Reality Bites

Reality is like that Lego that your kids left in the middle of the hallway: you might wish that your children were more responsible, you might wish you didn't have to go pee at 2:00 AM, you might wish that you weren't barefoot, but when you step on the Lego, all those wishes come to naught.  I have had several conversations recently about how we can sometimes get so caught up wishing things were different that we become utterly unable to make positive changes in how things are.  Often the first step in overcoming a crisis is breaking out of the mental inertia that wants to insist that everything is fine and dandy.  Thus, most of  us live life in some form of denial, because reality is rather unpleasant.
When a crisis presents itself, you have two choices: stay the course, or make a change.  Sometimes, especially if you happen to be British, staying the course is the way to go.  Other times, and this is more or less the American way, it's time to come up with some new solution.  Neither one of these approaches is foolproof, and the relative merits of either approach is largely dependent on the reality of the crisis.
In either instance, the effectiveness of your response will depend greatly on how accurately you have assessed the reality.  Scientific types would lead you to believe that this is simply a matter of gathering data and "crunching the numbers."  Because they have this illusion that their particular sort of data collection and information synthesis is "objective," meaning without the bias and imperfection of more subjective forms of judgment.
This would be wonderful if it were true, however, the reality is that, earthquakes, hurricanes and catastrophic meteor collisions aside, most of our profound crises are human in origin.  And humans are a tangled mess of emotions, beliefs, psychoses, neuroses and general messiness.  We are decidedly subjective snarls of prejudice and false assumptions, of which are largely unaware.  Failure to adequately compensate for this reality is exceedingly hazardous.
While it is important to try and grasp reality with all the tools available to you, it is important to remember that you will never be able to grasp total reality.  It is tempting to think that somehow you could access the power of seeing things completely, but you never will.  Thus it is always possible that we will step on that Lego in the middle of the night, unless we get rid of our lousy, sloppy children and all their infernal toys.
Life is messy, but it is life.

Freedom in Anxiety

One could call man's freedom "freedom in anxiety" or "anxious freedom."

-Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology II

Every once in a while I get an itch to get into some nice, dense theology.  It's usually inspired by something particular: today it is anxiety.  There are obvious acute anxieties: illnesses, death, major life transitions, conflicts within the congregation and a fairly long list of other anxiety producing events.  However, there is another sort of anxiety that generally afflicts us on an existential level, that rarely gets any airtime outside of theological/philosophical discussions.  Tillich notes that, "through Soren Kierkegaard," the Danish word Angst, "has become a central concept of existentialism."

However, I think that angst, has become something that we generally associate with adolescent alienation more than an actual "grown up" struggle.  This is a rather keen example of how overusing a word can warp it's actual meaning.  What Tillich describes, and what Kierkegaard was always going on about is the essential nature of our being as "fallen" creatures.  We have been given awareness of infinity and yet are confronted with our finitude: "(God) has set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." (Eccl. 3: 11)

Thousands of years before Kierkegaard or Tillich, Quoheleth knew angst, he defined and described "anxious freedom."  What the "wise" have always known is that this condition is a result of our estrangement from God.  That is what led me to Tillich this afternoon, estrangement, his favorite word for our "fallen" condition.  It's a much better word than separation.

If I were to say that my wife and I are separated, meaning that I am at my office and she is at our home, unless I supplied the context, people would assume that we were in fact estranged and in the process of getting a divorce.

Estrangement is a spiritual condition.

It is a spiritual condition that produces anxiety.

Separation can be the physical manifestation of a spiritual condition, it can be a way to attempt to resolve the anxiety created by estrangement.

The problem that we face is, depending on your theological perspective, you cannot actually separate from God, because God is the essence of all that is, God is being itself.  If you separate from the essence of all that is you become nothing.

Fortunately for us, God gives us the freedom to be estranged without having our state of being absorbed into the void.  Our awareness of that estrangement is the thing that keeps us in that rather tenuous balance between complete oneness with God and being lost in nothingness.

Kierkegaard and Tillich alike recognize how precarious our situation really is.  Tillich cautions us against hubris, which he defines as "elevation of self," rather than simple "pride."  Hubris, is the fatal flaw in many general systems of thought devised by brilliant humans, because of our "greatness" we are in danger of building spurious platforms that put us (or so we think) on equal footing with God.  Hubris is what allows us to brazenly declare that God is dead, or that God does not exist, or that we have no need of God any longer.  All attitudes which primarily serve to deepen our estrangement from God and increase our anxiety.

Oddly enough, hyper-theologizing can cause the same effect, when we think "too much" about God our anxiety can go into overdrive.  When we focus on the obvious symptoms of our estrangement, which we call sin, we can become anxious that God's wrath is certainly about to strike down upon us.

Take another look at the Gospels and notice how many times Jesus told people not to be worried, not to be afraid, to lay their burdens down and trust in God.  It's all over the place.  He was trying to help people deal with the anxiety that estrangement produces.

Rather than taking away our freedom, Christ gives us a way to deal with the angst created by our estrangement: a liberal application of mercy and grace, a demonstration that God's love can conquer our seemingly intractable existential dilemma.

Synchronicity II or whatever...

Strange things are happening in my brain.  Wonderful things in some respects, but strange enough to make me pause and recognize that something unusual is going on.
While I was walking this morning, I was thinking about community and this peculiar set of memories came to me about someone I used to know.  I was thinking about the way that my relationship with them taught me to be more accepting of people who are a little bit "out there," in terms of their personality, and their approach to thought and communication.  I was thinking about how, when I first met them, I had pretty much judged them to be a certain sort of person.  I had allowed myself to be irritated by them, I had failed to really see what a rather remarkable person they were.
I remembered how, in the course of time, and thanks to several incidents where God simply put them in my way, I came to really appreciate their uniqueness and actually started to look forward to seeing them.
I remembered how, when they finally joined the church triumphant, I was truly sad that I would see them no more in this life.  I thought, as Hannibal Lechter says to Clarisse Starling at the end of Silence of the Lambs, that the world was a more interesting place with them in it.
At some point in my reverie, I remember thinking, that all this would make a wonderful sermon illustration someday, when I'm preaching about the community of God's people and the peculiar nature of the Church...
So then I come into the office and take out my Bible and the schedule of lectionary texts for the week and begin to read through the selections for Sunday...
Whaddya know?
Acts 11, Peter justifying the inclusion of Gentiles... okay, okay that could be a coincidence... "what God has made clean, how dare you make unclean..."  hmmm, maybe not such a coincidence.
And then there's Revelation 21: the church adorned as a bride for her husband... they will be His people and He will be their God... behold I am making all things new...
Okay, now the Spirit is really messing with my head.
Seriously, I was going to file the thoughts I had on my walk this morning away for some other time... I don't write sermons that way...  I don't think of an idea and then find ideas to back it up... Couldn't God have waited a couple of hours to give me that brainstorm?
At least let me think it was the fruit of exegesis?
At least let me think that I have some control over this process?

Yeah, I guess that's not how this works is it?

Now I've got a full week to wrestle this madman that's messing with my head.

Sam, if you're listening, this one's for you.

And Justice for All

They got the guys who bombed the Boston Marathon.
That makes today a happy day, but it also gives us a moment to take a deep breath and consider some important issues.  First, the narrative of what went down this week:  Monday there were several explosions, people were killed, injured and maimed, and no one had any idea who was responsible.  The specter of terrorism is ever present, but I noticed, for the first time since 9-11, there was no immediate panic, no call to arms to fight the war on terror.
But neither was there mute acceptance that things like this are bound to happen.  What there was was an immediate, purposeful and focused response, by a nation that is no longer an amateur at dealing with incidents like this.   I want to give much respect to the various law enforcement agencies involved in this the events of this week, looks like you guys finally have it figured out.  There was no panic.  There was very little chaos.  You let the media have their space and conduct their circus, but you kept it out of your field of operations.  You used the citizens of Boston as the resource they are, and you kept them safe.  One of the talking heads said as the shelter in place order came down, and staggering numbers of armed police units rolled into Watertown: "They seem to have a purpose and know exactly what to do."  You did, you are serious men and women and you did your job well.
The result: you captured Dzhokar Tsarnaev alive, and that is both a wonderful victory and now presents a staggering challenge for the rest of the nation.  I hope that we can handle ourselves with as much class as you did in apprehending him
What kept striking me repeatedly as I watched the theater of the absurd that is the 24-hour news cycle, is how unlike a monster Dzhokar looked in the picture that was up in some part of the screen nearly all day.  Don't get me wrong, what he did was evil, there is no shred of sympathy for the actions of terrorism, but it reminded me again that the terrorists themselves are often the first victims of the evil that eventually explodes out into the world.
I wonder how a 19 year old college student, who by most of his friends accounts, was well adjusted, friendly and intelligent, gets so twisted that he can go along with a plot to blow up innocent people watching the marathon.  The people who carry out these sorts of things are often brainwashed and bullied, indoctrinated and turned completely psychotic by some sort of powerful pressure.  In this case it may have been his older brother, but it almost certainly involved a much larger group of people, it almost certainly involved a religious perspective and worldview that has been responsible for much of the hatred and violence that has exploded out into the world in recent years.
Perhaps the challenge to a nation that proclaims liberty and justice for all, is to respond to this young man, not as an evil villain, but as a victim of a system that has severely twisted his soul.  Maybe the challenge in meting out justice is to resist the urge to try to "pay back" the violence that has been done, and temper our justifiable outrage with mercy, and try to finally learn the lesson that violence only begets more violence.
Think of the 19 year olds that you know, have known.  Think of the 19 year old that you were at one point in your life, and then try to understand the sort of creature we're talking about here.  They are at the height of alienation, not quite children, not quite adults.  Old enough to join the army, too young to drink alcohol.
When I was 19, I was pretty mad at the world, if I had had an older brother who led me into a world where serious and twisted people were telling me there was something I could do about it by setting off a couple bombs, who knows what I might have done.
This is not to make excuses.  This is not to say there doesn't need to be justice.
This is a call to consider, maybe for the first time in the history of events such as this, what Justice actually looks like.

Perspicaciousness

I have a seven year old daughter...
This means I am exposed daily to one of the most fickle and savagely selfish creatures on the planet.
It also means I am graced daily with the presence of one of the most pure and beautiful creatures on the planet.
She can be loving and sensitive, funny and charming...
And she can be utterly shrill, vindictive and completely self-centered...
That's just before breakfast.
She often tells us that we're being mean to her and that she wishes we weren't her parents.
She often wants nothing more in the universe than to snuggle underneath our arms and hear a story.
She has taught me an awful lot about what perspective can do for a situation.
Sometimes, in the midst of one of her fits of cussedness, I catch myself explaining to her how lucky she is in comparison to so many kids her age, who don't have enough to eat, who don't get to go to school, or ever wear new sneakers.  I stop short of telling her about the children who are abused, who become collateral damage in the wars of grown-ups, who are sold into slavery.  I stop short because I don't want her to know about those things.  I don't want her to have that perspective.
In a weird way, I want her to keep thinking that the worst thing that could possibly happen to her is that she will have to clean her room instead of going outside to play.
Which is why it's so hard when parents have to explain the horrible things that you cannot even hide from your seven-year-old.  I know, that when that bomb went off in Boston, we Americans were just experiencing the sort of thing that happens almost daily in Beirut or Baghdad.  The tragedies in this country used to be spread out, so that you could delude yourself into thinking that outbreaks of evil were preventable.
Here's how it works: an enemy attacks, we investigate the motives and methods of that enemy, we track down that enemy and bring them to justice, it's the old sheriff going after the bad guys motif.  It doesn't matter whether the bad guy is Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh or Osama Bin Laden, they must be hunted down and destroyed.  Every time we slay the dragon, we think we're going to be safe forever...
but there are always more dragons.
It's okay for us to tell our kids that there are no such thing as monsters...
They don't need that kind of perspective.
But it's our job as adults to stop believing the fairy tales we tell to children, because the monsters are going to keep coming.  We are never going to stop the flow of sick and twisted individuals who would set off a bomb at a public event.  As of right now, we have no clue as to what the motivation of the Boston Bomber was, but it very well may be that they had no motivation other than chaos and destruction.  What difference does it make if they had a good reason?
An eight year old boy and a 29 year old woman are still dead, many people are missing parts that they were probably fairly keen on keeping.  What perspective makes that okay?
Not a single one that I can think of...
What we need to do as a society is understand that we can't just keep chasing the bad guys into the wilderness, we need to address the systems of injustice and poverty that produces theses monsters.  We need to address the twisted soul of our culture that inspires people (foreign or domestic) to consider innocent children their enemy.  We need to realize that our war machine does the same thing to villages in Afghanistan as the bomber did to Boston, and we need to realize that, to much of the world, we are the monster.
Our perspective on this does not somehow justify our enemies...
It does not make the attacks of 9-11 or the Boston marathon bombs acceptable...
What it does is helps us see things like adults, people who are old enough to know better.
It is my hope that, one day, my daughter will grow up enough to understand things from the perspective of an  adult.  And I also hope that the children of Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran will grow up to understand things from the perspective of an adult, maybe they'll do a better job fighting the monsters than we have.  I'm probably being naive, but if I refuse to believe in fairy tales and I must acknowledge the monsters... I need some hope somewhere.
For now, I suppose, I'll just grieve for those children who will never see things from an adult perspective, because a monster stole them away.

Just Maybe...

It's the day after the Boston Marathon bombs.
We seem to be having a lot of these days after.
And we're getting a little too good at responding to disasters...
Because we keep having disasters and we have no choice but to respond.
But I've noticed that our responses are getting a little more polished, we are beginning to realize what's really important.  Yesterday, in addition to prayers for the victims there were lots of prayers for the first response personnel.  This is good, but it's not a thing that people thought about before 9-11-2001.  Believe me, I think we should pray for the people who rush into the breach to help people a lot more than we do, what struck me yesterday was how quickly that became a part of the public sentiment.
We are learning more than we really want to know about catastrophe.
I shared a quote from Mr. Rogers on facebook yesterday (yeah, I was one of about a million people who shared the same thing in one way or another) that was about what his mother told him to do whenever evil seemed out of control: "Look for the helpers, you will always find people who are helping."
Which turns out to be very true...
I remember growing up in a world where they always told you that people didn't want to get involved.  I remember hearing that women should yell, "fire" instead of "rape" because people will respond if they think there's a fire and will just ignore someone being violated sexually.
Some people will look at things like 9-11 or Columbine or Newtown or Boston and say: "Look how terrible the world has become!"  But sometimes I wonder if all of these calamities are proving that we're NOT actually as bad as we thought.
Which is weird, and a little twisted, but it might be true.
What if it takes acts of terrorism to glue us together?
What if it takes natural disasters to get people to act like neighbors?
I know enough about history to know that calamities and catastrophes are nothing new.  There will always be wars and rumors of wars.
That is not an excuse or a call to accept the evil.
It is an observation that our communities tend to show their strength in adversity.
Fire hardens steel.
We are at our best when the deck is stacked against us, we stand tall under the rocket's red glare.
We lose our way when there is no challenge.
We grow lazy and soft when prosperity lulls us to sleep.
Maybe it's not just an American thing...
Maybe the same is true of individuals...
Maybe it is true of small communities...
Maybe it is true of churches...
Maybe it is true of nations...
Maybe it's a human thing...
Maybe we are wired to fight the power...
Maybe it is the rocket's red glare and the bomb blast that brings out the best in us...
Maybe it is the life of comfort and ease that inspires selfishness and sloth...
Maybe without the worst in us rearing it's ugly head once in a while, we would never get to see the response from the best in us...

What Should Have Been

There's quite a difference, isn't there?

Between what was and what should have been?

Because there is a lot of one, but there is an infinity of the other!

-Dr. Who, The Rings of Akhenaten

One of the reasons why I love Dr. Who is the way that the show has always gone beyond the simple telling of a spacey-timey-wimey kind of story and into some rather deep reflections on the human condition.  For instance the latest episode that finally begins to tell you the story of the mysterious Clara "Oswin" Oswald.  Clara and the Doctor encounter a hungry and parasitic god inhabiting a sun and consuming the worship and stories of the people that are in orbit around him.  The Doctor and Clara are out to rescue a little girl, who knows all the stories and songs of her people, who has been chosen to appease the appetite of the "old god."

Funny how the worship of gods who constantly need to be fed usually leads to feeding them children...

But that's for another day.

What is for today is how the following clip reduced me to tears:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo8dbZavEXM

Today would have been my brother's 32nd birthday.
I go through this every year.
I try to forget it, but I can't, someone always reminds me.  My Dad called this morning, someone else who knew Jon posted something on facebook, it's just rather unavoidable.
The power of grief, after nearly eight years, is becoming not so much a mourning of what was, but all the moments that never were, and that's what gets me right in the gut.
I have two kids who aren't so little anymore that will never know what an amusing fool their Uncle Jon could be.  My brother had the perfect disposition to hang around with a seven and nine year old, he never sat still, he was always up to something.  My kids would love him, but Jack was a baby and Cate was still inutero when Jon left us.
As the years go by, I am feeling the weight of what might have been a lot more than the tragedy of what was.  Neither one of them is very pleasant.
I wish I had a leaf that held all of this...
Something I could just hold up to a hungry god and have it consumed in fire.
But instead I hold all the days of Jonathan that might have been up to a loving God and He gives me tears...
And there seems to be an infinity of them...
But they are powerful enough to fill all the emptiness.

Happy Birthday Molebutt.

The Remains of the Day

2:41 pm
It's Monday afternoon in a church office.
Everyone's gone except me, and I'm feeling like there will be little productive work done for the rest of the afternoon.  It's not that I'm stuck or out of gas either, it's just that it's so quiet and lovely right now with the windows open to a beautiful spring day.
It would probably be insulting to God for me to try and fill this particular moment of silence with something useful.  So I just listen to the mockingbirds imitating the delighted shrieks of the children who were playing at the school next door a few hours ago.  I let myself go quiet and listen.
Every once in a while my fingers tip-tap on the keyboard, but I'm not doing anything really important, just writing these random thoughts.
You might think I'm wasting my time.
After all there are probably some "important" things I could be doing...
Even this blog could be better thought out, I could have had some sort of plan for how it was going to turn out, but I didn't... I don't... not even now... I don't know how long it's going to be, I don't really know where it's going, I'm just letting the tip-tapping of the keys mix with the silence.
There is plenty of time for plans and phone calls and preparation and going out into the world.
We need more time to just listen...
Listen, I tell you a mystery: God speaks to us.
I don't know why, I've been trying to figure that out for years.
With all of the wonderful things there are in the universe, why does God take the time, when there are so many other things to do, to spend time in an empty and silent office on a Monday afternoon with a pastor who is idly wasting his time.
Like I said, I don't know why, but I know that it happens.
In fact, I suppose listening to God is technically part of my job description.
As a matter of fact, I  just caught myself praying...
Now I'm really working...
This is a very peculiar job.

Live and Let Live

Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone!  Let them go!

For if their purpose is of human origin, it will fail.

But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; 

you will only find yourselves fighting against God.

-Acts 5: 38-39

Once upon a time there was a culture that stood divided.

There were deep divisions among the people; among the leaders; among the teachers, philosophers and theologians.  No one could seem to agree about what was right and wrong, good and bad, and people were generally just a hair shy of breaking out into open hostility if you pushed them a little too far.

On one side you had people who called themselves the House of Hillel, after a great and wise teacher of a previous generation.  They were the progressives, the liberals, the live and let live crowd.  They were the ones who saw that you really couldn't fight the current of history for too long, so you should just figure out how to swim with the Roman sharks.  As long as you could still read your Holy Books and pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, what could Caesar really do to you anyway?

On the other side you had the House of Shammai, named for another great teacher, who was a little more of a headbanger than Hillel, who wanted to fight the power and shake the world with strict dedication to the Law.  The followers of Shammai wanted a revolution, they wanted the good old days back, they clung to their mores like a life raft and kicked at the sharks for all they were worth.

Shammai had it's day, but eventually there were just too many sharks.  When the temple came down in 70 CE, no one wanted to hear the fever dreams of a vengeful god anymore.  Eventually then Shammai became a footnote and Hillel became orthodoxy.

But they both eventually lost.

Without a challenger, Hillel had no fire and all that was left was to drift along with the current, avoiding the sharks, or getting in bed with them.  Hillel survived, but just like Shammai always said would happen, he was never quite what he once was.

But there was someone who had a few things in common with both Hillel and Shammai, who managed to find a different current.  Who drifted along until the sharks stopped swimming, who washed up on a virgin shore and founded a new empire.  Who claimed a new Rabbi, and their Rabbi was no mere human, their Rabbi was God incarnate.  Hillel and Shammai had the stone tablets of the law and the scrolls of the prophets; the new tribe had those as well, plus something new: Jesus of Nazareth.  They had a handful of parables, some peculiar miracle stories, a few strange new sacraments and a lot of talk about a bloody cross and an empty tomb.

What it all stacked up to was a New Covenant, based on the Old Covenant, but founded on grace instead of law, and burning with tongues of the fire of the Holy Spirit.  The New Covenant showed old Hillel and Shammai that they both missed the boat.  Now that they had that out of the way, what could possibly go wrong?

A lot apparently.  Sin is a Hell of thing.

It would seem that the New Covenant was not immune to the same polarizing process that afflicted their Hebrew forerunners.  Does God want us to follow the rules, or does God want us to go with the flow?  A lot depends on how you answer that question.

Even for people who once recognized that there was a way out of one shark infested current, it seems way too easy to get sucked right into another one.  We go through the endless process of choosing up sides, dividing into houses and fighting it out, until one side goes away and the other "wins."

And we all lose.

And we cry out to God: "Lord Jesus, how did you let this happen to your church?"

To which Christ replies: "I didn't call you to fight and win, I called you to stretch out your arms and die, so that in dying you might live.  Weren't you listening to that part?"

Got me... Good!

This morning on my facebook feed I saw a rather authentic looking post by George Takei, for those of you who aren't utter sci-fi geeks, he played Mr. Sulu on Star trek.  Takei is, pretty much  hands down, one of the best people to follow on facebook, because, well, he's darn funny.  The graphic in question has Takei in a Jedi hood with a lightsaber and announced that he had been tapped to play a Jedi master in the upcoming JJ Abrams production of Star Wars VII.  Hey, it seemed plausible.  Takei has some acting chops and would also win many kudos in the fandom of things sci-fi.  A cross-over homage to the original Star Trek, in the galaxy far far away of Star Wars!  Great God Jim! That would be better than bulls-eyeing Womprats in a T-16!
Except a few hours later, Takei posts: "Gotcha!"  Oh yeah, it's April Fools Day!  Duh, I should have known that, I was woken up this morning by my nine-year old pranking his sister (and his mother) that there was a puppy in the yard.
Like I said, he's got a sense of humor.  The best things about the prank were that it was plausible and that most of us out there in Sci-fi fandom who follow Takei, probably really WANTED it to be true.  The prank was harmless, the worst thing that was going to happen was some fanboy (like me) might have shared the post on facebook and publicly fallen for a joke (like I almost did, but didn't have time).  But the prank leads me to an interesting consideration of how and why we believe, because belief is a powerful thing and it's a honking big part of what I do for a living.
Belief can be dangerous, and it can be wonderful and sometimes it can be both at the same time.  Belief can comfort people who grieve and search for meaning and belief can inspire people to violence against those who do not share their belief.  When all you are asked to believe is that a quirky old actor got a small supporting role in a new movie, no one's going to get hurt.  When you are asked to believe that God wants you to kill a thousand people in His name... well someone's going to get hurt.
As I found out this morning, people are more gullible when they want to believe something.  In the case of this fanboy, I wanted to believe that two of my favorite fantasy universes could collide (why not throw in some Hobbits instead of Ewoks this time!), but what inspires some of the more hateful manifestations of belief?
Without going into any specific controversies, which would tend to derail the light-hearted spirit of April Fools day, I am interested in what happens when belief ceases to be the positive, creative force we call faith and becomes a force for ignorance, hatred and violence.  Oh well, I guess the light-heart got derailed anyway.
We see it all the time, belief in something that cannot qualify as faith.  As the Apostle Paul said, "faith, hope and love abide..."  That would seem to indicate that those three things must somehow coexist.  If you say you are acting on faith, but your actions are devoid of hope and love than you may be acting simply on belief.  I believed that George Takei was going to be playing a Jedi master, for a a minute, but I did not let that belief alter my life.  I still went for a walk, I still went to work, and I didn't shout hateful things at anyone who disagreed with me, or who called my belief into question, and I certainly did not kill anyone or take hostages to ensure that Takei was going to really get the part.
As a follower of Jesus Christ, I believe that the God, in whom I put my faith, calls me to lay down my life for the sake of the faith that I have been given.  However, I do not see anywhere in the scriptures I use as a guide for my journey, a way to justify taking someone else's life for the sake of that faith.  Nor do I see a justification for hatred, intolerance and general skulduggery in the name of Jesus.
I am often wrong in the things I believe, but faith is another matter, bound as it is to hope and love, and rooted in the grace of God, it will not let me down.