Systems of Belief

I watched the HBO documentary Going Clear, about the Church of Scientology, because as I told my wife, "I like to look in on the competition."  Scientology is rather more widely known than it's actual size warrants. By some estimates they only have about 50,000 adherents world wide, which may seem like a lot until you realize that there are approximately 600,000 Rastafarians, and they're sort of on the low end of the list (Judaism: 14 million, Islam 1.6 billion, Christianity: 2.2 billion, according to Wikipedia, but those numbers seem pretty on target).  Scientology is a fairly new religion founded by L.Ron Hubbard, a man who was a failure as a Science Fiction writer but whom you would have to say, started a fairly successful religion, at least if you judge by dollar signs.
And that seems to be the thing about Scientology, they are a religion that is all about success and straight cash money.  They attract a handful of super-wealthy, super-famous people: notably Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and they put on a show, about how they can help everyone succeed like those two have succeeded.  Of course, there's a bit of dark side to the whole thing as you can imagine, but if you want to know about that, watch Going Clear.
What I want to think out loud about here is the spectrum of religious practice, where Scientology occupies a clear (pun intended) end point.  This end point is the type of religion that starts with methods and only reveals it's "secrets" to the initiated.  One of the points that a former Scientologist made in the documentary was that if you ask your average Christian or Jew or Muslim what they believe, they will be able to tell you, roughly, in a couple of minutes.  Christians will say something that can be as simple as: Jesus is Lord, or get a little more complicated.  Muslims actually have a slogan: There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.  Atheists (yes they're a religious group) basically require their adherents to say there is no god, if you start talking about a god or gods or even the possibility of a god or gods,  you're technically an agnostic and out of the club.
Scientology however, starts with a whole bunch of practical instructions for living and succeeding, and never tells you anything about overlord Xenu until you're an Operating Thetan level III (or something like that).  Want to know what that means?  Actually you probably don't, particularly if Scientology has been working out pretty well for you so far, and by that I mean, it's methods and it's system of expensive audits has been helping you acquire wealth and live the "good life," which is actually their major selling point.
Scientology is a creation of the modern/postmodern mindset, it's mythos is founded in the writings of science fiction writer, its evangelists are celebrities, its practice, if we are to believe the growing number of ex-scientologists, are dystopian on an Orwellian scale.  But none of that is really getting to the core of the matter, which is the method.  Scientology does something for people, from the very beginning: it teaches them how to organize, how to communicate, how to focus, basically how to become successful in the world.  Once it establishes its value, and once it earns the acceptance and loyalty of its adherents, then it springs the ideas, the audits, the engrams, becoming clear, thetans, Xenu,,, all that stuff that sounds just absolutely crazy to outsiders.  To those inside though, it doesn't seem crazy because they have accepted that it all works, and often would rather not challenge the crazy for fear of upsetting a system that has real benefits for them.
In modern Protestant Christianity we tell you our "secret" on day one.  We tell you it's about a relationship with God, which is mediated by Jesus Christ, who is our savior and our example.  We have varied ways of expressing this truth, but it essentially comes back to the triune God, who is the same God that made covenant with the people of Israel, and thus connects us to Judaism.  It comes back to Jesus of Nazareth who was a Jewish teacher, healer and miracle worker, who was crucified by the Romans at the urging of the Sanhedrin (Jewish religious establishment/ruling class).  And we will tell you, most of us anyway, that Jesus was resurrected on the third day after his crucifixion and then ascended into heaven.
Some people will find that last part implausible, perhaps even impossible, and I will have to admit, given a scientific understanding of the world, it is, in fact, unlikely.  But that's what makes it an article of faith.  It cannot be proven or dis-proven, it can only be believed or not believed.  The thing about it is, you don't have to learn any secret handshakes or subscribe to any secret pact to be able to hear about our faith.  You don't have to follow our rules or worship in our community, you don't have to go on a mission or join a special group, you just have to hear and accept the love of God in Jesus.
There are some within the church who think we're giving away our truth a little too easily.  There are some who look at the commitment evoked by more strenuous disciplines in say Buddhism or even within Roman Catholicism (after all I'm going on a pilgrimage next week, you don't get much more Catholic or committed than trying to walk 500 miles to a cathedral where they supposedly have the bones of a Saint), and say that perhaps we've just made it too easy.
Maybe we have.
I realize, at about this point, that I have opened a large can of worms, this is going to have to be continued.

Last Things

I spent time this morning sifting through the narratives of Jesus' last days with his disciples before the crucifixion.  I also bought train tickets for a trip from Madrid to Pamplona.  I am thinking about Maundy Thursday service, and Easter Sunday, and leaving my family and my church for forty days.  I am sitting here flipping back and forth between the journey of Lent as it comes to a close and the journey that will absorb most of the Easter season.  What do I need to say and do in the next week?
I'm feeling the urgency of Jesus' prayer for his disciples, I'm feeling a little bit of his anxiety about something really big coming up (though my big event is decidedly of a different character).
I also know I'm coming back again!
And that's part of what I'm wrestling around with as well.  What about this whole experience is going to be transformative?  Jesus probably had a better idea on that one than me.  At least according to the Gospels, he sort of knew what this was going to accomplish, but I think he had some doubts and anxiety of his own.  What if he was wrong?  What if this cross incident was every bit as foolish as it looked from this vantage point 2000 years ago?  What if God's plan really was to give the whole Messiah thing one more try, and Jesus was just missing his big chance?
Let's face it, the crucifixion makes walking five hundred miles seem like a trip to Disney World.  There was absolutely no guarantee that his death was going to accomplish anything.  Even after the resurrection, and for quite a long time actually, the way of Jesus sort of hung on by a thread.  An awful lot depended on random moments and what can only be described as an ongoing revelation of the Holy Spirit.  The story took shape, the Gospels were told and then written down.  People came to call Jesus Lord in the strangest places and when they did they seemed willing to devote themselves to that proposition, even if it meant putting themselves in harm's way.
Dad and I are sort of going through this flip-flop routine about how much to plan, how many reservations to make, how prepared to be.  For us, this pilgrimage is not about earning salvation (that's a verboten idea for a couple of die hard Protestants).  It's not even about earning some special favor or blessing (our theology doesn't permit that either).  But it is about more than just curiosity, and it is about more than just a particularly long walk.  It's a microcosm of the Christian story and the journey of faith.  We must give up a lot of our comfort and security, and join Jesus on the way.  Like the disciples, we don't exactly know what that's going to be like.  I'm quite sure that if we knew what change the Camino was going to bring to each one of us and if we could somehow just sort of learn those things without putting our bodies, minds and spirits through this ordeal, we probably wouldn't find this thing compelling enough to do.
Jesus faces the events this week with a knowledge that, while he doesn't really want to go, he must.  While he holds out some hope that there is another way, he knows that there is not.
Heaven, earth and the salvation of humanity do not hang in the balance when it comes to my father and I taking this journey, but we are going to find out some things.
The first of those things is what it's like to leave.

The Morning After

It is rare that I find myself still thinking about a Presbytery meeting the morning after.  Presbytery meetings are mostly business, with a thin veneer of worship and community, but yesterday was different.  National Capital Presbytery gathered for our meeting, where one of the most visible and crucial issues of the past 40 years was going to be decided.  Except it wasn't, because basically it had already passed the requisite number of Presbyteries to be ratified.
For those of you who are not Presbyterian, I'm talking about amendment 14F, which changes the language in our constitutional definition of marriage from "between a man and woman" to "between two people."  A constitutional change is moved by Presbyteries, voted up or down by General Assembly (the national governing body) and then sent back to Presbyteries for ratification.  Well, the change has been ratified.  Last week I talked about the change as a whole, today I want to talk about the process and the movement of God's people in the PC(USA).
If I had to pick one word to describe the process it would be gracious.  People were actually listening to each other, and hearing each other for real.  Maybe it was because the pressure was off, and the change was pretty much already a done deal, maybe it was because in an urban/metropolitan presbytery like NCP, there really wasn't ever very much doubt that it was going to pass by a landslide (217-55-6, was the final vote if I remember correctly).
But I would like to think it's because even those who disagree now recognize that the really important thing about all this is what we do now.  Do we continue to listen to each other?  Or do we retreat into our citadels of like-mindedness?  Do we continue to seek understanding of the other? Or do we just redraw the battle lines and go at something else?  Do we live up to our bright hopes? Or do we live down to our darkest fears?
We have choices to make and directions to choose, but for the first time in a long time, I'm not waiting for the other shoe to drop.  And that is a relief.
I also had the pleasure of attending this meeting with the youngest member of our session, it was her first Presbytery meeting, and it made me proud that it pretty much illustrated the best of what we can be.  In a church where we are constantly wringing our hands about what to do about young people, I saw something with fresh eyes: let's just trot out our good side a little more often.  Let's demonstrate that we can have mature and difficult conversations without getting steamed up like a bunch of posturing teenagers.
I think we forget that most kids and young people look to adults to set an example, at our table last night we had a male and a female pastor, we had a young single woman and two middle aged married women, and we had a man who had just celebrated his 60th wedding anniversary (for those of you who are into math that makes him at least 80).  We talked about what makes for a good marriage, and we learned from each other.  We had diversity, and it was good, and it was the church, and while I may not understand all the mysteries of God, I am absolutely sure that he found nothing wrong with what we were and what we are.
Amen.

Painted into a Corner

Personal history to the side for a moment, let's examine the nature of violence on a larger scale.  Almost everyone agrees, even most pacifists, that war is sometimes necessary.  The test case, now and probably forever, is World War II.  Forget Japan in this whole discussion, let's just talk Hitler.  Hitler has become the very definition of a madman, a megalomaniac, an unbalanced person consumed by hate and fear who wrought horror on Europe, and especially on the Jewish people.

Here's the narrative that we have been taught in history class: WWI was a pretty typical struggle between nation states for control of territory, it still involved Kaisers, Kings and various other feudal sounding figures (like Archdukes).  It was a pretty horrible conflagration where human beings first started trying out some of our new tricks, like chemistry and airplanes in the service of war.  It literally chewed up a good part of the European continent, and since Germany lost, they had to be punished.  That punishment was the Treaty of Versailles, which helped make Europe well again, largely at the expense of the German people.

As is usually the case, the next generation of Germans did not appreciate being the red-headed step children of the European community because of something that happened when they were little kids or not even born.  Along comes Uncle Adolf and his hyper-nationalist, angry young man Nazi propaganda.  And the whole Nazi thing is: we're going to show everyone how hard we can punch.  The despair and anger that allowed Hitler to take power is the same desperation and despair that has formed Al Quaeda and ISIS: our life is not as good as it should be, and it's somebody else's fault.

Basic human problem.

Enter the Jews, or rather, just sort of notice the Jews, because they were already there.  Throughout history, the Jews have been the perfect scapegoat for bad stuff; there are usually not that many of them compared to the general population, they insulate themselves from others, keeping all their secret religious days and eating their secret religious food and wearing those little funny hats.  When stuff starts rolling downhill it's really easy to make sure most of it lands on the Jews.  Seriously, it happens a lot over the course of history.

There's a fair amount of bigotry against Jewish people in America and Europe, for no really good reason.  And G-D help them in the Middle East, where the nation state of Israel has actively dispossessed an entire nation in the name of safety and security.  And this is where the rubber really hits the toad, because Arabs (particularly Palestinians) and Israelis have legitimate beef with one another.  This is no manufactured paranoia and no simple misunderstanding.  Hitler taught an entire race of people that they cannot just ignore hatred and bigotry and hope it will go away.  Israel is, even to moderate and dovish Israelis, the only hope of security in the world for the children of Jacob.

To an Israeli the threat of attack from people that live on their doorstep is no abstract threat.

To a Palestinian the notion that something precious and irreplaceable has been forcibly taken from them is not an abstraction either.

We have demonstrated the ability to fight massive wars over abstractions and ideologies.  The US and the USSR spent a good 70 years threatening to annihilate human life on this planet over different economic strategies, so I'm not throwing stones from this glass house, but this sort of thing has no happy ending, it's like Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, it's a freaking tragedy.

It's a tragedy, because the people involved are painted into a corner.  One side cannot just back down and go away, it is their life and their identity.  I have been reading a book about Zionism, written by an Israeli, and what surprises me, and brings a lump to my throat is that there are people on both sides who know this, it's not a matter of understanding, it's an utter inability to do anything about that understanding.  The thing would be for Israelis and Palestinians to live together, there is apparently plenty of room.  The problem is that Israelis cannot and will not sacrifice their security, and the Palestinians are too angry to stop trying to blow them up.

Honestly, I don't blame either side.

Intervention from the west usually just makes things worse.  We like absolute solutions, we like clear-cut win/lose decisions.  We like to be the good guys, and in this case there are no good guys, there are only gradations of wrong.

I suppose we could just hunker down and wait for the paint to dry, but that's hard, and it means you have to stop adding new paint.  I suppose also we could just walk across the wet paint and then try to clean up the mess, but in this case the mess in human lives, so don't start that stroll casually.

A History of Violence

When I was a kid I had a bit of a temper.  I think the only thing that kept me from being a bully was probably the fact that I preferred to be mostly left alone and that trying to intimidate other kids would have taken too much effort on my part.  But I was usually bigger than a lot of kids my age and I was pretty quiet, and from time to time, that would attract attention from others... unwanted attention... unjust attention.  Attention that made Hulk want to smash.
By about 8th grade or so, I had managed to get my rage under control enough to largely avoid frequent suspensions and detentions, but it was not easy.  The urge to punch obnoxious kids in the face was more or less a daily struggle, especially since I had been in enough fights and altercations over the years to know (sort of) how to do it.  Don't get me wrong, I was not Chuck Norris just waiting to lay a beating down on some unsuspecting kid.  I knew that fights hurt, and that, even in the best of circumstances you were going to take a shot or two.
Here are some other things I have learned:

1. Never underestimate an opponent. I learned this from picking a fight with a girl in first grade, an age where girls and boys are pretty much on equal footing physically and if the girl in question happens to be a tomboy with several older brothers, you just bought yourself face full of snow on the playground. I have to say, to the girl's credit, she just took me down, shamefully quickly, pushed snow in my face, and said, "had enough?"  I said, "Yes" and it was done.  That was it, to this day that's about all I remember about the whole thing, no idea what started it, only that it was done without so much as a whimper, no teachers got involved, I'm not even sure any of the other kids even noticed it, which is kind of hard to believe, but then I remember, we were six, six-year-old kids are pretty clueless.
2. If you're going to fight, don't talk first, just fight.  I learned this from the first and last fight of my high school career, which oddly enough was not of my own doing, but rather the result of some misplaced jealousy and really shady teenage drama making.  I confronted a kid in my homeroom.  Through what I considered to be a wild rumor, I had heard that he wanted to fight me for something I had never done.  I was like, "Hey Joey, what's this I hear about..." and that's when I saw the fist coming.  The bruise on my jaw was testament to the fact that diplomacy had failed, and I suppose to the fact that I can take a punch.
3. If you're going to use violence, you really need to commit to it.  In the above mentioned fight, during the grappling and pushing phase, I remember pretty much my only conscious thought was whether or not to smash Joey's testicles into a pulp, I had a clear shot for a nice swift knee to the groin and was actually weighing that option when a couple of other boys pulled us apart. Had I been slightly more ruthless, and decisive that kid would have been the last of his bloodline, and I probably would have been in considerably more trouble.  Joey to this day has no idea that, A. I was fully capable of squashing his grapes and B. was just about to do it, viciously. To this day, there is is this part of me that wishes I had pulled the trigger on that knee to the groin.  He totally deserved it, and it would have probably put me on the list of people not to be messed with in my high school.  But at the same time, while it may have "taught him a lesson," I know it probably would not have taught me the lesson that I needed to learn, which is:
4. Violence never solves anything. If I had taken that swing, it would have made the next few weeks, more pleasant.  I would have had the "honor" of reducing a kid who sucker-punched me to a crying pile of Def-Leppard clad goo, and I would not have had to "watch my back."  As it was though, he thought the whole thing was more or less a draw, and still had the illusion that he could beat me up.  He was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and tended to announce things, like the fact that he was going to ambush me when I got off the bus after school.  I wasn't about to relive the unsuspected punch to the jaw this time, this time I was ready, I had back up, and I was going to hurt this slime ball.  Sure enough here he came, in the parking lot of the bank near my bus stop, his arms were out to his side and all his really tender bits were just begging to be kicked, I was being given a second chance to live out my violence.  I can still remember it pretty vividly, my best friend was with me, there was this lady in a minivan saying, "hey you boys, stop it," but making no move to get out of her car, she was afraid of us.  And she was probably right, he wanted to fight, and honestly, I wanted to fight, and I could see the opening, guts begging to be punched, a nose in the middle of pugnacious face just begging to be smashed, a stupid, worthless waste of human flesh that I wanted to stomp into the asphalt, this time there would be no hesitation and no mercy, and I was just about to do it, and feel utterly justified, but then here came my Dad.  Ostensibly just going to the post office, at a time of day when he never went to the post office, but since my antagonist had been so very public about his intentions, even my Dad knew something was going down. Dad did the grown up thing and mentioned that if this sort of teenage nonsense didn't end here and now, police would be getting involved.  I have no idea what went through Joey's head, probably not much, but in mine it was like the end of The Lord of the Flies, where the kids come out on to the beach and there's an adult, and the savagery of the world they had been living in comes crashing down around them.  Now I couldn't, even though I wanted to, even though I had been primed for days by anxiety and hatred, even though I could envision Joey bleeding on the pavement, I was not going to be allowed to live that through.

Over the years, I hold my head higher when I think of the times that I prevented a fight or walked away from a fight, than on the fights I was in.  The fights, even the ones I won, are embarrassing.  I would rather really tell you about the one with the girl in first grade, which I totally and unequivocally lost, than the ones that I remember in more detail, especially the one with Joey. I really wish I could say it was my last one, but it was just the last one in school.  And that's really the worst part of it, none of that really taught me that violence is not the answer, if I was back in that bank parking lot now, I would still feel that rage and that desire to inflict violence.
This is the place I find myself in with regard to many sins and virtues, I only understand the virtue if I have been afflicted by the sin.  I only understand the power and the worth of peace because I have been through violence, I have felt it's rush and I have experienced it's weight, I have walked up to the edge of inflicting serious harm and have backed away.  I have learned that security through violence is folly.  Violence does not make the world safer, it only spawns and brings forth more violence.
But in the moment, it's hard to see that.  When we feel threatened and wronged, our impulse is to fight.  Oddly enough, we can twist the virtues of righteousness and justice to the extent where our own violence seems ultimately justified.  You need to be aware though, when you do that, your "enemy" probably is as well.  Neither one of you is correct, and you are both lesser for allowing yourself to get trapped in that web.  That is true if you are kids on the playground or nation states, violence erodes our humanity.
I don't know what ever happened to Joey, I suspect his life has been hard, since while my part in our little fracas cost me a three day suspension, his lead to 10 and an eventual expulsion (it wasn't his first trip to the principals office). It was, however, my last, except if you count the times I got called there to win an award. At the time of our fight, we were roughly the same size, when I saw him next, three years later, while I was working at a supermarket, I was at least four or five inches taller than him.  He kind of sneered at me, and I more or less pretended he didn't exist.  We never did make peace, but I learned a lot about why nonviolence is really our only hope from my history of violence.

Necessary Evil?

When are we going to catch on?
That necessary evil is still evil.
When are we going to see through the lies:
That we must discriminate,
That we must hate,
That we must imprison,
That we must oppress,
That we must kill.

Calling it our jobs,
Following orders,
Believing that it's necessary,
Saying that we're "only human,"
Does not make us righteous,
Does not make us safe,
Does not make us whole,
It makes us all less human.

Fear builds walls,
Fear builds prisons,
Fear aims the gun,
Fear pulls the trigger,
Fear drops bombs,
Fear pushes us into necessary evil.

Love casts out fear,
But fear is persistent and clever,
Fear can wear a mask
That looks like love,
But is really a shadow.
And in the shadows
Necessary Evil lurks.

There Goes Our Conservative Street Cred

And now, faith, hope and love abide, these three;

And the greatest of these is love.

-1 Corinthians 13: 13

In the not so distant past, I dreaded this day.  I kind of knew it was coming, but I sort of hoped that it would take longer than it did.  I admit, I had great trepidation about what would happen if our particular part of the Body of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA), were to actually move towards being fully inclusive of homosexual people.  Well we crossed one line a couple of years ago, we said that LGBTQ people could be ordained as Elders, even if they didn't agree to keep their sex lives on ice.  Some folks got mad, and walked away, and they said on the way out the door: "You just watch!  The next thing is going to be marriage!  They're going to want to get married, then what you gonna do brother?"

Sure enough, yesterday, the amendment to our constitution that clears the way for our churches to sanction same-gender marriages passed the requisite number of Presbyteries, and will go into effect on June 21.  While this truly and honestly seems like a step in the right direction for Christian faith in the 21st century, I feel like the thing to do is not get too loud and boisterous about it.  There is just too much important stuff still going on for us to gloat and carry on.  For one thing, this is just a small step in breaking the stranglehold that conservative political positions have had on the minds of American Christians, and yes, I am talking about all of us, even those of us in "liberal" traditions like the PC(USA) or the Episcopalian Church.  For another, it is important not to repeat the process of marginalizing a group of people who disagree with us.  We should not trumpet our inclusion and acceptance of LGBTQ people in the face of people for whom this is a difficult reality to accept.

Every time we make a change or even a statement, no matter how carefully discussed and thought through, someone is going to get mad about it.  We're just dealing with things that are far too sensitive; things like sex, Israel, abortion (which is related to sex as well), economic justice, racism, these things are what you call, "hot buttons."  And when you press hot buttons, people get mad.  My sort of default position was to think that we would be better off to just leave well enough alone. Except for the fact that these issues are causing people real pain, and once I admitted that to myself, the status quo became less and less tolerable within a very short period of time..

Yes, it was because of a change in cultural values, and yes, the church is called to be counter-cultural in some ways, but it got to the point where we were challenging a point of culture that was actually moving towards justice and, dare I say, love.  Love is supposed to be our thing, we're supposed to love people, even our enemies, we're supposed to be the forgiveness people, not the morality police.  The whole mess put us in a very bad place as a church.  I'm not so naive as to think that this move resolves the tension that has been pulling at our denomination for over 40 years, in fact, this probably sets the stage for more disagreements and schisms at the local level, in congregations and presbyteries across the country.  That's really what I was dreading: the day when we couldn't just keep calm and carry on.  I admit, that was selfish of me, to want this all to just go away, just so I didn't have to deal with it. 

As for me, my own heart changed a while back.  Part of it was looking at the people who were getting married whenever States made it legal.  They were not deviants, they were not dangerous to the fabric of society, they were mostly middle aged men and women who just wanted to live with the people they loved (and in many cases had loved for a rather long time) and feel that it was somehow normal and maybe even blessed, both inside and out. Part of it was God working on me, and yes, I do mean the same God that the Bible talks about, there is only one.  There was this moment where I read through the story of the woman caught in adultery, and when Jesus said, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone," I knew he was talking to me.  That's Biblical faith as I understand it, letting the Living Word work on you and challenge what you think you know.  Once I put my stone down and walked away from all my fear and anxiety a lot of the arguments that had seemed so persuasive stopped holding water.

Reality got a hold of me using a mystical voice, and the combination of those two is just really hard to refute for the sake of a few verses.  Slippery slope arguments, talk of abominations, and "love the sinner, hate the sin," all seemed to dissolve like so much dust.  The facts didn't change, my heart did.

I had to learn to love a little bit more than I did, I had to expand the definition of who my neighbor was, and actually consider whether it was loving for me to deny the holiness of how they experienced love.

Now, it's not so much a matter of whether this is going to trouble my conscience, but whether or not I can help people in my congregation deal with this issue, when not if, this comes up. Even as I learned to love one group of people, I need to hold on to the love I have for people who are seriously troubled by this sort of change.  I can't just make the same mistake over again and ignore their convictions.  I do pray that God will change hearts and open us to be more loving towards all, but in the meantime I've got to try and love people where they are, that's why I need to restrain my urge to celebrate something I truly feel is right.

This following Jesus thing is really tough sometimes.