff in there could make us nervous. And Proverbs, that's nice too...until you see foolishness described as an alluring, wayward woman.
But when we take it as a whole there are a lot more stories in the Bible that are objectionable than we would care to admit. Maybe we're just too squeamish today, but I think it has more to do with the fact that we think that grace is clean and sterile. God comes in, lysols our tiny little mistake, and we move happily on.
The more I preach, though, I see how foolish that vision is. Grace is messy. God doesn't just have to make a minor course correction to our lives, he spends time cleaning up after us like we are an infant with a bad case of diarrhea. It's nasty, and we don't want to talk about it, but it's real, and that messiness is reflected in all these stories. As much as we want to explain these stories away, we can't, because then we have to ignore our own stories of sin. There's nothing in the lives of people I have served with that isn't reflected by the Bible.
More importantly, though, there's no mess in our lives that can't be saved by grace. Most of these stories ultimately are about redemption of one sort or another. As messed up as people are, God comes in and makes things right, even when it seems impossible to us. We may not like to admit it, but we need to read these messy stories to remind us of God's great blessing.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
On humility and grace
One of the great struggles of my life is humanity. Not the question of, 'why are so many so bad?', but rather, 'why are so many such idiots?' I really do struggle with this question...it's not simply that I mock politicians or get a great chuckle out of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which, via the internet, I've been plowing through in recent months again). It's that I'm increasingly amazed that more people can even feed themselves or keep from drooling when they walk down the sidewalk. I'm more and more convinced that people's intelligence is making it where they will have trouble surviving. When I heard about the study recently that people really are getting dumber, I thought, yeah, that explains it. That dumb people no longer have to face Darwin's wrath because they were too stupid to survive has now been replaced by a social safety net in which the dumbest among us are surviving just nicely and procreating at a terrific rate seems obvious. It's just that now there is scholarly proof.
My issues with the vapidity of others is much less significant, of course. Today I tried to give blood and was doing just fine (though the tech had problems finding my veins) and then when they tried to fill one of their tiny little test tubes off of it, it clotted because the people who were supposed to be careful about this were not, and now my entire blood donation was shot. The fat guy in charge several times reminded me that I could use my other arm and do it again, but by this time I was annoyed enough that I just got cleaned up and left. This was the third time in a row in which I have been suspicious of the competence of the blood donor employees because of actions they have taken, but this is the first time it has really backfired. Not sure I will bother again.
So many other issues come to mind when I think about them...the newest one is that for years I have heard that many of my fellow Christians hate on all reality TV (rightly so) and but now think Duck Dynasty is a model for their lives. I guess it's not just stupidity, but inconsistency, but part of stupidity in my mind is when you loudly and publicly speak inconsistency.
It's a wonder that I can survive, how annoyed I get at my fellow human. But then, I am a preacher. Sometimes I speak of this great and wonderful thing called grace. I tell the stories of Jesus when he speaks about being humble, meek, and not so annoyingly self-righteous. And I like it...in a religious movement in which legalism has often prevailed against grace, it's an amazing truth that needs to be heard again and again. We are all sinners. We are all stupid. We do dumb things all the time, and God loves us anyway, for some crazy reason. But I do a terrible job living it.
I have always known on some level that much of my problem in life has been patience, but now I've come to see more of what that means...I am not a humble person, in that I think myself wiser and smarter than everybody else. This is a great sin, and I need, as somebody once said, 'one good humiliation each day'. Maybe that would knock me off my perch. And I've also seen that I am not very good at showing grace to others as I have been shown. Maybe that's not right...I do to people, but then in my mind I'm thinking, what a dope. That, too, is wrong. They aren't dopes, they are beautiful people made in the image of God. And if they aren't as bright as they ought to be, maybe it's my job to help them be better tomorrow than they are today. Isn't grace something that has to be realized in each of our lives?
Father, forgive me, for I know what I have done, and I know that it is wrong. Give me the heart of a graceful, humble, and patient man.
My issues with the vapidity of others is much less significant, of course. Today I tried to give blood and was doing just fine (though the tech had problems finding my veins) and then when they tried to fill one of their tiny little test tubes off of it, it clotted because the people who were supposed to be careful about this were not, and now my entire blood donation was shot. The fat guy in charge several times reminded me that I could use my other arm and do it again, but by this time I was annoyed enough that I just got cleaned up and left. This was the third time in a row in which I have been suspicious of the competence of the blood donor employees because of actions they have taken, but this is the first time it has really backfired. Not sure I will bother again.
So many other issues come to mind when I think about them...the newest one is that for years I have heard that many of my fellow Christians hate on all reality TV (rightly so) and but now think Duck Dynasty is a model for their lives. I guess it's not just stupidity, but inconsistency, but part of stupidity in my mind is when you loudly and publicly speak inconsistency.
It's a wonder that I can survive, how annoyed I get at my fellow human. But then, I am a preacher. Sometimes I speak of this great and wonderful thing called grace. I tell the stories of Jesus when he speaks about being humble, meek, and not so annoyingly self-righteous. And I like it...in a religious movement in which legalism has often prevailed against grace, it's an amazing truth that needs to be heard again and again. We are all sinners. We are all stupid. We do dumb things all the time, and God loves us anyway, for some crazy reason. But I do a terrible job living it.
I have always known on some level that much of my problem in life has been patience, but now I've come to see more of what that means...I am not a humble person, in that I think myself wiser and smarter than everybody else. This is a great sin, and I need, as somebody once said, 'one good humiliation each day'. Maybe that would knock me off my perch. And I've also seen that I am not very good at showing grace to others as I have been shown. Maybe that's not right...I do to people, but then in my mind I'm thinking, what a dope. That, too, is wrong. They aren't dopes, they are beautiful people made in the image of God. And if they aren't as bright as they ought to be, maybe it's my job to help them be better tomorrow than they are today. Isn't grace something that has to be realized in each of our lives?
Father, forgive me, for I know what I have done, and I know that it is wrong. Give me the heart of a graceful, humble, and patient man.
Friday, March 1, 2013
We hate who we are told to hate
One of my favorite news stories from the past week was the tale of Dennis Rodman going to North Korea and meeting their new leader and watching basketball games with him. This story delights me on so many levels.
-First, I've watched far too much of the Stone/Parker world to not at least consider that that maybe Rodman was sent in as a secret agent to kill whichever Kim Jong this happens to be. You could just picture it...they're sitting courtside or at a dinner buffet or are playing on one of his water slides and all of a sudden Rodman pulls out a knife and stabs him. Wouldn't that be amazing, to see something like that? I'm not hoping for it as I believe murder of any stripe to be wrong...but could you imagine the 'wha?' factor on it? Our country has been trying to bump him off for years, but the job finally gets done by a washed up basketball player with an alleged history of mental illness? Yeah, nuclear war would await. Bad idea.
-Second, Dennis Rodman, documentary filmmaker. I guess Ken Burns was busy.
-And finally, this story reminds me that we believe what we are told to believe. One of the fascinating subplots has been the interviews of Rodman after he came out. Kim is a great guy, Rodman says, and everybody goes nuts. Now, of course, we have to consider the source. Rodman is one of the more annoying public figures of recent history, even though he played at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, and according to an old friend of mine who went to school there the same time Rodman did, was a thief who would steal stuff from dorm rooms. But everybody is going nuts that Rodman hasn't jumped up on the bandwagon that this guy is a madman, a lunatic, a terrorist. Instead, Kim Jong Un is 'an awesome dude' and has a friend for life in Rodman.
We assume that just because we have been told for years and years that North Korea is an enemy and that its leaders are nuts that it has to be true. But is it? Foreign policy in our life seems to about knowing who your friends and your enemies are and keeping that list where everybody can see it. We are friends with Saudi Arabia and the many terrorists it keeps producing, but we are enemies with Cuba because the Cuban exiles can't forgive the Castros for what happened a half-century ago? We act like teenage girls who hold grudges because somebody wore the same pair of shoes. What's really insane?
Sometimes I think our political bosses need to hire in the WWE writers who make heels and faces turn overnight. Then maybe we could more reasonably assess how we look at the people in this world we've been told to love or hate.
-First, I've watched far too much of the Stone/Parker world to not at least consider that that maybe Rodman was sent in as a secret agent to kill whichever Kim Jong this happens to be. You could just picture it...they're sitting courtside or at a dinner buffet or are playing on one of his water slides and all of a sudden Rodman pulls out a knife and stabs him. Wouldn't that be amazing, to see something like that? I'm not hoping for it as I believe murder of any stripe to be wrong...but could you imagine the 'wha?' factor on it? Our country has been trying to bump him off for years, but the job finally gets done by a washed up basketball player with an alleged history of mental illness? Yeah, nuclear war would await. Bad idea.
-Second, Dennis Rodman, documentary filmmaker. I guess Ken Burns was busy.
-And finally, this story reminds me that we believe what we are told to believe. One of the fascinating subplots has been the interviews of Rodman after he came out. Kim is a great guy, Rodman says, and everybody goes nuts. Now, of course, we have to consider the source. Rodman is one of the more annoying public figures of recent history, even though he played at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, and according to an old friend of mine who went to school there the same time Rodman did, was a thief who would steal stuff from dorm rooms. But everybody is going nuts that Rodman hasn't jumped up on the bandwagon that this guy is a madman, a lunatic, a terrorist. Instead, Kim Jong Un is 'an awesome dude' and has a friend for life in Rodman.
We assume that just because we have been told for years and years that North Korea is an enemy and that its leaders are nuts that it has to be true. But is it? Foreign policy in our life seems to about knowing who your friends and your enemies are and keeping that list where everybody can see it. We are friends with Saudi Arabia and the many terrorists it keeps producing, but we are enemies with Cuba because the Cuban exiles can't forgive the Castros for what happened a half-century ago? We act like teenage girls who hold grudges because somebody wore the same pair of shoes. What's really insane?
Sometimes I think our political bosses need to hire in the WWE writers who make heels and faces turn overnight. Then maybe we could more reasonably assess how we look at the people in this world we've been told to love or hate.
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