Tag Archives: Shalom

Confessions of an accidental feminist

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Go read Rachel Held Evans’ Confessions of an accidental feminist. Very good stuff.

I always laugh a little to myself when I receive a Google Alert informing me that someone on the internet has criticized me as a “bitter, angry woman” intent on destroying the Church with my “radical feminist agenda.” I laugh because if these bloggers actually knew me, they would know that I’m more goofy than angry, more hopeful than bitter, and far too disorganized to lead a movement. If they knew me, they would know that I don’t fit into their distorted stereotype of what a feminist looks like, that I don’t hate men or burn bras or crave power, that I—like most feminist—simply believe that women are human and should be treated as such.

Most of all, if these critics knew me, they would know that it isn’t feminism that inspires me to advocate gender equality in the Church and in the world; it is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Not Mindless

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DAVOS/SWITZERLAND, 29JAN10 - David Cameron, Le...

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Prime Minister David Cameron was on vacation while parts of London burned.  After a few days, he decided to make an appearance.

England’s leaders and members of the media have called the uprising in several poor communities in London “mindless”.  Condemning atrocious acts as “mindless” is a way of totally discrediting the other party’s humanity.  It makes the person that much easier to dismiss.  To say “This act was mindless” is to say there was no cause worth caring about.  The very laws of science tell us that for an effect, there must be a cause.  So this approach is to so belittle that cause as to deem it irrelevant.  But look what that does!  Like Krusty the Clown likes to say “Don’t blame me, I didn’t do it!”

The people who argue this are usually the ones at fault.

I pointed out the insanity of ignoring the cause while only punishing the effect earlier.  Since then, I’ve read a very good article by a Londoner that you really ought to read.  But the surprising thing in all of this was the stunning silence on the cause from leadership.  Among those that did speak, they wanted to sweep it under the rug and reassure the people that they would bring safety.  Hence, quotes about petty criminals, thuggery, and “mindless” misbehavior.  Absolute safety is an impossible promise made to whitewash events; an attempt to scrub away mutual culpability for what we have at the moment: a leadership that is so clearly out of touch from its people, a media class that refuses any responsibility for influencing events, an economic class that shows little respect for long-term health of the multitudes, and an ever-expanding poverty class that has shrinking influence in the “legal” channels.  The better question is how did this not happen sooner?

Even though these events started nearly a week ago, the queen has made no public statement.  Neither has the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster.  Only today has the Archbishop of Canterbury made a public statement.  Otherwise, crickets.  Mark Harris wrote about this on Tuesday.

The poor and disenfranchised pay the price for the excess of the wealthy.  Economics isn’t a sliding scale with only a finite amount of money, but the monied elites have made gains directly off of the backs of the poor for years now, and the widening gap has reached a pressure point.  Without proof that this arrangement is being fixed, there is no hope for lasting civility in London.

So what are we going to learn from this?

If we’re smart, we’ll bone up on our game theory and brush up on the prisoner’s dilemma.  We’ll listen to everyone and come up with a solution that benefits all, not only the most, and certainly not just the few.  All.  We’ll have a frank, public discussion about how we move forward from here.  We’ll treat everybody with respect.

But we’re not smart.  And I hold out little hope that any of this will happen.  Because up to now, the response has been, well…mindless.

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Violence is not a given

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Antonin Scalia in 2010.

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I used to play over 30 hours of video games per week, so as a former gamer, the recent Supreme Court decision overturning a California ban on violent video games on free-speech grounds makes me happy.  I’m predisposed to supporting a maligned and misunderstood industry.  However, it is how  the industry won that is deeply disturbing.

The defense compared the restricting of children’s exposure to violence in video games to the legal restriction of exposure to sexual images.  In his thought-provoking essay on Justice Antonin Scalia’s written argument for the majority, Robert Scheer reveals Justice’s Scalia’s opinion is based on two ideas: 1) violence is ingrained and acceptable to the people of this country and 2) there is a similarly ingrained objection to sexual images.  He seems to bend precedent to imply that in free speech cases, only sexual content may be restricted.  There are many reasons one should find fault with Justice Scalia’s primary argument, but for Christians there should be one most glaring problem: Jesus consistently condemns the Pharisees’ obsession with personal ethics over acts of violence.  Jesus not only condemns violence, but extends it to systemic violence and that is of greater importance than worrying about other people’s purity.

In the example of the widow and her son, Jesus shows his compassion for the one who is failed by a system written (ostensibly) to help her.  In the 1st Century Judaic culture, widows were given favored status and laws were written to give them extra protection—particularly in their time of vulnerability (affirmative action?).  And yet, these women could still fall through the cracks into abject poverty.  Jesus rejects the belief that these laws were ‘the best they could do’ and rejects a system that does violence to her because of who she is (and isn’t).

Time and time again, Jesus rejects the placement of personal morality over the protection of the weak and disenfranchised.  From the parable of the Good Samaritan to the healings on the Sabbath, Jesus sees oppressive morality as a graver sin than almost any other.

In light of this, I can’t see the decision to maintain the restriction of a child’s access to sexual materials while overturning such a restriction to violent materials.  It seems to track as the opposite of Jesus’s direction to his followers.  I’m not saying Jesus likes porn or would want children to be exposed to it, but He seems to argue that we are wrong to obsess about sex and not violence.  He also seems to argue that violence is a graver concern than sexual ethics.  Full stop.

It all comes down to this, however.  As a Christian and a father, I reject that the ingrained violence in our culture is given privilege in the courts.  Free speech is not about freedom to promote violence, but instead, peace.  We are called to help GOD transform this world into something new and different—a world of peace and justice.  This decision is one more obstacle for that transformation.

Hearing Jesus: my manifesto

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The most profound thing Jesus ever taught wasn’t something he said.  It is something he did.

He split his time with his followers and took on a different posture for each group.  And of course, there are three groups:

The Needy

Jesus gave his greatest gifts to those most in need of it: his time, his love, and his respect.  He gave it to prostitutes and traitors, the poor and the sick, the disabled and lonely by eating with them and treating them as equals.

The Capable

Jesus taught the people who were productive members of society how to be, how to pray, and how to love the needy.  He did so with stories, teachings, and actions that all expressed a love and compassion that he felt for them and expected them to share.

The Elite

Jesus turned the mirror on the educated and powerful.  He made them see their own hubris and evil and demanded so much more of them because they had all of the resources and all of the opportunity.  At the same time, he showed them how to get it right and what the Kingdom is supposed to look like.  Even when he calls them a brood of vipers.

Most of the time, we think we’re the needy; or at least the real needy; because we can feel so lost sometimes or left out, like we don’t belong.  Or sometimes we feel confused or unloved.

But the truth is that most of us aren’t the needy.  We’re the elite.  We’re the ones Jesus is turning the mirror on and demanding more.

And yet Jesus tries, even with us.  He tries to get us oriented.  He tries to get us to see the Kingdom.  Here are some of the parts of the vision that seem the most relevant:

  1. Worship GOD always and all-ways.
  2. Love…everybody.
  3. Help the haters to learn about love and how to love.
  4. Reconcile with everybody—don’t just love from afar.
  5. Be a source for peace.
  6. Change the culture.
  7. Admit that we have been bad communicators of the gospel.
  8. End clericalism and empower the grassroots.
  9. Help worship communities take charge of themselves.
  10. Worship in ways that feed us second—
  11. and feed newcomers first.
  12. Live differently.

Seperate and Unequal: income inequality in the U.S.

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Some have spent the better part of the last thirty years describing the dramatic economic shift toward the greater concentration of wealth in the ultra-wealthy, and the adverse effect this has had on the average American.  Some have even chosen to mock this concern in recent years, suggesting that “redistribution of wealth” is something to mock. As if the wealth wasn’t already being redistributed (what is a tax cut but an act of changing the economic flow?)!

A new release of graphs highlighting that inequality are striking.  Produced by Mother Jones, these graphs not only highlight the problem.  Notice the last one in this description piece that shows the gap between what the economic reality is and what people think it is.  Then what they wish it were.

Now look closely at this one:

If you figure out where you fit in the metrics, you can see how much more money you would be making if the economic principles that governed the decades during and after the Great Depression (1930s-70′s) had not been obliterated in the early 1980s.  Look at it.  Ninety percent of Americans, 90%!!!!, would be making more money today.  That means, that the plain-old wealthy (as opposed to the super rich) would also be making more money!  Let me say that again.  Low income=more money.  Middle income=more money.  High income=more money.  Wealthy=more money.  Ridiculously, disgustingly wealthy=less money.  Unless you are the lucky one out-of-100, you are making less money than you would have so that the 96-99 percentile could make almost $30K more and the 100th percentile could make $600K more per year!

It would be one thing to be coy and call it “trickle up economics,” but a more accurate term might be “geyser economics”.  The rapid, immediate, and dramatic shifting of national wealth to the upper echelon has obvious economic effects:

  1. Less money in their pockets, means greater financial difficulty for the bottom half of the country. Living paycheck-to-paycheck as it is, increases in two particular areas: transportation costs and housing costs: coupled with a decrease in real wages, means half of the country is getting by on less with no relief in sight.
  2. If we value peace and hate conflict, then we should also be concerned with the emotional and psychological effects that the crushing weight of income inequality is having on the majority of Americans that are struggling–most of which were raised struggling through the last 30 years
  3. The current economic crisis is not a crisis at all for the highly educated and wealthy. The top 10% have seen no job loss at all.  The middle has seen quite a bit.  And yet, it is the bottom third and the young that are disproportionately hurt by the last few years.  We aren’t all being effected.
  4. Gen Xers and Millenials only know this widened gap. The redistribution of wealth to the wealthy in the form of an economic geyser had no positive impact on my generation or those after me.  This means that many of us have been raised in a time believing we were the weird ones not living the high life–when that high life was all perception.

It seems to me that we have no hope of dealing with the struggles and evils of our time without taking a moral stand in support of improving the economic conditions of the 95%.  We know the obvious link between poverty and school performance, violence, blight, drug abuse, and all of the cancers of society.  But until we make it a moral imperative to change the system that creates poverty, we only invite it to repeat.  These graphs show that we are not repeating a cycle of poverty, but living within a system that ever more pushes the bottom 80% toward poverty, and all of its associated evils.

Note: I originally posted that 95% lost money.  It was changed to correctly read 90%.

No Retaliation

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My sermon for Proper 7A (yesterday) is up here.  It deals with our culture of retaliation and Jesus’s encouragement to see another alternative; an alternative that we have trouble seeing because we are so committed to violence and retaliation.

I thought it was a little spicy.  What do you think?

Keep Dreaming

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Dr. Martin Luther King giving his "I Have...

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It seemed like a bad dream. A little over a month ago, I was checking my e-mail and I came across a strange alert: Glenn Beck was co-opting MLK. Not sure what this meant, I took a look at a response that was written for Sojournors by Ruth Hawley-Lowry that stirred in me a righteous anger. The description on the rally’s site, called ‘Restoring Honor’ states the following:

Throughout history America has seen many great leaders and noteworthy citizens change her course. It is through their personal virtues and by their example that we are able to live as a free people. On August 28, come celebrate America by honoring our heroes, our heritage and our future.

Join the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and many more for this non-political event that pays tribute to America’s service personnel and other upstanding citizens who embody our nation’s founding principles of integrity, truth and honor.

Our freedom is possible only if we remain virtuous. Help us restore the values that founded this great nation. On August, 28th, come join us in our pledge to restore honor at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. This rally, to be held on Saturday, is on the 47th anniversary of The March and the famous “I have a dream” speech.

Aside from the tone-deafness and strange comparison of himself to King and ascribing the moniker of “great leader” or “noteworthy citizen” to himself, I honestly didn’t know what to make of it, other than to suggest that Beck seemed to either misunderstand who Martin Luther King, Jr. was and what he represents or he is ignoring it.

Even if I choose to give Mr. Beck the benefit of the doubt, I will share how I, living in the country transformed by this moment, still respond to Dr. King’s words. When Dr. King says, toward the opening of the famous “I have a dream” speech:

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

I don’t hear him saying that, thanks to this speech, we’re all going to be free. I don’t hear him saying, “Pass the Voting Rights Act” and all will be fine. Those words are as apropos today as they were in 1963, and to even suggest that we are in a “post-racial” anything is, at best, willfully ignorant and disturbingly obtuse.

Dr. King then describes the march as coming to Washington to cash a check—a check of justice and equality promised by the framers of the Constitution and built on the backs of slaves. To cash a check that came in the form of an IOU—not to be redeemed during the slave’s lifetime, or the lifetimes of their children, grandchildren, or great grandchildren. An IOU promised and perpetually rejected. An IOU of such fundamental import, that freedom would be woven throughout the entirety of the Constitution.

The tenor of the speech, which you should read yourself (it’s pretty short—find it here), is about justice. Not the justice that a piece of legislation can bring, or simple shifting of attention could address, but that would require the dramatic alteration of our culture and reorientation of our very being to represent this type of justice. And how does Dr. King describe this justice? He describes GOD’s understanding of justice. He is talking about justice that flows out of us; a justice won by our labors and given to us by GOD.

Glenn Beck has similar hopes for reorienting the culture—perhaps this is the most diplomatic way of suggesting the least bit of connection between the two gatherings. But his reorientation is toward nationalism, U.S. capitalism, and a Christianity that is subservient to those two principles. It will be a pro-military day—a strange counter to Dr. King’s plea for nonviolence.

As Mr. Beck declares his desire that the nation “change course,” and sees himself as an agent of that change, it becomes incredibly clear that this moment is not only an attempt to co-opt Dr. King’s legacy, but to change course away from that legacy. His speech continues to describe a future that inspires and provokes the best in us and world that we still can create. For Mr. Beck to urge that we change course is to declare that we change course from the course Dr. King has directed: to not make that dream a reality, but to disfigure that dream. A dream that describes, not simply a colorblind society, but a generous and beautiful one. As Dr. King argues:

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

In leading this rally, and making a bold attempt to co-opt this watershed moment in American history—a moment in which a picture of true justice was painted for every American to see and understand—Mr. Beck not only spits on Dr. King’s grave, but spits on GOD’s sense of justice. And that is total BS.

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First comes before Second

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Earlier, I wrote a piece about the Islamic Center being built two blocks from the former site of The World Trade Center (I erroneously referred to it as a mosque–notice the influence of misinformation in the media!) which you can find here.  I recently came across a great, similar  response by Anglican Minimalist.  A statement in it caught my eye:

It is fascinating watching and listening to all these protectors of the Second Amendment suggesting that we should curtail the First!

There is something sort of zen about this statement and aproppot.  It is the kind of zinger that goes back and forth across the aisle and we might be tempted to see it in that light (aside from the fact that it was really, really good!).  But think about these two amendments for a moment.

It is probably true and fair to say that the political left cares more about the 1st Amendment than the 2nd and the politcal right cares more about the 2nd than the 1st–even the religious right (strangely).  The popular understanding is that the First deals with the right to free speech, assembly, and religion; the Second deals with the right to bear arms (ostensibly to protect the country from threats without and within its borders).  The Second’s place in that equation has been heavily pounded and pushed and demanded of us in our culture: that we all bear witness to the impact of a military salvation.  But the same isn’t made of what happens to us when the first is abridged: when the very purpose of fighting for freedom is thrown under the bus so we can “feel” free.

None of this is new, I know.  And I feel as if I am rambling a bit.  But I made an interesting connection that any student of the Constitution has already noticed (though perhaps forgotten).  There is a good reason that these Amendments go in that order.  The First is first because of what it means, and therefore all the rest are subbordinate to it, even the Second.  The very claim that the Second is important requires the exercise of the First.

If you are paranoid, I don’t have a problem with you.  I’m a little bit paranoid, too.  But let’s show a little bit of restraint and a little bit more compassion!