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Last year's nest

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

I rescued an empty nest the other day. In the rain. I don’t know why I rescued the nest. No bird lives in it. It was last year’s nest.

I was in my car, pulling out of the driveway to head somewhere, when I saw the nest in the middle of the road in front of my house. Instead of driving by or driving over it, I stopped the car, stepped out into the springtime deluge, and hurried over to it, looking up and down the street for other cars (and for the eyes of curious neighbors) as I went.

The nest was beautiful, perfect in its construction, with a singular strand of sapphire yarn woven into its middle. I picked it up. It was fragile and soggy. And since I was now dripping from the rain and late for where I was headed, I laid the nest at the base of a tree in the sidewalk buffer and dashed back to my car.

Sometimes I think I spend far too much time rescuing last year’s nests. Perhaps we all do. How do we decide, after all, how much energy to give to preserving last year’s architectural delights, and how much to use building for this year and the future?

There is something to be said, I think, for the intricate magnificence of some of last year’s nests. Those nests held and hold precious, life-shaping memories. They nurtured possibilities and provided launching pads for nestlings’ first flights.

The nest reminded me of how, in Christian traditions, we are discovering again the ways in which early believers became community and worshiped together. Some of these discoveries serve… [Read more…] about Last year's nest

This Is How Bigotry Dies (To Thunderous Tantrums)

by Don M. Burrows in Christian Issues

What is with conservatives quoting Star Wars so often in their political discourse?

I’m referring, of course, to the line in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, where Natalie Portman’s character utters, in response to dictatorial powers being given to Chancellor Palpatine (the erstwhile Sith Lord), that “this is how liberty dies … to thunderous applause.”

I can’t tell you how often I’ve seen this applied with a straight face to President Obama’s democratic election, or his congressionally passed health-care mandate. Conservatives everywhere seem to think active-state liberalism is analogous to an intergalactic weakening of the representational monarchies of the Old Republic.

The latest to do so is (our favorite!) Albert Mohler, the Southern Baptist Convention’s resident pseudo-intellectual. I’ve written about Mohler before. Many times. So I’ve been anxiously awaiting his response to the kerfuffle in Indiana over that state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and this week, he didn’t disappoint.

Mohler, in a post titled “This is How Religious Liberty Dies,” complains about the “secular left,” a frequent boogeyman of right-wing nightmares, which sunk Indiana’s RFRA after it was revealed that it could be used to green-light discrimination against LGBT folks.

Mohler indicts the law’s detractors for misconstruing it, all the while leaving his readers under the mistaken impression that the Indiana law is simply a mirror to the federal one signed by Bill… [Read more…] about This Is How Bigotry Dies (To Thunderous Tantrums)

Jesus, Executed Terrorist

by Don M. Burrows in Christian History

Today is Good Friday, the day on which Christians mark the occasion of Jesus’ crucifixion. The precise day and time varies depending on which Gospel you read, but according to the historical methodologies accepted by scholars of the ancient world, there is perhaps no event that more certainly occurred in antiquity.

It is hard to emphasize just how striking a situation early Christians were in, owing to the crucifixion of their founder. The cross today is almost universally recognized as a symbol for Christianity, but that was certainly not the case in the first century, nor even in the first few centuries after Jesus died.

Scholars have long seen the crucifixion of Jesus as highly probable historically, because crucifixion was such a public, shameful, and politically charged method of execution. This is not, as the “criterion of embarrassment” sees it, something that a group of people would make up. As a scholar of ancient Rome, I have to agree: I cannot imagine a scenario more fraught with problems than one in which your chief figurehead had been crucified, and it seems clear from much of Christian literature, from the Gospels themselves onward, that Christians were very concerned about the image this portrayed and significantly invested in making Jesus appear not at all worthy of any such execution.

Whether one thinks he was, in fact, worthy of execution – from the standpoint of the Romans, of course – typically has more to do with one’s politics and theology.… [Read more…] about Jesus, Executed Terrorist

Longing for Grace

by in Christian Spirituality

I won’t be in church on Easter, but I wish I could be.

If you’d asked what I was doing inside a megachurch that sunny Sunday morning, I wouldn’t have had a clue. I’d left my children with their dad, intending to go home and work, maybe take a walk. But after a few minutes alone in the car a familiar ache returned, the one that took over whenever busyness yielded to the backdrop of my impending divorce.

I’d driven past suburban Boston’s Grace Chapel a hundred times. That day, I stopped. Inside, a band played and a woman sang lyrics of yearning and forgiveness. People were swaying, arms upstretched. A man near the front was crying and soon so was I, unsure what I was witnessing, much less feeling. Was it grief or joy, or something else? In my loss, I felt a sense of comfort, but more: awe and encompassing love, unlike anything I’d experienced in other spiritual contexts.

It was powerful enough to bring me back again and again and again. For years, I found Grace a place of deep caring and hope—and yet a place where I don’t fit. It wasn’t for lack of trying. For months after that first visit, I went there almost every Sunday. I attended a divorce support group, and read the Bible at night after my kids were asleep. Grace was a gentler place than I’d imagined from stereotypes I’d absorbed as a left-leaning New Englander. I met mostly whole and happy people there, people who seemed remarkably free to focus on the world beyond themselves. Belief in Jesus did… [Read more…] about Longing for Grace

The Political Punch Behind Christianity’s Favorite Prayer

by Don M. Burrows in Christian History

I love the Lord’s Prayer.

The translation of it now universally recited in the English-speaking world holds a poetic, lilting quality that makes its recitation a cathartic ritual even if one holds sincere doubts about its specific words.

But what exactly are those words?

Many Christians, if not most, have experienced the embarrassment of rehearsing aloud – and it always feels super loud, right? – the wrong choice of “debts” or “trespasses” when the service at a new church turns to the Lord’s Prayer, as it so often does. It always feels as though – even if you managed to discreetly escape the Visitor’s Sticker they wanted to put on your lapel – you have just declared in no uncertain terms that you are an outsider.

Yet despite this common experience, few perhaps realize that this confusion between debts and trespasses reflects an inconsistency in the New Testament itself. It’s Luke – and Luke alone – who records that Jesus instructed us to pray to God to “forgive us our sins,” or ἁμαρτίαι (hamartiai), the word we translate as “trespasses.” Yet he does not use the same word for what we are to do for others. That word remains “debtors” (ὀφείλοντι, opheilonti) in much the same way Matthew records that we are to forgive the “debts” (ὀφειλέταις, opheiletais) owed to us.

So why do so many churches use “trespasses” in both cases? Clearly it’s more poetic for them to be in parallel, even if they never appear that way in the New Testament, and… [Read more…] about The Political Punch Behind Christianity’s Favorite Prayer

Christians and Spank Culture: How and Why to Stop It

by Jennifer C. Martin in Christian Issues

Between the “cool pope” speaking out in favor of physical discipline and Fifty Shades of Grey, spanking is back in the news.

Though I come from an evangelical background, I admire the pope, and so found his latest comments frustrating.

I don’t spank my children. (Full disclosure: my children are still quite young—but so far, so good.)

My relatives all spank their children with reckless impunity. To them I know it seems so simple: the actions of the child who has disobeyed is immediately met with the power and authority of their mighty hand, by which the child immediately learns that he or she has done wrong.

But I don’t discipline my kids that way. And people judge me for that. One relative mentioned casually to my husband, “You guys can get away with not spanking, because your kids listen—but my kid won’t do anything unless she’s spanked.”

I wanted to argue; I wanted to answer, “That’s because you’ve trained your child to be completely unresponsive to any form of discipline other than spanking. Your child knows that when you simply ask her to do something, you don’t mean it—you only mean it when you spank. (And no, my kids do not always listen.)”

The idea that not spanking is some sort of easy, overly lenient parental response is baffling to me. It would be much simpler to smack my kids every time they did something wrong (especially when I’m angry at them) than it is to consistently treat them like human beings deserving of the same respect that I believe I’m… [Read more…] about Christians and Spank Culture: How and Why to Stop It

Must "American Sniper" Chris Kyle be seen as immoral?

by in Christian Issues

This is in response to so much that we’re now seeing on the Internet–and maybe especially amongst progressive Christian bloggers (such as Ben Corey)—about how “American Sniper” Chris Kyle must, by virtue of having done his job, be immoral.

It would have been wrong for Chris Kyle to have ON HIS OWN killed people. That would be murder. He, and his fellow soldiers, whether they were snipers or truck drivers, put the needs of others ahead of their own lives, and that is the very essence of both love and heroism. And we rightly honor heroes.

That of course is not the same thing as saying that all wars are just. Leaders make mistakes, and citizens have the responsibility to question the morality or need for any war. One could argue that the United States made either a moral or practical mistake by entering any number of wars. But the heroism of the individual soldiers who served in those wars remains exactly the same.

Non-violent means of political change is great, and should always be pursued. But non-violence is not a moral absolute. Gandhi is a hero, for standing up to British imperialism non-violently. But non-violence did nothing but encourage Hitler.

Without war, without the sacrifice of many, many, heroic soldiers, slavery would be legal in the Confederate States of America, and Auschwitz would still be in operation. To refuse to fight those wars would have been immoral.

Finally, out of necessity, soldiers don’t have the luxury of… [Read more…] about Must "American Sniper" Chris Kyle be seen as immoral?

Eliminating evangelical double-speak about salvation

by Chuck Queen in Christian Issues, Christian Spirituality

Mega-church pastor, best-selling author, and evangelical icon, Rev. Rick Warren wrote the foreword to a 2008 book authored by Rabbi David J. Wolpe titled, Why Faith Matters. Rev. Warren had this to say about Rabbi Wolpe,
The closer I get to David Wolpe, the more I am impressed by this man of faith.  … his unique contribution of experiences has given him a credible platform from which he presents the case that faith in God truly matters … .

Regardless of where you are in your own personal faith journey, I’m certain that his profound insights in this book will stimulate your thinking and even touch your soul about the reality of God in fresh and surprising ways.
Of course, Rabbi Wolpe’s “faith in God” is not faith in Jesus, which Warren holds as essential for salvation.

In 2012, Mr. Warren was interviewed by ABC’s Jake Tapper, who asked if he believed that Jesus is the only way to heaven. Warren responded,
I do believe that. I believe that because Jesus said it. See, I don’t set myself as an authority. Jesus said “I am the way.” He didn’t say I’m one of the ways; he said “I am the way. I’m the truth. And I’m the way.” I’m betting my life that Jesus wasn’t a liar.
Tapper next observed that Warren was involved in a lot of Interfaith dialogue with friends of other faiths. He asked Warren,
Why would a benevolent God tell those friends of yours who are not evangelical Christians, “I’m sorry you don’t get to go to heaven?”
Here’s how Warren sidestepped that vital… [Read more…] about Eliminating evangelical double-speak about salvation

One question fundamentalists cannot answer

by Chuck Queen in Christian Spirituality, Fundamentalism

For several years now I have been asking Christian fundamentalists and conservatives the same question; namely, Why would God care more about what we believe about God than how we live for God?   

Rarely does a fundamentalist/conservative even attempt to offer a rational answer to this question. Instead, they generally respond in one of three ways:

1: Shout louder: You are denying the truth! That’s the wrong question to ask! The question has no bearing on what is true!, and so on. They respond with accusations and denials, and never get around to actually wrestling with the question.

2. Quote Bible verses and/or recite the talking points of their learned doctrine.

3. At least try to approach it rationally—but, again, never really respond directly to the question. (They usually say something about God’s holiness demanding that Jesus die in our place—which, in the end, amounts to nothing more than a recitation of a doctrine they think essential for salvation.)

And all along the question lingers, and waits, and hopes to be answered . . .

The reason no fundamentalist can reasonably answer the question is because no reasonable answer exists for it. No answer makes sense based on common sense, reason, human dignity, and our best intuitive sense of what is good, right, just, fair, and of most value. So all they can do is quote the Bible, deny the importance of the question, cling to their creed, and stumble around the question as best they… [Read more…] about One question fundamentalists cannot answer

Keeping Hope Alive

by Chuck Queen in Christian Spirituality

In Luke’s story about Mary and Joseph bringing Jesus to the temple (Luke 2:22-40) they meet two prophets, Simeon and Anna, both well along in years. Simeon and Anna had been patiently waiting and looking for “the redemption of Israel” (Luke 2:38) and for God’s salvation “prepared in the presence of all peoples” as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” (Luke 2:31-32). In eschatological terms they were looking for a world of peace and restorative justice, a world healed and put right.

This is what the early Christians were longing for when they talked about the second coming of Jesus. They were looking for a new world order of equity and equality (Gal. 3:28), in essence “a new creation” (Gal. 6:15; 2 Cor. 5:17). The early Christians employed the language of “apocalyptic” to talk about this new world, which is the language of poetry, of metaphor and symbol, of exaggeration (hyperbole).

Some Christians think that God will intervene at some point in the human struggle to bring about this new world. Other Christians think it will come about through the collaborative, cooperative work of human beings as they work with each other (and with the Spirit) to bring it about. I align with this latter group, if indeed, the kingdom of God will ever be realized fully in this world. Sometimes I wonder.

In terms of our spiritual and moral evolution as a species we can’t be much past adolescence can we? Our intellectual and technological evolution seems to be outpacing our spiritual and… [Read more…] about Keeping Hope Alive