#2 Reacting to DOMA/Please don't screw this up.

Wrote this in 3 or 4 settings, mea culpa, but I think it needed it... anyway....

I remember going with friends to see Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. It was an awesome movie. Not really one you watch while eating chips and doing homework, but pretty damn powerful (except for the demon-baby part, wtf?). So churches got together like small armies occupying theaters for the midnight showings.
So we were kinda obvious. Our reputations preceded us and it only remained to either confirm or deny. We had an opportunity as a community to make an impression.
And, at least in the movie theater I was in, we totally blew.
When it seemed like things might not start on time, church members sporting "I LOVE JESUS" t-shirts descended on the theater staff, demanding to know what was happening. Not nicely inquiring. DEMANDING. They needed to talk to the manager, stat. They put us in one theater and then told us we needed to move to another. The Christian community lost their shit at this outrage and were quite vocal about it. The staff were already tired and hassled and a barbarian horde of gorilla Christians (you know, the meek, long-suffering, patient servants of Christ?) probably made their night one they will always look back to with joy. That's a moment we can't get back, and an impression we can't unmake.

Historically speaking, Christians as a collective entity fulfill the sayings about stupid people in large groups. It's pretty much why the latter half of the Bible was written. Because we keep screwing up. We call Romans and Ephesians and the like "books", but they are actually letters written to a specific group of people at a specific time in history. In the case of I and II Corinthians, the letters were written (among other things) because the Christians in those churches were behaving badly. If I understand right, there were so many problems with cliques and judgment (the letters still apply because we are still just as stupid) that Paul had to abort the mission he was about to undertake so he could visit the snobby Corinthians and lovingly smack them upside the head in the name of Jesus (there was also the issue about sleeping with your father's wife or, something, but not really to our purpose here....). Not everyone was behaving badly and in some areas the church was thriving and Paul high-fives them accordingly. Although it has been represented otherwise, Paul's tone is actually quite playful, rather than judgmental and fun-killing. Now, hold that though one moment.

BUM bum BUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!  DOMA was finally ruled unconstitutional. We knew it was going to happen eventually. With or without DOMA, people are going to do what people are going to do. However, Christians are once again indiscreetly losing their shit. As this article from Cracked documents very well.
http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/a-30-second-guide-to-how-gay-marriage-ruling-affects-you/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=new+article&wa_ibsrc=fanpage

I would really hope those comments were photo-shopped, except I'm hearing them from other places. Christians freaking out, crying out to the Lord for the rapture, begging Jesus to come and collect them into the clouds to shield them from the possibility of being contaminated by such wickedness.

As a Christian with a conservative view on homosexuality myself, I still need to call bullshit.

REASON THE FIRST
Stop kidding yourself about being contaminated. You already are. The very thing that makes them do the thing that makes you do the thing where you cry out for the rapture, yeah, that's in you too (Romans 7:14-25). Savvy? The source of what you're so quick to call disgusting is a part of your human make-up. You're made of the same stuff. You're part of the kingdom of God, spiritually under His protection, but you still exist in eschatological tension, able to be very close with God and still royally screw up like some dudes I know named Abraham, Jacob, Peter--all after their increased intimacy with God. So take your pious horror down a notch. 

REASON THE SECOND
Unless you live in Sodom and Gomorrah where your neighbors are pounding on your door and asking to rape your dinner guests (I know how it sounds, let's just leave it at it is possible, mmk?), you better have another damn good reason to think your life is so terrible, or under such persecution, other than a paper shuffle. Because that's all this is, folks. Political smoke and mirrors.

REASON THE THIRD
The early church martyrs join me in calling bullshit. You're about to be set on fire for Nero's gardens? I totally get it. I would be screaming for heaven at a sound frequency only dogs could hear. They've just unleashed a very hungry pair of lions into the arena so we can all watch them eat you--for fun. Great time for the Second Coming, seriously. Zip ahead a few hundred years. Catholics and Protestants setting each other on fire, getting dragged behind wild horses. Let's look at today. (Which brings us another point, no one knows the hour, so stop obsessing that it could be ANY minute and be a good steward of what the Lord has entrusted to you for THIS life!!!!) Christians in other countries are jailed or killed. Even our citizens in other countries. America is by no definition perfect, but she is definitely not the Whore of Babylon either.

REASON 3
You look like a jerk. You don't come across as pious. You don't come across as godly or holy. You're not "throwing pearls to swine" or showing tough love. You come across as an overreacting jerk, which is ALWAYS good for your witness, right? I mean, in high school, I simply LOVED when people would stop and ask me if I worshiped Satan or was obsessed with death. Really provided some empathetic common ground there.
You can't beat the sin out of anyone. The heart or the life, but not the sin.

So, returning to the thought above.
Now that DOMA is out, the church has another chance to make an impression. I'm not qualified to write a treatise about this, but these are my thoughts narrowed down.

Separate legal arguments from moral arguments and a person from the movement.

IDEA THE FIRST
I have an issue with how many times we've voted on this. I have an issue with feeling like I can't express my belief, like every time some celebrity admits they believe marriage is between a man and a woman, people lose their shit and stop buying their products. I have a problem with the idea that as a teacher I may not be able to say I disagree or that I may have to endorse a worldview I don't agree with even though I can't mention my own religion in my own classroom. These are all legal issues that affect me. It is not in my power to control other people. We--CHRISTIANS--sin in our very thoughts!
We are living alongside people outside our theocracy, eschatological tension. If we're going to play together, we need to learn to be nice and fair. There is a logic here that has to be applied when people live in a community, not a name-calling contest (::shakes finger at both sides::). Find that and work from within it. None of my issues with homosexuality have to do with the value of the human being. Only God has that right.

Note* Just to be clear, I'm not talking about sitting quietly by if, say, people are fired for our worldview, or censured (although we know both sides have experienced this), or that whole question of pastors being forced to marry people, or if any of the things I listed above come into effect. Name calling and judgment still wouldn't be helpful then either.

IDEA THE SECOND
Start caring about people beyond their sexuality. The Bible does not say, "Thou shalt focus on one arbitrary sin that you particularly find disgusting." I can't speak for God, but I don't think the Great Physician uses rusty instruments to rip a tumor out of a cancer patient without anesthetics, with a broken vital monitor. Think more pilates. You start at your core, at what's really important and work your way out as you get stronger, relying on your core without straining more delicate muscle areas until you're ready.

This doesn't mean you have to throw over your own personal beliefs. My belief system is not a surprise to any of my friends outside my worldview. Learn how to express your view in a loving way that still values the other person. Let's not force ANYONE to pretend to be anything other than what they are. Actually, tolerance at it's finest is when you disagree 100% and can still split a pizza with the person. When your conviction compels you to act inappropriately, hatefully, something else is interfering that has nothing to do with God.
 Anyone you are trying to bring to Christ will respect and listen to you more if you see them as an individual and not a problem, and if you firmly but respectfully hold your own beliefs. You are now a safe person for them, because you are honest and loving. #healthy boundaries

Anyway, just my thoughts... If you disagree or are offended.... please forgive me.
Please comment, ermergherd please comment. Show me I am not alone in the universe!!!

My Ninety-Five #1

I know, I know, lost momentum there, please forgive me. Fell down the rabbit hole, hit the floor, did a little grab the key and THEN shrink yourself tango, and now crawling through the door.
Anyway.
So, in 1517 this guy named Martin Luther (he's on wiki) wrote this thing against the church called the Ninety-Five Theses, detailing 95 challenges, or issues he had with the church at that time (to call that a gloss would be an obscene understatement). He was a monk, a Catholic priest, a theologian, attended university (back when that actually meant something), studied the great philosophers, I'm guessing spoke or at least understood Greek and Latin, and had the spiritual ballz to take on the Catholic church when they ruled the western world and get himself in a LOT of trouble.
And then there's me. What do we have in common???
 Not anything really.
 I don't really fall under any of these categories, some less than others. I think the only thing we have in common is standing in front of our prospective religious institutions (since Protestants were earning their name at that time in history by 'protesting') with a speech bubble over our heads that says, "Religious Institution! What gives?! Are you kidding me?!?!?"
 So, I am most emphatically not comparing myself to Martin Luther or the present Protestant wing of the church to the Medieval Catholic church, but I'm exploring if I can find ninety-five things that legitimately bug me about the Protestant church in general. It would definitely give me the means to get REALLY SPECIFIC, and give me time to do some research and see if my impressions are still (or ever were...) reality at large.


One of my grievances with church is that it's not designed for new comers, though it be the goal for a lot of well-intentioned leaders. Don't get me wrong, we put out the welcoming banner. It's on church handouts and seems built into events, but we do A LOT to undermine how user-friendly we would like church to be.

#1-Oversimplifying

This first issue is such an irritatingly intricate issue, it has taken me weeks trying to extricate it from other issues, and in the end, I think I have pretty much failed, but, here goes...

A lot of our messages are confusing, if not seemingly contradictory and inconsistent, and if you don't know to ask further (cuz people don't really explain it further), you won't find out the truth of any matter, only the bumper-sticker wrap-up repeated for the lifers each Sunday.

Here is one example. New believer in a new church, a little uncomfortable, you've gone through the 101 class and they are now cutting you loose in "big church". You get the church bulletin showing the pastor's schedule for the coming year.

Your Church Itinerary

Jan:             All You Need is Jesus
Feb:            Why We Need Each Other-The Importance of Relationships
March:       You Don't Need Self-Help with Jesus
April:          Guest Speakers Drs. Cloud and Townsend
May:          Why Following Christ is Easy-Always being Joyfully His
June:          Learning How to Carry Your Cross-Suffering is Inevitable
July:           It's Not About You, It's About Jesus
Aug:           Are You Making an Impact for the Kingdom?
Sept:          Learning Life's Not About Me/Less of Me, More of Jesus
Oct:           Developing Spiritual Gifts and Talents
Nov:          Why Missions is Right for Everyone
Dec:          Discovering Your Unique Calling

It's confusing, but everyone is smiling and easy as though it's the simplest thing in the world. I mean, who cares if we understand as long as we have Jesus? What they're saying has threads of truth, but those threads are getting tangled when they cross things other people have said.

The best part is the ways pastors tend to emphasize in each sermon just how universally, unequivocally what their saying at that moment is perpetually true. #selltheproduct
This Sunday: The SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING you need in your life is prayer.... until next week when,
Next Sunday: The SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING you need is faith in Christ....until the week after when,
Next Next Sunday: The SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING you need is to know the Word....

This has been a feature of every single church I have attended.
Each of the messages is delivered in a polemic, turn-or-burn, skate-or-die dichotomy that often conflicts with the polemic, turn-or-burn, skate-or-die dichotomy the pastor laid out the Sunday before.  Each Sunday is preached in a vacuum as though nothing said that day has any bearing on the statement the pastor made last week. It's confusing, and honestly, I welcome my home Bible study because it helps untangle the knots created at church (Plug: Clinton Arnold's Bible Background Commentary is kick-ass!!!!)

Soooooooo difficult not to careen headlong into other topics!!!

Whenever someone begins to define faith, or God's love as "SIMPLY blah blah blah", I stop reading.You wonder if Paul might have used the athletic imagery because if you do it wrong, you can seriously hurt yourself. Human beings are complex beings. God is a complex being. This isn't necessarily sexy. It might turn people off. We've never let us stop that before. In high school, we would have two "Purity Weeks" where we had chapel EVERY DAY and had to listen about the evils of sex, ESPECIALLY sex before marriage. Why is virginity (a fake sense of purity, really) more important than our intelligence?

How can we determine our spiritual gifts without discerning minds?

Arg, veering, sorry....

What if we actually defined the concepts in our religion with the respect sublime concepts deserve? (yes, I called it a religion, screaming "it's a relationship not a religion" isn't actually saying anything and you could even argue it robs God of His due respect and glory)
I would argue people outside the church would respect our teachings more if we ourselves actually gave our teachings more respect, at the very least as much attention as we do our catch-phrases and bumper-stickers. How can people love and appreciate the nuances found in our belief system when we don't even celebrate them? #grasshopperfail


Now, to be fair, I'm not saying we should deluge people in information. At this point in my rant, I'm not sure exactly what I'm saying, but, I'm saying weigh every damn word and make sure what you're saying is unequivocally what you meant to say and that you're actually conveying needed information.


Further Reading...
Love Your God With All Your Mind, J.P. Moreland
12 Christian Beliefs that can Drive You Crazy, Cloud and Townsend