God's Joyful Judgment - Early-Morning Thoughts

From Psalm 98 ...

Let the floods clap their hands;

     let the hills sing together for joy

      at the presence of the LORD, for he is coming

      to judge the earth.

      He will judge the world with righteousness,

      and the peoples with equity.

For some, the judgment of God has been used as a tool to inspire fear, because fear is a handy tool to corral the folks, get 'em in line, fleece 'em and fool 'em.

How many children over the millennia have gone to bed terrified of god, dreaming of a lurid end, with the sounds of some screaming preacher or priest echoing in their little minds.

And how many adults have emotionally crashed and burned in the fear of committing the "unforgivable" sin ... crossing some invisible line, and not ever knowing it until the Last Judgment, when its too late to do anything about it.

But here in the Psalm, and plenty of other places, we have a joyful anticipation of God's Last Judgment ... and a good one it is ... because God is utterly and completely righteous, i.e. faithful to God's creation, to all of its creatures, rocks and stones, and to you and me, brother and to you and me, sister.

Faithful to save.

To love.

Forgive and make new.

To welcome and receive

To bind up and heal.

To restore the lost.

Give sight to the blind.

Release to the prisoner.

Food to the hungry.

Rest to the weary.

Utterly fair, utterly kind, comprehensive and inclusive, God's judgment sets things right, recalibrates the mechanisms of life, fine tunes the whole thing, to be sure that it's working just right, as God intended.

No fear here.

No nail-biting and angst.

No threats, no hellfire and damnation.

Only joy.

Clapping and singing.

Because the LORD is coming.

To judge the earth.

Hallelujah and Amen!

A Failed Christianity.

Christianity is very large tent of ideas, but it's not unlimited.

There are boundaries, foundations, core ideas, values, that define the faith and keep it centered in Christ, his life and his teachings, and the central ideas of going to Jerusalem, and there confronting both religious and secular powers, dying there at their hands, and then the resurrection, the ascension and the promise of a return when time has run its course, as determined by God, the LORD of history.

With that, I have spent a good deal of my life trying to be a Christian, and I think it means basing my life on the essentials, noted in the preceding paragraph.

Having gone to a Calvinist based Christian High School, then to Calvin College, and then to Western Theological Seminary, all in Western Michigan, before much of the Reformed Church in that area was deformed by evangelicalism, Moody Bible Institute, Jerry Falwell and "inspirational TV" and its shallow praise music, which slowly but inexorably turned covenant-oriented churches into conversion-oriented churches, and shifted the focus from God to self, from humility to pride, now with a curious fixation on wealth and power and the condemnation of the poor for their moral failures and defective judgment. A Christianity that loves its walls and fears the bridges.

With that, I simply say: this is a failed Christianity.

Now, immediately, some will jump in and say, "You're judging."

My response: "Damn right I am."

And I stand with the likes of Jeremiah, Jesus himself, the Apostle Paul, Augustine, Luther and Calvin, Bonhoeffer and Barth, Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, Jr., to name just a few luminaries who have consistently inspired me to think biblically, critically, carefully and to make judgments.

And I'm not without some credentials ... yes, yes, yes, I know that's the first refuge of the arrogant (look at all the medals on my chest) and all of that, but Jesus made it clear that he had his credentials, Paul had his, and so did Luther and Calvin (both well-credentialed).

Anyway, the point is this: large segments of American Christianity is a failed Christianity, with
1) it's baptism of wealth and power,
2) it's readiness to identify with Trump's condemnation of others,
3) his bluster and buffoonery,
4) his windbaggery and wantonness,
5) his wall-fixation and wild lies.

It's the "other gospel" that Paul addresses ... it's the anabaptist movement of self which Calvin condemns, it's the lack of justice so clearly identified by King ... they all looked at various versions of the faith, and while making room for variants, they also said "No!" to other versions.

Part of this was prompted by someone talking about the "legal" and "the illegal" immigrant, to which I replied: these kinds of distinctions have no legitimacy in Christianity, smacking more of the Jew/Samaritan distinction which Jesus patently ignored. Jesus was clearly someone who paid no attention to boundaries and social rules about children and women, gentiles and Samaritans.

To deal with people by legal or illegal distinctions, and yet claim to be Christian, reveals what I determine to be, "a failed Christianity."

So, for me, I'd rather stand with Jeremiah rather than with the false prophets of king and cult who preached peace when there was none. I'd rather stand with Paul and not those who preached the gospel and grew rich because of it. I'll stand with Calvin and his covenant theology rather than the Anabaptists and their focus on conversion and its clever back-patting. I'll walk with King along the road of Justice worked out on the Edmund Pettus Bridge rather than those who wanted the church to only preach "spiritual values" even as the church ignored the sins of racism, promoted school segregation, with private schools, and maintained voter suppression, "through law."

That's how I see it.

And I have a lot of weight behind that judgment, and for that, I'm grateful.

Psalm 96 on Judgment

Psalm 96 Thoughts

To hear some folks tell it,
When Jesus comes again,
There will be hell to pay!

When Jesus comes again
To judge the earth.
Blood and guts, for sure.

Not mine, of course, but yours.

But Psalm 96 has another picture.
The peaceable kingdom.
The kindness of God.

For the LORD comes to judge.
Yup, that's the word.
With righteousness and truth, it says.

The righteousness of utter faithfulness.
Faithfulness to creation and all its creatures.
Great and small.

The truth that always manages
To set things free.
And restore lost beauties.

And the heavens are glad and the earth shall rejoice.
The fields exult, and all within them.
And the trees will sing for joy.

Justice or Judgment - PCUSA Decision on Marriage Equality

This year's General Assembly for the Presbyterian Church (USA) decided that pastors living in states that have legalized marriage equality can now officiate at all marriages, without fear of sanction.

For some, this is a day longed for, a day of justice, a day sought with prayer and tears.

For some, this is a dreadful day, perhaps day of judgment, wherein God allows evil to win, for a time, to reveal the depravity of humankind.

Which is it?

Both sides prayed fervently ... citing Scripture, the Confessions, tradition and various clinical studies.

Lincoln wisely noted this in his Second Inaugural Address:

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

To read how well Lincoln dealt with this matter, please read the entire address - it's a stunning example of clear-headed thought and moral review.

So, where are we today in the PCUSA?

A day of justice or a day of judgment?

For me, it's a day of justice, but for sisters and brothers of other persuasion, a day of judgment.

Will we ever know?

For sure?

History, of course, is a mess ...

What we do is move on, as best we can.

Limiting our worst instincts of either gloating in "victory" or despairing in "loss."

Finding solace in Lincoln's closing paragraph:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.