Life

We are all brought up with certain assumptions, a unique set of beliefs. I have had most of my core convictions — my entire worldview — challenged in this short life of mine. I’ve had to re-evaluate what is valuable and right, and how small I allow truth to be. My outlook had been churned about, and I wonder when I’ll ever get off the tire swing. But the supernatural has goaded me in (even when I questioned its existance), and with all of my staggering about, I have found a need to discover some one thing that can keep me moving forward.

Posters and album covers are littered with swirly tree branches with cute leaves. The green movement in on with full force, with bandwagoners like me toting recycling symbols and reusable bags everywhere.  Maybe the theme for 2008 was green, and I want 2009 to be Life. Life might sound like a sort of Buddhist/modernist nice sort of trend word for the year, but lately, this is what I have allowed to guide me through my day-to-day. 

So I’ve given it a go for a while before I said much to anyone. I am sort of a prince of “phases.” Starting in 1993, every new T-shirt I bought, every hat I bought, was Blue Jays memorabilia. I counted my baseball cards regularly, and re-organised them. I stopped in 1996. I’ve had a lot of “things” which have phased out or ended abruptly. I guess we all do. I have made declarations of faith or moral standing that today make me rouge a little. I love new ideas and I seem to embrace and advocate things I don’t really even understand. So I try to let things settle a little more now. I let it percolate, and hope that the product I share is beneficial.

I have been eager to jump on these recent bandwagons. I’d like to think that I was on them already “before everyone else,” but that’s hardly true. My suite is all earth-toney and I’ve been eating more organic and making a bigger deal of consuming less. I’m just a little more hardcore than most people I know. I made a messenger bag for myself out of leather, which made some people, not knowing where else I fit, to put me into a little conceptual box made for hippies. I am not a hippie. But I do like what they had to teach us.

With a slight sense of irony and pride, I like to wear my CCCP vest. I read Marx’s Manifesto with gusto. The evils of capitalism are too clearly seen for me to be able to follow along with the American Dream, and if we could somehow live like the early Christians from the book of Acts, I’d be thrilled. I am not a Commie, though.

I have lived around a lot of Mennonites, who are supposed to be stalwart clingers to nonviolence. “Conscientious objectors,” is what they liked to call themselves. They see no reason to lash out in violence to anything or anyone. Bush’s war regime was as ungodly as any other American government before, and I don’t think that I would ever volunteer to fight in a war. I hope that when I pass on, I can somehow give Lennon a pat on the back, who just asked us to “give peace a chance.” Even so, I don’t think you could really call me a peacenik.

And on it goes. There have been so many movements standing for so many great things, which get tossed aside by the population at large, because it gets out of hand. Flower Power is a great example. These young, idealistic people knew that there was something terribly wrong with American culture, and they had an idea of where to go, but they had no tradition to follow, no intact principle guiding them, and it all fell apart. All that’s left is colourful peace symbols and old hippies driving around in RV’s, who probably aren’t much able to make love anymore. Communism, a great and noble idea, has also failed. Most Mennonites have little connection with their true heritage. Our national Human Rights tribunal, and a woman who didn’t want to wash her hands (or work anywhere but McDonald’s) showed us, once again, that Human Rights people have gone off the deep end. Artists don’t realise what self expression is for, and get all huffy when their art is deemed inappropriate for regular humans. George Bush was after some sort of great ideal, and thousands (millions?) of people have paid dearly for it.

Christian theology swings from extreme to irrelevent tangent to heresy and back, all in the name of “truth” or something. Separation, mistrust, and name-calling result. I listened to J.I. Packer talk about “liberals,” in his thick British accent , with such disdain that I thought he was going to call down fire from heaven if anyone in the room questioned the way he interprets Scripture (role your r like they taught us in the old “Roll up the Rim to Win” commercials, and say it like a slave owner says “niggers.” … “Liberals.”) Somehow I worked up the nerve.

Obviously, I’m not any smarter than Packer. I assume I’m not as well-read or well-informed as Bush was in 2001. I’m not able to figure out many things on my own, left to myself. Great people, educated men, godly women, charismatic leaders, humble servants — people greater than I ever will be — disagree on such fundamental life principles. “Even” Billy Graham has done some serious rethinking of what he has preached so fervently in his younger years; I cannot claim have a better ear to the voice or guidance of God than he. Even so, I believe that I was made to be a person who has some sort of theological/spiritual influence on others. I want so badly to lead my life well, and to bring up a family in the best way possible. How do I decide what to believe? How can I know what to follow? How do I teach anyone anything at all?

I’ve been reluctant to bring things directly from the Bible on this blog, for a collection of reasons (one being that, for a theology student, I have shamefully little knowledge of the Bible), but now I will attempt to put something coherent together, as concisely as I can.

Painting with broad strokes, I see God, revealed in his Scriptures, as a life-giver. I wonder even if describing him as “Love” falls short of the greater, deeper nature of our creator, the great life-giver.

In the beginning, he took the chaos and made it inhabitable. He ordered it into a place, a place upon which life can happen. When he made and breathed life into creative humans, he said that it was very good. He told them to be fruitful, and to multiply (Side note: I wonder if he would tell that to us, today?).

The story of the Fall is a narrative explaining how death entered into the world. The rest of the Pentateuch (first five books of Hebrew Scripture) is about YHWH (God) making deals (i.e. covenants) with certain people to get them to live in a way that promotes life. He set down guidelines (which we don’t fully understand, but whatever) to help them have healthy family relations, vibrant communities, and rich lives. At the end of Deuteronomy, he makes it very clear that what he is presenting is not arbitrary laws, made for kicks, but a choice for life. The very explicit choice was between life and death, blessing or cursing. Since God tends to love his children, no wonder he got pissed off when they went off track and disobeyed. He didn’t want them to be choosing the path of death. I know my mom isn’t too happy when I tell her about my near-death experiences. YHWH set down new covenants over and over, becuase the people continually rejected the path they had been given to walk.

So fast-forward: YHWH sends prophets to warn the people of doom and death and invasion and sickness sent from God unless they return to the same God of life. These people sometimes repent, sometimes saw the prophet in half, or something like that. Sometimes they are packed off to another country, sometimes they prosper in the land God gave them. Repeat about a million times.

Remember that people are under a curse, ever since the Fall. They are under the curse of Death, and death is always the enemy. Sin and death are always found together, you’ll find. You know, “The wages of…”

Then Christ breaks into history. Death came through a man, so he came as a man to break that curse. He showed us a few things about life, then he was killed by some jealous people (sinful people). After three days, he rose again. He rose victorious over death, and the grave now has no power over him. Oh, and he took on sin, too.

There were a handful of people who witnessed this, just as a few people were around to witness the first covenants made by God. They now had a message, a mission, a kingdom to spread. This is the kingdom of righteousness, of God, of life. They formed a vibrant community that advocated right, rich living and healthy family relations. They told everyone that even if people don’t know it, God is actually their king, and the way to have life is to accept that fact.

They left a robust tradition, a wonderful legacy. There were blunders and terrible mistakes. There were individuals and civilisations turned around and improved. Christianity helped bring about order and peace and prosperity to much of the world. We also know that Christians fought unjust wars and killed people needlessly, out of vain ambition rather than love and justice and mercy, and history has not forgotten. Christianity, too, has fought for women to have a voice, for lepers to be cared for, for slavery to be abolished. When Christians are doing what Christians should do, they are promoting life.

Acting against the proper care of Earth (as misdirected as the green movement is) is not promoting life. (If I hear another Christian talk down people with a concern for the earth, calling them “earth worshippers,” I’ll … I’ll … well, I’ll not be happy; you better believe it.) Allowing denominational differences to keep us apart is not promoting life. Raging against the “immoral sinners” usually doesn’t promote life. Pride, anger, jealousy, adultery, and the like, do not promote life. These are death patterns.

What does God require of us? To love mercy, to act justly, and walk humbly with our God. I think I read that in my Bible somewhere. Take care of widows and orphans and the like. Spend time with our families. All these things that just sort of make sense; this is what God wants for us. What is moral or immoral is not based on some arbitrary grid that we’re supposed to fit into, but on the way the world works, because God made it like that. That is why people who pay attention to the natural, healthy rythms of life and of the earth often live in ways which are quite congruent with the Bible I follow. God made the earth and told us to take care of it. The earth, in a sense, is a mother to us, since it raises us up and nurtures us. It makes sense to protect it. He gave us community models, so that we can have a good place to raise families, so that, ulitmately, we as individuals can thrive and create, as God himself does. This is the best way for us to have unhindered communion with him, and that is what he wants for us, and for himself. The great God of love has shown us how to live in love so that we can all have life, and have it more abundantly.

Oh yeah, when Christ rose again, he made a way for all of us to live forever, in the way I just described. I don’t know what “heaven” will be like, but for some reason Christ prayed that God’s will would be done on earth the way it is there. I make it my goal to go along with that idea, here on earth, for the rest of my life. I want to ask myself, with every decision I make, with eveything I support, with everything I do: “Does it promote life?“

 

Tolerance

Deep in our psyche as a western culture is tolerance. Even many of the most seemingly intolerant people, when it comes to issues that they aren’t so daily aware of, or that don’t seem to threaten the foundation of their belief, hold to tolerance like a fashionista to her Birkin bag. There is a deep need to have it.

Let me explore this a little.

I come to this as a Christian. If you know me at all, or if you have read this blog at all, you’ll expect this. This is who I am, and this is the point from which I try to understand the world, as I critique and honour my own tradition. I hope that as I criticise Christian culture as it is, I can inspire those who hold to truth and justice over comfort or understanding to imagine the possibility of a better world, where the life of Christ is lived out by those who are called His followers.

I think I can say that tolerance, as we often see it, is driven at least partially by fear. We have seen the evils done in the name of God or whatever else. We have known the awful consequences of those who are not “tolerant” of people from other cultures or races or political views. We are afraid of oppression because we like freedom. We despise violence because we are human. We fear what hatred can do, and we also despise radicalism, even if it stands against the things we disapprove of. It scares us.

It’s also unfashionable. We reject radicals wholesale because of the fact that they are radical. Ultra-charismatic Holy Spirit people are laughed at and we don’t notice that they are seeking to experience God, probably more fervently than we are. Environmentalists have been seen as an inconvenience and an enemy for years. Only recently have they been taken a little more seriously, as world food shortage and air quality have become more foreseeable problems. John Lennon wasn’t trusted, but all he was saying is, “Give peace a chance.”

If I remember right, Christ’s disciple Peter, or St. Peter, the great apostle and leader of the early church, was a bit radical and erratic. He foolishly lopped someone’s ear off to “protect” his Lord, he spoke his mind and often tasted foot, and he was the leader of the greatest movement of all time. John Lennon is appreciated by most now. Also, as I have just implied, environmentalists are seen more as specialists than as crazy people (although their complete redemption has yet to come). Time has allowed us to see the greatness of what these people were up to. They can now fit comfortably into our worlds.

Tolerance and intolerance alike are fickle. They last only as long as the appropriate fear holds onto us. There is fear of interfering or of being seen as extreme that holds us to tolerance, because, really, all tolerance is saying is, “I don’t like you (or what you’re doing) but as long as you aren’t in my face, I’ll leave you be.” Like a mosquito buzzing in the distance. It is no better than barely-contained contempt. The Polish tolerated the Jews, but when the Jews were sent to the ghettos, they were ecstatic to see them go.

Tolerance can also come from the same place that allows us to watch injustice and starvation on TV and do nothing. But it does serve, for a while, to keep the peace (if that’s what you want to call it). It is a temporary fix; a Canadian ideal no more wonderful than the American allowance of some vague pursuit of happiness. Tolerance may be a Canadian ideal, but it is too shallow to serve as a guide for any culture.

Intolerance is a name applied to many things, which would be alright if the negative baggage wouldn’t follow it around. We don’t tolerate murder. Good. We don’t tolerate fascism. Great. Call someone intolerant, though, and it’s like calling him or her a fascist.

Intolerance, as it is normally understood in the media and when addressing social issues, is not very different from tolerance. It is a reaction to the fear of something we hold dear being threatened. We all have pictures in our heads of people we believe to be intolerant; usually, these people are protecting something. Often, they believe (they convince each other) that they are protecting something good. It gets justified. Protect your heritage and culture: get rid of the Jews or the Negroes. Protect the moral fabric of society: suppress the homosexuals or the “liberals.” Protect your god: kill the infidels.

So, now I bring us here, in Abbotsford, to the mess we are in now. A good number of people across Canada don’t truly accept or like homosexual people. I have seen too many people cringe at the thought of gay people to believe that my country actually accepts them. I think that opinion polls on the subject can be misleading, because people want to be seen as tolerant, so they don’t say anything bad. It’s kind of like when eleven year-old kids smoke in a group, maybe for the first time, and they all “like” the flavour. They probably have a favourite brand. …Soon they really do.

“Christian Abbotsford,” though, doesn’t have the same ideal at the centre. Many evangelicals see the lack of substance that tolerance offers, but don’t see a great alternative (for some reason, love doesn’t seem to be a viable option). Some of them react with intolerance and anger, hiding behind a thin façade of spiritual piety. The actual issue which makes homosexuality such a hot topic is not that Christians have moral objections to a person’s sexual choices – every religion has moral ideals which most people don’t achieve perfectly, and homosexuality isn’t the only one for Christianity. The issue is that as our culture seems to be ready to accept homosexual lifestyles and behaviour as normal (being the latest chapter in the obvious reality that we are not a Christian society), Christians are becoming aware of their loss of power and control. There is also legitimate fear: we all want our children to grow up in a society with stable moral bearings, and if you believe that homosexual behaviour is wrong, you will react in some way.

But who decided Christians should not allow gay people to have a parade? Christians are allowed to say “Jesus Christ is Lord” as loud and proud as anyone would want to, and often thank God for that right. It isn’t just our right. However, that is hardly the point that we should even focus on.

The point is that the first characteristic of the God we hold ourselves to is love. Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery, and told her that he didn’t condemn her. Love is patient, love is kind, and love denies “faggots” the same rights we enjoy? We say “Love the sinner but hate the sin,” but really, we are just hateful. We can’t order the world out of fear and control; we should influence the world with love. It is counter-productive to tell homosexuals that they are living in sin and going to hell, because usually they are quite aware of what Christians think about them. That’s part of the reason why there is a pride parade going on. They have been misunderstood and bullied and they want to express themselves. Some of the indecency we have seen in other parades is just people going overboard, and it’s not like anti-homosexual people don’t go overboard (it’s sad that we all know what queer-bashing is). Also, if we are really serious about “protecting the sanctity of marriage,” then let’s work on being examples of good marriages that actually last a lifetime. We are trying to protect something that is already broken from many things other than homosexual behaviour; maybe we need to do more about those things in our own circles before we go wagging our fingers at people who, according to us, don’t know what marriage is. Can they be blamed if they have no working model to go off of?

I just wish that when people looked at Christianity, they could see it for what it actually is, for what Jesus set out for us. People blame religion for all of the world’s evils, but evil people will use whatever they can to justify what they do, and so they have used religion. God is indeed a God of justice, but that has been taken quite out of context. When the day of Judgement comes, it will be a day when God sets things right – He will crush oppression and take away greed and offer true lasting love as the alternative. He will lift up the AIDS orphan and the victims of racism. He isn’t out simply to act out His rage on the people who didn’t do what He said and so hurt His pride as the ruler of the universe. And Christians also should not be out to do it. Let’s offer hope and love and defend the oppressed. Let’s show people what a loving community of believing people can look like, as we invite people in. Let’s quit the right-wing dogmatist thing and embrace people for being made in the image of God. Let’s move far beyond tolerance and give the world something to believe in.

 

Christian=Conservative?

I’m listening to the radio, waiting for the election results. It looks like another Conseravative government. I asked a Christian man today what the main factor is that decides his vote; he’s a stalwart supporter of the Coservatives, as are most Christians around here. It seems that the Tories are the Christian party, just like the Republicans in the U.S. The man answered that it’s because of the values of the party, since, as he says, their values are mostly Christian values.

I wish people would stop saying that. It’s not that the Conservatives have necessarily poor values, or that I think that a Conservative vote is a bad choice. There is a lot of good that they have to offer our country. For most Christians, though, our votes go to the Tories by default, because voting otherwise is unchristian. And what are the issues for the majority of these people? Homosexuality and abortion. For real. Last time I checked, true religion was about looking after the widow and orphan – the oppressed and disadvantaged. As for the issues, the Conservatives’ official stand on abortion is that they won’t bring it up. Bringing it up splits votes, and it’s not worth bringing up. Very Christian. And giving gay people rights? If Christians are really concerned about preserving “the sanctity of marriage,” we should lead by example, not by legislation. We forget that this is not a Christian nation, and dictating morals to non-Christian people doesn’t seem right to me.

A Conservative government is a great choice for people who are middle class, and can more or less take care of themselves. Shouldn’t those who can easily take care of themselves look to how they can take care of people who can’t?  I know that churches do some of that, but shouldn’t we be happy to pay taxes for social programs and environmentally friendly incentives? And yes, taking care of the earth is a Christian duty, not an option we consider when the economy is looking good.

I know that the issues are much more complex, and the party platforms actually don’t look very different from one another for this 2008 election. I’m just focusing on a certain trend that bothers me quite a lot. Christians are supposed to stand for love and peace and justice, not just against some nearly non-issues. Am I right?