With or against? a reflection on living in a pluralistic society

A combination of bumper stickers confronted me today. One sticker was in support of a specific political party and the other sticker said this: God Is TOO Big To Fit Into Just One Religion.

Now, living where I live - I can easily put together exactly where this type of statement is being aimed at. Honestly, how many of us would say in response to a bumper sticker like that that it is a shot at the Muslim or at the Buddhist.

It’s unfortunately obvious that it is pointed toward the direction of any Christian within range of the bumper of the car. So I’d like to approach this statement for what it is worth but also for what it truly does miss and how it contradicts itself.

We live in a society where we are afraid to offend someone by what we may say or do or even believe. But is that really true? Or has the power to manipulate through fear tactics changed hands or just become attractive to someone else who has their own collection of rocks to throw?

Good intentions that still clench divisive attributes. After all, the determination to get others to set aside their faith and convictions in order to be embracing toward someone else’s faith and convictions certainly does not apply the demonstration of one’s faith but more over it creates a greater divide.

We are living in a pluralistic society. There are many beliefs that wait around our every corner and watch our every move each and every day. Beliefs that aren’t by any means beliefs that I would choose to conform to but are also beliefs that do indeed contain some truths and valuable insight to living. This very mindset is as evident in our world today as the golden arches of a McDonald’s restaurant and was so in Paul the apostle’s day.

As a Christian, if I say the word pluralistic it may be received as if I am drawing a line around my self and saying, “Stay out and away with your beliefs”. Dallas Willard in 1992 wrote an article about this. He wrote:
“... pluralism is not a bad arrangement. It is a good thing. It is, in fact, a social expression of the kind of respect and care for the individual that is dictated by trust in God and love of neighbor. Therefore the Christian does not oppose pluralism as a social principle. Pluralism simply means that social or political force is not to be used to suppress the freedom of thought and expression of any citizen, or even the practice that flows from it, insofar as that practice is not morally wrong.”

You know most “visitors” that I sit down with to talk about what kind of church I pastor usually whip out two questions:
How do you feel about abortion?
How do you feel about homosexuality?

I have learned over the years that they aren’t asking sincere questions but are irrationally taking a swing at Christianity. I say irrational because there is almost always no goal to be reached in the discussion that has no intention to bring about fruit in the first place. There is inevitably a stretch and grasp for a futile discussion that promotes more divisiveness than actual “neighboring”. It turns into a “Are you with us or against us?” discussion.

And there it is: Are you with us or against us?

Every “religion” has boundaries no matter how accepting and/or open one may claim to be. You cannot envelope yourself in Hinduism and call yourself a true Buddhist and demand the Muslim to abide in your system. Well, maybe in Hollywood you can.

A bumper sticker that seemingly disarms the narrow-mindedness of Christianity and sets up a religion that is an “all inclusive enlightenment” is really in fact saying that what I believe is wrong and what the sticker-bearer believes is right. So because I, like Joseph who was discredited for believing in one God, give full allegiance and all my life to Christ and His way - I am somehow not loving my neighbor because I don’t embrace someone else's religion according to their standards. Whaaaat?!?!

That is what kills relationships: to forcefully and willingly choose to begin a relationship based on known chasm builders. If I want to embrace you or hope to embrace you as friend, as neighbor - then I am not going to get far if I ream you out for using asphalt instead of concrete to pave your driveway and then ask you over for dinner only and after you have replaced the asphalt with concrete.

It is amazing how many times I hear someone say “Love your neighbor” when a disagreement arises. This is the falsity that comes with the embracing of many ideas and philosophies over actually applying them and living them out. How is it that if I disagree then it means that I don’t love?

HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIO:
If I say homosexuality is a sin to someone who genuinely asks me what I think then - I am homophobic.

or...

If I take my friend shopping for a Celine Dion Cd and help him purchase drag clothes for his lip-syncing performance at a gay bar because he needs the extra cash then I am now a Fag-Enabler.

In either case, love as much as disagreement is certainly capable of being present. And... in each case the name calling and throwing stones from a distance is to be expected by those observers who simply, in my opinion, fear living.

Love is full of disagreements. I do not base my marriage to my wife on balancing out our disagreements so that I may measure her love for me and then let her know that she is unloving because she has disagreed with me on something. My life was literally saved because my wife disagreed with me on something. Because she loved me enough to disagree on my decisions she ultimately rescued me. She rescued me.

My allegiance is to God and whatever is pleasing to Him is my desire. So I do for Him what He identifies as good and necessary. What I need flows from this. What I do will be judged righteously by Him and Him alone. I do not need to be cool with the culture nor does Christianity need any sort of limelight approval from society or the media in order for it to flourish.

I have a very close friend of mine who is a Buddhist. I don’t hang out with him so that I can convert him. I hang out with him because I love him. We hang out and do things together because we make a difference in this world when we work together and even when we talk together and even when we laugh together. We clothe the naked. We feed the hungry. We love the stranger. We love Irish music. We love tattoos. We love really good coffee. I don’t need to convert to Buddhism in order to do these things or in order to be his friend and nor does he need to become a Christian so that I may approve him worthy.

I am not here to represent Christianity. I am here because I have my being in Him who has always been and will be. In Him I breathe. In Him I move. In Him I love.

The God I have come to love(and only because He loved on me with a love I had not yet known) is most definitely too big for any religion. In fact, He despises religion and anything that tastes of it, smells like it, or even whispers a sound of it.

I follow Jesus whom is my King. I am not ashamed of that nor will I hide my love for Him because someone says how much they hate the church and Jesus because someone was a bad example of it. I give my life for Him and in honor of Him. I follow what I believe to be the One True God.

I do not follow Jesus so I can point at those who do not follow Him and create a judgment seat to file in the non-believer and sit them upon it. I do not follow Jesus so that I can prove that He is the way. I do not judge the values of a Buddhist on Christian principles. I expect not to be judged by a Unitarian who embraces multiple faiths over my belief in one. I am more than prepared to stand and love in the midst of a pluralistic society. I am confident because the Kingdom is already at hand and it will have no end. That is not arrogance - it is passion.

The words of Christ are flung from one end of an argument to another and the ones picked out as weapons seem to always be “Love your neighbor” and “Do not judge”. Candy coated heat-seeking missiles that are actually used to decisively separate for the mere purpose of finding out “who is against us” - no matter where one sits.

Jesus was crucified by corrupt politicians and religious leaders who could not get Him to bend to their practices nor their way. Irrational decision making in “gotta have my way” gangs is what drove nails into the hands that healed lepers and embraced the shattered lives of prostitutes.

Today my friend is moving a single mom into a new apartment. He and the church he is pastoring have unanimously agreed to pay for her rent for the next year so that she may be restored back into her life. They do this collectively because of the One God they serve lives in them and His attributes are lived out through them.

I guess they could let a bumper sticker do all the talking and then they wouldn’t have to deal with the commitment to care for their neighbor. But I’m glad that their faith is the evidence of what is not seen because a homeless mom with kids will be warm and fed tonight.

People need help not stickers.

How to REALLY be an effective church!!

If you get one of these.... they will come.

after all

Here's my new found love thanks to my friend Rodney:

U2 Connections: Eugene Peterson

Here is an article I enjoyed reading since U2 has been a favorite band of mine since 1980 and Eugene Peterson is such an amazing scholar and teacher of Scripture!!

U2 Connections : Eugene Peterson

www.@U2.com

by Angela Pancella

[photo: Eugene Peterson}

What can I give back to God for the blessings he's poured out on me? I'll lift high the cup of salvation -- A toast to God! I'll pray in the name of God; I'll complete what I promised God I'd do, And I'll do it together with his people.

Sound familiar? Bono recited these lines, or some variation on them, before "Where the Streets Have No Name" throughout the Elevation tour. U2-watchers online quickly traced them to Psalm 116. You'd be hard-pressed to find an expression like "a toast to God!" in the Bible on the family bookshelf, however. Most fans, if they gave the matter any thought, probably assumed Bono had done a little creative paraphrasing. Bono putting an ear-catching spin on Biblical passages is, after all, nothing new. (He once described Jesus summing the law into "Love God and love your neighbor as you love yourself," then saying "That's what I'm about! That's my Greatest Hits!") But just like all those uncredited lyrics from other people's songs that end up sung during U2 concerts, this translation of Psalm 116 was not a Bono original. It is the work of Eugene Peterson, poet, Professor Emeritus at Regent College in Vancouver, and for 35 years a pastor.

Does the name sound familiar? Bono's been dropping that line for the last several years, even mentioning that he'd been reading Peterson's translation of the New Testament to his dying father. However, the fact that he swiped Peterson's Psalm 116 for the introduction to Streets hasn't come up.

Peterson's complete American English translation of the Christian Scriptures, The Message Bible, hits bookshelves in July. In the promotional materials heralding this, a story is told of Peterson and U2: "Once, while teaching in Vancouver, some of Peterson's students became very excited because Bono of the rock band U2 said The Message was the most important book he'd read in his whole life. The students thought this a great triumph. Eugene didn't recognize either Bono or U2."

So when interviewing Peterson for @U2 (a project which went through most communications media: I emailed the questions to NavPress, publisher of The Message, and they mailed me the answers Peterson faxed back to them), I asked first if he had learned any more about the band. "Yes, I am familiar with Bono and U-2 [sic]. A year or so ago (maybe less) their chaplain/pastor who was traveling with them at the time, called and asked me to come to Chicago to meet them. I wasn't able to get away at the time but I had a lovely conversation with him. And many of my younger friends and ex-students keep me posted on the latest from U-2. When the Rolling Stones [sic] interview with them came out a few months ago, I got clippings sent to me from all over the world!"

(Presumably he's referring here to the Rolling Stone interview in December of 2001, where Bono was asked about his favorite reading materials: "...there's a translation of Scriptures -- the New Testament and the Books of Wisdom -- that this guy Eugene Peterson has undertaken. It has been a great strength to me. He's a poet and a scholar, and he's brought the text back to the tone in which the books were written.")

What did he think about having a quote from his work recited, uncredited, in front of 20,000 concertgoers at a time?

"My reaction? Pleased, very pleased. Bono is singing to the very people I did this work for. I feel that we are allies in this. He is helping get me and The Message into the company of the very people Jesus spent much of his time with."

The seed for The Message was planted during his pastoral work, Peterson says in a press release. He was trying to get across the fire and wild words of Paul's letter to the Galatians in a Bible study class, but his parishioners were paying more attention to the pot of coffee in the church basement. "It was just awful. They'd fill up their coffee cups and stir in sugar and cream and look at their cups and they weren't getting it. It was just really bad. I went home after the third week and said to my wife that I was going to teach them Greek. If they could read it in Greek they would get it, they'd understand what a revolutionary text it is and couldn't just keep living in their ruts. She agreed that would empty the class out fast."

Instead, Peterson translated Galatians himself. In the interview with @U2 he explains his approach to this and other books of the Bible: "The largest influence on the work of The Message, after the Greek and Hebrew text itself, was 35 years working as a pastor, listening, listening, listening to people, trying to get these original texts in their idiom, their imaginations, the way they talked. I always felt I was on the border of two countries where they spoke different languages -- the bible language and the American language. I kept asking myself, if Isaiah or John were writing what they wrote for these people I am living with, how would they say it?"

Here's an example of that approach, from the sixth chapter of Galatians: "Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life."

All of Paul's letters have this vibrancy in Peterson's translation. How did working these (which, being letters, have a built-in immediacy) into contemporary language compare to working on the other books, with their variety of moods and tones?

"Paul is an extravagant, inventive poet. His syntax is sometimes wild. It's an adventure to enter into his imagination and get the same sounds and meanings in American. The gospels were very different, much more difficult because there is a simplicity and directness that is a real challenge to get across into American English. By the time I got to the Old Testament I was prepared for the variations in style and the long stretches of poetry."

It would be interesting to find out from Bono just why he has been so impressed by this translation. Peterson can't speak to that, but he can talk about reactions from people in similar circumstance to Bono's. "When I started this, I really had in mind people who had never read the Bible before," he says. "What took me by surprise and continues to please me is how many speak or write to me as 'having read the Bible all my life and now, finally, I get it.'"

Bono's familiarity with the Bible is evident through his lyrics, but he doesn't seem to have been calcified by custom into the "my Bible is the only Bible" syndrome. This can happen when someone is brought up to read the Bible, or certain passages, so many times that the word choices of a given translation are confused with the Holy Writ itself. Bono's unusual religious upbringing and allergic reaction to fundamentalism may have helped keep him from thinking that Jesus spoke in, say, King James English. A similar trap, which I confess colors my ability to fully appreciate The Message Bible, opens up because most translations have been made in the best and most literary writing possible. One can come to love the language so much, the meaning becomes secondary. For example, there is a passage in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews which is rendered in exquisite prose in "my" Bible:

"You have not approached that which could be touched and a blazing fire and gloomy darkness and storm and a trumpet blast and a voice speaking words such that those who heard begged that no message be further addressed to them..."

The Message Bible's take on the same words seems flat by comparison:
"Unlike your ancestors, you didn't come to Mount Sinai -- all that volcanic blaze and earthshaking rumble -- to hear God speak."

When asked, Peterson says he has received very few complaints that he tinkered with well-loved language. "I was prepared for an all-out assault but I have received very little opposition or criticism. Maybe there has been a shift in our population from a bible reading people who know their bibles well and have no reason to want something different, to a non-bible reading country with a huge population of people who go to U-2 concerts who didn't know that anything like this bible even existed. And when they learn about it they are ready to read."

(For more information about The Message Bible, visit www.messagebible.com.)

You're The Reason I Sing

If you asked me what image would appear in my mind every time I thought about my Grandpa it would look something like this:

There he'd be across the table from me, in his kitchen, with those big Russian, Polish - Ukrainian pirogi ears. His leather bound watch on his left hand and he'd be fiddling around with his place setting. He had that clock radio to the left of him on a little shelf where he'd sing along to songs like "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime".

The music of the Great Depression is what he listened to. How the music touched him. I noticed that part. It was always so obvious to me that the music was such a big part of him. He played this concertina or otherwise known as a "squeeze-box" while he would hold a harmonica in his mouth with his teeth. I would sit there amazed. I was truly intrigued by his musical abilities because if you saw him you'd never think this guy was interested in music to the degree of where he could "make" it.

It makes sense to me more and more that he is the reason the music is in me. How I love music. How I love to make it. How I love to play it. How I love to listen to it. How it calms me. How it lifts me. How it breaks me. How it moves me to places that nothing else can.

Today it makes sense that he is the reason for music in my life because today that man, my Grandpa, passed away and for some reason it seems more evident to me now than ever before. He was the only Grandpa I had. I never knew my other Grandfather. But this one took care of that just fine. This one made me laugh. This one let me screw up and then gave me 20 bucks. This one made me laugh a lot. This one took me to my first movie theater experiences (King Kong - Jeff Bridges, Paradise Alley - Sylvester Stallone, Moonraker - Roger Moore). This one helped me buy my first car that leaked a quart of oil every 50 miles - but he didn't hold that against me he just helped me get it - he just let me make the mistake and still was my Grandpa with no strings attached and no "I told you so". This one let me try a cigarette when I was like 9. This one shared a beer with me in his car(while driving!). This one put me on his knee and would say "bumpety-bump-bumpety-bump". This one made me laugh.

There was this song that he whistled all the time. I mean all the time. It drove people nuts in his neighborhood because they heard it all the time. I heard it all the time and I find myself whistling it on occasion for absolutely no reason other than it grew into me because he shared it. Last year I asked him what song that was that he has been whistling for 60 years. This is what I loved about him. He looked at me and then sang it to me word for word as if he was talking to me. The song is called "Cathedral in the Pines". Just a simple song about a young couple getting married.

That's what I love though! That ability to share a song you love as if it's, without a doubt, a part of the conversation. I want to do that to my kids more and more. Just sing to them. Just give the music away.

He promised me that he'd give me that concertina when his time was nearing the end. Sure enough he sent it with my Dad to me a few months ago. It began to settle into me a little that my Grandpa was starting his goodbyes if you will.

Just three days ago I went to see him because he refused anymore preventative treatments and was ready to die at 91 years of age. I just held his face and he held mine. And I just told him how great of a Grandpa he was to me. He let me pray for him(which is a huge deal).

Then last night I stayed up and learned a couple of his favorite songs and sang them in my living room for quite a while.

There is this song by U2 that was written when Bono's Dad passed away. It's a father-son song for sure and there are so many parts to that song that ring true with my Grandpa. I just want to sing out from the depths of my heart to him those words that Bono bellows out:
"Listen to me now
I need to let you know
You don't have to go it alone...
It's you when I look in the mirror
It's you when I don't pick up the phone
Sometimes you can't make it on your own...
...Can you hear me when I sing
You're the reason I sing..."

So, today I am sad. Today I hurt. But today I know the reason I sing more than I did yesterday.

I think I'm gonna drown myself in some U2 and Bing Crosby tonight for quite a while.