Muslims and Obama: Thoughts on the Current Issues

If you have any contact with society I'm sure that you have heard about President Obama's thoughts on the Muslim community building an Islamic center around "ground zero" in New York. I have heard a lot of people outraged at this action and the fact that the President does not condemn this is causing even more problems and anger. I understand why many people do not like this idea -- Islam has been linked with 9/11, the terrorism, and the loss of loved ones, partly because the hijackers were Muslim extremists -- because if Islam is really responsible for that horrible act (I do not believe that Islam is to blame, just a few of the extremists) than putting an Islamic center or Mosque anywhere close to it, is a slap to the face for all the people who were there, lost someone they loved, or felt like it was an attack on all that we hold close to our hearts. Unfortunately the media and just our fear of cultures that we do not understand has caused a divide between Muslims and Westerns (which by the way there are many Western Muslims). People now see every person of Arab decent as a Muslim and terrorist just waiting for the opportunity to strike. I hope that down the road our ignorance about Islam and people of other cultures will become less prominent in our society as sexism, racism, etc. have kind of gone into the background of our history.

I however am on the side of the President: I think that an Islamic center is actually a step in a positive direction for our country. The third article of the Bill of Rights protects the freedom of religion for everyone, not just Christianity. Many people think that Muslims are scary, dangerous people that only live to hurt anyone not Muslim, when in fact many Muslims are very nice, peaceful people who only want to live a good life and go to heaven. Our society is plagued with this fear of Muslims that is simply unwarranted, especially today when we are supposed to more accepting than we were even 100 years ago. We cannot move past that fear until we begin to act against it and I think that President Obama is thinking in the right direction by not stopping any construction of an Islamic center by ground zero. If we limit their religious freedom we are no better than the extremists that do the same thing.

"Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear." - Bertrand Russell

Violent Jesus and the Robber's Den pt. 1

For those of you that follow my blog, I wrote on peace and violence a while back (click here to read the post that started the series). During that four part series a few questions were raised: God's "violence" in the First Testament, Jesus mostly nonviolence, etc. Since then, I have been trying to work through those issues with friends and mentors, and although I do not have all the answers I would like to propose my own thoughts on Jesus' nonviolence. Whenever I push nonviolence as a means to fight evil, as Jesus did, someone usually says, "What about that scene in the Temple, he didn't seem very nonviolent there" referring to what we call "the Temple cleansing" passage in Matt. 21:12-14, Mark 11:16-18, and Luke 19:45-47.

When looking at these passages I asked a few questions: What is the context and why did the author choose to put this story where he did? What did Jesus and his contemporaries think of his actions? Can we take this story at face value or is there some deeper meaning? Do we simply use this proof-text as a way to justify "righteous anger", not selling things at church, or to say that Jesus really was violent? Finally, if Jesus was violent in his message why is this the only violent recording of his life?

I am sure there are more questions, but those are the ones that I think about when the church tells me their different responses to the passages stated above. I am not satisfied with what I have been told and so I feel compelled to respond to those questions and I challenge you as you read through this blog and hopefully through the passages in question that you will come up with some questions of your own and that you will not be afraid to ask them, nor be afraid of the answers you might receive.

I started out with the intention of answering these questions in one blog, but I realize now that it will be far to long for me to do that and for the sake of mine and your sanity, I will break these questions up into a few manageable portions over the next week or two.

Great Friends

Drops of joy form these tears, comforting words blanket fears.
The life we know must now shift, as it passes I'm left to drift.
I do not float silent and alone, there are many friendships I have sown.
I see a wave moving fast, I pray that it will go right past,
because I fear it's awesome might, I cannot move or take flight.
I hold fast to what I've sown, remembering how far we've grown,
and as we are pushed away, I know that there will come a day,
when we enjoy newer things, and anticipate what tomorrow brings.
The shore is now in sight, I can see it from the pale moon light,
and on its beach we all will stand, embracing each other on dry land.
Let us now not be sad, for time that we could not add,
smiling on our adventures past, and enjoying what will always last.
Here's to my great friends, remembering what never ends!

Re-framing Peace pt. 4

Jesus message worked, although not in the way the people wanted with peace instead of violence, to deal with evil, and we can learn a whole lot if we follow that framing story instead of our own...

Jesus entire kingdom message was/is counter intuitive. Instead of Jesus "picking up a sword" and fighting (which is what some read when they read Revelation, but is what I believe to be an inaccurate reading of that text), he told Peter to put down his sword, he talked about blessing peacemakers, he said things like if his kingdom was was of this world that his followers would fight to protect him, etc. Jesus sounds like a wimp, or at least his contemporaries would have thought so, and I think that we must think so too, because we still insist on using violence to solve our problems. The real problem is that following Jesus creates a sort of cognitive dissonance with living in the world, or by the worlds means.

The kingdom of this world tells us that violence is a form of power and that if we do not have the power then someone else does and they can use that power against us. That is why we think that our way of doing things is the only way to do things. It seems that more and more, Christians are rejecting the kingdom of God for the kingdom of this world. We end up boiling Jesus message down to a ticket to a disembodied existence somewhere away from the world.

Through all of these posts on re-framing peace, objections have been raised about both peace in the Hebrew Scriptures, and about peace in Jesus own life (usually based on the "temple cleansing" passage, which has more to say than what we place at its face value). If we want to know more of God's character, we need look no further than in the incarnate, God became man, so that the powers of this world would not have the power. What appears to be weak is actually strong enough to defeat evil at its worst. If God did not fight true evil with violence, then why do we need to fight perceived evil? God always wins, not through violence, but through peace.

To understand what our role in peace is, perhaps we should re-frame what we define as peace and how we reach that, when Jesus re-framed what Messiah-ship looked like to the first century, so too did he re-frame what it means to be in him. Let us live in him, and let his ways overcome the way of the world. Let Peace overcome violence in all respects, that we may be as we are called to be and not be of the world.

I'm a Social Justice Christian because...

I came across an interesting video on Brian McLaren's blog today that deals with issues that I have been discussing with friends for a while and in my Sociology class while working on my undergrad. You can watch this video and Brian's response here. I feel that I need to respond to, so here is my response:

I'm a Social Justice Christian because I believe that the Gospel is more than just my individual salvation.

I'm a Social Justice Christian because Jesus said that whatever we do to the least of these, we do to him.

I'm a Social Justice Christian because God loves everyone.

I'm a Social Justice Christian because we are all created equal.

I'm a Social Justice Christian because discrimination of all kinds to more harm than good.

I'm a Social Justice Christian because I believe in the hope of resurrection.

If you are a Social Justice Christian too, I would like to know why?

Resurrecting Easter Hope

Over the last few weeks I have heard people talking about loved ones that have died, some of whom have died recently. My heart goes out to those people because it is very difficult to lose people that have been so very close to them. What does someone say to someone that has just lost a loved one? This is what I heard: "They are in a better place", "They are happier", "They no are no longer suffering". Hearing all this made me think about what hope we have in the future. It is funny that we can find the answer in the Easter narrative, yet it is less celebrated than Christmas, there is no season only one week, but even then we really only talk about the last day, which is supposed to be about resurrection, but that is a difficult topic so we just talk about Jesus' death, again. Do not get me wrong, his death is important, but why talk about such a depressing topic, when his life is so much more interesting?!

It seems to me that we tend to stop at Jesus' death even on the day that is about his resurrection. I think the reason is partly because dead people are supposed to stay dead. Even in the traditional view, if all Jesus did was "die for our sins" then we are still living in sin because death was not defeated. Now that we know that Easter is more than just Jesus' death, what do we do now? If Easter is not about my own personal salvation as we have been taught, then what is the point? In order to understand this question we need to start at the beginning and work our way forward.

Genesis talks about how God created the creation and said that it was good. He then created humans, in his image, to take care of the creation and help keep things in order, but what happens when that part of creation messes up, who do you turn to then? The answer is the Creator, but instead of just fixing the problem by himself, he entrusts his creation, created in his image to restore the "natural order" of things. He then calls a group of people to fulfill the responsibility of renewal, but they fail over and over again, finally he takes matters into his own hands and becomes human so that his image bearing creation can at last do what they were intended to do, and save the creation, restoring the goodness that it had begun with. This act was greater than personal salvation, it was a counter imperial, counter sinful, and counter deadly; it required actions along with a change in mindset and ideology. This is where Jesus' death comes in because by allowing death to exhaust its full power on Israel's representative, it no longer had a hold on Israel and thus on the creation as a whole. The Creator did not just stop there by showing the world the first step of a two step dance. He ushered in the second step, resurrection, again using his image bearing creation. Resurrection is about new creation, the Creator working with and in his creation to restore the beauty that once was, heaven has begun to come to earth and we are part of that transaction.

One thing I have noticed is that our eschatology (our view of end times) has a huge impact on how we view the present. If we truly believed the Easter message, then we would be acting in a very different way today. If we read Luke and Acts together as one act we can see this happening. Luke talks about Jesus' life, setting the stage for what the new creation will look like and giving his follows instructions on how to start living the new creation at the right time, through his death and resurrection. Act picks up there, showing the first century church living the new creation way to help renew all of creation, and setting a pattern to what this should look like down the road, but sadly many of us have lost view of new creation and have watered the gospel down into a personal escape instead of a collective renewal. It is a sad experience when someone dies, but instead of focusing on that person's death as a "happy escape", it should be a somber reminder that creation is not fully renewed yet, and that we should continue to bring that new creation to the forefront so that death does not have the final say, but that the Creator does through his renewing and empowering spirit.

If we believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and is not still in the grave, our life should be transformed to live accordingly. May our Easter hope inspire us to help bring heaven to earth and create a true Easter season!

Re-framing Peace pt. 3

Once we re-frame the Hebrew Scriptures it is time to re-frame the New Testament thought...

My last post, which has generated quite a few responses through my Facebook post, has prompted me to open up this post with a response that I had to a friend of mine. If you have not yet, you can read my last post and the responses here. As I see it if we are to understand God, the Bible, and our role in this life, we need to understand what the Bible says about those issues, and we need to wrestle with these issues, particularly the options that I am bringing up about God's character through out the Bible:

Option one the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is a different one than we see in the New Testament or...

option two God is the same and did not change and if that is the case then what do we do with the differences in let's say Amos vs Matthew, God is violent in the Hebrew Scriptures yet Jesus is non-violent in the New Testament.

For me I do not believe that God has changed and since Jesus is the incarnation of God and the one whom Christians are supposed to follow then he cannot be violent (ie kill other people)...Whether or not the violence in the Hebrew Scripture is actually God telling them to do this or if it is the author's interpretation does not change the fact that the New Testament authors interpreted it in a certain way and saw their world as a continuation of that narrative.

The New Testament authors were living in a time that was full of violence. The Romans used violence to show how strong they were, any time opposition arose, they would be squash in a violent way, mainly crucifixion, as a violent reminder that the Romans had the power, not the Jews. When the Jews read in the Hebrew Scriptures that they were supposed to be God's chosen people, then why were they still living in exile? The Messiah was supposed to overthrow the oppressors and restore Israel in the promised land; at the time many believed that only violence would bring peace, which given their history of would-be messiahs failing miserably through their violent revolts, should have been obvious that another would not work.

The first century Bible authors were brought up in this world kingdom. They were trying to fight the kingdom of this world using what their framing narrative had taught them, violence shows power, overthrow the oppressors with violence and you have the power (the same kind of Ideology that we have been using for years). Jesus came as a re-framed Messiah preaching a re-framed way to overthrow the oppressors, which was not taken positively by those who thought that their framing narrative worked and would work.

Jesus message worked, although not in the way the people wanted with peace instead of violence, to deal with evil, and we can learn a whole lot if we follow that framing story instead of our own...

Re-framing Peace pt. 2

Recently I was discussing with a friend the concept of war/violence with regard to peace and he asked me if there was war in the Bible and I said that there was, but that too needs to be re-framed. When we view the Bible, generally people split it into two parts with the first part being referred to as the Old Testament and the second part being referred to as the New Testament. This in turn causes some issues, because it means that we can ignore the Old Testament, except when it suites our purposes such as thoughts on war and God being violent and allows us to focus on the New Testament, except when it talks about peace and nonviolence, in which case we just skim over those passages until we read something that we want. Of coarse this is not the proper way to look at Scripture, because it is meant to be read from beginning to end; only by reading the Old Testament or as I prefer the Hebrew Scriptures, first can we begin to understand what the New Testament authors were thinking about when they wrote. Let's face it, they did not have the New Testament only the Hebrew Scriptures, so doesn't it make sense that we should start there and work our way forward?

When it comes to war/violence in the Bible we look at the Hebrew Scriptures particularly the parts talking about Israel being led by God to destroy the opposing nations and take the promised land by force, kind of like what the British did when they came to America. Again this is about framing and sense Israel was an oral community, meaning that they mainly used stories to talk about their history instead of writing it down, they would have to tell their history in a way that could not be forgotten easily. I believe that Israel framed their violence around God, saying that he was on their side, so they would be blessed by their violent actions. This may be difficult for many to hear because in our culture we place them, the Hebrews and the Bible authors, on a high pedestal, making them more god like and less human just because they are in the Bible. This is the way our framing looks at sacred objects, but I believe to truly understand them in their context we need to re-frame them to be fully human.

Granted someone will read this and ask me then if I believe the Bible is authoritative and inspired by God (which to be honest is a frustrating question to ask because no answer I can give will satisfy and nothing will be gained by our dialogue)? My answer would be yes, and even though I have re-framed the people in the Bible as human does not change the fact that the entire Bible is a narrative about a creator God who works within creation to bring about its renewal. The Hebrews were human and as such they were emotional, just as we are emotional. In order to make it appear that God was with them when they used violence against another nation all they had to say was that when they won that God had given them the victory and when they lost they could either say that they or someone among them was sinning and that is why they lost. It is easy to get lost in the details of such a narrative and see phrases like "God was with them" or "God ordered" etc. and miss the over all theme that starts back in Genesis and is continually weaving its way through the story as a cloth maker uses the loom to bring together all the pieces of string and make a whole fabric image. This type of view can be framed within a kingdom or imperial type mindset.

Once we re-frame the Hebrew Scriptures it is time to re-frame the New Testament thought...

Re-framing Peace pt. 1

People fascinate me, which is good because I got a degree that deals with people. One reason that I both enjoy and am frustrated with people is how we frame things. Let me explain this concept briefly: framing is essentially how we see the world and the people, places, and events within it. Generally no one has the same framing view as another person, your framing view is your own will continue to be shaped through your entire life, generally reaching it's climax view in your mid to late twenties, and only small tweaks of refinement after that. Our framing view starts at birth and is influenced by where we life, what we look like, our family's beliefs and values, and many different events that take place during your development (ie if you were born into slavery or elitism). The top 3 influences of our view are #1 family, #2 friends, and #3 religion, with 2 and 3 switching depending on what kind of family you were born into.

Part of the joys of watching people is that we share a lot in common with Transformers, that is that there is more that meets the eye. People generally know this but in a very broad sense. I came to understand this concept in a deeper way through my work on my Undergrad Degree. A few of my friends have talked about re-framing our view in order to understand others, and so a few years ago I began to do that, which has caused some controversy over my thoughts on what I found (read some of my previous thoughts and you'll understand why).

One of the subjects that has recently been on my mind is the whole war issue, which is a hot topic no matter where you are from, usually people are for war or against it, not in between. I do not believe that war is ever a solution to any problem and is especially not a means to an end as many people think. War/violence only leads to more war/violence, if we look back through history we can see this is true and history likes to repeat itself unless we change the way the game is played. I also do not agree with our war in Afghanistan or Iraq or where ever else we may be sending our troops. This does not mean that I do not support our troops, because I assure you that I do, but I can still not support a war that is being fought unjustly, because let's face it, there's no such thing as a just war! That is simply a way to frame war to make it positive instead of negative.

Now I'm sure that there will be some people who read this and say that if we do not strike first the terrorists will attack us and then we will be poor and destitute just like the people we are attacking, or more like the "casualties of war". However there is another option but our view of others has been framed by fear and by an ideology that we are "God's nation" and so we have to prevail over the "bad" in the world. I fully agree that we do need to do that, however there is a better way than war. I believe that we can come to that solution through true peace. We, however, do not know what true peace is because we have framed peace to mean "the way the world will be after we prevent future blood shed with present blood shed and when the whole world is 'Democratic'" which seems a little counter intuitive and is all the more reason to re-frame in a positive light.

Recently I was discussing with a friend the concept of war/violence with regard to peace and he asked me...

Astronomy Lesson About Salvation

*NOTE TO THE READER* I know that my thoughts on life and religion are controversial but I do not write my words so as to cause dissension within the church or cause my fellow believers to stumble. I write to spur people to think critically about their beliefs and make them feel uncomfortable with where they are because that produces true beliefs instead of believing in tradition. I have never claimed to be right, nor do I think that I know everything about these topics, however I am willing to challenge what I have been taught in the past and am being taught in the present. That being said, I know that some people will disagree with me and I welcome different opinions and open dialogue; so there are only a few options for people that disagree with me. 1) You can choose not to read what I write or if you choose to read what I write 2) you can write a comment and I'll respond (this is good but much gets lost in translation because we can not "read" each others nonverbal cues) or 3) we can meet in person and discuss the different opinions. If you have gotten through this disclaimer and would still like to read on, please do, if not I encourage us to continue in our friendship and I hope that I have not caused to much distress. Now on the meat of my thoughts...

Today was the last day of the twelve days of Christmas which I do not know a lot about except for the five gold rings some geese laying, pipers piping, etc. Something interesting happens right in the middle of all of these Christmas days, we move into a new year and for many people they make resolutions that will most likely be broken within the first week. Generally people make resolutions to better themselves, "I resolve to be healthier" "I resolve to loose thirty pounds" "I resolve to be more studious" etc. It is funny that we are so egotistical in a time when we are spending so much time with others. This of coarse is counter-intuitive to what society, that is western society, tells us to be. This then translates into how we see the world and how we view our salvation, both within Christianity and other religious views.

We have a view of life in which we think of ourselves as more important than others and push our achievements into the lime light yet the Bible says to consider others better than our self. I wonder why we can read this and still think that our "salvation" is more important than that of another person's. Perhaps our view of "salvation" is seen more through tradition than through what it really means. Perhaps we are limiting YHWH by saying that he only "saves" the Christians and everyone else is screwed. Here comes the astronomy lesson: It is not God that revolves around us and our life, but rather we all revolve around God. We forget that we are not at the center of the cosmos, just as the Earth is not the center of the universe. It is hard for us to fathom the thought of the Earth being the center of the universe where the sun goes around us because we know that is not true, but it never used to be like that. The same is true about our salvation, and even about how we view YHWH, his purpose, our purpose and more.

I know that there will be people who read this and come away angry; I apologize for this as it is not my intention to anger anyone. There will be some that immediately look to find verses in their bible that goes against what I have said; this does not help in our discussion because those people already think that I am wrong and will no longer entertain any more ideas from me on the subject. Then there will be some that go away and ponder what I have said and will begin to think that perhaps there is more to know about what they "know"; I hope that this is the option that you take.

May you be humble enough to understand that you plural are just as important as you singular. I look forward to our dialogue!