Political Email as Terrorism: The Libelous Forward

Like everyone else, I daily receive forwarded email messages from friends and acquaintances. Whenever it says at the bottom, “Pass this along to ten of your friends and keep this message alive,” I immediately determine I will not pass it along no matter what the threat may be in ignoring the warning.

However, in the midst of an election year, forwarded political messages have become problematic. There has been a marked increase in messages we receive as forwards that have that high-mileage, heavily-passed-along look, that are in fact campaign smears against one or the other presidential candidate.

Admittedly, some of these messages are meant to be humorous. They are meant as jokes even though there’s an unmistakable personal barb in them. Political satire has long been a vital part of the American political system. Late night comedians thrive on the economy of the misspoken word or social gaffe and we citizens love to take our politicians down a notch or two whenever possible. This week’s The New Yorker magazine cover illustrates how even political satire can be deadly. Are the characterizations by cartoonist Barry Blitt true? It doesn’t seem to matter as he has lampooned a common perception fueled by these anonymous email forwards.

These messages are sinister because they allege certain secret facts about a candidate that have inexplicably gone unnoticed by untold thousands of professional political reporters who are gunning for the candidates in order to scoop these same kind of hidden secrets before any other reporter can get hold of them. Professional reporters have well-established ethical codes that tether them to the responsibilities they have as reporters. In those codes, they must verify the facts and identify themselves as the authors of their own reports. But with email, these so-called facts are presented as if no one else has the courage to unmask them or as if there is a conspiracy to keep these facts from the public who deserve to know the truth. With email, we somehow suspend the need for ethics and allow messages with no identified author to have the same merit as those messages we receive from actual reporters.

So what do we do with these anonymous messages passed along virus-like from one person to another? When one uses one of the several urban legend search engines, more often than not the content of these mysterious email messages are discovered to be fabrications. They are vicious, destructive lies with racial or anti-religious biases. They question a candidate’s motives and challenge their patriotism. Why would anyone wish to tell blatant lies about these candidates? What motivations do they have that these messages would originate, then be given an unending life on the Internet passed along by both the malicious and the naïvely zealous?

When I discover the forwarded message is not true and is instead a thinly veiled personal attack on the candidate, my anger expectedly wells up at the one who passed it along as fact. Since there’s no one else to be held accountable, I point my anger at the only name I recognize that is usually someone I know personally: ironically a fellow church member, a friend, or someone else I know. I wonder, why they would participate in this hateful way of communicating?

In this year’s presidential election, there are hateful religious and racial overtones claimed falsely about Senator Barack Obama. Senator McCain gets off lightly but still must deal with the issues of ageism although there is a marked difference in the way the two candidates are unfairly vilified. Four years ago, a new term, “swift-boating,” came to mean an unfair attack on one’s distinguished military service as if to reduce that service to a sham that had been contrived for purely political gain, even though the truth of that person’s service had been noble and self-sacrificing. It was the epitome of turning truth into a lie. Nevertheless, the damage was done and no one suffered much for passing along the original lies unless you consider John Kerry’s character as having been sacrificed on the altar of dirty politics. To that end, I suppose we all suffered at the sacrifice of our need for personal and public integrity.

The Bible has plenty to say about the sins of gossip and lying and condemns both forthrightly. Our legal system also condemns both slander and libel as character assassination. It’s slander when you say it and libel when you print it. So what happens when you forward libelous emails where the author of such lies hides behind the cloak of anonymity … is there no guilt for that as well?


Author: admin | Category: Uncategorized | Comments(5) July 2008
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The War Between Men and Women

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for what James Thurber called, “the war between men and women.” Thurber didn’t begin the war, mind you, but he spoke and wrote satirically about how women and men have traditionally been at odds with one another for power, sexual politics, and marital commitment. In his defense, some things are so important they must be lampooned in order to save us from ourselves.

The latest skirmish came recently after Professor Bruce Ware of Southern Seminary preached a sermon at the Denton Bible Church commenting on how some women bring their own spousal abuse upon themselves and suffer because they rebel against God and God’s supposed choosing of men to be the authoritarian figures in the family (Cf. www.ethicsdaily.com “Southern Baptist Scholar Links Spouse Abuse to Wive’s Refusal to Submit to Their Husbands”). You understand that male dominance is considered a central teaching of the patriarchal understanding of the family and assigned sex roles as pronounced by a fundamentalist/literal reading of the Bible.

Does the Bible present a patriarchal view of male and female roles? Yes, but only if you read the Bible literally. Does that mean God intended this to be the way of things for all time? I don’t think so. There’s a lot in the literalistic Bible we’ve turned away from and now see as archaic for its day or as metaphors that point us toward truth that guides our lives rather than legalistic rules that dominate us punitively. For the literalist, does plucking out the offending eye make sense or was it simply a metaphor?

Miguel de la Torre, theologian at Iliff Seminary in Denver, cites biblical examples of male dominance over women in his essay, “Show Me a Sexist; I’ll Show You a Racist,” on today’s Ethics Daily website. De la Torre reads from the Bible a variety of ways men should have power over women:

* Seeing women as property that can be bought or sold (Exodus 20:17)

* Owning concubines (I Kings 11:3), sex slaves (Deuteronomy 21:10-14) or to enjoy the occasional pleasure of a prostitute (Genesis 38:15)

* The bride who was discovered to not be a virgin on her wedding night should be executed (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)

All these he cites satirically as evidence of “the good old days” … the days when men ruled the world unchallenged by women. He also insightfully correlates how this same male dominance over women is the same power directed toward minorities to suppress them as well.

There are two major schools of thought about how women and men are to relate to one another according to the teachings of the Bible. The Bible seems to support them both depending on how you think about the Bible in literal terms or whether you allow there are metaphors that demand interpretation. If you lean toward a Bible that’s literally true, then you might lean towards a patriarchal understanding where God speaks to men and the men pass God’s intentions along to women. In that kind of relationship, men and women may be created equal but with assigned sex roles: Men have gender roles they must play and women likewise also have gender roles they are to play. This view is called a complementarian view of gender roles.

Belief in a literal Bible, however, presents a good deal of trouble as you can see above. According to a literalist viewpoint, some of you wouldn’t be reading this because your parents might have taken you out to the gates of the city and stoned you to death for disobedience (Leviticus 20:9). I know some of you well enough to know it is the grace of God that such biblical punishment wasn’t meted out in your case. Bill Leonard rightly observes that the only true literalists are the snake handlers!

But it’s not hard to imagine that the Bible came to us from a pre-scientific world and it’s teachings must be culturally interpreted in its original context. Common sense seems to point us toward this viewpoint.

In addition to the obvious cultural boundaries from the ancient world, the Bible also has great metaphorical value demanding thoughtful interpretation. Therefore you might understand that the Bible is not locked into an archaic male-dominated world and that it also values an egalitarian understanding of being male and female.

Both male and female are equally a part of God’s creation and both are blessed by God because we’ve been created in God’s image (imago Dei). Both are free to serve God as God has given them gifts and as God has called them into action. God is the one who gifts and calls and who are we to limit or monitor God’s activity and wisdom?

What is your view on these issues? Do you believe men have certain work to do and women have their own work and that neither should venture over into the other’s world? Do you think both men and women are bound by biblically assigned gender roles and men trump women every time in a tilted world where God has ordained that men control the women ala the patriarchal view of headship?

You might already know I am an egalitarian and not a complementarian. I don’t believe in a literalistic reading of the Bible but see it as the word God has given to guide us in life and that the Bible demands our thoughtful submission to its metaphors and images for divine truth. We study and learn from it but we do not deify it (perhaps another article for the future?).

Back to Professor Ware and his sermon on the rebellion of women against God … this viewpoint of male domination over women is apparently common at Southern Seminary. Remember, this is the seminary where a “full quiver theology” is espoused (couples submit to God’s fruitful blessing of children unhindered by the couple’s use of birth control). It’s also where professors have taught that young adults should get married as young as possible so they can have babies in abundance. To do otherwise is labeled by them as “sin.” All that causes me to ask: Why is there such a deep interest in such things? This past week I wrote an essay about these issues for the Ethics Daily website and labeled their interest in such things as obsessive.

I think it matters greatly what we think about how we relate to one another. I believe God has given each one of us certain gifts that are to be made available to the calling God might have for us … whether we’re male or female. To arbitrarily limit those gifts or to hamstring God simply because of one’s genitalia might be okay if you teach theology at Southern Seminary, but that way of thinking seems foolishness to me and a great limitation on what God might want to do with us and through us to bless the world.


Author: admin | Category: Uncategorized | Comments(0) July 2008
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I am the Alpha and the Omega

The funeral home was packed because “Uncle Jimmy” was a man people counted on in life. He was a well-respected leader in the community and the community gathered in droves when he died.

Uncle Jimmy was a true salesman. He entered the diner and had to go around to nearly every table before he could sit down. He seemed to know everyone and often had a hearty “Hello” to offer them all as if they were his best friends. People loved him for his friendliness. He sold cars down at the Buick house thus explaining why LeSabres and Regals dominated the streets in town.

Birdie and Earl had known him when he was a young man and had helped him get started. It was widely known that Birdie respected some men more than others. Uncle Jimmy earned his respect because he was equally respectful of both men and women. Most men are obvious in the way they insult women by being sugary sweet to them without offering them the same sense of respect they offer freely to men.

Birdie was dressed for respect. She wore an elegant black dress appropriate for the level of respect she felt for “James” as she called him. Even the faux pearls and matching earrings were in sync because they picked up the silver-blue highlights of her hair. As she passed by Uncle Jimmy’s open casket, the highlights of her hair glistened in the blue and pink lights that shined down on him like a divine light.

“James deserves a good send-off,” she whispered to me as she passed by on her way to her seat in the back. While some might have thought she was encouraging me to do a good job, I understood her to mean she looked like a million bucks in his honor.

The somber-serious funeral director escorted the family to their seats as the time to begin the funeral neared. The entrance of the family was like the maestro stepping up on the podium. It was the theater of small-town drama at its best.

What was obvious was that Uncle Jimmy was not going to be around to see the birth of his first great-grandson. Jimmy’s oldest granddaughter was so pregnant with child she waddled gingerly down the aisle and carefully lowered herself down to the folding chair that groaned under her bulging weight. When the gravity of her body seemed to relax and settle, so did the crowd. She was full with child and the whole town seemed to hold its breath when she made her way into the room.

This granddaughter was the one who lit up Uncle Jimmy’s world. The first couple of grandkids had been boys and while grandsons were nothing to sneer at, when Jennifer was born, she became his favorite. Uncle Jimmy loved her and she loved him back.

Jennifer grew up and got married. Uncle Jimmy bought them a car for their wedding and off they went in it when the rice was thrown at their big send-off. What they didn’t know as they drove out of town was that Uncle Jimmy’s doctor had given him a medical report that included cancer.

So while he was laughing and making a fuss over his granddaughter’s wedding, he was holding back a piece of sadness that only he and his wife knew.

Months later, he was unable to get to the car dealership. He was too tired, he said, and the loss of weight had made him gnarly and weak. Unlike some who suffered the same, Uncle Jimmy never lost his hope or his quick wit. He may have been hurting but he never let on that he felt bad. He always had a good word to share with the many people who stopped by to see him.

Jennifer came by after the honeymoon. The day she told him she was pregnant, he mustered up the energy to take her down to the diner for a celebration. They sat in the booth in the back so they could have a little privacy. Uncle Jimmy was never happier, he told her. It was then he broke the news that he was sick unto death.

The closer she got to the due date, the weaker he got. They were headed in different directions it seemed. She grew larger and he withered away.

Uncle Jimmy died on a Friday and Thelma, his wife, planned his funeral for the following Monday. Jennifer’s doctor had meanwhile determined she should deliver by Caesarian and they set the date for Tuesday. Uncle Jimmy’s big departure was on one day and Little Jimmy’s arrival was the next day. Jennifer had no question about what the baby’s name would be.

Life in a small town is a sampler for the whole range of emotions one can feel. There’s no place to hide and no secrets kept for too long. As I stood to “say words” over Uncle Jimmy’s life, I knew there were two strong tugs on both ends of the spectrum of life.

I read the words as if they were penned just for this occasion. “I am the Alpha and the Omega…”


Author: admin | Category: Back Row Birdie Stories, Uncategorized | Comments(0) July 2008
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Voting the God Ticket

I first wrote a few stories about “Back Row Birdie” seven years ago. Birdie’s a fictional character who sits on the back row of church where she can keep her eye on things in her church. From that elevated perch, she watches everything! She watches the drama of church and she’s alert to all the under-the-surface movements of the church as it worships God week by week.

Because of the interest from my congregation back then, I submitted those articles to four editors of publications I admired and asked them if they thought this kind of writing could be useful. I suggested there were other stories I could write using my relationship with this imaginary woman living in my brain. Soon, I heard back from John Pierce, editor of Baptists Today, who offered me a monthly column - one page, 850 words, due on the first of the month [check it out @ www.baptiststoday.org].

Johnny and his associate editor Jackie Riley are very cool to write for. They make no demands other than to observe the word count and writing deadline. They let me do my own editing with very few exceptions and impose no controls on content or make suggestions as to subject matter. Our relationship has been simple: I keep sending them stories and they keep publishing them. And eighty-two columns later, here we are!

All of that’s true with the exception of the one time a story was rejected. I kid you not, “Voting the God Ticket,” the article for the October 2004 issue was rejected because what I had written might be considered offensive to some of their more conservative readers (I know you’re shocked at that!). So I wrote a second story they subsequently published in its place.

That unpublished semi-fictional story was about a well-known SBC pastor who preached a July 4th sermon titled, “The God Ticket,” about the political platform God would promote if God could tell us how to vote. It was a simple sermon about those issues in our nation God would want us to adopt. Of course it was eerily similar to the platform of the Republican National Party! Coming from this pastor, there was no surprise as he was eager to be considered one of God’s “up and comers” among the Moral Majority crowd of preachers competing for national recognition. The narcissism of that kind of political posturing and self-aggrandizement was amazing.

None of that, however, was overly unusual; it was expected from this pastor that he would preach the Republican Party platform and call it “Christian” preaching. What was stunning was as soon as he mentioned the words, “the God Movement,” the Jumbo-Tron above the choir began flashing a montage of slides of President Bush for the church to view while he preached. Never did the pastor mention the President’s name but who else were they to think of as the pastor preached so eloquently about the God Ticket?

Even I recognized that if you preached on the God Platform, it’s required you also preach about the Anti-God Platform (those things God would want us to vote down in the next election). You can see this one coming a mile away, can’t you? This über-conservative pastor preached on all those issues God would have us vote down and of course they were all the issues on the Democratic ticket for the fall. Every Democratic platform issue was named on the Anti-God Ticket.

Worse, when the preacher mentioned “the Anti-God Ticket,” the slide show changed to showing slides of Senator John Kerry in a variety of scenes. Never did the pastor identify the Senator by name; only the visual images were shown but they were shown with the sermon-soundtrack implying God wanted all us faithful children of God to vote for the President’s re-election and to make sure this Anti-God candidate was sent home emptyhanded.

I am a writer of stories and you may think I’m making all this up … but we all the know the weirdest stories are usually true.

Baptists have long advocated a separation between God and country for the simple reason the church is never strengthened when it gets in bed with the government and the government has never been better when it endorses a faith as the only faith its constituents can have. “Separation of Church and State is Good for Both,” the Baptist Joint Committee reminds us.

We are not a Christian nation because only people can become Christians; governments are simply tools the people use to help make for themselves a better life.

Happy Fourth of July! Shoot off all your fireworks and fly your American flag with all the honest and sure admiration you have in your heart. We are a wonderful nation when we do right and see our place in the world as one of the countries where God is at work … but not the only country where God works and not even God’s chosen country because God’s love is not limited by national borders.

On Sunday when we worship, our job is to worship the God of Creation who made the world and watches over all of us. That’s enough.


Author: admin | Category: Uncategorized | Comments(0) July 2008
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Strange Sexual Obsessions

I don’t think there’s anything weirder than religious sexual obsession. Sex is tough enough without layering our obsession about it with some bizarre religious viewpoint. Jim Jones was obsessed with sex. Reportedly he had sex with both the women and the men of his cult. David Koresh couldn’t keep his hands off his female followers. The Eldorado group of radical polygamists had their dirty little secret of sex between older men and young teenage girls in a twisted wedding ritual where the other men of the cult could watch “the first time.”

Like sex, religion is tough to keep squared away without it being overrun with bizarre social and personal viewpoints. Flannery O’Connor aptly said it, “you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” I don’t think she was inviting us to turn weirdness into an art form and blessing it in the name of God. I think she was holding up a mirror so we would see ourselves more clearly and realize how we can take something as the goodness of our faith in God and turn it into Six Flags Over Jesus.

Over the years since the takeover of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the ickiest viewpoints about sex and procreation and pleasure have been lurking in the theological minds of the President and professors who teach there. Once a viable center of creative and respectable theological thinking, now we are subjected to the strangest of sexual obsessions that focus on the means and motives of sex slimed by the notion they claim to represent the viewpoints of the God who created sex. Remember, this is the seminary that openly defended the torture of prisoners of war by our government as a means of self-defense in the world of terrorism. One is left to ponder what it means that both viewpoints are held by the same professors of theology and about the theological worldview that is now forming the faith and thinking of those who study there.

The latest weirdness to come from Southern Seminary involves how women are initiators of their own spousal abuse by being rebellious to the sacred order of obedience to their man. More about that later…

In the past few years, the greatness of the seminary has been reduced to an obsession with procreation and filling the wombs of young Christian women who are submissive in bed as an act of their commitment to God. The Southern faculty advocate that Southern Baptist young women must serve as willing sexual partners with their husbands … making babies as often as God (as in the life-giving reproductive powers of nature) wills as millions of sperm attack and bombard the single ovulated egg. Why would the theological professors at Southern have such an interest as to make pronouncement on behalf of a God they envision as a fertility God? Why would these professors make pronouncements that God wills for these young women to be so open to their own fertility as to spurn birth control methods as acts of disobedience? Such a theology they call “a full quiver theology” meaning the quiver of a man is filled with the arrows of the offspring they sire with their obedient wives.

These Southern professors have also condemned the rebellion of young Southern Baptist men and women who might choose not to marry until they are older. Again waiting until they are ready is deemed as disobedience and condemned as if such condemnation was according to the eternal plan of God. Is there no wisdom to waiting until they are prepared to marry and bear children? Should there not be some gladness to such wisdom from our young adults who would thoughtfully enter into marriage and creating a family? Does it matter much to the rest of us when they make this choice?

Back to the latest weirdness at hand … this past Friday, a report was carried on www.ethicsdaily.com of a sermon preached recently by Bruce Ware, professor of Christian theology, at the Denton Bible Church pronouncing that women bring physical abuse by their husbands upon themselves by their desire to have their own way rather than submitting to the authority of their husbands. There’s only the thinnest of blame offered to women who suffer brutality at the hands of their abusive husbands he claims is linked to Eve’s sin of rebellion in the Garden of Eden. Men whose wives demonstrate such rebellion often act in one of two ways, claims Professor Ware. They either react in strength and beat their wives, or they acquiesce and become weak male partners with their domineering wives.

Dr. Ware needs to have his head examined. He and the others who share these views need therapy and should be banned from teaching the next generation of ministers who sit at their feet learning about God, about human pain and suffering.

Warning signs should be posted at the entrance of the seminary: “Warning! Sexual Obsessions Abound Here … Enter at Your Own Peril!”


Author: admin | Category: Uncategorized | Comments(4) June 2008
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A Prayer for Memorial Day … for Peace and Remembrance

By William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

Gracious God, whose own Son’s term of service to humanity was so full that its brevity was no distress, we call to mind on this Memorial Sunday those who will not grow old as we are left to grow old, those whose lives were too brief for us but long enough, perhaps, for thee.

Forgive us that they died so young because we were too unimaginative, too imperious, too indifferent, or just too late to think of better ways than warfare to conduct the business of the world. Gratefully, we remember the generosity that prompted them to share the last of their rations, the last pair of dry socks, to share in the course of one hour in the foxhole more than most of us care to share with one another in a lifetime. And we recall the courage that made more than one of them fall on the grenade there was no time to throw back.

Grant, O God, that they may not have died in vain. May we draw new vigor from past tragedy. Buttress our instincts for peace, sorely beleaguered. Save us from justifications invented to make us look noble, grand and righteous and from blanket solutions to messy, detailed problems.

Give us the vision to see that those nations that gave the most to their generals and least to their poor were, throughout all history, the first to fall. Most of all, give us the vision to see that the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth, too small for anything but love. Through Jesus Christ our Savior, who became what we are to make us what he is.

Amen.


Author: admin | Category: Uncategorized | Comments(1) May 2008
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Ahh … Spring At Last!

Spring happens in the Midwest at a slower pace than in most places I’ve lived. It shows up in the slightest of ways just before Easter, typically only in hints of green and the occasional bud on the tips of the tree limbs. In most places in the south, folks are mowing regularly while here in the Midwest we are only beginning to see our lawns turn green. So while some in warmer climes have been to the pool by now, we won’t be dipping for another month or until our pools warm up enough to get in them.

In 2003, I wrote a Back Row Birdie story about the breaking forth of spring for Baptists Today in order to correlate our need to come forth and renew. Stress is a killer in our time. We live by a very short clock with too much to do and too little time to do it. I believe we are somatizing ourselves to death and in response to this, a new wave of interest is emerging about the need for Sabbath - a weekly day intentionally given to renewal. I’m seeing the deep need for Sabbath, how about you?

There’s nothing like a little springtime resurrection to remind us that the four seasons reflect our mortal journey from birth to death and beyond. After enduring long months in a world painted off a palette of grays, browns and tans, the earth and the skies awaken with primary colors of blues and greens generously sprinkled by an array of bright springtime colors of reds and yellows. It is the earth awakening from its wintry slumber right before our eyes.

Birdie was alive with vivid colors. Humble hues never befitted the chromatic colors of her personality and she wasn’t afraid to flaunt it on occasion. She came into the church office bearing a handful of her garden’s earliest floral gifts. She placed a small vase with cut flowers on the desk of our church receptionist. Flowers make a mighty friendly greeting. It’ll put everyone in a good mood, she remarked to no one in particular. She found meaning in putting words to her inner thoughts and needed no response from others to validate them.

Preacher, how about a cup of coffee with an old gal? I didn’t have time to answer before she headed down the hall to pour herself a cup of our famed office workroom coffee. In the wink of an eye, she was gone and back filling my doorway. She had a coffee cup in each hand.

I’ve been watching things for a while now, and it’s occurred to me that we’re living in an in-between time. Birdie glanced in my direction to make sure I was listening before continuing, We’re surrounded by worries beyond our comprehension. The economy’s in the tank here at home and most folks are worried sick about their jobs. The Middle East looks like Spring Break in Daytona with half a gazillion soldiers out there in the desert. Seems like there’s all kinds of nervous fallout going on around us.

Anxiety’s a weird thing, isn’t it? I asked. You think things are going good when they’re really not. Then there are times when it looks bad but it’s only your perception of things that’s unstable. Anxiety can make reality look like those crazy mirrors at the State Fair where life is nothing more than a distorted illusion.

Birdie’s eyes lit up and she said, Exactly! I can’t believe how uptight everyone is right now. Most of my neighbors are tighter than the skin stretched across Michael Jackson’s nose. Lord, help us.

Rev, let’s go for a walk. Think of it as a field trip from your dull, boring life in the office. We left our coffee cups on my desk and walked across the empty parking lot and started down the sidewalk into the sleepy neighborhood surrounding our church. Instead of flapping our lips and spoiling this quiet moment, let’s don’t say anything … let’s just drink it all in while we walk.

The invitation to silence caught me off guard. But Birdie was inviting me to join her in her moment of reverie. It was something she could have easily done by herself but she wanted to share it with me. And drink it in I did. I was like a thirsty drunk needing a long, cold one. I drank and drank and drank. It was an untamed thirst I couldn’t quench once I began.

The neighborhood was opening itself up like a new creation. There were birds in the tree limbs above singing merrily as if they had no other concern than deciding which song to sing. The tips of the grass blades were turning a pale shade of green. The dandelions were already sprouting. They looked like dinner salads strewn across the yard awaiting their baptism by oil and vinegar.

Above, the sun was behind a large fluffy cloud and spikes of brilliant light were streaking through the light blue sky anointing the world in holiness. The breeze upon my face was cool, but comforting.

Preacher, what do your God-given senses tell you? What can you learn right here on the sidewalk out in the wide-open spaces?

Birdie, it’s like I came up for air after being swallowed by a deep ocean of worry and weariness and sorrow. Maybe that’s the problem with anxious living. We end up drowning in it.

The silence between us went deeper.

It was Birdie who finally broke the silence. Pastor, all of those things we’re worried about are going to fix themselves in the end whether we worry about them or not. God knows what we’re facing and stands ready to help us if we’ll allow it. Seems to me that we all need a walk down the street on a fine day like this every now and then to help us keep our bearings.

Birdie, I can’t believe how different the world looks out here. Just a few minutes ago my boat was swamped with worries. Now, it’s like Jesus has calmed the storms and the sun has broken through!

Pastor, even the High Priest needs to leave the Holy of Holies and go outside for a walk every now and then.


Author: admin | Category: Back Row Birdie Stories | Comments(2) May 2008
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Writing and Life

It was preaching that taught me to write and since I didn’t become a pastor until my early 40’s I never wrote much until then. The daily grind of writing something worthy of saying has been perhaps the most daunting task of being a pastor (other than dealing with the peckerwoods who make their nests in the church tree). Since I write manuscript sermons there is little room for tossing in self-notes such as “give it punch here” or “use hand gestures” on an innocuous sermon outline that leaves me feeling underwhelmed and underinspired. I need more than “a preaching point.” I need to have given serious thought to what to say and how to say it. Besides hand gestures won’t mask a bad sermon if there’s nothing being said.

But just how does one write? Where does one start? What does one write about? Blogs are helpful because they give one a platform by which to publish short bursts of ideas or words, but not everyone has the power to crack the nut of having something worth saying. Obviously Gordon’s got something to say on Real Live Preacher otherwise we wouldn’t be reading him. I like reading Milton’s, Don’t Eat Alone, and I’ve found Robert Fulghum’s blog to be well-done and worth checking for his latest essays. There are a handful of others I read regularly because they’re my friends or I like what they say or how they say it.

I like the unspoken dialogue that happens between the writing of a sermon and the oralizing of those words on Sunday morning. The manuscript as it’s being written must bend an ear toward how the words are put together and how they will be said outloud and how they will be heard. Sometimes the tongue says to the ear, “Too hard! Too difficult to say! Loosen it up … shorten the thought or the sentence so the ear can hear it!” Sometimes the written word can hear the oral word as it would be said and write it in such a way as it would be best said and heard. “Saying words” informs “writing words” and vice versa.

T he best thing I’ve read on writing I’ve printed off and posted behind my screen where I can see it. I soak in it when I am sitting and waiting for the words to come. Inspiration comes directly as if it’s being said to me personally. Those words come from Anne Lamott’s great handbook on writing, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Everyone’s read her other stuff and admires her ability to say a thing so honestly it reeks of truth. But not everyone’s discovered this jewel of a book. Here’s what I have posted above my desk:

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw light on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and the truth in what you say.

Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being subtle or oblique. Don’t be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.

If something inside you is real, we will find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So, you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your writing.

Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don’t worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent.

Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act … truth is always subversive.

Amen.


Author: admin | Category: Uncategorized | Comments(2) May 2008
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Theologizing as Spiritual Practice

It dawned on me a few years ago, that theology is a dynamic, living thing even though we treat it as a static, immovable set of ideas. By calling it a “thing,” I’ve already set the wrong tone, because theology is not a thing at all. Theology is a process of thinking. By the way, thinking qualifies as “believing” if one needs to expand the definitions. I have never felt the need to distinguish everyday thinking from believing as I generously include all such interior processes as one and the same. Somehow they are connected if I’m faithing and thinking honestly.

In regard to theology, we must have been taught in an earlier era to not think, not challenge, not accept our Christian freedom that claims we are free to study and think and reflect as part of our growth as believers. In truth, I think we are born as theologians and later cut off that part God created in us because we feel inadequate or unworthy. I believe children are born theologians! I love their sense of wonder … their sense of curiosity … their honesty about what they think and the gift of faith they sense innately. It’s later in life we become more cautious and wounded from shame. Some have consequently put a lid on their curiosity and given their brains over to authoritarian pastors who supply them with every thought they should be thinking.

But we can rediscover our need to theologize if we are willing to risk it. Theological studies began for me at Baylor when I was nineteen or twenty and early on I learned theology is way of thinking that pushes one to the fringes of what is known so that what is not known can be considered as a form of exploration. A starting point would be to recognize that the God of creation is a God who welcomes the questioner to ponder the depths of the universe. The risk of this way of living is the price we pay to grow and keeps the fires of thoughtful reflection alive.

When I say theology is “alive,” I don’t mean it’s not without its holding features. Theology is not untethered but is rather attached to every significant relationship. Theology is held by our responsibilities to live up to its meaning. It is held by Scripture although we must admit the Bible doesn’t sit still with its pronouncements and demands and because of that, we study hard to discern its deepest meanings and not get distracted by its superficial or simplistic meanings.

I would also add that theology is held by our commitment to community. This may illustrate our need to be in a community of believers with whom we trust and have deep commitments so we don’t drive the theology of belief off in the ditch of false-faith.

Francis Schaeffer in the 1970’s asked an intriguing question, “How shall we then live?” implying that issues of real life must be connected to faith in order to know how our living could be termed, “christian.” While there wasn’t much I found to agree with Schaeffer’s methodology in utilizing the tools of faith, I do think he got the question right. That’s why theologizing is important. It allows us to ask the questions and make critical decisions about how we will use the toolbox of faith in coming to conclusions.

Most of us don’t accept our status as theologians. We think that’s only for academic-minded persons who have committed their entire lives to diligent and arduous scholarship. Obviously such persons help stir the pot of ideas regarding belief, but even they don’t live in a vacuum. I look upon their work as those who have the power to stimulate and challenge our old worlds so we might then be free to do our work at a deeper level. Like most provincialisms, our home-grown beliefs need to be open to challenge from all corners of faith’s world.

Theology is an art that demands illustration …

Here are a handful of current issues I believe we as 21st century believers should be theologizing about. You will recognize that none of these issues are easy although you may have already done some good work in thinking theologically about them:

Poverty and Economic Injustice  The more we sense the leadership of God to meet our community at their point of need, the more we encounter the harsh reality of poverty. There are an assortment of attending concerns (as poverty never exists by itself):  education, single parent families, stigmas and prejudices, racism, and on and on we could go. At its core, poverty and economic disparities are issues of biblical justice. Read the Bible through the lens of God’s view of justice and you will sleep uneasy tonight.

Racism  Forty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. we’re still struggling to come to terms with the equality of all human persons. Racism is evidence of our fallen nature of sin that would withhold mutual respect based simply upon superficialities of skin color, or ethnicity, or some other notion that minimizes the imago dei (image of God imprinted upon every person).

Sexual Orientation  Every religious group I know of is struggling to deal with this pernicious issue. While the Bible has harsh words to say about this personal issue, there is also the noticable silence of Jesus about the issue and the assumption the Bible seems to make that sexual preference is the result of choice. The church clearly cherry-picks the issue while ignoring other issues. I believe the church will eventually level out and be less divisive in the future, but there is much work to do.

War and Militarism  Terrorism is not new to our time, but its effect upon our world is felt more deeply than ever before. But what shall Christians do with our moral struggle of waging war in order to protect our energy interests in the Middle East? There are many talking points to be sure, but one of the issues that has emerged in our war in Iraq is the discussion among Christians over the use of torture on prisoners of war. The newspaper just this week carried stories about the support of torture by leaders of the religious right. While I cannot fathom how one can support torture of prisoners of war from a Christian point of view, I do recognize there are other Christians who somehow believe this is a position that faith can support.

See what I mean?

Theology can be a moving target and who can say with absolute certitude that one holds the high ground? How does one come to believe their beliefs are Christian while other points of view are what we might call sub-Christian or even false belief?

In the end, I would encourage you to push the boundaries of what you think and allow yourself the right to call yourself a “theologian.” Faith is not meant to be something taken out of the closet and worn only on Sunday like a sport coat and tie that’s never worn anywhere else. It’s meant to be lived but in order for it to be lived, you must be alive and aware and curious. You must engage faith and think deeply about what it means to be Christian.


Author: admin | Category: Uncategorized | Comments(1) April 2008
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I’ll Send You My Dreams

Sunday before last, Dith Pran died. I’m guessing you don’t recognize him by name, but that doesn’t matter as he became famous for his actions in his own native country of Cambodia in the years following the American war in Vietnam. The aftershocks of that tribal war reverberated throughout Southeast Asia no doubt stirred by our secret bombing of Cambodia in a vain effort to intervene in a Vietnamese civil war that had been going on for decades. The French gladly stepped aside in the late 1950’s to allow the U.S. to attempt to complete what they had not been able to do. Thus, the war continued on for another decade and a half.

Under extreme conditions, Pran bravely navigated the merciless rogue troops of the Khmer Rouge that killed nearly two million of their own citizens in a bloodbath not widely reported until after the slaughter was mostly over. He himself was held captive for four years and watched countless numbers of persons who were massacred and left in what he termed, “the killing fields.” It’s an incredible film to watch and it tells in pictures more than I am capable of describing in words.

Isn’t it odd how we in America can blithly know that such mass murders are occurring but turn away our eyes to this knowledge until it’s over, only then to ask “why?” When intervention is too late, we are like onlookers at a wreck on the highway craning our necks to see but unwilling to stop and help.

Dith Pran would have been another of history’s obscure asterisks had it not been for his partner, New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg, who was in Cambodia to record the story of a nation’s massacre of its own citizens. Pran was Schanberg’s assistant, translator, and photographer. Nevertheless, Dith Pran became famous in America because his story was told first in The New York Times and later in the 1984 Academy Award winning film, The Killing Fields.

One day, Schanberg and two other foreign journalists were seized by the Khmer Rouge troops. Pran sensed what was about to happen and told the soldiers the journalists were not Americans but rather French reporters. He told them they were not there to write anything bad about the soldiers but to record the glorious triumph of the Khmer Rouge. After hours of this kind of negotiating, the journalists were released to safety.

After being forced to flee Cambodia, Schanberg lost track of Dith Pran. He had been captured by the communist regime and endured four years of starvation and torture. In 1979, he miraculously escaped and told a story of despair beyond words and imagination. Through Schanberg’s efforts, Pran immigrated to the United States.

Pran’s son, Dith Titonath, talked on his father’s behalf in speaking about the Cambodian genocide by admitting to his childhood fear, “I never thought I was going to see my father again.” Pran’s son had been a small child when his mother and other siblings escaped on one of the last helicopters out of Cambodia. They eventually relocated to the United States without Dith Pran who remained behind, lost in the fierce storm of the Khmer Rouge. When they were reunited in 1979, the children didn’t recognize him as he was frail, stooped over, and missing teeth. But he had survived.

Last fall, Dith Pran contracted pancreatic cancer. Schanberg traveled to be with him through the last stages of his illness. He spent weeks with him, laughing and talking as brothers bound by their survival from the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge. One evening Schanberg overheard a night nurse call Pran “(an) effervescent soul.” Having faced death so courageously, he became someone filled with life.

Near the end, Schanberg told Pran he believed in an afterlife. Somehow he wanted to keep their relationship intact even beyond the inevitable. “You know,” he said, “we’ll have to find a way to communicate with one another.”

Pran thought about that for a moment and said, “I’ll send you my dreams.”

And Schanberg replied, “And I’ll send you mine.”


Author: admin | Category: Uncategorized | Comments(3) April 2008
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