Church Voices

My last post (and I admit its an easy mistake to make with my final sentence) has some people confused about what I’m advocating. I’ve received feedback, most publicly from Heath, about the failures of the Democratic party. Some were even handed (like Heath’s) some were not.

Let me say first, that I was not advocating a vote for either party, or any candidate. I believe the Democratic party has disastrously failed to reduce poverty, and in some cases has made it much worse.

But that only illustrates my real point, which is that Christians and churches shouldn’t see political systems as the answer to anything. Both parties which claim to be strong in areas that are of interest to Christians have failed utterly to achieve much of anything.

The answer doesn’t lie with our ability to force people to act in a certain way, it lies with churches acting like the church in a million little communities across the world.

The difference between me and Eliot Spitzer is largely this: I have never been elected governor of New York.

Douglas Groothuis writes:

However, the leading domestic moral issue remains the value of helpless human life. Since Roe v. Wade, approximately 50 million unborn humans have been killed through abortion.

He goes on to make a political case, in which Christians should be voting against both Democratic candidates because of their record on abortion.

A compelling case, until one considers what voting for Republican (and allegedly pro-life candidates has gotten us). After all, there’s been 8 years of President Bush, 4 years of the first President Bush, and 8 years of President Reagan. That’s 20 years of Republican Presidents broken only by 8 years of President Clinton. And in the end the only thing that pro-life forces have gotten is some room for states to regulate a bit more.

The strongest argument is the appointment of Supreme Court judges, but even if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned (as it ought to be) the result is not outlawing abortion, but rather allowing states to legislate as they want. I’m not sure how much of a dent this would make, as it would only require crossing state lines, and I would suspect that the majority of abortions are already performed in states that would allow it remain relatively legalized.

In other words, the political campaign has been a near complete and total failure, even as general pro-life sentiment has been on the rise.

So what are the options? Well the other option is the one the church should have been doing all along, and is naturally good at to begin with: creating a community that removes the motivation for abortion. This means doing more than just setting up centers that provide the nutritional necessities for a baby (and mom). It means more than just pointing pregnant women to a computer with its browser pointed at a medicare application. It means creating a church that will provide emotional support (via real, human relationships). It means providing things like babysitting as an act of family (rather than as an act which incurs an obligation), it means making people, who in the past might have been stigmatized by the church feel accepted. It means doing this in such a way that word gets around. It means doing this in places where women have abortions regularly

Or we can just keep trying what we’ve been doing. Maybe 20 more years of Republican president will make the difference this time.

Peter’s words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?”

Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is to you, and to your children, and even to the Gentiles—all who have been called by the Lord our God.” Then Peter continued preaching for a long time, strongly urging all his listeners, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation!”

Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all.

Being raised and educated in a non-denominational denomination that puts a huge emphasis on baptism I know all the verses about baptism. I could put together a nice big powerpoint presentation for you, write a paper, justify my position, and generally get all academic up in this hizzle.

I wonder sometimes, if we don’t make an idol of the Bible. If what once brought joy now has turned into “much study[ing] wearies the body”. There were no NT scriptures at this point, no Romans 6, or words like “baptismal regeneration”.

Only the knowledge that forgiveness of sins was there, waiting.

Have we exchanged joy for a power point presentation?

In his Confessions, St. Augustine recalls a conversation he had between himself, his friend Alypius, and Ponticianus, a “fellow countryman…from Africa, who held high office in the emperor’s court” (VIII,14 [Trans. & ed. Albert C. Outler]). Augustine quotes Ponticianus, who tells a story about one of his fellow political friends who happened upon a book containing the life of Antony, the Egyptian monk. His friend began reading it,

and was so fascinated and thrilled by the story that even before he finished reading he conceived the idea of taking upon himself the same kind of life and abandoning his career in the world – both he and his friend were officials in the service of the State – in order to become [God’s] servant. All at once he was filled with the love of holiness. Angry with himself and full of remorse, he looked at his friend and said, “What do we hope to gain by all the efforts we make? What are we looking for? What is our purpose in serving the State? Can we hope for anything better at court than to be the Emperor’s friends? Even so, surely our position would be precarious and exposed to much danger. We shall meet it in every turn, only to meet another danger which is greater still. And how long is it to be before we reach it? But if I wish, I can become the friend of God at this very moment.” (VIII, 15)

I recently had a family get-together, at which one of my relatives went on and on about the infinite woes of the American government. In his spiel, he denounced this and that and suggested such and so as respective appropriations. It was a passionate and angry pitch to all in ear shot. All the while I couldn’t help but think of questions similar to those asked by Ponticianus’s friend. Finally, he paused, looked at me and asked, “What do you think?” Somewhat nervously, I replied “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Suppose this utopia you’ve been imagining were actualized. Then what?” He didn’t really have an answer. When you don’t have a prior foundation upon which to build political perspective, the question seems unanswerable. That’s probably why Jesus asked it.

“Jesus did not die at the hands of muggers, rapists, or thugs. He fell into the well-scrubbed hands of deeply religious people, society’s most respected members.” -Brennan Manning

The metaphor of God as father is found throughout the scriptures. The relationship between father and children communicates much to us about God. I’ve been a father for a bit over a year now (go to Living and Growing in Owosso for massive amounts of pictures) and I can definitively say that being a father has taught me more about God than almost anything else. The way my son pays attention to me, even when I don’t think he is, how he becomes insecure when he doesn’t have one of his parents in sight, and how when he hurts himself, instead of attending to the hurt he crawls to me. The other side of the coin is what I do for him. Whether its sleep deprivation or getting knuckle deep in a dirty diaper if he needs it I’ll take care of it.

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

The most important issue weighing into who gets my vote in presidential elections is that of abortion. Let me just say on the onset that the legality of abortion is logically posterior the morality of abortion. Only after abortion is shown morally justified or unjustified should its legal status be determined. Furthermore, deciding the morality of abortion is fundamentally a matter of philosophical debate, not scientific (even though scientific considerations factor heavily into one’s philosophical position).

The key issue in the abortion debate is, of course, the status of the unborn; more specifically, the personhood of the fetus. Articulating and defending adequate criteria for personhood is the task of the philosopher. Indeed, the entire concept of personhood is philosophical. No scientific evidence could establish personhood per se. What scientific evidence that is relevant to the abortion debate, however, is contemporary biomedical evidence of human characteristics sufficient for personhood (brain-wave activity, complete genetic blueprint, etc).

And regarding such evidence, let me just say that no rational, sane person can now deny its overwhelming verdict. In the words of the world-famous French geneticist Jerome LeJeune, “to accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion.” Embryonic and genetic research has conclusively demonstrated human characteristics sufficient for personhood are present as early as the moment of conception itself. To say, therefore, that “the human fetus is not a human person until the morning that the mother goes into labor,” as the high court ruled in South Korea last year, is complete scientific poppycock. As one author put it, such an understanding “…is so biologically ignorant that I would call it medieval, except that would be to insult the medievals!” Rather than insult the medievals, therefore, I’ll just call such an understanding premodern, outmoded, and archaic.

In light of such evidence, the law desperately needs to be amended. The inconsistency is simply mind-boggling: In the one courtroom you have the fetus denounced as human yet, in another, you have a man convicted of double-homicide for murdering his pregnant wife. In one hospital room you have doctors vigorously trying to save a five-month old preemie yet, in another, you have them heartlessly aborting a nine-month old, full-term baby. You have someone vote to end the War in Iraq because of the number of U.S. deaths (3700 and climbing) yet, flip his ballot over and vote for abortion (number of abortions in the in U.S. since Iraq War began: 6,286,671 and climbing).

Check out some of these statistics. They’ll blow your mind.

The more we seek happiness, the more our search ends in depression. The more we pursue freedom, the more enslaved we become by our pursuit. The more we hunger for power, the more we starve by serving its limitlessness. The more pleasure we chase the more pain it engenders.

The common woes of life all result from a misguided pursuit for their respective virtues. This is because the virtues of life are necessarily byproducts of fulfillment of a deeper kind. Seeking the virtues for themselves is to put the cart before the horse. Their richest enjoyment is always incidental.

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else…. and all these things will be added to you.
Matt 6.33

“Teacher, of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and most important commandment.’
Matt 22.36-38

Paradoxically, our greatest earthly desires are only satisfiable when we no longer desire them.

Josh writes something that sums up what I’ve noticed about myself and thinking for the past year or so.

You really can’t sum up the life of Jesus with the doctrine of active obedience. That might be part of it, I guess, but his life isn’t a mask for a doctrine. I’m at the point in my Christian life now where I really don’t want to hear doctrines about Jesus anymore. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in them, as I understand the importance of the various orthodox dogmas. However, I feel like the stories in the Gospels themselves are far more important. I find myself more and more dealing with life by mentally referring to a Gospel (or sometimes OT) story than by referring to a doctrinal formulation.