Shane Claibourne's letter to non-believers

If you have not read Shane's letter yet, please do! (in Esquire magazine)

Quotes that resonated with me:
"I still believe in the afterlife, but too often all the church has done is promise the world that there is lifeafter death and use it as a ticket to ignore the hells around us."
"This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to
ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins."

P.S., yes, I do believe that love wins. As much brokenness and conflict that surrounds us and touches every life, there are sunlit shafts of hope and joy and love, too. God IS good.

Not a Coincidence

Seriously, is it possible for anyone to look at this type of male-instigated investigation by a male hierarchy and consider that shifting the focus and blame onto the women is not the central time-worn way for men to ignore their own sins and displace their reactions to the sins of others? Richard Mouw wrote of a conversation with a devout Catholic nun about the Vatican's recent decision to investigate women's religious orders in the United States in his blog, A Vatican Investigation. His report:

She is a wonderful person, a deeply devoted follower of Christ. "I guess the thing that hurts the most," she said, "is the 'Why us?' and 'Why now?' issue. Here we have had this huge scandal of sexual abuse on the part of priests, with no real official action on Rome's part. And all of a sudden they announce, 'We are worried about the nuns, and we're going to investigate them.' What in the world are they thinking?"

I recall a conversation Massimo & I had with a highly intelligent and devout Catholic woman, who had a PhD from Loyola University. She was very active in her parish, employed by the church and had the unusual privilege given by her Vatican II priest of having an equal vote with the male priests. She spoke of her hope that before she died, she would be able to be ordained a Deacon in the Roman Catholic Church. Massimo and I didn't share her hope.

Massimo and I had lived long enough in Italy for me to realize just how far from honoring women the Catholic Church really is, in the institutional sense. I suspect that hierarchy, in itself, is so male that only a particular type of subservient woman could ever participate in it. (Sarah Palin comes to mind in another hierarchy.) Men resist and exclude women who speak truth "in Christ" out of their deep personal connectedness to the image of God they share with men. Men's resistance to women's truth can often be brutal and destructive. Every hierarchy of which I've been a part, from Wall Street investment banks, to commercial banks, to government agencies, to churches, to classrooms, has had a complicit (male) agreement to protect one another from the discomfort of facing the whole truth about the ethics or wisdom or constructive nature of their conduct. Consider how many whistle-blowers are female. While I can perceive that a political system (generically, a system of governance in a corporation, bureaucracy or ecclesiastical body), in itself, may be neutral when unpopulated, it seems abundantly clear that hierarchical leadership will always damage others. The only top-down structure that is healthy is one where the higher placed see their job as serving, hearing and supporting the lower placed. Ranking and placements are fundamentally indicative of world-honoring measurements, not of God's gracious gift of life and worth to humanity.

When the ten [apostles] heard [that the mother of James and John was advocating for them to have place of honor at Jesus' side in his kingdom], they were angry with the two brothers. But Jesus called them to him and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:24-28) [Notice how Mom was complicit in trying to abet her sons' hierarchical ambitions!]

So, while I greatly value Mouw's concern and attention to this matter, I draw attention to his use of the word, "arbitrarily", below.

Still, I am with my nun-friend. The Vatican-ordered investigation is deeply distressing. It is hurting some devoted followers of Christ who do not deserve to be treated with suspicion. As one who observes all of this from a distance—but with great interest and concern—I do not want Catholicism to turn back the clock. Neither do I want a turn in the direction of liberal Protestantism. This means that a better option would be to engage in some serious new discussion about what an orthodox Catholicism should look like today. Many of us in the evangelical world would love to engage in some dialogue with "official" Catholicism on that subject. But not with a Vatican hierarchy that arbitrarily picks on Catholics whom we admire as humble servants of the cause of the Gospel.     {bolding with underlining added}

From my perspective, I see no arbitrariness to the Vatican hierarchy's choice to pick on Catholic women. It is male weakness, male pride, and sin.

Name it, guys, please! Women have our own weaknesses, pride and sin, but hierarchy in this manifestation isn't. We do hierarchy differently (and also damagingly, I might add, although it frequently doesn't have the sweeping power to cause broad harm that men's hierarchies have). Another post on another day about our stuff – feel free to send me links or articles that you think constructively address women's issues.

Working the Angles

It's interesting that Eugene Peterson chose this provocative title for his book, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity. The sad commentary for most of us who have spent years in churches, as members, as lay leaders, and among paid staff, is that we've seen far too many pastors, leaders, and church members working the angles. They name themselves followers of Christ, but belie their profession of faith with their political and financial maneuvering. From my experiences in reconciliation ministry, churches and chaplaincy, it's obvious that most people who now don't attend church but who did attend, at some point in life, left the church because of the hypocrisy and damaging relationships that many so-called "pastors" and "Christians" have espoused openly or surreptitiously within the "church" system. As these former church members realized in their hearts, it is sheer hypocrisy to claim to serve God while chasing big donors, ignoring the poor, the elderly, and the marginalized, and chopping off at the knees those who dare to dissent with such methodologies.

Peterson writes,

For a long time, I have been convinced that I could take a person with a high school education, give him or her a six-month trade school training, and provide a pastor who would be satisfactory to any discriminating American congregation. The curriculum would consist of four courses.

Course I: Creative Plagiarism. I would put you in touch with a wide range of excellent and inspirational talks, show you how to alter them just enough to obscure their origins, and get you a reputation for wit and wisdom.

Course II: Voice Control for Prayer and Counseling. We would develop your own distinct style of Holy Joe intonation, acquiring the skill in resonance and modulation that conveys and unmistakable aura of sanctity.

Course III: Efficient Office Management. There is nothing that parishioners admire more in their pastors than the capacity to run a tight ship administratively. If we return all phone calls within twenty-four hours, answer all the letters within a week, distributing enough carbons to key people so that they know we are on top of things, and have just the right amount of clutter on our desk—not too much, or we appear inefficient, not too little or we appear underemployed—we quickly get the reputation for efficiency that is far more important than anything that we actually do.

Course IV: Image Projection. Here we would master the half-dozen well-known and easily implemented devices that that create the impression that we are terrifically busy and widely sought after for counsel by influential people in the community. A one-week refresher course each year would introduce new phrases that would convince our parishioners that we are bold innovators on the cutting edge of the megatrends and at the same time solidly rooted in all the traditional values of our sainted ancestors.

(I have been laughing for several years over this trade school training with which I plan to make my fortune. Recently, though, the joke has backfired on me. I keep seeing advertisements for institutes and workshops all over the country that invite pastors to sign up for this exact curriculum. The advertised course offerings are not quite as honestly labeled as mine, but the content appears to be identical—a curriculum that trains pastors to satisfy the current consumer tastes in religion. I'm not laughing anymore.)

I wouldn't be surprised if names pop into your mind as you read Peterson's words. Whether the names were those of pastors, leaders or church members, what turned our stomachs was the lack of integrity between their faith profession and the way they treated others, the way they conducted business and themselves, in their homes, inside the church, in the community, or in the secular workplace. A mentor and friend with whom I met this week noted that the wheat and the tares (weeds) grow up alongside one another. As Jesus told the parable, the field's owner told his servants not to gather the weeds, "…for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest…" (Matt. 13: 29-30) Peterson's quotation above is indicative of how distorted "church" becomes when the one ordained as "pastor" is one of the weeds. Atheists have asked me why the church allows so many of these (frequently) loud-mouthed, slick-talking and self-aggrandizing weeds among us, and the fact is that our answer has to be that God doesn't permit us to throw out these weeds. (NB: Institutional authorities who fail to reprove, correct, discipline and remove leaders who are demonstrably leading according to worldly methods, however, destroy the meaning of "church" – those called out to follow Christ – and become the very authorities against whom Jesus spoke in Matt. 23.) Regarding the members, however, Paul noted, "…when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it. Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine." (1 Cor. 11:18-19)

It is certain, however, that God would not commend us for endorsing leaders who feed the weeds, who chase after wealth, who demean and gossip about others, who foster divisiveness, and who fail to embody the incarnate Word s/he speaks to the community in life, action, deed, and whose Sunday morning words are contradicted by their lives. As Peterson noted, pastors are supposed to guide the community in the way of Christ, NOT in the ways of the world. "…Christians continue to take certain persons in their communities, set them apart, and say, 'We want you to be responsible for saying and acting among us what we believe about God and kingdom and gospel.'" (p. 23) However, too often institutions with the word, "Church", in their names humanly endorse other humans to lead communities according to human methods and claim their institutional endorsement certifies this person to be "ordained by God." They put an "ordained" or "certified" banner in the name of a god over worldly scheming which subordinates that god to serve their ends. The Almighty God is not there.

So, if people are burdened and burned out by the machinations in their offices and communities and walk into a building named "church", they expect a reprieve and a respite from brokenness, lies, gossip, slander, back-stabbing, self-promotion and incessant undermining, and encouragement to live differently. Instead, too often, they find those same machinations among the church staff, the church committees, and members' relationships with one another. Why, then, should we be surprised to find so many people becoming atheists and people who claim belief in God but would never set foot in another "church"? Biblically, atheism is defined by the actions of doing these very same things! Too many church leaders and members are actually atheists, in practice!

Frankly, one reason I continue in church life is because I have faithful family and friends such as those with whom I fellowshipped this week. We encourage one another to believe God, to live lives of integrity in the face of the charlatans, and to continue to work for the good of God's work here on earth – the mission of Jesus Christ to make disciples, to live in communities that are united in love just as Jesus and the Father are one. The reason we continue, ultimately, is because we have been blessed by God's grace to have the faith to be faithful and to live holy and obedient lives empowered by the Holy Spirit. Neither do we claim more than the wisdom of Jesus and try to sort wheat from tares, now. But, we hope and we pray that by our lives' testimonies others may come to know and love this God whom we serve, and to know God's love for them within the wreckage in which we live. We also pray that those who seek God with their whole hearts will be able to discern lies from truth and not follow these many false shepherds and teachers. Those who are false will be exposed on that Day, we believe, and that which they built will be burned (1 Cor. 3) or swept away (Matt. 7). May the true Lord, our Shepherd, have mercy on us, and lead us in the way everlasting through these valleys shadowed in death. May we be builders approved by God, God-ordained accordingly with lives conformed to the Word who is Jesus Christ, and certified by our love and service that endures the fires and the floods.

Serious Business

At times, I've been told that I'm too serious, too intense, and at times, too observant and out-spoken for others' comfort levels, and for their political and financial ambitions. May I propose this: the central idea of Religion concerns the serious nature of life in all its difficulties, relationships and outcomes.

Regarding justice and injustice:  Most of us think of law and consequences when we think of justice. If people we know, or if we ourselves have experienced injustice or criminal behavior, our thoughts may quickly jump to returning fire for fire. Christians may cringe at the images in Psalm 137:9 "Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock."  Many of us cannot imagine wishing such harm to other people's infants and children, much less carrying it out! Taken in the context of the previous verse, the source of pain in this imprecatory prayer becomes clear: "O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!"

The cry of the psalmist is for retributive justice against the perpetrators of the horrible suffering and pain caused to their children, and to them by watching their children die. We cannot ignore these cries from those who are the most abused, the most downtrodden, the poorest, and the sickest among us. Every one of us has experienced some time in life where we have been victimized by others, but few in the U.S. have experienced this particular pain. The message of this psalm should be considered when we consider the pain war and terrorism bring to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. We know that other groups have also victimized the people, but we shouldn't be surprised at the backlash which occurs when US soldiers and military actions kill or injure children and family members. They cry out for justice, and the natural human response is to seek revenge.

If we look at this Psalm's lament, however, we see a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ. The psalmist does not claim that the people of Israel will be happy when they take revenge on the Babylonians who have taken them captive and killed their children in front of the parents. The avenging people are an ambiguous, "THEY." Why is that?

We should know ourselves well enough to understand that the enacting of vengeance and the exacting of justice according to human measures harm us. There is no detached "justice"; we can only try to increase the distance between ourselves and those whom we have judged. Distance can be measured in miles: an impersonal missile launched from a ship or a plane may feel "impersonal" to the owner of the hand on the trigger, or the commander giving the order to fire, but the missile's explosive destruction is very personally experienced by the people in the impact zone. Distance can be measured in relationships: a distance of race, gender, political party affiliation, religious system, education, economic status, nationality or ethnicity can permit the perpetrator to depersonalize the offense in her imagination, but the offended party knows exactly how personally wounded s/he is. Distance can be created by lies: liars frequently fabricate a false reality that is a combination of blatant lies, innuendo and semi-truths in order to push the truth or the truth-teller away from the liar's self, or worse, to kill the truth-teller by slander, gossip, libel (all of these are a form of judgment and death).

God-with-us, God-in-Christ, the God who reconciles humans to God and to one another - this God loves the victim and the perpetrator. This God loves Nineveh and Jonah, the Persians and the Israelites, the Babylonians and their captives, the Afghans, the Iraqis and the Americans. Our God knows that distancing ourselves in order to cause pain with words or actions, or distancing ourselves from sensing the pain we cause others inflicts harm on us, not just on those whom we've hurt.

During an internship at the Denver Veterans Administration Medical Center, I saw firsthand the damage done to soldiers by their participation in wars. Perhaps, to the people of Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, these soldiers may have seemed akin to the Babylonians of Psalm 137. Yet, these soldiers also experience pain from participating in war, even those who joined the Army because a relative or friend was killed on September 11, 2001. Their own physical injuries may be healed or treated medically, but the psychological damage may last and last. One Vietnam vet was broken in ways he'd been able to ignore for most of the 40 years since leaving that country. Then, too, our government's system of treating soldiers and vets refuses, at times, to diagnose psychological harm from combat in the interest of saving money, denying benefits' claims, and maintaining troop levels. A soldier may "justify" their actions because "I was only following orders." Nevertheless, he will know - in his body and person - that his actions killed or injured other people. The more people the soldier kills, the higher the risk of PTSD. Imagine then, the soldier returned home is told by the VA that his experiences of anger outbursts, sleeplessness, nightmares, flashbacks, discomfort or fear in crowded places, anxiety if someone stands behind him, are nothing. Our society believes a myth that we have the resources to heal all ills and to treat everything, and to perpetuate that myth people in authority do lie to the suffering, and will "kill" anyone who endangers their myths.

We need to reconsider our myths! That reconsideration is part of the "serious business" of religion.

The Psalmist knew that any revenge against the captors by the captives would harm the captives, too. The implications of our belief in One God and One Creator of all things, and in humans being created in God's image resonate strongly. If God is truly with us in our experiences of suffering and injustice, and not distant from us in dispensing justice, then the Christian call to be conformed to Christ means that Christians love the victims and speak truth to the perpetrators; we reflect grace and truth to every person just as God-in-Christ has done to us. We know that for all that we have been victims of injustice and suffering, we have also been perpetrators of injustice and suffering. We are responsible, we are accountable, and we face and confess the truth about ourselves knowing that the judgment of God against sin has been lifted from us by Jesus Christ's sacrifice.

Christians and our churches must not participate in the polarizing rhetoric that characterizes our national political debates right now. We should and will testify to justice, against unjust and inequitable systems, to the care our society should give to all people, and to the harm we cause ourselves by our distancing ourselves from one another. Our system of providing medical care only to the rich, the employed, and the dying is akin to passing by on the other side of the road from the poor, wounded and sick. Our strategies that harm others in the name of the harm done to us will always damage us, too.

On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway." ~Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hand in Hand

This video gives us a visual metaphor of how humans need one another. We miss the truth of our interdependency in every regard, not just the physical interdependency which this captures. We miss the holistic interdependency of human and God, male and female, between races, between all ethnic heritages, tribes, nations, humanity and environment, humanity and conditions in which we live. Humans naturally striate and separate themselves from one another, but God's love is found in our unity.

It seems to me that the health care debate is really between those who envision independence and those who are aware of dependence and interdependence. James spoke to this profound reality when he contrasted the partiality being awarded to the privileged with God's choosing of the poor: "My brothers and sisters, you do not hold the faith while practicing partiality. ...Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has God not chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?" (James 2:1, 5)

Hand in Hand

@ TOM

Tom, thank you for your comment. I do believe you completely missed the point that I made, and inadvertently, you strengthened my point. I hear your words as dividing humanity out of people who work in government offices - you characterize them as "bloated, impersonal government bureaucrats" not as people. Any person - whether in a bureaucracy of a governmental entity or of an insurance company - can become "inhuman", as it were, in relation to others. As soon as we stop seeing another person or group of people as anyone we want to be "with", we've divided ourselves from them, instead of listening to and hearing them. I don't trust in a "faceless social responsibility." I hope and work for a society of humans who individually place people's welfare and well-being above self-interest & profit-making.

 

FWIW, it seems unlikely that anyone working in a democratic governmental structure would be able "to corruptly aggregate to themselves more power" at any level that even draws close to the corrupted power among leaders of Wall Street and insurance companies! The myth of free-market capitalism has been exposed in recent years for market leaders' inability to regulate participants' own sinfulness. The insurance company, AIG, was right in the thick of the corruption and dehumanization. Government jobs simply don't pay that well. There are people in government who care about doing their jobs well and ethically. I'm sure there were individual people working at AIG who were dismayed about the directions their bosses were taking, ethically and in terms of risk-taking.

Human sinfulness being what it is, our society, governmental structures, corporate structures, groups and individuals will always need to be adjusting to compensate for the advantage that self-seeking people will try to take of any system. Right now, the profit-making system holds sway. The human leaders of that system who pursued only profits have harmed too many families and individuals with their carelessness for providing care to the poor and the sick. They do not see themselves as being "with" the poor and the sick, or as being part of a society which is mutually interdependent.

Obviously, the same danger may surface with leaders and individuals working in government offices. But, at the least, they won't personally profit by refusing to be "with" the poor and the sick.

I've always tried to listen to everyone's POV, and although I disagree that the "good and workable suggestions" proposed by Republicans are sufficient to deal with this problem, I do think that leaders should heed what's valuable and true about them.

Church Formation?

Internet Monk's post on church de-formation or mal-formation and new formation (my words) are healthy and helpful for those leaving institutions masquerading as "church."

He wrote, "short of a view that certain Protestant congregations are the only portals to eternal life, it is hard to say that those who leave these churches are imperiling their souls. For many people, the peril of their souls is exactly why they are gone."

And…

"The current defense of the church may be necessary, but many of the assertions being made are not necessary and have about them the scent of males in power having far too much fun flirting with infallibility. The Christian ministry is one of the few places in our world that men can assert that they and their institutions must be submitted to in the name of God. That's heady stuff, and I'm not even close to being prepared to buy the bona fides of everyone who claims it."

Those of us who seek to follow Christ each day are bound to run up against hypocrisy – in ourselves and in others. We can't avoid it because we're still imperfectly "crucified with Christ"! The power against hypocrisy is repentance, confession and forgiveness, and any institution embodying self-assurance in and of itself (or in and of the priests' or ministers' "ordination") doesn't embody the self-sacrificing love and service of others which we see in Christ Jesus.

Lord, have mercy!

As Iron Sharpens Iron

Our daughter pulled a sharpening steel out of the drawer, tonight. The rest of us at the dinner table laughed and wondered what knife she was going to sharpen and why!

I was reading articles and posts about philosophical debates, today, too. All of the writings were by men arguing with other men.

Does it occur to us that what passes for "debates" is, too often, one side trying to win vs. another? I.e., the debate's goal seems not pursuing greater truth or exhibiting the "love of wisdom" (philo-sophia), but rather one intellect's victory over another's, one's worldview over another's. The raised arms of victory over another view's "foolishness" crown the conclusion.

Proverbs 27:17 states, "Iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens the wits of another." (NRSV)
In the NLT, "As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend."
The Tanakh translation is a more literal translation, "As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the wit of his friend."

The problem I have with many debates is the goal of victory and triumph over any others. Isn't this simply another perverse form of proselytization by academic or philosophical warfare?

Be a Christian! No, be an Atheist! To be religious means you're an idiot. To be a non-believer means you're going to hell! Religion is anti-intellect, anti-logic, and anti-mind. Atheism is anti-god, anti-believer, and anti-order.

To return to the metaphor my daughter pulled out of the drawer...

Anyone who has sharpened a knife by hand realized that if our angle of sharpening is too high, we dull the blade rather than sharpen it. The knife sharpening experts recommend 15/20 degree beveled angles. In other words, the stone or sharpening steel is more alongside the knife than against it. It is counterproductive to confront the knife edge with a harsher angle. The Hebrew isn't impersonal; the one sharpening the wit of another is a companion or friend. In the context of wisdom literature, "love of wisdom" isn't a love of abstract, detached knowledge and logic but love of wise and thoughtful living in the companionship of fellow humans.

So, to those who love debating, may we examine the product of those arguments! Do you gain or lose friends of differing views? (We all know that gathering people of views similar to ours is the norm!) Do we fail at relating well to the person, or do we gain both increasing insight and relationships that last?

Finally, to make a comment on what may have seemed the "coincidence" of men's debates, may I offer another look at the infamous text most frequently cited vs. women?

1 Timothy 2:8, in my opinion, begins a discussion of negative gender paradigms in that culture. Paul began with the men, "I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument..." The Greek word for argument, dialogismos, has the meaning of a "verbal exchange that takes place when conflicting ideas are expressed, dispute, argument." (BDAG)

I've been around enough discussion boards to recognize that the disputes are most frequently dominated by men. There are some women in the fray, but many have told me in "asides" that they are quiet because they don't want to get beaten up in the "discussions."

Guys, please tell me. Is that a coincidence? Or, would you recognize Paul's admonition as countering a particularly male penchant for warfare - whatever the battlefield?

I love wisdom. I find philosophy intriguing, inspiring and provocative, at its best. But, the warfare, folks, the warfare has gotta go. Telling others they're stupid or hell-bent won't win them to your logic, but it may serve to beat them down into submission to your god. (That god isn't mine.) However, loving them and walking alongside them may build up and encourage them in wisdom.