We Can Observe a Lot by Just Watching (eCrozier #273)

On September 25, 2015, in culture, fear, gospel, hope, Purity of Heart, by bishopbenhase

You can observe a lot by just watching – Yogi Berra

As I read the words of Jesus in the Bible, whether they be in his Sermon on the Mount or in his parables, he seems to be less concerned with the purity of his disciples’ arguments or the rigidity of their doctrine and more concerned with the purity of their hearts and their steadfast commitment to live out the Good News he was ushering into the world.

Yet, like with Mr. Berra, we can observe a lot by just watching how many of us maintain a death grip on the purity of our arguments and the rigidity of our doctrines, whether in religion or in politics. My hunch is that the death grip we’ve deployed is caused by our fear that we’re somehow losing what we once hoped we could control. But that was always a fantasy. Our culture is changing and people different from people like me are now a part of the conversation about what we will become. Religious and Political leaders sense this fear and exploit it for their own ends. But such fear mongering about people who are different than me will lead only to our collective downfall.

One of my favorite episodes of the old TV series, The Twilight Zone, is about a meteor that lands near Maple Street somewhere in Middle America. Soon rumors begin on the street that aliens disguised as humans have invaded. Everyone’s electricity goes out on the block so people gather in the street. One neighbor begs for everyone to remain calm. But then the lights in his house go on, while every other house remains dark. One of his neighbors shouts that he must be an alien. As suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are produced. In the faint distance, an “alien” is spotted and promptly shot, but when they run up to confront the alien, they discover he was no alien. He was simply a neighbor who had gone for help. The next scene is on a nearby hill where two real aliens are seen with a device that manipulates electricity. One tells the other “there’s no need to attack the humans. All you have to do is turn a few of their machines on and off and then they pick the most dangerous enemy imaginable: themselves.” Rod Serling then appears on camera concluding the episode with these words: “The tools of conquest don’t necessarily come with bombs and explosions. There are more powerful weapons; the ones found in the thoughts, attitudes, and prejudices of men.”

We seem to take great delight as a culture in arguing about who’s acceptable and who isn’t; who has the correct position on a particular issue and who doesn’t. And then we listen to the voices of those who tell us to fear those who are different than us; those on the outside of whatever side we’re on.

I’d rather spend my energy trying to follow Jesus. When we stand before the great judgment seat of Christ, I don’t think Jesus will ask you and me about the correctness of our beliefs or how rigidly we stood on principle. I believe he’ll ask if we tried in our lives to bring good news to the poor, hope to the hopeless, comfort to those who suffer, and mercy to the sinner. I may well be wrong about Judgment Day. I’ve been wrong before. But I’m willing to stake my eternal life on it.

+Scott

 
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A Faithful Response to the Changing Culture (eCrozier #261)

On May 1, 2015, in Anxiety, Change, culture, faith, fear, gospel, grace, by bishopbenhase

As we live through the rapid change of our contemporary culture, some are fearful that Christianity is losing its traditional, privileged place. Demographers tell us that the fastest growing cohort is the so-called “nones,” those with no religious affiliation or particular religious practice. Those who are fearful about this development warn that the lost, privileged place of the Church’s faith will inevitably lead to a growing hostility toward Christianity. Every fear has at least a kernel of truth to it, so there’s reason for us to pay attention. But I don’t think fear about the changing nature of the culture is a faithful response, even as we pay attention to it. Fear is never faithful. All culture is highly elastic and, at least partly, cyclical. Historians look back and find times when particular social, religious, political, and economic conditions in one era were similar to those in another. That’s true of Church history as it overlaps with the larger cultural history. In every age then, the Church faces new as well as familiar challenges for how she will be faithful to the Gospel of Jesus.

I believe we’re in a similar time as to what the Church experienced in the 4th Century. Christianity then had a foothold in the culture, but it was by no means the dominant religion. The Roman Empire had grown vast, outgrowing its own power to govern and control that vastness. In the other words, the Pax Romana wasn’t what it had been. This resulted in great social anxiety as groups sought to blame other groups for why Rome wasn’t what it used to be. Some blamed the Christians. Others blamed the laxness of the traditional Pagan practices. What was evident was this: No one group was dominant or privileged in its ability to guide the culture. This was also the time of the great Church Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon. At these Councils, the Church struggled to define her own faith, identity, and practice. But even amidst the great debate within the Church, we continued to witness to the grace, compassion, and mercy of God. In the middle of the 4th century the Roman emperor Julian (later he had the moniker “the Apostate” attached to his name, which, let’s just say, wasn’t a term he chose) wrote a sarcastic complaint about the Christians he observed: “These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also. While our pagan priests neglect the poor, these hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity.” 

The Church today is struggling, as we always have, to live out our faith, identity, and practice. As was true 17 centuries ago, today we’re not all of one mind on various issues. But that has never stopped the Church from its essential witness to the world’s redemption by our Lord Jesus Christ. We’ll need to continue to find ever more creative and effective ways of sharing and dispensing God’s grace to this beautiful, yet broken world, especially as it becomes more disinterested in or indifferent to the Gospel. So, I believe the truth claims we make about Jesus will never win the day if they’re limited to a “we’re right and your wrong” contest. I think the Emperor Julian (the Apostate) unwittingly showed us the most effective way: A steadfast commitment to sharing God’s unmerited grace with others, particularly to those who are lonely, lost, or left out in our culture, through specific acts that make tangible God’s grace in their lives. The old camp song has it so right: “They will know we are Christians by our love.”

+Scott

 
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The Moral Bankruptcy of Violence (eCrozier #245)

On January 9, 2015, in evil, Facts, fear, Grief, Justice, media, morality, news, politics, by bishopbenhase

As we all heard the news of the mass shootings at the Parisian satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, it was natural for us to be horrified by such violence, which is so often fueled by perceived political or religious anger and grievance. This news from Paris comes at the same time as the lone surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings begins to have his day in court. In the midst of such violent news, we may lose our perspective, and thus the big picture and the larger trajectory humankind appears to be on, at least based on the real data we have. More on that in a moment.

Mass murder, such as we just witnessed in Paris this week, has almost always been born out of people’s twisted response to their anger and grievance (at least in their own minds) over some great wrong being done to them or to their “tribe” or to their “people.” Timothy McVeigh was motivated by such anger and grievance when he set off a deadly bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995. In the same state 74 years earlier, hundreds of white citizens in Tulsa systematically murdered as many as 300 black residents in a part of town known as the “Black Wall Street,” which at the time was the wealthiest African-American community in the United States. In Wilmington, North Carolina there was the so-called Massacre of 1898, which was actually a coup d’etat of the elected government. No one knows the full extent of the massacre since many of the bodies of the African-Americans killed were dumped in the Cape Fear River and never recovered.

In each of these instances, as we will probably discover with the one this week in Paris, the deranged actors all justified their murderous act or rampage on settling some score or righting some wrong. In their own warped sense of logic (engaging in an evil for an alleged evil), they were right to do what they did. The actions of others, they claim, led them to do what they did. That leads inevitably to the old “ends justifies the means” argument, which is always morally bankrupt.

But we should also know, even as the horrendous act in Paris sinks in, that such actions are actually fewer in number and less frequent than at other times in human history. It may be hard for us to believe because of the media available today, but war and other forms of political violence (like the examples above) are declining. As Steven Pinker illustrates in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, deaths related to such political violence are falling. This coincides with a steady decline worldwide of extreme poverty, child mortality, and hunger as well as the continued growth, since the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, of the number of countries that are democracies.

Of course, such perspective doesn’t help those who mourn now for their murdered loved ones and fellow citizens. For now, we should just grieve with them and share their outrage and sadness, while also reminding ourselves about the historical moral bankruptcy of responding to evil with more evil. But I do hope it helps us all take a step back and see the arc of history better. As Dr. Martin Luther King said in 1967, Jr. (paraphrasing the words of the Reverend Theodore Parker a century before): “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”.

+Scott

 
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I’m not afraid of the Girl Scouts – except maybe their cookies during Lent! (eCrozier #125)

On March 2, 2012, in culture, discipleship, fear, by bishopbenhase

This year is the centennial of the Girl Scouts founded by Juliette Gordon Low, who was a native of Savannah and a beloved member of Christ Church. All Girl Scouts make the promise: “On my honor, I will try to serve God and my country, to help people at all times, and to live by the Girl Scout Law.” Their slogan is: “Do a good turn daily.” This is a great organization that for 100 years has helped girls gain confidence and abilities in outdoor activities, has provided a place for girls to learn the importance of working together, and has helped instill in them the virtue of citizenship for the common good. My only complaint with them: They sell those tempting cookies during Lent every year.

So, one can only wonder why Mr. Bob Morris, an Indiana State legislator, wants his legislative colleagues to defeat a nonbinding resolution honoring the Girl Scouts on their centennial. An old Hoosier friend of mine sent me a copy of the letter he sent to his colleagues referring to the Girl Scouts as a “radicalized organization” dominated by “liberal progressive politics” and committed to the “destruction of traditional American family values.” He points to the fact that since Michelle Obama is the Honorary President of the Girl Scouts, this proves his case. Oh please!

Now, it seems, the Girl Scouts are the next thing we are supposed to fear. A culture of fear is stirred by incessant talk radio, 24-hour cable news, and internet blogging (Mr. Morris claims he arrived at his conclusion about the Girl Scouts after doing a “small amount of web-based research”). The daily fear-mongering we endure has transformed conversations about the common good into shouting monologues where each voice vies to make more outrageous claims than the other. Modern communication technology, rather than providing opportunities for greater community, has moved us farther down a tribalist path. We’ve been instructed to fear these other tribes. Such tribalist fear affects our moral lives because it deforms our discernment, character and judgment.

In some ways, this is nothing new. It is only hyper-actualized in our contemporary culture. Appealing to people’s fears has always been a tactic used by some to control the lives of others. You will recall that Jesus in the Gospels spends a good part of his teaching ministry with his disciples telling them: “Do not be afraid.” You see, Jesus clearly recognized the corrosive capacity of fear, understanding profoundly how living by our fears would lead us away from the traditional spiritual practices of hospitality, generosity, and bearing one another’s burdens. Thus, living in a culture where fears are repetitively stirred up and then served up for us to consume, we will find it increasingly difficult to practice the Christian virtues of those who attend themselves to discipleship in Jesus.

One of our important roles as church leaders is to help people develop the habits, practices, and virtues that correspond with following Jesus. We can only do so effectively if we are clear about what prevents people from doing so. My hunch is that people’s fears are on the top of the list. So, I will not let Mr. Morris make me afraid of the Girl Scouts. And, if I buy their cookies, I will save them until Eastertide.

Scott+

 
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