For this part of the series, just a few things to consider before I start drawing to a close in a future post.

And Jesus said:

There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.' But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.' He said, 'Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house—for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.' Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' He said, 'No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' (Luke 16:19-31, NRSV)

Is it significant, or not, that the only distinction Jesus makes here between the fellow in torment and the man in paradise after death is that the first was rich and well fed, and did little to help the second, who was poor? Does it mean something that Jesus points out nothing, nothing about what we today would call "morality" in the life of either man? That the only thing Jesus mentions is wealth and luxury versus poverty and suffering?

We like to talk about Sodom with respect to God's unhappiness toward its inhabitants. Typically, we refer to Sodom in regard to perverse sexual practices. But, how often do we talk about the bottom line, the root of the problem, as Ezekiel saw it:

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it. (Ezekiel 16:49-50, NRSV)

The root of Sodom's sin, the source of its culpability, was being rich, and proud, and not helping the poor. I like another English translation, which uses the word "complacent" to describe Sodom. It's interesting to me that many of us dress in our fine clothes, sitting in our padded pews on Sunday mornings, with our luxury cars and SUVs sitting in the parking lot, wondering what restaurant we'll attend for lunch, while speaking of the evils and impending doom of those who practice "sodomy."

And what are we told about Zacchaeus, about what and where he was before salvation, and after? Not much. Only the important parts, perhaps?

A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today." So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost." (Luke 19:2-10, NRSV)

How about James 2:1-5 (NRSV); who has God chosen to be heirs of his kingdom?

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Have a seat here, please," while to the one who is poor you say, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet," have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?

It's a bit more radical in the beatitudes. Note how this relates to Jesus' teaching about Lazarus, as noted previously:

And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. Then he looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

In James 1:27, just before the quote noted above:

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Although there are many, many other passages along this vein, for example the many passages in the prophets which speak of social justice, and I think they form an overarching theme in the Bible, I'm aware that arches can be built and cited for or against most anything. Given a book of the Bible's breadth in time and subject matter, this is almost unavoidable. In this regard, I'm not a big fan of lists like the foregoing—although obviously I'm not above using them. I tend to think that sometimes other things are more powerful, and so instead I'll leave with the following point.

Jesus, as God incarnate, was born to a very young (let's say, thirteen-ish to fifteen-ish), unwed, poor girl who was refused room and bed at a common inn, even though she was with child and about to give birth. The Son of God was from a no-good, disrespected village named Nazareth, and born in a manger where—I presume— the animals stained the hay with their urine. What, exactly, is this story to mean to us about the nature of God and Man, and with which of the latter the former most identifies? In other words, to whom did the Lord God come first and foremost?

This one, it seems to me, is undeniably central, clear and to the point.

I tend to avoid small talk in life. That's a plus or minus, depending upon who you ask. To me, it's a plus. To those who sit with me and twiddle their thumbs thinking of things to say, it's a minus. But tonight I feel like reviewing the weekend. I didn't get to talk to my folks this weekend, so this will catch them up.

Friday was the last day of this year's Shuttle Camp for the girls, which means there were rocket launches. The older girl has moved up to two-stage creations, but unfortunately the weather scrubbed the launches for her class. So, a trip to launch the newest rocket ourselves is on the manifest. Younger girl built a nice single-stage that flew well, and it looks great sitting on the shelf with the rockets of years passed. One of the instructors attempted the launch of a modified two-stage that was too light in the forward fuselage. It spun wildly as it left the rail, and I only had time for one thought: Uh-oh. Now the second stage is gonna… Which it did, flying straight toward some of us spectators, hitting the ground between myself and a dad who was just as slow as I was, and bursting into flames (the rocket, not the dad). Which just goes to show that in the world of rockets you can plan for certain types of failures, and with others it's simply over too quick to do anything about it.

A new activity this year for one of the classes was the challenge of using a raw egg as the cargo of a craft that was dropped from sixty feet above the concrete. It was kind of a Mars rover landing type of challenge, and my daughter's team used cotton batting, wings and balloons. Their egg survived intact, so score one for the home team.

We arrived home late Friday night and all three kids went to sleep easily, so the tired mom and dad stayed up to watch the movie The Bucket List. It's a good film; worth watching. The combination of camp, rockets, getting to see the girls again after their week of absence, the movie, and probably a bit of being tired all combined to leave me with a tear of weary joy in each eye as a lay down to go to sleep. "I had a good day," I whispered between myself and God. "Thank you for my life."

I'm steeped in a battle of wits with one of the puppies. A while back she figured out how to climb our rock wall and get into the neighbor's yard. Finally I resorted to running a dog-rated electric fence along the top of that wall, which did little to deter her. So I ran another line lower, back from the fence, which did the trick. But it only took her a couple of days to figure out that she can climb the metal gate on the other side of the house and get into the front yard, scale the wall into the front courtyard, and sleep on the front porch. So I ran the electric wire all the way around the fence in the back, and stretched it across the path to the metal gate. She came around to see what I was doing as I finished my work, stopped dead in her tracks, ducked her head, and backed off. War over, I figured. Until this past week, when I found her on the front porch and the wire by the gate torn down. So on Saturday I fortified the defenses with a bit more engineering, to find her tonight on the front porch again. She broke only a small portion of the wire, leaving the rest of the improved design functional with its secondary skirmish line, which she would have had to have engaged to scale the gate, intact. Yet she obviously defeated this perimeter. She would have felt the shock, I'm sure, and in fact there are claw marks up the side of the house (!!) where she climbed up by the corner of the gate. Hmph; War just beginning, I guess. She is one stubborn, determined foe, and I am now back to the drawing board. Perhaps something with cotton batting, wings and balloons...

Today was a party and ongoing sleepover for the two-stage rocket girl's birthday. Nine little girls in the house today and tonight. We'll see how the "sleep" part of sleepover pans out. It's almost midnight at the moment, and they just started a movie not long ago. I can tell I'm distracted; I posted Merton Monday before the clock rolled over. And with that, the weekend is officially over. Work tomorrow, and I don't want to go. But then again, I never do.

One more story to tell, but it stands well enough alone that I'll save it for a separate post. Besides, it's not a small talk story, so will get me back to my normal posting self. Have a good week, all.

To the truly humble man the ordinary ways and customs and habits of men are not a matter for conflict. The saints do not get excited about the things that people eat and drink, wear on their bodies, or hang on the walls of their houses. To make conformity or nonconformity with others in these accidents a matter of life and death is to fill your interior life with confusion and noise. Ignoring all this as indifferent, the humble man takes whatever there is in the world that helps him to find God and leave the rest aside. — New Seeds, chapter 14

Back to the series on dealing with common aversions and excuses regarding our wealth, the next one is based in the following of Jesus' parables:

For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, 'Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.' His master said to him, 'Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, 'Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.' His master said to him, 'Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, 'Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.' But his master replied, 'You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. (Matthew 25:14-29, NRSV)

I find it interesting that it just so happens that the English word for a certain amount of money (actually a weight of metal) is "talent." It's not uncommon for Christians to simply use this passage as a reference to natural abilities (talents; get it?) like leadership, working with one's hands, etc., and not use it to refer to money. On the one hand this is an unsophisticated association of the coincidental word "talent." On the other hand, some Christians use this passage as one which actually is speaking about money, and here is the irony because in my opinion the parable is indeed metaphorical, speaking not of money necessarily, but all sorts of things including… well, talents. I tend to think that Jesus' point here is that no matter what we have that has been granted to us, we are to use it to bring forth some sort of increase on behalf of the Grantor. We are supposed to be serious, wise, and diligent in making something more out of whatever we have been given. Certainly we aren't to waste what we have been given. We aren't even supposed to protect it with no hope of increase. We're supposed to nourish it in some way; even risk it with a calculated chance of gain for the sake of God. There is an implication of willful responsibility being exercised. The buzzword often assigned to this is stewardship, and there's certainly nothing wrong with the word or the concept it signifies. Take care of what God gives you, utilize it wisely, and do so in a way that God has more from your labor than when he started with you. This is pretty much axiomatic, I tend to think, and it is a lesson we should take to heart.

The other day a reader of this blog sent me an email that went something like this:

[For a good many years I worked off and on with an anthropologist who worked with us in staff training activities to help overcome some of the cultural barriers we faced in working with Indian communities. Her contention was that folks will usually part with money before they will give of their time. Also that most of us are pretty selfish when it comes to giving of our time. Guess I wonder how this fits into the total giving equation. Visiting the sick, sitting with the dying, or comforting the grieving is not a highly visible act, or at least I don't think it should be, but it can take a part of the soul, if that terminology works. It also means the giver probably has other uses for the time. I know money is always welcome and hopefully put to good use but on a general societal basis money may not be what is needed . Maybe just a bucket of chicken. A large tin of coffee at a wake, or a tender touch and a kind word is worth more.]

These of course are good points. I'll probably return to them toward the conclusion of this series of posts, but for the moment point out that we can and should be using whatever it is that we each, uniquely, have been given. Maybe it's money. Maybe it's time. Maybe it's an ability. Maybe it's a personality trait (or even a quirk) that is useful in helping other people. Maybe it's simply being another human being in the right place at the right time. Making our very selves available to others is a use of the life we have been given. Don't sit on your butt watching television, when there are people who could use your help dealing with a problem. Certainly all of these fit, and fit very importantly, into the idea of this parable. Everything I have in this very moment is in my possession for the purpose of furthering God's kingdom. I mustn't waste it. I mustn't let it lay dormant. I must use it, even if using it puts it at risk.

And this is really the point I've been hovering around in these posts; that what we have, including but not limited to our money, is in our hands so that it may be used for the kingdom (I plan to speak more about "the kingdom" when I close this series), not for ourselves. But, it is far too easy and far too common for us to take the idea of stewardship and use it to justify the way we protect what we have so that it will remain ours. Being a good steward comes to mean that we polish our fishing boat once a month and protect it from the elements. Being a good steward comes to mean watching my investment portfolio so I'm sure to have more money for myself in ten years than I have now. And from the outside looking in, if we have done little for the kingdom, what have we really done but protect ourselves by placing all of our resources under a rock?

To the point of aversions and excuses, I'll say it briefly and simply. Being a good steward is a poor excuse for spending a Saturday polishing a boat and buying a new cover to protect it from the elements; being a good steward is more about what we could have done instead of buying a new toy and taking care of it. Being a good steward is a poor excuse for investing money so that it will bring more wealth and luxury to ourselves; being a good steward is more about who we could have helped with that money yesterday. Being a good steward is a poor excuse for keeping resources for myself while I think, "that family over there is suffering because they're irresponsible, so I'm not giving them something they would already have for themselves if they were good stewards like I am." Being a good steward is about figuring out how to relieve their situation using whatever I've been given. This is the kingdom view, which is almost certainly the view Jesus intended by his parable.

"Being a good steward" is about bringing forth increases in the kingdom, not about protecting our own wealth, time, energy and luxury. Come to think of it, using the idea of "being a good steward" to justify our selfishness is about like using the idea of "loving my neighbor" to justify having sex with the mailman.

I've posted before about Vinnie, a mentally challenged young man I know, and from that post I'll remind the reader of two things:

(1) Vinnie speaks pretty well and gets his point across, sometimes he's really funny without trying to be, and he always speaks sincerely. He knows the value of communication and of being transparent. (2) Vinnie knows the value of many things much better than I do. Lots of times he comes to church at the same place I go. Vinnie was formed by the same Loving God as me. That's why he's my brother. I'm going to watch him more closely this year. I think he's here to be a teacher—for people like me.

I saw Vinnie at church services today. He came up to me after they were over, said "Hi," and held out his hand to shake mine. I returned the gesture, offering, "Hi Vinnie. How ya doin' today?"

"I'm doing good I was just wondering if you have any plans for lunch today—" he said. Most of his sentences are spoken with the inflection of part statement, part question.

At this, I was thinking Vinnie was trying to ask me out to lunch, maybe because I gave him a ride home recently. So I said, "No, I don't, I'm just going to go home because I have some other things I gotta go do later. I don't really have time to go out to lunch today. But thank you very much for asking."

"Ohhhh okaaaaay," Vinnie said as his eyes gazed past me, looking around the church auditorium, as if searching for something. I decided it would be a good idea to try to clarify the conversation, so I asked, "Were you wanting to ask me out to eat with you today?" At this point, I'll just note ahead of time that this is how we normal, average, blah-blah people think: Ah-hah! I did a nice thing the other day, and so I'm being offered payback! Good for you, Vinnie! That's so nice of you!

My brother Vinnie, though, he's much more clearly focused than us, far less calculating, with no ego whatsoever. His response? "Uhm no I was just going around asking the older people to see who's going out to lunch to see if somebody might take me out with them—" I smiled broadly and genuinely, and explained again that I was going out of town, and didn't have time to go eat. Vinnie told me good-bye, and continued with his quest.

The lesson from Vinnie to me here? I'm having trouble finding all the right words. It's a very clear, very simple lesson, but it's big. It's a big lesson about how we should relate to other people, versus how we actually relate to other people. I think the best way I can put it is, Vinnie wanted food and he wanted companionship. No calculations. No ego. No attachment to outcome. No strings. No reading into things. No hurt feelings. No embarrassment. Clean. Pure. Simple. Childlike. Innocent. Just basic human needs, as natural and acceptable as daybreak and nightfall. I need. You give? No? Okie. I ask somebody else.

Naah… we normal, average, blah-blah people would never be satisfied with something so uncomplicated. We can't seem to think we're alive unless we have something to be unhappy about, and somebody to blame for it.

The next aversion in this series of posts is about taking care of our families, and there's a bit of hand waving we have to do around the word "families." It's somewhat about relatives, with a special emphasis on those closest to us. I've heard this aversion several times when I've mentioned the idea of spending too much money on our personal lifestyles. The response is along the lines of, "Well, Paul clearly says that if I don't provide for my family, I'm worse than an unbeliever." True enough. The verse being quoted, plucked from its context, is:

And whoever does not provide for relatives, and especially for family members, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Timothy 5:8, NRSV)

I'm certainly not going to argue with this, especially since it is in the middle of Paul talking about a number of guidelines for taking care of others; most notably widows. What I find interesting, though, is that if we read a bit further we encounter Paul saying something that nobody, to date, has ever bothered to mention to me when he or she speaks of providing for his or her family:

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. (1 Timothy 6:5-8, NRSV)

So, I've wondered from time to time, if we could ask Paul what it means to provide for family in a Christian way, and if a Christian should be content with food and clothes, what is expected in terms of provision? Personally, I distaste trying to slice and dice verses in this way, but if we are going to quote 5:8 in an effort to defend our wealth, shouldn't we also consider 6:5-8 along with it?

To be fair, I need myself to be willing to read further, for Paul also says,

As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share… (1 Timothy 6:17-18)

And so it appears that there were indeed rich Christians, and Paul doesn't tell them to become poor. He does imply though, that they need to be generous and ready to share, and this is after he notes:

But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. But as for you, man of God, shun all this… (1 Timothy 6:9-11, NRSV)

To summarize and place things into the present, personally I would include shelter and medical care as part of providing for my family; although admittedly this is a bit beyond what Paul was literally saying. And apparently it's okay to be rich, given that you take care of your relatives, you're not arrogant, you strive to do good, you're generous, and you share. (I understand that all these are open to interpretation (and subsequent misuse), too. More on this, probably, in a future post.)

But all in all, my point is about the aversions we tend to have. I still think the larger context of the passage begs us to reconsider what we're dealing with when we use "providing for my family" as a license (which is to say, excuse) for excesses in our lives. Plain and simple, anything beyond necessities is beyond the scope of what Paul meant when it came to providing for our families. So, no: I don't consider my kids' Wii, computers, toys, plethora of clothing, cell phones, mp3 players, DVDs, CDs, pets, music lessons and instruments, sports lessons and equipment, orthodontics, educational trips and summer camps to fall under the biblical idea of provision. My children are materially spoiled, because I let them be, because I am. They are children. They are innocent. My problem is greed; greed for myself and for my family. But I'm not going to be obtuse and hypocritical, and claim that to the contrary I'm simply following Paul's admonition to take care of my family. Such a claim would be a selfish and gross manipulation of scripture, beyond what even I can bear. To live in wealth and claim, "Hey, man, I'm just following Paul" is, simply, ludicrous.

To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure…

So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmakers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed—but hate these things in yourself, not in another. — New Seeds, chapter 16

Outside of reading The Cost of Discipleship and being aware of the general legendary respect given by many to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I've never studied him. I've been working on this post for about an hour, and have decided to just give up trying to write it. This interview is compelling at so many levels, I don't know where to start talking about it.

And by the way, the documentary referenced in the interview is available at Netflix for instant viewing.

One of my other pursuits. I figure this one goes well with the current series of posts...

A portion of one of my favorite Merton passages. The photo is from my trip to the Abbey of Gethsemani, where Merton lived and wrote.

[There] is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.

But although this looks simple, it is in reality immensely difficult. In fact, if I am left to myself it will be utterly impossible. For although I can know something of God's existence and nature by my own reason, there is no human and rational way in which I can arrive at that contact, that possession of Him, which will be the discovery of Who He really is and of Who I am in Him.

That is something that no man can ever do alone.

Nor can all the men and all the created things in the universe help him in his work.

The only One Who can teach me to find God is God, Himself, Alone. — New Seeds, chapter 5.

For your consideration, my opening notes in in our poverty, the book:

THE JESUS story began for me many years ago, and it was a story that began with a given: Jesus is the Son of God. From the given flowed many claims, demands and concerns; claims of what was right and wrong, demands to be good, and concerns of not being good enough. For a while, that approach worked for me. The given was enough, and I could be good enough. Yet in time it ceased to be—perhaps because I ceased to be.

I think that my problem with the story was that it was too big in all of the small places, and too small in all of the big places. It increasingly became a story that seemed to have itself backwards. Somewhere along the way, I decided it was all but completely wrong.

But by that time it had already become a story that I could never fully let go, and maybe this was the point of it all in the first place. If so, it served its purpose well, and to it I will forever be in debt. Whatever the case may be, I have had to rewrite the story for myself—a process that I now realize will continue for the rest of my life.

I will always think of God in terms of particular ancient stories and with the accent of a particular religious language, but I have learned that what matters far more than the stories and the language is the meaning of the stories, and the messages the language is trying to convey. I have learned that finding a way to see God clearly is the only thing that matters—that in the midst of a world that can seem ambiguous, arbitrary, pointless and even malevolent, we are in fact awash in a sea of immeasurable love. This I have come to know beyond any shadow of doubt.

What we must do is discover the vision to see this love, and find the courage to submerge ourselves and drown within it. This is the great challenge of the Jesus story, and it is the sheer depth of this challenge, rather than any intellectual debate, that has caused serious emphasis upon Jesus' story to often be viewed with great skepticism. Jesus called us to accept more than we are willing to accept, to reject more than we are willing to reject, to love more than we are willing to love, and to give more than we are willing to give. Jesus called us to live within the reign and rule of God, and we are typically unwilling to do so. This is why people like you and me killed him.

Yet while most of Christianity focuses upon Jesus' death, I believe we must choose to think instead of his life. I fully understand that as far as Christian doctrine is concerned, the death and resurrection of Jesus are of paramount importance. But I can never escape the feeling that to focus upon them to the exclusion of everything else is a way to cheat at believing the story. It seems to me all too convenient to say that Jesus died for us, and that is the end of that—than to say Jesus called us to live like he did, and that this is the beginning of everything.

The opening and concluding paragraphs of in our poverty, chapter 10:

To many people the Bible is more important than God. They consider the Bible to be the only validation of anything man can possibly have to do with God. They believe there is no point in believing there is a God unless you believe in the Bible. To them there is no useful God apart from the Bible, and there would be no point to God's existence without the Bible. Reduced to its pure practicality, their view is that without the Bible there is no God.

If I am to live in this physical world and see it rightly, see each created thing as a manifestation of God's glory, I must see that the world, both in its visible forms and in its hidden forms, is part of the word of God. I must then take what I see and I must love what I see; not love a particular thing as if for its own sake, but love it for the particular word or words of God it is. I do not need to love the things of this world, but I must come to dearly and passionately love the spirit of God as it shows itself to me within and through them. Once I have seen and learned to love what is before me, I must welcome this love into my heart that it may compel me to act in accord with God's word all around me. If I cannot do this, the meaning of all these things will be lost to me and I will not hear his voice. Each utterance of God around me will fall upon my deafness, and if I hear anything at all it will only be because I mistake my own voice for that of God.

Probably just me, but is Jimmy Carter the only president in my lifetime who… no, that would seem rude. Let's just say he remains the only politician to impress me; which cannot be wholly unrelated to the fact that he wasn't particularly successful at being one. The mp3 here has some stuff worth hearing.

"It isn't what you have, but what your priorities are."

This is one of the very common comments tossed about by us when we start talking about our wealth, and I want to address it before any others because I tend to think that it alone is the one idea in this wealth mess that I haven't yet resolved in my own mind. It's of no surprise that I am especially intrigued with this idea intellectually, because it leaves a lot of room for shades of gray and I tend to inhabit that kind of a world.

On the one hand, there are two clear things which support this idea. One, I know some people with quite a bit of money who are extremely generous and give a lot to our local community, as well as to individuals in need. They have no particular attachment to the material things they own, and as some Christians are fond of saying, "It's all going to get burned up in the end anyway. It's just stuff." In short, there are people who have a lot of material wealth but don't consider that wealth an end in itself. Two, there are probably people who have very little but are very selfish about it. I can't think of anybody I've met who is like this, but I have no doubt that they exist.

To continue, I know people who probably give half of what they make to one charity or another, and it's difficult to look at somebody who makes a lot of money but gives half away and say they are somehow more greedy or less concerned with the poor than a person who makes comparatively little and gives only a small fraction, if any, to those more needy than themselves. There is unselfishness and there is selfishness, fully independent of resources. It isn't what you have. It's what your priorities are. Fair enough.

But on the other hand, there can be serious flaws in the basis of this thinking, and for over half of my life, I have not been able to get them out of my head. Before talking about them, there is something that needs to be delineated. The idea of priorities in the above few paragraphs needs to be explained a bit for the sake of completeness. There are two main issues at stake, which are concerns about greed and concerns about idolatry. So when a Christian looks at their possessions and says "It's all going to be burned up in the end anyway; it's just stuff," he or she is typically making reference to concern with idolatry. It's a way of saying "These things aren't important to me in the way God and people are important to me. God comes first; not things." I mention this just to note that I do see the distinction between the views; but as I hope to point out, the distinction becomes more or less meaningless to the discussion at hand. So. Onward to the flaws.

The first major problem I have with the idea of priorities is to me as obvious and unavoidable as the sun in the sky. There's a simple way to say it, but I'll first mention the way it came to me. Years ago, I was sitting around one day pondering the phrase, "It isn't what you have, but what your priorities are," when to my mind came the image of Jesus walking into my house, wandering through the rooms therein. As he walked around, he looked at the furnishings. He looked at the things hanging on the walls. He looked at the decorations. He looked at all my electronic toys (including, sigh… my computers). He went outside and looked at my four-wheeled toys. Nervously, wringing my hands, I followed him around. Finally, I could bare the silence no more, and offered, "I know what you must be thinking, but, it's not what I have here, it's my priorities in life that matter." And with that, Jesus turned to me, nodded slowly, and said, "Yes. And I see what your priorities are." The simple point is, what we have indicates what our priorities are. I cannot see anything more concrete, more clear, more obvious, more inarguable than this. Greed or idolatry? Irrelevant, really. Where your resources go, is where your priorities lie.

The second problem concerns the wealthy giving much and the poor giving little. Jesus touched upon this a bit when he spoke of what we sometimes refer to as the widow's mite:

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on." (Mark 12:41-44)

Before I say what I'm about to say, I just want to notice that I'm posting this series out of my own guilt and confession of my extreme selfishness in a hurting world. I'm guilty, I'm sorry, and I'm hoping, wanting, to change. So I am not pointing fingers here. Really, I'm not; but it will easily seem so. I've heard people with a lot of money talk about what they give at church. And I've heard them talk in thickly veiled terms about how they give so much more than other people in church. Sometimes they'll fall back to something like, "I give my ten percent, but I don't see those people doing it." To be sure, if a person takes home $100k a year and gives $10k a year to charity, they're giving a whole lot more than the person who brings home $20k a year and gives five percent for a total of $1k. This argument makes a lot of sense numbers-wise, I agree. The only problem with it is that it's not the way Jesus looks at it, and it's bass-ackwards from the economic reality of the situation. Interestingly, it summarizes elegantly the two main ways of viewing things that we see in the politico-socio-economic rhetoric around us. The former people always view giving in terms of what is given. But Jesus defined giving in what was left. And so, as Jesus would see it, the person who is left with $19K has given far more than the person who is left with $90K. If you really must assign cold mathematics to it, let's do it this way: the "wealthy" person has given approximately four and half times less than what the other has given.

Perhaps needless to say, I have very little patience for the Christian who drops a thousand dollars into a collection plate, drives his or her expensive car to a restaurant before heading to his or her fine home, to sit in front of his or her HDTV and think of how other people need to be giving more to further the work of the kingdom—while a brother or sister in God drops five bucks into the plate, leaves church by packing his or her family into a beat-up old wreck with plastic tape over the tail lights and cardboard for windows, to go home and scrape together something for lunch and wonder which bill he or she will have to let slide so that the family can eat during the coming week. In this scenario, I'd really like to hear some banter about "It's not what I have, but what my priorities are."

To summarize the "what I have versus what my priorities are" line of speaking, I'm thinking the following. The idea remains gray. I would be one of the very last people to try to second guess other people's motivations and hearts, which are absolutely between them and God. Maybe a person has a sick kid or may not see another birthday. Spoil them rotten? Absolutely. I would. Or maybe a person makes far more, gives far more, works far more, and is devoted far more to the poor than anybody else, especially me, knows. I can absolutely allow for that. Or maybe a person, like me, is morally weak and is selfish, and needs patience and time with love in the meantime. No problem. We love each other in our weaknesses. And last of all, the Bible says some people have certain gifts and not other gifts, and it lists giving as a gift. So after all my talking, there's no judgment cast. But I look inward, and I know the line doesn't fit me. I know that for me, what I own shows my priorities. I know the line is untrue. If I truly cared for the hungry, the sick, and the homeless, I would have less so that they could have more.

I am a work in progress. May God move me.

There is only one true flight from the world; it is not an escape from conflict, anguish and suffering, but the flight from disunity and separation, to unity and peace in the love of other men. — New Seeds, chapter 10

A few years ago I was teaching a group of Christian adults, and every class for twenty-six weeks was great. I loved the class. The students loved the class. I talked about some fairly hard topics, and some pretty provocative topics. I talked about how we love to come to church with our smiles pasted on and pretend we have no problems, when in fact we have all the same problems as everybody else in the world. I talked about the idea that God doesn't have an intricate plan lined out to the most minute detail from now until the end of the world. One period I even claimed that Jesus didn't have a priori knowledge that Judas would betray him, and that furthermore—presuming the traditional view of "salvation" being about going to Heaven instead of Hell—Judas was saved in the end (the context within which this opinion was delivered is a bit large). And so it went, smoothly and thoughtfully and respectfully with good-willed reciprocity from both sides of the lectern, until one night after I had made the statement that the kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of the poor and not of the rich, and asked, "So who are the rich?"

There was a pregnant pause, and nobody said a word.

So I said that if I were to take a yard stick and hold it vertically, and if it represented the per-capita income of all the people in the world, then every one of us in the building that night would be in the upper half inch of the stick. "That makes you and me the rich," I said. And at this—I kid you not—a woman straightened right up in her seat and yelled at me, "Don't talk to me about my money!"

The odd thing is, the lady who said this was a bright, thoughtful, supportive member of the class and I had a good deal of respect for her (to this day I would say "have" instead of "had," but she has since passed away). Given that, it would be far too easy, and I think quite mistaken of me, to simply ask myself, "How could she have been so wrong, so selfish, so far off base?" I don't think that's the wise question. But what I still wonder, to this day, is why did she react the way she did? She was bright. Why didn't she say something else, and contribute to the discussion? Why did she just give this emotional interjection that effectively shut the conversation down?

I can only guess, but I tend to think that for those of us who are rich and who claim Christianity, somewhere deep down we know "our money" is a problem. By this I mean that I think we know, deep down, that there is an issue with our wealth and we have not resolved the issue to our own satisfaction. Further, I think that maybe we realize the resolution would be either: to come up with an effective defense of our wealth; or to give up our wealth. And finally, I think we don't want to play the gamble of honestly seeking this resolution because doing so would incur the risk of having to acknowledge the latter alternative. So, we avoid the issue whenever possible. But of course it can't be avoided entirely. Once in a while somebody will bring it up publicly, or in moments of repose we will raise the question within our own hearts and minds. In both of these cases, it seems that the best we can usually muster are lines of discussion which have become so predictable that they have become clichés.

As noted in my previous post, I'll present a few of these in upcoming posts.

I've been touching upon the subject of loving God and loving others; that the center of Christian living rests in the vicinity of these two great commandments. Because they are so central to biblical teaching, it isn't difficult to talk about almost anything in Christianity and relate it to these two themes. Recently I've also been dancing around social justice, and it is a case in point, for to be concerned with and act on behalf of social justice is a manifestation of loving others and, by extension, of loving God. The question is, if you turn that statement, does a necessity result? Does loving God and loving others necessarily mean that you are concerned with and act on behalf of social justice? I believe so, and would like to open up some personal opinions on the issue.

I write once in a while on a problem I have with the fact that many people have characterized the word love by labeling it as an action. Now, with respect to using this classification in order to separate actively loving somebody from the idea of simply having an emotional feeling for them, I agree. Similarly, it is a good idea—as well as a useful admonition to myself—to perform this same separation with respect to a purely intellectual view of what love should be. That is to say, it doesn't do much good to have beautiful, profound ideals of what Godly love might be, if you never act upon them. Where I have a problem is in settling for the idea that love is merely an action, and nothing more. The problem I have with this is that it places love in the position of being one more thing which Man can claim as his own, as if love does not and could not exist—doesn't happen—without Man. So, rather simply, I take the stand that Love with a capital L, Love that comes from and is God, exists within Man but also transcends and exists independently of Man. Having said all that, I claim that the Love with which we are supposed to concern ourselves as Christians is the Love of God that is God, that it can be and must be experienced, that it can be and must be entered into, and that we can and should literally become a part of it in both the ontological and the active senses. In so doing, we become Love's inspired action in this place we call the world.

Because I have this view my interpretation of 1 John, as an example, is when the writer says "[if you know God, you'll love. If you don't love, you don't know God]" what he means is that if you've experienced God, you can't help but become a part of his love, which leads to action in the world. And he also means that if you aren't a part of that love, then obviously you haven't experienced God. To me this seems much more matter-of-fact and spiritually sound than a more typical, legally based interpretation which substitutes the presence of actions accepted as loving for any actual knowledge of God; the latter being a matter of confusing simple action with a state of spiritual being. But, as I've also noted previously, this creates a great area of concern for me in regard to my own Christian faith. Without going into the specifics all over again and yet including some of my most recent posts, the issue is this: if one is not primarily concerned—genuinely concerned in a deeply inspired and actively loving way—with the social injustices and suffering that other people endure in this world, then that person really must question whether he or she knows God at all. If, for example, I can sit and see in the newspaper the plight of millions of people who are starving or otherwise being systematically slaughtered by individuals or institutions while I blithely sip my Starbucks and circle my thumb around the wheel of my iPod, well—there is almost certainly something seriously, seriously wrong with me as a child of God. There is no way around this. There is no way around it, and I am rapidly reaching a point in life where I am unwilling to accept the aversion to, excuses concerning, and complacency toward this issue; all of these being inherent in my personal, formal Christian tradition.

In line with the posts on loving God, loving others and social justice, over the next few weeks or months I will be offering a few posts dealing with these aversions and excuses.

It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as God's will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe you—try to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as God's will yourself! —New Seeds, Chapter 24

Several months ago, probably closer to a year ago, I began putting together a post but had some problems working it out in my mind. I thought up until this week that I had eventually posted it, but I can find it nowhere, so I'm guessing that I didn't. In that case, it's a nice thing that I didn't, because I think I've now remedied the problem I was having (best as I can recall) with feeling good about posting it in the first place.

The post was supposed to be the first of three concerning "dirty little secrets" of Christian faith (note, please, that I'm referring to specific traditions in modern Christian faith; not Christian faith in general). Well, so I didn't publish the first, I forgot the second, and I ended up posting the third as "Faith, Belief, Reality etc. Part III." Now that I recently posted some ideas on judgment, I think I'm ready to publish the first post now, in a slightly edited form without some introductory materials concerning dirty little secrets. I'll include the post here and now, and append a comment or two related to the judgment post:

[begin]

A lot of us, Christian or not, spend a fair amount of time talking about "justice." Oftentimes, perhaps usually, we talk about how justice was or was not carried out in a particular criminal or civil case. Sometimes we talk about justice in terms of our Christian faith, generally when we talk about Heaven and Hell and who will or should go to either place. In the majority of all these cases we like to say we "cry out" for justice to be served, which is in itself a borrowing of language inherited from religious tradition. We believe, for whatever reasons, that crying out for justice is a good, moral, Godly thing for us to do. And so it is. But now we have to get a little closer to the dirty little secret, and to inch toward it I'll start with Micah, who is credited with saying:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8, NRSV)

Some English translations of the Old Testament give us "mercy" instead of kindness in this verse, and I'm not sure which, if either, is closer to the Hebrew. I'm going to go with mercy, since it's what I've heard most often and because, admittedly, it goes better with my point. To love mercy implies that we will extend mercy, and extending mercy necessitates that beforehand a wrong must have been committed. (After all, if none had been committed, there would be no need for mercy.) In short, it seems to me that if we accept that the three things Micah admonishes us to pursue are not mutually exclusive—and there is no reason to think they are so—then mercy is dealing with gracious forgiveness toward wrong-doing and if so, then the justice we are supposed to "do" is not about dispensing an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. It is not about people "getting what they deserve." Justice here cannot be about punishing wrong, nor about giving another person their just desserts. So here's the beginning of the dirty little secret: The justice we typically seek in mainstream Christianity is not the justice God asks of us, but is a purposeful misinterpretation on our parts; one which allows us to ignore what Micah says the LORD really requires of us: that we be socially just.

I have long believed and often said that every problem of man comes down to his frighteningly insidious and clever pride. In the case of ourselves vis-à-vis Micah, what we have is a pride that tells us we should be able to possess whatever we want in life no matter what the cost to those who can't seem to get what they need in life. It is pride that tells us that we deserve spoils and they don't, because, simply, we are good and they are not (in a sort of incestuous reasoning , we have previously concluded, via our poor theology, that they are not good because they do not have). Once this pride convinces us that justice is about punishment and vengeance rather than social welfare and fairness, then we can tell—which is to say, lie to—ourselves that we cry out for justice, while we commit all manner of crimes against social justice. Furthermore, because this twisted view of life necessitates that we relegate the justice for which we "must" cry out to the realm of punishment and just desserts, we throw mercy out the window, saving it as well for those whom we judge to be deserving—which we read as those who haven't really done anything wrong other than what we ourselves may have already done or are currently doing. In short, we somehow manage to make sure that justice and mercy are defined in such a way that each affords us personally the most benefit possible. Whatever that psychological, intellectual "somehow" may be, it is allowed to succeed because it is approved by our pride.

What the secret comes down to, the dirty little secret too dirty for our minds to allow to bubble up to the surface of our consciences, is that we rich, Bible-thumping Christians are not leading the lives God asks us to live. In spite of all our rhetoric, in spite of all our crying out, in spite of all our so-called morality, we are missing the basic, essential facts of Godliness. And dirtiest of all, when it comes down to it and the rubber meets the road, we aren't really willing to face the facts. Plain and simple, we don't want to be in line with God's program. We don't want to be, because we are too selfish. We don't want to be, because we don't want to share. We don't want to be, because we would rather believe that we deserve life's extravagant spoils and others deserve comparatively nothing. We don't want to be, because in the end we care about ourselves far more than we care about others. We don't want to be, because we like it this way. We don't want to be, because it's a lot more fun to wheel our SUV through the drive-thru than it is to be like much of the rest of the world: hungry, sick and suffering from exposure to the elements. Besides, what thinking person can't see the truth that some of us are blessed because of who we are, some are cursed because of who they are, and this is the way life always will and should be? (Well and of course, notwithstanding that Micah, the other prophets and Jesus disagree.)

Many of us, and I fear myself included, are hypocrites in the realm of justice. It's a secret that only we don't know.

[end]

As best as I can recall (and believe me, my memory is not so great anymore), the problem I had with this post was questioning myself on my interpretation of the word justice. I seem to recall going a few rounds in my head about whether or not I was being sufficiently open to the form of justice that I was rejecting. But, after reviewing Jesus' invective in Matthew, where (it seems clear to me, anyway) that Jesus is quoting the prophets regarding justice, mercy and humility, I have to side with my original thoughts. Jesus was far more interested in social justice (or, more correctly, the lack thereof) in his time than about "legal" justice. What is significant here is that I can find no evidence that the Pharisees, scribes and such were short on the "legal" justice. To the point, given that these men were more than willing to deny, cast out and punish those whom they considered to fall short, and given that in such an environment Jesus would say they had neglected justice, I really must conclude that Jesus' take on the prophet was that the reference is to social justice.

Do I feel better? Yes, in that I think the original post stands on firm footing. And no, in that I think the post stands on firm footing.

Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you were capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy.

Do not be too quick to assume that your enemy is an enemy of God just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy precisely because he can find nothing in you that gives glory to God. Perhaps he fears you because he can find nothing in you of God's love and God's kindness and God's patience and mercy and understanding of the weaknesses of men.

Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God, for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice, your mediocrity and materialism, your sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith. —New Seeds, Chapter 24

The website speakingoffaith.org is offering up discussions surrounding the life, work, and teachings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Today I listened to one of their podcasts, which is available here. I highly recommend giving it a listen if you have any interest in God, spirituality, mysticism, humanity, etc. Which is to say, if you have any interest in a relevant God, a God who transcends the petty bounds of human religious concepts, check it out.

I can't explain what it means to me to listen to interviews like the one in this podcast. The feeling of relief and solace in knowing that the way I view these kinds of topics is in line with the thinking of somebody else, well… I guess that partial sentence only makes sense if I admit that when I listen to this type of interview I am at once reminded that in the circles I inhabit in life, in the religious tradition I have grown up with, I am all but alone. And so to be presented with Heschel's work, to hear it talked about and valued, is at once to receive a sort of validation—encouragement is a much better word—and to concurrently recognize all over and anew again that I need that encouragement because nowhere else, in human-to-human contact, do I find it. This is not self pity. But it is indeed a deep, incumbent loneliness and sorrow.

At any rate, please. Check out the podcast. Download it and listen to it as you can. It is not the most profound thing you'll ever here, but Heschel's view of God is quite wonderful.

Some people think it is enough to have one virtue, like kindness or broadmindedness or charity, and let everything else go. But if you are unselfish in one way and selfish in twenty-five other ways your virtue will not do you much good. In fact, it will probably turn out to be nothing more than a twenty-sixth variety of the same selfishness, disguised as virtue.

Therefore do not think that because you seem to have some good quality, all the evil in you can be excused or forgotten on that account alone. —New Seeds, Chapter 24

Continuing my previous post, here's quite a long ramble concerning the "complication" I mentioned…

To look at a person or a group who claims to be Christian, and to say the religion practiced thereby is "not much of a Christianity" because it is divisive, is a dicey stand to take. It is to create a sort of division, seems contradictory, and some might even say is hypocritical. I think it's fair to say that it is not a clearly defensible position to take, similar to saying, "I accept everybody except those who can't accept other people," or, "I believe (absolutely) that all things are relative." I'm well aware of this, and by and large I have long struggled, and continue to struggle, to not draw lines and to be very careful not to take stands which divide. The problem is, there isn't any way to have convictions for one's life without drawing lines and taking stands somewhere, and to draw lines and take stands means that sometimes you make claims that divide. By the way, I should mention that while this probably seems as obvious as the sun in the sky to most of you, it's something that I've really had a hard time with. Perhaps I've just gotten high-centered in my thinking somewhere back in a long ago, and let's not forget personal psychology; I just don't like causing conflict and I'm a bit of a cowardly little thing. So. What to do?

All of this is wrapped up in a realm of general fear, foreboding and mystique in Christian religion; the idea of "judging" other people:

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.—Matthew 7:1-5 (NRSV)

I have to note that I've noticed a great number of Christians who, in my opinion, pretty much fail at this injunction. Judgment seems to be high on their can-do list, ranging from judging a person's entire worldview all the way down to attitudes revealed via common gossip: "Do you know what he said she said? Can you believe that? What kind of a person says something like that?" Even at the small scale this is judging in a certain sense, and not just judging, but reveling in the act of it; it's a sad curiosity that sometimes Christians form social bonds based upon shared judgment against others. But, part of my problem is that I've never gotten it straight in my mind as to just what "judge" is supposed to mean. I use the word, I talk about the concept in argument, but what exactly does it mean? Does it mean simply on emotional human terms, does it mean judging facts, behaviors, beliefs, eternal salvation or what? Does it mean I don't like somebody, that I disagree with them, or what? To my mind those forms of judgment—disagreement and (dis)affection—are natural and acceptable. But often we use the word in the area of judging whether a person is "good or bad." I'm not sure this clarifies the issue at all; we never well define what "good" and "bad" mean, but the implication is that we consider them morally inferior to ourselves. I seriously doubt that Jesus would approve of this. We use the word "judge" more definitively in terms of a person's "eternity status," as in, "Yep, that one over there is going to hell for sure if he doesn't change his ways," and that sort of thing. I also seriously doubt that Jesus would approve of this usage, and in fact I'm convinced that he would not. Now, most Christians will say they're judging behavior and acts, not people and souls. To do this is a pretty supportable idea Biblically; it's okay to say that murder is wrong, and you can do it without casting judgment on whether the murderer is morally inferior or going to hell. But the truth is, I'm not sure that the majority of Christians make the distinction.

There's another factor that has long confused me, too. Look at what Jesus says, according to Matthew, in the following invective:

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath. ' You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? And you say, 'Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.' How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, and you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors. You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?" Matthew 23:1-33 (NRSV)

For a person who said do not judge, and for a person who said he was not here to judge the world, Jesus obviously held a strong stand concerning the behavior of these people and—seemingly—their state in the face of God. At first blush, if he wasn't judging them in some way, I don't know what I should call it. So I've long asked myself, "If Jesus said don't judge, isn't he violating his own idea here? Isn't this inconsistent?" But, I think there's a fairly obvious connection or two between the two passages: first of all, in three words, "Pride is bad." Working it out in relation to these passages, if you think about it, pride is at the root of casting judgment, it's at the root of placing yourself above others, it's at the root of condemning others, and it's at the root of hypocrisy. (Admittedly, my conclusion comes as no great surprise, since I believe strongly that pride is the root of all our human problems, so my take on these passages may be more than a bit biased.)

Pride causes us to view ourselves in relation to other people rather than in relation to God. I really tend to believe that Jesus understood that what is good or bad about a person at the most fundamental levels is known only by God. Furthermore, the knowledge between individual and God is the only one that matters. To judge another in a moral sense is to manifest the fact that you are placing yourself in the place of God. Being hypocritical manifests that you are worried about how others see you, about your appearance in their eyes, rather than about how you stand in relationship with God. In short, judging others and hypocrisy are both signs that we have our focus all wrong. Both indicate that we have adopted a person-to-person view of life, rather than a God-to-person view of life. We have failed to understand that all human interrelations are person-to-God-to-person. We have pushed God aside, and attempted to usurp God's position as God. I think this is what steamed Jesus so greatly about the scribes and Pharisees. They talked a great deal about God, but didn't have room for God. All they had room for was placing themselves alongside others, with themselves in the superior position. Jesus just couldn't stand for this. He drew a line. It is very interesting to note that overall in Jesus' ministry he accepted the humble people, some of whom were tax collectors, prostitutes, drunks and the like. But he drew the line at pride.

As to the second connection between the passages, a fair question to ask would be, "So in this case, Jesus didn't seem to allow for the God-person relationship with the scribes and Pharisees. He stepped right in and judged them." Well, apparently, yes, unless one would allow for a view I consider likely. Note that Jesus in the earlier passage says that we ourselves determine the measure of judgment that is poured out upon us. Could it be that Jesus is saying, "Given that you people condemn others based upon a system that you yourself fail to fulfill, given that you are guilty of those things you claim sentence one to hell, then how can you avoid being sentenced to it yourself?" In other words, Jesus wasn't himself judging the scribes and Pharisees; his point was that they were guilty under the standards of judgment they wielded against others. The hypocrites judged themselves, and he was merely pointing it out. While I admit that the felt need to find some consistency between the two passages is mostly a matter of the western modernity's influences in my mind, I consider this analysis to be reasonable enough to be considered seriously. If it is in anyway correct, then there is a contemporary counterpart to it that should be considered, most of all by Christians who are doctrinally legalistic.

There are Christians who claim that believing the "correct" Christian doctrine is absolutely essential to salvation. I'm not saying they simply believe you have to have the Trinity, Immaculate Conception and Resurrection correct. I'm saying they believe things like, oh, if you have a kitchen in your church building, or you play an organ while you sing hymns, or you get the roles of men and women in church mixed up, you're doomed. Needless to say, if you're of a different denomination than they, or perhaps a different congregation of the same denomination, well, you're doomed. I've actually had a conversation with a guy that went like this:

Me: So, are you saying that the people in your church are the only ones going to Heaven?

Him: Oh no. I wouldn't say that. The Bible says we aren't to judge others. But I will say that only people who follow the Bible correctly are going to Heaven. I believe the Bible teaches this quite clearly.

Me: So would you say, though, that only your church follows the Bible correctly?

Him: Well, yes. That's why I'm here in this church.

Me: So you're saying that your church is the only ones going to Heaven?

Him: No. I didn't say that.

Well… yeah, he did. And he's not alone. What's most unsettling about this view is that if you ask somebody who is deeply committed to it, "But what about those people who are humble of heart in following a different doctrine? Won't they be saved in the end by a loving God who reads the hearts of men?" they will answer, "No. I know that sounds like it would be nice, but the Bible teaches that 'there is a way that seems right to man, yet leads to destruction,' and, 'Many people will say to me on that day, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and I will say them to them, Away from me, for I never knew you'." There is no room in these people's minds for being mistaken about what the Bible "really teaches." So, to put things into their frame of reference, wherein a person meets God on Judgment Day and accounts for one's life, it seems to me it would have to go something like this: (1) Since they have said that correct doctrine is essential (the key) to salvation, God will use doctrine to judge them. (2) Obviously, their doctrine is imperfect (as is true of all doctrines), so they deserve to perish. (3) In response, a loving God could and would accept them in Grace and Mercy anyway, based upon humility of heart in their beliefs and upon their love for Him alone, but ... (4) They themselves have said this counts for nothing. Their bad. In this hypothetical scenario, such people would stand condemned, and solely by their own standards; not God's. To my mind, this is essentially why Jesus presented the scribes and Pharisees with a bleak and tragic outlook. They had created this same situation for themselves, and Jesus was stating the obvious. But I digress a bit.

My point? Drawing lines and taking stands are things to do—things we must do—between ourselves and God. Yes, they affect how we live and what we judge as right or wrong for ourselves. They sometimes divide us from others in beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. But are the lines we draw to be lines for other men and women as well? I think not. I think those lines are their business, between them and God. It is okay to disagree with some people. It is okay to not like some people. But it is not okay to presume the ultimate moral state of another, nor his or her ultimate standing in relation to God. Nor is it okay to hate. So, when I spoke in the previous post about divisive forms of Christianity "not being much a Christianity," I meant it. I take that stand. But in making such a statement, be it clear that I'm disagreeing with doctrine; namely doctrine that denies entrance to God's Kingdom from those who humbly desire to be a part of it. Perhaps I am also going so far as to not like some of my fellow Christians. But as for their ultimate moral state and ultimate standing with God? As far as I can tell, they're right here with me, as equals, in strength and weakness, in wisdom and foolishness, for good and for bad, warts and all. Who am I to deny them the Kingdom? I cannot and would not. Thanks be to God, who is no respecter of persons and accepts all of us who remain humble before him in all our disparate—and undoubtedly flawed—beliefs. May God rid me of all my pride, and keep me safe in an ever maturing humility.

This post has an underlying complication, which to my mind is a rather large one, that I will try to address in a later post; one that I started this past week but have yet to finish.

In the vivid darkness of God within us there sometimes come deep movements of love that deliver us entirely, for a moment, from our old burden of selfishness, and number us among those little children of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven.

And when God allows us to fall back into our own confusion of desires and judgments and temptations, we carry a scar over the place where that joy exulted for moment in our hearts.

The scar burns us. The sore wound aches within us, and we remember that we have fallen back into what we are not, and are not yet allowed to remain where God would have us belong. We long for the place He has destined for us and weep with desire for the time when this pure poverty will catch us and hold us in its liberty and never let us go, when we will never fall back from the Paradise of the simple and the little children into the forum of prudence where the wise of this world go up and down in sorrow and set their traps for a happiness that cannot exist. —New Seeds, chapter 31

There are moments in God, beautiful, mind-numbing moments, where the Love of God is glimpsed and all of life becomes crystal clear in its profound simplicity. To the human mind God is full of paradoxes, and the profound nature of that simplicity is one of them. It's an absolutely glorious thing. But true, the moment never lasts, and only the scar remains. And those scars, over time, remind us of God's Love while we are in our normal everyday living. We remember, though we cannot feel at the moment, that it answers everything. We hold onto enough of our memory of those moments that our view of life is forver changed. Even though we fall back to our weakened states of self-absorption, we never forget that Love rules all, and that we are on this earth to be part of that Love.

The souvenirs brought back to our house this weekend include a book of poetry and a poster from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial. I was greatly touched that my wife and daughter would pick these two gifts for me. I like to think that, perhaps, they say something of what I try to stand for in life; that even though I am weak and frail and full of selfishness, I carry the scars and do not forget their pain. The poster is of a very famous quote by Martin Niemoller, a quote which exists in many variations:

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . and by that time there was no one left to speak up.

Niemoller is a very controversial figure because in the 1930's he held anti-Semitic views. To be clear, I know almost nothing of Niemoller's life, but it remains that this quote (or rather, versions of it) appear on walls at both the U.S. and New England Holocaust Memorials. For good or for bad, Niemoller has become somewhat of a hero in relation to the Holocaust. It may be that Niemoller serves as a perfect example of his poem. He didn't speak up for those who were "different" from him, and in the end the system caught up with him—a lesson we should take to heart, I think. Do not believe that we stand alone, cherished and special, while others fall by the wayside. Hatred, fear and insanity are rarely satisfied in erasing only one or two "different" classes of people. Once a single class is done and gone, those who hate have nothing left to do, no one left to hate, until they can invent the next class that is not quite enough like them, and so must be eliminated. The poster I was given notes that the Nazi party created colored symbols to denote each class of people they needed to eliminate in order to cleanse society. Among them were the communists, the socialists, the Jews, the gypsies, the homosexuals, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the emigrants. Should this list give us pause? I think so. I think a list, period, should give us pause.

In those moments where one touches the Love of God, when one glimpses briefly through the gate of the Kingdom of Heaven, one learns that God's love is about a Oneness; about a Love that gathers us one to another in God and makes us all one in God's presence. To divide humans into groups, factions and classes is the antithesis of Loving them. A Christianity which divides and casts out, therefore and quite clearly, is really not much of a Christianity. Yet, to say so is to cause division, and here is where I will work on the complication—another day.

But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person. — My Argument With the Gestapo

I knew May would be a crazy month for my family. Once I finished up class this semester, we were off to Tucson, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada for a whirlwind trip to see a couple of friends' kids graduate; one with an engineering degree and one with a medical degree. And now this week, for the first time in my life I have each of my kids in a different part of the country simultaneously. So, I find it hard to sleep. Not that I'm overwrought with worry; it's just a parent thing. My mind won't settle in a solid sleep. I wake up every hour seeing one of their faces, as if there's something I've forgotten to do for them, some way to care for them. Maybe as a parent of young kids you get so used to constantly doing things with and for them, your mind can't stop feeling like it should be doing so.

I seriously need to find some time to collect my thoughts after the past few weeks, and this week should, in theory, help. With a little time to myself, there should be room for some serious garbage collection in my head. I relish times to do just that. And I've been trying this morning. One of the things that never fails to amaze me about such collection is that to a person like me, it always becomes more clear that the things of this life are unclear. What I mean by this is that I'm not a person who likes to slice, dice, divide, label, name and categorize life. I tend to be an integrator. And so, when I say things become more unclear, I don't mean that they are getting separated further and that I can't fit them together or find a place for them. Rather, I mean that life becomes more integrated, and all the things begin to blend together. Human life is very grey to me, but not because there is a lack of sharpness and meaning to it. It is simply that all things are connected, and they are connected to such an extent that even the connections cannot be well identified. This may be one of the reasons I admir