Lord of the Sabbath

Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.   (Exodus 20:9-10 ESV)

And he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath."  (Mark 2:27-28 ESV)

And he said to them, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?" But they were silent.   (Mark 3:4 ESV)

This morning I preached on the passages from Mark 2-3 in which Jesus and his disciples pick and eat grain on the Sabbath, then Jesus heals a man's hand on the Sabbath.  The ultimate point I was wishing to make was not that we are simply free to do what we want on Sunday (which is often today how many Christians view their Sunday afternoons, with eating out, shopping, or watching football), but that we are called to affirm life on this day, recognizing that Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath.  If he is in charge, we are called to do good not just for ourselves but make it where others can rest, too.  In an era in which so many have to work on Sundays in order to keep the economy going and make it so that we who are privileged are free to relax on this day, I challenged the church to give up activities that make it where others have to work on Sundays. Don't others wish to spend time with their family, rest, or even attend worship on Sunday, but can't because of our activities?  Though I don't believe in passing Sunday laws and know that one can take this practice to Pharisaical levels ("Hey, you're writing this post on a Sunday afternoon...doesn't that mean that the controllers of the internet have to work so you can write?"), I think it's important that we question whether or not is good that we make cooks and servers work so that we can eat, grocery stockers and checkers so that we can shop, and football players and peanut vendors and grounds crew and traffic cops so that we can be entertained.  

The reaction, of course, was rather indifferent.  Hopefully it will change people over time, but likely not.  Maybe I'm wrong in my interpretations on this subject, though I think that our culture (as well as the Christian subculture) has swung from legalism to libertinism.  Yet here's the two general reactions to what was said that bother me.  

-1)"I like what you are saying, but in our capitalistic world, we can't really stop what Sundays have become."  This attitude basically admits that Christians as a whole are impotent to shine a light in our culture.  Sure, we pass laws all the time telling people how to live their lives, but moral influence?  Forget about it.  This says more about the weakness of genuine Christianity today than it does about the world.  Don't we believe in the power of the gospel to change the world?  I guess not.  

-2)"You may be right, but I'm still going to do what I want to do."  Now, nobody will say this directly, but it's what we do.  Maybe I made some people uncomfortable today, but after they've had their dinner at Applebees and then spent the next two hours looking through shops at the mall, they've forgotten about why they weren't very happy with the preacher this morning.  Many Christians today are so comfortable in their own culture that they refuse to be changed.  Yes, the preacher might say things that they know are right, but are they willing to change?  Are we as hard-hearted as Pharaoh?  

Fake Life

My old seminary buddy Bruce Bates linked to a terrific article about a film that takes on the subject of how internet porn has affected an entire generation.  I especially liked the comment from the film's writer, director, and star: "Are you watching these images and concluding how this is how real life should be?"

Porn is certainly a serious problem for many many...but I'm wondering how much 'fake' life affects the rest of reality.  It's not enough that a woman that doesn't have a size 0 body is now considered chunky in our modern society or that sex isn't always like it is in movies (both porn or mainstream).  How much other kinds of fantasy do we live with from the stuff we allow into our homes.  It comes in so many flavors:
-Romance novels that make a woman think that prince charming shouold be coming on his white horse to save her from the losers in her life
-TV dramas that make us think that criminal cases can be wrapped up easily within an hour
-Talk radio that makes people believe that their own extreme positions can and must prevail or nobody will win

Though I've not really had an appetite for porn and avoided it as much as possible (I've always found it somewhat disturbing, though in honesty I do know what my lust triggers are) and I've sought to stay as grounded in real life as much as possible, I've noticed that fake life has impacted me as well.  I am a child of the first wave of the video game culture.  From Space Invaders onward, we've been taught to believe that nothing in life is permanent.  First we would put another quarter in, but later on we learned the beauty of switching the home consoles on and off.  Don't like how the game is going?  The reset button is right there.  No problem, right?

I'm wondering if this kind of denial of the results of our games causes more problems than we think.  Let's start with a simple game of Pac-Man that isn't going well.  You get distracted by the kids, you lose focus for a moment, and soon enough you're dead.  Just hit reset, problem solved.  But life isn't that easy.  Many people daily make horrible choices and think that there are no consequences.  As a parent I am daily trying to make my children understand that what we do matters: if my daughter throws a tantrum, holding her to punishment doesn't seem fair to her.  If my son spends all of his money on something frivolous (and yes, the frivolity of the marketplace is ever-stunning in the crap that it produces) and therefore has no money later to buy something of substance, not then loaning him five dollars may seem cruel.  But consequences exist...have video games tried to convince us otherwise.

A few years ago I became interested in a game called Football Manager and still probably play it too much (finishing 30 seasons...yeah, that's too much).  Basically, you take control of the management of a team and see where it takes you.  I'm really quite good at working the game, getting the right players, and putting them in the right spots.  But this game is so good in part because it leaves a lot of things to chance.  Players get hurt, or we lose a match we should have won, or my team owner is demanding unrealistic results and fires me for not achieving them.  But early on I learned how easy it was to not live with the results...quit early from the game in which your player gets hurt or you lose to Wigan.  Who cares, right?  But think about how video games makes us view sports: our team loses winnable games, and we think the coach is a bum.  A player gets hurt, and we scream and rant because it's not just fair.  Part of the problem of fan behavior in our modern society may come from the fact that we haven't accepted the reality of the results.  Because we have no outlet to give us an upset button if, say, Sporting Kansas City loses tonight, we get upset and bitter.  Our fake life has made it where we don't want to deal with the reality of life.

I don't know that we can ever go back to the way things once were.  Many people even now spend all their time in Second Life or the Sims or playing some other game or watching porn or absorbing a romance novel.  The escapism from reality may seem comforting for a moment, but inevitably it makes returning to the real world all that much more difficult.

Expecting Equality

Once again in the news today we find that the Republicans in Congress are trying to block Obamacare.  It's not enough that they've voted to repeal it over 40 times, continually criticize it, and seek to have the supreme court strike it down as law of the land (all the while blaming Obama because of the problems it will inevitably have)...now they are trying to starve it out of existence.  Foolish, I know...but nobody is accusing modern conservatives of any kind of common sense.

Here's the great question nobody is asking, though...do we believe that all people in our country, no matter how rich or poor, no matter their social status, and no matter their health history, deserve the same quality of health care?  It's a question that nobody is asking, and nobody is getting close to answering.  For if we believe that all people deserve the equal opportunity of treatment when it comes to health care, should we not simply make it a right, and thus make socialized health care a fundamental basis of our social system?

For example...let's say a young person with no money in her checking account comes down with cancer.  Do we offer her the same drugs, the same screenings, and the same treatment as somebody whose insurance can pay for it?  Or do we go ahead and let her die, because economically treatment for her is impossible to be paid for by herself or her family?

Or think about an older man who needs a liver transplant and can afford the finest medical care.  Do we believe that a different man, without money, should have the same right to the same kind of treatment, even though he can't afford to pay for it?  Let's be blunt: does the wealthier (or more resourceful or the better connected) person have a greater right to live than somebody else?

It's interesting that in much of life only the most ardent communists would believe that people should have the same access to a product: almost nobody believes that we are all entitled to drive a lexus, live in a fancy house, or have the opportunity of an Ivy-league education.  Some might feel entitled to such things, but that's usually more a problem of the rich in my experience.

Yet increasingly we believe that there are many other elements of life in which we ought to strive for equality as much as possible.  Only the most hardened people do not believe that inner-city kids do not have a right to a quality education, as hard as it may be to get it.  Only the most embittered would say that low-income defendants do not have the right to at least a competent level of legal defense, though often that is more of a goal than a reality.  In some areas of life, we have determined that people have a particular right to equal opportunity, regardless of their social standing or their wealth.

So why not health care?  What I'd really like to be asked to politicians on both sides of the aisle is this:  do the poor have the same right to health care as the wealthy?  If we can come to an agreement about this as a country, the health care debate might well get a lot more simple.

Christian Nation: A Novel

Last week my brother told me about a novel he had read recently called Christian Nation.  It's a book that is a 'what-if' account that assumes John McCain won the presidential election in 2008 and dropped dead two months after the inauguration, leaving Sarah Palin to became president.  It's written from a liberal perspective that is terrified of the religious right, and is a word of warning about what would happen if the aims of the extreme religious right (personified by a dominion/reconstructionist ideology) gain credence in this country.  I'm about halfway through the book, and though it's not the best book I've read, it is certainly something to pique one's attention.  As a Christian sometimes I lament the fact that we are increasingly a wicked nation, but yet I also lament where conservatism has gone.  I've drifted from my 1990s Rush Limbaugh conservatism into what I think is the sensible center, but sadly nobody looks to centrists anymore...both parties are too busy running so far to the far left or far right that the silent majority of those of us in the middle have been left without a political home.

I think there are two major problems with the premise laid out by Frederic Rich, the author.  First, the novel paints a tea party movement that is swallowed up by the Christian right, when in fact I think that the Christian right has been swallowed up by the tea party movement.  When the Christian right really started getting involved in politics several decades ago they found it necessary to align themselves with others who might be sympathetic to their POVs and would give them a foothold into the corridors of power.  Their aims might have been good as they sought to promote morality and defend life, but in fact they have been co-opted to the point that their message could hardly be considered Christian at all anymore.  When Christians of a particular bent are demanding unlimited gun rights, intervention into foreign conflicts, abolishing education programs, and incarcerating people at alarming rates, it's hard to think of them as truly being guided by Biblical Christianity.  Maybe they think they are promoting the Kingdom of God, but rather they are more hell-bent on promoting worldly values than they would ever care to admit.  Biblical illiteracy may well be part of the problem...they've gotten so far away from what the Bible actually says that they can be deluded into thinking that second amendment rights are found in the gospel.  (This is an argument I actually heard a Christian make recently; it centered on Jesus telling his disciples on the night he was betrayed to take two swords with them.  No, really.)

The truth is that the right wing of American politics is far more concerned with a pseudo-libertarian agenda than they are with Christianity.  Sure, they may throw Christians a bone once in awhile on abortion or gay marriage, but modern conservatism is concerned with two things: 1)LOWER (or better yet eliminate) MY TAXES and 2)CURB (or better yet neuter) GOVERNMENTAL REGULATIONS.  Everything else bows at the altar of these two points.  The pursuit of money and what it can do for those in power, even the promotion of America First and our military might, guides the agenda of these right wingers.  Whether it's right-to-work legislation, NAFTA, or overturning environmental regulations, what really matters is the bottom line...will it make the rich even more money?  The Christian right, having forgotten about the prophets of the Scripture and their warnings about those who would build paneled houses while others starve, have bought into this agenda and made it their own.  Christ may be spoken about sometimes, but in truth this is only a minor portion of the far right agenda.

A second problem with the novel, and perhaps more fundamental to why 'it can't happen here' (or at least not in the way it thinks) is that all evangelical Christians are portrayed with a broad brush.  In the novel all evangelicals are reconstructionists, demanding a right-wing Christian America in which gays and Muslims and abortionists are all shown the door or shot, their choice.  Truth is, this is a caricature that simply does not hold water.  While there are fringes of Christianity that have bought into this agenda, it has become interesting that evangelicalism is becoming a much more broad place.  Writers like Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis and countless others have been having a big impact on the conversation, taking Christians back to issues like social justice and love for one's neighbors.  While some Christians make it hard for the rest of us to tell of the grace of Jesus Christ (and indeed, introlerant bigotism has become the common public perception many people have of Christianity as shown by books like UnChristian, which surveys those who believe that Christianity is a homophobic and intolerant and angry group of whiteys), there are many others looking to dispel that perception.

Most of my friends come from what could broadly be called 'evangelical' in their worldview, but with a few exceptions most have little or nothing to do with the reality of demanding forcibly a 'Christian' nation.  Yes, they are bugged by gay marriage and abortion and similar issues, but most of them simply want to serve God the best way they can.  Most of them can see through the false veneer of the lunatics, and like me are appalled at the extremes in both directions.  This is why McCain ultimately lost the election.  While many were nervous about electing a black man with a Muslim name, most of us were far more terrified at the prospect of a President Palin, she being recognized for the nincompoop she was by even sensible conservative voters.  Yes, maybe we wanted a president that was a bit more white a bit more conservative, but we at minimum we wanted somebody who could string two sentences together.  Obama may not have been perfect (and ultimately he has been mediocre), but we dodged a bullet by not having Sarah Palin be a heartbeat away from the presidency, a bullet that was far wider than the author of this book would have us believe.

In the end, it's an interesting book, and one I've enjoyed reading.  But it's just fiction, and Lord willing will remain that way.

To emigrate or to stay

Philip Yancey tells the story of a man he knew as a kid growing up in the south who got infuriated with the United States and its acceptance of the civil rights movement.  This man moved his entire family to South Africa, which at the time was still fervently apartheid-ruled and would be for another 20 years or so.  To him, it was a place where people knew their place, and things could be as Yancey's friend thought they should be.

I thought about that story this morning when I came across a brief article that said that more Americans are emigrating to other countries than ever before.  The article didn't really give a reason why, and didn't really say where people are going to, but stories like that always make me want to read the comments.  I'm a sucker for punishment, but I do.  Basically it was the same whining and moaning that has become so common in our country.  People are getting away from Obama, or higher taxes, or remaining restrictions on homosexuality, whatever.  Everybody had a reason for why they might want to emigrate, but with a few exceptions only a few people posting had done so.

I'm wondering how many people horrified by gay marriage are thinking about going to Russia right now, considering how homosexuality is being suppressed there.

I'm also wondering how many people who consider themselves True Patriots are thinking about leaving the United States.  They love this country so much in their minds that they have to leave it.  Kind of bizarre thinking, if you ask me.

There have been times in my life when I think about leaving the United States.  Sometimes my reasoning is altruistic, in that I want to GO somewhere else...to do mission work in other lands, or to raise my kids with a simpler lifestyle.  But usually my reasoning says more about my feelings about where this country is going...I want to get away from the right wing nutjobs as well as the left wing bloodsuckers.  I get fed up with life here and think that it would be better somewhere else.

Like most of my thoughts, though, they usually don't last very long.  Back in my single days when I thought for several weeks about going to teach English in China (and do covert mission work) all it took was the realization that I knew nothing of the culture or the language and that likely I'd be in a giant city and stand out like a sore thumb.  I can remember sitting on the floor of a Barnes & Noble reading about the language and thinking that I had lost my mind.

As Christians, sometimes we are called to go somewhere else, or in fact are sent in order to tell about Jesus.  But I believe that most of us are called to stay where we are, wherever we may be, to be salt and light and leaven in this world.  It means that instead of moaning and complaining about everything, we are called to work where we are to make things better.  Instead of just talking about how bad things are and wringing our hands, we are called to be a witness to the gospel, which is Good News, not a listing of all the evils in this world.  And instead of threatening to take our balls and go play somewhere else if things aren't exactly as we ought to be, we are called to be good neighbors to the foolish people around us, to be a blessing in their lives instead of using them only as a warning about how not to live.