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Binary Culture

We live in a binary culture in which we divide into groups based on our disagreements. We label each other and assign moral value to each other based on the labels. And the worst thing you can do—the unpardonable sin—is to disagree with me. Areas of agreement are discounted or dismissed altogether, even when we agree about most things. Total agreement and compliance are the only bases of community. So, we fight with each other. Civil debate over issues is replaced with juvenile name-calling and judgmental castigation over even minor disagreements. Compromise and cooperation are dismissed and demonized as morally weak. Only total agreement and compliance are acceptable bases of community. I am liberal. OK, I’m very liberal, and it’s difficult for me to look through unbiased lenses to evaluate ideas that don’t line up with my own. I try to be fair and weigh the relative merits of various perspectives. But it’s difficult, especially when those who advocate for those “other” perspec...
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Are You Sure?

It is said that knowledge is power. I have long felt that humanity is a species of control freaks. In my observation, most human problems reflect some kind of struggle for power and control. If there is “original sin,” it may be the obsession over control. In the Genesis account, Adam and Eve were tempted to eat the fruit of the tree of (wait for it) the knowledge of good and evil. “If I know the difference, then I can be in control of my destiny!” (which would make me “like God,” according to the tempter ~ Genesis 3:5). Ancient cultures believed that to know the name of a person or a phenomenon was to have power over him/her/it. When Jesus confronted the possessed man in Gerasa (Mark 5), he asked the man—or more to the point, he asked the spirit that possessed the man, “What is your name?” If a physician knows the name of a disease or condition, she has the ability (power) to treat it. There is a modicum of control over the malady. All of the above is why precise termino...
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On Earth as It Is in Heaven

               Jim Palmer opens Chapter 11 of Inner Anarchy with this: “There are 41,000 different Christian denominations around the world, and close to 450,000 international missionaries mobilized abroad. The Roman Catholic Church is considered to be the largest financial power on earth. “Evangelical Christianity isn’t doing too shabby either. A top Christian televangelist lives in a $10 million house, another one drives a $350,000 Bentley, and several of them make more than $1 million a year. One megachurch meets in a sports stadium, draws close to 50,000 people for a worship service, and has an annual budget that exceeds $70 million. “Speaking of budgets, 82 percent of the average church budget is used to cover the expense of buildings and salaries. Considering the number of people, buildings, and dollars, Christendom is quite an impressive empire on planet Earth. “But for what? “What has this shiny, lucrative Christian empire actua...
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Plans and Interruptions

             It is said that life is what happens while you’re making other plans. Very often, life is found in the interruptions that seem overwhelming: your son takes his own life, leaving behind a financial trainwreck for his unprepared children, his aging parents, and his siblings to sort out. All the survivors already had full plates and plans, but creditors have valid claims and there’s probate: legal fees and court costs cut into whatever assets may or may not exceed the indebtedness. So, plans get put on hold, vacation time is repurposed, and life is found in the interruptions. Grief, itself a different kind of interruption, will just have to wait. And then “church” happens. People gather round with words, shared tears, hugs, food, prayers, and time, willingly setting their own plans aside and living with you in the interruptions. They even open their wallets to offer contingency funds. But life doesn’t stop. It’s not put on hold. Life co...
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Post-Truth Culture

  A recent article suggests the term, “post truth”, as a description of today’s culture. Its point is not that truth no longer exists, but that it has grown irrelevant. There is a general apathy about truth. It has succumbed to a constant wash of opinion. By the 19 th century the Enlightenment had authenticated scientific inquiry. Some authorities in the church saw science as a threat to their power, which they sustained in large measure by keeping the common people illiterate and pliable. Free thinking might lead to questions of their authority, so a vigorous science-versus-the-Bible dogma emerged. Part of the backlash against enlightenment thinking was manifest in the Second Great Awakening, a neo-Calvin/neo-Puritan movement. Unlike the First Great Awakening's focus on predestination, the Second Great Awakening was a quasi-enlightenment movement that emphasized free will and individual responsibility for salvation; nevertheless, the dichotomy was reinforced and science ...
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Spiritual Abuse/Religious Trauma

  Spiritual abuse and religious trauma are epidemic. The church has lost credibility; indeed, the whole of Christianity and virtually every other expression of organized religion are suspect. For those who have somehow escaped the epidemic, this blog will attempt to offer two ways (there are more than two ways) to understand the origins and causes of the mental and emotional pain. Hopefully, some empathy can be found and exercised. For those whose lives are tormented by the epidemic, I hope to offer a word of encouragement without making it worse by seeming to pressure you to respond in any specific way. I write in the spirit of the 1927 poem by Max Ehrmann, “Desiderata,” with which I will close. There is a perceived lack of integrity on the part of some of the most vocal and most prominent leaders of Christianity. When television became widespread in the 1950s and 60s, the cat was out of the bag. They preach a Jesus who, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but...
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Is Our Testimony Attracting people to Christ? or Pushing Them Away?

       Not long ago our church had a booth at the local Pride Festival. We acknowledged that most of those in attendance had been hurt by some manifestation of Christianity, and we wanted to be a healing presence.      During that afternoon, a couple of guys approached us, one with an open Bible in his left hand, his right forefinger jabbing at a single verse, claiming they wanted to “have a conversation” with us.      They were lying, of course. They wanted to use the Bible to condemn us for reaching out in love to people guilty of the heinous abomination of homosexuality. Theirs was a daunting task, since there is no clear biblical injunction either condemning or confirming homosexuality.      In the first place, the biblical word that is translated “abomination” means “liturgically improper” and includes certain food prohibitions, like shrimp and other shellfish, wearing wool and linen fabrics in the same garment, and a...
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