About that "putting Christ back into Christmas" thing ...

 

'Tis the season for that old canard about "putting Christ back into Christmas." 

Not a completely unreasonable request, but I am often tempted to respond with the thought that we really ought to "put Christ back into Christianity." Put Christ back into the churches. Put Christ back into the pulpits. Put Christ-like behavior front and center. 

But these are slogans and soundbites, bits of shorthand that hint at something deeper and more pressing. A more straightforward approach would be this:

When was the last time you turned the other cheek when someone struck you?

When was the last time you forgave someone who injured you?

When was the last time you saw someone on the side of the road, in distress, and you stopped and helped, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan?

When was the last time you welcomed a stranger?

When was the last time you healed someone?

When was the last time you gave a cup of water to someone who was thirsty, or food to someone who was hungry? 

When was the last time you asked your Father God to give you your daily bread?

When was the last time you went to a garden and spent the night in prayer? 

When was the last time someone asked you for your coat and you gave him your cloak too? 

When was the last time you sold what you had and gave the money to the poor? 

When was the last time you hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors and other social undesirables?

When was the last time you laid your hands on someone who was ill? 

When was the last time you wept?

When was the last time you put aside your own will and did God's will instead? 

When was the last time you prayed for your enemies?

When was the last time you did good to those who hurt you? 

When was the last time you decided not to judge someone? 

I'll admit it: I'm not big on theology. In the Middle Ages, they had fierce debates on how many angels could fit on the head of a pin, but that's really not my thing. Doesn't interest me in the slightest. 

I'm not sure Jesus was big on theology either. He didn't offer of anything on that score. He didn't go around making theological statements. Wasn't his cup of tea. Instead, he talked incessantly about people -- and about how we treat each other. He even went so far as to say that the "whole of the law" could be summed up in two commandments: Love God and love your neighbor as you love yourself.

It's NOT the end of the world as we know it

David Bawden

Meet David Bawden. He lives about 20 miles outside of Topeka, Kansas and calls himself Pope Michael I. He was elected to the papacy by a conclave of six people (one of whom was his father) in the early 1990s.

Bawden is a traditional Catholic who believes the Roman Catholic Church strayed into heresy and error during its Vatican II sessions in the 1960s. Because it has "embraced heresy," it is no longer the Catholic Church, or so the traditional Catholic believes.

You may think all of this is perfectly ridiculous (and it is), but Bawden is not the only "pope in exile" wandering around the planet. There is Pope Linus II in Hertfordshire, England, Pius XIII in Montana (now deceased) (and not to be confused with the new movie starring Jude Law), Pope Krav I in Croatia and Alexander IX in Argentina, among others. This Wikipedia entry is a good place to start your own research.

Since I grew up in the traditional Catholic world, I know about these things.

We believed:

• That the end was near and we lived in the End Times.
• That the Roman Catholic Church had been destroyed from the inside out by heresy and error.
• That the pope, by embracing heresy, was no longer pope. 
• That the mass, because it had been changed and was now said in the vernacular rather than Latin, was no longer valid.
• That all Catholics (from the pope and cardinals on down) who were part of the "New Church" with its "bastard rites and bastard sacraments" were in heresy and would therefore go to hell.
• That we alone - traditional Catholics - were "true Catholics."  

There are many flavors of traditional Catholicism. The brand I followed featured a bishop (Francis Schuckardt) who stockpiled weapons and was extremely anti-Semitic and who had a painting of Adolf Hitler overlooking his bed. We passed around a pamphlet called The Six Million Swindle about how the Holocaust never happened. We attended John Birch Society meetings and waited for society to collapse.

Francis Schuckardt

You can read the official version of Schuckardt's life here, but you might also want to have a look at this article as well as this article.

Glenn Beck

I read an article recently in The Atlantic about Glenn Beck, that perennial purveyor of doom and gloom who found his voice by comparing Obama to Hitler. If you thought Beck would be happy to see Trump become president of the United States, you thought wrong. Beck has now turned his guns on Trump and is convinced, yet again, that the END IS NEAR and that the US Constitution "hangs by a thread" and the Ship of Liberty is about the founder on the rocks and ... you know the drill. Same same but different.

I was reminded that people like Beck - and Pope Michael I and traditional Catholics and all the other doom and gloomers among us - have always been around, and will always be around, and that it's not the issue of the day that concerns them. It's the outrage. The feeling of outrage. The feeling of moral superiority - that they know something the rest of us don't. That they "get it" while the rest of us are clueless.

I could easily populate this post with an endless list of examples of hysteria and fear-mongering going back to Jesus himself, who seemed to believe the end was indeed near.

None of this is new.

It's been more than fifty years since the Second Vatican Council closed in Rome in 1965 and there are still traditional Catholics who are utterly convinced the Roman Catholic Church has been destroyed and is no more, despite the fact that it is still very much alive and actually prospering.

As we head into 2017 and whatever a Trump presidency will bring, there is a sense of doom and gloom among many of my friends, some of whom have been talking in rather apocalyptic language. My message is simple: It's not the end of the world as we know it. There is cause for concern and renewed vigilance, but the world is not about to collapse around us.

I've heard all of this before. In fact, I've heard it over and over and I wasted too many years engaging with the doomsayers, trying to reason with them, trying to comprehend what the fuss was all about. I've come to realize that some people enjoy a sense of impending catastrophe and that if there wasn't something awful on the horizon, they would invent it just so they could have something to rail against.

To each his own.

As for me and my house,  we're going to go about our business and enjoy whatever time we have together in the quiet confidence that this too shall pass and all shall be well.

What's Up with Mississippi?

In the realms of chutzpah, it was a bona fide keeper. Mississippi Speaker of the House Philip Gunn said he was disappointed that a judge had ruled against House Bill 1523, which would have allowed discrimination against LGBT folks under the guise of religious liberty. Federal judge Carlton Reeves put a stay on the bill, which was to take effect on July 1, 2016.

Gunn said, "We felt like it was a good bill, protecting religious beliefs and the rights of LGBT community."

He did not explain how giving religious people a free pass to discriminate against the gay community would "protect the rights of LGBT community." He also did not explain his aversion to the use of a definite article.

Perhaps he was trying to one-up his boss, Governor Phil Bryant, who received the Samuel Adams Religious Freedom Award from the Family Research Council (categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center), for signing the bill in the first place. During the award ceremony, held in Washington, D.C., Bryant said, "They don't know that Christians have been persecuted throughout the ages. They don't know that if it takes crucifixion, we will stand in line before abandoning our faith and our belief in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So if we are going to stand, now is the time and this is the place."

As Judge Reeves noted in his dissent, the bill was clearly a reaction to last year's marriage equality ruling that made gay marriage legal throughout the United States. Bryant and his friends in the Mississippi legislature thought they had come up with an end run around the ruling with a so-called "religious liberty" bill. After all, who doesn't want to protect "religious liberty"? 

Proponents argued that unless the bill was signed, pastors in the state of Mississippi would be forced to marry gay couples whether they wanted to or not. They provided no evidence for this claim, and were apparently unaware that not one pastor or priest or anyone else wearing a funny hat in this country has ever been forced to marry a gay couple against their will. 

Not to be outdone, the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer posted this on his Facebook page:

He also said the "homosexual agenda is the greatest threat to religious liberty in our nation's history."

Fischer's overheated and over the top rhetoric is one of the reasons why the American Family Association was also categorized as a hate group  by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

The only sensible statement from a public official in Mississippi on this matter came from Attorney General Jim Hood, who said, "The fact is that the churchgoing public was duped into believing that HB1523 protected religious freedoms. Our state leaders attempted to mislead pastors into believing that if this bill were not passed, they would have to preside over gay wedding ceremonies. No court case has ever said a pastor did not have discretion to refuse to marry any couple for any reason. I hate to see politicians continue to prey on people who pray, go to church, follow the law and help their fellow man."

The challenges faced by Mississippi are many and well known. How its opposition to gay marriage and gay rights in general will help the state with these challenges is a complete mystery. HB1523 has actually hurt the state. Many main street groups and chambers of commerce asked the governor not to sign the bill, as did major corporations like Nissan, Toyota, Levis, Tyson Foods and many others. The governor ignored all these folks and signed the bill anyway. 

Now that a stay has been issued against it, there is talk of an appeal. 

Why, Mississippi? What's up with that?

What the duck?

So, what's wrong with Duck Commander Phil Robertson going Biblical with his views on homosexuality?

Nothing. 

Not one single, solitary thing. 

His religious views are not substantially different from many Christians all over the world, including the pope in Rome. 

But it wasn't his religious views that caused the Quack Heard Across the Globe.

Here's what he actually said during the GQ interview:

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

It takes just eleven words to find the problem. When the topic turns to homosexuality, he immediately throws out the word "bestiality," linking homosexual behavior and bestiality as if they were of a piece, as if the relationship between two gay men or two gay women, between two consenting adults who love and cherish each other, was no different than a redneck having sex with a donkey. 

That's the problem.

Members of the LGBT community are no strangers to this type of talk. We are routinely classified as sexual perverts, and homosexuality, we are told, is not substantially different than sexual perversions like pedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia. 

As a child growing up during the 1970s, I remember very well looking up the word "homosexuality" in the dictionary and finding it classified as a sexual perversion, "akin to pedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia, which see."

I flipped the pages to look up those other words and was horrified to learn that the crush I had on Shaun Cassidy was no different than my wanting to have sex with a little kid, or a cow, or a dead body. Pretty heady stuff for a teenager in the throes of puberty. And not only heady, but shaming. Intensely, relentlessly, mindbogglingly shaming. And embarrassing. And humiliating. And psychologically damaging. 

Does it need to be said that the love two gay men or two gay women feel for each other is substantially different than someone having sex with a corpse? Do we really need to explain how deeply misinformed, ignorant and offensive such thinking is? 

Apparently we do. 

Folks like Phil Robertson, pontificating on Bible verses and taking a stand for Jesus, routinely throw out comparisons to pedophilia and bestiality. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum is famed for talking about gay marriage as something that will lead to the "man on dog" thing. Evangelicals constantly warn that gay marriage will lead to people wanting to marry their pets, or their children, or their brothers or sisters or ... fill in the blank.

Well, you say, so what? What's the big deal?

I'll tell you what the big deal is.

Love.

Surprise, surprise, gay people want to be loved, too. They want to fall in love, experience intimacy and romance, have sex, commit themselves to each other, create families, live normal lives.

By constantly suggesting that gay love is a sexual perversion like bestiality, religious types are striking right at the heart (so to speak) of a person, hitting them right in the place where they feel, where they find meaning and hope and happiness. They are striking at the core of an individual and his or her ability to love, to receive love, to interact with the community, to be a human being. By dismissing as perversion their romantic feelings, their attractions to members of the same sex, they are killing the souls of such people. 

They are suggesting that these feelings of love and affection among gay people are disgusting and unworthy, perverted, sinful, so terrible that such feelings ought to be denied. They are doing this, not because there is any scientific or medical evidence to support it, but because they believe the Bible condemns homosexuality. They are teaching young gay men and women to hate themselves, to hate their feelings, to hate the truth about themselves, to shut themselves off from the love and affection of others like them. The psychological, spiritual and sociological consequences are predictable:  Alienation, suicidal ideation, low self-esteem, self-doubt, self-loathing, loneliness, and ultimately, despair. And as a final kick in the pants, young gay men and women are expected to believe that this is what the God of love wants for them: A life of loneliness and pain and rejection and humiliation and shame. 

Monstrous ignorance, from start to finish, as so many members of the gay community have painfully learned. 

Read those words again:

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality ..."
It takes but six little words for Robertson to jump from "homosexual behavior" to "bestiality." As if they were so intrinsically linked, he couldn't mention one without the other. 

This type of talk is so common among evangelicals as to be uninteresting. But that doesn't make it right. That doesn't redeem it from being what it is: Hate speech. 

Hate speech is the use of words to demonize groups of people. Suggesting that two men who love each other is not at all different than a horny farmer raping his goat is demonization. It's a display of shocking ignorance and stupidity which has nothing to do with supposed Biblical teachings on sexuality and everything to do with bigotry and prejudice.

It's wrong.

Many, many churches carry on a conversation about homosexuality without resorting to demonization and hate speech. It is possible to talk about religious beliefs on homosexuality without needlessly offending people. But the moment you stray from your beliefs and start talking about gay people as being no better than pedophiles or people who like to have sex with goats, you are no longer having a conversation on your religious beliefs: You are engaging in highly offensive exercise in ignorance and bigotry. And you can, and should, be made to face the consequences. 

No one argues with Robertson's right to free speech and no one is suggesting that he is not entitled to his own religious beliefs. But when free speech turns into hate speech, and religious belief turns into ignorant demonization of others, there is a problem.

Hate speech leads to hate crimes. Gay people can and do get fired from their jobs. Some have had their children taken away from them. Gay and lesbian teens are kicked out of their homes and left to fend for themselves on the streets.  Hate speech makes it easier for society to discriminate against gay people, take away their rights, violate their persons and property. Hardly what Jesus had in mind when he said we should do unto others what we would have done unto ourselves. This is not loving your neighbor as you love yourself. 

That this hate speech wraps itself in Christianity does not give it the protection of freedom of religion. Your religious beliefs are protected, but your belief that homosexuality is somehow the same as necrophilia is not supported by the Bible (or any authority, including science or common sense). When you talk about homosexuality being the same as bestiality, you are not having a conversation on religious belief. You are being an ignorant bigot, and we have the right to be offended.

Why I hate "Christians"

Someone asked me recently why I hate Christians.

I replied that real "Christians" are rather rare and I don't know that many. I do, however, know a great many people who call themselves Christians, but who are anything but Christ-like. 

These folks are a dime a dozen. They wrap themselves in religion and use it as an excuse to hate, or judge, or condemn, or exclude. They glory in their chosen-ness, their blessedness, casting a sad eye on those of us who are unwashed and unsaved. They are morally superior and want their morality legislated onto those of us who are apparently incapable of genuine morality.

I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, though. The "Christians" I hate are the ones who are the most strident, the most vociferous, the ones leading the charge in the culture wars, the shiny-faced folks on TV with their hands out who fear-monger about abortion and homosexuality to gin up donations. The "Christians" I'm talking about are the last to turn the other cheek, the last to be meek, mild, humble, the last to leave judgement to God, where it belongs. 

On the one side are real, genuine Christians who are Christ-like, who understand what the Gospels were about, the ones who know that when they pray they should go to their room and shut the door and not stand on the street corner and proclaim their righteousness for the world to see. On the other hand, there are shiny charlatans with $3,000 suits who use Christianity as a weapon to suit their own agenda. Between these two poles are the mass of souls in between.

It is not those souls in between that I hate. It is not Christ-like people that I hate. It's the hypocrites, the users, the abusers, the vampires who suck on the body of Christ to sustain their own lives. Those are the "Christians" that I hate. 

And for good reason.

Jesus hated them too. 

If you read the Gospels attentively, you will notice that Jesus didn't get mad that often. But when he did, it was invariably with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, those self-righteous hair-splitters who were forever rabble-rousing and stirring up trouble, who thought of themselves as the apples of God's eyes, who rejoiced in their salvation even as they sneered down at sinners and the outcast who could never measure up. 

Jesus hated those bastards. Don't believe me? Read what he said about them. On one occasion he calls them children of their father, the Devil. 

I think it's important to understand who he was talking to. The Pharisees and Sadducees were prominent, scholarly Jews. They knew the law inside and out. They were the pillars of the community, the leading lights. They had the prime seats at table and in the temple. They were respected, prominent, important. They called the shots. They were the priests, pastors and popes of their day.

Imagine how it must have appeared to them for someone like Jesus to come along and publicly revile them, over and over, even going so far as to tell them that they were children of the Devil, their mouths like "white-washed sepulchers." It's no wonder these folks schemed to find a way to have Jesus silenced. And it's no wonder they eventually succeeded. 

Let us consider the matter further:

• Unlike so many American Christians, Jesus had absolutely no interest in political power. Indeed, he was a huge disappointment to the Jews who were waiting for a political leader, a worldly "king," not a spiritual Messiah or Savior, but someone who could lead the charge against Rome and free Jerusalem from Roman occupation. When they gave him a coin with Ceasar's image on it and confronted him on the matter, he said, "Render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's, and unto God what is God's."  He wanted nothing to do with political power. He did not tell his followers to agitate for political power or change. He made utterly no effort to overthrow an unjust occupation.  How does this square with the many Christians and Evangelicals who constantly agitate for legislation that is favorable to their religious beliefs? 
• What is the response of a Christian to injury or harm? Jesus was plain: Turn the other cheek. Do good to those that hate you, that revile you, that do all manner of evil to you. Love your enemies. Bless them. Wish them well. So, when was the last time you saw a Christian turn the other cheek? When was the last time you saw Sarah Palin, or Michelle Bachmann, or Ann Coulter, or Mike Huckabee, or Pat Robertson, "do good" to those that hate them? You won't find much cheek-turning these days. You will find, though, a lot of heated rhetoric about how Christians have to stand their ground, step up, be counted, make their voices heard so that we're not steamrolled by the homosexuals or the abortionists or the atheists or the Muslims. Lock and load, to use Palin's terminology.
• "Judge not, lest you be judged." How much plainer or simpler could it be? But the Christians I'm referring to are the first to judge, to condemn, to exclude, to vilify, to actively promote policies that hurt and harm and drive away souls they don't like. But notice something very curious: While they pick on the gays constantly (and, it seems, rather gleefully), they do not pick on adulterers. Or drunkards. Or murderers. Or child abusers. Or men who slap their wives around. Or fornicators. Or business people who cheat their employees out of a just wage. No. Their self-righteous ire is very carefully channeled into a safe outlet: Pick on the gays. Curious, isn't it? To their way of thinking, gays are destroying the family. Not fornicators or straight couples who live together. Not men having affairs. Not men cruising the Internet for porn. But gay people. While there is a website called godhatesfags.com, there is no site called godhatesfornicators.com, or godhatesdrunkards.com. Curious how judgement is carried out against a safe target ("the gays"), and not in a way that might hit too close to home. 
• Furthermore, what is Christianity today if not one giant exercise in judging? Christians are constantly judging everyone and everything: Society, law, other religions, other religious believers, lifestyle choices. It's all but impossible to imagine Christianity without all the relentless judging that goes with it. Jesus never once said you had to go to church on Sunday. He did say, "Judge not, lest you be judged." How do we account for this? Christians are like the Jews who caught the woman in adultery and wanted to stone her to death. What was the response of Jesus? "Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone." Today's Christians would gladly stone the gays, and the women who have had abortions, and the Muslims, and all the other people they can't stand. They would do it without a second thought, and they would feel justified in doing so. 
• "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first." In Christianity, the social order is inverted. Jesus invited the riffraff trash of society to his table, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the lepers, the morally compromised. Time and again, he made it clear that the "first" shall be last in the Kingdom of Heaven. You would be hard pressed to find any evidence of this teaching among today's American Christians. Just the opposite, in fact. The Mike Huckabees of this world will always be seated at the head of the table. 
• "See those Christians, how they love another!" To which I can only say: Ha ha ha! Where is the Christian who "loves" those around him? Who loves the stranger? The immigrant? The homosexual? The morally compromised? The other? The enemy? Where is the Christian who loves his Muslim neighbors? American Christianity has become almost synonymous with hate. If you ask Google the leading question of "Why are Christians so ..?" the answers that pop up (based on previous searches) are "Why are so Christians so mean?" and "Why are Christians so angy?" It does not ask "Why are Christians so loving?" When you think of Christians, you do not think of loving, gentle people. 

I admire Jesus a great deal. He was an extraordinary man. It's been more than 2,000 years and we're still talking about him, about what he did, about what it meant. No other person in the history of this world has had a greater impact. 

I admire Jesus. I love Jesus. I love what he stood for, what he taught, what he meant. 

But I would not be the first to say that his followers have messed it up, over and over, time and again, to such an extent that it's hard to believe they think of themselves as "Christ-like."

Christ was not a bully. Christ did not have a "my way or the highway" mentality. Christ did not come to condemn the world, but save it.

Part of my anger at "Christians" has to do with my love for Jesus, and my sadness at the way he has been treated by his followers, at the great many souls they have scandalized and driven away by their unChrist-like behaviors and beliefs. Surely it would be better for these people to have a millstone tied around their neck and for them to be thrown into the river than to have so scandalized so many people. Truly, he has cast his pearls before swine. 

Harsh words? I suspect that when these "Christians" stand before God for their judgement, they will hear much worse. They might be reminded that St. Paul told them that without love, they are just tinkling brass.

All of this is in contrast to a genuine Christian, a soul who has taken Christ as his savior, mentor, friend, spiritual guide.

What does Jesus tell this soul?

• Turn the other cheek. 
• Be patient, kind, loving, humble. 
• Don't put yourself first. 
• When you pray, go into your bedroom and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. 
• Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven. 
• Don't be anxious for tomorrow. 
• Become like a little child. 
• Love your enemies. 
• Do good to those that hate you and persecute you and do all manner of evil against you. 
• If someone asks for your coat, give them your cloak too. If someone asks you to walk a mile with them, walk two. 
• It is better to give than to receive.

These people are not much interested in the politics of the day. They don't wear their religion on their sleeve. They pray in private. They love. They forgive. They ask for forgiveness. They demonstrate, by their actions, that Christ means something to them. They give the glory to God, not to the man on the TV in the shiny suit. They do unto others as they would have done unto themselves. They do not lord it over others. They do not seek a special status. 

Where are these people? They may indeed be sitting in the pew next to you. A few of them may even be in the pulpit. But most of these people understand that it is God who judges, God who sees, not man. They are concerned with what God think of them, not man. They cast their cares and trust upon God and do not worry about the 'morrow. 

When you meet a person like that, you've met a Christian. They don't have to tell you. You just know. The rest are nothing but sound and fury, signifying nothing.