The Fall

Theologians say there was a Fall. Humankind, they say, was made a little lower than the angels, but through disobedience fell from our lofty estate and brought the whole world down with us. We fell, they say again, into the wretched condition of original sin. Alienated from our Creator, we ushered death and damnation into a formally pristine universe. It is a dark view of the world and humans. I don’t see it – neither in scripture nor in nature.

There are two stories of creation in the opening chapters of Genesis - different ways of understanding the same condition. The first is poetry describing a universe in harmony - light and dark flowing in a yin-yang dance of opposites, bringing forth life. The Lord pronounced the whole cosmos as good, including humans, the most recent of God’s creatures, added to the earthly menagerie as an ellipsis at the end of a long week.

The second story is not meant to negate the first, but to supplement it. It tells a story of a Garden in Eden, Adam and Eve, magical trees, a wily talking serpent, and sword-wielding cherubim. It reads like a folk tale. Here humans are created first. That is the problem. In their self-importance they eat greedily of the Tree of Knowledge, hide from God, become aware of good and evil, suffering and death, and are walled off from paradise.

As I read the stories, the world did not fall from its primeval harmony when Homo sapiens began to exercise moral choice. Eden did not wilt or decay. The galaxies still spin in their celestial orbits, unaffected by what happens on this pale blue dot. To suggest our actions have cosmic consequences is to repeat the primordial sin of anthropocentrism.

We did not fall; we jumped. Our ancient ancestors did not fall from a paradisal state of sinless innocence and endless life. They jumped down from the trees and onto the savannas to get a different view. We stood erect. We became self-aware and morally conscious. We exchanged hunting and gathering for animal husbandry and agriculture. We built villages and cities, factories and the internet.

Along the way we forgot the songs of Eden and died to the dance. Creation still sings its sacred hymn, but we no longer recognize the tune. But as I face the ocean and watch the waves thundering onto the shore, I hear echoes of Eden. I get a glimpse of what lies over the horizon. We have not fallen. We have simply turned our backs.

McJesus

On the wall of a museum in Haifa, Israel, hangs a controversial work of art by Finnish artist Jani Leinonen, entitled “McJesus.” It is part of an exhibition called “Sacred Goods,” which is “the responses of contemporary artists to issues of religion and faith in the contemporary global reality, which is dominated by the consumer culture,” according to the museum’s website.

McJesus is a large crucifix with Ronald McDonald in the role of Christ. A clown on a cross. It has caused an uproar in the Christian community of the Holy Land and led to a protest outside the museum that had to be quelled by Israeli police. There have been calls by the Christian community to have it removed, as offensive to that country’s minority Christians. (One can only imagine what would have happened if the Torah or Muhammad had been disparaged in a work of art!)

I have to admit that my initial reaction to the sculpture was one of visceral disgust. I immediately took offense. My second thought was sympathy for my Arab Christian sisters and brothers in Israel and Palestine, who have to regularly endure so many indignities from both Muslims and Jews. This is just one more. My third reaction was empathy for Muslims.  I realized that I was feeling what many Muslims feel when cartoonists depict Muhammad in a degrading manner.

Only after I processed my emotions for a few days, posted the article about the museum on Facebook and read a very insightful comment from a friend, could I return to the sculpture with fresh eyes. Then I could view it, not as the work of an insensitive provocateur, but a statement about the present state of Christianity. I was forced to ask the question: Is this piece of art saying something we need to hear? Has the Western Christ become a clownish figure, a commercialized caricature of the historical Jesus?

I thought of the image of Christ that I had grown up with in American Protestantism: Sallman's “Head of Christ,” with Jesus pictured as a white male with soft brown hair and dreamy eyes. Variations on this Gentile Jesus fill Sunday school literature and stained glass windows to this day. The greasepainted Ronald is not too much different. Yet I never reacted with negativity to my cultural stereotype of Christ.

This crucified clown confronts us with the commercialization of today's Christianity: the obscene salaries of megachurch pastors, the plush worship centers, the vacuity of entertainment masquerading as worship, the vulgarity of the health and wealth gospel, the trinkets for sale in Christian bookstores, and the scandal of a politicized Evangelicalism that sells its soul for political power.

Suddenly Ronald McDonald on the cross began to look like an accurate depiction of western Christianity. This scandalous work of art started to look more like a modern prophecy, a word from God spoken to God's wayward people, who have forsaken the crucified Christ for a Golden Calf. (Incidentally Jani Leinonen has also created a “McBuddha” sitting in the lotus positon, depicting the similar Western enculturation of Buddhism.)

The McJesus crucifix still offends me when I look at it, which it should. It is too true not to offend.  But it also has made me look deeply at why it offends me. That is a good thing. I hope it remains hanging in that museum and offends many more people. Then maybe we Christians will look more carefully at the Christ we profess to worship, and make sure he is the real Jesus.

God Wears Flannel

Last Sunday I had lunch after church with a few other retired ministers and their spouses. We all came straight from church. Of the three other clergymen present, one was wearing a coat and tie, one had taken off his tie after worship, and the third wore khakis and a sweater. None of them had preached that Sunday. That was just their normal church attire.

I wore blue jeans and a flannel shirt to the meal. That is what I also wore to church. That is what I always wear to worship these days. It feels comfortable. It also feels like I am going to church incognito. Who would guess that the old guy with the gray beard (that is getting a bit too long) and Wallace tartan is a preacher? Not many.

Before I retired, I always wore a coat and tie on Sundays. A suit for special occasions. For many years I wore a black pulpit robe and stoles. When I starting preaching in the 1970’s I even wore a coat and tie during the week for visitation and meetings. I still wear a coat and tie nowadays when I am a guest preacher. A suit for funerals and weddings. The rest of the time it is flannel.

These days many preachers dress casually all the time, even when preaching. Especially megachurch pastors. Apparently it helps them connect to the people in the pews. That is, if they had pews. Pews are out, having been replaced by cushioned chairs. Organs are out. Guitars and drums are in. Choirs are out. Worship teams are in. Hymnals are out. Lyrics projected on a screen are in. Stained glass windows are out. Windowless auditoriums are in.

I have mixed feelings about these trends in worship. I lament the loss of poetry in lyrics and variety in music. I prefer hymns, and I could do without the amplifiers. I like sermons with thoughtful theologizing delivered from a pulpit, rather than casual talks given without notes. I like sunlight shining through glass windows, and I like hearing scripture read in worship.

But my aching back and bottom are glad for comfortable chairs as opposed to hard pews. I don’t care what the preacher or the worship leaders wear. I wear flannels and jeans, and so I cannot begrudge others’ wardrobe choices. When I had a church in Steeler Nation half the congregation wore black and gold jerseys to church on game day, so I got used to unusual worship apparel.

But I don’t want to hear closed-mindedness and dogmatism in theology, whether liberal or conservative. I don’t want to hear prejudice or bigotry of any type. I don’t want to hear about politics in church. I get enough of that elsewhere. I don’t want to hear people being judged for what they do or don’t do. Leave that to God, who is the only one who can judge impartially.

Did I mention flannel shirts? I think God prefers flannel and jeans over coat and ties. After all his son was a carpenter. (Something God and I have in common.) Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God. We even call him God the Son. That means that God wears flannel! If Jesus returns to earth physically, the way many Christians expect, he will certainly be sporting Levis. Or at least Carhartt.

If I were to require one new rule for church, it would be that everyone had to wear flannel shirts and blue jeans to church at least once a month. Both men and women. Even the pastor. Kind of like “Casual Friday” at work. Call it “Flannel Sunday.”

Maybe we could make it the eleventh commandment. It is time the Ten Commandments got an upgrade. Better yet, put it in the place of that Sabbath law. Christians ignore that one anyway. We might as well be upfront about it. And once in a while we could all sing that gospel favorite: Gimme that Blue Jeans Religion. It’s good enough for me.

You Don’t Trust Me

Chances are you don’t trust me. Well, not me personally … I hope. I am talking about clergy in general, a group in which I am included. A recent Gallup poll released a few days before Christmas rated twenty professions on honesty and ethics. Clergy did not fare well. The question was: “Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields.”

Gallup has been doing this poll since 1977, which coincidentally is the year I graduated from seminary and was ordained to Christian ministry. The clergy rating actually went up in the first few years of the poll, ranking in the top two professions. In 1986 we began to slip in the ratings, and we have been slipping ever since. This past year clergy rated the lowest ever. Only 37% of those polled thought clergy were ethical or honest. At least we beat telemarketers! (Nurses were at the top with 84%. Members of Congress were last at 8%.)

Ministers have been wringing their hands over the results, but it comes as no surprise to me. I have been watching the change as it happened. The decline of confidence in clergy coincided in the 1980’s with the rise of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, which redefined the GOP as “God’s Own Party.” It was followed by various other groups composing the Religious Right, who promote a political agenda over a spiritual message.

The televangelist scandals of the 1980’s and 90’s did not help matters any. Then there was the Catholic Church’s pedophile priest scandal of the 2000’s which is still unfolding today.  Protestant, evangelical, and fundamentalist churches have had their share of sexual assaults and financial scandals as well. No segment of Christianity is immune.

In the meantime attendance at churches of all types has plummeted. Every generation of Americans is less religious than the previous one. For that reason a smaller percentage of people have a relationship with a local clergyperson, leaving their opinions susceptible to the prejudices of the mainstream media, which promotes stereotypes and struggles to understand the role of religion in society.

As churches have emptied out, less churches can afford fulltime pastors. That translates into fewer people entering the ministry. The closure of mainline seminaries has become epidemic in recent years, leaving churches at the mercy of ministers trained at fundamentalist schools or not at all.

The popularity of Creationism and Intelligent Design in Evangelicalism has further shaped the public image of Christians as uneducated and anti-scientific. The result is a picture of American Christianity which is less attractive to educated people, further limiting the pool of people from which the church can draw upon.

The political polarization of American society in recent years has meant that conservatives do not trust liberal clergy, whom they think are left-wing socialists disguised as Christians. Liberals do not trust conservative clergy, whom they perceive to be religious bigots who have betrayed the spirit of Christ. So the downward spiral of distrust deepens.

Personally I have seen dramatic changes in churches and clergy over the four decades I have been in professional ministry. Churches are grayer, smaller, more isolated, and have fewer children and young families. Clergy also are grayer, and many come into ministry later in life. One good change is the increase in the number of female pastors.

I have changed as well. I used to identify myself as evangelical. I don’t use that term any longer, mainly because of what the word has come to mean in popular culture. Even the term “Christian” has become problematic, even though I still identify myself that way. But I prefer the phrase “follower of Jesus.”

Just as the Gallup poll indicates, I have become one of those people who don’t trust clergy the way I used to. Pastors aren’t as vigilant as I would like in protecting children in their churches’ care. Clergy and churches’ attitudes toward women are too often misogynistic.

I don’t trust most clergy to have a basic understanding of church history, historical theology or biblical scholarship. I don’t trust pastors to have been trained in the historical-critical method, which for over two hundred years has been the gold standard for biblical scholarship. In my opinion too many pastors have abandoned pastoral care and spiritual direction to serve as community organizers and church administrators.

In short I think clergy deserve the failing grade that the American public gives us. I pray that this trend will be reversed, and clergy will once again be among the most respected, knowledgeable, honest, and trustworthy persons in the community. That used to be the case. I hope it can be that way again.

Prayers R Us

Looking for something special to give to your special someone for New Year’s? How about buying a prayer? Not any old prayer, but a Holy Land prayer. I am referring to the burgeoning market of buying prayers in Jerusalem. Maybe it is more accurately called Rent-a-Prayer. For as little as the price of a meal at the local diner you can get a bona fide holy person of your choice to pray for you or your loved one at one of the holy sites in the Holy City.

A business known as “Holy Land Prayer” offers packages ranging from $15 to $40. For that you get a priest to read a prayer in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the spot where tradition says Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected. For more particular customers the company “Salvation Garden” allows you to choose from a Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox clergyman to read your prayer.

If kosher is more to your taste, a “Western Wall Prayer Delivery Service” will have a rabbi or Torah scholar offer a prayer at the holiest site of Judaism. Prices range from the $29 economy package to the $3,600 deluxe package that provide 10 people praying daily for 40 days, as well as reading the entire Book of Psalms.

I am trying to wrap my mind around this phenomenon. To be honest it smells much like selling indulgences, a practice which prompted the spiritual Resistance known as the Protestant Reformation. I guess I am too much of a protestant to believe that money buys any spiritual commodity, or that any person or place is any holier than any other.

I understand the lure of sacred sites, but I am not sure what to make of proxy prayers. I have had spiritual experiences at religious sites in the Holy Land, but I can’t see how they are transferable to other people for a price.

Do people believe that prayers are more likely to be answered if prayed from a certain geographical location? Are those spots closer to heaven? Is there less atmospheric interference? Do people believe that the veil between heaven and earth is thinner at certain spots?

As a student of the world’s religions, I know that holy places are a widespread phenomenon. On our trips to the Holy Land, you could not walk more than a few steps in Jerusalem without tripping over a holy site. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam fight over the sacred real estate of that city.

Christians go on pilgrimages to other holy sites as well, such as Lourdes. Muslims have a religious obligation to take a pilgrimage to Mecca once during their lifetimes. Every Muslim is supposed to pray toward Mecca five times a day. New Agers believe that certain spots on earth – called spiritual vortexes - have greater spiritual power. Places like Machu Picchu, the Great Pyramid of Giza, and Sedona, Arizona.

I love the holy places of the Holy Land. I have led several tours of the Holy Land during my ministry, and I have seen the emotional effect that places can have upon people. I honor these pilgrims’ experience. But for me holiness is not in the place but the people. The holy sites are just geographical locations of historical significance. God is not more present there than anywhere else.

In my experience, God is present everywhere. Wherever I am, God is. The apostle Paul says our bodies are temples of God, and the Holy Spirit dwells within us. We are walking holy sites. Wherever we walk is holy ground. We are our own priests; no paid clergy necessary. I experience God present here and now; I have no need to go elsewhere to be closer to God. Or to pay for anyone to pray in such places for me.

As Jacob said of the isolated spot in the wilderness where he camped for the night, “God is in this place and I did not realize it. This is none other than the house of God! This is the gate of heaven!” God is wherever we are. God is here now. All we have to do is be here now to know God’s presence. We are living prayers. You are a holy place. Credit cards not accepted.

Slavery’s Roots

On December 12 my alma mater, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, released a report entitled “Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.” It follows up on a 1995 resolution passed by the Southern Baptist Convention, which admitted the sins of Southern Baptists in their support of slavery and racism in the United States.

I am not going to criticize the report. Personally I am impressed that it happened at all. It is a step in the right direction, but it is only a first step. I hope that steps will be taken by the seminary to follow up on the report.

I am thinking specifically of renaming buildings, which presently bear the names of the seminary’s founding faculty, whom seminary president Albert Mohler says “were deeply involved in slavery and deeply complicit in the defense of slavery.” At a time when Confederate memorials are coming down, it seems only right that names of slaveholders should come down from buildings at an institution that trains Southern Baptist leaders.

My main concern about the SBTS report is what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t address the underlying issue. It doesn’t ask the question “Why?” Why did these devout Southern Baptists support and defend slavery? And why has it taken until 2018 to clarify Southern Seminary’s position on this issue.

The answer is the Bible.  Southerners’ support for slavery was rooted in the Bible as much as in Southern economy and culture. Southern Baptist support for slavery was not an aberrant 19^th century interpretation of the Bible, but an accurate understanding of the stance of the Scriptures on the subject. The founders of the seminary were biblically literate Christians who correctly assessed the Bible’s support for slavery.

The harsh truth is that the Bible condones and supports slavery from beginning to end. One can’t deny that reality without being dishonest with the biblical text and one’s own conscience.  No amount of prooftexting and creative eisegesis can ever turn the Bible into an abolitionist manifesto.

Abraham – the father of faith – was a slaveholder. His decision to have children with his Egyptian slave girl Hagar was nothing less than sex slavery. There was no way for Hagar to say “No” to Abe’s advances. There was no #MeToo movement for Hagar to appeal to.

When we move on to Moses we find slavery institutionalized and regulated in God’s Law given at Sinai. Slavery is accepted even in the Ten Commandments, which many Christians insist on erecting on public property. In the tenth commandment not to covet anything that is our neighbor’s, slaves are included in the list of covetable property… along with wives, donkeys and oxen.

I could give many other examples from the Old Testament, but let’s move on to the New Testament. The apostles Paul and Peter command slaves to be obedient to their masters as to the Lord, even if they mistreat them. When addressing slaveholders, Paul does not tell then to release their slaves; he tells them to treat their slaves well. True, Paul tells Christian slaves that if they have a chance to be free, they should take it, but he never condemns slavery as wrong or unchristian.

In fact Paul returns the runaway slave Onesimus to his Christian master Philemon! It is true he recommends that the slaveholder receive him as a Christian brother rather than a slave. But he adds that the decision is entirely up to Philemon, and he should not feel under compulsion to do so.

Paul goes so far as to use the term “slave” as a positive metaphor of a Christian’s relationship to Christ. Paul often begins his letters describing himself as a slave of Christ, which would make Christ into a slaveholder. Is it any wonder that Southern Christians would imitate their Lord in this matter?

How about Jesus? What was his word on slavery? Jesus often uses slaves as characters in his parables, but he never advocates freeing slaves. In fact he heals a centurion’s slave so that he could return to a life of servitude. In the process he has a conversation with the centurion about slavery, but never suggests that it might be the right thing to do to free his slave.

The fact is that slavery was part of the worldview of the Bible, just as it was part of the Christian worldview in the antebellum South. It was assumed to be a social institution acceptable to God. That is what the founding fathers of Southern Seminary believed, and that is what everyone in the Bible believed. To suggest that any of the saints in the Bible were actually secret abolitionists is historical revisionism.

The roots of slavery in Western civilization can be traced to the Bible. Slavery was practiced by the Hebrew patriarchs, regulated by the Mosiac Law, and condoned by Jesus and the apostles. Yes, there are deeper principles in the Bible that eventually led Christian abolitionists to support the elimination of slavery. Paul’s statement that “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female” comes to mind.

But the development of such verses into principles of universal human equality, human dignity and inalienable human rights took millennia to work out and apply to society.  Southern Baptists are still struggling with how to apply the “male and female” part of that verse to their denomination today, much less the controversial issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Slavery and racism are problems, not just for the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Southern Baptist Convention. They are problems for all Christians who consider the Bible to be the authoritative Word of God and their infallible guide for Christian faith and practice.

It is time that we admit that we have a problem. We have a Bible problem. More specifically it is a problem with our understanding of the authority and inspiration of the Bible. This is a problem that Southern Baptists are nowhere near to admitting. In fact it was the denial of that problem – and a retreat into a pre-critical view of the inerrancy of scripture – which gave birth to the “conservative resurgence” which now controls the SBC.

It is not just that the Bible contains characters who were sinners – a fact which Dr. Mohler admits in his introductory letter to the report - but the Bible condones behaviors that are sins. Slavery is just one of them. If Southern Baptists could admit that perhaps – just maybe – the biblical writers got this one issue wrong, then it might open up a different way of understanding the inspiration and authority of scripture.

That could lead to Baptists and other evangelicals to view other social issues of our day from a new perspective. Then the Church might regain a respected place at the table of public opinion. But that is probably hoping for too much. Only when we admit that we have a scripture problem, can we begin to solve the sin problem in the Southern Baptist denomination and evangelical Christianity.

Christmas Earthrise

Something special happened on Christmas Day long ago. Something that forever changed the human understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe. On that day three men traveled a long distance and beheld a wondrous sight, which inspired the recitation of scripture. Actually two events fit that description. The more famous one you know about – the birth of Jesus. But I am also thinking about the Apollo 8 moon flight.

Exactly fifty years ago on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1968, three NASA astronauts "slipped the surly bonds of earth" and orbited the moon. They became the first humans to leave this rock we call home, and they forever changed the way we see our planet. On the fourth orbit of the moon, William Anders thought to put color film in the camera, which they were using to photograph possible future landing sites on the moon’s surface, and he turned the lens toward home.

From 240,000 miles away he snapped the famous photo called “Earthrise.” It shows our vibrant, little blue and white planet, rising beyond the lifeless gray foreground of the moon’s surface. On Christmas morning the three astronauts (which means “star sailors”) read the opening lines of Genesis to earthlings celebrating the holiday. 

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night….”

They ended the reading with these words: “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth.” For kids used to the special effects of Star Wars and Star Trek, a still photo taken from the moon may not seem like much. But it still gives me chills to look at it.

I get the same feeling when I see the photograph of earth taken on Valentine’s Day, 1990, by the Voyager 1 space probe. In this shot, taken from 4 billion miles away, earth is barely visible as a “pale blue dot,” as Carl Sagan described it.

Seeing the earth from a distance puts everything in perspective. It wakes me up. The same is true for the more ancient event that occurred on Christmas Day. The birth of Christ puts everything in perspective for me. A new way of seeing the world and humankind happened two thousand years ago.

Humans disagree about the significance of the man Jesus, whom his followers called the Christ. Indeed, Christians disagree about Christ! Within Christianity competing Christologies continue to argue over the nature of the man and his birth. Nonreligious people dismiss the whole story as nothing more than a myth.

But for me the birth of Jesus changes everything. I do not pretend to understand what happened on the first Christmas. But I know that it changes the way I see the world. As a follower of the one born that day, I see the world from a heavenly perspective.

The closing words of McGee’s famous poem “High Flight” (which I quoted above) speaks to me of spiritual truth, as well as air flight and space travel. Jesus has made it possible for me to “put out my hand, and touch the face of God.” Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth.