All
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Excerpt
from Chapter 7: WHO IS ON THE LORD'S SIDE?
Many
of the world's atrocities have been committed with the perpetrators’ full
conviction that God is on their side. While not every issue
I mention is in league with atrocity, that’s a predictable
end when certain personalities are combined with closed God-boxes.
Maybe
we’re always a little more comfortable with certainty
than with doubt, but it would have been helpful if Hitler
had some doubts about racial supremacy, if the Inquisitors
hadn’t
been quite so sure what constituted heresy, if the Crusaders
had left room for even a bit of fidelity in the "infidel." How
might history have been different if we were a little less
willing to believe that we had God completely figured out
and God's will
completely mastered? Yet we continue, on both the conservative
and liberal ends of the spectrum, to equate our cause with
God's and to proclaim the other side unfit for the Kingdom.
In the
end, we’re all diminished.
In
this chapter I want to look at what I believe to be some dangerous
roads that we
currently travel, in the hopes that
we can keep
those roads from becoming a trail of tears. Again let me
emphasize that I write these things as my public confession
and repentance
for living in such ways myself. In my teens and early twenties
I was a staunch conservative and about as intolerant as
they come, at least in religious matters. When the lessons
of
Scripture, mixed with the lessons of life, blew that box
apart, I swung
to the opposite extreme and could tolerate anything but
intolerance, merely swapping the residents of Heaven and Hell
like the
changing sands in an hourglass. Neither position brought
peace.
So
I bring you here the view from both sides, not to create a
new intolerance for anything but the middle ground,
but
rather to promote a new openness for the parts of truth
that each
side
holds. God is, in some sense, on all sides. To paraphrase
Psalm 139, "Where can I go from your spirit? Or where
can I flee from your presence? If I move to the right you
are there; if
I pitch my tent with the liberals, you are there. If I
preach the evils of evolution on Darwin's grave or travel
to the Red
Sea to claim it never parted, even there your hand shall
lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast."
We can’t trap God in a single ideology, social agenda,
or political platform. Maybe if we could remember that, we wouldn't
be so tempted to demonize the other side. Pro-choice people don't
want to kill babies, and pro-lifers don't hate women. Democrats
don't want to shirk responsibility and let the government do
it for them, and Republicans do in fact have compassion for the
poor. It's bad enough that we squabble and call people names
like children, but do we have to drag God into the fray? Mixing
God into our already volatile language only brings us the death
of abortion doctors, the deeds of Timothy McVeigh, and war.
CHURCH AND STATE
Let's look at religion and politics for a minute. It’s
not a given that Christians will vote with one mind on election
day. It’s also not true that those Christians who voted
differently than you did are necessarily misguided or have less
faith. Good, solid Christian folks can be found behind every
candidate and on both sides of every issue, and many of them
have specifically made that choice in a spirit of prayer and
a desire to do God's will.
Suppose
we look at the Conservative/Liberal polarity in the Christian
faith as simply the two pieces of the
Great Commandment. The
beauty of fundamentalism, at least for me, is its devotion. The Christian Right hasn’t forgotten the first part of the
Great Commandment: "You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength,
and with all your mind." Faith, if it’s the sort of
faith the Bible teaches, affects every single part of your life
during every minute that you draw breath and beyond. All people
of faith will not vote the same way, and some people's faith
may dictate that they do not vote at all, but no one fully living
out the first part of the Great Commandment can say that faith
has no effect on their political stand. You might as well say
that I will have faith all the time except Tuesdays and Thursdays
after dinner.
The commandment says "all...all...all...all" and fundamentalism
has that part exactly right. Jesus looked to his faith when
paying taxes (Matt. 17:27), when confronted with a decision on
capital
punishment (John 8:1-11), and when deciding to engage in civil
disobedience (Matt. 12:1-8). As with everything else, the problem
isn’t so much bringing God into the issue at hand, as
binding God to and even equating God with the particular side
we’ve
chosen to support. The problem is not having the box, but closing
it.
For
the view from the left, the beauty of
liberalism is compassion. Their standard bears the picture of Jesus feeding
the hungry,
healing the sick, eating with sinners, rampaging through
the temple in righteous indignation over the trampling of the
poor.
Liberalism is the advocate for the second part of the Great
Commandment: "Love
your neighbor as yourself." The liberal camp reminds
us that while issues of personal morality may grab our attention,
there’s a social dimension to morality that can’t
be ignored if we take our faith seriously. Just consider
Jesus’ admonitions
in Matthew 25:31-46 to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.
Liberals
remind us that budget decisions and trade agreements and
health-care provisions are as much moral choices as abortion
and marital fidelity, and that sin is often so much a part
of the systems in which we live that individual moral choices
are
sometimes not even possible. Liberals remind us that the
heart of Jesus' message often got through to society's
outcasts before
it reached the religious establishment.
I
believe that we need both sets of voices for balance, and I
believe that so
strongly that it is how I vote. By
ideology,
I am a Democrat. But I want the White House and Congress
to represent
different parties. Each voice needs to be heard and each
voice needs political clout. While I can't swallow the
doctrine of
original sin whole, enough of it rings true that I’m
afraid to have no brakes on the train in the political
arena. I just
can’t let go and trust that sin won’t find
its way into our political system. If one party controls
both Congress
and the White House, its own shortcomings will multiply, unchecked.
Each side, I believe, needs the wisdom of the other.
My solution
to the 2000 election debacle in the US was to elect both
Bush and Gore. Put two desks in the Oval Office, give
them both veto
power, and let Congress come up with bills that only
both of them could sign. So we might only get one bill
signed
in four
-- at least it would be a good one. We’ve got to
come to grips with the fact that the people in the pews
around us have
voted in all sorts of ways, many of which we find offensive.
But we can be sure of this: their voting habits haven’t
expelled them from the Kingdom of God.
HUMBLE PIE
Don’t think I’m saying it doesn't really matter how
we vote or where we stand on issues. Once again, it’s the
difference between having a box and closing the lid on it. We
rightly make decisions about what does and doesn’t belong
in our God-box. According to God's leading, we decide between
right and wrong. What I call leaving the box open is simply asking
for some humility as we make our decisions. That means that I
recognize in my humanity that I may have right and wrong mixed
up to some degree. So may others. We are all in this human project
together, trying to find our way through with integrity.
When
I was appointed to my first church in rural Florida, the issue
of a woman in the pulpit was a big one and needed to be
addressed. I set aside my first Sunday night there as a time
when I would share my faith journey with the congregation and
allow them to ask whatever questions they wanted of me. The
sanctuary was packed. I suppose there must have been friendly
faces, but
what I saw were arms crossed over chests and very dour, determined
looks.
So
I began to tell my story. I shared my call to ministry at the
age of fourteen and my own scriptural struggles with
whether
I, as a woman, belonged in a pastoral position. I told of
all the other ways that I tried to fit into church life, doing
everything from acting as Sunday School superintendent to
serving
as choir
director to painting the walls.
"But
in the end," I said, "God kept putting me back
at the helm, blessing me when I did what pastors do. I
may be completely wrong in assuming I should be here, but at
least grant
me that I am very sincerely wrong. I have prayed and struggled
and wrestled with the will of God for my life, and in going
into the pastoral ministry am simply doing what I believe God has
called me to do. If you have determined that is wrong,
please pray for me, but for now I am doing all I know to do."
I
finished my piece and opened up for questions, holding my
breath in the initial silence. A woman at the back stood
up
and said, "I
think we should all sing 'Trust and Obey' because that's
what Anne has done." I love that woman. I doubt
that we have ever voted for the same candidate or have
ever
been on the same
side of a social issue, but that didn’t keep the
Spirit of God from living and working within both of
us that night.
The dam was broken with her words, people openly told
me of changed minds, and I was able to minister in that
congregation
from that
night forward.
We
all came into that room knowing we were on different sides.
We had made different decisions about
what was
right and
what was wrong. But because we were each able to leave
room for
integrity of faith on the other side, we were able
to worship and minister
together under one roof. And that’s the point.
Leave room for your own errors
in judgment, and leave room for sincerity
of faith in those who have decided differently; or
as the saying goes, "Make your words sweet; you
might have to eat them."
This
is why diversity in a congregation is so important to our spiritual
health. We can’t keep a diverse congregation
under the same roof without humility, and it’s
the challenges brought by that diversity that can give
us the humility we need.
We might start with diversity, but without humility,
our differences will soon lead to fractions and splits.
Those who don’t
share the mind of the majority will leave to find a
more comfortable place. Those who are left might think
that it’s all worked
out for the best--that the infidel has left and the
faithful remain. But what’s happened, in fact,
is that all sides have moved further from the Kingdom
of God.
THIS TRAIN IS BOUND FOR GLORY
I haven’t heard that Heaven's neighborhoods are going to
be segregated according to political and social ideology. So
I figure that if I'm going to find Heaven at all heavenly, I’d
better learn to like the diversity here. That doesn't mean I
can't decide to reject certain positions. It simply means that
I can't decide to reject the faith of the people who disagree.
For
instance, at this stage in my faith, I take a very open stand
on all the religious issues surrounding homosexuality. That
hasn’t
always been the case, and what I once defended (even in print)
as "right," I now believe to be "wrong." In
looking at the way my own faith has moved (and homosexuality
is not the only issue on which I’ve done an about-face),
I find the truth of Jesus' words that in judging others we
only judge ourselves. I can say at this point that I think
closing
the lid to exclude the gifts of those of homosexual orientation
is harmful. But I can’t say that those who do decide
to close the lid aren’t Christian or have no faith, without
saying that at the point in my life when I did the same I had
no faith either. To judge their faith is to judge my own. And
I know better. I know I had faith then just as I do now.
Faith
is about our relationship with God, and like any relationship
we can make good and bad decisions from within it. If a teenager
goes out, gets drunk, and wrecks the car, I can look at that
and say she made some bad choices. But it would be silly
for me to determine from that action that she had no relationship
with her parents or that her parents were unfit. For good
or
for ill, we’re free agents, and being in a good relationship
doesn’t preclude our making bad choices. In the same
way, we can’t say that people aren’t in relationship
with God because they’ve made a choice we believe to
be wrong. In my own case, knowing how my notions of "right" and "wrong" have
shifted over time, I’d be condemning either my past
or my future faith.
I’ve seen in my life that the citizens
of both Heaven and Hell have never been able to unpack, because
I keep moving them
from one place to the other. Finally, I’ve seen how
silly that is. If we can recognize that people of faith can
hold positions
we consider to be "wrong," I think we’re
well poised to renew the church. When we make social, political,
and
moral agendas into marks that can unswervingly identify a
Christian, I think we’ve lost our true center
Copyright ©2004
Anne Robertson
All
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