A FB Rage Page

Because I'm friends with certain types, got a page recommendation, so I paid a visit.

OMG, Rump.
White Supremacy.
LGBTQ hatred.
Obama hatred.

Now, with some folks talking about "getting along" with those of another persuasion, I'm clueless, I will admit.

Maybe a cuppa would help.
Some face-to-face.
But I don't think FB, or any other social medium can promote communication, or communion. Information, yes; encouragement, for sure. Friendship and hope, always.

I looked carefully over the page for any sign of decency.
Found none.

The writer is self-listed as single.
He's a guy.
His brain is awash with hate.

I quickly left the page.
It left me nauseated.

I keep forgetting how bad it is.

I think of our forebears and the question of slavery.
They fundamentally knew there was no compromise.
Either yes or no.
Up or down.

Paul the Apostle understood there could be no compromise with some elements.
So did Luther and Calvin.
So did Jeremiah and Micah.

Of our own nation:
Washington.
John Adams.
And Lincoln.
FDR
Johnson.
And with regard to schools, Eisenhower.

All were leaders of great mind and energy.
Striving to build the Union.
But understanding that some ideas were inimical.

Some would have been more than happy to dismantle the fledgling Union in order to promote their own interests.
Then, or now, States' Righters, and White Supremacists.

A few moments on that page was enough.

Big Questions for Our Times

Reading a Kay Boyle essay from The New Yorker, 1950, pondering how in the world a nation like Germany could succumb to such a vast evil as Nazism.

And reading Tom Wright's new book on Paul, which begins with a fascinating, if not frightening, chapter on Saul's "zeal" - it's long history and how some believed that violence is justified, indeed, God-approved against any and all who oppose God's plan, with a special vehemence against fellow Jews who were considered compromisers with the tenor of the times.

Zeal ... of the four gospel accounts of Jesus cleansing the Temple, John references zeal ...

So here's where Wright's book gets good, if you will ... the young Saul's zeal was for the Temple, whereas Jesus overturned its tables.

The young Saul a nationalist ... Jesus a reformer ... Saul despised anyone who deviated from the rule of law, whereas Jesus himself was a law-breaker, seeking not to be exclusive, but welcoming.

Zeal ... there's not much life without it ... without passion and vision and purpose ... but some forms of zeal turn narrow, nationalistic, and murderous ... other forms of zeal protest war and racism and anything that excludes anyone because of race, creed, or color.

Given the moment of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s crossing of Pettus Bridge, the murderous zeal of those who stood at the foot of the bridge, mounted and armed, saying "This far and no further," and King and those with him full of zeal for freedom and equality.

How in the world did young Saul reject his studies under Gamaliel and then turn to a more violent view of faith?

Kay Boyle asks how in the world did a young German youth reject his heritage and education to sign on with the Nazis and become a killer?

Or, for that matter, those who stood at the foot of Pettus Bridge, many of them church members, singing gladly of Jesus, come to look upon people of color as objects to be hated?

And collectively, how did so many Germans reject culture and Christ and then turn to a vicious anti-Semitism, and to a vicious cleansing of German society?

All of it driven by zeal ... which may, perhaps be some kind of emotional element we all possess ... but without formation, until the right moment comes along, and, then, like Saul, or young Germans, we turn to the Dark Side, if you will ... or like Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Karl Barth, or a Martin Luther King, Jr., we turn to the Light.

As the story unfolds, the young Saul (likely just a few years younger than Jesus) was given another chance, and in the midst of his darkness, a Light ... and in that moment, Saul's zeal was transformed into something life-giving and profoundly generous.

In times such as ours, dangerous times, I think, questions abound about young shooters, men with guns, and people, even evangelicals, who are just mean-spirited and hateful ...

And those who rise above the clamor and choose love and justice and welcome instead ... who go to bat for the voiceless, who raise a cry for mercy, who seek a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Big questions for our times ...

I'm Glad to be a Christian

I'm glad to be a Christian, not that I could really be anything else, since I was born into a Christian family in a culturally Christian world (Wisconsin and Michigan - the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions), educated and trained in the Christian Ministry. Had I been born in a Muslim or Buddhist nation/culture, that's likely what I'd be.

But I am what I am, and I'm grateful for the faith that speaks of love and forgiveness as the great anchors of life and work. Other traditions focus on similar themes, and here's where I find a great deal of correspondence with people of faith everywhere.

In all of this, I find more commonality with people of other faith-traditions than I find with Christians who discriminate against LGBTQ persons, love guns and tolerate racism, and are willing to condemn the poor for the sake of Christian Libertarianism and its dreams of unfettered Capitalism.

I wish life were a little easier for me and mine when it comes to faith and the way we live, but if history tells me anything, life has never been easy, for anyone.

To my spiritual/religious friends, thanks for all your support and vision ... not every Christian agrees with me, naturally, and some take profoundly different paths, but so it goes - glad we're still friends, nonetheless.

I'm still learning and growing, too ... who knows where it will end, though for now, I'm happy to be where I am.

Sin: A Realistic Understanding

Are we always destined to be ruled by fear and hate?

While the church surely trivialized sin into simple categories of misbehavior and moral failings (like drunkenness and cussing), so as to avoid the larger categories of power and abuse and war and greed (which would have upset the Ruling Class of Clergy and Capitalists), the concept of sin needs to be maintained and revived!

For many people, to even mention the word "sin" conjures up images of Medieval Priests, candles, incense and bells ... or at least, sawdust trail preachers whooping and hollering and threatening little children with hellfire and damnation.

Yet ...

The Genesis stuff of Adam and Eve hiding (fear) and Cain killing Abel (hatred) are part and parcel, it seems, of the human story, and we're not likely to get rid of these twin evils any time soon.

If Christians hope to have any voice in today's world, this might just be it. We've got to talk about sin.

To call things as they are ... the great evils of greed and war and class inequality ... things that respond to and generate fear and hate ... as well as the deeper reality, the mystery ... that humanity fears many things that go bump in the night, and we easily come to hate that which inspires fear.

And with enough hate, violence erupts - Cain kills Abel again and again, and the Ruling Classes send Jesus to the Cross.

Slobbering preachers going on and on about the evils of "demon rum" and tobacco, have done great harm to the truth of sin, and when sober society rejects such stuff as nonsense, as it truly does, society sadly denies itself a tool in understanding itself - though "understanding" is always qualified by the reality ever so much larger than our intellectual and spiritual abilities to grasp it.

Sin is a mystery ... in the classic sense, sin is our four-fold alienation from self, from others, from the natural world around us and from God ... four fundamental alienations that cripple the human race and leave a wake of destruction in their path.

Denying these alienations, or at least trying to sugarcoat them, doesn't help one bit.

And continuing to preach about lesser things as sin is even worse ... better to not even mention the whole thing if we're not prepared to come to grips with it for what it is. Though preaching about "getting ahead in life" and "Five Steps to a Healthy Family" doesn't help either. Turning the pew into a therapy couch cheapens those who sit there, and those who preach such nostrums.

We do well to maintain the word "sin" and the mystery it represents ... a deep and penetrating darkness of spirit and mind - best described in the words, fear and hate.

These exist, abundantly.

In all of us.

Rich and poor alike.

No sense denying it.

No sense pretending that:

Meditation.

Prayer.

Bible reading.

Incense.

Yoga.

Charity and mission work.

Will expunge it from our DNA.

Honest and forthright confession helps: the Jesus Prayer, for example:

"LORD Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy upon me

A Sinner."

And with some such awareness, to keep ourselves vigilante against the perennial forces of hate and fear.

Honest reckoning and clear-headed thinking will help ... and one of the sources of good reckoning and thought remains Christian Theology ... when humbly held and offered with kindness and sympathy.

Christians, at this point, have something terribly important to offer ... keeping in mind how easily it has been corrupted by cheap preaching and shallow thinking ...

Sin ... that which so easily fears and hides from life, and sooner or later, erupts in hatred and violence.

And what parts of it we cannot understand, at least to say, "There is it ... in all of its ugly reality - fear and hate."

For Christians, then, to be reminded of the angels who counsel mortals, "Fear not" and when hatred raises its ugly head, to choose the Beatitudes and the ways of love - with Jesus clearly in mind, "Take up your cross [the truth about sin] and follow me."

It's not easy to deal with sin ... but failing to deal with it only heightens its power to instill ever-greater levels of fear and hatred into our heart and into our life together.

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.

Then to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses while the coward stands aside,
Till the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

By the light of burning martyrs, Christ, Thy bleeding feet we track,
Toiling up new Calv’ries ever with the cross that turns not back;
New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong;
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

"Once to Every Man and Nation" - James R Lowell, in the Bos­ton Cour­i­er, De­cem­ber 11, 1845. Low­ell wrote these words as a po­em pro­test­ing Amer­i­ca’s war with Mex­i­co.

huithiang!: THE CANTOR AND THE CLANSMAN

THE CANTOR AND THE CLANSMAN: "One sunny Sunday morning in June 1991, Cantor Michael Weisser and his wife, Julie, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes in the kitchen of thei..."

Love changes the heart of a hateful man ... because hate grows where love is denied, and he was a man reared in home with too little love, and so hatred entered in, until love came a-calling.