Oh, Number Two!

When I posted on the subject of Creating Godde in my own image, I expected some negative reactions, but the kind of negative reactions the post received has been rather interesting.

Setting aside the whole "feminist issue" for a minute, one of the more interesting comments was from a fellow Methodist who objected to my first comment that I was waiting for the inevitable **** to fly. I wrote four asterisks, and my colleague pulled out the old card of "Let's all be horrified that an ordained minister (and a woman at that?) has made a scatological remark."

I'm going to put myself on a limb again, but I don't believe that there is anything immoral or unethical with making scatological remarks. I accept that some may find such words distasteful, but I think possibly the greatest worry is about being indelicate.

We also have all these "cute" words for excrement (is that a naughty word too?) like "number two" and "doggy do" and "poo poo". Are four asterisks really all that much more offensive? And, for that matter, what really is wrong with the words "shit" or "crap"? (yes, I dared to write them)

It's a topsy-turvy world. I wonder if those who take offense at four asterisks are writing letters of protest to the television programmes that are showing people jumping up and down shouting "Oh my God! Oh my God!"? (Are you offended that I dared to write those words? It's technically taking the name of the Lord in vain, but my bet is you're not nearly offended at that as what I wrote in the previous paragraph.)

Or what about getting outraged at articles that spin the truth so that people are presented in the worst possible light or presented as meaning something that they didn't mean? God forbid that those with sensitive constitutions should see four asterisks, but, hey, tell as many half-truths as you like and hope that others will interpret everything in the worst possible light.

We don't care about truth or taking the Lord's name in vain, but don't offend our eyes or ears with Number Two.

A Thought Experiment - Did I ask you to breed?

Here is a thought experiment that is born out of two recent stimuli: 1) the recent discussion on the repeal of the Health Care Law and 2) paying my property taxes.

Some of my politically conservative Christian friends and colleagues have been opining about how God doesn't like it when the government forces people to look after other people. So this got me thinking about my property taxes.

You see, 66.95% of my property taxes are going to our public schools. In a town that voted Republican, in a county that voted Republican, in a State that ousted the Democratic Governor for a Republican one. We are really Republicans around here. I can vouch for that because I keep hearing about how all the government wants to do is tax us and take away our freedoms.

It's kind of ironic. I voted twice for an increase in our property taxes for the purpose of funding schools and not only do I not have children in the local school district, I don't have children full stop. I did it because I believe that we have to look after one another in society and that the education of the children in this community is about the good of the whole, not about me.

I figure I'm something of a mug. My neighbors apparently believe that there is something ethically wrong about helping me with my healthcare in the event that I can't pay for it, but that there is nothing wrong at all about me paying for their kids' schooling.

So, my proposal is this: It is ethically wrong to expect other people to pay for your kids' education. Did I ask you to breed? If you can't afford their education, then don't have them.

Let me review my property bill. 66.95% to the school district can go and I'm not going to pay the $22.71 for the zoo, either since I never go there nor the $50.23 for the county parks or the $77.40 for child services. You can strike off my bill the $154.80 to the Board of Developmental Disabilities and the $104.48 for the County Mental Health Board since no one in my family is benefiting from either of their services. I'm also not paying the $20.30 for the bond retirement since I didn't live here and couldn't vote for it.

So now that I have refused to pay taxes to entities that me and my family do not directly benefit from, I have reduced my tax bill by 86.68%. I can see the attraction of the principle of "It is unethical to make me pay for community services that I don't want and that don't directly benefit me." Tea Party, here I come!

Are Women Human?

My friend, Dave over at 42 has just pointed to a brilliant blog entitled Are Women Human? which, according to it's subtitle is dedicated to "Debunking complementarianism and other myths of gender"

For those who don't know what complementarianism is, it's the view that men and women are equal in the eyes of God except that God has reserved leadership for men and "followship" (my word) for women. Or to slightly misquote George Orwell's characters in Animal Farm it's the idea that all people are equal but some are more equal than others. I think that the sound-bite "Are Women Human?" captures this idea perfectly. Check out the blog.

Creating Godde in my own image

I’m coming out of the closet: I have decided to create God in my own image. Really, I have.

I’m going to call Her Godde. Godde is a white middle class woman. Or, in your case, Godde might be an African-Caribbean young woman, or a disabled elderly Latina.

Someone else’s God might be a 3-month old Asian boy with a congenital heart defect or even a white, middle-aged, middle-class man.

I’m absolutely, utterly serious. Here’s the deal.

Christian theology has long asserted that God has no gender and that God is neither male nor female. Yet, if we’re being honest, Western Christianity traditionally pictures God as a powerful white male who is not elderly but old enough to have power and influence and still be physically virile. The CEO of Exxon, perhaps.

Jesus, despite his ethnicity and cultural context, we have pictured as a younger version of the CEO-God. Of course, Jesus was certainly male. And we’ve also been happy to envisage him as white and powerful, a sort of up-and-coming CEO to God’s Chairman of the Board image.

So, if Jesus is divine and male then God must also be male. And Jesus called God his Father, so that must be the way that Jesus wanted all his followers forever after to refer to the first person of the Trinity, right?

Hmm.

British Methodism – I speak only for the tradition in which I was ordained rather than trying to speak for other traditions – affirms that every person is made in the image of God and that we each bear that image within us.

Bearing the Imago Dei does not mean that any one of us bears God’s complete image. Scripture tells us that God created both male and female in God’s image. Thus, woman is not a complete image of God. And man is not a complete image of God. But together we complement each other and bear something that is closer to the image of God than one gender or the other on its own.

Many conservative Christians are not only happy – but indeed eager – to point out this complementarity of gender when it suits their purposes.

So, tell me why tradition, and much of conservatism, insists that we must think of God as male and that we must conceive of the male human being as being a complete image of God and the female as representing no aspect of God whatsoever?

But here is why I am really creating Godde in my own image: because I realised that I have spent over 50 years not being able to get in touch with the Imago Dei in which I was created because “everyone knows” that God is a man.

Did I think that God is a man? No, I did not think that. Did I believe that God is a man? I didn’t believe that in my head, but I sure believed it in my heart and in my gut. God could not be part of me because God is not a woman. Even if I have “received the Holy Spirit” and the Spirit is in me, the Spirit is a man (not in Greek or Hebrew, but certainly in popular Western thought).

Of course, God is not black either. Or disabled. Or gay. Or transgendered. If you’re any of those things, you have to think that the Imago Dei inside you is a straight white male. A foreign invader. Not really part of you. You bear no image of the divinity. But if you are ready to confess to God your sin of being female, black, gay, disabled, or whatever, then God will be happy to put his “normal” corrective image within your field of vision, even though you will never be able to change the way you are.

So, I have decided to create Godde in my own image. And I hope that you too will create God/Godde in your own image in the same way. I’m not going to pretend any more that God is a powerful, white middle class male CEO. And if you don’t believe that either, maybe together we can begin to change the world one person at a time.

Love Divine (Blaenwern)

"Love Divine" to the proper tune.

And Can it be That I should Gain

Feeling nostalgic and thought I'd post one of my favourite hymns.

I Know You Know

Dear Mom:

You know how you give me those things that you don't want? The stuff that you don't want to throw away because they might come in handy and someone could use them? Like the containers that lunch meat comes in? Or the disposable plastic cake carrier that the "Royal Dairy" (let the reader understand) ice cream cake came in?

Well, I'm going to walk out your front door and put them in the garbage bin. And you know that. And I know you know that. And you probably know that I know that you know. It's just that you can't bear to be the one to throw them out, so I'll do it for you.

Just sayin' is all.

Love,
Daughter

Mercy, Not Justice

Recently, I went to pray with the family of a deceased elderly patient. I'd met one of the children a few days previously when I went into the room to introduce myself to the patient and this particular (middle aged) child. The patient was polite but firm, no that patient didn't need a Chaplain. So, here I am a few days later with all the children praying with them upon the - not unexpected - death of a parent.

"Tell me about your parent" I asked. The children told me that the parent had been angry with God on account of the tragic death of another one of their siblings a number of years ago. Then one of them asked me a question that I've been asked once before in my short tenure as a Chaplain: could God accept their parent into heaven if that parent had been angry with God over the death of that child? And then one of them said "We want you to pray for mercy, not justice."

Justice? I passionately believe in God's justice. But I'm not so sure that God's justice has a lot to do with the "sending to hell" of a person whose heart is broken. And that's what I said: "I don't think that God condemns a person to hell for having a broken heart." Now, I have no idea if this particular individual was "going to heaven" but I'm certain in my own heart that they aren't going to be "sent" to hell against their will for not being able to get over their grief.

I also noticed that, when I said that, all the children started crying and they all thanked me afterward.

Here is one place where I think popular notions of salvation and what it means to be a Christian do Jesus and Scripture a disservice. Popular Christianity has turned "faith in Jesus" into some kind of an intellectual assent that has nothing to do with Justice. So, we name people as "just" who assent to certain ideas about Jesus. And they don't even have to actually try to change their lives according to Jesus' teachings; all they have to do is assent to certain ideas about him. And we name as "unjust" people who don't assent to certain ideas, even those whose heart is broken. And we are certain that such people are "unjust" even if they visit the sick and imprisoned and feed the hungry.

This accounting-version of what it means to be a Christian also does a disservice to the concept of "Justice". Any honest reading of Scripture on the subject of "justice" will demonstrate that the biblical concept of justice is not some kind of complicated, abstract, doctrinal mental Olympics. Scriptural justice is very similar to plain, straightforward, everyday justice: don't harm others. Don't steal, don't exploit, don't take advantage just because you can. And it's also more than that: God's people are called beyond the don'ts into the realm of the do's: Do help, do give a hand up, do empower.

Faced with an unjust person whose soul cries out to God: "I harmed, I killed, I stole, I was self-centered, and I'm proud of it. I don't want anything to do with repentance and I don't want anything to do with You. Eternity in Your presence would be hell" I believe that God will grant the person's wish to be outside of the Kingdom for all eternity.

I do not, however, believe in a God who sends a broken-hearted parent unwillingly to eternal torture on grounds of "justice".

If God's mercy is ultimately smaller than the best mercy that we humans can conceive of, then ours is indeed a very small god.

Blogging on blogging / blogging on chaplaincy

I notice that a number of bloggers who I read are currently writing apologetics about not having written much lately. Some are contemplating stopping blogging all together. Some are vowing to blog more next year. And one of my favourite bloggers seems to periodically vow off blogging for a specified period of time but then seems to find that he has so much to say that he can't help himself and a flurry of posts appear.

So here is my blog on my blogging.

I haven't been blogging a lot. But I'm not contemplating giving up. And I'm not going to vow to blog more in the near future either.

A good part of the reason is my new "job". Or rather the Clinical Pastoral Education Chaplaincy training that I'm doing at a very large hospital near where I live. The job, you see, has a way of putting things in perspective. By "things", I mean mainly life, faith and theology.

Theology is actually very important in Chaplaincy, because if you don't know what you believe, it's hard to help other people sort out what they believe. And it's hard to set people in the right direction if you don't know what you believe about God. "Does God forgive me?" "Am I not getting better because I don't have enough faith?" "Why did God let my newborn baby die when she didn't do anything wrong?" These are big questions. And they are difficult questions without easy answers.

Maybe that's why historically the church has liked to keep its eyes on the kind of theology that tries to count how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Will 5-point Calvinists get into heaven? Does God really love Arminians? Can God save those who hold a Christus Victor theology of atonement instead of a penal substitution model?

Don't get me wrong. I still love theology. But some of the more esoteric stuff strikes me as not having anything to do with real life and real faith and the kind of relationship with God that sustains a person through a long illness. Oh, and by the way, the "Accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour" model also doesn't really cut it either.

The wonderful thing about being a chaplain is that I get to see real, genuine miracles every day. I also see real, genuine people of deep, deep faith being told by God "Your loved one will not receive a healing or a cure; it's her time to come to me." And it's inexplicable why some people get the miracle and others don't. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Oh, there is one other dirty secret of Chaplaincy. Non-Christians get miracles too. People of other faiths and people of no faith. God actually does appear to be as merciful as the best mercy that human beings can conceive.

So that's the background to why I'm not blogging much. I'm still taking this all in. My faith in God is rock solid. My faith in the church and in platitudinous theology not so much. I feel like I'm going through a "dark night of the words". I can't describe the kind of faith that I think really gets us through the crises. But I think I know it when I see it.

A Word in Time

Today is the celebration of the festival of Christ the King and this week's appointed bible readings focus on the theme of "The King of Kings". Bible study written by me over at A Word in Time.

Faith in Your Damnation

I don't have faith in your damnation. You whose Christianity doesn't meet some standard of "good enough". Or you who are a Jew, a Muslim, a Bahai'i, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Pagan, or maybe "spiritual but not religious", I don't have faith in your damnation.

Don't get me wrong. You and I might both very well be damned. But, thanks be to God, it's not my job to decide who, if anyone, is damned. That job belongs to God.

However, you might very well have got the impression from many of my fellow Christians that the main meaning we Christians derive from our faith is that you are damned and we are not. And I don't blame you if you've got that impression because I think that's the main message that Christians have communicated.

After all, some would argue, why be a Christian if everyone else is going to get into heaven too?

We've made the "good news" into the message "Good news! God will love you if you are just like us and believe exactly what we tell you to believe." But the flip side of that belief is "Bad news! God doesn't love you for who you are."

The only people who can't seem to see through this message is us.

That's a funny kind of faith - a faith that mainly focuses on the question of who is outside the Holy Fence. To talk to a lot of Christians, it's as if there isn't actually any meaning, reconciliation with God or salvation to be found inside Christianity, so we need to find our meaning in the idea of "Thank God I am not like that sinner." (Oops, didn't Jesus have a parable about that?)

Do we Christians really believe that there is good news at the heart of Christianity? Can we stand before God, just me and God, and find forgiveness, reconciliation, transformation of life? Or can we only feel "saved" if we have the comforting knowledge that there are some people who God just doesn't like - not now, not ever?

Obama, a Socialist?

I thought my American friends might find this post by my friend Doorman Priest interesting:
Joke of the Day

The Democrats are to the Right of our Right wing Party, the Conservatives. Our Left Wing party, the Labour Party, is Socialist. To any American readers please be aware that European Socialism is not the same as Stalin's Gulags or Kim Il Jong's worker's paradise. Some of you would get along just fine here: democracy, free press, a fairly civilised political landscape ... oh no, not that last one: you wouldn't recognise that. And we tend to lock up dangerous people rather than giving them talk shows to host. Just saying.

I become mildly offended when some folk insist on discussing Socialism as if it's symbol is 666. Really people, think before you speak!

Naming the Demons

Over on the blog of my cyber-friend, Allan Bevere, I've been ranting a lot recently about what I call "the institutional church". This evening, I came across the quote below by Richard Rohr.

I'm prepared to own these words, but I didn't write them - I wish I had. I'm happy to dialogue with readers (if there are any of you left) about what these words mean to me. Sometimes it's just good to know that you haven't totally gone off the deep end. (Please, no comments from the Peanut Gallery!)

The three great things that in my opinion we have to let go of are the following. First there is the compulsion to be successful. Second is the compulsion to be right - even, and especially, to be theologically right. That's an ego trip, and because of this need churches have split in half, with both parties the prisoners of their own egos. Finally there is the compulsion to be powerful, to have everything under control. I'm convinced that these are the three demons Jesus faced in the wilderness. And so long as we haven't looked these three demons in the face, we should presume that they're still in charge. The demons have to be called by name, clearly, concretely, practically, spelling out just how imperious and self-righteous we are. This is the first lesson in the spirituality of subtraction.

That lesson also has many social and political implications and leads us to letting go of our political mythologies: for example, that we're the best country in the world, as many Americans believe. Pretty soon we've got to overcome nationalism - there isn't a lot of time left. We also have to give up the compulsion to possess so many thing and to have our own private stock of everything. The fact that not every one of us needs our own auto or washing machine would naturally make a good argument for physical community.

From "Simplicity: the art of living" by Richard Rohr, (Crossroads Press, New York 1992) p.44

I'll just briefly say that I think the church goes wrong when it buys into the ideas of being successful and powerful and when it pushes congregations and clergy to be these things. I think the point about being theologically correct is self-evident.

God is a Woman and She is Growing Older

This is a stunning sermon and well worth a read: God is a Woman and She is Growing Older by Rabbi Margaret Wenig.

(Hat tip to Rachel Barenblat at Velveteen Rabbi)

Faith Sharing

I am currently reading The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything by James Martin, SJ.

In the book, he talks about a practice in the Jesuit community that is called "faith sharing". I immediately recognized this process as the one we used when I belonged to the Ignatian lay community called the Charistian Life Community.

Many Methodists talk about reinstating the original Methodist classes and many people wonder what they might do in such a "class" when they gather to hold their fellow members accountable in love. My own experience of "faith sharing" (I didn't know of this term until I read the book) was that it was the most profound experience of fellowship and growth in faith and prayer that I have ever had. And Fr. Martin can explain it better than I can, so I offer his words here:

Every Sunday night in the novitiate our community gathered for "faith sharing," which meant speaking to one another about our spiritual lives: where we had experienced God in our daily lives and what our prayer was like.

There were two rules. First, everything was confidential. Second, no comments were allowed after someone spoke, unless it was a question asked to clarify something.

The first rule made sense. The second seemed ridiculous. Early on, when people expressed their struggles, I wanted to say, "Why not try this?" If someone talked about being lonely, I wanted to say, "Knock on my door." I couldn't understand why the novice director wanted us to be silent.

Gradually I realized: it was so we could listen....

Gradually I grew to love faith sharing. When my fellow novices, as well as Gerry and his assistant, David, shared about how they had experienced God in the previous week, I was fascinated. What a wonder to see how complicated these men were and how much they were all trying to grow in holiness, trying to be better men, better Jesuits.

I've wanted to write about my experience in CLC for a long time. But it's hard to write about because it's so simple. I personally found the rule of "no talking except to clarify" to be rule that made the entire process work and I think that many people find it a bit silly. But here is what I found:

* When no one can tell another that they disagree with his or her experience of God or that the speaker has got their doctrine wrong then people begin to be totally honest with each other.

* When no one interrupts others, the speakers don't get desperate to talk more in order to be heard and the listeners actually listen instead of worrying about what to say.

* The Spirit of God does move to challenge people and hold them accountable without any human in the group needing to don the mantle of Spiritual Rule-maker.

* When people are really honest about what is genuinely going on in their faith-life, the group members grow to love and appreciate each other and to understand their challenges.

In my experience in CLC, neither accountability nor faith-sharing required a human police(wo)man to make sure everyone was on track. God managed just fine without human intervention.

I'm not an historian of exactly how Wesley did things, but my hunch is that this format would work well for many accountability groups in our time. But the urge to make exceptions to the second rule really does need to be resisted at all cost.

Profit and Productivity

An interesting video: money doesn't motivate people to be productive. People are motivated to be productive when they can master challenges and make a contribution.

If you can't abuse a child, ordain a woman instead

In another one of those instances where evil triumphs if good people say nothing, the Vatican appears to have shot itself in the foot today by pronouncing that the ordination of women is a grave sin.

And how did the Vatican do this? In what document did they choose to make this important pronouncement? Why, in a document written to deal with the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. Guardian Article here.

Apparently, on some Planet Ratzinger in a universe of parallel morality far far away, violating the stricture of Church tradition and ordaining women is equal in immorality to sexual abuse of a child. Wow, if that's the case then we really had better get cracking and make sure that we pounce on feminist theologians. We wouldn't them influencing anyone to think that women can usurp the priestly duties and stand as an intermediary between god and Man (capitalizations deliberate).

This has got to be one of the most egregious violations of common sense, decency and natural justice.

I really hate to appear to be some kind of Protestant who makes knee-jerk attacks on the Catholic Church for no good reason. Half of my family is Catholic and I studied theology at a Catholic university.

But sometimes you just have to stand up for what is right. I've heretofore refrained from speaking about the ordination of women in the Catholic Church because I felt that it wasn't my place. Now the Vatican is comparing the ordination of women to the sexual abuse of children. The Vatican has lost the plot although I'm confident that many millions of faithful Catholics have not.

This pronouncement is morally bankrupt.

Deadbeats

Here is an article from our local newspaper that narrates the stories of all the deadbeats in Northeastern Ohio who could perfectly well work if they weren't so lazy and didn't enjoy sitting around at home and doing nothing while taking the money of good, honest taxpayers.

Rolls of Needy Swell

For those who don't know me, I assure you that I am being facetious.

There is a recession on, people. There but for the grace of God go you and I. Pretending that "my" get-up-and-go in contrast to "their" laziness will keep me in a job is just a form of magical thinking.

Broken Covenant? Not.

Would someone please explain to me how the following statement by the Revd. Nicola Jones at the Portsmouth Methodist Conference can be construed as expressing the view that "that the State of Israel by its 'oppressive actions' has broken the Jews' covenant with God"?

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This report is about Christians listening to the cry from our Christian sisters and brothers. They cry out to us to help Israel and its occupation. The end of the occupation is the key to peace in this troubled land of The Holy One as is the renouncing of violence by all. All the peoples yearn for security but security only follows from justice, not the other way around. And justice is the prophetic priority for all God’s people, as students of the bible know well.

In the bible we learn of The Chosen People. Who are they and what are they chosen for? Genesis tells us again and again that God choose Abraham and makes a covenant with Abraham and his heirs. A covenant being a two-sided agreement with obligations on both parties, like marriage. God’s covenant with the Children of Israel, Abraham’s heirs, is that he will be their God and they will be his people if they walk humbly before God, obey God’s laws and are a light to the nations.

Of course, Israel today is not the same as Israel in the bible. In the bible, Israel refers to the people of Abraham’s descendants who are in covenant with God. Israel today is a modern, secular State, created in 1948. Where, if you live in the West Bank: Bethlehem, Hebron, Ramallah, there is no freedom of travel, no freedom to leave the country and return, no freedom to plant your olive trees or tend your land, no freedom to marry and live together where you choose.

Last Sunday marked the anniversary of my ordination into The Methodist Church. It was 26 years ago (I was very young at the time!). For years I cherished the Galatians text: “In Christ there is no longer male or female.” Now I read it properly: “In Christ there is no longer male or female, slave or free, Jew or Greek – we could say ‘Jew or Arab’ – we are all one in Christ. We are heirs of Abraham and so inheritors of the promise to Abraham.”

Jesus, who makes with us a New Covenant which transforms us utterly, never speaks of the land or owning it; he speaks of the Kingdom and joining it and invites us to do so. He teaches us God is not a racist God who has favourites. God loves all his children and blesses them.

“What is it God requires of you?” asks Micah today. “To do justice, to show mercy, walk humbly with God.” So we look for the day when that is true for all of Abraham’s children – Christian, Muslim and Jew – that they can live together freely and know God’s justice and peace.

A Thought on Immigration

Just a thought inspired from a snippet I read this morning. It's "interesting" how people get worried about immigration and "all those people coming into our country to take jobs away from us."

My husband is a UK citizen with a British accent living in the US. For 21 years, I was a US citizen with an American accent living in the UK.

Maybe people were too polite to say so, but no one ever complained to me that I was taking a job away from a native-born British citizen. Quite the opposite. A number of times, people complained to me at length about immigrants and then when I'd point out that I was an immigrant they said "Oh, but I don't mean you!"

In the same way, no one has yet challenged my husband about his immigration status to the US. OK, it's relatively early days, but I bet they don't mean him - that nice white man with a British accent - when they are worried about all those people coming over here and taking our jobs.

However, the ironic thing is that we were and are the people who are coming over here and taking away jobs from the native born. We are not doing the hard-grafting work that most immigrants do because native born sons and daughters don't want to do such hard work.

I'm pretty sure that it helps being white.