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Writing about what I have been reading and encountering in the media. |
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WELCOME TO MY BLOG! I comment on things I am reading, thinking about, encountering in media, and spiritual issues. I hope you will find something interesting. PS. I love feedback... |
| Message for Cabool Chruch of the Brethren February 12, 2023 Scripture readings for the day: Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Psalm 119:1-8 Matthew 5:21-26, 33-37 I Corinthians 3:1-9 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Ps 19:14 The scriptures for today have given me the opportunity to talk about something that bothers me: the split in Christianity in America today. As the pundits and talking heads most often describe it, the split is between “evangelical” Christians and the left, whom the “evangelicals” describe as secular humanists. The people who call themselves evangelicals seem to want everyone to believe they represent all of Christianity. There is a movement called “Christian Nationalist” who preach that the government must be guided by Christian principals. Unfortunately, they do not trust Christian principles to make that happen. They lie about people not in the movement frightening people who are, to create a wall around their movement. They lie to accomplish their goals in government knowing full well they are not acting on the will of the people they say they represent. They have correctly understood that a significant portion, but not the majority by any stretch, of voters are followers and they are skillful at gathering them in. In addition, they use coercion to force people to follow their rules even though many of the rules they want to enforce go against the intentions presented in today’s scripture. It seems to me that they have lost faith if they ever had it. This is a sad situation. The lesson from Deuteronomy ends with verses 19-20: I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord you God, obeying him and holding fast to him, for that means life. Psalm 119 begins with: happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. When putting that together with Matthew it becomes clear that we are instructed to keep our faith alive and healthy and let that be our guide. Before I discuss Corinthians, I want to put these in context. Deuteronomy is considered to be essentially Moses’ last will and testament. This passage is near the end of the book and Moses is instructing the people about to enter a new land about a new and empowering vision of how to live a faithful life. The same message is found in the Psalm. The passage from Matthew is a continuation of the sermon on the mount and follows the sections that say you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. In the portion selected for today, Jesus addresses issues of conflict and refers to the 10 Commandments. The sermon is given to Jews and non-Jews, rich and poor, male and female. He admonishes all to follow the laws of Moses and the laws of the Torah. It seems as if he is honoring the tradition of the community gathering every 7 years to review the laws, but he is also adding his vision of expanded inclusion. In I Corinthians 3:1-9, Paul is intervening in conflict in the Corinthian Christian community. He bases his intervention on the earlier admonitions to follow the law, to put God first and to reconcile conflict. The conflict was so bad that Appolos, the leader of that community, had left. It seems some people thought Paul was their leader and others attached themselves to Appollos. Paul came in to reconcile the split. Here we are with our own split and no one person has the power that Paul had to resolve it. The Christian Nationalists want to provide that leadership. Unfortunately, they are trying to impose their idea of what needs to be done on people who are not Christian, and people who are but see Christ in a different light. This has been done before. We have the history of torture and murder of early Christians by people who wanted to control them. There are the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades. The Third Reich rewrote the Bible to support their thinking and then forced it on everyone. They tried to force it on Europe and North Africa and were very active in American politics. Their goal was to take control of the world. In this country there was genocide of the natives, and slavery. Colonialism by European and American leaders was justified with their interpretation of scripture so the colonialist could steal their resources. In some countries, including but not limited to China and India, Christians are persecuted. In Russia, the church endorses persecution of ethnic minorities, women and LGBTQ people. In Iran, a small group of Muslims took over the government and forced their version of Islam on the entire country, as do the Taliban in Afghanistan. Here, the Christian Nationalists are actively trying to control what children read and lay judgement on persons who take action to resolve their experience of sexual ambiguity. They are working hard to eliminate women’s rights. The type of government they want for us is called theocracy. Our scriptures for today say we are to place God at the center of our lives. Nowhere does it say we are to force our beliefs on others. In Corinthians Paul states clearly and directly we are not to put responsibility for our faith and happiness under the control of any person but ourselves. The message is that following the word of God will bring happiness and peace. You probably have noticed that when a person is happy, their happiness spills out on the people around them. This appears in the form of inviting, welcoming, nurturing, teaching and protecting. The Christian Nationalists have ideals they have gleaned from scripture. This is perfectly okay both under the Constitution and within the realm of God. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to feel the love of God is enough. They want everyone to conform to their ideas and priorities whether they or we want to or not. It is my impression that they are not trusting God very much. They are trying to usurp his power. They are putting man ahead of God. They welcome people who will help them gain power, but judge and vilify those who disagree. We as Brethren work to bring peace and act as best we can to love our neighbor. Even so, we have experienced a split in our denomination. As citizens of a Democracy, we have an obligation to understand our government well enough to make informed decisions as voters. We are free to vote for people who agree with our take on things. We are free to dialogue with our neighbors to develop a common understanding of what is best. We are not free to force our ideas on anyone. We have people posing as Christian running for office. We have people posing as Jewish also running for office. And we have faithful Christians participating in politics. How do we tell the difference? As the song says, we will know they are Christian by their love. If they try to bring about things that help most people and harm no one, they are behaving within scripture whether they profess Christianity or not. If they engage in self-serving behavior that puts some or all citizens at a disadvantage, if they break the laws of the democracy, they are not acting within scripture. They are not trusting God. They live unhappy lives. Let us choose happiness. Let us spill our happiness into our communities by nurturing, welcoming, and protecting the agreements that we have made and that have been made among our ancestors that function to support our rights, and our neighbors’ rights to our own values and ideals. Let us live as Jesus lived following the will of God and respecting our neighbors. Thank you for your attention. |
| As I continue to wade through The Power Worshipers by Katherine Stewart, I see another thing that may be the overall problem faced by the Christian Nationalists. On page 150, Rick Ridings is quoted as reporting a conversation directly with God: I said, how will the nations learn to change? The Lord said, ‘it must play.’ He pauses for emphasis: The Trump card. What I hear in this is a man who says it is his job to change the nations. Since acting in faith has not worked, as he sees it, he must act like Trump. He does not acknowledge this is a destructive path of manipulation, dishonesty, and greed. I think this is a man who has lost faith (or never had it) in the power of God. He does not seem aware that in order to do the Lord’s work, he must do as Jesus did. I think of this sort of Christian as an Old Testament Christian. By this I mean they have failed to notice that Jesus taught a new way of living that honored Jewish law but reached out to communities surrounding the Jewish community with love and acceptance. He also taught that putting your trust in humanity will go only so far. In fact, trusting in God helps one survive the foibles and missteps of humanity. He didn’t tell us we are to change the nations. He taught us to be a nation of respect and authentic concern for the well-being of others, all others regardless of race, religions, sex, or national identity. This man, Rick Ridings, uses the name of God to legitimize his quest for power to control others. He talks about controlling people that are not his business to control because they have not asked for his control nor have they expressed a need for external control. He says he wants to walk in the path of Trump. He specifically says he heard that from God. So, that is what he is organizing others to do. He wants them to listen to his idea and follow it. If he focused on Christ's words, his whole house of cards would collapse. Jesus says to follow him and never mentions following anyone else. Rick Ridings and the people like him are trying to establish a new religion based on greed and earthly power. Their presentation is very confusing, but they are not confused. They want to run things their way and they don’t seem to recognize that they have abandoned Christ in the process. This is sad for them and dangerous for us. We need to look to Christ for guidance in the face of all of this. If we want an interpretation of Christianity that is respecting of Christ, we need to look to the people who are nurturing communities with respect all over the world. There are myriads of Christians working every day to bring peace among neighbors. They run child care organizations where children are taught to love each other. They run organizations that bring food to the hungry and safety to those in danger. They teach forgiveness, acceptance and that they are responsible for their own behavior. They teach that the way of Trump is a mistake without ever mentioning Trump or any other leader who does not demonstrate the presence of the Holy Spirit in their behavior. There are a lot of faithful Christians in the world. There are a lot of other people who do not profess Christ but who demonstrate the presence of love in their behavior. The Christian Nationalists appear to have lost faith and I fear they are looking in the wrong place to regain it. |
| I continue to read Katherrine Stewart's book, The Power Worshipers. This morning, as I read about the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby, I noticed something I have seen before but not thought about. Christian Nationalists, a group which includes a lot of antisemites, often quote from the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. If they hate the Jewish people, why do they justify their behavior using the Jewish Torah? Of course, this is only one of the many inconsistencies and contradictions present in their publications. There is the previously mentioned problem of cozying up to the mostly unreligious Libertarians. There is also the problem of describing the mixture of founding father's spiritual beliefs as consistently Christian when this is an inaccurate description of their published spiritual ideas. Then there is their stated belief that they are standing up for freedom of religion while making it clear they mean freedom to make everyone live by their religion. The most troubling contradiction is they say they are Christian while strongly opposing loving neighbors who are different from them such as immigrants, and people from different cultures and religions. I could go on. To make my bias perfectly clear, I prefer internal consistency and fact-based reasoning and I find neither of these in Christian Nationalist thinking. End of rant. |
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