Choosing Herod's way or Jesus' Way

God made himself weak for one purpose: to let human beings choose freely for themselves what to do with him.
Philip Yancey

Another provocative quote from Yancey. This is only provocative because Christians do not typically follow this kind of thinking. For some reason, Christians have since Christianity's inception, believed that compulsion was the necessary method for bringing people to Christ. The method of compulsion has differed through the years, taking such forms as violence, argument, and today, providing a sense of shame and guilt for sin. If sin is prominent in an outsider, we refuse to talk with them and instead curse them and ridicule them and try to fix them. If they are an insider, we shun them and remove them from our circle of friends and kick them out of church. We refuse to associate with them until they have proven they have quit their sin.

Yancey in his book The Jesus I Never Knew, shows us a portrait of Jesus that is unrecognizable to most churches, yet is the most accurate portrayal of Jesus since the Bible was written. Maybe it is not that people have a misperception of who Jesus was/is, but instead choose to ignore him because his method seems weak (see Ivan's story in the Brothers Karamozov). Either way, we need to follow Jesus' technique. His method for bringing people to him was weak, but that is because that is the only way genuine relationship can develop, by putting the ball in the court of the person you want a relationship with. Jesus came and showed love to people of every class and character without discrimination. Yancey tells us, "In short, Jesus honored the dignity of people, whether he agreed with them or not. He would not found a kingdom on the basis of race or class or other such divisions. Anyone, even a half-breed with five husbands (the Samaritan woman from John 3) or a thief dying on a cross, was welcome to join his kingdom. The person was more important than any category or label" (Yancey, 245). Jesus loved all people. He did not come to people by force, but came to them to provide for their needs. He came to them to love them, and if they wanted to follow him, that was their choice, not his. Yet we come at people with shouts of "you sinner," "you faggot," "you baby killer." Can you imagine these words coming out of Jesus' mouth? Jesus never once labeled a person a sinner (other than religious leaders). Yet he was ready and willing to forgive people.

In discussing Jesus' temptations in the wilderness, Yancey explained that Jesus had the opportunity to compel people to follow him by strength. He had the option to obtain power by giving everyone bread, he had the opportunity to compel people by ruling over every kingdom, and he had the opportunity to compel people by an amazing feat. Jesus could have, three years later, chosen to call forth all of the angels to destroy the Roman empire; instead he chose to die on a cross. Jesus chose the weak way, and we have chosen the strong way. Jesus chose to bring love to people, we have chosen the way of power. Jesus chose to forgive, we have chosen to hate. In the words of Yancey, "Despite Jesus' plain example, many of his followers have been unable to resist choosing the way of Herod over that of Jesus" (Yancey, 246). Herod's way was to kill everybody who did not follow him. Jesus' way was to love and forgive everyone who did not follow him. It is not our responsibility to bring people to Christ. My call to Christians is to stop bearing the heavy burden that the salvation of humanity rests on you. Christians make for poor saviors. Jesus Christ makes for a perfect Savior. Let him do the work. Do the work that you were called to do, "love your neighbor as yourself," "love your enemy," etc... This is what we were called to do.
God bless.
-Brandon

Is the Christian God to be Feared?

"In Jesus, God found a way of relating to human beings that did not involve fear."
Philip Yancey

Yancey's statement is a beautiful sentiment that needs some explaining. Until Jesus walked the earth, the only perception of God that existed was that he was a fearful, angry being that one needed to appease in order not to be punished. One only needs to look at the ancient depictions of the Babylonian, Mesopotamian, or Egyptian gods to see there animalistic faces with sharp teeth and blood dripping from their mouths to understand what I mean. One reads the ancient mythologies and discovers that people were fearful of the gods, some of whom might be warring against them. Then we come to the Hebrew Scriptures and we read, “Thus says the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel: Why do you commit this great evil against yourselves? . . . Why do you provoke Me to anger?” (Jer 44:7-8) (cited from blog entitled "My God is an Angry God"; an excellent blog showing God's depiction as angry in Hebrew poetry). We read other verses such as: "Even at Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was so angry with you that he was ready to destroy you," (Deuteronomy 9:8), "Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and you shall perish quickly from off the good land that he has given to you" ( Joshua 23:16), "Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it" (Isaiah 13:9), and "While the food was still in their mouths, the anger of God rose against them, and he killed the strongest of them and laid low the young men of Israel" (Psalm 78:30-31) (cited from "An Angry God"). Prior to Jesus, God was seen as an angry and judgmental God. Essentially he had what they would call in the Public Relations department a "perception problem."

Then came Jesus. What is unique about Jesus (one of the many things) is that he came on the scene in a very unexpected way. He was born into a dirt poor family in a dirt poor environment. He was an illegitimate child living in a neighborhood where rumors swirled about who his "real father" was (We often read the account of the response Jesus got when he returned home as a positive response, which is ironic since the people nearly threw him off a cliff. Reread Matthew 13:54-56, but put a nasty tone into the people's mouths and you will really understand what they thought of Jesus' family life). Jesus was incarnated into the situation in which he was, so that he could relate to people in that same situation, and so he could approach people as God without them fearing Him. Philip Yancey gives us this wonderful illustration where he talks about how the fish in his aquarium react to him. He feeds them and makes sure their water stays clean. He is the sole reason they are alive, yet everytime he nears them, they react like he is about to murder everyone of them. This is how people have responded to God. We do not understand him, and so we have depicted him as this giant, nasty, evil, angry, wrathful, vengeful God. He finally decided it was time to become like one of us so that we would not run away at his approach. What was Adam's first response to God after the first sin, he hid because he was afraid. When Adam and Eve sinned, we no longer understood God's love and compassion. It was not until Jesus came along, gentle and loving, caring and compassionate, that we became free to approach God once again without fear.

So why do Christians still perpetuate this image of God being a God to fear. Being an angry, malicious, wrathful God? Why is it that so many people are so afraid to approach Christianity? We have forgotten what Jesus represents. We have misrepresented his teachings. Jesus came to say to everyone, "come unto me, for I love you and want to be with you." Many Christians perpetuate this message: "stop sinning or you'll go to hell." Jesus' emphasis was never on hell. He mentioned a place like hell occasionally, but it is my belief that on these occasions, Jesus was speaking about the religious leaders of his day that were going down to hades due to their oppression of the people. Hell was never intended as a motivation to turn to Jesus. Jesus' love and the lack of fear that he brings to those who come to him was all the incentive he needed. Yet, as Feuerbach said, "It is owing to the egoism, the vanity, the self complacency of Christians, that they can see the motes in the faith of non-Christian nations, but cannot perceive the beam in their own." Rev. Dr. Jerry states the problem eloquently in his blog "Hate-Mongering Among Professing Christians" when he says, "The ignorance and biases of the haters and hate-mongers who claim to speak for God, the Bible, and Christians hammer home God’s plea to each and every one of His children, 'O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.'" (Isaiah 3:12) We need to remember that Jesus was not a representative of fear against those perceived as sinners. Jesus was a representative of love and kindness and acceptance for those perceived as sinners. To read how Christians are perceived by non-Christians, to read how people view Christianity and "sin" as incompatible, read the blog: Not all Christians are to blame, but Christianity is. It is a shame that Christianity is perceived as incompatible with those we were intended to bring love and acceptance to. Let us work together to change that perception.
God bless,
-Brandon

A Call to Christian Leaders

I have spent much of this afternoon reading through various blog posts about the recent gay suicides that just occurred. There is much consensus that church leaders need to do something to help stop the hurtful bullying that is directed toward homosexuals. Some of the blogs (e.g. Religious Gays tell Teens, "It Gets Better") explain how some church leaders are doing their part in speaking words of encouragement to the gay community. I have discussed in many of my past blogs how Christians are at least partly (I would say much) to blame for the anti-gay attitude that is prominent in the world today. This has much to do with explicit anti-gay treatment of church leaders (which I define loosely enough to include anyone who represents the Church and knows better than to act in such judgmental ways). One of my readers explained to me how 2 of her women co-workers consistently tell a lesbian coworker that she is going to hell. One of the things I am going to continue to explore in this blog and am writing about in my book is where this behavior and attitude came from. What is important for this post is that the only people Jesus ever said were going to go to hell were the religious leaders of his day who were treating people the way those 2 women are treating their lesbian co-worker. The religious leaders of Jesus' day were constantly going around and judging people for their sinful behavior. Jesus purposed to put to a stop to that, saying things like, "do not judge lest you want to be judged," "do not attempt to take the splinter out of your brother's eye before you have first taken the log out of your own eye," and why he told the parable of the good Samaritan. The parable was intended to show that we are to love all people, regardless of whether we agree with their beliefs (The Jews and the Samaritans were notorious enemies because of opposing religious beliefs). Jesus was saying that it does not matter if the person laying on the ground is someone whom you disagree with; you pick him up, you place him on your horse, and you get him help, meeting his need. In this parable, Jesus is speaking to a crowd of Jews who hate Samaritans. By making the hated Samaritan the hero of the story, Jesus is saying that the Samaritan is more worthy of the love of God than the priest and the Levite in the story. Place today's Church leaders in the story as the Levite and the priest and place a gay man in the story as the Samaritan, and we can understand the story as it relates to us today. (Who says the bible is not relevant anymore). Dr. Janet Edwards talks about the Good Samaritan parable in her blog Gay Teen Suicides: People of Faith, Step up for our Youth. In it she rightly calls many of today's church leaders the priest and Levite from the parable that step around and avoid the man laying on the road. And I think this is the other problem.

The first problem is Church leaders speaking out explicitly against homosexuals. The second problem is that the Church leaders who are for showing love and compassion to the glbt (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) community are complicit because they avoid the issue and remain silent. They do not speak out against the gay lifestyle, but they do nothing to speak out against the anti-gay rhetoric of the church. Many Church leaders choose to remain silent because they do not want to offend anyone in their church. But by remaining silent, they are offending the glbt community and remain accomplices in the offenses of the Church leaders who speak out loudly against the gay population. Whenever I see a situation in which people are afraid to speak out against an issue, I think how between President Andrew Jackson and President Abraham Lincoln, there was not a single two term president. Andrew Jackson served from 1829 to 1837 and there were eight single term presidents until Lincoln was elected in 1860 and elected again for a second term in 1860. The reason no president won a second term between these two presidents was because not one of them had the courage to stand up against slavery. It was not until Abraham Lincoln came onto the scene that someone spoke out boldly against slavery. We need church leaders to be bold today and to stand up with a loud voice and decry the bullying that is being directed at the gay community. We need church leaders today who have the character and integrity to stand up for what is right and preach the gospel of love for our neighbor that Jesus preached, which means preaching love to all people, regardless of beliefs, background or sexual orientation. Church leaders need to do what Rabbi Jason Miller writes about in his blog and Preach Tolerance, Compassion Toward LGBT Community.

Here is my call to Church leaders around the country; I'm asking you to do 3 things. Stand up as representatives of the church and apologize on behalf of the Church for failing the gay community and being complicit in the bullying of the GBLT community that led to the suicides a month ago and to countless other suicides. Bishop Gene Robinson, in his blog How Religion is Killing our Most Vulnerable Youth, says in an extremely powerful way, These bullying behaviors would not exist without the undergirding and the patina of respect provided by religious fervor against LGBT people. It's time for "tolerant" religious people to acknowledge the straight line between the official anti-gay theologies of their denominations and the deaths of these young people. Secondly, reach out to the gay community and invite them into your churches, allowing them to be a part of your church community; giving them an environment of love and care that will foster much needed healing in their lives. Finally, as much as you can, educate the your churches and the public about the fact that Jesus never preached a message of hate or intolerance towards sinner, but that he never showed anything less than the greatest love for all people, regardless of whether they followed the letter of the law or not. As a matter of fact, the people Jesus showed the most love towards were the greatest sinners in the community. He ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, those considered the most unholy by the religious leaders. So as one Church leader to others, I am calling to you, come forward and do these three things. It will make for a more Christ-centered nation.
God bless,
Brandon

For further resources, go to the following blog which I was not able to cite in the post: Christians and Bullying: Standing with Gays and Lesbians and The Christian Call to Civility.

Christians: Take Responsibility So You can be the Cure

It is the greatest feeling to finish another chapter, and I just finished the fifth chapter in my book, discussing how Christians today should interact with contemporary outsiders. One area where our interactions have fallen short of the desire of Christ, is in our interactions with the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender crowd. Ask anyone on the street what the Christian perspective on homosexuality is, and they will say Christians view homosexuals as sinners who are going to hell. This comes from the outspokenness of Christians about gays being responsible for all of the tragedy's that have taken place in the last ten or more years. 9/11 was blamed on the gay population, Katrina was blamed, the death of American soldiers over seas is blamed for the homosexuality in America. Christians have a bad reputation when it comes to how we interact with the gay population.

Jim Daly has a wonderful article entitled "My Take: Christianity not to Blame for Anti-Gay Bullying" in which he says that Christianity is the cure for this type of anti-gay treatment of homosexuals. He is referring to the recent suicides of some gay teenagers that made the news last month. I agree with Jim that Christianity, as it was meant to be, is the cure. But I highly disagree (can one mildly disagree I wonder) with him that Christianity is not to blame. I think the biggest problem is that the Church is not standing up and taking responsibility for itself. The blaming of homosexuals for the recent disasters in our country was done by prominent church leaders, not merely nominalist Christians. If Christians cannot stand up and take at least some of the blame for the anti-gay treatment, taking responsibility for its part, it will never be able to take the position as the cure for the accepting of gays and lesbians. When Christian leaders can stand up and say, "we are sorry for preaching hatred and judgment against homosexuals, and we ask for your forgiveness so we can begin the healing process," Christians can then begin to be the cure by exemplifying Christ Jesus in showing long deserved love and compassion to the gay and lesbian, the bisexual and transgender population of the United States. This is what Rev. Mark Tidd, Sr. Pastor of the Highlands Church in Denver, Colorado did. You can read about his remarkable transformation in a blog entitled Evangelical Changes His Views on Homosexuality and Church Grows as a Result. This pastor was deeply effected when he experienced first hand the love God had for a family with a gay child in his congregation. He changed his views and his church grew from 80 to 300. That is a stamp of approval from God on this pastor and his change of belief if I ever saw one. Remember, God loves and embraces all of humankind, whether it be straight or gay, black or white; He accepts all who desire to enter into His kingdom.
God bless.
-Brandon

Christians: Voting without Judging

It has been nearly a week since my last post and I left you all with a difficult question to ponder: "How can I reconcile my voting record with my faith and my treatment of others?" In other words, if I think homosexuality is a sin, would it not be wrong for me to vote to allow gay marriage at the polls. But if I vote to ban gay marriage, how can I look my gay friend in the face again? How can I treat him or her with compassion when it seems I have voted in such a judgmental way? I think the answer is simpler than it might first appear. I want to look at 3 things mentioned in another blog I came across by Tom Davis called Where do I vote? Election Day 2010:

The first thing to understand is that as a Christian one of our responsibilities is to vote according to our heart. If you do not feel right voting against gay marriage, then do not vote against it. If you do not feel right voting for gay marriage, do not vote for it. No one can judge you for voting according to what feels right to you. That does not mean that if it is a difficult issue, that you should not wrestle with it. Wrestling with difficult issues just shows how much you really want to do the right thing. But ultimately a country's laws are guided by its individual's personal beliefs and values which are largely shaped by their religious beliefs (see: Jim Daly's Voting an American right, a Christian responsibility)

The second thing is that you should pray about how you should vote. As a Christian we are not led purely by rational thinking (which is finite) or by our feelings (which can be faulty), but by God. Let the Spirit guide you in the right direction as far as your vote goes.

Finally, whatever the results of the election, know that God is in charge and that regardless of whether you won or lost, God is still watching over our country and ultimately will guide in the right direction.

The other issue is how can you remain non-judgmental when your vote seems judgmental. Forgive me for quoting this oft too used cliche, but it is true, "Love the sinner, not the sin." You can be loving toward homosexuals, you can be loving toward pro-choicers without giving up your beliefs. In this blog, we are talking about how we treat these individuals regardless of whether or not we think their behavior is a sin. What too often has happened is that Christians believe homosexuality is a sin and end up treating the homosexual like the spawn of satan; we want nothing to do with them. Jesus taught that regardless of the wrongfulness or rightfulness of a person's behavior, they should be treated with love and compassion. So do not be afraid to vote according to what your heart is telling you. But we should be cognizant of our behavior towards individuals we perceive as sinful and make sure we are not treating them judgmentally or with any sort of condemnation.
God bless.
-Brandon