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10. When Jesus forbade judging, that included us.

Negative responses to point 10 divided into two camps. Some said they were not judging other people, but merely pointing out what scripture says. A second group of responses said that Jesus never meant that we shouldn’t judge.

I would certainly agree that we need some kind of discernment. We need to “judge” the difference between right and wrong in our own lives. If someone is being bullied and asks for our help, there is a sense in which any intervention implies we have “judged” the victim’s claims over that of the bully. And, we sometimes must sometimes protect children even though they cannot make a justice claim. In these two senses I would agree that we need to “judge.”

But what if no one has made a justice claim and there are no victims? What if we simply believe we know better than others how they should live their lives? Perhaps this is what Jesus means when he says we should not judge.

Some understand the Jewish Covenant to be based on obedience to the law. The New Covenant is based on an understanding that we all fall short of perfection. In the New Covenant, God will offer clemency to all who offer it to others. So Jesus said:

The measure you use on others, will be the measure God will use on you.
Judge not, lest you be judged.
If you forgive your brother or sister you will be forgiven.
If you are on your way to worship and you remember that someone has a justice claim against you, leave the church and go make up with your brother or sister.

Judgment does not cease being judgment just because we find a Bible verse to back it up. The Bible is a huge book. Any of us can find a scripture to make others feel bad. Paul said there is not a person alive that could stand up to that kind of scrutiney so we should all stop doing it whenever possible.

What does it mean for Christians to say that Jesus died to free us from sin, and yet still needs us to sit in judgment of others? Do we think Jesus botched the atonement and needs us to pull it out of the fire? Do we really think Jesus was a such a bad teacher that we have to correct what he said?

When Jesus said “judge not,” it included us. “Grace” means we can stop trying to do God’s job, and, instead, make ourselves a living sacrifice to love. Show love equally to those who deserve it and those who do not, and you will be like your heavenly parent who sends rain on the just and the unjust.

9. If we do not do the right thing in our day, our grandchildren will look at us with same embarrassment we look at racist grandparents.

Some respondents found it offensive that to compare the struggle for civil rights for American Blacks with the struggle for GLBT rights. I would agree that there are major differences in the two movements, but I also think that all forms of oppression have some things in common as well.

We all like to think we would have marched with Dr. King or Gandhi had we been in the right place and time. Hindsight is 20/20 so it is easy to think we would have been brave at key moments in history, but social issues are not always that clear at the time. We forget that some of the most passionate defenders of slavery came from the church. At the time, many Christians looked at the biblical passages on slavery and saw that whereas several passages condemned slavery, no where did the Bible specifically condemn slavery.

If we could go back in time hear we would hear the same kind of excuses about why we should be patient and work within the system. In our praise of prophets from the past we conveniently ignore the fact that what made them prophetic was a vision unshared by the people of their time, and a courage to cross the line to do justice even if that meant they would have to break unjust laws.  There comes a time when mere acceptance is not enough. There comes a time when, if we do not respond in our own place and time, we have failed to be prophetic.

Those of us who are old enough remember the racism of our teachers and family members. We can still love them for who they were to us. We can understand how they were a part of the culture of their day, but we cannot respect them as fully as if they had found the courage and the vision to get ahead of the curve and stand on the right side of history.

It is easy to say we love and accept everyone, but if our love is to mean anything to the oppressed, there are times we must leave our place of acceptance and safety in the hierarchy of our culture and stand with the oppressed of our day. This is the message of prophets, but church is usually the last to get on board. On the topic of homosexuality, it is humiliating to realize that the marines got to this insight before the church did. If the struggle for human rights were a train, the church would always be the caboose. It is time to change that.

8. To condemn homosexuality, you must use parts of the Bible you don’t yourself obey. Anyone who obeyed every part of Leviticus would rightly be put in prison.

One of the most common form of rebuttals I received was that of the Socratic questioner. People would send a very long letter with a list of yes or no questions. “Is homosexuality a sin, yes or no?” “Is incest a sin, yes or no?” If I did spend the time to wade through the mousetraps my reward would be an email with more mousetraps. Respondents would usually ignore any points I had made, and would just bring up more parts of scripture I was “ignoring.” Having a conversation with someone who has already memorized the answers is like trying to have a conversation with an answering machine.

Here’s what I couldn’t get across. The English word “sin” is a translation of over 72 Hebrew words. And, this is very important, some of those words for “sin” refer to  ceremonial infractions not ethical violations. In other words, some of the words for “sin” come from ethical codes like the Ten Commandments, but others come from the rituals that made one “clean” to approach holy things.

The list of ceremonial infractions is long and creepy. A church that truly honored the Levitical Code of cleanliness would never allow pork to be served at its family night suppers. Men would be expected to impregnate their brother’s widow. Every Sunday someone would check the women to make sure they weren’t having a period, and the men to make sure they weren’t trying to enter the temple with crushed testicles. In addition to condemning homosexuality, the clergy might need to condemn vasectomies as a varient of “crushed stones” and tampons for hiding a woman’s “sin”.

Thank God the new covenant did not include the cleanliness laws. The gospels are full of examples of Jesus breaking the cleanliness laws to minister to people who would be excluded by them. One of the clearest expressions of this point occurs in Acts when Peter has a vision of God offering him unclean food to eat. Peter reacts with piety saying he has never eaten unclean food, to which god responds, “Do not call unclean what I have declared clean!” Peter awakes to some gentile visitors. He realizes that the vision was not just about food, and that he is to call no human being “unclean.”

Some people don’t realize that they trivialize the message when they take out the food laws, and leave in the discriminatory parts about people. It’s like Jesus died so we can eat ham. Christians have been called to a new covenant that does not exclude anyone as impure by reasons of physical condition. When Jesus said we can’t sew old parts onto a new garment he was saying we can’t shift between these two worldviews at whim. In the new covenant no one is born into second class existence. This new hospitality is very clear, but have to have eyes to see and ears to hear, which means you have to read all of scripture with love.

Abby Zimet has such an eye for news stories that illumine larger truths about our nation. This story is set in the context of the Trayvon Martin shooting. In that case, an unarmed black man was shot to death. At first, the suspect was not even arrested because of the “Stand Your Ground” laws  in Florida.

Then we hear the story of a black woman who fired a registered gun into the ceiling to ward off her abusive husband. She too invoked the “Stand Your Ground” law, and is now serving a twenty year prison term.

What is wrong with this picture?

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2012/05/18-0

7. If how someone stimulates the pubic nerve has become the needle to your moral compass, you are the one who is lost.

Many of the responses to number seven assumed it was a typo. Some people who copied and forwarded the article corrected “pubic” to “public”. It would have been clearer if I had worded it, “if how someone stimulates a nerve in the pubic region has become the needle to your moral compass, you are the one who is lost.”

The point I was trying to make is that reducing ethics down to what happens to the scrotums in question misses the point. Ethics is about character, faithful relationship, and about what our actions mean to the whole world, not where people are touching each other.

Ethics based on universal love are much more difficult than moralizing based on rules about our physical bodies. It is a much simpler world if we mindlessly obey rules, but then our lives are mechanical, unresponsive and sometimes brutal. Such soulless living resembles the crude simplicity of a paint-by-number picture.

When the painting is done by a true artist we cannot see the lines of composition but still we sense that everything in the picture is in balance. The artist moves not by rigid and concrete rules, but by deep intuitions of the spirit. Rules trace the outline of the beloved, but only love can capture its heart.

The Progressive has an interesting article raising important questions about whether NATO still serves it original stated purpose of defense, or has now become a leg breaker for the global 1%.

“Once constrained to the defense of Europe, NATO has now put itself forward as the world’s policeman. It has fought wars in North Africa and Central Asia, and it has placed weapon systems or troops in areas that threaten Russia and China.”

To read article, click here

6. Marriage is a civil ceremony, which means it’s a civil right.

In the story of the good Samaritan, Jesus summarized our ethical duty as being a good neighbor. In the story, someone is injured on the road leading to the holy city of Jerusalem and lies wounded by the side of the road. Priestly types see the man lying wounded, but pass on by so as to remain pure for their religious obligations in Jerusalem.

Finally, a Samaritan man stops to help. The fact that Jesus used a Samaritan in this teaching story is important. Samaritans were considered outsiders in every sense of the word. They weren’t quite Israelite and not quite Jewish.  Why would Jesus use an outsider as the example of being a good neighbor?

Jesus seems to be asking us to consider what we owe to someone who is not from our group. The people passing by the wounded man used religion as an excuse not to meet the needs of a stranger. Many who think of themselves as followers of Jesus have never understood this parable. To update the story, the Samaritan might be Muslim or gay or atheist. The point is, it doesn’t matter what group someone is from, we have a duty to help them meet their human needs.

Being a good neighbor in the political sense means not depriving others of their rights and needs. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, people have a right to have a home and family. While some would use scripture to deny them of that right, I think the parable of the Good Samaritan calls us to a deeper understanding of the issue.

Marriage is as much a civil institution as it is a religious one. Contrary to what some claim, the Bible gives no clear definition of marriage. Jesus’ statement at the wedding at Cana that a man is to leave his parents and cleave to his wife is hardly a complete ethical treatise on marriage. We find many examples of marriages that were not between one man and one woman. Lots of the heroes of scripture had more than one wife. So if the church wants to return to honesty on this subject, it must first stop pretending that its views on marriage are coming from scripture.

But even if there were a clear definition of marriage in scripture, Jesus is saying in this parable and throughout his teaching that we are never true to his teaching if we don’t care about what others need. The parable of the Good Samaritan calls us to a secular response to human suffering. It does not matter if others are Christian or not, we have a duty to help them meet their human needs.

Jesus is saying not to read scripture in a way that deprives others of what they need. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the people obeying scripture and passing by the wounded stranger to remain pure are the bad example. The good example is the one who knows when to lay down his Bible and respond from the heart.

Being a good neighbor in a democracy means being a good citizen, which means not requiring others to be like us before we honor their human and civil rights. The Bible does not clearly define what a marriage is, which has given the church great flexibility across history to adapt the civil definition of marriage to what people need in different cultural settings. But, because marriage is a civil ceremony, it is also a civil right.

Gandhi taught that the purpose of political struggle is not to eliminate an enemy, but to illumine a principle. In other words, the true activist is not trying to win against another group but inviting all parties to seek principles that seek the good of all concerned. Not assuming one’s own motives are good, is essential to the work. So is emotional balance.

Martin Luther King had a check list for people about to march with him. If an activist was too angry to be loving they were invited to step back from the struggle until they had retained balance. Love for one’s “opponent” was essential to the method. I refer to this list often. The list has been edited slightly to remove sexism. A non-Christian can also edit line one to fit their own path.

“I hereby pledge myself — my person and body — to the nonviolent movement. Therefore I will keep the following ten commandments:

1. Meditate daily on the teachings and life of Jesus.

2. Remember always that the nonviolent movement seeks justice and reconciliation — not victory.

3. Walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love.

4. Pray daily to be used by God in order that all might be free.

5. Sacrifice personal wishes in order that all might be free.

6. Observe with both friend and foe the ordinary rules of courtesy.

7. Seek to perform regular service for others and for the world.

8. Refrain from the violence of fist, tongue, or heart.

9. Strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health.

10.Follow the directions of the movement and of the captain on a demonstration.

I sign this pledge, having seriously considered what I do and with the determination and will to persevere.”

Those who have followed the trials of Jane Adams Spahr know that this weekend was to mark the end of a very long process. She had been found guilty for performing same sex unions in the Presbyterian Church and was to be officially rebuked at the meeting yesterday of Redwoods Presbytery in California. Instead, something very strange happened. Scott Clark, one of her attorneys, rose to ask the Presbytery not to rebuke her. In other words, he was asking them to be civilly disobedient within the Presbyterian Church.

Redwoods Presbytery is one of the most liberal in the denomination, but because same sex marriage is prohibited by the denomination, their support has been limited. If they were going to fit comfortably in the structure, they had to say one thing and do another.

To refuse to issue the rebuke was a very brave and difficult thing for a Presbytery to do. If they refused, someone would almost certainly file charges against the Presbytery for not obeying the rules. It would cost the Presbytery untold tens of thousands of dollars and years of stress.

There were speeches on both sides, but the ones recommending that the Presbytery refuse to co-operate had a basic theme. The body was asked to place scripture ahead of the book of Rules, and loyalty to Jesus ahead of their loyalty to a denomination. There was also a concern for those who opposed the decision. The Presbytery Exec assured them if the motion passed that they could express their opinions in a minority report.

As the speeches show up on the web I’ll try to post them somewhere. This was mine as best I can remember:

“I am Jim Rigby from Mission Presbytery. I have come from Texas to implore you not to participate in this rebuke. Redwood Presbytery has been a lighthouse to this denomination for years. You are the Presbytery that first said clearly that it is time for justice for GLBT people. You are the first who said, through your PJC, that Janie’s hospitality to all persons is what Jesus calls us to do.

But there comes a day when words are not enough. There comes a day when as Gandhi said we must become the change we wish to see in the world. There comes a day when verbal support is not enough and we must be willing to cross the line and to suffer for the people we say we love and for the Jesus we say we follow.

We are not helpless. We do not have the right to be a cog in the machine of someone else’s oppression. As the Westminster Confession says you do not have the right to surrender our conscience to any human council. We are responsible before Christ for how we treat every human being.

This rebuke will be an act of violence against your GLBT brothers and sisters, and it will be an act of violence against your own conscience. I implore you to cross the line and do what you know to be right.”

When the time came to vote, the Presbytery voted overwhelmingly not to rebuke Rev. Spahr. Then there was a moment of slightly stunned silence as the body realized what they had just done. They knew they had possibly just headed into a storm. Lunch afterward was strangely quiet. People did not seem to divide up by political position but both sides seemed to seek out a time of communion. A relief seemed to settle over the group. It was the peace of mind felt by those who have determined that they will follow their principles at any cost.

A brief history of people who are now considered pillars of the church, but whose willingness to challenge traditional understandings were considered heresy at the time.

Peter Abelard (1079-1142) was a French Christian whose passionate belief in reason ran afoul of St. Bernard and other church authorities. Many church officials in his day defined “faith” as suspending our reason and trusting the church’s authoritative interpretations of scripture. Abelard wrote a book called “Yes and No.” Where he lined up those authoritative teachings to show their contradictions. You can imagine how that was received.

Abelard taught that the individual has not only the right, but the duty, to choose reason over faith. He wrote, “By doubting we are led to inquire, by inquiry we perceive the truth.” Though deemed a heretic by the authorities of his day, Abelard’s courage to think for himself planted the seed for a vision of Christian theology that would latter attract some of the great minds of history.