the edge

Do Christians Ever Read Those Bibles That They Tote Around?

A recent PEW survey found that the more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists. 54% of people who attend church once a week think torture can be justified.   Even more sad, only 1 out of every 8 Evangelicals is willing to say that torture is never justified.  

I'd like to say that this is surprising, but it's no more surprising than the fact that so many Christians support the death penalty and find their justification in the Holy Writ.  Maybe they should try a little more of the Gospels and a little less Old Testament?

Atheism On The Rise

Today's New York Times  has an article entitled "More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops" about the growing number of people in the U. S. who are willing to admit that they are atheists.  Based on a recent poll, the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.

Before we go any farther, let me state, for the record I Am Not An Atheist.  I'm not even an agnostic.  Not, as Seinfeld would say, that there's anything wrong with that.   I just have no question that there's a higher power out there.   I can't look at a mountain range or ocean, or consider photosynthesis without uttering a silent "thank you" to God for making this great wonderful world. 

But back to that article.  Rather than the rising numbers of agnostics and atheists coming out of the closet, what caught my attention  were comments from some young non-believers:

Andrew Morency, who attended a Christian high school, said that when he got to college and studied evolutionary biology he decided that “creationists lie.”

Josh Streetman, said he knew the Bible too well to be sure that Scripture is true. Like Mr. Streetman, many of the other students at the meeting were highly literate in the Bible and religious history.

Like these folks, the longer I've studied the Bible, the more discrepancies I've found that I can't reconcile.  The more I've learned about the way the Bible came to be and the more I've learned about the ancient documents that are the basis of the Bible, the more I doubt everything that I know. 

Since we've just recently celebrated Easter, let's consider that the Bible contains three different accounts of the Resurrection of Christ (if you'd like to check it out,  Matthew 28:1-8, Mark 16:1-7, Luke 24:1-9 and John 20:1-18).    Bart Ehrman, Biblical scholar and former Evangelical turned agnostic, outlines the discrepancies in his latest book,  Jesus, Interrupted:

Who actually went to the tomb? Was it Mary alone (John 20:1)? Mary and another Mary (Matthew 28:1)? Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome (Mark 16:1)? Or women who had accompanied Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem—possibly Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and “other women” (Luke 24:1; see 23:55)?

Had the stone already been rolled away from the tomb (as in Mark 16:4) or was it rolled away by an angel while the women were there (Matthew 28:2)?

Whom or what did they see there? An angel (Matthew 28:5)? A young man (Mark 16:5)? Two men (Luke 24:4)? Or nothing and no one (John)?

And what were they told? To tell the disciples to “go to Galilee,” where Jesus will meet them (Mark 16:7)? Or to remember what Jesus had told them “while he was in Galilee,” that he had to die and rise again (Luke 24:7)?

Then, do the women tell the disciples what they saw and heard (Matthew 28:8), or do they not tell anyone (Mark 16:8)? If they tell someone, whom do they tell? The eleven disciples (Matthew 28:8)? The eleven disciples and other people (Luke 24:8)? Simon Peter and another unnamed disciple (John 20:2)?

What do the disciples do in response? Do they have no response because Jesus himself immediately appears to them (Matthew 20:9)? Do they not believe the women because it seems to be “an idle tale” (Luke 24:11)? Or do they go to the tomb to see for themselves (John 20:3)?

He continues, but I think that you get the point.    The Four Gospels have irreconcilable differences about this event, the event central to the entire Christian faith, but we're to believe without question that it actually happened.  It's little wonder that so many (me) who were raised to believe in an Inspired Word of God find it hard to maintain the faith after rigorous Bible study. 

I just wish my grandfather were around so I can ask him how he did it.  I suspect his answer would involve the Holy Spirit and truly being born again..... but that's material for another post at another time.

In an Op-Ed piece in  last Sunday's New York Times, Bono, a devout man of faith, writes of Easter and the renewal  it brings.  He talks of the need for rebirth and the dying and living that is Easter. 

Writing about his faith he says

I come to lowly church halls and lofty cathedrals for what purpose? I search the Scriptures to what end? To check my head? My heart? No, my soul. For me these meditations are like a plumb line dropped by a master builder — to see if the walls are straight or crooked. I check my emotional life with music, my intellectual life with writing, but religion is where I soul-search.

But the central thesis of his column has little to do with his faith.  It has to do with doing right.  It has to do with taking care of the least on this earth:

So much of the discussion today is about value, not values. Aid well spent can be an example of both, values and value for money. Providing AIDS medication to just under four million people, putting in place modest measures to improve maternal health, eradicating killer pests like malaria and rotoviruses — all these provide a leg up on the climb to self-sufficiency, all these can help us make friends in a world quick to enmity. It’s not alms, it’s investment. It’s not charity, it’s justice.

Strangely, as we file out of the small stone church into the cruel sun, I think of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, whose now combined fortune is dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty. Agnostics both, I believe. I think of Nelson Mandela, who has spent his life upholding the rights of others. A spiritual man — no doubt. Religious? I’m told he would not describe himself that way.

Not all soul music comes from the church.

Jesus, in Matthew 25 (in the parable of the sheep and goats), speaks of the final judgment, not in terms of those who know Him, but in terms of those reach out to others in their deepest hour of need.  Jesus says ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.' (Matthew 25:45,46)

If we're to believe Jesus words,  both Bono and Warren Buffett are righteous and saved.  This concept of salvation is for me, much more palatable than the notion that only those who accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior will be saved.  Forget those who are Muslim or Hindu or who have rejected the notion of Jesus as Messiah.  What about those who have never heard the Gospel?  Those who die never knowing the message of salvation?  I have never been able to reconcile this issue and no explanation has ever been sufficient. 

I know I'm not to question God, but it seems like horrible planning.  "For God So Loved the World, that He gave his Only Begotten Son"......except for those of you in New Guinea who never hear the Gospel, well, sorry about that.  See you in Hell. 

Fundamentalism In a Hipster's Clothes

One of the biggest challenges to my faith journey has been caused by exposure to the non-denominational, charismatic reformed movement.  You might have run across this group.  They're self-described as socially liberal but theologically conservative.  The New Calvinism Movement (sometimes called The Emerging Church)  is essentially concerned with correct doctrine, but it's very difficult to manage a conservative belief system with a socially liberal conscience.

The end result is a mis-mash of contradiction. Consider that they're Young Earth Creationists. They do not believe in evolution, but they're highly educated, college graduates.  They believe that women are subservient (now they'll tell you it's separate but equal roles (complementarianism) for men or women, but you won't see a woman be named an Elder in the Church--why? Because it's in the Bible).  They are certain that homosexuality is a sin.  But they all have cool clothes, tricky hair styles, and they all use Macs.  You might see them walking around with a lot of piercings, listening to Coldplay on their iPods, drinking coffee at Starbucks while dissecting the Sopranos or Lost for spiritual truths or amusing teaching moments that can be worked into their sermons or become part of their "witness."

I could respect all of the above and even admire someone for so strictly toeing the line on what the Bible says while still being able to appreciate good rock music or fun TV.   

Where my issues start is a relatively innocuous issue, but when one is looking me in the eye and telling me the earth is 6,000 years old, Created by God in 6, 24 days because it says that in Genesis 1, and because the Bible tells me so, I need to believe. Well, at that moment,  I don't want to be seeing your Jesus tattoo because I cannot get past Leviticus 19:28 (which says "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.")  to concentrate on your discussion of Creationism. 

Now I can ignore Leviticus 19:28 because I don't see Evolution and Genesis 1-2 to be contradictory (Evolution is science; Genesis is a theological narrative not meant to explain the how, but the why), but Mr. Creationist surely can't, can he?

Likewise, Mr. Reformed Theology Man cannot in the same breath tell me that I can't be a preacher because Paul wrote "But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet." (Timothy 2:12) and then turn around and tell me that Paul's admonitions on proper slave behavior no longer pertain to our societal norms.  

Finally, the reformed church (and especially one of its most well-known spoke persons) takes a very hard line on homosexuality. It is a sin. It is a choice; it is to be prayed away.  But the Reformed Church is very silent on divorce. 

So, it's the picking and choosing of the scriptures that give pause.  It's fundamentalism in a hipster's cool clothes.  It might be all dressed up, but the end game is the same: fundamentalist men seek to control women and the expression of sex.  The Emerging Church falls right into place. 

My mom tells me not to worry about this stuff.  She says that some people who have found Jesus later in life, maybe after a bout with addiction or mental illness need the structure that fundamentalism provides.  I can see her point.  And I want to be able to say that if it works for them and it's what they need then I'm good with it because it's not hurting me or anyone else and it's providing comfort to that particular believer. But then I read a quote like this:

Without blushing, Paul is simply stating that when it comes to leading in the church, women are unfit because they are more gullible and easier to deceive than men. While many irate women have disagreed with his assessment through the years, it does appear from this that such women who fail to trust his instruction and follow his teaching are much like their mother Eve and are well-intended but ill-informed. . . Before you get all emotional like a woman in hearing this, please consider the content of the women’s magazines at your local grocery store that encourages liberated women in our day to watch porno with their boyfriends, master oral sex for men who have no intention of marrying them, pay for their own dates in the name of equality, spend an average of three-fourths of their childbearing years having sex but trying not to get pregnant, and abort 1/3 of all babies – and ask yourself if it doesn’t look like the Serpent is still trolling the garden and that the daughters of Eve aren’t gullible in pronouncing progress, liberation, and equality

and I realize that it is hurting not only me, but every other woman of faith. Especially those women who follow the teachings of Mark Driscoll.  But more on the Bad Boy of Reformed Theology later.  Much more. I promise. 

My Religious Background

I am the daughter and granddaughter of ministers, both ordained in The Brethren Church*.  If you're not German and from Ohio, Indiana or Illinois, you probably haven't heard of us.  We're of the Anabaptist vein of Protestant believers, but because our church loves to fight over doctrine, and then split up, we're a really, really small denomination.

My maternal grandfather was saved at the age of 16 at a tent revival in Long Beach, California.  His family was notoriously rough-necked (my great grandfather drilled the first Shell oil well in California) and atheist and his older brothers turned the hose on him when he came home and fully mocked him for becoming a Christian.  He attended college at our Church's Bible College in Ohio, driving from California to Ohio and back once a year with three other young men from Southern California.  He founded (or church-planted in today's terminology) a church while an undergrad, and then went on to found 14 other churches around the U.S. after graduating from seminary. 

From the mid-30's until 1942-is, he was either head of missions for the church or President of the church.  In 1939, our denomination split over fundamentalism and the direction of Ashland College.  My grandfather spent about 18 months in court testifying over assets (the "Gracies" as I was taught to call the faction that split from us) had changed church locks, taken over buildings and to sort out who got what took a long time and a legal battle.  The split created what is known within the church as "The Period of Disillusionment"

The division of 1939 affected the Ashland Brethren far more adversely than it did the Grace Brethren. A number of ministries that add vitality and vision to a denomination sided with the Grace Brethren: the youth work, the home and foreign mission programs, and nearly all the young ministerial recruits. The emotional drain of the division itself, combined with the exertion needed to begin new ministries from scratch, created a period of despair and disillusionment in the Brethren Church that lasted nearly twenty years.

It hit my grandfather even harder.  After the court settled matters, he packed up his wife and his young daughter and headed back to California.  My mom now says that he had a nervous breakdown.  For 12 years, he did not set foot in a church.  He sold used cars, he sold encylopedias door to door.  He provided for his family and he read his Bible, but he never attended church or preached.  When my mom was a sophomore in high school, with no forewarning to her or my grandma, he announced that he (they) were headed back to Ashland and he was rejoining the church's national office.  

By the time my mom was a sophomore at Ashland College, he had become a full professor of Religion.  My memories of my grandfather are all wonderful and amazing and full of love.  He is by far the most intelligent person I've ever personally known and the hardest worker.  When he taught a course in say, the Book of Hebrews, he would get up at 5:30 every morning for a month before the course began and he would read the entire book.  Every morning.  He did this for every book of the Bible, every semester, every year.  

Sometime in my middle school years, I realized that he had the entire Bible memorized and I loved to shout out a random verse and listen to his booming voice recite that verse.

But his learning wasn't limited to the Bible.  He read every issue of Harper's, underlining key information, annotating articles with his notes in the margin.  He read The Atlantic, US News and World Report, Time, Newsweek, fiction, non-fiction and Biblical commentary.  He had a wonderful sense of humor and loved to stage practical jokes.  He also loved extremely bawdy humor and he smoked from the time he was 9 until he was 90.    He was a genius. He was never a fundamentalist (he was too smart for that, I think) but he fully believed that the Bible was Inerrant and God Given. He defies stereotyping or easy categorizing. 

Before he retired from the university, it was unusual to go to his house (I grew up a block away from my grandparents and since there were no streets to cross, we could walk or ride bikes to their house anytime we wanted to do so--for me, that was daily) and not have to wait until he was finished talking to some student who needed help or advice or a friendly ear.  He got tons of drunken football players out of trouble and more than one unwed college student told him before telling the parents. 

But he was a pain in the behind.  He did not bend when he believed that he was right.  His doppleganger was an atheist English professor. Once after a heated argument, he threw Dr. Snyder down the stairs.  When people asked if I was his granddaughter, I was often afraid to admit to it, because one either loved or hated the man.  There wasn't a lot of gray in him, nor in how people felt about him, but I loved him dearly and would defend him to any detractor, even as a shy little kid. 

When he died, his funeral service was attended by close to 1,000 people.  Hundreds of people shared how my grandfather had led them to Christ.  It was touching and comforting and wonderful to my 32 year-old self.  For years after he died, I missed him so much that I'd find myself sobbing in the shower or overcome when I would hear one of his favorite hymns. 

My mom and my dad maintain that I am my grandfather through and through and I like that.  I also know that his experiences when the Church split has had a huge influence on how I view church arguments over doctrine or direction and my lack of patience with those who let things of this earth interfere with the Church's mission on earth.

Like Bono says:

I have this hunger in me--everywhere I look, I see evidence of a Creator. But I don't see it in religion, which has cut my people in two.  I don't see Jesus Christ as being part of religion.  Religion to me is almost like when God leaves and people devise a set of rules to fill the space.
(emphasis mine)

*Oh yea, and did I mention that we feet wash? 

If The World Was A Village of 100 People.....

...this is how it would be divided by religious belief

That Jesus fellow has some staying power, does He not?

Fraying Around the Edges

In my first post on this blog, I alluded to my "fraying around the edges" faith, but didn't really explain it.  My transition from Born-Again Christian to Person Who Believes in a Divine Entity But Who Rejects Jesus as the Only Way to Salvation took quite a while and happened in small, incremental steps. 

My early troubles with Christians (not with God, mind you)  started while I was in high school.  My dad had a part-time pastorate, a small, country church where multi-generational families worshipped together: grandparents, cousins, second cousins, kids.  But more than one family had at least one family member who wasn’t speaking to another family member.    I don’t mean that for one Sunday they simmered over a spat they’d had earlier in the week.  I mean that for all the years I attended there (5th grade until I graduated college and moved away), Mrs. Bricker did not utter a word to her mother.  Not on Mother’s Day, not on Christmas, not ever.  Neither one would stop worshipping Jesus or attending that church, but they did not speak.  And that wasn’t the only blood feud in that little church. 

Then there were the little old ladies who brought my dad pies every week and profusely thanked my dad for his sermons, then grabbed his hand and proceeded to gossip or flat out rail against another church member.   Even worse, at least to me, the gossip was usually masked as a prayer request.   Every bone in my body screamed “Hypocrite,” but when you’re raised in the belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and when you make an adult decision (I was 13, but I felt all grown up) to accept Christ as your personal savior and then are baptized by full immersion, dunked three times in front of the church to symbolize the death and resurrection of Christ, you blame Satan for their sins and you pray for them.  I did, but I carried the realization with me that church is full of people who need to forgive and forget and leave the judging to God. 

Another trouble began when one of my closest friends came out to me.  After years of dating men, she was ready to admit that she was a lesbian and had found a wonderful partner.  I’d been raised to “love the sinner, hate the sin” and being gay was a huge, huge sin. 

Now, divorce was a sin, but we’d allow divorced people to remarry and sit in church with us.  But we weren’t going to allow gay folks to have sex and we surely weren’t going to allow them to marry.  Nope, our remedy for being gay was to first try to pray away the gay.  If that didn’t work, then all sexual tendencies should be suppressed and celibacy was required.  Sin can be forgiven, but not on-going, premeditated sin. 

My good friend was raised the same way, so she was in an enormous quandary. She could reject the teachings of our church on homosexuality and be happy (temporarily and earthly happy—forsaking eternal life,  the church fathers would say), or she could deny what she believed to be her true self, be miserable now, and have eternal life.  She compromised. She’s true to herself, and she’s found a church with a more liberal theology that welcomes her and her partner (who she’s still with—while I’ve divorced and remarried.  No irony there, eh?).

Over the years, I have more and more gay friends and they’re all pretty different:  some love sports, some hate sports, some read, some prefer movies, some eat McDonald’s as a choice, some are gourmands.  Some even vote for the GOP, but they all believe that being gay isn’t a choice.  It’s just the way that they were born and if it weren’t for the Christianist obsession about homosexuality, they’d think not much more of it than straight people think about being straight.  It's just one small part of their entire being.  It's the James Dobsons and Focus On The Family that make it an issue they can't ignore. 

By the time I was in my mid-30’s I’d made a personal decision to reject the church’s (and my father’s, if I’m being fully honest here) teachings on homosexuality.  I still believed that Jesus died for my sins and that Jesus was the Way, the Truth and the Life and that one couldn’t have eternal life without that belief.  In fact, I still talked about it vociferously and frequently with my agnostic friends, but I’d taken that first step away from Biblical Inerrancy.  It wasn't the last. 

Easter

This is the fifth Easter holiday that has meant little more to me than a time to celebrate with family.  As the child of a pastor and the granddaughter of a pastor, both of whom walked the walk more than they talked the talk, writing that sentence is harder than you can imagine.  But hard or not, I have no regrets about writing it.  Getting to this point wasn’t quick and there wasn't one catalyst, looking back, I see that it was inevitable. 

The events of June 9, 2003, pretty much finalized my fraying-around-the-edges faith (I'll discuss the events that started the fraying in later posts).  On that lovely June evening, my step-son, the drug addict/alcoholic got really miffed that his dad wouldn’t let him leave the house at midnight to go to a party, so he took his revenge on his father by burglarizing 12 cars and one house in our neighborhood, stealing one car and doing donuts in another neighbor’s yard.  This, in a place where we’d lived for less than six months, where no one locked their houses or cars (they do now, thanks to my family) and where we were hoping to spend the rest of our lives.  The step-kid was so stoned that he left his cell phone in the car that he stole.  There was no denying the crime or getting the kid off, as his parents had been so willing and able to do the previous times he’d committed crimes. 

So, there we were.  Five felony counts in our neighborhood.  How did the neighbors react?  Well, with one exception, our church-going neighbors shunned us; the ‘godless heathens’ rallied to our support in a kind of judge not, as you never know with kids kind of way.  Our neighborhood was divided: those who would talk to us, those who wouldn’t.   Neighbors who had talked to us previously, now put their heads down and scurried by—at the grocery store, on the street, and at church. 

One neighbor down the street, a deacon in the church we’d started to attend, was kind enough to write a letter to all the neighbors, warning them of the horrible kid living in their midst.  It was personal; it was accusatory; it was ugly.  He was also kind enough to attach photocopies of the police report and highlight each incident…we had never spoken to him and he didn’t have any idea of who we were, but the righteous indignation dripped from every word in that letter.  

Nine months later, on Easter Sunday (I was still going to church) at church, our pastor read an email from that same neighbor, who was serving in Iraq.  The email began “He Is Risen; Christ is Risen indeed.  I thank my Lord Jesus Christ for the many blessings….”  I stopped listening after that and my heart turned to stone.  Literally turned to stone; I got cold all over and I was done.   I glanced sideways and saw that man’s wife sitting two rows ahead of me with her three children; two rows ahead of her was the woman and her husband who tried to have the pro at the club fired for being gay.   And it was over.  If Jesus was Lord of this bunch of hypocrites then I didn’t want to be part of the club.