We all know that things are tough and we all wish that they would get better. But that's the easy part. The hard part is trying to keep track of what matters most and resisting the temptation to take our anger and frustration out on the wrong people.
A business friend of mine helps me keep up with the details--the more subtle aspects of what happens during an economic downturn. Perhaps the saddest thing that I have learned through this is what happens when there is less and less to go around. We treat each other pretty well when there is plenty but when things get a little more scarce, we not only fight like fish over the last few crumbs, we begin to bite at one another as well. Not because we are hungry to eat them but because we can't bite anyone else.
None of this is new. It has been a sad side-effect of poverty since people had to leave the Garden and make a go of it in a world where things don't just grow on trees... Struggling people look around them and begin to resent and blame not those who hold the power and make the decisions but rather those who seem to have it as bad or worse than they do. In Germany, poor Christians come to resent poor Jews. In America, poor white folk learned to resent their poor black neighbors. Misplaced anger... We humans have a tendency to take our frustrations out on whatever might be in striking distance.
The best example of this is domestic abuse: You're mad at your boss. You're getting older and less attractive. The bills are piling up and no one listens to you... So what do you do? Why you beat your wife, of course; or your kids; or both!
Naturally this is wrong but people just keep doing it. What else are they going to do? ... Watching the latest on the Gulf Oil disaster, I see that rich people get into this too. Congress is dragging BP execs in so they can take some swings on behalf of the country. Nothing like a good public display of vengeance to clear the soul! Sheeeesh.
Here's an idea. How about some peace? Or some good will? If we're gonna have to suffer through this ______ anyway, why don't we try to make the best of it? How about we recognize that we actually have more in common with the people we can reach than those we can't? There is nothing wrong with a little anger, let's just work a little harder at directing it at the right people.
BTW, that poor fellow there is The Weather Man. He's just been pelted by another chocolate shake thrown from a passing car. Killing The Messenger--another tried and true practice of the downtrodden. Sure... but let me see you hit God with one of those things!
Monday, June 21, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Celibacy and Other Things The Clergy Probably Shouldn't Be Doing For Us
In response to the sex scandal in the Roman Catholic church, a group of women have apparently written an open letter to the pope. The woman are Italian Catholics who have had affairs or relationships with priests. However, unlike the harsh criticisms that has characterized other such letters, these are letters in support of the priests and others who have been caught in a system that has some very real problems. Some have said that the letters will reopen the discussion about celibacy. While that remains to be seen, I do feel that the letter is an important document. Many people have sensed (myself included) that the cause of much of the pain and suffering that we have seen in the Church around the issue of sex is rooted in the strangely applied expectation of a celibate and unmarried priesthood.
The current Pope, along with many before him, has responded to questions of this kind by referencing that celibacy has been the historic practice and expectation of clergy for a very long time (though curiously not since the beginning of the Church). I think it is a bad idea to ask entire groups of people to refrain from sex on the basis of their loyalty to God and to the Church. But what I really think is a bad idea is doing this out of some kind of queer loyalty to values and faith positions that the Church does not promote.
What I mean by this is that the Church certainly does not believe that marriage is a bad thing. Moreover, despite the strange and mixed messages that we've heard from time to time, the Church does not believe that sex is dirty or evil. While there have been times when both Protestant and Catholic Christians have entertained such ideas, the Bible does not support it and as Christians we have largely gotten past our awkward feelings about sexuality. Indeed, in the more recent past, the Church has made it a point to proclaim that sex is a part of God's created order and therefore a good thing. Of course, we also believe that there are more and less appropriate ways of expressing this particular gift but there is no official position in the Church suggesting that sex is a bad thing. Herein lies the twofold problem.
First, by setting a unique standard for the priesthood, the Vatican is indirectly making a strange statement, both to the Church and to the larger world. By implying that marriage and sex are OK for lay people but not OK for Church leaders, the Vatican is suggesting these things are some kind of vice. The unspoken lesson here is that real Christians should not be interested in lesser things like marriage and sex.
Second, and this is the really sad part... The truth is, the Church doesn't believe this. It doesn't believe that sex is dirty. In fact, marriage is actually a sacrament in the Roman Catholic tradition--on the level of Baptism and Holy Communion. Why would you deny something that is upheld as good and desirable from leaders within the Church? Again, in the proper context... Or to put it in the darker context: could it be that we are seeing perversion of sexuality in these men precisely because they have not been allowed to enjoy healthy expressions of it?
This issue is actually just one of a number of double-standards that we have applied to clergy at one time or another. Of course, part of this is helpful; we want our servant leaders to serve as examples of the faith and holding them to a higher standard makes sense in this regard. However, sometimes there seems to be something else going on. Sometimes, we sort of imagine that we want the clergy to live out our faithfulness for us. It seems that we ask them to be pure or poor or nonviolent so we won't have to.
This, it seems to me, is a poor way to live out our faith together. By asking some to carry the disciplinary burden of all might sound attractive but like the Church's expectation of celibate priesthood, it not only sends a mixed message, it also paves the way for some rather bizarre side effects. I am thinking here especially of the Church's confused and compromised relation to war and nonviolence. Although Jesus himself was nonviolent and early Christian disciples were taught to avoid vocations in which there might be shedding blood, the Church today has moved far away from this expectation. Of course, clergy are expected to be peaceful in both personal and collective ways, that expectation is seldom applied to the faithful. Another example, of course, is money. The people in the pews feel that it is their God-given right to pursue and protect wealth to any and all degrees as long as our servant leaders remain nice and poor.
Interestingly, these two examples are somewhat different from the example of celibacy. Whereas the Bible clearly recognizes sex (at least within marriage) as a good and important part of life, violence and the pursuit of riches are generally not regarded as Godly behavior. So what's going on? Does the Church really want to continue to underwrite things like violence and greed while hypocritically judging something as natural as sex?
The current Pope, along with many before him, has responded to questions of this kind by referencing that celibacy has been the historic practice and expectation of clergy for a very long time (though curiously not since the beginning of the Church). I think it is a bad idea to ask entire groups of people to refrain from sex on the basis of their loyalty to God and to the Church. But what I really think is a bad idea is doing this out of some kind of queer loyalty to values and faith positions that the Church does not promote.
What I mean by this is that the Church certainly does not believe that marriage is a bad thing. Moreover, despite the strange and mixed messages that we've heard from time to time, the Church does not believe that sex is dirty or evil. While there have been times when both Protestant and Catholic Christians have entertained such ideas, the Bible does not support it and as Christians we have largely gotten past our awkward feelings about sexuality. Indeed, in the more recent past, the Church has made it a point to proclaim that sex is a part of God's created order and therefore a good thing. Of course, we also believe that there are more and less appropriate ways of expressing this particular gift but there is no official position in the Church suggesting that sex is a bad thing. Herein lies the twofold problem.
First, by setting a unique standard for the priesthood, the Vatican is indirectly making a strange statement, both to the Church and to the larger world. By implying that marriage and sex are OK for lay people but not OK for Church leaders, the Vatican is suggesting these things are some kind of vice. The unspoken lesson here is that real Christians should not be interested in lesser things like marriage and sex.
Second, and this is the really sad part... The truth is, the Church doesn't believe this. It doesn't believe that sex is dirty. In fact, marriage is actually a sacrament in the Roman Catholic tradition--on the level of Baptism and Holy Communion. Why would you deny something that is upheld as good and desirable from leaders within the Church? Again, in the proper context... Or to put it in the darker context: could it be that we are seeing perversion of sexuality in these men precisely because they have not been allowed to enjoy healthy expressions of it?
This issue is actually just one of a number of double-standards that we have applied to clergy at one time or another. Of course, part of this is helpful; we want our servant leaders to serve as examples of the faith and holding them to a higher standard makes sense in this regard. However, sometimes there seems to be something else going on. Sometimes, we sort of imagine that we want the clergy to live out our faithfulness for us. It seems that we ask them to be pure or poor or nonviolent so we won't have to.
This, it seems to me, is a poor way to live out our faith together. By asking some to carry the disciplinary burden of all might sound attractive but like the Church's expectation of celibate priesthood, it not only sends a mixed message, it also paves the way for some rather bizarre side effects. I am thinking here especially of the Church's confused and compromised relation to war and nonviolence. Although Jesus himself was nonviolent and early Christian disciples were taught to avoid vocations in which there might be shedding blood, the Church today has moved far away from this expectation. Of course, clergy are expected to be peaceful in both personal and collective ways, that expectation is seldom applied to the faithful. Another example, of course, is money. The people in the pews feel that it is their God-given right to pursue and protect wealth to any and all degrees as long as our servant leaders remain nice and poor.
Interestingly, these two examples are somewhat different from the example of celibacy. Whereas the Bible clearly recognizes sex (at least within marriage) as a good and important part of life, violence and the pursuit of riches are generally not regarded as Godly behavior. So what's going on? Does the Church really want to continue to underwrite things like violence and greed while hypocritically judging something as natural as sex?
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Enough
Occasionally, I have this image of a plow. It is hooked to an immense tractor and turning the soil over upon itself and that soil is me. It is, in a sense, a dark image I guess; but strangely comforting for me. It is not that I am in a hurry to be returned to the dust from which we all come. It is just good to know that there will some day be an end to it. All the disappointments, failures and damage that I see being wrought upon the earth and my part in it. I am glad that these things will at some point be finished--everything turned back to dirt. And then used for something new--I hope for something better.
This perhaps reads as reincarnation of some kind. But it doesn't feel that way. Reincarnation tends to focus on the I part in all this. What will become of me and all that... But my interest is more in the end of the me--the end to the us as cruel butchers of beauty and one another. It seems that all that focus on the self is sort of the part of life that I find most distressing. So my interest in the soil is not because I am in a hurry to be something or somewhere else. I just like knowing that there will be something else--something beside all the self-seeking that characterizes so much of this life.
Of course, as a Christian, I am also drawn to the image of eternal life, to the vision of paradise. And for the same reasons. Whatever paradise might be, it must be more than an endless parade of personal consumption. It is not that I don't like things or pleasure; and, again, I am not in a hurry to become fertilize for the next generation of whatver. I'm just getting tired. Or, at least I am tired today. I am tired of disappointment. And I am sick to death of the cruelty of people. It just seems there is no end to the self-seeking and death that we humans can visit on one another.
As I was thinking about this, I remembered something that Jesus said about God's people:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Mt. 23:37
Jesus uses that word, brood, in only one other reference.
You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Mt. 12:34
Strange isn't it? Snakes and harmless chicks--two pretty different images, indeed. Jesus likens the former to those who imagine themselves to be good and holy when, in fact, they are evil and vile. The latter he uses to name the Father's love for his childrenl.
This perhaps reads as reincarnation of some kind. But it doesn't feel that way. Reincarnation tends to focus on the I part in all this. What will become of me and all that... But my interest is more in the end of the me--the end to the us as cruel butchers of beauty and one another. It seems that all that focus on the self is sort of the part of life that I find most distressing. So my interest in the soil is not because I am in a hurry to be something or somewhere else. I just like knowing that there will be something else--something beside all the self-seeking that characterizes so much of this life.
Of course, as a Christian, I am also drawn to the image of eternal life, to the vision of paradise. And for the same reasons. Whatever paradise might be, it must be more than an endless parade of personal consumption. It is not that I don't like things or pleasure; and, again, I am not in a hurry to become fertilize for the next generation of whatver. I'm just getting tired. Or, at least I am tired today. I am tired of disappointment. And I am sick to death of the cruelty of people. It just seems there is no end to the self-seeking and death that we humans can visit on one another.
As I was thinking about this, I remembered something that Jesus said about God's people:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Mt. 23:37
Jesus uses that word, brood, in only one other reference.
You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Mt. 12:34
Strange isn't it? Snakes and harmless chicks--two pretty different images, indeed. Jesus likens the former to those who imagine themselves to be good and holy when, in fact, they are evil and vile. The latter he uses to name the Father's love for his childrenl.
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