Lies My Pastor Told Me#2- Doubt it the Opposite of Faith

Sunday November 2, 2014- Lies My Pastor Told Me #4- James:1: 4-9, Doubting Thomas (John)

                                                            Doubt is the opposite of faith

            A long time ago I learned a very hard lesson that has stood the test of time: There is no one more intelligent than the college freshman.  Ok maybe we should replace intelligent with certain.  Because if you listen to many students across campus who are here for the first time, at least at the beginning, there is a notion of certainty.  They are certain that they want to be an engineer, certain that veterinary school will be what they do with their life, and they are certain that they already know everything they need to know about the world and college is just one big party where you check off an endless list of things to do.  But they have everything already figured out.  I’ve even had students who I’ve reached out to say, I’ll let you know if I need any advice, but I’m pretty good.

To which I say, of course GOOD LUCK.

            Because when you really get into it, and perhaps when 4 years later you realize you are actually going to graduate with a degree, you begin to realize that you well, you don’t know much of anything.  Some of you might be wonderful why and how the school might actually give you a degree when you realize just how little you know.  And perhaps that feeling of uncertainty can be helpful, especially when it comes to examining the scriptures and exploring faith as a part of ones life.

            It wasn’t actually that long ago that Christianity itself started to become a religion about certainty, about fact versus truth.  For those of you who may not have heard it in theological discussions, fact is like how science makes sure that something exists in the world.  Truth is how something exists that although not perfect, has merit.  As the native American storyteller says, Now I don’t know if the story happens exactly this way (fact), but this story is true.   In fact, it wasn’t until the enlightenment where Christianity was placed on a pedestal of truth.  People had heard so many different things about religion, mostly from priests because people couldn’t read, but the englightenment forced the hand of religion and made the faith traditions across the world separate fact from fiction.  In response, religions started to take sacred scriptures and put historical value to them.  The garden of eden actually happened, Moses did in fact part the Red Sea, Joshua literally had thousands of people killed in Israel in order to claim the land that God had actually given them.  All these things became fact, not narrative storytelling to make sense of the world.

And when they became fact, they became dangerous.

Nowadays, Christianity has firmly been swept up in a notion of this fact finding.  We are looking often for the Bible Answer Man, and when we find him, we ask questions, they provide us answers, and then we get on with our lives.  There is no discussion, no dispute, no doubt, because to do so is to be a lesser representation of Christ in the world.  To have doubt about faith is to simply move toward rejection of the faith itself.  Or is it?

Annie Dillard, one of America’s most known poets and authors once remarked that Doubt is not the opposite for faith: Certainty is.  And in fact, grammatically she is correct.  Certaintly means that you need not have faith about something.  Once we have proved gravity exists, then we need not have faith in it, for it is fact.  But faith is about believing things that you can not see and can not touch and that you simply have to have hope in.

But before we become so tied up in language, I want to consider that doubt it almost impossible to avoid.  I doubt that my dog is currently at home eating food from the table, but buttercup has been known to do it.  I doubt that I will ever get the chance to go into space or set foot on the moon, but if I live long enough, you never know.  I do have faith though that tomorrow morning the Sun will rise, and although there is some sort of faith behind it, you never know.  I have to trust that things will turn out alright, even when things are challenging and difficult.  And if they do, that’s great.  But there is no certainty.

In the scriptures today, we find two lessons which appear to counter one another.  James, in his opening encounter, tends to be the more challenging here.  But James is simply helping the persons he is talking with maintain composure.  He says, just trust God, don’t doubt that God will be with you and will respond.  This is a difficult lesson.  To have faith for him means you have to let go of doubt, and while he has a nice point, I simply disagree.  To be honest with you, I didn’t want to use this passage, but I did so that you could see that not everything in the Bible can be fully agreed with by this pastor.  I doubt that James is right.

The second scripture though speaks to my point.  You may have heard it before as it is read in Church almost every year on the Sunday after Easter. Doubting Thomas.  The guy who just couldn’t believe without seeing and touching and well, physically examining Jesus.  And how does Jesus respond….well he shows up.  And Thomas is shown what he needs to see.  And surprisingly enough, Jesus doesn’t scold him.  He shows him, and he believes.

This leads me to a point about this whole language thing.  What most Christian groups want from you is belief, which is not the same as faith.  You might believe that God exists, but having faith in God’s power is a different thing.  And to have faith like that, well, if you aren’t doubting once a in while, I’m not sure you are doing it right. But remember, don’t believe everything that pastor says.  What I can tell you is that honestly, I doubt all the time.  I doubt I’m doing the right thing, that I’m saying the right things, that I know much of anything about this tradition.  Sometimes I am simply a doubter who keeps preaching.  John Wesley actually dealt with all of this a few hundred years ago when he was preaching in Georgia.  Confronting Peter Bohler, a friend, Wesley remarked that while he believed in the gospel, he had doubts as to whether it was meant for him.  Jesus he said, saves others, but did he really save me?  And he feared he could not go on.  Bohler simply understood his doubt and told him to keep going, preaching faith until he had it, and then preaching faith because he had it.

Doubt is inevitable.  And in fact, it may be more imbedded in the Biblical story than we know.  Thomas has always been seen as the bad guy, the position of doubt, the one who just couldn’t get it right. But Thomas wasn’t actually his name, it was his nick name.  Didymus was actually his name, and as I have said to some of you, names are VERY important in the narrative.  Didymus just happens to be “Twin” in  Aramaic, Jesus’ native tongue.  Now you may have heard that Thomas, who was the twin, language before.  But the narrative tells us that this means Thomas may have been so like Jesus in characteristics, so giving of himself like Jesus, that he came to take on the name Twin.  And this group of disciples and the rabbi that leads them are looking for people to imitate.  In fact, the disciples who job is to become like Jesus, thus Twin is a pretty highly esteemed name to pick up on this journey.

My point is that if Thomas is the Twin of Jesus, and Thomas is the example of doubt and Jesus is the example of faith, perhaps the two are not so far different from each other that they can not and should no coexist.  They are like two sides of the coin that can not exist without one another.  Faith without doubt will never lead to greater faith, which may lead to more doubt.  It is an endless cycle that I think I can live with.

In the end, I believe that if someone has ever told you that you are not allowed to doubt this tradition, or if you are not sure of your beliefs than you must be wrong, I apologize.  I believe Christianity has never been a faith about strict and blind belief but is a tradition that requires us to keep examining and exploring, which will untimately lead to at times doubt.  Frankly, I like it that way.  It makes the journey that must more interesting. 

May it be so

Amen.

Lies My Pastor Told Me #1- God will Never give you more than you can handle

Sunday October 12, 2014- Lies My Pastor Told Me #1- Matthew 11:28-30, 1 Corinthians 10:6-13

                                                            God Never gives you more than you can handle

            Over times in our culture, there are quotes that are popularized that play a major part in our world view.  We see them all the time in movies, like in the Wizard of Oz…. name it “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.  Instead, it’s Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.  Ok.  No biggee.  How about Field of Dreams….”If you built it, they will come.” NO.  “If you build it, HE will come.”  And finally, the most famous of them all, from The Empire Strikes Back…. “Luke, I am your father….. NO, I am your father.”

            Words have important meaning, and sometimes we get those words wrong.  When it comes to the Bible, it becomes extremely important, especially when you look at how much respect many of us place upon the Bible. In the Bible, you hear all the time of these sentences that are important.  How about the one that says “The Lord helps Those who Help Themselves.  I’ve heard that one.  And the other one, God will Never Give you More than you can Handle.  Those are great cherry picked verses. 

There’s only one PROBLEM.  Those verses don’t exist.  No.  Don’t even open your Bible and try to pull it out.  I’ve looked, I’ve called people. It doesn’t exist.  And that might be a little problem. OK.  Actually, that is as big problem.

But what about the passage from Corinthians.  Good point, except that one must understand context.  See Paul is not talking about more than you can bear, he’s talking about temptation.  In the passage, Paul directly reflects on a situation that is happening with the Corinthians wherein they are getting caught up in their lust.  Paul says back, there is nothing that can tempt you more than you can bear.  You can be tempted by these things of the world, but it’s in your control.

But the problem is that some things are out of our control and beyond what we can handle.  Imagine a Jew in a Holocaust camp being told, well, God won’t give you more than you can handle.  How about the death of a loved one, a child dealing with the loss of a parent, a parent losing a child, an inexplicable tradegy, 9/11….

These are things beyond anything we can handle, not things that God sets before us and says, let me show you that you can handle this.  No God I know of would offer these things to the world, only to test us.  There’s no Biblical backing for that, and anything you might be able to pull would be out of context.  On the contrary, there is actually a fair amount of commentary about there ACTUALLY BEING more than one can handle within the scriptures.

Paul, in 2 Corinthians “Brothers and sisters, we don’t want you to be unaware of the troubles that we went through in Asia. We were weighed down with a load of suffering that was so far beyond our strength that we were afraid we might not survive.” (2 Corinthians 1:8 CEB)

Or in the Psalms…. “I’m worn out, completely crushed; I groan because of my miserable heart.” (Psalms 38:8 CEB)
“My wrongdoings are stacked higher than my head; they are a weight that’s way too heavy for me.” (Psalms 38:4 CEB)

And of course we shouldn’t forget about Jesus, the man who died a robbers death at the hand of the Romans. 

Where did this idea come from?  Well, in some ways it came from the fact that in modern Christianity, we’ve misconstrued many aspects of the faith and made them into some sort of security blanket.  My friend Mark Schaefer describes it as “sentimental Christianity” built on the concept that the Christianity we follow allows us to feel better because we imagine that nothing is more than we can handle and God is in charge of everything.  But that’s theology is dangerous, not just for those of us that follow it, but for the victims and all those who are suffering.

Perhaps you’ve felt down, felt as though your burden is more than you can bear, and theologically some one comes up to you and says, well God wouldn’t give you more than you can bear.  One is means God gave it to you, and two, if you can’t handle it, well then maybe you aren’t faithful enough, or something is really wrong, in which case we start thinking about the story of Job.

And if you are burdened with suffering, you may suffer in worry about suffering.  It’s a snowball effect that becomes worse and worse and worse.  And the problem is it stems from incorrect theology.

What is more accurate is what does next, when he explains to the audience that in fact that burdens do feel overwhelming and it does seem as though there is no way out.  This introduces us to the reality that God is not giving us the suffering and burden, but being present with us in the midst of the burden.  Why would a loving God want to give us burdens: that doesn’t make sense.  What a loving God would do is to respond by being with us, offering us hope and a place to find peace in the midst of terrible and awful circumstances.  And that’s what we see in Matthew….

“Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Put on my yoke, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble. And you will find rest for yourselves. My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.”

In this passage, Jesus never says anything about more than you can bear.  But Jesus does say, you can come to me when it’s a heavy load.  I’ll give you rest.  Comfort is not always the same thing as a cure.  In Parker Palmer’s famous work “Let Your Life Speak” he discusses a moment in his life that was a chronic depression, something he has dealt with most of his life.  In the midst of one of the worst he has endured, a friend begins coming each day to wash his feet. The friend does not try to give him advice, does not tell him it will be alright, that he should just snap out of it, or certainly that God wouldn’t give this to him if he couldn’t handle it.  The friend simply washes his feet, intent to be a presence in the midst of a challenging time.  And that is the closest image of God I can imagine.  It does not mean everything is going to be perfect, that by being a Christian, whether more devout or otherwise, that you are going to be rewarded with less burden or more burden, it simply means that bad things happen to each of us and God is present with us.

This brings me to my final point.  In the midst of challenges, these things that simply happen, there is something that God offers us that is restorative and even has curative properties.  God calls us into relationship with each other.  Christianity is not a do it yourself kind of thing.  Its work revolves around a communal understanding of oneself, acts which are selfless and repeated time and time again.  You should not feel as though you have to show up hear and have everything pulled together.  You need not be perfect or have everything in your life balanced.  In fact, just the opposite.  If we are truly to be a community which bears a Christian identity, we need to be able to come together and admit that there are times when life gives more than we can bear and offer that up to a community that is called to respond and help each other along this journey. 

If we take a step back in our theology and look for the reality of what we believe, we come to find that there is much more depth and at some points struggle with this faith.  We should not just accept Christianity as a security blanket which protects us from harm in the world.  Instead, we might see that we are offered new perspective in the midst of challenging times.  And that is what this entire sermon series is about.  Throughout this sermon series, we’re going to be concentrating on some of these passages which well, they don’t exist, or at least they are out of context.  I invite you to come along on this journey, not just because it will challenge assumptions, but because getting to the bottom of the Biblical Canon is one of the most important things anyone can do.  Whether you are atheist, agnostic, spiritual, religious, or anything else, there is most definitely a place within this sermon series that’s for you.  It might be hard, and it might challenge you, but that’s the point.  And when things get to be too much, we learn to remember that we community, and we have a God who says, Come to me, all you who are weary and laden, and I will give you rest.

May it be So.

Amen.

            A Call To Exploration- Romans 12:9-21

            This past Spring, universities across the United States were bombarded with a reality check around their issues of tolerance and diversity.  It wasn’t the university that was specifically called out but rather the students.  In a time in history when American politics is the microcosm of a culture which is continually at odds over very serious issues, controversial topics and speakers have been met with hostility by student activists in a way that was almost unheard of a decade or two ago.  On the campus of the University of Minnesota, Condaleeza Rice, a polarizing Republican who at one time was considering a female front runner for the Republican national ticket was heavily protested by hundreds of students.  These students, expressing their beliefs and values,  on that day destroyed a little fabric of what the university is meant to be about.  Later that month, Rice actually withdrew from a graduation speech at Rutgers University, citing the extreme protesting and hostility she was potentially bringing to the campus.

            Now I’m not a huge Condaleeza Rice fan myself, but the problem is in the deeper understanding of what is happening here.   Michael Bloomberg, in his graduation speech at Harvard this past may, sums it up quite well.

“Tolerance for other people’s ideas and the freedom to express your own are . . . perpetually vulnerable to the tyrannical tendencies of monarchs, mobs, and majorities, and lately we’ve seen those tendencies manifest themselves too often, both on college campuses and in our society,

On every issue you must follow the evidence where it leads and listen to people where they are,     

            The college campus at one time used to be a place for diverse thoughts.  Sure, the thoughts and ideas were divisive, and people became impassioned about their beliefs and ideas, but they did not flatly reject the expression of those ideas.  But what seems to be happening is that people are now no longer to hear different opinions.  There are few debates in our culture any longer, instead you come over here and I’ll give my perspective and you go over the and get yourself your own education.

            This has left us to be isolated, and as much as we want to believe we are in the most advanced higher education universities that we can be offered, the reality is that we are in many ways losing the sacred struggle of difficult conversations.  We are instead pushing certain groups away while letting other control the airwaves. This is the challenge of higher education.  It used to be that on the campus, the academy was a place for diverse thinking, for challenging ideas and difficult conversations.  But now it feels like we are wanting to push out ideas which differ from our own instead of engaging in the hard work of talking together.

            There is much to be said about our Christian identity within this discussion.  Many religious organizations these days wish for you to believe all the same thing.  It’s the indoctrination of their beliefs, making sure that everyone in each tribe believe the exact same thing, yet by doing so we have formed over 39,000 Christian denominations across the world.  Our unwillingness to have differing ideas in the same denomination (not congregation, denomination) has led us to shatter into thousands of pieces.  How many disputes do you have to have to form 39,000 denominations?  How much unwillingness to hear each other does it take to form that many differing groups. 

            Paul’s message in Romans tonight speaks directly to the needs of the community to be willing to see differences as not only alright but as assets to the community.  And we need see this as well.  As a community that prides itself on welcoming everyone to the community, we need be inclusive without becoming exclusive.  Think about our values.  When we say that we are GLBTA inclusive, are we willing to let someone in the door who is not yet settled on their beliefs on this topic.  As Christians who are sometimes less serious about scripture as we are about service are we ready to let in someone whose focus is only on studying the Bible.  Are we ready to welcome someone in who is theologically more conservative than us, more progressive than us?  Are we ready to welcome differing races, ages, etc?  I think so, but sometimes I wonder just a little bit about our own readiness when certain demographics might enter the community.  This is challenge to myself as much as it is a challenge to each of us gathered here. 

            Paul’s words echo loud and clear for me.  Do not attempt to be wiser than you are?  Do you be haughty to think you have it all figured out.  Your love much be genuine or you yourself will find that you are a fool who is faking their real concern for others who are different from you. And what’s better, if you truly believe these people are evil, overcome it by doing the right thing, by doing good. I’m pretty sure Jesus wasn’t a big fan of the prostitution and the tax collecting that was being done, but he did what others didn’t and welcomed them to the table.  And let me be clear: the majority of different opinions and beliefs we will see hear are far less divisive than many in Jesus’ day. The call that Paul gives us offers us the chance to remember that we are called to exploration, rather than to static uniform belief in this community.

Last week, I told you then that campus ministry was the place you learned how to be you, how to figure out who you are and how you are to figure out how to live.  Tonight I invite you from that lens to consider this idea of divergent beliefs and ideas combining to find a deeper sense of community than what most people imagine.  IF you are going to figure out how to be you, you have to be willing to allow yourself to hear and appreciate each other’s different opinions.  You may not always agree, and you shouldn’t, but you have to find ways to appreciate each others ideas.  Yes, in the process it is your job so stand up for what you believe.  The problem is that most people get set in their ways and refuse to be changed by others.  Sure you grew up as a fiscal conservative who thinks that tax increases are the worst idea ever conceived by American politicians.  Sure you think the Bible is the literal word of God and that has been and will be always the same.  But be challenged.  You never know.  Maybe you will learn something about yourself in this exploration of the world.

            Jesus, and our current culture, offers us something to realize about the nature of ourselves: we like to be with people who believe what we believe.  And certainly, you are going to get a chance to spend a lot of your life like this, and probably our community will continue to reflect similar beliefs. But we should not stop ourselves from welcoming others, from being challenged ourselves, and certainly from allowing the university to be a space of free flowing thought and challenging conversations.

            If we are here to learn how we figure out who who we are, we must learn where we sit in comparison to others. The how is in the challenge of knowing who you are and being willing to be challenged and changed.  And we must appreciate the value of the other around us.  John Wesley once said, though we may not think alike, at least let us love alike.

            So let us begin our call to exploration from this point of unity: we are called to love each other, to let go of differences that divide us, even though we may be challenged by each other, and to simply become a community who is practicing a call to exploration.  If you want to know how to figure out who you are, you must enter into the fray of other opinions, beliefs, and thoughts.  You must find participate in a community which challenges you and stretches you.  By remaining stagnant and only associating with those with whom you have similar values, you will never fully embody who you are.  So let us hear each other, let us explore together.  That is the beginning of how.   The is a call to exploration.

May it be So

Amen.

Romans 13:8-10

Matthew 18:15-20

The Reason We Are Here

            Well, you’ve made it.  You’ve survived your first week of college (of your first week of grad school), or simply you’ve made it through the first week of another endless year.  (Sigh)…. Don’t worry, you are on your way.  It’ll be Christmas before you know it. 

            Often when we first come onto campus and start up and start a new year there are these feelings of excitement, hope, and just newness.  But for many of us, including myself (even though I’m a pretty big extrovert) the feeling of the sheer number of people becomes overwhelming.  You’re once again just a number in a huge factory of people getting a degree.  In fact, there are now over 55,000 numbers just getting a degree.  And judging by how long I could have stood in line for Panda the other day at Coffman, I would definitely feel like a number on this campus.  It’s stressful

            And that stress, it remains so until you realize what you are supposed to do here in college.  In many ways, the first thing have to do when you set up shop on a college campus is to establish a place for you to find community, a community that gives you a place to thrive. And communities are important. Some are big, some are small, but they should a place where as the old saying goes “everybody knows your name.”

            Religious groups on campus often try to fill that void, but they do so with different intentions.  Some groups are there to provide you a space to simply come and worship once a week and to have a bible study.  These groups tend to spend most of their time talking about how your faith is the only thing you have to deal with, and that you simply show up, get given information about how to live your faith, and you walk away.  They tend to be more answer focused, less interested in probing into deeper questions, and generally are less concerned with who you are as much as what you believe. 

            But something always strikes me about these groups.  They never fully get that you are in college, and that there is something more to why you are here. And it’s not what you might think.  See college has become about getting degrees.  It has become this space for us to get in, pay a whole ton of money, and get out of as quickly as possible. Nevermind what people say about college being the best time of your life, we’ve got bills to pay and a life in suburban America to live.  This past week I met with a friend of mine and we were talking about how people on campus ask questions, or think deeply.  So many people just feel like they are here and just trying to punch a ticket or finish this or that so they can get a degree.  But that’s not why you are here.

            You are here to figure out how to live, how to be you.  How to be a part of a bigger world that you ever imagined.  You are being trained as global citizens, but you are ultimately trying to figure out who you are.  And that means something all together different than simply being an ecom major or a dance major.  I know some of you may be hearing this for the first time, and you may want to question what I have to say (and I encourage that by the way, but college is about probing into the depths of your own self and asking serious questions and searching for framing stories about your life and the lives of those around you.  This is not something you can learn exclusively in a classroom and certainly something that can not be measured by an assigned grade.  This about the real world and real things.

            Thus, you are here to figure out how to be you.  Ok. 

Ok, so why do I need a religious group.  Why can’t I just do that on my own.  WHY ARE WE HERE.  I’m here to tell you that if you want, you can do your religion, and everything else for that matter on your own. But you might find the world to be a lonely place.  What you need is a deeper sense of community, something authentic and real and hard to capture because it’s a place full of different people.  You need a place where people do know your name but not one where you are judged based on what you believe.  Religious communities can be positive or negative, and as a pastor I’ve spent most of my career working through stereotypes of what Christianity was and is.  I was there myself when I started college.  I thought religion for me was irrerevant, and it was based on what I had experienced, but something changed for me when I entered cautiously into a community of the Wesley Foundation at the University of Northern Iowa.  I had learned that there was something more than just simply a degree to be had.  I even had learned that I needed something more than to simply realize I was there to figure out myself.  But what I didn’t learn, was how!

            The scriptures tonight speak of mutual concern for one another.  Even in their sometimes aggressive stances, each of our scriptures speak to the idea that there is to be a mutual concern for others.  As Paul says in Romans, the sum of the commandments is to learn to love your neighbor.  And in Matthew, the specifics may not mean much, but the general idea is that qualms and disagreements are best solved directly.  Thus, the community does not suffer and the relationships between persons actually grow.  These may seem like rudimentary scripture lessons, but historically, they are very innovative ideas.  Most of the time in ancient Palestine and Israel, people were scrapping by for anything they could, which meant there wasn’t always a lot of concern for others, especially those of different families and especially those you didn’t know.  But this call, in these two different ways, one to sum up the commandments, another to solve issues, are exactly the opposite of what the culture was living, and in fact the very acts of sharing concerns and having love for one’s neighbor became a bonding agent and a mark of the early Christian movement. 

            In order for these early Christians to learn what is meant to be a member of this community, they were naturally drawn to be together. They were trying to figure out who they were, what this message of Jesus was, but in order to do so, in order to learn the how, they had to work together, to be connected.  If they didn’t practice their mutual concern, if they only held to their own needs and never gave of themselves, they would be missing the practice of the faith.  This means that being a part of this early Christian community was about learning to be something different the standard culture, but it could only be practiced in the presence of others. You can’t love your neighbor is all you care about is yourself.   The only way to learn how to be was to practice with others.

            So it goes with us as well.  You are not here to get a degree.  You may think you are, but your concerns are much broader than simply that which is the bookends of your journey of college. 

It is the experience of being in college that matters, that practice of finding oneself. 

And that practice, that almost holy experience that has captivated millions in the United States over the past, it can only be done when we learn how. 

So answered that you were here at college for your own self understanding, but I believe the reason we are here in this setting, tonight, in a United Methodist related campus ministry, is to practice finding yourself, understanding who you are, and to do so in community.  Now you may be really religious, sort of religious, not really that religious, or completely unsure where you fall. That’s fine with me, and I bet it’s fine with most of us.

            This place is for you.  This is the place where I hope you will realize college is about finding yourself.   The reason we are here is to find others who will travel this journey of college with us, who will ask deep questions about who they are and will practice and share then with you.  You will ask questions of your faith, your life, your purpose, your values, whatever it is.  You will find yourself here at college, and I hope you will realize that you are here in this space to learn how. You can find another faith community, there are a lot of them, but I doubt many of them will tell you to ask questions that don’t have answers, will tell you that it’s ok to be different, will tell you that you don’t have to believe the same things as the pastor to be right. And if that’s what you are looking for, then I can recommend some places. But if you want to be here to be in community, to experience something very different and something that has changed my life and several others sitting in these chairs, then I invite you here.

Because you will find something different. 

You will discover that the reason you are here is more than simply for the religion, but instead for all the things that can not be summed up in answers and can not be found in the classrooms, but can be understood only together in community. 

You are at college not for the degree, but for the experience of finding yourself.  And you are here, to find out how!

The God I Don't Believe in #4: The God of Violence

It probably started in 1095.  A pope, built for power and sure of the Turks anti-Christian elements, forcefully invited Christians to join in a war against those Turks.  His name was Pope Urban II, and he offered them an indulgence, thus on a major sin that would still allow them to get into heaven.  His offer brought about the first holy war, a crusade.

            Nearly 200 years later, and after the Muslims had taken Jerusalem, parts of Spain, lost part of Jerusalem, regained it, etc there had been eight crusades, many which costed thousands of lives on every side. And Christians, devote in their Biblical interpretation, remained sure that God would call for such violence in order to cleanse the world of those who are not Christian.

            Now of course that’s where religiously ordained acts of violence end right.  Oh no.  The Dutch, the Germans, the Swiss, everyone used religion as a mainstay of violence and war throughout the middle ages.  Then there was the 30 years war.  You know that war, the one that originally pitted Protestants and Catholics against each other for yes, 30 years.  It divested into a war that included almost all the European powers fighting over things that at times even they were unsure of, then ended up being the dividing line in Germany between Calvinists and Catholics.  But it had to be done.  God ordained it.  Violence, hatred, war.  That’s the God of the the Bible though right?

            Perhaps.  You could read that as the God of the Bible.  In fact, it’s quite easy to read this.  It’s very easy to see that there are moments in the book of Joshua where people come together and “cleanse the land” of all other peoples until well…until they are simply the only ones left on the block. They blow over walls, destroy towns and decimate kingdoms.  The only problem with this account is that it never happened.  What?  It never happened.  Nope.  In fact, archaeologists in the Middle East have been unable to find any evidence that anything like that ever happened.  In fact, what they and other Biblical Scholars believe is that the Israelites simply slowed moved their way into Israel and assimilated until there was a mixing of cultures.  The God of violence did not win that one.

            Throughout history, the story of the Bible is one that envisions a God who is both blood thirsty and violent.  This presumably masculine image of God is responsible for all acts of violence, including natural violence like Hurricanes, Tornados,  Earthquakes,  or even more simple ones like rain today and not tomorrow or getting your parking spot at the local shopping center.  Some people really do see this as a devastating thing you know.

            But something bothers me about all of this.  Yes of course there are dozens of places in the Bible where one can find the story of a God who does all of this.  But in reality, the question of context comes to mind.  Does God really bring about the flood, does God really allow for the destruction of entire towns, of modern day Katrina’s because of governments, or are we readying something into the Biblical story that really isn’t implied.  To do this, we need to go back in history, back to the time of the Israelites, and figure out just what they are thinking.

            To the way way back.  Further, yes even further.  Ok.  It is an age before science.  An age before wikopedia an the internet.  Yes before facebook and cell phones, even phones at all.  It is a time when the only thing one did when they looked into the sky was see a mystery.  In fact, it was so mysterious that the Israelites had no idea is the lights in the sky respresented people who had died or what.  They didn’t know.  The only thing they knew, that they were pretty sure of, was that a God, a single God, which of course was more powerful than all the other Gods of all the other peoples in the world, was in charge.  That God was in charge of everything.  And so, God brought them good fortune.  A good spouse, a plethora of children, the rains from the heavens in order to have crops and feed their families, all of these were God given. 

            But so was all of the other stuff.  You know, the droughts, the flooding, the scary weather, the bad times, the waring nations from afar.  These were simply signs that God was mad at them, that God wanted them to suffer.  And so, they prayed to God to spare them, and sometimes God did.  And when God did, they then wanted to protect themselves, so they used that idea that God controlled everything and asked for God to grant them victory to gain control of further lands so that they might be fortunate enough to extend their country and have more land.  And sometimes God granted such things, and others not so much.

            There was no science, only God.  Now I’m not going to tell you that these are two completely different things.  In fact, I believe honestly that science and God can and should co-exist because while some view it as divergence, surety versus faith, perhaps the thought of convergence is much more intriguing.    But if there was no science, God became the go-to for everything.  And sure enough, God then was the reason for and reasons against things.  In fact, God’s nature changed so dramatically because of this simply because people had no other place to turn to make sense of the world.

           

            Does this make sense, sure.  But does it make sense to continue to see God in this light with information we have nowadays.  That’s the big question.

            Here’s my thought.  One: we like a sexy story.  We like one that includes danger, a buildup of characters, an action filled adventures, and sometimes a happy ending.  So we pay attention to the devastation stories in the Bible.  Do we hear of the stories where God is shown to forgive, to not call for violence, where turning the other cheek means giving the other person to seeing your face when they slap you again.  This is the God we so often miss in our attempts to see the most action packed filled God in all mankind.

            And  Two: as for that modern day witness to the God of the weather…Well, sure, I think it’s ok to see God as being a person who watches over us, but I put this out there.  I don’t believe in a God who is playing a chess match with us, who is giving us bad things along with good things.  I think these things are happening though, and I believe that when it comes to the devastation much like Super Storm Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, tsunami’s in Indonesia, Earthquakes in the Pacific, Comets in Russia.

 I wonder if nature itself is rebelling against God much like we ourselves in our sinful nature may have rebelled against a loving God and used God to legitimize our wars and other acts of violence.

            Do you see what I mean?  We had crusades all in the name of God, because well, because we fall short of a God who calls for love and who really wants us to have a peaceable kingdom.  And we forget that we were created in the image of God. But wasn’t the natural environment created in the same image, just a different aspect?  Was nature created by a different God, are we really that different from the rest of nature around us, is it possible that nature itself, if we are to theologically argue that nature is a product of God like us, it is just a little possible, that nature itself has rebelled against God, becoming sinful in its character.  Could nature itself be deviant of its perfect image.  Could nature being sinning in the same way.  The story of Eden is of course a story in the way human kind ended up in our dismal state.  Toiling the land, pain in childbirth, all things bright and beautiful right. But maybe the search for Eden comes up empty because we are participating in a world where the nature around us has become just as deviant to God’s will as ours

            Maybe we could take a lesson in humility, in the need to see God as more than a God of bad and good things.  Maybe we could see God as a healer, a provider, one who calls us to something different, but can’t manipulate the weather, doesn’t want violence to befall one group and be used as a weapon of victory for another.  Maybe God is more loving, is waiting for us to wake up and reimagine that this God wants something better of us.

           

            No matter what, the God the Israelites saw is the same God we view, but we view it a different way…at least we could.  We could see God if we like as an abusive parent, a violent and hate filled God, a God of masculine image, a God of some get more, some get less, and a God of violence and hatred who acts out on God’s people using the weather, abuse, or many others things.  Or we can begin to hope and believe that context is everything in this discussion and our understanding of God’s nature can change.  We can use the Bible as a lens, but also remember that we know more about the world as it exists today than ever. We can see theology in our approach to the world, but perhaps we can see a different reflection of God in the world than our ancestors….Maybe, but that’s just one aspect of the God I don’t believe in.

The God I Don't Believe in #2: The God of Prosperity and Wealth

            The Prosperity Gospel God

Black Friday is coming.  It is.  Soon and very soon.  And on that day, The United State economy will boom with the sounds of the first in the black sales that most retail businesses will have all year).  That’s right.  Black Friday, for those of you who don’t know, is the first day of the year where most businesses turn a profit.  Then, for about 35 more days, the bucks just roll right in.  This is the way of things around here.  And we can be sure that in the most Christian nation on Earth, the reason for the season is in fact the Christmas holiday.

And Christmas means one thing in the business world.  MONEY.  MONEY MONEY MONEY.  (I don’t think I’ll try to sing it).  And what’s interesting is how it has become presents and such.  Because in America right now, millions of people are preparing their wallets (or really not) for the onslaught of buying and giving that will take place.  Parents dread it because there is so many mouths to feed.  So much need for these kids to have so much.  And of course we can’t buy any less than what the neighbors or our other family members buy because it wouldn’t work. And you know, Jesus received big gifts didn’t he.  Lots of toys every year…or did he

This is the world of material wealth in the world.  It permeates us like very few things in the American culture does.  And almost nothing can stop it.  In fact, it’s getting worse.  Last year, no less than six major retailors decided to open their doors on Thursday evening (yes while people were still having thanksgiving people had to work) in order to get even more deals to people.  This year, Macy’s the original company that refused to open on Thursday and set the bar for black Friday itself, has agreed to open on Thursday night.  All in the name of a Christian holiday. 

We are all aware this is not the way of things in Christiainity right?  Greed was one of the things that Jesus spoke against, against the wealth of the world.  Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…. We know this one.  But in a few streams of American Chrisitanity, there has become a real latching on of the idea that it’s ok to have lots of money that that in fact if you are rich, if you have material wealth, if you are fortunate in life, you are more faithful.

It started with the creation of a book called the Prayer of Jabez, and it’s basis is a single verse in the Bible, the one we heard first tonight.  In the verse, and I really mean this is the only place in the Bible we even hear of Jabez, he cries out to God and gets everything he could ever want.  And Bruce Wilkerson, a Christian himself, writes this book called the Prayer of Jabez and outlines that those who have the most faith in God will be granted all they want.  That promotion, got it.  That cute girl down the hall, she’ll be yours (I’m not even here to talk sexism in that but I am very aware of what I’m doing). That number on your paycheck: it’s in God’s hands and God will make it so if it is to be so.

Really:  God’s going to give me a bigger paycheck?  God’s going to give me a chance to buy that Mercedes if I’m faithful enough.  Where is that in the Bible.  It’s in Chronicles, in one passage.  Really, one passage outdoes everything else. And what is born is the Prosperity Gospel, the one where God is riding around in heaven with Cuban cigars and serves as CEO of everything 

You might ask yourself how many people buy into this model.  A LOT!  In fact, a whole lot of people.  Turn on your televisions next Sunday morning, or better yet just youtube an extremely popular pastor in Houston texas named Joel Osteen.  Listen for 30 minutes to his sermon and you will have the entirety of the prosperity gospel.  Last Sunday I watched.  He was talking about being happy with what we had.  He said that if I didn’t get that raise I was looking for, it wasn’t what God wanted right now and in fact I would get it just as soon as I needed it (I would add I am perfectly happy with what I’m receiving and am grateful already).  He told me if I prayed harder though I might get it sooner than I think.  And he reminded me to stay in love with God and that that would help the process along.

See, on the surface it sounds really good.  ON the surface it makes perfect sense: work harder, get more.  God rewards those who are most dedicated right.  That’s what happened to Abraham.  Well…sort of.  Often times in the Bible, the least and the lost are rewarded.  Often times, the first is last and the last first.  Often times, really tough times come with being a Christian.  And is it because of a lack of faith….on the contrary.  Job seems to have been one of the most faithful characters in the Bible and yet God takes away everything from him.  Now again, this Job thing is largely attributed as a story and I’m sure it had nothing to do with illustrating our call to faithfulness….

            In fact, Jesus’ turning over the tables in the temple was only an understanding that sales shouldn’t happen within the temple itself and that it was fine for the sellers to continue their greed just outside on the street corner.  Or that the camel really can go through the eye of the needle…. Which brings up just a moment to let you know that in the context of the Bible, the needle is in fact not the needle.  Anybody know what it was?  It’s the doorways through the walls to the cities.  In times of war and danger, the wanders or the citizens would rush back to get behind the fortified walls of the cities, some of which were tucked up against the sea.  When the camels came to pass through the eye (the door), they had to drop everything they were carrying on their back and simply make it through with their passanger.  The water, provisions, anything they were carrying, you had to let it go or you wouldn’t ever make it through.  And that’s what Jesus is saying:  You can’t depend on your career, your money, your anything.  That’s not the point of the Bible.  You point it simply and ultimately to store up for yourselves on heaven.  Stay in Love with God, Love your Neighbor without abandon.

            The whole idea of the prosperity Gospel Brings into Question who God is for us.  Is God is God that simply grants our every wish like Bruce Almighty, does God elect some to receive more than others, does God elect the most faithful to have the most…so thus the Christians in Hollywood are more faithful than Tim Tebow, former NFL football player.  Is God truly on someone’s side more than other people’s.  And the I think the firm answer to that for me is ultimately no.  And that takes some humility.  We are not loved any more or less than others.  Just because we have been fortunate in life does not mean that we are any more blessed by God.  It means that the world has given us a better straw, but not that we are more faithful.  IN fact, it is also true that much more may be commanded of us.  The eye of the needle does remind us that we must let go of certain things in order to pursue the kingdom of God.  And of one those things is pride, another being material wealth.

            The Bible does not speak as much as we might expect about wealth, but about letting go of things that are of this world.  John Wesley is famous for saying that you should make all you can, so that you give all you can.  Wesley understood that God was not after the rich, but simply the way that they lived.  If you could see your wealth as a part of our human characteristics and frailties, if you could see it for the idol I believe Jesus was saying it was, then it doesn’t possess you and you are free to give to others.  See, when pressed, most people who have large sums of money in the their bank account say that it makes them feel secure.  And security is nowhere in the Bible.  Take up your cross and follow me.  Come, sell all that you own, give it to the poor, and come with me.

See, security is the one thing Jesus says you can’t have in his world…and that’s what most of our wants come from.

           A God of Prosperity, of everything given to you precisely when you want it, no, that’s not quite the God I’m thinking of.  And it’s enticing I know.  I know because it sounds so good…just have more faith, get more things…but that’s not a God of equality.  And if your God is one of disparity, of more love and concern to someone else, less to you and more to them, it sounds terrible.  That’s not the kind of God that I’m looking for.  I’m looking for a God who simply is present, who of course doesn’t want bad things to happen, to have hard times be a part of God’s story, but the reality is the world is tougher than simply a prayer and a hope.  The world is one where God has to be present, but we simply are not going to receive everything we always want.  In fact, sometimes being a Christian is going to be harder because we are called to something more than simply rushing the doors on black Friday.

This fall, as we enter into the season of spending, or giving and of receiving, I encourage you to consider whether prosperity is the gospel of today’s world and if it’s the same as you might read in the Bible and find in your heart to be who God is.  Like I said before, this is a journey, one where you might try to discern for yourself what Kind of God you believe in.  Because I won’t be stopping for a while in telling you about the God I DON”T believe in.