Gospel or Baloney?

I'm usually pretty laid-back. I like to diffuse tense situations with humor. But I can definitely get irritated if the things that are really important to me are dissed or misrepresented.

So, here's what happened to me this past week. I was listening to a sermon where the preacher was talking about the prosperity gospel. Don't worry, he was talking about how much he hates it. He showed this video from John Piper, which is a little intense but still pretty on-point about the whole issue. He warned the congregation against being taken in by the prosperity gospel.

Then he went to make a point which, in essence, I agree with (and which I'll talk more about in a minute), but I was actually almost hurt by how he set it up. What he said was that there's a "gospel" on the other end of the spectrum that reacts to the prosperity gospel and insists that all material possessions are bad. This, he said, is especially big among young Christians today, who live in community and voluntary poverty, which seems nice but, and I quote, is "baloney."

For those of you who don't know, I have been profoundly influenced by Shane Claiborne's book The Irresistible Revolution and the ministry of Rutba House/Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Isaiah House, the Pathways program, New Monasticism and more, all of which focus on intentional Christian community; St. Francis, the champion of voluntary poverty, is a personal hero of mine; I have made 3 trips to Christ in the Desert Monastery, where one of the monks' vows is conversion of life, or poverty; and I currently live in a house with 5 other people where we commit to daily prayer, weekly meals, retreats and more (and our house mentors are the folks at Isaiah House).

So I didn't react well to having all of that called "baloney."

Pause. The point this pastor was trying to make was legitimate. Poverty cannot and should not be glorified or romanticized. Those who choose to live simply defeat their purpose if they are self-righteous about it. Not everyone is called to live in a poor neighborhood and make their own clothes. My housemates and I by no means live in poverty--each of us has our own computer, though the fact that we don't have a TV is sometimes a source of pride for me, which is ridiculous, and I need reminders like this to stay humble. I mean, come on, I didn't even wake up for prayer this morning. I have no moral high ground on which to stand.

But in Matthew 19:21, Jesus says to the young ruler, "sell your possessions, and give the money^* to the poor." I hate doing exegesis on this passage. I feel like I either have to compromise the integrity of Jesus' own words or out myself as a complete hypocrite. Mamby-pamby interpretations like "Well, Jesus really just meant that we need to be willing to give up our possessions" just don't do it for me (though I can't unilaterally deny them).

A major reason St. Francis was such a revolutionary character is that he read those words in Matthew and thought he was actually supposed to do what Jesus said. Any good Christian these days knows that's taking things too far. "Baloney," even.

Of course, the church needs rich people. My dad's church in Charlotte is able to do phenomenal missions work thanks to the generosity of a number of wealthy members. But the point of things like the Simple Way (ideally) is that if everyone lived a little more simply, maybe we could distribute wealth more justly. It's like that bumper sticker I see sometimes: "Live simply so that others may simply live."

I genuinely struggle with the question of whether it is sinful to be wealthy. Of course, I'm sitting here on my Macbook wearing a new outfit and zoning out of a graduate course at Duke. I don't have the answers.

I Like the Way It Hurts

Eminem is a figure that has always interested me. He is phenomenally talented, but his life is so broken and full of anger that a lot of the work he does just turns my stomach. My boyfriend has speculated that if Eminem were to use his talents for the good of others, he could do some incredible things--the whole "From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required" (Luke 12:48) thing--but he is bound by the world and his rage.

So the first time I heard his new song "Love the Way You Lie," featuring R&B singer Rihanna, I listened with cautious interest. I love that song. Rihanna's hook is catchy (I've started covering it myself as part of an acoustic mash-up with another chart-topping rap song lately), the beat is solid, and the chord progression, simple as it is, adds an element of longing and regret to the sound.

Of course, some of the song's lyrics make me uncomfortable. "Next time I'm just gonna aim my fist at the drywall." "If she ever tries to ----ing leave again, I'm a tie her to the bed and set this house on fire." Yikes. Save for that last part (the parting line in Eminem's rap before Rihanna closes the song out with the hook again), I even like the words of the song, because it seems to be a raw exposure of the cycle of domestic violence. Rihanna herself was a victim of highly publicized violence from her then-boyfriend Chris Brown and has since become an advocate for women in abusive relationships.

But is the song glorifying domestic violence? This article from the Associated Press thoughtfully treats the question. The song's video debut recently added to the controversy, for in it actors Megan Fox and Dominic Monaghan portray a couple locked in a passionate but violent relationship. (I'm embedding the video at the end of this post--I think it's well done, so check it out.)

The question is, how do young people, especially young women, interpret this song and the accompanying video? Artists and entertainers these days tend to just throw things out there and leave their audience to draw their own conclusions, which may or may not be a good thing. Artists like Lady Gaga and Ke$ha (though Gaga is slowly redeeming herself in my eyes to some extent) drive me crazy because they put out all this music glorifying rampant partying, and although friends have argued with me that they're not taking themselves seriously, the average 15-year-old girl isn't necessarily going to catch onto that even if it is the case.

One thing that AP article pointed out is that a song like "Love the Way You Lie" can do something positive, and that is to encourage young people to talk about the issues it brings up. Perhaps the song is intentionally ambiguous in its message, and if young women have someone they can talk to about such things, the questions the lyrics and imagery bring up can be important starters to conversations about relationships, self-worth and more.

The key is that something like this song must be coupled with discussion and education. Not everyone is going to assume that the relationship depicted is a negative example. This makes me think back to my Old Testament class last year, where we took a hard look at some of the war and violence in the Hebrew Bible and talked through the possibility that some of these images are meant as warnings, not as permission to ride to war in the name of God. But without thoughtful, well-informed conversation on the subject, it would be easy to conclude that the Old Testament essentially condones the use of overwhelming military force to the benefit of God's people.

My plea to parents and other adults who are connected to young people is this: don't dismiss or forbid popular music like this. Kids are going to be listening to and talking about Eminem and Rihanna whether you approve or not. Talk to them about the lyrics and the images. Make them think about what they're saying when they sing along to the radio. Without that corrective thought process, kids are ingraining far more into themselves than they or we realize. We can allow songs like "Love the Way You Lie" to glorify domestic violence or to expose it. We have that power.

El Salvador Compassion Trip: Meeting Karen

My boyfriend recently went to El Salvador to meet a child he has been sponsoring through Compassion International. You can read about his incredible experience here, and the video below captures his meeting and interacting with Karen.

A Child Is Waiting

My boyfriend recently returned from a trip to El Salvador. It's always interesting when people ask what he was doing down there, because it was an unusual trip. Gary went with a group through Compassion International, an organization that does work all over the world. Gary has been sponsoring a young girl named Karen through Compassion for several years now and had been saving money to make the trip down to El Salvador to meet her. He had an incredible experience and is now a bigger Compassion advocate than ever.

I've sponsored Compassion children in the past, usually via my dad. I recently took on a 6-year-old Kenyan girl named Gakii on behalf of the youth group at my church in Durham. Since I'm no longer on staff there, I finally changed my information with Compassion so that I have sole responsibility for sponsoring and writing to Gakii--I want to keep sharing her letters with the youth and telling her what they're up to, but it was just easier to switch things over so I could keep sponsoring her even after I finish seminary. I finally wrote her a letter, the first one in a while, and hopefully will be more consistent about writing to her in the future.

Gary's stories from his trip inspired me, so today I started sponsoring another child, this one in El Salvador. Realizing that the adorable 4-year-olds probably get sponsors more easily than perhaps older children, I looked for a teenager and found one who had been waiting for a sponsor for over 6 months. Cesar is 13 and enjoys singing, soccer and playing a musical instrument. Sounds like a good kid for me, even if I stink at soccer. :) Maybe Gary and I can go to El Salvador together someday.

In addition to Gakii and Cesar, my dad sponsored a child in my name for Christmas. His church, Myers Park UMC in Charlotte, has been very involved in the community of Bayonnais in Haiti--the poorest part of the poorest country in the western hemisphere. One of his church members started the organization World of God, which is sort of a localized version of Compassion. World of God so far establishes sponsorships in Haiti and Liberia, two countries where Myers Park has relationships with churches. I like that approach--the church taking initiative to be more intentionally engaged in a place where they have already established connections. Anyway, Choudeline is my sponsored child from Haiti, and I have been a horrible sponsor and haven't written her yet, so this morning I got myself together and wrote her a letter. It would probably be pretty easy for me to visit Bayonnais, since MPUMC sends groups down there pretty regularly--both my dad and sister have been there.

I'm grateful for the sort of nudging I've gotten towards being more intentional about this means of reaching out. I've been pretty turned inward for quite a while now, and though in many ways I have needed to be that way lately, it's time for me to start moving past myself.

What Would You Do?

Make sure you watch the whole thing. The beginning might make you cynical, but Jesus shows up in the end, in the form of a sometimes-homeless woman.

"Where is your brother?" -- Genesis 4:9

"I have called you by name; you are mine." -- Isaiah 43:1

Wisdom as Relational Justice in Proverbs 22:1-16

Yesterday I turned in my exegesis paper for the second semester of Intro to Old Testament Interpretation with Dr. Stephen Chapman. I actually experienced something like postpartum depression because I had so enjoyed working on this paper all semester. It's 18 pages long with lots of footnotes, so I'll limit this post to a few key excerpts. If you decide you want to read my whole paper (which includes the passage itself), you can link to the PDF on my Duke webspace here.


Introduction/Thesis:
"Proverbs 22:1—16 includes sayings on various subjects, all of which inform an understanding of wisdom not as an intellectual inclination but as a commitment to living out discerning and just relationships in light of Israel’s status as God’s chosen people. Statements on poverty and wealth begin and end the passage, framing a sustained call to interpersonal, relational justice. Although the aphorisms on poverty, wealth, discipline and generosity may on the surface appear to be aimed at reinforcing an unequal status quo, when understood in its cultural and canonical context, this passage carries an ethical imperative that shapes a definition of justice as relational, personal and distributive."

A Killer Quote:
From J. K. Nyerere's Man and Development on Proverbs 22:2 ("The rich and the poor have this in common: the LORD is the maker of them all."): "At this time in man’s history, it must imply a divine discontent and a determination for change. For the present condition of men must be unacceptable to all who think of an individual person as a unique creation of a living God. We say man was created in the image of God. I refuse to imagine a God who is poor, ignorant, superstitious, fearful, oppressed, wretched—which is the lot of the majority of those He created in his own image. Men are creators of themselves and their conditions, but under present conditions we are creatures, not of God, but of our fellow men."

Theological Reflection (Paragraph on Charity and Justice):
"There are two words in Hebrew that can be translated as 'justice,' משפט (mishpat) and צדקה (tzedakah). Neither is found in 22:1—16, but the ideas embedded in the language inform the theology of this passage nonetheless. In his book The Dignity of Difference, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks meditates on the distinction between these two terms: 'Mishpat means retributive justice or the rule of law. ...Tzedakah, by contrast, refers to distributive justice.' Tzedakah does not have a direct synonym in English; Sacks explains that this word contains the ideas of both charity and justice—two terms that are translated separately and therefore perceived as being mutually exclusive in both Latin (iustitia and caritas) and English. When [David J.] Pleins claims [in The Social Visions of the Hebrew Bible], 'Proverbs rarely moves beyond charity,' he is interpreting through a lens that is tempered by his temporal and linguistic location, a lens that is incongruous with ancient Israelite ideas of justice."

Take Advantage of Me

Every Sunday, I take the exit off the highway towards my church, and at the stoplight, there is always at least one man either panhandling or selling newspapers. I rarely have cash, so I don't often give them money or buy a paper, but the sight challenges me every time. I've talked to many people, both Christian and not, who have various rationales for whether or not they should give money to panhandlers. I think the argument that fascinates me most is that you don't want to be taken advantage of—that you want to make sure your money goes to good use.

Lately, I've been wondering if maybe we are called to be taken advantage of by others. I don't know exactly where he says this, but Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor-theologian who died in a Nazi concentration camp and is a personal hero of mine, said that this is the case. He said that we serve a God who allowed himself to be taken advantage of to the point of being crucified, and, as people living in the shadow of the cross, we should not cling to our pride so much that we fail to participate in the crucifixion by taking up our own cross.

This has come up for me a lot lately because I've gotten myself into some situations and relationships where I sometimes wonder if I should feel taken advantage of. Last summer, I taught music at a new kids' program at my church, and I formed bonds with several of the children that lasted past the summer, particularly with a few who live near me. One brother-sister combo who went to the camp live in a challenging home situation and have begun to look to me for all kinds of support. Most recently, this has meant that several times in the past few weeks I have been woken up around 7 a.m. by a phone call from my 12-year-old friend asking for a ride to school because she missed her bus. More than once, when I've dragged myself out of bed to go pick her up, one or more of her 6 siblings has also begged a ride.

Something in me starts to resent the early-morning phone calls and the gas I'm using driving these kids to school, but I can't quite feel that way. For one thing, I can see a tendency of the haves to exercise power over the have-nots, even—and especially—when the haves do something good for the have-nots. Good deeds might be done out of a selfless desire to follow Christ, but if we are frustrated when we don't see gratitude or when handouts aren't used "correctly," we have moved from serving to controlling. When we dictate the terms of our justice and charity, it becomes simply another means of maintaining the status quo and socioeconomic inequality.

I'm 21 years old and I have my own car. I attend one of the most prestigious universities in the country. My parents love me and continue to support me financially and otherwise. I can't pride myself in having these things that others don't; and, in fact, I believe that I am obligated as a Christian to share my various forms of wealth with others without micromanaging the ways in which that plays out. As long as I live in a society that makes a 12-year-old immigrant girl one of the downtrodden, I will get out of bed at 7 in the morning to drive that girl to school.

I Pray for You, You Pray for Me

Today I had a jarring but bittersweet experience. I met a man named Paul who had come to Asbury Temple to get food. He started talking to me while he was waiting for Julius to bag his groceries. He told me that he was bipolar, that his mother had died two weeks ago, and that he just wanted to die himself. A lot of what he said was incoherent, and honestly I was terrified because I didn't know how to respond, but something calmed my heart and allowed me simply to listen to Paul as he rambled.

I didn't actually find out his name until the end of our conversation because he wouldn't tell me at first because he doesn't trust people. I told him I only wanted to know so that I could pray for him, and he started crying. Finally I learned that his name was Paul, and as I left to go back upstairs, I told him I'd be praying for him, and I asked if he would pray for me. That made him cry again, but by then it seemed that he was in a better place, and as I left I heard him excitedly telling Julius that I had asked him to pray for me and that he was going to do so.

I can't remember where I learned to do that, or if it was even something I learned and not just the Spirit moving, but I somehow doubt Paul has ever been asked to pray for someone. I suspect prayers are often offered for him, but never solicited from him. I also suspect there's something empowering and meaningful about being given the responsibility of praying for someone. So...yeah. It's like in the song "I Need You to Survive": "I pray for you / You pray for me / I love you / I need you to survive." I pray for you, you pray for me. Only in this way can we be made whole.

Thank you, Captain Obvious

I recently had a blog post on Theolog, Christian Century's blog, that was a shorter version of my post on 10/25. One thing I learned through the comments I received (and they came from a variety of people and opinions) is that a lot of people think that it is obvious that (in this example) homosexuality is wrong, or, conversely, that it is obvious that homosexuality is fine. What happens is that you get arguments over full inclusion, ordination and marriage rights among people whose basic assumptions about the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality itself are sharply at odds.

On many issues, though not on the question of homosexuality, I am often one of those people who presumes that certain tenets of the faith are self-evident. A lot of this comes about because I have grown up in the church and am—in some cases, but not all—more familiar with the scriptural and/or theological arguments surrounding an issue than your average person. Once I got to college, I started learning that this tendency towards the obvious is not always helpful. Suddenly I was around intelligent Christians who thought that certain things about faith were perfectly obvious—things about which I thought in polar opposite terms, which I, too, thought were obvious.

One of my friends supports the death penalty from a Christian perspective and claims that its use preserves the right to life. Just hearing this makes my head spin because it seems like such a blatant internal contradiction. However, my friend thinks his reasoning is perfectly sound, and when I counter his point, it's not as if it's the first time he's thought about it from a different perspective—he's heard similar views before, he's thought about it before. I will maintain that his argument is inconsistent, but if I am not careful about how I approach the argument, I shut off all further debate, which seems to me to be ultimately unhelpful.

What this calls for, I think, is a certain level of intellectual generosity—something, I admit, I'm not very good at practicing. Especially on the issue of homosexuality, plenty of people have thought long and hard about it and crafted scripturally based arguments that end up being utterly divergent in many cases. One does not have to relinquish one's own position in order to seek to understand another point of view, and one does not have to agree with the other person, but as Christians I believe it is important that even—and especially—when we hold to seeming extremes of interpretation, we cannot do so without allowing space for the other side to articulate its points, even if we think their ideas ludicrous.

The heart of the Gospel is not that we need to prove ourselves right in opposition to all those who are wrong. I am by no means calling for a wishy-washy universality or relativity of belief (heaven forbid); I am not saying that some things are not ultimately right, because some things are. The Trinity, Christ's death and resurrection, Christ's divinity and humanity—these things, and other dogma outlined in the Nicene Creed, are non-negotiable. However, where it concerns the adiaphora of the Christian faith, we must be able to understand, if not necessarily embrace, other points of view—or risk the fragmentation of Christ's body, the Church.

No One Is Beyond Redemption

This article was first published in Religio: An Undergraduate Journal of Christian Thought at Duke, in April 2007.

The United Methodist Church, of which I am a part, has stood against the death penalty for over 50 years. Many other denominations take a similar stance. American Christians especially must grapple with this issue because the U.S. is one of few developed countries that has retained the death penalty over the years. As the modern world has advanced, the overwhelming trend among industrialized nations has been to abolish the death penalty. Capital punishment is not practiced anywhere in Western Europe; in fact, this is a prerequisite to membership in the European Union. The company that America keeps in its use of capital punishment is less than flattering: other nations with high rates of execution include Iran, Iraq, Sudan, China, and Pakistan, countries whose human rights records are not among their best qualities.

The demographics of those against whom capital punishment is used in America evince a disturbing trend. A huge percentage of convictions are handed down to defendants who could not afford an attorney, and a majority of death row inmates are people of color. In 80% of capital cases, the victim is white, but only half of homicide cases nationwide involve white victims. Amnesty International's website summarizes this in a damning statement: "From initial charging decisions to plea bargaining to jury sentencing, African-Americans are treated more harshly when they are defendants, and their lives are accorded less value when they are victims" (www.amnestyusa.org). The fact that the people who are executed for crimes in this country are those who are already marginalized by society evinces the ease with which one can dehumanize criminals and distance oneself from the humanity of the accused.

Much time and energy has been spent on finding more humane ways of carrying out executions. Regardless of the extent to which certain methods of execution may or may not be "humane," the death penalty is an incontrovertibly violent act. Violence entails doing bodily harm to another person, and I can think of no bodily harm more permanent than death. One does not need the example of Eduard Delacroix's grisly death in the movie The Green Mile, or the real life example of Angel Nieves Diaz, whose 2006 execution in Florida took over half an hour, to recognize the face of violence in the death penalty. The danger that emerges here is one that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized well when he pointed out that "returning violence for violence multiplies violence" (Nobel Speech 1964). Peter Storey, a Methodist bishop in South Africa who helped lead the nation's protest against apartheid, made a similar observation: "If you justify violence for any reason, no matter how good and noble, you legitimize it for every reason, no matter how wrong and unworthy" (With God in the Crucible, Abingdon 2002). Both King and Storey had seen what violence had done to tear their countries to shreds and had heard the good news that with Christ lies the way of peace and reconciliation, a path not taken when recourse to violence, including the death penalty, is taken.

To support capital punishment is to say that some people are beyond redemption. This was not what Jesus declared when he stretched his arms out on the cross in an eternal gesture of welcome and forgiveness. This was not what Paul was telling the early Christians when he said, "while we still were sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Jesus was a victim of the death penalty, and he was flanked on each side by criminals being put to death. To the thief who cried, "Jesus, remember me," he responded, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:42-43). Who is this Savior who hangs next to sinners and tells them the gates of heaven are open wide to them, even as they endure state-mandated execution for crimes they willfully committed? This is the Savior we address thus: "Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace" (Book of Common Prayer). Christ's death and resurrection declares loudly that no one is beyond redemption, and the death penalty flies flagrantly in the face of this unconditional, forgiving love.

Capital punishment seeks to establish a system of justice, but it is enslaved to the concept of retributive justice. The famed Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa explains the difference between retributive and restorative justice eloquently in his book No Future Without Forgiveness as exemplified in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission held in post-apartheid South Africa. Archbishop Tutu writes that retributive justice, "whose chief goal is to be punitive...has little consideration for the real victims and almost none for the perpetrator. We contend that there is another kind of justice, restorative justice...the central concern is the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships, a seeking to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator" (No Future Without Forgiveness, Doubleday 1999). Tutu says that this approach looks at a crime as something personal, "something that has happened to persons and whose consequence is a rupture in relationships." In the legal workings of capital punishment cases, the perpetrator is the accused and the wronged party is the state. In actuality, it is all of us, including the perpetrator, who experience the crime as a tear in the fabric of humanity. The American justice system does not acknowledge this and provides the victims' families—not to mention the perpetrator's loved ones—little space for healing. Our legal system sees only the transgression of laws, not the rending of human hearts.

Christ came not so that everyone might get what they deserve in an "eye for an eye" system of justice. Christ came "that they may all be one" (John 17:21). Christ died and rose again that broken relationships might be healed and that all might be reconciled with God and with one another. To resort to the death penalty is to make permanent the damage done to human relationships in a violent act, first in the initial crime and again in the perpetrator's trial and execution. To say that the death penalty is the only option is to abandon hope that we, the body of Christ, broken and bruised, may one day be made whole. We as Christians need to believe that we are promised more than the suffering we now experience and to recognize that in our ability to forgive and to live in peace with one another lies God's greatest dream for us, his most beautiful creation.

A Peculiar Means of Grace (revised from an earlier post)

Since October 2006, I have been engaged in one of the most interesting and transformative ministries I have yet to encounter. For almost a year now, I have been corresponding regularly with William Barnes ("Tim"), prisoner #0020590 at Central Prison in Raleigh, NC. Tim is on Death Row for the 1990 murder of two people.

As I have gotten to know Tim through his letters, he has become a unique source for information, questions, and challenges to my life. Tim converted to Islam while in prison and we converse often about religion and spirituality. Tim is not afraid to share his faith or to ask pointed questions about mine. Once he asked how Jesus could be born of Mary and also have in him the fullness of God. Tim couldn’t make sense of this, and it became my task to explain the Christian belief in the humanity and divinity of Christ. Tim challenges me to articulate my beliefs in very basic terms. As a student of religious studies, I am so used to inhabiting conversation space where words like "eschatological" and "soteriology" are second nature that to have to delineate the fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith is not only humbling but also a reminder that communication and debate in the interfaith community is important, difficult, and requires practice.

One of my friends who is in seminary tells about his friendship with a Muslim graduate student. My friend was working in the library when his friend poked his head in the door and then turned to leave when he saw the room was occupied. When he realized he knew the person in there, he came back, nodded a greeting, then laid out his prayer rug and proceeded to pray. My friend was struck by the fact that this man felt comfortable openly practicing his faith in the presence of a Christian, and he wondered what he would have done had he been seeking a place to pray and had seen his Muslim friend in the room. For my friend, this man became a means of grace as the act of performing a spiritual discipline led him to reevaluate his own practices.

For me, Tim is also a peculiar means of grace. He ends every letter saying that he will pray for me and signs it "God bless, Tim." To know that a man in prison facing no escape but death is praying for me lends a great deal of perspective to how and for what I pray. Tim often quotes the writings of Muslim imams, talks about Ramadan during that season, and asks me questions about my own spiritual disciplines when describing his own. How often do I pray? How often do I fast? In a way, I've found that Tim's curiosity and candor have become a greater source of accountability even than some of the Christian communities of which I am a part.

When I agreed to write to a death row inmate, I knew it would be a unique experience. It has done all the things I thought it would: it has helped me get to know someone from a completely different sector of society, given me another perspective on the justice system, and challenged me to work for an alternative to the death penalty and to explore avenues of restorative justice rather than the punitive justice with which our country is so familiar. However, I did not expect my faith to be revitalized by conversation with a Muslim prisoner, and I do believe that Tim has been a means of grace in my life as a Christian.

The Green Mile Seems So Long

Tonight I watched the movie The Green Mile on TV with my family. That film (and the book that inspired it—it's by Stephen King and I would definitely recommend the print version) is so saturated with emotion and difficult questions, and every time I watch it, something different latches onto my heart like a vise and twists until I hash it out. This time, the image of the guards on E Block tidying up the main room to prepare for an execution stuck with me. Watching them sweep the floors, set out folding chairs, and polish the one chair no one wants to sit in—but in which someone will have to sit—put me in mind of preparations being made for a show to be put on stage. I was appalled to watch the execution scenes as women in big hats and fancy dresses fanned themselves and their generally less well-dressed husbands as they calmly waited to watch another human being die. It was as if I had been transported back not to 1935 but to the 12th century and was watching as curious spectators gathered to witness a hanging.

Going along with that, I was struck by the things the people in the crowd had to say to the man being led to his death—struck not only by the nature of the comments but also by the familiar ring they brought to my ears, so used to being regaled with people's gallant declarations of support for the death penalty. I'll leave the actual issue to discuss another time; what I want to look at now is whatever it is in our human nature that makes the darkest parts of us well up at certain times.

The other day, I watched a video clip of Ann Coulter on a talk show. The day before, she had made a comment about John Edwards, and on this particular education, the audience was surprised to hear none other than Elizabeth Edwards' voice coming in over the line to speak to Coulter. Edwards was well-spoken, kept her composure very admirably, and had a very good point—namely, that Coulter's tendency to use personal attacks, often of a disturbingly cruel nature, on political candidates does nothing but paralyze actual debate over issues. I cheered Edwards on and scowled as Coulter rudely interrupted her (I don't care who you are, interrupting someone who's trying to make a sincere point is rude, and Coulter reigns supreme in that very activity), but I became extremely irked when the talk show host asked why Coulter felt it necessary to make fun of Hillary Clinton's and Monica Lewinsky's chubbiness in her book. Coulter stubbornly refused to answer the question unless he could produce the exact passage and give her the context; his response was that he himself was wondering what on earth the context could be. Certainly comments about Clinton's chubby legs have no place in political debate, but I found myself, someone who is none to comfortable with her own weight, muttering something bitter and terribly unkind about how skinny Ann Coulter is. At this point, I was engaged in a conversation about the subject with my father, who pointed out to me that I had just done the very same thing Coulter had done; I had made a personal attack, and the fact that I am sensitive about slights on people packing a little extra weight gives me no right to disparage those who are thin. Coulter, with her attitude of negativity, had appealed to my dark side and brought it out in full force.

I wonder if that very same thing were not happening at those fictional executions in The Green Mile, if that does not happen at executions today. When confronted with a person who murdered a friend or relative, who could honestly hope to keep the angry, primitive side of them from lashing out, as one character in the movie did, by shouting to "kill him twice, go on and kill him twice"? Darkness, grief, and evil breed their own. Perhaps that is why I was told again and again as I entered college to surround myself with good people. It was not in order to insulate myself from bad influences but to give the good in me a chance to be nurtured and encouraged, so that when I was faced with darkness in all its forms, I could enter into that situation without fear of being consumed by it, with the hope of consuming it with the love in which I had been growing. That is, after all, what Christian community is supposed to do; never to cut us off from the rest of the world, but to give us the strength and love necessary to go into the world and wrestle its demons without having to pretend we can do it alone. Alone, we succumb to the temptations of the world; as a community of people in communion with God, we can shed light even in the darkest places.

The question then becomes how to communicate this conviction, this hope, to the people who would sit on the front row in an execution chamber and shout, "kill him twice!" Oftentimes when I express my views about capital punishment, people respond with utmost confidence that if a member of my family were murdered, I would support the death penalty. But...no, I would not. Again, I'll save that whole discussion for another time, but for now, I will say that I at least would never want to watch anyone die, criminal or no—and aren't we all sinners, aren't we all murderers according to Jesus himself who said that he who is angry with his brother merits the same punishment as one who kills his brother (Matthew 5:21-22)?—and looking in the face of someone who had taken someone I loved and watching them die would bring me nothing resembling satisfaction. I wish I knew a way to communicate to those who believe that such a circumstance would bring them peace that there is a better way, a way of love and forgiveness...even now. To cry out for the death of another human being is to commit the murder, and it will not be an earthly government before which you or I will stand trial for such an act.

The Fast I Choose

Welcome to the first post in my new blog. I don't have a terribly clear vision of what I want to do with this, but I have some vague inkling that I'd like to make it a space where I can explore and hash out how I and others in the church are doing theology and what impact it (necessarily) has on individual lives, communities, congregations, and the world. Ideally, it would be nice to have a place to reflect upon, make connections regarding, and garner support for various endeavors in social justice amid which I may find myself, and find myself wanting company. I've updated a LiveJournal nearly daily for over 4 years now, and I feel like it's time I carved out a spot in cyberspace where I'm doing something more and vastly better than whining about my personal life. Besides, writing is in my marrow, and if I hope to use it to establish and carry out orthodoxy and orthopraxis in my life and in the communities with which I identify myself, I figure I had better get some practice other than writing papers for school and recounting the day's events with sometimes overwhelming verbosity.

I felt the need to come up with a clever name for my blog, and who knows if I'll stick with the one I chose, but in a way it works because it's Scripture and it's all about social justice. Here's the context, in case you don't run in my particular faith circles and didn't catch it:

"Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
⁷Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?" — Isaiah 58:6-7

The preceding verses show that although the house of Jacob may fast and "lie in sackcloth and ashes" (v. 5), God says to his people, "[you] oppress all your workers" (v. 3) and perpetrate injustice against others. God will not hear the cries of a people who mistreat their brothers and sisters so. In the book of Amos, God declares that unless justice is carried out, he will not even hear their praise and worship:

"I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
²²Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
²³Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
²⁴But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." — Amos 5:21-24

All of this is stuff that the good liberal Christian knows. However, I am aware of the subtle ways in which the most sincere efforts to pursue justice can fall short of God's vision for his fallen world. It is so easy to become an activist, to protest injustice everywhere, to raise a much-needed voice against oppression in all its insidious forms. But Stanley Hauerwas and others warn that it is possible for the church to get so wrapped up in standing against something—whether it is standing against war, against poverty, against homosexuality, against immorality, or any number of things—that she forgets what she is standing for. The church stands at the foot of the cross for the sake of all of God's children whom he longs to come to know him through relationship and community, which the church is meant to establish as mirrored in God's very nature as Trinity, three in one, a self-contained community of unconditional love.

So that's a handful of scattered thoughts posing as an introduction to this blog. Please to enjoy—or not, and either way, comments are encouraged. Also, the list of websites I've posted includes all kinds of resources: church websites, social justice initiatives, various nonprofit organizations, intentional communities, Christian publications, and some links of my own dealing with my music or projects with which I am involved. I'll be updating that list occasionally, so keep checking it out—you may find something of interest.