What's Fundamental to a Christian?

Some Christian denominations call themselves "fundamentalists"—they have identified a handful of concerns which they attest are, well, fundamental to Christianity. It's what is often referred to as "lowest common denominator Christianity" (for a good discussion, see Baptist writer John D. Pierce). It's a focus on the core values. There are pros and cons to this approach--it does reduce the whole of Christianity to a few basic principles, which can cut out a lot--too much, according to some. But it also helps to make sure that the most important pieces stay central, as Pierce discusses.

There are variations in the list of fundamentals, but a good representation is the original from the early 20th century:

1.       Biblical inspiration and the infallibility of scripture as a result of this

2.       Virgin birth of Jesus

3.       Belief that Christ's death was the atonement for sin

4.       Bodily resurrection of Jesus

5.       Historical reality of the miracles of Jesus

Other lists include the deity of Christ, the literal reading of the Creation account and the eventual return of Christ to earth. [I guess there's still disagreement as to what constitutes a "fundamental," as the list keeps shifting over time.]

My point here is: Absolutely none of these lists include the thing that Jesus Himself said was fundamental, despite the quadruple Gospel repetition: The command to "love God and love one another."

Isn't that a problem?

You could argue that the Greatest Commandment is included under the "inerrancy of Scripture" and it permeates everything on this list. That would be a fair point. But there are a few pieces of Scripture that were brought out for extra emphasis, and the Greatest Commandment was not one of them. Sadly, it rarely is.

Just to make sure you don't think I'm picking just on Protestant fundamentalists here, let's roll out the Nicene Creed. This is adhered to by the Orthodox, Catholics and most mainline Protestants. Like the five fundamentals, there are some points of disagreement on which version of the Creed is canonical. However, the Greatest Commandment is not included in the Creed nor is it a mentioned in any of the debates surrounding it.

In fact, almost nothing of what Jesus actually said or taught is part of the Creed.  That's a strange homage to the guy we claim to be God Himself. 

Going even further, the Catholic Church subscribes to the doctrine of infallibility. This is a very misunderstood (and at the same time hotly contested) issue, but at its core, it basically claims that the Holy Spirit will never let the Church be in error. Is this referring to following the ultimate Commandment of God Himself?  No, it is about whether the Church could ever be wrong in dogmatic teachings regarding faith and morals. 

If the Holy Spirit were going to make absolutely certain that the Catholic Church, in all its humanity, does not make any major mistakes, wouldn't you think the Holy Spirit would make sure we got the big things right? And Jesus (you know, God, right?) said the "big thing" was the Greatest Commandment. Sure, we profess it—but it’s not first on our list. It's not our central rallying cry. It's not the goal we strive for in our daily labors. Given the prominence which Jesus gave it, it is shocking, if not downright scandalous, how rarely we discuss it.

But instead, Catholics are convinced of the inerrancy of dogmas--theological explanations. Jesus Himself never said that our Christology, Ecclesiology, Eschatology or any of the other -ologies had to be correct. Rather, He said we are to love God and love one another. 

Isn't that just so hysterical it's ridiculous? Here's this guy walking around the earth, and most Christians will say that this man was actually God--literally. Mind blowing. Amazing.  Emmanuel--God with us. God came to earth in the person of Jesus, had a lot to say and gave a lot of instructions. And we have managed to silence every. single. word. from. his. mouth. in our most fundamental faith statements--a universal tendency shared by all Christian denominations. As we get ready for a year-long anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, this one point on which virtually all Christian denominations have in common is not something to be proud of.

I don't want to over-simplify. Christians affirm that the whole of Scripture is the Word of God, not just the specific words of Jesus. And many Christians affirm that God continues to speak through the living Body of the Church--the Body of Christ in the world today. Still, none of that takes away the strangeness of the duct tape around the mouth of Jesus of Nazareth.

If you ask Christians for moral guidance, they are more likely to point you in the direction of the 10 Commandments of Mosaic Law from the Old Testament than to the Beatitudes, Works of Mercy or the Greatest Commandment preached by Jesus Himself.

God walked the earth as Jesus. Christians generally do not deny that. Many of Jesus' words are recorded in Scripture. Most Christians do not deny that. Jesus says out of all the things you do, this one should be the first. He even spells it right out for us! Here's the #1 place you'll want to devote your time and attention, folks. *Crickets*

Yet, when we come together to define ourselves as Christians, it doesn't even crack our top 10.

All around Christianity, the name of the game is belief. Dogmas and head games are the central talking points. Denominations have fragmented over arguments about nuances in the way we understand that which we, ironically, all agree is impossible to fully understand.

Yet, how many denominations have split over a desire to follow THE command of Jesus more fervently?

I admire the work of the Red Letter Christians who dare to ask:  What if Jesus actually meant what he said?

Sin of Sodom: A Case of Denial

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, John Martin, 1852

Folks will tell you that the Biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18-19) is about the "sin of homosexuality." In fact, the word "sodomy" even comes from this interpretation.

Many do not question this interpretation at all. It is treated like it's built into the law of nature: Birds fly, fish swim and the sin of Sodom is homosexuality.

Easy peasy, right?

There is no shortage of commentaries on this subject with scholars exploring all angles. I'm going to risk looking at it from a simpler perspective to make this case: Sodom fits right into themes of denial and cognitive dissonance that I've been exploring on this blog lately.

Take a look at this:

Ezekiel 16:49-50 (NSRV)
This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.

See also: Genesis 18-19, Jeremiah 23:14, Amos 4:1-11 and Jude 1:7

The Bible is full of brain-teasing parables and puzzling narratives. It's hard enough to figure out what a good many passages might mean. In fact, I hold that the Bible invites us on a multi-layered journey of introspection, growth and discovery. It's about a people who are in varying stages of that same journey. Good folks can reasonably disagree about many things. However, in the case of these texts above, Scripture does us a favor: Bible authors tell us point-blank where to direct our attention. 

The Ezekiel passage specifically lists the sins of Sodom. It even prefaces it to be as clear as possible:  "This was the guilt of your sister Sodom," followed by an actual list. I don't know how you can get any clearer than that. For those who take the Bible literally, this should be an even simpler matter.

Yet, people will insist that Sodom is about something other than what it actually says. I respect if people don't agree with the Bible here, but let's at least be honest about what it says.

The Book of Ezekiel very clearly writes that pride, haughtiness and hoarding riches at the expense of the poor are among those sins. It also lists "abominable things." What does this last point mean? You could argue that those "abominable" things could include homosexual acts, but it does not specify.

There were all sorts of "abominable acts" in the Old Testament, and the passages from Jeremiah and Jude seems to suggest those acts relating to Sodom were adultery. You could argue further that "homosexual acts" could be considered a form of adultery, but then you would have to bend and stretch the text all sorts of ways to get it to read that way. Even worse, you would be ignoring all the other possible ways to interpret it, especially those that have far more evidence to support them. In addition to the verses mentioned above, the original Genesis reading looks like the sin in question was gang rape of houseguests by a violent mob. Amos affirms that the sins were greed and a corresponding lack of charity. And so on.

Nothing that seems to match our modern understanding of same sex partnerships seems to be described in any of these verses.

It seems like the people of Sodom were violent and focused on partying and rowdy pleasure-seeking while the poor suffered. They were treated each other in outrageous displays of selfishness and meanness--these are the "abominable acts."

Why would people take the Ezekiel passage above, ignore the first three very clearly stated points, and then focus all attention on a questionable interpretation of the fourth point?

Even if the sins of Sodom were to include a general indictment against all "homosexual acts" (which I highly doubt), anyone preaching on this text should still give the most time and emphasis to the sins of pride, greed and haughtiness.

Preachers should be pounding the pulpit over and over again about pride and greed if they want to be consistent with Scripture. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Bible passages condemning greed, for example. By contrast, there are a total of six that many claim relate to homosexuality, and even those have come under some serious doubt in light of recent scholarship (including the story of Sodom).

Are pride and greed no longer major problems in our world today? The United Nations claims that around 21,000 people die every single day from hunger and hunger-related causes. How do we sit with that given that many of us have time, talent and treasure that we spend pursuing pleasures of all kinds? That's the sin of Sodom. But we can't face the truth of that statement, so we redirect our attention to "those homosexuals." Regardless of your beliefs about homosexuality, how is this even an honest read of this particular story?  How can we justify the monumental attempt to distract attention from greed, pride, lack of charity and violence?

This blog post is not about homosexuality. Neither is the story of Sodom, but people have neutralized its meaning this way. It could powerfully critique the greed and pride in all of society. It could be a warning to all who are going down that path that God is going to blow us all to bits (figuratively, let's say). Leave that lifestyle and don't even look back. It's not the path that leads to love, goodness and wholeness. Just look at the classic painting at the top of this post--it's a fierce condemnation.

Given the stockpiling of nuclear weapons, climate change and endless wars, it is easy to see how this path of consumerism and world power will also end in ruin for us all, just like it did for the people of Sodom. We need to hear this story with new eyes today. Look at that painting again and see nuclear war, not homosexuality.

We've been robbed of the power of the story of Sodom. It should be a strong companion to Matthew 25:31-46, which also gives dire warnings for those who do not serve Jesus by feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger and the other Works of Mercy. It's a path that ends in destruction.

It's so tempting to bring the explanation we want to the Bible, rather than let the Bible teach us. We are afraid of the power of the Bible. If we don't already have a preconceived idea, a preacher tells us what to find in the Bible, and lo and behold, that is exactly what we find. It's the power of suggestion.

When a passage does not fit our preconceived notions, our brain simply discards it. It's how we deal with cognitive dissonance. People do it all the time. We've been told so often that Sodom is about homosexuality, so when we find lines about greed and pride we simply gloss over and discard them.

Thomas Merton in Opening the Bible says that the Bible tells us about ourselves. In other words, if we go to the Bible and ask, "What is this book about?" the response from the Bible is, "Who are you?"

The story of Sodom is a perfect example of this. The subjects in the story are not the people of Sodom. No, the true subjects are the people reading it. How you interpret the story and what you find says more about you than it does about the people living in that doomed city thousands of years ago.

As a closing, the fact that the "good guy" in the story named Lot offered up his virgin daughters to appease the violent mob from attacking his houseguests should make it pretty obvious that we should not be taking every detail from this story as direct instruction about morality. It should also make us wonder if this story is an allegory about some other spiritual truth. Or maybe the story does the very thing Merton proposed--we think it's telling us about something else but it is really tells us about ourselves.

***

NOTE: Thanks to this article for help in identifying verses which relate to Sodom.

The Simplicity of Discipleship, the Complexity of Beliefs

If you ask what "Christian unity" means, the first thing most people talk about is their beliefs: 

Do we believe what this other church believes?

Are we saying the same things just in different ways? If not, do we try to convince them that we are right?

However, Christians may also be united by having common practices, too. In fact, this is the area where most of us have the most control and opportunity to explore right here and now.

If we focus too much on beliefs, we can be paralyzed to do anything when those beliefs seem to differ. This is especially true when some denominations require global councils with ample study, debate and votes before any change happens.

Many denominations have been divided for hundreds of years. Unless a miracle happens quickly, many of them will continue to be divided for probably hundreds more. Perhaps that's pessimistic, but there is an opportunity that comes by being realistic here: We have to figure out how to live out our Christian discipleship today in light of these differences.

I see the relationship between belief and practice as reciprocal—belief informs practice and practice informs belief.  In other words, when groups work together for a common cause it is good to look for signs of the unity that may emerge out of those efforts. 

People who hunger for unity among Christians usually recommend that we approach this task from both ends of the spectrum. What I mean is this:  On one side of the spectrum, church leaders and theologians work out the details that divide churches and see what's possible in the nitty-gritty details of doctrine and policy. They have made some rather amazing accomplishments in the last few decades, but it is slow and painstaking work.

On the other end of the spectrum, the rest of us can and should do together what we can in our Christian practices. Our churches may be formally divided in a number of ways, but we can all pray together. We can serve the poor together. We can raise our prophetic voices together. Our beliefs may seem like a tangled mess, but there is a wide open highway for living out our Christian practices available to all of us right now.

You might think that evangelizing is probably one thing we shouldn't do together. That certainly depends on how you want to understand evangelization, because we witness to the faith in all that we do--that list above, which includes prayer, justice advocacy and charity are all forms of evangelization, as well. We all know the famous quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: "Preach the Gospel at all times, use words when necessary." You get the idea.

Surprisingly, it was foreign missionaries who first started the modern ecumenical movement. They were having trouble gathering people into the church when the presence of competing denominations raised questions as to the validity of Christianity itself. You might think that the last thing a Catholic missionary would want to do is evangelize together with a Protestant or Evangelical missionary. What they found out is that staying in their separate, protected bubbles was not attractive to outsiders. With the fear of opening up and losing a few, they closed down and probably lost a lot. Why would someone be attracted to Christianity when even the Christians themselves can't agree on what it's all about? We should add evangelizing to the list of things we can do today.

Jesus prayed that "all who believe may be one" (John 17:21), then as followers of Christ we ought to hope and trust that this prayer will one day come true.  It seems like an impossible task.  Followers of Jesus started breaking away from each other right from the beginning. It is recorded in the New Testament. Divisions did not just begin with the Protestant Reformation in the year 1517!

There is a concept called the Lund Principle which argues that churches should only do the things separately that our denominational rules require us to do separately! This is pretty ambitious, but it is a goal worth working towards. If we take seriously that Christ wants unity among believers, and our churches don't have full unity, we can be stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Lund Principle helps us by pushing our churches to open up in the areas where we freely admit there is no reason to stay apart.

Our churches may disagree on the proper methods of baptism and who can and should participate in worship services, but we all affirm that Jesus commanded us all to "love one another." Jesus even said that that should be first and foremost. You could just be so busy loving one another that you don't have any time to squabble over doctrinal differences. Perhaps that overly simple. Perhaps it's simply beautiful.

We might as well spend our time doing that, because it's going to be a long time before the churches formally unite together. We don't know what that unity might look like or how it might come to pass here on this fallen planet, but one thing we can probably agree on is that it's probably not going to happen today. Or maybe better said--it might happen today, we can and should have abundant hope that it happens today, but we should also have a plan of how to live out our Christian discipleship if it doesn't happen today.

Let's not obsess so much about differences in beliefs and doctrines to the point where we fail to do what we already can do. Beliefs are interesting things to ponder over and raise our voices over, no question about that. But in the meantime, there is work to do--there is a lot of work to do.

And maybe--just maybe--by living out the unity that is already available to us, we may find that elusive unity that we have been missing. We may find that unity not in the destination but rather on the way there. If we wait to work together until full unity has been achieved, we may fail to do the very thing that will help bring it about!

Why We Hate the Poor (It's Not What You Think)

It's easy to say that people are selfish when they don't support efforts to help poor people.

You can just scroll through your Facebook feed and read people on conservative and liberal sides of the spectrum making these accusations about each other.

"Those conservatives don't care about anybody!" The poor, the homeless, the immigrant--people in our culture find ways to turn a cold shoulder and even mock them. Conservatives say the same about liberals on issues like abortion.

My uncle once said that the entire approach and philosophy of radio host Rush Limbaugh was basically "an attempt to justify selfishness." I think he's onto something.

Rush is an vocal example of a larger movement that is trying to say something like:

I have what I have, and I don't have to help you. I don't even have to care about you, because you have the power to improve your life. In fact, it would be bad if I did help you, because I would be depriving you of the opportunity to work hard, pull yourselves up and gain the self-confidence and spiritual growth that comes by triumphing over adversity.

That's a fine hypothesis, but does it match reality? Sure, a few people can develop an unhealthy dependence, but it is fair to assume that is true for all who are poor?

Perhaps my favorite quote of all time is the one that leads this post: 

"If wealth were the inevitable result of hard word and enterprise,

every woman in Africa would be a millionaire."

-- George Monbiot, The Self-Attribution Fallacy.

There have been countries where people have been desperately poor for century after century, and no amount of hard work or free enterprise was able to pull themselves up. The societal structure worked against their efforts--political structure, business climate, wars, famine, you name it.

If time travel were possible, I would dare you to visit any of my relatives from East Europe and tell them that their poverty was a result of not working hard or smart enough. They would put a pitchfork right through your face. I don't know if anyone else has worked harder than these people or were more enterprising, yet they barely managed to survive from one season to the next.

It's common sense that there's far more than just personal motivation responsible for poverty, yet the myth persists rather strongly. It's easy to write off people for simply being selfish and cold to the suffering of others.

But I think something deeper is going on.

For instance, why is there so much rage toward people on food stamps (SNAP)? It's one thing to disagree with the policy of food stamps, but the level of rage seems to indicate something else.

The entire food stamps program is folded into the Farm Bill, and the entire Farm Bill is less than 1% of the annual Federal budget. The rage is out of proportion to the situation. We pay many times more for much less useful programs.

A significant number of people are helped by this program. Studies will show that these are hard working people who hold jobs. Their jobs don't pay enough and better jobs are unavailable, so they have no choice but to use food stamps as a supplement. But the myth of the "lazy food stamps recipient" persists.

Why? I'll tell you, and you'll be shocked:

The reason we hate the poor is because we love the poor.

What?? How can this be?

We know, deep down in our being, that we are all connected. We have this fundamental knowledge. It's instinctive. It's just something that is just known in the universe.

We know all humans are brothers and sisters. It follows that we have a responsibility to each other that stems from that relationship.

When we see someone suffering, we instinctively feel it, too. We know they are a part of us. We feel their pain, too. Their pain is our pain. Despite the unjust world we see before us, with its patterns of death, decay and misery, in ways we are at a total loss to explain, despite all evidence to the contrary, we know deep in our bones that nobody wins unless everybody wins, and that this is a fundamental law written into the very fabric of the universe.

But we turn away. It's too hard to go there.

It's hard, because we are attached in this world to our baser instincts. It takes a lot of spiritual growth to move beyond that. We're attached to our money. We're attached to our comfort and security. We are attached to our fear. So we hoard our money, we just want to live our lives and not deal with anyone. We don't want to engage with their pain and trauma.

Why jump into someone else's life struggles?  I've got my own.

We are afraid of the poor--they threaten us by their very presence! It makes no logical sense, but they threaten to open us up to our true nature. They remind us of what we all mean to each other. That's why we are so enraged by the homeless person who comes up to us asking for money. He's not likely to hurt us in a physical sense, but he threatens to expose our lifestyle for the lie it is. The way we are living is not true to our nature. The poor remind us of that, but it drives us into a rage.  We wish they would just go away.

We find ways to hate them and blame them so we don't have to love them, because deep down, if we could only get past our fear, loving them is all we really want to do.

The reason we hate the poor is because we love the poor, but we refuse to enter into that love.

We all have a deep empathy. Some of the people who hate the poor the most have the biggest hearts. But they can't admit that. They can't open themselves up to the possibilities that may come if they dare open themselves.

Once you open the floodgates of empathy and compassion, we are afraid there would be no stopping it. God only knows what would happen--literally! Heck, we might give away all our possessions, we might live close to the poor, we might have to stick our necks out advocating for causes important to them--in other words, we might get in the middle of their pain and suffering and incur some pain and suffering of our own, even to the point of our own death. We're so afraid we're going to lose everything.

Jesus reminds us that we're only going to gain by doing this. The things we are holding onto are not real. That's the paradox--in this life, the things that seem "real" are what we can taste, touch, hear, see and hold, like money and possessions. Spirituality seems to promise imaginary things. But the truth is that what's spiritual is eternal and what we see in this world--however tangible it may seem--is imaginary.

It's easy to say that Republicans hate the poor and liberals hate the unborn. That's not true at all. We love them all, but we are afraid of entering into that love and going where that love may take us. We are afraid of losing control. 

Time and time again, people who have committed themselves to the cause of love have said they wouldn't trade it for the world. Yet, we're so afraid, we're holding on. We're huddled up in our fortress, trying to keep everyone else out, when Jesus, and all the spiritual masters from around the world, have told us to let go. Jesus tell us: You are going to find yourself by giving yourself away, not by hoarding your time, hoarding your love or hoarding your possessions. 

Admittedly, it's easy to see why people hoard and close themselves off. There are safety concerns. You want to raise your children in health. You want to protect your loved ones. These are noble pursuits. There's a scarcity mindset where people think if they give away what they have there won't be enough to go around. There is a time to be discerning and not just haphazardly jumping into a risky situation unprepared.

We worry that we might give away all that we have, deplete ourselves in the process and still be unsure whether all that sacrifice would even accomplish anything at all. It's easy to wonder if Jesus had similar thoughts while hanging on the cross.

But again, Scripture tells us over and over again--the lives of the saints tell us over and over again--it's a good life to give yourself in service to others. You find your true self that way, because you get the false self out of the way. Our true nature is one of unbelievable oneness--perfect unity in perfect diversity--but our false self pretends there are divisions. We mistakenly believe that the only way to maintain what we are and what we have is to keep our distance from others.

So the reason we hate the poor is because we love the poor. We know deep down we're all connected. It tugs on us. It tugs on our conscience. It can tug on us in an unhealthy way through guilt and shame. But a small amount of guilt can open the door to your conscience. The five dollars I spend on dessert today is not a big deal to me, but that $5 could mean the difference between life and death to a family faced with impending starvation. It's hard to justify my $5 dessert when there are people out there who need it more. It's too bad we approach this out of guilt, because it's just a matter of simple economics. But we have to understand our true nature before we can see it that way.

So that's what the phenomenon of hating and blaming the poor is all about. It's a way to try to manage the guilt that comes with privilege. The guilt pops up like the groundhogs in the Whac-A-Mole game, and you keep hammering them down, but they keep popping up over and over--until maybe, you give in and go where it takes you.

It's a nice partnership with corporate America. Corporations want to make money and citizens want to assuage their guilt. You see this unholy marriage in our modern political parties. The "Rush Limbaugh ideology" is one example this--make money and don't worry about anyone else.

It's too bad. I would like to think this post can help break the stalemate in America--between rich and poor, between conservative and liberal.  Maybe we aren't so different after all, we are just choosing to cope with our lives differently. We're all just afraid of how deeply we are all connected and how rich that love is and how meaningless our separation from each other is.

A Meditation: Black Lives Matter

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Illustration by Vectorstock, Malchev, Andrew Glencross.

 

By Andrea and Frank Lesko

 

We invite you to join us in a virtual (but real) social media prayer and meditation.

 

We'd like you to get comfortable wherever you are--at your desk, on the subway or at home. And quiet.

 

Put yourself in the presence of God. Or rather, acknowledge that you are already there.

 

We're going to say something, and we'd like you to sit back and think about what comes to your mind when you hear it.

 

Close your eyes and begin to be aware of your breath.

 

Allow your breaths to become deeper and deeper until you can feel them down in your belly. 

 

After a bit, allow your breathing to come back to normal.

 

As you breathe in, imagine your are taking  in peace and love - imagine them as feelings or as words, or however they form in your mind's eye.

 

As you breathe out, imagine your thoughts and worries and preconceptions being exhaled.

 

Sit with this for a few moments - breathing in and out. 

 

Now I am going to give you a phrase. Allow your clear head to simply feel or think whatever comes to mind when you hear it.

 

There is no right or wrong.

 

Just allow your thoughts and feelings to be.

 

The phrase is... Black Lives Matter.

 

Remember to continue to breathe in deeply,

 

And breathe out.

 

***

 

Allow some time to sit with this thought.

 

What comes up for you?

 

How does it feel in your body when you hear the words?

 

Joys, pains, memories.

 

Be aware of any tensions, reflexes, resistance.

 

Suspend any judgments, conclusions or distractions, but take notice if you want to react in that way.

 

Just let the thoughts be. 

 

Try to avoid leaving the topic and jumping elsewhere.

 

This is not about the #BlackLivesMatter movement. 

 

This is not about "All lives matter." 

 

It's just the expression that black lives--in their own right--matter. 

 

Just experience it.

 

***

 

Maybe it's awkward to you,

 

Maybe you want to wiggle away and change the subject.

 

Perhaps your breathing immediately becomes more shallow.

 

Ask yourself where is that coming from?

 

***

 

It's perfectly normal to have biases and prejudices. Even people who believe they are beyond having prejudices probably have some subtle angst or awkwardness in relation to somebody. There has probably never been a human who didn't grow up with some kind of bias against somebody--except Jesus.

 

Whether it's the rednecks in town, the "dumb Polak" down the street, "them Jews", homosexuals, hippies, blacks, you name it.  We all got somebody that we just can't stand... and perhaps hate. If you are in a minority population, you might even pick up the sentiments of the larger population and have a bias against your own group! You can say it's part of human nature. It's tribalism--we stick with our tribe and have an implicit bias against the others.

 

Jesus challenged this continuously through the Gospels. He kept approaching people as fully equal, human persons. It didn't matter if they were rich or poor, popular or unpopular, whether they smelled funny, were sick, or were a member of the "unapproved" groups of the day. He developed quite a reputation for hanging out with "sinners and tax collectors." For a Jewish male to associate with a Samaritan woman, for example, especially someone who was known publically as "sinful," was to incur scandal upon scandal.  It's hard for us to image for us today just how scandalous that was. 

 

That Jesus could do this so consistently, without a hint of prejudice recorded in the Gospel narratives, is perhaps more evidence for his divinity than any other miracle! Humans just have a really tough time with that, and we've never met a person would could do it as consistently and constantly as Jesus did in the Gospel narratives.

 

We can and should be held accountable if we hurt people through our biases and prejudices, but we can at least have some compassion for having them. We inherited many of them. We are soaked in a culture that is full of them, some of them so subtle--yet strong--that we don't even realize we have them. They are just part of the fabric of life--birds fly, fish swim and black people are second class. It can take a lifetime to untangle oneself from a culture rife with them. 

 

There's a paradox. Shaming yourself for these thoughts is not likely to be helpful.  But those are also thoughts that need to be purged and healed so that you can grow into the being God made you to be and that we all can grow together in peace and harmony as one human family.

 

The problem becomes much more urgent when our biases and prejudices are combined with institutional power. This is what we call racism. That's when these prejudices are not just quirks that individual people have, but they are put into practice and damage real people.

 

Police can gun black men and children down in the streets over the most questionable behavior, with almost no consequences whatsoever. Black people go to jail more often--and with harsher sentences--than white people for the same behaviors. When people take to the streets to protest, they are tear gassed and silenced--how dare they speak up and question the way things are! 

 

Even justice-minded white people, who thought racism was yesterday's news, are coming to terms with this.  How did we miss it?

 

***

 

Black lives matter.

 

Black people matter.

 

This is a good thing.

 

Let’s breathe into this thought.

 

If it's a frail idea to you, build it up. Give it roots. 

 

Give it strength.

 

If it is strong, imagine it stronger.

 

***

 

Let's think about the goodness of black people.

 

Created in the image and likeness of God.

 

Who show us something about what God is like.

 

For far too long, they have been treated like their lives don’t matter. Like they don’t deserve time and attention.

 

To quickly change a discussion from “black lives matter” to “all lives matter” only reinforces what many believe in the first place: That black lives do not deserve special time and attention reserved only for them.

 

So let's change that.

 

***

 

When people say, "black lives matter," they are affirming what is rightfully theirs. 

 

They are not demanding it. 

 

They are not asking for your permission.

 

You can’t give them value--their value comes from the Creator. 

 

They are affirming what God said: "And it was good."

 

So very, very good.

 

Black lives matter.

 

***

 

Black lives matter.

 

Say it.

 

Love it .

 

Embrace it.

 

Suspend other thoughts.

 

Suspend the exceptions,

 

The qualifying clauses,

 

Everything else.

 

Just repeat after me:  Black lives matter.

 

Black people matter.

 

This is a good thing, a complete thought all unto itself that doesn't need any qualifiers, exceptions or footnotes.

 

It is a thought whose time has come--it is overdue, in fact.

 

God announced the goodness of black lives at the moment of Creation. We've got some catching up to do.

 

There is a time later to talk about everyone and everything else.

 

Right now, let’s just embrace the thought that black lives matter.

 

Cherish that thought and the people that go with it.

 

Amen.