Sometimes Right is Wrong

    Not long ago my wife, Patti, and I attended a seminar with Dr. Terry Wardle at Ashland Seminary.  During one session Dr. Wardle noted that sometimes the question is not whether something is right or wrong, but whether it is loving or unloving.  This idea struck me and I immediately wrote it in my notebook.  While this may not always be the case, this is a wonderful lens by which we can examine our choices as we live out our faith.  Checking to see if our actions are loving or unloving is a great way to get closer to deciding, “What would Jesus do?” 

   

    Some will object that Jesus was the perfect man and lived his life without sin, and so, he could not have done wrong.  And yet, he did.  During his ministry, Jesus seemed often to be at odds with the Pharisees, men who devoted their lived to following “the rules” and, in fact, devised rules stricter than those contained in the Law so that, by following these ‘new and improved’ rules, they would never, even accidently, violate the Law.  Simply put, the Pharisees made it their business never to break a rule.  They were devoted to living that was always right and never wrong but if this is so, why were they so often at odds with Jesus?

    The Pharisees began to hate Jesus and plot for his humiliation and, ultimately, his destruction when Jesus repeatedly revealed their hypocrisy and the failure of their rules-based morality.  Jesus pointed out that what they had achieved was like white washing a tomb; it looked pretty on the outside bur remained full of corruption on the inside.  The Pharisees were known to tithe from everything they earned, every increase that God granted to them, even to the point of giving ten percent of the growth from their herb gardens and yet some of them had elderly parents whom they allowed to starve.  They justified their actions by saying that all their money was “Corban” or, dedicated to God.  They had followed one rule so vigorously, that they missed the bigger ideas of “love your neighbor” and “honor your father and mother.”  They had done what was “right” but had failed to be loving.  As Jesus saw it, they had missed the point.

    At the same time, the Pharisees attacks against Jesus revolved around what they perceived as his wrongdoing.  Jesus and his followers were rule breakers.  Jesus sat down with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, outcasts, and ate with them.  No self respecting, rule-following, religious person would be seen socializing, let alone sharing food, with “those people,” and yet, Jesus did.  As Jesus and his followers were walking through a field on the Sabbath, they were hungry and the disciples began to pick heads of grain, rub them between their hands to remove the chaff, and eat them.  The Pharisees asked Jesus why he allowed them to do wrong. Clearly they were harvesting on the Sabbath, and everyone knew that harvesting was work and work was not permitted on the Sabbath.  They made the same accusation against Jesus when he healed a man on the Sabbath.  Since healing was “work,” obviously Jesus had done wrong.  Again, as Jesus saw it, they had missed the point.

    In each case, the Pharisees wanted to follow the rules, to do what was right, but Jesus wasn’t as concerned with right and wrong as he was with being loving.  Jesus believed that the Pharisees had missed the point when following “the rules” caused them to be unloving.

    If we see ourselves in the mirror held up by the Pharisees, we should.  The Pharisees weren’t bad people; they were the church leaders and teachers of their day.  Like the Pharisees, I think sometimes we get so focused on “the rules” that we miss the point.  When people of faith debate issues like homosexuality, abortion, capital punishment and other “religious” issues in the public square we often carve out positions that we believe are “right” and yet, at the same time, fail miserably at being loving.  That doesn’t mean that we have to accept sin, Jesus didn’t, but Jesus found a way to be loving even if it broke a few rules.

    As we enter the public square we must ask ourselves if our arguments are right, but also if they are loving.  Because…

Sometimes, right is wrong.

Why the Russian Adoption Ban is a Disaster in Slow Motion

    By now most of you have heard about the adoption ban put into law in Russia.  It all began with an attempt by our United States government to rein in human rights violations in Russia.  President Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, which provides sanctions against Russian citizens deemed by the US to have violated human rights.  Prior to this, the Russian government was concerned about the abuse some Russian children have received at the hands of their adoptive parents in the United States but had only recently, in November, 2012, signed a new treaty designed to provide greater access for Russian officials who desired to review the treatment of adopted children.  This new agreement was only in place for eight weeks before the adoption ban was signed by President Putin.

    The Russian government claims that the adoption ban was necessary because they were not getting access to the documents that the new treaty was supposed to give them and the American government claims that the whole thing is just retaliation for passing the Magnitsky Act.  Whichever is true, it is neither the American nor the Russian government that is the big loser.  The big losers remain the children who will remain in Russian orphanages instead of in loving homes.

    I know something about this.  Our family includes two children who were adopted from a Russian orphanage.  The trauma that they suffered in their first year of life has been a real education.  Before we witnessed it firsthand, I never would have believed that children could be so damaged in their first year of life.  We were always told that “Love heals all wounds,” and “Love conquers all,” and things like that.  We genuinely believed it when people told us that all we had to do was take them home and love them.  But sometimes love isn’t enough.  Thankfully, the problems that our children have, though not insignificant, are not nearly what other parents, whom we’ve met, live with every day.  Some of the neurological, emotional and psychological problems that grow out of living in an orphanage, even for a few months, are frightening. 

 

    While I could not ever condone abuse, I have seen enough to understand how parents of some of these children could reach a point where they simply don’t know what else to do.  Many parents do not abuse these damaged children but recognize that they cannot cope with the behaviors of their children and choose to dissolve or disrupt the adoption.  That means what it sounds like; they go in front of a judge and declare that they are no longer the parents.  This frees them, but makes the children orphans yet again and turns their care over to the state in which they live, or to yet another set of adoptive parent and cause still more emotional and psychological damage.

    Children from former Eastern bloc countries (primarily Russia and Ukraine) bear a higher risk for behavioral problems and eventual adoption disruption.  We don’t completely know why, but although similar problems are seen in children from other nations, these children see higher rates of disruption than any others.  I cannot quote any particular sources but I have heard estimates as high as 10-20 percent.  That means that even with the resources of wealthier American parents, even with parents who love them, even with access to modern medical and psychological care, between one in ten and one in five of these kids have real, serious problems.   Do the Russians have a right to be concerned about what is happening to their children?  Certainly.  But what happens if they don’t come here, don’t have parents, and don’t have access to care?  Russia does not have a history of adoption.  Adoption is not a part of their culture.  While adoption does happen, fewer Russian children are adopted by Russians than by Americans, and we are just one country among many who has, until now, been able to adopt from Russia.  Children who remain in Russian orphanages are likely to stay there until they “age out,” until they are old enough that the Russian government turns them loose on the streets with no support whatsoever.  The majority of children who age out of Russian orphanages will end up dead or in prison within two years.

    Yes, these children can be scarred and damaged by even a few months in an orphanage.  Yes, we should strive with all that is within us to do a better job than we are doing.  No.  No child should suffer abuse at the hands of their parents regardless of their behavior.  But the Russian government needs to look in the mirror as well.  Our system may not be perfect, but an adoption ban that prohibits these children from coming home to loving parents doesn’t fix the problem and in reality only makes it worse.

As usual, when grown-ups fight, the ones who lose... are the children.

The Christmas Manger – Born to Die?

    During our Advent Bible Study, a few people were surprised when we saw an image that looked a lot like this one.  It is a feeding trough, a manger, from the part of the world where Jesus lived.  For many of us who grew up in northern woodlands, this is not at all what we have been taught or expect.  For most of our lives we have grown up with the idea that the manger in which Mary and Joseph placed the baby Jesus was a wooden thing made with boards nailed into an ‘X’ on each end and this doesn’t quite seem right.  For us, a people who are accustomed to being surrounded by trees, building things from stone seems unnecessarily difficult.  Where we live, trees grow wild and we have to mow, trim, cut and work to keep them from growing where we don’t want them.  Israel (and all of the Near East) is a different place.  Take a look at the pictures and videos that are available, look at the pictures you can find in books about Israel.  You will likely notice that in much of the country, trees are not common and often, where they are more common, they are tended and cultivated as food producing crops, not as building materials.  In that part of the world, stone is a much more common building material… for many things.  Stone is used not because it is easier or cheaper (it isn’t) but because it’s what they have.

    I saw this image a year or two ago and I have had conversations about Near Eastern building materials before so this didn’t really surprise me.  What struck me however came later when I opened this month’s issue of Biblical Archaeology Review and read an article on the Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter in Jerusalem.  There, included in the article, were photographs of stone sarcophaguses (sarcophagi?) found in and near Jerusalem.  I could not get copies of these pictures but they are similar to this one.

    Before the front wall of this was broken out, it would have looked strikingly like a stone manger.

An argument could be made that tombs that contain this sort of sarcophagus were built only for the rich and powerful of Israel’s elite.  Jesus would never have been buried in such a tomb… and yet… far more common in that time, even for middle class and poorer folks were burials in stone ossuaries, bone boxes, in which the remains of a buried person were re-buried. 

Jesus came to earth to sacrifice his life and die on the cross for our sins.   

Was his death and burial foreshadowed by the manger in which he slept on the day of his birth, or was it an accident? 

 Either way, it makes you think.

Pearl Harbor - A Story of Forgiveness and Salvation?

    Seventy-one years ago today the Japanese navy, led by 36 year-old "top gun" pilot of his day, Mitsuo Fuchida, attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  The surprise was nearly total and the destruction was immense both physically as well as to the psyche of the United States.  The Japanese admiralty expected that such devastation would compel the United States to sue for peace and stay out of their plans for expansion in the Pacific.  Instead, our nation was filled with a "terrible resolve."  Our reaction was not to surrender but to get even.  The death and destruction (on all sides) that spread across the Pacific and around the world was nearly incalculable.  Tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of men and women went to their deaths for reasons that, even now, are difficult to explain.


    For his part, Mitsuo Fuchida, was plagued by the death that he had witnessed and that which he had been a part of and he struggled to find a way to bring a message of peace to the world.  A friend who had been a prisoner of war in the United States, told him an amazing, almost impossible, story that revealed a way toward peace.  Later still he encountered the message of Jacob DeShazer, a B-25 bombardier captured by the Japanese after the Doolittle raid.  DeShazer, despite being treated horrifically during his imprisonment, had learned an amazing lesson as well during his confinement.  He traveled to Japan and spoke in venues across the country telling of the peace that he had found in their POW camp.

    Nathan Naversen has written a great story about this and I used it as a devotion at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting this morning.  It is an amazing story of peace and forgiveness that grew out of ome of history's greatest periods of death and destruction.  How is this possible?  Read the whole story here:

From Pearl Harbor to Golgotha

Politicians, Rape and Bad Theology (Part 2)

The answer is that God doesn’t want that. 

Just because God loves life doesn’t mean that he intends for every person to come into being. 

Wait. 

What? 

Just because God loves life doesn’t mean that he intends for every person to come into being.

    Some people will read that and conclude that if God does not intend for some people to be born, then some people are not wanted by God.  Nothing could be further from the truth but in order to see why, we have to think carefully.

    Consider this example: If a birthmother chooses to give up her baby for adoption, it has nothing at all to do with the goodness of the child.  Many of those children will assume they were adopted because their birthmother didn’t want them or that they weren’t good enough, or that something was wrong with them.  Many suffer for years until they understand that their birthmother wasn’t keeping them even if they were perfect.  Birthmothers give up their children because they are unwilling or unable to be a parent.  Their choice has nothing to do with the perceived “goodness” of their child.  Often, birthmothers would like nothing more than to keep their child but understand that, for a variety or reasons, they cannot. 

    Giving a child up for adoption has nothing to do with being “wanted” and neither does rape.  Just because God doesn’t intend for a woman to become pregnant as a result of rape, doesn’t mean that God will not love the child that is produced.  

He does.  

    I am the fourth child in my family.  I was born five years after my next older brother.  It is well known that my parents thought they were done having children.  I was an accident.  My existence is unintended but I have never had any doubt that my parents welcomed me, wanted me and loved me since the moment that they knew I was coming.

    God does not want women to be raped nor does he want them to suffer the emotional trauma that will follow them through an unexpected and unwanted pregnancy.  Even so, that does not mean that he does not love and value that child from the moment of its conception.  

He does. 

    What’s left to us, is an unwanted choice between two unpleasant outcomes.  We must choose between the emotional and psychological pain and suffering that will inevitably come with the pregnancy, and the destruction of that unique and valuable life that has been created as well as the emotional and psychological pain and suffering follows that choice.   

Neither choice is a good one.

This is a complicated and difficult theological problem. 

When politicians try to oversimplify it, they sound stupid.

(Click here to go back to Part 1)

Politicians, Rape and Bad Theology (Part 1)

    What is it about politicians this year?  I know it’s an election year, and I know that politicians often say (and do) downright dumb things, but it seems that this year an unusually large number of politicians are saying them.  Some of these things we can just laugh at, but as a pastor I cringe whenever politicians make pronouncements about theology and religion.  Several things have been said this year that defy common sense.

    Most recently, Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said that that pregnancy resulting from rape can be "something that God intended."   He has since clarified his remarks and made it clear that God does not advocate violence or rape but that if a child is conceived through rape, that this is something that God intended to happen.

    In order to even begin we need to review what we know about God.  First, God is good.  Not everyone believes this, but Christians do.  We believe that God created human beings for a reason and that even though we don’t always understand why, God loves us and wants what is best for us.  Second, God is omniscient, which means all knowing.  The Bible tells us that God knows everything that has happened and everything that will happen.  Before he created the universe he knew everything about us.  Third, everything that happens does not happen because God wants it to happen.  The whole story of Adam and Eve teaches us that human beings are stubborn and will do things that God commands them not to do, things that hurt themselves and others.

    Saying that rape is a part of God’s plan is patently ridiculous.  Rape is violent, brutal and is both physically and emotionally damaging.  Victims of rape often require years of therapy and some are never the same again.  It seems obvious that this isn’t something that anyone ‘good’ would want.  Richard Mourdock has essentially acknowledged this in his explanation but I don’t understand his assertion that a pregnancy as a result of a rape is something that God intends.

    I suspect that Mourdock’s thinking is that since God is a good God, and also a God that is the creator and protector of life, that once a life has begun in the womb, that this must be something that God intended.  Frankly, I don’t follow that logic.  Pregnancy as the result of a rape can add a significant emotional burden to a woman who is already suffering the effects of the original trauma.  The pregnancy can, and will, stir the memories of her rape over and over again and each time they return, those memories will cause the victim more pain.  Again, I come back to the question, “How can a good God want that?”

(Continued in Part 2)