Deacon Dan Wright

On Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Amnesty

If ever I were asked to pick a theme for the Christian religion on the whole, I believe that theme would have to be God’s great clemency and forbearance in dealing with humanity. Another way of saying it is that in God there is complete amnesty.

Actually, I was asked recently to make a presentation on the topic of God for a class on Catholic teachings. The presentation was to take a couple hours. Regardless of the many possible things there were to say, I never seemed to be able to move too far from the concept of forgiveness and reconciliation.

My question at the presentation, and for us tonight, is whether there can really be true forgiveness without reconciliation. However, you need not fear. I don’t plan to take two hours with this homily, and actually I want to take it in a slightly different direction.

While it is important to consider that forgiveness without reconciliation, without a true mending of ways, is somewhat empty, the greater consideration has to do with how we actualize God’s clemency in our world today through our deeds, attitudes, and beliefs. Our being the agents of God in how we live—what we say and do—is indeed the litmus test of who we really are. We should not forget, as today’s gospel reminds us, that weeds have been sown among the wheat. Part of what we do each day, the way we treat others, even what we stand for or against, decides whether we are children of light or of darkness.

Every moment of every day provides opportunities to be like God. I know, being godlike ranks pretty high in aspirations of spirituality. However, that is exactly what living a life of righteousness entails. Still, there is something important, often missed, that needs to be pointed out to all of us, and I include myself. There’s often confusion about what being godlike looks like. We tend often to overlook the amnesty, lenience, mercy, and kindness that are the true aspects of God, and instead we go somehow to judgment as our model.

Too often our piety becomes a judgmental and halting hand, rather than a welcoming and reconciling embrace. Too often real need gets ignored because of lofty principles, at least as such in our esteem, that we feel we need to protect. The failure to be like God also lives out in the lives of us who are too quick to go to the letter of the law while giving no regard to the spirit of it, and rather than standing among those who were sown as good seed, we find ourselves fooled, duped, often by nothing more than irrational fear. We have frequently and without intention, unawares, and perhaps even out of a desire to preserve the strict sense of our religious purity or national identity, become the weeds growing among the wheat of the harvest.

Nevertheless, at any moment when we realize that our lives reveal more judgment than clemency, we may still say, “I repent of what I have become. I turn my back on my failure to be an agent of kindness, forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.” Said in sincerity with the intention to do what is good, this counts for much.

The tone of the gospel today, more than warning us of the weeds among the harvest, warns us to be sure beyond a doubt that we have not been somehow tricked, even by our own willful complacency, into being the weeds sown among God’s harvest. Always we are mindful that we may at any time in our lives present ourselves to the God who allows repentance.

Our role is always to be those who hold the branches of peace, forbearance, and clemency in our hands. We must learn not to count the cost involved in reconciliation. We must learn to take a risk and live somewhat dangerously. We must learn to be forgivers who intend reconciliation as part of forgiveness. We must not say, “I forgive but I will never forget.” Still, with that said, it is not that we are ever to forget great evil that has been done. Much to the contrary, we must always be on guard against real evil.

Recently I went on vacation to Washington, DC and New York City.  While in Washington I had the opportunity to visit to the National Holocaust Memorial Museum. The museum visit was a good reminder of the need for guarding against evil, or in other words, of being certain that similar evil does not occur again. While there, the words “Never Again” took on a fresh meaning to me.

A good example has to do with how we react—both in action and attitude—to those who come to this nation to escape the dangers of crime and injustice, or most often just to make a better life for themselves. While in DC at the Holocaust Museum I learned about the voyage of the MS St. Louis in 1939. During the time of the Nazi occupation about a thousand Jewish refugees aboard the St. Louis sought asylum in the US, but once here they were turned back to Europe on account of strict immigration quotas. Many of those aboard the St. Louis perished in the death camps.

Being godlike means standing up not to allow something similar to happen again. What would we say to the passengers of the St. Louis today? Would we tell them that we cannot admit everyone? Would we mumble that our nation will be overrun by foreigners? Would we fear crime and violence on our streets?

As people of God, we cannot allow evil to triumph—great or small. Never should we be hard of heart, legalistic, or driven by ideologies of any kind that stand against the basic truth of goodness toward human beings in need. I recently heard that another word for tough love—in case that holds some appeal—is soft hate. Never should we be guilty of hate of any kind, and always we should be wise to its appearance as something else, something acceptable or good. Part of the lesson of the weeds among wheat is that evil loves to masquerade as good. Never should we refuse to do what is really good when that good can be done, and always we should be willing to unmask evil.

We all hold the ability to do miracles, and our single act of clemency, one act of acceptance, one single embrace, may be the miracle that someone needs at the time. At every moment we must look to the light and aspire to be saints, even better, to be angels in the lives of others. We hear a lot about fear, but we should keep in mind that the opposite of fear is courage. Do we want to be known as a cowardly people of fear, or as a great people of courage?

In being the people of God, the wheat among tares, we must learn to hear the groaning of the Spirit; of that which calls out to the Most High from the depths of basic human need. We must learn to give and forgive, to welcome and to heal, and offer our open arms without expectation of return. Our goal as the people of God is to rise to greatness; it is to live as a people of royal righteousness—a righteousness and courage that imitates God: a righteousness that cannot separate forgiveness from the acts of reconciliation. It begins with our prayer, our deepest personal prayer, for our own reconciliation.

Discovering and Accepting Truth as Spirituality: The Journey of Getting Our Facts Straight

For years I held that the stories of Christian martyrs and their persecutions were historical facts and thus to be accepted without question. However, I recently found an article on a new book by Notre Dame scholar Candida Moss, which calls the historicity of these stories into doubt. Moss is interviewed in the article.

Something that Moss said--just a simple statement--stood out to me, and in many ways defines the direction that my spiritual growth has taken me most recently. Moss says, "We... have an obligation to get our facts straight, however painful that might be." Sometimes it turns out that we make a discovery in our lives that goes against everything we ever held to be true. How do we handle it when that happens?

First, a maxim I have learned to live by is that we have nothing to fear in discovering and accepting truth. This holds even when what we discover seems to strike at the heart of what we believe and value. Jesus taught that his disciples would know the truth and the truth would free them. From the viewpoint of faith there is certainly nothing to fear in learning truth. Mine has become a religion of seeking and learning truth regardless of the cost. Truth has that kind of value.

Knowing truth helps us to be aware of when we are being manipulated for some purpose, and it exposes the dangers of falling for such manipulation. In searching for truth it is not that we are merely relying on facts without examining the subjective depth of truth claims, but that we allow the facts to speak to us from as many different variables of experience as possible. However, the subjective truth we experience has to be weighed against whatever the evidence that exists tells us.

Throughout my life I have found that belief often has to be adjusted, but doing so does not necessarily involve a loss in faith. Actually, the opposite tends to hold true more often, at least in my experience. Sometimes it is the case that the adjustment--the eye-opening experience--is what faith actually requires in order to continue to grow and be healthy. Any time our beliefs become such that we refuse to adjust them when truth calls for it, then those beliefs bear more the character of idols.

The case of martyrdom and persecution that I examine in tonight's reflection is a great example. Recently, over many months in the past year, I have heard the claim that the Church--the US Church in particular--is undergoing a time of great persecution. I have heard from the pulpit that we should not be surprised to see Christian bishops shed their blood in a year's time. From the first time I heard the claim of persecution I knew that something was wrong. I asked, "Where is the violence and the bloodshed against the Church right now? It may exist somewhere in the world but not here: not in the US Catholic Church." Moss aptly points out in her interview that we do a certain wrong to those who actually suffer persecution when we misuse it for our own purposes.

All true believers, and all seekers of truth, owe it to themselves to question those claims--both recent and historical--that have somehow gained a place of being beyond inquiry or doubt. What may be our outcome is a purified personal belief that better helps us see ourselves as a part of a plurality of religious truth where persecution on account of one's religion will scarcely be tolerated.

The journey of truth continues along the path: it never really involves loss. Truth is always a gain, and if it does involve exchanging some aspect of our personal belief--even if it is painful as Moss says--we have to treat it as an obligation. This only amounts to spiritual growth.

Rejecting the Rhetoric of WBC

I learned recently that Westboro Baptist Church has a new video that blames Christians for same-sex marriage. I don't want to post the video here. The link alone will do. I find it to be a rather pathetic thing. It contains the hate language that we've come to expect from WBC. 

While the video is bound to cause some confusion about how a self-identified Christian group can blame Christians for the thing it claims to be against, it's all part of the cult-like tactic of WBC that sets them up as the only true bearers of truth and genuine faith. The message is that Christians who refuse to hate gay people aren't Christian at all.

It's easy enough to dismiss WBC. It's an easy temptation to ignore them and hope they will simply go away. However, there is something for all of us--especially those of us who refuse to hate; those who are the targets of this latest attempt--to be warned of and of which we must be on guard.

Take away the blatant hate language; take away the anti-gay slurs, and what might be left is language that many of us are accustomed to hearing as an acceptable way to believe. The video begins "The bible defines marriage as one man, one woman, one lifetime." The problem is that WBC is attempting to dupe us into accepting its doctrine of hate.

A comment made by one of the readers of a story about the video reads, "I grew up catholic and I never, ever remember the priests giving a liturgy on anti-gay, anti-Jew or anti-minority ideology. Yes, homosexuality is going against God's Laws..." There is a serious problem here that I believe we have to avoid. It has to do with the mistake that the commenter who I quoted made. Certainly the bible, God's laws if you prefer, makes plenty of condemnations. However, when did God tell us to pick one law and let it lead us into an all-out war of hate? Really, what goes against Jesus' teaching is human beings hating and judging other human beings.

The rhetoric of WBC is clear. It's easy to say, "I don't believe that. I'm not going to carry a sign with a hate message and I'm not going to use hate language." However, where we have to be cautious is when it comes to accepting and endorsing the same rhetoric when it is presented to us as a legitimate Christian concern. Sometimes the same ideas come to us in a way that the hate of it is hidden from us though still present.

In the bible God said "It is not good for the man to be alone..." This is what I'm going to endorse. Our faith ought to be such that we don't need to fear the possibility of the destruction of the family. Jesus taught love and forgiveness. When Christianity begins teaching otherwise then it may be time to ask whether it has veered off the path.

 

On Tolerance

For some time I have considered writing a piece—even something brief—on tolerance. Tolerance seems to me to be something that goes along with Christian values in such a way that I wouldn’t necessarily expect it to be challenged. However, I don’t have to look far to find opposition. It seems that there’s not much tolerance for tolerance these days.

When I get an idea to write about something it typically comes from one of several sources. Often actual encounters—say, conversations with my family—are the source of inspiration. Generally I find my kids to be fairly tolerant people, though at times they’ll surprise me. Sometimes they cause me to wonder if there is a climate of intolerance overall, but with them it tends to be something as simple as not being able to tolerate the tastes in music of others.

At other times I get my inspiration from something I’ve seen in the news, but cases of intolerance that find their way into the news tend to be severe. Most recently I’ve been able to get ideas—at least for this post—from what I see people post on various forms of social media and blogs, and once in a while something from a friend on Facebook. Unfortunately in the attitudes of ordinary people I sometimes find a good bit of intolerance and occasionally it’s even directed at the notion of being tolerant itself.

When I see someone say something like, “I’m going to go ahead and say this even though I know the tolerance police are not far away” then I know the best thing to do might be to skip it, but I rarely do this. They hook me; I read what they have to say, and I rarely come away feeling like the world is becoming a more open-minded place.

The fact is that tolerance isn’t a bad thing and we shouldn’t sit by quietly when someone tries to paint it as such. It reminds me of a few years back when the easy target was "political correctness." I always thought that those who were opposed to political correctness should preface whatever they’re going to say with “Excuse my bad manners, but…” Really, being opposed to tolerance is the same kind of thing. It comes from a failure to recognize the legitimacy of other people in their views, their self identity, and their essential humanity.

Tolerance is a Christian value, though I wouldn’t say that Christians have exclusive rights to it, and as such it’s one of the things that most attracts me to Christianity. Actually, I feel an obligation—a duty—to stand for tolerance because in doing so I am standing up for others and that is precisely what Jesus taught us to do. The truest meaning of the word “others” is that it refers to those who are most unlike us.

Sadly, it’s easy to find intolerance nowadays in values that some are putting forth as being Christian (though I doubt the label applies). Intolerance is also easy to find among those who feel they’re defending something patriotic or traditionally American. Christianity and the tolerance and love that Jesus taught demand that we learn to transcend our presupposed values and see through the eyes of those who are most unlike us. There has never been a time when it wasn't perfectly clear to me that the values taught by Jesus far transcend any notions or ideals of nationalism. I think we can learn to see the same thing when it comes to sectarian differences.

As Christians, one of the primary places we need to consider being tolerant is when it comes to people whose religion, whose expression of faith, is different than ours, and although I’m primarily thinking of Islam as an example it’s not hard to find religious intolerance directed—by so-called Christians—toward Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and perhaps as a recent trend toward liberal mainline Protestants. However with the latter the intolerance has taken the more subtle form of “They’re declining in numbers anyhow so who really cares?” It’s not hard to find this same kind of intolerance directed toward liberal or progressive Catholics who might be seen as being too concerned with social justice over other more "tolerable" positions.

We who follow Jesus have a duty to stand up against the oppression of others. For example, when we learn of a community that is trying to stand in the way of a house of worship being constructed, as has been the case in Murfreesboro, Tennessee recently, as well as other notable places, it’s time to speak out. It’s time to label groups who promote opposition to others faiths for what they are: hate groups. This is just one of the activities that has led me to value and support the work of the SPLC for many years.

Another area where legitimized intolerance—hate—is seeking to gain ground is in regard to the LGBT community. Regardless of what our particular religion has to say about sexuality, we do not have license to be against other human beings. This is as clear as I can say it. The Christianity that I have been taught has instilled the value that we are not to judge and condemn others. This is a sensitive area for me because as a deacon I have an obligation to be faithful to Church teaching. However, never has the Church taught me to have a closed mind or turn away from anyone. Never has the Church taught me to deny human rights or reject another human being on any basis. Intolerance begins as a subtle negative attitude and grows.

Years ago before my ordination to the diaconate, I volunteered at the University of Texas Catholic Center. I was helping with the fall ministry fair, which had been going all morning. One table was for a ministry offered for and by gay Catholic students. There was a sign up list and I noticed that no one who had visited that day had signed the list. I tried to put myself in the shoes of the fellow who had stood at that table all morning as students had walked by without signing. It was approaching late afternoon and most everyone had gone already. I walked over to the table and signed my name on the list for the ministry. I simply said, “However I can help let me know.” When I signed I did so somewhat reluctantly because I noticed that the pastor, who I knew well, and who likewise knew me, was watching. As I stepped away from the table I turned around momentarily just in time to see the pastor also signing the list. At least it had two names that day. Sometimes being tolerant may put us in an uncomfortable position, but tolerance is like faith: it is intertwined with courage.

One might be tempted to think that in the year 2012 racism isn’t as much an issue as it once was. To believe this would be incredibly blind. Racism still exists—sometimes hidden in our seemingly harmless attitudes or the jokes we hear and choose to laugh at—and we are called to recognize it and eradicate it. Intolerance toward those who are racially or ethnically different from us is easily recognized in attitudes that oppose immigration reform or that say those who were not born here do not belong here.  Christians are called to be givers, and this includes giving others the opportunity to live in our nation. We are called to give freely and completely, and there is absolutely nothing to fear in it.

As a Christian I am called to see all people of the world as my brothers and sisters. Recently here in Texas I’ve seen political advertisements of a candidate who swears he will secure the borders. What is the source of this fear? What is it that would make others go on a campaign to hold up a halting hand of rejection rather than extend a hand of welcome? Christianity is about offering what we have and sharing it with others. It is social; it is progressive, and it is based on what Jesus taught us to be and to do.

The role of tolerance as I see it is twofold. First, tolerance asks us to be accepting of and open to all people, but especially of those whose values, whose faith or even lack thereof, whose sexuality, race, nationality, language, immigration status, disability, health or even level of education is different from our own. Second, tolerance demands that we speak the truth always and take a stand for those who are the object of intolerance regardless of how unpopular our stance may be.

Tolerance is a Christian value but it goes far beyond the confines of one religion. A sign of the success of Christianity, far from the numbers we attract on Sunday, is how faithful we are to our values and how we apply them to society as a whole. When we teach tolerance in time we will find that others may be much more willing to tolerate us. We can judge the success of Christianity by how committed we are to others. Our job, as Fr. Roy Bourgeois once said, is not to be effective but to be faithful. Thanks to many honest, courageous, and tolerant people, we may learn what it truly means to be faithful.

Revisiting St. Thomas the Apostle: Patron of All who Have Doubted

When I first began my blog about six years ago, I felt that the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle was an important date for us to bear in mind as a community of believers. That post is still here, and I think that what I was getting at in 2006 is perhaps even more important to us now in 2012.

Many years ago, long before I had place to post my thoughts on the Internet, a wise priest told me that someday I would find my personal patron saint. Since then I've considered more than one who has indirectly influenced my life--people like Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta or perhaps Dorothy Day: people who gave their lives for the poor of the earth. In my search for serving in justice and charity these have stood out. However, I'm not sure now that I would consider them to be my patron saints. A personal patron ought to be one whose life somehow reaches deep to cross paths with our own. With a patron saint we make a deeply personal connection.

In 2006 on the feast day of St. Thomas I considered the doubt that existed in the world then. I considered what I read in the news of increasingly vocal opposition to belief, and moved by that opposition and unbelief I wrote to it. My point of view hasn't changed really at all: belief is now challenged more than ever it seems. In way that may seem strange to many Christian believers I tend to identify deeply with Thomas the doubter, and I identify with those who have a hard time believing. I think we tend to believe in the wrong things while we overlook the most obvious. If there has been a patron saint in my life it will mostly likely turn out to be St. Thomas the Apostle before any of the other noble inspirations I might mention here.

As with my earlier post, I still believe in looking beyond the empirical objective world for the deepest realities. I believe in and I look to qualitative experiences of the lifeworld, the "down and dirty" and "nitty-gritty" of life, to find the stuff of faith. For me faith can't be so much about the things that demand scientific proofs, rather faith is about life as it is experienced. If faith is about merely believing, about blindly accepting and following--without questioning, reflecting, or grappling with doubt--then I would be among those whose doubts are overwhelming. I might count myself among the unbelievers. However, I am a believer and I believe that life offers evidence daily in itself for what I believe in.

While opposition to Christianity in our world seems stronger than ever, the greatest challenges to faith don't necessarily come from anti-Christian or atheistic claims. The greatest opposition comes from our willingness to take hold of what is false and our unwillingness, perhaps our fear, to seek out the truth with clarity. It comes from our unwillingness to search beneath the surface and explore the deepest layers of experience. Faith is about having the courage to hang on when there aren't any readily available answers on the surface at the moment.

In 2006 I hinted in my post that there is a problem with being both an ideologue and a believer. The two are in opposition to one another. I hinted that we have to move beyond legalistic and political positions. Well here we are in 2012 and we aren't necessarily better off. I look around and I see those who claim to have faith battling those who they see as their opponents with politics and legalistic religion. We seem to want to put out the fire by pouring gas on it. Instead of faith we choose dogma. Instead of looking to the world and passion of human life we look to the dead letter of the law. Instead of Jesus, Christians choose politics. Humanity--like that of Christ--with all its earthiness, tends to be looked to last when we consider the stuff of faith. I think this is a huge mistake. It is part of the dupe of all dupes.

A few years ago when I learned of the doubts that Mother Teresa reportedly had in her life I was concerned. Now at this point in my life I am no longer worried about it so much. Doubt is part of belief and I actually would seriously question the faith of one who claimed to have never doubted. 

Indeed our world offers us a great deal to be doubtful about, though often it is in a negative and unhealthy way. Unfortunately sometimes the public expression of our faith, our religion, also offers us plenty to be doubtful about. Whenever certain quarters of Christianity begin to demand fanatic following; when so-called faith begins to demand ideological or political allegiance; when it overlooks the experiences of real-life people caught up in real-life struggles, then how can we help but feel a temptation to doubt and even to walk away in despair?

It's really no coincidence that I write this post on the eve of Independence Day after a long hiatus from blogging anything but an occasional homily. For me the greatest enemy of true Christianity is and always has been the idols we place before having faith in that which truly should be the ground of all we believe: the Holy.

We make our idols now not in the form of wood and stone, but in the form of nation, party, and ideology. We tend to elevate our ideals to the level of the things that are sacrosanct in the faith. We set aside the deeper and harder to grasp realities of belief for more concrete and graspable ideologies. We replace the word of faith with the notions of state and freedom. We place our banners and flags next to our shrine and our altars too often have become the soapbox of mere political wrangling or the places to honor and elevate ideas that are in no way equal to the mystery symbolized by those sacred places.

True belief makes certain demands or challenges on our part and we are better off by taking them. To be faithful we remain courageous when faced with challenges and doubts. We admit that we may not always have the answers. Faith asks us to take a position that might put us in a dangerous spot: it asks us to stand for truth in a time when eyes have become blind to it.

Faith demands that we have a vision of a world where there is fairness, peace, and justice, and in faith we work to bring those about. Faith demands that we take a position that may be unpopular because it doesn't lend support to the idols or the idolaters or to their ideals. Belief demands that we explore the texture of humanity, which never really comes in a neat and clean package, and that we look squarely at those things that tend to challenge us most; that is, at those things which cause us to be most fearful and most doubtful. Faith demands that we leave the idols and ideologies behind for the reality of life as we live it. Faith asks us to be honest about our deepest doubts, and faith opens a world for us where we can finally touch that which is most real.

It turns out that our greatest threats to faith, and our greatest threats to freedom--if that is what concerns us--is our all too easy willingness to accept an imitation of the real thing. We have to be like Thomas: we have to reach out and touch the humanity that has experienced the cross. We touch it by making contact with each other and especially with those who suffer. We recall that the all-in-all of our believing walked among us to teach us not to be Pharisees, scribes, or even good citizens of Rome. He came to have his hands, feet, and side pierced and he asks us to touch his humanity, and nothing aside from this will do. 

 

How Easter Killed His Faith: On Lee Strobel Responding to Ricky Gervais' Easter Message

As we begin Holy Week and move toward the celebration of Easter, the news gets really interesting. This is especially true if you, like me, have your news feed set to let you see stories on religion. Maybe the religion news isn't that important to you. If not, I respect that, but for me it's part of where I live as a deacon. 

Any time of the year, not just Holy Week, the religion news setting will catch a plethora of negative articles. Particularly this is true in regard to those who are opposed to the faith or perhaps who are militant in arguing from the viewpoint of non-belief. Typically I like their articles because they challenge me to give a good answer.   

Recently I found the following piece from a former militant atheist, now an evangelical apologist, the journalist Lee Strobel. He is writing in response to an "Easter message" by atheist comedian Ricky Gervais. Strobel says it was Easter that killed his faith:

It was the worst news I could get as an atheist: my agnostic wife had decided to become a Christian. Two words shot through my mind. The first was an expletive; the second was “divorce.”

I thought she was going to turn into a self-righteous holy roller. But over the following months, I was intrigued by the positive changes in her character and values. Finally, I decided to take my journalism and legal training (I was legal editor of the Chicago Tribune) and systematically investigate whether there was any credibility to Christianity.

Maybe, I figured, I could extricate her from this cult.

I quickly determined that the alleged resurrection of Jesus was the key. Anyone can claim to be divine, but if Jesus backed up his claim by returning from the dead, then that was awfully good evidence he was telling the truth.

For nearly two years, I explored the minutia of the historical data on whether Easter was myth or reality. I didn’t merely accept the New Testament at face value; I was determined only to consider facts that were well-supported historically. As my investigation unfolded, my atheism began to buckle.

Continue reading

I don't know that I would necessarily take the same strategy or tactic as Strobel in replying to Gervais, or even to others who doubt or who are opposed to Christianity. While proofs, in the sense in which they are presented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, are important to belief, and while faith and reason should not be opposed in any way, I don't really believe that traditional proofs are always effective tools for convincing nonbelievers, though certainly in the case of Strobel they amounted to something. However, if you read the comments that have been posted on Strobel's article, and can get past the haters, you can see that proofs mean very little to those who are convinced in their faith against God. 

Instead, I would look to my own experience of doubt and faith, and apply it accordingly.  Like Strobel, I too at one time was a nonbeliever.  Unlike Strobel, I went from being an evangelical Pentecostal as a teenager to being a questioning student of philosophy in my 20's who understood his Christianity best in terms of atheism.  That's right, at one time I defined myself as an atheist, albeit a Christian atheist. Bear in mind that this was many years before my journey to Catholicism.

Now this brings me to the point of Gervais, who in his Easter message says why he believes he is better at being a Christian as an atheist than believers are by being Christians. However, Gervais is making an attempt at humor rather than a true statement of belief. Gervais, in my opinion, is not a Christian atheist, rather he is relying on humorous irony to make his point.

Gervais says that he believes in the Ten Commandments and keeps all of them. To this I would point out, not so much in a judgmental way as much as an objective observation, that he sounds a little like the Pharisee in Jesus' time who went into the temple and prayed, "Thank you Lord, that I am not a sinner like that tax collector over there." Keep in mind that the tax collector, who wouldn't even come into the building all the way, stood back at a distance and prayed for mercy to God, of whose existence he surely had no rational proofs. Furthermore, out of the tax collector's situation of being aware of his sin, he was also probably acutely aware that he had no proofs. Rather, his viewpoint was from the sheer poverty of existence--the place I believe we are most likely to discover the sacred for ourselves. 

As Christians, should it matter all that much what we say about what we believe?  Are we really going to prove anything to anyone by way of talking?  Isn't what we do much more important, and isn't this the lesson of the story of the tax collector in the temple?  Did he not realize that in his life there had been an absence of justice?

The message to nonbelievers is that true religion isn't really about believing in things that are too big to grasp, things that can never be proven except perhaps subjectively. True religion isn't about fairy tales, nor is it about perfectly keeping the Ten Commandments. Rather, it's all about how you live and how you love others, even those who are most unlike you in what they do and believe.

Many years ago, back when I was a Pentecostal teenager, I heard a gospel song that went "If heaven never had been promised to me, neither God's promise to live eternally, it's been worth just having the Lord in my life." Sure it matters that we believe, but what's most important is that we learn to follow Jesus really.

Does Religion Lay the Foundation for Gender Discrimination?

If you believe what Frances Kissling of the Washington Post blog says, it does:

When women of different faiths who are committed to women’s equality get together, there is little space between their views. They agree that official, internal discrimination against women which withholds the most important leadership roles from them is rampant. At the same time, no institutional religious leader accepts the premise that he or his denomination seriously discriminates against women. Heaven forbid! If it were not for religion, women would not be educated and would have minimal health care. Increasingly religious leaders speak out publicly against some human rights abuses women experience, but minimal efforts are made within the congregation to curb violence against women in the family.

The absence of a commitment to eliminating gender discrimination is most evident in the denial of opportunities for spiritual or congregational leadership. Whether it is the persistence of laws and practices that prevent Muslim women from leading prayers in many mosques or the fact that few women rabbis are heads of class A synagogues, or even the fact that Tibetan Buddhism, the branch led by the Dalai Lama has not yet fully ordained a single woman while Chinese, Korean and other branches of Buddhism have women know we are not equal. The kind of leadership that actually influences teaching and policy, the top “jobs”, are still reserved to men. I know this best in my own faith Roman Catholicism so I will discuss that, but let me be clear gender discrimination is pervasive within almost all religion.

Read the whole story

I recall years back when I was a student at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, I heard the argument many times that it all boils down to power.  While this was the main argument and concern that many women of the seminary presented to me in discussions on the topic, I failed to see the power/ministry connection.  Contrarily, true ministry seemed more to be service than power. However, I know there's many issues involved here.  I invite your discussion in the comment box.

 

Atheists in Foxholes

So it's true there are atheists in foxholes.  Though I never really doubted it, and I certainly never believed it was a good argument or proof for belief to say there are no atheists in foxholes.  Believing when bullets are flying over your head isn't the same thing as believing on a good and blessed day.

RALEIGH, N.C. – The cliche notwithstanding, there are atheists in foxholes. In fact, atheists, agnostics, humanists and other assorted skeptics from the Army's Fort Bragg have formed an organization in a pioneering effort to win recognition and ensure fair treatment for nonbelievers in the overwhelmingly Christian U.S. military.

"We exist, we're here, we're normal," said Sgt. Justin Griffith, chief organizer of Military Atheists and Secular Humanists, or MASH. "We're also in foxholes. That's a big one, right there."

For now, the group meets regularly in homes and bars outside of Fort Bragg, one of the biggest military bases in the country. But it is going through the long bureaucratic process to win official recognition from the Army as a distinct "faith" group.

Read the whole story

As one who believes in, and preaches, the value of tolerance it seems to me that those of us who are people of faith may stand to learn a lot by taking into consideration the viewpoint of those most different from us.  Although it's a challenge to do so, I've found that seeing through the eyes of others is a good method for understanding.  My hope is that tolerance will be reciprocal among all people.  The beginning is recognizing similarities and respecting differences, which isn't the same thing as buying into pluralism at all. All things are not equal, nor will they ever be.

Sunday Homily: On Being Salt

Jesus told his disciples, "You are the salt of the earth." Recently I put quite a bit of thought into what it means to be the salt of the earth. I feel that it's something important to consider because it comes to us somewhat as an imperative: we are to be the salt of the earth. We are to make a noticeable difference in the world.

For me this question comes as a particular personal challenge—as it should for all of us—because it addresses each one of us. We really do need to know how to be the salt of the earth in order for Christianity to be the difference the world needs.

Now as I began to explore the question of being the salt of the earth the first thing that came to mind was that to be the salt of the earth we must be good people. Certainly there's nothing wrong being good and undoubtedly as Christians we ought to be good. Being good goes a long way because God is good. However, is being good all by itself enough to make us the salt of the earth?

Something I've noticed recently among those who are unbelievers is the claim that it's possible to be good without believing in God. In fact, there's a popular book that bears the title Good without God. Aside from the more philosophical question of whether goodness is even possible without God, I wouldn't necessarily argue whether non-believers can be good without believing because my experience teaches me that there are, in fact, plenty of good, ethical, and honest people who dedicate their lives to the service of humanity, and yet who adamantly claim to have no belief in God. Obviously one can be good without being a Christian. Therefore, being good alone isn't sufficient to make us the salt of the earth.

The next thing that came to mind was that perhaps it's faith that makes us the salt of the earth. Surely belief itself sets us apart from the rest of the world? I'm sure that faith as the criterion might appeal to traditional mainline Protestants, who believe that faith alone can bring about salvation. Or faith might appeal to Catholics who have a heightened sense of the spirituality belonging to faith and devotion. However this too failed to give me a satisfactory answer. There are plenty of faithful Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, even pagans and Wiccans right here in the Austin area. Just having faith by itself doesn't make us the salt of the earth. It puts us in a bigger group of individuals and communities who, as a central tenet, have faith as their defining characteristic.

"There must be something else that I'm missing," I thought. So I considered the lives of the martyrs and mystics. I considered whether it's possible at all to be salt without the supernatural help of God and whether salt might be a possible metaphor for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I even considered that being salt might stand for having the courage to meet every trial, and to face the ultimate threat of ceasing to exist altogether.

Finally I considered love: love in the sense of caritas or agape, the love that is charity, love in deed or action, and I thought that perhaps I had found the definitive answer. Love makes us the salt of the earth, I reasoned, because God is love. It's love that compels us to act in a selfless or altruistic manner. It's love that's the source of mercy and forgiveness; it's love that compelled the martyrs to offer their lives; it's love that St. Paul tells us is the greatest of the three interrelated features of Christian life: faith, hope, and love.

Indeed, perhaps love is the salient difference that makes Christians stand out, that which lets our light shine; but we have to learn to see love in a way that's essentially different from what the culture and world of today tells us is love. Love, without qualification, is pretty common. Our love has to go beyond the ordinary understanding of love. Our love must be countercultural. Jesus tells us that if we love only those who love us there is no reward in it. Love, in its truest sense, is giving sacrificially of oneself and being at the service of justice—of righting the wrongs—as the first reading from Isaiah makes clear: Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and homeless, clothe the naked when you see them. However, see justice not as an obligation but as love. Be willing to do and give beyond all expectation. Be at the service of the common good.

It's important in our modern-day world to note that the features intrinsic to justice, as with goodness, are something that people of other faiths and people of no faith may share with us. Being tolerant of others also belongs to justice. The fact that non-Christians are capable of justice doesn't take away from its salience. Ours is justice that is infused with God's love. It is action that expects nothing in return; it is that which loves its enemies and forgives the worst wrongs done to it.

The imperative to be salt comes with the injunction of not allowing salt to lose its defining feature: that is, we are not to allow Christianity to become diluted or watered down. However, knowledge of the injunction not to allow the salt to lose its savor only places a greater imperative on us. Is the faith we present to the world such that our actions toward the poor and marginal reveal it clearly? Does it give hope where there is little or is it diluted by our being opposed to reason, by superstition or false religiosity, by self-righteousness, or by our having condemning and judgmental attitudes?

Christianity is under the microscope of scrutiny more now than at any other time in history. More now than ever Christians have to be certain that if the world rejects us, it's not because of some evil done on our part. Therefore, the question that every Christian must ask himself or herself is, "In the way that I live my life, am I perceived as being the salt of the earth?"

Rejoice! He Comes Bringing Health and Salvation

This Sunday, the Third Sunday of Advent, is the Sunday we call "Gaudete," which translated from the Latin means "Rejoice." Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say, rejoice. Today is the Sunday that signifies joy, both when we rejoice as we prepare for the coming of Christmas less than two weeks from now, and as we prepare and welcome the Kingdom of God already present in our midst, which will be fulfilled in its entirety when Christ returns in glory in the time when all things are finally complete.

Certainly we feel a heightened sense of excitement about things as we light the rose-colored candle of the Advent wreath and don the rose vestments for one of only two times in the liturgical year. This Sunday's celebration gives us a good opportunity to reflect on what there really is to be all that excited about, other of course than the imminent arrival of Christmas.

In order to meaningfully interpret the readings we have for today, and really any time we study scripture, there are at least two approaches we can take, and always--of course--we should seek the guidance of the Church's teaching. We keep in mind that what we look for is a living and dynamic encounter with the word of God. First, we might attempt to understand or step into the historical situation. What was it that Jesus or the prophets really wanted to impart to their audience at that time? What were the human authors attempting to affirm? Then next we can ask how the scriptures bear relevance to our lives in the world in which we live now? What does God want to reveal to us at the close of the year 2010?

Overall, something that stands out clearly in the readings today, which has the power to transcend history and time, is the theme of transformation. There is a clear prophecy of and fulfillment of transformation. Jesus says, "Go tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news preached to them." The prophecies of Isaiah were being fulfilled. Transformation and the dawn of a new era were beginning. Healing was taking place, as well as a new way of thinking about those who needed it, but not without challenge. We know that Jesus challenged the attitude and beliefs of his contemporaries. His challenge is for us too in our times. I've learned that the message is right when we feel that it makes us question our attitudes and beliefs us in some way. Often I feel challenged myself during my own homily because the message applies to me as well as everyone else.

During the time of Jesus there was a prevalent punishment concept of disease and disability. It was thought that if someone had a disease or disability it was because he or she had sinned, or even because his or her ancestor or ancestors had sinned. We might think that in our enlightened times we have moved far away from this kind of thinking. However, a good bit of modern scholarship has been devoted to understanding the punishment concept of disease in relation to, for example, the AIDS epidemic. Another example is how the word previously used to describe intellectual disability has come to be used as an insensitive insult. Unfortunately, the punishment concept is still with us and sometimes we aren't aware that it remains in our attitudes though not necessarily spoken or even fully realized.

Without a doubt, Jesus came to do away with such notions as the punishment concept of disease. He challenged the attitudes about sin and sickness. It's part of what we rejoice in this Sunday, and certainly the source of joy through the ages, that Jesus really is a savior in that he not only heals us and makes us whole, but he sets us free from the shame and guilt that binds us. Each of us has the opportunity to leave the weight of guilt behind and be reasonable, rational beings who part company with unreasonable and unhealthy ways of thinking.

A good friend of mine recently, actually it was my wife, asked me to consider the possibility that in our times the true miracle in healing, as promised by Jesus, will take place in our attitudes when we encounter people who have disabilities. Rather than seeing them as different or "other" than us, or even as "special," in the healed or transformed world we accept disability as natural. Also our attitudes change in that we don't mind so much adjusting our environment so that people of all levels of ability can be included. Perhaps we will come to see that fair does not always mean equal but that it requires us to go above and beyond the expectations of equality.

As I was growing up, and at a time when I began to seriously consider things of the faith, I came across the idea that salvation has mostly to do with health, or put another way, health is the metaphor for salvation. We're all familiar with the tent revivals where the main attraction is to see people healed by faith. Now certainly the healing ministry of Jesus, even in our times, should not be undervalued, even though we understand salvation as entailing much more than just health. Still, there's a lot of validity for us in our times in understanding health in the context of salvation and as part of the Church's mission. Health is so important that the Catholic bishops speak of healthcare not just as a commodity but as a basic human right that they say is included in "the first right of the human person, the right to life."

From a scriptural point of view, health and healing stand for the kind of transformation that we celebrate in the joy of Gaudete Sunday. It's a sign of mature faith to see salvation as an overall picture of a transformed world in which there is true progress. However, undoubtedly, in our times there are great challenges and obstacles to overcome. Often these obstacles are within us in the form of a particular mindset, attitude, or belief system—especially as it has to do with the way we experience and treat others.

As we move into Christmastime and a new year we have the opportunity not to become distracted but to become intent on healing the wounds of disunity and distrust that abound. More than ever before we are in the place where we may counter the forces of unbelief by embracing joy, healing, forgiveness, transformation, and the progress that forms us into the full, mature, stature of Christ who comes to save the world and make all things new.