Political grace

          Today I finished re-reading Philip Yancey’s wonderful 1997 book ‘What’s So Amazing About Grace?’  It had been a number of years since I had read it, but as I was reading it struck me how much his thinking has affected my own over the years, and how we both have lamented much of the ‘un-grace’ that has characterized Christians and the Church in my lifetime. 

          Near the end of the book Yancey takes aim at political Christians, primarily conservatives, who have sought to equate the Kingdom of God with the Kingdom of the United States.  Because we have sought to legislate so much about what people can and cannot do with their lives, even as we have been increasingly screaming about how much we want to get Big Government out of our lives, much of the world looks at our witness as being about small-minded moralistic fervor.  Years before the book came out called UnChristian that spoke of how young people look at Christians as judgmental, hateful, and homophobic, Yancey related story after story of the un-grace of Christians against Bill Clinton and others in government and society; I’m sure if he was to update this book today he could really dig into the Obama haters of the world. 

          One section he wrote really is as relevant today as it was 16 years ago (just replace the names of the ‘important’ issues then with what some are screaming about today):

Stephen Carter offers good counsel about political activism: to be effective, ‘gracious’ Christians must be wise in the issues to support or oppose….

          What about today?  Are we choosing our battles wisely?  Obviously, abortion, sexual issues, and the definitions of life and death are issues worthy of our attention.  Yet when I read the literature produced by evangelicals in politics I also read about gun rights, abolishing the Department of Education, the NAFTA trade agreements, the Panama Canal treaty, and term limits for Congress.  A few years back I heard the president of the National Association of Evangelicals include in his list of top ten concerns, ‘Repeal of the capital gains tax.’  Too often the agenda of conservative religious groups matches line for line the agenda of conservative politics and does not base its priorities on a transcendent source.  Like everyone else, evangelicals have a right to present arguments on all the issues, by the moment we present them as part of some ‘Christian’ platform we abandon our high moral ground….

          All too often in their forays into politics Christians have proved ‘wise as doves’ and ‘harmless as serpents’—exactly the opposite of Jesus’ precept.  If we expect society to take seriously our contribution, then we must show more wisdom in our choices.

Bad, awful thoughts...

Over the last few days I've seen a commercial for an upcoming movie called The Purge.  It's not a movie I want to see at this point, since I see about 3 movies in theaters a year and never get caught up by DVD of other watchable movies.  I don't like horror movies, and this probably would turn into one.

But the story of this movie has piqued my interest.  In the quasi-dystopian future, life seems to be great.  Unemployment is almost non-existent, crime has just about been wiped out.  Society seems to be functioning well, but why?  For 12 hours each year, there is absolute freedom...there will be no consequences for crime, for murder, for anything that somebody might do, and society purges itself of its most heinous elements all in a brief period of time.  Kind of a cathartic, violent release.

I'm intrigued because, if I'm completely honest, sometimes the wicked side of me thinks, hey, this ain't a bad idea.  Wouldn't our world be all better if the child molesters, drug dealers, rapists, and murders basically had open season on each other?  Or go even further...what about the members of society who are, quite frankly, burdensome?  The aged, the sick, the morbidly obese.  Doesn't darwinism say that eventually the weakest of the species will die out, and isn't this what basically we have been preventing over the last hundred or so years of social safety nets?  We see it all the time, that there are some humans who are breeding who really shouldn't be allowed to breed.  We see it in hospitals in which the chronically sick are kept alive even as they soak up resources.  We wonder if society might better be served if we just shot the child molesters rather than letting them live out their lives behind bars.  Heck, just a little bit ago I saw at the grocery store a guy getting out of a car who must of weighed half a thousand.  How much does his existence negatively affect my life?

Part of me really does want to see this movie...but as usual I'd probably be disappointed because of the lack of answers that are given (IMDB seems to indicate that it's basically a very personal story with few outside elements).  I'd rather see the big picture...do people go through hospitals euthanizing patients?  Do prisons turn into slaughterhouses?  Do the most violent of our cities burn?  Is most of the year dedicated to getting prepared for the purge?  Is the fastest growing industry home defense?  Is this all just an NRA wet dream?

Of course, in some respects we already seek to purge society of its vilest elements.  We lock people away into prisons, mental institutions, and even nursing facilities, so we can forget about some whom we'd rather not think about.  We then broadcast their lives on cable TV and call it 'reality'.  We watch it and feel better about our good lives.

I'll be honest, there are only two things that keeps me from thinking that this wouldn't be a bad idea:
1)There's probably at least a few people out there who think that me (or my family or my other loved ones) ought to be purged.  Admittedly, I'd be an easy target.  I don't keep guns, and I'm nearly a pacifist.  Anybody who wanted to kill me would not find it that hard to do.  So maybe this ain't a good idea on a selfish level.

2)From a Christ-honoring perspective, in which we honor all, both weak and strong, this mindset is abhorrent.  It is faithful, Godly people who have helped lay the foundation of our society in which we don't kill the guilty straightaway and we take care of the weakest of our society.  Notice how most hospitals were started by Christians?  Perhaps our society has forsaken some of the religious structures but the mindset of honoring all people still (grudgingly) remains.  That's Christianity in action.

Indeed, I think that this is where grace comes in.  By grace we recognize that others have a right to life and liberty, not just the most powerful among us.  The Ayn Rands of our culture probably would love this movie concept unconditionally, because it is a way of life based solely on the selfishness we can maintain.  It might make sense for a year or two that a society does this...but to what end?  Ultimately it denies the absolute sanctity of life, and whatever short-term gains that others be purged will be quickly overcome by the long-term destruction of any culture that systematically purges the weakest among themselves.  Catharsis might feel good for a short time, but eventually it's like a drug...if once a year, why not once a month?  Once a week?  Why not just abolish all forms of civilization?  I'm sure some would love this, but only the strongest and most selfish will survive. Not sure I'd want to stay alive for that.

I suppose in the end our scared selfishness, combined with our innate Christian compassion, is the reason why the Purge likely will not happen in our culture, at least in my lifetime.  Someday this movie might seem to be accurately predictive, but hopefully it is as spot-on about the future as the Jetsons.

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.

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.