A preacher in Fayetteville, NC, preached a sermon that went viral this week. As part of a campaign to encourage persons to vote “protect marriage” in NC—there is an Amendment up for vote—the pastor explained his views on the hot topic of homosexuality, including his view that a dad should crack his son’s wrist and give him a good punch if he ever starts acting a little girlish. The preacher also preached that the reason we rely so heavily on products from overseas is that we, in America, aren’t reproducing enough children to work, because of homosexuals, and that we need to start having more children lest Muslims take over.
To me, this sermon was awful. I must confess that I didn’t listen to the whole thing—it was over 45 minutes long—but I listened to enough of it to know that it went against my understanding of God’s redemptive story. And even if I could agree with parts of what he was saying, the manner in which he delivered the sermon—yelling and with what came across as arrogance—shut me down. While I know that there are some who uphold this pastor's views and like his style of speaking, I’m blessed that the majority of people that I know and spend my life with do not agree with this pastor and that his yelling teachings do not reflect our comprehensive understanding of the bible and God's story. I’ve come to learn that, quite often, persons like this preacher are living out of a fear, judgment, and hurt that are not cornerstones of Jesus' teachings or the whole of God's redemptive story…
It is true that Christians have done some stupid, damning, things over the course of history. Persons have used their religion as a means of gaining power and control more times than I care to think—and not just Christian persons but persons from other religions as well. I've read Christopher Hitchens' book, “God Is Not Great.” I know what he is saying—that humanity has done a lot of damage in God’s name. It's human nature to fight for power and control—to fight to survive. And religion is made up of humans. And humans do stupid things in God’s name. Yet God’s name is love.
Breaking your children’s wrists and punching them for being who they are, to me, and to even the conservative Christians I know, is not love. I know. There's the spare the rod, spoil the child verse that so many people use. I’m not arguing the merits and anti-merits of spanking. But the rest of the verse says that a parent who loves his child is CAREFUL to discipline him. I can't help but believe that being careful in discipline is being wise in helping a child learn when his/her actions are right and wrong as they influence other people...not trying to beat a child into submission by forcing him/her to change the very core of their being…
I've come to believe that we humans are looking for something to believe in—something to give our lives meaning and purpose—something around which we live, breathe, and make our choices. Religion is the formalized system of belief in a higher being. Humanism is the formalized system of belief in humanity. Sports teams are the formalized system of belief in athletics. The American Dream is the formalized system of belief in financial prosperity in America. Charity. Community service. Family. Anything can become the driving system around which we build our beliefs. Even if that anything is nothing. Nothing is still something.
And so...I decided at the end of Hitchen's book that I'd rather believe in God than fall back on nothing. And I go from God to nothing because my belief in humanity is so entrenched in my belief in God that they cannot be separated. I believe that God is alive and working in and through humanity—that we humans are co-creating with God and partnering with God for the good of the world and redemption. I believe that everything good comes from God because I believe that God is good. God is love. And that as part of that love, God allows us to work out our junk and make stupid decisions and suffer the consequences without always swooping down to interfere. I say always because I think that maybe God sometimes does swoop down and perform miracles—although that confuses me a bit so I try not to think about it too much. I believe that there is power in humanity's words and actions, just as there was power in the Word that spoke creation into being. I believe in a loving, alive, steady God whose existence gives me life, whose Spirit reminds me to breathe and spreads peace, and whose humanity in Christ gives me a loving, rebellious, strong, humble, sacrificial example to follow.
How in the world this God can accept "praises" from someone like the preacher whom I wrote about at the beginning while accepting them from someone like me while seeing people suffer around the world, I have no idea. It's so far beyond me that it hurts my thinker and pretty much shuts me down when I think upon it for too long. The best I can do is something I learned from my non-Christian massage therapist. In talking about compassion, I admitted that I have trouble having compassion on people like this pastor and that I don't understand how God can be okay with them and she said, "Maybe God has compassion on them." Maybe like I had compassion toward my students who came from horrible families and acted out of the only brokenness they knew, God has compassion on each of us—including this man who makes me so angry that my heart-rate increases—because it's the only thing we know...until...with time, and self-awareness, and the example of other people who teach a new way, we finally "get it." And "it," to me, is love...
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