Doing the Same Thing & Expecting Different Results...What's That Called Again?

We are sending more troops (30,000 more to be precise) to Afghanistan. President Obama made a powerful argument for the necessity of this action...powerful, but not convincing to me. We have spend the past 8 years engaged in nation-building and the strategy of invasion as foreign policy tool. I don't think it works.

Yes, Al Qaeda has attacked us in the past and perhaps continues to be some threat to our security. Yes, the Taliban is a ruthless organization determined to establish a totalitarian and oppressive regime in Afghanistan. Yes, we have started something and should have some responsibility to see it through. I agree with all of these things.

Here are my issues:
1. We have no idea what we are doing. Our nation-building in Iraq was a long and painful process, not to mention enormously costly in terms of lives and money. We do not understand the Arab mindset, ethos or culture at many levels . How long will it take this time as we make mistake after mistake because we, to paraphrase Tom Friedman in his opinion column in the NYT this morning, "try to make Afghanistan into Norway"?

2. We have some "nation-building" to do right here at home and perhaps we should get our own house in order before we go dictating to the rest of the world how it should be done. Lost in the shuffle of all of this talk of security is the real threat to our security...our economy is consumer-driven instead of production-driven, our debt is staggering and growing daily, and our culture is based on borrowing instead of saving. This is an unsustainable system and the biggest security risk we have...far more dangerous than Al Qaeda. (This is not to even mention the fact that we will not blink at raising the deficit or passing on debt to our grandchildren to fight wars, but will scream "socialism" from the highest tower if we dare to think about the same thing providing health care for millions of Americans. As my dad used to say, if you want to know where a person's heart is look at where they spend their money. For a nice take on "paying for war" see this site.)

3. We have Korea, Vietnam, both Gulf wars and a host of other nations' histories to look at - why do we think that we can accomplish what has never been accomplished with these tactics in a place that no country has ever invaded and successfully built up? And to try to do all of this on a timeline is just political gaming...

I agree with Friedman and others in the belief that a real stance for our security would not involve sending more troops to fight, but would mean the much more difficult and self-effacing move of a retreat from our addiction to fossil fuels and, in doing so, a shift of power, economic support for the totalitarian regimes we resist on one hand and feed on the other.

Our future demands some real courage...some courage beyond even the substantial amount being demonstrated by our armed forces every day. It requires the courage to say that the way we have been doing things isn't working and its time to re-evaluate our priorities and goals. It requires the courage to change. That's what I can believe in.

A Purpose Driven Life?

Rick Warren gives the standard argument against same-sex marriage in these clips - a position he basically reinterates in a more recent "Meet the Press" interview. His claim is that same-sex marriage would change a "5000 year-old" definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. There's only one issue with that - it isn't true. He goes on to claim that he doesn't want a brother and sister marrying (OK, that one is covered),an older man marrying a young girl (sorry, Rick, that was not only a Biblical custom but still goes on today in many cultures), or a man with multiple wives (You mean like David or Solomon or the many cultures which still practice that today? Read Leviticus 18:18 or Deuteronomy 21:15 if you need some insight into multiple wives in the Biblical law). The idea that monogomy is the norm that has existed through all cultures and times is just false.

I have yet to hear any commentator against same-sex marriage tell me how two loving gay partners marrying threatens my 10 year-old monogamous, "traditional", one man and one woman marriage. How does it change anything? What does threaten my marriage and the so-called "sanctity" of the "institution" of marriage is the disrespect we give to it in general. Britney Spears Vegas weddings or the moral proselytizers on their soap-boxes and their 4th marriages do more damage than a gay or lesbian couple could ever do.

The slippery slope argument doesn't work for me either. As a minister of the Gospel, I call people (same or different sex) to be monogamous couples because that is the truest form of relationship and the most responsible with the mighty power that is love. I want same-sex marriage not because I want to damage marriage, but because I want to strengthen it - and because I wish to call my brothers and sisters who are LGBTQ to the same discipleship I call everyone else to - and that includes marriage for those who wish to do the hard work of relationships.

Rick - you're missing the boat. The bibical model of marriage is not the same as our mdoel of marriage, just as the biblical model of slavery is not one that we ascribe to. The cultures and times are different. We understand (some of us) that homosexuality is not a sin or curse, but the manner in which God creates some people. It is not a choice, I did not choose my heterosexuality. It is how God created me.

I appreciate the hard pastoral position that this puts ministers in...I really do. But that doesn't mean that we can walk the line so intently that we lose our prophetic responsibility to the Gospel. Jesus was comforting and also challenging. We must be the same, even when it means that those in our own congregations are afflicted. I do not believe that Rick Warren can do the good work he has done with AIDS patients and not be changed by that. I think he addresses that in the "Meet the Press" interview. But you still have to do something, Rick. If you spend time with people dying of this horrible disease and know that they did not "choose" to have this "lifestyle" but instead are victims of a sub-culture that has sprung up from people trying to be true to themselves in a world which will not accept that and therefore forces all kinds of false living, then that new awareness asks for some sort of new response from you. No one said the Gospel was easy.

And one last thing, Rick. You can't support "equal rights for everyone" but then call those rights different things. That's called "separate but equal" and it's been tried. It doesn't work. You're going to have to bite the bullet and do some soul-searching. Either a human right is just that, or it isn't.

Health Care Reform in Oklahoma

If you are wondering what the health care reform package that will be debated in Congress soon will mean to you as a citizen in Oklahoma, read this.

There are a lot of reasons to support reform, even if it isn't perfect.

We cannot afford to do nothing.

Dissention in the ranks...

As I said my prayers last night (yes, I actually do this), I said some special words for Kileen, Texas and the Ft. Hood community. I think that the President said it well when he remarked that a soldier's death in combat is tragic enough. It is awful beyond words when they come under fire on their own soil, at their own base, fired upon by their fellow soldier.

When it happened, I immediately began to wonder what the motive was and was very nervous that we would find another Timothy McVeigh at work or, worse yet, that the shooter would be Muslim. Of course those worst fears came true. It would seem that Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychologist in an ironic twist, opened fire on his fellow soldiers on the grounds of Ft.Hood. Nothing is really known about motive, though what concerns me is that the religious tradition of the "alleged" shooter instantly produces much speculation.

Why is that? As soon as the man's name is released, clearly of Arabic origin, and the nature of his religious practices are revealed the landslide of implied or bold declarations of "domestic terrorism" are released. First of all I think it odd that he is identified so quickly by his religion.

Robert Stewart, Devan Kalathat, Michael McLendon, Steven Kazmierczak, Robert A. Hawkins, Seung-Hui Cho, Charles Carl Roberts IV, Student Jeffrey Weise, Terry Ratzmann. These are all names of the shooters from the mass murders of the past 4 years. Do you know the religious practices of any of them? Was religion part of even the speculative motives for any of these people? If the answer is no (and I think it is) then is that a double-standard?

While I don't deny that religion often plays a vital role in the motivation of unstable people, such motivation is clearly not monopolized by a single religion. Islam has no special claim on motivating people to kill others. Christianity certainly has its own history with that.

So, as I pray for Ft. Hood, for the survivors and the wounded, for the families impacted in so many ways- including the family of Major Hasan, for the community wounded by this evil, I pray also for a nation which likes to pigeonhole these awful events and turn them into overly simplistic "us versus them" scenarios. The hard truth is that this may be a whole lot more of us...

Jesus once told his followers not to judge so they won't be judged. He said that the judgements we give will be the ones we get. So we'd best be aware that the standard we are establishing now is the one that will be used for us. What kind of world are we creating?

A candle against the gale...

As we gathered in the dusk of a windy evening, we knew we were in trouble. My friend, a fellow minister in the Methodist tradition, looked at me as she tried to light one of the candles we had brought for our candlelight vigil. There was no way that thing was going to either light or stay lit in the strong south wind. Here in Oklahoma, holding an outdoor candlelight vigil is a roll of the dice against big odds.

We had gathered at an outdoor park to hold a vigil for health care reform in conjunction with many others across the country. We had our sound system, our candles, our lighters, our notes...we were ready. As it reached time to start and there were just a few seats filled in an amphitheater made to hold a couple of hundred we delayed for a few minutes. But that was the crowd...

So we looked at the flickering flame, barely able to last a second in the unrelenting wind, and we counted the number of people who could make it to the hastily assembled vigil and for a moment we might have both had some reservations. What are we doing? We did throw this together at the last minute and weren't able to advertise or get much participation because people were already scheduled. What were we expecting?

The cool darkness of the evening, the small number of participants and the complete lack of any candles - a pretty crucial part of a candlelight vigil - might have been enough to completely deflate us. Yet there we stood. We had a single newspaper reporter to cover our story and no hint of a TV camera. There was just a few of us in the driving wind with no candles at all to stand against the approaching darkness.

Yet there we stood. We stood together. We stood even though we knew it was a small gesture against the torrent of opposition. We stood knowing that we were holding a rally in support of reform that none of us expect a single one of our representatives in the House or Senate to support. Yet we stood at least knowing that we weren't alone. Maybe that was why we were there. Not to be a grand showing of half of the city, or to raise a thundering cry of outrage, or to be the lead story on the evening news. Maybe we were there, in the way that we were there, just to be our small group. Maybe we were there, just like those candles were going to be symbols, to represent all of the people who think that health care is a human right. Maybe we were there for all of those people who just couldn't make it for a million different reasons, or who didn't think it would matter, or who can't speak out because of what it might cost them.

What I think is that it did matter, though maybe not for the reasons we had intended. God often works this way, foregoing our intentions and the lure of numbers we so often are beholden to in order to teach us something else. Maybe God was trying to tell us that while we may never feel like a majority, we are not alone. But it isn't the numbers that make an impact...after all, even Jesus never had more than 12 disciples.

It can be a lonely thing to be a progressive faithful person in Oklahoma. I often feel very alone as a person who wants a world oriented more towards justice than judgment, love over righteousness and grace over greed. It was nice that cool evening to feel a different kind of warmth...not the heat of a candle burning next to me, but the warmth of hope from deep inside, stirred by the presence of my fellow travelers.

And thank God for that.

Hoping for Peace

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde

President Obama is announced as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and audible gasps are heard in the room. Then, just like clockwork, the disparaging comments start rolling in. I have to say that I’m not sure how I feel about him winning. There is a part of me that thinks it is a great statement, and another that says awards like this should be given for accomplishment, not intent.

It is amazing to me how often this happens, but there is a great synchronicity between the gospel lectionary passage for this week and this topic. Jesus encounters a rich young man who claims to be blameless before the law and seeks the final step to inheritance of “eternal life”. Jesus calls him with love to let go of one more thing – his money. We can make this just about money, and that might be a good message in our greed driven society, but the real kicker is this – you can’t halfway hope. You have to give in completely or it will never work. You have to be willing to go as far as changing what you believe in…even when what you believe in seems a long way off.

I agree with a friend of mine who said that it wasn’t so much that President Obama won the award as it was the ideals that he represents. President Obama may not have accomplished much in the scheme of things yet, but he has brought a cool drink to a very thirsty people. The reason that he was voted in and that people all around the world are responding to him, despite his lack of measurable outcomes, is that people are hungry for hope.

We’re hungry for hope instead of power, for cooperation instead of competition, for “we’re all in this together” instead of “every man for himself” and the vast yet largely quiet majority wants to see peace…real meaningful peace as something beyond just the absence of war. None of these ideals are currently measurable. In fact, if one watches nothing but Glenn Beck and listens only to Rush Limbaugh you would think quite the opposite. You would think that the world is going to hell and that President Obama is the ringleader marching us straight into the fiery pit.

This is the funny thing about hope. Look at the gospel stories. People weren’t exactly beating down the doors to get into Jesus’ group. They liked the healing and welcomed his stance against the occupying forces of Rome, but when the rubber met the road everyone but the women (in most accounts) fled his side like a fire alarm had gone off. The hope that lots of us see in President Obama is met quite often with skepticism, doubt and even derision. A lot of that is just partisan politics, but there is something else at work…something deeper and more sinister. It is a questioning of what hope really is.

I believe that a sense of hope is crucial to survival and that, ironically, the more comfortable you become materially the easier it is to convince yourself that you have no space for hope. Hope is a more necessary and hungered for commodity the lower on the ladder you get. But I want to cut my angry brothers and sisters a break, because I understand that hope can be a scary thing…especially when it asks you to give up the things you have already done…to change the way that you live…to believe something entirely new and even invisible. It asks people with power to give some of it up for at least a couple of reasons. First, it isn’t real anyway. The possessions age and crumble or break, the money goes away and power or fame is a wicked slave master. Second, this is the way that hope works...at least the way that I have learned from an itinerant carpenter from Nazareth who tells us that the first shall be last and the last first and that in the Reign of God, power doesn't look like we're used to. In order for power to be real, just like love, we have to give it away.

So, Jesus meets this young man with a serious answer for a serious question. He loves him because he deserves nothing less. He just doesn’t sugar-coat anything or deny him the truth. There is a struggle for our souls going on – one side tells us that might makes right and that we cannot let go of “the way things are” or abandon the “America we grew up in”. Another side says that we have to change things…seriously and completely change things in order to see a world that we want to see. We have hope set before us. We‘re all in the same boat, but some of us are looking beyond at what might be shoreline in the distance. Others are afraid to abandon ship…even as it cracks and splinters and takes on water.

Maybe this award is the best thing…maybe it has just raised expectations so high on President Obama that it will be a detriment. At least it seems like an endorsement of the ideals he represents - the ideals of dialogue, humility and justice...the ideals that focus on the far shoreline of hope...though I don't count him (or any human being) as having a perfect score on those accounts. Perhaps it could encourage him to seek a different path in Afghanistan, or to pursue peace between Israel and Palestine with more vigor, I don’t know. In fact, I really have no idea how anything is going to work out. I just know that from my vantage point in the boat, the stars are very bright.

Ground Zero...8 Years Later

The best defense against terrorism is a strong offensive against terrorists. That work continues.
--President George W. Bush, 10/13/2001

In Oklahoma we have a remembrance of 9-11 that is always colored by our remebrance of 4-19. On April 19th, 1995 an American groups of terrorists, born and raised here on our soil, killed innocent women, men and children as surely as those hijackers did almost 8 years later. That scar has forever changed us here locally, as the scars from New York City, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania have left an unmistakable mark on all of us.

I consider this nation changed since that day - changed economically, socially, ethically, patriotically, democratically and even theologically. I'm not sure its a change for the better. I do think that the initial surge, just like here in Oklahoma City after the Murrah Building bombing, was one of great compassion and unity. I just don't think that has lasted.

What has taken its place is fear. The sheer terror of that day in 2001 has lingered even more than the heartwarming feelings that surrounded the stories of selfless rescue attempts and the heroic courage of the first responders (not to mention the second and third and so on...). It is the "never again" mentality which drives us now, as if we could prevent such evil.

Story after story leaks out about how some law enforcement agencies knew about this hijacker or that one before that fateful day. They could have been stopped. The pieces should have been put together. The tragedy should have been averted. I'm afraid the truth is much harder than that.

What we have at times turned into in order to secure our sense of safety is the very thing that drove the hijackers to fly those planes into buildings...ideologically-driven protectionsts willing to do anything, even engage in absolute evil, to secure our "selves" or our ideas.

In the Gospel attributed to Mark, Jesus tells us that "Anyone who wanst to save his life will lose it, but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel, will save it" (Mark 8:35 NRSV Translation). In other words, there is no pain-free way to live, nor can we protect ourselves from all evil because we end up becoming evil when we do that. It comes down to this...if we must torture people in order to secure our lives, then we gain nothing but those lives for our souls are dead.

I believe that we are in the midst of another "great awakening" in terms of our awareness of one another, this planet and our relationship with God. I don't know what that will look like, but I do know this - I am not interested in theology than is unsustainable without fear, nor am I interested in patriotism or democracy that is unsustainable without fear.

It is time for a recovery of that word fear - it doesn't mean the same thing now that it did when it was written down. I'm good with biblical fear - the kind of respect and awe you have for a raging river or a twisting tornado - something else we are quite familiar with here. It is the fear generated by people interested only in their ratings, or in pursuing a political agenda, or worse yet saving a tired old idea of something that doesn't even exist anymore but which they are unwilling to let go...that's the soul-killing stuff.

I seek the God of Easter morning. The God who calls us to let go of the reins and trust that its not our bodies we're seeking to save but our souls. The God who calls us to awaken to the unimaginable possibility that our physical lives are not all that there is and that in the end, despite what the TV and internet would have you believe, love wins.

Tired in the Heartland...

"I am no believer in the amalgamation of parties, nor do I consider it as either desirable or useful for the public; but only that, like religious differences, a difference in politics should never be permitted to enter into social intercourse or to disturb its friendships, its charities or justice. In that form, they are censors of the conduct of each other and useful watchmen for the public." --Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824.

"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true." --Martin Luther King Jr.

We have been at this for some time, no doubt. Perhaps it is just because the guy that I favor is in office, but it seems like the vitriolic rhetoric is reaching new heights. Whether it is the "birther" movement, the "Obama-Hitler wants to kill your grandmother" slogans, or the current "education indoctrination" criticism, the general atmosphere (at least here in Oklahoma) makes it hard to find any sense of civility or reasonable dialogue about our future together as a nation.

Yes, that's right. I said OUR future TOGETHER as a nation. Sometime pretty recently we lost the sense of taking care of one another. Someplace between Survivor and American Idol we have decided that our own personal ideologies, our own personal feelings about someone or something, trump everything else. They trump reasonable legislation, they trump any possibility of changing our minds and they apparently trump moral imperatives.

Can we really not have meaningful changes - needed changes - in issues like health reform, education or immigration without simply retreating to our corners and spitting insults at one another? I will call myself out as guilty of this during the last administration. I wouldn't let anything be good if it came from Bush/Cheney because of my ideology.

As a Christian, I believe that Christ calls us to love. To love means that we are willing to change our own minds, to see another's point of view and to try to walk a mile in their shoes so that we might understand them. athe apostle Paul once told us about love in a passage that is unfortunately usually relegated to weddings, but should be the Christian Constitution, right after the Beatitudes. Paul said:

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

1 Corinthians 13:1-7
translation from The Message

We may not still agree, but disagreeing with compassion and understanding is a far better place to be in than where we are now. Our lives together should not be dictated by the talking heads and blogospheres looking only to increase their ratings. They should be forged in the discipline of agape love, as Dr. King once told us. We don't know who to trust anymore because we aren't looking with the right eyes.

Frankly I'm tired of being a liberal. I'm ready to just be an American.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." --Antoine De Saint Exupery

mercy, mercy me...

“Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” – Mark 7:14-15

I am really troubled and fascinated by the decision of the Scottish legal system to release Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, who was convicted in the 1988 terrorist bombing of a Pan Am flight over Scotland that killed 270. This man was the only one convicted of anything and there is some doubt out there as to the veracity of the case against him. Maybe it was entirely a politically motivated and fueled trial and conviction, I don’t know. Someone needed to be responsible, no doubt, and although I can’t say whether this guy was implicit or not, I can say that it wouldn’t be the first time that someone had been either wrongly convicted or convicted of something far beyond their actual involvement because a perpetrator was needed to satisfy some sense of justice.

And then again perhaps he was involved, even if only in planning or some downstream funding or organization. Even if his involvement was only at that level, if you are willing participating with a group or organization that believes the killing of innocent victims is justifiable you are every bit as complicit as the one who straps on the bomb or pulls the trigger, in my opinion.

My real issue with this case is what it says about our idea of justice. Is such a thing attainable? If this is the guy who really orchestrated the entire event, would his death even in the most gruesome manner possibly balance the scales against the 270 innocent lives lost? I’m sure that my feeling on this matter would be quite different had one of my loved ones been on that flight, just as I am quite sure that if someone did something to hurt my children I would have vengeance not love on my heart.

Still, the justice system seems like it ought to be built on something other than responding to our passions. When Jesus refutes the eye for an eye normalcy of his time with “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:38) it is much more than a refutation of vengeance. He is calling for us to have anger, just not to act from that anger. Just as our anger does not produce God’s righteousness (James 1:20), our justifiable and understandable desire for vengeance does not produce God’s justice.
Perhaps the most meaning in the Scottish court’s actions can be found in this: When the call came for mercy to be shown to this man whose life is over and for whom a small amount of painful existence is left, the answer was for mercy. It was perhaps more than he showed his victims if he is truly guilty of that crime, and certainly more mercy than has been shown to the countless victims of terrorism worldwide. But hell…mercy has to start sometime, doesn’t it?

C'mon Mr. Obama!

As recently as June of this year, a national poll indicated that 72% of Americans polled favored a public option in health care reform. How is it that we are now seeing the death of this as an option? How is it that in the span of a few weeks we have gone from this as a central part of the reform process to an optional one? Can we chalk this one up to effective counter-protests?

In an informal class setting before worship last Sunday, some members of Norman UCC discussed the health care crisis, the reform efforts and what we might glean from all of this both as citizens and as people of faith. We were a collection of mostly “like-minded” people in terms of our politics and views of the role of government and we had several opinions. One of the opinions voiced was that the public option is the way to reform, but it is too much, too fast. It needs to be examined more so that we are sure about where we are headed and what we are obligating ourselves to. Perhaps that is right…it certainly is a more reasoned and practical way of dealing with an issue that evokes many emotions – but mostly fear.

If we don't address the fear, we won't get anything accomplished. I don't believe that the big chunk of us who consider ourselves more moderate and reasoned in our decision-making and conclusion-drawing are living out of the same fear that the fringes are. But the fringes get the publicity and you simply cannot consume that from every direction the way that we have without absorbing some of it. Jesus once said that he is the bread of life and that we must consume him to find the Kingdom of Heaven. That means to me that if we consume fear instead of hope, darkness instead of light and hatred instead of love we will live up to the adage "you are what you eat".

We can discuss many options and you can even look at the proposals side-by-side here. There’s lots of information out there…I guess I should say that there’s lots of propaganda out there, most of it unsupported by any actual information. I have yet to hear anyone who has cried “death panels” actually support that statement with anything other than speculation about what could happen. I mean, theoretically aliens could invade the planet tomorrow. It doesn’t mean that I should be shouting that at the top of my lunatic lungs on my FOX news hour-long trip into crazyville.

Meanwhile, militia membership and activity is up dramatically, the rhetoric and general tenor of “Tea Party” and “Birther” and “Anti-Socialism” movements grows angrier. The powder keg is full, all that is needed is a spark and I’m afraid that it can even be a real powerful flashlight. Fear is controlling and dominating all of our discussions and decisions. What we need is a leader who again will say, like FDR, “we have nothing to fear, but fear itself”.

My disappointment with Obama and the administration is not with the lack of liberal agenda fulfillment. Heck, I know where I live and understand that my own personal political agenda is far too left to be implemented. I’m fine with that. I actually prefer a more centrist government…something that keeps us from swinging back and forth on a pendulum of polarization would be nice. My disappointment is with leadership. Now is the time to lay out good arguments for why we need health care reform and to demonstrate in clear terms how a public option is the best one. The “Obama is a socialist” nuts will never be with you. They are against you because you won the election or because you aren’t in the right political party or, worse yet, because you are black. There’s nothing you can do about any of those issues.

I sense that part of Obama’s pull for lots of people is that we saw an opportunity in him to have a “post-partisan” system in which we made decisions based on what is good for the country, not what makes one party successful. It’s time to go back to the grassroots organizing that won the White House. There are more people, I believe, who want this than don’t. The ones who don’t are simply louder. Let’s not make decisions that way. Evoke your base. Awaken the middle that simply stands and watches the spectacle of what passes for both journalism and politics these days, either too busy or apathetic or disgusted to do anything. That’s what leaders do.

A Citizens' Proclaimation for Sanity

I have had many people tell me that when you point your finger at someone, there are three fingers pointing back at you. This is a point which seems lost on most politicians, the Oklahoma Legislature perhaps even more than average. In yet another example of how we make of ourselves a completely polarized nation, the Oklahoma Legislature takes time out of keeping us 36th in the country in education (2007 rankings), 5th and 6th in the country in divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births to tell you that the source of the recession and the so-called degradation of our society is…wait for it…your morality. (I’m sure it’s not yours, probably someone else’s…)

In a wonderful continuation of Christian revisionist history we are compelled, as most of these arguments go, to return to a time when everything was great and we didn’t have any of these problems because we recognized the “biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives” and did not “forsake the rich Christian heritage upon which this nation was built”. We are never told when this time was; just believe them when they tell you. Don’t bring up the fact that “biblical admonitions” were the very thing that were used to keep African-Americans in slavery, women from voting and even children working in factories. These same “biblical admonitions” demand that people who commit adultery are to be put to death (Leviticus 20:10) and that every seven years everyone should forgive all debts owed to them (Deuteronomy 15). And while we’re on the subject, you might want to ask a Native American what he or she thinks about our “rich Christian heritage”.

Of course, there are places you can go if you’d like to have a government driven by scripture. They’re called theocracies and perhaps Saudi Arabia or Iran would welcome you, as long as you convert. That’s going to be your problem – no Protestant Christian theocracies to choose from. You’ll have to convert, you just can’t make The United States a theocracy unless you are willing to give up the United States. Because the truth is that while Christianity certainly influences our “rich heritage”, what makes it rich is our freedom. And you can’t have both a Christian nation and a free nation at the same time – you have to choose.

My point is that this argument is really tired yet salacious enough to keep turning up again and again, despite its obvious flaws. The most obvious is that we are founded as a “Christian nation”. Do I believe that many practicing and believing Christians were part of the founding of this country? I certainly do. I also believe that they we wise enough not to place those personal views in the founding documents. The problem is, just like with reading the Bible, we are trying to read these documents with our own values in mind instead of seeing what was written then.

For instance, quoting Patrick Henry and James Madison to support the “Christian Nation” argument is disingenuous primarily because they were on opposite sides of this issue during their lives. James Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments” was written in 1785 in opposition to a proposal by Patrick Henry that all Virginians be taxed to support “teachers of the Christian religion.” The “Memorial and Remonstrance” remains one of the most powerful arguments against government-supported religion ever penned. Find the full text of the document here: http://presspubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions43.html

Three of the people quoted in the “Oklahoma Citizen's Proclamation for Morality” document had nothing to do with the founding of the country. They signed neither the Declaration nor the Constitution. Of the people quoted, it is Jefferson and Madison we must be most concerned with because they wrote the Declaration and the Constitution respectively. Certainly others were involved, but their signatures on the documents must mean that they agreed with the final product enough to have given their approval to it.

Pulling quotes out of context does not give one a viable picture of the turmoil and great debate in which the founding of this country took place.

I could easily counter a Madison quote with this:
“The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion." -James Madison

Or I could counter a Jefferson reference with this one:

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.
But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It
neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
--Jefferson from the Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781 – 1785

We can play that game all day because these men lived just like we do – they looked at new information and they changed their minds. They grew and developed their opinions. So, reading quotes doesn’t really give us a complete picture. Looking at the documents that ALL parties signed does give us an idea about what they agreed on.

While God is mentioned expressly one of the founding documents, it is not applicable to simply insert your own personal Christian interpretation of that term, particularly since the founders had a variety of expressions themselves. If the Founders had intended to found a Christian nation, surely they would not have forgotten to leave out their Christian objectives in the Supreme law of the land. Nowhere in the Constitution do we have a single mention of Christianity, God, Jesus, or any Supreme Being. There occurs only two references to religion and they both use exclusionary wording. The 1st Amendment's says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. . ." and in Article VI, Section 3, ". . . no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." There is a reference to the “Creator” in the Declaration of Independence, but this again cannot be taken to mean God in the way that Representative Kern or any other elected official sees it. This is more the God of 12-step groups, a “higher power” that is non-specific for the very purpose of being embraceable by the largest number of people. This is not a coincidence, it is the intention of the Founders so that the church and state could remain as separate as possible.

If indeed our Framers had aimed to found a Christian republic, it would seem highly unlikely that they would have forgotten to leave out their Christian intentions in the Supreme law of the land. In fact, nowhere in the Constitution do we have a single mention of Christianity, God, Jesus, or any Supreme Being. There occurs only two references to religion and they both use exclusionary wording. The 1st Amendment's says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. . ." and in Article VI, Section 3, ". . . no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

There did occur, however, some who wished a connection between church and State. Patrick Henry, for example, proposed a tax to help sustain "some form of Christian worship" for the state of Virginia. But Jefferson and other statesmen did not agree. In 1779, Jefferson introduced a bill for the Statute for Religious Freedom which became Virginia law. Jefferson designed this law to completely separate religion from government. None of Henry's Christian views ever got introduced into Virginia's or U.S. Government law.

There is more to complain about than just the “Christian revisionism” and the blatant attempt to co-mingle religion and government (always with the religion of the instigator in the primary slot, of course…because they’re right.) The implication of this document is that our “moral crisis” has delivered us to a state of economic decline and ruin. Yet, the same people who profess this kind of Christian revisionist thinking have largely been in charge of the government for the past decade and nowhere in the “charges” leveled against our nation are things like unchecked greed, disregard for our fellow human beings, lack of love for our neighbors or any of the same accusations that Isaiah leveled against ancient Israel so long ago. Instead we get the same tired list of abortion, same sex marriage, and illegitimate births (among others). It wasn’t anything on this list that caused Bernie Madoff to rob thousands of people of their savings, nor is it same sex marriage that somehow threatens “traditional” marriage to the point of a 50% divorce rate.
If you wish to be helpful, begin to offer solutions that work beyond a glib and over-sentimentalized “return to morality”. It is clear that no side of this (or any other) argument has a monopoly on morality. We your constituents grow increasingly tired of one-upsmanship, the unambiguous support of party over country and the blatant attempts to enforce your own sense of religion as if it were the only answer. If that formula works for you, great. Knock yourselves out in your houses of worship and in your homes. But the capital building is where you serve everyone, not your own narrow interpretation of scripture, history or morality.

Despite my lengthy and somewhat frustrated argument above, my real issue with this is the undercurrent of theology that is present in this document. It is identical to the theology presented after Hurricane Katrina which held that the Gulf Coast was merely getting its due for its sins of debauchery and promiscuity. The idea that God is a vengeful being waiting to smite us with natural calamities, financial hardship or suffering of any kind is certainly present in the Bible. But so is the notion of a God who calls out Jerusalem with judgment but says this: “Look, I will send peace flowing over her like a river…As a mother comforts a child, so shall I comfort you…” (Isaiah 66:12).

God is not a God of fear but a God of love. As a minister of the Gospel I welcome calls for people to live moral lives, but not when they are presented as if there are some of us who do and some of us who don’t – and you know who you are. We all fall short of God’s Grace and the only way that we get anywhere is together in the spirit of love, not compartmentalized by the seat of judgment.


All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation. – John Adams

The Ten Commandments as lawn ornament

So here in Oklahoma the legislature, apparently having solved the economic, traffic, education and environmental problems, have spent some good time on a bill to erect a monument to the Ten Commandments on the capitol lawn as a - get this - shrine to the law. That's kind of like saying the Lincoln Memorial is a tribute to beards.

It is pretty clear what the monument is intended to do, regardless of the careful and deliberate wording used by the proponents of this bill. Unfortunately the only legislature in the country to gain GOP seats during the last election apparently feels like its duty is to be the sole bastion of far right wing politics in the nation. Oh sure, there's the Rush and Cheney tour coming to a theatre near you, but they (thank God) can't make legislation.

The bigger issue is not separation of church and state, although that is a biggy. The bigger issue for me as a follower of Jesus and a person who values scripture is that this effort to establish monuments to the Ten Commandments does two things, neither of them helpful. It actually violates one of the Ten Commandments - you shall make no idols for yourselves. It also takes the sacredness of such a covenent and completely trivializes it.

The Ten Commandments are part of the covenental language between God and the people of Israel, the ancestors of both the Jewish and Christian faiths. In an effort to get what they want, the people who are pushing for this have so lost sight of the sacred nature of this covenant that they are willing to say that it is simply a legalistic model for us.

While we can certainly argue that point by itself (frankly we'd be better off with a monument to the Magna Carta if we're looking for our legal basis to be memorialized), I prefer to simply say that the Ten Commandments have a far better home on our hearts than they do on the lawn of the capitol. Let's worry about actually living the Ten Commandments more than memorializing them.

Back to the roots

What kind of God did Jesus reveal?

It is an important question that a friend of mine asks and he goes on to wonder if the battles for Christian theologies/dogma/orthodoxy have not so clouded or damaged or even warped this vision that we must almost "start over". Can the man who said "Why do you call me good? No one but God is good", have been pointing us away from him and toward God the whole time? Is it better that we worship Jesus or follow him?

I talk with people all the time here in Oklahoma who no longer practice religion because they can't buy it anymore. They can't handle the theology or the nature of the church or the plain ol' hypocrisy. They are spiritual people, meaning that connection to God is important to them. But they don't find a place in religion. The question is - is that important?

Ultimately I think that it is because organized religion (and who are we kidding, its not that organized) allows us a chance to practice our faith...to give some structure to our own spirituality. I don't think that you can find God in a vacuum - it is why even monasteries create community. God id found everywhere, true, but isolation leads to unchallenged theology, which is never good.