March 9, 2017

Love Your Enemies (part 3)

Plowshares

Evangelical pastor Brian Zahnd had once been a big supporter of American militarism. He enthusiastically cheered during the first Gulf War and delivered a patriotic, anti-Islamic sermon after 9/11. Then he was converted and wrote the book, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor’s Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace. (As we know, Mars is the Roman god of war). Brian writes:

[Americans] have embraced a privatized . . . gospel that stresses Jesus dying for our sins but at the same time ignores his [politics]. This leaves us free to run the world the way it has always been run: by the power of the sword. Under pressure from the ideology of empire, concepts like freedom and truth gain radically different meanings than those intended by Christ.

Freedom becomes a euphemism for vanquishing (instead of loving) enemies; truth finds its ultimate form in the will to power (expressed in the willingness to kill). This is a long way from the ideas of peace, love, and forgiveness set forth by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.[i]

There are huge differences between political parties in our world. Some are more militaristic, tied to economic elites, and prone to exploit our fears and prejudices. (Different parties exploit different kinds of fears and prejudices.) Yet, there’s no major political party in our country that doesn’t subscribe to an ideology of empire. All think that loving our enemies would be a kind of suicide.

I consider such things as I decide on my support for a given party or political candidate. At the same time, I refuse to identify myself with any political party without qualification. I’m a follower of Jesus and for me, “Jesus Christ is Lord.” Within the reign of God, the power of love is understood to be more powerful than violence and hating our enemies.

Jesus is telling us, “Be like God who loves and blesses everyone.” If we instead love those who love us and hate those who hate us, we’re just like everyone else. Instead, like God, we’re called to be complete in our love. We may be severely tested on this in our present political climate.

[i] Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars (Colorado Springs, CO: David C Cook, 2014), 34.

March 7, 2017

Love Your Enemies (part 2)

Plowshares

Our notion of American exceptionalism and of fighting our enemies to protect our freedom, democracy, and capitalism is a modern version of the myth of redemptive violence. It’s as old as history but its keeps continually evolving into different forms. In Jesus’ day, it took the form of Pax Romana (the peace of Rome)—a peace brutally enforced by Roman legions.

In the fourth century, when Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, it became Christendom fighting against all kinds internal enemies, including Jews and those considered to be heretics, and external enemies such as Islam. This was followed by independent European nations dividing the world between themselves and fighting each other for their colonial empires. That struggle was at the root of the two world wars in the twentieth century. This was followed by the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.

A key part of the myth of redemptive violence is dividing the world between the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” This is Star Wars stuff. Pastor Greg Boyd writes, “To be willing to kill, soldiers must believe they are the good guys who are righteously fighting the bad guys—to defend God, country, truth, justice, equality, freedom, or whatever.”[i]

National and military leaders go to great lengths to perpetuate this myth because they simply can’t sustain an effective war unless soldiers and ordinary citizens remain confident that our cause is just. We need to believe that something more than chance has decided which side we’re on. Many in my generation lost our confidence in that myth during the Vietnam War; we no longer believed what we were being told about that war, why we were fighting there, or the justice of our cause.

Let’s return to the issue that Khrushchev raised about following Jesus’ example of loving our enemies. Christians followed Jesus’ example of loving their enemies (sometimes as great cost) for the first three hundred years. That changed when the Roman general Constantine came to power after winning a decisive battle in a civil war in which he had symbols of the cross placed on his weapons of war. (The incongruence is stunning!).

The wheels had been set in motion for Christianity to become the state religion of the Roman Empire and the enemies of Rome were now assumed to be the enemies of God. Popular American Christianity is another version of this. I’ll expand on this in my next blog post.

[i] Gregory Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Religion (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 93.

February 21, 2017

Practice Reconciliation (part 2)

We all have a proclivity for breaking ourselves into teams of us against them. Part of the genius of faith in Jesus is that it breaks down such distinctions and walls of separation. It never comes easily but we know that this is what the kin-dom of God looks like. Christena Cleveland writes, “This is a tall order that requires a real and fierce conversation on the elephant in the church: privilege and power differentials. For some reason, high-status people (in my experience, particularly white men) have a hard time seeing and admitting that they are in fact high-status people who enjoy privileges that aren’t afforded to low-status people” (Disunity in Christ, 166).

This is the situation that Paul tackled head-on in the church in Corinth. People were dividing themselves into groups loyal to either Paul our Apollos. He had planted the church and then Apollos became a prominent leader after Paul left. We don’t know what the division was about but we can assume that both were high-status men. It’s easy to see how such a situation could develop. Many loved Paul and resisted any changes Apollos may have initiated. We can assume that Apollos was a little insecure and perhaps a bit sensitive about his status and role. He was naturally charismatic and others were drawn to him.

We don’t know if there was a concrete issue like same-sex marriage (which is tearing churches apart today) that church members in Corinth were fighting about but we always find such an issue to legitimize our prejudices and ambitions . Paul told them that such party loyalties indicate that we’re spiritual babies who cannot even eat solid food. Furthermore, both he and Apollos are mere workers in the church, which he likens to a field. One planted and another watered and each will receive his wages at the end of the day for the work he has done. Neither can take credit for the growth. That belongs to God.

The huge issue that divided people and created huge fights in the early church was the inclusion of Gentiles. Nobody wanted to exclude Gentiles but some wanted to impose conditions that marked them as second-class. This reflected a deep-seated cultural and religious divide or what sociologists call identity politics. The identity politics in our country today includes struggles surrounding racial, cultural, gender, sexual, and religious differences. This drives the fight over immigration.

It was a long struggle in the early church but Gentiles were eventually fully included as equals. Coming to that place included studying Scripture together, discerning how the Spirit was leading in real-life situations, and being committed to staying in communion with each other even when we see things differently.

We dare not forget that we’re Gentiles. Paul reminds us that we have been grafted in. A way was found to include us as equals. This is not our church; it’s Christ’s church! That should make us especially eager to bend over backward to include others, to always make sure we do not relate to others out of a sense of entitlement or privilege, and to drop everything else in order to seek reconciliation.

February 17, 2017

Practice Reconciliation

As a young man, I participated in a Paul–Timothy Program designed to develop future church leaders. As part of our training, we read about a racially diverse, fast-growing new church in Chicago called Circle Church. Formed the in the late 60s, the church met in a union hall located between black and white neighborhoods in this racially divided city. At the time, Circle Church was a model for racial diversity, but later ran into difficulties and split along racial lines. Long-standing racial segregation and prejudice in Chicago still shaped the way blacks and whites in their church related to each other. Whites were used to taking charge and were largely unaware of what we today call white privilege. Others felt left out and deeply buried racial frustrations became insurmountable.

Such discrimination goes beyond race. Women friends have told me about participating in meetings where their suggestion was ignored but then taken seriously when a male colleague said the same thing. It can feel like you’re invisible. Women need to be better and brighter to get the same respect. But it’s tricky because a determined woman is labeled “pushy” when a male counterpart with the same characteristics is assumed to be a natural leader.

Social class and economic status easily lead to yet another kind of discrimination. Some of us are born on third base and go through life thinking we hit a triple. This has been a longstanding problem. The writer of the book of James in the New Testament scolds his congregation for giving undue honor to a rich visitor while ignoring and demeaning a poor person. He pointedly asks them, “Isn’t it the rich people who oppress you?” (2:6).

Lynn Hur, an Asian-American high school student gives us yet another twist on discrimination in America. The school she attends is predominantly Asian-American and she says it’s a privilege to grow up in an environment where she isn’t teased because of her small eyes or praised for her good English. But it can easily blind students to the racism they will face in the real world. She wants people to know three things: “Number one: Racism is not just a black-and-white situation. [It] encompasses the entirety of our colorful and complicated world. Number two: No one is completely innocent. Asians have their own assumptions and stereotypes of others, despite our experiences. Number three: I want us to look racism in the eye, name it and undo it” (The Mennonite, Feb. 2017:29).

Ben Goossen talks about white Mennonite privilege. He’s referring to those of us from European stock who can trace our genealogy back to our Anabaptist ancestors. He calls it white privilege with a twist. We’re very aware of our ethnic family names, foods, and the history of our ancestors as a persecuted religious minority. It makes us feel special but it makes others feel like they can never quite fit into our churches or ever measure up. They will always be outsiders. Such blinders keep us from seeing our white privilege. Ben Goossen says that learning about white privilege taught him to see us and our churches in a different light. He writes, “I see that even when we talk about peace and justice and righteousness, we can still be implicated in systems of oppression” (The Mennonite, Feb. 2017: 23).

Yet another divisive and often incredibly painful matter is how we relate to and include people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. A lesbian friend recently told me that some of her family will not even talk with her (a kind of verbal abuse) or allow her to come to their homes. Jesus warns us that verbally abusing and demeaning another person is equivalent to murder. Such anger, like murder, opens the cauldron of hell. He tells us that if we are about to offer a sacrifice or gift to God and remember that our brother or sister has something against us, we should immediately drop what we’re doing, first go to be reconciled, and then return and offer our gift (Matthew 5: 21-24).

For Jesus, compassion and relationships always trump ritual and religious purity. He was fond of repeating Hosea 6:6: “For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” It’s instructive to consider the many times he went out of his way to build relationships with despised others such as the Samaritan woman. Churches continually face challenges related to the different forms of prejudice and discrimination in our world. We will want prioritize going out of our way to build relationships with despised others and to practice reconciliation.

November 14, 2016

Our Response to a Political Earthquake

We lived through a political earthquake this week. Few expected Donald Trump to win and become our president elect. Most of us are still in shock. I found myself talking pastorally with several women who are so angry and depressed that a man who bragged about groping women and treating them as sex objects is now our next president. This is especially painful for those who were themselves sexually harassed and abused.

One person came to our house because she was so discouraged and needed to talk. Other pastors report the same thing. Some are telling their congregations that they are available to talk to with those who are struggling with severe feelings of anger and depression. Likewise, school teachers report that many children are afraid about what will happen to them or their friends.

I had a conversation with the pastor of a minority church who is deeply concerned about the underlying racism in the Trump campaign and what this might mean for people of color, ethnic minorities, and recent immigrants. This spiritually perceptive pastor told me that perhaps it will be good for churches to recognize that we don’t completely fit in our dominant American culture. It will push us to be more creative in finding models for living and witnessing from the margins.

And I need to acknowledge that I’m struggling to find the inner spiritual and emotional strength to overcome my own despair. I found the way our president-elect mocked and demeaned others, beginning in the Republican primaries, very offensive. I was so much looking forward to the end of the election when he would no longer dominate the news. Now that’s not going to happen. I fear that he’s temperamentally unfit to be president.

This week I attended our Fairfax County Faith Communities in Action meeting. Rabbi David Kalender, who chaired the meeting, opened it by acknowledging the political earthquake we have been through. He gave us some helpful spiritual advice. During an earthquake, things that we thought were stable begin to shake and move and we need to find and grab onto those anchors of stability in our lives. Such anchors may include our family, our friends, meaningful work, gardening, art, exercise, our community of faith, and our God. Then we reach out and hold each other’s hands.

This blog post is part of the sermon I gave at our church this Sunday. This was followed by a communion service and then a sharing time where people freely talked about their personal struggles related to the election earthquake we all went through. There were lots of tears. I also encouraged our congregation to consider our response to Donald Trump as our next president.

I don’t assume that all of us experienced his election the same way. Many Evangelical Christians voted for him, even though they saw him as a flawed candidate, because his political platform supported their positions on various social issues. We will want to have honest conversations with each other about this, practice agreeing and disagreeing in love, and recognize that we’re part of a worldwide communion that brings us together beyond such differences.

Our daughter, who is a school teacher in Oakland, California told me that school students walked out of their classes in protest. Young people marched in the streets holding signs “Love Trumps Hate” and “He’s not my President.” Many more such actions quickly sprung up across our country. That frustration is real but we will also want to give president-elect Trump the chance to prove our worst fears wrong. We hold him up in our prayers.

I believe in grace and that people can change. He might surprise us. Let’s give him that opportunity. Let’s strive to get beyond our distaste and consider the things we may have in common and how we can support those things. He must overcome lots of division and needs lots of support to be a successful president. I’m not sure he completely understands how much anxiety and distrust he has generated.

We will, however, not give him a free pass on things he said and did or his agenda moving forward. He ran a very destructive and mean-spirited campaign. Other candidates then felt that they had no choice but to respond in kind. Such things have consequences. As a result, our American public square is a more vulgar and ugly place than it was before he began running for president. Part of our task will be to hold him accountable and to help repair that torn social fabric.

We should also be prepared to resist were necessary for the sake of the gospel and all vulnerable people. There will be lots of chaos if Trump follows through on some of the things he said he will do during his campaign. We shouldn’t wait to see if that actually happens. Let’s take this as a call to greater social engagement. We will want to pray, talk with each other, strategize, and organize to take action.

Many Christians in the past have suffered for the sake of the gospel. The same is true for some Christians in other parts of the world today. We should not assume that we are somehow exempt from that cost. This is a good time to again read Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship. Let’s take this opportunity to let our lights shine as God’s people. It’s about living God’s love and growing God’s justice.

November 9, 2016

A Post-Election Reflection

The shadow of the cross on top of our church is in the foreground of the Memorial to the Lost on our church lawn remembering the 202 lives lost to gun violence in the greater Washington DC region in 2015.

This is an anxious time in our country following the ugliest presidential election in memory. I worry about how our nation will come together and begin the healing process now that it’s over. This election has exposed significant tears in our social fabric. The hateful and demeaning rhetoric and behavior we have seen is especially frightening.

These things matter deeply and our anxiety is understandable. That’s why we need something beyond our present American politics to help ground us. Steps toward such groundedness include focusing on the many other aspects of my life including my family, my friends, my work, my local community, and my church.

This involves a God oriented perspective. The word “God” denotes the ultimate which relativizes all other powers in our world. For example, the Apostle Paul prays for the people in the church of Ephesus who he describes as a community of saints. He prays that they will have a broader vision and hope—the evocative phrase used is that “the eyes of your heart might be enlightened.”

This involves three things expressed by suggestive Greek words. The first is the word gnosis (knowledge); the second is Sophia (wisdom), and the third is apocalypses (revelation). He takes it even further by claiming that Jesus, the Christ has been raised and is seated at the right-hand of God. Jesus is therefore far above all other authority, power, and dominion (Ephesians 1: 15:23).

African American religious scholar Cornel West speaks so powerfully to times like these, “I speak as a Christian—one whose commitment to democracy is very deep but whose Christian convictions are even deeper. Democracy is not my faith. And American democracy is not my idol . . . To be a Christian—a follower of Jesus Christ—is to love wisdom, love justice, and love freedom” (Democracy Matters, 171-72).

When I get especially anxious, I remember that our American political system is a power that is brought down to size by God’s purposes and what God is doing in and through Jesus in our midst. Furthermore, the church is Jesus’ arms and feet in our world. Paul calls us the body of Christ.

October 24, 2016

Remembering Lives Lost to Gun Violence

memorial-to-the-lost-2016 On Sunday morning our congregation again erected a Memorial to the Lost on our church lawn reminding us to stop, remember, pray, educate, organize, and advocate on behalf of the 202 people killed by gun violence in greater Washington DC in 2015. This is the third year we have erected the Memorial created by Heeding God’s Call to End Gun Violence and rotated to the lawns of different churches and faith communities in the DC area.

The Memorial includes 202 tee-shirts with each victim’s name, age, and date of death. It becomes a holy labor of love as we work together to pound in stakes, erect frames, and place the tee-shirts on them. When our work is completed we dedicate the memorial with this scripture taken from the book of Habakkuk 1: 2-4a:

O LORD, how long shall I cry for help and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.

Then we read this litany of commitment for the Memorial before processing silently into our church to begin our worship service:

Faced with gun violence,
We grieve for those who have been killed
and those whose lives are forever changed;
We seek comfort for those who have lost loved ones;
We pray for healing in the hearts
of those who have been left to mourn.
Faced with gun violence,
We seek healing for the perpetrators,
so they no longer inflict pain upon others.
We pray for healing of the violence in our culture.
Faced with gun violence,
We pray for those in positions of power
that they may use their power for peace.
Faced with gun violence, may we
Educate; Organize; Advocate;
and in all the ways we can, work for the day when
guns and weapons of destruction
are transformed into instruments of healing.
May it be so. May we do so.

October 13, 2016

Faith Values that Guide Our Politics (part 2)

engaging-politics

Many of our faith values are in serious tension with or even antithetical to every political system our world has ever known. Even so, we can use them to help us discern which candidate and which political platform is more in line with God’s purposes:

We will want to discern which has the most respect for all people, including recent immigrants and racial minorities.
All politicians spin the truth but some are more honest than others and more able to admit when they made a mistake. Being able to admit mistakes is an important indication of one’s character.
Wealth and power are ingrained in all political systems. Even so we can discern who flaunts it as a way to impress people, who takes advantage of our legal system for unjust personal gain, who is more generous, and who seeks to live a simpler life.
Religious freedom and freedom of conscience go together. Does the candidate respect the rights and consciences of all people on deeply dividing issues such as abortion and sexuality? Does the candidate respect or demean people from other faith traditions?
All politicians claim to support common people and all are beholden to the rich and powerful people who help put them into office. Even so we can discern which will do more for common people, poor communities, and small businesses, and which has policies that benefit the rich and powerful.
Caring for the earth and all creation has become one of the most important social problems of our generation because of rapidly decreasing natural resources and the problem of climate change. We will want to discern which candidate and political party takes these matters seriously.
We will want to discern which candidate and political party is more apt to rely on military solutions to international conflicts and which will be more ready to use diplomacy and other means.

Let’s vote our values as best we can in the upcoming election but let’s also resist getting sucked into the agenda of either political party. Political parties recruit churches and religious leaders as errand boys and girls to help deliver the vote but give little in return. Let’s be wise!

Evangelical writer David Swartz encourages Evangelicals to learn from the Anabaptists who found themselves the target of every civic authority in the sixteenth century. Furthermore, our Anabaptist peace position has always kept us from completely fitting into our American political system. We’ve learned how to live with that tension.

David Swartz says that “the vocabulary of nationalism we hear in the Republican and Democratic parties—and then echoed in Christian groups—typically shades toward idolatry. . . Both sides practice realpolitik to accomplish their goals. Anything goes in the attempt to win. Parties enforce platforms, leaving little room for dissent, and they coerce adherents into following culture war scripts. They encourage the demonization of the enemy.”[1]

This political system is at the root of the partisan gridlock in our country. The challenge for us as followers of Jesus is to find ways to rise above, go around, resist, and engage this system. We don’t expect it to bring in the reign of God and we will not become its errand boys and girls.

Even with this critique, I’m grateful for many aspects of our political system and our American culture and seek to work within it to, in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, “seek the welfare of our city.” Our democratic system of government is a huge improvement over the domination and violence in in past centuries and in other parts of the world today. There’s much to be thankful for.

We respect and pray for our political leaders but we will not give them our religious blessing. Our loyalty belongs to God and to God’s reign. We bless and seek to be a blessing to all people. We trust that our church is a sign of that new world bubbling up in our midst. This is where we place our hope.

Jesus repudiated the very premises of systems of domination and called disciples to come follow him. He rejected the right of some to dominate others by means of power, wealth, or titles of prestige. Through his beatitudes, his healings, and by eating with outcasts and sinners, he declared God’s special concern for the oppressed.

As his disciples, Jesus calls us to create a community of equals that includes women. He asks us to do away with the hierarchical relationship of master and slave, teacher and student. So welcome to this new world coming! It’s a good time to be Anabaptist. Vote your faith values and encourage others to do the same, then place your trust in God and the power of God’s Spirit creating a new world in our midst.

[1] David Swartz, “Hey White Evangelicals, Welcome to Anabaptism (September 28, 2016)

October 11, 2016

Faith Values that Guide Our Politics

engaging-politics

This is the strangest and most worrisome presidential election I can remember because of the temperament of the GOP candidate Donald Trump. Personalities matter but American elections go beyond the individual candidates. We have become so politically polarized that people support their party no matter what and live in echo chambers where they only listen to people who reinforce their beliefs. This is especially true when our sole sources of information are the internet, talk radio, and certain TV channels.

Presidential elections become horse races. The media loves the excitement. The more they hype it the more viewers and advertising dollars they get. Partisan commentators from both sides spin all the bad stuff they can dig up on the other candidate while praising the accomplishments of their candidate. Half-truths or outright lies are exaggerated and repeated over and over again until many accept them as true.

The rhetoric becomes so shrill. We’re told that this election is a crucial turning point or even the last chance to save our country. We should always question such claims. Fortunately, cooler heads generally prevail. Nevertheless, we need to take a step back—breathe in and breathe out—and seriously consider how our faith values guide our politics.

We need to remember what a presidential election is. We’re choosing the commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military and the leader of the dominant economic system in our world. Who that person is and how she or he assumes that leadership can make a big difference. Nevertheless, that person will always be beholden to those systems of domination. That goes with the job.

This needs to temper our hope that a new president will somehow usher in a radically more just, secure, and prosperous world. Even though a president can make big differences, more radical and lasting change will necessarily come from elsewhere. For followers of Jesus, change and new life begins with the good news that Jesus lived and proclaimed. This politics of Jesus shapes our political engagement. Core gospel values include:

Respecting the basic dignity and worth of all people
Honesty and truth-telling
Generosity and simple living
Religious freedom and respect for people of all faiths
A special concern for the poor and most vulnerable among us
Caring for the earth and all creation
Peace, justice, and reconciliation.

In my next blog post I will discuss how these values inform our political engagement, including how we vote.

October 3, 2016

My Journey to Peace Action (part 2)

Plowshares My personal peace action hasn’t been easy but nothing of consequence ever is. I’m grateful for the many peacemaking mentors I’ve met along the way who taught me so much. John Howard Yoder taught me the fallacy of the common perception that pacifism and just war are opposed systems of belief.

Instead, both share the conviction that war is never good. The major difference between them is that just war theorists consider war to sometimes be the lesser of two evils while pacifists are not willing to concede that.

Unfortunately, what generally passes for just war is actually some form of the “good guys taking out the bad guys.” And the “good guys” are always our kind of people. Authentic just war theory and pacifism both recognize that violence takes different forms and that lasting peace is built from the ground up through many initiatives designed to create the common good. Let’s consider ways we can do that collaboratively.

The International Day of Peace is annually observed around the world on September, 21. The United Nations has devoted this day to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and peoples. The theme this year is: “Sustainable Development Goals: Building Blocks for Peace.”

One of the huge remaining development challenges is refugees who are forced to flee their homes because of conflict and violence. There are 65.3 million forcibly displaced people in our world today. That number is the largest it has been since World War II. Perpetual war between and within nations is a major obstacle to achieving sustainable development goals in our world.

We have long known that violence begets violence and can quickly become a vicious cycle. Recently people within the public health arena have begun to treat violence like other communicable diseases. “Mental trauma from exposure to violence has been scientifically shown to increase a person’s risk of adopting violent behavior themselves, meaning that violent behavior transmits and spreads based on exposure – just like an epidemic disease.”[1]

We see this in places like Syria, Afghanistan, and the streets of Chicago. I saw it up close in the trauma unit of the MedStar Washington Hospital Center where I recently took a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education. We were continually caring for victims of gun violence and their families. A small response that our church has taken to help break the cycle of violence is to erect a Memorial to the Lost on our church lawn each year remembering those killed by gun violence in the DC area.

[1] http://cureviolence.org/understand-violence/violence-as-a-health-issue/

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