This document was recently produced by a collection of prominent evangelical Christians. It is a fien summary of the evangelical Christian witness, with a refreshing mea culpa for the politicizing of Christian beliefs in America over the last few decades. It is nicely inclusive, while avoiding a watering down of the strong witness of the evangelical tradition. Check it out if you are interested…
In John 8:2-11, Jesus famously is in the presence of a crowd of people who are about to kill a woman for adultery. It is worth mentioning that even though we feel in our present cultural circumstances that such a punishment is totally inappropriate, this was not the case in the first century (nor for many centuries after, as well). Adultery was considered a threat to stable clan-based and tribal communities. Even the Bible sanctioned death for adulterers in Leviticus 20:10.
Jesus does not allow the execution to take place, however. Not because she is innocent. She is not. Even Jesus admits it. He does not even stop the execution because he feels the Old Testament law is wrong. He does not mention it one way or another. He statement – “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” – implies that if a person came a long without sin then it might be permissible for them to cast a stone. So, in principal, he is not even abrogating the Law of God.
No, in the end, he seems to be enforcing the principal that servants of God should avoiding hypocrisy in practicing their faith, and most especially when they are doing something in the name of the God they serve. This principal arises several times in scripture (famously in Luke 12:1).
Perhaps it might be right to execute someone for some reason, but we are equally worthy of death for the great crimes we have undertaken. And so, if there is punishment to be met out, it ought to be met out by the One without sin – Jesus Christ alone. Not by me. Not you. Not any government.
In our culture, the death penalty is most often put forward for murderers. I think Jesus would remind us that we are all complicity in killing people or letting them die. Every day we do nothing while the innocent are slaughtered in Darfur; every day we gorge on food while millions starve; every day we buy the product of peoples working in sweat shops working themselves into early graves; every day we fail to pay for and send to those who need them, simple and cheap medicines that kill millions; every day . . . every day. And none of this is beginning touch on the bad that each and everyone of us has done in our own lives- our betrayals and hurts of others.
None of us ought to be condemning others to death. None of us are righteous enough for so awful a task.
NAHA, Japan (AFP) - Buddhists clasp their palms together to pray for enlightenment, but Conan, a chihuahua, appears to have more worldly motivations.
The dog has become a popular attraction at a Japanese temple after learning to imitate the worshippers around him.
“Conan started to pose in prayer like us whenever he wanted treats,” said Joei Yoshikuni, a priest at Jigenin temple on the southern island of Okinawa.
“Clasping hands is a basic action of Buddhist prayer to show appreciation. He may be showing his thanks for treats and walks,” he said.
Conan, a two-year-old male with long, black hair and a brown collar, sits next to Yoshikuni in front of the altar and looks right up at the statue of a Buddhist deity.
When the priest starts chanting and raises his clasped hands, Conan also raises his paws and joins them at the tip of his nose.
Visitors to the temple look on with curiosity.
“It’s so funny that he does it,” said Kazuko Oshiro, 71, who has frequented the temple for more than 25 years.
“He gets angry when somebody else sits on his favourite spot. He must be thinking that it’s his special place,” Oshiro said.
Conan, originally a temple pet, has become so popular that people come in to take pictures almost every week, the priest said.
Yoshikuni estimated that the temple receives 30 percent more visitors, especially young tourists, than it would otherwise.
“I’m glad that people feel more comfortable visiting the temple because of Conan,” he said as he jokingly joined his hands and bowed to the dog.
The above picture was taken during the South Carolina Democrat primary which, as I write this, it going on still. I have little to say about this primary. In my capacity as a pastor and minister of the United Methodist Church I have not endorsed anyone and I am unsure that I will.
What I wanted to comment on was this simple little picture. Martin Luther King’s birthday was celebrated this past week. How far we have come! I know it is fashionable sometimes to lament that we have not come farther. But it is nice to sometimes take stock on how far we as a nation have come.
This picture would not have been taken just a few decades ago. Half of South Carolina’s electorate is Black. The majority of poll workers are still White. And here we have a poll worker welcoming, greeting, and offering basic instructions to a voter. This in a state which only a few decades ago was considered an impregnable fortress of segregation and racist legislation.
We may need to do better, but we have also done well.
According to the Telegraphy, England is now making moves to abolish a law which criminalized blasphemy.
Personally, I oppose the abolition of such a law. In stead, I propose that the law get transferred to the United States – if the English do not want it. Perhaps then, we can end the practice of politicians ending every speech with “God bless America” Of “God bless you all” as if they meant it.
According to a new survey of U.S. adults who don’t go to church, even on holidays, 72% say “God, a higher or supreme being, actually exists.” But just as many (72%) also say the church is “full of hypocrites.” Furthermore, a full 44% agree with the statement “Christians get on my nerves.”
I have spend years hearing these sorts of comments from people and I have to say that I find them sadly disingenuous. I would like to be more affectionate and compassionate, but God simply has not given me this strength.
Let me be the first to burst the bubble here. The Church is in fact full of hypocrites. Many of them. Even I am a hypocrite. In fact, I may be one of the best of them. My hypocrisies are backed with seminary education and the authority of collar wearing and a good enough mind to concoct many reasons why my hypocrisies are in fact consistencies.
Let me burst a second bubble. Quite often, Christians get on my nerves as well. In fact, I know loads of annoying Christians. Furthermore, I have been an annoying Christians to many people. (Just ask my wife.)
But maybe this will be the most surprising truth of all: Jesus – by his own admission - came into the world for those who are sick, not those who are well. (Matthew 9:12) Who is more ill than a hypocrite? We need Jesus and that is why we all go to church. To offer our hypocrisies upon the altar of God and receive the healing grace of God. Many of us are still waiting for that healing, but I am sure it will come.
If one is waiting for the community where no one gets on your nerves, then it seems we are destined to live alone in our own little holes. And even then, well, I sometimes get on my own nerves. So, to avoid such company is futile and probably a little juvenile. But if you think you can manage that, well, more power to you then. Please send an invite when you get there.
As for those who stay away from church because of all us hypocrites, I do not understand why you would leave us all behind to wallow in our blindness. If you have figured it out - and clearly you must have if you have moved out of glass houses and into something more sturdy – then why not share with the rest of us. To do anything less, would be . . . well, hypocritical.
The whole human race was created by God and for God. In a sense, all our hungers, desires, and longings are pale reflections of our desire for God. And no less certain, we will never be satisfied with our petty thirsts until such time as we have allowed God to pour himself into us so that we will be full.
Paul says in Acts 17: God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’
And Augustine said it equally well, “Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee.”
This longing is not less pressing in the quest and desire for justice. All true justice and righteousness comes from God and from God alone, who “judges the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.” (psalm 98)
So, in this time of elections and seeking out a greater fairness and perfection for our imperfect union, it is always worth taking a moment to realize that our elections, speeches, and positions are more important in that they point to our need for God who alone can bring justice. They point to our human brokenness in our inability to being about a just order of creation and society. They point to the fact that we lie to one another and to ourselves when we think that this or that party or candidate will somehow bring about the good commonwealth.
We do not need another Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or Thomas Jefferson . . . We need God. We need God desperately.
Congregation Poile Zedek is an Orthodox Ashkenazic synagogue located in New Brunswick, NJ. About ten years ago their beautiful synagogue was placed on the historical registry of New Jersey. They have wonderful people and a kindly rabbi. Every year, the put on a wonderful dinner for the poor in the area at Thanksgiving. In fact, their synagogue was originally founded as a mutual aid society and grew into their present congregation over the last hundred years or so.
This week, someone vandalized their cemetery, with 499 stones overturned, of which more than 50 will need to be replaced.
The police initially said that they were not considering this to be an act of anti-Semitism – which to me can only mean that they fail to take this event seriously in any way.
I know that New Brunswick is the home of Rutgers University and sometimes college kids get bored and do dumb things, but no one could have been ignorant of the fact that they were at the very least desecrating the graves of people who were beloved by the living. This is already long past unconscionable.
Still more, it is hard to believe that anyone who has grown to the age of maturity necessary to topple a gravestone can be ignorant that Jews have had a long history of being labeled “undesirable” in almost any place they have called home. If this was college students, they certainly would have been knowledgeable about the legacy of the Shoah, gulags, and ghettoes which litter the history of Western civilization.
But if somehow the persons who did this act where ignorant, then I would argue anti-Semitism is still a root cause of this event. The fact that a child has been allowed to come to some level of maturity and not know the great and evil deeds of our forbearers means that they are destined to repeat it, as the old adage goes. And in this much, the failure to teach the legacies of hate which we inherit, it a commitment to repeat them in the future. In this way, the ignorance of the youth betrays the legacy of hate or - what may be worse – indifference of us all.
Please pray of Congregation Poile Zedek, for their honored dead, and for the people who did this awful thing to these good people.
I have been spending some time latterly thinking about Wesley and the doctrine of predestination. Wesley was a famous rejecter of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. To be more specific, he disagreed with the doctrine of double predestination, whereby some are elected to damnation.
Here is what he said:
“With regard to…Unconditional Election, I believe,
That God, before the foundation of the world, did unconditionally elect certain persons to do certain works, as Paul to preach the gospel:
that He has unconditionally elected some nations to receive peculiar privileges, the Jewish nation in particular:
that He has unconditionally elected some nations to hear the gospel…
that He has unconditionally elected some persons to peculiar advantages, both with regard to temporal and spiritual things:
And I do not deny (though I cannot prove that it is so), that He has unconditionally elected some persons [thence eminently styled ‘the Elect’] to eternal glory.
But I cannot believe, That all those who are not thus elected to glory must perish everlastingly;
or That there is one soul on earth who has not, [nor] ever had a possibility of escaping eternal damnation.”
Wesley was not able to escape the clear presence of the doctrine of predestination with in the Bible. But neither could he escape his clear experience of the role of human agency (free will) in our lives.
His classic attempt to reconcile this is in his sermon on predestination. There he suggests that God predestined before the beginning of time those people who he knew would eventually choose to become believers.
This always strikes me as a poor reconciliation. The central discomfort regarding predestination remains – that whether or not I chose to become a believer, it was always meant to be.
In Calvin’s case, God decided I would become a believer. In Wesley’s case, I chose to become a believer, but that is the choice I was always going to make anyway, as God knew from eternity. In either case, determinism is the reality of my spiritual life.
For myself, I cannot agree with Calvin. His God would send people to Hell in a capricious manner. I know that there are good Calvinist answers to this. But I cannot get passed that if God can save all, but chooses to save some, then he is immoral. Since God is the fountain of goodness-itself, God cannot be immoral – however else we put the pieces together.
Neither do I like Wesley’s version of predestination from his sermons. It seems a poorly argued copout for a man who has to deal with a scriptural word, but does not like the reality to which it seems to point.
I am still working on this one.
I have no clear leadings from the spirit, and I may never have this one figured out on this side of eternity.
Many people in my churches tell me that they have a great deal of difficulty speaking about their faith with other people. In a way, I find this confusing. The most likely reason is that - as clergy - I am a professional speaker-on-faith. Also, it is socially acceptable for me to speak about my faith. Others expect it and are not hurt, resentful, or taken back when I do. So, I understand that there are far fewer social opportunities for people to speak about their faith.
But here is the thing I think needs to be kept in mind by all those who are in a love affair with God:
When I am in company, I love to tell people about my wife and daughter. I love to share stories about them, ways they make me feel, my pride in them, and so much more. I love to tell people about good books I have read, and what I thought was great about them. And I love to tell people about an exceptional movie I viewed, and the ways in which the characters, story, and cinematography moved me.
So, what is the difference between this and religious faith?
If I would tell others about the people I love, why not about God? If I would tell people about great books I read, why not scripture? If I would tell people about a great movie-going experience, then why not about a moving moment at worship?
It is a great sign of caring to share what is important in your life with other people. We should share what we care about.
