The dust barely settled from years of revelations about its pedophile priest coverup here in America, the Roman Catholic church now faces another round of public exposures: According to this recent NY Times story, a nine-year investigation points a finger of indictment at the church for covering up an "endemic" pattern of sexual and physical abuse took place from the 1930s into the 1990s in church-run reformatories and special-education schools in Ireland.
Patterns of religious abuse, historically, are by no means limited to the Catholic churches. Evangelical Christian groups and a number of charismatically inclined churches, along with a host of religious fringe groups, have been called out in the past, in books, TV exposes, movies and legal proceedings, for a variety of abuses of organizational power. In May, for example, the nephew of Warren Jeffs, a now imprisoned former leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS, the LDS splinter group that still practices polygamy), has broken his silence about the inner workings of the sect in a much touted book, Lost Boy, in which he reveals the full extent of the religious abuse that led to Jeff's arrest and trial. (Hear the National Public Radio program about it here.)
An op/ed piece in the May 20 NY Times, penned by someone who experienced life in the Irish Catholic system indicted in the report above, opens a window for those too young to have lived through the middle part of the 20th Century into just how differently things looked back then. The writer's account reminded me of my own childhood, when what we today consider to be scandalous abuse was often tolerated and sometimes condoned.
When I was a kid, there was a family on the next block where the husband beat his wife and his kids. How do I know this? Everyone knew. What went on in the home across the street stayed in the home across the street. You didn't interfere. There was a conspiracy, but not one of silence. And as I look back, I wonder how much we didn't know.
This "open silence" was the way. But it was not the right way. How do I know? This is how: By all accounts, the oldest son from that family was a real nice kid. Respectful to adults, he was the only kid I ever knew who unfailingly called my dad Mr. Musselman. He dated my sister. Yeah, he smoked, but back then, except in front of the pastor or priest, almost everyone did. Years later, however, he was arrested elsewhere for the murder of a neighbor in a rundown apartment complex in which he had been living as a bitter, friendless man. Nobody could figure out why. I know why. Abuse breeds abuse. Anger breeds anger. Perpetrators create perpetrators.
In this case, that boy's father was not religious nor was he raised religious, but that makes my point: abuse, no matter what the motive or who the perpetrator, ultimately begats more abuse. Religious people (like my parents and our catholic neighbors) tolerated such behavior because authority figures had broad discretion in my father's world, inside and outside the church. The worst that happened to an abusive dad like that was that he would have to pack up the family and move because of the gossip. When abusive dad's actions were cloaked with a religious veil — in the pulpit or by membership on the church board — they were untouchable. Who would bring down the church, even to save it from a monster? Sadly, it was more important to keep up the appearance of respectability. Although I look back and wonder, who exactly were we trying to fool? God?
And there were plenty of religiously veiled perpetrators in my neighborhood: Everyone knew that the great guy up the block, a devout Catholic, was also an alcoholic and, when he had a few too many beers, could get abusive. No one was surprised when his wife finally got up the gumption to confront it and divorce him. But no one was there to help her, either, and many criticized her. Divorce, of course, wasn't the respectable thing. An interesting sidelight: The oldest son of that family had the guts to take his mom's side and later married a woman whose career and independence he has faithfully supported all these years. He's still married, and happily — and not an alcoholic. But not a Catholic, either. More importatntly ... he was an exception.
In our neighborhood, there were some Lutheran families. In one, the father, a altogether respectable fellow, was an ingrained racist. The word nigger was a common noun in his household when the Freedom Riders cruised the South. Another beat his son and told him he was worthless. That fellow's son, 40 years later, still can't hold a consistent job and is still overcoming that judgment on his life.
And everyone knew that the stern but biblically conservative pastor (he preached against homosexuality, I remember) who served in a nearby church for many years had at least once (that, we knew) beaten his wife in a rage.
Scratch an atheist and, all too often, you'll find someone who, in some way like those reform-school kids in Ireland, suffered at the hands (if not physically then, mentally and spiritually) of a religious authority figure, at home, at school, in a church. A personal example: I learned my catechism one summer at the hands of my racist Lutheran neighbor's pastor during a week-long barrage masquerading as Vacation Bible School. We were seated at tables with printed copies of the catechism. We were told to memorize it. Then we were called up, one-by-one to face the pastor and serve it up without looking at our notes. This man of God never smiled, not once. I was terrified of him ... and, as a result, terrified of God as well. Those who managed the catechetical feat were treated as if it was only to be expected. Those who, like me, were too terrified to perform, were held in barely disguised contempt.
Every time one Christian victimizes someone else, in the church or out, for any reason, it becomes an effective argument against the reality of the church's connection to God. So we shouldn't be too surprised, therefore, that there is a sort of general horror at the idea of the Pope or some other religious leader "calling the shots" in public life. You've got a couple of generations of people who suffered under those leaders, who now write, speak and live as journalists, teachers, lawyers, judges and politicians. They're bent on protecting another generation from what they suffered, and if I were in their shoes, I might do likewise. (In fact, I am. Here. Now.)
We can't forget that Jesus himself said, "The world will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." And if we don't love one another? If what the world sees coming from the church isn't consistent with Jesus' message of love, but rather a holdover from the church's unfortunately lengthy history of abuse of authority, then who can blame them for their unbelief?
We have to face an uncomfortable truth: People whose "map" of Christendom has been drawn by abusers, angry right-wing politicians, uptight latter-day Pharisees and the like are very unlikely, apart from the amazing grace of a loving God, to find the Way.
There are implications here, of course, for the current debate over whether or not "enhanced interrogation" carried out at Guantanamo and other locations by CIA operatives were "useful." The Obama Administration has taken the admirable tack of stepping back and looking not just at the immediate result, which (for all we'll ever know) might have secured information that stopped some terrorist plots from unfolding. Instead, he's looking at how this plays in the Big Picture. He's asking not only how such actions affect the way the U.S. is perceived and how we see ourselves but he's asking the more important — the critically central — question: How are terrorists created?
I know how. I've known from childhood. Abuse breeds abuse. Anger breeds anger. Perpetrators create perpetrators.
You look at the history of the regions that now breed terrorists and you will find decades of ill treatment by those who have abused positions of power. Some of it financed by American money, and perpetrated by people trained by American military operatives. Afghanistan and Pakistan come to mind. Mr. Obama, I think, was right when he said that Gitmo has probably created more terrorists than it has stopped.
At least one U.S. soldier has taken this historical perspective to heart and, in a remarkable act of courage, questioned U.S. policy on this point by stepping forward to defend the rights of a single detainee. A SWAT team member in his civilian life, Capt. Kirk Black now trains Afghani policemen in counter terrorism. At first skeptical that any detainee could be innocent, Black investigated and then took up the case of a man held in Bagram (one of our "offshore" prisons in Afghanistan) even helping him obtain legal counsel.
Capt. Black, previously assigned to Gitmo, has learned by experience to question the wisdom of U.S. policy in the region. He's too young to remember the time when taking a suspect to the police station basement and beating a confession out of them with a rubber hose was a all-to-common law enforcement procedure. (And yes, I have spoken with an older chief of police personally, who acknowledged that fact from his own personal experience. I'm not just repeating "liberal dogma.") The fact that it appeared to be effective caused officialdom to look the other way for decades until court decision after court decision established beyond a reasonable doubt that confession by compulsion was a way to get a quick conviction, but a very bad way to get at the truth.
Mr. Cheney and others who defend America's treatment of suspected terrorists are children of a generation that accepted abuse of authority as a normal, even necessary, part of life, laboring under the illusion that those so abused can flower, somehow, into moral rectitude. Like Capt. Black, we must all acknowledge that such assumptions are not born out by the facts.
History indicates quite the opposite. Authority unchecked, is inevitably abusive. And more to the point, is patently ineffective at accomplishing good ends. Gitmo is a product of what is still resident in our community heart: The residue of a cultural belief that force, compulsion, shame, disrespect, dishonor and rejection are legitimate or effective tools for moral people to use in moral redirection. Whether we are protecting Americans from terrorists or our own children from the fires of hell, compulsion, castigation and cruelty simply don't work. They feed the disorder they intend to end. They kill the faith they meant to instill. They drive underground the discontents that can only be addressed in the light of day, with understanding and compassion.
Mr. Obama also is right to look to the future and resist retribution for those who created Gitmo. Mr. Cheney is sadly mistaken. But he is not a monster. He, too, is a victim. You do not silence the Rush Limbaughs of the world with vitriol. It is vitriol that feeds them. Peace, forgiveness and reformation never rise from retribution and shame. Do we not have the witness of the Reconstruction era and the aftermath of WWI as witnesses to that? The one gave rise to the Jim Crow South and the other to Nazi Germany. Do we not have the witness to the wisdom of rejecting retribution in the post-WWII period, when the U.S. helped Japan rebuild and gained, to this day, an important ally?
Gitmo has given an ironic form of aid and comfort to fanatical jihadists, giving them ample fuel to fan hatred of America in the hearts of Islam's dispossessed. It has made a negative impact on our collective soul and further soiled our already sullied reputation in the global community.
What we do about it has serious implications for our future. What does it say about our decades-long refusal to extend a hand of conciliation to Cuba? The refusal to speak with leaders of Iran? And countless other decisions the U.S. has made, from its position of power, that have often unnecessarily alienated both foe and friend?
Indeed, what does it say about campaigns to prevent gay marriage? Or reverse Roe v. Wade? The lessons of Gitmo might have special relevance for those on both sides of the abortion battlelines, since the wounds of this particularly painful "culture war" were opened afresh this week by the murder of a Wichita, Kan. physician who performed the procedure in the third trimester.
Abuse breeds abuse. Anger breeds anger. Perpetrators create perpetrators. And we, corporately and individually, still so easily become both abusers and victims.
It's time for America to close Gitmo and for each of us to close the Gitmo in our own heart.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Sonja Sotomayor
Oh my.
I keep thinking I've seen the worst from the Republican spin team (Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, etc.) but the news of their accusations of racism with respect to Supreme Court nominee Sonja Sotomayor really makes me wonder how low they're willing to go? I read her comments from the 2002 speech in context ... something Coulter and crew apparently didn't do or didn't care to do. Sorry, I just don't see it, folks. Seems like she's pretty well grounded in reality to me. Certainly not a racist.
If I didn't know better, I'd think these characters were double agents. The Democrats couldn't have hoped for these three to make themselves look so ... well, ridiculous. And without any help!
Hopefully, most Republicans can see through this stuff and distance themselves from it. But I'm more doubtful than ever about the G.O.P.'s ability to re-energize itself. It won't happen anytime soon. The conservative "voice" in this country has been highjacked by these self-appointed mouthpieces and their noisy cohort on the Fox "news" crew and made to look foolish. Thoughtful and compassionate people like me in the Pro-Life movement have little hope of advancing their cause with this kind of assistance.
One bright light: Their unwise comments could do a lot to help secure a more fair hearing for Ms. Sotomayor in the Senate. One can hope.
I keep thinking I've seen the worst from the Republican spin team (Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, etc.) but the news of their accusations of racism with respect to Supreme Court nominee Sonja Sotomayor really makes me wonder how low they're willing to go? I read her comments from the 2002 speech in context ... something Coulter and crew apparently didn't do or didn't care to do. Sorry, I just don't see it, folks. Seems like she's pretty well grounded in reality to me. Certainly not a racist.
If I didn't know better, I'd think these characters were double agents. The Democrats couldn't have hoped for these three to make themselves look so ... well, ridiculous. And without any help!
Hopefully, most Republicans can see through this stuff and distance themselves from it. But I'm more doubtful than ever about the G.O.P.'s ability to re-energize itself. It won't happen anytime soon. The conservative "voice" in this country has been highjacked by these self-appointed mouthpieces and their noisy cohort on the Fox "news" crew and made to look foolish. Thoughtful and compassionate people like me in the Pro-Life movement have little hope of advancing their cause with this kind of assistance.
One bright light: Their unwise comments could do a lot to help secure a more fair hearing for Ms. Sotomayor in the Senate. One can hope.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Ann Coulter Does Not Speak for Me
For a long time, I've been hearing the name Ann Coulter. Apparently an evangelical Christian and pretty definitely a Republican, she has written at least one book that excoriates "liberal" values. In fact, the reason I first heard her name was in connection with the fact that she created quite a storm among her own constituency (politically right-leaning evangelicals — no, that's not redundant) for wearing what some thought was too-suggestive, off-the-shoulders garb on her book cover.
I ran across one of her latest salvos just now, in which she claims that Sarah Palin would have carried the day for the Republicans had she not been weighed down by her not-truly-Republican running mate, Mr. McCain.
I happen to be an admirer of Ms. Palin. As Ms. Coulter notes quite accurately, Ms. Palin has done a pretty good job in Alaska, confronting Alaska's good-old-boy Big Oil problems. Ms. Coulter conveniently forgets that her Republican pals were on the other side of that one. What is notable is that Ms. Palin, like her supposedly ne'er-do-well running mate, Mr. McCain, went against her party's typical stance on that issue, one reason she appealed to the "maverick." And she did, indeed "walk-the-walk" on social issues important not only to the so-called "religious right" but to many people across party lines.
But reading the rest of Ms. Coulter's diatribe, I got the feeling I had entered a parallel universe, one in which everything is turned upside down or inside out and nothing is as you remember it.
As I remember the run-up to the election, things went like this: Ms. Palin, the surprise selection as Mr. McCain's running mate, immediately boosted the Republican hopes in the polls. An attractive woman and a good speaker, she was initially a plus for the ticket, with her soccer-mom directness and velvet-fisted humor that made you think she was tough enough to duke it out with the big kids on the block in Washington. Politically, it appeared to be a shrewd and calculated move to disarm the Democrats by trumping them with a female running mate even as the liberal Democrats watched Ms. Clinton go down to defeat by Mr. Obama.
Ms. Coulter seems to have forgotten that the polls held, even after she "walked the walk," but her (and Mr. McCain's) fortunes began to fall when Ms. Palin's poor grasp of international politics surfaced in a series of interviews. I talked to some people, pre- and post-election, who were uncomfortable with her views on some social issues, but the people I know who voted against the Republican ticket this time around, without exception, did so because of two things: the fact that Ms. Palin was clearly not yet ready to step into the role and the fact that they did not trust the Republican party (no matter who was at the helm) to guide us through a growing financial crisis that was ever more clearly the result of so called "free market" policies Republicans have championed since the days of the Reagan Administration.
Despite Ms. Coulter's suggestion to the contrary, Ms. Palin would have lost the election whether or not Mr. McCain had been on the ticket. She was not ready to lead the country through the political and financial quagmires in which we now find ourselves. And even most Republicans were privately admitting that before it was over.
I have no argument here with Ms. Coulter about her philosophical bent (although we'd no doubt disagree on a number of issues). And I'm more than willing to ignore the cover photo thing. What I'm upset about is her plainly loose grip on the facts and her apparent pride in the fact that Ms. Palin could have exceeded Ms. Coulter's capacity to alienate liberals — the very people I would think she'd want, as a Christian, to reach and convince with her message.
Ms. Palin is a promising young face. She may yet help revitalize an obviously ailing G.O.P. But if she's to be worthy of the U.S. Presidency, she will take a couple of pages from the Obama playbook: Study to show herself worthy to handle the world's economic and political complexities, respect your foes, domestic and foreign (Mr. Obama makes no secret of the fact that several of the former presidents on which he has modeled aspects of his own political career were Republicans, and he's not afraid to talk to the presidents of Iran and Venezuela), and she needs to cultivate an ability to reach out to and open a civil dialogue with those with whom she doesn't agree.
The Republican party is reeling, and Rush Limbaugh and a small army of angry right-wingers are attempting, unwittingly, to marginalize it for a decade. Ms. Palin is one of the few who have the opportunity, should she care to take it, to remake the G.O.P. into a positive rather than negative force for conservative values. She might even get a shot at piloting the ship of state in 2012. But she'll have to shed some baggage along the way. Mr Limbaugh and Ms. Coulter, if they continue on their present courses, would have to be left with the bags on the dock.
I ran across one of her latest salvos just now, in which she claims that Sarah Palin would have carried the day for the Republicans had she not been weighed down by her not-truly-Republican running mate, Mr. McCain.
I happen to be an admirer of Ms. Palin. As Ms. Coulter notes quite accurately, Ms. Palin has done a pretty good job in Alaska, confronting Alaska's good-old-boy Big Oil problems. Ms. Coulter conveniently forgets that her Republican pals were on the other side of that one. What is notable is that Ms. Palin, like her supposedly ne'er-do-well running mate, Mr. McCain, went against her party's typical stance on that issue, one reason she appealed to the "maverick." And she did, indeed "walk-the-walk" on social issues important not only to the so-called "religious right" but to many people across party lines.
But reading the rest of Ms. Coulter's diatribe, I got the feeling I had entered a parallel universe, one in which everything is turned upside down or inside out and nothing is as you remember it.
As I remember the run-up to the election, things went like this: Ms. Palin, the surprise selection as Mr. McCain's running mate, immediately boosted the Republican hopes in the polls. An attractive woman and a good speaker, she was initially a plus for the ticket, with her soccer-mom directness and velvet-fisted humor that made you think she was tough enough to duke it out with the big kids on the block in Washington. Politically, it appeared to be a shrewd and calculated move to disarm the Democrats by trumping them with a female running mate even as the liberal Democrats watched Ms. Clinton go down to defeat by Mr. Obama.
Ms. Coulter seems to have forgotten that the polls held, even after she "walked the walk," but her (and Mr. McCain's) fortunes began to fall when Ms. Palin's poor grasp of international politics surfaced in a series of interviews. I talked to some people, pre- and post-election, who were uncomfortable with her views on some social issues, but the people I know who voted against the Republican ticket this time around, without exception, did so because of two things: the fact that Ms. Palin was clearly not yet ready to step into the role and the fact that they did not trust the Republican party (no matter who was at the helm) to guide us through a growing financial crisis that was ever more clearly the result of so called "free market" policies Republicans have championed since the days of the Reagan Administration.
Despite Ms. Coulter's suggestion to the contrary, Ms. Palin would have lost the election whether or not Mr. McCain had been on the ticket. She was not ready to lead the country through the political and financial quagmires in which we now find ourselves. And even most Republicans were privately admitting that before it was over.
I have no argument here with Ms. Coulter about her philosophical bent (although we'd no doubt disagree on a number of issues). And I'm more than willing to ignore the cover photo thing. What I'm upset about is her plainly loose grip on the facts and her apparent pride in the fact that Ms. Palin could have exceeded Ms. Coulter's capacity to alienate liberals — the very people I would think she'd want, as a Christian, to reach and convince with her message.
Ms. Palin is a promising young face. She may yet help revitalize an obviously ailing G.O.P. But if she's to be worthy of the U.S. Presidency, she will take a couple of pages from the Obama playbook: Study to show herself worthy to handle the world's economic and political complexities, respect your foes, domestic and foreign (Mr. Obama makes no secret of the fact that several of the former presidents on which he has modeled aspects of his own political career were Republicans, and he's not afraid to talk to the presidents of Iran and Venezuela), and she needs to cultivate an ability to reach out to and open a civil dialogue with those with whom she doesn't agree.
The Republican party is reeling, and Rush Limbaugh and a small army of angry right-wingers are attempting, unwittingly, to marginalize it for a decade. Ms. Palin is one of the few who have the opportunity, should she care to take it, to remake the G.O.P. into a positive rather than negative force for conservative values. She might even get a shot at piloting the ship of state in 2012. But she'll have to shed some baggage along the way. Mr Limbaugh and Ms. Coulter, if they continue on their present courses, would have to be left with the bags on the dock.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Confessions of a Contrarian, Part 4
Yes, last time, I did actually say Jesus is a contrarian.
I realize that might be difficult to swallow, so I'm prepared to defend what may, at first, seem to be a rather extreme position (and therefore in need of contrarian balance) but the evidence is right there in his Book. So let's take a look through and see.
Let's look, for example, at Luke 11:27-28: As Jesus is passing by, a woman in the crowd calls out, "Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you." Now, I don't know about you, but that strikes me as a very nice thing to say. A compliment: Your mom is lucky to have had you as a kid! (No one, thus far, has said anything like that to me.) But Jesus does not say, "Why thank you." or more modestly, "You're very kind to say it." Or something rather gallant, like, "Well, I'm very fortunate to have had her as my mother." Instead, he says in response, "Blessed, rather, are those who hear the word of God and obey it." Now, take Jesus out of the equation for a moment and insert, say, your favorite politician or movie star or, heck, one of your acquaintances. Kinda, well ... contrary. Maybe a little rude. But Jesus is after something else here. Even though He is certainly who she thinks He is, he wants her and all those who heard her to focus not on the "new prophet in town" (scholars tell us that as many as 500 such prophets came and went — mostly to their deaths — in Israel during the troubled times of the long Roman occupation), but on the message He's come to deliver.
How about John 7:21-24? Here, Jesus delivers a good contrarian retort to those who condemn him for healing on the Sabbath, exposing their hypocrisy. First, he offers a bit of balance to their worship of Moses ("Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs) ....") and then he asks, "Now if a child can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing on the Sabbath?" Indeed.
A prime example is the famous exchange between Peter and Jesus at the foot washing in John 13: Peter, always a man of extremes, gets balanced not once, but twice. "You're not going to wash my feet," declares Peter, to which Jesus replies, "If I don't, you'll have no part with me." "Then wash my whole body," Peter exclaims, and he gets a lesson on the difference between salvation from our sin nature (happens once) and cleansing from the pollution of sin (an ongoing necessity and a service we are to perform for one another).
In fact, the act of foot washing was a bit of contrarian theater, if you will. Jesus was not trying to institute a new ritual for the church (most of us actually got that). Foot washing is not widely practiced today because Jesus was making a pointed statement not about religious practice but rather about the nature of leadership. The disciples were, to the hour of his death, convinced that Jesus was a closet Zealot, and would lead them all, somehow, to political victory and cultural autonomy in Roman-dominated Palestine. Jesus did all that he could, in very contrarian fashion, to suggest otherwise.
The foot washing and the mountainside transfiguration that preceded it are, in fact, the bookends in a contrarian teaching strategy. Jesus gives James, John and Peter a glimpse of his Glory on the hillside, then washes their feet like a common slave. Then in John 14, he calls them friends (bullseye -- the balance). Those contrasting images and the tensions they create have always characterized genuine Christian experience.
There's no more compelling example of that tension than the episode of the woman caught in adultery (John 8). The teachers of the law and the Pharisees, the story goes, bring her into the Temple and show her to Jesus. They appeal to the Book: "In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" Before I go further, it's important to note three things: They were upset and agitated, they were appealing to a recognized authority, they were looking for a fight and trying to set a trap. Now, notice also that Jesus was contrarian at each point. He calmly squats down and begins to write on the ground with his finger (sorry guys, I'm not buying into your game, I won't respond in kind). They keep after him for a while, so he stands up and, as my son would say, he "owns" them with that now famous line, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." After the guys all slink out, he asks the woman, "Where are they? Has no one accused you?" No, sir, she says. "Then neither do I condemn you." he says, but then, contrarian through-and-through, he adds, "Go, now, and leave your life of sin." He doesn't deny what the Law says, he just points out that only those who are sin-free have the right to pass judgment. And the woman gets neither pardon nor permission: She gets grace. She'll not be stoned, but she will be expected to amend her life. And so it is with each of us.
I must point out, before I go any further that if you're thinking that, by contrarian, I mean one who seeks balance in the sense of establishing a middle ground or forging a compromise, I have to say that you've misheard what I said.
Contrarians are not great compromisers. Jesus, the Great Contrarian, if you will, was to the modern mind, in particular, distressingly uncompromising. Consider his answers when questioned about the Jewish Law. In Matt. 18-22, for example, Jesus has just given a mini-sermon on forgiveness and then Peter pipes up and asks him, "Lord, how many times may my brother sin against me and I have to forgive him? Seven times?" Now, the rabbis of the time were in the habit of telling people that you had to forgive someone who has sinned against you — when asked with sincerity — at least three times. But then you were more or less off the hook. So ... Peter's thinking, perhaps, that seven might get him a solid "A" in discipleship class this morning. But no pat on the back is forthcoming. Jesus says to him, "I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy times seven!" And all the scholarly folks tell us that that was a way, numerically, of indicating that there was really no practical limit to forgiveness. We're never off the hook. Ouch, pretty harsh, huh?
Or how about Mark 10:2-5: Some Pharisees came to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to divorce her." But Jesus said to them, "It was because of your hardness of heart that he wrote this command for you. But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' 'That is why a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh." So they are no longer two, but one flesh. For that reason, Jesus says, "What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." Back in the house, the disciples asked him about this again. So he said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery." Double ouch!
There's more. During the mountainside discourse we've come to call the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told a society which excluded the physically handicapped from the Temple environs to cut off their own hands or pluck out their own eyes if they cause them to sin, because it was better to enter heaven as a cripple than to be excluded whole. (We're still not sure what to do with that one.) He admonished an ethnic group that had once ruled the Middle East in great wealth under King David and Solomon and longed to reclaim its glory when the Messiah came that they should give no thought to what they should eat or wear but instead seek God's righteousness and let God take care of the rest. (Try quoting that one to the legions of your neighbors who are suffering from our economic follies in 2009.)
Jesus sought at every contrarian turn to impress upon his hearers the radical nature of the kingdom he was initiating by contrasting it in the sharpest possible terms with the kingdom the Messianic myth-makers had imagined for them.
He told Israel and by extension, all who seek salvation, not only that the Law was in full force, but that its provisions were far more demanding and severe than their rabbis had intimated. Such extremity caused Paul to exclaim, in his letter to the Romans, that "there is not one righteous, no not one, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." And those who heard Jesus say it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven asked in horror, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus answers: "With God, anything is possible." Even our salvation.
Jesus' entire life was a contrarian masterpiece. A contrast of extremes to illustrate an almost impossibly complex interweaving of sacred and profane that still defies our poor efforts to codify it into mechanical logic and simple steps on the one hand or magical mysterium on the other: The God born in a stable. The finite human who could die for the infinite sins of the whole world. The teacher who counted a tax collector among his followers but then took a whip to moneychangers in the Temple, who would eat dinner with the Pharisees and with those the Pharisee wouldn't acknowledge in the street. The Jewish rabbi who heaped scorn on Israel's religious elite then healed the daughter of a Roman centurion whose faith he had not seen among his own people. Who appeared after his resurrection first to two women among his followers, putting his appointed apostles second on the list. The One who would say that not one "jot or tittle" of the Law would pass away until all was fulfilled, then at almost every turn, turn the received wisdom inside out so that we could be changed from the inside out by the Spirit because we could not be changed from the outside in by the Law. The God/man, worthy of our worship yet tempted in all our ways and subject to all our weaknesses. The one to whom all power and authority has been given, and yet who was and is fully and ultimately submitted to his Father's will. The Savior who gave up His position and His freedom (he was not captured or detained against his will), so that we could be free. The One who would submit to death, and in so doing, utterly defeat and destroy it.
To be a follower of Christ is to live in the tension of attempting to find the balance between the righteous demands of the Law and reality of our freedom from its curse. Those who camp on one side of the divide inevitably fall into error. That's one reason why Paul insisted on unity in diversity (a contrarian notion if ever there was one). The Church, ideally, a willing assemblage of contrary folk who balance each other out on their common pilgrammage. It's always when that unity/diversity thing breaks down that the church gets into trouble. And as fragmented as it is, these days, it's clearly in big trouble.
Chase out all your contrarians, and your church becomes a cult. Or a monolithic institution run by an elite that slights its poor, or the rich, or the uneducated, or the educated, or its women, or whatever group(s) whose trait(s) do not happen to describe those at the top who make the decisions and wield the authority.
Cults and monoliths have dominated the religious landscape in the last century, and the Church is now hearing, again, from its contrarian children. May She find that ever shifting place somewhere in the radical middle, where saved sinners and sinners who need to be saved can find the acceptance and repentance, compassion and correction, freedom and responsibility, faith and works, exclusivity and inclusivity that are inseparable in the love and grace of Him who faithfully contradicts all we think we know about Him so that we can come to know Him truly.
I realize that might be difficult to swallow, so I'm prepared to defend what may, at first, seem to be a rather extreme position (and therefore in need of contrarian balance) but the evidence is right there in his Book. So let's take a look through and see.
Let's look, for example, at Luke 11:27-28: As Jesus is passing by, a woman in the crowd calls out, "Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you." Now, I don't know about you, but that strikes me as a very nice thing to say. A compliment: Your mom is lucky to have had you as a kid! (No one, thus far, has said anything like that to me.) But Jesus does not say, "Why thank you." or more modestly, "You're very kind to say it." Or something rather gallant, like, "Well, I'm very fortunate to have had her as my mother." Instead, he says in response, "Blessed, rather, are those who hear the word of God and obey it." Now, take Jesus out of the equation for a moment and insert, say, your favorite politician or movie star or, heck, one of your acquaintances. Kinda, well ... contrary. Maybe a little rude. But Jesus is after something else here. Even though He is certainly who she thinks He is, he wants her and all those who heard her to focus not on the "new prophet in town" (scholars tell us that as many as 500 such prophets came and went — mostly to their deaths — in Israel during the troubled times of the long Roman occupation), but on the message He's come to deliver.
How about John 7:21-24? Here, Jesus delivers a good contrarian retort to those who condemn him for healing on the Sabbath, exposing their hypocrisy. First, he offers a bit of balance to their worship of Moses ("Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs) ....") and then he asks, "Now if a child can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing on the Sabbath?" Indeed.
A prime example is the famous exchange between Peter and Jesus at the foot washing in John 13: Peter, always a man of extremes, gets balanced not once, but twice. "You're not going to wash my feet," declares Peter, to which Jesus replies, "If I don't, you'll have no part with me." "Then wash my whole body," Peter exclaims, and he gets a lesson on the difference between salvation from our sin nature (happens once) and cleansing from the pollution of sin (an ongoing necessity and a service we are to perform for one another).
In fact, the act of foot washing was a bit of contrarian theater, if you will. Jesus was not trying to institute a new ritual for the church (most of us actually got that). Foot washing is not widely practiced today because Jesus was making a pointed statement not about religious practice but rather about the nature of leadership. The disciples were, to the hour of his death, convinced that Jesus was a closet Zealot, and would lead them all, somehow, to political victory and cultural autonomy in Roman-dominated Palestine. Jesus did all that he could, in very contrarian fashion, to suggest otherwise.
The foot washing and the mountainside transfiguration that preceded it are, in fact, the bookends in a contrarian teaching strategy. Jesus gives James, John and Peter a glimpse of his Glory on the hillside, then washes their feet like a common slave. Then in John 14, he calls them friends (bullseye -- the balance). Those contrasting images and the tensions they create have always characterized genuine Christian experience.
There's no more compelling example of that tension than the episode of the woman caught in adultery (John 8). The teachers of the law and the Pharisees, the story goes, bring her into the Temple and show her to Jesus. They appeal to the Book: "In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" Before I go further, it's important to note three things: They were upset and agitated, they were appealing to a recognized authority, they were looking for a fight and trying to set a trap. Now, notice also that Jesus was contrarian at each point. He calmly squats down and begins to write on the ground with his finger (sorry guys, I'm not buying into your game, I won't respond in kind). They keep after him for a while, so he stands up and, as my son would say, he "owns" them with that now famous line, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." After the guys all slink out, he asks the woman, "Where are they? Has no one accused you?" No, sir, she says. "Then neither do I condemn you." he says, but then, contrarian through-and-through, he adds, "Go, now, and leave your life of sin." He doesn't deny what the Law says, he just points out that only those who are sin-free have the right to pass judgment. And the woman gets neither pardon nor permission: She gets grace. She'll not be stoned, but she will be expected to amend her life. And so it is with each of us.
I must point out, before I go any further that if you're thinking that, by contrarian, I mean one who seeks balance in the sense of establishing a middle ground or forging a compromise, I have to say that you've misheard what I said.
Contrarians are not great compromisers. Jesus, the Great Contrarian, if you will, was to the modern mind, in particular, distressingly uncompromising. Consider his answers when questioned about the Jewish Law. In Matt. 18-22, for example, Jesus has just given a mini-sermon on forgiveness and then Peter pipes up and asks him, "Lord, how many times may my brother sin against me and I have to forgive him? Seven times?" Now, the rabbis of the time were in the habit of telling people that you had to forgive someone who has sinned against you — when asked with sincerity — at least three times. But then you were more or less off the hook. So ... Peter's thinking, perhaps, that seven might get him a solid "A" in discipleship class this morning. But no pat on the back is forthcoming. Jesus says to him, "I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy times seven!" And all the scholarly folks tell us that that was a way, numerically, of indicating that there was really no practical limit to forgiveness. We're never off the hook. Ouch, pretty harsh, huh?
Or how about Mark 10:2-5: Some Pharisees came to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to divorce her." But Jesus said to them, "It was because of your hardness of heart that he wrote this command for you. But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' 'That is why a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh." So they are no longer two, but one flesh. For that reason, Jesus says, "What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." Back in the house, the disciples asked him about this again. So he said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery." Double ouch!
There's more. During the mountainside discourse we've come to call the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told a society which excluded the physically handicapped from the Temple environs to cut off their own hands or pluck out their own eyes if they cause them to sin, because it was better to enter heaven as a cripple than to be excluded whole. (We're still not sure what to do with that one.) He admonished an ethnic group that had once ruled the Middle East in great wealth under King David and Solomon and longed to reclaim its glory when the Messiah came that they should give no thought to what they should eat or wear but instead seek God's righteousness and let God take care of the rest. (Try quoting that one to the legions of your neighbors who are suffering from our economic follies in 2009.)
Jesus sought at every contrarian turn to impress upon his hearers the radical nature of the kingdom he was initiating by contrasting it in the sharpest possible terms with the kingdom the Messianic myth-makers had imagined for them.
He told Israel and by extension, all who seek salvation, not only that the Law was in full force, but that its provisions were far more demanding and severe than their rabbis had intimated. Such extremity caused Paul to exclaim, in his letter to the Romans, that "there is not one righteous, no not one, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." And those who heard Jesus say it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven asked in horror, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus answers: "With God, anything is possible." Even our salvation.
Jesus' entire life was a contrarian masterpiece. A contrast of extremes to illustrate an almost impossibly complex interweaving of sacred and profane that still defies our poor efforts to codify it into mechanical logic and simple steps on the one hand or magical mysterium on the other: The God born in a stable. The finite human who could die for the infinite sins of the whole world. The teacher who counted a tax collector among his followers but then took a whip to moneychangers in the Temple, who would eat dinner with the Pharisees and with those the Pharisee wouldn't acknowledge in the street. The Jewish rabbi who heaped scorn on Israel's religious elite then healed the daughter of a Roman centurion whose faith he had not seen among his own people. Who appeared after his resurrection first to two women among his followers, putting his appointed apostles second on the list. The One who would say that not one "jot or tittle" of the Law would pass away until all was fulfilled, then at almost every turn, turn the received wisdom inside out so that we could be changed from the inside out by the Spirit because we could not be changed from the outside in by the Law. The God/man, worthy of our worship yet tempted in all our ways and subject to all our weaknesses. The one to whom all power and authority has been given, and yet who was and is fully and ultimately submitted to his Father's will. The Savior who gave up His position and His freedom (he was not captured or detained against his will), so that we could be free. The One who would submit to death, and in so doing, utterly defeat and destroy it.
To be a follower of Christ is to live in the tension of attempting to find the balance between the righteous demands of the Law and reality of our freedom from its curse. Those who camp on one side of the divide inevitably fall into error. That's one reason why Paul insisted on unity in diversity (a contrarian notion if ever there was one). The Church, ideally, a willing assemblage of contrary folk who balance each other out on their common pilgrammage. It's always when that unity/diversity thing breaks down that the church gets into trouble. And as fragmented as it is, these days, it's clearly in big trouble.
Chase out all your contrarians, and your church becomes a cult. Or a monolithic institution run by an elite that slights its poor, or the rich, or the uneducated, or the educated, or its women, or whatever group(s) whose trait(s) do not happen to describe those at the top who make the decisions and wield the authority.
Cults and monoliths have dominated the religious landscape in the last century, and the Church is now hearing, again, from its contrarian children. May She find that ever shifting place somewhere in the radical middle, where saved sinners and sinners who need to be saved can find the acceptance and repentance, compassion and correction, freedom and responsibility, faith and works, exclusivity and inclusivity that are inseparable in the love and grace of Him who faithfully contradicts all we think we know about Him so that we can come to know Him truly.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Susan Boyle
If you haven't heard the name, you're more computer-challenged than I am, and you have my deepest sympathies. I haven't provided the link, but you won't need one. Simply type in "Susan Boyle video," in your browser's search window and hit return. (I'll wait.)
People say the Internet is the Great Leveler. It's Communication for the Common Man. Certainly its the haven for everyone who ever wanted his or her 15 minutes of fame. The online world is positively awash with MySpacing Facebookers who twitter and tweet and text each other incessantly, as they await their moment on YouTube. Talent is not required. This week, however, the Internet proved its worth, again, as a stage for real talent that isn't packaged in pubescent perfection or bought-with-Botox beauty.
Susan Boyle is a 47-year old woman from Scotland. She looks .... well, like most of us. Not Angelina Jolie. Not Brad Pitt. Since she was 15, she says, she's wanted to be a professional singer. Instead, she cared for her ailing mother until she died. Now she lives alone with her cat and, until this week, sang mostly for the smallish crowd at the local pub, with a karaoke machine as her back-up band. Hasn't made a dime. By her own admission, she's "never been kissed."
After a single, seven-minute appearance on Britain's Got Talent six days ago, during which she presumably used up half of her 15 minutes, spunky Ms. Boyle endured chuckles and rolling eyes and earned cheers and a standing ovation, impressing even the almost impossible to please impressario Simon Cowell. Videos of her turn signing "I Dreamed a Dream" (from the stage musical Les Miserables) streamed onto the Internet. More than 25 million hits and counting. A week later, she's famous not only in Great Britain, but all over the world.
Just today, someone turned up a charity CD on which she sang a single song a decade ago. Google "Susan Boyle Cry Me a River," then picture Lena Horne or almost any other famous voice who's sung a similar song in the last 70 years. Oh, my! What a voice.
No money yet, but that will surely follow. Simon Cowell will no doubt see to that, even if she doesn't win the competition. But for now, she's captured the hearts of every plain old nobody whose talents are wrapped in brown paper but still dreams a dream.
Hope she finds that first kiss, too.
People say the Internet is the Great Leveler. It's Communication for the Common Man. Certainly its the haven for everyone who ever wanted his or her 15 minutes of fame. The online world is positively awash with MySpacing Facebookers who twitter and tweet and text each other incessantly, as they await their moment on YouTube. Talent is not required. This week, however, the Internet proved its worth, again, as a stage for real talent that isn't packaged in pubescent perfection or bought-with-Botox beauty.
Susan Boyle is a 47-year old woman from Scotland. She looks .... well, like most of us. Not Angelina Jolie. Not Brad Pitt. Since she was 15, she says, she's wanted to be a professional singer. Instead, she cared for her ailing mother until she died. Now she lives alone with her cat and, until this week, sang mostly for the smallish crowd at the local pub, with a karaoke machine as her back-up band. Hasn't made a dime. By her own admission, she's "never been kissed."
After a single, seven-minute appearance on Britain's Got Talent six days ago, during which she presumably used up half of her 15 minutes, spunky Ms. Boyle endured chuckles and rolling eyes and earned cheers and a standing ovation, impressing even the almost impossible to please impressario Simon Cowell. Videos of her turn signing "I Dreamed a Dream" (from the stage musical Les Miserables) streamed onto the Internet. More than 25 million hits and counting. A week later, she's famous not only in Great Britain, but all over the world.
Just today, someone turned up a charity CD on which she sang a single song a decade ago. Google "Susan Boyle Cry Me a River," then picture Lena Horne or almost any other famous voice who's sung a similar song in the last 70 years. Oh, my! What a voice.
No money yet, but that will surely follow. Simon Cowell will no doubt see to that, even if she doesn't win the competition. But for now, she's captured the hearts of every plain old nobody whose talents are wrapped in brown paper but still dreams a dream.
Hope she finds that first kiss, too.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Confessions of a Contrarian, Part 3
I've confessed to and defined contrarianism and suggested a general genesis for this under-appreciated tendency, but so far it's been about contrarians as a group. What about me?
Although I remain (necessarily) open to the idea that I'm contrarian in my DNA (yes, my father was one), I suspect he and I became contrarians largely as a result of our religious upbringing. Dad was the preacher's kid, and had all the unhappy experiences a P.K. could have in a small, conservative Mennonite community in South Central Kansas, where everyone knows who you are you and news of anything you do gets back to the church board.
Like my dad, I grew up in the Christian church. Or so I've often said. But recently, I've come to realize, appallingly late, that that is an inaccurate statement for several reasons:
A Gordian knot, of course, cannot be untied. It seems a truism that those who wish, finally, to grow up in such churches must begin that process (as did a legendary Alexander the Great) by cutting the knot — a decision that it takes a reasonably healthy contrarian to make without plunging headlong into an even more dangerous brew of belief and misbelief or losing faith altogether.
It's a decision one can make only when one finally realizes an obvious and, therefore, almost universally overlooked fact: Jesus is, yes ... a contrarian. (More in Part 4.)
Although I remain (necessarily) open to the idea that I'm contrarian in my DNA (yes, my father was one), I suspect he and I became contrarians largely as a result of our religious upbringing. Dad was the preacher's kid, and had all the unhappy experiences a P.K. could have in a small, conservative Mennonite community in South Central Kansas, where everyone knows who you are you and news of anything you do gets back to the church board.
Like my dad, I grew up in the Christian church. Or so I've often said. But recently, I've come to realize, appallingly late, that that is an inaccurate statement for several reasons:
- First, and most importantly, I did little "growing up" in the church. (I'll have more to say about that another time.)
- Second, I didn't do this growing up within a fairly narrow, distinctly protestant/rationalist and thorough-goingly American slice of a splintered church that is as variegated, divided and at war with itself as the world it claims to be here to save. We referred to ourselves as evangelical Christians. The rest of the church and the world, especially in the last couple of decades, have suggested other, less complimentary names for us — not entirely without cause.
- Third, I became associated for a number of years with an organization that claimed to represent The Church but often obscured the real church from view. We self-proclaimed evangelicals were, of course, right, and the rest were wrong and, therefore, we had little real contact with other brands of Christianity.
- Fourth, the theologies of the evangelical churches (yes, plural — there are many, which tends to blunt each sub-brand's truth claims) with which I was associated were unfortunately malignant mixes of what I still believe are timeless, eternal truths with time-bound, temporal, cultural conservatism tainted by racism and class bigotry, marred by misogyny and despoiled by a surprisingly pervasive undercurrent of unaddressed sexual dysfunction and gender confusion.
A Gordian knot, of course, cannot be untied. It seems a truism that those who wish, finally, to grow up in such churches must begin that process (as did a legendary Alexander the Great) by cutting the knot — a decision that it takes a reasonably healthy contrarian to make without plunging headlong into an even more dangerous brew of belief and misbelief or losing faith altogether.
It's a decision one can make only when one finally realizes an obvious and, therefore, almost universally overlooked fact: Jesus is, yes ... a contrarian. (More in Part 4.)
Friday, April 10, 2009
Confessions of a Contrarian, Part 2
Last time, I admitted to being a contrarian and celebrated the contrarian's role in a world too full of those who are too sure they're right and everyone else is wrong. But ... what is a contrarian?
As the term suggests, folks thus afflicted tend to be contrary. Yes, they can be a bit Eeyore-ish, seeing the rain cloud when others are focusing only on the silver lining. They can appear, to those who do not know them, to have a negative attitude toward life. And for that reason, they often are mistaken for curmudgeons or misanthropes.
If those accusations were true, however, they could not be contrarians. Contrarians, in fact, are often hopeful and caring people. They are just as likely to point out the silver lining when others are under a cloud. And they are more likely to take issue with a friend than someone they don't know (or who does not know them), precisely because they are anything but misanthropic.
So, how does one become a contrarian? There's no easy answer to that, because it's a chicken-and-the-egg thing: Which came first? Are we contrarian by nature, and just can't help ourselves? Or have we come into a world owned by the overly sure overlords of rightness, and thus been forced to become contrarians in an attempt to find some kind of balance?
I lean toward the latter option because balance is the contrarian's bottom line. Contrarians aren't argumentative for argument's sake. They aren't trying to win. They seek, instead, a middle ground, a level playing field, a fair airing of a subject's undiscovered complexity, a more thoughtful, less doctrinaire dialogue.
And they will take positions that are quite different from the ones they actually hold, to remind the other that there is always another side to a one-sided discussion. They want the other to leave the scene with a broader perspective, a sense that there may be more to it than they had suspected.
As you might suspect, there is more to this contrarian apologetic. Next time.
As the term suggests, folks thus afflicted tend to be contrary. Yes, they can be a bit Eeyore-ish, seeing the rain cloud when others are focusing only on the silver lining. They can appear, to those who do not know them, to have a negative attitude toward life. And for that reason, they often are mistaken for curmudgeons or misanthropes.
If those accusations were true, however, they could not be contrarians. Contrarians, in fact, are often hopeful and caring people. They are just as likely to point out the silver lining when others are under a cloud. And they are more likely to take issue with a friend than someone they don't know (or who does not know them), precisely because they are anything but misanthropic.
So, how does one become a contrarian? There's no easy answer to that, because it's a chicken-and-the-egg thing: Which came first? Are we contrarian by nature, and just can't help ourselves? Or have we come into a world owned by the overly sure overlords of rightness, and thus been forced to become contrarians in an attempt to find some kind of balance?
I lean toward the latter option because balance is the contrarian's bottom line. Contrarians aren't argumentative for argument's sake. They aren't trying to win. They seek, instead, a middle ground, a level playing field, a fair airing of a subject's undiscovered complexity, a more thoughtful, less doctrinaire dialogue.
And they will take positions that are quite different from the ones they actually hold, to remind the other that there is always another side to a one-sided discussion. They want the other to leave the scene with a broader perspective, a sense that there may be more to it than they had suspected.
As you might suspect, there is more to this contrarian apologetic. Next time.
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