Inappropriate Conversations

A #FirstTrack example

On Inappropriate Conversations #184 I mentioned a process I've been calling First Track for more than a year now. Here is an example of that, reblogging myself.

Ray Boltz is famous, perhaps deservedly, for his song "Thank You" (thank you for giving to the Lord; I was a life that was changed). I'm probably exaggerating a little, but I can't recall ever attending a church camp or "weekend" as either a child or adult where that song wasn't played on a stereo or sung collectively. I'll share it below, but it isn't my ‪#‎FirstTrack‬ from Boltz.

I only bring it up as an introduction to wonder aloud if "Thank You" is still sung -- or now ever sung -- at such gatherings. I never hear the name Ray Boltz in conversations about CTC music. His song is still famous. He has made subsequent recordings. My favorite is "All You Died for Me to Be."
That one isn't the "first" either, but I'd still typically share it below. I can't/won't today because I can't find a video for it, not even one of those videos with a static picture of the album cover (Songs from the Potter's Field, 2002) and the music playing in the background.

Around the time of that album, Boltz publicly acknowledged some truths about himself that the broad Christian community strongly and intensely wanted him to keep lying about. Boltz is gay.

I have seen an evolution in modern Christian thought about this, even in just a few years now.
* Denial: he can't be gay because there is no such thing; it's just a lifestyle choice.
* Anger: if he can't lie to himself about who he is, then he's going to hell.
* Bargaining: I understand how he might not be able to lie to himself about this, but we'll continue to accept him -- sing his songs, buy his albums -- as long has he keeps lying to everyone else about his life and loves.
* Depression: the world is going to accept these pop stars and there is nothing "we" can do about it, so I'll just check completely out, including pretending that Boltz doesn't exist and never contributed any uplifting or edifying music to the modern Christian experience. I'll just stop "thanking him for giving to the Lord" whether my life was changed by his songwriting or not.

We haven't gotten anywhere near an Acceptance stage yet. The devil's bargain of "it's OK to be gay if you don't act upon it" is just another form of denial and bargaining. Another double standard. I don't believe for one second that the people who abandoned Boltz, burning his albums either literally or metaphorically, would really be "back to normal" as listeners. We know that as long as they didn't view Boltz as "normal" then they'd never be a regular listener ever again.

Some introduction! Well, I needed to make two things clear. I was never that huge fan in the first place. I prefer my music with a bit of an edge, and Boltz has never had such an edge. I own two albums, one recorded before he started telling people truths they didn't want to hear, and one recorded after. My favorite song from him comes from the latter, but the true "first track" comes from the former.

I wonder now when hearing the words to songs like "The Altar" if there is more meaning than any of us could have known at the time. What people in their private prayer life might long to leave at the altar is truly none of our business. Judging them for it, though, has been strictly forbidden by Jesus in The Sermon On The Mount and elsewhere. 
These days, though, it is harder and harder to find a Christian who truly cares what Jesus commanded or even taught. There is more lip service than faith in action about what Jesus died for us to be.

Ray Boltz - The Altar

Thank you, Ray, for your years of service, for your honesty, and hopefully for your perseverance in the face of undeniable betrayal.
Ray Boltz - Thank You

'Laws Of Motion'

I'm told that April is National Poetry Month and April 21st is Poem In Your Pocket Day, so here is a one-page poem that I first shared on Inappropriate Conversations #23 in August 2010: "Laws Of Motion"

“He is never going to

Change, is he?”

We’ve always done it that way around here.

It is what it

Is: predictable.

What did you expect?

If you examine

All of the

Causes and effects, beforehand,

You could predict the future.

Bet on it;

The odds are with you.

He is never going to change.

 

“To make any

Headway, you’ve got

To hit the ground

Running.” Charge forward.

Work harder. Work smarter.

Direct the committee

To create a subcommittee.

The task force will recommend

Throwing dollars at the problem,

Or hours. Top priority, as in “now.”

The wrong answer today will always

Win over the right answer

At any other time.

 

“What goes around, comes around.”

Prepare yourself for

A backlash.

At the moment I say the

Words, I want to swallow them back

In my throat.

Yet, when I’m silent

I can’t hear my thoughts

Over the shouting.

Consequences.

Do we still believe in consequences?

No matter;

They still believe in us.

Forbidden or Sacred Friendships

Not long ago, some friends of the family told my wife and me that their elementary school kids would never be allowed to attend a party that included any children of the opposite gender. This policy against “boy/girl parties” included birthdays. It certainly covered the concept of play dates.

I do not know the reason why. The safe bet is the word “dates” and a clear animosity within the church about inter-sexual, or mixed gender, friendships. This was an after-church conversation. Several people had left the same church we left at roughly the same time. I document my family’s part of that process in the Walk The Earth podcast. I was left wondering if this other couple was going to struggle to find a gender-segregated youth group when their children got a bit older, or if I was just unaware of a new trend within mainline Protestant churches.

Remembering this makes me sad. I have a long history of being blessed by these kinds of friendships, using terms for most of my life like “sacred friendship” and “sacred history” to describe my mostly positive experiences of friendship across gender lines. I have shared some of those stories in Inappropriate Conversations podcasts. Perhaps I’ll use the comments section of this blog post to share a few links to specific episodes. We’ll see.

(A quick #IC list would be episodes: 44, 79, 80, 90, and 118, but there are more.)

Another point of sadness for me recently came from a book that I’m going to cautiously recommend. Forbidden Friendships: Retaking the Biblical Gift of Male-Female Friendship by Joshua D. Jones had its second edition released last August. Aimed at a Christian audience, I recommend the book to that target group. For others, I have reservations which I hope to explain well enough to expand the recommendation a bit further. Forbidden Friendships has much to commend within its short and direct page count.

Let me start with one positive and a couple of negatives. First, I find it challenging to critique an argument that I fully agree with. My style as a critic is, well, critical. Rather than gush about something that pushes all of my buttons, in a good way, I’d rather find even the most minor opportunity to improve. I am fully on board with Jones’ argument. On the other hand, I found the appendices at the end of the book disheartening. That also became my last impression, and it led me to re-read parts of the book in an effort to wash away the negativity.

I’m probably being harsh. One appendix shared Facebook feedback that Jones sought for the question of whether male-female friendships are “real friendships” or not. By my subjective estimate, the responses were pretty much an even three-way split between No, Yes, and some Maybes (so highly qualified that Yes simply doesn’t apply). More people in this nowhere-near-random survey would tell me that my personal experience is false, if not impossible. Fully a third would endorse the presumptions made by our friends from our former church. Maybe it’s just me, but the people who share my perspective seemed to be drowned out by those who don’t.

The other appendix was called “On ‘Being Gay’ and ‘SSA’” and I still have no idea how that applied in any direct way to the topic of genuine friendships that cross society’s gender lines. Jones used this section to promote his website, where that subject matter does appear, and homosexuality was mentioned a few times in the body of the book as well. I found it distracting. Despite both Jones and I being committed Christians, we differ slightly in our views of scripture and what I might call the focus of Christ. It’s a difference that makes a difference. Most of my friends who fall outside the gender binary will find little value in Forbidden Friendships. Some, though not all, of my gay friends will find sections insulting and potentially harmful.

Consider this a warning. Jones does denounce the “just a choice” mentality while still recommending what I would call forced, involuntary celibacy on a significant number of people. Faced with that option, I’m quite sure most LGBTQI people would leave the church instead. Many already have. My faith tells me that Jesus isn’t mired in the same Either/Or fallacies that characterize far too much of the “religious right” in the United States and elsewhere. (America isn’t the only place where political and religious ideologies have become too anti-intellectual to support even a narrow, Gospel-based discourse.)

I do not lump Jones in with the anti-intellectuals. Forbidden Friendships is carefully considered, well reasoned, and succinct. In the context of heterosexual men and women befriending one another in a way that completely subverts concepts like “with benefits” and rising above “more than a friend” and its presumed limitations, Jones has delivered essential reading for Christians and valuable reading for non-Christians.

Referring to the work of psychologist Carl G. Jung on the phenomenology of the self, I have noted that it is very difficult to follow notions of anima and animus through whatever “the opposite sex” might mean for homosexuals. I’ll simply leave the question open, as I have in the past.

Suffice to say that I dwell on this for sincere, heartfelt reasons that Jones would surely understand. Early on, he makes the observation that congregations maintaining a strict gender divide and carefully monitoring for “inappropriate” male-female interactions between the unmarried cannot claim a solid track record when it comes to scandal. It is precisely past scandals that have reinforced this version of gender apartheid within those churches.

The other side effect is homophobia. Jones says, “The result of these scandals and cultural shifts has also resulted in men being anxious of loving friendships with other men lest they appear ‘gay’. Adults also shy away from affectionate interaction with children for fear of pedophilia accusations. Greater distance isn’t just growing across the gender divide, it’s growing everywhere.”

So, let’s just say that I know I have been called to speak on behalf of sacred friendship, as I describe it. I use the word “called” intentionally, as a reference to answered prayer. I also believe I have been called to denounce homophobia.

Given the concerns I’ve already shared, I held my breath a bit on my first reference to the Notes pages. Names like Mark Driscoll and Focus On The Family appear there. Without exception, Jones cites them in order to refute their views. He, like me, disagrees with their narrow, harmful perspectives on inter-sexual relationships. One name I didn’t see that I think of often on topics like relationships and The Sexual Revolution was David R. Mace. That’s a shame. David and Vera Mace contributed valuable insight into marriage during their lives, and Jones’ work here would fit well on the topic of non-marital relationships.

Since there are Inappropriate Conversations podcasts that tell my stories in varying degrees of detail, I won’t dwell on my experiences in this review. Jones is also not particularly specific about his personal stories. The biographical section focuses elsewhere. Jones is pastor in the United Kingdom. He was born in America, married a Danish woman, and has lived in several places. His blog is at JoshuaDJones.com.

Forbidden Friendships is not addressing a side issue of marginal importance. Jones makes an argument that we aren’t just falling short of the vision Jesus described for the new heaven and new earth. Worse, many within the church seem to be regulating against the standard and example set by Jesus. In his First Word segment, Jones writes, “There has been a growing relational chasm within the church that seeks to keep men and women from engaging in genuine friendship. This separation has been parading under the banner of integrity and it has become unhealthy.”

By the end of this review, I might come close to describing that separation as blasphemy. Jesus said that in the afterlife there won’t be marriage (Mark 12: 18-27) with the implication that there will be something far greater. Greater than sex. Greater than marriage. Probably greater than the notion of friendship that Jones and I concur about, too, although perhaps of its type. The phrase that comes to mind is “through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12) which suggests that we will eventually comprehend love completely.

Like me, Jones does not view this sort of friendship as merely a preference. He shares a list of benefits with some supporting explanation:

Healing, joy and growth. God puts the right people in our path, regardless of gender.

To help us resist temptation. I’ve learned more about integrity from female friends than I ever could claim if “integrity” merely meant not having any connection with women other than my wife.

To strengthen our marriages. I’ve told this story online before, but the first person to tell me – as if she was seeing the future – “you are going to marry Sheryl” was a female friend. I cannot even imagine a male friend at that time using those words.

Because we are commanded to be. Among other things, we are commanded by Christ to be the Family Of God, and that includes relationships between brothers and sisters, regardless the heredity or biology.

To share the power of the cross. I believe God told me, “’Tis far better to say something that should not be said, than not to say something that should be said.” Those words were shared in the context of a male-female friendship, and they were meant to be spoken through other inter-sexual friends and into the entire notion of sacred friendship.

And, Release of ministry.

What about sex, though? Jones looks at modern sexuality through the work of Sigmund Freud. Perhaps Freud has been so influential that most of us take at least a few of his concepts for granted. My focus has always leaned toward Jung. While those two psychologists were roughly contemporary and even worked together for a time, Jung has more to say about interpersonal connections.

I’ve asked before in past blog posts, one in particular about the sexual orientation of potential leaders within youth Scouting programs, if we understand the concept of sexualization.

During one of the Boy Scouts Of America controversies in recent years, I asked some older church friends in a small group meeting how they understood the phrase “openly gay” in the context of kids who weren’t yet sexually active. They didn’t understand the question. To them, “openly gay” meant having sex. To me, it meant coming to terms with same-sex attraction as the reality for those potential Scouts. Just as the boys attracted to girls weren’t getting help earning a “hit it before you quit it” badge from their leaders, so the “openly gay” teens would also be learning about leadership and other skills while delaying sexual experimentation until a later stage of life.

It is possible, in other words, to refrain from sleeping with someone you are attracted to. Perhaps the most monstrous ideas I hear from opponents of my experience and perspective is that this is somehow impossible. If you love someone of the opposite gender and you are heterosexual, the logic goes, you therefore are inevitably mired in lust (whether you are aware of it or not). 

The first time I made a trip to visit a female friend after marrying my wife, the reaction of some within my family (not my wife, thankfully) was reprehensible. “What does he think he’s up to?!” was, I’m told, the response. It earned both the question and exclamation marks. The assumption was that I was being lustful and deceptive, perhaps even violating my vows. Irony abounds! The real deceptions here were accusations made behind my back and to my wife but never to me. As for breaking vows, if those false assumptions were true, I would have been breaking vows not only to my wife but also to my friend.

I’ve used the expression “sacred friendship” in the context of those friendships, as often as not. The words carry powerful meaning for me. It isn’t about sex, and certainly not about lust, and that’s what makes the friendship work. Or, would those who oppose the views expressed by Jones suggest that the only female friends of mine who are “genuinely friends” are those who identify as lesbian? There are some, and the differences in perspective Jones and I have about homosexuality make me wonder what he might do with that question.

No, what’s at stake here is intimacy, not sexuality. Jones shares a quote that he attributes to Alfred, Lord Tennyson. We all know the one about it being better to have loved and lost. What is perceived today as a romantic notion, Jones notes, was actually written for a close male friend of Tennyson who had died. We aren’t good at intimacy these days. Homophobia is one reason. Disregard for male-female friendship is surely another. There are more: presumptions of sexual intent, the false notion that love is a progression that inevitably leads to “more than a friend” concepts that exalt sexuality above all expressions of intimacy, etc.

“But in heaven,” Jones writes, “unity and intimacy with both the Lord and with others will be perfected beyond our wildest imaginings. In this world we get small tastes of what this will be like as we learn about a love that’s based upon naked souls instead of naked bodies.”

I read this book again, following my unhappy emotional response to the appendices, to recapture the beauty of that paragraph and the next two sentences. “Humans can live without sex. We can’t live without intimacy.”

Forbidden Friendships is worth reading to experience those words in context. There are many traditional, even old-fashioned, assumptions about sex and marriage from a Christian perspective in the book. It strikes me that there is a purpose beyond merely speaking to a churchgoing audience.

What I call sacred friendship, Jones describes as “soul friends” in the central chapters of the book. Anamchara is the Gaelic word for this. Funny, I started reading this book while visiting Ireland. Examples included St. Patrick and St. Brigid, along with St. Francis and St. Clare. There are many Protestant examples as well, like John Wesley and John Knox and their friendships with women Jones does not name. 

St. Teresa of Avila was also cited as an example. I’m familiar with her from this hauntingly beautiful quote:

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ's compassion to the world
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about
doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.”

How many people would refuse to answer this call if their hands and feet needed to serve side-by-side, without a chaperone, with a person of the opposite gender who wasn’t their spouse? 

One of those central chapters looked at examples of these friendships within Christian history. The other looked at the issue within scripture, finding no Biblical prohibitions. I’ll share just a couple of the many examples.

Galatians 3:28 says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” I honestly don’t know if Jones would agree with me, but I would certainly emphasize that there is no gay or straight at the foot of the cross either, if only because James teaches in his letter that there are no “special sins” that make one person more unworthy of grace than another.

Genesis 2:18 says, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” According to Hebrew Scripture, human sexual reproductive practices have not yet entered the story. The concept of marriage is non sequitur at this point, too. What sense does it make to speak of vowing fidelity “to you and none other” when there are no others? Jones goes into more detail, drawing this wise conclusion from the Genesis passage: “[God] gave Adam an opposite gender friend.”

Breaking my heart as I was reading, once again, Jones makes this reference to Romans 16:16a: “Greet one another with a holy kiss.” His conclusion, sadly, “Instead of replacing the ‘forbidden kiss’ with a ‘holy kiss’ we’ve opted for ‘no kiss’.”

Finally, Forbidden Friendships invests necessary time on the modern concept of “emotional adultery” which has been used to justify most of the segregation that Jones rightly describes as an apartheid. He starts the chapter with a brilliant use of a famous quote from The Princess Bride. “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

From a Biblical perspective, certainly not. Adultery is something both the Old and New Testaments take seriously, and it always refers to sexual infidelity. It is a reckless, potentially blasphemous, mistake to pour a broader meaning into a concept that was used in ancient days as a cause for brutal capital punishment.

Among the biggest mistakes the church makes today is trying to specifically re-forbid what is already forbidden, or trying to re-codify as allowed what is already so clearly Biblical. We don’t need a new set of rules, a new legalism. Jesus said he was going to fulfill all of The Law and he did so dramatically and sufficiently on the cross (and after). By the way, conservative Americans are making the same mistake politically, with state after state passing laws that at best only restate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and at worst violating the Bill Of Rights by misrepresenting it. (We don’t need another law forbidding the government from either establishing a state religion or forcing pastors and priests to subvert their doctrine.)

Jones rightly identifies this as creating a new non-Biblical standard when we already have clear direction in scripture. It is wrong to covet, lust, or lie. These are already specifically denounced. All the while, loving others and helping them carry their burdens is specifically allowed, without any regard for age, race, nationality, or gender. (You may as well all sexual orientation to that list, from my perspective.)

There is one key exception where the notion of “emotional affair” isn’t fully covered by commands against the temptation to covet, lust, or lie. What about a situation where someone who isn’t coveting another’s possessions or relationship and avoiding lust is also quite openly exalting the relationship with an opposite-gender friend above their spouse and at the expense of the marriage? If my wife has ever shared a worry over friendships in my life, past or present, I suspect that this would be the concern.

Jones calls this a problem within that marriage regardless of the friendship(s), and he is right. I am thankful that I can confidently say I do not have this problem within my marriage. I have, though, always struggled with the terminology we use, with society’s obsession with “best friends” as a concept. I can certainly see how the implied ranking in that expression could be hurtful, either to a spouse or to other friends.

I mentioned our society’s persistent use of Either/Or logical fallacies, and it applies here as well. We just don’t know what to do with people like me. I’m not just one thing, not liberal or conservative across the board, not strictly traditional or progressive in church circles, and I refuse to play the “name your best friend” game either. 

To restate, love is not a scale where anything is singularly best. We don’t move from acquaintance to friend to “more than a friend” (aka, lover) to spouses. Jesus would describe the progression very differently, with “no such thing as marriage because heaven is so much more” as the pinnacle. Even that notion presumes a progression of sorts that Jesus said nothing about and, in all likelihood, would dismiss with a smirk. “Slow of heart” is the expression he used in Luke 24:25 with followers who seemingly couldn’t comprehend things that seemed obvious to Jesus in the scriptures.

The takeaway from Jones’ chapter on “emotional adultery” is two-fold. He easily dismissed the claim that this concept is even valid, calling it little more than a repackaging of admonishments against lying or behaving with lustful or covetous intentions. This sort of repackaging could generously be called unnecessary. Too often, though, it is more of an evil effort – however benign – to mix man-made rules in with the commandments Jesus gave us to follow. If, for example, we fail to love our neighbors as we love ourselves because we are afraid of whatever “emotional adultery” heaps above guidelines about treating others with dignity and respect, then this concept becomes an abomination.

Jones also dealt with the most valid cause for concern head on. I appreciate the honesty in dealing with situations where a marriage might be so broken that any loving relationship could be perceived as a threat.

Make no mistake, though. The term “emotional adultery” borders on blasphemy. The Bible is clear that adultery is a sexual act. It would be a deception to prevent people from loving their neighbors as the Holy Spirit leads due to some confusion about the difference between brotherhood/sisterhood and what might be called “friends with benefits” or something similar. It may well be evil because, as a deception, we must account for the fact that Jesus referred to Satan as “the father of all lies” (John 8:44).

Forbidden Friendships: Retaking the Biblical Gift of Male-Female Friendship by Joshua D. Jones has inspired some strong words from me. This book taps directly into some of the most important spiritual experiences of my life, providing historical and scriptural support in clear and simple arguments. I’ll restate, though, that Jones does not have any more answers than Jung (or me) on how to apply these concepts outside of the traditional gender binary. I do not recommend this book for insight on homosexual friendships or marital relationships. Of course, I also don’t believe those topics fall within his thesis, and those distractions play too much of a role in certain sections.

“There will be a day when we will be able to give and receive extravagant love with all our friends without any thought of boundaries or of being misunderstood,” Jones concludes in a section I won’t quote in much more detail because I don’t want to spoil a beautiful conclusion to a book written for Christians. Instead, I’ll give C.S. Lewis, quoted within these pages by Jones, the final challenging word.

“Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best. And the reason for this is important. ... In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets ...” (The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis).

Fable: The Threat of a Mousetrap

Note: I did not write this and cannot recall where I originally received it, at least 7 years ago, but the fable seems even more relevant now.

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. "What food might this contain?" The mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

                Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning. "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

                The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it."

                The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

                The pig sympathized, but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers."

                The mouse turned to the cow and said "There is a mousetrap in the house!  There is a mousetrap in the house!"

                The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose."

                So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house -- like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

                The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught.

                The snake bit the farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she later returned home with a fever.

                Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient.

                But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.

                The farmer's wife did not get well; she died. So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

                The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn't concern you, remember:  when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk.

A Belated Happy Birthday

 I have been waiting what seems a lifetime,        

                Watching to see if you could trust me.

 

There is something rather odd, touching in your

                Smile. I’d call it a knowing grin,

                If only I knew.

 

I’ve looked in five languages, not including

                My own, for words – rather, a phrase –

                To say what I’m almost feeling.

 

It’s just one of those things: if you don’t

                Already know, you never will, even with

                My help.

 

On the other foot: if you know from before,

                You won’t need me to tell you, and you

                Wouldn’t want me to try.

 

 

Obviously, the only reason I sleep well at night

                Is because I know that you know already

                What I don’t know how to say.

 

I’ve attempted to explain to you many times before,

                Moments when you were younger,

                Living in other places, in other homes.

 

I have been a prodigal member of all your families.

                Both of us know we’ve been awaiting my return.

 

Before you were born, I was there.

                Even though you are sometimes younger than I am,

                You saw my birth as well.

 

I tell you this now because the knowledge comes

                Through you. When you knelt and crawled away,

                You reminded me of something I never knew before.

 

 

(Manifestos of Neosurrealism, 1989)

 

 

Candy-coated Apostasy

Perhaps the central theme of Inappropriate Conversations in recent years has been this: we can do better and we must do better.

The meme I’m sharing solely to support this commentary says, “Here is 10,000 M&M’s…10 of them are poisoned. Who wants to eat a handful? Now do you see the problem?”
I see many problems, as a matter of fact.

Americans aren’t that good at grammar and punctuation, especially when it comes to social media. Twitter forces the issue with a 140-character limitation. Meme management is just as bad or worse.

Americans aren’t that good at math. What if I told you that we actually have more than 750k of these candies and none of them had been poisoned? With that in mind, why the scare tactics? You don’t need to hear about this from me. Online friends have already explained this to any with ears to hear or eyes to read.

Americans aren’t that good at vocabulary. I’m sure we’ve already heard from people who cannot make the legal distinction between the words “asylum” and “refugee.”

American’s aren’t that good at geography and history. Franklin Graham, for example, can’t decide if Russians are our enemies (communism, socialism and totalitarianism are bad) or the example we must follow (Putin, after all, is strongly committed to Graham’s “Christian value” of rounding up all the gays). Don’t get me wrong. Middle East politics and history are challenging. That’s why we shouldn’t impose a Western genre storyboard on current events and insist on costuming all the players with either white or black cowboy hats.

We can do better. We must do better.
The area of greatest opportunity, though, might be that a large number of Christians in this Christian nation aren’t that good at Christianity.

I acknowledge that these sound like hard words. If so, consider this a “get behind me, Satan” moment (Mark 8). You see, I’m not talking about an understanding of Christianity that comes from years of seminary study. This isn’t even what I’ve called “Christianity 201.”  No, this should be so obvious to the faithful that it’s almost a cliché.

I’ll explain what I mean next, but the concepts go back to Jesus himself: redemption, forgiveness, love, faith, atonement. We’re talking about Saul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9) and becoming Paul as a result. It’s in our jargon about God not “calling the qualified” but “qualifying the called.” We shed legitimate tears of joy – and often, because of some charlatans, get accused of faking it with the theatricality of snake oil salespersons – when someone shares her or his testimony about God reaching into lives and touching hearts. So often this comes from unexpected intervention, where the Holy Spirit uses the faith of one believer to overcome fear of foreign things and people to share agape.

In John 1, the first epistle of John, the writer makes a comparison between a faith that overcomes all fear and brings love into the world with something he refers to as anti-Christ. This anti-Christ is not a person, so much as an attitude. Often out of fear, it rejects things like redemption, forgiveness, love. It lacks empathy to such a degree that an anti-Christ worldview rejects atonement, even to the extent of denying that there is a Holy Spirit or that God really has the power to convert.

This is apostasy. It is a renunciation of Biblical Christianity. It rejects not just the words but even the mission of Jesus Christ. By embracing fear over faith, it puts a seriously flawed human solution (represented by an equally flawed confectionary analogy) over everything Jesus commanded in Matthew 28 and warned us against in Matthew 25.

So, let’s walk through this meme.

False assumption 1: the poisoned M&M comes into factory that way rather than perhaps being contaminated after the fact.

False assumption 2: contamination is permanent and neither time nor elements of packaging and preparation have any hope of mitigation.

False assumption 3: toxins are all-powerful and immune systems are either non-existent or pathetically weak.

Note that I’m addressing this from an Inappropriate Conversations perspective. I am not, in other words, telling people that it is OK to eat tainted food or handle poisonous snakes. No.
Politically, I am a radical moderate. I reject the two major political parties for their corruption, which is both shared and competing.
Religiously, I am a Protestant Christian. I used to be part of a denomination that was a reform of a reform of Catholicism that itself could only barely be aligned with the Protestant Reformation. I now attend a church that sees even less reason to play any of those “church doctrine” games.
Socially, I strive (and fail from time to time) to view and treat people with something I’ve heard called unconditional positive regard. I cover that concept in more detail in Walk The Earth 32, recently released.

Above all, though, I consider myself a Christ Follower. I still would if there were no available religious or political affiliations. I reject “group think” because my faith is mine. It’s built upon the command of Jesus to love God with all of my mind, not merely my heart and soul.

Disclaimers aside, the message is two-sided. Don’t play with poison. Don’t assume everything you don’t fully comprehend is poison. 

Rely to assumption 1: we know that a high majority of radicalization within the U.S. happens after people live here for a significant amount of time, not before. This may say something about a screening process that is already in place, clearly effective, and in no need of either abandonment or fortification.  Our goal needs to be treating people with sufficient dignity and respect so they don’t develop a strong desire to retaliate. Second-class citizens tend to behave with less regard for the welfare of first-class citizens. We solve this by doing all we can to eliminate discrimination, segregation, and pungent forms of majority-rule privilege that hold our society back by coddling a small group of people with a “my country” rather than an “our country” perspective.

Reply to assumption 2: Jesus. I’m tempted to stop right there. If you don’t see the problem behind this assumption, then you don’t know Jesus. The good news is that this isn’t a permanent problem. The Gospel is meant to be shared. I strongly believe that it should be understood by all, including people who have and will continue to reject its claims. I also think we should strive to understand a variety of other things for similar reasons, including Islam, socialism, human sexuality, physics, etc.

Reply to assumption 3: OK, I’ll use this reply to cover more of both 2 & 3 for any who are slow to understand. Not everyone who reads or listens to Inappropriate Conversations and Walk The Earth posts are Christians. Fair enough, because not all Christians understand what Jesus is said to have taught in the Bible either.

Jesus does not teach that some of us are inherently so good that we are close to perfect – delicious, if I may, to tie in with the M&M analogy. He also doesn’t teach that some of us are so bad we are beyond saving. I understand that some Calvinists tight-rope across a fine line here, but I would ask them to lean away from apostasy.
Instead, a Biblical theology teaches that none of us are as sweet as candy-coated chocolate. We all fall short of a standard called “holiness” in Christian jargon. Edibility, as a concept, doesn’t come from the raw ingredients. It doesn’t matter if those ingredients are grown locally or imported from Syria. Throughout theism, in fact, it is clearly taught that God is the chef.

This isn’t some small side issue. As Christians, our trust in the Lord can have a devastating impact on how we treat others. More, how we treat others can either bring them closer to God or push them further away. Some of the people we push away, if only because we treat them as hopeless outcasts unworthy of our thoughts much less our help, can become terrible enemies rather than wonderful brothers and sisters.

I use that phrase intentionally, as a Gentile who knows that I have brothers and sisters in Christ because I’m one with them in Christ. Paul committed his life’s work to ensuring that we would all know this. There is no Jew or Gentile at the foot of the cross. If we believe what we say and sing, that every knee will bow, then there is no "formerly Muslim" or "always been Christian" at the foot of the cross either.

Let’s talk about Paul for a moment. If this M&M analogy is anything more than borderline blasphemy from a New Testament perspective, then we would insist that Saul the Christian Hunter could never ever become Paul the Evangelist to the world. Never. Once a tainted candy, always a tainted candy.
The problem is far worse than that. Many politically-active Christians aren’t merely suggesting that Jesus would never intervene in the life of a man like that on the road to Damascus; more, we shouldn’t trust the words of people who suggest that our Lord might just work in mysterious ways.

In one of my favorite sermons since I started the Walk The Earth process that is documented in one of the two podcasts on this feed, the pastor referred to The Paul Problem.  Can we trust Jesus? Should we believe what Jesus taught about the Holy Spirit (John 14-17)? Is it possible that truly evil people can be transformed by Christ? Really?
I mentioned the answers to these questions early in this article with concepts like redemption, forgiveness, atonement and faith.  To deny the conversion of Saul to Paul (Acts 8-9) is to deny Christ.

You know, I’ve seen other memes recently that quote Jesus saying he will deny he knows us before his Heavenly Father if we deny him in our earthly walks. That isn’t about what I might call Christian branding, flying our denominational (or U.S.) flags, singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers” or anything like that. We deny Christ before others when we say that a poisoned M&M will always be a poisoned M&M and will always pose a threat that no almighty God or human love could ever overcome. We deny Christ, proclaiming that we might say his name like some magic words but have no regard for what he taught, when we call concepts like redemption into question.

In that sermon more than a year ago, the pastor described the Paul Problem as the legitimate fear of early Christians about whether they could trust the conversion rumor they were hearing. Was it just a trick? This was, after all, the executioner. In Acts 9, the Paul Problem has an Ananias Answer.
This isn’t easy. Ananias was frightened. He had every reason to be frightened. But he didn’t let his fear overcome his faith, and neither should we. Christians must not tell the world, wittingly or unwittingly, that our Paul Problem is bigger than our Ananias Answer. That is where we are right now. American Christianity is, today, telling the world that the Holy Spirit either does not exist or cannot intervene. So many of us, too many of us, simply don’t believe that Jesus can turn tainted M&Ms into something we’d mix into our own candy bowls.

I’ve said before in past Inappropriate Conversations podcasts, including some long and detailed episodes, that I am conservative when it comes to scripture. That isn’t a political statement, and it certainly isn’t any form of alignment with denominational tradition. It means that I take scriptures seriously.

People look for shortcuts. It’s human nature. Most of what memes like this one get wrong are based on the desire to be brief, incisive. (Brief and incisive, clearly, are not my strength.) It’s just so easy to call a bad thing bad and make it go away. It’s just as easy, though, to pretend that nothing matters.

Let me repeat myself. I’m not suggesting that Americans drop their guard. We shouldn’t act as if the world isn’t a dangerous place. We just need to careful to avoid the other extreme. If we stop being the things that have made this country great, and more than just a bit unique at its inception, then what is it worth? Security, as a word, is all about securing and preserving. That’s the opposite of giving up the heart of this nation by scratching the words off the Statue Of Liberty or scrawling “Don’t” as graffiti over the line “send these” in that poem.

As a Christian, I’m also not making the mistake of saying that just because Jesus has the power to forgive any sin, that he therefore must forgive any sin. No, Jesus himself said there was one sin that would not be forgiven. From a Biblical perspective, it is just one.
“Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin,” Jesus of Nazareth (Mark 3:28).

Who is questioning God’s power in this current situation? Who is denying that there is a Holy Spirit or implying that there are some things we can’t trust our Lord to do? Who is denying Christ by refusing to swallow when he says, “Take, eat”?

Mistakes will be made here. Don’t doubt that. Some lives may be lost. Some destruction seems inevitable. We are fallible humans, and we are going to miss something.

All of that can be forgiven. What can’t be forgiven is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. I would suggest that denying the redemptive power of Jesus crosses this line. 

I’ll paraphrase something I’ve heard ascribed in the past to David Winter: those who experience your love today will be much more interested in your faith tomorrow.

What about those who experience our hate today? What will happen with those who are told that they have to at least pretend to adopt our faith today (even against their will, in a life or death decision point) before we will extend even minimally decent courtesy, let alone love?

There are foul tasting M&Ms in our current candy bowl, probably from our own attempt to save a few bucks and knock-off the recipe. Let’s not pretend that our biggest problem, as Christians in this nation, will come from external threats. Some of us are betraying Christ. Compared to that, nothing else matters.

Apparently, It's a Game of Inches

I was pulled over the other day for a violation related to my vehicle registration. I have no doubt that I was uneasy. From what I believe was mild food poisoning, I had left work before lunch and had serious concerns about making it to the bathroom in my home on time. I was sweating, distracted, worried, and impatient.

I challenged the officer from a nearby sheriff's department, questioning his facts and his approach. 

The good news: despite having my car towed, needing a family member to pick me up, and struggling to fully note the "popcorn trail through a dark maze" of steps that needed to be followed to pay late fees and get my car back ... I didn't lose my shit on the spot. I mean that literally. Delaying the inevitable diarrhea as long as I did was arguably a miracle.

The better news: I didn't die that day or a few days later in the custody of law enforcement officials. 

I have seen the Eric Garner video last year from New York City. A case could be made that I should have been strangled to death last week. I know too many people who have tried to justify the police actions because he was "uncooperative" or resisted arrest. If failing to be perfectly cooperative when you think the police are confused or making a mistake is a death-penalty offense, then it is definitely a miracle that I am alive today.

I have read the more recent accounts about Sandra Bland's arrest, which seems to have led to her death. Based on evidence, we should be investigating whether she died at the hands of law enforcement officials or by others through their indifference to protecting people in their custody. It is also possible, though less likely, that she committed suicide after being traumatized by her encounter with police. 

Again, if "nature called" and forced a (to be fair, very patient) law enforcement officer to deal with that mess, could I have mysteriously breathed my last breath that afternoon? 

I've described myself before as the kind of person that the American political majority is inclined to be patient with: white, married, family man, politically moderate (until people figure out what that means), deeply religious, very comfortably middle class or above average in that regard, steadily and gainfully employed, etc. 

Did this officer's patience, which I mentioned above, have more to do with me than with him? 

Did I get lucky by being pulled over by this man at that point in time? 

Or would I always be lucky for reasons that society is calling "privilege" on several levels that fall outside the legal dictionary?

And, I wonder, what would have happened if I had been unable to immediately pay more than $250 to get my car back? Surely, the choice would be "pay day loan" (so-called legal loan sharking in the opinion of some, which I cannot corroborate as it's outside of my experience) or loss of job due to loss of reliable transportation.

It's a game of inches, to use a sports analogy.

 A piece of mail delivered or not.

 A neighbor putting that official document back into the postal system, if mis-delivered, or not.

 Keeping my cool in a stressful situation, or literally losing my shit.

 Or simply the fact that my stress level was perceived as the concerns of a responsible citizen, while the same physiological response from someone else -- of a different age, race, gender, economic stability level, etc. -- might be perceived as deeply suspicious, disrespectful toward "the badge" or even criminal. 

I do not believe that I committed the crime of "resisting arrest" in this situation and clearly neither did the sheriff's officer. For me, this only further underscores how subjective that criminal charge clearly is and how wary we should be when it is used as an excuse for using too-often deadly force.

"If only she had shown more respect, then Bland would be alive today," I've heard commentators say about the recent Texas case. Sorry, once again this makes "attitudes" like impatience and distrust a death penalty offense. Even in Texas, such "attitudes" are not a crime, and even in Texas assault of a police officer or resisting arrest are not grounds for execution.

Or they shouldn't be.