Excuses, Excuses

 “I could never be a _______ because I once heard about a really stupid _______.”

    This kind of statement is all too common on social media.  It has been said about almost every possible group.  I have heard it said about Republicans, Democrats, pro-lifers, pro-choicers, Christians, Atheists, and everything in-between.

But those aren’t arguments, they’re excuses.

And it is unfair to everyone.

    Sure, it’s funny to point at the Republican that didn’t know that Tehran is the capitol of Iran.  Or the Democrat who thought the island of Guam would capsize if we sent too many Marines there.  But it isn’t really fair to say that these people represent all Republicans or all Democrats.

And the same is true for Christianity.

    I admit that sometimes Christians say really dumb things.  There are some Christian leaders who make me cringe almost every time they open their mouths.

But that seems to be true of people from any large group.

    I have heard people with Masters and Doctorate degrees say dumb things but that doesn’t mean that education is stupid.  We shouldn’t give up on education because we once met an educated person that did, or said, something dumb.

    Just because someone in Hollywood made a bad movie (and there have been some really awful ones) is no reason to give up on movies forever.

    Just because we saw a stupid driver on the highway (and there are plenty) is no reason to give up on driving. 

    Our opinions about education, politics, morality, religion, or anything else, should be built on the truth and on the merits of their arguments, not simply on whether or not we once heard one of “those people” say something stupid.

    If you want an excuse to stay away from a political party, or church, or anything else, that’s up to you. But don’t say that it’s because a few people said, or did, something dumb.

Don’t judge an entire group by the actions of a few.

Because that would just be stupid.

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Snipers and Burning Pilots - God Weeps

    Lately there has been a great deal of publicity and social media chatter about the movie, American Sniper.  Of course everyone is also talking about the Jordanian pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, who was burned to death by ISIS fighters. 

I struggle with these things.

    I spent ten years in the Army Reserve.  For years I collected and read books on military history and one of the books that I liked was about the Marine sniper, Carlos Hathcock, who was the “most lethal” sniper during the Vietnam war and whose record held until Chris Kyle broke it.  I have always admired the courage and fortitude of men like Carlos Hathcock.  At the same time, seeing a helpless, caged man burned to death (I haven’t actually seen it.  I just can’t bring myself to watch a man die) stirs an incredible anger in me. 

A part of me wants revenge.

    But as much as we have made heroes out of men like Carlos Hathcock and Chris Kyle, and martyrs out of men like Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, we ought to stop and think about what God wants.

We know how these things make us feel.

But how does God feel?

    While it is true that our God is a god of Justice, and while it is true that God has sent armies to destroy evil and to avenge wrongdoing, God is also a god of compassion, mercy and love.  In cases like these, clearly, we find that there is tension between the world that exists and what God wants.

    But even if, in the darkest sense, we assume that God desires for evil to be destroyed and that, at least by our definition, ISIS is that evil, what do we know about God? 

I do not pretend to know the mind of God.

God did not speak to me from Mount Sinai.

    It is not my place to declare that God wants to kill or destroy ISIS regardless of their violence and evil.  If we have learned anything from history, we should know that it is not the place of human beings to go to war under the assumption that we have been “sent by God” or that we are doing the “will of God.” 

Unless God speaks to me in a clear and audible voice, I am not likely to change my opinion on that.

But I think that the message of scripture tells us quite clearly how God feels.

God weeps.

    God loves the people of his creation.  God loves the Jews, and the Christians, Buddhists, Atheists, Muslims, and everyone else. 

God claims all of us as his children.

    And God desires for every one of his children to come to him.  That, after all, is the message of scripture and especially the message of Jesus and the New Testament. 

    God loves us so much that he was willing to sacrifice the most valuable thing he had, his own son, in order to rescue us.  God loves humanity so much that he was willing to set aside his God-ness, come to earth in human flesh, and suffer and die as one of us, all so that we might have the chance to live forever in his home.

    And so I honestly don’t know how God feels about Chris Kyle or Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh except that he must feel like any other parent who watches their children fight.  God loved Chris Kyle, and Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, and the men they killed, and the men that killed them. 

    Every one of them, whether they were Americans, Jordanians, ISIS fighters, Christians or Muslims, were his beloved children.

And with us, God watched them die.

    And so, although I cannot say whether God sent Chris Kyle to impose some kind of “divine judgment,” I do know something else that is certain.

Just as any parent who watches a child die, when God watches the horror that is war…

God weeps.

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What is Faith?

I have a faith problem.

    Don’t worry, I haven’t lost my faith.  Sure, I have occasional doubts, but wrestling with doubt is normal and even healthy.  No, the problem that I have with faith is with how believers and unbelievers misuse, misunderstand, misappropriate, and even abuse the word (and the definition of) faith.

    More than once, I have listened as atheists or others have mocked the followers of God claiming that having faith is belief in the absence of evidence.  Defined this way, faith becomes the opposite of rational thinking.  Believing with the utter absence of evidence is nothing more than wishful thinking.  If this were the definition of faith, then Christians (and other people of faith) would be held up as fools. 

Thankfully, it isn’t.

    Likewise, I have heard well-intentioned believers misuse, and even abuse, the word “faith.”  Far too often, when spiritual conversations get sticky and honest questions get difficult, Sunday school teachers, Bible study leaders, and even pastors have been heard to say, “Well, you just have to have faith.”  In some cases, this might be reassuring, but if a student or seeker has asked a thoughtful, although difficult, question this sort of answer is nothing short of spiritual malpractice. 

    Faith does not believe, “because I said so” or because God doesn’t allow difficult questions.  Our beliefs are both rational and explainable.  For a teacher to dismiss difficult questions by telling a student that “you just have to have faith” instead of finding a real answer is just lazy. 

    I admit that there are difficult questions that connect us to the great mysteries of Scripture.  But even in the mystery it is a disservice to put off those with honest questions by saying “you just have to have faith.”  An honest answer in these cases often means admitting that we just don’t know. 

So what is faith?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it this way-

: strong belief or trust in someone or something

: belief in the existence of God: strong religious feelings or beliefs

: a system of religious beliefs

    While two of these are specific to the followers of God, I think that the first definition is entirely sufficient.  We shouldn’t think that faith is belief without evidence, but know that faith is the trust that one has in the unknown because of the knowledge and experience that one has in the known.

Here’s what I mean. 

    I trust (have faith) that my brother will pick me up at the airport even though he is over an hour late, not because of something mindless, but because he has never failed to do what he said that he would do.  In all the years that I have known, and lived with, my brother, in all the times that I have trusted him with money, with my most private secrets, with picking me up from the airport, or anything else, he has never (okay, rarely) failed to do what he said that he would do or to be where he said he would be.  If he is an hour late picking me up at the airport, I am far more likely to be worried that something has happened to him than to worry that he is not coming.

    Our faith in God is (or should be) like that.  We aren’t hoping that there will be pie in the sky by and by just because the preacher told us so.  Our faith in God comes from the relationship that we have built over time.  We met God, we spoke with God, we read stories that told us about his nature and his character, and we began to trust him.  As we began to trust God we began to witness and experience his grace, mercy, and love for us, and as we did, we began to trust him more.  Over time, many of us have seen some amazing things, we shared those experiences with others and our faith grew stronger.  I have seen God do things that medical doctors thought was impossible, I have spoken with those who have seen other impossible things, and I have also seen God open doors and change hearts so that we could adopt each of our children. 

    Those of us who believe, do so because we have, over time, developed a lasting relationship built on trust.  We trust God because he has proven himself to be trustworthy.  Because of the trust that we have built through the things that we have seen, we can trust God in the things that we have not yet seen.

This trust is what we call faith.  

We *Are* Making a Difference

    I have friends who like to say that the world would be better off without the church.  Today, 2,400,000 Africans would disagree with them.  If it had not been for the United Methodist Church (and her partners) many of those 2.4 million people, most of them children…

…would be dead.

    In 2010, children in sub-Saharan Africa were dying from malaria at a rate of one every 30 seconds.  Today that rate has dropped to one every 60 seconds.  The difference?  Our church’s campaign to eliminate malaria.  In 2008, we had “Nothing but Nets” which partnered with the NBA as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  Then in 2010 this effort became “Imagine No Malaria.”  Imagine No Malaria still has the support of the Gates Foundation but also the World Health Organization, The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the United Nations Foundation.  Since 2008, The United Methodist Church has raised $40 million dollars toward our goal of $75 million.  Together, we have distributed 1.2 million insecticide treated bed nets and trained 5400 community health workers to distribute bed nets, train families in their use, and track usage rates.  The results are obvious.  In the last three years we have reduced the childhood death rate (from malaria) by half.

    Why us?  Why is the church important if the NBA, Bill Gates, the UN, and these other big names are already involved?  Is it just because eleven million United Methodists can raise money?  That is undeniably a part of it, but helping the poor has been a part of our United Methodist DNA from the very beginning.  For 200 years we have built and maintained hospitals and schools all across the continent of Africa.  When this project was conceived, everyone knew that while Americans can often be generous, and some are great at publicity, someone had to be the “boots on the ground.”  United Methodists were already there, all across the continent of Africa.  Over two centuries we have built relationships with governments, leaders and decision makers in many of those nations and we established a reputation as being genuinely interested in the welfare of their people, as well as trustworthy.

    Of course, we can’t rest yet.  The job isn’t done.  We haven’t reached our goals and one child every sixty seconds is still way too many.  The goal of Imagine No Malaria is the total elimination and eradication of malaria from the face of the earth.  That’s a long way off, but we’re headed in the right direction.

    I don’t pretend that United Methodists have a monopoly on compassion.  Clearly our story is just one of many.  Imagine No Malaria is just one way, that one church, is making a difference.  And so, to all those who think we would be better off without the church, I say this:

The people of Africa would like to disagree with you…

…because today their children are not dead.

Top Ten 2012 Blog Posts

    As promised, here are my top ten blog posts of 2012.  There are a few interesting points that I will note along the way, but among these is just the growth of this blog.  While it is still pitifully small compared to some of the mainstream “big name” bloggers with tens of thousands of subscribers (I have five), there is a marked difference between 2011 and 2012.  In the last year, the number of readers has grown enough that of all the posts included in last year’s list, only the number one post from 2011 would have made this list and even then at number eight. Hey, while you're here, why don't you click on the "Subscribe to Blog Updates" link in the right hand column?

    In any case, the readership of this blog, however small, has doubled in one year, and for that, I am both humble and grateful.  I hope that my musings make you think, regardless of whether we agree or not.  This year’s list is reversed, David Letterman style, with number ten presented first, so that you have to scan the whole list to see the most popular.

10) As was the case in other multi-part blogs I have written, “Part 2, Politicians, Rape and Bad Theology”, was less popular than Part 1 (which comes in at number 7).

9) In, “Is It Time to End Spousal Benefits?” I pondered the injustices of the way that many employee benefits as well as Social Security and other Federal benefits are calculated.  Several comments showed me that that my thinking was not as clear as I would have liked and made me think that I may need to think this through a bit more and revisit the subject sometime down the road.

8) “Why I Stand With the Catholic Church” discusses why I agree that our federal government is overreaching in its demand that church agencies be compelled to pay for contraception and abortion inducing drugs despite in a clear violation of their religious beliefs.

7) Politicians, Rape and Bad Theology (Part 1) is the first, and most popular, of my reaction to some seriously dumb things that were said by politicians.  Honestly, I sometimes think that this happens every day, but when these same politicians begin to justify their dumb stuff by saying that it’s God’s fault, I have to say something.

6) In John Wesley's Crazy Rules?, I list the rules that the early Methodists had agreed to live by.  Today, most all have been abandoned and most church members would panic if we even suggested bringing them back.  On the other hand, under these rules the church grew and under ours we’re shrinking.  Perhaps something in this list we ought to learn from?

5) Why is Homosexuality an Argument Instead of a Discussion? Isn’t even my blog post, but a link to a post by Dr. John Byron, one of my seminary professors.  Here we wonder why everyone wants to demonstrate and shout from their polarized positions, but not have an honest discussion about the issues.

4) The blog entitled, “Just How Many Homosexuals Are There?” was taken, by some, as a political post even though I made some effort to deliberately distance myself from making any overt political statements.  The unfortunate truth, as we’ve seen in other posts, is that anything regarding abortion, homosexuality and a few other topics automatically become argumentative instead of the opening of a discussion.  Here, I simply found statistics that indicated that nearly everyone has a dramatically wrong idea of what we are talking about whenever we begin such an argument.

3) What’s the Big Deal About Sex? was written after it was discovered that several Secret Service agents and military personnel had been cavorting with prostitutes during a trip in which they were to be guarding President Obama.  While what they did was immoral, I wonder why all the fuss?  These folks aren’t monks?  Clearly there are national security concerns, but otherwise, in a culture that values sex and money above all else, what do you expect?

2) Censorship is never the answer.  The beauty of our freedom of speech here in the United States is that it allows atheists to blaspheme my religion and my God, but it also allows me to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ.  In Christians are Wrong; Atheists are Right I argue that when Christians lobby for censorship to protect them, they really undermine the most important protection of all.

1) This is the one that makes me smile.  I first wrote, Ahimaaz - Patron Saint of Cross Country Running? , about a man known to King David who loved to run.  When it was written, almost no one read it.  For months afterward… almost no one read it.  And then something interesting happened.  Because I suggested that Ahimaaz ought to be a patron saint of long distance runners (clearly, being Methodist, I have no inside track on this), this blog started to turn up in Internet searches for patron saint of cross country and track.  As track season came closer it began to get a few, but regular, hits each week.  By the end of the year, just like the story of the tortoise and the hare, slowly but surely, this blog had become the most popular of the year (and continues to grow).