A Conversation with a Bird

A mockingbird has laid claim to my back yard.

This is nothing new. Multiple generations of mockingbirds have staked out their territories here. I’ve lived in this house for almost 20 years and there’s always been a mockingbird squawking and flying around, acting like it owns the place. Snotty little creatures, they are.

Mockingbirds also seem to be insomniacs because I hear them singing all through the night (I just read that they are particularly noisy during full moons, thereby revealing their affinity with vampires and werewolves). They are also copycats (okay, copybirds) because they mimic the sounds that other birds make.

I often sit on my back porch to read. The resident mockingbird would sit up on a telephone wire and scold me once in a while, but mostly it would ignore me. But this weekend, I experimented with a little bit of mockery of my own.

I stood under the wire where the bird was perched and did my humanly best to mimic the call that I heard. I noticed that it started looking at me in the weird bird way that they do, with their heads moving back and forth so that their sideways eyes can see you. Every time I copied the bird’s call, it would give me that look and then make another sound, which I would feed back to it. After a while, I retreated to my cherished spot on the porch and continued my reading.

In just a few minutes, the bird landed on the railing near to where I was sitting and gave me its look. We exchanged bird talk for a while, and then it flew under my porch, flapped around, and took off. We’ve continued this little human-avian exchange several times over the past couple of days.

I wondered: Is the bird trying to connect with me? Is it seeking to establish a unique bond with me that would draw us both into the complexities and wonders of the created order? So I did some Internet investigation and explored the various calls of the mockingbird.

As it turns out, the bird’s call to me was an aggressive one, telling me, in bird essence, to get off of his lawn. It could be that, in its astonishment that one of the large, clumsy, land dwellers would speak in bird language, it still wanted to poke its sharp little beak into my eyes and then snip my aorta so that I would cease to be a threat to its territorial claim. Or, it could just have been having fun with me.

I choose to believe the latter theory. It occurs to me that if I would figure out how to do a non-aggressive call, the bird and I might become friends (after all, it probably did sound like I was picking a fight). And I’d better be sure that I don’t attempt something that could be interpreted as a mating call. That could have difficult ramifications.

I tend to worry too much about global things. There’s a lot going on all around us—politically, socially, economically, and even religiously—and I’m concerned with how we Christians are or are not responding to these things. I worry about how dramatic and rapid cultural shifts will affect Christian communities of faith and their role of ministry in the world. I struggle with how reactive we can all be and how we aren’t very good at listening to one another, looking one another in the eye even as we disagree. These things trouble me.

It was a life-giving respite to share a conversation with a bird. Yes, as it turns out, we were speaking aggressively to each other. But the bird came close and we made eye contact, two mortal subjects sharing the breath of God in our bodies. In that contact, annoyance turned into communication, and aggression turned into curiosity. I am coming to like this bird.

I can’t determine exactly what the bird thinks of me, but I’m appreciative that it came close and looked me in the eye. And, to be clear, the lawn is mine.

A Scout is . . .

I am troubled about the recent news stories surrounding the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) organization’s ruling to allow openly gay boys to become scouts, in effect overturning a ban on gay membership. There are two things that trouble me.

First, BSA is open to boys as young as seven years old (Cub Scouts). A boy can enter the ranks of the Boy Scouts at age eleven (that’s when I joined up). The levels of cognitive, social, moral, physical, and sexual development are all over the map when you get boys (girls also, but boys are my topic today) of varying ages together.

I get concerned when developmental labels are put on children while they are still in the process of developing. My guess is that most boys join the Boy Scouts (or move from the Cub program) at the younger ages of eligibility. I wonder how many 11-13 year olds have sufficiently moved through their developmental stages so that a label of sexual orientation can be placed on them?

I do not object, however, to the lifting of the ban. Young boys (and adolescents) are working through many complex developmental issues all at once. It seems appropriate to me to open membership to boys in general rather than attempting to encourage categorizations about sexual orientation that may be premature.

If there is a concern about sexual behavior among scouts, it would be a mistake to assume that having a ban on homosexual membership would stop that from happening in the first place. In his book Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis talks about the sexual domination of younger boys by the older boys in the boarding school where he lived. Boys get into these kinds of shenanigans all the time. It’s not a good thing, but it’s also not a new thing.

My other concern is about the very loud and vocal exodus out of the BSA by very conservative Christian groups. I am troubled when Christians extract themselves from the world and create competing organizations. I recognize that there are times when extraction may be appropriate, but I’m not convinced that this is one of those times.

The subtle message that leaks through the reaction to the BSA’s ruling is that there are certain kinds of people that are outside the scope of Christian ministry and care. Perhaps there is even the implication that there are people out there who stand outside the possibility of God’s redemptive love (unless, of course, that they get their acts together—can I please hear my Reformed friends reminding us, “By faith alone!”?) This is, in my view, a problematic message that is being given to the world.

Not all things that happen in our culture should be embraced—I get that. But there needs to be deeper reflection taking place than simply drawing a hasty line in the sand and creating competing subcultures that make Christians appear both irrelevant and ineffective.

[a personal note: I was only in the Boy Scouts for a year. But, to this day, I can quote the BSA oath and the 12-points of the Scout Law. I can’t remember where I left my car keys, but I remember all of that. I guess it’s an okay trade-off]

Praying "In the Name of Jesus"

I was once asked to offer an opening prayer at an event that was attended by several hundred people, and I was aware before I prayed that the group did not hold a common faith. Some were Christians, but a few others were Jewish, and still others considered themselves irreligious. I thought a long time about the prayer, and opened the prayer addressing “God,” and closed the prayer with “Amen.”

A few of my Christian friends were concerned that I didn’t close my prayer with “in the name of Jesus.” While it is true that I was hoping to allow more than just the Christians in the room to enter into the prayer, I argued that all of the prayers that Christians pray, regardless of the closing words, are prayed in the name of the Jesus. Also, to make those words a requirement for each prayer is to cast a bit of shadow on the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray.

Why do we pray, “In the name of Jesus”? Does God need to hear that, or do we? It isn’t a formulaic command in Scripture, as far as I can tell. What do we think is happening when we pray that way?

I’ve been thinking about this topic again, and reread a paper titled “Prayer in the Name of Jesus” that I wrote for a Systematic Theology course in 1997, when I was a seminary student. I think I still agree with myself, at least on some things. I share excerpts from it now:

“Our perception of God’s greatness and mystery can result in a sense of distance that makes him seem difficult to approach. If Jesus is seen as one who is distinct from God because he seems familiar in his humanness, then he becomes more accessible than God. If prayer is directed to Jesus on that basis, then he has become less than God, slightly more than a man, and an inappropriate target for prayer. In that role Jesus becomes middle-man rather than mediator; if he stands in the middle, separate from humanity and God, then prayer to him is misdirected.

“When prayer is offered to God in the name of Jesus, it is done in the recognition that God has made himself known by revealing himself in the person of Jesus Christ. We pray to our Father in Heaven, acknowledging what he has done for us through his son, Jesus. The phrase ‘in the name of Jesus’ is not the equivalent of first-class postage, used as a tag at the end of a prayer to insure it gets priority attention. It reflects the understanding that we, as ones who have been redeemed by Christ, are praying to the loving, compassionate, gracious Father.

“When prayer is rightly directed to Jesus (rather than to God in Jesus’ name) it is done by virtue of God’s revelation to us by his Spirit, that he is the very one we see in Christ. To pray to Jesus is not to lower the hurdle of prayer, but to adore God the Father in his appearance to us in his Son. Such a prayer is directed to God the son, who has come to us as one us to reveal the Father.

“Jesus is God who has become flesh, rather than flesh who has become God. He is, therefore, the legitimate object of our worship and prayer. When we pray in the name of Jesus we are praying to God who has revealed himself to us . . . Prayer to Jesus as the living God is the equivalent of prayer to God the Father in the name of Jesus the Son.”

On Abortion and Artificial Categories

I appreciated Rachel Held Evens thoughtful post regarding her evolving views regarding abortion. It continues to be a difficult and painful debate (it is rarely a conversation, and I appreciate Rachel’s attempts at civil discourse), especially with the recent discovery of the horrors inside Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic.

As the Gosnell case unfolded, I began thinking how the arguments for “ pro-choice” (which have actually devolved into arguments that are “pro-abortion”) have successfully altered the public perception of life by segmenting and depersonalizing the early stages of human life in order to turn the discussion to things abstract and legally categorical.

So, zygotes, embryos and fetuses end up having little or no relationship to the human beings that will emerge at birth. It’s a handy way to win the argument, and it has been fairly successful in the western world in altering people’s thinking about the acceptability of abortion.

How do we who follow Jesus respond to this? Christians are not unified on the subject. We easily fall into the same public categories of pro-life and pro-choice, the former being conservative, the latter progressive.

The securing of victory for pro-choice proponents has been found in the law. The law has offered legality to the practice of abortion even while setting boundaries to the timing of the procedure—boundaries that are often pushed.

Christians have faced off with both abortion and infanticide in the past. In the earliest years of the emerging Christian movement, one Christian writer highlighted the common cultural practice of abandoning unwanted infants outside the city limits where they would either die of exposure or be killed by wild animals. He indicated that neither Jews nor Christians discarded their children that way, and were even known to rescue abandoned babies and take them into their own families.

Until the late fourth century, infanticide was an accepted practice in both Greek and Roman societies. But there was a technicality: To avoid actually committing murder, the unwanted infant would be left out in the wilderness, where it would either die of exposure (a natural process) or be rescued by the gods or a kind traveler. One defender of the faith remarks:

“First of all, you [pagans] expose your children, so that they may be taken by any compassionate passer-by, to whom they are quite unknown!” Tertullian (c. 197, W) 3.26.

His response to his pagan detractor? We don’t do that.

We’ve created a lot of technicalities in our culture as well. We have legal lines that we think offer us protection and justification. That might work in the public square, but it shouldn’t work for we who follow Jesus. There’s an artificiality to that perceived safety zone that is proven every time the law is changed. The law of the land may be important, but it often speaks more about majority preference than it does ethics and morals (for example, in the mid-1800’s, the Supreme Court ruled that states were able to enslave human beings imported from the southern hemisphere. We’re all probably glad that there were people who claimed that the law didn’t speak for them).

Rather than thinking about human life (or any life, for that matter) as a series of disconnected phases, I prefer to think of life as a unified trajectory that starts with conception. There is an inevitability to the cellular creation that we call a zygote: It’s destiny is to emerge into the light of day and become present to the world.

And, for we who follow Jesus, we might also say that such a life is intended to affirm and nurture the life it encounters in the world. If we are going to use the term “pro-life,” then it ought to relate to more than the denial of the practice of abortion. It should relate to how we view war, capital punishment, and poverty for starters.

I’ve spoken of this before in relation to gay marriage. If we fall into the pre-created categories of discourse that come to us from the public square, then we stop short of thoughtful theological reflection on issues of tremendous importance. We in the church seem to be particularly short on that kind of reflection these days.

O Lord, make haste to help us.

Thinking of Boston

This has been a very sad week. The drama that unfolded in Boston drew us all into the pain, sorrow and anxiety that flowed through the city. While there is relief that one suspect remains alive and is now in custody, perhaps able to supply answers to the “why” of this tragic act of violence, most of us have become realistic enough over the past decade or so to know that our relief will be short lived. There’s always another danger waiting to make itself known to us.

I know that we have our share of problems and failures here in the US. But I must say that I’m fascinated by how things seemed to play out in Boston. The chief of police appeared to asking rather than demanding that residents stay inside and be willing to inform police of any suspicious behavior they might observe through their windows. From what I understand, people cooperated willingly with that request.

When the owner of the boat where 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding found him there, he didn’t alert his neighbors so that they could pull the young man out and beat him to death and hang his body from a light pole. The man contacted the police and waited.

I suppose there will be things posted on various social media sites that scream for the young suspect’s blood—these things appear to be unavoidable these days. But what I’ve seen so far are posts expressing sorrow that a young person would commit such a heinous act and then have his own life thrown away. People have encouraged us to pray for him just as we pray for those who have suffered at his hand. I am glad for these words.

So, yes, there will be the enacting of justice, if by justice we mean setting things right again (although, that will never quite be the case for those who have suffered. And keep in mind that justice is not the same as retribution). There will be consequences experienced by young Dzhokhar, who will never be free again and is probably grieving the loss of his own brother.

It is sobering for we, who trust our lives to Jesus, to remember who we are in times like this. We are called to care for widows, orphans, the foreigner, and all who suffer. We are also called to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. These can be tough assignments, but it is what we do, and must do. Not everyone will do this, but we must. That is how we exist as the light of the world, the salt of the earth. We do this because we follow Jesus, and we also do it on behalf of the rest of the world.

Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on us.

Gay Marriage: Convictions and Ministry

The tension between religious convictions and ministry is nothing new. For centuries followers of Jesus have visited people in prison, even though the ones imprisoned may have broken laws to get there. They have cared for people ravaged by plagues, putting themselves at risk of infection, even as the general populace assumed that the sickness was some sort of divine act of judgment. Jesus’ call for his disciples to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them is a relational tension that most of us find difficult but necessary to our Christian witness.

Roy Hattersley, a UK journalist and atheist, marvels that a Christian leader he knows holds views toward homosexuality that Hattersley finds ridiculous, yet he marvels that the man also goes to the margins of society and cares for those very people whose lifestyles have landed them in the dark and degraded shadows of civilization. Hattersley notes that he and his like-minded friends do not do that sort of thing. Faith, he observes, does breed charity.

I read a journal article once that speculated about first and second-century slaves finding a place in the early church. Some of those slaves—both male and female—might have been forced into prostitution. That would have been a challenge for those early faith communities that would have found prostitution to be an abominable practice. Speculation or not, it is not a big leap to imagine those small churches bringing ministry to the lives of ones that unfortunate, living in the tension between conviction and ministry.

In the early days of the emergence of AIDS, a number of Christians visited gay people languishing in the horror of that yet-undefined disease, and cared for them in the midst of the suffering patients’ fear and anguish. In an LA Times story that I read at the time, the caregivers refused to answer questions about judgment on the suffering. They came only to care for the ones in pain.

I predict that, once same-sex marriage becomes commonplace, that some Christian communities will bar the doors and make their stand. That’s their prerogative. Others, however, are likely to respond with an intuition birthed of the Spirit of God, and bring ministry in places that require a collision with their convictions.

There are serious implications to this kind of response. If churches reach out in care to gay people—including those who are married to each other and have children—are they participating in the ministry of Christ? Has Jesus gone before them to those places? In doing such ministry, are people of faith finding that Jesus is present in the most unlikely of circumstances, this friend of sinners?

Followers of Jesus have, since the unleashing of the church 2,000 years ago, put themselves in places that are risky, scandalous, and dangerous. We shouldn’t expect that we, in the perceived safety of the western world, should be sheltered from that call to ministry.

Following Jesus may not be for the faint of heart. But it clearly is for those who have a heart.

Really—Is This Marriage?

In the debates I’ve heard within the context of the church regarding same-sex marriage, the call to preserve marriage as a union between a man and woman is referred to as “traditional.” It’s a fairly accurate term, since marriage has been looked at that way for a very long time. It is too bad, in my view, that anyone who finds a shift in that tradition difficult is often labeled as a hater or a denier of human rights.

On the other hand, those of us who are heterosexual followers of Jesus and interested in the debate about marriage might be missing something in the conversation. There’s a mirror being held up to us and we are avoiding taking a look at the reflection.

First of all, while the statistics are a challenge to accurately nail down, the evidence suggests that divorce rates in the US are ridiculously high (including for folks who are Christians), marriage rates are falling and premarital co-habitation is rising.

We have to look in the mirror and ask ourselves: Is this the tradition we are seeking to preserve? It is, after all, our reality. Or is it a lost ideal that we treasure? Is traditional marriage something that we heteros have mangled and crushed so thoroughly that it is hardly recognizable as marriage any longer?

There’s a story of an artist who would take several cellos, smash them with a sledgehammer, cover them with resin, and then sell them as art. It was as though he was asking the art community, “What do you think: Is this art?”

It seems like the gay community is lining up for marriage licenses and asking the rest of us, “Given that you’ve slaughtered the traditional concept of marriage, what do you think: Is this marriage?”

Second, when we look closely at all the people whose images are reflected in the mirror, do we only see them and us? If we look carefully we will see a common humanity that stands in tragic solidarity before God, all made in God’s image and yet fractured and broken. At the same time, it is a humanity that constitutes the world that God loves, a world that God, through Jesus Christ, is reconciling to himself, not counting their trespasses against them (see 2 Corinthians 5).

Since the battle for same-sex marriage rights may be over, we heterosexual Christians have the opportunity to do some self-reflection and start the conversation anew. Rather than point outwardly at the other while attempting to preserve a sense a righteousness, it is time for us to confess our own brokenness before God—including the sexual misadventures, fantasies, and deviances that roll through our heterosexual minds—and recognize our complicity in the sins of the world (see Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 about the connection between the mind and sin).

If we expect to participate in the ongoing ministry of Jesus in the world, then we will have to do so confessionally and with repentance. Our rapidly changing culture—one in which our story of faith is losing its dominance—is still our context for ministry. We don’t minister in the abstract; we minister in what is real.

And to do so with integrity, we need to look deeply into that mirror.

Christianity and Angry Critics

I’ve been reading various blog comments regarding Christianity on a number of sites. I find myself perplexed and bothered by the vitriolic responses by some non-religious folks who find the Christian faith to be stupid, violent, evil, repulsive, and dangerous (one commenter even offered the hope that a certain high-profile TV preacher would be “taken out” by some disillusioned parishioner).

One thing I notice is that much of the angry comments are crafted around a lot of popular distortions of Christian faith—including some distortions maintained by Christians themselves. On occasion I read critiques against Christians by atheists and am somewhat disturbed that I don’t entirely disagree with them.

It is rare to see a religious skeptic taking issue with legitimate biblical scholars or theologians. The kind of reasonable reflection that comes from some of those Christians in the academic world is not typically the fuel that lights up the commentator’s fires. Most of the attack is on popular religion and too much of it reeks of deep hatred and even violence.

I worry about this. I don’t mind that some people find Christians to be irrelevant or mistaken—that’s been going on for a couple of thousand years. But I am concerned when the blogosphere carries comments and declarations suggesting that a purging of Christianity from society would be the balm that soothes the wounds of the nation (although people like the Emperor Nero and Adolf Hitler thought the same thing).

I wonder if there aren’t two things going on here:

1. Through the angry words of the critics, should we who follow Jesus take an honest look at ourselves and see if the critiques are, in any way, warranted? Is it possible that God could be speaking through some of the more thoughtful critics, and even through the ones who are rageful?

2. Could much of the anger that we hear be grounded in the perception that Christianity—at least in America—is not so much a description of the movement of faithful people who follow Jesus, but instead is a dominant political and social force that is viewed as an oppressor of freedom? Is the fury that we witness a tool for unseating the perceived power of Christendom?

This is disturbing stuff and we ignore it to our peril. Strategizing ways to retain or gain power is not, in my view, the answer. But I think the answer might be found in revisiting our identity as followers of the humble king who “came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). We may truly end up being pushed to the margins of society (as has happened elsewhere in the history of the world), but it may be that we meet Jesus anew at those places at the edge.

The Biggest Threat to the American Way of Life

I’ve just discovered a very dangerous group of subversives who threaten the consumer demand, free-market capitalism system that makes America great. Forget the Socialists, the Communists, the Green Party or any other group that seeks to undermine all that is great about western civilization. This group is more potentially devastating than any other.

They are called followers of Jesus.

I avoid the terms Christian, Protestant, Catholic, or any other moniker that seeks to create a definable and predictable category. These people can be found throughout those faith systems and probably wouldn’t be accepted by their own religious tribes if their values and actions were popularly known. They are clearly a minority group, but one whose potential influence could undermine our preferred way of life.

Here’s why they are dangerous.

They are refusing to buy things without knowing their origin. If a shirt at a megastore has a label that says “Made in ¬¬¬¬____________” (fill in the blank with any country in the southern hemisphere or in Asia), they want to know the conditions of the factory and the quality of the treatment of the workers. They claim that these invisible weavers of expensive clothing are kin to them, co-humans made in the image of God, and the relationship between production and consumption matters. If they don’t get a satisfactory answer, then they won’t buy the product. Such activity limits the power of consumer shopping and potentially diminishes corporate profits.

They do the same thing with food. They see some strange connection between their faith and the natural (or as they call it, “created”) order, and have either started growing their own fruits and vegetables, buying only from local producers, or at least only buying from larger markets that guarantee to have “fair trade” products.

One the most potentially deadly plans of this group is to stop spending large amounts of money and refusing to dive deeply into credit card debt during the holidays—especially Christmas. A diminishing of holiday binge spending would have a disastrous effect on retailers and their end of the year numbers. The stock market would reel if the trend expanded to larger groups, such as the Evangelical voting block or Roman Catholics.

There is more, of course, such as caring for the poor (an obvious bleeding-heart, socialist move), shunning violence (a potential threat to national security), loving one’s enemy (a denial of the nation’s manifest destiny and sovereignty). But it’s the financial impact of this group that is the most immediate threat.

These people are our enemies (of course, they are difficult enemies to have since they claim to love us) and cannot be ignored. They seem to have forgotten what happened to their namesake—Jesus—and the way he was dispatched for attempting to disrupt the dominant culture. The same thing could happen to them. They probably never factored in suffering and death in their commitments to follow their Messiah.

Let’s hope this never catches on with other religious people. Keeping things as they are is the highest priority.

Christians and Muslims: Chrislam? Islianity?

There’s been some new controversy lately about Christians and Muslims doing scandalous things like talking with each other and working on common projects for the good of others. The stir this time is about Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church speaking with a large group of Muslims about working together in peace projects. Some have labeled Warren’s efforts, as well as the efforts of others, to be leading toward a path of syncretism, that is, morphing Christianity and Islam together to form a new, apostate religion called “Chrislam.”

I have friends and colleagues who regularly participate in faith dialogues with both Muslims and Mormons. The unique thing about this kind of dialogue is that the common ground is Jesus—different ways of looking at Jesus, to be sure, but Jesus nonetheless. A lot of criticism as also come their way, primarily from Christians who don’t think this is a good idea.

I heard of a man—a Christian leader—who was asked to speak to a group of non-Christians. They were very interested in Jesus, but had been formed by a religious and social world that was filled with multiple deities, none of which even closely resembled the God of the Bible.

So the man accepted the invitation and quickly came to the conclusion that these people had found favor with God, in spite of the fact that they had no understanding of orthodox Christianity and had certainly not gone through any of the steps that this man had undertaken to show a commitment to Christian faith.

When word got out, his fellow leaders called him on the carpet and wanted to know what this was about. It was scandalous, this thing he had done. It was the equivalent of someone going into a mosque full of devout and prayerful Muslims and, out of a perceived obedience to God, declaring that the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus had found favor with them and had accepted them before they could quote the Apostles’ Creed or get baptized.

Anyway, the man declared that the very Spirit of God—the Holy Spirit—had visited these people and that he had seen evidence of this. So the leaders marveled at what God seemed to be doing, even though it would be quite some time before someone actually scoured the Bible to figure out how it all fit in God’s plan for the world.

You can read that story for yourself. It’s in the Bible—Acts chapters 10 and 11, to be precise. The event didn’t start a new religion, but it did morph the emerging Christian church from a distinctively Jewish movement to one that brought Jews and Gentiles together as one people—the people of God. It would be Paul who would later give biblical and theology reasons for all of this. The book of Romans is mostly about that.

I wonder how things might have looked if Peter and the rest of the early Christian leaders had taken a combative stance against the Gentiles rather than taking the risk to see what God was doing? I wonder what would happen if we who claim to follow Jesus could take the risk of following him into some places that we deem to be scandalous? What if, upon going into those scandalous places, we were to find that God was already there, at work among the people that comprise the world that he loves?

Where was God?

I stood yesterday over the huge bin of shoes, the smell of old leather hanging in the air like a dim memory. A young woman standing near me was weeping. I saw a small shoe among the thousands that the Nazis took from the Jews. It looked about the size that one of my grandsons wears.

The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC provides visitors with a startling, heart-breaking experience. That such a horrific series of evil events could occur in recent history is almost unthinkable, but the museum refuses to let the story die.

People have to ask, after witnessing the accounts of the genocides of World War II: "Where was God?" I asked it a number of times myself. But it occured to me that maybe God was doing what he always does--calling the church and the world to enact his justice, to rescue the oppressed.

Maybe too many weren't listening. Many German leaders--leaders in both the church and the state--listened to Hitler, but not to God. Nations--including the US--shut their ears and refused to take in the persecuted strangers, allowing immigration limits to trump the call to alleviate human suffering and to provide care for the stranger.

Others, however, did listen. Denmark protected its Jewish citizens from Nazi demands. The Dominican Republic took in 100,000 Jewish refugess. Faithful Christians and people of good conscience protected as many as they could, often suffering harsh consequences for their courageous acts of rescue.

I believe that God was at work during that dark time in world history, not only suffering with the oppressed, but also calling out for people to stop the machinery of terror and rescue those targeted by Hitler's insane, murderous schemes.

I wonder what our ears are closed to right now? I wonder what my ears . . .

On Being Right

I had a lively conversation with some of my students yesterday. We talked together about some of the more significant issues that Christian leaders are facing today: Same-sex marriage and ordination, illegal immigration, religious pluralism, and so on. These are issues that were not on the larger cultural table even twenty or thirty years ago, at least to the degree that they are now.

We talked about how we are always struggling with assumptions about what is acceptable, biblical, and right, while at the same time being confronted with principles that create difficult tensions for us. So our faith tradition might, for example, stand in opposition to same-sex marriage. Yet, if a same-sex couple were to approach one of us and ask for help and counsel, would we refuse them? What if their adopted child had been coming to our church with a friend, and the parents later showed up, wondering if they could be part of such a community of faith? What if we lead a church in a California or Arizona border town, where emotions run high regarding illegal immigration, and a family in our neighborhood—a family without proper US documentation—needs help, do we reach out or turn away because of their illegal status? Either way, do we feel an obligation to turn them in to the authorities?

These are not random, hypothetical questions. They happen. And without deep, theological reflection, we run the risk of sacrificing human beings on altars of rightness. The tensions are not insignificant, and Christian leaders need more than a list of rules in order to respond with integrity.

Here’s a precedent from the Bible. The rule for the first followers of Jesus was that, in order to enter into this new life and to receive the Holy Spirit, a person had to become part of the Jewish community. It made sense: Jesus and the disciples were Jewish, they were all in Israel, Jesus said that he came for his own people, and so on. But when the Holy Spirit fell upon a group of Gentiles in Antioch, a tension was created. Now the rules were crashing against a new reality that involved real human beings and the apparent work of God. The early Christians struggled with this, and the former rule of ethnic affiliation ultimately gave way to the new principle of God’s intentions for the world (see Acts 10-11).

We need to think a lot about where we begin with people. There is a tendency for us (and with most people) to put others in categories (gay, illegal, divorced, apostate, etc.) and react with sets of rules that keep things orderly. That way, we can end with things left in tact (this didn’t work for the earliest Christians, who found their whole world turned upside down when the Spirit fell on the Gentiles). Rather than begin in those categorical places of “sin” (as if we don’t fit in any of those categories), we might consider beginning with other people as co-humans made in the image of God, co-sinners seeking new life. That place of commonality changes our assumptions about others and draws us into the recognition of God’s common grace (as my Reformed friends might say) to us.

Along with Peter and the early Church leaders, we must hold loosely to our rules. After all, the people of God have a long and chronicled history of getting things wrong. We are not exempt from that.