Progressively Christian

Pastor Rob Bell

 This past Sunday something amazing happened: an evangelical Christian came out in support of marriage equality - for everyone. Rob Bell is founder of a megachurch in Michigan and is a television writer and author. In 2011, Time magazine named him as one of the "top 100 most influential people". He self-identifies as evangelical and has been called the "heir to Billy Graham" (sorry Franklin). According to Jack Jenkins, guest blogger for Think Progress ( http://bit.ly/116MDgA ), Rob Bell was speaking at Grace Cathedral in San Fransisco when he was asked a question regarding his personal beliefs about marriage equality:

BELL: I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it’s a man and woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man. I think the ship has sailed and I think the church needs — I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.

Pastor Rob Bell is proof that it is possible to be an evangelical Christian AND a social progressive, though preaching LOVE of God and neighbor shouldn't be controversial as it is the heart of God's Word to us. John Wesley had a "born again" experience but he didn't leave it at that. Neither did he preach Scripture alone. What he did do was interpret Scripture through the lens of experience, reason and tradition. Tradition isn't paramount and neither is reason or experience. Together, with Scripture as the guide we live our lives as Christians. No one interprets Scripture purely. We all approach the Bible with our own biases and the only way to keep those biases from distorting our approach to the Bible is to study it quite self-consciously applying reason, experience and tradition. Without that self-conscious awareness we are always in danger of making the Bible an idol in our own image. For me, my experience is that I found the love of Jesus because of a church music director who happened to be gay. Thankfully, his life as a Christian told me far more about Jesus than the bigots who drummed him out of the church. 

Christian bigots keep more people away from Jesus than their own personal sin ever did. The sad part is that these same people talk about evangelism and "bringing people to Christ" not recognizing that their judgmental behavior speaks more loudly than their words ever will. Fortunately, or maybe with the help of the Holy Spirit (or whatever you want to call the universal force for good) there is emerging an alternative to fundamentalist evangelicals.

There is a movement afoot in Christendom that embraces progressive social conscience  AND belief in Jesus. Groups like Sojourner's, The Christian Left and The God Article's "Be the Love" project are evidence that progressive voices are increasingly speaking and rising up to say that the right wing fundamentalists do not speak for the entire Church, or even most of it. The shrill voices of the right may be drowned out by tolerance. It is a great sign of hope when an evangelical stands up and stands apart from the radical right wing, at least on the issue of marriage equality. Perhaps Love will win the day after all.

The Least of These

 

Much of the problem I have with the Republicans these days has to do with their insistence upon cutting much needed services for the elderly, the disabled and the poor all so they can help pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. Many, if not most of these same Republicans call themselves Christians. Yet, anyone who reads the Bible knows that Jesus preached this: Love God, Love your neighbor as yourself. Who is your neighbor? Jesus responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan. The answer then is: your neighbor is EVERYONE.  The Republicans, the Tea Party and their rich sponsors do not get this. They ignore the Prophet Isaiah: "Shame on you! who make unjust laws and publish burdensome decrees, depriving the poor of justice, robbing the weakest of my people of their rights, despoiling the widow and plundering the orphan. What will  you do when called to account.." Isaiah 10:1-3a)  The Bible is quite clear, yet those who call themselves Christians and pander to the evangelical right seem not to get what it means to follow Jesus. Jesus was NOT about hatred, racism or injustice. That is totally antithetical to Christian teachings. Jesus would not ask to see your insurance card before healing you. Don't you get it? Wake up. 

But it is not just Christians who have this problem because the Prophets preached not to Christians but to Jews. So anyone in the Abrahamic tradition gets hit with the teaching by Isaiah. How do we treat the poor, the oppressed, the weakest? And for politicians it is not just in the abstract...not just all the poor, all the unemployed, but it also means, this ONE unemployed person who stands in front of me. It is most especially about the particular, not the general. How do you treat the ONE who has been unemployed so long the stresses have caused great and deep depression and desperation? The answer is not just in passing laws to make things better but also in helping the ONE. It is much easier to see  and deal with the general because it doesn't become personal. But the ONE who stands before you calls for an immediate and personal response. That is much harder, isn't it?

Faith in the One G-d calls us all to step up and love our neighbor and not just in the abstract. It means understanding the stresses on the One and to not make them worse by treating them like dirt when they are in front of you. It means not acting like they are the OTHER, the scary, when they are just the Neighbor in need, the weakest among us who have been decimated by the ones in power.

So, who is YOUR Neighbor?


*ALL content herein is the opinion of the author.

Republican Pharisees

I find it fascinating that a government body (The US House of Representatives) which meets for a maximum of 4 days per week (more usually 3 1/2 T-Th) can sit and debate taking away affordable health care from the American people but it has not, in 1 1/2 years, acted to create ONE American job. The Republicans spent all day debating the repeal of the AHCA, which has just been declared to be constitutional by the US Supreme Court. They sit and they waste time while REAL people are REALLY hurting in this country! They allow the CROOKS (banks) of this country to accrue TRILLIONS of dollars while not ONE of them has been jailed for destroying the nation's economy. They sit there and insist that the nation's wealthiest people need their tax cuts while they equally insist on paying for those tax cuts on the backs of the poor. 

The Republicans often identify as conservative Christians. They can call themselves anything they like but their ideology is the furthest thing from any of the teachings of Jesus. They ARE, however, pretty much right in line with those of the Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus' day. If Jesus were here today, based on the words in red in the New Testament (and the Prophets in the Old), He would condemn the GOP in the strongest possible terms, especially the ones who profess to follow Him. The Biblical record is clear: G-d Judges those who oppress the widowed, the poor and the sick and imprisoned. If those in the Republican party and the 1% who call themselves Christians do not repent and turn away from evildoing they WILL be Judged. Count on it. This IS the Word of G-d (Isaiah through John).

P.S I am NOT the agent of Judgement nor is anyone I know or do not know. Judgement usually comes in the form of the consequences of our own actions, not at the hand of someone else. 

You Never Know...

You never know what a person is capable of and if you discriminate against them to the point where they choose suicide, you never know how history may have been forever changed.  Who KNOWS what Alan Turing would have been capable of without the inhumanity demonstrated against him?

Who knows what the people might have been capable of who are tormented to death because they are different ? What could they have been? What might they have added to our society?Think about all the teen-agers who have been bullied to death? So much possibility, so much waste. Their deaths are tragedies not only for them and their families, but also for us.  Our short-sighted inhumanity short changes the world. So, if simple compassion isn't enough to stop bullying and discrimination, think about the self-interest of human society.  

You never know, the person you just were cruel to might have cured your cancer someday.

The Antithesis of Christ?

I came across an article today: "True Believer Rick Santorum Is The Antithesis of Christ's Teachings" http://www.politicususa.com/en/rick-santorum-christ  It made me stop and think: could this guy be THE Anti-Christ? It would be easy to understand why one would be tempted to think so - everything Santorum says and does seems, at best, to misrepresent the teachings of Jesus.  The problem is, he is not alone - far from it. He represents many fundamentalist people who call themselves Christians. They are the people who, as I said the other day, base their beliefs on individually selected verses from the Bible, many from the Law. The problem with that kind of approach to Scripture is that it tends to twist and pervert the meaning of the whole. I have heard it said, "Even the Devil can quote Scripture." And it is true. Santorum, if he thinks through what he believes at all, probably bases most of it in the Old Testament. I doubt that he has much room in his theology for "Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself." I doubt that he reads the Old Testament Prophets who were all about social justice for the sick and the poor, the widowed and the prisoners. They were all about condemnation for the wealthy and powerful who oppressed the poor. And Jesus followed very much in the tradition of the Prophets. No where does Jesus EVER say, "God loves everyone - unless you're gay." No where does Jesus say, "Blessed are the rich for they inherit great wealth." So, yes, Rick Santorum does, indeed, seem to have it backwards. The question though is whether he, himself, if the Anti-Christ. I don't think so because he is far from alone in his heresy. So much of Fundamentalism, the Tea Party and Corporate America hold similar twisted and perverted views of Christianity. I would suggest that the Anti-Christ IS among us, but not as one individual. Rather, the Anti-thesis of Christ is to be found wherever Jesus' teachings are twisted to benefit the rich at the expense of the sick, the elderly, the poor.

In 1981, I was in my third year of seminary at Perkins School of Theology, SMU, Dallas, TX.  I was noticing a trend among television evangelists: the beginning of political involvement from a group which had traditionally eschewed politics as a corrupting influence on faith. I had no idea exactly where this trend would lead. I did know that I was uncomfortable with the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson leading the charge under the banner of the Moral Majority. As we were soon to discover, the Moral Majority was neither very moral or a majority. But they WERE loud. And obnoxious. And not very interested in good scriptural exegesis. 

In those respects, and others, the Moral Majority of the 1980's is much like today's Tea Party and the Dominionist Movement which accompanies them. They are definitely loud and definitely want the country to be run by theological standards which are set in stone, if not the Bible. There is a overwhelming tendency for these folks to ignore great chunks of the Bible in order to knock others over the head with the parts they deem applicable. They will totally ignore the major themes of scripture: Love God and walk justly. Instead they focus on individual verses, usually taken out of context to support their prejudice against homosexuals or whatever other social issue bug they have their collective butts. 

What all these fundamentalist folks fail to fathom is that Americans are a pragmatic and liberty loving bunch and will not easily give in to the Christian Taliban any more than they will to any outside terrorist group. My advice to them is to read the WHOLE Bible and if that is too much for them, read just the verses in red. THEN come back and tell me what Jesus would do.