We're All Mormon Now

Long-time readers of my series-of-tubes-log risk developing hemorrhoids but may also remember I've mentioned the silliness of Protestant, specifically Evangelical, notions of scriptural authority as stated in most Evangelical statements of faith.

As a Christian, I don't disagree with the idea of the Bible's authority, but as I've said before, the insistence upon a capital W "word" seems blasphemous in those statements of faith. And I've said before, it seems a bit odd to claim the Bible to be more authoritative than it ever does itself, let alone thinking that it is the kind of text that "makes claims". And it's silly the way the whole thing is often conceived and practiced with a wink. Sure there are better and worse ways of doing the bit- it can be sophisticated, responsible, thoughtful, and honest to varying degrees. To wit, someone has a concern, imagines there is a single word that deals with said concern, finds every instance of the Bible mentioning that concern and then creates a prescription for it from the pile of verses gathered. Something like that would be of the least degree. I know, I know, the horse isn't getting any deader, but I mention this as background and intro to where we are now.

"Where is that?" you ask.

Well, I'm glad you asked, but once I tell you, you may be unhappy.

We are now under the auspices of the Mormon Magisterium- or whatever the interpretive authority among LDS is called.

What?!

It's true. I bet you didn't think that would happen, but it did.

I'm guessing folks who think the Bible says something about homosexuality and marriage and that something is "gay folks can't get married" did not think through one of the more troubling implications of voting to eliminate that right. In their eagerness to make the state (in their minds "the world" as a whole) correspond to the world they imagine ought to exist in relation to some metaphysical template they find in scripture, they decided to traipse along with a Mormon and Christian Reconstructionist understanding of the world vis-a-vis scripture.

Huh?

The matter of same sex marriage is hardly settled among Christians- even among Bible believing Evangelical Christians. Of course for some, that one is not particularly settled on it belies one being a Bible believing Evangelical Christian. Whatever- the point is, it's not settled. Churches ostensibly decided what counted as marriage, who could get married, what criteria had to be met, etc... A pastor didn't think a Buddhist and Christian should get married, they didn't marry them. One partner was a member the other wasn't? No church marriage for them. A divorced partner and a first-timer? No way. Same sex marriage was a similar matter- subject to the criteria of a given congregational context. You like the stability, cohesiveness, commitment to love, discerning a life in community, togetherness, and loyalty marriage requires and fosters but not if it means banging sticks? Great, you don't allow same sex marriage.

I'm sure some of us think we dodged a bullet; the state addressed the issue so we don't have to. Our minds were nagged- even as some denominations formally settled the matter. We knew that while one body of Christians prohibiting same sex marriage existed side by side with another that received it, it could not rest. And what's church for if not settling into easy and familiar ruts? I think we thought this could lock us easily into those grooves.

So what does this have to do with being subject to scriptural authority and LDS?

Well, back in the day, when there was just one church (we'll pretend that actually was the case), that one church was the authority. We would all settle where the church said we ought to settle. But those were dark times and we're Protestants now. We say, "The church doesn't tell us how to think or understand things, only the Bible can do that, and when we read the Bible we all think the same thing we've always thunk". I know, that's silly, but we're ham-handed. So we say it's the Bible alone and ignore all whatever else that goes into our saying what we say the Bible says about what we do.

The larger point is that we're trying to say the matter is finally settled by virtue of some authority and what we've shown that authority to be is the state wielding power for a Mormon or Christian Reconstructionist understanding of the world.

It's not just troubling (to those who are troubled) that some unnamed gay person wants to love and marry some other gay person. The scarier concern (for those who are scared) is the confusion that churches reading the same Bible walking such different paths causes. Thankfully (for those who are thankful),the state offers security. Mormons have shown themselves willing to step up and be the point of stability we've been asking for.

Isn't that great?

A Whole Lot of Funny In One Quote

One white supremacist leader, describing himself as moderate, professes alarm.

"There is a tremendous backlash" to Obama's election, said Richard Barrett, the leader of the Nationalist Movement in Learned, Miss. "My focus is to try to keep it peaceful. But many people look at the flag of the Republic of New Africa that will be hoisted over the White House as an act of war."

LA Times

Learned, Mississippi.

Naturally.

It's Not About You... Just Kidding It Totally Is

A couple of whiles ago I met the chaplain for the Lakers. He's exactly the kind of person you would think the chaplain for the Lakers ought to be. He's tall, good-looking, broad-shouldered, and gregarious. His voice has a bright, laughing timbre that, no matter what he says, makes you think he's done you a favor by speaking- a favor made all the more gracious because he's the chaplain for the Lakers but he's willing to waste time talking to you. (You're no Derek Fisher- you're not even a Luke Walton.)

I heard him give a chapel message. It was something positive and uplifting, I'm sure. I've forgotten it. That's not necessarily an indictment of my memory or his "sermon". Through most of it I was distracted by thinking how terrible it must be to be the Lakers' chaplain.

Let alone the awful actions of people associated with the team*, his job isn't to care for or shepherd the people that make up the Lakers institution. He can't be concerned with making disciples of Christ. His responsibility is the maintenance of the institution for which he is a chaplain. Those responsibilities may involve doing churchy things here and there, but it doesn't involve being a church or making Christians. Someone needs prayer? Pray. Someone feels glum? Cheer them up with some motivational words. Someone has twelve illegitimate children scattered across the country? Well, that's what paternity suits are for. He may preach, he may pray, he may lead Bible studies, but ultimately his job is to serve the Lakers.

Of course all that only seems terrible to me because I would see it as frustrating, misguided, and most importantly, at cross purposes with the Gospel. And of course, I only see that because I see the Gospel as something challenging, transformative, and freeing. If I were smarter, if I had any sense of self-preservation, if I would just accept that all Jesus wants to do is give us all a great big hug, then I would see that making people capable of feeling good about themselves just as they are is really what the Gospel is all about.

I bet I could do that if I started drinking more.

* Except for that Jerry Buss. Total class.

High School Skybalon Sure Did Relate to This Charming Man
The Smiths-The Smiths

They Can Have My Gold When They Pull It From My Cold Dead Teeth

I've noticed the reemergence of a golden thread running through the various paranoid media outlets I visit. (I hate myself.) If you're a certain type of paranoid, now is the time to invest in gold.

Well... I suppose you don't have to be paranoid to turn to gold to offset currency instability, but I'm sure this ad is meant to appeal to a specific someone:

Someone not necessarily concerned with inflation or currency exchange. Someone that still has foodstuffs left in their Y2K stockpile. Someone who generally feels haunted by some vague fear but who is also much more terrified now than they were of even Y2K.

I've said before that we have experienced a kind of apocalypse, and now we see it is a zombie apocalypse- Obama seems to be raising the Clinton dead for his administration. So sure, I can see why you'd be afraid. But gold?

I've never understood why gold is so valuable generally, but it seems especially worthless if things are about to go horribly wrong.

Like so much of contemporary Conservatism, I think hyping gold is a move to squeeze a little more blood from REAL AMERICANS (thick-skulled rubes) who are only too happy to dig their own graves if they think it means they're taking the next guy's plot. (I should think of a more artful way to construct that image- it seems like a good one.) The fear on which selling gold depends seems not only a scam but also a misdirection. When there's a run on gasoline and bullets... and football pads, S&M gear, mohawks, dune buggies, and Tina Turner anthems- then we'll know it's all over. But by then it'll be too late, and who's going to want your shiny yellow rocks then?

What Was The Phrase I Like Girls Used- "'Something' Kill"?

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. 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. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

The above is from a speech Martin Luther King, Jr. gave at a church a year before his murder. You probably don't know it. Saying stuff like this makes you less cuddly and gets you killed.

So there's a rash of MLK-Obama merchandise hitting the streets and following that is a move by the King estate to make sure they get paid. I suppose that seems right. I suppose it also seems right to tie the two men together. Actually, it must seem right because folks all over the place were using some sort of "content of character" "color of skin" "dream this or that" construction to color the historic significance of Obama's election.

Sure, I am all farklempt by Obama's election. I think it marks the possible end of one world and the dawn of another. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but try to imagine this happening a generation ago. There is something significantly different about America simply because of the color of our president elect's skin. But at the same time, Obama's not magic simply because of the color of his skin. To be more pointed, he did not/will not, as the convention goes, come along to magically make "white people" better for the sake of their narrative. White people still largely went for the erratic, intemperate, injudicious McCain over Obama. Was it because McCain was white? Maybe. Was it because Obama was black? I want to say "yes". But that's only slightly here or there.

The symbolic significance of Obama's victory is not in the magical transformation of racist folks to not racist folks but it is in the transformation it portends for the face of a nation. Nationally, white people voted more often for McCain. I am not saying every white person that voted for McCain was a racist (not any more than the average American anyway). I am saying, the majority of white people did not vote for the brown guy. The election of a person with dark skin to the White House does not indicate the end of racism (duh), so let's not be too back patty about what Obama's election means in that regard. But there is a transformation worth mentioning: the old, rural, white people that voted for McCain are dying and the browns are participating in greater numbers. Simply stated, the group among whom Obama did the worst is not long for this world. That, along with the conceptual shift does signify a change worth noticing. Still, white folks voted for the white guy, brown folks voted for the brown guy- not really a "dream fulfilled" moment. But, there was a brown guy for brown folks to vote for, so...

But to the Martin Luther King, Jr. point. Again, though there were obviously plenty of people who could look past skin color to some type of content, it's hard to describe this as a dream fulfilled. I recognize that it is something new and in a world of "at leasts" it is something good. But that seems a bit secondary and we ought to be careful about how much MLK dust we apply in this case.

It was not King's goal to get a dark-skinned person elected president. While that occurrence could mean something to and for what we might call the soul of our nation, King's call was to the revolutionary power of the Gospel, not the attrition of racists.

But, But, But, But...

So last night, as a change of pace, our Quaker Peace Fellowship group went to see/hear Christopher Hitchens. I thought it would be helpful to hear his articulation and understanding of how we work towards a stable, responsible, international community- especially because he sees imperialism as a good thing. I don't think he represents the majority of folks in that. Not that we don't endorse imperialism. I think most folks just don't think about the consequences or manifestations of our militarism as imperialism. He does. He calls it what it is, and endorses it. For whatever else you can say about the guy, you can't say he doesn't try for some sense of responsible thought about geopolitical concerns. That thought process seems important, especially because the majority of folks don't.

I'm not saying I endorse an imperial approach to stability or security. Only that it's important to know what thoughtful folks might say about such a thing.

For the most part I enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed how much the hipster college kids who came to hear him rail against theism were disconcerted by his support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Of course I had my own moments of embarrassment. No evening of Christopher Hitchens would be complete without some anti-theism. I have no problem with that per se. My embarrassment came from how shallow his anti-theism can be. There is nothing new, and little clever or very interesting about his case against God. Why should there be? He has no reason to be any more thoughtful about his position than he is. Most often, the God that we demonstrate as true is a pathetic laughable mess.

We demonstrate belief in a God... why am I doing that? We demonstrate belief in a god that is hardly worth the argument. That Hitchens' job is so easy is an indictment of the church.

What we do as the church reveals what we say about the god we believe in. It is that, that determines the nature and meaning of our existence and that we are able to live such shallow, petty, self-righteous, desperate lives, all the while clinging to hollow statements about the "bigness" of some Santa Claus on the other side of the moon is argument enough. We believe in a straw man.

We should thank God Hitchens is there to point that out.

ed.- The majority of folks don't seem important to me? Is that what I meant to say? Edit, man, edit.

The Really Good Parts of Heaven Are Reserved for Male Virgins

We don't buy into this do we?

If you see a lady you like among your enemy, bring her home, rape her, and she's yours. If you later decide you don't like her after all, you can get rid of her, but you can't sell her because you made her dirty. (Deut. 21:10-14)

If a man rapes an unengaged young woman, he must compensate her father and then marry her. (Deut. 22:28)

If a young engaged women is raped in town and she doesn't cry out loudly enough to get help, she should be killed. (Deut. 22:23-24)

Men should not "go to worship" with damaged genitalia. (Deut. 23:1)

As you're speaking with your child, telling her about the ins and outs of physical intimacy, teaching her about what love means to us, what she should do, what she ought not do, what she might expect, how to treat others, you teach her this don't you? Of course if you do, you're already violating the sense of the law since it was written for men. See you in hell, dummy (from heaven).

But your son, you tell your son to keep his penis intact so that he can go to church, right? You tell him to make sure he only rapes a woman he can afford, don't you? Of course you... oh you don't? Oh well, see you in hell, too.

***
I should offer a tip of the hat to students with whom I first shared these verses, who remind us these "translations" have me read "seizing a woman" as rape rather than something a man gets to do to a woman by virtue of his being a man. That is, my use of "rape" may not be appropriate since it carries with it a meaning for us that may not be present for the audience who could not imagine certain types of forced sexual intercourse as something wrong. But that remains a part of my point, which is, we generally* don't say this has a direct "do and do not do" bearing on our lives even though we say the Bible has a direct "do and do not do" bearing on our lives.

We can say that because there is something that comes before the do and do not do (and it's not the "New Covenant"), though it's not likely that we see it. It's hard, if not disorienting, to see the things through which we see. Imagine if you were aware that you see your eyeball lens as you see through it.

Cosmic, man.

No wonder we don't question the Late Capitalist Agenda, or even know to look for its influence on how we imagine and approach everything. (Sure, but we can imagine something like the Gay Agenda can exist- as if people excluded from the "mainstream" have the type of position in the world to create an agenda). No wonder it seems silly for me to identify something called Late Capitalism and suggest it has an influence on us. Did I say influence? That's not nearly strong enough. What would you call the activity of a power that completely dominates your being, binds you to itself so the whole of your life is determined to serve it? Maybe in-fluence is the perfect word.

I only mention this because we reject the Gospel for our lives, so we are determined to imagine something we call homosexuality is treated by the Bible. Yeah that's what I'm saying: if you think the Bible addresses what we call homosexuality and from that you say something like "It's wrong for a man to be physically attracted to a man, blah blah blah", you need Jesus to save you from that. But don't feel bad, we all need Jesus. So, you know, whatever.

*I say generally because I am sure there are those who would love for this to be the basis of social order. I'm looking at you, "Yes On 8" financial backers.

When I Hear Gay Agenda, I Think of This
Waiting for The Bus- Violent Femmes
It's Oh So Quiet- Björk
Novacane- Beck
Jumpin' at the Woodside- Duke Ellington
Myxomatosis- Radiohead
Tangled Up In Blue- Bob Dylan
When The Levee Breaks- Led Zeppelin
Livin' Thing- ELO

Maybe They Should've Built a Cracker Barrel Instead of The Chili's

My brother was recently assaulted by a couple of Bros just west of the Glendora country club. According to him, some Bros started yelling at him from their truck and followed him from the Glendora Marketplace to Route 66. He was initially confused- wasn't sure if he knew these guys or what, and then they started shouting the N-word and making some sort of gesture. He likes The Rap Musics and listens to it pretty loudly so I guess that makes some kind of sense. When he pulled over and got out of his car, they self-corrected and used the phrase "Sand-N-word" instead. If you've ever seen me or my brother, that makes more sense.

He should've stayed in the car.

The other day a friend of mine told me one of his students was called a N-word Lover for sporting an Obama '08 sticker on his car. This was at the Glendora Marketplace, too.

My response then was something I've said before and and will now say again:
"30 miles east of Los Angeles sometimes may as well be
2000."

Someday You'll Thank Me For All This Scary Love

We like to say our thoughts on sex, or more accurately our rules regulating sexual behaviors, are rooted squarely and surely in scripture. I think, as Christians of a certain type anyway, we like to say that about everything, but these days, sex especially.

I don't happen to think Christianity is about regulating behaviors, but let's say for a moment it is, and let's then say that the Bible is the source for those regulations.

We know what to do and not do based on what the Bible says (not what we say the Bible says), and there are things that the Bible says we ought to do or not do and those things are tied to whether one gets to be a Christian and from that whether one gets to go to heaven. This is important to remember.

It's easy to make those opposed to THE GAY into a God Hates Fags caricature. Of course it's made all that much easier because of a tendency to see the complexities of desire and attraction as an absurd simplification called gay or straight, but let's resist the tendency to both caricaturizations. Could that be any less clear? Point being, it's easy to forget that those who imagine there is some thing called GAY and oppose it however it is manifest may do so out of a sincere desire to offer what is best for the one who is gay.

If I supremely care for the condition of your soul- read "I don't want you to go to hell", then I would want to make sure you are not being or doing something that may send you to hell. Forget for a moment that that set up depends on a way of knowing the world at odds with a Gospel narrative, but if I say being and doing gay, whatever that may be, is something that will send you to hell, then the idea of putting up barriers around the possibility of gayness makes sense. Good sense.

It's not hate, at least not the kind of hate that rolls up to campus with a Confederate Nazi flag (seriously- what was up with that guy?). It's a kind of love- a kind of distorted, crazy, self-serving love, but a try at love. That's something, no? And to my more delicate readers I apologize for putting the words but and love so close together.

So it's not hate, not always anyway. But being a distorted, crazy, self-serving love doesn't make it good. Maybe sympathetic, to a degree, maybe understandable, but not good. It is something that ought to be exposed to light, overcome, and redeemed, at least if one buys into being a Christian.

Monster Machine and I Were Briefly Discussing Whether Slipknot Was More Motorhead or The Misfits for Its Attachment to a Certain Comic Teen Aesthetic. What say You?
Sister I'm a Poet- Morrisey
We Are 138- The Misfits
Cosmopolitan- Nine Black Alps
No New Tale to Tell- Love and Rockets
Mr. Hurricane- Beast (If Jamiroquai and The White Stripes had a baby, it would cry like this)
Brazil- Pink Martini
Cut Your Hair- Pavement
Think- Aretha Franklin
Suzie- Boy Kill Boy

Now I Understand What So Many Others of You Were Feeling This Week

So this is how that hope everyone keeps talking about feels.

You Want This, Don't You?

The hate is swelling in you now.

Our God Has Given Our Enemy Into Our Hand

Three things.

First.
I'm guessing if the No on 8 folks had early on clearly identified what and who was behind the Yes push- Mormon and Ahmanson money- it would not have passed. Consider that the present constitutional revision passed by a much narrower margin than the 2000 ballot measure that proved unconstitutional, though it was organized and well funded. We could say it's just a matter of a few more decades before these remaining folks are dead or at least outnumbered and a referendum is put to voters. Or we could recognize that the No campaign, a campaign that did not call out the kooks behind Prop 8, a campaign that let distortion and misrepresentation stand, a campaign that didn't make this about real people, and had to deal with Gavin Newsom's boorish soundbite, did as well as it did. Not that that is a great consolation, but if it had countered or done those things earlier, I think it would have passed- especially if the whole theocratic agenda of the financiers was clearly laid out. When most "straight folks" realize this is as much about their protection under the law, they will be less inclined to slouch along with Mormons and Christian Reconstructionists. Unless of course I'm wrong about that, and the vast majority of Californians would actually like to live in a Rushdoonian Mormon Bible-based paradise in which we wear magic underwear while stoning homosexuals* and adulterers.

Two.
Since passing Prop 8 was the great ecclesial call of this generation, since we successfully averted the flood they said was a'comin', could we as the church now maybe do one or two of the things Jesus actually talked about as recorded in the gospels? We could even say, "It's about the children" if we must, but how about 100 days of prayer and 40 days of fasting for something actually attributable to Jesus Christ if one is going to call one's self a follower of the guy? At least as a show of sincerity- "No hard feelings, homos, we take everything this seriously. High five? C'mon, sport, don't leave us hanging."

And D.
Now that THE CHURCH, at least in California, is safely ensconced in the security of the state, thoroughly protected by the power of legislation from any threats of strangeness or difference, insulated from any thing that may threaten its self-certainty, I wonder what will become of folks like me who seemed so suited to ministry until it was learned we didn't know how to properly read the Bible. Are we now bound with the bronze fetters of the law and so may be safely put to the wheel?

* As if the Bible says anything about homosexuality.

And I Proudly Stand Up...

Please join Citrus College, City of Glendora and Azusa Pacific University in Saluting our Veterans.

The Ceremony will begin at Citrus College Center Quad at 11:00 and end with Flyover and Landing of US Army Helicopters at the APU Football Field



SALUTING OUR VETERANS
Thursday ▪ 6 November 2008 ▪ 11:00 AM to 1:30 PM



Musical Prologue
Covina Concert Band

Welcome, Proclamations, and Remarks
Dr. Jeanne Hamilton, Vice President of Student Services at Citrus College
Karen Davis, Mayor of Glendora

Presentation of Colors
American Veterans State Honor Guard (AMVETS)

National Anthem
Dani Bustamante, Cameron Lanier, and Frank Rodriguez, Citrus College Music Students

Moment of Silence
Chaplain Rick Givens, Azusa Pacific University

Salute to Fallen Veterans
American Veterans State Honor Guard (AMVETS)

Keynote Address
Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis

US Army Helicopter Flyover

Closing Remarks
Dr. Jeanne Hamilton, Vice President of Student Services at Citrus College

US Army Helicopter Landing at APU Football Stadium

We command people to go and do things that no human should do, to subject themselves to the worst we have to offer, to be bound to a way of being that requires death and destruction, but I would be seen as the jerk for saying this event meant to honor anyone seems like a whole lot of nothing. I guess we do what we can.

It's Nothing Personal

So there you have it, fags. TRADITIONAL VALUES... well Mormon values anyway, cut the legs out from your homosexual agenda. Decent, righteous upstanding Californians were able to tell queers they don't know that they can't marry.

Oh, and of course I don't mean "fag" or "queer" in any disparaging way. Just like no one means anything disparaging by saying you are inherently incapable of doing or being what is necessary to marry. You're fine, really. This was always all about THE CHILDREN. And since this was always about what marriage means for kids, it's only a matter of time until we make minimum income and education requirements before allowing people to have children. We won't allow divorcées with children to remarry because that really screws up a kid. We'll probably reconsider interracial marriage as well- that just seems like it's inviting problems. What else... who knows? I mean, there's all kinds of things we need to do for THE CHILDREN now that we've got this ball rolling.

And as far as THE CHURCH's responsibilities in the matter, we can show how seriously we do take marriage by telling straight couples that we won't allow them to get married because they don't meet some random serious and consequential set of criteria. We can have church committees monitor the sex lives of congregants to make sure they're not doing anything to violate nature or tradition. Ministers will no longer hire themselves out to "perform" weddings. In fact, we could probably go to some type of arranged marriage system- all in all, that just makes sense.

So in short, no hard feelings, right homos? We just really really love marriage... and children. Don't forget to think of THE CHILDREN.

Excellent

President Obama is satisfying but if I can wake up tomorrow knowing that I can marry a man when the Qweenbean and I are forced to divorce, it will be a perfect world.

Update- Nov. 5th, 9:30 AM

Great. Thanks for painting me into a corner, California.

So now there's a Democrat majority in Congress and a socialist headed to the White House, but just when I think I get to have a gay terrorist Muslim divorce on a burning American flag fetus and be single again, I won't be able to marry a man.

I was going to marry Seth Rogen, he seems soft and fun.

Thanks a lot.

Wake Up Whuate Payple

So it was raining this morning, now it's cool, cool enough to require a jacket, at least when compared to last week.

My dogs are barking at people coming up here to vote.

I think this shows that creation is trying to suppress the Glendora vote.

Also- I should reconsider writing longer posts when I'm so tired- which is all the time these days.

Who Is This Who Even Forgives Sins?

You know that Onesimus was a slave when Paul wrote to Philemon saying he wasn't a slave, right? For some people, the fact that Paul sent Onesimus back to Philemon without unequivocally and certainly overturning the institution of slavery, similar to certain of Paul's comments about the nature of gender and sexuality, makes the Bible an ideological text meant only to justify entrenched power and injustice. To be brief, it is that for those who wish it to be. There's plenty in the Bible that can give a veneer of legitimacy to anyone that seeks to dominate and destroy.

But to see it that way ignores the fact that what we have here is just a snapshot of a guy in a certain place and time trying to live according to this strange power that is unlike anything in the world. A snapshot wherein we see he says, "You're slave is not a slave." The powers, the very real institutional powers that determine the way we live and know the world say there is such thing as a slave and here is how you navigate your existence around and with that reality. That's just the way it is, so here is what you do and how you live given those circumstances. Except, Paul says, "No it isn't."

That's the power of God versus the power of the world- the power of the world has Paul writing letters from prison, whereas the power of God has Paul writing letters from prison. I know, right?

This past Sunday, a visiting preacher, shared from Philemon, and it was perhaps good timing. He talked about the safety and security of our American congregations and wondered if we really trusted in the power of God to work miracles. And although he was offering a more allegorical reading of Onesimus as a slave of sin freed by the power of God*, given our circumstances it could be just what we need- an outsider's eyes to point out what's right before our own.

Considering the preacher's own experiences, the possibility of imprisonment or death for being a Christian, Paul's imprisonment resonated with him. Paul preached and was imprisoned and so the idea of being a Christian meaning being bold enough to preach the Gospel in the face of prison or death as a demonstration of the power of God makes sense. But here you're not likely going to go to prison or be killed for being a Christian- even when Obama is president- not if being a Christian means what we generally understand it to mean. This doesn't mean preaching harder to raise the ire of people who already find Christians obnoxious. Preaching the Gospel in our context generally has little to do with preaching anyway. But his point should still be taken. His sermon could be taken to ask whom or what we trust for our security and what security means to us. It should be taken that way- especially considering that tomorrow a lot of us will be demonstrating to what degree we trust God- or rather how we trust God.

But even if tomorrow were just an other Tuesday instead of our religion's high holy day, we could ask where we find our security, in what do we trust, and on what power we rely and for what.

When as THE CHURCH our priority is not alienating visitors or losing our tax exempt status, I think we can say where our security lies. When we believe in the power of something called international borders that allow us to treat people like animals, the power of "our way of life" that encourages us to kill and easily identify people as our enemies, or the power of some self-privileging artifice we call nature or tradition that allows us to deny the possibility of two people's love I think we can get a sense of what powers we trust.

Of course someone that was willing to live in opposition to those powers because of a higher power, someone that understood there was some Good News that freed them from the tyranny of those powers, in this present time and place would probably... Ah who am I kidding? Like we could even know.


* A reading I don't necessarily dispute when I see that Onesimus is a slave because of sinful power and it's only the power of God that has Paul see that such is not the case.

It's a Beautiful World

I'm sure you've heard that some voters are viscerally (read racistly) against voting for Obama but don't want to say so, so they use the Secret Muslim or We Don't Know Enough About Him memes to justify their not voting for him though they might were he white. That's silly, you don't have to be racist to not vote for Obama. It might help, but it's not necessary.
Likewise, you don't have to be not racist to vote for him. To wit, this Esquire article describing a white supremacist argument for supporting Obama:

White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face. Personally I’d prefer the negro. National Socialists are not mindless haters. Here, I see a white man, who is almost dead, who declares he wants to fight endless wars around the globe to make the world safe for Judeo-capitalist exploitation, who supports the invasion of America by illegals--basically a continuation of the last eight years of Emperor Bush. Then, we have a black man, who loves his own kind, belongs to a Black-Nationalist religion, is married to a black women--when usually negroes who have 'made it' immediately land a white spouse as a kind of prize--that’s the kind of negro that I can respect.

Esquire via BOING

The Holy Spirit Will Come Upon You, and The Power of The Most High Will Overshadow You

In a Christian sense of the world, salvation is an unwarranted gift from God. That's a pretty standard concept to a Christian. What we say is that there is no human work that earns salvation or requires that God save us. Rather it's something in the nature of God- the good news of the Good News is that God is revealed as the kind of God that seeks to save humanity because of God's nature, not human nature.

I don't say this to try to sell it to anyone that doesn't already buy it. And of course, saved to or from what needs to be filled in. And I suppose there are other things to fill in as well, but I mention this point specifically because we who claim to know this, often act as if knowing this is the thing to do to get this salvation; we live in such a way that says "Knowing that Jesus died for your sins is that which you must do to get to get to go to heaven". I'm going to ignore for now that idea of "going" to heaven. You should too- there is something more important to address. Namely, knowing something, knowing anything, is a human work that, like any human work, is worthless insofar as "being saved" is concerned. Saying you believe "such and such" does nothing for your salvation.

You should be happy about that. It's a reminder that it's the power of God that saves, not your silly notions about this or that or what may or may not be. That's good news. And strange as it seems, it remains news to even Christians; in our lives as people who know that Jesus saves we easily get confused into thinking that knowing Jesus saves saves so the good news is often viewed as scary news.

We, evangelicals, are pretty good at saying you can never be good enough to earn salvation. You can never feed, clothe, or shelter enough people, you could never give away enough of what you own, you could never turn the cheek enough times, we could never [insert your pick here] to make God save you. Jesus saves. Sure. Often, that just makes most of us pretty good at neglecting that type of behavior. we say you can't do anything except we do have requirements for doing. We require the knowing and building and receiving a world in which we know what we know. That is something we do.

We say our beliefs are how we are saved (and as soon as we say that we're saying it's not the power of God that saves). We ignore maliciously or innocently, that we create a sense of the world in which belief in any thing and of any kind is possible. We act as if we don't craft and negotiate the sense of the world in which we know we know. We pretend that our minds are senses that simply receive what the world is. This is death Any sense of the world, even our Christian sense of the world, is a created thing, so to put our faith in that- to say belief saves- is to trust a human work for salvation. What we are doing with that is tying our salvation to a particular world. In one sense, that's only as it can be. We exist. We make choices and have commitments and loyalties in order to live. What else could we do? But to be brief, thinking that salvation lies in one particular set of commitments and arrangements is idolatrous.

What follows from that are often behaviors that pull us deeper and deeper into a particular way of doing and knowing that is more and more alien to faith. We want it because we often confuse the illusory security and certainty of a well established way of the world with the indomitability of life in Christ. We seem to know to say that Christianity is not about following a particular legal code of conduct (even if we say it with a wink), but we do say being a Christian means being and doing some type of such and such. It can be a terrible trap then to ask for more of that which we say makes one a Christian because we may only be asking for a more world-fixed expression of that which we presently call Christianity.

"Make me more of what I am," "Give me a bigger portion of what I already have," "Make me more secure and certain in the world," "Give us a deeper and stronger commitment to the way we know and do things now." "Thank you Lord that we are not like other folks... will you make us even more of that?"

We don't need more of the same, we need the courage, humility, and openness to strangeness that will lead us to walk in places we have never walked. When I hope that God would meet us, invigorate us, and give us new life, I realize I'm opening myself to a life that is foreign, alien, and scary.We don't do this ourselves. We need the spirit to confront us because the foreign, alien, and scary is generally that which we work to exclude and eliminate from our well-crafted, stable, and certain Christian existence.

It certainly doesn't seem easy, but if a young girl can say "Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word"* knowing only that it will turn every aspect of her world upside down, then we can do it, no? We're better than some little girl that doesn't have the sense to not get pregnant while she's engaged to some other guy aren't we?

No? Maybe?

Nah let's just stick with what we know.


* It's a bit inside but with this verse in mind I could've titled the post "We Are 1:38".