Counter to What?

It cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong and the powerful and against the weak and the oppressed - this, despite the Gospel.

-Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited

I don't think I have ever read three words in the English language that chill my soul quite like, "despite the Gospel."  It not only means that we have gone wrong through a sort of sin-blindness, but rather that we have willfully missed the point of Jesus and his teachings.  And I cannot come close to refuting Thurman when he says, "It cannot be denied."  Indeed I think trying to deny it is a very complex and certainly dangerous sort of spiritual/intellectual gymnastic routine.

Yet, I hear people try, rather than confess to the sins of empire, rather than admit that the people who call Jesus their Lord, have often been much more buddy-buddy with Caesar.  I have heard it said that the ones who climbed into bed with power and violence were not "true" Christians.  I have heard the excuse that they were just living according to the moral values appropriate to their time. I have even perhaps nibbled at these arguments and felt the warm embrace of their poison, as it soothed my middle class, white soul.  But for the past week or so, I have this staring at me:

And he is looking at me and telling me that a lot of my assumptions about stuff are really wrong.  As the Supreme Court made their decisions and dissents about the ACA and about marriage equality, black churches were burning in the south, and there is Thurman reminding me that these things are all connected, and how the church responds is really important.

I have heard people say that the church needs to be counter-cultural for years now.  I have heard people interpret the ways in which Jesus challenged the dominant and powerful people of his time.  But these days the most common usage of the "counter-cultural" argument is to encourage Christians to "stand up" on moral ground to the changing world around us.  This is all good and fine if it means we stand up for equality and dignity for people who are oppressed, if we work to see that human beings are not objectified, labeled as somehow inferior and denied their full participation in society.  It is all good and fine if we're working to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and house the homeless.  It is all good and fine if we rail against the ways that the social and economic systems of our day stack the decks against minorities and those who are born poor.  It is all good and fine if we say that we are against a culture built on violence and greed and fear.

But what if the culture changes for the better?

Do I need to remind you (again) of MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail, where he strongly critiques the leaders of the Christian church for sitting on the sidelines of the civil rights fight?

Do I need to tell you the story of Thurman's Grandmother, born a slave, who used to hear white preachers tell her all about Paul's injunction for slaves to obey their masters?  (She eventually decided she didn't need to read or hear about that part of the Bible any more, and thankfully didn't reject the whole thing).

Yes, the church is supposed to be counter-cultural, but that is not synonymous with obstinate and contrarian.  I think that sometimes the world can have a prophetic pull on us as well as the other way around.  Wasn't it some while visiting some Gentiles that Peter had that dream about the sheet (Acts 10)? Didn't God and the changing world conspire to convince a bunch of Jewish followers of Jesus to accept and even eat with people who they had previously considered enemies, and even unclean?  Didn't the very voice of God say, "What God has made clean, you must not call profane?"

How do you read these stories church?

Want to be counter-cultural?  Try welcoming "the least of these," try loving unconditionally, try refusing the vicious cycle of power and violence, try laying down your swords and dropping your defenses, let your enemies in and love them.  Try actually forgiving, as you have been forgiven.

When we get done with that part, then we can talk morality.