Thought For The Day

I've been mulling over some of the issues swirling around the Barrack Obama/ Reverend Wright kerfuffle. I've been reading an awful lot about it, a fair bit of it from black pastors and pundits who all have their own take on racism in America and Liberation Theology. It's been very interesting reading. I'm not going to get into the political side of this, but one spiritual thing has struck me rather forcefully. Much of what I have read has claimed that the black church in America breaks down into pretty much two camps, the Liberation Theology camp--blacks are an oppressed people on whom the wrongs of the past are still being wrought today--and the Prosperity Gospel camp--God wants you to be financially prosperous, healthy, and untroubled in life. I'm not sure how accurate this assessment is. I personally went to a church for over a decade whose black pastors and black members of the congregation completely rejected both these teachings. However that may be, many now are saying these two belief systems are the predominant lines of thought. What I am convinced is the case is that these two ways of thinking may seem like different ideologies to the people who embrace them, but they are two sides of the same coin.

Think about it. If you believe that God wants you to have every material comfort, if you, in fact, believe this to be a spiritual law, when (as is inevitable in life) you face trials and adversities, you are going to have to find some reason to explain why God is not blessing you as He has promised. You have to blame Him, yourself, or someone/something else. If you see yourself as following His rules and complying with the things He requires to guarantee these blessings, then something, or someone else must be at fault when they are not forthcoming. It is a natural progression. It also follows that you would do the same when you see others who you believe to be worthy facing an inevitably imperfect existence, especially if you see your condition and theirs as intrinsically linked. I don't care what race, color, gender, etc. you are. Most of us try to find ways to reconcile when our worldview and our reality come into conflict. Often that reconciliation takes the form of blame and resentment.

Now, the problems I see in this type of thinking are myriad, but I will limit my response to just a couple. First off, we are flawed and sinful beings, and the first person whose goodness and virtue we ought to look to question is our own. After all, we know ourselves quite intimately, and see the things inside our heads which no one else gets to see. Casting blame should always come back to "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." That, however, is really just the surface of the issue. The Prosperity Gospel's intrinsic flaw, in my opinion, is that it perverts the nature of our motivation for coming to Christ. What the Bible clarifies over and over is that humans are separated from God by our own sin, and that He has made a way, through Jesus, for us to be reconciled to Him and to be changed. The Gospel is all about spiritual restoration and transformation--often a very uncomfortable process as we let go of our selfishness and submit to God's better understanding of what would be best for us. (To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, God's goal is not to make us happy, but to make us good.) We come to God because we love Him and are grateful that He loved us first and wants a relationship with us--that He made a way for that to happen.

What happens when people make it about God making us comfortable instead? They lose the very essence of the love relationship. I ask you, on a strictly human level, do you want people in your life who are your friends because they love you come what may and are grateful for your love in return, or because you give them stuff and make things easy for them? On a less self-focused note, if you want what is best for those you love, where is the benefit to them from merely having things given to them? If your goal for those you love is to see them become better and stronger people, more able to help themselves and others, how will those traits be developed if you never allow them to face trials to develop and prove that growth? Weight lifters only get stronger by adding more weight. Runners gain endurance by pushing their limits. How many of us grow personally during the good and easy times? How much strength and perseverance and wisdom and virtue are gained on a beach in Maui? Now, how many of those do we develop as we work hard to support our families, or endure physical pain, or serve a suffering loved one? It's the hard times that teach us best. All of us naturally want to avoid pain and suffering, but we should not look to avoid them completely, nor desire a life with no trials for the ones we love. Would you want your children so coddled in life that they never develop any character, but remain weak, selfish, dependant whiners their whole lives? Now, take that limited human understanding of wanting what is best for those you love, and combine it with God's infinite love, knowledge and foresight. It goes against His very character to suggest that His goal for any person or group of people is perfect health, wealth and happiness. He loves us too much for that, and He does not want us to come to Him because He can give us stuff, but rather because He can change who we are.

I don't know how really prevalent the teachings of "prosperity" and "liberation" are in the black church, or any other church in America for that matter, but I do believe that those who cling to such teachings deny the true power of the Gospel. That true power is the power to change lives, through forgiveness for our sins and an ongoing changing of individual character which makes us able to say with Paul:

...I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:11-13

My husband always says, "Circumstance is nothing. Character is everything." It's who God is shaping us to be that matters. All the rest is just circumstance.

Now I've Heard Everything

I've been out most of the day, so I haven't had any time to write anything of substance, but I had to pass on a link I got from IMAO, to an article in The Seattle Times. Religion can be confusing at times for most people, and usually if someone hasn't come up against hard questions that challenge their faith, they are either very sheltered or not thinking very deeply. Generally , however, people either resolve their issues to some degree, or move on to something that they can believe with more clarity. It's difficult to imagine someone doing both, but there is an Episcopalian priest--a woman who has been an Episcopalian priest for twenty years--who has recently converted to Islam, while still retaining her position as a Christian priest. Personally, I don't think it's possible to really be either if you claim to be both, at least not from a Christian perspective, but this woman claims to be okay with the conflicts inherent to the situation, although I'm surprised her denomination isn't less okay with it. Actually, now that I think about it, I'd be more surprised if the denomination involved wasn't on the front lines of redefining Christianity and Christian standards in America today. A Muslim Episcopalian. Now I've heard everything... maybe. (No, I take that back--when I've heard of a Hindu Baptist I will have heard everything.)

Are The Crusades To Blame?

Throughout the current struggle between the West and its terrorist opponents, there have been continual references to the roots of the conflict, hearkening back to the Crusades. There is a recurrent "well Christians started it" attitude, as if anything done a thousand years ago somehow justifies atrocities done today, and makes Christian believers of the present (or anyone descended from the believers of old) responsible to atone for the misdeeds of previous generations. Islamists today frequently cite the grievances of a millenia past as the source of their discontent, and the West, so willing to believe the worst about itself, takes on the mantle of responsibility. Americans, especially, buy into the concept of inherited guilt. We feel responsible, on an emotional level, for wrongs done to Native American peoples (native in the sense that they reached this land before our ancestors did), and wrongs done to the people brought here against their will as slaves. It is right that we acknowledge the wrong of these actions, but it is not right that we lay claim to their guilt. I am not responsible for the slave trade. I did not participate in it. Neither did you. Likewise I did not wage war in the Middle East a thousand years ago in order to capture its wealth and subjugate its people. Ironically, if some historians are to be believed, neither did the Crusaders.

In a piece from 2002 titled "The Real History of the Crusades", Thomas F. Madden, associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University, takes close look at the centuries of religious conflict, their origin and progression of battles, victories and losses for both Christians and Muslims. There are surprises for those of us raised to believe that the Crusades were a systematic Christian aggression. According to Madden, a historian specializing in the Crusades, this is far from the case. Rather, he says they were a response to ongoing violent Muslim aggression, taking lands that were once overwhelmingly Christian and converting them by the sword.

Madden discusses how the computer-aided compilation of information, occurring over the past few decades, has led to a clearer picture of how the Crusades came to be. He examines how they progressed as a desperate attempt to stave off Islamic conquest, how they really had their roots in faith, and the defense of brethren under siege, and how, sadly, they led to the schism in Christianity, between the Catholic church of the West and the Orthodox church of the East. Madden says, "It is a terrible irony that the Crusades, which were a direct result of the Catholic desire to rescue the Orthodox people, drove the two further—and perhaps irrevocably—apart." As the highest irony, though blamed for the state of poverty and decay in which much of the Islamic world (the part without oil revenues) exists today, the Crusades were ultimately a victory for Muslims. The Christians, over the long stretch of the centuries, continued to lose ground to Islamic invaders. It was the Renaissance which turned the tables, and halted Islam's march, not by arms, but by economic superiority which eclipsed the previous domination rising from the East. There's so much more to the tale, and Madden synopsises the story in clear, comprehensible prose. It's a fascinating study, loooooong, but full of rich historical meat. Hungry for history? Prepare to dine.

HT: The Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill

From The Junkyard To The Schoolyard

For those of you who think that Christian rap-metal music is an oxymoron, and possibly even that the terms Christian, rap, metal, and music are all mutually exclusive, here's an interesting look at a band that's spent the better part of a decade combining those same elements to create a very effective ministry. Matt Labash, writing for The Weekly Standard, goes touring with Junkyard Prophet.

The most compelling thing about Labash's jaunt with this group of "independent missionaries" is where they go touring--public schools. He says that their ministry was "laboring in the vineyards of near total obscurity. Or at least they did until last winter." No one was raising a fuss over a Christian band performing at public schools, yet.

That's when the left-wing blogosphere discovered them, and grew apoplectic at the notion of their existence. How dare Junkyard Prophet preach to our children, sometimes getting paid out of Department of Education funds provided to cash-strapped schools--funds that could more usefully be spent on federal initiatives like anti-bullying programs, workshops on why kids shouldn't construct crystal-meth labs, and free condoms for students who need to work out pent-up sexual frustrations after being bullied by their meth dealers.

Sounds like the left is none too happy about Junkyard Prophet headlining at Kennedy High School. (Any Kennedy, you choose.) Lest you think, however, that the right side of the political spectrum would be less compelled to throw a fit, there's more.

It will come as a great disappointment to Junkyard's leftist critics, who've assumed they're propagandistic Bush puppets, that the strongly pro-military band is also more antiwar and anti-Bush than most of the Chomsky-spewing cyberdorks who pilloried them. The band's drummer and leader, Bradlee Dean, calls Bush a "punk, lyin' stinkin' kid," and says Dick Cheney is a "straight-up liar" who he expects "will be in Hell pretty soon." He regards our two-party system as "professional wrestling," and says if he had to commit, it would be to Howard Phillips's Constitution party.

So, with the potential to tick off pretty much everybody in one way or another, what's their message? Most of it comes out of their own mistakes, and the consequences that led them to Christ. Bradlee Dean is the group's drummer, and the guy who takes the mic, after the music's gotten the kid's attention. Labash says he's about straight talk.

...he speaks about how prevention is better than cure, about how we reap what we sow, about how we are not "sick" when we fall into alcohol and drug abuse, but rather "making bad choices," about corny notions like right and wrong and the Ten Commandments, and about how our culture is afraid to state the obvious. He talks straight to the kids, without pretense or euphemism. And they seem to respond, from the buckets of testimonials the band shows me, and from the "You rock" and "Thanks for being honest" attaboys that I witness firsthand. I also hear it in my own conversations with teachers and principals, many of whom prefer the cloak of anonymity as they quietly root for these Christian rockers. One teacher tells me that it's not the public school's place to parent the kids, but since the parents aren't doing it, somebody should.

There's a lot more to this look at a "Christian rap-metal band," and Labash's writing is hilarious. You get to know the band members a bit, through his eyes. I could tell there were things I would agree with them about, and things I REALLY wouldn't, but either way I admire their dedication to a ministry that doesn't give them many perks, and does give them a good deal of trials. Read the article and you'll see what I mean.